I
Saakera came up to Dio, his face so distorted that she hardly knew him.
"The king is waiting for you, go to him," he said, and was about to go when she stopped him.
"What has happened, prince?"
"He will tell you himself, go to him."
"I am keeping watch; I must wait till I am relieved."
"Never mind. I will take your place."
Dio ran up the stairs to the flat roof of Aton's temple.
The day was just dawning. The sky seemed empty and glassy like the open eye of a corpse. The waters of the river looked leaden. The earth was under the spell of sleep. The town below appeared dead. It was the hour when men's sleep is like death as is said in the hymn to Aton:
Men sleep in darkness like the dead,
Their heads are wrapped up, their nostrils stopped,
Stolen are all their things that are under their heads,
While they know it not.
Every lion comes forth from his den,
All serpents creep out of their holes,
The creator has gone to rest and the world is silent.
The white walls of the temple were dull-green as though under water. All was dead; only on the great altar of the Sun a perpetual fire was burning and the sun disc of Aton above it—the highest point of the whole huge edifice—glowed with a dull-red glow as though a ray of an invisible sun were reflected in it.
Dio saw the king in the distance, but she did not recognise him at once. He was sitting on the altar steps in a curiously cramped attitude, with his chin resting against his knees and his face buried in his hands. "Sitting on their heels in the dust," she recalled the refrain of the Babylonian song about the dead in the underworld, mournful as the howling of the night wind. He probably did not hear her step, for he did not stir. She did not dare to call him, thinking he was asleep.
Suddenly he raised his head and looked at her in a way that made her heart stand still.
"Ah, Dio! Have you seen Saakera?"
"Yes."
"Has he told you what I wanted to say to you?"
"No."
"Sit down."
She sat down beside him. He took her hand, kissed the palm of it and smiled in a way that wrung her heart again.
"There, now I have forgotten. I remember what I wanted to say, but I can't think how to say it. It must be the fit that has made me so forgetful."
She understood he was referring to the epileptic fit he had had recently.
He stretched himself so that the knuckles of his fingers cracked, and yawned loudly. Two deep wrinkles formed round his mouth. He looked like the ancient Sphinx with the face of Akhnaton.
"Do you remember my telling you, Dio, that my kingdom was coming to an end? Well, it has come to an end. I want to go away."
"How go away? Where?"
"Anywhere, so long as I go away from here, escape out of this prison.... But why do you ask? You know it all better than I do."
"But how are you to go? Will they let you?"
"No one is to know, except you and Saakera. You two will help me. He has already promised."
"Promised what?"
"I will tell you. It was he who killed Maki; she had the child by him. He has just confessed it. He is so wretched that he wants to kill himself and drink the remainder of the poison out of Merira's ring, my present to him. But I have thought of a worse punishment for him: he is to be king when I go away."
"But can he do it?"
"He will be no worse than I am. And it won't be for long: he will hand over the power to Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North. Horemheb refuses to be king so long as I live, but I expect he will agree when I am dead."
"How, when you are dead?"
"When I go away I shall be dead to all. No one will know that I have gone, and those who hear of it will not believe it but will think me dead."
Dio knew that Horemheb was an enemy of Aton's faith. Would the king ruin the work of his whole life by putting him into power? She wanted to ask the question, but felt she had better not.
"This is how Saakera is going to help me," the king went on. "We shall set out for Memphis together to see Horemheb and on the way I shall go ashore somewhere in the night—and that will be the last they will see of me."
"Will you go alone?"
"Yes. I will take off my royal dress, put on the clothes of a nab priest—you know, those that walk about the high roads collecting money for the temples, and go off with a staff and wallet."
"What for? What will you do?"
"What I have done all my life. Do you remember, Iserker said 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight'? Well, I shall be preparing it. I will leave the great and go to the small, leave the first and go to the last; the first have not heard me—perhaps the last will...."
He was saying extraordinary things in a dull, dreary way. He kept yawning; perhaps those who 'sit in the dust on their heels in the underworld' yawn like that, too.
"Well, why are you silent? Do you think I am mad?"
"No, it isn't that...."
"Speak, don't be afraid."
"I think .... forgive me, sire, but all you kings are like babies: you don't know what poor, hard life is like. As soon as you have gone you will perish senselessly—of thirst, of hunger, from a wild beast, or a brigand's knife. You will be like a naked child on naked earth...."
