Chapter XI: Part IV: The Shadow of the One to Come (2)

"What is the matter with you? Why do you tremble?"

"I am afraid. I kept telling you lies and now when I must tell the truth I don't know how to do it. Do you know what Pentu and I were talking of just now? Of how best prepare you for joy...."

"What am I saying, good Lord!" she thought with terror, but could not stop herself, it was like rolling headlong downhill.

"What joy?" the queen whispered, and she too began to tremble.

"Why, a messenger whom Mahu had sent to Memphis has just returned; he had seen the king in two days' journey from here: the king knows you are ill and is coming home. He may be here to-morrow evening. If you don't believe me, ask Mahu...."

Watching the change in the queen's face, Dio felt that she had found the right way, and, fearing no longer, led her with a firm hand by the very edge of the abyss; and she might have led her through safely and saved her. But suddenly a cry was heard, distant at first and then nearer and nearer; someone was running and shouting. A door banged close by. Dio recognized the voice of Princess Meritatona, who though still weak after her illness, was no longer confined to her bed. She must have heard of the king's return and was running to him shouting: "Abby! Abby! Abby!"

With a low exclamation the queen jumped off the bed and ran to the door. Dio held her back, but she struggled, crying:

"Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!"

She wrenched herself free, rushed through the door, pushed Pentu away, and ran towards the door at the end of the covered passage; having guessed the direction from Rita's voice. But after taking a few steps she fell on her knees and stretching out her arms cried "Enra!" in such a voice that an old fisherman mending his net in a boat some distance down the river heard it and wondered "who can be screaming in the palace as though they were being murdered?"

A door at the end of the passage was flung open and, running out of it, the king rushed to the queen who lay on the floor.

Kneeling down he bent over her and lifted her up, passing one arm round her waist, and supporting her head with the other. He looked into her face. With a low moan she opened her eyes and looked at him with a blissful smile, repeating:

"It's you! It's you!"

Suddenly she trembled all over and struggled like a fish on a hook. Her head was thrown back and he felt her body growing heavy. He laid her on the floor and, bending down, kissed her on the lips, receiving her last breath in that kiss.

That same evening the queen's body lay on the bed in her chamber and all except the king and Dio were weeping over her.

"I am thy sister who loved thee on earth,
No one has loved thee more than I."

Dio recalled the wail of Isis.

The king took her by the hand and said, leading her aside, "It's a good thing you don't cry."

Dio made no answer and only gazed at him.

"We mustn't cry," he went on, with a quiet, fearful smile. "It is better so."

"Better?"

"Yes, better. Now we are free. Let us go to Him together. Will you?"

"No!" she wanted to cry out, but looking at him she suddenly grasped that it was not he who was speaking. And it was not to him she replied with a smile as quiet and fearful as his own:

"Let us go!"

V

I am the prisoner and you the gaoler, isn't it so, Ramose?"

"No, sire, it isn't. You are my king and I am your slave.... Why do you laugh?"

"It is no use crying over sour milk, as Ay says. The thing is done, the bird is caught. There are sentries at every door: they bow down to the ground, but they don't let me pass--they cross their spears. And so this means you are my slave?"

"The guards are there to protect you, sire. You know yourself, hired assassins, sent by Tuta, are all over the city. You remember Iserker's knife and Merira's poison? Of course I must protect you! You are laughing again?"

"Forgive me, my friend. You are no good at lies: Ramose lying is like a hippopotamus catching a flea! It isn't from assassins but from myself you are trying to protect me. Be frank, tell me what do you want of me?"

"I have told you many times, Uaenra: you are king--so be a king...."

"I am no longer king: I have resigned the throne."

"A king cannot resign when he has no heir. And Saakera is dead...."

"Yes, my dear brother! Tell me how he died."

"He fell on the battlefield like a hero. He led the army of the god Ra against Tuta's rabble; when our men lost heart he rushed forward and drew them all after him with his battle cry--do you know which? 'Sun's Joy, Uaenra!' He had a spear wound in the stomach and suffered for hours. He had lived without God, but he died a believer. 'There is God, there is,' he kept repeating before his death, and he spoke of you--he was happy to be dying for you...."

