Such vaults were decidedly uncommon among the Egyptians. The idea of feasting in one was novel and appealing. Thrilled exclamations came from the eager, excited crowd and they pressed forward to gaze into the depths, now brightly illuminated. They saw a room beneath them almost as vast in size as the amphitheater in which they were standing. It was filled with banquet, tables upon which were set the most delectable foods and rich, sparkling wines in an abundance that would satiate the banqueters of Bacchus. Luxurious, thick rugs covered the floors. Among the tables passed nymphlike maidens, and at one end of the room harpists and singers stood, making sublime music.
The air was cool with the dampness of under-earth, and it was made delightfully fragrant by the perfumes of burning spices and the savory odors of the feast. If it had been heaven itself which the crowd of the queen’s guests now gazed down upon they would not have considered the vision disappointing. Perhaps even if they had known the hideous menace that lurked in those gay-draped walls beneath them, they would still have found the allurement of the banquet scene difficult to resist.
Decorum and reserve were almost completely forgotten in the swiftness of the guests’ descent. The stairs were not wide enough to afford room for all those who rushed upon them, and some tumbled over, landing unhurt upon the thick carpets. The priests themselves forgot their customary dignity and aloofness when they looked upon the beauty of the maiden attendants.
Immediately all of the guests gathered around the banquet tables, and the next hour was occupied in gluttonous feasting. Wine was unlimited, and so was the thirst of the guests. Goblets were refilled as quickly as they were made empty by the capacious mouths of the drinkers. The songs and the laughter, the dancing and the wild frolicking grew less and less restrained until the banquet became a delirious orgy.
The queen alone, seated upon a cushioned dais from which she might overlook the whole room, remained aloof from the general hilarity. Her thick black brows twitched; her luminous black eyes shone strangely between their narrow painted lids. There was something peculiarly feline in the curl of her rich red lips. Now and again her eyes sought the section of wall to her left, where hung gorgeous braided tapestries from the east. But it seemed not the tapestries that she looked upon. Color would mount upon her brow and her slender fingers would dig still tighter into the cushions she reclined upon.
In her mind the queen Nitocris was seeing a ghastly picture. It was the picture of a room of orgy and feasting suddenly converted into a room of terror and horror, human beings one moment drunken and lustful, the next screaming in the seizure of sudden and awful death. If any of those present had been empowered to see also that picture of dire horror, they would have clambered wildly to make their escape. But none was so empowered.
With increasing wildness the banquet continued into the middle of the night. Some of the banqueters, disgustingly gluttonous, still gorged themselves at the greasy tables. Others lay in drunken stupor, or lolled amorously with the slave girls. But most of them, formed in a great irregular circle, skipped about the room in a barbaric, joy-mad dance, dragging and tripping each other in uncouth merriment and making the hall ring with their ceaseless shouts, laughter, and hoarse song.
When the hour had approached near to midnight, the queen, who had sat like one entranced, arose from the cushioned dais. One last intent survey she gave to the crowded room of banquet. It was a scene which she wished to imprint permanently upon her mind. Much pleasure might she derive in the future by recalling that picture, and then imagining what came afterward—stark, searing terror rushing in upon barbaric joy!
She stepped down from the dais and walked swiftly to the steps. Her departure made no impression upon the revelers. When she had arrived at the top of the stairs she looked down and observed that no one had marked her exit.
Around the walls of the temple, dim-lit and fantastic-looking at night, with the cool wind from the river sweeping through and bending the flames of the tall candelabra, stalwart guardsmen were standing at their posts, and when the gold cloaked figure of the queen arose from the aperture, they advanced toward her hurriedly. With a motion, she directed them to place the slab of rock in its tight-fitting sockets. With a swift, noiseless hoist and lowering, they obeyed the command. The queen bent down. There was no change in the boisterous sounds from below. Nothing was yet suspected.
