A murmur quickly sprang up round me, which grew into shouts. “Kneel,”
one whispered, “kneel, sir, or you will be seen.” And another cried:
“Kneel, you without beard, and do obeisance to the only Goddess, or by
the old Gods I will make myself her priest and butcher you!” And so the
shouts arose into a roar.
But presently the word “Deucalion” began to be bandied about, and there
came a moderation in the zeal of these enthusiasts. Deucalion, the man
who had left Atlantis twenty years before to rule Yucatan, they might
know little enough about, but Deucalion, who rode not many days back
beside the Empress in the golden castle beneath the canopy of snakes,
was a person they remembered; and when they weighed up his possible
ability for vengeance, the shouts died away from them limply.
So when the silence had grown again, and Phorenice turned and saw me
standing alone amongst all the prostrate worshippers, I stepped out from
the crowd and passed between two of the great stones, and went across
the circle to where she stood beside the altar. I did not prostrate
myself. At the prescribed distance I made the salutation which she
herself had ordered when she made me her chief minister, and then hailed
her with formal decorum as Empress.
“Deucalion, man of ice,” she retorted.
“I still adhere to the old Gods!”
“I was not referring to that,” said she, and looked at me with a
sidelong smile.
But here Ylga came up to us with a face that was white, and a hand that
shook, and made supplication for my life. “If he will not leave the old
Gods yet,” she pleaded, “surely you will pardon him? He is a strong
man, and does not become a convert easily. You may change him later. But
think, Phorenice, he is Deucalion; and if you slay him here for this
one thing, there is no other man within all the marches of Atlantis who
would so worthily serve--”
The Empress took the words from her. “You slut,” she cried out. “I have
you near me to appoint my wardrobe, and carry my fan, and do you dare
to put a meddling finger on my policies? Back with you, outside this
circle, or I’ll have you whipped. Ay, and I’ll do more. I’ll serve you
as Zaemon served my captain, Tarca. Shall I point a finger at you, and
smite your pretty skin with a sudden leprosy?”
The girl bowed her shoulders, and went away cowed, and Phorenice turned
to me. “My lord,” she said, “I am like a young bird in the nest that has
suddenly found its wings. Wings have so many uses that I am curious to
try them all.”
“May each new flight they take be for the good of Atlantis.”
“Oh,” she said, with an eye-flash, “I know what you have most at heart.
But we will go back to the pyramid, and talk this out at more leisure. I
pray you now, my lord, conduct me back to my riding beast.”
It appeared then that I was to be condoned for not offering her worship,
and so putting public question on her deification. It appeared also that
Ylga’s interference was looked upon as untimely, and, though I could not
understand the exact reasons for either of these things, I accepted
them as they were, seeing that they forwarded the scheme that Zaemon had
bidden me carry out.
So when the Empress lent me her fingers--warm, delicate fingers they
were, though so skilful to grasp the weapons of war--I took them
gravely, and led her out of the great circle, which she had polluted
with her trickeries. I had expected to see our Lord the Sun take
vengeance on the profanation whilst it was still in act; but none had
come: and I knew that He would choose his own good time for retribution,
and appoint what instrument He thought best, without my raising a puny
arm to guard His mighty honour.
So I led this lovely sinful woman back to the huge red mammoth which
stood there tamely in waiting, and the smell of the sacrifice came
after us as we walked. She mounted the stair to the golden castle on the
shaggy beast’s back, and bade me mount also and take seat beside her.
But the place of the fan-girl behind was empty, and what we said as we
rode back through the streets there was none to overhear.
She was eager to know what had befallen me after the attack on the gate,
and I told her the tale, laying stress on the worthiness of Nais,
and uttering an opinion that with care the girl might be won back to
allegiance again. Only the commands that Zaemon laid upon me when he
and I spoke together in the sacred tongue, did I withhold, as it is
not lawful to repeat these matters save only in the High Council of the
Priests itself as they sit before the Ark of the Mysteries.
“You seem to have an unusual kindliness for this rebel Nais,” said
Phorenice.
“She showed herself to me as more clever and thoughtful than the common
herd.”
