VII
People were crowded in the Square. In the vague hubbub of voices one could distinguish at times the phrases:
"Glory be to Amon on High! Glory be to Khonsu, Amon's Son!" Suddenly there came the sound of melodious singing, far off at first and then nearer and nearer. The Square was lit up with the red glow of the torches and a solemn procession appeared.
The Lybian mercenaries walked in front followed by fan-bearers and censer-bearers; then came the horemhebs—officiating priests, and finally twenty-four senior priests—neteratephs, with shaven heads, leopard skins across the shoulder and wide, stiffly starched white skirts. Walking twelve in a row they carried on two poles the holy tabernacle—Userhet—a boat of acacia wood with linen curtains like sails, that hid a figure of Amon a foot high. Its shadow could be seen through the fine material in the flickering light of the torches: but people did not dare to look even at the shadow of the god: to see him was to die.
A crowd followed the tabernacle, singing in a chorus:
"Glory be to Amon on High
Glory to Khonsu, Amon's son!
Exalt ye them above the heavens,
Exalt ye them above the earth.
Proclaim to all their glory!
Tell men to fear the Lord
Throughout all generations,
Tell it to the great and small,
To every creature that draws breath.
To fishes and fowls of the air;
Tell those who know not and who know:
'Fear ye the Lord!'"
Yubra sang, too, saying 'Aton' instead of 'Amon'; no one heard him in the general chorus. And sometimes he made a mistake, glorifying the god of his enemies and rejoiced: he knew that where they were going there would be no more enemies; the lion and the lamb would lie down together and the child would play on the hole of the asp.
The beggar woman from the province of the Black Heifer walked by Yubra's side. He had found her half-dead with hunger by the heap of manure-bricks in the Square, restored her to life and given her some food: Nebra procured bread for her and milk for the baby from a boatman friend of his. When she had eaten and seen that the baby was alive and sucking a comforter that Yubra cleverly made for it, she revived and followed him as a dog follows the man who has given it food. She followed him in the procession, too.
He was holding her firmly and kindly by the hand, as though he were leading this sorrowful and perishing daughter of the earth to the new earth, to the Comforter. She understood but vaguely what was going on, and not daring to look at the shadow of the god behind the veil, simply repeated with the rest of the crowd:
"Glory be to thee, god of mercy,
The Lord of the silent,
The help of the humble,
The saviour of those in hell!
When they call unto thee
Thou comest to them from afar
Thou sayest to them 'I am here.'"
She, too, was in hell; perhaps He would come to her, too, and say 'I am here,' she thought joyfully, as though knowing that in the place where they were going there would be no famine and the mothers would not have to steal other people's children and kill them like lambs in order to feed their own.
Pentaur was walking on the left in the first row of the twelve priests, neteratephs, who carried the tabernacle. Yubra saw him and they looked at one another. "How did you come here, servant of Aton? Are you a spy?" Yubra read the question in Pentaur's eyes. "Come, there can be no spies now! We are all brothers," was the answer in Yubra's eyes, and Pentaur seemed to understand—he smiled at him like a brother.
Zen, the prophet, was also with the crowd; a little boy was leading him by the hand. His face was sorrowful unto death: maybe he knew that Kiki was right and that the earth would turn upside down only in order that the worst might come.
After passing Coppersmiths' Street they came into the sacred Road of the Rams. At the very end of it the dull red disc of the moon, cut across by the black needle of the obelisk, like a cat's eye by the narrowed pupil, was slowly rising behind the sanctuary of Mut.
Suddenly the procession stopped. The blast of trumpets and the rattle of drums was heard in front; arrows and stones from slings flew about with a hissing sound: it was an ambush of the Nubian soldiers sent against the rebels.
One arrow struck the foot of the tabernacle. The priests lowered it to the ground; men crowded round it, defending the body of the god with their own bodies.
The attack of the Nubians was so violent that the Lybian mercenaries flinched and would have run away had not help arrived just in time.
Kiki, with a few desperadoes like himself, had gone from the Hittite Square to the raised road where the workmen, who had been dragging the giant statue of King Akhnaton during the day, had gone to sleep, some on straw and others on the bare earth. Kiki could not wake many of them: they slept so heavily that if the very earth under them had caught fire they would hardly have wakened. But he did rouse some three hundred by the mere cry of 'Plunder!'; leading them against the Nubians' ambush he attacked it from behind and so won the battle for the rebels.
