Allan Quatermain, H. Rider Haggard [robert munsch read aloud TXT] 📗

hard it had been thee to ask. See, a crown lies at thy feet, my lord Incubu, and with that fortune a woman whom some have wished to woo. Now mayst thou answer, oh my chosen, and soft shall thy words fall upon mine ears.’

“‘Oh Sorais,’ I said, ‘I pray thee speak not thus’—you see I had not time to pick and choose my words—‘for this thing cannot be. I am betrothed to thy sister Nyleptha, oh Sorais, and I love her and her alone.’

“Next moment it struck me that I had said an awful thing, and I looked up to see the results. When I spoke, Sorais’ face was hidden in her hands, and as my words reached her she slowly raised it, and I shrank back dismayed. It was ashy white, and her eyes were flaming. She rose to her feet and seemed to be choking, but the awful thing was that she was so quiet about it all. Once she looked at a side table, on which lay a dagger, and from it to me, as though she thought of killing me; but she did not take it up. At last she spoke one word, and one only—

“‘Go!’

“And I went, and glad enough I was to get out of it, and here I am. Give me another cup of wine, there’s a good fellow, and tell me, what is to be done?”

I shook my head, for the affair was indeed serious. As one of the poets says,

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,”

more especially if the woman is a queen and a Sorais, and indeed I feared the very worst, including imminent danger to ourselves.

“Nyleptha had better be told of this at once,” I said, “and perhaps I had better tell her; she might receive your account with suspicion.”

“Who is captain of her guard tonight?” I went on.

“Good.”

“Very well then, there will be no chance of her being got at. Don’t look surprised. I don’t think that her sister would stick at that. I suppose one must tell Good of what has happened.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Sir Henry. “It would hurt his feelings, poor fellow! You see, he takes a lively personal interest in Sorais.”

“That’s true; and after all, perhaps there is no need to tell him. He will find out the truth soon enough. Now, you mark my words, Sorais will throw in her lot with Nasta, who is sulking up in the North there, and there will be such a war as has not been known in Zu-Vendis for centuries. Look there!” and I pointed to two Court messengers, who were speeding away from the door of Sorais’ private apartments. “Now follow me,” and I ran up a stairway into an outlook tower that rose from the roof of our quarters, taking the spyglass with me, and looked out over the palace wall. The first thing we saw was one of the messengers speeding towards the Temple, bearing, without any doubt, the Queen’s word to the High Priest Agon, but for the other I searched in vain. Presently, however, I spied a horseman riding furiously through the northern gate of the city, and in him I recognized the other messenger.

“Ah!” I said, “Sorais is a woman of spirit. She is acting at once, and will strike quick and hard. You have insulted her, my boy, and the blood will flow in rivers before the stain is washed away, and yours with it, if she can get hold of you. Well, I’m off to Nyleptha. Just you stop where you are, old fellow, and try to get your nerves straight again. You’ll need them all, I can tell you, unless I have observed human nature in the rough for fifty years for nothing.” And off I went accordingly.

I gained audience of the Queen without trouble. She was expecting Curtis, and was not best pleased to see my mahogany-coloured face instead.

“Is there aught wrong with my Lord, Macumazahn, that he waits not upon me? Say, is he sick?”

I said that he was well enough, and then, without further ado, I plunged into my story and told it from beginning to end. Oh, what a rage she flew into! It was a sight to see her, she looked so lovely.

“How darest thou come to me with such a tale?” she cried. “It is a lie to say that my Lord was making love to Sorais, my sister.”

“Pardon me, oh Queen,” I answered, “I said that Sorais was making love to thy lord.”

“Spin me no spiders’ webs of words. Is not the thing the same thing? The one giveth, the other taketh; but the gift passes, and what matters it which is the most guilty? Sorais! oh, I hate her—Sorais is a queen and my sister. She had not stooped so low had he not shown the way. Oh, truly hath the poet said that man is like a snake, whom to touch is poison, and whom none can hold.”

“The remark, oh Queen, is excellent, but methinks thou hast misread the poet. Nyleptha,” I went on, “thou knowest well that thy words are empty foolishness, and that this is no time for folly.”

“How darest thou?” she broke in, stamping her foot. “Hast my false lord sent thee to me to insult me also? Who art thou, stranger, that thou shouldst speak to me, the Queen, after this sort? How darest thou?”

“Yea, I dare. Listen. The moments which thou dost waste in idle anger may well cost thee thy crown and all of us our lives. Already Sorais’ horsemen go forth and call to arms. In three days’ time Nasta will rouse himself in his fastnesses like a lion in the evening, and his growling will be heard throughout the North. The ‘Lady of the Night’ (Sorais) hath a sweet voice, and she will not sing in vain. Her banner will be borne from range to range and valley to valley, and warriors will spring up in its track like dust beneath a whirlwind; half the army will echo her war-cry; and in every town and hamlet of this wide land the priests will call out against the foreigner and will preach her cause as holy. I have spoken, oh Queen!”

