Evil in a Mask (34 page)

Before the match, a display of wrestling and javelin-throwing took place below the big balcony; then the square was cleared and the players rode out from either end of it. There were twenty a side, but there was ample space for them to gallop in. None of the French had ever seen the game before, and they found it most exciting.

For the third night running, Lisala came to Roger on his roof. By then he would have welcomed a respite of a night or two. Yet he found her so bewitching that, no sooner had she unrobed herself, than he again rose to the occasion and met her embraces with renewed fervour. Again they parted with lingering kisses, vowing that neither of them could ever meet anyone who compared with the other.

Five hours later Mesrop took them to a small mansion in which there was an exhibition of waxworks. Roger had seen
that of Madame Tussaud, who had come as a refugee to London during the French Revolution; but decided that her work was of poor quality when compared with that of the Persian artists. The figures were clad in garments representative of every class, from the highest to the lowest, and there were groups wearing the traditional costume of every tribe in the King of Kings' vast dominions. But the striking thing about them was that they resembled human beings so closely that one could have expected them to speak at any moment, or walk out of their cases.

In a place of honour, at the head of a staircase, there was a figure of the great Shah Abbas, and it greatly intrigued Roger to see what this remarkable monarch had looked like. He was portrayed as on the tallish side, with powerful limbs and a handsome head of Aryan cast. His cheeks and chin were clean-shaven, but he had an enormous, handlebar moustache, the points of which stuck out well beyond his ears.

Afterwards Mesrop took them to a quarter of the city where Dervishes were wont to congregate. It was a piece of semi-waste ground, and the buildings on it were little more than heaps of tumbled ruins. The heads of the Dervishes, like those of all Persian men, were shaved; but otherwise, unlike the bulk of the male population who favoured long whiskers but only short beards, their beards were long and tangled. Most of them were wearing only a single garment of animal skin, and the majority appeared strong-limbed, well fed and healthy. The few genuine fanatics, wasted by fasting, sat alone in contemplation, obviously oblivious of their surroundings; but by far the greater number of Dervishes were sitting smoking their narghiles and talking animatedly.

Mesrop explained that, with few exceptions, protected by the cloak of religion, they were an utterly unprincipled sect of rogues. Some earned a living at snake-charming or by giving displays with dangerous beasts. Others were professional story-tellers who could recite Ferdusi by heart and knew all the tales told by Shahrazade to her Arab Caliph. But a far greater number of them battened on the superstitions of the ignorant masses. Witchcraft was rife throughout
Persia. Everyone carried charms against the Evil Eye, and for many other reasons. The Dervishes made a fat living by selling bits of parchment with cryptic symbols scrawled on them, and parts of animals which, when carried on a person, were said to work wonders.

The knuckle-bones of a wolf would give courage; its gall rubbed on a woman's belly would cause her to conceive; the skin of an ape's nose was a preventive against poison; the cunning and speed of the animal could be acquired by swallowing its ashes after it had been burned; the tail of a horse placed under a child's pillow would ensure sound sleep, and horses dosed with the blood of a hare would increase their speed. However, most of the talismans concerned love. The skin of a hyena worn next to a woman's skin would keep her husband faithful, and the liver of an ape would bring back the affections of one who had become enamoured of another woman.

When, in mid-morning, Roger got back to the mission, he found the big house in a ferment. The royal astrologers had informed the Shah that it would be propitious for him to honour the French visitors by dining with them that night. Soon after Roger had left to collect Lisala and Dona Christina, the Mirzataher—as the Comptroller of the King's Household was called—had arrived with a letter from the Grand Vizier, declaring His Imperial Majesty's intention. Three sizes of wax seals were used for such communications, and this had the largest so, even before opening it, Gardane realised that it must be urgent and important.

