"There is a law in man"s heart," replied Sargon, still in the same low concentrated accents, "that sets aside the law of nations and the artificial ordinances of priests. See here," he continued, plucking from his girdle a knotted bowstring, limp and frayed, which he put in the other"s hand; "a reader of the stars should be able to tell a simple spearman how many knots on that bit of twisted silk go to the score."
"It needs no great study to perceive that but one is left here now,"
answered a.s.sarac with an inquiring look into the other"s face.
"The bow from which I took that string had been bent many a time in the Great King"s service," was the reply; "and a shaft it sped but seldom missed its mark. I have covered Ninus under shield, and defended him with my body, when arrows and javelins were flying thick as the sands of the desert before a south wind. I have waged my life, poured out my blood freely for my lord, and he has rewarded me with his own royal hand."
"He is lavish enough," observed a.s.sarac, "be it gold or stripes, honours or death, that he awards. May the king live for ever!"
"May the king live for ever!" repeated his shield-bearer, "a G.o.d among G.o.ds, a star in the host of heaven. If an empty throne be waiting for him up yonder, may it soon be filled! When I saw my boy fall stark dead, the blood gushing from his mouth and nostrils, I prostrated myself and did obeisance to the Great King; but I drew that string from my bow, and in it I tied a score of knots, swearing with each a deadly oath, that by the splendour of Nisroch I would be avenged ere the twentieth was undone. Since then I have loosed a knot with every sunrise; and lo, a priest of Baal counts, and tells me there is but one left!"
Beneath its sallow skin a terrible smile rounded the fleshy outlines of the eunuch"s face. His voice, however, remained firm while he whispered--
"We understand each other, and there must be no wavering--no escape--no mercy!"
Between his clenched teeth the shield-bearer"s answer came in single syllables, hissing like drops of blood on a burning hearth--
"Such wavering as stayed the cruel hand, the deadly bow! Such escape as was afforded that light-footed youth, whom only an arrow"s flight could overtake! Such mercy as he showed my boy!"
"Come with me," was the high-priest"s reply; and the two ascended a spiral staircase of carved and polished wood-work, leading to the Talar or cedar-chamber on the roof of the temple, where at nightfall sacrifice was to be offered, and drink-offerings poured out in person by the Great King to his a.s.syrian G.o.d. Here they drew from a store-chamber within the wall several bundles of reeds, which they strewed in profusion over the wooden floor of the cedar-house, and which a.s.sarac sprinkled a.s.siduously with a certain fluid from a phial he had kept hidden beneath his gown.
"Every precaution must be taken," observed the priest with another hideous smile. "But if it be the will of his ancestor Ashur to descend for him in a chariot of fire, and these reeds thus saturated should catch the flame, then must the Great King, if he be not overcome with wine and sleep, escape by yonder narrow staircase. His shield-bearer will lie in wait there to help him down."
Sargon nodded, and his white teeth gleamed between the curls of his jetty beard.
"It is a faithful servant who thus risks life with his master,"
continued the priest. "When a subject approaches the king in his sacred office, the punishment is death."
"Death!" repeated Sargon, and his hand stole to the haft of his two-edged sword, while he burst into a mocking laugh.
Semiramis meantime, left to her own devices, strolled through the long corridors and lofty halls of the temple with wavering steps and slow, that yet bore her nearer and nearer the chamber at the end of the painted gallery, where Sarchedon was lodged. Opposite its entrance stood an eagle-headed figure of Nisroch, with beak and wings of gold. On this the prisoner"s eyes were fixed, as he watched the lapse of time by the fading sunlight on its burnished edges, and, looking only for deliverance in the carelessness of the priests, longed for darkness, that he might explore the temple and find for himself some secret pa.s.sage through which to gain the town. Thus gazing, it was with no a.s.sumed start of surprise that he marked the queen"s beautiful figure and shining raiment emerge like a vision from under the very shadow of the G.o.d; and while he prostrated himself at her feet, he could not forbear covering his eyes with his hands in honest doubt whether he were face to face with a woman of real flesh and blood, or with some illusive creation of his own excited fancy. Perhaps no intentional flattery could have been so grateful to the queen, whose daring nature was yet sufficiently feminine to be tempered with a certain reserve and restraint in the presence of a man she loved.