“Ay,” she answered, with a sigh that I think was real enough in its way,
“an Empress loses much that meaner woman gets as her common due.”
“In what particular?”
“She misses the honest wooing of her equals.”
“If you set up for a Goddess--” I said.
“Pah! I wish to be no Goddess to you, Deucalion. That was for the common
people; it gives me more power with them; it helps my schemes. All you
Seven higher priests know that trick of calling down the fire, and it
pleased me to filch it. Can you not be generous, and admit that a woman
may be as clever in finding out these natural laws as your musty elder
priests?”
“Remains that you are Empress.”
“Nor Empress either. Just think that there is a woman seated beside you
on this cushion, Deucalion, and look upon her, and say what words
come first to your lips. Have done with ceremonies, and have done with
statecraft. Do you wish to wait on as you are till all your manhood
withers? It is well not to hurry unduly in these matters: I am with you
there. Yet, who but a fool watches a fruit grow ripe, and then leaves it
till it is past its prime?”
I looked on her glorious beauty, but as I live it left me cold. But I
remembered the command that had been laid upon me, and forced a smile.
“I may have been fastidious,” I said, “but I do not regret waiting this
long.”
“Nor I. But I have played my life as a maid, time enough. I am a woman,
ripe, and full-blooded, and the day has come when I should be more than
what I have been.”
I let my hand clench on hers. “Take me to husband then, and I will be a
good man to you. But, as I am bidden speak to Phorenice the woman now,
and not to the Empress, I offer fair warning that I will be no puppet.”
She looked at me sidelong. “I have been master so long that I think
it will come as enjoyment to be mastered sometimes. No, Deucalion, I
promise that--you shall be no puppet. Indeed, it would take a lusty lung
to do the piping if you were to dance against your will.”
“Then, as man and wife we will live together in the royal pyramid, and
we will rule this country with all the wit that it has pleased the High
Gods to bestow on us. These miserable differences shall be swept aside;
the rebels shall go back to their homes, and hunt, and fight the beasts
in the provinces, and the Priests’ Clan shall be pacified. Phorenice,
you and I will throw ourselves brain and soul into the government, and
we will make Atlantis rise as a nation that shall once more surpass all
the world for peace and prosperity.”
Petulantly she drew her hand away from mine. “Oh, your conditions, and
your Atlantis! You carry a crudeness in these colonial manners of yours,
Deucalion, that palls on one after the first blunt flavour has worn
away. Am I to do all the wooing? Is there no thrill of love under all
your ice?”
“In truth, I do not know what love may be. I have had little enough
speech with women all these busy years.”
“We were a pair, then, when you landed, though I have heard sighs and
protestations from every man that carries a beard in all Atlantis. Some
of them tickled my fancy for the day, but none of them have moved me
deeper. No, I also have not learned what this love may be from my own
personal feelings. But, sir, I think that you will teach me soon, if you
go on with your coldness.”
“From what I have seen, love is for the poor, and the weak, and for
those of flighty emotions.”
“Then I would that another woman were Empress, and that I were some
ill-dressed creature of the gutter that a strong man could pick up by
force, and carry away to his home for sheer passion. Ah! How I could
revel in it! How I could respond if he caught my whim!” She laughed.
“But I should lead him a sad life of it if my liking were not so strong
as his.”
“We are as we are made, and we cannot change our inwards which move us.”
She looked at me with a sullen glance. “If I do not change yours, my
Deucalion, there will be more trouble brewed for this poor Atlantis
that you set such store upon. There will be ill doings in this coming
household of ours if my love grows for you, and yours remains still
unborn.”
I believe she would have had me fondle her there in the golden castle on
the mammoth’s shabby back, before the city streets packed with curious
people. She had little enough appetite for privacy at any time. But for
the life of me I could not do it. The Gods know I was earnest enough
about my task, and They know also how it repelled me. But I was a true
priest that day, and I had put away all personal liking to carry out the
commands which the Council had laid upon me. If I had known how to set
about it, I would have fallen in with her mood. But where any of those
shallow bedizened triflers about the court would have been glibly in his
element, I stuck for lack of a dozen words.
