CHAPTER II. THE VISION OF THE WORLD’S DESIRE
CHAPTER III. THE SLAYING OF THE SIDONIANS
CHAPTER IV. THE BLOOD-RED SEA
CHAPTER V. MERIAMUN THE QUEEN
CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF MERIAMUN
CHAPTER VII. THE QUEEN’S VISION
CHAPTER VIII. THE KA, THE BAI, AND THE KHOU
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I. THE PROPHETS OF THE APURA
CHAPTER II. THE NIGHT OF DREAD
CHAPTER III. THE BATHS OF BRONZE
CHAPTER IV. THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER
CHAPTER V. THE CHAPEL PERILOUS
CHAPTER VI. THE WARDENS OF THE GATE
CHAPTER VII. THE SHADOW IN THE SUNLIGHT
CHAPTER VIII. THE LOOSING OF THE SPIRIT OF REI
CHAPTER IX. THE WAKING OF THE SLEEPER
CHAPTER X. THE OATH OF THE WANDERER
CHAPTER XI. THE WAKING OF THE WANDERER
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I. THE VENGEANCE OF KURRI
CHAPTER II. THE COMING OF PHARAOH
CHAPTER III. THE BED OF TORMENT
CHAPTER IV. PHARAOH’S DREAM
CHAPTER V. THE VOICE OF THE DEAD
CHAPTER VI. THE BURNING OF THE SHRINE
CHAPTER VII. THE LAST FIGHT OF ODYSSEUS, LAERTES’ SON
CHAPTER VIII. “TILL ODYSSEUS COMES!”
To
W. B. RICHMOND, A.R.A.
PREFACE
The period in which the story of _The World’s Desire_ is cast, was a
period when, as Miss Braddon remarks of the age of the Plantagenets,
“anything might happen.” Recent discoveries, mainly by Dr. Schliemann
and Mr. Flinders Petrie, have shown that there really was much
intercourse between Heroic Greece, the Greece of the Achaeans, and the
Egypt of the Ramessids. This connection, rumoured of in Greek legends,
is attested by Egyptian relics found in the graves of Mycenae, and by
very ancient Levantine pottery, found in contemporary sites in Egypt.
Homer himself shows us Odysseus telling a feigned, but obviously not
improbable, tale of an Achaean raid on Egypt. Meanwhile the sojourn of
the Israelites, with their Exodus from the land of bondage, though not
yet found to be recorded on the Egyptian monuments, was probably part
of the great contemporary stir among the peoples. These events, which
are only known through Hebrew texts, must have worn a very different
aspect in the eyes of Egyptians, and of pre-historic Achaean observers,
hostile in faith to the Children of Israel. The topic has since been
treated in fiction by Dr. Ebers, in his _Joshua_. In such a twilight
age, fancy has free play, but it is a curious fact that, in this
romance, modern fancy has accidentally coincided with that of ancient
Greece.
Most of the novel was written, and the apparently “un-Greek” marvels
attributed to Helen had been put on paper, when a part of Furtwängler’s
recent great lexicon of Mythology appeared, with the article on Helen.
The authors of _The World’s Desire_ read it with a feeling akin to
amazement. Their wildest inventions about the Daughter of the Swan, it
seemed, had parallels in the obscurer legends of Hellas. There actually
is a tradition, preserved by Eustathius, that Paris beguiled Helen by
magically putting on the aspect of Menelaus. There is a mediaeval
parallel in the story of Uther and Ygerne, mother of Arthur, and the
classical case of Zeus and Amphitryon is familiar. Again, the
blood-dripping ruby of Helen, in the tale, is mentioned by Servius in
his commentary on Virgil (it was pointed out to one of the authors by
Mr. Mackail). But we did not know that the Star of the story was
actually called the “Star-stone” in ancient Greek fable. The many
voices of Helen are alluded to by Homer in the _Odyssey_: she was also
named _Echo_, in old tradition. To add that she could assume the aspect
of every man’s first love was easy. Goethe introduces the same quality
in the fair witch of his _Walpurgis Nacht_. A respectable portrait of
Meriamun’s secret counsellor exists, in pottery, in the British Museum,
though, as it chances, it was not discovered by us until after the
publication of this romance. The Laestrygonian of the Last Battle is
introduced as a pre-historic Norseman. Mr. Gladstone, we think, was
perhaps the first to point out that the Laestrygonians of the
_Odyssey_, with their home on a fiord in the Land of the Midnight Sun,
were probably derived from travellers’ tales of the North, borne with
the amber along the immemorial Sacred Way. The Magic of Meriamun is in
accordance with Egyptian ideas; her resuscitation of the dead woman,
Hataska, has a singular parallel in Reginald Scot’s _Discovery of
Witchcraft_ (1584), where the spell “by the silence of the Night” is
not without poetry. The general conception of Helen as the World’s
Desire, Ideal Beauty, has been dealt with by M. Paul de St. Victor, and
Mr. J. A. Symonds. For the rest, some details of battle, and of wounds,
which must seem very “un-Greek” to critics ignorant of Greek
literature, are borrowed from Homer.
H. R. H.
A. L.
THE WORLD’S DESIRE
Come with us, ye whose hearts are set
On this, the Present to forget;
Come read the things whereof ye know
_They were not, and could not be so!_
The murmur of the fallen creeds,
Like winds among wind-shaken reeds
Along the banks of holy Nile,
Shall echo in your ears the while;
The fables of the North and South
Shall mingle in a modern mouth;
The fancies of the West and East
Shall flock and flit about the feast
Like doves that cooled, with waving wing,
The banquets of the Cyprian king.
Old shapes of song that do not die
Shall haunt the halls of memory,
And though the Bow shall prelude clear
Shrill as the song of Gunnar’s spear,
There answer sobs from lute and lyre
That murmured of The World’s Desire.
There lives no man but he hath seen
The World’s Desire, the fairy queen.
None but hath seen her to his cost,
Not one but loves what he has lost.
None is there but hath heard her sing
Divinely through his wandering;
Not one but he has followed far
The portent of the Bleeding Star;
Not one but he hath chanced to wake,
Dreamed of the Star and found the Snake.
Yet, through his dreams, a wandering fire,
Still, still she flits, THE WORLD’S DESIRE!
BOOK I
CHAPTER I.
THE SILENT ISLE
Across the wide backs of the waves, beneath the mountains, and between
the islands, a ship came stealing from the dark into the dusk, and from
the dusk into the dawn. The ship had but one mast, one broad brown sail
with a star embroidered on it in gold; her stem and stern were built
high, and curved like a bird’s beak; her prow was painted scarlet, and
she was driven by oars as well as by the western wind.
A man stood alone on the half-deck at the bows, a man who looked always
forward, through the night, and the twilight, and the clear morning. He
was of no great stature, but broad-breasted and very wide-shouldered,
with many signs of strength. He had blue eyes, and dark curled locks
falling beneath a red cap such as sailors wear, and over a purple
cloak, fastened with a brooch of gold. There were threads of silver in
his curls, and his beard was flecked with white. His whole heart was
following his eyes, watching first for the blaze of the island beacons
out of the darkness, and, later, for the smoke rising from the far-off
hills. But he watched in vain; there was neither light nor smoke on the
grey peak that lay clear against a field of yellow sky.
There was no smoke, no fire, no sound of voices, nor cry of birds. The
isle was deadly still.
As they neared the coast, and neither heard nor saw a sign of life, the
man’s face fell. The gladness went out of his eyes, his features grew
older with anxiety and doubt, and with longing for tidings of his home.
No man ever loved his home more than he, for this was Odysseus, the son
of Laertes—whom some call Ulysses—returned from his unsung second
wandering. The whole world has heard the tale of his first voyage, how
he was tossed for ten years on the sea after the taking of Troy, how he
reached home at last, alone and disguised as a beggar; how he found
violence in his house, how he slew his foes in his own hall, and won
his wife again. But even in his own country he was not permitted to
rest, for there was a curse upon him and a labour to be accomplished.
He must wander again till he reached the land of men who had never
tasted salt, nor ever heard of the salt sea. There he must sacrifice to
the Sea-God, and then, at last, set his face homewards. Now he had
endured that curse, he had fulfilled the prophecy, he had angered, by
misadventure, the Goddess who was his friend, and after adventures that
have never yet been told, he had arrived within a bowshot of Ithaca.
He came from strange countries, from the Gates of the Sun and from
White Rock, from the Passing Place of Souls and the people of Dreams.
But he found his own isle more still and strange by far. The realm of
Dreams was not so dumb, the Gates of the Sun were not so still, as the
shores of the familiar island beneath the rising dawn.
This story, whereof the substance was set out long ago by Rei, the
instructed Egyptian priest, tells what he found there, and the tale of
the last adventures of Odysseus, Laertes’ son.
The ship ran on and won the well-known haven, sheltered from wind by
two headlands of sheer cliff. There she sailed straight in, till the
leaves of the broad olive tree at the head of the inlet were tangled in
her cordage. Then the Wanderer, without once looking back, or saying
one word of farewell to his crew, caught a bough of the olive tree with
his hand, and swung himself ashore. Here he kneeled, and kissed the
earth, and, covering his head within his cloak, he prayed that he might
find his house at peace, his wife dear and true, and his son worthy of
him.
But not one word of his prayer was to be granted. The Gods give and
take, but on the earth the Gods cannot restore.
When he rose from his knees he glanced back across the waters, but
there was now no ship in the haven, nor any sign of a sail upon the
seas.
And still the land was silent; not even the wild birds cried a welcome.
The sun was hardly up, men were scarce awake, the Wanderer said to
himself; and he set a stout heart to the steep path leading up the
hill, over the wolds, and across the ridge of rock that divides the two
masses of the island. Up he climbed, purposing, as of old, to seek the
house of his faithful servant, the swineherd, and learn from him the
tidings of his home. On the brow of a hill he stopped to rest, and
looked down on the house of the servant. But the strong oak palisade
was broken, no smoke came from the hole in the thatched roof, and, as
he approached, the dogs did not run barking, as sheep-dogs do, at the
stranger. The very path to the house was overgrown, and dumb with
grass; even a dog’s keen ears could scarcely have heard a footstep.
The door of the swineherd’s hut was open, but all was dark within. The
spiders had woven a glittering web across the empty blackness, a sign
that for many days no man had entered. Then the Wanderer shouted twice,
and thrice, but the only answer was an echo from the hill. He went in,
hoping to find food, or perhaps a spark of fire sheltered under the dry
leaves. But all was vacant and cold as death.
The Wanderer came forth into the warm sunlight, set his face to the
hill again, and went on his way to the city of Ithaca.
He saw the sea from the hill-top glittering as of yore, but there were
no brown sails of fisher-boats on the sea. All the land that should now
have waved with the white corn was green with tangled weeds. Half-way
down the rugged path was a grove of alders, and the basin into which
water flowed from the old fountain of the Nymphs. But no maidens were
there with their pitchers; the basin was broken, and green with mould;
the water slipped through the crevices and hurried to the sea. There
were no offerings of wayfarers, rags and pebbles, by the well; and on
the altar of the Nymphs the flame had long been cold. The very ashes
were covered with grass, and a branch of ivy had hidden the stone of
sacrifice.
On the Wanderer pressed with a heavy heart; now the high roof of his
own hall and the wide fenced courts were within his sight, and he
hurried forward to know the worst.
Too soon he saw that the roofs were smokeless, and all the court was
deep in weeds. Where the altar of Zeus had stood in the midst of the
court there was now no altar, but a great, grey mound, not of earth,
but of white dust mixed with black. Over this mound the coarse grass
pricked up scantily, like thin hair on a leprosy.
Then the Wanderer shuddered, for out of the grey mound peeped the
charred black bones of the dead. He drew near, and, lo! the whole heap
was of nothing else than the ashes of men and women. Death had been
busy here: here many people had perished of a pestilence. They had all
been consumed on one funeral fire, while they who laid them there must
have fled, for there was no sign of living man. The doors gaped open,
and none entered, and none came forth. The house was dead, like the
people who had dwelt in it.
Then the Wanderer paused where once the old hound Argos had welcomed
him and had died in that welcome. There, unwelcomed, he stood, leaning
on his staff. Then a sudden ray of the sun fell on something that
glittered in the heap, and he touched it with the end of the staff that
he had in his hand. It slid jingling from the heap; it was the bone of
a forearm, and that which glittered on it was a half-molten ring of
gold. On the gold lambda these characters were engraved:
ΙΚΜΑΛΟΣ ΜΕΠΟΙΣΕΝ.
(Icmalios made me.)
At the sight of the armlet the Wanderer fell on the earth, grovelling
among the ashes of the pyre, for he knew the gold ring which he had
brought from Ephyre long ago, for a gift to his wife Penelope. This was
the bracelet of the bride of his youth, and here, a mockery and a
terror, were those kind arms in which he had lain. Then his strength
was shaken with sobbing, and his hands clutched blindly before him, and
he gathered dust and cast it upon his head till the dark locks were
defiled with the ashes of his dearest, and he longed to die.
There he lay, biting his hands for sorrow, and for wrath against God
and Fate. There he lay while the sun in the heavens smote him, and he
knew it not; while the wind of the sunset stirred in his hair, and he
stirred not. He could not even shed one tear, for this was the sorest
of all the sorrows that he had known on the waves of the sea, or on
land among the wars of men.
The sun fell and the ways were darkened. Slowly the eastern sky grew
silver with the moon. A night-fowl’s voice was heard from afar, it drew
nearer; then through the shadow of the pyre the black wings fluttered
into the light, and the carrion bird fixed its talons and its beak on
the Wanderer’s neck. Then he moved at length, tossed up an arm, and
caught the bird of darkness by the neck, and broke it, and dashed it on
the ground. His sick heart was mad with the little sudden pain, and he
clutched for the knife in his girdle that he might slay himself, but he
was unarmed. At last he rose, muttering, and stood in the moonlight,
like a lion in some ruinous palace of forgotten kings. He was faint
with hunger and weak with long lamenting, as he stepped within his own
doors. There he paused on that high threshold of stone where once he
had sat in the disguise of a beggar, that very threshold whence, on
another day, he had shot the shafts of doom among the wooers of his
wife and the wasters of his home. But now his wife was dead: all his
voyaging was ended here, and all his wars were vain. In the white light
the house of his kingship was no more than the ghost of a home,
dreadful, unfamiliar, empty of warmth and love and light. The tables
were fallen here and there throughout the long hall; mouldering bones,
from the funeral feast, and shattered cups and dishes lay in one
confusion; the ivory chairs were broken, and on the walls the moonbeams
glistened now and again from points of steel and blades of bronze,
though many swords were dark with rust.
But there, in its gleaming case, lay one thing friendly and familiar.
There lay the Bow of Eurytus, the bow for which great Heracles had
slain his own host in his halls; the dreadful bow that no mortal man
but the Wanderer could bend. He was never used to carry this precious
bow with him on shipboard, when he went to the wars, but treasured it
at home, the memorial of a dear friend foully slain. So now, when the
voices of dog, and slave, and child, and wife were mute, there yet came
out of the stillness a word of welcome to the Wanderer. For this bow,
which had thrilled in the grip of a god, and had scattered the shafts
of the vengeance of Heracles, was wondrously made and magical. A spirit
dwelt within it which knew of things to come, which boded the battle
from afar, and therefore always before the slaying of men the bow sang
strangely through the night. The voice of it was thin and shrill, a
ringing and a singing of the string and of the bow. While the Wanderer
stood and looked on his weapon, hark! the bow began to thrill! The
sound was faint at first, a thin note, but as he listened the voice of
it in that silence grew clear, strong, angry and triumphant. In his
ears and to his heart it seemed that the wordless chant rang thus:
Keen and low
Doth the arrow sing
The Song of the Bow,
The sound of the string.
The shafts cry shrill:
Let us forth again,
Let us feed our fill
On the flesh of men.
Greedy and fleet
Do we fly from far,
Like the birds that meet
For the feast of war,
Till the air of fight
With our wings be stirred,
As it whirrs from the flight
Of the ravening bird.
Like the flakes that drift
On the snow-wind’s breath,
Many and swift,
And winged for death—
Greedy and fleet,
Do we speed from far,
Like the birds that meet
On the bridge of war.
