'IN THE DEVIL-TREE'S LARDER!'
Leonard awoke from a deep sleep, on the morning after the _fête_, to
find himself, like Templemore, in a place that was strange to him.
So profound had been the slumber induced by the drug that had been
mixed with the drink, that he had been carried all the way to Coryon's
retreat in absolute unconsciousness. When he at last woke up, he was
in one of the cells under the terrace within the reach of the great
flesh-eating tree.
No words can describe the horror and anguish that filled his breast
when, by degrees, he realised the dreadful truth. Not only did he
shudder at the thought of his own too probable fate, but the fear that
his sweet Ulama might share the same awful doom drove him almost to the
verge of madness. He cursed the false sense of security that had led up
to this terrible result. A few simple precautions would have frustrated
this treachery! But it was too late!
Through the grated door he could see the great devil-tree, hear the
swishing of its long, trailing branches, watch them come up to the
grating and search about over its face for some opening large enough
to penetrate, even trying to wriggle in through its small slits and
perforations. In the centre of the cell was a block of wood fixed
in the ground to serve as a table. A small stream of water ran down
from a pipe above and fell into a channel in the floor, and a pitcher
stood beside it. For chair there was a smaller log of wood; the 'bed'
on which he had found himself was simply a bag of straw whereon were
laid two or three rugs. An iron door shut off the back from an interior
gallery, and the cell was partitioned off from others, on each side, by
grated screens, like that in the front. The occupants of adjacent cells
could, therefore, see each other.
As Leonard looked round in astonishment and alarm, and exclaimed,
involuntarily, "Where am I?" a discordant peal of mocking laughter rang
out from the cell upon his right.
"Where is he! He doesn't even know where he is!" a harsh voice cried
out. "He--one of the gods that wielded the lightning and thunder! After
all, caught by Coryon, and brought here like the rest of us! Ha! ha!
ha!"
Leonard, shocked and amazed, went to the side whence the sounds
proceeded, and there saw, peering through the bars, a horrible face
that grinned at him with hideous sneers and wild-looking eyes. The hair
and beard were matted and dishevelled; the face and figure, so far as
he could make them out, looked gaunt and thin. He was dressed in the
black tunic with gold star that denoted one of Coryon's soldiers.
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the mocking voice. "You don't know where you are,
eh? I'll tell you, my lord, son of the gods, that can kill us soldiers
with a magic lightning wand, but can't keep yourself out of Coryon's
clutches--you are in the 'devil-tree's larder'!"
"The devil-tree's larder!"
"Yes, my lord; the devil-tree's larder. That means that they have put
you here to keep you cool and in good condition, before they hand you
over to be food for their pet out there." And he pointed to the tree.
Leonard shuddered, and the awful truth of the man's statement forced
itself upon his mind, in spite of his wish to believe it too atrocious
to be possible. He went up to the door in the front and examined it. He
saw that it ran in grooves at the top and bottom.
"Ah," said the mocking voice behind him, "that's right. You see how
it's done now. They run that back from inside, sudden-like, some time
when you don't expect it; and in come the twisting branches that lay
hold of you, and out you go to make him a nice meal. Ha! ha! ha!"
Leonard turned and stared in helpless horror. Was it possible that
there was such cold-blooded, fiendish cruelty in the world? Yet--he
remembered the fate of the poor puma. He trembled, and turned sick and
faint; while the one in the next cell continued to jeer and mock at him.
"Where is your lightning-wand, my lord? Why have you not brought it
to try it on the tree? You managed to get _me_ brought here; and now
you've managed to get here yourself!"
"I got _you_ brought here? How? What then are you doing here?" Leonard
asked, his surprise overcoming his disgust.
"What am I doing here? Why, the same as you--waiting in 'the
devil-tree's larder' till I'm given to him for a meal--as you will be.
And it's all through you; because you killed some of us and we others
ran away; this is what they do with us."
Leonard shuddered again, while the man went to the stream of water
that, as in Leonard's cell, was pouring down from a pipe above, and,
filling the pitcher, took a long drink.
"Makes you thirsty, this sort of thing," he said, with another jeering
laugh. "You'll find that water there mighty handy if they let you stay
here long enough. Ha! ha! ha!"
The man was evidently in a state of high fever. The place was full of
foetid odours given off by the foul tree; and, apart from that, the
want of sleep would superinduce fever, if, indeed, it did not drive mad
the wretched occupants of the cells; for who could sleep for more than
a minute or two at a time in one of those dens, where, at any moment,
the door might be run back and the miserable prisoner delivered over
to the fatal branches? It was this constant, ever-present dread that
banished sleep, and must inevitably end in madness for the victims,
provided they were kept there long enough.
