Uarda, Volume 10.

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UARDA

Volume 10.

By Georg Ebers

CHAPTER XLII.

The cloudless vault of heaven spread over the plain of Pelusium, the
stars were bright, the moon threw her calm light over the thousands of
tents which shone as white as little hillocks of snow. All was silent,
the soldiers and the Egyptians, who had assembled to welcome the king,
were now all gone to rest.

There had been great rejoicing and jollity in the camp; three enormous
vats, garlanded with flowers and overflowing with wine, which spilt with
every movement of the trucks on which they were drawn by thirty oxen,
were sent up and down the little streets of tents, and as the evening
closed in tavern-booths were erected in many spots in the camp, at which
the Regent's servants supplied the soldiers with red and white wine. The
tents of the populace were only divided from the pavilion of the Pharaoh
by the hastily-constructed garden in the midst of which it stood, and the
hedge which enclosed it.

The tent of the Regent himself was distinguished from all the others by
its size and magnificence; to the right of it was the encampment of the
different priestly deputations, to the left that of his suite; among the
latter were the tents of his friend Katuti, a large one for her own use,
and some smaller ones for her servants. Behind Ani's pavilion stood a
tent, enclosed in a wall or screen of canvas, within which old Hekt was
lodged; Ani had secretly conveyed her hither on board his own boat. Only
Katuti and his confidential servants knew who it was that lay concealed
in the mysteriously shrouded abode.

While the banquet was proceeding in the great pavilion, the witch was
sitting in a heap on the sandy earth of her conical canvas dwelling; she
breathed with difficulty, for a weakness of the heart, against which she
had long struggled, now oppressed her more frequently and severely; a
little lamp of clay burned before her, and on her lap crouched a sick and
ruffled hawk; the creature shivered from time to time, closing the filmy
lids of his keen eyes, which glowed with a dull fire when Hekt took him
up in her withered hand, and tried to blow some air into his hooked beak,
still ever ready to peck and tear her.

At her feet little Scherau lay asleep. Presently she pushed the child
with her foot. "Wake up," she said, as he raised himself still half
asleep. "You have young ears--it seemed to me that I heard a woman
scream in Ani's tent. Do you hear any thing?"

"Yes, indeed," exclaimed the little one. "There is a noise like crying,
and that--that was a scream! It came from out there, from Nemu's tent."

"Creep through there," said the witch, "and see what is happening!"

The child obeyed: Hekt turned her attention again to the bird, which no
longer perched in her lap, but lay on one side, though it still tried to
use its talons, when she took him up in her hand.

"It is all over with him," muttered the old woman, "and the one I called
Rameses is sleeker than ever. It is all folly and yet--and yet! the
Regent's game is over, and he has lost it. The creature is stretching
itself--its head drops--it draws itself up--one more clutch at my dress
--now it is dead!"

She contemplated the dead hawk in her lap for some minutes, then she took
it up, flung it into a corner of the tent, and exclaimed:

"Good-bye, King Ani. The crown is not for you!" Then she went on: "What
project has he in hand now, I wonder? Twenty times he has asked me
whether the great enterprise will succeed; as if I knew any more than he!
And Nemu too has hinted all kinds of things, though he would not speak
out. Something is going on, and I--and I? There it comes again."

The old woman pressed her hand to her heart and closed her eyes, her
features were distorted with pain; she did not perceive Scherau's return,
she did not hear him call her name, or see that, when she did not answer
him, he left her again. For an hour or more she remained unconscious,
then her senses returned, but she felt as if some ice-cold fluid slowly
ran through her veins instead of the warm blood.

"If I had kept a hawk for myself too," she muttered, "it would soon
follow the other one in the corner! If only Ani keeps his word, and has
me embalmed!

"But how can he when he too is so near his end. They will let me rot and
disappear, and there will be no future for me, no meeting with Assa."

