Читать книгу Sarchedon - A Legend of the Great Queen - George J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 7

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In the hierarchy of Baal, as in other religious orders, false and true, it was deemed but right that the priests should want for nothing, while the altar was well supplied with offerings. To one who had dismounted from a two nights' ride, such luxuries as were scattered profusely about the temple of the great Assyrian god formed a pleasing contrast to camp lodging and camp fare.

If Sarchedon, weary and travel-stained, was yet of so comely and fair a countenance as to extort approval from the queen herself, Sarchedon, bathed, refreshed, unarmed, clad in silken garments, and with a cup of gold in his hand, was simply beautiful. Assarac the priest, sitting over against him, could not but triumph in the sparkle of that bauble by which he hoped to divert and dull the only intellect in the Eastern world that he believed could rival his own.

The servant of Ninus and the servant of Baal sat together on the roof of a lower story of the temple; below them the pillars and porticoes of the outer court, behind them vast piles of building, vague, gloomy, and imposing in the shades of coming night. High over their heads rose the tower of Belus, pointing to the sky, and many a fathom down beneath their feet the stir and turmoil of the great city came up, terrace by terrace, till it died to a faint drowsy murmur like the hum of bees in a bed of flowers. The sun was sinking in uninterrupted splendour behind the level sky-line of the desert, and already a cool breeze stole over the plains from the hills beyond the marshes, to stir the priest's white garments and lift the locks on Sarchedon's glossy head, while for each it enhanced the flavour and fragrance of their rich Damascus wine, bubbling and blushing in its vase of gold. Between them stood a table, also of gold, studded with amethysts, while the liquor in their golden cups was yet more precious than the metal and brighter than the gem.

Something to this effect said Sarchedon, after a draught almost as welcome and invigorating as that which he had drained in the morning at the Well of Palms; while, with a sigh of extreme repose and content, he turned his handsome face to the breeze.

"It is so," answered Assarac; "and who more worthy to drink it than the warrior whose bow and spear keep for us sheep-fold and vineyard—who watches under arms by night, and bears his life in his hand by day, that our oxen may tread the threshing-floor, and our peasants press out their grapes in peace? I empty this cup to Ninus, the Great King, yonder in the camp, in love, fear, and reverence, as I would pour out a drink-offering from the summit of that tower to Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven."

"And the Great King would dip his royal beard in it willingly enough, were it set before him," answered the light-hearted warrior. "I saw him myself come down from his chariot when we crossed the Nile, and drink from the hollow of his buckler mouthful after mouthful of the sweet vapid water; but he swore by the Seven Stars he would have given his best horse had it been the roughest of country wine; and he bade us ever spare the vineyards, though we were ordered to lay waste cornland and millet-ground, to level fruit-trees, break down water-sluices, burn, spoil, ravage, and destroy. Who is like the Great King—so fierce, so terrible? Most terrible, I think, when he smiles and pulls his long white beard; for then our captains know that his wrath is kindled, and can only be appeased with blood. I had rather turn my naked breast to all Pharaoh's bowmen than face the Great King's smile."

Assarac was deep in thought, though his countenance wore but the expression of a courteous host.

"He is the king of warriors," said the priest carelessly—"drink, I pray you, yet once more to his captains—and beloved, no doubt, as he is feared among the host."

"Nay, nay," answered the other laughing, for the good wine had somewhat loosened his tongue, while it removed the traces of fatigue from his frame. "Feared, if you will. Is he not descended from Nimrod and the Thirteen Gods? Brave, indeed, as his mighty ancestors, but pitiless and unsparing as Ashur himself."

"Hush!" exclaimed the priest, looking round. "What mean you?"

"I have not counted twenty sunsets," answered the other, "since I saw the Great King's arrow fly through buckler and breastplate, aye, and a brave Assyrian heart too, ere it stuck in the ground a spear's length farther on. He has a strong arm, I can bear witness, and the man fell dead under his very chariot; but it should not have been one of his own royal guard that he thus slew in the mere wantonness of wrath. Sataspes, the son of Sargon, had better have died in Egypt, where he fought so bravely, than here, under an Assyrian sky, within a few days' march of home."

"Sataspes!" repeated the other; "and what said his father? It is not Sargon's nature to be patient under injury or insult."