"'Be merciful to yourself, Uaenra!' Is that it? Do you remember who said it? My friend, Merira. No, Dio, my Father will not leave me. He who preserves worms and midges of the air will not forsake a man. And what is more terrible—a robber's knife or Tuta's flattery, thirst in the desert or Merira's poison? Isn't this so, Dio the prophetess?"
"It is. But I shall say, like Merira again: can't a king do more good than a beggar?"
He laughed.
"No, you are not Merira. You don't believe what you are saying. I have reigned for many years and much good I have done! Ramose is right: nothing is more vile than empty noble words, nothing more wicked than empty good words. I thought I could make people happy, bring heaven down to earth—and this is the happiness I have bestowed upon them: blood is being shed everywhere between the Delta and the Waterfalls, it is hell upon earth. I wanted to efface the boundaries of the fields, to make the poor equal with the rich, and what has happened is that the whole of Egypt is like a dirty Jews' village where people live and die like cattle in perfect equality! And it is all done by the decree of the king Who-lives-in-Truth—Ankh-em-Maat—a fine name! Iserker wanted to stab me, Merira to poison me, but isn't it doing me too much honour? To spit into the liar's face would be punishment enough.... Do you ever have shameful dreams, Dio, so ridiculous that one could die of laughter?"
"Yes, I know."
"Ah, so you have them, too.... Well, I have had such a dream—I nearly died of laughter. To laugh at oneself is death. 'I am He,' is what I laugh at, what is killing me. Laughter will kill me one day like epilepsy.... Dio, Dio, if you love me, save me, help me!"
"How can I help you?"
"Stay with her!"
She understood: with the queen.
"Does she know?"
"No."
"How then will you .... deceive her?"
"I can't deceive her—she will find out. But if at least it weren't just now, after Maki's death—one wound on the top of another.... Later on, when everything is over, you will tell her, you alone will know how to tell her so that she should forgive me...."
"No, she won't forgive, and if she does...."
"I know, you need not tell me! Oh, it would be better if she didn't forgive me! But she is sure to forgive.... What am I to do, what am I to do? To stay is to kill myself: to go away is to kill her, to trample upon her heart? ... Help me, stay with her. Perhaps you will save her. Remember, if she dies I shall die, too."
"You ask me for a miracle?"
"Yes, do a miracle—a miracle of love. You do love her, don't you? Love her to the end. Relieve me of my burden and take it upon yourself. Will you?"
"I will."
She was silent for a while and then asked:
"You will go away and I shall never see you again?"
"Yes, you will; I will call you as soon as I can and we will go to Him together!"
He spoke no more, and raising his knees as before put his chin on them and wept, covering his face with his hands.
She put her arm round his head and pressed it to her bosom, stroking it gently with the other hand.
Shiha, the eunuch, was right: the king did not know how to cry: he swallowed his tears convulsively, choked, trembled as in a shivering fit. But Dio's caress gradually calmed him, and he only shuddered from time to time with a sob like a child tired of crying.
"Perhaps you are right," he began again, "and I shall perish senselessly. Saakera wants to kill himself; perhaps I do also.... Dio, my sister, oh if you only could...."
"What is it? Tell me."
"If you could only tell me whether I ought to go away?"
Dio knew that the right answer was "no one but yourself can tell." But she also knew that saying this would mean abandoning him—the naked child upon the naked earth.
She pressed his head to her bosom and said:
"You ought."
The trumpets down below played the hymn to Aton:
"Glorious is Thy rising in the East
Lord and giver of life, Aton!"
The dead sky revived and turned rosy. A red ember blazed up in the misty gorge of the Arabian mountains and the first ray of the sun glittered on Aton's disc.
The king rose, took Dio by the hand and led her up the sloping approach to the great altar of the Sun. He turned to the East, raised his arms and said:
"I come to glorify thy rays, living Aton..."
But his voice failed him: he suddenly felt that he could no longer pray to Aton.
He fell on his knees and cried:
"My God, my God, have mercy upon me, a sinner! In thee have I put my trust, let me never be ashamed...."
And with a sob he beat his head against the flagstones:
"Let me never, never be ashamed!"
On the twenty-ninth day of the month of Hoyak, December, on the thirteenth anniversary of the foundation of the City of the Sun and the day of Aton's nativity, the king set out on his journey.
Everyone wondered at his breaking his oath not to leave the domain of Aton, but they did not wonder very much; it was the privilege of a king and a god to release himself from his vows, and besides, many had noticed that his fervour for the new faith had begun to cool. The decree prohibiting the worship of the gods had never been declared after all, and the day of departure was fixed on the very day of the great festival, as though on purpose to cancel it.
