Simultaneously with the
mammoth, there came into sight that
other and greater wonder, the
mammoth's
mistress, the Empress
Phorenice. The beast took my eye at the first, from its very
uncouth hugeness, from its show of
savage power restrained; but the
lady who sat in the golden half-castle on its lofty back quickly
drew away my gaze, and held it
immovable from then onwards with an
infinite attraction.
I stood to my feet when the people first shouted at Phorenice's
approach, and remained in the porchway of my
scarlet pavilion
till her vast steed had halted in the centre of the square,
and then I
advanced across the
pavement towards her.
"On your knees, my lord," said one of the chamberlains behind
me, in a scared whisper.
"At least with bent head," urged another.
But I had my own notions of what is due to one's own
self-respect in these matters, and I marched across the bare open
space with head erect, giving the Empress gaze for gaze. She was
clearly summing me up. I was
frankly doing the like by her. Gods!
but those few short seconds made me see a woman such as I never
imagined could have lived.
I know I have placed it on record earlier in this writing
that, during all the days of a long official life, women have had
no influence over me. But I have been quick to see that they often
had a strong swaying power over the policies of others, and as a
consequence I have made it my business to study them even as I have
studied men. But this woman who sat under the
sacred snakes in her
golden half-castle on the
mammoth's back, fairly baffled me. Of
her thoughts I could read no single
syllable. I could see a body
slight, supple, and
beautifully moulded; in figure rather small.
Her face was a most perfect book of cleverness, yet she was fair,
too, beyond
belief, with hair of a lovely ruddiness, cut short in
the new fashion, and bunching on her shoulders. And eyes! Gods!
who could plumb the depths of Phorenice's eyes, or find in mere
tint a trace of their heaven-made colour?
It was plain, also, that she in her turn was searching me down
to my very soul, and it seemed that her scrutiny was not without
its
satisfaction. She moved her head in little nods as I drew
near, and when I did the
requisite obeisance permitted to my rank,
she bade me in a voice loud and clear enough for all at hand to
hear, never to put
forehead on the ground again on her
behalf so
long as she ruled in Atlantis.
"For others," she said, "it is
fitting that they should do so,
once, twice, or several times, according to their rank and station,
for I am Empress, and they are all so far beneath me; but you are
Deucalion, my lord, and though till to-day I knew you only from
pictures drawn with tongues, I have seen you now, and have judged
for myself. And so I make this
decree: Deucalion is above all
other men in Atlantis, and if there is one who does not render him
obedience, that man is enemy also of Phorenice, and shall feel her
anger."
She made a sign, and a stair was brought, and then she called
to me, and I mounted and sat beside her in the golden half-castle
under the
canopy of royal snakes. The girl who stood behind in
attendance fanned us both with perfumed feathers, and at a word
from Phorenice the
mammoth was turned,
bearing us back towards the
royal pyramid by the way through which it had come. At the same
time also all the other machinery of splendour was put in motion.
The soldiers and the gaudily bedecked civil traders fell into
procession before and behind, and I noted that a body of troops,
heavily armed, marched on each of the
mammoth's flanks.
Phorenice turned to me with a smile. "You piqued me," she
said, "at first."
"Your Majesty overwhelms me with so much notice."
"You looked at my steed before you looked at me. A woman finds
it hard to
forgive a slight like that."
"I envied you the greatest of your conquests, and do still.
I have fought
mammoths myself, and at times have killed, but I
never dared even to think of
taking one alive and bringing it into
tameness."
"You speak boldly," she said, still smiling, "and yet you can
turn a pretty
compliment. Faugh! Deucalion, the way these people
fawn on me gives me a nausea. I am not of the same clay as they
are, I know; but just because I am the daughter of Gods they must
needs feed me on the pap of insincerity."
So Tatho was right, and the swineherd was forgotten. Well, if
she chose to keep up the
fiction she had made, it was not my part
to
contradict her. Rightly or wrongly I was her servant.
"I have been pining this long enough for a stronger meat than
they can give," she went on, "and at last I have sent for you. I
have been at some pains to
procure my tongue-pictures of you,
Deucalion, and though you do not know me yet, I may say I knew you
with all thoroughness even before we met. I can admire a man with
a mind great enough to forego the silly gauds of clothes, or the
excesses of feasts, or the pamperings of women." She looked down
at her own silks and her glittering jewels. "We women like to
carry colours upon our persons, but that is a different matter.
And so I sent for you here to be my
minister, and bear with me
the burden of ruling."
"There should be better men in broad Atlantis."
"There are not, my lord, and I who know them all by heart tell
you so. They are all enamoured of my poor person; they weary me
with their empty phrases and their importunities; and, though they
are always brimming with their cries of service, their own
advancement and the filling of their own treasuries ever comes
first with them. So I have sent for you, Deucalion, the one strong
man in all the world. You at least will not sigh to be my lover?"
I saw her watching for my answer from the corner of her eyes.
"The Empress," I said, "is my
mistress, and I will be an honest
minister to her. With Phorenice, the woman, it is likely that I
shall have little enough to do. Besides, I am not the sort that
sports with this toy they call love."
