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SARCHEDON
A Legend of the Great Queen
by
G. J. Whyte-Melville
Author of "Roy's Wife," "Black but Comely," "Market Harborough,"
etc.
Illustrated by S. E. Waller
London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne
* * * * *
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
AUSTIN LAYARD, D.C.L.,
HER MAJESTY'S MINISTER AT MADRID,
THE
FOLLOWING ROMANCE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
AS A TRIBUTE OF
ADMIRATION TO THE GREAT DISCOVERER,
WHOSE SKILL, COURAGE AND RESEARCH HAVE
EXCAVATED FROM THE DESERT SANDS
THE ARTS, ARMS, AND RECORDS OF A MIGHTY NATION;
WHOSE LEARNING AND PERSEVERANCE
HAVE RESTORED AN IMPORTANT LINK IN THE
WORLD'S HISTORY,
LONG SEVERED IN THE OBLIVION OF THE PAST.
ONSLOW GARDENS,
_June, 1871_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "THE STARTLED HORSEMAN DREW REIN."]
CONTENTS
The Seven Stars.
"They watch him who wakes--They watch him who sleeps--him who
speaks--him who is silent--the guilty, the blameless: there is none
on earth who is not watched."--_Bhuddhagosa Proverbs._
I. The King of Beasts 9
II. Merodach 16
III. Semiramis 24
IV. The Temple of his God 33
V. The Stars in their Courses 40
VI. A Dreamer of Dreams 47
VII. The King of Nations 55
VIII. The Lust of the Eye 63
IX. The Pride of Life 71
X. A Banquet of Wine 79
XI. Like to Like 87
XII. The Gods of the Heathen 94
XIII. Mother and Son 102
XIV. Strong as Death 110
XV. The Queen's Petition 118
XVI. Cruel as the Grave 125
XVII. The Divining Cup 133
XVIII. A Lying Spirit 141
XIX. The Feast of Baal 148
XX. Gone to the Stars 154
Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven.
"From love comes grief, from love comes fear; he who is free from
love knows neither grief nor fear."--_Bhuddhagosa Proverbs._
XXI. Who is my Brother 162
XXII. The House of Bondage 170
XXIII. Pharaoh on the Throne 177
XXIV. The Captive in the Dungeon 187
XXV. The Wisdom of the Egyptians 193
XXVI. Deliverance 199
XXVII. In the Desert 206
XXVIII. A Ride for Life 216
XXIX. The City of Refuge 221
XXX. Loth 229
XXXI. Willing 235
XXXII. Bread and Salt 243
XXXIII. Parted 250
XXXIV. Forlorn 257
XXXV. The Lion's Cub 263
XXXVI. The Power of the Dog 270
XXXVII. The Wings of a Dove 276
XXXVIII. Bond and Free 284
XXXIX. In the Gate 292
XL. Unveiled 298
Nisroch the Avenger.
"Your sin follows steadily behind, as the cart-wheel follows the
draught-bullock."--_Bhuddhagosa Proverbs._
XLI. A Serpent on a Rock 304
XLII. Before the Altar 311
XLIII. The Snare of the Fowler 317
XLIV. The Veiled Queen 325
XLV. Aryas the Beautiful 332
XLVI. A Wind from the South 339
XLVII. The Fenced City 345
XLVIII. Sons of the Sword 355
XLIX. Faithful unto Death 361
L. A Fool in his Folly 365
LI. Bow and Spear 372
LII. Lost and Won 379
LIII. Sharing the Spoil 385
LIV. Counting the Cost 392
LV. The Voice of the Charmer 398
LVI. Requited 405
LVII. Betrayed 411
LVIII. Who is on my Side 417
LIX. Forgiven 424
LX. Lost in the Dark 430
SARCHEDON
The Seven Stars
CHAPTER I
THE KING OF BEASTS
Dying in the desert--stretched, limp and helpless, in the darkening
waste--poured out like water on the tawny sand--two specks poised high
above him in the deeper orange of the upper sky--a wide-winged vulture
hovering and wheeling between the stricken lion and the setting sun.
Dying in the desert--grim, dignified, unyielding, like a monarch slain
in battle. So formidable in the morning--the herdsman's terror, the
archer's dread, the savage wrestler in whose grasp horse and rider went
down crushed, mangled, over-matched, like sucking fawn and unweaned
child--fierce, tameless, unconquered--a noble adversary for the noblest
champions of the plain--but ere the last red streak of evening faded on
the dusky level of their wilderness, a thing for the foul night-bird to
tear and buffet--for the wild ass, wincing and snorting, half in terror,
half in scorn, to spurn and trample with her hoof.
