S
Saakera was giving a feast. The pillared hall of the palace where the guests were assembled gave on to an open porch and the porch on to the river. The palm-shaped columns, decorated with a scaly design of coloured glass on a golden background, seemed made of precious stones, glittering in the light of candelabra, each of which resembled a burning bush; the yawning abyss of darkness gaped in between. There the rusty sickle of the waning moon shed its dim light on the ragged tops of the Lybian mountains and was reflected as a pillar of dull copper in the black rippled surface of the river, so wide that it was hard to believe it was a river and not the sea.
The night was still, but fresh, as often happens during the overflow. The gentle breeze from the north blew so evenly that the flames of the lamps were all bent to one side.
The blue ceiling, studded with golden stars, looked through the white smoke of incense like a real sky through the clouds.
The guests sat in a semi-circle in the square space that was free from columns: the king was in the middle, on his right sat Saakera, the heir-apparent, with his consort, Meritatona, the king's eldest daughter; then Ramose, Tuta, Ay; on the king's left was the queen, next to her was an empty seat reserved for Merira, who had not yet arrived; then came Mahu, Dio, and others. Members of the royal family and senior dignitaries sat in arm-chairs and on folding chairs, and the lesser ones sat on carpets and mats on the floor.
Within the semi-circle stood a big, round, one-legged table of alabaster. It was covered with loaves of bread shaped like pyramids, cones, balls and sacred animals, dishes of food, covered with fresh leaves to protect the food from flies, and mounds of fruit: gigantic bunches of Lybian grapes, a foot long, the rare fruits of shakarab, spotted like a leopard's skin, and the egg-shaped persae in a four-petalled chalice, golden-coloured and fragrant as flowers. Four wine and beer stands made of trellised woodwork and garlanded with flowers stood round the table.
Nubian girls, dressed in white, transparent linen—'woven air'—or naked but for a narrow girdle just above the navel, served round the cups with food and drink. Meat was cut up into small pieces and eaten with the fingers, which were washed in scented water after every dish. Wine and beer were sucked through reeds.
Fans of ostrich feathers and flykillers of jackals' tails were being waved unceasingly to keep off the night midges,zezet.
Each guest wore on his head a tiny cup filled with fragrant ointment, with a lotos stuck through it, so that the flower hung over the forehead. Melting slowly with the warmth of the body and the heat of the room the ointment fell in drops upon the white linen of the dresses, leaving greasy yellow streaks upon it; the greater the number of such streaks the better: it meant the guest had been well looked after. When the cup was empty the girls produced a new one offering the choice betweenkemi, 'the royal ointment,' oranti, 'the dew of the gods,' which gave a golden tint to the skin and made the face look 'like the morning star.'
"Where is Merira?" the king asked.
"He has promised to come, but he is not here yet. He is not well. He can't sleep," answered Saakera, the heir apparent, a young man with a beautiful face, fine and mournful like the sickle of the moon turning pale in the morning sky.
"Why don't you cure him, Pentu?" the king asked.
"There is only one certain remedy against sleeplessness, sire," Pentu, the physician, answered.
"What is it?"
"A clear conscience."
"But isn't his conscience clear?"
Pentu made no answer, as though he had not heard, and there was a general silence.
"Why are you eating so little, Tuta?" the host inquired solicitously. "This is your favourite dish, antelope from the salty plains. Isn't it cooked to your liking?"
"Oh, yes, prince, it is excellent; I have eaten much of it."
"He is telling fibs—he hasn't had a bite, I have seen myself," the king laughed. "He is grieving over poor Ruru. Haven't they discovered yet who killed it?"
"No, they haven't," Tuta answered in confusion.
"They will soon discover it, I am on the track," Mahu said, looking intently at Tuta.
Tuta was more dead than alive: he took a piece of meat into his mouth and could not swallow it.
"What's the matter with you, stomach-ache again?" his consort, princess Ankhsenbatona, who sat next to him, asked him in a whisper.
"Yes," he answered with the languid air he always assumed when speaking about his health.
Ankhi knew that his stomach-ache was generally due to fear.
"What has frightened you?"
He said nothing.
"Speak! what is it? Ah, you insufferable creature!" she whispered furiously and pinched his back so viciously that he nearly cried out.
Ay saw Tuta's confusion and wanted to help him, but did not know how.
Ay's wife, the great royal nurse, Ty, was sitting next to him. Enormously stout—a regular toad—with a purplish face covered with warts that had red hair on them, the old lady was wearing a fiery-red wig, a Canaan novelty, and gold-coloured gloves, a Hittite novelty; though there was no need to wear them in a hot country like Egypt, she showed them off on every festive occasion. People thought her half-mad, but she was very cunning and intelligent, and a malicious gossip, especially in love affairs.
Soft-boiled ibis eggs were served. They were not eaten as a rule, for the ibis was a bird sacred to the god Tot. But this time all the company ate some to please the king and show their contempt for the false god.
Ty helped herself to three eggs. It was awkward to eat them with gloved hands and she smeared herself with the yolk which, however, was not very noticeable beside the yellow streaks from the ointment.
