IV
THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER
At midday on the morrow Pharaoh and the host of Pharaoh marched in
pomp from Tanis, taking the road that runs across the desert country
towards the Red Sea of Weeds, the way that the Apura had gone. The
Wanderer went with the army for an hour's journey and more, in a
chariot driven by Rei the Priest, for Rei did not march with the host.
The number of the soldiers of Pharaoh amazed the Achæan, accustomed to
the levies of barren isles and scattered tribes. But he said nothing
of his wonder to Rei or any man, lest it should be thought that he
came from among a little people. He even made as if he held the army
lightly, and asked the priest if this was all the strength of Pharaoh!
Then Rei told him that it was but a fourth part, for none of the
mercenaries and none of the soldiers from the Upper Land marched with
the King in pursuit of the Apura.
Then the Wanderer knew that he was come among a greater people than he
had ever encountered yet, on land or sea. So he went with them till
the roads divided, and there he drove his chariot to the chariot of
Pharaoh and bade him farewell. Pharaoh called to him to mount his own
chariot, and spake thus to him:
"Swear to me, thou Wanderer, who namest thyself Eperitus, though of
what country thou art and what was thy father's house none know, swear
to me that thou wilt guard Meriamun the Queen faithfully, and wilt
work no woe upon me nor open my house while I am afar. Great thou art
and beautiful to look on, ay, and strong enough beyond the strength of
men, yet my heart misdoubts me of thee. For methinks thou art a crafty
man, and that evil will come upon me through thee."
"If this be thy mind, Pharaoh," said the Wanderer, "leave me not in
guard of the Queen. And yet methinks I did not befriend thee so ill
two nights gone, when the rabble would have put thee and all thy house
to the sword because of the death of the firstborn."
Now Pharaoh looked on him long and doubtfully, then stretched out his
hand. The Wanderer took it, and swore by his own Gods, by Zeus, by
Aphrodite, and Athene, and Apollo, that he would be true to the trust.
"I believe thee, Wanderer," said Pharaoh. "Know this, if thou keepest
thine oath thou shalt have great rewards, and thou shalt be second to
none in the land of Khem, but if thou failest, then thou shalt die
miserably."
"I ask no fee," answered the Wanderer, "and I fear no death, for in
one way only shall I die, and that is known to me. Yet I will keep my
oath." And he bowed before Pharaoh, and leaping from his chariot
entered again into the chariot of Rei.
Now, as he drove back through the host the soldiers called to him,
saying:
"Leave us not, Wanderer." For he looked so glorious in his golden
armour that it seemed to them as though a god departed from their
ranks.
His heart was with them, for he loved war, and he did not love the
Apura. But he drove on, as so it must be, and came to the Palace at
sundown.
That night he sat at the feast by the side of Meriamun the Queen. And
when the feast was done she bade him follow her into her chamber where
she sat when she would be alone. It was a fragrant chamber, dimly
lighted with sweet-scented lamps, furnished with couches of ivory and
gold, while all the walls told painted stories of strange gods and
kings, and of their loves and wars. The Queen sank back upon the
embroidered cushions of a couch and bade the wise Odysseus to sit
guard over against her, so near that her robes swept his golden
greaves. This he did somewhat against his will, though he was no hater
of fair women. But his heart misdoubted the dark-eyed Queen, and he
looked upon her guardedly, for she was strangely fair to see, the
fairest of all mortal women whom he had known, save the Golden Helen.
"Wanderer, we owe thee great thanks, and I would gladly know to whom
we are in debt for the prices of our lives," she said. "Tell me of thy
birth, of thy father's house, and of the lands that thou hast seen and
the wars wherein thou hast fought. Tell me also of the sack of Ilios,
and how thou camest by thy golden mail. The unhappy Paris wore such
arms as these, if the minstrel of the North sang truth."
Now, the Wanderer would gladly have cursed this minstrel of the North
and his songs.
"Minstrels will be lying, Lady," he said, "and they gather old tales
wherever they go. Paris may have worn my arms, or another man. I
bought them from a chapman in Crete, and asked nothing of their first
master. As for Ilios, I fought there in my youth, and served the
Cretan Idomeneus, but I got little booty. To the King the wealth and
women, to us the sword-strokes. Such is the appearance of war."
Meriamun listened to his tale, which he set forth roughly, as if he
were some blunt, grumbling swordsman, and darkly she looked on him
while she hearkened, and darkly she smiled as she looked.
"A strange story, Eperitus, a strange story truly. Now tell me thus.
