III
The conical clay granaries stood by the back wall of the granary yard. Every one of them had a round opening at the top for pouring in the grain and a window with a board that lifted for pouring it out.
Slaves, brown as brick and naked but for white aprons and caps, were climbing up the ladders to the upper windows of the granaries, pouring into them grain that glided down with a gentle rustle like liquid gold.
This was the new corn from the Miuer Lakes. Looking at it Khnum remembered the starving and gave orders that a whole granary-full should be given to them.
Then he walked to the cattle-yard where the prison-pit was. It was a square hole dug in the ground, with brick walls and a brick bridge-like roof with a grated window in it.
Khnum went up to the pit, bent down to the window and heard quiet singing.
"Glory be to thee, Aton, the living and only God,
Who hast created the heavens and the secrets thereof!
Thou art in heaven and here upon earth is thy son
Akhnaton, the joy of the Sun!"
The man in the pit must have caught sight of Khnum, for he suddenly sang aloud and, it seemed to Khnum, with insolent defiance:
"When thou descendest beyond the sky
The dead come to life in thy life;
Thou givest their nostrils the breath of life,
And the air to their stifled throats,
Glorifying thee from their narrow tombs
The dead stretch forth their hands,
And they who are at rest rejoice."
Khnum walked away and, returning to the shelter by the big pond, sat down in his old place beside Nibituia who was still wrapping up her beetles. Inioteph began reading a new endless account of sacks of corn. Khnum felt dreary. He was conscious of the ominous weight in his right side, under the last rib; he suffered from his liver. His father had died of the same complaint at the age of eighty—"Perhaps I, too, will die before I have fulfilled my span of days," thought Khnum.
He liked to have something of his tomb dowry brought to him every day. To-day they brought him the sacred Beetle, Kheper, made of lapis-lazuli.
The great beetle of the Sun, Ra-Kheper, rolls along the sky its great ball as the dung beetle rolls its small ball along the earth. The Sun is the great heart of the world; the human heart is a small sun. This was why they put inside the mummy, in the place of the heart which was taken out, the Sun beetle Kheper with a hieroglyphic inscription—the prayer of the dead at the Last Judgment: "Heart of my birth, heart of my mother, my earthly heart, do not rise against me, do not bear witness against me!"
"I shouldn't wonder if mine did rise against me," thought Khnum, recalling Yubra, and he smiled: "Extraordinary! Fancy comparing the sun to a dung beetle!"
He recalled another prayer of the dead: "May my soul walk every day in the garden beside my pond; may it flutter like a bird among the branches of my trees; may it rest in the shade of my sycamore; may it rise up to heaven and come down to earth unhindered."
"And perhaps it is all nonsense," he thought as he used to think in his youth. "A man dies—like a water bubble bursting—and nothing is left of him. And, indeed, it may be as well, for what if one grew bored there also?"
He had once seen an eclipse of the sun: the day had been fine and bright and suddenly everything grew dim and grey, as though covered with a layer of ash, and all was dull, numb and dead. It was the same now. "It's my liver," he thought, "and Yubra, too."
"I must put an end to it," he said aloud. "Go and fetch him!"
"Whom, master?" Inioteph asked, looking at him in surprise.
Nibituia too raised her eyes in alarm.
At that moment Dio and Pentaur came into the garden from the roof of the summer house: Zenra had told her mistress that Tuta had sent a boat for her.
As they were passing the shelter by the big pond, Khnum called to them:
"I am just going to judge Yubra, my slave. You be judges, too."
He made Pentaur sit down beside him and Dio sat on the mat by Nibituia.
Yubra, with his arms tied behind his back, was brought in and made to kneel before Khnum. He was a little old man with a dark wrinkled face that looked like a stone or a lump of earth.
"Well, Yubra, how much longer are you going to sit in the pit?" Khnum asked.
"As long as it is your pleasure," Yubra answered, with downcast eyes and, Khnum fancied, with the same defiance with which he sang Aton's hymn in the pit.
"Look here, old man; I have spared you and not handed you over to the magistrates, but do you know what the lawful penalty is for what you have done? To be buried alive or thrown into the water with a stone round your neck."
"Well, let them put me to death for truth's sake."
"For what truth? Say plainly what possessed you to raise your hand against the holy Ushebti?"
"I have told you already."
"Surely you can take the trouble to say it again."
"I did it for my soul's sake. To save my soul. Here I am a slave, but there I shall be free."
He paused and then said in a changed voice: "There the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; the prisoners are at peace and do not hear the gaoler's voice; there the great and the small are equal and the slave is free from his master."
He paused again and asked:
"Do you know the parable of the rich and the poor?"
"What parable?"
"Shall I tell it you?"
"Do."
