Chapter Eleven. The Companions of the Rosy Hours

Greenmantle

by John Buchan

We battled to a corner, where a jut of building stood out into
the street. It was our only chance to protect our backs, to stand up
with the rib of stone between us. It was only the work of seconds.
One instant we were groping our solitary way in the darkness, the
next we were pinned against a wall with a throaty mob surging round
us.

It took me a moment or two to realize that we were attacked.
Every man has one special funk in the back of his head, and mine was
to be the quarry of an angry crowd. I hated the thought of it - the
mess, the blind struggle, the sense of unleashed passions different
from those of any single blackguard. It was a dark world to me, and
I don't like darkness. But in my nightmares I had never imagined
anything just like this. The narrow, fetid street, with the icy
winds fanning the filth, the unknown tongue, the hoarse savage
murmur, and my utter ignorance as to what it might all be about, made
me cold in the pit of my stomach.

'We've got it in the neck this time, old man,' I said to Peter,
who had out the pistol the commandant at Rustchuk had given him.
These pistols were our only weapons. The crowd saw them and hung
back, but if they chose to rush us it wasn't much of a barrier two
pistols would make.

Rasta's voice had stopped. He had done his work, and had
retired to the background. There were shouts from the crowd -
'Alleman' and a word 'Khafiyeh' constantly repeated. I didn't know
what it meant at the time, but now I know that they were after us
because we were Boches and spies. There was no love lost between the
Constantinople scum and their new masters. It seemed an ironical end
for Peter and me to be done in because we were Boches. And done in
we should be. I had heard of the East as a good place for people to
disappear in; there were no inquisitive newspapers or incorruptible
police. I wished to Heaven I had a word of Turkish. But I made my
voice heard for a second in a pause of the din, and shouted that we
were German sailors who had brought down big guns for Turkey, and
were going home next day. I asked them what the devil they thought
we had done? I don't know if any fellow there understood German;
anyhow, it only brought a pandemonium of cries in which that ominous
word Khafiyeh was predominant.

Then Peter fired over their heads. He had to, for a chap was
pawing at his throat. The answer was a clatter of bullets on the
wall above us. It looked as if they meant to take us alive, and that
I was very clear should not happen. Better a bloody end in a street
scrap than the tender mercies of that bandbox bravo.

I don't quite know what happened next. A press drove down at me
and I fired. Someone squealed, and I looked the next moment to be
strangled. And then, suddenly, the scrimmage ceased, and there was a
wavering splash of light in that pit of darkness.

I never went through many worse minutes than these. When I had
been hunted in the past weeks there had been mystery enough, but no
immediate peril to face. When I had been up against a real, urgent,
physical risk, like Loos, the danger at any rate had been clear. One
knew what one was in for. But here was a threat I couldn't put a
name to, and it wasn't in the future, but pressing hard at our
throats.

And yet I couldn't feel it was quite real. The patter of the
pistol bullets against the wall, like so many crackers, the faces
felt rather than seen in the dark, the clamour which to me was pure
gibberish, had all the madness of a nightmare. Only Peter, cursing
steadily in Dutch by my side, was real. And then the light came, and
made the scene more eerie!

It came from one or two torches carried by wild fellows with
long staves who drove their way into the heart of the mob. The
flickering glare ran up the steep walls and made monstrous shadows.
The wind swung the flame into long streamers, dying away in a fan of
sparks.

And now a new word was heard in the crowd. It was Chinganeh,
shouted not in anger but in fear.

At first I could not see the newcomers. They were hidden in the
deep darkness under their canopy of light, for they were holding
their torches high at the full stretch of their arms. They were
shouting, too, wild shrill cries ending sometimes in a gush of rapid
speech. Their words did not seem to be directed against us, but
against the crowd. A sudden hope came to me that for some unknown
reason they were on our side.

The press was no longer heavy against us. It was thinning
rapidly and I could hear the scuffle as men made off down the side
streets. My first notion was that these were the Turkish police. But
I changed my mind when the leader came out into a patch of light. He
carried no torch, but a long stave with which he belaboured the heads
of those who were too tightly packed to flee.

