The Witch of Aleppo/Chapter 9

NIGHT and a day Michael waited for the interview with his new master. The chamber in which he had been confined without food was bare except for two hemp ropes suspended from the beams of the ceiling and ending in slip-nooses about a yard from the floor. Under the ropes lay two lengths of bamboo, tough and pliable. Under the bamboos was a thick veneer of dried blood—the mark of the bastinado, in which a prisoner was strung up by the ankles and beaten with the bamboos upon the soles of his bare feet until exhausted nerves gave way and he confessed, or lied to save himself.

At the end of the time a door opened and two armed negroes entered with cresset torches, signing for Michael to advance to the black square of the open portal. But on the threshold they stayed him, and he made out a figure in the shadows beyond.

This was a thin, stooped form draped in striped silk. A form with a beak of a face and a pinched mouth, seeming to droop under the weight of a massive green turban set with emeralds.

“The Sidi ibn Ahmad,” grunted one of the slaves, “would have speech with thee.”

Michael bowed and stood at ease, sniffing the odor of musk and opium, while two large eyes considered him.

“O Frank,” said the Moslem sharply, “where are the kazaks?”

It startled Michael more than a little that this man should be aware he spoke Turki, and had knowledge of the raid of the Cossacks.

“Who knows,” he replied musingly, “if not Allah?”

“You do.”

“That is not true.”

“Bah! Offspring of swine, the Sidi has eyes that can pierce beyond the hills. A band of kazaks rode toward Aleppo. Where did you leave them?”

“If you can see through the hills, then you can see them. I know nothing, O pasha.”

“Dog of an unbeliever! You were in their company. What plans had they formed when you were taken from them?”

If, Michael thought, the pasha of Aleppo could not see beyond the Caucasus, he must have ears in every bazaar in Asia Minor. And this was close to the truth, for the man in the doorway was well served by spies.

“The chief of the kazaks," went on he of the turban, “is like a falcon, striking far from home. But where are his men?”

Michael, wondering if Demid’s disguise had been pierced, only shook his head. Demid had been careful to say nothing of his plans to any one.

The man in the door snapped his teeth angrily and motioned to the guards to string Michael up. As they moved to do this, a high voice whispered something from the darkness behind the dignitary, who hesitated and drew back.

“We will not wheedle you like a woman. You have until the mid-morning prayer of the morrow to make up your mind to confess. When that time comes if you do not speak you will be drawn on the stake—”he paused, the pinched lips curving with relish—“by horses.”

“Nay, not that!” cried Michael, starting.

“Aye, unbeliever. Prepare to taste maut ahmar, the bloody death.”

The slaves drew back and the door closed, leaving him to the shadows of the torture chamber and the contemplation of the bastinado ropes that now seemed luxurious compared to the fate in store for him. He wondered who the unseen speaker had been—for who would countermand an order of Sidi Ahmad, within the palace?

“Perhaps a woman,” he reasoned.

To be drawn on a stake by horses, before a throng of watching Turks! Michael gritted his teeth. Hanging was better, and yet—and yet, he would not play the part of a coward. If he could make up a false tale—but instinct warned him that the pasha was not to be hoodwinked.

“Ah, if they would put a blade in my hand, it would be a blessed thing.”

He thought longingly of Demid, and the chance of having a weapon smuggled in through the grating of the window. Demid had tried to get him free, and speak with him—had taken a daring chance—but the Cossack could not know where he was confined.

“What a lad he is! God save him!” thought Michael admiringly, and wondered what plan the Cossack meant to follow.

Demid had done as he promised Ibnol Hammamgi—had passed openly through the gate of Aleppo and the wall of the castle, into the Wolf’s Ear.

Perhaps Lali, who seemed to know all things, had an inkling of where the pasha kept his treasure; perhaps the singing girl could find out. Michael had reasoned that the treasure would lie in the tower or under it. He was quick of wit and he had noticed that the janizaries who brought him had turned over their prisoner to the personal slaves of Sidi Ahmad at the tower door.

He had used his eyes and had a fair idea of the plan of the palace, which was much like that of a medieval castle in England. At the rear a sheer cliff some twenty feet high rose from the slope of the hill. Above this were the terraced gardens of the palace itself, protected on the other three sides by a wall of solid marble blocks, too high to climb, too massive to beat in.

The road that led up to this wall from the alleys of Aleppo passed through the single gate, of iron-bound teak. Seen from the suk this gate seemed to be the eye of a wolf, the palace its skull, and the tower its ear.

The palace itself was small, forming three sides of a courtyard. The embrasures of the dungeon, set with iron bars, looked out upon the cedars and olive trees and the pleasant fountain of the courtyard. Michael could see no more than the tops of the trees and the spray of the fountain, for the opening was a spear’s length over his head.

It seemed to him that the torture chamber was the base of the tower, as the walls were of massive black basalt and the columns supporting the ceiling were thick as buttresses, instead of the slender pillars of Arabic design. In fact the grim, black tower with its rounded cupola was like nothing else in Aleppo. Perhaps it had been built centuries ago for an astrologer—certainly it served to guard Sidi Ahmad from assassins.

All at once Michael stiffened where he sat in a corner of the torture chamber. A slight sound had reached him, the muffled gritting of iron against stone. Often before when the chamber was in darkness he had heard this sound, but now he was aware of a breath of stale air that passed across his cheek.

As quietly as possible he rose to his feet, with an effort, for long fasting had sapped his strength. Too clearly to be mistaken he now heard the tinkle of a guitar, and a swelling voice, high and plaintive.

These were the first words of Lali’s song and (the sound of it came through the embrasure overhead. Michael felt for the heavy ropes that hung near at hand, put his foot in one of the loops and drew himself up by his arms until he could see out into the court.

