The Golden Hope: A Story of the Time of King Alexander the Great

by Robert H. Fuller

He was absent so long that Leonidas began to grow uneasy. He found the chamber destitute of furniture and without doors save that by which they had entered and that by which the chancellor had left them. Both were now secured. This had been accomplished without attracting their attention and it added to their uneasiness.

"We are like owls in a cage," Nathan said. "We can do nothing but wait."

"I do not like it," Leonidas replied.

"Nonsense," Chares remarked. "They brought us here for a purpose and we are of more use to them alive than dead. Do you suppose that Azemilcus is anxious to be crucified?"

"Perhaps not," the Spartan replied, "but it maybe that he has changed his mind. If he does not send for us soon, I think we had better try the door."

Clearchus said nothing, but he paced impatiently back and forth across the narrow room, pausing at every sound. The night was passing and the hour for the sacrifice to Moloch was drawing nearer. Shut up in the palace, they would be powerless to save Artemisia. The moments seemed hours to him. At last he could bear the suspense no longer.

"We should never have permitted the chancellor to leave us!" he said, and, striding to the door, he began to beat upon it with the hilt of his sword until the metal of which it was composed rang like a bell.

There was no response. The others joined him, raising a tumult loud enough to be heard throughout the palace, but even then some time elapsed before the bars were removed and the door swung open. The chancellor had returned alone, his face white and scared in the flickering light of the lamp that he had set upon the stone floor while he worked at the bars.

"Silence, or we are all lost!" he whispered imploringly, taking up the lamp with a hand that trembled so that the oil spilled upon the floor. "Do you want to invite death?"

"Don't talk to us of silence!" bellowed Chares, threatening the old man with his sword. "What do you mean by shutting us up here? You have yet to learn that it is not wise to keep the soldiers of Alexander waiting. Take us to your king."