Then the thought flashed upon him that Ulama also might be an occupant
of one of these awful cells; and at that such a burst of grief and
agony came over him that he hid his face within his hands and groaned
aloud.
"Yah! don't give way like that, my lord. Being here's not so bad when
once you're used to it! Look at me! You don't see me worry and cry like
a great girl. I take it quietly; I've been too used to seeing others
here. Many's the time I've had the pulling back of these doors and have
seen a man or a woman hauled out squealing and kicking like an animal
going to be killed; and I've laughed at them. I thought it such fun!
And now those who used to help me and laugh with me, they're waiting to
see how I like it; and they will laugh at me, too, just the same. But I
don't care. What does it matter? It's nothing, I tell you, when you're
as used to it as I am."
The wretched creature thus trying to delude himself with boastful
talk and jeering at his fellow-captive, was himself, it was easy to
see, worked up into the highest state of nervous dread and fear. The
least sound made him start and look with straining eyeballs in the
direction from which it came. He kept going to the pitcher for draughts
of water, and never remained still for a single instant. If he sat down
for a short space, the twitching of a foot, or leg, or hand, spoke of
agitation within that would not be controlled.
Leonard turned from the sight with mingled feelings of disgust and
loathing and, going to the other side, looked through the grating of
the adjoining cell, to see whether it was occupied. And, looking, his
heart seemed to come up into his throat when he saw a silent female
form seated with its back to him. The exclamation that escaped him
caused the form to turn, when he saw that the woman was a stranger.
Her face was pleasing in its features, and good-looking, but had in
its expression such a burden of unspeakable horror and despair that
he shivered as he met her glance. At sight of it, for the moment, he
almost forgot his own misery, and he asked gently,
"And who then are you?"
For a few seconds there was no reply; then, in a voice that had in it
the suggestion of much sweetness, albeit now forced, and unnatural,
"I scarcely know. Once I was a happy young girl; then a well-beloved
and loving wife and mother; now I am only something with which to feed
yonder monster."
"Yes," continued the woman dreamily, "I was once good-looking, they
said. Certainly, my husband thought so; and that was enough for me. But
it was my curse, alas! for Skelda, the chief of the priests next to
Coryon, thought so too. He stole me away from my home and my children
and forced me to become one of his so-called wives. And now, because my
sorrowing and pining have seared and furrowed my good looks, even as
they had eaten into my heart, he has tired of me, and has sent me to
the fate that, sooner or later, we all come to here--all of my sex, at
least, as well as many of the other among those who are not priests.
Yet," she added, "it is but five years since they brought me here. What
I look like now you can see for yourself!"
Leonard looked at her with pity; and there came into his mind the
remembrance of Ulama's words of the day before--"It seems almost wrong
to be happy when I know so many others are unhappy"--and his own light
rejoinder. And he reproached himself in that he had been content to
bask in love and self-enjoyment while, close at hand, there were such
abuses, such direful sufferings. True, he had not actually known
their whole nature and extent; but he _had_ known of the so-called
'blood-tax'; and had heard enough to make it certain, had he given the
matter due consideration, that there were evils in the land that cried
aloud for remedy.
Then his thoughts reverted to Ulama, and he asked,
"Do you know aught concerning the Princess Ulama?"
"I know that she was to be brought to this place, and that she was to
be put into the cell I occupied before they brought me here yesterday.
It is underground; a long way from this part."
At least, then, the poor child, Leonard thankfully reflected, was not
in one of the cells in sight of the dreaded tree.
Presently he asked the woman whether she had known Zelus, the son of
Coryon.
"Ah yes! Who did not in this land?" was the reply. "The monster! A
great spasm as of relief and joy came upon us all--all the women, I
mean--when we heard of his death. He was the worst of them all, though
one of the youngest. No one was safe from him. Even the princess he
sought to bring here to treat as he had treated so many others!"
"I know. I killed him when he was in the very act of raising his
cowardly hand against the king's daughter," said Leonard quietly.
The woman turned and looked at him with more of interest in her manner
than she had yet shown. She scanned him closely.
"Then," she said, "you must be one of the strangers of whom we heard.
But you are young, and not, as I have been told, of our race. We heard
of one older, one who, it was said, belonged to our people. And when we
heard that, we all rejoiced; for surely, we said, he brings us tidings
of what all have been expecting. Therefore, we who were held here in a
bondage that is a daily, hourly torture, a never-ceasing degradation,
we welcomed your coming as a sign that the Great Spirit had at last
brought our long punishment to an end. I, even I, dared to hope I
should escape the fate that has befallen all others, and should live to
see again my husband and children before I die. But, alas! it was but a
dream--a delusive, passing hope, a thing too good to come in my time.
Four months have passed and nothing has occurred, though ye smote the
hated Zelus quickly; and even Coryon was filled with fear and dread.
