T
The conical clay granaries stood by the back wall of the granary yard. Every one of them had a round opening at the top for pouring in the grain and a window with a board that lifted for pouring it out.
Slaves, brown as brick and naked but for white aprons and caps, were climbing up the ladders to the upper windows of the granaries, pouring into them grain that glided down with a gentle rustle like liquid gold.
This was the new corn from the Miuer Lakes. Looking at it Khnum remembered the starving and gave orders that a whole granary-full should be given to them.
Then he walked to the cattle-yard where the prison-pit was. It was a square hole dug in the ground, with brick walls and a brick bridge-like roof with a grated window in it.
Khnum went up to the pit, bent down to the window and heard quiet singing.
"Glory be to thee, Aton, the living and only God,Who hast created the heavens and the secrets thereof!Thou art in heaven and here upon earth is thy sonAkhnaton, the joy of the Sun!"
The man in the pit must have caught sight of Khnum, for he suddenly sang aloud and, it seemed to Khnum, with insolent defiance:
"When thou descendest beyond the skyThe dead come to life in thy life;Thou givest their nostrils the breath of life,And the air to their stifled throats,Glorifying thee from their narrow tombsThe dead stretch forth their hands,And they who are at rest rejoice."
Khnum walked away and, returning to the shelter by the big pond, sat down in his old place beside Nibituia who was still wrapping up her beetles. Inioteph began reading a new endless account of sacks of corn. Khnum felt dreary. He was conscious of the ominous weight in his right side, under the last rib; he suffered from his liver. His father had died of the same complaint at the age of eighty—"Perhaps I, too, will die before I have fulfilled my span of days," thought Khnum.
He liked to have something of his tomb dowry brought to him every day. To-day they brought him the sacred Beetle, Kheper, made of lapis-lazuli.
The great beetle of the Sun, Ra-Kheper, rolls along the sky its great ball as the dung beetle rolls its small ball along the earth. The Sun is the great heart of the world; the human heart is a small sun. This was why they put inside the mummy, in the place of the heart which was taken out, the Sun beetle Kheper with a hieroglyphic inscription—the prayer of the dead at the Last Judgment: "Heart of my birth, heart of my mother, my earthly heart, do not rise against me, do not bear witness against me!"
"I shouldn't wonder if mine did rise against me," thought Khnum, recalling Yubra, and he smiled: "Extraordinary! Fancy comparing the sun to a dung beetle!"
He recalled another prayer of the dead: "May my soul walk every day in the garden beside my pond; may it flutter like a bird among the branches of my trees; may it rest in the shade of my sycamore; may it rise up to heaven and come down to earth unhindered."
"And perhaps it is all nonsense," he thought as he used to think in his youth. "A man dies—like a water bubble bursting—and nothing is left of him. And, indeed, it may be as well, for what if one grew bored there also?"
He had once seen an eclipse of the sun: the day had been fine and bright and suddenly everything grew dim and grey, as though covered with a layer of ash, and all was dull, numb and dead. It was the same now. "It's my liver," he thought, "and Yubra, too."
"I must put an end to it," he said aloud. "Go and fetch him!"
"Whom, master?" Inioteph asked, looking at him in surprise.
Nibituia too raised her eyes in alarm.
At that moment Dio and Pentaur came into the garden from the roof of the summer house: Zenra had told her mistress that Tuta had sent a boat for her.
As they were passing the shelter by the big pond, Khnum called to them:
"I am just going to judge Yubra, my slave. You be judges, too."
He made Pentaur sit down beside him and Dio sat on the mat by Nibituia.
Yubra, with his arms tied behind his back, was brought in and made to kneel before Khnum. He was a little old man with a dark wrinkled face that looked like a stone or a lump of earth.
"Well, Yubra, how much longer are you going to sit in the pit?" Khnum asked.
"As long as it is your pleasure," Yubra answered, with downcast eyes and, Khnum fancied, with the same defiance with which he sang Aton's hymn in the pit.
"Look here, old man; I have spared you and not handed you over to the magistrates, but do you know what the lawful penalty is for what you have done? To be buried alive or thrown into the water with a stone round your neck."
"Well, let them put me to death for truth's sake."
"For what truth? Say plainly what possessed you to raise your hand against the holy Ushebti?"
"I have told you already."
"Surely you can take the trouble to say it again."
"I did it for my soul's sake. To save my soul. Here I am a slave, but there I shall be free."
He paused and then said in a changed voice: "There the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; the prisoners are at peace and do not hear the gaoler's voice; there the great and the small are equal and the slave is free from his master."
He paused again and asked:
"Do you know the parable of the rich and the poor?"
"What parable?"
"Shall I tell it you?"
"Do."
