He gave me a scornful look. “You think me a fool, but I shall show you. You are my slave. If you do not obey, I shall hit you. I shall beat you or burn you.”
Once on my feet I tried to get the sack to my shoulder but could not. He approached, and careful to avoid my one good hand, he placed the sack on my shoulder. Weak as I was, I almost fell under its weight, but finally I managed to take a step. He started on, only occasionally glancing back.
I could move but slowly, and finally he returned. “You are no good!” He spat in my face. “You are no good!”
Suddenly, he leaped at me and began striking and pounding me with his stick. Desperately, I lunged at him, but he sprang back and began dancing about me, striking and thrusting. Finally, I fell, and then he really attacked, beating me unmercifully with his stick, trying to throw dirt in my eyes. He was a madman. Yet if I could only get him close enough I had my knife.
At last he tired of beating me and built a small fire and began to prepare a meal. Once he came at me with a burning brand, poking it at my eyes. He burned my chin, and one ear was singed, but when I swung my crutch and tripped him, he fell into the fire. He screamed and rolled away from the fire, but while he cursed me, he stayed out of reach.
Something moved in the shadows beyond the fire. Firelight flickered on a silken flank. “Ayesha!” The name burst involuntarily from my lips, and I saw her head go up, her ears prick at the familiar name.
My tormentor at the fire turned as if stung, and then he saw the mare. He leaped to his feet, staring at her and panting audibly.
“It is your horse?” His beady eyes shined with malice. “Call it. Call it over, and you shall have this!” He held up a filthy bone I would not have given to a dog.
To think of my mare in the hands of this fiend was frightening, but Ayesha, spirited though she was, could be caught when I was around. Unless something was done, he would have not only me to torture but the mare also.
“I can bring her to me, but she is frightened of strangers.” Slowly, carefully, I shifted my sitting position. My fingers felt for the bola with its twin rocks, and the bowstrings. “I can catch her,” I said, “but there is but one way.”
Seated on the ground my hand was free. How far away was he? Six feet? “Come, Ayesha,” I said, “come to me!”
She was not sure. She lifted her dainty nostrils to sniff in my direction and stamped the earth, not liking the smell. Little could I blame her, for between my captor and me the odor must have been frightful. “Ayesha,” I pleaded. “Come!”
She came a step nearer, then another. “Now, Ayesha! Come!”
He had taken a step forward, hardly able to restrain his eagerness, his attention upon her. My hand shot out in a swift, darting motion shooting the rocks past his neck. The weight of the rocks did as they were designed to do and wrapped around his scrawny neck. With a jerk, I snapped him toward me.
He fell, and heedless of my injuries, I threw myself atop him, holding tight to the line with my bad hand and grasping my dagger with the other.
He fought like the madman he was, scratching and clawing, righting to be free of the strangling noose. He kicked viciously at my injured foot, and the agony was like a bolt of lightning. The pain left me gasping and weak. My dagger came up and drove at him, and he took a good inch of the blade before it struck bone.
He screamed and exploded into violent action. Tearing loose from my bad hand, he sprang erect, but all thought of hurt or danger was gone from me. I must kill! Kill!
He must die or I must, and I dared not fail and leave Ayesha to him. Throwing myself at him, I stepped for an instant on my injured foot and pain shot through me. He tried to spring back but fell on his back in the fire, and before he could move or rise I fell atop him stabbing and thrusting.
He screamed and screamed again, and then his struggles ceased, and his teeth were bared to the sky, his eyes wide. I fell away from him, nauseated, and crawled away from the fire.
A long time later, when I opened my eyes, Ayesha stood over me.
43
Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it.
I say this, who am Mathurin Kerbouchard, a homeless wanderer upon the earth’s far roads. I speak as one who has known hunger and feast, poverty and riches, the glory of the sword and the humility of the defenseless.
It was without money that I arrived in Constantinople.
Hunger inspires no talent, and carried too far, it deadens the faculties and destroys initiative, and I was hungry, although not yet starving. Women have treated me well, bless their souls, and it has occurred to me that a man need know but two sentences to survive. The first to ask for food, the second to tell a woman he loves her. If he must dispense with one or the other, by all means let it be the first. For surely, if you tell a woman you love her, she will feed you.
At least, such has been my limited experience.
Yet such a solution was beyond me, for my rags lacked gallantry, and rags without firm, exciting flesh beneath them excite little compassion and no passion. A woman who will gather a stray dog into her arms will call the watch if approached by a stray man, unless he is very handsome, but not often even then, for there remains an occasional feminine mind of such a caliber that she might suspect him of more interest in her money than more intimate possibilities.
Now I was footloose in Constantinople, a ragged, penniless vagabond amid the glories of the Byzantine Empire. Around me were wealth, luxury, and decadence. The two former I did not share, but decadence is the one attribute of the very rich to which the poor have equal access.
Decadence is available to all; only with the rich it is better fed, better clothed, better bedded. Cities were built for conquest, and I, a vagabond, must conquer this one with what weapons experience had provided.
To a man without money, for I could not call myself a poor man, the obvious way to riches was theft. Thievery, however, is a crime only for the very ignorant, in which only the most stupid would indulge. There is a crass vulgarity in theft, an indication that one lacks wit, and the penalties far outweigh the possible gain.
To a man in rags all doors are closed. In my present circumstances only the humbler occupations would be open. I, son of Kerbouchard the Corsair, a seafaring man, a swordsman, a merchant, a scholar, a linguist, a physician, and even an alchemist of sorts, had the possibilities of being an acrobat or a magician, but what trade is beyond a man with wit?
Of what use are abilities if they are unknown? To make them known, and myself, was now my problem. My health and physique were now too poor to be an acrobat. As a magician I must fall far below the average in such a city. As a mercenary soldier the way to wealth was too long, and I had a father to find and, once found, to rescue.
Lacking the necessary clothing, I could not be a physician, for a ragged, ill-dressed physician inspires no confidence. A storyteller, perhaps? A weaver of tales? Thus far my flights of fancy had been reserved for the ears of women, for long since I had observed that masculine beauty as an enticer of the female is much overrated. Women are led to the boudoir by the ears. For one who talks well, with a little but not too much wit, it is no problem.
Where women are concerned it is the sound of the voice, the words that are spoken, and the skill with which they are said, especially when combined with a little, but not too much, humility. A few coins, just a few paltry dirhems, these I needed; so I would become a weaver of tales, since most who practiced that skill dressed in rags, anyway. By such means I would inform my listeners, if such there were to be, what manner of man I was.
Ayesha, drawn by some internal magic of her own, had brought me to the edge of a bazaar, and in the shadow of a great old building there was shade, and in the shade, a stone. A stone polished, no doubt, by the posteriors of the idle poor. With the stone came inspiration. Tying Ayesha in the shade where she might poach a few leaves, I seated myself on the stone and looked about at the passersby and the loiterers.