"Let out the dogs," cried the Mohar. "All who have legs run after the
blackguard! Freedom, and five handfuls of gold for the man who brings
him back."
The guests at the House of Seti had already gone to rest, when Ameni was
informed of the arrival of the sorceress, and he at once went into the
hall, where Ani was waiting to see her; the Regent roused himself from a
deep reverie when he heard the high-priest's steps.
"Is she come?" he asked hastily; when Ameni answered in the affirmative
Ani went on meanwhile carefully disentangling the disordered curls of
his wig, and arranging his broad, collar-shaped necklace:
"The witch may exercise some influence over me; will you not give me
your blessing to preserve me from her spells? It is true, I have on me
this Houss'-eye, and this Isis-charm, but one never knows."
"My presence will be your safe-guard," said Ameni. "But-no, of course
you wish to speak with her alone. You shall be conducted to a room,
which is protected against all witchcraft by sacred texts. My brother,"
he continued to one of the serving-priests, "let the witch be taken
into one of the consecrated rooms, and then, when you have sprinkled the
threshold, lead my lord Ani thither."
The high-priest went away, and into a small room which adjoined the hall
where the interview between the Regent and the old woman was about to
take place, and where the softest whisper spoken in the larger room
could be heard by means of an ingeniously contrived and invisible tube.
When Ani saw the old woman, he started back is horror; her appearance at
this moment was, in fact, frightful. The storm had tossed and torn her
garment and tumbled all her thick, white hair, so that locks of it fell
over her face. She leaned on a staff, and bending far forward looked
steadily at the Regent; and her eyes, red and smarting from the sand
which the wind had flung in her face, seemed to glow as she fixed them
on his. She looked as a hyaena might when creeping to seize its prey,
and Ani felt a cold shiver and he heard her hoarse voice addressing
him to greet him and to represent that he had chosen a strange hour for
requiring her to speak with him.
When she had thanked him for his promise of renewing her letter
of freedom, and had confirmed the statement that Paaker had had a
love-philter from her, she parted her hair from off her face--it
occurred to her that she was a woman.
The Regent sat in an arm-chair, she stood before him; but the struggle
with the storm had tired her old limbs, and she begged Ani to permit her
to be seated, as she had a long story to tell, which would put Paaker
into his power, so that he would find him as yielding as wax. The
Regent signed her to a corner of the room, and she squatted down on the
pavement.
When he desired her to proceed with her story, she looked at the floor
for some time in silence, and then began, as if half to herself:
"I will tell thee, that I may find peace--I do not want, when I die, to
be buried unembalmed. Who knows but perhaps strange things may happen
in the other world, and I would not wish to miss them. I want to see him
again down there, even if it were in the seventh limbo of the damned.
Listen to me! But, before I speak, promise me that whatever I tell thee,
thou wilt leave me in peace, and will see that I am embalmed when I am
dead. Else I will not speak."
Ani bowed consent.
"No-no," she said. "I will tell thee what to swear 'If I do not keep my
word to Hekt--who gives the Mohar into my power--may the Spirits whom
she rules, annihilate me before I mount the throne.' Do not be vexed,
my lord--and say only 'Yes.' What I can tell, is worth more than a mere
word."
"Well then--yes!" cried the Regent, eager for the mighty revelation.
The old woman muttered a few unintelligible words; then she collected
herself, stretched out her lean neck, and asked, as she fixed her
sparkling eyes on the man before her:
"Did'st thou ever, when thou wert young, hear of the singer Beki? Well,
look at me, I am she."
She laughed loud and hoarsely, and drew her tattered robe across her
bosom, as if half ashamed of her unpleasing person.
"Ay!" she continued. "Men find pleasure in grapes by treading them
down, and when the must is drunk the skins are thrown on the dung-hill.
Grape-skins, that is what I am--but you need not look at me so
pitifully; I was grapes once, and poor and despised as I am now, no one
can take from me what I have had and have been. Mine has been a life
out of a thousand, a complete life, full to overflowing of joy and
suffering, of love and hate, of delight, despair, and revenge. Only to
talk of it raises me to a seat by thy throne there. No, let me be, I am
used now to squatting on the ground; but I knew thou wouldst hear me to
the end, for once I too was one of you. Extremes meet in all things--I
know it by experience. The greatest men will hold out a hand to a
beautiful woman, and time was when I could lead you all as with a rope.