"There were two men in the world, a rich one and a poor one. The rich lived in luxury and the poor was wretched. They both died and the rich received an honourable burial and the poor was thrown away like a dead dog. And they both appeared before the judgment seat of Osiris. The works of the rich man were weighed and, behold, his evil deeds outweighed his good deeds. And they put him under a door so that the door hinge entered his eye and turned in it each time that the door opened or shut. The poor man's deeds were weighed, too, and, behold, his good deeds outweighed his evil deeds. And he was clothed in a robe of white linen, called in to the feast and placed at the right hand of the god."
"Quite, quite, quite. And to whom does the parable refer? To you and me?"
"No, to everyone. I have seen all the oppressions that are done under the sun and, behold, the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no one to defend them. The poor are pushed off the roads, the sufferers are forced into hiding, the orphan is torn away from its mother's breast and the beggar is made to pay a pledge. Moans are heard from the city and the souls of the victims cry unto the Lord...."
He raised his eyes to heaven and his face seemed to light up.
"Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord! He shall come down like rain on the freshly cut meadow, like dew upon the withered fields. He shall save the souls of the humble and the oppressors he shall lay low. All the peoples shall worship him. Behold He comes quickly!"
Khnum felt dreary; everything was as grey and dull as when the sun was eclipsed. And it was all Yubra's doing. He had called him to be judged and now it was as though Yubra were judging him, his master.
"Who comes? Who comes?" he cried with sudden anger.
Yubra did not answer at once. He looked at Khnum from under his brows as though again with mocking defiance.
"Second Osiris," he said quietly at last.
"What are you talking about, you fool? There is only one Osiris, there will be no second."
"Yes, there will."
"He must have heard from the Jews about their Messiah," Inioteph remarked, with a jeer.
Yubra glanced at him in silence and then said, lower still: "There has been no Son yet; the Son is to come."
"What? There has been no Son? Ah, you infidel! So it's against Him you have rebelled?" Khnum shouted furiously.
"The liver rushes to his head," his doctor used to say about these sudden fits of fury.
Turning purple he got up from his chair heavily, walked up f o Yubra and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him so that the old man staggered.
"I see through you, you rebel! Take care, I will have no nonsense."
"A slave's ear is on his back; a good whipping would soon make him drop this folly," Inioteph incited him.
Yubra said nothing.
"Oh, the snake, he holds his tongue and lies low," Khnum went on, and bending still lower over him looked into his face, "What have I done to you? What have I done to you? Why do you hate me?"
Had Yubra answered simply "because you robbed me of Maïta," Khnum's anger might have died down at once: his heart would have risen against him and denounced him as at the Last Judgment. But Yubra answered slyly:
"I bear you no evil."
And he added so low that only Khnum heard him: "God shall judge between us."
"What do you mean? What are you thinking of?" Khnum began and broke off, unable to look his slave in the face; he understood it was not easy to take dead flies out of the fragrant ointment.
"Ah, you stinking dog!" he shouted, beside himself with fury: the liver rushed to his head. "You bear me no evil, but who is it informed against me, who told the king's spies that two images of Amon in my tomb have not been effaced? Tell me, who?"
"I have not told, but even if I had I would not have been to blame: it is the king's command that images of Amon should be destroyed," Yubra answered, it seemed to Khnum, with insolent defiance.
"So you try to threaten me, you dog! Wait a bit, I'll give it you!"
He raised his stick. It was a thick, heavy stick of acacia wood, hard as iron: had he brought it down on Yubra's head he would have killed him. But God saved them both. Their eyes met and it was as though Maïta had looked at Khnum.
He slowly lowered the stick without touching Yubra's head, staggered and fell into his chair, burying his face in his hands. He was motionless for a few minutes, then he uncovered his face and said, without looking at Yubra:
"Away with you! Begone! You are not a slave to me any more. Untie his hands and let him go, no one is to interfere with him. I have pardoned him."
"Perhaps I was wrong," said Dio to Pentaur, as she walked with him across the garden to Tuta's boat in the canal. "Perhaps you Egyptians can rebel after all...."
"You judge by Yubra?" Pentaur asked.
"Yes. Have you many such?"
"Yes, we have."
"Well, then, there is sure to be rebellion. How strange it is, Taur: you and I have just been disputing whether the Son had come already or is to come, and here is the same thing over again..."
"It is the same thing everywhere."
"And the rebellion is about this, too?" Dio asked.
"Yes, it is. You are glad?"
Dio did not answer, she seemed lost in thought. Pentaur paused, too, and then said:
"Perhaps the world will perish through this...."
"Let it!" she answered, and it seemed to him that the fire of rebellion was already burning in her eyes. "Let the world perish if only He will come!"
T
The boat was brought to the gates of Khnum's garden by the Big Canal which united the southern part of the city with the north—Apet-Oisit, where the throne of the world, the Temple of Amon, stood.
