Sarchedon Part 34

"Then you have seen Pharaoh?" interrupted Ninyas. "What is he like?"

The cup-bearer looked surprised.

"I have indeed stood before him," he answered, "and spoken with Pharaoh face to face. His throne is of beaten gold, studded with jewels; his garments shine and glisten so that he seems clad in light; but the man himself is of low stature and puny frame, lean, sallow, undignified. It is only the line of Ashur who are princes in bearing as in blood."

"The princes of Ashur go out to war with their hosts," responded Ninyas, accepting the compliment greedily enough. "Pharaoh lay soft in his palace beyond the river many a night while I was watching with bow and spear."

"Pharaoh lives for ever," said the other. "So proclaim his captains and officials from rise to set of sun. Perhaps it is that he cares not to front death in battle or the chase. Nevertheless, he entertained me with all the honour due to him who carried the message of my lord the king."

"And what message had my lord the king for one with whom he might have made his own terms at his very gate?" asked the prince.

Once more the puzzled look crossed his face, while Sethos pondered ere he replied. The path he trod seemed very dangerous; he must look well to his balance at every step. Taking courage, he answered frankly, yet with a certain caution,

"What am I, that I should stand in the light of the king's countenance?

The reed withers in the furnace and is consumed, the bar of iron doth but bend and obey. On such a matter it was not fitting that the lowest of his servants should speak with the king face to face. I received my instructions from him who stood on the king's right hand. Shall I repeat them to my lord?"

Ninyas watched him keenly.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I was commanded to make all speed through the desert, until I came into the presence of Pharaoh himself," said the cup-bearer; "to speak out boldly, as befitted him who represented the glory of Nimrod; to demand the body of a son of Ashur, lying captive in the land of Egypt; and if aught but good had befallen him, to warn Pharaoh that a.s.syria would come down with her chariots and hors.e.m.e.n to take a life for every hair of Sarchedon's head."

The prince started as if he was stung.

"Sarchedon!" he exclaimed. "Was it even so? And you brought him back with you to Ascalon?"

"It seemed but my duty," answered Sethos, "to shelter in a city of refuge one on whose head the king set so high a price, rather than suffer him to fall a second time into the hand of the false Egyptian."

Ninyas seemed much disturbed, betraying his vexation, as the other could not but perceive, in the unnatural composure of his demeanour.

"And these instructions?" said he, after a pause. "They must have been given by one in authority, standing at the right hand of my lord the king."

"They were given by a.s.sarac, high-priest of Baal," answered the cup-bearer. "Surely my lord is but proving his servant with empty words.

What am I, that I should seek to show aught but the truth in the sight of my lord."

"a.s.sarac, high-priest of Baal!" repeated Ninyas. "And at the right hand of the Great King! Beware, my friend; beware! There is yet a morsel of bread and a cruse of water in that dungeon where you pa.s.sed the day.

When a son of Ashur speaks to his lord with a lie in his mouth, surely his face is already covered, and his blood lies on his own head."

Hurt, alarmed, and in the utmost perplexity, the tears rising to his eyes, Sethos could but answer in a broken voice: "The Great King is gone to the G.o.ds! If my lord should slay his servant, he can only speak of that which he hath seen and knows."

In spite of all his self-control, Ninyas turned deadly pale, rocking and tottering where he stood, like a man stricken sore in fight. Then he called for another cup of wine, and turning to Sethos, with a smile said only:

"Leave me now; I am wearied, and the sun smote fierce to-day on the desert sand. See that they water not my horse till he is cool; and, Sethos, let not man nor woman come near me till I clap my hands."

With these words Ninyas retired to his chamber, and was seen no more, leaving the cup-bearer at his wits' end with astonishment, a state which was shared more or less by all the household; for was not the banquet spread, the hall lighted, the wine poured out, yet the prince absent?

Such an event had never yet come to pa.s.s in the memory of his servants; and Rekamat, who hoped to-night she would regain some of the footing she had lost in his favour, was loud in protestations of astonishment and vexation.