The procession moved on with a song of victory:
"Woe to be to thine enemies, Lord!
Their dwelling place is in darkness,
But the rest of the earth in thy light.
The sun of them that hate thee is darkened,
The sun of them that love thee is rising!"
Reaching Amon's temple they walked past it and turned to the right, to Khonsu's sanctuary, easily scattering a small detachment of Midian archers on the way. But at the sanctuary they learned that at the first news of mutiny the golden figure of Khonsu had been removed and hidden in the treasury of Amon's temple.
"Come, good people, you have been saving the god long enough, it is time you thought about yourselves!" Kiki the Noseless shouted to the crowd, jumping on the empty pedestal of Khonsu's statue. "There is nothing to be got here, Aton's rabble have cleared the place, but on the other side of the river in the Chanik Palace there is still plenty of stuff left. Let's make for the river, mates!"
There arose a dispute, almost a fight, as to what they were to do—save the god or plunder.
As Yubra listened, he grew uneasy: was this what he had been hoping for or something utterly different?
After much wrangling the crowd divided into two: the bigger part went to the other side of the river with Kiki and the smaller set out towards Amon's temple.
Pentaur led them. Expecting another ambush they put out the torches. Men walked in silence, with stern faces; they knew that perhaps they were going to their death. "We shall all die for Him!" Yubra thought, with quiet joy.
When they reached the temple they saw there were no guards there. Two granite colossi and two obelisks, as though keeping watch, threw black, menacing shadows on to the square of white stone bathed in moonlight.
Pentaur and Hafra, the blacksmith, walked up to the temple gates; the gold, with the hieroglyphics of dark bronze upon it, the two words 'Great Spirit,' dimly glistened in the moonlight.
"Hack them!" Pentaur said.
Hafra raised the axe, but let it down again, not daring to strike. Pentaur seized the axe from him and cried:
"Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in!"
He lifted the axe and struck; the ponderous echo rolled through the empty, resonant air behind the gates, as though the Great Spirit himself had answered him.
"Achaeans, Achaeans, the devils!" was heard in the crowd.
Achaeans, the half-savage mercenaries from the North, had just arrived in Egypt to serve the king. They had come straight to the City of the Sun, and were hardly known at Thebes, but there were terrible rumours about their ferocity and mad courage.
Rushing out from three ambushes at once they surrounded the crowd on all sides, pressing it to the walls of the temple so that escape was impossible. And above the gates on the flat roof of the temple copper helmets and spears were glistening, too. Ethiopian slingers were ambushed there. Arrows, stones and lead fell from there like hail.
Pentaur raised his eyes and saw just above him, in a narrow window of the temple wall, a boy of fifteen, with a black monkey-like face, white teeth bared like those of a beast of prey, and two feathers, a green and a red one, stuck aslant in the black frizzy hair. Placing an arrow on the bowstring, he aimed at Pentaur slowly bending a huge bow made of rhinoceros bone.
Pentaur remembered the tame monkey on the top of the palm tree over Khnum's house, throwing the shells of the pods at the sleeping dancer, Miruit, and he smiled. He might have jumped behind the projecting wall, but he thought "what for? I shall be killed anyway, and it is good to die for Him Who has been!"
The bowstring sounded.
"Has been or will be?" he had time to ask and to answer: "Has been, is and will be," while the arrow whistled through the air. Its copper sting pierced him just under the left breast. He fell on the threshold of the closed gates. For him the gates lifted their heads, the everlasting doors were lifted up and the King of Glory came in.
Standing by the tabernacle Yubra was watching the last batch of the Lybians fighting. Suddenly the leaden bullet from a sling struck him on the temple. He fell and thought he was dying. But a minute later he propped himself up on his elbow and saw that the Achaean devils were hacking the tabernacle.
The white curtains flapped like broken wings laying bare the small, worm-eaten, wooden figure of the god, blackened with the smoke of incense, polished with the kisses of the worshippers. A soldier seized it, and lifting it up, flung it upon the ground and trampled it underfoot. The god's body cracked like a crushed insect.
Yubra fell upon his face so as not to see.
Pentaur was dying happily. Some one gentle as the god whose name is Quiet-Heart was bending over him—he could not tell whether it was a boy who looked like a girl or a girl who looked like a boy. He wanted to ask 'Who are you?' when the kiss of eternity sealed his lips. And the dulcet chords played on:
"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,
Death is now to me like healing,
Death is now to me like refreshing rain,
Death is now to me like a home to an exile!"