T
There was a riot in Busiris, a town in the Northern district.
As usual it was started by the Israelites working in the brick factories when they were no longer given any chopped straw necessary for making bricks, but were ordered to chop it themselves, while producing the usual quantity of bricks. Porters and loaders from the harbour joined them when they heard that boys younger than fifteen were to be taken for the army. The mothers said indignantly, "What is the good of bearing sons? They are no sooner grown up than they are driven to the slaughter, and you, their fathers, put up with it!" Part of the garrison of Kidjevadan mercenaries, who had received in their monthly ration nasty smelling sesame oil instead of olive oil for ointment, also joined the rioters.
Usirmar, son of Ziamon, the governor of the province of Busiris and an old soldier of the times of Tutmose the Fourth, sternly put down the rebellion. With a number of other rioters the tramp Bata, the slave Yubra and the Jew Avinoam—this was the assumed name of Issachar—denounced by the scribe Herihor, were seized as the chief culprits.
"This accursed Bata," so the denunciation ran, "a godless and seditious fellow, having gathered a band of thieves and brigands like himself, intended to cause rebellion not only in the Busiris province, but throughout Egypt, preaching that people should not obey the authorities and that they should refuse to serve in the army, that the poor ought to be equal to the rich, saying that the boundaries between fields should be effaced and the land be common property, and wealth taken from the rich and given to the poor. The said accursed man blasphemes against the gracious god-king and says in his vain talk that there is only one King in heaven and on earth—the god Ra-Aton."
The denunciation was illiterate but cleverly put together. It was a troubled time. Horemheb, the governor of the North, had just set out to the eastern province, Goshen, to put down a rising of the Israelites who were always dreaming of a second Exodus, and to repulse the attack of the Sinai nomads against the Great Wall of Egypt. Terrible rumours reached Usirmar of King Akhnaton's madness, suicide, or assassination, of a new rising in Thebes and an imminent war between the two rivals for the throne, Saakera and Tutankhaton.
The riotous band of the false prophet, Bata, might be the first spark of a new conflagration.
When Bata had been brought in fetters from the prison to the governor's white house, Usirmar ordered everyone out of the room and looked at him with surprise: he was so unlike a criminal. Usirmar had seen King Akhnaton only once, some twenty years ago, and would not have known him now.
"What is your name?" he asked the prisoner.
"Bata."
"Whose son are you?"
"God's."
"Are you joking? Take care."
"No, I am not joking. I do not know my earthly father; I know only the Heavenly."
"Who are you, where do you come from?"
"You see, I am a tramp. I walk about all over the country but I do not remember where I come from."
"Is it true that you incite the mob to rebellion and want to make the poor equal to the rich?"
"No, it is not true. Rebellion is an evil thing, and I want what is good."
"Why then don't you honour our gracious god-king?"
"I do honour the king, but the king is not God; only one Man on earth shall be God."
"What man?"
"Men call him Osiris, but they do not know his real name."
"Do you know it?"
"No, I don't know it either."
"And willHebe like you?"
"No, the sun is not like the shadow."
"Is it he then who will make the rich and the poor equal?"
"He, He alone and no one but He! You have said it well, my brother."
"I am not a brother to you, but a judge. Don't you know that I have the power to put you to death or to pardon you?"
"Whether you put me to death or pardon me, either will be a welcome gift to me," Bata answered with such a serene smile that Usimar marvelled more than ever and thought 'Poor crazy creature, one can't be angry with him.'
He asked him many more questions, but could not discover anything. Usirmar was a just and intelligent man: he understood that the denunciation was for the most part untrue and wanted to pardon the unfortunate prisoner, but could not do so legally; he gave him a light sentence, however; a light corporal punishment and then three years labour in the Nubian gold mines.
The sentence was carried out. With a number of other convicts Bata was sent in a large flat-bottomed barge, a floating prison, up the Nile to the distant Elephant City, Ieb, in the South. A caravan route went from Ieb through the terrible desert of Kush. There in the mining wells in the burning hot depths of the earth old and young men, women and children, with chains on their naked bodies, worked day and night under the overseer's whip, grinding quartz on hand mills, washing gold sand, and dying like flies of heat and thirst.
Issachar had escaped out of prison before the trial. The cunning sons of Israel bribed the gaolers and helped him to run away. Yubra escaped with him. They hired from a fisherman a sailing boat, old and damaged but swift, and sailed up the Nile following the prison barge at a distance.
They overtook and passed it by the City of the Sun. Issachar went ashore, found the chief of the guards, Mahu, and told him that Akhnaton, King of Egypt, was on the barge that was approaching the city.
Knowing something about the king's sudden disappearance, Mahu was not very much surprised, but he did not believe Issachar at once. Detaining him, he promised to reward him if his words proved to be true and, if not, to put him to death; he gave orders to stop the barge and at nightfall went to the harbour with fifty black soldiers on whose loyalty he could rely. Going on board he called the chief gaoler and ordered him to bring the prisoner called Bata; he took Bata into a deck cabin, shut the doors and windows and bringing a lamp close to his face recognised King Akhnaton.
