Before I could open my mouth to speak there came a frantic roar, and a great, bearded booby of a man came rushing upon me, shouting and expostulating. “Away! Be gone, vagabond! Do you not know that you have taken the seat of Abdullah, the storyteller?” He loomed over me, his beard quivering with rage, his eyes bulging, his vast stomach agitated.
“I do not doubt,” I replied coolly, “that others have taken your seat, but I am not one of them. If it is this stone to which you refer, I found it unoccupied. Now, Father of Vermin, Son of Iniquity, begone! I am about to regale these gentlemen”—my gesture included the growing crowd of amused bystanders—”with the harrowing tale of a thief and the daughter of a sultan, a thief who crept into her bedchamber.”
“What?” He fairly screamed. “Nay! None shall tell stories upon this spot but Abdullah! Away, or I shall have out my sword!”
“Insect! You are too clumsy to hold a sword and too fat in the belly to see its point!”
The fat graybeard grasped his sword hilt threateningly. “Away! Or I shall have out thy heart! Draw your sword!”
“My mind is my sword,” I replied, “and if you linger you shall feel its edge.”
A crowd had gathered, eager as always to enjoy any argument or scuffle, and from their expressions they were pleased to see the pompous old storyteller getting the worst of it. My eyes swept the crowd. Beggars and loiterers, but a few shopkeepers and artisans, also.
“What stories can you tell?” I scoffed. “You, who have done nothing but polish this stone with your fat behind? And I? What sea has not known my ship? What road has not left its dust upon my feet?”
He blustered and ranted and grasped his sword again, glaring wildly.
“Draw the sword,” I invited, “and I shall spank you with your own blade, or pluck your beard, hair by hair!
“Look upon him!” I gestured toward the huge stomach. “Is this bloated thing a teller of tales, or a concealer of wealth? It has been said that Abdullah the storyteller is really Abdullah the Tale-Bearer, receiving rewards for information.”
Leaning toward the crowd, with a wink to show I was not serious, I said, “Do you think that monstrous swelling is a stomach? If you do, you are fools. It is a huge sack in which he carries his wealth!”
Pointing at the huge stomach, I said, “I wonder how much wealth he conceals in that huge sack? Shall we open it and see?”
“No!” Abdullah shouted. “This man is a—!” Drawing my dagger, I tested its edge with my thumb. “Come! Let us open this bag to see if I am mistaken or not. If I am wrong”—I threw my palms wide—”I will admit my mistake and apologize.
“Perhaps,” I said deprecatingly, “it is only wind! But let us see. Come, Abdullah! A fair test! Let us open the bag!” I glanced around at the crowd. “I will wager this bag is filled with coins! Who will take my wager?”
The crowd joined in, amused at Abdullah’s angry astonishment, an astonishment rapidly changing to protest and the beginnings of fear. A huge-shouldered man with an exposed, hairy chest pushed through the crowd. “I wager it is nothing but wind! There are no coins there! I accept your challenge! Open it up!”
“Come, Abdullah, you are a sportsman! Help us to settle our wager!” I reached for his sash with my left hand, the dagger in my right.
He sprang back with amazing agility for such a huge man, but in so doing, he stumbled and fell into a pile of camel dung. “Come!” I protested. “Do not hide down there! I shall have your sack open in an instant!”
So saying, I grasped him by the beard, a deadly insult in any Moslem country, and held the point of my dagger at his fat belly. Turning my hand, I struck him lightly in the belly with the fist that held the knife. “Here?” I asked the crowd. “Or shall we open it here?” And I struck him lightly in the side.
“Try it there!” The big-shouldered man pointed with a toe at a spot just below the wide sash. “Perfect!” Releasing my grip upon his beard, I lifted the dagger. “Now—!”
He shot from under my dagger like an eel from a greased hand, lunged to his feet, half fell against the building, and then fled, followed by the laughter of the crowd.
Some of the people began to drift off, but many remained. “There!” A Greek pointed to the rock. “You have dethroned the king, do you take his place and tell us a story!”
This Greek was a slender, graceful man in a rich semicircular cloak of maroon, decorated at the collar and lower hem with a richly jeweled band of embroidery. The jewels were pearls and garnets. Under it was a tunic that came almost to the knees. His legs were cross-gartered.
He gestured to Ayesha. “Your mare is of the blood. Such a mare would be the pride of a king.”
“There are kings and kings,” I said, “and the mare is mine.”
From his sash he took a coin and tossed it to me with a careless gesture. It winked gold in the sunlight as I took it deftly from the air. “Come, Teller of Tales, let us hear what you can do.”
Bowing low, I spoke mockingly. “O Mighty One! What is your desire? Would you have a tale of the Caliph of Baghdad? Or from the siege of Troy? A reading from Aristophanes? From Firdausi? Or would you hear of far seas and lands unknown to the Byzantines?”
“Can there be such?” He lifted a supercilious eyebrow. “Byzantium is the center of the world!”
“Ah … ?”
“You doubt it, vagabond?”
“I was remembering Rome, Carthage, Babylon, Nineveh … each in its time the center of the world, all ruins now.”
He was amused. “Do you imagine this city will be as those? You jest.”
“Had I asked in any of those cities, would anyone have believed they someday would lie in ruins? Each age is an age that is passing, and cities, my friend, are transitory things. Each is born from the dust; each matures, grows older, then it fades and dies. A passing traveler looks at a mound of sand and broken stones and asks ‘What was here?’ and his answer is only an echo or a wind drifting sand.”
Bowing again I said gently, “Perhaps your city will draw new life from the steppes, new blood.” I looked into his eyes and said, “Perhaps the blood here is thinning now, and perfume appreciated more than sweat.”
“You spoke of Troy? What know you of Troy?”
“Perhaps no more than Virgil knew, or Homer. Yet perhaps something more, for I myself have pulled an oar in a galley.”
“A slave? I suspected it.”
“Are we not all slaves, occasionally? To custom? To a situation? To an idea? Who among us is truly free, Byzantine? Yes, I have been a slave, but other things also, and a sailor upon Homer’s wine dark seas, as well as those unknown to Byzantines.”
“That again. What seas?”
“Have you read Pytheas? Or Scylax? Eudoxus? I have sailed seas Pytheas sailed. Shall I speak of them?”
“We would be diverted.” The Byzantine did not like me. “Tell us, vagabond, and if the tale be good you shall have another coin.”
“Know then”—I crossed my legs upon the polished stone—”that far to the west a cold finger of land thrusts into the dark waters of the sea called Atlantic. Strange and rockbound is that coast, and along its shores live a hardy folk who from ancient times have taken their living from the sea. From a time beyond memory they have quested far a-sea in search of fish.
“Know then, Byzantine, that long ago these men built great, oak-hulled ships that towered above the galleys of Rome; great ships they were with leathern sails and no oars. Within these ships men sailed to far lands, breasting the cold green seas to follow the trail of the great gray geese, which each year fly westward over colder and colder waters.
“They sailed to Iceland, Greenland, even to the shores beyond.”
“Beyond?”
“There are always the shores beyond, for this have the gods given to men: that we shall always have those farther shores, always a dream to follow, always a sea for questing. For in this only is man great, that he must seek what lies beyond the horizons, and there is an infinity of horizons that lie ever waiting. Only in seeking is man important, seeking for answers, and in the shadow he leaves upon the land.”
“Shadow?”
“Man in himself is small, but his Parthenons, his pyramids, his St. Sophias, in these he conceives greatly and leaves the shadow of his passing upon the land.”