Chapter XVI: Aryenis and I Visit Paulos

As I entered, Aryenis appeared on the staircase the other side of the hall in her riding-dress, and I realized once more the truth of Payindah’s words. She was extremely good-looking, if such a word can be applied fairly to some one who is very beautiful. Yes; she would be just the sort of wife of whom a man would feel really proud.

She looked at me critically and then smiled.

“I thought that only women were supposed to be vain. Why, O Harilek, have you got that coloured thing round your throat? Is this a custom of your folk when they go out riding with ladies to see old men? You have also got on another coat, not so shabby as the one you usually have. I think”--she looked again--“it is the one I used to wear.”

It was, as a matter of fact.

“All the same,” she went on, “when we get to Miletis you must have new things. I think that I will see to it, since men are not to be trusted to choose their clothes.”

“Thank you, Aryenis,” said I. “You told us we were not able to feed ourselves. Are we trusted to do anything?”

“Very little,” said Aryenis, looking down on me from the height of the second stair. “No men are really to be trusted without a woman to look after them. Men and babies, they are all the same, except when it comes to battle, and even then men really want a woman to encourage them and pet them afterwards. Even when men are playing they generally have to ask a woman to look at them just like children run and call their mothers to come and see their games. Come here and let me put that bandage straight for you.”

“What will Forsyth say if you change it?”

“Forsyth did not tie that one, Harilek. Either you or Payindah did it, and did it very badly.” She was adjusting it as she spoke, and she carefully pushed it to one side to see if the wound was all right; at least, that’s what it felt like.

“You are branded for the rest of your life, I think, Harilek, so that you may never forget the gate. There, that looks better.”

“I don’t want to forget it, Aryenis. I can remember the gate very well without a scar to help me.”

She hurriedly changed the subject.

“Come; the horses wait.”

She swung herself into the saddle of her mare before I could help her. Then, with two mounted archers behind us, we rode out of the gate down into the city, and, when we got to the main street we turned up it in the opposite direction from the one at which we had come in in the morning. We passed through the same crowd of people as we had seen before, and now, when they saw Aryenis, many of them called to her, and I could see all heads turning our way. Aryenis is a wonder at making every one know her, but then you couldn’t help noticing her in the thickest of crowds.

She smiled at those who spoke to her, and passed a word or two with some of the shopkeepers who came running out to greet her. We rode through the northern gate, a replica of the one we had entered in the morning, out on to a broad highway with gardens on either side.

After going a couple of miles, we struck off to the left, and, riding up the hillside, followed a narrow track, along which flowed a little irrigation channel shaded with willows, almond, and silver-barked poplar. Most of the trees were now shedding their leaves, but in summer it must have been a very pretty, shady, green lane.

The ground on either side was cut up into fields, which evidently drew their water from the irrigation channel, for there were water-cuts and banks, and at one place a man was opening a little rough sluice to let the water on to the fields at the side.

About us were wooded slopes, and all along the hillsides little terraced fields, fruit orchards with grey stone walls, scattered little stone houses, and ricks of straw and hay.

“You have a fertile country, Aryenis, and a beautiful one. Look at those hills there!”

Beyond us long slopes of blue hills, climbing ever higher and higher toward the main snow-peak, and between them dim blue shadows, not unlike my own Sussex country that Kipling sings of:

“Belt upon belt, the wooded dim
Blue goodness of the weald.”

“Is it not, Harilek? I know no other country save that of the Green Sakae, but I love this more than all I have seen. Is your country like this?”

“My own is just like that part there under the hills. I might almost be looking at the landscape round my father’s house at home.”

“You said your father was dead, or so my father told me. Who, then, holds his land? Have you an elder brother?”

“No. I had only one brother, and he was killed during the war I spoke of. My sister, whose husband was also killed in the same war, lives there now while I am away.”

“And you will go back some day, I suppose, and settle?”

“Perhaps. When I grow too old to wander. But I shall not hurry back yet. I want to learn about your country first, and that will take a long time, I think.”

“But does not your sister want you to come back and settle down and--look after the land?”

“She has not said so, much. She has her two sons, one of whom is fifteen now, and presently he will be old enough to manage things if I am away. Not that she wants any help really”--and I smiled as I thought of Ethel’s masterful nature requiring any one to help her. “She has spent most of her life looking after my father, myself, my brother, and every one and everything else she has ever met,” I explained. “I do not think she wants much help. Like you, she thinks all men are babies.”

