THE LOOSING OF THE SPIRIT OF REI
Rei the Priest had fled with what speed he might from the Gates of
Death, those gates that guarded the loveliness of Helen and opened only
upon men doomed to die. The old man was heavy at heart, for he loved
the Wanderer. Among the dark children of Khem he had seen none like
this Achæan, none so goodly, so strong, and so well versed in all arts
of war. He remembered how this man had saved the life of her he loved
above all women—of Meriamun, the moon-child, the fairest queen who had
sat upon the throne of Egypt, the fairest and the most learned, save
Taia only. He bethought him of the Wanderer’s beauty as he stood upon
the board while the long shafts hailed down the hall. Then he recalled
the vision of Meriamun, which she had told him long years ago, and the
shadow in a golden helm which watched the changed Hataska. The more he
thought, the more he was perplexed and lost in wonder. What did the
Gods intend? Of one thing he was sure: the leaders of the host of
dreams had mocked Meriamun. The man of her vision would never be her
love: he had gone to meet his doom at the door of the Chapel Perilous.
So Rei hasted on, stumbling in his speed, till he came to the Palace
and passed through its halls towards his chamber. At the entrance of
her own place he met Meriamun the Queen. There she stood in the doorway
like a picture in its sculptured frame, nor could any sight be more
beautiful than she was, clad in her Royal robes, and crowned with the
golden snakes. Her black hair lay soft and deep on her, and her eyes
looked strangely forth from beneath the ivory of her brow.
He bowed low before her and would have passed on, but she stayed him.
“Whither goest thou, Rei?” she asked, “and why is thy face so sad?”
“I go about my business, Queen,” he answered, “and I am sad because no
tidings come of Pharaoh, nor of how it has fared with him and the host
of the Apura.”
“Perchance thou speakest truth, and yet not all the truth,” she
answered. “Enter, I would have speech with thee.”
So he entered, and at her command seated himself before her in the very
seat where the Wanderer had sat. Now, as he sat thus, of a sudden
Meriamun the Queen slid to her knees before him, and tears were in her
eyes and her breast was shaken with sobs. And while he wondered,
thinking that she wept at last for her son who was dead among the
firstborn, she hid her face in her hands upon his knees, and trembled.
“What ails thee, Queen, my fosterling?” he said. But she only took his
hand, and laid her own in it, and the old priest’s eyes were dim with
tears. So she sat for awhile, and then she looked up, but still she did
not find words. And he caressed the beautiful Imperial head, that no
man had seen bowed before. “What is it, my daughter?” he said, and she
answered at last:
“Hear me, old friend, who art my only friend—for if I speak not my
heart will surely burst; or if it break not, my brain will burn and I
shall be no more a Queen but a living darkness, where vapours creep,
and wandering lights shine faintly on the ruin of my mind. Mindest thou
that hour—it was the night after the hateful night that saw me
Pharaoh’s wife—when I crept to thee and told thee the vision that had
come upon my soul, had come to mock me even at Pharaoh’s side?”
“I mind it well,” said Rei; “it was a strange vision, nor might my
wisdom interpret it.”
“And mindest thou what I told thee of the man of my vision—the glorious
man whom I must love, he who was clad in golden armour and wore a
golden helm wherein a spear-point of bronze stood fast?”
“Yes, I mind it,” said Rei.
“And how is that man named?” she asked, whispering and staring on him
with wide eyes. “Is he not named Eperitus, the Wanderer? And hath he
not come hither, the spear-point in his helm? And is not the hand of
Fate upon me, Meriamun? Hearken, Rei, hearken! I love him as it was
fated I should love. When first I looked on him as he came up the Hall
of Audience in his glory, I knew him. I knew him for that man who
shares the curse laid aforetime on him, and on the woman, and on me,
when, in an unknown place, twain became three and were doomed to strive
from life to life and work each other’s woe upon the earth. I knew him,
Rei, though he knew me not, and I say that my soul shook at the echo of
his step, and my heart blossomed as the black earth blossoms when after
flood Sihor seeks his banks again. A glory came upon me, Rei, and I
looked back through all the mists of time and knew him for my love, and
I looked forward into the depths of time to be and knew him for my
love. Then I looked on the present hour, and naught could I see but
darkness, and naught could I hear but the groans of dying men, and a
shrill sound as of a woman singing.”
