"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 blushing in cl.u.s.ters of ripening grapes. A fountain scattered its silver spray in the sunshine, 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.

"There is danger also for _you_," she exclaimed, wringing her hands and sobbing in real perplexity. "No son of Ashur must leave the city to-night on pain of death; and yet, if the queen be not forewarned, nothing can save her from the vengeance of these blood-thirsty priests.

O Sethos, Sethos, did I not love you dearly, I had never trusted you with such a mission; yet how can I bear to send you out into the very jaws of death?"

But the cup-bearer's equanimity was proof even against so formidable a consideration. Accepting her confession of attachment with a good-humoured carelessness that at any other time would have cut her to the quick, he professed his readiness to incur any amount of peril so that he might preserve Semiramis from the threatened a.s.sault, and her son from the commission of so hideous an outrage. It was agreed, therefore, that he should escape from the city at all hazards, and make his way to the tent of the Great Queen, under cover of night. To leave Babylon through any one of her gates was impracticable, so closely were they guarded by the spearmen of Ninyas under a.s.sarac's orders; and it was only by watching a favourable opportunity during the darkest hours before the moon had risen, that Kalmim succeeded in letting her lover down from the wall by a rope, to dispatch him on his errand of life and death.

With characteristic coolness the cup-bearer received his instructions and embarked on his perilous enterprise; but Kalmim, though not a nerve failed her while, swinging in mid-air, his life depended on her steadiness of hand, had over-taxed her strength; for no sooner was the tension of the rope relaxed, and the form of Sethos lost in darkness as he sped from beneath the wall, than brain and sense gave way, leaving her pale, prostrate, and helpless on the ground.

CHAPTER LVIII

WHO IS ON MY SIDE?

Reconciled to their change of rulers under the crafty administration of a.s.sarac, careless who swayed the sceptre of Nimrod so long as wine was cheap and corn plentiful, the people of Babylon troubled themselves but little that the Armenian expedition seemed so tardy in returning; that Semiramis lay sick and dying, as they were told, among those northern mountains; or that Ninyas, whom they had been taught to believe a dutiful son abdicating in his mother's favour, reigned once more in her stead. Nevertheless, even among that fierce and fickle populace remained a leaven of the adoration she alone was able to inspire, and every child of Ashur at home or a-field felt his dignity, his self-love, and his nationality identified with the glory of the Great Queen.

They were stirred more than the eunuch expected by the news of her return; so that when it became known she was within bowshot of the wall, and about to reenter her own especial city, a.s.sarac's watchful eye discerned among the mult.i.tude those signs of discontent and restlessness which precede a tumult, as lowering clouds and whitened waves indicate the coming of a storm.

Groups were forming and dispersing in the street, women and children remained on the roofs and terraces of their houses, men looked expectant in each other's faces; while captains and warriors thronged the ramparts, as though an enemy were already at the gate.

Presently there came a hush and calm over all that vast a.s.semblage, succeeded by a shiver that stirred the rippling ma.s.s from edge to edge, when the tramp of horses, the roll of a chariot, broke on the still warm air; then, wild and fierce as a defiance, though loud, jubilant, and overwhelming, rose a mighty shout from Great Babylon to welcome back her queen.

a.s.sarac, eager and preoccupied, watching these signs of earth with more anxiety than he had ever read the stars, felt a momentary thrill of triumph in that very enthusiasm which, uncontrolled by his own skill, must herald his doom. For a moment, in the agony of conflicting feelings, he thought it would be well could he abandon every scheme of glory and greatness, forego pride, ambition, revenge, to die at the queen's feet, and be at rest. Gazing on her as she drew near in the chariot, this temporary weakness pa.s.sed away, leaving all that was evil in his nature to resume the ascendency once more. Could this be the proud Semiramis, the bright, the matchless, the beautiful? this sad and stately woman, pale with the long fatigue of woe, yet wearing in her desolation the same unrivalled beauty that had enhanced the glory of her pride? It seemed the ghost of her former self, thus bending its haughty head in acknowledgment of a nation's greeting, as she pa.s.sed within the gate--a spirit too sad to be of good, too fair to be of evil, sublimed and elevated by the prescience of its doom, catching and reflecting the spectral rays of a cold clear light that dawns beyond the grave.