Hearing that Tuta had put off his meeting with her for a few hours, Dio decided to pass these hours—perhaps the last—with Pentaur: she had not made up her mind yet whether she was going away the next day. She wanted, too, to say good-bye to Amon's Temple; she had grown to love this house of God, the largest and most beautiful in the world, because it was through it she had entered Egypt.
Surrounded by walls, three enormous sanctuaries of Amon, Khonsu, and Mut—the Father, the Son, and the Mother—towered above the endless multitude of low, grey, flat houses made of river mud, like swallows' nests. Within the walls there were copses, gardens, ponds, cattle-yards, cellars, granaries, breweries, perfumeries and other buildings, a town within the town, the City of God in the city of men.
During King Akhnaton's reign the place fell into decay: the holy enclosures had been destroyed, the treasuries robbed, the sanctuaries closed, the priests driven away and the gods desecrated.
Having reached by boat the holy Road of the Rams, Dio and her nurse Zenra, stepped into a litter and Pentaur walked by their side.
Turning to the right into a by-road to the sanctuary of Mut, they entered it through the northern gates.
The sacred lake of the god Khonsu, Osiris the Moon, shone, crescent-shaped, with a silvery brilliance. The rosy granite of the obelisks, the black basalt of the colossi, the yellow sandstone of the pylons, the green tops of the palms, bathed in the molten gold of the afternoon sun, were mirrored in the water with such clearness that one could see every feather in the rainbow-coloured Falcons of the sun at the top of the pylons and every hieroglyphic in the multi-coloured inscriptions on the yellow sandstone; it was as though there were another world down there, the reverse of this one, exactly like it and yet quite different.
By the shores of the lake some sandpits had been dug, probably in order to defile the holy waters, and bricklayers were getting clay from them. The lake in those places was shallow, its slimy bottom could be seen and the stagnant water in the pools had a dull rainbow glitter on the surface. A huge statue of the god Amon, of dark-red sandstone, had been thrown near by, face downwards, and an ox, standing knee-deep in water, was scratching its mud-coated side against the sharp end of one of the two feathers in the god's tiara; the smell of the pig-sty came from the animal.
Next to the pits was a sanctuary of immemorial antiquity consecrated to two goddess-mothers, Hekit the Frog, and Tuart the Hippopotamus.
At the beginning of the world the divine Frog, the midwife, crawled out of the primaeval slime and at once began to help all women labouring of child; she helped the birth of Khonsu-Osiris, the son of God; she helped every dead man to rise again and be born into eternal life. Tuart, the Hippopotamus, was as efficient a help in labour.
The copper doors of the sanctuary were locked and sealed, but in the entry the two goddesses were hidden from the king's spies in two vaulted niches in the wall, behind torn curtains. The huge frog made of green jade with kind and intelligent round eyes of yellow glass, was sitting on its cubical throne. The pig-faced Hippopotamus, in a woman's wig, was ferociously showing its teeth; made of grey obsidian, with hanging breasts and monstrous belly, it was standing on its hind legs, holding in its forepaws the sign of eternal life—the looped cross Ankh.
A little girl of twelve, an Ethiopian, in the last stage of pregnancy, had placed a wreath of lotus flowers round the neck of the goddess and, kneeling before her, was ardently praying with childish tears for easy travail.
Zenra wanted to sacrifice to the mother-goddesses two turtle doves for Dio, that the virgin might at last become a mother.
They went into the portico. An old priestess, who looked rather like her goddess, the Frog, was bathing in a copper basin of warm water two sacred ichneumons, water animals something between a cat and a rat, beloved by the god of the floods, Khnum-Ra. After the bath the creatures ran away, playing; the male chased the female.
"Pew-pew-pew!" the priestess called them quietly and began feeding them out of her hands with bread soaked in milk, muttering a prayer about a propitious flood.
Then she went down to the lake and called:
"Sob! Sob! Sob!"
There was a splash at the other end of the lake and, thrusting out its shining, slimy black head, a huge crocodile, some nine feet long, sacred to Sobek, the god of the Midnight Sun, rapidly swam across in answer to the call. Brass rings with bells glittered on its front paws, there were rings in its ears and a piece of red glass was stuck into the thick skin of the head in the place of the ruby that had been stripped from it. The crocodile was so tame that it allowed its attendant to clean its teeth with acacia charcoal.
It crawled out of the water and stretched itself at the feet of the priestess. Squatting before it she fed it with the meat and the honey cakes brought by Zenra, fearlessly thrusting her left hand into the open jaws of the beast; her right hand had been bitten off by the crocodile while she was still a child.
"I wish it had eaten me altogether," the old lady used to say, "I then wouldn't have to see what is going on now."
She did not go on to say "under the apostate king."
To be devoured by a sacred crocodile was regarded as a most happy death: there was no need to embalm or bury the body—one went straight from the holy belly into paradise.
