Читать книгу At the Queen's Mercy - Mabel Fuller Blodgett - Страница 3

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I am a plain man, and to do a plain man’s work was ever more to my taste than to set down with a clerk’s skill such happenings as have befallen.

Nevertheless, something within me spurs me onward; for, to tell the truth, I am loath to die leaving no record of the sights that I have seen; sights to brand the memory and stir the blood, and doings to turn one hot and cold, years after the doers thereof have crumbled into dust.

Fate, fickle jade, has willed a peaceful end for me—a man from whom peace has ever been afar off. Yet by my fireside I am not alone: Zobo, the Mighty, wrestles in the flames; Astolba, my fair white dove Astolba, gently smiles upon my waking dreams, and she, the Queen with deadly wondrous beauty, like some fair poisonous flower, flaunts before my eyes.

But enough of fancies. I must on to the beginning of the marvellous tale in which I was to play so large a part. A tale strange beyond common reckoning; strange beyond belief, were I not known not only as a man whose inches well may bear him out, but also as one little versed in the art of embroidering blunt facts with fine imaginings.

It chanced in this wise:—

We sat by the fire, Gaston Lestrade and I, one dark and stormy evening, for this was the end of the rainy season. We were in the African interior; fortune had dealt hardly with us. It is not needful to the purpose of this tale to tell by what and by whom we had come to so dismal a pass; enough that we found ourselves wet, hungry, surrounded by hostile savages, and, worse than all, poor to nakedness after four months’ irksome traffic in ivory and gum. Lestrade sat pulling his fine black mustache, for all his present wretchedness, with the air of a dandy on the Parisian boulevard, though there was not a petticoat within miles, and death, from one cause or another, more like to be our portion than amorous adventure.

A quick eye for a woman had my comrade, and a heart big enough to hold all the sex, or, at least, such as were personable. But over and above all this, Gaston Lestrade was a man to die for a friend, albeit with a jest on his lips, and I forbore to meddle with his pastimes.

For myself, I cannot deny that women have ever held me in esteem, and once or twice have urged me to retreat by hot advances. The reason of this has ever seemed to me that I am big of limb and brawny withal; that I am slow to speech and anger, yet enduring in that to which I have set my mind. And this is not commonly the manner of the sex, who look up to the power or strength such as the Lord has not given them, whose tongues are nimble, and whose fancies float hither and thither with every breath, like thistledown before the wind. And so they take to that which is not of their fashion.

Every man to his taste, say I—the wooing of maids to one, the clash of arms to another, and for me comfort and plenty, and as little danger as possible, which is in itself a strange thing, since it has been decreed that all my life till now be spent for war and women. But I must hark back to the fireside. We had taken stock of our resources, and with the less trouble, inasmuch as they were few.

“Four biscuit, mon ami,” said Lestrade, “and a few strips of smoked meat. Truly, Africa is an excellent place to starve in.” And he yawned as though the subject did not closely concern him.

Which nettled me, and I spoke sharply: “Our powder and shot are nearly spent. The king, next whose village we lie, loves us not; his fourth wife can perhaps tell the reason.”

Here Lestrade yawned again.

“A spiritless wench, but not uncomely,” he murmured in his own tongue.

“The palm-oil wine is gone,” I finished.

Here my comrade was pricked to interest. He raised the flask and set it down with a sigh.

“Hélas, thou art ever right, my Dering. What shall it be? Do we fight our way to shore, or on through the jungle, or does it meet with thy judgment that we await here the tender mercies of our royal neighbor yonder?”

I gave the fire an ill-tempered shove with my foot, for I was cold and hungry, and it has ever been my experience that a man’s sweetness of temper will suffer from the emptiness of his stomach. “You know it is equally impossible to go or to stay,” I answered shortly. Lestrade held up his hand for silence, and through the heavy patter of the rain on the roof of our hut came a noise that was not of the jungle. Gaston looked to the priming of his rifle; I held my finger on the trigger of my own.

“Some one running, and for his life,” said Lestrade, under his breath, and even as he spoke, the door of our cabin was thrust open, and a man leaped into the fire-lit circle.

He stood a hunted creature, quivering and amazed for an instant, the next, an arrow sped through the doorway and buried its point in his shoulder.

