The mare was rubbing her head caressingly against his breast; he pushed her away, extending both arms in token of sincerity, and replied, "All that I have, my life, and the lives of my tribe, herds and horses, bows and spears, are at the disposal of my guest."
"My lord speaks well," answered Ishtar. "But words are vain. Like the flight of a bird through the air, they leave no track. It is the steed and the camel that stamp their mark on the sand."
"The tongues of the Anakim are small and feeble," said he, "their arms long and weighty. Desire of me what you will. It is a gift, before it is asked."
"What have you done with the Assyrian?" she murmured eagerly. "How fares he? Whither is he gone? You will not deceive me!"
"You are my guest," returned the chief, "and Icannotdeceive you. The Assyrian is sold into captivity; ere now he has journeyed many a furlong over the plain towards the city of the Great King."
"Is he, then, bound for Babylon?" she asked, with something of hope rising in her eyes.
"I know not, of a surety," was his answer. "Yet I think these northern traders, possessing so goodly a captive, would hardly pass within a few days' journey of the great city, and fail to visit its market. They will treat him well, and if he finds friends to redeem him, he may soon be free. No doubt in Babylon he will sell for nearly a talent of gold, and we let him go at a hundred shekels of silver! Half the price of a camel! Truly there is injustice in the desert as in the city!"
This reflection was unheard by Ishtar, being indeed but the echo of the chief's own thoughts, and spoken aside, as it were, into the ear of his mare.
There seemed a vague hope, then, of seeing Sarchedon once again. The girl seized her protector's hand, and, stooping but a little, pressed it against her forehead.
"You will take me under safe conduct to the gates of Babylon?" said she.
He pondered, looking very grave.
"Will you not abide with us in our tents?" he asked. "Will you be cooped up in the walls of a city, when you might roam over the desert free as the wild ass on the plain? Take thought, damsel, once more, as a man fits a new bowstring when his arrow has missed its aim."
"Had I a quiverful," she replied, "I can see but one mark for them all!"
"You are my guest," said he stoutly; "and go where you will, it is my duty to speed you safely on your way. You shall ride this my own mare, the most precious of my possessions, and Lotus-flower, swift, easy, gentle, will bear you like flowing water. But I must leave you, damsel, under cover of night, in the vineyards that fringe the great city. If, for every horseman who leaps to the saddle when I shake my spear, I could muster a score, then should you enter Babylon through a breach of fifty cubits in the wall. But a wolf or a jackal would meet with more mercy than a child of Anak from the Assyrians when they set upon him, a hundred to one! I have spoken."
Their journey was begun accordingly. Ishtar, mounted on the chief's favourite mare, led by its owner, and guarded by a score of the stalwart sons of Anak, journeyed in security and comfort through the wilderness, until they reached its confines, and entered a territory over which Ninus, and more especially Semiramis, had thrown the protection of their severe and pitiless laws. Here they lay hidden by day, advancing swiftly and silently under cover of night; and Ishtar could not withhold her admiration from the extraordinary skill and sagacity shown by these professional spoilers in concealing their encampment on their march. On such expeditions as the present, they were careful to ride their mares; for these animals, docile and gentle, either loose or picketed, never disclosed their presence by those paroxysms of neighing and screaming to which their less tractable brothers were exceedingly prone.
At length, soon after dawn, Ishtar found herself alone with the chief at an easy distance from the great city. Taking the ass of a poor peasant, who dared not even protest against the spoliation, he had dismounted his guest from the high-bred mare, and placed her on the humbler animal's back. The troop had been left many a league in the desert. Their leader, at the utmost personal risk, was within a short ride of Babylon. It was time to depart, and thus he bade his charge farewell:
"May thy corn never fail nor thy well run dry! May thy vines yield a hundredfold, and men-children play round thy feet! Thou camest into my tent like the breeze from the mountain. Though the breeze passeth on, the tent is glad because of the coolness it hath left. The desert is boundless, and we scour it far and wide. Behold! Where rides a son of Anak, there hast thou a brother. I have spoken."
He swung himself on the mare from which he had lately dismounted, caught Lotus-flower by the bridle, and sped away like the wind.
She watched the gigantic form till it disappeared amongst the dust raised by those two fleet animals, of which toil and privation seemed in no way to diminish the mettle or speed; then she looked towards Great Babylon, towering in state, with her glittering pinnacles, her flashing gates, her frowning, forbidding walls, and felt that she had lost a friend.
