Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt. Complete
Various opinions were given, and at last it was settled that a small division, guarded by a few soldiers, should be sent out every day to supply only the daily need for charcoal.
It was suggested that the most dangerous of the convicts should be fettered together in pairs to perform their duties.
The superintendent was of opinion that two strong men fettered together would be more to be feared if only they acted in concert.
“Then chain a strong one to a weak one,” said the chief accountant of the mines, whom the Egyptians called the ‘scribe of the metals.’ “And fetter those together who are enemies.”
“The colossal Huni, for instance, to that puny spat row, the stuttering Nebsecht,” said a subaltern.
“I was thinking of that very couple,” said the accountant laughing.
Three other couples were selected, at first with some laughter, but finally with serious consideration, and Uarda’s father was sent with the drivers as an escort.
On the following morning Pentaur and Nebsecht were fettered together with a copper chain, and when the sun was at its height four pairs of prisoners, heavily loaded with copper, set out for the Oasis of the Amalekites, accompanied by six soldiers and the son of the paraschites, to fetch fuel for the smelting furnaces.
They rested near the town of Alus, and then went forward again between bare walls of greyish-green and red porphyry. These cliffs rose higher and higher, but from time to time, above the lower range, they could see the rugged summit of some giant of the range, though, bowed under their heavy loads, they paid small heed to it.
The sun was near setting when they reached the little sanctuary of the ‘Emerald-Hathor.’
A few grey and black birds here flew towards them, and Pentaur gazed at them with delight.
How long he had missed the sight of a bird, and the sound of their chirp and song! Nebsecht said: “There are some birds—we must be near water.”
And there stood the first palm-tree!
Now the murmur of the brook was perceptible, and its tiny sound touched the thirsty souls of the travellers as rain falls on dry grass.
On the left bank of the stream an encampment of Egyptian soldiers formed a large semicircle, enclosing three large tents made of costly material striped with blue and white, and woven with gold thread. Nothing was to be seen of the inhabitants of these tents, but when the prisoners had passed them, and the drivers were exchanging greetings with the out-posts, a girl, in the long robe of an Egyptian, came towards them, and looked at them.
Pentaur started as if he had seen a ghost; but Nebsecht gave expression to his astonishment in a loud cry.
At the same instant a driver laid his whip across their shoulders, and cried laughing:
“You may hit each other as hard as you like with words, but not with your hands.”
Then he turned to his companions, and said: “Did you see the pretty girl there, in front of the tent?”
“It is nothing to us!” answered the man he addressed. “She belongs to the princess’s train. She has been three weeks here on a visit to the holy shrine of Hathor.”
“She must have committed some heavy sin,” replied the other. “If she were one of us, she would have been set to sift sand in the diggings, or grind colors, and not be living here in a gilt tent. Where is our red-beard?”
Uarda’s father had lingered a little behind the party, for the girl had signed to him, and exchanged a few words with him.
“Have you still an eye for the fair ones?” asked the youngest of the drivers when he rejoined the gang.
“She is a waiting maid of the princess,” replied the soldier not without embarrassment. “To-morrow morning we are to carry a letter from her to the scribe of the mines, and if we encamp in the neighborhood she will send us some wine for carrying it.”
“The old red-beard scents wine as a fox scents a goose. Let us encamp here; one never knows what may be picked up among the Mentu, and the superintendent said we were to encamp outside the oasis. Put down your sacks, men! Here there is fresh water, and perhaps a few dates and sweet Manna for you to eat with it.
[“Man” is the name still given by the Bedouins of Sinai to the sweet gum which exudes from the Tamarix mannifera. It is the result of the puncture of an insect, and occurs chiefly in May. By many it is supposed to be the Manna of the Bible.]
But keep the peace, you two quarrelsome fellows—Huni and Nebsecht.”
Bent-Anat’s journey to the Emerald-Hathor was long since ended. As far as Keft she had sailed down the Nile with her escort, from thence she had crossed the desert by easy marches, and she had been obliged to wait a full week in the port on the Red Sea, which was chiefly inhabited by Phoenicians, for a ship which had finally brought her to the little seaport of Pharan. From Pharan she had crossed the mountains to the oasis, where the sanctuary she was to visit stood on the northern side.
