Glory and the Lightning (20 page)

For the first time Aspasia noticed small tricklings of blood on the children’s round thighs. She put her hands to her cheeks and shuddered. The slaves, seeing her gaze, wiped away the blood indifferently, then smeared unguents on the parts. The children winced and whimpered, then ran off to play.

Aspasia turned to the four wives of Taliph. “Are not your maternal hearts in revolt against this desecration and deflowering and torture of children? Is it not abominable to you, you who are mothers of children, yourselves?”

They looked at her with fresh derision and wonder. “Is this not for what a woman was born, to give pleasure to men?” Thus spoke the oldest wife.

Then Aspasia realized fully, and for the first time, that the eastern concept of women was accepted by females, not denied, not rebelled against, but serenely recognized as their fate, against which it was unbelievable to protest, unthinkable to revolt.

The oldest wife, who did not detest Aspasia as much as the others did, said to her almost gently, “Why would you destroy our happiness?”

Aspasia made a wide gesture with her white arms. “Is this happiness, to you?”

“Yes,” said the wife. “What more could be given? Alas for you, poor foreign woman, your mind is beset by turbulent demons.”

“I will protest this monstrous torture of little ones to my lord, tonight, and remove them from this noxious harem,” said Aspasia, and left the room, her heart thudding with anger and sickness. She was followed by the high tinkling laughter of the women, and she felt unclean.

CHAPTER 11

Aspasia had been summoned for this night to attend a banquet given by Al Taliph for some illustrious guests. She was bathed and anointed and perfumed by her slaves, her long glistening hair brushed with fragrant lotions. Seething with rebellion and horror at what she had learned today in the harem she refused to wear eastern garments, and chose a white Greek tunic bordered with silver, and a full toga of the finest Egyptian linen the color of a faint hyacinth petal. She dressed her hair herself, binding it up in Greek fashion with ribbons of silver, and the tunic and toga revealed her white neck which was embraced by pearls. She put no armlets on her arms nor rings upon her fingers. She would not use more color upon her rosy lips nor cheeks. When she stood up before her polished mirror she was as untouched as Athene Parthenos, the virgin goddess of wisdom, and the slaves were intimidated. Her aspect was austere and remote. Her brown eyes had dangerous glints in them. She intended to rebuke Al Taliph in every gesture and intonation of her voice. She would confront him with western principles and her abhorrences, and, in his bed, she would reproach him coldly. Though she was supposed to conceal her hair under a light veil she now rejected it. She was a woman of learning and consequence and she was again determined so to impress Al Taliph. She was his companion and not a compliant slave, concubine or wife. She could leave him at her will. She considered the wealth he had given her. With sickness in her heart, she reflected on leaving him, and almost wept.

She decided to recline upon a divan in her chamber to rest and compose her mind before appearing in the dining hall. For once the sound of wind and tree and the scent of the gardens and the cries of the birds did not calm her. They were a hot discord, mocking. She understood fully now that eastern women had no more regard for human life than did their lords, or perhaps even less. The fate of those little girls was no more deplored than the fate of a fly or a locust or a rat.

She began to doze in the languid heat of the day despite herself. She suddenly started awake at a touch on her shoulder. A female slave said to her, “Lady, the lord Al Taliph wishes to see you at once in his chamber.”

This was most unusual. He never desired to see her this early. She rose, arranged her garments and went to the satrap’s chamber. The halls were unusually quiet, and she saw no one and heard nothing but the far sound of slaves singing and strumming on musical instruments.

A eunuch stood at the entrance to the chamber and he stared at her and then with insolent slowness he opened the door. She entered, bowing as customary. Al Taliph, whose chamber was royal and filled with treasures and perfumes, sat at a distance on a divan. He was splendidly clad in scarlet trousers and a silk shirt as white as snow and a vest of blue woven with gems. His turbaned head was majestic, his swarthy face unreadable. His whole posture was contained yet alert, as a panther, lying in shade, is alert. He did not respond to Aspasia’s greeting.

He merely observed her without expression. Then for the first time she saw Kurda near him, Kurda with a whip in his hand, Kurda gloating and grinning, his fat jowls gleaming.

“Lord,” said Aspasia, her first start at the presence of Kurda subsiding.

