Here she was tended carefully during the night, its gigantic owner stepping softly to its entrance at intervals to a.s.sure himself of her state. With morning she was able to rise, and as her faculties resumed their vigour, she realised the whole force of the blow that had fallen.

Ishtar's nature, however, was one which is only found amongst women.

Shrinking instinctively from everything approaching to pain or danger--fond, trusting, sensitive, and docile--she could yet brave and endure all things on behalf of those she loved; identifying herself so wholly with their welfare as to forget her own fears, her own weakness, and combining with the martyr's patient courage that cheerful energy, which, looking only to duty, overcomes, by sheer persistence, the difficulties it ignores. Sorrow might bend, but could not break her spirit. Like certain flowers which, tread them down as you will, lift their fair heads directly the crushing footstep has pa.s.sed on, it rose, for all its meekness, the more invincible, because of its misfortunes.

Satisfied that Sarchedon was fairly gone, she set herself the one single task of recovering him. Was he sold into captivity? He must be bought back. Was he lost? He must be found. That should now be her sole object in life; and no sooner did she feel strong enough to stand upright than she began her work without wasting another moment in consideration or delay.

Seeking the chief of the Anakim, whom she found without the encampment leading his mare to water, she placed herself in his path, standing erect and motionless till he approached. Then she rent her garment to the hem, and, lifting a handful of sand, poured it over her head.

"The servant of my lord is in sore distress and perplexity," said she: "to whom should she come for help, but to him of whose bread and salt she has eaten within the shadow of his tents?"

The mare was rubbing her head caressingly against his breast; he pushed her away, extending both arms in token of sincerity, and replied, "All that I have, my life, and the lives of my tribe, herds and horses, bows and spears, are at the disposal of my guest."

"My lord speaks well," answered Ishtar. "But words are vain. Like the flight of a bird through the air, they leave no track. It is the steed and the camel that stamp their mark on the sand."

"The tongues of the Anakim are small and feeble," said he, "their arms long and weighty. Desire of me what you will. It is a gift, before it is asked."

"What have you done with the a.s.syrian?" she murmured eagerly. "How fares he? Whither is he gone? You will not deceive me!"

"You are my guest," returned the chief, "and I _cannot_ deceive you. The a.s.syrian is sold into captivity; ere now he has journeyed many a furlong over the plain towards the city of the Great King."

"Is he, then, bound for Babylon?" she asked, with something of hope rising in her eyes.

"I know not, of a surety," was his answer. "Yet I think these northern traders, possessing so goodly a captive, would hardly pa.s.s within a few days' journey of the great city, and fail to visit its market. They will treat him well, and if he finds friends to redeem him, he may soon be free. No doubt in Babylon he will sell for nearly a talent of gold, and we let him go at a hundred shekels of silver! Half the price of a camel!

Truly there is injustice in the desert as in the city!"

This reflection was unheard by Ishtar, being indeed but the echo of the chief's own thoughts, and spoken aside, as it were, into the ear of his mare.

There seemed a vague hope, then, of seeing Sarchedon once again. The girl seized her protector's hand, and, stooping but a little, pressed it against her forehead.

"You will take me under safe conduct to the gates of Babylon?" said she.

He pondered, looking very grave.

"Will you not abide with us in our tents?" he asked. "Will you be cooped up in the walls of a city, when you might roam over the desert free as the wild a.s.s on the plain? Take thought, damsel, once more, as a man fits a new bowstring when his arrow has missed its aim."

"Had I a quiverful," she replied, "I can see but one mark for them all!"

"You are my guest," said he stoutly; "and go where you will, it is my duty to speed you safely on your way. You shall ride this my own mare, the most precious of my possessions, and Lotus-flower, swift, easy, gentle, will bear you like flowing water. But I must leave you, damsel, under cover of night, in the vineyards that fringe the great city. If, for every horseman who leaps to the saddle when I shake my spear, I could muster a score, then should you enter Babylon through a breach of fifty cubits in the wall. But a wolf or a jackal would meet with more mercy than a child of Anak from the a.s.syrians when they set upon him, a hundred to one! I have spoken."

