THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES
Casting his eye on the fire of fragrant wood that burned in its brazen
tripod at the summit of the tower, passing his fingers, as it seemed,
mechanically through its flame, and with the same unconscious gesture
touching his right eyebrow, Assarac leaned his massive figure against
the parapet, plunged in a train of deep engrossing thought.
The tapering structure he had ascended was built, as his traditions
taught him to believe, for purposes of astral worship and observation.
It afforded, therefore, a standing-point from which, on all sides, an
uninterrupted view of the heavens could be obtained down to the horizon;
yet the eyes of Assarac were fixed steadfastly on the great city
sleeping at his feet, and it was of earthly interests, earthly
destinies, that he pondered, rather than those spheres of light, hanging
unmarked above him in the golden-studded sky.
A soft but measured step, the rustle of a woman's garment, caused him to
turn with a start. He prostrated himself till his brow touched the
brickwork at her feet, and then, resuming an erect position, looked his
visitor proudly in the face, like a teacher with his pupil, rather than
a subject before his queen.
"Assarac," said Semiramis, "I have trusted you with a royal and
unreserved confidence to-night. I do not say, deserve it, because your
life is in my hand, but because our wishes, our interests, and the very
object we aim at, are the same. Many have served me in slavish
subjection through fear. Do you serve me with loyal regard as a
friend?"
She laid her white hand frankly on his arm, and he, priest, man of
science, as he was, ambitious, isolated, above and below the strongest
impulses of humanity, felt the blood mount to his brain, the colour to
his cheek, at that thrilling touch.
"Your servant's life," he answered, "and the lives of a thousand priests
of Baal, are in the queen's hand to-night; for doth she not hold the
signet of my lord the king, sent with Sarchedon from the camp in token
of victory? And more than my life,--my art, my skill, the lore by which
I have learned to compel those gods above us, are but precious in my
sight so far as they can advantage the Great Queen."
"You will unfold the mysteries of the sky," she replied eagerly. "You
will bid Baalim, Ashtaroth, and all the host of heaven speak with me
face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. If you will answer for
the gods up yonder," she added with a touch of sarcasm on her sweet
proud lip, "I will take upon myself to order the actions of men below."
"Something of this I _can_ do," said he gravely, "or I have watched here
night by night, and fasted, and prayed, and cut myself with knives
before the altar of Baal, in vain. But, first, I must ask of the queen,
doth she believe in the power of the gods? Doth she trust her servant to
interpret truly the characters of fire engraved by them on the dark
tablets of night?"
She scanned him with a searching look. "I believe," she said, "thus
far--that man makes for himself the destiny to which hereafter he must
submit. I believe the gods can foretell that destiny, and I would fain
believe, if I had proof, that you, Assarac, their faithful servant,
possess power to read up yonder the counsels of the Thirteen, and all
their satellites."
"What proof does my queen desire?" asked the priest. "Shall I read off
to her from those shining tables the plastic mouldings of the future, or
the deep indelible engravings of the past?"
The queen pondered. "Of the future," she replied, "I cannot judge
whether they speak true or false. Were they to tell me of a past known
only to myself and one long since gone from earth"--she sighed while
she spoke--"I might give credit to their intelligence, and shape my
course by those silent witnesses, as men do in the desert or at sea."
"Look upward, my queen," answered Assarac, "and mark where the belt of
the Great Hunter points to that distant cluster of stars, like the
diamonds on your own royal tiara. Faintest and farthest shines one that
records her past history, as yonder golden planet, glowing low down by
the horizon, foretells her future destiny."
He stopped, and from a vase of wine that stood near the sacred fire,
sprinkled a few drops to the four quarters of the sky. "I pour this
drink-offering," he said, "to Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven! Shall I tell
the Queen of Earth a tale I read in those stars forming the symbol
which, rightly interpreted, contains the name of Semiramis?"
The queen nodded assent, turning her beautiful face upward to the sky.
"Could it all be true?" was the wild thought that fleeted for an instant
through his brain, "and had not Ashtaroth herself come down from heaven
to look on her adoring votary?"
With a glance almost of awe into the queen's upturned countenance,
Assarac proceeded: "I read there of a city in the South, a city beyond
the desert, pleasant and beautiful in the waving of palms, the music of
rushing waters, built on the margin of a lake, where leaping fish at
sundown dot the glistening surface, countless as rain-drops in a shower.
