Cahena
A Dream of the Past
Manly Wade Wellman
1986
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
To the memory of her who deserves to be remembered from the long ago;
How beautiful, how brilliant a woman;
Her womanhood and womanliness raised her to the heights;
Her womanhood and womanliness doomed her to the depths;
That queen, that prophetess, that goddess of war and love,
DAIA THE CAHENA
Contents
Foreward
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
Note to the electronic edition, 2002
Foreward
A historical novel must be as historical as possible, but the almost forgotten history of the brave and beautiful Cahena, who for years blocked the Moslem conquest of North Africa, remains deeply shadowed. Today, her name has various spellings. Even the supposed dates of her rise and fall vary from work to work. Place names have changed over the centuries.
Most rewarding of available sources is Ibn-Khaldoun, the great thirteenth-century Arabian historian, whose monumental work, translated into French as Histoire des Berberes, cites many earlier commentators, now lost. Also helpful are Ch.-André Julien, Histoire de L’Afrique de Nord; E.F. Gautier, Le Passé de L’Afrique de Nord; The Encyclopedia of Islam; and William Muir, The Caliphate. Nahum Slouschz, The Jews of North Africa, gathers legends of the Cahena. Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Washington Irving, Mohamet and His Successors, notice with admiration her career and character. Germaine Beauguitte wrote a slipshod paperback novel, La Kahina, Reine des Aures. Some help comes from the works of travelers and historians such as Leo Africanus, Galbraith Welch, Amos Perry, E. Alexander Powell, Hendrik de Leeuw, Robert Graves, S.F. Scott, and, inevitably, Sir Richard Francis Burton. There are also fugitive newspaper and magazine articles, too numerous to list.
Perhaps H. Rider Haggard wrote She and Pierre Benoit wrote L’Atlantide because they had heard something about the Cahena.
— Manly Wade Wellman
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
1986
* * *
And now they wait and whiten peaceably,
Those conquerors, those poets, those so fair:
They know time comes, not only you and I,
But the whole world shall whiten, here or there;
When those long caravans that cross the plain
With dauntless feet and sound of silver bells
Put forth no more for glory or for gain,
Take no more solace from the palm-girt wells,
When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And earth is but a star, that once had shone.
— James Elroy Flecker
* * *
I
When the two armed retainers marched the big stranger into the tent, Charles Martel sat and looked heavily at him. At last Charles Martel said, “Leave him here with me,” and to the stranger when they were alone, “Sit on that other bench. If you can tell me how to fight those Moors I must soon face, I’ll be glad to listen.”
The tent was by far the biggest and finest in all the great sprawl of the Frankish camp. Woven of twisted sheep shearings, it could shed rain and fence out the October night wind. Black-oiled poles pushed the top high. By the light of heaped red embers just inside the doorway, the interior looked like a murky cave. Baggage and camp gear were cluttered along its walls. Between Charles Martel and the stranger stood a rough plank table on two trestles, with a big wooden trencher of cold roast venison, a torn loaf of bread, earthen wine flasks, and half a dozen cups of copper-bound leather. Furs and blankets were stacked to one side for a bed. On a rack hung mail jackets, a homed helmet, a lance, and a scabbarded sword. Among the shadows in the back of the tent stamped a big blond horse, tethered to a peg, with grain spread on a cloth under his nose.
Charles Martel was big and blond, too. His gold-worked tunic was thrown open to show his leather war shirt, sewn all over with lengths of iron chain. The ale-colored crescent of his mustache hid his mouth and clamped his hard, square chin, and from under his jeweled cap heavy braids of hair hung upon his shoulders. A fox-skin cloak draped him. On his legs were heavy boots, lashed at the knees. He studied his visitor again, silently and searchingly. With one yellow-fuzzed hand he fondled the haft of the great hammerheaded mace that lay across his lap, the weapon for which men had named him Charles Martel.
He saw a man fully as big as himself and perhaps twenty years older, in his mid-sixties anyway, with shabby garments and a massive cropped head. Thick, bowed legs showed cross-gartered beneath the stained tunic of brown cloth. The wide leather belt had clasps at the left from which a sword had been unslung, at the right an iron-riveted sheath from which a dagger had been plucked before the guards had fetched the stranger to speak alone with the chief of the Franks. Broad, sunburned hands bracketed themselves upon the square knees, and one big wrist was wound with a blood-spotted rag. The face was a weathered rectangle, set with three-cornered blue eyes and a nose that sometime or other had been smashed flat by a heavy blow. A scar squirmed down into the blunt, gray-laced tawny beard, like a dull river running among frosted autumn woods.
A stark old fighter, Charles Martel judged expertly, seasoned rather than burdened with his years. To fight such a man would be a fierce, violent joy, like a gulp of strong wine.
“They didn’t say your name,” Charles Martel addressed him.
“Wulf.” It was a short growl.
“They did say you were English.”
“English born, but I’m a Saxon, not an Angle.”
A nice distinction, pondered Charles Martel. Maybe they understood it in England.
