Part 53 (1/2)
”Is she then so near?”
”She will encamp to-night beneath the city walls,” answered Beladon imperturbably. ”She marches with the vanguard of her army; but the conquerors of Armenia cannot be many furlongs in her rear; and when the sun goes down to-morrow, the hosts of Ninyas will be increased fourfold, while the Great Queen lays her trophies and her sceptre at the feet of her son. May the king live for ever!”
Something in the cold sneering tones seemed to recall the eunuch's energies and wake him, as it were, from a dream.
”Never!” he muttered between his teeth; and seizing the other's arm in a gripe that caused him to wince with pain, he hurried out of the corridor, past the golden image of Baal, across the court of the temple, and so, through leafy thicket and level lawn, threaded its cool green paradise to the palace of the Great King.
Here Beladon, notwithstanding a sufficiently good opinion of his own merits, would have excused himself from entering; but a.s.sarac's grasp was never relaxed, and ere the younger priest could realise the imprudence of such an intrusion, he found himself in the presence of one for whom he had been alternately spy and gaoler, yet who held over him irresponsible power of life and death.
Ninyas was seated in the shade on a chair of state, ornamented and embossed with the symbols of a.s.syrian sovereignty, under a trellis-work whereon had been trained the luxuriant tendrils of a vine, already bending and blus.h.i.+ng in cl.u.s.ters of ripening grapes. A fountain scattered its silver spray in the suns.h.i.+ne, while female forms, with jetty locks, transparent veils, and glancing eyes, flitted through the shade. Soft airs murmured among the flowers, birds carolled from the thicket, and the king held a half-emptied goblet in his hand. With a hasty inclination of head and body, far short of the usual ceremony observed on entering the royal presence, a.s.sarac placed himself in front of his lord, and looking him full in the face, arrested the cup that Ninyas was raising to his lips.
”Is this a time,” said he, in grave sonorous accents, ”for bubble of wine and sound of timbrel--for dance and song and careless revel--the mirth that goes before destruction--the folly that is a sure fore-runner of death? Rouse you, my lord, rouse you! Take bow in hand, gird you sword upon your thigh; for the watchman cries out on the wall, and even now your enemy is at the gate!”
The king's eyes, once so bright, looked dim and dull, the handsome features were flushed and sodden with excess; but he set his goblet down untasted, while there seemed something of interest, even apprehension, in the tone with which he asked, ”What enemy, and whence? I have but one in all the kingdoms of the earth, and she is sick unto death beyond the mountains of the north.”
Again, while he smiled in scorn, came a glow of triumph on the eunuch's weary face. ”Semiramis,” he answered, ”is encamped within bowshot of the wall--Semiramis, the mother of my lord the king--Semiramis, who never cast a bank against a city but she razed it to the ground--who never drew bow but she shot her arrow home--who never took account of an injury but she requited it with death! O my queen, my queen!” he added in a broken murmur, ”even now the lord of earth trembles and cowers at the very whisper of your name!”
Ninyas turned pale. ”Counsel me, a.s.sarac!” he exclaimed, while his eye roved helplessly over all the splendour and luxury that surrounded him.
”If my mother enters the city, I am undone.”
”Not so,” answered the eunuch. ”Let my lord the king go out to meet her as a son should welcome the mother of his affections bringing home the wife of his desire. Let the gates be thrown open, and the people give her greeting as she pa.s.ses by. The hosts of the Great Queen are yet many a league off in the desert. Her vanguard, few in number, must be wearied sore with travel. When she enters her own city, who so fitting to provide for her safety as the son of her vows? Let him guard her like the apple of his eye, and relieve her of all care in the government of the people whom he rules.”
”You know her not!” exclaimed Ninyas, much disturbed. ”Where is the prison-house in Babylon that could hold her for a single day? Where is the son of Ashur who would not leap to the saddle with bow and spear at the first wave of the Great Queen's hand?”