"There were two men in the world, a rich one and a poor one. The rich lived in luxury and the poor was wretched. They both died and the rich received an honourable burial and the poor was thrown away like a dead dog. And they both appeared before the judgment seat of Osiris. The works of the rich man were weighed and, behold, his evil deeds outweighed his good deeds. And they put him under a door so that the door hinge entered his eye and turned in it each time that the door opened or shut. The poor man's deeds were weighed, too, and, behold, his good deeds outweighed his evil deeds. And he was clothed in a robe of white linen, called in to the feast and placed at the right hand of the god."
"Quite, quite, quite. And to whom does the parable refer? To you and me?"
"No, to everyone. I have seen all the oppressions that are done under the sun and, behold, the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no one to defend them. The poor are pushed off the roads, the sufferers are forced into hiding, the orphan is torn away from its mother's breast and the beggar is made to pay a pledge. Moans are heard from the city and the souls of the victims cry unto the Lord...."
He raised his eyes to heaven and his face seemed to light up.
"Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord! He shall come down like rain on the freshly cut meadow, like dew upon the withered fields. He shall save the souls of the humble and the oppressors he shall lay low. All the peoples shall worship him. Behold He comes quickly!"
Khnum felt dreary; everything was as grey and dull as when the sun was eclipsed. And it was all Yubra's doing. He had called him to be judged and now it was as though Yubra were judging him, his master.
"Who comes? Who comes?" he cried with sudden anger.
Yubra did not answer at once. He looked at Khnum from under his brows as though again with mocking defiance.
"Second Osiris," he said quietly at last.
"What are you talking about, you fool? There is only one Osiris, there will be no second."
"Yes, there will."
"He must have heard from the Jews about their Messiah," Inioteph remarked, with a jeer.
Yubra glanced at him in silence and then said, lower still: "There has been no Son yet; the Son is to come."
"What? There has been no Son? Ah, you infidel! So it's against Him you have rebelled?" Khnum shouted furiously.
"The liver rushes to his head," his doctor used to say about these sudden fits of fury.
Turning purple he got up from his chair heavily, walked up f o Yubra and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him so that the old man staggered.
"I see through you, you rebel! Take care, I will have no nonsense."
"A slave's ear is on his back; a good whipping would soon make him drop this folly," Inioteph incited him.
Yubra said nothing.
"Oh, the snake, he holds his tongue and lies low," Khnum went on, and bending still lower over him looked into his face, "What have I done to you? What have I done to you? Why do you hate me?"
Had Yubra answered simply "because you robbed me of Maïta," Khnum's anger might have died down at once: his heart would have risen against him and denounced him as at the Last Judgment. But Yubra answered slyly:
"I bear you no evil."
And he added so low that only Khnum heard him: "God shall judge between us."
"What do you mean? What are you thinking of?" Khnum began and broke off, unable to look his slave in the face; he understood it was not easy to take dead flies out of the fragrant ointment.
"Ah, you stinking dog!" he shouted, beside himself with fury: the liver rushed to his head. "You bear me no evil, but who is it informed against me, who told the king's spies that two images of Amon in my tomb have not been effaced? Tell me, who?"
"I have not told, but even if I had I would not have been to blame: it is the king's command that images of Amon should be destroyed," Yubra answered, it seemed to Khnum, with insolent defiance.
"So you try to threaten me, you dog! Wait a bit, I'll give it you!"
He raised his stick. It was a thick, heavy stick of acacia wood, hard as iron: had he brought it down on Yubra's head he would have killed him. But God saved them both. Their eyes met and it was as though Maïta had looked at Khnum.
He slowly lowered the stick without touching Yubra's head, staggered and fell into his chair, burying his face in his hands. He was motionless for a few minutes, then he uncovered his face and said, without looking at Yubra:
"Away with you! Begone! You are not a slave to me any more. Untie his hands and let him go, no one is to interfere with him. I have pardoned him."
"Perhaps I was wrong," said Dio to Pentaur, as she walked with him across the garden to Tuta's boat in the canal. "Perhaps you Egyptians can rebel after all...."
"You judge by Yubra?" Pentaur asked.
"Yes. Have you many such?"
"Yes, we have."
"Well, then, there is sure to be rebellion. How strange it is, Taur: you and I have just been disputing whether the Son had come already or is to come, and here is the same thing over again..."
"It is the same thing everywhere."
"And the rebellion is about this, too?" Dio asked.
"Yes, it is. You are glad?"
Dio did not answer, she seemed lost in thought. Pentaur paused, too, and then said:
"Perhaps the world will perish through this...."
"Let it!" she answered, and it seemed to him that the fire of rebellion was already burning in her eyes. "Let the world perish if only He will come!"