Capture of the New Crusader
THE dawn was about to break in a cloudless sky, when Tancred, accompanied by Baroni and two servants, all well armed and well mounted, and by Hassan, a sheikh of the Jellaheen Bedouins, tall and grave, with a long spear tufted with ostrich feathers in his hand, his musket slung at his back, and a scimitar at his side, quitted Jerusalem by the gate of Bethlehem.
If it were only to see the sun rise, or to become acquainted with nature at hours excluded from the experience of civilisation, it were worth while to be a traveller. There is something especially in the hour that precedes a Syrian dawn, which invigorates the frame and elevates the spirit. One cannot help fancying that angels may have been resting on the mountain tops during the night, the air is so sweet and the earth so still. Nor, when it wakes, does it wake to the maddening cares of Europe. The beauty of a patriarchal repose still lingers about its existence in spite of its degradation. Notwithstanding all they have suffered during the European development, the manners of the Asiatic races generally are more in harmony with nature than the complicated conventionalisms which harass their fatal rival, and which have increased in exact proportion as the Europeans have seceded from those Arabian and Syrian creeds that redeemed them from their primitive barbarism.
But the light breaks, the rising beam falls on the gazelles still bounding on the hills of Judah, and gladdens the partridge which still calls among the ravines, as it did in the days of the prophets. About half-way between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Tancred and his companions halted at the tomb of Rachel: here awaited them a chosen band of twenty stout Jellaheens, the subjects of Sheikh Hassan, their escort through the wildernesses of Arabia Petræa. The fringed and ribbed kerchief of the desert, which must be distinguished from the turban, and is woven by their own women from the hair of the camel, covered the heads of the Bedouins; a short white gown, also of home manufacture, and very rude, with a belt of cords, completed, with slippers, their costume.
Each man bore a musket and a dagger.
It was Baroni who had made the arrangement with Sheikh Hassan. Baroni had long known him as a brave and faithful Arab. In general, these contracts with the Bedouins for convoy through the desert are made by Franks through their respective consuls, but Tancred was not sorry to be saved from the necessity of such an application, as it would have excited the attention of Colonel Brace, who passed his life at the British Consulate, and who probably would have thought it necessary to put on the uniform of the Bellamont yeomanry cavalry, and have attended the heir of Montacute to Mount Sinai. Tancred shuddered at the idea of the presence of such a being at such a place, with his large ruddy face, his swaggering, sweltering figure, his flourishing whiskers, and his fat hands.
It was the fifth morn after the visit of Tancred to Bethany, of which he had said nothing to Baroni, the only person at his command who could afford or obtain any information as to the name and quality of her with whom he had there so singularly become acquainted. He was far from incurious on the subject; all that he had seen and all that he had heard at Bethany greatly interested him. But the reserve which ever controlled him, unless under the influence of great excitement, a reserve which was the result of pride and not of caution, would probably have checked any expression of his wishes on this head, even had he not been under the influence of those feelings which now absorbed him. A human being, animated by the hope, almost by the conviction, that a celestial communication is impending over his destiny, moves in a supernal sphere, which no earthly consideration can enter. The long musings of his voyage had been succeeded on the part of Tancred, since his arrival in the Holy Land, by one unbroken and impassioned reverie, heightened, not disturbed, by frequent and solitary prayer, by habitual fasts, and by those exciting conferences with Alonza Lara, in which he had struggled to penetrate the great Asian mystery, reserved however, if indeed ever expounded, for a longer initiation than had yet been proved by the son of the English noble.
After a week of solitary preparation, during which he had interchanged no word, and maintained an abstinence which might have rivalled an old eremite of Engedi, Tancred had kneeled before that empty sepulchre of the divine Prince of the house of David, for which his ancestor, Tancred de Montacute, six hundred years before, had struggled with those followers of Mahound, who, to the consternation and perplexity of Christendom, continued to retain it. Christendom cares nothing for that tomb now, has indeed forgotten its own name, and calls itself enlightened Europe. But enlightened Europe is not happy. Its existence is a fever, which it calls progress. Progress to what?
The youthful votary, during his vigils at the sacred tomb, had received solace but not inspiration. No voice from heaven had yet sounded, but his spirit was filled with the sanctity of the place, and he returned to his cell to prepare for fresh pilgrimages.
One day, in conference with Lara, the Spanish Prior had let drop these words: ‘Sinai led to Calvary; it may be wise to trace your steps from Calvary to Sinai.’
At this moment, Tancred and his escort are in sight of Bethlehem, with the population of a village but the walls of a town, situate on an eminence overlooking a valley, which seems fertile after passing the stony plain of Rephaim. The first beams of the sun, too, were rising from the mountains of Arabia and resting on the noble convent of the Nativity.
From Bethlehem to Hebron, Canaan is still a land of milk and honey, though not so rich and picturesque as in the great expanse of Palestine to the north of the Holy City. The beauty and the abundance of the promised land may still be found in Samaria and Galilee; in the magnificent plains of Esdraelon, Zabulon, and Gennesareth; and ever by the gushing waters of the bowery Jordan.
About an hour after leaving Bethlehem, in a secluded valley, is one of the few remaining public works of the great Hebrew Kings, It is in every respect worthy of them. I speak of those colossal reservoirs cut out of the native rock and fed by a single spring, discharging their waters into an aqueduct of perforated stone, which, until a comparatively recent period, still conveyed them to Jerusalem. They are three in number, of varying lengths from five to six hundred feet, and almost as broad; their depth, still undiscovered. They communicate with each other, so that the water of the uppermost reservoir, flowing through the intermediate one, reached the third, which fed the aqueduct. They are lined with a hard cement like that which coats the pyramids, and which remains uninjured; and it appears that hanging gardens once surrounded them. The Arabs still call these reservoirs the pools of Solomon, nor is there any reason to doubt the tradition. Tradition, perhaps often more faithful than written documents, is a sure and almost infallible guide in the minds of the people where there has been no complicated variety of historic incidents to confuse and break the chain of memory; where their rare revolutions have consisted of an eruption once in a thousand years into the cultivated world; where society has never been broken up, but their domestic manners have remained the same; where, too, they revere truth, and are rigid in its oral delivery, since that is their only means of disseminating knowledge.
