Read Ebook: At the Queen's Mercy by Blodgett Mabel Fuller Sandham Henry Illustrator

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Ebook has 620 lines and 33951 words, and 13 pages

We were prisoners again, and in much worse case, and as I stared about me with late repentance that I had ever left my cell, the only comfortable thought for me at all lay in the still fresh evidence of the havoc we had wrought amongst the enemy in whose toils we once more found ourselves.

If I live to a ripe old age, which seems likely though I be now at seventy but little past my prime, I shall, I am sure, never forget the look of rage and triumph upon those dark faces bent above us. We lay, Lestrade and I, bound and helpless on the stone floor of that bloody Council Room.

Agno would fain have played with us awhile, even as a cat with a mouse, for the sheer love of the sport, but the High Priest's hot-headed followers would have none of it. They clamored for a swift judgment on the culprits, and their wily leader saw their demands had best be satisfied.

So from the throne before the grim and silent images of the gods we had dared, came forth the solemn sentence of our doom.

Lestrade was given over to the worshippers of Hed. A week hence on the high festival day he was to be tied to the horns of the altar, and there done to death. My fate was swifter, but as terrible. Two nights hence the moon would be at its full, and Edba would claim in me her chosen victim.

"Let the stranger," said Agno, "be bound to the stone that stands in the centre of the cleared space within the holy grove. There has Izab, the Mad Man of the Moon, his abiding-place, and there, unpitied, and alone save for the avenger, shall this dog of an unbeliever meet his doom."

"What is your meaning?" I began, for I have always held it the wiser part to learn the worst at once; but in the hoarse roar of satisfied revenge that rose from the priests about, my words were lost, and before I could speak again a gag was thrust, none too tenderly, into my mouth. I saw Lestrade wave his fettered hand to me, in parting, and the brave smile on his white lips made my eyes strangely dim.

Four lusty sons of Edba raised me up, and I was borne from the Council Room and carried through a multitude of passages.

At length my bearers stopped; a door opened, a massive door, but so low that a short man must stoop to enter. The foul smell of a noisome dungeon assailed my nostrils. I was thrust within, still fettered, and so rudely that for a little my head swam with the force of the blow I had received in falling, so that I could not note at once the quality of my new prison.

This, alas! I found quite soon enough, matched but too well the state of my changed fortunes. The hole was unfit for a beast, much less for the chamber of a Christian gentleman. Nevertheless, I had been placed there, and it was cold comfort to reflect that I was not long to trespass on the hospitality of my entertainers.

However, it is ill crying over spilt milk, nor am I a man to waste good time in such thankless observance. So I disposed myself upon the damp floor of the dungeon, as well as the painful tightness of my bonds would permit, and by dint of thrusting my swollen tongue this way and that, I at last got rid, to my great joy, of the foul gag that had so unceremoniously stopped my speech.

My mouth was sore and my throat parched. A rare thirst consumed me, and it was with delight that I observed the slimy coating on the walls made by the constant fall of water from above. I put my lips close to the cold stone, and with much greater patience than I thought could abide in my nature, I waited till little by little, drop by drop, my suffering was assuaged.

It was dark in my prison house. Four small holes pierced the stone roof, and from these came some air and, I hoped, by morning, light also.

I heard the scuffling of a legion of rats; from whence I know not, unless the earthen pipe that thrust its nozzle through the floor gave access to the cell. This, I think, was the case, for soon I felt the pattering of their feet upon my body; the boldest even nibbled at the belt of leather that I wore, and had I not shown signs of life, they might have been yet more uncivil in their advances.

A hundred years passed by, and I was still a prisoner: let one who would assure me that I am wrong, take but my place in that foul spot, and see the bitter truth that lies within such reckoning as mine.

No visitor, grim or otherwise, approached my cell. I would, I believe, have welcomed, in my extremity, Satan himself, but he came not, nor his ministers. The Queen's hand could not reach me here; Gaston, my faithful comrade, he too was absent, perhaps in pain like me, perhaps in bonds, forgotten and, like me, well-nigh mad.

My head was light from want of food and drink and sleep. I tossed about from side to side in unavailing anguish, and it was not the agony of the bonds eating into my flesh, that cowed me, but the darkness and the solitude.

There in that place of torment my manliness fought against such odds as even now I dread to think on. But praise to Him whose servant I am, at last my braver self prevailed, and when, after those hours of interminable horror, Agno appeared, I did not grovel at his feet, but faced him calmly and, at least in outward seeming, unafraid.

"What of my friend?" I managed to ask.

Agno smiled with subtile malice.

"The stranger waits his doom in the company of fair woman, with revel and sweet minstrelsy. Goodly wines and rich meats are his portion, and soft garments wrap him round. Yet in six short days shall the Snake receive his own."

At least he knows not the torments of such a dungeon as this, I thought, and my heart was a little lightened, which I think fell hardly within the reckoning of the High Priest of Hed when he disclosed the fate of my fellow captive.

But there was no time to ponder this or other matters. At a sign from their leader the guard closed in upon me. I was led along through a maze of underground passages as before, and at last into the open. Before we reached the outer wall my eyes were blindfolded, my hands tied, and I was muffled in the folds of a cloak.

In this fashion I was marched along, to my great inward misgiving; but at length a halt was called and the bandage was taken from my eyes.

Though I knew from all that had gone before that change of quarters was little likely to bring me comfort, pleasure, or ease, either of mind or of body, my spirits rose, despite my better sense, as I turned my back upon the place of torment that had held me captive.

