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Updated: May 25, 2025
'If there is no question of marriage, of what is there question in this company? asked El Safy. 'Let me tell you that two questions only concern the Old Man of Musse. Jehane, who had stood pouting, with a very high head, throughout this little colloquy, said nothing; but now she allowed El Safy his way. So she was dressed.
When all was done she turned to one of her women and demanded her baby. El Safy, to Milo's surprise, made no demur. Then they put her in a gold cage on a mule's back, and so let her down by a steep path into the region of birds and flowering trees. There was very little conversation, except when the abbot hit his foot against a rock.
What immediately followed was due to the insistence of El Safy, who said that if Jehane was not suitably attired and veiled she would fail of her mission. Jehane did not like this. 'It is not the custom of our women to be veiled, El Safy, she said, 'except at the hour when they are to be married. 'And it is not the custom of our men, replied the Assassin, 'to choose unveiled women.
The Old Man murmured to the roof, scarcely moving his lips; El Safy answered by rote, not moving any other muscles but his jaw's. As for the Assassins, they stayed squat against the walls, as if they had been dead men, buried sitting. At a sign from El Safy the abbot with veiled Jehane came down the hail, and stood before the white spectre on his throne. Jehane saw that this was really a man.
Our Mohammedan friends were there; the eldest called upon me and was exceedingly civil, besides being to a certain extent useful. For the hire of a shilling and two cakes of Cavendish he found me eggs in a village some three miles off, and he ended by writing me a 'safy, which would bring me good luck in all my undertakings.
But I recommend to these priests the expediency of first finding El Safy. As this was to be their guide up Lebanon, those priests agreed. El Safy also agreed, when they had him. From the haven at Acre to the bill of Tortosa is two days' sailing with a fair wind. Thence, climbing the mountains, you reach Musse in four days more, if the passes are open. If they are shut you do not reach it at all.
Thither on mules from Tortosa came El Safy, leading the Abbot Milo and Jehane, and brought them easily through all the defiles to that castle on a spur which is called Mont-Ferrand, but in the language of the Saracens, Bārin. From that height they looked down upon the domes and gardens of Musse, and knew that half their work was done.
And this for obvious reasons. 'What are your reasons, my son? asked the abbot. 'I will tell you, said El Safy.
What gave closer mystery was that the light came strange and milky through agate windows, and that when the Old Man spoke it was in a dry, whispering voice which, with the sound of a murmur in the forest, was in tune with the silence of all the rest. El Safy stood up, and was rigid. There ensued a passionless flow of question and answer.
Her hair was plaited and braided with pearls, a broad silk girdle tied about her waist. Over all was put a thick white veil, heavily fringed with gold. Round her ankles they put anklets of gold, with little bells on them which tinkled as she walked; last, scarlet slippers. They would have painted her face and eyebrows, but that El Safy decided that this was not at all necessary.
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