She had lost a friend, and where was there another left? Her father slain, her home despoiled, the man she loved sold into slavery and carried she knew not where: could human lot be more lonely, more hopeless? Yet she never lost heart. Plodding on in lowly guise, riding that humble animal, there was yet dominant in her tender frame a hopeful courage, such as does not always animate the warrior in his chariot, a spirit of self-reliance and self-devotion that would have ennobled a sceptred monarch on his throne.
Reaching the well-remembered spot where she used to watch for the return of Arbaces, where she had first met Sarchedon riding home with tidings from the Great King, it was no wonder that she saw the Well of Palms through a mist of tears.
Nevertheless she dashed them hastily from her eyes, and summoned all her energies, when she became aware of a troop of horsemen moving rapidly on her track. To be discovered by these, she knew too well, would entail the risk of insult, perhaps injury, and the certainty of delay. While they were yet afar off, she leaped from the ass, and, taking advantage of her familiarity with the locality, concealed herself behind a broken wall that skirted the fountain, while the animal jogged leisurely home, to the relief and comfort of its disconsolate owner.
So near the great city, a solitary wayfarer was an object of little interest. She soon perceived she had escaped observation by the movements of the party, who galloped on towards Babylon without diverging to visit her hiding-place. She determined, however, to remain concealed yet a while longer, and had no cause to regret her caution, when a single horseman, detaching himself from the rest, approached the marble basin of the Well of Palms, as if to water his good white steed, ere he passed on.
Half a bowshot off, she recognised the animal with a start of fear, suspense, surprise, sweetened by a thrill of love. She could not be deceived: it was Merodach! That spotless frame, those glancing limbs, that gallant bearing, could belong to no other animal in the land of Shinar; and where Merodach bent to the rein, it seemed cruelly hard Sarchedon's should not be the hand to guide.
Watching with fond and eager eyes, she turned sick and faint, while she crouched down, like some poor hunted fawn, into her shelter; for on its back, soothing the good horse with many a gentle word and tender caress, sat the form of him whom most she feared and hated in the bounds of earth. Yes; the beautiful face she seemed yet to behold lulled on her own breast, in flushed and drunken sleep, was surely there, within a few paces, gazing dreamily into the distance; while Merodach, scarcely wetting his dark muzzle in the water, pawed and snorted in restless impatience to rejoin the companions he had left.
What was Ninyas doing here? Had the prince pursued her from Ascalon? was he on her track, and searching for her even now? could she escape him, neither in the city nor the plain? All these thoughts whirled through her brain, while she lay still as death, scarcely daring to breathe, peering at her enemy through a crevice of the crumbling wall with pale face and wild dilated eyes.
The horseman seemed moody and abstracted—strangely lavish of caresses for his steed, strangely indifferent to the heat of the sun, the ripple of the fountain, everything but his own engrossing thoughts. Without dismounting, he sat wrapped in meditation for a space of time that appeared interminable to the watcher, ere he woke up, as it were, with a start, and, curbing his beast's impatience, rode away at a walk to enter the city by a different gate from that which the party he had left were about to pass through.
Emerging from her shelter, though not until the white horse and his rider had disappeared in the distance, Ishtar felt sadly perplexed. To abide by her present hiding-place would be imprudent in the highest degree, for the Well of Palms was the resort of every traveller who approached Babylon on its southern side. If she retraced her steps, and fled once more into the wilderness, she must perish from thirst and fatigue; for to be afoot in the desert without a camel was to be adrift on the sea without a boat; and she had even abandoned the honest plodding beast that brought her thus far after she left her gigantic protector at sunrise. She almost wished now she had remained in their tents with the Anakim, intrusting to those tameless denizens of the waste her own safety and the task of eventually recovering her lover.
She saw no other course left but to trudge wearily on, and pass, if possible, unnoticed through the gate of Babylon, there to seek high and low some real friend, who, for her father's sake, would give her bread to eat, a roof to cover her, and aid in the one object of her life.
Wrapping her veil closely round her, counterfeiting as well as she could the gait and bearing of a woman advanced in years and of humble grade, Ishtar toiled slowly forward, carrying indeed a sorely laden heart into that glittering capital of splendour, luxury, and sin.
The troop that had so disquieted this forlorn and friendless fugitive trampled bravely on, raising clouds of dust, through which flashed the magnificence of their arms and apparel, as a beautiful face sparkles and blushes through its tawny veil. Without waiting for the detached horseman, they hastened towards the city, galloping, it seemed, from sheer exuberance of spirits rather than from any actual necessity for speed. The principal figure in the group, to whom the others turned obsequiously for guidance, was Assarac; and the eunuch's bearing, as he managed his steed with the graceful ease of an Assyrian born, was dignified and commanding in the extreme.