Why have ye failed to do more, and, instead, fallen victim to Coryon?"
Ah! why? It was a question that now sank deep into Leonard's soul
and tortured him with vain regrets and self-reproach. For he had a
heart that swelled with kindness towards his fellows, and a tender
conscience; and the more he thought things over, the more difficult he
found it to feel that he was without blame. He had been too selfishly
wrapped up in his own personal feelings, he now acknowledged; too
little interested in those very matters that, as the king's future
son-in-law, should have taken, if not the first, at least a prominent
position in his mind. And then, to be ignobly trapped, at a time when
there was nothing but feasting and amusement in their minds! Their arms
taken from them--they who could have kept at bay all Coryon's soldiers
and dispersed them, had they but been vigilant and wakeful! It was
a cruelly humiliating thought--it was worse; for the child-hearted,
innocent Ulama, who had a right to rely on his protection, had been
sacrificed also to his self-abandonment and want of watchfulness.
Thus did Leonard reason, now that his opportunities had vanished. He
knew not what was the true explanation of the position in which he
found himself; but a vague, half-formed idea crept into his mind that
Coryon would hardly have ventured upon such a daring stroke unless he
had felt he could rely upon the support, or, at least, the indifferent
neutrality, of a certain proportion of the people. And if he, Leonard,
had shown more interest in the affairs of the people over whom he
was one day to be king, he might have gained so firm a hold on their
confidence and affections as would have rendered Coryon's schemes
hopeless from the very start.
But such thoughts, whether well or ill-founded, came now all too late.
Here he was, caged, and at Coryon's mercy. His relentless enemy had but
to give the signal and he would be consigned to an awful death.
He had some further talk with the woman, who told him terrible
tales of indescribable barbarities and iniquities perpetrated by the
priestly tyrants under the covering of their 'religion'; tales that
made the blood within him boil, and filled his soul with savage, though
helpless, indignation. Then he asked the woman's name, and was told it
was Fernina.
At last, he asked the question that, though often upon his tongue, yet
he had shrunk from giving voice to.
"And what do you suppose will happen--here?"
She sighed and shook her head, hopelessly, despairingly.
"Only what always happens," she answered, in a dull, listless tone.
"None that are once placed here ever escape the fatal tree; except that
sometimes they are carried up above and laid on what they call 'the
devil-tree's ladle.'"
"'The devil-tree's ladle?'"
"Yes; it is a contrivance on wheels; a kind of long plank shaped at one
end like a great spoon. Those who are to be given to the tree are laid
upon it, bound so that they cannot move, and then pushed out along the
stone-work till they are within reach of the branches; those who push
the plank at the other end being far enough away for their own safety.
It is part of the system of terrorism and torture here," Fernina added,
"to place some of us, at times, in rooms that are in the rock above,
and that overlook this place, and to keep us locked in there for days
and nights, that we may be cowed and frightened at the scenes that are
enacted here. Often, a hateful fascination compels you to become an
unwilling witness; in any case, you cannot avoid hearing the shrieks
and moans; imagination supplies the rest."
Leonard turned away, not caring to hear more, and sat down to brood,
eating his heart out with keen regrets, all now unavailing. The
jeering of the half-mad wretch in the other cell had ceased; he,
too, had fallen into a sort of brooding lethargy, and so was quiet;
but a constant tap, tap, tap, of one foot on the stone floor told he
was not asleep. Thus the hours dragged by in silence, save for the
intermittent, stealthy rustle of the branches outside, as they came
prowling over the face of the gratings in their sleepless seeking after
the prey they seemed to scent within.
Once, a small grating at the bottom of the door of each cell was
opened, and a platter with coarse food upon it was pushed in; then the
space closed up again. The sounds made them all, for the moment, start;
then they relapsed again into the stupor of despair. None touched the
food or even noticed it. But the man in the further cell had now seated
himself near the little stream of water and, every now and then, he
roused himself to take long draughts.
When it grew dark, a lighted lantern was pushed under the door into
each cell, as the food had been. Leonard felt drowsy and longed for
rest; yet was afraid to lie down or to close his eyes. Now and again
they even closed against his will in a short doze; but it was never of
long duration, and each time he woke it was with a renewed sense of the
horror of his situation.
He had just roused from one of these brief snatches of sleep, and had
had time to remember once more where he was, when a low rumble made
him spring up and look around. Then the man in the next cell gave an
awful cry--a cry that rang in Leonard's ears for many a day--and at the
same moment the grated door of his prison slowly began to move. In his
demented terror he banged himself against the partition between the two
cells, tried to get his fingers into the slits that he might cling to
it; then climbed up on to the wooden block in the middle of the cell.
