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, Ramua 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 Ramua 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 Ribata'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 Ramua'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 Ramua 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 Ramua 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 Ramua 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, Ramua. 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 Ramua 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, Ramua 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 Ramua, 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 Ramua 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 Ramua 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, Ribata'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 Ramua, 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, Ramua," he whispered.
Ramua, white to the lips, grasped his arm. "Go! Go to her, Charmides!"
she responded, a breathless fear coming on her.
"What is it, Ramua? 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. Ramua, 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 Ramua. Yet Ramua 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 Ramua guessed her identity?
Ribata'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.