"Ayesha, the Return of She"
"Ayesha" is the sequel to "She", the story of the all but immortal She-who-must-be-obeyed. Haggard regarded it not a sequel, but rather as the second part of the story. In keeping to his rigorous logic the book was written some 16 years after "She", that being the time lapse between the events in "She" and those in "Ayesha".
The story begins, as is common to Haggard, with a mysterious manuscript falling into the hands of the editor, in this case the "editor" of "She". It is from Ludwig Horace Holly, companion of Leo Vincey (aka Kallikrates), narrator of the events described in the first story. It has been conveyed to the editor by a Cumberland physician, who recounted the death of Holly in unusual circumstances, and reported that Holly had asked him to send the mss and the sistrum by which it was accompanied to the editor, for eventual publication.
The story is Holly's diary of the events which followed their great adventures in the caves of Kor in 1885. After a year in their home in Cumberland, Holly and Leo give up hope of ever gaining a clew to the fate of Ayesha. Leo despares and contemplates suicide. Holly fears for his sanity, and throws his soul outward, seeking Ayesha. That very night both Leo and he see a vision on the clouds, showing Ayesha and a scene in Central Asia. They follow the vision.
Their quest is not prosperous, indeed they spend some years in Asia, including five years in Tibet (spelt Thibet in the book). Leo is now over 40, and Holly over 60. Eventually the find a crecent-shaped lamasery with a colossal Buddha, just as Leo saw in his vision. The monastery of the mountains is extremely isolated, but they receive a hospitable welcome from the aged monks led by their Abbot Kou-en. Leo and Holly stay in the monastery for some six months, not for preference but because winter has set in.
The Abbot, who is well over 80, recalls a past life in which the Macedonian hero Alexander passed by. His army was accompanied by a priestess Hes, head of a cult of Isis, and thought that she had bewitched his then self. He believed that the army took a distance khanate and established the worship of Isis in a holy mountain dominated by a fiery mountain with a crux ansata-shaped (Egyptian cross of life) peak - just as Leo and Holly had seen in their vision.
When spring came they set out for the distant Khanate, which they reached only after an awful near-fatal accident. Trying to approach the city via the long-neglected mountain road they become stranded on the ice after an avalanch. Leo falls and Holly jumps after him. But instead of being dashed to pieces as they expected they land in a swollen river and survive. Moreover they are rescued by a man and a woman who are aparently watching for them. These are Atene, Khania of Kaloon, and her great uncle Simbri, Guardian of the Gate.
In the gatehouse where they rest after their accident they learn the Khania and her husband the Khan are the descendant - along with the small and efete noble ruling class - are descended from Alexander's army, led by Rassen (now the name of the Khan). Leo quickly discovers that the Khania is none other than Amenartes, but fears that Leo will misidentify her, especially as she has an obvious passion for him, bred, so she said, in her dreams since childhood. Holly suspects that if Atene is Amenartes, then the mysterious Hes or Hesea, priestess of the holy mountain, is none other than Ayesha.
Travelling with Simbri to Kaloon, the capital city, they see the Khan hunting a mounted noble with his death hounds. He is mad, and as they discover when they reach the town and attend a debauched banquet, victim of unrequited love for his wife, who hates him. She in turn proposes to Leo, who is appalled and tries to escape. The Khan overhears, and offers to assist them to escape the Khania. He provides horses and escorts them outside the city. But they mistrust his intentions, which proves prescient, as he has doctored their horses' hooves with a potion allowing the death hounds to track them with ease. Fortunately they see this in time to make a mad rush for the holy mountain. The volcano flared as if to show them the way.