Fleet as ghosts that wail,
When the dart strikes true,
Do the swift shafts hail,
Till they drink warm dew.
Keen and low
Do the grey shafts sing
The Song of the Bow,
The sound of the string.
This was the message of Death, and this was the first sound that had
broken the stillness of his home.
At the welcome of this music which spoke to his heart—this music he had
heard so many a time—the Wanderer knew that there was war at hand. He
knew that the wings of his arrows should be swift to fly, and their
beaks of bronze were whetted to drink the blood of men. He put out his
hand and took the bow, and tried the string, and it answered shrill as
the song of the swallow.
Then at length, when he heard the bowstring twang to his touch, the
fountains of his sorrow were unsealed; tears came like soft rains on a
frozen land, and the Wanderer wept.
When he had his fill of weeping, he rose, for hunger drove him—hunger
that is of all things the most shameless, being stronger far than
sorrow, or love, or any other desire. The Wanderer found his way
through the narrow door behind the dais, and stumbling now and again
over fallen fragments of the home which he himself had built, he went
to the inner, secret storehouse. Even _he_ could scarcely find the
door, for saplings of trees had grown up about it; yet he found it at
last. Within the holy well the water was yet babbling and shining in
the moonlight over the silver sands; and here, too, there was store of
mouldering grain, for the house had been abundantly rich when the great
plague fell upon the people while he was far away. So he found food to
satisfy his hunger, after a sort, and next he gathered together out of
his treasure-chest the beautiful golden armour of unhappy Paris, son of
Priam, the false love of fair Helen. These arms had been taken at the
sack of Troy, and had lain long in the treasury of Menelaus in Sparta;
but on a day he had given them to Odysseus, the dearest of all his
guests. The Wanderer clad himself in this golden gear, and took the
sword called “Euryalus’s Gift,” a bronze blade with a silver hilt, and
a sheath of ivory, which a stranger had given him in a far-off land.
Already the love of life had come back to him, now that he had eaten
and drunk, and had heard the Song of the Bow, the Slayer of Men. He
lived yet, and hope lived in him though his house was desolate, and his
wedded wife was dead, and there was none to give him tidings of his one
child, Telemachus. Even so life beat strong in his heart, and his hands
would keep his head if any sea-robbers had come to the city of Ithaca
and made their home there, like hawks in the forsaken nest of an eagle
of the sea. So he clad himself in his armour, and chose out two spears
from a stand of lances, and cleaned them, and girt about his shoulders
a quiver full of shafts, and took in hand his great bow, the Bow of
Eurytus, which no other man could bend.
Then he went forth from the ruined house into the moonlight, went forth
for the last time; for never again did the high roof echo to the
footstep of its lord. Long has the grass grown over it, and the
sea-wind wailed!
CHAPTER II.
THE VISION OF THE WORLD’S DESIRE
The fragrant night was clear and still, the silence scarce broken by
the lapping of the waves, as the Wanderer went down from his fallen
home to the city on the sea, walking warily, and watching for any light
from the houses of the people. But they were all as dark as his own,
many of them roofless and ruined, for, after the plague, an earthquake
had smitten the city. There were gaping chasms in the road, here and
there, and through rifts in the walls of the houses the moon shone
strangely, making ragged shadows. At last the Wanderer reached the
Temple of Athene, the Goddess of War; but the roof had fallen in, the
pillars were overset, and the scent of wild thyme growing in the broken
pavement rose where he walked. Yet, as he stood by the door of the
fane, where he had burned so many a sacrifice, at length he spied a
light blazing from the windows of a great chapel by the sea. It was the
Temple of Aphrodite, the Queen of Love, and from the open door a sweet
savour of incense and a golden blaze rushed forth till they were lost
in the silver of the moonshine and in the salt smell of the sea.
Thither the Wanderer went slowly, for his limbs were swaying with
weariness, and he was half in a dream. Yet he hid himself cunningly in
the shadow of a long avenue of myrtles, for he guessed that sea-robbers
were keeping revel in the forsaken shrine. But he heard no sound of
singing and no tread of dancing feet within the fane of the Goddess of
Love; the sacred plot of the goddess and her chapels were silent. He
hearkened awhile, and watched, till at last he took courage, drew near
the doors, and entered the holy place. But in the tall, bronze braziers
there were no faggots burning, nor were there torches lighted in the
hands of the golden men and maids, the images that stand within the
fane of Aphrodite. Yet, if he did not dream, nor take moonlight for
fire, the temple was bathed in showers of gold by a splendour of flame.
None might see its centre nor its fountain; it sprang neither from the
altar nor the statue of the goddess, but was everywhere imminent, a
glory not of this world, a fire untended and unlit. And the painted
walls with the stories of the loves of men and gods, and the carven
pillars and the beams, and the roof of green, were bright with flaming
fire!
At this the Wanderer was afraid, knowing that an immortal was at hand;
for the comings and goings of the gods were attended, as he had seen,
by this wonderful light of unearthly fire. So he bowed his head, and
hid his face as he sat by the altar in the holiest of the holy shrine,
and with his right hand he grasped the horns of the altar. As he sat
there, perchance he woke, and perchance he slept. However it was, it
seemed to him that soon there came a murmuring and a whispering of the
myrtle leaves and laurels, and a sound in the tops of the pines, and
then his face was fanned by a breath more cold than the wind that wakes
the dawn. At the touch of this breath the Wanderer shuddered, and the
hair on his flesh stood up, so cold was the strange wind.
There was silence; and he heard a voice, and he knew that it was the
voice of no mortal, but of a goddess. For the speech of goddesses was
not strange in his ears; he knew the clarion cry of Athene, the Queen
of Wisdom and of War; and the winning words of Circe, the Daughter of
the Sun, and the sweet song of Calypso’s voice as she wove with her
golden shuttle at the loom. But now the words came sweeter than the
moaning of doves, more soft than sleep. So came the golden voice,
whether he woke or whether he dreamed.
“Odysseus, thou knowest me not, nor am I thy lady, nor hast thou ever
been my servant! Where is she, the Queen of the Air, Athene, and why
comest _thou_ here as a suppliant at the knees of the daughter of
Dione?”
He answered nothing, but he bowed his head in deeper sorrow.
The voice spake again:
“Behold, thy house is desolate; thy hearth is cold. The wild hare
breeds on thy hearthstone, and the night-bird roosts beneath thy
roof-tree. Thou hast neither child nor wife nor native land, and _she_
hath forsaken thee—thy Lady Athene. Many a time didst thou sacrifice to
her the thighs of kine and sheep, but didst thou ever give so much as a
pair of dove to _me_? Hath she left thee, as the Dawn forsook Tithonus,
because there are now threads of silver in the darkness of thy hair? Is
the wise goddess fickle as a nymph of the woodland or the wells? Doth
she love a man only for the bloom of his youth? Nay, I know not; but
this I know, that on thee, Odysseus, old age will soon be hastening—old
age that is pitiless, and ruinous, and weary, and weak—age that cometh
on all men, and that is hateful to the Gods. Therefore, Odysseus, ere
yet it be too late, I would bow even thee to my will, and hold thee for
my thrall. For I am she who conquers all things living: Gods and beasts
and men. And hast thou thought that thou only shalt escape Aphrodite?
Thou that hast never loved as I would have men love; thou that hast
never obeyed me for an hour, nor ever known the joy and the sorrow that
are mine to give? For thou didst but endure the caresses of Circe, the
Daughter of the Sun, and thou wert aweary in the arms of Calypso, and
the Sea King’s daughter came never to her longing. As for her who is
dead, thy dear wife Penelope, thou didst love her with a loyal heart,
but never with a heart of fire. Nay, she was but thy companion, thy
housewife, and the mother of thy child. She was mingled with all the
memories of the land thou lovest, and so thou gavest her a little love.
But she is dead; and thy child too is no more; and thy very country is
as the ashes of a forsaken hearth where once was a camp of men. What
have all thy wars and wanderings won for thee, all thy labours, and all
the adventures thou hast achieved? For what didst thou seek among the
living and the dead? Thou soughtest that which all men seek—thou
soughtest _The World’s Desire_. They find it not, nor hast thou found
it, Odysseus; and thy friends are dead; thy land is dead; nothing lives
but Hope. But the life that lies before thee is new, without a remnant
of the old days, except for the bitterness of longing and remembrance.
Out of this new life, and the unborn hours, wilt thou not give, what
never before thou gavest, one hour to me, to be my servant?”
The voice, as it seemed, grew softer and came nearer, till the Wanderer
heard it whisper in his very ear, and with the voice came a divine
fragrance. The breath of her who spoke seemed to touch his neck; the
immortal tresses of the Goddess were mingled with the dark curls of his
hair.
The voice spake again:
“Nay, Odysseus, didst thou not once give me one little hour? Fear not,
for thou shalt not see me at this time, but lift thy head and look on
The World’s Desire!”
Then the Wanderer lifted his head, and he saw, as it were in a picture
or in a mirror of bronze, the vision of a girl. She was more than
mortal tall, and though still in the first flower of youth, and almost
a child in years, she seemed fair as a goddess, and so beautiful that
Aphrodite herself may perchance have envied this loveliness. She was
slim and gracious as a young shoot of a palm tree, and her eyes were
fearless and innocent as a child’s. On her head she bore a shining urn
of bronze, as if she were bringing water from the wells, and behind her
was the foliage of a plane tree. Then the Wanderer knew her, and saw
her once again as he had seen her, when in his boyhood he had journeyed
to the Court of her father, King Tyndareus. For, as he entered Sparta,
and came down the hill Taygetus, and as his chariot wheels flashed
through the ford of Eurotas, he had met her there on her way from the
river. There, in his youth, his eyes had gazed on the loveliness of
Helen, and his heart had been filled with the desire of the fairest of
women, and like all the princes of Achaia he had sought her hand in
marriage. But Helen was given to another man, to Menelaus, Atreus’s
son, of an evil house, that the knees of many might be loosened in
death, and that there might be a song in the ears of men in after time.
As he beheld the vision of young Helen, the Wanderer too grew young
again. But as he gazed with the eyes and loved with the first love of a
boy, she melted like a mist, and out of the mist came another vision.
He saw himself, disguised as a beggar, beaten and bruised, yet seated
in a long hall bright with gold, while a woman bathed his feet, and
anointed his head with oil. And the face of the woman was the face of
the maiden, and even more beautiful, but sad with grief and with an
ancient shame. Then he remembered how once he had stolen into Troy town
from the camp of the Achæans, and how he had crept in a beggar’s rags
within the house of Priam to spy upon the Trojans, and how Helen, the
fairest of women, had bathed him, and anointed him with oil, and
suffered him to go in peace, all for the memory of the love that was
between them of old. As he gazed, that picture faded and melted in the
mist, and again he bowed his head, and kneeled by the golden altar of
the Goddess, crying:
“Where beneath the sunlight dwells the golden Helen?” For now he had
only one desire: to look on Helen again before he died.
Then the voice of the Goddess seemed to whisper in his ear:
“Did I not say truth, Odysseus? Wast not thou my servant for one hour,
and did not Love save thee in the city of the Trojans on that night
when even Wisdom was of no avail?”
He answered: “Yea, O Queen!”
“Behold then,” said the voice, “I would again have mercy and be kind to
thee, for if I aid thee not thou hast no more life left among men.
Home, and kindred, and native land thou hast none; and, but for me,
thou must devour thine own heart and be lonely till thou diest.
Therefore I breathe into thy heart a sweet forgetfulness of every
sorrow, and I breathe love into thee for her who was thy first love in
the beginning of thy days.
“For Helen is living yet upon the earth. And I will send thee on the
quest of Helen, and thou shalt again take joy in war and wandering.
Thou shalt find her in a strange land, among a strange people, in a
strife of gods and men; and the wisest and bravest of man shall sleep
at last in the arms of the fairest of women. But learn this, Odysseus;
thou must set thy heart on no other woman, but only on Helen.
“And I give thee a sign to know her by in a land of magic, and among
women that deal in sorceries.
“_On the breast of Helen a jewel shines, a great star-stone, the gift I
gave her on her wedding-night when she was bride to Menelaus. From that
stone fall red drops like blood, and they drip on her vestment, and
there vanish, and do not stain it._
“By the Star of Love shalt thou know her; by the star shalt thou swear
to her; and if thou knowest not the portent of the Bleeding Star, or if
thou breakest that oath, never in this life, Odysseus, shalt thou win
the golden Helen! And thine own death shall come from the water—the
swiftest death—that the saying of the dead prophet may be fulfilled.
Yet first shalt thou lie in the arms of the golden Helen.”
The Wanderer answered:
“Queen, how may this be, for I am alone on a seagirt isle, and I have
no ship and no companions to speed me over the great gulf of the sea?”
Then the voice answered:
“Fear not! the gods can bring to pass even greater things than these.
Go from my house, and lie down to sleep in my holy ground, within the
noise of the wash of the waves. There sleep, and take thy rest! Thy
strength shall come back to thee, and before the setting of the new sun
thou shalt be sailing on the path to The World’s Desire. But first
drink from the chalice on my altar. Fare thee well!”
The voice died into silence, like the dying of music. The Wanderer
awoke and lifted his head, but the light had faded, and the temple was
grey in the first waking of the dawn. Yet there, on the altar where no
cup had been, stood a deep chalice of gold, full of red wine to the
brim. This the Wanderer lifted and drained—a draught of Nepenthe, the
magic cup that puts trouble out of mind. As he drank, a wave of sweet
hope went over his heart, and buried far below it the sorrow of
remembrance, and the trouble of the past, and the longing desire for
loves that were no more.
With a light step he went forth like a younger man, taking the two
spears in his hand, and the bow upon his back, and he lay down beneath
a great rock that looked toward the deep, and there he slept.
CHAPTER III.
THE SLAYING OF THE SIDONIANS
Morning broke in the East. A new day dawned upon the silent sea, and on
the world of light and sound. The sunrise topped the hill at last, and
fell upon the golden raiment of the Wanderer where he slept, making it
blaze like living fire. As the sun touched him, the prow of a black
ship stole swiftly round the headland, for the oarsmen drove her well
with the oars. Any man who saw her would have known her to be a vessel
of the merchants of Sidon—the most cunning people and the greediest of
gain—for on her prow were two big-headed shapes of dwarfs, with gaping
mouths and knotted limbs. Such gods as those were worshipped by the
Sidonians. She was now returning from Albion, an isle beyond the
pillars of Heracles and the gates of the great sea, where much store of
tin is found; and she had rich merchandise on board. On the half-deck
beside the steersman was the captain, a thin, keen-eyed sailor, who
looked shoreward and saw the sun blaze on the golden armour of the
Wanderer. They were so far off that he could not see clearly what it
was that glittered yellow, but all that glittered yellow was a lure for
him, and gold drew him on as iron draws the hands of heroes. So he bade
the helmsman steer straight in, for the sea was deep below the rock,
and there they all saw a man lying asleep in golden armour. They
whispered together, laughing silently, and then sprang ashore, taking
with them a rope of twisted ox-hide, a hawser of the ship, and a strong
cable of byblus, the papyrus plant. On these ropes they cast a loop and
a running knot, a lasso for throwing, so that they might capture the
man in safety from a distance. With these in their hands they crept up
the cliff, for their purpose was to noose the man in golden armour, and
drag him on board their vessel, and carry him to the mouth of the river
of Egypt, and there sell him for a slave to the King. For the
Sidonians, who were greedy of everything, loved nothing better than to
catch free men and women, who might be purchased, by mere force or
guile, and then be sold again for gold and silver and cattle. Many
kings’ sons had thus been captured by them, and had seen the day of
slavery in Babylon, or Tyre, or Egyptian Thebes, and had died sadly,
far from the Argive land.
