But before they joined the bodyguard, Solomon told them, they would first be his guests for a while, in order that they might in some measure recover themselves after their labors; so they stayed at his house for five days, and were treated as heroes are treated at the table of Odin. They partook of many delicate dishes, and drink was brought to them whenever they cared to call for it; musicians played for them, and they made themselves tipsy with wine every evening; no Prophet having forbidden Solomon to taste of that drink. Orm and his fellows, however, kept a watchful eye on Toke the whole time, lest he should drink too much and so weep and become dangerous. Their host offered each of them a young slave-girl to keep them company in bed, and this delighted them most of all. They agreed unanimously that the Jew was a fine man and a chieftain, every bit as good as if he had been of Nordic blood; and Toke said that he had seldom made a more fortunate catch than when he had drawn this noble Semite out of the sea. They slept late in the mornings, in feather beds softer than anything they had previously known; and at table they quarreled merrily about which among them had the prettiest slave-girl, and none of them would allow that his was not the choicest of them all.
On the third evening of their stay there, Solomon bade Orm and Toke accompany him into the city, saying that there was someone else whom they had to thank for their liberation, and who had perhaps done more for them than he had. They went with him along many streets, and Orm asked whether Khalid, the great poet of Málaga, had perhaps come to Córdoba, and whether it was he whom they were on their way to visit; but Solomon replied that they were going to meet a nobler personage than Khalid.
“And only a foreigner,” he added feelingly, “could look upon this Khalid as a great poet, though he noises it abroad that he is one. Sometimes I try to calculate how many truly great poets there can be said to be nowadays in the Caliph’s dominions; and I do not think that that honor can rightly be allowed to more than five of us, among which number Khalid could not possibly find inclusion, though he has a certain facility for playing with rhymes. None the less, you do right, Orm, to regard him as your friend, for without his help I should never have discovered what became of you and your men; so if you should meet him and he should refer to himself as a poet, you need not correct him.”
Orm remarked that he knew enough about men not to argue with poets concerning their respective merits; but Toke broke into their conversation with the complaint that he wanted to know why he had been pressed into this evening ramble when it was impossible for him to understand a word of what was being said and when he had been enjoying himself so much in Solomon’s house. Solomon merely replied that it was necessary that he should accompany them, it having so been ordered.
They arrived at a walled garden with a narrow gate, which was opened to admit them. They entered, walking among beautiful trees and many strange plants and flowers, and came to a place where a great fountain was playing and clear water ran through rich grasses in small coiling streams. From the opposite direction to that from which they had come, a litter was being carried toward them by four slaves, followed by two slave-girls and two black men carrying drawn swords.
Solomon halted, and Orm and Toke did likewise. The litter was lowered to the ground, and the slave-girls ran forward and stood reverently one on either side of it. Then a veiled lady stepped forth. Solomon bowed low at her thrice, with his hands pressed against his forehead, so that Orm and Toke realized that she must be of royal blood; they remained upright, however, for it seemed to them a wrong thing that any man should abase himself before a woman.
The lady inclined her head graciously in Solomon’s direction. Then she turned toward Orm and Toke and murmured something beneath her veil; and her eyes were friendly. Solomon bowed to her again and said: “Warriors from the north, thank Her Highness Subaida, for it is by her power that you stand liberated.”
Orm said to the lady: “If you have helped to free us, we owe you a great debt of thanks. But who you are, and why you have showed us such favor, we do not know.”
“Yet we have met,” she answered, “and perchance you will remember my face.”
So saying, she lifted her veil, at which the Jew abased himself again. Toke tugged at his beard and muttered to Orm: “It is my girl from the fortress, and she is more beautiful now than ever. Her luck must indeed have been good, for since we last saw her, she has become a queen. I should like to know whether she is pleased to see me again.”
The lady glanced toward Toke and said: “Why do you address your friend and not me?”
Orm replied to her that Toke could not understand Arabic, but that he said that he remembered her and thought her even more beautiful now than when he had last seen her. “And we both rejoice,” he added, “to see that luck and power have come your way, for you appear to us to be deserving of the one and worthy of the other.”
She looked at Orm and smiled, and said: “But you, O red man, have learned the language of this country, as I have done. Which is the better man, you or your friend who was once my master?”
“We both reckon ourselves to be good men,” replied Orm. “But I am young and am less experienced than he; and he performed mighty feats when we took the fortress that was your home. Therefore I hold him to be the better man of us as yet, though he cannot tell you so himself in the language of this land. But better than either of us was Krok, our chieftain; but he is dead.”
She said that she remembered Krok, and that good chieftains seldom lived to be old. Orm told her how he had died, and she nodded, and said: “Fate has woven our destinies together in a curious way. You took my father’s house and slew him and most of his people, for which I should rightly make you atone with your lives. But my father was a cruel man, especially toward my mother, and I hated and feared him like a hairy devil. I was glad when he was killed, and was not sorry to find myself among foreigners, nor to be made love to by your friend, though it was a pity that we were never able to talk to each other. I did not much care for the smell of his beard, but he had merry eyes and a kind laugh, and these I liked; and he used me gently, even when he was drunk and impatient with lust. He left no bruises on my body, and gave me only a light burden to bear on the march to the ship. I would have been willing to accompany him to your country. Tell him this.”
All that she had said Orm repeated to Toke, who listened with a contented expression. When Orm had finished, Toke said: “You see how lucky I am with women! But she is the best I ever saw, and you may tell her that I said so. Do you suppose that she intends to make me an important man in this country of hers?”
Orm replied that she had said nothing about that; then, after repeating Toke’s compliment to her, he begged her to tell them what had happened to her since they had parted on the seashore.
“The ship’s captain brought me hither to Córdoba,” she said. “Nor did he lay his hand on me, though he had forced me to stand naked before him, for he knew that I would make a fine gift for him to present to his master, the Grand Vizier. Now, therefore, I belong to the Grand Vizier of the Caliph, who is called Almansur and is the most powerful man in the whole of the Caliph’s dominions. He, after first instructing me in the teaching of the Prophet, raised me from a slave-girl to be his chief wife, since he found that my beauty exceeded that of all his other women. Praised be Allah for it! So you have brought me luck, for if you had not come to destroy my father’s fortress, I should still be living in daily dread of my father and should have had some bad man forced on me as a husband, for all my beauty. When, therefore, Solomon, who makes my finest jewelry, informed me that you were still alive, I resolved to give you such assistance as lay within my power.”