Chapter VI: Part II: Who Is He? (2)

Issachar took a purse from his bosom and producing from it a two-inch sacred scarabee, Kheper, made of beautiful Sinai lapis-lazuli, gave it Ahiram.

The old man seized it greedily, weighed it on his palm and scrutinized it for a few minutes.

"A fine stone," he said at last, divided between the delight of a connoisseur and the wish to beat down the price. "There is a little flaw in it, it looks dull and greenish in one place, but it is a lovely thing all the same. It's from Amon's treasury, isn't it? Did you steal it?"

"What next, uncle! I am not a thief. Holy father gave it to me."

"Oh, what for? Though indeed there are all sorts of fools in the world--some give presents for nothing. How much do you want for it?"

"Nothing, only get me the pass."

The old man's eyes glittered, he examined the stone again, and even tried it with his tongue and teeth; then he stroked his beard with a quick, as it were, thievish movement, and lifting an eyebrow and screwing up one eye, said giving back the stone:

"Look here, my son, don't sleep in the town to-night: there will be a search. The chief of the guards, Mahu, has got wind of something and is looking for the Nut-Amon rebels. Spend the night in the Goats' cave above Sheol; Naaman will take you there. If I procure the pass I will come there before midnight, and if I don't it will mean things have gone wrong--then save yourself and run away."

Issachar handed him the stone once more, but he did not take it.

"No, I will not take it in advance. Payment is due when the goods are delivered. I am an honest merchant."

He was speaking the truth--he was honest; an honest man and a rogue at the same time, after the manner of Abraham.

"I am sorry for you, my red-haired boy!" he said quietly, with an old man's benignity. "Your brother Eliav has perished for nothing; mind the same thing does not happen to you.... Remember, my son: man is born to suffering as a spark flies upward, and yet the sight of the sun is sweet to the living; a living dog is better than a dead lion."

"He has bought my soul for a stone and here he pities me," Issachar marvelled. He looked once more at the eagle still circling in the sky, thought of what was to happen next day and his heart throbbed with joy: "He hears me and will bring me unto himself!"

They climbed to the top of the hill and saw in the hollow below a regular quadrangle of uniform houses, intersected by a network of streets and surrounded by high walls.

The dead desert was all round; not a tree, not a bush, nothing but stones and sand; in the winter it was a cold grave, in the summer a scorching oven, a true Hell--Sheol.

A stench as though of decaying carrion came from below. Ahiram sniffed and frowned.

"Oho-hoho! It's the human smell, the smell of two-legged cattle. There is no well or spring near, and one can't be forever going to the river to fetch water; they stifle in their own stench, poor things!"

They descended rapidly by the goats' path to the bottom of the valley and approached the entrance to Sheol. Ahiram knocked. A window in the wall was opened, the gatekeeper peeped out and, recognizing the old man, unlocked the gate. He did not mean to admit Issachar, but Ahiram whispered something in his ear, thrust something into his hand and he let them both in.

Long, narrow, perfectly straight streets led from the square at the entrance into the centre of the settlement. One side of each street was a bare wall and the other a uniform row of mud huts that resembled stable stalls; the streets were like prison corridors, the huts like prison cells. There were no storehouses or granaries; all the inhabitants of Sheol received government rations.

Dirty pools with clouds of flies buzzing over them and heaps of filth and dung spread such an evil smell that the whole village seemed to be one enormous heap of refuse.

"I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession," the Lord said to Israel. "If the plague be in the walls of the house with hollow strokes, greenish and reddish, the stones in which the plague is shall be taken away and cast into an unclean place; and if the plague come again and be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy; the house shall be broken down."

All the houses in Sheol had such leprosy. Lifeless stones were cankered by filth, and living bodies of men even more so; the unfortunate creatures which came down into Hell while still on earth were covered with rashes, ulcers, spots, festers, and the terrible white scabs of leprosy.

The king in his mercy allowed the prisoners' families to live with them, but this only made matters worse: people were suffering from overcrowding more than ever. "The dirty Jews' wives are fruitful," the gaolers said jeeringly. "In multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven." The Lord blessed Israel, but this blessing turned into a curse; numberless children were born and died, teeming in the filthy place like maggots in carrion.

"Thou hast carried them all away captive.
Thou bindest them by Thy love."

Issachar recalled the king's hymn to the god Aton. "Fine sort of love," he thought, "casting the living into hell!"

Ahiram brought his nephew to Eliav's hut and saying good-bye to him went back to the city to get the pass.

Issachar walked into the half-dark entry. Two mangy sheep dozed in their stall; a sick old mule and a scraggy ass stood dejectedly by an empty water trough: beasts of burden carried stones in the quarry and lived together with the prisoners.

Beside them a decrepit old man, naked but for a ragged loin cloth, sat on a heap of dung and ashes scraping with a potsherd the white scabs of leprosy on his body, with a dull, monotonous wail, like the howling of wind at night. This was Shammai the Righteous, the grandfather of Eliav's wife Naomi.