Shall I begin at the beginning? Well--I seldom am in the mood for it
now-a-days. Fifty years ago I sang a song with this voice of mine; an
old crow like me? sing! But so it was. My father was a man of rank, the
governor of Abydos; when the first Rameses took possession of the throne
my father was faithful to the house of thy fathers, so the new king sent
us all to the gold mines, and there they all died--my parents, brothers,
and sisters. I only survived by some miracle. As I was handsome and sang
well, a music master took me into his band, brought me to Thebes,
and wherever there was a feast given in any great house, Beki was
in request. Of flowers and money and tender looks I had a plentiful
harvest; but I was proud and cold, and the misery of my people had made
me bitter at an age when usually even bad liquor tastes of honey. Not
one of all the gay young fellows, princes' sons, and nobles, dared to
touch my hand. But my hour was to come; the handsomest and noblest man
of them all, and grave and dignified too--was Assa, the old Mohar's
father, and grandfather of Pentaur--no, I should say of Paaker, the
pioneer; thou hast known him. Well, wherever I sang, he sat opposite me,
and gazed at me, and I could not take my eyes off him, and--thou canst
tell the rest! no! Well, no woman before or after me can ever love a man
as I loved Assa. Why dost thou not laugh? It must seem odd, too, to hear
such a thing from the toothless mouth of an old witch. He is dead, long
since dead. I hate him! and yet--wild as it sounds--I believe I love him
yet. And he loved me--for two years; then he went to the war with Seti,
and remained a long time away, and when I saw him again he had courted
the daughter of some rich and noble house. I was handsome enough still,
but he never looked at me at the banquets. I came across him at least
twenty times, but he avoided me as if I were tainted with leprosy, and I
began to fret, and fell ill of a fever. The doctors said it was all over
with me, so I sent him a letter in which there was nothing but these
words: 'Beki is dying, and would like to see Assa once more,' and in the
papyrus I put his first present--a plain ring. And what was the answer?
a handful of gold! Gold--gold! Thou may'st believe me, when I say that
the sight of it was more torturing to my eyes than the iron with which
they put out the eyes of criminals. Even now, when I think of it--But
what do you men, you lords of rank and wealth, know of a breaking heart?
When two or three of you happen to meet, and if thou should'st tell the
story, the most respectable will say in a pompous voice: 'The man acted
nobly indeed; he was married, and his wife would have complained with
justice if he had gone to see the singer.' Am I right or wrong? I know;
not one will remember that the other was a woman, a feeling human being;
it will occur to no one that his deed on the one hand saved an hour of
discomfort, and on the other wrought half a century of despair. Assa
escaped his wife's scolding, but a thousand curses have fallen on him
and on his house. How virtuous he felt himself when he had crushed and
poisoned a passionate heart that had never ceased to love him! Ay, and
he would have come if he had not still felt some love for me, if he had
not misdoubted himself, and feared that the dying woman might once more
light up the fire he had so carefully smothered and crushed out. I would
have grieved for him--but that he should send me money, money!--that I
have never forgiven; that he shall atone for in his grandchild." The
old woman spoke the last words as if in a dream, and without seeming to
remember her hearer. Ani shuddered, as if he were in the presence of a
mad woman, and he involuntarily drew his chair back a little way.
The witch observed this; she took breath and went on: "You lords, who
walk in high places, do not know how things go on in the depths beneath
you; you do not choose to know.
"But I will shorten my story. I got well, but I got out of my bed
thin and voiceless. I had plenty of money, and I spent it in buying of
everyone who professed magic in Thebes, potions to recover Assa's love
for me, or in paying for spells to be cast on him, or for magic drinks
to destroy him. I tried too to recover my voice, but the medicines I
took for it made it rougher not sweeter. Then an excommunicated priest,
who was famous among the magicians, took me into his house, and there I
learned many things; his old companions afterwards turned upon him, he
came over here into the Necropolis, and I came with him. When at last
he was taken and hanged, I remained in his cave, and myself took to
witchcraft. Children point their fingers at me, honest men and women
avoid me, I am an abomination to all men, nay to myself. And one only
is guilty of all this ruin--the noblest gentleman in Thebes--the pious
Assa.
"I had practised magic for several years, and had become learned in many
arts, when one day the gardener Sent, from whom I was accustomed to buy
plants for my mixtures--he rents a plot of ground from the temple of
Seti--Sent brought me a new-born child that had been born with six toes;
I was to remove the supernumerary toe by my art. The pious mother of the
child was lying ill of fever, or she never would have allowed it; I took
the screaming little wretch--for such things are sometimes curable. The
next morning, a few hours after sunrise, there was a bustle in front of
my cave; a maid, evidently belonging to a noble house, was calling
me. Her mistress, she said, had come with her to visit the tomb of her
fathers, and there had been taken ill, and had given birth to a child.
