From behind her lattice, still breathless from the haste she had made, and with her whelp Marzak at her side, Fenzileh had witnessed that first angry return of the Basha from the house of Sakr-el-Bahr.
She had heard him bawling for Abdul Mohktar, the leader of his janissaries, and she had seen the hasty mustering of a score of these soldiers in the courtyard, where the ruddy light of torches mingled with the white light of the full moon. She had seen them go hurrying away with Asad himself at their head, and she had not known whether to weep or to laugh, whether to fear or to rejoice.
“It is done,” Marzak had cried exultantly. “The dog hath withstood him and so destroyed himself. There will be an end to Sakr-el-Bahr this night.” And he had added: “The praise to Allah!”
But from Fenzileh came no response to his prayer of thanksgiving. True, Sakr-el-Bahr must be destroyed, and by a sword that she herself had forged. Yet was it not inevitable that the stroke which laid him low must wound her on its repercussion? That was the question to which now she sought an answer. For all her eagerness to speed the corsair to his doom, she had paused sufficiently to weigh the consequences to herself; she had not overlooked the circumstance that an inevitable result of this must be Asad’s appropriation of that Frankish slave-girl. But at the time it had seemed to her that even this price was worth paying to remove Sakr-el-Bahr definitely and finally from her son’s path — which shows that, after all, Fenzileh the mother was capable of some self-sacrifice. She comforted herself now with the reflection that the influence, whose waning she feared might be occasioned by the introduction of a rival into Asad’s hareem, would no longer be so vitally necessary to herself and Marzak once Sakr-el-Bahr were removed. The rest mattered none so much to her. Yet it mattered something, and the present state of things left her uneasy, her mind a cockpit of emotions. Her grasp could not encompass all her desires at once, it seemed; and whilst she could gloat over the gratification of one, she must bewail the frustration of another. Yet in the main she felt that she should account herself the gainer.
In this state of mind she had waited, scarce heeding the savagely joyous and entirely selfish babblings of her cub, who cared little what might betide his mother as the price of the removal of that hated rival from his path. For him, at least, there was nothing but profit in the business, no cause for anything but satisfaction; and that satisfaction he voiced with a fine contempt for his mother’s feelings.
Anon they witnessed Asad’s return. They saw the janissaries come swinging into the courtyard and range themselves there whilst the Basha made his appearance, walking slowly, with steps that dragged a little, his head sunk upon his breast, his hands behind him. They waited to see slaves following him, leading or carrying the girl he had gone to fetch. But they waited in vain, intrigued and uneasy.
They heard the harsh voice in which Asad dismissed his followers, and the clang of the closing gate; and they saw him pacing there alone in the moonlight, ever in that attitude of dejection.
What had happened? Had he killed them both? Had the girl resisted him to such an extent that he had lost all patience and in one of those rages begotten of such resistance made an end of her?
Thus did Fenzileh question herself, and since she could not doubt but that Sakr-el-Bahr was slain, she concluded that the rest must be as she conjectured. Yet, the suspense torturing her, she summoned Ayoub and sent him to glean from Abdul Mohktar the tale of what had passed. In his own hatred of Sakr-el-Bahr, Ayoub went willingly enough and hoping for the worst. He returned disappointed, with a tale that sowed dismay in Fenzileh and Marzak.
Fenzileh, however, made a swift recovery. After all, it was the best that could have happened. It should not be difficult to transmute that obvious dejection of Asad’s into resentment, and to fan this into a rage that must end by consuming Sakr-el-Bahr. And so the thing could be accomplished without jeopardy to her own place at Asad’s side. For it was inconceivable that he should now take Rosamund to his hareem. Already the fact that she had been paraded with naked face among the Faithful must in itself have been a difficult obstacle to his pride. But it was utterly impossible that he could so subject his self-respect to his desire as to take to himself a woman who had been the wife of his servant.
Fenzileh saw her way very clearly. It was through Asad’s devoutness — as she herself had advised, though scarcely expecting such rich results as these — that he had been thwarted by Sakr-el-Bahr. That same devoutness must further be played upon now to do the rest.