He had once been rich, happy and respected by all; he had salt mines by the Bitter Lakes and a lot of cattle in the Goshen pastures, and he used to send caravans with wool and salt into Midia. He was a godfearing man and led so blameless a life that he was surnamed 'Righteous.' He had hoped to live to a happy old age and to die filled with days. But it pleased God to test him and he was suddenly deprived of everything. Two of his sons were lost with their caravan in the desert, probably killed by robbers; the other two perished in the rebellion. His son-in-law, who was steward over all his property, falsely accused Shammai of having taken part in the rebellion. The old man was seized and tried; the judges acquitted him, but they had a compact with his son-in-law and robbed him of all he had. Now that he was a beggar all his friends forsook him; his wife died. He thought of Naomi, his favourite granddaughter, and came to live with her in Sheol where he fell ill with leprosy.

Sitting day and night among the ashes, he scraped his scabs with a potsherd and comforted his heart with wailing. All the family had grown so used to his endless wail that they noticed it no more than one notices the creaking of a door, the sound of the wind or the chirping of a grasshopper.

Issachar stopped in the entry and listened.

"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said there is a man child conceived. Why died I not from the womb? For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept, then had I been at rest. My soul is weary of my life; I will say unto God, do not condemn me; show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst destroy the innocent?"

And it seemed to Issachar that Shammai's wail was the lament of the whole people of Israel and, perhaps, of all mankind from the beginning to the end of time.

Walking past Shammai, he entered a dark and narrow room dimly lighted by two small lamps filled with mutton fat, one by the wall, on a wooden shelf with little clay idols of the gods Elohim, and another on the low brick platform with a block of stone on it that served as a table.

Eliav was having supper at that table with his two guests--Aviezer, a priest, and Naaman, a prophet.

Aviezer was a stout, important-looking man with red cheeks and a black beard. His luxurious dress of Phoenician patterned material was not very clean; a number of rings with imitation stones glittered on his fingers. He came to Sheol bringing alms for the prisoners from the rich Goshen merchants.

Naaman, a plumber and a prophet--_nabi_--was a little bald old man, gentle, shy and timid, with the kind and simple face of a poor Israelite labourer. He came from Thebes with Issachar.

There were other visitors present, but they sat at a distance and took no part in the supper or the conversation.

When Issachar saw his brother, a tall, round-shouldered, bony man, with a face so deeply lined that it seemed crumpled, everything else suddenly vanished from his eyes and he only saw this face--familiar, strange, pitiful, dear, and terrible.

"Ah, so you have arrived at last; I began to think you weren't coming," Eliav said, getting up.

Issachar went up to him and was going to embrace him when Eliav seized his hands with a quick movement and holding him back looked into his eyes with a laugh:

"Well, I should think we might embrace each Other, or is it beneath your dignity?" he said, as though it had been Issachar who held himself back.

Issachar threw his arms round Eliav's neck.

"Well, sit down," said Eliav, disengaging himself and pointing to the place of honour by his side--a low, half-circular stone chair. "You see, we are feasting here, enjoying your gifts without you. Thank you for remembering us and sending alms to us poor beggars. I dare not offer you anything: you Egyptians think our Jewish food unclean!"

"Why do you say such things, brother?" Issachar began, but broke off, looking down and flushing crimson. He took a piece off the dish.

"Why, he is eating! He really is, he doesn't despise our food!" Eliav cried, with the same unkind smile.

Aviezer also smiled into his beard, and Naaman anxiously looked round at them all with his kind eyes.

"Perhaps you will have a drink, too?" Eliav asked.

Issachar moved up his cup and Eliav filled it from a jug with pomegranate wine, blood-red and thick as oil--also his brother's present. He poured some out for himself, also.

"Your health, Iserker!"

He swallowed it at one gulp.

"Splendid wine this! I have never drunk anything like it."

He poured out some more. His wife, Naomi, a young, worn-looking woman with child, came up to him and whispered in his ear:

"You must not take any more, sir."

"Why not? I haven't seen my brother all these years and I mayn't have a drink on the occasion?"

He rudely pushed her away, giving her such a blow on the stomach with his elbow that she nearly fell.

"Oh, my dears, please don't let him drink, there will be trouble!" she begged the guests, retreating submissively like a beaten dog.

"A second cup to the success of your errand!" Eliav said. "You must have come to us on business I expect, and not for the pleasure of seeing your brother. Well, speak up, Iserker! What have you come for?"

"Issachar, not Iserker," his brother corrected him, paling slightly and frowning.

"Issachar in Hebrew and Iserker in Egyptian," Eliav answered. "Do you know yourself what your name is, I wonder? There now, don't be cross, don't look at me like Abel. I know you want to be an Abel, but I am not a Cain... Rabbi, what did Cain kill Abel for?" he asked Aviezer.

"Because God accepted Abel's gift and rejected Cain's."

"And why did God reject it?"

"No one knows this."

"That's always the way: no one knows the chief thing. But that was just the beginning of it all. The beginning was bad and I expect the end will be bad, too.... Well then, tell me what news have you brought us, Abel?"

"Good news, brother: the Lord has heard at last the cry of Israel. You will soon leave Sheol, captives.... Nabi Naaman, you are God's prophet, you know it all better than I do. Speak!"

Naaman shook his head, with a shy smile.

"Prophet, indeed! I am a simple man: all my wisdom is in mending cauldrons and saucepans..."

"Never mind, speak; God will teach you!"

