The Yoke Part 41

Returning to the niche, he took up the matting with its weight of chipped stone, and went down through the dark to the line of rocks opposite the quarries. There he permitted the rubble to slide with a mixture of earth, like a natural displacement, into the talus, of a similar nature, at the base of the cliff. The matting he shook and laid aside. It would serve for a bed in the tomb that night.

Then he destroyed the north wall. In the four months of its existence the sand had banked against it more than half its height. Each stone removed in the dismantling was carried away to a new place, until the whole fortification was, as once it had been, scattered up and down the slope. The light, dry sand he pitched with his wooden shovel against the great cube until it all lay where the wind would have piled it had no second wall stood in its way. By dawn the strong breeze from the north would cover every footprint and shovel-mark to a level once more.

He went again to the line of rocks and threw the shovel with a sure aim and a strong arm into the quarries across the valley. To-morrow it would seem that an Israelite had forgotten one of his tools.

The work was done.

With an ache in his heart, Kenkenes returned to Deborah and Rachel.

"The shelter for us is in the cliff to the north, near Toora," he began immediately. "It is a tomb, but others before us have partaken of the dead's hospitality." [1]

"How am I to reach it?" Deborah asked. "Is the place far?"

"A good hour's journey, but we go by water. Still, we must walk to the Nile."

"That I can not do," the old woman declared.

"Nay, but I can carry you," Kenkenes replied, bending over her. She shrank away from him.

"Thou hast forgotten," she protested.

"Not so," he insisted stoutly. Taking her up, he settled her on one strong arm against his breast. The free hand he extended to Rachel, who had taken the matting, and together they went laboriously down the steep front of the hill. They proceeded cautiously, watching before and behind them lest they be surprised.

He had covered his boat well with the tangle of sedge and marsh-vines, and after a long s.p.a.ce of search, he found it.

Once again he lifted Deborah and laid her in the bottom of the boat.

With its triple burden, the bari sank low in the water, but Kenkenes wielded the oars carefully. The faint moonlight showed him the way.

Now and then a red glimmer across the grain marked the location of a farmer's hut, but there was no other sign of life. Even at the Memphian sh.o.r.e there was little activity.

When the line of cultivation ended Kenkenes knew he was in the precincts of the Marsh of the Discontented Soul. He rowed across what he believed to be one-half of its width and drew into the reeds. The sound and movement awoke many creatures, which hurried away in the dark, and something slid off into the river with a splash. The lapping of the ripples sounded like a drinking beast. Kenkenes put a bold foot on the soggy sand and stepped out. Rachel followed him with bated breath. Anubis unceremoniously mounted his shoulder. He dragged the bari far up on the sh.o.r.e, once more lifted Deborah and started up the warm sand.

At the base of the limestone cliff he deposited his burden and brought together a little heap of dried reeds and flag blades. This he fired after many failures by striking together his chisel and a stone.

Rachel hid the blaze from the Nile while he made and lighted a torch of twisted reeds and stamped out the fire. In the feeble moonlight he discerned a stairway of rough-hewn steps leading into a cavity in the wall. The southern side of the ascent was sheltered by an outstanding b.u.t.tress of rock.

He put the torch into Rachel's hand, and, taking up Deborah, climbed a dozen steps to a dark opening half-closed by a fallen door. Pushing the obstruction aside with his foot, he entered. When they were all within he closed the entrance and unrolled the reeds.

There was a helter-skelter of mice past them and a rustle of retiring insects. The torch blazed brightly and showed him a squat copper lamp on the floor of the outer chamber. The vessel contained sandy dregs of oil and a dirty floss of cotton. With an exclamation of surprise Kenkenes lighted the wick, and after a little sputtering, it burned smokily.

"Nay, now, how came a lamp in this tomb?" he asked without expecting an answer.

The chamber was low-roofed and small--the whole interior rough with chisel-marks. To the eyes of the sculptor, accustomed to the gorgeous frescoes in the tombs of the Memphian necropolis, the walls looked bare and pitiful. There were several prayers in the ancient hieroglyphics, but no ancestral records or biographical paintings. Several strips of linen were scattered over the floor, with the customary litter of dried leaves, dust, refuse brought by rodents, cobwebs and the cast-off chrysalides of insects. In one corner was a bronze jar, Kenkenes examined it and found it contained cocoanut-oil for burning.

"Of a truth this is intervention of the G.o.ds," he commented, a little dazed, but filling his lamp nevertheless.

