T
Tutankhaton was king of Egypt. On his accession to the throne he changed his name from Tutankhaton—the living image of Aton—to Tutankhamon—the living image of Amon. He changed his religion just as easily. He took off his feet Amon's sandals with the divine image on the soles and bowed down before the god on whom he had trampled.
He moved from the City of the Sun to the ancient capital, Thebes, and began restoring Amon's temples throughout Egypt: he raised up idols of pure gold to him, multiplied gifts and levys, re-established feasts and sacrifices. He demolished the temples of Aton and destroyed his name wherever it was found—on granite colossi or personal amulets, on the high obelisks or in underground tombs. The same masons were hammering with their mallets as in King Akhnaton's reign: then they had been destroying the name of Amon and now the name of Aton; the same spies who had then been tracking Amon's secret worshippers were now hunting down the servants of Aton.
King Akhnaton's memory was anathematized. The curse was proclaimed throughout Egypt:
"May the Lord destroy the memory of him in the land of the living and may his double, Ka, find no rest in the kingdom of the dead. Woe to thine enemies, Lord, their dwelling-place is in darkness, but the rest of the earth in thy light. The sun of them that hate thee is darkened, the sun of them that love thee is rising!"
No one dared to mention his name and he was called the Enemy, the Criminal, the Monster, or the Buffoon, the Fool.
The first men of the land—the well-born, the rich, the happy, soon forgot him; but the last—the beggars, the sick, the wretched remembered him for years. They did not believe in his death: "he died and rose from the dead," said some of them, while others asserted that he did not die at all, but escaped from the palace and wandered about the world as a beggar, secretly. But all equally believed that he would come again and restore truth and justice; would punish the wicked, show mercy to the good, comfort the sorrowful, free the slaves, make the poor and the rich equal, wipe out the field boundaries, like the Nile, with the waters of inexhaustible love; would save the world that was perishing in evil and be the second Osiris, the true Redeemer and Son.
"Do you know what rumours there are about?" Tuta said one day to Merira, the high priest of Amon, and his chief helper in the war upon Aton.
"What rumours, sire?"
"That the Criminal is alive."
"I have known it all along," Merira answered, with a smile so strange that Tuta was surprised, almost alarmed.
"Known what?"
"That he is alive. He may die any number of times, but the Fool will always live for the fools! Foolishness is the sun of the world, and he, Uaenra, is the son of the Sun."
Tuta laughed and was reassured. But then he sighed and added sadly:
"Yes, my friend, foolishness is immortal. It is hard to combat it—harder than we had thought."
They spoke of other things. But in the middle of the conversation Merira asked as though recalling something:
"Do you know for certain, sire, that Akhnaton is dead?"
Tuta thought at first he was still joking, but, looking attentively into his face, was again surprised, almost frightened.
"How can you ask, my friend? Why, how could I not be certain when I saw with my own eyes...."
"Yes, you must have excellent eyes: it is not easy to see from the battlefield and recognise a man's face at the top of a house in the night, through thickets of trees, smoke and flame!"
"But not I alone, everyone says he was there and Dio with him, and I certainly did see her."
"You saw her, but did you see him?"
"I think I did."
"You think—that means you are not certain."
"Come, Merira, can you really think?—"
"I don't think anything, sire, I only want to know."
They looked at each other in silence and both felt uncomfortable. Again they spoke of other things. And when Merira rose to go, Tuta asked him:
"How is your health?"
"I am well, why?"
"You don't look well, you have grown much thinner in the face."
"I must be tired of waging war upon the Fool," Merira answered, with the same queer smile as before.
Tuta was holding his hand affectionately and looking into his eyes, as though he wanted to say something more, but did not venture to do so. Merira was silent also.
"And do you know where these rumours come from, about the Criminal being alive?" Tuta said at last. "From that accursed hole, the City of the Sun, damnation take it! Our friend Panehesy is still hiding there like a scorpion in a chink—there is no catching him...."
