Winged Pharaoh

by Joan Grant

  What can the land of Zuma give to us? Its grain-lands are like oceans to our seas, yet if we owned them our fields would lie fallow and our people would no longer need to work for their bread, and in their idleness they would find discontent. Only the men who walk the warrior’s path are in our armies; but if we had these vast boundaries to keep, then would our ploughmen, artisans, and scribes, have to change the pattern of their lives and join the ranks of our fighting men; and they would hear no music in the battle cry, for only they of the Scarlet rejoice in the sword.

  If a man steals a bunch of grapes from your vineyard, by the Law of Scales you can take a bunch from his, and so adjust the balance. But one bunch of grapes looks like another, and the one stolen from you may have had ninety grapes on it, and the one you steal may have a hundred, and by taking it you have placed yourself in the debt of another thief. The wise man whose vineyard is raided by a thief will not turn thief himself to right the wrong, for he knows that there is another way in which the Scales can be made true: the thief will have to become an honest man to repay the debt that he in the past incurred.

  But a man who finds his house has been robbed is a fool to set no watchman. The Zuma gateway into Kam is the Narrow Land between the Two Waters. So we decreed that, five days’ journey from our north-east boundary, there should be built a chain of garrisons set two days’ march apart, and that our fleet in the Narrow Sea should be increased to guard our eastern shore. The Minoan fleet is master of the Northern Sea, and our fleet joins with theirs in its guardianship, Punt has acknowledged us her overlord and Na-kish secures us from the Land of Gold. When this mighty north-east gate is built, then will our country be tranquil through the years.

  If we went as conquerors to their land, the people of Zuma would hate us and hate our Gods; for though we gave them our justice and our laws, they would see in them the Flail and not the Crook. But the time may come when the people of Zuma shall hear our voices in the south-west wind; then will they put to the sword their evil priests and overthrow the tyrants who are their kings; for they will have heard that contentment flowers in Kam and they will wish us to be their overlords. If that day comes, then shall we have won a mighty victory, not by the sword in our hand, but by the sword of our will.

  PART EIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  Noonday of My Mother

  When my mother died, I prayed to the Gods that I might not shadow her noonday by my sorrow. She left Earth smoothly and quietly as a sailing boat drifts downstream on the cool wind of sunset. It was as if she had lived in a house with closed shutters, and had opened the door upon a garden where dreams were flowering in their glory, for she had walked out into the Light and seen my father waiting for her.

  Her body joined my father’s in their tomb at Abidwa. Beside her, as she had wished, was placed a painted wooden chest, which long ago Neyah had made for her. In it she had kept the presents we had given to her and to our father when we were children: little slips of ivory on which I had written her name while I still found it difficult to scribe; pieces of broken limestone on which Neyah had practised carving; and two ivory game pieces of a set that he had started to make for her and never finished. In her sarcophagus she still wore the bracelet that we had given to her when I was nine. And with her were put many other things that she had been fond of: a little statuette of Shamba, my father’s lioness; and some painted pottery which we had brought home from Minoas when we stayed with Kiodas.

  When the tomb of the great Atet was opened, the flowers that I had put there when I was a little girl, like soft brown shadows still held their petals’ shape. Before my mother joined her husband, the room was filled with fresh garlands as for a bridal. And their bodies slept beside each other even as their spirits rejoiced together.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Children of Pharaoh

  Though I could meet my mother in my spirit, on Earth I was often lonely for her counsel and her understanding. I had always told her of the things that troubled me, and the light of her wisdom had driven forth the shadows of my uncertainty, so that I knew my own heart and could see the path clearly before me.

  While Den was still a child, I thought that, as she grew older, I should find with her that same harmony which I shared with my mother. But though we loved each other and our thoughts often reached the same destination, we travelled there upon different paths.

  I have always wanted to know the reason for things. All my life I have had dreams and visions and known their reality, but I was never content until I learned how I saw them; for I wished to know the laws and not only to see them in action. If I see a tree beautiful against the sunset, I see it not only with my heart but with my mind; I know why I find it beautiful, which line it is that gives the rhythm that to my mind is beauty. But to Den a thing is beautiful or ugly, an action is good or evil, not because of reason, but because she knows it in her heart. Sometimes she used to laugh at me and say that to try to explain why the curve of one jar was more satisfying than the curve of another was as if one should pull a flower to pieces to discover the secret of its perfume.

  I hoped that she would go to the Temple of Atet as I had done, but she was impatient of priestly things, and I knew that to force my will upon her would be as useless as to try to tame a wild leopard by shutting it away behind bars. Yet she had wisdom, without knowing from whence it came, and she could weigh hearts without knowing the Scales.

  From the time she was twelve years old, she often sat beside me when I was in audience; and before I gave judgment she made a private sign to tell me whether she thought the one before me was innocent or guilty. I weighed hearts with the facts of Earth and the wisdom of the spirit, but many times I found that Den had known the truth before I had. At first I thought that she must be a seer, but that was not so. She would say, ‘I know things, but I don’t know why I know them—and I don’t mind’. Though she would not undergo the training of a priest, as time went by I was sure that her judgments would be worthy of the Scales under which she would sit when she was Pharaoh.