"Aita! Aita!" she suddenly said in a loud voice, when there was a silence and everyone was occupied with the eggs, and she gave a high-pitched little laugh, curiously out of keeping with her enormous size; it was like the silvery trill of a toad.
Ay looked at her and understood what he had to do. He began telling about the pretty Aita, wife of one of the king's dignitaries who used to deceive her husband so boldly and cleverly under his very nose that everyone knew it except him.
"She had a feed, wiped her mouth and said 'I haven't done any wrong'," Ay concluded.
"What? What?" the king laughed. "She had a feed, wiped her mouth...." he tried to repeat it but could not go on for laughter.
"Wiped her mouth and said 'I haven't done any wrong'," Ay repeated.
"And what is your other saying? 'It is no use crying....'" the king began again and could not finish.
"No use crying over sour milk," Ay said.
Tuta was saved. Ruru was forgotten.
Meanwhile Dio was whispering with Mahu, the chief of the guards.
"And what if he does not come?" she asked.
"He is sure to come," Mahu answered. "How many have you hidden away?"
"Three hundred."
"That will do."
"Hadn't we better tell the king?"
"Heaven forbid! If he learns it, all is lost, he will not believe a word of it. We must catch the scoundrel red-handed.... Ah, there he is!"
Merira came in. Tuta almost fainted.
"Here he is, at last!" said the king, getting up to greet Merira.
He made him sit down next to the queen and began asking him about his health. Merira answered calmly, almost jokingly. But when a Nubian brought him a cup of perfume he sent her away with a grimace of disgust.
The little girls who sang and played the lute, the tambourine, the flute and the cithern sat down in a circle on the floor. Miruit, Pentaur's pupil whom Dio had brought with her from Thebes, stood in the middle. Her dark amber-coloured body could be seen through the flowing folds of the transparent dress. Her face, ugly, charming and dangerous, like the head of a snake, seemed tiny under the mass of the dull black hair powdered with blue.
The girls played and sang:
"Sweet one, you are sweet for loveFairer than any woman,Fairer than any girl,Your hair is blacker than abed berries,Your teeth are whiter than sunny flint.Your lips are the bud of a flower,Your arms are slender branches.Two flowering crowns,Your breasts are hardly formed,Your nipples smell of myrrh."
Miruit was dancing thedance de venire. The upper part of the body remained motionless and the lower moved rapidly, although she stood on the same spot. Her head was thrown back, her lips open, her eyes dark and fixed, and the slender waist moved like a serpent's tongue; the belly rose and fell, the narrow, childish hips moved slower and slower as though prolonging the last tremours of passion. If she had really done before everyone the things her dance pictured, it would not have been so innocently shameless.
The women looked down, the men smiled, beating measure with their hands and the girls sang:
"You have captured my heart,You have captured my heartBy a single look of your eyes.How tender are your embraces,How sweet your caresses!Better than wine is your kiss,The odour of your sweet bodyIs better than any perfume."
When Miruit had finished the dance the choir of the blind men who had sung at the Sun's festival entered the hall. They sat down on the floor and sang to the sounds of the harp:
"One generation replaces another,The sun rises, the sun sets again,The nostrils of all breathe the morning air,Until man goes to his place of rest.No one can return from there, no one can tellWhat awaits us beyond the tomb.Rejoice then, O mortal, in thy day of life,Until the day of weeping comes.I have heard of what befell my forefathers:The walls of their tombs are destroyed,Their coffins are empty like coffins of beggars,Forsaken by everyone on earth.Their dwelling place knows them no more.It is as though they had never been:Rejoice then, mortal, in thy day of life!Oil thy body with fragrant oilMake lotos garlands for thy armsAnd the breasts of thy sister beloved.Enjoy the music and the songsForget thou all thy sorrows,Remember nothing but the joy,Until the day thy boat shall landUpon the shores of Silence."
The song stopped and the breath of the night blew fresher than before from the black gaps between the pillars; the flames of the lamps bent lower, all on one side, as though someone invisible had come into the room.
"Isn't it a fine song?" Saakera asked.
"No, prince, it isn't," answered Panehesy, the second priest of Aton and the head of the king's spies—a man without age who looked like a eunuch. He was a mild fanatic, 'a holy fool,' in the words of Ay.
"What's wrong with it?"
"It's godless. If it is true, our faith is in vain."
"I would answer you, my friend, but it doesn't behove ignorant men to speak in the presence of the wise."
"Speak, Saakera," the king said. "I like listening to you. You say what many people think, but don't say, and to me even a bitter truth is dearer than a sweet lie."
"Listen then, Panehesy," Saakera began. "Let the son of the Sun who has come down from heaven speak of heavenly things, and I will speak of the earthly. We are all creatures of yesterday and we know nothing, for our days upon earth are like a shadow. The same fate befalls the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the wicked, the clean and the unclean, him that sacrifices and him that does not sacrifice. A man has no pre-eminence above a beast: all are of the dust and all turn to dust again. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and believe the dead are happier than the living, and happiest of all is he who was never born!"
