The Bride of the Nile — Complete by Georg Ebers (best historical fiction books of all time txt) 📖

“You have heard from her own lips what makes the greatest bliss of my life. The noble daughter of Thomas is my promised bride!”

There was a murmur among the Jacobite judges. ‘Till this moment several of them, oppressed by the heat, had sat dreaming with their heads sunk on their breasts, but now they were suddenly as wide-awake and alert as though a jet of cold water had been turned on to them, and one cried out: “And your father, young man? You have forgotten him in a hurry! What would he have said to such a disgrace to his blood as your marriage to a Melchite, the daughter of those who caused your two brothers to be murdered? Oh! if the dead could....”

“He blessed our union on his death-bed,” Orion put in.

“Did he, indeed?” asked another Jacobite with sarcastic scorn. “Then the patriarch was in the right when he refused to let the priests follow his corpse. That I should live to be witness to such crimes!”

But such words fell on the ears of the enraptured pair like the chirping of crickets. They felt, they cared for nothing but what this blissful moment had brought them, and never suspected that Paula’s glad avowal had sealed her death-warrant.

The wrath of the Jacobite faction now hastened the end. The prosecutor, an Arab, now represented how many Moslems had lost their lives in the affair of the nuns, and once more read Orion’s letter. His Christian colleagues tried to prove that this document could only refer to the flight, so ingeniously plotted, of the sisters; and now something quite new and unlooked-for occurred, which gave a fresh turn to the proceedings: the old man interrupted the Kadi to make a statement. At this Paula’s confidence rose again for the last speaker had somewhat shaken it. She felt sure that the tried friend and adoptive father of her faithful Philippus would take her part.

But what was this?

The old man seemed to measure her height in a glance which struck to her heart with its fierce enmity, and then he said deliberately:

“On the morning of the nuns’ flight the accused, Paula, went to the convent and there tolled the bell. Contradict me if you can, proud prefect’s daughter; but I warn you beforehand, that in that case, I shall be compelled to bring forward fresh charges.”

At this the horror-stricken girl pictured to herself the widow and daughter of Rufinus at her side on the condemned bench before the judges, and felt that denial would drag her friends to destruction with her; with quivering lips she confirmed the old man’s statement.

“And why did you toll the bell?” asked the Kadi.

“To help them,” replied Paula. “They are my fellow-believers, and I love them.”

“She was the originator of the treasonable and bloody scheme,” cried the Vekeel, “and did it for no other purpose than to cheat us, the rulers of this country.”

The Kadi however signed to him to be silent and bid the Jacobite counsel for the accused speak next. He had seen her early in the day, and came forward in the Egyptian manner with a written defence in his hand; but it was a dull formal performance and produced no effect; though the Kadi did his utmost to give prominence to every point that might help to justify her, she was pronounced guilty.

Still, could her crime be held worthy of death? It was amply proved that she had had a hand in the rescue of the nuns; but it was no less clear that she had been far enough away from the sisters and their defenders when the struggle with the Arabs took place. And she was a woman, and how pardonable it seemed in a pious maiden that she should help the fellow-believers whom she loved to evade persecution.

All this Othman pointed out in eloquent words, repeatedly and sternly silencing the Vekeel when he sought to argue in favor of the sentence of death; and the humane persuasiveness of the lenient judge won the hearts of most of the Moslems.

Paula’s appearance had a powerful effect, too, and not less the circumstance that their noblest and bravest foe had been the father of the accused.

When at length it was put to the vote the extraordinary result was that all her fellow Christians—the Jacobites—without exception demanded her death, while of the infidels on the judges’ bench only one supported this severe meed of punishment.

Sentence was pronounced, and as the Vekeel Obada passed close to Orion—who was led back to his cell pale and hardly master of himself—he said, mocking him in broken Greek: “It will be your turn to-morrow, Son of the Mukaukas!”

Orion’s lips framed the retort: “And yours, too, some day, Son of a Slave!”—but Paula was standing opposite, and to avoid infuriating her foe he was able to do what he never could have done else: to let the Vekeel and Horapollo pass on without a word in reply.

As soon as the door was closed on this couple, Othman nodded approvingly at Orion and said:

“Rightly and wisely done, my friend! The eagle should never forget that he must not use his pinions in a cage as he does between the desert and the sky.”

He signed to the guards to lead him away, and stood apart while the young man looked and waived an adieu to his betrothed.

Finally the Kadi went up to Paula, whose heroic composure as she heard the sentence of death had filled him with admiration.

“The court has decided against you, noble maiden,” he said. “But its verdict can he overruled by the clemency of our Sovereign Lord the Khaliff and the mercy of God the compassionate. Do you pray to Him—I and a few friends will appeal to the Khaliff.”

He disclaimed her gratitude, and when she, too, had been led away he added, in the figurative language of his nation, to the friends who were waiting for him:

“My heart aches! To have to pronounce such a verdict oppressed me like a load; but to have an Obada for a fellow Moslem and be bound to obey him—there is no heavier lot on earth!”