The Golden Hope: A Story of the Time of King Alexander the Great

"Hush!" she said, in a crooning voice, and, covering the child's head with her garment, she pressed its lips to her breast. For an instant she sat there, but the chill of the waxen mouth struck through her heart. She gave a startled glance at the baby's face, and then sprang up with a scream of despair and rushed out of the temple into the tempest, with the poor little body clasped in her arms.

Nathan called to Chares and Leonidas. "Alexander is on the wall," he said. "The streets are filled with the Tyrians. We must escape as we came. Listen!"

He held up his hand, and the Greeks became aware of a dull roaring that filled the city like the humming of a gigantic hive of bees.

"Even here we shall not be safe," Nathan continued. "Let us seek the secret passage."

"Chares!" cried one from among the women, and Thais ran forward, with her saffron robe torn so that half her perfect breast was exposed. She carried a dagger in her hand, and its blade was red; but her face shone with joy. The weapon fell from her grasp as she sprang to the Theban, who lifted her like a child in his arms and kissed her.

"Come," he said, as he set her down, "let us go."

Turning their backs upon the throng of the living and the dead, they descended into the secret passage and closed the entrance behind them.

CHAPTER XLVII

SYPHAX SQUARES HIS ACCOUNT

King Azemilcus stood at a window of his chamber, with the aged chancellor at his side, looking out across the parapet of the wall. They were alone in the room, for the king had ordered his guard to await his commands in an outer apartment. The window opened directly upon the top of the wall, to which the royal palace was joined. Often during his long reign had the old king stood there, revolving his schemes in his cunning brain, while the salt breeze cooled his temples.

Beneath his feet the stones trembled with the shock of the great battering rams that were enlarging the breach in the wall west of the palace. In his ears sounded the tumult of the attack upon the two harbors, where the Macedonian triremes were seeking to break the barriers of chains. He saw the Tyrian soldiers upon the battlements, fighting against hope, with the valor of desperation.

The roar of falling masonry told him that the rams had done their work. The breach had become a wide gap, extending beyond the ends of the inner wall that had been built to block the assault. The vessels lying in wait drew nearer. Flights of arrows and volleys of stones, great and small, swept the defences. Troop-ships, provided with drawbridges at their prows, closed in at the breach. The bridges fell, and streams of men in armor began to flow across them. They gained the breach and held it. They scaled the slope of fallen blocks and reached the top of the wall. The Tyrians were forced backward or hurled into the sea.

"That must be Alexander," the king remarked, noting the irresistible vigor of the assault.

"Yes," the chancellor replied, "those are his plumes."

Alexander indeed was leading the charge along the wall toward the palace, fighting in the forefront as his custom was, while the shield-bearing guards pressed forward where he led. Their triumphant voices shouted his name. At one of the towers upon the wall, between the breach and the palace, the Tyrians made a stand, seeking to check the advance of their foes. The Macedonians hunted them out and drove them to the next tower. The battle raged in mid-air, and the bodies of the slain fell either into the sea on one side or into the streets of the city on the other.

"They will enter here," Azemilcus said. "I think it is time to go."

"It is time!" the chancellor echoed, gazing upon the slaughter like a man under the spell of a horrible fascination.

The king led the way into the large hall where the guard was stationed. It consisted of a company of a hundred men under the command of a young captain whose bronzed face and steady gaze showed that he was a veteran in service despite his youth. He had been pacing backward and forward before his men, who stood at attention along the wall. At sight of Azemilcus he paused and saluted. The old king placed a thin hand upon his shoulder.

"I am going to the Temple of Melkarth," he said. "Escort me thither."

The young man shook off the royal hand as though he felt contaminated by its touch.

"Does your Majesty really mean to seek refuge with the Alexandrine?" he asked indignantly.

"Yes," the king replied, "and I command you to come with me."

"Then I refuse!" the soldier exclaimed. "I have two brothers yonder on the wall, if they be still alive. The Macedonians will try to enter the palace, and if they succeed, the city is lost. Go you to Melkarth's temple if you will; but you go alone. We remain here."

Azemilcus looked at the handsome face, flushed with anger, and his inscrutable smile played about his lips.