With motherly tenderness the old priestess stroked the monster on its scaly back, calling it 'Sobby,' 'little one,' 'ducky.' And it was strange to see the beast's pig-like eyes gleam with responsive affection.
"Well, how did you like our crocodile mother?" Pentaur asked Dio with a smile when they came out of the portico, leaving Zenra behind and telling the litter to go on.
"I liked her very much," Dio answered, smiling also.
"Does it make you laugh?"
"No. Your Mut and our Ma is the same Heavenly Mother who blesses all the creatures of the earth."
"How then could you...." he began and broke off. But she understood 'how then could you have killed the god Beast?'
"Our secret wisdom teaches," he said hurriedly, in order to hide her confusion and his own, "that animals are nearer to God than men, plants are nearer to God than animals and the dust of the ground—Mother Earth—is nearer to God than plants; a mass of flaming dust, the sun, is the heart of the world—God."
"Doesn't he know this?" Dio asked.
"No," Pentaur answered, guessing that she was speaking of King Akhnaton, "if he knew he would not desecrate the Mother."
"Perhaps there is something that I, a childless virgin, don't know either," Dio thought.
From the sanctuary of Mut they walked towards the Temple of Amon, along the sacred road of the Rams, huge creatures of black granite placed in a row on either side of the pathway. On the top of the head between the horns that curled downwards, each ram had the sun disc of Amon Ra, and between the doubled up front legs a tiny mummy of King Amenhotep, Akhnaton's father: the god-beast was embracing the dead king, carrying him, as it were, into eternal life.
It seemed to Dio they all looked at her as though they would say "Decide!"
They came up to the pylon—the huge gates shaped like a pyramid cut off at the top, with a rainbow-coloured sun disc with rays and high posts for flags; it stood at some distance from the Temple. On either side of it were two granite giants, exactly alike, representing King Tutmose the Third, Akhnaton's great-great-grandfather, the first world-conqueror. Wearing gods' tiaras, they were sitting on their thrones with their arms folded in everlasting rest, with an everlasting smile on the flat lips. Above them the wretched tatters of old flags fluttered on the broken posts. The birds nesting in the tiaras chirruped loudly, as though laughing, and the black faces of the giants were streaked with white.
Pentaur read aloud the hieroglyphic inscription on the gates—the words of the god to the king:
"Rejoice, my son, who hast honoured me. I give thee the earth in length and breadth. With a joyful heart pass through it as a conqueror."
And the king's answer to the god:
"I have made Egypt the head of all nations, for together with me it has honoured thee, god Amon on high."
From the way Pentaur read the inscription Dio understood that he was comparing the great ancestor with the insignificant descendant.
Passing through the gate, and leaving the road ta the Khonsu sanctuary on their left, they came out into the square. Men of all classes—beggars, slaves and grand gentlemen—were standing there in separate groups without speaking, as though waiting for something, and when the town guards on duty went past looked at them sullenly from a distance. All was quiet, but Dio suddenly remembered: "Rebellion!"
Someone came up to Pentaur stealthily from behind. The man's woollen striped Canaan cloak, worn over the Egyptian white robe, his reddish goat's beard, the curly hair hanging down his cheeks, the prominent ears, hooked nose, thick lips and the hot glitter in his eyes, made Dio recognize him at once for a Jew.
Pentaur whispered something in his ear; the man nodded silently, glanced at Dio and disappeared in the crowd.
"Who is this?" Dio asked.
"Issachar, son of Hamuel, a Jewish priest of Amon."
"But how can an unclean Jew be a priest?"
"He is a Jew on his father's side, but an Egyptian on his mother's. Their prophet, Moses, was also a priest in Heliopolis."
"But why is he not shaven?"
Dio knew that all Egyptian priests shaved their heads.
"He is hiding from the king's spies," Pentaur answered.
"What did you speak to him about?"
"About your meeting Ptamose."
They came to the western gates of Amon's temple; the leaf gold that covered them glowed like fire in the light of the setting sun. Three words had been inscribed on them in hieroglyphics of dark bronze: "Amon, great spirit." The word Amon was effaced, but that made the other two words glorify the Unutterable the more.
Guards were standing by the closed and sealed gates. People going past knelt down and kissed the dust of the holy flagstones, praying in a whisper; they would be thrown into prison for calling on the name of Amon aloud.
Dio showed the chief of the guards the ring with Tutankhaton's seal and he let her and Pentaur through the side door of the gates.
They entered the inner court that had rows of such gigantic columns, shaped like sheaves of papyrus, that it was hard to believe they were the work of human hands: it seemed as though the Great Spirit had piled up these everlasting stones as a mute praise to himself, the Unutterable.
