Chapter XXIII: I Pretend to Understand Aryenis

The winter sun shone gaily in through the open windows of my bedroom at Paulos’s, dimming the red flames of the big log fire, and throwing bright shafts of light along the dark polished floor. Outside, under the cloudless blue sky, the chenar trees stood in the last warmth of their russet autumn dress, almost the colour of Aryenis’s hair. The leafless silver of the poplars, the falling yellow leaves of the big mulberries, the faint yellow tinge in the green of the little lawns, the occasional splash of colour of a late rose with its loose-leafed glory of crimson, all spoke to the end of the year, and the little posy of winter violets on the table by my bed were a last parting gift of fragrance from a year that had held more life and adventure than all the thirty-one preceding it. Also a year that had once seemed to hold more promise than I had ever dreamed of.

This was my second day at Paulos’s, and the peace of the place was sinking into my soul after the rather tiring and strained days I had been through. I had been put into the big oak-panelled bedroom on the ground-floor with a verandah which gave on to the walled garden at the back, Paulos’s favourite resort. My leg was less painful already, and, according to Forsyth, gave promise of healing up straight away--partly owing to the clean nature of the wound, partly to my own physical hardness after months of marching. Over the fireplace hung my mail and weapons, and above them, at Paulos’s own wish, his banner which had waved above us during our struggle at the Astara defile. The old archer had revised his opinion of me apparently, and himself polished up my mail daily, sitting with Payindah in the sunlit verandah outside, exchanging broken phrases.

This morning, however, despite the peace of my surroundings, there was much to worry over. The previous day had brought a messenger from Kyrlos, whose army was now steadily pushing back the Shaman forces toward their fantastic hills, and with letters from Kyrlos came a characteristic note from Wrexham, a note which lay upon my little table, and which introduced an extraordinary complexity into things. For its brief contents informed Forsyth and me that we were likely to remain prisoners in Sakaeland for many, many months if not, perhaps, for ever; and what not so long before would have been to me at least a not unpleasing accident opened up now a prospect of weeks and months of Aryenis’s company, when everything told me that the Aryenis I had saved in the gate had been saved for some one else; Andros’s telltale eagle feathers were more illuminating than fifty statements.

I took up John’s note again, scribbled in pencil on a sheet torn from his notebook.

DEAR H.,--We have just pushed the Shamans over the border, and
hammered them some in the process. But there is real bad news. I went
with Stephnos’s mounted men on the left, chasing some enemy cavalry.
We halted that night within a mile or so of Kyrlos’s house near the
caves, and then learnt that the enemy had burnt the place. Being
anxious about Sadiq and the camels, I rode up with some men in the
morning, and the very first thing I ran into in the garden was poor
Sadiq’s body, much cut about. We went off straight to the caves, and
almost at the mouth found a dead Blue Sakae, whom the men identified
as one of the guard that had been left.

We followed the passage through the caves and down--the ropes were
still in place--and then below the cliffs, even before we got down,
the kites and ravens told us the worst. There were eight of the
camels lying about dead with arrows sticking in them, and close by
we found the bodies of the rest of the guard. Where the other two
camels went, I don’t know. Don’t think they can have been taken round
anywhere below the cliffs.

There was no one at the house able to give us any idea of what had
happened. The old man who had been left in charge was dead. I think
Sadiq must have come up with one of the guard to have a look round
the place, and then fallen in with the enemy, who thereby discovered
the caves. Sadiq’s uncommon clothes and appearance, and perhaps his
speech, if they caught him alive, probably made them connect him with
us, so they went down to look below, and finding the guard and camels
killed the lot off. This seems to be the usual Shaman way of dealing
with anything for which they have no immediate use.

So here we are fixed in Sakaeland until we can evolve some scheme of
getting across the desert. At the moment I can think of nothing.