By his side rode Beladon, laughing, talking, gesticulating, proud to show his countrymen that a priest of Baal could back a horse and bend a bow with the best of them—that if his sacred character debarred him from seeking fame in the war-chariot, he was yet a true child of Ashur for skill and daring in the chase.
His eye gleamed, his cheek glowed; there were stains of blood on his linen garments; and from his horse's chest dangled the muzzle and fangs of a full-grown lion, that had fallen since sunrise to his bow.
He was never weary of detailing this achievement, dwelling in boundless satisfaction on his own success and the formidable size of his prey.
Assarac listened, with his usual imperturbable smile.
"I called on Baal," said Beladon, "and urged my good horse to his speed; for already the lion was scarce the cast of a javelin from the reeds, and had he reached his thicket, I must have gone in and finished him on foot. By the belt of Nimrod, I can tell you it was no comely face he showed me when I came up with him. His eyes glared like the carbuncles on the palace-gate, and he bared all these fangs that hang here at my horse's breast, as who should say, Behold! a score of proven warriors, and every one an enemy! I drew my bow thus—to my very ear—and as he rose on his hind-legs, I pierced him straight and true right through his open mouth, then turned my hand and galloped off across the plain, lest he should rise up ere life was extinct, and tear my good horse limb from limb in his death-pang."
"So the spearmen gathered round and slew him," observed Assarac.
"The spearmen gathered round and slew him," repeated the other, "after they found him disabled by the might of this right arm. When I turned back and got down to measure his carcass, there was my shaft driven through the roof of his mouth, cleaving his very skull."
"Was there not an arrow in his body when he fell?" asked the eunuch.
Beladon coloured and looked vexed.
"The king had, indeed, loosed a shaft at the beast when first we roused him," said he. "Doubtless, the royal hand never misses its mark."
"Had you come between Ninus and his prey in the olden time," observed the other, "not all the host of heaven could have turned aside his wrath. He would have impaled you before set of sun."
"He loved the chase dearly," answered Beladon, "as did the Great Queen, and Ninyas too, till lately. What has come over him now? He leaps to the saddle at dawn—hasty, eager, excited, as though every beast of chase between the rivers must be swept away forthwith, slaying and sparing not—then, after one fierce dash at the wild-bull, one savage thrust at the lion, leaves his followers, as he left us even now, to ride slowly home, sad, moody, and alone. Always on the same steed too. It seems as though he cared for nothing under heaven but the white horse with the wild eyes."
"'Tis a good beast," answered the other, scrutinising the face of his follower, "and worthy to bear the person of a king."
"A good beast indeed," said Beladon simply, "and belonged once to as good a warrior as ever lifted spear or emptied wine-cup. It seems but yesterday that Sarchedon brought back the Great King's signet, and made his night's lodging with us in the temple of our god. What has become of him now? I would we knew!"
"I would we knew!" repeated Assarac in a careless tone, as if he only echoed the other's sentiments, not as if he would have given wealth untold, deemed no waste of blood or treasure too lavish, for the information.
Reining their horses to a walk, the gaudy troop had already passed through one of her gates, and entered the crowded streets of Babylon. Thinking their king was amongst the party, his people gathered round in considerable numbers, and appeared disappointed to miss the beautiful face and form they so seldom looked on now. It was a common remark amongst all classes, that the wild, free-living, free-spoken young prince had become strangely solemn and reserved since his accession to the throne. There was far less revelry in the palace than in the days of stern old Ninus. His son seldom rode abroad through the streets or showed himself to his people. The shadow of the priests of Baal seemed over the monarch, and it was known that Assarac had great influence in the royal counsels. As is usual in such cases, the favourite came in for a larger share of obloquy than his lord.
Nevertheless, there is always enough popularity about a gay cavalcade to insure its welcome in a pleasure-loving city like Babylon. Assarac could not but observe that, although there were dark frowns and angry glances in the outskirts of the crowd, the nearer spectators shouted their welcome cordially enough, pressing in to kiss the trappings of his horse, the hem of his garment, with all the transitory enthusiasm of their impressionable nature.
"Tis an easy people to rule!" whispered Beladon in the ear of his superior. "Believers in Baal, and a thousand gods besides; mark the reverence they pay your sacred character. Surely the sons of Ashur love the linen vestment of the priest."
