"But how can he when he too is so near his end. They will let me rot and
disappear, and there will be no future for me, no meeting with Assa."
The old woman remained silent for a long time; at last she murmured
hoarsely with her eyes fixed on the ground:
"Death brings release, if only from the torment of remembrance. But
there is a life beyond the grave. I do not, I will not cease to hope.
The dead shall all be equally judged, and subject to the inscrutable
decrees.--Where shall I find him? Among the blest, or among the damned?
And I? It matters not! The deeper the abyss into which they fling me
the better. Can Assa, if he is among the blest, remain in bliss, when he
sees to what he has brought me? Oh! they must embalm me--I cannot bear
to vanish, and rot and evaporate into nothingness!"
While she was still speaking, the dwarf Nemu had come into the tent;
Scherau, seeing the old woman senseless, had run to tell him that his
mother was lying on the earth with her eyes shut, and was dying. The
witch perceived the little man.
"It is well," she said, "that you have come; I shall be dead before
sunrise."
"Mother!" cried the dwarf horrified, "you shall live, and live better
than you have done till now! Great things are happening, and for us!"
"I know, I know," said Hekt. "Go away, Scherau--now, Nemu, whisper in
my ear what is doing?" The dwarf felt as if he could not avoid the
influence of her eye, he went up to her, and said softly--"The pavilion,
in which the king and his people are sleeping, is constructed of wood;
straw and pitch are built into the walls, and laid under the boards. As
soon as they are gone to rest we shall set the tinder thing on fire. The
guards are drunk and sleeping."
"Well thought of," said Hekt. "Did you plan it?" "I and my mistress,"
said the dwarf not without pride. "You can devise a plot," said the old
woman, "but you are feeble in the working out. Is your plan a secret?
Have you clever assistants?"
"No one knows of it," replied the dwarf, "but Katuti, Paaker, and I; we
three shall lay the brands to the spots we have fixed upon. I am going
to the rooms of Bent-Anat; Katuti, who can go in and out as she pleases,
will set fire to the stairs, which lead to the upper story, and which
fall by touching a spring; and Paaker to the king's apartments."
"Good-good, it may succeed," gasped the old woman. "But what was the
scream in your tent?" The dwarf seemed doubtful about answering; but
Hekt went on:
"Speak without fear--the dead are sure to be silent." The dwarf,
trembling with agitation, shook off his hesitation, and said:
"I have found Uarda, the grandchild of Pinem, who had disappeared, and I
decoyed her here, for she and no other shall be my wife, if Ani is
king, and if Katuti makes me rich and free. She is in the service of
the Princess Bent-Anat, and sleeps in her anteroom, and she must not be
burnt with her mistress. She insisted on going back to the palace, so,
as she would fly to the fire like a gnat, and I would not have her risk
being burnt, I tied her up fast."
"Did she not struggle?" said Hekt.
"Like a mad thing," said the dwarf. "But the Regent's dumb slave, who
was ordered by his master to obey me in everything to-day, helped me. We
tied up her mouth that she might not be heard screaming!"
"Will you leave her alone when you go to do your errand?"
"Her father is with her!"
"Kaschta, the red-beard?" asked the old woman in surprise. "And did he
not break you in pieces like an earthenware pot?"
"He will not stir," said Nemu laughing. "For when I found him, I made
him so drunk with Ani's old wine that he lies there like a mummy. It was
from him that I learned where Uarda was, and I went to her, and got her
to come with me by telling her that her father was very ill, and begged
her to go to see him once more. She flew after me like a gazelle, and
when she saw the soldier lying there senseless she threw herself upon
him, and called for water to cool his head, for he was raving in his
dreams of rats and mice that had fallen upon him. As it grew late she
wanted to return to her mistress, and we were obliged to prevent her.
How handsome she has grown, mother; you cannot imagine how pretty she
is."
"Aye, aye!" said Hekt. "You will have to keep an eye upon her when she
is your wife."
"I will treat her like the wife of a noble," said Nemu. "And pay a
real lady to guard her. But by this time Katuti has brought home her
daughter, Mena's wife; the stars are sinking and--there--that was the
first signal. When Katuti whistles the third time we are to go to work.
Lend me your fire-box, mother."
"Take it," said Hekt. "I shall never need it again. It is all over with
me! How your hand shakes! Hold the wood firmly, or you will drop it
before you have brought the fire."
