The Romance of Atlantis (11 page)

“One has to do something,” responded Tyrhia, a little petulantly.

“Well, where are thy books, thy music, thy birds?”

“Books!” exclaimed Tyrhia. “I am weary of books! Thou art always urging me to them, Salustra, and despite what thou dost explain to me of them, they fill me with yawns. I cannot understand them; they are so stupid. Besides, men do not like clever women.”

Salustra laughed suddenly. “And where didst thou acquire thy great knowledge of men, child?”

Tyrhia looked at the Empress slyly. “There are enough of them in the Palace. They wait on thy slightest move like dogs fawning for a bone.”

Salustra gave her an indulgent glance. “But where didst thou gain thy profound insight into them? Do they spend their gallantries upon a chaste maiden like thee?”

Salustra laid her hand upon the girl’s shoulder, her face suddenly solemn. “Tonight, Tyrhia, I wish thy presence in my apartments. I have something of moment to impart to thee.” Her hand fell to her side, and with a glance she took in the maidens, who had respectfully hung back a few steps. She extended her hand to them and they kissed it reverently. She stood conversing awhile, listening to their eager remarks. She patted a rosy cheek or two, smoothed a head with an affectionate hand, and then, feeling suddenly old and drained, she slowly moved off. When Tyrhia would have joined her, she lifted her hand, and the girl fell back. They watched her tall figure, deep in thought, moving toward the Palace. She was thinking somewhat bitterly that, unlike Tyrhia and her friends, she had never been young.

10

The chastity of Brittulia, daughter of the philosopher Zahti, was by no means accidental. Zahti, after a brief plunge from ascetism which had resulted in his marriage to the frigid daughter of Pletis, Consul of the Fourth Province, had retired gratefully to his bare chamber and his philosophic treatises. It was rumored slyly that after six months of marriage he and his wife had agreed to absolute chastity. Whether the rumor was true or not, they had no more children after Brittulia, nor did the older Brittulia need resort to the clever physician Nulah, the helpful accomplice of all wealthy matrons desirous of avoiding maternity.

The senior Brittulia had died after four years of connubial continence amid whispers she had succumbed to madness begot by frustration. She left a sizable fortune to her only child and namesake. Zahti had little affection, obviously, for his daughter. He saw her upon few occasions and seemed to possess the same morbid aversion for women which she later professed for men. After his death, the girl was kept secluded in the care of her father’s sister, a frigid termagant. Taught from childhood that chastity was the only desirable condition for a woman, the girl had no male teachers, no male companions. She was closely veiled against men’s defiling glances. Even the household slaves were exclusively female.

Brittulia, now the age of Salustra, was beautiful with the small-breasted meager beauty of the overripe virgin. Despite some shortcomings, her frosty beauty intrigued many men who would have been pleased to relieve her unfortunate condition. Brittulia, like many virgins no longer in bloom, was concerned much with religion. She was devoted to the goddess of the arts and sciences and regularly paid homage to the High Priestess. Jupia yearly enriched her coffers with gold from Brittulia’s considerable store. As a noblewoman, she was obliged by tradition to visit the royal Palace once a year to pay her respects to the sovereign. After the brief formalities, she would leave with impassioned haste, as though she could not stand the perfumed pollution of Salustra’s presence.

“This woman will bite herself in frustrated passion one day,” wryly observed Salustra on one occasion.

In view of her attitude, it was not surprising that Brittulia was thrown into a panic when the Prefect of the Guards appeared at her secluded house and brusquely advised her that the Empress intended to visit her before sundown. The very appearance of the formidably masculine Creto was enough to cause her consternation. She had the overwrought imagination of the secluded, and fancied reasons for the unusual visit crowded her mind. Was there to be a casual suggestion that she commit suicide, a harsh demand for her fortune or a spiteful command to attend some super-orgy? She spent the hours before Salustra’s visit in a darkened chamber, silently praying to the goddesses she had supported so handsomely.

However, when the Empress, attended only by a small detachment of guards, finally appeared, Brittulia’s despair had turned to a cold resignation that gave her an outer appearance of composure. She perfunctorily kissed the Empress’ hand, as her eyes searched Salustra’s for a sign of her fate. She saw only a pale, rather grave Salustra, who looked about the house, which she had never before visited, with feminine curiosity.