"His dark face grew black as night," answered Sarchedon, "and the javelin he held splintered in his grasp; but he bowed himself to the ground, and said only, 'My lord draws a stiff bow, and the king's arrow never yet missed its mark.'"

"It was a heavy punishment," observed Assarac thoughtfully.

"And for a light offence," answered the other. "Sataspes did but lift her veil to look on the face of a virgin in a drove of captives who had not yet defiled by the Great King's chariot. She cried out, half in wrath, half in fear; and ere the veil fell back on her bosom, the offender was a dead man."

"Did the Great King look favourably on the virgin?" asked Assarac. "A woman must needs be fair to warrant the taking of a brave man's life."

"I scarce heeded her," answered Sarchedon. "She came of a captive race, whom the Egyptians hold in bondage down yonder, imposing on them servile offices and many hard tasks—a race that seem to mix neither with their conquerors nor with strangers. They have peculiar laws and customs in their houses and families, giving their daughters in marriage only to their kindred, and arraying their whole people like an army, in hosts and companies. I used to see them at work for their task-masters, moving with as much order and precision as the archers and spearmen of the Great King."

"I have heard of them," said Assarac; "I have heard too that their increasing numbers gave no small disquiet to the last Pharaoh, who was wiser than his successor. Will they not rise at some future time, and cast off the Egyptian yoke?"

"Never!" answered the warrior scornfully. "It presses hard and heavy, but this people will never strike a blow in self-defence: they are a nation of slaves, of shepherds and herdsmen. Not a man have I seen amongst them who could draw a bow, nor so much as sling a stone. Where are they to find a leader? If such a one rose up, how are they to follow him? They are utterly unwarlike and weak of heart; they have no arms, no horses, and scarcely any gods."

Assarac smiled with the good-humoured superiority of an adept condescending to the crude intelligence of a neophyte. Did he not believe that through the very exercise of his profession he had sounded the depths of all faith, here and hereafter—in the earth, in the skies, in the infinite—above all, in himself and his own destiny?

"Their worship is not so unlike our own as you, who are outside the temple, might believe," said he, pointing upwards to the glowing spark on the summit of the tower of Belus, which was never extinguished night or day. "I have learned in our traditions, handed down, word for word, from priest to priest, since the first family of man peopled the earth after the subsiding of the waters, that they too worship the sacred element which constitutes the essence and spirit of the universe. If they have no images, nor outward symbols of their faith, it is because their deity is impalpable, invisible, as the principle of heat which generates flame. If they turn from the Seven Stars with scorn, if they pour out no drink-offering, make no obeisance to the Queen of Heaven, it is because they look yet higher, to that mystic property from which Baalim and Ashtaroth draw light and life and dominion over us poor children of darkness down here below. Their great patriarch and leader came out of this very land; and there is Assyrian blood, though I think shame to confess it, in the veins of that captive people subject now to our hereditary enemies in the South."

"The men are well enough to look on," answered Sarchedon, "but, to my thinking, their women are not so fair as the women of the plain between the rivers; not to be spoken of with the Great Queen's retinue here, nor the mountain maids who come down from the north to gladden old Nineveh like sweet herbs and wild flowers growing in the crevices of a ruined wall. If this people are of our lineage, they have fallen away sadly from the parent stock."

"What I tell you is truth," replied Assarac; "and I, sitting by you here to-night, have spoken with men whose fathers remembered those that in their boyhood had seen the great founder of our nation—old, wrinkled, with a white beard descending to his feet, but lofty still, and mighty as the tower of defiance he reared to heaven, though suffering daily from torment unendurable; and why? Because of the patriarch and chief of the nation you despise."

Through all the Assyrian people, but especially amongst the hosts of the Great King, to believe in Nimrod was to believe in Baal, in Ashur, in their religion, their national existence, their very identity.

The colour rose to Sarchedon's brow as he passed his hand over his lips, scarcely yet darkened with a beard, while he answered haughtily,

"Nimrod was lord of earth by right of bow and spear. No man living, backed by all the gods of all the stars in heaven, would have dared to dispute his word, nor so much as look him in his lion-like face!"