The dwarf bid the old woman farewell, and she let him kiss her without
moving. When he was gone, she listened eagerly for any sound that might
pierce the silence of the night, her eyes shone with a keen light, and
a thousand thoughts flew through her restless brain. When she heard the
second signal on Katuti's silver whistle, she sat upright and muttered:
"That gallows-bird Paaker, his vain aunt and that villain Ani, are no
match for Rameses, even when he is asleep. Ani's hawk is dead; he has
nothing to hope for from Fortune, and I nothing to hope for from him.
But if Rameses--if the real king would promise me--then my poor old
body--Yes, that is the thing, that is what I will do."
She painfully raised herself on her feet with the help of her stick, she
found a knife and a small flask which she slipped into her dress, and
then, bent and trembling, with a last effort of her remaining strength
she dragged herself as far as Nemu's tent. Here she found Uarda bound
hand and foot, and Kaschta lying on the ground in a heavy drunken
slumber.
The girl shrank together in alarm when she saw the old woman, and
Scherau, who crouched at her side, raised his hands imploringly to the
witch.
"Take this knife, boy," she said to the little one. "Cut the ropes the
poor thing is tied with. The papyrus cords are strong, saw them with the
blade."
[Papyrus was used not only for writing on, but also for ropes. The
bridge of boats on which Xerxes crossed the Hellespont was fastened
with cables of papyrus.]
While the boy eagerly followed her instructions with all his little
might, she rubbed the soldier's temples with an essence which she had in
the bottle, and poured a few drops of it between his lips. Kaschta came
to himself, stretched his limbs, and stared in astonishment at the place
in which he found himself. She gave him some water, and desired him to
drink it, saying, as Uarda shook herself free from the bonds:
"The Gods have predestined you to great things, you white maiden. Listen
to what I, old Hekt, am telling you. The king's life is threatened,
his and his children's; I purpose to save them, and I ask no reward but
this-that he should have my body embalmed and interred at Thebes. Swear
to me that you will require this of him when you have saved him."
"In God's name what is happening?" cried Uarda. "Swear that you will
provide for my burial," said the old woman.
"I swear it!" cried the girl. "But for God's sake--"
"Katuti, Paaker, and Nemu are gone to set fire to the palace when
Rameses is sleeping, in three places. Do you hear, Kaschta! Now hasten,
fly after the incendiaries, rouse the servants, and try to rescue the
king."
"Oh fly, father," cried the girl, and they both rushed away in the
darkness.
"She is honest and will keep her word," muttered Hekt, and she tried to
drag herself back to her own tent; but her strength failed her half-way.
Little Scherau tried to support her, but he was too weak; she sank down
on the sand, and looked out into the distance. There she saw the dark
mass of the palace, from which rose a light that grew broader and
broader, then clouds of black smoke, then up flew the soaring flame, and
a swarm of glowing sparks.
"Run into the camp, child," she cried, "cry fire, and wake the
sleepers."
Scherau ran off shouting as loud as he could.
The old woman pressed her hand to her side, she muttered: "There it is
again."
"In the other world--Assa--Assa," and her trembling lips were silent for
ever.
CHAPTER XLIII.
Katuti had kept her unfortunate nephew Paaker concealed in one of her
servants' tents. He had escaped wounded from the battle at Kadesh, and
in terrible pain he had succeeded, by the help of an ass which he had
purchased from a peasant, in reaching by paths known to hardly any one
but himself, the cave where he had previously left his brother. Here he
found his faithful Ethiopian slave, who nursed him till he was strong
enough to set out on his journey to Egypt. He reached Pelusium, after
many privations, disguised as an Ismaelite camel-driver; he left his
servant, who might have betrayed him, behind in the cave.
Before he was permitted to pass the fortifications, which lay across the
isthmus which parts the Mediterranean from the Red Sea, and which were
intended to protect Egypt from the incursions of the nomad tribes of
the Chasu, he was subjected to a strict interrogatory, and among other
questions was asked whether he had nowhere met with the traitor Paaker,
who was minutely described to him. No one recognized in the shrunken,
grey-haired, one-eyed camel-driver, the broad-shouldered, muscular
and thick-legged pioneer. To disguise himself the more effectually,
he procured some hair-dye--a cosmetic known in all ages--and blackened
himself.
[In my papyrus there are several recipes for the preparation of
hair-dye; one is ascribed to the Lady Schesch, the mother of Teta,
wife of the first king of Egypt. The earliest of all the recipes
preserved to us is a prescription for dyeing the hair.]
Katuti had arrived at Pelusium with Ani some time before, to superintend
the construction of the royal pavilion. He ventured to approach her
disguised as a negro beggar, with a palm-branch in his hand. She gave
him some money and questioned him concerning his native country, for she
made it her business to secure the favor even of the meanest; but though
she appeared to take an interest in his answers, she did not recognize
him; now for the first time he felt secure, and the next day he went up
to her again, and told her who he was.
