The Flight and the Summons
We gained the hidden passage, bearing with us the treasures and the
holy books of the Sanctuary that to this day lie buried in the caves
of Kôr. We came safely to the ruined temple of Osiris that the
Persians had destroyed, and through it to the water-gate where the
boats waited. None noting us, we embarked upon the boats and glided
away down Nile. If any saw us pass, they thought us countryfolk, or
perchance Egyptians who fled from the Persians in Memphis. But I think
that none did see us, since all eyes were bent upon the flaming temple
of Isis and all ears were filled with the rumours that flew from mouth
to mouth, telling that the goddess had descended in fire and made an
end of the tyrant Ochus, his generals, his councillors, and his court.
Thus did I bid farewell to white-walled Memphis which never again my
eyes should see, though often my spirit shows it to me in visions of
the night, and often I seem to hear the last wild agony of those upon
whom I executed the decree of Heaven.
What happened afterward? Of that I know little, though rumours which
Philo brought in the later years told me that Bagoas and the physician
let fall or flung away the corpse of Ochus. These rumours said that it
was found devoured by cats and jackals, so that had it not been for
the rent Osiris wrappings, none would have known that here lay all
that was left of the King of kings who desolated Egypt and made her as
a widow. They told also that Bagoas set Arses, the son of Ochus, upon
the throne of Persia, and later poisoned him and all his children save
one. Then it seems that he made Darius king, and this Darius
Codomannus, knowing that Bagoas would poison him also, smote the
first, forcing him to drink of the drugged cup that he had given to so
many.
Such, it appears, was the end of Bagoas whom I used as the artist uses
a tool, harnessing him to the chariot of my wrath and, like the
_Erinnyes_ of the Greeks, making of him a sword wherewith I, or Heaven
working through me, stabbed Persia to the heart, as through Tenes I
had stabbed Sidon and through Sidon, Egypt. For such were the dooms
that I was commanded to bring about. Thus Bagoas walked the road down
which, aforetime, he drove his victims, and save for an evil name that
echoes through the ages, this was the end of him and all his crimes.
Ere dawn our company came to the great reed-bed and through it by
channels known only to our pilots, reached the secret shrine named
_Isis-among-the-Reeds_, where all had been made ready for our coming
by the priests who watched there. Worn out, as well I might be, I laid
me down and slept in a tiny cell, fearing no harm, since I knew surely
that none would come to me or to those with me. Why I knew it I cannot
say, but it was so. I knew further that I had done with Egypt; my work
there was finished; henceforth we were divorced.
All that day I slept and through most of the night which followed,
lulled by the whispering of the tall, surrounding reeds. I suppose
that it must have been during those night hours that I dreamed a
strange dream. In it I stood upon the desert, a vast waste of sand
bordered in the distance by the Nile. I was alone in this desert save
for the sun that sank in the west and the moon that rose in the east,
and between them, shone upon by sun and moon, by Ra and by Isis,
crouched a mighty Sphinx of stone with a woman's breasts and head,
which Sphinx I knew was Egypt. There she sat, immemorial, unchanging,
stern, beautiful, and stared with brooding eyes toward the east whence
morn by morn arose the sun.
Appeared before her, one by one, each adorned with its own sacred
emblems, all the gods of Egypt, a grim, fantastic crowd such as a
brain distraught might fashion in its madness. Beast-headed and
human-shaped, human-headed and beast-shaped; dogs and hawks,
crocodiles and owls; swamp-birds, bulls, rams, and swollen-bellied
dwarfs, came this rout of gods and bowed before the stern and
beauteous Sphinx that wore a woman's head.
The Sphinx opened its mouth and spoke.
"What would ye of me who have sheltered you for long?" it asked.
One shaped like a man but from whose shoulders rose the beaked head of
an ibis crowned with a crescent moon on which stood a feather, and
holding in his hand the palette of a scribe; he whom the Egyptians
named Thoth the Measurer, the Recorder, stood forward and made answer.