So the Sidonians went round warily, and, creeping in silence over the
short grass and thyme towards the Wanderer, were soon as near to him as
a child could throw a stone. Like shepherds who seek to net a sleeping
lion, they came cunningly; yet not so cunningly but that the Wanderer
heard them through his dreams, and turned and sat up, looking around
him half awake. But as he woke the noose fell about his neck and over
his arms and they drew it hard, and threw him on his back. Before they
could touch him he was on his feet again, crying his war-cry terribly,
the cry that shook the towers of Ilium, and he rushed upon them,
clutching at his sword hilt. The men who were nearest him and had hold
of the rope let it fall from their hands and fled, but the others swung
behind him, and dragged with all their force. If his arms had been free
so that he might draw his sword, it would have gone ill with them, many
as they were, for the Sidonians have no stomach for sword blades; but
his arms were held in the noose. Yet they did not easily master him;
but, as those who had fled came back, and they all laid hands on the
rope together, they overpowered him by main force at last, and hauled
him, step by step, till he stumbled on a rock and fell. Then they
rushed at him, and threw themselves all upon his body, and bound him
with ropes in cunning sailor knots. But the booty was dearly won, and
they did not all return alive; for he crushed one man with his knees
till the breath left him, and the thigh of another he broke with a blow
of his foot.
But at last his strength was spent, and they had him like a bird in a
snare; so, by might and main, they bore him to their ship, and threw
him down on the fore-deck of the vessel. There they mocked him, though
they were half afraid; for even now he was terrible. Then they hauled
up the sail again and sat down to the oars. The wind blew fair for the
mouth of the Nile and the slave-market of Egypt. The wind was fair, and
their hearts were light, for they had been among the first of their
people to deal with the wild tribes of the island Albion, and had
bought tin and gold for African sea shells and rude glass beads from
Egypt. And now, near the very end of their adventure, they had caught a
man whose armour and whose body were worth a king’s ransom. It was a
lucky voyage, they said, and the wind was fair!
The rest of the journey was long, but in well-known waters. They passed
by Cephalonia and the rock of Ægilips, and wooded Zacynthus, and Samê,
and of all those isles he was the lord, whom they were now selling into
captivity. But he lay still, breathing heavily, and he stirred but
once—that was when they neared Zacynthus. Then he strained his head
round with a mighty strain, and he saw the sun go down upon the heights
of rocky Ithaca, for that last time of all.
So the swift ship ran along the coast, slipping by forgotten towns.
Past the Echinean isles, and the Elian shore, and pleasant Eirene they
sped, and it was dusk ere they reached Dorion. Deep night had fallen
when they ran by Pylos; and the light of the fires in the hall of
Pisistratus, the son of Nestor the Old, shone out across the sandy
sea-coast and the sea. But when they were come near Malea, the
southernmost point of land, where two seas meet, there the storm
snatched them, and drove them ever southwards, beyond Crete, towards
the mouth of the Nile. They scudded long before the storm-wind, losing
their reckoning, and rushing by island temples that showed like ghosts
through the mist, and past havens which they could not win. On they
fled, and the men would gladly have lightened the ship by casting the
cargo overboard; but the captain watched the hatches with a sword and
two bronze-tipped spears in his hand. He would sink or swim with the
ship; he would go down with his treasure, or reach Sidon, the City of
Flowers, and build a white house among the palms by the waters of
Bostren, and never try the sea again.
So he swore; and he would not let them cast the Wanderer overboard, as
they desired, because he had brought bad luck. “He shall bring a good
price in Tanis,” cried the captain. And at last the storm abated, and
the Sidonians took heart, and were glad like men escaped from death; so
they sacrificed and poured forth wine before the dwarf-gods on the prow
of their vessel, and burned incense on their little altar. In their
mirth, and to mock the Wanderer, they hung his sword and his shield
against the mast, and his quiver and his bow they arrayed in the
fashion of a trophy; and they mocked him, believing that he knew no
word of their speech. But he knew it well, as he knew the speech of the
people of Egypt; for he had seen the cities of many men, and had spoken
with captains and mercenaries from many a land in the great wars.
The Sidonians, however, jibed and spoke freely before him, saying how
they were bound for the rich city of Tanis, on the banks of the River
of Egypt, and how the captain was minded to pay his toll to Pharaoh
with the body and the armour of the Wanderer. That he might seem the
comelier, and a gift more fit for a king, the sailors slackened his
bonds a little, and brought him dried meat and wine, and he ate till
his strength returned to him. Then he entreated them by signs to loosen
the cord that bound his legs; for indeed his limbs were dead through
the strength of the bonds, and his armour was eating into his flesh. At
his prayer they took some pity of him and loosened his bonds again, and
he lay upon his back, moving his legs to and fro till his strength came
back.
So they sailed southward ever, through smooth waters and past the
islands that lie like water-lilies in the midland sea. Many a strange
sight they saw: vessels bearing slaves, whose sighing might be heard
above the sighing of wind and water—young men and maidens of Ionia and
Achaia, stolen by slave-traders into bondage; now they would touch at
the white havens of a peaceful city; and again they would watch a smoke
on the sea-line all day, rising black into the heavens; but by
nightfall the smoke would change to a great roaring fire from the
beacons of a beleaguered island town; the fire would blaze on the masts
of the ships of the besiegers, and show blood-red on their sails, and
glitter on the gilded shields that lined the bulwarks of their ships.
But the Sidonians sped on till, one night, they anchored off a little
isle that lies over against the mouth of the Nile. Beneath this isle
they moored the ship, and slept, most of them, ashore.
Then the Wanderer began to plot a way to escape, though the enterprise
seemed desperate enough. He was lying in the darkness of the hold,
sleepless and sore with his bonds, while his guard watched under an
awning in the moonlight on the deck. They dreamed so little of his
escaping that they visited him only by watches, now and again; and, as
it chanced, the man whose turn it was to see that all was well fell
asleep. Many a thought went through the prisoner’s mind, and now it
seemed to him that the vision of the Goddess was only a vision of
sleep, which came, as they said, through the false Gates of Ivory, and
not through the Gates of Horn. So he was to live in slavery after all,
a king no longer, but a captive, toiling in the Egyptian mines of
Sinai, or a soldier at a palace gate, till he died. Thus he brooded,
till out of the stillness came a thin, faint, thrilling sound from the
bow that hung against the mast over his head, the bow that he never
thought to string again. There was a noise of a singing of the bow and
of the string, and the wordless song shaped itself thus in the heart of
the Wanderer:
Lo! the hour is nigh
And the time to smite,
When the foe shall fly
From the arrow’s flight!
Let the bronze bite deep!
Let the war-birds fly
Upon them that sleep
And are ripe to die!
Shrill and low
Do the grey shafts sing
The Song of the Bow,
The sound of the string!
Then the low music died into the silence, and the Wanderer knew that
the next sun would not set on the day of slavery, and that his revenge
was near. His bonds would be no barrier to his vengeance; they would
break like burnt tow, he knew, in the fire of his anger. Long since, in
his old days of wandering, Calypso, his love, had taught him in the
summer leisure of her sea-girt isle how to tie the knots that no man
could untie, and to undo all the knots that men can bind. He remembered
this lesson in the night when the bow sang of war. So he thought no
more of sleeping, but cunningly and swiftly unknotted all the cords and
the bonds which bound him to a bar of iron in the hold. He might have
escaped now, perhaps, if he had stolen on deck without waking the
guards, dived thence and swam under water towards the island, where he
might have hidden himself in the bush. But he desired revenge no less
than freedom, and had set his heart on coming in a ship of his own, and
with all the great treasure of the Sidonians, before the Egyptian King.
With this in his mind, he did not throw off the cords, but let them lie
on his arms and legs and about his body, as if they were still tied
fast. But he fought against sleep, lest in moving when he woke he might
reveal the trick, and be bound again. So he lay and waited, and in the
morning the sailors came on board, and mocked at him again. In his
mirth one of the men took a dish of meat and of lentils, and set it a
little out of the Wanderer’s reach as he lay bound, and said in the
Phoenician tongue:
“Mighty lord, art thou some god of Javan” (for so the Sidonians called
the Achæans), “and wilt thou deign to taste our sacrifice? Is not the
savour sweet in the nostrils of my lord? Why will he not put forth his
hand to touch our offering?”
Then the heart of Odysseus muttered sullenly within him, in wrath at
the insolence of the man. But he constrained himself and smiled, and
said:
“Wilt thou not bring the mess a very little nearer, my friend, that I
may smell the sweet incense of the sacrifice?”
They were amazed when they heard him speak in their own tongue; but he
who held the dish brought it nearer, like a man that angers a dog, now
offering the meat, and now taking it away.
So soon as the man was within reach, the Wanderer sprang out, the
loosened bonds falling at his feet, and smote the sailor beneath the
ear with his clenched fist. The blow was so fierce, for all his anger
went into it, that it crushed the bone, and drove the man against the
mast of the ship so that the strong mast shook. Where he fell, there he
lay, his feet kicking the floor of the hold in his death-pain.
Then the Wanderer snatched from the mast his bow and his short sword,
slung the quiver about his shoulders, and ran on to the raised decking
of the prow.
The bulwarks of the deck were high, and the vessel was narrow, and
before the sailors could stir for amazement the Wanderer had taken his
stand behind the little altar and the dwarf-gods. Here he stood with an
arrow on the string, and the bow drawn to his ear, looking about him
terribly.
Now panic and dread came on the Sidonians when they saw him standing
thus, and one of the sailors cried:
“Alas! what god have we taken and bound? Our ship may not contain him.
Surely he is Resef Mikal, the God of the Bow, whom they of Javan call
Apollo. Nay, let us land him on the isle and come not to blows with
him, but entreat his mercy, lest he rouse the waves and the winds
against us.”
But the captain of the ship of the Sidonians cried:
“Not so, ye knaves! Have at him, for he is no god, but a mortal man;
and his armour is worth many a yoke of oxen!”
Then he bade some of them climb the decking at the further end of the
ship, and throw spears at him thence; and he called others to bring up
one of the long spears and charge him with that. Now these were huge
pikes, that were wielded by five or six men at once, and no armour
could withstand them; they were used in the fights to drive back
boarders, and to ward off attacks on ships which were beached on shore
in the sieges of towns.
The men whom the captain appointed little liked the task, for the long
spears were laid on tressels along the bulwarks, and to reach them and
unship them it was needful to come within range of the bow. But the
sailors on the further deck threw all their spears at once, while five
men leaped on the deck where the Wanderer stood. He loosed the
bowstring and the shaft sped on its way; again he drew and loosed, and
now two of them had fallen beneath his arrows, and one was struck by a
chance blow from a spear thrown from the further deck, and the other
two leaped back into the hold.
Then the Wanderer shouted from the high decking of the prow in the
speech of the Sidonians:
“Ye dogs, ye have sailed on your latest seafaring, and never again
shall ye bring the hour of slavery on any man.”
So he cried, and the sailors gathered together in the hold, and took
counsel how they should deal with him. But meanwhile the bow was
silent, and of those on the hinder deck who were casting spears, one
dropped and the others quickly fled to their fellows below, for on the
deck they had no cover.
The sun was now well risen, and shone on the Wanderer’s golden mail, as
he stood alone on the decking, with his bow drawn. The sun shone, there
was silence, the ship swung to her anchor; and still he waited, looking
down, his arrow pointing at the level of the deck to shoot at the first
head which rose above the planking. Suddenly there was a rush of men on
to the further decking, and certain of them tore the shields that lined
the bulwarks from their pins, and threw them down to those who were
below, while others cast a shower of spears at the Wanderer. Some of
the spears he avoided; others leaped back from his mail; others stood
fast in the altar and in the bodies of the dwarf-gods; while he
answered with an arrow that did not miss its aim. But his eyes were
always watching most keenly the hatches nearest him, whence a gangway
ran down to the lower part of the ship, where the oarsmen sat; for only
thence could they make a rush on him. As he watched and drew an arrow
from the quiver on his shoulder, he felt, as it were, a shadow between
him and the deck. He glanced up quickly, and there, on the yard above
his head, a man, who had climbed the mast from behind, was creeping
down to drop on him from above. Then the Wanderer snatched a short
spear and cast it at the man. The spear sped quicker than a thought,
and pinned his two hands to the yard so that he hung there helpless,
shrieking to his friends. But the arrows of the Wanderer kept raining
on the men who stood on the further deck, and presently some of them,
too, leaped down in terror, crying that he was a god and not a man,
while others threw themselves into the sea, and swam for the island.
Then the Wanderer himself waited no longer, seeing them all amazed, but
he drew his sword and leaped down among them with a cry like a
sea-eagle swooping on seamews in the crevice of a rock. To right and
left he smote with the short sword, making a havoc and sparing none,
for the sword ravened in his hand. And some fell over the benches and
oars, but such of the sailors as could flee rushed up the gangway into
the further deck, and thence sprang overboard, while those who had not
the luck to flee fell where they stood, and scarcely struck a blow.
Only the captain of the ship, knowing that all was lost, turned and
threw a spear in the Wanderer’s face. But he watched the flash of the
bronze and stooped his head, so that the spear struck only the golden
helm and pierced it through, but scarcely grazed his head. Now the
Wanderer sprang on the Sidonian captain, and smote him with the flat of
his sword so that he fell senseless on the deck, and then he bound him
hand and foot with cords as he himself had been bound, and made him
fast to the iron bar in the hold. Next he gathered up the dead in his
mighty arms, and set them against the bulwarks of the
fore-deck—harvesting the fruits of War. Above the deck the man who had
crept along the yard was hanging by his two hands which the spear had
pinned together to the yard.
“Art thou there, friend?” cried the Wanderer, mocking him. “Hast thou
chosen to stay with me rather than go with thy friends, or seek new
service? Nay, then, as thou art so staunch, abide there and keep a good
look-out for the river mouth and the market where thou shalt sell me
for a great price.” So he spoke, but the man was already dead of pain
and fear. Then the Wanderer unbuckled his golden armour, which clanged
upon the deck, and drew fresh water from the hold to cleanse himself,
for he was stained like a lion that has devoured an ox. Next, with a
golden comb he combed his long dark curls, and he gathered his arrows
out of the bodies of the dead, and out of the thwarts and the sides of
the ship, cleansed them, and laid them back in the quiver. When all
this was ended he put on his armour again; but strong as he was, he
could not tear the spear from the helm without breaking the gold; so he
snapped the shaft and put on the helmet with the point of the javelin
still fixed firm in the crest, as Fate would have it so, and this was
the beginning of his sorrows. Next he ate meat and bread, and drank
wine, and poured forth some of the wine before his gods. Lastly he
dragged up the heavy stone with which the ship was moored, a stone
heavier far, they say, than two other men could lift. He took the
tiller in his hand; the steady north wind, the Etesian wind, kept
blowing in the sails, and he steered straight southward for the mouths
of the Nile.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BLOOD-RED SEA
A hard fight it had been and a long, and the Wanderer was weary. He
took the tiller of the ship in his hand, and steered for the South and
for the noonday sun, which was now at his highest in the heavens. But
suddenly the bright light of the sky was darkened and the air was
filled with the rush, and the murmur, and the winnowing of innumerable
wings. It was as if all the birds that have their homes and seek their
food in the great salt marsh of Cayster had risen from the South and
had flown over sea in one hour, for the heaven was darkened with their
flight, and loud with the call of cranes and the whistling cry of the
wild ducks. So dark was the thick mass of flying fowl, that a flight of
swans shone snowy against the black cloud of their wings. At the view
of them the Wanderer caught his bow eagerly into his hand and set an
arrow on the string, and, taking a careful aim at the white wedge of
birds, he shot a wild swan through the breast as it swept high over the
mast. Then, with all the speed of its rush, the wild white swan flashed
down like lightning into the sea behind the ship. The Wanderer watched
its fall, when, lo! the water where the dead swan fell splashed up as
red as blood and all afoam! The long silver wings and snowy plumage
floated on the surface flecked with blood-red stains, and the Wanderer
marvelled as he bent over the bulwarks and gazed steadily upon the sea.
Then he saw that the wide sea round the ship was covered, as far as the
eye could reach, as it were with a blood-red scum. Hither and thither
the red stain was tossed like foam, yet beneath, where the deep wave
divided, the Wanderer saw that the streams of the sea were grey and
green below the crimson dye. As he watched he saw, too, that the red
froth was drifted always onward from the South and from the mouth of
the River of Egypt, for behind the wake of the ship it was most red of
all, though he had not marked it when the battle raged. But in front
the colour grew thin, as if the stain that the river washed down was
all but spent. In his heart the Wanderer thought, as any man must have
deemed, that on the banks of the River of Egypt there had been some
battle of great nations, and that the War God had raged furiously,
wherefore the holy river as it ran forth stained all the sacred sea.
