Now he has taken her on his croup.
Now he has gazed into her face of matchless beauty.
O the deep wells of her eyes that reflect his own eyes,
O the cup of her lips from which a lover's lips will drink the nectar of Paradise.
He has found her, how soon may he have her for his own?
Allah hath wrought him of ungainly form and fearful visage,
Yet appointed him to find her on the desert.
She is not yet ripe for love, but the moon will return
And not fail to return until it looks down and sees her ready,
A maiden and a princess arrayed as a bride.
How soon may Omar take her to his tent for his bride of matchless beauty?
Must I answer, O Sheik? Must I tell you, Beni Kabir?
Never, never, never, never. For Omar is a slave,
And the bride that awaits him is a chain of iron.
CHAPTER 13
The Wakening
Not many months after Isabel Gazelle had come to live with us, I had a chance to dispatch a long-harbored letter addressed to the American consul at Gibraltar, and which I had written when my first missive brought no return.
The bearer now was a Jew, Aaron ben Levi, who sold dawa (medicine) throughout North Africa, and who needed bitterly five pieces of gold. These I paid him—my total store—for his promise to deliver the letter within two years, or return it to me with the sum. The Jews we knew were hard bargainers, but once the bargain was made, they could be trusted to keep it with great staunchness. Since Aaron was no renegade, I kept a lighter heart in the ensuing seasons, and my dreams were sweet.
In November, 1814, he returned to our encampment, and when my eyes sought his across the thorn fire, he shook his head. When the others were wrapped in their bumooses we met in the gray moonlight. Pale, he handed me my letter and five pieces of gold.
'I could not deliver it. There's no longer any United States consul in Gibraltar. The consulate doors have been closed and the officer has fled and so have all his countrymen. Even if he were there it would be useless to give it to him, the people said, because there's no longer any United States."
I waited a few seconds before I spoke. It was to clear my head put my tongue in good control, and to bid my informant not to speak wildly.
"What causes you to think that?"
"There's no doubt of the war. It was with England, and it began m the summer of 1812. For a while the Yankees made a good showing. But when the English had beaten Napoleon and sent him to Elba they brought their troops down from the North from a place called Montreal, and also up the rivers from Vugima. The capital—named for the first president—has been burned to the ground. That much is certain. I had it from one of my nation, one Gideon whose home is in Italy and whose kinsman Judah Touro is a merchant in the city of New Orleans."
"Does Boston stand, and New York, and Baltimore?" "That I don't know. Gideon had it from Judah Touro that the Redcoats had been driven back from the wild lands in the West and Yanki fleets on the lakes there—lakes as big as seas—have held their own well. Much land has been laid waste, but Gideon doubts if the old men who fought under Washington have been hanged as was first told, or the young ones captured in battle have been shot for insurrection. For a long while no Yanki ship was seen on the high seas. Lately Gideon has it that small ships, in some numbers, have come out of nowhere to harry the English traders. Now the rumor is that the king will make peace, spare the Yankis that are left, and forgive all treason, provided they swear allegiance to his throne and be ruled by his governors. Whether the Yankis have agreed to these terms Gideon did not know, but certainly there is talk of peace, and the great money—lending house of Bauer of Frankfort on the Main, which is called Rothschild, meaning the red shield, has given out to its agents that the guns will be silent before the Christmas of the Gentiles."
"If there's peace before Christmas—or Christmas ten years from now—you can be sure the Yankis haven't agreed to those terms."
"Think you they would fight that long before surrendering up their freedom?"
I started to say I knew it, but how could I know? Aaron told me, on Gideon's word, that no few Boston merchants of great wealth had connived with the captains of English warships blockading our coast to let their goods through to supply the armies and fleets attacking their own country. But I remembered the Boston men whom I had known, aft and before the mast. I thought of Ethan Allen, with whom Farmer Blood had sat at Sunday dinner, and Anthony Wayne whom my father had seen at Yorktown, John Rogers Clark and Joshua Barney and the silversmith Paul Revere. I had been gone from under the American flag for thirteen years, but I doubted if the ways of the people had changed very much.
When I was in school in Bath we were something like four million. In ten years, we were five million, three hundred thousand—I had proudly told Sophia so—at that rate of gain, more than a third, we must be eight million now. The wagons were winding up the western roads and the flatboats making down the Ohio River when I had left home. By now there were farms and towns, thick or scattered, all the way to the Mississippi. Could I picture a lank frontiersman beyond the Appalachians, wearing a coonskin cap and armed with a Kentucky rifle, bowing down to an English lord?
"England couldn't conquer the land west of the mountains, let alone to the River," I told Aaron ben Levi.
"If you mean the great river that flows by New Orleans, where dwells Judah Touro, one of the great of my nation—it marks only half of the American domain."
"I don't comprehend you."
"Ten—eleven years ago, the American president bought from Napoleon the Louisiana Territory, running clean to the Rocky Mountains. I saw Judah's letter, writ in Hebrew, with my own eyes."
My neck prickled fiercely and my scalp felt too tight and I could not speak.
"You turned red in the face, and now white," said Aaron gravely.
"I can't help it."
"Unwittingly I've dealt you a cruel blow, to remind you how long you've been gone from your native land."
"I needed no reminder. I've kept good count of the days. You only reminded me of how the world has gone forward while I've been away. And the news you gave me is good. I've no fear whatever of America ceasing to be free."
"My people wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Yet they came at last into the Promised Land, and waxed great."
"Ah!Ah!"
"You're not a young man any longer—thirty-four or five?—but add twenty years to that number, and you would reach only your full strength of character and mind."
"I'll be free—or I'll be dead—in seven years."
I had told myself this before, but now I had spoken it aloud before a witness, and I knew it to be true.
"I will entreat God to spare your life. Farewell, Omar."
"You've run a great risk, bearing my letter, and brought me news, good and ill, of use to me, so you're welcome to as many of these five gold pieces as you'll accept."
"My friend, I'll accept none. I didn't succeed in delivering your letter and the gold pieces came to me at a time of need, and I've had the use of them without usury for two years. We Jews are good husbandmen, but it is against our law to reap the corners of the field."
I thought to send the letter by some other bearer, but could not bring myself to do so. In the first place, I could find none in whom to put great faith; and I became afraid that if a search was ever made for me, I would not be found. It came to me in my dreams that this desert drama would play to the end without help from any god from the machine. The forces that would free me or destroy me were already on the scene.