Electronic Bookshelf/Electronic Bookshelf.iso/stories/bethmoor.txt

Text File | 1994-12-22 | 9KB | 165 lines

                       Bethmoora

                    by Lord Dunsany


There is a faint freshness in the London night as though
some strayed reveller of a breeze had left his comrades in
the Kentish uplands and had entered the town by stealth.
The pavements are a little damp and shiny.  Upon one's ears
that at this late hour have become very acute there hits the
tap of a remote footfall.  Louder and louder grow the taps,
filling the whole night.  And a black cloaked figure passes
by, and goes tapping into the dark.  One who has danced goes
homewards.  Somewhere a ball has closed its doors and
ended.  Its yellow lights are out, its musicians are silent,
its dancers have all gone into the night air, and Time has
said of it, "Let it be past and over, and among the things
that I have put away."
   Shadows begin to detach themselves from their great
gathering places.  No less silently than those shadows that
are thin and dead move homewards the stealthy cats.  Thus
have we even in London our faint forebodings of the dawn's
approach, which the birds and the beasts and the stars are
crying aloud to the untrammelled fields.
   At what moment I know not I perceive that the night
itself is irrecoverably overthrown.  It is suddenly revealed
to me by the weary pallor of the street lamps that the
streets are silent and nocturnal still, not because there is
any strength in night, but because men have not yet arisen
from sleep to defy him.  So have I seen dejected and untidy
guards still bearing antique muskets in palatial gateways,
although the realms of the monarch that they guard have
shrunk to a single province which no enemy yet has troubled
to overrun.
   And it is now manifest from the aspect of the street
lamps, those abashed dependants of night, that already
English mountain peaks have seen the dawn, that the cliffs
of Dover are standing white to the morning, that the
sea-mist has lifted and is pouring inland.
   And now men with a hose have come and are sluicing out
the streets.
   Behold now night is dead.
   What memories, what fancies throng one's mind!  A night
but just now gathered out of London by the hostile hand of
Time.  A million common artificial things all cloaked for a
while in mystery, like beggars robed in purple, and seated
on dread thrones.  Four million people asleep, dreaming
perhaps.  What worlds have they gone into?  Whom have they
met?  But my thoughts are far off with Bethmoora in her
loneliness, whose gates swing to and fro.  To and fro they
swing, and creak and creak in the wind, but no one hears
them.  They are of green copper, very lovely, but no one
sees them now.  The desert wind pours sand into their
hinges, no watchman comes to ease them.  No guard goes round
Bethmoora's battlements, no enemy assails them.  There are
no lights in her houses, no footfall in her streets; she
stands there dead and lonely beyond the Hills of Hap, and I
would see Bethmoora once again, but dare not.
   It is many a year, as they tell me, since Bethmoora
became desolate.
   Her desolation is spoken of in taverns where sailors
meet, and certain travellers have told me of it.
   I had hoped to see Bethmoora once again.  It is many a
year ago, they say, when the vintage was last gathered in
from the vineyards that I knew, where it is all desert now.
It was a radiant day, and the people of the city were
dancing by the vineyards, while here and there one played
upon the kalipac.  The purple flowering shrubs were all in
bloom, and the snow shone upon the Hills of Hap.
   Outside the copper gates they crushed the grapes in vats
to make the syrabub.  It had been a goodly vintage.
   In little gardens at the desert's edge men beat the
tambang and the tittibuk, and blew melodiously the zootibar.
   All there was mirth and song and dance, because the
vintage had been gathered in, and there would be ample
syrabub for the winter months, and much left over to
exchange for turquoises and emeralds with the merchants who
come down from Oxuhahn.  Thus they rejoiced all day over
their vintage on the narrow strip of cultivated ground that
lay between Bethmoora and the desert which meets the sky to
the South.  And when the heat of the day began to abate, and
the sun drew near to the snows on the Hills of Hap, the note
of the zootibar still rose clear from the gardens, and the
brilliant dresses of the dancers still wound among the
flowers.  All that day three men on mules had been noticed
crossing the face of the Hills of Hap.  Backwards and
forwards they moved as the track wound lower and lower,
three little specks of black against the snow.  They were
seen first in the very early morning up near the shoulder of
Peol Jagganoth, and seemed to be coming out of Utnar Vehi.
All day they came.  And in the evening, just before lights
come out and colours change, they appeared before
Bethmoora's copper gates.  They carried staves, such as
messengers bear in those lands, and seemed sombrely clad
when the dancers all came round them with their green and
lilac dresses.  Those Europeans who were present and heard
the message given were ignorant of the language, and only
caught the name of Utnar Vehi.  But it was brief, and passed
rapidly from mouth to mouth, and almost at once the people
burnt their vineyards and began to flee away from Bethmoora,
going for the most part northwards, though some went to the
East.  They ran down out of their fair white houses, and
streamed through the copper gate; the throbbing of the
tambang and the tittibuk suddenly ceased with the note of
the zootibar, and the clinking kalipac stopped a moment
after.  The three strange travellers went back the way they
came the instant their message was given.  It was the hour
when a light would have appeared in some high tower, and
window after window would have poured into the dusk its
lion-frightening light, and the copper gates would have been
fastened up.  But no lights came out in windows there that
night and have not ever since, and those copper gates were
left wide and have never shut, and the sound arose of the
red fire crackling in the vineyards, and the pattering of
feet fleeing softly.  There were no cries, no other sounds
at all, only the rapid and determined flight.  They fled as
swiftly and quietly as a herd of wild cattle flee when they
suddenly see a man.  It was as though something had befallen
which had been feared for generations, which could only be
escaped by instant flight, which left no time for
indecision.
   Then fear took the Europeans also, and they too fled.
And what the message was I have never heard.
   Many believe that it was a message from Thuba Mleen, the
mysterious emperor of those lands, who is never seen by man,
advising that Bethmoora should be left desolate.  Others say
that the message was one of warning from the gods, whether
from friendly gods or from adverse ones they know not.
   And others hold that the Plague was ravaging a line of
cities over in Utnar Vehi, following the South-west wind
which for many weeks had been blowing across them towards
Bethmoora.
   Some say that the terrible gnousar sickness was upon the
three travellers, and that their very mules were dripping
with it, and suppose that they were driven to the city by
hunger, but suggest no better reason for so terrible a
crime.
   But most believe that it was a message from the desert
himself, who owns all the Earth to the southwards, spoken
with his peculiar cry to those three who knew his voice --
men who had been out on the sand-wastes without tents by
night, who had been by day without water, men who had been
out there where the desert mutters, and had grown to know
his needs and his malevolence.  They say that the desert had
a need for Bethmoora, that he wished to come into her lovely
streets, and to send into her temples and her houses his
storm-winds draped with sand.  For he hates the sound and
the sight of men in his old evil heart, and he would have
Bethmoora silent and undisturbed, save for the weird love he
whispers at her gates.
   If I knew what that message was that the three men
brought on mules, and told in the copper gate, I think that
I should go and see Bethmoora once again.  For a great
longing comes on me here in London to see once more that
white and beautiful city; and yet I dare not, for I know not
the danger I should have to face, whether I should risk the
fury of unknown dreadful gods, or some disease unspeakable
and slow, or the desert's curse, or torture in some little
private room of the Emperor Thuba Mleen, or something that
the travellers have not told -- perhaps more fearful still.