"It's a great opportunity for you," Karim said.

"An opportunity I don't desire."

To his relief, days went by and the Shah didn't summon him again. He felt the need for friends who were not kings and spent much of his free time with Mirdin and Karim.

Karim was settling into the life of a young physician, working at the maristan as he had before, save that now he was paid a small stipend by al-Juzjani for daily examination and care of the surgeon's patients. With more time to himself and a bit more money to spend, he was frequenting the maidans and the brothels. "Come with me," he urged Rob. "I'll bring you to a wh.o.r.e with hair black as a raven's wing and fine as silk."

Rob smiled and shook his head.

"What kind of woman do you want?"

"One with hair red as fire."

Karim grinned at him. "They don't come that way."

"You need wives," Mirdin told them placidly, but neither of them heeded him. Rob turned his energies to his studies. Karim continued his solitary womanizing, and his s.e.xual appet.i.te was becoming a source of merriment to the hospital staff. Knowing his story, Rob was aware that within the beautiful face and the athlete's body was a friendless little boy seeking female love to blot out terrible memories.

Karim ran more than ever now, at the start and end of each day. He trained hard and constantly and not only by running. He taught Rob and Mirdin to use the curved sword of Persia, the scimitar, a heavier weapon than Rob was used to and one requiring strong, supple wrists. Karim made them exercise with a heavy rock in each hand, turning the rocks up and down, before and behind, to make their wrists quick and strong.

Mirdin was not a good athlete and couldn't become a swordsman. But he accepted his clumsiness cheerfully, and he was so endowed with intellectual power it scarcely seemed to matter that he wasn't fierce with a sword.

They saw little of Karim after dark-abruptly, he stopped asking Rob to accompany him to brothels, confiding that he had begun an affair with a married woman and was in love. But with increasing frequency Rob was invited to Mirdin's rooms near the House of Zion Synagogue for the evening meal.

On a chest in Mirdin's home he was amazed to see a checkered board such as he had seen only twice before. "Is it the Shah's Game?"

"Yes. You know it? My family has played it forever."

Mirdin's pieces were wooden, but the game was identical to that Rob had played with Al, save that instead of being intent on swift and b.l.o.o.d.y victory, Mirdin was quick to teach. Before long, under his patient tutelage, Rob began to grasp the fine points.

Homely Mirdin offered him small glimpses of peace. On a warm evening, after a simple meal of Fara's vegetable pilah, he followed Mirdin to wish six-year-old Issachar a good night.

"Abba. Is our Father in Heaven watching me?"

"Yes, Issachar. He sees you always."

"Why cannot I see Him?"

"He is invisible."

The boy had fat brown cheeks and serious eyes. His teeth and jaw already were too large and he would have his father's inelegance, but also his sweetness.

"If He is invisible, how does He know what He looks like?"

Rob grinned. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, he thought. Answer that, O Mirdin, scholar of oral and written law, master of the Shah's Game, philosopher and healer ...

But Mirdin was equal to it. "The Torah tells us He has made man in His own image, after His likeness, and therefore He does but glance at you, my son, and sees Himself." Mirdin kissed the child. "A good night, Issachar."

"A good night, Abba. A good night, Jesse."

"Rest well, Issachar," Rob said, and kissed the boy and followed his friend from the sleeping chamber.

49.

FIVE DAYS TO THE WEST.

A large caravan arrived from Anatolia and a young drover came to the maristan with a basket of dried figs for the Jew named Jesse. The youth was Sadi, eldest son of Dehbid Hafiz, kelonter of Shrz, and the figs were a gift symbolizing his father's love and grat.i.tude for the plague-fighters of Ispahan.

Sadi and Rob sat and drank chai and ate the delectable figs, which were large and meaty, full of crystals of sugar. Sadi had bought them in Midyat from a drover whose camels had carried them from Izmir, across the whole of Turkey. Now he would drive the camels east again, bound for Shrz, and he was caught up in the great adventure of travel and proud when the Dhimmi healer requested that he carry a gift of Ispahan wines to his distinguished father, Dehbid Hafiz.

The caravans were the only source of news, and Rob questioned the youth closely.

