Omar Khayyam - a life (4 page)

With this he tried to wash the face of his milk-brother. After a while the girl knelt at his side and took the cloth from him. Deftly she bathed the dirt from Rahim's head and throat, as if she hoped to please Omar by doing so. Then she arranged the dead man's clothing. Omar thought that he would never have touched a dead Christian.

It seemed to him that there were so many things to do all at once. Nothing must be omitted that was necessary for Rahim.

Late that night the mullah with the gray beard looked at him wearily.

"My son," he said in his dry voice, "even the water of the sacred well of Zemzem must sink into the earth. Life comes from Allah, and to Allah return the souls of the believers upon that day when men's deeds are weighed in the scales of Judgment."

In his mind Omar saw the face of Rahim, the color of clay, lying upon the wet earth. Now Rahim lay in a clean shroud with his feet toward the holy city of Mecca, down there in the dark ground.

The mullah went away, having other burials upon his hands that night, and Omar sat down upon a stone. Yarmak came like a dog and sat by him, rocking gently forward and back. Now that his master was buried, Yarmak seemed satisfied. There was no help for it.

But to Omar, who had lost the foster brother with whom he had grown up, it would be agony to go away from that place by the stone. Here Rahim must lie, washed by the rain, while the grass rose and the wheat was sown and reaped—through all the uncounted years until that day when the souls would rejoin their bodies at the Judgment seat. Behind the curtain of the Invisible, Rahim would wait for that day.

Omar sat, his chin on his hands, until the gray apparition of the dawn. He felt a little relief in his agony of mind, from the exhaustion of the last two days and nights.

"O Rahim," he whispered, "thy body is but a tent wherein the soul abides for a little. Then when the tent is struck, the soul goes forth on its long journey. O Rahim, I shall find thee, upon that journey."

"Aman,"
assented Yarmak. "Peace!"

Within his tent Omar found a candle burning and he blinked at it, until the Roumi girl who had been sleeping among the garments thrown into a corner rose and poured a goblet of wine from a jar.

Omar raised his hand to strike it to the ground. Then he remembered how Rahim had offered him a cup that night they had talked together in the serai on the Nisapur road. He took the goblet and drank it. A warmth crept through his chilled body. The girl filled the goblet again, and again Omar drank. He sighed and threw himself down on the rug, sinking into the stupor of exhaustion.

The captive girl blew out the candle. Seating herself beside him, she watched the dawn lighten the sky. When she could see everything clearly she picked up a bronze mirror and began to comb out her hair, looking reflectively into the mirror. It was not the first time that she had changed masters overnight.

Far down the valley the tent of the Sultan Alp Arslan had been pitched at last.

Turkish amirs thronged the entrance, on both sides of the carpet, straining for a sight of the three men at the head of the carpet. Jafarak, a privileged person, perched himself on a chest from which he could see the three—Romanus Diogenes, the Emperor of the Romans, and the mean little Moslem slave who had found the Emperor lying unconscious on the field and had brought him to the feet of Alp Arslan.

At first the spectators had watched Romanus, still in his armor, forced to kneel before the Sultan. Alp Arslan had set his foot once on the neck of the imperial captive, and then had lifted Romanus to a seat on the cushions at his right.

The listeners waited for the first word to be spoken between the commanders of the East and the West.

"Tell me," Alp Arslan asked casually, "what thou wouldst have done to me had I been brought captive thus before thee."

Romanus raised his head and thought for a moment, when the speech had been interpreted to him.

"I would have dealt with thee harshly," he said.

A smile lightened the dark face of the Sultan. "And what," he demanded, "dost thou expect from my hand?"

The captive Emperor looked at the intent faces of his enemies, and considered. "It may be that thou wilt slay me here, or place me in chains to be carried about thy kingdom. Or thou wilt accept ransom for me."

Alp Arslan found in his heart a liking for this Christian monarch who did not lack courage. He was filled with exultation at his victory, and at having placed his foot upon the neck of a Caesar of Rome.

"Know," he said after a moment, "that I have decided what is to be done with thee."

From his place behind his father, the Lion Cub leaned forward, his hands clenched in his lap. He had not forgotten the prophecy that victory would come to the Moslems and that both the kings would die.

"From thee," Alp Arslan went on, "I shall take ransom, and a yearly tribute from thy people. And I will escort thee back to thy country with honor."