"What are we to do then, we who have been born?" Panehesy asked.
"The song gives an answer: rejoice in your day, mortals, but remember that the peace of the god with the unbeating heart is the better portion."
"Thank you very much, our kind host, you have given us a treat!" Ay laughed. "Why, I couldn't swallow a morsel to the accompaniment of a song like that!"
"Why not, my friend? Remembrance of sorrow in the midst of joy is like salt in one's food."
"That's all very well, but every condiment should be used in moderation, and this is too much salt."
"No, this is not salt," Pentu the physician said, quietly, as though to himself.
"What is it then?" Ay asked.
"Poison," Pentu answered, quieter still. Mahu glanced at Merira. He sat with his head bent and his eyes half closed, his face as unmoved as that of a man asleep or dead.
"Why don't you speak, sire?" Panehesy cried, turning to the king.
"I don't speak because there is nothing to say: he is right," the king answered.
"Well said, Abby darling!" Princess Meritatona exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight.
Everyone looked at her with surprise.
"What does this mean, sire?" Panehesy faltered.
"It means, my friend, that if there is no God man is worse off than a beast, because a beast does not know its end and a man does."
"But there is God."
"Yes, there is. Everyone says there is, but acts as though there were not. And haven't you read, my son, that we shall have to give a terrible answer for empty words? Pentu, too, is right: there is poison in that song. But poison may be a medicine. There are two endings to the song: one is 'eat, drink and die' and another 'feed the starving, give drink to the thirsty'.... But it is better not to speak of it. God is a spring in the wilderness, sealed for the talkers and open for the silent. Merira is silent and he is right, more right than any of us. Don't be vexed with our chatter, our silent friend, forgive us!"
Merira made no answer, he merely looked at the king and his face remained as unmoved as though he were asleep or dead.
Suddenly there came through the stillness the slow, measured clang of the cymbals on the roof of Aton's temple, as though a huge heart of brass began beating in the night.
All rose from their seats; the king, the queen, the princesses, the heir-apparent and Merira walked to the altar that stood in the depths of the room before a bas-relief of the god Aton.
"Glory be to the unseen god, to the midnight sun!" Merira intoned. "Oh, mighty Falcon, with broad wings, flying through the two skies, hastening in thy sleepless course through the sky underneath the earth, to arise in thy place in the morning, the most secret of secret gods. In thy life the dead come to life again; thou givest their nostrils the breath of life and air to their stifled throats. Thou bringest light to those who are in death; glorifying thee from within their tombs, the dead lift up their hands and those in the earth rejoice!"
When the cymbals sounded Mahu and Dio went into the adjoining room. He walked up to the wall, knocked at it gently and put his ear to it. A knock came from the other side, too. The block of stone in the wall turned round like a swing door, leaving a narrow opening. The palace walls were double and there was a hiding place between them. No one knew of it except the king, Mahu and Ramose.
The Hittite Amazons of the king's bodyguard came out of the open door noiselessly like shadows. The dwarf Iagu jumped out after them, ran up to Mahu and asked in a whisper:
"Where are they?"
"Who?"
"Tuta, Merira."
"Why do you want to know?"
"I won't give them to anyone, I will throttle them with my own hands."
It was Iagu who had killed Ruru: he had climbed the tree by the window, looked into the room, listened to all that the conspirators said and told Mahu.
"You are a fine fellow, Iagu!" said Mahu, patting the dwarf on the head. "Tiny as you are, you have a lion's heart. But there's one thing, my friend: if you want to save the king, you must not touch them, do you hear?"
"I hear," Iagu answered, grinding his teeth.
"Make haste, make haste!" Dio hurried them.
"Don't be afraid, we'll be in time," Mahu said calmly. "You go to the king, and I will wait here. We will run out as soon as you call."
Dio returned to the guest chamber. Both Tuta and Ay had gone. The king stood by the altar, whispering a prayer. Dio placed herself behind him, opposite Merira.
A table with bread, wine and fruit stood near the altar. Merira went to it and began preparing the libation cup.
He then returned to the altar, holding the cup in his hands.
Dio noticed a ring with a carbuncle on his finger; he had not worn it before.
Their eyes met. "Who is to drink the cup?" he read the question in her eyes. "You will see," she read the answer in his.
He approached the king and said:
"King Uaenra, Sun's only Son, light of light, spirit of spirit, flesh of Sun's flesh, accept the cup of life, drink the cup of immortality, thou who overcomest death!"
He held out the cup to the king. But before Akhnaton had had time to take it, Dio snatched it out of Merira's hand and threw it on the floor.
"What are you doing?" the king cried.
"I've poured out the poison," Dio answered and she called:
"Mahu! Mahu!"
The door was flung open, and the Hittite women, led by Mahu, ran into the room. Some surrounded the king, others occupied the porch and mounted guard by the doors, but most of them ran to the next room where a battle with a detachment of Midian mercenaries had started.