The widow was not unmoved by the frightful alteration in her nephew, and
although she knew that even Ani had decreed that any intercourse with
the traitor was to be punished by death, she took him at once into
her service, for she had never had greater need than now to employ the
desperate enemy of the king and of her son-in-law.
The mutilated, despised, and hunted man kept himself far from the other
servants, regarding the meaner folk with undiminished scorn. He thought
seldom, and only vaguely of Katuti's daughter, for love had quite given
place to hatred, and only one thing now seemed to him worth living
for--the hope of working with others to cause his enemies' downfall,
and of being the instrument of their death; so he offered himself to the
widow a willing and welcome tool, and the dull flash in his uninjured
eye when she set him the task of setting fire to the king's apartments,
showed her that in the Mohar she had found an ally she might depend on
to the uttermost.
Paaker had carefully examined the scene of his exploit before the king's
arrival. Under the windows of the king's rooms, at least forty feet from
the ground, was a narrow parapet resting on the ends of the beams which
supported the rafters on which lay the floor of the upper story in which
the king slept. These rafters had been smeared with pitch, and straw had
been laid between them, and the pioneer would have known how to find the
opening where he was to put in the brand even if he had been blind of
both eyes.
When Katuti first sounded her whistle he slunk to his post; he was
challenged by no watchman, for the few guards who had been placed in
the immediate vicinity of the pavilion, had all gone to sleep under the
influence of the Regent's wine. Paaker climbed up to about the height
of two men from the ground by the help of the ornamental carving on
the outside wall of the palace; there a rope ladder was attached, he
clambered up this, and soon stood on the parapet, above which were the
windows of the king's rooms, and below which the fire was to be laid.
Rameses' room was brightly illuminated. Paaker could see into it without
being seen, and could bear every word that was spoken within. The king
was sitting in an arm-chair, and looked thoughtfully at the ground;
before him stood the Regent, and Mena stood by his couch, holding in his
hand the king's sleeping-robe.
Presently Rameses raised his head, and said, as he offered his hand with
frank affection to Ani:
"Let me bring this glorious day to a worthy end, cousin. I have found
you my true and faithful friend, and I had been in danger of believing
those over-anxious counsellors who spoke evil of you. I am never prone
to distrust, but a number of things occurred together that clouded my
judgment, and I did you injustice. I am sorry, sincerely sorry; nor am I
ashamed to apologize to you for having for an instant doubted your good
intentions. You are my good friend--and I will prove to you that I am
yours. There is my hand-take it; and all Egypt shall know that Rameses
trusts no man more implicitly than his Regent Ani. I will ask you to
undertake to be my guard of honor to-night--we will share this room.
I sleep here; when I lie down on my couch take your place on the divan
yonder." Ani had taken Rameses' offered hand, but now he turned pale as
he looked down. Paaker could see straight into his face, and it was not
without difficulty that he suppressed a scornful laugh.
Rameses did not observe the Regent's dismay, for he had signed to Mena
to come closer to him.
"Before I sleep," said the king, "I will bring matters to an end with
you too. You have put your wife's constancy to a severe test, and she
has trusted you with a childlike simplicity that is often wiser than
the arguments of sages, because she loved you honestly, and is herself
incapable of guile. I promised you that I would grant you a wish if your
faith in her was justified. Now tell me what is your will?"
Mena fell on his knees, and covered the king's robe with kisses.
"Pardon!" he exclaimed. "Nothing but pardon. My crime was a heavy one,
I know; but I was driven to it by scorn and fury--it was as if I saw the
dishonoring hand of Paaker stretched out to seize my innocent wife, who,
as I now know, loathes him as a toad--"
"What was that?" exclaimed the king. "I thought I heard a groan
outside."
He went up to the window and looked out, but he did not see the pioneer,
who watched every motion of the king, and who, as soon as he perceived
that his involuntary sigh of anguish had been heard, stretched himself
close under the balustrade. Mena had not risen from his knees when the
king once more turned to him.
"Pardon me," he said again. "Let me be near thee again as before,
and drive thy chariot. I live only through thee, I am of no worth but
through thee, and by thy favor, my king, my lord, my father!"
Rameses signed to his favorite to rise. "Your request was granted," said
he, "before you made it. I am still in your debt on your fair wife's
account. Thank Nefert--not me, and let us give thanks to the Immortals
this day with especial fervor. What has it not brought forth for us! It
has restored to me you two friends, whom I regarded as lost to me, and
has given me in Pentaur another son."