The king made no secret of his journey: he was going to Memphis to see Horemheb, the Viceroy of the North, to persuade him to take Saakera's place as heir to the throne. Sensible people rejoiced: they did not want Saakera for king; there was nothing to be proud of in being ruled by a king who had his ears boxed by his Ethiopian concubine; Horemheb, the husband of the queen's sister, Nezemmut, a direct descendant of the great king Tutmose the Third, had every right to reign; the gods themselves had commanded him to do so. "The gods rocked thy cradle," as it said in the song of Amon's priests. He was a faithful servant of the king and was not implicated in any court or priestly intrigue; but he had not been false to the faith of his fathers, had not worshipped the new god, and the enemies of Aton hoped he would destroy the work of the apostate king and restore the old gods.
Everyone rejoiced except the queen. The parting from her husband frightened her; she had never been parted from him during the fifteen years of their married life. Did she suspect anything? If she did she showed no sign of it, but submitted without a murmur. She did not ask him to take her with him—she knew he would not; and besides she could not leave Rita, who was ill. And she herself was not well: she had a racking cough, was feverish at night and there was an ominous flush in her cheeks.
The king had not been seen so joyful for years as he was on the day of his departure. Only when he took leave of the queen a shadow passed over his face; but he looked at Dio and was happy again.
The crowd on the quay was joyful, too. When the king's ship set sail, a white falcon, the bird of Horus, circled over it, foretelling a happy journey.
The people stood for some time watching the three ships, magnificently painted and gilded—marvels of gold, purple, and azure, half birds, half flowers—glide along the white water: after the overflow the Nile turns white 'like the milk of Isis.'
Memphis was four hundred aters from the City of the Sun, down the river.
The further the king went the happier he was, as though he had, indeed, escaped from prison. It made him happy that the yellow streak of the dead sands and the black of fertile earth stretched on either side of the river simply, quietly and monotonously: life and death side by side in eternal union, eternal peace; that the slow oxen were drawing deep furrows in rich earth and the bright green crops already showed here and there, and the monotonous singing of the ploughman echoed far in the stillness of the fields.
A deserted temple of the Sun, built a thousand years before Akhnaton, stood at the edge of the desert in the middle of a great pyramid cemetery, within four or five hours' journey from Memphis down the river.
A full moon, huge and red-hot, was rising beyond the Arabian Mountains when the king's ship stopped by the temple. The king, Saakera and two priests, with sacred utensils, the bread of offering, wine for libations and incense, came ashore.
The only priest and guardian of the temple, an old man of a hundred years, met them and wept when he heard that the king wanted to offer a sacrifice: the last person to visit the temple was king Tutmose the Fourth, Akhnaton's grandfather.
They walked from the harbour to the temple down a long covered passage. On the large flat roof of the temple a huge obelisk, the Sun stone, Ben-ben, stood on a pyramid-shaped base, facing an altar made of five huge blocks of alabaster, exactly like the one in the City of the Sun, on the roof of Aton's temple.
The king burned incense, made the libation and prayed in silence for a few minutes. Then he sent everyone away and walked with Saakera to the secret gates that led into the desert. He gave him a scroll of papyrus—his resignation from the throne, and a letter to Horemheb, in which he implored him to save Egypt and accept the crown.
When Saakera had sworn that all should be done, the king embraced and kissed him on the mouth and, taking off his royal tiara, with a golden snake of the sun, Uta, over the forehead, put it on Saakera's head; he took off all his royal robes, put on the dress of a wandering priest, uab, slung a wallet over his shoulder, took a staff in his hand and walked out of the gate.
The full, dazzlingly bright moon stood high in the starless sky. Coal-black shadows fell upon the white sand that sparkled like snow with sapphire sparks, and the black triangles of the pyramids stood out against the sky on the distant horizon.
Saakera watched the king go. He walked as though he had been a wanderer all his life, with a light quick step, along a faint path—a jackals' track—to the neighbouring fishing village, Ptah-Sokkaris, consisting of some two dozen mud huts.
His figure grew smaller as he walked away; he had been the size of an animal, now he was the size of a bird, a mouse, an ant, a point, and finally he disappeared, melted away in the fire of the moon.
"Strange!" Saakera thought, unconscious of the tears that were trickling down his face. "There is no God, I know there isn't, then why...?"
He broke off and started as though someone else had finished for him:
"There is God, there is! It is because there is God that he has gone away!"