Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 (9 page)

The fragile fingers of Djalout’s left hand turned
the ruby ring upon the right.

“You’ve known great men,” said Wulf.

“Mohammed, for one.
I sat on his knee seventy years ago, when I was a boy. He
liked children, and he respected my father.”

“Your father was a Moslem.”

“A Jew of Medina, named Yakoub,” said Djalout. “He
left wisdom to me as a legacy. When he saw that Mohammed would conquer, he
professed Islam. Allah’s name was always on his lips, always lyingly.”

Djalout refilled their cups.

“When I was old enough to keep my mouth shut — and
I was old enough very young — my father taught me to be a hypocrite. He said,
‘When a Moslem asks your faith, say you’re a true believer and hold out one
finger of your right hand. But lay it on your left palm.’”

The ruby-ringed right forefinger lay upon the open
left hand.

“Can you read that?” asked Djalout. “One finger
means one God, of course, but here’s one finger with five more, six in all.
The points of the Star of David.”

“Yes,” said Wulf.

“My name wasn’t always Djalout, and I was born a
Moslem by my father’s profession of faith. But he taught me Judaism, and I’ve
been of that faith and others. When Mohammed died and his companions quarreled,
my father found the situation embarrassing. He took me to
Egypt
, and I went to school and began to know how wise you may
become if you live long enough. I profess Christianity.” Djalout smiled over
the word. “Like yourself.”

“There are many Christianities,” observed Wulf.

“They fight among themselves, to no great purpose,”
said Djalout. “If they hadn’t confused Mohammed, he might have become a
Christian himself. But they don’t confuse me.”
A smile in the
beard.
“They only amuse me.”

“Are you married, Djalout?”

“I’ve had wives, but they died. I do well alone.”

“You went to
Egypt
. The Moslems came conquering there.”

“I got away to
Carthage
, lived there for years. Then I came here, for I’d heard of
a young prophetess and queen who ruled a jumble of tribes and would go far.”

“The Cahena.”

“Yes.”
A slow sip of wine.
“She saw my talents and usefulness, as now she sees yours. I’ve helped her, and
she’s appreciative. She might have succeeded from rule to rule without me,
would have added tribe after tribe to her alliance; but maybe not so quickly.”

“You said you weren’t always named Djalout,” Wulf
reminded.

“Oh, that. When I left
Carthage
, I came first among the Djerdilan. They say they’re
descended from Philistines. Their hero was Djalout, the giant of
Gath
.”

“Goliath.”

“That’s the one. Should I have told them that my
true name was Daoud, like the shepherd boy who knocked their hero down with a
stone?” The old eyes crinkled. “I called myself Djalout, and I didn’t bother to
change back when I settled here among the Djerwa, though they have Jewish
associations.”

“You were born a Moslem, Djalout.”

“Yes.”

“And you were secretly reared a Jew.”

“Yes.”

“Later on you were a Christian.”

“Yes.”

“In which of those faiths do you believe?”

“In none.”
The thin shoulders shrugged under the robe. “My mind
demands proofs. Faith can’t exist if it calls for proof.”

“Then you don’t believe in anything,” said Wulf.

Djalout lifted his cup. “I believe in what I’ve
found out, here and there in the world. And I believe in the Cahena. She’s
definite enough.”

“What if somebody told her all about your
adventures and attitudes?” Wulf smiled as he challenged.

Djalout smiled back, faintly. It was like the
smile of a ghost.

“I told it to her myself, years ago,” he replied.
“She understood perfectly.
She’s tremendously understanding
.”

“Yes,” agreed Wulf. “Yes, she is.”

“Meanwhile, she expects you to come back to her.
The sand in her glass must be fairly well run. Go to her now, and you and I can
talk again some other time.”

Outside in the misty rain, Bhakrann fell into step
with Wulf. He said nothing until they came back to the Cahena’s door. Then
Bhakrann caught Wulf’s arm. His fingers bit like teeth.

“When you go in there,” he said tightly, “when you
go in, be sure you deserve to go in.”

Wulf wrenched his arm free. “You don’t need to
talk like that to me.”

They stared into each other’s eyes. Raindrops ran
on their faces.

“Be sure you deserve it,” said Bhakrann again. “I
don’t remember anything like this. We’ve taken strangers into the Djerwa, but
never one like this, alone with her.”

Wulf looked at the red door.

“I’ll try to imagine what happens,” said Bhakrann.
“Wulf!
From this moment on, if you show that you don’t
prize —”

“Get away from me, before you and I fight,” Wulf
broke in.

Bhakrann swung on his heel and tramped off through
the dark veil of the rain. His cloak snapped like a wet flag.

Wulf moved closer to the door, guiding himself
with a hand on the rock. He felt the planks with his fingers and pushed the
door open. He saw no guardsman, only a servingwoman who gestured him through
the entry and to the curtain he remembered. He pushed it aside and stepped into
the room where they had eaten.

