CHAPTER XLIII.
Katuti had kept her unfortunate nephew Paaker concealed in one of herservants' tents. He had escaped wounded from the battle at Kadesh, andin terrible pain he had succeeded, by the help of an ass which he hadpurchased from a peasant, in reaching by paths known to hardly any onebut himself, the cave where he had previously left his brother. Here hefound his faithful Ethiopian slave, who nursed him till he was strongenough to set out on his journey to Egypt. He reached Pelusium, aftermany privations, disguised as an Ismaelite camel-driver; he left hisservant, who might have betrayed him, behind in the cave.
Before he was permitted to pass the fortifications, which lay across theisthmus which parts the Mediterranean from the Red Sea, and which wereintended to protect Egypt from the incursions of the nomad tribes ofthe Chasu, he was subjected to a strict interrogatory, and among otherquestions was asked whether he had nowhere met with the traitor Paaker,who was minutely described to him. No one recognized in the shrunken,grey-haired, one-eyed camel-driver, the broad-shouldered, muscularand thick-legged pioneer. To disguise himself the more effectually,he procured some hair-dye--a cosmetic known in all ages--and blackenedhimself.
[In my papyrus there are several recipes for the preparation of hair-dye; one is ascribed to the Lady Schesch, the mother of Teta, wife of the first king of Egypt. The earliest of all the recipes preserved to us is a prescription for dyeing the hair.]
Katuti had arrived at Pelusium with Ani some time before, to superintendthe construction of the royal pavilion. He ventured to approach herdisguised as a negro beggar, with a palm-branch in his hand. She gavehim some money and questioned him concerning his native country, for shemade it her business to secure the favor even of the meanest; but thoughshe appeared to take an interest in his answers, she did not recognizehim; now for the first time he felt secure, and the next day he went upto her again, and told her who he was.
The widow was not unmoved by the frightful alteration in her nephew, andalthough she knew that even Ani had decreed that any intercourse withthe traitor was to be punished by death, she took him at once intoher service, for she had never had greater need than now to employ thedesperate enemy of the king and of her son-in-law.
The mutilated, despised, and hunted man kept himself far from the otherservants, regarding the meaner folk with undiminished scorn. He thoughtseldom, and only vaguely of Katuti's daughter, for love had quite givenplace to hatred, and only one thing now seemed to him worth livingfor--the hope of working with others to cause his enemies' downfall,and of being the instrument of their death; so he offered himself to thewidow a willing and welcome tool, and the dull flash in his uninjuredeye when she set him the task of setting fire to the king's apartments,showed her that in the Mohar she had found an ally she might depend onto the uttermost.
Paaker had carefully examined the scene of his exploit before the king'sarrival. Under the windows of the king's rooms, at least forty feet fromthe ground, was a narrow parapet resting on the ends of the beams whichsupported the rafters on which lay the floor of the upper story in whichthe king slept. These rafters had been smeared with pitch, and straw hadbeen laid between them, and the pioneer would have known how to find theopening where he was to put in the brand even if he had been blind ofboth eyes.
When Katuti first sounded her whistle he slunk to his post; he waschallenged by no watchman, for the few guards who had been placed inthe immediate vicinity of the pavilion, had all gone to sleep under theinfluence of the Regent's wine. Paaker climbed up to about the heightof two men from the ground by the help of the ornamental carving onthe outside wall of the palace; there a rope ladder was attached, heclambered up this, and soon stood on the parapet, above which were thewindows of the king's rooms, and below which the fire was to be laid.
Rameses' room was brightly illuminated. Paaker could see into it withoutbeing seen, and could bear every word that was spoken within. The kingwas sitting in an arm-chair, and looked thoughtfully at the ground;before him stood the Regent, and Mena stood by his couch, holding in hishand the king's sleeping-robe.
Presently Rameses raised his head, and said, as he offered his hand withfrank affection to Ani:
"Let me bring this glorious day to a worthy end, cousin. I have foundyou my true and faithful friend, and I had been in danger of believingthose over-anxious counsellors who spoke evil of you. I am never proneto distrust, but a number of things occurred together that clouded myjudgment, and I did you injustice. I am sorry, sincerely sorry; nor am Iashamed to apologize to you for having for an instant doubted your goodintentions. You are my good friend--and I will prove to you that I amyours. There is my hand-take it; and all Egypt shall know that Ramesestrusts no man more implicitly than his Regent Ani. I will ask you toundertake to be my guard of honor to-night--we will share this room.I sleep here; when I lie down on my couch take your place on the divanyonder." Ani had taken Rameses' offered hand, but now he turned pale ashe looked down. Paaker could see straight into his face, and it was notwithout difficulty that he suppressed a scornful laugh.
Rameses did not observe the Regent's dismay, for he had signed to Menato come closer to him.
"Before I sleep," said the king, "I will bring matters to an end withyou too. You have put your wife's constancy to a severe test, and shehas trusted you with a childlike simplicity that is often wiser thanthe arguments of sages, because she loved you honestly, and is herselfincapable of guile. I promised you that I would grant you a wish if yourfaith in her was justified. Now tell me what is your will?"
Mena fell on his knees, and covered the king's robe with kisses.
"Pardon!" he exclaimed. "Nothing but pardon. My crime was a heavy one,I know; but I was driven to it by scorn and fury--it was as if I saw thedishonoring hand of Paaker stretched out to seize my innocent wife, who,as I now know, loathes him as a toad--"
"What was that?" exclaimed the king. "I thought I heard a groanoutside."
He went up to the window and looked out, but he did not see the pioneer,who watched every motion of the king, and who, as soon as he perceivedthat his involuntary sigh of anguish had been heard, stretched himselfclose under the balustrade. Mena had not risen from his knees when theking once more turned to him.
"Pardon me," he said again. "Let me be near thee again as before,and drive thy chariot. I live only through thee, I am of no worth butthrough thee, and by thy favor, my king, my lord, my father!"
Rameses signed to his favorite to rise. "Your request was granted," saidhe, "before you made it. I am still in your debt on your fair wife'saccount. Thank Nefert--not me, and let us give thanks to the Immortalsthis day with especial fervor. What has it not brought forth for us! Ithas restored to me you two friends, whom I regarded as lost to me, andhas given me in Pentaur another son."
A low whistle sounded through the night air; it was Katuti's lastsignal.
Paaker blew up the tinder, laid it in the bole under the parapet, andthen, unmindful of his own danger, raised himself to listen for anyfurther words.
"I entreat thee," said the Regent, approaching Rameses, "to excuse me.I fully appreciate thy favors, but the labors of the last few days havebeen too much for me; I can hardly stand on my feet, and the guard ofhonor--"
"Mena will watch," said the king. "Sleep in all security, cousin. I willhave it known to all men that I have put away from me all distrust ofyou. Give the my night-robe, Mena. Nay-one thing more I must tell you.Youth smiles on the young, Ani. Bent-Anat has chosen a worthy husband,my preserver, the poet Pentaur. He was said to be a man of humbleorigin, the son of a gardener of the House of Seti; and now what do Ilearn through Ameni? He is the true son of the dead Mohar, and the foultraitor Paaker is the gardener's son. A witch in the Necropolis changedthe children. That is the best news of all that has reached me on thispropitious day, for the Mohar's widow, the noble Setchem, has beenbrought here, and I should have been obliged to choose between twosentences on her as the mother of the villain who has escaped us. EitherI must have sent he
r to the quarries, or have had her beheaded beforeall the people--In the name of the Gods, what is that?"
They heard a loud cry in a man's voice, and at the same instant a noiseas if some heavy mass had fallen to the ground from a great height.Rameses and Mena hastened to the window, but started back, for they weremet by a cloud of smoke.
"Call the watch!" cried the king.
"Go, you," exclaimed Mena to Ani. "I will not leave the king again indanger."
Ani fled away like an escaped prisoner, but he could not get far, for,before he could descend the stairs to the lower story, they fell inbefore his very eyes; Katuti, after she had set fire to the interior ofthe palace, had made them fall by one blow of a hammer. Ani saw her robeas she herself fled, clenched his fist with rage as he shouted her name,and then, not knowing what he did, rushed headlong through the corridorinto which the different royal apartments opened.
The fearful crash of the falling stairs brought the King and Mena alsoout of the sleeping-room.
"There lie the stairs! that is serious!" said the king cooly; then hewent back into his room, and looked out of a window to estimate thedanger. Bright flames were already bursting from the northern end of thepalace, and gave the grey dawn the brightness of day; the southern wingor the pavilion was not yet on fire. Mena observed the parapet fromwhich Paaker had fallen to the ground, tested its strength, and foundit firm enough to bear several persons. He looked round, particularly atthe wing not yet gained by the flames, and exclaimed in a loud voice:
"The fire is intentional! it is done on purpose. See there! a man issquatting down and pushing a brand into the woodwork."