There is no reason to doubt that these reservoirs were the works of Solomon. This secluded valley, then, was once the scene of his imaginative and delicious life. Here were his pleasure gardens; these slopes were covered with his fantastic terraces, and the high places glittered with his pavilions. The fountain that supplied these treasured waters was perhaps the ‘sealed fountain,’ to which he compared his bride; and here was the garden palace where the charming Queen of Sheba vainly expected to pose the wisdom of Israel, as she held at a distance before the most dexterous of men the two garlands of flowers, alike in form and colour, and asked the great king, before his trembling court, to decide which of the wreaths was the real one.
They are gone, they are vanished, these deeds of beauty and these words of wit! The bright and glorious gardens of the tiaraed poet and the royal sage, that once echoed with his lyric voice, or with the startling truths of his pregnant aphorisms, end in this wild and solitary valley, in which with folded arms and musing eye of long abstraction, Tancred halts in his ardent pilgrimage, nor can refrain from asking himself, ‘Can it, then, be true that all is vanity?’
Why, what, is this desolation? Why are there no more kings whose words are the treasured wisdom of countless ages, and the mention of whose name to this moment thrills the heart of the Oriental, from the waves of the midland ocean to the broad rivers of the farthest Ind? Why are there no longer bright-witted queens to step out of their Arabian palaces and pay visits to the gorgeous ‘house of the forest of Lebanon,’ or to where Baalbec, or Tadmor in the wilderness, rose on those plains now strewn with the superb relics of their inimitable magnificence?
And yet some flat-nosed Frank, full of bustle and puffed up with self-conceit (a race spawned perhaps in the morasses of some Northern forest hardly yet cleared), talks of Progress! Progress to what, and from whence? Amid empires shrivelled into deserts, amid the wrecks of great cities, a single column or obelisk of which nations import for the prime ornament of their mud-built capitals, amid arts forgotten, commerce annihilated, fragmentary literatures and populations destroyed, the European talks of progress, because, by an ingenious application of some scientific acquirements, he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.
The soft beam of the declining sun fell upon a serene landscape; gentle undulations covered with rich shrubs or highly cultivated corn-fields and olive groves; sometimes numerous flocks; and then vineyards fortified with walls and with watch-towers, as in the time of David, whose city Tancred was approaching. Hebron, too, was the home of the great Sheikh Abraham; and the Arabs here possess his tomb, which no Christian is permitted to visit. It is strange and touching, that the children of Ishmael should have treated the name and memory of the Sheikh Abraham with so much reverence and affection. But the circumstance that he was the friend of Allah appears with them entirely to have outweighed the recollection of his harsh treatment of their great progenitor. Hebron has even lost with them its ancient Judæan name, and they always call it, in honour of the tomb of the Sheikh, the ‘City of a Friend.’
About an hour after Hebron, in a fair pasture, and near an olive grove, Tancred pitched his tent, prepared on the morrow to quit the land of promise, and approach that ‘great and terrible wilderness where there was no water.’
‘The children of Israel,’ as they were called according to the custom then and now universally prevalent among the Arabian tribes (as, for example, the Beni Kahtan, Beni Kelb, Beni Salem, Beni Sobh, Beni Ghamed, Beni Seydan, Beni Ali, Beni Hateym, all adopting for their description the name of their founder), the ‘children of Israel’ were originally a tribe of Arabia Petrasa. Under the guidance of sheikhs of great ability, they emerged from their stony wilderness and settled on the Syrian border.
But they could not maintain themselves against the disciplined nations of Palestine, and they fell back to their desert, which they found intolerable. Like some of the Bedouin tribes of modern times in the rocky wastes contiguous to the Red Sea, they were unable to resist the temptations of the Egyptian cities; they left their free but distressful wilderness, and became Fellaheen. The Pharaohs, however, made them pay for their ready means of sustenance, as Mehemet Ali has made the Arabs of our days who have quitted the desert to eat the harvests of the Nile. They enslaved them, and worked them as beasts of burden. But this was not to be long borne by a race whose chiefs in the early ages had been favoured by Jehovah; the patriarch Emirs, who, issuing from the Caucasian cradle of the great races, spread over the plains of Mesopotamia, and disseminated their illustrious seed throughout the Arabian wilderness. Their fiery imaginations brooded over the great traditions of their tribe, and at length there arose among them one of those men whose existence is an epoch in the history of human nature: a great creative spirit and organising mind, in whom the faculties of conception and of action are equally balanced and possessed in the highest degree; in every respect a man of the complete Caucasian model, and almost as perfect as Adam when he was just finished and placed in Eden.
But Jehovah recognised in Moses a human instrument too rare merely to be entrusted with the redemption of an Arabian tribe from a state of Fellaheen to Bedouin existence. And, therefore, he was summoned to be the organ of an eternal revelation of the Divine will, and his tribe were appointed to be the hereditary ministers of that mighty and mysterious dispensation.
It is to be noted, although the Omnipotent Creator might have found, had it pleased him, in the humblest of his creations, an efficient agent for his purpose, however difficult and sublime, that Divine Majesty has never thought fit to communicate except with human beings of the very highest powers. They are always men who have manifested an extraordinary aptitude for great affairs, and the possession of a fervent and commanding genius. They are great legislators, or great warriors, or great poets, or orators of the most vehement and impassioned spirit. Such were Moses, Joshua, the heroic youth of Hebron, and his magnificent son; such, too, was Isaiah, a man, humanly speaking, not inferior to Demosthenes, and struggling for a similar and as beautiful a cause, the independence of a small state, eminent for its intellectual power, against the barbarian grandeur of a military empire. All the great things have been done by the little nations. It is the Jordan and the Ilyssus that have civilised the modern races. An Arabian tribe, a clan of the Ægean, have been the promulgators of all our knowledge; and we should never have heard of the Pharaohs, of Babylon the great and Nineveh the superb, of Cyrus and of Xerxes, had not it been for Athens and Jerusalem.
