The Song of the Sirens and Other Stories/Iarbas
IARBAS
IARBAS
WHEN through the fire nothing remained discernible, when peering and gazing they saw only flame within flame, two of her women gently drew Anna away from the pyre. She let herself be conducted across the courtyard and up the easy stone stair to the first gallery. There, hanging over the polished marble railing of the balustrade, her head leaned against one of the columns, Anna watched the burning pyre. It blazed on, even larger and fiercer, for a string of porters and workmen carrying logs or faggots, filed into the court. Each threw his burden upon the pyre and passed out by another door. Others followed in like manner, and, after a time, the same men returned again with fresh burdens.
From her place by the pillar of the gallery Anna refused to stir.
Several of the women carried in a broad, cushioned couch, placed it silently behind their lady and gently induced her to recline upon it. So reclining she leaned her bosom against the balustrade, her arms upon its rail, her head upon her arms. There she fell asleep.
All night, the slaves in single file carried fuel to keep up the blaze. When the first dawn-light appeared in the sky overhead and the pigeons began to coo upon the red-tiled roofs of the palace, Anna awakened and gave a soft-voiced order. The fuel-carriers ceased to file into the court, the last of them went their way and the pyre was left to burn out of itself.
Watching its fury slacken and its blaze abate Anna, partly from innate docility, partly from dazed indifference, passively permitted her maids to bathe her face and hands, to bind up her hair, somewhat to arrange her dress. She even compliantly swallowed some mouthfuls of the bread moistened with hot spiced wine which they urged upon her. She allowed them to unclasp her nerveless fingers from the tear-soaked square of linen they clutched, to place in them another.
Tactfully they withdrew some little distance and left her absorbed in her grief, oblivious of all other things, droopingly half-supported against the balustrade and pillar, watching the pyre sink into a bed of glowing coals. She stared down at it, weeping softly, now and then sobbing, and once and again dabbing at her eyes with the square of linen she held crumpled in her hand. The women slaves, huddled out of sight under the lower arcade, kept up a monotonous shrill wailing, a weird, droning noise which had become less and less insistent as the hours passed. Through it Anna was aware of a different sound.
She heard the clank and tinkle of jangling armor and glanced across the court. Between two pillars of the lower colonnade in front of the main central doorway stood Iarbas. The scarlet plume of his helmet-crest nodded still and waved as his crimson cloak fluttered and undulated behind him with the impetus of his checked haste; the dawn-light and the fire-light glittered and gleamed on the brow-piece of his helmet, on the gilded links of his chain corselet, on the burnished scales of his broad kilt-straps, and shone on the great round shield and the broad polished points of the twin spears his armor-bearer carried behind him. His eyes were bright in his big swarthy face, and roved about the court gazing at the huddled crowd of servitors and menials under the side-colonnades, at the dying glow of the sinking pyre, at Anna and her attendants above. He waved his hand backward with a single imperious gesture and strode across the court. Anna heard his tread on the tesselated floor of the gallery and looked around at him, half sitting up, but still limply leaning upon the balustrade, her head against the pillar. She said nothing.
Weeping did not disfigure Anna. Her pale gold hair rippled ever so little over her temples, her pale blue eyes gazed from unreddened lids, her pale pinkish cheeks were not streaky with her hours of tears, her mild oval face was pretty as it had been throughout her past, whether she had been anxious and worried or happy and gay. Iarbas looked her over from the grass-green sandal-straps across the small arched instep showing under the embroidered hem of her sea-green gown to the jade brooch at her shoulder and the apple-green ribbon which confined her hair. He found himself astonished at her comeliness, he had never noted her looks before.
She gazed at him steadily, mute.
"I am a day too late," he said.
She turned from him, buried her face upon her crossed arms, and burst into a passion of sobs.
