A Wind in Cairo (2 page)

“I'll show you,” he whispered. He stood still in the middle of his emptied floor. Mahaut watched him tirelessly, in calm that was too perfect even to be contempt. Hasan was no match for Frankish muscle, nor ever could be.

His shoulders drooped. His head sank in dejection. He drifted, stumbling, toward the bundle and the door. Mahaut did not move.

Hasan snatched, leaped, bolted. Full under his jailer's hands, the wind of them chilling his nape as he darted beneath. They caught his gown. He twisted viciously. The fine linen tore. He burst out of it, all but naked in drawers and shirt, and running all the lighter for it.

The Frank knew his master's house, but Hasan knew every cranny in it, and every smallest bolthole. He laughed even as he fled, white wild laughter, fierce with mockery.

The last he knew of Mahaut was the thudding of feet and the snarl of a Frankish curse. Then he was over the garden wall, bundle slung behind him, the crowds and clamor of the city before. They parted: shocked eyes, startled faces, a flicker of laughter.

He halted in an alleyway, gulping air, grinning like a mad thing. After a moment he remembered what he carried. He lowered it, spreading it open on the ground; and laughed aloud. Fine robes for the desert, these; princely fine. Under the interested eye of a small grey cat, he put them on, winding the turban, hanging from his belt the weight that had been the heart of his booty. A very heavy weight, jingling musically.

He laughed again, lighter now, freer. “Oh, surely, God is with me!” The cat yawned and flicked her tail. “I'll show them,” he said to her. “I'll win back everything I ever lost. I'll win it back a hundredfold. And then I'll be perfection itself. They'll see. They'll see what I am, by Allah, by every saint and prophet.”

Rashid and Daoud were there in Faranghi's, waiting as they always were, with the shifting crowd of others who always came to the scent and the sound of princely largesse. The sun went down in prayer. The night fell in wine and roistering. The luck was on Hasan. He could feel it. Tonight would be his triumph. Tomorrow…

“I'll go,” he said. “He thinks I'll beg and grovel and cry to be set free. I'll show him. I'll go to the old monster in Arabia. I'll be the greatest desert raider who ever was.”

They cheered. They called him by the name which Sheikh Uthman had given him, which for bright defiance he had taken for his own. “Al-Fahl! Al-Fahl! Al-Fahl!” The Stallion tossed his haughty head and bade the wine go round again. Music, song, bold and wanton women falling helpless before his eyes. The luck was singing in him.

Tonight, no backgammon. “Law,” he explained with care round the sweet stammer of the wine. “Law says no backgammon. Bones, O my beloved. Bones that dance and sing.”

They danced for him. Gold heaped for him. His hands were charmed tonight. They could not cast awry.

The emir was there, sweet sacrificial lamb. Dark oily slant-eyed Turk, soft prey for the Prophet's child on whom were prayer and peace and precious, precious luck. Ten mares, he wagered. Double or none. On all that Hasan had. Poor victim. Hasan stroked his dancing beauties; crooned to them; laid his will upon them.

“
Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar:
God is great, God is great! There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God. Come to prayer, O ye Muslims; come to prayer. Come to prosperity, come to prosperity. God is great. God is great. There is no god but God!”

The muezzin's wail shattered Hasan's spell. In the tavern was sudden silence: prayer rugs spread, heads bowed, backs bent toward Mecca. Infidels looked on, bored or interested or infernally amused. “Allah,” prayed Hasan with the dice in his hand. “
Allahu akbar.
” He cast. The dice rattled as they fell. Rolled. Settled in the stillness of the hour of prayer.

Eyes stared up at him, mocking him. Serpent's eyes. Defeat; disaster. He saw his hand creep out. One touch while all eyes bent in worship. One small encouragement, for his own salvation.

His hand froze. An inch more, only an inch. There was no one to see.

Only God.

He turned as all the others turned. He had nothing to pray for, except despair. But perhaps, afterward—one loss, one only. The luck would come back.

Fortified with prayer and wine, he was magnanimous in defeat. “Another cast?” he said. “In God's name?”

