The Yoke Part 79

The palace sentries started and gave him room.

He was running, sobbing, through the dark and capacious corridors of the palace and no man had stayed him yet. Were they to make his shame more poignant by pitying him and punis.h.i.+ng him not at all? He flung himself through the doors of the council chamber and halted.

The great hall was crowded and full of excitement. Meneptah had summoned the court to the royal presence.

In his loft above the throng stood the king, purple with rage. The queen, in her place at his side, was staying his outstretched hand.

Below at his right stood Rameses, the kingliest presence that ever graced a royal sitting. At the left of Meneptah, was Har-hat, complacent and serene.

Out in the center of a generous s.p.a.ce stood Moses. The great Hebrew was alone and isolated, but his personality was such that a throng could not have obscured him.

In his ma.s.sive physique was an insistent suggestion of immovability and superhuman strength; in the shape of his imperial head, there was illimitable capacity; in his face, the image of a nature commanding the entire range of feeling, from the finest to the fiercest. There was nothing of the occult in his atmosphere. His intense human force would have commanded, though Egypt had not known him as the emissary of G.o.d.

As it was, when he moved the a.s.sembly swayed back as if blown by a wind. A motion of his hand sent a nervous start over the hall. The nearest courtiers seemed prepared to crouch. Meneptah did not win a glance from his court. Every eye, wide and expectant, was fixed upon the Israelite.

The pale and troubled queen strove in vain. Meneptah thrust her aside and shaking his clenched hand at the solitary figure before him, ended the audience in a voice violent with fury.

"Get thee from me! Take heed to thyself; see my face no more. For in that day thou seest my face, thou shalt die!"

After the speech, the silence fell, deepened, grew ominous. None breathed, and the overwrought nerves of the court reached the limit of endurance.

Then Moses answered. His tones were quiet, his voice full of a calm more terrifying than an outburst had been.

"Thou hast spoken well," he said. "I will see thy face no more."

Another breathless silence and he turned, the courtiers shrinking from his way, and pa.s.sed out of the hall.

At the doors, his eyes fell upon Seti. He made no sign of surprise.

Indeed his glance seemed to indicate that he expected the prince. He raised his hand and extended it for a moment over the boy's head, and went forth.

The strength went from Seti's limbs, the pa.s.sion from his brain, and when Rameses with grim purpose in his face beckoned him, he obeyed meekly and prostrated himself before the angry king.

[1] Zoan--The Hebrew name for Tanis.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

BEFORE EGYPT'S THRONE

The distance by highway between Memphis and Tanis was eighty miles, a little more than two days' journey by horseback.

Masanath had required two weeks to accomplish that distance. She refused to travel except in the cool of the morning and of the afternoon; if she felt the fatigue of an hour's journey, she rested a day at the next town; she consulted astrologers, and moved forward only under propitious signs; she insisted on following the Nile until she was opposite Tanis, instead of taking the highway at On and continuing across the Delta.

The most of her following walked, and she proceeded at the pace of her plodding servants.

She spoke of her freedom as though she went to meet doom; she gazed on the sorry fields and pastures of Egypt as though the four walls of a prison were soon to shut out heaven and earth from her eyes.

She was now within ten miles of Tanis, fourteen days after her departure from Memphis.

Four solemn Ethiopians bore her litter upon their shoulders, and another waved a fan of black ostrich plumes over her. The litter was of glittering ebony, hung with purple, ta.s.seled with gold. At her right, was Unas; at her left, Nari. Behind her were dusky attendants and sooty sumpter-mules.

Her robes were white, and very fine, but there was no henna on her nails, nor kohl beneath her lids, nor jewels in her hair. So she would prove that, though she was a coming queen, she was not glad of it. Hers was not the spirit that hides its trouble and enamels the exterior with false flushes and smiles. She enveloped herself in her feelings. She tinctured her voice with them; she made her eyes languid with them; and the touch of her hand, the curve of her lips and the droop of her head were eloquent of them.