"We guards are used to all sorts of things," Mahu used to tell afterwards. "We have seen so much that our hearts are like stone. But at that moment my heart melted like wax!"
It would have been terrible to him to see a wretched madman instead of King Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun; but it was more terrible to find before him a happy and rational man.
"Life, strength and health to the king," he began, but his voice failed him, his knees gave way under him and, falling at the king's feet, he wept.
The king bent down and said, putting his arms round him:
"There, Mahu, don't cry. I am happy here...."
And added, after a pause:
"I am better here than at home."
Mahu was still looking intently at him, hoping to see a madman; but the king certainly was not mad, and, all at once, Mahu felt as though he himself were going out of his mind.
"What are you saying, what are you saying, sire? You are better here among thieves and murderers than among your faithful servants?"
"Yes, Mahu. My brother, do you love me? I know you love me. Do then what I ask you: tell no one about me and let me go."
"God knows, Uaenra, I would gladly give my soul for you, but it is easier for me to kill you than leave you here."
"You will kill me if you don't leave me," the king said, and again he bent down and, putting both arms round Mahu's head, looked into his eyes with entreaty.
Mahu said afterwards that in another minute he would have broken down, lost his reason and gone, leaving the king behind. But Akhnaton had pity on him.
"You cannot?" he whispered as though lost in thought, looking at Mahu so that his heart again melted like wax. "Well, there is nothing for it then, let us go!"
They went from the cabin on to the deck. The king stepped into a litter. The soldiers lifted it and carried him to the palace.
D
Dio woke up, opened her eyes and saw that the dull gold of the palm leaves on the capitals was turning silver in the bluish light of the morning, while the flickering flame of the night-light still threw a reddish reflection on the pale green, pointed leaves at the bottom of the columns; in the middle, where the disc of the god Aton was spreading its hand-shaped rays over the royal couple, the two lights merged in one.
Dio lay on a panther skin spread on the floor between two beds; the queen slept in one, but the king's bed was empty. Dio raised her head and looked at the sleeper: she slept quietly, breathed evenly; only at times the fine brows twitched like a butterfly's antennae and the wrinkle between them grew deeper, as though she were thinking hard even in her sleep; the pale face with the black shadow of the long lashes was beautiful in spite of the ravages wrought by disease.
Dio looked at the queen and it seemed to her it was he and not she: the sister-wife was strikingly like her brother-husband, especially in sleep.
Her hand, transparently pale with the blue veins standing out, hung over the edge of the bed. Dio touched it with her lips as lightly as the night wind and again it seemed to her it was not her hand but his.
"The two are one," she thought. "How could they have parted? How could he have left her? What will become of her, what will become of him?"
He had told the queen before his departure that he was going to Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North, to persuade him to accept the throne. The queen had always dreamed of resigning the throne and being free from the heavy yoke of sovereignty. She was glad and believed him, though not quite; she was surprised at his not taking her with him: for so many years they had hardly ever parted for a single day, and now in those dreadful weeks after Maki's death he left her, ran away as it were. She felt he was concealing something from her. She soon learned that he had never arrived at Memphis and no one knew or wanted to tell her where he was. She asked Dio, but she did not know either, or did not want to tell. Dio said nothing for days, but at last, seeing that the torture of uncertainty was worse than anything for the queen, she told her.
The queen listened to her calmly, as though she had been prepared for it; she had submitted to him in everything and she submitted to this, also. But she still failed to understand why he had not taken her with him. Together in happiness but apart in sorrow: so then he did not love her as much as she loved him? But for this, too, she blamed herself: she evidently had not known how to love; had she loved him more this would not have happened.
That same day she took to her bed and did not get up any more. The heart disease she had had for years grew very much worse.
Dio never left her for a moment: she remembered her promise to the king. But she sometimes fancied that her love was worse than hatred. She acted like a skilled torturer who preserves his victim's life, inflicting wounds and then healing them to prolong the torture. She deceived the queen from day to day, telling her that they were looking for the king, would soon find him, had already traced him; but each deception was found out and the torture grew worse.
Sometimes she felt indignant on her account: "What has he done to her! He did not want to kill the victim with his own hands—he ran away; he took a light burden upon himself and put upon her a burden no human being can bear."
That night the invalid had a terrible heart attack. The physician, Pentu, thought she would not survive it. The pang in her breast was so severe that she turned blue as though she had been strangled. No drugs were of any help. Finally Pentu decided to try, as the last resort a very powerful and dangerous remedy—the stupefying juice of Kidjevan belladonna, Lybian sylphium, Arabian myrrh and poppy juice with powdered turquoise and bones of the sacred ibis.
The remedy helped: the invalid dropped asleep.
Would she wake? "Oh, if only...." Dio thought and broke off, remembering the king's words, "if she dies, I will die with her." She knew this would be so.
The curtain on the door moved. Dio turned round and saw that Pentu had thrust his head in. She got up and went to speak to him behind the door in the covered passage leading to the river.
The early morning sky, grey as though covered with clouds, reminded her of the winter days when wet snow fell on Mount Ida. But the sun would rise and the sky would be as blue and cloudless as ever. White mist coiled like smoke over the low-lying meadows beyond the river, a water-bird among the reeds was calling in a creaking voice, and as though in answer to it the wheel of a well creaked somewhere in the distance. There was a smell of bitter smoke and winter freshness.
