Free Omar Khayyam - a life by Harold Lamb

hastened to do him reverence.
*[Khorosan.]
    All this the begger perceived with half an eye, because he was intent upon Omar and Yasmi. During the hours of daylight they were seldom visible, but after the curtain of dusk they met at the fountain—two shadows in the dusk, heedless of the hurrying footsteps around them.
    Well for the girl, the beggar mused, that she was heavily veiled, a very twin to a half hundred others thronging the twilight to gossip and feast and watch the tumult of the Wheel of Fortune moving. Otherwise she would have been seen and known.
    As to Omar, the beggar thought this tall scholar had lost both sight and hearing. Only at times did Omar remember to eat with the pilgrims, in the crowded courtyard of the Friday mosque. He drank at the fountain and he spoke to no one.
    "Belike," the beggar thought enviously, "he is as drunk as if he emptied a whole wineskin down his gullet each evening. Ai —it costs him not one broken piaster."
    It was the next day that a porter came and planted his slippered toes in the beggar's ribs.
    "O Father of the lice," the porter muttered, "where wandereth this mad Tentmaker of thine?"
    " Ya , father of nothing at all—windbladder!" The beggar, glancing up evilly, perceived that this was only an under-servant without a staff. "Sired by a scavenger on a woman without a nose! Ditch-born, and bred——"
    A second kick jarred him into fuming silence. "Who sent thee?" he grumbled.
    "One that could hang thy carcase on the Castle gate for the crows to peck."
    "Omar, called the Tentmaker, is down yonder in the bath of the Glory of Hussayn. Allah be witness, I would be there if I had but one dirhem to pay the keeper——"
    By way of rewarding him the porter spat into his bowl and swaggered off, leaving the pockmarked one nearly speechless with rage. "May dogs litter on thy grave—may vultures strip thy bones—may the fires of the seven hells scorch thy thick hide!" he groaned.

    Omar followed the porter to the first courtyard of the Castle where the armed retinues of a half-dozen nobles waited beside saddled horses. Here they found Tutush who was in a fever of impatience, crying out at sight of Omar, and grasping him by the sleeve, to hasten in past guards and servitors—all of whom seemed to know the voluminous blue turban and the swaying rosary—to a small chamber, empty of furniture.
    "My soul," he whispered, "it is past the hour appointed. Yet he hath not sent for thee as yet." Curiously, he glanced at Omar. "Knowest thou who hath summoned thee into his presence? Nizam al Mulk."
    Omar's pulse quickened, and he felt more than a little amazed. Nizam al Mulk—the Arranger of the World—was the title of the man who had been Alp Arslan's Minister and who still held authority now that Malikshah, the son of the slain Sultan, had come to the throne. More than that, Nizam al Mulk was virtually dictator under the Sultan's authority. A learned and brilliant Persian, he had gathered into his hands by degrees the administration of everything except the army. It was a mystery why he should have sent for a scholar of the academy.
    Tutush cast no light on the mystery. "Once," he said reflectively, "I dug into thee at the Takin gate the spur of arrogance. It was a test. By command of Nizam al Mulk I have had thee watched——"
    Omar glanced down at him swiftly.
    "—and guarded. Thou art young, and without heed. But now, at this moment thy destiny is in the balance. Nizam himself will test thee. So give heed."
    Omar heard without comprehending. It seemed purposeless—unless that Lion Cub who was now Sultan had asked for him. But the Lion Cub was remote in the shadows of the highway and Yasmi's eyes looked up at him, unveiled.
    Suddenly a slave drew back a heavy curtain. The empty chamber was in reality only an alcove of the long audience hall with its huge rose carpet. Against the mid-wall sat a man of some sixty years, erect and busied with the papers upon the low tables at his knees.