To the General's surprise, the Mirzataher took immediate charge of the proceedings. With him he had brought carpenters, tent pitchers and carpet layers. Under his directions the whole garden was covered with canvas so that it became a great marquee. Thousands of square yards of carpet were brought in wagons to be laid in the street outside, and the floors of all the downstairs rooms were covered in precious rugs. So, too, was the garden and, at its far end, a huge, silk carpet was folded into thirty-two layers and spread with
priceless shawls to form a temporary throne on which the King of Kings would sit.

At midday, a score of cooks and confectioners arrived with pots, pans and vast quantities of food, to take over the kitchen. A ton of ice was carried in to cool the wines and sherbets. Meanwhile, upholsterers had draped the whole of the front of the house with gorgeous brocade curtains. The fountains were set playing, flowers arranged in their basins and jars of perfume placed beside them, to be tipped in before the Shah entered the building.

While all this was going on, the French stood about, submitting with such grace as they could to being pushed into corners. Gardane looked on speechless and sour, for the Mirzataher had told him that people honoured by the Shah in this manner always paid the cost of the entertainment and, in due course, he would be told the sum due from him.

Early in the evening the crowd was supplemented by His Majesty's singers, and the Luti Bachi—the Shah's jester—who brought with him a score of jugglers, dwarfs and other mountebanks. The time of the King of Kings' arrival was to be after the evening prayer, and Gardane was told that he must go the Palace to precede his royal visitor in the procession. Making the best of matters, he put on his smartest uniform and sallied forth.

The people of Isfahan, having learned of what was afoot, lined the streets and roof-tops to acclaim their Sovereign during his stately progress. Heading the procession came heralds carrying weighty clubs and trumpets. They proclaimed the mightiness of their master as the Centre of the Universe and by innumerable other titles. Following them came a great body of gorgeously-clad nobles. Then came Gardane with, immediately behind him, the Shah. After them rode two Princes the Grand Vizier, other functionaries and the royal guards.

When the Shah had duly been escorted through the house to his temporary throne, Gardane, as he had been instructed was customary, had, to his intense annoyance, to offer his royal guest one hundred gold pieces on a silver salver. The
Shah nodded acceptance of them and through his interpreter told the General that such freely-made tributes inspired confidence and would increase his condescension to his host. The courtiers made numerous speeches to their master, flattering him as the greatest, wisest and most generous monarch under heaven; then his dinner was served.

It consisted of a hundred or more dishes and basins, all of solid gold, heaped with different kinds of food. For some twenty minutes he picked a bit here and a bit there with his fingers. When he had done, the two Princes sat down and set to. Only after them were the senior hosts and the Ministers allowed to eat. The dishes were then carried to the junior members of the mission and the Court officials. Finally the still-plentiful mounds of lamb, chicken, fish, rice, fruit, nuts, cakes and sweets went in turn to the guards, jesters, musicians and servants.

An entertainment followed, the star turn of which was the recitation of new piece by a poet. It lauded the Shah to the skies so satisfactorily that His Majesty ordered the man's mouth to be filled with gold, and the French were astonished to see how many pieces he succeeded in having crammed into it without choking.

It was not until well after midnight that, with much ceremony, the Shah took his departure and his tired hosts were able to discuss the party. Gardane was in an unusually black humour which, at first, Roger attributed to the great expense to which he had been put; but soon learned that it was not for that reason only. The General had optimistically believed that the Shah's visit was to convey to him a reply to the Emperor's letter and, during the course of the conversations that had taken place, he had opened the subject with the Grand Vizier.

The Minister had expressed great surprise and had conveyed the reply, ‘Surely you did not expect an important decision concerning war or peace to be decided in the course of a few days? It will be another fortnight at least before you receive a reply to your communication.'

He had then gone on to inform Gardane that meanwhile
it was His Majesty's pleasure that his guests should amuse themselves by going on a hunting expedition in the great forests north of Tehran, and that arrangements were already in train for the whole of the mission to set out, with an appropriate escort, the following morning.