It was dim; the lamps had been trimmed low. On the
far side hung another curtain, one he had not seen before. Light soaked
through, though not much. He went to it and stood.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Come in,” said the voice of the Cahena from
beyond, and he pushed the curtain aside and entered another chamber.

A stone lamp stood on a narrow ledge just inside.
The soft yellow leaf of flame sent up a thread of vapor to the hewn rock of the
ceiling. On the chamber’s far side, fully thirty feet from the curtained
doorway, showed another light, red this time — coals in a brazier on a stand.
Next to it he saw a blurred silhouette, head and draped body, sitting among
heaped cushions.

“Take off those boots and put down your sword,”
the hushed voice said.
“Your cloak, too.
Leave them
there by the door.”

He dropped his wet cloak beneath the lamp and
lifted one foot, then the other, to drag off his boots. Unbuckling his belt, he
bent to set the boots and the sword on the cloak.

“Now come here,” she bade him. “No, don’t fall
down and creep.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he said.

“Walk here and sit down.”

He paced toward her, trying not to seem too fast
or too slow. His bare feet felt thick, coarse carpet. He came and stood above
where she sat on heaped cushions that looked like dark silk in the dimness. Of
dark silk, too, was the robe into which she had changed, the robe that clung to
her body. Her black hair fell like a cloud upon her shoulders, to each side of
the sculptured beauty of her face. How delicately straight her nose was, how
softly pointed her chin. Under the sketched lines of her brows, her eyes gave
back the glow of the brazier. Her mouth was ripe as fruit, and like carven
pride flared her nostrils.

“Sit down,” she said again, and Wulf sat on a
cushion and crossed his big legs.

The Cahena held a tray, and from it measured a
palmful of something. This she trickled into the brazier. A sort of steam rose
from it, spicy to the smell. She lifted her head to look at him.

“Your name’s Wulf,” she said. “Djalout told me
that that’s the name of a brave beast in your language. Were you ever married?”

“No, Cahena,” he said. “Ever since I was a boy,
I’ve been going to wars. Warriors shouldn’t take wives to wars with them.”

“Don’t you like women?”

He let himself smile in the red light. “Yes, I
like women.”

“You’ve had them?”

“Yes, from time to time, but I never married one.”

“I was married once, Wulf.”

“You were married once,” he repeated her.

“Long ago, and I rarely talk about it, but I’ll
tell you. How old are you?”

“Thirty years old,” he said.

“I’m forty. It
happened
when I wasn’t yet twenty. His name was Madghis.”

She said the name as though it was a bad taste in
her mouth.

“He was a strong subchief of the Djerwa when my
father Tabeta was head chief. My father died, and had no son, only a daughter —
me. Madghis became head chief and said he wanted me. That he’d have me and rule
over the Djerwa after my father. The other chiefs said it was all right. So he
had me.”

She paused as though to let Wulf speak, but he
only waited for her to continue. She continued:

“It was night in his house, off among the hills
west of here. It was like this house, dug into the rock.”
A
gesture, perhaps to show the direction.
“He had men on guard in front of
the door in the dark.”

“In front of the door,” said Wulf, thinking of
Bhakrann.

“Madghis had me then. It hurt, and he laughed and
said that all his life he’d had whatever he wanted. The men outside heard him,
and they laughed, too.”

Again she paused and put a handful of whatever it
was on the brazier. A thicker vapor cloud rose, and Wulf felt a ringing in his
ears. He wondered if a drug were in that preparation.

“I can hear them laughing now,” said the Cahena.
“Right now at this moment, I hear them laughing. Do you hear them?”

“No, Cahena,” said Wulf. “But if they laughed then,
I don’t think that anybody has ever laughed at you since.”

“No,” she said, “nobody ever has. Well, at last
Madghis got tired of what he did to me and went to sleep and snored. I took his
big knife and cut his throat to the neckbone and cut the neckbone, too, and
took off his head.”

She told it calmly, as though it had happened with
strangers. Wulf thought of Judith and Holofernes, and wondered if Holofernes
had had Judith before she killed him.

“Next morning,” the Cahena went on, “I walked out
and called the subchiefs together and showed them Madghis’s head. They talked,
they were excited, but they were afraid, too. Some of them seemed glad that
Madghis was dead. I’d counted on that. Then I said that I was Madghis’s widowed
queen, that I’d rule the Djerwa, and told them to gather up the men who’d
laughed outside in the night. They did, and I said to kill those men with
javelins. Later on, when it turned out that I was pregnant, would have
Madghis’s child, the last objections quieted down. Mallul was born, my son by
Madghis. After that, other tribes joined the Djerwa, and I ruled them, too.”

“How did the other tribes join you?” asked Wulf.

“Two of them fought us, first one and then the
other, because they’d heard that only a woman ruled the Djerwa. I beat those tribes
and made them join us.
After that, more joined, without my
having to fight them.
They all say I’m the Cahena.”

“You’re the Cahena and there’s nobody like you,”
said Wulf. “Koseila wasn’t like you.”