Where war was, there was his home, no other home had he now, and all
the more eagerly he steered right on to see what the Gods would send
him. The flight of birds was over and past; it was two hours after
noon, the light was high in the heaven, when, as he gazed, another
shadow fell on him, for the sun in mid-heaven grew small, and red as
blood. Slowly a mist rose up over it from the South, a mist that was
thin but as black as night. Beyond, to the southward, there was a bank
of cloud like a mountain wall, steep, and polished, and black, tipped
along the ragged crest with fire, and opening ever and again with
flashes of intolerable splendour, while the bases were scrawled over
with lightning like a written scroll. Never had the Wanderer in all his
voyaging on the sea and on the great River Oceanus that girdles the
earth, and severs the dead from the living men—never had he beheld such
a darkness. Presently he came as it were within the jaws of it, dark as
a wolf’s mouth, so dark that he might not see the corpses on the deck,
nor the mast, nor the dead man swinging from the yard, nor the captain
of the Phoenicians who groaned aloud below, praying to his gods. But in
the wake of the ship there was one break of clear blue sky on the
horizon, in which the little isle where he had slain the Sidonians
might be discerned far off, as bright and white as ivory.
Now, though he knew it not, the gates of his own world were closing
behind the Wanderer for ever. To the North, whence he came, lay the
clear sky, and the sunny capes and isles, and the airy mountains of the
Argive lands, white with the temples of familiar Gods. But in face of
him, to the South, whither he went, was a cloud of darkness and a land
of darkness itself. There were things to befall more marvellous than
are told in any tale; there was to be a war of the peoples, and of the
Gods, the True Gods and the False, and there he should find the last
embraces of Love, the False Love and the True.
Foreboding somewhat of the perils that lay in front, the Wanderer was
tempted to shift his course and sail back to the sunlight. But he was
one that had never turned his hand from the plough, nor his foot from
the path, and he thought that now his path was fore-ordained. So he
lashed the tiller with a rope, and groped his way with his hands along
the deck till he reached the altar of the dwarf-gods, where the embers
of the sacrifice still were glowing faintly. Then with his sword he cut
some spear-shafts and broken arrows into white chips, and with them he
filled a little brazier, and taking the seed of fire from the altar set
light to it from beneath. Presently the wood blazed up through the
noonday night, and the fire flickered and flared on the faces of the
dead men that lay about the deck, rolling to larboard and to starboard,
as the vessel lurched, and the flame shone red on the golden armour of
the Wanderer.
Of all his voyages this was the strangest seafaring, he cruising alone,
with a company of the dead, deep into a darkness without measure or
bound, to a land that might not be descried. Strange gusts of sudden
wind blew him hither and thither. The breeze would rise in a moment
from any quarter, and die as suddenly as it rose, and another wind
would chase it over the chopping seas. He knew not if he sailed South
or North, he knew not how time passed, for there was no sight of the
sun. It was night without a dawn. Yet his heart was glad, as if he had
been a boy again, for the old sorrows were forgotten, so potent was the
draught of the chalice of the Goddess, and so keen was the delight of
battle.
“Endure, my heart,” he cried, as often he had cried before, “a worse
thing than this thou hast endured,” and he caught up a lyre of the dead
Sidonians, and sang:—
Though the light of the sun be hidden,
Though his race be run,
Though we sail in a sea forbidden
To the golden sun:
Though we wander alone, unknowing,—
Oh, heart of mine,—
The path of the strange sea-going,
Of the blood-red brine;
Yet endure! We shall not be shaken
By things worse than these;
We have ‘scaped, when our friends were taken,
On the unsailed seas;
Worse deaths have we faced and fled from,
In the Cyclops’ den,
When the floor of his cave ran red from
The blood of men;
Worse griefs have we known undaunted,
Worse fates have fled;
When the Isle that our long love haunted
Lay waste and dead!
So he was chanting when he descried, faint and far off, a red glow cast
up along the darkness like sunset on the sky of the Under-world. For
this light he steered, and soon he saw two tall pillars of flame
blazing beside each other, with a narrow space of night between them.
He helmed the ship towards these, and when he came near them they were
like two mighty mountains of wood burning far into heaven, and each was
lofty as the pyre that blazes over men slain in some red war, and each
pile roared and flared above a steep crag of smooth black basalt, and
between the burning mounds of fire lay the flame-flecked water of a
haven.
The ship neared the haven and the Wanderer saw, moving like fireflies
through the night, the lanterns in the prows of boats, and from one of
the boats a sailor hailed him in the speech of the people of Egypt,
asking him if he desired a pilot.
“Yea,” he shouted. The boat drew near, and the pilot came aboard, a
torch in his hand; but when his eyes fell on the dead men in the ship,
and the horror hanging from the yard, and the captain bound to the iron
bar, and above all, on the golden armour of the hero, and on the
spear-point fast in his helm, and on his terrible face, he shrank back
in dread, as if the God Osiris himself, in the Ship of Death, had
reached the harbour. But the Wanderer bade him have no fear, telling
him that he came with much wealth and with a great gift for the
Pharaoh. The pilot, therefore, plucked up heart, and took the helm, and
between the two great hills of blazing fire the vessel glided into the
smooth waters of the River of Egypt, the flames glittering on the
Wanderer’s mail as he stood by the mast and chanted the Song of the
Bow.
Then, by the counsel of the pilot, the vessel was steered up the river
towards the Temple of Heracles in Tanis, where there is a sanctuary for
strangers, and where no man may harm them. But first, the dead
Sidonians were cast overboard into the great river, for the dead bodies
of men are an abomination to the Egyptians. And as each body struck the
water the Wanderer saw a hateful sight, for the face of the river was
lashed into foam by the sudden leaping and rushing of huge four-footed
fish, or so the Wanderer deemed them. The sound of the heavy plunging
of the great water-beasts, as they darted forth on the prey, smiting at
each other with their tails, and the gnashing of their jaws when they
bit too eagerly, and only harmed the air, and the leap of a greedy
sharp snout from the waves, even before the dead man cast from the ship
had quite touched the water—these things were horrible to see and hear
through the blackness and by the firelight. A River of Death it seemed,
haunted by the horrors that are said to prey upon the souls and bodies
of the Dead. For the first time the heart of the Wanderer died within
him, at the horror of the darkness and of this dread river and of the
water-beasts that dwelt within it. Then he remembered how the birds had
fled in terror from this place, and he bethought him of the blood-red
sea.
When the dead men were all cast overboard and the river was once more
still, the Wanderer spoke, sick at heart, and inquired of the pilot why
the sea had run so red, and whether war was in the land, and why there
was night over all that country. The fellow answered that there was no
war, but peace, yet the land was strangely plagued with frogs and
locusts and lice in all their coasts, the sacred river Sihor running
red for three whole days, and now, at last, for this the third day,
darkness over all the world. But as to the cause of these curses the
pilot knew nothing, being a plain man. Only the story went among the
people that the Gods were angry with Khem (as they call Egypt), which
indeed was easy to see, for those things could come only from the Gods.
But why they were angered the pilot knew not, still it was commonly
thought that the Divine Hathor, the Goddess of Love, was wroth because
of the worship given in Tanis to one they called THE STRANGE HATHOR, a
goddess or a woman of wonderful beauty, whose Temple was in Tanis.
Concerning her the pilot said that many years ago, some thirty years,
she had first appeared in the country, coming none knew whence, and had
been worshipped in Tanis, and had again departed as mysteriously as she
came. But now she had once more chosen to appear visible to men,
strangely, and to dwell in her temple; and the men who beheld her could
do nothing but worship her for her beauty. Whether she was a mortal
woman or a goddess the pilot did not know, only he thought that she who
dwells in Atarhechis, Hathor of Khem, the Queen of Love, was angry with
the strange Hathor, and had sent the darkness and the plagues to punish
them who worshipped her. The people of the seaboard also murmured that
it would be well to pray the Strange Hathor to depart out of their
coasts, if she were a goddess; and if she were a woman to stone her
with stones. But the people of Tanis vowed that they would rather die,
one and all, than do aught but adore the incomparable beauty of their
strange Goddess. Others again, held that two wizards, leaders of
certain slaves of a strange race, wanderers from the desert, settled in
Tanis, whom they called the Apura, caused all these sorrows by
art-magic. As if, forsooth, said the pilot, those barbarian slaves were
more powerful than all the priests of Egypt. But for his part, the
pilot knew nothing, only that if the Divine Hathor were angry with the
people of Tanis it was hard that she must plague all the land of Khem.
So the pilot murmured, and his tale was none of the shortest; but even
as he spoke the darkness grew less dark and the cloud lifted a little
so that the shores of the river might be seen in a green light like the
light of Hades, and presently the night was rolled up like a veil, and
it was living noonday in the land of Khem. Then all the noise of life
broke forth in one moment, the kine lowing, the wind swaying the
feathery palms, the fish splashing in the stream, men crying to each
other from the river banks, and the voice of multitudes of people in
every red temple praising Ra, their great God, whose dwelling is the
Sun. The Wanderer, too, praised his own Gods, and gave thanks to
Apollo, and to Helios Hyperion, and to Aphrodite. And in the end the
pilot brought the ship to the quay of a great city, and there a crew of
oarsmen was hired, and they sped rejoicing in the sunlight, through a
canal dug by the hands of men, to Tanis and the Sanctuary of Heracles,
the Safety of Strangers. There the ship was moored, there the Wanderer
rested, having a good welcome from the shaven priests of the temple.
CHAPTER V.
MERIAMUN THE QUEEN
Strange news flies fast. It was not long before the Pharaoh, who then
was with his Court in Tanis, the newly rebuilded city, heard how there
had come to Khem a man like a god, wearing golden armour, and cruising
alone in a ship of the dead. In these years the white barbarians of the
sea and of the isles were wont to land in Egypt, to ravage the fields,
carry women captive, and fly again in their ships. But not one of them
had dared to sail in the armour of the Aquaiusha, as the Egyptians
named the Achæans, right up the river to the city of Pharaoh. The King,
therefore, was amazed at the story, and when he heard that the stranger
had taken sanctuary in the Temple of Heracles, he sent instantly for
his chief counsellor. This was his Master Builder, who bore a high
title in the land, an ancient priest named Rei. He had served through
the long reign of the King’s father, the divine Rameses the Second, and
he was beloved both of Meneptah and of Meriamun his Queen. Him the King
charged to visit the Sanctuary and bring the stranger before him. So
Rei called for his mule, and rode down to the Temple of Heracles beyond
the walls.
When Rei came thither, a priest went before him and led him to the
chamber where the warrior chanced to be eating the lily bread of the
land, and drinking the wine of the Delta. He rose as Rei entered, and
he was still clad in his golden armour, for as yet he had not any
change of raiment. Beside him, on a bronze tripod, lay his helmet, the
Achæan helmet, with its two horns and with the bronze spear-point still
fast in the gold.
The eyes of Rei the Priest fell on the helmet, and he gazed so
strangely at it that he scarcely heard the Wanderer’s salutation. At
length he answered, courteously, but always his eyes wandered back to
the broken spear-point.
“Is this thine, my son?” he asked, taking it in his hand, while his
voice trembled.
“It is my own,” said the Wanderer, “though the spear-point in it was
lent me of late, in return for arrows not a few and certain
sword-strokes,” and he smiled.
The ancient priest bade the Temple servants retire, and as they went
they heard him murmuring a prayer.
“The Dead spoke truth,” he muttered, still gazing from the helmet in
his hand to the Wanderer; “ay, the Dead speak seldom, but they never
lie.”
“My son, thou hast eaten and drunk,” then said Rei the Priest and
Master Builder, “and may an old man ask whence thou camest, where is
thy native city, and who are thy parents?”
“I come from Alybas,” answered the Wanderer, for his own name was too
widely known, and he loved an artful tale. “I come from Alybas; I am
the son of Apheidas, son of Polypemon, and my own name is Eperitus.”
“And wherefore comest thou here alone in a ship of dead men, and with
more treasure than a king’s ransom?”
“It was men of Sidon who laboured and died for all that cargo,” said
the Wanderer; “they voyaged far for it, and toiled hard, but they lost
it in an hour. For they were not content with what they had, but made
me a prisoner as I lay asleep on the coast of Crete. But the Gods gave
me the upper hand of them, and I bring their captain, and much white
metal and many swords and cups and beautiful woven stuffs, as a gift to
your King. And for thy courtesy, come with me, and choose a gift for
thyself.”
Then he led the old man to the treasure-chambers of the Temple, which
was rich in the offerings of many travellers, gold and turquoise and
frankincense from Sinai and Punt, great horns of carved ivory from the
unknown East and South; bowls and baths of silver from the Khita, who
were the allies of Egypt. But amidst all the wealth, the stranger’s
cargo made a goodly show, and the old priest’s eyes glittered as he
looked at it.
“Take thy choice, I pray thee,” said the Wanderer, “the spoils of
foemen are the share of friends.”
The priest would have refused, but the Wanderer saw that he looked ever
at a bowl of transparent amber, from the far-off Northern seas, that
was embossed with curious figures of men and gods, and huge fishes,
such as are unknown in the Midland waters. The Wanderer put it into the
hands of Rei.
“Thou shalt keep this,” he said, “and pledge me in wine from it when I
am gone, in memory of a friend and a guest.”
Rei took the bowl, and thanked him, holding it up to the light to
admire the golden colour.
“We are always children,” he said, smiling gravely. “See an old child
whom thou hast made happy with a toy. But we are men too soon again;
the King bids thee come with me before him. And, my son, if thou
wouldst please me more than by any gift, I pray thee pluck that
spear-head from thy helmet before thou comest into the presence of the
Queen.”
“Pardon me,” said the Wanderer. “I would not harm my helmet by tearing
it roughly out, and I have no smith’s tools here. The spear-point, my
father, is a witness to the truth of my tale, and for one day more, or
two, I must wear it.”
Rei sighed, bowed his head, folded his hands, and prayed to his God
Amen, saying:
“O Amen, in whose hand is the end of a matter, lighten the burden of
these sorrows, and let the vision be easy of accomplishment, and I pray
thee, O Amen, let thy hand be light on thy daughter Meriamun, the Lady
of Khem.”
Then the old man led the Wanderer out, and bade the priests make ready
a chariot for him; and so they went through Tanis to the Court of
Meneptah. Behind them followed the priests, carrying gifts that the
Wanderer had chosen from the treasures of the Sidonians, and the
miserable captain of the Sidonians was dragged along after them, bound
to the hinder part of a chariot. Through the gazing crowd they all
passed on to the Hall of Audience, where, between the great pillars,
sat Pharaoh on his golden throne. Beside him, at his right hand, was
Meriamun, the beautiful Queen, who looked at the priests with weary
eyes, as if at a matter in which she had no concern. They came in and
beat the earth with their brows before the King. First came the
officers, leading the captain of the Sidonians for a gift to Pharaoh,
and the King smiled graciously and accepted the slave.
Then came others, bearing the cups of gold fashioned like the heads of
lions and rams, and the swords with pictures of wars and huntings
echoed on their blades in many-coloured gold, and the necklets of amber
from the North, which the Wanderer had chosen as gifts for Pharaoh’s
Queen and Pharaoh. He had silks, too, embroidered in gold, and
needlework of Sidonian women, and all these the Queen Meriamun touched
to show her acceptance of them, and smiled graciously and wearily. But
the covetous Sidonian groaned, when he saw his wealth departing from
him, the gains for which he had hazarded his life in unsailed seas.
Lastly, Pharaoh bade them lead the Wanderer in before his presence, and
he came unhelmeted, in all his splendour, the goodliest man that had
ever been seen in Khem. He was of no great height, but very great of
girth, and of strength unmatched, and with the face of one who had seen
what few have seen and lived. The beauty of youth was gone from him,
but his face had the comeliness of a warrior tried on sea and land; the
eyes were of a valour invincible, and no woman could see him but she
longed to be his love.
As he entered murmurs of amazement passed over all the company, and all
eyes were fixed on him, save only the weary and wandering eyes of the
listless Meriamun. But when she chanced to lift her face, and gaze on
him, they who watch the looks of kings and queens saw her turn grey as
the dead, and clutch with her hand at her side. Pharaoh himself saw
this though he was not quick to mark what passed, and he asked her if
anything ailed her, but she answered:—
“Nay, only methinks the air is sick with heat and perfume. Greet thou
this stranger.” But beneath her robe her fingers were fretting all the
while at the golden fringes of her throne.
