For me, I have, thank the Lord, small stomach for heathen follies; little patience with holy serpents and sacred apes, with bloody chanting and such like deviltries.
Nevertheless, when Astolba added softly, “It is the Queen’s order; will you learn of me?” I nodded, and she, I think, was puzzled and not best pleased, not knowing for certain which argument had changed the habit of my mind. And that is, let me tell you, an excellent manner to deal with women.
Astolba, therefore,—for so she was called, and the word meaning “white dove” did indeed singularly befit her,—Astolba having told her errand and won consent, began at once her mission.
I cannot fit with nicety the meaning of all she told into the jewelled setting of her speech. I am, as I have said, a plain man, and can but repeat the substance of the strange lesson begun that hour, and continued in due order during many succeeding days, until the language and customs of this strange people became at length known to us.
For Astolba herself, her own story was simple. We already knew much from the dying words of the fugitive priest. Her future fate was to her, as to us, a sealed book, and we forbore to let her see the red light cast upon it by those same last words.
The maid had so far been treated well, with a kind of contemptuous pity, by her beautiful mistress. Lah was curious of all that pertained to Saxon life and usage. She had even learned the language; she had questioned her white prisoner closely about the arts, the doings, the manufactures of the stranger. She had copied in some measure, but secretly, such things as pleased her fancy, or seemed like to extend her power.
“She is wonderful,” said Astolba, “but she is terrible. The Queen’s nature is like a bottomless well. You drop a pebble into its depths, and you listen and listen, and you hear no sound. It is falling, falling, falling. And so with Lah. No one can judge that hidden depth. She is all in one. Childlike, lovable, gentle, then fierce, treacherous, and oh so unspeakably cruel!”
The girl covered her face with her hands as if to shut out some horrid sight.
“You could not bear, strong men that you are, the things that I have seen,” she said in a whisper. Then she went on more calmly, to speak of other matters, but the vision of the icy fear that had pierced her was by me not soon forgotten.
As I look back on it all now, I see how, little by little, we learned the belief of the people of the Walled City.