Panehesy, the second priest of Aton, a mild fanatic, a 'holy fool,' in Ay's words, was one of the few people who had remained faithful to King Akhnaton.
"And it is not only he," Tuta continued. "All sorts of rascals keep going there. Living fools do their best for the dead, spreading seditious rumours among the people...."
He paused and said, after a moment's thought:
"Do me the favour, my friend, go to the City and find out what is going on there; I have long meant to ask you. That wasps' nest ought to be destroyed and burnt down utterly!"
"No, sire, spare me. You have spies enough and I am not any good at that kind of thing," Merira replied so drily that Tuta did not insist.
But two days later Merira returned to the subject himself and suddenly said that he was ready to go. Tuta was overjoyed and at once sent him on the journey, with a whole pack of spies, an assembly of priests and a strong detachment of bodyguards.
The City of the Sun was deserted. Several times during the war the rebellious mob and Tuta's troops burned and plundered it. And when the new king ascended the throne he ordered that it should be destroyed completely and the inhabitants driven out. At first they had to be driven out by force and, afterwards, they fled of their own accord from the accursed place where nothing but ruins remained.
The royal gardens of Maru-Aton were even more desolate than the city. Their walls were destroyed and waves of drifting sand covered the burnt-out flower beds, the dried-up ponds, the fallen trees and the charred remains of the lodges, arbours and chapels. The place that had once been God's paradise was now a desert.
Some three days after his arrival in the town Merira visited Maru-Aton gardens to see the spot where the Criminal perished.
It was the month of Paonzu, March—already hot summer in Egypt. The sun had just set and the Lybian hills stood out black and flat, like the charred edge of a papyrus against the red sky. The Nile, too, seemed black and heavy, streaked with red here and there. The sail of a boat looked like a blood-stained rag against its dark surface.
The breath of the wind was hot as that of a man in a fever; the evening had brought it neither freshness nor rest. The grasshoppers chirped like dry sticks crackling in the fire; felled palms, lying on the ground, rustled with their yellow leaves as the sand dropped from them on the ground.
A shepherd's pipe wailed in the distance; monotonously sad, the sounds fell slowly one after the other like tear after tear.
"The wail is raised for Tatmmiz far away.The mother-goat and the kid are slain,The mother sheep and the lamb are slain,The wail is raised for the beloved Son."
The old shepherd was Engur, son of Nurdahan, a Babylonian slave of Tammuzadad, brought by Dio to Egypt from the island of Crete.
As he drove up to Maru-Aton Merira saw Engur's lean sheep and goats nibbling the dry grass on the hills. "It must be he singing," Merira guessed, listening to the sounds of the pipe. He knew the song: he had heard it once together with Dio and she translated the Babylonian words into Egyptian for him. He recalled them now: "The wail is raised for the beloved Son!"
"It's always about Him, there is no getting away from Him," he thought drearily, frowning with disgust.
A young priest, Horus, a pupil of Ptamose, was walking beside him. He was the young man with the austere and meagre face whom Dio had seen once in the subterranean sanctuary of the god Ram. He was telling Merira about the rebels who had just been arrested as secret worshippers of the Criminal—the king's dwarf, Iagu, the runaway slave, Yubra, old Zenra, Dio's nurse, and other poor and obscure people. He hoped to trace through them Issachar and Aton's priest Panehesy, the two chief rebels.
"Have you questioned them?" Merira asked.
"I have."
"What do they say?"
"That the Criminal is alive."
"How could they believe anything so absurd?"
"They say they have seen him."
"Where, when, how?"
"They would rather die than say."
"What are you going to do with them?"
"Whatever you tell me, father."
"It is all one to me, but remember: if you put the living fools to death the dead one will be alive all the more. I should release them all and make an end of it."
"As you like, master, but what will the king say?"
"Oh yes, the king. You want to please the king? Very well, do what you like, only don't talk to me about it.... What day is it?"
"The twenty-fourth of Paonzu."
"And when did King Akhnaton die?"
"On the twenty-fifth."
