Read Ebook: Zarah the Cruel by Conquest Joan

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Ebook has 1817 lines and 101536 words, and 37 pages

And just as the first sunbeam slid over the mountaintops, filling the rocky bowl with golden light, the two men adopted the place as home.

" ... for if we have safely followed in the path of the thirty who sleep yonder," argued Mohammed-Abd, looking up to the tombs in the rocks bathed in the glory of the sunrise; "why should not yet another thirty, fleeing before the law, and even thrice times thirty, come safely through the hungry sands? If two horses escaped the death, why should not two camels, with their feet as big and soft as the heart of one who leans unduly to the affections, cross that path, and, with violent lamentations and much urging, make their way down yon rocky road? And if two, why should not thirty of their brothers and sisters follow as safely, with thirty Nejdeen stallions and mares, as nimble as goats upon their dainty feet, behind them? And are we so weak that we could not carry sheep and goats, in young, across our saddle bows, so that they multiply in this place of plenty?" He looked up and around, stretching wide his arms. "Is there not place for man and beast and many of each? And are we not, O my brother, bidden by the Great Prophet to succour those in distress, are we not?"

In such-wise did Mohammed-Abd, the ambitious outlaw, with Yussuf as his right hand, become the head of as daring a gang of brigands as had ever swept the highways of the desert.

And all went well with him, his harvests yielding abundantly, his wealth accumulating, his people and cattle waxing fat and multiplying throughout the years, until he took unto himself a wife, who died on bearing him a daughter.

Zarah the Cruel leaned on the wall which surrounded the chapel of the monastery, built by early Christians in the fifth century, and looked down at two dogs fighting upon the plateau near the water's edge.

Twenty years had passed since Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, so called by his men, who adored him, had adopted the natural stronghold in a desert waste as home, naming it the Sanctuary, unwitting that he poached upon the poetical tendencies of the long dead Holy Palladius; fifteen years since he had taken to wife Mercedes, the beautiful Spaniard, the arrogant daughter of an impoverished Spanish grandee, who, made prisoner as she journeyed on business bent across the Arabian Peninsula in the company of her high-born and feckless father, had condescended to marry the notorious robber-sheikh in exchange for the liberty of her progenitor and the safe conduct of himself and his retinue out of the country. She had condescended to marry him, but in the secret places of her passionate, adventurous heart she had come most truly to love him, so that the years preceding the birth of their daughter had been years of happiness; years in which, although the raids upon caravans and peoples had been as fierce and bloody as before, the lot of the prisoners had been considerably lightened, until those who had not the wherewithal to pay the ransom demanded had come to sing as they set about their tasks of herding cattle, tending harvests, or working to strengthen and beautify the ruins upon the mountainside. Those who had the means, or friends altruistic enough to raise the ransom, had paid it and taken their departure with a distinct feeling of regret in their hearts.

Many had thrown in their lot with the outlawed chief, whilst the physically undesirable had been liberated at once and sent packing on the homeward track, so that harmony had reigned in the strange place and the welfare of the brotherhood had increased a hundredfold.

Three years later Mercedes died, leaving in her stead a woman-child, upon whom the Sheikh poured out the adoration of his stricken heart. A strange, quiet woman-child, who had neither cried nor laughed as she had lain in her father's arms, staring past him out of tawny, opalescent eyes.

And as she grew, beautiful, cruel, and as relentless as the desert to which she belonged, so did unrest and fear and passion grow in the erstwhile happy community, until women ran and seized their children so that her shadow should not fall upon them, prisoners shrank at sight or sound of her, and the men, hating her in their hearts yet hypnotized by her beauty and her great daring, whispered amongst themselves as they questioned the one, the other, as to the next whim or new punishment her ungovernable temperament would invent.

For an Arabian she was well educated. Vain as a peacock, she forced herself, loathing it the while, to take advantage of every opportunity of learning which presented itself, solely with the object of shining before the men, who, with, the exception of one nicknamed the Patriarch, were as illiterate as most Arabs are.

A learned Armenian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman, made prisoners through an injudicious display of wealth, had each had the sentence of heavy ransom commuted to that of two years' instruction to the Sheikh's almost ungovernable daughter.

The Jew had taught her to read and to write whilst thoroughly appreciating his robber-host's hearty hospitality; the Spaniard had taught her his language and the dances of his country whilst enjoying the wild life he had led between lessons; the Frenchman had taught her his language and the use of the foils, and had asked for her hand in marriage, to be thoroughly surprised at a blunt refusal.

