A while went by, how long I know not, and at last I said,
"Where is Martina? It is time we left this place."
"Martina!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean Irene's lady, and is she here? Ifso, how comes she to be travelling with you, Olaf?"
"As the best friend man ever had, Heliodore; as one who clung to himin his ruin and saved him from a cruel death; as one who has risked herlife to help him in his desperate search, and without whom that searchhad failed."
"Then may God reward her, Olaf, for I did not know there were such womenin the world. Lady Martina! Where are you, lady Martina?"
Thrice she cried the words, and at the third time an answer came fromthe shadows at a distance.
"I am here," said Martina's voice with a little yawn. "I was weary andhave slept while you two greeted each other. Well met at last, ladyHeliodore. See, I have brought you back your Olaf, blind it is true, butotherwise lacking nothing of health and strength and station."
Then Heliodore ran to her and kissed first her hand and next her lips.In after days she told me that for those of one who had been sleepingthe eyes of Martina seemed to be strangely wet and red. But if this wereso her voice trembled not at all.
"Truly you two should give thanks to God," she said, "Who has broughtyou together again in so wondrous a fashion, as I do on your behalf fromthe bottom of my heart. Yet you are still hemmed round by dangers manyand great. What now, Olaf? Will you become a ghost also and dwell herein the tomb with Heliodore; and if so, what tale shall I tell to Palkaand the rest?"
"Not so," I answered. "I think it will be best that we should return toKurna. Heliodore must play her part as the spirit of a queen till we canhire some boat and escape with her down the Nile."
"Never," she cried, "I cannot, I cannot. Having come together we mustseparate no more. Oh! Olaf, you do not know what a life has been mineduring all these dreadful months. When I escaped from Musa by stabbingthe eunuch who was in charge of me, for which hideous deed may I beforgiven," and I felt her shudder at my side, "I fled I knew not whithertill I found myself in this valley, where I hid till the night was gone.Then at daybreak I peeped out from the mouth of the valley and saw theMoslems searching for me, but as yet a long way off. Also now I knewthis valley. It was that to which my father had brought me as a childwhen he came to search for the burying-place of his ancestor, thePharaoh, which records he had read told him was here. I rememberedeverything: where the tomb should be, how we had entered it through ahole, how we had found the mummy of a royal lady, whose face was coveredwith a gilded mask, and on her breast the necklace which I wear.
"I ran along the valley, searching the left side of it with my eyes,till I saw a flat stone which I knew again. It was called the Table ofOfferings. I was sure that the hole by which we had entered the tombwas quite near to this stone and a little above it, in the face of thecliff. I climbed; I found what seemed to be the hole, though of this Icould not be certain. I crept down it till it came to an end, andthen, in my terror, hung by my hands and dropped into the darkness,not knowing whither I fell, or caring over much if I were killed. As itchanced it was but a little way, and, finding myself unhurt, I crawledalong the cavern till I reached this place where there is light, forhere the roof of the cave has fallen in. While I crouched amid the rocksI heard the voices of the soldiers above me, heard their officer alsobidding them bring ropes and torches. To the left of where you standthere is a sloping passage that runs down to the great central chamberwhere sleeps some mighty king, and out of this passage open otherchambers. Into the first of these the light of the morning sun strugglesfeebly. I entered it, seeking somewhere to hide myself, and saw apainted coffin lying on the floor near to the marble sarcophagus fromwhich it had been dragged. It was that in which we had found the bodyof my ancestress; but since then thieves had been in this place. Wehad left the coffin in the sarcophagus and the mummy in the coffin, andreplaced their lids. Now the mummy lay on the floor, half unwrapped andbroken in two beneath the breast. Moreover, the face, which I rememberedas being so like my own, was gone to dust, so that there remained ofit nothing but a skull, to which hung tresses of long black hair, as,indeed, you may see for yourself.
"By the side of the body was the gilded mask, with black and staringeyes, and the painted breast-piece of stiff linen, neither of which thethieves had found worth stealing.