The old woman remained silent for a long time; at last she murmured
hoarsely with her eyes fixed on the ground:

"Death brings release, if only from the torment of remembrance. But
there is a life beyond the grave. I do not, I will not cease to hope.
The dead shall all be equally judged, and subject to the inscrutable
decrees.--Where shall I find him? Among the blest, or among the damned?
And I? It matters not! The deeper the abyss into which they fling me
the better. Can Assa, if he is among the blest, remain in bliss, when he
sees to what he has brought me? Oh! they must embalm me--I cannot bear
to vanish, and rot and evaporate into nothingness!"

While she was still speaking, the dwarf Nemu had come into the tent;
Scherau, seeing the old woman senseless, had run to tell him that his
mother was lying on the earth with her eyes shut, and was dying. The
witch perceived the little man.

"It is well," she said, "that you have come; I shall be dead before
sunrise."

"Mother!" cried the dwarf horrified, "you shall live, and live better
than you have done till now! Great things are happening, and for us!"

"I know, I know," said Hekt. "Go away, Scherau--now, Nemu, whisper in my
ear what is doing?" The dwarf felt as if he could not avoid the
influence of her eye, he went up to her, and said softly--"The pavilion,
in which the king and his people are sleeping, is constructed of wood;
straw and pitch are built into the walls, and laid under the boards. As
soon as they are gone to rest we shall set the tinder thing on fire. The
guards are drunk and sleeping."

"Well thought of," said Hekt. "Did you plan it?" "I and my mistress,"
said the dwarf not without pride. "You can devise a plot," said the old
woman, "but you are feeble in the working out. Is your plan a secret?
Have you clever assistants?"

"No one knows of it," replied the dwarf, "but Katuti, Paaker, and I; we
three shall lay the brands to the spots we have fixed upon. I am going
to the rooms of Bent-Anat; Katuti, who can go in and out as she pleases,
will set fire to the stairs, which lead to the upper story, and which
fall by touching a spring; and Paaker to the king's apartments."

"Good-good, it may succeed," gasped the old woman. "But what was the
scream in your tent?" The dwarf seemed doubtful about answering; but
Hekt went on:

"Speak without fear--the dead are sure to be silent." The dwarf,
trembling with agitation, shook off his hesitation, and said:

"I have found Uarda, the grandchild of Pinem, who had disappeared, and I
decoyed her here, for she and no other shall be my wife, if Ani is king,
and if Katuti makes me rich and free. She is in the service of the
Princess Bent-Anat, and sleeps in her anteroom, and she must not be burnt
with her mistress. She insisted on going back to the palace, so, as she
would fly to the fire like a gnat, and I would not have her risk being
burnt, I tied her up fast."

"Did she not struggle?" said Hekt.

"Like a mad thing," said the dwarf. "But the Regent's dumb slave, who
was ordered by his master to obey me in everything to-day, helped me.
We tied up her mouth that she might not be heard screaming!"

"Will you leave her alone when you go to do your errand?"

"Her father is with her!"

"Kaschta, the red-beard?" asked the old woman in surprise. "And did he
not break you in pieces like an earthenware pot?"

"He will not stir," said Nemu laughing. "For when I found him, I made
him so drunk with Ani's old wine that he lies there like a mummy. It was
from him that I learned where Uarda was, and I went to her, and got her
to come with me by telling her that her father was very ill, and begged
her to go to see him once more. She flew after me like a gazelle, and
when she saw the soldier lying there senseless she threw herself upon
him, and called for water to cool his head, for he was raving in his
dreams of rats and mice that had fallen upon him. As it grew late she
wanted to return to her mistress, and we were obliged to prevent her.
How handsome she has grown, mother; you cannot imagine how pretty she
is."

"Aye, aye!" said Hekt. "You will have to keep an eye upon her when she
is your wife."

"I will treat her like the wife of a noble," said Nemu. "And pay a real
lady to guard her. But by this time Katuti has brought home her
daughter, Mena's wife; the stars are sinking and--there--that was the
first signal. When Katuti whistles the third time we are to go to work.
Lend me your fire-box, mother."

