Sarchedon Part 27

Sarchedon did not answer. His heart was beating fast, and all the blood in his body seemed surging to his brain; for amongst the spectators looking down from the housetops on the entrance of their countrymen, he had caught sight of a veiled figure, that had in it something of her air and gestures who was never absent from his mind--the object of his search, the desire of his life, the woman he had loved and lost.

It was but a momentary glimpse. The figure disappeared almost as soon as seen. Nevertheless, for Sarchedon there was henceforth but one aim, one interest, in the whole city of Ascalon.

His progress through the streets reminded Sethos, though on a less splendid scale, of the Great King's return after his successful Egyptian campaign, with its greetings, its enthusiasm, its shouts of welcome, and casting down of flowers on the warriors' heads, though the numbers were scanty, compared to the population of imperial Babylon, the height from which the garlands dropped but mean and humble, measured by the pinnacles and terraces that crowned the City of Palaces, throned on her mighty stream.

Long before it could arrive beneath her walls, the watchman at the gate of Ascalon had espied this scanty troop of his countrymen advancing through the desert, pursued by an enemy from that south on which it was his duty to keep a sleepless eye. Ere Sarchedon became satisfied that he was making for a tangible stronghold, and not an illusion of the sandy wilderness, the city had been alarmed, and its a.s.syrian garrison, tried warriors all, were at their posts. Scores of bowmen therefore lined the streets through which the little party pa.s.sed. Many a broad hand tendered its grasp of welcome and good-fellowship to the comrade who had baffled yet one more danger, foiled the hated Egyptian with bow and spear yet once again. Agron, the Captain of the Gate, a young warrior in whose company Sethos had often emptied the wine-cup, spending days and nights of revelry amongst the material joys of his beloved Babylon, himself accompanied them to the stronghold of the city, now brightened by a certain appearance of luxurious indulgence, added to its usual aspect of defence and grim security.

"Here," said Agron, "you shall be brought into the royal presence, with the rising of to-morrow's sun. You shall be sped on your way to Babylon under such a guard as may laugh Pharaoh and all his chariots to scorn, if indeed they dare thus pursue their venture into the land of Shinar.

Fear not, my friends; you shall ride out of Ascalon almost as swiftly as you rode in, and I wish it had been the will of Nisroch that I might be permitted to accompany you."

"Are you then so weary of the City of Towers?" asked Sethos, smiling gaily on a group of women who were pelting him with flowers from an upper story. "It seems to me that here, as elsewhere, Ashtaroth shines down in light through the eyes of these southern damsels, and that Agron may bask in her beams no less pleasantly than at home."

"Ashtaroth!" repeated the other scornfully, "and the City of Towers! Say rather Shamash and the City of Fire! Where shall you find a palm's breadth of shade in the whole town at noon, or a green thing within a day's march of the walls? There was a fountain here over against us when we arrived; but the sun licked it up ere we saw him rise three times, dry and clean as a dog's red tongue licks a platter. For duty, it is watch and ward day by day, with your headpiece scorching the very hair off your brow, and alarms throughout the night, every time a camel tinkles its bell within or a jackal howls for hunger without. As to pleasure, if you care not to fly your hawks over a plain so barren that the very wormwood refuses to show a twig, or to follow a lion as sulky as yourself for lack of food, who burrows into a cave when you come up with him, you must be content to tie knots in your bowstring, and so keep count of the days of your captivity, as they pa.s.s by and bring no change."

"But you hold a high post," said Sarchedon absently, for his thoughts were still with the veiled figure that vanished so quickly from his sight. "You have a n.o.ble command, and great honour amongst men."

"And receive gifts from travellers entering in," added Sethos. "Caravans out of Egypt, merchants from the coast, spoilers of the desert, who must needs replenish quiver and sharpen steel, none can pa.s.s through without doing homage to the keeper of the gate, and his hand is never empty whose beard brushes the dust. Tell me, Agron, are there not bales of silk piled in thy dwelling, myrrh, spices, inlaid arms, and talents of gold, ay, and a captive maid or two, fresh and rosy as the dawn on those eastern mountains from which she comes?"

Agron laughed loud.