He stood behind her awkwardly, ill at ease and silent, until her paroxysm of grief quieted. Exhibition of emotion was no habit of Anna's. She had been a matter-of-fact child, whose hurts made but a passing impression upon her, a quiet girl, the reverse of high-strung; and a housewifely young woman. Embroidery had been her only activity, superintendence of the maids at their spinning and weaving, or overseeing of the cookery and service her chief occupations. She had never been enthusiastic, or fervid, but always very much the reverse. When King Belus of Tyre died Anna's wailing had been low-voiced, less noisy than that of any of his other daughters. At her mother's burial her grief had been tacit and suppressed. Amid the tumult and alarm following the murder of Sychaeus, Anna had wept for her beloved brother-in-law decorously and briefly. So now the violence of her sobbing soon abated, her soft weeping too ceased before long. She sat up again and again looked at him.
"I am a day too late," he repeated.
"My sister is beyond any reach or any revenge of yours," she said in her even, unemotional tones, her gaze contemptuous. "All that remains of poor Dido is ashes under the coals of her pyre there."
"I had no thought of revenge on her or of violence to her or her wishes," Iarbas disclaimed.
Anna regarded him unwinkingly. Her weeping had entirely stopped, her eyes were dry, as her cheeks. Her many bereavements, her experiences amid assassinations, plots, revolt, exile and colonization had changed her not at all. Her grief for the loss of her last and best loved sister was genuine and keen, but its manifestations were evanescent. Her gaze was almost as placid as her habitual serene look.
"For what are you a day too late?" she asked.
Anna was not argumentative. She never spoke with heat. Her girlish companions had never been able to elicit from her any warmth of utterance except when she enunciated to them her favorite aphorism that a woman should not find fault with her husband, that any woman should be glad to be married and that the sort of man made little difference. Even this pet doctrine she had maintained but tepidly. So also to Iarbas she spoke mildly.
As he stood mute she repeated, tonelessly.
"For what then are you a day too late?"
"To avenge her and myself," Iarbas answered fiercely. "To reach him, to kill him."
"Aeneas?" Anna exclaimed. "You thought you could? Why did you think you could?"
"You must have known, Dido must have known, anybody must have known, that I had spies in Carthage," Iarbas began apologetically. "I have had many and I have been well served. They learnt his habits and informed me. The man was very thoughtless, very heedless or very reckless."
"Aeneas!" Anna interjected, "call it entirely self-reliant."
"So be it, if you please," Iarbas consented. "Call it what you choose. At any rate, according to the reports I received, he never varied his day's routine.
"About an hour after sunrise Achates drove his chariot into the palace forecourt and waited for him. When he came out he was driven straight to the arsenal. There he inspected the forges, sometimes the storerooms, always the shipyards and docks. When he again mounted his chariot they drove out by the Cothon gate and along the beach past his ships and the three guard-camps, then they wheeled to the left and drove inland to the south side of the Hippodrome. On foot and alone he went the rounds of that, inspecting the derricks and stone-cutting, climbed alone to the theater, noted the masons there and talked with the architects and overseers. On the north side of that he regained his chariot which Achates had driven round by the quarry road. From there they drove along outside the walls to the Byrsa gate, stopping at each tower where rebuilding or enlarging was in progress.
"Then instead of coming in by the Byrsa gate Achates drove him westward along the cattle track past the foot of Magar hill. They always drove alone and followed the cattle track up the slope and into the wooded depression between the two crests of Magar hill and along through the gully to the north side."
"Yes," Anna ruminatingly interjected. "He told me. He said it reminded him of the glens of Ida."
"In that ravine," Iarbas went on, "they were out of sight and sound of the city. Every day he passed there at the same time, unattended except by Achates. After traversing the hollow they turned east again, skirted Magar hill on the north and reentered the city by the Magar gate."
"You meant to ambush him in the gorge," Anna said quietly. "How many men did you expect to have with you?"
"A hundred," Iarbas replied.
"Fifty to one," Anna commented. "Surely you brought more than a hundred?"