The old man looked down and was silent for a time; then he began timidly and in a low voice, obviously repeating somebody else's words:

"Thus speaks the Lord of Sabaoth, the God of Israel: strengthen your arms which have grown weak, steady your knees that tremble. Behold your God! He shall come and save you; He shall stretch out his arm, He shall judge and lead his people out of Egypt, as out of the house of bondage. The second Exodus will be greater than the first, and the new Leader of Israel greater than Moses!"

He raised his eyes and his voice rang out with sudden force:

"How long, O Lord, shall the ungodly triumph? They trample upon thy people, they oppress thine inheritance, God of vengeance, Lord God of vengeance, show thyself, punish the proud! The Lord is to sit in judgment upon the peoples; He shall be judge of all flesh!"

"He is rather slow about it," Eliav said, with a jeering smile and, as though in answer to him, Shammai's wail was heard:

"Behold I cry out of wrong but I am not heard; I cry aloud and there is no judgment! Why does God mock the torture of the innocent? Why do the wicked live and spend their days in wealth? Why is the earth given over to evildoers and God gives them countenance? If it is not His doing, whose doing is it?"

"Do you hear?" Eliav asked, looking straight into Issachar's eyes. "Shammai is right: there is no judgment of God in the doings of men. All your prophecies are empty babble. The earth is a paradise for evildoers and a hell for the innocent, a Sheol. You are wretched comforters, useless physicians, all of you, damnation upon you and your God!"

Aviezar looked at Eliav and said, "Do not blaspheme, my son. Woe to him who disputes with his Maker."

"And what do you say, brother?" Eliav asked, still looking straight into Issachar's eyes. "Is Shammai right?"

"Yes, he is."

"Who is to answer him, then?"

"The Redeemer."

"And who is the Redeemer?"

"You know yourself."

"No, I don't. So many prophets come to us--not you alone. Some say that King Akhnaton is the Redeemer. Perhaps you have come to us from him?"

"Why do you laugh, brother, why do you jeer at what is holy?"

"But do you think you know what is holy? Is it true, they say you have been converted to the king's faith?"

"No, it is not."

"How is it, then, you were seen the other day at the festival of the Sun, among the converts? Whom are you deceiving, them or us? Why are you silent? Speak!"

"What am I to say, brother? You won't believe me in any case. Wait till to-morrow--to-morrow you shall know all."

"To-morrow? No, tell me at once, at once, what do you mean by saying 'you will soon leave Sheol, captives'? We shall not leave it without a rebellion. Have you come to stir us up, then?"

"You shall know everything to-morrow," Issachar repeated, getting up.

Eliav got up, too, and seized him by the hand.

"Stop, you shan't go like this! If you won't tell us, you will tell the king's overseer!"

"Will you inform against me?"

"And why not? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I have suffered for ten years on your account, and now it is your turn. Come along!"

"Oh, my dears, hold him, hold him, there will be trouble!" Naomi cried again.

All rushed at Eliav, but before they had time to restrain him, he dashed to the corner, seized the copper pickaxe, with which he broke stones in the quarry, ran towards Issachar, and raised it over his head, shouting:

"Get out of my sight, you son of the stinking Goat, or I'll kill you!"

Issachar ran out of the house, covering his face with his hands.

He ran along the dark streets, stumbling, falling, getting up, and running on again in terror.

He only came to himself outside the Sheol gates. Naaman had been running beside him and saying to him something he could not make out; at last he grasped that Naaman said:

"Let us run to the Goats' Cave and spend the night there."

By a steep narrow footpath cut in the rock, they ascended from the Sheol valley to the open ground at the top of the hill. A small red light flickered in the distance. They walked towards it. Fierce sheep dogs, with heads like spiders, rushed at them barking.

An old shepherd came out to meet them; he drove away the dogs and welcomed his guests with a low bow, calling Naaman by name. He had evidently been expecting them and led them straight to the cave at the top of the cliff overhanging Sheol.

Two young shepherds, who had been sitting by the bonfire in the cave among a sleeping flock of goats and sheep, got up and also made a low bow. They put more wood on the fire, spread some sheep-skins on the ground, and wishing their guests good-night, went out together with the old shepherd.

Issachar and Naaman sat down by the fire.

"Man is born to suffering as a spark flies upward," Issachar recalled Ahiram's words as he gazed at the sparks in the smoking fire and he thought "To-morrow Eliav will learn everything and will forgive and love me."

He lay down and as soon as he closed his eyes began to descend by the dark subterranean passages into the Nut-Amon sanctuary of the god Ram; he went on and on, but he could not reach it--he had lost his way. A small red light flickered in the distance. He walked towards it. The light grew bigger and bigger and became at last a red sun upon the black sky. Someone was standing under it, dressed in white, with a face as gentle as that of the god whose name is Quiet Heart. A quiet voice said, "Thou, Father, art in my heart and no one knows thee but me, thy son." "Cursed be the deceiver who said 'I am the Son'," Issachar cried, and drawing the knife from his belt was about to strike him. But he saw the red blood flowing on the white robe. "They shall look upon him whom they pierced and shall mourn for Him as for a son," he recalled the prophecy, and, throwing down the knife, flung himself at the feet of the Pierced One, crying "Who are you?"

"Ahiram, your uncle, who did you think I was? Come, wake up, my son," he heard Ahiram's voice and woke up.

"What is the matter with you, my boy? Have you had a bad dream?" the old man said, stroking Issachar's hair affectionately. "See, here is your pass!"

