There is no denying that the wishes of Phorenice were carried into quick
effect in the city of Atlantis. Her modern theory was that the country
and all therein existed only for the good of the Empress, and when she
had a desire, no cost could possibly be too great in its carrying out.
She had given forth her edict concerning the burying alive of Nais, and
though the words were that I was to build the throne of stone, it was an
understood thing that the manual labour was to be done for me by others.
Heralds made the proclamation in every ward of the city, and masons,
labourers, stonecutters, sculptors, engineers, and architects took hands
from whatever was occupying them for the moment, and hastened to the
rendezvous. The architects chose a chief who gave directions, and the
lesser architects and the engineers saw these carried into effect. Any
material within the walls of the city on which they set their seal,
was taken at once without payment or compensation; and as the blocks of
stone they chose were the most monstrous that could be got, they were
forced to demolish no few buildings to give them passage.
I have before spoken of the modern rage for erecting new palaces and
pyramids, and even though at the moment an army of rebels was battering
with war engines at the city walls, the building guilds were steadily
at work, and their skill (with Phorenice’s marvellous invention to aid
them) was constantly on the increase. True, they could not move such
massive blocks of stone as those which the early Gods planted for the
sacred circle of our Lord the Sun, but they had got rams and trucks and
cranes which could handle amazing bulks.
The throne was to be erected in the open square before the royal
pyramid. Seven tiers of stone were there for a groundwork, each a
knee-height deep, and each cut in the front with three steps. In the
uppermost layer was a cavity made to hold the body of Nais, and above
this was poised the vast block which formed the seat of the throne
itself.
Throughout the night, to the light of torches, relay after relay of the
stonecutters, and the masons, and the sweating labourers had toiled over
bringing up the stone and dressing it into fit shape, and laying it in
due position; and the engineers had built machines for lifting, and the
architects had proved that each stone lay in its just and perfect place.
Whips cracked, and men fainted with the labour, but so soon as one was
incapable another pressed forward into his place. No delay was brooked
when Phorenice had said her wish.
And finally, as the square began to fill with people come to gape at the
pageant of to-day, the chippings and the scaffolding were cleared away,
and with it the bodies of some half-score of workmen who had died from
accidents or their exertions during the building, and there stood the
throne, splendid in its carvings, and all ready for completion. The
lower part stood more than two man-heights above the ground, and no
stone of its courses weighed less than twenty men; the upper part was
double the weight of any of these, and was carved so that the royal
snake encircled the chair, and the great hooded head overshadowed it.
But at present the upper part was not on its bed, being held up high by
lifting rams, for what purposes all men knew.
It was to face this scene, then, that I came out from the royal pyramid
at the summons of the chamberlains in the cool of next morning. Each
great man who had come there before me had banner-bearers and trumpeters
to proclaim his presence; the middle classes were in all their bravery
of apparel; and even poor squalid creatures, with ribs of hunger showing
through their dusty skins, had turbans and wisps of colour wrapped about
their heads to mark the gaiety of the day.
The trumpets proclaimed my coming, and the people shouted welcome, and
with the gorgeous chamberlains walking backwards in advance, I went
across to a scarlet awning that had been prepared, and took my seat upon
the cushions beneath it.
And then came Phorenice, my bride that was to be that day, fresh from
sleep, and glorious in her splendid beauty. She was borne out from the
pyramid in an open litter of gold and ivory by fantastic savages from
Europe, her own refinement of feature being thrown up into all the
higher relief by contrast with their brutish ugliness. One could hear
the people draw a deep breath of delight as their eyes first fell upon
her; and it is easy to believe there was not a man in that crowd which
thronged the square who did not envy me her choice, nor was there a
soul present (unless Ylga was there somewhere veiled) who could by any
stretch imagine that I was not overjoyed in winning so lovely a wife.
For myself, I summoned up all the iron of my training to guard the
expression of my face. We were here on ceremonial to-day; a ghastly
enough affair throughout all its acts, if you choose, but still
ceremonial; and I was minded to show Phorenice a grand manner that would
leave her nothing to cavil at. After all that had been gone through and
endured, I did not intend a great scheme to be shattered by letting my
agony and pain show themselves, in either a shaking hand or a twitching
cheek. When it came to the point, I told myself, I would lay the living
body of my love in the hollow beneath the stone as calmly, and with as
little outward emotion, as though I had been a mere priest carrying out
the burial of some dead stranger. And she, on her part, would not,
I knew, betray our secret. With her, too, it was truly “Before all
Atlantis.”
