The Sleeper in the Sands

by Tom Holland

  The High Priest glanced at Inen, and smiled once again. ‘After the gods had fashioned man and brought him to life by the power of Amen’s name, they slept with the fairest of their new creations -- and their children, O Queen, were the first of your kind. The gods have long since left Egypt and returned to the heavens, but their descendants still sit upon the Throne of the Two Lands. And I’ -he gestured to Inen -- ‘we -- the priests who guard the mysteries of the gods -- are the heirs to those who first guarded the blood-line, and who have handed down the secret from the very dawn of time.’

  Tyi gazed between the two of them, back and forth. ‘That, then,’ she whispered, ‘was the reason you would not permit me at first to be Great Queen?’

  The High Priest nodded. ‘The purity of the blood-line must always be preserved.’

  ‘But then,’ Inen smiled, ‘when you fell from the Harim roof, we knew that you possessed the sacred blood after all. For it is the quality of those who own it, O my sister, that they can survive what to others would be certain death.’

  ‘And yet . . .’ - Tyi frowned and narrowed her eyes -- ‘when you had first discovered what I was, on the evening when Pharaoh proclaimed me Great Queen, you came to me, did you not, O my brother, and told me how you wished that things had been different? Did you not, O Inen? Tell me -- did you not?’

  Inen glanced at the High Priest, then took his sister’s hands. ‘It is true,’ he whispered, ‘that the power of Amen which courses within you is a thing of the heavens and the far-away stars, and therefore not of this world at all. Do not be surprised, then, if in its outward appearance it should sometimes seem a thing of horror to men.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Tyi whispered, her voice hoarse now with suspicion.

  Inen glanced at the High Priest again, then past him towards the portraits of the gods upon the wall. ‘Do you wonder,’ he asked Tyi, ‘that we keep the truth of their appearance veiled from mortal eyes, and portray them instead as being like their worshippers? So also, O my sister, we must do now with you.’

  ‘What, you do not mean ... it is not possible . . . that I will end up as loathsome to look at as these gods?’

  ‘Unless -- precautions - are taken, yes, you will.’

  ‘ “Precautions”?’ Tyi whispered. ‘What . . . “precautions”?’

  Inen turned to the High Priest, who stood motionless a while and then slowly nodded his head. Tyi observed how her brother glanced down at the channel, then back towards a side-door from which the channel led. ‘Come,’ he said softly, taking her by the hand. He escorted her towards the empty pool and then ordered her, very calmly, to remove her jewellery and to undress.

  ‘Before you?’ Tyi gazed at him in horror. ‘I shall never do that!’

  ‘And yet you must. Do not fear -- I shall not watch.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Very well.’ Inen shrugged. ‘Then you know what you will become.’

  Tyi closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Inen met them for a moment, then turned and looked away. Tyi breathed in deeply before reluctantly doing as he had ordered her.

  ‘I am ready,’ she said at last.

  ‘Enter the bath,’ Inen said, still looking away.

  Tyi did so, her shoulders hunched and her arms across her breasts. The stones felt sticky and damp beneath her feet. She did not dare to look down, to see what might be there. ‘O Inen,’ she whispered, ‘I am afraid, so afraid.’

  As well you might be,’ said Inen softly. ‘For what happens now is a thing of wondrous horror.’

  ‘Why,’ she stammered, ‘what might it be?’

  ‘It is the way of the divine that it must feed upon the mortal, as a hungry plant must draw upon water. Within you, O my sister, the mortal is growing dry. You must prepare then, like a plant, to be watered anew’

  ‘No!’ Tyi cried out. She could hear from the darkness sudden muffled sounds, strange and indistinct; and, turning round, she saw that the High Priest had gone. At the same moment, she observed a flood of liquid coursing down the channel, moving very thickly, and then it started to splash down upon her where she stood in the bath. ‘No!’ she cried out again, then screamed, as she gazed up at the liquid and realised what it was. She began to scrabble despairingly at the side of the bath, trying to escape, but even as she sought to pull herself up she saw Inen crouched above her, shaking his head.

  ‘I cannot endure it!’ she screamed.

  ‘And yet,’ Inen whispered, ‘O my beloved sister, you must.’