“An ill tale, Queen,” said Rei.
“Ay, an ill tale, Rei, but half untold. Hearken again, I will tell thee
all. Madness hath entered into me from the Hathor of Atarhechis, the
Queen of Desire. I am mad with love, even I who never loved. Oh, Rei!
Rei! I would win this man. Nay, look not so sternly on me, it is Fate
that drives me on. Last night I spoke to him and discovered to him the
name he hides from us, his own name, Odysseus, Laertes’ son, Odysseus
of Ithaca. Ay, thou startest, but so it is. I learned it by my magic,
and wrung the truth even from the guile of the most crafty of men. But
it seemed to me that he turned from me, though this much I won from
him, that he had journeyed from far to seek me, the Bride that the Gods
have promised him.”
The priest leaped up from his seat. “Lady!” he cried, “Lady! whom I
serve and whom I have loved from a child, thy brain is sick, and not
thy heart. Thou canst not love him. Dost thou not remember that thou
art Queen of Khem and Pharaoh’s wife? Wilt thou throw thy honour in the
mire to be trampled by a wandering stranger?”
“Ay,” she answered, “I am Queen of Khem and Pharaoh’s wife, but never
Pharaoh’s love. Honour! Why dost thou prate to me of honour? Like Nile
in flood, my love hath burst the bulwark of my honour, and I mark not
where custom set it. For all around the waters seethe and foam, and on
them, like a broken lily, floats the wreck of my lost honour. Talk not
to me of honour, Rei, teach me rather how I may win my hero to my
arms.”
“Thou art mad indeed,” he groaned; “nevertheless—I had forgotten—this
must needs end in words and tears. Meriamun, I bring thee tidings. He
whom thou desireth is lost to thee for ever—to thee and all the world.”
She heard, then sprang from the couch and stood over him like a lioness
over a smitten stag, her fierce and lovely face alive with rage and
fear.
“Is he dead?” she hissed in his ear. “Dead! and I knew it not? Then
thou hast murdered him, and thus I avenge his murder.”
With the word she snatched a dagger from her girdle—that same dagger
with which she had once struck at Meneptah her brother, when he would
have kissed her—and high it flashed above Rei the Priest.
“Nay,” she went on, letting the knife fall; “after another fashion
shalt thou die—more slowly, Rei, yes, more slowly. Thou knowest the
torment of the palm-tree? By that thou shalt die!” She paused, and
stood above him with quivering limbs, and breast that heaved, and eyes
that flashed like stars.
“Stay! stay!” he cried. “It is not I who have slain this Wanderer, if
he indeed is dead, but his own folly. For he is gone up to look upon
the Strange Hathor, and those who look upon the Hathor do battle with
the Unseen Swords, and those who do battle with the Unseen Swords must
lie in the baths of bronze and seek the Under World.”
The face of Meriamun grew white at this word, as the alabaster of the
walls, and she cried aloud with a great cry. Then she sank upon the
couch, pressing her hand to her brow and moaning:
“How may I save him? How may I save him from that accursed witch? Alas!
It is too late—but at least I will know his end, ay, and hear of the
beauty of her who slays him. Rei,” she whispered, not in the speech of
Khem, but in the dead tongue of a dead people, “be not wrath with me.
Oh, have pity on my weakness. Thou knowest of the Putting-forth of the
Spirit—is it not so?”
“I am instructed,” he answered, in the same speech; “’twas I who taught
thee this art, I, and that Ancient Evil which is thine.”
“True—it was thou, Rei. Thou hast ever loved me, so thou swearest, and
many a deed of dread have we dared together. Lend me thy Spirit, Rei,
that I may send it forth to the Temple of the False Hathor, and learn
what passes in the temple, and of the death of him—whom I must love.”
