Queen Sheba's Ring Part 35

Dimly, very dimly, I became aware that I was being carried. I heard voices in my ears, but what they said I could not understand. Then a feeling of light struck upon my eyeb.a.l.l.s which gave me great pain. Agony ran all through me as it does through the limbs of one who is being brought back from death by drowning. After this something warm was poured down my throat, and I went to sleep.

When I awoke again it was to find myself in a large room that I did not know. I was lying on a bed, and by the light of sunrise which streamed through the window-places I saw the three others, my son Roderick, Orme and Higgs lying on the other beds, but they were still asleep.

Abati servants entered the room bringing food, a kind of rough soup with pieces of meat in it of which they gave me a portion in a wooden bowl that I devoured greedily. Also they shook my companions until they awoke and almost automatically ate up the contents of similar bowls, after which they went to sleep again, as I did, thanking heaven that we were all still alive.

Every few hours I had a vision of these men entering with the bowls of soup or porridge, until at last life and reason came back to me in earnest, and I saw Higgs sitting up on the bed opposite and staring at me.

"I say, old fellow," he said, "are we alive, or is this Hades?"

"Can't be Hades," I answered, "because there are Abati here."

"Quite right," he replied. "If the Abati go anywhere, it's to h.e.l.l, where they haven't whitewashed walls and four-post beds. Oliver, wake up. We are out of that cave, anyway."

Orme raised himself on his hand and stared at us.

"Where's Maqueda?" he asked, a question to which of course, we could give no answer, till presently Roderick woke also and said:

"I remember something. They carried us all out of the cave; j.a.phet was with them. They took the Child of Kings one way and us another, that is all I know."

Shortly afterwards the Abati servants arrived, bearing food more solid than the soup, and with them came one of their doctors, not that old idiot of a court physician, who examined us, and announced that we should all recover, a fact which we knew already. We asked many questions of him and the servants, but could get no answer, for evidently they were sworn to silence. However, we persuaded them to bring us water to wash in. It came, and with it a polished piece of metal, such as the Abati use for a looking-gla.s.s, in which we saw our faces, the terrible, wasted faces of those who have gone within a hair's breadth of death by starvation in the dark.

Yet although our gaolers would say nothing, something in their aspect told us that we were in sore peril of our lives. They looked at us hungrily, as a terrier looks at rats in a wire cage of which the door will presently be opened. Moreover, Roderick, who, as I think I have said, has very quick ears, overheard one of the attendants whisper to another:

"When does our service on these hounds of Gentiles come to an end?" to which his fellow answered, "The Council has not yet decided, but I think to-morrow or the next day, if they are strong enough. It will be a great show."

Also that evening, about sunset, we heard a mob shouting outside the barrack in which we were imprisoned, for that was its real use, "Give us the Gentiles! Give us the Gentiles! We are tired of waiting," until at length some soldiers drove them away.

Well, we talked the thing over, only to conclude that there was nothing to be done. We had no friend in the place except Maqueda, and she, it appeared, was a prisoner like ourselves, and therefore could not communicate with us. Nor could we see the slightest possibility of escape.

"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," remarked Higgs gloomily. "I wish now that they had let us die in the cave. It would have been better than being baited to death by a mob of Abati."

"Yes," answered Oliver with a sigh, for he was thinking of Maqueda, "but that's why they saved us, the vindictive beasts, to kill us for what they are pleased to call high treason."

"High treason!" exclaimed Higgs. "I hope to goodness their punishment for the offence is not that of mediaeval England; hanging is bad enough--but the rest----!"

"I don't think the Abati study European history," I broke in; "but it is no use disguising from you that they have methods of their own. Look here, friends," I added, "I have kept something about me in case the worst should come to the worst," and I produced a little bottle containing a particularly swift and deadly poison done up into tabloids, and gave one to each of them. "My advice is," I added, "that if you see we are going to be exposed to torture or to any dreadful form of death, you should take one of these, as I mean to do, and cheat the Abati of their vengeance."

"That is all very fine," said the Professor as he pocketed his tabloid, "but I never could swallow a pill without water at the best of times, and I don't believe those beasts will give one any. Well, I suppose I must suck it, that's all. Oh! if only the luck would turn, if only the luck would turn!"

Three more days went by without any sign of Higgs's aspiration being fulfilled. On the contrary, except in one respect, the luck remained steadily against us. The exception was that we got plenty to eat and consequently regained our normal state of health and strength more rapidly than might have been expected. With us it was literally a case of "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Only somehow I don't think that any of us really believed that we should die, though whether this was because we had all, except poor Quick, survived so much, or from a sneaking faith in Maqueda's optimistic dreams, I cannot say. At any rate we ate our food with appet.i.te, took exercise in an inner yard of the prison, and strove to grow as strong as we could, feeling that soon we might need all our powers. Oliver was the most miserable among us, not for his own sake, but because, poor fellow, he was haunted with fears as to Maqueda and her fate, although of these he said little or nothing to us. On the other hand, my son Roderick was by far the most cheerful. He had lived for so many years upon the brink of death that this familiar gulf seemed to have no terrors for him.

