Читать книгу Sarchedon - A Legend of the Great Queen - George J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 13

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On the first night of his return from conquest, it was customary for an Assyrian king, his captains, and chief officers of state to be received by his consort with a banquet, offered to their special entertainment. The stars were already out, the moon was rising from the desert, when a thousand torches, flaring on the summer night, lit up the central court of the royal residence with a fierce red glow, vivid as the light of day. It brought out in strange grotesque relief the gigantic sculptures on the wall, till winged bull, man-faced lion, and eagle-headed deity seemed but fleeting flickering shadows, that moved, threatened, and retired as the night breeze rose and fell. It played in variegated hues on the columns of porphyry and jaspar that supported the upper story, blackening the remote recesses of its lofty chambers, while marble pillar, shaft of alabaster, carving, cornice, and capital blushed in crimson flame. It shed a ruddier lustre on wine, fruit, and flowers, the rich profusion of a royal table, glittering from massive chalice and ancient flagon, blazing in jewelled cup and vase of burnished gold. The brilliant gems, the costly robes, the stately figures of those noble guests, were enhanced tenfold by its power; while the king's wan face showed paler, fiercer, ghastlier than ever, in that strong searching glare.

The procession had been long, the triumph protracted and wearisome; sacrifices offered, not ungrudgingly, to the gods, had delayed him with observances he loathed, ceremonials he despised; and Ninus had been in the saddle since daybreak. It was not strange then that Arbaces, his chief captain, sitting over against him, should have felt his heart sink while he looked on the ashy war-worn face, from which he had so often gathered counsel and resource, picturing to himself that he saw a dead monarch presiding, stark and grim, at his own funeral feast.

The king sat for a while with his head sunk on his breast, to all appearance thoroughly out-wearied and overcome; but after Sethos had filled his cup more than once, a feeble light came into his eyes, while he glared around with a haughty air of inquiry, that seemed rather to threaten the absent than welcome those who were present at his festival. He looked sternly satisfied, however, with the number and importance of his guests—men who formed the props of his throne and the very bulwarks of his empire. There was Arbaces, captain of the host, firm in position as in character, a sage counsellor, a skilful leader, and a stout man of war in close fight, hand to hand; there was Sargon, his shield-bearer, who slew before the gates of Memphis, in single combat, seven Egyptian champions, one by one, and vowed in the hearing of both armies, that as he had sacrificed these to the Seven Stars, so would he take life after life from the host of Pharaoh till the Consulting Gods, the Judges of the World, and each of the Assyrian deities, had been propitiated with a victim. Scowling and silent, Sargon sat apart at the banquet; and a keen eye, scanning him warily and by stealth, noted the seal of murder set upon his brow.

There was Assarac too, the scheming priest, unwarlike indeed in form and nature, yet owning a more daring spirit, a more enduring courage, than the fiercest archer who ever drew bow from a war-chariot—Assarac, present in virtue of his office to pour out drink-offerings, to peer into the divining cup if required, above all, to watch with jealous supervision the temper and opinions of those who surrounded the king. Though aware that Ninus disliked, suspected, and would have put him to death without scruple, his eye never quailed, nor did his speech falter; and when he raised his goblet, filled to its brim, the eunuch's hand was firm and steady as a rock.

These last-named persons, with the older leaders and captains of ten thousand, were placed near the king; but scores of younger warriors, rising in fame, comely in person, and splendid in apparel, thronged the lower and more noisy extremity of the board. Over these, amongst whom Sarchedon was not the least remarkable, presided Ninyas, distinguished no less for his beautiful face and magnificent attire than for his deep draughts, reckless hilarity, and boisterous freedom of discourse.

"Once more in Babylon," said he, "after months of toil and heat, and worst of all, that torturing thirst! After those weary marches by day, those endless watches by night, welcome to the land of palm and pomegranate, peace and plenty, women and wine! What say you, Sarchedon? Well, I trow that, being of his guard, your duty bids you echo the Great King. The old lion cannot hear you where you sit; you may speak the truth freely as if you were reading the Seven Stars. Confess, now. None but a fool would go forth in warfare who could stay to revel and sleep at home."

Sarchedon, though familiar with camps, was also no stranger to the usages of a palace.

"My lord did not seem of so peaceful a mind," he answered, "while he drove his war-chariot through the archers who lined her vineyards when we invested the city of Pasht, or it had cost us a weary siege ere we broke in pieces the idols of the Cat!"

"Well said, Sarchedon!" was the vain-glorious reply. "Why did we not push on, as I advised? By the gods of my fathers, I swear to you, that if Ninyas had been your leader but for one week, rather than the Great King, he would have left the Ethiopians to lose themselves amongst the marches in our rear, fought a pitched battle on the plain by the sweet river, and you and I would have been drinking wine of Eshcol in the palace of Pharaoh at this moment."