The Khan catches up with them a short distance from the mountain, with only a few of his dogs, most having fallen by the wayside. Leo kills the Khan by throwing him, and Holly despatches the dogs, though he is hurt - asked by Leo if he is injured he replies that "Oh, my forearm is chewed to a pulp, but nothing else, I think". They take refuge on a small island in a river marking the boundary of the mountain, a boundary which is inviolate on pain of war between Khanate and College of Hes. The remaining dogs arrive but flee as though fearful. Next morning the Khania and Simbri arrive, vowing revenge and war. But the adventurers press on. On the mountainside they are met by a veiled woman, who guides them upwards. Holly says to Leo, "It may be a messenger from above. Leo replied "From below, more likely". They pass savage sentries, who abase themselves before the veiled woman. They narrowly avoid being cast into a fiery furnace for interrupting a witchcraft trial utilising a cat - a savage survival of Egyptian cat-worship, and meet Oros, head priest of the College.
Oros told them how the Greeks had introduced Isis worship, and how a college of 300 priests and 300 priestesses continued the worship, led by the Hesea. They see the central venue of the worship, which is a cathedral-sized sanctuary in the mountain, lit by emormous flares of natural fire from the volcano. Above the altar is a statue of motherhood, or humanity saved by the divine, and below, in the hollow of the altar, is the Hesea. She is veiled, and speaks in a voice which seems dissimilar to Ayesha, yet appears to know them, and may be Ayesha herself.
The Hesea avows that she is indeed Ayesha - though her stature is less, and voice different. The Khan is buried - by being cast into the fiery pit - after the Accuser and Defender read from books showing detailed knowledge of the deceased's life and actions. But no priestess ever ventured to condemn the soul of the deceased. The head priestess, Papave, and priest, Oros, attend when Ayesha showed Leo, Holly, Atene adn Simbri visions on the volcanic lake - of her and their history. But they are skeptical of her "might limnings". Oros explained how 18 years ago the aged Hesea (in her 108th year of rule) died then revived - with Ayesha as her new soul.
Leo and the others insisted that Ayesha unveil herself; she is reluctant ("I am somewhat changed"), but acquiesed. She removed her veils and graveclothes, and stood exposed a living corpse, just as she had appeared in the Caves of Kor 16 years before. Oros alone appears unsurprised by the terrible appearance Ayesha presents. Leo appears to waiver, then chooses to cling to Ayesha, and kisses her. Regenerate, Ayesha prays to whatever divinity she was accountable, and before their eyes is transformed in a flame which arose from the mountain. She now appears even more divine than at Kor, and Atene, in her bitter jealousy, tries to stab her, but fails and almost casts herself into the lava lake.
Ayesha is bethrothed to Leo, but cannot marry him until they travel to Kor, and he bathes in the Flame of Life, for as Atene said, man and spirit cannot mate.
Leo and Holly are mysteriously drawn to the sanctuary, where they see Ayesha enthroned and apparently receiving the homage of spirits or ghosts. They flee, and Ayesha later suggests to Leo that she may be one of those who entered into a pact with the forces of evil. He again recoils, but clings to her. She then reveals that he has passed the three appointed tests (though she never reveals by whom they were set. The first is the lure of Atene, the second the repulsive appearance of the aged Ayesha, and the third the sanctuary homage and avowal of diabolical allegiance - the latter two of which she suggests were mere illusions and tales.
Ayesha amuses herself awaiting the spring by turning iron ore into gold - for her plans for world conquest. Leo hunts - and narrowly escapes death or serious injury from a mountain lion - a scene which Ayesha saw from afar but was unable to prevent. Meanwhile war approaches, for the Khania of Kaloon has vowed that there will be a war to end all wars, the hereditary hatred and jealousy of the Khans for the College of Hes having reached boiling point with the personal rivalry over Leo, and national importance dur to looming famine due to drought.
Leo insists of accompanying Holly and Ayesha out with the army - raised from the mountain tribes. Ayesha is afraid for him, with just cause as Atene lures him out and captures him. Ayesha makes haste to rescue him, for with her clairvoyance she sees that they are about to murder him, since he again repulses Atene. With 5,000 savage cavalry they pass through the van of 20,000 Kaloon soldiers, and then the main army of 30,000, when Ayesha "looses the powers" - raising a fierce lightning and wind storm which destroys the city and its army, yet doesn't touch them. On the outskits of the city Ayesha faced her cavalry unvealed for the first and only time, with the unearthly light shining from the body and brow, and receives the worship of her people as "the Goddess". This battle of the plains ranks as one of Haggards masterpieces of high drama.
