WHO IS ON MY SIDE?
Reconciled to their change of rulers under the crafty administration of
Assarac, careless who swayed the sceptre of Nimrod so long as wine was
cheap and corn plentiful, the people of Babylon troubled themselves but
little that the Armenian expedition seemed so tardy in returning; that
Semiramis lay sick and dying, as they were told, among those northern
mountains; or that Ninyas, whom they had been taught to believe a
dutiful son abdicating in his mother's favour, reigned once more in her
stead. Nevertheless, even among that fierce and fickle populace remained
a leaven of the adoration she alone was able to inspire, and every child
of Ashur at home or a-field felt his dignity, his self-love, and his
nationality identified with the glory of the Great Queen.
They were stirred more than the eunuch expected by the news of her
return; so that when it became known she was within bowshot of the wall,
and about to reënter her own especial city, Assarac's watchful eye
discerned among the multitude those signs of discontent and restlessness
which precede a tumult, as lowering clouds and whitened waves indicate
the coming of a storm.
Groups were forming and dispersing in the street, women and children
remained on the roofs and terraces of their houses, men looked expectant
in each other's faces; while captains and warriors thronged the
ramparts, as though an enemy were already at the gate.
Presently there came a hush and calm over all that vast assemblage,
succeeded by a shiver that stirred the rippling mass from edge to edge,
when the tramp of horses, the roll of a chariot, broke on the still warm
air; then, wild and fierce as a defiance, though loud, jubilant, and
overwhelming, rose a mighty shout from Great Babylon to welcome back her
queen.
Assarac, eager and preoccupied, watching these signs of earth with more
anxiety than he had ever read the stars, felt a momentary thrill of
triumph in that very enthusiasm which, uncontrolled by his own skill,
must herald his doom. For a moment, in the agony of conflicting
feelings, he thought it would be well could he abandon every scheme of
glory and greatness, forego pride, ambition, revenge, to die at the
queen's feet, and be at rest. Gazing on her as she drew near in the
chariot, this temporary weakness passed away, leaving all that was evil
in his nature to resume the ascendency once more. Could this be the
proud Semiramis, the bright, the matchless, the beautiful? this sad and
stately woman, pale with the long fatigue of woe, yet wearing in her
desolation the same unrivalled beauty that had enhanced the glory of her
pride? It seemed the ghost of her former self, thus bending its haughty
head in acknowledgment of a nation's greeting, as she passed within the
gate--a spirit too sad to be of good, too fair to be of evil, sublimed
and elevated by the prescience of its doom, catching and reflecting the
spectral rays of a cold clear light that dawns beyond the grave.
Had she glowed, as was her wont, in all the flush and sparkle of her
imperial charms, he could have found it in his heart to have spared her
even then; for her dear sake, could have betrayed his followers, broken
faith with his king, and forsworn himself before his god. But marking
the sorrow she did not care to hide, and remembering its cause, his
blood turned to gall, and he vowed with bitter oaths she should never
light down from that chariot a living woman--no, not if he must hew her
in pieces with his own hand.
But for the Great Queen to be forewarned was to be forearmed. In no
extremity of sorrow nor of danger was it possible for her to lose that
unconscious presence of mind, that instinctive power of combination,
which had made her the conqueror of the world. Informed by Sethos of the
conspiracy against her life, she had taken measures to defeat it wisely,
calmly, promptly, yet deliberately, just as she would have sat down to
besiege a fenced city, or gone out to meet an enemy in the open field.
While the eunuch waited to hem her in with his priests and spearmen,
Semiramis, watching her opportunity, foiled him by the suddenness of her
attack.
Halting her chariot in the open space immediately within the gate, and
taking advantage of the astonished silence which succeeded this
unexpected stoppage, the Great Queen stood erect, flung her arms above
her head, and cried with a loud voice, "Who is on my side?" Then Assarac
knew that by so much time as it took to speak those words, he was too
late; and immediately before his eyes there passed a darkness, that was
as the shadow of death.