"I gathered twenty thousand spearmen before I set out," Iarbas told her, "but I intended only a hundred for the ambush."
"When did you set out?" Anna queried settling herself against the balustrade and pillar.
"We left Usinaz a month ago to-day," Iarbas answered, "but we rode slowly, foresaw no need for haste. We crossed the Bagradas high up and camped this side of Zama. There we stayed several days, six or eight I think, resting the camels and horses, while I compared reports. We were still there four days ago. Three days ago we broke camp at dawn. I meant to catch him early yesterday morning. Runners came to me early with the news of the mustering of the Trojans, of their leaving the city, of the launch of the fleet; but as my forces were camped well back of the dunes and I was on lesser Magar with my guards only, I could not strike in time to forestall their sailing or to prevent it. A messenger during the night had brought word that the day before Aeneas had returned on foot through the Hippodrome, sent a runner around for his chariot, spent most of the morning on the beach and reentered the city by the Cothon gate. But I had paid no attention to the report, thinking that even if he broke his routine that one day he would resume it the next as he had done once or twice before when something held or deflected him from his habitual round. So I missed my chance."
"How did you approach so near?" Anna queried, "without our getting any warning?"
"All the natives are with me heart and soul," Iarbas replied simply. "Many of your citizens are for me, they informed me at once of everything. Word of your poor sister's end was brought me before dusk. I had made my arrangements and did not change them. I assigned one division to Garamas to enter the Magar gate, one to Maurusus for the Cothon gate, and led my own column to the Byrsa gate. They were all opened for us about midnight. There has been no fighting, not a man killed. My men are in possession of all the gates and towers, of the walls, docks and arsenal, of the market, the streets and the citadel. Bitias is under guard in his own house scared and submissive."
"You have done well," Anna declared.
"I have indeed," Iarbas boasted, "Carthage is in my hands. I have been completely successful."
"You prayed to Jupiter to help you before you left Usinaz, I suppose," Anna remarked.
"I sacrificed a hundred white bulls," Iarbas informed her, "all two-year-olds, every one perfect. I was sure of Jupiter's favor."
"He has indeed protected you," Anna said with her nearest approach to a sneer. "You did not meet Aeneas in Magar gorge."
"What do you mean?" Iarbas exclaimed.
"I mean," said Anna, sitting up haughtily, her eyes as near brightness as they were capable of, "that had you met Aeneas in Magar gorge it would have been your last hour. You would have seen a lion's rush, an eagle's swoop, his spear point would have struck you wherever he aimed and that would have been the end of you."
"You appraise me too low," the royal Moor snarled, nettled.
"I appraise you," spoke Anna placidly, "the most redoubtable champion in all Africa, but no match for Aeneas of Troy."
"I should have had my best hundred guards with me," Iarbas reminded her.
"Aeneas," Anna made answer, "without bow or arrows, with javelins only, killed seven antelopes out of one herd the day he landed in Africa. He is no sluggish spearman. He might have killed twenty of your guards, he might have needed to kill only ten. But before him your hundred ruffians would have scattered like a handful of children. You and they would have had no chance against him."
"You talk," Iarbas exclaimed, "as if you admired the Phrygian pirate."
"Never you dare to miscall Aeneas to me," Anna blazed. "You are master of Carthage if you please, but not of me. Go, or promise to speak respectfully to me and of him."
Mighty of bulk Iarbas stood, towering in height, huge of girth, brawny, clad in mail, clothed as well in the elation of his triumph. Anna was sitting half recumbent, small, slight, soft-voiced and almost expressionless, yet before her gaze the eyes of the big warrior sought the floor.
"I promise," he said. "You admire him indeed."
"Naturally," Anna replied, "he is the most admirable man alive, the most admirable man who ever lived."
"Can you say that," the tall prince exclaimed, "when your poor sister's ashes are not yet cold in her pyre, the day after her wretched death, the day after his heartless desertion of her?"
