The Lost Continent Part 6

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! G.o.ds!

who could plumb the depths of Ph.o.r.enice'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 Ph.o.r.enice, 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 Ph.o.r.enice 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.

Ph.o.r.enice 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 G.o.ds 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 Ph.o.r.enice, 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.p.a.ce, 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.

Ph.o.r.enice 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 l.u.s.tily 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 Ph.o.r.enice 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 seriousness yesterday, 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 ma.s.sed 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 t.i.tter 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 Ph.o.r.enice 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 pa.s.sed out of the hot sunshine into the cool gloom beyond, with the fan-girl following decorously at her heels. With a heaviness beginning to grow at my heart, I too went inside the pyramid, and the stone doors, with a sullen thud, closed behind us.

We did not go far just then. Ph.o.r.enice halted in the hall of waiting.

How well I remembered the place, with the pictures of kings on its red walls, and the burning fountain of earth-breath which blazed from a jet of bronze in the middle of the flooring and gave it light. The old King that was gone had come this far of his complaisance when he bade me farewell as I set out twenty years before for my vice-royalty in Yucatan. But the air of the hall was different to what it had been in those old days. Then it was pure and sweet. Now it was heavy with some scent, and I found it languid and oppressive.

"My minister," said the Empress, "I acquit you of intentional insult; but I think the colonial air has made you a very simple man. Such an obeisance as you showed to that mountain not a minute since has not been made since I was sent to reign over this kingdom."

"Your Majesty," I said, "I am a member of the Priests' Clan and was brought up in their tenets. I have been taught, before entering a house, to thank the G.o.ds, and more especially our Lord the Sun, for the good air that He and They have provided. It has been my fate more than once to be chased by streams of fire and stinking air amongst the mountains during one of their sudden boils, and so I can say the prescribed prayer upon this matter straight from my heart."

"Circ.u.mstances have changed since you left Atlantis," said Ph.o.r.enice, "and when thanks are given now, they are not thrown at those old G.o.ds."

I saw her meaning, and almost started at the impiety of it. If this was to be the new rule of things, I would have no hand in it. Fate might deal with me as it chose. To serve truly a reigning monarch, that I was prepared for; but to palter with sacrilege, and accept a swineherd's daughter as a G.o.d, who should receive prayers and obeisances, revolted my manhood. So I invited a crisis.

"Ph.o.r.enice," I said, "I have been a priest from my childhood up, revering the G.o.ds, and growing intimate with their mysteries. Till I find for myself that those old things are false, I must stand by that allegiance, and if there is a cost for this faithfulness I must pay it."

She looked at me with a slow smile. "You are a strong man, Deucalion,"

she said.

I bowed.

"I have heard others as stubborn," she said, "but they were converted."

She shook out the ruddy bunches of her hair, and stood so that the light of the burning earth-breath might fall on the loveliness of her face and form. "I have found it as easy to convert the stubborn as to burn them.

Indeed, there has been little talk of burning. They have all rushed to conversion, whether I would or no. But it seems that my poor looks and tongue are wanting in charm to-day."

"Ph.o.r.enice is Empress," I said stolidly, "and I am her servant.

To-morrow, if she gives me leave, I will clear away this rabble which clamours outside the walls. I must begin to prove my uses."