Drawing the soft and shimmering folds of her cloak about her with fingers that trembled with eagerness, excitement and the intense emotion which she felt, the queen passed swiftly across the stone floor of the temple toward the open front through which the night wind swept, blowing her cloak in sheenful waves about her tall and graceful figure. The slaves followed after in silent file, well aware of the monstrous deed about to be executed and without reluctance to play their parts.
Down the steps of the palace into the moon-white night, passed the weird procession. Their way led them down an obviously secreted path through thick ranks of murmuring palms which in their low voices seemed to be whispering shocked remonstrances against what was about to be done. But in her stern purpose the queen was not susceptible to any dissuasion from god or man. Vengeance, strongest of passions, made her obdurate as stone.
Out upon a rough and apparently new-constructed stone pier the thin path led. Beneath, the cold, dark waters of the Nile surged silently by. Here the party came to a halt. Upon this stone pier would the object of their awful midnight errand be accomplished.
With a low-spoken word, the queen commanded her followers to hold back. With her own hand she would perform the act of vengeance.
In the foreground of the pier a number of fantastic, wandlike levers extended upward. Toward these the queen advanced, slowly and stiffly as an executioner mounts the steps of the scaffold. When she had come beside them, she grasped one up thrust bar, fiercely, as if it had been the throat of a hated antagonist. Then she lifted her face with a quick intake of breath toward the moon-lightened sky. This was to her a moment of supreme ecstasy. Grasped in her hand was an instrument which could release awful death upon those against whom she wished vengeance. Their lives were as securely in her grasp as was this bar of iron.
Slowly, lusting upon every triumph-filled second of this time of ecstasy, she turned her face down again to the formidable bar in her hand. Deliberately she drew it back to its limit. This was the lever that opened the wall in the banquet vault. It gave entrance to death. Only the other bar now intervened between the banqueters, probably still reveling undisturbed, and the dreadful fate which she had prepared for them. Upon this bar now her jeweled fingers clutched. Savagely this time she pulled it; then with the litheness of a tiger she sprang to the edge of the pier. She leaned over it and stared down into the inky rush of the river. A new sound she heard above the steady flow. It was the sound of waters suddenly diverted into a new channel—an eager, plunging sound. Down to the hall of revelry they were rushing—these savage waters—bringing terror and sudden death.
A cry of triumph, wild and terrible enough to make even the hearts of the brutish slaves turn cold, now broke from the lips of the queen. The pharaoh was avenged.
And even he must have considered his avenging adequate had he been able to witness it.
After the retiring of the queen, the banquet had gone on without interruption of gayety. None noticed her absence. None noticed the silent replacing of the stone in the socket. No premonition of disaster was felt. The musicians, having been informed beforehand of the intended event of the evening, had made their withdrawal before the queen. The slaves, whose lives were of little value to the queen, were as ignorant of what was to happen as were the guests themselves.
Not until the wall opened up, with a loud and startling crunch, did even those most inclined toward suspicion feel the slightest uneasiness. Then it was that a few noticed the slab to have been replaced, shutting them in. This discovery, communicated throughout the hall in a moment, seemed to instill a sudden fear in the hearts of all. Laughter did not cease, but the r
ing of dancers were distracted from their wild jubilee. They all turned toward the mysteriously opened wall and gazed into its black depths.
A hush fell over them. And then became audible the mounting sound of rushing water. A shriek rose from the throat of a woman. And then terror took possession of all within the room. Panic like the burst of flames flared into their hearts. Of one accord, they rushed upon the stair. And it, being purposely made frail, collapsed before the foremost of the wildly screaming mob had reached its summit. Turbulently they piled over the tables, filling the room with a hideous clamor. But rising above their screams was the shrill roar of the rushing water, and no sound could be more provoking of dread and terror. Somewhere in its circuitous route from the pier to the chamber of its reception it must have met with temporary blockade, for it was several minutes after the sound of it was first detected that the first spray of that death-bringing water leapt into the faces of the doomed occupants of the room.
