Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

"Winsome indeed," replied Beladon, pointing upward to where the queen sat in state on the wall amidst her people. "Is he not his mother's son? and has he not inherited her very eyes and smile?"

"She would make the noblest leader of the three," swore the captain of spears. "By the serpent of Ashtaroth, she has more skill of warfare than the Great King himself; and I have seen the Bactrians lay down their arms and surrender without a blow, when she drove her war-horse into their ranks. You are a priest, and priests are learned in such matters. Have you never heard that she is something more than woman?"

"The gods will take her to dwell with them in their own good time," answered Beladon gravely, but smothering a smile as he reflected on sundry feminine weaknesses and caprices of the Great Queen, freely discussed by the priests of the inner circle in the temple of Baal. "More than woman," he muttered, moving away to another group of spectators—"more than woman in cunning, more than man in foresight, more than the lion in courage, more than a goddess in beauty! The day must come when she will rule the world! Assarac is her chief adviser—Beladon is high in the counsels of Assarac—and so, what matters a gash or so before an altar, a little reserve amongst the people, compared with the prospect that opens before us, if only we were rid of this fierce old unbeliever, who fears neither gods above nor men below?"

Then he moved a few paces on, and bade a listener mark how the queen had turned the course of a stream out of her gardens round the royal palace to fill the fountains of the city, wondering in the same breath how Ninus would relish the alteration—Ninus, who a few years back had levelled walls, streets, and temples to enlarge the borders of a paradise for his game. This observation having won sufficient attention from the crowd, he proceeded to discuss the value of provisions, a subject of interest to all, reminding them that grain had been strangely cheap during the king's absence from his dominions, and marvelling why millet should have gone up in price as the conquering army advanced nearer and nearer home. Were they better or worse for the Great King's presence, he wanted to know; had they been athirst or ahungered while Ninus was far away making war on the frontier; and why was it that now, on the day of his return in triumph, they began to feel scarcity and to be sparing of the children's bread? Men looked blankly in each other's faces, and shook their heads for a reply; but such seed is never sown on barren ground, and it dawned on many minds that their city, which after all was not of his own founding, but his queen's, would have been none the worse had the Great King never come back from the war at all.

A hundred priests prating to the same effect in a hundred quarters produced no contemptible result. Discontent soon grew to disloyalty, and men who at daybreak would have asked no better than to fling themselves in adoration under the king's chariot-wheels were now prepared to receive him in sullen displeasure, and, as far as they dared, with outward demonstrations of ill-will.

Yet, like clouds before the northern breeze, all these symptoms of disaffection were swept away by the first glitter of spears in the desert, the first trumpet blast without the walls giving notice of his approach—to return, when the triumph and the pageant should be over, when the shouting and the excitement should have died away.

There was one, however, who watched the alternations of temper in the multitude as a steersman in shoal water watches the ebb and flow of the tide. Assarac's keen intellect penetrated the wavering feelings of the people, while his daring ambition aimed even at the overthrow of a dynasty for the gratification of its pride. He had long dreaded the return of Ninus as a check to his own power over the populace and paramount influence with the queen. The old lion loved neither priests nor priestcraft, and would have had small scruple in putting all the servants of Baal to the sword, if he suspected them of treachery or revolt. Had the army marched back from Egypt weakened and disorganised by the fatigues of its campaign; had the numerous force within the walls showed stronger symptoms of impatience and discontent; in short, had his materials seemed but inflammable enough to take fire at a moment's notice, Assarac would not have hesitated that one moment in applying a torch to set the whole Assyrian empire in a blaze.

But the priest, though swift to strike his blow, was also patient to abide his time. The Great Conqueror's army marched home as it had marched out, strong in numbers, in courage, in supplies—flushed moreover with an easy victory and a sufficiency of spoil. Warlike enthusiasm is of all excitement the most catching, and the hosts within the city were fain to greet their brethren-in-arms with at least the semblance of cordiality and good-will. Not thus on the day of his triumph was the old lion to be taken in the toils. Assarac, in his place of honour as high priest, standing near the queen, watched every turn of her countenance, and bethought him that the stars in their courses afforded no such difficult page to read as the text of a woman's heart.

Semiramis was attired with a magnificence that, enhancing her own unrivalled beauty, seemed to envelop her in splendour more than human. When she raised her veil to look down on the crowd, an awe came over the people, so that they forbore even to shout. It seemed as if Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven, had descended in their midst; but a single voice finding vent at last, such a pent-up burst of cheers rose to the sky, that her fair face turned a shade paler, and to him who was scanning it with eager gaze of curiosity and admiration, it seemed as if a moisture rose in her deep dark eyes.

The shouts of the people were caught up again and again. Clad in a robe of golden tissue, crowned with a diadem of rubies and diamonds set in gold, wearing the star-shaped ornaments round her neck that denoted her divine origin, and on her breast the most precious jewel in the empire, representing a cock and a crescent-moon, emblems of that homage to the Evil Principle which she had herself inculcated on the nation; wrapped besides in the halo of her own surpassing beauty, it was scarce possible to believe she was only a woman after all, of the same mould, the same nature, the same passions, with the drudges they had left pounding corn and drawing water at home. From gilded warrior to naked slave, from the captain in his chariot to the leper at the wayside, not a man, as he looked on that lovely face, but would have felt death cheaply purchased by a kind word or a smile. And these were lavished on one who was asked to encounter no danger—scarcely to perform an act of homage, in return.