He took a day tablet from his bosom and gave it to Issachar: the king's seal--the sun disc of Aton--was at the top, next to the date of the month and below was the signature Tutankhaton.'

Issachar took the tablet and gazed at it, still trembling, so that his teeth chattered.

"Give me the stone!" Ahiram said, looking at him suspiciously, wondering if he would refuse payment.

Issachar took the stone out of his purse and gave it to Ahiram.

"But why are you so frightened? Have you changed your mind? Won't you go?" the old man said.

"Yes, I will go," Issachar answered.

VI

Poor queen! To give the god hot fomentations when he has stomach-ache and still believe that he is a god is no joke," the old courtier Ay said, laughing.

Tuta, who was very fond of witty remarks, repeated it to Dio in a moment of confidence, and she often recalled it as she looked at Queen Nefertiti.

Mother of six children at the age of twenty-eight, she still looked like a girl: slender girlish waist, bosom only slightly marked, narrow shoulders, collar bones that stood out under the skin, a thin long neck--'like a giraffe's,' she used herself to say jokingly. The round face looked childishly tender under the high bucket-shaped royal tiara, worn low over the forehead so that no hair showed. There was something childishly piteous in the short slightly protruding upper lip; there was an inward brooding look and a fathomless depth of sadness in the big lustreless, rather slanting black eyes under the heavy drooping eyelids.

She seemed to be all on guard, as though listening, spell-bound, to something within herself, motionless as an arrow on the bow string or a chord stretched to the uttermost but not sounding as yet; if it did sound it would break. It was as though she had received a mortal wound and were concealing it from all.

Daughter of Tadukhipa, a princess of Mitanni, and Amenhotep the Third, king of Egypt, Queen Nefertiti was King Akhnaton's half-sister: kings of Egypt, children of the Sun, often married their sisters in order to preserve the purity of the race.

The king and queen were so much alike that when, as boy and girl, they used to wear almost the same clothes, people found it hard to distinguish them. There was the same languid charm about them, the charm of a half-opened flower drooping with the heat of the sun.

"Oh plant that never tasted running water,
Oh flower, plucked out by the roots."

Dio recalled the dirge for the dead god Tammuz when she looked at the bas-relief of the king and queen in one of the palace chambers. They were represented sitting side by side on a double throne; she had her left arm round his waist, the fingers of the right hand were intertwined with his fingers and their faces were so close together that one could hardly see her through him; he was in her and she in him. As it said in the hymn to Aton:

"When Thou didst establish the earth
Thou didst reveal thy will to me
Thy son Akhnaton Uaenra,
And to thy beloved daughter
Nefertiti, delight of the Son
Who flourishes for ever and ever!"

It was then that this brother's and sister's marriage was made.

"They cannot be loved separately, they must be loved together--two in one," Dio understood this at once.

After her dance on the day of Aton's Nativity, she received the rank of 'the chief fan-bearer on the right side of the gracious god-king' and, leaving Tuta's house, settled in the palace where a room was assigned to her in the women's quarters close to the queen's chambers. She soon made friends with the queen, but a barrier which she herself could not understand separated her from the king.

She was no longer afraid of his being 'not quite human': she had learned from the queen that he certainly was human. There was profound meaning in the flat joke about 'the god having stomach-ache.' And the horror that the king's blasphemous words about being 'the son of God' had inspired in her at the festival of the Sun had disappeared, too: all kings of Egypt called themselves 'sons of God.'

She felt no fear, but something that was perhaps worse than fear.

It used to happen in the autumn when she was hunting on Mount Ida in Crete that on a bright, sunny day mist suddenly crept up from the mountain gorges, and the molten gold of the forest, the blue sky, the blue sea grew dim and grey and the sun itself looked out of the fog like a dead fish's eye. "What if the Joy of the Sun, Akhnaton, also looks at me with the eyes of a dead fish?" she thought.

She danced for him every day, and he admired her. "Only a dancer--I will never be anything more for him," she said to herself, with a grey fog of boredom in her mind.

She stood for hours behind the king's throne, raising and lowering with a slow, measured movement, in accordance with the ancient ritual, the big ostrich-feather fan on a long pole. Sometimes when left alone with her he turned suddenly and smiled at her with such appealing tenderness that her heart stood still at the thought that he would speak and the barrier would fall. But he said nothing or spoke about trifles: asked whether she was tired and would like to sit down; or wondered at the quickness with which she had learned to wave the fan--an art more difficult than it appeared; or, with jesting courtesy, blessed the stupid old custom of keeping cool in winter and fanning away the non-existent flies because it gave him a chance of being with her.

One day Dio was reluctantly--she did not like talking about it--telling the queen who questioned her how she had killed the god Bull on the Knossos arena to avenge a human victim, her best friend, Eoia; how she had been sentenced to be burned and was saved by Tammuzadad, the Babylonian, who went to the stake in her place.

The king was present, too, and seemed to listen attentively. When Dio finished there were tears in the queen's eyes, but the king, as though coming to himself suddenly, glanced at them both with a strange quiet smile, and muttered hurriedly and excitedly, repeating the same words, as he often did:

"You mustn't shave it off! You mustn't shave it off!"

It was so inappropriate that Dio was alarmed and wondered if he were ill. But the queen smiled calmly and said, laying her hand on Dio's head:

"No, certainly not: it would be a pity to shave such beautiful hair!"