The old priests, who conducted the service of the Goddess, had received the daughter of Rameses with respect, and undertook to restore her to cleanness by degrees with the help of the water from the mountain-stream which watered the palm-grove of the Amalekites, of incense-burning, of pious sentences, and of a hundred other ceremonies. At last the Goddess declared herself satisfied, and Bent-Anat wished to start for the north and join her father, but the commander of the escort, a grey-headed Ethiopian field officer—who had been promoted to a high grade by Ani—explained to the Chamberlain that he had orders to detain the princess in the oasis until her departure was authorized by the Regent himself.
Bent-Anat now hoped for the support of her father, for her brother Rameri, if no accident had occurred to him, might arrive any day. But in vain.
The position of the ladies was particularly unpleasant, for they felt that they had been caught in a trap, and were in fact prisoners. In addition to this their Ethiopian escort had quarrelled with the natives of the oasis, and every day skirmishes took place under their eyes—indeed lately one of these fights had ended in bloodshed.
Bent-Anat was sick at heart. The two strong pinions of her soul, which had always borne her so high above other women—her princely pride and her bright frankness—seemed quite broken; she felt that she had loved once, never to love again, and that she, who had sought none of her happiness in dreams, but all in work, had bestowed the best half of her identity on a vision. Pentaur’s image took a more and more vivid, and at the same time nobler and loftier, aspect in her mind; but he himself had died for her, for only once had a letter reached them from Egypt, and that was from Katuti to Nefert. After telling her that late intelligence established the statement that her husband had taken a prince’s daughter, who had been made prisoner, to his tent as his share of the booty, she added the information that the poet Pentaur, who had been condemned to forced labor, had not reached the mountain mines, but, as was supposed, had perished on the road.
Nefert still held to her immovable belief that her husband was faithful to his love for her, and the magic charm of a nature made beautiful by its perfect mastery over a deep and pure passion made itself felt in these sad and heavy days.
It seemed as though she had changed parts with Bent-Anat. Always hopeful, every day she foretold help from the king for the next; in truth she was ready to believe that, when Mena learned from Rameri that she was with the princess, he himself would come to fetch them if his duties allowed it. In her hours of most lively expectation she could go so far as to picture how the party in the tents would be divided, and who would bear Bent-Anat company if Mena took her with him to his camp, on what spot of the oasis it would be best to pitch it, and much more in the same vein.
Uarda could very well take her place with Bent-Anat, for the child had developed and improved on the journey. The rich clothes which the princess had given her became her as if she had never worn any others; she could obey discreetly, disappear at the right moment, and, when she was invited, chatter delightfully. Her laugh was silvery, and nothing consoled Bent-Anat so much as to hear it.
Her songs too pleased the two friends, though the few that she knew were grave and sorrowful. She had learned them by listening to old Hekt, who often used to play on a lute in the dusk, and who, when she perceived that Uarda caught the melodies, had pointed out her faults, and given her advice.
“She may some day come into my hands,” thought the witch, “and the better she sings, the better she will be paid.”
Bent-Anat too tried to teach Uarda, but learning to read was not easy to the girl, however much pains she might take. Nevertheless, the princess would not give up the spelling, for here, at the foot of the immense sacred mountain at whose summit she gazed with mixed horror and longing, she was condemned to inactivity, which weighed the more heavily on her in proportion as those feelings had to be kept to herself which she longed to escape from in work. Uarda knew the origin of her mistress’s deep grief, and revered her for it, as if it were something sacred. Often she would speak of Pentaur and of his father, and always in such a manner that the princess could not guess that she knew of their love.
When the prisoners were passing Bent-Anat’s tent, she was sitting within with Nefert, and talking, as had become habitual in the hours of dusk, of her father, of Mena, Rameri, and Pentaur.
“He is still alive,” asserted Nefert. “My mother, you see, says that no one knows with certainty what became of him. If he escaped, he beyond a doubt tried to reach the king’s camp, and when we get there you will find him with your father.”
The princess looked sadly at the ground. Nefert looked affectionately at her, and asked:
“Are you thinking of the difference in rank which parts you from the man you have chosen?”
