Sarchedon Part 21

Work, my brother, while 'tis day-- Pharaoh lives for ever; Rivers waste and wane away, Marble crumbles down like clay, Nations dwindle to decay; But Pharaoh lives for ever!

Work--it is thy mortal doom-- Pharaoh lives for ever!

Shadows pa.s.sing through the gloom, Age to age gives place and room, Kings go down into the tomb; But Pharaoh lives for ever!"

The task-master on his spirited little steed was here, there, everywhere; now giving out the words of the chant, to which, dropping his bridle, he clapped his hands in time; now directing a broken lever to be replaced, the position of a roller altered, a hook secured, a rope greased, or a fainting labourer revived by smart application of the lash. The sun was high, the heat suffocating; even Sarchedon, inured to the toils of war, longed for any catastrophe, however dangerous, that might release him from the insupportable hardships of his task.

The sand became softer, the men more fatigued, the ponderous image rocked, wavered, and stood still. In terror of the lash, a simultaneous effort was made, a cable snapped, and some score of Israelites were hurled panting to the earth.

Amongst them fell the younger son of Sadoc, a weakly stripling, whose labour Sarchedon, working between him and his brother, had endeavoured to spare by his own exertions. When the others scrambled to their feet, this lad lay prostrate, too faint to rise.

The task-master arrived at the scene of disorder almost as quickly as the casualty took place. His eye glared fiercely on the boy's slender shoulders, bare to the waist; his hand went up to strike; but even while the lash whistled round his head, the Egyptian's wrist was clasped by an iron grip, that shook him in the saddle where he sat. Sarchedon's eye looked very fierce and resolute, his arms seemed powerful enough to have torn the threatening horseman limb from limb.

The latter foamed with rage while he struggled to release himself from the a.s.syrian's grasp. The Israelites gathered round, the guard of bowmen were fairly shut out by the crowd, a thousand tongues clamoured, a thousand eyes glared vengeance, and the mocking colossus looked down on all that turmoil with its eternal inscrutable smile.

"By the Queen of Heaven, if you move a finger, or speak a syllable, I will strangle you on the spot!" said Sarchedon, in those low distinct tones men use when they mean to waste little more breath on words.

There was enough similitude in their languages for the Egyptian to understand his meaning; but had it not been so, he could scarce have mistaken the other's att.i.tude and bearing. The oath too, and the man's determined face so close to his own, warned him that this was no Israelitish slave, but one of those formidable enemies from the North, before whom he had seen the choicest of Pharaoh's bowmen turn and flee.

What could it mean? What did this stranger in the land of Egypt, naturalised, it would seem, amongst her slaves? This was no time to inquire while those slaves crowded round so wildly, as though eager for an outbreak, of which his life would too surely be the prey. Men learned discretion in the service of the Pharaoh's, and though he trembled and turned pale, he did not lose his presence of mind.

"Lift the youth from the ground," said he earnestly, "and take care of him if you be indeed his brother. Bring here water!" he added, raising his voice--"wine, if you have it. Stand off from him, Israelites, and give him air! Make way, there, for the bowmen to bring him help!"

Thus craftily summoning the guards to his a.s.sistance, he extricated himself from the perplexity of his position, and ordering the youth's brother to take him home, excused from farther labour, resumed the direction of affairs; but during the rest of the day blows fell less thickly among the Israelites, and the solemn senseless image made a shorter journey than usual towards its final resting-place.

Returning at nightfall to his hut, Sadoc found it surrounded by a company of bowmen. The tale of bricks his family were required to provide for the king's use had been increased one-tenth, and Sarchedon was to be carried into the presence of Pharaoh without delay.

CHAPTER XXIII

PHARAOH ON THE THRONE

To be carried into the presence of Pharaoh!--words of significant import, suggesting speedy condemnation and summary punishment. With arms strapped tight to his body, with feet bound together under his horse's girth, guarded on either side by mounted bowmen, surrounded by scores of their comrades on horseback and on foot, Sarchedon rode slowly on through the night, and at dawn found himself before the portals of a flourishing town dedicated to the worship of Bubastis, as revealed in the outward semblance of the cat.