"You were wounded in the same battle?"

"It's a mere scratch, not a wound. But many brave men have given their lives for you, sire...."

He paused gloomily.

"And do you know who has Amon's ring with poison, your present to Saakera?" he spoke again, smiling. "Merira. No sooner had Saakera breathed his last than Merira sent envoys to me begging for the ring in exchange for twenty war chariots and ten prisoners."

"Did you give it?"

"No, I refused. But the ring was stolen all the same, by his men, I expect. Let him keep it--poison suits the snake. He had poured out half into your cup but the other is left for himself. Perhaps there will be enough for Tuta as well!"

He went on talking at length about the war and rebellion, imploring the king to show himself to the people, so as to deprive Tuta of his chief weapon--the belief that the king was dead and he, Tuta, was the only legitimate heir to the throne. But the king no longer listened, he paced rapidly up and down the covered passage leading to the river, the very one in which the queen had died a fortnight before.

Ramose was sitting in an armchair; he did not like to sit in the king's presence, but Akhnaton pressed him to do so, knowing that he had difficulty in standing because of the wound in his leg.

Big clouds, white and round, were reflected in the smooth surface of the river that had entered its banks for the winter, and boats, with outspread sails flitted like birds over the clouds. An amber ray of the afternoon sun fell upon an old painting on the inner wall of the passage: a girl of twelve was giving a boy of thirteen a half-open tulip to smell; there was the timid languor of love in their graceful, as it were dancing, movements, and in their childish faces a sadness that was not childish. It was a portrait of the king and queen in their youth.

The king looked with strangely insensible surprise at the little girl, thinking that at that very moment her dead body was twisting and turning, like the burning bark of a tree, in the heavy resinous perfumes of the embalmers. He recalled his own saying that 'a corpse is worse than dung,' and began to tremble with quiet laughter, that ran down his body like shivers or like crackling sparks in a fur that is being smoothed with the palm.

Tired of walking he sat down in an armchair next to a small chess table that stood between him and Ramose. A knife lay on the table. The king took it out of its sheath and looked at the silver pattern on the bronze blade--lions hunting antelopes among the reeds.

"Whose knife is it?" Ramose asked.

"I don't know," the king answered. "See how fine and flexible it is--a Keftian 'willow leaf.' It must be Dio's.... What do you think, my friend, is a knife dangerous in a madman's hands?"

"You keep joking, sire, and I am in no mood for jokes."

"Joking? No, not quite. I sometimes fancy...."

He broke off. Shivers again ran up and down his body like crackling sparks in a fur.

"Well, what are we to do about an heir, Ramose? You say there is not one, and I say there are two: Horemheb and Tuta--choose whichever you like."

"Horemheb will not accept the crown while you live, and Tuta is a thief, a murderer, a low born cur...."

His breath failed him; turning purple and shaking with fury, he brought out:

"Tuta--king of Egypt? No, sire, this shall not be so long as I live."

He got up.

"Are you going?" the king asked, getting up, too.

"I am going; there is nothing more to say."

"Wait. There was something else I wanted.... Yes, I know. Do what you think best, it is all the same to me, choose whom you like, only let me go. I cannot bear it any longer...."

His lips trembled, his face twitched like that of a child ready to burst into tears and, before Ramose had time to think, the king fell on his knees before him.

"Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!" he wept, wringing his hands.

If the earth had given way under his feet or the sky had fallen upon him, Ramose would have been less horror-stricken.

He quickly bent down to the king, lifted him up, put him in a chair and himself fell at his feet:

"My king, my god, Sun's Joy, Sun's only Son, all shall be as you wish!"

But the king was no longer listening; he had turned away and was staring before him with fixed, wide-open eyes.

"What is it, sire?" Ramose said gently touching his hand.

The king started, slowly turned to him and looking straight into his eyes said with a quiet smile:

"Do you know, Ramose, when they were beating me with sticks in the Busiris court it was less shameful than this."

He rose and taking the knife walked towards the door. Ramose rushed after him.

The king turned round and shouted: "Let me go! Let me go!"