It was only then that Dio remembered that she had asked the queen a day or two ago whether she ought to shave her head and wear a wig, as the custom in Egypt was.

After saying these sudden words the king went out and the queen, as though apologizing for him, said that he had not been very well lately.

It took Dio some time to forget that at that moment she had caught a glimpse of the decrepit monster of Gem-ton--that the sun looked through the fog like a dead fish's eye.

The same evening when he was left alone with her, he got up suddenly, put his hands on her shoulders and brought his face near hers, as though he would kiss her; but did not--he merely smiled so that her heart stood still: she recalled the girl-like boy with a face as gentle as the face of the god whose name is Quiet-Heart.

A man dreams sometimes a dream of paradise, as though in sleep his soul had returned to its heavenly home; and on waking he cannot believe that it has been a dream only, cannot get used to his earthly exile and is full of sadness and yearning: such was the sadness in his face. The long lashes of the drooping eyelids, as though weighed down with sleep, seemed moist with tears, but there was a smile on the lips--a trace of paradise--heavenly joy shining through earthly sorrow like the sun through a cloud.

"I heard everything you said this afternoon, only I did not want to speak before her: one may not speak about this to anyone. You know this, don't you?" he asked, looking at her with the same smile.

"I know," Dio answered.

"Darling, how good it is that you came, how I have been waiting for you!"

He brought his face still nearer so that their lips almost touched.

"Do you love me?" he asked as simply as a child.

"I love you," she answered, as simply.

And it was a joy like a dream of paradise that he left her without a kiss.

On the following day, the eleventh after Aton's nativity, Dio was standing with her fan behind the queen's chair in the palace-chamber of the Flood, in which the flooding of the Nile was depicted.

The morning sun shone through the melting mist of the clouds into the square opening of the ceiling, adorned with faience wreaths of vine, with dark red clusters of grapes and dark blue leaves. The tiled walls were painted with water-flowers and plants, the pillars, shaped like sheaves of papyrus, had for capitals figures of wild geese and ducks hanging head downwards--the spoils of river hunting; the paintings on the floor represented a backwater on the Nile; fishes swam among the blue, wavy lines of the river, butterflies fluttered among the lotos thickets, ducklings flew up, and an absurd spotted calf galloped about with its tail in the air. As it said in the morning hymn to Aton:

"The earth rejoices and is glad
All cattle graze in pastures green,
All plants are growing in the fields.
The birds are flying o'er their nests,
And lift their wings like hands in prayer,
Lambs leap and dance upon their feet.
All winged things fly gaily round,
They all live in thy life, O Lord!"

The king was playing with his six daughters: Meritatona, Makitatona, Ankhsenbatona, Neferatona, Neferura and Setepenra. The eldest was fifteen, the youngest five and there was a year's difference between the others. When they stood in a row to say their prayers, their smoothly shaven egg-shaped heads--royal marrows--formed a series of descending steps, like the reeds on a shepherd's pipe.

The four elder girls were dressed in shifts of transparent linen--'woven air'--and the two youngest were quite naked. Their arms and legs, thin as sticks were almost brown; they wore heavy gold rings in their ears and broad necklaces of crystal and chrysolite tears arranged like rays round their necks.

The king's dwarf, Iagu, took part in the games; he came of the wild tribe of Pygmies, Ua-Ua, who lived like monkeys in the trees of the marshy forests in the extreme South. Two feet in height, bow-legged, fat-bellied, black, wrinkled, old and monstrous like the god Bes, the primaeval monster, he looked ferocious but was in truth as mild as a lamb; he was a splendid dancer and an unwearying nurse to the princesses who loved and tormented him; a faithful servant of the king's household, he would have gladly died for each and all of them.

First they played 'nine-pins,' rolling ivory balls through reed hoops so as to knock down at one blow nine wooden dolls with ugly faces--nine kings hostile to Egypt.

Then Iagu's pupil, the trained white poodle, Dang, with a cap of fiery red feathers on its head and ruby earrings, jumped through a hoop and walked on its hind legs, holding a marshall's staff in its front paws and a piece of antelope meat on its nose, not daring to swallow it until Iagu cried "eat."

Then they went into the winter hot-house garden, where there were rare foreign flowers and an ornamental pool with floating lotuses, and made two dreadful monsters of clay--the Babylonian king, Burnaburiash and his son, prince Karakardash, who wanted to marry the eight year old princess Neferatona. The king was so smeared with clay that he had to be washed in the pool.

Then they amused themselves with the cock--the bird, unknown in Egypt, had just been brought from the kingdom of Mitanni; upset by its long journey, the cock ruffled its feathers in gloomy silence, but suddenly flapped its wings and crowed for the first time so loudly that all were frightened and then delighted--'a regular trumpet'!--and began to imitate him; the king did it so badly that the girls laughed at him.

Then they returned to the chamber and played blind man's buff. Iagu caught the king, who then had his eyes bandaged. The girls jumped about and scurried to and fro under his very nose, strummed on citherns, stamped with their bare feet on the floor, imitating the oxen threshing and sang a song:

"Hey! Hey! Hey!
It's fine and fresh to-day,
Fine workmen, oxen,
Work, work away!
Stamp upon the threshing floor!
You'll have something for your trouble.
We'll have the grain and you the straw!"