“So they are,” said Aryenis defiantly. “Men never grow up, except when they go bad. Nice men never grow up, not properly, although they pretend to, and put on airs and speak gravely; feign to talk important secrets when we women aren’t there, and turn us out of council meetings; try to look impressive, and puff and blow if you ask them anything. But it’s all make-believe. In the things that really matter a man of fifty is no wiser than a boy of fifteen.”

“What things?” said I, honestly seeking for knowledge.

“Oh, lots of things, real ones; not playthings like bows or new ways of feathering arrows, or new kinds of bits for horses, with which men fill their heads and for which they invent weird new names that no one understands to make them sound important. But when it comes to the real things of life, they’re babies, just babies.”

She flicked her mare with her switch as if she were endeavouring to drive knowledge into the heads of those undeveloped infantile beings, the nice members of the male sex.

“But you haven’t made it clear what are the really important things,” I persisted.

“I couldn’t make it clear, because, if I did you wouldn’t understand them, being a man.”

“And hence a babe, I suppose?”

“Certainly, a babe. Oh, undoubtedly a babe.” Then, completely off the point, “Do you know, Harilek, you haven’t asked after my shoulder for two days?”

“I’m so sorry; how is it?”

As a matter of fact I had asked Forsyth twice daily on the point, and knew that it was practically healed up.

“It’s getting better, and the doctor thinks it won’t leave a mark.”

“That’s good. Now a babe would probably prefer to have a mark.”

“Yes, exactly; so that he could show it to people and talk about it.”

“And a woman, being grown up, would be much better pleased not to have a mark that might spoil the look of her shoulder. I begin to understand the important things of life, Aryenis, ‘the things that really matter.’”

“I think you’re trying to be rude. But my shoulder does matter.”

“That’s just what I said. I think any one’s shoulder would matter, and certainly yours.”

“And why mine, certainly?”

“Because it’s the nicest one I’ve ever seen.”

Whereupon she blushed and hastily proceeded to point out her friend’s house, which was just coming into sight round the bend in front. Then she put her mare into a canter, and we came up to the gate in a cloud of dust.

It was a long, low, stone house of two storeys, with little windows above like attics. The garden was very charming with its patterned flower-beds, its big chenar trees copper and gold in their October leaf, and the flagged stone walks in the grass. Evidently the owner was a man of taste.

As we rode in, servants ran out, and, when they saw who it was, they clustered round excitedly and kissed Aryenis’s hand. They had only heard of her escape the evening before.

We dismounted and passed through the house into a walled garden behind, scented with late roses and gay with autumn flowers, where we found an old man, clean-shaven and fragile-looking, lying on a couch with rugs over his legs. Aryenis ran up to him and kissed him on both cheeks. It was evident that they were very fond of each other. She talked to him a minute, and then she turned round and presented me.

“So this is the young man that brought you back, is it, Aryenis?” said he in Greek, holding out both his hands to me.

Then he looked me up and down, and it seemed that I passed muster.

“Stephnos rode this way not so long ago, bringing with him another stranger. They were hurrying, but he stopped a minute to tell me the news. God is very good to send you back safe to your friends, child.”

Then he turned to me.

“Stephnos tells me that you come from a far country, but that you speak the old tongue? It makes it even clearer than before to an old man that there is no chance in the world. All is intended.”

Then, looking at my face, he went on:

“I see you have been wounded, or so I presume. Was that got while you rescued Aryenis?”

“It was, sir. But ’tis only a scratch. But Aryenis says it will leave a mark, whereas the one she got on her shoulder will not leave any, which is important.”

Aryenis interrupted:

“He is teasing me because I told him men were babes, uncle mine” (Aryenis called him uncle, although he was actually only a very distant cousin of her father’s), “and when they got scars liked people to see them, whereas women--”

“Whereas women--especially pretty ones--would be greatly concerned if they got any scars that might show at all. I understand, Aryenis.” He smiled at her.

Servants brought us carved chairs, but Aryenis insisted on sitting on the couch by the old man.

“Be seated, sir,” he said. “I would hear how you saved Aryenis, only I would hear it from her lips since I shall thus get somewhat more of the truth. I understand that you have been a soldier, and soldiers are notoriously bad at telling the real facts about themselves in such matters.”

So she gave him a flowery version of her rescue, with italics in most places concerning the part I had played, and minor italics for Payindah now and then. After that she gave him a very accurate description of our camels and our camp. Very little misses Aryenis.

“’Twas well done, Harilek,” he said at last. “I do not know whether Aryenis is the more fortunate in being rescued by you, or you the more fortunate in being able to rescue her. When I was a young man I dreamed of such things as that, but they did not come my way.”

