Caravan To Xanadu

CHAPTER 2

THE ARGHUN WOMAN

As has been said since time out of mind, one lark doesn’t make a summer—and one half-smile is not a pledge of a maiden’s favor. Yet I felt an inkling of happy fortune.

The next good augury came to pass well after the evening meal. A long-winded sheik and other worthy villagers had occupied Nicolo’s time for a good hour; then he retired to the pavilion he shared with Maffeo with every sign of seeking a good night’s sleep. He could be disguising his purpose, but I doubted if he would take the trouble. More likely he was not in the mood for adventure and chose to wait a more favorable time and place.

Throughout the journey I had made a point of greasing our interpreters’ palms. Although they were a lying lot by nature—by pure human nature they could not resist taking advantage of their in-between position and all words passing through their mouths must pay a kind of toll—they were glad to lie in my favor if to their best gain. The Armenian Rusas, whom we had hired at Hormuz, was more my creature than Nicolo’s. I had kept him reasonably honest by what seemed an uncanny penetration of some of his schemes—the simple matter of knowing Arabic—and besides, I paid him well.

“Rusas, has Signor Nicolo made any arrangements for obtaining the maiden’s favor?” I asked when the camp had grown still.

“He bade me carry certain compliments to her. She thanked him kindly in her own name and the name of her husband in Heaven. Perhaps she was only whetting his appetite, but more likely she was a little afraid of one of his years and station, ambassador to the Great Khan.”

“Perhaps her grief is still too great——”

“What could comfort it like a lover’s arms? Of those she’s been bereft for half a year—so her sire confided—and she’s young and beautiful and, I would hazard, fiery. The gelding Patience was a good horse according to the tale, but the great stallion Impetuosity won the race. Although the signor is far from old, he’s no longer a boy, and he wants all things in order, delivered to him at his own convenience, and not to miss a good night’s sleep. And remember, young master—youth calls to youth.”

Pleased with his show of sapience, Rusas took himself off. I lay down around the corner from the flood of moonlight and as still as though sound asleep, but my eyes were as open as an owl’s and soon almost as sharp. A merchant setting down figures in a book closed it and blew out his candle. The last stirrings of the camp died fitfully away. The cameleers lay like casualties of battle, each under his white aba, unmoving as white rocks. Each flock of sheep reclined in its place, its members close to one another in some sort of love that awed my heart tonight, and the huge white oxen dozed on their feet, sometimes lowing softly. A whole great history of man was written here, I thought. I waited and watched for the sight of a beautiful maiden. . . .

After an hour’s vigil I was all but certain that Araxie would not keep rendezvous. I had given her more than enough time, and it stood to reason that she had missed the signal I sent her, or was unable or unwilling to comply. Then I decided to give her another hour. Giving it to her was the right term, but in the way of a compliment or a tribute instead of a gift of value—I did not want it or have any use for it except to sleep through, and that was a dull employment. And while most maidens would come to meet a lover in the first hour, perhaps Araxie would not yield to his longings until the second.

What was sleep to me but a dark bridge between one adventure and another, and what were my dreams but the rippling waters that flowed beneath? The vigil was quiet and lonely and uneventful, but what I heard and saw and smelled was far more sharp than dreams. And this living of that hour instead of merely living through it—making something out of it instead of begrudging it—appeared to please the gods.

I saw what might be a peculiarly nimble young ghost floating among the shadows of the houses. It did not pass close to my lying place—if I were to see it at all, I must be wide-awake and on the lookout. As it started to move along the wall, I rose and took a course that would intercept it not far from the gate. I too avoided the spaces of bright moonlight. I did not want to catch some evil eye, or the attention of anyone who lay awake. Soon the byres hid me from any doorway or pavilion.

When I had drawn within a hundred paces of my tryster, she was no longer ghostlike, but as hard to see as a sprite in the web of light and shadow. If she had seen me, she had not acknowledged me. As she came close to the gate she stopped and looked back, but not as though in expectation of my coming. When she did see me, she gave the impression of being startled. She stood motionless a few seconds, then drew back into the shadow. I waved my hand.

When I came up to her she was standing midway between light and shade, her hands clasped, her raven hair flowing, her eyes long and lifted a little at the corners, and a dreamy beauty upon her face.