Pentu took Dio by the hand, led her away from the door and whispered in her ear.
"The king has come back...."
"Where is he?" Dio cried.
Pentu silenced her with a gesture.
"Sh-sh! She may hear. We must prepare her; if she heard suddenly it would be fatal...."
"Where is he?" Dio repeated in a whisper.
Pentu pointed to the door at the end of the passage. Dio rushed towards it, but stopped and put her hands to her head.
"Oh, Pentu, how are we to tell her? I cannot, you had better do it."
"No, Dio, you, no one but you!"
"Where did he come from? How did they find him?"
"Mahu brought him, but I don't know where from."
"Have you seen him?"
"I have."
"Well, how is he, what does he look like?"
"Better not ask. Such a thing hasn't happened since the days of the god Ra! In rags, unwashed, unshaved, bristles on his face, thin, black with sunburn and, dreadful to say, scars on his back. But, thanks to Mahu, no one except us knows anything about it—he has managed it all splendidly! We washed, shaved and dressed him...."
He stopped, as though lost in thought and then turned to Dio again.
"Well, why do you stand still? Go to her and I will keep watch here. When the king heard she was ill he rushed to her and we had difficulty to hold him back.... Go, don't be afraid. God willing, everything will come right!"
Dio returned to the bedroom. The queen was lying with her eyes open. She looked at Dio intently.
"Where have you been?"
"Just by the door."
"Whom were you talking to?"
"To Pentu."
"What about?"
"About the king. Good news...."
"Oh, yes, they are looking for him, they will soon find him. They have traced him already. Oh, Dio, aren't you tired of it? It's a mean, silly game! You know I was thinking last night that if I loved him more I wouldn't suffer as I do. He is not a child and not insane—he knows what he is doing. He has gone away—very well, it means it's better for him it should be so. Dio, my dear, my sister, he loves you. Be with him, love him to the end, don't forsake him; if need be, die with him. But don't lie any more...."
She raised herself on her elbow and looked at Dio still more intently.
"What is the matter with you? Why do you tremble?"
"I am afraid. I kept telling you lies and now when I must tell the truth I don't know how to do it. Do you know what Pentu and I were talking of just now? Of how best prepare you for joy...."
"What am I saying, good Lord!" she thought with terror, but could not stop herself, it was like rolling headlong downhill.
"What joy?" the queen whispered, and she too began to tremble.
"Why, a messenger whom Mahu had sent to Memphis has just returned; he had seen the king in two days' journey from here: the king knows you are ill and is coming home. He may be here to-morrow evening. If you don't believe me, ask Mahu...."
Watching the change in the queen's face, Dio felt that she had found the right way, and, fearing no longer, led her with a firm hand by the very edge of the abyss; and she might have led her through safely and saved her. But suddenly a cry was heard, distant at first and then nearer and nearer; someone was running and shouting. A door banged close by. Dio recognized the voice of Princess Meritatona, who though still weak after her illness, was no longer confined to her bed. She must have heard of the king's return and was running to him shouting: "Abby! Abby! Abby!"
With a low exclamation the queen jumped off the bed and ran to the door. Dio held her back, but she struggled, crying:
"Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!"
She wrenched herself free, rushed through the door, pushed Pentu away, and ran towards the door at the end of the covered passage; having guessed the direction from Rita's voice. But after taking a few steps she fell on her knees and stretching out her arms cried "Enra!" in such a voice that an old fisherman mending his net in a boat some distance down the river heard it and wondered "who can be screaming in the palace as though they were being murdered?"
A door at the end of the passage was flung open and, running out of it, the king rushed to the queen who lay on the floor.
Kneeling down he bent over her and lifted her up, passing one arm round her waist, and supporting her head with the other. He looked into her face. With a low moan she opened her eyes and looked at him with a blissful smile, repeating:
"It's you! It's you!"
Suddenly she trembled all over and struggled like a fish on a hook. Her head was thrown back and he felt her body growing heavy. He laid her on the floor and, bending down, kissed her on the lips, receiving her last breath in that kiss.
That same evening the queen's body lay on the bed in her chamber and all except the king and Dio were weeping over her.
"I am thy sister who loved thee on earth,No one has loved thee more than I."
Dio recalled the wail of Isis.
The king took her by the hand and said, leading her aside, "It's a good thing you don't cry."
Dio made no answer and only gazed at him.
"We mustn't cry," he went on, with a quiet, fearful smile. "It is better so."
"Better?"
"Yes, better. Now we are free. Let us go to Him together. Will you?"
"No!" she wanted to cry out, but looking at him she suddenly grasped that it was not he who was speaking. And it was not to him she replied with a smile as quiet and fearful as his own:
"Let us go!"
I
I am the prisoner and you the gaoler, isn't it so, Ramose?"
"No, sire, it isn't. You are my king and I am your slave.... Why do you laugh?"
"It is no use crying over sour milk, as Ay says. The thing is done, the bird is caught. There are sentries at every door: they bow down to the ground, but they don't let me pass—they cross their spears. And so this means you are my slave?"