The news was pretty staggering, and, like Wrexham, I could think of no scheme whereby we could get back. Even if the two missing camels turned up, they would hardly suffice to carry water enough for the five of us to get back across the sands, even supposing the animals themselves could do the journey without any, which, after the outward march, it seemed pretty clear they could not.

Anyway, for the moment there was nothing to do but put the best face on matters, and content one’s self with the present. Forsyth did not seem to take the news at all hardly, but then at the moment Sakaeland and Ziné, or rather Ziné in Sakaeland, completely filled his attention. Payindah, of course, was in no way perturbed, and merely considered it another good proof that we were meant to stop in the country and annex some of the land. He seemed to have made up his mind quite firmly on that point.

I was making pretence of deciphering an old manuscript of the fifth century which Paulos had lent me, a black-lettered parchment from the pen of the Bishop Basil, one of the little colony of Greeks who had somehow found their way across the desert into Sakaeland, and, converting many of the Sakae, had impressed upon them a considerable amount of the culture and taught them many of the arts of far Byzantium before, from intermarriage with the clans, they had disappeared as a separate people.

The bishop was an observant writer, and much of his work dealt with the social customs of the Sakae of his time, in many ways the same as those of to-day, notably, perhaps, in the matter of the independence of their women--a point which found much praise from the worthy bishop, despite his Greek blood and training. He seemed to have been very enthusiastic over his new flock--savage enough then in many ways, but with the clean, healthy savagery that has appealed through all ages to your real ardent Christian missionary who has learnt the key truth of his Master’s teaching--namely, that Christianity is a living fire, designed not to annihilate the God-given force of our own personality, but to direct its energies into the fitting channels which can remove mountains. The colourless outlook of some modern so-called followers of Christ would have seemed far less Christian to the bishop than the frank, virile savagery of his Sakae pagans. From his account these seem to have taken to him as frankly as they took to us. As he said in his manuscript: “Their errors are, as Saint Paul admonishes us, ‘but human,’ and for such surely God and His Son are wholly merciful.”

Basil must have borne a strong family likeness to Saint Augustine among his Angle and Saxon pirates, savage men with the minds of little children. I conceived a liking for the old Greek, and under other circumstances would have read him with enthralling interest; but at the moment my mind was much too taken up with future prospects. Forsyth, having dressed my leg very early, had ridden to Miletis for the day--to see Ziné, I imagined--so that I was alone.

I was glad, therefore, when the shuffling tread outside informed me of Paulos’s arrival. The shadows of his bearers darkened the doorway as they bore him on a sort of wicker couch with arms and placed him down between me and the fire, settled the rugs over his legs, and left us.

“We are two cripples now, Harilek,” said he, smiling at me. “I suppose you are all impatience to be afoot again, but Forsyth tells me he will not let you off your bed for another ten days, whatever happens.”

“No, Paulos, just now I am not ill content to rest here awhile; to look out upon your garden and read your manuscripts; to think a little from time to time, and, as we say, ‘to make my soul’ a bit. But I am afraid poor Bishop Basil is somewhat neglected. There is much to think about--for instance, this disaster to our camels.”

“Let the dead bury their dead, lad. I am sorry that your man should have been killed, but for the rest I am frankly glad that Fate--if you choose to call it so--has intervened to keep you among us longer. Indeed, being privileged as an old man to speak my mind, I hope Fate, or Fate’s Master, will keep you with us for ever.”

“And do what, Paulos? Live on charity? You would be tired of guests whose visit was a lifetime.”

“What talk is this of charity when you and your friends have built up such claims upon us that fifty years were too short to repay? I told you before you left that my people already spoke of you as one of ourselves. But now your name is sung by every bard at every fireside. Listen, Harilek. If when the war is over you and your friends should find you cannot recross the desert--or perchance feel that you would wish to cast in your lot with ours, as did Basil and his companions--then remember that Kyrlos and I have broad lands, and there is no shame for a soldier to take land and title he has won in war. You will be robbing no one, for there are many vacant fiefs in the Green Sakae country, whose rightful owners have passed through the Shaman gate. You have told me that such honours have been accepted by soldiers in your own land, and none, I am sure, can have earned them better than you have done here.”