She read everything she could get hold of, lining the reconstructed walls of two cells, which had once echoed the prayers and witnessed the austerities of the holy monks, with books brought by caravan from the port of Jiddah. She could eat quite nicely with a knife and fork and manipulate a finger napkin with some dexterity, but showed a preference for her fingers--which she wiped upon the carpet or by digging them into the hot sand--and her splendid white teeth for the process of separating meat from bone.

From her father she undoubtedly came by her magnificent horsemanship and surpassing skill in the use of weapons of self-defence.

He delighted in her physical training, spending hours with her either in a room which had been fitted up as a gymnasium after the counselling of the Frenchman; or on the plateau, pitting her skill with spear, rifle and revolver against that of youths of her own age; or away in the desert riding with the magnificent horses for which he had become famous throughout the Peninsula.

Trained to a hair, with a ripple of muscle under the velvety, creamy skin which the sun barely bronzed, she could, at last, throw an unbroken horse with any of her father's followers, or ride it bare-back out into the mystery of the terrible desert, heedless of its efforts to dismount her, driving it farther and farther with little golden spurs until, with its pride shattered and its heart almost broken, she would race it back, utterly spent, to the shade of the mountains.

She joined the enthusiastic men in the sports they got up amongst themselves to pass the monotony of leisure hours, or hunted with them for the sheer joy of killing, laughing with delight when she brought down ostrich or gazelle, firing at carrion for the sole purpose of keeping her hand in, leaving the birds to die where they fell.

Born and bred in the heat of the tropics, which hastens the physical development of both sexes in the Eastern races, she was almost full grown upon her twelfth birthday. She inherited the beauty of her mother, save for the colour of her hair, which rioted over her head in short curls and flamed like the setting sun, and the colour of her eyes, which shone like a topaz in the moonlight or as the storm-whipped desert, according to the violence or moderation of her mood. Through the Andalusian strain in her mixed blood she had come by her perfect hands and feet and teeth, and to the same source was she a thousand times indebted for the grace of her movements and gait and the assurance of her pose.

Her father's tenacity was abnormally developed in her. It had helped him to cling to life in the first turbulent years in the desolate Sanctuary; it helped her to beat down his almost indomitable will over matters both great and small, until, save for an occasional outburst of authority, he was as wax in her slender hands. Of his great-heartedness, his charity towards the needy--for whom he so often robbed the wealthy, with much violence and bloodshed--his justice and understanding, she had not one particle in her heart of stone, as she had not a glimmer of the humour and tenderness which had served to balance her mother's arrogance and passionate nature.

In her, the crossing of the races, exaggerating the defects, minimizing the merits of her parentage, had resulted in a terrible streak of cruelty which roused a fierce hatred in heart of man and beast.

Virile, ambitious, relentless, she was cursed from birth by the strength of her dual nationality.

Driven, beaten, horses did her bidding, but had never been known to answer to her call; dogs hated her instinctively, but feared her not one bit; her arm still showed, would always show, the marks of R?di's teeth when, from an incredible distance, the greyhound bitch leapt upon her to revenge the death, by drowning, of one pup which had angered the girl by its continual whimpering. For her life she dared not visit the kennels unattended.

She had tried, but had failed to bring about the fall of Yussuf of the Wondrous Eyes, who loved the Sheikh as a brother, and would have laid down his life for him if he had so desired.

She hated him for his beauty, for his indifference towards her, for the love he inspired in animals--R?di, the famous greyhound; Lulah, the fastest mare; Fahm, the priceless dromedary, were all his.

Allah! how she hated him!

He responded to her hate with a hate transcending that of his own dog, the maddened bitch; he had hated her blindly from the very beginning--for causing the death of the woman who had brought such happiness to his friend; for usurping her place and his place in the Sheikh's heart; for her cruelty, her tyranny, her utter disregard of the happiness and welfare of others.

He set himself to thwart the child in every possible way and upon every possible occasion--craftily, so that none should point to him as the author of the contretemps which so strangely and so frequently befell her.

From the day she could understand until the dawn of her tenth birthday misfortune after misfortune fell upon her, until those who met her, covertly made the gesture, used all the world over, to avert the evil eye; whilst the Sheikh tore his beard in secret as he tried to elucidate the mysteries of the dead mare, the broken spears, the disappearance, almost within sight of the Sanctuary, of an entire caravan laden with gifts for her, and other calamities which had befallen his offspring, in whom, blinded as unfortunately are so many doting parents, he saw no fault.