“Welcome, thou Wanderer,” cried Pharaoh, in a deep and heavy voice,
“welcome! By what name art thou named, and where dwell thy people, and
what is thy native land?”
Bowing low before Pharaoh, the Wanderer answered, with a feigned tale,
that his name was Eperitus of Alybas, the son of Apheidas. The rest of
the story, and how he had been taken by the Sidonians, and how he had
smitten them on the seas, he told as he had told it to Rei. And he
displayed his helmet with the spear-point fast in it. But when she saw
this Meriamun rose to her feet as if she would be gone, and then fell
back into her seat even paler than before.
“The Queen, help the Queen, she faints,” cried Rei the Priest, whose
eyes had never left her face. One of her ladies, a beautiful woman, ran
to her, knelt before her, and chafed her hands, till she came to
herself, and sat up with angry eyes.
“Let be!” she said, “and let the slave who tends the incense be beaten
on the feet. Nay, I will remain here, I will not to my chamber. Let
be!” and her lady drew back afraid.
Then Pharaoh bade men lead the Sidonian out, and slay him in the
market-place for his treachery; but the man, whose name was Kurri,
threw himself at the feet of the Wanderer, praying for his life. The
Wanderer was merciful, when the rage of battle was over, and his blood
was cool.
“A boon, O Pharaoh Meneptah,” he cried. “Spare me this man! He saved my
own life when the crew would have cast me overboard. Let me pay my
debt.”
“Let him be spared, as thou wilt have it so,” spoke Pharaoh, “but
revenge dogs the feet of foolish mercy, and many debts are paid ere all
is done.”
Thus it chanced that Kurri was given to Meriamun to be her jeweller and
to work for her in gold and silver. To the Wanderer was allotted a
chamber in the Royal Palace, for the Pharaoh trusted that he would be a
leader of his Guard, and took great pleasure in his beauty and his
strength.
As he left the Hall of Audience with Rei, the Queen Meriamun lifted her
eyes again, and looked on him long, and her ivory face flushed rosy,
like the ivory that the Sidonians dye red for the trappings of the
horses of kings. But the Wanderer marked both the sudden fear and the
blush of Meriamun, and, beautiful as she was, he liked it ill, and his
heart foreboded evil. When he was alone with Rei, therefore, he spoke
to him of this, and prayed the old man to tell him if he could guess at
all the meaning of the Queen.
“For to me,” he said, “it was as if the Lady knew my face, and even as
if she feared it; but I never saw her like in all my wanderings.
Beautiful she is, and yet—but it is ill speaking in their own land of
kings and queens!”
At first, when the Wanderer spoke thus, Rei put it by, smiling. But the
Wanderer, seeing that he was troubled, and remembering how he had
prayed him to pluck the spear-point from his helmet, pressed him hard
with questions. Thus, partly out of weariness, and partly for love of
him, and also because a secret had long been burning in his heart, the
old man took the Wanderer into his own room in the Palace, and there he
told him all the story of Meriamun the Queen.
CHAPTER VI.
THE STORY OF MERIAMUN
Rei, the Priest of Amen, the Master Builder, began his story
unwillingly enough, and slowly, but soon he took pleasure in telling it
as old men do, and in sharing the burden of a secret.
“The Queen is fair,” he said; “thou hast seen no fairer in all thy
voyagings?”
“She is fair indeed,” answered the Wanderer. “I pray that she be
well-mated and happy on her throne?”
“That is what I will tell thee of, though my life may be the price of
the tale,” said Rei. “But a lighter heart is well worth an old man’s
cheap risk, and thou may’st help me and her, when thou knowest all.
Pharaoh Meneptah, her lord, the King, is the son of the divine Rameses,
the ever-living Pharaoh, child of the Sun, who dwelleth in Osiris.”
“Thou meanest that he is dead?” asked the Wanderer.
“He dwelleth with Osiris,” said the Priest, “and the Queen Meriamun was
his daughter by another bed.”
“A brother wed a sister!” exclaimed the Wanderer.
“It is the custom of our Royal House, from the days of the Timeless
Kings, the children of Horus. An old custom.”
“The ways of his hosts are good in the eyes of a stranger,” said the
Wanderer, courteously.
“It is an old custom, and a sacred,” said Rei, “but women, the
custom-makers, are often custom-breakers. And of all women, Meriamun
least loves to be obedient, even to the dead. And yet she has obeyed,
and it came about thus. Her brother Meneptah—who now is Pharaoh—the
Prince of Kush while her divine father lived, had many half-sisters,
but Meriamun was the fairest of them all. She is beautiful, a
Moon-child the common people called her, and wise, and she does not
know the face of fear. And thus it chanced that she learned, what even
our Royal women rarely learn, all the ancient secret wisdom of this
ancient land. Except Queen Taia of old, no woman has known what
Meriamun knows, what I have taught her—I and another counsellor.”
He paused here, and his mind seemed to turn on unhappy things.
“I have taught her from childhood,” he went on—“would that I had been
her only familiar—and, after her divine father and mother, she loved me
more than any, for she loved few. But of all whom she did not love she
loved her Royal brother least. He is slow of speech, and she is quick.
She is fearless and he has no heart for war. From her childhood she
scorned him, mocked him, and mastered him with her tongue. She even
learned to excel him in the chariot races—therefore it was that the
King his father made him but a General of the Foot Soldiers—and in
guessing riddles, which our people love, she delighted to conquer him.
The victory was easy enough, for the divine Prince is heavy-witted; but
Meriamun was never tired of girding at him. Plainly, even as a little
child she grudged that he should come to wield the scourge of power,
and wear the double crown, while she should live in idleness, and
hunger for command.”
“It is strange, then, that of all his sisters, if one must be Queen, he
should have chosen her,” said the Wanderer.
“Strange, and it happened strangely. The Prince’s father, the divine
Rameses, had willed the marriage. The Prince hated it no less than
Meriamun, but the will of a father is the will of the Gods. In one
sport the divine Prince excelled, in the Game of Pieces, an old game in
Khem. It is no pastime for women, but even at this Meriamun was
determined to master her brother. She bade me carve her a new set of
the pieces fashioned with the heads of cats, and shaped from the hard
wood of Azebi.[*] I carved them with my own hands, and night by night
she played with me, who have some name for skill at the sport.
[*] Cyprus.
“One sunset it chanced that her brother came in from hunting the lion
in the Libyan hills. He was in an evil humour, for he had found no
lions, and he caused the huntsmen to be stretched out, and beaten with
rods. Then he called for wine, and drank deep at the Palace gate, and
the deeper he drank the darker grew his humour.
“He was going to his own Court in the Palace, striking with a whip at
his hounds, when he chanced to turn and see Meriamun. She was sitting
where those three great palm-trees are, and was playing at pieces with
me in the cool of the day. There she sat in the shadow, clad in white
and purple, and with the red gold of the snake of royalty in the
blackness of her hair. There she sat as beautiful as the Hathor, the
Queen of Love; or as the Lady Isis when she played at pieces in Amenti
with the ancient King. Nay, an old man may say it, there never was but
one woman more fair than Meriamun, if a woman she be, she whom our
people call the _Strange Hathor_.”
Now the Wanderer bethought him of the tale of the pilot, but he said
nothing, and Rei went on.
“The Prince saw her, and his anger sought for something new to break
itself on. Up he came, and I rose before him, and bowed myself. But
Meriamun fell indolently back in her chair of ivory, and with a sweep
of her slim hand she disordered the pieces, and bade her waiting woman,
the lady Hataska, gather up the board, and carry all away. But
Hataska’s eyes were secretly watching the Prince.
“‘Greeting, Princess, our Royal sister,’ said Meneptah. ‘What art thou
doing with these?’ and he pointed with his chariot whip at the
cat-headed pieces. ‘This is no woman’s game, these pieces are not soft
hearts of men to be moved on the board by love. This game needs wit!
Get thee to thy broidery, for there thou may’st excel.’
“‘Greeting, Prince, our Royal brother,’ said Meriamun. ‘I laugh to hear
thee speak of a game that needs wit. Thy hunting has not prospered, so
get thee to the banquet board, for there, I hear, the Gods have granted
thee to excel.’
“‘It is little to say,’ answered the Prince, throwing himself into a
chair whence I had risen, ‘it is little to say, but at the game of
pieces I have enough wit to give thee a temple, a priest and five
bowmen, and yet win,’—for these, O Wanderer, are the names of some of
the pieces.
“‘I take the challenge,’ cried Meriamun, for now she had brought him
where she wanted; ‘but I will take no odds. Here is my wager. I will
play thee three games, and stake the sacred circlet upon my brow,
against the Royal uraeus on thine, and the winner shall wear both.’
“‘Nay, nay, Lady,’ I was bold to say, ‘this were too high a stake.’
“‘High or low, I accept the wager,’ answered the Prince. ‘This sister
of mine has mocked me too long. She shall find that her woman’s wit
cannot match me at my own game, and that my father’s son, the Royal
Prince of Kush and the Pharaoh who shall be, is more than the equal of
a girl. I hold thy wage, Meriamun!’
“‘Go then, Prince,’ she cried, ‘and after sunset meet me in my
antechamber. Bring a scribe to score the games; Rei shall be the judge,
and hold the stakes. But beware of the golden Cup of Pasht! Drain it
not to-night, lest I win a love-game, though we do not play for love!’
“The Prince went scowling away, and Meriamun laughed, but I foresaw
mischief. The stakes were too high, the match was too strange, but
Meriamun would not listen to me, for she was very wilful.
“The sun fell, and two hours after the Royal Prince of Kush came with
his scribe, and found Meriamun with the board of squares before her, in
her antechamber.
“He sat down without a word, then he asked, who should first take the
field.
“‘Wait,’ she said, ‘first let us set the stakes,’ and lifting from her
brow the golden snake of royalty, she shook her soft hair loose, and
gave the coronet to me. ‘If I lose,’ she said, ‘never may I wear the
uraeus crown.’
“‘That shalt thou never while I draw breath,’ answered the Prince, as
he too lifted the symbol of his royalty from his head and gave it to
me. There was a difference between the circlets, the coronet of
Meriamun was crowned with one crested snake, that of the divine Prince
was crowned with twain.
“‘Ay, Meneptah,’ she said, ‘but perchance Osiris, God of the Dead,
waits thee, for surely he loves those too great and good for earth.
Take thou the field and to the play.’ At her words of evil omen, he
frowned. But he took the field and readily, for he knew the game well.
“She moved in answer heedlessly enough, and afterwards she played at
random and carelessly, pushing the pieces about with little skill. And
so he won this first game quickly, and crying, ‘_Pharaoh is dead_,’
swept the pieces from the board. ‘See how I better thee,’ he went on in
mockery. ‘Thine is a woman’s game; all attack and no defence.’
“‘Boast not yet, Meneptah,’ she said. ‘There are still two sets to
play. See, the board is set and I take the field.’
“This time the game went differently, for the Prince could scarce make
a prisoner of a single piece save of one temple and two bowmen only,
and presently it was the turn of Meriamun to cry ‘_Pharaoh is dead_,’
and to sweep the pieces from the board. This time Meneptah did not
boast but scowled, while I set the board and the scribe wrote down the
game upon his tablets. Now it was the Prince’s turn to take the field.
“‘In the name of holy Thoth,’ he cried, ‘to whom I vow great gifts of
victory.’
“‘In the name of holy Pasht,’ she made answer, ‘to whom I make daily
prayer.’ For, being a maid, she swore by the Goddess of Chastity, and
being Meriamun, by the Goddess of Vengeance.
“‘’Tis fitting thou should’st vow by her of the Cat’s Head,’ he said,
sneering.
“‘Yes; very fitting,’ she answered, ‘for perchance she’ll lend me her
claws. Play thou, Prince Meneptah.’
“And he played, and so well that for a while the game went against her.
But at length, when they had struggled long, and Meriamun had lost the
most of her pieces, a light came into her face as though she had found
what she sought. And while the Prince called for wine and drank, she
lay back in her chair and looked upon the board. Then she moved so
shrewdly and upon so deep a plan that he fell into the trap that she
had laid for him, and could never escape. In vain he vowed gifts to the
holy Thoth, and promised such a temple as there was none in Khem.
“‘Thoth hears thee not; he is the God of lettered men,’ said Meriamun,
mocking him. Then he cursed and drank more wine.
“‘Fools seek wit in wine, but only wise men find it,’ quoth she again.
‘Behold, Royal brother, _Pharaoh is dead_, and I have won the match,
and beaten thee at thine own game. Rei, my servant, give me that
circlet; nay, not my own, the double one, which the divine Prince
wagered. So set it on my brow, for it is mine, Meneptah. In this, as in
all things else, I have conquered thee.’
“And she rose, and standing full in the light of the lamps, the Royal
uraeus on her brow, she mocked him, bidding him come do homage to her
who had won his crown, and stretching forth her small hand for him to
kiss it. And so wondrous was her beauty that the divine Prince of Kush
ceased to call upon the evil Gods because of his ill fortune, and stood
gazing on her.
“‘By Ptah, but thou art fair,’ he cried, ‘and I pardon my father at
last for willing thee to be my Queen!’
“‘But I will never pardon him,’ said Meriamun.
“Now the Prince had drunk much wine.
“‘Thou shalt be my Queen,’ he said, ‘and for earnest I will kiss thee.
This, at the least, being the strongest, I can do.’ And ere she could
escape him, he passed his arm about her and seized her by the girdle,
and kissed her on the lips and let her go.
“Meriamun grew white as the dead. By her side there hung a dagger.
Swiftly she drew it, and swiftly struck at his heart, so that had he
not shrunk from the steel surely he had been slain; and she cried as
she struck, ‘Thus, Prince, I pay thy kisses back.’
“But as it chanced, she only pierced his arm, and before she could
strike again I had seized her by the hand.
“‘Thou serpent,’ said the Prince, pale with rage and fear. ‘I tell thee
I will kiss thee yet, whether thou wilt or not, and thou shalt pay for
this.’
“But she laughed softly now that her anger was spent, and I led him
forth to seek a physician, who should bind up his wound. And when he
was gone, I returned, and spoke to her, wringing my hands.
“‘Oh, Royal Lady, what hast thou done? Thou knowest well that thy
divine father destines thee to wed the Prince of Kush whom but now thou
didst smite so fiercely.’
“‘Nay, Rei, I will none of him—the dull clod, who is called the son of
Pharaoh. Moreover, he is my half-brother, and it is not meet that I
should wed my brother. For nature cries aloud against the custom of the
land.’
“‘Nevertheless, Lady, it _is_ the custom of thy Royal house, and thy
father’s will. Thus the Gods, thine ancestors, were wed; Isis to
Osiris. Thus great Thothmes and Amenemhat did and decreed, and all
their forefathers and all their seed. Oh, bethink thee—I speak it for
thine ear, for I love thee as mine own daughter—bethink thee, for thou
canst not escape, that Pharaoh’s bed is the step to Pharaoh’s throne.
Thou lovest power; here is the gate of power, and mayhap upon a time
the master of the gate shall be gone and thou shalt sit in the gate
alone.’
“‘Ah, Rei, now thou speakest like the counsellor of those who would be
kings. Oh, did I not hate him with this hatred! And yet can I rule him.
Why, ’twas no chance game that we played this night: the future lay
upon the board. See, his diadem is upon my brow! At first he won, for I
chose that he should win. Well, so mayhap it shall be; mayhap I shall
give myself to him—hating him the while. And then the next game; that
shall be for life and love and all things dear, and I shall win it, and
mine shall be the uraeus crest, and mine shall be the double crown of
ancient Khem, and I shall rule like Hatshepu, the great Queen of old,
for I am strong, and to the strong is victory.’
“‘Yes,’ I made answer, ‘but, Lady, see thou that the Gods turn not thy
strength to weakness; thou art too passionate to be all strength, and
in a woman’s heart passion is the door by which King Folly enters.
To-day thou hatest, beware, lest to-morrow thou should’st love.’