She was yet more dismayed, however, on the morrow to learn that a troop of hors.e.m.e.n had pa.s.sed out of the gate at sunrise, and disappeared in the desert towards the north; the watchman farther reporting, that in their centre, on the prince's favourite steed, rode a woman closely veiled. Rekamat bit her lip in sore vexation, to keep back the tears of spite and shame that rose br.i.m.m.i.n.g to her eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

THE POWER OF THE DOG

Towards sunset, Ishtar wandered into Babylon anxious, forlorn, and desolate, yet carefully nursing in her breast that spark of true courage she inherited from a line of warriors. In plain attire, travel-worn and dejected, she pa.s.sed on among a crowd of wayfarers heeded by none.

Desirous of escaping observation, she yet could not help reflecting bitterly how everything about her was changed, herself perhaps most of all.

It seemed but yesterday that the daughter of Arbaces moved abroad attended by a retinue of servants, escorted by a troop of hors.e.m.e.n. Even when most she affected privacy, she could not stir without women, camels, foot-cloths, fan-bearers, all the enc.u.mbrances of rank. Eager eyes were fain to pierce her veil, that they might gaze on her beauty; kind voices wafted after her their welcome or good wishes, because of her own graces and her father's fame. She was flattered, admired--above all, loved. And now she must shrink beneath the wall, to avoid the rude camel-driver and his ungainly charge. The water-carrier, tottering under his jars, gruffly bade her stand aside to let him pa.s.s; and the only courtesy she experienced amongst that hurrying, shifting throng was from a curled and bearded bowman, who would fain have lifted her veil as the price of his protection, and whose good offices she repulsed with a scornful energy that put him to flight in considerable dismay.

She wept a little after this effort, and hurried on faster to the shelter of what had once been her home.

In the days of mourning that succeeded his death, or, as his subjects were taught to believe, the enthronement amongst the stars of the Great King, a strange repressive power had made itself felt amongst all cla.s.ses in the city of Babylon. An unseen hand, cold, weighty, and irresistible, seemed laid upon the whole people, forbidding any demonstration of sympathy and indeed all expression of feeling whatever, public or private. The king's host, as it was still termed, had been recalled within the walls, and amalgamated cordially enough with their comrades of that army which was avowedly in the interests of the queen; but the citizens gained little from such an alliance, save more mouths to feed, more prejudices to consult, and it might almost be said more masters to serve. The priests of Baal too, with whom, in the reign of Ninus, his men of war had been covertly at variance, seemed now on terms of the closest brotherhood with all who handled bow and spear. Such a fusion of two non-productive cla.s.ses boded little good to those whose industry supported both; and the thoughtless Babylonian, usually so light-hearted, found himself saddened and depressed when he had fondly expected to eat, drink, and be merry, under the easy rule of a lord who preferred feast to fray, bubble of wine-cup to clash of sword and spear.

From a change of rulers Babylon had expected a change of those principles which const.i.tute government itself. Ninus, though firm and impartial, was severe, and reined her with a strong hand; she had therefore always looked forward to the day when his son should sway the sceptre, as a time of ease and luxury, with license for every man to think and speak and act as seemed good in his own eyes. But Ninus went to the stars, Ninyas reigned in his stead; and the citizens wondered, with blank faces, why bread was dear and water scarce, the priest covetous, the warrior oppressive, and the royal yoke harder than ever to be borne.

Under such circ.u.mstances none thought it worth while to bestir himself for the bettering of his own position, or the a.s.sistance of his neighbour. If a well was choked, he cared not to clear it: if a wall fell down, he let it lie. There was a shadow over the city, and its inhabitants already regretted the wise foresight and judicious government of the Great Queen.

Ishtar felt very weary before she reached the portals of her father's house, very sad and friendless when she crossed its threshold and looked round on the precincts of her home. The sun was down, but a clear cold moon poured its beams over the scene of desolation and decay. It was obvious that the palace must have been abandoned on the night of its attack, and that no friend or servant of Arbaces had revisited it since.

The a.s.sailants, having another object than plunder, carried away from his dwelling only that one of his possessions the chief captain most dearly valued, which they took with them to Ascalon. But an unguarded house could scarce remain unspoiled for a single night in such a city as Babylon. And Ishtar found her father's dwelling rifled and sacked from roof-tree to door-stone completely, as though an enemy had taken it by storm. In the court-yard remnants of shawls, silks, precious arms, costly flagons, strewed the inlaid pavement, dinted and defaced by marks of struggling feet; but the shreds were frayed and torn, stained with wine or stiff with blood, the weapons bent or broken; the flagons lay crushed and battered where they had been emptied and dashed down.