There was no help for it but to leave all, save what I actually felt,
unsaid. Diplomacy I was trained in, and on most matters I had a glib
enough tongue. But to palter with women was a lightness I had always
neglected, and if I had invented would-be pretty speeches out of my
clumsy inexperience, Phorenice would have seen through the fraud on the
instant. She had been nurtured during these years of her rule on a
pap of these silly protestations, and could weigh their value with an
expert’s exactness.
Nor was it a case where honest confession would have served my purpose
better. If I had put my position to her in plain words, it would have
made relations worse. And so perforce I had to hold my tongue, and
submit to be considered a clown.
“I had always heard,” she said, “that you colonists in Yucatan were far
ahead of those in Egypt in all the arts and graces. But you, sir, do
small credit to your vice-royalty. Why, I have had gentry from the Nile
come here, and you might almost think they had never left their native
shores.”
“They must have made great strides this last twenty years, then. When
last I was sent to Egypt to report, the blacks were clearly masters of
the land, and our people lived there only on sufferance. Their pyramids
were puny, and their cities nothing more than forts.”
“Oh,” she said mockingly, “they are mere exiles still, but they remember
their manners. My poor face seemed to please them, at least they all
went into raptures over it. And for ten pleasant words, one of them cut
off his own right hand. We made the bargain, my Egyptian gallant and
I, and the hand lies dried on some shelf in my apartment to-day as a
pleasant memento.”
But here, by a lucky chance for me, an incident occurred which saved me
from further baiting. The rebels outside the walls were conducting their
day’s attack with vigour and some intelligence. More than once during
our procession the lighter missiles from their war engines had sung
up through the air, and split against a building, and thrown splinters
which wounded those who thronged the streets. Still there had been
nothing to ruffle the nerves of any one at all used to the haps of
warfare, or in any way to hinder our courtship. But presently, it seems,
they stopped hurling stones from their war engines, and took to loading
them with carcases of wood lined with the throwing fire.
Now, against stone buildings these did little harm, save only that they
scorched horribly any poor wretch that was within splash of them when
they burst; but when they fell upon the rude wooden booths and rush
shelters of the poorer folk, they set them ablaze instantly. There was
no putting out these fires.
These things also would have given to either Phorenice or myself little
enough of concern, as they are the trivial and common incidents of
every siege; but the mammoth on which we rode had not been so properly
schooled. When the first blue whiff of smoke came to us down the
windings of the street, the huge red beast hoisted its trunk, and began
to sway its head uneasily. When the smoke drifts grew more dense, and
here and there a tongue of flame showed pale beneath the sunshine, it
stopped abruptly and began to trumpet.
The guards who led it, tugged manfully at the chains which hung from the
jagged metal collar round its neck, so that the spikes ran deep into its
flesh, and reminded it keenly of its bondage. But the beast’s terror
at the fire, which was native to its constitution, mastered all its
new-bought habits of obedience. From time unknown men have hunted the
mammoth in the savage ground, and the mammoth has hunted men; and the
men have always used fire as a shield, and mammoths have learned to
dread fire as the most dangerous of all enemies.
Phorenice’s brow began to darken as the great beast grew more restive,
and she shook her red curls viciously. “Some one shall lose a head for
this blundering,” said she. “I ordered to have this beast trained to
stand indifferent to drums, shouting, arrows, stones, and fire, and the
trainers assured me that all was done, and brought examples.”
I slipped my girdle. “Here,” I said, “quick. Let me lower you to the
ground.”
She turned on me with a gleam. “Are you afraid for my neck, then,
Deucalion?”
“I have no mind to be bereaved before I have tasted my wedded life.”
“Pish! There is little enough of danger. I will stay and ride it out. I
am not one of your nervous women, sir. But go you, if you please.”
“There is little enough chance of that now.”
