The Yoke Part 45

"He is tall, half a palm taller than his fellows; comely of countenance; young; in manner, amiable and courteous--."

Atsu interrupted him with a wave of his hand. "I saw him once--good three months agone, but not since."

The reply baffled Hotep for a moment. He realized that to find Kenkenes he must begin a search for Rachel.

"Good Atsu, he whom we seek is a friend to the maiden. He is much beloved by me--by us. Whomsoever he befriendeth we shall befriend.

Wilt thou tell us when and from whom the maiden fled?"

Atsu had become willing by this time. This amiable young n.o.ble might be able to lift the suspense that burdened his unhappy heart.

"Har-hat--Set make a cinder of his heart!--asked her at the hands of the Pharaoh for his harem--"

Mentu interrupted him with a growling imprecation and Hotep's fair face darkened.

"Yesterday morning he sent three men to me," the taskmaster continued, "with the doc.u.ment of gift from the Son of Ptah, but she saw them in time and fled into the desert. At that hour there were only women in the camp, and the three men made short work of me when I would have held them till she escaped. In three hours, two of them returned--one, sick from hard usage, and the third, they said, had been pitched over the cliff-front into the valley of the Nile. They had not captured her and they were too much enraged to explain why they had not. During their absence I emptied the quarries of Israelites and posted them along the Nile to halt the Egyptians, if they came to the river with Rachel. But we let them return to Memphis empty-handed, and thereafter searched the hills till sunset. The maiden's foster-mother, it seems, fled with her, but neither of them, nor any trace of them, was to be found."

"Does it not appear to thee," Hotep asked, after a little silence, "that the same hand which so forcibly persuaded the Egyptians to abandon the pursuit may have led the maiden to a place of safety? My surmises have been right in general, O n.o.ble Mentu, but not in detail,"

he continued, turning to the murket. "There is, however, the element of danger now to take the place of the gracelessness we would have laid to him. Thou knowest Har-hat, my Lord."

He thanked the dark-faced taskmaster. "Have no concern for the maiden.

She is safe, I doubt not."

He took Mentu's arm and pa.s.sing up through the Israelitish camp, climbed the slope behind it.

"It is my duty and thine to hide this lovely folly up here, ere these searching minions of Har-hat or frantic Israelites come upon it."

The scribe's sense of direction and location was keen. It was one of the goodly endowments of the savage and the beast which the G.o.ds had added to the powers of this man of splendid intellect. He doubled back through the great rocks, his steps a little rapid and never hesitating, as though his destination were in full view. Mentu followed him, silent and moodily thoughtful. At last Hotep stopped.

Before them was a narrow aisle leading down from the summit of the hill. It was hemmed in on each side by tumbled ma.s.ses of stone. The aisle terminated at its lower end in a long white drift of sand against a great cube. Instinct and reason told Hotep that here had been the hiding-place of Athor, but there was no sign that human foot had ever entered the spot. After a s.p.a.ce of puzzlement, Hotep smiled.

"He hath made way with the sacrilege himself," he said with relief in his voice; "I had not credited him with so much foresight. Nay, now, if the runaway will but come home, we will forgive him."

Mentu said nothing. Indeed, since Hotep had told him of the recent doings of Kenkenes, the murket had had little to say. He had felt in his lifetime most of the sorrows that can overtake a man of his position and attainments--but he had never known the chagrin of a wayward child. The fear that he was to know that humiliation, now, made his heart heavy beyond words.

As they turned away the sound of voices smote upon their ears.

"Near this spot, it must be, my Lord," one said.

"Find the sacrilege, lout. We seek not the neighborhood of it."

Hotep caught the murket's arm and drew him out of the aisle into hiding behind another great stone.

"This is the place; this is the place," the first voice declared, and his statement was seconded by another and as positive a voice.

There was the sound of the new-comers emerging into the aisle, and immediately the first speaker exclaimed in a tone full of astonishment and disappointment:

"O, aye; I see!" the master a.s.sented with an irritating laugh.

"Har-hat!" Hotep whispered.

Another of the party broke in impatiently: "Make an end to this chase.

Saw you any sacrilege, or was it a phantom of your stupid dreams?"

"Asar-Mut," Mentu said under his breath.

The first voice and its second protested in chorus.

"As the G.o.ds hear me, I saw it!" the first went on. "It was a statue most sacrilegiously wrought and the man stood before it. It was cunningly hidden between two walls, and there is no spot on the desert that looks so much like the place as this. And yet, no wall--no statue--no sign of--"

"How did you find it yesterday?" the fan-bearer asked.

"We followed the hag, and she, the girl. The pair of them were in sight of each other, as they ran."

"How did they find it?"

"Magic! Magic!"

"There were three of you and one man overthrew you all?" the high priest commented suspiciously.

"Holy Father!" the servant protested wildly, "he was a giant--a monster for bigness. Besides, there were but two of us, after he had all but throttled me."

Har-hat laughed again. "Aye, and after he pitched Nak over the cliff, there was but one. But tell me this: was he n.o.ble or a churl?"

"He wore the circlet."

Mentu's long fingers bent as if he longed for a throat between them.

"The craven invented his giant to salve his valor," the priest said.

"It may be," the fan-bearer replied musingly, "but thy nephew, holy Father, is conspicuously tall and well-muscled. Likewise, he is a sculptor. Furthermore, the two slaves came home badly abused. Unas has some proof for his tale--"

"Kenkenes is the soul of fidelity," the high priest retorted warmly.

"He has had unnumbered opportunities to betray the G.o.ds and he has ever been steadfast."

"Nay, I did not impugn him. The similarity merely appealed to me. Let us get down into the valley and question that villain Atsu. I would know what became of the girl."

"Mine interests are solely with the ecclesiastical features of the offense, my Lord," Asar-Mut replied. "I would get back to Memphis."

"Bear us company a little longer, holy Father. The taskmaster may tell us somewhat of this blaspheming sculptor-giant."

When the last sound of the departing men died away, Mentu turned across the hill toward the Nile-front of the cliff.

"Nay, I will go back to Memphis first," he said grimly. "Mayhap Kenkenes hath returned. If Asar-Mut should question him, he would not evade nor equivocate, so I shall send him away that he may not meet his uncle. I would not have him lie, but he shall not accomplish his own undoing."

But days of seeking followed, growing frantic as time went on, and there was no trace of the lost artist. Even his pet ape did not return. Asar-Mut questioned Mentu closely concerning the fidelity of Kenkenes to the faith and the ritual.

"I ask after his soul," he explained. But he gained no evidence from Mentu.

On the fourteenth day after the disappearance of the young sculptor, Sepet, the boatman that had hired his bari to Kenkenes, found the boat among the wharf piling. It was overturned, its bottom ripped out, one side crushed as if a river-horse had played with it. In the small compartment at the tiller were provisions for a light lunch; a wallet, empty; a rope and a plummet of bronze used to moor a boat in midstream while the sportsman fished; the light woolen mantle worn as often for protection against the sun as against the cold, and other things to prove that Kenkenes had met with disaster.