Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen
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Title: Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen
Author: G. J. Whyte-Melville
Illustrator: S. E. Waller
Release date: March 23, 2013 [eBook #42393]
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SARCHEDON
A Legend of the Great Queen
by
G. J. Whyte-Melville
Author of "Roy's Wife," "Black but Comely," "Market Harborough,"
etc.
Illustrated by S. E. Waller
London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne
* * * * *
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
AUSTIN LAYARD, D.C.L.,
HER MAJESTY'S MINISTER AT MADRID,
THE
FOLLOWING ROMANCE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
AS A TRIBUTE OF
ADMIRATION TO THE GREAT DISCOVERER,
WHOSE SKILL, COURAGE AND RESEARCH HAVE
EXCAVATED FROM THE DESERT SANDS
THE ARTS, ARMS, AND RECORDS OF A MIGHTY NATION;
WHOSE LEARNING AND PERSEVERANCE
HAVE RESTORED AN IMPORTANT LINK IN THE
WORLD'S HISTORY,
LONG SEVERED IN THE OBLIVION OF THE PAST.
ONSLOW GARDENS,
_June, 1871_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "THE STARTLED HORSEMAN DREW REIN."]
CONTENTS
The Seven Stars.
"They watch him who wakes--They watch him who sleeps--him who
speaks--him who is silent--the guilty, the blameless: there is none
on earth who is not watched."--_Bhuddhagosa Proverbs._
I. The King of Beasts 9
II. Merodach 16
III. Semiramis 24
IV. The Temple of his God 33
V. The Stars in their Courses 40
VI. A Dreamer of Dreams 47
VII. The King of Nations 55
VIII. The Lust of the Eye 63
IX. The Pride of Life 71
X. A Banquet of Wine 79
XI. Like to Like 87
XII. The Gods of the Heathen 94
XIII. Mother and Son 102
XIV. Strong as Death 110
XV. The Queen's Petition 118
XVI. Cruel as the Grave 125
XVII. The Divining Cup 133
XVIII. A Lying Spirit 141
XIX. The Feast of Baal 148
XX. Gone to the Stars 154
Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven.
"From love comes grief, from love comes fear; he who is free from
love knows neither grief nor fear."--_Bhuddhagosa Proverbs._
XXI. Who is my Brother 162
XXII. The House of Bondage 170
XXIII. Pharaoh on the Throne 177
XXIV. The Captive in the Dungeon 187
XXV. The Wisdom of the Egyptians 193
XXVI. Deliverance 199
XXVII. In the Desert 206
XXVIII. A Ride for Life 216
XXIX. The City of Refuge 221
XXX. Loth 229
XXXI. Willing 235
XXXII. Bread and Salt 243
XXXIII. Parted 250
XXXIV. Forlorn 257
XXXV. The Lion's Cub 263
XXXVI. The Power of the Dog 270
XXXVII. The Wings of a Dove 276
XXXVIII. Bond and Free 284
XXXIX. In the Gate 292
XL. Unveiled 298
Nisroch the Avenger.
"Your sin follows steadily behind, as the cart-wheel follows the
draught-bullock."--_Bhuddhagosa Proverbs._
XLI. A Serpent on a Rock 304
XLII. Before the Altar 311
XLIII. The Snare of the Fowler 317
XLIV. The Veiled Queen 325
XLV. Aryas the Beautiful 332
XLVI. A Wind from the South 339
XLVII. The Fenced City 345
XLVIII. Sons of the Sword 355
XLIX. Faithful unto Death 361
L. A Fool in his Folly 365
LI. Bow and Spear 372
LII. Lost and Won 379
LIII. Sharing the Spoil 385
LIV. Counting the Cost 392
LV. The Voice of the Charmer 398
LVI. Requited 405
LVII. Betrayed 411
LVIII. Who is on my Side 417
LIX. Forgiven 424
LX. Lost in the Dark 430
SARCHEDON
The Seven Stars
CHAPTER I
THE KING OF BEASTS
Dying in the desert--stretched, limp and helpless, in the darkening
waste--poured out like water on the tawny sand--two specks poised high
above him in the deeper orange of the upper sky--a wide-winged vulture
hovering and wheeling between the stricken lion and the setting sun.
Dying in the desert--grim, dignified, unyielding, like a monarch slain
in battle. So formidable in the morning--the herdsman's terror, the
archer's dread, the savage wrestler in whose grasp horse and rider went
down crushed, mangled, over-matched, like sucking fawn and unweaned
child--fierce, tameless, unconquered--a noble adversary for the noblest
champions of the plain--but ere the last red streak of evening faded on
the dusky level of their wilderness, a thing for the foul night-bird to
tear and buffet--for the wild ass, wincing and snorting, half in terror,
half in scorn, to spurn and trample with her hoof.
Pitiful in its hopelessness, the wistful pleading of eyes gradually
waning to the apathy of death; pitiful the long flickering tongue,
licking with something of a dog's homely patience that fatal gash of
which the pain grew every moment more endurable, only because it was a
death-wound; and pitiful too the utter prostration of those massive
limbs, with knotted muscles and corded sinews--of that long, lean,
tapering body--the very emblem of agile strength--which, striving in
agony to rear but half its height, sank down again in dust, writhing,
powerless, like an earthworm beneath the spade.
No yell, no moan--only a short quick breathing, a convulsive shiver, and
the occasional effort to rise, that time by time soaked and stained his
lair with darker jets of blood.
So those specks on the upper sky widened into two huge soaring vultures,
while the wing of a third brushed lightly against the fallen lion's
mane, as the foul bird ventured nearer its coming banquet, croaking
hideous invitations to others and yet others, that emerged, as if by
magic, from the solemn cloudless heaven.
Far back into the desert, varied here and there by clammy clotted spots,
lay a single track of footprints, closer together, less sharp, round,
and clearly-defined, as they dragged towards the end. Many a weary
furlong had he travelled, the king of beasts, on his journey here to
die; and yet he never was to reach the patch of arid reeds that instinct
bade him seek for a last shelter--the scanty covert where-with nature
prompted him to shield his death agony from the remorseless bird of
prey.
It is a royal sport to-day. It was a royal sport, no doubt, thousands of
years ago, to rouse the kingly lion from his haunt of reeds, or rock, or
cool dank quivering morass, in those wide plains that stretch between
the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Mesopotamia of the ancients, the
Naharaina of its present migratory tribes. A royal sport, when followed
by a queen and all her glittering train, defiling from the lofty porches
of Babylon the Great, the tramp of horse and ring of bridle, with steady
footfall of Assyrian warriors--curled, bearded, erect, and
formidable--with ponderous tread of stately elephants, gorgeous in
trappings of scarlet, pearls, and gold, with stealthy gait of meek-eyed
camels, plodding patient under their burdens in the rear. Scouring into
the waste before that jewelled troop, herds of wild asses bruised and
broke the shoots of wormwood beneath their flying hoofs, till the hot
air was laden with an aromatic smell; the ostrich spread her scant and
tufted wings to scud before the wind, tall, swift, ungainly, in a cloud
of yellow dust; the fleet gazelle, with beating heart, and head tucked
back, sprang forward like an arrow from the bow, never to pause nor
stint in her terror-stricken flight, till man and horse, game and
hunter, pursuer and pursued, were left hopelessly behind, far down
beyond the unbroken level of the horizon. Was not her speed of foot the
strength and safety and glory of her being? Nor could the desert falcon
strike her save unawares, nor the cruel Eastern greyhound overtake her
save when she had lately drunk her fill from the spring.
But the monarch of the desert, the grim and lordly lion, sought no
refuge in flight, accepted no compromise of retreat. Driven from his
covert, he might move slowly and sullenly away; but it was to turn in
savage wrath on the eager horseman who approached too near, on the
daring archer who ventured to bend his bow within point-blank distance
of so formidable an enemy. Nevertheless, even the fiercest of their kind
must yield before man, the conqueror of beasts; before woman, the
conqueror of man: and on the shaft which drank his life-blood, and
transfixed the lion from side to side, was graven the royal tiara of a
monarch's mate, were cut those wedge-shaped letters that indicated the
name of Semiramis the Great Queen.
Fainter and fainter drooped the mighty frame of the dying beast; one by
one large red drops plashed heavily on the sand beneath him, as the
first bright stars of a Chaldean sky blazed from the clear depths of
heaven. The perishable was fast fading below. Was that indeed eternal
which shone so pure and pitiless above?
Great Babylon lay spread out, massive, mysterious, and indistinct, in
the shades of coming night. Here and there, huge piles of building
loomed vast and shadowy against the sky, far below these, amidst the
tents, houses, palaces, and gardens within the town, glittered and
flashed a world of lamps and torches, scattered bright and countless as
the stars in that other world above; while rearing its head, like some
ghostly giant, high over shaft and column, fortress, palace, and
obelisk, rose a lofty tower that seemed to demand of heaven its secrets,
and bade defiance to the sky.
Here, on the summit of this tower stood a human figure, gazing fixedly
on the planets already visible, scanning the heavens with rapt
attention; calm, serious, abstracted, wrestling, as it were, with all
its mental forces, for the triumph of intellect, the mastery of thought.
It was Assarac, priest of Baal, reading the stars, as a student reads a
book writ in some symbolical language of which he holds the key.
Assarac the priest, the man for whom in that voluptuous climate, amidst
that gorgeous people, delighted in splendour, in pleasure, in luxury, in
warfare, glory, arts, arms, and magnificence, the world could furnish
but one attraction--the insatiable craving of ambition--to lull which he
must rule supreme; therefore he trained himself, night and day, with the
weapons of victory, seeking diligently that knowledge which constitutes
power.
The act of worship is amongst all creation indigenous and peculiar to
man. As he alone stands erect and raises his front without effort
towards heaven, so he bends the knee in reasoning adoration, neither
cowering down with his head in the dust, nor grovelling on his belly,
like other creatures, in abject fear; but wanton, unstable, and
extravagant even in his noblest aspirations, this viceroy of earth has
been ever prone to waver in his allegiance, eager to amplify his worship
of the one true God into a thousand false religions, more or less
beautiful, poetical, and absurd. Amongst these, none could be less
unworthy than that earliest form of superstition which attributed to the
celestial bodies certain properties of power and knowledge, such as
could affect the present no less than they predicted the future. Man's
intellect felt elevated and purified by scientific communion with the
book of Fate as written on the luminous pages of the sky, while his soul
seemed scarce debased by an adoration that lifted it at least to the
visible and material heaven. On the wide-stretching plains of Western
Asia, in the warm cloudless Assyrian night, with the lamps of heaven
flashing out their radiance in uninterrupted splendour from the centre
to the boundless horizon, it was no wonder that students and sages
should have accepted for deities those distant worlds of fire on which
eyes, brain, hopes, thoughts, and aspirations were nightly fixed--the
guides of their science, the exponents of their history, the arbiters of
their fate.
While the rude camel-driver, as he plodded by night through the
trackless desert, relied, no less than the early mariner, for progress
and safety on the stars, priests in their temples, kings in their
palaces, consulted the same changeless, passionless, inscrutable
witnesses, for the web of policy, the conduct of warfare, the
furtherance of love, desire, ambition, or revenge. Ere long, by an
inevitable process in the human mind, the instructor of their course
came to be looked on as the originator of events; and that which began
only with an assumption that it could foretell, was soon credited with
the power to bias, to prevent, or to destroy.
Then arose an idolatry which seemed irresistible to the noblest and
boldest nations of the ancient world, which, notwithstanding their own
sublime creed, possessed a strong fascination for the Chosen People
themselves. Yav, Nebo, Bel, and Ashtaroth[1] came to be worshipped as
living deities, reigning and revealing themselves through the planets
that bore these names. The Seven Stars[2] were believed to time the
inevitable march of the universe to their seven tones of mysterious
music, unheard by mortal ears only because it never ceased nor faltered
in its eternal diapason. The twelve months of the year were sacred, each
to its especial luminary. Thirty stars were worshipped as the Consulting
Gods. Twelve to the north, twelve to the south, were believed
respectively to compel the destinies of living men and dead, the whole
twenty-four bearing the title of Judges of the World. And finally, lest
superstition should overlook one single object of its adoration, or
idolatry fail in the smallest detail to sin against its Creator,
priests, temples, sacrifices, and votive offerings were assigned to
those countless worlds that gem a Southern night, under the collective
title of the Host of Heaven.
[Footnote 1: Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and Venus.]
[Footnote 2: Rather the seven spheres, or the five planets with the sun
and moon.]
Assarac looked abroad, above, around, below--with the confident glance
of a monarch who reviews his powers, with the critical attention of a
calculator who sums up his total, with the visionary gaze of a prophet
who forecasts his destiny, yet not entirely without something of that
astute and wary expression which on the magician's face seems to scan
and dominate, while it half mistrusts, the implements of his art.
He was yet a young man, to count by years, and his dark almond-shaped
eyes had lost none of the fire and softness which are only combined
before middle life; but above his black eyebrows there were lines traced
deep in the tawny forehead, and at his temples a few white hairs already
mingled with the black bushy ringlets that, confined by a fillet of
gold, were drawn back in clustering profusion to his neck and shoulders.
His arms, but for the heavy gold bracelets that clasped their wrists,
were bare, as were his strong muscular legs from knee to ankle; he wore
sandals, fastened by straps; of embroidered leather crossing and
recrossing so as to form no slight protection for foot and instep. His
long gown of white linen, open to the breast and looped so as to give
the legs freedom of action at the knee, was bordered with cunning
needlework wrought in tissue of gold and scarlet silk, its arrow-headed
characters displaying many a dark sentence and time-honoured record. A
tasselled cord fastened it at the waist, and a deep fringe also of
scarlet tissue, hung below its edges, while an ample cloak, white and
embroidered like the gown, fell from one shoulder and trailed behind the
priest as he stood erect and motionless, looking out into the night.
On his solid earrings, on his golden bracelets, on the fillet that bound
his forehead, on the very clasps that secured his sandals, was graven
the mystic circle that, with or without its winged figure, constituted a
memorial and a symbol of fate, omnipotence, and eternity. If he
worshipped the stars, he could yet conceive of a power so supreme as to
control and dominate their influence: nor could his religion in its
aspirations for this ineffable essence find a better emblem of its ideal
than that geometrical figure which has neither beginning nor end.
He bore in his hand a lotus-flower lately gathered, and was careful,
with something of superstitious reverence, to preserve its freshness;
though once, when it caught his eye by chance, a smile of mingled scorn
and curiosity wreathed his full red lips; but he looked aloft again the
next instant with a keener and more rapt attention in his gaze. If he
speculated on the symbolical interpretation of the plant, it was not
_there_ he sought the power and lore that should enable him to control
his kind.
Though he carried two knives in his girdle, though his limbs were
massive and muscular, his chest deep and his head erect, the man's
habits seemed those of peace and study, not of action and warfare. His
face, for all its indications of intellectual virility, was somewhat too
rounded in outline, too full and flaccid, rather perhaps unmanly than
effeminate, and bearing an expression of sustained effort, as of one who
continually strives to hide and overcome a consciousness of unmerited
degradation. There was no sign of beard about the well-cut lips, nor on
the firmly-moulded chin; and for Assarac the priest it was too obvious
that the domestic affections must ever remain a sealed book--his hearth
must be the sacred fire of his worship, and the starry canopy of heaven
his home.
"And what have you given me?" said he, rising his hand towards the
glittering world above, with a gesture that denoted quite as much of
defiance as devotion. "What have you given me, O my gods, in exchange
for the glow of youth, the dignity of manhood, the rapture and the folly
and the sweet sorrow that are common, like cool breezes and running
streams, to all but such as me? No wife, no child! None of the treasures
others guard so jealously; but, in compensation, none of the fears that
bid the brave man cower and the strong man quake. What have you given
me, O my gods? The thirst for power, the desire to rule, the knowledge
that causes brave and strong to bend and quiver like reeds in the
Euphrates before the breeze that hurries down its stream. You have given
me wisdom to forecast men's lives and destinies; it is strange if he who
has a knowledge of the future cannot control and warp the present to his
will. I have torn open your scrolls by force of hand; I have compelled
you to reveal your secrets by sheer strength of intellect--ye are my
gods indeed, and I your priest and servant; yet is there something
working here in this forehead, in this breast, that seems to dominate
you as the goad rules the elephant, as the bridle turns and guides the
foaming war-horse on the plain! Your strength, your knowledge, and your
fire are mine--mine until these reasoning powers are dulled--these
senses enervated by luxury and indulgence. Prophesy--prophesy! Trace for
me in your shafts of light the story of that which is to come: show me
the future of Assarac the priest--his growing knowledge, his indomitable
struggles, his successful encounters, the culminating glory of his
career. Show me the destiny of that fairest, bravest, fiercest of
women--the diamond of the East! whose white arm conquers nations, whose
flashing eyes set towns and palaces and kingdoms all ablaze--beautiful,
proud, and pitiless--Semiramis the Great Queen; of her lord, the king of
nations, the grim old champion who scoffs, forsooth, at your power, O my
gods! and trusts only in the strength of his right arm and in his sword.
Shall ye not avenge yourselves for his scorn and unbelief? Shall not
Assarac your priest rise on the war-worn monarch's ruin to a splendour
before which the glory of Ninus and all his line shall pale, even as ye
pale yourselves, eternal host, before the Lord of Light who comes with
day?"
Even while he spoke, the dying lion, far off in the desert, turned on
his side with one quick gasping moan, one convulsive shudder of his
mighty limbs, ere they grew rigid and motionless for ever, breaking
short off in his death-pang the shaft on which was graven a royal tiara
and the symbol of the Great Queen.
CHAPTER II
MERODACH
The boldest war-horse was never too courageous to wince and tremble at
the smell of blood.
A solitary rider speeding across the surface of the desert, smooth,
swift, and noiseless, like a bird on the wing, found himself nearly
unseated by the violence with which the good horse under him plunged
aside in terror, swerving from a low dark object lying in his path.
While the startled horseman drew rein to examine it more closely, he
scared two sated vultures from their work, the gorged birds hopping
lazily and unconcernedly to a few paces' distance. Already the gray
streaks of morning were tinged with crimson, as they flushed and widened
on the long level of the horizon; and the lion, dead at nightfall, was
picked nearly to the bone.
Ere dawn had fairly broke, and long before the gold on bit and
bridle-piece caught the first flash of sunrise, the traveller had sped
many a furlong on his way, and the vultures had laboured back to
continue their loathsome meal. He had been riding the live-long night,
yet his good horse seemed neither blown nor wearied; snorting, indeed,
in the very wantonness of strength, as he settled down again to his long
untiring gallop, and cleared his nostrils from the abomination that had
so disturbed him in his career.
"Soh, Merodach!" said his master, "my gentle bold-hearted steed! I never
knew you shrink from living foe, be it man or brute; but you would not
trample on a dead enemy, would you, my king of horses? Steady then! At
this rate we shall see the tower of Belus springing out of the plain,
and the black tents by the Well of Palms, before the sun is another
spear's length above the sky-line of this half-cooled sand. Steady, my
gallant horse! Ah! you are indeed fit to carry him who takes the message
of a king!"
Merodach, or Mars, no less sensible of his lord's caresses than he was
worthy of the praises lavished on him, arched his crest, shook his head
till his ornaments rang again, and increased his speed, for a reply.
He was in truth a rare and unequalled specimen of his kind, the true
pure-bred horse of the Asiatic plains. Strong and bold as had been the
very lion he was leaving rapidly behind him, beautiful in his rounded
symmetry of shape, and so swift that Sarchedon, his rider, was wont to
boast only one steed in all the armies of the King of Assyria was able,
with a man's weight on his back, to outstrip the wild ass in her native
plains, and that steed was Merodach. Horse and rider seemed a pair well
matched, as they flung their dancing shadows behind them on the sand.
The arms of one and accoutrements of the other shone ablaze with gold in
the splendour of the morning sun. Both seemed full of pride, courage,
mettle, and endurance, counterparts in strength and beauty, forming
when combined the fairest and noblest ideal of the warlike element in
creation. So they galloped on, choosing their course as if by instinct,
through the trackless waste.
Long before noon a lofty tower seemed to grow, cubit by cubit, out of
the horizon. Presently the walls and palaces of a city were seen
stretching far on either side along the plain, like a line of white surf
on a distant shore. Then strips of verdure, intersecting each other with
more frequency, as a network of irrigation filtered the waters of the
Euphrates through many a trickling stream, to fertilise the desert in
the neighbourhood of Great Babylon. Yet a few more furlongs of those
smooth untiring strides; a startled ostrich scudding away on long
awkward legs before the wind; a troop of wild asses standing at gaze for
a moment, to disappear with snort and whinny, and heels glancing upward
through volumes of dust; a fleet gazelle scouring off in one direction,
a desert-falcon darting through the sunlight in another; and Sarchedon
could already descry that knot of feathery trees, that sprinkling of
black tents, that low marble structure of dazzling white, which, under
the name of the Well of Palms, afforded a landmark for every thirsty
wayfarer journeying to the Great City.