Blood flowed from the mammoth’s neck where the spikes of the collar tore
it, and with each drop, so did the tameness seem to ooze out from it
also. With wild squeals and trumpetings it turned and charged viciously
down the way it had come, scattering like straws the spearmen who
tried to stop it, and mowing a great swath through the crowd with its
monstrous progress. Many must have been trodden under foot, many killed
by its murderous trunk, but only their cries came to us. The golden
castle, with its canopy of royal snakes, was swayed and tossed, so that
we two occupants had much ado not to be shot off like stones from a
catapult. But I took a brace with my feet against the front, and one
arm around a pillar, and clapped the spare arm round Phorenice, so as to
offer myself to her as a cushion.
She lay there contentedly enough, with her lovely face just beneath my
chin, and the faint scent of her hair coming in to me with every breath
I took; and the mammoth charged madly on through the narrow streets. We
had outstripped the taint of smoke, and the original cause of fear, but
the beast seemed to have forgotten everything in its mad panic. It
held furiously on with enormous strides, carrying its trunk aloft, and
deafening us with its screams and trumpetings. We left behind us quickly
all those who had trod in that glittering pageant, and we were carried
helplessly on through the wards of the city.
The beast was utterly beyond all control. So great was its pace that
there was no alternative but to try and cling on to the castle. Up there
we were beyond its reach. To have leapt off, even if we had avoided
having brains dashed out or limbs smashed by the fall, would have been
to put ourselves at once at a frightful disadvantage. The mammoth would
have scented us immediately, and turned (as is the custom of these
beasts), and we should have been trampled into a pulp in a dozen
seconds.
The thought came to me that here was the High God’s answer to
Phorenice’s sacrilege. The mammoth was appointed to carry out Their
vengeance by dashing her to pieces, and I, their priest, was to be human
witness that justice had been done. But no direct revelation had been
given me on this matter, and so I took no initiative, but hung on to the
swaying castle, and held the Empress against bruises in my arms.
There was no guiding the brute: in its insanity of madness it doubled
many times upon its course, the windings of the streets confusing it.
But by degrees we left the large palaces and pyramids behind, and got
amongst the quarters of artisans, where weavers and smiths gaped at
us from their doors as we thundered past. And then we came upon the
merchants’ quarters where men live over their storehouses that do
traffic with the people over seas, and then down an open space there
glittered before us a mirror of water.
“Now here,” thought I, “this mad beast will come to sudden stop, and as
like as not will swerve round sharply and charge back again towards the
heart of the city.” And I braced myself to withstand the shock, and took
fresh grip upon the woman who lay against my breast. But with louder
screams and wilder trumpetings the mammoth held straight on, and
presently came to the harbour’s edge, and sent the spray sparkling in
sheets amongst the sunshine as it went with its clumsy gait into the
water.
But at this point the pace was very quickly slackened. The great sewers,
which science devised for the health of the city in the old King’s
time, vomit their drainings into this part of the harbour, and the solid
matter which they carry is quickly deposited as an impalpable sludge.
Into this the huge beast began to sink deeper and deeper before it could
halt in its rush, and when with frightened bellowings it had come to
a stop, it was bogged irretrievably. Madly it struggled, wildly it
screamed and trumpeted. The harbour-water and the slime were churned
into one stinking compost, and the golden castle in which we clung
lurched so wildly that we were torn from it and shot far away into the
water.
Still there, of course, we were safe, and I was pleased enough to be rid
of the bumpings.
Phorenice laughed as she swam. “You handle yourself like a sore man,
Deucalion. I owe you something for lending me the cushion of your body.
By my face! There’s more of the gallant about you when it comes to the
test than one would guess to hear you talk. How did you like the ride,
sir? I warrant it came to you as a new experience.”
“I’d liefer have walked.”
“Pish, man! You’ll never be a courtier. You should have sworn that with
me in your arms you could have wished the bumping had gone on for ever.
Ho, the boat there! Hold your arrows. Deucalion, hail me those fools in
that boat. Tell them that, if they hurt so much as a hair of my mammoth,
I’ll kill them all by torture. He’ll exhaust himself directly, and when
his flurry’s done we’ll leave him where he is to consider his evil ways
for a day or so, and then haul him out with windlasses, and tame him
afresh. Pho! I could not feel myself to be Phorenice, if I had no fine,
red, shaggy mammoth to take me out for my rides.”
