T
The whip cracked, the horses dashed forward, the feathers on their manes swayed, snowflakes of foam dropped off their bridles, and the chariot flew like a whirlwind. The air whistled in the ears; the lion's tail fixed to the king's belt at the back and the crimson ribbons of his robe fluttered in the wind. The king was driving; Dio stood behind him.
They passed the palm groves and the fields of ripe, yellow corn, taller than the height of man; the Nile glittered for the last time in the distance and the menacing silence of the endless desert, now dark brown, now sparkling like glass, enveloped them.
As she looked through her lashes at the shining snake-like sandy roads, flattened by heavy traffic, Dio recalled the thin layer of ice over the thawing snow sparkling in the sun on Mount Dicte. The dazzling air was shimmering with the heat. A vulture hung motionless in the dark blue sky. At times the shadow of a passing cloud ran over the ground and, still quicker, an antelope galloped past; suddenly it would stop and, stretching out its neck, sniff the air and then run on, light as the wind.
The sun was setting when the wayfarers saw on a high rock of the Arabian hills a boundary-stone of the province of Aton.
The images of King Akhnaton and Queen Nefertiti, cut out in the rock at a height where only the wind, the sun and the eagles could reach them, were half-covered, as though buried alive, by the waves of drifting sands. The only way to reach the bas-reliefs was to descend by a rope down a perpendicular rock; and evidently this was what some enemy of Aton's faith had done, for the images were broken and defiled.
The king stepped out of the chariot. The long black shadow cast by his figure upon the white sand seemed to stretch to the ends of the earth.
There was a clatter of hoofs. The high-priest, Merira, and the chief of the guards, Mahu, drove up.
"If I could only find the scoundrels, I would kill them on the spot!" Mahu cried indignantly, when he saw the desecrated images.
"Come, come, my friend," said the king, with a smile. "The sands will bury them anyway—there will be nothing left."
Mahu went to make arrangements for the night: the king wished to sleep in the desert.
Close by there was a mountain gorge, dark and narrow like a coffin, where tombs had been cut in the rock for the princesses. Hard by an old fig-tree made an unfading patch of green against the dead sand, and a sweetbrier flowered, fragrant with the scent of honey and roses: the secret water of an underground spring kept them fresh.
The king, accompanied by Dio and Merira, went down into the gorge to see the tombs.
When they had finished they walked up the slope of the hill by a narrow jackals' path, talking.
"Is the decree concerning the gods ready, Merira?" the king asked.
Dio understood that he meant the decree prohibiting the worship of all the old gods.
"It is ready," Merira answered, "but do think before you proclaim it, sire."
"Think of what?"
"Of not losing your kingdom."
The king looked at him intently, without speaking, and then asked again:
"And what ought I to do, my friend, not to lose my kingdom?"
"I have told you many times, Uaenra: be merciful to yourself and others."
"To myself and others? Can one do both?"
"Yes."
"And what do you think, Dio?"
"I think one cannot."
Merira looked at her from under his brows, with mute derision.
"Do you remember, Merira, who it was said: 'I know the day when I shall not be'?" the king asked.
"I remember: the god Osiris."
"No, the man Osiris. It is the will of the Father that the Son should suffer and die for all. Blessed be my heavenly Father! I, too, know the day when I shall not be. It is drawing near—it has come already. Now my kingdom is coming to an end, now fulfil the last will of your king, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, and proclaim to men my decree concerning the false gods and the one true God, whose is the glory for ever and ever!"
"Your will shall be done, sire, but remember: once the fire is kindled, there is no putting it out."
"Why, did you think we should just play with the fire and then let it out?" the king said, with a smile. He put both his hands on Merira's shoulders and again looked deep into his eyes.
"I know what makes you wretched, Merira," he said quietly, almost in a whisper. "You have not yet decided whether you are my friend or my enemy. Maybe you will decide very soon. Remember one thing: I love you. Don't be afraid then, my friend, my beloved enemy; be my friend or my enemy to the bitter end. God help you!"
He put his arms round him and kissed him.
The chariot was brought. The king stepped into it and Dio followed him. The whip cracked, the horses dashed off and the chariot flew like the whirlwind.
Merira watched it go, and when it disappeared in the last rays of the setting sun he stretched out his arms towards it and cried:
"You have prophesied your own doom, Akhnaton Uaenra: now your sun is setting, now your kingdom is coming to an end!"