A low whistle sounded through the night air; it was Katuti's last
signal.
Paaker blew up the tinder, laid it in the bole under the parapet, and
then, unmindful of his own danger, raised himself to listen for any
further words.
"I entreat thee," said the Regent, approaching Rameses, "to excuse me.
I fully appreciate thy favors, but the labors of the last few days have
been too much for me; I can hardly stand on my feet, and the guard of
honor--"
"Mena will watch," said the king. "Sleep in all security, cousin. I will
have it known to all men that I have put away from me all distrust of
you. Give the my night-robe, Mena. Nay-one thing more I must tell you.
Youth smiles on the young, Ani. Bent-Anat has chosen a worthy husband,
my preserver, the poet Pentaur. He was said to be a man of humble
origin, the son of a gardener of the House of Seti; and now what do I
learn through Ameni? He is the true son of the dead Mohar, and the foul
traitor Paaker is the gardener's son. A witch in the Necropolis changed
the children. That is the best news of all that has reached me on this
propitious day, for the Mohar's widow, the noble Setchem, has been
brought here, and I should have been obliged to choose between two
sentences on her as the mother of the villain who has escaped us. Either
I must have sent her to the quarries, or have had her beheaded before
all the people--In the name of the Gods, what is that?"
They heard a loud cry in a man's voice, and at the same instant a noise
as if some heavy mass had fallen to the ground from a great height.
Rameses and Mena hastened to the window, but started back, for they were
met by a cloud of smoke.
"Call the watch!" cried the king.
"Go, you," exclaimed Mena to Ani. "I will not leave the king again in
danger."
Ani fled away like an escaped prisoner, but he could not get far, for,
before he could descend the stairs to the lower story, they fell in
before his very eyes; Katuti, after she had set fire to the interior of
the palace, had made them fall by one blow of a hammer. Ani saw her robe
as she herself fled, clenched his fist with rage as he shouted her name,
and then, not knowing what he did, rushed headlong through the corridor
into which the different royal apartments opened.
The fearful crash of the falling stairs brought the King and Mena also
out of the sleeping-room.
"There lie the stairs! that is serious!" said the king cooly; then he
went back into his room, and looked out of a window to estimate the
danger. Bright flames were already bursting from the northern end of the
palace, and gave the grey dawn the brightness of day; the southern wing
or the pavilion was not yet on fire. Mena observed the parapet from
which Paaker had fallen to the ground, tested its strength, and found
it firm enough to bear several persons. He looked round, particularly at
the wing not yet gained by the flames, and exclaimed in a loud voice:
"The fire is intentional! it is done on purpose. See there! a man is
squatting down and pushing a brand into the woodwork."
He leaped back into the room, which was now filling with smoke, snatched
the king's bow and quiver, which he himself had hung up at the bed-head,
took careful aim, and with one cry the incendiary fell dead.
A few hours later the dwarf Nemu was found with the charioteer's arrow
through his heart. After setting fire to Bent-Anat's rooms, he had
determined to lay a brand to the wing of the palace where, with the
other princes, Uarda's friend Rameri was sleeping.
Mena had again leaped out of window, and was estimating the height of
the leap to the ground; the Pharaoh's room was getting more and more
filled with smoke, and flames began to break through the seams of the
boards. Outside the palace as well as within every one was waking up to
terror and excitement.
"Fire! fire! an incendiary! Help! Save the king!" cried Kaschta, who
rushed on, followed by a crowd of guards whom he had roused; Uarda had
flown to call Bent-Anat, as she knew the way to her room. The king had
got on to the parapet outside the window with Mena, and was calling to
the soldiers.
"Half of you get into the house, and first save the princess; the other
half keep the fire from catching the south wing. I will try to get
there."
But Nemu's brand had been effectual, the flames flared up, and the
soldiers strained every nerve to conquer them. Their cries mingled with
the crackling and snapping of the dry wood, and the roar of the flames,
with the trumpet calls of the awakening troops, and the beating of
drums. The young princes appeared at a window; they had tied their
clothes together to form a rope, and one by one escaped down it.
Rameses called to them with words of encouragement, but he himself was
unable to take any means of escape, for though the parapet on which he
stood was tolerably wide, and ran round the whole of the building, at
about every six feet it was broken by spaces of about ten paces. The
fire was spreading and growing, and glowing sparks flew round him and
his companion like chaff from the winnowing fan.
"Bring some straw and make a heap below!" shouted Rameses, above the
roar of the conflagration. "There is no escape but by a leap down."