"We would bid thee farewell, Mother Egypt, our shelterer for thousands
upon thousands of years. Out of thy mud we were created, into thy mud
we return again."
"Is it so?" answered the Sphinx. "Well, what of it? Your short day is
done. Yet tell me, who gave you these monstrous shapes and who named
you gods?"
"The priests gave them to us and the priests named us gods," answered
the ibis-headed man. "Now the priests are slain and we perish with the
priests, because we are but gods made of thy mud, O Egypt."
"Then get you gone back into the mud, ye gods of mud. But first tell
me, where is my Spirit that in the beginning, when the world was
young, I sent forth that it might be a Soul divine to rule Egypt and
the world?"
"We know not," answered Thoth the Recorder. "Ask it of the priests who
made us. Perchance they have hidden it away. Farewell, O Egypt,
farewell, O Sphinx, farewell, farewell!"
"Farewell!" echoed all that monstrous throng and then faded miserably
away.
There was silence and with it solitude; the Sphinx stared at
Nothingness and Nothingness stared at the Sphinx, and I, the watcher,
watched. At length out of the nothingness arose something, and its
shape was the shape of woman. It stood before the Sphinx and said,
"Behold me! I am thy lost spirit, but thou, O Egypt, didst not create
me, for I created thee by a divine command. I am she whom men know as
Isis here upon the Nile, but whom all the world, and all the worlds
beyond the world know as Nature, the visible garment of the Almighty
God. Gone are those phantasies, man-nurtured and priest-conceived. Yet
I remain and thou remainest, aye, and though we be called by many
names in the infinite days to come as we have been called in the
infinite days that are gone, ever shall we remain until this little
floating globe of earth ceases from its journeyings and melts back
into that from which it came, the infinite arms of the infinite God."
Then the human-headed Sphinx rose from the rock whereon it had lain
from the beginning. It reared its giant bulk, it went upon its knees
and bowed to the woman-shape, the tiny woman-shape that was Isis, that
was Nature, that was the Executrix of God. Thrice it bowed--and
vanished.
The Spirit was left and I, Ayesha, was left. The Spirit turned and
looked on me and lo! to my sight it was shaped as I am shaped. Sadly
it looked, with grieving eyes, but never a word it spoke.
"Mother. My mother," I called, "speak to me, my mother!"
But never a word it answered, only it pointed to the skies and
suddenly was gone. Then I, Ayesha, I stood alone in the immeasurable
desert looking at the setting sun, looking at the rising moon, looking
at the evening star that shone between, and wept and wept and wept
because of my loneliness. For what company is there for a human soul
in sun and moon and evening star when the spirit that formed it and
them has departed, leaving them to gaze one upon the other, voiceless
in the void?
Such was my dream upon which I have pondered from year to year, asking
an answer to its riddle from sun and moon and evening star, and
finding none. Only the spirit can interpret its own problems, and to
me, because of my sins, because, like the gods of Egypt I am fashioned
of mud that veils my soul's dim lamp within, as yet that spirit is
choked and dumb. Still, one day the Nile of death that I have dammed
from me for so long will burst its barriers and wash away the mud.
Then the lamp will shine out again; then the spirit will come and
refresh it with its holy oil and breathe upon it with its breath, and
in that breath perchance I shall understand my dream and learn the
answer to its riddle.
Indeed already Time lays its foundations bare, for does not Holly tell
me that for nigh upon two thousand years her gods have been dead in
Egypt? For awhile they lingered on beneath the Greeks and Romans,
changed masks of what once they were; for awhile their effigies were
still painted upon the coffins of her people. Then the star of a new
Faith rose, a bright and holy star, and in its beams they withered and
crumbled into dust. Only the old Sphinx remains staring at the Nile
and mayhap in the silence of the night holds commune with Isis the
Mother, telling of dead kings and wars forgot, for being Nature's
self, Isis alone can never die although from age to age her vestments
change.
Yea, when I, Ayesha, fired the hall and burned those foul Persian
feasters, with them I slew the gods of Egypt, and their sad and solemn
statues stared a farewell to me through that wavering wall of flame.