"What a coincidence!"
"How do you mean?" Horus asked him, with sudden alarm.
Merira made no answer and stopped to look round.
"Where have you brought me, my friend? A cheerful sort of place!"
The burning sky was a deep red, the breath of the wind was hot and feverish, the yellow palm leaves made a dry rustle as the sand dropped from them on the ground, the crickets chirped and the pipe wailed.
"Always about Him—there is no getting away from Him!" Merira thought again, drearily. He sat down heavily on a tree-trunk on the ground, stretched himself, raising his arms above his head and yawned convulsively like a man who had not slept for several nights.
"How dreary it all is, oh dear!" he said, as he yawned. "Don't you find it dreary, Horus?"
"Find what dreary, father?"
"Everything, my friend, everything: being born, living, dying and rising from the dead. It would not be so bad if there were something new there, but what if it is the same as here—everlasting dreariness!"
He suddenly raised his eyes to Horus and laughed.
"Why, my son, you seem to have two little lumps on your forehead! That's a strange thing. You have grown horns just like a little ram. Bend down, let me feel them."
Horus was frightened. He knew that Merira was seriously ill and knew what his complaint was, but he feared to think of it. He always hoped that God would have mercy and spare the great prophet who had saved the earth from the Criminal.
He stood more dead than alive. But so strong was the habit of obeying the master that at the words 'bend down,' he submissively bent his shaven head. Merira gently moved his palm over it and again a smile that was like a grimace of disgust appeared on his face.
"No, there's nothing, it is smooth.... But why are you so frightened, you foolish boy? Come, I was joking, I wanted to test you. You keep watching me, afraid I will go mad. But I won't, don't you fear. I have only grown rather foolish through my war with the Fool, but it will soon pass off...."
Horus bent down again, seized his hand and kissed it. "If he dies, I will die with him," he thought and calmed down.
"I know you love me, dear boy," Merira said, kissing him on the head. "There, that's enough talking, let us go. Where is the place of the fire?"
Walking a few steps they came to a sandy open space—the big pond. Beside it, Maki's birch tree, buried in the sand, showed a bit of the broken white stem.
As he passed it, Merira for some reason recalled Dio, and he suddenly wanted to kiss the white slender stem, rosy in the light of the setting sun. But he felt shy of Horus: the young man might again imagine something. He merely slowed his pace and touched the stem as though it were a living hand stretched out to him from the earth, and for the first time after many days he smiled a real and not a jeering smile.
Passing the pond they came to a small sandy hillock, with charred planks and beams sticking out here and there. These were the ruins of the burnt palace—the tomb of Akhnaton and Dio.
"Was it here he perished?" Merira asked.
"Yes," Horus replied. "This is a holy place to them: they come here to worship the Criminal."
On the top of the hill two charred cross-beams, with a brass hoop at the top—probably a bolt that had been curled in the fire—stood out clearly against the red evening sky, like the hieroglyphic of life, the looped cross Ankh.
"What is this? Did it happen of itself in the fire?" Merira asked, pointing to it.
"No, the Criminal's worshippers must have made it," Horus answered, and calling one of the soldiers of the bodyguard, who were standing by the hillock, he told him to take away the cross.
The man climbed up, drew the poles out of the sand, broke them and flinging them on the ground, trampled upon them.
"He is alive, alive, alive! He was dead and behold he is alive!" Merira heard a loud voice behind him and, turning round, saw a thin ragged man, blackened by the sun and shaggy like a wild beast, walking towards him with a distorted face and fiercely burning eyes.
"I know what you have come for, murderer!" he cried, like one possessed. "You want to kill the dead, but behold he is alive and you are dead!"
At a sign from Horus the soldiers seized the man.
"Let him go," Merira commanded, and turning to the man asked him:
"Who are you?"
"Don't you recognise me? And yet we are old friends, berries from the same vine. We both are his murderers—only I have grown wiser and you are still foolish!"
Merira looked at him and recognized Issachar the Jew.