Ahead of him was a black opening leading into the second chamber. He stooped, and entering, held the lamp above his head. He cried out, and Rachel came to his side.

In the center of the room was a stone sarcophagus of the early, broad, flat-topped pattern. In one corner was a two-seated bari, in another a mattress of woven reeds. Leaning against the sarcophagus was a wooden rack containing several earthenware amphorae; on the floor about it was a touseled litter of waxed outer cerements torn from mummies. All these things they observed later. Now their wide eyes were fixed on the top of the coffin. At one time there had been a dozen linen sacks set there, but the mice and insects had gnawed most of them away. The bottoms and lower halves yet remained, forming calyxes, out of which tumbled heaps of gold and silver rings, zones, bracelets, collars and masks from sarcophagi--all of gold; images of Isis in lapis lazuli and amethyst; scarabs in garnets and hemat.i.te, Khem in obsidian, Bast in carnelian, Besa in serpentine, signets in jasper, and ropes of diamonds which had been Babylonian gems of spoil.

"The plunder of Khafra and Sigur, by my mummy!" Kenkenes e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Will they return?" Rachel asked, in a voice full of fear.

"They are gathered to Amenti for their misdeeds many months agone," he explained. "See how thickly the dust lies here without a print upon it. They were tomb-robbers. None of the authorities could discover their hiding-place, and lo! here it is."

He walked round the sarcophagus and found at the head, on the floor, several bronze cases sealed with pitch. He opened one of them with some difficulty. Flat packages wrapped with linen lay within.

"Dried gazelle-meat,--and I venture there is wine in those amphorae.

They lived here, I am convinced, and fed upon the food offerings they filched from the tombs. Was there ever such intrepid lawlessness?"

"Here is a snare and net," Rachel reported.

"Did they not profit by superst.i.tion? As long as they were here they were safe. They did not fear the spirit."

"The spirit?" Deborah, still in the outer chamber, repeated with interest.

"The spirit of this tomb," Kenkenes explained, returning to her. In a few words he told her the story as Hotep had told it to him.

"Canst thou discover the name?" she asked when he had finished.

"The sarcophagus is plain. There is no inscription within yonder crypt, for I have this moment looked. But let me examine this writing here by the door."

After a while he spoke again. "The name is not given. It says only this:

'The Spouse to Potiphar, Captain of the Royal Guard to Apepa, Child of the Sun, In the Twelfth Year of Whose Luminous Reign She Died.

Rejected by the Forty-two at On, because of Unchast.i.ty, She Lies Here, Until Admitted to the Divine Pardon of Osiris.'"

"Aye, I know," Deborah responded. "It is history to the glory of a son of Abraham. Him, who brought our people here, she would have tempted, but he would have none of her. Therefore she bore false witness against him and he was thrust into prison.

"But the G.o.d of Israel does not suffer for ever His chosen to be unjustly served, and he was finally exalted over Upper and Lower Mizraim. And honor and long life and a perfumed memory are his, and she--lo! she hath done one good thing. Her house hath become a shelter for the oppressed and for that may she find peace at last."

Kenkenes looked at the old woman with admiring eyes. The quaint speech of the Hebrews had always fascinated him, but now it had become melody in his ears. In this, the first moment of mental idleness since midday, he had time to think on Deborah. He knew that he had seen her before, and now he remembered that it was she who had transfixed him with a look on an occasion when Israel had first come to Masaarah.

But he did not remind her of the incident. Instead, he set about counteracting any effect that might follow should her memory, unaided, recall the occurrence. He had put her down on the matting, and the running spiders and slower insects worried her.

"A murrain on the bugs," he said. "We shall have a creepy night of it.

Let us bottle this treasure and lay the mattress out of their reach on the sarcophagus. Endure them a while, Deborah, till we make thee a refuge."

He set the lamp in the opening from the outer into the inner crypt and entered the second chamber. Rachel followed him, and the old Israelite watched them with brilliant eyes.

Kenkenes swept the jewels as if they had been almonds into an empty amphora and returned it to the rack. The mattress he laid upon the broad top of the sarcophagus.

"A line of oil run around the coffin will keep the insects away,"

Rachel ventured. Kenkenes returned to the outer chamber for the jar of oil; but Rachel took it from him.

"Let me be thy handmaid," she said softly.

He did not protest, and she reentered the crypt.

"Luckily the mattress is large enough for the two of you," Kenkenes observed to Deborah, "but it will be hard sleeping."