"I looked and a thought came to me. Lifting the mummy, I thrust itinto the sarcophagus, all of it save the gilded mask and the paintedbreast-piece of stiff linen. Then I laid myself down in the coffin, ofwhich the lid, still lying crosswise, hid me to the waist, and drew thegilded mask and painted breast-piece over my head and bosom. Scarcelywas it done when the soldiers entered. By now the reflected sunlighthad faded from the place, leaving it in deep shadow; but some of the menheld burning torches made from splinters of old coffins, that were fullof pitch.
"'Feet have passed here; I saw the marks of them in the dust,' said theofficer. 'She may have hidden in this place. Search! Search! It will gohard with us if we return to Musa to tell him that he has lost his toy.'
"They looked into the sarcophagus and saw the broken mummy. Indeed, oneof them lifted it, unwillingly enough, and let it fall again, sayinggrimly,
"'Musa would scarce care for this companion, though in her day she mayhave been fair enough.'
"Then they came to the coffin.
"'Here's another,' exclaimed the soldier, 'and one with a gold face.Allah! how its eyes stare.'
"'Pull it out,' said the officer.
"'Let that be your task,' answered the man. 'I'll defile myself with nomore corpses.'
"The officer came and looked. 'What a haunted hole is this, full of theghosts of idol worshippers, or so I think,' he said. 'Those eyes starecurses at us. Well, the Christian maid is not here. On, before thetorches fail.'
"Then they went, leaving me; the painted linen creaked upon my breast asI breathed again.
"'Till nightfall I lay in that coffin, fearing lest they should return;and I tell you, Olaf, that strange dreams came to me there, for I thinkI swooned or slept in that narrow bed. Yes, dreams of the past, whichyou shall hear one day, if we live, for they seem to have to do with youand me. Aye, I thought that the dead woman in the sarcophagus at my sideawoke and told them to me. At length I rose and crept back to thisplace where we stand, for here I could see the friendly light, and beingoutworn, laid me down and slept.
"At the first break of day I crawled from the tomb, followed that sameroad by which I had entered, though I found it hard to climb up throughthe entrance hole.
"No living thing was to be seen in the valley, except a great night birdflitting to its haunt. I was parched with thirst, and knowing that inthis dry place I soon must perish, I glided from rock to rock towardsthe mouth of the valley, thinking to find some other grave or crannywhere I might lie hid till night came again and I could descend to theplain and drink. But, Olaf, before I had gone many steps I discoveredfresh food, milk and water laid upon a rock, and though I feared lestthey might be poisoned, ate and drank of them. When I knew that theywere wholesome I thought that some friend must have set them there tosatisfy my wants, though I knew not who the friend could be. AfterwardsI learned that this food was an offering to the ghosts of the dead.Among our forefathers in forgotten generations it was, I know, thecustom to make such offerings, since in their blindness they believedthat the spirts of their beloved needed sustenance as their bodies oncehad done. Doubtless the memory of the rite still survives; at least,to this day the offerings are made. Indeed, when it was found that theywere not made in vain, more and more of them were brought, so that Ihave lacked nothing.
"Here then I have dwelt for many moons among the dust of men departed,only now and again wandering out at night. Once or twice folk have seenme when I ventured to the plains, and I have been tempted to speak tothem and ask their help. But always they fled away, believing me tobe the ghost of some bygone queen. Indeed, to speak truth, Olaf, thiscompanionship with spirits,
for spirits do dwell in these tombs--I haveseen them, I tell you I have seen them--has so worked upon my soul thatat times I feel as though I were already of their company. Moreover, Iknew that I could not live long. The loneliness was sucking up my lifeas the dry sand sucks water. Had you not come, Olaf, within some fewdays or weeks I should have died."
Now I spoke for the first time, saying,
"And did you wish to die, Heliodore?"
"No. Before the war between Musa and my father, Magas, news came to usfrom Byzantium that Irene had killed you. All believed it save I, whodid not believe."
"Why not, Heliodore?"
"Because I could not feel that you were dead. Therefore I fought for mylife, who otherwise, after we were conquered and ruined and my fatherwas slain fighting nobly, should have stabbed, not that eunuch, butmyself. Then later, in this tomb, I came to know that you were not dead.The other lost ones I could feel about me from time to time, but younever, you who would have been the first to seek me when my soul wasopen to such whisperings. So I lived on when all else would have died,because hope burned in me like a lamp unquenchable. And at last youcame! Oh! at last you came!"
The Wanderer's Necklace Page 49