"Thus speaks the Lord God of Israel," Issachar cried again, lifting up his hands. "They shall look upon Him Whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one is in bitterness for his firstborn!"
And as though in answer to the cry the shepherd's pipe wailed:
"Dead is the Lord, dead is Tammuz!Dogs wander about in the ruined house,Ravens flock to his funeral feast.O heart of the Lord! O pierced side!"
Merira walked up to Issachar, took him by the hand, led him aside, and said:
"Stop shouting and tell me plainly what do you want of me?"
"Don't you know?"
"I don't."
"Then I won't tell you: you wouldn't believe me if I did. He will tell you himself."
Merira understood that 'he' meant King Akhnaton.
"Thine hour is at hand, Merira. To-morrow is a great day, do you know what it is?"
"Yes, the day of the Fool's death."
"Mind you don't find yourself among the fools, you clever one!" Issachar said, turning to go.
At a sign from Horus the soldiers again ran up and seized him, but Merira said once more:
"Let him go, don't interfere with him!"
The soldiers released him, and he went without quickening his pace or turning round, as though certain of not being touched again.
"Are you going to let him off, father?" Horus asked Merira. "This is Issachar, the Jew, their prophet, the chief rebel," he added, thinking that Merira had not recognised him.
"But what are we to do with him? You see he is crazy, nothing is to be gained from him!" Merira answered, shrugging his shoulders, and went to where his chariot was waiting for him. He stepped into it and drove into the town.
M
Merira was staying in Tuta's house, which had, at the king's orders, been preserved for the benefit of posterity. Merira lived in the summer house by himself, Horus and the other priests were in the winter house and the soldiers in the outbuildings.
Returning to the town after dark Merira called on Horus and told him to have everything ready in the upper Aton's temple at daybreak for a service to Amon and laying a curse upon the Criminal.
Then he went indoors to the upper chamber, where the conspirators' meeting had once been held, and lay down on the couch. He lay there with his eyes closed, his face still as death; he did not sleep and knew he would not.
Late at night he got up and sniffed the air with a grimace of disgust. His old illness was upon him again: he was everywhere pursued by bad smells—of dead rats, as in a granary, of bats' dirt as in the tombs, of rotten fish as on the banks of the Nile, where fish is cleaned, salted and dried in the sun. He opened a box at the head of the bed and taking out a gold casket, with white powder in it, sniffed it, put some on his tongue and spat it out. He knew the powder would make him sleep but afterwards sleeplessness would be worse than ever.
He placed the casket back in the box and took out the ring with the carbuncle—Amon's eye. He lifted the stone which turned on a tiny golden hinge and peeped into the cavity underneath, filled with silvery grey powder—the poison. Only a half of it remained, the other he had put into the king's cup at Saakera's feast. Moving the stone into its place he put the ring back into the box.
He went down into the garden and then through a gate in the garden wall into the street, bathed in the white moonlight on one side and black with the shadows of the ruins on the other.
He stooped as he walked with his head bent, treading heavily and leaning on a staff, like a weary pilgrim at the end of a day's journey.
Clouds, fluffy like lambs, with transparent opalescent fleece, tawny-pink and silvery-blue in the moonlight, slowly moved all in one direction as though grazing in the pastures of heaven, with the moon for shepherd. There was stillness in heaven and stillness on earth; nothing stirred, as though bound by the moon's silver chains; only bats flitted to and fro like shuttles in a loom.
Suddenly there came the sound of howling and laughter as though someone, tickled to the point of tears, were both laughing and weeping. It was the howling of hyenas that must have scented Merira. It was followed by the hysterical barking of jackals. The dead city came to life. But gradually they subsided and stillness reigned once more.
Passing a huge piece of waste ground with charred planks and beams—remnants of the king's palace, Merira came to Aton's temple.
