第65章 CHAPTER THE FOURTH(10)

The extra horse involved the addition of its owner, a small suspicious Latin Christian, to the company, and of another horse for him and an ugly almost hairless boy attendant.Moreover the British consul prevailed with Benham to accept the services of a picturesque Arnaut CAVASSE, complete with a rifle, knives, and other implements and the name of Giorgio.And as they got up into the highlands beyond Scutari they began to realize the deceitfulness of Podgoritza and the real truth about khans.Their next one they reached after a rainy evening, and it was a cavernous room with a floor of indurated mud and full of eye-stinging wood-smoke and wind and the smell of beasts, unpartitioned, with a weakly hostile custodian from whom no food could be got but a little goat's flesh and bread.The meat Giorgio stuck upon a skewer in gobbets like cats-meat and cooked before the fire.For drink there was coffee and raw spirits.

Against the wall in one corner was a slab of wood rather like the draining board in a scullery, and on this the guests were expected to sleep.The horses and the rest of the party camped loosely about the adjacent corner after a bitter dispute upon some unknown point between the horse owner and the custodian.

Amanda and Benham were already rolled up on their slanting board like a couple of chrysalids when other company began to arrive through the open door out of the moonlight, drawn thither by the report of a travelling Englishwoman.

They were sturdy men in light coloured garments adorned ostentatiously with weapons, they moved mysteriously about in the firelit darknesses and conversed in undertones with Giorgio.

Giorgio seemed to have considerable powers of exposition and a gift for social organization.Presently he came to Benham and explained that raki was available and that hospitality would do no harm;Benham and Amanda sat up and various romantic figures with splendid moustaches came forward and shook hands with him, modestly ignoring Amanda.There was drinking, in which Benham shared, incomprehensible compliments, much ineffective saying of "BUONA NOTTE," and at last Amanda and Benham counterfeited sleep.This seemed to remove a check on the conversation and a heated discussion in tense undertones went on, it seemed interminably....Probably very few aspects of Benham and Amanda were ignored....Towards morning the twanging of a string proclaimed the arrival of a querulous-faced minstrel with a sort of embryonic one-stringed horse-headed fiddle, and after a brief parley singing began, a long high-pitched solo.

The fiddle squealed pitifully under the persuasion of a semicircular bow.Two heads were lifted enquiringly.

The singer had taken up his position at their feet and faced them.

It was a compliment.

"OH!" said Amanda, rolling over.

The soloist obliged with three songs, and then, just as day was breaking, stopped abruptly and sprawled suddenly on the floor as if he had been struck asleep.He was vocal even in his sleep.A cock in the far corner began crowing and was answered by another outside....

But this does not give a full account of the animation of the khan.

"OH!" said Amanda, rolling over again with the suddenness of accumulated anger.

"They're worse than in Scutari," said Benham, understanding her trouble instantly.

"It isn't days and nights we are having," said Benham a few days later, "it's days and nightmares."But both he and Amanda had one quality in common.The deeper their discomfort the less possible it was to speak of turning back from the itinerary they had planned....

They met no robbers, though an excited little English Levantine in Scutari had assured them they would do so and told a vivid story of a ride to Ipek, a delay on the road due to a sudden inexplicable lameness of his horse after a halt for refreshment, a political discussion that delayed him, his hurry through the still twilight to make up for lost time, the coming on of night and the sudden silent apparition out of the darkness of the woods about the road of a dozen armed men each protruding a gun barrel."Sometimes they will wait for you at a ford or a broken bridge," he said."In the mountains they rob for arms.They assassinate the Turkish soldiers even.It is better to go unarmed unless you mean to fight for it....Have you got arms?""Just a revolver," said Benham.

But it was after that that he closed with Giorgio.

If they found no robbers in Albania, they met soon enough with bloodshed.They came to a village where a friend of a friend of Giorgio's was discovered, and they slept at his house in preference to the unclean and crowded khan.Here for the first time Amanda made the acquaintance of Albanian women and was carried off to the woman's region at the top of the house, permitted to wash, closely examined, shown a baby and confided in as generously as gesture and some fragments of Italian would permit.Benham slept on a rug on the first floor in a corner of honour beside the wood fire.There had been much confused conversation and some singing, he was dog-tired and slept heavily, and when presently he was awakened by piercing screams he sat up in a darkness that seemed to belong neither to time nor place....

Near his feet was an ashen glow that gave no light.

His first perplexity gave way to dismay at finding no Amanda by his side."Amanda!" he cried....

Her voice floated down through a chink in the floor above."What can it be, Cheetah?"Then: "It's coming nearer."

The screaming continued, heart-rending, eviscerating shrieks.

Benham, still confused, lit a match.All the men about him were stirring or sitting up and listening, their faces showing distorted and ugly in the flicker of his light."CHE E?" he tried.No one answered.Then one by one they stood up and went softly to the ladder that led to the stable-room below.Benham struck a second match and a third.

"Giorgio!" he called.

The cavasse made an arresting gesture and followed discreetly and noiselessly after the others, leaving Benham alone in the dark.