He looked down at her raptly, like a worshipper before a shrine, or a child to whom a glimpse of fairyland has been vouchsafed. Involuntarily he leaned toward her. The attraction was instinctive, elemental, unreasoning as the drifting down of autumn leaves which take their flight without consideration or knowledge of the botanical process involved. For a long, heart-stilling moment they looked into each other’s eyes, and as he looked at her he felt the shell of rage and hatred for the world and all mankind which he had kept about him for the last ten years begin to soften like a frozen river in the first spring sunshine.
‘Helena!’ he breathed almost inaudibly.
Her steadfast eyes were wide, star-bright with tears that came unbidden to their black-lashed lids, and her lips were trembling like an eager child’s. ‘Is it truly thou, my lord?’ she asked again.
Hell-broth simmered to a boil in Alexandria. It was the summer of the year 635, and everywhere within the ancient city of the Ptolemies dissension reigned. Fanatic monks and deacons of the orthodox religion mobbed heretics of the old Coptic Church. Copts burned the orthodox churches, and murdered monks and priests at every opportunity. From the ghetto where almost a hundred thousand Jews were barred in by intolerance of Greek and Copt there issued almost nightly raiding parties to avenge the insults heaped upon the Sons of Israel by daylight. The Roman governor hanged and crucified adherents to all parties with a fine impartiality, and confiscated lands and goods with even greater readiness. From the East came ominous reports of Islam’s onward march; some said that Amrou, general of the Caliph Omar’s Syrian armies, had already laid siege to Pelusium, guardian fortress of the boundary.
In an upper chamber of her father’s house in the Museum Street the damsel Helena was seated, reading from a vellum scroll the romance of Hero and Leander. Of late there had been little else that she could do. Most of the city’s four hundred theaters were closed by order of the governor, for wherever crowds assembled rioting was sure to follow. The streets and squares re-echoed to the march of mailed protectorii—soldiers of the Roman garrison—the baths no longer afforded a comfortable haven for exchange of friendly gossip.
‘. . . yonder shines the blessèd light,
Love-kindled to dispel the night
And lead me, Hero mine, to thee’,
she read, her lips half forming the words as her eyes traced down the lines of boldly-formed Greek letters. ‘Yes, Judith?’ she looked up as a small Negro maid paused at the door with a deep bow.
‘If it please your ladyship the Copt Philamon waits below, and begs an audience.’
Helen’s smooth brow wrinkled in a frown. ‘Bid him begone,’ she answered. ‘Tell him I am at the bath, or in the theater——’
‘I have, your ladyship, but still he lingers obstinately, saying he will wait until it pleases you to see him.’
‘Does he, in very truth? Why, then, ’twere better that I saw him quickly and dispatched the business for all time. Bring him hither, slave.’
As the serving wench went on her errand Helena laid by her parchment and glanced toward the door with a small frown of annoyance between her classic level brows. Philamon—she had no wish to see him now or ever, yet for old time’s sake she’d try to be as gentle as she might. They had been schoolmates and playfellows, though she was the daughter of a philosopher attached to the Museum and he the son of a rich Coptic merchant. Ostensibly he was a Christian, and bore the Greek name of Philamon, but as he grew from youth to manhood he had joined with others of his race in an attempt to revive worship of the ancient deities of Egypt. Until they had expelled him from the lecture halls of the Museum he had the impudence to preach the godhead of Osiris. Now, grown to man’s estate, he presumed to sue for her hand—insolent desert-spawn, to aspire to the hand of one in whose veins ran the noblest blood of the Empire. The tinkling of the small bells on the silken curtain at the door cut short her reverie, and Philamon entered with a deep obeisance.
He was a handsome young man, dark, slender, lithe, and almost silent as a snake in his movements. Above a tunic of deep Tyrian purple edged with gold embroidery he wore a light cape of green silk. A jeweled girdle with a dagger hanging from it in a sheath of gem-encrusted leather clasped his waist, buskins of white leather worked with gold were on his feet. His curling black hair was encircled by a golden fillet.
‘Salve, Helena,’ he greeted, dropping naturally into the classic Latin which, as a Copt, he preferred to the Greek spoken by the ruling class ‘Dominus tecum.’