It was already dark when, having driven far into the hilly desert, the king stopped and alighted from the chariot. Dio tied the horses to a spear stuck in the sand. The king sat down on a stone and Dio sat at his feet.
He pointed out to her the distant flame of a bonfire in the desert.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Mahu, strange man that he is...." the king answered. "He follows me about like a watchdog; I suppose he is afraid of my running away...."
Both were silent: Dio was waiting for him to speak: she knew he had come with her to the desert in order to talk undisturbed.
"I want to ask you something, Dio, and I cannot, I can't find the words," he began quietly, without looking at her.
He broke off and then began lower still:
"Do you know what Iserker said to me when I asked him why he wanted to kill me? 'Because, being a man, you make yourself God'. This was well said, wasn't it?"
"No, it wasn't: you don't make yourself God."
"I know I don't: it would be better for a man who made himself God not to have been born. But that's one thing and then there is something else; and one thing is so like the other that sometimes there is no distinguishing them.... And then it turns round all of a sudden: it was like this and then, all at once, it's the other way about...."
He rambled on incoherently, constantly losing the thread of his thought, wandering off the point and trying to find words; at last he was in a complete tangle and, with a wave of his hand, said hopelessly:
"No, I cannot! I will tell you another time...."
Dio smiled, and, taking his hand began kissing and stroking it gently, comforting him like a child.
"Better tell me now, Enra!"
'Enra' was the diminutive of 'Uaenra' and only those most intimate with him called him so.
"You speak very well, I understand it all. You don't make yourself a god, that's one thing, and what was the other?" she tried to help him as though he were a schoolboy who had forgotten his lesson.
"What was the other thing?" he began again and suddenly hurried on joyfully. "Do you remember the prayer 'Thou, Father art in my heart and no one knows Thee but me, Thy son?' I have said this and I don't go back on it. I never shall. This is as fixed in me as the stars in heaven. But this is so when I am not afraid, and when I am afraid, I pray to the Father: 'send someone else, someone else instead, I cannot!' And now, too, I am afraid. I keep thinking of the burden I have taken upon myself. Can a man bear it? What do you think, can he?"
"I don't know, Enra...."
"Don't you know either?"
The way he looked at her wrung her heart.
She clasped his knees and cried: "Yes, I do know: you can—you alone!"
He said nothing and buried his face in his hands. There was a long silence.
The stars came out. The Milky Way like a cloud rent in two stretched from one end of the desert to the other; the Pleiades glowed and the seven stars of Tuart, the Hippopotamus, glittered with a cold brilliance.
The king uncovered his face and looked at Dio. His face was as still as the sleeping desert and the starry heavens above. But Dio shuddered: she recalled the Sphinx with the face of Akhnaton; if a man had been tortured for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again, he would have such a face.
"Dio, my sister, my beloved, why did you come to me, why did you love me?" he said, wringing his hands. "It was easier for me without you: I did not know myself then, did not see myself. For the first time I saw myself in you and was terrified: who am I? who am I? Go away, I beg you! Why should you be tortured with me?"
"No, my brother, I shall never go away from you, I want to suffer with you!"
"You have escaped one fire and now you seek another?"
"Yes, I want to perish in your fire!"
T
The days of the floods were approaching.
The black, parched, withered earth, deathlike and terrible was aching under the terrible sun; the waters of the Nile barely covered its slimy bed. Men, animals, and plants were perishing with the heat. Had the heat lasted, everything, it seemed, would have been burnt up as with the fire of a conflagration or of the Sheheb.
But at the exact day, at the exact hour, God's miracle took place: Mother Isis wept over her dead son—the dried-up Nile; her tear—the star Sirius, the forerunner of the sun—fell into it and the ram-headed Khnum unsealed the springs of water.
Frogs croaked joyfully; herons paced about the black mud as though measuring the earth like the wise god Tot, the Measurer; the clerks of the Water Department measured the height of the water from the Waterfalls to the Delta by the marks on the stone walls of the measuring wells, while simple folk did it by the crocodile eggs and ant-heaps: the water never rose above these. Twelve cubits meant the ruin, sixteen cubits the salvation of Egypt.