Tancred rose with the sun from his encampment at Hebron, to traverse, probably, the same route pursued by the spies when they entered the Land of Promise. The transition from Canaan to the stony Arabia is not abrupt. A range of hills separates Palestine from a high but level country similar to the Syrian desert, sandy in some places, but covered in all with grass and shrubs; a vast expanse of downs. Gradually the herbage disappears, and the shrubs are only found tufting the ridgy tops of low undulating sandhills. Soon the sand becomes stony, and no trace of vegetation is ever visible excepting occasionally some thorny plant. Then comes a land which alternates between plains of sand and dull ranges of monotonous hills covered with loose flints; sometimes the pilgrim winds his way through their dull ravines, sometimes he mounts the heights and beholds a prospect of interminable desolation.
For three nights had Tancred encamped in this wilderness, halting at some spot where they could find some desert shrubs that might serve as food for the camels and fuel for themselves. His tent was soon pitched, the night fires soon crackling, and himself seated at one with the Sheikh and Baroni, he beheld with interest and amusement the picturesque and flashing groups around him. Their fare was scant and simple: bread baked upon the spot, the dried tongue of a gazelle, the coffee of the neighbouring Mocha, and the pipe that ever consoles, if indeed the traveller, whatever his hardships, could need any sustenance but his own high thoughts in such a scene, canopied, too, by the most beautiful sky and the most delicious climate in the world.
They were in the vicinity of Mount Seir; on the morrow they were to commence the passage of the lofty range which stretches on to Sinai. The Sheikh, who had a feud with a neighbouring tribe, and had been anxious and vigilant while they crossed the open country, riding on with an advanced guard before his charge, reconnoitring from sandhill to sandhill, often creeping up and lying on his breast, so as not to be visible to the enemy, congratulated Tancred that all imminent danger was past.
‘Not that I am afraid of them,’ said Hassan, proudly; ‘but we must kill them or they will kill us.’ Hassan, though Sheikh of his own immediate family and followers, was dependent on the great Sheikh of the Jellaheen tribe, and was bound to obey his commands in case the complete clan were summoned to congregate in any particular part of the desert.
Page2-083
On the morrow they commenced their passage of the mountains, and, after clearing several ranges found themselves two hours after noon in a defile so strangely beautiful that to behold it would alone have repaid all the exertions and perils of the expedition. It was formed by precipitous rocks of a picturesque shape and of great height, and of colours so brilliant and so blended that to imagine them you must fancy the richest sunset you have ever witnessed, and that would be inferior, from the inevitable defect of its fleeting character. Here the tints, sometimes vivid, sometimes shadowed down, were always equally fair: light blue heights, streaked, perhaps, with scarlet and shaded off to lilac or purple; a cleft of bright orange; a broad peach-coloured expanse, veined in delicate circles and wavy lines of exquisite grace; sometimes yellow and purple stripes; sometimes an isolated steep of every hue flaming in the sun, and then, like a young queen on a gorgeous throne, from a vast rock of crimson, and gold rose a milk-white summit. The frequent fissures of this defile were filled with rich woods of oleander and shrubs of every shade of green, from which rose acacia, and other trees unknown to Tancred. Over all this was a deep and cloudless sky, and through it a path winding amid a natural shrubbery, which princes would have built colossal conservatories to preserve.
‘’Tis a scene of enchantment that has risen to mock us in the middle of the desert,’ exclaimed the enraptured pilgrim; ‘surely it must vanish even as we gaze!’
About half-way up the defile, when they had traversed it for about a quarter of an hour, Sheikh Hassan suddenly galloped forward and hurled his spear with great force at an isolated crag, the base of which was covered with oleanders, and then looking back he shouted to his companions. Tancred and the foremost hurried up to him.
‘Here are tracks of horses and camels that have entered the valley thus far and not passed through it. They are fresh; let all be prepared.’
‘We are twenty-five men well armed,’ said Baroni. ‘It is not the Tyahas that will attack such a band.’
‘Nor are they the Gherashi or the Mezeines,’ said the Sheikh, ‘for we know what they are after, and we are brothers.’
‘They must be Alouins,’ said an Arab.
At this moment the little caravan was apparently land-locked, the defile again winding; but presently it became quite straight, and its termination was visible, though at a considerable distance.
‘I see horsemen,’ said the Sheikh; ‘several of them advance; they are not Alouins.’
He rode forward to meet them, accompanied by Tancred and Baroni.
‘Salaam,’ said the Sheikh, ‘how is it?’ and then he added, aside to Baroni, ‘They are strangers; why are they here?’
‘Aleikoum! We know where you come from,’ was the reply of one of the horsemen. ‘Is that the brother of the Queen of the English? Let him ride with us, and you may go on in peace.’
‘He is my brother,’ said Sheikh Hassan, ‘and the brother of all here. There is no feud between us. Who are you?’
‘We are children of Jethro, and the great Sheikh has sent us a long way to give you salaam. Your desert here is not fit for the camel that your Prophet cursed. Come, let us finish our business, for we wish to see a place where there are palm trees.’
‘Are these children of Eblis?’ said Sheikh Hassan to Baroni.
‘It is the day of judgment,’ said Baroni, looking pale; ‘such a thing has not happened in my time. I am lost.’
‘What do these people say?’ inquired Tancred.
‘There is but one God,’ said Sheikh Hassan, whose men had now reached him, ‘and Mahomet is his Prophet. Stand aside, sons of Eblis, or you shall bite the earth which curses you!’
A wild shout from every height of the defile was the answer. They looked up, they looked round; the crest of every steep was covered with armed Arabs, each man with his musket levelled.
‘My lord,’ said Baroni, ‘there is something hidden in all this. This is not an ordinary desert foray. You are known, and this tribe comes from a distance to plunder you;’ and then he rapidly detailed what had already passed.
‘What is your force, sons of Eblis?’ said the Sheikh to the horsemen.
‘Count your men, and your muskets, and your swords, and your horses, and your camels; and if they were all double, they would not be our force. Our great Sheikh would have come in person with ten thousand men, were not your wilderness here fit only for Giaours.’
‘Tell the young chief,’ said the Sheikh to Baroni, ‘that I am his brother, and will shed the last drop of my blood in his service, as I am bound to do, as much as he is bound to give me ten thousand piastres for the journey, and ask him what he wishes.’
‘Demand to know distinctly what these men want,’ said Tancred to Baroni, who then conferred with them.
‘They want your lordship,’ said Baroni, ‘whom they call the brother of the Queen of the English; their business is clearly to carry you to their great Sheikh, who will release you for a large ransom.’