“The man to whom I offer my hand, I put in the rank of a prince,” said Bent-Anat. “But if I could set Pentaur on a throne, as master of the world, he would still be greater and better than I.”
“But your father?” asked Nefert doubtfully.
“He is my friend, he will listen to me and understand me. He shall know everything when I see him; I know his noble and loving heart.”
Both were silent for some time; then Bent-Anat spoke:
“Pray have lights brought, I want to finish my weaving.”
Nefert rose, went to the door of the tent, and there met Uarda; she seized Nefert’s hand, and silently drew her out into the air.
“What is the matter, child? you are trembling,” Nefert exclaimed.
“My father is here,” answered Uarda hastily. “He is escorting some prisoners from the mines of Mafkat. Among them there are two chained together, and one of them—do not be startled—one of them is the poet Pentaur. Stop, for God’s sake, stop, and hear me. Twice before I have seen my father when he has been here with convicts. To-day we must rescue Pentaur; but the princess must know nothing of it, for if my plan fails—”
“Child! girl!” interrupted Nefert eagerly. “How can I help you?”
“Order the steward to give the drivers of the gang a skin of wine in the name of the princess, and out of Bent-Anat’s case of medicines take the phial which contains the sleeping draught, which, in spite of your wish, she will not take. I will wait here, and I know how to use it.”
Nefert immediately found the steward, and ordered him to follow Uarda with a skin of wine. Then she went back to the princess’s tent, and opened the medicine case.
[A medicine case, belonging to a more ancient period than the reign of Rameses, is preserved in the Berlin Museum.]
“What do you want?” asked Bent-Anat.
“A remedy for palpitation,” replied Nefert; she quietly took the flask she needed, and in a few minutes put it into Uarda’s hand.
The girl asked the steward to open the wine-skin, and let her taste the liquor. While she pretended to drink it, she poured the whole contents of the phial into the wine, and then let Bent-Anat’s bountiful present be carried to the thirsty drivers.
She herself went towards the kitchen tent, and found a young Amalekite sitting on the ground with the princess’s servants. He sprang up as soon as he saw the damsel.
“I have brought four fine partridges,”
[A brook springs on the peak called by the Sinaitic monks Mr. St. Katherine, which is called the partridge’s spring, and of which many legends are told. For instance, God created it for the partridges which accompanied the angels who carried St. Katharine of Alexandria to her tomb on Sinai.]
he said, “which I snared myself, and I have brought this turquoise for you—my brother found it in a rock. This stone brings good luck, and is good for the eyes; it gives victory over our enemies, and keeps away bad dreams.”
“Thank you!” said Uarda, and taking the boy’s hand, as he gave her the sky-blue stone, she led him forward into the dusk.
“Listen, Salich” she said softly, as soon as she thought they were far enough from the others. “You are a good boy, and the maids told me that you said I was a star that had come down from the sky to become a woman. No one says such a thing as that of any one they do not like very much; and I know you like me, for you show me that you do every day by bringing me flowers, when you carry the game that your father gets to the steward. Tell me, will you do me and the princess too a very great service? Yes?—and willingly? Yes? I knew you would! Now listen. A friend of the great lady Bent-Anat, who will come here to-night, must be hidden for a day, perhaps several days, from his pursuers. Can he, or rather can they, for there will probably be two, find shelter and protection in your father’s house, which lies high up there on the sacred mountain?”
“Whoever I take to my father,” said the boy, “will be made welcome; and we defend our guests first, and then ourselves. Where are the strangers?”
“They will arrive in a few hours. Will you wait here till the moon is well up?”
“Till the last of all the thousand moons that vanish behind the hills is set.”
“Well then, wait on the other side of the stream, and conduct the man to your house, who repeats my name three times. You know my name?”
“I call you Silver-star, but the others call you Uarda.”
“Lead the strangers to your hut, and, if they are received there by your father, come back and tell me. I will watch for you here at the door of the tent. I am poor, alas! and cannot reward you, but the princess will thank your father as a princess should. Be watchful, Salich!”
The girl vanished, and went to the drivers of the gang of prisoners, wished them a merry and pleasant evening, and then hastened back to Bent-Anat, who anxiously stroked her abundant hair, and asked her why she was so pale.