Most of the temple had remained. The huge building, with thick walls of well-baked brick and stone, could not be burned and was not easy to demolish. Only wooden rafters in the ceilings had been burned and ceilings and columns had fallen down in places. All bas-reliefs of King Akhnaton sacrificing to the god of the Sun had been broken and hieroglyphic inscriptions painted over or erased. The three hundred and sixty-five alabaster altars, in the seven courts of the temple, had also been destroyed and their place defiled: cartloads of filth had been brought from the Jews' Settlement and flung there, so that for a time the stench took one's breath away. But soon the sun burnt out and cleansed everything, turning filth into black earth; the wind of the desert covered it with sand and what had once been a place of pollution was fragrant with the fresh smell of mint and bitter wormwood.
"Seven courts—seven temples: of Tammuz of Babylon, Attis of the Hittites, Adon of Canaan, Adun of Crete, Mithra of Mitanni, Ashmun of Phoenicia, Zagreus of Thrace. All these gods are the shadow of the One to come," Merira recalled and again he thought drearily: "He is always everywhere, there is no escaping from Him."
Suddenly there was a sound of footsteps. He looked round—there was no one. This happened several times. At last, by the time Merira reached the eighth, the secret temple, where the Holy of Holies had been, he saw in the distance a man who was running from moonlight into the shadow. He knew people were robbed and murdered in the city at night; he remembered he had no weapons; he stopped and wanted to shout "who goes there?" but felt such an aversion from his own voice that he said nothing and went into the temple.
The sixteen giant figures of Osiris in the likeness of King Akhnaton, in royal tiaras and tightly drawn winding sheets, had all been broken to bits. The ceiling had fallen in and pale moonlight fell upon the pale blocks of alabaster—the giant limbs of the dead giants.
Picking his way between them and climbing over them, Merira approached the inner wall of the Holy of Holies, where there was a figure of a Sphinx, with a lion's body and human arms, raising to Aton the Sun a figure of the goddess Maat, the Truth, as a sacrificial offering. The Sphinx had the face of King Akhnaton; if a man had been tortured for a thousand years in hell and then came to the earth again, he would have such a face.
The Sphinx had not been destroyed, either because those engaged on the task had failed to recognize the Criminal's face or because they had not the courage to destroy so terrible a monster.
Merira stood on a stone to see it better in the pale moonlight. He was looking at it eagerly and suddenly stretched forward to it and kissed it on the lips.
At the same moment he felt that someone was standing behind his back: he turned round and saw Issachar.
"Ah, it's you again!" he said, stepping off the stone. "Why do you follow me about? What are you doing here?"
"And what are you doing?" Issachar asked.
"I am waiting for him," Merira answered, with a jeer. "If he is alive let him come. Does he visit you?"
"No. But he will come to us together: we both wanted to kill him and we shall both see him alive."
"Are you speaking of the king?"
"Of the king and of the Son—through the king to the Son—there is no other way for you and me."
"Why do you talk as though you were my equal? I am an Egyptian and you are a dirty Jew. Your Messiah is not ours."
"He is the same for all. You have killed Him and we shall give Him birth."
"And kill him also? .... Well, go along," Merira said, and walked on, without looking round. Issachar followed him.
Suddenly Merira stopped, looked round and said:
"Will you follow me about much longer? Go along, I tell you, while you have a chance."
"Don't drive me away, Merira. If I go away He will not come to you...."
"Do you imagine you've a charmed life, you Jewish dog?" Merira shouted, raising his stick.
Issachar never stirred and looked into his eyes. Merira lowered the stick and laughed.
"Ah, you crazy creature! What am I to do with you?" He paused and then said, in a changed voice:
"Very well, come along. Shall we go to my house?"
Issachar nodded, without speaking.
They walked quickly, as though in a hurry. Passing the seven sanctuary courts they came to the street. They never spoke and only as they drew near Tuta's estate, Merira said:
"What time is it?"
"About seven," Issachar answered, glancing at the sky. The time of the night was reckoned from sunset.
"Another five hours before sunrise. Well, there is plenty of time," Merira said.
