Istar of Babylon Part 44

In the temple, behind the ranks of the regiment of Guti, the royal eunuchs, creatures of silent courage and loyalty, had gathered together all the women into one group, round which, for protection, they and the lords of the council were piling the temple furniture into a barricade.

Istar alone was not here. Since the first battle-cry no one had seen her; and now, in the excitement of the moment, she, being unseen, was also forgotten.

Baba, in her silks and chains, was with the women of Ribata's household, all of whom their lord had placed carefully in one corner of the protecting barricade, behind a pile of divans and stone tables laid beside the sacrificial altar. In the rush of the moment Ribata had but a word with his favorite slave. For an instant, however, he bent over her, to see that she was well protected, and in that time he pressed his lips as a seal against her forehead, muttering hurriedly, at the same time: "Courage, little one! Be not afraid. Our lives are in the hands of the great Bel. Pray to him, but do not weep."

And Baba answered readily, without any sign of fear: "My lord is my lord. I obey his word."

Then, as he left her side, the young girl lay back on the floor close against a couch that had been tipped beside her, and stayed there, silent and open-eyed, listening to the tumult of the battle round the door. The chorus of shouts and yells was deafening. Babylonish battle-cries mingled with Median phrases of triumph. And closer at hand, all around her, in fact, the women of high station lay wailing out their fright. Ribata's two wives were near, crazed with terror for themselves, for their lord, for Babylon, for the king. Now and then, high above the general tumult, came the shrill, fierce voice of Belitsum, crying her anguish. Nabonidus was the name that continually left her lips, till Belshazzar himself, from the thickest of the fight, caught the syllables, and fought the more fiercely for the memory of his father.

While the men of Gutium held the door, there appeared to be nothing to fear for the women in the temple. Ribata, before joining in the conflict, pa.s.sed among his friends of the council, bidding them hold back a little from the thick of the fight, that, should it prove necessary, they might be unhurt to defend the women. The holders of the temple were in bad enough straits, to be sure, yet there was no immediate danger. Belshazzar's men, flanked by two bands of eunuchs and n.o.blemen, who fought with sacrificial knives and axes, were for the moment holding all Babylon and the army of Cyrus at bay. Baba knew this, as she lay, quiet and silent, gazing up into the shadowy s.p.a.ces of the roof. Presently, while all that terrible din sounded in her ears, with that throng of writhing, struggling, bleeding men twenty yards away, a little smile stretched itself over her lips, and her eyes fell shut. She lay wrapped in a vision of her own: a vision of fair fields and broad, blue water, where, on the sh.o.r.e, stood a man; a man whose hair shone like the sun, and who bore in his hands a five-stringed lyre. And presently, from out of the racket, she could hear the pure tones of Charmides' voice, singing, as he had always sung throughout his life, for love.

Baba was lying unconscious of her surroundings in this little ecstasy, when suddenly the low wailing of the women was heightened into loud cries of well-warranted horror. The little slave felt a new presence at hand. She lifted up her eyes, and saw something that caused her heart to rise into her throat. The barricade was breaking down before a band of armed temple-servants that were advancing to the murder of the women. A cold stream poured round Baba's heart, and for the first time to-night she screamed aloud. Her cry was answered by Ribata, who was trying desperately to gather the lords out of the conflict at the door. But the fight there was going badly. More than half the defenders of the temple had fallen, and each of those that remained was pressed by half a dozen of the enemy. Many of the guards had been drawn out into the square and were keeping up the battle there while they lived. But it seemed all at once that the defence could not last many minutes more. Not a man could come to the rescue of the women caught in so terrible a trap. And in the faces of the inhuman creatures that threatened them, there was no hope for their lives. The murderers were nearly all of them Zicaru from the third college, which was Amraphel's own; and into their hearts hatred for the upper cla.s.ses had been instilled for years. Now, as they looked upon their helpless prey, all the animal savagery of their race rose up in them, and their eyes sparkled and their lips twitched in the l.u.s.t for blood. The wife of Nabu-Mashetic-Urra, one of the old councillors of Nabonidus, received the first blow. The knife of a seer struck her to the heart; and with that first gush of blood the general carnage began.

Defenceless as they were, the women were roused to action. With their hands, their limbs, their teeth, the pins that fastened their hair, they fought uselessly for life. From the place where she lay half concealed, Baba watched the scenes of murder around her. The woman next her had been dodging the knife that continually pursued her, till, stabbed in a dozen places, hair and body dripping with her blood, she proffered her heart to the a.s.sa.s.sin, who mercifully plunged his dripping blade up to its hilt in her breast.