Their journey was begun accordingly. Ishtar, mounted on the chief's favourite mare, led by its owner, and guarded by a score of the stalwart sons of Anak, journeyed in security and comfort through the wilderness, until they reached its confines, and entered a territory over which Ninus, and more especially Semiramis, had thrown the protection of their severe and pitiless laws. Here they lay hidden by day, advancing swiftly and silently under cover of night; and Ishtar could not withhold her admiration from the extraordinary skill and sagacity shown by these professional spoilers in concealing their encampment on their march. On such expeditions as the present, they were careful to ride their mares; for these animals, docile and gentle, either loose or picketed, never disclosed their presence by those paroxysms of neighing and screaming to which their less tractable brothers were exceedingly p.r.o.ne.

At length, soon after dawn, Ishtar found herself alone with the chief at an easy distance from the great city. Taking the a.s.s of a poor peasant, who dared not even protest against the spoliation, he had dismounted his guest from the high-bred mare, and placed her on the humbler animal's back. The troop had been left many a league in the desert. Their leader, at the utmost personal risk, was within a short ride of Babylon. It was time to depart, and thus he bade his charge farewell:

"May thy corn never fail nor thy well run dry! May thy vines yield a hundredfold, and men-children play round thy feet! Thou camest into my tent like the breeze from the mountain. Though the breeze pa.s.seth on, the tent is glad because of the coolness it hath left. The desert is boundless, and we scour it far and wide. Behold! Where rides a son of Anak, there hast thou a brother. I have spoken."

He swung himself on the mare from which he had lately dismounted, caught Lotus-flower by the bridle, and sped away like the wind.

She watched the gigantic form till it disappeared amongst the dust raised by those two fleet animals, of which toil and privation seemed in no way to diminish the mettle or speed; then she looked towards Great Babylon, towering in state, with her glittering pinnacles, her flashing gates, her frowning, forbidding walls, and felt that she had lost a friend.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

FORLORN

She had lost a friend, and where was there another left? Her father slain, her home despoiled, the man she loved sold into slavery and carried she knew not where: could human lot be more lonely, more hopeless? Yet she never lost heart. Plodding on in lowly guise, riding that humble animal, there was yet dominant in her tender frame a hopeful courage, such as does not always animate the warrior in his chariot, a spirit of self-reliance and self-devotion that would have enn.o.bled a sceptred monarch on his throne.

Reaching the well-remembered spot where she used to watch for the return of Arbaces, where she had first met Sarchedon riding home with tidings from the Great King, it was no wonder that she saw the Well of Palms through a mist of tears.

Nevertheless she dashed them hastily from her eyes, and summoned all her energies, when she became aware of a troop of hors.e.m.e.n moving rapidly on her track. To be discovered by these, she knew too well, would entail the risk of insult, perhaps injury, and the certainty of delay. While they were yet afar off, she leaped from the a.s.s, and, taking advantage of her familiarity with the locality, concealed herself behind a broken wall that skirted the fountain, while the animal jogged leisurely home, to the relief and comfort of its disconsolate owner.

So near the great city, a solitary wayfarer was an object of little interest. She soon perceived she had escaped observation by the movements of the party, who galloped on towards Babylon without diverging to visit her hiding-place. She determined, however, to remain concealed yet a while longer, and had no cause to regret her caution, when a single horseman, detaching himself from the rest, approached the marble basin of the Well of Palms, as if to water his good white steed, ere he pa.s.sed on.

Half a bowshot off, she recognised the animal with a start of fear, suspense, surprise, sweetened by a thrill of love. She could not be deceived: it was Merodach! That spotless frame, those glancing limbs, that gallant bearing, could belong to no other animal in the land of Shinar; and where Merodach bent to the rein, it seemed cruelly hard Sarchedon's should not be the hand to guide.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE COULD NOT BE DECEIVED: IT WAS MERODACH!"]

Watching with fond and eager eyes, she turned sick and faint, while she crouched down, like some poor hunted fawn, into her shelter; for on its back, soothing the good horse with many a gentle word and tender caress, sat the form of him whom most she feared and hated in the bounds of earth. Yes; the beautiful face she seemed yet to behold lulled on her own breast, in flushed and drunken sleep, was surely there, within a few paces, gazing dreamily into the distance; while Merodach, scarcely wetting his dark muzzle in the water, pawed and snorted in restless impatience to rejoin the companions he had left.