But, except the sea, there is no such fallacious medium through which to
estimate distance as the sun-dried atmosphere and unbroken expanse of
the desert. Ere they reached those scattered tents and halted at the
Well of Palms, neither man nor horse were unwilling to enjoy a moment's
respite from their exertions; while the former, at least, was suffering
from a protracted thirst, which under those scorching skies made a
draught from the desert spring such a cordial, such an elixir, as could
not be pressed from the choicest grapes that ever blushed and ripened
under the Assyrian sun.
Springing off Merodach's back, his master drew the embossed bit
carefully from his favourite's mouth, pressing his head down with a
caress towards the water, while he administered, like a true horseman,
to the needs of his servant before he slaked his own parched lips, or so
much as dipped his hand in the cold, clear, tempting element. But
Merodach, though he pointed his ears and neighed joyfully, scarcely
wetted his muzzle in the marble basin; thereby affording a proof, had
any been wanting, of his celebrated pedigree and stainless purity of
breed. His young lord was not so abstemious. He looked about, indeed,
for a drinking-vessel; but would have done very well without it, had not
a shadow come between him and the sun as he was in the act of stooping
to immerse face, lips, and nostrils in the sparkling water. With the
ready instinct of one whose trade is war, he sprang erect, but bowed his
head again in manly courtesy when he saw a girlish figure bending over
him to dip her pitcher in the fountain.
"Drink, my lord," said a very sweet and gentle voice from the folds of a
thin white veil. "When your thirst is quenched, your servant will take
her payment in news from the army of the Great King."
He was young, bold, gallant, born under a Southern sun; but had
Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven, come down in person to accost him, with a
pitcher of water in her hand, he must have drunk before he could utter a
syllable in reply.
The girl watched him, while he emptied the vessel, with such tender
interest as women take in the physical needs of one to whom they render
aid, and refilled it forthwith, showing, perhaps not unconsciously, a
lithe and graceful figure as she bent over the fountain.
"Thanks, maiden," said he. "You have put new life into a fainting man;
for I have galloped over many a weary league of sand, and scarce drawn
bridle since yesterday at noon."
"The poor horse!" answered the girl, laying a slender hand on Merodach's
swelling neck. "But my lord comes doubtless from the camp, and has
joyful tidings to bring, or he had never ridden so far and fast. What of
the Great King? and O! what of Arbaces? Is he safe? Is he unhurt? Is he
well?"
There was a tremble in her voice that denoted intense anxiety, and the
pitcher in her hand shook till it overflowed.
Sarchedon marked her agitation with a sense of displeasure,
unaccountable as it was unjust.
"The Great King," he answered, raising his right hand quickly to mouth
and eyes while he named him--"the Great King has triumphed, as he must
ever triumph when he mounts his war-chariot. The captain of the host is
well in health, unwounded, though foremost in battle;--trusted by his
lord, feared by the enemy, and honoured of all."
She clasped her pretty hands together in delight, while the pitcher,
escaping from her grasp, poured its contents into the thirsty soil and
rolled under Merodach's hoofs, eliciting from the horse a prolonged
snort of astonishment and disgust.
"You are indeed a messenger of the gods!" said she--"welcome as the
breeze at sundown; welcome as the rains of spring; welcome to the Great
Queen and her people yonder in the city; but to none so welcome as you
have been to me!"
"Indeed!" he answered in a cold, measured voice. "Have I then brought
tidings of one so very dear to you?"
"None can ever be so dear," she exclaimed with a light laugh, musical
and pleasant as the whisper of the rippling fountain--"none will ever
love me so well--none shall I ever love half so dearly in return!
Arbaces is my father, and every day since he mounted his chariot at the
head of the Great King's captains have I watched here with my maidens,
to catch the first gleam of his armour when he returns, to learn good
tidings of him by the first messenger who rides hither from the camp.
Not one has yet arrived but yourself, my lord. I say again, may all the
host of heaven befriend you, for to me you are welcome as the dawn!"
It was unaccountable that his heart should have bounded so lightly at
her speech, that his tone should have been so much softer while he
replied:
"I am bearing tidings from a king to his queen,--from the conqueror of
nations to his people in the greatest city of the earth. I have to
relate how we slew and spared not, crushing and trampling down the enemy
as an ox treads out the ripened corn; breaking their chariots of iron;
taking their fenced cities by assault; capturing and bringing away men,
women, and children by thousands and tens of thousands. All that I have
to tell is of honour, glory, and victory. Yet I speak truth when I swear
to you, maiden, by the light of morning, that whatever recompense it may
please the Great Queen to bestow on the lowest of her servants, to have
met you here to-day at the Well of Palms, and to have gladdened you with
assurance of my lord your father's welfare, is to me the richest and
brightest reward of all."
"You have noble triumphs to report," she answered hurriedly, and drawing
her veil closer, as if he could see the blood rushing to her cheek
behind its folds. "Great victories, but not without fierce warfare--many
a broken shield and shivered spear, and deadly arrow quivering in its
mark! And you, my lord--have you escaped scathless? Has this good horse
borne you always unhurt and triumphant in the press of chariots?--Yes, I
know it, in the hottest fore-front of the battle? O, it is dreadful to
think of!--the wounded, the dying, the fallen steed, the pitiless
conqueror--those we love, it may be, gasping out their lives on the
trampled plain, and then to watch on the walls of the city, or here by
the Well of Palms, for the horseman that never comes! Pardon me, my
lord: I speak too freely. Let me give you to drink once more from the
fountain; then will I gather my maidens about me, and depart in peace."
He took her hand in his own, nor did she withdraw it.
"You are not alone?" he asked. "The daughter of Arbaces does not travel
unattended so much as a bowshot from the city walls?"
"My damsels are in those tents," she answered, "my camels are kneeling
in the shade. I have no need of guards nor horsemen. Over many a league
without the ramparts of Babylon her father's fame is a tower of defence
for the daughter of Arbaces."
"The daughter of Arbaces!" he repeated. "Maiden, so long as I eat bread
and drink water I will remember her by that name."
"And by her own," she added hurriedly. "The servant of my lord is called
Ishtar. It was my mother's name, and Arbaces loved her well."
"Ishtar!" he murmured--and his rich low voice dwelt softly on the
syllables--"Ishtar, the fair pure queen of night! 'twas well chosen, in
good truth; for the moon shines ever gentle, mild, and gracious, like a
true goddess."
"And changes, my lord, like a true woman!" laughed the girl; but
continued in a graver and more respectful tone: "The day wears on--he
who carries a king's tidings must be diligent on the way. I thank my
lord for his favourable notice of his servant, and I bid him farewell."
Then she gathered her dress about her, recovered the pitcher, and walked
away towards her tents, modest, stately, and graceful--a goddess in
gesture, as in name.
She turned once, nevertheless, when he was busied adjusting the bridle
in his horse's mouth, and drew her veil aside while he might have
counted ten. The large serious eyes, the perfect oval, the pale delicate
beauty of that young face haunted him, even to the towers and ramparts
of haughty Babylon, even amidst the shouting crowds who thronged her
brazen gates.
There is a spirit that, whether for good or evil, when it takes
possession of the heart of man, must needs tear and rend, stanch and
soothe, torture and perplex, or elevate and encourage, each and all in
turn; but, be it a blessing or a curse, it fills the tenement, occupies
the whole temple, and when it vanishes, leaves but bare walls and a
riven altar to mark the sacred spot that it has scathed and blasted ere
it passed away.
Merodach galloped on, swift, mettlesome, untiring, regardless of the
many leagues he had traversed, as he was unconscious of the double
burden that he bore.
Nearing the city, Sarchedon could not but admire the stupendous walls
that frowned over him as he rode at a slower pace through scores of
tents and lodges of wood or sun-dried bricks scattered through the
richly cultivated garden-grounds without the rampart walls, that, rising
to forty cubits in height, were yet so wide as to admit of three
chariots being driven abreast along their summits, flanked with lofty
towers standing out in pairs, bluff and bold, like defiant warriors, and
utterly impregnable to assault. Between every two of these, large gates
of brass, worked in fantastic ornaments representing gods, men, and
animals, amongst which the bull was the most conspicuous, stood open
from sunrise to sunset, while through their portals passed and repassed
a busy crowd, swarming like bees in and out of the rich and magnificent
city, her own especial residence, which the Great Queen had created to
be a Wonder of the World. What mattered waste of life and treasure,
starving families, fainting peasants, the sinking slave and the
task-master's whip? Each countless brick in all those leagues of
building might be moistened with tears and cemented with blood, every
stone raised on the crushed and mangled corpses of its founders; masses
of marble, slabs of alabaster, roof, tower, and pinnacle, beam of cedar,
and parapet of gold, might tell their separate tales of famine, disease,
misery, and oppression--what matter? The Great Queen said, "Raise me
here a city by the river that shall be worthy of my name!" and
straightway up-sprang, on either bank of the mighty stream, such
structures of pride, splendour, and magnificence, as were not to be
surpassed by that very tower of man's defiance to his Maker, about which
their foundations were laid.
Passing within the walls, a guard of Assyrian bowmen turned out to greet
with warlike honours the messenger from their monarch's camp; their
exertions were even required to clear a passage for him as he rode
through the crowded streets--men, women, and children thronging and
pressing in as he passed on, shouting a thousand cheers and
acclamations, striving with each other to touch his feet, his garments,
the horn of his bow, the carved sheath of his sword, the very trappings
and accoutrements of his horse. With all his desire for dispatch, it was
necessary to rein Merodach back to a foot's-pace; and many a dainty
flower fell whirling down on the young warrior, many a charm and amulet
was cast with unerring aim on his knees and saddle-cloth, while he paced
forward under stately palaces, solemn temples, or broad terraces glowing
like gardens with bright-robed Assyrian women, who flung their veils
aside to shower greetings and welcome on the brave.
The watchman at the gate had long expected such a one. With the first
glint of his armour in the distant waste the news spread like wildfire,
and the whole population of the city was astir.
So he rode slowly on, the observed of all; and still, turn which way he
would, above that sea of faces, amidst that mass of triumph, splendour,
and gorgeous colouring, floated like a star shining through a mist the
pale spectral beauty of the gentle girl whom he had left an hour ago at
the Well of Palms--even the shouts that rent his ear seemed to reëcho
from afar in an unearthly whisper, "Ishtar, Ishtar! pure, sacred, and
beautiful queen of night!"
The streets were wider, the buildings more magnificent, the crowd, if
possible, denser, as he proceeded through the city.
Presently, reaching a wide flight of low broad marble steps, flanked by
those colossal bulls with eagles' wings and human heads, that
represented the strength and solidity of the great Assyrian empire, he
halted to dismount; for a cloth of gold and scarlet had been rolled out
from top to bottom, and down these stairs were marching a body of
white-robed priests with slow and solemn gait, their centre figure
walking three paces before the rest, and advancing obviously to hold
conference with the messenger from the camp.
Then the young warrior took a jewelled signet from his breast, and with
a low obeisance pressed it to heart, mouth, and forehead; while over the
eager multitude came unbroken silence, as Sarchedon tendered to Assarac,
high-priest of Baal, his token from the Great King.
CHAPTER III
SEMIRAMIS
The silence lasted but a short space. When his lord, ere he accompanied
that priestly escort into the palace, bestowed one parting caress on
Merodach, shouts longer and more deafening than ever went up into the
sunny sky. The good horse, led away by half a dozen negroes, now seemed
to attract universal attention; for Sarchedon had disappeared between
the gigantic bulls of stone that guarded each entrance to the royal
dwelling. His armour, here and there defaced with sword-stroke or
spear-thrust, his dusty, travel-stained garments, and, notwithstanding
bodily strength and warlike training, the weary gait of one who has seen
the sun set twice without quitting the saddle, were in marked contrast
to the glittering splendour and refined magnificence of all that
surrounded him. The marble steps, skirted by their entablatures of
gilding and sculpture coloured to the life; the broad level terrace,
glistening and polished like a steel breastplate inlaid with gold; the
regal front of the costly palace itself, with its colossal eagle-headed
figures, its winged monsters, couching or erect, its sacred emblems, its
strange deities, its mystic forms, tributes of adoration offered to a
host of gods, as the long succession of lifelike carvings on the walls,
brought out in high relief with boldness of design and brightness of
tint, were memorials of the triumphs won by a line of kings.
Here were represented the pleasures of the chase, the vicissitudes of
war, the lion, the stag, the boar, the wild bull, beasts, landscapes,
rivers, chariots and horsemen, warriors, captives, towers, and towns.
Above rose a hundred stately pillars to support their painted chambers
roofed with cedar and other precious wood, inlaid in elaborate and
fantastic patterns, brilliant with vermilion or other gaudy colours, and
profusely ornamented with gold. Over these lofty rooms rose yet another
story, on ivory columns carved with the utmost skill that Indian
handicraft could produce and Bactrian triumphs furnish, under a roof of
which the very battlements and parapets were plated with silver and
gold.
High above all towered the sacred structure of cedar, which formed that
mysterious retreat, remote from the gaze of man, where none might enter
but the monarch alone when ministering in his holy office, and combining
in his own person the sacred characters of priest and king.
Assarac left his retinue at the gate of the palace, where stood two
pillars of sardonyx to render poison innocuous should it pass through,
and over which a gigantic carbuncle flashed its lurid rays, that seemed
to shed an angry gleam even in the darkness of night. He bade Sarchedon
follow, and the pair strode swiftly on through a cool and spacious
hall, propped by as many columns as there were days in the Assyrian
year, or furlongs in the circuit of the city walls, till, having thus
traversed the palace at its narrowest part, they emerged once more on a
paradise or garden, where the first object that met their eyes was a
wild stag roused from his lair, and scouring with all the freedom of his
native mountains to the shelter of a neighbouring thicket.
"She seldom hunts within these gardens now," was the priest's comment on
this startling incident. "She cares for no tamer pastime than to ride
the lion down, and shoot him with bow and arrow when at bay. There are
none left here since my lord the king slew three with his javelin not a
bowshot from where we stand; so she must away to the desert, or the
mountains beyond the great river, for the sport she loves so well.
Follow me close; you might lose yourself in this pleasant labyrinth, and
it is death, my friend--by impalement too!--for any one caught
disturbing the game."
He looked keenly in the other's face while he spoke, and seemed
gratified to observe that the young soldier received this announcement
with perfect unconcern.
Notwithstanding the power of an Assyrian sun, its rays could not
penetrate to the darkling path by which they now threaded a tangled
thicket of verdure--the tender flickering of green leaves above their
heads, the sweet carol of song-birds in their ears, and a carpet of
velvet turf beneath their steps--while they followed the course of a
rippling stream, guiding them by its murmur, rather than its leap and
sparkle, back to the light of day. Emerging from this grateful shade,
they found a broad sheet of water spread at their feet, its surface
dotted with wild fowl, its banks fringed with flowers, reflecting in its
dazzling mirror a temple of silver and ivory raised in honour of Dagon,
the fish-god, and much affected by the Great Queen, who, leaving her own
especial palace, loved to retire here with her women and wile away the
hottest hours of the summer's day.
One of these attendants seemed in expectation of the priest; for,
appearing suddenly in the portico of the temple, she made him a sign to
follow, and led the way, wrapping her veil so carelessly about her as
to afford ample opportunity for contemplation of her charms. At another
time Sarchedon might have observed with greater interest the jetty locks
and rich Southern colouring of this smiling dame; but besides his
new-born taste for beauty of a fairer, paler, and more gentle type, his
heart was beating, as it had never beat in the hurtle of chariots and
press of horsemen, at the thought that he was about to enter her
presence with whose name the whole world rang.
Immediately within the entrance of this temple hung a curtain of crimson
silk embroidered in lotus-flowers of gold. Assarac raised the hangings,
and stepping quickly aside, gave place while he let them fall behind his
comrade. Sarchedon, prostrating his forehead till it touched the cool
shining floor, found himself alone with the Great Queen.
The temple was circular, paved, panelled, vaulted, in ivory and silver,
the latter wrought and frosted with exceeding taste and skill, the
former carved into a thousand fantastic patterns, delicate and elaborate
as needlework. In the midst, a fountain threw its jets of silver to the
roof, falling back in silvery showers to an ivory basin, of which the
sparkling waters were thus continually moved with a refreshing drip and
murmur. White doves flitted about the building, or cooed their drowsy
love-song, perched peacefully on pinnacle and shaft. An odour of some
subtle perfume, like incense mingled with the scent of flowers, stole on
Sarchedon's senses; while he became aware of a figure reclining on the
couch of silver and ivory over against the entrance. He dared not raise
his eyes, and it was but the hem of her garment that he looked on, while
he heard the low musical tones of that enchantress who was destined to
subjugate the world.
"Rise, trusty messenger," said Semiramis; "fear not to tell me your
tidings for good or evil, and speak with me face to face. He must needs
be welcome who carries a token from my lord the king."
Sarchedon sprang to his feet at her bidding, and stood before the queen,
as fair a specimen of youth, manhood, and warlike grace as could have
been selected from the countless myriads that formed her husband's
hosts. He averted his eyes, nevertheless, and kept his head bent down
while, plucking from his breast the jewel that had already gained him
admission, he replied:
"The light of the queen's countenance dazzles the eyes of her servant.
Let him take courage to look but once, and be blind for evermore!"
While he spoke he laid the signet on a silken cushion under her feet.
She glanced at it carelessly enough, and bent her eyes on the young
warrior with a smile, half soft, half scornful.
"Am I then so dangerous to look upon?" said she; "the face of a queen
should be gracious to a faithful servant. I say to _you_, Look and
live!"
A thrill of intense triumph and pleasure shot through him with her
words. He took courage to scan the form and features of that celebrated
woman, whose intellect and beauty had already made her mistress of the
mightiest nation in the East.
She was beautiful no doubt, in the nameless beauty that wins, no less
than in the lofty beauty that compels. Her form was matchless in
symmetry, so that her every gesture, in the saddle or on the throne, was
womanly, dignified, and graceful, while each dress she wore, from royal
robe and jewelled tiara to steel breastplate and golden headpiece,
seemed that in which she looked her best. With a man's strength of body,
she possessed more than a man's power of mind and force of will. A
shrewd observer would have detected in those bright eyes, despite their
thick lashes and loving glance, the genius that can command an army and
found an empire; in that delicate, exquisitely chiselled face, the lines
that tell of tameless pride and unbending resolution; in the full curves
of that rosy mouth, in the clean-cut jaw and prominence of the
beautifully-moulded chin, a cold recklessness that could harden on
occasion to pitiless cruelty--stern, impracticable, immovable as fate.
But Sarchedon only saw a lovely woman of queenly bearing, glancing
approval on his glowing face. His Southern nature seemed to expand like
a flower in the sunshine of her smiles.
His looks could not fail to express admiration, and she, who might have
been satiated with homage, seemed well pleased to accept as much as he
had to offer.
Bending towards him with a gesture of condescension, that was almost a
caress, she bade him advance yet nearer to her couch.
"And now," said she, "that you have looked on this terrible face of mine
without perdition, tell me your tidings from the camp. What of the war?
what of the host? what of my lord the king?"
"The war is ended," he answered briefly; "the host is victorious. My
lord the king will return in triumph ere another day be past."
She started, but controlled herself with an effort.
"Enough," she answered haughtily and coldly; "you have done your
duty--you are dismissed!"
Then she clapped her hands, and from behind the silken hangings appeared
the woman who had guided Sarchedon into the temple.
"Kalmim," said the queen, still in the same constrained voice, "take
this messenger to Assarac without delay; bid the priest report to me, at
sunset, all the details he can learn from him regarding the host. But
stay"--her tone changed to one of winning sweetness, soft, sad, and
irresistible--"not till he has had food and rest. You have ridden day
and night through the desert; you have looked on your queen's face and
lived. Take courage, you may live to look on it again."
With the last words she turned on him one of her rare intoxicating
smiles, and the strong soldier left her presence helpless, confused,
staggering like a man who wakes out of a dream.
Within the gardens, or paradise, belonging to the royal palace stood a
vast pile of building, dedicated to the worship of Baal, and surrounding
the lofty tower of Belus, raised on the same site, and nearly to the
same altitude, as that by which human rebellion presumed to offend after
the Flood. Here, at the head of a thousand priests, dwelt Assarac in
solemn state and splendour, officiating daily in sacrifices offered to
the gods of Assyria, and their numerous satellites--Assarac, who
combined in his own person the leadership of religion and of politics;
for, during the absence of Ninus on his Egyptian expedition, it had been
the ambitious eunuch's aim to share, if he could not guide, the queen's
counsels, and, as far as he dared, to centre in his own person the
executive of government.