Her mistress was lying senseless--I must go at once, and help her. I
took the little six-toed brat in my cloak, told my slavegirl to follow
me with water, and soon found myself--as thou canst guess--at the tomb
of Assa's ancestors. The poor woman, who lay there in convulsions, was
his daughter-in-law Setchem. The baby, a boy, was as sound as a nut,
but she was evidently in great danger. I sent the maid with the litter,
which was waiting outside, to the temple here for help; the girl said
that her master, the father of the child, was at the war, but that the
grandfather, the noble Assa, had promised to meet the lady Setchem at
the tomb, and would shortly be coming; then she disappeared with the
litter. I washed the child, and kissed it as if it were my own. Then I
heard distant steps in the valley, and the recollection of the moment
when I, lying at the point of death, had received that gift of money
from Assa came over me, and then I do not know myself how it happened--I
gave the new-born grandchild of Assa to my slave-girl, and told her to
carry it quickly to the cave, and I wrapped the little six-toed baby
in my rags and held it in my lap. There I sat--and the minutes seemed
hours, till Assa came up; and when he stood before me, grown grey, it
is true, but still handsome and upright--I put the gardener's boy, the
six-toed brat, into his very arms, and a thousand demons seemed to laugh
hoarsely within me. He thanked me, he did not know me, and once more he
offered me a handful of gold. I took it, and I listened as the priest,
who had come from the temple, prophesied all sorts of fine things for
the little one, who was born in so fortunate an hour; and then I went
back into my cave, and there I laughed till I cried, though I do not
know that the tears sprang from the laughter.
"A few days after I gave Assa's grandchild to the gardener, and told
him the sixth toe had come off; I had made a little wound on his foot to
take in the bumpkin. So Assa's grandchild, the son of the Mohar, grew
up as the gardener's child, and received the name of Pentaur, and he
was brought up in the temple here, and is wonderfully like Assa; but
the gardener's monstrous brat is the pioneer Paaker. That is the whole
secret."
Ani had listened in silence to the terrible old woman.
We are involuntarily committed to any one who can inform us of some
absorbing fact, and who knows how to make the information valuable.
It did not occur to the Regent to punish the witch for her crimes; he
thought rather of his older friends' rapture when they talked of the
singer Beki's songs and beauty. He looked at the woman, and a cold
shiver ran through all his limbs.
"You may live in peace," he said at last; "and when you die I will see
to your being embalmed; but give up your black arts. You must be rich,
and, if you are not, say what you need. Indeed, I scarcely dare offer
you gold--it excites your hatred, as I understand."
"I could take thine--but now let me go!"
She got up, and went towards the door, but the Regent called to her to
stop, and asked:
"Is Assa the father of your son, the little Nemu, the dwarf of the lady
Katuti?"
The witch laughed loudly. "Is the little wretch like Assa or like Beki?
I picked him up like many other children."
"But he is clever!" said Ani.
"Ay-that he is. He has planned many a shrewd stroke, and is devoted to
his mistress. He will help thee to thy purpose, for he himself has one
too."
"And that is--?"
"Katuti will rise to greatness with thee, and to riches through Paaker,
who sets out to-morrow to make the woman he loves a widow."
"You know a great deal," said Ani meditatively, "and I would ask you
one thing more; though indeed your story has supplied the answer--but
perhaps you know more now than you did in your youth. Is there in truth
any effectual love-philter?"
"I will not deceive thee, for I desire that thou should'st keep thy word
to me," replied Hekt. "A love potion rarely has any effect, and never
but on women who have never before loved. If it is given to a woman
whose heart is filled with the image of another man her passion for him
only will grow the stronger."
"Yet another," said Ani. "Is there any way of destroying an enemy at a
distance?"
"Certainly," said the witch. "Little people may do mean things, and
great people can let others do things that they cannot do themselves. My
story has stirred thy gall, and it seems to me that thou dost not love
the poet Pentaur. A smile! Well then--I have not lost sight of him,
and I know he is grown up as proud and as handsome as Assa. He is
wonderfully like him, and I could have loved him--have loved as this
foolish heart had better never have loved. It is strange! In many women,
who come to me, I see how their hearts cling to the children of men who
have abandoned them, and we women are all alike, in most things. But I
will not let myself love Assa's grandchild--I must not. I will injure
him, and help everyone that persecutes him; for though Assa is dead, the
wrongs he did me live in me so long as I live myself. Pentaur's destiny
must go on its course. If thou wilt have his life, consult with Nemu,
for he hates him too, and he will serve thee more effectually than I can
with my vain spells and silly harmless brews. Now let me go home!"
A few hours later Ameni sent to invite the Regent to breakfast.
"Do you know who the witch Hekt is?" asked Ani.
