Upon the face of it, no logic could explain her present state. She had arrived at the encampment, arm-borne, as one who suffers the terrifying visions of fever, seeming not to know those who essayed to help her, nor their words, struggling with subdued moans, feeble, aimless motions, as if they had been those who had assaulted her.
Lishabha had cleansed her, treated the few injuries which deserved the name, smoothed her hair, caressed her brow, realizing all the time that her real injuries, invisible, would be a long time healing—if they did not prove fatal, in metaphor or literality.
Fireclaw gathered his implements, packed them in a roll of oiled hide. He retreated to the far side of the camp, another dozen yards away, to spread his cloak and bedroll. He would watch, by turns, with Mochamet and the others. The Helvetian shaman, for some reason or another, they did not take into their precautionary calculations.
Lishabha had demanded her own turn. To her indignant astonishment, she had been rejected by one who knew from experience her capabilities in that regard. Did she believe Mochamet when he asserted that the task he had assigned her was more important, tending to this pampered palace-bred softling? Perhaps she would decide before night was over. At present, it was Fireclaw’s turn to sleep.
“Chayn...Ham chassaanagh?”
Ayesha stirred, opened her eyes. At first they were inward, unfocused. Then, as memory and recognition returned, she rolled over, burying her face against Lishabha’s thigh, and began to sob. Lishabha smoothed her hair again—this kindness had been mechanical at first, until Lishabha realized that something in the girl’s despair had moved her own heart—speaking syllables of comfort until the sobbing died away. Ayesha slept where she was until an hour later, judging by the motion of the stars, when the entire process repeated itself.
She slept again.
Lishabha watched the rain.
Much later—Fireclaw had replaced Schulieman upon watch, been himself replaced by Knife Thrower—when the Princess stirred again, she remained awake after crying herself dry. Lishabha offered her a cup of broth.
Ayesha accepted without enthusiasm, then was reluctant to permit Lishabha to go from her as far as the coal-bed to prepare it. Lishabha, sounding sterner than she felt, insisted. While she stooped beside the fire, she reached into the well of her experience, that which she had learned from life—for the most part under Mochamet’s tutelage—for the right words to heal injuries of the spirit.
Returning to the lean-to with the cup between her fingers in the still-damp cloth, she found a sentence forming itself upon her lips of its own inane accord.
“Charjooh, how do you feel?”
Ayesha’s nose was red, her lips and eyelids swollen. A fist-sized bruise marred one pale cheek; her chin had been scraped. She took a ragged breath, speaking out of a calm Lishabha recognized as less healthy than outright hysteria.
“I have thought about this moment,” the Princess replied, taking the cup, “as I suppose every woman has, imagining what it would feel like to be...” She swallowed, forced herself to finish. “...violated. Limaadaa! Why, in all the visions I have been compelled to suffer, did I not foresee this? Last night—laa, in the name of God, it was just this night—I dreamt a fantasy about stars! It seems a lifetime ago. I had never in truth imagined, after all, how it would make me feel.”
Struggling for an apparent impassivity she did not feel, Lishabha took the cup as the girl placed her face in trembling hands and began crying again. She placed a free, ring-decorated hand of her own upon Ayesha’s shoulder.
“How is it, my Princess, that you feel?” It was important, she knew, to keep the girl talking. The sooner she emptied herself of the experience, the better.
Ayesha looked up, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her nose was running. She wiped it upon a sleeve. “Do not call me that, Lishabha. I am just Ayesha. Old. I feel old.”
Lishabha stifled a small laugh born of sympathy, which would have been misunderstood. “Nanam chanaa chabhgham. I know what you mean. All terrible experiences make one feel like that. I am lucky. I was born old, and have been growing younger all my life.”
Ayesha sniffed back tears, straightened herself, took the cup again, staring through steam arising from its surface, but saying nothing. Lishabha searched for something to say.
“You, too, are lucky.”
These words Lishabha had with care selected, but, even uttering them, she knew a pang of doubt. If she were wrong...if she were wrong, they were but words. It was in any case too late. Swallowing her doubts, Lishabha plowed forward.