"All come right somehow, my father," he said airily. "Who can know what happen? Perhaps Child of King drag us out of mud-hole, for after all she was very strong cow, or what you call it, heifer, and I think toss Joshua if he drive her into corner. Or perhaps other thing occur."

"What other thing, Roderick?" I asked.

"Oh! don't know, can't say, but I think Fung thing. Believe we not done with Fung yet, believe they not run far. Believe they take thought for morrow and come back again. Only," he added sadly, "hope my wife not come back, for that old girl too full of lofty temper for me. Still, cheer up, not dead yet by long day's march, and meanwhile food good and this very jolly rest after beastly underground city. Now I tell Professor some more stories about Fung religion, den of lions, and so forth."

On the morning after this conversation a crisis came. Just as we had finished breakfast the doors of our chamber were thrown open and in marched a number of soldiers wearing Joshua's badge. They were headed by an officer of his household, who commanded us to rise and follow him.

"Where to?" asked Orme.

"To take your trial before the Child of Kings and her Council, Gentile, upon the charge of having murdered certain of her subjects," answered the officer sternly.

"That's all right," said Higgs with a sigh of relief. "If Maqueda is chairman of the Bench we are pretty certain of an acquittal, for Orme's sake if not for our own."

"Don't you be too sure of that," I whispered into his ear. "The circ.u.mstances are peculiar, and women have been known to change their minds."

"Adams," he replied, glaring at me through his smoked spectacles, "If you talk like that we shall quarrel. Maqueda change her mind indeed!

Why, it is an insult to suggest such a thing, and if you take my advice you won't let Oliver hear you. Don't you remember, man, that she's in love with him?"

"Oh, yes," I answered, "but I remember also that Prince Joshua is in love with her, and that she is his prisoner."

CHAPTER XX

THE TRIAL AND AFTER

They set us in a line, four ragged-looking fellows, all of us with beards of various degrees of growth, that is, all the other three, for mine had been an established fact for years, and everything having been taken away from us, we possessed neither razor nor scissors.

In the courtyard of our barrack we were met by a company of soldiers, who encircled us about with a triple line of men, as we thought to prevent any attempt of escape. So soon as we pa.s.sed the gates I found, however, that this was done for a different reason, namely, to protect us from the fury of the populace. All the way from the barrack to the courthouse, whither we were being taken now that the palace was burned, the people were gathered in hundreds, literally howling for our blood.

It was a strange, and, in a way, a dreadful sight to see even the brightly dressed women and children shaking their fists and spitting at us with faces distorted by hate.

"Why they love you so little, father, when you do so much for them?"

asked Roderick, shrugging his shoulders and dodging a stone that nearly hit him on the head.

"For two reasons," I answered. "Because their Lady loves one of us too much, and because through us many of their people have lost their lives.

Also they hate strangers, and are by nature cruel, like most cowards, and now that they have no more fear of the Fung, they think it will be safe to kill us."

"Ah!" said Roderick; "yet Harmac has come to Mur," and he pointed to the great head of the idol seated on the cliff, "and I think where Harmac goes, Fung follow, and if so they make them pay plenty for my life, for I great man among Fung; Fung myself husband of Sultan's daughter. These fools, like children, because they see no Fung, think there are no Fung.

Well, in one year, or perhaps one month, they learn."

"I daresay, my boy," I answered, "but I am afraid that won't help us."

By now we were approaching the court-house where the Abati priests and learned men tried civil and some criminal cases. Through a mob of n.o.bles and soldiers who mocked us as we went, we were hustled into the large hall of judgment that was already full to overflowing.

Up the centre of it we marched to a clear s.p.a.ce reserved for the parties to a cause, or prisoners and their advocates, beyond which, against the wall, were seats for the judges. These were five members of the Council, one of whom was Joshua, while in the centre as President of the Court, and wearing her veil and beautiful robes of ceremony, sat Maqueda herself.

"Thank G.o.d, she's safe!" muttered Oliver with a gasp of relief.

"Yes," answered Higgs, "but what's she doing there? She ought to be in the dock, too, not on the Bench."

We reached the open s.p.a.ce, and were thrust by soldiers armed with swords to where we must stand, and although each of us bowed to her, I observed that Maqueda took not the slightest notice of our salutations. She only turned her head and said something to Joshua on her right, which caused him to laugh.

Then with startling suddenness the case began. A kind of public prosecutor stood forward and droned out the charge against us. It was that we, who were in the employ of the Abati, had traitorously taken advantage of our position as mercenary captains to stir up a civil war, in which many people had lost their lives, and some been actually murdered by ourselves and our companion who was dead. Moreover, that we had caused their palace to be burned and, greatest crime of all, had seized the sacred person of the Walda Nagasta, Rose of Mur, and dragged her away into the recesses of the underground city, whence she was only rescued by the chance of an accomplice of ours, one j.a.phet, betraying our hiding-place.