“‘Love,’ she said, gazing scornfully; ‘Meriamun loves not till she find
a man worthy of her love.’
“‘Ay, and then——?’
“‘And then she loves to all destruction, and woe to them who cross her
path. Rei, farewell.’
“Then suddenly she spoke to me in another tongue, that few know save
her and me, and that none can read save her and me, a dead tongue of a
dead people, the people of that ancient City of the Rock, whence all
our fathers came.[*]
[*] Probably the mysterious and indecipherable ancient books, which
were occasionally excavated in old Egypt, were written in this dead
language of a more ancient and now forgotten people. Such was the book
discovered at Coptos, in the sanctuary there, by a priest of the
Goddess. “The whole earth was dark, but the moon shone all about the
Book.” A scribe of the period of the Ramessids mentions another
indecipherable ancient writing. “Thou tellest me thou understandest no
word of it, good or bad. There is, as it were, a wall about it that
none may climb. Thou art instructed, yet thou knowest it not; this
makes me afraid.” Birch, _Zeitschrift_, 1871, pp. 61-64. _Papyrus
Anastasi_ I, pl. X. 1. 8, pl. X. 1. 4. Maspero, _Hist. Anc._, pp.
66-67.
“‘I go,’ she said, and I trembled as she spoke, for no man speaks in
this language when he has any good thought in his heart. ‘I go to seek
the counsel of That thou knowest,’ and she touched the golden snake
which she had won.
“Then I threw myself on the earth at her feet, and clasped her knees,
crying, ‘My daughter, my daughter, sin not this great sin. Nay, for all
the kingdom of the world, wake not That which sleepeth, nor warm again
into life That which is a-cold.’
“But she only nodded, and put me from her,”—and the old man’s face grew
pale as he spoke.
“What meant she?” said the Wanderer.
“Nay, wake not _thou_ That which sleepeth, Wanderer,” he said, at
length. “My tongue is sealed. I tell thee more than I would tell
another. Do not ask,—but hark! They come again! Now may Ra and Pasht
and Amen curse them; may the red swine’s mouth of Set gnaw upon them in
Amenti; may the Fish of Sebek flesh his teeth of stone in them for
ever, and feed and feed again!”
“Why dost thou curse thus, Rei, and who are they that go by?” said the
Wanderer. “I hear their tramping and their song.”
Indeed there came a light noise of many shuffling feet, pattering
outside the Palace wall, and the words of a song rang out triumphantly:
The Lord our God He doth sign and wonder,
Tokens He shows in the land of Khem,
He hath shattered the pride of the Kings asunder
And casteth His shoe o’er the Gods of them!
He hath brought forth frogs in their holy places,
He hath sprinkled the dust upon crown and hem,
He hath hated their kings and hath darkened their faces;
Wonders He works in the land of Khem.
“These are the accursed blaspheming conjurors and slaves, the Apura,”
said Rei, as the music and the tramping died away. “Their magic is
greater than the lore even of us who are instructed, for their leader
was one of ourselves, a shaven priest, and knows our wisdom. Never do
they march and sing thus but evil comes of it. Ere day dawn we shall
have news of them. May the Gods destroy them, they are gone for the
hour. It were well if Meriamun the Queen would let them go for ever, as
they desire, to their death in the desert, but she hardens the King’s
heart.”
CHAPTER VII.
THE QUEEN’S VISION
There was silence without at last; the clamour and the tread of the
Apura were hushed in the distance, dying far away, and Rei grew calm,
when he heard no longer the wild song, and the clashing of the
timbrels.
“I must tell thee, Eperitus,” he said, “how the matter ended between
the divine Prince and Meriamun. She bowed her pride before her father
and her brother: her father’s will was hers; she seemed to let her
secret sleep, and she set her own price on her hand. In everything she
must be the equal of Pharaoh—that was her price; and in all the temples
and all the cities she was to be solemnly proclaimed joint heir with
him of the Upper and Lower Land. The bargain was struck and the price
was paid. After that night over the game of pieces Meriamun was
changed. Thenceforth she did not mock at the Prince, she made herself
gentle and submissive to his will.
“So the time drew on till at length in the beginning of the rising of
the waters came the day of her bridal. With a mighty pomp was Pharaoh’s
daughter wedded to Pharaoh’s son. But her hand was cold as she stood at
the altar, cold as the hand of one who sleeps in Osiris. Proudly and
coldly she sat in the golden chariot passing in and out the great gates
of Tanis. Only when she listened and heard the acclaiming thousands cry
_Meriamun_ so loudly that the cry of _Meneptah_ was lost in the echoes
of her name—then only did she smile.
“Cold, too, she sat in her white robes at the feast that Pharaoh made,
and she never looked at the husband by her side, though he looked
kindly on her.
“The feast was long, but it ended at last, and then came the music and
the singers, but Meriamun, making excuse, rose and went out, attended
by her ladies. And I also, weary and sad at heart, passed thence to my
own chamber and busied myself with the instruments of my art, for,
stranger, I build the houses of gods and kings.
“Presently, as I sat, there came a knocking at the door, and a woman
entered wrapped in a heavy cloak. She put aside the cloak, and before
me was Meriamun in all her bridal robes.
“‘Heed me not, Rei,’ she said, ‘I am yet free for an hour; and I would
watch thee at thy labour. Nay, it is my humour; gainsay me not, for I
love well to look on that wrinkled face of thine, scored by the cunning
chisel of thy knowledge and thy years. So from a child have I watched
thee tracing the shapes of mighty temples that shall endure when
ourselves, and perchance the very Gods we worship, have long since
ceased to be. Ah, Rei, thou wise man, thine is the better part, for
thou buildest in cold enduring stone and attirest thy walls as thy
fancy bids thee. But I—I build in the dust of human hearts, and my will
is written in their dust. When I am dead, raise me a tomb more
beautiful than ever has been known, and write upon the portal, _Here,
in the last temple of her pride, dwells that tired builder, Meriamun,
the Queen_.’
“Thus she talked wildly in words with little reason.
“‘Nay, speak not so,’ I said, ‘for is it not thy bridal night? What
dost thou here at such a time?’
“‘What do I here? Surely I come to be a child again! See, Rei, in all
wide Khem there is no woman so shamed, so lost, so utterly undone as is
to-night the Royal Meriamun, whom thou lovest. I am lower than she who
plies the street for bread, for the loftier the spirit the greater is
the fall. I am sold into shame, and power is my price. Oh, cursed be
the fate of woman who only by her beauty can be great. Oh, cursed be
that ancient Counsellor thou wottest of, and cursed be I who wakened
That which slept, and warmed That which was a-cold in my breath and in
my breast! And cursed be this sin to which he led me! Spurn me, Rei;
strike me on the cheek, spit upon me, on Meriamun, the Royal harlot who
sells herself to win a crown. Oh, I hate him, hate him, and I will pay
him in shame for shame—him, the clown in king’s attire. See here,’—and
from her robe she drew a white flower that was known to her and
me—‘twice to-day have I been minded with this deadly blossom to make an
end of me, and of all my shame, and all my empty greed of glory. But
this thought has held my hand: I, Meriamun, will live to look across
his grave and break his images, and beat out the writings of his name
from every temple wall in Khem, as they beat out the hated name of
Hatshepu. I——’ and suddenly she burst into a rain of tears; she who was
not wont to weep.
“‘Nay, touch me not,’ she said. ‘They were but tears of anger. Meriamun
is mistress of her Fate, not Fate of Meriamun. And now, my lord awaits
me, and I must be gone. Kiss me on the brow, old friend, whilst yet I
am the Meriamun thou knewest, and then kiss me no more for ever. At the
least this is well for thee, for when Meriamun is Queen of Khem thou
shalt be first in all the land, and stand on the footsteps of my
throne. Farewell.’ And she gathered up her raiment and cast her white
flower of death in the flame of the brazier, and was gone, leaving me
yet sadder at heart. For now I knew that she was not as other women
are, but greater for good or evil.
“On the morrow night I sat again at my task, and again there came a
knocking at the door, and again a woman entered and threw aside her
wrappings. It was Meriamun. She was pale and stern, and as I rose she
waved me back.
“‘Has, then, the Prince—thy husband——’ I stammered.
“‘Speak not to me of the Prince, Rei, my servant,’ she made answer.
‘Yesterday I spoke to thee wildly, my mind was overwrought; let it be
forgotten—a wife am I, a happy wife’; and she smiled so strangely that
I shrunk back from her.
“‘Now to my errand. I have dreamed a dream, a troublous dream, and thou
art wise and instructed, therefore I pray thee interpret my vision. I
slept and dreamed of a man, and in my dream I loved him more than I can
tell. For my heart beat to his heart, and in the light of him I lived,
and all my soul was his, and I knew that I loved him for ever. And
Pharaoh was my husband; but, in my dream, I loved him not. Now there
came a woman rising out of the sea, more beautiful than I, with a
beauty fairer and more changeful than the dawn upon the mountains; and
she, too, loved this godlike man, and he loved her. Then we strove
together for his love, matching beauty against beauty, and wit against
wit, and magic against magic. Now one conquered, and now the other; but
in the end the victory was mine, and I went arrayed as for a
marriage-bed—and I clasped a corpse.
“‘I woke, and again I slept, and saw myself wearing another garb, and
speaking another tongue. Before me was the man I loved, and there, too,
was the woman, wrapped about with beauty, and I was changed, and yet I
was the very Meriamun thou seest. And once more we struggled for the
mastery and for this man’s love, and in that day she conquered me.
“‘I slept, and again I woke, and in another land than Khem—a strange
land, and yet methought I knew it from long ago. There I dwelt among
the graves, and dark faces were about me, and I wore That thou knowest
for a girdle. And the tombs of the rock wherein we dwelt were scored
with the writings of a dead tongue—the tongue of that land whence our
fathers came. We were all changed, yet the same, and once more the
woman and I struggled for the mastery, and though I seemed to conquer,
yet a sea of fire came over me, and I woke and I slept again.
“‘Then confusion was piled upon confusion, nor can my memory hold all
that came to pass. For this game played itself afresh in lands, and
lives, and tongues without number. Only the last bout and the winner
were not revealed to me.
“‘And in my dream I cried aloud to the protecting Gods to escape out of
the dream, and I sought for light that I might see whence these things
were. Then, as in a vision, the Past opened up its gates. It seemed
that upon a time, thousand, thousand ages agone, I and this man of my
dream had arisen from nothingness and looked in each other’s eyes, and
loved with a love unspeakable, and vowed a vow that shall endure from
time to time and world to world. For we were not mortal then, but
partook of the nature of the Gods, being more fair and great than any
of human kind, and our happiness was the happiness of Heaven. But in
our great joy we hearkened to the Voice of That thou knowest, of that
Thing, Rei, with which, against thy counsel, I have but lately dealt.
The kiss of our love awakened That which slept, the fire of our love
warmed That which was a-cold! We defied the holy Gods, worshipping them
not, but rather each the other, for we knew that as the Gods we were
eternal. And the Gods were angered against us and drew us up into their
presence. And while we trembled they spake as with a voice:
“‘“Ye twain who are one life, each completing each, because with your
kisses ye have wakened That which slept, and with the fire of your love
have warmed That which was a-cold: because ye have forgotten them that
gave you life and love and joy: hearken to your Doom!
“‘“From Two be ye made _Three_, and through all Time strive ye to be
Twain again. Pass from this Holy Place down to the Hell of Earth, and
though ye be immortal put on the garments of mortality. Pass on from
Life to Life, live and love and hate and seem to die: have acquaintance
with every lot, and in your blind forgetfulness, being one and being
equal, work each other’s woe according to the law of Earth, and for
your love’s sake sin and be shamed, perish and re-arise, appear to
conquer and be conquered, pursuing your threefold destiny, and, at the
word of Fate, the unaltering circle meets, and the veil of blindness
falls from your eyes, and, as a scroll, your folly is unrolled, and the
hid purpose of your sorrow is accomplished and once more ye are Twain
and One.”
“‘Then, as we trembled, clinging each to each, again the great Voice
spoke:
“‘“Ye twain who are One—let That to which ye have hearkened divide you
and enfold you! Be ye Three!”
“‘And as the Voice spoke I was torn with agony, and strength went out
of me, and there, by him I loved, stood the woman of my dream crowned
with every glory and adorned with the Star. And we were three. And
between him and me, yet enfolding him and me, writhed that Thing thou
wottest of. And he whom I loved turned to look upon the fair woman,
wondering, and she smiled and stretched out her arm towards him as one
who would take that which is her own, and Rei, in that hour, though it
was but in a dream, I knew the mortal pain of jealousy, and awoke
trembling. And now read thou this vision, Rei, thou who art learned in
the interpretation of dreams and in the ways of sleep.’
“‘Oh, Lady,’ I made answer, ‘this thing is too high for me, I cannot
interpret it; but where thou art, there may I be to help thee.’
“‘I know thy love,’ she said, ‘but in thy words is little light.
So—so—let it pass! It was but a dream, and if indeed it came from the
Under World, why, it was from no helpful God, but rather from Set, the
Tormentor; or from Pasht, the Terrible, who throws the creeping shadow
of her doom upon the mirror of my sleep. For that which is decreed will
surely come to pass! I am blown like the dust by the breath of Fate;
now to rest upon the Temple’s loftiest tops, now to be trodden
underfoot of slaves, and now to be swallowed by the bitter deep, and in
season thence rolled forth again. I love not this lord of mine, who
shall be Pharaoh, and never may _he_ come whom I shall love. ’Tis well
that I love him not, for to love is to be a slave. When the heart is
cold then the hand is strong, and I am fain to be the Queen leading
Pharaoh by the beard, the first of all the ancient land of Khem; for I
was not born to serve. Nay, while I may, I rule, awaiting the end of
rule. Look forth, Rei, and see how the rays from Mother Isis’ throne
flood all the courts and all the city’s streets and break in light upon
the water’s breast. So shall the Moon-child’s flame flood all this land
of Khem. What matters it, if ere the morn Isis must pass to her
dominion of the Dead, and the voice of Meriamun be hushed within a
sepulchre?’
“So she spoke and went thence, and on her face was no bride’s smile,
but rather such a gaze as that with which the great sphinx, Horemku,
looks out across the desert sands.”
“A strange Queen, Rei,” said the Wanderer, as he paused, “but what have
I to make in this tale of a bride and her mad dreams?”
“More than thou shalt desire,” said Rei; “but let us come to the end,
and thou shalt hear thy part in the Fate.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE KA, THE BAI, AND THE KHOU
“The Divine Pharaoh Rameses died and was gathered to Osiris. With these
hands I closed his coffin and set him in his splendid tomb, where he
shall rest unharmed for ever till the day of the awakening. And
Meriamun and Meneptah reigned in Khem. But to Pharaoh she was very
cold, though he did her will in everything, and they had but one child,
so that in a while he wearied of her loveliness.
“But hers was the master-mind, and she ruled Pharaoh as she ruled all
else.
“For me, my lot was bettered; she talked much with me, and advanced me
to great dignity, so that I was the first Master Builder in Khem, and
Commander of the legion of Amen.
“Now it chanced that Meriamun made a feast, where she entertained
Pharaoh and Hataska sat beside him. She was the first lady about the
Queen’s person, a beautiful but insolent woman, who had gained
Pharaoh’s favour for the hour. Now wine worked so with the King that he
toyed openly with the lady Hataska’s hand, but Meriamun the Queen took
no note, though Hataska, who had also drunk of the warm wine of the
Lower Land, grew insolent, as was her wont. She quaffed deep from her
cup of gold, and bade a slave bear it to the Queen, crying, ‘Pledge me,
my sister.’
“The meaning of her message was plain to all who heard; this waiting
lady openly declared herself wife to Pharaoh and an equal of the Queen.
Now Meriamun cared nothing for Pharaoh’s love, but for power she did
care, and she frowned, while a light shone in her dark eyes; yet she
took the cup and touched it with her lips.
“Presently she lifted her own cup in turn and toyed with it, then made
pretence to drink, and said softly to the King’s paramour, who had
pledged her:
“‘Pledge me in answer, Hataska, my servant, for soon, methinks, thou
shalt be greater than the Queen.’
“Now this foolish woman read her saying wrong, and took the golden cup
from the eunuch who bore it.
