THE PROCESSION OF BELCHAPTER XVI
THE PROCESSION OF BEL
Upon Ai-Bur-Shabou Street, not far from the Northern Gate, called the Gate of Ilu, stood the barber’s shop of Mulis-Assur. A shop, we say, though in truth it was only an open booth, thrust in betwixt two houses, and its sole furnishings were two low stools, a reed carpet, a little chest for the razors and silvered mirrors, and a brass brazier, over which at this moment curling irons were heating above the smouldering charcoal. Mulis-Assur was neither the first nor the last of his kind whose principal staple of sale was gossip. At this moment, as the worthy man stood patting the lump of melted butter upon the black locks of Gabarruru, the corn merchant, who occupied one stool, his head was turned to reply to Itti-Marduk, the banker, who was lolling on the other stool. It was a great festival day—the day of the procession of the patron god of Babylon, of the “going forth of Bel-Marduk,” and for once the broker had forgotten his jars of account books.
“Well,” Mulis was declaring, while he lifted the irons from the brazier, “I am the last to chattertreason, but may the gods ward off from his Majesty the consequences of listening to that frog Gudea’s croakings, and casting the civil-minister into prison! Not one man can say a fair word for the deed.”
“The more particularly,” thrust in the merchant, “because Gudea himself has died the death not long since. I saw the crows around his skull the last time I passed under the gate. Jew or Chaldee, no man ought to suffer bonds on such evidence. The minister is no more guilty of slaying by sorcery than you or I. A trick of Avil-Marduk, I say; there is too much priestcraft loose in Babylon. My head already sits overlightly on its shoulders.”
“Peace!” conjured Itti, “never will I, a loyal and pious citizen, suffer such treason to be prated against my betters!”
“No alarm,” answered Gabarruru, feeling that perhaps he had gone too far, “we are all loyal and obedient men. Daniel, at least, has been saved for the present by the queen-mother.”
“The queen-mother saved the Jew for the moment,” replied the barber, “but I think his neck will last through to-day, and no longer. You know the custom. When the ship of Bel reaches the foot of theziggurat, the chief priest can demand of the king one boon, and the king cannot refuse it. You may imagine what that boon will be.”
“The life of Daniel?”
“Nothing else, by Marduk! But I imagine there is likely to be another part to the tale. Imbi-Ilu,the chief priest of Nabu, is Daniel’s good friend. Mark my words, the priests of Nabu and of Samas and Nergal of Kisch hate Avil, and his designs to make all their temples subordinate to his own, more than they do the harmless Jehovah worship of the minister. I look for a spark on the firewood in Babylon, and strange sights this very day.”
“Ramman protect us!” muttered the banker, uneasily. “I have put down fresh loans only last night. I shall lose all.”
“Yes,” continued Mulis, who was happiest when peddling bad news that did not touch himself, “we must prepare for grievous times. Now that the king has clapped the Persian envoy in durance, and keeps him prisoner in his chambers at the palace, I think we may see a war the like of which was not since the brave days of Nebuchadnezzar. Ea, the God of Wisdom, alone knows what it was that befell during the royal hunt. Forth goes his Majesty and Darius, boon companions as Gilgamesh and Eabani; they come back eying each other like two cocks in the farmer’s yard. The next thing we hear, the Persian is a state prisoner. Woe, what wretched times!”
A groan cut the barber short, for a hot curling iron had tingled on Gabarruru’s neck.
“Nergal blast you, chattering sparrow!” was his curse. “Must I be roasted like a stalled ox every time I seek your shop?”
“Mercy, gentle sir,” soothed Mulis; “I was butsaying to the noble Itti, that the evil omens which have plagued the city of late, seem too nigh fulfilment. Piety declines, the gods are neglected—”
“Small loss!” growled the corn merchant, who was a very impious man; “the gods are of little use. They may be all-wise, and know each secret we would give everything to learn, but they are most inconveniently silent when they might serve us. My brother spent half his estate on priests and exorcists; much favour heaven gave him—he died childless and poor! While I, who have not given one of Avil’s cattle two shekels in ten years, wax prosperous and fat!”
“Hush,” exhorted Itti, horrified, “do not blaspheme before me! Doubtless heaven will, with one clap, smite you down for your wickedness—”
A second touch of the iron and renewed curses interrupted the broker. And before the conversation resumed, into the shop came Hasba, the tall, gaunt priest of Nabu, his costume very threadbare, and his eyes glittering as if with ill-concealed excitement.
“Well, Hasba,” cried Mulis, pausing in his curling for the twentieth time, “you are in a strange robe for a festival day. Is Nabu so poor a god he can give his priests nothing better?”