I think it spared a pang to find that there was to be no mockery or
flippancy in what went forward. All was solemn and impressive; and,
though a certain grandeur and sombreness which bit deep into my breast
was lost to the vulgar crowd, I fancy that the outward shape of the
double sacrifice they witnessed that day would not be forgotten by any
of them, although the inner meaning of it all was completely hidden from
their minds. When it suited her fancy, none could be more strict on the
ritual of a ceremony than this many-mooded Empress, and it appeared
that on this occasion she had given command that all things were to be
carried out with the rigid exactness and pomp of the older manner.
So she was borne up by her Europeans to the scarlet awning, and I handed
her to the ground. She seated herself on the cushions, and beckoned
me to her side, entwining her fingers with mine as has always been the
custom with rulers of Atlantis and their consorts. And there before us
as we sat, a body of soldiery marched up, and opening out showed Nais
in their midst. She had a collar of metal round her neck, with chains
depending from it firmly held by a brace of guards, so that she should
not run in upon the spears of the escort, and thus get a quick and
easy death, which is often the custom of those condemned to the more
lingering punishments.
But it was pleasant to see that she still wore her clothing. Raiment,
whether of fabric or skin, has its value, and custom has always given
the garments of the condemned to the soldiers guarding them. So as Nais
was not stripped, I could not but see that some one had given moneys
to the guards as a recompense, and in this I thought I saw the hand of
Ylga, and felt a gratitude towards her.
The soldiers brought her forward to the edge of the pavilion’s shade,
and she was bidden prostrate herself before the Empress, and this she
wisely did and so avoided rough handling and force. Her face was
pale, but showed neither fear nor defiance, and her eyes were calm
and natural. She was remembering what was due to Atlantis, and I was
thrilled with love and pride as I watched her.
But outwardly I, too, was impassive as a man of stone, and though I knew
that Phorenice’s eye was on my face, there was never anything on it from
first to last that I would not have had her see.
“Nais,” said the Empress, “you have eaten from my platter when you were
fan-girl, and drunk from my cup, and what was yours I gave you. You
should have had more than gratitude, you should have had knowledge also
that the arm of the Empress was long and her hand consummately heavy.
But it seems that you have neither of these things. And, moreover, you
have tried to take a certain matter that the Empress has set apart for
herself. You were offered pardon, on terms, and you rejected it. You
were foolish. But it is a day now when I am inclined to clemency.
Presently, seated on that carved throne of granite which he has built me
yonder, I shall take my Lord Deucalion to husband. Give me a plain word
that you are sorry, girl, and name a man whom you would choose, and I
will remember the brightness of the occasion, you shall be pardoned and
wed before we rise from these cushions.”
“I will not wed,” she said quietly.
“Think for the last time, Nais, of what is the other choice. You will
be taken, warm, and quick, and beautiful as you stand there this minute,
and laid in the hollow place that is made beneath the throne-stone.
Deucalion, that is to be my husband, will lay you in that awful bed, as
a symbol that so shall perish all Phorenice’s enemies, and then he will
release the rams and lower the upper stone into place, and the world
shall see your face no more. Look at the bright sky, Nais, fill your
chest with the sweet warm air, and then think of what this death will
mean. Believe me, girl, I do not want to make you an example unless you
force me.”
“I will not wed,” said the prisoner quietly.
The Empress loosed her fingers from my arm, and lay back against the
cushions. “If the girl presumes on our old familiarity, or thinks that I
jest, show her now, Deucalion, that I do not.”
“The Empress is far from jesting,” I said. “I will do this thing because
it is the wish of the Empress that it should be done, and because it is
the command of the Empress that a symbol of it shall remain for ever as
an example for others. Lead your prisoner to the place.”
The soldiers wheeled, and the two guards with the chains of the collar
which was on the neck of Nais prepared to put out force to drag her
up the steps. But she walked with them willingly, and with a colour
unchanged, and I rose from my seat, and made obeisance to the Empress
and followed them.
Before all those ten thousand eyes, we two made no display of emotion
then, not only for Atlantis’ sake, but also because both Nais and I had
a nicety and a pride in our natures. We were not as Phorenice to flaunt
endearments before others.