‘And they have no feud with the Jellaheens?’
‘None; they are strangers; they come from a distance for this purpose; nor can it be doubted that this plan has been concocted at Jerusalem.’
‘Our position, I fear, is fatal in this defile,’ said Tancred; ‘it is bitter to be the cause of exposing so many brave men to almost inevitable slaughter. Tell them, Baroni, that I am not the brother of the Queen of the English; that they are ridiculously misled, and that their aim is hopeless, for all that will be ransomed will be my corpse.’
Sheikh Hassan sat on his horse like a statue, with his spear in his hand and his eye on his enemy; Baroni, advancing to the strange horsemen, who were in position about ten yards from Tancred and his guardian, was soon engaged in animated conversation. He did all that an able diplomatist could effect; told lies with admirable grace, and made a hundred propositions that did not commit his principal. He assured them very heartily that Tancred was not the brother of the Queen of the English; that he was only a young Sheikh, whose father was alive, and in possession of all the flocks and herds, camels and horses; that he had quarrelled with his father; that his father, perhaps, would not be sorry if he were got rid of, and would not give a hundred piastres to save his life. Then he offered, if he would let Tancred pass, himself to go with them as prisoner to their great Sheikh, and even proposed Hassan and half his men for additional hostages, whilst some just and equitable arrangement could be effected. All, however, was in vain. The enemy had no discretion; dead or alive, the young Englishman must be carried to their chief.
‘I can do nothing,’ said Baroni, returning; ‘there is something in all this which I do not understand. It has never happened in my time.’
‘There is, then, but one course to be taken,’ said Tancred; ‘we must charge through the defile. At any rate we shall have the satisfaction of dying like men. Let us each fix on our opponent. That audacious-looking Arab in a red kefia shall be my victim, or my destroyer. Speak to the Sheikh, and tell him to prepare his men. Freeman and Trueman,’ said Tancred, looking round to his English servants, ‘we are in extreme peril; I took you from your homes; if we outlive this day, and return to Montacute, you shall live on your own land.’
‘Never mind us, my lord: if it wern’t for those rocks we would beat these niggers.’
‘Are you all ready?’ said Tancred to Baroni.
‘We are all ready.’
‘Then I commend my soul to Jesus Christ, and to the God of Sinai, in whose cause I perish.’ So saying, Tancred shot the Arab in the red kefia through the head, and with his remaining pistol disabled another of the enemy. This he did, while he and his band were charging, so suddenly and so boldly, that those immediately opposed to them were scattered. There was a continuous volley, however, from every part of the defile, and the scene was so involved in smoke that it was impossible for Tancred to see a yard around him; still he galloped on and felt conscious that he had companions, though the shouting was so great that it was impossible to communicate. The smoke suddenly drifting, Tancred caught a glimpse of his position; he was at the mouth of the defile, followed by several of his men, whom he had not time to distinguish, and awaited by innumerable foes.
‘Let us sell our lives dearly!’ was all that he could exclaim. His sword fell from his wounded arm; his horse, stabbed underneath, sank with him to the ground. He was overpowered and bound. ‘Every drop of his blood,’ exclaimed the leader of the strange Arabs, ‘is worth ten thousand piastres.’
Plans for Rescue
‘WHERE is Besso?’ said Barizy of the Tower, as the Consul Pasqualigo entered the divan of the merchant, about ten days after the departure of Tancred from Jerusalem for Mount Sinai.
‘Where is Besso? I have already smoked two chibouques, and no one has entered except yourself. I suppose you have heard the news?’
‘Who has not? It is in every one’s mouth.’ ‘What have you heard?’ asked Barizy of the Tower, with an air of malicious curiosity.
‘Some things that everybody knows,’ replied Pasqualigo, ‘and some things that nobody knows.’
‘Hah, hah!’ said Barizy of the Tower, pricking up his ears, and preparing for one of those diplomatic encounters of mutual pumping, in which he and his rival were practised. ‘I suppose you have seen somebody, eh?’
‘Somebody has been seen,’ replied Pasqualigo, and then he busied himself with his pipe just arrived.
‘But nobody has seen somebody who was on the spot?’ said Barizy.
‘It depends upon what you mean by the spot,’ replied Pasqualigo.
‘Your information is second-hand,’ observed Barizy.
‘But you acknowledge it is correct?’ said Pasqualigo, more eagerly.
‘It depends upon whether your friend was present——’ and here Barizy hesitated.
‘It does,’ said Pasqualigo.
‘Then he was present?’ said Barizy.
‘He was.’
‘Then he knows,’ said Barizy, eagerly, ‘whether the young English prince was murdered intentionally or by hazard.’
‘A—h,’ said Pasqualigo, whom not the slightest rumour of the affair had yet reached, ‘that is a great question.’
‘But everything depends upon it,’ said Barizy. ‘If he was killed accidentally, there will be negotiations, but the business will be compromised; the English want Cyprus, and they will take it as compensation. If it is an affair of malice prepense, there will be war, for the laws of England require war if blood royal be spilt.’
The Consul Pasqualigo looked very grave; then, withdrawing his lips for a moment from his amber mouthpiece, he observed, ‘It is a crisis.’
‘It will be a crisis,’ said Barizy of the Tower, excited by finding his rival a listener, ‘but not for a long time. The crisis has not commenced. The first question is: to whom does the desert belong; to the Porte, or to the Viceroy?’
‘It depends upon what part of the desert is in question,’ said Pasqualigo.
‘Of course the part where it took place. I say the Arabian desert belongs to the Viceroy; my cousin, Barizy of the Gate, says “No, it belongs to the Porte.” Raphael Tafna says it belongs to neither. The Bedouins are independent.’
‘But they are not recognised,’ said the Consul Pasqualigo. ‘Without a diplomatic existence, they are nullities. England will hold all the recognise powers in the vicinity responsible. You will see! The murder of an English prince, under such circumstances too, will not pass unavenged. The whole of the Turkish garrison of the city will march out directly into the desert.’
‘The Arabs care shroff for your Turkish garrison of the city,’ said Barizy, with great derision.
‘They are eight hundred strong,’ said Pasqualigo.