  Den always went with Neyah when he made his yearly progress to the garrisons. He used to take her hunting with him in the south, and he said that no lion-spear sped more truly than hers and no arrow was more swiftly judged. Although she was Dio’s child, I think she was more Neyah’s son than she was my daughter.

  Neyah had four daughters by his secondary wives, but his only son was Seshet, who had been two years old when I became Pharaoh. Until he was seven he lived with his mother in the women’s quarters, but after she died he shared with Den the Apartments of the Royal Children, which had been ours when we were young. He was like his father as the shadow of a tree is like a tree, and I think that he used to pray, not to the Gods, but to the image of Neyah that he held in his heart. He would have found happiness in the life of a healer priest or a man of learning, but because Neyah was a Warrior Pharaoh he longed to follow in his path. He spent much time in the Room of Records. He would climb up to a high shelf and bring down a papyrus that for many years had not had its sealing threads untied, and unroll it as eagerly as a child listens to a story-teller. He would read old judgments of Meniss and of his grandfather, and lists of the ways in which tribute had been expended in different years. The scribes’ plans for the building of a new road or for a new system of water-channels, which long ago had become familiar to the people of Kam, were as fresh to him as the day on which they were born in the minds of the men who had designed them.

  Neyah was always very gentle with his son, and he used to take him wild-fowling, though he thought that he had very little skill with arrows. But once I saw Seshet practising at a target of a flowering papyrus reed that was swaying in the wind. He transfixed it with three arrows before he saw me watching him. Then I realized that when he missed a flying swan it was not because he could not hit it, but because he hated to destroy its perfection. I told him to explain to Neyah that he didn’t like killing birds, but he made me promise to keep his secret. And I did so,
for I knew that it would give Seshet more pain to admit to anything that he thought a weakness than to be laughed at for being unskilled. I told him that there are many roads to freedom, and that he who attains freedom in the way of a scribe has as splendid a courage as he who attains it in the way of a warrior, but I could not make him realise that what he possessed was not cowardice but compassion.

  His present was always overcast by his future, for Seshet could see the shadows that would be thrown by everything he did. If Den swerved her chariot too swiftly and it was nearly overturned, she never thought of what would have happened if it had tilted a little further; but to Seshet, who watched her, what might have happened was almost as vivid as if it had come to pass, and his bones ached, so keen was his vision of the hurt that she might have received. Yet deeply within him shone the flame of true courage that does not run back although it can see the unmasked face of danger.

  He had given his heart to Den ever since she was a baby, and Neyah and I always hoped that they would marry and rule after us together. Den was the Royal Heir, and unless she married Seshet, she would rule alone and he could not be Pharaoh. If I had not had a child, Neyah could have declared any of his children the royal heir; and if he had had no children, he would, after consulting with his seer priests, have declared one old in spirit to be the next Son of Horus.

  When Den was fourteen, the time came for her betrothal to Seshet to be announced to the people, so that all should know them as their rulers when Neyah and I handed on the Crook and Flail. To Seshet, Den was the sun of his noonday; when she was with him there could be no shadows, and when she was away from him the sky was without stars. But she loved him only as a brother, and within her heart he could not kindle the brilliant flame that lovers know. And because of his love for her, he saw her heart; and he knew that, as his wife, she would never find the happiness at full circle that another man could give her who was not only a brother to her spirit, but also the lover that her body had chosen. To Seshet, marriage with Den meant to have her who was the breath of his nostrils for his wife, and the crown of Pharaoh. But he loved her beyond possession and beyond power; and greater than this, he loved her beyond pride. He longed to be Pharaoh, because the Crook that he would then hold would have been Neyah’s, and because the crown that he would then wear would have been worn by Neyah. He knew that he would have been forbidden this denial of his heritage if he told his father that he gave up the succession to the throne because he loved the woman that he would have shared it with. So Seshet told his father that he could not be Pharaoh because he dared not lead the Royal Chariots into battle. Neyah loved him, and as he listened to him, his heart sorrowed that he would have no son to follow him. But he knew that the boy was long in years to have gained humility, which so few gain until in the gaining of it they are almost at the end of their journey. And he thought that Seshet was wise beyond the understanding of scholars to have weighed his own heart, and knowing that he was not a leader of warriors, to have put off the war helmet of Pharaoh and laid down the Flail. So Neyah made Seshet the Vizier of Nekht-an, and the Land of the Lotus was shepherded by his compassion.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Den and Horem-ka

  The passing years brought beauty and strength as gifts to Den. Her hair shone like new copper, and her body was as slender as a young boy’s. She used to go on expeditions to far countries, searching for new animals and birds to bring back to Kam, just as my father had searched for plants and trees. She was the pride and the fear of the Master of Chariots, for if danger stretched out his hands towards her she laughed him into the shadows. She was beloved throughout the Two Lands, for whether she was with an old scholar or a young noble, a captain-of-captains or a hound-boy, she made each feel that he was her equal and that she had chosen him for her companion. Her anger was swift, but it was outpaced by her sympathy and her generosity.