Nay, it was not I who did it, nor was it I who brought its doom on
Sidon and his death on Ochus, but Destiny that used me as its sword,
as I used Bagoas, me, Fate's doom-driven daughter.
When I awoke it was still dark save for the light of the sinking moon,
and in the night-wind, with a faint continual voice, the tall reeds
whispered their prayer to Heaven. For though we know it not, all that
has life must pray or die. From the great star rushing through space
on its eternal journey to the humblest flower nestling beneath a
stone, everything must pray, for prayer is the blood of the spirit
that is in them and if that blood freezes, then they are resolved to
matter that cannot grow and, knowing neither hope nor fear, is lost in
the blind gulf of darkness.
I hearkened to those whispering reeds telling of the mysteries below
to the mysteries above, and on the wings of their sweet petitions,
sent up my own to Heaven.
For in truth I was troubled and knew not what to do. Here I could not
bide for long, since surely, soon or late the Persians would seek me
out and surely Bagoas, to cover his own crimes, would slay me as the
destroyer of his king. This did not affright me who was weary of the
world with all its horrors and in a mood to walk the gate of death,
hoping that beyond it I might find a better. But there were those with
me, my fellow servants to whom I had sworn safety and who put their
faith in me, as though in truth I were the goddess herself, and if I
died, certainly they would die also.
Therefore I must save them if I could. Yet how? I had no ship in which
to flee from Egypt, and if it were to hand, whither should I fly now
that all the earth was Persian? Oh! that Noot were here to counsel me.
That he lived somewhere I was sure, since had not his voice spoken in
the shrine and this by no priestly trick, for when I put up that
prayer for guidance, I knew not how it would be answered or by whom,
or if indeed it would but fall upon the deaf ears of the winds, and
like a dead leaf, in their breath be blown away and lost.
Yes, he still lived, yet how could I know that it was here he lived?
Mayhap he spoke from far beyond this stormy air of earth. Even so he
who had counselled me once might counsel me again.
"O whispering reeds," I cried in my heart, "with all your million
tongues, pray east and west and north and south, that Ayesha in her
need may be helped of the wisdom of the holy Noot."
Yes, thus I prayed like a little, bewildered child who sees God in a
cloud and thinks that flowers open for her joy and that the great
Pleiades look down from the sky and love her. Yes, toil and grief and
terror had made me like a little child.
Well, it is to such, rather than to the proud and learned, the rulers
of the earth and the challengers of Heaven, that answers oftenest come
and with them knowledge of the truth. At least to me, emptied of
strength and wisdom and in that weak hour, forgetful even of my
beauty, my great deeds, and the lore that I had won, swiftly there
came an answer.
Of a sudden, at the first blush of dawn upon night's pale cheek, a
priestess stood by my pallet,
"Awake, O Isis-come-to-Earth," she said, bowing. "A man stands without
who would have speech with you. He came here in a boat and when he was
challenged answered with all the signs, aye, and even spoke the secret
words known to few, those words that open the sanctuary's door. The
priests questioned him of his business. He answered that he could tell
it only to her who bore the jewelled _sistrum_, to her who veiled her
head with cloud like a mountain-top, to that Prophetess who in all
shrines is known as Child-of-Wisdom, but who among men was named
Ayesha, Daughter of Yarab."
Doubting me of this man and scenting treachery, I caused that
instructed priestess to repeat one by one the mystical words that he
had spoken. At last she uttered a certain syllable of which even she
did not know the meaning. But I knew it and knew also who had its
custody.
Filled with a great hope I rose and wrapped myself in a dark garment.
"Lead me to this man," I said, "but first make sure that three priests
stand round him with drawn swords."
She went and presently returned again, saying that the man awaited me
in the fore-court of the little temple, guarded as I had bidden. To
this court I followed her. It was but a small place, like to a large
room. I entered it from the sanctuary to the west. Through the eastern
door poured the first rays of the rising sun, that struck upon a man
who stood waiting in the centre of the court, guarded by three priests
with lifted swords.
I could not see his face, though perhaps even beneath my cowl he could
see mine upon which those rays also struck. At least I saw him start,
then fall to his knees, raising his hand in salute with a quick and
curious motion. It was enough. I knew him at once. This man was Philo
and no other. With a word I bade the armed priests leave us and the
priestess who had accompanied me bide in the shadow. Then I went
forward, saying,
"Rise, Philo, for whom I have looked so long that I began to think you
were no more to be found beneath the sun. Whence come you, Philo, and
for what purpose?"
"O Prophetess, O adored, O Lady divine," he answered in a voice of
joy, "I, your slave in the flesh and your fellow servant in the
goddess, greet you whom never I hoped to see again after all that has
passed in Egypt. Suffer that I may kiss your hand and thereby learn
that you are still a woman and not a ghost."
I stretched out my hand and reverently he touched it with his lips.
"Now tell your tale, friend Philo," I said. "Whence come you, most
welcome Philo, and by what magic do you find me here?"
"I come from far to the south, Prophetess, out of an ancient land of
which you shall learn afterward. For three moons have I struggled over
difficult seas driven by contrary winds, to reach the mouths of Nile
and to find you, if still you lived."
"And who sent you, friend Philo?"
"A certain Master who is known to both of us, he sent me."
"Is he perchance named Noot?" I asked in a low voice, "and if so, did
you sail hither over mortal seas, or over those through which Ra
travels in the Under-world?"
This I said wondering, for it came into my mind that he who knelt
before me might perchance be not a man but a shadow sent to summon me
to the halls of Osiris.
"Mortal seas I sailed; those of the Under-world still await my prow, O
Wisdom's Daughter. Here is the proof of it," and drawing a roll from
his bosom, with it he touched his brow in token of reverence, then
gave it to me.
I broke the seals, I opened that roll, and by the light of the rising
sun I read. It ran thus:
"From Noot, the son of Noot, the high-priest, the guardian of Secrets,
to Ayesha, Child of Isis, Wisdom's Daughter, the Instructed, the
Oracle: Thus saith Noot.
"I live, I do not sleep in my eternal house. My spirit shows me that
which passes upon the Nile. I know that you have obeyed my commands
which I gave to you before we parted in the bygone years, O my
begotten in the goddess. I know that you have waited patiently in
faith through many tribulations. I know also that this writing will
find you in an hour of great peril when for the second time you have
escaped from fire, leaving behind you the ashes of your foes. Come to
me now and at once, Philo the beloved brother and the consecrated
_sistrum_ that is the sceptre of your office being your guides. Philo
shall lead you; through all dangers the _sistrum_ shall be your
shield. I write no more.
"Obey, Mouth of Isis, bringing with you those that are left to the
service of the goddess. Read the seal of Noot, high-priest and
prophet, and tarry not."
I read and hid away the roll. Then I asked,
"Upon what wings do we fly to Noot who is so far from us, friend
Philo?"
"Upon those of a ship that is known to you, Prophetess, the ship named
_Hapi_, upon which already you have passed many perils. She lies
yonder fully manned in the outer fringe of this sea of reeds."
"How did you find those reeds, and how did you know that I was hidden
among them?" I asked curiously.
"Noot marked them on a chart he gave me and told me that in them,
where, as the story runs, Isis discovered the heart of Osiris, there I
should find the child of Isis. Prophetess, inquire no more."
I heard and returned thanks in my heart. Truly what I whispered to the
whispering reeds had been borne to the ears of Heaven.
The trireme _Hapi_, with her mast struck, lay hidden in shallow water
midst beds of tall bulrushes and papyrus plants, into which Philo had
worked her by the moonlight. All that day we laboured lading her with
the treasures of the temple of Isis and those of the secret shrine,
which were many, for during these times of trouble much gold and
priceless furnishing of precious metals had been hidden here among the
reeds. Also with them were some of the most ancient and hallowed
statues of the goddess fashioned in gold and ivory and alabaster
stone.