"Rebellion! Save the king!" the dignitaries cried, rushing about the room in search of an exit.
Suddenly there was a loud hammering at the door from which the Hittite women had come. Both halves of the door were creaking and shaking under the blows of the axe from the other side. No one had expected an attack from the rear. The Amazons had barely had time to run to the door. A new battle began there.
Arrows and spears whistled in the air. A spear struck the stand with wines, and it fell with a clatter of broken crockery. A candelabrum was overthrown and the mats on the floor caught fire.
"Fire! Fire!" the dignitaries shouted, but they did nothing to put it out.
A Nubian girl seized a carpet and flung it over the flame, extinguishing it at once.
An arrow pierced the fragrant cup on Ty's head and tore off the wig, leaving her bald head bare. But the old woman sat unperturbed and did not even take her gloves off; rebellion seemed to be part of the court ceremonial to her.
Miruit, wounded in the stomach with a spear, lay in a pool of blood on the floor, scratching the ground with her nails and showing her teeth as it were in a smile, and the narrow childish hips moved slower and slower as though ending the dance of love.
The Hittite Amazons might not have withstood the attack of the Midians, had not half the mercenaries deserted the conspirators at the last moment.
The noise of the battle began to subside, the rebels were in retreat. The women had conquered the men. It had all happened so quickly that those present had hardly come to their senses.
Suddenly Ramose, lightly wounded in the left arm, came into the chamber dragging Tuta after him. He threw him at the king's feet and cried:
"Here is the chief criminal, sire! It is for his sake the other one has been working," he pointed to Merira and turned to Tuta again. "Confess, you rascal, or I'll kill you like a dog."
He raised the knife over Tuta. The king seized his hand.
"Let go the knife!"
Ramose did not obey and, shaking with anger, grumbled:
"Will you forgive this one, too?"
"It's for me to decide what I will do, but you let go the knife!"
The king pulled the knife out of Ramose's hand by force and threw it aside.
"Woe to us! God will not save him who ruins himself!" the old man muttered, sinking into an armchair heavily, exhausted by his wound.
Tuta lay at the king's feet.
"Is it true that you have done it?" the king asked him.
"Not I, not I, sire, God sees it isn't I...." Tuta babbled, pointing his finger at Merira.
Merira stood at a distance without moving; he looked so unconcerned that he seemed not to see or hear anything. Someone had tied his hands behind his back.
The king went up to him and asked:
"You wanted to kill me, Merira?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you prepare the way for the Son of perdition."
"Haven't we prepared it together?"
"No, not together."
"Why have you lied to me, then?"
"To destroy your work."
"But why did you rise against Him?"
"May I ask you a favour, sire?"
"Do."
"Don't ask me about anything and put me to death as soon as possible."
"No, Merira, I will not put you to death."
"You will forgive me like Tuta?" Merira said, with a smile that looked like a grimace of disgust. He had spoken with his eyes on the ground; suddenly he raised them and said looking straight into the king's eyes:
"Do what you like, but remember, Uaenra, that if you don't kill me, I will...."
He did not finish, but the king understood 'I will kill you.'
He put both hands on Merira's shoulders, and, also looking straight into his eyes, said, with a gentle smile:
"Remember, you too, Merira: whatever happens, I love you."
T
The king was the last to learn that Princess Makitatona was with child. She confessed it to him herself, but did not say who the man was and so implored him not to ask her that he had pity and reassured her:
"Don't tell me if you don't want to; you will tell me when you feel that you can."
He blamed himself for everything: "If I loved her more, this would not have happened!" He was doing himself injustice: he loved all his daughters and Maki more than the rest.
He thought the queen knew, but she did not. The princess's nurse, old Asa, may have suspected something, but she would rather have had her tongue cut off than said anything.
There were strange rumours in the town: it was said that the princess had been seduced by a tramp, a runaway slave or, perhaps, by the Jew Iserker himself; it would not have been very difficult, because the king's daughters were not properly looked after; Princess Makitatona had been seen to go out alone into the desert through the secret gate in the Maru-Aton garden wall. And people added, not without malice, that the Jews were highly delighted, for they thought that the princess would give birth to their Messiah.
The dwarf, Lagu, was brought one day to the palace half dead: he had had a fight with a crowd of street ruffians who were gazing at a charcoal drawing of the princesses made on the wall with an indecent inscription beneath it.
The king allowed Maki to live in retirement in the Maru-Aton palace until her confinement. She spent the days there in a perfectly dark room with the shutters closed and the windows curtained: she could not bear the light. She had had attacks of this disease before: daylight seemed to stab not only her eyes, but her whole body as with a knife; if a ray of sunshine penetrated into the room, she cried and groaned as with intolerable pain.
The eldest princess, Meritatona, or Rita, Saakera's wife, was inseparable from Maki. There was a year's difference between the sisters—one was fifteen, the other fourteen; they loved each other tenderly though they were as different as day and night.
