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Updated: May 2, 2025
Here again in the Palace square were Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour as of silver and gold, drawn up as she had seen them drawn then, to be reviewed by their overlord. She swept swiftly through the streets and bazaars on her mission to Nahoum. "Lady Eglington" had asked for an interview, and Nahoum had granted it without delay.
Lacey had eased the Prince Pasha's immediate and pressing financial needs and, "Allah be praised!" Poor human nature backsheesh to a Prince regnant! "Effendina," he said presently, "thou didst speak of Harrik. One there was who saved thee then " "Zaida!" A change passed over Kaid's face. "Speak! Thou hast news of her? She is gone?"
As the door opened, and Nahoum disappeared leisurely and composedly, David caught a glimpse of a guard of armed Nubians in leopard-skins filed against the white wall of the other room. "What is thy intention towards Nahoum, Effendina?" David asked presently. Kaid's voice was impatient.
Wilt thou desert it?" "The West lured me by things that seemed. Now I know things as they are." "They will lure thee again to-morrow," said David firmly, but with a weight on his spirit. His eyes sought and held Kaid's. "It is too late to go back; we must go forward or we shall lose the Soudan, and a Mahdi and his men will be in Cairo in ten years." For an instant Kaid was startled.
"By Harrik's death I am free, a slave no longer. O my lord, where I go bounty and famine are the same." Kaid took a step forward. "Let me see thy face," he said, something strange in her tone moving him with awe. She lowered her veil and looked him in the eyes. Her wan beauty smote him, conquered him, the exquisite pain in her face filled Kaid's eyes with foreboding, and pierced his heart.
Into Nahoum's mind there flashed the words of an Arab teacher, "There is no refuge from God but God Himself," and he found himself blindly wondering, even as he felt Kaid's hand upon his beard and listened to the honeyed words, what manner of death was now preparing for him, and what death of his own contriving should intervene.
With his eye meeting Kaid's again, after a low salaam, Nahoum made answer: "I would that the lance of my fame might sheathe itself in the breasts of thy enemies, Effendina." "Thy tongue does that office well," was the reply. Once more Kaid laid a gentle hand upon Nahoum's beard.
Her heart had remembrance of thee. Her foster-brother Mahommed Hassan is my servant. Him she told, and Mahommed laid the matter before me this morning. Here is a sign by which thee will remember her, so she said. Zaida she was called here." He handed over an amulet which had one red gem in the centre. Kaid's face had set into fierce resolution, but as he took the amulet his eyes softened. "Zaida.
Money will be needed, and sufficient will not be at thy hand-not till new ledgers be opened, new balances struck." He turned to Hylda quietly, and with a continued air of innocence said: "Shall it not be so-madame? Thou, I doubt not, are of his kin. It would seem so, though I ask pardon if it be not so wilt thou not urge his Excellency to restore me to Kaid's favour?
"It is in my hand, then, to give or to withhold, to make or to break?" Kaid chuckled to have this tribute, as he thought, from a Christian, who did not blink at Oriental facts, and was honest. David bowed his head to Kaid's words. "Then if it be my hand that lifts up or casts down, that rewards or that punishes, shall my arm not stretch into the darkest corner of Egypt to bring forth a traitor?
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