Pushing aside some rent hangings at the entrance of the court, night-hawks shrieked and night-owls hooted, while a bat, flying out, struck cold and clammy against Ishtar's cheek. Her flesh crept with horror; but that sorrow mastered fear, she must have cried aloud for help.

The moon shone brighter as it mounted in the sky. Patches of dried blood stained courts and pa.s.sages, a splintered javelin and a naked sword, lay at her feet--fragments of alabaster and gilding broken from the sculptures on the walls strewed the floor; but whatever loss the a.s.sailants might have sustained, it seemed that they had borne away their wounded and their dead. As yet she was spared the ghastly presence of a corpse.

Cold and faint, she leaned against the wall to take breath. It had come to this. Amongst all that shattered splendour in those very halls where her father feasted scores of warriors, every one a captain of ten thousand, there was now neither bread to eat nor wine to drink--no, nor the means of purchasing so much as a draught of fair water; though so short a while ago the palace of Arbaces had been stored with royal gifts and costly merchandise, meat and drink, gold, precious stones, and spoil of war.

If she could but find even an embroidered baldrick, a jewelled dagger, whole and uninjured, something she might carry into the market, and sell for as many skekels of silver as would put food in her mouth, and enable her to continue those efforts for the delivery of Sarchedon, which should never cease but with her life!

Resolving to search the palace through, she pushed on, traversing the court she had lately entered, and so reached the well-known stairs leading to the women's apartment, that heretofore she had so often climbed dreamily thinking of her lover, or run down blithely with a smiling welcome for her sire. Here were indeed traces of deadly strife.

Embroidered curtains, torn and disordered, dangled from the wall; defaced sculptures and shattered slabs enc.u.mbered the pavement; a slender column of bronze, supporting a brazier, was bent and twisted to its pedestal; a broken bow lay across a torch long since extinguished on the floor. The lower part of the hall was black in shadow, while a flood of moonlight bathed roof and rafters, painted wood-work, gilded pinnacle, all that elaborate ornament and finish which had been above the level of the conflict.

As her foot touched the first step, two lurid eyes glared on her through the darkness, and a long lean object glided swiftly by, brushing her garments as it pa.s.sed.

It was the wild-dog disturbed from his loathsome meal.

She had no fear now; only a thrill of intense suffering, with a fierce hideous desire for revenge. Wreathing her white arms above her head, she flung herself down by something, that an instinct of love, stronger than the very horror of the situation, told her must be the remains of her father.

A cloven headpiece had rolled from the smooth and grinning skull. His fleshless fingers still closed round the handle of a sword. He lay where he fell, his face to heaven, grim, unyielding, defiant even in death; but the wild-dogs had stripped him to the bone, and it was a bare bleached skeleton against which Ishtar laid her pale and shuddering cheek.

There rose through roof and rafters, curdling her very blood, a shrill and piercing shriek. She never knew it was the wail of agony wrung from her by her own despair.

Alas for the brave spirit pa.s.sed away, the loyal heart, cold and still, kind and true! He had been struck down in _her_ defence; had been willing, eager, to purchase with drops of life-blood the brief moments that might have aided _her_ to escape; his last blow struck on _her_ behalf, his last breath drawn for the child who had sat on his knees and lain in his bosom. The n.o.blest warrior that ever drew bow in the service of Ninus, fit leader of the brave who were arrayed under the banner of Ashur at his behest. She was proud of him even then.

As the moonbeams crept across the pavement where it lay, they were so far merciful, that they revealed to her the ghastly sight by imperceptible degrees. She seemed to gather strength from him whose blood ran in her veins, stretched out in that white distorted heap, scarce retaining a semblance of human form. She thought of him in the majesty of his strength, the pride and beauty of his manhood, recalling the broad hand that used to rest so lovingly on her head, the n.o.ble brow that never wore a frown for _her_; and the weight seemed lifted from her brain, the iron probe taken out of her heart, while sobs convulsed her bosom, and scalding tears rushed to her eyes.

She became human again. She was a woman now, and she wept.