Baba gave a hoa.r.s.e shriek, threw up her hands, and fell, face down, upon the floor. A second after a streak of fire ran deep into her right shoulder. Then, immediately, all the noise died away. The world reeled with her and became black; and for her this scene of incredible brutality was at an end.

Not so Belshazzar's desperate task. At the moment when the Zicaru, appearing from the back rooms of the temple, had set about the slaughter of the women, the king, in the midst of a little band of five soldiers, had pressed through the front ranks of the enemy, out into the temple square. This was packed with the city mob that had gathered from the feast in the temples of Nebo, Nergal, Istar, and Sin, and come hither under the leadership of their officiating priests. In the darkness it was impossible to tell friend from foe. Belshazzar's self-const.i.tuted body-guard fought madly to preserve his life; but, fifteen minutes after they had pa.s.sed the temple doors, the last of them, wounded in twenty places, had fallen at the feet of his king, and Belshazzar of Babylon was alone with the darkness and with besetting death. Many set upon him where he stood on the eastern edge of the square; but perhaps none of his a.s.sailants knew him. He was armed only with a short sword taken from the hand of a dying Elamite; but with this weapon his execution was terrible. As man after man went down before his tigerish strength, the attention of many was drawn to him, and presently he found himself backing down a narrow and crooked street running out of the square, engaged with three men, variously armed, that vainly strove to fell him.

An arrow stuck in the flesh of his right forearm, and there was a great gash upon one of his knees. He left behind him a trail of blood; but, in the heat of contest, he felt not a twinge of pain. The noise of the battle perceptibly diminished. He heard it vaguely, caring at this time very little how the fight was going. His adversaries pressed him hard; yet he smiled, as continually he beat them back. The brute, the tiger in him, was uppermost now. He had not a thought for anything but fighting.

In his slow and certain way he had retreated perhaps two hundred yards, and was approaching the house of one of the under-priests of Bel. From its open door-way a flood of light poured into the street, and as Belshazzar moved into the luminous spot a cry of recognition broke from the lips of his oppressors. At the same moment a white-robed figure came quickly out of the house, and, unseen by him, moved behind Belshazzar.

In the moment that followed, a knife gleamed in the light behind the king. The blow fell. With a great cry Belshazzar reeled, sank to his knee, straightened up again with a superhuman effort, thrust weakly in the direction of the men in front, and sank back on the ground with a faint moan. At the same time his a.s.sa.s.sin, motioning the three soldiers to go back, stepped in front of his victim and bent over him.

"Amraphel!" muttered the king.

"Ay, Amraphel, thou dog! Amraphel, thou tyrant of the city! Amraphel, thou last ruler of a hated line! Amraphel, that stands at last alone in the land of his desire! Hear thou, then, the name of Amraphel. Know his everlasting hatred for thee and thine, and knowing--die!" Then, with his sandalled foot, the old man spurned the face of him that was fallen, hoping to bring some craven word to the lips of the king.

But Belshazzar was himself in death as in life. Gazing steadily into the face of the high-priest, he permitted himself to smile--a slight, scornful smile, such as he had sometimes worn during the sacrifice.

Seeing it, the high-priest was goaded into a hot fury. With what strength he had he kicked the face of the dying man. Then, drawing his b.l.o.o.d.y skirts about him, he turned and pa.s.sed once more into the house of the priest, out of Belshazzar's sight forever.

So at last the king lay alone, unmolested, with the night and with his thoughts. Babylon was fallen--was fallen the Great City, before the hand of no invader, but by treachery and stealth, by means of murder and of outrage. All this the king knew; yet no regret for the inevitable disturbed these final moments. Rather he turned his mind to that that was his alone, to that which const.i.tuted his true, his inner life, that made his great happiness, that had redeemed him from all mental pain--his supreme love for Istar the woman.

In that dim dream into which all surrounding things were fading, her name floated to his lips. Once, twice, thrice he repeated it to himself, lingeringly, adoringly, loving each syllable as he spoke it. He had no thought, no hope of seeing her again. She was somewhere, far away, in the midst of those direful scenes beyond him. He commended her to his G.o.ds as best he could. Then he thought of himself as at her side, the mist of her hair hiding the world from his eyes, the perfume of her breath causing his head to swim. He thought of her as she had been to him in the last months. And then--suddenly--she was with him.

Out of the gloom of the narrow street she came, searching after him, calling his name. The veil had fallen back from her pallid face. Her eyes were staring wide with fear and with the horror of blood. Her movement was slow, indeterminate, vague. Not till after he had watched her for a full minute did she come upon his figure in its pools of blood. Then, with a faint, fluttering cry she ran to him, only half-believing her poor vision. Their meeting was ineffable. She lay upon his body, eye on eye, lip on lip to him, her cries stifled by his gasping breath, her wandering hands caressing his hair, his brow, his neck, his b.l.o.o.d.y vestment. Not knowing what she did, she pulled the broken arrow from his arm, and then screamed to think of where it had been. Of the two, Belshazzar's state of mind was infinitely clearer, infinitely stronger than hers. It was with a supreme effort that he took his lips from hers that he might speak, might try to make her understand what this moment must be to them.