From the yard they came into a covered antechamber, where the daylight came sparsely from narrow windows right under the ceiling. There was sunshine in the yard, but here it was half dark already and the thick forest of columns, saturated with the fragrance of incense like a real forest smelling of resin, seemed all the more huge in the twilight. And it was quiet as in a forest; only up at the top one could hear a faint tapping that sounded like woodpeckers. "Knock-Knock-Knock!"—and there was stillness, and then again: "Knock-knock-knock!"
Dio raised her eyes and saw masons hung up in hammocks on long strings, like spiders on cobwebs, hammering on the walls and the pillars up above.
"What are they doing?" she asked.
"Effacing Amon's name," Pentaur answered with a smile. Dio smiled, too; the knocking seemed to her absurd: how could one efface the name of the Unutterable?
As they went further into the temple the walls narrowed down, the ceilings grew lower, darker and more menacing, and at last an almost complete darkness enveloped them; only somewhere in the far distance a lamp was burning dimly. That was the Holy of Holies—Sehem, the tabernacle, cut out in a block of red granite, where in the old days a golden statuette of god Amon, a foot high, had been kept behind linen draperies—the sails of the holy boat. Now Sehem was empty.
A narrow passage led from it to another tabernacle where in the past Amon's great Ram, the sacred Animal—the living heart of the temple—lay on a couch of purple in clouds of the ever-burning incense. But now this tabernacle too was empty; people said that a dead dog's bones had been thrown into it to defile the holy place.
"He does not know God's darkness either?" Dio asked.
"No," Pentaur answered, understanding again that 'he' meant the king. "He knows that God is light, but he does not know that darkness and light go together...."
He knelt down and Dio knelt beside him; he began to pray and she repeated after him:
"Glory to thee, who dwellest in darkness,Amon, the Hidden,Lord of the silent,Help of the humble,Saviour of those in hell!When they cry aloud to thee,Thou comest to them from afar,Thou sayest to them 'I am here!'"
They bowed down to the ground and Dio felt that the hair on her head moved with awe: 'He is here!'
They left the temple through the eastern gates where the litter was waiting for them. They got into it and were carried to the small temple Gem-Aton—Sun's Radiance—which had only just been built by King Akhnaton.
It had taken a thousand years to build Amon's temple of huge blocks of rock, and this one had been built quickly of small stones; Amon's temple was dark and mysterious, and this one was all open and sunny. There were no divine images in it except Aton's disc, with rays like hands descending from it.
They entered one of the porticos, on the wall of which there was a bas-relief of King Akhnaton making a sacrifice to the Sun god.
Dio looked at it dumb foundered. Who was it? What was it? A human being? No, it was some unearthly creature in human form. Neither a man nor a woman, neither an old man nor a child; a eunuch, a decrepit still-born baby. The arms and legs were so thin that they seemed to be nothing but bone; narrow childish shoulders and wide, well-covered hips; a big belly; a huge head shaped like a vegetable-marrow, bent down under its own weight on a long thin neck, flexible like the stem of a flower; a receding forehead, a drooping chin, a fixed stare and the smile of a madman.
Dio gazed at this face, trying in vain to recall something. All of a sudden she remembered.
In the Charuk Palace near Thebes, where Akhnaton was born and spent his childhood, she had seen his sculptured head: a boy looking like a girl; an oval, egg-shaped face, childishly, girlishly charming, quiet and gentle as that of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.
A man dreams sometimes a dream of paradise, as though his soul returned to its heavenly home; and long after waking he refuses to believe that it had only been a dream and is full of sadness and yearning. Such was the sadness in that face. The drooping eyelids were heavy as though with sleep, the long eye-lashes seemed wet with tears and the lips wore a smile—a trace of paradise—heavenly joy through earthly sadness, like sunshine through a cloud.
"Can it be the same face?" Dio wondered. As in delirium the beautiful face was distorted, grown decrepit and monstrous, and, most awful of all, one could still see that young face in this changed one.
"Well, don't you know him?" Pentaur whispered. There was horror in his voice and mockery, too—triumph over an enemy. "No, he is not easy to recognize. But it is he, Joy of the Sun, Akhnaton!"
"How did they dare insult him like this!" Dio cried out.
"No one would have dared if he had not asked for it himself. It is he who teaches painters not to lie, not to flatter. 'Living in Truth'—Ankh-em-Maat—so he calls himself, and this is what truth is; he did not want to be a man, so this is what he has become!"
"No, that's not it, that's not it!" a voice said behind Dio.
She turned round and recognized Issachar, son of Hamuel. "No, that's not it. The deception is worse and more subtle!" he said looking at the face of the bas-relief.
"What deception?" Dio asked.
"Why, this: listen to the prophecy. 'As many were astonied at Him: His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. And we hid our faces from Him. But He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him: and with His stripes we are healed.' Do you know of whom this has been said? ... And who is this man? Accursed, accursed, accursed is the deceiver who said 'I am the Son'!"