At that time Merira went to Nut-Amon, Thebes, to see Ptamose who was at death's door and implored him not to delay. But even when Merira had arrived in Thebes he kept putting off the meeting, as though he feared it.
He, too, was ill; he could not sleep at night and in the daytime he wandered about the town, not knowing what to do with himself. A grimace of disgust was constantly upon his face as though he smelt an evil stench. This was one of the curious torments of his illness: he was everywhere pursued by bad smells—of dead rats as in a granary, of bats as in the burials caves, or of rotten fish as on the banks of the Nile where fish is cleaned, salted and dried in the sun. No perfumes were of any use: they only made the stench worse.
Some three days after his arrival he was sitting by the eastern gates of the Apet-Oisit enclosure, among the ruins of the tomb-sanctuary of King Tutmose the Third.
The sun was in the zenith: its rays came down straight almost without casting any shadow. The dreadful light poured down like molten tin. Merira sat in the narrow shadow cast by the crown of the giant pillar that had fallen—the double head of the Heifer-Hather. The shadow at his feet diminished so rapidly that one could almost see it: only a minute before he had been all in the shadow and now the sun was burning his feet. He saw a scorpion running in the dusty grass but he did not stir, he seemed spellbound. There was a dull pain in his left temple, as though a fishbone had pierced the eyeball. He felt rather sick, and there was a taste of death in his mouth.
Black dots like flies, swam about in the air, that quivered with the heat, and turning into transparent glassy maggots melted away. One of them began to grow and became an ancient Sphinx, with the face of Akhnaton; if a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again he would have a face like that. He slowly swam past and melted away, then came back again, turned thick and heavy and stood on all fours; his hind legs were those of a lion but the front were human arms. He ran along making a hideous clatter with his claws.
As though breaking with a terrible effort invisible bonds on his arms and legs, Merira regained consciousness, got up and walked away.
By the same subterranean passages which Dio had trodden, he descended into the large, low-pitched sepulchral chamber, or sanctuary, supported by low quadrangular columns. A couch stood in the middle; a corpse lay upon it.
The vaulted niche in the wall where once Amon's great Ram had lain on a couch of purple in the brilliant light of sanctuary lamps, was dark and empty: the animal had just died and its body was being embalmed.
Merira told the two priests who were in the room to go out, and, approaching the couch with the dead man upon it, knelt down, bending towards him. The dead man opened his young, living, immortal eyes; his lips whispered with the rustle of dry leaves:
"Is it you, Merira?"
"Yes."
"Blessed be the True, the Only God! I have waited seven years for you, my son, I knew that you would come—that I would not die without seeing you. Why did you tarry so long? Did you think I would not forgive you? I will forgive everything. Well, tell me, are you with him or with me?"
"Oh, if I only knew, if I only knew, father! This is why I have suffered so for seven years—because I don't know on whose side I am. Perhaps I am neither with you nor with him."
"There is no middle course."
"To an honest man there is not, but to a vile one anything is possible. For seven years I have done nothing but deceive myself and others. Don't torment me, father, don't ask me, decide yourself on whose side I am!"
"If I do you will not believe me. Do you remember your oath?"
"What are oaths to me? I have broken them long ago."
"No, you wanted to break them but you could not. You know yourself, there is no room for both of you in the world, it is either you or he. If you don't kill him, you will kill yourself."
"Yes, perhaps I will. Or, first him and then myself.... Can one kill the man one loves, father?"
"Yes. To kill the body in order to save the soul."
"Well, that is how it will be with me, or perhaps it will be different: I will kill him not out of love but out of envy. A beggar envies a rich man, a scoundrel envies a noble one, the dead envy the living. Set killed Osiris, his brother, from envy. And how can I help envying him? He is—and I am not: he is alive and I am dead He kills me, he destroys me for ever and ever!"
"Why have you not come before? What have you been doing with him?"
"What have I been doing? I thought I should get the better of him, deceive him, catch him in my net, but instead...."
He broke off and asked, with a wry smile:
"Was it good, father, that Set killed Osiris?"