‘Eight hundred weak, you mean. No, as Raphael Tafna was saying, when Mehemet. Ali was master, the tribes were quiet enough. But the Turks could never manage the Arabs, even in their best days. If the Pasha of Damascus were to go himself, the Bedouins would unveil his harem while he was smoking his nargileh.’
‘Then England will call upon the Egyptians,’ said the Consul.
‘Hah!’ said Barizy of the Tower, ‘have I got you at last? Now comes your crisis, I grant you. The English will send a ship of war with a protocol, and one of their lords who is a sailor: that is the way. They will call upon the pasha to exterminate the tribe who have murdered the brother of their queen; the pasha will reply, that when he was in Syria the brothers of queens were never murdered, and put the protocol in his turban. This will never satisfy Palmerston; he will order——’
‘Palmerston has nothing to do with it,’ screamed out Pasqualigo; ‘he is no longer Reis Effendi; he is in exile; he is governor of the Isle of Wight.’
‘Do you think I do not know that?’ said Barizy of the Tower; ‘but he will be recalled for this purpose. The English will not go to war in Syria without Palmerston. Palmerston will have the command of the fleet as well as of the army, that no one shall say “No” when he says “Yes.” The English will not do the business of the Turks again for nothing. They will take this city; they will keep it. They want a new market for their cottons. Mark me: England will never be satisfied till the people of Jerusalem wear calico turbans.’
Let us inquire also with Barizy of the Tower, where was Besso? Alone in his private chamber, agitated and troubled, awaiting the return of his daughter from the bath; and even now, the arrival may be heard of herself and her attendants in the inner court.
‘You want me, my father?’ said Eva, as she entered. ‘Ah! you are disturbed. What has happened?’
‘The tenth plague of Pharaoh, my child,’ replied Besso, in a tone of great vexation. ‘Since the expulsion of Ibrahim, there has been nothing which has crossed me so much.’
‘Fakredeen?’
‘No, no; ‘tis nothing to do with him, poor boy; but of one as young, and whose interests, though I know him not, scarcely less concern me.’
‘You know him not; ‘tis not then my cousin. You perplex me, my father. Tell me at once.’
‘It is the most vexatious of all conceivable occurrences,’ replied Besso, ‘and yet it is about a person of whom you never heard, and whom I never saw; and yet there are circumstances connected with him. Alas! alas! you must know, my Eva, there is a young Englishman here, and a young English lord, of one of their princely families——’
‘Yes!’ said Eva, in a subdued but earnest tone.
‘He brought me a letter from the best and greatest of men,’ said Besso, with much emotion, ‘to whom I, to whom we, owe everything: our fortunes, our presence here, perhaps our lives. There was nothing which I was not bound to do for him, which I was not ready and prepared to do. I ought to have guarded over him; to have forced my services on his acceptance; I blame myself now when it is too late. But he sent me his letter by the Intendant of his household, whom I knew. I was fearful to obtrude myself. I learnt he was fanatically Christian, and thought perhaps he might shrink from my acquaintance.’
‘And what has happened?’ inquired Eva, with an agitation which proved her sympathy with her father’s sorrow.
‘He left the city some days ago to visit Sinai; well armed and properly escorted. He has been waylaid in the wilderness and captured after a bloody struggle.’
‘A bloody struggle?’
‘Yes; they of course would gladly not have fought, but, though entrapped into an ambush, the young Englishman would not yield, but fought with desperation. His assailants have suffered considerably; his own party comparatively little, for they were so placed; surrounded, you understand, in a mountain defile, that they might have been all massacred, but the fear of destroying their prize restrained at first the marksmen on the heights; and, by a daring and violent charge, the young Englishman and his followers forced the pass, but they were overpowered by numbers.’
‘And he wounded?’
‘I hope not severely. But you have heard nothing. They have sent his Intendant to Jerusalem with a guard of Arabs to bring back his ransom. What do you think they want?’
Eva signified her inability to conjecture.
‘Two millions of piastres!’
‘Two millions of piastres! Did you say two? ‘Tis a great sum; but we might negotiate. They would accept less, perhaps much less, than two millions of piastres.’
‘If it were four millions of piastres, I must pay it,’ said Besso. ‘’Tis not the sum alone that so crosses me. The father of this young noble is a great prince, and could doubtless pay, without serious injury to himself, two millions of piastres for the ransom of his son; but that’s not it. He comes here; he is sent to me. I was to care for him, think for him, guard over him: I have never even seen him; and he is wounded, plundered, and a prisoner!’
‘But if he avoided you, my father?’ murmured Eva, with her eyes fixed upon the ground.
‘Avoided me!’ said Besso; ‘he never thought of me but as of a Jew banker, to whom he would send his servant for money when he needed it. Was I to stand on punctilios with a great Christian noble? I ought to have waited at his gate every day when he came forth, and bowed to the earth, until it pleased him to notice me; I ought——’
‘No, no, no, my father! you are bitter. This youth is not such as you think; at least, in all probability is not,’ said Eva. ‘You hear he is fanatically Christian; he may be but deeply religious, and his thoughts at this moment may rest on other things than the business of the world. He who makes pilgrimage to Sinai can scarcely think us so vile as you would intimate.’
‘What will he think of those whom he is among? Here is the wound, Eva! Guess, then, child, who has shot this arrow. ‘Tis my father!’
‘O traitor! traitor!’ said Eva, quickly covering her face with her hands. ‘My terror was prophetic! There is none so base!’
‘Nay, nay,’ said Besso; ‘these, indeed, are women’s words. The great Sheikh in this has touched me nearly, but I see no baseness in it. He could not know the intimate relation that should subsist between me and this young Englishman. He has captured him in the desert, according to the custom of his tribe. Much as Amalek may injure me, I must acquit him of treason and of baseness.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Eva, with an abstracted air. ‘You misconceive me. I was thinking of others; and what do you purpose, my father?’
‘First, to clear myself of the deep stain that I now feel upon my life,’ said Besso. ‘This Englishman comes to Jerusalem with an unbounded credit on my house: he visits the wilderness, and is made prisoner by my father-in-law, who is in ambush in a part of the desert which his tribe never frequents, and who sends to me for a princely ransom for his captive.