They walked through the garden to the summer house. In the hall Merira took a lamp burning in a niche in the wall and led Issachar through several empty chambers. They went up the stairs, passed Merira's bedroom and entered the room next to it.
"Lie down here," Merira said, pointing to a couch, "I shall be next door. Lie still, don't get up and don't come in to me, do you hear?"
Issachar again nodded silently.
"Are you hungry? I expect you have not tasted food for the last day or two. See how thin you are."
"No, I am thirsty," Issachar replied.
Merira took a jug of beer off the table and gave it to him. He drank greedily.
"Why do you tremble?" Merira asked, noticing that Issachar's hands trembled so that he could hardly hold the jug.
He threw a cloak to him.
"Lie down and wrap yourself up, perhaps you will get warm."
"I am not sleepy, I will sit up."
"Lie down, lie down, I tell you!"
Issachar lay down on the couch. Merira covered him up with the cloak.
"Sleep. I will wake you at daybreak. We will go to the upper temple and meetHimthere."....
Issachar sat up suddenly and would have kissed Merira's hand but he drew it quickly away.
He went into the next room, carefully shut the door after him, but did not lock it; put the lamp on a stand, took from the shelf by the wall two bleached cedar tablets and writing a few lines upon them hid them in his bosom. Then he took out of the box at the head of the bed the ring with the carbuncle, Amon's eye, and put it on his finger.
He paced up and down the room, muttering something under his breath, quickly and inaudibly as in delirium.
Two chairs of honour, one for the host and another for the visitor, stood according to Egyptian custom on a carpeted brick platform, one step high, in the middle of the room between four lotos-shaped, painted and gilded columns.
Every time that Merira walked past these chairs he slowed down his step and, without turning his head, looked at one of them out of the corner of his eye. His face was sleepy and immovable and he kept muttering to himself.
He spent more than an hour in this fashion. The moonlit sky through the clink-like windows with a stone grating under the very ceiling, turned darker and darker, and at last the grating was no longer visible: the moon must have set.
Merira lingered by the platform longer and longer each time. Suddenly he stopped and smiled, looking intently at one of the chairs. He stepped on to the platform, sat down in the other chair, stretched himself and yawned.
"Forgive me, sire," he said aloud, as though speaking to someone who sat on the chair opposite him. "I know it is unseemly to yawn in the presence of a king, especially of a dead one. But I am fearfully sleepy. And it wouldn't be so bad if I were awake, but this is a dream. Does it ever happen to you? To be asleep and yet to feel sleepy at the same time? Issachar now wouldn't yawn in your presence. I confess I envied him last night. He is shaking with fear but he would give his soul to see you! It is he you ought to visit. But evidently the dead are like women: you only love those who don't put too much trust in you.... By the way, I ought to have locked the door into his room, I forgot to do it. He would be frightened to death if he came in, poor fellow! .... But perhaps I left it open on purpose so that he might come in and I should know whether he could see you.... This is what I am driven to in my dreariness! It is dreary, Enra, very dreary. Can it be as bad in your world? Always the same thing—rotten fish in eternity.... Or is it rather different with you? Is it worse or better? You are silent? I don't like it when you are silent and look at me with pity as though to say 'it's better for such as I and worse for such as you'.... Well, aren't you going to speak? Tell me, what have you come for? Do you remember, Enra, how you said when I wanted to kill you, 'I love you, Merira'.... And just now who is it has said it, you or I?"
He paused as though listening to an answer and then spoke again.
"You love your enemy? He has taught you this? You come from Him to try and save me? No, Enra, you cannot save a man who does not want to be saved. You died for what you loved; let me too die for what I love—not for the world beyond the grave but for this one, for this life—for living and not for rotten fish. The world already smells of putrefaction because of Him and one day it will stifle in its own stench. He lies that the world kills Him; He kills the world. He calls Himself the Son of God in order to kill the true Son—the world. I know it is hard to go against Him, but I don't care, I don't seek for what is easy: I am the first but not the last to rise against Him. There will be men like me when He comes: they will kill Him and destroy His work; they will perish but will not save the world; this is how it will be, Enra!"