A yell of triumph rang through the forest, and two Fan warriors, hideous in war-paint, followed. They faltered on seeing Lestrade and me, but quickly plucked forth their spears to do us injury.

It was not the time or place for argument. The report from Gaston’s rifle rang out sharply, and the first savage pitched headlong and lay still, a thin, dark stream trickling from the body over the earthen threshold. The second, I dropped also, but not so neatly, for he wriggled like a big black snake into the underbrush, and was lost to sight. Seeing which I turned to look at our visitor, but here again Lestrade was quicker than I.

The negro was leaning heavily against the side of the hut, and Gaston held in his hand the slender arrow which he had plucked from the man’s shoulder.

“A pin prick,” I began, with some contempt, for indeed the stranger’s pallor, black though he was, and my comrade’s grave face, seemed greater tribute than was needful for so slight a hurt.

“Poisoned,” Gaston answered briefly, and even as he said it I knew that it was so.

I took the piece of bamboo in my hand. It was some ten inches long and sharpened at one end. I stooped and picked up the bag of skin that lay on the floor beside the body, still warm, of our fallen foe. Arranged in careful order within were other arrows like to the first, each red-tipped, each a swift and fatal messenger.

There was no hope, and the wounded man knew it.

He was a tall, muscular savage, a little stooped and grizzled with age, but powerful, save for the death sickness that had begun already to loosen his joints.

Many lines crossed and recrossed his face, and as I looked on him more closely, I saw that his features were not those of the neighboring tribe, nor indeed did his face resemble the natives that I had seen. Furthermore, his skin was more bronze than black.

A curious woven strip falling from one shoulder over the right breast bound his middle. Save for this, the man was naked, and I saw that some strange torture had twisted and distorted his wrists and hands. Moreover, his body bore in several places the mark of hot iron, and my gorge rose at the thought of the infernal cruelties that had been practised.

Meanwhile Lestrade, with something of a woman’s touch, and in that was I ever far behind my comrade, well-known as he is for skill and nicety in sickness,—Gaston, I say, had helped the stranger down, had placed a packet beneath his head, and now stood waiting, helpless to do more and pitiful of the drops of agony that stood bead-like upon the forehead of the dying man.

The end would not be long. Presently the savage spoke, and in the dialect of the neighboring tribe, but with the words somewhat clipped and altered as one speaking a strange language to strange ears.

“I am Sagamoso, priest of the Council,” he said, “and the door of Shimra opens.” He raised himself with pain, upon his elbow, and his eyes glittered strangely in the firelight. “Nevertheless, promise, O men of white countenance, that you will bury me, my feet to the rising sun, ashes upon my breast, in the name of Edba and of Hed; and deep, deep, so that no beast shall rend me, no enemy loose me from my grave. Inasmuch shall I escape the last evil.”

“Christian burial, and no heathen mummery shall you have,” said I; for in truth I was sore that this savage should have fled to us, as if our case was not evil enough, and so was like to bring the whole tribe of Fan, like a swarm of angry bees, about our ears.

Lestrade was silent, and the stranger catching at my tone looked from one to the other of us, for a space, in silence also.

Then, as if some inward power thrust from him words he fain would have held back, he burst forth:—

“O men of white countenance! My hour is at hand. Swear by Edba and by Hed to bury me as I have besought, and the place of the woman and of the treasure shall be known to you, and, moreover, the secret way.”

“The woman!” said Lestrade, drawing in his breath quickly.

“The treasure!” I cried, and neither of us thought of the strangeness of such words from the lips of a savage.

Then by Edba and by Hed we swore; for the man’s words had somehow taken hold upon our minds, and afterwards, all-curious, half-believing, for the very strangeness of its telling lured us on, we heard the story of Sagamoso, one time priest of the people of the Walled City, now outcast and slave.

I cannot tell it as he told it there in the African forest, with the rain falling heavily without, and the fire casting strange shadows on the face of the dying man, convulsed now and again by the action of the poison that was eating out his life. But the things that he said are set down in due order, though, as I told you, I am no scribe and cannot cunningly interweave and polish my words as the learned do.

“I am not of this people nor of this place,” said Sagamoso; “my home is many miles hence, and the path is hidden and beset with peril. But two of the people of white countenance like to yours have ever come so far,—one a man old, not so much with years as with weariness and the toil of wanderings; the other, his daughter, straight and slender, and fair above the common lot of woman.