"Take it," said Hekt. "I shall never need it again. It is all over with
me! How your hand shakes! Hold the wood firmly, or you will drop it
before you have brought the fire."

The dwarf bid the old woman farewell, and she let him kiss her without
moving. When he was gone, she listened eagerly for any sound that might
pierce the silence of the night, her eyes shone with a keen light, and a
thousand thoughts flew through her restless brain. When she heard the
second signal on Katuti's silver whistle, she sat upright and muttered:

"That gallows-bird Paaker, his vain aunt and that villain Ani, are no
match for Rameses, even when he is asleep. Ani's hawk is dead; he has
nothing to hope for from Fortune, and I nothing to hope for from him.
But if Rameses--if the real king would promise me--then my poor old body
--Yes, that is the thing, that is what I will do."

She painfully raised herself on her feet with the help of her stick, she
found a knife and a small flask which she slipped into her dress, and
then, bent and trembling, with a last effort of her remaining strength
she dragged herself as far as Nemu's tent. Here she found Uarda bound
hand and foot, and Kaschta lying on the ground in a heavy drunken
slumber.

The girl shrank together in alarm when she saw the old woman, and
Scherau, who crouched at her side, raised his hands imploringly to the
witch.

"Take this knife, boy," she said to the little one. "Cut the ropes the
poor thing is tied with. The papyrus cords are strong, saw them with the
blade."

[Papyrus was used not only for writing on, but also for ropes. The
bridge of boats on which Xerxes crossed the Hellespont was fastened
with cables of papyrus.]

While the boy eagerly followed her instructions with all his little
might, she rubbed the soldier's temples with an essence which she had in
the bottle, and poured a few drops of it between his lips. Kaschta came
to himself, stretched his limbs, and stared in astonishment at the place
in which he found himself. She gave him some water, and desired him to
drink it, saying, as Uarda shook herself free from the bonds:

"The Gods have predestined you to great things, you white maiden. Listen
to what I, old Hekt, am telling you. The king's life is threatened, his
and his children's; I purpose to save them, and I ask no reward but this-
that he should have my body embalmed and interred at Thebes. Swear to me
that you will require this of him when you have saved him."

"In God's name what is happening?" cried Uarda. "Swear that you will
provide for my burial," said the old woman.

"I swear it!" cried the girl. "But for God's sake--"

"Katuti, Paaker, and Nemu are gone to set fire to the palace when Rameses
is sleeping, in three places. Do you hear, Kaschta! Now hasten, fly
after the incendiaries, rouse the servants, and try to rescue the king."

"Oh fly, father," cried the girl, and they both rushed away in the
darkness.

"She is honest and will keep her word," muttered Hekt, and she tried to
drag herself back to her own tent; but her strength failed her half-way.
Little Scherau tried to support her, but he was too weak; she sank down
on the sand, and looked out into the distance. There she saw the dark
mass of the palace, from which rose a light that grew broader and
broader, then clouds of black smoke, then up flew the soaring flame, and
a swarm of glowing sparks.

"Run into the camp, child," she cried, "cry fire, and wake the sleepers."

Scherau ran off shouting as loud as he could.

The old woman pressed her hand to her side, she muttered: "There it is
again."

"In the other world--Assa--Assa," and her trembling lips were silent for
ever.

CHAPTER XLIII.

Katuti had kept her unfortunate nephew Paaker concealed in one of her
servants' tents. He had escaped wounded from the battle at Kadesh, and
in terrible pain he had succeeded, by the help of an ass which he had
purchased from a peasant, in reaching by paths known to hardly any one
but himself, the cave where he had previously left his brother. Here he
found his faithful Ethiopian slave, who nursed him till he was strong
enough to set out on his journey to Egypt. He reached Pelusium, after
many privations, disguised as an Ismaelite camel-driver; he left his
servant, who might have betrayed him, behind in the cave.