He paused again and smiled suddenly, as he did in the Maru-Aton garden that afternoon when looking at Maki's birch tree he recalled Dio.
"How living you are to-day, more living than you have ever been! I see every fold of your dress: see how small the pleats are: you have good pleaters in your world. You have the royal serpent on your forehead; so you had renounced your crown here and accepted it there? I see every line in your face: the charming, childish ones round the mouth—your smile, Enra. I loved it so and I love it now. Enra, Enra, do you know that I love you? You have grown younger, more beautiful. And how is Dio? Is she with you? There, forgive me, I won't... Yes, you are quite living, you could not be more so! And yet I know that you don't exist, that you are my dream.... Goodbye, Enra, this is the last time I see you. I want to escape from Him.... You think I cannot? He is always and everywhere and there is no escaping from Him? ... Well, we shall live and die and see. There is a great deal you don't know, Enra: you are wise like a god, but you are not clever. You remember, you yourself used to say 'wisdom is beyond reason'.... Oh, I nearly forgot: here is the ring, do you remember it? Take it as a keepsake.... A-ah, you laugh! You understand? Yes, I want to test you: if the ring is not on my finger when I wake, it will mean that you exist, and if it is on my finger—you don't exist. Well, will you take it?"
His guest stretched out his hand to him—a hand he knew so well that he would have recognized it among a thousand—a long, slender, beautiful hand, with the same childishly piteous expression as the face, with blue veins under the brown skin, so real that warm, red blood seemed to be flowing in them. The middle finger was slightly apart from the others so that the ring could be slipped on more easily and the nail on it was a dark rosy colour with a white arch at the bottom.
"If I touch this hand I will die of horror," Merira thought and an icy shiver ran down his back. Yet he did touch it, put the ring on the middle finger, felt the firm bone under the soft flesh and he felt no horror but only a desire to know what it was, who it was.
He suddenly clasped the hand: it was soft, dry, warm—a real, living hand!
"You are real! You are real! I adjure you by the living God, tell me, are you real?" he cried in such a voice as though his soul left his body with that cry.
Regaining consciousness he saw an empty chair in front of him and Issachar kneeling beside it. Looking at the chair he trembled so violently that Merira heard his teeth chattering.
"What has frightened you so?"
Issachar said nothing and went on staring at the chair, his teeth chattering.
"He has been here," he whispered at last, turning to Merira.
"Who?"
"King Akhnaton."
"Have you seen him?"
Issachar was going to say 'No,' but said 'Yes,' as though somebody else had uttered the word instead of him. And no sooner had he said it than he believed he had really seen the king.
"Have you heard him?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"That the Son would come to you."
"What else?"
"He spoke about the ring. You gave him the ring to test him."
"Did he take it?"
"He did."
"But what's this?" Merira asked, with a laugh, pointing to the ring on his finger. "You heard me raving—this is all the miracle."
Issachar gazed at the ring in silence with the same terror as he had gazed at the empty chair. Suddenly he raised his eyes to Merira and exclaimed:
"He has been here! He has!"
"Yes, he has. I, too, think that Somebody has been here," Merira answered quietly and, as it were, thoughtfully, without a laugh.
He paused and then said, getting up:
"Let us go, it is time, the sun will soon be rising."
T
The sun had not yet risen but the sky was already rosy and the morning star shone like a tiny sun, when Merira and Issachar climbed by the outer staircase of Aton's temple on to the flat roof where the great altar of the Sun stood intact; only the disc of Aton had been torn away and the bas-relief of King Akhnaton on the wall broken to bits. Aton had once been glorified here and now a service to Amon was to be performed at the altar and the Criminal was to be solemnly anathematized.
Horus, with the other priests, met Merira. All were surprised to see Issachar, the Jew, by his side.
"Leave us," Merira said to the priests, and taking Horus by the hand led him aside, looked into his face and asked: "Do you love me, my son?"