"How long would she abide with me at the gate, think you, after the prince had heard of her white skin and ruddy cheeks? No, my friends, wayfarers are driven from our walls as if they brought a pestilence in their very garments. For recompense, I have stern command and scornful look; for food, camel's flesh and dried locusts; for handmaiden, an Ethiopian wench, black and rough as a goat's-hair tent; and for drink--well, for drink--you are a king's cup-bearer, Sethos--I can give you, as you will presently confess, a skin of wine equal to the richest you ever pressed at dawn for thirsty old Ninus. May he live for ever!

Hush, man! we are now within the royal gate, and none speaks here above his breath who values the safety of his tongue."

Thus cautioning his companions, Agron guided them through a ma.s.sive portal, into the central fortress of Ascalon, constructed to hold a foe at bay even in the last extremity, were the outer walls destroyed, and the town itself razed to the ground.

As a bulwark against Egyptian aggression, and a check to the excesses of those wild tribes that, from the earliest period of history, seem to have made the desert their home, Ascalon had been fortified with all the appliances of defence which the experience of Ninus could suggest; and perhaps, as the birthplace of the queen whom he loved so dearly, had acquired in his eyes a fict.i.tious value that caused him to regard it with jealous and constant supervision. Its central fastness was therefore in proportion to the strength of the whole place, nor did it fail to impress both Sethos and Sarchedon with feelings of awe and wonder, quite incomprehensible to the light-hearted captain of the gate.

For Agron, this lowering fortress seemed but a dreary prison, only preferable to the tomb, because of the hope that he might at last resume life and light amidst the luxuries of Babylon the Great. Ascalon, as the queen remembered it, was a glittering city, beautiful in architecture, pleasant with verdant bowers, and ripening dates, and voice of rushing waters. As Agron found it, shorn of beauty to enhance its strength, it was a grim solemn citadel, denuded of palm and paradise to make room for frowning rampart and threatening tower, drained of its bubbling streams that they might fill its moats and ditches, retaining nothing of its ancient loveliness but the blue sea and the silver lake, that continued to mirror its rugged features in age truly and faithfully as the smiling freshness of its youth.

Making signs to them of silence and discretion, the captain of the gate led his comrades through a succession of ma.s.sive portals and vaulted pa.s.sages, to a chamber lined with cedar wood, taken, as it were, out of the wall itself, and lit but sparingly by an aperture communicating with the roof.

"The prince will not see you," said he, "because he sits at the banquet of wine, and he holds by our ancient custom of Ashur, which forbids the clashing of cups and counsel; but you are fasting men as yet, and you may see _him!_"

Thus speaking, he drew aside a heavy curtain that had hitherto darkened their hiding-place, and disclosed a sufficiently sumptuous banqueting-hall, in which feasted some twenty or thirty guests, of whom at least half a score were women, unveiled, with flushed cheeks, disordered raiment, and garlands of flowers clinging to their loosened hair.

Keen as the desert hawk's, Sarchedon's eye took in the gay a.s.semblage at a glance. There was less of disappointment than relief in the deep breath he drew to miss the woman he loved amongst these restless, lavish, and alluring forms.

Ninyas sat in their midst, gorgeously attired as was his wont, with a jewelled drinking-cup in hand, pledging his male guests at the lower end of the board with loud hilarity, or whispering softly in the ear of one of those fairer companions by whom he had surrounded himself. The good humour of princes is contagious. To the royal challenge, men raised their goblets full and set them down empty; to the royal jest, women replied with peals of laughter and protestations of disapproval; while the royal whisper was answered by blush, and smile, and smothered sigh, more flattering than the wildest outbreak of mirth.

"I told you so," said Sethos in his friend's ear. "He was anxious about our emba.s.sy and could not remain in Babylon, but removed here to be nearer the land of Egypt."

"His mind seems easy enough now," answered Sarchedon; while Ninyas, taking a lotus-flower from his own garland, and steeping it in wine, twined it through the flowing locks of a free and laughing damsel, leaning across a comrade, till her head almost reclined on the prince's shoulder.

As she suffered him to fasten the flower in her hair, it was evident to those watching above that she made some vehement though mirthful declaration, accompanied by many gestures of affected reluctance and denial; presently, on a remark of the prince, her retort called forth an over-powering burst of laughter, and Ninyas, taking the collar of gold from his neck, wound it as a bracelet round her arm.