Maki had been betrothed to Saakera, who was passionately in love with her; she loved him, too, but renounced him for Rita's sake and made a vow of virginity to the god Attis. The god's chapel was in the hilly desert not far from Maru-Aton. The droning of the eunuchs engaged in their devotions sounded like jackals howling in the night.
Some ten days after Saakera's feast Maki and Rita were sitting at Maru-Aton late one evening in a long and narrow Water House, supported by palm-shaped pillars with a labyrinth of eleven ornamental pools. Their slanting walls were covered with paintings of water plants, lotoses and papyrus, that seemed to be growing out of water; above them were painted pomegranate bushes and clumps of vine. Beds of living flowers were all round.
Rita and Maki were reclining on pillows by the water's edge, under bushes of white, pink, and red roses.
"Why didn't you tell sooner, you silly? We could have arranged things, and now look at yourself: it is too late," said Rita, feeling Maki's body as an experienced midwife. Pregnancy seemed monstrous in a little creature like Maki, almost a child.
"Saakera's Ethiopian has some stuff. Shall I ask her? Perhaps it could still be done...."
"Oh, Rita, don't speak of it, please don't!"
"Very well, don't whine.... What was I talking about? Yes, about Ankhi. She wants to run away and join Tuta. The rascals did not stay long in prison—they escaped to Nut-Amon; I expect they'll stir up a rising there. No, I would not have let them off: they ought to have been killed on the spot. But our courtiers are all traitors and scoundrels."
She spoke listlessly, evidently thinking of something else. Suddenly she smiled, as though recalling something funny.
"Shiha is a clever man! Do you know what he says of Enra?" Shiha was the high priest and eunuch of the god Attis.
"What?" Maki asked. She started slightly at the name of Shiha and Rita noticed it.
"He says Enra lives as though all were well with the world; but all is not well!"
"All is not well?" Maki repeated, frowning with the childish effort to understand.
"Do you remember Yuma's death?" Rita went on. Yuma was a little black slave who died of a tarantula sting.
"She turned greyish-white all over, just like an autumn fly covered with mildew, and a smell of corruption came from her before she died. And the day before yesterday someone had attacked a little girl of five by the very walls of Aton's temple, strangled her and thrown the body to the pigs. Is that well? And Enra lives as though none of these things happened. Perhaps all is well for God, but Enra is not God; people say he is, but he himself knows he isn't."
She pondered for a while and began again:
"He does not know how to cry, but one cannot live without tears; nothing is sweeter than tears..."
"Does Shiha say that?" Maki asked.
"No, I say it .... or perhaps Shiha, I don't remember.... What is Aton, the Sun? A spark in darkness: death will blow and the sun will be extinguished. Darkness is more than light; first there was darkness and then light. Maybe God dwells in darkness."
She laughed suddenly.
"You, too, are a sensible girl; you are afraid of light and love darkness. The daughter does not take after the father."
Maki listened greedily; sometimes she strove to say something, but words froze on her lips; she merely looked at her sister with wide open eyes and seemed like one bound hand and foot waiting for a blow.
"Well, that's enough moping, let us go! You must walk about, it is good for you," Rita said, lifting her with apparent roughness, but in reality with tender care, and led her into the garden.
It was dusk. The sky was clear, but mist was creeping over the ground. The water in the river had only just returned to its normal level; there were still pools of water about. Drops fell from the wet leaves. Frogs croaked ecstatically. The smell of the flowers was intoxicating. All at once the mist turned rosy from the moon that was rising invisibly.
They walked to the big pond where Maki's birch tree grew. It had never recovered after the scorching Sheheb. Everything round it was green and in flower, but it was dead and only on some of the bare branches a withered leaf showed black.
Maki put her arms round the pale, slender stem and pressed her cheek against it.
"Poor, poor darling!" she whispered tenderly as though saying good-bye to a friend who had died.
"A-ah, you remember the superstition!" Rita said, with a laugh. "If one plants a tree and it dies, the person who planted it will die also. Well, even if you do die, that's nothing very dreadful—you will have had a child anyway. To think of God sending such happiness to one who doesn't want it! Why, I would die ten times if I could only have a child."
After walking round the big pond, they came to the Lotos pond, with Aton's chapel on a little island and a small bridge leading to it. A huge lotos, not yet fully opened, showed white on the water. A boat was tied near by. Rita jumped into it, and seeing a garden knife at the bottom, took it to cut the lotos; she gave the flower to Maki and hid the knife in the bosom of her dress.
They went back to the Water-House and sat down in the old place.
"You haven't been to see Shiha for some time, have you?" Rita asked.
"No, I haven't."
"And I often go to him. It is interesting. A regular abode of love. All our dignitaries' wives keep going there. These eunuchs are excellent matchmakers. And they are themselves fond of women—and the women like it, of course. Shiha tempts me, too, with the god's marriage-bed: 'the god will come down to you in the night like a bridegroom to his bride,' he says. But I am not a fool to buy a pig in a poke. Instead of a god a slave or a dirty Jew may come and disgrace one..."
