On
Being Carried Shackled Into The Presence Of The Sultan, Bartema Said
That He Was A “Roman, Professed A Mamaluke
In Babylon of Alcayr;” but when
told to utter the formula of the Moslem faith, he held his tongue,
“eyther
That it pleased not God, or that for feare and scruple of
conscience he durst not.” For which offence he was again “deprived of ye
fruition of heaven.”
But, happily for Bartema, in those days the women of Arabia were “greatly
in love with whyte men.” Before escaping from Meccah, he lay hid in the
house of a Mohammedan, and could not express his gratitude for the good
wife’s care; “also,” he says, “this furthered my good enterteynement, that
there was in the house a fayre young mayde, the niese of the Mahumetan,
who was greatly in loue with me.” At Aden he was equally fortunate. One
of the Sultan’s three wives, on the departure of her lord and master,
bestowed her heart upon the traveller. She was “very faire and comely,
after theyr maner, and of colour inclynyng to blacke:” she
[p.336] would spend the whole day in beholding Bartema, who wandered
about simulating madness,[FN#5] and “in the meane season, divers tymes,
sent him secretly muche good meate by her maydens.” He seems to have
played his part to some purpose, under the colour of madness,
converting a “great fatt shepe” to Mohammedanism, killing an ass because he
refused to be a proselyte, and, finally, he “handeled a Jewe so euyll
that he had almost killed hym.” After sundry adventures and a trip to
Sanaa, he started for Persia with the Indian fleet, in which, by means
of fair promises, he had made friendship with a certain captain.
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