REQUITED
"I have cast stones in the air to fall on mine own head! I have knelt at
the stream, and, lo, the waters were bitter and defiled! O Kalmim,
there is neither faith, nor honour, nor gratitude in Ninyas, the son of
Ninus. May the king live for ever!"
She laughed outright. It was a rare jest to behold Sethos in a vein of
serious reflection; above all, to hear him revile the prince to whom,
through good and evil, he had been a devoted servant, notwithstanding
the vices, caprices, and heartless ingratitude of his lord.
"You are but a child," she answered lightly, "and for all your downy lip
and shapely limbs, not yet fit to run alone. Trust a strained bow, a
frayed string, a blown horse, or a baffled woman--all these will quit
them better in the hour of need than a king on the throne, whom you have
served when he was a captive in the dungeon."
They were standing together on a terrace of the royal palace in Babylon,
looking over many a league of gardens, vineyards, lofty palms, thin
silvery streams--vast tracts of desert sand beyond--all shining and
glowing in the bright morning sun, while their own comely faces and
splendid attire were rich and deep in colour as the surrounding hues of
earth and sky.
A great change had indeed taken place at home, since the queen's
expedition to Armenia left the city without a ruler, while its lawful
prince languished a weary prisoner, losing health, energy, and all the
dignity of manhood, under supervision of the priests of Baal. The return
of Assarac, bearing, as he affirmed, full powers and authority on the
part of Semiramis, sickening even to death in the far north, had
extricated Ninyas from captivity, and placed him on the throne to which
he was entitled by the laws of Shinar, the eunuch, in a secret
interview, extorting a solemn oath of vengeance on the mother who had
deprived him of his liberty and his empire. Broken in health and courage
by close imprisonment, acting on a frame already yielding to the effects
of unbridled indulgence, the young king was but a tool in the hands of
Assarac, who soon conceived the idea of making him also a mere
stepping-stone to the attainment of supreme power at which he aimed.
Though scrupulous in practising the usual forms and observances towards
his lord, the eunuch scarcely affected to ignore his own real
superiority, affirming only that his words and deeds were prompted by
the immediate inspiration of his god.
"And Baal bids him store up goodly treasures for himself, you may be
sure," observed Kalmim, discussing with her old admirer the character of
their new and arbitrary ruler; "so that at any time he may win over the
spearmen with spoil, as he secured the priests by promises, and the
prophets of the grove by threats. Gold and steel, Sethos--these are the
only real forces on earth, and I sometimes think there is no power that
can dominate them in heaven."
"Good faith," answered Sethos, "is precious as the one and true as the
other. I have never wavered, Kalmim, in my loyalty to Ninyas, nor my
love for _you_."
"And what have they profited you?" she retorted lightly. "You stood by
the prince in good and evil, eating with him the bitter morsel and
sharing the cup of affliction. One fine morning, Baal forsooth sends a
fat man in white to pull the king of nations out of a prison-house and
put him in a palace with a royal mantle on his shoulders, and a golden
sceptre in his hand. Then comes the cup-bearer, who has proved his
readiness to go to the gates of death with his lord, and asks to be made
leader of the host and to stand on the king's right hand, in the day of
his glory as in the night of his bondage. What said Ninyas to the poor
youth, in answer to so modest a request?"
"He laughed in my face," replied the other, with considerable
irritation. "And if there is justice in heaven it will be repaid him
fourfold. May the king live for ever!"
"So much for loyalty to a prince," she continued. "Now for truth to a
woman. Have you _really_ kept faith with me, Sethos, all this time? It
is many a long day since you and I first met by a strange chance in the
queen's paradise, and you told me--I forget what you told me, but it was
something very foolish, no doubt."
"You know I have," said Sethos bitterly, almost fiercely, turning his
head away while he spoke.
It was a short answer, but to a woman's ear worth a whole series of
protestations. In perception of such matters, Kalmim was no whit behind
her sex.
If he had but looked at her, he would have seen her blush, and surely in
no encounter whatsoever should a man take his eye off his enemy.
Sethos, alas, was completely at the adversary's mercy, and she trampled
him accordingly.
"Well, and what has this service, also, profited you for your pains?"
she asked in taunting accents, wholly unable to forbear the pleasure of
tormenting him. "You have stood by _me_ at my need faithfully, nobly,
grudging nothing, keeping nothing back. When the time comes, you will
ask _me_ too to make you my captain and leader, to seat you on my right
hand till I die, and, Sethos, I too--I shall laugh in your face!"
"Be it so," he answered in a grave quiet voice, so unlike his usual
tones that she glanced anxiously towards him. He seemed sad and
troubled, yet looked like a man whose loyalty was still unshaken and
unimpeachable.
"And you are tired of it at last?" she asked, in the same mocking
accents.
"It is too late to change now," was his answer, with a wan and weary
smile.
"Ninyas refused you?" she continued, looking straight into his eyes.
He bowed his head in silence.
"But _I_ have only laughed at you," she murmured, drawing her veil
hastily over her face. "And, Sethos, have you passed your life in
Babylon and not found out that liking grows with laughter as blossoms
come with rain? _I_ am not a king, I am only a woman; and I cannot deny
a faithful servant who asks the reward he has toiled through storm and
sunshine to attain."
He would have passed his arm round her waist, but with a dexterous
twirl, the result, perhaps, of considerable practice, she placed herself
out of reach.