“_I_ have no doubt whatever, sir. The good fortune was entirely on my side.”

“And Aryenis says that you slew the Shamans with new weapons, such as have not been heard of in our country. Have you them with you? I was a lover of weapons ere misfortune tied me to this couch.”

I pulled out my pistol, unloaded it, and placed it in the old man’s hand, explaining roughly the way it worked as I showed him the cartridges.

“Wonderful,” he said. “That little thing which you say is as the miniature of our fort catapults will send those tiny bolts right through a mail-coat and through the man inside. And your man who slew the others, was he armed with this?”

“No. We have bigger ones that slay much farther; indeed, if you have eyes that are keen enough to point them straight, they will slay at over a mile. This is the dagger of which the other is the long spear.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful! Man has yet much to discover.” He handed me back the pistol, watching me reload it, and put it back in its holster.

“Stay you long in our country? If so you must come and see me again. Aryenis knows the way well enough. She has played here since she was a child.”

“I know not. But we stay for the war, and until that finishes in your favour we shall not leave.”

“Then I think you will stay some while. This will be a long and cruel war. Why do you stay for a war which is not your affair?”

“We stay because it is the matter of Aryenis and of her people, and since she was our guest we consider it in some sort as our business, too. Besides, we like not such of the ways of the Shamans as we have seen.” I told him of the morning’s episode, and Kyrlos’s narrow escape.

“The Shamans grow bold to practise open treachery like that. They must hold the other clans in thrall like dogs. Ten years ago, had such a thing been done, the whole of the clans would have turned on them.” He stopped; then continued:

“You speak as I would have spoken when I was your age and a whole man. But not all men would consider that the war was their affair because they had saved Aryenis. Rather would they incline to say they had done their part and somewhat over. I think that all the fortune was not with you; some large portion goes to Aryenis.”

“So also think I,” said she. “Life is sweet, but when with the gift of life one gets the gift of friends as well, then is one doubly blest.”

“True, child. You seem to have had both given to you in the gate”--and he was silent a space.

Then he clapped his hands, and a servant brought us out wine and sweet cakes on little silver trays. We talked awhile, and he asked many questions about the countries we came from. He was well read, and told me that he had some old manuscripts which he would show me one day. He knew the classics, Arrian and Herodotus amongst them, and could follow a little about India when I tried to explain our journey to him.

Then Aryenis went into the house to see the old servants, and he and I were left alone. He looked after her as she walked across the lawn.

“Aryenis is just like her mother--I sometimes think she is her mother when she comes here.”

“Her mother is dead, is she not?” I asked.

“Yes, many years ago. And yet it seems but yesterday that she sat here as Aryenis does now. She and Kyrlos often came to see me.” He sighed a little.

“And to-morrow you ride to Miletis. When things are settled you will come and see me again, will you not? ’Tis nice to see one who has seen places that I have read of, but none I know have ever seen.”

“Surely,” said I.

“You are Christians also, Aryenis tells me. She wrote me a letter which came by a fast messenger yesterday. Your faith was a matter of some surprise, since we believed that most of those who lived beyond the desert were pagans.”

“We are. All the countries around us, even the old Greece, are Christian now.”

“Yes. That, of course, I knew. But we had no idea you came from so far, thinking rather you came from the nearer lands which were overrun by the slant-eyed folk, who--so our old books tell us--drove our people out across the desert.”

“I should like to see those old books when we have time. We wondered whence came your folk. Are you Greeks?”

“No, or so the books tell us. But there were some Greeks who came among us, bringing with them much knowledge of the arts, and, above all, of the true faith. It is a long story that I shall be pleased to tell you one day. But Aryenis comes, and you must ride. One should not be abroad after dark in time of war. We are not over-distant from the frontier even here, though it is many years since raiders came as far as Aornos.”

Aryenis joined us and said that we must go. The horses waited saddled.

“Good-bye, uncle mine. All will be ready, will it not?”

“It will, child. I see that you were right--as ever--in what you wrote.”

Then he said good-bye, and we went out to the horses.

Riding back I asked Aryenis to tell me Paulos’s history.

“He was a great friend of my father’s, and they both loved my mother. But she preferred father, and not long after they were married there was a raid on the border. My father went out with his men, and Paulos, who was then commanding one of the forts, went, too, with some of his.

“There was a fight, and father was beaten down and like to lose his life, being surrounded by the enemy. Paulos, seeing his danger, leapt in, holding off the enemy until more of his men came up; but while doing so he received a spear thrust in the back.