Pitiful in its hopelessness, the wistful pleading of eyes gradually
waning to the apathy of death; pitiful the long flickering tongue,
licking with something of a dog's homely patience that fatal gash of
which the pain grew every moment more endurable, only because it was a
death-wound; and pitiful too the utter prostration of those massive
limbs, with knotted muscles and corded sinews--of that long, lean,
tapering body--the very emblem of agile strength--which, striving in
agony to rear but half its height, sank down again in dust, writhing,
powerless, like an earthworm beneath the spade.
No yell, no moan--only a short quick breathing, a convulsive shiver, and
the occasional effort to rise, that time by time soaked and stained his
lair with darker jets of blood.
So those specks on the upper sky widened into two huge soaring vultures,
while the wing of a third brushed lightly against the fallen lion's
mane, as the foul bird ventured nearer its coming banquet, croaking
hideous invitations to others and yet others, that emerged, as if by
magic, from the solemn cloudless heaven.
Far back into the desert, varied here and there by clammy clotted spots,
lay a single track of footprints, closer together, less sharp, round,
and clearly-defined, as they dragged towards the end. Many a weary
furlong had he travelled, the king of beasts, on his journey here to
die; and yet he never was to reach the patch of arid reeds that instinct
bade him seek for a last shelter--the scanty covert where-with nature
prompted him to shield his death agony from the remorseless bird of
prey.
It is a royal sport to-day. It was a royal sport, no doubt, thousands of
years ago, to rouse the kingly lion from his haunt of reeds, or rock, or
cool dank quivering morass, in those wide plains that stretch between
the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Mesopotamia of the ancients, the
Naharaina of its present migratory tribes. A royal sport, when followed
by a queen and all her glittering train, defiling from the lofty porches
of Babylon the Great, the tramp of horse and ring of bridle, with steady
footfall of Assyrian warriors--curled, bearded, erect, and
formidable--with ponderous tread of stately elephants, gorgeous in
trappings of scarlet, pearls, and gold, with stealthy gait of meek-eyed
camels, plodding patient under their burdens in the rear. Scouring into
the waste before that jewelled troop, herds of wild asses bruised and
broke the shoots of wormwood beneath their flying hoofs, till the hot
air was laden with an aromatic smell; the ostrich spread her scant and
tufted wings to scud before the wind, tall, swift, ungainly, in a cloud
of yellow dust; the fleet gazelle, with beating heart, and head tucked
back, sprang forward like an arrow from the bow, never to pause nor
stint in her terror-stricken flight, till man and horse, game and
hunter, pursuer and pursued, were left hopelessly behind, far down
beyond the unbroken level of the horizon. Was not her speed of foot the
strength and safety and glory of her being? Nor could the desert falcon
strike her save unawares, nor the cruel Eastern greyhound overtake her
save when she had lately drunk her fill from the spring.
But the monarch of the desert, the grim and lordly lion, sought no
refuge in flight, accepted no compromise of retreat. Driven from his
covert, he might move slowly and sullenly away; but it was to turn in
savage wrath on the eager horseman who approached too near, on the
daring archer who ventured to bend his bow within point-blank distance
of so formidable an enemy. Nevertheless, even the fiercest of their kind
must yield before man, the conqueror of beasts; before woman, the
conqueror of man: and on the shaft which drank his life-blood, and
transfixed the lion from side to side, was graven the royal tiara of a
monarch's mate, were cut those wedge-shaped letters that indicated the
name of Semiramis the Great Queen.
Fainter and fainter drooped the mighty frame of the dying beast; one by
one large red drops plashed heavily on the sand beneath him, as the
first bright stars of a Chaldean sky blazed from the clear depths of
heaven. The perishable was fast fading below. Was that indeed eternal
which shone so pure and pitiless above?
Great Babylon lay spread out, massive, mysterious, and indistinct, in
the shades of coming night. Here and there, huge piles of building
loomed vast and shadowy against the sky, far below these, amidst the
tents, houses, palaces, and gardens within the town, glittered and
flashed a world of lamps and torches, scattered bright and countless as
the stars in that other world above; while rearing its head, like some
ghostly giant, high over shaft and column, fortress, palace, and
obelisk, rose a lofty tower that seemed to demand of heaven its secrets,
and bade defiance to the sky.