Sarchedon found himself, therefore, again threading the shady paths by
which he had come, but on this occasion under the conduct of a guide
less swift of foot than the priest but, as became her sex, more nimble
of tongue. Kalmim made no scruple of unveiling, to afford her companion
the whole benefit of her charms.
"A good beginning indeed," said this saucy dame, with a smile that did
justice to the reddest lips and wickedest eyes in Babylon; "you are in
favour, my young lord, I can tell you. To have seen her face to face is
no small boast; but that she should take thought of your food and rest,
and bid me charge myself with your guidance through this deserted
wilderness! why, I cannot remember her so gracious to any one
since--well--since the last of them--there, you needn't look so bold at
an unveiled woman--I ought never to have brought you here alone!"
It was almost a challenge; but he was busy with his own thoughts, and
made no reply. Kalmim, unaccustomed to neglect, attributed his silence,
not unnaturally, to exhaustion and fatigue.
"You are weary," said she kindly; "faint, doubtless, from lack of food,
and would not confess it to save your life? O, you men, how your pride
keeps you up! and why are you only ashamed of those things in which
there is no disgrace?"
He compelled himself to answer, though his thoughts were far away.
"I am not ashamed to be faint and athirst. I have ridden two nights and
a day, and drank water but once--at the Well of Palms."
"The Well of Palms!" she repeated, her woman's wit marking his
abstraction, and assigning to it a woman's cause. "It is the sweetest
water in all the land of Shinar. It would taste none the worse when
drawn for you by the daughter of Arbaces."
"Ishtar!" he exclaimed, while his whole face brightened. "You have seen
her--you know her! Is she not beautiful?"
Kalmim laughed scornfully.
"Beautiful!" she echoed, "with a poor thin face, white as ivory, and
solemn as Dagon's yonder, in the fishing-temple! Well, well! then she
_is_ beautiful, if you like; and we shall learn next that she is good as
well as fair!"
"What do you mean?" he asked, stopping short to look his companion in
the face.
Kalmim burst into another laugh.
"I mean nothing, innocent youth!--for strangely innocent you are, though
the beard is budding on your chin. And a modest maiden means nothing, I
suppose, who frequents the well at which every traveller from the desert
must needs halt--who draws water for warriors to drink, and unveils for
a stranger she never saw before! Yes, I am unveiled too, I know; but it
is different here. The queen's palace has its privileges; and, believe
me, they are sometimes sadly abused!"
"Not by one who has just left the light of her presence," answered
Sarchedon, angered to the core, though he scarce knew why. "I have never
been taught to offend against the majesty of a king's house--to believe
a fenced city taken because a bank is cast against it, nor a woman my
lawful prize because she lifts her veil."
Next to making love, Kalmim enjoyed quarrelling. To tease, irritate, and
perplex a man, was sport only second to that of seeing him at her feet.
She clapped her hands mischievously, and exclaimed,
"You are bewitched, my lord! Confess, now. She unveiled to turn her eyes
on you before you got to horse and went your way. Is it possible you do
not know who and what she is?"
"Good or evil," he answered, "tell me the truth."
"She bears her mother's name," replied Kalmim; "and, like her mother,
the blood that flows in her veins is mingled with the fire that glitters
in the stars of heaven--a fire affording neither light nor heat, serving
only to dazzle and bewilder the children of earth. Arbaces took a wife
from that race whom, far off in the northern mountains, the daughters of
men bare to the spirits of the stars, tempting them down from their
golden thrones with song and spell and all the wiles of grosser
earth-born beauty;--deceiving, debasing the Sons of Light, to be by them
deceived and deserted in turn, left to sorrow through long years of
hopeless solitude and remorse. Old people yet speak of some who had
themselves heard the voice of mourning on those mountains in the still
sad night--the shriek of woman wailing for the lost lover, in whose
bright face she might never look again! Ishtar, the wife of Arbaces,
possessed her share of the unearthly influence hereditary in her race.
Her husband became a slave. He loved the very print of her feet on the
sand. Travelling here from Nineveh, while this great city was building,
he halted in the desert, and Ishtar walked out from her tent into the
cool starlight night. They say he followed a few paces off. Suddenly she
stopped, and stretched her hands towards the sky, like one in distress
or pain. Rushing forward to take her in his arms, she vanished out of
his very grasp. At sunrise a camel-driver found Arbaces senseless on the
plain, and Ishtar was seen no more in tent or palace. But all the love
he bore the mother seemed henceforth transferred to the child. Doubtless
she has bewitched him too. Beware, my lord--beware! I have heard of men
leaving real springs in the desert for shining rivers and broad
glittering lakes, that faded always before them into the hot
interminable waste. I am but a woman; yet, had I your chance of fortune,
I would think twice before I bartered it away for a draught of water and
an empty dream!"
He seemed very sad and thoughtful, but they had now reached the temple,
and he made no reply. A white-robed priest received the young warrior at
its portal with every mark of respect, and ushered him into the cool and
lofty building, where bath, raiment, food, and wine, he said, were
already prepared, casting a look of intelligence at Kalmim, who answered
with as meaning a glance, and one of her brightest smiles. Then dropping
her veil, since nobody was there to see her handsome face, she tripped
back a good deal faster than she had come to her duties about the person
of the Great Queen.
CHAPTER IV
THE TEMPLE OF HIS GOD
In the hierarchy of Baal, as in other religious orders, false and true,
it was deemed but right that the priests should want for nothing, while
the altar was well supplied with offerings. To one who had dismounted
from a two nights' ride, such luxuries as were scattered profusely about
the temple of the great Assyrian god formed a pleasing contrast to camp
lodging and camp fare.
If Sarchedon, weary and travel-stained, was yet of so comely and fair a
countenance as to extort approval from the queen herself, Sarchedon,
bathed, refreshed, unarmed, clad in silken garments, and with a cup of
gold in his hand, was simply beautiful. Assarac the priest, sitting over
against him, could not but triumph in the sparkle of that bauble by
which he hoped to divert and dull the only intellect in the Eastern
world that he believed could rival his own.
The servant of Ninus and the servant of Baal sat together on the roof of
a lower story of the temple; below them the pillars and porticoes of the
outer court, behind them vast piles of building, vague, gloomy, and
imposing in the shades of coming night. High over their heads rose the
tower of Belus, pointing to the sky, and many a fathom down beneath
their feet the stir and turmoil of the great city came up, terrace by
terrace, till it died to a faint drowsy murmur like the hum of bees in a
bed of flowers. The sun was sinking in uninterrupted splendour behind
the level sky-line of the desert, and already a cool breeze stole over
the plains from the hills beyond the marshes, to stir the priest's white
garments and lift the locks on Sarchedon's glossy head, while for each
it enhanced the flavour and fragrance of their rich Damascus wine,
bubbling and blushing in its vase of gold. Between them stood a table,
also of gold, studded with amethysts, while the liquor in their golden
cups was yet more precious than the metal and brighter than the gem.
Something to this effect said Sarchedon, after a draught almost as
welcome and invigorating as that which he had drained in the morning at
the Well of Palms; while, with a sigh of extreme repose and content, he
turned his handsome face to the breeze.
"It is so," answered Assarac; "and who more worthy to drink it than the
warrior whose bow and spear keep for us sheep-fold and vineyard--who
watches under arms by night, and bears his life in his hand by day, that
our oxen may tread the threshing-floor, and our peasants press out their
grapes in peace? I empty this cup to Ninus, the Great King, yonder in
the camp, in love, fear, and reverence, as I would pour out a
drink-offering from the summit of that tower to Ashtaroth, Queen of
Heaven."
"And the Great King would dip his royal beard in it willingly enough,
were it set before him," answered the light-hearted warrior. "I saw him
myself come down from his chariot when we crossed the Nile, and drink
from the hollow of his buckler mouthful after mouthful of the sweet
vapid water; but he swore by the Seven Stars he would have given his
best horse had it been the roughest of country wine; and he bade us ever
spare the vineyards, though we were ordered to lay waste cornland and
millet-ground, to level fruit-trees, break down water-sluices, burn,
spoil, ravage, and destroy. Who is like the Great King--so fierce, so
terrible? Most terrible, I think, when he smiles and pulls his long
white beard; for then our captains know that his wrath is kindled, and
can only be appeased with blood. I had rather turn my naked breast to
all Pharaoh's bowmen than face the Great King's smile."
Assarac was deep in thought, though his countenance wore but the
expression of a courteous host.
"He is the king of warriors," said the priest carelessly--"drink, I pray
you, yet once more to his captains--and beloved, no doubt, as he is
feared among the host."
"Nay, nay," answered the other laughing, for the good wine had somewhat
loosened his tongue, while it removed the traces of fatigue from his
frame. "_Feared_, if you will. Is he not descended from Nimrod and the
Thirteen Gods? Brave, indeed, as his mighty ancestors, but pitiless and
unsparing as Ashur himself."
"Hush!" exclaimed the priest, looking round. "What mean you?"
"I have not counted twenty sunsets," answered the other, "since I saw
the Great King's arrow fly through buckler and breastplate, aye, and a
brave Assyrian heart too, ere it stuck in the ground a spear's length
farther on. He has a strong arm, I can bear witness, and the man fell
dead under his very chariot; but it should not have been one of his own
royal guard that he thus slew in the mere wantonness of wrath. Sataspes,
the son of Sargon, had better have died in Egypt, where he fought so
bravely, than here, under an Assyrian sky, within a few days' march of
home."
"Sataspes!" repeated the other; "and what said his father? It is not
Sargon's nature to be patient under injury or insult."
"His dark face grew black as night," answered Sarchedon, "and the
javelin he held splintered in his grasp; but he bowed himself to the
ground, and said only, 'My lord draws a stiff bow, and the king's arrow
never yet missed its mark.'"
"It was a heavy punishment," observed Assarac thoughtfully.
"And for a light offence," answered the other. "Sataspes did but lift
her veil to look on the face of a virgin in a drove of captives who had
not yet defiled by the Great King's chariot. She cried out, half in
wrath, half in fear; and ere the veil fell back on her bosom, the
offender was a dead man."
"Did the Great King look favourably on the virgin?" asked Assarac. "A
woman must needs be fair to warrant the taking of a brave man's life."
"I scarce heeded her," answered Sarchedon. "She came of a captive race,
whom the Egyptians hold in bondage down yonder, imposing on them servile
offices and many hard tasks--a race that seem to mix neither with their
conquerors nor with strangers. They have peculiar laws and customs in
their houses and families, giving their daughters in marriage only to
their kindred, and arraying their whole people like an army, in hosts
and companies. I used to see them at work for their task-masters,
moving with as much order and precision as the archers and spearmen of
the Great King."
"I have heard of them," said Assarac; "I have heard too that their
increasing numbers gave no small disquiet to the last Pharaoh, who was
wiser than his successor. Will they not rise at some future time, and
cast off the Egyptian yoke?"
"Never!" answered the warrior scornfully. "It presses hard and heavy,
but this people will never strike a blow in self-defence: they are a
nation of slaves, of shepherds and herdsmen. Not a man have I seen
amongst them who could draw a bow, nor so much as sling a stone. Where
are they to find a leader? If such a one rose up, how are they to follow
him? They are utterly unwarlike and weak of heart; they have no arms, no
horses, and scarcely any gods."
Assarac smiled with the good-humoured superiority of an adept
condescending to the crude intelligence of a neophyte. Did he not
believe that through the very exercise of his profession he had sounded
the depths of all faith, here and hereafter--in the earth, in the skies,
in the infinite--above all, in himself and his own destiny?
"Their worship is not so unlike our own as you, who are outside the
temple, might believe," said he, pointing upwards to the glowing spark
on the summit of the tower of Belus, which was never extinguished night
or day. "I have learned in our traditions, handed down, word for word,
from priest to priest, since the first family of man peopled the earth
after the subsiding of the waters, that they too worship the sacred
element which constitutes the essence and spirit of the universe. If
they have no images, nor outward symbols of their faith, it is because
their deity is impalpable, invisible, as the principle of heat which
generates flame. If they turn from the Seven Stars with scorn, if they
pour out no drink-offering, make no obeisance to the Queen of Heaven, it
is because they look yet higher, to that mystic property from which
Baalim and Ashtaroth draw light and life and dominion over us poor
children of darkness down here below. Their great patriarch and leader
came out of this very land; and there is Assyrian blood, though I think
shame to confess it, in the veins of that captive people subject now to
our hereditary enemies in the South."
"The men are well enough to look on," answered Sarchedon, "but, to my
thinking, their women are not so fair as the women of the plain between
the rivers; not to be spoken of with the Great Queen's retinue here, nor
the mountain maids who come down from the north to gladden old Nineveh
like sweet herbs and wild flowers growing in the crevices of a ruined
wall. If this people are of our lineage, they have fallen away sadly
from the parent stock."
"What I tell you is truth," replied Assarac; "and I, sitting by you here
to-night, have spoken with men whose fathers remembered those that in
their boyhood had seen the great founder of our nation--old, wrinkled,
with a white beard descending to his feet, but lofty still, and mighty
as the tower of defiance he reared to heaven, though suffering daily
from torment unendurable; and why? Because of the patriarch and chief of
the nation you despise."
Through all the Assyrian people, but especially amongst the hosts of the
Great King, to believe in Nimrod was to believe in Baal, in Ashur, in
their religion, their national existence, their very identity.
The colour rose to Sarchedon's brow as he passed his hand over his lips,
scarcely yet darkened with a beard, while he answered haughtily,
"Nimrod was lord of earth by right of bow and spear. No man living,
backed by all the gods of all the stars in heaven, would have dared to
dispute his word, nor so much as look him in his lion-like face!"
"And yet did this old man, lord only in his own family--chief of a tribe
scarce numbering a thousand bowmen--beard the lion-king in the city he
had founded, in the palace where he reigned, in the very temple of his
worship. The patriarch reasoned with him on the multitude of his gods;
and Nimrod answered proudly, he could make as many as he would, but that
while they emanated from himself they had supreme dominion on earth and
over all in heaven, save only the Seven Stars and the Twenty-four Judges
of the World. Then the patriarch took the king's molten images out of
the temple, kindled a great furnace in the centre of the city, and in
the presence of all Nineveh, cast them into the midst."
Sarchedon started to his feet.
"And the king did not hew him in pieces with his own hand where he
stood!" exclaimed he. "It is impossible! It is contrary to all reason
and experience!"
"The king could scarce believe his eyes," continued Assarac, smothering
a smile, "when he saw his sacred images crumbling down and stealing away
in streams of molten gold. It is even said that he uttered a great cry
of lamentation and sat on the ground a whole night, with his garments
rent, fasting, and in sore distress. This I scarcely think was the
fashion of the mighty hunter: what I _do_ believe is, that he sent a
company of bowmen after the offender with orders to bring him back into
his presence, alive or dead. They pursued the patriarch through the
Valley of Siddim, till they came to the bitter waters; and
here"--Assarac put his goblet with something of embarrassment to his
lips--"here the stars in their courses must have fought against Assyria;
for our warriors turned and fled in some confusion, so that the daring
son of Terah escaped. Then it is said that he prayed to his God for
vengeance against our lion-king, entreating that he who had been
conqueror of the mightiest men and slayer of the fiercest beasts on
earth, should be punished by the smallest and humblest of that animal
creation it had been his chief pleasure to persecute and destroy. His
God answered his prayer, though he raised no temples, made no golden
images of man, beast, bird, nor monster, and sacrificed but a lamb or a
kid in burnt-offering on the altar of unhewn stones in the plain.
"A tiny gnat was sent to plague great Nimrod, as the sand-fly of the
wilderness maddens the lion in his lair. Under helm or diadem--in purple
robe or steel harness--at board and bed--in saddle, bath, or war
chariot, the lord of all the earth was goaded into a ceaseless encounter
where there was no adversary, and exhausted by perpetual flight where
none pursued.
"Then he sent for cunning artificers, who made for him a chamber of
glass, impervious even to the air of heaven, so that the king entered it
well pleased; for he said, 'Now shall I have ease from my tormentor, to
eat bread and drink wine, and be refreshed with sleep.'
"But while he spoke the gnat was in his ear, and soon it ascended, and
began to feed on his brain. Then the king's agony was greater than he
could bear, and he cried aloud to his servants, bidding them beat on his
head with a hammer, to ease the pain. So he endured for four hundred
years; and then he--then he went home to his father Ashur; and when the
Seven Stars shine out in the Northern sky, he looks down, well pleased,
from his throne of light, on the city that his children have built, and
the statue of gold they have raised to his name."
"And this is true?" exclaimed Sarchedon, whose love of the marvellous
could not but be gratified by the priest's narrative.
"True as our traditions," answered Assarac, with something like a sneer;
"true as our worship, true as our reason and intellect, true as the
lessons we have learned to read in the stars themselves. What can be
truer? except labour, sorrow, pain, and the insufficiency of man!"
"Every one to his own duty," replied the young warrior. "Slingers and
bowmen in advance, spears and chariots in the centre, horsemen on the
wings. It is your business to guess where the shaft falls; mine is but
to fit the arrow and draw the bow. I am glad of it. I never could see
much in the stars but a scatter of lamps to help a night march, when no
brighter light was to be had. The moon has been a better friend to me
ere now than all the host of heaven. Tell me, Assarac, can you not read
on her fair open face when I shall be made captain of the guard to the
Great King?"
"What you ask in jest," said the other, smiling, "I will hereafter
answer in sober earnest. I go hence to the summit of that high tower,
and all night long must I read on those scrolls of fire above us a
future which they alone can tell--the destiny of nations, the fate of a
line of kings, nay, the fortunes of a young warrior whom the queen
delighteth to honour, and who may well deserve to sleep to-night while
others take their turn to watch."
Thus speaking, he spread his mantle over a heap of silken cushions,
disposed at the foot of the stairs leading to the tower of Belus so as
to form a tempting couch, in the cool night air, for one who had ridden
so far through the heat of an Assyrian day.
He had not ascended three steps towards the tower, ere Sarchedon,
overcome with fatigue, excitement, and Damascus wine, laid his head
amongst the cushions and fell into a deep sound sleep.
CHAPTER V
THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES
Casting his eye on the fire of fragrant wood that burned in its brazen
tripod at the summit of the tower, passing his fingers, as it seemed,
mechanically through its flame, and with the same unconscious gesture
touching his right eyebrow, Assarac leaned his massive figure against
the parapet, plunged in a train of deep engrossing thought.
The tapering structure he had ascended was built, as his traditions
taught him to believe, for purposes of astral worship and observation.
It afforded, therefore, a standing-point from which, on all sides, an
uninterrupted view of the heavens could be obtained down to the horizon;
yet the eyes of Assarac were fixed steadfastly on the great city
sleeping at his feet, and it was of earthly interests, earthly
destinies, that he pondered, rather than those spheres of light, hanging
unmarked above him in the golden-studded sky.
A soft but measured step, the rustle of a woman's garment, caused him to
turn with a start. He prostrated himself till his brow touched the
brickwork at her feet, and then, resuming an erect position, looked his
visitor proudly in the face, like a teacher with his pupil, rather than
a subject before his queen.
"Assarac," said Semiramis, "I have trusted you with a royal and
unreserved confidence to-night. I do not say, deserve it, because your
life is in my hand, but because our wishes, our interests, and the very
object we aim at, are the same. Many have served me in slavish
subjection through fear. Do you serve me with loyal regard as a
friend?"
She laid her white hand frankly on his arm, and he, priest, man of
science, as he was, ambitious, isolated, above and below the strongest
impulses of humanity, felt the blood mount to his brain, the colour to
his cheek, at that thrilling touch.
"Your servant's life," he answered, "and the lives of a thousand priests
of Baal, are in the queen's hand to-night; for doth she not hold the
signet of my lord the king, sent with Sarchedon from the camp in token
of victory? And more than my life,--my art, my skill, the lore by which
I have learned to compel those gods above us, are but precious in my
sight so far as they can advantage the Great Queen."
"You will unfold the mysteries of the sky," she replied eagerly. "You
will bid Baalim, Ashtaroth, and all the host of heaven speak with me
face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. If you will answer for
the gods up yonder," she added with a touch of sarcasm on her sweet
proud lip, "I will take upon myself to order the actions of men below."
"Something of this I _can_ do," said he gravely, "or I have watched here
night by night, and fasted, and prayed, and cut myself with knives
before the altar of Baal, in vain. But, first, I must ask of the queen,
doth she believe in the power of the gods? Doth she trust her servant to
interpret truly the characters of fire engraved by them on the dark
tablets of night?"
She scanned him with a searching look. "I believe," she said, "thus
far--that man makes for himself the destiny to which hereafter he must
submit. I believe the gods can foretell that destiny, and I would fain
believe, if I had proof, that you, Assarac, their faithful servant,
possess power to read up yonder the counsels of the Thirteen, and all
their satellites."