The emir likewise could be generous, for a Turk. “Another cast,” he agreed. And another, and another. Hasan won a little. He lost rather more than a little. The next cast, surely, or the next…

In the end they left Faranghi's. They had drunk all the wine he would let them drink. Faranghi the miser, Faranghi the fool. They found a more generous seller. His wine was stronger. It made them wild. Hasan had lost his embroidered coat, his belt of gold set with lapis and silver, his dagger with the emerald hilt. His purse was thin and frail. They were drinking it dry, his fine friends, his brothers in the blood of the vine. Their faces blurred. Their names were all one. “
Thirst,”
he said to them. “I name you
Thirst
.” They laughed. Good fellows. They always laughed at a prince's jest. Even a prince whom luck had made its fool. “Sharif, I am,” he sang. “Sharif, sharif, blessed and beloved, scion of the Prophet's tree. A sharif should be above reproach. A sharif should be a perfect saint. A sharif should be—should be—”

“Generous!” they cried.

His hand was full of silver. He cast it into the air. It fell like rain. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow, no more. No more rain. No more silver. No more anything.”

They were sad with him. They wept with him. They drank the wine he bought for them to make them sadder still. Weeping, groaning dirges, they wove out into the night. More wine; they needed more wine. They looked at Hasan. His hand delved into his purse. It came up empty. “No more,” he said. “All gone.” He giggled through his tears. “
All
gone.”

All. Silver, wine, friends. All gone. He stood alone under a shopkeeper's torch and laughed and wept. His feet carried him somewhere. Not home. There was no more home. His head floated among the stars. He sang in his voice that had broken into sweetness. “
O my gazelle, O my fawn…”

No gazelles in the street tonight. No fawns with painted eyes. They were all gone away. But shadows there were in plenty. He smiled at them. “Come,” he sang to them. “Come into my embrace.”

They smiled back. They came. They circled. They closed.

It was most uncomfortable, this bed. Hard. Cold. Fetid. Foul, for a surety. Hasan shifted, gasped. White agony pierced him. His arm. His right arm. His face. His eyes—his—

He whimpered. It bubbled. He choked. Blood. His mouth was full of blood.

His mind was bitterly, mercilessly clear. The wine had abandoned it. It remembered little, but it could guess. He had been taken, stripped of all that his foolishness had left him, and beaten for that it was so little. Beaten badly. His arm was broken, perhaps. His face felt like nothing he knew. He could not see.

Allah!
he wailed in the prison of his self.
Take anything, take anything You please, but O Allah, I beg of You, leave me my eyes!

He could stand, though he keened with the pain of it. He could walk, after a fashion. Hobbling, staggering, clinging to walls. A grey light grew. He wept for joy. God had heard him. He could see.

He did not know where he was. He could not speak, to ask. Passers fled him. Beggars spat and kicked him, driving him away from them. Gates would not open to his feeble hammering. Sometimes he fell. He did something to his foot. He could not get up. He began to crawl. Forward. Into the waxing dawn. How strange: there was darkness in the heart of it. It opened to embrace him.

“Come,” a voice said. A warm voice, a beautiful voice, sweet as honey. “Come, poor child. Drink.”

He opened his eyes on paradise. Light supernal, heavenly sweetness, a houri's face. A dark-eyed maiden, beautiful as the moon: angelic, perfect. She smiled. He died anew for love of her. “Drink,” she bade him.

The cup was silver. It brimmed with milk of paradise. He smiled, lost in bliss, and drank, and went down joyfully into the night.

“Come.” This voice was deep. It was, he supposed, not unbeautiful. It was nothing like an angel's. “Drink,” it commanded him.

He heard; he obeyed. He gagged and choked and plummeted into wakefulness.

A man bent over him, a very human man. His beard was long and shot with grey; his face was thin, keen-nosed, with eyes both dark and deep; his turban was the green turban of a holy man, a Hajji, a pilgrim to Mecca. He met Hasan's outraged stare with great serenity and said, “Ah, sir, my apologies. My medicines are not always as sweet to the taste as I could wish. Drink, I pray you, and be comforted. The bitterness bears healing in it.”

This was not the sort of man whom one disobeyed. Hasan drank, grimacing at the taste. The Hajji smiled. “Peace be upon you,” he said.

“Peace,” Hasan responded without thinking. It hurt, but he could speak. He was one great bruise. His arm was bound and aching fiercely. He was all too painfully alive. “Where—” he tried to say. “What—”

“You are in my house,” the Hajji said, “and you are not as sorely wounded as perhaps you fear. Your arm is badly bruised but not broken; the rest is but an ache or ten.”

