Khaled: A Tale of Arabia by F. Marion Crawford

Author:F. Marion Crawford
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Arabian Peninsula -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2017-02-28T20:25:26+00:00

VIII

Ab­dul­lah ibn Mo­hammed, though a young man, was now the sheikh of a con­sid­er­able tribe which had fre­quently done good ser­vice to the late Sultan, Ze­howah’s father, and which had also borne a prom­in­ent part in the re­cent war. Ab­dul Kerim, whom Al­masta had murdered, had been the sheikh dur­ing his life­time, and if the claims of birth had been justly con­sidered, his son, though a mere boy, should have suc­ceeded him. But Ab­dul­lah had found it easy to usurp the chief place, and in the coun­cil which was held after Ab­dul Kerim’s death he was chosen by ac­clam­a­tion. It chanced, too, that he was not mar­ried at the time when he took Al­masta, for of two wives the one had died of a fever dur­ing the sum­mer, and he had di­vorced the other on ac­count of her un­bear­able tem­per, hav­ing been de­ceived in re­spect of this by her par­ents, who had as­sured him that she was as gentle as a dove and as sub­missive as a lamb. But she had turned out to be as quar­rel­some as a wasp and as un­man­age­able as an un­trained hawk, so he di­vorced her, and the more read­ily be­cause she was not beau­ti­ful and her dower had been in­sig­ni­fic­ant. Al­masta there­fore found that she was her hus­band’s only wife.

She would cer­tainly have killed him, as she had killed Ab­dul Kerim, and, in­deed, the late Sultan, in the hope of be­ing taken back into the palace, but she was pre­ven­ted by the fear of death, for she had seen that Khaled’s threat was not empty and would be ex­ecuted if harm came to Ab­dul­lah after his mar­riage. She ac­cord­ingly set her­self to please him, and first of all she learned to speak the Ar­abic lan­guage, in or­der that she might sing to him in his own tongue and tell him tales of dis­tant coun­tries, which she had learned in her own home.

Ab­dul­lah passed the months of au­tumn and the early winter in the desert, mov­ing about from place to place, as is the cus­tom of the Be­douins, it be­ing his in­ten­tion to reach a north­erly point of Aj­man in the spring, in or­der to fall upon the Per­sian pil­grims and ex­tort a ransom be­fore they entered the ter­rit­ory of Ne­jed. For it would not be law­ful to at­tack them after that, since there was a treaty with the Emir of Bas­rah, al­low­ing the pil­grims a safe and free pas­sage to­wards Mecca, for which the Emir paid yearly a sum of money to the Sultan of Ne­jed.

But Al­masta knew noth­ing of this, for she was wholly ig­nor­ant of the desert; and moreover Ab­dul­lah was a cau­tious man, who held that what­so­ever is to be kept secret must not be uttered aloud, though there be no one within three days’ jour­ney to hear it.

Ab­dul­lah treated her with great con­sid­er­a­tion, not ob­li­ging her to weary her­self over­much with cook­ing and other work of the tents. For he re­joiced in her beauty and in the sweet­ness of her

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