Chapter XXI: Book II: The Great City (13)

Belshazzar looked searchingly into the face of the high-priest, but he failed to find there more than a warrantable anxiety. Therefore he replied: "As thou wilt, Amraphel. Inâ-shu-Îbni, let rather Baza of the temple go to search for the prophet; and watch thou for them from the door, that Daniel, coming, may quickly enter."

The priest Baza, of the third house of Zicarû, put away the cups that he bore, and, catching Amraphel's sign, made his obeisance to the king and hurried from the temple. Just before his disappearance Istar, who had watched the whole scene in silence, half rose from the couch to which she had returned, as if she would have prevented the man's departure. For a second she stood quite still in her upright position, glancing from the letters on the wall to Belshazzar's face. Then she sank back on her couch again without speaking; and as her head once more touched the cushions, Baza disappeared into the night, and Inâ-shu-Îbni shut, but did not fasten after him, the great temple door.

Fifteen minutes passed, and still the dazed throng neither spoke nor moved. They waited for him who could make plain to them the mystery or the miracle that had come upon the feast. At the end of this time the temple door once again softly opened, and a man, dark-robed, bare-footed, gaunt, and sharp-eyed, walked into the room, and straight to the foot of the steps of the shrine. Seeing Belshazzar and Amraphel together above him, he made obeisance to each, and Belshazzar, rising, came to the top of the first step, asking:

"Art thou that Daniel which art of the captivity of Judah, whom the great king my father's father brought out of Jewry?"

Daniel bent his head.

"It is said of thee that the spirit of the gods, light, wisdom, and understanding, are to be found in thee. Look then, thou leader of Jews, at the wall yonder. Behold what is written on it in letters of fire. If thou canst interpret those strange words, honor and great riches shall be to thee. Look thou, and read."

Obediently, while the gaze of every eye in the room of the feast was fixed upon him, Daniel turned and looked over the door, that had been left ajar, and saw the signs that glowed more faintly now upon the bricks above. For many seconds he stood passive, his black brows knit under the stress of thought. Amraphel grew cold with nervousness. His lips twitched to give the signal that should drown this incident in the flood of something infinitely greater; and he was on the very verge of crying out when the prophet turned and faced the king, a fire of emotion burning in his eyes and in his cheeks. When he opened his lips the room grew breathless, and Istar, shivering in irrepressible fear, hung upon his words:

"O king, the most high God gave Nebuchadrezzar thy forefather a kingdom, and majesty and glory and honor. And for the majesty that he gave him all people, nations, languages, trembled and feared before him. Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down. But when his mind was lift up and his heart was hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne and they took his glory from him. And he was driven forth from the sons of men. His heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was made with wild asses. They fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that He appointeth over it whomsoever He will.

"And thou his descendant, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this. Thou hast lifted thyself up against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of His house before thee, thou and thy lords, thy wives and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them. Thou hast worshipped the gods of silver and of gold, and of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear nor know. And the God in whose hands thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified. Then was the part of the hand sent from Him, and this writing was given.

"This is the writing that was written: 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.'

"This is the interpretation of the thing: Mene: God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Tekel: thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting. Peres: Thy kingdom is divided--_and given to the Medes and Persians_!"

The last words were spoken not to Belshazzar nor to any one in the temple. They rose to a shout that was heard outside the half-open temple door. In the moments that followed, Istar, her eyes blazing with wrath and scorn, sprang to her feet and came forth to confront the man of lies. But her lips never showed him false. Even as she lifted up her voice there came from without the sound of a mighty roar of fury. The two doors of the temple were burst apart, and those within found themselves face to face with the army of Cyrus and a vast Babylonish mob.

XIX

THE REGIMENT OF GUTI

The terrible spell of silence that had spread over the feasters at the temple was broken by a woman's scream. That scream brought men and women alike back to life. With a loud shout Belshazzar the king leaped down the steps of the shrine and ran forward, crying lustily to his guard to form into line. Old as he was, Amraphel, Cyrus' tool, was an instant before the king; and he, with Daniel the prophet close beside him, made his way through the band of soldiers that had gathered near the door, to the ranks of the enemy, in the vast throng of whom priest and Jew were presently lost to sight.

Meantime Belshazzar hurriedly rallied his men around him, had them quickly in order, and lined them before the opening, from which by this time doors and gates had been entirely torn away. The men of Guti were armored and armed. The scent of battle came to their nostrils. They were at home with it. Their blood tingled with joy, and Belshazzar saw how they would fight for him, every man to the end.

Now came the first sharp volley of arrows and sling-stones from the multitude at the doors. Two or three of the guards fell. The ranks were quickly closed up and the volley answered. Then the range became too short for bows. Men of Elam and Babylonish traitors were hand-to-hand with the defenders of the temple. In the semi-darkness it was hard to distinguish between friend and foe; and the struggle became as man to man. Shouts and cries ascended from the indivisible mass. In the midst of everything rose the trumpet tones of Belshazzar, crying encouragement to his men. But the rich and mellow voice of Cyrus was not to be heard giving commands to the other side. Cyrus was not here to-night. Only the open field and honorable combat were his. And he had left the dishonor of such a victory to Amraphel the high-priest, and Cambyses, his own son, who had asked for it.

In the temple, behind the ranks of the regiment of Guti, the royal eunuchs, creatures of silent courage and loyalty, had gathered together all the women into one group, round which, for protection, they and the lords of the council were piling the temple furniture into a barricade. Istar alone was not here. Since the first battle-cry no one had seen her; and now, in the excitement of the moment, she, being unseen, was also forgotten.

Baba, in her silks and chains, was with the women of Ribâta's household, all of whom their lord had placed carefully in one corner of the protecting barricade, behind a pile of divans and stone tables laid beside the sacrificial altar. In the rush of the moment Ribâta had but a word with his favorite slave. For an instant, however, he bent over her, to see that she was well protected, and in that time he pressed his lips as a seal against her forehead, muttering hurriedly, at the same time: "Courage, little one! Be not afraid. Our lives are in the hands of the great Bel. Pray to him, but do not weep."

And Baba answered readily, without any sign of fear: "My lord is my lord. I obey his word."

Then, as he left her side, the young girl lay back on the floor close against a couch that had been tipped beside her, and stayed there, silent and open-eyed, listening to the tumult of the battle round the door. The chorus of shouts and yells was deafening. Babylonish battle-cries mingled with Median phrases of triumph. And closer at hand, all around her, in fact, the women of high station lay wailing out their fright. Ribâta's two wives were near, crazed with terror for themselves, for their lord, for Babylon, for the king. Now and then, high above the general tumult, came the shrill, fierce voice of Belitsum, crying her anguish. Nabonidus was the name that continually left her lips, till Belshazzar himself, from the thickest of the fight, caught the syllables, and fought the more fiercely for the memory of his father.

While the men of Gutium held the door, there appeared to be nothing to fear for the women in the temple. Ribâta, before joining in the conflict, passed among his friends of the council, bidding them hold back a little from the thick of the fight, that, should it prove necessary, they might be unhurt to defend the women. The holders of the temple were in bad enough straits, to be sure, yet there was no immediate danger. Belshazzar's men, flanked by two bands of eunuchs and noblemen, who fought with sacrificial knives and axes, were for the moment holding all Babylon and the army of Cyrus at bay. Baba knew this, as she lay, quiet and silent, gazing up into the shadowy spaces of the roof. Presently, while all that terrible din sounded in her ears, with that throng of writhing, struggling, bleeding men twenty yards away, a little smile stretched itself over her lips, and her eyes fell shut. She lay wrapped in a vision of her own: a vision of fair fields and broad, blue water, where, on the shore, stood a man; a man whose hair shone like the sun, and who bore in his hands a five-stringed lyre. And presently, from out of the racket, she could hear the pure tones of Charmides' voice, singing, as he had always sung throughout his life, for love.

Baba was lying unconscious of her surroundings in this little ecstasy, when suddenly the low wailing of the women was heightened into loud cries of well-warranted horror. The little slave felt a new presence at hand. She lifted up her eyes, and saw something that caused her heart to rise into her throat. The barricade was breaking down before a band of armed temple-servants that were advancing to the murder of the women. A cold stream poured round Baba's heart, and for the first time to-night she screamed aloud. Her cry was answered by Ribâta, who was trying desperately to gather the lords out of the conflict at the door. But the fight there was going badly. More than half the defenders of the temple had fallen, and each of those that remained was pressed by half a dozen of the enemy. Many of the guards had been drawn out into the square and were keeping up the battle there while they lived. But it seemed all at once that the defence could not last many minutes more. Not a man could come to the rescue of the women caught in so terrible a trap. And in the faces of the inhuman creatures that threatened them, there was no hope for their lives. The murderers were nearly all of them Zicarû from the third college, which was Amraphel's own; and into their hearts hatred for the upper classes had been instilled for years. Now, as they looked upon their helpless prey, all the animal savagery of their race rose up in them, and their eyes sparkled and their lips twitched in the lust for blood. The wife of Nabû-Mashetic-Urrâ, one of the old councillors of Nabonidus, received the first blow. The knife of a seer struck her to the heart; and with that first gush of blood the general carnage began. Defenceless as they were, the women were roused to action. With their hands, their limbs, their teeth, the pins that fastened their hair, they fought uselessly for life. From the place where she lay half concealed, Baba watched the scenes of murder around her. The woman next her had been dodging the knife that continually pursued her, till, stabbed in a dozen places, hair and body dripping with her blood, she proffered her heart to the assassin, who mercifully plunged his dripping blade up to its hilt in her breast.

Baba gave a hoarse shriek, threw up her hands, and fell, face down, upon the floor. A second after a streak of fire ran deep into her right shoulder. Then, immediately, all the noise died away. The world reeled with her and became black; and for her this scene of incredible brutality was at an end.

Not so Belshazzar's desperate task. At the moment when the Zicarû, appearing from the back rooms of the temple, had set about the slaughter of the women, the king, in the midst of a little band of five soldiers, had pressed through the front ranks of the enemy, out into the temple square. This was packed with the city mob that had gathered from the feast in the temples of Nebo, Nergal, Istar, and Sin, and come hither under the leadership of their officiating priests. In the darkness it was impossible to tell friend from foe. Belshazzar's self-constituted body-guard fought madly to preserve his life; but, fifteen minutes after they had passed the temple doors, the last of them, wounded in twenty places, had fallen at the feet of his king, and Belshazzar of Babylon was alone with the darkness and with besetting death. Many set upon him where he stood on the eastern edge of the square; but perhaps none of his assailants knew him. He was armed only with a short sword taken from the hand of a dying Elamite; but with this weapon his execution was terrible. As man after man went down before his tigerish strength, the attention of many was drawn to him, and presently he found himself backing down a narrow and crooked street running out of the square, engaged with three men, variously armed, that vainly strove to fell him. An arrow stuck in the flesh of his right forearm, and there was a great gash upon one of his knees. He left behind him a trail of blood; but, in the heat of contest, he felt not a twinge of pain. The noise of the battle perceptibly diminished. He heard it vaguely, caring at this time very little how the fight was going. His adversaries pressed him hard; yet he smiled, as continually he beat them back. The brute, the tiger in him, was uppermost now. He had not a thought for anything but fighting. In his slow and certain way he had retreated perhaps two hundred yards, and was approaching the house of one of the under-priests of Bel. From its open door-way a flood of light poured into the street, and as Belshazzar moved into the luminous spot a cry of recognition broke from the lips of his oppressors. At the same moment a white-robed figure came quickly out of the house, and, unseen by him, moved behind Belshazzar. In the moment that followed, a knife gleamed in the light behind the king. The blow fell. With a great cry Belshazzar reeled, sank to his knee, straightened up again with a superhuman effort, thrust weakly in the direction of the men in front, and sank back on the ground with a faint moan. At the same time his assassin, motioning the three soldiers to go back, stepped in front of his victim and bent over him.

"Amraphel!" muttered the king.

"Ay, Amraphel, thou dog! Amraphel, thou tyrant of the city! Amraphel, thou last ruler of a hated line! Amraphel, that stands at last alone in the land of his desire! Hear thou, then, the name of Amraphel. Know his everlasting hatred for thee and thine, and knowing--die!" Then, with his sandalled foot, the old man spurned the face of him that was fallen, hoping to bring some craven word to the lips of the king.

But Belshazzar was himself in death as in life. Gazing steadily into the face of the high-priest, he permitted himself to smile--a slight, scornful smile, such as he had sometimes worn during the sacrifice. Seeing it, the high-priest was goaded into a hot fury. With what strength he had he kicked the face of the dying man. Then, drawing his bloody skirts about him, he turned and passed once more into the house of the priest, out of Belshazzar's sight forever.

So at last the king lay alone, unmolested, with the night and with his thoughts. Babylon was fallen--was fallen the Great City, before the hand of no invader, but by treachery and stealth, by means of murder and of outrage. All this the king knew; yet no regret for the inevitable disturbed these final moments. Rather he turned his mind to that that was his alone, to that which constituted his true, his inner life, that made his great happiness, that had redeemed him from all mental pain--his supreme love for Istar the woman.

In that dim dream into which all surrounding things were fading, her name floated to his lips. Once, twice, thrice he repeated it to himself, lingeringly, adoringly, loving each syllable as he spoke it. He had no thought, no hope of seeing her again. She was somewhere, far away, in the midst of those direful scenes beyond him. He commended her to his gods as best he could. Then he thought of himself as at her side, the mist of her hair hiding the world from his eyes, the perfume of her breath causing his head to swim. He thought of her as she had been to him in the last months. And then--suddenly--she was with him.

Out of the gloom of the narrow street she came, searching after him, calling his name. The veil had fallen back from her pallid face. Her eyes were staring wide with fear and with the horror of blood. Her movement was slow, indeterminate, vague. Not till after he had watched her for a full minute did she come upon his figure in its pools of blood. Then, with a faint, fluttering cry she ran to him, only half-believing her poor vision. Their meeting was ineffable. She lay upon his body, eye on eye, lip on lip to him, her cries stifled by his gasping breath, her wandering hands caressing his hair, his brow, his neck, his bloody vestment. Not knowing what she did, she pulled the broken arrow from his arm, and then screamed to think of where it had been. Of the two, Belshazzar's state of mind was infinitely clearer, infinitely stronger than hers. It was with a supreme effort that he took his lips from hers that he might speak, might try to make her understand what this moment must be to them.

"Oh, thou art wounded, my king, my beloved! Look--here upon thee is blood--blood on the white of thy robe. Why art thou red?" she repeated, once and again, anxiously examining the wet, dark stains that flowed ever freshly from his body.

Belshazzar saw that her brain was turned, and his anguish became terrible. Was she to bid him good-bye like this? Must he leave her forever with the infinite unsaid? How could he bring her mind back to him, if but for one moment? He could not think. All that he could do was to say, thickly, with the blood in his mouth:

"Istar, beloved, I die! Dost thou hear?"

"Yea, Belshazzar, and I also. Allaraine hath written it upon the wall. Didst thou not see? 'Hast thou found man's relation to God? The silver sky waits for thy soul.' I also die."

"Thou!" he murmured, quickly. "Art thou wounded, Istar?" His feeble hands searched over her body, but felt no sign of blood. She had been untouched by any weapon. And now his eyes grew dull with suffering, and he said, faintly, and with reluctance: "Fare thee far and well, my Istar--Istar of my city. I go."

"Belshazzar!"

What it had been, tone or word of his, that roused her at last, the dying man could not tell. But that name rang through the night in a scream of living agony. Now she knew what it meant--that her Babylon was fallen around her--that the world was empty--that the lord of her life was passing--that henceforward her way lay through the valley of loneliness. What mattered now the writing on the wall, hopeless prophecy of her own death? Belshazzar was here, beneath her, dying; while she--Istar--his wife--had received no wound.

She raised him in her arms and their eyes met for the last time. How much passed in the look cannot be told, for it was a final mingling of souls. All their love, their infinite happiness, their sorrow, their tears unshed, the humanity of their two lives, was embodied in that look. Grief of parting was not there, for the two were striving to make parting endurable, each to each, by the look. It was finished at last, with Belshazzar's whispered words:

"In the silver sky, O my glorious one, I wait for thee!"

"O my beloved, wait for me! Wait for me!"

Then the body dropped inert in her arms. Belshazzar was gone. Istar was left alone in the world.

How long afterwards she rose from that place she did not know. Many people--soldiers of the invading army and men of the mob, with blood-dripping swords--had passed her as she lay along the ground, face down, beside the body. And none of these offered to molest her, for they thought that two dead lay there in the semi-darkness. The light in the house of the priest of Bel had gone out, and the shouts of conflict had long since been hushed. Still, through all the city, there was the murmur of uneasiness, of many men awake and stirring. The night was filled with stars, and with that curious white glow that comes in midsummer to the Orient. But it seemed strange that the skies did not turn from the hideous spectacle of Babylon that night.

Forth into the city, from the body that she loved, Istar went. Guided and protected by some divine spirit, she passed unhurt among groups of strange, uncouth warriors that laughed and talked in an unknown tongue. She crossed streets where dead lay piled together. For those that were loyal to the city had not been spared by the men of Amraphel. She passed houses in which sat women wailing out their terror through the long hours before the dawn; and came finally to the open doors of a small temple in which the feast of Tammuz had been celebrated through the day. Before this Istar paused. Inside she could see the glowing of the sacrificial lights and the disorderly desertion of the room--the long, empty tables covered with half-filled cups and plates, and the altar whence, from the smouldering fire, a thin stream of blue incense still poured upward. The woman's weary eyes saw these long, soft divans with a sense of desire and of relief. She entered the room and went quickly towards the nearest resting-place. She was about to lay herself down. Her eyes were all but closed under their weight of weariness, when suddenly, from the shadowy spaces beyond her, came a sound that caused her to start back from the couch, and hasten in nervous terror towards the door. It had been only the bleating of a little group of hungry sheep in their pen near the temple kitchen; yet the unexpected noise had shattered Istar's nerves, and she fared forth again out of the holy house into the long, winding streets of the city.

Whither she went, how far, with what purpose, no one knew, no one cared. She saw the river winding its tranquil way between well-stoned banks, with the shadows of vast buildings mirrored in its depths, while the glittering stars from their high dome shone like pale, white eyes in the glassy, lazily moving stream. Wandering Euphrates! Took it any heed of the deeds of good or evil performed upon its banks? God had bequeathed to it eternal calm, had made the sight of it an eternal balm for weary eyes. This night it brought peace on its waves and a promise of rest to the soul of the woman. As she stood gazing down into its baffling green, there came to her again the message from the kingdom, written in golden letters on the surface of the water. Again Istar read and again she wondered, yet in her soul understood the words:

"Hast thou found man's relation to God? The silver sky waits for thy soul."

Istar, in her great woe, stood looking upon the fiery words, that seemed to have burned themselves into her brain; and her whole heart rebelled against them. Those that she loved had been taken from her. With Belshazzar, the light of her life was extinguished. Man was bound to God only by great suffering, by grief, by heart-sorrow! A sob came into her throat, and there was anger in her mind as she would have turned away from the mystical words. But at that instant they flashed out into darkness, and the gleam was gone. For a moment the night grew thickly black, and Istar reeled where she stood. Afterwards she found herself walking on the bank of the river, only a little distance west of the spot where the huge temple of Marduk reared its bulk into the air. It was now in Istar's mind to go back to the place where Belshazzar's body lay, and to remain there at his side till dawn should banish the horrors of the night. But just as she would have left the river for the second time, there came out upon the path that ran along its bank a group of white-robed men, whom Istar knew for priests, bearing with them a heavy burden covered over with a purple cloth. At sight of them Istar turned suddenly dizzy and crouched on the bricks of the pavement.

Arrived at the edge of the river, the five priests of Amraphel's temple laid their burden on the ground and removed the cloth that covered it. Belshazzar's body was exposed to view. Istar, with a little moan, pressed both hands tightly across her breast. But neither sound nor movement attracted any attention from the priests. These now indulged in a short parley, that ended in their taking from the corpse the royal ornaments that covered it and dividing them evenly among the five.

"Now, Bel-shar-utsur, tyrant of the city, go down by river to plead with the Lady Mulge in Ninkigal for a drink from the spring of life; for thou shalt drink no more, in the Great City, of the wines of Helbon and Izalla!"

With this only farewell, three of them lifted the body up, swung it thrice in the air by the feet and by the head, and at the third swing let it fly out into the waters of the river that had so short a time before received the worn frame of the dead man's father.

As the body left their hands the priests were startled to hear a long, low cry that came from a few yards to the right. Looking, they saw a woman's figure run to the river-bank and peer into the waters below, where the body of the king, as on a funeral barge, went floating down towards the city of the dead that lay south of Babylon.

Without any attempt at accosting her who mourned, the men of Amraphel presently turned away and began their return to the temple, carrying with them the new wealth of jewels. Istar also rose, half consciously, and knowing neither any abiding-place where to lay her head, nor any one to seek who could give her help, she moved away aimlessly down the bank of the stream. A few yards to the south there was a great ferry station, where, by day, a dozen boats were wont to ply back and forth across the stream. By night only one barge went its way backward and forward; and as Istar came down to the little quay the broad scow was just ready to start to the western shore with its load of men and soldiers. She ran quickly down the steps and on to this moving bridge. The west bank of the river was home to her. She knew its streets and its people. There, to the north, was the palace of Belshazzar, and the temple in which she had once dwelt. There, somewhere, she would find shelter.

When the barge finally touched the landing at the western shore and Istar, last of any one, was about to leave it, she was stopped by one of the ferrymen.

"Lady, it is two _se_ for the passage."

"Two _se_! Money? I have none," said Istar, slowly.

"Thou shalt not leave the barge till the price is paid," retorted the boatman, angrily.

But vaguely understanding what he meant, Istar pulled the veil from her face and fixed her great eyes upon him, the better to comprehend what it was he told her. The man gave a great start, for in the semi-darkness her marvellous beauty shone like a star. Then the rough fellow bent his head before her.

"It is the lady of Babylon! Great Istar, forgive our fault! Let it please thee to leave the barge!" he exclaimed, reverently.

Istar did not pause to wonder that he knew her. She saw that her way was open, and she went forth, up the steps, across the path at the top, and into the lower city. Too weary, too stricken for either rest or sleep, she felt her brain burn and her limbs grow cold as she walked. Now there was a fire in her veins; now they grew chill as the snows of Elam. In the pale gray of the dawn she trembled with sickness. The coming of day was not beautiful to her eyes. In the first pink flush from the east she found herself standing before a miserable hut on the border of a canal, and from the dark door-way came a voice crying in great fear:

"The plague! The plague! It is come upon us! Behold the gods visit their wrath upon men! Woe, woe to them that see light in Babylon to-day!"

Istar shuddered at the cry. From another place farther to the north the words of horror and grief were repeated. The reign of death was thus proclaimed in the city. Now there was a great ringing in Istar's ears. Lights shot up before her eyes. It seemed to her that over all the city, from the five millions of human tongues, rose that cry of woe: "The plague! The plague!"

The memory of her dead child was with her. A few more paces she staggered through, half consciously. Then, of a sudden, some one appeared beside her--some one whom she knew and had forgotten. At sight of the well-known face the woman's brain gave way. With a long, heart-broken sob, she fell helpless, lifeless, into the reverent arms of Charmides, her bard.

XX

PESTILENCE

It was thus that, on the night of July 3d, in the year 538 B.C., Persian rule began in Babylon, and native rule in the Great City was ended forever.

Historically this was true. In actual fact, on the morning of July 4th--ay, and for many weeks thereafter--no man knew the real ruler of the city, and no man greatly cared to know him. Every soul within the walls was occupied with a far more terrible and more engrossing matter, and officer and priest alike obeyed orders of Cyrus that passed through the lips of Amraphel, without caring whence they were issued or why. Cyrus the king, his sons, and the most of his army remained encamped without the walls. Gobryas had returned to the governorship of Sippar. Amraphel, unable to find any loop-hole for escape, remained shut up in his palace, miserably afraid, not even venturing to sacrifice in the temple for dread of the curse that hung over the city. Every place of worship, indeed, was deserted. In the middle of the temple of Bel-Marduk the hideous pile of dead still lay behind their barricade, just as they had fallen on the night of the massacre. Men not cowards at other times fled that building and the square and all the neighborhood, as a place of the damned. The air around was thick with the stench of death; and no command of Cyrus could force one of his men near enough to the spot to wall up the open space between the shattered doors.

Plague reigned supreme in Babylon. The black death, that horror of horrors that occasionally swept upon the great nations of the East, like the scourge of God smiting every man in its path, leaving behind it a wake of dead, dying, and miserable bereft, had entered into the beleaguered city. It was for this that Amraphel stopped ears and eyes and remained a prisoner behind the thick, white walls of his palace, where the chorus of woe could not penetrate to him. And day by day Daniel the Jew interpreted, to those that would hear, the meaning of this further wrath of God against them that had so long allowed themselves to be governed by such a one as Nabonidus, descendant of Nebuchadrezzar. Indefatigably Daniel, plague-marked and immune long years ago, preached the wrathful word of his death-bearing Lord; and such was his success among these pagans that it became a not uncommon thing to behold some woman, swollen and spotted, inexpressibly repulsive and pitiable to look at, with the final frenzy upon her, kneeling in street or hovel before the wooden image of a demon, and frantically calling upon the god of the Jews to remove from her both the curse of life and the after-terrors of hell, and to plunge her into the longed-for peace of utter annihilation.

By the middle of the month bodies could not be buried, but lay piled in streets and houses, till Babylon became the true city of Mulge, Queen of the Dead. Those that knew, those that had gone through the visitation of thirty years before, felt their hearts fail them as they thought of what was still to come. Many, indeed, tried to leave the city; but Cyrus' soldiers patrolled every gate, and any having about them the mark of death were not allowed to pass.

Charmides the Greek was not among those that attempted an escape. By every tie that he held sacred he was bound to his adopted city, and it was his one desire to do what little he might to help the sufferers of the plague.

At dawn on the fourth of Ab, the morning after the fall of the city, Ramûa and Beltani sat together in their tenement, waiting, watching, more than all wondering at the strange sounds that had come to them as faint echoes of the great happenings of the night. Neither of them had gone to celebrate the feast in any temple. Plead or storm as Beltani would, she found Charmides fixed in his wishes on this point, and in tears and bitterness of spirit she found it necessary to move forward for an entire year all her dreams of three days of unlimited wine and meat. The Greek, who had gone back to temple-service almost immediately after his meeting with Belshazzar on the day of Daniel's attempted assassination of the king, knew enough of what was likely to happen in the first night of the feast to forbid his family to participate in it. And while Beltani had raged, and even Ramûa had shed a few submissive tears when Charmides departed for the temple of Sin, the two of them watched quietly through the night and eagerly awaited the promised early return of the master of the household.

Very early in the evening came vague mutterings of distant, gathering mobs. Much later were the still more indeterminate but more ominous sounds of battle, shouts and cries, with the underlying murmur grown more fierce. Afterwards fell the great silence--a silence in which no man could sleep, something more terrible than sound, something that foreboded direful things--carnage, murder, merciless death. At this time the name of Baba first passed the lips of the waiting women. Baba was in Ribâta's train at the temple of Bel-Marduk. Baba, a slave, stood no chance of salvation if any were to be lost. Had she lived or had she died that night? Through the silence that lasted till dawn this unspoken question lay in the hearts of the watchers. And then, with the first streaks of day, their thoughts were turned again by something else, another cry more awful than any battle-shout, that rose like a mist from every hovel in the tenement quarter.

"The plague--the plague! Woe unto us! It is the plague!"

It was as if every soul in the city was become a leper, and each was crying his disease. At the first sound of it Ramûa's heart turned sick within her, and Beltani became as white as the dawn. For Beltani could remember the last plague in Babylon.

"Charmides! Why does he stay?" whispered Ramûa to her mother, over and over again; and it was the only word that passed between them till, with the first beams of the sun, the Greek was seen coming into the square in front of the tenement. At sight of him Ramûa gave a little cry:

"He is not alone!"

"It is not Baba," added Beltani, quickly.

Then the two of them watched in silence while Charmides advanced with his companion, a tall, slender woman covered with the silver-woven veil, who faltered as she moved, till Charmides was nearly carrying her. At the first glance Ramûa perceived that the Greek was weary, so weary that every step was an effort to him. Thus, when he finally reached the door of the dwelling, she ran quickly forward to give him aid.

"The night has been very long. Thou must rest," she whispered, disregarding the stranger, who drooped as they halted at the door.

"Nay, Ramûa. Nay. I am not weary," returned the Greek, monotonously. "Behold, I bring home to you Istar, the great lady of Babylon. In this night she, and all in the Great City, have terribly suffered. Babylon is fallen to Kurush the king, and Belshazzar, the mighty prince, and all that were with him in the temple of Bel, are slain."

Istar gave a quick, convulsive shudder, but Ramûa hardly noticed her. "Baba!" she cried, in terror. "Baba was in the temple of Bel!"

Charmides turned very white, and Istar suddenly threw back the veil from her face. "And Baba--Baba, too!" she said, mournfully, her voice ringing like a knell.

But seeing the woman, Ramûa and her mother forgot what they said. The two of them stood transfixed by her undreamed-of, supernatural beauty. Her pallor was something incredible, and the unearthly purity of it, the light in the great eyes, the bluish shadows that lay on the skin, were enough for the moment to make one forget death itself. As she looked, Beltani perceived something that caused her to start. She took an impulsive step forward, and then halted again as Istar's eyes came slowly to the level of hers.

"What seest thou?" asked the woman.

Beltani went forward again and laid a finger upon Istar's neck, and as she draw it away Istar shuddered convulsively.

"What is it?" demanded Charmides, in a thick voice.

"The plague."

There was a momentary silence as the four that stood there gave the words time to penetrate. Then Istar, quivering again, started suddenly towards the door. Charmides barred her way.

"Where goest thou?" he asked, gently.

"Out! Out into the Great City! Let me go, Charmides! Let me go!"

With what little strength she had Istar threw herself upon the Greek, that he might give way and let her escape from his house. But Charmides was firm, and his strength infinitely greater than hers. After a struggle of a few seconds Istar gave way and would have fallen upon the floor had not the young man caught her about the body, lifted her in his arms, and carried her, lifeless and unresisting, into the little-used inner room where, at this moment, Bazuzu lay asleep. The black slave was quickly roused and Istar was placed upon a hurriedly arranged bed. Then Charmides returned again to his wife and sternly commanded her to retire to her room up-stairs, forbidding her to enter the lower rooms of their dwelling while Istar should be there. Both Bazuzu and Beltani had had the plague, and were in no danger from it. But Charmides himself, like Ramûa, was relegated to the upper rooms and to the roof.

The moment that her body rested upon a bed, poor as it was, Istar fell asleep, and there, in the great weight of her sickness and her grief, lay for many hours insensible to all things. As the heat of the day came on, and the atmosphere of the small and ill-ventilated room became more and more stifling, Bazuzu took his place at her side, and minute by minute, hour by hour, fanned to her lips what air there was, while his own face streamed with perspiration and his breath came in gasps. His eyes, the eyes that had so tenderly watched the childlike slumbers of Ramûa and Baba, now looked upon her whose face had been the wonder of the East, whom he himself once had seen clothed in blinding radiance, seated upon her golden car in a procession of the great gods and who now lay here, alone and friendless, shorn of her divinity, stricken with disease, to die a pauper's death or to live on to a hideous old age.

Istar suffered in her sleep. Whether it was the memory of the horror of the past night or the pain of disease racking her body could not be told. But Bazuzu heard her moans with heartfelt pity. Over and over again she spoke two names, one of which the slave could scarcely understand, the other that of the dead prince of Babylon. They were the names of her baby and of her husband, all that world of happiness that had gone, and that was calling to her out of the shadowy past.

Like every one in the clutch of the dread sickness, Istar thirsted continually, yet shrank, nauseated, at the mere sight of water or milk. Continually Beltani brought and held to her lips the refreshment that she craved, as often to have it thrust away with a gesture of pitiable repulsion. At length, seeing there was no other way, Bazuzu held the sick woman fast pinioned on the ground, while Beltani poured down her throat a pint of freshly cooled water. Over the first swallow Istar's struggles were convulsive, but after that she drank eagerly all that was given her, and when the last in the cup was gone she opened her burning eyes in a mute appeal for more. This was refused, of necessity; but, in pity for the heat of her fever and the closeness of the room, Beltani had her carried out and laid down near the door-way of the living-room, where presently she sank into a sleep that changed gradually to a heavy stupor.

Noon passed and left the city streets quivering with heat. From the burning desert in the west came a faint breath of wind, that twinkled blue and white in the air till the eyes were blinded and the brain reeled under its intensity. Charmides and Ramûa were sitting together on the gallery outside their room in an upper story of the tenement, looking off to the shining strip of canal beyond which rose the patch of shrivelled green where, two months before, Ribâta's garden had blossomed with many a fragrant rose and fragile lily. Charmides was mentally preparing himself for another journey across the desolate city to the temple of Bel, that vast tomb in which so many tangled bodies lay. He had not yet voiced his intention to Ramûa, though he knew that she would not oppose it.

Suddenly round the corner of the tenement, into the open square, came a strange thing: a human being, crawling upon hands and knees along the brick pavement, halting now and then in visible exhaustion, but displaying also a nervous eagerness in its movements; and all the way behind it as it came was left a deep, red trail. A mere heap of bloody rags at first it seemed; but presently, as he watched, Charmides could see a mop of long, black hair that fell to the ground upon one side.

"That is a woman, Ramûa," he whispered.

Ramûa, white to the lips, grasped his arm. "Go! Go to her, Charmides!" she responded, a breathless fear coming on her.

"What is it, Ramûa? What is thy thought?" questioned the Greek.

"I do not know. Go thou, Charmides! Haste! Haste! She falls!"

Thereupon Charmides went, slowly at first, still staring in a half-puzzled way at the little heap of bruised flesh that now lay inert upon the bricks below. Then his pace quickened, for he realized the woman's need. Along the gallery and down the stairs he ran, and then, at breakneck pace, crossed the space between the wounded creature and the door-way of the tenement. Ramûa, straining her eyes after him, saw him bend over the fallen one, and then thought that a cry came from his lips.