But the rustling branches neared him, sought for him on every side, and
soon mounted the log and caught him in their deadly embrace. Slowly,
but irresistibly, while he never ceased his cries or his vain struggles
and clutchings, the coils around him tightened and dragged him out into
the darkness, where his cries gradually became weaker, and were finally
heard no more; and when they ceased, and he heard the door rolling
back, with dull rumbling, to its place, Leonard tottered to the pile of
rugs in the corner of his cell, and fell upon them in a swoon.
When he returned to consciousness a bright light was shining through
the grated door. He got up and, like one who is but a helpless
on-looker in a fevered dream, he went to the bars and gazed out. It
was bright moonlight outside, and there he saw the same ghastly scene
repeated that Templemore had witnessed a short time before. He saw
the dead body of the latest victim of the tree's insatiable thirst
for blood dangling amongst the branches; caught up, now by the neck,
and now by the feet, and passed on from one branch to another in what
seemed a new dance or sport of death; and finally carried off by the
great crawling reptiles that had come up to claim their share in the
repast.
While the scene lasted, Leonard seemed incapable of volition; his limbs
refused to obey the will of his reeling brain and to bear him away
from the sight. But, when the creatures had disappeared, he turned and
made his way once more to the low bed, where he remained in a state of
torpor till the day was far advanced.
After what seemed a long interval, he sat up and rubbed his eyes, after
the manner of one just awakened from the horror of a nightmare. Then he
saw the woman who occupied the next cell standing with her eyes fixed
on him; and, when she found he was once more awake and conscious, she
addressed him.
"I am sorry for you," she said. "Even in my own misery I am not so
blinded but that I can see that your burden of sorrow is a heavy
one--more than you can bear. Yet methinks, were I a man, I would not
thus give way to it. I am but a woman, but my greatest wish--since
nothing else is left me--is that I may see Coryon once more--stand
face to face with him--and show him that all his calculated cruelty
and subtle ingenuity of torture have not subdued my spirit, nor the
scorn that a heart conscious of having done no wrong can feel for such
as he. I would give him back look for look, hate for hate, as I have
before to-day; and make his wicked eyes quail before mine with the
consciousness that the spirit of one he has unjustly oppressed can
show itself greater than his own. But with _you_--he will but laugh at
you--for I feel, somehow, you will be taken from here to meet him. I
suspect he has sent you here first to crush your spirit with the sight
of the horrors that are perpetrated here. He--have you ever seen him?"
"No," Leonard answered, staring at her in amazement.
"Ah! then you know not what he is like. I tell you," the strange woman
went on, her eyes lighting up with unexpected fire, "he is a man whose
mere glance strikes terror into the souls of ordinary men. There is
that about him that makes you shrink as from some unearthly incarnation
of all the powers of evil; and in that he delights, yea, more, even,
than in torturing his victims."
Here she broke off abruptly; then resumed, in a different manner.
"I have been wondering whether you are he who was to have wedded the
princess?"
"Alas! yes. You have divined aright," Leonard answered sadly.
"Then," said the woman, with increasing warmth, that gained as she went
on an energy that was almost fierceness, "then, the greater the reason
you should throw off this weakness and gird up your strength to meet
the haughty tyrant and show him that your spirit is equal to his own.
In all his ill-spent time upon this earth--and they say it has been a
very long one--it is his boast and his pride that scarce any can meet
his glance without quailing under it. Think! Think how he will triumph
over you--how he will point the finger of scorn--turn the look of
cold contempt upon the one who aspired to be the future king of this
country--and _that_ means to stand on an equality with himself--and
yet, as he will declare, is but a weak, puling, or ordinary mortal.
Ah! would I were in your place! You can but die. But I would make him
feel that I had a heart, a spirit, more dauntless, more unconquerable
than his own. Ay! I would die knowing that for many and many and many a
year to come, the remembrance that he had met _one_ spirit he could not
intimidate or master would be to him an instrument of defeat and shame,
eating into his proud heart, even as the suffering he has caused to me
has gnawed into my own."
The woman spoke at the last with a force that almost electrified her
hearer. Leonard felt roused as, perhaps he had never been roused before.
"You are right, my friend!" he exclaimed, "and I thank you. As you
truly say, he who aspires to high things should show himself worthy
to achieve them, and not even the shadow of a dreadful death and
cruel sufferings should have the strength to cow his spirit in the
presence of this most cold-blooded and revolting tyrant. If I have
shown weakness, it was not from personal fear, but from thought of the
suffering of one dearly loved, and my self-reproach for having been
the unintentional cause of it. It is well that I met you; for you have
taught me how I should meet this Coryon!"
"And," said the woman, "if you want one unerring shaft to launch at
him--one that I know will pierce the armour of his pride and drive him
to the verge of madness--tell him you know one woman whose spirit more
than matches his; tell him that she is called Fernina."