"What proof does my queen desire?" asked the priest. "Shall I read off
to her from those shining tables the plastic mouldings of the future, or
the deep indelible engravings of the past?"
The queen pondered. "Of the future," she replied, "I cannot judge
whether they speak true or false. Were they to tell me of a past known
only to myself and one long since gone from earth"--she sighed while
she spoke--"I might give credit to their intelligence, and shape my
course by those silent witnesses, as men do in the desert or at sea."
"Look upward, my queen," answered Assarac, "and mark where the belt of
the Great Hunter points to that distant cluster of stars, like the
diamonds on your own royal tiara. Faintest and farthest shines one that
records her past history, as yonder golden planet, glowing low down by
the horizon, foretells her future destiny."
He stopped, and from a vase of wine that stood near the sacred fire,
sprinkled a few drops to the four quarters of the sky. "I pour this
drink-offering," he said, "to Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven! Shall I tell
the Queen of Earth a tale I read in those stars forming the symbol
which, rightly interpreted, contains the name of Semiramis?"
The queen nodded assent, turning her beautiful face upward to the sky.
"Could it all be true?" was the wild thought that fleeted for an instant
through his brain, "and had not Ashtaroth herself come down from heaven
to look on her adoring votary?"
With a glance almost of awe into the queen's upturned countenance,
Assarac proceeded: "I read there of a city in the South, a city beyond
the desert, pleasant and beautiful in the waving of palms, the music of
rushing waters, built on the margin of a lake, where leaping fish at
sundown dot the glistening surface, countless as rain-drops in a shower.
On its bank stands a temple to that goddess who, like Dagon, bears half
a human form, terminating in the scales and body of a fish. Very fair is
Derceta to the girdle, and, womanlike, fanciful as she is fair. Near her
temple dwelt a young fisherman, comely, ruddy, of exceeding beauty and
manhood, so that the goddess did not scorn to love him with all the
ardour of her double nature, only too well.
"Yet it shamed her of her human attributes when she gave birth to a
child, though the stars tell me, O queen, that never was seen so
beautiful a babe, even amongst those borne by the daughters of men to
the host of heaven.
"Nevertheless, a foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sackcloth;
so that the goddess, in wrath and shame, carried her infant into the
wilderness, and left it there to die.
"Behold how Ashtaroth glows and brightens in the darkening night. Surely
it was the Queen of Heaven who sent fair doves to pity, succour, and
preserve that child of light, tender as a flower, and beautiful as a
star. Day by day the fond birds brought her fruits and sustenance, till
certain peasants, observing their continual flight in the same
direction, followed their guidance, and found by a rill of water the
laughing infant, bearing even then a promise of beauty to be unequalled
hereafter in the whole world."
There was pride and sorrow in the queen's deep eyes as she fixed them on
the seer, and whispered,
"Ask, then, if it had not been better to have left the child there to
die."
"The stars acknowledge no pity," was his answer. "It is the first of
human weaknesses cast off by those who rule in earth or heaven. Had they
not written the destiny of that babe by the desert spring in the same
characters I read up there to-night? They tell me how, in her earliest
womanhood, she was seen by Menon, governor of ten provinces under my
lord the king. They tell me how Menon made her his wife. They tell me,
too, of an amulet graven with a dove on the wing, which that maiden wore
hidden in her bosom when she came veiled into the presence of her lord."
The queen started.
"How know you this?" she exclaimed almost angrily. "I have never yet
shown it even to my lord the king."
"I do but read that which is written," he answered. "They tell me also
how, when she shall part with that amulet, it will purchase for her the
dearest wish of her heart at the sacrifice of all its powers hereafter.
Its charm will then be broken, its virtue departed. She never showed it
man save Menon; for the governor of those wide provinces stretching to
the Southern sea would have gone ragged and barefoot, would have given
rank, riches, honours, life itself, for but one smile from the loveliest
face that ever laughed behind a veil."
"They speak truth," murmured the queen; "he loved me only too well."
"It was written in heaven," continued Assarac, "that the servant must
yield to his master, and that a jewel too precious for Menon was to
blaze in the diadem of the Great King. I read now of a fenced city,
frowning and threatening, far off in an Eastern land; of a bank cast
against its ramparts, and mighty engines smiting hard at its gates; of
archers, spears, slingers, and horsemen; of the king of nations seated
on his chariot in the midst, pulling his grey beard in anger because of
the tower of strength he could in no wise lay waste and level with the
ground. But for Menon and his skill in warfare, the besiegers must have
fled from before it in disorder and dismay. One morning at sunrise there
were heard strange tidings in the camp. Men asked each other who was the
youth who had ridden to Menon's tent in shining apparel, devoid of helm
and buckler, but armed with bow and spear--beautiful as Shamash the God
of Light, so that human eyes were dazzled, looking steadfastly on his
face.
"Ere set of sun the Great King had himself taken counsel with this
blooming warrior; ere it had risen twice, Menon was made captain of the
host, and the work of slaughter commenced; for the proud city had
fallen, and the gods of Assyria were set up in its holy places, to be
appeased with blood and suffering and spoil.
"When the host returned in triumph, they left a mighty warrior dead in
his tent over against the ruins of the smoking town. No meaner hand
could have sufficed to lay him low, and none but Menon took Menon's
life, because--Shall I read on?"
A faint moan caused him to stop and scan the queen's face. It was fixed
and rigid as marble, pale too with an unearthly whiteness beneath that
starlit sky; but there was neither pity for herself nor others in the
calm, distinct articulation with which she syllabled her answer in his
own words--"Read on!"
"They teach me," he continued, "that Menon could not bear his loss,
after she had left his tent whose place was on the loftiest throne the
earth has ever seen. When the triumph returned to Nineveh, there sat by
the Great King's side, in male attire, the fairest woman under heaven.
She guided his wisest counsels; she won for him his greatest victories;
she raised his noblest city; she became the light of his eyes, the glory
of his manhood, the treasure of his heart, mother of kings and mistress
of the world; but she had never yet parted with her amulet to living
man. All this is surely true; for it is written in those symbols of fire
that cannot lie, and that trace the history of the Great Queen."
Semiramis turned her eyes on him with a look that seemed to read his
very heart. The priest bore that searching glance in austere composure,
creditable to his nerve and coolness; though these were enhanced by a
vague conviction of his own prophetic powers, the result, no doubt, of a
certain exaltation of mind, consequent on his previous fasts, his
studies, and his long hours of brooding over deep ambitious schemes.
After a protracted silence, she sighed like one who shakes off a heavy
burden of memories; and, giving her companion the benefit of her
brightest smile, asked him the pertinent question: "Is it the amulet
that controls the destiny, or the destiny that gives a value to the
amulet? Do the stars shed lustre on the woman, or is it the woman's fame
that adds a glory to her star?"
For answer he pointed to a ruby in her bracelet, sparkling and glowing
in the light of the mystic flame.
"That gem," said he, "was beyond price in the rayless cavern of its
birth. Nevertheless, behold how its brilliancy is enhanced by the gleams
it catches from the sacred fire. The stars shine down on a beautiful
woman, and they make of her an all-powerful queen."
"All-powerful!" repeated Semiramis. "None is all-powerful but my lord
the king. To be second in place is to be little less a slave than the
meanest subject in his dominions."
He took no heed of her words. He seemed not to hear, so engrossed was he
with his studies of the heavens, so awe-struck and preoccupied was the
voice in which he declaimed his testimony, like a man reading from a
sacred book.
"She whose counsels have won battles shall lead armies in person; she
who has reached her hand to touch a sceptre shall lift her arm to take
a diadem; she who has built a city shall found an empire. Walls and
ramparts must hem in the one; but of the other brave men's weapons alone
constitute the frontier: as much as they win with sword and spear so
much do they possess. The dove is the bird of peace; and for her whom
doves nourished at her birth there shall be peace in her womanhood,
because none will be left to contend with the conqueror and mistress of
the world."
He fell back against the parapet of the tower, pale, gasping, as if
faint and exhausted from the effects of the inspiration that had passed
away; but beneath those half-closed lids not a shade on the queen's
brow, not a movement of her frame, escaped his penetrating eyes. He
could read that fair proud face with far more certainty than the
lustrous pages of heaven. Perhaps he experienced a vague consciousness
that here on these delicate features were written the characters of
fate, rather than yonder above him in the fathomless inscrutable sky.
She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She was looking far out into
the night, towards that quarter of the desert over which Sarchedon had
ridden from the camp, where an arrow from her own quiver lay under the
bleaching bones of the dead lion. Her eyes were fierce, and her
countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, yet not
devoid of triumph, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.
Such a glare had he seen in the eyes of the Great King when he awarded
death to some shaking culprit--such a look on the victim's fixed face,
ere it was covered, while they dragged him away.
It was well, thought Assarac, for men who dealt with kings and queens to
have no sympathies, no affections, none of the softer emotions and
weaknesses of our nature. The tools of ambition are sharp and
double-edged; the staff on which it leans too often breaks beneath it,
and pierces to the bone. Moreover, it would have been wiser and safer to
commit himself to the mercy of winds and waves than to depend on the
wilfulness of a woman, even though she wore a crown. Already the queen's
mood had changed: her face had resumed its habitual expression of calm,
indolent, and somewhat voluptuous repose.
"No more to-night," she said, with a gracious gesture, as of thanks and
dismissal. "There is much to be done before the return in triumph of my
lord the king. To-morrow you will carry my commands to the captains
within the city, bidding them have all their preparations made for the
reception of the conquerors. Let them assemble their companies under
shield; let the chariots and horsemen be drawn up in the great square
over against the palace; and let the archers look that their bows have
new strings. You can answer for your own people here?"
"For every hand that bears a lotus in temple, palace, or streets--two
thousand in all, without counting the prophets of the grove, and the
priests of Baal, outside the walls."
"Enough," said the queen; "you have done well. I, too, can read in the
future more and mightier things than you have imparted to me to-night."
She wrapped her mantle round her to depart, not suffering Assarac to
attend her one step on her way. Kalmim, she said, was waiting in the
garden, and would accompany her to the palace. So she walked slowly down
the winding staircase, grave, abstracted, as though revolving some
weighty purpose in her mind. At its foot she started to see the
recumbent figure of Sarchedon buried in profound sleep.
Was it a fatality of the stars? Was it an impulse of womanhood? She bent
over that beautiful unconscious face till her breath stirred the curls
on its comely brow, then, with a gesture almost fierce in its passionate
energy, snatched the famous amulet from her neck, and laid it on his
breast.
"It is a rash purchase," she muttered; "but I am willing to pay the
price."
CHAPTER VI
A DREAMER OF DREAMS
He was sleeping, yet not so sound but that his rest was visited by a
strange and terrifying dream.
He thought he was in the desert, galloping his good horse in pursuit of
an ostrich, winged with plumes worthy to tuft the spears that guarded
the Great King's tent. But for all his efforts of voice, hand, and
frame, Merodach laboured strangely in the deep sand, of which the
long-legged bird threw back such volumes as to choke his lips and
nostrils, wrapping him in a dim revolving cloud, that whirled and
towered to the sky. Like a stab came the conviction that he was in the
midst of the pitiless simoon, and he must die. Once more he strove to
rouse Merodach with heel and bridle; but the horse seemed turned to
stone, till, plunging wildly, he struggled forward, only to sink under
his rider and disappear beneath the sand. Then the cloud burst asunder
to reveal the glories of a dying sunset, fading into the purple sea.
He was on foot in the desert, fainting, weary, and sore athirst; but he
heard the night-breeze sighing through palms and whispering in lofty
poplars; he heard the cool ripple of water against the shore, and the
pleasant welcome of a stream, singing in starts of broken melody as it
danced down to meet the waves; then he saw a yoke of oxen, a camel at
rest, a few huts, and a boat drawn up high and dry on the beach.
He was no longer a warrior in the armies of the Great King, but a rude
fisherman amongst fishermen. He ate of their bread, he drank from their
pitcher; yet was he still hungry and athirst, still wore a sword at his
girdle and carried a bow in his hand.
He took his share of their labour; he drew in their nets. It seemed to
him he had seen their faces before, though they knew him not; but he
marvelled why they moved so slowly, and neither spoke nor smiled. While
he helped them, too, it was as if the whole weight of rope and meshes
hung on his arm alone. So night fell; and they took him into a hut,
pointing to a cruse of water and a mantle spread in the corner, but
withdrawing in the same sad silence, calm and grave, like those who
mourn for the dead.
He could not sleep. The moon rose and shone in on him where he lay.
After long hours of tossing troubled waking, a figure blocked the window
where her rays streamed in on his couch. Then a great horror came over
him without cause or reason, and tugging hard to draw his sword, he
found it fastened in the sheath. Solemnly, slowly the figure signed to
follow. Leaving his couch, he felt his heart leap, for it resembled
Ishtar! But in the porch of the hut he seemed to recognise the clear
proud features of the queen. Nevertheless, when its face was turned to
the moonlight, he knew it was Assarac under the garb of a fisherman, but
bearing the lotus-flower always in his hand. Without exchanging word or
look, with averted eyes and stealthy steps, these two set the little
bark afloat and took the oars. Then at last was broken the long weary
silence, by a voice that came up from the deep, saying, "Ferrymen, bring
over your dead!"
Light, buoyant, and high in the water, the boat had danced like a
sea-bird on the surface; but now, though never a form was seen nor sound
heard, she began to sink--deeper, deeper, so that the waves seemed to
peer over her sides, leaping and sporting about her in cruel mockery, as
though eager to break in and send her down.
It was a hard task to row that heavy freight out to sea. Weary and
horror-stricken he tugged at his oar till the sweat dropped from his
brow.
The moon went down, and a great darkness settled on the waters--the
thick clogging waters, through which their oars passed so heavily. Was
it the sea of the plain whereon they were embarked? Yes, surely, it must
be the sea of the plain, the Dead Sea.
Was he never to approach the term of this numbing oppressive labour?
Must he row on for ever and ever, without pause or respite, having bid
his last farewell to the shores of earth and the light of day? Thus
thinking, he felt the boat's keel grate against the bottom, while the
oar started from his hand.
He took courage to look about him; but mortal eye could not pierce that
thick darkness; and though the toil awhile ago had been so severe, a
chill air curdled his blood, and crept into his very heart.
Still and silent as the grave seemed that shadowy land, till the same
voice he had heard on the other shore called out the name of one he knew
well and loved with a brother's love. There was no answer; but the boat
lightened perceptibly, and her keel no longer touched the shingle.
Another name was called, and yet another, always in the same calm
passionless accents, always with the same strange solemn result.
At every summons the boat rose higher in the water. When Sataspes was
called, she swung to the flow and wash of the sluggish wave against her
sides; at the name of Ninus, the Great King, she floated free and
unencumbered as before she put out on her mysterious voyage.
With a heart lightened as was the boat that bore him, he pushed her off
to return; for something warned him that now his task was done. He would
fain have spoken with Assarac; but the surrounding gloom seemed so to
oppress his lungs and chest, that the words formed by his tongue could
not find vent through his lips.
Once more he was bending to the oar, when, as it were out of his own
heart, came a voice whispering his name, "Sarchedon! Sarchedon!" in low
sweet tones, which yet he knew vibrated with the sentence of his doom.
An unseen power raised him to his feet, and would have lifted him to
shore, but that the priest held him back by his coarse fisher's garment,
which dragged on chest and throat till he was fairly choked. Then, in
extremity of fear and agony, he found his voice to call on Assarac for
help at the moment when his vesture, yielding to the strain laid on it,
parted asunder to let the cold night air in on his naked breast.
So he awoke, scared, trembling, panting for breath, and even in his
waking seemed still wrapped in the gloom of that Isle of Shadows--seemed
still to catch the tread of muffled footsteps, the breath of airy
whispers, faint echoes from another world.
In that age, and amongst a people ever striving after a mystic ideal,
yearning for communion with a higher world, dreams, and the
interpretations thereof, were held of no small account.
Sarchedon, warrior though he was, and, like his great chief, little
imbued with the superstitions of his time and country, could not yet
pass over such a scene as his imagination had even now pictured without
much cogitation and concern. He sat up and considered it in no small
perplexity, inclining to regard the vision now as an omen of fortune,
anon as a warning of fate. In his suffocating struggles to wake, his
hands had been pressed close against his breast; a few moments elapsed
ere he became conscious that he held in them a jewel he had never seen
before. Rising from his couch at the foot of the tower, he hastened to
examine it by starlight under the open sky. It consisted of an emerald,
on which was cut the figure of a dove with outspread wings, following,
as it seemed, the course of an arrow flying upward through the air. That
it had come to him by supernatural influences during his sleep, he never
doubted, and interpreted it, as men always do interpret the
inexplicable, in the manner most agreeable to his own wishes. This dove,
he said to himself, must mean the girl he had so lately seen at the Well
of Palms; for what could be more dove-like than the maiden sweetness and
innocent bearing of Ishtar? The arrow doubtless signified, in its upward
flight, his own future career. He would become illustrious as a warrior,
and Ishtar would follow him in his brilliant course to fame. Was it an
arrow, or the initial of a name? He was forced to confess, from its
shape and direction, that it seemed intended to represent the weapon
itself, and not the letter of which he would fain consider it a symbol.
Nevertheless, it must be a sign that the gods intended him for great
things, and it should be no fault of his if the only woman who had yet
touched his heart did not share with him the good fortune thus promised
by the stars.
Meantime it wanted many hours of dawn; so he returned to his cushions
and mantle for the remainder of his night's rest, stopping by the table
at which he had sat with Assarac in the evening for a pull at the golden
flagon, not yet emptied of its good Damascus wine.
Nevertheless, long before sunrise, he awoke refreshed, invigorated,
happy; feeling the amulet resting on his breast, he accepted its
presence for a fortunate omen; and ere daylight paled the beacon-fire on
the tower of Belus, was galloping Merodach through the desert on his way
to the Well of Palms.
"Surely," thought this dreamer, "she will be watching there for the
first glitter of spears that shall give token of her father's return?
Then will I tell her when to expect the host, and how to distinguish
between its vanguard and the spearmen of its strength, having Arbaces at
their head, who march with the chariot of the Great King. She will give
me to drink, and I will say unto her, Maiden, as this draught of water
to one athirst and stifled with the desert sand, so is a whisper from
the lips and a glance from the eyes of the fairest damsel in all the
land of Shinar to him who has ridden from the great city only to look on
her face ere he departs to see her no more. Then she cannot but lift her
veil, and speak kindly to me, bidding me tarry but a few moments, while
she draws water for my horse. So will I tell her the whole tale; and
hereafter, when my lord the king has rewarded his warriors for service
done with bow and spear, I will take to Arbaces a score of camels, a
hundred sheep, and a talent of gold, together with the armour I won of
that swarthy giant beyond the sweet river; and how shall he say me nay?
So will I lead her home to my tent, and then shall I have attained full
happiness, and need ask for nothing more on earth."
Thus it fell out that Kalmim, arriving in the temple of Baal soon after
daybreak, missed both the object of her real and her fictitious search.
The queen after a heated restless night, bade her chief tiring-woman
seek in that edifice for an amulet, which Semiramis affirmed she could
only have dropped at the foot of the tower of Belus, where some one, she
added, was sleeping, who must be brought to her and interrogated
forthwith. Kalmim's experience, in her own person and that of her
mistress, led her at once to guess the truth; therefore she hurried off
to apprise Sarchedon he was wanted without delay in the royal palace. On
her arrival, it might be said that she found the nest still warm, though
the bird had flown; for a priest was carrying away the cloak and
cushions that had formed the young man's couch, and his dark eyes
glittered with a roguish smile while he peered into the flagon of
Damascus, to find little left in it but dregs.
"These warriors seem to know the use of good wine when they can get it,"
said he, "and I doubt not it sings and mantles under helm of steel no
less than linen tiara or fillet of gold; but they clasp bow and spear
through many a long night for one that they spend with goblet of Ophir
in hand. Men sleep little in the camp too, and feed sparingly, they
tell me, nor day after day must they be cheered by the sight of a
woman's veil or the sound of a woman's voice. To say nothing of a fierce
enemy and a place in the fore-front of the battle between two hosts in
array, where it is scarcely more dangerous to fight than to fly. Truly
it is better to be a servant of Baal than of the Great King."
"It is better to be a boar in the marshes than a lion in the mountain!"
retorted Kalmim with high disdain; "a vulture battening on a dead camel
than an eagle striking the wild goat from its rock! Conquering or
conquered, up or down, a warrior is at least a _man_, and a match for
men!"
"While a priest is a match for women," answered the other, laughing. "Is
that what you would say? Nevertheless, Kalmim, it must be a priest who
will serve your turn this morning, for there are here a thousand in the
temple, and never a hand among us to draw bowstring or close round the
shaft of a spear."