  ‘No,’ she sobbed, ‘no . . .’ When she looked up again, though, she saw that Inen was now holding a mirror in his hands. She gazed at her own reflection, streaked and damp with blood; and she gasped in amazement, seeing that her cheeks were already growing fuller, and her limbs were no longer so thin upon the bones. ‘What sorcery is this?’ she whispered. ‘Is it my imagination, or do I see my lost beauty restored?’

  ‘Yes, O my sister,’ Inen smiled. ‘That same for which Pharaoh made you his Queen.’

  Tyi stared at him dumbly.

  ‘Wash yourself,’ he whispered. You know you must do it. You know you have no choice.’

  She stood frozen a moment more, gazing up into her brother’s eyes; and then she knelt and bowed her head, as more blood splashed from the channel down upon her. She reached with her hands to soap her belly and breasts, and as she did so she felt a golden warmth as sweet as a rush of love, tingling and spreading very deep into her bones. She moaned softly. All sense of time, all sense of space, seemed dissolved upon the pleasure. She barely felt the stream of warm blood start to cease, and then be replaced by a flow of clean and cleansing water. Only as Inen helped her to emerge from the bath, and to dress her in her scattered jewellery and robes, did the pleasure of the trance at last begin to fade. For a moment she smiled, gazing at her reflection in the mirror he was holding; and then she remembered. She staggered backwards, turned round and ran.

  In the chamber beyond the magic doors of iron, she saw the High Priest standing by the side-wall, barely illumined in the faint wash of the candles. He smiled at her, then vanished into the shadows. Tyi ran on and, as she did so, heard footsteps behind her echoing upon the stone, drawing nearer. She glanced round, and saw Inen. Stumbling on, she knew that she would be caught, but still she continued, for she did not want him to think that she was his willing accomplice. Then at last she felt his hand reaching out to touch her arm, and then she was stopped and pushed against the wall.

  ‘Let me go!’ she screamed.

  ‘There was no choice,’ Inen hissed.

  Tyi shook her head wildly.

  ‘You knew,’ Inen repeated, ‘that there was no choice, not if you wished to avoid the Harim. So do not blame me, O Tyi, for it was all as you desired.’

  ‘The blood, though,’ she whispered, ‘the blood, it was warm. How many of Pharaoh’s prisoners, O my brother -these captives he has brought back with him here to Thebes -- had to be slain so that my beauty could be restored?’

  Inen smiled grimly. ‘You will soon learn to forget such considerations.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Oh, but you will.’

  Tyi gazed at him with hate, then twisted suddenly and broke from his grip. She began to run again.

  ‘Wait!’

  Despite herself, she froze. Such had been the note of agony, such the longing of Inen’s tone, that she could not help herself. She turned again. Inen gazed at her a moment in silence, then drew near to her once more and whispered in her ear. ‘I have already told you,’ he whispered, ‘how everything I do here is for you.’ He breathed in deeply, then glanced about him. ‘And in token of that promise . . .’ - he reached within his cloak -- ‘I give you this.’

  It was a bottle, which Tyi took.

  ‘Please,’ Inen whispered, ‘you must keep it hidden. Do not tell a soul. It is forbidden for me to give it to such as you.’

  ‘What is it?’ Tyi asked.

  ‘You have had it before, when I came to you and app
lied it to the wounds of your whipping, and then again to the bruises of your fall.’

  ‘What should I do with it now?’

  Inen smiled. ‘If you would keep your beauty,’ he whispered, ‘then drink it with your wine.’

  He kissed her fleetingly, brushing her lips, then turned and walked away, back into the temple. Tyi watched him go. She touched the bottle which she had concealed beneath the folds of her gown, and despite herself, as she did so, felt a flickering of joy and fierce excitement.

  That night, when King Amen-hetep returned, Tyi was ready to welcome him. The sight of her beauty, restored to a loveliness which he had almost but never quite forgotten, dizzied him utterly. All duly happened as had been read in the stars by Lady Tiya. Nine months later, Tyi gave birth to a son.

  But at this point, Haroun saw the approach of morning and broke off from his tale. ‘O Commander of the Faithful,’ he said, ‘if you would care to return here tomorrow evening, then I shall describe to you the adventures of Queen Tyi’s son, Prince Amen-hetep.’