It was the most eldritch apparition you can conceive. A tall
man dressed in skins, with bare legs and sandal-shod feet. A wisp of
scarlet cloth clung to his shoulders, and, drawn over his head down
close to his eyes, was a skull-cap of some kind of pelt with the tail
waving behind it. He capered like a wild animal, keeping up a
strange high monotone that fairly gave me the creeps.

I was suddenly aware that the crowd had gone. Before us was
only this figure and his half-dozen companions, some carrying torches
and all wearing clothes of skin. But only the one who seemed to be
their leader wore the skull-cap; the rest had bare heads and long
tangled hair.

The fellow was shouting gibberish at me. His eyes were glassy,
like a man who smokes hemp, and his legs were never still for a
second. You would think such a figure no better than a mountebank,
and yet there was nothing comic in it. Fearful and sinister and
uncanny it was; and I wanted to do anything but laugh.

As he shouted he kept pointing with his stave up the street
which climbed the hillside.

'He means us to move,' said Peter. 'For God's sake let us get
away from this witch-doctor.'

I couldn't make sense of it, but one thing was clear. These
maniacs had delivered us for the moment from Rasta and his
friends.

Then I did a dashed silly thing. I pulled out a sovereign and
offered it to the leader. I had some kind of notion of showing
gratitude, and as I had no words I had to show it by deed.

He brought his stick down on my wrist and sent the coin spinning
in the gutter. His eyes blazed, and he made his weapon sing round my
head. He cursed me - oh, I could tell cursing well enough, though I
didn't follow a word; and he cried to his followers and they cursed
me too. I had offered him a mortal insult and stirred up a worse
hornet's nest than Rasta's push.

Peter and I, with a common impulse, took to our heels. We were
not looking for any trouble with demoniacs. Up the steep, narrow
lane we ran with that bedlamite crowd at our heels. The torches
seemed to have gone out, for the place was black as pitch, and we
tumbled over heaps of offal and splashed through running drains. The
men were close behind us, and more than once I felt a stick on my
shoulder. But fear lent us wings, and suddenly before us was a blaze
of light and we saw the debouchment of our street in a main
thoroughfare. The others saw it, too, for they slackened off. just
before we reached the light we stopped and looked round. There was
no sound or sight behind us in the dark lane which dipped to the
harbour.

'This is a queer country, Cornelis,' said Peter, feeling his
limbs for bruises. 'Too many things happen in too short a time. I
am breathless.'

The big street we had struck seemed to run along the crest of
the hill. There were lamps in it, and crawling cabs, and quite
civilized- looking shops. We soon found the hotel to which Kuprasso
had directed us, a big place in a courtyard with a very tumble-down-
looking portico, and green sun-shutters which rattled drearily in the
winter's wind. It proved, as I had feared, to be packed to the door,
mostly with German officers. With some trouble I got an interview
with the proprietor, the usual Greek, and told him that we had been
sent there by Mr Kuprasso. That didn't affect him in the least, and
we would have been shot into the street if I hadn't remembered about
Stumm's pass.

So I explained that we had come from Germany with munitions and
only wanted rooms for one night. I showed him the pass and blustered
a good deal, till he became civil and said he would do the best he
could for us.

That best was pretty poor. Peter and I were doubled up in a
small room which contained two camp-beds and little else, and had
broken windows through which the wind whistled. We had a Wretched
dinner of stringy mutton, boiled with vegetables, and a white cheese
strong enough to raise the dead. But I got a bottle of whisky, for
which I paid a sovereign, and we managed to light the stove in our
room, fasten the shutters, and warm our hearts with a brew of toddy.
After that we went to bed and slept like logs for twelve hours. On
the road from Rustchuk we had had uneasy slumbers.

I woke next morning and, looking out from the broken window, saw
that it was snowing. With a lot of trouble I got hold of a servant
and made him bring us some of the treacly Turkish coffee. We were
both in pretty low spirits. 'Europe is a poor cold place,' said
Peter, 'not worth fighting for. There is only one white man's land,
and that is South Africa.' At the time I heartily agreed with
him.