"Were not their shouts yet louder, their welcome kinder, to the scarlet and steel of the Great King's horsemen, when he marched in from Egypt?" returned Assarac. "Trust me, Beladon, they bend lowest when they carry the heaviest load. They love deepest where most they have to fear."
"And they fear Baal," said the other.
"Only because they know not Nisroch," replied Assarac. "God or man can be great for this false fickle nation only until there cometh a greater than he. Do they not offer homage willingly to Abitur of the Mountains? And why? Because they dread his power, not knowing its nature nor its extent. Their ruler should indeed be a god in all but benevolence. He must have no natural sympathies, no human weaknesses, no remorse, no pity, and, above all, no fear."
"There is but one man in the land of Shinar who is above and without these softer failings of his kind. May I sit on his right hand henceforward, as to-day!" was Beladon's insidious reply.
Though half despising the flattery of his follower, Assarac smiled. Yet it did not escape the other's observation, ever on the alert, that in the eunuch's smile lurked an expression of weariness and sorrow almost amounting to pain.
"The king has faithful followers," said he "and wise counsellors—may he live for ever!"
The crowd hemmed them in very close; his last sentence, though uttered in a low voice, was caught up and repeated by a thousand tongues. Through the noise and confusion that prevailed, only Assarac could hear the whisper of his subordinate,
"Baal is great. What are kings and princes compared to the mighty Assyrian god? Let Baal rule alone in Babylon and through all the land of Shinar; while Assarac, the interpreter of his will to the people, twines the sacred lotus round the royal sceptre, he needs but stretch out his hand to take."
"As the serpent of Ashtaroth twines round a man's heart!" answered the other. And Beladon, looking in his face, marvelled to see it drawn and white, as of one who strives with an agony of mortal pain.
It was but according to an established principle of nature and general law of race, that the descendants of Nimrod should entertain a keen predilection for the chase. In this particular Ninyas, notwithstanding habits of luxury and effeminacy at home, formed no exception to the princes of his line. He was never so happy as when urging a good horse to speed after the scudding ostrich, loosing a grim leopard from its leash to spring on the fleet antelope, tracking with fierce and heavy hounds the footprints of some lordly lion on the desert sand, or watching with eager eyes his long-winged falcons wheeling and stooping in the desert sky. Skilled in bodily exercises, sitting his horse with the graceful ease of constant practice, flushed, panting, joyous, he rode to and fro, beautiful as a woman and radiant as a god.
After that night of revelry, on which he so lowered the pride of Rekamat, to be in turn foiled by Ishtar, it was not strange that this wayward prince should wake from a feverish sleep in the very worst of humours; but having relieved his irritated feelings by condemning the captain of the gate to a painful death, and settled himself in the saddle for a long day's pleasure on the plain, he felt sufficiently comforted to enter with considerable zest into the amusement of the hour.
While his horse was fresh, he had succeeded in approaching within bowshot of some wild asses to wound one of the herd wantonly and uselessly, with an arrow from his own royal quiver. He had fairly ridden down and secured an ostrich of unusual plumage, breaking the bird's long legs by a blow from the club, which he flung while galloping at speed with marvellous dexterity. His leopard had not failed to strike an antelope at the first pounce; his hawks never once missed their quarry, nor delayed returning obedient to the lure; moreover, he had brought an old male lion to bay, and, riding in on him, wounded the monster so severely with his spear, that although it had crawled for refuge into certain inaccessible rocks, it must have died before night; and as none of his servants had come up to help him, the glory was exclusively his own.
Accordingly, when he paced back into Ascalon at sundown, weary and dishevelled, yet happy and triumphant, he felt at peace with mankind; revenge seemed hateful, anger impossible, and all he thirsted for was a cup of wine.
Dismounting within the gate of the fortress, it was served as his foot touched the ground. Then he bethought him of the fugitive from Egypt, to whom he had not yet granted audience, and desired that this visitor should be brought into his presence forthwith. Sethos, in his dark and cheerless apartment, scooped out of the very rock on which the fortress stood, received such a summons with considerable dismay. The care taken to secure him, the dreary nature of his lodging, the coarse food brought by his only visitor, a spearman, belted with bow and quiver, grim, silent, and armed to the teeth, denoted that his offence, whatever it might be, was considered of exceeding gravity, and that in all likelihood his imprisonment would soon be terminated by death.
Bold and joyous as was his nature, the cup-bearer followed his conductor with a sad brow and a heavy heart. He knew the prince's character well, and a peal of laughter from his lord, while he bent low at the royal feet, served by no means to allay his fears.