"Thy father was my friend, and I have loved thee," he said. "I would save thee if I could, but youth is hot and hasty; have thy will if thou must."

He began to descend the broad staircase, followed by the trembling chancellor.

"There goes Tyre!" the young captain cried bitterly, "selfish and treacherous to the last. To the windows! We may yet save him honorably, though he does not deserve it."

They reached the seaward side of the palace in time to receive the remnants of the Tyrian companies that had vainly striven to defend the wall. The captain's brothers were not among the fugitives.

It had seemed to the young officer that the entrances to the palace from the wall might be held by a few men against any force that could be brought up; but it was not within human power to resist the onrush of the Macedonians. The captain was slain by Ptolemy; half his men fell with him, and the others fled down through the palace to the streets with the Macedonians at their heels.

The noise of the battle spread from the palace through the city. There was the clash of steel and the hoarse shouting of men at barricades; screams of women in fear and sharp cries of command mingled with the trampling of many feet. Save for the obstinate guard, the palace had been left unprotected by the crafty old king, who was awaiting his conqueror in the sanctuary of Melkarth's temple. Alexander led the way into the city with Hephæstion and Philotas. Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Clitus, Peithon, Glaucias, Meleager, Polysperchon, and a score more of his Companions and captains swept after him, heading the scarred veterans of Philip's wars, – phalangites, archers and javelin throwers, Thessalian cavalry riders, and heavy-armed mercenaries.

Then in the city of Tyre, whose name for centuries had been a synonym for power and pride, began a slaughter which lasted until nightfall. Alexander ordered that the Israelites should not be molested and that none should enter with violence the Temple of Melkarth; but he did not seek to forbid his followers from taking revenge for the rigors and hardships of the long siege.

At first the Tyrians fought desperately from street to street and from square to square, falling back from one barrier to another; but this resistance served only to whet the rage that drove the Macedonians on. Fresh troops constantly landed from the fleet and poured in through the palace. The breach in the wall became a gateway. The pitiless squadrons hunted the defenders from lane and housetop, cutting them to pieces.

In the Sidonian Harbor, seven ships were hastily manned, the chains were let down, and the crews made a dash for the open sea. They were snapped up by the Cretan vessels which lay in wait beyond the breakwater. Three of them were sunk, and the rest were forced to surrender.

In the house of Phradates the terrified slaves locked and barred the doors by direction of Mena. The master was fighting on the walls. More than once parties of Macedonian soldiers demanded that the gates be opened, but when no response was given, thinking perhaps that the house was deserted and tempted by easier spoil, they passed on. At last came a Tyrian cry for admittance. Mena looked from the wicket and saw Phradates, supported by two soldiers. His face was pale and his helmet had been shattered.

"Open!" cried the soldiers. "Your master has been wounded."

Several of the slaves started forward and laid their hands upon the bars, but the Egyptian pushed them back.

"There is no longer master or slave in Tyre," he said. "Each man must think first of himself."

At the suggestion of Phradates the soldiers bore him to the rear of the house, where there was a small door leading to the kitchens. It was opened by a white-haired crone, whose eyes were blinded with tears.

"Bring him in," she cried. "I am his nurse."

"Take him, then," the soldiers said roughly, irritated by the delay. "He owes us fifty darics for bringing him off, and we have our own to save."

Upheld by the trembling arms of the old woman, Phradates staggered across the threshold. He could no longer feel the earth beneath his feet. If he could only rest a little!

"Is it you, mother?" he asked faintly. "I must sleep."

"Yes, yes, master," the old woman replied through her sobs, "but not here. Come to your own chamber."

She tried to urge him toward the banqueting hall, but his steps grew more uncertain and his weight became too great for her feeble strength.

"Mena!" she called. "Mena, here is your master. Come and help him!"

The Egyptian ran in furiously and closed the door that she had left open in her anxiety.

"Do you want to have us all killed?" he demanded, turning upon the old woman. "Take that, my master, for the beatings you have given me!"

He plunged his dagger into the young man's defenceless side, and Phradates sank to the floor.

"Thais!" he muttered, "where art thou?"