With this expression and her whole posture, her costume was in poetic keeping. A silken robe tucked in under her arms laid bare the swell of her breast and confided her small voluptuous form; over her naked shoulders hung the piece of embroidered silk her grandfather had offered Nicolo today; her black hair flowed, and her feet were bare of sandals. She let the shadows partly conceal her beauties in a show of shyness that was no doubt some old propriety among her people. Indeed I got the impression of time-honored formality not only in her bearing but in her dress. I was almost sure that a concubine of the sultan presented herself in this fashion when he summoned her to his couch on a moonlit court.

“Koba (Evening Star)!”

Her eyes that had avoided mine wheeled in surprise.

“Do you speak Arabic?” she asked in that tongue. But her pronunciation made it sound like some other language.

“It’s almost my native tongue.”

“Why, you speak it as it’s spoken in very Oman!”

“I delight that you speak it also, moon of beauty.”

“But the great malik—I think he’s your father—spoke Tatar to my grandsire.”

“I doubt if the Tatar language lends itself well to talk of love.”

“It is good for discussing horses, hunting, and war. Arabic was my mother’s tongue, and it has been pleasant to my ears, so the effendi will forgive me for lingering this long.”

“I wouldn’t forgive you if you left me.”

“Lord, it’s not fitting that we should meet so in the dark, both of us unattended, and I in immodest raiment. I was hot and could not sleep and the moon beguiled me——”

No doubt this was what a Sultan’s concubine was supposed to say to her master, part of a time-honored ritual, when she had gone walking in her master’s garden after a eunuch had whispered something in her ear.

“We needn’t waste time or breath on the proprieties, bringer of delight,” I broke in. “None are necessary after our eyes had met today, and you had given me a smile.”

She stood quite still for several long-drawn seconds and an expression stole into her face that I could not read. If I were to guess it, she was half frightened, half wonder-struck. She gave me a furtive glance, then moved enough to bring her face and breast full into the moonlight.

“You called me Cobah,” she remarked in a thoughtful tone.

“I think it fits you well.”

“Perhaps you’ve mistaken me for a virgin. Instead I’m a widow of half a year, and I’m soon to become the wife of my husband’s brother. That is the custom among my people.”

“Then for the moment you are free.”

“Effendi, is it your desire——?”

“My great desire.”

Then my scalp tightened with the effect of creeping, for I remembered another meeting under the moon. It was far off in time and space. The stars were grouped the same, although some I had known had dropped behind the western horizon, and some I did not know had risen in the east. Our island there had been surrounded by silver waters instead of silver desert.

The beauty that I sought then was of another birth and order than that I was seeking now. Still, as the shock of remembrance passed I felt only gray regret. I had bartered away my pearl never to be reclaimed and I must make the most of my returns. I must no longer let the dead past cast shadows backward over the glimmering present.

2

I bent my head and kissed Araxie’s rose-red mouth. And that rose was not of delicate and subdued hue, but the scarlet rose of Persia, red as the breast of the desert falcon. Her eyes began to shine with intense excitement.

“It’s too dangerous here,” she whispered.

“Where can we go?”

“Outside the gate. There’s an old Mohammedan tomb close by——”

“Let’s not have anything to do with death.”

“Why, those bones have been dust a thousand years!”

“Still, we can’t go out the gate, because there’s no one to lock it behind us.”

“There’s no danger from the Karaunas tonight. There might be a greater danger inside the wall.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It doesn’t matter. Follow me, my lord.”

She stood poised—reminding me of a beautiful black-and-white bird with gay-colored wings about to take flight—until I nodded. Then she could hardly resist running in the light way of village girls, and when I would move cautiously from shadow to shadow, she became impatient. She clutched my hand and tugged it and hers was damp with sweat, but it was a smoother hand and more voluptuous than I would have expected from a field-working village girl.

“Take care, lest your grandsire see us,” I whispered when she started to cross half an acre of smooth-spread moonlight.

“He’s half-blind and sleeps like a babe,” she answered in great impatience. “I’m more afraid of the sharp eyes of your sire.”

“Why should you be? Has he——” But I did not know what to ask.

“He desires me himself, and I take him for one as proud and unyielding as a king.”

“Would you rather have him? Decide quickly.”

“No, I’ve chosen you.”

“If you leave me to go to him, I’ll kill you.”

“By Gog and Magog, I never will.”

Instead of angering or frightening my companion, the savage threat fanned her passion. With rough ardor, she clutched my neck and pressed the full length of her body and thighs against mine. Her belly thrust slowly forward until she stood in the shape of a drawn bow, my shoulders drawn atop hers and pressed down with great strength.

