Winged Pharaoh

by Joan Grant

  Another priest came into the room, a high-priest of Anubis. He sat in a chair at the far end of the room, and seemed to sleep, while the healer pointed the fingers of healing between Harka’s eyes and forced him to leave his body. I knew that although the priest of Anubis seemed to sleep, his spirit waited to take Harka far away from pain when he left his body, so that they might work upon his body and mend it as though they but stitched up a tear in an empty cloak.

  I felt Harka’s hand grow limp, and I knew that he was beyond the reach of pain and I could no longer help him by staying. But I thought that it was right for me to learn all that I could of Zertar’s skill.

  First he shaved the hair from the side of Harka’s head, and on the smooth-shaven skin Ptah-kefer marked the place where the skull pressed. Then Zertar took a small leaf-shaped knife and made three cuts like three sides of a square, and, with two things like eyebrow pluckers, he drew back a flap of skin. Then the pluckers were held by the healer, who with his power tightened the veins so that little blood should flow. Two silver mirrors, held in high stands, reflected strong sunlight on to Harka’s head. I could see the white bone of the skull, and there was a dent in it surrounded by fine cracks, like an egg that has been cracked by a spoon. Zertar took a little metal cylinder, the edge of which was notched with fine teeth like a saw, and, placing it against the skull, he spun it quickly between his hands, just as a goldsmith drills a hard stone bead. Then he moved and I could not see Harka’s head; but they were still working on it.

  Ptah-kefer, who all this time had been watching with the eyes of his spirit, told the healer to drive the life of Ptah into Harka’s heart, for it was getting weak. When the healer moved to do it, I saw that an ivory plate had been fitted across the hole that Zertar had drilled; it was held to the fractured skull by little pins of gold. Then the flap of skin was put back and covered with a film of clear wax to keep it in place until the cuts were healed. When the wax had hardened, a pad of specially charged linen, which would ensure its healing cleanly, was put over the wound. And then his head was tightly bandaged.

  The wounds on his shoulder and side were washed with cane-spirit to remove any bits of filth that might have been upon the lion’s claws, and then they were bathed in water that had been charged with the life of Ptah. After this they were spread with a green herbal salve, which my father had found stopped the pain of bandages sticking to an open wound; and Zertar bandaged the arm and shoulder so that Harka could not move them and tear a muscle that Ptah-kefer said was frayed.

  Cloths that had been steeped in a cooling lotion were laid on Harka’s forehead, and a heated stone, wrapped in a towel, was put at his feet, under the woollen covers. When all was finished, the Anubis priest allowed Harka to return to is body, and suddenly I felt his hand which I still held, tighten on mine. Harka opened his eyes; his face was smooth again and did not twitch. He looked dazed, and said, “Za…Za Atet…my lord, my master, is he safe?”

  I told him that my father was unhurt, and then dear Harka was at peace; and I stayed beside him until he went to sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dream of Zuma

  That night there was a banquet in honour of Sardok, King of Zuma.

  Sardok, who sat at my father’s right hand, wore a crown of gold and enamel, high and fluted, as though a bundle of reeds, narrowing towards the top, had been covered with gold leaf and three times bound with jewelled thongs. His long straight robe was scalloped in three tiers and pleated to look like feathers. Over this he wore a cloak of dark red wool caught on the shoulder with a long gold pin, at the head of which was a large cylinder seal minutely carved from amethyst. His fingernails and toenails were painted like a woman’s; his greased hair hung in ringlets to his shoulders, and his long black beard was curled elaborately and shone with grease. His hooked nose was fleshy and his skin a muddy yellow, not smooth like ours, but pitted like the holes of mud-worms on the river bank. He had bracelets of cornelian and onyx beads on his arms and a wide ring on each big toe.

  I remembered Harka and wished it had been Sardok’s body that the lion had torn.

  Four of Sardok’s nobles ate with us, the rest of his followers being servants or soldiers. Their faces were not clear-cut like ours, not as though cleanly carved in stone, but as if they were wax images that had begun to melt in the sun.