The old woman uttered a quivering cry and fell upon her knees beside him, trying with her robe to stop the flow of blood. Mena ran back to the front of the house, leaving her alone with the body.

"Speak to me! Speak to me!" she wailed, not knowing what she said; but Phradates made no reply.

Tyre was in a turmoil of riot and license. The real fighting was at an end, but the soldiers were everywhere pillaging and drinking. Costly fabrics were trampled in the mud of the gutters. Rare vases and priceless statuary were shattered upon the pavements. Rough Thessalians ransacked the houses of rich merchants for gold and gems, destroying with laughter and jests what they did not want. The stifled screams of women mingled with their voices. Here a soldier emerged from a great house with his arms full of rich silks. Another shouted to him that a hoard of gold had been discovered close at hand, and he straightway dropped his burden that he might get his share of the more convenient plunder. There a man who had found a huge tusk of ivory tried to carry it away on his shoulder, while his comrades wrestled with him for it, uttering shouts of laughter as their fingers slipped upon its polished surface. Sometimes swords were drawn and blood flowed over a bag of gold or a necklace of pearls. Bands of mercenaries paraded with wine-skins on their backs, singing the hymns of Dionysus and squirting the precious vintage into each other's faces. Gorged with blood, the army glutted itself in a delirium of indulgence.

In the universal license the baser elements of the city's population joined in the pillage with none to hinder, for the Macedonians were too intent upon their revenge to heed them. Like Mena, slaves rose against their masters, and entire families were slain for the sake of plunder or to requite harsh treatment. The prisons were broken open and their inmates set at liberty. The sailors about the harbors, who had been kept inactive by the blockade of the fleet, desperate men from all quarters of the sea, satisfied their ferocious appetites at will. In the frenzied carnival of lust and slaughter, neither age nor innocence was spared.

The swirl of the battle drew Syphax and his companions from their haunts among the great warehouses near the waterside, where they had been drinking. The bloated face of the freebooter grew purple with eagerness as he heard the sounds of conflict and of panic spread through the city.

"Ho, comrades!" he shouted, "to-day we pay ourselves for all we have had to endure from Fortune! The spoil lies ready for us."

"Break open the warehouses and load a ship with ivory and silk," cried one of his followers.

"You are a fool," Syphax replied contemptuously. "We should be sunk before we could get out of the harbor. Take nothing but gold and jewels. We can hide them until the time comes to escape. Look there!"

An old man, a member of the council, came running toward them, glancing back over his shoulder to see if he was being pursued. Syphax grasped him by the arm and tore the heavy golden chain of office from his neck. The man made no resistance, but fled away without a word as soon as he was released.

"This is what we want," Syphax cried, holding up the shining links. "Be bold and follow me."

He set off toward a part of the city that the Macedonians seemed not yet to have penetrated. It was a quarter where many wealthy houses stood, and the sailors were fortunate enough to arrive among the first of the marauders. In half an hour, each of them had collected a fortune in gold and precious stones. There was blood upon the hands of Syphax and one of his men had a cut across his forehead when they came out of the last house, carrying their spoil in small, heavy bundles. The city was in its death-throes. From harbor to harbor it had become a vast shambles.

"Let us get back to the warehouses and bury what we have," one of the seamen said.

Syphax looked about him, and his glance fell upon the house where he had seen Ariston enter. In their immediate vicinity there was yet no sign of the enemy. A cruel gleam entered the pirate's bloodshot eyes.

"Now that we are rich," he cried, "it is no more than fair that we should pay our debts. I have one yonder that must be discharged, and to you I resign my share of whatever of value we may find inside."

"Lead on, then, but hasten," the sailors answered.

Syphax found the door bolted, as he had expected. His men battered it in with stones and rushed into the entrance hall. The place seemed deserted. The sailors scattered through the house in search of booty, but Syphax sought only his enemy.

The terrified family had taken refuge in an alcove on the third floor of the house. There one of the sailors found them and summoned his chief with a joyful shout. Ariston and his host stood at the entrance of the recess, with swords in their hands to defend the women, a mother and three daughters, who cowered behind them in the shadow with two slave girls only, the rest of the household having fled. The sailors laughed at the two feeble old men who dared to oppose them.