  And so the Caliph did as Haroun suggested; and the following evening he returned to the mosque.

  And Haroun said:

  Prince Amen-hetep’s earliest memory was of being kissed by his mother, but the second was of being licked by the tongues of her three lions. He had not known at the time that they were lions, of course; that only came later, when he had learned to understand his nurse’s shrieks and her repeated insistence that lions liked to eat small children. The Prince was not a little startled by this warning, for until that time he had rather assumed that they were creatures like himself; and certainly the lions, who continued to groom him, appeared to believe that the Prince was just like them. Nor him alone, for they also tended his dearest comrade, Kiya, the daughter of the Prince’s Uncle Ay, who had been born (so his mother said) on the very day that he had, and whom the Prince therefore assumed had been created just for him. Wherever they went to play, there the lions would pad about them, growling lazily at anyone who dared to draw near; and at night when they slept together, the lions would lie in a tangled ring about the children’s bed - a circle of fur, and manes, and twitching tails, guardian spirits such as none of the nurses dared disturb.

  It was not surprising then that it was soon widely claimed, by those who saw the two children abroad, that they were protected by a strange and dangerous magic, and had been marked out by fate for miraculous things. In their faces there was a beauty such as it was said inspired the nightingales to sing, and in their limbs a radiance which rendered many afraid, for it seemed bright like the sun or the stare of a god. Some people, meeting with the Prince as he clung to a lion’s mane, riding on the beast’s back as though it were a horse, or with Kiya as she ran with the creatures by the lake, imagined indeed that they were glimpsing gods, and grew perturbed when later they discovered the truth. A few complained to the Keeper of the Harim that it was not proper for a girl of Kiya’s age to run about so freely; and the Keeper, who agreed, ordered her to remain henceforth within the Harim, along with the Prince’s younger sisters.

  But the Prince, when he learned this, was plunged into the depths of wretchedness, and was discovered by his mother, Queen Tyi, in floods of tears. She raised him in her arms and kissed him tenderly, wiping away his tears with her hair; but when she had learned the cause of his sorrow, she smiled strangely to herself and promised her son that Kiya would soon be released. And so it proved, that very same day; nor was Kiya ever kept within the Harim walls again.

  Indeed, from that time on, it seemed to the Prince that there was nothing which his mother could not achieve. Even the passage of the years seemed her slave, for unlike every other woman she appeared not to age, and her beauty remained in perpetual spring; but when the Prince asked her why, she would smile and touch her lips. Then it happened that one of the lions, who were by now all very old, fell sick so that even Pharaoh’s best physician, a man of great skill, despaired of its life. But Tyi, when the news was brought to her, came to the sick-bed where the dying lion lay, and as she knelt by its side it whimpered softly and lifted its head, trying to lick the hand of its mistress, but in vain. The Prince watched wonderingly as a single tear welled in his mother’s eye; and then she reached within her gown and drew out a flask. Within it there was a liquid, very sticky and black, and his mother poured it out between the lions unresisting jaws.

  A minute passed - and the lion yawned. It stretched very slowly, then lumbered to its feet. Another yawn, and then suddenly it began to run, round and round, as though chasing the breeze, as though it were a cub and had never been sick at all.

  Yet there were some griefs, the Prince was soon to learn, which not even his mother could ease away. Some years later, when he and Kiya were out upon the sands, one of the lions disappeared and could not be found until at last, after several days and nights of search, its corpse was discovered half-eaten by the birds. Its two companions approached it, and sniffed at its flanks; then they seemed to sigh, and slumped down, one on either side. The Prince sent a message at once to his mother, but although she hurried she arrived too late, for the lions were already dead, a tangled bundle with their fellow as they had so often been in life. Tyi ordered them buried; but even as the grave was dug, the Prince and Kiya clung to the lions’ sides, ears pressed to their hearts, as though in disbelief that there was nothing any longer to be heard. ‘Can you not bring them back?’ the Prince asked his mother, gazing at her despairingly as the bodies were laid within their graves. ‘Bring them back, as you did before.’

  But his mother shook her head. ‘It is the way of the world. All things must die.’

  ‘Must I die?’