“Thank you, Paulos; I will remember. But for myself just now the thought of a life in Sakaeland is somewhat hard. A month ago no second invitation would have been needed. But now--” I stopped.

“But now a certain Andros wears a plume of eagle feathers bound with mauve, and Harilek is bedridden like a foolish old man who sits opposite to him--thought-reading! But time brings many things. At all times and always that offer will be open.”

Then he turned to the war news, which was good, and we discussed the prospects of the campaign. He opined that the main struggle would come in the Shaman country itself, since Milos’s reports from the north showed that the Red Sakae--save for isolated raids--were too disorganized to do much, and the sympathies of the majority were with us rather than with the Shamans, of whose rule the country-folk were heartily tired.

We spent a pleasant day together discussing an infinity of subjects, for Paulos is a cultured talker, and the most shrewdly observant man I have ever met. It was a daily wonder to me that an old cripple among a nation of rather primitive fighting men should have retained such a vivid interest in life. Once or twice we were interrupted by visitors--old grey-headed village headmen, who rode in seeking news, and appeared kindly anxious to greet me. It seemed that Paulos’s statements as to his people’s feeling in my regard were not exaggerated, for the Sakae are very transparent, and make no pretence of dissimulating likes or dislikes.

The early afternoon brought Philos’s wife with her small son to ask after me, and to thank me for having saved her husband’s life. Philos had gone on with the army the day after the Astara, having apparently given her a most exaggerated account of my doings, and, woman-like, she would take no notice of my version of the real facts. The boy sat on the foot of my bed playing with the sword which the old archer reached down for him from the wall, and studying me with great blue eyes. I envied Philos very much when she left again--a slim girlish figure in her riding-clothes--smiling us a farewell, and telling the boy to salute us both with my sword, which he was not at all ready to relinquish.

Paulos and I had just finished our afternoon glass of wine, when his apple-cheeked, wrinkled, white-haired housekeeper entered and spoke to him. I gathered from his tone that he was giving her some instructions. Shortly after she left us in came the old archer, evidently with some news. A little later, as Paulos’s bearers came to carry him away, I heard horses’ feet outside, and then Forsyth’s voice calling to Payindah. I wondered if he had seen Ziné, and envied him being able to ride about. I picked up Basil once more, and studied the crabbed writing by the light of the lamp which had just been lit. But my thoughts were very far removed from the good bishop’s dissertation on Sakae customs. They were following a twisted chain, of which the nearest link was Philos’s wife and her stout, little blue-eyed son; an intermediate link was connected with a fireside in Aornos and a talk of dragons; while somewhere in the mists at the far end was a dream vision seen by a tired man sleeping out on the stones, while Wrexham and Payindah held the mouth of the Shamans’ gate. Then a footstep as some one pulled back the curtain and entered.

I looked up, and there, in the dim circle of the lamp and the bright glow of the fire--my lady herself, the big fur collar of her riding-coat thrown back, a sparkle in her eyes, and the glow of the winter wind in her cheeks, as she stood looking at me, pulling off her riding-gauntlets--my gauntlets.

“Aryenis!” I gasped, rather foolishly.

“Yes, Harilek. Aryenis in person, as you see.” She came forward. “I thought I should like to win some more bets, and, since one-legged Harilek couldn’t come to Miletis, two-legged Aryenis had to come here.” Then her laughing note changed as she held out both her hands. “Are you badly hurt, Harilek?”--the laughing note came back--“or is it only another wiggly mark?”

She stood holding my hands, looking down at me, all the red-gold glory of her hair aflame in the firelight which played across her beautiful face, now lighting up the wonderful clear depths of her big hazel-grey eyes, now casting tender little shadows about the witching curves of her dear lips. Then, without waiting for an answer, she went on:

“Forsyth said you’d be in bed at least a fortnight, so I told Paulos that Ziné and I would come and stop with him, for a womanless house is no place for a wounded man. And the doctor fetched us to-day.”