  One of her favourite companions was Horem-ka, son of the Vizier of Iss-an. He was a captain of the Royal Bodyguard, and except when he was in attendance on Pharaoh, he lived on his own estate, which was near to the Royal City. He was a strong man both in heart and in body. His skin was red-brown with the sun, and his hands had the broad palms of a warrior; his brows were level as the wings of a hawk, but his mouth was the friend of laughter.

  Though there were many who loved her, when Den was nineteen she had still not chosen her husband.

  One day news was brought that a lion, which was no longer swift enough to catch antelope, had taken a child from one of the villages, two days’ journey to the south of the Royal City. Den went with Neyah upon the lion hunt. And she returned, not in a chariot as she had set forth but in a curtained litter. The wheel of her chariot had broken while she was challenging for the quarry, and she had been thrown out and kicked on the head by a following horse.

  For four days she lay as though she were dead. Only the faint beating of her heart showed that the silver cord was still unsevered. So slender was her hold on Earth, that it seemed that her spirit was like a bird that rustles its wings before its last flight. She breathed embalmed in sleep, and neither seer nor healer could stir her from this strange tranquillity.

  Her body was quiet as a statue as I watched beside it. Then I heard someone come into the ante-room and the voice of Horem-ka demanding to see my daughter. The servants told him that he must not enter. But he swept them aside, and they parted before him as reeds bow before a great wind. The curtain of the doorway clattered on its rings as he pulled it back. The room was dark, except for the dim light of one alabaster lamp, and I think he never knew that I was there. He knelt beside Den and held her hand, calling her by the little soft names that lovers use. And his voice followed her to those far lands where her spirit wandered; and her spirit heard his voice, and she returned to her body. She opened her eyes for a moment and smiled at him, murmuring his name contentedly as a drowsy child. Then in the shelter of his arms she slept, no longer in sleep in the semblance of death, but to the refreshing of her body.

  On the third day of the second month of the Harvest in the twenty-first year of my reign, Den and Horem-ka were united before the Gods.

  As Horem-ka was not of the royal blood, he would not be Pharaoh, but only the Royal Husband, when Den came to the throne. Neyah announced him to be the first in the line of succession after Den, if she died before she bore an heir; for though Horem-ka had not the blood of Meniss in his veins, our tradition lived in his heart. He became the Royal Vizier, for Rey-hetep had grown weary of office, being seventy-six years of age. In the armies he ranked second only to Neyah, and in all save name he was the son of Pharaoh.

  He and Den together had the strength of the two sides of a pylon, and they were balanced each to each like the two sides of the Scales. Now that Den had found peace, which the beloved dweller in her heart had brought to her, she was no longer impatient of the ways of wisdom, and she listened to the voice of her memory, from which her knowledge of people had been born. Ney-sey-ra gave her of his counsel, and in the voices of priests she found that joy that once she had found only in the swiftness of chariots.

  With Horem-ka she travelled throughout Kam. They talked with the viziers, and they went among the people in the market-places; they talked with priests and temple counsellors, with vintagers and with women gathering in the harvests; so that our people knew that when the Crook and the Flail passed into her hands, they were the same ones that Neyah and I now held, and the contentment of their lives would be unbroken by our death.

  Nearly two years after their marriage, a son was born to them and Den asked me to choose a name for him. And to my grandson I gave the name Seshet-ka, after him who was the son of my heart, though his body had been fashioned by Neyah and Sesket.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Death of Neyah

  When I had been on Earth forty-six years, the sun no longer rose over the horizon of my days and sorrow hid the stars from my sight. For Neyah, who had gone upon a journey far to the south of Kam, died of the fever o
f the swamps.

  He told me in a dream that his body was ill, twenty-seven days’ swift journey from the Royal City. And he told me that I could not reach him upon Earth, for within two days his body would be an empty house.

  Away from Earth death is a rejoicing; but to waking eyes it shadows beauty, flowers lose their perfume and the singing-birds are dumb. Yet although all the people of Kam could show their sorrow, in my eyes the tears must burn unshed. For to my people I must speak of the littleness of death, tell them that they should rejoice that their Pharaoh drove his chariot in the Golden Army of Horus, tell them that he had but gone ahead of them and waited to greet them when they too should die.

  Neyah was their shepherd and the avenger of their wrongs, and they loved him as they loved their Gods, for to all of them Pharaoh was the symbol of what one day they would become. But to me, Neyah was the little boy I played with when I too was little, the one with whom I had always shared the secrets of my heart, the one with whom my tongue could be unguarded and heart unwalled.

  And I was so very lonely.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Evening of My Days

  For a year after Neyah’s death I stayed in the Royal City, and Den and I ruled over the Two Lands.

  My little grandson was dear to me, and I would tell him the stories that Neyah used to tell to me: of the scarlet fish, and of the oryx who challenged the North Wind to race to the horizon; of the monkey who wanted to be a man, and of the tortoise who was proud. With him I re-lived the days of my youth, and I thought of how, when he grew older, I should tell him legends of the Gods and of the strong in heart who lived upon Earth through the old years.