"The guards are there to protect you, sire. You know yourself, hired assassins, sent by Tuta, are all over the city. You remember Iserker's knife and Merira's poison? Of course I must protect you! You are laughing again?"
"Forgive me, my friend. You are no good at lies: Ramose lying is like a hippopotamus catching a flea! It isn't from assassins but from myself you are trying to protect me. Be frank, tell me what do you want of me?"
"I have told you many times, Uaenra: you are king—so be a king...."
"I am no longer king: I have resigned the throne."
"A king cannot resign when he has no heir. And Saakera is dead...."
"Yes, my dear brother! Tell me how he died."
"He fell on the battlefield like a hero. He led the army of the god Ra against Tuta's rabble; when our men lost heart he rushed forward and drew them all after him with his battle cry—do you know which? 'Sun's Joy, Uaenra!' He had a spear wound in the stomach and suffered for hours. He had lived without God, but he died a believer. 'There is God, there is,' he kept repeating before his death, and he spoke of you—he was happy to be dying for you...."
"You were wounded in the same battle?"
"It's a mere scratch, not a wound. But many brave men have given their lives for you, sire...."
He paused gloomily.
"And do you know who has Amon's ring with poison, your present to Saakera?" he spoke again, smiling. "Merira. No sooner had Saakera breathed his last than Merira sent envoys to me begging for the ring in exchange for twenty war chariots and ten prisoners."
"Did you give it?"
"No, I refused. But the ring was stolen all the same, by his men, I expect. Let him keep it—poison suits the snake. He had poured out half into your cup but the other is left for himself. Perhaps there will be enough for Tuta as well!"
He went on talking at length about the war and rebellion, imploring the king to show himself to the people, so as to deprive Tuta of his chief weapon—the belief that the king was dead and he, Tuta, was the only legitimate heir to the throne. But the king no longer listened, he paced rapidly up and down the covered passage leading to the river, the very one in which the queen had died a fortnight before.
Ramose was sitting in an armchair; he did not like to sit in the king's presence, but Akhnaton pressed him to do so, knowing that he had difficulty in standing because of the wound in his leg.
Big clouds, white and round, were reflected in the smooth surface of the river that had entered its banks for the winter, and boats, with outspread sails flitted like birds over the clouds. An amber ray of the afternoon sun fell upon an old painting on the inner wall of the passage: a girl of twelve was giving a boy of thirteen a half-open tulip to smell; there was the timid languor of love in their graceful, as it were dancing, movements, and in their childish faces a sadness that was not childish. It was a portrait of the king and queen in their youth.
The king looked with strangely insensible surprise at the little girl, thinking that at that very moment her dead body was twisting and turning, like the burning bark of a tree, in the heavy resinous perfumes of the embalmers. He recalled his own saying that 'a corpse is worse than dung,' and began to tremble with quiet laughter, that ran down his body like shivers or like crackling sparks in a fur that is being smoothed with the palm.
Tired of walking he sat down in an armchair next to a small chess table that stood between him and Ramose. A knife lay on the table. The king took it out of its sheath and looked at the silver pattern on the bronze blade—lions hunting antelopes among the reeds.
"Whose knife is it?" Ramose asked.
"I don't know," the king answered. "See how fine and flexible it is—a Keftian 'willow leaf.' It must be Dio's.... What do you think, my friend, is a knife dangerous in a madman's hands?"
"You keep joking, sire, and I am in no mood for jokes."
"Joking? No, not quite. I sometimes fancy...."
He broke off. Shivers again ran up and down his body like crackling sparks in a fur.
"Well, what are we to do about an heir, Ramose? You say there is not one, and I say there are two: Horemheb and Tuta—choose whichever you like."
"Horemheb will not accept the crown while you live, and Tuta is a thief, a murderer, a low born cur...."
His breath failed him; turning purple and shaking with fury, he brought out:
"Tuta—king of Egypt? No, sire, this shall not be so long as I live."
He got up.
"Are you going?" the king asked, getting up, too.
"I am going; there is nothing more to say."
"Wait. There was something else I wanted.... Yes, I know. Do what you think best, it is all the same to me, choose whom you like, only let me go. I cannot bear it any longer...."
His lips trembled, his face twitched like that of a child ready to burst into tears and, before Ramose had time to think, the king fell on his knees before him.
"Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!" he wept, wringing his hands.
If the earth had given way under his feet or the sky had fallen upon him, Ramose would have been less horror-stricken.
He quickly bent down to the king, lifted him up, put him in a chair and himself fell at his feet:
"My king, my god, Sun's Joy, Sun's only Son, all shall be as you wish!"
But the king was no longer listening; he had turned away and was staring before him with fixed, wide-open eyes.
"What is it, sire?" Ramose said gently touching his hand.
The king started, slowly turned to him and looking straight into his eyes said with a quiet smile:
"Do you know, Ramose, when they were beating me with sticks in the Busiris court it was less shameful than this."
He rose and taking the knife walked towards the door. Ramose rushed after him.
The king turned round and shouted: "Let me go! Let me go!"