She paused and then spoke again, looking straight into Maki's eyes:
"Extraordinary! How is it possible not to find out who the father of your child is? Why, I would get the wretch from the bottom of the sea! But Shiha knows who came to you then. Would you like me to threaten him so that he should tell? ... Well, why are you silent? Do you want me to?"
"Do what you like, but don't torment, don't torment me so! Better make an end of it." Maki moaned, pale and trembling as though she were on the rack.
Rita drew back, and she trembled, too.
"Make an end of it? Do you think I know everything and merely tease you, play cat and mouse with you? Well, perhaps I do know.... What's the matter, why are you so frightened? Perhaps you know, too? A-ah, I've caught you! Speak, tell me, who is it? He?"
"Yes, he, Saakera," Maki answered, with apparent calm, looking straight into her eyes. "Well, kill me, I don't care..."
Rita brought the knife out of her bosom and flung it far away. She buried her face in her hands and sat for a few minutes without moving; then she drew her hands away from her face and put them on Maki's shoulders.
"There, it's a good thing you told me or very likely I would have killed you, really. Do you remember Ankhi's doll?"
When Rita and Ankhi were little they had once a fight over a clay doll, a hideous thing that they both loved passionately. Rita took it from her sister, who pulled it out of her hands, and broke it into bits against the wall. Then Rita fell upon Ankhi like a fury and bit her throat; the nurses had difficulty in dragging her off. And in the night she stole away into the garden and ate some poison berries, 'spiders' eggs'; she very nearly died.
"The devil entered into me then, and now, too. We have all taken after father—we are possessed.... Yes, it is a good thing you told me. All is well now—it's over! But I do wonder at myself: I thought I would kill you if you told me; and now I don't feel anything. Silly girls had a fight over a doll, but perhaps it was not worth while, after all. You know what a number of wives Saakera has. Sheep are in the stalls, fish in the hatchery and we in his palace. You and I are no better than the others. You gave me your betrothed, I gave you my husband, so we are quits and that's an end of it. We'll be friends as before, better than before. When the baby is born—it must be a boy, we don't want a girl—we'll look after it together.... What's the matter, why are you silent again? Don't you believe me?"
"I do, but I am afraid...."
"What of?"
"I don't know.... You may forgive me, but I will torment myself to death.... Oh, Rita, darling, why didn't you kill me straight away? It would have been better to make an end of it!"
"Nonsense! All will be forgiven and forgotten if only one lives and loves. And you do love me, don't you—more than before?"
"More, much more! I love you dreadfully, that's why I will die—because I love you so. You know, Rita, if one loves very much, one cannot live, it's too great a joy...."
"It was after that you got to love me so?" Rita asked, with slight mockery.
Instead of answering Maki hid her face on Rita's breast and burst into tears.
"There, that will do," Rita said, drily. "It is time to go home—see what heavy dew there is."
She took her by the arms and again led her along carefully like a nurse.
They went indoors. Rita put her sister to bed and sat down beside her, waiting for her to go to sleep.
"Don't go," Maki begged.
"I won't, don't be afraid, I'll sleep here beside you."
"You do love me, yes?" Maki whispered in her ear.
"No, I don't love you a bit. Why, you silly girl, if I didn't love you, I wouldn't torment you so.... there, that's enough talking, go to sleep."
"No, wait a minute, what was I going to say? ... Oh, yes! You know I do not know for certain who came to me then. I told you it was he, Saakera, but I don't really know—perhaps it wasn't he."
"Who was it, then?"
"He Whom I was expecting. I doubted, I did not believe—and this is why I suffer now. I shall die in misery, but when I am dead, perhaps He will come again."
"There, don't let us talk of it, sleep. Shall I tell you a story?"
"Do," Maki answered in a sleepy, childish voice.
"Once upon a time there lived a king and queen," Rita began the tale of the Bewitched Prince, in a sing-song voice like the old nurse, Asa. "One day they prayed to the gods and the gods gave them a son. And when he was born the seven Hathor came to decree his destiny and said, 'this man will meet with death from a crocodile, a snake, or a dog.' And the king was very, very sorry when he heard of this. And he caused a tower to be built in the mountains and settled the prince there. And the prince was very, very happy there...."
She stopped, listened to her sister's even breathing and kissing her on the eyes, that she might have good dreams, went out of the room.
Old Asa, the princesses' nurse, could not go to sleep in her stuffy room and went out into the garden; seeing something white flit among the trees she was frightened and wondered if it were Tiy—she knew that the dead queen walked about at night. But, recognizing Princess Meritatona, she called to her. The girl stopped, looked round without answering and ran along, disappearing among the thick bushes.
Used as Asa was to the princess's whims, she was surprised and then frightened—in a different way than at first: she felt there was something really alarming about the white phantom.
She ran after Rita, but her old legs did not obey her very well. She went on and on, calling her name, but there was no trace of her.
She met the gardener.
"Have you seen the princess?"
"Yes, I have."
"Where?"
"On the Lotos pond, in the chapel."
"What was she doing there?"
"I can't say."
"Let us go and look."