The boat was a ten-slave galley which was churning up from the farther
side of the harbour as hard as well-plied whips could make oars drive
her, but at the sound of my shouts the soldiers on her foredeck stopped
their arrowshots, and the steersman swerved her off on a new course to
pick us up. Till then we had been swimming leisurely across an angle of
the harbour, so as to avoid landing where the sewers outpoured; but we
stopped now, treading the water, and were helped over the side by most
respectful hands.
The galley belonged to the captain of the port, a mincing figure of
a mariner, whose highest appetite in life was to lick the feet of the
great, and he began to fawn and prostrate himself at once, and to wish
that his eyes had been blinded before he saw the Empress in such deadly
peril.
“The peril may pass,” said she. “It’s nothing mortal that will ever kill
me. But I have spoiled my pretty clothes, and shed a jewel or two, and
that’s annoying enough as you say, good man.”
The silly fellow repeated a wish that he might be blinded before the
Empress was ever put to such discomfort again.
But it seemed she could be cloyed with flattery. “If you are tired of
your eyes,” said she, “let me tell you that you have gone the way to
have them plucked out from their sockets. Kill my mammoth, would you,
because he has shown himself a trifle frolicsome? You and your sort want
more education, my man. I shall have to teach you that port-captains and
such small creatures are very easy to come by, and very small value when
got, but that my mammoth is mine--mine, do you understand?--the property
of Goddess Phorenice, and as such is sacred.”
The port-captain abased himself before her. “I am an ignorant fellow,”
said he, “and heaven was robbed of its brightest ornament when Phorenice
came down to Atlantis. But if reparation is permitted me, I have two
prisoners in the cabin of the boat here who shall be sacrificed to the
mammoth forthwith. Doubtless it would please him to make sport with
them, and spill out the last lees of his rage upon their bodies.”
“Prisoners you’ve got, have you? How taken?”
“Under cover of last night they were trying to pass in between the two
forts which guard the harbour mouth. But their boat fouled the chain,
and by the light of the torches the sentries spied them. They were
caught with ropes, and put in a dungeon. There is an order not to abuse
prisoners before they have been brought before a judgment?”
“It was my order. Did these prisoners offer to buy their lives with
news?”
“The man has not spoken. Indeed, I think he got his death-wound in being
taken. The woman fought like a cat also, so they said in the fort, but
she was caught without hurt. She says she has got nothing that would be
of use to tell. She says she has tired of living like a savage outside
the city, and moreover that, inside, there is a man for whose nearness
she craves most mightily.”
“Tut!” said Phorenice. “Is this a romance we have swum to? You see what
affectionate creatures we women are, Deucalion.”--The galley was brought
up against the royal quay and made fast to its golden rings. I handed
the Empress ashore, but she turned again and faced the boat, her
garments still yielding up a slender drip of water.--“Produce your woman
prisoner, master captain, and let us see whether she is a runaway
wife, or a lovesick girl mad after her sweetheart. Then I will deliver
judgment on her, and as like as not will surprise you all with my
clemency. I am in a mood for tender romance to-day.”
The port-captain went into the little hutch of a cabin with a white
face. It was plain that Phorenice’s pleasantries scared him. “The man
appears to be dead, Your Majesty. I see that his wounds--”
“Bring out the woman, you fool. I asked for her. Keep your carrion where
it is.”
I saw the fellow stoop for his knife to cut a lashing, and presently who
should he bring out to the daylight but the girl I had saved from the
cave-tigers in the circus, and who had so strangely drawn me to her
during the hours that we had spent afterwards in companionship. It was
clear, too, that the Empress recognised her also. Indeed, she made no
secret about the matter, addressing her by name, and mockingly making
inquiries about the menage of the rebels, and the success of the
prisoner’s amours.
“This good port-captain tells me that you made a most valiant attempt to
return, Nais, and for an excuse you told that it was your love for
some man in the city here which drew you. Come, now, we are willing to
overlook much of your faults, if you will give us a reasonable chance.