From her people, who loved the very ground she trod on, rose an outcry
to which their previous shouts had been but a maiden's whisper compared
to the roar of a beast of prey. Swords leaped from the scabbard, strong
arms beat the air, dark eyes gleamed, and dark-curled beards bristled
with fierce enthusiasm, eager hate, or wild desire for blood--archers
and spearmen descended like a torrent from the wall, stout champions of
a hundred battles came rushing and crowding through the streets. They
gathered in swarms about their queen; they hemmed her in with a circle
of steel; they swore, they wept, they gnashed their teeth, they
implored, they adjured her only to point out an enemy, and they would
tear him limb from limb.
Never before, through all the years she reigned in Babylon, had her
power seemed so absolute, her dominion so secure; yet she knew, none
better, that had her outcry been deferred by one short minute, had she
halted her chariot but fifty paces farther on within the city, a score
of blades would have carved away life and sorrow together from her
aching heart, her cheek, now so cold and pale in its bereavement, would
have been for ever cold and pale in death.
But not a shade of colour deepened that lovely cheek; no glitter of
wrath, nor anxiety, nor even excitement of mortal strife, disturbed the
scorn of those calm proud eyes, while she pointed to the eunuch,
standing erect in his chariot over against her, and spoke in the clear
full tones that had so often turned the tide of battle, like the
trumpets of a succouring host.
"I have need of that man!" said she, stretching out her round white arm.
"Sons of Ashur, I bid you fall on Assarac, priest of Baal. Slay him not,
but bind him and bring him to me!"
He was no coward, yet he trembled in every joint. Perhaps the sound of
her voice moved him no less than the yells of rage, the scowls of
hatred, the flashes of steel that met him on every side, than the mighty
rush that made at him, wave on wave, as the wolves of the forest pour on
some wounded mountain bull to get him down.
He bore himself bravely, notwithstanding, calling priests and spearmen
to his rescue, fitting an arrow to the bow he was never to draw again.
For a moment his white-clad form towered above the press and tumult,
like a sail in a troubled sea, that disappears among the breakers ere a
man has summoned courage for a second look. The priests of Baal could
not resist the shock. In spite of numbers and discipline, the hired
spearmen gave way. There was a rush, a recoil, an angry roar, a scuffle
of feet, the crash of a broken chariot, the scream of a woman from the
housetops, a horse reared high above their heads, the surging crowd
divided, and on the open space emerged some half a score Assyrian
warriors, dragging in their midst Assarac, priest of Baal, to the feet
of the Great Queen.
Even now in this extremity of danger and disgrace, bruised, panting,
dishevelled, doomed to certain death, he sought in the queen's eyes for
something of sympathy, of recognition, of acknowledgment, that they had
once looked kindly in his own. Of all he suffered, this was perhaps the
keenest pang--that on the fair face he had loved, and hated, and
worshipped so madly, there showed no more of anger than of pity.
Immovable, impenetrable, but for her beauty she might have been an image
of Nisroch the avenger, god of retribution and of fate.
Then he laughed out loud, a strange harsh laugh that scared the guards
who held him, while he thought that here in his mortal anguish,
throbbing under the knife or writhing on the stake, he had power to
wring and torture that proud heart still.
Before deigning to notice him, she thanked her people for their loyalty
with a sad and weary smile.
"Sons of Ashur," said she, "let none persuade you I have ever believed
you could fail your queen. She has but trusted you once more to-day, and
nobly have you once more answered her appeal. I have spoiled for you
another city; I have conquered for you another kingdom; I have journeyed
far and fast to return to you. My bow is unstrung, my sword is sheathed,
and I would fain rest from my labours. But Ashtaroth sleeps not in
heaven, nor Semiramis on earth; and be the queen's eyes never so heavy,
justice must be done by the greatest, as by the least, through the
length and breadth of the land of Shinar. There is one here who has
imagined evil in his heart against his ruler. Assarac, priest of Baal,
what have you to say why you should not forthwith be put to death?"
With these last syllables she turned full upon him her deep inscrutable
eyes, and if he had any hope of it before, he neither desired nor
expected pardon now. The pitiless gaze chilled him to the marrow, while
he felt, that were their positions reversed, he too could be as cold and
calm and cruel as his judge.
One glance of sympathy in the crowd would have unmanned him; but he
looked for it in vain. On earth he saw a dreary wavering mass of sullen
faces, and in heaven a wide-winged vulture, wheeling, hovering, poising
itself in the blue eternal sky.