The king, awkwardly spreading out his arms, kept catching empty air or embracing pillars. At last he caught Ankhi, Tuta's twelve year old wife.

"You moved the bandage," she cried. "There, the left eye is peeping out! You mustn't cheat, abby!"

'Abby' was the diminutive from the Canaan word _Abba_--father.

"No, I haven't, it slid off," the king tried to justify himself.

"You have moved it, you have!" Ankhi kept on shouting. "I know you, abby, you are a dreadful little rogue! But that's not the way to play. You must catch again."

She bandaged his eyes tighter than before and he had to catch them again.

The poodle, Dang, as though also playing, walked about on its hind legs holding a sounding cithern in its front paws. The king, imagining from the sound, that it was the little Zeta--Zetepenra--bent down rapidly and threw his arms round Dang. The dog barked and licked him in the face. The king cried out in alarm, sat down on the floor and pushed Dang away. But it rushed up to him again, put its front paws on the king's shoulders and licked him squealing with delight.

All laughed and shouted.

"Abby has kissed Dang! Doggy has made friends with the king."

The queen laughed, too.

"There, you've done enough fanning, sit down and rest," she said to Dio, and Dio sat down at the foot of her chair.

"The kingdom is for the children," she suddenly recalled aloud the king's words that she had heard from little Ankhi.

"The kingdom is for the children," the queen repeated. "And do you know how it goes on?"

"How?"

"What is most divine in men? Tears of the wise? No, laughter of children."

"So this is why the god Aton has children's hands for rays?" Dio asked.

"Yes, the whole of wisdom is in this: what is childlike is divine," the queen answered and, gently placing her hand on Dio's head, looked straight into her eyes.

"How is it you are so pretty to-day? Have you fallen in love by any chance?" she said, smiling--'quite like him--' Dio thought.

"Why fallen in love?" she asked, smiling, too.

"Because when girls are in love they grow particularly pretty."

Dio shook her head, blushed and bending quickly down, caught the queen's hand and began kissing it eagerly, as though she were kissing him through her.

Suddenly she felt the queen's hand tremble. Raising her eyes and seeing that the queen was looking at the door, she, too, looked in the same direction. Merira, son of Nehtaneb, the high priest of the god Aton, was standing in the doorway.

Dio had been struck by his face at the festival of the Sun and since then she often looked at him wondering whether she felt repelled or attracted by him.

He somewhat resembled Tammuzadad: there was the same stony heaviness about their faces; but there had been something childlike and piteous in the Babylonian's face, while Merira looked hopelessly grown up. There was a stony heaviness in the low overhanging brows, in the eyes immoveably intent and yet, as it were, unseeing, the wide cheekbones, the firmly set jaw and the tightly closed lips that seemed sealed with bitterness and were always ready to jeer, though they could never smile.

"He that increases knowledge increases sorrow," Dio recalled Tammuzadad's words as she looked at that face. "To know all is to despise all," it seemed to say, "not to curse, but merely to despise in secret, to spew out of one's mouth." If a very courageous man firmly determined on suicide had drunk poison and then calmly awaited death, his face would wear the same expression.

Merira came of a very old family of the Heliopolis priests of the Sun. He had once been the favourite pupil of Ptamose and an ardent devotee of Amon; but he gave up the old faith and worshipped Aton. The king was very fond of him. "You alone have followed my teaching, no one else has," he said, when he conferred on Merira the rank of high priest.

Merira came in while the king was sitting on the floor and the poodle, Dang, with its paws on his shoulders, was licking his face and the princesses were laughing and shouting.

"Abby has kissed Dang! Doggie has made friends with the king."

Merira probably failed to notice the queen and stopped in the doorway looking intently at the king. The queen, bending slightly forward and craning her neck, looked at Merira as intently as he did at the king.

"Merira, Merira!" she cried suddenly and there was fear in her eyes. "Why do you look at the king like that, do you want to cast a spell over him?" she laughed, but there was fear in her laughter.

He slowly turned to her and made the low ceremonial bow, bending down from his waist and stretching out his hands, palms upwards.

"Rejoice, queen Nefertiti, the delight of the Sun's delights! I have come to call the king to the Council. It seems I have come at the wrong moment."

"Why wrong? Go and tell the king."

Merira went up to the players. Laughter died down. The king jumped up and looked at him with a guilty smile.

"What is it, Merira?"

"Nothing, sire. You were pleased to call the Council for to-day."

"Oh yes, the Council! I had forgotten..... Well, let us go, let us go!" he hurried.

The bandage he had round his eyes during the game was dangling on his neck; he tried to pull it off, but could not--it got tied into a knot. Ankhi went up to him, undid the knot and took off the bandage, while Rita--Meritatona--put on his head the royal tiara he had taken off for the game.

The girls' faces fell. The poodle slightly growled at Merira and the dwarf made funny and frightful faces at him behind the king's back. It was as though a shadow had come upon everything and the sun had grown dim and looked like a 'fish's eye.'

As the king walked past the queen and Dio he looked at them dejectedly and resignedly like a schoolboy going to a dull lesson.

Dio glanced at the queen.

"Yes, follow him," she said, and Dio followed the king.

He looked round at her with a grateful smile and Merira looked at them both with his usual mute derision.

