Khaled, F. Marion Crawford [pdf ebook reader txt] 📗

and they will believe us. Then all will be ended, and the lies will be extinguished as the coals of an evening fire go out when the night frost descends upon the camp in winter. But if you will not tell us, yet I, for one, do not believe ill of you; and moreover you are lord, and we are vassals, so long as you are King and hold good and evil in your hand.”

“So long as I am King,” Khaled repeated. “And you think that if I do not tell my father’s name, I shall not be where I am for a long time.”

“Allah is wise, and knows,” answered the Kadi, but he would say nothing more.

“This is plain speaking,” said Khaled, “such as I like. But I might plainly take advantage of it. You desire to know my father’s name and whence I come. Then is it not easy for me to say that I come from a distant part of the Great Dahna? Is there a man in Nejed who has crossed the Red Desert? And if I say that my father was Mohammed ibn Abd el Hamid ibn Abd el Latif, and so on to our father Ismaïl, upon whom be peace, shall anyone deny that I speak truth? This is a very easy matter.”

“So much the more will it be easy for us to satisfy the people,” answered the Kadi.

“No doubt. I will think of what you have said. And now, I pray you, partake of another refreshment and go in peace.”

At this all the chief men looked one at the other again, for they saw that Khaled would not tell them what they wished to know. And those of them who had doubted the story before now began to believe it. But they held their peace, and presently made their salutation and took their swords from the wall and departed.

Khaled then left the kahwah and returned to Zehowah in the harem.

“I have told them that these tales are lies,” he said, “but they do not believe me.”

He repeated to Zehowah all that had been said, and she listened attentively, for she began to understand that there was danger not far off.

“And I told them,” he said at last, “that it would be as easy for me to invent names, as for them to hear them. Then they looked sideways each at the other and kept silent.”

“This is a foolish thing which you have done,” answered Zehowah. “They will now all believe that your father was an evildoer and that you yourself are no better. Otherwise, they will say, why should he wish to conceal anything? You should have told them the truth, whatever it is.”

“You also wish to know it, I see,” said Khaled, looking at Zehowah curiously. “But if I were to tell you, you would not believe me, I think, any more than they would.”

Then Zehowah looked at him in her turn, but he could not understand the language of her eyes.

“What is this secret of yours?” she asked. “I would indeed like to hear it, and if you swear to me that it is true, by Allah, I will believe you. For you are a very truthful man, and not subtle.”

But Khaled was troubled at this. For he knew that she would find it hard to believe; and that if she did believe it, she would be terrified to think that she had married one of the genii, and if not, she would suspect him of a hidden purpose in telling her an empty fable, and he would then be further from her love than before. He held his peace, therefore, for some time, while she watched him, playing with her beads. In reality she was very curious to know the truth, though she had always been unwilling to ask it of him, seeing that she had married him as a stranger, of her own will and choice, without inquiry.

“Is it just,” she asked at last, “that the people should accuse you of evil deeds and fill the air of the city with falsehoods concerning you, so that the very slaves hear the guards repeating the lies to each other in the courtyard, and that I, who am your wife, should not know the truth? What have I done that you should not trust me? Or what have I said that you should regard me no more than a slave who sprinkles the floor and makes the fire, and while she is present in the room you hold your peace lest she should know your thoughts and betray them? Am I not your wife, and faithful? Have I not given you a kingdom and treasure beyond counting? Surely there were times when you talked more freely with that barbarian slave-woman, whose hair was red, than you ever talk with me.”

“This is not true,” said Khaled. “And if I talked familiarly with Almasta, you know the reason, for you yourself found it out, and called me simple for trying to deceive you. And now she is gone to the desert with her husband and there is no more question of her, or her red hair. But all the rest is true, and you have indeed given me a kingdom, which I am likely to lose and wealth which I do not desire, though you have not given me that which I covet more than gold or kingdoms, for I desire it indeed, and that is your love. Moreover if you have given me the rest, I have done something in return, for I have fought for your people, and shed my blood freely, and given you a nation captive, besides loving you and refusing to take another wife into my house. And this last is a matter of which some women would think more highly than you.”

But Zehowah’s curiosity was burning within her like a thirst, for although she had at first cared little to know of Khaled’s former life,