The Court of the King, and Other Studies

by Margaret Benson

The Approach

The moon had risen as we rode down the steep, sandy road and threaded our way through the little mud enclosures, where dogs, alive for the excitement of the night, were prowling on the walls, listening with ears pricked up for warnings of enemies, looking with vigilant eyes for some alien to draw near. As we crossed into that part of the village where they did not know us, a hoarse storm of barking filled the air, but in a minute or two we had passed beyond this, and were out among the sand-hills between the tombs, where the whole plain was flooded with a misty, uncertain light.

Song and merry-making had begun in the villages, for the full moon is festival for those who have no artificial light; but the thud of the drums, the sound of children’s voices, and the barking of dogs faded and died away, and we came out into a great emptiness, threading a narrow path between the tumbled heaps; on each side the tombs gaped dimly at our feet. On the right hand we looked far away over desert and field to the great dark pylons of a temple across the river: on the left rose sharply the sandy spur of the hill we were rounding. No one was in sight and on no side could we see any human habitation.

We turned round the spur of the hill into a boulder-strewn valley, arid and silent. Even at midday there is little sign of life here, except on certain days when a stream of people traverse it and return; otherwise you find but a chance sown seed, dropped in a favourable spot; a withering leaf let fall by some traveller, a stray pigeon, an “evil bird” the Arabs think, who has left the abode of men and foresworn its final service for their use, to live its hermit life in the wilderness. Otherwise you see but the golden limestone rocks, radiating back the golden Egyptian sunshine. Then all is bare and keeps no secret, for the very shadows are broken by reflected light.

But now the colour of the limestone showed but faintly in the white light, and the shadows fell dark from boulder and rocks. The valley was empty of life, penetrated with mystery.

There, as we turned, at an angle of the path was a figure, solitary in the moonlight, a man in a long, dark garment, holding by him his donkey with a sheepskin over its saddle. He stood waiting here to give us a message, and having delivered it went back by the way we had come. And now looking back we could see nothing of mud village or vast old temple, no living man of the present, no stone memorial of the past; we were alone in a world half lit, wholly empty, stone and sand as far as eye could see, with an empty sky above where the moon had quenched all lesser lights.

The valley, which we began to see more clearly, was narrow and rose steeply on each side; the ground beneath our feet looked like a river-bed, on each side of which were large boulders casting deep black shadows. From time to time the rocks which walled the valley so crossed one another that it seemed the way was barred in front of us, until, as we neared it, we found the road swept round a corner of rock. Turning such a corner, again we found three people silently awaiting us, two of them the companions who had preceded us; the third a slim figure all in white, on foot with a staff in his hand. He was a man of some authority over the guard, who, as we learned later, had lain seven years in jail for a murder. He ran with noiseless steps in front of us, and so heralded we went on to where the valley broadened out a little, branching to the right; and at the entrance a great rock jutting out of the cliff seemed in the moonlight to take a fantastic likeness to some colossal statue of a king, carved, you would have said, by an Egyptian of old.

Our path led us to the left, and here the cliffs began to close in on us, until they rose like a wall on each side of a narrow way, at once so steep and so rugged that we could not tell whether the defile was natural or the work of man. It led at last to where a wall of rock, barring the way, had been rudely cut through. In this rough gateway we halted—behind us the rocky passage through which we had come; before us, as far as we could see, the hills ran down, like a great amphitheatre, to a floor of tumbled sand-heaps.

Here, as we halted, one of our companions blew a whistle, and the next moment the hills re-echoed to the sound of a gun. After a moment’s pause he blew again, and now dark-draped figures suddenly appeared among the desolate rocks, running noiselessly towards us. After a moment all but two or three dispersed again, and we rode forward with the white, slim figure still in front and two men in flowing dark garments following us behind.

The great emptiness, the silence, the white, uncertain light by which the rocks showed faintly tinged with the rose and golden colour of the limestone, the dark figures suddenly appearing, noiselessly moving, dispersing into the night; the strange, desolate valley winding through all apparent barriers into the heart of the hills seemed like a dream. Surprise vanished; even observation was dulled.

So we went forward to the head of the valley, ringed about with sheer mountain walls, and perceived that here the mounds which lay about the way gaped with open mouths, and we could see the moonlight shining through grated doors on the painted walls of galleries that ran down deep into the hill.

These we passed, and dismounting from our beasts, climbed a little mound, turned behind a projecting buttress of rock, and found ourselves opposite to a door cut in the cliff. One of the men who had followed us went in and left us for a while sitting without in the moonlight.