How camest thou by yonder great bow, the bow of the swallow string? If
my minstrel spoke truly, it was once the Bow of Eurytus of Œchalia."
Now the Wanderer glanced round him like a man taken in ambush, who
sees on every hand the sword of foes shine up into the sunlight.
"The bow, Lady?" he answered readily enough. "I got it strangely. I
was cruising with a cargo of iron on the western coast and landed on
an isle, methinks the pilot called it Ithaca. There we found nothing
but death; a pestilence had been in the land, but in a ruined hall
this bow was lying, and I made prize of it. A good bow!"
"A strange story, truly--a very strange story," quoth Meriamun the
Queen. "By chance thou didst buy the armour of Paris, by chance thou
didst find the bow of Eurytus, that bow, methinks, with which the god-
like Odysseus slew the wooers in his halls. Knowest thou, Eperitus,
that when thou stoodest yonder on the board in the Place of Banquets,
when the great bow twanged and the long shafts hailed down on the hall
and loosened the knees of many, not a little was I put in mind of the
song of the slaying of the wooers at the hands of Odysseus. The fame
of Odysseus has wandered far--ay, even to Khem." And she looked
straight at him.
The Wanderer darkened his face and put the matter by. He had heard
something of that tale, he said, but deemed it a minstrel's feigning.
One man could not fight a hundred, as the story went.
The Queen half rose from the couch where she lay curled up like a
glittering snake. Like a snake she rose and watched him with her
melancholy eyes.
"Strange, indeed--most strange that Odysseus, Laertes' son, Odysseus
of Ithaca, should not know the tale of the slaying of the wooers by
Odysseus' self. Strange, indeed, thou Eperitus, who art Odysseus."
Now the neck of the Wanderer was in the noose, and well he knew it:
yet he kept his counsel, and looked upon her vacantly.
"Men say that this Odysseus wandered years ago into the North, and
that this time he will not come again. I saw him in the wars, and he
was a taller man than I," said the Wanderer.
"I have always heard," said the Queen, "that Odysseus was double-
tongued and crafty as a fox. Look me in the eyes, thou Wanderer, look
me in the eyes, and I will show thee whether or not thou art
Odysseus," and she leaned forward so that her hair well-nigh swept his
brow, and gazed deep into his eyes.
Now the Wanderer was ashamed to drop his eyes before a woman's, and he
could not rise and go; so he must needs gaze, and as he gazed his head
grew strangely light and the blood quivered in his veins, and then
seemed to stop.
"Now turn, thou Wanderer," said the voice of the Queen, and to him it
sounded far away, as if there was a wall between them, "and tell me
what thou seest."
So he turned and looked towards the dark end of the chamber. But
presently through the darkness stole a faint light, like the first
grey light of the dawn, and now he saw a shape, like the shape of a
great horse of wood, and behind the horse were black square towers of
huge stones, and gates, and walls, and houses. Now he saw a door open
in the side of the horse, and the helmeted head of a man look out
wearily. As he looked a great white star slid down the sky so that the
light of it rested on the face of the man, and that face was his own!
Then he remembered how he had looked forth from the belly of the
wooden horse as it stood within the walls of Ilios, and thus the star
had seemed to fall upon the doomed city, an omen of the end of Troy.
"Look again," said the voice of Meriamun from far away.
So once more he looked into the darkness, and there he saw the mouth
of a cave, and beneath two palms in front of it sat a man and a woman.
The yellow moon rose and its light fell upon a sleeping sea, upon tall
trees, upon the cave, and the two who sat there. The woman was lovely,
with braided hair, and clad in a shining robe, and her eyes were dim
with tears that she might never shed: for she was a Goddess, Calypso,
the daughter of Atlas. Then in the vision the man looked up, and his
face was weary, and worn and sick for home, but it was his own face.
Then he remembered how he had sat thus at the side of Calypso of the
braided tresses, on that last night of all his nights in her wave-girt
isle, the centre of the seas.
"Look once more," said the voice of Meriamun the Queen.
Again he looked into the darkness. There before him grew the ruins of
his own hall in Ithaca, and in the courtyard before the hall was a
heap of ashes, and the charred bones of men. Before the heap lay the
figure of one lost in sorrow, for his limbs writhed upon the ground.
Anon the man lifted his face, and behold! the Wanderer knew that it
was his own face.
Then of a sudden the gloom passed away from the chamber, and once more
his blood surged through his veins, and there before him sat Meriamun
the Queen, smiling darkly.
"Strange sights hast thou seen, is it not so, Wanderer?" she said.
