Swords From the Desert (3 page)

Lamb spent the remainder of his life on familiar ground, engaged in travel and study. He maintained a close friendship with Muhammad Reza, the shah of Iran, and continued writing histories and biographies, as well as articles and stories for the likes of Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, and National Geographic. He also turned his hand to writing screenplays for a burgeoning Hollywood.

As all things must, the end came in 1962 when, at the age of seventy, Harold Albert Lamb passed away. He left behind a legacy of impeccable scholarship, stories, and books that would excite and inform his readers for generations to come.

I fell under Harold Lamb's spell in the early 198os, after reading Alexander of Macedon for a school project. While my teachers were competent, they lacked Lamb's flair for bringing history to life; I remember checking the book out from my school's library time and time again, noticing after each reading some small facet I had missed before. Later, I came across an original edition of The Crusades: The Flame of Islam, and my esteem for Lamb increased a thousandfold.

Like that book, the stories collected here represent the perfect blending of storytelling and history. You'll meet men and women who must have surely existed, like Daril ibn Athir, a swordsman-turned-physician whose voice, to my ear at least, sounds curiously like Lamb's own; the far-wandering Bedouin Khalil el Khadr, lover of horses; wily Alai, who dwells in the house of Genghis Khan; and many more besides. Listen and you'll hear sounds from a time long past: tent poles creaking in a desert breeze, the silver chime of bells woven into a camel's halter, steel rasping on steel, and the splintering of lances ...

Welcome to the old Orient as Harold Lamb knew it.

The sun was going down behind the roofs of Paris. A chill wind came up from the river, whispering over the bridge of Notre Dame. One after the other, far-off bells clanged and chimed for vespers, and Jeanne put away her fiddle. That is, she tied a cloth'round it and started homeward-a slight, ragged girl with slim legs thrust into muddy slippers.

The wind tossed the tangle of red hair upon her shoulders as she bent to count the day's earnings in her hand. Six copper coins she had, a clipped piece of silver, an old ring with a broken moonstone in it and a link from a gold chain. A great lord had thrown her this link as he rode past, but Jeanne doubted it was gold.

At a money-changer's stall she held it out, and a claw-like hand reached for it-felt of it and rang it down upon the counter. And thrust it back to her contemptuously.

"Brass!" The money-changer sneered. "Not the value of a sol."

"But," cried Jeanne, her gray eyes innocent, "a seigneur with six spears and a trumpeter to follow him gave it me."

"Eschec! Will the like of him cast gold to a rogue's girl? Now that ring you have is worth a chip-"

"Don't burn your fingers." Jeanne had been looking at the pale moonstone all afternoon and she liked it.

"Half a crown."

"My faith," she grimaced, "do you think to buy a crown jewel for silver? I'll be wearing it myself."

With a toss of her head she was off across the bridge, pausing only to bargain for cheese and bread. She nibbled at her supper as she edged around a veiled leper who sounded his clacker mournfully. It was latealmost dark between the leaning houses-and she circled wide where men-at-arms loitered over a watch fire. Jeanne was sixteen years old and she knew well where harm and where safety lay for a fair fiddling girl in the alleys of Paris. Humming to herself, she tossed a copper into the basket of a begging woman, mimicking as she did so the air of the seigneur who had thrown her brass for gold. Then she shrank against the wall, hiding her face in her hood.

The horsemen splashed through the mud of the alley, heedless of the women. The leader, a bearded man in red Burgundian colors, carried two shields, and Jeanne saw that one had been broken. Down toward the river galloped the riders, swinging away from the watch fire.

"My faith," Jeanne muttered, "they go apace!"

She wondered, as she turned from the alley into another, why a led horse with empty saddle had been with the men, and why they chose a way to darkness and water instead of a lighted square. But she had seen much of the feuds and the fighting of the lords of Paris.

Abruptly she stopped, peering into the dimness before her. A man lay there, outstretched and motionless. A tall youth with yellow hair darkened by running blood. Jeanne knelt down and touched his chest, her fingers feeling the iron rings of mail. But he was breathing.

Quickly the girl glanced about her. No one else was in the alley and the walls were blank and silent. Jeanne bent over the white face of the wounded man, and it seemed to her he must be dying. She drew a long, helpless breath, and hurried to the end of the alley through an archway to the black void of a stair.

"Giron!" she called, and whistled melodiously.

After a moment a figure broad as a bear appeared before her, and another followed, bearing a candle. They had shaggy heads and they smelled of the wine cellar from which they had come.

"There's a poor dupe," she cried, "turning up his toes yonder."

The two rogues grunted and followed her to the wounded man, where they blew out the candle and searched the ground by him.

"Thunder of God," whispered the broad fellow, "he's been stripped by them that laid him down. Aye, pouch and rings, all gone."

"And belt and cloak," added the other. "Sword and knife gone-like a peeled turnip he is."

But before the candle had been put out, Jeanne had caught a glimpse of a lean, proud head and gentle lips twisted by pain. "Nay, Giron," she exclaimed, "carry him down to the cellar and look to his hurts."

"Let him lie," muttered the big man with an oath. "See you not, Jeanne, he is a high Mark? He'll be cold in another hour, belike, and if he be found in our hands, they will e'en hie us off to the Big Jump."

He meant that this was a seigneur, whose death in their cellar would mean hanging for all of them. Giron was one of the most skilled dice coggers and picklocks in the city, while his companion, Pied-a-Botte, was a veteran mockmonk and mumper. They felt aggrieved that the fallen man had not even a belt worth taking on him, and they had no mind to set their necks in a noose to help him in his dying.

