‘If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest?’
‘Call ‘em in one by one,’ I said.
‘They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,’ said Strickland. ‘We must segregate ‘em. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it?’
‘He may, for aught I know; but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only been here two or three days,’ I answered. ‘What’s your notion?’
‘I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling-cloth?’
There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This showed that Bahadur Khan, his body servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed.
‘Come in,’ said Strickland. ‘It’s a very warm night, isn’t it?’
Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mohammedan, said that it was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by his Honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.
‘It will be so, if God pleases,’ said Strickland, tugging off his boots. ‘It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days—ever since that time when thou first earnest into my service. What time was that?’
‘Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given; and I—even I—came into the honoured service of the protector of the poor.’
‘And Imray Sahib went to Europe?’
‘It is so said among those who were his servants.’
‘And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?’
‘Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.’
‘That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting tomorrow. Give me the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case yonder.’
The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breech of the 360 Express.
‘And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange, Bahadur Khan, is it not?’
‘What do I know of the ways of the white man, Heaven-born?’
‘Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.’
‘Sahib!’
The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled themselves at Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.
‘Go and look!’ said Strickland. ‘Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits thee. Go!’
The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the writhing snake under foot; and last, a grey glaze settling on his face, at the thing under the tablecloth.
‘Hast thou seen?’ said Strickland after a pause.
‘I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the Presence do?’
‘Hang thee within the month. What else?’
‘For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever-my child!’
‘What said Imray Sahib?’
‘He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.’
Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular, ‘Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.’
Bahadur Khan stood ashen grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly. ‘I am trapped,’ he said, ‘but the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,’ he glared at Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, ‘only such could know what I did.’
‘It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!’
A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
‘Take him to the police station,’ said Strickland. ‘There is a case toward.’
‘Do I hang, then?’ said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and keeping his eyes on the ground.
‘If the sun shines or the water runs—yes!’ said Strickland.
Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The two policemen waited further orders.
‘Go!’ said Strickland.
‘Nay; but I go very swiftly,’ said Bahadur Khan. ‘Look! I am even now a dead man.’
He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
‘I come of land-holding stock,’ said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. ‘It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his wash-basin. My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and—and—I die.’
At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little brown karait, and the policeman bore him and the thing under the tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imray.
‘This,’ said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, ‘is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?’
‘I heard,’ I answered. ‘Imray made a mistake.’
‘Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for four years.’
I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
‘What has befallen Bahadur Khan?’ said I.
‘He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,’ was the answer.
‘And how much of this matter hast thou known?’
‘As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.’
I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house—
‘Tietjens has come back to her place!’
And so she had. The great deerhound was crouched statelily on her own bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
The Horses of Abdera
Leopoldo Lugones, Argentinian writer, born in Rio Seco, in the province of Cordoba in 1874, died in el Tigre, Buenos Aires province, in 1938. He was at home in poetry, biography, history, homeric studies and fiction. His literary legacy includes the following titles: Las Montafias del Oro (1897), Los Crepusculos del Jardin (1905), El Imperio Jesuistico (1905), Lunario Sentimental (1909), Odas Seculares (1910), Historia de Sarmiento (1911), El Payador (1916), El Libro de los Paisaies (1917), Mi Beligerancia (1917), La Torre de Casandra (1919), Nuevos Estudios Helenicas (1928), La Grande Argentina (1930), Roca (1938).
By the Aegean Sea lay the Thracian City of Abdera, which is now called Balastra and must not be confused with its Andalusian namesake, and which was famous for its horses. In Thrace, to win distinction for horses was no mean achievement, and Abdera’s reputation in this regard was unsurpassed; each and every citizen took great pride in the care
and rearing of these noble creatures, and their devotion to horses, carefully nurtured over many years until it had grown into a deeply-rooted tradition, had lead to wonderful results. The horses of Abdera commanded extraordinary prestige, and all the Thracian people from Cicilia to Bisalta paid a special tax to the Bithynians, the conquerors of Abdera. Moreover, the business of horse-rearing—a joy as well as a trade—occupied everyone, from the King down to the lowliest citizen.