“Has your life been forever changed, forever ruined? Chanaa muthachassibh. What happened was unpleasant, also frightening. You knew not what was going to become of you. Manlayagh, no damage was done which will be visible in a few weeks’ time. A normal function was forced upon you which, save in the all-important manner of consent—”
“Do you dare,” Ayesha interrupted in an outraged tone, “trivialize what has happened to me? I have been...I have been...”
She set the cup aside, spilling most of it into the dirt floor of the lean-to, began crying again.
Knowing now that she had done the right thing, and hating herself for it, Lishabha placed a gentle hand upon Ayesha’s bruised cheek. Her rings were cold against Ayesha’s face. “You have been raped. I do not trivialize it, I describe it. I confront it. That is the way—the only way—you are going to survive its having happened.”
“Nanam! Yes! Let us confront it!” Ayesha slapped the jeweled hand away from her face, began to flail her own. “I have learned firsthand a lesson of history! Man is an instinctive, perverted animal, sodomizing his enemy by raping those whom both sides regard as property! To him, coupling is no more than an act of war which in peace he teaches to succeeding male generations with tales and jokes he tells them in saloons!”
In the distance, they heard the muted roll of thunder. Perhaps, Lishabha thought, an argument was just the thing the Princess needed. She seized Ayesha’s hands. “Is that not just like a scholar? A scant few minutes of ‘Woe is me,’ then you begin writing a thesis.” She shook her head. Fine wire twists of gold and silver in her earlobes bobbed and jingled. “I think I liked ‘Woe is me’ better.”
She released Ayesha’s hands. “This is nonsense that you speak, girl. And you have less excuse than I, for you are educated. Even I can see the fact that we speak of it at all refutes this picture you paint of men. If they were brutal out of heritage, were rape instinctive—or even in particular widespread—we would not be sitting here discussing it, for, being products of it, none would carry any gentler inheritance to make discussion possible!”
“But you have seen them for yourself, Lishabha,” Ayesha protested, “strutting, posturing to one another, demonstrating their virility by regaling others of their kind with tales of butchery, child-molestation, rape—”
This time, Lishabha did laugh.
“Maa ghaadaa? Now who trivializes what has happened? There is no such crime as rape, Ayesha, nor any other of the things which you have placed upon your laundry list. There is only one crime, be it perpetrated upon a woman, man, or child: violent assault upon a person against that person’s will. Thank our large male friend over there, with all the muscles—and his sword. They who have transgressed have received such punishment as all such who transgress should receive. She who is innocent and injured—”
Lishabha stopped suddenly, wondering if she had begun to say too much. Then, the decision made, she went on.
“The old one, Woeck, held you to blame. When they brought you back, he said such things never came to pass unless a woman entices a man into it.”
Lishabha gazed across the darkened clearing at the gray lump of blankets which was the old Helvetian priest. Ayesha would not look in that direction, but kept her eyes fixed on the ground.
Lishabha laughed.
“Sedrich-called-Fireclaw threatened to strike the old one’s head off on the spot—that sword of his makes the eeriest whistli
ng noise when he whirls it about. Knife Thrower made an even ghastlier suggestion, and my Lord Mochamet....The Rabbi David calmed them down, then promised to unleash them again upon Oln Woeck did he not desist in future with his moral judgments.”
Rummaging in her pack, she removed a small white cylinder, placed one end in her mouth, lit the other from a twig fetched from the fire. She blew smoke, and regarded the sleeping form of Fireclaw.
“They are not so different from us. Their moral range is greater. The worst of them is worse than a woman could be. The best of them is better.”
“I think,” Ayesha answered, somewhat calmer, “I have heard this asserted before, but of women by men.”
Tapping ashes on the damp ground, Lishabha grinned. “Hmm. Well, I suppose it is bound to look like that to them. We know elsewise.” She offered a puff of her thanpaah to the Princess.
Ayesha refused with an outstretched palm, a shake of her head, and slumped back. “A normal function, you say. I see that even now you contemplate how it would feel with that savage Fireclaw. How could...can you possibly...think about...doing it with him?”