  I wasn’t old enough to stay until the end of the banquet, and when I left, Neyah came with me because he wanted me to tell him about Harka. When I was in bed he came into my room and listened while I told him every detail of what had happened.

  My thoughts kept straying back to Sardok, and I said, “I know Sardok is evil.”

  “Yes, and I know he’s cruel. I saw him lash his horse after he had made it fall. It wasn’t the horse’s fault. If he’s the king of Zuma, it must be a dreadful country to live in.”

  I had found that answers to things sometimes came to me in a dream, so that, when I awoke, that which had been obscure before I slept, was clear to me. Neyah and I had often talked of this, and we had found it very useful. Once Neyah lost one of Father’s seals, which he had borrowed and forgotten to return; and although we searched and searched, we could not find it. But that night I dreamed that it had fallen under the straw of the wild-cat’s cage, and I woke Neyah and told him. And very early, when it was just dawn, we went and looked, and there, buried in the straw, we found the seal. No one had heard us, or ever discovered how in the night Neyah had got those scratches on his hands. Neyah put back the seal, and no one knew that he had borrowed it for us to play a game in which he was Pharaoh and I was a captive king.

  But as a fish when sleeping in a pool shows every scale and detail of its fins, and when it is startled flicks its tail and disappears, so does a dream, which is clear in every detail when you waken, often vanish, unless some record of it is quickly made. So when there was something special that we wanted to know, Neyah would bring his mattress into my room and sleep on the floor, so that on waking I could tell him what I had dreamed; and then we would both remember all the details of it. We had tried sleeping in the same bed, but it was too narrow and we both fell out.

  That night, Neyah came and shared my room, and before I slept I sent out a call that I might go to Zuma, the land of Sardok.

  And much I saw. And when I returned to my body, I told Neyah, “First it was as though I travelled like a bird, and spread out beneath me I saw a country where the horizon in every direction was of green corn, rippling under the wind like the waters of the lake. Across this huge expanse of green ran straight rivers, straight as knife-cuts. There were so many of them! They seemed in ordered pattern, I think they must have been canals such as we have, but each was twenty times as wide and much, much longer. On these canals were many villages, built of a different sort of brick from ours, and smaller—and most squalid. There were flies everywhere, and the people seemed afraid, and did not sing.

  “I went to the temple of a great city. Although there were large buildings there, I saw no stone. The temple was surrounded by a high oval wall, and at the main gateway there was a table with crude clay figures on it, which were sold to people who came to the temple with some special petition to their god. Some gave a tall basket of corn, and some two kids, and others five strange birds, which cannot fly, but stretch out their necks and scuttle; they have yellow legs, and shabby feathers, and little beady eyes.

  “In the temple, I saw no one who could teach; those who should have been priests seemed but the attendants of a statue of a god; a god called Mardok, shaped like a man, yet with fanged teeth over his lips, and claws instead of hands and feet. In front of him the one who wanted to pray must break the figurine that he had bought at the gate. All they seemed to do was to cringe before the statue. I don’t know why they were there: they could not have left the temple wiser or stronger than when they came: they must have felt more debased. I saw no women there; it may be that the women are too wise to wish to go, or that their men think they are unworthy.


  “Then I saw a ceremonial rite, which was held at the sowing of the crops—it was in the courtyard of the king’s palace. An enormous white bull was brought in, it looked as though it were eager for a cow.…No, Neyah, I can’t tell you about that.”

  Neyah said, “Don’t be silly, go on.”

  “While eight men held the bull by its legs, a man in a long red robe took a knife from a gold sheath and cut off the thing that the bull waters through and the bag that hangs behind, and gave them to the king, who held them high above his head, while the blood ran down his arms. Then he carried these things round the court, where there were many earthen jars of seed, and into each he dropped something of the bull. There must have been at least two hundred jars. And when he had been round to all of them, he dropped the rest into a green stone bowl, which afterwards was to be taken to the chief temple and set before the god. After this the people were allowed into the courtyard; and those of them who wished to have children surged forward to dabble their fingers in the dead bull and taste its blood.