Freeing his hand he threatened Ramose with the knife, but at the same moment, with a terrible scream, fell on the floor at his feet, struggling in a fit of epilepsy.

Ramose was a courageous man, and he had seen men in a fit more than once. He knew that in the 'sacred illness' men are possessed by god; but he could never decide whether the king was possessed by god or the devil, and only now as he looked at him he decided it was by the devil.

"Help! Help!" he cried, running away as though driven by an unearthly terror.

VI

As many were astonied at Him, His visage was so marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men." Dio recalled Issachar's prophecy when she looked at the king in his illness.

The first fit was followed by a second and a third one, the worst that he had ever had. Pentu, the physician, was afraid he would not live. He did live, but it was no joy either to himself or to others: it was terrible to see the soul dying in a living body.

The days and hours, however, were not all alike. Sometimes as though waking from deep sleep or a swoon, he understood everything and spoke so rationally that those around him had hopes of his complete recovery. But then his mind was clouded again. He sat for hours on the floor in some dark corner with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out, looking into vacancy with eyes dim as a new-born baby's; or slowly swaying his body to and fro, he muttered something under his breath rapidly and inarticulately as in delirium, laughing quietly, or crying, or humming a song. Or he repeated one and the same word over and over again with meaningless persistence. But sometimes there was an obscure meaning in these repetitions.

"Aton-Amon, Aton-Amon, Aton-Amon," he kept repeating one day, making one word of the two, as though on purpose: he had devoted his whole life to dividing them and now he seemed to have understood that it had not been worth while.

Or he asked himself with perplexity, as though he had forgotten and were trying to remember:

"Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?"

And suddenly, turning to Dio, said with a perfect understanding of what he was saying:

"Oh, if I only knew who I am, I should be saved!"

He often had visions of his mother Tiy, of his wife, Nefertiti, of his daughter, Maki, and spoke to them as though they were living.

He had a vision of Shiha, the eunuch, too: standing by his side on the top of a pyramid, he heard the laughter of innumerable crowds down below, saw the face of Aton the Sun red with laughter in the sky and covering his face with his hands repeated:

"Shame! Shame! Shame!"

But when a flash of consciousness lighted the darkness of his clouded mind, he was wise once more--wiser than he had ever been.

At first Dio rejoiced at these lucid intervals, but she came to fear them: after them the darkness was even more terrible; he suffered acutely each time that madness closed in upon him.

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" he cried out one day, repeating an old Babylonian psalm.

And suddenly Dio felt in a way she had never done before that it was He Himself, the Son Who was to come. She was terrified at the thought, but the memory of it remained in her soul like a trace of lightning.

They moved the king to the Maru-Aton palace where Princess Makitatona had died four months before.

It was a three-storeyed building, high like a tower; the bottom was of brick, the top, light and airy, of cedar and cypress wood, trellis-worked, gilded and painted like a jewel casket. On hot days drops of resin trickled down the match-boarded walls and the palace was fragrant like a censer.

The flat roof had a carved railing all round it--a row of Sun-serpents, with gold sun-discs on their heads, their throats dilated with poison. A fire was perpetually burning upon an altar on the roof and, on an alabaster column in front of it, the sun disc of the god Aton made of _cham_, a mixture of gold and silver, glittered in the sky like another sun.

As soon as the king felt better he went up on the roof to pray.

On the tenth day of his illness there was such an improvement in his health that Dio began to hope again.

He went up to the roof in the evening, himself chopped some sandalwood and put it on the altar, and when a white pillar of smoke rose in the still air he knelt down, and stretching his arms to the hand-shaped rays of Aton's sun began to pray. Standing beside him, Dio heard the words of an ancient Babylonian psalm:

"Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord! Hear my voice, let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication and enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified. The enemy has persecuted my soul, has smitten my life down to the ground, has made me to dwell in darkness as those that have been long dead. My spirit is overwhelmed within me, my heart within me is desolate. I stretch forth my hands unto Thee; my soul thirsteth after Thee as a thirsty land. Hear me speedily, O Lord, for I am Thy son!"

