III
Do not judge me, O Lord, for my many sins! I am a man with no understanding of myself," Merira whispered.
"What are you whispering?" Dio asked.
"Nothing."
He stood at the prow of the boat with a double-edged harpoon in his hands and she sat at the helm, rowing with a short oar, or pushing off in shallow places with a long pole. The flat-bottomed boat for two, made of long stems of papyrus, tied together and covered with coal tar, was so unstable that one could hardly move in it without risk of upsetting it. Merira wore the ancient hunting dress: a two-lobed apron—shenti of white linen, a broad necklace of turquoise and carnelian beads, a small beard of black horsehair and a 'tiled' closely curled wig; all the rest of the body was naked. In such dress the dead, after the resurrection, hunted in the blessed fields of Ialu in the papyrus thickets of the heavenly Nile.
The milky-white sky of the early morning was changing to blue, as innocent as the smile of a child asleep. The waters of the Nile were still as a pond; the morning breath was so gentle that the mirror-like surface of the river was not yet broken with ripples, though boats with full sails were already flitting upon it like birds. The rafts of pines and cedars from Lebanon slowly floated along. Men, tiny as ants, dragged by a rope a huge barge with a granite obelisk, singing a mournful song; it made the stillness seem more still and the expanse of the river more limitless. The white houses of the City of the Sun, scattered about like dice in the narrow green strip of palm groves, were disappearing in the distance.
"What is the matter with you?" Dio asked Merira. "Happy? in good spirits? No, that's not it.... I have never seen you like this."
"I had a good night," Merira answered. "I slept for quite six hours on end."
He took a deep, eager breath. He was glad when he felt the smell of bats and not of dead rats or rotten fish; and to-day—what joy! he smelt nothing but morning freshness.
"And everything is good," he said, still more joyfully. "See how high the water is! Isn't it fine?"
"Very fine," she agreed.
"Just think, sixteen and a half cubits! The water hasn't risen so high for the last ten years!" Merira went on. "The country is saved if the rebels in the south do not destroy the canals. Look, a little ass in the field doesn't dare to put its foot in the ditch—ah, now he has done it, clever creature—and men are more stupid than asses!"
He added, after a pause:
"I had a good dream the other night...."
"What was it?"
"It was about you. I dreamt we were children together walking in a lovely garden, better than Maru-Aton—a real paradise—and you were saying something very nice to me. I woke up and thought 'I will do what she told me.'"
"And what did I say?"
He shook his head and said nothing.
"Again something you can't tell?"
"No."
He turned away to hide from her the tears that came into his eyes:
"Don't judge me, O Lord, for my many sins! I am a man with no understanding of myself," he whispered again.
He suddenly struck the water with his harpoon so violently that he nearly upset the boat. Dio cried out. When he pulled the harpoon out of the water a fish was struggling on each side of it: an in, with a rectangular, wing-like fin on its back, glittering like ruby, sapphire and gold, and a ha with the monstrous head of an anteater, consecrated to the god Set. He threw both fishes at her feet and she admired the way they struggled, dying.
"Why do you say you have never seen me like this?" he asked.
"I don't know. You always jeer, and to-day you look as though you were going to smile. Quite like...."
"Like whom?"
She stopped suddenly and looked down; she wanted to say 'quite like Tamu,' but suddenly she felt frightened and sorry—sorry for this one as for the other.
"Also something you can't tell?" he asked, smiling.
"No, I can't."
"There, there, look!" he pointed to something that lay on the sand-bank and seemed exactly like a greenish-black, slimy log.
"What is it?"
"A crocodile. It hid in the sand for the night and now it has crawled out and will warm itself in the sun; and at midday, when the north wind blows, it will open its mouth towards it to get cool. An intelligent beast. But an ibis's feather paralyzes it and then one can do anything with it..."
He spoke about indifferent things on purpose to hide his emotion, but went on smiling exactly like Tamu.
The boat cut into a dense mass of papyrus plants. Their umbrella-like tops quivered as though alive, the stems rustled and bent over the boat like two high green walls. The yellow ambaki flowers smelt of bitter almond and warm water and the pink lotoses, nekhebs, of sweet aniseed. Blue dragonflies whirred unceasingly over the floating leaves. An ichneumon, a sharp-faced little creature with whiskers, something between a cat and a rat, was stealing up the entangled papyrus-stems, and the bird-mother fluttering over her nest desperately flapped her wings to drive the robber away. Suddenly in the far distance there was a loud trumpet-call: it was a hippopotamus, roaring as it spouted water from its nostrils like a whale.
Water birds flew about in clouds: sacred herons—benu—with two long feathers thrown back over their heads, sacred ibises, bald-headed and white but for a black tail and a black edge on the wings; wild ducks, geese, swans, cranes, spoonbills, plovers, water-hens, hoopoos, peewits, divers, pelicans, cormorants, golden-eyes, lapwings, magpies, snipe, fish-hawks and many others. They were singing, twittering, chirruping, calling, quacking, screeching, whistling, cackling, cawing, droning, clucking.