These are the apparent circumstances. These are the facts. There is but one inference from them. I dare say ‘tis drawn already by all the gossips of the city: they are hard at it, I doubt not, at this moment, in my own divan, winking their eyes and shrugging their shoulders, while they are smoking my choice tobacco, and drinking my sherbet of pomegranate. And can I blame them?’
‘A pure conscience may defy city gossips.’
‘A pure conscience must pay the ransom out of my own coffers. I am not over fond of paying two millions of piastres, or even half, for one whose shadow never fell upon my threshold. And yet I must do it: do it for my father-in-law, the Sheikh of the Recha-bites, whose peace I made with Mehemet Ali, for whom I gained the guardianship of the Mecca caravan through the Syrian desert for five years, who has twelve thousand camels which he made by that office. Oh, were it not for you, my daughter, I would curse the hour that I ever mixed my blood with the children of Jethro. After all, if the truth were known, they are sons of Ishmael.’
‘No, no, dear father, say not such things. You will send to the great Sheikh; he will listen——’
‘I send to the great Sheikh! You know not your grandfather, and you know not me. The truth is, the Sheikh and myself mutually despise each other, and we have never met without parting in bitterness. No, no; I would rather pay the ransom myself than ask a favour of the great Sheikh. But how can I pay the ransom, even if I chose? This young Englishman is a fiery youth: he will not yield even to an ambush and countless odds. Do you think a man who charges through a defile crowned with matchlocks, and shoots men through the head, as I am told he did, in the name of Christ, will owe his freedom to my Jewish charity? He will burn the Temple first. This young man has the sword of Gideon. You know little of the world, Eva, and nothing of young Englishmen. There is not a race so proud, so wilful, so rash, and so obstinate. They live in a misty clime, on raw meats, and wines of fire. They laugh at their fathers, and never say a prayer. They pass their days in the chase, gaming, and all violent courses. They have all the power of the State, and all its wealth; and when they can wring no more from their peasants, they plunder the kings of India.’ ‘But this young Englishman, you say, is pious?’ said Eva.
Ah! this young Englishman; why did he come here? What is Jerusalem to him, or he to Jerusalem? His Intendant, himself a prisoner, waits here. I must see him; he is one of the people of my patron, which proves our great friend’s interest in this youth. O day thrice cursed! day of a thousand evil eyes! day of a new captivity——’
‘My father, my dear father, these bursts of grief do not become your fame for wisdom. We must inquire, we must hold counsel. Let me see the Intendant of this English youth, and hear more than I have yet learnt. I cannot think that affairs are so hopeless as you paint them: I will believe that there is a spring near.’
Parleyings
IN AN almost circular valley, surrounded by mountains, Amalek, great Sheikh of the Rechabite Bedouins, after having crossed the peninsula of Petrasa from the great Syrian desert, pitched his camp amid the magnificent ruins of an ancient Idumæan city. The pavilion of the chief, facing the sunset, was raised in the arena of an amphitheatre cut out of the solid rock and almost the whole of the seats of which were entire. The sides of the mountains were covered with excavated tombs and temples, and, perhaps, dwelling-places; at any rate, many of them were now occupied by human beings. Fragments of columns were lying about, and masses of unknown walls. From a defile in the mountains issued a stream, which wound about in the plain, its waters almost hid, but its course beautifully indicated by the undulating shrubbery of oleanders, fig-trees, and willows. On one side of these, between the water and the amphitheatre, was a crescent of black tents, groups of horses, and crouching camels. Over the whole scene the sunset threw a violet hue, while the moon, broad and white, floated over the opposite hills.
The carpet of the great Sheikh was placed before his pavilion, and, seated on it alone, and smoking a chibouque of date wood, the patriarch ruminated. He had no appearance of age, except from a snowy beard, which was very long: a wiry man, with an unwrinkled face; dark, regular, and noble features, beautiful teeth. Over his head, a crimson kefia, ribbed and fringed with gold; his robe was of the same colour, and his boots were of red leather; the chief of one of the great tribes, and said, when they were united, to be able to bring ten thousand horsemen into the field.
One at full gallop, with a long spear, at this moment darted from the ravine, and, without stopping to answer several who addressed him, hurried across the plain, and did not halt until he reached the Sheikh.
‘Salaam, Sheikh of Sheikhs, it is done; the brother of the Queen of the English is your slave.’
‘Good!’ said Sheikh Amalek, very gravely, and taking his pipe from his mouth. ‘May your mother eat the hump of a young camel! When will they be here?’
‘They will be the first shadows of the moon.’ ‘Good! is the brother of the Queen with Sheikh Salem?’
‘There is only one God: Sheikh Salem will never drink leban again, unless he drink it in Paradise.’
‘Certainly, there is only one God. What! has he fallen asleep into the well of Nummula?’
‘No; but we have seen many evil eyes. Four hares crossed our path this morning. Our salaam to the English prince was not a salaam of peace. The brother of the Queen of the English is no less than an Antar. He will fight, yea or nay; and he has shot Sheikh Salem through the head.’
‘There is but one God, and His will be done. I have lost the apple of mine eye. The Prince of the English is alive?’
‘He is alive.’
‘Good! camels shall be given to the widow of Sheikh Salem, and she shall be married to a new husband. Are there other deeds of Gin?’
‘One grape will not make a bunch, even though it be a great one.’
‘Let truth always be spoken. Let your words flow as the rock of Moses.’
‘There is only one God: if you call to Ibrahim-ben-Hassan, to Molgrabi Teuba, and Teuba-ben-Amin, they will not be roused from their sleep: there are also wounds.’
‘Tell all the people there is only one God: it is the Sheikh of the Jeilaheens that has done these deeds of Gin?’
‘Let truth always be spoken; my words shall flow as the rock of Moses. The Sheikh of the Jeilaheens counselled the young man not to fight, but the young man is a very Zatanai. Certainly there are many devils, but there is no devil like a Frank in a round hat.’