“And never told me why he was going to Miletis!”

“You didn’t tell me--us--when you were coming here,” retorted my lady, loosing her hands to take off her big coat. “Besides, surprises are always the nicest things, aren’t they? Much better than the things you’ve been looking forward to, which sometimes don’t turn out as nice as you’ve imagined them.”

She pulled up a chair and sat down, only to get up again to rearrange the flowers on my little table.

“What helpless creatures men are! You’ve got the best violets out of my pet bed, and the poor little things are all squashed up anyhow.” Then she turned on me.

“You’re very tongue-tied, Harilek. You haven’t even said you’re pleased to see me, and you’ve not had a glimpse of me for over a fortnight.”

“What’s the good of saying things, Aryenis? You know--or you ought to--how more than glad I am to see you. Why, every day--” I broke off, remembering Andros.

“Yes? Every day? Go on,” prompted my lady, arranging the neglected violets, her face turned half away.

“Well, every day, and every night, and all the time, I want to see you, Shahzadi, even if I don’t say so.”

“Women like being told the things they know,” remarked Aryenis.

“Even ones with good memories?”

“The better their memories, the more they like it. So now you know.”

Then she sat down in the chair, propping her rounded chin on one hand, as she does when she is thinking, looking at me silently. I turned over and pulled myself up on my pillows to see her better, and my ribs where the spear hit me hurt badly as I turned. I suppose Aryenis saw the grimace, for she was out of her chair in a flash to help me and to pack up the pillows.

“Does your leg hurt much, Harilek?” she asked, suddenly anxious.

“Nothing much. My side’s all stiff, though; that’s what caught me then.”

“Your side?”

“Yes. I bumped a spear in the mix-up. Thanks to Paulos’s mail, it didn’t go in, but it’s a bit sore. You see, your gift repaid your debt for you, all right, as you hoped it might.”

“I didn’t know. Tell me.”

She was smoothing out my blankets as she spoke, and I lay silent, watching the movements of her slender, capable hands. Just then I felt more than I’d ever felt before that I would give my whole soul to have her slim arms about me and her lips on mine. However, I choked that down, and told her something about our last battle on the hill, she listening steady-eyed.

“So you think that the debt is repaid now, do you?” she said when I had finished. “That because Paulos’s mail saved you from a chance blow in a fight fought for us that we are quits? You’re wrong, Harilek.” She bent over me. “For what you did for me in the gate--man with the wiggly marks--a whole lifetime’s service would be all too short repayment.”

Then she straightened up, ignoring my effort to catch her hands. “I must go and change into more suitable clothes now. And after dinner we’ll all come and see you.” And she went, leaving me with my mind all in a chaotic whirl, trying to reconcile her tone and her words with Andros’s feathers.

Followed ten days in bed, no longer boresome, since it was lightened by Aryenis’s continual visits. But for some days she seemed on the defensive, always selecting her times when Paulos was with me. Then she would sit for hours with her work listening to us talking, or telling us bits and scraps of homely news she had gathered in her morning rides round the estate. She seemed to have annexed Payindah, for that worthy was hardly ever to be seen of a morning, and, when I asked him where he went to, he answered, as though a matter of course, “Riding with the Shahzadi round your lands. She always rides your horse now.”

At other times she would bring Ziné with her to help her in the lessons, as she said, for she and Paulos were making me learn Sakae, saying I would need it when I got about again. I like Ziné very much: she is an ever-cheerful, chatty, friendly damsel, and very much more than very pretty, but Aryenis alone was ample company for me, and I’m sure Ziné would far rather have been wandering the woods with Forsyth. But I suppose Aryenis dominated her as she did every one else.