‘Hast thou then become a Christian—again?’ she asked with a faint sneer. ‘I had not thought to hear thee say——’
He cut her short with an impatient gesture. ‘There is no time to bandy words, my Helena. Knowest thou the latest tidings from the East?’
‘What should a Grecian maiden know of them? Am I a Coptic traitor, having secret messages from spies——’
Once more his lifted hand broke through her bitter words. ‘Pelusium has been taken by Amrou. The path to Alexandria lies open to the hosts of Islam. Within the month the Caliph’s soldiers will have ringed the city’s walls with steel.’
Now genuine alarm showed in her face. ‘The governor——’
‘The governor? Pah!’ He spat the exclamation out as though it were an epithet. ‘What can he do? The Roman soldiery is soft with too much wine and food, too little war. The Gothic mercenaries are besotted with their wine and dice and wenches, and would set sail for Europe ere the first assault. There is not a single legion in the field against the hordes of Amrou’s Arab cavalry, and every day fresh troops of Saracens come up from Syria. There is no help or hope for it. The Alexandrian garrison is doomed.’
‘Then—then what shall I do?’ she faltered.
He smiled. Not pleasantly. ‘Hear me, O Helena. Aforetime I have offered you my hand, but you have refused—reviled—me. Now once more I make you offer of an honorable marriage and a fortune which shall be secure from seizure by the Arabs. They have promised all us Copts immunity if we will join with them against the Greeks. I shall have high place and rank and power in the government of the Caliph. Which will you choose, O Helena, my name and love and fortune, or exile and poverty at the court of Heraclius? Philosophers are very plentiful in Byzantium. Thy father’s learning will command small recompense.’
Not for a moment did she doubt him. He was a traitor to the Empire, an apostate Christian, a conspirator, but no liar. In an agony of apprehension her fingers twisted and untwisted themselves. There was about her the appearance of a frightened child. ‘But I do not love thee, Philamon——’
‘No more Philamon; I have done with all things Greek,’ he interrupted. ‘Call me by my rightful name, Harmichis.’
She went on as if he had not spoken: ‘To wed a man not loving him——’
Once more he cut her short. ‘See, Helena, here is a window to the future. Look into it and tell me what thou see’st.’ From the pocket hanging at his girdle he produced a globe of rock-crystal somewhat larger than an orange and laid it on the table before her. ‘Look, look into it, my Helena, and see if thou wilt choose to be my mate, or brave the future unprotected!’
Timorously she bent forward, looking into the cool limpid depth of the glass ball. His eyes, hot, greedy, coal-black, were upon her, his sharp-cut lips were whispering insistently. ‘Look—look! Look through the window of the future, Helena——’
At first she saw no more than vague prismatic mirrorings of the room, such as might have been reflected in a floating soap-bubble, but gradually the crystal clouded, shading from the clarity of water to the opalescence of fresh milk, then darkening steadily, appeared to grow jet-black, as if it were a sphere of polished ebony. A point of light appeared against the brilliant blackness, another, and another.
Now they were whirling round each other, like torches carried by wild-leaping dancers viewed from a tower top at night, and gradually they seemed to form a pattern. In their merging brightness she could descry figures—she saw the wild charg
e of the Arab cavalry, saw the Imperial legions staggering from the battlefield; beheld the great siege-engines set up under Alexandria’s walls, and saw the Saracens come swarming up the battlements to cut down every living thing that barred their wild, victorious advance.
‘Oh—horrible!’ she faltered, and tried to wrench her gaze away from the bright sphere, but a power greater than her own will held her fascinated eyes upon it. A light, bright mist, an endless network of converging lines seemed taking form in the crystal. In its depths, as through a dim, wiped-over window, she beheld herself asleep. Asleep? No, never maiden slept in such a bed as that, save in the last long sleep that knows no waking. It was a coffin that she lay in, and they had taken all her jewelry off, slipped the bright emeralds from her ears, drawn the rings from her fingers, even taken off her gold-embroidered sandals. Dead. She, Helena, was dead, and about to be buried like a beggar maid.