Before he was permitted to pass the fortifications, which lay across the
isthmus which parts the Mediterranean from the Red Sea, and which were
intended to protect Egypt from the incursions of the nomad tribes of the
Chasu, he was subjected to a strict interrogatory, and among other
questions 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, muscular and
thick-legged pioneer. To disguise himself the more effectually, he
procured some hair-dye--a cosmetic known in all ages--and blackened
himself.

[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 superintend
the construction of the royal pavilion. He ventured to approach her
disguised as a negro beggar, with a palm-branch in his hand. She gave
him some money and questioned him concerning his native country, for she
made it her business to secure the favor even of the meanest; but though
she appeared to take an interest in his answers, she did not recognize
him; now for the first time he felt secure, and the next day he went up
to her again, and told her who he was.

The widow was not unmoved by the frightful alteration in her nephew, and
although she knew that even Ani had decreed that any intercourse with the
traitor was to be punished by death, she took him at once into her
service, for she had never had greater need than now to employ the
desperate enemy of the king and of her son-in-law.

The mutilated, despised, and hunted man kept himself far from the other
servants, regarding the meaner folk with undiminished scorn. He thought
seldom, and only vaguely of Katuti's daughter, for love had quite given
place to hatred, and only one thing now seemed to him worth living for--
the hope of working with others to cause his enemies' downfall, and of
being the instrument of their death; so he offered himself to the widow
a willing and welcome tool, and the dull flash in his uninjured eye 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 on to the
uttermost.

Paaker had carefully examined the scene of his exploit before the king's
arrival. Under the windows of the king's rooms, at least forty feet from
the ground, was a narrow parapet resting on the ends of the beams which
supported the rafters on which lay the floor of the upper story in which
the king slept. These rafters had been smeared with pitch, and straw had
been laid between them, and the pioneer would have known how to find the
opening where he was to put in the brand even if he had been blind of
both eyes.

When Katuti first sounded her whistle he slunk to his post; he was
challenged by no watchman, for the few guards who had been placed in the
immediate vicinity of the pavilion, had all gone to sleep under the
influence of the Regent's wine. Paaker climbed up to about the height of
two men from the ground by the help of the ornamental carving on the
outside wall of the palace; there a rope ladder was attached, he
clambered up this, and soon stood on the parapet, above which were the
windows of the king's rooms, and below which the fire was to be laid.

Rameses' room was brightly illuminated. Paaker could see into it without
being seen, and could bear every word that was spoken within. The king
was sitting in an arm-chair, and looked thoughtfully at the ground;
before him stood the Regent, and Mena stood by his couch, holding in his
hand the king's sleeping-robe.

Presently Rameses raised his head, and said, as he offered his hand with
frank affection to Ani:

"Let me bring this glorious day to a worthy end, cousin. I have found
you my true and faithful friend, and I had been in danger of believing
those over-anxious counsellors who spoke evil of you. I am never prone
to distrust, but a number of things occurred together that clouded my
judgment, and I did you injustice. I am sorry, sincerely sorry; nor am I
ashamed to apologize to you for having for an instant doubted your good
intentions. You are my good friend--and I will prove to you that I am
yours. There is my hand-take it; and all Egypt shall know that Rameses
trusts no man more implicitly than his Regent Ani. I will ask you to
undertake 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 divan
yonder." Ani had taken Rameses' offered hand, but now he turned pale as
he looked down. Paaker could see straight into his face, and it was not
without difficulty that he suppressed a scornful laugh.

Rameses did not observe the Regent's dismay, for he had signed to Mena to
come closer to him.

"Before I sleep," said the king, "I will bring matters to an end with you
too. You have put your wife's constancy to a severe test, and she has
trusted you with a childlike simplicity that is often wiser than the
arguments of sages, because she loved you honestly, and is herself
incapable of guile. I promised you that I would grant you a wish if your
faith 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 the
dishonoring 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 groan
outside."