I remember that, sitting on the edge of my bed, I took stock of
our position. It was not very cheering. We seemed to have been
amassing enemies at a furious pace. First of all, there was Rasta,
whom I had insulted and who wouldn't forget it in a hurry. He had
his crowd of Turkish riff-raff and was bound to get us sooner or
later. Then there was the maniac in the skin hat. He didn't like
Rasta, and I made a guess that he and his weird friends were of some
party hostile to the Young Turks. But, on the other hand, he didn't
like us, and there would be bad trouble the next time we met him.
Finally, there was Stumm and the German Government. It could only be
a matter of hours at the best before he got the Rustchuk authorities
on our trail. It would be easy to trace us from Chataldja, and once
they had us we were absolutely done. There was a big black dossier
against us, which by no conceivable piece of luck could be upset.

it was very clear to me that, unless we could find sanctuary and
shed all our various pursuers during this day, we should be done in
for good and all. But where on earth were we to find sanctuary? We
had neither of us a word of the language, and there was no way I
could see of taking on new characters. For that we wanted friends
and help, and I could think of none anywhere. Somewhere, to be sure,
there was Blenkiron, but how could we get in touch with him? As for
Sandy, I had pretty well given him up. I always thought his
enterprise the craziest of the lot and bound to fail. He was
probably somewhere in Asia Minor, and a month or two later would get
to Constantinople and hear in some pot-house the yarn of the two
wretched Dutchmen who had disappeared so soon from men's sight.

That rendezvous at Kuprasso's was no good. It would have been
all right if we had got here unsuspected, and could have gone on
quietly frequenting the place till Blenkiron picked us up. But to do
that we wanted leisure and secrecy, and here we were with a pack of
hounds at our heels. The place was horribly dangerous already. If we
showed ourselves there we should be gathered in by Rasta, or by the
German military police, or by the madman in the skin cap. It was a
stark impossibility to hang about on the off-chance of meeting
Blenkiron.

I reflected with some bitterness that this was the 17th day of
January, the day of our assignation. I had had high hopes all the
way down the Danube of meeting with Blenkiron - for I knew he would
be in time - of giving him the information I had had the good fortune
to collect, of piecing it together with what he had found out, and of
getting the whole story which Sir Walter hungered for. After that, I
thought it wouldn't be hard to get away by Rumania, and to get home
through Russia. I had hoped to be back with my battalion in
February, having done as good a bit of work as anybody in the war.
As it was, it looked as if my information would die with me, unless I
could find Blenkiron before the evening.

I talked the thing over with Peter, and he agreed that we were
fairly up against it. We decided to go to Kuprasso's that afternoon,
and to trust to luck for the rest. It wouldn't do to wander about
the streets, so we sat tight in our room all morning, and swopped old
hunting yarns to keep our minds from the beastly present. We got
some food at midday - cold mutton and the same cheese, and finished
our whisky. Then I paid the bill, for I didn't dare to stay there
another night. About half-past three we went into the street,
without the foggiest notion where we would find our next quarters.

It was snowing heavily, which was a piece of luck for us. Poor
old Peter had no greatcoat, so we went into a Jew's shop and bought a
ready-made abomination, which looked as if it might have been meant
for a dissenting parson. It was no good saving my money when the
future was so black. The snow made the streets deserted, and we
turned down the long lane which led to Ratchik ferry, and found it
perfectly quiet. I do not think we met a soul till we got to
Kuprasso's shop.

We walked straight through the cafe, which was empty, and down
the dark passage, till we were stopped by the garden door. I knocked
and it swung open. There was the bleak yard, now puddled with snow,
and a blaze of light from the pavilion at the other end. There was a
scraping of fiddles, too, and the sound of human talk. We paid the
negro at the door, and passed from the bitter afternoon into a garish
saloon. There were forty or fifty people there, drinking coffee and
sirops and filling the air with the fumes of latakia. Most of them
were Turks in European clothes and the fez, but there were some
German officers and what looked like German civilians - Army Service
Corps clerks, probably, and mechanics from the Arsenal. A woman in
cheap finery was tinkling at the piano, and there were several shrill
females with the officers. Peter and I sat down modestly in the
nearest corner, where old Kuprasso saw us and sent us coffee. A girl
who looked like a Jewess came over to us and talked French, but I
shook my head and she went off again.