There had been no further sign of the plague when the caravan had departed Shrz. Seljuk troops had been sighted once in the mountainous eastern part of Media but they appeared to be a small party and did not attack the caravan (praise be to Allah!). In Ghazna the people were afflicted with a curious itching rash and the caravan master would not stop there lest the drovers lie with the local women and contract the strange disease. In Hamadhn there was no plague but a Christian foreigner had brought a European fever to Islam and the mullahs had forbidden the populace from all contact with the infidel devils.

"What are the signs of this disease?"

Sadi ibn Dehbid demurred, for he was no physician and didn't bother his head with such matters. He knew only that no one save the Christian's daughter would go near him.

"The Christian has a daughter?"

Sadi could not describe the sick man or his daughter but said that Boudi the Camel Trader, who was with the caravan, had seen them both.

Together they sought out the camel trader, a sly-eyed, wizened man who spat red saliva from between teeth blackened from chewing betel nut.

Boudi barely remembered the Christians, he said, but when Rob pressed a coin on him his memory improved until he recalled that he had seen them five days' travel to the west, half a day beyond the town of Datur. The father was middle-aged, with long gray hair and no beard. He had worn foreign clothing black as a mullah's robes. The woman was young and tall and had curious hair a little lighter in color than henna.

Rob looked at him in dismay. "How ill did the European appear?"

Boudi smiled pleasantly. "I do not know, master. III."

"Were there servants?"

"I saw no one attending them."

Doubtless the hirelings had run off, Rob told himself. "Did she appear to have sufficient food?"

"I myself gave her a basket of pulse and three loaves of bread, master."

Now Rob fixed him with a stare that frightened Boudi. "Why did you give her foodstuffs?"

The camel trader shrugged. He turned and rummaged in a sack, and pulled out a knife, hilt first. There were fancier knives to be found in every Persian marketplace but it was the proof, for the last time Rob had seen it, this dagger had swung from the belt of James Geikie Cullen.

He knew if he confided in Karim and Mirdin they would insist on accompanying him, and he wanted to go alone. He left word for them with Yussuf-ul-Gamal. "Tell them I'm called off on a personal matter and will explain on my return," he said to the librarian.

Of others, he told only Jalal.

"Going away for a time? But why?"

"It's important. It involves a woman ..."

"Of course it does," Jalal muttered. The bonesetter was cranky until he found that there were enough apprentices to serve the clinic without discomforting him, and then he nodded.

Rob left next morning. It was a long trip and undue haste would have worked against him, yet he kept the brown gelding moving, for always in his mind was the picture of a woman alone in a foreign wilderness with her sick father.

It was summer weather and the runoff waters of spring already had evaporated under the coppery sun, so that the salty dust of Persia coated him and insinuated itself into his saddle pack. He ate it in his food and drank a thin film of it in his water. Everywhere he saw wildflowers turned brown, but he pa.s.sed people tilling the rocky soil by turning the little moisture to irrigate the vines and date trees, as had been done for thousands of years.

He was grimly purposeful and no one challenged or delayed him, and at dusk of the fourth day he pa.s.sed the town of Datur. Nothing could be done in the dark, but next morning he was riding at sunrise. At midmorning in the tiny village of Gusheh, a merchant accepted his coin, bit it, and then told him everyone knew of the Christians. They were in a house off Ahmad's wadi, a short ride due west.

The wadi eluded him but he came upon two goatherds, an old man and a boy. At his question about the whereabouts of Christians, the old man spat.

Rob drew his weapon. He had an almost-forgotten ugliness in him. The old man could sense it and, with his eyes on the broadsword, he raised his arm and pointed.

Rob rode in that direction. When he was out of range, the younger goatherd put a stone in his sling and launched it. He could hear it rattling in the rocks behind him.

He came upon the wadi suddenly. The old riverbed was mostly dry but had been flooded earlier in the season, for in shady places there was still green growth. He followed it a good way before he saw the little house built of mud and stone. She was standing outside boiling a wash and when she saw him she sprang away like a wild thing, into the house. By the time he was off his horse, she had dragged something heavy against the door.

"Mary."

"Is it you?"

"Yes."

There was a silence, then a grating sound as she moved the rock. The door opened a crack, and then wider.