What was Ninyas doing here? Had the prince pursued her from Ascalon? was he on her track, and searching for her even now? could she escape him, neither in the city nor the plain? All these thoughts whirled through her brain, while she lay still as death, scarcely daring to breathe, peering at her enemy through a crevice of the crumbling wall with pale face and wild dilated eyes.

The horseman seemed moody and abstracted--strangely lavish of caresses for his steed, strangely indifferent to the heat of the sun, the ripple of the fountain, everything but his own engrossing thoughts. Without dismounting, he sat wrapped in meditation for a s.p.a.ce of time that appeared interminable to the watcher, ere he woke up, as it were, with a start, and, curbing his beast's impatience, rode away at a walk to enter the city by a different gate from that which the party he had left were about to pa.s.s through.

Emerging from her shelter, though not until the white horse and his rider had disappeared in the distance, Ishtar felt sadly perplexed. To abide by her present hiding-place would be imprudent in the highest degree, for the Well of Palms was the resort of every traveller who approached Babylon on its southern side. If she retraced her steps, and fled once more into the wilderness, she must perish from thirst and fatigue; for to be afoot in the desert without a camel was to be adrift on the sea without a boat; and she had even abandoned the honest plodding beast that brought her thus far after she left her gigantic protector at sunrise. She almost wished now she had remained in their tents with the Anakim, intrusting to those tameless denizens of the waste her own safety and the task of eventually recovering her lover.

She saw no other course left but to trudge wearily on, and pa.s.s, if possible, unnoticed through the gate of Babylon, there to seek high and low some real friend, who, for her father's sake, would give her bread to eat, a roof to cover her, and aid in the one object of her life.

Wrapping her veil closely round her, counterfeiting as well as she could the gait and bearing of a woman advanced in years and of humble grade, Ishtar toiled slowly forward, carrying indeed a sorely laden heart into that glittering capital of splendour, luxury, and sin.

The troop that had so disquieted this forlorn and friendless fugitive trampled bravely on, raising clouds of dust, through which flashed the magnificence of their arms and apparel, as a beautiful face sparkles and blushes through its tawny veil. Without waiting for the detached horseman, they hastened towards the city, galloping, it seemed, from sheer exuberance of spirits rather than from any actual necessity for speed. The princ.i.p.al figure in the group, to whom the others turned obsequiously for guidance, was a.s.sarac; and the eunuch's bearing, as he managed his steed with the graceful ease of an a.s.syrian born, was dignified and commanding in the extreme.

By his side rode Beladon, laughing, talking, gesticulating, proud to show his countrymen that a priest of Baal could back a horse and bend a bow with the best of them--that if his sacred character debarred him from seeking fame in the war-chariot, he was yet a true child of Ashur for skill and daring in the chase.

His eye gleamed, his cheek glowed; there were stains of blood on his linen garments; and from his horse's chest dangled the muzzle and fangs of a full-grown lion, that had fallen since sunrise to his bow.

He was never weary of detailing this achievement, dwelling in boundless satisfaction on his own success and the formidable size of his prey.

a.s.sarac listened, with his usual imperturbable smile.

"I called on Baal," said Beladon, "and urged my good horse to his speed; for already the lion was scarce the cast of a javelin from the reeds, and had he reached his thicket, I must have gone in and finished him on foot. By the belt of Nimrod, I can tell you it was no comely face he showed me when I came up with him. His eyes glared like the carbuncles on the palace-gate, and he bared all these fangs that hang here at my horse's breast, as who should say, Behold! a score of proven warriors, and every one an enemy! I drew my bow thus--to my very ear--and as he rose on his hind-legs, I pierced him straight and true right through his open mouth, then turned my hand and galloped off across the plain, lest he should rise up ere life was extinct, and tear my good horse limb from limb in his death-pang."

"So the spearmen gathered round and slew him," observed a.s.sarac.

"The spearmen gathered round and slew him," repeated the other, "after they found him disabled by the might of this right arm. When I turned back and got down to measure his carca.s.s, there was my shaft driven through the roof of his mouth, cleaving his very skull."

"Was there not an arrow in his body when he fell?" asked the eunuch.