Moses (25 page)

“They also killed and burned and looted,” Seti-Keph pointed out, but with no passion.

“Will a war bring back the dead? The truth is, my friend, and you know it as well as I do, that the lust of the God-King for slaves and gold is insatiable. When the Libyans come out of the western desert and do the same thing, he takes no umbrage, for the Libyans are as poor as Bedouins, eh?”

“If I went looking for a just war,” Seti-Keph growled, “I would still be a peasant in the Delta.”

“And perhaps a good deal happier.”

“I doubt that. There are no happy peasants in the Delta today. But since I am a soldier, I do as I am told.”

“We enslave ourselves with people who do as they are told,” the doctor sighed. “And like all great nations, we Egyptians take such cursed comfort in it. We know so surely that nowhere but in Egypt is there culture and beauty and proper reverence for the gods, and we make a lovely cradle for what used to be called our conscience. For a thousand years we have been boasting to the world that only we possess the holy
macaat
, that peculiar Egyptian word which we claim can be translated into no other tongue. Is it conscience, the knowledge of right and wrong? In part, we admit loftily. Is it justice—yes, we admit elements of justice, don't we? Mercy? That too, and of course an element of innate nobility. But those are only indications of
macaat
, which is all of them and more.
Macaat
is Egypt, the noble, the divine.” There was such bitter irony in his voice that Moses looked to Seti-Keph and Sokar-Moses to take offence. But they only smiled with the sort of tolerance that assured the doctor that nothing he could say would offend them.

“But do you know what this
macaat
really is ?” the little physician demanded.

“You failed to mention honour and courage,” Sokar-Moses said with some defence, not eager to pit himself against wit and intellect; and actually admiring the crackling speech of the physician. He had said very little until now, and his self-deprecating smile was at odds with his great bulk and ferocious appearance. “I mean, a soldier would have small
macaat
without those—don't you think?”

“I don't think! Honour—courage—those are war words, and they mean one thing to the professional butcher and something else entirely to normal folk. As a physician, I tell you they are your medicine; otherwise, how would you brigands sleep nights?”

Now, surely, Moses expected the company to explode, but the two women sat calmly, their hands properly folded on their laps; Sokar-Moses was taken somewhat aback; and Seti-Keph burst into roars of laughter, rocking with laughter until the tears ran down his cheeks. “All my life,” he spluttered, “I have been trying to say something like that. Rest easy, Sokar-Moses—the truth is always demanding and bitter. And you, Prince of Egypt,” turning to Moses, “can put this all down to the ranting of old men. He is not yet nineteen years,” he explained to Aton-Moses, “so all your lonely wit that you spin in the empty nights here seems damn' foolishness to him!”

“Oh, no—no,” protested Moses, speaking for the first time.

“And you think it blasphemous and treasonable, my son?” the doctor asked gently.

“I think it wonderful,” Moses managed to say.

“Well!” cried Seti-Keph. “There you are. But what
macaat?
You were going to tell us, weren't you?”

“Yes, if you want to hear?”

“Go ahead.”

“
Macaat
is righteousness, which is the curse the gods bestow on a people they desire to destroy.”

Moses understood this not at all, but he didn't dare to say so and catching the grave eyes of Merit-Aton, he felt that above all things he must not reveal his own narrow horizons, his own great limitations. For the first time in his remembered life, he had lost all consciousness of being a prince of Egypt—and all consciousness of his princely fraudulence as well. In the Great House, he had heard contemptuous remarks concerning the “over-educated” and “over-sophisticated” barons of the Upper Nile, of their plotting against the gods, of the treasonable scepticism they had imbibed with their worship of Aton, and the way in which they undermined all that was truly Egyptian and holy. But never had he dreamed that there actually were people who thought and conversed in this manner. A part of him was experiencing that sudden discovery of vast horizons that comes to some young men once in their lifetime; another part of him was afraid, for in what he remembered as closest to this, his best talks with AmonTeph and Neph, there was always the secrecy that admitted the action as punishable sin. Here it was open, without any conspiratorial overtones, and filled with laughter and innuendo.

Seti-Keph said, “So you think the gods plan to destroy us.”

“Unless we destroy ourselves first.”

“With our
macaat
?” Seti-Keph asked mockingly.

“With out cursed righteousness. What do we know of people? We have lost all sense of them. What do your lords on the'Delta know of Kush?”