Here, in one of the n.o.blest cities of his dominions, Pharaoh was administering justice, according to custom. At sunrise the Egyptian king ascended his judgment-seat to dispose without appeal of all cases laid at the royal feet. Therefore had Sarchedon been conducted hither, through the hours of darkness, to receive the award of his crime.

As they neared their destination, the adjacent country began to teem with life. Cows and oxen, speckled, spotted, and ring-streaked, dragged the plough through a lately-irrigated soil, the former doing their work far more nimbly than their weightier brothers. Playful calves leaped and frisked behind, marked, like their dams, with the brand of their respective owners. Slender husbandmen, naked to the waist, followed in pairs, scattering seed over that rich and generous surface. Scores of birds from the banks of the neighbouring river followed their movements; while a steward or overseer in every field directed the toil of the labourers, taking account of their expenditure and their stores. Peace and plenty seemed to reign throughout the land, and Sarchedon could not but reflect he might be looking his last on a world of light, life, labour, and prosperity.

Unlike his own a.s.syrian cities, there were no bowmen on these walls, no guard in this capacious gate, through which all seemed free to pa.s.s at will. Two gigantic sphinxes, indeed, couched half-a-bowshot apart, kept watch in majestic gravity on either side. Two colossal idols, cat-headed and of compound form, half man, half monster, faced each other at the entrance; but within, a crowded market, swarming with peasants, glowed in gaudy luscious fragrance of fruit and flowers. A thousand tongues chattered, a thousand arms gesticulated; the a.s.s munched its provender; the sacred stork pushed its long beak at will into woven basket or wicker pannier. Merry faces and broad smiles gleamed in the morning sun.

A burst of cymbals rose in the warm serene air, and Pharaoh went up to his golden judgment-seat, the birthplace of those unanswerable decrees that signified life and death.

As his guards hurried Sarchedon along the streets, much interest and curiosity seemed excited by the personal appearance of the prisoner; while comments flew from lip to lip on his stature, his bearing, and the probable punishment of his crime.

"Stately as a sycamore," said one, apparently a carpenter by trade, "and hard as a tamarisk; he will bear impalement as seasoned wood stands soaking, without a warp. If they keep water from him, my friends, we shall find him alive on the fourth day."

"Impalement!" interrupted an old hag, grandmother to the first speaker; "Pharaoh will never order such a goodly youth to the stake. No, no. Let him be carefully disembowelled; give me a measure of myrrh, a pound or two of ca.s.sia, and a handful of spice--I wouldn't ask you for cinnamon, oil of cedar, nor palm-wine--and if he look not as tall and comely a thousand years hence as at this moment, may I never touch salt or natron, iron probe or linen swaddlers, again."

"Fie, mother!" said a good-humoured peasant, emptying a basketful of onions and lentils at the feet of a purchaser. "Pharaoh is merciful, though he lives for ever. The youth may escape with the loss of his shapely nose, or at worst a thousand blows on the soles of his feet. By the talons of our Cat, 'tis a goodly measure of manhood; 'twere pity to make a mummy of it before its time. Why, what hath he done?"

"Ay, what hath he done?" echoed a score of voices, to be answered by a score of extravagant surmises.

He had slain an Israelite! Bah! they would fine him a quarter of wheat, and let him go. He had murdered an Egyptian! It was a hanging matter; but here at Bubastis their dams and banks were raised by working gangs of such criminals. He would escape with hard labour for life. Not much worse than their own peasant lot, after all. Better, forsooth, in so far that such miscreants paid no taxes, and Pharaoh found them enough to eat. No, it was a blacker business than this. He had insulted a priest; he had blasphemed Athor; he had put his finger in his mouth to ridicule Horus; he had said openly that Osiris was a falsehood and Isis a harlot; he smote Anubis in the muzzle, mocked with feline sounds the majesty of Bubastis; outrage of outrages, spat on the sacred bull itself! He was a spy, a stranger disguised as an Israelite, a Philistine--nay, a child of Seth, with square ears--a worshipper of Abitur in the mountains, a devil, and a son of devils! Away with him! down with him! slay him! tear him limb from limb!