Here, on the summit of this tower stood a human figure, gazing fixedly
on the planets already visible, scanning the heavens with rapt
attention; calm, serious, abstracted, wrestling, as it were, with all
its mental forces, for the triumph of intellect, the mastery of thought.
It was Assarac, priest of Baal, reading the stars, as a student reads a
book writ in some symbolical language of which he holds the key.
Assarac the priest, the man for whom in that voluptuous climate, amidst
that gorgeous people, delighted in splendour, in pleasure, in luxury, in
warfare, glory, arts, arms, and magnificence, the world could furnish
but one attraction--the insatiable craving of ambition--to lull which he
must rule supreme; therefore he trained himself, night and day, with the
weapons of victory, seeking diligently that knowledge which constitutes
power.
The act of worship is amongst all creation indigenous and peculiar to
man. As he alone stands erect and raises his front without effort
towards heaven, so he bends the knee in reasoning adoration, neither
cowering down with his head in the dust, nor grovelling on his belly,
like other creatures, in abject fear; but wanton, unstable, and
extravagant even in his noblest aspirations, this viceroy of earth has
been ever prone to waver in his allegiance, eager to amplify his worship
of the one true God into a thousand false religions, more or less
beautiful, poetical, and absurd. Amongst these, none could be less
unworthy than that earliest form of superstition which attributed to the
celestial bodies certain properties of power and knowledge, such as
could affect the present no less than they predicted the future. Man's
intellect felt elevated and purified by scientific communion with the
book of Fate as written on the luminous pages of the sky, while his soul
seemed scarce debased by an adoration that lifted it at least to the
visible and material heaven. On the wide-stretching plains of Western
Asia, in the warm cloudless Assyrian night, with the lamps of heaven
flashing out their radiance in uninterrupted splendour from the centre
to the boundless horizon, it was no wonder that students and sages
should have accepted for deities those distant worlds of fire on which
eyes, brain, hopes, thoughts, and aspirations were nightly fixed--the
guides of their science, the exponents of their history, the arbiters of
their fate.
While the rude camel-driver, as he plodded by night through the
trackless desert, relied, no less than the early mariner, for progress
and safety on the stars, priests in their temples, kings in their
palaces, consulted the same changeless, passionless, inscrutable
witnesses, for the web of policy, the conduct of warfare, the
furtherance of love, desire, ambition, or revenge. Ere long, by an
inevitable process in the human mind, the instructor of their course
came to be looked on as the originator of events; and that which began
only with an assumption that it could foretell, was soon credited with
the power to bias, to prevent, or to destroy.
Then arose an idolatry which seemed irresistible to the noblest and
boldest nations of the ancient world, which, notwithstanding their own
sublime creed, possessed a strong fascination for the Chosen People
themselves. Yav, Nebo, Bel, and Ashtaroth[1] came to be worshipped as
living deities, reigning and revealing themselves through the planets
that bore these names. The Seven Stars[2] were believed to time the
inevitable march of the universe to their seven tones of mysterious
music, unheard by mortal ears only because it never ceased nor faltered
in its eternal diapason. The twelve months of the year were sacred, each
to its especial luminary. Thirty stars were worshipped as the Consulting
Gods. Twelve to the north, twelve to the south, were believed
respectively to compel the destinies of living men and dead, the whole
twenty-four bearing the title of Judges of the World. And finally, lest
superstition should overlook one single object of its adoration, or
idolatry fail in the smallest detail to sin against its Creator,
priests, temples, sacrifices, and votive offerings were assigned to
those countless worlds that gem a Southern night, under the collective
title of the Host of Heaven.
[Footnote 1: Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and Venus.]
[Footnote 2: Rather the seven spheres, or the five planets with the sun
and moon.]
Assarac looked abroad, above, around, below--with the confident glance
of a monarch who reviews his powers, with the critical attention of a
calculator who sums up his total, with the visionary gaze of a prophet
who forecasts his destiny, yet not entirely without something of that
astute and wary expression which on the magician's face seems to scan
and dominate, while it half mistrusts, the implements of his art.
He was yet a young man, to count by years, and his dark almond-shaped
eyes had lost none of the fire and softness which are only combined
before middle life; but above his black eyebrows there were lines traced
deep in the tawny forehead, and at his temples a few white hairs already
mingled with the black bushy ringlets that, confined by a fillet of
gold, were drawn back in clustering profusion to his neck and shoulders.
