Sarchedon Part 35

It was a weary watch. The long night through she never left his skeleton, never changed her position, nor ceased her silent mourning, nor moved a limb, but to drive away the wild-dogs that glided in and out the entrance of the court, drawing near with eager whine and wistful eyes while she was still, scouring off in vexed dismay when she stirred, to return again, and yet again, till dawn.

Though grief like hers may for a time dominate the requirements of the body, these a.s.sert themselves at last. With the return of day Ishtar felt conscious of hunger and weakness, the one threatening to overpower her if the cravings of the other were not speedily satisfied. She knew she must exert herself at once, lest she too should sink down, and die by him whose bones lay bleaching beside her there.

Would it not be better so? What had she to do with life now? There was but one consideration to rouse her from the apathy of despair. The last obsequies must be paid to the remains of her father; and who would insure for him that final mark of respect if she was gone? She would live at least till this was accomplished; and therefore must she go out into the city, and stand unveiled in square and street till she could find a friend. Surely amongst all those men of war who went forth to battle at his word might pa.s.s one who would recognise his daughter, and afford the only tribute of respect left to the memory of Arbaces!

From the resolution to make her effort grew strength to attempt it. With exertion came renewed vitality, and with vitality a spark of hope. Yes, even through those depths of gloom and misery glimmered faint reflective rays of that which was not quite impossible; as the light of heaven, though blurred and dim, reaches one who is sinking in the green bewildering sea.

Then she rose up, tore a strip of curtain from the portal, and lifting the skeleton with tender reverent care, disposed it in a seemly att.i.tude under that scanty covering, so as to baffle wild-dog and vulture till her return.

In raising her father's remains she found under them a baldrick in which his sword had hung, embroidered by her own hands. Even this had been gnawed and partly eaten away; but it was fastened with a jewelled clasp, pressed down beneath the broad shoulder-blade of the dead warrior, and had escaped alike the eyes of cupidity and the fangs of hunger. It was a treasure to her now. Drawing it hastily out, she concealed it in her bosom, kissing the precious relic once with eager, pa.s.sionate lips, because she must part from it so soon.

Then she disposed his strange shroud about the remains of Arbaces, looked high and low, to earth and heaven, with wild imploring eyes, seeking aid, but finding none, and so walked out alone into the world from her home.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

THE WINGS OF A DOVE

An hour after sunrise, Babylon the Great was up and dressed like any other restless lady, wakeful and astir, warm with life and beauty, rich in gaudy colours, bright with gold and gems.

Trumpets that mustered warriors by thousands were pealing from her walls. Priests of Baal and prophets of the grove were chanting their idolatrous hymns, to ring of harp or sound of timbrel, through a score of stately temples, a hundred squares, terraces, and open places in the city. Oxen were lowing, sheep bleating, as they stood in droves herded together for sacrifice. Peasants from without were toiling under their market-produce; merchants of Tyre and of the South were guiding their camels, laden with bales of costly goods for the mart of nations; a hundred streams of labour, luxury, and traffic converged to this common centre; and through all her gates the wealth of a hundred countries was flowing in to enrich the mistress of the world.

She accepted their tribute like a queen lavish of smiles and honours, repaying real substantial benefits with bright glitter of ornament, with show of tinsel and gilding, with a false welcome and a cold farewell.

Her visitors took their leave, the better for her notice, by an acquired taste for deteriorating luxuries, an increased discontent with the manly simplicity of their homes. They thronged in and out nevertheless, crowding especially to one quarter of the city, on the banks of the broad river, at an equal distance from the two royal palaces, where it was customary to hold a market for all kind of wares and provisions, where a man might purchase, according to his needs, a barley loaf or a dress of honour, a rope of onions or a string of pearls.