With the ferocity of a lion springing into the arena of a Roman amphitheater to devour the gladiators set there for its delectation, the black water plunged in. Furiously it surged over the floor of the room, sweeping tables before it and sending its victims, now face to face with their harrowing doom, into a hysteria of terror. In a moment that icy, black water had risen to their knees, although the room was vast. Some fell instantly dead from the shock, or were trampled upon by the desperate rushing of the mob. Tables were clambered upon. Lamps and candles were extinguished. Brilliant light rapidly faded to twilight, and a ghastly dimness fell over the room as only the suspended lanterns remained lit. And what a scene of chaotic and hideous horror might a spectator have beheld! The gorgeous trumpery of banquet invaded by howling waters of death! Gayly dressed merrymakers caught suddenly in the grip of terror! Gasps and screams of the dying amid tumult and thickening dark!
What more horrible vengeance could Queen Nitocris have conceived than this banquet of death? Not Diablo himself could be capable of anything more fiendishly artistic. Here in the temple of Osiris those nobles and priests who had slain the pharaoh in expiation of his sacrilege against Osiris had now met their deaths. And it was in the waters of the Nile, material symbol of the god Osiris, that they had died. It was magnificent in its irony!
I would be content to end this story here if it were but a story. However, it is not merely a story, as you will have discerned before now if you have been a student of the history of Egypt. Queen Nitocris is not a fictitious personage. In the annals of ancient Egypt she is no inconspicuous figure. Principally responsible for her prominence is her monstrous revenge upon the slayers of her brother, the narration of which I have just concluded. Glad would I be to end this story here; for surely anything following must be in the nature of an anticlimax. However, being not a mere storyteller here, but having upon me also the responsibility of a historian, I feel obliged to continue the account to the point where it was left off by Herodotus, the great Greek historian. And therefore I add this postscript, anticlimax though it be.
The morning of the day after the massacre in the temple, the guests of the queen not having made their return, the citizens of Thebes began to glower with dark suspicions. Rumors came to them through divers channels that something of a most extraordinary and calamitous nature had occurred at the scene of the banquet during the night. Some had it that the temple had collapsed upon the revelers and all had been killed. However, this theory was speedily dispelled when a voyager from down the river reported having passed the temple in a perfectly firm condition but declared that he had seen no signs of life about the place—only the brightly canopied boats, drifting at their moorings.
Uneasiness steadily increased throughout the day. Sage persons recalled the great devotion of the queen toward her dead brother, and noted that the guests at the banquet of last night had been composed almost entirely of those who had participated in his slaying.
When in the evening the queen arrived in the city, pale, silent, and obviously nervous, threatening crowds blocked the path of her chariot, demanding roughly an explanation of the disappearance of her guests. Haughtily she ignored them and lashed forward the horses of her chariot, pushing aside the tight mass of people. Well she knew, however, that her life would be doomed as soon as they confirmed their suspicions. She resolved to meet her inevitable death in a way that befitted one of her rank, not at the filthy hands of a mob.
Therefore upon her entrance into the palace she ordered her slaves to fill instantly her boudoir with hot and smoking ashes. When this had been done, she went to the room, entered it, closed the door and locked it securely, and then flung herself down upon a couch in the center of the room. In a short time the scorching heat and the suffocating thick fumes of the smoke overpowered her. Only her beautiful dead body remained for the hands of the mob.
(Published 1928)
A Lady’s Beaded Bag
Through the chill of a November evening a small man trudged down an alley, bearing upon his shoulders a huge, bulging sack. He moved with that uneasy, half-unconscious stealth characteristic of an old and weary mongrel who realizes that his life can be preserved from its enemies through wariness alone. The profession which he followed was not illegitimate; he had no need of fearing molestation from the enforcers of the law. And yet his manner seemed to indicate a sense of guilt and fear of detection. He kept close to the walls of the garages as though seeking concealment in their shadows. He skirted widely the circles of radiance cast by the occasional alley lights. Whenever he encountered another alleywalker he lowered his head without glancing at the other’s face. He had none of the defiant hardness and boldness common among most of his kind. He was oppressed with an almost maniacal sense of lowliness and shame.
