THE DIVINING CUP
His queen's command, backed by the signet of the Great King himself, was
a matter that brooked neither hesitation nor delay; and Arbaces,
retiring from the royal presence, reflected with considerable
apprehension on the order he had received from Semiramis. Like many
other veterans in the Assyrian army, he was devoted, body and soul, to
Ninus, reverencing him perhaps less as a monarch than as the famous
warrior, who had led armies to victory again and again. There is no bond
so close as that which is drawn by companionship in privation, danger
and adventure--by a share, however small, in that military glory, before
which all other fame pales to a wan and feeble light. But between his
tried captains and a despotic leader of whose authority there can be no
jealousy, as there can be no cavil at his command, exists the community
of interests, the mutual and reciprocal confidence of hounds with their
huntsman, the wild deer in the mountain with the broad-fronted
master-stag of the herd.
Arbaces, riding slowly towards his palace, while a score of bearded
retainers paced beside his steed, shook his head in grievous doubt and
perplexity as to his duty in the present crisis.
"To move without the wall at an hour's notice," thought the old warrior,
"that tried host, which has even now marched in, triumphant and
well-found in every detail, from a successful campaign; the veterans of
Ninus, trained under his own eye in the field, on every man of whom I
could depend as on myself, that he would shed his last drop of blood for
the glory of the Great King--to leave Babylon at the mercy of the
priests and that gilded army, which professes allegiance only to the
queen--thus to place ourselves, weakened and defenceless, in the hands
of such men as Assarac and Beladon, crafty intriguers who would shrink
from no secret crime, though they would tremble like girls to set a
company in array against an open foe--is it right? Is it wise? Is it for
the safety of the Great King? It is on my head. I must obey. Yet will I
make one effort to save him from himself, even though he consume me in
his wrath while I speak with him face to face."
Drawing rein as he came to this conclusion, Arbaces dispatched
messengers to the captains of the host, summoning them to meet at his
own dwelling with the utmost promptitude; and, turning his horse, rode
off at speed towards the palace of the Great King.
As he galloped through the wide streets, sitting erect and fair, his
golden armour gleaming in the sun, his long beard waving in the wind,
many an eye looked after him with glances of respect, admiration, and
even regard for the successful warrior, the noted captain, the right
hand and counsellor of Ninus himself. Stalwart water-carriers staggering
between their jars--tawny fruit-sellers sitting amongst their gourds
under booths at the street side--the very leper, grovelling and scraping
himself in the dust, had heard of his achievements, and envied rather
than grudged him his horses, his wealth, his splendour, his beautiful
daughter, and his warlike fame.
How could they tell he was risking all these with every stride of his
good steed, from a sense of unquestioning loyalty to the grim old
monarch, who might put him to death on the spot for entering his
presence unrequired?
Ninus in the camp was to be accosted by the meanest soldier; Ninus on
the seat of judgment turned a willing ear to the lowest of his subjects;
but to intrude on Ninus in the palace was a capital offence by royal
decree, by the custom of the olden time, and by the laws of the land of
Shinar.
Nevertheless, Arbaces waited for no announcement, but flinging his
horse's rein to be held by a captain of ten thousand on duty at the
gate, strode swiftly through vast halls and shining corridors till he
reached the summer chamber of the old monarch's privacy. Two stalwart
spearmen at the entrance, guards of his own selection, made way for him
with looks of wonder and awe, while the chief captain, desperate as
though leaping with lowered point and raised buckler to the breach of a
fenced city, dashed headlong into the presence of the Great King.
Ninus sprang to his feet, and once again the light of battle gleamed in
his eyes.
"Welcome," he exclaimed, "my trusty servant!--welcome, as the sound of
trumpets that bids Assyria charge with chariots and horsemen along the
whole line! It can be no light matter, by the beard of Ashur, that
brings you thus into my presence. Reach your hand to the sceptre, and
out with it, man. Is the city in revolt? Hath Armenia sent us a
defiance? Are the rebels of Philistia swarming at the gate? O, I am
weary, weary to madness of this drowsy inaction! Tell me it is something
that shall force me to saddle and war-chariot. Bid me shake a spear
under shield once again, or you had better have leaped into the air from
the tower of Belus, rather than flown here thus, quivering and aimless,
like a random shaft from a wet bowstring!"
Little reassured by the alternative, Arbaces hastened at least to take
hold of the royal sceptre, and thus secure himself against the worst
consequences of his indiscretion; for pardon was invariably accorded to
him for whom the king extended that emblem of sovereignty with his own
hand; but he dreaded the old warrior's disappointment to learn there
seemed no excuse for a recommencement of the game he loved so well, and
it was only because he was a brave man to the core that he looked his
lord steadily in the face while he said firmly, but respectfully, "O
king, live for ever! I speak not as the lowest of slaves to the highest
of masters; I speak as warrior to warrior, as man to man. Arbaces asks
Ninus if he has ever deceived him in council, or failed him in the
field."