The sun had set behind the Lybian hills and in the afterglow the sky seemed covered with feathers of fire; the green of the palm groves had turned blue and the mirror-like surface of the water, almost invisible, like another sky, reflected exquisite opalescent shades of white, blue, green, yellow and rose.

The day had not yet died in the west but the night was already being born in the east: there, in a violet velvety sky, a full moon was glowing, yellow as though filled with honey.

When he had finished his prayer, the king rose, looked round and said:

"How lovely it is, O Lord!"

Tears trembled in his voice. Dio knew they were tears of joy and yet she looked at him anxiously. He smiled at her and gently drawing her towards him put his cheek against hers, as he often did, with a childish tenderness.

"Ma, Ma, how lovely it is! Don't be afraid, I am not raving, I know you are not Ma."

Ma was the Cretan goddess, the Great Mother of gods and men.

And he added, after a pause:

"You and Nefertiti and Tiy, all three of you are One.... Don't be afraid, all shall be well, I will recover ... And if I don't, never mind, it will be well, too: even in my madness I will praise reason, the sun of suns!"

He sat down in a chair and Dio on the ground at his feet. Gently stroking her hair, he said:

"Yes, maybe I shall die in my madness; I shall be cursed, rejected, mocked by men. 'Ah, you silly, you have disgraced yourself before all the world,' as Shiha, the eunuch, says. And yet, I have been the first to see Him Who is to come! The first ray of sunshine is on the top of the pyramid while the rest of the earth is still in darkness: this is how His light rests upon me ... Why are you crying, Dio? Are you afraid that He will not come?"

"No, I am not afraid, I know He will come. If you have, so will He.... But when, when? Men have waited for him for centuries and may have to wait for centuries more! And when He does come, it will not be for us...."

"Yes, for us, too. Do you remember, I said to you 'Let us go to Him'? And now I say we shall not go to Him, but He will come to us!"

And suddenly he began muttering, as though in delirium:

"Soon! Soon! Soon!"

VII

Tutankhaton's troops were approaching the City of the Sun.

Tuta had proclaimed throughout Egypt that King Akhnaton and the heir-apparent, Saakera, had been killed by the traitor Ramose and that he, Tuta, henceforth the only legitimate heir to the throne, was going to put the regicides to death. Troops loyal to Ramose met the rebels at the southern frontier of Aton's province. The issue of the battle was doubtful. The rebels retreated, but so did Ramose. The old leader understood that his cause was lost; his soldiers were dispirited; disturbed by rumours from the enemy camp, they did not know with whom and for whose sake they were fighting or who the real rebel was--Tuta or Ramose. The only way to silence these rumours was for the king to show himself to the troops; but Ramose had hardly any hope of this left.

All the same he retreated towards Akhetaton, so as to give the final battle in the presence of the king. "Perhaps he will think better of it and refuse to give up his kingdom to Tuta, the thief," Ramose thought.

But there was unrest in the city, too. Robber bands of Tuta's followers had stopped the supply of corn to Akhetaton. There were hunger riots, first among the prisoners of war and hired labourers, numbers of whom had been employed in building the new capital, then among the troops left for the defence of the city and, finally, in the Jews' Settlement.

Ramose came to Akhetaton on the first day of the riots but did not venture to enter the town with his untrustworthy troops, and Tuta, who was following him, overstepped the holy boundary of Aton's province.

About one o'clock in the morning, Mahu galloped up from the city to the royal gardens of Maru Aton, bringing nine war chariots, and gave orders to place the best detachments of the palace guards so as to defend Maru Aton from a double attack of Tuta's army and rebels from the city.

"Where is the king?" Mahu asked, running into the ground floor hall of the palace.

"He is asleep," Pentu, the physician, answered, glancing at Mahu in alarm: he looked terribly upset and his head was bandaged: he had evidently been wounded.

"Go and wake him," Mahu said.

"Wake a sick man in the middle of the night?"

"Make haste and go!"

"But what has happened?"

"Rebellion in the town. The king must be saved."

Both ran up to the first storey where the king lay asleep on a humble bed in a small panelled room that had belonged to the princess's nurse, Asa.

