Читать книгу Sarchedon - A Legend of the Great Queen - George J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 9

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He was sleeping, yet not so sound but that his rest was visited by a strange and terrifying dream.

He thought he was in the desert, galloping his good horse in pursuit of an ostrich, winged with plumes worthy to tuft the spears that guarded the Great King's tent. But for all his efforts of voice, hand, and frame, Merodach laboured strangely in the deep sand, of which the long-legged bird threw back such volumes as to choke his lips and nostrils, wrapping him in a dim revolving cloud, that whirled and towered to the sky. Like a stab came the conviction that he was in the midst of the pitiless simoon, and he must die. Once more he strove to rouse Merodach with heel and bridle; but the horse seemed turned to stone, till, plunging wildly, he struggled forward, only to sink under his rider and disappear beneath the sand. Then the cloud burst asunder to reveal the glories of a dying sunset, fading into the purple sea.

He was on foot in the desert, fainting, weary, and sore athirst; but he heard the night-breeze sighing through palms and whispering in lofty poplars; he heard the cool ripple of water against the shore, and the pleasant welcome of a stream, singing in starts of broken melody as it danced down to meet the waves; then he saw a yoke of oxen, a camel at rest, a few huts, and a boat drawn up high and dry on the beach.

He was no longer a warrior in the armies of the Great King, but a rude fisherman amongst fishermen. He ate of their bread, he drank from their pitcher; yet was he still hungry and athirst, still wore a sword at his girdle and carried a bow in his hand.

He took his share of their labour; he drew in their nets. It seemed to him he had seen their faces before, though they knew him not; but he marvelled why they moved so slowly, and neither spoke nor smiled. While he helped them, too, it was as if the whole weight of rope and meshes hung on his arm alone. So night fell; and they took him into a hut, pointing to a cruse of water and a mantle spread in the corner, but withdrawing in the same sad silence, calm and grave, like those who mourn for the dead.

He could not sleep. The moon rose and shone in on him where he lay. After long hours of tossing troubled waking, a figure blocked the window where her rays streamed in on his couch. Then a great horror came over him without cause or reason, and tugging hard to draw his sword, he found it fastened in the sheath. Solemnly, slowly the figure signed to follow. Leaving his couch, he felt his heart leap, for it resembled Ishtar! But in the porch of the hut he seemed to recognise the clear proud features of the queen. Nevertheless, when its face was turned to the moonlight, he knew it was Assarac under the garb of a fisherman, but bearing the lotus-flower always in his hand. Without exchanging word or look, with averted eyes and stealthy steps, these two set the little bark afloat and took the oars. Then at last was broken the long weary silence, by a voice that came up from the deep, saying, "Ferrymen, bring over your dead!"

Light, buoyant, and high in the water, the boat had danced like a sea-bird on the surface; but now, though never a form was seen nor sound heard, she began to sink—deeper, deeper, so that the waves seemed to peer over her sides, leaping and sporting about her in cruel mockery, as though eager to break in and send her down.

It was a hard task to row that heavy freight out to sea. Weary and horror-stricken he tugged at his oar till the sweat dropped from his brow.

The moon went down, and a great darkness settled on the waters—the thick clogging waters, through which their oars passed so heavily. Was it the sea of the plain whereon they were embarked? Yes, surely, it must be the sea of the plain, the Dead Sea.

Was he never to approach the term of this numbing oppressive labour? Must he row on for ever and ever, without pause or respite, having bid his last farewell to the shores of earth and the light of day? Thus thinking, he felt the boat's keel grate against the bottom, while the oar started from his hand.

He took courage to look about him; but mortal eye could not pierce that thick darkness; and though the toil awhile ago had been so severe, a chill air curdled his blood, and crept into his very heart.

Still and silent as the grave seemed that shadowy land, till the same voice he had heard on the other shore called out the name of one he knew well and loved with a brother's love. There was no answer; but the boat lightened perceptibly, and her keel no longer touched the shingle.

Another name was called, and yet another, always in the same calm passionless accents, always with the same strange solemn result.

At every summons the boat rose higher in the water. When Sataspes was called, she swung to the flow and wash of the sluggish wave against her sides; at the name of Ninus, the Great King, she floated free and unencumbered as before she put out on her mysterious voyage.

With a heart lightened as was the boat that bore him, he pushed her off to return; for something warned him that now his task was done. He would fain have spoken with Assarac; but the surrounding gloom seemed so to oppress his lungs and chest, that the words formed by his tongue could not find vent through his lips.