“Lie down,” said the princess kindly, “you are feverish. Only look, Nefert, I can see the blood coursing through the blue veins in her forehead.”
Meanwhile the drivers drank, praised the royal wine, and the lucky day on which they drank it; and when Uarda’s father suggested that the prisoners too should have a mouthful one of his fellow soldiers cried: “Aye, let the poor beasts be jolly too for once.”
The red-beard filled a large beaker, and offered it first to a forger and his fettered companion, then he approached Pentaur, and whispered:
“Do not drink any-keep awake!”
As he was going to warn the physician too, one of his companions came between them, and offering his tankard to Nebsecht said:
“Here mumbler, drink; see him pull! His stuttering mouth is spry enough for drinking!”
CHAPTER XXXV
The hours passed gaily with the drinkers, then they grew more and more sleepy.
Ere the moon was high in the heavens, while they were all sleeping, with the exception of Kaschta and Pentaur, the soldier rose softly. He listened to the breathing of his companions, then he approached the poet, unfastened the ring which fettered his ankle to that of Nebsecht, and endeavored to wake the physician, but in vain.
“Follow me!” cried he to the poet; he took Nebsecht on his shoulders, and went towards the spot near the stream which Uarda had indicated. Three times he called his daughter’s name, the young Amalekite appeared, and the soldier said decidedly: “Follow this man, I will take care of Nebsecht.”
“I will not leave him,” said Pentaur. “Perhaps water will wake him.” They plunged him in the brook, which half woke him, and by the help of his companions, who now pushed and now dragged him, he staggered and stumbled up the rugged mountain path, and before midnight they reached their destination, the hut of the Amalekite.
The old hunter was asleep, but his son aroused him, and told him what Uarda had ordered and promised.
But no promises were needed to incite the worthy mountaineer to hospitality. He received the poet with genuine friendliness, laid the sleeping leech on a mat, prepared a couch for Pentaur of leaves and skins, called his daughter to wash his feet, and offered him his own holiday garment in the place of the rags that covered his body.
Pentaur stretched himself out on the humble couch, which to him seemed softer than the silken bed of a queen, but on which nevertheless he could not sleep, for the thoughts and fancies that filled his heart were too overpowering and bewildering.
The stars still sparkled in the heavens when he sprang from his bed of skins, lifted Nebsecht on to it, and rushed out into the open air. A fresh mountain spring flowed close to the hunter’s hut. He went to it, and bathed his face in the ice-cold water, and let it flow over his body and limbs. He felt as if he must cleanse himself to his very soul, not only from the dust of many weeks, but from the rebellion and despondency, the ignominy and bitterness, and the contact with vice and degradation. When at last he left the spring, and returned to the little house, he felt clean and fresh as on the morning of a feast-day at the temple of Seti, when he had bathed and dressed himself in robes of snow-white linen. He took the hunter’s holiday dress, put it on, and went out of doors again.
The enormous masses of rock lay dimly before him, like storm-clouds, and over his head spread the blue heavens with their thousand stars.
The soothing sense of freedom and purity raised his soul, and the air that he breathed was so fresh and light, that he sprang up the path to the summit of the peak as if he were borne on wings or carried by invisible hands.
A mountain goat which met him, turned from him, and fled bleating, with his mate, to a steep peak of rock, but Pentaur said to the frightened beasts:
“I shall do nothing to you—not I!”
He paused on a little plateau at the foot of the jagged granite peak of the mountain. Here again he heard the murmur of a spring, the grass under his feet was damp, and covered with a film of ice, in which were mirrored the stars, now gradually fading. He looked up at the lights in the sky, those never-tarrying, and yet motionless wanderers-away, to the mountain heights around him-down, into the gorge below—and far off, into the distance.
The dusk slowly grew into light, the mysterious forms of the mountain-chain took shape and stood up with their shining points, the light clouds were swept away like smoke. Thin vapors rose from the oasis and the other valleys at his feet, at first in heavy masses, then they parted and were wafted, as if in sport, above and beyond him to the sky. Far below him soared a large eagle, the only living creature far or near.