“Nabu is very poor and hungry—to-day,” responded Hasba, with a significant cough, which made Itti look at him very hard.
“But not yesterday or to-morrow?” pressed Mulis, pricking his ears.
“Quietly.” Hasba’s voice sank very low. “You are all good friends, and will leak nothing. See!” He showed a short sword girded under his mantle.
“Istar help us!” cried the broker. “What will happen?”
“Patience, worthy Itti. Avil-Marduk is likely to learn strange things before nightfall. We have sworn loyalty to Belshazzar, but not to Avil. His Majesty loves the priest of Bel-Marduk too well. Why is Daniel in the palace prison? Not because he ‘kills by sorcery,’ as that scorpion Gudea charged, nor because he is a Jew. He stands betwixt Avil and his design to make Belshazzar his tool, to make all the priesthoods of Babylon slaves of Bel-Marduk. Imbi-Ilu is not a man to see the deed done in silence. To-day we of Nabu appear in tattered mantles that the people may see how the king is starving us. And as for Avil, if he seeks Daniel’s life, let both him and the king beware!”
“Ramman protect us!” muttered Itti again. “When was ever such strife in Babylon?”
“A strange case that of Daniel’s,” commented Mulis. “I hear that the king was very desirous of laying his hands on his would-be son-in-law Isaiah, who was so loud in denouncing the gods, and more than desirous of getting the minister’s daughter (the maid was called Ruth) for his own harem. Yet both have escaped him, though their arrest was ordered.”
“Vanished utterly,” replied the priest, gatheringhis robe tightly, to guard against an unfriendly eye upon the sword; but his tone and wink made the others stare at him, then exchange knowing glances.
“As for the young Jew,” continued Hasba, with the air of a person who knows far more than he is likely to tell, “he is a man of great resources, and knows the city as a bird the way to its nest. All the Jews reverence him as a prophet of their Jehovah, and protect him when they can. My own master, Imbi-Ilu, esteems him highly, notwithstanding his absurd devotion to his native god. But the Jewess,” Hasba’s lips curled in a very bitter smile, “she is safe also, and Nabu grant shall remain so long, for the man who prompted his Majesty to try to take her by force from our temple is devoted to the ‘Maskim’ if the gods keep any power to punish sacrilege. Better worship a thousand Jehovahs, than do one deed like that.”
“You of Borsippa do not hate this Jewish god so very fiercely?” remarked Mulis, shrewdly.
“He is a harmless demon. We of the temple of Nabu only know this,—that we have no hate to squander on any, saving Avil-Marduk and his underlings.”
“Be that as it may,” was Mulis’s answer, “Isaiah and the maid have been in marvellously safe hiding. The king threatens Mermaza’s head if she is not found.”
“Then may the chief eunuch’s pate topple offquickly!” swore Hasba. “Next to Avil we love him the least.”
Gabarruru’s tortures were at an end at last, but just as he was about to quit the barber’s shop, the sudden rush of people to the street from all the adjoining alleys, and the din of distant horns and kettle-drums, told that the long-waited procession was at hand. Hasba excused himself and was off, leaving the others to meditate on his warnings and await the issue in what peace they might. The clangour of cymbals grew louder continually. The street was becoming one sea of heads. By standing on the little raised platform of the barber’s shop, it was possible to gain a fair view up the avenue, where one could see standards tossing, and the shimmer of steel.
“Way! way!” rang the familiar cry at length, and a squad of scarlet-robed wand-bearers began forcing the people backward toward the house walls. After this advance corps streamed the priestesses of Istar, tall, comely women, their heads and necks wreathed with flowers, their dresses of tinted Egyptian gauze floating around them in bright clouds, the transparent web falling in folds none the most prudish. The older priestesses walked in well-drilled files, bearing gay banners, and keeping up an incessant clatter upon their tambourines; but their younger sisters would break ranks, time and again, and whirl in voluptuous dances, joining hands, shaking out their streaming black locks, tearing offtheir coronals to cast amid the admiring crowd, or even when they saw a handsome youth, would pluck him from the multitude by sheer force, and whirl him with them; then, at a change in the music, all released their captives, and marched demurely until the spirits moved them to new madness.
So the “Maids of the Grove,” to the number of many hundreds, passed. But when the soldiers of the palace guard followed, each in his gayest mantle and brightest helmet, Mulis whispered in the banker’s ear:—
“A costly blunder, unless there is no fire under much smoke. Look at the guard!”
“What is amiss?” demanded Itti, rubbing his eyes.
