By the gods beloved

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

There was dead silence after this; I could see Hugh, with clenched hands and lips tightly set, ready at any cost to prevent the terrible and awful deed, the consequences of which we had already witnessed in the lonely desert beyond the gates of Kamt. The Pharaoh had turned positively livid; amidst his white draperies he looked more ghostlike and dead than the corpses which had just now stood before us; Khefaran’s face was still impassive.

Then the judges said solemnly:

“Take the gag off the woman’s mouth; it is her turn to speak now.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. There was a great sense of fairness in this proceeding, which, for the moment, relieved the tension on my overwrought nerves. I saw that Hugh, too, was prepared to wait and listen to what the woman would have to say.

The gag had been removed, and yet Kesh-ta did not speak; it seemed as if she had ceased to be conscious of her surroundings.

“Woman, thou hast heard the accusation pronounced against thee: what hast thou to say?”

She looked at the judges, and at the crowd of men, on whose faces she could see nothing but loathing and horror, then suddenly her wild and wandering gaze rested upon Hugh, and with a loud shriek she wrenched her arms from out her bonds, and stretched them towards him, crying:

“Thou, beloved of the gods, hear me! I ask for no pardon, no mercy! Remember death, however horrible, is life to me; the arid wilderness, wherein the gods do not dwell, where bones of evil-doers lie rotting beneath the sun, will be to me an abode of bliss, for inaccessible mountains will lie between me and her. There, before grim and slowly-creeping death overtakes me, I shall have time to rejoice that I, with my own hands, saved Sem-no-tha, my son, my beloved, from the same terrible doom. He was a slave, abject at her feet, but he was tall and handsome, and she smiled on him. And dost know what happens when Neit-akrit smiles upon a man, be he freeborn or be he slave? He loses his senses, he becomes intoxicated, a coward and a perjurer, and his reason goeth forth—a vagabond—out of his body. Hast heard of Amen-het, the architect, oh, beloved of the gods? hast heard that for a smile from her he perjured himself and committed such dire sacrilege that Osiris himself veiled his countenance for one whole day because of it, until Amen-het was cast out of Kamt, to perish slowly and miserably body and soul. And I saw Sem-no-tha at the feet of Neit-akrit! I saw her smile on him, and knew that he was doomed; knew that to see her smile again he would lie and he would cheat, would sell his soul for her and die an eternal death, and I, his mother, who loved him above all, who had but him in all the world, preferred to see him dead at my feet, than damned before the judgment-seat of the Most High!

“Ay! I am guilty of murder,” she continued more excitedly than ever, “I have nothing to say! I slew Sem-no-tha, the slave of Neit-akrit!—Her property!—Not mine!—I am only his mother—and am too old, too weary to smile! Beloved of the gods, they did not tell thee all my sins; they did not tell thee that when I saw Sem-no-tha lying dead at my feet, and Neit-akrit kneeling by his side, while a tear of pity for her handsome slave fell upon his white and rigid form, that with the knife still warm with his blood, I tried to mar for ever the beauty of her face. I had no wish to kill her, only to make upon that ivory white flesh a hideous scar that would make her smile seem like the grimace of death. But Fano-tu stopped my arm ready to strike, and to punish me he, with his own hand, made upon my face this gaping wound, such as I had longed to make on that of Neit-akrit. You may condemn me—nay, you must cast me out of Kamt, for if you do not I tell you that were you to bury me beneath the tallest pyramid the proud Pharaohs have built for themselves, and set the entire population of Kamt to guard it and me, I yet would creep out and find my way to her, and I tell you Kesh-ta would not fail twice.”

Exhausted, she sank back, half fainting, on the ground, while deathlike silence reigned around; one by one every member of the jury dropped his lotus flower before him, and the judges, having taken count, pronounced solemnly the word “Guilty!”