At the Queen’s Mercy
9781465665263
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I am a plain man, and to do a plain man’s work was ever more to my taste than to set down with a clerk’s skill such happenings as have befallen. Nevertheless, something within me spurs me onward; for, to tell the truth, I am loath to die leaving no record of the sights that I have seen; sights to brand the memory and stir the blood, and doings to turn one hot and cold, years after the doers thereof have crumbled into dust. Fate, fickle jade, has willed a peaceful end for me—a man from whom peace has ever been afar off. Yet by my fireside I am not alone: Zobo, the Mighty, wrestles in the flames; Astolba, my fair white dove Astolba, gently smiles upon my waking dreams, and she, the Queen with deadly wondrous beauty, like some fair poisonous flower, flaunts before my eyes. But enough of fancies. I must on to the beginning of the marvellous tale in which I was to play so large a part. A tale strange beyond common reckoning; strange beyond belief, were I not known not only as a man whose inches well may bear him out, but also as one little versed in the art of embroidering blunt facts with fine imaginings. It chanced in this wise:—We sat by the fire, Gaston Lestrade and I, one dark and stormy evening, for this was the end of the rainy season. We were in the African interior; fortune had dealt hardly with us. It is not needful to the purpose of this tale to tell by what and by whom we had come to so dismal a pass; enough that we found ourselves wet, hungry, surrounded by hostile savages, and, worse than all, poor to nakedness after four months’ irksome traffic in ivory and gum. Lestrade sat pulling his fine black mustache, for all his present wretchedness, with the air of a dandy on the Parisian boulevard, though there was not a petticoat within miles, and death, from one cause or another, more like to be our portion than amorous adventure. A quick eye for a woman had my comrade, and a heart big enough to hold all the sex, or, at least, such as were personable. But over and above all this, Gaston Lestrade was a man to die for a friend, albeit with a jest on his lips, and I forbore to meddle with his pastimes. For myself, I cannot deny that women have ever held me in esteem, and once or twice have urged me to retreat by hot advances. The reason of this has ever seemed to me that I am big of limb and brawny withal; that I am slow to speech and anger, yet enduring in that to which I have set my mind. And this is not commonly the manner of the sex, who look up to the power or strength such as the Lord has not given them, whose tongues are nimble, and whose fancies float hither and thither with every breath, like thistledown before the wind. And so they take to that which is not of their fashion. Every man to his taste, say I—the wooing of maids to one, the clash of arms to another, and for me comfort and plenty, and as little danger as possible, which is in itself a strange thing, since it has been decreed that all my life till now be spent for war and women. But I must hark back to the fireside. We had taken stock of our resources, and with the less trouble, inasmuch as they were few.