"No man," spoke Anna steadily, "was ever further from being heartless than Aeneas was and is, no man ever tore himself more unwillingly and reluctantly from the woman he loved."
"There must have been some blundering in the reports that reached me then," Iarbas declared, bewilderedly, "all agreed that from the time he took up his abode in the palace until day before yesterday he lived as her husband and as king of Carthage, that day before yesterday about noon the Trojans began leaving the city by the Cothon gate, that before sunset the fleet was launched and riding at anchor. Two of my messengers told of Dido's begging him to stay, one told of you yourself going out of the Cothon gate to plead with him when the whole fleet was already afloat. All the messengers uniformly reported that Dido's suicide was caused by his desertion."
"Before you left Usinaz," Anna began evenly, "you burnt a hecatomb to Jupiter, did you not?"
"I did," Iarbas agreed.
"The omens were favorable mostly, were they not?" Anna inquired.
"Not mostly," Iarbas replied, "all were favorable and very favorable. Not only none of the bullocks stamped, but not one so much as fidgeted or bellowed. As mild and meek a hundred bulls as those never stood about one altar. Every liver was perfect, not one with a shrunken lobe, not one with a white spot, not a streak on any, not a discoloration. So with the hearts and the rest. No man ever had a more unmistakable pledge of his God's approval, no man ever had a more positive authorization from Heaven."
"Suppose some of the omens had been bad?" Anna suggested.
"Anyone is used to that," Iarbas shrugged.
"Suppose they all had been bad," Anna continued.
"I should have sacrificed another hecatomb," Iarbas reflected, "until they came out right."
"Suppose they did not come out right?" Anna pursued. "Suppose they were all bad and continued to be bad. Suppose you had sacrificed a thousand bulls and not one of them but was as bad as possible in every respect?"
"Too improbable to suppose," Iarbas muttered. "That would be impossible."
"Just suppose it," Anna insisted. "Say it had happened so, what would you have done?"
"I should have stayed in Usinaz, certainly," Iarbas ruminated. "Likely I should have disbanded my men too and let them go home. If such a thing could happen and if it had happened to me I should have been too scared to stir out, not merely for an expedition, but even for a hunt or a ride."
"You would have taken it as a plain message from Jupiter imperatively prohibiting you from your purpose?" Anna inquired, "would you not? You would have left Aeneas undisturbed and Dido in his possession no matter how you raged and fumed?"
"I certainly should," Iarbas admitted, "if such an unthinkable accumulation of bad omens had occurred."
"Suppose," Anna resumed, "that before your first sacrifice Mercury himself had appeared to you, spoken to you as plainly as I am speaking to you and told you from Jupiter to give up your purpose and remain quietly at home, would you have obeyed?"
"I should certainly have obeyed," Iarbas declared fervently, "if such a plain warning had come to me from on high."
"You think yourself a scrupulous man," Anna said, "but Aeneas is far more scrupulous than you. Day before yesterday he left the palace on his rounds punctually as usual, as you know; as you know, he returned from the Hippodrome to the beach, spent most of the day there and re-entered the city by the Cothon gate about mid-afternoon. As he came in by the men's forecourt Dido met him. She had heard that the Trojans quartered in the city were leaving by the Cothon gate. He bade her a rather bungling, clumsy and tongue-tied farewell. I watched them from the rear gallery and he looked when he came in like a man who had seen a ghost and when he went out like a man going to his death. Dido made me go after him to the beach and plead with him. That was about dusk.
"He stood there with his back to the sea, looking down at me and listening to me with his grave courtesy.
"'I was at the worst of my misfortunes,' he said, 'with only seven ships left and those no longer seaworthy, their crews worn out, all of us in despair, short of food, clothing, supplies and weapons. I was a beggared outcast on an unknown coast. She welcomed me. She did everything for us. She rescued my scattered people and reunited us all. She was the very goddess of generosity and kindness. Apart from all that she is the very handsomest woman I ever saw, after Helen of Tiryns, and gentler and sweeter than any woman ever was. More than that she loves me. And above all, I love her. Yet I must go. My hard fate drives me and tears us apart. I must follow my bitter destiny.'