But when the sun rose on the anniversary of Zarah's tenth year of life, Yussuf's hate, as is the wont of unbridled passions, turned back upon him, whilst tragedy followed close upon his heel as he wended his way to the Hall of Judgment by one of the many paths he had made, in his love of solitude, amongst the rocks. Mohammed-Abd looked up at the handsome face and smiled into the wondrous eyes which looked down into his in such splendid friendliness and bade him sit beside him on the carpet, upon which were spread gifts of gold and silver, ivory and glass and silk, to celebrate the festival.

"She would ride Lulah?" replied Yussuf slowly, ignoring the girl entirely, intentionally, so as to rouse her anger. "Lulah, descendant of the mare that brought thee safely across the path so many moons ago?"

As it happened, Zarah did not mind if she rode mare or stallion in her first raid upon a caravan which had been reported as travelling, heavily laden, towards Hutah.

Foiled, up to that very moment, in all her efforts to break or bend the man she hated with all her heart, she was making one last effort to triumph over him.

Incapable of understanding the friendship between the men, under-estimating Yussuf's strength of character, believing, in her colossal vanity, that he was merely the victim of a petty jealousy roused by her beauty and her power over the Sheikh, she had decided to make her request before her father upon a day when, so she thought, no one would dare refuse her anything.

"Yea! little brother," replied Mohammed-Abd, "the fastest mare in all Arabia!"

Knowing nothing whatever about fortune telling, and merely to plague the girl, Yussuf, slowly and with an irritating nonchalance, drew certain signs upon the floor, then spoke, as Fate, who held the strings by which they were hobbled to their destinies, dictated.

"I see Lulah flying across the desert sands," he whispered, "at dawn, with death upon her back. She flees for her life, with hate, revenge, hard upon her heels. She stumbles, there is ... nay! I see no more. 'Tis hidden in the mists of time. But death, death with a crown of red above her snow-white face, rode her, with hate upon her heels."

He looked across at Zarah, who, ridden with superstition, and totally unaware that he was fooling her, leant far back upon her cushions, one hand extended, with fingers spread against disaster, the other clutching an amulet of good luck hanging about her neck.

He smiled at her terror and shrugged his shoulders, spreading his hands, palm uppermost, as though to protest against such signs of weakness. The action, the look in the wonderful eyes, acted as a spur upon the girl, goading her to maddest wrath. With a mighty effort she controlled herself and leaned far forward, eyes blazing, her lips drawn back in a snarl of hate.

The men who sat in the body of the hall smoking or drinking coffee whilst listening to the dispute, nudged each other at the sudden, tense silence which fell between the two.

"A golden piece, Bowlegs, to the dagger in thy belt that trouble befalls before the coffee grows cold within the cups," whispered the Patriarch, whose benign exterior covered a heart given entirely to gambling.

Bowlegs, who had gained his unpoetical sobriquet on account of his lower limbs, which had become almost circular through his infantile desire to run before he could crawl, laid his dagger on the carpet beside the golden piece.

"Nay! Not to-day. Fall the trouble will between the two who love each other as love the cat and dog, but not upon the tiger-cub's day of festival--hist--she speaks."

"And why shall I not ride the black mare?"

Zarah spoke slowly, clearly, whilst the Sheikh looked from the one to the other in grief and anxiety.

"Because she is in foal!"

It was a lie, the girl knew it was a lie, the Sheikh knew it was a lie, as he leaned forward and tried to catch her hand.

He was too late.

"Liar!" she screamed. "Accursed liar!" she screamed again, as she seized a heavy, cut-glass bowl and hurled it in Yussuf's face, against which it smashed to pieces, cutting it to ribbons, a thousand needle-pointed splinters of glass putting out for ever the light of the wondrous eyes.

The mistaken love of friends saved him, though would it have been far kinder to have let him close his blinded eyes in the last long sleep, from which he would perchance have wakened with a clearer vision and a better understanding.

"The will of Allah? Does our brother live or die? Speak quickly lest I pinch thy windpipe 'twixt thumb and finger."

Some many days later the renowned herbalist procured from Hutah, in the Hareek Oasis, by the simple process of kidnapping, and brought, blindfolded, by swiftest camel to the curing of the sick man, looked up at Al-Asad, the gigantic Nubian.

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