The Circassian Slave, or, the Sultan's favorite Part 9

"Dear father, what shall I say to thee?"

"Speak thy whole heart, my child."

"Nay, but it would only displease thee, my father, for me to do so."

"Tell me, Zillah, if thou knowest what it is that sickens thee, and robs thy cheek of its bloom?"

"Father," she answered, with a sigh, "my heart is breaking with unhappy love."

"Love!"

"Ay, I love Selim, he who saved me from drowning in the Bosphorus."

"The Sultan's officer?"

"Yes, father, Capt. Selim."

"Why, child, that young rascal is a notorious dog of a Christian. Do you know it?"

"I know he believes not in the faith of our fathers," she answered, modestly.

The old Turk bit his lips with vexation, but dared not vent the pa.s.sion he felt in the delicate ear of his sick child. Indeed he had only to look into her pale face to turn the whole current of his anger into pity at the danger he read there.

The old Bey knew the spirit that Zillah had inherited both from himself and from her mother, and that she was fixed in her purpose.

She frankly told him that she could never be happy unless Selim was her husband. The father was most sadly annoyed. He referred to the best physicians in the city to know if a malady such as his daughter suffered under, could prove fatal, and they a.s.sured him that this had frequently been the case. One, however, to whom he applied, informed the Bey that he knew of a Jewish leech who was famed for curing all maladies arising from depression, physical or mental, and if he desired it, he would send the Jew to his house on the subsequent day, when he would say if he could do her any good as it regarded her illness.

Much as the Mussulman despised the race, still, in the hope of benefiting his child by the man's medical skill, he desired the Armenian physician to send the Jew, as he proposed, on the following day, and paying the heavy fee that these leeches know so well how to charge the rich old Turks, the Bey departed once more to his palace.

At the hour appointed, the Armenian physician despatched the Jewish doctor to the Bey's gates, where he was admitted, and received with as much respect as the Turk could bring his mind to show towards unbelievers, and the business being properly premised, the father told the Jew how his daughter was affected, and asked if he might hope for her recovery.

"With great care and cunning skill, perhaps so," said the Jew, from out his overgrown beard.

"If this can be accomplished through thy means, I make thee rich for life," said the Bey.

"We can but try," said the Jew, "and hope for the best. Lead me to thy daughter."

The Bey conducted the leech to his daughter's apartment, and bidding her tell freely all her pains and ills, left the Jew to study her case, while he retired once more to silent converse with himself.

"You are ill," said the Jew, addressing Zillah, while he seated himself and rested his head upon his staff.

"Yes, I am indeed."

"And yet methinks no physical harm is visible in thy person. The pain is in the heart?"

"You speak truly," said Zillah, with a sigh--"I am very unhappy."

"You love?"

"I do."

"And art loved again?"

"Truly, I believe so."

"Then, whencefore art thou unhappy; reciprocal love begets not unhappiness?"

"True, good leech; but he whom I love so well is a Christian, and I can hold no communication with him, much less even hope to be his wife."

"Do you love him so well that you would leave home, father, everything, for him?" asked the Jew.

"Alas! it would be hard to leave my father but still am I so wholly his, I would do even so."

"Then may you be happy yet," said he, who spoke to her, as he tossed back the hood of his gaberdine, and removed the false hair that he wore, presenting the features of young Selim, whom she loved!

"How is this possible?" she said, between her sobs and smiles of joy; "my father told me that the Armenian recommended you for your skill in the healing art."

"He is my friend, the man who taught me my religion, my everything, and the only confidant I have in all Constantinople. To him I told the grief of my heart at our separation; by chance your father called on him for counsel; he knew the Bey, and his mind suggested that I was the true physician whom you needed, and fabricating the story of my profession, he sent me hither."