"Won't your destiny wait until spring?" I asked him. "Does your destiny call any louder than yesterday or the day you landed here?" I did not know what he had said to Dido or she to him and I was angry and hurt all through.
"He looked at me steadily.
"'Anna,' he said, 'my destiny might have called me forever and I should not have listened. Jove has called me and in no uncertain tones.
"'I was sauntering up the cut-off path from the Hippodrome to the theater. I was happy and humming an air, the air Dido made the morning of our first hunt. I had passed between the two pomegranate trees and up the steps to that shoulder of rock where you can look over the tops of the pomegranates and see the Hippodrome. I stood there awhile looking down at it, Then I turned to go up the crooked steps.
"'I heard a whirring in the air like the noise of a flock of doves swooping down to alight. I looked back and up. There was Mercury, as plain as I see you, not five yards from me, almost on a level with me, poised in the air over the pomegranate trees.
"'His attitude was much that of a spear-thrower, all balanced, leaning forward over the left leg, left knee bent, left heel raised, left arm hanging free, right leg straightened and trailing, feet well apart. But his right arm was not raised, it was extended toward me and carried his caduceus. The snakes around the rod squirmed and coiled and recoiled as I looked.
"The wings on his cap and bracelets and sandals made rainbow colors in the air about his ankles and wrists and temples, like the iridescent shimmer of a dragonfly's wings when it hovers over a pool. I could hear the whiz of their buzzing motion.
"'He alighted not two yards from me on the edge of the cliff.
"'You have seen me more than once at Troy,' he said, 'though not so clearly nor for so long; you know who I am and whose messenger I am. His message is but one word: 'SAIL!' That means sail at once. You have no right to rest or ease or comfort. It was never right for you to linger one needless day anywhere. Still less was it right for you to form ties in any land except the land appointed for you and indicated to you. Least of all is it right for you to assist another race to strengthen a colony. You know all this. Jove reminds you through me. Heed him. ACT! SAIL!
"'Like a bird from a flower he whirled upward, flashed in the sunlight and was gone.
"'Do you wonder I obey? Can I, could I yield to any appeal from you or her or my own heart? Is there any use in saying anything?
"I turned away to my litter and my bearers carried me back to the palace, but I remember nothing of the way home. He was right."
"You sympathize with him!" Iarbas blurted out indignantly. "You take his side."
"Who could but sympathize with him?" Anna maintained. "Really he never knew any mother except his foster nurse Caieta. Since before he was half grown his father was a cripple. From boyhood he never could have his own way about anything. It was duty, duty perpetually. He always spoke beautifully of Creusa, but it was plain to be seen he loved her because he had married her rather than had married her because he loved her. It was plain that he had married her because his father and his cousins, old Sultan Priam and Prince Hector and the rest thought the marriage advisable for state reasons. Then they all suffered ten years of unremitting siege. Then he had the horror of Creusa's death to remember and the haunting self-reproach that he had not saved her, as he had saved his father and son from that appalling whirlpool of terrors, the awful night of the sack of Troy. Then in exile he endured years of toils, misfortunes and baffled wanderings.
"And then he had the only taste of happiness in all his life. He was happy for the first time, living with a woman he loved, who loved him, who was fit to be his companion, living as king of a strong prosperous city, as the chief of an adoring, appreciative people. And no sooner had he begun to relish it than he must tear himself away from it, give it all up, leave it behind and go out to more wanderings and toils and sufferings and disappointments and he did not blench. He went. He suffered more than Dido, though he talked less. But he never thought of giving up, he accepted his fate as it came to him and did his duty as he found it. Not even his worst enemy could fail to sympathize with him. Even you cannot help sympathizing with him. You know in your heart you cannot but approve of his unhesitating obedience to Jove's behest, you cannot but admire the strength of will equal to such magnificent self-control, you cannot but sympathize with his heartache and regrets."