"Vepvet!" Merira called, and a huge yellow hunting cat, with emerald eyes, that had been sleeping at the bottom of the boat, jumped to him and settled beside him on the bow, pricking up its ears.
He threw a flat, curved tablet made of rhinoceros skin—a weapon of immemorial antiquity. It flew along, struck its aim and describing an arc in the air returned to him and fell at his feet. The cat jumped into the thicket and brought a bird that had been killed. He threw the weapon again, and the cat brought another bird, and soon the boat was so full of game that it began to sink.
They rowed to a little island surrounded on all sides with thick walls of papyrus, three times the height of man, bright green and fresh as in paradise. In days of old, Mother Isis brought up the baby Horus in such a papyrus nest.
They landed. A fisherman's net was stretched out on poles on the shore to dry. There was a bed of reeds under a shelter of dry palm leaves. Dio sat on the bed and Merira on the ground at her feet. The cat ate fish greedily.
"She is as good at scenting prey as Ruru was," Merira said.
"Why 'was'?" Dio asked in surprise.
"Don't you know? The poor creature was killed the other day. Tuta wept over it as though it had been his own daughter and has fallen ill with grief."
"Who killed it?"
"I don't know. It was found dead in the garden. Someone must have climbed a tree and been listening at the window, and the cat smelt him out and rushed at him and he ripped its belly with a knife."
"But who could it have been?"
"Probably some spy of Mahu's."
"Impossible. Mahu knows that Tuta is a faithful servant of the king. Why should he be watched?
"He might well be. All we do at court is to watch one another."
"And you watch me?"
"I do. Do you remember how you spoke about me with the king in the desert? I know everything—I know that you betray me."
He gave her a long, intent look.
"No, Merira," she said quietly. "It is not I who betray you—you do it yourself. You deceive yourself: you want to hate him and you cannot—you love him...."
"I don't know. Perhaps I do love him. But love, too, is sometimes cruel—more cruel than hate. It is said 'love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire; many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.' Do you know this?"
"I do. Is this how you love me, too?"
"What is my love to you? Why do you ask? Do you want to deceive me?"
"No. Even if I wanted to I could not: we know all about each other."
"Do we? There is no getting to the bottom of the soul—it is too deep."
"At the bottom of the soul is love; one who loves knows everything. Are you very unhappy?"
"And are you very sorry for me? It is a bad sign: if a woman pities a man she doesn't love him."
There was a silence. Then he spoke again in a changed voice, without looking at her.
"I have had another dream about you, a bad one. Only I don't know if it was a dream. Perhaps you know what it was—a dream or not?"
She lowered her eyes, feeling that he was looking at her: it was like spiders running over her naked body; she was ashamed and frightened as in that dream.
"No, Dio, I do not love you. To love a woman one must despise her just a little. I might love you when you are asleep or dead—as you were in that dream. You said then 'it is sweet to be weak, sweet to be only a woman.' But you wouldn't say that awake, would you? Why do you lie then? You are a woman after all: moths nest in clothes and slyness in woman. If you had only said to me then 'go away' I would have gone. And I will go now—you have only to tell me...."
She put both her hands on his shoulders and said simply and quietly:
"Listen, my brother, three people have already perished through me; I don't want you to perish too...."
"It wouldn't be through you, don't be afraid; I hated him before you came."
There was a long silence, then she asked, speaking still lower than before:
"What do you hate him for?"
"Don't you know? Surely you don't believe, do you, that King Akhnaton is the One who is to come?
"No. I know he is only His shadow."
"But he does believe it himself."
"No, he doesn't. That was your temptation, your snare, but he is free from it now."
"He is not—he never will be. I tempted him, you say? Why, could I ever have done it without him? I merely said aloud what he thought; I revealed his own secret to him. And do you imagine one can say 'I am He' and then repent? I don't know who has been led into temptation—I by him or he by me. But anyway, there is no greater temptation upon earth than for a man to say 'I am God.' Yes, he is only a shadow of the One to come; this one has said 'I will kindle the flame' and that One will kindle it. But maybe we still have time to put it out...."
"No, you will not put it out. His fire is love! 'Many waters cannot quench love'—you have said so yourself. No, Merira, you will not rise against him!"
"Do you think I am afraid of him?"
"Not of him but of the One behind him."
"Liar, Murderer, Devil is behind him. If He came I would rise against Him, too!"
The green walls parted suddenly and the king's boat appeared. The king stood at the stern with Mahu and was saying something to him, pointing to the island.
"He is looking, he is looking at us!" Merira whispered in terror. "Let us hide!"
They both went into the papyrus thicket. The boat passed them.
"I believe you are right after all, Dio, and I will never rise against him," Merira said, with a quiet laugh, passing his hand over his eyes as though he had just awoken from a fearful dream. "I may rise against myself, but not against him...."
And after a silence he asked:
"You won't tell him what we have been talking about, will you?"
"No, I won't," she replied and glancing at him understood more clearly than she had ever done before:
"He is an enemy."