He realized she had never seen him in the beard or the Persian garb, although the leather Jew's hat was the one she knew.

She was holding her father's sword. The ordeal was in her face, which was thin, making her eyes and the large cheekbones and long thin nose all the more prominent. There were blisters on her lips, which he recalled happened to her when she was exhausted. Her cheeks were sooty except for two lines washed by tears from the smoky fire. But she blinked and he could see her become as sensible as he remembered.

"Please. Will you help him?" she said, and led Rob quickly into the house.

His heart sank when he saw James Cullen. He didn't need to take the sheepman's hands to know he was dying. She must have known too, but she looked at him as though she expected him to heal her father with a touch.

There hung over the house the fetid stink of Cullen's insides.

"He has had the flux?"

She nodded wearily and recited the details in a flat voice. The fever had begun weeks before with vomiting and a terrible pain in the right side of his abdomen. Mary had nursed him carefully. After a time his temperature had subsided and to her great relief he had begun to get well. For several weeks he had made steady gains and was almost recovered, and then the symptoms had recurred, this time with even greater severity.

Cullen's face appeared pale and sunken, and his eyes dull. His pulse was barely perceptible. He was racked with alternating fever and chills, and had both diarrhea and vomiting.

"The servants thought it was the plague. They ran away," she said.

"No. Not the plague." The vomitus wasn't black and there were no buboes. Small consolation. His abdomen had hardened on the right side until it was boardlike. When Rob pressed on it, Cullen-although he appeared to be lost in the deep softness of coma-screamed.

Rob knew what it was. The last time he had seen it, he had juggled and sang so a little boy could die without fright.

"A distemper of the large intestine. Sometimes they call it the side sickness. It is a poison that began in his gut and has spread through his body."

"What has caused it?"

He shook his head. "Perhaps the bowel has become kinked or there is an obstruction." They both recognized the hopelessness of his ignorance.

He worked hard over James Cullen, trying anything that might possibly help. He gave enemas of milky chamomile tea and when they didn't do anything he administered doses of rhubarb and salts. He applied hot packs to the abdomen, but by then he knew it was no use.

He stayed next to the Scot's bed. He would have sent Mary into the next room to get some of the rest she had denied herself, but he knew the end was near and reasoned she would have plenty of time to rest later.

In the middle of the night Cullen just gave a little leap, a small start.

"It's all right, Da," Mary whispered, rubbing his hands, and there was a slipping away, so quiet and easy that for a little while neither she nor Rob knew that her father was no longer alive.

She had given up shaving him a few days before he died and there was gray beard to be sc.r.a.ped from his face. Rob combed his hair and held the body in his arms while she washed it, dry-eyed. "I am glad to do this. I wasn't allowed to help with my mother," she said.

Cullen had a long scar on the right thigh. "He got that chasing a wild boar into the brush, when I was eleven. He had to spend the winter in the house. We made a creche together for Yuletide and it was then I came to know him."

After her father had been prepared, Rob carried more water from the brook and heated it on the fire. While she bathed he dug a grave, which proved devilishly hard, for the soil was mostly stone and he hadn't a proper tool. In the end he used Cullen's sword and a stout sharpened branch for prying, and his bare hands. When the grave was ready, he fashioned a rood of two sticks lashed together with the dead man's belt.

She wore the black dress in which he had first seen her. He carried Cullen in a winding sheet that was a wool blanket they had brought from their home, so beautiful and warm he regretted placing it in the grave.

It required a Holy Ma.s.s of Requiem and he couldn't even speak a proper burial prayer, not trusting himself to get the Latin right. But a psalm that had been one of Mam's came to mind.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

He closed the grave and fixed the cross. When he walked away she remained kneeling, her eyes closed and her lips moving with words only her own mind could hear.

He gave her time to be alone in the house. She had told him about turning loose their two horses to forage for themselves on the thin growth in the wadi, and he rode out to find the animals.

He saw they had built a pen with a thornbush fence. Inside he found the bones of four sheep, probably killed by animals and eaten. Doubtless Cullen had bought many more sheep that had been stolen by humans.

Crazy Scot! He never could have brought a flock all the way to Scotland. And now he would not bring himself home either, and his daughter was left alone in an unfriendly land.