“Stand before me,” said Al Taliph in a voice she had never heard from him before. It was not angry or emotional nor raised. It was merely indifferent, as one who speaks to a slave. Aspasia halted. Was this cold and remote man the man who had held her in his arms and kissed her hands and called her his lily of the Shalimar, his rose of India, his moonlit blossom? For the first time she felt a thrill of apprehension and dismay. She glanced at Kurda again, and saw his hateful triumph. She raised her head proudly, and waited. Al Taliph continued to regard her as if she were a slave beyond his notice who had finally intruded her presence impertinently upon him.

“I have indulged you,” he said. “I have heard for some time that you have been vexing the women of my household with wild exhortations and fulminations against authority and the customs of our country. I did not protest. I even thought you would amuse them or awaken them to some liveliness that might entertain me. But they have finally appealed to me to bar you from their presence as a disturbing and unpleasant trespass. You have, they say, attempted to incite them against my pleasure and my comfort. They can no longer endure your blatant western barbarities, and from them I have now delivered my women. Never again must you visit them unless you can control your tongue and be one with them.”

Aspasia forgot her fear and her face colored deeply. “I am no barbarian, lord. I am a free woman, not a slave, not an unlettered concubine, not a fat and mindless wife whose sole joy is in eating and languishing on cushions and serving you at your will.”

He inclined his head. “What are you?” he asked.

She felt her heart jump. “I am your companion, at your pleasure, to converse with you, at your will. I am freeborn, and have been educated, and my mind has been admired.”

He lifted the lid of a box of sweetmeats, drew out a honeyed date and ate it slowly, watching her. Then he said, “What are these things to me, you bought woman of Miletus? I paid an enormous price to your mistress, Thargelia, for the alleged delights of your company. You no longer please me.”

She was suddenly sick and dazed and something enormously sentient in her heart quailed. She felt tears in her eyes. But she lifted her head proudly. “Then,” she said, “I will depart and no longer fatigue you with my presence nor bore you with my disputations. If you paid an enormous price for me I will return it.”

“From the gifts I gave you,” he said, in that same low and terrible voice.

She was silent. She felt as if she were dying both of shame and something else she could not comprehend.

“You are not even young any longer,” he continued. “You are eighteen years old. I dismissed my Narcissa, and she was younger than you, seventeen, but she had become too old for me. Why, then, do I suffer you, the disturber of my peace, the turmoil of my women, the disorder of my household?”

Kurda gave a muffled chuckle of joy and victory, and Aspasia heard but did not look at him. The whole intensity of her eyes was fixed on Al Taliph, as she stood before him like a white goddess, the color gone from her lips and cheeks.

“If I did these things which displease you, lord,” she said, “it was because I could no longer bear to see my sex degraded, my womanhood shamed, my very existence made less than the existence of a dog.”

He raised his sharp black eyebrows. “I have done so to you?”

“No,” she said. “But you have done this to the women of your harem, and in their ignominy I have seen my own, however kind you have been to me.”

He said, very slowly, as if with distaste, “You have learned that women are not considered truly human in civilized countries. Yet, you have set your face against this absolute truth. Are you not presumptuous, because I indulged you? You have not been treated in this house like a woman of the harem. I have proffered you honors which are unbelievable in my country; I have accepted you almost as an equal. For that you have not been grateful. You have tried to incite rebellion in my house, among creatures less valuable than a good horse.”

“Some are mothers of your children!” cried Aspasia, goaded at the thought. “Or are your children less than the dust also, because they proceeded from ‘a good horse’ or a dog?”

“Your father considered you less worthy to live than a donkey,” said Al Taliph. “Your mother rescued you and gave you to Thargelia; otherwise you would have perished as an infant. Are your men of more compassion and gentleness than I?”

At this, Aspasia was silent for a moment. Finally she said, “If there was one thing for which I was born it is to elevate the stature of my sisters, and to deliver them from dishonor, to make them recognize that they are human also, with human prerogatives. Twice that was so, under the laws of Solon, and in the Homeric period. It is said that the women of Israel are honored by their men and respected by their sons.”

“You are indeed learned—in the wrong things,” said Al Taliph and now he smiled and the smile was more threatening than his voice. “You are my companion, you say—my bought companion. Do you not know that in the eyes of our laws you are only an animal? Yet, if you wish, I will have pity and release you, and you may go where you will. But without the gifts I have given you.”

