Four days after the king's departure, Nehushta was wandering in the
gardens as the sun was going down, according to her daily custom. There
was a place she loved well--a spot where the path widened to a circle,
round which the roses grew, thick and fragrant with the breath of the
coming summer, and soft green shrubs and climbing things that twisted
their tender arms about the myrtle trees. The hedge was so high that it
cut off all view of the gardens beyond, and only the black north-western
hills could just be seen above the mass of shrubbery; beyond the
mountains and all over the sky, the glow of the setting sun spread like
a rosy veil; and the light tinged the crests of the dark hills and
turned the myrtle leaves to a strange colour, and gilded the highest
roses to a deep red gold.
The birds were all singing their evening song in loud, happy chorus, as
only Eastern birds can sing; the air was warm and still, and the tiny
gnats chased each other with lightning quickness in hazy swarms
overhead, in the reflected glow.
Nehushta loved the little open space, for it was there that, a year ago,
she had sent for Zoroaster to come to her that she might tell him she
knew the truth at last. She stood still and listened to the singing of
the birds, gazing upwards at the glowing sky, where the red was fast
turning to purple; she breathed in the warm air and sighed softly;
wishing, as she wished every night, that the sunset might fade to
darkness, and there might be no morning for her any more.
She had lived almost entirely alone since Darius had gone to Shushan;
she avoided Atossa, and she made no effort to see Zoroaster, who was
entirely absorbed by the management of the affairs of the state. In the
king's absence there were no banquets, as there used to be when he was
in the palace, and the two queens were free to lead whatever life seemed
best to them, independently of each other and of the courtiers. Atossa
had chosen to shut herself up in the seclusion of her own apartments,
and Nehushta rarely left her own part of the palace until the evening.
But when the sun was low, she loved to linger among the roses in the
garden, till the bright shield of the moon was high in the east, or till
the faint stars burned in their full splendour, and the nightingales
began to call and trill their melancholy song from end to end of the
sweet valley.
So she stood on this evening, looking up into the sky, and her slaves
waited her pleasure at a little distance. But while she gazed, she heard
quick steps along the walk, and the slave-women sprang aside to let some
one pass. Nehushta turned and found herself face to face with Atossa,
who stood before her, wrapped in a dark mantle, a white veil of Indian
gauze wound about her head, and half-concealing her face. It was a year
since they had met in private, and Nehushta drew herself suddenly to her
height, and the old look of scorn came over her dark features. She would
have asked haughtily what brought Atossa there, but the fair queen was
first in her speech. There was hardly even the affectation of
friendliness in her tones, as she stood there alone and unattended,
facing her enemy.
"I came to ask if you wished to go with me," said Atossa.
"Where? Why should I go with you?"
"I am weary of the palace. I think I will go to Shushan to be nearer the
king. To-night I will rest at the fortress."
Nehushta stared coldly at the fair woman, muffled in her cloak and veil.
"What is it to me whether you go to the ends of the earth, or whether
you remain here?" she asked.
"I wished to know whether you desired to accompany me, else I should not
have asked you the question. I feared that you might be lonely here in
Stakhar--will you not come?"
"Again I say, why do you ask me? What have I to do with you?" returned
Nehushta, drawing her mantle about her as though to leave Atossa.
"If the king were here, he would bid you go," said Atossa, looking
intently upon her enemy.
"It is for me to judge what the king would wish me to do--not for you.
Leave me in peace. Go your way if you will--it is nothing to me."
"You will not come?" Atossa's voice softened and she smiled serenely.
Nehushta turned fiercely upon her.
"No! If you are going--go! I want you not!"
"You are glad I am going, are you not?" asked Atossa, gently.
"I am glad--with a gladness only you can know. I would you were already
gone!"
"You rejoice that I leave you alone with your lover. It is very
natural----"
"My lover!" cried Nehushta, her wrath rising and blazing in her eyes.
"Ay, your lover! the thin, white-haired priest, that once was
Zoroaster--your old lover--your poor old lover!"
Nehushta steadied herself for a moment. She felt as though she must tear
this woman in pieces. But she controlled her anger by a great effort,
though she was nearly choking as she drew herself up and answered.
"I would that the powers of evil, of whom you are, might strangle the
thrice-accursed lie in your false throat!" she said, in low fierce
tones, and turned away.