"So I have kept him in ward from sunrise to sunset," exclaimed Ninyas, shaking his sides and wiping his eyes, in the exuberance of his mirth, "little guessing who he was! The Great King's cup-bearer, the curled and scented ornament of all the Assyrian host, the daintiest flower in the whole of dainty Babylon; for whom the royal banquet was but a coarse meal of broken meat; the royal court, blazing with a thousand torches, but a dim and dismal den. And I ordered him bitter water and bread of affliction; shut him up in a stone cell without a breath of air or a gleam of light! By the beard of Ashur, I shall never recover it. O Sethos, Sethos! had I known this morning it was you, I could not have sat my horse for laughing all day. And think what a spoil we should have lost! Five antelopes, man; an ostrich as tall as my spear; scores of all the birds of heaven; and a lion, though we brought him not in, so tawny that he seemed almost black, old, and fierce, like Nimrod himself, big as a wild bull, and with fangs more than a span long. By the quiver of Merodach, I have not taken such a prey since we hunted that pleasant time in the northern mountains, before the Egyptian campaign!"
Ninyas seemed in high good-humour. Sethos, raising his eyes to look in the prince's joyous face, knew that the bitterness of death was past.
"His servant has received many good gifts from my lord," was the conventional reply. "Shall he not accept evil without complaint? There can be no injustice between a master and his slave."
"But how come you here?" asked Ninyas, ignoring, from force of habit, the accustomed formalities of the other. "They tell me you rode in with half-a-score of bowmen, pursued by the hosts of Egypt—chariots and horsemen, banner, bow, and spear. I would have loosed a shaft or two amongst them nevertheless, had they been a hundred to one."
"My lord speaks well," answered Sethos proudly. "His servant slew their leader with his own hand ere he turned rein, and fled to seek shelter with my lord!"
"I would I had been at your back!" exclaimed the prince, kindling. "I grew weary unto death of their country, I own, when we rode there under the banner of Ashur, and I never wished to set eyes on one of their tawny faces or their supple backs again. But to have them brought here at bowshot distance, without any trouble, like a troop of wild asses or a herd of deer! Ah, Sethos, you were always a favourite of the gods—Baal, Nisroch, Merodach, and above all, Ashtaroth, Queen of Light!"
"My lord gives praise to his servant out of his own bounty," answered the other. "Hath Ninyas ever yet been known to come down from saddle or war-chariot without taking the first spoil? And as for Ashtaroth—surely, fairer game than feeds in field or forest falls to him, even before he lifts his bow."
The prince loved flattery dearly, though he had wit to despise the flatterer. He smiled well pleased.
"I cannot blame the gods," said he; "they have served me better than ever I servedthem. Do you remember the old lion we slew in the mountains ten days' march from Nineveh, when you drove my chariot up to the axles through the marsh? That was a prey worth the taking of a king. How he grinned and roared, and fought, with my javelin through his shoulder, and my arrow in his neck! Had he not torn at the chariot-wheel with claws and fangs, in blind senseless rage, we had hardly brought his dark skin home to make a foot-cloth for the Great Queen. Believe me, man, the beast I slew to-day might have been whelped in the same litter—as old, as savage, flecked in the jaws with grey, leaner perhaps, and a thought longer—say a span—from muzzle to tail. I am no boaster, Sethos; but surely old Nimrod himself can scarce have won nobler triumphs over the fiercest beasts of chase than mine!"
"My lord hath spoken," answered Sethos. "Is he not unrivalled in war, in the chase, in love?"
The last word seemed to touch some painful chord, rouse some bitter memory in his listener. The prince's handsome face reddened, and then turned pale. When he spoke again, it was the cup-bearer's turn to feel discomposed; for the voice of Ninyas sounded cold and hard, his manner had become stern and almost severe.
The lion's cub so far resembled his fierce old father, that his mood would change on occasion at a moment's notice from joyous good-humour and hilarity to a paroxysm of wrath, all the more dangerous that it was so sudden and unexpected.
With Ninus, however, such an access of passion betrayed itself in uncontrolled violence of language and gesture; while his son, on the contrary, concealed his feelings under a smooth brow and calm demeanour, far more implacable than the savage outbreak of his sire. The one would order an offender to be taken out and strangled on the spot, but forgive him perhaps before the fatal covering had been drawn round his head. The other spoke softly, nodded courteously, passed sentence of death in a whisper, and remitted it for no consideration of justice or mercy whatsoever.