On its bank stands a temple to that goddess who, like Dagon, bears half
a human form, terminating in the scales and body of a fish. Very fair is
Derceta to the girdle, and, womanlike, fanciful as she is fair. Near her
temple dwelt a young fisherman, comely, ruddy, of exceeding beauty and
manhood, so that the goddess did not scorn to love him with all the
ardour of her double nature, only too well.
"Yet it shamed her of her human attributes when she gave birth to a
child, though the stars tell me, O queen, that never was seen so
beautiful a babe, even amongst those borne by the daughters of men to
the host of heaven.
"Nevertheless, a foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sackcloth;
so that the goddess, in wrath and shame, carried her infant into the
wilderness, and left it there to die.
"Behold how Ashtaroth glows and brightens in the darkening night. Surely
it was the Queen of Heaven who sent fair doves to pity, succour, and
preserve that child of light, tender as a flower, and beautiful as a
star. Day by day the fond birds brought her fruits and sustenance, till
certain peasants, observing their continual flight in the same
direction, followed their guidance, and found by a rill of water the
laughing infant, bearing even then a promise of beauty to be unequalled
hereafter in the whole world."
There was pride and sorrow in the queen's deep eyes as she fixed them on
the seer, and whispered,
"Ask, then, if it had not been better to have left the child there to
die."
"The stars acknowledge no pity," was his answer. "It is the first of
human weaknesses cast off by those who rule in earth or heaven. Had they
not written the destiny of that babe by the desert spring in the same
characters I read up there to-night? They tell me how, in her earliest
womanhood, she was seen by Menon, governor of ten provinces under my
lord the king. They tell me how Menon made her his wife. They tell me,
too, of an amulet graven with a dove on the wing, which that maiden wore
hidden in her bosom when she came veiled into the presence of her lord."
The queen started.
"How know you this?" she exclaimed almost angrily. "I have never yet
shown it even to my lord the king."
"I do but read that which is written," he answered. "They tell me also
how, when she shall part with that amulet, it will purchase for her the
dearest wish of her heart at the sacrifice of all its powers hereafter.
Its charm will then be broken, its virtue departed. She never showed it
man save Menon; for the governor of those wide provinces stretching to
the Southern sea would have gone ragged and barefoot, would have given
rank, riches, honours, life itself, for but one smile from the loveliest
face that ever laughed behind a veil."
"They speak truth," murmured the queen; "he loved me only too well."
"It was written in heaven," continued Assarac, "that the servant must
yield to his master, and that a jewel too precious for Menon was to
blaze in the diadem of the Great King. I read now of a fenced city,
frowning and threatening, far off in an Eastern land; of a bank cast
against its ramparts, and mighty engines smiting hard at its gates; of
archers, spears, slingers, and horsemen; of the king of nations seated
on his chariot in the midst, pulling his grey beard in anger because of
the tower of strength he could in no wise lay waste and level with the
ground. But for Menon and his skill in warfare, the besiegers must have
fled from before it in disorder and dismay. One morning at sunrise there
were heard strange tidings in the camp. Men asked each other who was the
youth who had ridden to Menon's tent in shining apparel, devoid of helm
and buckler, but armed with bow and spear--beautiful as Shamash the God
of Light, so that human eyes were dazzled, looking steadfastly on his
face.
"Ere set of sun the Great King had himself taken counsel with this
blooming warrior; ere it had risen twice, Menon was made captain of the
host, and the work of slaughter commenced; for the proud city had
fallen, and the gods of Assyria were set up in its holy places, to be
appeased with blood and suffering and spoil.
"When the host returned in triumph, they left a mighty warrior dead in
his tent over against the ruins of the smoking town. No meaner hand
could have sufficed to lay him low, and none but Menon took Menon's
life, because--Shall I read on?"
A faint moan caused him to stop and scan the queen's face. It was fixed
and rigid as marble, pale too with an unearthly whiteness beneath that
starlit sky; but there was neither pity for herself nor others in the
calm, distinct articulation with which she syllabled her answer in his
own words--"Read on!"
"They teach me," he continued, "that Menon could not bear his loss,
after she had left his tent whose place was on the loftiest throne the
earth has ever seen. When the triumph returned to Nineveh, there sat by
the Great King's side, in male attire, the fairest woman under heaven.
She guided his wisest counsels; she won for him his greatest victories;
she raised his noblest city; she became the light of his eyes, the glory
of his manhood, the treasure of his heart, mother of kings and mistress
of the world; but she had never yet parted with her amulet to living
man. All this is surely true; for it is written in those symbols of fire
that cannot lie, and that trace the history of the Great Queen."