Still Atossa stood there, smiling as ever. Nehushta looked back as she
reached the opposite end of the little plot.
"Are you not yet gone? Shall I bid my slaves take you by the throat and
force you from me?" But, as she spoke, she looked beyond Atossa, and saw
that a body of dark men and women stood in the path. Atossa had not come
unprotected.
"I see you are the same foolish woman you ever were," answered the older
queen. Just then, a strange sound echoed far off among the hills above,
strange and far as the scream of a distant vulture sailing its mate to
the carrion feast--an unearthly cry that rang high in the air from side
to side of the valley, and struck the dark crags and doubled in the
echo, and died away in short, faint pulsations of sound upon the
startled air.
Nehushta started slightly. It might have been the cry of a wolf, or of
some wild beast prowling upon the heights, but she had never heard such
a sound before. But Atossa showed no surprise, and her smile returned
to her lips more sweetly than ever--those lips that had kissed three
kings, and that had never spoken truly a kind or a merciful word to
living man, or child, or woman.
"Farewell, Nehushta," she said, "if you will not come, I will leave you
to yourself--and to your lover. I daresay he can protect you from harm.
Heard you that sound? It is the cry of your fate. Farewell, foolish
girl, and may every undreamed-of quality of evil attend you to your
dying day----"
"Go!" cried Nehushta, turning and pointing to the path with a gesture of
terrible anger. Atossa moved back a little.
"It is no wonder I linger awhile--I thought you were past suffering. If
I had time, I might yet find some way of tormenting you--you are very
foolish----"
Nehushta walked rapidly forward upon her, as though to do her some
violence with her own hands. But Atossa, as she gave way before the
angry Hebrew woman, drew from beneath her mantle the Indian knife she
had once taken from her. Nehushta stopped short, as she saw the bright
blade thrust out against her bosom. But Atossa held it up one moment,
and then threw it down upon the grass at her feet.
"Take it!" she cried, and in her voice, that had been so sweet and
gentle a moment before, there suddenly rang out a strange defiance and a
bitter wrath. "Take what is yours--I loathe it, for it smells of
you--and you, and all that is yours, I loathe and hate and scorn!"
She turned with a quick movement and disappeared amongst her slaves,
who closed in their ranks behind her, and followed her rapidly down the
path. Nehushta remained standing upon the grass, peering after her
retreating enemy through the gloom; for the glow had faded from the
western sky while they had been speaking, and it was now dusk.
Suddenly, as she stood, almost transfixed with the horror of her fearful
anger, that strange cry rang again through the lofty crags and crests of
the mountains, and echoed and died away.
Nehushta's slave-women, who had hung back in fear and trembling during
the altercation between the two queens, came forward and gathered about
her.
"What is it?" asked the queen in a low voice, for her own heart beat
with the anticipation of a sudden danger. "It is the cry of your fate,"
Atossa had said--verily it sounded like the scream of a coming death.
"It is the Druksh of the mountains!" said one.
"It is the howling of wolves," said another, a Median woman from the
Zagros mountains.
"The war-cry of the children of Anak is like that," said a little Syrian
maid, and her teeth chattered with fear.
As they listened, crouching and pressing about their royal mistress in
their terror, they heard below in the road, the sound of horses and men
moving quickly past the foot of the gardens. It was Atossa and her
train, hurrying along the highway in the direction of the fortress.
Nehushta suddenly pushed the slaves aside, and fled down the path
towards the palace, and the dark women hurried after. One of them
stooped and picked up the Indian knife and hid it in her bosom as she
ran.
The whole truth had flashed across Nehushta's mind in an instant. Some
armed force was collecting upon the hills to descend in a body upon the
palace, to accomplish her destruction. Atossa had fled to a place of
safety, after enjoying the pleasure of tormenting her doomed enemy to
the last moment, well knowing that no power would induce Nehushta to
accompany her. But one thought filled Nehushta's mind in her
instantaneous comprehension of the truth; she must find Zoroaster, and
warn him of the danger. They would have time to fly together, yet.
Atossa must have known how to time her flight, since the plot was hers,
and she had not yet been many minutes upon the road.
Through the garden she ran, and up the broad steps to the portico.
Slaves were moving about under the colonnade, leisurely lighting the
great torches that burned there all night. They had not heard the
strange cries from the hills; or, hearing only a faint echo, had paid no
attention to the sound.