The evening advanced; the white moon, that had only gleamed, now glittered; the necks of the camels looked tall and silvery in its beam. The night-fires began to blaze, the lamps to twinkle in the crescent of dark tents. There was a shout, a general stir, the heads of spears were seen glistening in the ravine. They came; a winding line of warriors. Some, as they emerged into the plain, galloped forward and threw their spears into the air; but the main body preserved an appearance of discipline, and proceeded at a slow pace to the pavilion of the Sheikh. A body of horsemen came first; then warriors on dromedaries; Sheikh Hassan next, grave and erect as if nothing had happened, though he was wounded, and followed by his men, disarmed, though their chief retained his spear. Baroni followed. He was unhurt, and rode between two Bedouins, with whom he continually conversed. After them, the bodies of Sheikh Salem and his comrades, covered with cloaks and stowed on camels. And then came the great prize, Tancred, mounted on a dromedary, his right arm bound up in a sling which Baroni had hastily made, and surrounded and followed by a large troop of horsemen, who treated him with the highest consideration, not only because he was a great prince, whose ransom could bring many camels to their tribe, but because he had shown those feats of valour which the wild desert honours.
Notwithstanding his wound, which, though slight, began to be painful, and the extreme vexation of the whole affair, Tancred could not be insensible to the strange beauty of the scene which welcomed him. He had read of these deserted cities, carved out of the rocks of the wilderness, and once the capitals of flourishing and abounding kingdoms.
They stopped before the pavilion of the great Sheikh; the arena of the amphitheatre became filled with camels, horses, groups of warriors; many mounted on the seats, that they might overlook the scene, their arms and shawled heads glistening in the silver blaze of the moon or the ruddy flames of the watch-fires. They assisted Tancred to descend, they ushered him with courtesy to their chief, who made room for Tancred on his own carpet, and motioned that he should be seated by his side. A small carpet was placed for Sheikh Hassan, and another for Baroni.
‘Salaam, brother of many queens, all that you see is yours; Salaam Sheikh Hassan, we are brothers. Salaam,’ added Amalek, looking at Baroni, ‘they tell me that you can speak our language, which is beautiful as the moon and many palm trees; tell the prince, brother of many queens, that he mistook the message that I sent him this morning, which was an invitation to a feast, not to a war. Tell him we are brothers.’
‘Tell the Sheikh,’ said Tancred, ‘that I have no appetite for feasting, and desire to be informed why he has made me a prisoner.’
‘Tell the prince, brother of many queens, that he is not a prisoner, but a guest.’
‘Ask the Sheikh, then, whether we can depart at once.’
‘Tell the prince, brother of many queens, that it would be rude in me to let him depart to-night.’
‘Ask the Sheikh whether I may depart in the morning.’
‘Tell the prince that, when the morning comes, he will find I am his brother.’ So saying, the great Sheikh took his pipe from his mouth and gave it to Tancred: the greatest of distinctions. In a few moments, pipes were also brought to Sheikh Hassan and Baroni.
‘No harm can come to you, my lord, after smoking that pipe,’ said Baroni. ‘We must make the best of affairs. I have been in worse straits with M. de Sidonia. What think you of Malay pirates? These are all gentlemen.’
While Baroni was speaking, a young man slowly and with dignity passed through the bystanders, advanced, and, looking very earnestly at Tancred, seated himself on the same carpet as the grand Sheikh. This action alone would have betokened the quality of the newcomer, had not his kefia, similar to that of Sheikh Amalek, and his whole bearing, clearly denoted his princely character. He was very young; and Tancred, while he was struck by his earnest gaze, was attracted by his physiognomy, which, indeed, from its refined beauty and cast of impassioned intelligence, was highly interesting.
Preparations all this time had been making for the feast. Half a dozen sheep had been given to the returning band; everywhere resounded the grinding of coffee; men passed, carrying pitchers of leban and panniers of bread cakes hot from their simple oven. The great Sheikh, who had asked many questions after the oriental fashion: which was the most powerful nation, England or France; what was the name of a third European nation of which he had heard, white men with flat noses in green coats; whether the nation of white men with flat noses in green coats could have taken Acre as the English had, the taking of Acre being the test of military prowess; how many horses the Queen of the English had, and how many slaves; whether English pistols are good; whether the English drink wine; whether the English are Christian giaours or Pagan giaours? and so on, now invited Tancred, Sheikh Hassan, and two or three others, to enter his pavilion and partake of the banquet.
‘The Sheikh must excuse me,’ said Tancred to Baroni; ‘I am wearied and wounded. Ask if I can retire and have a tent.’
‘Are you wounded?’ said the young Sheikh, who was sitting on the carpet of Amalek, and speaking, not only in a tone of touching sympathy, but in the language of Franguestan.
‘Not severely,’ said Tancred, less abruptly than he had yet spoken, for the manner and the appearance of the youth touched him, ‘but this is my first fight, and perhaps I make too much of it. However, my arm is painful and stiff, and indeed, you may conceive after all this, I could wish for a little repose.’
‘The great Sheikh has allotted you a compartment of his pavilion,’ said the youth; ‘but it will prove a noisy resting-place, I fear, for a wounded man. I have a tent here, an humbler one, but which is at least tranquil. Let me be your host!’
‘You are most gracious, and I should be much inclined to be your guest, but I am a prisoner,’ he said, haughtily, ‘and cannot presume to follow my own will.’
‘I will arrange all,’ said the youth, and he conversed with Sheikh Amalek for some moments. Then they all rose, the young man advancing to Tancred, and saying in a sweet coaxing voice, ‘You are under my care. I will not be a cruel gaoler; I could not be to you.’ So saying, making their reverence to the great Sheikh, the two young men retired together from the arena. Baroni would have followed them, when the youth stopped him, saying, with decision, ‘The great Sheikh expects your presence; you must on no account be absent. I will tend your chief: you will permit me?’ he inquired in a tone of sympathy, and then, offering to support the arm of Tancred, he murmured, ‘It kills me to think that you are wounded.’
Tancred was attracted to the young stranger: his prepossessing appearance, his soft manners, the contrast which they afforded to all around, and to the scenes and circumstances which Tancred had recently experienced, were winning. Tancred, therefore, gladly accompanied him to his pavilion, which was pitched outside the amphitheatre, and stood apart. Notwithstanding the modest description of his tent by the young Sheikh, it was by no means inconsiderable in size, for it possessed several compartments, and was of a different colour and fashion from those of the rest of the tribe. Several steeds were picketed in Arab fashion near its entrance, and a group of attendants, smoking and conversing with great animation, were sitting in a circle close at hand. They pressed their hands to their hearts as Tancred and his host passed them, but did not rise. Within the pavilion, Tancred found a luxurious medley of cushions and soft carpets, forming a delightful divan; pipes and arms, and, to his great surprise, several numbers of a French newspaper published at Smyrna.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Tancred, throwing himself on the divan, ‘after all I have gone through to-day, this is indeed a great and an unexpected relief.’