Entering the palace they find Atene has poisoned herself, and Simbri is in the midst of stabbing Leo. He is frozen into lifelessness by a wave of Ayesha's arm. All appears well. Ayesha has conquered the Khanate indeed. But Ayesha, in her triumph, promises to grant Leo anything he might wish. He asks for her in marriage - now not in two years hence (it taking that long to reach Kor). She is upset, but agrees, and Holly marries them in the presence of the dead Khania and the frozen Simbri. Ayesha undergoes a further change, relinquishing much of her divine appearance, until she appears largely human. However, when they kiss, Holly noticed that the light on Ayesha's brow spread to Leo. Ayesha began to sing of the beginning of their existence - which unwed she could not do - but stops abruptly. Leo collapses. He is dead, withered in Ayesha's kiss, "slain by the fire of her love". She screams, then lapses into acceptance: "It seems that my Lord has left me for a while; I must hasten to my Lord afar". She said "I need a messenger, and for no common journey, since he must search out the habitations of the shades". She wants someone to comfort Leo until she comes to him. She passes her eye over Oros, who for once is out of countenance, but dismisses him as afraid. Holly is willing, but she has need of him. Simbri she revives, and orders to go - he does so willingly enough, knowning Ayesha's true state perhaps better than anyone else.
Leo is distraught at losing his foster son, and Ayesha mourns over Leo's corpse that night, not she had done over Kallikrates 2,000 years earlier, but more as a mother over her infant. Next morning she tells Holly that the goddess she serves has whispered in her ear, and that she now knows that she did wrong to struggle for 2,000 years. Her and Leo's destiny lay elsewhere.
Back at the holy mountain, upon its summit, Leo awaits burial. Ayesha tells Oros and Papave that she may leave them for a while, a year or a thousand she cannot tell. Until she returns Papave, with Oros as her husband and counsellor, and their descendants, are to hold her place as Hes and as Khania of Kaloon. Holly is to call upon her when he is about to die, and she will come. A flame, alike to that in which she appeared to be regenerated, descends upon the peak. When the light passes the body of Leo, and Ayesha herself are gone. But Holly believes he sees two glorious figures ascending into the sky.
Holly, broken in health and spirit, returns to the monastery of the mountains, and thence back to England. He dies in the snow, beside some ancient standing stones near his home, some time later, having risen from his sickbed where he lay with a fatal heart complaint. The doctor, who forwarded the mss, had followed him, and although he was reluctant to say anything for fear for his reputation, saw, or thought he saw, a shining spirit appear in front of the stones, apparently in response to a chant by Holly, and the shaking of the sistrum. Holly saw the apparition and collapsed into it, and died.
This story is a fitting continuation of the tackle begun in "She". The African aspects are missing, and the Asian character is less well developed by comparison. More emphasis of placed on the mystery of the nature of She, and speculation as to her origins and the meaning of the relationship between Ayesha, Leo and Atene. As Ayesha herself said, after Leo's (second) death, in this her soul was reunited, for in truth it was one. In reality we are just as much in the dark as before, and even "Wisdom's Daughter", which is Ayesha's autobiography, does not resolve the mystery, if it does not comlicate it. Leo remains as insignificant a character as before, and the only really well developed character is the haughty (though later humbled) Ayesha, and Holly.
It would be interesting to speculate on whether the passage of the years between the writing of "She", and "Ayesha", reflected any change in Haggard's own attitude to life, and death. "She" has been described as his own monument to a life-long fear of death. The death of his only son an a child, and other personal experiences, led Haggard to wish for something beyond death, or even immortality. Yet Ayesha, after Leo's death, realises that death - or the passage from life on this world - is part of the natural order, and is not to be fought against. Rather, it is to be accepted, and even welcomed.
"Ayesha" is a powerful novel, and worthy of widespread acceptance as one of Haggard's major achievements.