"I am ready to go now," answered the impetuous boy. "My horses are of the purest breed in all the land of Shinar. I will fly with her to the ends of the earth."

"You need not go farther than Ascalon," replied his mother with a smile.

"In mine ancient stronghold, rude and timeworn though it be, I can still count many a friend who would beard Ninus and all his line at my lightest word. And the common mult.i.tude are devoted to my service far more than in Nineveh, or even here in Babylon, which but for me would still have been a mere hamlet of huts in a marsh. My son, if ever you come to rule, trust no longer to the people's grat.i.tude than while you have benefits to confer: the loyalty of a nation is seldom proof against a rise in the price of corn. Nevertheless, in lofty Ascalon you may be safe and secret enough, until time and my constant entreaties shall have softened the resentment of my lord the king. The girl is willing, of course," continued the queen, tenderly and in a half-sorrowful tone; "for such faces as yours are made to be the ruin of all who look on them too freely."

No woman, she was thinking, could resist that smile of her boy's--so fond, so winning, so like her own.

Ninyas hesitated; and once more his hand stole towards the javelin by the wall.

"There must be neither delay," said he, "nor hesitation. The girl would love well enough without doubt; but--but--" here the blood flew to his temples and the angry light to his eye--"another has seen her, and would fain make her his own: one who brought here tidings from the camp before the host marched in--a goodly youth and a brave warrior. Nevertheless, he must die."

"Not so," exclaimed the queen, turning pale. "Believe me, this is a matter to be carried through by the fine wit of woman, rather than the strong hand of man. You must abide wholly by my counsel. I have never failed you, my son. Shall I fail you now in this your great need?"

It is possible that, had he trusted implicitly to his mother's guidance, her heart might have been softened and her purpose set aside even now; but he flung his head up impatiently, and threatened where he should have confided or cajoled.

"I will not wait a day!" he exclaimed angrily. "I will not sit still while another is in my place. Sarchedon loves this girl very dearly, and in a few hours I may be too late."

"Sarchedon does _not_ love her," hissed the queen through her clenched teeth, while her face turned white. "Foolish boy!" she added, recovering her self-command, "with all your manhood and your valour, you are as much a child as when you cried on my knee for a lotus-flower or a pomegranate; and you must even have your toy to-day, at any sacrifice, though you tire of it to-morrow, like the wilful babe you are."

"I am satisfied when I have what I want," answered Ninyas. "Is it not so with us all, from the Great King to the spearman that marches by his chariot? Even Ninus will chafe and roar and lash himself into rage like the lion of the desert, if the merest trifle runs contrary to his whim.

Am I not his _son_, mother, as well as _yours_?"

"You are more easily ruled than your father," answered the queen. "And it is well for you, my boy, that with your mother's form and features you inherit her temperament--joyous, placable, and easily moulded to the wishes of those you love." She spoke in a light, bantering tone, not entirely devoid of scorn. "Carry your toy with you, if so it must be; but do not murmur at the measures I take for your safety, nor quarrel with the restraint that can alone preserve you from the king's anger, as a young warrior chafes under the weight of that harness which fences death from his heart."

"I only ask for the daughter of Arbaces," was his reply. "Give me the desire of mine eyes, and do with me what you will."

"You shall carry her off from her father's house to-night," said the queen. "Follow my counsel, and you shall pounce on the girl, swift and secure as the hawk when she strikes a partridge on the mountain. Ride out of the Great Gates, taking Sethos, or some one attendant whom you can trust, with bow and spear, as though you purposed hunting the lion in the desert. Let none see you return, but steal back to the city in the darkness of night. I will take order for such a band of spearmen to be under arms as no single household could attempt to resist, and I will place one at their head who knows neither compunction nor remorse. With these you shall force the gate of the chief-captain's palace. When they have gained possession of the court, I need scarce tell you, my son, so lately returned from warfare, the rights of those who occupy the stronghold of an enemy--the women's apartments are not far to seek. A shawl may be round her head, and the girl herself on the back of your best horse or swiftest dromedary, in less time than it will take to put to the sword such few servants as Arbaces can muster in the first watch of night. Ere the alarm is sounded and the city in arms, you should be many a furlong off in the desert, galloping towards your place of refuge, like a wild stag to the hill."

"And Arbaces?" asked Ninyas. "He has the courage of a lion. He will resist to the death."

"Arbaces will take his chance like another," answered the queen coldly.

"An adversary who stands in the path, my son, must be ridden down ere we can pa.s.s on. Nevertheless, I will not have a hair of _your_ head fall in this business. A few priests of Baal shall accompany the spearmen, wrap one of their linen robes about you, and thus avoid detection as well as danger; but do not neglect to wear your armour underneath. Is that a proven harness I see yonder, thrown aside in the corner?"

"It is inlaid with gold," answered Ninyas lightly, "and curiously wrought; but Pharaoh's bowmen have blunted many a shaft on it, and it turns the thrust of a spear as it were a bulrush."

While he spoke, the queen had taken a helmet from amongst the other pieces of armour, and placed it, laughing, on her brows.

