Beladon coloured and looked vexed.

"The king had, indeed, loosed a shaft at the beast when first we roused him," said he. "Doubtless, the royal hand never misses its mark."

"Had you come between Ninus and his prey in the olden time," observed the other, "not all the host of heaven could have turned aside his wrath. He would have impaled you before set of sun."

"He loved the chase dearly," answered Beladon, "as did the Great Queen, and Ninyas too, till lately. What has come over him now? He leaps to the saddle at dawn--hasty, eager, excited, as though every beast of chase between the rivers must be swept away forthwith, slaying and sparing not--then, after one fierce dash at the wild-bull, one savage thrust at the lion, leaves his followers, as he left us even now, to ride slowly home, sad, moody, and alone. Always on the same steed too. It seems as though he cared for nothing under heaven but the white horse with the wild eyes."

"'Tis a good beast," answered the other, scrutinising the face of his follower, "and worthy to bear the person of a king."

"A good beast indeed," said Beladon simply, "and belonged once to as good a warrior as ever lifted spear or emptied wine-cup. It seems but yesterday that Sarchedon brought back the Great King's signet, and made his night's lodging with us in the temple of our G.o.d. What has become of him now? I would we knew!"

"I would we knew!" repeated a.s.sarac in a careless tone, as if he only echoed the other's sentiments, not as if he would have given wealth untold, deemed no waste of blood or treasure too lavish, for the information.

Reining their horses to a walk, the gaudy troop had already pa.s.sed through one of her gates, and entered the crowded streets of Babylon.

Thinking their king was amongst the party, his people gathered round in considerable numbers, and appeared disappointed to miss the beautiful face and form they so seldom looked on now. It was a common remark amongst all cla.s.ses, that the wild, free-living, free-spoken young prince had become strangely solemn and reserved since his accession to the throne. There was far less revelry in the palace than in the days of stern old Ninus. His son seldom rode abroad through the streets or showed himself to his people. The shadow of the priests of Baal seemed over the monarch, and it was known that a.s.sarac had great influence in the royal counsels. As is usual in such cases, the favourite came in for a larger share of obloquy than his lord.

Nevertheless, there is always enough popularity about a gay cavalcade to insure its welcome in a pleasure-loving city like Babylon. a.s.sarac could not but observe that, although there were dark frowns and angry glances in the outskirts of the crowd, the nearer spectators shouted their welcome cordially enough, pressing in to kiss the trappings of his horse, the hem of his garment, with all the transitory enthusiasm of their impressionable nature.

"Tis an easy people to rule!" whispered Beladon in the ear of his superior. "Believers in Baal, and a thousand G.o.ds besides; mark the reverence they pay your sacred character. Surely the sons of Ashur love the linen vestment of the priest."

"Were not their shouts yet louder, their welcome kinder, to the scarlet and steel of the Great King's hors.e.m.e.n, when he marched in from Egypt?"

returned a.s.sarac. "Trust me, Beladon, they bend lowest when they carry the heaviest load. They love deepest where most they have to fear."

"And they fear Baal," said the other.

"Only because they know not Nisroch," replied a.s.sarac. "G.o.d or man can be great for this false fickle nation only until there cometh a greater than he. Do they not offer homage willingly to Abitur of the Mountains?

And why? Because they dread his power, not knowing its nature nor its extent. Their ruler should indeed be a G.o.d in all but benevolence. He must have no natural sympathies, no human weaknesses, no remorse, no pity, and, above all, no fear."

"There is but one man in the land of Shinar who is above and without these softer failings of his kind. May I sit on his right hand henceforward, as to-day!" was Beladon's insidious reply.

Though half despising the flattery of his follower, a.s.sarac smiled. Yet it did not escape the other's observation, ever on the alert, that in the eunuch's smile lurked an expression of weariness and sorrow almost amounting to pain.

"The king has faithful followers," said he "and wise counsellors--may he live for ever!"

The crowd hemmed them in very close; his last sentence, though uttered in a low voice, was caught up and repeated by a thousand tongues.

Through the noise and confusion that prevailed, only a.s.sarac could hear the whisper of his subordinate,

"Baal is great. What are kings and princes compared to the mighty a.s.syrian G.o.d? Let Baal rule alone in Babylon and through all the land of Shinar; while a.s.sarac, the interpreter of his will to the people, twines the sacred lotus round the royal sceptre, he needs but stretch out his hand to take."