"Oh, thou art wounded, my king, my beloved! Look--here upon thee is blood--blood on the white of thy robe. Why art thou red?" she repeated, once and again, anxiously examining the wet, dark stains that flowed ever freshly from his body.

Belshazzar saw that her brain was turned, and his anguish became terrible. Was she to bid him good-bye like this? Must he leave her forever with the infinite unsaid? How could he bring her mind back to him, if but for one moment? He could not think. All that he could do was to say, thickly, with the blood in his mouth:

"Istar, beloved, I die! Dost thou hear?"

"Yea, Belshazzar, and I also. Allaraine hath written it upon the wall.

Didst thou not see? 'Hast thou found man's relation to G.o.d? The silver sky waits for thy soul.' I also die."

"Thou!" he murmured, quickly. "Art thou wounded, Istar?" His feeble hands searched over her body, but felt no sign of blood. She had been untouched by any weapon. And now his eyes grew dull with suffering, and he said, faintly, and with reluctance: "Fare thee far and well, my Istar--Istar of my city. I go."

"Belshazzar!"

What it had been, tone or word of his, that roused her at last, the dying man could not tell. But that name rang through the night in a scream of living agony. Now she knew what it meant--that her Babylon was fallen around her--that the world was empty--that the lord of her life was pa.s.sing--that henceforward her way lay through the valley of loneliness. What mattered now the writing on the wall, hopeless prophecy of her own death? Belshazzar was here, beneath her, dying; while she--Istar--his wife--had received no wound.

She raised him in her arms and their eyes met for the last time. How much pa.s.sed in the look cannot be told, for it was a final mingling of souls. All their love, their infinite happiness, their sorrow, their tears unshed, the humanity of their two lives, was embodied in that look. Grief of parting was not there, for the two were striving to make parting endurable, each to each, by the look. It was finished at last, with Belshazzar's whispered words:

"In the silver sky, O my glorious one, I wait for thee!"

"O my beloved, wait for me! Wait for me!"

Then the body dropped inert in her arms. Belshazzar was gone. Istar was left alone in the world.

How long afterwards she rose from that place she did not know. Many people--soldiers of the invading army and men of the mob, with blood-dripping swords--had pa.s.sed her as she lay along the ground, face down, beside the body. And none of these offered to molest her, for they thought that two dead lay there in the semi-darkness. The light in the house of the priest of Bel had gone out, and the shouts of conflict had long since been hushed. Still, through all the city, there was the murmur of uneasiness, of many men awake and stirring. The night was filled with stars, and with that curious white glow that comes in midsummer to the Orient. But it seemed strange that the skies did not turn from the hideous spectacle of Babylon that night.

Forth into the city, from the body that she loved, Istar went. Guided and protected by some divine spirit, she pa.s.sed unhurt among groups of strange, uncouth warriors that laughed and talked in an unknown tongue.

She crossed streets where dead lay piled together. For those that were loyal to the city had not been spared by the men of Amraphel. She pa.s.sed houses in which sat women wailing out their terror through the long hours before the dawn; and came finally to the open doors of a small temple in which the feast of Tammuz had been celebrated through the day.

Before this Istar paused. Inside she could see the glowing of the sacrificial lights and the disorderly desertion of the room--the long, empty tables covered with half-filled cups and plates, and the altar whence, from the smouldering fire, a thin stream of blue incense still poured upward. The woman's weary eyes saw these long, soft divans with a sense of desire and of relief. She entered the room and went quickly towards the nearest resting-place. She was about to lay herself down.

Her eyes were all but closed under their weight of weariness, when suddenly, from the shadowy s.p.a.ces beyond her, came a sound that caused her to start back from the couch, and hasten in nervous terror towards the door. It had been only the bleating of a little group of hungry sheep in their pen near the temple kitchen; yet the unexpected noise had shattered Istar's nerves, and she fared forth again out of the holy house into the long, winding streets of the city.

Whither she went, how far, with what purpose, no one knew, no one cared.

She saw the river winding its tranquil way between well-stoned banks, with the shadows of vast buildings mirrored in its depths, while the glittering stars from their high dome shone like pale, white eyes in the gla.s.sy, lazily moving stream. Wandering Euphrates! Took it any heed of the deeds of good or evil performed upon its banks? G.o.d had bequeathed to it eternal calm, had made the sight of it an eternal balm for weary eyes. This night it brought peace on its waves and a promise of rest to the soul of the woman. As she stood gazing down into its baffling green, there came to her again the message from the kingdom, written in golden letters on the surface of the water. Again Istar read and again she wondered, yet in her soul understood the words:

"Hast thou found man's relation to G.o.d? The silver sky waits for thy soul."

