CHAPTER XIV
STRONG AS DEATH
It is well known that secrets are not to be kept from princes, and that for royal ears "the bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter," however scrupulously it may be hidden from curiosity of lower rank. Sarchedon's interview with Ishtar had been witnessed by Sethos, who reported it, as in duty bound, to Ninyas; and although that wilful youth, ignoring, according to custom, everything running counter to her wishes, never mentioned it to his mother, the whole affair came to her knowledge very soon after Semiramis had quitted the apartments of her son. It may be that in Assyrian palaces, below the surface of forms and ceremonies, stole an under-current of interest, intrigue, and license, which, eddying upward on occasion, troubled the courtly waters to the brim, and those who lived habitually in an atmosphere of luxury and magnificence refused to deny themselves certain relaxations of the heart or senses, that relieved the peasant's toil, and sweetened his hard-earned fare.
Sethos was a comely youth with laughing eyes. Kalmim a black-browed dame, joyous of temperament, and pleasant to look on as a summer's morning. It was natural that the woman's maturer tact and greater experience should lead the king's cup-bearer into confidences it had been wiser to withhold; and whatever Kalmim learned of good or evil, within or without the city walls, she lost no time in imparting to her mistress.
Semiramis listened, to all appearance undisturbed. Only the most practised of tire-women could have marked how the blue veins about her temples traced themselves more distinctly, how the colour turned a shade fainter in her cheek.
And yet what rage and self-contempt were tearing at her heart! That she, whose wishes were daily anticipated almost before they were formed, who, never since she arrived at woman's estate, and succeeded to her royal inheritance of matchless beauty, had left a desire ungratified, should find, here in Babylon, the citadel of her power, the very throne, as it were, of her dominion, a man who could resist the one and undervalue the other, preferring, to the Great Queen's favour, and such a destiny as the mightiest monarch on earth might envy, the smile of a sickly girl, the simple follies of a homely, humble, unpolluted love!
"Tire me nobly, Kalmim," said she, sitting before a mirror of burnished silver, that reflected her faultless form from head to foot. "There must be no crevice in mine armour to-day—not a fold must be ruffled, not a plait laid awry, since I go hence straightway into the presence of my lord the king." Thus to her woman, but to her own heart: "He will be on duty about the gates. He shall see how fair that face is he has dared to despise, and look on the beauty he undervalues, till he turns faint and sick and dizzy in its rays. I will crush him to the earth, and when he sues at my feet for the hope I bade him but yesterday to entertain, I will turn coldly away, and leave him to perish like a trampled worm. But he shall not go to this girl for comfort in his despair—no, he shall die! I have said it; he shall die! O Sarchedon, Sarchedon, I could not hate you so bitterly, did I not love you so well!"
And all the while not a quiver moved her eyelid, nor caused her jewelled hand to shake, while it smoothed the soft dark hair on her brow; the fair bosom itself, white, smooth, and polished, seemed also hard and motionless as marble. How different, the thought struck her, as she rose to depart—how different was that stately figure sweeping past the mirror from the flushed and panting woman, who, with shining eyes and heated cheeks, and dewy lips apart, had bent over the sleeping form of Sarchedon, to drop her love-token in the breast of him on whom she had set her heart! And yet, could it be because she had lost him, she asked herself, with fierce rage and longing, that he was a hundredfold more precious now?
There are women whom it is very dangerous to love, as in Eden there stood a tree that it was death to taste. But the forbidden fruit was gathered nevertheless; and these beauties seem to allure more than their share of victims, to win more than their natural meed of triumph. Perhaps it is their destiny to avenge on mankind the common wrongs of their sex, and to fall at last by the very weapons they have wielded so successfully in their march over a host of slain.