VII

The three walked into the Council Chamber. The dignitaries had long been gathered there waiting for the king. When he passed by them they prostrated themselves, sniffed the ground under his feet and, raising their shaven, egg-shaped heads stretched out their hands palms upwards, saying:

"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"

Tuta, as usual, surpassed them all.

"My king, my god, who hast made me, grant me to enjoy the sight of thy face forever!" he exclaimed, rolling his eyes so ecstatically that everyone envied him.

The king sat down in his chair on a low alabaster platform between four pillars. Dio stood behind him with the fan.

All looked at her curiously. She felt she was already regarded as the king's mistress; she flushed and looked down.

A bodyguard of Hittite amazons stood in the depths of the many pillared room. The dignitaries sat on their heels in a semicircle on mats on the floor; only three sat on folding chairs: Tuta, Merira, and the commander-in-chief and king's vizier, Ramose, a heavy fat old man of seventy, with a red puffy face, like an old woman's, a courtly smile on his lips and small eyes lost in fat, very kind and intelligent.

Grandson of General Amenemheb, fellow-soldier of the great Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, he had covered himself with glory in the different campaigns he led against the wild tribes of Kush and the Sinai nomads. He had been promoted to the rank of Vizier under King Amenhotep the Third, Akhnaton's father, and the people were fond of him and called him 'a just man.' He would have given his life for the king, but he regarded the new faith in Aton and the betrayal of the old gods as madness and disaster. "The best and most unfortunate of kings," he used to say about Akhnaton, "he is ruining himself and his kingdom for nothing."

The sitting of the Council began. The king listened to the officials' reports about the failure of crops, famine, rebellions, brigandage, robberies, bribe-taking, secessions of provincial governors and feuds between them.

Standing slightly on one side Dio could see his face. He listened with his head bent and his face seemed expressionless.

The chief of the guards, Mahu, reported on the last rising--the one in Thebes.

"Very likely nothing would have happened had not the Lybian mercenaries joined the rebels," he said in conclusion.

"And why did they join them?" the king asked.

"Because their salary was not paid in time."

"And why was it not paid?"

"At the prince Viceroy's orders."

The king looked at Tuta.

"Why did you do it?"

"I have laid the king's yoke upon my neck and here I bear it," Tuta began, wondering what kind of answer he had better give: he understood that someone had informed against him. "If I go up to heaven or come down to earth my life is always in thy right hand, O King! I look here and I look there and I see no light; I look upon thee, my king, my sun, and behold, here is light! A brick may move from under other bricks in a wall but I shall not move from under the feet of my king, my god...."

"Make haste and tell me why you did it," the king interrupted him impatiently.

"There was no money to buy bread for the starving and so I borrowed it from the Lybians' salary."

The king said nothing, but gave him such a look that Tuta lowered his eyes.

"How many killed?" asked the king, turning to Mahu again.

"Less than a hundred," he answered.

He knew that more than two thousand had been killed, but, exchanging glances with Ramose, understood that the truth should not be told: the king would be unhappy and perhaps fall ill and nothing would be gained by it--everything would remain as before.

"A hundred people!" the king whispered, bending his head still lower. "Well, you won't have long now....."

"Not long to do what, sire?" Ramose asked.

"To kill people in my name!" the king answered and then asked, after a pause: "Is there a letter from Ribaddi?"

"Yes, there is."

"Show it me."

"I cannot, sire, it is an unseemly letter."

"Never mind, show it."

Ramose gave him the letter. The king read it first to himself and then aloud so calmly that it might have been written about someone else:

"Ribaddi, Viceroy of the King of Egypt in Canaan, thus speaks to the King: for ten years I have been sending to thee for help but thou hast not helped me. Now Azini, an Amorite, a traitor, has risen against thee and gone over to the king of the Hittites. And they have gathered together chariots and men to conquer Canaan. The enemy is at my gates, to-morrow they will enter and kill me and throw my body to the dogs. Well does the King of Egypt reward his faithful servants! May the gods do the same unto thee as thou hast done unto me. My blood is on thy head, traitor!"

"How dares this dead dog insult our god-king!" Tuta said, with indignation.

The king looked at him again, and he subsided.

"Has Ribaddi perished?" the king asked.

"He has," Ramose answered. "He threw himself on his sword so as not to fall into the enemies' hands alive."

"What will happen now, Ramose?"

"Why, this, sire: the king of the Hittites will have Canaan; the thieves will undermine the wall and enter the house. We were for four hundred years under the yoke of the nomads, and we may be for another four hundred under the yoke of the Hittites. Your great-grandfather, Tutmose the Great, made Egypt the head of all nations and we were the light of the world and now this light is no more...."

"What are we to do then, Ramose?"

"You know yourself, king."

"Begin war?" the king asked.

Ramose made no answer; he knew that the king would perish and ruin his kingdom rather than begin war.

The king was silent, too; he seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he raised his head and said:

"I cannot!"

He paused again, thinking, and repeated:

"I cannot; no, I cannot! 'Peace, peace to the far and the near,' says my heavenly father, Aton. 'Peace is better than war; let there be no war, let there be peace!' This is all I know, all I have, Ramose. If you take this from me, there will be nothing left: I shall be destitute, naked, dead. Better kill me outright!"