Semiramis looked tenderly down on the kneeling form at her feet, leaning towards it with the graceful pliancy of the palm-tree as she bends in the evening breeze.
"Rise, Sarchedon," she whispered, dwelling fondly on every syllable of his name as it pa.s.sed her trembling lips; "this is no time for empty homage and unmeaning form. Know you not that you are to die with to-morrow"s dawn?"
Even that hideous prospect, even love for another woman burning at his heart, could not veil the pa.s.sionate admiration that blazed from his eyes while he looked up in the fairest face beneath the sky.
Meeting his glances, her own kindled into fire. She laid her white hand on his shoulder with a gesture that was almost a caress. But the hand, so firm to draw a bow, to grasp a sceptre, to record a doom, shook like a leaf of the great tamarisk-tree in her own gardens.
"I have come to save you," she continued in a voice that sank lower and lower with her failing breath. "Was I not the cause of your offence? Do I not share your crime? I cannot let you die!"
He scarcely believed his senses. Could this be the royal lady who had ruled so calmly half the nations of the East--this panting, trembling, eager woman, changing colour, mood, and bearing with every throb of her beating heart? It was hard to find voice for the conventional declaration, that "he was the lowest of her servants, and his life lay in the hand of the Great Queen!"
"Your life, Sarchedon," she murmured. "If your life be indeed mine, what more can I desire? See, you shall take it back. It is a free gift; and again I am all alone. A queen, forsooth! Who would be a queen, to burn like Ashtaroth in heaven with fire kindled in her own heart, having none to counsel, none to cherish, none to love?"
He had sprung to his feet. He looked on the beautiful woman standing beside him, and every manly instinct of his nature rose to answer her appeal, so touching, so bewildering, and so fond. The very contrast of her flushed temples and disordered looks with those royal robes of state might have turned a cooler brain, and no consideration of danger or duty could have caused him to forbear exclaiming,
"I have but one desire on earth--to live and die at the queen"s feet!"
Never had she bestowed on Ninus, perhaps never even on Menon, the husband of her youth, such a smile as now beamed from eyes and lips and brow on the impulsive warrior, who had scarcely spoken ere something in his inmost heart bade him wish his words unsaid. Her lithe and shapely figure swayed towards him, as if, but for his outstretched arms, it must have fallen. The perfume of her hair surrounded and intoxicated his senses; her breath was on his cheek, her sweet lips scarce a palm"s breath from his ear, while in gasping broken syllables she murmured,
"Not at her feet, Sarchedon, but at her heart! Nay, more, you shall----"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "NOT AT HER FEET, SARCHEDON, BUT AT HER HEART!"]
Had Nisroch descended bodily from his pedestal, or Ninus started up like a ghost from the gaping floor, Semiramis could scarcely have changed so suddenly to the cold impa.s.sive rigidity of marble. Following the direction of her stony gaze, Sarchedon beheld, emerging, as it were, from the very pannelling of the chamber, a dark face and armed figure he recognised as those of the shield-bearer. Sargon, returning by a secret pa.s.sage from strewing reeds on the floor above, had thus unwillingly interrupted an interview which his own instincts told him it was very dangerous to have witnessed. With oriental readiness, indeed, his countenance a.s.sumed an expression of unconscious stolidity; but in his heart he knew that the queen"s eye had identified him. And it was too late. Sarchedon, though without a weapon, would have sprung at the intruder, but the queen laid her hand, firm enough now, on his arm.
"It is not time," she said in accents so unmoved, so pitiless, that they made his blood run cold. "To-morrow, Sarchedon, we meet again here, at the same hour." Then changing her tone to one of the deepest tenderness, added, "I will claim that amulet you wear before the whole of Babylon;"
and so, whispering "farewell," was gone.
When she vanished from his sight, Sarchedon could almost have believed he was mocked by the illusions of a dream.
Ere she left the temple, Semiramis did not fail to clap her hands, and summon a.s.sarac to her presence. With more than usual graciousness, she bade him attend her to the gate, and when beyond the hearing of certain priests who were busied about their usual offices, asked with a smile, "that shield-bearer, Sargon, is a stout warrior, I have heard. Can you depend on him?"
"To the death!" answered the eunuch. "Less will not serve him. He requires blood for blood."
"If the flames do their work, there need be no bloodshed," was the reply. "But of course he must never leave the temple alive."