“The troops have neither shields nor spears with them, only their parade arms, sword, and helmet. His Majesty may have cause to rue this blunder.”
“Ramman protect us!” implored Itti yet another time. But now fifty squeaking pipers headed the files of the priests of Samas from the southern city, a notable array of handsome men, white robes, and nodding banners. After them marched their brethren of Sin, the moon-god; then those of Nergal from the Kisch suburb; then the priestesses of Nana, consort of Nabu.
Suddenly a great shout began running down the street in advance of the next contingent.
“Hail, Nabu! Hail, son of Marduk! Hail, Imbi-Ilu, holy priest of the god!”
“Nabu, they say, is the son of Marduk,” commented Gabarruru, dryly. “He bears dutiful love for his parent, if what Hasba says is true.”
“Do not blaspheme him,” implored the broker; “he is a great god, the peer of Marduk almost. The son has the place of honour in the father’s procession. Pity the two must quarrel.”
“Bow down! The knee! The knee!” rang the shout, and the multitude (all that had room) knelt on the stone pavement, while from a distance sounded a mighty rumbling as of clumsy wheels. Soon there lumbered into view an enormous wain, dragged by long cables like those for a stone bull, but no sullen labour gang was tugging now. Many leaped from their knees and contended with the priests who were toiling at the ropes, for the honour of drawing the god. Upon the wain rode Nabu’s “Ship of the Deep,” a goodly-sized galley, fitted with a towering mast and tackle. Upon her decks swarmed a score of priests in lieu of crew, and perched upon the upcurved stern was the idol of the god, a block of black stone, human size, but with features of such ugliness that the very fiends beholding might well have trembled. Yet at sight of that image even Gabarruru bowed his head, for it had been the guardian genius of Babylon and Borsippa for more generations than the wisest could tell.
Yet a great wail of wrath and disappointment seemed rising from the people. “Nabu’s priests are threadbare! Where are their robes of honour?Where are the jewels once on the gunwales of the ship? Where are the golden dresses of the image?” The three in the barber’s shop rubbed their eyes. In the crowd they saw Hasba and others, doubtless fellow-priests, bustling about, whispering in the ear of this burgher and of that.
Imbi-Ilu, second pontiff of the realm, the friend of Daniel and the arch-foe of Avil, stood handsome and erect beside the image of his god; but there was no tiara on his head, his robe was torn and sombre.
“Marduk is robbing Nabu!” some bold spirit in the crowd was shouting. “The priests of Bel-Marduk grow fat; those of Nabu starve! Down with Avil!”
But the servants of the Borsippa god marched on in silence, each man smiling grimly when he saw how their pitiful display was working on the crowd, and pressing his mantle around his hidden sword. And there were other cries at times:—
“Release Daniel! Release the good minister! Release! Down with Avil!”
“Evil times!” muttered Itti. “While Nabonidus was king the processions were suspended; now they become mere occasion for tumult.”
“Well,” protested the cheerful barber, “here comes his Majesty and the car of Bel-Marduk. We shall soon see now.”
A new corps of musicians, new guards. A second boat creaked past on its many wheels. High above the noise of the crowd sounded the hymn chantedby the choir of chosen priests and priestesses in praise of Bel-Marduk, smiter of the great dragon.
“Look favourably upon thy dwelling-place,Look favourably upon thy city, O Lord of quietness!May Babylon salute thee, and thy temple,May the city find safety under thee!”
“Look favourably upon thy dwelling-place,Look favourably upon thy city, O Lord of quietness!May Babylon salute thee, and thy temple,May the city find safety under thee!”
“Look favourably upon thy dwelling-place,Look favourably upon thy city, O Lord of quietness!May Babylon salute thee, and thy temple,May the city find safety under thee!”
“Look favourably upon thy dwelling-place,
Look favourably upon thy city, O Lord of quietness!
May Babylon salute thee, and thy temple,
May the city find safety under thee!”
After this choir moved the car, and, unlike Nabu’s, it was a single blaze of colour. The four snow-white “sacred horses” who aided to drag the ship tossed their bridles of silver chains, and champed on bits of pure gold. The sail and pennons were covered with the rarest embroideries, the gunwale glittered with precious stones—agate, onyx, lapis-lazuli. The idol on the stern wore a robe that was one sheen of golden lace. But Belshazzar the king, who sat under his purple umbrella upon the prow, scowled at Avil, his prime counsellor, who stood beside him.