"No," she said with imposing force and gesture, "my friend, and more
than friend, this is not a time for follies such as these. Some day,
when the heavy hand of Baal has been taken off this unhappy city, when
men's flocks and herds and wives and children have ceased to be at the
command of those who are but hewers of wood and drawers of water in the
temple, I may peradventure suffer you to--to--well, to touch the tip of
my finger with your lips. But now, the first duty of every son of Ashur
is to cast off this hateful yoke that bows his nation to the dust. O
that the old lion had but lived to see the white robes lording it in
his well-beloved city! He would have cleared them out with fire and
sword, ay, though all the host of heaven had come down from the stars to
take their part.
"Look at _me_! O, I know well you never take your eyes off me if you can
help it; but I am serious now. Look at _me_, I say--a woman who in her
life before never knew a thought nor care weightier than the smoothing
of a plait, the planting of a bodkin: I tell you I would take up spear
and shield to-morrow, if I might help to lay Assarac and his priests in
their blood at the altar before which they serve. What have they done
for us? What has Baal himself done for us since he has governed from the
throne of Nimrod? Corn is dear, water scarce, the people starve, and the
priests wax fatter, prouder, fiercer, day by day. Even Beladon, who used
to be meek and gentle as a weaned child, and was indeed a personable
youth, and one of my truest friends--even Beladon, I say, holds that we
are to be at his beck and call without question or murmur, you and I,
and every one within the hundred gates of the city wall."
"May Nisroch tear him limb from limb!" exclaimed Sethos, in high wrath;
for he had long been jealous of the comely young priest's intimacy with
Kalmim, and it was in no ignorance of his feelings that the latter now
worked upon her listener with the hated name.
"Yes, Beladon," she continued, "though he be not so bad as some of the
rest. But how long are we to bear this? How long are we to be trodden on
and kept down, not by a conqueror of worlds like old Ninus, wielding bow
and spear as I would handle a needle, but by a slothful priest, a eunuch
forsooth, in flowing robes and linen tiara, who never lifted weapon
deadlier than gilded fir-cone or fresh-gathered lotus, never bore
heavier burden than jewelled casket, nor faced a fiercer enemy than the
poor sheep he slays to please his god!"
"Nay, there you wrong him," argued honest Sethos. "If all that comes out
of Armenia be true, never bolder champion mounted war-chariot than
Assarac, the priest of Baal."
"Armenia!" retorted Kalmim, with infinite contempt--"a desert peopled by
a few half-starved wretches, doubtless naked and without arms. Besides,
was he not warring in the mountains under the banner of the Great Queen?
I pray you, when did Semiramis ever fail to conquer where she set the
battle in array? And now, by his own confession, she languishes with a
death-wound, and he is not ashamed to be standing here within the brazen
gates in a whole skin! O, it passes all patience! But I know my mistress
well. Surely never yet was that shaft feathered which could drink her
life-blood. Once I loved her dearly, and she repaid my faithful service
with the gratitude of--of a Great Queen, I suppose! But for all that is
past and gone, I will never believe, wounded or unwounded, she could
abandon the sceptre of Nimrod, or license Baal himself to usurp her
authority in the land of Shinar and the city she loves to call her own."
"But Ninyas sits in the royal palace," observed Sethos, "under the
mystic circle and the wings of gold. It is before Ninyas that the
spearmen defile at noon, and to Ninyas that the people cry for justice
in the gate at sunrise, when he is sober enough to hear."
"And how often is that?" exclaimed Kalmim. "Not once in twenty days. But
are you too blind to perceive, O simple youth, that while Ninyas wears
the tiara, Assarac holds the sceptre; while Ninyas fits the arrow,
Assarac draws the bow? It is time Babylon were rid of both. The fire
that crowns that sacred tower burns doubtless night and day; but what is
that to me if it be so high up I cannot thread my needle in its light?
When Baal means to rule over us in person, let him come down and show
himself. I am tired of a god who never answers, call on him loudly as
you will."
Such liberal sentiments would have astonished her companion more, but
that Sethos, during his lord's captivity, had dwelt long enough within
its sacred precincts to have lost much of his former reverence for the
mysteries of the temple, of his early confidence in the unseen power of
its god. He felt somewhat bewildered, nevertheless, and astray in this
uprooting of a faith that seemed like a birth-right to every son of
Ashur, and asked helplessly,
"If Baal cannot, and Ninyas must not, and Assarac will not, succour us,
to whom then are we to look?"
"To the Great Queen," answered Kalmim proudly: "never believe but she
will come again in her majesty, beautiful as morning, fierce and
terrible as the storm that rises with midday. I have seen her angered
once, only once in all my life. I tell you, Sethos, I would rather stand
in the presence of Nisroch to be consumed than face the blaze of those
eyes again. She spoke not, scarcely moved a limb; but I felt as the lamb
must feel when the leopard has made her spring, and there is no escape.
In her love, her hatred, and her desire, she knows no bounds and
acknowledges no check, yet never sunlight was welcomed by captive in a
dungeon as would be that beautiful face to-day in Babylon by the people
of the Great Queen."
While she spoke, she looked wistfully out over the desert towards the
north; Sethos, watching her eager face, saw it brighten with a sudden
gleam of triumph and hope. Following the direction of her eyes, he
observed the flash of spears through a dense cloud low on the horizon,
that denoted a body of horsemen on the march.
Pointing towards it, Kalmim burst into tears.
"It is the Great Queen!" she sobbed. "For my sake, Sethos--for my sake,
will you not be on our side?"