"Spare our lives and you shall each receive five thousand talents of gold," Ariston cried. "I am Ariston of Athens, and I pledge myself to the payment."

"We know what the pledges of Ariston are worth!" Syphax replied, his face convulsed with hate and rage.

"We are lost, my friend," Ariston said, in a low voice, to his host, recognizing the pirate.

"You bade me once to remember Medon," Syphax bellowed. "I bid thee now to remember him and the silver talent thou wert to give me for what was done in Athens. I have had no luck since; and now thou shalt pay for all!" He rushed upon Ariston, who tried to defend himself; but the pirate easily disarmed him and dragged him out into the room. The master of the house fell beneath a shower of blows.

"Now for the harbor! Our time is short," Syphax shouted, hurrying Ariston with him down the stairs.

The screaming and prayers of the women mingled with sounds of brutal merriment told him that his order was unheeded.

"Do you hear?" he roared. "Come, I tell you, before it is too late!"

This time two of the wretches obeyed him, bursting from the room with loud guffaws. The others straggled after them, but several minutes elapsed before they were all assembled for the sally.

"Why not do it here?" one of the sailors asked, indicating Ariston, whose arm Syphax held in a firm grasp.

"Because I intend to make him remember Medon," the freebooter answered savagely. "You shall see sport when we reach the harbor."

A cold sweat covered Ariston's forehead, but he made no sound. His ear had caught the trampling of feet, and he hoped yet for rescue.

The sailors emerged into the street and turned toward the harbor. Just as they reached the first corner, a company of Thessalians, in pursuit of a few Tyrian fugitives, ran into them. No questions were asked. The swords of the cavalrymen were already out, and they drove them into the bodies of the men who were unfortunate enough to block their way.

Syphax alone had time to drop his booty and draw his sword. He saw that there was no escape.

"Thou hast been my evil genius," he cried to Ariston, "but at any rate thou shalt go with me to the Styx."

He plunged his sword into the old man's side. Before he could withdraw it, a Thessalian blade cleft his skull. Murderer and victim fell together.

The storm had blown over. The sinking sun shone crimson upon the twisted clouds far across the sky. In the quarter where the Israelites dwelt, amid the mourning and rejoicing, Pethuel, the high priest, raised his hands to heaven.

"Give thanks to Jehovah!" he cried. "Our enemies have fallen and they that mocked Him are no more! Blessed be the name of the Lord!"

CHAPTER XLVIII

THAIS GIVES A FEAST

Down in the secret passage the fugitives from the Temple of Moloch could hear no sound of the battle. Leonidas had snatched one of the perfumed censers from the hand of a quaking neophyte, and this shed a glimmer of light as he led the way.

Artemisia came to her senses to find herself clasped in her lover's arms.

"Clearchus!" she murmured, "may the Gods grant that this be not a dream."

"It is no dream, my beloved!" the young man answered. "I have found thee at last."

"Dear heart, I have longed for thee so!" she said, with a little sigh of content, as her arms stole around his neck.

Clearchus bent his head, and their lips met in the darkness. Thais heard the murmur of their voices.

"Oh, I have lost my sandal – and I am cold!" she exclaimed, in a tone of distress. "Chares, I am afraid you will have to carry me."

"You are so heavy," the Theban said, taking her in his arms.

"There, be careful, sir, or I shall make you set me down again," she cried.

Leonidas uttered a sound that was something between a snort and a grunt and signified disdain, whereupon Chares laughed until the narrow passage rang.

Before they reached the palace it was in full possession of the Macedonians. They entered the room where the young men had left Azemilcus the night before, and found a portion of the squadron belonging to Leonidas busily searching there for plunder. The men stood open-mouthed when their captain appeared from behind the hangings. They looked like schoolboys caught in a forbidden frolic.

"Where is the king?" the Spartan demanded sternly.

"He is fighting down there," one of the soldiers replied, pointing from the window.

Leonidas glanced down upon the city and saw the conflict raging in the streets.

"Then what are you doing here?" he asked harshly. "Fall in!"

"I will go with you," Nathan said. "I must seek my people."