Slowly, as though with an effort, he averted his eyes from the bas-relief and looking at Dio bent down to whisper in her ear:
"The high priest of Amon expects you to-day at the third hour after sunset." And covering his head with his cloak he walked out of the temple.
For a few minutes Dio stood as though spellbound. She was so lost in thought that she did not hear Pentaur call her twice and when he gently touched her hand, she started.
"What is it? What are you thinking of?" he asked.
"I hardly know myself..." she answered, with a shy, as it were, guilty smile, and then added, after a pause:
"Perhaps we don't any of us know the most important thing about him...."
She paused again and then cried with such agony that Pentaur thought she was like one dying of thirst and asking for water:
"Oh, if I only knew, if I only knew who he is!"
T
Tutankhaton had spread a rumour that he was the son of King Amenhotep IV, Akhnaton's father. Tuta's mother, Meritra, was one of the king's concubines for a day—he had numbers of such. Gossips said, however, that Tuta's father was not the king, but the king's namesake, Amenhotep, the chief of the Surveying Office. Thanks to his mother, Tuta had obtained, as a child, the rank of the prince's play-fellow, and he rapidly made a career: royal chamberlain, chief fan-bearer on the right hand of the divine and gracious king, treasurer of the king's household, bread-giver of the Two Kingdoms, defender of Aton's faith and, finally, the king's son-in-law, husband of Ankhsenbatona, Akhnaton's twelve-year-old daughter.
No one could look up to heaven as devoutly as he did, whispering in a honeyed voice:
"Oh, how salutary is your teaching, kind Uaenra, the only Son of the Sun!"
Or compose such pious inscriptions for tombs: "Akhnaton, the Son of the Sun, rose early in the morning to lighten me with his light for I was zealous in carrying out his words," said one of those inscriptions. "I have followed thee, O Lord Aton—Akhnaton!" said another.
This identification of the king with God seemed absurd and blasphemous, since everyone knew that Aton was the Father and the king the son. But when it was known that these words expressed the king's secret doctrine about the perfect unity of the Father and the Son, people marvelled at Tuta's cunning.
The courtiers vied with one another in trying to revile the old god Amon. But Tuta surpassed them all: he ordered for himself a pair of plaited sandals made of golden straps, with Amon's face on the soles so as to tread on the unholy one with every step he took. And everyone marvelled again—they understood that he would go far in those sandals.
Tuta had been sent to Thebes with the title of Viceroy to carry out the decrees about taking away burial grounds from the priests and desecrating the god Khonsu, Amon's Son.
When Dio came to the Viceroy's white house the old servant, who knew her, met her with low bows and wanted to tell His Highness at once about her. But hearing that Tuta was having lunch with the chief of the Lybian mercenaries, Menheperra, a man whom she disliked, she said she would wait and going into an inner room, lay down on a low day-couch. Watching the slanting pink oblongs cast by the setting sun on the white ceiling through the long narrow slits of windows high up on the wall she sank into deep thought, as in the antechamber of Gem-Aton's temple: was she to go or not to go?
She grew tired of thinking and dozed. Two big flies were buzzing by her very ear as though disputing "to go or not to go?"
She woke up suddenly and grasped that it was not the buzzing of flies but a whisper, somewhere quite close to her ear. She looked round, but there was no one there. The whisper came from the next room, which was divided off by a latticed partition covered with a carpet; Egyptian rooms were sometimes arranged in this way for the sake of coolness. The speakers were probably sitting on the matting-covered floor just by the side of Dio's couch.
"This heartburn will be the death of me," whispered one of the voices, dignified and elderly.
"It's the goose's liver, father," answered the other voice, high-pitched and respectful. "Would you like some telek? There is nothing like it for indigestion; with lemon and cardamon it is most refreshing."
There was a sound of liquid being poured out
"Have a drink too, Sparrow?"
"Your health, father!"
"Why do you call me 'father'?"
"Out of respect: you're my benefactor and that's as good as a father."
"It is a good thing you respect old people. And why do they call you 'Sparrow'?"
"Because I pick up a grain out of every bit of business like a sparrow out of a manure heap."
"Come now, don't be so modest about it: you must have grabbed 'the man with the pig' from the cemetery thieves the other day...."
Dio remembered that a man holding a pig by the tail was the hieroglyphic of lapis-lazuli, the Egyptian officials' favourite bribe—Hez-Bet: hez—to hold and bet—a pig, and that the tomb of the ancient King Saakerra had been robbed recently.
"And so I was saying, Ahmez, son of Aban, is a foolish man and no good will come of him," the old man's voice went on. "You may pound a foolish man in the mortar, but his foolishness will not leave him, and it is better to meet a savage bear in a field than a foolish man in the house!"
"But in what way is he foolish, father?"