But what was this? Above the coffin which enclosed her bent a face. She did not recognize it, for the features differed from the features of the men she knew. It was finely drawn with rather high cheek-bones, the mouth was wide and generous, the eyes a pale and smoky gray. Hardened by suffering it was, and scarred by the deep acid-cuts of cynicism, but instinctively she felt drawn to it, for she knew that it belonged to one who had an infinite capacity for love and kindness—and infinite need of them.
‘Art thou—art thou to be my lord?’ she asked tremulously. ‘Art thou he into whose hands I shall lay my heart like a gift——’
Harsh and dry and rasping with cold fury Harmichis’ voice drowned out her timid question:
‘Sleep, Helena. Fall thou in a deep and dreamless sleep which men shall take for death, and wake no more until thy hand be taken and thy name called——’
Four oxen, white and without blemish, drew the funeral car that held Helena’s coffin from the Church of Holy Wisdom to the great Necropolis where Christian dead were buried. Two dozen lovely maidens robed in white and veiled with purple walked barefoot in the dust beside the flower-burdened hearse, with the Patriarch of Alexandria and his train of deacons and subdeacons following in their gilded curricles drawn by white mules. At the grave the girls wailed piercingly and tore their faces with their nails, then cut their long hair off and threw the braided tresses on the coffin. With incense, bell, and intoned prayer the churchmen laid her in the grave and went their several ways.
The burying ground lay silent in the fading moonlight. A soft low haze that swept up from the harbor shrouded tree and monument and mausoleum in a silvery unreal half-light as Harmichis and the two stout knaves he had picked up on the waterfront crept silently as wind-blown clouds across the broad lawns of the great Necropolis. ‘Dig here,’ Harmichis ordered, and at his command the villains turned the loose turf back.
The ornate coffin, ornamented with a frieze depicting scenes from the life of Saint Helena, lay but a foot or two beneath the sod. In fifteen minutes it was hoisted from the grave, its sealings of lime-mortar broken, and the lovely corpse exposed.
Working quickly, Harmichis undid the emerald rings from Helena’s small ears, drew the jeweled rings from her fingers, unclasped the brooch that held the Persian shawl about her shoulders, unlaced the gold-embroidered buskins on her feet. ‘Take them.’ He tossed the loot to his helpers. ‘Their price will buy a jar of wine in any shop along the quay.’ Then, as the scoundrels pocketed the finery, ‘Bring on the other coffin.’
It was a plain, cheap case of half-baked earthenware they lugged from the cart hitched beside the road, the sort of casket used by those just rich enough to bury their dead chested, but too poor to afford any but the meanest funeral furnishings. Into it they put Helena, then dropped it in the place of her elaborate casket, and heaped the broken earth upon it.
‘Break this up and throw the pieces in the harbor,’ Harmichis ordered as he gave the fine coffin a kick. ‘Here is the balance of thy hire.’ He tossed a purse to them and turned away. Chuckling, he murmured to himself, ‘No grave robber will seek for buried treasure in that pauper’s coffin. Sleep on my Helena; sleep on in blessèd poverty until——’
Half an hour later he was in his own bed chamber. His Grecian clothes were laid aside and in their place he wore a gown of plain white linen, such as that the priests vowed to Osiris wore in days before the coming of the Greeks and Romans. Before him on the table lay the crystal ball which he had used to hypnotize the girl.
‘Gaze, gaze, Harmichis,’ he bade himself. ‘Gaze, servant of the Most High Gods, gaze in the magic crystal, yield up thy being and sink thou in a sleep so deep that men shall take it for death till——’ His voice failed slowly, sinking from a murmur to a whisper, finally to silence. His head fell forward on his arms——
The news that Philamon the Copt had died of grief for Helena the Greek girl spread through the city. His funeral was a simple one, for neither Greek nor Coptic priest would say a prayer for one who had admitted publicly he was apostate, a follower of the old gods.
Nevertheless, because he had been rich, and because his will requested it, they dug his grave a little distance from the grave where Helena the Christian maiden had been laid.
‘Art thou truly he whom I did see aforetime in the gazing-crystal of the renegade Philamon?’ the girl asked Fullerton, her golden eyes fixed questioningly on him.
