At the Queen's Mercy

by Mabel Fuller Blodgett

The lamp that lit my chamber had gone out, and the slave that was wont to sleep at my feet had left his accustomed place. With a strange inward shrinking I passed my hand swiftly over the huddled shape on the pavement, and as I thus learned the sickening truth, a lurid flash of lightning showed the distorted features of him whom I had called, and proved the reason of his silence.

Then a clap of thunder shook the very Palace. I heard the shrill scream of a frightened woman, and I groped my way to the door. As I reached it, a dull red glare lit up faintly the stone corridor, and I saw that it came from without and through a loophole that pierced the massive wall.

There was an indescribable murmur also that was deadened by the thickness of outer stone of the fortress Palace. This murmur sounded to me very much like the angry hum of a horde of bees. Hurrying feet, bare of sandals, ran this way and that. The royal household was astir and affrighted.

Soon I saw again a blinding flash of blue light and heard the deafening peal of thunder that followed. All this time there was no sound of falling rain, but the air was heavy and stagnant and full of a curious mineral odor that stank in my nostrils.

Then as I groped my way onward through the tangled labyrinth that lay between me and the Queen, I felt a hand fall on my shoulder, and a voice spoke low in my ear through all the tumult. I turned, and the voice whined on, and in a moment I had caught the sense of that which it uttered.

“For behold, I have given gifts of price to the Temple, yet doth fire from heaven even now destroy my household. Woe is me! but the magic of the white stranger is strong. Follow, my lord, and I will lead you to your friends. So shall the shadow of your protecting mantle fall upon me, and my miserable life be spared.”

Thus the creature grovelled before me, and even as he spoke, a forked tongue of light struck a cornice above our heads, and a great fragment of carved stone fell at my feet.

I bade the whimpering fellow rise and be a man and lead me, as he valued his black skin, with all speed, to the dungeon where lay my comrade and the maid.

So at his word I turned me back once more, and, drawing my knife, I let the shivering wretch gaze on the bright polish of its metal, that he might forswear all thought of treachery. I think, however, that the deadly fear of the storm that consumed him would have kept him true.

At least, without mischance, he led me downward, by a way new to me, till at length, in the bowels of the earth, I rejoined my friends. It was a hasty, if a joyous, greeting that we gave one another. There was no time to lose. Astolba’s face told me that, as did the feverish pressure with which my good comrade Lestrade grasped my hands.