"There was a warrior in the porch even now," replied Kalmim; "a goodly
young warrior with dark flowing locks, and a chin nearly as smooth,
Beladon, as your own. What have you done with him? He bore hither the
Great King's signet, and if he has come by harm, not all the gods of all
your temples will shield you from the fair face that never looked on man
in anger but he was consumed."
Beladon, a handsome young priest, with bright roguish eyes and swarthy
complexion, turned pale while she spoke--pale even through the rich
crimson of his cheek and the blue tint of lips and chin, where his beard
was close-shaven, and rubbed down with pumice-stone in imitation of
Assarac's smooth unmanly face.
"The youth lay here scarce an hour ago," said he, trembling. "He mounted
the noblest steed that ever wore a bridle--a white horse, with eyes of
fire--and rode off through the Great Brazen Gate into the desert like an
arrow from a bow. Surely he will return."
Kalmim burst out laughing at his discomposure.
"Surely he will return!" she repeated; "and when he does return, surely
you will bring him to me by the path through the great paradise without
delay. Semiramis hath been dealing justice amongst the people since
sunrise, but she will pass the heat of the day as usual in the fishing
temple, and you will find me in its porch. You do not fear to present
yourself before Dagon? His worship requires no sacrifice of sheep nor
oxen, no blood of priests to flow from the gashes they cut in their
naked flesh, before his altar."
She spoke in a jesting tone ill befitting the solemnity of the subject,
and he answered in the same vein.
"The sheep and oxen we offer are consumed without doubt by Baal himself,
while his servants live miraculously on the light of his countenance and
the fragments that he leaves! Touching our self-inflicted wounds,
notwithstanding all the blood spilt before the people, we scarcely feel
the pain; and this too cannot but be by a miracle of the god. I make no
secret with you of our mysteries. Tell me, in return, what mean these
warlike preparations that have set the whole city astir to-day?"
Her tone was still of banter and sarcasm.
"Would you wish the Great King to be received," said she, "with no more
ceremony than a shepherd bringing a stray lamb in from the wilderness on
his shoulders? When he returns a conqueror, shall not the triumph be
worthy of the victory?"
"But if every man who can bear arms is to stand forth in array with bow
and spear; if the women and children, on pain of death, are not to come
down into the streets; if the priests of Baal and the prophets of the
grove are to be marshalled like warriors, with knives unsheathed and
sacrificing weapons in hand, our welcome will seem to Ninus more like
the assault of a fenced city than the return of my lord the king to his
home!"
"So be it," answered Kalmim. "It is not the flash of a blade or the
gleam of a spear that will frighten the old king. By the serpent of
Ashtaroth, he fears neither man nor demon; and when his queen raised a
temple in Bactria to Abitur of the Mountains, he profaned his altar and
defied the Chief of the Devils in sight of our whole army. It angered
her, and she hath not forgotten it. Why, men say, he believes no more in
Baal than--than you do yourselves!"
He looked about him in alarm.
"Hush!" said he. "It is not for me to judge between my gods and my lord
the king. The divining cup of Assarac has not failed to tell him that
Ninus shall one day take his place with the Thirteen Gods. It may be
that he knows the golden throne is waiting for him even now."
He scrutinised her face narrowly, but saw on it only a light and
careless smile.
"Were I the queen, I'd have a younger one next time," was her reply. "Of
_your_ years, say you? No, thank you, Beladon--not for me. Well, you may
come with me to the Jaspar Gate and as far as the outer court; I dare
not pass alone through all those oxen, lowing, poor things, as if they
knew not one of them would be left alive to-day at noon."
CHAPTER VII
THE KING OF NATIONS
Leaning on his spear within a day's march of the Great City, the tall
figure of a warrior loomed massive and indistinct in the early light of
morning breaking on the Assyrian camp. Line by line, shade by shade, as
dawn stole slowly upward, his form came out in bolder relief. Presently
a dark blurred mass, some few paces off, took the shape of a sleeping
camel; soon shadowy tents, dusky banners, spoil, arms, accoutrements,
all the encumbrances of an army on the march, grew into their real
outline, filled with their respective colours; and the man's features,
under his steel headpiece, became plainly visible in the light of day.
He was arrayed in the utmost splendour of armour and apparel. The
former, inlaid throughout with gold, shone bright and polished like a
mirror, though the goodly silks and heavy embroidery that formed the
latter were sadly rent and frayed by the press of many a hot encounter,
the wear and tear of many a weary march. He wore in his girdle a short
straight sword with jewelled hilt and ornamented scabbard, carried a
bow and quiver of arrows at his back, and a shield studded with precious
stones on his arm. From his shoulders hung an ample mantle of crimson
silk, bordered with deep fringes of gold; while the head of the spear,
or rather javelin, on which he rested, though broad, sharp, and heavy,
was plated and ornamented with the same costly metal.
In such an arm it seemed no doubt a formidable weapon; for the man's
square frame and weighty limbs denoted great personal strength; while
his marked features wore an expression of habitual fierceness, in
accordance with a swarthy complexion, thick black brows, and ample
curling beard.
He was buried in thought of no pleasing nature, to judge by the working
of his lips and the scowling glances he directed towards a tent standing
apart, of which two upright spears tufted with ostrich-plumes marked,
and seemed to guard, the entrance.
As morning brightened, the whole camp came into view from the mound
where he kept guard, and whereon the Great King's tent was pitched--a
camp of many sleeping thousands, ranged in warlike order under a hundred
banners drooping heavily in the still clear air.
Suddenly the warrior started from his listless attitude into life and
action; for a light step was approaching, and a figure advanced to the
tufted spears that denoted the abode of royalty.
"Stand!" he exclaimed in threatening accents, advancing his shield and
raising the javelin to strike. "Nay, pass, Sethos," he added with a
scornful laugh. "I have no orders to stop the king's cup-bearer; but you
are on foot betimes this morning, though you wot well the old lion stirs
not before break of day."
Sethos patted the wine-skin under his arm--a homely vessel enough,
though its contents were to be poured into a jewelled cup.
"The old lion laps ever at sunrise," said he; "and the hunter who brings
him to drink need not fear to enter his lair."
"Fear!" repeated the other with an accent of contempt. "He who deals
with lions must forget the meaning of the word. 'Tis thus, man, they are
trapped and tamed."
"Of a truth," answered Sethos, "I once believed that in all the hosts of
Assyria or of Egypt was to be found no frown so dark as gathers on the
brows of the Great King when he is angered. By the beard of Ashur,
Sargon, I have seen a fiercer look of late on the face of one who used
to be ready with smile and wine-cup as with bow and spear; and it comes
from under the helmet, my friend, that keeps _your_ head."
"Have I not cause?" muttered the other, speaking below his breath in the
quick concentrated accents of intense feeling. "When the host marches
into Babylon, and the women come out with song and timbrel to welcome
the conquerors; when each man makes his boast, showing his treasure, his
spoil, and the captives of his bow and spear; when my lord the king
rewards his servants, giving gifts--to this a dress of honour, to that a
beautiful slave, to another a talent of gold and spoil of household
stuff--what shall be done for Sargon, the king's shield-bearer,
returning childless and bereaved by the king's own hand? Boy, it is well
I hold not your place. I might be tempted to mix that in the cup which
should cause Ninus to pour out his next drink-offering amongst a host of
heaven in whom he professes to have no belief."
"Dangerous words," answered Sethos, "and empty as they are rash. Why,
man, you yourself cover him in battle with his shield. It is but
lowering your arm a cubit, and the king's life is in your hand."
"I could not do it," said Sargon, drawing himself proudly up. "It shall
never be said that the great Assyrian fell to point of Egyptian arrow,
or gash of Bactrian steel. Nay; though the fire on Sargon's hearth may
be quenched, his name extinct, let Ninus fulfil his destiny, and sit
amongst the gods like his forefathers. It may be they are waiting for
him even now. Listen, Sethos; he calls from his tent. Hie thee into the
lion's den, and pour him out such a morning's draught as shall keep him
fasting from blood at least till noon."
Sethos--a handsome light-hearted youth, who as the king's cup-bearer
enjoyed many privileges and immunities, of which he availed himself to
the utmost--passed swiftly between the tufted spears, and with a low
prostration raised its curtain, to enter the tent of the oldest and
mightiest warrior in the world.
Ninus, half risen from his couch, ruder and simpler than that of any
captain in his host, stretched his long gaunt arm with impatience for
the wine he so craved, to replenish the exhausted energies and wasting
powers of extreme old age. The Great King's face was pale and sunken;
his eyes, deep in their sockets, were dull and dim; while his thin
scattered locks, shaggy brows, and long flowing beard had turned white
as snow. Nevertheless, the wreck of that mighty frame, like some hoary
fortress crumbling and tottering into ruin, still showed the remnant of
such grand proportions, such fabulous strength as was allotted to the
men of olden time, when earth was new and nature inexhaustible. Yet was
it whispered through the host, that as their fiercest champion would
have seemed a mere child by the side of their king in his prime, so was
Ninus but as a babe compared with great Nimrod, his ancestor, the god of
their idolatry, and mighty founder of their race.
Sethos tendered the wine-cup as in duty bound, then stood with hands
crossed before him, and looks bent lowly on the earth. The king drained
his morning draught to the dregs; and for a moment there rose a faint
flush on the ashen features, a lurid glow in the wan weary eyes--but
only to fade as quickly; and it was a sadly tremulous hand, though so
broad and sinewy, that grasped his wine-cup; while the deep voice came
very hoarse and broken in which he asked Sethos,
"Who waits outside? Is it near sunrise?"
"Sargon, the royal shield-bearer," was the answer, "has been on guard
since cock-crow; and Shamash, Prince of Light, will doubtless show
himself above the horizon so soon as my lord the king appears at the
door of his tent."
Ninus bent his shaggy brows in displeasure on the volubility of his
servant.
"Halt!" said he. "Rein in thy tongue, lest the dogs have their share of
it without the camp. Fill yet again; and let me hear no more of this
endless jargon about the gods."
It was death to laugh in the king's presence; but Sethos, replenishing
the goblet to its brim, did not repress a smile. The old warrior's
second draught seemed somewhat to renew his strength.
"Reach me that gown," said he--"the heavy one; and the girdle yonder.
Fool! that in which hangs the sword--my good old sword! Ha! if Baal and
Ashtaroth had done for me but one half the service of horse and weapon,
they might take their share of the spoil, and welcome. By the belt of
Nimrod, they shall not have one shekel more than a tenth this time!
Thirteen gods, by my beard, and every god a thousand priests! Why, it is
enough to ruin the richest king that ever built treasure-house. I must
reduce them. I will about it at once, when the people are busy with the
triumph. I wonder what _she_ will say--my beautiful! I angered her long
ago, when I refused to worship Satan up yonder in the mountains. I would
be loath to anger her again, though I will worship nothing but the eyes
that are watching fondly for my return."
Old, exhausted, weary as he was, there came a gentle look over his grim
war-worn face while he thought of the woman he loved so fondly, whom it
had cost him so much of crime and cruelty to possess. But the passion of
acquisition, almost inseparable from age, was strong in the king's
heart; and it chafed him to think the votaries of Baal should so largely
share in the fruits of this his last and most successful expedition
beyond the Nile.
Sethos, standing before him in the prescribed attitude of respect,
marked every shade of his lord's countenance, drawing his own
conclusions, and preserving his usual air of imperturbable good humour
and self-conceit.
The early flush of sunrise now stole under the hangings of the tent,
crimsoning the cup-bearer's feet where he stood, so that his sandals
looked as if they had been dipped in blood.
"Bid them sound trumpets," said the king. "Go tell Arbaces that the
vanguard must set themselves in array at once. Where is Ninyas? He
should have been waiting before his father's tent ere now. Wine, sloth,
and pleasure--he loves them all too well. Yet the boy drew a good bow in
his first battle, and rode through Pharaoh's horsemen, dealing about him
like Nimrod himself. Go, bring him hither; and, Sethos, as you pass
through the camp, order the captain of the night to call in the watches.
So soon as the camels are loaded I shall march."
A warrior to the very marrow, Ninus loved such minute details as the
marshalling of a vanguard, or the ordering of an encampment, better than
all the pomp of royalty; and felt more at ease in steel harness, on the
back of a good steed, than seated in purple and gold, with the royal
parasol over head, the royal sceptre in hand, an object of worship to
adoring crowds in ancient Nineveh, or even great Babylon itself.
His son Ninyas, on the contrary, though scarcely yet verging on manhood,
was already steeped in sensuality, and a slave to that reckless
indulgence of the appetites which so soon degenerates from pleasure into
vice. His grim father perhaps would have been less patient of excesses
and outbreaks in camp and city but for the lad's exceeding beauty and
likeness to his mother, Semiramis, whose race and womanly graces were
reproduced with startling fidelity in those delicate boyish features,
that lithe symmetry of form.
Sethos was a prime favourite with the prince, who approached his
father's tent, leaning on the cup-bearer's shoulder, in respectful
haste, denoted by his flushed face and disordered apparel. Though
careless of the displeasure with which Ninus visited such unwarlike
negligence, as he was of everything save the folly of the moment, he had
put on neither harness nor headpiece, had neither taken a spear in his
hand nor girt a sword upon his thigh.
The old king's shaggy brows lowered till they almost hid his dull stern
eyes.
"What maiden is this," said he, "who comes thus unveiled into the camp
of warriors? Go, take needle in hand, and busy them with cunning
embroidery if those unmanly fingers be too dainty to bear the weight of
heavier steel."
It was death to laugh in the king's presence, death to assume any other
than the prescribed attitude with bowed head and crossed hands;
nevertheless a merry peal rang through the tent, the boy tossed the
king's goblet in the air, and caught it again, while his fresh young
voice answered lightly,
"There is a season for all things, father, and I like fighting at the
proper time as well as old Nimrod himself. But this is a day of victory
and rejoicing. I begin it with a drink-offering to my lord the king."
He held the cup to Sethos while he spoke, laughing to see how little of
the generous fluid was left in the wine-skin. His mirth was contagious,
and the old lion smiled a grim smile while he laid his large wrinkled
hand on the lad's shoulder, with a kindly gesture that was in itself a
caress.
"Begone with you!" said he, "and if proven harness be too heavy for
those young bones, at least take bow and spear in hand. It was thus your
mother came riding into camp the first time I ever saw those arched
brows of hers. You have her fair face, lad, and something of her proud
spirit and wilful heart."
He looked after the boy sadly and with a wistful shake of his head; but
just then a trumpet sounded, and the old warrior's eye gleamed, his
features assumed their usual fierce and even savage expression, while he
summoned his armour-bearer to rivet harness on his back, and the
captains of his host to take their short, stern orders for the day.
And now the whole camp was astir. Tents were struck and camels loaded
with a rapidity only acquired by the daily repetition of such duties
under the eye of discipline and in presence of an enemy. Ere long, where
horses and beasts of burden had been loosely picketed, or wandering half
tethered amongst bundles of unbound forage, between the lines of dusky
weather-stained tents--where spears had been piled in sheaves, amongst
cooking utensils and drinking vessels--where bow and arrow, sword and
shield, helm and habergeon, had been tossed indiscriminately on
war-chariots, horse furniture, or scattered heaps of spoil--where the
movable city had seemed but a confused and disorganised mass, was fairly
marshalled the flower of an Assyrian army, perfect in formation,
splendid in equipment, and no less formidable, thus disposed in its
smooth motionless concentration, like a snake prepared to strike, than
when drawn out in winding shining lines to encircle and annihilate its
foe.
Even the captives had their allotted station, and with the spoil were
disposed in mathematical regularity, to be guarded by a chosen band of
spears. These prisoners were of two kinds, separate and distinct in
every detail of feature, form, and bearing. The darker portion, some of
whom were so swarthy that their colour looked like bronze, scowled with
peculiar hatred on their conquerors, and, as it seemed, with the more
reason that several bore such wounds and injuries as showed they had
fought hard before they were taken alive, while a whiter-skinned and
better-favoured race, with flowing beards, high features, and stately
bearing, who kept entirely apart and to themselves, seemed to accept the
proceedings of their captors in the forbearance of conscious
superiority, not without a certain sympathy, as of those who have
interests and traditions in common with their masters.
The admiration of all, however, was compelled by the imposing appearance
of those war-chariots and horsemen that formed the strength and pride of
an Assyrian army.
As the old king, tottering somewhat under the weight of his harness,
appeared at the door of his tent, the entire host was set in
motion--bowmen and slingers in front, followed by a body of horsemen
glittering in scarlet and gold, raising clouds of dust, while their
trumpets sounded above the neigh and trample of those horses of the
desert that knew neither fatigue nor fear; then, with stately even
tread, marched a dark serried column of spears, bearded, curled, and
stalwart warriors, every man with shield on arm, sword on thigh, and
lance in hand; next, the war-chariots, thousands in number, with a roll
like distant thunder, as they came on in a solid mass of moving iron,
tipped with steel. After these a few priests of Baal, weary and
dejected, walking with but little assumption of sacred dignity, bore the
image of a bull and a few other idols small and portable, but formed of
molten gold. These hurried on, as if they feared to be ridden down by
the king's body-guard who succeeded them, picked champions, every one of
whom must have slain an enemy outright with his own hand, mounted on
white steeds, and glistening with shields and helmets of gold. In their
rear rode Arbaces, the captain of the host, and immediately behind him
came the chariot and led horse of the monarch himself.
As these reached the mound on which the royal tent was pitched, the
whole force halted, and a shiver of steel ran like the ripple of a wave
along their ranks, while every man brandished his weapon over his head,
and shouted the name of the Great King.
Ninus stood unmoved, though for an instant the wrinkles seemed less
furrowed on his brow. They gathered, however, deeper than ever, when his
quick eye caught sight of Ninyas reclining in his chariot, with his
favourite Sethos beside him, and a cup of wine half-emptied in his hand.
The king's own chariot was in waiting; but he caused it to pass on, and
bade them bring his war-horse, a fiery animal, that came up curvetting
and champing at its bit. Sargon, with the same scowl that had never left
his face, went down on hands and knees for his lord to mount with
greater advantage from off his back, and Ninus, settling himself in the
saddle, while the war-horse plunged with a force that would have
unseated many a younger rider, looked his son fixedly in the face,
observing in a tone of marked reproach,
"Couches for women! chariots for eunuchs! May you never learn to your
cost, boy, that his good horse is the only secure throne for an Assyrian
king!"
Then he signed with his hand, and while trumpets rang out, and warriors
recovered their weapons, a globe of crystal, emblematic of the sun, and
suspended above the royal tent, was illumined by a priest with sacred
fire. As it flashed and kindled, the whole army set itself in motion,
and the King of Nations was once more on the march towards his last
triumph, after his last campaign.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LUST OF THE EYE
Babylon the Great had pranked herself out in holiday attire, like some
loyal and splendid dame arrayed to welcome her lord. From the Gates of
Brass in her southern wall to the temple of Baal towering in her centre,
squares, streets, and terraces were hung with scarlet, blazing with
gold, and strewed knee-deep in flowers. Her population were shouting by
tens of thousands on either bank of the Euphrates, which ran through the
heart of the city, while even the broad river was dotted with boats of
every shape and colour, fantastic, gaudy, and beautiful as the exotics
on the tanks of those paradises or gardens which formed her
distinguishing characteristic and her pride. Myriads of women waved
their veils and scarfs from roof and balcony in endless perspective,
while countless children added a shriller echo to every cry of welcome
as it rose.
It was remarkable, however, that, contrary to custom on similar
occasions, none of the weaker sex were to be seen in the streets. Such
had been the decree of the Great Queen; a decree enforced by the
presence of so strong an array of warriors as denoted the mighty
resources of an empire, which could thus furnish a formidable army at
home to receive an army of comrades returning from the frontier.
Besides these champions of bow and spear, masses of white-robed priests
occupied the porches of every temple and every open space dedicated to
sacrifice throughout the city; while others, chosen from the servants of
Baal, and therefore under the immediate influence of Assarac, were
scattered through the crowd, conspicuous amongst the gay dresses and
glittering arms of their countrymen by their linen garment and the
lotus-flowers in their hands.
Of these, Beladon seemed the busiest and most voluble, gliding from
group to group with plausible words and impressive gestures, which
nevertheless left on his listeners a nameless sense of dissatisfaction
in the pageant, the victory, and general results of the Egyptian
campaign.
Amongst the warriors perhaps this discontent was most apparent,
amounting indeed to a sentiment of insubordination, which lost nothing
in strength and bitterness from the observations of the priest.
"A feeble war," said he, addressing himself to the captain of a band of
spearmen who occupied one of the Brazen Gates--"a distant country and a
doubtful success. Few captives, I have heard, little spoil, and the
frontier remains where it was."
