VII
The three walked into the Council Chamber. The dignitaries had long been gathered there waiting for the king. When he passed by them they prostrated themselves, sniffed the ground under his feet and, raising their shaven, egg-shaped heads stretched out their hands palms upwards, saying:
"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"
Tuta, as usual, surpassed them all.
"My king, my god, who hast made me, grant me to enjoy the sight of thy face forever!" he exclaimed, rolling his eyes so ecstatically that everyone envied him.
The king sat down in his chair on a low alabaster platform between four pillars. Dio stood behind him with the fan.
All looked at her curiously. She felt she was already regarded as the king's mistress; she flushed and looked down.
A bodyguard of Hittite amazons stood in the depths of the many pillared room. The dignitaries sat on their heels in a semicircle on mats on the floor; only three sat on folding chairs: Tuta, Merira, and the commander-in-chief and king's vizier, Ramose, a heavy fat old man of seventy, with a red puffy face, like an old woman's, a courtly smile on his lips and small eyes lost in fat, very kind and intelligent.
Grandson of General Amenemheb, fellow-soldier of the great Tutmose the Third, the Conqueror, he had covered himself with glory in the different campaigns he led against the wild tribes of Kush and the Sinai nomads. He had been promoted to the rank of Vizier under King Amenhotep the Third, Akhnaton's father, and the people were fond of him and called him 'a just man.' He would have given his life for the king, but he regarded the new faith in Aton and the betrayal of the old gods as madness and disaster. "The best and most unfortunate of kings," he used to say about Akhnaton, "he is ruining himself and his kingdom for nothing."
The sitting of the Council began. The king listened to the officials' reports about the failure of crops, famine, rebellions, brigandage, robberies, bribe-taking, secessions of provincial governors and feuds between them.
Standing slightly on one side Dio could see his face. He listened with his head bent and his face seemed expressionless.
The chief of the guards, Mahu, reported on the last rising—the one in Thebes.
"Very likely nothing would have happened had not the Lybian mercenaries joined the rebels," he said in conclusion.
"And why did they join them?" the king asked.
"Because their salary was not paid in time."
"And why was it not paid?"
"At the prince Viceroy's orders."
The king looked at Tuta.
"Why did you do it?"
"I have laid the king's yoke upon my neck and here I bear it," Tuta began, wondering what kind of answer he had better give: he understood that someone had informed against him. "If I go up to heaven or come down to earth my life is always in thy right hand, O King! I look here and I look there and I see no light; I look upon thee, my king, my sun, and behold, here is light! A brick may move from under other bricks in a wall but I shall not move from under the feet of my king, my god...."
"Make haste and tell me why you did it," the king interrupted him impatiently.
"There was no money to buy bread for the starving and so I borrowed it from the Lybians' salary."
The king said nothing, but gave him such a look that Tuta lowered his eyes.
"How many killed?" asked the king, turning to Mahu again.
"Less than a hundred," he answered.
He knew that more than two thousand had been killed, but, exchanging glances with Ramose, understood that the truth should not be told: the king would be unhappy and perhaps fall ill and nothing would be gained by it—everything would remain as before.
"A hundred people!" the king whispered, bending his head still lower. "Well, you won't have long now....."
"Not long to do what, sire?" Ramose asked.
"To kill people in my name!" the king answered and then asked, after a pause: "Is there a letter from Ribaddi?"
"Yes, there is."
"Show it me."
"I cannot, sire, it is an unseemly letter."
"Never mind, show it."
Ramose gave him the letter. The king read it first to himself and then aloud so calmly that it might have been written about someone else:
"Ribaddi, Viceroy of the King of Egypt in Canaan, thus speaks to the King: for ten years I have been sending to thee for help but thou hast not helped me. Now Azini, an Amorite, a traitor, has risen against thee and gone over to the king of the Hittites. And they have gathered together chariots and men to conquer Canaan. The enemy is at my gates, to-morrow they will enter and kill me and throw my body to the dogs. Well does the King of Egypt reward his faithful servants! May the gods do the same unto thee as thou hast done unto me. My blood is on thy head, traitor!"
"How dares this dead dog insult our god-king!" Tuta said, with indignation.
The king looked at him again, and he subsided.
"Has Ribaddi perished?" the king asked.
"He has," Ramose answered. "He threw himself on his sword so as not to fall into the enemies' hands alive."
"What will happen now, Ramose?"
"Why, this, sire: the king of the Hittites will have Canaan; the thieves will undermine the wall and enter the house. We were for four hundred years under the yoke of the nomads, and we may be for another four hundred under the yoke of the Hittites. Your great-grandfather, Tutmose the Great, made Egypt the head of all nations and we were the light of the world and now this light is no more...."
"What are we to do then, Ramose?"
"You know yourself, king."
"Begin war?" the king asked.