Freeing his hand he threatened Ramose with the knife, but at the same moment, with a terrible scream, fell on the floor at his feet, struggling in a fit of epilepsy.
Ramose was a courageous man, and he had seen men in a fit more than once. He knew that in the 'sacred illness' men are possessed by god; but he could never decide whether the king was possessed by god or the devil, and only now as he looked at him he decided it was by the devil.
"Help! Help!" he cried, running away as though driven by an unearthly terror.
A
As many were astonied at Him, His visage was so marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men." Dio recalled Issachar's prophecy when she looked at the king in his illness.
The first fit was followed by a second and a third one, the worst that he had ever had. Pentu, the physician, was afraid he would not live. He did live, but it was no joy either to himself or to others: it was terrible to see the soul dying in a living body.
The days and hours, however, were not all alike. Sometimes as though waking from deep sleep or a swoon, he understood everything and spoke so rationally that those around him had hopes of his complete recovery. But then his mind was clouded again. He sat for hours on the floor in some dark corner with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out, looking into vacancy with eyes dim as a new-born baby's; or slowly swaying his body to and fro, he muttered something under his breath rapidly and inarticulately as in delirium, laughing quietly, or crying, or humming a song. Or he repeated one and the same word over and over again with meaningless persistence. But sometimes there was an obscure meaning in these repetitions.
"Aton-Amon, Aton-Amon, Aton-Amon," he kept repeating one day, making one word of the two, as though on purpose: he had devoted his whole life to dividing them and now he seemed to have understood that it had not been worth while.
Or he asked himself with perplexity, as though he had forgotten and were trying to remember:
"Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?"
And suddenly, turning to Dio, said with a perfect understanding of what he was saying:
"Oh, if I only knew who I am, I should be saved!"
He often had visions of his mother Tiy, of his wife, Nefertiti, of his daughter, Maki, and spoke to them as though they were living.
He had a vision of Shiha, the eunuch, too: standing by his side on the top of a pyramid, he heard the laughter of innumerable crowds down below, saw the face of Aton the Sun red with laughter in the sky and covering his face with his hands repeated:
"Shame! Shame! Shame!"
But when a flash of consciousness lighted the darkness of his clouded mind, he was wise once more—wiser than he had ever been.
At first Dio rejoiced at these lucid intervals, but she came to fear them: after them the darkness was even more terrible; he suffered acutely each time that madness closed in upon him.
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" he cried out one day, repeating an old Babylonian psalm.
And suddenly Dio felt in a way she had never done before that it was He Himself, the Son Who was to come. She was terrified at the thought, but the memory of it remained in her soul like a trace of lightning.
They moved the king to the Maru-Aton palace where Princess Makitatona had died four months before.
It was a three-storeyed building, high like a tower; the bottom was of brick, the top, light and airy, of cedar and cypress wood, trellis-worked, gilded and painted like a jewel casket. On hot days drops of resin trickled down the match-boarded walls and the palace was fragrant like a censer.
The flat roof had a carved railing all round it—a row of Sun-serpents, with gold sun-discs on their heads, their throats dilated with poison. A fire was perpetually burning upon an altar on the roof and, on an alabaster column in front of it, the sun disc of the god Aton made ofcham, a mixture of gold and silver, glittered in the sky like another sun.
As soon as the king felt better he went up on the roof to pray.
On the tenth day of his illness there was such an improvement in his health that Dio began to hope again.
He went up to the roof in the evening, himself chopped some sandalwood and put it on the altar, and when a white pillar of smoke rose in the still air he knelt down, and stretching his arms to the hand-shaped rays of Aton's sun began to pray. Standing beside him, Dio heard the words of an ancient Babylonian psalm:
"Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord! Hear my voice, let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication and enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified. The enemy has persecuted my soul, has smitten my life down to the ground, has made me to dwell in darkness as those that have been long dead. My spirit is overwhelmed within me, my heart within me is desolate. I stretch forth my hands unto Thee; my soul thirsteth after Thee as a thirsty land. Hear me speedily, O Lord, for I am Thy son!"
The sun had set behind the Lybian hills and in the afterglow the sky seemed covered with feathers of fire; the green of the palm groves had turned blue and the mirror-like surface of the water, almost invisible, like another sky, reflected exquisite opalescent shades of white, blue, green, yellow and rose.
The day had not yet died in the west but the night was already being born in the east: there, in a violet velvety sky, a full moon was glowing, yellow as though filled with honey.
When he had finished his prayer, the king rose, looked round and said:
"How lovely it is, O Lord!"
Tears trembled in his voice. Dio knew they were tears of joy and yet she looked at him anxiously. He smiled at her and gently drawing her towards him put his cheek against hers, as he often did, with a childish tenderness.
"Ma, Ma, how lovely it is! Don't be afraid, I am not raving, I know you are not Ma."
Ma was the Cretan goddess, the Great Mother of gods and men.
And he added, after a pause:
"You and Nefertiti and Tiy, all three of you are One.... Don't be afraid, all shall be well, I will recover ... And if I don't, never mind, it will be well, too: even in my madness I will praise reason, the sun of suns!"