By this time, she had despaired. There was yet an opportunity to spend another day covering the remaining ten miles, but she would loiter no longer. She was tired, of a truth.

It was near sunset when a company of royal guards, under Menes, rode up from the north.

The captain flung himself from his horse and hurried to Masanath's litter.

"Holy Isis! Lady Masanath," he exclaimed; "where in all Egypt hast thou hidden thyself these fourteen days? The whole army of the north hath been searching after thee, and Rameses hath raved like a madman since that day long past on which thou shouldst have arrived in Tanis."

"I have been on the way," she answered loftily. "The haste of the prince is unseemly. I would not fatigue myself nor court disaster by incautiousness, these perilous days."

Menes bowed. "I am reproved, and contrite. I forgot that I spoke with my queen. But I am most grateful that thou didst permit me to find thee, for Rameses sent me forth an hour since, with the hard alternative of fetching thee to him or losing my head. But that he was sure of my success is proved by the litter he sent between two horses for thee.

Wilt thou leave this and proceed in the other?"

Masanath answered by extending her hand to him. Three of the soldiers laid their cloaks on the earth for her feet; six others let down the litter and Menes a.s.sisted her into the sumptuous conveyance Rameses had sent.

Another soldier, after rapid and low-spoken instructions from the captain, whirled his horse about, saluted and took the road toward Tanis at a gallop.

The six shouldered the litter of the crown princess-to-be, Menes mounted his horse and rode beside her; Unas, her Memphian train, and the riderless horses were left to bring up the rear, and Masanath continued to the capital.

"Perchance, thou hast been famished these fourteen days in the matter of court-gossip," the captain said. "Wherefore I am come as thy informant with such news as thou shouldst know. For, being ignorant of the infelicities in the household of the king, it may be that thou wouldst ask after the little prince, Seti, and wherefore the queen appears no more at the side of the Pharaoh, nor speaks with thy lord nor sees thy n.o.ble father; and furthermore, where Ta-user hath taken herself and other things which would embarra.s.s thee to hear answered openly."

Masanath roused herself and prepared to listen. Serious words from the lips of the light-hearted captain were not common, and when he spoke in that manner it was time to take heed.

"I had heard of the little prince's misfortune and of the treason of Ta-user and her party, and the placing of a price upon her head; but nothing more hath come to mine ears. Is there more, of a truth?"

"Remember, I pray thee," the captain replied, riding near to her, "that I bring thee this for thine own sake--not for the love of tale-bearing. On the counsel of Rameses, this day the Pharaoh sentenced Seti to banishment for a year to the mines of Libya--"

"To the mines!" Masanath cried in horror.

"Not as a laborer. Nay, the sentence was not so harsh. But as a scribe to the governor over them."

"It matters little!" she declared indignantly. "The boy-prince--the poor, misguided young brother sent to a year of banishment--a lifelong humiliation! Libya, the death-country! Now, was anything more brutal?

Nay, it is like Rameses!"

"Aye," the captain replied quickly, leaning over her with a cautioning motion of his hand. "Aye, and it is like thee to say it. But hear me yet further. The queen and the Son of Ptah have quarreled, violently, over Seti," he continued in a low tone. "The little prince merited thy father's disfavor, because Seti espoused the cause of Ta-user in thy place, though he loves thee, and for that--we can find no other reason--the n.o.ble Har-hat also urged the king into the harsh sentence of the little prince. For this the queen hath publicly turned her back upon the crown prince and the fan-bearer, and the atmosphere of the palace is most unhappy."

He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Hotep championed Seti,--for the young sister's sake, it would appear,--but to me it seemeth that the scribe hath lost his wits."

"It would seem that he courteth a sentence to the mines likewise, and he needs but to go on as he hath begun to succeed most thoroughly. And it behooveth his friends to prevent him."

He took Masanath's hand and, leaning from the saddle, whispered:

"Ye are under the same roof--thou and Hotep. Avoid him as though he were a pestilence."