The wave gathered force as it advanced; the popular indignation swelled into ferocity. Instead of merry good-morrows and happy laughter, the air was filled with yell and shriek and wild revengeful howl. Faces, but now smiling in content, were distorted with brutal hate and cruel l.u.s.t for blood. The crowd surged and swayed through the market-place, leaping, bristling, closing in like wolves about their prey. Could they have reached the a.s.syrian, he must have been torn to pieces ere he lifted a finger in self-defence. But for those whose trade is war there exists a professional instinct of brotherhood stronger than any prejudices of nationality, any credulity of fanaticism. The bowmen who guarded him recognised in Sarchedon one of their own calling, and made common cause with a warrior, even against their kindred and countrymen vociferating for his blood. With the unerring rapidity of discipline, they formed round their charge in double rank, forcing their way at a steady even tramp through the wavering crowd, and so opening a s.p.a.ce on every side, kept it clear by bending their formidable bows.

Advancing thus in a long avenue of colossal sphinxes brightened by the morning sun, they arrived at the entrance of the royal palace. Here, with an infuriated yell, the populace made a final rush; but were beaten back by the archers, at the cost of a few broken heads and b.l.o.o.d.y faces, though, fortunately for the prisoner, without loss of life or injury to limb.

The judgment-seat of Pharaoh--a throne of solid gold, elevated on twenty-four steps of the same metal above the raised floor on which accusers and accused were stationed face to face--seemed to blaze in a flood of sunlight, that bathed it from the open sky above.

The palace, Sarchedon observed, was built, like those of his own country, round an unroofed court. It differed but little from the dwelling of an a.s.syrian king in architecture and general plan, but was even more profusely decorated, in a greater variety of sculptures, minutely designed, gaudily-coloured, and representing many of the lowest reptiles and animals with a fidelity not entirely pleasing to the eye.

Here, besides the fox, the jackal, the porcupine, the lizard, the locust, and the asp, were an infinity of compound monsters, the produce of a theology which persisted in embodying every attribute of its ideal under a form, however grotesque, that should give tangible expression to its idolatry. Such were the winged goat, the serpent-headed lion, the griffin with pinions spread and feathered crest striding over its mysterious triad of flowers, the b.i.t.c.h, dragging her homely chain, hanging her heavy teats, canine in all her properties but her sleek bird's head and delicate beak. Things that creep and things that fly, from the stork and the raven, the crocodile and the ichneumon, to the serpent, the beetle, and the bat, filled every interstice on the variegated walls; while between the crowded figures closely-packed hieroglyphics recorded for initiated readers the history, the nature, and the occult signification of each. Deeds of arms too and field sports, from taking of towns and spearing of the river-horse to numbering of captives and snaring of song-birds, were handed down to future ages in imperishable carving; while, at stately intervals, solemn and majestic, here in the palace of the Pharaohs, towered the statues of those numerous G.o.ds in whom Egypt had ever trusted for succour at her need.

Osiris, the great benefactor and founder of their nation, the inventor of agriculture, mechanics, all arts necessary to life; who taught men how to plough the earth and train the vine; who, in his contest with Typhon, the principle of evil, was cut asunder into six-and-twenty pieces; and who, as every true Egyptian firmly believed, would return in his original form at some future epoch to judge and regenerate mankind.

Had not Isis yonder, his wife and sister, collected the fragments of his dismembered body to put together and embalm the whole ere, summoning the high-priest from each of all her temples, she confided to him, and him alone, as she caused him to think, the sacred deposit, so that each carried away what he believed to be the body of his G.o.d, under solemn oath that he would never divulge to living man the place of its sepulture, persuaded that his own temple was the revered and sacred spot? This mighty deity of the future and the past here revealed himself for his worshippers to adore in the ma.s.sive statue of a bull!

Isis, too, with her ten thousand names, sat in a place of honour over against her lord; and near her Horus, their son, with finger on his lip, emblem of princely modesty and discretion, supported by his half-brother, Anubis, the wise and faithful, with human form and a dog's sagacious head. Multiplied too in many a niche and along many a lofty corridor, stood erect and threatening the figure of that deity to whom the city was especially sacred, worshipped under the semblance of a cat.