"Certainly--how should I not know? She is the singer Beki--the former
enchantress of Thebes. May I ask what her communications were?"
Ani thought it best not to confide the secret of Pentaur's birth to the
high-priest, and answered evasively. Then Ameni begged to be allowed
to give him some information about the old woman, and how she had had a
hand in the game; and he related to his hearer, with some omissions and
variations--as if it were a fact he had long known--the very story which
a few hours since he had overheard, and learned for the first time. Ani
feigned great astonishment, and agreed with the high-priest that Paaker
should not for the present be informed of his true origin.
"He is a strangely constituted man," said Ameni, "and he is not
incapable of playing us some unforeseen trick before he has done his
part, if he is told who he is."
The storm had exhausted itself, and the sky, though covered still with
torn and flying clouds, cleared by degrees, as the morning went on; a
sharp coolness succeeded the hot blast, but the sun as it mounted higher
and higher soon heated the air. On the roads and in the gardens lay
uprooted trees and many slightly-built houses which had been blown
down, while the tents in the strangers' quarter, and hundreds of light
palm-thatched roofs, had been swept away.
The Regent was returning to Thebes, and with him went Ameni, who desired
to ascertain by his own eyes what mischief the whirlwind had done to his
garden in the city. On the Nile they met Paaker's boat, and Ani caused
it and his own to be stopped, while he requested Paaker to visit him
shortly at the palace.
The high-priest's garden was in no respect inferior in beauty and extent
to that of the Mohar. The ground had belonged to his family from the
remotest generations, and his house was large and magnificent. He seated
himself in a shady arbor, to take a repast with his still handsome wife
and his young and pretty daughters.
He consoled his wife for the various damage done by the hurricane,
promised the girls to build a new and handsomer clove-cot in the place
of the one which had been blown down, and laughed and joked with them
all; for here the severe head of the House of Seti, the grave Superior
of the Necropolis, became a simple man, an affectionate husband, a
tender father, a judicious friend, among his children, his flowers, and
his birds. His youngest daughter clung to his right arm, and an
older one to his left, when he rose from table to go with them to the
poultry-yard.
On the way thither a servant announced to him that the Lady Setchem
wished to see him.
"Take her to your mistress," he said.
But the slave--who held in his hand a handsome gift in money--explained
that the widow wished to speak with him alone.
"Can I never enjoy an hour's peace like other men?" exclaimed Ameni
annoyed. "Your mistress can receive her, and she can wait with her till
I come. It is true, girls--is it not?--that I belong to you just now,
and to the fowls, and ducks, and pigeons?"
His youngest daughter kissed him, the second patted him affectionately,
and they all three went gaily forward. An hour later he requested the
Lady Setchem to accompany him into the garden.
The poor, anxious, and frightened woman had resolved on this step with
much difficulty; tears filled her kind eyes, as she communicated her
troubles to the high-priest.
"Thou art a wise counsellor," she said, "and thou knowest well how my
son honors the Gods of the temple of Seti with gifts and offerings.
He will not listen to his mother, but thou hast influence with him. He
meditates frightful things, and if he cannot be terrified by threats of
punishment from the Immortals, he will raise his hand against Mena, and
perhaps--"
"Against the king," interrupted Ameni gravely. "I know it, and I will
speak to him."
"Thanks, oh a thousand thanks!" cried the widow, and she seized the
high-priests robe to kiss it. "It was thou who soon after his birth
didst tell my husband that he was born under a lucky star, and would
grow to be an honor and an ornament to his house and to his country. And
now--now he will ruin himself in this world, and the next."
"What I foretold of your son," said Ameni, "shall assuredly be
fulfilled, for the ways of the Gods are not as the ways of men."
"Thy words do me good!" cried Setchem. "None can tell what fearful
terror weighed upon my heart, when I made up my mind to come here. But
thou dost not yet know all. The great masts of cedar, which Paaker sent
from Lebanon to Thebes to bear our banners, and ornament our gateway,
were thrown to the ground at sunrise by the frightful wind."
"Thus shall your son's defiant spirit be broken," said Ameni; "But for
you, if you have patience, new joys shall arise."
"I thank thee again," said Setchem. "But something yet remains to be
said. I know that I am wasting the time that thou dost devote to thy
family, and I remember thy saying once that here in Thebes thou wert
like a pack-Horse with his load taken off, and free to wander over a
green meadow. I will not disturb thee much longer--but the Gods sent me
such a wonderful vision. Paaker would not listen to me, and I went back
into my room full of sorrow; and when at last, after the sun had risen,
I fell asleep for a few minutes, I dreamed I saw before me the poet
Pentaur, who is wonderfully like my dead husband in appearance and in
voice. Paaker went up to him, and abused him violently, and threatened
him with his fist; the priest raised his arms in prayer, just as I saw
him yesterday at the festival--but not in devotion, but to seize Paaker,
and wrestle with him. The struggle did not last long, for Paaker seemed
to shrink up, and lost his human form, and fell at the poet's feet--not
my son, but a shapeless lump of clay such as the potter uses to make
jars of."