It may be that Sarchedon had his own opinion of the strategy which should have conduced to so triumphant a result. He answered gravely enough:

"My lord confessed even now that he was far better in the palaces of Babylon. Is he not satisfied with the spoil, the captives, and the cheers of the people? They lifted up their voices when he passed to-day as it had been great Nimrod himself."

"The lazy drones!" laughed his well-pleased listener. "When I come to rule, they shall have something more to do than shout, I promise them. Reach me that flagon, I pray you—nay, hold! I am like my scoffing old sire, in one respect at least—I pour all drink-offerings down my own throat! No; what pleased me best to-day was neither spoil nor glory nor the voices of fools. It was the face of a maiden sweeter than the honeysuckle and fairer than the rose. Did you not mark her Sarchedon? or were you so busy in attendance on the queen, my mother, that you had eyes for none beside?"

Stifling the hideous misgivings that rose like a flood in his heart, Sarchedon answered with forced calmness:

"My lord must have passed to-day under the glances of a thousand damsels, and every one his handmaid. The comeliest of all were standing behind Kalmim, in attendance on the Great Queen."

"You are blind! by the beak of Nisroch, you must be blind!" exclaimed the excitable young prince. "Take Kalmim herself—for when she has tired her head and painted her eyes she is the best of them, since the queen loves not too much beauty so near her own—but take Kalmim, I say, and tell me whether she shows not like a camel beside a courser when you compare her with the daughter of Arbaces. O! never bend your brows and look so scared towards the chief captain. He cannot hear us up there; and, by the belt of Ashur, the king's voice raised in anger is enough to deafen a man in both ears! What can have chafed the old lion to make him roar so fiercely, even over his food?"

In truth, the deep harsh tones of Ninus, loud and overbearing, were heard above the ring of flagons, the clatter of tongues, all the din that accompanies a feast—even above the vibration of the lyre, the roll of the drum, the soft sweet music floating on the night air from an unseen gallery, far off amongst the pillared corridors that surrounded the open court.

Like the lion to which his graceless son compared him, Ninus was lashing himself into rage. His theme was the rapacity of priests, and, to use his own words, the extortions of the gods.

"Ten thousand of you!" roared the old warrior, turning fiercely on Assarac, of whom he had asked a question relating to certain details of the day's pageant. "Ten thousand demons! and for Baal alone. By the beard of Nimrod, he should be better served than any of us his descendants, who must needs feed the hungry swarming brood. And you would have me believe that there are gods as many as stars in heaven? Hear him, Arbaces! You and I have set armies in array ere this, so strong that our trumpets in the centre carried no sound to the horsemen on the wings; but if we are to have a thousand gods, and every god ten thousand priests, it will pass your skill and mine to devise how such a multitude may be ranged in order of battle. And one company of my bowmen would put them all to flight ere you could ride a furlong! Ten thousand priests of Baal! Ten thousand vultures tearing at a dead carcass! I trow there will be little left for the desert-falcon that struck the prey. You read the stars, forsooth, and can foretell the future easily as I can forget the past! Go to! Will you compute me the share of spoil I am likely to assign to-morrow for your entertainment and the altars of your gods?"

Without compromising one jot of his own dignity, the wily eunuch's answer was yet temperate and respectful to the Great King.

"My lord is himself the child of Ashur and of Baal—the father gives freely to the son, requiring only honour and reverence in return."

"Fill my cup!" thundered the king to Sethos, who ministered hastily to his wants. "I have not found it so," he continued, harping still on the theme that thus chafed him. "The honour and reverence I pay them willingly, though they keep me standing long enough in their temples, and, perhaps because they sit so far off, it seems hard to make them hear. But if honour and reverence are to signify, sheep and oxen, wine, jewels, raiment of needlework and heaps of treasure, they have had their share from Ninus—henceforth I will follow the example of those poor slaves we found in Egypt, the captives of our captives, who worship but one God, and offer him neither silver nor gold!"

"Therefore are they but servants to the servants of my lord the king," replied Assarac, unabashed by the frowns of Ninus and the open derision of certain veterans, who took their creed from their leader, as they took their orders—without comment or inquiry.

"Prate not to me!" was the angry answer; "I have scores of them down yonder bound in the outer court amongst my Egyptian captives. I cannot tell, Arbaces, what hinders me now, this moment, from sending you with a handful of spearmen to clear his temple of its white-robed locusts, and drive in these strangers, Egyptians and all, to worship Baal in their stead."

The chief captain, who to certain scruples of religion added those of custom, policy, and propriety, would have ventured on expostulation; but Assarac interposed.

"The gods, thy fathers, who look upon us to-night!" said he, in a stern loud voice, that awed even Ninyas and the younger revellers into attention while he pointed gravely upward where the stars were shining down in their eternal splendour on all the royal magnificence and glittering profusion of that feast in the open court.