"Nothing," said Iarbas, "can alter the fact that Dido killed herself because Aeneas left her. Nothing can alter the fact that he is under the curse she laid upon him before she died. The fact of the curse by itself should cut him off from any reminiscent sympathy in your heart, from even the thought of it."
Anna bowed her face into her covering hands and began to weep softly.
The warrior king stood staring down at her helpless and uneasy.
Presently she took her hands from her face, dried her eyes and looked up at him.
"Oh," she wailed, "if prayer or sacrifice or any expiation or incantation might lift that curse! If only it lay within my power to save him from that curse! He goes weighted with it to some dreadful doom and he never deserved it or anything but blessings and good wishes."
"You make me angry," Iarbas growled. "Deserve or no deserve she killed herself because of him. You have no proper clan-spirit or family spirit. You should think only of her suicide."
"I do not blame him for her death," Anna declared. "I blame her. He suffered as much as she at their parting, for he loved her as much as she loved him; more, for she was left with her established city, her sister, her loving people, countless opportunities of usefulness lay before her, countless duties called her. She thought only of her pangs of grief. She selfishly threw away all the noble activities, all the honor and respect her future might have brought her. He rose superior to his anguish, to the black threatening of the future before him, to everything except his duty. He is all admirable. Why blame him because of her weakness? I suffered more than both of them, I have not killed myself. I can bear my misery, why could not she have borne hers?"
"Your misery?" Iarbas cried resonantly.
Anna turned from him, cast her arms upon the broad top of the balustrade, hid her face upon her arms and burst into a storm of violent sobbing.
Iarbas took a step toward her, hand outstretched as if to lay it upon her shoulder. He checked himself, drew up, stiff and straight and tall and stood immobile and mute till her outburst spent itself.
Again she dried her eyes and looked up at him. She was no less beautiful because of her weeping. He could not but notice that, as she could not but notice the harsh query in his suspicious eyes.
"What did Dido suffer?" she argued, "compared with what I suffered, with what I suffer now? She was abandoned, deserted, forlorn, but she knew even in her frenzy that he really loved her and left her reluctantly at stern duty's call. He went away from me forever without any thought of me more than he took of the sands beneath his feet as he stood there and spoke to me for the last time.
"She lost him, but she had possessed him, had seen him utterly swept away in a passion of longing for her, wholly absorbed in adoration for her. Me he had never for one instant regarded, had never thought of as desirable, never considered as anything but placid, mild, easy-going Anna, useful as a confidant, serviceable as a bearer of tokens and gifts and messages, as a smoother-out of misunderstandings.
"She felt his caresses and knew him her own for the time, basked in months of ecstasy; I must keep a serene face and suave tongue and watch their bliss and know that I was absolutely nothing to him and give no sign. I suffered ten thousand deaths a day while their felicity endured. I did not kill them, I did not kill myself, I shall not now. Dido should not have killed herself. She would have outworn her agony in time. So shall I. I believe not in making the worst of anything, but in making the best of everything."
"Now you talk more like yourself," said Iarbas. "I have not known you since I came here this time. I thought you too staid for such vehemence, too gentle for such feelings, too contained to show it if you felt any such."
"That has always been the way since I was a baby," Anna protested. "Father called me his little pillow, because I was so plump and soft, brother Sychaeus called me 'cushion,' even Pygmalion teased me about my tranquillity. Nobody ever gave me any credit for having any feelings."
"I do," said Iarbas.
"You do not show it," Anna asserted.
"Feelings or no feelings as that may be," Iarbas pursued. "You said just now you believe in making the best of things."
"I do," Anna agreed.
"How do you expect," Iarbas inquired, "to make the best of your present circumstances?"