"A strange dream!" exclaimed Ameni, not without agitation. "A very
strange dream, but it bodes you good. Clay, Setchem, is yielding, and
clearly indicates that which the Gods prepare for you. The Immortals
will give you a new and a better son instead of the old one, but it is
not revealed to me by what means. Go now, and sacrifice to the Gods, and
trust to the wisdom of those who guide the life of the universe, and of
all mortal creatures. Yet--I would give you one more word of advice. If
Paaker comes to you repentant, receive him kindly, and let me know; but
if he will not yield, close your rooms against him, and let him depart
without taking leave of you."
When Setchem, much encouraged, was gone away, Ameni said to himself:
"She will find splendid compensation for this coarse scoundrel, and
she shall not spoil the tool we need to strike our blow. I have often
doubted how far dreams do, indeed, foretell the future, but to-day my
faith in them is increased. Certainly a mother's heart sees farther than
that of any other human being."
At the door of her house Setchem came up with her son's chariot.
They saw each other, but both looked away, for they could not meet
affectionately, and would not meet coldly. As the horses outran the
litter-bearers, the mother and son looked round at each other, their
eyes met, and each felt a stab in the heart.
In the evening the pioneer, after he had had an interview with the
Regent, went to the temple of Seti to receive Ameni's blessing on all
his undertakings. Then, after sacrificing in the tomb of his ancestors,
he set out for Syria.
Just as he was getting into his chariot, news was brought him that the
mat-maker, who had sawn through the masts at the gate, had been caught.
"Put out his eyes!" he cried; and these were the last words he spoke as
he quitted his home.
Setchem looked after him for a long time; she had refused to bid him
farewell, and now she implored the Gods to turn his heart, and to
preserve him from malice and crime.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Three days had passed since the pioneer's departure, and although it was
still early, busy occupation was astir in Bent-Anat's work-rooms.
The ladies had passed the stormy night, which had succeeded the exciting
evening of the festival, without sleep.
Nefert felt tired and sleepy the next morning, and begged the princess
to introduce her to her new duties for the first time next day; but the
princess spoke to her encouragingly, told her that no man should put
off doing right till the morrow, and urged her to follow her into her
workshop.
"We must both come to different minds," said she. "I often shudder
involuntarily, and feel as if I bore a brand--as if I had a stain here
on my shoulder where it was touched by Paaker's rough hand."
The first day of labor gave Nefert a good many difficulties to overcome;
on the second day the work she had begun already had a charm for her,
and by the third she rejoiced in the little results of her care.
Bent-Anat had put her in the right place, for she had the direction of a
large number of young girls and women, the daughters, wives, and widows
of those Thebans who were at the war, or who had fallen in the field,
who sorted and arranged the healing herbs. Her helpers sat in little
circles on the ground; in the midst of each lay a great heap of fresh
and dry plants, and in front of each work-woman a number of parcels of
the selected roots, leaves, and flowers.
An old physician presided over the whole, and had shown Nefert the first
day the particular plants which he needed.
The wife of Mena, who was fond of flowers, had soon learnt them all, and
she taught willingly, for she loved children.
She soon had favorites among the children, and knew some as being
industrious and careful, others as idle and heedless:
"Ay! ay!" she exclaimed, bending over a little half-naked maiden with
great almond-shaped eyes. "You are mixing them all together. Your
father, as you tell me, is at the war. Suppose, now, an arrow were
to strike him, and this plant, which would hurt him, were laid on the
burning wound instead of this other, which would do him good--that would
be very sad."
The child nodded her head, and looked her work through again. Nefert
turned to a little idler, and said: "You are chattering again, and doing
nothing, and yet your father is in the field. If he were ill now, and
has no medicine, and if at night when he is asleep he dreams of you, and
sees you sitting idle, he may say to himself: 'Now I might get well, but
my little girl at home does not love me, for she would rather sit with
her hands in her lap than sort herbs for her sick father.'"
Then Nefert turned to a large group of the girls, who were sorting
plants, and said: "Do you, children, know the origin of all these
wholesome, healing herbs? The good Horus went out to fight against Seth,
the murderer of his father, and the horrible enemy wounded Horus in the
eye in the struggle; but the son of Osiris conquered, for good always
conquers evil. But when Isis saw the bad wound, she pressed her son's
head to her bosom, and her heart was as sad as that of any poor human
mother that holds her suffering child in her arms. And she thought: 'How
easy it is to give wounds, and how hard it is to heal them!' and so she
wept; one tear after another fell on the earth, and wherever they wetted
the ground there sprang up a kindly healing plant."
