The World's Desire
by
Andrew Lang
Part 1 out of 5
Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
and Emma Dudding, emma_302@hotmail.com
The World's Desire
by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
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
by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
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
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:
IKMALIOS MEPOIESEN
(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!
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 ensure 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.
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 brought 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 Phœnician 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.
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 Phœnicians 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.
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.
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 that 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."
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 the 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
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