The Great White Queen Part 27

"Well, tell me," I urged. "Why are you so downcast?"

"I--I have lost Liola," he answered hoa.r.s.ely. "Truth to tell, Scarsmere, I loved Goliba's daughter."

"She is absolutely beautiful," I admitted. "No man can deny that she is handsome enough to share your royal throne."

"Indeed she was," he said with emotion, his chin upon his breast.

"Was!" I cried. "Why do you speak thus?"

"Because she is dead!" he answered huskily. "Ah! Scars, you don't know how fondly I loved her ever since the first moment we met. I loved her better than life; better than all this honour and pomp to which I have succeeded. Yet she has been taken from me, and my life in future will be devoid of that happiness I had contemplated. True I am Naba of Mo, successor to the stool whereon a line of unconquered monarchs have sat throughout a thousand years, yet all is an empty pleasure now that my well-beloved is lost to me."

"Have you obtained definite news of her death?" I asked sympathetically.

"Yes. When we were captured in Goliba's house, she, too, was seized by the soldiers. While held powerless I saw her struggling with her captors, for they had somehow obtained knowledge of the part she had played in our conspiracy against their queen. The Naya had, it appears, ordered her guards to bring us all before her, dead or alive. With valiant courage she resented the indignity of arrest, and as a consequence she was brutally killed by those who held her prisoner."

"How have you ascertained this?" I asked, shocked at the news, for I myself had admired Liola's extraordinary beauty.

"To-day I have had before me the three survivors of the guards who captured us, and all relate the same story. They say that a young girl, taken prisoner with us, while being dragged up the roadway towards the palace was in danger of being released by the people, and one of their comrades, remembering the Naya's orders that none of us were to escape, in the _melee_ raised his sword and plunged it into her heart."

"The brute!" I cried. "Is the murderer among the survivors?"

"No. All three agree that the mob, witnessing his action, set upon him and literally tore him limb from limb."

"A fate he certainly deserved," I said. "But has her body been recovered?"

"A body has been found and I have seen it. But the limbs are crushed, and her face is, alas! trampled out of all recognition, although the dress answers exactly to one that Goliba says his daughter possessed, and in which I myself saw her. There is, alas! no doubt of her fate. She has been brutally murdered, and at the instigation of the Naya, who sent forth her fiendish horde to kill us."

"I knew from the manner you exchanged glances with Liola that you loved her," I said, after a pause, brief and painful.

"Yes," he answered sadly. "Surrept.i.tiously I had breathed into her ear words of affection, and had been transported to a veritable paradise of delight by the discovery that she reciprocated my love. But," he added, harshly, "my brief happy love-dream is now ended. I must live and work only for my people; they must be to me both sweetheart and wife. I must act as my ancestors have done, indulging them and loving them."

Never before, even in the moments when as fellow-adventurers things looked blackest, had I seen him in so utterly dejected an att.i.tude. The light had died from his face, and he had suddenly become burdened by a monarch's responsibilities; prematurely aged by a bitter sorrow that had sapped all youthful gaiety from his buoyant heart.

With heartfelt sympathy I endeavoured to console him, but all was unavailing. That he had loved her madly was only too apparent, and it seemed equally certain that she was dead, for shortly afterwards Goliba entered, and in a voice full of emotion told us how he had been able to identify the body, and that his tardy attendance upon his royal master was due to the fact that he had been superintending her burial.

The old sage's words visibly increased Omar's burden of sorrow, for in the moonlight I saw a tear trickle down his pale cheek, glistening for an instant brighter than the jewels upon his robe. Liola had fallen victim to the inhuman brutality of the Naya's guards, and Mo had thus been deprived of a bewitchingly handsome queen.

The _denouement_ of this stirring story of a throne was indeed a tragic one; Goliba had lost his only daughter, the pride of his heart, and Omar the woman he loved.

The silence that followed was broken by a hasty footstep, and the tall dark figure of Kona approached.

"A strange fact hath transpired, O Master!" he cried breathlessly, addressing Omar.

"Speak, tell me," the young Naba exclaimed, starting up. "Is it of Liola that thou bearest news?"

"Alas! no. That she was murdered in the first moments of the conflict is only too certain," he answered. "The news I bring thee is amazing. While we were engaged in the struggle for thy throne, thine enemies, the people of Samory, entered the city and fought side by side with the military!"

"Samory's people here!" we all three cried, starting up.

"They were, but they have departed no one knows whither. Their numbers were not great, but they sacked and burned several large buildings near the city-gate and fought desperately to join their allies the troops of Mo, but were at last prevented and driven back by the people in a fierce b.l.o.o.d.y conflict that actually occurred after thou wert enthroned."