"Why do you ask? You know yourself: they, the blind puppies, think it was not good. Osiris is life and Set is death for men, but for us, the wise ones, this is not so. The Tormented one torments, the Slain one slays, the Destroyed one destroys the world. Osiris-Amenti is the eternal West, the sun of the dead, the end of the world: he will rise over the world and the sun of the living will be extinguished; the god with an unbeating heart will conquer the world and the heart of the world will cease to beat. He is merciful and he ensnares the world with his mercy as a bird-catcher ensnares a bird. He says 'everlasting life' and, behold, there is everlasting death. Set and Osiris have been struggling since the beginning of the world, but the world does not yet know which of the two shall conquer."
"You speak almost exactly as he does, father! the tiniest hairbreadth divides you from him...."
"Yes, there is only a hairbreadth difference between truth and falsehood. Do you know the secret? The first Osiris has been, the second is to come; this man is but a shadow cast by Him; this one has spoken but the One to come will act."
"What will He do?"
"Destroy the world."
"Or perhaps the world will perish for His sake and be happy in doing so?"
"And will you be happy, too?"
"Perhaps I, also."
"Do you love Him, then?"
"I do. How can one help loving Him? He is more beautiful than all the sons of man. The devil knew well how to tempt man. I love His shadow, too, King Akhnaton; I love and hate him at the same time. And he knows it—he knows I want to kill him...."
Without speaking Ptamose took a ring off his finger and put it on Merira's.
King Tutmose the Third, King Akhnaton's great-great-grandfather, gave this ring to Hatuseneb, the high priest of Amon. A tiny cup of poison was concealed under the fiery yellow carbuncle—'Amon's eye.' On his deathbed the king commanded that if any king of Egypt were false to Amon he was to be killed with that poison.
"My spirit be upon you, my son, and the Spirit of the Secret One!" Ptamose said, laying his hands on Merira's head. "Henceforth, you, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, are the High Priest of Amon. Woe to thy enemies, O 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!"
He ceased speaking, closed his eyes, and for a few minutes lay without moving. Suddenly a faint tremor passed over his body. He heaved a deep, deep sigh; his chest rose, then sank and did not rise again. But there was no change in his face.
Merira watched him for some time, unable to tell whether he were alive or dead. He took his hand—it was cold; he felt his heart—it did not beat.
He called the priests and said:
"The great seer—Urma, the prophet of all the gods of the south and the north, the high priest of Amon, Ptamose, has ascended to the gods!"
N
Now we have begun, we must finish; it is no use crying over sour milk, as an intelligent girl said once, having done something that could not be put right," said Ay, a court dignitary, and everyone laughed.
"How soon will the decree for destroying the gods be published?" Tuta asked.
"In ten days or so," Parennofer, the Keeper of the King's Seal, replied.
"Couldn't we hurry it? It will be the beginning, you know...." Tuta said.
"It may be the beginning of such things that nothing will be left of us," muttered Ahmes, the superintendent of the king's household.
"What is it you are afraid of?" Tuta asked.
"Oh, anything! It's no joke going against the gods...."
"Well, the gods can fend for themselves, but we must think of our own skins. In this accursed hole, Aton's province, we are like mice in a trap—there is no way of escape. They will slaughter us like sheep when the levelling begins."
"What levelling?"
"Don't you know? The king thinks of nothing but making the rich and the poor equal. But what if the mob does rise up in earnest?"
"No, I am not particularly afraid of the mob," Ahmes replied. "The mob may very likely be on our side, but our own sort, the officials, will cut off our noses in a trice."
"'Better have a head without a nose than a nose without a head,' as a smart fellow said who had had his nose cut off," Ay said, and everyone laughed again.
"And what are we to do with Saakera?" Parennofer asked.
"Nothing at all; his Ethiopian woman will deal with him," Ay answered.
Saakera, the heir-apparent, had three hundred and sixty-five wives, according to the number of days in the year, one more beautiful than the other, but he was said to prefer to them all an old, hideous and bad-tempered Ethiopian who, so the rumour ran, used to box his ears and do what she liked with him.
"One can't trust anyone," Ahmes concluded, looking round at them all suspiciously. "Do you remember the words of King Amenemhet? 'Do not trust your brother, do not commune with your friend, for in the day of fear no one will stand by you. I gave alms to the poor and bread to the hungry; but he who ate my bread lifted his heel against me.' And someone else, too, has said rather cleverly 'where there are six conspirators, there is one traitor.'"
They all looked at one another in silence: there were more than six of them.