His arms, but for the heavy gold bracelets that clasped their wrists,
were bare, as were his strong muscular legs from knee to ankle; he wore
sandals, fastened by straps; of embroidered leather crossing and
recrossing so as to form no slight protection for foot and instep. His
long gown of white linen, open to the breast and looped so as to give
the legs freedom of action at the knee, was bordered with cunning
needlework wrought in tissue of gold and scarlet silk, its arrow-headed
characters displaying many a dark sentence and time-honoured record. A
tasselled cord fastened it at the waist, and a deep fringe also of
scarlet tissue, hung below its edges, while an ample cloak, white and
embroidered like the gown, fell from one shoulder and trailed behind the
priest as he stood erect and motionless, looking out into the night.
On his solid earrings, on his golden bracelets, on the fillet that bound
his forehead, on the very clasps that secured his sandals, was graven
the mystic circle that, with or without its winged figure, constituted a
memorial and a symbol of fate, omnipotence, and eternity. If he
worshipped the stars, he could yet conceive of a power so supreme as to
control and dominate their influence: nor could his religion in its
aspirations for this ineffable essence find a better emblem of its ideal
than that geometrical figure which has neither beginning nor end.
He bore in his hand a lotus-flower lately gathered, and was careful,
with something of superstitious reverence, to preserve its freshness;
though once, when it caught his eye by chance, a smile of mingled scorn
and curiosity wreathed his full red lips; but he looked aloft again the
next instant with a keener and more rapt attention in his gaze. If he
speculated on the symbolical interpretation of the plant, it was not
_there_ he sought the power and lore that should enable him to control
his kind.
Though he carried two knives in his girdle, though his limbs were
massive and muscular, his chest deep and his head erect, the man's
habits seemed those of peace and study, not of action and warfare. His
face, for all its indications of intellectual virility, was somewhat too
rounded in outline, too full and flaccid, rather perhaps unmanly than
effeminate, and bearing an expression of sustained effort, as of one who
continually strives to hide and overcome a consciousness of unmerited
degradation. There was no sign of beard about the well-cut lips, nor on
the firmly-moulded chin; and for Assarac the priest it was too obvious
that the domestic affections must ever remain a sealed book--his hearth
must be the sacred fire of his worship, and the starry canopy of heaven
his home.
"And what have you given me?" said he, rising his hand towards the
glittering world above, with a gesture that denoted quite as much of
defiance as devotion. "What have you given me, O my gods, in exchange
for the glow of youth, the dignity of manhood, the rapture and the folly
and the sweet sorrow that are common, like cool breezes and running
streams, to all but such as me? No wife, no child! None of the treasures
others guard so jealously; but, in compensation, none of the fears that
bid the brave man cower and the strong man quake. What have you given
me, O my gods? The thirst for power, the desire to rule, the knowledge
that causes brave and strong to bend and quiver like reeds in the
Euphrates before the breeze that hurries down its stream. You have given
me wisdom to forecast men's lives and destinies; it is strange if he who
has a knowledge of the future cannot control and warp the present to his
will. I have torn open your scrolls by force of hand; I have compelled
you to reveal your secrets by sheer strength of intellect--ye are my
gods indeed, and I your priest and servant; yet is there something
working here in this forehead, in this breast, that seems to dominate
you as the goad rules the elephant, as the bridle turns and guides the
foaming war-horse on the plain! Your strength, your knowledge, and your
fire are mine--mine until these reasoning powers are dulled--these
senses enervated by luxury and indulgence. Prophesy--prophesy! Trace for
me in your shafts of light the story of that which is to come: show me
the future of Assarac the priest--his growing knowledge, his indomitable
struggles, his successful encounters, the culminating glory of his
career. Show me the destiny of that fairest, bravest, fiercest of
women--the diamond of the East! whose white arm conquers nations, whose
flashing eyes set towns and palaces and kingdoms all ablaze--beautiful,
proud, and pitiless--Semiramis the Great Queen; of her lord, the king of
nations, the grim old champion who scoffs, forsooth, at your power, O my
gods! and trusts only in the strength of his right arm and in his sword.
Shall ye not avenge yourselves for his scorn and unbelief? Shall not
Assarac your priest rise on the war-worn monarch's ruin to a splendour
before which the glory of Ninus and all his line shall pale, even as ye
pale yourselves, eternal host, before the Lord of Light who comes with
day?"
Even while he spoke, the dying lion, far off in the desert, turned on
his side with one quick gasping moan, one convulsive shudder of his
mighty limbs, ere they grew rigid and motionless for ever, breaking
short off in his death-pang the shaft on which was graven a royal tiara
and the symbol of the Great Queen.