"I do not expect anything," Anna declared, "and I have no power to make, I can only go on existing, and pray and wait, as a woman must, for what is to come."
"You must have expected something," Iarbas insisted. "You could not help thinking."
"I was too dazed to think," Anna maintained. "If I expected anything it was that Bitias would seize the citadel as soon as he heard of Dido's death and likely enough have me strangled to ensure his control of the city. If he made no attempt at revolution or faction, Pygmalion might appear any day with an irresistible fleet convoying the transports of an overwhelming army. I saw not a ray of hope for the city or for me. Dido had capacity, and popularity and prestige, I have barely the shadow of any of the three."
"And now?" Iarbas queried.
"You are master of the city, you say," she answered. "I am in your hands."
"The logical solution," Iarbas declared, "is for you to marry me and live on as queen of Carthage."
"You hound!" Anna cried. "My sister unburied, and you talk to me of marriage!"
Iarbas stared at her amazed at her outburst
"You said you were in my hands," he wondered.
"I expected better treatment at your hands," Anna retorted.
"I cannot imagine any better treatment," the bluff soldier king declared. "You say you loved Aeneas and show you loved him. Yet after all I offer you myself. You would be my queen."
"I had rather perish as Dido perished," Anna declared fiercely, "than be your queen."
"You said you believed in making the best of everything." Iarbas reminded her.
"There are some things," Anna told him, "out of which there is no best to make. You care nothing for me. You only want to be king of Carthage."
"I do not need you," Iarbas retorted, "to make myself king of Carthage, Carthage is mine now."
"I am not," said Anna, almost vigorously, her small head erect. "You may control Carthage, you cannot subdue me. You never cared for me, you always loved Dido. The instant she is dead you are for marrying me! I will die before I will be your queen."
"I never cared for you," Iarbas admitted, "until you faced me down and defended that Trojan p."
He stopped, gulped and began again.
"That Trojan prince, Aeneas."
"There," Anna interjected, "that is better."
"I like your pluck, your grit," Iarbas glowed. "You held your own and showed spirit. You have no idea how beautiful you looked as you vindicated him. I fell in love with you wholly and at once. It is not so much Carthage I crave as you."
Anna looked down at her interlacing fingers.
"Am I to ride away?" Iarbas asked, softly, "and leave you to have your throat cut by Bitias and his party, or to be burned alive by Pygmalion if he comes? I love you and I want you. Apart from loving you I like you too much to leave you to such a fate, as I like you too much to force you to anything. I like you!"
"And I like you," Anna confessed. "I like your self-confidence in imagining yourself a match for Aeneas. You protested nothing when I vilified you, but I understood you never meant to use your hundred guards against him in Magar gorge. You expected them to stand and look on. You fancied yourself capable of overcoming him with no more help from them or your armor-bearer than he would have had from Achates. It was temerity, it was foolhardiness, but it was magnificent."
She gazed up at him.
"I know your decision," he said, "without your uttering any word."
His eyes met hers steadily.
"We must wait till my nine days of mourning are past," Anna demurred, yielding.
"As you please," Iarbas agreed, "but no longer than the tenth day."
"The nine days," Anna reasoned, her matter-of-factness enveloping her, "must count from the day after Dido's funeral, that cannot be until to-morrow."
"I consent," Iarbas replied, "but for no longer postponement than that."
"My women," said Anna, now wholly her matter-of-fact housewifely self, "should have changed this gay clothing of mine for proper black before now. I must call them. You can occupy the courtyard and rooms Aeneas used."
"Entirely to my mind," Iarbas agreed. "And now I must go the rounds, and see to my posts and pickets. Then I shall arrange for the details of the funeral."
Once again Anna turned from him. She looked down at the sinking coals, dulling and smouldering, their light effaced under the full brilliance of early morning. Again she hid her bowed face on her crossed arms and sobbed pitifully.