"They say I am like my mother," exclaimed her son, "in face and bearing.

By the beauty of Ashtaroth, it must be true! When I look at you I seem to see my own image on the march stooping down to drink from a stream!"

CHAPTER XIV

STRONG AS DEATH

It is well known that secrets are not to be kept from princes, and that for royal ears "the bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter," however scrupulously it may be hidden from curiosity of lower rank. Sarchedon's interview with Ishtar had been witnessed by Sethos, who reported it, as in duty bound, to Ninyas; and although that wilful youth, ignoring, according to custom, everything running counter to her wishes, never mentioned it to his mother, the whole affair came to her knowledge very soon after Semiramis had quitted the apartments of her son. It may be that in a.s.syrian palaces, below the surface of forms and ceremonies, stole an under-current of interest, intrigue, and license, which, eddying upward on occasion, troubled the courtly waters to the brim, and those who lived habitually in an atmosphere of luxury and magnificence refused to deny themselves certain relaxations of the heart or senses, that relieved the peasant's toil, and sweetened his hard-earned fare.

Sethos was a comely youth with laughing eyes. Kalmim a black-browed dame, joyous of temperament, and pleasant to look on as a summer's morning. It was natural that the woman's maturer tact and greater experience should lead the king's cup-bearer into confidences it had been wiser to withhold; and whatever Kalmim learned of good or evil, within or without the city walls, she lost no time in imparting to her mistress.

Semiramis listened, to all appearance undisturbed. Only the most practised of tire-women could have marked how the blue veins about her temples traced themselves more distinctly, how the colour turned a shade fainter in her cheek.

And yet what rage and self-contempt were tearing at her heart! That she, whose wishes were daily antic.i.p.ated almost before they were formed, who, never since she arrived at woman's estate, and succeeded to her royal inheritance of matchless beauty, had left a desire ungratified, should find, here in Babylon, the citadel of her power, the very throne, as it were, of her dominion, a man who could resist the one and undervalue the other, preferring, to the Great Queen's favour, and such a destiny as the mightiest monarch on earth might envy, the smile of a sickly girl, the simple follies of a homely, humble, unpolluted love!

"Tire me n.o.bly, Kalmim," said she, sitting before a mirror of burnished silver, that reflected her faultless form from head to foot. "There must be no crevice in mine armour to-day--not a fold must be ruffled, not a plait laid awry, since I go hence straightway into the presence of my lord the king." Thus to her woman, but to her own heart: "He will be on duty about the gates. He shall see how fair that face is he has dared to despise, and look on the beauty he undervalues, till he turns faint and sick and dizzy in its rays. I will crush him to the earth, and when he sues at my feet for the hope I bade him but yesterday to entertain, I will turn coldly away, and leave him to perish like a trampled worm. But he shall not go to this girl for comfort in his despair--no, he shall die! I have said it; he shall die! O Sarchedon, Sarchedon, I could not hate you so bitterly, did I not love you so well!"

And all the while not a quiver moved her eyelid, nor caused her jewelled hand to shake, while it smoothed the soft dark hair on her brow; the fair bosom itself, white, smooth, and polished, seemed also hard and motionless as marble. How different, the thought struck her, as she rose to depart--how different was that stately figure sweeping past the mirror from the flushed and panting woman, who, with shining eyes and heated cheeks, and dewy lips apart, had bent over the sleeping form of Sarchedon, to drop her love-token in the breast of him on whom she had set her heart! And yet, could it be because she had lost him, she asked herself, with fierce rage and longing, that he was a hundredfold more precious now?

There are women whom it is very dangerous to love, as in Eden there stood a tree that it was death to taste. But the forbidden fruit was gathered nevertheless; and these beauties seem to allure more than their share of victims, to win more than their natural meed of triumph.

Perhaps it is their destiny to avenge on mankind the common wrongs of their s.e.x, and to fall at last by the very weapons they have wielded so successfully in their march over a host of slain.

The old king's eyes were dim, and his senses failed him perceptibly, as life waned gradually, yet surely, like an unfed lamp, or a leaking vessel of wine. The pomp of royalty, the joy of battle, the feast, the pageant, the bright steel quivering in his grasp, the good horse bounding between his knees, what were they all now but shadows, memories, vague, idle dreams of the past? Was this the hand, he was fain to ask himself, that drew the heaviest bow in the broad land of Shinar, the arm that could drive a javelin through and through the lion's heart?

Yonder upon the wall was sculptured many a deed of prowess, many a n.o.ble triumph of warfare or the chase. Warriors in long array were marching to the battle or the siege; archers bent their bows, slingers and spearmen smote and slew and spared not; hors.e.m.e.n galloped, chariots rolled, and vultures soared over heaps of corpses. A bank was raised against a city, the battering-ram laid to its gates, while amidst a shower of arrows and javelins men were falling headlong from its walls to feed the fishes in the river below.

