It was Haroun! It was the voice of Haroun!
Stealing a glance, I saw him in the uniform of an officer and sitting a fine black horse. So he, too, was among my pursuers! He had never been as close to me as Mahmoud, although there had been a sort of quiet friendship between us. The moving line was carrying me past, but I glanced back again. It was a mistake.
Our eyes met; for an instant our gaze held. In his eyes there was first surprise, then puzzlement. He started toward me, but a cart drawn by four oxen pulled between us, and his path was blocked. When I looked back again he had turned away.
Hunger gnawed at my vitals. The only thing of value I possessed was my dagger, which was also the last tie with my father and my home. Finally, I could walk no more, and I sank down with my back against a building. The sun was warm; the air, filled with fragrances. Oranges, melons, grapes were being sold about me, yet I starved. Voices were lifted in argument; whips cracked; wheels rumbled over the pavement, and there was the pleasant aroma of coffee from a stall nearby. Exhausted, my head tipped forward, and I slept.
Awakening, I was chilled to the bone. The sun was gone, and the bazaar, empty. My sleep seemed not to have rested me, and my bowels were a void where hunger growled. My muscles had cramped and stiffened; my face was sore, and there was nowhere to turn. In despair, I looked about me.
Why was I such a fool? If I were a prisoner, they would at least feed me. Or would I be strangled at once?
Gloomily, I stared around the bazaar, scattered with fruit skins, drifted leaves fallen from the trees, and all the usual debris left by traders. Soon the sweepers would come, and after them, the lamplighters.
My dagger held release. I could die.
Die? But I was Kerbouchard, the son of Jean Kerbouchard the Corsair! Had I not started to find my father and seek my fortune? Was I a coward, to quit so soon? I, who had ridden out of Cadiz, my cloak sewn with gems?
There were smells about me, but the worst was the smell of my own unwashed body, of my stale clothing. I started to rise, glimpsing behind a booth an orange, fallen from a stand nearby. My eyes went to the orange and then to the booth’s owner, who was preparing to leave.
Strolling over, I picked up the orange, but the man turned to me, glancing from the orange to me. “It is mine. Give it to me, or pay me.”
“I am hungry,” I said.
He shrugged. “So? Pay me. Then eat.”
“I have no money.”
The skin on his face tightened. He eyed me with open contempt. “Give me the orange, and be gone.”
The dagger was in my waistband. If I drew the dagger, the orange might no longer be so dear to him, yet there were soldiers at the far end of the market area, and he had only to lift his voice.
“You accept not the word of Allah?” I asked gently. ” ‘To eat thereof, and feed the poor and the unfortunate’?”
“Allah has his troubles, I mine. Pay me. If Allah wills you to be fed, then you will be fed, but not by me.”
Staring, I brought all the intensity of my gaze upon him. As I advanced a step, he involuntarily retreated. “There is no god but Allah,” I said, “but there are devils.”
He liked not my words and took a step back, glancing right and left as if for escape. “There are devils,” I said, “and there are curses.” Lifting my hand, I pointed a finger at him and began to mutter in my own Breton tongue a phrase or two of Druid ritual, but nothing to do with curses.
His features went stiff with horror. I had forgotten how lately these people had come from the desert where savage gods ruled and superstition was the order of the day.
“No!” he lifted his hands as if to shield himself. “Take the fruit and go!” Seizing a small clutch of bananas he thrust them at me. “Take these also, but go. I am a poor man. I have done no harm. I did not know. I thought …”
Jerking the bananas from his hand, I glared at him, then strode away, inwardly pleased at my good fortune. Truly, there was power in the word.
Walking along, I ate the bananas and the orange as well. It was overripe and not to my taste, but it was food. Then I rinsed my hands in a fountain and dried them on my shirt. With food in my stomach my mood expanded. I began to think of a place to sleep.
If curses were to be the answer, I could invent horrendous ones, but there must be simpler solutions. Why should I lie in a cold and dusty street when I might rest my head on the shoulder of some wealthy widow looking for solace? Yet if such there were, they would not look with favor upon me in my rags.
There is, after all, an atmosphere that hangs about success that is favorable to the breathing of beautiful women. No doubt this follows some law of physics, some aspect of feminine instinct or of feminine laws of survival. Despite my tattered clothing and bruised body, I still had my wits. Somewhere, somehow, I would find a bed.
The last of the day was gone, the side streets were shuttered and closed, becoming caverns of darkness, empty of life. There were lighted streets in Córdoba, but upon these walked the young men of fashion, roistering soldiers, men out upon the town. Many of these had I known, but none could I count as friends. I could beg, a few coins, perhaps?
No, not the son of Kerbouchard. My feet strayed into a narrow alley between two high walls of baked clay, beyond one of them I heard a feminine voice, softly singing. A haunting song of love sung by a lonely voice. Beyond, the sound of falling water.
My eyes estimated the wall. It would not do to be caught in the women’s quarters of a Moslem house. Men had been killed or castrated for less.
However I leaped, catching the top of the wall, swinging up to lie flat atop it. Had the music missed a beat? The fingers throbbed the strings of the qitara, and the plaintive voice lifted again. The words yearned with memories of the desert, dunes, and palm trees, of the black tents of the Bedouin.
The song’s words hung inquiring into the night; the water fell in a fountain, and there was a heavy smell of jasmine, a sense of delightful coolness after the day’s heat. Swinging my feet over, I dropped to the ground, and the music of the strings whispered away and faded, leaving only the memory of sound.
Feet shuffled by in the street I had quit only in time, and I looked about me, feet apart, hands on my hips. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
There was a difference in the tone, not that of a frightened girl nor of a woman of the harem. There was unexpected assurance, a voice accustomed to command. My refuge lay in frankness.
“I am a man without money, a man with many enemies. My only food in days was a little fruit in a market, nor do I have a place to sleep.
“However, despite my garb, I am a man of honor, a warrior, and a son of warriors, a man who can sail a ship, compose a rhyme, discourse upon the laws of men and nations, fight a duel, or treat a wound.”
“Leave this garden at once, by the way you came. If I am forced to call my slaves, they will kill you.”
“There is no deliverance from a destiny decreed by Allah,” I said with my tongue in my cheek, “but surely it cannot be my destiny to be sent to starve by one so lovely? If I am here, it was only because of you, of your voice, of the song you sang. Your song called to me. I had no will but to answer.”
Taking a step nearer, I said, “You see in me a Celt, the son of Kerbouchard the Corsair, a wanderer, a man without home, family, or lands, but if you have use for a sword, I know the blade.”
“You must go.”
Did I detect a softening of resistance? A relenting? A suggestion of growing interest? Man’s greatest advantage in the battle of the sexes is woman’s curiosity. She was in the shadows, beyond the reach of my eyes, yet the voice was of a woman both young and well-bred.