Point me out your man, and if he is a proper fellow, I will see that he
weds you honestly. Yes, and I will do more for you, Nais, since this day
brings me to a husband. Seeing that all your estate is confiscate as a
penalty for your late rebellion, I will charge myself with your dowry,
and give it back to you. So come, name me the man.”
The girl looked at her with a sullen brow. “I spoke a lie,” she said;
“there is no man.”
I tried myself to give her advocacy. “The lady doubtless spoke what came
to her lips. When a woman is in the grip of a rude soldiery, any excuse
which can save her for the moment must serve. For myself, I should think
it like enough that she would confess to having come back to her old
allegiance, if she were asked.”
“Sir,” said the Empress, “keep your peace. Any interest you may show in
this matter will go far to offend me. You have spoken of Nais in your
narrative before, and although your tongue was shrewd and you did not
say much, I am a woman and I could read between the lines. Now regard,
my rebel, I have no wish to be unduly hard upon you, though once
you were my fan-girl, and so your running away to these ill-kempt
malcontents, who beat their heads against my city walls, is all the
more naughty. But you must meet me halfway. You must give an excuse
for leniency. Point me out the man you would wed, and he shall be your
husband to-morrow.”
“There is no man.”
“Then name me one at random. Why, my pretty Nais, not ten months ago
there were a score who would have leaped at the chance of having you for
a wife. Drop your coyness, girl, and name me one of those. I warrant
you that I will be your ambassadress and will put the matter to him with
such delicacy that he will not make you blush by refusal.”
The prisoner moistened her lips. “I am a maiden, and I have a maiden’s
modesty. I will die as you choose, but I will not do this indecency.”
“Well, I am a maiden too, and though because I am Empress also,
questions of State have to stand before questions of my private modesty,
I can have a sympathy for yours--although in truth it did not obtrude
unduly when you were my fan-girl, Nais. No, come to think of it, you
liked a tender glance and a pretty phrase as well as any when you were
fan-girl. You have grown wild and shy, amongst these savage rebels, but
I will not punish you for that.
“Let me call your favourites to memory now. There was Tarca, of course,
but Tarca had a difference with that ill-dressed father of yours, and
wears a leprosy on half his face instead of that beard he used to trim
so finely. And then there is Tatho, but Tatho is away overseas. Eron,
too, you liked once, but he lost an arm in fighting t’other day, and I
would not marry you to less than a whole man. Ah, by my face! I have it,
the dainty exquisite, Rota! He is the husband! How well I remember the
way he used to dress in a change of garb each day to catch your proud
fancy, girl. Well, you shall have Rota. He shall lead you to wife before
this hour to-morrow.”
Again the prisoner moistened her lips. “I will not have Rota, and spare
me the others. I know why you mock me, Phorenice.”
“Then there are three of us here who share one knowledge.”--She turned
her eyes upon me. Gods! who ever saw the like of Phorenice’s eyes, and
who ever saw them lit with such fire as burned within them then?--“My
lord, you are marrying me for policy; I am marrying you for policy, and
for another reason which has grown stronger of late, and which you may
guess at. Do you wish still to carry out the match?”
I looked once at Nais, and then I looked steadily back to Phorenice. The
command given by the mouth of Zaemon from the High Council of the Sacred
Mountain had to outweigh all else, and I answered that such was my
desire.
“Then,” said she, glowering at me with her eyes, “you shall build me up
the pretty body of Nais beneath a throne of granite as a wedding gift.
And you shall do it too with your own proper hands, my Deucalion, whilst
I watch your devotion.”
And to Nais she turned with a cruel smile. “You lied to me, my girl,
and you spoke truth to the soldiers in the harbour forts. There is a man
here in the city you came after, and he is the one man you may not have.
Because you know me well, and my methods very thoroughly, your love for
him must be very deep, or you would not have come. And so, being here,
you shall be put beyond mischief’s reach. I am not one of those who see
luxury in fostering rivals.
“You came for attention at the hands of Deucalion. By my face! you shall
have it. I will watch myself whilst he builds you up living.”