Chapter Thirty One.
The Queen Isori.
Queen Isori had come, and, with her army, was in possession of her royal capital of Karnadama.
She had taken away fifty-six thousand foot and mounted soldiers. She brought home forty-eight thousand six hundred and twenty able-bodied amazons. Seven thousand three hundred and eighty dauntless females had found the death they coveted, and over a thousand disconsolate widowers bewailed their fate loudly in the temple courtyards. It was the custom for those bereaved widowers to mourn in public for their departed spouses, while they prayed that their sins might be overbalanced by their good deeds, in the scales of the gods.
The men of Karnadama were unquestioning slaves to custom, therefore they covered their smooth heads with ashes, wailed, howled, and prayed during the hours appointed for mourning. Afterwards they met together in those vaults and shades where the wine was kept cool in great clay-baked jars, and drowned their sorrows as deeply as possible.
Bands of them reeled past the garden walls, over which Ned and his companions leaned, watching the bustling midnight streets in the moonlight. Some of them were trying to sing, others laughed hysterically, while a few of the morbid class, remembering the fine women they had lost, wept feebly while they recounted the departed one’s charms. Ned almost pitied those ownerless and most degenerate goats.
Now that they had seen the great queen, Ned had only one desire left; that was, to lead his men safely from this city, and back to Rhodesia as quickly as possible.
He had passed through every street and alley until he knew each mart and building by heart. He and his companions had sailed on the lake and along the canals that intersected the city, hundreds of times. They had watched the men in their open shops: the working jewellers and enamellers, the carvers, sculptors, and painters; the armourers and blacksmiths; the confectioners, bakers, hairdressers, and loom-workers. These were all quaint and interesting for a time, but they had now grown stale. They abhorred the men, and did not feel over comfortable with those bold-eyed, combative women, beautiful although most of them were.
The day when Isori returned at the head of her victorious cohorts was the climax to all the brilliant sights they had witnessed; after that procession with the audience which followed were over, Ned began to feel that he could not get too quickly away.