“The people give thrice as many cheers for Nabu as for Bel. The gods reward me if I do not make Imbi-Ilu pay the price for his mummery! To appear with his priests in tatters, and his car all stripped of decoration, at the moment when the procession was about to start! He knew well I would never have suffered his company to march, had it not meant a riot to leave behind the car of Nabu!”
Avil deliberately cast his eyes down over the swelling crowd, and readjusted the horn-set tiara that crowned his head.
“The more reason for striking down Daniel, myking. His fate will be a mighty warning to Imbi-Ilu.”
“Once you advised me to move gently with him, yet you are bold now.”
“True; but I have set my feet on the path, and see no danger to-day.”
“Release Daniel! Release! Release! Down with Avil!” broke in the bolder spirits in the crowd, as if to give the lie to the hardy pontiff.
Avil spat at them in contempt. “Stingless drones!” commented he. “They will forget the Jew by another Sabbath.”[5]
“I am led in all things by you,” replied Belshazzar, in a tone that showed he nigh felt himself overpersuaded. Avil only salaamed, and turned to pay his respects to the Princess Atossa, whose chair was upon the prow, close beside that of her royal lord.
“My princess sees a sight that must be rare in her native Persia,” began he, blandly. “If my information does not fail, the worship of the Persian Ahura and his archangels does not demand such elaborate processions as these.”
Atossa turned upon him haughtily, and from under her veil shot through him a glance such as can dart only from the eyes of a great king’s daughter.
“Assuredly, worthy priest,” and Avil winced before her disdainful patronage, “it is true our prophetZarathushtra[6]enjoins no processions where the populace heap personal revilings on the chief of our Magian pontiffs.”
“Down with Avil! Release Daniel! Nabu is outraged!” buzzed from the crowd.
“Ah, my princess,” said Avil, smiling, “the king is overkindly disposed. Could I persuade him, these seditious fellows would soon shout otherwise.”
“His Majesty is too kindly disposed?” replied she, removing her veil that Avil might see the unconcealed sneer on her lips.
“His heart is a mountain of compassion,” asserted the priest, who felt that he was being made sorry sport of, yet would not retire from the encounter.
“But not so merciful as my Lord Avil,” interposed Mermaza, the oily chief eunuch, glad to prod his comrade, “for his heart is one sponge soaked with magnanimity.”
“Marduk blast you, Mermaza!” muttered Avil under breath.
“I trust not,” replied the smirking eunuch, “the excellent god, my dear Avil, will need all his powers for weightier things to-day. Hear the people—”
“Avil conspires against Nabu! Rescue for the good minister! Release Daniel!”
To reënforce the shouts, a brick flung by some mad rascal in the crowd dashed against the car.
“Be persuaded, Avil,” urged Mermaza; “make no demand for Daniel’s life.”
“Spare the Jew? Never will I yield a ‘finger breadth.’ Having gone thus far, it is self-destruction to turn back.”
“Nevertheless, I wish we had brought more soldiers from the palace.”
Belshazzar was beckoning to the priest, and he turned away, whereupon Atossa addressed Mermaza wearily:—
“Is it far now to the temple of Marduk?”
“Not far; yet why is my mistress so tired? The under eunuchs tell me she did not sleep. The king’s Egyptian doctor must prepare a night draught.”
“Alas! that can profit little when I consider that Prince Darius’s life is in danger while he is a prisoner.”
“Danger?” Mermaza’s smile was radiant as the moon. “Has not his Majesty pledged that he is perfectly safe? His life is more precious than the gems in the royal treasure chamber.”
Atossa fixed her clear eyes straight upon the eunuch, and even he glanced away from her uneasily.
“Mermaza,” said she, very coldly, “I think it will be better for both of us if we hide fewer black thoughts under smooth protestations. You know as well as I that Darius is held as a hostage, to tie the hands of my father in requiting Belshazzar for his dark intrigue.”
“I am only your ladyship’s slave,” the eunuchbowed obsequiously. “Who am I to say my mistress ‘nay’?”
“And for once you speak well in very truth,” answered she, the hot colour of anger rising at last; “for to a man I would bow as to one mightier than I, and to a woman I would answer wrath with wrath. But to you, who are neither man nor maid, but only creature, I will vouchsafe not one curse; one does not bend the bow to slaughter gnats!”
Mermaza’s smile had become sickly indeed; but she deliberately turned her back upon him, and kept company with her own gloomy meditations.