Then I remembered having noticed the smoke of the encounter, and how with others, I had been puzzled.

"But how could they enter our country, and unseen approach the city?"

Omar exclaimed astounded.

"I know not the intricacies of the approaches to Mo save the perilous Way of the Thousand Steps," Kona replied. "The force may have been the rear-guard of the army that attacked Mo, and were defeated in the great chasm known as the Grave of Enemies. If they approached by that means they must have followed closely in our footsteps, and through the treachery of spies, been admitted to the city at a time when the alertness of the guards was diverted by the popular rising."

"Were their losses great in the fight?" Goliba asked.

"Terrible. Whole streets and market-places in the vicinity of the entrance to the city were found strewn with their dead," the black giant answered. "Apparently the people discovered the ident.i.ty of their enemies and took no prisoners. With the exception of about two hundred survivors all were killed."

"And the survivors have escaped!" Omar observed thoughtfully.

"Yes. Owing to the lax watch kept at the gate during those momentous hours, they were enabled to descend the steps to the plain and get clear away."

"They must nevertheless be still in Mo. They must be found," Omar cried excitedly. "While they are among us our country will be in jeopardy, for they will act as spies. Samory hath set his mind upon conquering this our land; his plot must be frustrated."

"Already have I given orders for a search from the land's most northerly limits even to the Grave of Enemies, O Master," Kona answered. "All the men who could be spared from guarding the city I have dispatched on expeditions with orders to attack and destroy the fugitives."

"They cannot have travelled far," the young ruler said. "They have only about twelve hours' start of your men."

"To a man our troops are now loyal to thee," the newly-created chief of the army answered. "They are alive to the fact that Samory's fighting-men are their bitterest foes, therefore if the survivors of that intrepid force are within our boundaries, they will a.s.suredly be overtaken and killed."

"I would rather that they were captured and held as hostages," Omar said.

"Enough blood hath been already shed to-day."

"The order to capture them is not sufficient incentive to thine army to rout them from their hiding-place," Kona replied. "They have had the audacity to make a dash upon thy city and burn some of its most renowned and beautiful structures, therefore in their opinion if not in thine, death alone would expiate their offence."

"I would wish their lives to be spared," Omar repeated. "But the army is under thy control, and I leave the final annihilation of the band of freebooters unto thee. Hast thou obtained any tidings of the Naya's flight?"

"None. My Dagombas have searched every nook and corner of this thy palace, each prison dungeon hath been entered by detachments of soldiers, while enthusiastic parties have descended to the subterranean Temple of Zomara, but found only the dwarf priests there. The Naya hath disappeared as completely as if Zomara had crushed her between his jaws."

"Her disappearance is amazing," Omar observed. "Even her personal attendants whom I have questioned are ignorant of the direction she hath taken. They declare that she escaped within ten minutes of the blowing up of the palace-gate. The catastrophe alarmed her, and she saw in the fall of these defences the instability of her throne."

"All is being done that can be done to secure her arrest," Kona said. "It is absolutely necessary that we should hold her captive, or, like the deposed queen of the Nupe, she may stir up strife and form a plot to reascend the stool."

"To thee, Kona, I look to guard me from mine enemies," my friend exclaimed. "We must elucidate the mystery of the sudden descent of this weak force of Samory's, the rapidity with which they struck their blow, and the means by which they have, within twelve hours, so completely eluded us."

"News of them hath been flashed even unto the furthermost limits of thy kingdom, O Great Chief," Kona a.s.sured him. "No effort shall be spared by thy servant in executing thy commands. I go forth again, and sleep shall not close my eyes until the men of Samory have been overtaken."

With these words he made deep obeisance to the newly-enthroned sovereign, and lifting his long native spear, which he still retained, he swore vengeance most terrible upon the enemies of Mo, who had, with such consummate strategic skill, entered and attacked the city at the moment when it remained undefended.

"There is some deep mystery underlying this, Scars," Omar said, when Kona had stalked away into the darkness, and Goliba had risen and crossed the moon-lit court in response to a message delivered by a black slave. "I am scarcely surprised at Kona's failure to capture the Naya; indeed, personally, I should only be too happy to know that she had got safely beyond the limits of Mo. But the sudden attack and rapid disappearance of this marauding band of Samory proves two things; first that our country, long thought impregnable, may be invaded, and secondly that through Kouaga Samory is in possession of certain of our secrets."

"What secrets?" I asked.

"Secrets upon the preservation of which the welfare and safety of my country depend," he answered mysteriously. Then, with a sudden air of dejection, he added: "But there, what matters after all, now that Liola is dead and my life is desolate? At the very moment when the greatest honour has been bestowed upon me and I am enthroned Naba, the saviour of my people, the greatest sorrow has also fallen upon me."