“Fall with me, man of the West!” she cried. “Am I not cushion enough for your tender bones?”

“Not into the dust.” But I was half ashamed of my squeamishness, so out of place on an adventure of this kind, and troubled by some distaste of mind about the escapade itself. Whatever its cause, it did not curb the sudden, avid hunger of the flesh. I felt no tenderness toward the desert girl but knew she wanted none. She was beautiful in her wild way and I, and I thought she, had kept a long fast.

“Have the women of Frankistan taught you nothing, or are they eggshell frail?” she asked. “This is the way we Arghun women prove our lovers.”

Arghun was a Tatar word I had heard Nicolo use. I thought it meant of mixed blood.

“I’m no Arghun man, but a Venetian.”

“Then in Allah’s name make haste.”

Again she took my hand, and as fast as I would follow, led me by way of the shadows to a picket fence. It enclosed not more than half an acre, protecting from the livestock a stack of new-cut unthreshed millet. I felt a brief chill in following Araxie though the gate and closing it behind us. I had heard of capturing wild stallions on the steppes by tying a mare in heat in a pen with a drop barrier. The ground was bone-bare except for the dull glimmer of the high moon.

But we were a good way from the houses and largely screened by the cattle byres. Our only watchers that I knew of were huge white cattle, some of which lurched to their feet as though in good manners, and Bactrian baggage camels of low caste and malodor. Araxie uttered a low cry and flung off her beautifully embroidered silk scarf. It fell in the dust and her white robe fluttered down beside it in dishevelment. My own hands were busied now, but not fast enough to satisfy the itch in hers. Yet this frantic passion and my own response to it, more brutal in many respects than was ever aroused in me before, did not quite overcome what seemed self-disdain, but which might be only deeply submerged fear.

In some Asiatic tribes, the young women are frankly and overtly the wooers. That did not explain the culmination’s seeming more a predatory binding in the dimness of the jungle than an embrace of human lust. But if she were a strange woman, she was also strangely beautiful. I knew ecstasy and felt exquisite pain.

At her peak of rapture, Araxie gave a high-pitched, convulsive cry. She had failed or had not tried to muffle the sound, and it would carry far through the stillness and disturb the villagers’ sleep. I had no care for that, but was surprised by my own grim thought, like an eerie phantasy, that they would mistake it for the shriek of a desert fox. The spell slowly dissolved. Araxie lay still, her eyes uprolled and revealing silverlike crescents under the half-closed lids. I rose and saw that her pale-brown breast was smeared the same color as her lips, and these were even redder than before.

I looked at my chest and shoulders. But on touching the wounds, I found them trifling. I must wait till their flow ceased and wipe it away; then my shirt would hide the short twin rows of little cuts. I felt no need of haste—all fear of our tryst being discovered had passed from me. It might happen but I did not believe it. It seemed to me that the adventure would have some other end.

Araxie stirred, uttered a long sigh, and slowly opened her eyes. When she saw me she gave me a sleepy smile. But it checked quickly when she saw my chest.

“Did I do that?” she gasped.

“Unless a succubus took your place.”

“Oh, do you know what it means?”

“No.”

“You won’t believe me, effendi, but it’s true. You’ve put me with child.” Her eyes glimmered incredibly in the pale light.

I shook my head in instinctive rejection of the thought. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, licked it clean, then spoke eagerly.

“Isn’t it your blood? That’s a sign that it will flow with mine in a new life. Already that life is kindled. It happened so with me only once before on the first full moon of my bridehood—and the sign did not fail.”

Against my will, I swayed to the conviction in her voice.

“If that should be true, what would be the consequences?” I asked.

“None to trouble either you or me. I told you my husband’s brother would make me one of his wives in a few days. He’ll never know that the baby isn’t his.”

“Was your other baby—the first time you were given the sign—a boy or a girl?” But I did not know the bent of my own mind.

“A boy!”

“Was he a phoenix, born of fire?” I was flattering her because of some unknown fear.

“He was beautiful and bold, and if he had lived, he would have been a chief!”

“Did he die like so many babes of summer fever?”

“Not he. He was sick not one day in the month that he lived. He tugged at my teat like a pig, and grew fat and lusty.”

“Then how did he come to die?”

“My husband, the babe’s father, lately lost to me, became jealous of him and killed him.”

I had heard the words clearly but I must have mistaken her proud tone.

