FTER sunset when the heat began to pass from the baked streets of Aleppo, the light and tumult of the festival arose and swelled through all the quarters of the guilds, even to the gate, el Nasr, formerly the Gate of the Jews but named otherwise by Saladin the Great.
The flickering lamp against the iron fretwork of the portal—the lamp kept lighted since the day of the prophet Elisha—vied with the colored lanterns of a puppet show before which lean Arabs and stout Osmanlis stood gravely, bubbling, however, with inward mirth.
A party of saddlers assembled in the faya, the cleared space just within the gate, sweating under their sugar-loaf hats and tiger skins and the burden of a float manned by several agile buffoons, who cracked jokes with the half-dozen janizaries on guard at the post.
Other lamps appeared on the balconies of the nearest houses, where veiled women sat, and occasionally a shrill voice rose over the monotonous tinkling of a guitar.
Nimble-footed urchins scurried about in the throng, wielding pig bladders inflated and tied to sticks, casting wary glances when a silence fell at the bulk of the Wolf’s Ear, which, apart from the merry-making, showed black as a bat’s wing against the glowing sky over the hills. But Hassan, the Arab was not among them.
Hassan came limping toward the gate in bedraggled garments, snuffling and tearing at his hair. Behind him staggered a slender figure, veiled. The throng gave back as the two neared the gate and the child’s cry could be heard.
“’Way for him who goes to the mercy of Allah! Riwan hath opened the gate of mercy to this one. Ai-a!”
He tugged valiantly at the rope which seemed to drag the figure of the leper along. Shrewdly enough, Hassan, on seeing that the faya was alight and crowded, had abandoned the idea of secrecy and made outcry sufficient for a half-dozen deaths. Moreover be did not make the mistake of asking that the portal be opened. But he edged closer to the janizaries who drew back with oaths.
“Child of misfortune. Cover the fire of disease with the water of solitude.”
“Ai-a! I am his son!”
“A lie escaped thy tongue.” They began to curse the weeping boy and his ill-omened familiar. “You are the son of all stupidity.”
“I know not where to go.”
“Allah!” One of the maskers spoke up feelingly. “Instruct the boy in what he should do. The leper is far gone: let him go out to the burial place of the unclean.”
Here Hassan began to wail the louder, and the crowd began to revile the guards who did not open the gate.
“It is forbidden!” growled the one in command.
“So also is a dying leper forbidden within the city.”
“This may be the Frank on whose capture is the price of ten slave girls.”
“O pack-saddle of an ass! The warrior Frank was tall as a spear; this one is like an ape.”
The janizary hesitated, and for a moment Michael feared that Hassan might betray him; but the boy remembered very well that the cavalier had a simitar under his cloak, and, besides he had heard his real father swear an oath on the Koran. That was binding on Hassan as well.
“He can not speak,” Hassan forestalled the soldier’s intention of questioning the supposed leper. “Lift the veil and you will see how his tongue is rotted away, and the bone sticks through his nose.”
The horrors of the lepers’ well were still vivid in Hassan’s mind, and his voice shook. When Michael took it upon himself to make some uncouth noises the janizary drew back quickly.
“Darisi bashine—the grain may have been reaped by thee! Go, the two of you! Open the gate to them!”
“Where shall we go?” whined Hassan.
“Mashallah! Where but to the burial hill yonder—behold the grove of pistachio trees against the sky-line.”
So the two slender figures passed under the flickering lamp of Elisha, out into the void of darkness, and the hub-bub at the gate resumed its even key. It was a weary climb for the tired Michael, up the path to the shrines and stones of the cemetery, and for some time they stumbled around, feeling their way toward the blotch of the grove.
Here Hassan gave a real yell of alarm and the skin prickled on Michael’s back. From the deeper gloom ahead of them issued the call of animals and they heard the whining of panthers, the grunting of camels and the whirr of wings. Hassan, knowing that no beasts larger than jackals were in the thickets, started to flee and the rope pulled his companion headlong.
Perforce, they both halted, and the boy whimpered when a muffled screech sounded from a tree almost overhead; but Michael remembered the Cossacks’ trick of mimicking animal calls and cried Ayub’s name softly.