They walked to the chapel. The gardener did not dare to go in; Asa went in, but ran out immediately, screaming wildly, and fell to the ground, almost knocking the gardener off his feet.
He went into the chapel and saw the princess hanging on the brass rod of the curtain before the altar. She had made the noose out of the curtain drawstring but so badly that it slipped off. Hanging unevenly, her body rested with the toes of the left foot on the corner of the bench she had knocked down after climbing on to it to throw the string over the rod.
When the gardener cut the string and took the noose off Rita's neck she did not breathe and her face was so blue and fixed that he thought her dead.
Maki dreamt that she was lying on the marriage-bed in a high tower in the starry sky, waiting for Him as she had done then, in the temple of Attis; she knew that He would come and that His face would be like the moon, the sun of the night, not burning, not terrible, like the face of the god whose name is Quiet Heart.
She woke up and called:
"Rita!"
She looked round—there was no one in the room; only the moon looked in at the window, bright as the sun of the night.
Suddenly far away in the garden cries were heard. Maki jumped up, ran into the garden and listened. The cries came nearer and nearer. Men with torches ran about shouting.
Maki ran towards the torches. The men were carrying something long and white. Maki rushed forward with a shriek. The men made way for her. Moonlight fell upon Rita's face, and Maki fell fainting upon the ground.
Rita was in a deep swoon. She was saved in the end, but for several weeks she was at death's door as in childhood when she had eaten 'spiders' eggs.'
The same night Maki's labour pains began and by the morning she was safely delivered of a son.
T
There was brilliant sunshine outside, but it was dark as night in the bedchamber of the Maru-Aton palace, with the shutters closed and the windows curtained; only the gilded columns glimmered faintly in the dim lamplight.
A bed of carved ebony and ivory, painted and gilded, stood in the middle of the room on a platform with four steps. It was shaped like a fantastic monster, a mixture of crocodile and hippopotamus, with lion's feet and open jaws: it guarded the sleeper; the more fearful the bed, the sweeter the sleep. Strangely convex, round and hard, with a wooden crescent for a pillow, it seemed uncomfortable, but was in truth better than any other bed, for it was cool to sleep on in the hot nights when feather beds and pillows were unendurable.
Princess Makitatona lay on the bed. On the fourth day after her delivery she had been attacked with child-bed fever.
The dark, stuffy room smelt of drugs. Pentu, the physician, was pounding in a mortar of stone a complicated remedy, composed of forty-six ingredients, corresponding to the same number of blood vessels in the human body. In addition to medicinal herbs it contained lizard's blood, sulphur from pigs' ears, powder from the head and wings of the sacred beetle, Kheper, a pregnant woman's milk, a hippopotamus's tooth and flies' dirt.
In another corner of the room a Babylonian sorcerer, Assursharatta, was boiling in a cauldron the blood of a freshly slain lamb with magical herbs and muttering a spell against the seven demons of fever:
Sibiti shunu, sibiti shunu,Sibit adi shina shunu.They are seven, they are seven,They are seven twice over.There are seven of them in heaven,There are seven of them in hell.They are neither male nor female,They are childless and unmarried.Whirlwinds that bring destructionDo not know what mercy is,Do not bend their ear to prayer.They are evil, they are mighty,They are seven, they are seven!
But nothing helped the patient—neither the medicines nor the spells, nor even the healing water from the well of the Sun in Heliopolis, where the god Ra washed his face when he lived on earth.
In vain old Asa whispered the incantation:
Mother Isis criesFrom the top of the hill:"Horus my son,The hill is on fire,Bring me water,Quench the fire."
The fire of the fever would not be quenched.
In vain the queen read over her daughter the prayer of Mother Isis. When a scorpion stung baby Horus she cried to the sun and the sun was darkened, night was upon the earth until the god Tot healed the baby and gave it back to its mother. Since then the magical prayer of Isis had always been read over sick children.
"Stand still, O Sun, stand still until the child is restored to its mother!" the queen repeated with frenzied entreaty, but she knew the miracle would not happen, the sun would not stop.
She recalled the hymn to Aton:
Thou conquerest all through love,Thou soothest the babe in the wombBefore its mother can soothe it.
But now He failed to soothe her.
Thou hast mercy upon a wormAnd upon the midges of the air.
But now He had no mercy upon her.
The king and queen never left the invalid's side, but she was delirious and did not recognize them. If a ray of sunlight penetrated between the curtains or through a crack in the door, she grew restless and cried:
"It is coming, it is coming again! There it is stretching out its leg.... Abby darling, do drive it away, quick! It will seize me and suck me dry like a fly ... whoever could have let a spider into the sky?"
The king understood: Aton the Sun was the spider, the hand shaped rays were the spider's legs.
But most often she talked in her delirium about Shiha, the eunuch.
"Shiha, what does it mean 'light is greater than darkness'? Who has blasphemed against divine darkness? Do you say King Uaenra is godless? .... How dare you, you old monkey? .... Drink, drink! Isn't there something cooler? You gave me boiling water last time, it scalded my mouth...."
