The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician

by Edwin Lester Arnold

I know not how long it was, some hours most likely, but after a time the strangest feeling took possession of me in that slumber, and a fine ethereal terror, purged of gross material fear, possessed my spirit. I awoke—not with the pleasant drowsiness which marks refreshment, but wide and staring, and my black Phrygian hair, without the cause of sight or sound, stood stiff upon my head, for something was moving in the silent tent.

I glared around, yet nothing could be seen: the lights were low in their sockets, but all else was in order: my piled shield and helmet lay there in the shadows, our warlike implements and gear were all as I had seen them last, no noise or vision broke the blank, and yet—and yet—a coward chill sat on me, for here and there was moving something unseen, unheard, unfelt by outer senses. I rose, and, fearful and yet angry to be cowed by a dreadful nothing, stared into every corner and shadow, but naught was there. Then I lifted a dim taper, and held it over the face of the dead girl and stared amazed! Were it given to mortals to die twice, that girl had! But a short time before and her sweet face had worn the reflection of that dreadful day: there was a pallid fright and pain upon it we could not smooth away, and now some wonderful strange thing had surely happened, and all the unrest was gone, all the pained dissatisfaction and frightened wonder. The maid was still and smooth and happy-looking. Hoth! as I bent over her she looked just as one might look who reads aright some long enigma and finds relief with a sigh from some hard problem. She slept so wondrous still and quiet, and looked so marvelous fair now, and contented, that it purged my fear, and, strong in that fair presence—how could I be else?—I sat, and after a time, though you may wonder at it, I slept again.

I dozed and dozed and dozed, in happy forgetfulness of the present while the black night wore on to morning, and the last faint flushes of the priestly tapers played softly in their sockets; and then again I started up with every nerve within me thrilling, my clenched fists on my knees, and my wide eyes glaring into the mid gloom, for that strange nothing was moving gently once more about us, fanning me, it seemed, with the rhythmed swing of unseen draperies, circling in soft cadenced circles here and there, mute, voiceless, presenceless, and yet so real and tangible to some unknown inner sense that hailed it from within me that I could almost say that now ’twas here and now ’twas there, and locate it with trembling finger, although, in truth, nothing moved or stirred.

I looked at the maid. She was as she had been; then into every dusky place and corner, but nothing showed; then rose and walked to the tent-flap and lifted it and looked out. Down in the long valley below the somber shadows were seamed by the winding of the pale river; and all away on the low meadows, piled thick and deep with the black mounds of dead foemen, the pale marsh lights were playing amid the corpses—leaping in ghostly fantasy from rank to rank, and heap to heap, coalescing, separating, shining, vanishing, all in the unbroken twilight silence. And those somber fields below were tapestried with the thin wisps of white mist that lay in the hollows, and were shredded out into weird shapes and forms over the black bosom of the near-spent night. Up above, far away in the east, where the low hills lay flat in the distance, the lappet fringe of the purple sky was dipped in the pale saffron of the coming sun, and overhead a few white stars were shining, and now and then the swart, almost unseen wings of a raven went gently beating through the star-lit void; and as I watched, I saw him and his brothers check over the Crecy ridges and with hungry croak, like black spirits, circle round and drop one after another through the thin white veils of vapor that shrouded prince, chiefs, and vassals, peer and peasant, in those deep long swathes of the black harvest we cut, but left ungarnered, yesterday. Near around me the English camp was all asleep, tired and heavy with the bygone battle, the listless pickets on the misty, distant mounds hung drooping over their piled spears, the metaled chargers’ heads were all asag, they were so weary as they stood among the shadows by their untouched fodder, and the damp pennons and bannerets over the knightly porches scarce lifted on the morning air! That air came cool and sad yonder from the English sea, and wandered melancholy down our lifeless, empty canvas streets, lifting the loose tent-flaps, and sighing as it strayed among the sleeping groups, stirring with its unseen feet the white ashes of the dead camp-fires, the only moving presence in all the place—sad, silent, and listless. I dropped the hangings over the chill morning glimmer, the camp of sleeping warriors and dusty valley of the dead, and turned again to my post. I was not sleepy now, nor afraid—even though as I entered a draught of misty outer air entered with me and the last atom of the priestly taper shone fitful and yellow for a moment upon the dead Isobel, and then went out.

I sat down by the maid in the chill dark, and looked sadly on the ground, the while my spirits were as low as you may well guess, and the wind went moaning round and round the tent. But I had not sat a moment—scarcely twenty breathing spaces—when a faint, fine scent of herb-cured wolf-skins came upon the air, and strange shadows began to stand out clear upon the floor. I saw my weapons shining with a pale refulgence, and—by all the gods!—the walls of the tent were a-shimmer with pale luster! With a half-stifled cry I leaped to my feet, and there—there across the bier—though you tell me I lie a thousand times—there, calm, refulgent, looking gently in the dead girl’s face, splendid in her ruddy savage beauty, bending over that white marbled body, so ghostly thin and yet so real, so true in every line and limb, was Blodwen—Blodwen, the British chieftainess—my thousand-years-dead wife.

Looking gently in the dead girl’s face, was Blodwen—Blodwen—my thousand-years-dead wife

Standing there serene and lovely, with that strange lavender glow about her, was that wonderful and dreadful shade—holding the dead girl’s hand and looking at her closely with a face that spoke of neither resentment nor sorrow. I stood and stared at them, every wit within me numb and cold by the suddenness of it, and then the apparition slowly lifted her eyes to mine, and I—the wildest sensations of the strong old love and brand-new fear possessed me. What! do you tell me that affection dies? Why, there in that shadowed tent, so long after, so untimely, so strange and useless—all the old stream of the love I had borne for that beautiful slave-girl, though it had been cold and overlaid by other loves for a thousand years, welled up in my heart on a sudden. I made half a pace toward her, I stretched a trembling, entreating hand, yet drew it back, for I was mortal and I feared; and an ecstasy of pleasure filled my throbbing veins, and my love said: “On! she was thine once and must be now—down to thy knees and claim her!—what matters anything, if thou hast a lien upon such splendid loveliness!” and my coward flesh hung back cold and would not, and now back and now forward I swayed with these contending feelings, while that fair shadow eyed me with the most impenetrable calm. At last she spoke, with never a tone in her voice to show she remembered it was near three hundred years since she had spoken before.

“My Phœnician,” she said in soft monotone, looking at the dead Isobel who lay pale in the soft-blue shine about her, “this was a pity. You are more dull-witted than I thought.”

I bent my head but could not speak, and so she asked: