"Thou, Baniya, must go, in company with this slave here, to the tenement of Ut, across the canal, and bring to me, from her abode, the Lady Ramua--her, and none other. See that none but you attends or follows her hither. In this place I shall wait for your return. Behold, I have spoken. Hasten to obey."
The slave inclined himself again, and then, driving Bazuzu peremptorily before him, left the garden by a gate that was always fastened on the inside. Once without, the two started together across the bare field leading to the foot-bridge that crossed the canal. Baniya knew the way as well as Bazuzu himself, for the tenement of Ut was one of Ribata's largest buildings, and any one familiar with the poor quarter of the New Year was sure to know where this house was. Therefore there was no hope of Bazuzu's leading the man astray. There was but one thing that he could do now for Ramua, and this he tried.
In spite of his ungainliness, which amounted to actual deformity, Bazuzu was a powerful, and, in a way, an agile man. He had come victorious out of more than one brawl, and physical pain meant very little to him. Now, as the two of them came to the edge of the bridge, the black man fell a step behind his companion, and after a second or two darted quickly upon Baniya, seized him about the body, and lifted him high in the air with the intention of flinging him into the canal and then taking to his heels in an opposite direction. But Bazuzu had reckoned on Baniya's losing his head at the crucial instant; and this Baniya did not do. The moment that he was seized, the sinewy little slave twisted one arm from the other's grasp, drew something from his girdle, and struck twice at Bazuzu's brawny shoulder. The black slave uttered a quick cry and dropped his burden. His right arm fell helpless at his side, and the two red streams that had gushed forth from different points in his shoulder, met on the upper arm and flowed in a thick flood down to his hand.
"Let the slave of the Lady Ramua guide me quickly to her," observed Baniya, with a grin at the distant moon.
And Bazuzu, thoroughly cowed, made no answer, but started in advance of his companion across the bridge.
The door to the general room of Beltani's _menage_ was open, as Bazuzu had left it an hour before. Across the threshold lay Zor, quietly asleep. From within came the faint, regular sound of Charmides'
breathing. Everything was perfectly still. As Bazuzu started to enter the first room, however, Baniya pulled him back, and, once more drawing his knife, breathed softly:
"I will enter that room first, slave, and my knife is in my hand. Thou shalt rouse the Lady Ramua from her sleep and bring her to me alone. But if any man or any other living thing in this house wakes, know that thou shalt not escape death at my hands. Now heed me!"
Bazuzu signified his acquiescence by a nod, and presently Baniya was left alone beside Charmides' pallet, while the black man crept on his hands and knees into the other room. Ramua's bed was near the door.
Beltani lay in the far corner, Baba on the other side of the room.
Beside Ramua Bazuzu stopped and knelt down. All three women were asleep.
Beltani's light snores brought reassurance to the slave's heart, though the task of waking one of the sleepers in this room without rousing either of the other two seemed, on the face of it, impossible.
Nevertheless, Bazuzu must try for his life. Therefore, with the most delicate of touches he laid a finger on Ramua's forehead. She quivered a little. Her eyes flew open. Then, seeing the strange shadow beside her, she asked, softly:
"What is it? Thou, my Baba?"
Bazuzu, speaking between his teeth in a tone scarcely audible, answered: "It is I, Bazuzu, Lady Ramua. Rise thou without noise and creep into the outer room. There we may more safely speak."
Forthwith he set the example by starting upon his hands and knees back into the other room, where Baniya waited and the Greek slept.
Ramua, instinctively dreading her mother, and fearing also the unguessed errand of Bazuzu, implicitly obeyed the words of the slave and made her way skilfully, without the faintest sound, out of her dark sleeping-place into the moonlit living-room. Seeing her, Baniya stepped swiftly forth, causing an exclamation to rise to her lips. Bazuzu stood one side, his head bowed, till Ribata's slave had insolently examined her, from the pretty head with its loosened hair, down the ragged tunic to her delicately arched feet. Then a slight smile broke over the face of my lord's servant, and he bowed as he whispered:
"Will the Lady Ramua deign to follow me?"
Ramua, who had been regarding the man in mute amazement, now turned quickly round and looked to Bazuzu for some explanation of this astonishing request. Bazuzu, weary, suffering from his wounds, and utterly despairing over Ramua's impending fate, lowered his head still further.
"Lord Ribata waits," he muttered.
"Ribata!" In her terror, Ramua scarcely whispered the words. She looked wildly from Bazuzu, who had lost all hope, to Baniya, uneasy with impatience. Then, slowly, she turned her eyes to the spot where Charmides lay. He slept. The Greek slept tranquilly on while she passed through this great peril! It was the sight of him there, sunk in oblivion, that suddenly decided Ramua. That he _could_ sleep through this time was an omen that he was not for her. A sudden anger against him rose up in her breast. With her heart full to bursting of tears, of terror, of misery, she started forward into the moonlight, following the footsteps of the swiftly moving slave.
In the mean time my lord, kept up later than he had expected to-night, was trying to amuse himself with the beauties of his unfrequented garden. While he wandered up and down the deserted paths, he could not but muse on the rather curious and entertaining incident of the night.
Ribata was not by nature an ungenerous man; and now, as he looked about him on the extreme beauty of his surroundings, it seemed rather well than otherwise that some one should have had so much benefit from his unheeded flowers. Certainly the plants seemed to have suffered no harm at Bazuzu's hands. Instead, the gardeners had, in all probability, been saved a daily hour or so of labor of the same kind. Then Ribata pondered for a little on the code of laws that might put a slave to death for just such a deed--something that did no harm to any one, and on the other hand helped a poor family to live. Certainly, for a judge of the royal court, Ribata was not narrow; neither was he harsh. Presently, as he continued his walk, he came upon the basket still containing a handful of red lilies, lying, as he himself had finally dropped it, beside the rose thicket. Ribata picked it up, and, as he moved on again, began, half absently, to pluck flowers--such flowers as Bazuzu had never dared take--and to put them into the light receptacle. My lord confessed to himself that his work was not artistically done. Great clumps of jasmine from their carefully trained vines, thick bunches of heliotrope, heavy lotus-blossoms with their rubber-like stalks, golden roses and waxen camellias, the rarest of his garden's lustrous treasures, he pulled and dragged about with his unpractised hands, and threw in a fragrant, tangled heap into Ramua's basket.
It was soon filled to overflowing, and then Ribata went back to the gate through which Baniya must return. Near this was an arbor overgrown with sweet, white flowers, and here he seated himself to wait. He was not impatient. The beauty of this unvisited part of his own domain had made a strong impression on him, and he leaned back comfortably to gaze out upon the moonlight and to dream unwonted dreams. Around and above him the heavy jasmine exhaled its overpowering sweetness into the limpid moonlight. Near him row upon row of brilliant lilies lay like scarlet butterflies asleep. Presently, from a distant thicket, a nightingale began to pour forth its full-throated song; and then, as Ribata in a quiet ecstasy raised his head to listen, the gate opened, and Ramua, bare-footed, with flowing hair, came into the garden.
She could not, from where she stopped, see Ribata; and he, wishing to know her first, did not immediately rise. Baniya, however, broke in upon him by running forward, performing his obeisance, and demanding to know if he had done well. My lord peremptorily dismissed him, and then, rising reluctantly, went to the maiden.
"Ramua is made welcome to Ribata's dwelling-place," he said, quietly, looking at but not offering to touch her.
Ramua's reply was to cover her face with her hair, and to fold both hands across her breast, in token of the deepest woe.
Somewhat against his will, Ribata changed his tactics. Assuming a tone of severity that did not in the least accord with his mood, he said: "And it was you, then, that despatched your slave into my garden, that he might steal my blossoms for your gain?"
The girl fell upon her knees and touched her forehead to the earth.
"Alas, my lord! Alas, it is true! My lord, be merciful to me! May my lord grant a little time and he shall be repaid--shall be repaid for all. I will repay him. By day and by night shall my hands labor. I will earn a maneh of silver wherewith to buy new plants for his garden, if he will let me now depart from him. May the great gods put mercy into the heart of my lord!"
Ribata looked down at her with a smile that she could not see. An honest maid, apparently, yet too pretty to give back to toil and poverty. The solitude, the song of the nightingale, and the intoxicating odors of the jasmine, had put Ribata into a sentimental mood. He lifted Ramua in his arms, carried her inside the arbor, and placed her tenderly upon the seat that he had occupied. Then, while she vainly struggled to free herself from his touch, he continued his scrutiny of her face and form.
Ramua was choking with terror at her position. It seemed to her now that, rather than have come hither, she should have killed herself. Yet Charmides had slept through her trial! Charmides! Doubtless he was sleeping yet. And, unreasonable as it was, that thought angered her anew. Ah! When he did finally awake he would find his world changed for him.
These bitter thoughts, that occupied her mind even as she strove to hold off from the man at her side, were broken in upon by Ribata, who plaintively addressed her:
"Lady Ramua, I have no need for manehs of silver. They are mine in plenty. At the thought that you labored for my sake my heart would be cut with each hour of your work. Nay, maiden, rather than that, I offer you or your mother as many golden manehs as you desire if you, fair one, will become a flower of my garden that shall bloom near me forever. This that is around you now, and my palace yonder, and slaves and silks and perfumes, sandal-wood and frankincense, wines of Helbon and spices from the East, soft couches and embroidered garments, shall be all your own.
Come, then, Ramua! Let us out of the sweet night into my house! And to-morrow shall thy mother be made glad with wealth. Say that thou wilt follow me, my beautiful one!"
Now this offer was a very fair and more than generous one--for the day.
There was no insult in it. So much Ramua knew. And she knew also that it was something that Beltani would have heard with unbounded delight. It was a chance that any girl of her station might regard as a gift from the silver sky. For this reason Ramua could show neither scorn nor anger. She had no refuge but tears. Weep, however, she certainly did, and to much purpose; for, before the deluge, Ribata was perfectly helpless. He was also not a little amazed, for he knew no man who had ever been refused such an offer. It was not a little mortifying to his vanity; and as he thought the matter over while still she wept, his temper began to rise. Poor man! He was unaware that he was pitted against a youth with a halo of shining hair, eyes like the summer sky, the physique of a Tammuz, and a voice like the notes of an ivory flute.
Even he would scarcely have expected to compete with these things, added, as they were, to the hope, faint though it might be, of an honest marriage with such masculine beauty. But in his ignorance the good man began to regard his rebellious prize with no little impatience.
"Well, maid," he observed at length, "are these silly tears all thine answer? Hast thou no other word? If so, thou shalt be carried in!"
Then Ramua, terrified in earnest, repeated, tremulously: "My lord! Have pity! I will work! I will repay the debt! Only, in the name of the great Sin, be merciful!"
"Now is this girl surely a fool!" muttered Bit-Shumukin to himself.
"Listen thou, Ramua! I will take no money from thee."
"Then let my lord take my life," she answered, wearily.
"Gladly!" was the eager reply.
Misunderstanding her entirely, he would have seized her in his arms again, but that the girl, shuddering a little, drew the knife from his belt and pressed it into his hand.
"Ramua is ready!" she gasped, faintly.
Ribata uttered an exclamation. "Child! Would I kill thee, thinkest thou?"
She looked up at him stupidly. "Thou hast said it."
Now Ribata was amazed. Fool she might be, indeed, but she was no coward.
He had not thought any woman possessed of such ready courage. Stepping back a little, while she still sat there before him, drooping and silent, he considered the situation. He was not brutal at heart, Bit-Shumukin; and he was too experienced to lose his head through that mad intoxication known only to youth in its first freedom. Besides this, no woman in all Babylon could have said that he had not been perfectly fair with her. This present matter being, in his wide knowledge, unique, demanded a unique finale. Presently he took up the basket with its rare and fragrant burden, and put it into Ramua's passive hand.
"There, my maid, are thy morrow's flowers. Go thy way with them, and sell them as is thy wont. But may it be thy last day upon the steps of the temple of Istar. To-morrow, at sunset, I and my slaves will come to thee in thy dwelling. By then thy heart must be softened towards me.
For, as Sin sheds his light from above, I swear that I will have thee for mine own! Go thy way in peace to thy home, and the great gods bring sleep to thine eyelids."
He made way for her to pass; and Ramua, panting with anxiety to escape, still clinging to her basket, rose and ran from him, swiftly as a deer, to the unfastened gate. Ribata watched her go, and heard the little sob of relief that she gave as she found Bazuzu, weak from loss of blood and bitter anxiety, awaiting her outside.
So Ribata, pondering philosophically upon the mysteries of woman-nature, and looking forward with no little interest to the sunset of the morrow, wended his way slowly towards his palace.
VIII