He made a menacing gesture in Atossa’s face. She never quailed.
“You have indeed chosen,” said she, in icy tone; “hereafter there is war: betwixt darkness and light, dæva and angel, Angra-Mainyu and Ahura-Mazda, implacable, truceless,—till the abasing of the ‘Lie’!”
Belshazzar motioned impatiently to the soldiers. “Let the prince be taken to his chambers as commanded, and let the Lady Atossa go below to her eunuchs.”
The two Persians sped one glance upon each other—but neither spoke farewell.
CHAPTER XV
Isaiah the Jew, whose arrest had been urgently commanded by the king, continued to defy all the zeal of the royal officers. Truth to tell, that was not great. More than one captain of the “Street Wardens” had been beholden to Daniel or his late colleague, Shadrach, for one service or another, and were loath to bring the young Hebrew within Khatin’s gentle mercies. Likewise, not a Jew in Babylon, barring a few recreants, would have betrayed the youth, who passed amongst them as a veritable prophet of Jehovah, hardly less inspired than Daniel himself. When a new levy of forced labour was proclaimed, and scarce a Hebrew but had to choose betwixt toilsome days in a broiling sun and the offering of a little corn to Marduk, Isaiah had gone up and down by night among their little cottages along the Street of Kisch, exhorting, warning, encouraging. “Endure a little longer,” was his message, “a few more trials to prove their devotion, and God would recall them to His mercy.”
Such was the burden of Isaiah, and to Avil-Marduk’s discomfiture scarcely a Hebrew chose apostasy, though the “whip-masters” had been ordered to be trebly harsh. The pontiff gnashed his teeth and swore by all the Anunnaki that he would yet break this Jewish stubbornness.
“Arrest Isaiah, living or dead,” fulmined the mandate again from the palace, but the royal thunders spent themselves in noise. Isaiah had found a safe refuge, the house of Dagan-Milki, a Babylonish schoolmaster, and confessedly one of the most devoted servants of the gods in Babylon. Once upon a day Isaiah had saved the goodman’s only son from the Euphrates, and now Dagan repaid the debt of gratitude. He conducted a little day school by the Borsippa Canal, where fifty boys and girls buzzed from morning till night, learning their lists of syllables, and the “Book of Fables” and the “Book of Countries and Rivers”; for there were few parents in Babylon that let even a daughter grow up so ignorant that she could not sign a letter, and had to content herself with her “nail-mark.” Dagan announced that his scholars had grown so numerous that he needed an assistant, to aid him to correct their tablets. The young man he took into his family seldom showed himself to the pupils; if he had, who would have thought of connecting him with the fugitive Hebrew? Dagan was such a pious man! But a terrible day came to Isaiah when a secret messenger of Imbi-Ilu contrived to search him out, and he heard the story of the abduction of Ruth. Imbi had done what he could, but to have pushed the inquiries about her far would have brought the case to the ears of the king, and that were sheerest madness. Friendly eunuchs reported that no such maid as the Jewess had been introduced into the royal harem. Neither Isaiah nor Imbi knew what to hope or to fear. Isaiah said little of his grief, but he went about with a face seven years older than his wont; and Dagan-Milki, worthy soul, was troubled for him and had wordy comfort.