Semiramis turned her eyes on him with a look that seemed to read his
very heart. The priest bore that searching glance in austere composure,
creditable to his nerve and coolness; though these were enhanced by a
vague conviction of his own prophetic powers, the result, no doubt, of a
certain exaltation of mind, consequent on his previous fasts, his
studies, and his long hours of brooding over deep ambitious schemes.
After a protracted silence, she sighed like one who shakes off a heavy
burden of memories; and, giving her companion the benefit of her
brightest smile, asked him the pertinent question: "Is it the amulet
that controls the destiny, or the destiny that gives a value to the
amulet? Do the stars shed lustre on the woman, or is it the woman's fame
that adds a glory to her star?"
For answer he pointed to a ruby in her bracelet, sparkling and glowing
in the light of the mystic flame.
"That gem," said he, "was beyond price in the rayless cavern of its
birth. Nevertheless, behold how its brilliancy is enhanced by the gleams
it catches from the sacred fire. The stars shine down on a beautiful
woman, and they make of her an all-powerful queen."
"All-powerful!" repeated Semiramis. "None is all-powerful but my lord
the king. To be second in place is to be little less a slave than the
meanest subject in his dominions."
He took no heed of her words. He seemed not to hear, so engrossed was he
with his studies of the heavens, so awe-struck and preoccupied was the
voice in which he declaimed his testimony, like a man reading from a
sacred book.
"She whose counsels have won battles shall lead armies in person; she
who has reached her hand to touch a sceptre shall lift her arm to take
a diadem; she who has built a city shall found an empire. Walls and
ramparts must hem in the one; but of the other brave men's weapons alone
constitute the frontier: as much as they win with sword and spear so
much do they possess. The dove is the bird of peace; and for her whom
doves nourished at her birth there shall be peace in her womanhood,
because none will be left to contend with the conqueror and mistress of
the world."
He fell back against the parapet of the tower, pale, gasping, as if
faint and exhausted from the effects of the inspiration that had passed
away; but beneath those half-closed lids not a shade on the queen's
brow, not a movement of her frame, escaped his penetrating eyes. He
could read that fair proud face with far more certainty than the
lustrous pages of heaven. Perhaps he experienced a vague consciousness
that here on these delicate features were written the characters of
fate, rather than yonder above him in the fathomless inscrutable sky.
She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She was looking far out into
the night, towards that quarter of the desert over which Sarchedon had
ridden from the camp, where an arrow from her own quiver lay under the
bleaching bones of the dead lion. Her eyes were fierce, and her
countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, yet not
devoid of triumph, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.
Such a glare had he seen in the eyes of the Great King when he awarded
death to some shaking culprit--such a look on the victim's fixed face,
ere it was covered, while they dragged him away.
It was well, thought Assarac, for men who dealt with kings and queens to
have no sympathies, no affections, none of the softer emotions and
weaknesses of our nature. The tools of ambition are sharp and
double-edged; the staff on which it leans too often breaks beneath it,
and pierces to the bone. Moreover, it would have been wiser and safer to
commit himself to the mercy of winds and waves than to depend on the
wilfulness of a woman, even though she wore a crown. Already the queen's
mood had changed: her face had resumed its habitual expression of calm,
indolent, and somewhat voluptuous repose.
"No more to-night," she said, with a gracious gesture, as of thanks and
dismissal. "There is much to be done before the return in triumph of my
lord the king. To-morrow you will carry my commands to the captains
within the city, bidding them have all their preparations made for the
reception of the conquerors. Let them assemble their companies under
shield; let the chariots and horsemen be drawn up in the great square
over against the palace; and let the archers look that their bows have
new strings. You can answer for your own people here?"
"For every hand that bears a lotus in temple, palace, or streets--two
thousand in all, without counting the prophets of the grove, and the
priests of Baal, outside the walls."
"Enough," said the queen; "you have done well. I, too, can read in the
future more and mightier things than you have imparted to me to-night."
She wrapped her mantle round her to depart, not suffering Assarac to
attend her one step on her way. Kalmim, she said, was waiting in the
garden, and would accompany her to the palace. So she walked slowly down
the winding staircase, grave, abstracted, as though revolving some
weighty purpose in her mind. At its foot she started to see the
recumbent figure of Sarchedon buried in profound sleep.
Was it a fatality of the stars? Was it an impulse of womanhood? She bent
over that beautiful unconscious face till her breath stirred the curls
on its comely brow, then, with a gesture almost fierce in its passionate
energy, snatched the famous amulet from her neck, and laid it on his
breast.
"It is a rash purchase," she muttered; "but I am willing to pay the
price."