"Men of Babylon," shouted Charmides, commandingly, "open your ranks! Let the Lady Istar pass through to the gate of Bel!"
A low, sullen murmur of refusal rose from the men in the front line. Not one of them moved. There was not so much as a glance of encouragement for Charmides in his hopeless championship of the woman. Nevertheless the Greek cried again:
"What right have ye to forbid that she enter the city?"
Then came a voice from the midst of the throng, a strident voice, and one harsh with age, known too well both to Istar and to her protector.
"The witch of the plague shall enter no more into the city. Long enough, creature of Namtar, hast thou worked destruction among us. Let the demon thy master save thee from our wrath!" And with the last words a piece of broken brick was hurled from out of the throng, striking Istar upon the shoulder.
Instantly Charmides sprang in front of her, but, violently trembling, she pushed him back. Quite alone, quite unprotected, she faced the mob, even advanced to them a step or two, while she asked, faintly:
"What is this that ye call me? Servant of Namtar? Witch of the plague?"
"Yea verily, wicked one!"
"Witch!"
"Sorceress!"
"Murderess!"
With the last word two or three more stones came towards her, one of them striking her upon the knee, another passing just over her head.
Istar drew a long sigh, and for an instant she closed her world-weary eyes. Thereafter, with a slighter movement than she had used before Cyrus, she caused the veil to fall from her form, and stood exposed in all her pitiable plight before the pitiless mob that had gathered against her.
Instantly there came a chorus of wonderment and of repulsion, with which a weak note of compassion was mingled. Charmides, who now saw her face for the first time since the morning after the massacre, started with horror.
"Behold, the mark of the plague is upon me. How then do ye call me servant of Namtar?" she said.
"Sorceress! Beneath the veil thou hast transformed thyself! Take thy true form!" cried Amraphel from the throng.
At this accusation a howl of anger suddenly rolled over the childish multitude. At last, almost by accident, they had been successfully roused to fury against the helpless creature before them.
"Thy true shape, witch!"
"Thy true shape!"
"Fly, if thou canst, from our wrath!"
"Pray Namtar to save thee now!"
And then, dropping articulate speech, the mob prepared themselves for their revenge against the demon's minion.
Drops of sweat rolled down Istar's face. Faint for food and greatly suffering from weariness, she swayed where she stood. Charmides, overcoming his repulsion, remembering her as she had once been in the days of her great glory, threw his arm about her and supported her.
"Dogs!" he cried, angrily, "the woman is weak and sick of the plague.
Will ye still keep her from the city wherein she must rest?"
"Shall we admit a murderess among us?" shouted one of the Jews, wrathfully.
"Murderess? What creature have I slain?"
"Dost thou deny the murder of thy husband, Belshazzar, on the night of the feast?" demanded Amraphel from the midst of the throng.
"Belshazzar! My beloved!--_I?_" A great sob burst from the lips of the woman. For a moment she could feel again about her the dying arms of him whom she had loved more dearly than godhead. The tears flowed fast down her scarred cheeks. Before the wave of grief she bent her head low.
"Behold, she confesses! She dares not deny! Murderess! Murderess!"
The voice of the mob grew deafening; and now bricks and stones came forth upon her in a shower. They struck her in many places, bruising her head, her breast, her scantily clothed arms, her broken body. Under the blows she cowered like a wounded animal, uttering no sound.
"Istar, Istar, come away with me! Fly! Here is death if we remain.
Come!"
Charmides seized hold of her while the missiles were striking them both in great numbers. Then, taking her up bodily, the Greek turned and fled rapidly down the hill-slope in the direction of the nearest shelter, a broad palm-grove upon the river-bank. For a few moments Istar was helpless; but he found, to his immense relief, that they were not pursued. When at last they were beyond danger Istar shuddered and cried to be put down. He set her anxiously upon her feet and found that she could walk.
"If I had but wine to give thee!" he exclaimed, as he saw her weakness.
"Nay, Charmides, thou hast saved and greatly helped me. I give thee blessing from the heart. And now thou must leave me, that I may go alone down to the river. Fear not. None will accost me. I am well."
The Greek would have protested against letting her go, but that he had an unaccountable feeling that a higher force than hers was dominating both of them. Therefore, after a glance into her uplifted face, he fell upon his knees before her, and bent his head before the will of the Almighty that was over them. And there, while the sunset shed its light around them like a halo, Istar turned away and went forth alone in the sunset light, to the grove of palms upon the bank of the quietly flowing Euphrates.
XXIII
THE SILVER SKY
Never, in all the days of Babylon, had there been an evening more fair than this. At sunset the burning day melted and flowed away, down the western sky, in a flood of liquid gold. A faint breath of air came over the river from across the distant Tigris, out of the cool hills of Elam, the conqueror's land. On the river-bank rose the palm-trees, casting their shadows into the softly slipping water; and the turf beneath them was all strewn with sunset gold. To the north lay Babylon, huge and black and silent, her dying thousands shut away behind the vastly towering walls. To the west and south stretched great irrigated fields of ripening grain, in the midst of which were many shadufs, with their patient buffaloes at the interminable work of drawing water from the clay wells. Still farther back were the crumbling brick huts of the tillers of the soil. On the edge of the river two long-legged cranes stood quietly meditating. Overhead a flock of pelicans wound their slow way southward towards the marshes where they dwelt. From the far distance was heard the loud cry of the bittern. Otherwise the land was silent--wrapped in evening prayer.
Along the river-bank, under the shadowy palms, with the golden light glowing about her, walked Istar, musing gently upon many things. Voices from the infinite addressed her. The iron was leaving her soul. Her mind was transfused with quietude. She ceased to notice or to feel the aching of her bruised body. She was holding communion with deeper things, and she moved with her head bent forward and her eyes upon the ground.
Presently she paused at the brink of the river--the fair, well-flowing river, that held in its pure depths the body of the storm-eyed, her beloved. Its flashing waters encompassed her with glory. Her mortal eyes grew blind with light. Presently, out of the glowing depth, there came to her, as once before, a voice--but now a voice most familiar, most dear to her ears, most longed-for since its silence. Belshazzar spoke from the beyond, in the words that Allaraine had written on the temple wall, and that had appeared to her again from the river, on the night of death:
"Hast thou found man's relation to God? The silver sky waits for thy soul."
And now in the heart of the woman was no bitterness, no rebellion, only knowledge of the truth. And, answering the question of the Lord, spoken in the voice of her dead, she whispered, softly:
"Man and man, as man and God, are bound by those ties of eternal love that made the covenant of Creation. Consciously or unconsciously, all living things must live with this as their law, for they are God's children, God's brothers, God Himself sent forth to wander for a while in time, but in the end returning to their eternal source, which is God.
"All the sin, all the sorrow of the world, I have known, have suffered.
Yet no loss nor grief can take away the great joy of love, its purity, its perfection.
"I acknowledge the wisdom of the All-Father displayed in His creation.
Let Him do with me as He will."
As she ceased to speak a blinding, silver stillness wrapped her about and held her immovable. From its depths in the far-off heavens there came to her ears sounds such as she had known in the long-ago: the song of the infinite, the infinite, unceasing chorus, the wind-choir that sings the Creator's hymn.
Still she could see the green fields and the water, and the ferny palms above her head. Still she beheld the broad river running full of pink and molten gold. Still the breath of the evening wind came to her lips.
The world was all about her; but she was no longer of it all.