This great tradition drew horse and master together much more closely than elsewhere in Thrace. The stable came to be regarded as a natural extension of the home, even (since enthusiasm leads to understandable excess) to the extent of allowing the horses to eat at table with their owners.
They were truly remarkable steeds, and the manner of their treatment might make one forget that they were beasts at all. Some slept under fine linen bedcovers and, since not a few veterinarians maintained that the equine race displayed artistic taste, others had the walls of their stalls decorated with simple frescoes, whilst in the horses’ cemetery there were two or three real masterpieces among the conventionally over-elaborate gravestones. Abdera’s most beautiful temple was dedicated to Orion, the horse that Neptune conjured from the ground with a single blow of his trident; and I believe that the current practice of carving a ship’s prow in the shape of a horse’s head derives from the temple decorations; in any event, the most common architectural decorations were the equestrian bas-reliefs. It was the King who showed the greatest devotion to horses, but his leniency towards his own steeds’ mischief turned them into particularly ferocious creatures, so much so that Podargos and Flash of Light became names in dark and terrible legends; for it should be added that horses were given human names.
But on the whole the horses of Abdera were so well-trained that bridles were unnecessary and were used only for adornment—a practice greatly appreciated by the horses themselves. The usual method of communication with them was by the spoken word and, since it had been found that complete freedom from all constraint brought out their best qualities, they were left to roam freely to feed and frolic in the lush meadows reserved for them on the outskirts of the city, on the banks of the River Kossinites, except when they needed to be saddled or harnessed. A horn was then sounded to summon them in, and they were always extremely punctual, whether it was for work or for feeding. Their skill in all manner of circus tricks, even in parlour games, their bravery in combat, their self-possession during formal ceremonies—all defied credulity. The Hippodrome at Abdera thus became renowned not only for its troupes of acrobats but also for its bronze-armoured teams of horses and for its ceremonial funerals, so that people came from far and near to wonder at the excellence of the trainers and horses alike.
This practice of nurturing horses, cultivating and idealizing their qualities—in short, this humanizing of the equine race—gradually brought about something on which the Bithynians gloated as another glorious national achievement: the intelligence of the animals began to develop, as did their moral conscience. But this also lead to some instances of rather curious behaviour, which aroused much public debate.
A mare demanded mirrors in her stall. She tore them off the walls of her master’s bedroom with her teeth, and when he protested she kicked them to pieces. When her whim was finally indulged, she became visibly coquettish. Another instance: Balios, the finest horse in the district, an elegant and highly-strung white colt who had survived two military campaigns and who thrilled at the sound of heroic hexameters, died of a broken heart. He had been stricken with love for the wife of his master, the general, and the lady made no attempt to disguise what had happened. It was whispered that his bizarre affaire gratified her vanity. Things of this sort occurred frequently in the capital.
There were also cases of equine infanticide, which increased at such an alarming rate that they had to be forestalled by giving the foals to old, motherly mules. The horses developed tastes for fish and for hemp, and they raided the hemp plantations; they also began to rebel against their masters in a number of scattered outbreaks, and had to be quelled with burning irons, whips proving inadequate. This stern punishment was employed more and more as the horses became increasingly restless, despite all attempts to discipline them—but these were half-hearted at best, for the Bithynians were besotted with their horses and took no heed of the growing unrest.
Soon there were more significant occurrences. Two or three teams of horses banded together to attack a carter who had flogged an unruly mare. The horses began to resist being harnessed and yoked, and donkeys started to be used in their place. Some horses would not be saddled at all, but their wealthy owners still took no action, dismissing it with a laugh as a passing mood.
On a certain day, the horses ignored the sound of the horn and their owners had to go and round them up from the meadows, but the rebellion did not break out at once; it erupted later, when the tide had covered the beach with stranded fishes—as had often happened before. On this day, however, the horses gorged themselves on the fishes and then were seen ambling slowly and menacingly back towards the open meadows in the suburbs of the city. The conflict first broke out at midnight. Suddenly, the inhabitants of the outlying regions heard a muffled but persistent sound of thunder as the horses stampeded together in an attempt to storm the city. The cause was not discovered until later, however; at the time there was merely surprise at the unexpected sound coming out of the night’s darkness, and no suspicion that an attack might be imminent.