"Nay, he will live," cried Jeanne. "See ye not how strong he is, and a stranger, by his dress? And if he is a lord's son, ye will not lack pay for this hour's work. Be quick, before he bleeds his life away."

She kept at the rogues until they bore the man down to their fire in the abandoned wine cellar and laid him on the straw. But they had neither clean clothes to bind up his hurts nor water. Jeanne tried to wash away the blood with wine, in vain.

"Wait!" she cried. "I will bring one to tend him."

Ten minutes later she was climbing to the top of a dark stair, with her pulse throbbing. At the landing she found a lantern that cast specks of light upon a black curtain, disclosing curious writing embroidered in gold upon the cloth. Jeanne could not read, but she knew this writing was not honest French-since she had come to stare at it once before. And at the curtain she hesitated.

Behind it lived Ibn Athir, the Arab. Some said he was an alchemist who knew the art of drawing the essence of gold out of quicksilver. Others said he was a sorcerer who could summon to him the demiurges of Satan in the fire of his furnace. Surely the great ladies visited him to buy spells for their beauty, or secret potions. Yet Jeanne had seen him give medicine to a wine crier who had a fit in the street below.

"Maitre Athir!" she called, crossing her fingers before her eyes. A strip of light showed beneath the curtain, and she heard slippers moving over stone.

Then the light vanished, and Jeanne almost turned and fled as the curtain was drawn aside and a tall figure confronted her within the gloom of the doorway. "Who seeks?" a deep voice asked.

"'Tis Jeanne, the fiddling girl," she explained. "Oh, Master Athir, will you come now, at once, and bring a medicine to save a young lord who has been cracked on the scrag-on the head?"

"Who is this seigneur?"

"I know not. I found him in the alley, and he can say no word."

Athir disappeared from the doorway and after a moment came out on the landing wrapped in a long, gray kaftan, the hood drawn over his head. In one of his wide sleeves he carried a bundle, and he nodded to her-she thought that his dark eyes were not evil, but only amused. "Lead," he said briefly.

The two rogues and the girl watched while the Arab drew the mail shirt from the wounded lad and ran a lean finger over the wounds-for the silvered mail had been hacked through across the chest. He felt the faint pulse beat in the wrists, and drew the slashed flesh together, applying an aromatic gum that stopped the bleeding. Then he bound up the wounds, and skillfully poured a little fluid down the throat of the unconscious man.

"Will he live," Jeanne asked, "now that you have worked this magic upon him?"

Athir shook his head. "Verily, little demoiselle, I have worked no sorcery. The drink will bring sleep to him presently. Such a blow on the head may do great harm, but this youth is strong as a colt, and-inshallah-if God wills it, he may yet live with a clear mind."

"Yonder whack on the scrag," observed Giron from the fire, "was a foul blow. Aye, 'twas dealt him when the poor lordling lay outstretched on the ground."

"And how so?" demanded Pied-a-Botte.

"Did I not see the cut o' the blade in the mud? Aye, right against this young cock's comb. Now bend thy peepers on this."

Giron pointed out the line of a red bruise running across the forehead of the wounded man. "'Tis the mark," he said, "of the steel cap that kept him from being cracked open like a melon."

"And where," Pied-a-Botte inquired, "is this helmet? It lieth not i' the alley. Nay, who would carry off a split cap?"

"Why, them that stripped his gear from him. See ye not, addlehead, that they took every mark of his name and rank, and left him for dead."

Suddenly Jeanne bethought her of the three riders with the riderless horse and the broken shield galloping toward the river. "Then," she exclaimed, "I saw them, and they were followers of my lord of Burgundy, with a red-bearded lord leading them."

"A red beard close-clipped upon his chin?" demanded Giron. "A hawk's beak and a roving eye?"

Jeanne nodded.

"God's thunder! That will be Renault. Aye, the duke's lieutenant he is."

The name of Renault was well known to the rogues of Paris. They called him the Gardener, saying that he kept the gallows-tree loaded down with fruit, and the grave diggers ever busied at turning up the soil. This red Renault was the confidential agent of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. So if Renault had struck down this stranger secretly, the duke had desired his death. And it was not safe to cross the path of John the Fearless.

"Here we be," muttered Pied-a-Botte, "a-nursing of this wight."

A shadow of dread fell upon the two rogues. That day they had seen the archers of Burgundy mustering at the street corners, while the butchers came forth from the markets with poleax and knife to join them. Rumors ran through the alleys that the duke had become master of the city. Certainly he held the gates, while the retinue at his house-the Hotel St. Pol-was more like an army. Both Giron and stout Pied-a-Botte could not help wondering how much Renault would pay to hear that the man he had thought slain was lying alive in a certain cellar. And Jeanne read their thoughts.

"Asses, with long ears!" she cried. "You would flit off to the duke's men and gab for a silver pound. And then what would befall you? Why, Renault, who hath taken pains to hide this deed, would swing you up to dance in the air, to still your tongues."

The straw beside her stirred, and a deep voice muttered drowsily, "What is this talk? Where is-my horse?"

Aroused by their voices, the wounded man had raised himself on his elbow, to stare wearily at the fire. His brown hand quivered as he raised it to his head, then fumbled at his side for the missing sword.

"Messire," said Athir quietly, "you were struck down before nightfall and left to die. Your horse is lost, with all you carried on you, and these people-"