Here prevailed that stir, turmoil, and confusion of tongues which must necessarily accompany such gatherings of different tribes and professions, especially under a southern sky. The plain-spoken countryman discoursed volubly on the luxuriant growth of garden-stuff that overflowed his baskets; the keener-witted citizen cheapened and chaffered, sparing neither laughter nor sarcasm, nor shrill and deafening abuse; dark-skinned Ethiopians grinned, nodded, clapped their hands, and rubbed their woolly heads in mingled amazement and delight; haughty warriors stalked in and out the stalls of the various traders with martial strides and offensive demeanour, taking at their own price such things as they required, or, on occasion, omitting the ceremony of payment altogether; troops of women, chiefly from the lowest cla.s.s, added their eager voices to the general clamour, hanging their swaddled infants at their backs, hoisting them on their shoulders, or extricating with loud outcries and hearty cuffs the stronger urchins, who persistently sought every opportunity of being trampled under foot by the crowd; while over all, at no distant intervals, towered the pliant necks and patient heads of meek-eyed camels, looking sleepily down on the confusion, in calm tolerant contempt, like that of their swarthy riders, for those who dwelt in cities, earning bread by the bustle and compet.i.tion of sedentary occupation rather than by long adventurous journeys or the vicissitudes of robbery and war.

These were invariably objects of undisguised interest to the bystanders; for about man and beast hung a smack of the boundless desert, the wild free air, the untrodden measureless waste, as from the dress and bearing of the mariner seems to exhale a flavour of his adopted element, a breath from the salt breezes of the sea.

They were mostly sun-burned and travel-worn, bearing traces of fatigue, hardship, and long exposure by night and day.

To a group of these, standing somewhat apart, surrounding one of their camels, which had lain calmly down, load and all, Ishtar thought well to address herself. They were apparently traders of a superior cla.s.s, while something in their dress and furniture, denoting that their home was in the north, led her to believe they would offer a more liberal price for jewels than those southern merchants, who might probably have brought with them many such valuables for sale. The men, like their camels, seemed very weary; nevertheless they entered on the business of a bargain without delay.

"The damsel needs but look round," said one, "to see that her servants have no need of such things. We are overcome with long travel, sore hungered and athirst. What have we to do with clasp and jewel? Your servants are faint for lack of bread. Can they comfort their hearts with gems and gold?"

"Behold the sandals dropping from our feet," pursued another, "the halters of our camels worn to the last fibre! Bring us goats'-hair ropes, woollen raiment, or even garments of fine linen; we will buy them of you, and welcome--at a price."

Sorely discouraged, Ishtar would have protested; but the words died on her lips, and she turned meekly away. Perhaps no amount of eloquence could have served her so well as this apparent indifference. The princ.i.p.al trader leaped down from his camel, and accosted her with some eagerness.

"Be not hasty, my daughter," said he. "The foolish guest turns from a smoking platter, the wise waits till it is cool. Those who desire not to buy may be willing to sell. Will you look on the wares we have brought out of the south?--over the long trackless desert, and through the nations whose hand is ever stretched out to spoil and slay--the Amalekites, the Hivites, and the Anakim."

Ishtar started. The mention of the last-named tribe brought the blood to her brow. She turned back, and replied,

"Show me your wares, if you will, but I too am faint for lack of bread.

If I am compelled to take this jewel out of the market unsold, I must creep hence to the city wall, turn my face to its shelter, and so lie down to die."

There was something in her tone that vouched for her truth. He was a merciful man, though he had traded and travelled through the eastern world. Had she bargained with him, he could have found it in his heart to cozen her out of every article she possessed, and had been proud of his own acuteness the while. But this was a different question. It was like fighting an unarmed adversary, taking a prey that made no effort to resist or flee. His heart melted within him for sheer pity and good-will. Caution, however, whispered that such appeals might form the new mode of trading lately adopted in Babylon; and while he took the jewel from her hand, he only said,

"We have enough and to spare of such ornaments. Nevertheless, let us look, and judge for ourselves."

His comrades, of whom there were but two, joined in the examination.

From their immovable features she could not guess their opinion; but Ishtar gathered that they meant to trade from the quiet air of depreciation a.s.sumed incontinently by each.

After scrutinising the jewel at every possible angle, so as to subject each particle of each stone to the searching test of sunlight, the last speaker, who seemed the princ.i.p.al personage, weighed it carefully in a pair of scales hanging at his belt, and observed,

"One hundred shekels of silver would surely be a fair price, oh! my daughter? But we too have merchandise to sell. Will you not take fifty shekels and your choice of a breadth of silk, a piece of goodly needlework, or a wrought ornament in bronze and ivory from Tyre?"

The clasp was worth three hundred at the lowest, and he felt full of pity and loving-kindness towards the damsel, but a profession is second nature. He was a trader, and must live.

"Your servant is in the hand of my lord," answered Ishtar humbly. "Take the jewel, I pray. Give me the fifty shekels, so that I may buy a morsel of bread, and eat before I die!"

