Later in the evening he was back, and a nod told her that the message had been safely delivered. But Atossa slept little that night. Once the eunuch who kept her door thought he heard some one within speaking, and entered unbidden lest there be an intruder. His mistress did not see him, for she was kneeling beside her bed, and praying softly in her Persian tongue. Before the fellow tiptoed away he noticed that ever and anon she would shake with sobbing.
“Marvel,” he grunted to himself, “the ‘Lady of Sumer and Akkad’ is weeping! What can such as she have to move to tears?”
CHAPTER IX
Darius the envoy had been assigned a spacious suite of rooms in the old palace of Nebuchadnezzar; he had his own guards, his own retinue of Persian body-servants. The prince’s private chamber was a high vaulted room, elegantly tiled, with little windows pierced in the arching roof. During the heat of the day the serving lads sprinkled the brick floor with water, and, as this evaporated, there arose a cool and refreshing vapour. All that afternoon the prince had kept to his chamber, and appeared to be in even less of a merry mood than had been his wont lately. Boges, who kept the door, was whispering to Ariæus the chamberlain that their master must have been mightily disturbed over the murderous attack on the king during the feast in the Gardens.
“As Ahura lives!” protested the worthy, “there is somewhat on his lordship’s mind. He has kept company with his writing tablets all day.”
And it was indeed so; for though the scribe’s art was not commonly among the accomplishments of an Aryan nobleman, Darius had long since mastered it, and now for a long time he had sat with his clay frame in his lap and his stylus in hand. Boges had ventured once the question:—
“And does my prince require me to send Artabanus to copy down the despatches to Susa?”
“I do not,” came the answer, so curt that Boges risked nothing more.