“And they say you came into camp after fighting the Moors and Arabs before us,” Charles Martel prompted the old warrior who named himself Wulf.
“I’ve fought them for forty years,” said Wulf. “In Asia and now here in your country.”
Charles Martel scraped his mustache with his knuckle. “They also said that you had a band of stout men who stood in the way of this Moorish general — his name’s strange, hard to speak.”
“Abd-ar-Rahman,” supplied Wulf the Saxon. “I had only twenty men, not enough to stand in his way. We stung his advance guard, but they killed half of us. We fell back and fell back until we found your army camped here, in Abd-ar-Rahman’s face.”
“Half of you got away. Did you have women with you?”
“My followers had one or two,” said Wulf. “Lost them, I’m afraid. There was no woman with me. None.” He snapped his hard mouth shut on the word.
“We’ve skirmished with the Moors for a week now,” said Charles Martel, “waiting for them to give battle.”
“Abd-ar-Rahman waits for you to give battle,” said Wulf. “He’s driven everything before him until now — driven them since he was a young man coming out of Africa. He won’t go back unless you beat him.”
“You talk as if you kno
w him.”
“I know him,” said Wulf. “I’ve fought him more times than you and I have fingers and toes.”
None of that was supple courtier talk. Wulf spoke respectfully but bluntly, in a deep voice. Charles Martel remembered Count Eudo, driven from his castle on the Garonne into the protection of the Frankish host. Eudo had been plaintive, even servile. Charles permitted himself to like the flavor of Wulf’s speech, even while he was glad that no retainers heard their master so levelly addressed. Silence again, while the big war-horse stamped behind him and snuffed at its grain.
“No woman with you,” Charles Martel harked back. “Don’t you love women?”
“At my age, a man’s nature gets past loving women.”
“Ha!” Charles Martel barked a laugh. He leaned to pour wine into two leather cups and shoved one across the table to Wulf. “I’ll warrant this wasn’t always so with you, not loving women.”
“I didn’t speak of times long past,” said Wulf, closing his corded fist around the cup. “I spoke of now, with Abd-ar-Rahman here in your country, his camp full of booty plundered from your people, his men swearing by Allah to wipe you off the earth.”
That, too, was boldly blunt, but it was a wholesome reminder of why they sat together. Charles Martel drank and wiped his mouth.
“How do you swear, and by whom?” he asked. “I take it you’re a Christian.”
“England’s been Christian for more than a hundred years,” Wulf said, drinking in turn, and that was no real answer to the question. “My father wanted me to be a priest and put me to school at Canterbury. Abbot Hadrian was my teacher.”
“Hadrian?” echoed Charles Martel, remembering that a Roman emperor had borne that name.
“Hadrian of Carthage. He taught me to read and write Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and I was good at those.”
“I’d have thought your young mind would have been to war and weapons,” said Charles Martel.
“It was, and Abbot Hadrian saw that it was. When I was seventeen, he sent me away from Canterbury, saying I’d be happier as a soldier.”
“He must have been a wise teacher, and a kind one.”
“He was as sharp as vinegar, but he understood me,” said Wulf. “He told me cloisters and psalms were for some boys, but not for me. So I fought in an English war or two, and others among your Franks. I was at the battle of Tertry, forty-five years ago.”
“Were you so?” Charles Martel wondered if Wulf had fought for or against his father Pepin, but did not ask. “Well, what then?”
“There was peace in these countries for a while. I traveled on and got into the imperial service at Constantinople.”
“With the Byzantines. What sort of people were they?”
“Fairly proud. Fairly foolish. But the army was a good one. I was with it against the Arabs in Armenia and Syria.”
“Was that good fighting?” asked Charles Martel.
“It was deadly fighting,” said Wulf. “There was supposed to be a truce, but there was fighting. Then I visited Carthage, for Abbot Hadrian had come from there. I got there in time to be driven out by the Arabs in 695, but Constantinople sent a fleet, and we drove them out in turn. It was what you’d call good fighting.”
“The Arabs destroyed Carthage next time.”
“I was there when they started taking its stones apart,” growled Wulf into his wine cup. “Some got away by sea as the Arabs closed in. I couldn’t join those, but I managed not to get killed. I ran into the desert before the army of Hassan ibn an-Numan.”
“Christ’s soul, my friend, you seem to have done a lot of running before those infidels,” Charles Martel could not help saying. “Back in Carthage and later, and now, too, they’ve chased you.”
Wulf grinned, showing gaps in his teeth. “I didn’t run long that time after Carthage fell. I came among the Moors.”
“And the Moors are yonder,” reminded Charles Martel, gazing into the night outside. “Deciding how to fight us.”
“They weren’t Moslems then,” said Wulf. “We fought the Moslems, and I saw the Moslems do some running of their own.”
“When did that happen?”
“Thirty-four years back, when I was thirty. I’d seen so much fighting by then that I thought I had no more to learn.”
“There’s always something more for a fighter to learn,” pronounced Charles Martel. “Who was your Moorish general?”