“Why didn’t you kill him in revenge?”

“He was my husband who had stolen me from my father’s house when I was a virgin, and I loved him. Oh, I tell you we Arghun women know how to love.”

Then a sign was given to me. It was only the shriek of a desert fox far away on the moonlit plain—a belated answer, I thought, to a cry he had heard several minutes ago and had thought upon in vain. I did not know the meaning of the sign.

3

The desert sun, threatening imminent heat, brought a great stirring. The cameleers yelled; their beasts twisted back their necks and tried to bite them, and the horses looked down their noses at such goings-on. The baggage wallahs heaved bales and boxes and fastened ropes; we merchants exchanged pleasantries until Nicolo bade us take our places. He had greeted me affably and asked if I had rested well. I could read nothing in his quiet smile and brilliant eyes.

Araxie and her grandsire were given seats atop a lightly loaded baggage camel. All hands were glad to have them with us on the road, the old man so venerable, and the damsel so beautiful; no one could look at them without pleasure. Otherwise the traveling was about the same as yesterday. Rather it was a gradual development of yesterday’s trends. The plain’s tilt became more pronounced; hills were more frequent and steep; brooks flowed swifter and straighter; there was less sand and more rock; the air was clearer and the copses larger and greener.

We came on a beggar clothed in vile rags, grimy hand outstretched. The merchants looked at him impassively and rode by; I turned in my saddle to watch the cameleers and the baggage wallahs look aside to avert the evil eye. But Araxie’s grandsire gazed upon him with sorrow and pity, grieving that he had no money to give him, and of all our company, only Araxie herself leaned down and put something in his hand. The movement was wonderfully graceful. Her face was alight with happiness. I wondered if this were an act of gratitude to her gods.

“If there be honor among thieves, as the adage tells, a beggar maid can give to a beggar man,” came a harsh voice beside me.

I felt a touch of anger. The speaker was Daniel, a swarthy Jew of Tabriz. If he had spoken slightingly of a Christian girl on the Rialto, he would have been spat upon. But remembering Simon ben Reuben and his parting gift to Miranda, I held my tongue.

“He gave her something in return,” Daniel went on. “I suppose it was a charm of some sort. These foolish people buy written charms from so-called holy men, wash off the ink in a little water, and drink it. They think it brings them all sorts of benefits.”

Such as the healthy growth and safe delivery of an unborn babe?

“She showed more charity than any of us,” I remarked.

“Anyway she’s a very beautiful girl. I would think her an Arghun—that’s a Tatar word for a person of mixed blood. She has a dash of Tatar from a quarter other than the old man’s. There’s some fine Arab blood in the cross, and most likely Persian of Khurasan, famous for its beautiful women. But don’t fall into the error of thinking of her as a Christian. In many of these regions the Nestorian Church has been contaminated with rank paganism.”

“The old man told us that——”

“In effect he did. I’m still puzzling over it. The hooded duster that Maffeo Polo wore last evening looked something like a friar’s gown—it may have been for his benefit. Anyway, young man, don’t get involved with either of them. No doubt the girl would afford good sport and that’s all right——”

I turned curtly away.

The heat mounted as the road roughened, and I would be glad when we stopped for our Mohammedan cameleers to say midday prayers. The beasts slipped and stumbled on the rocks, their drivers cursed; of all our company I saw only two who appeared unwearied and unruffled. One of them was Nicolo. He had made some sort of truce with the hardships of the way, yielding gracefully when he must, keeping intact his reserve strength, lithe in the saddle. The other was Araxie. Not merely serene, she took a positive joy in the long, grueling ride, and it was almost as irrepressible as her beauty. Trouble came into her face only when she glanced at her grandsire and this she tried to hide, I thought, lest we share her worries about him and begin to regard him as a burden on the caravan. While retaining his dignity of manner, he looked pale and under deep strain.

About half an hour short of noon according to my sand glass, we came to a ford on a tributary of the Halil Rud. Apparently it had offered a fairly easy crossing until lately: now the banks had slid, leaving them impassably steep. Detour would be difficult because of gullied ground and thorn thickets. As the drivers scratched their heads, Araxie called to her grandsire in a pleasantly excited tone and in a language I did not recognize. He answered gravely, then spoke to Nicolo through an interpreter.

“My granddaughter has reminded me of another crossing not two arrow casts from here. It is used by the villagers at Konsalmi, and is reached by a bridle path we crossed a stone’s throw back.”