Nyleptha was quite calm now; her jealous anger had passed; and putting off the character of a lovely headstrong lady, with a rapidity and completeness that distinguished her, she put on that of a queen and a woman of business. The transformation was sudden but entire.

“Thy words are very wise, Macumazahn. Forgive me my folly. Ah, what a Queen I should be if only I had no heart! To be heartless—that is to conquer all. Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!

“And thou thinkest that my sister Sorais would levy war upon me. So be it. She shall not prevail against me. I, too, have my friends and my retainers. There are many, I say, who will shout ‘Nyleptha!’ when my pennon runs up on peak and pinnacle, and the light of my beacon fires leaps tonight from crag to crag, bearing the message of my war. I will break her strength and scatter her armies. Eternal night shall be the portion of Sorais of the Night. Give me that parchment and the ink. So. Now summon the officer in the ante-room. He is a trusty man.”

I did as I was bid! and the man, a veteran and quiet-looking gentleman of the guard, named Kara, entered, bowing low.

“Take this parchment,” said Nyleptha; “it is thy warrant; and guard every place of in and outgoing in the apartments of my sister Sorais, the ‘Lady of the Night’, and a Queen of the Zu-Vendi. Let none come in and none go out, or thy life shall pay the cost.”

The man looked startled, but he merely said, “The Queen’s word be done,” and departed. Then Nyleptha sent a messenger to Sir Henry, and presently he arrived looking uncommonly uncomfortable. I thought that another outburst was about to follow, but wonderful are the ways of woman; she said not a word about Sorais and his supposed inconstancy, greeting him with a friendly nod, and stating simply that she required his advice upon high matters. All the same there was a look in her eye, and a sort of suppressed energy in her manner towards him, that makes me think that she had not forgotten the affair, but was keeping it for a private occasion.

Just after Curtis arrived the officer returned, and reported that Sorais was gone. The bird had flown to the Temple, stating that she was going, as was sometimes the custom among Zu-Vendi ladies of rank, to spend the night in meditation before the altar. We looked at each other significantly. The blow had fallen very soon.

Then we set to work.

Generals who could be trusted were summoned from their quarters, and as much of the State affairs as was thought desirable was told to each, strict injunctions being given to them to get all their available force together. The same was done with such of the more powerful lords as Nyleptha knew she could rely on, several of whom left that very day for distant parts of the country to gather up their tribesmen and retainers. Sealed orders were dispatched to the rulers of far-off cities, and some twenty messengers were sent off before nightfall with instructions to ride early and late till they reached the distant chiefs to whom their letters were addressed: also many spies were set to work. All the afternoon and evening we laboured, assisted by some confidential scribes, Nyleptha showing an energy and resource of mind that astonished me, and it was eight o’clock before we got back to our quarters. Here we heard from Alphonse, who was deeply aggrieved because our non-return had spoilt his dinner (for he had turned cook again now), that Good had come back from his hawking and gone on duty. As instructions had already been given to the officer of the outer guard to double the sentries at the gate, and as we had no reason to fear any immediate danger, we did not think it worth while to hunt him up and tell him anything of what had passed, which at best was, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, one of those tasks that one prefers to postpone, so after swallowing our food we turned in to get some much-needed rest. Before we did so, however, it occurred to Curtis to tell old Umslopogaas to keep a look-out in the neighbourhood of Nyleptha’s private apartments. Umslopogaas was now well known about the place, and by the Queen’s order allowed to pass whither he would by the guards, a permission of which he often availed himself by roaming about the palace during the still hours in a nocturnal fashion that he favoured, and which is by no means uncommon amongst black men generally. His presence in the corridors would not, therefore, be likely to excite remark. Without any comment the Zulu took up his axe and departed, and we also departed to bed.

I seemed to have been asleep but a few minutes when I was awakened by a peculiar sensation of uneasiness. I felt that somebody was in the room and looking at me, and instantly sat up, to see to my surprise that it was already dawn, and that there, standing at the foot of my couch and looking peculiarly grim and gaunt in the grey light, was Umslopogaas himself.

“How long hast thou been there?” I asked testily, for it is not pleasant to be aroused in such a fashion.

“Mayhap the half of an hour, Macumazahn. I have a word for thee.”

“Speak on,” I said, now wide enough awake.

“As I was bid I went last night to the place of the White Queen and hid myself behind a pillar in the second anteroom, beyond which is the sleeping-place of the Queen. Bougwan (Good) was in the first anteroom alone, and outside the curtain of that room was a sentry, but I had a mind to see if I could pass in unseen, and I did, gliding behind them both. There I waited for many hours, when suddenly I perceived a dark figure coming secretly towards me. It was the figure of a woman, and in her hand she held a dagger. Behind that figure crept another unseen by the woman. It was Bougwan following in her tracks. His shoes were off, and for so fat a man he followed very well. The woman passed me, and the starlight shone upon her face.”

“Who was it?” I asked impatiently.

“The face was the face of the ‘Lady of the Night’, and