‘’Tis your own divan,’ said the young Arab, clapping his hands; ‘and when I have given some orders for your comfort, I shall only be your guest, though not a distant one.’ He spoke some words in Arabic to an attendant who entered, and who returned very shortly with a silver lamp fed with palm oil, which he placed on the ground.
‘I have two poor Englishmen here,’ said Tancred, ‘my servants; they must be in sad straits; unable to speak a word——’
‘I will give orders that they shall attend you. In the meantime you must refresh yourself, however lightly, before you repose.’ At this moment there entered the tent several attendants with a variety of dishes, which Tancred would have declined, but the young Sheikh, selecting one of them, said, ‘This, at least, I must urge you to taste, for it is a favourite refreshment with us after great fatigue, and has some properties of great virtue.’ So saying, he handed to Tancred a dish of bread, dates, and prepared cream, which Tancred, notwithstanding his previous want of relish, cheerfully admitted to be excellent. After this, as Tancred would partake of no other dish, pipes were brought to the two young men, who, reclining on the divan, smoked and conversed.
‘Of all the strange things that have happened to me to-day,’ said Tancred, ‘not the least surprising, and certainly the most agreeable, has been making your acquaintance. Your courtesy has much compensated me for the rude treatment of your tribe; but, I confess, such refinement is what, under any circumstances, I should not have expected to find among the tents of the desert, any more than this French journal.’
‘I am not an Arab,’ said the young man, speaking slowly and with an air of some embarrassment.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Tancred.
‘I am a Christian prince.’
‘Yes!’
‘A prince of the Lebanon, devoted to the English, and one who has suffered much in their cause.’
‘You are not a prisoner here, like myself?’
‘No, I am here, seeking some assistance for those sufferers who should be my subjects, were I not deprived of my sceptre, and they of a prince whose family has reigned over and protected them for more than seven centuries. The powerful tribe of which Sheikh Amalek is the head often pitch their tents in the great Syrian desert, in the neighbourhood of Damascus, and there are affairs in which they can aid my unhappy people.’
‘It is a great position, yours,’ said Tancred, in an animated tone, ‘at the same time a Syrian and a Christian prince!’
‘Yes,’ said the young Emir, eagerly, ‘if the English would only understand their own interests, with my co-operation Syria might be theirs.’
‘The English!’ said Tancred, ‘why should the English take Syria?’
‘France will take it if they do not.’
‘I hope not,’ said Tancred.
‘But something must be done,’ said the Emir. ‘The Porte never could govern it. Do you think anybody in Lebanon really cares for the Pasha of Damascus? If the Egyptians had not disarmed the mountain, the Turks would be driven out of Syria in a week.’
‘A Syrian and a Christian prince!’ said Tancred, musingly. ‘There are elements in that position stronger than the Porte, stronger than England, stronger than united Europe. Syria was a great country when France and England were forests. The tricolour has crossed the Alps and the Rhine, and the flag of England has beaten even the tricolour; but if I were a Syrian prince, I would raise the cross of Christ and ask for the aid of no foreign banner.’
‘If I could only raise a loan,’ said the Emir, ‘I could do without France and England.’
‘A loan!’ exclaimed Tancred; ‘I see the poison of modern liberalism has penetrated even the desert. Believe me, national redemption is not an affair of usury.’
At this moment there was some little disturbance without the tent, which it seems was occasioned by the arrival of Tancred’s servants, Freeman and True-man. These excellent young men persisted in addressing the Arabs in their native English, and, though we cannot for a moment believe that they fancied themselves understood, still, from a mixture of pride and perverseness peculiarly British, they continued their valuable discourse as if every word told, or, if not apprehended, was a striking proof of the sheer stupidity of their new companions. The noise became louder and louder, and at length Freeman and Trueman entered.
‘Well,’ said Tancred, ‘and how have you been getting on?’
‘Well, my lord, I don’t know,’ said Freeman, with a sort of jolly sneer; ‘we have been dining with the savages.’
‘They are not savages, Freeman.’
‘Well, my lord, they have not much more clothes, anyhow; and as for knives and forks, there is not such a thing known.’
‘As for that, there was not such a thing known as a fork in England little more than two hundred years ago, and we were not savages then; for the best part of Montacute Castle was built long before that time.’
‘I wish we were there, my lord!’
‘I dare say you do: however, we must make the best of present circumstances. I wanted to know, in the first place, whether you had food; as for lodging, Mr. Baroni, I dare say, will manage something for you; and if not, you had better quarter yourselves by the side of this tent. With your own cloaks and mine, you will manage very well.’
‘Thank you, my lord. We have brought your lordship’s things with us. I don’t know what I shall do to-morrow about your lordship’s boots. The savages have got hold of the bottle of blacking and have been drinking it like anything.’
‘Never mind my boots,’ said Tancred, ‘we have got other things to think of now.’
‘I told them what it was,’ said Freeman, ‘but they went on just the same.’
‘Obstinate dogs!’ said Tancred.
‘I think they took it for wine, my lord,’ said Trueman. ‘I never see such ignorant creatures.’
‘You find now the advantage of a good education, Trueman.’
‘Yes, my lord, we do, and feel very grateful to your lordship’s honoured mother for the same. When we came down out of the mountains and see those blazing fires, if I didn’t think they were going to burn us alive, unless we changed our religion! I said the catechism as hard as I could the whole way, and felt as much like a blessed martyr as could be.’
‘Well, well,’ said Tancred, ‘I dare say they will spare our lives. I cannot much assist you here; but if there be anything you particularly want, I will try and see what can be done.’
Freeman and Trueman looked at each other, and their speaking faces held common consultation. At length, the former, with some slight hesitation, said, ‘We don’t like to be troublesome, my lord, but if your lordship would ask for some sugar for us; we cannot drink their coffee without sugar.’