The flames rushed out of the windows of the king's room; it was
impossible to return to it, but neither the king nor Mena lost his
self-possession. When Mena saw the twelve princes descending to the
ground, he shouted through his hands, using them as a speaking trumpet,
and called to Rameri, who was about to slip down the rope they had
contrived, the last of them all.
"Pull up the rope, and keep it from injury till I come."
Rameri obeyed the order, and before Rameses could interfere, Mena had
sprung across the space which divided one piece of the balustrade from
another. The king's blood ran cold as Mena, a second time, ventured the
frightful leap; one false step, and he must meet with the same fearful
death as his enemy Paaker.
While the bystanders watched him in breathless silence--while the
crackling of the wood, the roar of the flames, and the dull thump of
falling timber mingled with the distant chant of a procession of priests
who were now approaching the burning pile, Nefert roused by little
Scherau knelt on the bare ground in fervent and passionate prayer to the
saving Gods. She watched every movement of her husband, and she bit her
lips till they bled not to cry out. She felt that he was acting bravely
and nobly, and that he was lost if even for an instant his attention
were distracted from his perilous footing. Now he had reached Rameri,
and bound one end of the rope made out of cloaks and handkerchiefs,
round his body; then he gave the other end to Rameri, who held fast to
the window-sill, and prepared once more to spring. Nefert saw him ready
to leap, she pressed her hands upon her lips to repress a scream, she
shut her eyes, and when she opened them again he had accomplished the
first leap, and at the second the Gods preserved him from falling; at
the third the king held out his hand to him, and saved him from a fall.
Then Rameses helped him to unfasten the rope from round his waist to
fasten it to the end of a beam.
Rameri now loosened the other end, and followed Mena's example; he too,
practised in athletic exercises in the school of the House of Seti,
succeeded in accomplishing the three tremendous leaps, and soon the king
stood in safety on the ground. Rameri followed him, and then Mena, whose
faithful wife went to meet him, and wiped the sweat from his throbbing
temples.
Rameses hurried to the north wing, where Bent-Anat had her apartments;
he found her safe indeed, but wringing her hands, for her young favorite
Uarda had disappeared in the flames after she had roused her and saved
her with her father's assistance. Kaschta ran up and down in front of
the burning pavilion, tearing his hair; now calling his child in tones
of anguish, now holding his breath to listen for an answer. To rush at
random into the immense-burning building would have been madness. The
king observed the unhappy man, and set him to lead the soldiers, whom he
had commanded to hew down the wall of Bent-Anat's rooms, so as to rescue
the girl who might be within. Kaschta seized an axe, and raised it to
strike.
But he thought that he heard blows from within against one of the
shutters of the ground-floor, which by Katuti's orders had been securely
closed; he followed the sound--he was not mistaken, the knocking could
be distinctly heard.
With all his might he struck the edge of the axe between the shutter and
the wall, and a stream of smoke poured out of the new outlet, and before
him, enveloped in its black clouds, stood a staggering man who held
Uarda in his arms. Kaschta sprang forward into the midst of the smoke
and sparks, and snatched his daughter from the arms of her preserver,
who fell half smothered on his knees. He rushed out into the air with
his light and precious burden, and as he pressed his lips to her closed
eyelids his eyes were wet, and there rose up before him the image of
the woman who bore her, the wife that had stood as the solitary
green palm-tree in the desert waste of his life. But only for a few
seconds-Bent-Anat herself took Uarda into her care, and he hastened back
to the burning house.
He had recognized his daughter's preserver; it was the physician
Nebsecht, who had not quitted the princess since their meeting on Sinai,
and had found a place among her suite as her personal physician.
The fresh air had rushed into the room through the opening of the
shutter, the broad flames streamed out of the window, but still Nebsecht
was alive, for his groans could be heard through the smoke. Once more
Kaschta rushed towards the window, the bystanders could see that the
ceiling of the room was about to fail, and called out to warn him, but
he was already astride the sill.
"I signed myself his slave with my blood," he cried, "Twice he has
saved my child, and now I will pay my debt," and he disappeared into the
burning room.
He soon reappeared with Nebsecht in his arms, whose robe was already
scorched by the flames. He could be seen approaching the window with his
heavy burden; a hundred soldiers, and with them Pentaur, pressed
forward to help him, and took the senseless leech out of the arms of the
soldier, who lifted him over the window sill.
Kaschta was on the point of following him, but before he could swing
himself over, the beams above gave way and fell, burying the brave son
of the paraschites.