"Not much to boast in the way of fighting," answered the other, a
stalwart warrior curled and bearded to the eyes. "Look at the vanguard
passing even now. Scarcely a dinted shield or a torn garment in their
ranks; every bowman with a whole skin and a quiver full of arrows at his
back. It was not thus we marched in from Bactria, when I myself could
count three scars on my breast, and one on my face that you may see
there even now; ay! and bore on my spear the head of a giant whom I slew
in sight of both armies with my own hand. Ninus laughed, and swore I
hewed at him like a wood-cutter at a broad-leafed oak in the northern
hills. I wonder if he will remember me to-day."
"The Great King hath forgotten many a stout blow and faithful service
since then," answered Beladon. "The lion grows old now, his teeth are
gone, and his claws worn down. Ere long he will take his seat among the
Thirteen Gods, my friend, and Ninyas, his son, will reign in his stead."
"He is a leader of promise, I have heard," said the other, "who can set
the battle in array; ay, and strike hard in the fore-front too, despite
his slender body and winsome woman's face."
"Winsome indeed," replied Beladon, pointing upward to where the queen
sat in state on the wall amidst her people. "Is he not his mother's son?
and has he not inherited her very eyes and smile?"
"She would make the noblest leader of the three," swore the captain of
spears. "By the serpent of Ashtaroth, she has more skill of warfare than
the Great King himself; and I have seen the Bactrians lay down their
arms and surrender without a blow, when she drove her war-horse into
their ranks. You are a priest, and priests are learned in such matters.
Have you never heard that she is something more than woman?"
"The gods will take her to dwell with them in their own good time,"
answered Beladon gravely, but smothering a smile as he reflected on
sundry feminine weaknesses and caprices of the Great Queen, freely
discussed by the priests of the inner circle in the temple of Baal.
"More than woman," he muttered, moving away to another group of
spectators--"more than woman in cunning, more than man in foresight,
more than the lion in courage, more than a goddess in beauty! The day
must come when she will rule the world! Assarac is her chief
adviser--Beladon is high in the counsels of Assarac--and so, what
matters a gash or so before an altar, a little reserve amongst the
people, compared with the prospect that opens before us, if only we were
rid of this fierce old unbeliever, who fears neither gods above nor men
below?"
Then he moved a few paces on, and bade a listener mark how the queen had
turned the course of a stream out of her gardens round the royal palace
to fill the fountains of the city, wondering in the same breath how
Ninus would relish the alteration--Ninus, who a few years back had
levelled walls, streets, and temples to enlarge the borders of a
paradise for his game. This observation having won sufficient attention
from the crowd, he proceeded to discuss the value of provisions, a
subject of interest to all, reminding them that grain had been strangely
cheap during the king's absence from his dominions, and marvelling why
millet should have gone up in price as the conquering army advanced
nearer and nearer home. Were they better or worse for the Great King's
presence, he wanted to know; had they been athirst or ahungered while
Ninus was far away making war on the frontier; and why was it that now,
on the day of his return in triumph, they began to feel scarcity and to
be sparing of the children's bread? Men looked blankly in each other's
faces, and shook their heads for a reply; but such seed is never sown on
barren ground, and it dawned on many minds that their city, which after
all was not of his own founding, but his queen's, would have been none
the worse had the Great King never come back from the war at all.
A hundred priests prating to the same effect in a hundred quarters
produced no contemptible result. Discontent soon grew to disloyalty, and
men who at daybreak would have asked no better than to fling themselves
in adoration under the king's chariot-wheels were now prepared to
receive him in sullen displeasure, and, as far as they dared, with
outward demonstrations of ill-will.
Yet, like clouds before the northern breeze, all these symptoms of
disaffection were swept away by the first glitter of spears in the
desert, the first trumpet blast without the walls giving notice of his
approach--to return, when the triumph and the pageant should be over,
when the shouting and the excitement should have died away.
There was one, however, who watched the alternations of temper in the
multitude as a steersman in shoal water watches the ebb and flow of the
tide. Assarac's keen intellect penetrated the wavering feelings of the
people, while his daring ambition aimed even at the overthrow of a
dynasty for the gratification of its pride. He had long dreaded the
return of Ninus as a check to his own power over the populace and
paramount influence with the queen. The old lion loved neither priests
nor priestcraft, and would have had small scruple in putting all the
servants of Baal to the sword, if he suspected them of treachery or
revolt. Had the army marched back from Egypt weakened and disorganised
by the fatigues of its campaign; had the numerous force within the walls
showed stronger symptoms of impatience and discontent; in short, had his
materials seemed but inflammable enough to take fire at a moment's
notice, Assarac would not have hesitated that one moment in applying a
torch to set the whole Assyrian empire in a blaze.
But the priest, though swift to strike his blow, was also patient to
abide his time. The Great Conqueror's army marched home as it had
marched out, strong in numbers, in courage, in supplies--flushed
moreover with an easy victory and a sufficiency of spoil. Warlike
enthusiasm is of all excitement the most catching, and the hosts within
the city were fain to greet their brethren-in-arms with at least the
semblance of cordiality and good-will. Not thus on the day of his
triumph was the old lion to be taken in the toils. Assarac, in his place
of honour as high priest, standing near the queen, watched every turn of
her countenance, and bethought him that the stars in their courses
afforded no such difficult page to read as the text of a woman's heart.
Semiramis was attired with a magnificence that, enhancing her own
unrivalled beauty, seemed to envelop her in splendour more than human.
When she raised her veil to look down on the crowd, an awe came over the
people, so that they forbore even to shout. It seemed as if Ashtaroth,
Queen of Heaven, had descended in their midst; but a single voice
finding vent at last, such a pent-up burst of cheers rose to the sky,
that her fair face turned a shade paler, and to him who was scanning it
with eager gaze of curiosity and admiration, it seemed as if a moisture
rose in her deep dark eyes.
The shouts of the people were caught up again and again. Clad in a robe
of golden tissue, crowned with a diadem of rubies and diamonds set in
gold, wearing the star-shaped ornaments round her neck that denoted her
divine origin, and on her breast the most precious jewel in the empire,
representing a cock and a crescent-moon, emblems of that homage to the
Evil Principle which she had herself inculcated on the nation; wrapped
besides in the halo of her own surpassing beauty, it was scarce possible
to believe she was only a woman after all, of the same mould, the same
nature, the same passions, with the drudges they had left pounding corn
and drawing water at home. From gilded warrior to naked slave, from the
captain in his chariot to the leper at the wayside, not a man, as he
looked on that lovely face, but would have felt death cheaply purchased
by a kind word or a smile. And these were lavished on one who was asked
to encounter no danger--scarcely to perform an act of homage, in return.
Sarchedon, flushed, dazzled, bewildered by the position, found himself
installed at her right hand, chief officer and prime favourite, placed
there ostensibly as bearer from the camp of the Great King's signet; in
reality, something whispered to his astonished senses, because he had
pleased the eye and taken captive the fancy of the queen.
Many a stolen look had he intercepted that could but be interpreted as
of high favour and approval. Once she fixed her eyes on the amulet,
which, in ignorance of its ownership, he wore openly round his neck, and
seemed about to speak, but checked herself, sighing languidly, and
turning with impatience to Assarac; while she questioned him about the
details of the pageant, wondering why the vanguard, already marching in,
should be thus far in advance of the main body and the Great King. "Was
the army so encumbered with spoil? Had they so many captives? Were there
beautiful women among them? She had heard much concerning the daughters
of the South--Sarchedon could tell them--was it true the women of Egypt
were so dangerously fair?"
Once more she bent her eyes on the young warrior, and was not displeased
to mark the colour deepen on his cheek, while bowing low he answered,
with his looks averted from her face.
"I thought so till I returned to Babylon from the host. But a man who
has once seen the glitter of a diamond is blind thenceforth to the
lustre of meaner gems."
"Your eyes must have been strangely dazzled," replied Semiramis with
exceeding graciousness; "and the diamond that so bewildered you--was it
rough from the mine, or cut and set in gold? Did it sparkle in the zone
of a maiden, or in the diadem of a--" She stopped short with a faint
laugh, adding in a more reserved tone, "She was no Egyptian, then, but
one of our own people, whose beauty thus reached the heart at which
Pharaoh's bowmen have been aiming in vain? Shall I press him to name
this victorious archer? Kalmim, do you plead guilty? Is it you? or you?
or you?" She looked round amongst her women while she spoke, and one
after another, trying hard to blush, bowed her modest disclaimer with
glances of admiration, not unmarked by the queen, at the warrior's
handsome face and figure, set off by the splendid armour and apparel in
which he stood. Even Semiramis, proud, conquering, almost omnipotent,
liked him none the worse that it was obvious the other women would have
liked him too, if they dared. But Assarac, ever watchful, ever jealous
of his own interests, which centred in the dignity of the Great Queen,
now interposed.
"The land of Shinar has been the land of beauty ever since the sons of
heaven came down to woo her daughters on the mountains beyond the two
rivers," said the priest. "Even before the days of the Great Queen, has
not Ashtaroth the beautiful reigned ever goddess of the Assyrians?
Ashtaroth, with her golden crown, enrobed in streams of light!"
"Ashtaroth trampling the lion beneath her feet!" added Semiramis, with a
curl on her lip and a dangerous glitter in her eyes.
"Ashtaroth with the serpent in her hand," retorted Assarac, lowering his
voice to a meaning whisper. "The emblem of cunning, stratagem, and true
wisdom. Think not it is her star-like beauty, her golden crown, her
lustrous robes, that dominate the world. No; it is the counsel of the
serpent she carries in her hand!"
The queen flung up her head. "I require no counsels," said she, "from
priest or serpent. When I spear the wild bull, I ride my horse freely
against his front. When I shoot the lion, I aim mine arrow straight at
his heart. Warriors bolder than the wild bull, fiercer than the lion,
must needs go down before the weapons of Semiramis!"
It had been an ungraceful boast, but for the sweet smile, the soft
glance, that accompanied her words, causing them to convey a loving
invitation rather than a warlike defiance.
Sarchedon's heart was thrilling and his brain burning. The sweet
intoxication of vanity possessed the one, the fiery spark of ambition
kindled in the other. He muttered low, that "to be slain and trampled
under foot by the Great Queen was a nobler lot than to drive a
war-chariot over prostrate nations," and was raising his eyes to learn
how the humility of such an avowal would be received, when his face
turned pale, and he started like a man who leaps to his feet at the
approach of danger.
Not half a bowshot off, looking fixedly towards him, was the gentle
troubled face of Ishtar, on the terrace of her father's palace, watching
for the chief captain's return.
The queen did not fail to detect his agitation and its cause. Her eyes
flashed, her delicate mouth shut close on the instant as if with a
clasp, her features set themselves like a mask, a beautiful mask, but of
the hardest steel. So looked she when she rode the lion down and pierced
him to the heart; so looked she when she urged her chariot through the
ranks of an enemy, over heaps of slain; so looked she when she
administered justice from the Great King's tribunal, and turned pitiless
from a suppliant pleading hard for life. The glance she shot at the
daughter of Arbaces was that of an unhooded falcon eyeing the gazelle
upon the plains.
And at the same moment glances, pleading, passionate, longing, as of
that same gazelle when she nears the desert-spring, were directed
towards Ishtar from a gorgeous chariot passing slowly in pompous march
of triumph through the Brazen Gate, while veils were waved, steel
brandished, and the acclamations of ten thousand voices rose higher and
higher; for in that chariot stood their future king, the young Ninyas, a
living reflection of his mother, bright, delicate, and beautiful as the
queen herself.
She marked her son's admiration of the pale fair girl; she marked
Sarchedon's uneasiness; but whatever thoughts were busy in her royal and
lovely head, she looked abroad into the desert and held her peace.
CHAPTER IX
THE PRIDE OF LIFE
As the glittering procession defiled in proud array through the gates of
that imperial city, Babylon might well be proud of her children. The
most warlike nation on earth had assembled to greet the flower of its
army returning from conquest; and the warriors of the old king bore
themselves like men who are conscious they deserve the meed of triumph
accorded to their fellows. Each black-browed spearman, so bold of
feature, so open-eyed, so curled and bearded, stalwart of limb and
stately of gesture, marched with haughty step and head erect, as though
he felt himself the picked and chosen champion of a host. Archers and
slingers assumed the staid dignity of veteran captains, while the very
horses that drew the war-chariots champed, snorted, and swelled their
crests as if they too were conscious of the reputation it behoved them
to uphold.
Far as stretched the triumph--so far indeed that its van had already
reached the temple of Baal, while its rearguard was yet below the
sky-line of the desert--every link in that chain of victory afforded
some object of interest, admiration, or pride to the spectators. These
were the bows that had been bent to such purpose in their first pitched
battle with the ancient enemy, when Egypt was worsted and driven back
upon the Nile. Those strong and stately spearmen, so bronzed, so
scarred, so splendid in dress and armour, were the very warriors who had
withstood the fury of all Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen, nor yielded
one cubit of ground, though sore out-numbered and beset, while they
covered the Great King's passage of that famous river. Close in their
rear, with clang of trumpet, clash of steel, and ring of bridle, came
trampling four abreast the famous horsemen of Assyria; and men told each
other, with kindling eyes and eager gestures, how the steeds that drank
from the Tigris and the Euphrates had charged to the gates of Memphis
and been stabled in the temples of the Stork.
Next, with horses gorgeously caparisoned, trapped, plumed, and stepping
daintily under the rein, rolled on the terrible war-chariots of iron,
that, with their scythes of steel, mowed down the ranks of an enemy in
broad swathes of slaughter where they passed. Each car, besides its
charioteer, held a heavily-armed warrior under shield, with bow and
arrows, sword and spear; three horses plunged abreast, two of which were
harnessed to the chariot, while a third, linked only with its fellows to
the bridle, was driven along-side in readiness to replace a maimed or
fallen steed. This formidable array, which struck with awe even the
accustomed senses of the bystanders, was compared by them to the chest
and body of the army, while the horsemen represented its limbs and feet.
Immediately in rear of that moving mass of metal rode the captain of the
host, less distinguished for splendour of array than personal dignity of
bearing and such a noble face as must have been beautiful in youth. To
please his fierce old master, he followed the example of Ninus, and
abandoned his chariot for the back of so goodly a steed as could only
have been bred in the plain between the rivers. If a thousand
acclamations rent the air while this stately veteran came galloping on,
managing his war-horse with all the grace and pliancy of youth, they
were increased tenfold when he drew rein beneath the terrace where stood
Ishtar and her maidens, halting for a moment, while he looked fondly
upward at his daughter and his home.
With the gesture of a child, she stretched out her arms towards him, as
if she would fain have leaped down into his embrace. Sarchedon, looking
on her from the wall, was but one of many thousands who felt her
innocent beauty thrill to his very heart. Nevertheless, Assarac,
narrowly watching Semiramis, observed her cheek turn a shade paler,
while the hard pitiless expression came back to the queen's unrivalled
face.
Arbaces made no long delay. Waving his hand towards his daughter, and
glancing proudly round on his applauding countrymen, he paced slowly on,
while a whisper ran through the crowd:
"Stand close--here they come! Welcome to the golden helmets! Honour to
the guards of the Great King!"
Two by two, mounted on white horses with scarlet trappings, arrayed in
silks of white and scarlet, with shields and helmets of burnished gold,
came flashing on this picked and chosen body--every man of whom,
selected for strength and beauty, must also have distinguished himself
by an attested act of daring in the field. In their centre floated their
standard, likewise of scarlet, and on its folds was embroidered in gold
the figure of Merodach, god of war, standing on a bull with a drawn bow
in his hand. The arms of these champions were bare to the elbow, their
legs to the knee; but their persons were otherwise defended by close
scale armour, thickly inlaid with gold; precious jewels studded the belt
and pommel of each man's sword, and the shaft of his spear; the fringes
of their gowns were inordinately long, their beards and hair elaborately
curled and perfumed. It was evident that these guards of royalty
esteemed themselves no less ornaments than champions of the Assyrian
host.
Sarchedon's eyes flashed, and his cheek glowed with pleasure while they
passed. He was proud to think that these were his own special comrades
and brethren-in-arms; that it was from their glittering ranks he had
been detached with the royal signet and tidings of the Great King's
return.
The queen marked his enthusiasm; and, bending kindly towards him,
demanded in a soft voice, scarce above a whisper:
"Who are these, Sarchedon? To my eye, they seem the goodliest and
best-favoured men in the armies of Assyria."
"They are my comrades," he answered proudly; "the guards of the Great
King: the meanest of us holds himself equal to a leader of ten thousand.
Arbaces Tartan[3] is our captain, as he is captain of the host."
[Footnote 3: Tartan, the general in command.]
"And Sarchedon would look nobly at their head," she answered, with one
of her bewildering smiles. "It may come to pass yet for him who knows
when to strike and when to forbear. Hush! there are higher destinies
written in the stars than the posting of a few tinselled spearmen to
watch the slumbers of a king!"
He was equal to the occasion. O, heart of man! so strong and bold when
beset by danger or privation, so weak and untenable when assailed on the
side of vanity! He replied in a low and trembling voice, "It is honour
enough for me. Yet is there one post I would rather hold--one watch I
would give my life to keep, if only for a day!"
"You shall not pay so dear a price!" she answered gently. "Take a lesson
from the amulet on your own breast. See how that loving bird follows the
arrow's flight. So long as her career is upward, the shaft can never
pierce her heart. 'Tis a fair and precious jewel--let no temptation lead
you to part from it. I will examine it more closely hereafter."
"It is my queen's!" he exclaimed. "As is my life, and all I have."
"Keep it till I require it of you," was the answer. "And now tell me,
Sarchedon, amongst these goodly warriors, whom think you the fairest and
the comeliest?"
"There are none in all the host to be compared with him now passing
beneath us in his chariot," said Sarchedon boldly. "None other face of
man or woman half so fair--but one!"
Such words conveyed no mental reservation--though his own heart told him
he had over shot the truth. But punishment for his duplicity followed
quickly on the offence.
Another of those rare smiles stole over the queen's face, as the
acclamations of the multitude rose higher than before to greet him who
must hereafter be their king; and Ninyas, reclining in his chariot,
accepted with indolent good-humour that loud and boisterous welcome.
His shield and spear were laid aside--his bow and quiver hung at the
back of the chariot. On his head, from which the dark curls were combed
back so daintily, he wore no helmet of defence--only a light linen tiara
bound by a circlet of gold. Robes of violet silk floated loosely round
his exquisite shape and womanly roundness of limb, while he carried a
jewelled drinking-cup, long since emptied, in his hand. It was the
attire--the attitude--the appearance of a votary of pleasure hastening
to the banquet, rather than of a tired warrior returning from the field.
Nevertheless, it may be that a character for prowess, cheaply earned
enough by a king's son in battle, lost nothing of its value among the
thoughtless crowd, for an affectation of effeminacy, only excusable in
one of such youth, beauty, and reputed valour. The queen, looking down
on him well-pleased, could not refrain from exclaiming:
"My son is indeed comely! Yet is it the comeliness of a woman rather
than a man."
"There is but one woman on earth more fair," whispered Assarac in her
ear. "Nevertheless, were she down yonder in male attire on a
war-chariot, and he sitting amongst us here in the royal robes of a
queen, I doubt if the change would be suspected by one of all that
countless multitude now gazing in admiration on both."
She started, not expecting to receive her answer from the priest, and
bent her brows in deep thought, mingled with displeasure, as she
observed the uneasiness of Sarchedon, eagerly watching certain movements
going on below.
Guiding the horses, by the side of Ninyas, sat Sethos, the king's
cup-bearer, who being in high favour with his young lord usually
accompanied him in his chariot, both to battle and to the chase. Perhaps
not entirely without a purpose, he drew rein immediately under the
terrace where stood Ishtar and her maidens, at the instant when a posy
of flowers, projected innocently enough by the damsel herself, came
whirling down at the feet of her future king.
Ninyas looked up quickly; and even in that moment of vexation Sarchedon
could not but remark the winning smile, that, brightening all his face,
enhanced her son's extraordinary resemblance to Semiramis.
The young prince lifted the flowers, and put them to his lips with a
graceful salutation. Then he bent his head to Sethos, and the latter,
taking the cup from his lord's hand, flung it deftly upward so as to
light on the terrace within a cubit of where the damsel stood.
"Keep it for the sake of Ninyas," called out the giver, as he bowed his
head once more; whispering in the ear of Sethos, while the chariot moved
slowly on, "That comely maiden, pale and tender like a lily in a
paradise, is better worth the taking than all the beauty of Egypt,
captives of our bow and spear."
"And my lord has won her with an empty cup," answered laughing Sethos.
"When he flings aside the maiden, like the goblet, may I be there to
catch her ere she falls!"