Lishabha gave Ayesha a knowing look. “I do not think that it is I who wonders what he hides beneath his breechclout. As you say, I am property—that of Siti Mochamet al Rotshild. I do a lot more than just ‘do it’ with him. Other things. Mostly because I like it. Some because he does. It gives me pleasure to see him happy, and to know that I am responsible.”
“Do you love him, then?”
Lishabha smiled. “Nanam, although it is not that simple. He found me in a Barcelona slum. He taught me everything I know, almost everything I feel. He gave me a life I would not otherwise have had.”
“So it is a matter,” Ayesha replied, “of gratitude. Of obligation. He teaches you. He feeds you—”
Lishabha took a puff, adding another aroma to the mixture of rain and woodsmoke.
“The important thing to learn about love”—laughed Lishabha—”is that it is complicated, mixed up with a hundred other feelings. Some days I love him because he is gentle, some because he is ferocious. There is, as you say, gratitude and obligation. But...you know I am his bodyguard.”
“Maadaa qulth? Chanaa la chabhgham.”
“You heard aright. He was looking for someone like me. He interrupted a fight in which, untrained and outmatched, I was getting the best of four other urchins, all male, all bigger. He trained me. I watch his back. I saved his life twice within the first year, have saved it countless times since—he has a liking for dangerous places. So maybe he feeds me—loves me—out of gratitude and obligation.”
As rain hissed gently into the coals glowing nearby, Ayesha considered this a moment. “You think he loves you? Did he teach you, then, to...these other things?”
“Not equivalent questions.” Drawing deeply on her thanpaah, she held the smoke a moment before going on. “Nanam, he loves me, as a woman, as a friend, as a companion in arms. I suppose as a daughter, as a man loves that which he has created. Nanam, he taught me ‘other things.’” She laughed. “It takes so little to put a sparkle in his eyes.”
“But he is old.”
Again Lishabha laughed. “My Lord is young enough. I am she who has kept him thus, with...” She moved slender fingers a handspan beneath her navel. “...with...”She brushed the same fingers across her lips. “...with...” She touched her small, firm breasts. “...with...” She turned her hips, one dark playful eye upon Ayesha’s scandalized expression, then converted the fluid motion so that her fingers moved to her right temple. “Most of all, with this.” She smiled, tapping her head.
“Stop it!” cried the Princess, then: “He uses you like a sheep—a whore—a boy!”
“Maadaa thureet? Thus I never worry about losing him to sheep or whores or boys—small chance!” Lishabha observed with satisfaction that she had been right. Scandalized indignation was a vastly more desirable emotion—and more attractive as well—than cowering defeat. And more conducive, too, to the Princess’ swift recovery.
“That is disgusting!” Ayesha shivered. “It is perverted!”
“Laa, it is love, where nothing is withheld.” Lishabha leaned closer to Ayesha, shut her eyes, her inner focus upon a vision she abhorred but which she nevertheless considered in all aspects.
“He could be rocking, bouncing grandchildren upon his knee, letting time murder him.” She inhaled, opened her eyes. “Instead, he is exploring the world with the same ardor he has explored me. I keep him interested. Pismallagh, may he live forever—if he does, then so shall I.”
A faraway flash of lightning illuminated the horizon. Ayesha shook her head violently. “Chanaa la chabhgham! I cannot believe I am hearing this! How could that keep a person alive? I have seen nothing since I came to this place but death and more death!”
“At least you are now argumentative and angry. Is that not better than the way you were? Facts of life, Princess.” Lishabha shrugged. “You may not approve, they may not suit the politics or religion of the day. Laa thaghthaam. They suit me to perfection. The wonderful thing is that the facts do not care, one way or another.”
Lishabha blew a ring of smoke into the night air. It drifted upon the damp breeze and disappeared.
XXXI: The Aspen Grove
“So, when they forgot that they were reminded of, We delivered those who were forbidding wickedness, and We seized the evildoers with evil chastisement for their ungodliness.”—The Koran, Sura VII
At dawn, the Saracen party proceeded with caution along the narrow trail to a ridge-top, where they began climbing downward again into a round-bottomed valley lined with rain-soaked yellow mountain grass.