"Why, because he never knows which way the wind is blowing. There is trouble brewing up in the town and the Lybian soldiers are mutinous because they haven't had their pay for the last six months. And he, the fool, is afraid of a rising, so he was delighted when the pay-money was sent the other day from the king's treasury and ordered it to be distributed straight away. But I was too sharp for him—I said nothing to him but kept back the money and at once reported the whole thing to His Highness the Viceroy. And what do you think? He thanked me, said 'well done,' patted me on the cheek and promised to get me a job in his service. What do you think of that now?"
"Splendid, father! There is no one like you for giving one a hint! ... But if there really is a rising, it will be bad, won't it?"
"Bad for some and good for others. A fool burns in the fire and a clever man warms his hands at it...."
The whisper became so low that Dio could not hear. Then it grew louder again:
"Impossible, impossible, father! Who could presume to do such a thing?"
"Do you know Issachar, son of Hamuel?"
"But he is a coward, it isn't for a dirty Jew like him to do it!"
"He is a coward, but he can work himself up to a frenzy. They are all like that, the Jews: they are cowards, but if it is anything to do with their God they are frantic. And it is not only he—he is merely the knife, and the hand that holds the knife is strong. Soon there will be things happening to make one dizzy, my lad."
"It is dreadful to think of, father."
"Don't be uneasy, Sparrow—you may be a falcon yet."
Dio listened with her heart beating so violently that she was afraid they would hear it behind the partition. She understood that a vile and evil plot was being hatched against the king—and she seemed to have a share in it; perhaps that was why she suffered so, unable to decide whether to go or to stay.
Suddenly there was a sound of footsteps in the next room—not in the one where they were whispering. Both halves of the door were flung open and a huge hunting-cat, half panther, glided in noiselessly like a shadow; behind it, as its guard of honour, came the runners, the fan bearers, the bodyguards, and, last of all, walking barefoot as noiselessly as the cat—shoes were taken off indoors—a slender and graceful young man of medium height, with an ordinary pleasant face. He was wearing a plain white robe, a smooth black wig, a broad necklace that came half way down to his waist, and he held in his hand a long gilded wooden staff adorned with a golden figure of the goddess Maat—Truth. This was the King's son-in-law, the Viceroy of Thebes, the real or supposed son of King Amenhotep—Tutankhaton.
He walked up to a carved ivory and ebony chair that stood on a platform in between four pillars in the middle of the room, and sat down. Approaching him Dio knelt before him. He kissed her on the forehead and said:
"Rejoice, my daughter! The grace of the god Aton be with you! Leave us," he added, addressing his suite.
When all had gone out of the room he moved to the day couch and, half reclining on it, motioned to Dio to sit down beside him; but he did it unobtrusively so that there was no need for her to notice the gesture unless she chose to do so. She did not notice it and sat down opposite him on a folding chair with a seat of plaited leather straps.
The cat walked up to her and rubbed itself against her legs, thrusting its head between her knees and mewing loudly, unlike a cat. Dio disliked cats and especially this one: she fancied it was a huge, black, slimy reptile. The cat never left Tuta's side and followed him about like a shadow.
"Why are you sitting here alone? Why didn't you send in your name?" he asked in a low caressing voice that sounded like a cat purring.
"You had a visitor."
"It was only your admirer Menheperra. Was that why you did not come in?"
"Yes, it was."
"Ah, you wild creature! ... Come here, Ruru," he called to the cat, "You have had enough of it?" he asked Dio.
"No, I don't mind," Dio said politely, but she would gladly have thrust the clinging creature away.
"It is marvellous," he said, smiling and looking at her in the peculiar masculine way she hated: 'just like spiders crawling about one's naked body,' she used to say about these looks. "One cannot get used to you, Dio! Each time I see you I cannot help marvelling at your beauty.... There, forgive me, I know you don't like it!"
The cat lifted its face and looked straight into Dio's eyes with its fiery pupils. She pushed it slightly away with her foot, afraid that the cat might jump on to her lap.
"Come now, you are being a nuisance!" Tuta laughed, seized the cat by its collar and, dragging it on to the couch, made it lie down, spanked it and said "Sleep!"
"Well, how do matters stand? Are you coming?" he began in a different and business-like voice. "Stop, wait, don't answer at once. I am not hurrying you, but just think: what are you doing here, what are you waiting for? Learning our dances? What for? Dance in your own way—they will like it all the better. Foreign things are more fashionable with us nowadays than our own...."
"I have decided..."
"Wait a minute, let me finish. I shall go away and you will remain alone here and in these times you don't know from day to day what might happen...."
"But I am coming!"
"Are you? Really? You won't play me false again?"
"No, now I want to go as soon as possible."
"Why so suddenly?"
She made no answer and asked:
"Are you going to-morrow for certain?"
"Yes. Why?"
"They say there may be trouble in the city."
"Oh, it's nothing. All will be over to-morrow. Of course it is a big town and there are many fools about; they may want to die for their puppet and then there is bound to be bloodshed, there is nothing for it...."