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 perceived
that his involuntary sigh of anguish had been heard, stretched himself
close under the balustrade. Mena had not risen from his knees when the
king 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 but
through thee, and by thy favor, my king, my lord, my father!"

Rameses signed to his favorite to rise. "Your request was granted," said
he, "before you made it. I am still in your debt on your fair wife's
account. Thank Nefert--not me, and let us give thanks to the Immortals
this day with especial fervor. What has it not brought forth for us! It
has restored to me you two friends, whom I regarded as lost to me, and
has given me in Pentaur another son."

A low whistle sounded through the night air; it was Katuti's last signal.

Paaker blew up the tinder, laid it in the bole under the parapet, and
then, unmindful of his own danger, raised himself to listen for any
further 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 have
been too much for me; I can hardly stand on my feet, and the guard of
honor--"

"Mena will watch," said the king. "Sleep in all security, cousin. I
will have it known to all men that I have put away from me all distrust
of you. 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
humble origin, the son of a gardener of the House of Seti; and now what
do I learn through Ameni? He is the true son of the dead Mohar, and the
foul traitor Paaker is the gardener's son. A witch in the Necropolis
changed the children. That is the best news of all that has reached me
on this propitious day, for the Mohar's widow, the noble Setchem, has
been brought here, and I should have been obliged to choose between two
sentences on her as the mother of the villain who has escaped us. Either
I must have sent her to the quarries, or have had her beheaded before all
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 noise
as 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 were
met by a cloud of smoke.

"Call the watch!" cried the king.

"Go, you," exclaimed Mena to Ani. "I will not leave the king again in
danger."

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 in
before his very eyes; Katuti, after she had set fire to the interior of
the palace, had made them fall by one blow of a hammer. Ani saw her robe
as she herself fled, clenched his fist with rage as he shouted her name,
and then, not knowing what he did, rushed headlong through the corridor
into which the different royal apartments opened.

The fearful crash of the falling stairs brought the King and Mena also
out of the sleeping-room.

"There lie the stairs! that is serious!" said the king cooly; then he
went back into his room, and looked out of a window to estimate the
danger. Bright flames were already bursting from the northern end of the
palace, and gave the grey dawn the brightness of day; the southern wing
or the pavilion was not yet on fire. Mena observed the parapet from
which Paaker had fallen to the ground, tested its strength, and found it
firm enough to bear several persons. He looked round, particularly at
the 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 is
squatting down and pushing a brand into the woodwork."

He leaped back into the room, which was now filling with smoke, snatched
the 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 arrow
through his heart. After setting fire to Bent-Anat's rooms, he had
determined to lay a brand to the wing of the palace where, with the other
princes, Uarda's friend Rameri was sleeping.

Mena had again leaped out of window, and was estimating the height of the
leap to the ground; the Pharaoh's room was getting more and more filled
with smoke, and flames began to break through the seams of the boards.
Outside the palace as well as within every one was waking up to terror
and excitement.

"Fire! fire! an incendiary! Help! Save the king!" cried Kaschta, who
rushed on, followed by a crowd of guards whom he had roused; Uarda had
flown to call Bent-Anat, as she knew the way to her room. The king had
got on to the parapet outside the window with Mena, and was calling to
the soldiers.

"Half of you get into the house, and first save the princess; the other
half keep the fire from catching the south wing. I will try to get
there."

But Nemu's brand had been effectual, the flames flared up, and the
soldiers strained every nerve to conquer them. Their cries mingled with
the crackling and snapping of the dry wood, and the roar of the flames,
with the trumpet calls of the awakening troops, and the beating of drums.
The young princes appeared at a window; they had tied their clothes
together to form a rope, and one by one escaped down it.

Rameses called to them with words of encouragement, but he himself was
unable to take any means of escape, for though the parapet on which he
stood was tolerably wide, and ran round the whole of the building, at
about every six feet it was broken by spaces of about ten paces. The
fire was spreading and growing, and glowing sparks flew round him and his
companion like chaff from the winnowing fan.

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