“Mercy, not Zophyrus, gracious Lord,” pleaded the abject Egyptian.
The king looked down on her, with a broader grin than ever.
“You are very hard to please. I ought to punish your wilfulness by some dreadful doom. Do not cry out again. I will not hear you. My decision is fixed. Mardonius shall bestow you in marriage to a man who is not even a Persian by birth, who one year since was a disobedient rebel against my power, who even now contemns and despises many of the good customs of the Aryans. Hark, then, to his name. When Hellas is conquered, I command that Mardonius wed you to the Lord Prexaspes.”
The king broke into an uproarious laugh, a signal for the thousand loyal subjects within the great pavilion to roar with laughter also. In the confusion following Artazostra and Roxana disappeared. Fifty hands dragged the appointed bridegroom to the king, showering on him all manner of congratulations. Xerxes’s act was a plain proof that he was adopting the beautiful Hellene as one of his personal favourites,—a post of influence and honour not to be despised by a vizier. What “Prexaspes” said when he thanked the king was drowned in the tumult of laughing and cheering. The monarch, delighted to play the gracious god, roared his injunctions to the Athenian so loud that above the din they heard him.
“You will bridle her well, Prexaspes. I know them—those Egyptian fillies! They need a hard curb and the lash at times. Beware the tyranny of your own harem. I would not have the satrapies know how certain bright eyes in the seraglio can make the son of Darius play the fool. There is nothing more dangerous than women. It will take all your courage to master them. A hard task lies before you. I have given you one wife, but you know our good Persian custom—five, ten, or twenty. Take the score, I order you. Then in twelve years you’ll be receiving the prize a Persian king bestows every summer on the father of the most children!”
And following this broad hint, the king held his sides with laughter again, a mirth which it is needless to say was echoed and reëchoed till it seemed it could not cease. Only a few ventured to mutter under breath: “The Hellene will have a subsatrapy in the East before the season is over and a treasure of five thousand talents! Mithra wither the upstart!”
* * * * * * *
The summer was waning when the host moved southward [pg 216]from Larissa, for mere numbers had made progress slow, and despite Mardonius’s providence the question of commissariat sometimes became difficult. Now at last, leaving behind Thrace and Macedonia, the army began to enter Greece itself. As it fared across the teeming plains of Thessaly, it met only welcome from the inhabitants and submissions from fresh embassies. Report came from the fleet—keeping pace with the land army along the coasts—that nowhere had the weak squadrons of the Greeks adventured a stand. Daily the smile of the Lord of the World grew more complacent, as his “table-companions” told him: “The rumour of your Eternity’s advent stupefies the miserable Hellenes. Like Atar, the Angel of Fire, your splendour glitters afar. You will enter Athens and Sparta, and no sword leave its sheath, no bow its wrapper.”
Every day Mardonius asked of Glaucon, “Will your Hellenes fight?” and the answer was ever more doubting, “I do not know.”
Long since Glaucon had given up hope of the defeat of the Persian. Now he prayed devoutly there might be no useless shedding of blood. If only he could turn back and not behold the humiliation of Athens! Of the fate of the old-time friends—Democrates, Cimon, Hermione—he tried not to think. No doubt Hermione was the wife of Democrates. More than a year had sped since the flight from Colonus. Hermione had put off her mourning for the yellow veil of a bride. Glaucon prayed the war might bring her no new sorrow, though Democrates, of course, would resist Persia to the end. As for himself he would never darken their eyes again. He was betrothed to Roxana. With her he would seek one of those valleys in Bactria which she had praised, the remoter the better, and there perhaps was peace.