“God’s grace upon you both, and you’ve earned your passage,” Nicolo replied.

We retreated the short distance and took up the path. Rough and little-used, it led into a natural amphitheater, its brush-grown rims about two hundred paces broad, and fronting on the stream. The ford looked easy but we were not to essay it yet.

With a low groan, Araxie’s grandsire clutched his throat and began to topple from his seat.

Three stout drivers checked his fall and eased him to the ground. At the same instant Araxie leaped down and ran to him, crying. Drawing his gray head into her lap, she began to stroke his brow, meanwhile murmuring a prayer.

The whole caravan had stopped in disorder. The marchers left their ranks to crowd about the fallen patriarch, and we horsemen in the van turned back to his help. Most of our number dismounted. I kept my seat with the thought of riding ahead to a village about half a mile beyond the ford, whose sun-baked white walls glimmered through the thorn scrub and whose oasis of date palms raised cool green plumes against the burning-glass sky.

Then I noticed that the Jew Daniel had not dismounted or made any other move to help the gaffer and was looking down at him with cold, alert eyes.

Daniel felt my angry glance and flushed. “I’m sorry I can’t join in the commiseration,” he told me in low tones.

“What do you mean?”

“This is a show of some kind. He knew those cameleers would catch him. I think the young beauty’s going to need twenty dinars for some rare drugs. I suspected her when the old man told that lie about the scarf.”

“What lie?”

“That she’d embroidered it herself. I saw it a good month ago in the stock of Kamul, the silk merchant, as he was loading his caravan at Shiraz.”

“Didn’t you know that caravan was ambushed by the Karaunas and wiped out?”

“What?”

I did not answer. Instead I wiped sweat from my brow, meanwhile peering through my fingers with every strength and effort of my eyes. I looked to the heavy thorn scrub that grew halfway down the walls of the amphitheater. A silver twinkle, instantly disappearing, was sunlight on a polished spearhead or harness metal. Then there was a stir off and on along the edge of the thickets, as if a giant serpent lying there were shifting his coils. It was inaudible and it would have been invisible except for the desperate probing of my eyes, and I would not have guessed its meaning if my mind had not already leaped to a dreadful truth.

The stir was caused by a line of a hundred or more horsemen slowly raising their bows.

Their mounts stood statue-still, silent at the scent of ours blown to them on the breeze, and this was not all their training. After the first flight of arrows they would leap down the steeps like stags, needing no guiding but a little shift of weight by their inhuman riders. Our horses and camels that did not fall or stampede at the first volley could not carry us far in the winged hail to follow. And for that little way, only our best steeds could keep pace with the Tatar ponies.

All this came to me as a vista revealed by lightning. I saw the arrows being nocked with slow, steady movements and the bows stealthily drawn. My mare was headed away from the ford. She bounded forward as I roweled her cruelly, but wheeled to my drawn bit. The quick turn fetched her on the course I must take and my howl had already drowned out every other sound and rang against the rocks.

“Karaunas! Karaunas! Follow me!”

Leaping from my spur, the mare did not quite clear an obstruction. I felt her front hoof sink into what seemed soft wet ground. No doubt the patriarch opened his eyes and saw the sky once more before darkness filled them, and his death scream had just started its sky climb as I dropped my reins over the pummel and bent low in the saddle. With one hand I clutched a big ropelike hank of Araxie’s hair. With the other I caught in her armpit as with a hook. Her upper garments ripped away and she screamed with pain, but my grip held, and by a great wrench of muscle and bone I heaved her in front of me, half in my lap in the chairlike saddle, and half jammed against the peak. She had little room to struggle and at once became helpless to do so under the press of my arm.

I made one dash straight away from the ambushed horde. For the instant I did not think they had eyes for anyone but my captive and me.

I began to wheel toward the ford. Our other horsemen bounded into their saddles and followed Nicolo on a cut that would intercept my course. With a half-turn I got between them and the bowmen. I was quite sure they would not let fly in my direction.

But with a howl like the hungry chorus of a hundred wolves, they broke from their ambush and came bounding down the slope. At least twoscore in the vanguard set off in our pursuit; the rest cut off the flight of the cameleers and surrounded the rest of the caravan. Yelling like devils, they shot arrows into the backs of all who tried to fly and drove lances into the breasts of the few who chose to fight rather than be sold for galley slaves.

I watched these killings over my shoulder and was very glad of Araxie’s close company on this ride.