Once more he was bending to the oar, when, as it were out of his own heart, came a voice whispering his name, "Sarchedon! Sarchedon!" in low sweet tones, which yet he knew vibrated with the sentence of his doom.

An unseen power raised him to his feet, and would have lifted him to shore, but that the priest held him back by his coarse fisher's garment, which dragged on chest and throat till he was fairly choked. Then, in extremity of fear and agony, he found his voice to call on Assarac for help at the moment when his vesture, yielding to the strain laid on it, parted asunder to let the cold night air in on his naked breast.

So he awoke, scared, trembling, panting for breath, and even in his waking seemed still wrapped in the gloom of that Isle of Shadows—seemed still to catch the tread of muffled footsteps, the breath of airy whispers, faint echoes from another world.

In that age, and amongst a people ever striving after a mystic ideal, yearning for communion with a higher world, dreams, and the interpretations thereof, were held of no small account.

Sarchedon, warrior though he was, and, like his great chief, little imbued with the superstitions of his time and country, could not yet pass over such a scene as his imagination had even now pictured without much cogitation and concern. He sat up and considered it in no small perplexity, inclining to regard the vision now as an omen of fortune, anon as a warning of fate. In his suffocating struggles to wake, his hands had been pressed close against his breast; a few moments elapsed ere he became conscious that he held in them a jewel he had never seen before. Rising from his couch at the foot of the tower, he hastened to examine it by starlight under the open sky. It consisted of an emerald, on which was cut the figure of a dove with outspread wings, following, as it seemed, the course of an arrow flying upward through the air. That it had come to him by supernatural influences during his sleep, he never doubted, and interpreted it, as men always do interpret the inexplicable, in the manner most agreeable to his own wishes. This dove, he said to himself, must mean the girl he had so lately seen at the Well of Palms; for what could be more dove-like than the maiden sweetness and innocent bearing of Ishtar? The arrow doubtless signified, in its upward flight, his own future career. He would become illustrious as a warrior, and Ishtar would follow him in his brilliant course to fame. Was it an arrow, or the initial of a name? He was forced to confess, from its shape and direction, that it seemed intended to represent the weapon itself, and not the letter of which he would fain consider it a symbol. Nevertheless, it must be a sign that the gods intended him for great things, and it should be no fault of his if the only woman who had yet touched his heart did not share with him the good fortune thus promised by the stars.

Meantime it wanted many hours of dawn; so he returned to his cushions and mantle for the remainder of his night's rest, stopping by the table at which he had sat with Assarac in the evening for a pull at the golden flagon, not yet emptied of its good Damascus wine.

Nevertheless, long before sunrise, he awoke refreshed, invigorated, happy; feeling the amulet resting on his breast, he accepted its presence for a fortunate omen; and ere daylight paled the beacon-fire on the tower of Belus, was galloping Merodach through the desert on his way to the Well of Palms.

"Surely," thought this dreamer, "she will be watching there for the first glitter of spears that shall give token of her father's return? Then will I tell her when to expect the host, and how to distinguish between its vanguard and the spearmen of its strength, having Arbaces at their head, who march with the chariot of the Great King. She will give me to drink, and I will say unto her, Maiden, as this draught of water to one athirst and stifled with the desert sand, so is a whisper from the lips and a glance from the eyes of the fairest damsel in all the land of Shinar to him who has ridden from the great city only to look on her face ere he departs to see her no more. Then she cannot but lift her veil, and speak kindly to me, bidding me tarry but a few moments, while she draws water for my horse. So will I tell her the whole tale; and hereafter, when my lord the king has rewarded his warriors for service done with bow and spear, I will take to Arbaces a score of camels, a hundred sheep, and a talent of gold, together with the armour I won of that swarthy giant beyond the sweet river; and how shall he say me nay? So will I lead her home to my tent, and then shall I have attained full happiness, and need ask for nothing more on earth."

Thus it fell out that Kalmim, arriving in the temple of Baal soon after daybreak, missed both the object of her real and her fictitious search. The queen after a heated restless night, bade her chief tiring-woman seek in that edifice for an amulet, which Semiramis affirmed she could only have dropped at the foot of the tower of Belus, where some one, she added, was sleeping, who must be brought to her and interrogated forthwith. Kalmim's experience, in her own person and that of her mistress, led her at once to guess the truth; therefore she hurried off to apprise Sarchedon he was wanted without delay in the royal palace. On her arrival, it might be said that she found the nest still warm, though the bird had flown; for a priest was carrying away the cloak and cushions that had formed the young man's couch, and his dark eyes glittered with a roguish smile while he peered into the flagon of Damascus, to find little left in it but dregs.