Again, linked in a cruel chain, the line of captives paced slowly by, bearing on their shoulders children, household stuff and goods, equally the spoil of their conqueror. The men marched sullenly, with downcast looks; the women beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and tore their hair. Here, with hook in his victim's nostrils, or knife to flay his naked flesh, a fierce warrior tortured some poor suppliant slave. There, proffering for a tribute the productions of his country--garments, gold, grain, animals wild and tame--some cringing wretch implored mercy at the feet of his executioner. But amongst all these scenes of strife, glory, and rapine, one figure still predominated, tall, fierce, and stately, the high tiara bound about its brows, bow and spear in hand; but, whether careering in the war-chariot over prostrate enemies, or sitting on the throne of state under the royal parasol, there was still poised above its head the winged mystery within a circle that heralded the sacred person of a king.

Could this be the same Ninus, he asked himself, whose limbs, so stiff and aching, now endured his silken robes with less patience than once they had carried his iron harness, whose head wavered and nodded on the lean neck that was once a tower of strength, proud, erect, colossal, like a column of stone?

And that winged figure in the circle. What was it? Did it really hover over them to protect the race of Nimrod in battle, or was this too a myth, a fable, a mere imposition of the priests? Should he know when he went to join his ancestors? and would it be long--how long!--ere he took his place among the stars?

There was not much to leave, after all! The wild bull had been driven from the plains, and could be found in no nearer fastness than the northern mountains now. He had himself exterminated the lion within the paradise round his palace, and it was weary work to ride in search of him over the scorching desert. Even the rush of battle was not what it used to be. Where were the men of the olden time, such as the champion he slew in Bactria, who stood two palms' breadths higher than the tallest warrior of either host, leaning on their spears to witness the single combat between a giant and a king? Or that fierce Ethiopian in the first Egyptian campaign, whom Pharaoh's chief counsellor had made captain of his armies for his matchless valour, and whose st.u.r.dy a.s.sault caused Ninus to reel and stagger where he stood, ere the swarthy swordsman went down under the buffets of the Great King, then in the vigour of his prime? But in his last expedition the armies of Egypt seemed to give way without a struggle before his spear, and it was hardly worth while to bid his chariot driver turn his hand into the press of battle. Even the wine of Eshcol was tasteless now; the wine of Damascus worse, and the feast had become loathsome to him as the fray.

He was weary of it all, could give it up without a regret, but for the queen.

Feeling, in spite of his angry protest against his own misgivings, that the link which bound them together grew slighter every day--that, like a frayed bowstring, it must snap at last, and leave her free,--the love in his fierce old heart began to be tinged with a savage and unreasoning jealousy, such as made him intolerant of every glance she directed at another, of every moment she was absent from his side. He had summoned her to his presence with all those forms and observances, the necessary ceremonial of royalty, which chafed him now more than ever; and in his impatience he bade the light-footed Sethos hurry to and fro to see if the queen and her train of attendants were not yet at the gates, although from where he sat in his throne of state he could command a n.o.ble approach, some furlongs in length, through double lines of colossal monsters, leading to the wide entrance of his palace.

A jewelled cup, filled to the brim, stood neglected at his hand. Ever and anon he stormed at Sethos because the wine had lost its flavour, and the queen tarried so long.

"I could put on and prove ten suits of harness," said the angry old monarch, "in less time than it takes a woman to tire her head! And yet one hair of that comely head is surely better worth preserving than the whole of this worn-out body of mine, that hath scarce strength left to draw a bow or empty a cup. Saw you not, Sethos, how fair she looked on the wall above us when we rode in, slender and pliant like a spear bending beneath a truss of forage? Who was attending her, boy? My memory halts and fails me now worse than a ham-strung steed."

"Kalmim, my lord," answered the cup-bearer, "with certain of the women, and Sarchedon."

He was too good a courtier to mention a.s.sarac, dreading the storm a priest's name was likely to bring down in the king's present mood.

"Sarchedon," repeated Ninus--"one of my own guards. A stout warrior enough, in the boy's play we call fighting now, and a comely youth--ruddy and comely as a maid. How came he absent from his duty in the ranks?"

"He had been sent by my lord from the host with the Great King's signet to the queen," was the reply. "He has remained in attendance on her ever since."

The old face turned gray with some hidden pang, and the blood-shot eyes rolled savage under their s.h.a.ggy brows.

"By the beard of Nimrod, I will take better order with these golden guards of mine!" exclaimed the king. "Do they think, because Pharaoh and his bowmen are no longer flying before my chariot, I have beaten my sword into a pruning-hook, and have forgotten how to mount a war-chariot or set a company in array? Where is this deserter now?"

"He is on duty at the great entrance," was the respectful answer. "My lord the king may see him from where he sits."

Sarchedon, in truth, with a handful of his comrades, was on guard at the palace gate, conspicuous even amongst those goodly warriors by the beauty of his person and the splendour of his attire.

Ere the king could summon him to his presence, his attention was diverted by the approach of his wife, followed by the women of her household; a fair and fragrant company, that wound through the avenues of winged bulls and colossal monsters, like a growth of wild flowers trailing across the surface of a rock.