Presently a girl came on the stage and danced, a silly affair,
all a clashing of tambourines and wriggling. I have seen native
women do the same thing better in a Mozambique kraal. Another sang a
German song, a simple, sentimental thing about golden hair and
rainbows, and the Germans present applauded. The place was so
tinselly and common that, coming to it from weeks of rough
travelling, it made me impatient. I forgot that, while for the
others it might be a vulgar little dancing-hall, for us it was as
perilous as a brigands' den.

Peter did not share my mood. He was quite interested in it, as
he was interested in everything new. He had a genius for living in
the moment.

I remember there was a drop-scene on which was daubed a blue
lake with very green hills in the distance. As the tobacco smoke
grew thicker and the fiddles went on squealing, this tawdry picture
began to mesmerize me. I seemed to be looking out of a window at a
lovely summer landscape where there were no wars or danger. I seemed
to feel the warm sun and to smell the fragrance of blossom from the
islands. And then I became aware that a queer scent had stolen into
the atmosphere.

There were braziers burning at both ends to warm the room, and
the thin smoke from these smelt like incense. Somebody had been
putting a powder in the flames, for suddenly the place became very
quiet. The fiddles still sounded, but far away like an echo. The
lights went down, all but a circle on the stage, and into that circle
stepped my enemy of the skin cap.

He had three others with him. I heard a whisper behind me, and
the words were those which Kuprasso had used the day before. These
bedlamites were called the Companions of the Rosy Hours, and Kuprasso
had promised great dancing.

I hoped to goodness they would not see us, for they had fairly
given me the horrors. Peter felt the same, and we both made
ourselves very small in that dark corner. But the newcomers had no
eyes for us.

In a twinkling the pavilion changed from a common saloon, which
might have been in Chicago or Paris, to a place of mystery - yes, and
of beauty. It became the Garden-House of Suliman the Red, whoever
that sportsman may have been. Sandy had said that the ends of the
earth converged there, and he had been right. I lost all
consciousness of my neighbours - stout German, frock-coated Turk,
frowsy Jewess - and saw only strange figures leaping in a circle of
light, figures that came out of the deepest darkness to make a big
magic.

The leader flung some stuff into the brazier, and a great fan of
blue light flared up. He was weaving circles, and he was singing
something shrill and high, whilst his companions made a chorus with
their deep monotone. I can't tell you what the dance was. I had
seen the Russian ballet just before the war, and one of the men in it
reminded me of this man. But the dancing was the least part of it.
It was neither sound nor movement nor scent that wrought the spell,
but something far more potent. In an instant I found myself reft
away from the present with its dull dangers, and looking at a world
all young and fresh and beautiful. The gaudy drop-scene had
vanished. It was a window I was looking from, and I was gazing at
the finest landscape on earth, lit by the pure clean light of
morning.

It seemed to be part of the veld, but like no veld I had ever
seen. It was wider and wilder and more gracious. Indeed, I was
looking at my first youth. I was feeling the kind of immortal light-
heartedness which only a boy knows in the dawning of his days. I had
no longer any fear of these magic-makers. They were kindly wizards,
who had brought me into fairyland.

Then slowly from the silence there distilled drops of music.
They came like water falling a long way into a cup, each the
essential quality of pure sound. We, with our elaborate harmonies,
have forgotten the charm of single notes. The African natives know
it, and I remember a learned man once telling me that the Greeks had
the same art. Those silver bells broke out of infinite space, so
exquisite and perfect that no mortal words could have been fitted to
them. That was the music, I expect, that the morning stars made when
they sang together.

Slowly, very slowly, it changed. The glow passed from blue to
purple, and then to an angry red. Bit by bit the notes spun together
till they had made a harmony - a fierce, restless harmony. And I was
conscious again of the skin-clad dancers beckoning out of their
circle.