They were on the top floor of Tuta's summer-house, which had just been built but was not yet inhabited; no one could disturb them there: the garden surrounding it was under water during the flooding of the Nile, so that the house had to be approached by boat.
On meeting each guest, Tuta led him to the washing-stand, then showed him to a seat on the wide and low couch that ran the whole length of the room and was covered with carpets, offered him the fragrant cup for the head and moved towards him the stand with cooling drinks in Tintyrian vessels of porous clay.
The night was dark and hot, a hot wind smelling of water, river mud and fish, blew in sudden gusts; it set up its mournful song, that sounded like a wolf's howl or a child's cry, somewhere very far-off—at the end of the world, it seemed—then drew nearer and nearer and suddenly came in a fearful gust, whistling, squealing, roaring and moaning furiously, and stopped as suddenly; all that could be heard was the splash of water against the walls of the house and the rustle of palm leaves like a whisper behind the windows.
During one of these quiet intervals the door opened noiselessly and a huge black cat, half-panther, walked in like a shadow. Going up to Tuta it began rubbing itself against his legs, purring loudly. He got up to shut the door when Merira came in.
Tuta ran forward to meet him and was going to bow down to the ground before the high priest of Amon; but Merira embraced him and kissed him on the mouth. Tuta offered him the seat of honour, but Merira sat down on the floor beside him, slowly looked at them all and said, with a quiet smile:
"Go on, gentlemen, I listen."
"It is for you to speak, father; it shall be as you say," Tuta replied.
"No, decide for yourselves. Do all know what we have met for?"
"Yes."
"Well, then there is nothing more to say."
"It is no use crying over sour milk," Ay repeated, adding, after a pause, "It is better that one man should die for all than that the whole people should perish."
"Who will give him the cup?" Merira asked.
"Three people can give it him in virtue of our office, you, I or Tuta," Ay answered. "Hadn't we better draw lots?"
The cat looking at the narrow stone-trellised chink-like window, right under the ceiling, was mewing savagely. Suddenly it made a huge leap across the room like a real panther, jumped up to the window, and holding on to the stone bars with its claws, thrust its head against it and tried to put its paw through, but could not: the trellis was too close. Mewing still more furiously and plaintively it jumped to the floor and rushed about the room, its black body smooth and slippery like a snake.
"What's the matter with the cat?" Merira asked. "Has it gone mad? See the way it bares its teeth! And its eyes glow like candles. Ugh, the devil! Fancy keeping a reptile like that in the house. Take care Tuta—it will go for your throat one day when you are asleep!"
"I expect it smells someone," said Ay, looking at the window.
"But who can be there? There is water all round—no one could get through. A bird or a monkey perhaps," said Tuta.
The wind that had just been roaring stopped again suddenly and everything was so still that one could hear the water splashing against the walls of the house and the palm leaves rustling.
"Perhaps it's they?" Parennofer whispered, turning pale.
"Who?" Tuta asked.
"The restless. It's not for nothing they desecrate the tombs nowadays. They say there are a lot of evil spirits going about at night."
"Oh please, please don't talk about it!" Tuta implored, his stomach beginning to ache with fear.
"Drive it away, I beg you," Merira cried, with disgust.
Tuta seized the cat by the collar and tried to drag it out of the room. But it would not go and he was scarcely able to master it; at last, however he succeeded, and bolted the door behind it. But the cat went on scratching and mewing outside the room.
"Let me see, what were we talking about?" Merira began again.
"About casting lots," Tuta reminded him.
"Yes. I don't know how it strikes you, gentlemen, but it seems to me that it is unworthy of intelligent men to be the slaves of chance. Let us decide freely. Ay, do you want to give the poison? No? Tuta? Nor you either? Very well, then I will."
In the depths of the room there was an altar of bronze with a folding wooden image of King Akhnaton sacrificing to the Sun god. Merira went up to it, took the image and hit it against the corner of the bronze altar so violently that it broke in two.
"Woe to thy enemies, O Lord! Their dwelling place is in darkness and the rest of the earth in thy light; the sun of them that hate thee is darkened and the sun of them that love thee is rising. Death to Akhnaton Uaenra, the apostate!"
All repeated, joining hands over the altar:
"Death to the apostate!"