“Koseila captured Cairouan because I told him how
to do it. But when the Moslems sent Zoheir, Koseila retreated from Cairouan —
he didn’t understand fighting within fortified walls — and Zoheir caught him in
the open and killed him.”

“Then you ruled after him,” said Wulf.

“No, Koseila never ruled the Djerwa and my other
tribes. We
were allies, that’s
all.”

“Did he perhaps want to marry you?”

“Maybe, but he knew what had happened to Madghis.
Whenever he and I talked, he usually let me do most of the talking.”

Wulf looked at her intent face, at the lines of her
body under the silk. “There’s nobody like you,” he said again.

“I’m what God made me and what I’ve made myself.
If I weren’t the Cahena, I’d be just a woman.”

“The most beautiful of women,” said Wulf, and her
eyes shone again.

“The most wretched of women,” she amended. “Sought
out for my beauty, but never honored. Snatched from hand to hand like a fruit
among apes.
Violently boarded like a ship overhauled by
pirates, boarded again and again, a hundred times by a hundred takers, until I
broke to pieces under them.”

That, too, she said quietly, as though it might
never have concerned her.

“It didn’t happen, Cahena,” said Wulf.

“Only that once, with Madghis, and that was more
than enough. What can I be but the Cahena? Before I cut off Madghis’s head and
became the Cahena, the prophetess, the queen, my name was only Daia.” She
looked at him, breathing. “Did you know that my name was Daia?”

“They said that anyone who dares speak your name
will be killed.”

“Are you afraid to speak my name and be killed?”

“Not greatly.”

“Daia,” she said the name again. “How does it
sound?”

“Like the Latin word
dea,
for goddess.
And like our Saxon word
doian,
for death. No, I don’t fear death, but
life isn’t such a burden that I go looking for death.”

She drew herself straight as she sat. The robe
sank from her firmly rounded left shoulder, softly shining as if polished.

“But you’re afraid of my name because it’s like
your word for death.” She laughed, so softly that he barely heard. “Maybe Wulf
is too brave and strong a name for you.”

“You think you can sit there and laugh at me,
Daia.”

Her lips opened,
then
closed again without speaking.

“I’ve called you Daia,” said Wulf. “Now you can
stop laughing and call somebody in to try to kill me with his javelin. Maybe
that’s why you told me to put aside my sword.”

She smiled, but she did not laugh.

“Call me Daia,” she said, “and live.”

“Daia,” he repeated. He reached and took her hand.
It was soft and slender in his.

“Will you kiss my shadow, here on these cushions?”
she asked him.

“No. Not your shadow.”

Her fingers stirred. He bowed his head and kissed
them.

“Wulf,” she whispered above him.
“Brave Wulf, strong Wulf.
Call me Daia. Tell me what you
think of me.”

“Daia,” he called her. “Not the moon in the sky
nor
its light on earth is more beautiful than you.”

“You’re a poet.”

“I say what I think. But why do you show me this
favor?”

“Because you were sent to me.
My spirits told me of you before you came. As soon as I
saw you, I knew that this would happen. That it was destiny for us both.”

She leaned forward and laid her other hand on his
that clasped hers. The movement made the robe slide farther down. He saw her
slenderly curved body and her full round breasts that swung like gently tolling
bells. Her hands shifted to pull at the lacing of his tunic. He helped her
unfasten it and cast it to the carpet behind him. His head sang with the
perfume from the brazier.

“Your skin’s so smooth, Wulf,” she murmured,
stroking his chest with her palm. “Not all grown over with hair.”

His heart drummed. He put out his arms to take
her, but she slipped away from him.

“Not like that yet, Wulf. Here.”

Her hands took his head between them and drew it
to her. He tried not to tremble. She shifted her bare body against his face.
The rondure of a breast drew along his cheek to his mouth.

“I make you a son of the Djerwa,” she was saying.
“I nourish you at my breast. I suckle you. You’re my man. Mine.”

Her nipple throbbed between his lips. It tasted as
sweet as honey; she must have put honey on it. She caught her breath as though
she were sinking underwater.

“The other,” she whispered in his ear.

He took the other in his mouth. She hugged his
head against her, more strongly than he had dreamed she could hug. Then she
sank back and down of her own accord and her thighs moved apart to receive him
and he mounted her and his face came to her face and his mouth to her mouth and
their tongues twined together more eloquently than speech, than any vow or
prayer, and they mingled and somehow she was within him as he was within her
with their breaths as one breath and their hearts beating as one beat, and
their union was forever and ever with the triumphant torrent and thunder of the
climax like the coming of Judgment Day when the mountains and islands shall be
moved from their places and never never never had it been like this before, and
he forgot utterly how it had been with any other woman all his life long in the
countries where he had lived but never had known this or dreamed this or
imagined this.

Afterward they lay side by side recovering, his
left arm under her head and her left arm across his chest.

“Was that how you thought it would be, Wulf?”

“I hadn’t thought how it would be. There can never
have been a woman like you, Daia.”

“There can never have been a man like you, either.
Never anyone like either of us.
Call me
Daia,
always call me Daia when we’re like this.”