THE TEMPLE OF HIS GOD
In the hierarchy of Baal, as in other religious orders, false and true,
it was deemed but right that the priests should want for nothing, while
the altar was well supplied with offerings. To one who had dismounted
from a two nights' ride, such luxuries as were scattered profusely about
the temple of the great Assyrian god formed a pleasing contrast to camp
lodging and camp fare.
If Sarchedon, weary and travel-stained, was yet of so comely and fair a
countenance as to extort approval from the queen herself, Sarchedon,
bathed, refreshed, unarmed, clad in silken garments, and with a cup of
gold in his hand, was simply beautiful. Assarac the priest, sitting over
against him, could not but triumph in the sparkle of that bauble by
which he hoped to divert and dull the only intellect in the Eastern
world that he believed could rival his own.
The servant of Ninus and the servant of Baal sat together on the roof of
a lower story of the temple; below them the pillars and porticoes of the
outer court, behind them vast piles of building, vague, gloomy, and
imposing in the shades of coming night. High over their heads rose the
tower of Belus, pointing to the sky, and many a fathom down beneath
their feet the stir and turmoil of the great city came up, terrace by
terrace, till it died to a faint drowsy murmur like the hum of bees in a
bed of flowers. The sun was sinking in uninterrupted splendour behind
the level sky-line of the desert, and already a cool breeze stole over
the plains from the hills beyond the marshes, to stir the priest's white
garments and lift the locks on Sarchedon's glossy head, while for each
it enhanced the flavour and fragrance of their rich Damascus wine,
bubbling and blushing in its vase of gold. Between them stood a table,
also of gold, studded with amethysts, while the liquor in their golden
cups was yet more precious than the metal and brighter than the gem.
Something to this effect said Sarchedon, after a draught almost as
welcome and invigorating as that which he had drained in the morning at
the Well of Palms; while, with a sigh of extreme repose and content, he
turned his handsome face to the breeze.
"It is so," answered Assarac; "and who more worthy to drink it than the
warrior whose bow and spear keep for us sheep-fold and vineyard--who
watches under arms by night, and bears his life in his hand by day, that
our oxen may tread the threshing-floor, and our peasants press out their
grapes in peace? I empty this cup to Ninus, the Great King, yonder in
the camp, in love, fear, and reverence, as I would pour out a
drink-offering from the summit of that tower to Ashtaroth, Queen of
Heaven."
"And the Great King would dip his royal beard in it willingly enough,
were it set before him," answered the light-hearted warrior. "I saw him
myself come down from his chariot when we crossed the Nile, and drink
from the hollow of his buckler mouthful after mouthful of the sweet
vapid water; but he swore by the Seven Stars he would have given his
best horse had it been the roughest of country wine; and he bade us ever
spare the vineyards, though we were ordered to lay waste cornland and
millet-ground, to level fruit-trees, break down water-sluices, burn,
spoil, ravage, and destroy. Who is like the Great King--so fierce, so
terrible? Most terrible, I think, when he smiles and pulls his long
white beard; for then our captains know that his wrath is kindled, and
can only be appeased with blood. I had rather turn my naked breast to
all Pharaoh's bowmen than face the Great King's smile."
Assarac was deep in thought, though his countenance wore but the
expression of a courteous host.
"He is the king of warriors," said the priest carelessly--"drink, I pray
you, yet once more to his captains--and beloved, no doubt, as he is
feared among the host."
"Nay, nay," answered the other laughing, for the good wine had somewhat
loosened his tongue, while it removed the traces of fatigue from his
frame. "_Feared_, if you will. Is he not descended from Nimrod and the
Thirteen Gods? Brave, indeed, as his mighty ancestors, but pitiless and
unsparing as Ashur himself."
"Hush!" exclaimed the priest, looking round. "What mean you?"
"I have not counted twenty sunsets," answered the other, "since I saw
the Great King's arrow fly through buckler and breastplate, aye, and a
brave Assyrian heart too, ere it stuck in the ground a spear's length
farther on. He has a strong arm, I can bear witness, and the man fell
dead under his very chariot; but it should not have been one of his own
royal guard that he thus slew in the mere wantonness of wrath. Sataspes,
the son of Sargon, had better have died in Egypt, where he fought so
bravely, than here, under an Assyrian sky, within a few days' march of
home."
"Sataspes!" repeated the other; "and what said his father? It is not
Sargon's nature to be patient under injury or insult."