"Of course," a.s.sented a.s.sarac; and so the Great Queen pa.s.sed calmly on to her own royal dwelling beyond the river.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DIVINING CUP
His queen"s command, backed by the signet of the Great King himself, was a matter that brooked neither hesitation nor delay; and Arbaces, retiring from the royal presence, reflected with considerable apprehension on the order he had received from Semiramis. Like many other veterans in the a.s.syrian army, he was devoted, body and soul, to Ninus, reverencing him perhaps less as a monarch than as the famous warrior, who had led armies to victory again and again. There is no bond so close as that which is drawn by companionship in privation, danger and adventure--by a share, however small, in that military glory, before which all other fame pales to a wan and feeble light. But between his tried captains and a despotic leader of whose authority there can be no jealousy, as there can be no cavil at his command, exists the community of interests, the mutual and reciprocal confidence of hounds with their huntsman, the wild deer in the mountain with the broad-fronted master-stag of the herd.
Arbaces, riding slowly towards his palace, while a score of bearded retainers paced beside his steed, shook his head in grievous doubt and perplexity as to his duty in the present crisis.
"To move without the wall at an hour"s notice," thought the old warrior, "that tried host, which has even now marched in, triumphant and well-found in every detail, from a successful campaign; the veterans of Ninus, trained under his own eye in the field, on every man of whom I could depend as on myself, that he would shed his last drop of blood for the glory of the Great King--to leave Babylon at the mercy of the priests and that gilded army, which professes allegiance only to the queen--thus to place ourselves, weakened and defenceless, in the hands of such men as a.s.sarac and Beladon, crafty intriguers who would shrink from no secret crime, though they would tremble like girls to set a company in array against an open foe--is it right? Is it wise? Is it for the safety of the Great King? It is on my head. I must obey. Yet will I make one effort to save him from himself, even though he consume me in his wrath while I speak with him face to face."
Drawing rein as he came to this conclusion, Arbaces dispatched messengers to the captains of the host, summoning them to meet at his own dwelling with the utmost prompt.i.tude; and, turning his horse, rode off at speed towards the palace of the Great King.
As he galloped through the wide streets, sitting erect and fair, his golden armour gleaming in the sun, his long beard waving in the wind, many an eye looked after him with glances of respect, admiration, and even regard for the successful warrior, the noted captain, the right hand and counsellor of Ninus himself. Stalwart water-carriers staggering between their jars--tawny fruit-sellers sitting amongst their gourds under booths at the street side--the very leper, grovelling and sc.r.a.ping himself in the dust, had heard of his achievements, and envied rather than grudged him his horses, his wealth, his splendour, his beautiful daughter, and his warlike fame.
How could they tell he was risking all these with every stride of his good steed, from a sense of unquestioning loyalty to the grim old monarch, who might put him to death on the spot for entering his presence unrequired?
Ninus in the camp was to be accosted by the meanest soldier; Ninus on the seat of judgment turned a willing ear to the lowest of his subjects; but to intrude on Ninus in the palace was a capital offence by royal decree, by the custom of the olden time, and by the laws of the land of Shinar.
Nevertheless, Arbaces waited for no announcement, but flinging his horse"s rein to be held by a captain of ten thousand on duty at the gate, strode swiftly through vast halls and shining corridors till he reached the summer chamber of the old monarch"s privacy. Two stalwart spearmen at the entrance, guards of his own selection, made way for him with looks of wonder and awe, while the chief captain, desperate as though leaping with lowered point and raised buckler to the breach of a fenced city, dashed headlong into the presence of the Great King.
Ninus sprang to his feet, and once again the light of battle gleamed in his eyes.
"Welcome," he exclaimed, "my trusty servant!--welcome, as the sound of trumpets that bids a.s.syria charge with chariots and hors.e.m.e.n along the whole line! It can be no light matter, by the beard of Ashur, that brings you thus into my presence. Reach your hand to the sceptre, and out with it, man. Is the city in revolt? Hath Armenia sent us a defiance? Are the rebels of Philistia swarming at the gate? O, I am weary, weary to madness of this drowsy inaction! Tell me it is something that shall force me to saddle and war-chariot. Bid me shake a spear under shield once again, or you had better have leaped into the air from the tower of Belus, rather than flown here thus, quivering and aimless, like a random shaft from a wet bowstring!"