But the prince loved pleasure even more than cruelty, and was therefore popular enough with the multitude, who were willing to give his beautiful face and graceful form credit for every royal virtue; believing no evil of one who rode abroad so gallantly in such shining raiment, sat so long at the feast among brave men and beautiful women, drank so deep, laughed so loud, and looked so fair, garland on head and wine-cup in hand.
"You have not yet accounted for your presence in Ascalon," said he coldly.
And Sethos, knowing well that he must trim his sails according as the wind blew, answered with the gravity of some high official making a report:
"In order to fulfil the mission of my lord, I was compelled to journey swiftly, tarrying nowhere by the way. Therefore were our horses somewhat faint and wearied, or we had laughed to scorn the speed of the Egyptian, flinging sand like the wild ass in their faces who pursue."
"You should have halted and fought it out," observed Ninyas.
"The embassy of my lord spoke indeed of defiance," replied Sethos; "but his servant was accompanied by scarce a score of horsemen. The hosts of Egypt swarmed like locusts in a south wind. Had the city of refuge stood but one furlong farther off, our bones had lain bleaching in the desert, or we had been again brought into the terrible presence of Pharaoh ere now."
"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 Assyria would come down with her chariots and horsemen 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 Assarac, 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."
"Assarac, 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 passed 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 gods! 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 pass 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 horsemen had passed 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 brimming to her eyes.
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 passed 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 horsemen. Even when most she affected privacy, she could not stir without women, camels, foot-cloths, fan-bearers, all the encumbrances 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 pass; 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 classes 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 classes 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 constitute 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 circumstances none thought it worth while to bestir himself for the bettering of his own position, or the assistance 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 assailants, 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 passages, 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 assailants 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 encumbered 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 passed.
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 passed away, the loyal heart, cold and still, kind and true! He had been struck down inherdefence; had been willing, eager, to purchase with drops of life-blood the brief moments that might have aidedherto escape; his last blow struck onherbehalf, his last breath drawn for the child who had sat on his knees and lain in his bosom. The noblest 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 noble brow that never wore a frown forher; 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.
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 assert 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 pass 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 attitude 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, passionate 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.
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 class, 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 competition 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 class, 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 principal 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 assumed 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 principal 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 space 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 donehimselfsome 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."
A thrill that, in spite of all, amounted to real happiness shot through her trembling frame.
"Can he not be redeemed?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands eagerly. "Where is he now?"
The trader pondered.
"I too have a brother," said he, "and we parted at a day's march from the tents of the Anakim, as we have parted many a time, trusting to meet yet once again before we die. My course lay hither to the great city; for are not my camels laden with silks and spices and costly jewels, such as rich Babylon must have at all hazards and at any cost? I pray you, damsel, remember I am a fair trader; I ask for no greater profit than enables me to get bread for myself and forage for my beasts. Some there be who scruple not to rob with the scales, as the Amalekite robs with the spear; but such prosper not in life, and long before their beards turn gray, their flesh is eaten by vultures and their bones whiten the plain.
"My lord spoke of the Assyrian," interrupted Ishtar. "Is he safe? Is he alive?"
"That he is alive, my daughter," replied the merchant, "if care and good usage can keep the life in a valuable captive, I will answer with my head. We bought him at a remunerative price, and my brother is even less likely than myself to let one suffer damage whose welfare is of such marketable value. That he is safe with the other goods I have sufficient reason to hope. Surely they joined a caravan guarded by more than five hundred horsemen of the desert. Ere now they must have reached the pleasant confines of my home—the broad-leaved oaks, the cool green valleys, and the breezy mountains of the north."
"The north!" repeated Ishtar, aghast and discomfited. "What! beyond Nineveh?"
"Far beyond Nineveh," said the other, "far beyond the boundaries of the land of Shinar, where the banner of Ashur hath never been lifted, the spear of the Assyrian never dulled its point in blood—in the land of corn and wine, pasture and fruit tree, flocks and herds, peace and plenty, the happy hill country of Armenia!"
"Sold to the Armenian for a slave!" was her answer. "O, my lord, shall I never see him again?"
He pitied her from his heart.
"Much may be done," said he, "with these three weapons, sword, bow, and spear; more yet with these, time, wisdom, patience. Add but a little gold, and who shall say that aught is impossible? My brother is one of those who, setting before them an object in the plain, turn neither to right nor left till they have reached it. The Assyrian is of fine frame and goodly stature, fit to stand on the steps of a throne. My brother hath determined he will sell him to no meaner purchaser than a king. Not all the wealth of Armenia will tempt him from his purpose, and to the king he will be sold. I have spoken."