Later, when discussing the matter with one of the Shah's gentlemen who spoke a little French and with whom he had become friendly, the General had received a hint that the real reason that lay behind sending the mission away from Isfahan was to deprive the French of any opportunity to bribe Ministers into favouring their designs while their Emperor's letter was under discussion.

Apart from the General and Roger, the others were delighted at the thought of the expedition. The latter was naturally alarmed, as it could deprive him for the next two weeks of further meetings with his adorable Lisala. It struck him, too, as at least a possibility that Alfonso de Queircoz, having many friends in high places at the Persian Court, might have put the idea into one of the Ministers' heads, with the object of getting Lisala's new admirer out of the way until the reply to the Emperor was ready and the mission no longer had any reason to remain in Isfahan.

He at once told Gardane that he had no desire to go hunting, so would stay on in the capital. But the General would not agree to his doing so. He said that the Grand Vizier had made it plain that the whole mission was to go, bag and baggage, and he dared not risk incurring the Shah's displeasure by leaving a French officer behind. In the circumstances, Napoleon's interests not being involved, Roger could not invoke his privileged position as an A.D.C. to the Emperor; so, seething with internal rage, he was obliged to submit.

Briefly Roger considered making his way as swiftly as possible to his roof-top. But by then it was past one in the morning. Lisala would almost certainly have heard that the mission was giving an entertainment for the Shah that night; and the odds against her still being up there waiting for him were overwhelming. Reluctantly, he abandoned the idea as futile, resigned himself to the fact that he would not even be able
to say good-bye to his beloved and went up to his room to pack for the journey.

Next morning, soon after nine o'clock, the mansion the mission had occupied was almost as empty as if they had never entered it. Only two score of trunks filled with surplus clothing, plate, glass, linen that they would not require and, in the basement, a number of cases containing arms, were left behind.

It was on August 18th that, with a considerable retinue of guides, guards and professional hunters, they took the road north to Tehran. They reached the city which—until Shah Abbas had moved to Isfahan and built the marvellous mosques and palaces there—had been the capital of Persia, late on the evening of the 20th and spent the night in a big caravanserai. Their baggage train caught up with them next day and, taking what they needed from it, in the early afternoon they resumed their march towards the great mountain range that now lay ahead of them.

Although it was high summer, some of the peaks were still capped with snow. To the east, along the chain, Mount Damavand rose above the others to nearly nineteen thousand feet; the highest mountain in Asia west of the Himalayas. But their guides led them through a pass and, by nightfall, they were installed in one of the Shah's big hunting lodges.

Next day they went out equipped for the chase. The country was as unlike central and southern Persia as could possibly be imagined. Instead of precipitous, barren ridges of rock and arid, sandy waste, interspersed by fertile valleys, north of the mountains there was one vast forest, extending right up to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea.

The area was almost uninhabited, but teemed with wild life of every description. There were tigers, leopards, bears, antelopes, wild boar, buck and deer in profusion. Their kill far exceeded anything they could possibly have expected; but the French felt themselves shamed because the Persian hunters proved far better marksmen with their bows and arrows than the Europeans with their latest pattern of musket.

For another two days they rode out to kill, and Roger became
sickened at this senseless slaughter; so he was much relieved when, on the evening of the 23rd, Gardane decided that they should return to Isfahan; in the hope that, after ten days, the Shah and his Ministers would have come to a decision.

Their journey south was as uneventful as that to the north had been, and they re-entered Isfahan late on the evening of the 27th. Roger had no doubt at all that many days ago Lisala had heard the French mission had left the capital on a hunting expedition; so by going up to his roof-top that night there would not be the least chance of his finding her waiting for him.

But his absence had increased his desire for her a hundredfold. During the journey, and even while shooting dangerous big game, his mind had wandered with great frequency to her. Again and again he had visualised her heart-shaped face; the broad, smooth forehead framed in tresses of rich, reddish hair; the widely-spaced tawny eyes; the full, smiling mouth with its rows of even, white teeth; her slim arms and hands; pouting breasts; Venus-like little stomach and long, shapely legs.