Yet, though the silver was coveted by a host, the gods strangely suffered their blasphemer to remain at large, and the money to lie safe in the royal coffers.
CHAPTER XVIII
The seventh day of the month, sacred to the dread goddess Sapanitum, and by every calendar pronounced an unfortunate day. The king had been forbidden by divine law to eat cooked food, change his dress, mount his chariot, or approach an altar for sacrifice. As for his subjects, they dared not, however sick, call in a physician or conjurer lest the wrathful goddess turn the remedies into poison. Nor had they ventured to breathe a curse against the bitterest enemy, lest the malediction be visited upon their own heads. It was a day of gloom and anxiety in all Babylon.
Graver things than the calendar were troubling Belshazzar and his ministers. Yet Khatin, the headsman, who waited beside Neriglissor, at the door of the king’s council-chamber, while their betters deliberated within, seemed in an unwontedly merry mood for so black a day.
“I profess, dear priest,” chuckled he, “his Majesty’s humour has most happily changed since the riot. He orders beheadings by the score, not of whining bandits, but of stout guardsmen and fat temple folk like yourself. By Samas! I shall need an assistant to aid me.”
The old “anointer” looked at him out of the corners of his eyes, and sidled away, fearful of too close company.
“Yes,” he assented, “since the riot the king cries ‘kill!’ every time a fly hums past his ears. The eunuchs who serve him every morning vow a goat to Sin if they are kept safely through the day.”
Khatin was just beginning some impious remark to the effect that “the worthy god was being over-fed with goats’ flesh,” when Igas-Ramman the captain burst in upon them on the run, and flew up to the sentry guarding the council-chamber door, almost before the two others knew his presence.