He sat down in a chair and Dio on the ground at his feet. Gently stroking her hair, he said:
"Yes, maybe I shall die in my madness; I shall be cursed, rejected, mocked by men. 'Ah, you silly, you have disgraced yourself before all the world,' as Shiha, the eunuch, says. And yet, I have been the first to see Him Who is to come! The first ray of sunshine is on the top of the pyramid while the rest of the earth is still in darkness: this is how His light rests upon me ... Why are you crying, Dio? Are you afraid that He will not come?"
"No, I am not afraid, I know He will come. If you have, so will He.... But when, when? Men have waited for him for centuries and may have to wait for centuries more! And when He does come, it will not be for us...."
"Yes, for us, too. Do you remember, I said to you 'Let us go to Him'? And now I say we shall not go to Him, but He will come to us!"
And suddenly he began muttering, as though in delirium:
"Soon! Soon! Soon!"
T
Tutankhaton's troops were approaching the City of the Sun.
Tuta had proclaimed throughout Egypt that King Akhnaton and the heir-apparent, Saakera, had been killed by the traitor Ramose and that he, Tuta, henceforth the only legitimate heir to the throne, was going to put the regicides to death. Troops loyal to Ramose met the rebels at the southern frontier of Aton's province. The issue of the battle was doubtful. The rebels retreated, but so did Ramose. The old leader understood that his cause was lost; his soldiers were dispirited; disturbed by rumours from the enemy camp, they did not know with whom and for whose sake they were fighting or who the real rebel was—Tuta or Ramose. The only way to silence these rumours was for the king to show himself to the troops; but Ramose had hardly any hope of this left.
All the same he retreated towards Akhetaton, so as to give the final battle in the presence of the king. "Perhaps he will think better of it and refuse to give up his kingdom to Tuta, the thief," Ramose thought.
But there was unrest in the city, too. Robber bands of Tuta's followers had stopped the supply of corn to Akhetaton. There were hunger riots, first among the prisoners of war and hired labourers, numbers of whom had been employed in building the new capital, then among the troops left for the defence of the city and, finally, in the Jews' Settlement.
Ramose came to Akhetaton on the first day of the riots but did not venture to enter the town with his untrustworthy troops, and Tuta, who was following him, overstepped the holy boundary of Aton's province.
About one o'clock in the morning, Mahu galloped up from the city to the royal gardens of Maru Aton, bringing nine war chariots, and gave orders to place the best detachments of the palace guards so as to defend Maru Aton from a double attack of Tuta's army and rebels from the city.
"Where is the king?" Mahu asked, running into the ground floor hall of the palace.
"He is asleep," Pentu, the physician, answered, glancing at Mahu in alarm: he looked terribly upset and his head was bandaged: he had evidently been wounded.
"Go and wake him," Mahu said.
"Wake a sick man in the middle of the night?"
"Make haste and go!"
"But what has happened?"
"Rebellion in the town. The king must be saved."
Both ran up to the first storey where the king lay asleep on a humble bed in a small panelled room that had belonged to the princess's nurse, Asa.
They called Dio and sent her to the king. Screening the flame of the lamp with her palm, she went on tiptoe into the king's room and stopped to look at him from a distance. He slept so sweetly that it seemed a pity to wake him. But recalling Mahu's words 'life is dearer than sleep,' she went up to the sleeper and, bending down, kissed him on the head.
He woke up and smiled, screwing up his eyes at the light.
"What is it, Dio? Sleep, I am well."
"No, Enra, we mustn't sleep, get up. Mahu has come and says he must see you."
"Mahu? What for?" he asked, looking at her attentively and half-rising from the couch.
"He will hear it at once in any case," she thought and said:
"There is a riot in the town."
"And Tuta is coming with his army?" he guessed: he must have heard something before. "Why haven't I been told sooner? Though it is better so—all at once."
He spoke calmly, and, as it were, thoughtfully.
"Where is Mahu?"
"Shall I call him?"
"No, I will come."
He began dressing. Dio helped him: they were not shy of each other. He dressed without hurry.
"What is this?" he asked, seeing a glow in the windows.
"There is a fire somewhere."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Mahu will tell."
They went into the next room. From there the fire in the town could be seen: the king's granaries, the barracks, the palace and Aton's temple were burning.
Mahu approached the king and fell at his feet.
"Life, power, health to the king...."
He could not speak for tears. The king bent down and embraced him.
"What is it, Mahu? Don't cry, all will be well. Are you wounded?" he asked, seeing the bandage on his head.
"O, sire, never mind me—we must save you!"
"Save me from what?"
Mahu briefly told him what had happened and exclaimed, falling at his feet again:
"Come, come quickly! The chariots are waiting at the garden gates. We shall manage somehow to go through the desert to the river lower down, where there are no ambushes, take boats and in another five days be in the loyal provinces of the North."
"Run away?" the king asked, as calmly as before.
"Yes, sire," Mahu replied. "Tuta's rabble may be here any minute. I can't answer for your life."