They gave her the freshest water out of porous Tyntyrian vessels, but she pushed the cup away:
"Hot water again!"
The baby boy had been born prematurely; it had no nails, no hair and was weak and pale like a blade of grass grown in darkness. It hardly cried at all and only wrinkled its face painfully at the lamplight.
"It isn't right for a baby to be in darkness: it may go blind; it must be taken into the sunshine," the midwives decided.
But as soon as they took it out into the light of day it screamed and struggled as in a fit; they had to take it back into the dark. It was born an enemy of Aton the Sun.
"Is it night outside?" Maki asked in one of her lucid intervals.
"No, it is day," the king answered.
"The day of life is short, the night of death is long," she said, with a quiet smile, looking into his eyes, as it were into his very heart. "Shiha says 'darkness was before light; sunshine is a veil over darkness.' Shall the dead see the sun? What do you think, Enra?"
He was about to answer, but she began to wander again.
"A hen, a white hen with a red wig on like Ty's.... It is running after me.... Oh, it has stuck its teeth into me!"
The king remembered that the white hen was the mate of the cock with which he and the princesses had played once. Old Asa wept bitterly: she thought the hen with teeth was a bad omen.
"Do explain, Shiha," Maki wandered, "King Uaenra is wiser than all the sons of men: how is it he does not know death? He lives and sings to the sun as though there were no death and all were well... What will he sing when he does know death?"
Sometimes the king fancied it was not mere delirium: it was as though she knew that he was there without seeing him and spoke for his benefit, passed dreadful judgment upon him, laughed at him with a terrible laugh.
"Enra, Enra, why don't you pray?" the queen repeated like one insane, looking at him with dry, tearless eyes. "Pray! Your prayer is strong: the Father will hear His son. Save her, Enra!"
The king was silent. He felt so ashamed that he could have screamed with shame, as with pain, but worse than shame, pain and death was the mockery "what will you sing when you do know death?"
At the same time princess Meritatona was lying ill in the apartments of Saakera, the heir-apparent.
Maki kept talking of her as of one dead.
"All through me, through me!" she repeated in anguish.
"But, darling, Rita is alive," her mother said, trying to comfort her. But she would not believe it.
"No, mother, don't deceive me, I saw how they carried her, dead."
"She might be saved if only she believed me," the queen thought. "But how can I convince her? And what has happened between them? A fine mother I am—I don't know why one daughter strangled herself and by whom the other has had a child.... Perhaps Enra knows? He spoke with her then—he must know."
She questioned the king when they were alone together.
"Enra, do you know who the baby's father is?"
"No, I don't know."
"Haven't you asked her?"
"I have, but she did not say."
"How is it you didn't find out, how could you have left her to face such torture alone?"
"I pitied her."
"And don't you pity her now? Enra, Enra, what have you done!"
The baby did not live long: it died by the evening of the fifth day as quietly as though it had gone to sleep.
"Where is the boy?" Maki asked, coming to herself.
"It is asleep," the queen answered.
"Never mind, I'll be very careful, let me have him!"
No one moved or spoke.
"Give him to me, do!" Maki repeated, looking round at them all. "Mother, where is he? Tell me the truth.... What has happened? Is he dead?"
The queen covered her face with her hands.
"Well, perhaps it is better so," Maki said quietly. "We shall soon be together...."
That same night before dawn the death struggle began. She no longer tossed about or wandered; she lay quite naked: the lightest covering oppressed her; the slender, childish body seemed flat and crushed as though it had been trodden on like a blade of grass; the head with the elongated skull was thrown back, the eyes closed, the face immovable and the breathing so faint that at times it was not noticeable.
Pentu, the physician, brought to her lips a round brass mirror and when it grew slightly clouded, he said:
"She breathes."
Suddenly she opened her eyes and called:
"Enra, where is Enra?"
"Here," the king answered bending over her, and she whispered in his ear, like a blade of grass rustling:
"Open the shutters."
He knew she was afraid of light and did not venture to open all the shutters at once, but ordered them to draw the curtains from one window only.
"All, all," she whispered.
All the windows were flung open. The morning sun flooded the room—the rays of the god Aton like a child's hands embraced her naked body.
"Lift me up," the blade of grass rustled, and the king lifted her as easily as though she were a blade of grass. The sun lighted her face.
"Akhnaton, Sun's joy, Sun's only Son!" she said, looking into his eyes so that he understood this was not delirium, "I know that you are...."
She did not finish, but he understood: "I know that you are He."
Suddenly she trembled in his arms, like a leaf in a storm. He laid her down on the bed.
Pentu put the mirror to her lips, but this time its brass surface remained clear. The rays of the Sun—a child's hands—embraced the body of the dead.
There was the sound of weeping in the chamber. The women cried, wailed frantically, beat their breasts, tore their hair, scratched their own faces till they bled, with a kind of rapture of despair. But all was decorous like a holy rite: this was how they had wailed thousands of years before and how they would wail thousands of years hence.
The king heard the wailing, but there was bitter laughter in his heart: "you are He!"