He spoke simply and quietly; but Dio's heart throbbed again as on the day before in the joy of the heavenly dream. She suddenly recalled the huge pale phantom of Cheop's pyramid shimmering in the rosy sunlight mist over the yellow sands of the desert: the perfect triangles--"I began to be as one god, but three gods were in Me," in the words of the ancient wisdom--divine triangles getting narrower and narrower, more and more pointed as they rose to heaven and in the very last point the same frenzied ecstacy as in Akhnaton's quiet word 'Peace'!

"O, how sweet is thy teaching, Uaenra," Tuta thrust himself forward again--like the poodle Dang licking the king in the face. "You are the second Osiris, conquering the world by peace and not by sword. If you say to the water 'let there be peace'--there shall be peace."

"Listen, Ramose," the king began, "I am not such a scoundrel as Ribaddi thought, and I am not such a fool as Tuta takes me to be...."

The poodle Dang got a flip on the nose: he was alarmed and upset. But he was soon comforted by Ay--an old dignitary with intelligent, cold and cynical eyes, who sat next to him.

"Don't bother, it isn't worth it," he whispered in Tuta's ear. "You see he is playing the fool again, the crazy saint!"

"I am not such a fool as Tuta thinks," the king went on. "I know there will be no peace on earth for a long time to come. There will be endless war, and the longer it goes on the fiercer it will be: 'all will be killing each other' as the ancient prophecy says. There has been a flood of water--there is going to be one of blood. But even so, even so, let men know that there has been in the world a man who said 'peace'!"

He suddenly turned to Merira.

"What do you think, Merira? Why do you smile?"

"I think, sire, that what you say is good, but it is not all. God is not only peace...."

He spoke slowly, with an effort, as though thinking of something else.--

"But also what?" the king said to help him.

"Also war."

"What are you saying, my friend? War is not of God, but of the devil."

"Yes, of God, too. Two sides of the triangle meet at one point: day and night, mercy and wrath, peace and war, Son and Father--all the opposites are in God...."

"Is the Son against the Father?" the king asked and his hand that was holding the arm of the chair trembled slightly.

Merira raised his eyes to him and smiled so strangely that Dio thought 'madman!' But he looked down again at once and his face turned to stone, grew heavy with a stony heaviness.

"Why do you ask me?" he answered calmly. "You know it all better than I, Uaenra: does not the Son know the Father? God is the measure of all things. I say it not to you but to others: seek for measure in everything--in peace as in the sword."

"Quite so! Quite so!" Ramose cried. "I am no friend of yours, Merira, but for this saying I am ready to bow down at your feet--it couldn't be said better!"

"Why are you so pleased with it?" the king asked, looking at Ramose in surprise. "What he says is very dreadful."

"Yes, dreadful, but necessary," Ramose answered. "Ankh-em-Maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth, you want to lift truth up to heaven and spread it throughout the earth; but men are weak, stupid and wicked. Be merciful to them, O King, don't ask too much of them. If you fix a ladder for them they will climb up, but if you say 'fly,' they will fly headlong into the pit. There is no getting on with mercy only: our mercy merely smooths the way for evildoers. We talk much and we do little, but believe an old man like me: nothing in the world is more wicked than empty good words, nothing more vile than empty noble words."

"Are you speaking of me, Ramose?" the king asked, with a kind smile.

"No, not of you, Uaenra, but of those who demand a miracle of you and do not stir a finger themselves. For twenty years I have served faithfully the king, your father, and you; I have never told lies and I am not going to now. Things are going ill in your whole kingdom, they are going very ill, O King! We say 'peace,' but there is war, we say 'love,' but there is hatred, we say 'light,' but there is darkness instead."

He got up heavily, fell at the king's feet and wept: "Have pity, sire; have mercy! Save yourself, save Egypt, take up the sword for right and justice. And if you do not want to do it, I don't want to see you ruin yourself and your kingdom any more. Let me retire, I am old and want a rest!"

The king bent down to him and lifting him up embraced and kissed him on the lips.

"No my friend, I will not let you go, and you would not go yourself--you are fond of me... Bear up a little longer, the time is getting short--I shall soon go myself," he whispered in his ear.

"Go where? Where?" Ramose asked with prophetic terror.

"Don't speak, don't ask, you will soon know everything!" the king answered and got up, showing that the Council was over.

VIII

Leaving the Council Chamber, they went to the Beggars' Court. Telling the courtiers to go on, the king lagged behind so as to remain alone with Dio. Passing through a number of rooms they came into a small hothouse garden where incense trees brought from the far-away Punt, the land of the gods, grew in pots of earthenware, like huge heather plants fine as cobweb, dropping amber rosin tears in the warm sunshine.

The king sank down on a bench and sat for some minutes in silence without moving. He seemed to have forgotten Dio's presence, but suddenly he looked at her and said:

"Shame! Shame! Shame! You have looked enough at my shame, go away!"

Dio knelt down before him.

"No, sire, I will not go away from you. As the Lord lives and as my soul lives, whither my king goes, to shame or to honour, there will his servant go also."

"You have seen me put to shame once, now you will see it again. Let us go," the king said, getting up.

They entered the Beggars Court.

Three times in the year--when the Nile overflowed, at seed time, and at harvest--the palace gates were opened to all; every beggar could go in freely, merely giving his name to Mahu, the chief of the guards. Tables with bread, meat and beer were placed in the courtyard: everyone could eat and drink his fill. It was there that the king received petitions and heard complaints.