Pentaur had his insensible friend carried to his tent, and helped the
physicians to bind up his burns. When the cry of fire had been
first raised, Pentaur was sitting in earnest conversation with the
high-priest; he had learned that he was not the son of a gardener, but
a descendant of one of the noblest families in the land. The foundations
of life seemed to be subverted under his feet, Ameni's revelation lifted
him out of the dust and set him on the marble floor of a palace; and yet
Pentaur was neither excessively surprised nor inordinately rejoiced;
he was so well used to find his joys and sufferings depend on the man
within him, and not on the circumstances without.
As soon as he heard the cry of fire, he hastened to the burning
pavilion, and when he saw the king's danger, he set himself at the head
of a number of soldiers who had hurried up from the camp, intending to
venture an attempt to save Rameses from the inside of the house. Among
those who followed him in this hopeless effort was Katuti's reckless
son, who had distinguished himself by his valor before Kadesh, and who
hailed this opportunity of again proving his courage. Falling walls
choked up the way in front of these brave adventurers; but it was not
till several had fallen choked or struck down by burning logs, that
they made up their minds to retire--one of the first that was killed was
Katuti's son, Nefert's brother.
Uarda had been carried into the nearest tent. Her pretty head lay in
Bent-Anat's lap, and Nefert tried to restore her to animation by rubbing
her temples with strong essences. Presently the girl's lips moved: with
returning consciousness all she had seen and suffered during the last
hour or two recurred to her mind; she felt herself rushing through the
camp with her father, hurrying through the corridor to the princess's
rooms, while he broke in the doors closed by Katuti's orders; she saw
Bent-Anat as she roused her, and conducted her to safety; she remembered
her horror when, just as she reached the door, she discovered that she
had left in her chest her jewel, the only relic of her lost mother, and
her rapid return which was observed by no one but by the leech Nebsecht.
Again she seemed to live through the anguish she had felt till she once
more had the trinket safe in her bosom, the horror that fell upon her
when she found her escape impeded by smoke and flames, and the weakness
which overcame her; and she felt as if the strange white-robed priest
once more raised her in his arms. She remembered the tenderness of his
eyes as he looked into hers, and she smiled half gratefully but half
displeased at the tender kiss which had been pressed on her lips before
she found herself in her father's strong arms.
"How sweet she is!" said Bent-Anat. "I believe poor Nebsecht is right
in saying that her mother was the daughter of some great man among the
foreign people. Look what pretty little hands and feet, and her skin is
as clear as Phoenician glass."
CHAPTER XLIV.
While the friends were occupied in restoring Uarda to animation, and in
taking affectionate care of her, Katuti was walking restlessly backwards
and forwards in her tent.
Soon after she had slipped out for the purpose of setting fire to
the palace, Scherau's cry had waked up Nefert, and Katuti found her
daughter's bed empty when, with blackened hands and limbs trembling with
agitation, she came back from her criminal task.
Now she waited in vain for Nemu and Paaker.
Her steward, whom she sent on repeated messages of enquiry whether the
Regent had returned, constantly brought back a negative answer, and
added the information that he had found the body of old Hekt lying on
the open ground. The widow's heart sank with fear; she was full of dark
forebodings while she listened to the shouts of the people engaged
in putting out the fire, the roll of drums, and the trumpets of the
soldiers calling each other to the help of the king.
To these sounds now was added the dull crash of falling timbers and
walls.
A faint smile played upon her thin lips, and she thought to herself:
"There--that perhaps fell on the king, and my precious son-in-law, who
does not deserve such a fate--if we had not fallen into disgrace, and
if since the occurrences before Kadesh he did not cling to his indulgent
lord as a calf follows a cow."
She gathered fresh courage, and fancied she could hear the voice of
Ethiopian troops hailing the Regent as king--could see Ani decorated
with the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, seated on Rameses' throne, and
herself by his side in rich though unpretending splendor. She pictured
herself with her son and daughter as enjoying Mena's estate, freed from
debt and increased by Ani's generosity, and then a new, intoxicating
hope came into her mind. Perhaps already at this moment her daughter
was a widow, and why should she not be so fortunate as to induce Ani to
select her child, the prettiest woman in Thebes, for his wife? Then
she, the mother of the queen, would be indeed unimpeachable, and
all-powerful. She had long since come to regard the pioneer as a tool
to be cast aside, nay soon to be utterly destroyed; his wealth
might probably at some future time be bestowed upon her son, who had
distinguished himself at Kadesh, and whom Ani must before long promote
to be his charioteer or the commander of the chariot warriors.