Since the pasturelands were within the city walls nothing could contain the main assault, and since the horses also knew their master’s houses inside out, the destruction was devastating. It was an appalling night, yet only in the day’s light was the full extent of its horrors revealed.
Doors had been kicked down and they lay shattered on the ground, offering no obstacle to the hordes of frenzied horses pouring through in an unending stream. There was blood, for many citizens were crushed beneath the sharp hooves or torn apart by the great flashing teeth of the raging beasts, and men’s own weapons were turned against them to wreak destruction. The city was paralysed by the surging mass, its skies darkened by the clouds of dust that it raised, and it was rent by a weird tumult in which cries of rage or of pain mingled with whinnyings as subtle as speech and the violent crashes of destruction: strange and horrifying sounds which added to the visible terror of the onslaught. The ground trembled with the ceaseless pounding of the rebellious hooves which, like a hurricane, grew and faded in intensity as frantic crowds of people rushed to and fro without purpose or clear direction. The horses plundered the fields of hemp and even the wine cellars—some of the beasts, corrupted by luxurious living, had long coveted the latter—and their fury grew as they became intoxicated and maddened. Escape by sea was impossible, for the horses knew the purpose of the boats and barricaded the way to the harbour.
Only the fortress itself remained safe, and from within its walls men began to plan a defence. They fired arrows at any horse which approached, and if it fell within reach they dragged it inside for food.
Strange rumours spread amongst the cowering citizens: that the attack had been intended as nothing more than a pillaging expedition, and that the horses had battered down the doors and broken into the chambers merely to try and adorn themselves with the sumptuous draperies, the jewellery and the other finery that lay within. It was the resistance they met that had aroused their fury.
Others whispered of unthinkable acts of rapine, of women set upon and crushed with bestial violence on their own beds. They told of a virtuous young noblewoman who, racked with tears, had managed to stammer out the tale of her vile experience before she broke down utterly; how she was awakened in the dim lamp-light of her chamber by the foul, thick-lipped mouth of a black colt rubbing against hers, its lips curling with pleasure and revealing its loathsome teeth; how she cried out in sheer terror at the presence of an animal that had turned into a slavering beast, its eyes burning with an evil, human gleam ful
l of lust, and how she was almost drowned in a sea of hot blood when the horse was run through by her servant’s sword.
They told of cruel and deliberate murders, when mares gleefully bit their victims with the frenzy of she-devils as they crushed them with their hooves. They had slaughtered all the asses, but the mules had joined in the rebellion—mindlessly, revelling in destruction for its own sake and taking a particular pleasure in cruelly tormenting and then trampling dogs. All the while, the thunderous roar of the rampaging horses continued to shake the fortress, and the crashing sounds of the destruction grew louder. If the huddling citizens were to save their city from utter destruction they must escape somehow, though their assailants’ sheer power in strength and number made it impossibly dangerous. The men gathered their arms; but, now that they had had a taste of what they had craved, the horses launched another attack.
A sudden silence preceded the assault. From the fortress the men could see the fearful army congregating, not without some confusion, in the hippodrome. This took the animals several hours and, when everything seemed ready, a sudden bout of prancing and a series of high-pitched neighings, the purpose of which was impossible to discern, threw the ranks into great disarray.
The sun was already setting when the first charge came. It was, if one may use the term, no more than a demonstration, for the animals confined themselves to running past the fortress and returned riddled with arrows.
They launched another attack from the furthest part of the city and its impact on the city’s defences was enormous. The entire fortress reverberated beneath the storm of hooves, and its solid Doric ramparts were severely strained. This time the enemy was repulsed, but it very soon attacked again.
Most destructive were the shod horses and mules, which fell by the dozen; but, their numbers seemingly undiminished, they quickly closed their ranks in frantic rage.
The worst thing was that some had managed to put on fighting armour, and the steel mesh blunted the arrows. Others wore gaudy strips of cloth, others necklaces, and, childlike in their very fury, they would burst into unexpected frolics.
The Book of Fantasy Page 26