CHAPTER XIX
Another king, another council, another palace. The twilight was creeping over Susa, the city of Cyrus, over the blue Choaspes winding southward, over the rambling town, with its shops and bazaars, which stretched away to eastward, and over the great mound betwixt river and city. High above dwelling and street loomed the ramparts of the palace fortress of the king. Complacent Babylonian envoys might sneer under breath at the barbarism of the decorations, but under the failing light the palace wore a glory all its own, the like of which was nowhere else save at its prototype in Ecbatana, city of the Medes. The citadel was natural, but strengthened by human art. Twenty furlongs and more was its circuit; its sheer height rose for fifty cubits. On its summit spread the Aryan palace. Original in nothing save truth-speaking, the Persian had been a borrower from many lands. A stranger would have declared the house of Cyrus like that of Belshazzar, yet in manner unlike it. Endless colonnades; huge courts, unroofed save for the Tyrian purple tapestries on great feast days; giant-winged bulls; walls brilliant with innumerable processions of huntsmen and spearmen, wrought in blue and green enamel,—all these from Babylon. But Greek chisels had given delicacy and grace to the sculptures; the conceit of India had set the four heads of griffins on the corners of each stately capital; Median ostentation had plated the ceilings of many of the chambers, as well as the cornice and parapet without, with the pale lustre of silver, or even with garish gold.
He who entered would have lost himself in court after court, hall after hall, each a-swarm with its hordes of guardsmen, eunuchs, and courtiers. His feet would have trodden priceless Bactrian carpets; over his head would have twinkled a thousand silver lamps and red resinous torches. Yet had he kept onward, he would have at last come to a door guarded by a score of watchful “eyes of the king,” and then, if some talisman suffered him to pass them, have stood face to face with the lord of the Aryans.
The king was taking counsel with his peers. The Tartar on the chillest steppe, the Brahmin by the hoary Indus, might quake at the name of Cyrus, son of Cambyses; but the six princes of the tribes of Persia and of Media were suffered at all times to speak their word to the monarch, and he must hear them.
There was no throne in this chamber. The king sat in a ponderous arm-chair, at the head of a long table, his fellow-councillors ranged on lower seats at either side. They had long since cast off ceremony. Cyrus’s cone-shaped tiara was taller than that of the others, the embroideries on his flowing Median robe richer; these alone distinguished him. There was no scribe present, nor other attendant. After a long silence the king was again speaking.
“My friends,” Cyrus smote a fist on the table with a buffet weighty enough to fell an ox, “you seem to have suffered Apaosha the ‘Drought-fiend’ to dry up all your thoughts. I called you for counsel; I meet silence and black frowns. Have you nothing to say?” The king looked from face to face; his own was troubled. There was care spread upon his high, bronzed forehead, care was in the lines of his mouth under the flowing gray beard, care was dimming the genial lustre of his keen blue eyes.
A man at the king’s right hand made answer, and all heard respectfully, for he was bowed with age and its wisdom.
“Live forever, King of the Aryans! Do not blame us if Ahura denies us the presence of Vohu-Manö, angel of good counsel. What is left to say? Yet let the king know this—determine the fate of Darius, my son, without thought for my own private loss or grief. The honour of Persia and of Persia’s king is more than the safety of forty sons of mine.”
But Cyrus shook his head, replying sombrely: “You are a true friend, Hystaspes; but understand that the honour of Persia and of Cyrus demands to-day that Darius should come harmless from that snare to which I, in folly, sent him. The blame is mine. Belshazzar has deceived me. Would to Ahura that I alone might bear the calamity, and not the noblest of our youth!”
But the dark-eyed Median prince, Harpagus, who sat at the king’s left hand, broke forth hotly: “Now as Mithra rains light from the heavens, I protest the Babylonian will never dare to make a hair of our prince to fall. Belshazzar and his pack of snivelling priests and paltering corn-merchants put to death a prince of our blood royal? The Chaldeans will love well to see our Aryan cavalrymen eating up all their dear farmlands like locusts! Belshazzar’s was a coward’s threat. He will make it good—never!”