  She gazed at her son strangely. ‘You are the descendant of a god,’ she said at last. ‘That makes you different.’

  The Prince considered this a moment. ‘Then why can I not bring the lions back to life?’

  His mother continued to stare at him a moment longer, a brittle smile now upon her lips, but then she turned to glance out at the burning red sands and her face grew suddenly as blank as the desert. ‘Because the gods,’ she murmured, ‘do not bring life but, to those who are not of their kind, only death.’ She turned back to face her son. ‘I tell you,’ she whispered, clasping him in her arms, ‘that the time will come when you, even you, will not only witness but bring death yourself- for that, as I have said, is the way of the world.’ Then she kissed him on the ruffled tangle of his hair, and on his lips, but did not talk to him again during all their journey back to the Palace.

  Her words, though, remained with the Prince. He was afraid to share them with Kiya, who stayed silent and puffy-eyed upon her bed all that morning, as though his presence were reminding her of the beasts no longer there; and when he tried to rouse her she turned and curled up, staring at the wall. The Prince left her and sat for a while by the fountains, then rose and ran down to the side of the lake. He knew it was the habit of his grandfather Yuya, at such an hour, to take a walk along the path; and sure enough, hurrying to the lakeside, the Prince saw the familiar, much-loved figure of his grandfather ahead of him. Running to join him, he took the old man’s hand and they continued together, neither saying a word. At length, arriving by a spring beneath the shelter of a tree, Joseph halted and smiled, and sat himself down. ‘When she was a girl,’ he told the Prince, suddenly breaking the silence, ‘this was always your mother’s favourite place.’

  The Prince nodded dumbly and sat down close by his grandfather’s side, clutching him tightly.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Joseph at last, feeling his grandson start to shake, ‘what is it, O my grandson, that is weighing on your heart?’

  Still the Prince sat hugging him until at last, without looking up, he repeated what his mother had told him that morning.

  Joseph sighed, so that it suddenly seemed to the Prince, watching his grandfather, that he was far more frail and old than he had ever realised. ‘Your mother,’ he said at last, ‘did not always think the power which rule
s this world to be so cruel.’

  ‘But what do you think?’

  ‘What have I always taught you? That there is only one God, and His rule is good.’

  ‘Yes.’ The Prince considered this. ‘So one of you must be wrong.’

  Joseph shook his head smilingly and then rose to his feet, crossing out of the shade. ‘See the beauty of the sun!’ he exclaimed, pointing with his stick. ‘How blazing it is, how wondrous, how great! It burns high above every land of this earth, so that there is no one who could ever hope to approach it - and yet the power of its rays are here all about us! For by what other means do animals exist -- all the wild and beautiful creatures of this world, the birds which fly up in song into the sky, and the fish in the river and the lakes, skimming silver? And yet the sun is but the image of the One and Only God -- and so I say to you, O my grandson, yes, His works are good.’

  The Prince thought of the lions, buried beneath the sands. ‘Then why must there be death?’

  ‘Only He Who sees all things can know all things as well.’ Joseph smiled, and half-cradled his grandson in his arms. ‘Do not think, though,’ he whispered, ‘that death itself cannot be a blessing and relief.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  But Joseph did not answer and the Prince gazed upwards in trepidation into his grandfather’s face, thinking of how the lions had looked when they were dead. ‘How do you mean?’ he whispered again.

  ‘I remember,’ said Joseph at last, ‘speaking to your grandfather, my friend, King Thoth-mes, of how a world so beautiful and various as this, so filled with pleasures and wonders and joys, should give us the strength to face death with bright hope. Yes, O my grandson’ -- he paused -- ‘I must die very soon, for I am old and weary, and my time is drawing near. Yet how can I doubt that all is for the best, when everywhere are the proofs of the goodness of the Creator, Who is brighter, more burning, more brilliant than the sun?’ He kissed his grandson lightly on his brow, then raised up his stick towards the sky. ‘When I am gone,’ he whispered, ‘look upon the sun, and remember what I have said. Live in truth, O my grandson, and let that be your motto - for you are called, I dare believe, to a high and wondrous purpose. Live in truth -- which is to say, blessed by the warmth and the light and the power of the All-High.’