"No, my friend, I cannot. If I run away, what will happen here, in the holy province of Aton? Endless war because of me! I have begun with peace and I shall end with war? I say one thing and do another? No, I have had enough of this shame. And from whom should I run away? From Tuta? But what can he do to me? Take away my kingdom? Why, this is just what I wish. From the rebels? And what will they do to me? Kill me? Let them—death is better than shame. Ankh-em-maat, He-who-lives-in-truth, is to die in falsehood? No, in death I shall say what I have said all my life: let there be peace...."
He stopped suddenly and listened; the blast of trumpets and the beat of drums were heard in the distance. There was a panic in the palace and in the gardens.
The centurion of the Hittite amazons, the king's bodyguard, ran up the stairs shouting:
"Tuta's soldiers are here!"
"Where?" Mahu asked.
"At the garden gates. The fighting has begun."
All, except the king and Dio, ran downstairs.
The fierce noises of war invaded the quiet Maru-Aton gardens: the blast of the trumpets, the beat of the drums, the neighing of horses, the creaking of carts, the rumble of chariots, the cries of the chieftains. Torches glowed in the black shadow of the palm groves: the moonlit sky was red with the dancing flames of the fire that made the face of the moon look pale and crimsoned the gold disc of Aton above the altar on the temple roof.
The gardens were surrounded by a quadrangle of high, thick walls, like a fortress, with only one gateway that gave on the river; an inner wall divided the enclosure into two: stables, cellars, granaries and barracks of the palace guards were in the southern half while the northern was occupied with summer houses, shelters, chapels of the god Aton and the palace by the big artificial pond.
The vanguard of Tuta's troops stopped on reaching Maru-Aton. Knowing how many treasures it held they wanted to plunder it.
They tried to force the gates. Mahu's soldiers repulsed them every time. But reinforcements came to the enemy continually and the rebels from the town joined them. They surrounded the garden, besieging it like a fortress and, at last, forced their way in.
The battle was now fought at the inner wall. The half-savage mercenaries from the north—Achaeans and Trojans—fought like lions. Naked but for brass leggings and brass plumed helmets, they flung small round shields behind their backs and fought desperately with the triangular iron sword-knife, one in each hand. Overcome by superior numbers they retreated to the pond. The water in it was shallow and only reached to the men's waists. The battle continued in the water so fiercely that it became clouded and warm with the blood.
Eteocles, the youthful leader of the Achaeans, was dying on the bank under Maki's withered birch tree and as he looked at its white stem he saw through the darkness of death his far-off native land.
Some were fighting and others plundering.
The tender stalks of the flowers in the beds broke under the soldiers' heavy tread. There were pools of blood on the floor of the chapel. The wood of the sacred pillars was chopped for bonfires, the purple of the sacred curtains was torn to make leg wrappings; the gold was scraped off the walls with fingernails. An old woman from the Jewish settlement, seeing that a precious casket had been screwed into the floor and could not be carried away, bit at it so hard that she secured a pearl with her teeth.
Naaman, the prophet, also from the Jews' Settlement, was stamping on a gilded wooden disc of Aton—a gold one would not have been given even to a prophet—dancing and shouting.
"God of vengeance, Lord God of vengeance, show Thyself! Arise, judge of the earth, and judge the proud!"
Cellars were broken into. They were so flooded with wine that people went down on their hands and knees and lapped it up. People drank themselves to death. Two drunken men had a fight and falling to the bottom of the cellar were drowned in the wine.
The screams of women and the blood of murdered children formed a ghastly tribute to their respective gods—Aton, Amon or Jahve.
The Sun's garden, God's paradise, was turned into hell.
A handful of Achaeans and Trojans, who had not been massacred in the pond, retreated towards the palace that stood in the narrow part between the pond and the north wall of the garden. The palace was defended by Mahu's war-chariots, the black archers, Lycian slingers and Hittite Amazons.
Hearing that the king was in the palace, Tuta's soldiers attacked it: they wanted to take the king, dead or alive, so as to end the war.
At the same time Tutankhaton's main forces were approaching from the south and Ramose's troops from the north. The great battle that was to decide the destinies of Egypt began under the very walls of Maru Aton. It looked phantom-like in the darkness of the night, the white moonlight and the red glow of the conflagration. The blast of the trumpets, the beat of the drums, the neighing of horses, the rumble of chariots, the clashing of swords, the whistling of arrows, the moans of the dying and the cries of the victors were all mingled in one seething hell. And the centre of it, the fixed axis in the whirling hurricane of the war, was the quiet palace tower.
The king and Dio were looking down from its flat roof.
"It's all because of me!" he repeated, wringing his hands, or, stretching them out to the combatants, he cried with desperate entreaty.
"Peace! Peace! Peace!"
It was as though he still hoped that men would hear him and stop fighting.
Or he stopped up his ears, covered his face with his hands, so as not to hear, not to see; or, running up to the roof bannisters, bent down and looked greedily at people dying and killing with his name on their lips, and there was such anguish in his face that it seemed as though every sword and spear and arrow pierced his heart as its aim. Or he ran to the staircase door that had been locked, banged it with his fists, and knocked his head against it, shouting:
"Open!"
And when Dio tried to restrain him he struggled out of her arms and begged her, with tears:
"Let me go to them!"