A solemn and utter silence surrounded him, and when the eagle swooped down and vanished from his sight, and the mist rolled lower into the valley, he felt that here, alone, he was high above all other living beings, and standing nearer to the Divinity.
He drew his breath fully and deeply, he felt as he had felt in the first hours after his initiation, when for the first time he was admitted to the holy of holies—and yet quite different.
Instead of the atmosphere loaded with incense, he breathed a light pure air; and the deep stillness of the mountain solitude possessed his soul more strongly than the chant of the priests.
Here, it seemed to him, that the Divine being would hear the lightest murmur of his lips, though indeed his heart was so full of gratitude and devotion that his impulse was to give expression to his mighty flow of feelings in jubilant song. But his tongue seemed tied; he knelt down in silence, to pray and to praise.
Then he looked at the panorama round him. Where was the east which in Egypt was clearly defined by the long Nile range? Down there where it was beginning to be light over the oasis. To his right hand lay the south, the sacred birth-place of the Nile, the home of the Gods of the Cataracts; but here flowed no mighty stream, and where was there a shrine for the visible manifestation of Osiris and Isis; of Horns, born of a lotus flower in a thicket of papyrus; of Rennut, the Goddess of blessings, and of Zeta? To which of them could he here lift his hands in prayer?
A faint breeze swept by, the mist vanished like a restless shade at the word of the exorcist, the many-pointed crown of Sinai stood out in sharp relief, and below them the winding valleys, and the dark colored rippling surface of the lake, became distinctly visible.
All was silent, all untouched by the hand of man yet harmonized to one great and glorious whole, subject to all the laws of the universe, pervaded and filled by the Divinity.
He would fain have raised his hand in thanksgiving to Apheru, “the Guide on the way;” but he dared not; and how infinitely small did the Gods now seem to him, the Gods he had so often glorified to the multitude in inspired words, the Gods that had no meaning, no dwelling-place, no dominion but by the Nile.
“To ye,” he murmured, “I cannot pray! Here where my eye can pierce the distance, as if I myself were a god-here I feel the presence of the One, here He is near me and with me—I will call upon Him and praise him!”
And throwing up his arms he cried aloud: “Thou only One! Thou only One! Thou only One!” He said no more; but a tide of song welled up in his breast as he spoke—a flood of thankfulness and praise.
When he rose from his knees, a man was standing by him; his eyes were piercing and his tall figure had the dignity of a king, in spite of his herdsman’s dress.
“It is well for you!” said the stranger in deep slow accents. “You seek the true God.”
Pentaur looked steadily into the face of the bearded man before him.
“I know you now,” he said. “You are Mesu.—[Moses]—I was but a boy when you left the temple of Seti, but your features are stamped on my soul. Ameni initiated me, as well as you, into the knowledge of the One God.”
“He knows Him not,” answered the other, looking thoughtfully to the eastern horizon, which every moment grew brighter.
The heavens glowed with purple, and the granite peaks, each sheathed in a film of ice, sparkled and shone like dark diamonds that had been dipped in light.
The day-star rose, and Pentaur turned to it, and prostrated himself as his custom was. When he rose, Mesu also was kneeling on the earth, but his back was turned to the sun.
When he had ended his prayer, Pentaur said, “Why do you turn your back on the manifestation of the Sun-god? We were taught to look towards him when he approaches.”
“Because I,” said his grave companion, “pray to another God than yours. The sun and stars are but as toys in his hand, the earth is his foot-stool, the storm is his breath, and the sea is in his sight as the drops on the grass.”
“Teach me to know the Mighty One whom you worship!” exclaimed Pentaur.
“Seek him,” said Mesu, “and you will find him; for you have passed through misery and suffering, and on this spot on such a morning as this was He revealed to me.”
The stranger turned away, and disappeared behind a rock from the enquiring gaze of Pentaur, who fixed his eyes on the distance.
Then he thoughtfully descended the valley, and went towards the hut of the hunter. He stayed his steps when he heard men’s voices, but the rocks hid the speakers from his sight.
Presently he saw the party approaching; the son of his host, a man in Egyptian dress, a lady of tall stature, near whom a girl tripped lightly, and another carried in a litter by slaves.