Dio understood that puppet meant the image of the god Khonsu.
"And does the king know it?" she asked.
"Know what?"
"That there may be bloodshed."
"No, he does not know. Why should he know? That he might revoke the decree? If he revoked this one, others would still be in force. And what is one to do? There is no teaching the fools without bloodshed!"
He sat up suddenly, put his feet on the floor, moved up to her, took her by the hand and smiled in the ambiguous way, with a sort of wink, which, again, there was no need for her to notice unless she chose to.
"You know, Dio, I have long wanted to ask you, why do you dislike me? I have always been a friend to you. Tammuzadad saved you, but I, too, have done something..."
Dio started and drew her hand away. Tuta pretended not to notice it and continued to smile.
"Why do you think?...." she began, and broke off, blushing and looking down. As always when she was alone with him she felt stiff, awkward—as though she had done some wrong and been caught unawares.
"What do you want me for?" she asked suddenly, almost rudely.
"There, you treat me as you do Ruru: I am being nice to you and you push me away," he laughed good-humouredly. "What do I want you for? Feminine charm is a great power..."
"You want to get power through me?"
"Not through you, but with you!" he said quietly with deep emotion, looking straight into her eyes.
"And I want you because of him," he went on, after a pause. "He is very difficult to get on with; you will help me: you love him and so do I—we shall love him together...."
She understood that he was speaking of King Akhnaton and her heart began to beat as violently as when she was listening to the whisper behind the partition. She felt that she ought to say something, but she was spell-bound as in a nightmare: she wanted to push away the clinging reptile and could not.
"You haven't been to see Ptamose yet, have you?" he asked suddenly, as though they had often spoken about it, while, as a matter of fact, they had never exchanged a word on the subject. Once more he caught her unawares like a naughty little girl.
"What Ptamose?" she pretended not to understand, but did it so badly that she was ashamed of herself.
"Come, come!" he said, with the same winking smile. "I won't betray you, no one shall know of it. And even if they did know, what of it? I would send you to him myself. He is a wise old man, a sage. He will tell you everything; you will know what the war is about. Only babblers and court flatterers imagine that we have won already. No, it is not so easy to conquer the old faith. Our forefathers were not any stupider than we are. Amon—Aton: is the dispute about a letter only? No, about the spirit. And indeed Amon is the Great Spirit!"
When he had moved from the armchair to the couch he had taken with him the staff with the gold sandals strapped to it. All of a sudden Dio bent down, took up one of them, turned it sole upwards and pointed with her finger to the image of Amon.
"And what have you here, prince? 'Amon the Great Spirit'?" she asked, smiling with almost undisguised contempt, as though she were really talking to a 'reptile.'
"There, you have caught me!" he laughed, good-naturedly, again. "Ah, Dio, priestess of the Great Mother, you are still living on your Mountain and refuse to come down to the earth to us poor men. And yet one day you will come down, will get your feet muddy and bruise them against the stones and be glad even of such sandals as these. One must have mercy, my friend. Be sober and fast by yourself, but eat with the glutton and drink with the drunkard. And as for the Great Spirit, I hope he will forgive me: my sandals won't hurt him!"
He went on speaking at great length of the secret wisdom of the chosen and the folly of the mob, of the greatness of King Akhnaton and of his loneliness—"he, too, does not come down to earth from the Mountain"—of their future triple alliance and of how he, Tuta, will help them both "to come down."
Dio listened and the same spell came over her—she could not awake or cry out.
"No, he is not stupid," she thought. "Or he is both stupid and clever, crude and subtle. Very strong—not he, though, but the one who is behind him. 'He is only a knife in the hand and the hand is strong.' He talks to me as to a child, and I expect he talks to the king in the same way; and perhaps he is right: we are children and he is grown up; we are 'not quite human' and he—quite. He is all for the world and all the world is for him. A man like that is certain to reign. You will be king over the mice, you cat! Akhnaton will disappear, Tutankhaton will remain. He will go through the ages in his Amon's sandals, trampling on the Great Spirit. And the kingdom of this world will be Tuta's kingdom!"
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in," Tuta said.
The centurion of the palace guards came in and, kneeling down, handed Tuta a letter. He opened it and, after reading it, said:
"A chariot!"
When the centurion went out, he got up, walked across the room in silence, then sat down in his chair, and resting his head on his hand, heaved a deep sigh.
"Ah, the fools, the fools! I knew there was bound to be bloodshed...."
"Rebellion?" Dio asked.
"Yes, there's a rising on the other side of the river. It seems the Lybian mercenaries have joined the rebels." His face was sad, but joy was shining through the sadness.
Dio understood: the rising was the beginning and the end was the throne.
He got up and turning to the couch took up his staff, untied the sandals from it, put them on and said:
"Well, there is nothing for it, let us go and put down the rising!"