There was no mistake about the meaning now. All the daintiness
and youth had fled, and passion was beating the air - terrible,
savage passion, which belonged neither to day nor night, life nor
death, but to the half-world between them. I suddenly felt the
dancers as monstrous, inhuman, devilish. The thick scents that
floated from the brazier seemed to have a tang of new-shed blood.
Cries broke from the hearers - cries of anger and lust and terror. I
heard a woman sob, and Peter, who is as tough as any mortal, took
tight hold of my arm.

I now realized that these Companions of the Rosy Hours were the
only thing in the world to fear. Rasta and Stumm seemed feeble
simpletons by contrast. The window I had been looking out of was
changed to a prison wall - I could see the mortar between the massive
blocks. In a second these devils would be smelling out their enemies
like some foul witch-doctors. I felt the burning eyes of their
leader looking for me in the gloom. Peter was praying audibly beside
me, and I could have choked him. His infernal chatter would reveal
us, for it seemed to me that there was no one in the place except us
and the magic-workers.

Then suddenly the spell was broken. The door was flung open and
a great gust of icy wind swirled through the hall, driving clouds of
ashes from the braziers. I heard loud voices without, and a hubbub
began inside. For a moment it was quite dark, and then someone lit
one of the flare lamps by the stage. It revealed nothing but the
common squalor of a low saloon - white faces, sleepy eyes, and frowsy
heads. The drop-piece was there in all its tawdriness.

The Companions of the Rosy Hours had gone. But at the door
stood men in uniform, I heard a German a long way off murmur,
'Enver's bodyguards,' and I heard him distinctly; for, though I could
not see clearly, my hearing was desperately acute. That is often the
way when you suddenly come out of a swoon.

The place emptied like magic. Turk and German tumbled over each
other, while Kuprasso wailed and wept. No one seemed to stop them,
and then I saw the reason. Those Guards had come for us. This must
be Stumm at last. The authorities had tracked us down, and it was
all up with Peter and me.

A sudden revulsion leaves a man with a low vitality. I didn't
seem to care greatly. We were done, and there was an end of it. It
was Kismet, the act of God, and there was nothing for it but to
submit. I hadn't a flicker of a thought of escape or resistance.
The game was utterly and absolutely over.

A man who seemed to be a sergeant pointed to us and said
something to Kuprasso, who nodded. We got heavily to our feet and
stumbled towards them. With one on each side of us we crossed the
yard, walked through the dark passage and the empty shop, and out
into the snowy street. There was a closed carriage waiting which
they motioned us to get into. It looked exactly like the Black
Maria.

Both of us sat still, like truant schoolboys, with our hands on
our knees. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't care. We
seemed to be rumbling up the hill, and then I caught the glare of
lighted streets.

'This is the end of it, Peter,' I said.

'Ja, Cornelis,' he replied, and that was all our talk.

By and by - hours later it seemed - we stopped. Someone opened
the door and we got out, to find ourselves in a courtyard with a huge
dark building around. The prison, I guessed, and I wondered if they
would give us blankets, for it was perishing cold.

We entered a door, and found ourselves in a big stone hall. It
was quite warm, which made me more hopeful about our cells. A man in
some kind of uniform pointed to the staircase, up which we plodded
wearily. My mind was too blank to take clear impressions, or in any
way to forecast the future. Another warder met us and took us down a
passage till we halted at a door. He stood aside and motioned us to
enter.

I guessed that this was the governor's room, and we should be
put through our first examination. My head was too stupid to think,
and I made up my mind to keep perfectly mum. Yes, even if they tried
thumbscrews. I had no kind of story, but I resolved not to give
anything away. As I turned the handle I wondered idly what kind of
sallow Turk or bulging-necked German we should find inside.

It was a pleasant room, with a polished wood floor and a big
fire burning on the hearth. Beside the fire a man lay on a couch,
with a little table drawn up beside him. On that table was a small
glass of milk and a number of Patience cards spread in rows.

I stared blankly at the spectacle, till I saw a second figure.
It was the man in the skin-cap, the leader of the dancing maniacs.
Both Peter and I backed sharply at the sight and then stood stock
still.

For the dancer crossed the room in two strides and gripped both
of my hands.

'Dick, old man,' he cried, 'I'm most awfully glad to see you
again!'