Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories, Rex Beach [moboreader TXT] 📗

monastery, look to the heights above it. Should you piece out from among the rocks the jagged ruins of a castle, ask its name. Your guide will perhaps inform you that those blackened stones are called "The Teeth of the Moor," and if he knows the story he will doubtless tell it to you, crossing himself many times during the recital. In all probability, however, he will merely shrug his shoulders and say it is a place of bad repute, nothing more.

Even the monks of the monastery, who are considered well versed in local history, have forgotten the reason for the name, although they recall the legend that once upon a time the castle harbored a haughty Moslem lord. Few of them ever heard the story of Joseph the Anchorite, and how he sought flesh within its portals; those who have will not repeat it. Time was, however, when the tale was fresh, and it runs this wise:

Away back in the reign of Abderamus the Just, First Caliph of the West, Hafiz, a certain warlike Moor, amazed at the fertility of this region, established on the edge of the plateau a stronghold of surprising security. His house he perched upon the crest of the cliff overlooking the valley below. It was backed by verdant, sun-kissed slopes which quickly yielded tribute in such quantity as to render him rich and powerful. Hafiz lived and fought and died beneath the Crescent banner, leaving in his place a son, who likewise waged war to the northward on behalf of the Prophet and all True Believers, at the same time farming his rich Catalonian acres.

Generations came and went, and, although the descendants of Hafiz waxed strong, so also did the power of the hated Christians. Living as they did upon the very fringe of the Mussulman empire, the Moors beheld with consternation the slow encroachment of the Unbelievers—more noticeable here than farther to the southward. At intervals these enemies were driven back, but invariably they reappeared, until at length, upon the plain beneath the castle, monks came and built a monastery which they called San Sebastian. Beneath the very eyes of Abul Malek, fourth descendant of Hafiz, they raised their impious walls; although he chafed to wreak a bloody vengeance for this outrage, his hands were tied by force of circumstance. Wearied with interminable wars, the Moorish nation had sought respite; peace dozed upon the land. Men rested and took from the earth new strength with which to resume the never-ending struggle between the Crescent and the Cross, wherefore Abul Malek's rage availed him nothing. From his embrasured windows he beheld the cassocked enemies of his creed passing to and fro about their business; he heard his sacred hour of prayer desecrated by their Christian bells, and could do no more than revile them for dogs, the while he awaited the will of Allah. It was scant comfort for a man of his violent temper.

But the truce threatened never to be broken. Years passed and still peace continued to reign. Meanwhile the Moor fed upon his wrongs and, from incessant brooding over them, became possessed of a fury more fanatical, more poisonous even than had been engendered by his many battles.

Finally, when the wrong had bit too deep for him to endure, he summoned all his followers, and selecting from their number one hundred of the finest horsemen, he bade them make ready for a journey to Cordova; then in their presence he kissed the blue blade of his scimitar and vowed that the shackles which had hampered him and them would be struck off.

For many days there ensued the bustle and the confusion of a great preparation in the house of the Moor; men came and went, women sewed and cleaned and burnished; horses were groomed, their manes were combed and their hoofs were polished; and then one morning, ere the golden sun was an hour high, down the winding trail past the monastery of San Sebastian, came a brilliant cavalcade. Abul Malek led, seated upon an Arabian steed whiter than the clouds which lay piled above the westward mountains. His two sons, Hassam and Elzemah, followed astride horses as black as night—horses the distinguished pedigrees of which were cited in the books of Ibn Zaid. Back of them came one hundred swarthy warriors on other coal-black mounts, whose flashing sides flung back the morning rays. Their flowing linen robes were like the snow, and from their turbans gleamed gems of value. Each horseman bore at his girdle a purse, a kerchief, and a poinard; and in their purses lay two thousand dinars of gold. Slaves brought up the rear of the procession, riding asses laden with bales, and they led fifty blood-red bays caparisoned as for a tournament.

With scowling glances at the monastery the band rode on across the valley, climbed to the pass, and disappeared. After many days they arrived at Cordova, then when they had rested and cleansed themselves, Abul Malek craved audience of the Caliph, Aboul-Abbas El Hakkam. Being of distinguished reputation, his wish was quickly granted; and on the following day in the presence of the Hadjeb, the viziers, the white and black eunuchs, the archers, and the cuirassiers of the guard, he made a gift to his sovereign of those hundred northern horsemen and their mounts, those fifty blooded bays and their housings, those bales of aloe-wood and camphor, those silken pieces and those two thousand dinars of yellow Catalonian gold. This done, he humbly craved a favor in return, and when bade to speak, he began by telling of the indignities rendered him by the monks of San Sebastian.

"Five generations my people have dwelt upon our lands, serving the true God and His Prophet," he declared, with quivering indignation; "but now those idolaters have come. They gibe and they mock at me beneath my very window. My prayers are broken by their yammerings; they defile my casement, and the stench of their presence assails my nostrils."

"What do you ask of me?" inquired the Caliph.

"I ask for leave to cleanse my doorstep."