He counted them out, well pleased. It was not often, even in careless pleasure-seeking Babylon, that he could trade to such advantage. But the bargain now stood on a different footing. Ishtar's prompt compliance with his terms caused him to feel bound in honour to give her free choice of the various articles he had named, trusting only that she might not select the rarest and most expensive. Neither he nor his comrades would have refused her for their lives. Their probity, though loose in the extreme, was not elastic, and no temptation could have seduced them into any act they considered a breach of faith. Causing, therefore, another camel to kneel down, they proceeded to unpack its load, turning over for inspection shawls, silks, embroidery, and trinkets, more or less costly, from the workshops of Tyre, Ascalon, or other cities on the seacoast.

Faint with watching and exhaustion, goods, camel, traders, and bystanders swam before Ishtar's eyes; for amongst a handful of glittering ornaments she distinguished the amulet that the Great Queen had bestowed on Sarchedon, that she had last seen about her lover's neck.

With an effort of which few women would have been capable, she recalled her fleeting senses in subservience to her will, and asked calmly to examine the trinket. It was valuable, no doubt, yet more from its exquisite finish than intrinsic worth, and she had presence of mind to appear only desirous of possessing it as a gaudy trifle with which they could have little disinclination to part.

"I will ask my lord," said she, "to bestow on me no more than this ornament I hold in my hand. Also, if a drop be left in the water-skin, that I may wet my burning lips, for indeed I am faint and sore athirst!"

"It is my daughter's," answered the trader. "My camels, my goods, all I possess, are hers! The water-skin is indeed dried and shrivelled like an ungathered grape, but here is a gourd not yet emptied, a barley-loaf still unbroken. I pray you, eat and drink, my daughter; comfort your heart, and go in peace."

Complying eagerly with the invitation, Ishtar felt her very life returning with each mouthful she swallowed. Had it not been so, she never could have found strength for the task she had set herself to perform. Looking on that amulet, with its bird of peace following the weapon of war through the air, her whole being, her very soul, seemed to go out towards the lover from whom she had been parted with so little likelihood that they might ever meet again.

"O, that I had the wings of a dove!" thought Ishtar, in the loving impotence of her desire, wishing, with other tortured spirits of every age and clime, but to burst through the invisible, impalpable wires of her cage to seek the rest that none can find--broken in heart and hopes, weary and wounded, yearning only to fly home.

And it may be that those who have followed in the slimy path of the serpent shall one day find their bitterest punishment in aimless, endless longing for the wings of the dove.

But could she have flown with all the speed of all the birds of air, it was yet indispensable to follow out the clue she had already obtained in the possession of the trinket that so lately belonged to Sarchedon.

Strengthened by food, her womanly wit regained its keenness, while womanly shame bade her disclose but half the truth. It would be wise, she thought, to trust this friendly merchant; yet she dared not confide in him wholly, nor lay open to a stranger all the weakness of her heart.

"My lord has shown favour to his servant," said she. "I desired of him a gift, and, lo, it lieth here in my hand! I was hungered and athirst; he gave me to eat and to drink! Am I not in some sort the guest of my lord?

I would fain ask him one question. All my happiness hangs on his lips.

As his soul liveth, I implore my lord to tell me the truth."

"Speak on, my daughter," was the reply. "There is no s.p.a.ce for falsehood within the curtains of a tent, and he who dwells in the desert knows not how to lie."

"This trinket," she continued eagerly, "you took it from its owner. It hung round his neck. He was a son of Ashur, tall and comely as a cedar of the mountain, brave as the lion, ruddy as sunset, bright as morning, and beautiful as day!"

The astute trader smiled.

"You know him," said he, "and you love him! It is as my daughter hath said."

"He is my brother," she answered, blushing crimson while she adjusted her veil. "If aught but good hath befallen him, it were better for me that I had never been born!"

"Such a one as you have described," answered the other, "did indeed come into our possession by lawful barter amongst the tents of the Anakim. A slave can have no goods to call his own, and when we discovered beneath his garment this jewel that had escaped the eyes of his spoilers, we might have taken it righteously by force. Nevertheless, the man was strong and warlike. Even in bonds, it may be that he would have done _himself_ some injury, and so lessened his price. It was well that he suffered me to strip it from his neck unnoticed while he looked back upon the camp, as if he had left his very heart with the tribe."