It was not his god that sustained him now, nor his sacred character, nor
his priestly lore; not even the stubborn pride engrained in the nature
of such spirits, destined to affect the fate of dynasties and trouble
the security of an empire. No; he took refuge in the bitterness of that
despair which has found and proved the worst--when love turns to hate,
and faith to scorn--when the sweet springs of hope are poisoned at their
source, and the vision of an angel in a halo of light changes to a
mocking fiend, or a bare gaunt skeleton crowned with a grinning skull.
He returned a stare of defiance, calm and contemptuous as her own.
"It is for the Great Queen to reward her servants according to their
deserts," said he. "Let her ask herself if I have merited death at her
hands."
"It is not Semiramis who accuses you," she retorted coldly. "By the laws
of Shinar you are judged, and by them you are condemned. I have spoken."
There was no hope; none. Yet would she but look kindly on him, he could
bear it bravely, he thought, and die in his utter weariness, as a man
lies down to sleep. He made one last effort.
"Have I not served her," he asked, "through good and evil, in no hope of
payment or reward, but for the love and loyalty I bore to the Great
Queen? I have lived too long when the face of Semiramis is turned from
me in anger. I ask for no pardon, no reprieve. Let her but say that she
forgives me before I die!"
"I have nothing to forgive," she replied, with pitiless unconcern. "The
servant has raised his hand against his ruler; the subject has conspired
against his queen. Whose are these white-robed bands cowering and
trembling before me, though each man carries a naked knife in his
girdle, and another in his hand? Who drew up that sullen and dejected
line of warriors, instructing them to bend their bows and point their
spears against the leader they have followed to victory? It is not for
Semiramis to ask the question, but Assyria. It is not for Semiramis to
answer it, but Baal, and he cries with a loud voice, 'Assarac the
priest!'"
"Who turned on her at the last!" he shouted, in a paroxysm of fury and
despair. "Who bears here in his bosom the secret she would give all her
empire to obtain; but who defies and reviles the Great Queen to her
face, even in the jaws of death!"
She started, and for a moment seemed uncertain how to act; but
recovering herself, pronounced firmly the fatal words, "Cover his face,
and lead him forth. I have spoken."
It was a sentence that could never be annulled. The eunuch felt he was
doomed, and glanced instinctively upward, where the vulture passed
between him and the sun.
So they brought the hideous stake, and impaled him in sight of all men,
that the people of Babylon might pass by to rebuke him with scoffs and
curses, for a traitor who had lifted his hand against the Great Queen.
Two days, two nights, he writhed and languished in his agony. On the
third morning men had become wearied of him, and he was left alone, save
that the vulture floating overhead kept watch on untiring wing, and
waited for him still.
At sunrise there came a veiled woman, with a jar of water in her hand.
His dim eye lightened, and the spasm, that should have been a smile,
crossed his face, for he recognised in her gait and bearing the presence
of his queen.
She raised her veil to look fixedly on those dying features, so changed,
so distorted--to mark the quiver of those dry cracked lips, the flutter
of life that played over the blackened, withered frame.
"Speak," said she, in a low hoarse whisper, while the water rippled
pleasantly in its jar. "Speak, and I will have mercy; for you shall
drink and die."
He nodded assent, eyeing with piteous eagerness the deadly draught for
which he longed.
"Doth he live?" she asked, and laid the jar almost against his lips.
Another nod, a convulsive choking gasp, and a roll of the half closed
eyes.
"And where?" she continued, in fierce impatience, pitiless of his
sufferings, careless of all but the secret she was fain to extort, even
from the dead.
It was obvious that till his lips were moistened he could not answer, if
he would. She held the jar to his mouth, and he took such a long and
greedy draught as dulled his mortal agony with a sense of relief from
suffering that was almost joy.
Again she watched those baked black lips with jealous eyes. They strove
to form a word that yet died on them ere it could be uttered. Was it in
mockery they trembled with certain faint syllables, that to her sense of
sight, rather than hearing, seemed to indicate the desert? Was it in
mockery they smiled and writhed and gibbered ere they set themselves,
fixed and rigid for evermore?
Semiramis turned thoughtfully away, and the vulture came swooping down;
for he, too, had waited long and patiently to take his share of one who
had been a reader of the stars, a governor of the empire, the Great
Queen's favourite servant, Assarac, high priest of Baal.