“At the time it was hoped it would be nothing but a simple wound, but in some way it damaged his legs, which gradually withered so that he lost nearly all power in them. Since then he has been a cripple tied to his couch.

“He must have suffered much, for father says he was a fine rider and one keen on all kinds of sport, an active man, and a brave soldier.

“He never married, and lives alone there on his lands with his books, for he is a studious man, or became so when he could no longer take an active part in life.

“Father goes often to see him, for they were always like brothers, and mother held him in great affection. He treats me as his daughter, having no children of his own, and every year I go and spend some weeks with him. He is a lovable person to live with, and I have never heard him complain of his troubles, though it must be hard to lie there year after year unable to move without the help of a servant.”

“It must be a hard life for one who has been active in his day. But he is fortunate in loving his books.”

“Yes; but he loves life, too, and is always interested in all who come to see him and in their affairs, so that he keeps in life as it were through others. He often says to me that as he cannot live himself he tastes life through other people’s senses. You like him, do you not?”

“Indeed, I think one could not help liking him. It is wonderful how he keeps his interest in things where other men would become just querulous invalids.”

The dusk was coming on as we reached the city gates and rode up the winding street into the citadel. The shops were all alight with little twinkling oil-lamps, where late passers-by were making their last purchases.

When we got in, we found Kyrlos and Torka sitting alone in the great hall. The others were evidently not back. Kyrlos asked after Paulos, and said he hoped to find time to see him on the way to Miletis the next day.

Forsyth came in presently, and we waited for a while, sitting over the fire, for the evenings were very chilly. But they did not come, so finally we started our evening meal. In the middle of it a messenger arrived from Stephnos, saying that there were reports of an enemy raid expected, and that they were stopping to see if anything occurred during the night, and would join us next day at Miletis.

Torka’s wife was away, and Kyrlos had asked him not to have any one in to supper, as he wished for a quiet evening, since there would be much to do for the next few days. Also he would be glad to get to bed early and rest his neck, which was getting stiff. Forsyth sent him off shortly after we had had supper, and went with him to bandage up his wound again. Torka went to see about the arrangements for the next day, and Aryenis and I were left alone sitting over the fire in the hall.

We were neither of us very talkative. She was leaning forward, one shapely arm propping her chin, gazing into the glowing logs, and I was, I think, gazing at her, with the firelight glinting on her wonderful hair. Payindah’s words kept on coming back to me, and I could not help thinking what a very alluring prospect a vista of evenings with some one like Aryenis sitting by the fire would be, especially if the some one were one’s own Aryenis, and the firelight came from one’s own fireside.

“You are silent, Harilek,” she said at last, turning her head.

“So also are you, Aryenis. What were you looking at in the fire? Pictures like the children look for in the winter evenings?”

“Perhaps. It is pleasant to sit by the fire, seeing pictures of things that might be: fairy stories such as we used to be told, of enchanted castles and dragons, and things like that.”

“You forget the fairy princess with the red-gold locks, Aryenis. There is always one of them in the stories, isn’t there?”

“Do all fairy princesses have red-gold locks?”

“I don’t know about all, but some of them do. The one in my story did.”

“What story is that?”

“Oh, only one I was making up while you were looking into the fire. Wonderful red-gold locks, and hazel-grey eyes, steady, clear ones, and--no marks on her shoulders.”

“That’s mean, Harilek. I shan’t tell you my story now if you’re going to laugh at me.”

“I wasn’t laughing at you. I’m glad there isn’t going to be a mark.”

“But there will be really, only it’ll be so small that none will see it unless they know where to look for it.”

“That makes the story all the better. Princess with small mark on shoulder, that only the fairy prince who knows about it is able to find. Then, when he goes to look for the princess when she gets lost--they always get lost--he has to keep an eye on shoulders all the time. I’m afraid all the princesses in that story would have to wear very low-necked clothes or he’d never get to the end of his search.”

“And how does the princess know the prince? Does he have fairy marks?”

“Oh, he’d have wiggly ones where the dragon’s claws scratched him. Purple scratches, probably, and a tooth-mark or two down one arm.”

“I don’t believe that’s right. Fairy princes don’t get bitten by dragons. They always kill them first with wonderful shiny swords the colour of that blue flame there.”

“Well, this would have to be a special kind of prince with wiggly purple marks.”

“No. I think he would have just the same kind of mark as the princess, a small one big enough to see, but not too ugly--on his face, perhaps.”