“An ill deed, Meriamun, and a fearful,” he answered, “for there shall
my Spirit meet them who watch the gates, and who knows what may chance
when the bodiless one that yet hath earthly life meets the bodiless
ones who live no more on earth?”
“Yet wilt thou dare it, Rei, for love of me, as being instructed thou
alone canst do,” she pleaded.
“Never have I refused thee aught, Meriamun, nor will I say thee nay.
This only I ask of thee—that if my Spirit comes back no more, thou wilt
bury me in that tomb which I have made ready by Thebes, and if it may
be, by thy strength of magic wring me from the power of the strange
Wardens. I am prepared—thou knowest the spell—say it.”
He sank back in the carven couch, and looked upwards. Then Meriamun
drew near to him, gazed into his eyes and whispered in his ear in that
dead tongue she knew. And as she whispered the face of Rei grew like
the face of one dead. She drew back and spoke aloud:
“Art thou loosed, Spirit of Rei?”
Then the lips of Rei answered her, saying: “I am loosed, Meriamun.
Whither shall I go?”
“To the court of the Temple of Hathor, that is before the shrine.”
“It is done, Meriamun.”
“What seest thou?”
“I see a man clad in golden armour. He stands with buckler raised
before the doorway of the shrine, and before him are the ghosts of
heroes dead, though he may not see them with the eyes of the flesh.
From within the shrine there comes a sound of singing, and he listens
to the singing.”
“What does he hear?”
Then the loosed Spirit of Rei the Priest told Meriamun the Queen all
the words of the song that Helen sang. And when she heard and knew that
it was Argive Helen who sat in the halls of Hathor, the heart of the
Queen grew faint within her, and her knees trembled. Yet more did she
tremble when she learned those words that rang like the words she
herself had heard in her vision long ago—telling of bliss that had
been, of the hate of the Gods, and of the unending Quest.
Now the song ended, and the Wanderer went up against the ghosts, and
the Spirit of Rei, speaking with the lips of Rei, told all that befell,
while Meriamun hearkened with open ears—ay, and cried aloud with joy
when the Wanderer forced his path through the invisible swords.
Then once more the sweet voice rang and the loosed Spirit of Rei told
the words she sang, and to Meriamun they seemed fateful. Then he told
her all the talk that passed between the Wanderer and the ghosts.
Now the ghosts being gone she bade the Spirit of Rei follow the
Wanderer up the sanctuary, and from the loosed Spirit she heard how he
rent the web, and of all the words of Helen and of the craft of him who
feigned to be Paris. Then the web was torn and the eyes of the Spirit
of Rei looked on the beauty of her who was behind it.
“Tell me of the face of the False Hathor?” said the Queen.
And the Spirit of Rei answered: “Her face is that beauty which gathered
like a mask upon the face of dead Hataska, and upon the face of the
Bai, and the face of the Ka, when thou spakest with the spirit of her
thou hadst slain.”
Now Meriamun groaned aloud, for she knew that doom was on her. Last of
all, she heard the telling of the loves of Odysseus and of Helen, her
undying foe, of their kiss, of their betrothal, and of that marriage
which should be on the morrow night. Meriamun the Queen said never a
word, but when all was done and the Wanderer had left the shrine again,
she whispered in the ear of Rei the Priest, and drew back his Spirit to
him so that he awoke as a man awakes from sleep.
He awoke and saw the Queen sitting over against him with a face white
as the face of the dead, and about her deep eyes were lines of black.
“Hast thou heard, Meriamun?” he asked.
“I have heard,” she answered.
“What dreadful thing hast thou heard?” he asked again, for he knew
naught of that which his Spirit had seen.
“I have heard things that may not be told,” she said, “but this I will
tell thee. He of whom we spoke hath passed the ghosts, he hath met with
the False Hathor—that accursed woman—and he returns here all unharmed.
Now go, Rei!”