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.
“Bring some straw and make a heap below!” shouted Rameses, above the
roar 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 was
impossible to return to it, but neither the king nor Mena lost his
self-possession. When Mena saw the twelve princes descending to the
ground, he shouted through his hands, using them as a speaking trumpet,
and called to Rameri, who was about to slip down the rope they had
contrived, 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 had
sprung across the space which divided one piece of the balustrade from
another. The king’s blood ran cold as Mena, a second time, ventured the
frightful leap; one false step, and he must meet with the same fearful
death as his enemy Paaker.
While the bystanders watched him in breathless silence--while the
crackling of the wood, the roar of the flames, and the dull thump of
falling timber mingled with the distant chant of a procession of priests
who were now approaching the burning pile, Nefert roused by little
Scherau knelt on the bare ground in fervent and passionate prayer to the
saving Gods. She watched every movement of her husband, and she bit her
lips till they bled not to cry out. She felt that he was acting bravely
and nobly, and that he was lost if even for an instant his attention
were 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 to
the window-sill, and prepared once more to spring. Nefert saw him ready
to leap, she pressed her hands upon her lips to repress a scream, she
shut her eyes, and when she opened them again he had accomplished the
first leap, and at the second the Gods preserved him from falling; at
the 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 to
fasten 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 king
stood in safety on the ground. Rameri followed him, and then Mena, whose
faithful wife went to meet him, and wiped the sweat from his throbbing
temples.
Rameses hurried to the north wing, where Bent-Anat had her apartments;
he found her safe indeed, but wringing her hands, for her young favorite
Uarda had disappeared in the flames after she had roused her and saved
her with her father’s assistance. Kaschta ran up and down in front of
the burning pavilion, tearing his hair; now calling his child in tones
of anguish, now holding his breath to listen for an answer. To rush at
random into the immense-burning building would have been madness. The
king observed the unhappy man, and set him to lead the soldiers, whom he
had commanded to hew down the wall of Bent-Anat’s rooms, so as to rescue
the girl who might be within. Kaschta seized an axe, and raised it to
strike.
But he thought that he heard blows from within against one of the
shutters of the ground-floor, which by Katuti’s orders had been securely
closed; he followed the sound--he was not mistaken, the knocking could
be distinctly heard.
With all his might he struck the edge of the axe between the shutter and
the wall, and a stream of smoke poured out of the new outlet, and before
him, enveloped in its black clouds, stood a staggering man who held
Uarda in his arms. Kaschta sprang forward into the midst of the smoke
and sparks, and snatched his daughter from the arms of her preserver,
who fell half smothered on his knees. He rushed out into the air with
his light and precious burden, and as he pressed his lips to her closed
eyelids his eyes were wet, and there rose up before him the image of
the woman who bore her, the wife that had stood as the solitary
green palm-tree in the desert waste of his life. But only for a few
seconds-Bent-Anat herself took Uarda into her care, and he hastened back
to the burning house.
He had recognized his daughter’s preserver; it was the physician
Nebsecht, 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 the
shutter, the broad flames streamed out of the window, but still Nebsecht
was alive, for his groans could be heard through the smoke. Once more
Kaschta rushed towards the window, the bystanders could see that the
ceiling of the room was about to fail, and called out to warn him, but
he was already astride the sill.
“I signed myself his slave with my blood,” he cried, “Twice he has
saved my child, and now I will pay my debt,” and he disappeared into the
burning room.
He soon reappeared with Nebsecht in his arms, whose robe was already
scorched by the flames. He could be seen approaching the window with his
heavy burden; a hundred soldiers, and with them Pentaur, pressed
forward to help him, and took the senseless leech out of the arms of the
soldier, who lifted him over the window sill.
Kaschta was on the point of following him, but before he could swing
himself over, the beams above gave way and fell, burying the brave son
of the paraschites.
Pentaur had his insensible friend carried to his tent, and helped the
physicians to bind up his burns. When the cry of fire had been
first raised, Pentaur was sitting in earnest conversation with the
high-priest; he had learned that he was not the son of a gardener, but
a descendant of one of the noblest families in the land. The foundations
of life seemed to be subverted under his feet, Ameni’s revelation lifted
him out of the dust and set him on the marble floor of a palace; and yet
Pentaur was neither excessively surprised nor inordinately rejoiced;
he was so well used to find his joys and sufferings depend on the man
within him, and not on the circumstances without.
As soon as he heard the cry of fire, he hastened to the burning
pavilion, and when he saw the king’s danger, he set himself at the head
of a number of soldiers who had hurried up from the camp, intending to
venture an attempt to save Rameses from the inside of the house. Among
those who followed him in this hopeless effort was Katuti’s reckless
son, who had distinguished himself by his valor before Kadesh, and who
hailed this opportunity of again proving his courage. Falling walls
choked up the way in front of these brave adventurers; but it was not
till several had fallen choked or struck down by burning logs, that
they made up their minds to retire--one of the first that was killed was
Katuti’s son, Nefert’s brother.
Uarda had been carried into the nearest tent. Her pretty head lay in
Bent-Anat’s lap, and Nefert tried to restore her to animation by rubbing
her temples with strong essences. Presently the girl’s lips moved: with
returning consciousness all she had seen and suffered during the last
hour or two recurred to her mind; she felt herself rushing through the
camp with her father, hurrying through the corridor to the princess’s
rooms, while he broke in the doors closed by Katuti’s orders; she saw
Bent-Anat as she roused her, and conducted her to safety; she remembered
her horror when, just as she reached the door, she discovered that she
had left in her chest her jewel, the only relic of her lost mother, and
her 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 once
more had the trinket safe in her bosom, the horror that fell upon her
when she found her escape impeded by smoke and flames, and the weakness
which overcame her; and she felt as if the strange white-robed priest
once more raised her in his arms. She remembered the tenderness of his
eyes as he looked into hers, and she smiled half gratefully but half
displeased at the tender kiss which had been pressed on her lips before
she found herself in her father’s strong arms.
“How sweet she is!” said Bent-Anat. “I believe poor Nebsecht is right
in saying that her mother was the daughter of some great man among the
foreign people. Look what pretty little hands and feet, and her skin is
as clear as Phoenician glass.”