But we were a good way from the houses and largely screened by the cattle byres. Our only watchers that I knew of were huge white cattle, some of which lurched to their feet as though in good manners, and Bactrian baggage camels of low caste and malodor. Araxie uttered a low cry and flung off her beautifully embroidered silk scarf. It fell in the dust and her white robe fluttered down beside it in dishevelment. My own hands were busied now, but not fast enough to satisfy the itch in hers. Yet this frantic passion and my own response to it, more brutal in many respects than was ever aroused in me before, did not quite overcome what seemed self-disdain, but which might be only deeply submerged fear.
In some Asiatic tribes, the young women are frankly and overtly the wooers. That did not explain the culmination’s seeming more a predatory binding in the dimness of the jungle than an embrace of human lust. But if she were a strange woman, she was also strangely beautiful. I knew ecstasy and felt exquisite pain.
At her peak of rapture, Araxie gave a high-pitched, convulsive cry. She had failed or had not tried to muffle the sound, and it would carry far through the stillness and disturb the villagers’ sleep. I had no care for that, but was surprised by my own grim thought, like an eerie phantasy, that they would mistake it for the shriek of a desert fox. The spell slowly dissolved. Araxie lay still, her eyes uprolled and revealing silverlike crescents under the half-closed lids. I rose and saw that her pale-brown breast was smeared the same color as her lips, and these were even redder than before.
I looked at my chest and shoulders. But on touching the wounds, I found them trifling. I must wait till their flow ceased and wipe it away; then my shirt would hide the short twin rows of little cuts. I felt no need of haste—all fear of our tryst being discovered had passed from me. It might happen but I did not believe it. It seemed to me that the adventure would have some other end.
Araxie stirred, uttered a long sigh, and slowly opened her eyes. When she saw me she gave me a sleepy smile. But it checked quickly when she saw my chest.
“Did I do that?” she gasped.
“Unless a succubus took your place.”
“Oh, do you know what it means?”
“No.”
“You won’t believe me, effendi, but it’s true. You’ve put me with child.” Her eyes glimmered incredibly in the pale light.
I shook my head in instinctive rejection of the thought. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, licked it clean, then spoke eagerly.
“Isn’t it your blood? That’s a sign that it will flow with mine in a new life. Already that life is kindled. It happened so with me only once before on the first full moon of my bridehood—and the sign did not fail.”
Against my will, I swayed to the conviction in her voice.
“If that should be true, what would be the consequences?” I asked.
“None to trouble either you or me. I told you my husband’s brother would make me one of his wives in a few days. He’ll never know that the baby isn’t his.”
“Was your other baby—the first time you were given the sign—a boy or a girl?” But I did not know the bent of my own mind.
“A boy!”
“Was he a phoenix, born of fire?” I was flattering her because of some unknown fear.
“He was beautiful and bold, and if he had lived, he would have been a chief!”
“Did he die like so many babes of summer fever?”
“Not he. He was sick not one day in the month that he lived. He tugged at my teat like a pig, and grew fat and lusty.”
“Then how did he come to die?”
“My husband, the babe’s father, lately lost to me, became jealous of him and killed him.”
I had heard the words clearly but I must have mistaken her proud tone.
“Why didn’t you kill him in revenge?”
“He was my husband who had stolen me from my father’s house when I was a virgin, and I loved him. Oh, I tell you we Arghun women know how to love.”
Then a sign was given to me. It was only the shriek of a desert fox far away on the moonlit plain—a belated answer, I thought, to a cry he had heard several minutes ago and had thought upon in vain. I did not know the meaning of the sign.
3
The desert sun, threatening imminent heat, brought a great stirring. The cameleers yelled; their beasts twisted back their necks and tried to bite them, and the horses looked down their noses at such goings-on. The baggage wallahs heaved bales and boxes and fastened ropes; we merchants exchanged pleasantries until Nicolo bade us take our places. He had greeted me affably and asked if I had rested well. I could read nothing in his quiet smile and brilliant eyes.
Araxie and her grandsire were given seats atop a lightly loaded baggage camel. All hands were glad to have them with us on the road, the old man so venerable, and the damsel so beautiful; no one could look at them without pleasure. Otherwise the traveling was about the same as yesterday. Rather it was a gradual development of yesterday’s trends. The plain’s tilt became more pronounced; hills were more frequent and steep; brooks flowed swifter and straighter; there was less sand and more rock; the air was clearer and the copses larger and greener.
We came on a beggar clothed in vile rags, grimy hand outstretched. The merchants looked at him impassively and rode by; I turned in my saddle to watch the cameleers and the baggage wallahs look aside to avert the evil eye. But Araxie’s grandsire gazed upon him with sorrow and pity, grieving that he had no money to give him, and of all our company, only Araxie herself leaned down and put something in his hand. The movement was wonderfully graceful. Her face was alight with happiness. I wondered if this were an act of gratitude to her gods.
“If there be honor among thieves, as the adage tells, a beggar maid can give to a beggar man,” came a harsh voice beside me.
I felt a touch of anger. The speaker was Daniel, a swarthy Jew of Tabriz. If he had spoken slightingly of a Christian girl on the Rialto, he would have been spat upon. But remembering Simon ben Reuben and his parting gift to Miranda, I held my tongue.
“He gave her something in return,” Daniel went on. “I suppose it was a charm of some sort. These foolish people buy written charms from so-called holy men, wash off the ink in a little water, and drink it. They think it brings them all sorts of benefits.”
Such as the healthy growth and safe delivery of an unborn babe?
“She showed more charity than any of us,” I remarked.
“Anyway she’s a very beautiful girl. I would think her an Arghun—that’s a Tatar word for a person of mixed blood. She has a dash of Tatar from a quarter other than the old man’s. There’s some fine Arab blood in the cross, and most likely Persian of Khurasan, famous for its beautiful women. But don’t fall into the error of thinking of her as a Christian. In many of these regions the Nestorian Church has been contaminated with rank paganism.”
“The old man told us that——”
“In effect he did. I’m still puzzling over it. The hooded duster that Maffeo Polo wore last evening looked something like a friar’s gown—it may have been for his benefit. Anyway, young man, don’t get involved with either of them. No doubt the girl would afford good sport and that’s all right——”
I turned curtly away.
The heat mounted as the road roughened, and I would be glad when we stopped for our Mohammedan cameleers to say midday prayers. The beasts slipped and stumbled on the rocks, their drivers cursed; of all our company I saw only two who appeared unwearied and unruffled. One of them was Nicolo. He had made some sort of truce with the hardships of the way, yielding gracefully when he must, keeping intact his reserve strength, lithe in the saddle. The other was Araxie. Not merely serene, she took a positive joy in the long, grueling ride, and it was almost as irrepressible as her beauty. Trouble came into her face only when she glanced at her grandsire and this she tried to hide, I thought, lest we share her worries about him and begin to regard him as a burden on the caravan. While retaining his dignity of manner, he looked pale and under deep strain.