She had not seen Darius since that evening hour when they were surprised in the Hanging Gardens. Report in the harem had it that the prince was under close ward in his own chambers, and that all the Persians of his suite had been arrested. All save one: Ariathes, the crafty and the nimble, had passed from sight as completely as if he had never been born. Was he escaped to Susa, and had the truth come to the mighty Cyrus’s ears? It was a faint hope, but all that was left in the princess’s despairing breast. The seizure of Darius, just at the instant when the future seemed bursting fair before her, and escape so close at hand, had almost blotted out the sun for Atossa. It had taken all her womanly strength and royal pride to bear up in the presence of her oppressors. Yet at that moment she had become possessed with one deep desire,—to see that Babylonian mob rise and take vengeance on Avil-Mardukand his grim master; and the howls of the multitude sounded sweeter in her ears than all the harping.
The greatzigguratat last! They had passed up the “Procession Street,” the broad avenue that led past the temple of “Istar the Foe-smiter.” There had been howls, ever increasing, from the multitude. Once the soldiers had charged with drawn blades to clear the way for Bel-Marduk’s car, but there had been no bloodshed. Avil, Mermaza, and their royal lord breathed easier. Before them was rising “E-Sagila,” “The Lofty House,” queen of the temple-towers of Babylon. The seven terraces of the great cone were all decked with flowers and streaming banners, the parapets of the different stages were swarming with the people, flowers were festooned over every pinnacle and battlement.
There it uprose against the azure, a vast mountain of brick, its lowest terrace painted white, the second black, the third purple, the fourth blue, the fifth vermilion, the sixth plated with silver, the seventh—the day-beacon first hailed by the Persians—was glittering with its sheen of gold. The bull-guarded gates had opened wide for the ship of Marduk. Inside the vast courtyard at the foot of the tower had arrayed themselves all the priests and soldiery that had preceded the car of the god. All but those from Borsippa stood on the left of the gateway; but the servants of Nabu, with their ship,were arrayed silent and sombre on the right. Imbi-Ilu’s company thus kept an ominous peace, but there was no lack of cheering for Bel-Marduk now. Even the disaffected multitude that had tried to attack the procession grew hushed and quiet when it passed within the sacred gates.
Loudly rose the well-drilled acclamations from the thousands of gentlefolk and temple servants perched upon the heights of the terraces above.
“Hail, Marduk! Hail, Dragon-smiter! Hail, Belshazzar, beloved of the gods! Hail, Avil, servant of the Guardian of Babylon!” There were more cheers for Atossa, for the vizier, for the “commander of the host.” Then, just as the ship of Bel-Marduk reached the foot of the great stairway leading to the first stage of the tower, the corps of priests marching before the god suddenly raised a shout that had not been heard before that day:—
“Death to the Jew! Death to Daniel the murderer! Death! Death!”
Instantly the crowds of Avil’s underlings upon the tower caught up the cry. But though the noise swelled to a deafening clamour, and all the files of the soldiers joined, Atossa heard no priest of Samas or Sin or Nergal open his lips. They were every man silent, like their fellows from Borsippa. And the great multitude that had trailed into the gate at the tail of the procession was silent also. Yet from Avil-Marduk’s supporters, and from the throng of courtiers about the king, the outcry continually increased.Belshazzar, she divined, must be able to say he sacrificed Daniel to quell the general clamour.
Louder, ever louder, “Death to Daniel! Death to the murderer! Extirpate the Jews!”
Atossa saw men with speaking trumpets stationed at advantageous points to roar across the sea of heads, and make one voice pass for twenty.
“Death to Daniel! Death to the civil-minister!”
The heads of the sacred colleges of the temple, the chief “libation-pourer,” the chief “demon-restrainer,” and their peers, had come to lift the idol from its station in the car, and bear it to the summit of theziggurat; the king had descended from the ship to follow them. Their feet were on the first stair, when across their path stood Avil-Marduk, in his hand the long white staff of his office, and obedient to his gesture the clamorous underlings and soldiers were silent instantly.
“Hearken, O Belshazzar, lord of Babylon and Akkad. On the day of the great feast of Bel, when the image of Bel is borne to the crest of the Lofty House, is it not the right of the god—a right, and not a boon—to demand of the king of Babylon one thing whatsoever the god, even Bel-Marduk, may desire?”
It was so still that the thousands could hear Belshazzar’s answer:—
“It is so, O Avil, mouthpiece of the ‘Lord of the Lofty House.’”
“Therefore I, O Belshazzar, do demand, as a thingnot to be denied, the life of that enemy of the god, that guilty murderer, that impious blasphemer—”
But the high priest said no more. Every eye had turned, his own also. Directly above him, at the head of the steps to the first terrace, had stepped forth a young man, who beckoned to the people. And a hundred whispered to their neighbours:—
“Isaiah! Isaiah the Jew, who prophesies for his God, Jehovah!”