Nehushta paused, breathless with running. As she realised the quiet that
reigned in the palace, where the slaves went about their duties as
though nothing had occurred, or were likely to occur, it seemed to her
as though she must have been dreaming. It was impossible that if there
were any real danger, it should not have become known at least to some
one of the hundreds of slaves who thronged the outer halls and
corridors. Moreover there were numerous scribes and officers connected
with the government; some few nobles whom Darius had left behind when he
went to Shushan; there were their wives and families residing in various
parts, of the palace and in the buildings below it, and there was a
strong detachment of Persian guards. If there were danger, some one must
have known it.
She did not know that at that moment the inhabitants of the lower palace
were already alarmed, while some were flying, leaving everything behind,
in their haste to reach the fortress higher up the valley. Everything
seemed quiet where she was, and she determined to go alone in search of
Zoroaster, without raising any alarm. Just as she entered the doorway of
the great hall, she heard the cry again echoing behind her through the
valley. It was as much as she could do to control the terror that again
took hold of her at the dreaded sound, as she passed the files of bowing
slaves, and went in between the two tall spearmen who guarded the inner
entrance, and grounded their spears with military precision as she went
by.
She had one slave whom she trusted more than the rest. It was the little
Syrian maid, who was half a Hebrew.
"Go," she said quickly, in her own tongue. "Go in one direction and I
will go in another, and search out Zoroaster, the high priest, and bring
him to my chamber. I also will search, but if I find him not, I will
wait for thee there."
The dark girl turned and ran through the halls, swift as a startled
fawn, to fulfil her errand, and Nehushta went another way upon her
search. She was ashamed to ask for Zoroaster. The words of her enemy
were still ringing in her ears--"alone with your lover;" it might be the
common talk of the court for all she knew. She went silently on her way.
She knew where Zoroaster dwelt. The curtain of his simple chamber was
thrown aside and a faint light burned in the room. It was empty; a
scroll lay open upon the floor beside a purple cushion, as he had left
it, and his long white mantle lay tossed upon the couch which served him
for a bed.
She gazed lovingly for one moment into the open chamber, and then went
on through the broad corridor, dimly lighted everywhere with small oil
lamps. She looked into the council chamber and it was deserted. The long
rows of double seats were empty, and gleamed faintly in the light. High
upon the dais at the end, a lamp burned above the carved chair of ivory
and gold, whereon the king sat when the council was assembled. There was
no one there. Farther on, the low entrance to the treasury was guarded
by four spearmen, whose arms clanged upon the floor as the queen passed.
But she saw that the massive bolts and the huge square locks upon them
were in their places. There was no one within. In the colonnade beyond,
a few nobles stood talking carelessly together, waiting for their
evening meal to be served them in a brightly illuminated hall, of which
the doors stood wide open to admit the cool air of the coming night. The
magnificently-arrayed courtiers made a low obeisance and then stood in
astonishment as the queen went by. She held up her head and nodded to
them, trying to look as though nothing disturbed her.
On and on she went through the whole wing, till she came to her own
apartment. Not so much as one white-robed priest had she seen upon all
her long search. Zoroaster was certainly not in the portion of the
palace through, which she had come. Entering her own chambers, she
looked round for the little Syrian maid, but she had not returned.
Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she hastily despatched a second
slave in search of the chief priest--a Median woman, who had been with
her in Ecbatana.
It seemed as though the minutes were lengthened to hours. Nehushta sat
with her hands pressed to her temples, that throbbed as though the fever
would burst her brain, and the black fan-girl plied the palm-leaf with
all her might, thinking that her mistress suffered from the heat. The
other women she dismissed; and she sat waiting beneath the soft light of
the perfumed lamp, the very figure and incarnation of anxiety.
Something within her told her that she was in great and imminent danger,
and the calm she had seen in the palace could not allay in her mind the
terror of that unearthly cry she had heard three times from the hills.
As she thought of it, she shuddered, and the icy fear seemed to run
through all her limbs, chilling the marrow in her bones, and freezing
her blood suddenly in its mad course.
"Left alone with your lover"--"it is the cry of your fate"--Atossa's
words kept ringing in her ears like a knell--the knell of a shameful
death; and as she went over the bitter taunts of her enemy, her chilled
pulses beat again more feverishly than before. She could not bear to sit
still, but rose and paced the room in intense agitation. Would they
never come back, those dallying slave-women?