He had been a trash-picker for fifteen years. He had spent each day following an unvarying route through the alleys of the city’s exclusive residential section, delving among the contents of ash-pits for old shoes, broken and rusted metal objects, and bundles of soiled and ragged cloth. The fruits of his scavangery he sold for a pittance to dealers who could make use of such rubbish. It would have been an intolerably drear and colorless occupation had he not been sustained through all of those fifteen years by the hope of some day discovering among the trash something of great worth accidentally thrown there. A diamond ring or pin, a watch, earrings—something for which he might receive hundreds of dollars, bringing the fulfillment of his beggar-dreams.
There had been times when his heart had been made to leap simply by the sharp glitter of a bit of broken glass or golden tinfoil, glimpsed over the edge of an ash-pit. And though he had found nothing as yet of greater worth than the scraps of metal, leather, and cloth, hope had not died in him.
He had made it an inviolable rule always to complete his route. Therefore, though his sack was already packed to its capacity, he would not turn back this evening until he had traversed the last block of alley. With aching feet and back he trudged from pit to pit, stopping sometimes to exchange one piece of rubbish in his bag for another of slightly more value. He came at length to a pit whose contents were surmounted by a mauve-colored milliner’s box, filled with a bundle of wrapping paper. He was prompted by some impulse to pull the box to the edge of the pit to look at it more closely. The sound of something heavy sliding beneath the bundled paper caught his attention. Removing the paper, he peered sharply into the interior of the box. He saw there one of those things for which he had been searching fifteen years. It was a lady’s beaded bag.
For a moment greed was stronger than caution. With trembling fingers he seized the bag and started to lift it from its covert. But at that moment a door slammed and he quickly lifted the heel of an old shoe and pretended to examine it, while his heart hammered at his breast and his head swam with excitement. A lady’s beaded bag!
The door slammed once more. He dropped the old heel, crouched closer against the pit. He reached once more into the interior of the box and found the beaded bag. He drew his fingers over its soft, cool surf
ace with the lightness of a cautious Don Juan caressing a woman of whom he is not sure. Once more he scanned the vista of backyards before him to assure himself that he was unobserved; then with lightning speed removed the bag from the box and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat. It was done. The treasure was his.
With elaborately affected nonchalance he swung the sack over his shoulder and started slowly down the alley, betraying outwardly no sign that he had found in the pit anything of more importance than the milliner’s box and the old heel that he had fingered. But in his pocket his hand was clasping the beaded bag—clasping it tightly, as though only through the cutting of the tiny cool beads into the hot flesh of his palm could he be made really to believe in its reality. With his fingers he found the opening of the bag. He squeezed them into its plushy interior. He could feel the coins and bills which it contained. It was fairly stuffed with them. Enchanting visions of the pleasures which this money could bring him passed kaleidoscopically before his eyes. He pictured himself clad in handsome clothes, dining upon delectable foods, enjoying for a while those luxuries and splendors of life of which he had yearningly dreamt for many years.
Before reaching the end of the alley he glanced once more behind him. And in the instant of that glance all of his rapturous dreams were shattered. Standing beside the ash-pit in which the bag had lain was a tall young man in the garb of a chauffeur. Their eyes met. And though the regard of the young chauffeur was perfectly casual, it brought panic to the trash-picker. He fancied that he could read in that regard a cold and stern accusation. The loss of the bag, he decided, must have been discovered; it had been traced to the ash-pit. The chauffeur had been sent by his mistress to retrieve it. In all probability, he knew that it had been taken by the trash-picker. He would notify the police. And the world of which the trash-picker had always been so insanely fearful would lay its cold, cruel hands upon him for having become a violater of its laws. The thought of that made him sick with terror; frantic as a small animal caught in a trap.