The illustrious Moslem shook his head, whereat Abul Malek cried:

"Does not the Koran direct us to destroy the unbelieving and the impious? Must I then suffer these infidels to befoul my garden?"

"God is merciful; it is His will that for a time the Unbelievers shall appear to flourish," said the Caliph. "We are bound by solemn compact with the kings of Leon and Castile to observe an armistice. That armistice we shall observe, for our land is weary of wars, our men are tired, and their scars must heal. It is not for you or for me to say: 'This is good, or this is evil.' Allah's will be done!"

Abul Malek and his sons returned alone to their mountains, but when they reined in at the door of their castle the father spat venomously at the belfried roof of the monastery beneath and vowed that he would yet work his will upon it.

Now that the Law forbade him to make way with his enemies by force, he canvassed his brain for other means of effecting their downfall; but every day the monks went on with their peaceful tasks, unmindful of his hatred, and their impious religion spread about the countryside. Abul Malek's venom passed them by; they gazed upon him with gentle eyes in which there was no spleen, although in him they recognized a bitter foe.

As time wore on his hatred of their religion became centered upon the monks themselves, and he undertook by crafty means to annoy them. Men said these Christian priests were good; that their lives were spent in prayer, in meditation, and in works of charity among the poor; tales came to the Moor of their spiritual existence, of their fleshly renunciation; but at these he scoffed. He refused to credit them.

"Pah!" he would cry, tugging at his midnight beard; "how can these men be aught but liars, when they live and preach a falsehood? Their creed is impious, and they are hypocrites. They are not superior beings, they are flesh like you or me. They have our passions and our faults, but a thousand times multiplied, for they walk in darkness and dwell in hypocrisy. Beneath their cassocks is black infamy; their hearts are full of evil—aye, of lust and of every unclean thing. Being false to the true God, they are false to themselves and to the religion they profess; and I will prove it." Thus ran his reasoning.

In order to make good his boast Abul Malek began to study the monks carefully, one after another. He tried temptation. A certain gross-bellied fellow he plied with wine. He flattered and fawned upon the simple friar; he led him into his cellars, striving to poison the good man's body as well as his mind; but the visitor partook in moderation, and preached the gospel of Christ so earnestly that the Saracen fled from his presence, bathing himself in clean water to be rid of the pollution.

Next he laid a trap for the Abbot himself. He selected the fairest of his slaves, a well-rounded woman of great physical charm, and bribed her with a girdle of sequins. She sought out the Abbot and professed a hunger for his creed. Bound thus by secrecy to the pious man, she lured him by every means at her command. But the Abbot had room for no passion save the love of Christ, and her wiles were powerless against this armor.

Abul Malek was patient; he renewed his vow to hold the false religion up to ridicule and laughter, thinking, by encompassing the downfall of a single advocate, thus to prove his contention and checkmate its ever-widening influence. He became obsessed by this idea; he schemed and he contrived; he used to the utmost the powers of his Oriental mind. From his vantage-point above the cloister he heard the monks droning at their Latin; his somber glances followed them at their daily tasks. Like a spider he spun his web, and when one victim broke through it he craftily repaired its fabric, luring another into its meshes.

At times he shared his vigil with his daughter Zahra, a girl of twelve, fast growing into womanhood; and since she had inherited his wit and temperament, he taught her to share his hatred of the black-robed men.

This Moorish maiden possessed the beauty of her mother, who had died in childbirth; and in honor of that celebrated favorite of Abderamus III. she had been christened "Flower of the World." Nor was the title too immoderate, as all men who saw her vowed. Already the hot sun of Catalonia had ripened her charms, and neighboring lords were beginning to make extravagant overtures of marriage. But seeing in her a possible weapon more powerful than any he had yet launched against the monks of San Sebastian, the father refused to consider even the best of them. He continued to keep her at his side, pouring his hatred into her ears until she, too, was ablaze with it.

Zahra was in her fourteenth year when Abul Malek beheld, one day, a new figure among those in the courtyard of the monastery below. Even from his eminence the Saracen could see that this late-comer was a giant man, for the fellow towered head and shoulders above his brethren. Inquiry taught him that the monk's name was Joseph. Nor was their meeting long delayed, for a sickness fell among the people of the valley, and Abul Malek, being skilled in medicine, went out to minister among the poor, according to his religion. At the sick-bed of a shepherd the two men came face to face.

Joseph was not young, nor was he old, but rather he had arrived at the perfect flower of his manhood, and his placid soul shone out through features of unusual strength and sweetness. In him the crafty Moor beheld a difference which for a time was puzzling. But eventually he analyzed it. The other monks had once been worldly men—they showed it in their faces; the countenance of Fray Joseph, on the contrary, was that of a boy, and it was without track of temptation or trace of evil. He had lived a sheltered life from his earliest youth, so it transpired, and Abul Malek rejoiced in the discovery, it being his belief that all men are flesh and that within them smolder flames which some day must have mastery. If this monk had never let his youth run free, if he had never met temptation and conquered it, those pent-up forces which inhabit all of us must be gathering power, year by year, and once the joint of this armor had been found, once it could be pierced, he would become earthly like other men, and his false religion would drop away, leaving him