Yet, when I had bidden the guards unhasp the collar which held the
prisoner’s neck, and clapped my arms around her, showing all the
roughness of one who has no mind that his captive shall escape or even
unduly struggle, a thrill gushed through me so potent that I was like
to have fainted, and it was only by supreme strain of will that I held
unbrokenly on with the ceremonial. I, who had never embraced a woman
with aught but the arm of roughness before, now held pressed to me one
whom I loved with an infinite tenderness, and the revelation of how love
can come out and link with love was almost my undoing. Yet, outwardly,
Nais made so sign, but lay half-strangled in my arms, as any woman does
that is being borne away by a spoiler.
I trod with her to the uppermost step, the vast throne-stone overhanging
us, and then so that all of those who were gazing from the sides of the
pyramids and the roofs of the buildings round might see, though we were
beyond Phorenice’s view, I used a force that was brutal in dragging her
across the level, and putting her down into the hollow. And yet the girl
resisted me with no one effort whatever.
So that the victim might not struggle out and be crushed, and so gain
an easy death when the stone descended, there were brazen clamps to fit
into grooves of the stones above the hollow where she lay, and these I
fitted in place above her, and fastened one by one, doing this butcher’s
work with one hand, and still fiercely holding her down by the other.
Gods! and the sweat of agony dripped from me on to the thirsty stone as
I worked. I could not keep that in.
I clamped and locked the last two bars in place, and took my brute’s
hand away from her throat.
The hateful fingermarks showed as bloodless furrows in the whiteness
of her skin. For the life of me, yes, even for the fate of Atlantis, I
could not help dropping my glance upon her face. But she was stronger
than I. She gave me no last look. She kept her eyes steadfastly fixed on
the cruel stone above, and so I left her, knowing that it was best not
to tarry longer.
I came out from under the stone, and gave the sign to the engineers who
stood by the rams. The fires were taken away from their sides, and
the metal in them began to contract, and slowly the vast bulk of the
throne-stone began to creep down towards its bed.
But ah, so slowly! Gods! how my soul was torn as I watched and waited.
Yet I kept my face impassive, overlooking as any officer might a piece
of work which others were carrying out under his direction, and on which
his credit rested; and I stood gravely in my place till the rams had
let the stone come down on its final resting place, and had been carried
away by the engineers; and then I went round with the master architect
with his plumbline and level, whilst he tested this last piece of the
building and declared it perfect.
It was a useless form, this last, seeing that by calculation they knew
exactly how the stone must rest; but the guilds have their forms
and customs, and on these occasions of high ceremonial, they are
punctiliously carried out, because these middle-class people wish always
to appear mysterious and impressive to the poor vulgar folk who are
their inferiors. But perhaps I am hard there on them. A man who is
needlessly taken round to plumb and duly level the tomb where his love
lies buried living, may perhaps be excused by the assessors on high a
little spirit of bitterness.
I had gone up the steps to do my hateful work a man full of grief,
though outwardly unmoved. As I came down again I had a feeling of
incompleteness; it seemed as though half my inwards had been left behind
with Nais in the hollow of the stone, and their place was taken by a
void which ached wearily; but still I carried a passive face, and memory
that before all these private matters stood the command of the High
Council, which sat before the Ark of the Mysteries.
So I went and stood before Phorenice, and said the words which the
ancient forms prescribed concerning the carrying out of her wish.
“Then, now,” she said, “I will give myself to you as wife. We are not as
others, you and I, Deucalion. There is a law and a form set down for
the marrying of these other people, but that would be useless for our
purposes. We will have neither priest nor scribe to join us and set down
the union. I am the law here in Atlantis, and you soon will be part of
me. We will not be demeaned by profaner hands. We will make the ceremony
for ourselves, and for witnesses, there are sufficient in waiting.
Afterwards, the record shall be cut deep in the granite throne you have
built for me, and the lettering filled in with gold, so that it shall
endure and remain bright for always.”
“The Empress can do no wrong,” I said formally, and took the hand she
offered me, and helped her to rise. We walked out from the scarlet
awning into the glare of the sunshine, she leaning on me, flushing, and
so radiantly lovely that the people began to hail her with rapturous
shouts of “A Goddess; our Goddess Phorenice.” But for me they had no
welcoming word. I think the set grimness of my face both scared and
repelled them.
We went up the steps which led to the throne, the people still shouting,
and I sat her in the royal seat beneath the snake’s outstretched head,
and she drew me down to sit beside her.
She raised her jewelled hand, and a silence fell on that great throng,
as though the breath had been suddenly cut short for all of them.