Ramose made no answer; he knew that the king would perish and ruin his kingdom rather than begin war.
The king was silent, too; he seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he raised his head and said:
"I cannot!"
He paused again, thinking, and repeated:
"I cannot; no, I cannot! 'Peace, peace to the far and the near,' says my heavenly father, Aton. 'Peace is better than war; let there be no war, let there be peace!' This is all I know, all I have, Ramose. If you take this from me, there will be nothing left: I shall be destitute, naked, dead. Better kill me outright!"
He spoke simply and quietly; but Dio's heart throbbed again as on the day before in the joy of the heavenly dream. She suddenly recalled the huge pale phantom of Cheop's pyramid shimmering in the rosy sunlight mist over the yellow sands of the desert: the perfect triangles—"I began to be as one god, but three gods were in Me," in the words of the ancient wisdom—divine triangles getting narrower and narrower, more and more pointed as they rose to heaven and in the very last point the same frenzied ecstacy as in Akhnaton's quiet word 'Peace'!
"O, how sweet is thy teaching, Uaenra," Tuta thrust himself forward again—like the poodle Dang licking the king in the face. "You are the second Osiris, conquering the world by peace and not by sword. If you say to the water 'let there be peace'—there shall be peace."
"Listen, Ramose," the king began, "I am not such a scoundrel as Ribaddi thought, and I am not such a fool as Tuta takes me to be...."
The poodle Dang got a flip on the nose: he was alarmed and upset. But he was soon comforted by Ay—an old dignitary with intelligent, cold and cynical eyes, who sat next to him.
"Don't bother, it isn't worth it," he whispered in Tuta's ear. "You see he is playing the fool again, the crazy saint!"
"I am not such a fool as Tuta thinks," the king went on. "I know there will be no peace on earth for a long time to come. There will be endless war, and the longer it goes on the fiercer it will be: 'all will be killing each other' as the ancient prophecy says. There has been a flood of water—there is going to be one of blood. But even so, even so, let men know that there has been in the world a man who said 'peace'!"
He suddenly turned to Merira.
"What do you think, Merira? Why do you smile?"
"I think, sire, that what you say is good, but it is not all. God is not only peace...."
He spoke slowly, with an effort, as though thinking of something else.—
"But also what?" the king said to help him.
"Also war."
"What are you saying, my friend? War is not of God, but of the devil."
"Yes, of God, too. Two sides of the triangle meet at one point: day and night, mercy and wrath, peace and war, Son and Father—all the opposites are in God...."
"Is the Son against the Father?" the king asked and his hand that was holding the arm of the chair trembled slightly.
Merira raised his eyes to him and smiled so strangely that Dio thought 'madman!' But he looked down again at once and his face turned to stone, grew heavy with a stony heaviness.
"Why do you ask me?" he answered calmly. "You know it all better than I, Uaenra: does not the Son know the Father? God is the measure of all things. I say it not to you but to others: seek for measure in everything—in peace as in the sword."
"Quite so! Quite so!" Ramose cried. "I am no friend of yours, Merira, but for this saying I am ready to bow down at your feet—it couldn't be said better!"
"Why are you so pleased with it?" the king asked, looking at Ramose in surprise. "What he says is very dreadful."
"Yes, dreadful, but necessary," Ramose answered. "Ankh-em-Maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth, you want to lift truth up to heaven and spread it throughout the earth; but men are weak, stupid and wicked. Be merciful to them, O King, don't ask too much of them. If you fix a ladder for them they will climb up, but if you say 'fly,' they will fly headlong into the pit. There is no getting on with mercy only: our mercy merely smooths the way for evildoers. We talk much and we do little, but believe an old man like me: nothing in the world is more wicked than empty good words, nothing more vile than empty noble words."
"Are you speaking of me, Ramose?" the king asked, with a kind smile.
"No, not of you, Uaenra, but of those who demand a miracle of you and do not stir a finger themselves. For twenty years I have served faithfully the king, your father, and you; I have never told lies and I am not going to now. Things are going ill in your whole kingdom, they are going very ill, O King! We say 'peace,' but there is war, we say 'love,' but there is hatred, we say 'light,' but there is darkness instead."
He got up heavily, fell at the king's feet and wept: "Have pity, sire; have mercy! Save yourself, save Egypt, take up the sword for right and justice. And if you do not want to do it, I don't want to see you ruin yourself and your kingdom any more. Let me retire, I am old and want a rest!"
The king bent down to him and lifting him up embraced and kissed him on the lips.
"No my friend, I will not let you go, and you would not go yourself—you are fond of me... Bear up a little longer, the time is getting short—I shall soon go myself," he whispered in his ear.
"Go where? Where?" Ramose asked with prophetic terror.
"Don't speak, don't ask, you will soon know everything!" the king answered and got up, showing that the Council was over.