“With a little nod to the Queen, and a wave of her slim hand, Hataska
drank, and instantly, with a great cry, she fell dead across the board.
Then, while all the company sat in terror, neither daring to be silent
nor to speak, and while Meriamun smiled scornfully on the dark head
lying low among the roses on the board, Pharaoh leaped up, mad with
wrath, and called to the guards to seize the Queen. But she waved them
back, and, speaking in a slow, cold voice, she said:
“‘Dare not to touch Khem’s anointed Queen lest your fate be as _her_
fate. For thee, Meneptah, forget not thy marriage oath. What, am I
Queen, and shall thy wantons throw their insolence in my teeth and name
me their sister? Not so, for if my eyes be blind yet my ears are open.
Peace, she is rightly served—choose thou a lowlier mistress!’
“And Pharaoh made no answer, for he feared her with an ever-growing
fear. But she, sinking back in her seat of state, played with the gold
kepher on her breast, and watched them bear the body forth to the House
of Osiris. One by one all the company made obeisance and passed thence,
glad to be gone, till at the last there were left only Pharaoh and
Meriamun the Queen, and myself—Rei the Priest—for all were much afraid.
Then Pharaoh spoke, looking neither at her nor at me, and half in fear,
half in anger.
“‘Thou hateful woman, accursed be the day when first I looked upon thy
beauty. Thou hast conquered me, but beware, for I am still Pharaoh and
thy Lord. Cross my purpose once again, and, by Him who sleeps at Philæ,
I will discrown thee and give thy body to the tormentors, and set thy
soul loose to follow her whom thou hast slain.’
“Then Meriamun answered proudly:
“‘Pharaoh, be warned: lift but one finger against my majesty and thou
art doomed. Thou canst not slay me, but I can over-match thee, and I
swear by the same oath! By Him who sleeps at Philæ, lift a hand against
me, ay, harbour one thought of treachery, and thou diest. Not lightly
can I be deceived, for I have messengers that thou canst not hear.
Something, Royal Meneptah, do I know of the magic of that Queen Taia
who was before me. Now listen—do this one thing and all shall be well.
Go on thy path and leave me to follow mine. Queen I am, Queen I will
remain, and in all matters of the State mine must be an equal voice
though it is thine that speaks. And, for the rest, we are apart
henceforth, for thou fearest me, and Meneptah, I love not thee, nor any
man.’
“‘As thou hast spoken, so be it,’ quoth Pharaoh, for his heart sank,
and his fear came back upon him. ‘Evil was the day when first we met,
and this is the price of my desire. Henceforth we are apart in bed and
board, but in the council we are still one, for our ends are one. I
know thy power, Meriamun, thou gifted of the evil Gods; thou needest
not fear that I shall seek to slay thee, for a spear cast against the
heavens returns on him who threw it. Rei, my servant, thou art witness
to our oaths; hear now their undoing. Meriamun, the Queen of ancient
Khem, thou art no more wife of mine. Farewell.’
“And he went heavily and stricken with fear.
“‘Nay,’ she said, gazing after him, ‘no more am I Meneptah’s wife, but
still am I Khem’s dreaded Queen. Oh, thou old priest, I am aweary. See
what a lot is mine, who have all things but love, and yet am sick of
all! I longed for power, and power is mine, and what is power? It is a
rod wherewith we beat the air that straightway closes on the stroke.
Yes, I tire of my loveless days and of this dull round of common
things. Oh, for one hour of love and in that hour to die! Oh that the
future would lift its veil and disclose the face of time to be! Say,
Rei! Wilt thou be bold and dare a deed?’ And she clasped me by the
sleeve and whispered in my ear, in the dead tongue known to her and
me—‘Her I slew—thou sawest——’
“‘Ay, Queen, I saw—what of her? ’Twas ill done.’
“‘Nay, ’twas rightly done and well done. But thou knowest she is not
yet cold, nor for a while will be, and I have the art to drag her
spirit back ere she be cold, from where she is, and to force knowledge
from her lips—for being an Osiris all the future is open to her in this
hour.’
“‘Nay, nay,’ I cried. ‘It is unholy—not lightly may we disturb the
dead, lest the Guardian Gods be moved to anger.’
“‘Yet will I do it, Rei. If thou dost fear, come not. But I go. I am
fain for knowledge, and thus only may I win it. If I die in the dread
endeavour, write this of Meriamun the Queen: That in seeking the
to-be—she found it!’
“‘Nay, Royal Lady,’ I answered, ‘thou shalt not go alone. I too have
some skill in magic, and perchance can ward evil from thee. So, if
indeed thou wilt dare this dreadful thing, behold now, as ever, I am
thy servant.’
“‘It is well. See, now, the body will this night be laid in the
sanctuary of the Temple of Osiris that is near the great gates, as is
the custom, to await the coming of the embalmers. Come ere she be
colder than my heart, come with me, Rei, to the house of the Lord of
the Dead!’
“She passed to her chamber, wrapped herself about in a dark robe, and
hurried with me to the Temple doors, where we were challenged by the
guards.
“‘Who passes? In the name of the Holy Osiris speak.’
“‘Rei, the Master Builder and the anointed Priest, and with him
another,’ I made answer. ‘Open.’
“‘Nay, I open not. There is one within who may not be wakened.’
“‘Who, then, is within?’
“‘She whom the Queen slew.’
“‘The Queen sends one who would look on her she slew.’
“Then the priest gazed on the hooded form beside me and started back,
crying, ‘A token, noble Rei.’
“I held up the Royal signet, and, bowing, he opened. Being come within
the Temple I lit the tapers that had been prepared. Then by their
feeble light we passed through the outer hall till we came to the
curtains that veil the sanctuary of the Holy Place, and here I quenched
the tapers; for no fire must enter there, save that which burns upon
the altar of the dead. But through the curtains came rays of light.
“‘Open!’ said Meriamun, and I opened, and hand in hand we passed in. On
the altar that is in the place the flame burnt brightly. The chamber is
not wide and great, for this is the smallest of the temples of Tanis,
but yet so large that the light could not reach its walls nor pierce
the overhanging gloom, and by much gazing scarcely could we discover
the outline of the graven shapes of the Holy Gods that are upon the
walls. But the light fell clear upon the great statue of the Osiris
that was seated behind the altar fashioned in the black stone of Syene,
wound about with the corpse-cloths, wearing on his head the crown of
the Upper Land, and holding in his hands the crook of divinity and the
awful scourge of punishment. The light shone all about the white and
dreadful shape that was placed upon his holy knees, the naked shape of
lost Hataska who this night had died at the hand of Meriamun. There she
bowed her head against the sacred breast, her long hair streaming down
on either side, her arms tied across her heart, and her eyes, whence
the hues of life had scarcely faded, widely staring at the darkness of
the shrine. For at Tanis to this day it is the custom for a night to
place those of high birth or office who die suddenly upon the knees of
the statue of Osiris.
“‘See,’ I said to the Queen, speaking low, for the weight of the
haunted place sank into my heart, ‘see how she who scarce an hour ago
was but a lovely wanton hath by thine act been clad in majesty greater
than all the glory of the earth. Bethink thee, wilt thou dare indeed to
summon back the spirit to the body whence thou hast set it free? Not
easily, O Queen, may it be done for all thy magic, and if perchance she
answereth thee, it may well be that the terror of her words shall
utterly o’erwhelm us.’
“‘Nay,’ she made answer, ‘I am instructed. I fear not. I know by what
name to call the Khou that hovers on the threshold of the Double Hall
of Truth, and how to send it back to its own place. I fear not, but if
perchance thou fearest, Rei, depart hence and leave me to the task
alone.’
“‘Nay,’ I said. ‘I also am instructed, and I go not. But I say to thee
that this is unholy.’
“Then Meriamun spoke no more—but lifting up her hands she held them
heavenwards, and so for a while she stood, her face fixed, as was the
face of dead Hataska. Then, as must be done, I drew the circle round us
and round the altar and the statue of Osiris, and that which sat upon
his knee. With my staff I drew it, and standing therein I said the holy
words which should ward away the evil things that come near in such an
hour.
“Now Meriamun threw a certain powder into the flame upon the altar.
Thrice she threw the powder, and as she threw it a ball of flame rose
from the altar and floated away, each time that she threw did the ball
of fire rise; and this it was needful to do, for by fire only may the
dead be manifest, and therefore was a globe of fire given to each of
the three shapes that together make the threefold spirit of the dead.
And when the three globes of fire had melted into air, passing over the
head of the statue of Osiris, thrice did Meriamun cry aloud:
“‘_Hataska! Hataska! Hataska!_
“‘By the dreadful Name I summon thee.
“‘I summon thee from the threshold of the Double Hall.
“‘I summon thee from the Gates of Judgment.
“‘I summon thee from the door of Doom.
“‘By the link of life and death that is between thee and me, I bid thee
come from where thou art and make answer to that which I shall ask of
thee.’
“She ceased, but no answer came. Still the cold Osiris smiled, and
still the body on his knee sat with open eyes gazing into nothingness.
“‘Not thus easily,’ I whispered, ‘may this dreadful thing be done. Thou
art instructed in the Word of Fear. If thou darest, let it pass thy
lips, or let us be gone.’
“‘Nay, it shall be spoken,’ she said—and thus she wrought. Passing to
the statue she hid her head within her cloak and with both hands
grasped the feet of the slain Hataska.
“Seeing this I also crouched upon the floor and hid my face, for it is
death to hear that Word with an uncovered face.
“Then in so soft a whisper that scarce had its breath stirred a feather
on her lips, Meriamun spoke the Word of Fear which may not be written,
whose sound has power to pass all space and open the ears of the dead
who dwell in Amenti. Softly she said it, for in a shout of thunder it
was caught up and echoed from her lips, and down the eternal halls it
seemed to rush on the feet of storm and the wings of wind, so that the
roof rocked and the deep foundations of the Temple quivered like a
wind-stirred tree.
“‘Unveil, ye mortals!’ cried a dreadful voice, ‘and look upon the sight
of fear that ye have dared to summon.’
“And I rose and cast my cloak from about my face and gazed, then sank
down in terror. For round about the circle that I had drawn pressed all
the multitude of the dead; countless as the desert sands they pressed,
gazing with awful eyes upon us twain. And the fire that was on the
altar died away, but yet was there light, for it shone from those dead
eyes, and in the eyes of lost Hataska there was light.
“And ever the faces changed, never for one beat of time did they cease
to change. For as we gazed upon a face it would melt, even to the eyes,
and round these same eyes again would gather but no more the same. And
like the sloping sides of pyramids were the faces set about us from the
ground to the Temple roof—and on us were fixed their glowing eyes.
“And I, Rei, being instructed, knew that to suffer myself to be
overcome with terror was death, as it was death to pass without the
circle. So in my heart I called upon Osiris, Lord of the Dead, to
protect us, and even as I named the ineffable name, lo! all the
thousand thousand faces bent themselves in adoration and then, turning,
looked each upon the other even as though each spake to each, and
changed, and swiftly changed.
“‘Meriamun,’ I said, gathering up my strength, ‘fear not, but beware!’
“‘Nay, wherefore should I fear,’ she answered, ‘because the veil of
sense is torn, and for an hour we see those who are ever about our path
and whose eyes watch our most secret thought continually? I fear not.’
And she stepped boldly, even to the edge of the circle, and cried:
“‘All hail, ye Sahus, spirits of the awful dead, among whom I also
shall be numbered.’
“And as she came the changing faces shrunk away, leaving a space before
her. And in the space there grew two arms, mighty and black, that
stretched themselves towards her, until there was not the length of
three grains of wheat betwixt the clutching fingers and her breast.
“But Meriamun only laughed and drew back a space.
“‘Not so, thou Enemy,’ she said, ‘this circle thou may’st not break; it
is too strong for thee. But to the work. Hataska, once again by the
link of life and death I summon thee—and this time thou must come, thou
who wast a wanton and now art “greater than the Queen.”’
“And as she spoke, from the dead form of the woman on Osiris’ knee
there issued forth another form and stood before us, as a snake issues
from its slough. And as was the dead Hataska so was this form, feature
for feature, look for look, and limb for limb. But still the corpse
rested upon Osiris’ knee, for this was but the _Ka_ that stood before
us.
“And thus spoke the voice of Hataska in the lips of the Ka:
“‘What wouldest thou with me who am no more of thy company, O thou by
whose hand my body did perish? Why troublest thou me?’
“And Meriamun made answer: ‘I would this of thee, that thou shouldest
declare unto me the future, even in the presence of this great company.
Speak, I command thee.’
“And the Ka said: ‘Nay, Meriamun, that I cannot do, for I am but the
Ka—the Dweller in the Tomb, the guardian of what was Hataska whom thou
didst slay, whom I must watch through all the days of death till
resurrection is. Of the future I know naught; seek thou that which
knows.’
“‘Stand thou on one side,’ quoth the Queen, and the Dweller in the Tomb
obeyed.
“Then once more she called upon Hataska and there came a sound of
rushing wings. And behold, on the head of the statue of Osiris sat a
great bird, feathered as it were with gold. But the bird had the head
of a woman, and the face was fashioned as the face of Hataska. And thus
it spoke, that was the _Bai_:
“‘What wouldest thou with me, Meriamun, who am no more of thy company?
Why dost thou draw me from the Under World, thou by whose hand my body
did perish?’
“And Meriamun said: ‘This I would of thee, that thou shouldest declare
unto me the future. Speak, I command thee.’
“And the Bai said: ‘Nay, Meriamun, that I cannot do. I am but the Bai
of her who was Hataska, and I fly from Death to Life and Life to Death,
till the hour of awakening is. Of the future I know naught; seek thou
that which knows.’
“‘Rest thou where thou art,’ quoth the Queen, and there it rested,
awful to see.
“Then once more Meriamun called upon Hataska, bidding her hear the
summons where she was.
“And behold the eyes of the Dead One that was upon the knee of Osiris
glowed, and glowed the eyes of the Dweller in the Tomb, and of the
winged Messenger who sat above. And then there was a sound as the sound
of wind, and from above, cleaving the darkness, descended a Tongue of
Flame and rested on the brow of the dead Hataska. And the eyes of all
the thousand thousand spirits turned and gazed upon the Tongue of
Flame. And then dead Hataska spoke—though her lips moved not, yet she
spoke. And this she said:
“‘What wouldest thou with me, Meriamun, who am no more of thy company?
Why dost thou dare to trouble me, thou by whose hand my body did
perish, drawing me from the threshold of the Double Hall of Truth, back
to the Over World?’
“And Meriamun the Queen said, ‘Oh, thou _Khou_, for this purpose have I
called thee. I am aweary of my days and I fain would learn the future.
The future fain would I learn, but the forked tongue of That which
sleeps tells me no word, and the lips of That which is a-cold are dumb!
Tell me, then, thou, I charge thee by the word that has power to open
the lips of the dead, thou who in all things art instructed, what shall
be the burden of my days?’
“And the dread Khou made answer: ‘Love shall be the burden of thy days,
and Death shall be the burden of thy love. Behold one draws near from
out the North whom thou hast loved, whom thou shalt love from life to
life, till all things are accomplished. Bethink thee of a dream that
thou dreamedst as thou didst lie on Pharaoh’s bed, and read its riddle.
Meriamun, thou art great and thy name is known upon the earth, and in
Amenti is thy name known. High is thy fate, and through blood and
sorrow shalt thou find it. I have spoken, let me hence.’
“‘It is well,’ the Queen made answer: ‘But not yet mayest thou go
hence. First I command thee, by the word of dread and by the link of
life and death, declare unto me if here upon the earth and in this life
I shall possess him whom I shall love?’
“‘In sin and craft and sorrow, Meriamun, thou shalt possess him; in
shame and jealous agony he shall be taken from thee by one who is
stronger than thou, though thou art strong; by one more beautiful than
thou, though thou art beautiful; and ruin thou shalt give him for his
guerdon, and ruin of the heart shalt thou harvest for thy portion. But
for this time she shall escape thee, whose footsteps march with thine,
and with his who shall be thine and hers. Nevertheless, in a day to
come thou shalt pay her back measure for measure, and evil for evil. I
have spoken. Let me hence.’