"As the serpent of Ashtaroth twines round a man's heart!" answered the other. And Beladon, looking in his face, marvelled to see it drawn and white, as of one who strives with an agony of mortal pain.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE LION'S CUB

It was but according to an established principle of nature and general law of race, that the descendants of Nimrod should entertain a keen predilection for the chase. In this particular Ninyas, notwithstanding habits of luxury and effeminacy at home, formed no exception to the princes of his line. He was never so happy as when urging a good horse to speed after the scudding ostrich, loosing a grim leopard from its leash to spring on the fleet antelope, tracking with fierce and heavy hounds the footprints of some lordly lion on the desert sand, or watching with eager eyes his long-winged falcons wheeling and stooping in the desert sky. Skilled in bodily exercises, sitting his horse with the graceful ease of constant practice, flushed, panting, joyous, he rode to and fro, beautiful as a woman and radiant as a G.o.d.

After that night of revelry, on which he so lowered the pride of Rekamat, to be in turn foiled by Ishtar, it was not strange that this wayward prince should wake from a feverish sleep in the very worst of humours; but having relieved his irritated feelings by condemning the captain of the gate to a painful death, and settled himself in the saddle for a long day's pleasure on the plain, he felt sufficiently comforted to enter with considerable zest into the amus.e.m.e.nt of the hour.

While his horse was fresh, he had succeeded in approaching within bowshot of some wild a.s.ses to wound one of the herd wantonly and uselessly, with an arrow from his own royal quiver. He had fairly ridden down and secured an ostrich of unusual plumage, breaking the bird's long legs by a blow from the club, which he flung while galloping at speed with marvellous dexterity. His leopard had not failed to strike an antelope at the first pounce; his hawks never once missed their quarry, nor delayed returning obedient to the lure; moreover, he had brought an old male lion to bay, and, riding in on him, wounded the monster so severely with his spear, that although it had crawled for refuge into certain inaccessible rocks, it must have died before night; and as none of his servants had come up to help him, the glory was exclusively his own.

Accordingly, when he paced back into Ascalon at sundown, weary and dishevelled, yet happy and triumphant, he felt at peace with mankind; revenge seemed hateful, anger impossible, and all he thirsted for was a cup of wine.

Dismounting within the gate of the fortress, it was served as his foot touched the ground. Then he bethought him of the fugitive from Egypt, to whom he had not yet granted audience, and desired that this visitor should be brought into his presence forthwith. Sethos, in his dark and cheerless apartment, scooped out of the very rock on which the fortress stood, received such a summons with considerable dismay. The care taken to secure him, the dreary nature of his lodging, the coa.r.s.e food brought by his only visitor, a spearman, belted with bow and quiver, grim, silent, and armed to the teeth, denoted that his offence, whatever it might be, was considered of exceeding gravity, and that in all likelihood his imprisonment would soon be terminated by death.

Bold and joyous as was his nature, the cup-bearer followed his conductor with a sad brow and a heavy heart. He knew the prince's character well, and a peal of laughter from his lord, while he bent low at the royal feet, served by no means to allay his fears.

"So I have kept him in ward from sunrise to sunset," exclaimed Ninyas, shaking his sides and wiping his eyes, in the exuberance of his mirth, "little guessing who he was! The Great King's cup-bearer, the curled and scented ornament of all the a.s.syrian host, the daintiest flower in the whole of dainty Babylon; for whom the royal banquet was but a coa.r.s.e meal of broken meat; the royal court, blazing with a thousand torches, but a dim and dismal den. And I ordered him bitter water and bread of affliction; shut him up in a stone cell without a breath of air or a gleam of light! By the beard of Ashur, I shall never recover it. O Sethos, Sethos! had I known this morning it was you, I could not have sat my horse for laughing all day. And think what a spoil we should have lost! Five antelopes, man; an ostrich as tall as my spear; scores of all the birds of heaven; and a lion, though we brought him not in, so tawny that he seemed almost black, old, and fierce, like Nimrod himself, big as a wild bull, and with fangs more than a span long. By the quiver of Merodach, I have not taken such a prey since we hunted that pleasant time in the northern mountains, before the Egyptian campaign!"

Ninyas seemed in high good-humour. Sethos, raising his eyes to look in the prince's joyous face, knew that the bitterness of death was past.

"His servant has received many good gifts from my lord," was the conventional reply. "Shall he not accept evil without complaint? There can be no injustice between a master and his slave."