"His dark face grew black as night," answered Sarchedon, "and the
javelin he held splintered in his grasp; but he bowed himself to the
ground, and said only, 'My lord draws a stiff bow, and the king's arrow
never yet missed its mark.'"
"It was a heavy punishment," observed Assarac thoughtfully.
"And for a light offence," answered the other. "Sataspes did but lift
her veil to look on the face of a virgin in a drove of captives who had
not yet defiled by the Great King's chariot. She cried out, half in
wrath, half in fear; and ere the veil fell back on her bosom, the
offender was a dead man."
"Did the Great King look favourably on the virgin?" asked Assarac. "A
woman must needs be fair to warrant the taking of a brave man's life."
"I scarce heeded her," answered Sarchedon. "She came of a captive race,
whom the Egyptians hold in bondage down yonder, imposing on them servile
offices and many hard tasks--a race that seem to mix neither with their
conquerors nor with strangers. They have peculiar laws and customs in
their houses and families, giving their daughters in marriage only to
their kindred, and arraying their whole people like an army, in hosts
and companies. I used to see them at work for their task-masters,
moving with as much order and precision as the archers and spearmen of
the Great King."
"I have heard of them," said Assarac; "I have heard too that their
increasing numbers gave no small disquiet to the last Pharaoh, who was
wiser than his successor. Will they not rise at some future time, and
cast off the Egyptian yoke?"
"Never!" answered the warrior scornfully. "It presses hard and heavy,
but this people will never strike a blow in self-defence: they are a
nation of slaves, of shepherds and herdsmen. Not a man have I seen
amongst them who could draw a bow, nor so much as sling a stone. Where
are they to find a leader? If such a one rose up, how are they to follow
him? They are utterly unwarlike and weak of heart; they have no arms, no
horses, and scarcely any gods."
Assarac smiled with the good-humoured superiority of an adept
condescending to the crude intelligence of a neophyte. Did he not
believe that through the very exercise of his profession he had sounded
the depths of all faith, here and hereafter--in the earth, in the skies,
in the infinite--above all, in himself and his own destiny?
"Their worship is not so unlike our own as you, who are outside the
temple, might believe," said he, pointing upwards to the glowing spark
on the summit of the tower of Belus, which was never extinguished night
or day. "I have learned in our traditions, handed down, word for word,
from priest to priest, since the first family of man peopled the earth
after the subsiding of the waters, that they too worship the sacred
element which constitutes the essence and spirit of the universe. If
they have no images, nor outward symbols of their faith, it is because
their deity is impalpable, invisible, as the principle of heat which
generates flame. If they turn from the Seven Stars with scorn, if they
pour out no drink-offering, make no obeisance to the Queen of Heaven, it
is because they look yet higher, to that mystic property from which
Baalim and Ashtaroth draw light and life and dominion over us poor
children of darkness down here below. Their great patriarch and leader
came out of this very land; and there is Assyrian blood, though I think
shame to confess it, in the veins of that captive people subject now to
our hereditary enemies in the South."
"The men are well enough to look on," answered Sarchedon, "but, to my
thinking, their women are not so fair as the women of the plain between
the rivers; not to be spoken of with the Great Queen's retinue here, nor
the mountain maids who come down from the north to gladden old Nineveh
like sweet herbs and wild flowers growing in the crevices of a ruined
wall. If this people are of our lineage, they have fallen away sadly
from the parent stock."
"What I tell you is truth," replied Assarac; "and I, sitting by you here
to-night, have spoken with men whose fathers remembered those that in
their boyhood had seen the great founder of our nation--old, wrinkled,
with a white beard descending to his feet, but lofty still, and mighty
as the tower of defiance he reared to heaven, though suffering daily
from torment unendurable; and why? Because of the patriarch and chief of
the nation you despise."
Through all the Assyrian people, but especially amongst the hosts of the
Great King, to believe in Nimrod was to believe in Baal, in Ashur, in
their religion, their national existence, their very identity.
The colour rose to Sarchedon's brow as he passed his hand over his lips,
scarcely yet darkened with a beard, while he answered haughtily,
"Nimrod was lord of earth by right of bow and spear. No man living,
backed by all the gods of all the stars in heaven, would have dared to
dispute his word, nor so much as look him in his lion-like face!"