“‘Not yet, O Khou—not yet. I have still to learn. Show me the face of
her who is mine enemy, and the face of him who is my love.’
“‘Thrice mayest thou speak to me, O thou greatly daring,’ answered the
dread Khou, ‘and thrice I may make reply, and then farewell till I meet
thee on the threshold of the hall whence thou hast drawn me. Look now
on the face of that Hataska whom thou slewest.’
“And we looked, and behold the face of dead Hataska changed, and
changed the face of the Double, the _Ka_ that stood on one side, and
the face of the great bird, the _Bai_, that spread his wings about the
head of Osiris. And they grew beautiful, yes, most exceeding beautiful
so that it cannot be told, and the beauty was that of a woman asleep.
Then lo, there hung above Hataska, as it were, the shadow of one who
was watching her sleeping. And his face we saw not, O thou Wanderer, it
was hidden by the visor of a golden two-horned helm, and in that helm
stood fast _the bronze point of a broken spear_! But he was clad in the
armour of the people of the Northern Sea, the Aquaiusha, and his hair
fell dark about his shoulders like the petals of the hyacinth flower.
“‘Behold thine enemy and behold thy love! Farewell,’ said the dread
Khou, speaking through dead Hataska’s lips, and as the words died the
beauty faded and the Tongue of Flame shot upwards and was lost, and
once more the eyes of the thousand thousand dead turned and looked upon
each other, even as though their lips whispered each to each.
“But for a while Meriamun stood silent, as one amazed. Then, awaking,
she waved her hand and cried, ‘Begone, thou _Bai_! Begone, thou _Ka_!’
“And the great bird whereof the face was as the face of Hataska spread
his golden wings and passed away to his own place, and the Ka that was
in the semblance of Hataska drew near to the dead one’s knees, and
passed back into her from whom she came. And all the thousand thousand
faces melted though the fiery eyes still gazed upon us.
“Then Meriamun covered her head and once more spoke the awful Word, and
I also covered up my head. But, as must be done, this second time she
called the Word aloud, and yet though she called it loud, it came but
as a tiny whisper from her lips. Nevertheless, at the sound of it, once
more was the Temple shaken as by a storm.
“Then Meriamun unveiled, and behold, again the fire burned upon the
altar, and on the knees of the Osiris sat Hataska, cold and still in
death, and round them was emptiness and silence.
“‘Now that all is done, I greatly fear for that which has been, and
that which shall be. Lead me hence, O Rei, son of Pames, for I can no
more.’
“And so with a heavy heart I led her forth, who of all sorceresses is
the very greatest. Behold, thou Wanderer, wherefore the Queen was
troubled at the coming of the man in the armour of the North, in whose
two-horned golden helm stands fast the point of a broken spear.”
BOOK II
CHAPTER I.
THE PROPHETS OF THE APURA
“These things are not without the Gods,” said the Wanderer, who was
called Eperitus, when he had heard all the tale of Rei the Priest, son
of Pames, the Head Architect, the Commander of the Legion of Amen. Then
he sat silent for a while, and at last raised his eyes and looked upon
the old man.
“Thou hast told a strange tale, Rei. Over many a sea have I wandered,
and in many a land I have sojourned. I have seen the ways of many
peoples, and have heard the voices of the immortal Gods. Dreams have
come to me and marvels have compassed me about. It has been laid upon
me to go down into Hades, that land which thou namest Amenti, and to
look on the tribes of the Dead; but never till now have I known so
strange a thing. For mark thou, when first I beheld this fair Queen of
thine I thought she looked upon me strangely, as one who knew my face.
And now, Rei, if thou speakest truth, _she_ deems that she has met me
in the ways of night and magic. Say, then, who was the man of the
vision of the Queen, the man with dark and curling locks, clad in
golden armour after the fashion of the Achæans whom ye name the
Aquaiusha, wearing on his head a golden helm, wherein was fixed a
broken spear?”
“Before me sits such a man,” said Rei, “or perchance it is a God that
my eyes behold.”
“No God am I,” quoth the Wanderer, smiling, “though the Sidonians
deemed me nothing less when the black bow twanged and the swift shafts
flew. Read me the riddle, thou that art instructed.”
Now the aged Priest looked upon the ground, then turned his eyes
upward, and with muttering lips prayed to Thoth, the God of Wisdom. And
when he had made an end of prayer he spoke.
“_Thou_ art the man,” he said. “Out of the sea thou hast come to bring
the doom of love on the Lady Meriamun and on thyself the doom of death.
This I knew, but of the rest I know nothing. Now, I pray thee, oh thou
who comest in the armour of the North, thou whose face is clothed in
beauty, and who art of all men the mightiest and hast of all men the
sweetest and most guileful tongue, go back, go back into the sea whence
thou camest, and the lands whence thou hast wandered.”
“Not thus easily may men escape their doom,” quoth the Wanderer. “My
death may come, as come it must; but know this, Rei, I do not seek the
love of Meriamun.”
“Then it well may chance that thou shalt find it, for ever those who
seek love lose, and those who seek not find.”
“I am come to seek another love,” said the Wanderer, “and I seek her
till I die.”
“Then I pray the Gods that thou mayest find her, and that Khem may thus
be saved from sorrow. But here in Egypt there is no woman so fair as
Meriamun, and thou must seek farther as quickly as may be. And now,
Eperitus, behold I must away to do service in the Temple of the Holy
Amen, for I am his High Priest. But I am commanded by Pharaoh first to
bring thee to the feast at the Palace.”
Then he led the Wanderer from his chamber and brought him by a side
entrance to the great Palace of the Pharaoh at Tanis, near the Temple
of Ptah. And first he took him to a chamber that had been made ready
for him in the Palace, a beautiful chamber, richly painted with
beast-headed Gods and furnished with ivory chairs, and couches of ebony
and silver, and with a gilded bed.
Then the Wanderer went into the shining baths, and dark-eyed girls
bathed him and anointed him with fragrant oil, and crowned him with
lotus flowers. When they had bathed him they bade him lay aside his
golden armour and his bow and the quiver full of arrows, but this the
Wanderer would not do, for as he laid the black bow down it thrilled
with a thin sound of war. So Rei led him, armed as he was, to a certain
antechamber, and there he left him, saying that he would return again
when the feast was done. Trumpets blared as the Wanderer waited, drums
rolled, and through the wide thrown curtains swept the lovely Meriamun
and the divine Pharaoh Meneptah, with many lords and ladies of the
Court, all crowned with roses and with lotus blooms.
The Queen was decked in Royal attire, her shining limbs were veiled in
broidered silk; about her shoulders was a purple robe, and round her
neck and arms were rings of well-wrought gold. She was stately and
splendid to see, with pale brows and beautiful disdainful eyes where
dreams seemed to sleep beneath the shadow of her eyelashes. On she
swept in all her state and pride of beauty, and behind her came the
Pharaoh. He was a tall man, but ill-made and heavy-browed, and to the
Wanderer it seemed that he was heavy-hearted too, and that care and
terror of evil to come were always in his mind.
Meriamun looked up swiftly.
“Greeting, Stranger,” she said. “Thou comest in warlike guise to grace
our feast.”
“Methought, Royal Lady,” he made answer, “that anon when I would have
laid it by, this bow of mine sang to me of present war. Therefore I am
come armed—even to thy feast.”
“Has thy bow such foresight, Eperitus?” said the Queen. “I have heard
but once of such a weapon, and that in a minstrel’s tale. He came to
our Court with his lyre from the Northern Sea, and he sang of the Bow
of Odysseus.”
“Minstrel or not, thou does well to come armed, Wanderer,” said the
Pharaoh; “for if thy bow sings, my own heart mutters much to me of war
to be.”
“Follow me, Wanderer, however it fall out,” said the Queen.
So he followed her and the Pharaoh till they came to a splendid hall,
carven round with images of fighting and feasting. Here, on the painted
walls, Rameses Miamun drove the thousands of the Khita before his
single valour; here men hunted wild-fowl through the marshes with a
great cat for their hound. Never had the Wanderer beheld such a hall
since he supped with the Sea King of the fairy isle. On the daïs,
raised above the rest, sat the Pharaoh, and by him sat Meriamun the
Queen, and by the Queen sat the Wanderer in the golden armour of Paris,
and he leaned the black bow against his ivory chair.
Now the feast went on and men ate and drank. The Queen spoke little,
but she watched the Wanderer beneath the lids of her deep-fringed eyes.
Suddenly, as they feasted and grew merry, the doors at the end of the
chamber were thrown wide, the Guards fell back in fear, and behold, at
the end of the hall, stood two men. Their faces were tawny, dry, wasted
with desert wandering; their noses were hooked like eagles’ beaks, and
their eyes were yellow as the eyes of lions. They were clad in rough
skins of beasts, girdled about their waists with leathern thongs, and
fiercely they lifted their naked arms, and waved their wands of cedar.
Both men were old, one was white-bearded, the other was shaven smooth
like the priests of Egypt. As they lifted the rods on high the Guards
shrank like beaten hounds, and all the guests hid their faces, save
Meriamun and the Wanderer alone. Even Pharaoh dared not look on them,
but he murmured angrily in his beard:
“By the name of Osiris,” he said, “here be those Soothsayers of the
Apura once again. Now Death waits on those who let them pass the
doors.”
Then one of the two men, he who was shaven like a priest, cried with a
great voice:
“_Pharaoh! Pharaoh! Pharaoh!_ Hearken to the word of Jahveh. Wilt thou
let the people go?”
“I will not let them go,” he answered.
“_Pharaoh! Pharaoh! Pharaoh!_ Hearken to the word of Jahveh. If thou
wilt not let the people go, then shall all the firstborn of Khem, of
the Prince and the slave, of the ox and the ass, be smitten of Jahveh.
Wilt thou let the people go?”
Now Pharaoh hearkened, and those who were at the feast rose and cried
with a loud voice:
“O Pharaoh, let the people go! Great woes are fallen upon Khem because
of the Apura. O Pharaoh, let the people go!”
Now Pharaoh’s heart was softened and he was minded to let them go, but
Meriamun turned to him and said:
“Thou shalt not let the people go. It is not these slaves, nor the God
of these slaves, who bring the plagues on Khem, but it is that strange
Goddess, the False Hathor, who dwells here in the city of Tanis. Be not
so fearful—ever hadst thou a coward heart. Drive the False Hathor
thence if thou wilt, but hold these slaves to their bondage. I still
have cities that must be built, and yon slaves shall build them.”
Then the Pharaoh cried: “Hence! I bid you. Hence, and to-morrow shall
your people be laden with a double burden and their backs shall be red
with stripes. I will not let the people go!”
Then the two men cried aloud, and pointing upward with their staffs
they vanished from the hall, and none dared to lay hands on them, but
those who sat at the feast murmured much.
Now the Wanderer marvelled why Pharaoh did not command the Guards to
cut down these unbidden guests, who spoiled his festival. The Queen
Meriamun saw the wonder in his eyes and turned to him.
“Know thou, Eperitus,” she said, “that great plagues have come of late
on this land of ours—plagues of lice and frogs and flies and darkness,
and the changing of pure waters to blood. And these things our Lord the
Pharaoh deems have been brought upon us by the curse of yonder
magicians, conjurers and priests among certain slaves who work in the
land at the building of our cities. But I know well that the curses
come on us from Hathor, the Lady of Love, because of that woman who
hath set herself up here in Tanis, and is worshipped as the Hathor.”
“Why then, O Queen,” said the Wanderer, “is this false Goddess suffered
to abide in your fair city? for, as I know well, the immortal Gods are
ever angered with those who turn from their worship to bow before
strange altars.”
“Why is she suffered? Nay, ask of Pharaoh my Lord. Methinks it is
because her beauty is more than the beauty of women, so the men say who
have looked on it, but I have not seen it, for only those men see it
who go to worship at her shrine, and then from afar. It is not meet
that the Queen of all the Lands should worship at the shrine of a
strange woman, come—like thyself, Eperitus—from none knows where: if
indeed she be a woman and not a fiend from the Under World. But if thou
wouldest learn more, ask my Lord the Pharaoh, for he knows the Shrine
of the False Hathor, and he knows who guard it, and what is it that
bars the way.”
Now the Wanderer turned to Pharaoh saying: “O Pharaoh, may I know the
truth of this mystery?”
Then Meneptah looked up, and there was doubt and trouble on his heavy
face.
“I will tell thee readily, thou Wanderer, for perchance such a man as
thou, who hast travelled in many lands and seen the faces of many Gods,
may understand the tale, and may help me. In the days of my father, the
holy Rameses Miamun, the keepers of the Temple of the Divine Hathor
awoke, and lo! in the Sanctuary of the temple was a woman in the garb
of the Aquaiusha, who was Beauty’s self. But when they looked upon her,
none could tell the semblance of her beauty, for to one she seemed dark
and to the other fair, and to each man of them she showed a diverse
loveliness. She smiled upon them, and sang most sweetly, and love
entered their hearts, so that it seemed to each man that she only was
his Heart’s Desire. But when any man would have come nearer and
embraced her, there was that about her which drove him back, and if he
strove again, behold, he fell down dead. So at last they subdued their
hearts, and desired her no more, but worshipped her as the Hathor come
to earth, and made offerings of food and drink to her, and prayers. So
three years passed, and at the end of the third year the keepers of the
temple looked and the Hathor was gone. Nothing remained of her but a
memory. Yet there were some who said that this memory was dearer than
all else that the world has to give.
“Twenty more seasons went by, and I sat upon the throne of my father,
and was Lord of the Double Crown. And, on a day, a messenger came
running and cried:
“‘Now is Hathor come back to Khem, now is Hathor come back to Khem,
and, as of old, none may draw near her beauty!’ Then I went to see, and
lo! before the Temple of Hathor a great multitude was gathered, and
there on the pylon brow stood the Hathor’s self shining with changeful
beauty like the Dawn. And as of old she sang sweet songs, and, to each
man who heard, her voice was the voice of his own beloved, living and
lost to him, or dead and lost. Now every man has such a grave in his
heart as that whence Hathor seems to rise in changeful beauty. Month by
month she sings thus, one day in every month, and many a man has sought
to win her and her favour, but in the doorways are they who meet him
and press him back; and if he still struggles on, there comes a clang
of swords and he falls dead, but no wound is found on him. And,
Wanderer, this is truth, for I myself have striven and have been
pressed back by that which guards her. But I alone of men who have
looked on her and heard her, strove not a second time, and so saved
myself alive.”
“Thou alone of men lovest life more than the World’s Desire!” said the
Queen. “Thou hast ever sickened for the love of this strange Witch, but
thy life thou lovest even better than her beauty, and thou dost not
dare attempt again the adventure of her embrace. Know, Eperitus, that
this sorrow is come upon the land, that all men love yonder witch and
rave of her, and to each she wears a different face and sings in
another voice. When she stands upon the pylon tower, then thou wilt see
the madness with which she has smitten them. For they will weep and
pray and tear their hair. Then they will rush through the temple courts
and up to the temple doors, and be thrust back again by that which
guards her. But some will yet strive madly on, and thou wilt hear the
clash of arms and they will fall dead before thee. Accursed is the
land, I tell thee, Wanderer; because of that Phantom it is accursed.
For it is she who brings these woes on Khem; from her, not from our
slaves and their mad conjurers, come plagues, I say, and all evil
things. And till a man be found who may pass her guard, and come face
to face with the witch and slay her, plagues and woes and evil things
shall be the daily bread of Khem. Perchance, Wanderer, thou art such a
man,” and she looked on him strangely. “Yet if so, this is my counsel,
that thou go not up against her, lest thou also be bewitched, and a
great man be lost to us.”
Now the Wanderer turned the matter over in his heart and made answer:
“Perchance, Lady, my strength and the favour of the Gods might serve me
in such a quest. But methinks that this woman is meeter for words of
love and the kisses of men than to be slain with the sharp sword, if,
indeed, she be not of the number of the immortals.”
Now Meriamun flushed and frowned.
“It is not fitting so to talk before me,” she said. “Of this be sure,
that if the Witch may be come at, she shall be slain and given to
Osiris for a bride.”
Now the Wanderer saw that the Lady Meriamun was jealous of the beauty
and renown and love of her who dwelt in the temple, and was called the
Strange Hathor, and he held his peace, for he knew when to be silent.