Taking up a flimsy silken veil, she went out to him where he now sat on the divan under the awning, alone there in the tepid-scented summer night. She crept to his side with the soft, graceful, questing movements of a cat, and sat there a moment unheeded almost — such was his abstraction — her head resting lightly against his shoulder.
“Lord of my soul,” she murmured presently, “thou art sorrowing.” Her voice was in itself a soft and soothing caress.
He started, and she caught the gleam of his eyes turned suddenly upon her.
“Who told thee so?” he asked suspiciously.
“My heart,” she answered, her voice melodious as a viol. “Can sorrow burden thine and mine go light?” she wooed him. “Is happiness possible to me when thou art downcast? In there I felt thy melancholy, and thy need of me, and I am come to share thy burden, or to bear it all for thee.” Her arms were raised, and her fingers interlocked themselves upon his shoulder.
He looked down at her, and his expression softened. He needed comfort, and never was she more welcome to him.
Gradually and with infinite skill she drew from him the story of what had happened. When she had gathered it, she loosed her indignation.
“The dog!” she cried. “The faithless, ungrateful hound! Yet have I warned thee against him, O light of my poor eyes, and thou hast scorned me for the warnings uttered by my love. Now at last thou knowest him, and he shall trouble thee no longer. Thou’lt cast him off, reduce him again to the dust from which thy bounty raised him.”
But Asad did not respond. He sat there in a gloomy abstraction, staring straight before him. At last he sighed wearily. He was just, and he had a conscience, as odd a thing as it was awkward in a corsair Basha.
“In what hath befallen,” he answered moodily, “there is naught to justify me in casting aside the stoutest soldier of Islam. My duty to Allah will not suffer it.”
“Yet his duty to thee suffered him to thwart thee, O my lord,” she reminded him very softly.
“In my desires — ay!” he answered, and for a moment his voice quivered with passion. Then he repressed it, and continued more calmly —“Shall my self-seeking overwhelm my duty to the Faith? Shall the matter of a slave-girl urge me to sacrifice the bravest soldier of Islam, the stoutest champion of the Prophet’s law? Shall I bring down upon my head the vengeance of the One by destroying a man who is a scourge of scorpions unto the infidel — and all this that I may gratify my personal anger against him, that I may avenge the thwarting of a petty desire?”
“Dost thou still say, O my life, that Sakr-el-Bahr is the stoutest champion of the Prophet’s law?” she asked him softly, yet on a note of amazement.
“It is not I that say it, but his deeds,” he answered sullenly.
“I know of one deed no True–Believer could have wrought. If proof were needed of his infidelity he hath now afforded it in taking to himself a Nasrani wife. Is it not written in the Book to be Read: ‘Marry not idolatresses’? Is not that the Prophet’s law, and hath he not broken it, offending at once against Allah and against thee, O fountain of my soul?”
Asad frowned. Here was truth indeed, something that he had entirely overlooked. Yet justice compelled him still to defend Sakr-el-Bahr, or else perhaps he but reasoned to prove to himself that the case against the corsair was indeed complete.
“He may have sinned in thoughtlessness,” he suggested.
At that she cried out in admiration of him. “What a fount of mercy and forbearance art thou, O father of Marzak! Thou’rt right as in all things. It was no doubt in thoughtlessness that he offended, but would such thoughtlessness be possible in a True–Believer — in one worthy to be dubbed by thee the champion of the Prophet’s Holy Law?”
It was a shrewd thrust, that pierced the armour of conscience in which he sought to empanoply himself. He sat very thoughtful, scowling darkly at the inky shadow of the wall which the moon was casting. Suddenly he rose.
“By Allah, thou art right!” he cried. “So that he thwarted me and kept that Frankish woman for himself, he cared not how he sinned against the law.”
She glided to her knees and coiled her arms about his waist, looking up at him. “Still art thou ever merciful, ever sparing in adverse judgment. Is that all his fault, O Asad?”
“All?” he questioned, looking down at her. “What more is there?”
“I would there were no more. Yet more there is, to which thy angelic mercy blinds thee. He did worse. Not merely was he reckless of how he sinned against the law, he turned the law to his own base uses and so defiled it.”
“How?” he asked quickly, eagerly almost.
“He employed it as a bulwark behind which to shelter himself and her. Knowing that thou who art the Lion and defender of the Faith wouldst bend obediently to what is............