Hasan's hand went to his face. He did not want to ask for a mirror. The Hajji did not offer one.

“Bruises,” the old man said. “Your beauty is marred for a little while, but it will recover.”

Hasan sighed and closed his eyes. After a moment they opened again. The Hajji had not moved. “I owe you much,” said Hasan. “My—father—” He stumbled and stopped. He struggled to sit up. “How long have I been here?”

“Not long,” said the Hajji. “A day and a night have passed since Allah's mercy brought you to our door.”

Hasan struggled harder, tangling in the bedclothes. The Hajji caught him with startling strength. He found himself flat again, motionless, well wrapped in blankets. “I shall send him word,” the Hajji said.

Hasan stilled in more than body. “No.” He had spoken before he thought. He said it again, with his mind behind it. “No. My thanks, but no. I dreamed—I had forgotten. I have no father.” The tears came of their own accord. “I have nothing. I am alone.”

Perhaps the Hajji would have spoken. Hasan turned his face away, squeezed his eyes shut. The man left him to weep in solitude.

He did not weep long. With no one to watch, there was no profit in it. Perhaps this was best. Let his father think he had run away. He could linger here, mend, and when he was mended, take his leave. Join a caravan. Wander far away. Redeem his sins, make a man of himself with no help from any bandit of a Bedouin; and come back at last, wealthy and strong, and show his father what in truth he was made of.

He slept fitfully. Once, when he woke, there was food beside him. He ate it.

He dreamed again of his houri. She was even more beautiful than before. She moved about him, tending him. Her hands were soft and light and very real. Her scent was musk and sandalwood.

Slowly it came to him. No houri, she. She was a living woman, but beautiful as any spirit of heaven. She was deft with him; she had no shyness. Drugged, half dreaming, he let her do as she would. Which was to tend his most intimate needs, and bathe him from head to foot, and change his bandages. She clothed him in a fresh bedgown; she drew up the coverlet. He smiled drowsily. She returned the smile. He caught her hand. That startled her, but she eased quickly.

“Stay,” he beseeched her. “Until I sleep.”

She stayed. She let him hold her hand, though it was cool in his own, neither responding nor resisting. He held it to his cheek. So comforted, he slept.

This, he knew, was morning. His body sang with it. His hurts were fading with miraculous swiftness. His head was clear. He sat up, and he was briefly dizzy, but he was strong. He stretched his good arm, arched his back. He yawned until his jaw cracked.

Somewhat gingerly he edged from the sleeping mat to the cool stone of the floor, gathered himself, rose. He reeled, steadied. He essayed a step; then another, growing stronger as he moved.

He circled the small room. He relieved himself in the basin that lay discreetly covered in a niche near the mat; he washed with water from the basin beside it. He counted bruises. They were hideous to see, greening as they healed, but the worst of the pain had passed.

He lay down again, light-headed with all he had done, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she was there.

She was veiled now. A very thin veil, hardly more than a token. It aroused him as no bare face, however beautiful, could have begun to do. She smiled through it, murmured a greeting, an exquisite courtesy. He echoed them with a dreamer's languor, or a lover's.

She had food for him. He let her feed him. His eyes feasted on her, but discreetly, through his long lashes. She was lightly clad: a chemise of fine linen, and under it thin drawers, and her drift of veil. None of it hid anything that mattered. She was a perfect beauty, deep-breasted, great-hipped, but slender between; her thighs were richly rounded, her calves a flawless curve, her feet slender and touched lightly with henna.

His blood was rising. Her eyes were bold, level as a man's; they did not lower when he met them. He smiled. She blushed a little, charmingly, but she smiled in return. He drew a breath that caught. He was in love. He choked on a mouthful of gruel; she rose swiftly, bending. She was in his arms.

It was a torrent in him. It bore him all unresisting; it swept her with him. She struggled, startled: a gazelle, a fawn. She was no match for his lion's strength. He laughed and set his lips on hers. She bit. He bit harder, Her hands clawed, raked. He snatched at her drawers. She twisted. Wondrous passionate, this slave of the Hajji. He took high delight in proving himself her master.