Dio spent three months here recovering from her wound. Issachar hit her with the knife just above her left breast. It was a dangerous wound: had the knife gone in deeper it would have touched the heart. During the first few days she suffered from fever and delirium.
She fancied she was lying on the funeral pyre as then, in the island of Crete after killing the god Bull; the sacrificial knife pierced her heart; the flames burnt her but through their heat she felt a heavenly freshness: Merira was the flame and Tammuzadad—the freshness.
Or she saw a fiery red goat grazing on the green meadows of paradise; the grass turned coal-black at his touch and red sparks flitted about it; and again—Tamu was the green grass and Merira—the sparks.
Or it was a rich old Sidonian merchant unfolding before her among the booths of the Knossos harbour magnificent stuff, red shot with green; winking slyly he praised his goods: "a true robe of Baal! A mine of silver per cubit is my last price." And, once more, the red shade was Merira, the green—Tammuzadad.
Or, the real Merira was taking her into the holy of holies of Aton's temple, as he really had done, three days before Issachar's attack on the king; she did not want to go in, knowing that no one but the king and the high priest were supposed to do so, but Merira reassured her, saying, "Yes, with me you may!" And, taking her by the hand, he led her in. In the dim light of sanctuary lamps the bas-relief of the Sphinx seemed a pale phantom: a lion's body and legs, human arms and head and an inexpressibly strange, fine, birdlike face—old, ancient, eternal. "If a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again, he would have a face like that," Merira whispered in her ear. "Who is he?" she tried to recognize him and could not; and then, suddenly, she knew him and woke up with a cry of unearthly horror: 'Akhnaton'!
The king's physician, Pentu, treated her so cleverly that she was soon better. But the unwearying care of the queen did her more good perhaps than any medicine. The queen nursed Dio as though she had been her own daughter; she never left her, spent sleepless nights beside her though she herself was far from well: she had a cough and every evening there was an ominous red flush in her cheeks.
Each time that Dio saw the wan, beautiful face bending over her, the face of one who had also received a mortal wound, she felt like bursting into tears.
She learned from the queen what happened in the Beggars Court after Issachar had struck her and she fell down senseless.
"God has saved the king by a miracle!" everyone said. The assassin had raised his knife to strike him when some dreadful vision appeared before him; the knife dropped out of his hand and he fell at the king's feet. The king, thinking that Dio was killed, bent over her and embraced her with a cry so terrible that only then they understood how much he loved her. He would not leave her, but at last Pentu, the physician, assured him that Dio was alive and he got up, covered with her blood.
"You are now related by blood both to him and to me," the queen said, smiling through tears.