  “Then I went a little further back in time and saw the burial of their last king. For I thought that if they had any goodness, these people would show it then. They have tombs of mud-brick, and I don’t think they embalm the bodies of their dead. Oh, Neyah, this is a terrible country! Everything I see is horrible to tell you about. In my spirit I went into the royal tomb, which in our country would have been sealed in splendour, but here it was grey with horror and fear, such sickly greyness that it must entrap the souls of those who are buried here, like insects in a web. And here, laid out in ordered rows, were the bodies of young girls and the bodies of young men. I was told that they had been held down while a long pin was driven behind their eyes and into their brains, leaving them unscarred as though they still lived. And their priests allow these things; and of their power they can force these earthly slaves to tend their evil king where he lives, bound to Earth.

  “The rulers of these people must be destroyed! Oh, Neyah, I wish that Sardok were not our guest, so that to-night you could stab him while he slept.”

  “And so make myself lower than a Zuma! No warrior of Kam would kill a man who was defenceless. I wish I could challenge him to single combat—chariots and spears, or even arrows at twenty paces.”

  “No, Neyah, it would be wiser to stab him while he slept, because he is too big for you to fight yet. Why should you give an evil one a chance to fight? If you see a poisonous snake you crush it; you don’t put your hand under its fangs so that it may have an equal chance of hurting you!”

  “Sekeeta! You have been brought up almost as a prince. You think that you can go into battle with me and be the companion of warriors. Have you learnt so little that you would attack an enemy by bribing a servant to poison his wine because you had not the courage to challenge him to battle?”

  “All right, say I’m a woman if you like, or child or girl who cannot understand things that men understand. If a thing is evil, stamp it out, kill it, destroy it any way you can; whichever way is quickest and most sure is best.”

  “If you ruled Kam, its name would soon be tarnished, when your guests were stabbed in sleep.”

  “Neyah, when I grow up I will learn power. Somehow I will learn to free trapped souls who died in fear. And I will learn to fight the evil ones with magic, and break their wills so that their bondaged people shall be free.”

  Next morning Neyah and I decided that we must warn Father about Sardok and the land of Zuma.

  We found him with my mother beside their bathing pool. They had been swimming, and they wore thin woollen cloaks, for the morning was still cool. His was of scarlet and hers of pale green. They were eating fruit from a flat alabaster dish, and Mother gave us each a bunch of grapes. We sat beside them, cross-legged, and Neyah said, “Father, Sekeeta has had a dream about the Zumas. They are dreadful people. Sardok is an evil one, and you should not stretch out a hand in greeting to him, but your mace should smite his skull and split it in two.”

  Father laughed and said that Neyah was a ferocious host. But he questioned me about my dream, and I told him all about it, except about the bull, which I thought Mother would not have liked me to have seen.

  Father said, “I know Sardok for what he is, and that in his heart he plots against us. But when asked if he might visit us, I welcomed him, because I hoped that if the King of Zuma saw how Kam flourished under Pharaoh and a true priesthood, he might take back the teachings of Kam to Zuma, and in time the Light might shine upon them.”

  Then Neyah asked if it was right to let the soldiers of Sardok and his servants mix with ours, for they might teach them evil things.

  And Father said that his attendants and warriors were strong men and needed no protection from evil. He pointed to the sky, where wheeled a vulture, and said, “The strong do not fear the contact of evil, for they are like the vulture, who dies not when he eats filth, but, of his special strength, thrives upon it, and after such a meal can fly to greater heights.”

  And then Mother questioned me about my dream, and when I told her that I often had dreams as true as this one, she seemed more pleased than if I had done some difficult lesson perfectly. This made Neyah so pleased that he told the story about my finding the seal, quite forgetting that Father did not know that he had ever borrowed it. Father listened gravely to the story and said to me, “That must have been a true dream. Such things will be more precious to you than her voice is to a sweet singer or his hands are to a sculptor.”