They called Dio and sent her to the king. Screening the flame of the lamp with her palm, she went on tiptoe into the king's room and stopped to look at him from a distance. He slept so sweetly that it seemed a pity to wake him. But recalling Mahu's words 'life is dearer than sleep,' she went up to the sleeper and, bending down, kissed him on the head.

He woke up and smiled, screwing up his eyes at the light.

"What is it, Dio? Sleep, I am well."

"No, Enra, we mustn't sleep, get up. Mahu has come and says he must see you."

"Mahu? What for?" he asked, looking at her attentively and half-rising from the couch.

"He will hear it at once in any case," she thought and said:

"There is a riot in the town."

"And Tuta is coming with his army?" he guessed: he must have heard something before. "Why haven't I been told sooner? Though it is better so--all at once."

He spoke calmly, and, as it were, thoughtfully.

"Where is Mahu?"

"Shall I call him?"

"No, I will come."

He began dressing. Dio helped him: they were not shy of each other. He dressed without hurry.

"What is this?" he asked, seeing a glow in the windows.

"There is a fire somewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Mahu will tell."

They went into the next room. From there the fire in the town could be seen: the king's granaries, the barracks, the palace and Aton's temple were burning.

Mahu approached the king and fell at his feet.

"Life, power, health to the king...."

He could not speak for tears. The king bent down and embraced him.

"What is it, Mahu? Don't cry, all will be well. Are you wounded?" he asked, seeing the bandage on his head.

"O, sire, never mind me--we must save you!"

"Save me from what?"

Mahu briefly told him what had happened and exclaimed, falling at his feet again:

"Come, come quickly! The chariots are waiting at the garden gates. We shall manage somehow to go through the desert to the river lower down, where there are no ambushes, take boats and in another five days be in the loyal provinces of the North."

"Run away?" the king asked, as calmly as before.

"Yes, sire," Mahu replied. "Tuta's rabble may be here any minute. I can't answer for your life."

"No, my friend, I cannot. If I run away, what will happen here, in the holy province of Aton? Endless war because of me! I have begun with peace and I shall end with war? I say one thing and do another? No, I have had enough of this shame. And from whom should I run away? From Tuta? But what can he do to me? Take away my kingdom? Why, this is just what I wish. From the rebels? And what will they do to me? Kill me? Let them--death is better than shame. Ankh-em-maat, He-who-lives-in-truth, is to die in falsehood? No, in death I shall say what I have said all my life: let there be peace...."

He stopped suddenly and listened; the blast of trumpets and the beat of drums were heard in the distance. There was a panic in the palace and in the gardens.

The centurion of the Hittite amazons, the king's bodyguard, ran up the stairs shouting:

"Tuta's soldiers are here!"

"Where?" Mahu asked.

"At the garden gates. The fighting has begun."

All, except the king and Dio, ran downstairs.

The fierce noises of war invaded the quiet Maru-Aton gardens: the blast of the trumpets, the beat of the drums, the neighing of horses, the creaking of carts, the rumble of chariots, the cries of the chieftains. Torches glowed in the black shadow of the palm groves: the moonlit sky was red with the dancing flames of the fire that made the face of the moon look pale and crimsoned the gold disc of Aton above the altar on the temple roof.

The gardens were surrounded by a quadrangle of high, thick walls, like a fortress, with only one gateway that gave on the river; an inner wall divided the enclosure into two: stables, cellars, granaries and barracks of the palace guards were in the southern half while the northern was occupied with summer houses, shelters, chapels of the god Aton and the palace by the big artificial pond.

The vanguard of Tuta's troops stopped on reaching Maru-Aton. Knowing how many treasures it held they wanted to plunder it.

They tried to force the gates. Mahu's soldiers repulsed them every time. But reinforcements came to the enemy continually and the rebels from the town joined them. They surrounded the garden, besieging it like a fortress and, at last, forced their way in.

The battle was now fought at the inner wall. The half-savage mercenaries from the north--Achaeans and Trojans--fought like lions. Naked but for brass leggings and brass plumed helmets, they flung small round shields behind their backs and fought desperately with the triangular iron sword-knife, one in each hand. Overcome by superior numbers they retreated to the pond. The water in it was shallow and only reached to the men's waists. The battle continued in the water so fiercely that it became clouded and warm with the blood.