“Then I might be able to be a fairy prince, mightn’t I, since Forsyth says I shall have a mark across my face that every one will be able to see, all right?”

“You might--if you found a fairy princess of the right kind and didn’t grow up too much.”

She looked back into the fire and was silent again, the dancing firelight playing across the long curve of her neck and chasing little shadows over the rose of her cheeks, faintly flushed in the glow.

“Do you know what Payindah and Firoz call you now, Aryenis?” I asked after a while.

“No? What is it?”

“‘Shahzadi,’ which in their language means ‘Princess.’ I think they must be observant folk.”

“That is rather nice of them. I like that title. I feel like one sometimes when there are dragons about, and a fairy prince would be useful.”

“Ever seen the fairy prince come along?”

She looked back into the fire and pondered quite a long time. Then she said slowly:

“I think I did once, though I’m not quite sure. Only he hadn’t got any purple marks, not even quite a little one, on his face.”

“And there were dragons?”

Aryenis shivered. “Lots!”

“And did the prince kill them, all right?”

“Yes, quite dead.”

“And then he and the princess would live happily ever after? That’s the proper ending, isn’t it?”

“It’s the proper ending--in a fairy story.”

She got up slowly.

“To-morrow you’re going to take me to see Uncle Paulos again on the way to Miletis. Father is coming later; he’s got things to do here, so he says that we are to ride on ahead, and I want to go to Uncle Paulos. It’s only a little way off the road.”

“I should like to go there again very much. I like your Uncle Paulos. He might have been a fairy prince easily.”

“No,” said Aryenis; “he plays another part.”

“What’s that?” said I.

“Fairy godfather generally. Now I’m going to see if father’s properly tied up. Don’t forget that we start early. Good-night, Harilek.”

“Good-night--Shahzadi.”

As I went to my room I wondered who Aryenis’s fairy prince, or the one who might be a fairy prince, was. I felt I should hate the sight of him pretty usefully when I did run into him. And the blighter had no marks, “not even a little one,” while I was marked with a very usefully puckered cheek.

I found Forsyth in bed, smoking the last of his cigarettes.

“No more tobacco after to-night. D----!” said he. “I wonder if there’s likely to be any wild tobacco growing in this country?”

“May be, but I doubt it. We’ve got a little tea left, I think, if you’d like that.”

“No, we haven’t. I gave the lot to Aryenis, who’s taken rather a fancy to the new drug. I think she’s saving it up for Christmas or something. Besides tea’s filth, though I have smoked it in a pipe upon occasions.”

While I was undressing, I told him what Paulos had said about his people having been driven across the desert by the slant-eyed folk in the dim ages.

“Ye gods!” said Forsyth, sitting up. “The green-eyed Wusuns, of course! What a mug I was not to think of that at first.”

“Who the blazes are the green-eyed Wusuns?” said I, getting into bed.

“Real, original, white-skinned Nordic folk, same family as the Danes and Norsemen, and all the crowd that made up the true white races of Europe in the early centuries. They were here in the first century B.C., when the Chinese were scrapping with them. You read about it in the old Chinese books. Only they disappeared, and most people think they either got pushed westward or wiped out. This lot evidently got washed up here somehow or other, and have been cut off by the desert ever since.

“‘Wusun’ was their Tartar name, and it means ‘the tall ones’; and, barring that they were tall and white and had ‘green’ eyes, which, of course, includes grey and blue and all the shades in between, we know nothing of them. But here they are, white, Aryan speech, fair hair, grey, green, and blue eyes, and tall, as we’ve noticed. What a find!”

“And that explains Aryenis and the various village women we’ve seen. I thought they didn’t look like the kind of Greeks I’ve met.”

“My dear man, the Wusuns are your first cousins, same as the Saxons, and the Danes, and the Normans, who were practically pure Nordic. The present Greek date from a long time before that.”

I had some difficulty in getting to sleep with Forsyth raving about his lost Nordics and Wusuns. It was all very interesting, but I was far more interested in wondering who Aryenis’s fairy prince was, and hoping he would fall over the cliff or get eaten by dragons or something. No, I didn’t really, since Aryenis might want him. I almost came round to a more charitable frame of mind, and hoped he would be a proper kind of fairy prince and not a make-believe. But I fell asleep, feeling very sore about the blighter. Then I got chased by a dragon that got mixed up with a fairy prince, and Aryenis came in in the middle and said he wasn’t a real one, and where were the wiggly marks? Then I fell down a precipice myself, and was unconscious: came to in the middle of an earthquake, and opened my eyes to find Payindah shaking me because it was time to get up.