Here, the novice travelers of the party, Rabbi David Shulieman among them, discovered what the experienced voyageurs had known all along. “As demanding as an uphill march might appear,” he wheezed at Fireclaw who trudged beside him, “downhill is much more difficult!”
“Inviting carelessness and falls.” The warrior laughed, not without sympathy.
“Yes,” David answered.
He removed his spectacles to polish off moisture they collected every few minutes in the steady drizzle. His hair and beard had curled into a thousand tight little ringlets. Then, placing the metal-framed lenses before his eyes again, he cast an envious eye at Fireclaw’s knee-length fringe-topped moccasins, comparing them to the boots he wore.
“And ramming already trail-battered feet into the toes of shoes not well selected for the task we put them to.”
David studied this peculiar, savage man they traveled with. The language he spoke—his native eastern tongue, not that of the even more savage tribesmen who had adopted him—was similar to a number of extinct Old World languages, their speakers one with the dust. In addition, the Helvetian was making rapid progress in the soft-syllabled and sibilant dialect of Arabic favored in the Judaeo-Saracen Empire. He loved to exercise his growing fluency whenever chance arose.
After a period of silence, Fireclaw shifted the enormous sword across his back to a more comfortable position, and waved a metal-tipped arm at the world about them.
“We’ve some good luck in the matter of weather, if not in your choice of footwear....” David knew, in Fireclaw’s view, they owed their present relative safety to rain which had fallen almost since they had entered the mountains. “The prairie tribes greatly fear thunder and lightning—”
“This appears to be universal,” the Saracen scholar offered, thinking of sky-worshiping Mongols of days long past, “with primitive plains-dwellers everywhere.”
Fireclaw grimaced at David’s choice of adjectives, a choice the rabbi had regretted the instant he had uttered it.
“Knife Thrower’s an exception,” the Helvetian answered. With words—gestures filled the gaps in his vocabulary—he explained to the Saracen how he had duplicated boyhood experiments with static electricity for the Comanche war chief, who had seen the connection straightaway between them and the displays which lit the heavens.
David was impressed, with both men. “Yet neither of you can say for certain whether the mountain Utes share this fear?”
Fireclaw shook his head, keeping an eye upon the trail ahead of them, on occasion fingering his dagger, or the grip of the handmade revolver swinging below his left hip.
Polishing his glasses once again, David thought back to the previous night. When Fireclaw had encountered Knife Thrower, patrolling the short trail back from the streambed, the Comanche had guessed the truth of what had happened to Ayesha, but remained quiet, vowing to the Saracens to keep secret what had been done to her.
His good intentions in this regard were in vain.
Next morning, somewhat recovered, Ayesha had, as a duty, related to her worried tutor and to her father’s representative, Mochamet al Rotshild, the entirety of what had happened to her. Conferring over what to tell the others, both considered omitting the rape as an accomplished fact. But it was a small party, and rumors found sustenance among them, fed especially by the cruel and strident moralizings of Oln Woeck. Those there were who felt the old man’s pious blathering must be countered. In due course, something resembling the truth was known by the rest of the expedition.
They then took up with Fireclaw and Knife Thrower the question of whether any point remained to the expedition.
The rabbi’s assiduous scholarship and Mochamet al Rotshild’s worldly experiences, were equally useless. Nor did Fireclaw know anything about the secret civilization whose boundaries they were crossing. Gossip, passed down by generations of Knife Thrower’s people, more resembled theology than geography.
The callous but pragmatic question remained: Had Ayesha been “spoiled” for her diplomatic mission? One individual surprised David by speaking his objections to the manner in which the Princess was being thus regarded.
“This attitude you Saracens seem to share confuses me,” admitted Fireclaw.
It was by this time clear to the Rabbi David Schulieman that, in fact, very little in life confused this remarkable man, the oddest combination he had ever known of bloody-handed ruthlessness, astonishing compassion, and subtle intelligence.