Then he turned away to prosecute his business with those who were waiting around for examination of his merchandise, and Ishtar found herself alone and friendless in the crowded market—alone, with a wild foolish hope in her heart, and Sarchedon's amulet in her hand.
From the time she lost sight of him, she had never faltered one single moment in her resolution; arduous, impossible as seemed her task, she would not relinquish it even now.
Had she needed any farther stimulant to exertion she would have found it in the reflection that he, the distinguished warrior, the ornament of a court, the flower of a host, the treasure of her own heart, was a slave!
At least she knew where he had gone; at least there was one spot of earth on which her loving thoughts could light, like weary birds, and take their rest. But how to reach him? how to span the cruel distance that lay between? Gazing wistfully on the amulet in her hand, she would have bartered all her hopes here and hereafter, peace and safety, life and beauty, innocence itself, in exchange for the wings of a dove.
"A horned owl in the twilight; a horned owl in the dark! How many horns does my owl hold up!" A merry laugh was ringing in her ear, a soft hand was laid over her eyes, while the white fingers of its fellow twinkled before her face, and Ishtar recognised the voice of Kalmim, challenging her to one of those foolish games of guessing so popular from the earliest ages with the thoughtless children of the south.
It was something to meet a friend, and of her own sex, even though that friend was one with whom her deeper, purer nature had but little in common. Strung to their highest pitch, her feelings now gave way; and leaning on Kalmim's shoulder, Ishtar burst into a passion of weeping that perhaps did more to calm and restore her than all the feminine consolations and condolences lavished by the other, whose compassion, lying near the surface, seemed easily aroused and quickly exhausted.
A weeping girl was no unusual sight in the public places of great Babylon. Exciting neither pity nor comment, Ishtar and Kalmim withdrew unnoticed from the crowd, to stand apart in the shelter of a gigantic fountain, erected for the refreshment of her people by the Great Queen, where the younger woman soon recovered composure to answer the voluble questions of the elder.
"Where have you been hiding, and what have you been doing, and why have we never seen you at the well, in the temple, at market, sacrifice, or on the city wall?" said Kalmim, flirting the water about while she dipped her white hand in its marble basin. "Surely the days of mourning are past, and those of feasting should have begun. Why, then, in the name of Ashtaroth, do I find the fairest damsel in Babylon with her eyes unpainted, her head untied, and, my dear, a dress that looks as if it had been trodden in the dust by every beast in the market? How did you ever get it so rumpled and soiled?"
Ignoring this important consideration, Ishtar took the other by the hand, and gazing in her face with large serious eyes, replied,
"Kalmim, I believe you would serve me, if you could. I believe you are my friend."
"As far as one woman can be a friend to another," laughed Kalmim. "And that is about as far as I could fathom the great river with my bodkin. Trust me, dear, you are too comely to possess friends, either men or women. Nevertheless, you sat on my knees when you were a curly-headed child, and I—well, when I was better and happier than I am now. I would serve you if I could. By the light of Shamash, I would, though I might hate myself and you the next minute! Take me, therefore, while the good mood is on. What can I do to please my white-faced Ishtar?"
"You have influence and power," was the reply. "He—my father used—I have heard it said that you are deep in her counsels, and high in favour with the Great Queen."
An angry flush rose to Kalmim's brow, and her laugh was not pleasant to hear, while she answered,
"The Great Queen is a woman like the rest of us. I wish I had never seen her haughty face. For days together it was Kalmim here, Kalmim there; who so quick-witted as Kalmim? whom could she trust like Kalmim? Kalmim was never to be out of her sight. I must have had a score of hands, and as many wings as Nisroch, to do half her bidding. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, lo, in the threading of a needle, all is changed, and because the Great King went to the stars or wherever hedidgo, I am to be cast aside like a frayed robe or a soiled napkin, and must see her face no more. She might have been a little fonder of him while hewashere, I think, instead of making all this mourning now he's gone. You would suppose that in the whole land of Shinar no wife was ever left a widow before. Queen though she be, she must take her chance with the others, I trow."
"And are you no longer in the royal service?" asked Ishtar, sadly disappointed.
"In the royal service I must ever be," answered Kalmim, "since I was born a bondwoman in old Nineveh, whence come the fairest of us, after all, say what they will of this great wicked town! I can no more help my bonds than my beauty, and I do not know, my pretty Ishtar, that I am more anxious to get rid of the one than the other. But it vexes me sore, and angers me too, when I think that the queen, because she sits in sackcloth and scatters ashes on her head, should refuse to admit her faithful slave and servant, who never failed her yet, even to the outer court of the palace. If I were free, like you, my dear, I swear by Baal I would take my leave of great Babylon for good and all!"
