Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy

by Margaret Horton Potter

This was done. In less than an hour two litters halted in front of the tenement of Ut, and in one of them was Ribâta himself, his head, breast, arms, and one limb wrapped in heavy bandages, so weak that his voice was but a whisper, yet a whisper of joy that one little creature out of all the multitude had escaped death in the temple. Baba was carried down to him, and their meeting had in it much of pathos. Ribâta's career was ruined, his position gone, his lord dead, his house in disorder; yet one thing was left to him, and her, in great joy, he took to his heart. Charmides and Ramûa, side by side, stood listening as Ribâta whispered to his slave the two words that changed the lives of them all.

"Baba—my wife," said he. And then presently, together, they were carried away into the evening.

While Charmides and Ramûa went back to their room to talk over the great thing that had come to Baba, Beltani, below, was preparing for the doleful night. She had kindled a little fire, cooked food for herself and Bazuzu, and was now on her knees offering up incantations to Namtar, the demon of the plague. Bazuzu, from his place beside Istar, joined at intervals in the prayers, which the sick woman, now in the violent delirium of fever, broke in upon continually with appeals for help and wails of grief over Belshazzar, who never left her thoughts.

In many a house and hovel in the Great City a similar scene was enacted to-night. Yet there could not be one more deplorable than this. She who raved upon the bed of straw in the heart of the most poverty-stricken quarter of Babylon—from what things was she descended? One by one she had lost everything that had made her life wonderful. Now the last, that attribute that she had left uncounted because it seemed to her indestructible, was going from her. In the next five days of this horrible sickness her beauty fled away, and she was left a thing dreadful for mankind to look upon.

By the second day of her attack, the mental disturbance had increased till the intervals of her sanity entirely disappeared. On the morning of the third day began those violent constrictions of the heart that caused unspeakable agony and brought her to the brink of the black abyss. By this time, also, the enlargement of glands, or buboes, the dominating symptom of the plague, had become frightful to see. Her eyes were suffused with a thick, white matter. Upon her body came forth great carbuncles. On the fourth day dark spots, patches like black bruises, and long, livid stripes, appeared upon her fair skin. The fever, now at its height, burned itself out in a day, and Istar fell into a cold and quiet stupor, the first stage of death. Her lips were black. Her eyes had closed. Her body had become something from which Beltani shrank at sight, and old Bazuzu touched only because of his great pity for the woman. Also at this time Istar's veil of hair, which had been wont to conceal her under its silken meshes, fell out in great masses and was burned by Beltani as a sacrifice before the demon of the plague.

Beltani's prayers to Namtar, however, had lost their sincerity, for the old woman could not in her heart wish Istar to live in her terrible disfigurement. Istar herself did not yet know what she had become. But unless, as seemed most probable, she died, there must soon come a time when she would discover, when she would see people shrink away from contact with her, yet turn to stare after in that fascination that a dreadful sight draws forth. Out of pure reverence for what Istar had been, Beltani attended her faithfully. Every herb and medicine and charm within her means and known to her she used to mitigate the sores, and to make the after-scars less terrible. Yet she, and Bazuzu also, felt that death were now the greatest boon for the woman.

Death did not come. In spite of her stupor and her low temperature, the fatal eighth day passed, and on the morning of the ninth Istar lived and was better. She regained a dim consciousness, and the strength to ask for food, which was given her in minute quantities, as also milk and wine. For forty-eight hours she hovered on the brink of reawakening; and then, finally, she found herself.

On the morning of the fifteenth of the month Istar opened her eyes in the early dawn. She was alone. On the other side of the room, upon her pallet, Beltani lay in a heavy sleep. Bazuzu was outside in the square. Istar moved her hand and sighed. She felt life coursing through her veins, and remembered the past week with only a vague, nightmarish sense of oppression. The air of the morning, hot as it was, had in it the gathered sweetness of the long, starry hours. She breathed it with joy; and for a moment forgot the sorrow that must be hers perpetually. Presently, with an old and habitual gesture, she lifted her hand to her head to push away her hair. And her hand touched the head. There was no hair upon it. Rather, two or three thin strands hung about her ears. Otherwise she was bald.

The heart of Istar gave a peculiar throb. She held up both hands before her eyes; and, as she saw them, she herself shrank. The hands, those fragile hands, the fair, white wrists, the arms, were spotted and streaked and swollen and hideously scabbed. She touched her cheek and found raw flesh upon it. She tore the covering from her neck. It was the same. Everywhere—everywhere, from head to foot, over her whole body—she was accursed. It was the plague—the plague! Istar tottered to her feet and uplifted her eyes. Poor, weak eyes! Yea, she was all but blind. With one low, wailing cry the afflicted one let herself slowly down, till she lay prone upon the kindly floor that did not hesitate to receive her. And there, through time and the day-dawn, she wept out the burden of her soul. But of the future and its inevitable suffering she could not think. As yet the way was too dark, too incomprehensible to her.

There upon the floor, motionless, Bazuzu found her two hours later. For long minutes he stood over her, helpless, pitying, knowing that there was no comfort to bring. But his heart was full as he felt the abandon of her attitude. Presently, kneeling at her side, he laid a horny hand gently upon one of her shoulders. And from his fingers a message of mute sympathy went forth to her. When she could bear that he should look upon her she lifted her head and opened her half-closed eyes to him. Then she spake, quietly, but with authority: