I found myself, however, not in the temple itself, but in a kind of chamber or passage, I did not know which, for it was very dark. Some five feet from the ground a narrow opening, scarce the width of an arm, in the granite wall, showed beyond it the brilliantly-lighted sanctuary. At first, in looking through this aperture, I could scarcely see, for the dazzling brightness of the innumerable hanging lamps, and the thick fumes of burning herbs, shut everything out from my view. But gradually, as my anxious gaze travelled round, I saw Ur-tasen and Maat-kha not ten feet away from me to my left; but the gossamer curtain hung between the sanctuary and them, and I could only vaguely distinguish their forms. Beyond them I could see nothing but gloom; the dim shadow, which I had fancied to be Princess Neit-akrit, had apparently disappeared, if indeed it had ever been there, and the high priest and the Queen evidently thought themselves alone.
“He often used to evade his attendants at nighttime,” Maat-kha was saying, apparently in answer to a query from the priest, “and wander about aimlessly in the gardens or the palace. I had come into the temple to pray, bidding my women go and leave me in peace for an hour, when suddenly I saw the Pharaoh before me.”
“I know the rest, for I saw and heard all,” replied the high priest, quietly.
“And thou didst not move a finger to save him from death, and thy Queen from a crime ten thousand times worse than any torment?” she exclaimed with a smothered shriek.
“The will of the gods is inscrutable,” he replied calmly. “I am but a servant of all-creating Ra. ’Tis he ordered me to be silent when the holy Pharaoh fell smitten by his mother’s hand. His will must guide thee, too. Thou hast sworn to do my bidding.”
“I will obey,” she said very meekly.
“Listen then to the commands of Ra, of Osiris, and of Horus, of Set, and of Anubis and all the gods in Kamt, whose wrath, if thou disobey, will fall heavily upon thy criminal head. I command thee to go anon, when thy women come to attend upon thee, back to thy palace peacefully and silently. The priests of Ra will guard the body of the Pharaoh until such time as the soulless corpse will have helped to fulfil the deed of vengeance which the gods of Kamt have decreed.”
“I do not understand.”
“Listen, Maat-kha,” said Ur-tasen, more eagerly, as he bent his shaven crown close to her ear; “at the midnight hour, when Isis is high in the heavens, the stranger, who with sacrilegious arrogance doth style himself beloved of the gods, will plight his troth to thee. Ignorant of thy terrible crime, he will swear that he will love and be true to thee, and reverence thee as men of Kamt do reverence the wife whom Isis places in their arms. Do thou be silent and at peace—none but I have seen the evil midnight deed—do thou be silent and at peace, and place thy hand in that of the stranger.”
There was a pause, while I pictured to myself the unfortunate Maat-kha listening to the priest’s commands, not daring to cling to the thin thread of hope which he was so enigmatically holding out to her.