Sidi Ahmad was giving a feast near the pool. Cresset torches held by motionless slaves revealed a company of Turkish officers, in colored silks and velvets, kneeling on carpets, listening to the song of the girl. Beside the host was Demid, the stem of a hubble-bubble in his hand.

Lali sat a little apart from the other slave girls, behind a screen of palms, and Michael noticed that, even while she sang for the pasha, her glance went to the Cossack. At the end of her song, while the guests were smiling and praising her to the slender Turk, Michael ventured to call to her softly:

“Daughter of Macari, a boon I crave of him who shared bread and salt with me—a sword from him, passed through this grating. Give him that word.”

Lali, rising, half turned her head toward the embrasure. Then, without response, she walked slowly to the feasters, adjusting her veil as she did so. The master of the palace gave command for a silver-sewn robe of honor to be brought her, and, receiving it, she bowed her dark head to the carpet. The officers of the janizaries and the dignitaries of the city lifted their hands and voiced courteous praise, for the grace of the girl could not be veiled.

“Hair blacker than the storm wind!”

“Eyes like a gazelle, softer than pearls”

“Nay, she walks like the wind of dawn among the flowers!”

The host, sitting back in shadow himself, motioned Lali toward his slaves and leaned forward to present a costly gift to Demid, a simitar of blue steel, chased with gold. Michael groaned under his breath, for Lali had not ventured near Demid and he remembered that now the singing girl had been given to Sidi Ahmad, and it would be mortal offence for Demid to exchange a word with her.

Then a voice from near at hand spoke laughingly—

“O watcher of the feast, is there no ease for thy hunger?”

Michael looked down into the gloom of the torture chamber and slid to the floor. The speaker seemed to be within the wall.

“Tell Sidi Ahmad what he seeks of you, and go unharmed from Aleppo on the morrow.”

“Who are you?”

“A prisoner like yourself, until my time comes. Aye, I have fled from daggers that would pierce these walls.”

Now was Michael aware of the truth that an elusive memory had been whispering to him. He knew the man who spoke from the wall.

“You are Captain Balaban, the Levantine!” he cried.

A pause, broken by a low, amused laugh—

“Nay, unbeliever, I am Sidi ibn Ahmad.”

RIM was the palace of the Wolf’s Ear, and dark the passageways beneath. Michael, hearkening to the lisp of lutes in the garden overhead, strained his eyes to make out the man who spoke to him, yet beheld only a black square where a secret door had opened away from the torture chamber. In this opening stood Captain Balaban, erstwhile captive of the Cossacks, and the gloom of the dungeon was not more forbidding than the whispering glee of his high-pitched voice.

Michael bethought him of several things: the talk of the Moslems in the caravanserai—that Sidi Ahmad had been on a journey from the Wolf’s Ear. And the warning of Ibnol Hammamgi that the pasha kept his face hidden when he was in Aleppo. Also, he remembered the high honor accorded the Levantine when the man escaped to the Moslems of the corsair.

How better could Sidi Ahmad protect himself from assassins than by taking another name, and allowing one of his officers to pose as pasha during his absence?

“O dog of an unbeliever,” went on the amused voiced “do you doubt my word? Would you see the signet ring of a pasha that I kept on a cord about my neck when I ventured among the Cossacks who guard the Christian frontier, to learn their strength? Or shall I summon my wazir who sits now on the carpet of honor in my stead—he who questioned you at my bidding?”

He clapped his hands and somewhere behind him a door opened, letting in a glow of candles. Michael saw that a section of the stone wall had been swung back upon its sockets, revealing a stair leading down past the dungeon. On a landing of this stair stood Balaban, robed in an Arab’s cloak.

“Aye,” the Moslem said, “I bought you of the thief in the suk and cheated him out of his profit—for you may be worth more than the price I paid. Verily, my word, a while ago, sentenced you to the stake—if you are fool enough to turn from my service.”

He lifted a hand significantly.

“My word can save you from the stake. Consider this, O Nazarene: my star is rising in Asia, and men flock to me. Soon the green standard will be carried from Bagdad to Moscow, and I shall ride before the standard bearer. Eyes serve me in hidden places and lips whisper in the Wolf’s Ear; but my eyes have shown me the weakness of your peoples, who flee from the sea before the corsairs.”

“Can your eyes find Demid and the hand of Cossacks?”

“Yes, by Allah! Demid sits at the feast over our heads. Alone, on the frontier his spirit is daring. Age the Cossack a bit and he would work harm, but now he is a fledgling flying before his time. I shall cut him down after you are staked.”

Michael’s heart sank, and his weariness grew upon him, for, indeed this man seemed to know all things.

“Consider again,” the Levantine went on, fingering the scar upon his cheek, “that the Cossack drinks his fill without thought for you.”

“A lie, that! Demid would strike a blow for me if he knew my plight.”

A calculating light came into the Moslem’s narrowed eyes.

“Inshallah, that we shall see. I shall bid the young hero to watch your torture on the morrow, and you will see that he stirs not—not so much as a hair of his beard. But I can put a sword in your hand, and give you a golden name. Aye, you may not lack a pashalik if you will acknowledge Mohammed, and turn to the true faith. One thing I ask, that you make clear where the bull Cossack and his dozen are hidden, for until now they have escaped my search.”

“I shared bread and salt with them.”

“Bah—what is faith? A word that dies on the lips. Lali, the young witch, sold you—I know not why. What faith do you owe her lover?”

“The word of Michael of Rohan!”

With that the cavalier stiffened his muscles and leaped at the man who mocked him. His body shot into the open door, but his cramped limbs were sluggish and Balaban, stepping back, brought down the flat of his blade upon Michael’s skull. Searing flames shot through the vision of the little man, and then—darkness.