He leaped back into the room, which was now filling with smoke, snatchedthe king's bow and quiver, which he himself had hung up at the bed-head,took careful aim, and with one cry the incendiary fell dead.
A few hours later the dwarf Nemu was found with the charioteer's arrowthrough his heart. After setting fire to Bent-Anat's rooms, he haddetermined to lay a brand to the wing of the palace where, with theother princes, Uarda's friend Rameri was sleeping.
Mena had again leaped out of window, and was estimating the height ofthe leap to the ground; the Pharaoh's room was getting more and morefilled with smoke, and flames began to break through the seams of theboards. Outside the palace as well as within every one was waking up toterror and excitement.
"Fire! fire! an incendiary! Help! Save the king!" cried Kaschta, whorushed on, followed by a crowd of guards whom he had roused; Uarda hadflown to call Bent-Anat, as she knew the way to her room. The king hadgot on to the parapet outside the window with Mena, and was calling tothe soldiers.
"Half of you get into the house, and first save the princess; the otherhalf keep the fire from catching the south wing. I will try to getthere."
But Nemu's brand had been effectual, the flames flared up, and thesoldiers strained every nerve to conquer them. Their cries mingled withthe crackling and snapping of the dry wood, and the roar of the flames,with the trumpet calls of the awakening troops, and the beating ofdrums. The young princes appeared at a window; they had tied theirclothes together to form a rope, and one by one escaped down it.
Rameses called to them with words of encouragement, but he himself wasunable to take any means of escape, for though the parapet on which hestood was tolerably wide, and ran round the whole of the building, atabout every six feet it was broken by spaces of about ten paces. Thefire was spreading and growing, and glowing sparks flew round him andhis companion like chaff from the winnowing fan.
"Bring some straw and make a heap below!" shouted Rameses, above theroar of the conflagration. "There is no escape but by a leap down."
The flames rushed out of the windows of the king's room; it wasimpossible to return to it, but neither the king nor Mena lost hisself-possession. When Mena saw the twelve princes descending to theground, he shouted through his hands, using them as a speaking trumpet,and called to Rameri, who was about to slip down the rope they hadcontrived, the last of them all.
"Pull up the rope, and keep it from injury till I come."
Rameri obeyed the order, and before Rameses could interfere, Mena hadsprung across the space which divided one piece of the balustrade fromanother. The king's blood ran cold as Mena, a second time, ventured thefrightful leap; one false step, and he must meet with the same fearfuldeath as his enemy Paaker.
While the bystanders watched him in breathless silence--while thecrackling of the wood, the roar of the flames, and the dull thump offalling timber mingled with the distant chant of a procession of priestswho were now approaching the burning pile, Nefert roused by littleScherau knelt on the bare ground in fervent and passionate prayer to thesaving Gods. She watched every movement of her husband, and she bit herlips till they bled not to cry out. She felt that he was acting bravelyand nobly, and that he was lost if even for an instant his attentionwere distracted from his perilous footing. Now he had reached Rameri,and bound one end of the rope made out of cloaks and handkerchiefs,round his body; then he gave the other end to Rameri, who held fast tothe window-sill, and prepared once more to spring. Nefert saw him readyto leap, she pressed her hands upon her lips to repress a scream, sheshut her eyes, and when she opened them again he had accomplished thefirst leap, and at the second the Gods preserved him from falling; atthe third the king held out his hand to him, and saved him from a fall.Then Rameses helped him to unfasten the rope from round his waist tofasten it to the end of a beam.
Rameri now loosened the other end, and followed Mena's example; he too,practised in athletic exercises in the school of the House of Seti,succeeded in accomplishing the three tremendous leaps, and soon the kingstood in safety on the ground. Rameri followed him, and then Mena, whosefaithful wife went to meet him, and wiped the sweat from his throbbingtemples.
Rameses hurried to the north wing, where Bent-Anat had her apartments;he found her safe indeed, but wringing her hands, for her young favoriteUarda had disappeared in the flames after she had roused her and savedher with her father's assistance. Kaschta ran up and down in front ofthe burning pavilion, tearing his hair; now calling his child in tonesof anguish, now holding his breath to listen for an answer. To rush atrandom into the immense-burning building would have been madness. Theking observed the unhappy man, and set him to lead the soldiers, whom hehad commanded to hew down the wall of Bent-Anat's rooms, so as to rescuethe girl who might be within. Kaschta seized an axe, and raised it tostrike.