Then Phorenice made proclamation:
“Hear me, O my people, and hear me, O High Gods from whom I am come.
I take this man Deucalion, to be my husband, to share with me the
prosperity of Atlantis, and join me in guarding our great possession.
May all our enemies perish as she is now perishing above whom we sit.”
And then she put her arms around my neck, and kissed me hotly on the
mouth.
In turn I also spoke: “Hear me, O most High Gods, whose servant I am,
and hear me also, O ye people. I take this Empress, Phorenice, to
wife, to help with her the prosperity of Atlantis, and join with her in
guarding the welfare of that great possession. May all the enemies of
this country perish as they have perished in the past.”
And then, I too, who had not been permitted by the fate to touch the
lips of my love, bestowed the first kiss I had ever given woman to
Phorenice, that was now being made my wife.
But we were not completely linked yet.
“A woman is one, and man is one,” she proclaimed, following for the
first time the old form of words, “but in marriage they merge, so that
wife and husband are no more separate, but one conjointly. In token of
this we will now make the symbolic joining together, so that all may see
and remember.” She took her dagger, and pricking the brawn on my forearm
till a head of blood appeared, set her red lips to it, and took it into
herself.
“Ah,” she said, with her eyes sparkling, “now you are part of me indeed,
Deucalion, and I feel you have strengthened me already.” She pulled down
the neck of her robe. “Let me make you my return.”
I pricked the rounded whiteness of her shoulder. Gods! when I remembered
who was beneath us as we sat on that throne, I could have driven the
blade through to her heart! And then I, too, put down my lips, and took
the drop of her blood that was yielded to me.
My tongue was dry, my throat was parched, and my face suffused, and I
thought I should have choked.
But the Empress, who was ordinarily so acute, was misled then. “It
thrills you?” she cried. “It burns within you like living fire? I have
just felt it. By my face! Deucalion, if I had known the pleasure it
gives to be made a wife, I do not think I should have waited this long
for you. Ah, yes; but with another man I should have had no thrill. I
might have gone through the ceremony with another, but it would have
left me cold. Well, they say this feeling comes to a woman but once in
her time, and I would not change it for the glory of all my conquests
and the whirl of all my power.” She leaned in close to me so that the
red curls of her hair swept my cheek, and her breath came hot against my
mouth. “Tasted you ever any sweet so delicious as this knowledge that we
are made one now, Deucalion, past all possible dissolving?”
I could not lie to her any more just then. The Gods know how honestly I
had striven to play the part commanded me for Atlantis’ good, but there
is a limit to human endurance, and mine was reached. I was not all anger
towards her. I had some pity for this passion of hers, which had grown
of itself certainly, but which I had done nothing to check; and the
indecent frankness with which it was displayed was only part of the
livery of potentates who flaunt what meaner folk would coyly hide. But
always before my eyes was a picture of the girl on whom her jealousy had
taken such a bitter vengeance, and to invent spurious lover’s talk then
was a thing my tongue refused to do.
“Words are poor things,” I said, “and I am a man unused to women, and
have but a small stock of any phrases except the dryest. Remember,
Phorenice, a week agone, I did not know what love was, and now that I
have learned the lesson, somewhat of the suddenest, the language remains
still to come to me. My inwards speak; indeed they are full of speech;
but I cannot translate into bald cold words what they say.”
And here, surely the High Gods took pity on my tied tongue and my
misery, and made an opportunity for bringing the ceremony to an end. A
man ran into the square shouting, and showing a wound that dripped,
and presently all that vast crowd which stood on the pavements, and the
sides of the pyramids, and the roofs of the temples, took up the cry,
and began to feel for their weapons.
“The rebels are in!” “They have burrowed a path into the city!” “They
have killed the cave-tigers and taken a gate!” “They are putting the
whole place to the storm!” “They will presently leave no poor soul of us
here alive!”
There then was a termination of our marriage cooings. With rebels merely
biting at the walls, it was fine to put strong trust in the defences,
and easy to affect contempt for the besiegers’ powers, and to keep
the business of pageants and state craft and marryings turning on easy
wheels. But with rebel soldiers already inside the city (and hordes of
others doubtless pressing on their heels), the affairs took a different
light. It was no moment for further delay, and Phorenice was the first
to admit it. The glow that had been in her eyes changed to the glare of
the fighter, as the fellow who had run up squalled out his tidings.