"And yet did this old man, lord only in his own family--chief of a tribe
scarce numbering a thousand bowmen--beard the lion-king in the city he
had founded, in the palace where he reigned, in the very temple of his
worship. The patriarch reasoned with him on the multitude of his gods;
and Nimrod answered proudly, he could make as many as he would, but that
while they emanated from himself they had supreme dominion on earth and
over all in heaven, save only the Seven Stars and the Twenty-four Judges
of the World. Then the patriarch took the king's molten images out of
the temple, kindled a great furnace in the centre of the city, and in
the presence of all Nineveh, cast them into the midst."
Sarchedon started to his feet.
"And the king did not hew him in pieces with his own hand where he
stood!" exclaimed he. "It is impossible! It is contrary to all reason
and experience!"
"The king could scarce believe his eyes," continued Assarac, smothering
a smile, "when he saw his sacred images crumbling down and stealing away
in streams of molten gold. It is even said that he uttered a great cry
of lamentation and sat on the ground a whole night, with his garments
rent, fasting, and in sore distress. This I scarcely think was the
fashion of the mighty hunter: what I _do_ believe is, that he sent a
company of bowmen after the offender with orders to bring him back into
his presence, alive or dead. They pursued the patriarch through the
Valley of Siddim, till they came to the bitter waters; and
here"--Assarac put his goblet with something of embarrassment to his
lips--"here the stars in their courses must have fought against Assyria;
for our warriors turned and fled in some confusion, so that the daring
son of Terah escaped. Then it is said that he prayed to his God for
vengeance against our lion-king, entreating that he who had been
conqueror of the mightiest men and slayer of the fiercest beasts on
earth, should be punished by the smallest and humblest of that animal
creation it had been his chief pleasure to persecute and destroy. His
God answered his prayer, though he raised no temples, made no golden
images of man, beast, bird, nor monster, and sacrificed but a lamb or a
kid in burnt-offering on the altar of unhewn stones in the plain.
"A tiny gnat was sent to plague great Nimrod, as the sand-fly of the
wilderness maddens the lion in his lair. Under helm or diadem--in purple
robe or steel harness--at board and bed--in saddle, bath, or war
chariot, the lord of all the earth was goaded into a ceaseless encounter
where there was no adversary, and exhausted by perpetual flight where
none pursued.
"Then he sent for cunning artificers, who made for him a chamber of
glass, impervious even to the air of heaven, so that the king entered it
well pleased; for he said, 'Now shall I have ease from my tormentor, to
eat bread and drink wine, and be refreshed with sleep.'
"But while he spoke the gnat was in his ear, and soon it ascended, and
began to feed on his brain. Then the king's agony was greater than he
could bear, and he cried aloud to his servants, bidding them beat on his
head with a hammer, to ease the pain. So he endured for four hundred
years; and then he--then he went home to his father Ashur; and when the
Seven Stars shine out in the Northern sky, he looks down, well pleased,
from his throne of light, on the city that his children have built, and
the statue of gold they have raised to his name."
"And this is true?" exclaimed Sarchedon, whose love of the marvellous
could not but be gratified by the priest's narrative.
"True as our traditions," answered Assarac, with something like a sneer;
"true as our worship, true as our reason and intellect, true as the
lessons we have learned to read in the stars themselves. What can be
truer? except labour, sorrow, pain, and the insufficiency of man!"
"Every one to his own duty," replied the young warrior. "Slingers and
bowmen in advance, spears and chariots in the centre, horsemen on the
wings. It is your business to guess where the shaft falls; mine is but
to fit the arrow and draw the bow. I am glad of it. I never could see
much in the stars but a scatter of lamps to help a night march, when no
brighter light was to be had. The moon has been a better friend to me
ere now than all the host of heaven. Tell me, Assarac, can you not read
on her fair open face when I shall be made captain of the guard to the
Great King?"
"What you ask in jest," said the other, smiling, "I will hereafter
answer in sober earnest. I go hence to the summit of that high tower,
and all night long must I read on those scrolls of fire above us a
future which they alone can tell--the destiny of nations, the fate of a
line of kings, nay, the fortunes of a young warrior whom the queen
delighteth to honour, and who may well deserve to sleep to-night while
others take their turn to watch."
Thus speaking, he spread his mantle over a heap of silken cushions,
disposed at the foot of the stairs leading to the tower of Belus so as
to form a tempting couch, in the cool night air, for one who had ridden
so far through the heat of an Assyrian day.
He had not ascended three steps towards the tower, ere Sarchedon,
overcome with fatigue, excitement, and Damascus wine, laid his head
amongst the cushions and fell into a deep sound sleep.