"Leave us alone, Mungana, I wish to speak with this white lord."
He did not seem to hear her words, but continued to stare at Alan.
"Hearken!" she exclaimed in a voice of ice. "Do my bidding and begone, or you shall sleep alone to-night in a certain chamber that you know of."
Then Mungana rose, looked at her as a dog sometimes does at a cruel master who is about to beat it, yes, with just that same expression, put his hands before his eyes for a little while, and turning, left the hall by a side door which closed behind him. The Asika watched him go, laughed musically and said:
"It is a very dull thing to be married,--but how are you named, white man?"
"Vernon," he answered.
"Vernoon, Vernoon," she repeated, for she could not p.r.o.nounce the O as we do. "Are you married, Vernoon?"
He shook his head.
"Have you been married?"
"No," he answered, "never, but I am going to be."
"Yes," she repeated, "you are going to be. You remember that you were near to it many years ago, when Little Bonsa got jealous and ran away with you. Well, she won"t do that again, for doubtless she is tired of you now, and besides," she added with a flash of ferocity, "I"d melt her with fire first and set her spirit free."
While Jeekie was trying to explain this mysterious speech to Alan, the Asika broke in, asking:
"Do you always want to wear that mask?"
He answered, "Certainly not," whereon she bade Jeekie take it off, which he did.
"Understand me," she said, fixing her great languid eyes upon his in a fashion that made him exceedingly uncomfortable, "understand, Vernoon, that if you go out anywhere, it must be in your mask, which you can only put off when you are alone with me?"
"Why?"
"Because, Vernoon, I do not choose that any other woman should see your face. If a woman looks upon your uncovered face, remember that she dies--not nicely."
Alan stared at her blankly, being unable to find appropriate Asiki words in which to reply to this threat. But the Asika only leaned back in her chair and laughed at his evident confusion and dismay, till a new thought struck her.
"Your lips are free now," she said; "kiss my hand after the fashion of your own country," and she stretched it out to Alan, leaving him no choice but to obey her.
"Why," she went on mischievously, taking his hand and in turn touching it with her red lips, "why, are you a thief, Vernoon? That ring was mine and you have stolen it. How did you steal that ring?"
"I don"t know," he answered, through Jeekie, "I found it on my finger.
I cannot understand how it came there. I understand nothing of all this talk."
"Well, well, keep it, Vernoon, only give me that other ring of yours in exchange."
"I cannot," he replied, colouring. "I promised to wear it always."
"Whom did you promise?" she asked with a flash of rage. "Was it a woman?
Nay, I see, it is a man"s ring, and that is well, for otherwise I would bring a curse on her, however far off she may be dwelling. Say no more and forgive my anger. A vow is a vow--keep your ring. But where is that one you used to wear in bygone days? I recall that it had a cross upon it, not this star and figure of an eagle."
Now Alan remembered that his uncle owned such a ring with a cross upon it, and was frightened, for how did this woman know these things?
"Jeekie," he said, "ask the Asika if I am mad, or if she is. How can she know what I used to wear, seeing that I was never in this place till yesterday, and certainly I have not met her anywhere else."
"She mean when you your reverend uncle," said Jeekie, wagging his great head, "she think you identical man."
"What troubles you, Vernoon," the Asika asked softly, then added anything but softly to Jeekie, "Translate, you dog, and be swift."
So Jeekie translated in a great hurry, telling her what Alan had said, and adding on his own account that he, silly white man that he was, could not understand how, as she was quite a young woman, she could have seen him before she was born. If that were so, she would be old and ugly now, not beautiful as she was.
"I never saw you before, and you never saw me, Lady, yet you talk as though we had been friends," broke in Alan in his halting Asiki.
"So we were in the spirit, Vernoon. It was she who went before me who loved that white man whose face was as your face is, but her ghost lives on in me and tells me the tale. There have been many Asikas, for thousands of years they have ruled in this land, yet but one spirit belongs to them all; it is the string upon which the beads of their lives are threaded. White man, I, whom you think young, know everything back to the beginning of the world, back to the time when I was a monkey woman sitting in those cedar trees, and if you wish, I can tell it you."
"I should like to hear it very much indeed," answered Alan, when he had mastered her meaning, "though it is strange that none of the rest of us remember such things. Meanwhile, O Asika, I will tell you that I desire to return to my own land, taking with me that gift of gold that you have given me. When will it please you to allow me to return?"