"Free!" repeated the girl bitterly, reflecting how little availed her freedom, her birth, even her beauty to attain the one object of her life, in the pursuit of which she was fain to implore the assistance of this bondwoman. "If I werefree, as you say, I would leap on yonder camel, with a lump of dates and a barley-cake in my hand, turn his head for the northern mountains, and never wish to see the city walls again."
"I guessed it!" exclaimed Kalmim, clapping her hands. "The daughter of the stars has gone the way of us poor children of earth, as if she too were made of common clay. He has taken your heart with him, whoever he is. I see it all, and follow him you must, at any labour and at any cost. I can feel for you, dear: I know what it is. Now, there was Sethos, the Great King's cup-bearer, as goodly a youth as ever longed for a beard. And, lo, he vanishes one summer's morning with a score of horsemen, rides away into the desert, and I shall never see him more."
"Take comfort," rejoined Ishtar, glad to do a kindness even for this flighty dame. "I left him safe and well at Ascalon, and beheld him with my own eyes drinking wine of Eschol the night before I fled."
"At Ascalon!" exclaimed Kalmim. "Where Rekamat was—I heard them say so! The treacherous tiger-cat! The false villain! See what it is to let a man find out you have thought twice about him. He cares no more for you than we do for a garment worn a score of times, or a husband we have known a score of years. And yet he swore and protested. Well, I was born under Ashtaroth, and I have been a fool like many another. Nevertheless, the broken jar will mend no doubt, and the empty gourd can be filled again at the stream."
"I think he came not into Ascalon of his own free will," answered Ishtar. "He galloped through the gate like one who rides for life, with a cloud of Egyptian horsemen at his heels."
"I wish with all my heart they had caught and flayed him alive!" laughed the other. "But I might have known him better than to think he would look at that cream-faced Rekamat, for all her delicate gait and her tawny hair. So he escaped with the skin of his teeth, say you, and was last seen safe in Ascalon. I pray you, is he there now?"
"I know not," answered Ishtar. "O Kalmim, I will trust you. I am so miserable. He entered the city with—with Sarchedon. And the walls were guarded, the watch set, because of the false Egyptian, so that a mouse could scarce creep out unnoticed. Nevertheless, we glided through the gate at sunrise, he and I, and—and, right or wrong, we fled into the wilderness."
"Like a pair of pelicans!" exclaimed the other in high glee. "And so, being in the wilderness, you made yourselves a nest no doubt, and folded your wings in peace, as it had been behind the city wall!"
"The children of Anak surprised us sleeping," sobbed Ishtar, whose tears were beginning to flow afresh. "They killed our dromedary, poor beast, and spoiled our goods—all that we had—a lump of bread and a handful of dates. They spared our lives in pity, but they set me down beside the Well of Palms, and they sold him into captivity. O Kalmim, comfort me, for indeed I fear I shall never see him more!"
Light-hearted and impressionable, the other was ready enough with sympathy, advice, and perhaps assistance, up to the point at which it could inconvenience herself.
"Take heart," said she; "the world is wide, but woman has her wits, as the bird of the air has its wings. Can you not discover where he is gone? Knowing this, surely the bow is bent, and the arrow fitted to the string. You need but let it fly."
"I was guided by Nisroch," was the tearful answer; "for I came hither into the market from the halls of my ruined home and the bones of my dead father. O Kalmim, I watched by them all last night, to drive the wild-dogs away."
Again she laid her face on the other's shoulder, and wept.
Kalmim was greatly moved.
"I will help you," she protested. "Indeed, I will. I have friends; I have lovers—scores of them, girl; and in high places too. I will seam my face with scars, tear out my hair by handfuls, but they shall listen to my prayer. What! is my cheek sun-burned? are mine eyes grown dim? I will force my way to the queen! I will humble myself before the prince!"
"The prince!" interrupted Ishtar. "He is in Ascalon."
"Foolish girl!" replied the other. "He is even now coming out from the queen's palace to do justice amongst the people. Every second morning he rides forth on a white horse, with Assarac at his right hand. Grave has he grown, and severe, putting aside the wine-cup, speaking but a word at a time, and scarce suffering the people to look on his face. Ashtaroth, what a face it is! Surely he is more beautiful than dawn."