Istar, in her great woe, stood looking upon the fiery words, that seemed to have burned themselves into her brain; and her whole heart rebelled against them. Those that she loved had been taken from her. With Belshazzar, the light of her life was extinguished. Man was bound to G.o.d only by great suffering, by grief, by heart-sorrow! A sob came into her throat, and there was anger in her mind as she would have turned away from the mystical words. But at that instant they flashed out into darkness, and the gleam was gone. For a moment the night grew thickly black, and Istar reeled where she stood. Afterwards she found herself walking on the bank of the river, only a little distance west of the spot where the huge temple of Marduk reared its bulk into the air. It was now in Istar's mind to go back to the place where Belshazzar's body lay, and to remain there at his side till dawn should banish the horrors of the night. But just as she would have left the river for the second time, there came out upon the path that ran along its bank a group of white-robed men, whom Istar knew for priests, bearing with them a heavy burden covered over with a purple cloth. At sight of them Istar turned suddenly dizzy and crouched on the bricks of the pavement.

Arrived at the edge of the river, the five priests of Amraphel's temple laid their burden on the ground and removed the cloth that covered it.

Belshazzar's body was exposed to view. Istar, with a little moan, pressed both hands tightly across her breast. But neither sound nor movement attracted any attention from the priests. These now indulged in a short parley, that ended in their taking from the corpse the royal ornaments that covered it and dividing them evenly among the five.

"Now, Bel-shar-utsur, tyrant of the city, go down by river to plead with the Lady Mulge in Ninkigal for a drink from the spring of life; for thou shalt drink no more, in the Great City, of the wines of Helbon and Izalla!"

With this only farewell, three of them lifted the body up, swung it thrice in the air by the feet and by the head, and at the third swing let it fly out into the waters of the river that had so short a time before received the worn frame of the dead man's father.

As the body left their hands the priests were startled to hear a long, low cry that came from a few yards to the right. Looking, they saw a woman's figure run to the river-bank and peer into the waters below, where the body of the king, as on a funeral barge, went floating down towards the city of the dead that lay south of Babylon.

Without any attempt at accosting her who mourned, the men of Amraphel presently turned away and began their return to the temple, carrying with them the new wealth of jewels. Istar also rose, half consciously, and knowing neither any abiding-place where to lay her head, nor any one to seek who could give her help, she moved away aimlessly down the bank of the stream. A few yards to the south there was a great ferry station, where, by day, a dozen boats were wont to ply back and forth across the stream. By night only one barge went its way backward and forward; and as Istar came down to the little quay the broad scow was just ready to start to the western sh.o.r.e with its load of men and soldiers. She ran quickly down the steps and on to this moving bridge. The west bank of the river was home to her. She knew its streets and its people. There, to the north, was the palace of Belshazzar, and the temple in which she had once dwelt. There, somewhere, she would find shelter.

When the barge finally touched the landing at the western sh.o.r.e and Istar, last of any one, was about to leave it, she was stopped by one of the ferrymen.

"Lady, it is two _se_ for the pa.s.sage."

"Two _se_! Money? I have none," said Istar, slowly.

"Thou shalt not leave the barge till the price is paid," retorted the boatman, angrily.

But vaguely understanding what he meant, Istar pulled the veil from her face and fixed her great eyes upon him, the better to comprehend what it was he told her. The man gave a great start, for in the semi-darkness her marvellous beauty shone like a star. Then the rough fellow bent his head before her.

"It is the lady of Babylon! Great Istar, forgive our fault! Let it please thee to leave the barge!" he exclaimed, reverently.

Istar did not pause to wonder that he knew her. She saw that her way was open, and she went forth, up the steps, across the path at the top, and into the lower city. Too weary, too stricken for either rest or sleep, she felt her brain burn and her limbs grow cold as she walked. Now there was a fire in her veins; now they grew chill as the snows of Elam. In the pale gray of the dawn she trembled with sickness. The coming of day was not beautiful to her eyes. In the first pink flush from the east she found herself standing before a miserable hut on the border of a ca.n.a.l, and from the dark door-way came a voice crying in great fear:

"The plague! The plague! It is come upon us! Behold the G.o.ds visit their wrath upon men! Woe, woe to them that see light in Babylon to-day!"

Istar shuddered at the cry. From another place farther to the north the words of horror and grief were repeated. The reign of death was thus proclaimed in the city. Now there was a great ringing in Istar's ears.