"Yea, Queen, the most strange of sights. Tell me of thy courtesy how
thou didst conjure them before my eyes."
"By the magic that I have, Eperitus, I above all wizards who dwell in
Khem, the magic whereby I can read all the past of those--I love," and
again she looked upon him; "ay, and call it forth from the storehouse
of dead time and make it live again. Say, whose face was it that thou
didst look upon--was it not the face of Odysseus of Ithaca, Laertes'
son, and was not that face thine?"
Now the Wanderer saw that there was no escape. Therefore he spoke the
truth, not because he loved it, but because he must.
"The face of Odysseus of Ithaca it was that I saw before me, Lady, and
that face is mine. I avow myself to be Odysseus, Laertes' son, and no
other man."
The Queen laughed aloud. "Great must be my strength of magic," she
said, "for it can strip the guile from the subtlest of men.
Henceforth, Odysseus, thou wilt know that the eyes of Meriamun the
Queen see far. Now tell me truly: what camest thou hither to seek?"
The Wanderer took swift counsel with himself. Remembering that dream
of Meriamun of which Rei the Priest had told him, and which she knew
not that he had learned, the dream that showed her the vision of one
whom she must love, and remembering the word of the dead Hataska, he
grew afraid. For he saw well by the token of the spear point that he
was the man of her dream, and that she knew it. But he could not
accept her love, both because of his oath to Pharaoh and because of
her whom Aphrodite had shown to him in Ithaca, her whom alone he must
seek, the Heart's Desire, the Golden Helen.
The strait was desperate, between a broken oath and a woman scorned.
But he feared his oath, and the anger of Zeus, the God of hosts and
guests. So he sought safety beneath the wings of truth.
"Lady," he said, "I will tell thee all! I came to Ithaca from the
white north, where a curse had driven me; I came and found my halls
desolate, and my people dead, and the very ashes of my wife. But in a
dream of the night I saw the Goddess whom I have worshipped little,
Aphrodite of Idalia, whom in this land ye name Hathor, and she bade me
go forth and do her will. And for reward she promised me that I should
find one who waited me to be my deathless love."
Meriamun heard him so far, but no further, for of this she made sure,
that /she/ was the woman whom Aphrodite had promised to the Wanderer.
Ere he might speak another word she glided to him like a snake, and
like a snake curled herself about him. Then she spoke so low that he
rather knew her thought than heard her words:
"Was it indeed so, Odysseus? Did the Goddess indeed send thee to seek
me out? Know, then, that not to thee alone did she speak. I also
looked for thee. I also waited the coming of one whom I should love.
Oh, heavy have been the days, and empty was my heart, and sorely
through the years have I longed for him who should be brought to me.
And now at length it is done, now at length I see him whom in my dream
I saw," and she lifted her lips to the lips of the Wanderer, and her
heart, and her eyes, and her lips said "Love."
But it was not for nothing that he bore a stout and patient heart, and
a brain unclouded by danger or by love. He had never been in a strait
like this; caught with bonds that no sword could cut, and in toils
that no skill could undo. On one side were love and pleasure--on the
other a broken oath, and the loss for ever of the Heart's Desire. For
to love another woman, as he had been warned, was to lose Helen. But
again, if he scorned the Queen--nay, for all his hardihood he dared
not tell her that she was not the woman of his vision, the woman he
came to seek. Yet even now his cold courage and his cunning did not
fail him.
"Lady," he said, "we both have dreamed. But if thou didst dream thou
wert my love, thou didst wake to find thyself the wife of Pharaoh. And
Pharaoh is my host and hath my oath."
"I woke to find myself the wife of Pharaoh," she echoed, wearily, and
her arms uncurled from his neck and she sank back on the couch. "I am
Pharaoh's wife in word, but not in deed. Pharaoh is nothing to me,
thou Wanderer--nought save a name."
"Yet is my oath much to me, Queen Meriamun--my oath and the hospitable
hearth," the Wanderer made answer. "I swore to Meneptah to hold thee
from all ill, and there's an end."
"And if Pharaoh comes back no more, what then Odysseus?"
"Then will we talk again. And now, Lady, thy safety calls me to visit
thy Guard." And without more words he rose and went.
The Queen looked after him.
"A strange man," she said in her heart, "who builds a barrier with his
oath betwixt himself and her he loves and has wandered so far to win!
Yet methinks I honour him the more. Pharaoh Meneptah, my husband, eat,
drink, and be merry, for this I promise thee--short shall be thy
days."