  As they walked towards their apartments to prepare for the day, I heard my father say, “Those two together shall rule after us,” and I think it was then that they decided that Neyah and I should be co-rulers; for it was less than a month later that my father, at the Festival of Ptah, announced us to the people.

  That night my mother came to my room and talked to me about my dreams; and before I slept she said to me, “Cherish memory above all things, for memory of yourself, which is the Silver Key, will stop your feet straying upon a path that you have found leads not to freedom. Memory will teach you humility, without which there can be no pride that is true. In memory you will remember fear, without which there can be no courage that is truly born of understanding. With memory you will learn compassion, which is the heart of strength.

  “One day you will possess the Golden Key, which unlocks the memories of others. And this will show you that there is no pit into which you may fall, from which others have not climbed; no great mountain, though it may seem too steep, that others have not conquered, even as you must conquer; no pain that has not passed, and no sorrow that has not lifted the shadow of its wing, letting the sunshine dry the tears of the weeping one.

  “All upon Earth are travelling towards their freedom and must one day reach the great gate where the last shackle is struck from their feet. Then shall all be equal in the light of the last sunset and the first sunrise; and the greatest priest and the poorest crippled prisoner shall be joined in the Brotherhood of the Gods.

  “So I say unto you, my daughter, remember your spirit.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Royal Progress

  Later in this same year Father took Neyah and me with him on his Royal Progress, in which he went up river as far as the southern garrison of Na-kish. My mother remained in the Royal City, for when he went upon a journey it was in her hands alone that my father placed the authority of the Royal Seal.

  When I knew that Father was taking me as well as Neyah, I was very excited, for I had never been further south than Abidwa, and even that was when I was much younger. My clothes were packed in five trunks, which had curved lids; three were of painted wood and two were of leather studded with nails.

  The Royal Barge was of fifty oars. The oarsmen sat on the narrow deck on either side of our rooms, whose walls were of cool reed-matting, with coloured linen curtains hung inside. At the stern of the boat, just in front of the great steering oar, there were mats and cushions for us to sit on, and when the sun was high it was cover
ed with an awning striped in green and scarlet.

  Sometimes we played a game with coloured pegs, which fitted into a chequered board; or I practised on a four-stringed harp while Neyah made a model of the barge, carving it from cedarwood, with thin strips of ivory for oars. Often we stopped at villages along the bank, and then the headman brought to Pharaoh a tally of all the people and animals under his care, and of the height of corn in the granaries. In some places my father gave judgment; and he always took us with him.

  In one village there were two men who disputed the ownership of a wild-ass, which both claimed to have seen first. One man was more prosperous than the other, yet he kept crying out about his poverty and the number of his children and the poorness of his fields; and he protested that his was far the greater need. My father knew he lied, and he said, “You tell me your need is the greater because you are poor and this other man is evil and a liar. I shall give judgment and adjust your wrong. You, who are the poor man, shall have the wild-ass; and to show how much you are favoured, you and this other man shall exchange all your possessions.”

  Then the man cried out in great self-pity, and said that he had been robbed. At this my father pretended to be surprised, “Robbed! When I have given to you the great possessions of your neighbour, which you so greatly envied? See, he is content under my judgment, although he has got for his share the fields and herds that you yourself claim to be the poorest in the land.”

  Afterwards my father said to us, “Sometimes a man must lose all that he has before he realises the value of what he has lost; even as some, who loudly bewail about a scratch, need a cut from a sword before they appreciate a healthy body.”

  At another village my father inspected all the animals; and he saw that one man’s oxen were in bad condition and had deep sores upon their shoulders from an ill-fitting yoke. He told their owner that this was not well, thinking perhaps that he was ignorant or stupid and had not seen the hurt of his animals. But the man protested that his oxen were thin because they were too lazy to eat, that the work they did in the fields was light enough for a child and that he envied his oxen their contentment. And my father said, “There is no need to envy them—you shall share it with them. You shall be yoked to the plough and draw it back and forwards under the hot sun until the field is furrowed.” And the oxen my father took away from him and gave to another, whose beasts were sleek and well cared for.