"These warriors seem to know the use of good wine when they can get it," said he, "and I doubt not it sings and mantles under helm of steel no less than linen tiara or fillet of gold; but they clasp bow and spear through many a long night for one that they spend with goblet of Ophir in hand. Men sleep little in the camp too, and feed sparingly, they tell me, nor day after day must they be cheered by the sight of a woman's veil or the sound of a woman's voice. To say nothing of a fierce enemy and a place in the fore-front of the battle between two hosts in array, where it is scarcely more dangerous to fight than to fly. Truly it is better to be a servant of Baal than of the Great King."

"It is better to be a boar in the marshes than a lion in the mountain!" retorted Kalmim with high disdain; "a vulture battening on a dead camel than an eagle striking the wild goat from its rock! Conquering or conquered, up or down, a warrior is at least a man, and a match for men!"

"While a priest is a match for women," answered the other, laughing. "Is that what you would say? Nevertheless, Kalmim, it must be a priest who will serve your turn this morning, for there are here a thousand in the temple, and never a hand among us to draw bowstring or close round the shaft of a spear."

"There was a warrior in the porch even now," replied Kalmim; "a goodly young warrior with dark flowing locks, and a chin nearly as smooth, Beladon, as your own. What have you done with him? He bore hither the Great King's signet, and if he has come by harm, not all the gods of all your temples will shield you from the fair face that never looked on man in anger but he was consumed."

Beladon, a handsome young priest, with bright roguish eyes and swarthy complexion, turned pale while she spoke—pale even through the rich crimson of his cheek and the blue tint of lips and chin, where his beard was close-shaven, and rubbed down with pumice-stone in imitation of Assarac's smooth unmanly face.

"The youth lay here scarce an hour ago," said he, trembling. "He mounted the noblest steed that ever wore a bridle—a white horse, with eyes of fire—and rode off through the Great Brazen Gate into the desert like an arrow from a bow. Surely he will return."

Kalmim burst out laughing at his discomposure.

"Surely he will return!" she repeated; "and when he does return, surely you will bring him to me by the path through the great paradise without delay. Semiramis hath been dealing justice amongst the people since sunrise, but she will pass the heat of the day as usual in the fishing temple, and you will find me in its porch. You do not fear to present yourself before Dagon? His worship requires no sacrifice of sheep nor oxen, no blood of priests to flow from the gashes they cut in their naked flesh, before his altar."

She spoke in a jesting tone ill befitting the solemnity of the subject, and he answered in the same vein.

"The sheep and oxen we offer are consumed without doubt by Baal himself, while his servants live miraculously on the light of his countenance and the fragments that he leaves! Touching our self-inflicted wounds, notwithstanding all the blood spilt before the people, we scarcely feel the pain; and this too cannot but be by a miracle of the god. I make no secret with you of our mysteries. Tell me, in return, what mean these warlike preparations that have set the whole city astir to-day?"

Her tone was still of banter and sarcasm.

"Would you wish the Great King to be received," said she, "with no more ceremony than a shepherd bringing a stray lamb in from the wilderness on his shoulders? When he returns a conqueror, shall not the triumph be worthy of the victory?"

"But if every man who can bear arms is to stand forth in array with bow and spear; if the women and children, on pain of death, are not to come down into the streets; if the priests of Baal and the prophets of the grove are to be marshalled like warriors, with knives unsheathed and sacrificing weapons in hand, our welcome will seem to Ninus more like the assault of a fenced city than the return of my lord the king to his home!"

"So be it," answered Kalmim. "It is not the flash of a blade or the gleam of a spear that will frighten the old king. By the serpent of Ashtaroth, he fears neither man nor demon; and when his queen raised a temple in Bactria to Abitur of the Mountains, he profaned his altar and defied the Chief of the Devils in sight of our whole army. It angered her, and she hath not forgotten it. Why, men say, he believes no more in Baal than—than you do yourselves!"

He looked about him in alarm.

"Hush!" said he. "It is not for me to judge between my gods and my lord the king. The divining cup of Assarac has not failed to tell him that Ninus shall one day take his place with the Thirteen Gods. It may be that he knows the golden throne is waiting for him even now."

He scrutinised her face narrowly, but saw on it only a light and careless smile.

"Were I the queen, I'd have a younger one next time," was her reply. "Of your years, say you? No, thank you, Beladon—not for me. Well, you may come with me to the Jaspar Gate and as far as the outer court; I dare not pass alone through all those oxen, lowing, poor things, as if they knew not one of them would be left alive to-day at noon."