"Isis is good!" cried a little girl opposite to her. "Mother says Isis
loves children when they are good."
"Your mother is right," replied Nefert. "Isis herself has her dear
little son Horus; and every human being that dies, and that was good,
becomes a child again, and the Goddess makes it her own, and takes it to
her breast, and nurses it with her sister Nephthys till he grows up and
can fight for his father."
Nefert observed that while she spoke one of the women was crying. She
went up to her, and learned that her husband and her son were both dead,
the former in Syria, and the latter after his return to Egypt. "Poor
soul!" said Nefert. "Now you will be very careful, that the wounds of
others may be healed. I will tell you something more about Isis. She
loved her husband Osiris dearly, as you did your dead husband, and I my
husband Mena, but he fell a victim to the cunning of Seth, and she could
not tell where to find the body that had been carried away, while you
can visit your husband in his grave. Then Isis went through the land
lamenting, and ah! what was to become of Egypt, which received all its
fruitfulness from Osiris. The sacred Nile was dried up, and not a blade
of verdure was green on its banks. The Goddess grieved over this
beyond words, and one of her tears fell in the bed of the river, and
immediately it began to rise. You know, of course, that each inundation
arises from a tear of Isis. Thus a widow's sorrow may bring blessing to
millions of human beings."
The woman had listened to her attentively, and when Nefert ceased
speaking she said:
"But I have still three little brats of my son's to feed, for his wife,
who was a washerwoman, was eaten by a crocodile while she was at work.
Poor folks must work for themselves, and not for others. If the princess
did not pay us, I could not think of the wounds of the soldiers, who do
not belong to me. I am no longer strong, and four mouths to fill--"
Nefert was shocked--as she often was in the course of her new
duties--and begged Bent-Gnat to raise the wages of the woman.
"Willingly," said the princess. "How could I beat down such an
assistant. Come now with me into the kitchen. I am having some fruit
packed for my father and brothers; there must be a box for Mena too."
Nefert followed her royal friend, found them packing in one case the
golden dates of the oasis of Amon, and in another the dark dates of
Nubia, the king's favorite sort. "Let me pack them!" cried Nefert;
she made the servants empty the box again, and re-arranged the
various-colored dates in graceful patterns, with other fruits preserved
in sugar.
Bent-Anat looked on, and when she had finished she took her hand.
"Whatever your fingers have touched," she exclaimed, "takes some pretty
aspect. Give me that scrap of papyrus; I shall put it in the case, and
write upon it:
"'These were packed for king Rameses by his daughter's clever helpmate,
the wife of Mena.'"
After the mid-day rest the princess was called away, and Nefert remained
for some hours alone with the work-women.
When the sun went down, and the busy crowd were about to leave, Nefert
detained them, and said: "The Sun-bark is sinking behind the western
hills; come, let us pray together for the king and for those we love in
the field. Each of you think of her own: you children of your fathers,
you women of your sons, and we wives of our distant husbands, and let us
entreat Amon that they may return to us as certainly as the sun, which
now leaves us, will rise again to-morrow morning."
Nefert knelt down, and with her the women and the children.
When they rose, a little girl went up to Nefert, and said, pulling her
dress: "Thou madest us kneel here yesterday, and already my mother is
better, because I prayed for her."
"No doubt," said Nefert, stroking the child's black hair.
She found Bent-Anat on the terrace meditatively gazing across to the
Necropolis, which was fading into darkness before her eyes. She started
when she heard the light footsteps of her friend.
"I am disturbing thee," said Nefert, about to retire.
"No, stay," said Bent-Anat. "I thank the Gods that I have you, for my
heart is sad--pitifully sad."
"I know where your thoughts were," said Nefert softly. "Well?" asked the
princess.
"With Pentaur."
"I think of him--always of him," replied the princess, "and nothing else
occupies my heart. I am no longer myself. What I think I ought not to
think, what I feel I ought not to feel, and yet, I cannot command it,
and I think my heart would bleed to death if I tried to cut out those
thoughts and feelings. I have behaved strangely, nay unbecomingly,
and now that which is hard to endure is hanging over me, something
strange-which will perhaps drive you from me back to your mother."
"I will share everything with you," cried Nefert. "What is going to
happen? Are you then no longer the daughter of Rameses?"