All of these together with my own great wealth of jewels and other
gear were borne in boats to the _Hapi_ and stored within her hold
where they lay hid beneath much merchandise that Philo had purchased
at the ports of Nile. Hither he had come disguised as a merchant from
the south, having his ship laden with the produce of Punt such as
ivory and rare woods. These he sold at the ports where he gathered
tidings of all that passed in Egypt, and having purchased other goods
in place of them, passed unsuspected up the Nile to the secret Isle of
Reeds where Noot had bidden him make inquiry for me at the time of
full moon in this very month. It was not difficult for him to find
this isle as it seemed that, being an initiate of Isis, once in bygone
days he had visited it on the business of the goddess.
While we were at this work we saw boats full of Persian soldiers pass
down Nile, as though they searched for someone, and toward the evening
saw them return up Nile again, heading for Memphis. I knew for whom
they sought and noted that they did so very idly, since all believed
that I and my company had perished with the Persians in the burning
temple.
At nightfall I gathered the priests and priestesses, in all they were
thirty and three in number, and spoke to them, saying,
"Here in Egypt we who are the servants of the goddess can stay no
more. The gods of Khem are fallen, their shrines are desolate, and
death by sword and fire, or by the torturer's hooks, is the lot of
those that worship them. Noot, the high-priest, the Master, the
Prophet, summons us from afar, bidding us bear the worship of the
goddess to new lands that lie I know not where. Philo, our brother, is
his messenger and here is the message written in this roll; read it if
you will. I, the Oracle and Prophetess, obey the summons; this very
night I sail setting my course for seas unknown, and trusting to the
goddess to be my guide, mayhap into the gates of death. Noot the
high-priest bids you to accompany me. Yet I give you choice. Bide on
here if you will and live out your lives disguised as scribes or
peasants, for in the temples you can no longer find a home. Mayhap
thus you shall escape the vengeance of the Persians. Or come with me
if you will, knowing that I promise you nothing. Let each speak as the
Spirit directs the heart within."
They consulted together; then one by one they said that it was their
mind to be of my company since they held it better to die with me and
pass pure to the arms of the goddess rather than to live on defiled,
or perchance to perish miserably beneath the stripes of the
executioners, having first been forced to do sacrifice to the Persian
god of Fire. So man by man and woman by woman they swore the oath that
might not be broken by those who would escape the jaws of the
Devourer, and in token kissed the holy _sistrum_ that I held to the
lips of each. Then for the last time we celebrated the rites of Isis
in a temple of Isis on the Nile and with weeping and with woe sang the
psalm of farewell, such as is chanted over the dead of our fellowship.
This done we went to the boats and were rowed on board the _Hapi_.
When the moon was bright the mariners, fierce, foreign men most of
them, such as I had never seen before, who wore great earrings of gold
and had rings thrust through their noses, poled the vessel out from
among the reeds into the deep waters of the Nile. Here they hoisted
the mast and set the sails which presently filled before the strong
wind blowing from the upper land, and bore us forward swiftly.
Passing out of the Nile by a little-used mouth, as we could do now
that the river was in flood, we entered the canal that joins the seas,
which canal the old Pharaohs dug and the Persians had caused to be
cleared of drifting sand. By it, though not easily, for in places it
was both narrow and shallow, at length we came safely into the Red Sea
and bade farewell to Egypt. None hindered us on this journey, and,
having crossed the lakes, only once did we stay at a little unravaged
town at the far mouth of the canal, to buy bread, fresh fish, and meat
wherewith to stock our ship.
This town we found to be full of rumours, for the news of the death of
Ochus had reached it and many tales were told of the manner of his
end. That which these coast-dwellers favoured was that Set the god had
appeared in person at a feast, and seizing Ochus, had set him upon a
winged Apis, that very Apis bull which he had sacrificed and eaten,
and borne him away to hell. At this fable I smiled, though indeed in
it there was a seed of truth, since without doubt, if there be a hell,
the blood-soaked Ochus was its inhabitant that day.