The eunuch's answer came in firm and measured accents, though his face was distorted as with a hidden agony of pain.
”There is a prison-house from which not Ashtaroth herself could break out--from which old Nimrod might not be delivered by all the hors.e.m.e.n of a.s.syria. When my lord's servants shall surround and hew her in pieces, then may every son of Ashur bind on his headpiece a shred of the Great Queen's garments, whom he loved so well.”
Ninyas laughed aloud, and, seizing his discarded goblet, drained it to the dregs.
”Enough!” he exclaimed. ”She sinned against Nisroch and Baal, when she took the sceptre of Nimrod from the hand of his descendant. What am I, that I should interfere to avert her doom? And yet, I would it might be done without shedding of blood. Can we not lead her forth from the city into some desert place, and so dispose of her in safety, where she shall disturb the king no more?”
”Will my lord trust his servant?” asked the eunuch.
”I will remain here at the banquet in my palace until it is over,”
answered Ninyas brutally. ”Let Baal be his own avenger, and let a.s.sarac see to vindicating the honour of his G.o.d. I have spoken.” Then, clapping his hands, Ninyas summoned back the women who usually surrounded him at his revels, to dismiss the whole matter from his mind in a deep and stupefying carouse.
Leaving the royal presence, Beladon felt his arm seized once more in the eunuch's painful gripe, while a.s.sarac muttered, half-unconsciously, such broken sentences as served to disclose the plot he had constructed, and the means by which it was to be carried out. Presently, in a few simple directions, he imparted to his subordinate the outline of his purpose, commanding him to muster all the priests and prophets in the city at the great northern gate by which the queen should enter, with knife and lotus-flower in hand; to surround these with so strong a force of spearmen as it would be impossible for the populace to break through; and then, at a given signal, to fall on Semiramis with his followers, bind her in fetters of iron, and so bring her a helpless captive into the temple of Baal. It would be a fine revenge, thought a.s.sarac, to keep her there till the arrival of Sarchedon from the desert, and then to slay them, in each other's sight, before the altar of his G.o.d. Better still, perhaps, and worthier of his fierce mad love, to strike his own knife into her heart at the first halt of her chariot within the gate.
”I can trust you,” said he, when they parted, and Beladon proposed to attest his fidelity in a great oath by the everlasting wings, ”because the queen's first act, when she reenters the city, will be to take vengeance on him who kept the door of her son's prison-house, and suffered the captive to escape.”
But the wariest of mankind may leave one weak point undefended--the keenest judges of human nature will omit from their calculation some vice, prejudice, or folly, such as dominates the very self-interest of their tools. That Beladon should have disclosed a plot, on the success of which his own personal safety, his very life depended, would have been unaccountable, but for the joyous, pleasure-loving disposition which, priest of Baal though he was, could not keep his secret from a woman.
Kalmim had beguiled him out of every particular before sundown, affecting, the better to deceive him, an irreconcilable enmity to the Great Queen, and entire devotion in the service of her son.
If a woman makes up her mind to duplicity, a little more or a little less counts as nothing to her conscience. She finds it as easy to profess an affection she does not feel, and a candour of which she is incapable, as to push another bodkin into her hair, lay another coat of red or white on the cheek she is not ashamed to paint. When Kalmim had resolved she would take him into captivity, it was no more possible for Beladon to resist than for the bird to escape out of the snare of the fowler. And, although the latter was exceedingly lavish of smiles and liberal of promises, the prey found itself captured, plumed, and despoiled, with no material equivalent for utter discomfiture and disgrace.
More than a match for a score of priests, she could indeed have outwitted the whole male population of Babylon, but that she too had found her master, and was but a weak foolish woman in presence of the man she loved.
To him she betook herself in her distress, imploring him to interfere at such a juncture, and prevent a crime which, with all his loyalty to his prince, seemed to Sethos too foul and unnatural to contemplate.