Though the populace applauded loudly, as it was natural they should
applaud such an action of mingled gallantry, condescension, and
insolence, a shudder crept over Ishtar from head to heel, and she moved
the skirt of her garment to avoid touching that gift of a future
monarch, as if it had been some noxious reptile in her path.
Semiramis did not fail to note how the daughter of Arbaces shot more
than one imploring glance at Sarchedon, that seemed to deprecate a
jealousy of which she was aware, while conscious of not being answerable
for its cause. It was perhaps more in character with the spite of a
woman than the dignity of a queen that she should have leant towards the
young warrior, and addressed him with such marked demonstrations of
favour as could not fail to be observed by Ishtar, whose perceptions and
feelings were now strung to their highest pitch.
She might even have shown him greater condescension than was either
royal or prudent, but for the renewed intervention of Assarac, who once
more took possession of her ear, speaking so as to be heard by the queen
alone.
"My directions have been carried out," he whispered, "and of every
hundred men assembled in the streets, ten are warriors and four are
priests. The people admire, but partake not in the triumph; they shout,
but their hearts go forth less freely than their voices. There is
discontent abroad, and even displeasure, relating to this conquest of
my lord the king. The men of war who have gone down with him to battle
are like to be ill-satisfied with their share of spoil. Those who have
remained within the walls already jeer and point the finger at the
unhacked armour and whole skins of their returning comrades. Our own
followers, servants of Baal and prophets of the grove, whisper strange
auguries, and the stars themselves declare that Ninus is destined ere
long to take his place among the gods. Caution, Great Queen! caution! I
must away on the instant, to be in readiness at the head of a thousand
priests who will receive the king on the steps before the temple. He
loves not such receptions, and holds but little with offerings and
sacrifices to the gods; nevertheless, even Ninus must not, _dare_ not,
beard the whole host of heaven in this their very stronghold. He will
make the ceremony short and simple as he can, however, and every priest
that ever laid knife to his own flesh before an altar will feel outraged
and aggrieved. You have the Great King's signet. Keep it safely. That
jewelled toy is worth ten thousand chariots of iron and as many
horsemen. Behold, the guards have now passed on. See what a handful of
priests are pacing with his chariot--an empty chariot, too; and look how
few in number and scant in metal are the molten gods that go before him
to battle. He comes. I say again, Caution, Great Queen! caution! and for
a space forbear!"
Pointing his warning with an expressive glance towards Sarchedon,
Assarac bowed reverently and withdrew.
Semiramis turned a shade paler, and for one moment a shudder seemed to
creep from her brow even to her feet. The next she stood forth to mark
her lord's approach, erect and beautiful, the stateliest queen, as she
was the fairest woman, in the world.
Immediately in rear of the royal standard passed on the war-chariot of
the Great King, containing his charioteer and shield-bearer. Sargon's
lowering brow was black as night, and to the vociferous greetings of his
countrymen he returned but a silent scowl. In the brief space that had
elapsed since the cruel slaughter of his son, the man's nature seemed
wholly changed. His very beard, formerly so black and glossy, was
streaked with grey, and the dark eyes now dull and downcast, glowed
with lurid light as though from some inner fire. Few, however, remarked
this alteration in the aspect of the shield-bearer; for with the first
glimpse of Ninus, shouts of jubilee rose once more from the people, and
in that moment of enthusiasm, assembled Babylon could not have afforded
a fuller, fairer welcome to mighty Nimrod himself.
The Great King came on at a foot's pace, reining his steed with that
craft of practised horsemanship which outlasts failing sight, lost
activity, and bodily powers impaired by age. His large, gaunt frame,
though bowed and tottering, swayed easily to every motion of his steed;
his broad loose hands, though numbed and stiff, closed with unimpaired
skill on spear and bridle; while ever and anon, with some vociferous
cheer or stirring trumpet-call, the drooping head went up, the dim eye
sparkled, and for a space in which bow might have been drawn or
sword-blow stricken, Ninus looked again the champion warrior of the
world.
The king had abstained from all outward pomp of attire or panoply; he
wore neither diadem nor tiara, but a steel helmet, much dinted and
battered, guarded his brow. Save for the lion's head embossed in its
centre, his shield was the plainest, as it was the most defaced, that
passed into Babylon that day; while neither his horse's trappings nor
his own accoutrements could compare in splendour with those of his
guards who preceeded him on the march. But his sword was a span longer,
his spear some shekels heavier, than any other in the whole Assyrian
host, and none, looking on that renowned conqueror, so formidable even
in decay, but would have recognised him for the bravest and mightiest
fighter of his time.
Slowly, sternly he came on, receiving the homage and acclamations of his
people with a royal indifference not far removed from scorn. The press
of chariots, the clash of steel, all the wild tumult and fierce music of
battle, could scarcely now call the light to his eye, the colour to his
visage. What was a mere peaceful triumph but an unmeaning pageant, a
protracted and somewhat wearisome dream? His grim old features sank and
lowered till it seemed to the nearer bystanders that they were looking
on a corpse in mail.
But once the Great King's face brightened, the blood rushed redly to his
cheek, and his strong hand shook so on the bridle, that his good horse,
accepting the signal, bounded freely in the air. Then he turned ghastly
pale, drawing his breath hard, and trembling like a maiden or a child.
Beaming down on him from the wall with her own bright smile, he saw the
face that had haunted him in those long night-watches for many a weary
month--the face that, of all on earth, had alone made itself a home in
his fierce old heart.
The wild joy of battle was indeed over, but for him the calm of peace
had come at last. From his saddle where he sat to the wall whence she
smiled down on him, not a score of spear-lengths divided him from
Semiramis, looking fonder and more beautiful than she had ever appeared
even in his lonely dreams.
CHAPTER X
A BANQUET OF WINE
On the first night of his return from conquest, it was customary for an
Assyrian king, his captains, and chief officers of state to be received
by his consort with a banquet, offered to their special entertainment.
The stars were already out, the moon was rising from the desert, when a
thousand torches, flaring on the summer night, lit up the central court
of the royal residence with a fierce red glow, vivid as the light of
day. It brought out in strange grotesque relief the gigantic sculptures
on the wall, till winged bull, man-faced lion, and eagle-headed deity
seemed but fleeting flickering shadows, that moved, threatened, and
retired as the night breeze rose and fell. It played in variegated hues
on the columns of porphyry and jaspar that supported the upper story,
blackening the remote recesses of its lofty chambers, while marble
pillar, shaft of alabaster, carving, cornice, and capital blushed in
crimson flame. It shed a ruddier lustre on wine, fruit, and flowers, the
rich profusion of a royal table, glittering from massive chalice and
ancient flagon, blazing in jewelled cup and vase of burnished gold. The
brilliant gems, the costly robes, the stately figures of those noble
guests, were enhanced tenfold by its power; while the king's wan face
showed paler, fiercer, ghastlier than ever, in that strong searching
glare.
The procession had been long, the triumph protracted and wearisome;
sacrifices offered, not ungrudgingly, to the gods, had delayed him with
observances he loathed, ceremonials he despised; and Ninus had been in
the saddle since daybreak. It was not strange then that Arbaces, his
chief captain, sitting over against him, should have felt his heart sink
while he looked on the ashy war-worn face, from which he had so often
gathered counsel and resource, picturing to himself that he saw a dead
monarch presiding, stark and grim, at his own funeral feast.
The king sat for a while with his head sunk on his breast, to all
appearance thoroughly out-wearied and overcome; but after Sethos had
filled his cup more than once, a feeble light came into his eyes, while
he glared around with a haughty air of inquiry, that seemed rather to
threaten the absent than welcome those who were present at his festival.
He looked sternly satisfied, however, with the number and importance of
his guests--men who formed the props of his throne and the very bulwarks
of his empire. There was Arbaces, captain of the host, firm in position
as in character, a sage counsellor, a skilful leader, and a stout man of
war in close fight, hand to hand; there was Sargon, his shield-bearer,
who slew before the gates of Memphis, in single combat, seven Egyptian
champions, one by one, and vowed in the hearing of both armies, that as
he had sacrificed these to the Seven Stars, so would he take life after
life from the host of Pharaoh till the Consulting Gods, the Judges of
the World, and each of the Assyrian deities, had been propitiated with a
victim. Scowling and silent, Sargon sat apart at the banquet; and a keen
eye, scanning him warily and by stealth, noted the seal of murder set
upon his brow.
There was Assarac too, the scheming priest, unwarlike indeed in form and
nature, yet owning a more daring spirit, a more enduring courage, than
the fiercest archer who ever drew bow from a war-chariot--Assarac,
present in virtue of his office to pour out drink-offerings, to peer
into the divining cup if required, above all, to watch with jealous
supervision the temper and opinions of those who surrounded the king.
Though aware that Ninus disliked, suspected, and would have put him to
death without scruple, his eye never quailed, nor did his speech falter;
and when he raised his goblet, filled to its brim, the eunuch's hand was
firm and steady as a rock.
These last-named persons, with the older leaders and captains of ten
thousand, were placed near the king; but scores of younger warriors,
rising in fame, comely in person, and splendid in apparel, thronged the
lower and more noisy extremity of the board. Over these, amongst whom
Sarchedon was not the least remarkable, presided Ninyas, distinguished
no less for his beautiful face and magnificent attire than for his deep
draughts, reckless hilarity, and boisterous freedom of discourse.
"Once more in Babylon," said he, "after months of toil and heat, and
worst of all, that torturing thirst! After those weary marches by day,
those endless watches by night, welcome to the land of palm and
pomegranate, peace and plenty, women and wine! What say you, Sarchedon?
Well, I trow that, being of his guard, your duty bids you echo the Great
King. The old lion cannot hear you where you sit; you may speak the
truth freely as if you were reading the Seven Stars. Confess, now. None
but a fool would go forth in warfare who could stay to revel and sleep
at home."
Sarchedon, though familiar with camps, was also no stranger to the
usages of a palace.
"My lord did not seem of so peaceful a mind," he answered, "while he
drove his war-chariot through the archers who lined her vineyards when
we invested the city of Pasht, or it had cost us a weary siege ere we
broke in pieces the idols of the Cat!"
"Well said, Sarchedon!" was the vain-glorious reply. "Why did we not
push on, as I advised? By the gods of my fathers, I swear to you, that
if Ninyas had been your leader but for one week, rather than the Great
King, he would have left the Ethiopians to lose themselves amongst the
marches in our rear, fought a pitched battle on the plain by the sweet
river, and you and I would have been drinking wine of Eshcol in the
palace of Pharaoh at this moment."
It may be that Sarchedon had his own opinion of the strategy which
should have conduced to so triumphant a result. He answered gravely
enough:
"My lord confessed even now that he was far better in the palaces of
Babylon. Is he not satisfied with the spoil, the captives, and the
cheers of the people? They lifted up their voices when he passed to-day
as it had been great Nimrod himself."
"The lazy drones!" laughed his well-pleased listener. "When I come to
rule, they shall have something more to do than shout, I promise them.
Reach me that flagon, I pray you--nay, hold! I am like my scoffing old
sire, in one respect at least--I pour all drink-offerings down my own
throat! No; what pleased me best to-day was neither spoil nor glory nor
the voices of fools. It was the face of a maiden sweeter than the
honeysuckle and fairer than the rose. Did you not mark her Sarchedon? or
were you so busy in attendance on the queen, my mother, that you had
eyes for none beside?"
Stifling the hideous misgivings that rose like a flood in his heart,
Sarchedon answered with forced calmness:
"My lord must have passed to-day under the glances of a thousand
damsels, and every one his handmaid. The comeliest of all were standing
behind Kalmim, in attendance on the Great Queen."
"You are blind! by the beak of Nisroch, you must be blind!" exclaimed
the excitable young prince. "Take Kalmim herself--for when she has tired
her head and painted her eyes she is the best of them, since the queen
loves not too much beauty so near her own--but take Kalmim, I say, and
tell me whether she shows not like a camel beside a courser when you
compare her with the daughter of Arbaces. O! never bend your brows and
look so scared towards the chief captain. He cannot hear us up there;
and, by the belt of Ashur, the king's voice raised in anger is enough to
deafen a man in both ears! What can have chafed the old lion to make him
roar so fiercely, even over his food?"
In truth, the deep harsh tones of Ninus, loud and overbearing, were
heard above the ring of flagons, the clatter of tongues, all the din
that accompanies a feast--even above the vibration of the lyre, the roll
of the drum, the soft sweet music floating on the night air from an
unseen gallery, far off amongst the pillared corridors that surrounded
the open court.
Like the lion to which his graceless son compared him, Ninus was lashing
himself into rage. His theme was the rapacity of priests, and, to use
his own words, the extortions of the gods.
"Ten thousand of you!" roared the old warrior, turning fiercely on
Assarac, of whom he had asked a question relating to certain details of
the day's pageant. "Ten thousand demons! and for Baal alone. By the
beard of Nimrod, he should be better served than any of us his
descendants, who must needs feed the hungry swarming brood. And you
would have me believe that there are gods as many as stars in heaven?
Hear him, Arbaces! You and I have set armies in array ere this, so
strong that our trumpets in the centre carried no sound to the horsemen
on the wings; but if we are to have a thousand gods, and every god ten
thousand priests, it will pass your skill and mine to devise how such a
multitude may be ranged in order of battle. And one company of my bowmen
would put them all to flight ere you could ride a furlong! Ten thousand
priests of Baal! Ten thousand vultures tearing at a dead carcass! I trow
there will be little left for the desert-falcon that struck the prey.
You read the stars, forsooth, and can foretell the future easily as I
can forget the past! Go to! Will you compute me the share of spoil I am
likely to assign to-morrow for your entertainment and the altars of your
gods?"
Without compromising one jot of his own dignity, the wily eunuch's
answer was yet temperate and respectful to the Great King.
"My lord is himself the child of Ashur and of Baal--the father gives
freely to the son, requiring only honour and reverence in return."
"Fill my cup!" thundered the king to Sethos, who ministered hastily to
his wants. "I have not found it so," he continued, harping still on the
theme that thus chafed him. "The honour and reverence I pay them
willingly, though they keep me standing long enough in their temples,
and, perhaps because they sit so far off, it seems hard to make them
hear. But if honour and reverence are to signify, sheep and oxen, wine,
jewels, raiment of needlework and heaps of treasure, they have had their
share from Ninus--henceforth I will follow the example of those poor
slaves we found in Egypt, the captives of our captives, who worship but
one God, and offer him neither silver nor gold!"
"Therefore are they but servants to the servants of my lord the king,"
replied Assarac, unabashed by the frowns of Ninus and the open derision
of certain veterans, who took their creed from their leader, as they
took their orders--without comment or inquiry.
"Prate not to me!" was the angry answer; "I have scores of them down
yonder bound in the outer court amongst my Egyptian captives. I cannot
tell, Arbaces, what hinders me now, this moment, from sending you with a
handful of spearmen to clear his temple of its white-robed locusts, and
drive in these strangers, Egyptians and all, to worship Baal in their
stead."
The chief captain, who to certain scruples of religion added those of
custom, policy, and propriety, would have ventured on expostulation; but
Assarac interposed.
"The gods, thy fathers, who look upon us to-night!" said he, in a stern
loud voice, that awed even Ninyas and the younger revellers into
attention while he pointed gravely upward where the stars were shining
down in their eternal splendour on all the royal magnificence and
glittering profusion of that feast in the open court.
At the same moment, sweeping round the outer walls of the palace,
vibrating through its long corridors and lofty painted chambers, there
rose a cry, so wild, so pitiful, so unearthly, that it arrested the
goblet in each man's hand, froze the jest on his lip, and curdling the
blood in his veins, caused him to sit mute and petrified, as if turned
to stone.
The Great King started, and bade Arbaces summon up his guard; but
Assarac's voice was heard once more, solemn and majestic in its notes of
warning and reproach.
"The gods, thy fathers!" he repeated, looking Ninus sternly in the face,
"who have spared the blasphemer, but visited his sin on the innocent
cause thereof. Hear those Egyptian prisoners mourning for a comrade this
moment passed away, wearied and out-worn by a toilsome march to the
house of his captivity, stricken and thrust through by the iron that has
entered into his soul!"
It was indeed such a wail of bereavement and despair as was to rise
hereafter through all its length and breadth in the land of the South,
because of the terrible punishment that visited her people, "from
Pharaoh that sat on the throne to the captive that was in the
dungeon"--on that awful night, the climax of successive judgments, when
"there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there
was not one dead."
As these long-drawn notes of woe swelled, sank, and swelled again, the
king's first emotions of horror were succeeded by a fresh outbreak of
wrath. It might have gone hard with the sorrowing herd of captives, and
perhaps not one had been left to mourn for another, but that the old
lion's fury, redoubled by its momentary check, was at this juncture
wholly diverted and appeased. A burst of music, so loud, so full, so
jubilant, that it drowned all other noises in its grand triumphant
swell, announced the entrance of Semiramis; and like the Queen of Heaven
rising from the dark back-ground of night, this Queen of Assyria,
blazing in jewels, and robed in the light of her incomparable beauty,
stood forth a shining vision from the black shadows of the gateway, to
move with stately step and slow through long lines of admiring
revellers, ere she made her royal obeisance before the throne of gold,
where sat the Great King. While she traversed the lower end of the
court, Assyria's chosen warriors, the goodliest men of all the East,
rose from the board and bent them low in courtly reverence, like a bed
of garden-flowers doing homage to the south wind as it passes by. With a
mother's love and a queen's dignity, she laid her hand on the shoulder
of her son Ninyas, while he bowed himself before her; but it was a
feeling stronger than the one, and but little in accordance with the
other, that bade her pause by the side of Sarchedon and whisper tenderly
in his ear.
He started, colouring to his temples--two or three young warriors
glanced enviously at their favoured comrade; but it was dangerous to
observe too narrowly the motions of royalty, and each man fixed his eyes
in deep humility on the hem of her garment as Semiramis moved proudly
on.
Ninus stirred uneasily where he sat. He would fain have risen to meet
his queen, and taken her in his gaunt embrace to the fierce old heart
that knew no other want; but such an innovation was not to be thought of
even by the conqueror of the East, and he could only reach towards her
the golden sceptre that lay on a cushion at his feet.
While she pressed it to her fair white brow, there came a light in the
old king's haggard face that told of the loving spark too often kindled
but to be quenched in sorrow, the blind trust born to be betrayed, the
fond unreasoning pride in another that goeth before a fall.
This final ceremony broke up the banquet. With loud peals of music, the
king and queen, waited on by their personal attendants, betook them to
their respective dwellings, between which ran the Euphrates, though
under the broad river a tunnelled passage afforded free communication
from one to the other. Arbaces and Sargon followed closely behind their
lord, as Kalmim and her group of women accompanied the queen. Ninyas,
pushing round a mighty flagon, called Sethos to his side, and swore he
would not stir till midnight; an intention loudly applauded by many of
the younger revellers, who gathered joyously round their prince. In the
change of places that ensued, Sarchedon made his escape from the
banquet, hastening through the outer gates to cool his brow in the night
air, while he communed with his own perplexed aspiring heart.
The queen's soft breath seemed still upon his neck, her whisper
thrilling in his ear. What could she mean? "Follow the shaft! Fly on,
fly upward!" Was it possible? Could the stars have written for him such
a destiny as these words seemed to imply, or was he deceiving himself
like a fool? And how was this upward flight to be accomplished? A
thousand wild impossible longings and fancies filled his brain, but
shining calmly through them all, like the moon amidst clouds and
storm-wrack veiling a troubled sea, rose the gentle image of the girl he
really loved. Could he give her up? Must it so soon come to an end,
this dream, so short, so sweet, so cruel in its hour of waking? At any
risk he was resolved to see her once again; that very night, that very
hour, before the gods had time to cast his lot for him without recall.
He hurried, like a ghost, through the shadows of the silent courts
towards the palace of Arbaces.
But Ninyas, while he filled cup and emptied flagon, by no means lost
sight of those interests and pleasures which, in his royal opinion,
constituted the chief advantages of his station as a prince. Sarchedon
had not moved ten paces from his seat to leave the revellers, ere the
king's son whispered to the king's cup-bearer, "Follow him, Sethos. A
wise hunter never loses sight of his hound till he pulls down the deer."
CHAPTER XI
LIKE TO LIKE
Deep in his own thoughts, and wholly unconscious he was watched,
Sarchedon hurried through the outskirts of the palace, traversing, with
one passing glance of curiosity and compassion, an open space in which
the Israelitish and Egyptian captives lay bound. The voice of mourning
was hushed at last among these sufferers, save where some weeping woman,
waking, as it were, to a sense of intolerable misery, pressed both hands
against her throat, and thus enhanced the long vibrations of that dismal
wail--so piteous, so keen, so thrilling, that it stirred the very jackal
in his lair amongst the vineyards without the city walls.