Now of all that journey I, who grow weary of writing, will omit the
story. Most marvellously it prospered, so much so that I think, unseen
by us, spirits from the Under-world must have stood upon our prow.
From day to day a strong and steady wind blowing from the north drove
us forward swiftly. No storm smote us nor did we strike upon any rock,
and when we made land for water, either it was uninhabited, or the
folk who dwelt there, strange barbarous folk, were friendly.
So the time went by creeping from moon to moon and ever we sailed on
southward. Nor was the time unhappy, since there I sat in that same
cabin which had been mine when Pharaoh gave me as a bribe to Tenes and
that therefore was familiar to me, having something of the aspect of a
home. Indeed with a certain taste of acid pleasure, from time to time
I recalled all that had happened to me upon this ship and in that very
cabin. For instance where I had wrung the writing from the
passion-maddened Tenes; where he had stood and knelt; where his shadow
had struck upon the cedar walls. There, too, in the wood was an arrow
hole, which arrow should have drunk my life.
Then in the waist of the ship was the place where the boarders from
the _Holy Fire_ had won aboard, whence Kallikrates, the Grecian
captain turned hierophant, had beat them back so gallantly. Aft, also,
was the shelter where I had visited him and dressed his wounds that
were almost to the death. Here I placed upon his finger the charmed
scarab ring of Khæmuas, the Magician, whereon were cut symbols with a
secret meaning, though they seemed to read only as "Son of Ra," that
this ring might raise him from the darkness of death, as Osiris rose
and as Ra rises from the Under-world.
Here, too, it was that I heard him mistake me for another woman and to
that woman give his thanks, thus opening my eyes to all the folly of
my heart. Years ago these things had chanced to me, and now when they
were dead things, I say that I could dream of them with that soft
grief which is like to the tenderness of eve after the promise of the
morning and the burning noonday heat have become but memories buried
beneath the dust of time. Yet it is true that now and again those
memories renewed their life, especially within the shrines of sleep.
Oh! it was all so long ago. Had not Philo's beard, that I remembered
brown and rich, since then grown gray, and were not his curling locks
thinned upon his temples? And I who then was young, had I not grown to
middle-age, though still I remained more lovely than any other woman
in the world, and was not my soul burdened with much learning, and had
not the sorrows I had passed pierced it with a thousand spears? Now,
too, doubtless Kallikrates was dead, and all the dreams to which he
alone among men had given birth within me had gone wherever dreams may
go, perchance to be lost in the vast unknown, or perchance after the
change called death, there to be found again?
Yet I, I wandered forward on my path, Fate-driven as of old, to what
end I knew not and did not greatly care to know. For now it seemed my
part was played; the world and its stirrings were left behind me and
the last shreds of my web must be spun of poor stuff in petty, unknown
places, where I should patter prayers beneath an alien sky till it
pleased death to enfold me in its wings and bear me to the depths of
its enormous habitations.
Well, so let it be, since, as I have said, I was weary of the world;
its toils, its bloody issues, and its perpetual strivings to grasp
that which man or woman may not hold--except in dreams.
With Philo I talked much, but always of the past; of those things
which we had experienced together, or of other events of his earlier,
adventurous life, or of my own. A most pleasant companion was this
Philo, of a shrewd wit and some learning also, a brave citizen of the
world who had seen much, and yet one who revered the gods, whatever
the gods might be, and had thoughts of that which lies beyond the
world, whatever this may be. But of the present or of what had
happened to him since he sailed away with Noot, my Master, when Ochus
invaded Egypt, and least of all of the future and whither we went or
why, I did not talk at all.
For when these matters came to my lips, as they did even before we
were clear of Nile, Philo made a certain sign to me which being
interpreted meant that he was under an oath, a very solemn oath, not
to speak of any of them, which oath I respected, as indeed I was bound
to do. Therefore I asked no more and sailed on careless as a child
that recks not of what is to come and from whom death is still very
far away.