The fan-girl tried to follow her mistress, and her small red eyes
watched cautiously every one of Nehushta's movements. But the queen
waved her off and the slave went and stood beside the chair where she
had sat, her fan hanging idly in her hand. At that moment, the Median
woman entered the chamber.
"Where is he?" asked Nehushta, turning suddenly upon her.
The woman made a low obeisance and answered in trembling tones:
"They say that the high priest left the palace two hours ago, with the
queen Atossa. They say----"
"Thou liest!" cried Nehushta vehemently, and her face turned white, as
she stamped her foot upon the black marble pavement. The woman sprang
back with a cry of terror, and ran towards the door. She had never seen
her mistress so angry. But Nehushta called her back.
"Come hither--what else do they say?" she asked, controlling herself as
best she could.
"They say that the wild riders of the eastern desert are descending from
the hills," answered the slave hurriedly and almost under her breath.
"Every one is flying--everything is in confusion--I hear them even now,
hurrying to and fro in the courts, the soldiers----"
But, even as she spoke, an echo of distant voices and discordant cries
came through the curtains of the door from without, the rapid, uneven
tread of people running hither and thither in confusion, the loud voices
of startled men and the screams of frightened women--all blending
together in a wild roar that grew every moment louder.
Just then, the little Syrian maid came running in, almost tearing the
curtains from their brazen rods as she thrust the hangings aside. She
came and fell breathless at Nehushta's feet and clasped her knees.
"Fly, fly, beloved mistress," she cried, "the devils of the mountains
are upon us--they cover the hills--they are closing every entrance--the
people in the lower palace are all slain----"
"Where is Zoroaster?" In the moment of supreme danger, Nehushta grew
calm, and her senses were restored to her again.
"He is in the temple with the priests--by this time he is surely
slain--he could know of nothing that is going on--fly, fly!" cried the
poor Syrian girl in an agony of terror.
Nehushta laid her hand kindly upon the head of the little maid, and
turning in the pride of her courage, now that she knew the worst, she
spoke calmly to the other slaves who thronged in from the outer hall,
some breathless with fear, others screaming in an agony of acute dread.
"On which side are they coming?" she asked.
"Prom the hills, from the hills they are descending in thousands," cried
half a dozen of the frightened women at once, the rest huddled together
like sheep, moaning in their fear.
"Go you all to the farther window," cried Nehushta, in commanding tones.
"Leap down upon the balcony--it is scarce a man's height--follow it to
the end and past the corner where it joins the main wall of the garden.
Run along upon the wall till you find a place where you can descend.
Through the gardens you can easily reach the road by the northern gate.
Fly and save yourselves in the darkness. You will reach the fortress
before dawn if you hasten. You will hasten," she added with something of
disdain in her voice, for before she had half uttered her directions,
the last of the slave-women, mad with terror, disappeared through the
open window, and she could hear them drop, one after the other, in quick
succession upon the marble balcony below. She was alone.
But, looking down, she saw at her feet the little Syrian maid, looking
with imploring eyes to her face.
"Why do you not go with the rest?" asked Nehushta, stooping down and
laying one hand upon the girl's shoulder.
"I have eaten thy bread--shall I leave thee in the hour of death?" asked
the little slave, humbly.
"Go, child," replied Nehushta, very kindly. "I have seen thy devotion
and truth--thou must not perish."
But the Syrian leaped to her feet, and there was pride in her small
face, as she answered:
"I am a bondwoman, but I am a daughter of Israel, even as thou art.
Though all the others leave thee, I will not. It may be I can help
thee."
"Thou art a brave child," said Nehushta; and she drew the girl to her
and pressed her kindly. "I must go to Zoroaster--stay thou here, hide
thyself among the curtains--escape by the window, if any come to harm
thee." She turned and went rapidly out between the curtains, as calm and
as pale as death.
The din in the palace had partially subsided, and new and strange cries
re-echoed through the vast halls and corridors. An occasional wild
scream--a momentary distant crash as of a door breaking down and
thundering upon the marble pavement; and then again, the long, strange
cries, mingled with a dull, low sound as of a great moaning--all came up
together, and seemed to meet Nehushta as she lifted the curtains and
went out.
But the little Syrian maid grasped the Indian knife in her girdle, and
stole stealthily upon her mistress's steps.