"Why do you ask, father? You know I love you."
"Do then what I ask you."
"Speak, I listen."
"Don't lay a finger on Iserker, let him go; whatever happens, remember that he is innocent. Release also all those whom you have arrested. Will you do it?"
"I will."
"Swear it."
"May I not see the sun in eternity if I don't do it!"
"May God reward you, my son," Merira said, embracing and kissing him. "And now go!"
Horus glanced at Issachar and was about to ask a question, but Merira frowned and repeated:
"Go!"
Horus was frightened, as at Maru-Aton the day before, and obeyed as he had done then; he turned to go without a word. But as he descended the outer staircase of the temple he stopped half-way so that he could not be seen from the roof and yet see what was happening there. The priests stood on the first landing below him and the soldiers still lower down.
"Can you sing the service to Aton?" Merira asked Issachar when they were left alone.
"Yes."
They went up to the small altar at the foot of the great one. White alabaster dust of the broken bas-relief of King Akhnaton crunched like snow under their feet.
All was ready for the service: the altar was decked with flowers and incense was burning upon it.
Merira stood before the altar with his face to the cast, where the red ember of the sun was already ablaze in the misty gorge of the Arabian hills. Issachar stood facing him.
"God Aton is the only God and there is none other God but He!" Merira intoned.
"I come to glorify thy rays, living Aton, one eternal God!" Issachar replied.
"I declare the way of life unto you all, generations that have been and are to be: render praise to God Aton, the living God and ye shall live," Merira intoned again and Issachar replied:
"Praise be to thee, living Aton, who has created the heavens and the secrets thereof! Thou art in heaven and thy son, Akhnaton Uaenra, is on earth."
"Thy essence, Uaenra, is the essence of the sun," they both sang together, "thy flesh is the sunlight, thy limbs the beautiful rays. In truth thou didst proceed from the Sun as a child from its mother's womb. The Sun rises in the sky and rejoices at its son on the earth!"
The rising sun lighted the altar. Merira raised the libation cup and slowly, drop by drop, poured on the burning embers the thick, blood-red wine.
"Lord!" he exclaimed in such a heart-rending voice that Issachar began to tremble as in the night when looking at the empty chair he saw the Invisible, "Lord! Before the foundations of the earth were laid Thou didst reveal Thy will to Thy Son who is forever. Thou, Father, art in His heart and no one knows Thee except Him, Thy Son!"
Then, turning his back to Issachar, he put some fresh wine into the cup, put it on the altar table, took the tablets from his bosom and placed them on the table, too; taking the ring off his finger, he lifted the carbuncle and put the poison in the cup. He took the cup in his hands, again turned with his face to the sun and cried three times in a low, as it were distant, voice:
"Glory be to the Sun, the Son Who is to come!"
Issachar fell on his knees and covered his face with his hands: it suddenly seemed to him that Merira saw the One Who was to come.
Merira raised the cup to his lips, drained it, and dropping it, stretched his hands to the sun with a low cry:
"He! He!"
Then he fell to the ground like a man struck by lightning.
Horus rushed to him and bending over him cried:
"Father!"
But glancing into his face he knew he was dead. People rushed to the roof in answer to Horus's cries and seized Issachar, thinking he was the murderer. But someone gave Horus the tablets. He read:
"I, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, high priest of Aton, the only living God, kill myself for having wanted to kill a righteous man. Akhnaton Uaenra, Sun's Joy, Sun's only Son, lives for ever!"
Horus carried out the dead man's behest and released Issachar. All made way for him when he moved to go—so strange and terrible was his face.
He went to the very edge of the roof and stretching his arms to the rising sun cried, as though he knew that his voice would be heard at the furthest ends of the earth:
"Thus says the Lord God of Hosts, the God of Israel: out of Egypt shall I call my Son. Behold I will send my Messenger and the Lord whom you seek and the Messenger of the covenant you delight in shall suddenly come to His temple. Behold, He cometh!"
THE END