"I showed myself to the people as a woman of the people," answered
Bent-Anat, "and I must take the consequences. Bek en Chunsu,
the high-priest of Amon, has been with me, and I have had a long
conversation with him. The worthy man is good to me, I know, and my
father ordered me to follow his advice before any one's. He showed me
that I have erred deeply. In a state of uncleanness I went into one
of the temples of the Necropolis, and after I had once been into the
paraschites' house and incurred Ameni's displeasure, I did it a second
time. They know over there all that took place at the festival. Now I
must undergo purification, either with great solemnity at the hands of
Ameni himself, before all the priests and nobles in the House of
Seti, or by performing a pilgrimage to the Emerald-Hathor, under whose
influence the precious stones are hewn from the rocks, metals dug out,
and purified by fire. The Goddess shall purge me from my uncleanness
as metal is purged from the dross. At a day's journey and more from the
mines, an abundant stream flows from 'the holy mountain-Sinai,' as it is
called by the Mentut--and near it stands the sanctuary of the Goddess,
in which priests grant purification. The journey is a long one, through
the desert, and over the sea; But Bek en Chunsu advises me to venture
it. Ameni, he says, is not amiably disposed towards me, because I
infringed the ordinance which he values above all others. I must submit
to double severity, he says, because the people look first to those of
the highest rank; and if I went unpunished for contempt of the sacred
institutions there might be imitators among the crowd. He speaks in the
name of the Gods, and they measure hearts with an equal measure. The
ell-measure is the symbol of the Goddess of Truth. I feel that it is all
not unjust; and yet I find it hard to submit to the priest's decree, for
I am the daughter of Rameses!"
"Aye, indeed!" exclaimed Nefert, "and he is himself a God!"
"But he taught me to respect the laws!" interrupted the princess. "I
discussed another thing with Bek en Chunsu. You know I rejected the suit
of the Regent. He must secretly be much vexed with me. That indeed would
not alarm me, but he is the guardian and protector appointed over me
by my father, and yet can I turn to him in confidence for counsel,
and help? No! I am still a woman, and Rameses' daughter! Sooner will I
travel through a thousand deserts than humiliate my father through his
child. By to-morrow I shall have decided; but, indeed, I have already
decided to make the journey, hard as it is to leave much that is here.
Do not fear, dear! but you are too tender for such a journey, and to
such a distance; I might--"
"No, no," cried Nefert. "I am going, too, if you were going to the four
pillars of heaven, at the limits of the earth. You have given me a new
life, and the little sprout that is green within me would wither again
if I had to return to my mother. Only she or I can be in our house, and
I will re-enter it only with Mena."
"It is settled--I must go," said the princess. "Oh! if only my father
were not so far off, and that I could consult him!"
"Yes! the war, and always the war!" sighed Nefert. "Why do not men rest
content with what they have, and prefer the quiet peace, which makes
life lovely, to idle fame?"
"Would they be men? should we love them?" cried Bent-Anat eagerly. "Is
not the mind of the Gods, too, bent on war? Did you ever see a more
sublime sight than Pentaur, on that evening when he brandished the stake
he had pulled up, and exposed his life to protect an innocent girl who
was in danger?"
"I dared not once look down into the court," said Nefert. "I was in such
an agony of mind. But his loud cry still rings in my ears."
"So rings the war cry of heroes before whom the enemy quails!" exclaimed
Bent-Anat.
"Aye, truly so rings the war cry!" said prince Rameri, who had entered
his sister's half-dark room unperceived by the two women.
The princess turned to the boy. "How you frightened me!" she said.
"You!" said Rameri astonished.
"Yes, me. I used to have a stout heart, but since that evening I
frequently tremble, and an agony of terror comes over me, I do not know
why. I believe some demon commands me."
"You command, wherever you go; and no one commands you," cried Rameri.
"The excitement and tumult in the valley, and on the quay, still agitate
you. I grind my teeth myself when I remember how they turned me out
of the school, and how Paaker set the dog at us. I have gone through a
great deal today too."
"Where were you so long?" asked Bent-Anat. "My uncle Ani commanded that
you should not leave the palace."
"I shall be eighteen years old next month," said the prince, "and need
no tutor."
"But your father--" said Bent-Anat.
"My father"--interrupted the boy, "he little knows the Regent. But I
shall write to him what I have today heard said by different people.
They were to have sworn allegiance to Ani at that very feast in the
valley, and it is quite openly said that Ani is aiming at the throne,
and intends to depose the king. You are right, it is madness--but there
must be something behind it all."
Nefert turned pale, and Bent-Anat asked for particulars. The prince
repeated all he had gathered, and added laughing: "Ani depose my father!
It is as if I tried to snatch the star of Isis from the sky to light the
lamps--which are much wanted here."