Merira led Tuta by the hand to the armchair and making him sit in it, said:
"The high priest of God on high, Amon-Ra, the king over all other gods, the prophet of all the gods of the south and the north, the great seer of the sky, Urma Ptamose, commanded me, on his death-bed, to elect king of all the earth Tutankhamon, the son of King Nebmaar Amenhotep, the son of Horus. Do you all agree, men and brethren?"
"We agree. Long live Tutankhamon, King of Egypt!"
Neferhepera, the master of the king's wardrobe, gave Merira a golden serpent of the Sun, Uta.
"By the power given me of God, I crown thee King of Egypt," Merira said, placing it on Tuta's head.
"Long live the King!" they all cried, prostrating themselves.
Merira's face was suddenly distorted.
"The cat again!" he whispered, looking into a dark corner of the room.
"The cat? Where?" Tuta asked, looking quickly about him.
"There, in the corner, do you see?"
"There is nothing there."
"No, there is not. I must have fancied it."
He moved his hand across his face and smiled.
"Zahi, Heheki—they are winged panthers, with a falcon's head, a human face on the back, a budding lotos instead of a tail and a belly covered with sharp teats like the teeth of a saw. They say there are a lot of these unclean creatures prowling about at night.... But perhaps they don't exist? Old women's tales .... Heheki, heheki," he laughed suddenly, with a laugh so dreadful that Tuta felt a shiver running down his back.
"There, there, again, look! But this time it is not a cat—it is he, Uaenra! Do you see what a face he has—worn out, old, eternal. If a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came back again, he would have a face like that ... he looks at me and laughs—he knows I want to kill him but he thinks I won't dare.... But wait a bit, I'll show you!"
He staggered and almost fell. They all rushed to him and would have bled him, but he had already recovered. His face was almost calm; only the corners of his mouth quivered and his lips were twisted into a smile.
All of a sudden there was a frantic squealing and howling outside the window; the leaves rustled and something fell into the water with a heavy splash.
They all ran to the ground floor hall which gave on to the garden and saw the cat floating on the water with its belly ripped open.
"It's a bad business," Ay said.
"Why!" Merira asked.
"Someone has been eavesdropping."
"What of it?"
"What of it? Why, he will tell the king."
"Let him. I know the king better than you do: he might hear with his own ears, see with his own eyes and yet not believe. He would hand the spy over to us."
"Hadn't we better put it off," Tuta began timidly; the fright had given him such a stomach-ache that he could hardly stand and could not spare a thought even for his beloved Ruru.
"Let's put it off! Let us!" everyone said.
"Cowards, scoundrels, traitors!" Merira cried in a fury. "If you put it off, I will inform against you!"
"But we are thinking of you, Merira," Ay said. "You are ill, you ought to look after yourself...."
"Here is my medicine!" Merira cried, pointing to the poison ring that glittered on his finger. "It shall be as we decided: all will be over in three days' time!"
D
Do not judge me, O Lord, for my many sins! I am a man with no understanding of myself," Merira whispered.
"What are you whispering?" Dio asked.
"Nothing."
He stood at the prow of the boat with a double-edged harpoon in his hands and she sat at the helm, rowing with a short oar, or pushing off in shallow places with a long pole. The flat-bottomed boat for two, made of long stems of papyrus, tied together and covered with coal tar, was so unstable that one could hardly move in it without risk of upsetting it. Merira wore the ancient hunting dress: a two-lobed apron—shentiof white linen, a broad necklace of turquoise and carnelian beads, a small beard of black horsehair and a 'tiled' closely curled wig; all the rest of the body was naked. In such dress the dead, after the resurrection, hunted in the blessed fields of Ialu in the papyrus thickets of the heavenly Nile.
The milky-white sky of the early morning was changing to blue, as innocent as the smile of a child asleep. The waters of the Nile were still as a pond; the morning breath was so gentle that the mirror-like surface of the river was not yet broken with ripples, though boats with full sails were already flitting upon it like birds. The rafts of pines and cedars from Lebanon slowly floated along. Men, tiny as ants, dragged by a rope a huge barge with a granite obelisk, singing a mournful song; it made the stillness seem more still and the expanse of the river more limitless. The white houses of the City of the Sun, scattered about like dice in the narrow green strip of palm groves, were disappearing in the distance.
"What is the matter with you?" Dio asked Merira. "Happy? in good spirits? No, that's not it.... I have never seen you like this."