At the same moment, sweeping round the outer walls of the palace, vibrating through its long corridors and lofty painted chambers, there rose a cry, so wild, so pitiful, so unearthly, that it arrested the goblet in each man's hand, froze the jest on his lip, and curdling the blood in his veins, caused him to sit mute and petrified, as if turned to stone.

The Great King started, and bade Arbaces summon up his guard; but Assarac's voice was heard once more, solemn and majestic in its notes of warning and reproach.

"The gods, thy fathers!" he repeated, looking Ninus sternly in the face, "who have spared the blasphemer, but visited his sin on the innocent cause thereof. Hear those Egyptian prisoners mourning for a comrade this moment passed away, wearied and out-worn by a toilsome march to the house of his captivity, stricken and thrust through by the iron that has entered into his soul!"

It was indeed such a wail of bereavement and despair as was to rise hereafter through all its length and breadth in the land of the South, because of the terrible punishment that visited her people, "from Pharaoh that sat on the throne to the captive that was in the dungeon"—on that awful night, the climax of successive judgments, when "there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead."

As these long-drawn notes of woe swelled, sank, and swelled again, the king's first emotions of horror were succeeded by a fresh outbreak of wrath. It might have gone hard with the sorrowing herd of captives, and perhaps not one had been left to mourn for another, but that the old lion's fury, redoubled by its momentary check, was at this juncture wholly diverted and appeased. A burst of music, so loud, so full, so jubilant, that it drowned all other noises in its grand triumphant swell, announced the entrance of Semiramis; and like the Queen of Heaven rising from the dark back-ground of night, this Queen of Assyria, blazing in jewels, and robed in the light of her incomparable beauty, stood forth a shining vision from the black shadows of the gateway, to move with stately step and slow through long lines of admiring revellers, ere she made her royal obeisance before the throne of gold, where sat the Great King. While she traversed the lower end of the court, Assyria's chosen warriors, the goodliest men of all the East, rose from the board and bent them low in courtly reverence, like a bed of garden-flowers doing homage to the south wind as it passes by. With a mother's love and a queen's dignity, she laid her hand on the shoulder of her son Ninyas, while he bowed himself before her; but it was a feeling stronger than the one, and but little in accordance with the other, that bade her pause by the side of Sarchedon and whisper tenderly in his ear.

He started, colouring to his temples—two or three young warriors glanced enviously at their favoured comrade; but it was dangerous to observe too narrowly the motions of royalty, and each man fixed his eyes in deep humility on the hem of her garment as Semiramis moved proudly on.

Ninus stirred uneasily where he sat. He would fain have risen to meet his queen, and taken her in his gaunt embrace to the fierce old heart that knew no other want; but such an innovation was not to be thought of even by the conqueror of the East, and he could only reach towards her the golden sceptre that lay on a cushion at his feet.

While she pressed it to her fair white brow, there came a light in the old king's haggard face that told of the loving spark too often kindled but to be quenched in sorrow, the blind trust born to be betrayed, the fond unreasoning pride in another that goeth before a fall.

This final ceremony broke up the banquet. With loud peals of music, the king and queen, waited on by their personal attendants, betook them to their respective dwellings, between which ran the Euphrates, though under the broad river a tunnelled passage afforded free communication from one to the other. Arbaces and Sargon followed closely behind their lord, as Kalmim and her group of women accompanied the queen. Ninyas, pushing round a mighty flagon, called Sethos to his side, and swore he would not stir till midnight; an intention loudly applauded by many of the younger revellers, who gathered joyously round their prince. In the change of places that ensued, Sarchedon made his escape from the banquet, hastening through the outer gates to cool his brow in the night air, while he communed with his own perplexed aspiring heart.

The queen's soft breath seemed still upon his neck, her whisper thrilling in his ear. What could she mean? "Follow the shaft! Fly on, fly upward!" Was it possible? Could the stars have written for him such a destiny as these words seemed to imply, or was he deceiving himself like a fool? And how was this upward flight to be accomplished? A thousand wild impossible longings and fancies filled his brain, but shining calmly through them all, like the moon amidst clouds and storm-wrack veiling a troubled sea, rose the gentle image of the girl he really loved. Could he give her up? Must it so soon come to an end, this dream, so short, so sweet, so cruel in its hour of waking? At any risk he was resolved to see her once again; that very night, that very hour, before the gods had time to cast his lot for him without recall. He hurried, like a ghost, through the shadows of the silent courts towards the palace of Arbaces.

But Ninyas, while he filled cup and emptied flagon, by no means lost sight of those interests and pleasures which, in his royal opinion, constituted the chief advantages of his station as a prince. Sarchedon had not moved ten paces from his seat to leave the revellers, ere the king's son whispered to the king's cup-bearer, "Follow him, Sethos. A wise hunter never loses sight of his hound till he pulls down the deer."