Hardly a cry, more a groan of utter horror it was. Charmides' heart was in his throat. For a second the blue eyes closed to shut out the pitiable sight, and then opened again upon Baba. It was Baba that lay there before him: Baba who, mangled as she was, had, in the gray dawn, crawled out from the bodies among which she lay in the temple, and since then had come upon her hands and knees, inch by inch, foot by foot, all across the Great City, to her old home, to him that stood over her now. She had allowed herself the untold luxury of unconsciousness only when the journey's end was reached, when at last she was at the door-way of the place of her early poverty, her great happiness, her life-sorrow.

Charmides knelt beside her, and, with a little quiver in which pity and fear for her were evenly mingled, lifted her in his arms. She stained his tunic with blood; but presently he perceived that this blood was not all Baba's own. It was caked in clots upon her torn garments; it smeared her rich sandals; it matted her hair. Yet on her body there was, so far as he could yet determine, only one wound--a deep stab in the back of her left shoulder. From this the blood had almost ceased to flow, coming only in a little trickle when she drew a longer breath than usual.

Charmides bore the light form, face downward, towards the stairs of the tenement, thinking rapidly as he went. A horrible sight, truly, to lay before Ramûa. Yet Ramûa must see it. Carry her into those rooms where Istar lay in the delirium of the plague, he dared not. Nowhere else--yes, there was one other place. There was the home of Baba's master. Should he take her there before Ramûa guessed her identity? Ribâta's house would be open to her. And yet--and yet--it was here that Baba herself had chosen to come, as she might well believe, in death. That mute appeal could not be withstood. Here, because she had asked it, she must remain.

Step by step up the stairs to the gallery he bore the pathetic burden. At the top of the flight stood Ramûa, face colorless, eyes wide with a fear that she would not admit to herself. Charmides, looking up, met the look, answered it, and saw his wife's hands go up to her head.

"Charmides! It is not--" she stopped.

"It is Baba, my beloved. Baba is alive. She has come home to us, Ramûa, to be cared for. Be thou brave, then. Go down and bring water wherewith to wash her, and a clean tunic of thine own to put upon her; and then together we will bind her wound."

A little while and the sunset came, and Babylon was aureoled again in crimson. Not till then did Ribâta's slave come back to consciousness in her sister's arms. The horror of the past night had stamped itself as indelibly upon her mind as on her body. Between fits of trembling she poured out to Ramûa the story of the fight in the temple and the massacre of the women. Charmides, standing outside the door on the gallery, listened to the tale as he looked off across the quiet city.

"And Istar, Istar, our divine lady, I did not behold at the side of Belitsum the queen, nor with the women of the royal house who lie together now in the centre of the dead. May the great gods grant that she and her lord, Belshazzar, together escaped death and are free--somewhere--in the city."

"Baba, the Lady Istar is here--below--sick of the plague; and our mother and Bazuzu are at her side."

"The Lady Istar! Here!" Baba struggled to sit up, but Ramûa kept her firmly down while she told her the story of Istar's coming; how Charmides brought her to them crazed with her grief and with her long wandering.

Baba listened closely, and at the end of the recital her tears flowed fast. "Belshazzar, then, is dead!" she whispered more than once. "The mighty prince is dead, and Istar is alone--alone--even as I."

But now, while Ramûa wiped her tears away, Charmides came in to them, saying: "Across the square from the canal come two men in the livery of the house of Ribâta. I go forth to meet them. If it is for thee they come, Baba, what word shall I give to them?"

Baba gave a long sigh, and her eyes closed. "I am here. Seeks my lord for me? I am my lord's. I will return to him when I may."

And with this reply Charmides went forth to meet the messengers.

Ribâta's men halted at the foot of the steps, waiting his descent; and the Greek found that he had guessed aright when he surmised the object of their coming. My Lord Ribâta, terribly wounded, stricken with great grief at the downfall of the city and the massacre of all his women, had despatched messengers to the only place where news of his favorite slave could be had, if mayhap she had by a miracle escaped the general carnage. Charmides dutifully gave them Baba's message, saw their faces light up with amazement and pleasure, and bade them, if they would carry Baba to their lord, go fetch the easiest of litters, that she might not suffer more than necessary on the way.

This was done. In less than an hour two litters halted in front of the tenement of Ut, and in one of them was Ribâta himself, his head, breast, arms, and one limb wrapped in heavy bandages, so weak that his voice was but a whisper, yet a whisper of joy that one little creature out of all the multitude had escaped death in the temple. Baba was carried down to him, and their meeting had in it much of pathos. Ribâta's career was ruined, his position gone, his lord dead, his house in disorder; yet one thing was left to him, and her, in great joy, he took to his heart. Charmides and Ramûa, side by side, stood listening as Ribâta whispered to his slave the two words that changed the lives of them all.

"Baba--my wife," said he. And then presently, together, they were carried away into the evening.

While Charmides and Ramûa went back to their room to talk over the great thing that had come to Baba, Beltani, below, was preparing for the doleful night. She had kindled a little fire, cooked food for herself and Bazuzu, and was now on her knees offering up incantations to Namtar, the demon of the plague. Bazuzu, from his place beside Istar, joined at intervals in the prayers, which the sick woman, now in the violent delirium of fever, broke in upon continually with appeals for help and wails of grief over Belshazzar, who never left her thoughts.