"Never!" exclaimed the king, on whose kindred spirit the other's manly
bearing produced such an effect as might have been expected. "Never," he
repeated, sitting down again, while the weary look crept over his gray
old face. "You have been true to me as the buckle of my belt, the handle
of my blade. Old servant, old friend, old comrade, something tells me I
shall never tighten one nor draw the other again."
Arbaces burst into tears. The practised warrior, who had seen towns
sacked, foes slain, and captives flayed alive without a quiver of
sympathy, a throb of pity, was not proof against this unaccustomed mood
in his stern old master. Slave as he really was, slave in presence of a
fierce and irresponsible despot, his heart filled with a painful,
piteous sympathy that unmanned him, and he wept.
The king's harsh laugh, covering, it may be, some kinder sentiment than
derision, and hoarse with other weakness besides the cough of age,
recalled him to himself.
"Go, get a spindle!" exclaimed Ninus. "Surely, but for that rugged face
and grizzled beard, I had believed it was an old woman standing at my
footstool with wet eyes to pray for her son's release out of the
clutches of Arbaces, rather than the Tartan himself, whom I have seen
many a time in haste, anger, and perplexity, but never in sorrow nor in
fear."
The other's face brightened with joy and pride; but he had a duty to
perform, and neither exultation in his lord's approval, nor dread of his
displeasure, would prevent his carrying it out to the end.
Assuming the usual attitude of respect, and thus dropping, as it were,
to his proper level of humility, the chief captain demanded meekly,
"Is it the king's pleasure to hearken, while the lowest of his servants
makes report concerning the ordering of the host, and setting of the
night-watches as in the day of battle?"
"What have I to do with the day of battle?" answered the king testily.
"This is the day of priests and prophets, sacrifice and drink-offering,
waste of time, treasure, and good wine. May Nisroch consume them all to
ashes! Day of battle!--by the beard of Nimrod, day of folly rather, and
weariness and shame! Thou too must needs come prating about it. Well,
say on."
"The whole army of Egypt has been commanded to encamp without the
walls," observed the other curtly. "Is this the pleasure of my lord the
king?"
"Without the walls!" repeated his angry master. "Who dared give such a
fool's order at such a time? And you too: have you thus disposed the
host, scattered from their centre, and incapable of concentration or
movement? By the belt of Ashur, you are a bolder man than I thought, to
come and tell me this!"
"I took my orders from the Great Queen," answered Arbaces, "and she
delivered them with the royal signet in her hand."
Ninus calmed down at once, while on his face came the smile that was
never seen there, but in the presence of Semiramis, or at the mention of
her name.
"It is well," he said. "Had it been any other man in the host but
yourself, who came here unbidden to question such an authority, his face
had been covered and his place should have known him no more. The king
hath spoken."
His old heart thrilled while he thought how this unmilitary disposition
of his army was but another instance of the queen's love and care;
another proof of her confidence and affection. She would spare him all
incitement to exertion by thus withdrawing for a time his favourite
occupation, would exact a proof of his trust in thus confiding his
personal safety and his kingdom to those who were avowedly at her own
disposal. Well, he might not have many more opportunities to please her.
Let the queen's fancy be indulged unquestioned, and her commands obeyed.
While he dismissed Arbaces, rudely enough it may be, according to his
wont, there was yet a rough kindliness underlying the haughty manner and
fierce peremptory tones, that caused the chief captain's heart to sink
with a sense of depression, a vague foreshadowing of evil he had never
felt before. As the subject raised his head, after the usual
prostration on leaving his king's presence, the eyes of master and
servant met. At the same moment, the same thought seemed to fall like
ice on the heart of each, that henceforth neither should look in the
other's face again.
Wearily and slowly the chief captain paced back towards his home, the
good horse under him partaking, as it seemed, in his rider's
discomfiture. It was a sore and saddened heart, contrasting painfully
with his elation on the day of triumph, when he rode so proudly beneath
its walls, that he now carried through the lofty portals of his palace.
He had, however, one consolation left in the presence of his daughter.
So long as she remained under his roof, it seemed to her father there
was still peace and rest and tranquil happiness at home.
"The girl," said he, with his Oriental turn of thought and expression,
"is like a light in the dwelling, a lily in the garden, a fountain in
the court."
But his apprehensions were not destined to be relieved by the return of
those whom he had sent to summon the principal captains of the host.
With the first who prostrated himself before the Tartan while he
dismounted came evil tidings, which each successive messenger arrived
only to aggravate and confirm.