We splashed through the ford—Nicolo leading now, Maffeo and seven other merchants in a band, I on the rear flank between them and our pursuers. As the Karaunas took a short cut to bring them on our flank, I dashed forward with joy in my heart that I wore such magic armor, protecting me and nine of my fellow travelers. Araxie might be the daughter of a Karauna chief, I thought; more likely she was his mistress.

Our horses ran with their necks stretched, tails arched a little, picking up their hoofs cleanly, for they were mostly excellent Badakhshans, costing up to two hundred dinars. But Darchill, a stingy Georgian Christian, had bought him a lowborn nag, priding himself upon his thrift; and now the jingle of the gold he had saved was a poor buckler against the nearing howls of the Tatars. Their ponies were shorter and shaggier, not quite as swift as ours on good ground, but wondrous coverers of rough going, impervious as their masters to heat or cold, and tireless as wild asses. Happily we were running on a cattle track between ford and village, and at the very longest, the race would be short.

“Let me go!” my captive wailed.

“In due course,” I answered, stopping her wriggling with my arm.

“It wasn’t my fault. I’ve been true to you, I swear before Jesu and all the saints! How could I know that the black horde lay in wait——”

“The beggar brought you word where to lead us. But you missed the chance for a clean sweep last night when I wouldn’t go with you outside the gate.”

“May I fall dead if I lie——”

I did not hear the rest. I was watching Darchill on his cheap scrub. He had dropped five yards behind our body, farther than the wildest Tatar arrow would miss its mark. At least ten came arching from the wild riders’ bows. The range was a hundred paces, aim was impossible from the bounding backs of the rough-gaited ponies, yet all but one of the ten passed within twelve feet of the horror-stricken rider. The tenth arrow took him at the base of the neck. He screamed, flung wide his arms, and tumbled to the dust.

“Last night you seemed surprised to see me,” I told my light-o’-love. “I thought you were pretending for propriety’s sake, but you really were surprised. You hadn’t given me a sign—I imagined it. You didn’t want to be seen when you crept out in the dark. You were making for the gate, and you intended to open it to your companions waiting outside.”

“Yes, but that was before I lay in your arms. Truly I’m a woman of the Karaunas, but I only obeyed the orders of our Khan. And after we had become lovers, I sent word by the beggar that you were to be spared.”

“You intended to stay with me?”

“I would follow you to the world’s end!”

“You are very beautiful, Araxie. Your back shines in the sun, and I wish we could stop and make love. But I must go into the village and close the gate behind me.”

“Those villagers know me and will kill me. So check your speed a little just before you dash through and let me slide off.”

I did not answer. I was watching the race and anticipating its finish. Our shouts had aroused the villagers, who had come in from their fields for noonday rest and repast, and at present were gathering about the gate of the earthen wall. They paid taxes and obeisance to a district governor. He might himself be a Tatar—at least he was remotely subject to Kublai Khan, a Mongolian Tatar—but the prosperity of the land stemmed from its commerce, and he would raze any village that took sides with the bandits. We had gained a little on our pursuers and they were nearly out of arrow cast. Except for some unforeseen disaster we could dash through the gate in time for the waiting villagers to swing it shut behind us and drop the bar.

There would probably be time enough for me to check my speed a little and let Araxie slide off. She would be flayed and bruised and perhaps break a bone, but she would live to remember our love-making.

“Let me go!” she cried.

“Not yet.”

“Remember our embrace under the moon!”

“I’ll never forget as long as I live.”

“Let me go! Their arrows can’t fly this far.”

“Why, I think you’re right, but we’ll wait a moment more.”

In the moment that we waited, one of the horses of our fleet band stepped in a gopher hole. I heard the sharp crack of his leg bone breaking, then saw him shatter down. I caught only a glimpse of his fallen rider, then lost sight of him in the dust. He was Daniel the Jew.

“You’re waiting too long,” my companion wailed. “The villagers will kill me.”

“No, you’ll be safe from them.”

“You’ll gain the gate in a moment more. Check your horse as you let me off, or I may break my neck.”

“The fall won’t hurt you, I promise.”

“But you’re riding as hard as before! Let me off now—quick—before too late. Remember what’s between us! I’m your woman and your seed is in my womb!”

“That I know, and it pains me to part with you. Still, I’ll let you off.”

But before I did so, I drove my dagger blade deep between her beauteous breasts.^[14]