Flattered by these fancies, she forgot every care as she walked faster
and faster to and fro in her tent. Suddenly the steward, whom she had
this time sent to the very scene of the fire, rushed into the tent, and
with every token of terror broke to her the news that the king and his
charioteer were hanging in mid air on a narrow wooden parapet, and that
unless some miracle happened they must inevitably be killed. It was
said that incendiaries had occasioned the fire, and he, the steward, had
hastened forward to prepare her for evil news as the mangled body of the
pioneer, which had been identified by the ring on his finger, and
the poor little corpse of Nemu, pierced through by an arrow, had been
carried past him.
Katuti was silent for a moment.
"And the king's sons?" she asked with an anxious sigh.
"The Gods be praised," replied the steward, "they succeeded in letting
themselves down to the ground by a rope made of their garments knotted
together, and some were already safe when I came away."
Katuti's face clouded darkly; once more she sent forth her messenger.
The minutes of his absence seemed like days; her bosom heaved in stormy
agitation, then for a moment she controlled herself, and again her
heart seemed to cease beating--she closed her eyes as if her anguish of
anxiety was too much for her strength. At last, long after sunrise, the
steward reappeared.
Pale, trembling, hardly able to control his voice, he threw himself on
the ground at her feet crying out:
"Alas! this night! prepare for the worst, mistress! May Isis comfort
thee, who saw thy son fall in the service of his king and father! May
Amon, the great God of Thebes, give thee strength! Our pride, our hope,
thy son is slain, killed by a falling beam."
Pale and still as if frozen, Katuti shed not a tear; for a minute she
did not speak, then she asked in a dull tone:
"And Rameses?"
"The Gods be praised!" answered the servant, "he is safe-rescued by
Mena!"
"And Ani?"
"Burnt!--they found his body disfigured out of all recognition; they
knew him again by the jewels he wore at the banquet."
Katuti gazed into vacancy, and the steward started back as from a mad
woman when, instead of bursting into tears, she clenched her small
jewelled hands, shook her fists in the air, and broke into loud, wild
laughter; then, startled at the sound of her own voice, she suddenly
became silent and fixed her eyes vacantly on the ground. She neither saw
nor heard that the captain of the watch, who was called "the eyes and
ears of the king," had come in through the door of her tent followed by
several officers and a scribe; he came up to her, and called her by
her name. Not till the steward timidly touched her did she collect her
senses like one suddenly roused from deep sleep.
"What are you doing in my tent?" she asked the officer, drawing herself
up haughtily.
"In the name of the chief judge of Thebes," said the captain of the
watch solemnly. "I arrest you, and hail you before the high court of
justice, to defend yourself against the grave and capital charges of
high treason, attempted regicide, and incendiarism."
"I am ready," said the widow, and a scornful smile curled her lips. Then
with her usual dignity she pointed to a seat and said:
"Be seated while I dress."
The officer bowed, but remained standing at the door of the tent while
she arranged her black hair, set her diadem on her brow, opened her
little ointment chest, and took from it a small phial of the rapid
poison strychnine, which some months before she had procured through
Nemu from the old witch Hekt.
"My mirror!" she called to a maid servant, who squatted in a corner of
the tent. She held the metal mirror so as to conceal her face from the
captain of the watch, put the little flask to her lips and emptied it
at one mouthful. The mirror fell from her hand, she staggered, a deadly
convulsion seized her--the officer rushed forward, and while she fixed
her dying look upon him she said:
"My game is lost, but Ameni--tell Ameni that he will not win either."
She fell forward, murmured Nefert's name, struggled convulsively and was
dead.
When the draught of happiness which the Gods prepare for some few men,
seems to flow clearest and purest, Fate rarely fails to infuse into it
some drop of bitterness. And yet we should not therefore disdain it, for
it is that very drop of bitterness which warns us to drink of the joys
of life thankfully, and in moderation.
The perfect happiness of Mena and Nefert was troubled by the fearful
death of Katuti, but both felt as if they now for the first time knew
the full strength of their love for each other. Mena had to make up to
his wife for the loss of mother and brother, and Nefert to restore to
her husband much that he had been robbed of by her relatives, and they
felt that they had met again not merely for pleasure but to be to each
other a support and a consolation.
Rameses quitted the scene of the fire full of gratitude to the Gods who
had shown such grace to him and his. He ordered numberless steers to be
sacrificed, and thanksgiving festivals to be held throughout the land;
but he was cut to the heart by the betrayal to which he had fallen a
victim. He longed--as he always did in moments when the balance of his
mind had been disturbed--for an hour of solitude, and retired to the
tent which had been hastily erected for him. He could not bear to enter
the splendid pavilion which had been Ani's; it seemed to him infested
with the leprosy of falsehood and treason.