She knew he wanted to throw himself among the combatants so that they should kill him and stop killing one another.
Now and again he suddenly grew quiet and sat down on the floor, muttering something under his breath, quickly and inaudibly, as in delirium. Listening attentively, Dio caught once the words of the incantation the old nurse Asa had said over the dying Princess Maki:
"Mother Isis callsFrom the top of the hill,Horus, my son,The hill is on fire,Bring me water,Quench the fire!"
"He will die insane," Dio thought, and sitting next to him on the floor, she gently stroked his head and whispered: "My poor little boy! My poor little boy!"
Listening to the roaring laughter of war, seeing the sun disc of Aton turn red as though filled with blood, she thought: "Perhaps we were mistaken after all and God is not Love but Hate and the law of the world is not peace, but war?"
Time ceased to exist, it was eternity: there always had been, was, and would be this seething hell of war to the furthest ends of the earth from the beginning to the end of time.
"Bring me water.Quench the fire!"
No, no water would quench it and they would burn in it for ever and ever.
"My poor little boy!" she kept whispering as she stroked his head and suddenly she added, with despairing tenderness: "My poor little girl!"
"Here I, too, am going mad," she thought. They both smiled—they understood each other—and there was exquisite joy in this in spite of all the pain.
She saw blood on his face: he must have been wounded with an arrow when he looked at the battle leaning over the parapet; he had not felt it and she had not noticed it. She wiped off the blood with the edge of her dress, but a trace of it still remained.
Gazing at him she recalled 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."
"You are He! You are He!" she whispered, with joyous terror.
"No, Dio, I am only His shadow," he answered, calmly and rationally. "But if His shadow suffers such agony, what will His suffering be?"
Suddenly he raised his eyes to the sky and jumped up.
"He is coming!" he cried in a voice so changed and with his face so altered, that she thought he would fall down in a fit. But she, too, looked at the sky and understood.
A gigantic, pyramid shaped ray, with its base on the ground and its apex in the zenith, flashed in the greyish sky of the morning, above the dying glow of the city fire, and the white opalescent lightnings of zodiacal light danced and quivered in it.
"Quick! Quick!" he repeated, trembling like those tremulous lights in the heavens.
They both made haste as though they were indeed meeting the Unexpected One.
Blowing up the embers on the altar the king put on them splinters of sandalwood and cannacat. Lighting a long golden censer, shaped like an outstretched hand, Dio gave it to the king and herself took a cithern—a brass hoop, threaded with fine silver snakes that gave a high ringing sound. Both stood before the altar facing each other:
"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one and eternal God!" he intoned, and it seemed to her that his voice drowned the roaring laughter of the hell let loose.
"Praise be to the living Aton, who didst create the heavens and the secrets thereof! Thou art in the sky and Thy beloved son, Akhnaton, is on earth!" she replied.
Suddenly the sound of axes came from below. The building trembled as though it were going to fall; the enemy had rushed into the palace and the battle was being fought indoors.
"Fire!" someone shouted on the stairs and the cry re-echoed, with a familiar dread, in Dio's heart: she remembered how she had lain on the pyre, a victim ready to be slain. She rushed to the bannisters, leaned over, and in the breach of the garden wall saw Tutankhaton, the conqueror, in his chariot, wearing the royal helmet with the royal serpent over the forehead.
He saw her also and shouted to her, waving his hands. She did not hear the words, but understood that he wanted to save her and was calling to her to come down.
A black warrior, agile as a monkey, climbed to the top of a palm by the roof of the lodge and cleverly threw from there right at Dio's feet a rope-ladder. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she picked it up, fixed one end of it to the bannisters and let the other down.
It would have been quite easy for her who had tamed wild bulls on the Knossos arena to take the king in her arms and carry him down—he was thin as a skeleton and no heavier than a child.
But she stopped to think. She leaned over the bannisters once more and looked down. Tuta went on shouting and waving to her. She looked into his face: it was neither ill-natured nor kind; neither stupid nor intelligent: the everlasting mediocre face of the average man.
"Akhnaton will disappear, Tutankhaton will remain and the kingdom of this world shall be Tuta's kingdom," she recalled the saying and thought "Should I spit into that face? No, it isn't worth while."
She threw the ladder into the fire—the bottom storey was in flames already—and returned to the king.
Hearing and seeing nothing, he stood on the same spot stretching out his hands to the rising sun.
"O Lord, before the foundations of the earth were laid Thou didst reveal Thy will to Thy Son Who lives for ever. Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one knows Thee, but me, Thy son!"
With furious roaring laughter red tongues of flame shot up on all sides through the white coils of smoke, as though the hell let loose had leapt up to heaven.
Dio rushed to the king, looked into his face that was like the sun and recognized Him Who was to come.
"Is it Thee, O Lord?"
"It is I!"
He embraced her as a bridegroom embraces a bride and in a fiery storm of love raised her to the Father.
The palace, a light trellis-work structure of cedar and cyprus-wood, dry and resinous, burned like a candle and its fragrant smoke coiled like incense upon an altar to greet the rising sun.
But when the sun rose it shone upon a smoking black ruin—the tomb of Akhnaton and Dio.