It was the tenth day after Aryenis’s arrival--a very red-letter day when Alec had promoted me to a couch by the fire on condition that I kept my leg still, and further promised me that, if all went well, in two days’ time I should be allowed to try a crutch and an arm in the garden--that the Ziné-Forsyth worm turned. At his morning visit, Paulos announced, with an enigmatical smile, that Forsyth and Ziné had ridden into Miletis, and would not be back till late: probably they would stay the night with Milos and Annais. Aryenis was out riding. “But I have told her that she must be back before lunch, for I have work this afternoon, and I cannot have my guest left lonely.”

He had lunch served in my room that day, and Aryenis returned in a very talkative mood, with lots to say about all she had seen and done in the morning. Soon after lunch, Paulos went off, saying he had headmen to interview, so that for the first time for a week I got my lady all to myself, albeit I was propped up on a couch, and she had established herself on a low stool with an embroidery-frame on the other side of the hearth. We talked of many things, and then relapsed into silence, as one does with those one knows well. I considered her for a long time, her face partly hidden behind her stretched silk, while her busy fingers fluttered backward and forward over the pattern.

“That embroidery is rather like you, Shahzadi,” said I at last.

“Like me?” she said, biting off a thread and looking up. “Why?”

“Because from where I sit I can see there’s something interesting going on on the other side, but I can’t make out what. And I’m very anxious to know.”

“There you are.” She turned over the frame, and I saw, what I had really guessed it was, Paulos’s bear on the green ground. “Satisfied?”

“Oh, that; yes. But my curiosity was directed to the other side of _you_, not to your work.”

“Do you think I’m going to turn myself inside out for inspection like I do my embroidery-frame, O Thought-Reader? If so, think again.”

“I am.”

Mutual silence, broken finally by Aryenis.

“And have our thoughts produced great results yet, O Wizard?” There was just a suspicion of curiosity in her tone.

“They are beginning to be illuminating.”

Another silence, over which curiosity eventually won a decisive victory.

“And might a humble princess ask a distinguished warrior what his thoughts are?”

“She might. In fact, she actually has. But the term ‘humble’ is new and unfamiliar. I thought princesses, especially this one, only issued commands.”

“So they do generally. But this one is at the moment faintly curious, and therefore make-believe humble. That is an unheard-of confession, but now you have it.”

“It is, and consequently deserves reward. I’m just beginning to understand why Andros wears a plume of feathers bound with your own mauve.”

Such understanding was immeasurably far from my intelligence, but I hoped the lie might draw.

“How very clever we are! And why does he wear it?”

The slender fingers were poised motionless over the embroidery.

“Because he asked you for it.” This seemed a safe statement, but what was to come next, Heaven only knew.

“I’d never have forgiven you if you’d said I’d given it him because he didn’t ask for it. Yes, well?” The fingers were busy once more.

“Well, that’s all,” I answered. My brain was petering out.

“And very lame, too, Harilek,” she said, putting down her work and looking at me. “Andros comes to me with a bunch of feathers which are part of his dress, and asks me to make them up for him, as he’s often asked me to do little things before. Harilek having--as he thinks, secretly--looked at me out of his window--yes, I saw you--spends nearly three weeks in deep thought over the matter. At the end of that time this marvellous thought-reader arrives at the stupendous conclusion that Andros asked me for his plume, and therefore wears it. Am I to admire this staggering piece of reasoning, O Harilek?” Her tone was mocking, but with a spice of tenderness in it, or so I thought.

“I--I thought you’d given them to him as--as a special favour,” I stammered.

“I told you last time you tried thought-reading that, if any one wanted my favour, he’d have to _take_ it. Your memory is very poor.”

“It will be good in future, Shahzadi,” said I humbly. “I’m glad the camels are dead.”

Aryenis busied herself with her work once more, ignoring my last remark. Presently she said, without looking up:

“The day after to-morrow, the doctor says you can try and walk a little with a stick and an arm. Will you trust mine?”

“I’d trust your arm, Shahzadi, more than any arm in all the world. Just as I’d trust you with my whole soul and my hope of a life to come.”