In the meantime goblets had been emptied freely, eyes began to shine, voices to rise, and the confusion of tongues became every moment more and more unintelligible. The captain of the gate, though a stout warrior, possessed, like his two comrades, a leavening of that discretion which, even if laid aside in camp, cannot be dispensed with at court. He judged it time to retire.

"Those are full men down yonder," said he, with a meaning smile, "and ye up here are fasting from all but desert air, and mayhap a mouthful or two of desert sand. Had you taken your places at the banquet amongst the others, with your feet washed, your locks combed, and garlands on your heads, there would have seemed no shame in all this revelry, because you too would have been merry with wine. That which is but decent mirth to one who rises from a feast, looks like rank folly to another who is about to sit down. Let us go hence, and you shall comfort your hearts with bread ere I show you the place of your repose. To-morrow Ninyas will speak with you face to face, in the light of the rising sun."

He conducted them accordingly to the lodging he himself occupied when not actually on duty at the city gate, placing before them such fare as, notwithstanding his protestations of its unworthiness, was exceedingly acceptable to their sharpened appet.i.tes, and producing a measure of Damascus wine, that even Sethos, in his official capacity, p.r.o.nounced irreproachable. It proved, indeed, of so tempting a quality, that Agron seemed well inclined to let the gate take care of itself, while he a.s.sisted his guests in its consumption, expostulating earnestly with Sarchedon on his insensibility to the merits of the matchless vintage--"ripened," as he boasted, "in the brightest beams of an a.s.syrian sun, pressed by the whitest feet that ever danced under a mountain-maid, stored in royal cellars, and worthy, if ever wine was, to be placed before the cup-bearer of a king."

Sethos admitted its flavour, comparing it to that with which he had been regaled in Egypt at Pharaoh's own table, not disparagingly, yet so as to enhance in his listeners' esteem his own importance as a man of pleasure, a man of counsel, and a man of action.

"Their feasts," he observed gravely, "are spread more fairly than ours, their dishes are more sumptuous, their attendants more numerous. There is not the profusion of fish, flesh, and fowl that we waste in our land of Shinar; but dainties are brought at any cost from the extremities of Libya and the other side of the southern mountains. They would be ashamed to hear the heifer lowing in the court for her calf smoking on the board at which they sit, with knife in hand. Is it not so, Sarchedon? You tarried longer as a guest of Pharaoh than I did myself."

"My own experience is chiefly of prison fare," was the answer; "nevertheless, though the lodging was somewhat strait and gloomy, I can in no wise complain of the food. The bread of my captivity was meat and wine, not to mention a barley-cake and a bunch of onions thrust into my hand by the archer who led me to my cell."

"Barley-cake and onions!" exclaimed Agron. "They fight pa.s.sing well--I pray you suffer me to fill your cups--pa.s.sing well, indeed, these nimble friends of ours, for men who fare no better than that!"

"Fight!" repeated Sethos, in high disdain. "Call you it fighting, forsooth, to set the battle in array, advancing in countless columns with levelled spears and waving banners, only to halt in orderly line, sound a trumpet, and retire discomfited before the sons of Ashur have time to bend their bows? Fight, comrades! I tell you, that for real fighting, man to man, hand to hand, foot to foot, and buckler to buckler, there is but one nation on the face of the earth."

"And but one champion in that nation," observed his host, with a covert smile at Sarchedon.

It was not lost on the merry nature of Agron, that his good wine already sang in the brain of the king's cup-bearer.

"You are my friend, and judge me too favourably," replied the latter, in perfect good faith. "I am no boaster, by the quiver of Merodach! yet I may say, that this belt of mine girdles a man who never shrank from buffets with the Egyptian at a score, ay, a hundred to one! The sun has scarcely set since the chosen host of Pharaoh, his chief captains, his chariots and hors.e.m.e.n, surrounded me in the desert, as--as I surround this goblet in my grasp. Did I yield? Did I fly? No. I retired to--to draw them on, as it were, and loosen their array. What! thou art a warrior--thou knowest my cunning of defence--my skill--"

"In retreat?" asked the other, laughing outright.

Sethos gazed on him angrily, and tried to rise; but resuming his seat, burst out laughing too.