He was suddenly aware that she did not speak English—but that he understood her perfectly.
‘Of—of course, it’s I,’ he answered stammeringly, ‘but——’ in his excitement he let go her hand, and instantly her look of rapt attention changed to one of mild bewilderment. She said something in reply. Her words were musically soft and liquid, but what she said he no more understood than if she’d spoken in Chinese.
‘May I help you?’ he put out his hand again, and she laid hers in it with the air of a princess bestowing a rare gift. Like a radio dialed suddenly from a foreign to a local broadcast, her words became intelligible in mid-syllable.
‘—and Philamon—Harmachis—shall not have me?’
‘He certainly shall not,’ he answered positively. ‘Neither he nor anyone, unless you wish——’
He stood away from her as he spoke, and once again he saw the puzzled look come in her eyes. She could not understand a syllable he pronounced.
Then understanding came to him. He could not explain it, but he knew. While they were standing hand in hand, or even when they touched each other lightly, everything one said was perfectly intelligible to the other. The moment they broke contact each was walled off from the other by the barrier of alien speech.
The maid had laid a fire before she left that evening, and in a moment he had kindled it. Then hand in hand they sat before the blazing logs and talked, and understood each other in that mystic communion which seemed to come to them when they made bodily contact. With only a few prompting questions she related her last day in Alexandria, told how Harmichis had bidden her look in the crystal—— ‘The Saracens did not prevail against the soldiers of the Emperor, did they, my lord?’ she broke off to ask him tremulously.
He took a deep breath. How could he tell her? But: ‘More than a thousand years ago, child,’ he answered.
‘A thousand years——’ Her eyes came up to his from under the deep shadow of their curling lashes. ‘Then I am——’
It was hard for him to explain, but adding what she’d told him to the information gleaned from the papyrus he could piece her history together. When he had done she bent her head in thought a moment. Finally she turned to him, eyes wide, lips parted. Her breath was coming faster. ‘I mind me that in that far day from which I come men sometimes found the mummies of the ancient ones in the rock tombs,’ she whispered.
‘They’re still doing it,’ he answered with a smile. ‘The mummies of Rameses and Tutankhamen are in museums——’
She nodded understandingly and he saw the pupils of her golden eyes swell and expand, darkening the bright irises. ‘To whom do they belong, those bodies salvaged from th
e past?’ she interrupted.
‘Why—to whoever finds them, I suppose,’ he rejoined, a little puzzled by her agitation.
‘They are the things and chattels of their finders?’ she persisted.
‘Yes, I suppose you might say that——’
He stopped in utter surprise, for at his words the girl had slipped down from the couch and fallen to her knees before him. Taking his right hand in both of hers she bowed her head submissively and placed his hand upon it. ‘Full-ah-tohn’—she said his name with difficulty—‘behold me, a stranger from another age and place, alone and friendless in a foreign world. Freely, and of mine own will and accord, I give myself into thy ownership, and claim from thee the protection the master owes his slave. Take me, my lord and master; do with me as thou wilt. My life is in thy shadow.’
He crushed down a desire to protest, or even show amusement at the drama of her self-surrender. She was a child of ancient days, and slavery was a social institution of her times. ‘Rise, Helena,’ he ordered solemnly. ‘I cannot take thee for my slave——’
Tears started to her lashes and rolled in big, slow drops down her pale cheeks, her lower lip began to tremble as though she were about to cry. ‘Am I then so favorless in thy sight that thou wilt not have me for thy handmaid, Full-ah-tohn, my lord?’ she asked.
‘Favorless? Why, child, you’re beautiful; you’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen——’
She was on the couch beside him now, her little feet tucked under her, one hand in his, the other resting on his arm. ‘Thou givest me my freedom, lord?’ she asked.
‘Of course, but——’
‘But promise me one thing before I take it,’ she persisted.
‘Why, certainly, if it will make you happier——’
‘It will, my lord. ’Twill make me very, very happy. Each day at this same hour promise me thou wilt repeat those words—tell me that I am fair and lovely in they sight!’
Night Creatures Page 21