“Him we slaughtered there at the outer gate, as is the law for strangers. The maid was at the Queen’s behest brought to the palace, but whether as the bride of Hed, I know not. Such service rendered to our god is like to be her portion: nevertheless, three moons must wax and wane before the feast, wherefore you who are of her people can yet save her from the death marriage, unless, indeed, Hed be wroth, or Lah, the Queen, set her will to thwart you.

“Yet even so, surely of maids there are many, but of treasure like to that in the secret storehouse of Edba, there is not in the whole world.

“I, Sagamoso, priest of the Council, tell it you. O men of white countenance! torture like to this,”—and he raised his twisted claw-like hands,—“torture of hot iron and seared flesh could not have wrung it from me. But if I be not buried with the rites of the dread god whose servant I yet am, I must walk forever in the outer darkness, weariness unutterable my portion throughout all ages. Because of the sin that I have sinned, the door of Shimra indeed is shut before my face, but the peace of nothingness is still within my grasp, and for that peace will I betray the secret of the city that has cast me forth, the secret of the jewels and the fragrant gums, the ivory and precious woods, the gold and rich garments and the wines of price, that lay hid within the bowels of the earth, and guarded by the name that may not be spoken.”

Here the stranger’s voice faltered and was still, and Lestrade and I looked at each other in amazement that was yet half belief, for the passion in the tones rang through the hut, and that the manner of this heathen burial was to him that asked it of vital import, none might doubt.

“This maiden,” said Lestrade, as though the thought of the treasure had passed him by, “what dreadful fate threatens her, and where is this walled city?”

The poison was doing its work all too well. Thickly and with difficulty the words came from the swollen lips of the dying man. He thrust aside the woven strip that covered his breast.

“Look!” he gasped; “the secret way.” Lestrade and I bent close and there sure enough, tattooed in lines of blue and red, on a spot above the heart as big as a man’s palm, we saw a rude map.

“Straight through the jungle northward,” breathed the priest, “by the swamp, by the waterfall, through the mountains, where beyond lieth the Pass of Blood! Behold the sign!”

His wavering forefinger touched the woven garment, and we saw the fantastic outline of an evil, leering god, about whose squat and crooked body twined a monstrous serpent.

“Bid the gate open in the name of Hed!” he continued, his voice growing full and resonant once more. “And look you—speak not of Sagamoso, the betrayer of the trust, the defiler of the sanctuary. Him, they think long since dead. Let his name be forgotten lest it be cursed before the Council.”

“But the maid, the maid!” cried Lestrade.

The eyes of the stranger narrowed. A curious light blazed in their depths. With a superhuman effort, the dying man raised himself from the ground.

“I am a priest of the Council,” he cried, in a strange, chanting kind of voice. “I have been traitor. I have been slave. To Edba and to Hed have I turned my back. But my gods remember, my gods are strong, my gods punish. Think not to wrest from the Snake, his bride.”

The strange, triumphant note broke. “By Edba and by Hed have you sworn,” he muttered, and so passed.

Lestrade and I had learned the slave’s secret, and the leaven for good or ill was working within us, silently indeed, but with a strange, persistent, and fateful power.

First, without more words, we buried him, and with the rites he had demanded, for I am a man of my word, and Lestrade follows my leading easily in that which affects him not nearly.

Then—for the day was at hand—we considered briefly that which had taken place and that which was to come.

Our present fortunes could well bear mending. The priest’s words of a woman to be saved, and a treasure to be gained, had fired our blood. Life held little of safety for us here, and the end of it was that Lestrade’s daring spirit weighed down my more prudent advices, and the die was cast.

Once having resolved upon the enterprise, I put from me, as is my habit, all thought against the wisdom of the undertaking, though to perish in the jungle in the pursuit of a phantom city, or to be slain at its gates in reality, seemed like to be our portion.

Sagamoso’s last words echoed in my mind. That hatred of the white stranger had lurked in the eyes of the dying man I doubted not, but needs must when the devil drives. Wherefore, without more speech upon the matter, our scanty goods were packed, and Lestrade, with a gay tune upon his lips, and I, the more silent for his light-heartedness, set forth upon our journeyings.