"In retreat, in advance," said he, "in press of battle--when and how you will. They came on at a gallop, with their spears down. I reined-in, and stood like a rock, with my wine-cup--I would say, with my bow--laid across my arm thus. Then I fitted an arrow to the string, and Sarchedon will bear me witness--Is it not so? Why, where is he? Surely he was here not a moment ago. Sarchedon, I say, will bear me--"

But turning round for better summons of this additional testimony to his valour, he found himself so unsteady, that he was fain to give up the search and the subject together, fixing his attention rather on the flagon, which he and his host finished in company ere they sank into a sound and not entirely sober repose.

Sarchedon in the meantime, anxious and sick at heart, had risen from the revel un.o.bserved, and retired to his a.s.signed resting-place, where, notwithstanding the day's exertions, sad thoughts and burning memories banished sleep from his eyelids, peace from his troubled heart.

CHAPTER x.x.x

LOTH

A lover's perceptions are not easily deceived; neither veil nor mantle can hide that subtle, mysterious idiosyncrasy which makes the one woman, while wholly distinct from the rest, a type and ideal of her s.e.x. It was indeed Ishtar whom Sarchedon had seen amongst the spectators of his entry into Ascalon, nor is it necessary to add that she had recognised him almost ere he pa.s.sed through the gate. In those long weary days since they parted, how many drink-offerings had she poured out, how many prayers had she offered to Baal, Nebo, Merodach, all the host of heaven, especially to Ashtaroth, Queen of Love and Light! Behold them accepted and answered now! Her lover was in the same town with her; all the cunning she had practised to keep him at bay whose ardour she so loathed--her a.s.sumed fatigue, her feigned sickness, her feminine arts of defence--were to be rewarded at last. Doubtless she would meet Sarchedon in the streets--on the wall--what matter where?--before another sun had set; and to look in his face, if only once again, would be happiness enough for Ishtar. Her influence over the volatile young prince gave her authority in his household, so that she could roam unquestioned through all parts of the town and fortress where he reigned supreme. Sarchedon, tossing uneasily on his couch, little thought whose hand had trimmed the lamp by his head, strewn the rushes on his floor, and filled with the purest coldest water in Ascalon the pitcher that stood ready to his hand.

During the first watch of night, Ishtar paced to and fro in her own chamber, restless, perturbed, fevered with a wild joy far too keen for happiness, her whole being, sense, heart, and brain, filled with the image of the man she loved. When the archers had been relieved on the wall, and the spearman's echoing tread had died out among the ramparts, a well-known footfall pa.s.sed along the gallery to her chamber: she recognised, with indescribable fear and loathing, the step of the man who loved _her_!

Ninyas, weary of a banquet too late prolonged, of wine poured out too freely, tresses unbound too readily, smiles lavished ere he provoked them, and favours offered that he had little inclination to ask, broke up the sitting with less than his usual cordiality, and flung his festive garland under foot with something of the petulance shown by a spoiled child, that destroys its playthings because of the one unattainable gaud it has been forbidden to possess.

His male attendants discreetly emptied their goblets and held their peace; but some of the women showed signs of displeasure and discontent ere they withdrew; Rekamat, indeed, a comely dame from the northern mountains beyond Nineveh, who deemed her own ruddy cheeks and amber hair too rare beauties thus to be wasted in Ascalon, spoke her mind freely enough.

"My lord is wrath," said she, "with his handmaidens, because, forsooth, we grudge neither word nor deed, dance nor song, to do him honour. Shall we not rejoice in the light of his countenance, as the golden fruit of the palm deepens under the rays of a southern sun? When the date is ripe it should be gathered ere it fall."

"The dates are musty, and the palm-tree bare," answered Ninyas; "I am weary of it all!"

"Let not the anger of my lord be kindled," replied Rekamat in a voice that betrayed considerable irritation, "while I tell him he is plunging his hand through the thorns to pluck a cl.u.s.ter of wild-grapes; he is pouring streams of fair water on a growth of bitter wormwood, and yoking a team of oxen to plough the desert sand. O, my lord, have you not free choice among all the birds of heaven? and cannot you refrain from the poor gray linnet that sits sad and moulting in her cage?"

"The linnet's plumage is sleek, and her song pleasant to hear," retorted Ninyas with a mocking laugh. "The vulture's neck is bare and peeled, her voice an ugly croak."