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Updated: May 24, 2025
Asad, waiting to learn who came, halted at the foot of the white glistening steps, whilst from doors and lattices of the palace flooded light to suffuse the courtyard and set the marbles shimmering. A dozen Nubian javelin-men advanced, then ranged themselves aside whilst into the light stepped the imposing, gorgeously robed figure of Asad's wazeer, Tsamanni.
"It was written; and even as none may obtain what is not written, so none may avoid what is. I am resolved. Stay thou here, Tsamanni. Remain for the outcry and purchase her. She shall be taught the True Faith. She shall be saved from the furnace." The command had come, the thing that Tsamanni had so ardently desired. He licked his lips. "And the price, my lord?" he asked, in a small voice.
Tsamanni swung round upon him again, white now with fury. "Is this a jest, O father of wind?" he cried, and excited laughter by the taunt implicit in that appellation. "And thou'rt the jester," replied Ayoub with forced calm, "thou'lt find the jest a costly one." With a shrug Tsamanni turned again to the dalal. "A thousand philips," said he shortly. "Silence there!" cried the dalal again.
Thou shalt outbid Tsamanni, or, better still, set someone else to do it for thee, and so buy the girl for me. Then we'll contrive that she shall vanish quietly and quickly before Asad can discover a trace of her." His face blanched, and the wattles about his jaws were shaking. "And... and the cost? Hast thou counted the cost, O Fenzileh? What will happen when Asad gains knowledge of this thing?"
"She does not come from the town at all," he says glibly, "but from Timbuctoo. It is more difficult than ever to get children from there. The accursed Nazarenes have taken the town, and the slave market droops. But this one is desirable: she understands needlework, she will be a companion for your house, and thirty-five dollars is the last price bid." "One more dollar, Tsamanni.
I was away from the Kasbah when that pig Tsamanni returned thither from the sok; but when at last I learnt that he had failed to purchase her as I commanded, I could have wept for very grief. I feared at first that some merchant from the Sus might have bought her and departed; but when I heard blessed be Allah! that thou wert the buyer, I was comforted again.
In the end all was dismissed to the treasury, and Tsamanni was bidden to go cast up the account of it and mark the share that fell to the portion of those concerned for in these ventures all were partners, from the Basha himself, who represented the State down to the meanest corsair who had manned the victorious vessels of the Faith, and each had his share of the booty, greater or less according to his rank, one twentieth of the total falling to Sakr-el-Bahr himself.
Four hundred and twenty philips, then, O dalal, and Allah pardon me my prodigality." Yet scarcely was his little speech concluded than Tsamanni with laconic eloquence rapped out: "Five hundred." "Y'Allah!" cried the Turk, raising his hands to heaven, and "Y'Allah!" echoed the crowd. "Five hundred and fifty," shrilled Ayoub's voice above the general din.
"Price?" quoth Asad. "Have I not bid thee purchase her? Bring her to me, though her price be a thousand philips." "A thousand philips!" echoed Tsamanni amazed. "Allah is great!" But already Asad had left his side and passed out under the arched gateay, where the grovelling anew at the sight of him. It was a fine thing for Asad to bid him remain for the sale.
But Tsamanni knowing full well how the Basha would like to be answered, trimmed his reply to that desire. "Allah is great, and what hath befallen once may well befall again, my lord." Asad's kindling eyes flashed a glance at his wazeer. "Thou meanest Fenzileh. But then, by the mercy of Allah, I was rendered the instrument of her enlightenment."
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