She made no reply to that, but I could see a tiny flush run into her cheeks, and a little happy quaver at the corner of her mouth. We relapsed into a long silence after that, but I think a contented one. Mine certainly was. Suddenly she lifted her head, listening:

“Horses! I wonder who it is so late? I wonder if it’s news from the army.”

She went out, and presently Wrexham’s unmistakable tread came ringing down the passage, and he entered with a clank of war-gear, flinging his steel cap on to my bed.

“Good to see you out of bed again, Harry,” he said, pulling up a stool and putting his feet to the blaze. “Aryenis says you’ll be walking in a couple of days.”

“Yes, so Alec promised. But what brings you back, John, and what’s the news?”

“Fine. We chivied the Shamans right back to their city after a week’s running fight through their hills. Filthiest tangle of knife-edges and precipitous gorges you ever saw. We took a minor knock or two, but on the whole we hustled them good and proper. Not many Shaman prisoners, but a lot of Brown Sakae. Stout savages like Pathans. Kyrlos says he’s going to civilize them when he’s done with the Shamans. Your pal Henga is up there--with the vanguard generally. He’s a tiger and no mistake. Country up there is too bad for horses, so I deserted Stephnos and joined with Henga. He and I had a tophole picnic last week.”

“But what have you come back for? It’s not like you to miss a healthy scrap.”

“Healthy scraps are off for the moment. As the learned used to say in the war, ‘the front has stabilized.’ In other words, we are sitting on three sides of the Shaman city--huge great walls and a devil of a ditch. The fourth side is sheer mountain near the gate where we found Aryenis. Kyrlos had two shots at assaulting the place, but they took tea with us over it. Now he says he’s going to starve ’em out, but I think he’s a bit of an optimist. They must have months of grub there. But it’s just like a bit of an old book. Boiling lead, hide-covered towers, catapults, and battering-rams.”

“Seems to suit you all right. But for the third time what’s fetched you back? If you tell me it’s to inquire after my leg, I’ll say you’re a d----d liar.”

“I’ve come back rather hurriedly with some of Kyrlos’s sappers to get engineer stores. I didn’t think they’d get in for weeks and months at the rate they were going, and, having a brain wave or two, I talked with Kyrlos and Andros. Live man, Andros. The upshot was that I and my engineer pal--you know the funny bloke with the crooked nose--with twenty picked men left Shamantown day before yesterday _en route_ to Miletis. They’re spending the night at Aornos, but I thought I’d sleep here if Paulos could give me a shake-down and they can pick me up in the morning. Aryenis says she can fix me up all right: gone to see about it now.”

“What are engineer stores in this country?”

“Tell you in a fortnight’s time. You’ll be fit enough to sit a pony then, and can come and see the beano. If my calculations are right, it’ll be worth seeing. Hulloa, here’s Firoz come to make salaams.”

Firoz, beaming all over, his steel cap adorned with a plume of cock’s feathers from a dead Shaman, and his waist girt with a gay-woven belt from a similar source, entered to pass the time of day and give me a lurid account of the war--a first-class article according to him.

Wrexham borrowed Payindah to help him at Miletis. “I’d like to have both of them with me for the next ten days if you can spare him,” he said as Firoz went out.

“Ask Aryenis. He’s her shadow nowadays. But if you speak kindly to her, she’ll let him go, I expect,” said I.

Just then the lady came in to show Wrexham the room she had had fixed up for him. It was rather wasted, because he sat on my bed till long after midnight, telling me of all the “picnics” and “shows” that he and Henga had had. I could picture the pair together: they are very much of a type.

Somewhere about ten o’clock Aryenis came in to say good-night to us, and despite John’s battle yarns my last waking moments were much more concerned with her than with any of his staccato stirring stories. As Aryenis said, “Toys all,” compared to other things: things like red-gold hair and hazel-grey eyes, slim white arms and warm red lips, for instance.