Avenues of cat-headed monsters kept watch in hall and pa.s.sage; while presiding, as it were, in the very entrance of the court, stood a gigantic image of granite, wearing the short ears of the sacred animal, its sleek round head, and cruel feline smile.

Immediately behind this dazzling throne, const.i.tuting it indeed the very tribunal of the Pharaohs, watching, as men believed, over sentence and acquittal, accuser and accused, might be seen the statue of a female figure, with blinded eyes, serene impa.s.sive face, and wings spread out in front, as though grasping and embracing all within their sweep. This was Thmei, emblematic G.o.ddess of truth and justice, whose essential attributes were thus typified in her outward form: the blinded eyes signifying her impartiality, the calm visage her indifference to consequences, the wings instead of hands her incorruptible nature, inaccessible to the bribes it was impossible for her to accept.

Standing between his guards, still pinioned and secured, Sarchedon's eye took in all these details of Pharaoh's sumptuous palace ere the glare of burnished gold permitted him to observe the judgment-seat and its occupant. After a time, however, he was able to distinguish the person of a pale slender sallow man, showing like the wick of a lighted candle through a blaze of shining raiment, dazzling jewels, and royal Egyptian state. Pharaoh's att.i.tude was one of extreme exhaustion and fatigue; his face looked very sad and weary, but in its long narrow eyes, low brow, and prominent chin there lurked a strange resemblance to the pitiless features of that colossal figure which was destined hereafter to keep watch over his tomb.

A case had just been disposed of, trifling, indeed, in its details, and scarcely worth the intervention of a monarch; but it was the custom of Egypt, that wherever Pharaoh held his court, he should administer justice in person, from the pilfering of a handful of lentils to desecration of an idol, blasphemy against a G.o.d, or resistance to the authority of the king. A dozen strokes of the bastinado had been awarded for the first offence. Sarchedon, accused of the last, was brought forward by the archers, and placed at the lowest step of the throne.

"Unbind him," said Pharaoh, looking round on his men of war with something of scorn. Then, in the prisoner's own dialect, he addressed him shortly and sternly: "You are an a.s.syrian. What do you here?"

The tone was of one who had never known opposition, and the keen dark eye wandered over Sarchedon from head to foot with something of the cat's expression, pausing carelessly before she makes up her mind to pounce.

"My life is in the hand of Pharaoh," answered the prisoner. "I will not deny my nation nor my name."

"What brought you into Egypt?" continued the king, still in the same scornful indifferent accents. "Have you any knowledge of my country and its customs?"

"I came here first as a conqueror," answered the haughty a.s.syrian. "It was not for _us_ to learn the manners and customs of the Egyptians, but to impose on them our own."

The guards, who understood him pa.s.sably well, exchanged looks of consternation at this imprudent reply; but something like a smile crossed Pharaoh's face, and sinking back into the throne, he observed carelessly,

"Let his accusation be read out."

It was the law of Egypt that, even in the presence of the supreme authority, all judicial proceedings should be reduced to a written statement, comprising the charge, the evidence on both sides, and the defence. It was believed that thus only could be avoided the bias of skilful oratory and impa.s.sioned eloquence, where an offender was pleading for his life.

A priest--distinguished by gravity of demeanour and wisdom of aspect no less than by the purity of his linen garments and the reverence he seemed to command from the bystanders--now read from a roll of papyrus the terms of the accusation with which the prisoner stood charged. It set forth in simple language that "he this a.s.syrian stranger, having come surrept.i.tiously into the land of Egypt, had there consorted, of his own free will, with their slaves the Israelites, tampering with their patriarchs, and inciting that stiff-necked people to revolt; that he had even headed the outbreak of a gang during a temporary respite from their labours--an indulgence, it added, which ought never to have been permitted by the task-master; had hurled that functionary from the saddle, and well-nigh slain him while bleeding and helpless on the ground; that such an enormity was in itself an insult to the majesty of the king, an outrage on the Egyptian nation, and a crime only to be expiated by death. He laid his charge at the feet of Pharaoh, who, like Thmei, was the embodiment of truth, justice, and wisdom, and would live in power and glory for ever."

From out the blaze of splendour flaming round the throne came again that calm and scornful voice, wearily enunciating the usual formula,