But he thought that he heard blows from within against one of theshutters of the ground-floor, which by Katuti's orders had been securelyclosed; he followed the sound--he was not mistaken, the knocking couldbe distinctly heard.
With all his might he struck the edge of the axe between the shutter andthe wall, and a stream of smoke poured out of the new outlet, and beforehim, enveloped in its black clouds, stood a staggering man who heldUarda in his arms. Kaschta sprang forward into the midst of the smokeand sparks, and snatched his daughter from the arms of her preserver,who fell half smothered on his knees. He rushed out into the air withhis light and precious burden, and as he pressed his lips to her closedeyelids his eyes were wet, and there rose up before him the image ofthe woman who bore her, the wife that had stood as the solitarygreen palm-tree in the desert waste of his life. But only for a fewseconds-Bent-Anat herself took Uarda into her care, and he hastened backto the burning house.
He had recognized his daughter's preserver; it was the physicianNebsecht, who had not quitted the princess since their meeting on Sinai,and had found a place among her suite as her personal physician.
The fresh air had rushed into the room through the opening of theshutter, the broad flames streamed out of the window, but still Nebsechtwas alive, for his groans could be heard through the smoke. Once moreKaschta rushed towards the window, the bystanders could see that theceiling of the room was about to fail, and called out to warn him, buthe was already astride the sill.
"I signed myself his slave with my blood," he cried, "Twice he hassaved my
child, and now I will pay my debt," and he disappeared into theburning room.
He soon reappeared with Nebsecht in his arms, whose robe was alreadyscorched by the flames. He could be seen approaching the window with hisheavy burden; a hundred soldiers, and with them Pentaur, pressedforward to help him, and took the senseless leech out of the arms of thesoldier, who lifted him over the window sill.
Kaschta was on the point of following him, but before he could swinghimself over, the beams above gave way and fell, burying the brave sonof the paraschites.
Pentaur had his insensible friend carried to his tent, and helped thephysicians to bind up his burns. When the cry of fire had beenfirst raised, Pentaur was sitting in earnest conversation with thehigh-priest; he had learned that he was not the son of a gardener, buta descendant of one of the noblest families in the land. The foundationsof life seemed to be subverted under his feet, Ameni's revelation liftedhim out of the dust and set him on the marble floor of a palace; and yetPentaur was neither excessively surprised nor inordinately rejoiced;he was so well used to find his joys and sufferings depend on the manwithin him, and not on the circumstances without.
As soon as he heard the cry of fire, he hastened to the burningpavilion, and when he saw the king's danger, he set himself at the headof a number of soldiers who had hurried up from the camp, intending toventure an attempt to save Rameses from the inside of the house. Amongthose who followed him in this hopeless effort was Katuti's recklessson, who had distinguished himself by his valor before Kadesh, and whohailed this opportunity of again proving his courage. Falling wallschoked up the way in front of these brave adventurers; but it was nottill several had fallen choked or struck down by burning logs, thatthey made up their minds to retire--one of the first that was killed wasKatuti's son, Nefert's brother.
Uarda had been carried into the nearest tent. Her pretty head lay inBent-Anat's lap, and Nefert tried to restore her to animation by rubbingher temples with strong essences. Presently the girl's lips moved: withreturning consciousness all she had seen and suffered during the lasthour or two recurred to her mind; she felt herself rushing through thecamp with her father, hurrying through the corridor to the princess'srooms, while he broke in the doors closed by Katuti's orders; she sawBent-Anat as she roused her, and conducted her to safety; she rememberedher horror when, just as she reached the door, she discovered that shehad left in her chest her jewel, the only relic of her lost mother, andher rapid return which was observed by no one but by the leech Nebsecht.
Again she seemed to live through the anguish she had felt till she oncemore had the trinket safe in her bosom, the horror that fell upon herwhen she found her escape impeded by smoke and flames, and the weaknesswhich overcame her; and she felt as if the strange white-robed priestonce more raised her in his arms. She remembered the tenderness of hiseyes as he looked into hers, and she smiled half gratefully but halfdispleased at the tender kiss which had been pressed on her lips beforeshe found herself in her father's strong arms.
"How sweet she is!" said Bent-Anat. "I believe poor Nebsecht is rightin saying that her mother was the daughter of some great man among theforeign people. Look what pretty little hands and feet, and her skin isas clear as Phoenician glass."