Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/137

125 king took horse, with all his guards and nobles, and rode down to the sea to meet her. Presently, she landed and the king embraced her and mounting her on a horse, carried her to the palace, where her mother received her with open arms and asked her how she did and whether she was yet a maid. ‘O my mother,’ replied Meryem, ‘how should a girl, who has been sold from merchant to merchant in the land of the Muslims, [a slave] commanded, abide a maid? The merchant who bought me threatened me with beating and forced me and did away my maidenhead, after which he sold me to another and he again to a third.’

When the queen heard this, the light in her eyes became darkness and she repeated her words to the king, who was sore chagrined thereat and his affair was grievous to him. So he expounded her case to his grandees and patriarchs, who said to him, ‘O king, she hath been defiled by the Muslims, and nothing will purify her save the striking off of a hundred of their heads.’ Whereupon the king sent for the prisoners and commanded to strike off their heads. So they beheaded them, one after another, beginning with the captain, till there was none left but Noureddin. They tore off a strip of his skirt and binding his eyes therewith, set him on the carpet of blood and were about to cut off his head, when an old woman came up to the king and said, ‘O my lord, thou didst vow to bestow upon the church five Muslim captives, to help us in the service thereof, so God would restore thee thy daughter the Princess Meryem; and now she