“Thou hast a charming house, Brittulia. Why have I never been extended an invitation before?”

“I am delighted that you found your way here at last, Majesty.”

“Come, Brittulia,” rejoined the Empress, “I thought not to find thee a victim of the common malady, hypocrisy. Tell me, frankly, after I am gone wilt thou scour the very chairs in which I have sat, and fumigate the rooms? Tell me that thou dost consider my breath an abomination, my words brazen cymbals in a sacred tomb, my smiles degradation, my very presence anathema. I will not think less of thee for being honest.”

Brittulia shuddered slightly, her eyes shrinking yet proud, asking the reason for the visit. But Salustra was obviously in no hurry.

“One naked truth,” observed the Empress, indolently leaning back in a chair, “is worth a thousand gorgeously attired lies.” She looked directly at Brittulia, who this time did not flinch. “Even fools serve a purpose. They are the dull background against which the brilliant shine the more brightly.”

Salustra studied her hostess with drooping eyes. Yet even in her negligent attitude there was a suggestion of supine strength. Brittulia, with her acute sensitiveness, felt this, and her apprehension increased.

Suddenly Salustra’s casual manner vanished. She leaned forward in her chair, her hands gripping the arms. “I could spend hours with thee, Brittulia, exchanging polite inanities, but I have no time. Let me say directly I have a favor to ask of thee.”

Brittulia stared at the Empress fearfully, her face paling still more. She had not erred, then, in her apprehensions.

Salustra saw her fear, and her lip curled, but she betrayed no emotion. “In all Lamora, with the exception of Mahius, I can trust neither man nor woman in this matter but thee. Thy virtue has kept thee free of treachery. Swear now that what I say to thee will go no further.”

Brittulia put a trembling hand to her modest breast. “Illustrious one, death would not wring one word of thine from me.”

Salustra studied her with narrowed eyes. “I will come to the point. My sister, the Princess Tyrhia, I intend to betroth to the Emperor Signar of Althrustri, who is presently at our gates.”

Brittulia uttered a faint cry of surprise.

“Tyrhia,” continued the Empress in her sharp, direct manner, “is a child. I have kept her secluded, because I did not wish her to be contaminated. I could consign her to the care of a hundred matrons in this city. I could surround her with the fawning daughters of noble families. I want none of these. Signar will demand the most snowy innocence in his bride, worthy in every way to be his consort. Tyrhia is both chaste and innocent, but she is very naive. Knowledge had no easy path through that pretty and unsophisticated little head. I am not especially concerned with that at this time. But I do wish that she could have with her a noble lady of unquestioned virtue. I wish that lady to be in constant attendance, be guardian, teacher and friend.” She gave the dumbstruck Brittulia a penetrating look. “Thou are that lady, Brittulia.”

An involuntary groan passed Brittulia’s lips.

“Thou hast till tomorrow to consider it,” said Salustra. “Tomorrow, thou wilt appear at the Palace with thy answer. I trust it will be affirmative.”

Before the Empress’ regard, Brittulia felt hopelessly trapped. “And must I live at the Palace, noble Salustra?” she murmured. “And for how long?”

“Only until such time as my sister is married. Thou shalt spend every moment with that child who has the body and tastes of a woman. Thou shalt let her be approached by no man or woman. Heretofore, she has been almost as secluded as thou. I wish her now to see the world, to see Lamora, so that she will become familiar with life. But not life as I know it, more as thou wouldst have it be.”

“And if I should refuse?” whispered the stricken Brittulia.

Salustra shrugged and spread out her hands. “Thou art a free woman, Brittulia.”

Brittulia wet her lips, and her famished soul looked hungrily into a forbidden world that she could safely enter under the guise of helping her country. Salustra clearly understood what was passing in the other woman’s mind. She made a gesture to Creto and he handed her a small gemmed casket. Salustra drew forth a magnificent necklace of opals. She held them delicately on the end of a finger, and surveyed them with critical pleasure. Then she carelessly tossed the necklace into the other’s lap. “This puts thee under no obligation, Brittulia,” she said, watching the other woman languidly. “Accept this merely as a token of the new direction thy life may henceforth take.”