The fair young girl gazed at him she loved, and wept with joy, and with her hands held tremblingly in his own, Selim told her of a plan he had formed for their escape from the city to some distant land where they might live together unmolested and happy in each other's society. He explained to her that he should tell her father that it was necessary for him to administer certain medicines to her beneath the rays of the moon, and that while she was strolling with him thus the water's edge, he would have a boat ready and at a favorable moment jumping into this, they would speed away.

The moments flew with fearful speed, and pressing her tenderly to his heart, the pretended Jew had only time to resume his disguise when the Bey entered. He saw in the face of his child a color and spirit that had not been there for months before, and delighted, he turned to the Jew to know if he had administered any of his cunning medicines, and being told that a small portion of the necessary article had been given, was overjoyed at the effect.

Being of a naturally superst.i.tious race, the Turk heard the Jew's proposition as it regarded the administering of his next dose of medicine beneath the calm rays of the moon in the open air, with satisfaction; for had he not already worked a miracle upon his child? He was told that by administering the medicine once or twice at the proper moment beneath the midnight rays of the moon, he should doubtless be able to effect a perfect cure.

Satisfied fully of what he had seen and heard, he dismissed the pretended Jew with a heavy purse of gold, and bade him choose his own time, telling him also that his palace gates should ever be open to him.

CHAPTER X.

THE SERENADE.

Beautiful as a poet's fancy can picture, is the seraglio, a fitting home for the proud Turkish monarch, gemmed with gardens, fantastic palaces, and every variety of building and tree on its gentle slope, descending so gracefully towards the sea, spreading before the eye its towers, domes, and dark spots of cypresses like a sacred division of the city of Constantinople, as indeed it is to the eye of the true believer.

The Sultan's household were removed at his will from the Valley of Sweet Waters. .h.i.ther and back again, as fancy might dictate. Thus Komel had met her lover Aphiz Adegah here before his sentence; and here she was now, still queen of its royal master's heart, still the fairest creature that shone in the Sultan's harem. Every luxury and beauty that ingenuity could devise or wealthy purchase, surrounded her with oriental profusion. Still left entirely to herself, the same occupation employed her time, of tending flowers and toying with beautiful birds. Sometimes the Sultan would come and sit by her side, but he found that the wound he had given was not one to heal so quickly as he had supposed, and that the Circa.s.sian cherished the memory of Aphiz as tenderly as ever.

The idiot boy, almost the only person in whom she seemed to take any real interest, still followed her footsteps. .h.i.ther and thither, now toying with some pet of the gardens, a parrot or a dog, now performing most incredible feats of legerdemain, running off upon his hands, with his feet in a perpendicular position, to a distance, and coming back again by a series of summersets, until suddenly gathering his limbs and body together like a ball, he went off rolling like a helpless ma.s.s down some gentle slope, and having reached the bottom, would lie there as if all life were gone, for the hour together, yet always so managing as to keep one eye upon Komel nearly all the while.

The Circa.s.sian loved the poor half-witted boy, for love begets love, and the lad had seemed to love her from the first moment they had met in the Sultan's halls, since when they had been almost inseparable.

It was on a fair summer's afternoon, that the Sultan, strolling in the flower gardens of the palace, either by design or accident, came upon a spot where Komel was half reclining upon one of the soft lounges that were strewn here and there under tiny latticed paG.o.das, to shelter the occupant from the sun. While yet a considerable way off, the Turk paused to admire his slave as she reclined there in easy and unaffected gracefulness, apparently lost in a day dream.

She was very beautiful there all by herself, save the half-witted boy, who seemed to be asleep now, away out on the projecting limb of a cypress tree that nearly overhung the spot, and where he had coiled himself up, and managed to sustain his position upon the limb by some unaccountable means of his own.

The Sultan drew quietly nearer until he was close by her side before she discovered him, when starting from the reverie that had bound her so long, she half rose out of respect for the monarch's presence, but no smile clothed her features; she welcomed him not by greeting of any kind.

"What dreams my pretty favorite about, with her eyes open all the while?" asked the Sultan.