"I had a good night," Merira answered. "I slept for quite six hours on end."
He took a deep, eager breath. He was glad when he felt the smell of bats and not of dead rats or rotten fish; and to-day—what joy! he smelt nothing but morning freshness.
"And everything is good," he said, still more joyfully. "See how high the water is! Isn't it fine?"
"Very fine," she agreed.
"Just think, sixteen and a half cubits! The water hasn't risen so high for the last ten years!" Merira went on. "The country is saved if the rebels in the south do not destroy the canals. Look, a little ass in the field doesn't dare to put its foot in the ditch—ah, now he has done it, clever creature—and men are more stupid than asses!"
He added, after a pause:
"I had a good dream the other night...."
"What was it?"
"It was about you. I dreamt we were children together walking in a lovely garden, better than Maru-Aton—a real paradise—and you were saying something very nice to me. I woke up and thought 'I will do what she told me.'"
"And what did I say?"
He shook his head and said nothing.
"Again something you can't tell?"
"No."
He turned away to hide from her the tears that came into his eyes:
"Don't judge me, O Lord, for my many sins! I am a man with no understanding of myself," he whispered again.
He suddenly struck the water with his harpoon so violently that he nearly upset the boat. Dio cried out. When he pulled the harpoon out of the water a fish was struggling on each side of it: anin, with a rectangular, wing-like fin on its back, glittering like ruby, sapphire and gold, and ahawith the monstrous head of an anteater, consecrated to the god Set. He threw both fishes at her feet and she admired the way they struggled, dying.
"Why do you say you have never seen me like this?" he asked.
"I don't know. You always jeer, and to-day you look as though you were going to smile. Quite like...."
"Like whom?"
She stopped suddenly and looked down; she wanted to say 'quite like Tamu,' but suddenly she felt frightened and sorry—sorry for this one as for the other.
"Also something you can't tell?" he asked, smiling.
"No, I can't."
"There, there, look!" he pointed to something that lay on the sand-bank and seemed exactly like a greenish-black, slimy log.
"What is it?"
"A crocodile. It hid in the sand for the night and now it has crawled out and will warm itself in the sun; and at midday, when the north wind blows, it will open its mouth towards it to get cool. An intelligent beast. But an ibis's feather paralyzes it and then one can do anything with it..."
He spoke about indifferent things on purpose to hide his emotion, but went on smiling exactly like Tamu.
The boat cut into a dense mass of papyrus plants. Their umbrella-like tops quivered as though alive, the stems rustled and bent over the boat like two high green walls. The yellow ambaki flowers smelt of bitter almond and warm water and the pink lotoses,nekhebs, of sweet aniseed. Blue dragonflies whirred unceasingly over the floating leaves. An ichneumon, a sharp-faced little creature with whiskers, something between a cat and a rat, was stealing up the entangled papyrus-stems, and the bird-mother fluttering over her nest desperately flapped her wings to drive the robber away. Suddenly in the far distance there was a loud trumpet-call: it was a hippopotamus, roaring as it spouted water from its nostrils like a whale.
Water birds flew about in clouds: sacred herons—benu—with two long feathers thrown back over their heads, sacred ibises, bald-headed and white but for a black tail and a black edge on the wings; wild ducks, geese, swans, cranes, spoonbills, plovers, water-hens, hoopoos, peewits, divers, pelicans, cormorants, golden-eyes, lapwings, magpies, snipe, fish-hawks and many others. They were singing, twittering, chirruping, calling, quacking, screeching, whistling, cackling, cawing, droning, clucking.
"Vepvet!" Merira called, and a huge yellow hunting cat, with emerald eyes, that had been sleeping at the bottom of the boat, jumped to him and settled beside him on the bow, pricking up its ears.
He threw a flat, curved tablet made of rhinoceros skin—a weapon of immemorial antiquity. It flew along, struck its aim and describing an arc in the air returned to him and fell at his feet. The cat jumped into the thicket and brought a bird that had been killed. He threw the weapon again, and the cat brought another bird, and soon the boat was so full of game that it began to sink.
They rowed to a little island surrounded on all sides with thick walls of papyrus, three times the height of man, bright green and fresh as in paradise. In days of old, Mother Isis brought up the baby Horus in such a papyrus nest.