"Not yet a while, I think," she said, smiling at him weirdly, for no other word will describe that smile. "My spirit remembers that it was always thus. Those wanderers who came hither always wished to return again to their own country, like the birds in spring. Once there was a white man among them, that was more than twenty hundred years ago; he was a native of a country called Roma, and wore a helmet. He wished to return, but my mother of that day, she kept him and by and by I will show him to you if you like. Before that there was a brown man who came from a land where a great river overflows its banks every year. He was a prince of his own country, who had fled from his king and the desert folk made a slave of him, and so he drifted hither. He wished to return also, for my mother of that day, or my spirit that dwelt in her, showed to him that if he could but be there they would make him king in his own land. But my mother of that day, she would not let him go, and by and by I will show him to you, if you wish."
Bewildered, amazed, Alan listened to her. Evidently the woman was mad, or else she played some mystical part for reasons of her own.
"When will you let me go, O Asika?" he repeated.
"Not yet a while, I think," she said again. "You are too comely and I like you," and she smiled at him. There was nothing coa.r.s.e in the smile, indeed it had a certain spiritual quality which thrilled him. "I like you," she went on in her dreamy voice, "I would keep you with me until your spirit is drawn up into my spirit, making it strong and rich as all the spirits that went before have done, those spirits that my mothers loved from the beginning, which dwell in me to-day."
Now Alan grew alarmed, desperate even.
"Queen," he said, "but just now your husband sat here, is it right then that you should talk to me thus?"
"My husband," she answered, laughing. "Why, that man is but a slave who plays the part of husband to satisfy an ancient law. Never has he so much as kissed my finger tips; my women--those who waited on you last night--are his wives, not I,--or may be, if he will. Soon he will die of love for me, and then when he is dead, though not before, I may take another husband, any husband that I choose, and I think that no black man shall be my lord, who have other, purer blood in me. Vernoon, five centuries have gone by since an Asika was really wed to a foreign man who wore a green turban and called himself a son of the Prophet, a man with a hooked nose and flashing eyes, who reviled our G.o.ds until they slew him, even though he was the beloved of their priestess. She who went before me also would have married that white man whose face was like your face, but he fled with Little Bonsa, or rather Little Bonsa fled with him. So she pa.s.sed away unwed, and in her place I came."
"How did you come, if she whom you call your mother was not your mother?" asked Alan.
"What is that to you, white man?" she replied haughtily. "I am here, as my spirit has been here from the first. Oh! I see you think I lie to you, come then, come, and I will show you those who from the beginning have been the husbands of the Asika," and rising from her chair she took him by the hand.
They went through doors and by long, half-lit pa.s.sages till they came to great gates guarded by old priests armed with spears. As they drew near to these priests the Asika loosed a scarf that she wore over her breast-plate of gold fish scales, and threw the star-spangled thing over Alan"s head, that even these priests should not see his face. Then she spoke a word to them and they opened the gates. Here Jeekie evinced a disposition to remain, remarking to his master that he thought that place, into which he had never entered, "much too holy for poor n.i.g.g.e.r like him."
The Asika asked him what he had said and he explained his sense of unworthiness in her own tongue.
"Come, fellow," she exclaimed, "to translate my words and to bear witness that no trick is played upon your lord."
Still Jeekie lingered bashfully, whereon at a sign from her one of the priests p.r.i.c.ked him behind with his great spear, and uttering a low howl he sprang forward.
The Asika led the way down a pa.s.sage, which they saw ended in a big hall lit with lamps. Now they were in it and Alan became aware that they had entered the treasure house of the Asiki, since here were piled up great heaps of gold, gold in ingots, gold in nuggets, in stone jars filled with dust, in vessels plain or embossed with monstrous shapes in fetishes and in little squares and discs that looked as though they had served as coins. Never had he seen so much gold before.
"You are rich here, Lady," he said, gazing at the piles astonished.
She shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, as I have heard that some people count wealth. These are the offerings brought to our G.o.ds from the beginning; also all the gold found in the mountains belongs to the G.o.ds, and there is much of it there. The gift I sent to you was taken from this heap, but in truth it is but a poor gift, seeing that although this stuff is bright and serves for cups and other things, it has no use at all and is only offered to the G.o.ds because it is harder to come by than other metals. Look, these are prettier than the gold," and from a stone table she picked up at hazard a long necklace of large, uncut stones, red and white in colour and set alternatively, that Alan judged to be crystals and spinels.
"Take it," she said, "and examine it at your leisure. It is very old.