Eteocles, the youthful leader of the Achaeans, was dying on the bank under Maki's withered birch tree and as he looked at its white stem he saw through the darkness of death his far-off native land.

Some were fighting and others plundering.

The tender stalks of the flowers in the beds broke under the soldiers' heavy tread. There were pools of blood on the floor of the chapel. The wood of the sacred pillars was chopped for bonfires, the purple of the sacred curtains was torn to make leg wrappings; the gold was scraped off the walls with fingernails. An old woman from the Jewish settlement, seeing that a precious casket had been screwed into the floor and could not be carried away, bit at it so hard that she secured a pearl with her teeth.

Naaman, the prophet, also from the Jews' Settlement, was stamping on a gilded wooden disc of Aton--a gold one would not have been given even to a prophet--dancing and shouting.

"God of vengeance, Lord God of vengeance, show Thyself! Arise, judge of the earth, and judge the proud!"

Cellars were broken into. They were so flooded with wine that people went down on their hands and knees and lapped it up. People drank themselves to death. Two drunken men had a fight and falling to the bottom of the cellar were drowned in the wine.

The screams of women and the blood of murdered children formed a ghastly tribute to their respective gods--Aton, Amon or Jahve.

The Sun's garden, God's paradise, was turned into hell.

A handful of Achaeans and Trojans, who had not been massacred in the pond, retreated towards the palace that stood in the narrow part between the pond and the north wall of the garden. The palace was defended by Mahu's war-chariots, the black archers, Lycian slingers and Hittite Amazons.

Hearing that the king was in the palace, Tuta's soldiers attacked it: they wanted to take the king, dead or alive, so as to end the war.

At the same time Tutankhaton's main forces were approaching from the south and Ramose's troops from the north. The great battle that was to decide the destinies of Egypt began under the very walls of Maru Aton. It looked phantom-like in the darkness of the night, the white moonlight and the red glow of the conflagration. The blast of the trumpets, the beat of the drums, the neighing of horses, the rumble of chariots, the clashing of swords, the whistling of arrows, the moans of the dying and the cries of the victors were all mingled in one seething hell. And the centre of it, the fixed axis in the whirling hurricane of the war, was the quiet palace tower.

The king and Dio were looking down from its flat roof.

"It's all because of me!" he repeated, wringing his hands, or, stretching them out to the combatants, he cried with desperate entreaty.

"Peace! Peace! Peace!"

It was as though he still hoped that men would hear him and stop fighting.

Or he stopped up his ears, covered his face with his hands, so as not to hear, not to see; or, running up to the roof bannisters, bent down and looked greedily at people dying and killing with his name on their lips, and there was such anguish in his face that it seemed as though every sword and spear and arrow pierced his heart as its aim. Or he ran to the staircase door that had been locked, banged it with his fists, and knocked his head against it, shouting:

"Open!"

And when Dio tried to restrain him he struggled out of her arms and begged her, with tears:

"Let me go to them!"

She knew he wanted to throw himself among the combatants so that they should kill him and stop killing one another.

Now and again he suddenly grew quiet and sat down on the floor, muttering something under his breath, quickly and inaudibly, as in delirium. Listening attentively, Dio caught once the words of the incantation the old nurse Asa had said over the dying Princess Maki:

"Mother Isis calls
From the top of the hill,
Horus, my son,
The hill is on fire,
Bring me water,
Quench the fire!"

"He will die insane," Dio thought, and sitting next to him on the floor, she gently stroked his head and whispered: "My poor little boy! My poor little boy!"

Listening to the roaring laughter of war, seeing the sun disc of Aton turn red as though filled with blood, she thought: "Perhaps we were mistaken after all and God is not Love but Hate and the law of the world is not peace, but war?"

Time ceased to exist, it was eternity: there always had been, was, and would be this seething hell of war to the furthest ends of the earth from the beginning to the end of time.

"Bring me water.
Quench the fire!"

No, no water would quench it and they would burn in it for ever and ever.

"My poor little boy!" she kept whispering as she stroked his head and suddenly she added, with despairing tenderness: "My poor little girl!"