"And yet you are a personable man enough," she said rather
thoughtfully. "But that still further proves your strength,
Deucalion. You at least will not lose your head through weak
infatuation for my poor looks and graces."--She turned to the girl
who stood behind us.--"Ylga, fan not so violently."
Our talk broke off then for the moment, and I had time to look
about me. We were passing through the chief street in the fairest,
the most wonderful city this world has ever seen. I had left it a
score of years before, and was curious to note its increase.
In public buildings the city had certainly made growth; there
were new temples, new pyramids, new palaces, and statuary
everywhere. Its
greatness and
magnificence impressed me more
strongly even than usual, returning to it as I did from such a
distance of time and space, for, though the many cities of Yucatan
might each of them be
princely, this great capital was a place not
to be compared with any of them. It was
imperial and gorgeous
beyond descriptive words.
Yet most of all was I struck by the
poverty and squalor which
stood in such close touch with all this
magnificence. In the
throngs that lined the streets there were gaunt bodies and hungry
faces everywhere. Here and there stood one, a man or a woman, as
naked as a
savage in Europe, and yet dull to shame. Even the
trader, with trumpery gauds on his coat, aping the prevailing
fashion for display, had a scared,
uneasy look to his face, as
though he had forgotten the mere name of safety, and hid a frantic
heart with his tawdry
outward vauntings of prosperity.
Phorenice read the direction of my looks.
"The season," she said, "has been unhealthy of recent months.
These lower people will not build fine houses to adorn my city, and
because they choose to live on in their squalid, unsightly kennels,
there have been calentures and other sicknesses
amongst them, which
make them disinclined for work. And then, too, for the moment,
earning is not easy. Indeed, you may say trade is nearly stopped
this last half-year, since the rebels have been hammering so
lustily at my city gates."
I was fairly startled out of my decorum.
"Rebels!" I cried. "Who are hammering at the gates of
Atlantis? Is the city in a state of siege?"
"Of their condescension," said Phorenice
lightly, "they are
giving us
holiday to-day, and so, happily, my
welcome to you comes
undisturbed. If they were fighting, your ears would have told you
of it. To give them their due, they are noisy enough in all their
efforts. My spies say they are making ready new engines for use
against the walls, which you may sally out to-morrow and break if
it gives you
amusement. But for to-day, Deucalion, I have you, and
you have me, and there is peace round us, and some prettiness of
display. If you ask for more I will give it you."
"I did not know of this rebellion," I said, "but as Your Majesty
has made me your
minister, it is well that I should know all about
its scope at once. This is a matter we should be serious upon."
"And do you think I cannot take it
seriously also?" she
retorted. "Ylga," she said to the girl that stood behind, "set
loose my dress at the shoulder."
And when the
attendant had unlinked the jewelled clasp (as it
seemed to me with a very ill grace), she herself stripped down the
fabric, baring the pure skin beneath, and showing me just below the
curve of the left breast a
bandage of bloodstained linen.
"There is a
guarantee of my
seriousnessyesterday, at any
rate," she said, looking at me sidelong. "The arrow struck on a
rib and that saved me. If it had struck between, Deucalion would
have been
standing beside my
funeral pyre to-day instead of riding
on this pretty steed of mine which he admires so much. Your eye
seems to feast itself most on the
mammoth, Deucalion. Ah, poor me.
I am not one of your
shaggy creatures, and so it seems I shall
never be able to catch your regard. Ylga," she said to the girl
behind, "you may link my dress up again with its clasp. My Lord
Deucalion has seen wounds before, and there is nothing else here to
interest him."
5. ZAEMON'S CURSE
It appeared that for the present at any rate I was to have my
residence in the royal pyramid. The glittering cavalcade drew up
in the great paved square which lies before the building, and
massed itself in groups. The
mammoth was halted before the
doorway, and when a stair had been brought, the trumpets sounded,
and we three who had
ridden in the golden half-castle under the
canopy of snakes, descended to the ground.
It was plain that we were going from beneath the open sky to
the apartments which lay inside the vast stone mazes of the
pyramid, and without thinking, the
instinct of custom and reverence
that had become part of my nature caused me to turn to where the
towering rocks of the Sacred Mountain frowned above the city, and
make the usual obeisance, and offer up in silence the prescribed
prayer. I say I did this thing unthinking, and as a matter of
common custom, but when I rose to my feet, I could have sworn I
heard a titter of
laughter from somewhere in that fancifully
bedecked crowd of onlookers.
I glanced in the direction of the scoffers, frowningly enough,
and then I turned to Phorenice to demand their
prompt punishment
for the disrespect. But here was a strange thing. I had looked to
see her in the act and article of rising from an obeisance; but
there she was,
standing erect, and had clearly never touched her
forehead to the ground. Moreover, she was
regarding me with a
queer look which I could not fathom.
But
whatever was in her mind, she had no plan to bawl about it
then before the people collected in the square. She said to me,
"Come," and, turning to the
doorway, cried for entrance, giving the
secret word appointed for the day. The
ponderous stone blocks,
which barred the porch, swung back on their hinges, and with
stately tread she passed out of the hot
sunshine into the cool
gloom beyond, with the fan-girl following decorously at her heels.