For an hour he remained alone, and weighed the worst he had suffered at
the hands of men against that which was good and cheering, and he found
that the good far outweighed the evil. He vividly realized the magnitude
of his debt of gratitude, not to the Immortals only, but also to
his earthly friends, as he recalled every moment of this morning's
experience.
"Gratitude," he said to himself, "was impressed on you by your mother;
you yourself have taught your children to be grateful. Piety is
gratitude to the Gods, and he only is really generous who does not
forget the gratitude he owes to men."
He had thrown off all bitterness of feeling when he sent for Bent-Anat
and Pentaur to be brought to his tent. He made his daughter relate at
full length how the poet had won her love, and though he frequently
interrupted her with blame as well as praise, his heart was full of
fatherly joy when he laid his darling's hand in that of the poet.
Bent-Anat laid her head in full content on the breast of the noble
Assa's grandson, but she would have clung not less fondly to Pentaur the
gardener's son.
"Now you are one of my own children," said Rameses; and he desired the
poet to remain with him while he commanded the heralds, ambassadors, and
interpreters to bring to him the Asiatic princes, who were detained in
their own tents on the farther side of the Nile, that he might conclude
with them such a treaty of peace as might continue valid for generations
to come. Before they arrived, the young princes came to their father's
tent, and learned from his own lips the noble birth of Pentaur, and that
they owed it to their sister that in him they saw another brother; they
welcomed him with sincere affection, and all, especially Rameri, warmly
congratulated the handsome and worthy couple.
The king then called Rameri forward from among his brothers, and thanked
him before them all for his brave conduct during the fire. He had
already been invested with the robe of manhood after the battle
of Kadesh; he was now appointed to the command of a legion of
chariot-warriors, and the order of the lion to wear round his neck
was bestowed on him for his bravery. The prince knelt, and thanked his
father; but Rameses took the curly head in his hands and said:
"You have won praise and reward by your splendid deeds from the father
whom you have saved and filled with pride. But the king watches over the
laws, and guides the destiny cf this land, the king must blame you, nay
perhaps punish you. You could not yield to the discipline of school,
where we all must learn to obey if we would afterwards exercise our
authority with moderation, and without any orders you left Egypt and
joined the army. You showed the courage and strength of a man, but the
folly of a boy in all that regards prudence and foresight--things harder
to learn for the son of a race of heroes than mere hitting and slashing
at random; you, without experience, measured yourself against masters of
the art of war, and what was the consequence? Twice you fell a prisoner
into the hands of the enemy, and I had to ransom you.
"The king of the Danaids gave you up in exchange for his daughter,
and he rejoices long since in the restoration of his child; but we,
in losing her, lost the most powerful means of coercing the seafaring
nations of the islands and northern coasts of the great sea who are
constantly increasing in might and daring, and so diminished our chances
of securing a solid and abiding peace.
"Thus--through the careless wilfulness of a boy, the great work
is endangered which I had hoped to have achieved. It grieves me
particularly to humiliate your spirit to-day, when I have had so much
reason to encourage you with praise. Nor will I punish you, only warn
you and teach you. The mechanism of the state is like the working of the
cogged wheels which move the water-works on the shore of the Nile-if
one tooth is missing the whole comes to a stand-still however strong
the beasts that labor to turn it. Each of you--bear this in mind--is a
main-wheel in the great machine of the state, and can serve an end only
by acting unresistingly in obedience to the motive power. Now rise! we
may perhaps succeed in obtaining good security from the Asiatic king,
though we have lost our hostage."
Heralds at this moment marched into the tent, and announced that
the representative of the Cheta king and the allied princes were in
attendance in the council tent; Rameses put on the crown of Upper and
Lower Egypt and all his royal adornments; the chamberlain who carried
the insignia of his power, and his head scribe with his decoration of
plumes marched before him, while his sons, the commanders in chief, and
the interpreters followed him. Rameses took his seat on his throne with
great dignity, and the sternest gravity marked his demeanor while he
received the homage of the conquered and fettered kings.
The Asiatics kissed the earth at his feet, only the king of the Danaids
did no more than bow before him. Rameses looked wrathfully at him,
and ordered the interpreter to ask him whether he considered himself
conquered or no, and the answer was given that he had not come before
the Pharaoh as a prisoner, and that the obeisance which Rameses required
of him was regarded as a degradation according to the customs of his
free-born people, who prostrated them selves only before the Gods. He hoped to become an ally of the king of Egypt, and he asked would he desire to call a degraded man his friend? |
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