Brittulia’s pale face flushed. She clasped the opals about her neck, and looked involuntarily at the Empress for her reaction.

“They suit thee marvelously, Brittulia,” said Salustra with a friendly manner. But her lips curled with a secret smile, and her eyes were faintly contemptuous. “They are as chaste as thou, yet under their modest opacity glows a smoldering fire. Who knows but that they resemble thee in this also?”

“Thou art too charitable, Majesty,” said a quivering Brittulia.

Salustra nodded carelessly. “I hope thy decision will be favorable, Brittulia. But that thou must decide thyself. Have I not told thee that thou art a free woman?” She looked about her benignly. “Oft have I heard my father speak of thy learned sire, Zahti. He spoke with great enthusiasm of Zahti as a logician and philosopher. I am interested in both logic and metaphysical philosophy. May I see his famed library?”

Brittulia bowed low. “My poor library is honored,” she said. She led the way to her father’s library. In the displaying of Zahti’s literary treasures, Brittulia regained a measure of composure. She knew logic almost as well as her father had known it. She could prattle of universals and particulars, syllogisms, deduction, induction and chain analogy. But though she had the volubility of a parrot, she could parrot only what she had so often heard, without any real understanding.

“My father,” said Brittulia, “dreamed of perfection; he thought that every true argument could be reduced to a valid syllogism. If it could not be so reduced, it was not truth.”

“There is no naïveté as complete as the naïveté of the savant,” said Salustra. “I was about to say the wise. But the wise are seldom pedants. Perhaps their wisdom prevents them from so becoming.”

Brittulia felt vaguely confused. “My father said that nothing in this world was worth the having but wisdom, and no pursuit satisfying but that of truth.”

The Empress smiled. “He gave his life to the pursuit of a shadow. Truth means something eternally true, an immutable fact. There are no eternal, fixed or immutable facts; therefore, there is no truth. What may be true today may be false tomorrow. However, that it is false tomorrow does not mean that it is not true today. Therefore, he who speaks of the immutability of truth knows not whereof he speaks. He who speaks of a present truth, knowing the future may make it a lie, is a wise man. Few philosophers are wise.”

Without meaning to, Salustra had allowed her own inclination to philosophize to extend the meeting beyond what she had intended. But she felt an inexplicable affinity for this woman so different from herself. Or was she really that much different?

Brittulia was bewildered. Few philosophers are wise—that was absurd. Had not her father been the wisest of men? The whole world had acknowledged that.

“Philosophers play with fantasies, suppositions and theories,” said the Empress. “They spend their lives among shadows and obscure hypotheses. They quarrel with each other’s armchair theories until they become ridiculous. They contribute nothing to the happiness of men. They advise tranquility. What they mean is death in life, for life is not tranquil, and he who is tranquil is not alive. Some advise love for humanity. They say, ‘Love thy neighbor.’ Bah! Know thy neighbor, and refrain from hating him if thou canst! Philosophers are the most slothful of men. When one has neither the desire for life nor courage nor health nor virility, he becomes a philosopher, and deals in dead things! I believe in thought; one would not wish to emulate the beasts. But I only believe in the thought which has a direct bearing on immediate life and its problems. It should teach us how to derive the utmost pleasure from daily existence, the least pain, the greatest comfort. The philosopher does not deal in life. He is a dull bystander, taking the crumbs that fall from the banquet table of the active and the virile.”

Brittulia was horrified by such sacrilege. “But some philosophers have been martyred for speaking great truths.”

“Those men were not philosophers,” said the Empress, smiling. “They acted.”

So offended was Brittulia, she dared not speak without deliberately framing her thoughts.

“A true philosopher is a parasite,” went on Salustra. “He spends his life trying to fit together haphazard parts of a meaningless puzzle. Some speak of good and evil, especially those who are pious. As if there are such things as good and evil! Nothing is fixed or stable, not even virtue, not even the gods. Philosophy is a frustrating plaything.”

“Thy Majesty must pardon me for differing,” said Brittulia, with a light of fanatical determination in her eyes, “but virtue is unchangeable. It is a fact. Virtue is life, and vice, death.”

“And of what does virtue consist?” asked Salustra. “Certainly not a sterile, fruitless, frustrated virginity.”