Groups of these prisoners sat or grovelled on the ground, in attitudes
expressive of the utmost sorrow and desolation. Here was a wounded
archer, one of Pharaoh's choicest marksmen, gnawing his bonds in
impotent rage and shame, while he cursed the javelin that disabled
him--the comrades who had fled and abandoned him to be taken
captive--the gods in all their different earthly shapes of goose, bull,
falcon, stork, and locust, whom he had worshipped faithfully by the
Nile, that they might leave him here in Babylon to die. There was a
cluster of children, the elder sleeping the calm lovely sleep of youth,
the youngest prattling, laughing, stretching its little arms towards the
stars. And beside them, on her knees, their tawny mother, with head
bowed down, dark eyes fixed, dim but tearless, and thoughts far away in
the South, by a rude hut raised on props above the river, where last she
saw him stark, motionless, and gashed from brow to breastplate, the
lover of her girlhood, the husband of her heart, the father of those
dear ones, dragged, without hope of return, into the land of their
captivity. Wherever grieved a dark-skinned mourner, from brawny warrior
to tender maiden, there seemed to be embodied the very abandonment of
woe; while a few Ethiopians, surprised by hazard amongst Pharaoh's
auxiliaries, before they had time to run away, wept and bemoaned
themselves, with a force of lungs and vehemence of gesture, so unbridled
as to border on the grotesque.
But somewhat apart, treated, as it would seem, by their Assyrian
conquerors with less rigour than the rest, a handful of prisoners had
disposed themselves, with scrupulous attention to decency of attitude
and bearing. Conversing little, and only to each other, their low tones
were forcible and expressive; their demeanour, grave and gentle, was
marked with a certain sad dignity and grace. Though dark of beard and
hair, they were far less swarthy in complexion than their fellow
sufferers, and while nobler of stature and fuller of limb, lacked the
sinuous ease and pliancy of movement so remarkable in the slender
Egyptian. Their high features, kindling eyes, and curved nostrils
partook of the peculiar beauty general amongst their present masters;
but they showed none of the haughty self-assertion, the lofty warlike
bearing, of the fierce Assyrian race. Such kin they seemed to their
conquerors as the dog to the wolf, the ossifrage to the eagle, the
patient ox in the furrow to the fiery wild-bull of the fell.
Presently silence came over them, and taking advantage of the laxity of
their fetters, one and all rose to their feet and stood erect. Then he
who seemed eldest and gravest spoke a few words in a loud solemn voice,
to which the others listened attentively, responding at intervals, with
heads sunk on their breasts. Sarchedon, hastening past, had yet time to
observe their motions, and marvelled, in his own mind, if this could be
a religious ceremonial, thus divested of all pomp and outward form; no
sacrifice of blood, nor drink-offering poured out, nor altar
raised,--only deep awe and reverence impressed on every face, courage,
love, and trust beaming in each worshipper's eyes. The white robe of a
priest of Baal flitted through the darkness round the circle; but
Sarchedon's heart was filled with a sentiment that left no room for
interest or curiosity, save on one subject, and he sped towards his
goal, longing only for the moment that should bring him face to face
with her he loved.
The moon was low in the sky, yet gave light enough to have guided him on
his way, even had not every step of it been familiar as the handle of
his sword. Was it strange he should have found so readily a path that
led to the home of Ishtar? that he should have had access to the roof of
a dwelling adjoining the palace of Arbaces? that the girl herself should
have been restless, unable to sleep, and fevered with a desire to spread
her carpets and cushions under the sky in the cool night air by the
parapet of her father's house?
No, it was not strange; and the reason seemed simple enough as explained
in a low measured chant, by a rich sweet voice--richer and sweeter that
it was toned down and suppressed--which thrilled and scorched through
every fibre of the young girl's being, while Sarchedon poured forth his
heart in passionate pleading conveyed through the fanciful imagery of
the East.
"I pass'd without the city gate,
I linger'd by the way;
The palm was bending to her mate,
And thus I heard her say,
'The arrow to the quiver,
And the wild bird to the tree;
The stream to meet the river,
And the river to the sea.
The waves are wedded on the beach,
The shadows on the lea;
And like to like, and each to each,
And I to thee.
'The cedar on the mountain,
And the bramble in the brake;
The willow by the fountain,
And the lily on the lake;
The serpent coiling in its lair,
The eagle soaring free,
Draw kin to kin, and pair to pair,
And I to thee.
'For everything created
In the bounds of earth and sky,
Hath such longing to be mated,
It must couple, or must die.
The wind of heaven beguiles the leaf,
The rose invites the bee;
The sickle hugs the barley-sheaf,
And I love thee.
By night and day, in joy and grief,
Do thou love me?'
The palm was bending to her mate,
I marked her meaning well;
And pass'd within the city gate,
The fond old tale to tell."
When he ceased, she rose on him like a ghost, from behind the parapet.
In another moment her veil was up, her sweet lips parted in a greeting
that was rather breathed than spoken, and both hands were abandoned to
the caresses of her lover.
"Ishtar," he murmured, "queen of my heart! I scarcely dared to hope, and
yet I _knew_ I should find you here."
"I thought not you would come," she whispered, for a girl's modesty
thinks no shame to veil with ingenuous falsehood the truth of which she
is really proud. "But I could not sleep--I could not rest under a
roof--the war is over--my own dear father has returned safe. O
Sarchedon! this has been such a happy day."
It was the first time she had called him by his name, and the endearing
syllables dropped like honey from her lips. It was no more to be "noble
damsel," "my lord's handmaiden," but "Ishtar," and "Sarchedon," because
they knew they loved each other with all the rich warmth, the stormy
passion of their race and climate.
"A happy day!" he repeated, rather bitterly; "and a day of victory for
the fairest maiden in the land of Shinar! Think you it was such a happy
moment for _me_, Ishtar, when I saw the love-gift hurled from our
prince's chariot to your feet?"
She had not been a woman, could she have quite suppressed a double sense
of triumph--of vanity gratified by the homage of a prince, and, sweeter
far, of pride in his own avowal that she could excite the jealousy of
him she loved. Very tender was her smile, very soft and kind her glance,
while she replied:
"You may judge how I value the gift when I tell you the handmaidens are
shredding herbs in it even now. Yet is he a goodly youth, our young
lord, and a comely--fair he must surely seem in _your_ eyes, Sarchedon,
for is he not the very picture of his mother? and _you_ of all men would
be loath to dispute the beauty of the Great Queen."
It was a feminine thrust, and planted fairly home; but here in Ishtar's
presence it rather roused in him a feeling of alarm, lest he should lose
the blossom in his hand, than any wish to reach the riper and costlier
fruit hanging above his head.
"Beloved!" he answered gravely, "the desire of queens and princes is
like the hot wind of the desert, that blasts and scorches where it
strikes. It matters little what befalls Sarchedon, if he loses her who
has become the jewel of his treasure-house, and the light of his path.
With the young prince, to see is too often to covet, and to covet, too
surely to possess! It may be, that ere the days of triumph are over, he
will have asked you of Arbaces in marriage, and whither shall I go for
comfort then, if I am to look nevermore on the only face I love?"
That face showed strangely pale in the wan light of the stars and
crescent moon. There was a thrill of deadly fear in the whisper that
appealed so piteously for succour and protection.
"Save me, Sarchedon, save me! It would be worse than death. What shall I
do? What shall I do?"
He pondered, pressing the hand he held fondly to his eyes and forehead.
"Arbaces would not barter you away for treasure, like a herd of camels
or a drove of captives?" he asked, after a pause.
"My father loves me dearly," she answered. "I know he fears to lose me;
for he has often said, if I were to vanish from his side, like my
mother, he would never wish to come out of his war-chariot alive!"
"She was a daughter of the stars," said Sarchedon abstractedly; "their
love is fatal to mortal men! You see, I have learned it all, and yet I
care not--I have but you in the world!"
The daughter of the stars, he thought, had surely transmitted her
celestial beauty to the girl who now bent fondly over him, and shook her
head.
"They say so!" she answered. "But Arbaces is loath to be questioned, and
I know not what to think. She may have been the child of a priestess of
Baal, espoused to the god. I cannot believe that the stars have come
down from their thrones for the love of women in these later days, since
the plague of waters in the olden time, before the great tower of Belus
was built. I only know I would I had my mother's beauty and my father's
fame, and the wealth of the Great Queen, that I might bestow it all on
the man I love. You would be rich, Sarchedon, and of high repute; while
I should be----very, very happy!"
"Then, if Ninyas sent to ask you of your father," whispered the young
warrior, "you would be loath to go and rule over him and his in a palace
of gold?"
"Better to serve Sarchedon in a tent of goat's-hair," was the answer;
"better by far draw water at the Well of Palms for your herds, your
camels, and the fair horse you rode that happy morning; better to be the
meanest and lowest of your slaves, than never see your kind face again!"
Vanity, pride, ambition--the dazzling career open to him--the lustrous
beauty of the queen: what were they to such love as this, but the flash
and glitter of tinsel, compared to the ray of a real diamond? If a
thought of Semiramis and her fatal favour crossed his brain, it did but
spur him on to secure his happiness ere she could thwart it, to remove
Ishtar, ere it was too late, from the sphere of the queen's displeasure,
and the still more dangerous admiration of her son.
"Then I will ask you of your father before another day has gone down!"
exclaimed Sarchedon, stealing his arm round that lithe slender figure,
leaning over the parapet, like the palm-tree bending to meet her mate.
"To-morrow will I send into the court below a score of camels and a
hundred sheep, with a suit of the truest armour that ever brought the
captain of a host unwounded out of battle, and my young men shall say to
Arbaces--'they seek but Ishtar in return.'"
"So my father will summon me from amongst my maidens, to know if
peradventure his daughter's heart hath gone forth to him who is so
lavish of sheep and camels, so skilled in choice of armour, and what
shall I say then?"
Only from the depths of a young girl's heart, happy and triumphant in
her honest love, could have risen the smile that beamed on Ishtar's
face. It was reflected in Sarchedon's eyes, while he answered:
"The daughter of Arbaces will tell him, that where her heart has gone
forth, thither must Ishtar needs follow, and she will be mine!"
"And she will be yours!" repeated the girl, with a great sob of womanly
happiness, tempered by maiden shame, the blood rushing to her face,
while she hid it on her lover's breast.
Fast as her heart was beating, it had scarce counted a score of
pulsations ere tramp of horses, call of servants, and flash of torches
in the court below, announced the return of Arbaces from his duties
about the Great King.
No sooner had he dismounted at the porch of his palace than the fond
familiar voice was heard, asking loudly for his daughter; and gliding
like a shadow from the embrace of Sarchedon, she was gone.
Yet even in that brief moment during which her brow was pressed against
his bosom, she had discovered the amulet he wore, and knew, as women
only do know such things, that it was not there when she saw him last.
Perhaps to an impulse of female tenderness was added the stimulant of
female curiosity, when she whispered, even in the act of escape:
"To-morrow, beloved one, at the same hour. You will tell me then whence
comes that jewel, and--and--if it was given you by the queen!"
Turning stealthily to depart, with his hand on the amulet, doubtful
whether he would not tear it from his neck and trample it under foot,
but in the mean time leaving it where it was, Sarchedon felt conscious
of a strange depression, of vague misgivings, as though some future evil
were casting its shadow about him ere it came. The air felt heavy, the
night was darker, the stars had become dim. It seemed a different world
as he passed along the silent streets towards his home, and those keen
senses of his, quickened by the practice of war, must have been
strangely blunted, that he neither saw the form nor heard the footsteps
of one who had watched his interview with Ishtar from first to last.
Sethos, no less nimble of foot than he was light of hand and heart, made
such good haste in returning to the queen's palace, that he found Ninyas
still seated at the banquet, flushed with wine, and more reckless, more
impetuous, as he was more beautiful, for the excess.
"You are a trusty hunter," laughed the prince, steadying his uncertain
steps as he rose with a hand on his favourite's shoulder, "and you
followed the good hound bravely to the thicket where lies the deer? What
think you? Is she worth the bending of a bow?"
"My lord had already wounded her with a random shaft," answered the
cup-bearer. "It is the daughter of Arbaces, who flung him the posy of
flowers as his chariot passed beneath her in our triumph."
The intelligence seemed to sober Ninyas on the instant.
"And it is Sarchedon who contends with me," said he, pondering. "By the
brows of Ashtaroth, the sport grows to earnest now, and the prize will
be won by him who can strike first!"
CHAPTER XII
THE GODS OF THE HEATHEN
Hastening from the queen's palace towards his stolen interview with
Ishtar, Sarchedon had not failed to observe the white robe of a priest
in the neighbourhood of the Israelitish exiles, though his
preoccupation forbade his identifying the person to whom it belonged.
Sethos, on the contrary, whose wits were more at their master's service,
had no difficulty in recognising Assarac, and marvelled in his own mind
what interests could exist in common between the haughty servant of the
Assyrian god, and this fettered prisoner, a captive even amongst the
captives of the Great King's bow and spear. Could he have overheard
their conversation, his curiosity would indeed have been sharpened, but
any ideas he might have previously conceived regarding supernatural
influences must have sustained a shock very confusing to his
understanding and his faith.
His interests, however, were of the earth, earthy, and he left to such
aspiring spirits as the high priest of Baal those abstruse speculations
which would fain penetrate the mysteries of another world.
Assarac only waited till the last of the revellers had departed, the
last of the thousand torches flaring in the palace court had been
extinguished, to glide through the band of captives and lay his hand on
the shoulder of him who seemed chief amongst the Israelites.
"Arise," said he, "my brother. Comfort your heart, I pray you, with a
morsel of bread and a draught of wine, while your servant spreads his
mantle for your ease, and loosens the fetters on your limbs."
He took the cloak from his own shoulders while he spoke, and folded it
round the prisoner, releasing him at the same time from the chain that
clanked and rung with every movement of wrist or ankle.
The Israelite accepted these good offices with the imperturbable
demeanour he had preserved through all the incidents of his captivity.
Standing erect by the priest of Baal, he seemed to look on his liberator
with a mild and condescending pity not far removed from contempt.
Scanning him warily and closely in the dubious starlight, Assarac could
not but admire the lofty bearing and personal dignity of this chief
amongst a nation of bondsmen. His marked features, dark piercing eyes,
ample beard, and venerable aspect denoted the sage and counsellor, while
his well-proportioned figure, with its shapely limbs, inferred an
amount of physical strength and activity not always accompanying the
nobler qualities of the mind.
There was a strange contrast between the eunuch's shifting restless
glances, his looks of eager curiosity, half doubtful, half scornful,
altogether suspicious and dissatisfied, with the expression of quiet
superiority and contented confidence that glorified the Israelite's
face, imparting to it a calm majesty like the light of sunset on a
mountain.
"You offer bread," said he, "and pour out wine unto him who hath neither
cornland nor vineyard. Therefore shall your harvest and your grapes
return you an hundredfold."
"Baal will not suffer me to want," replied the other. "Shall I, then,
see my brother hunger and thirst, while I have enough and to spare? Are
you not of our race and kindred? Are not your oppressors our ancient
enemies? Do we not come of one lineage and worship the same God?"
The Israelite pointed upward to the stars, and shook his head.
"Our fathers have taught us otherwise," said he solemnly; "and I, Sadoc
the son of Azael, standing here in the bonds of my captivity, protest
against your idols, your temples and your worship, your gashes and
drink-offerings, your winged monsters, your sacred tree, and all the
thousand unworthy forms to which you degrade the majesty of the
Omnipotent and the Infinite!"
Assarac smiled with the frank liberality of a disputant who in admitting
his adversary's premises narrows, as it were, the field in which to do
battle.
"Symbols," he answered, "symbols; the mere outward efforts of that inner
spirit of worship which must find vent, like the mind of man, through
the senses. He can see but with the eye, he can hear but with the ear,
he can impart his thoughts only in those forms of speech that his tongue
has learned to frame, and his fellows have skill to comprehend. How
shall you express the principle of heat but by fire? How shall you
comprehend the majesty of light but through the sun? How can you form a
nobler ideal of spirits, gods, and departed heroes than in those serene
and silent witnesses who never weary of their endless watches in the
unfathomable night?"
"So you send a thousand labourers to the mountain," replied Sadoc,
pointing scornfully at the sculptures on the palace wall, "and bid them
rend the granite from its unyielding sides till they have hewn out a
creature such as was never seen in earth or sea or sky--a creature of
make and qualities in direct defiance to that nature you profess to
reverence--winged like a bird, headed like a man, limbed like a bull--a
monster, grotesque, impossible, imposing only from its gigantic size and
truthful outline. You rear it up at a prince's doorway, and call on men
to fall down and worship before the hoofs of that which is lower than
the lowest of the brutes in the system of creation!"
"Are you a priest among your people?" asked Assarac quickly.
"Every head of a family is the priest of his own household," was the
dignified reply. "There need no mysteries for a worship sublime as the
eternal heavens, and clear as the light of day."
"Yet surely you cannot move the multitude without extraneous influences
stronger and more tangible than those truths of the inner shrine which
we the initiated know and accept at their real value," argued Assarac.
"That very figure which you scorn speaks to the senses of the Assyrian
nation far more forcibly than all the promptings from within that ever
moved a prophet to leap and howl and gash himself with knives before an
altar, while he foretold great actions and mighty events that should
never come to pass. Not a spearman in the Great King's host but, when he
looks on these carven blocks of granite, walks with a prouder step and
shakes his weapon in a stronger hand. He sees in that mighty frame the
over-powering forces that have made his race conquerors of the world; in
that majestic face, calm and indomitable, the true spirit of victory
marching unmoved over the ruins of an empire as over the ashes of a
peasant's hearth; in those unfurled wings, the ubiquity of a dominion
that can command ships for the sea, camels for the desert, and horsemen
swarming like locusts to overrun the fertile plain. It is no
representation of mere nature evoked by the toil, skill, and indeed the
sufferings of countless labourers, but of that spirit which dominates
and subdues nature for its own aggrandisement and fame. Where is the
type of godlike dominion to be found, if not here, in this impersonation
of conquest: strength, intellect, and audacity combined?"
Sadoc pointed to an Egyptian child sleeping a few paces off with a
wild-flower grasped in its little hand.
"Is there less of the godlike power," said he, "in the skill that put
together leaf and blossom for the delight of that poor infant, who has
no other joy nor comfort?"
Assarac pondered.
"There must be gods," he replied, "as there are stars, differing in
magnitude and glory. Dagon hath dominion on the waters, Anu and Abitur
in the mountain, Merodach raging in battle is yet subject to Ashur, and
even that monarch of the mighty circle yields to his irresistible
superior, and bows before the sentence of Nisroch, with the eagle's
head."
"And your Nisroch," continued the Israelite; "hath he not also a master
at whose word he spreads his wings and flies to the uttermost parts of
the desert? Whence comes he? Who gave him his eagles head and his
feathered shoulders? If he is substantial, he must be perishable; and
when he has passed away, who will make another god for the land of
Shinar, and what shall he be called?"
"You speak with reason," replied the priest of Baal, "and you speak to
one who has watched many a long night from the summit of the tower above
us, and pored on those starwritten scrolls till his brain reeled, to
learn that mystery which rules the heavens, and apply it to the
government of men below. You speak wisely indeed. Who shall make a god
for the land of Shinar? He it is who shall bring the whole Eastern world
beneath his feet."
"I speak not of gods made by men's hands," answered Sadoc. "The time
must surely come ere long when there will be one worship of the true God
through all the earth, as there is one sun that shines over the whole
heaven. Clouds may obscure it for a season, but no less doth it exist in
its warmth and splendour, giving vitality to creation and light to day."
"When there is but one worship, there will be but one dominion," argued
Assarac. "The altar and the temple will then become the judgment-seat
and throne, while the high-priest will be the true monarch and ruler
over all. Listen, my brother; for indeed here in the house of your
captivity you have found a friend. I am a priest of Baal, as you behold;
but in truth I am no hot-brained votary who mistakes his own intoxicated
frenzy for the inspiration of a god. My subordinates may gird their
loins to leap and run and gesticulate, shedding their own blood the
while in crimson streams. Such extravagances are foreign to my nature,
and below the dignity of my worship. I am a priest of Baal, but I am
also an Assyrian descended from a line of warriors, and to me the
greatness of my country is the paramount object and interest of life.
What else have such as I, who are severed, without being alienated, from
their kind? To extend an empire founded by our father Nimrod from the
Bactrian mountains to the Southern sea, to behold the standards of
Merodach waving on the confines of Armenia and over the gates of
Memphis, while conscious that I, Assarac the priest, had set in motion
the armies of victory and guided the march of triumph, were worth all
the fire-worshipper's dreams of luminous immortality, all the starry
thrones of the gods who are supposed to be looking down in judgment on
us even now."
"And when your wishes have been fulfilled," said Sadoc quietly--"wishes
only to be accomplished through much bloodshed, cruelty, and sin--you
will not be one whit happier than
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