They landed. A fisherman's net was stretched out on poles on the shore to dry. There was a bed of reeds under a shelter of dry palm leaves. Dio sat on the bed and Merira on the ground at her feet. The cat ate fish greedily.
"She is as good at scenting prey as Ruru was," Merira said.
"Why 'was'?" Dio asked in surprise.
"Don't you know? The poor creature was killed the other day. Tuta wept over it as though it had been his own daughter and has fallen ill with grief."
"Who killed it?"
"I don't know. It was found dead in the garden. Someone must have climbed a tree and been listening at the window, and the cat smelt him out and rushed at him and he ripped its belly with a knife."
"But who could it have been?"
"Probably some spy of Mahu's."
"Impossible. Mahu knows that Tuta is a faithful servant of the king. Why should he be watched?
"He might well be. All we do at court is to watch one another."
"And you watch me?"
"I do. Do you remember how you spoke about me with the king in the desert? I know everything—I know that you betray me."
He gave her a long, intent look.
"No, Merira," she said quietly. "It is not I who betray you—you do it yourself. You deceive yourself: you want to hate him and you cannot—you love him...."
"I don't know. Perhaps I do love him. But love, too, is sometimes cruel—more cruel than hate. It is said 'love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire; many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.' Do you know this?"
"I do. Is this how you love me, too?"
"What is my love to you? Why do you ask? Do you want to deceive me?"
"No. Even if I wanted to I could not: we know all about each other."
"Do we? There is no getting to the bottom of the soul—it is too deep."
"At the bottom of the soul is love; one who loves knows everything. Are you very unhappy?"
"And are you very sorry for me? It is a bad sign: if a woman pities a man she doesn't love him."
There was a silence. Then he spoke again in a changed voice, without looking at her.
"I have had another dream about you, a bad one. Only I don't know if it was a dream. Perhaps you know what it was—a dream or not?"
She lowered her eyes, feeling that he was looking at her: it was like spiders running over her naked body; she was ashamed and frightened as in that dream.
"No, Dio, I do not love you. To love a woman one must despise her just a little. I might love you when you are asleep or dead—as you were in that dream. You said then 'it is sweet to be weak, sweet to be only a woman.' But you wouldn't say that awake, would you? Why do you lie then? You are a woman after all: moths nest in clothes and slyness in woman. If you had only said to me then 'go away' I would have gone. And I will go now—you have only to tell me...."
She put both her hands on his shoulders and said simply and quietly:
"Listen, my brother, three people have already perished through me; I don't want you to perish too...."
"It wouldn't be through you, don't be afraid; I hated him before you came."
There was a long silence, then she asked, speaking still lower than before:
"What do you hate him for?"
"Don't you know? Surely you don't believe, do you, that King Akhnaton is the One who is to come?
"No. I know he is only His shadow."
"But he does believe it himself."
"No, he doesn't. That was your temptation, your snare, but he is free from it now."
"He is not—he never will be. I tempted him, you say? Why, could I ever have done it without him? I merely said aloud what he thought; I revealed his own secret to him. And do you imagine one can say 'I am He' and then repent? I don't know who has been led into temptation—I by him or he by me. But anyway, there is no greater temptation upon earth than for a man to say 'I am God.' Yes, he is only a shadow of the One to come; this one has said 'I will kindle the flame' and that One will kindle it. But maybe we still have time to put it out...."
"No, you will not put it out. His fire is love! 'Many waters cannot quench love'—you have said so yourself. No, Merira, you will not rise against him!"
"Do you think I am afraid of him?"
"Not of him but of the One behind him."
"Liar, Murderer, Devil is behind him. If He came I would rise against Him, too!"
The green walls parted suddenly and the king's boat appeared. The king stood at the stern with Mahu and was saying something to him, pointing to the island.
"He is looking, he is looking at us!" Merira whispered in terror. "Let us hide!"
They both went into the papyrus thicket. The boat passed them.
"I believe you are right after all, Dio, and I will never rise against him," Merira said, with a quiet laugh, passing his hand over his eyes as though he had just awoken from a fearful dream. "I may rise against myself, but not against him...."
And after a silence he asked:
"You won't tell him what we have been talking about, will you?"
"No, I won't," she replied and glancing at him understood more clearly than she had ever done before:
"He is an enemy."