The Lion Cub breathed deep and settled back in his place. If Romanus had been slain here by the scimitar of an executioner, the Lion Cub would have expected the fulfilment of the prediction of a young student of Nisapur.

Omar could not sleep. In spite of the exhaustion of his body, his mind would not be quiet for long. The face of Rahim, smiling that strange smile, came before the eyes of his mind and would not go away. Then Rahim had still been Rahim; but after that he had become a thing like a wooden chest, to be lifted about on the tent floor and carried away. Try as he would, Omar could not keep from thinking of how they had carried Rahim, and how he had been wrapped up, in fold after fold of white cloth.

It was not easy to give orders in Rahim's place. As far back as he could remember, they had shared everything, being in this respect more like twins than ordinary brothers. Rahim had always seen to such things as food and servants and horses, and now, naturally, the men looked to Omar for orders.

It was time to start the journey back to Nisapur. Only the Seljuk Turks would remain in these mountains; already the Arabs and irregulars were on the march homeward, laden with spoil and captives.

When Yarmak and his surviving fellows had struck Omar's tent and packed it on the led horses, Omar saw that each man had large sacks that did not belong to the baggage. They had spent these last days in gathering plunder, and in trading things they did not want. Now they were quite ready to go home with their new riches. But the son of Ibrahim had not so much as a dagger from the battlefield. He did not want anything to remind him of that.

Yarmak had saddled Rahim's black charger, and had made a bundle of his dead master's armor and weapons which he had tied behind the saddle. Omar looked at the black horse, and felt that he could not have it trotting beside him with an empty saddle all the way. On the other hand it must be taken back to Rahim's father.

"Perhaps," suggested Yarmak, "master, we could let the Roumi girl ride the charger. We have no litter for her."

The captive girl had to be taken along. She was Rahim's property and might be sold for a good price in the Nisapur slave market because she was young, with fine, silk-like hair. Omar, who had picked up a good many Greek words in his study of Plato's dialogues at the academy, had managed to find out a little about the girl.

Her name was Zoë, and she had no other because she had always been a slave, in Constantinople. She had been brought on the campaign by an officer who believed, like his Emperor, that the Moslems would be scattered and driven eastward without trouble.

"I will ride the charger," he said. "Give Zoë—give the Roumi girl my horse."

Although she wore a veil and rode behind Omar with the pack animals everyone who passed them on the road knew by her garments and light hair that she was a Christian captive, belonging to the young Khorasani warrior who rode alone and in silence.

It was hard for Omar at the first halting place. The caravanserai was so crowded that they had to set up the tent near a well occupied by the camp of an amir with a large following. The servants did nothing without being told—Omar had to show them where to picket the horses, and to bargain for barley and bread with the amir's men. He did not mind that because it kept him occupied, but when everything was done the memory of Rahim filled his mind.

So he sat upon his sleeping quilt until the fire by the tent pole died to embers. He remembered the wine that had brought forgetfulness for a few hours that first morning, but the wine was all used up and only the cup remained. Omar examined the sack to make sure, and held the silver vessel in his hand. Rahim had drained the cup of life so swiftly, and now he lay in the embrace of death.

Beside him the girl stirred in her sleeping robes, and sighed. Omar bent down and brushed the hair back from her eyes. They were dark and wet. Zoë had been crying to herself, for some reason of her own.

"Eh, what?" he asked gently.

Zoë's lips parted and she smiled. Evidently she did not want him to see her tears. For the first time he wondered what she was thinking about, in this long journey away from her own land. A slave had feelings as well as a sultan, but was not permitted to complain.

When he stroked the hair that tangled about her throat, it gave way softly under his fingers. Zoë glanced up at him curiously. She was no longer crying, and she moved away a little as if to make room for him beside her. The faint pulse in her throat quickened under his touch.

He took her into his arms and drew the covering over both of them, and lay looking up at the tent top from which the glow of the embers was slowly fading. He wondered if the trodden clay and the night wind and Rahim's strange smile would go from his mind now.

The girl stirred against him. When she raised herself to draw the heavy coils of her hair from beneath her shoulders, his lips brushed her throat. The warmth of her body, the scent of her hair soothed him, and then he felt her arms tighten about him. The warmth became a fever that drained the weariness from him and filled him with an intoxication that grew upon him with every motion of the girl.

In Zoë s arms that night he forgot death and the trodden clay, and he slept, breathing quietly, oblivious of the world.