Neither did the triumphant malice of Agno's dark countenance daunt me. Whatever befell, it was good. Good to be alive and breathe again the pure open air; good to be dazzled, half-blinded even, by a sun I had thought never to shine on me again save in death.

But I had not long in which to rejoice over my shackled freedom; for, still chained, I was thrust rudely into a new and curious prison; a barbarous invention of a barbarous people, a cage like a wild beast's den.

In this, still closely guarded, I was borne along, and through its open bars of stout bamboo, a gaping crowd beheld me, and it sent a hot wave of righteous wrath surging through my veins to feel that I could not, at least, stand upright like a man, and fling back scorn for scorn; but on account of the lowness of my prison, needs must crouch, beast-like, in shameful silence before the taunts of the rabble, this offscouring of the people of the Walled City.

Thus with ignominy was I carried through the broad streets of Lah's capital, and still caged thus, I was placed upon the central stone of the great open market-place, and here, at the High Priest's command, was I left with the staring crowd for company.

Agno himself had gone. I noted, through the open bars of my foul den, that the walls of the storehouses about were hung with gay carpets, and that the business of buying and selling had ceased in favor of the still more urgent and exciting business of seeing an enemy put to scorn, mayhap to death.

The multitude were wreathed with flowers as for a festal day. They jostled one another, it is true, to get a nearer look at the man about to suffer the extremest wrath of the mighty gods; they pushed one another aside, but with merry words and no anger. Their anger was all for him who had defiled the sanctuary. The very women held up their children and taught them words of infamy for me, the captive.

A man loves not to be called a coward. It was not for this that with patience I had learned from Astolba's lips the language of this people.

The time was long. The sun beat down upon my unprotected head. I shook the bars of my cage with savage strength, and the people shrank back, only to return with new-born laughter at my impotence.

And Lah came not.

Thus dragged the weary hours. At last, a few of them that tormented me, bolder or more cruel than the rest, began to fling not only taunts, but stones. Yet some unknown power restrained even these, for the stones they chose were small, and did but sting and bruise the flesh, nor did one of all draw blood. But it was merry sport for them, my enemies. As they warmed to it, 'twas like enough that the unknown bond that held them would have snapped, and I been given over, then and there, to an easy death thus at their hands, when once more an ever-watchful fate stepped between me and vengeance.

The sound of chanting and of bells rose faint from the distance, and, as at a command, the throng fell back, while I, with straining ears and beating heart, waited for what this might portend.

Was it the Queen bent on rescue?

The thought thrilled me with new hope, but the strange chant came nearer yet, and hope died. For I heard it now for the third time. The song of wrath, the song of the Temple of Edba, of the High Priest's Council--the song of death to the stranger, to him within the gates.

The dull beating of drums and the clash of weapons mingled with the hymn. Then the first of a band of warrior priests came into sight, and the people herded together, near to the walls, that the holy ones might have room to pass.

The strange procession circled about my cage. Of them that marched, some bore shields and swords; some carried wands of office; others swung open silver cups laden with sweet-scented spices consumed to the honor of the gods. Some bore wreaths of many-colored flowers. All were in spotless white, and all kept step with order and rhythm to the cadenced measures of that horrible hymn of praise.

But now an awed murmur rose from the waiting throng. Some fell on their faces, and some, and these were women, rushed forward in a kind of frenzied joy of welcome. The men drew aside with reverent haste to let them pass, and the object of their devotion came in sight.

I saw a canopied litter swung aloft; I saw fan-bearers and all the jewelled trappings of royalty. And again my pulse beat thick with joy, for a veiled figure sat within the litter, and for one fleeting moment I believed that Lah had come to claim me, prisoner. Another instant pricked the bubble of my hope.

One woman and another from out the throng fell, face downward, on the wayside, in the path of her who rode thus immovable, in state, herself, no woman truly, but Edba, the Moon Goddess, come to behold her fallen enemy.

The priests marched steadily along over the prostrate bodies in the dust, nor turned aside for any self-devoted victim. Only when the silver statue reached the centre of the cleared space before my cage, was a halt called. Then with much speech-making, and many strange observances, was I once more committed to my doom.

Surely had I no need to complain of lack of ceremony about my end, save only the incivility with which these pious persons received my own attempt at answer.

But of a truth they may have feared, and rightly, the effect of Christian eloquence. For though I be but a plain man, and one more of deed than of word, I was roused in that hour to a flow of language, a subtlety of wit, and a power of rebuke, that would, I think, have shamed the boldest into silence, and carried me perchance a conqueror, victor not victim, from that place of torment.

But it was not so to be. The beat of drums drowned my voice; at a sign, the bearers of the litter resumed their march.

Edba, too, had gone; another hour had sped. I was still caged, still fettered, still a prisoner.

Some of the people, my former tormentors, had gone on with the Moon Goddess and her train. Others stayed to bear away the victims left behind her in the market-place. Of these some groaned mournfully, others rent the air with cries, and one, a tall woman of some beauty, rose, swayed for a moment, and then fell heavily, and lay motionless, but with a strange smile on her parted lips.

I still had a few spectators of my misery, but their zest at the sight had somehow departed. No one now flung either taunts or pebbles. I began to solace myself with the idea of an hour's quiet before nightfall in which to think; bitter comfort undisturbed my own thoughts, when a group of chattering slave girls neared my prison. They gathered round it with unseemly jests and laughter. Their tinkling anklets were of gold, and of gold also were the bracelets on their bare brown arms. They belonged, I saw, to some great house, but the thought of them and their concerns did not affect me.

Lestrade, now, in such a case, even such an evil case as mine, would have held discourse with them. He would have saluted, I doubt not, with flattering words, such as through their hampering veils seemed comely.

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