VIII
Leaving the Council Chamber, they went to the Beggars' Court. Telling the courtiers to go on, the king lagged behind so as to remain alone with Dio. Passing through a number of rooms they came into a small hothouse garden where incense trees brought from the far-away Punt, the land of the gods, grew in pots of earthenware, like huge heather plants fine as cobweb, dropping amber rosin tears in the warm sunshine.
The king sank down on a bench and sat for some minutes in silence without moving. He seemed to have forgotten Dio's presence, but suddenly he looked at her and said:
"Shame! Shame! Shame! You have looked enough at my shame, go away!"
Dio knelt down before him.
"No, sire, I will not go away from you. As the Lord lives and as my soul lives, whither my king goes, to shame or to honour, there will his servant go also."
"You have seen me put to shame once, now you will see it again. Let us go," the king said, getting up.
They entered the Beggars Court.
Three times in the year—when the Nile overflowed, at seed time, and at harvest—the palace gates were opened to all; every beggar could go in freely, merely giving his name to Mahu, the chief of the guards. Tables with bread, meat and beer were placed in the courtyard: everyone could eat and drink his fill. It was there that the king received petitions and heard complaints.
During the first years of Akhnaton's reign these feasts were more frequent. "Let every ninth day of the month be a day for beggars," it said in the king's decree. Governors of provinces were on that day to distribute to the hungry corn from the king's granaries "for the cry of the needy has come up unto heaven and our heart is sore." "Amon is the god of the rich and Aton the god of the poor," the king preached. "Woe unto you, you sleek and rich who acquire house after house and field after field, so that there is no room on the earth left for others! Your hands are full of blood. Wash, cleanse yourselves, learn to do good. Save the oppressed, defend the orphan, protect the widow. Provide bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty, clothes for the naked, shelter for the homeless, smiles for the weeping. Undo the bondsmen's yoke and set the slaves free: then shall your light shine in darkness and your night shall be as midday!"
"Ankh-em-maat, You-Who-live-in-Truth," the king's disciples said to him, "you will make the poor equal with the rich, will efface the boundaries between fields as the river flood effaces them. You are a multitude of Niles, flooding the earth with the waters of inexhaustible love!"
The king had invented a dangerous game of throwing gold to the beggars like fire into straw. For many years Mahu, the chief of the guards, had saved the situation: collecting trustworthy people from among the palace servants he dressed them up as beggars and promised the well-behaved a fair share of the spoils and the unruly—the lash; and all had gone well. The king was short-sighted; from the High Place where he sat while throwing the gold money rings into the crowd, he could not recognize the faces below.
But someone informed against Mahu. The king was very angry and nearly dismissed him from his post; and next time Mahu had to admit real, not dressed up beggars. Then there was trouble: no sooner did the rain of gold begin to fall than people grew savage, a free fight began and a whole detachment of armed soldiers had difficulty in quieting the crowd. There were three killed and many wounded. The king fell ill with grief, gold rained no more, but food was still given away and petitions received.
The Beggars Court was a large quadrangle paved with slabs of alabaster and surrounded by two storeys of pillared arcades. At one end of it was the High Place—the king's tabernacle. A wide, gradually ascending staircase of alabaster led to it. The goddess, Nekhbet, the Falcon Sun-mother, with a white head and a red, scaly body, was soaring above the tabernacle holding a golden ring—the royal globe, in its claws. "As the mother comforts her children so will I comfort you," the king, son of the Sun, said to the sorrowful children of the earth.
"Down! down! down! the king comes! The god comes!" the runners cried and the whole crowd in the court prostrated themselves, crying out:
"Rejoice, Akhnaton, Joy of the Sun!"
Besides beggars and petitioners there were, in the crowd, many sick, blind, halt and lame, because people believed that everyone who touched the king's clothes or upon whom his shadow fell was healed.
"Defend us, save us, have mercy, O Lord!" they called to him, like the souls in hell to the god who came down to them.
The king ascended the steps to the tabernacle and sat on his throne. Dio stood behind him with the fan.
The guards admitted the petitioners through a narrow passage between two low walls of stone along the foot of the stairs. Two Nubian soldiers with naked swords guarded the door in the middle of the wall adjoining the staircase. Approaching this door every petitioner prostrated himself, sniffed the ground, placed a wooden or a clay tablet with his petition on the bottom step of the stairs, where there was a heap of them already, and passed on.
Everyone was admitted into the Court, but a special permit was required for entering the passage leading to the king's tabernacle. Mahu, the chief of the guards, watched over everything.
Suddenly there was a disturbance. A petitioner tried to get through the little door. The soldiers crossed their swords in front of him but he went straight ahead, stretching his arm towards the king and screaming as though he were being cut to pieces:
"Defend, save, have mercy, Joy of the Sun!"
Not daring to kill a man before the king, the soldiers lifted their swords and the man, flattening himself on the ground and wriggling like an eel, crept between them and began crawling up the stairs. Mahu rushed at him and seized him by the collar, but the man wriggled out and went on screaming and crawling towards the king.
Mahu made a sign to the lancers of the bodyguard who stood two in a row, along the stairs. They closed their ranks and lowered their spears. But the man crawled on.
At the same moment a frenzied scream was heard:
"Let him through! Let him through!"
The squealing, breathless scream like that of a woman in hysterics or of a child in a fit was so strange that Dio did not recognize the king's voice. With a distorted face he jumped up and stamped with both feet, as the little girls had done when they played blind man's buff to the sound of the threshing song. And the ringing cry went on:
"Let him through! Let him through!"
Mahu made another sign to the lancers and they lifted their spears, making way. The man crawled between them and advanced almost as far as the top landing where the king's tabernacle stood. He raised his head and Dio recognised the long red curls, the red goat's beard, the prominent ears, hooked nose, thick lips and burning eyes of Issachar, son of Hamuel.
The king was quiet now and, bending forward, looked straight into Issachar's eyes intently and, as it were, greedily, just as Issachar looked at him.
"Your servant has a secret message for you, sire!" Issachar whispered.
"Speak, I listen."
"No, for you, for you alone."
"Leave us alone," the king said to the dignitaries who stood on the landing.
All withdrew except Dio who hid behind the corner of the tabernacle.
Some three or four steps separated Issachar from the king. "I know who you are! I know!" he said, crawling up and looking straight into the king's eyes, with the same intent, eager look. "Sun's joy, Sun's Only Son, Akhnaton Uaenra, Son of the living God!"
Suddenly he jumped up and drew a knife from his belt. But before he had time to raise it Dio darted forward and seized him by the hand. He pushed her so that she fell on her knees but jumped up again, not letting go of his hand, and screening the king with her body. An unendurably burning chill pierced her shoulder. She heard shouts, saw people running and fell on the ground with the last thought: 'he will kill him!'