"And yet did this old man, lord only in his own family—chief of a tribe scarce numbering a thousand bowmen—beard the lion-king in the city he had founded, in the palace where he reigned, in the very temple of his worship. The patriarch reasoned with him on the multitude of his gods; and Nimrod answered proudly, he could make as many as he would, but that while they emanated from himself they had supreme dominion on earth and over all in heaven, save only the Seven Stars and the Twenty-four Judges of the World. Then the patriarch took the king's molten images out of the temple, kindled a great furnace in the centre of the city, and in the presence of all Nineveh, cast them into the midst."

Sarchedon started to his feet.

"And the king did not hew him in pieces with his own hand where he stood!" exclaimed he. "It is impossible! It is contrary to all reason and experience!"

"The king could scarce believe his eyes," continued Assarac, smothering a smile, "when he saw his sacred images crumbling down and stealing away in streams of molten gold. It is even said that he uttered a great cry of lamentation and sat on the ground a whole night, with his garments rent, fasting, and in sore distress. This I scarcely think was the fashion of the mighty hunter: what I do believe is, that he sent a company of bowmen after the offender with orders to bring him back into his presence, alive or dead. They pursued the patriarch through the Valley of Siddim, till they came to the bitter waters; and here"—Assarac put his goblet with something of embarrassment to his lips—"here the stars in their courses must have fought against Assyria; for our warriors turned and fled in some confusion, so that the daring son of Terah escaped. Then it is said that he prayed to his God for vengeance against our lion-king, entreating that he who had been conqueror of the mightiest men and slayer of the fiercest beasts on earth, should be punished by the smallest and humblest of that animal creation it had been his chief pleasure to persecute and destroy. His God answered his prayer, though he raised no temples, made no golden images of man, beast, bird, nor monster, and sacrificed but a lamb or a kid in burnt-offering on the altar of unhewn stones in the plain.

"A tiny gnat was sent to plague great Nimrod, as the sand-fly of the wilderness maddens the lion in his lair. Under helm or diadem—in purple robe or steel harness—at board and bed—in saddle, bath, or war chariot, the lord of all the earth was goaded into a ceaseless encounter where there was no adversary, and exhausted by perpetual flight where none pursued.

"Then he sent for cunning artificers, who made for him a chamber of glass, impervious even to the air of heaven, so that the king entered it well pleased; for he said, 'Now shall I have ease from my tormentor, to eat bread and drink wine, and be refreshed with sleep.'

"But while he spoke the gnat was in his ear, and soon it ascended, and began to feed on his brain. Then the king's agony was greater than he could bear, and he cried aloud to his servants, bidding them beat on his head with a hammer, to ease the pain. So he endured for four hundred years; and then he—then he went home to his father Ashur; and when the Seven Stars shine out in the Northern sky, he looks down, well pleased, from his throne of light, on the city that his children have built, and the statue of gold they have raised to his name."

"And this is true?" exclaimed Sarchedon, whose love of the marvellous could not but be gratified by the priest's narrative.

"True as our traditions," answered Assarac, with something like a sneer; "true as our worship, true as our reason and intellect, true as the lessons we have learned to read in the stars themselves. What can be truer? except labour, sorrow, pain, and the insufficiency of man!"

"Every one to his own duty," replied the young warrior. "Slingers and bowmen in advance, spears and chariots in the centre, horsemen on the wings. It is your business to guess where the shaft falls; mine is but to fit the arrow and draw the bow. I am glad of it. I never could see much in the stars but a scatter of lamps to help a night march, when no brighter light was to be had. The moon has been a better friend to me ere now than all the host of heaven. Tell me, Assarac, can you not read on her fair open face when I shall be made captain of the guard to the Great King?"

"What you ask in jest," said the other, smiling, "I will hereafter answer in sober earnest. I go hence to the summit of that high tower, and all night long must I read on those scrolls of fire above us a future which they alone can tell—the destiny of nations, the fate of a line of kings, nay, the fortunes of a young warrior whom the queen delighteth to honour, and who may well deserve to sleep to-night while others take their turn to watch."

Thus speaking, he spread his mantle over a heap of silken cushions, disposed at the foot of the stairs leading to the tower of Belus so as to form a tempting couch, in the cool night air, for one who had ridden so far through the heat of an Assyrian day.

He had not ascended three steps towards the tower, ere Sarchedon, overcome with fatigue, excitement, and Damascus wine, laid his head amongst the cushions and fell into a deep sound sleep.