"You will find us here when you come back," Chares cried after them. "We will fight no more to-day."

Leonidas overtook Alexander stamping out the last sparks of resistance in the northern part of the city. The young king, still glowing with the ardor of battle, greeted him with a smile.

"Are Clearchus and Chares safe?" he asked.

"They await you in the royal palace with Artemisia and Thais," the Spartan replied.

"Good!" Alexander cried. "This will have to be celebrated. Let us see what has become of Azemilcus."

He led the way to the Temple of Melkarth, which was filled with fugitives and suppliants. The general feeling in the city that the God was on the side of the Macedonians had led many to seek his protection when no other remained. Some of them were even striving to remove the chains with which the image had been bound to the pillars.

Azemilcus and the chancellor came forward, surrounded by the priests of the temple. The two kings, one withered and shrunken and old, his brain cankered by the cynical knowledge of experience, and the other, in the fulness of his vigorous youth and generous enthusiasms, looked into each other's eyes. Alexander's face was grave and stern, but the mocking smile still hovered about the lips of the older man.

"What have you to say?" Alexander said at last.

"I have been a king," Azemilcus replied, "but I am a king no longer. What is your will?"

"You may live," Alexander replied coldly, "but you have never been a king. Where is your son?"

"He is dead," the old king answered, and his eyes wavered.

"I would rather be in his place than in thine," Alexander said shortly. "Follow me."

Azemilcus shrugged his shoulders and gathered his robe more closely around him. To all who had sought refuge in the temple Alexander granted safety, and then, having issued the necessary orders regarding the city, he turned back to the palace.

The streets were encumbered with the dead. The bodies lay in heaps behind the broken barricades or scattered between them, where the fugitives had been stricken as they fled before the fury of the Macedonian charge. A wounded Tyrian raised himself on his elbow while the two kings passed, cursed Azemilcus, and died.

In the council room of the palace Alexander demanded from the chancellor an accounting of the public treasure of Tyre, an enormous sum in gold and silver, and gave it into the custody of his own treasurer. There, too, he received the reports of his captains, and with marvellous quickness despatched the business that they brought before him. The greater part of the army he ordered back to the camp on the mainland.

When nothing more remained to be done, he turned to Leonidas.

"Where are thy friends?" he asked. "They seem to have forgotten me."

"I will fetch them," the Spartan replied.

He ran to the apartment where he had left the lovers, and burst in, to find them nestled among the cushions, telling each other of all they had endured.

"Come," he cried. "The king has asked for you."

"Tell him that we will come presently," Chares said, but Thais promptly boxed his ears and slipped out of the arm that encircled her waist.

"I don't suppose there is a woman in the palace to smooth my hair," she exclaimed.

"Do you think Alexander will look at you?" Chares asked. "He has more important things to think about, indeed."

Nevertheless, Artemisia and Thais made Leonidas wait five minutes while they aided each other to make the best appearance possible under the circumstances, before they followed him to the great council chamber. Artemisia entered shyly, casting down her eyes before the bold glances of so many men; but Thais walked beside Chares with head erect, her red lips parted in a smile, and a gleam of excitement dancing in her eyes.

With the license that Alexander permitted, the captains raised a shout of welcome when Chares and Clearchus appeared. Before Artemisia could catch her breath, she was standing in front of Alexander, and Clearchus was presenting her to him.

"She looks like a rosebud when the dew is on it," Clitus whispered to Hephæstion.

"Don't be sentimental," the favorite answered. "When did you become a poet?"

"Not until this minute," Clitus replied.

Alexander himself was not free from embarrassment when he greeted Artemisia, for he knew nothing of women, not yet having met Roxana; but he took her hand and praised the bravery of Clearchus, at which she blushed and smiled.

Thais looked the young king frankly in the face. "We bid you welcome to Tyre," she said.

There was something in the unconquerable vitality of her gaze that reminded him of his mother, although Olympias' eyes were dark and the eyes of this girl were yellow, if any color could be assigned to them that seemed a blend of all.

"It was worth fighting for," he said, returning her look with unconcealed admiration. "But sometimes I wish I were not Alexander," he added, turning to Chares with a smile.