"But how come you here?" asked Ninyas, ignoring, from force of habit, the accustomed formalities of the other. "They tell me you rode in with half-a-score of bowmen, pursued by the hosts of Egypt--chariots and hors.e.m.e.n, banner, bow, and spear. I would have loosed a shaft or two amongst them nevertheless, had they been a hundred to one."

"My lord speaks well," answered Sethos proudly. "His servant slew their leader with his own hand ere he turned rein, and fled to seek shelter with my lord!"

"I would I had been at your back!" exclaimed the prince, kindling. "I grew weary unto death of their country, I own, when we rode there under the banner of Ashur, and I never wished to set eyes on one of their tawny faces or their supple backs again. But to have them brought here at bowshot distance, without any trouble, like a troop of wild a.s.ses or a herd of deer! Ah, Sethos, you were always a favourite of the G.o.ds--Baal, Nisroch, Merodach, and above all, Ashtaroth, Queen of Light!"

"My lord gives praise to his servant out of his own bounty," answered the other. "Hath Ninyas ever yet been known to come down from saddle or war-chariot without taking the first spoil? And as for Ashtaroth--surely, fairer game than feeds in field or forest falls to him, even before he lifts his bow."

The prince loved flattery dearly, though he had wit to despise the flatterer. He smiled well pleased.

"I cannot blame the G.o.ds," said he; "they have served me better than ever I served _them_. Do you remember the old lion we slew in the mountains ten days' march from Nineveh, when you drove my chariot up to the axles through the marsh? That was a prey worth the taking of a king.

How he grinned and roared, and fought, with my javelin through his shoulder, and my arrow in his neck! Had he not torn at the chariot-wheel with claws and fangs, in blind senseless rage, we had hardly brought his dark skin home to make a foot-cloth for the Great Queen. Believe me, man, the beast I slew to-day might have been whelped in the same litter--as old, as savage, flecked in the jaws with grey, leaner perhaps, and a thought longer--say a span--from muzzle to tail. I am no boaster, Sethos; but surely old Nimrod himself can scarce have won n.o.bler triumphs over the fiercest beasts of chase than mine!"

"My lord hath spoken," answered Sethos. "Is he not unrivalled in war, in the chase, in love?"

The last word seemed to touch some painful chord, rouse some bitter memory in his listener. The prince's handsome face reddened, and then turned pale. When he spoke again, it was the cup-bearer's turn to feel discomposed; for the voice of Ninyas sounded cold and hard, his manner had become stern and almost severe.

The lion's cub so far resembled his fierce old father, that his mood would change on occasion at a moment's notice from joyous good-humour and hilarity to a paroxysm of wrath, all the more dangerous that it was so sudden and unexpected.

With Ninus, however, such an access of pa.s.sion betrayed itself in uncontrolled violence of language and gesture; while his son, on the contrary, concealed his feelings under a smooth brow and calm demeanour, far more implacable than the savage outbreak of his sire. The one would order an offender to be taken out and strangled on the spot, but forgive him perhaps before the fatal covering had been drawn round his head. The other spoke softly, nodded courteously, pa.s.sed sentence of death in a whisper, and remitted it for no consideration of justice or mercy whatsoever.

But the prince loved pleasure even more than cruelty, and was therefore popular enough with the mult.i.tude, who were willing to give his beautiful face and graceful form credit for every royal virtue; believing no evil of one who rode abroad so gallantly in such shining raiment, sat so long at the feast among brave men and beautiful women, drank so deep, laughed so loud, and looked so fair, garland on head and wine-cup in hand.

"You have not yet accounted for your presence in Ascalon," said he coldly.

And Sethos, knowing well that he must trim his sails according as the wind blew, answered with the gravity of some high official making a report:

"In order to fulfil the mission of my lord, I was compelled to journey swiftly, tarrying nowhere by the way. Therefore were our horses somewhat faint and wearied, or we had laughed to scorn the speed of the Egyptian, flinging sand like the wild a.s.s in their faces who pursue."

"You should have halted and fought it out," observed Ninyas.

"The emba.s.sy of my lord spoke indeed of defiance," replied Sethos; "but his servant was accompanied by scarce a score of hors.e.m.e.n. The hosts of Egypt swarmed like locusts in a south wind. Had the city of refuge stood but one furlong farther off, our bones had lain bleaching in the desert, or we had been again brought into the terrible presence of Pharaoh ere now."