Aspasia was suddenly reminded of what Thargelia had threatened her with nearly four years ago, and she was filled with such despair that she instantly thought of suicide. There was no other deliverance. It was evident to her now that Al Taliph had wearied of her, though only two nights ago he had actually kissed one of the white arches of her feet, and, in passion, had declared that she was the moon of his delight and dearer to his heart than all his possessions and his position. But what a man swore in lust, Thargelia had taught her maidens, was not to be taken seriously, but only exploited at that moment before desire had become cool, or before it was satisfied.

Part of her mind contemplated her desperate condition but her heart was crushed with misery and longing and her white lips parted as if in an agony. She said, “Do with me what you will. It is no longer of significance to me.”

He studied her as if probing her soul. He idly played with the golden tassel of his girdle. At last he said, “I have heard that you pronounced some wild words upon discovering the women I have designated as a gift for my friend from Damascus tonight.”

“They are infants, not women!” she cried.

“They are animals,” he replied. “Would you have demurred so at a gift of twin lambs or a young colt?”

“They are human,” she said.

He shrugged. “I have not discerned it. Aspasia, you have known for a long time that in the east human life is very cheap; it is worthless. It is not of any importance unless it is well-born, and even then, if female, it is not considered of any consequence. But an Arabian steed—ah, there is beauty and value. There is something admirable and to be cherished.”

“Zoroaster did not come to animals, but to men,” she said, becoming more broken by the moment. “Mithras, also.”

“Let us not quibble,” said Al Taliph, closing his eyes for a weary moment. “They came to men. They did not come to women, for women, in the east, have never been considered to have souls.”

Kurda thought with hot impatience, Why does he even converse with this creature, as if she possessed a mind and an intellect?

Aspasia sighed with brokenhearted exhaustion. She repeated, “Do with me as you will.”

“That I intend,” he answered and held out his hand to Kurda. The eunuch responded swiftly and gave Al Taliph the whip he held. Al Taliph took it and idly slapped his knee with it and it made a sharp and crackling noise in the room. Aspasia could not believe what she saw. She glanced at Kurda with an appalled look and started.

“No,” said Al Taliph, “I do not intend Kurda to flog you though for less I would command him to flog even my favorite wife. I do not intend for him to witness your punishment either. Kurda, leave us.”

The eunuch was bitterly disappointed. He wanted to see this final crushing of the foreign creature, her absolute humiliation. He hesitated. Al Taliph raised his voice and said emphatically, “Begone, slave.” Kurda bowed, and backed away and left the room and slowly closed the door behind him. Aspasia drew a deep and sobbing breath, seeing to the last his taunting and hating face.

Al Taliph rose and loomed above her. He said, “Remove your garments to your waist.”

Aspasia glanced with terror at the thin but lethal whip. Never had she been struck before except once when receiving a mild slap from the impatient Thargelia. Despite her efforts her flesh quailed with mingled dread and shame. She looked up into Al Taliph’s face for some sign of mercy, but there was none. It was incredible to her that those metallic lips had lain upon her own, that that hand had caressed her breast and fondled her body and given her delight. It was this incredulity rather than pride which held her still and mute.

With an oath he seized her hair with one hand and with the other, which held the whip, he stripped and tore the tunic and toga from her shoulders and forced her to her knees. He flung her forward so that she lay prone. But instantly she raised herself to her knees and clasped her hands to her breast and lifted her head in silent repudiation.

“As you will,” he said. “It will be your last decision in this house.”

He lifted the whip and it sang through the air and struck her across her shoulders and then her back. It was as if a hot knife had seared her. But she did not tremble; she did not utter a sound. She pressed her lips together and stared into the distance. The whip lifted and fell, whistling, and each stroke was of renewed fire and ferocity. Pain almost overwhelmed her; her tender white flesh quivered but did not shrink. Her hands protected her breasts from the curling weapon, but the sides of her palms were scorched. Then her whole back was in flames, in torment almost more than she could endure. Still the lash rose and fell with a steady hissing, and it was the only sound in the chamber. She did not cry, attempt to escape, or moan. She was like a marble image receiving blows it could not feel. Once she thought she would faint, but from that last indignity she held herself, nor did she groan for mercy.