Part 5 (1/2)
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 sh.o.r.e, but that the priest held him back by his coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sarac 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 m.u.f.fled 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 superst.i.tions of his time and country, could not yet pa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 G.o.ds 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 cus.h.i.+ons and mantle for the remainder of his night's rest, stopping by the table at which he had sat with a.s.sarac 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 s.h.i.+nar 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 fict.i.tious 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 G.o.ds of all your temples will s.h.i.+eld 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 a.s.sarac's smooth unmanly face.
”The youth lay here scarce an hour ago,” said he, trembling. ”He mounted the n.o.blest 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 pa.s.s the heat of the day as usual in the fis.h.i.+ng temple, and you will find me in its porch. You do not fear to present yourself before Dagon? His wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d. 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.