Ispabara, chief of the spearmen, a tried warrior and leader of repute,
had been removed from his command, and cast into prison. Even now the
force that hitherto acknowledged his authority was defiling through the
great gate to quit the town under another captain. Scarcely was this
startling announcement digested when a second breathless runner appeared
to say that Sabacon, the captain of the chariots, had been summoned
hastily to the presence of the Great Queen, and had not since been heard
of. Meantime, the whole strength of the chariots of iron were already
massed in the plain by the Well of Palms.
"What of Belasys and his trusty bowmen?" exclaimed Arbaces in deep
concern and perplexity, while a third light-footed youth laid his
forehead to the ground ere he made his ill-omened report.
"Let not my lord be wroth," was the deprecating reply. "Belasys cannot
be found. The bowmen are in confusion, but Taracus has received orders
to command them under the signet of my lord the king, and has marched
them out by companies through the different gates of the city. The men
of Nineveh refused to move, and were scattered like chaff before the
wind by the horsemen of the Great Queen. Dagon! how the blue mantles
rode through and through their ranks, piercing, hewing, trampling them
down and sparing none! Men say their bowstrings had been cut when they
encamped last night by the temple of Baal. The women of Nineveh shall
look from their walls in vain, for by the Thirteen Gods I think not a
score of that northern band can have escaped alive!"
"And all this on the feast-day," muttered Arbaces, turning into his
house with a heavy heart.
It was obvious that some deadly plot had been contrived--some fearful
catastrophe was imminent. It needed but little of his warlike experience
to remind him that an army thus scattered, while disorganised by a
change of leaders, would be useless for all purposes of resistance or
offence.
Of the queen's object he could form but vague speculations; for the
means she had employed to carry it out, he could not repress a sentiment
of admiration, considerably dashed with fear. That the authority which
devolved on her with the royal signet had been employed to place the
city of Babylon, and with it the great Assyrian empire, at her mercy was
too apparent; but he hesitated to believe she would use the power she
thus owed to his affection, for the destruction of her husband and her
king.
Arbaces was a man of energy and action, accustomed to sudden peril,
fertile in the resources by which it should be met. But he was also
superstitious and a fatalist. It is possible that he might have
organised some scheme for the defence of his old master, made some
effort to avert the storm that was gathering over the royal head, had it
not been for one of those trifling events on which the fate of an empire
has sometimes been known to turn.
Exhausted and perplexed, he called for wine almost as he left the
saddle. Ishtar, who had been watching for her father's arrival, sprang
joyfully forward and ministered to his wants, bringing him the restoring
draught in a golden cup, beautifully carved, chased, and set with
precious stones.
The girl's step was free and buoyant; her bearing joyous, her sweet face
radiant in the light that once in a lifetime glorifies every child of
earth with a ray direct from heaven.
The sun was setting, and a stream of crimson from its level beams
crossed the shining floor beneath her feet. Suddenly she stopped, and
looking wildly into the cup, turned pale--pale even in that rich glow of
evening, tinging hands and robe and hair with red.
"O, father!" she said, "do not drink. It looks like blood!"
He set the wine down untasted, and covered his eyes with his hands.
"Enough!" he muttered. "Who shall strive against Nisroch, or flee from
him who hath the four winds of heaven for his wings? The Seven Stars
have spoken, and it is well!"
Then there came on him a great trembling and fear; for he looked on his
daughter, and wondered who should protect her when he was gone. His own
head, the life of the Great King, the fate of the empire, seemed as
nothing compared to the safety of that beloved being--the child of his
bosom--the one ewe lamb of his fold!
It was the divining cup of his race from which Ishtar had unwittingly
been about to give him to drink, and he would have been as loath to
defile his father's tomb, or question his father's honour, as to doubt
its gift of prophecy, or make light of the warning it proclaimed.
He believed firmly enough that a pure maiden, looking into this
mysterious vessel at any crisis of her fate, would there behold
reflected, as in a mirror, a presentiment of that good or evil which the
future held for her in store. And what had she seen now? By her own
confession, to her obvious dismay, a hideous sea of blood!
He dismissed her from his presence gently, kindly, yet with a stern
sorrow that forbade her to remonstrate or disobey. Then, alone at last,
in the hall of his stately palace, he rent his mantle from hem to hem
with a great cry of anguish, and sat down on the bare floor, unnerved,
unmanned, in a paroxysm of horror and despair.
Above him, grand and imposing in the shadows of coming night, loomed his
own sculptured image on the wall--proud, erect, triumphant--driving at
speed in his war-chariot over a field of slain.
So darkness gathered round original and likeness: the fierce conqueror
helmed and plated, bow in hand--the prostrate figure, with rent
garments, bowed in misery to the dust. And the stars came out in golden
lustre--mellow, benignant, radiant--smiling down, as it would seem, in
peace and good-will on the sleep of Babylon the Great.