“The Cahena.”
“What sort of man was he?”
“The Cahena was a woman,” said Wulf.
Charles Martel stared, he hoped not stupidly.
“She whipped Hassan and his bravest soldiers,” said Wulf. “Drove them like sheep. Those who didn’t run almost all the way back to Egypt, we killed or captured.”
“God’s rood, this is a strange story,” vowed Charles Martel, filling their cups again. “I never heard of this war queen.”
“There’s always something more for a fighter to learn.” Wulf gave him back his own words without mockery. “She was the only one who beat the Arabs, after they came from Carthage.”
Charles Martel shoved the replenished cup toward Wulf. “Tell me how she did it,” he said.
“That will be a long story.”
“You’ll have a long night to tell it,” said Charles Martel. “Take your time to say what will help me fight them tomorrow. You say Carthage fell, and you escaped. How did you meet this Cahena?”
* * *
II
They had been riding after Wulf ever since the summer sun had risen behind sacked Carthage. Now that sun was a hot disk at the top of the pale sky. Its rays raked the sullenly scrubby plain and the hammered track that ran west by south toward remote hunches of mountains. Whenever he urged the tall bay horse to a canter, they picked up speed two furlongs behind. When he slowed down, so did they, but not quite to his slowness. They gained. Either their horses stayed fresher than his or they cared less for their horses than they cared about catching Wulf.
For the fiftieth time he peered over the broad cliff of his shoulder. Four of them back there, and somehow they didn’t seem to be Moslems. What did they want of him?
Whatever they wanted, he’d better find out before his sweating horse fagged out in the hot, dry air. If he must fight four mounted men, he didn’t want to fight them on foot. Reining around, he sat his saddle and let the horse breathe gratefully. He’d begun to love that horse since he had taken it from its Moslem master in a black hour before dawn, had taken, too, the Moslem’s cloak and turban to look like something other than a fugitive resident of Carthage. A stolen horse carries you well, Wulf had once been told by a Hun of Constantinople’s imperial guard. Weary as the beast was from carrying Wulf’s big body so many miles, it knew a fight was coming and was not afraid.
Wulf loosened his straight sword in its sheath, and from a skin bottle he sipped water to churn inside his mouth. He looked this way, then that. The road had roughened to a sandy track across the rolling land with its brittle, dry grass. A mile or so to the left rose a tuft of palms with a little clay-brown hut beneath it. No hiding place, not even a big rock to set his back to, nothing except those pursuers coming nearer, while Wulf listened to his horse breathe. He squinted his eyes to see what he must face.
They weren’t Moslems, they were Moors, coming at him. Wild Moors, he judged, none of the soft hangers-on he had seen in Carthage. They wore dull-hued capes with hoods thrown back from shaggy heads. To their left arms were strapped painted shields, and each right hand poised a javelin. Nearer still, and he saw their roughly made saddles and their clumsily booted feet stuck into leather stirrup loops. Their bearded faces scowled. Warriors these, ready for war.
They spread into open order to approach. Wulf wished he had a shield, too, but felt lucky to have a sword. If only they didn’t cast their javelins all at once, if only they came to close quarters. Then a swift spurring charge to their right, outside the flanker’s shield and a slash or thrust for the life. With one down, whi
rl at the others. He might get a second of them quickly and, with luck, a third — he didn’t often need more than one fair chance at a man. With three down, the fourth would be no problem.
They had slowed their panting horses to a walk. They meant to take their time with him, savoring what they would do.
“I am Wulf the Saxon!” he shouted in the language they would know, braving his name at them in their own fashion. They came to a halt, fifteen paces away.
“He doesn’t talk like a Moslem,” said the swarthy, spidery man at the left.
“He has a Moslem saddle and Moslem clothes,” said another.
“I took them to get past the guards around Carthage,” said Wulf, glad of any chance to parley. “I’m a Saxon, I told you. I fought the Moslems at Carthage and, after they took the town, I sneaked around like a snake, looking for a chance to get away.”
“He’s lying,” said the man at the left. “I’ve talked to people who watched from outside. The only Carthaginians who escaped were rich ones who got places on the ships before the Moslems closed in. Those Moslems killed all the men who were left, raped all the women.”
“They didn’t kill me,” said Wulf. “I slung my sword behind and put a mantle over it, and I moved around carefully. When Moslems came frowning, I said, ‘Allahu akhbar,’ and they thought I was a convert. It was like that for two days — no, three. Last night I got over the wall and started away on foot. A Moslem came riding after me. I got him by the leg and dragged him off his horse and put my sword into him. This is his horse and these are his clothes and this is his blood on them. But you’re Moors, and I don’t have to dress like a Moslem among you.”
He raked the turban off with his bridle arm and shook down his tawny, sweaty hair. It was cut ear-length at back and sides and banged in front, to frame the flushed rectangle of his face. He shrugged out of the cloak, showing his embroidered tunic with a torn right sleeve.
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1986 Page 1