"Here I, too, am going mad," she thought. They both smiled--they understood each other--and there was exquisite joy in this in spite of all the pain.

She saw blood on his face: he must have been wounded with an arrow when he looked at the battle leaning over the parapet; he had not felt it and she had not noticed it. She wiped off the blood with the edge of her dress, but a trace of it still remained.

Gazing at him she recalled the prophecy: "As many were astonied at Him; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men."

"You are He! You are He!" she whispered, with joyous terror.

"No, Dio, I am only His shadow," he answered, calmly and rationally. "But if His shadow suffers such agony, what will His suffering be?"

Suddenly he raised his eyes to the sky and jumped up.

"He is coming!" he cried in a voice so changed and with his face so altered, that she thought he would fall down in a fit. But she, too, looked at the sky and understood.

A gigantic, pyramid shaped ray, with its base on the ground and its apex in the zenith, flashed in the greyish sky of the morning, above the dying glow of the city fire, and the white opalescent lightnings of zodiacal light danced and quivered in it.

"Quick! Quick!" he repeated, trembling like those tremulous lights in the heavens.

They both made haste as though they were indeed meeting the Unexpected One.

Blowing up the embers on the altar the king put on them splinters of sandalwood and cannacat. Lighting a long golden censer, shaped like an outstretched hand, Dio gave it to the king and herself took a cithern--a brass hoop, threaded with fine silver snakes that gave a high ringing sound. Both stood before the altar facing each other:

"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one and eternal God!" he intoned, and it seemed to her that his voice drowned the roaring laughter of the hell let loose.

"Praise be to the living Aton, who didst create the heavens and the secrets thereof! Thou art in the sky and Thy beloved son, Akhnaton, is on earth!" she replied.

Suddenly the sound of axes came from below. The building trembled as though it were going to fall; the enemy had rushed into the palace and the battle was being fought indoors.

"Fire!" someone shouted on the stairs and the cry re-echoed, with a familiar dread, in Dio's heart: she remembered how she had lain on the pyre, a victim ready to be slain. She rushed to the bannisters, leaned over, and in the breach of the garden wall saw Tutankhaton, the conqueror, in his chariot, wearing the royal helmet with the royal serpent over the forehead.

He saw her also and shouted to her, waving his hands. She did not hear the words, but understood that he wanted to save her and was calling to her to come down.

A black warrior, agile as a monkey, climbed to the top of a palm by the roof of the lodge and cleverly threw from there right at Dio's feet a rope-ladder. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she picked it up, fixed one end of it to the bannisters and let the other down.

It would have been quite easy for her who had tamed wild bulls on the Knossos arena to take the king in her arms and carry him down--he was thin as a skeleton and no heavier than a child.

But she stopped to think. She leaned over the bannisters once more and looked down. Tuta went on shouting and waving to her. She looked into his face: it was neither ill-natured nor kind; neither stupid nor intelligent: the everlasting mediocre face of the average man.

"Akhnaton will disappear, Tutankhaton will remain and the kingdom of this world shall be Tuta's kingdom," she recalled the saying and thought "Should I spit into that face? No, it isn't worth while."

She threw the ladder into the fire--the bottom storey was in flames already--and returned to the king.

Hearing and seeing nothing, he stood on the same spot stretching out his hands to the rising sun.

"O Lord, before the foundations of the earth were laid Thou didst reveal Thy will to Thy Son Who lives for ever. Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one knows Thee, but me, Thy son!"

With furious roaring laughter red tongues of flame shot up on all sides through the white coils of smoke, as though the hell let loose had leapt up to heaven.

Dio rushed to the king, looked into his face that was like the sun and recognized Him Who was to come.

"Is it Thee, O Lord?"

"It is I!"

He embraced her as a bridegroom embraces a bride and in a fiery storm of love raised her to the Father.

The palace, a light trellis-work structure of cedar and cyprus-wood, dry and resinous, burned like a candle and its fragrant smoke coiled like incense upon an altar to greet the rising sun.

But when the sun rose it shone upon a smoking black ruin--the tomb of Akhnaton and Dio.

VIII

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.