"It is more comfortable in the dark," said Nefert. "No, let us have
lights," said Bent-Anat. "It is better to talk when we can see each
other face to face. I have no belief in the foolish talk of the people;
but you are right--we must bring it to my fathers knowledge."
"I heard the wildest gossip in the City of the Dead," said Rameri.
"You ventured over there? How very wrong!"
"I disguised myself a little, and I have good news for you. Pretty Uarda
is much better. She received your present, and they have a house of
their own again. Close to the one that was burnt down, there was a
tumbled-down hovel, which her father soon put together again; he is a
bearded soldier, who is as much like her as a hedgehog is like a white
dove. I offered her to work in the palace for you with the other girls,
for good wages, but she would not; for she has to wait on her sick
grandmother, and she is proud, and will not serve any one."
"It seems you were a long time with the paraschites' people," said
Bent-Anat reprovingly. "I should have thought that what has happened to
me might have served you as a warning."
"I will not be better than you!" cried the boy. "Besides, the
paraschites is dead, and Uarda's father is a respectable soldier, who
can defile no one. I kept a long way from the old woman. To-morrow I am
going again. I promised her."
"Promised who?" asked his sister.
"Who but Uarda? She loves flowers, and since the rose which you gave
her she has not seen one. I have ordered the gardener to cut me a basket
full of roses to-morrow morning, and shall take them to her myself."
"That you will not!" cried Bent-Anat. "You are still but half a
child--and, for the girl's sake too, you must give it up."
"We only gossip together," said the prince coloring, "and no one shall
recognize me. But certainly, if you mean that, I will leave the basket
of roses, and go to her alone. No--sister, I will not be forbidden this;
she is so charming, so white, so gentle, and her voice is so soft and
sweet! And she has little feet, as small as--what shall I say?--as small
and graceful as Nefert's hand. We talked most about Pentaur. She knows
his father, who is a gardener, and knows a great deal about him. Only
think! she says the poet cannot be the son of his parents, but a good
spirit that has come down on earth--perhaps a God. At first she was very
timid, but when I spoke of Pentaur she grew eager; her reverence for him
is almost idolatry--and that vexed me."
"You would rather she should reverence you so," said Nefert smiling.
"Not at all," cried Rameri. "But I helped to save her, and I am so happy
when I am sitting with her, that to-morrow, I am resolved, I will put
a flower in her hair. It is red certainly, but as thick as yours,
Bent-Anat, and it must be delightful to unfasten it and stroke it."
The ladies exchanged a glance of intelligence, and the princess said
decidedly:
"You will not go to the City of the Dead to-morrow, my little son!"
"That we will see, my little mother!" He answered laughing; then he
turned grave.
"I saw my school-friend Anana too," he said. "Injustice reigns in the
House of Seti! Pentaur is in prison, and yesterday evening they sat in
judgment upon him. My uncle was present, and would have pounced upon the
poet, but Ameni took him under his protection. What was finally decided,
the pupils could not learn, but it must have been something bad, for
the son of the Treasurer heard Ameni saying, after the sitting, to old
Gagabu: 'Punishment he deserves, but I will not let him be overwhelmed;'
and he can have meant no one but Pentaur. To-morrow I will go over,
and learn more; something frightful, I am afraid--several years of
imprisonment is the least that will happen to him."
Bent-Anat had turned very pale.
"And whatever they do to him," she cried, "he will suffer for my sake!
Oh, ye omnipotent Gods, help him--help me, be merciful to us both!"
She covered her face with her hands, and left the room. Rameri asked
Nefert:
"What can have come to my sister? she seems quite strange to me; and you
too are not the same as you used to be."
"We both have to find our way in new circumstances."
"What are they?"
"That I cannot explain to you!--but it appears to me that you soon may
experience something of the same kind. Rumeri, do not go again to the
paraschites."
CHAPTER XXXII.
Early on the following clay the dwarf Nemu went past the restored hut of
Uarda's father--in which he had formerly lived with his wife--with a
man in a long coarse robe, the steward of some noble family. They went
towards old Hekt's cave-dwelling.
"I would beg thee to wait down here a moment, noble lord," said the
dwarf, "while I announce thee to my mother."
"That sounds very grand," said the other. "However, so be it. But stay!
The old woman is not to call me by my name or by my title. She is to
call me 'steward'--that no one may know. But, indeed, no one would
recognize me in this dress."
Nemu hastened to the cave, but before he reached his mother she called
out: "Do not keep my lord waiting--I know him well."
Nemu laid his finger to his lips.
"You are to call him steward," said he. "Good," muttered the old woman. "The ostrich puts his head under his feathers when he does not want to be seen." |
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