I stood and stretched my chest. I seemed in need of air. “Here,” I said,
“is work that I can understand more clearly. I will go and sweep this
rabble back to their burrows, Phorenice.”
“But not alone, sir. I come too. It is my city still. Nay, sir, we are
too newly wed to be parted yet.”
“Have your will,” I said, and together we went down the steps of the
throne to the pavement below. Under my breath I said a farewell to Nais.
Our armour-bearers met us with weapons, and we stepped into litters, and
the slaves took us off hot foot. The wounded man who had first brought
the news had fallen in a faint, and no more tidings was to be got from
him, but the growing din of the fight gave us the general direction, and
presently we began to meet knots of people who dwelt near the place of
irruption, running away in wild panic, loaded down with their household
goods.
It was useless to stop these, as fight they could not, and if they had
stayed they would merely have been slaughtered like flies, and would
in all likelihood have impeded our own soldiery. And so we let them run
screaming on their blind way, but forced the litters through them with
but very little regard for their coward convenience.
Now the advantage of the rebels, when it came to be looked upon by a
soldier’s eye, was a thing of little enough importance. They had driven
a tunnel from behind a covering mound, beneath the walls, and had opened
it cleverly enough through the floor of a middle-class house. They had
come through into this, collecting their numbers under its shelter, and
doubtless hoping that the marriage of the Empress (of which spies had
given them information) would sap the watchfulness of the city guards.
But it seems they were discovered and attacked before they were
thoroughly ready to emerge, and, as a fine body of troops were barracked
near the spot, their extermination would have been merely a matter of
time, even if we had not come up.
It did not take a trained eye long to decide on this, and Phorenice,
with a laugh, lay back on the cushions of the litter, and returned her
weapons to the armour-bearer who came panting up to receive them. “We
grow nervous with our married life, my Deucalion,” she said. “We are
fearful lest this new-found happiness be taken from us too suddenly.”
But I was not to be robbed of my breathing-space in this wise. “Let me
crave a wedding gift of you,” I said.
“It is yours before you name it.”
“Then give me troops, and set me wide a city gate a mile away from
here.”
“You can gather five hundred as you go from here to the gate, taking two
hundred of those that are here. If you want more, they must be fetched
from other barracks along the walls. But where is your plan?”
“Why, my poor strategy teaches me this: these foolish rebels have set
all their hopes on this mine, and all their excitement on its present
success. If they are kept occupied here by a Phorenice, who will give
them some dainty fighting without checking them unduly, they will press
on to the attack and forget all else, and never so much as dream of a
sortie. And meanwhile, a Deucalion with his troop will march out of the
city well away from here, without tuck of drum or blare of trumpet, and
fall most unpleasantly upon their rear. After which, a Phorenice will
burn the house here at the mine’s head, which is of wood, and straw
thatched, to discourage further egress, and either go to the walls to
watch the fight from there, or sally out also and spur on the rout as
her fancy dictates.”
“Your scheme is so pretty, I would I could rob you of it for my own
credit’s sake, and as it is, I must kiss you for your cleverness. But
you got my word first, you naughty fellow, and you shall have the men
and do as you ask. Eh, sir, this is a sad beginning of our wedded life,
if you begin to rob your little wife of all the sweets of conquest from
the outset.”
She took back the weapons and target she had given to the armour-bearer,
and stepped over the side of the litter to the ground. “But at least,”
she said, “if you are going to fight, you shall have troops that will do
credit to my drill,” and thereupon proceeded to tell off the companies
of men-at-arms who were to accompany me. She left herself few enough to
stem the influx of rebels who poured ceaselessly in through the
tunnel; but as I had seen, with Phorenice, heavy odds added only to her
enjoyment.
But for the Empress, I will own at the time to have given little enough
of thought. My own proper griefs were raw within me, and I thirsted for
that forgetfulness of all else which battle gives, so that for awhile I
might have a rest from their gnawings.
It made my blood run freer to hear once more the tramp of practised
troops behind me, and when all had been collected, we marched out
through a gate of the city, and presently were charging through and
through the straggling rear of the enemy. By the Gods! for the moment
even Nais was blotted from my wearied mind. Never had I loved more to
let my fierceness run madly riot. Never have I gloated more abundantly
over the terrible joy of battle.
Nais must forgive my weakness in seeking to forget her even for a
breathing-space. Had that opportunity been denied me, I believe the
agony of remembering would have snapped my brain-strings for always.