England -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Science fiction
The inhabitants flocked around me, examining my clothing, and
exclaiming in wonderment at each new discovery of button, buckle,
pocket, and flap. It seemed incredible that such a thing could be,
almost within a stone’s throw of the spot where but a brief two
centuries before had stood the greatest city of the world.
They bound me to a small tree that grew in the middle of one of their
crooked streets, but the girl they released as soon as we had entered
the enclosure. The people greeted her with every mark of respect as she
hastened to a large hut near the center of the camp.
Presently she returned with a fine looking, white-haired woman, who
proved to be her mother. The older woman carried herself with a regal
dignity that seemed quite remarkable in a place of such primitive
squalor.
The people fell aside as she approached, making a wide way for her and
her daughter. When they had come near and stopped before me the older
woman addressed me.
“My daughter has told me,” she said, “of the manner in which you
rescued her from the men of the elephant country. If Wettin lived you
would be well treated, but Buckingham has taken me now, and is king.
You can hope for nothing from such a beast as Buckingham.”
The fact that Buckingham stood within a pace of us and was an
interested listener appeared not to temper her expressions in the
slightest.
“Buckingham is a pig,” she continued. “He is a coward. He came upon
Wettin from behind and ran his spear through him. He will not be king
for long. Some one will make a face at him, and he will run away and
jump into the river.”
The people began to titter and clap their hands. Buckingham became red
in the face. It was evident that he was far from popular.
“If he dared,” went on the old lady, “he would kill me now, but he does
not dare. He is too great a coward. If I could help you I should gladly
do so. But I am only queen—the vehicle that has helped carry down,
unsullied, the royal blood from the days when Grabritin was a mighty
country.”
The old queenl’s words had a noticeable effect upon the mob of curious
savages which surrounded me. The moment they discovered that the old
queen was friendly to me and that I had rescued her daughter they
commenced to accord me a more friendly interest, and I heard many words
spoken in my behalf, and demands were made that I not be harmed.
But now Buckingham interfered. He had no intention of being robbed of
his prey. Blustering and storming, he ordered the people back to their
huts, at the same time directing two of his warriors to confine me in a
dugout in one of the trenches close to his own shelter.
Here they threw me upon the ground, binding my ankles together and
trussing them up to my wrists behind. There they left me, lying upon my
stomach—a most uncomfortable and strained position, to which was added
the pain where the cords cut into my flesh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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