Had she glowed, as was her wont, in all the flush and sparkle of her imperial charms, he could have found it in his heart to have spared her even then; for her dear sake, could have betrayed his followers, broken faith with his king, and forsworn himself before his G.o.d. But marking the sorrow she did not care to hide, and remembering its cause, his blood turned to gall, and he vowed with bitter oaths she should never light down from that chariot a living woman--no, not if he must hew her in pieces with his own hand.

But for the Great Queen to be forewarned was to be forearmed. In no extremity of sorrow nor of danger was it possible for her to lose that unconscious presence of mind, that instinctive power of combination, which had made her the conqueror of the world. Informed by Sethos of the conspiracy against her life, she had taken measures to defeat it wisely, calmly, promptly, yet deliberately, just as she would have sat down to besiege a fenced city, or gone out to meet an enemy in the open field.

While the eunuch waited to hem her in with his priests and spearmen, Semiramis, watching her opportunity, foiled him by the suddenness of her attack.

Halting her chariot in the open s.p.a.ce immediately within the gate, and taking advantage of the astonished silence which succeeded this unexpected stoppage, the Great Queen stood erect, flung her arms above her head, and cried with a loud voice, "Who is on my side?" Then a.s.sarac knew that by so much time as it took to speak those words, he was too late; and immediately before his eyes there pa.s.sed a darkness, that was as the shadow of death.

From her people, who loved the very ground she trod on, rose an outcry to which their previous shouts had been but a maiden's whisper compared to the roar of a beast of prey. Swords leaped from the scabbard, strong arms beat the air, dark eyes gleamed, and dark-curled beards bristled with fierce enthusiasm, eager hate, or wild desire for blood--archers and spearmen descended like a torrent from the wall, stout champions of a hundred battles came rushing and crowding through the streets. They gathered in swarms about their queen; they hemmed her in with a circle of steel; they swore, they wept, they gnashed their teeth, they implored, they adjured her only to point out an enemy, and they would tear him limb from limb.

Never before, through all the years she reigned in Babylon, had her power seemed so absolute, her dominion so secure; yet she knew, none better, that had her outcry been deferred by one short minute, had she halted her chariot but fifty paces farther on within the city, a score of blades would have carved away life and sorrow together from her aching heart, her cheek, now so cold and pale in its bereavement, would have been for ever cold and pale in death.

But not a shade of colour deepened that lovely cheek; no glitter of wrath, nor anxiety, nor even excitement of mortal strife, disturbed the scorn of those calm proud eyes, while she pointed to the eunuch, standing erect in his chariot over against her, and spoke in the clear full tones that had so often turned the tide of battle, like the trumpets of a succouring host.

"I have need of that man!" said she, stretching out her round white arm.

"Sons of Ashur, I bid you fall on a.s.sarac, priest of Baal. Slay him not, but bind him and bring him to me!"

He was no coward, yet he trembled in every joint. Perhaps the sound of her voice moved him no less than the yells of rage, the scowls of hatred, the flashes of steel that met him on every side, than the mighty rush that made at him, wave on wave, as the wolves of the forest pour on some wounded mountain bull to get him down.

He bore himself bravely, notwithstanding, calling priests and spearmen to his rescue, fitting an arrow to the bow he was never to draw again.

For a moment his white-clad form towered above the press and tumult, like a sail in a troubled sea, that disappears among the breakers ere a man has summoned courage for a second look. The priests of Baal could not resist the shock. In spite of numbers and discipline, the hired spearmen gave way. There was a rush, a recoil, an angry roar, a scuffle of feet, the crash of a broken chariot, the scream of a woman from the housetops, a horse reared high above their heads, the surging crowd divided, and on the open s.p.a.ce emerged some half a score a.s.syrian warriors, dragging in their midst a.s.sarac, priest of Baal, to the feet of the Great Queen.

Even now in this extremity of danger and disgrace, bruised, panting, dishevelled, doomed to certain death, he sought in the queen's eyes for something of sympathy, of recognition, of acknowledgment, that they had once looked kindly in his own. Of all he suffered, this was perhaps the keenest pang--that on the fair face he had loved, and hated, and worshipped so madly, there showed no more of anger than of pity.

Immovable, impenetrable, but for her beauty she might have been an image of Nisroch the avenger, G.o.d of retribution and of fate.