“I know nothing of Kush, where I have never been,” Sokar-Moses said bluntly, “and I've met few who do.”

“I respect an honest man,” Aton-Moses nodded. “There is no Kush. I see our young prince doubts me. I'm not being facetious, as Seti-Keph knows. Kush is a name for all of Africa to the south of us. Civilizations have come and gone in that strange land to the south, but always we Egyptians speak of Kush. The black skin is Kush. Bah! Our Egypt's wars are as empty as our
macaat
. Right now, there is a new life, a new kingdom, a new civilization coming into being in what we call Kush. Not the tribes of cattle-raiders whom you smashed in the battle at the Sixth Cataract seven years ago, Seti-Keph. They are gone. They never recovered from that battle. These are black people who live far to the south of the Sixth Cataract, weeks of marching up the Blue Nile. A long journey, if you are to reach them with the cruel hand of your master. They have built a city, and they herd their cattle and till their fields in peace. The few wild raiders whom you will practise justice against were driven out, and came down here for want of a better place to go. But now you will punish the innocent for the guilty.”

“And how do you know all this?” Seti-Keph wondered.

“I have long ears,” Aton-Moses scowled. “There is little goes on hearabout that I don't hear this or that concerning it. It may be that they have forgotten I exist, on the Delta—as I hope—but a hundred days' journey to the south, the name of Aton-Moses is known, I assure you, and I have had patients from places you never dreamed existed.”

“Aton-Moses,” the prince asked, “you said a hundred days' journey to the south?”

“And why not?”

“We have come so far,” Moses said unbelievingly. “I never knew such distances were in this world—”

“You will know better than half of a hundred days' journey by your own sweat and sorrow,” the Captain of Hosts chuckled, “for after we leave here, there is that much and more before ever we set foot in Kush.”

Abashed and feeling that he had wholly exposed his youth and ignorance, Moses nodded silently; but he met the warm brown eyes of Merit-Aton, and they were sympathetic rather than derisive. Aton-Moses, noticing his embarrassment, hastened to change the subject, and he said,

“Tell me, O Prince of Egypt, what are your impressions of out backward—and lonely ‘Upper Land'?” giving it the old name.

“I don't think it's backward,” Moses answered eagerly. “I like it. I feel good here—and I think I love the desert and these escarpments.”

“Yes—the desert is something you love or hate, no in-between; and I have heard that nowhere on earth is there anything to match the colours of our escarpments. Look!” He pointed eastward, across the gorge of the Nile, to where the setting sun was beginning to display its nightly flow and ebb of colour upon the escarpment. “So it is, each night, and each night different. In the tales we tell our children it is Mother Mut herself who comes each evening to clothe her beloved cliffs and keep the chill night air from them. Do you remember, Merit-Aton?”

“I remember,” she nodded, her voice low and musical, and said to Moses, “but why the cliffs needed protection from the cold, I never knew and no one could ever tell me, not even my father, who knows almost everything.”

The teasing was very gentle, and Moses realized that it was a part of their relationship—a relationship between parent and child that he could hardly comprehend, for it was outside his own experience or anything he could imagine.

“Almost everything,” her father said. “I suppose all this would be strange to you, Prince of Egypt—just as the Great House would be most strange to me. I have never seen it. Is it as wonderful as they say?”

“Wonderful? I never thought of it that way. It was there, the place where I lived.”

“Was it a happy place to live?” the girl asked.

Slowly, Moses said, “I think—that no palace is a happy place to live. This is just a very large house-some say the largest house in the world; but it is full of fear and superstition and every kind of hatred—”

“A court is a court,” Seti-Keph shrugged.

“Yet it must have parts of beauty,” Aton-Moses pressed, “since at least part of it was built by the same man who built this house for me twelve years ago.”

“The same man?” Moses whispered excitedly.

“Yes—a wonderful man. A plain Egyptian peasant boy, like Seti-Keph here, but when they win through, they are our best, I sometimes think. He had a vision of building a great dam across the valley where the First Cataract falls, a project like those we did in the olden times. He felt it would require as much stone as the great pyramid at Giza, but he knew it could be done. He had planned every detail of it, and he would build sluice gates to control the floodwaters, so that never again should we have havoc when the flood was too great or famine when it was too little. He fired the imagination of the God-King, who sent him here with a thousand slaves to begin the work. But no sooner was he here than the priests came, hot on his heels, with another counter-order from the God-King, whom they had convinced that such a project would be sacrilege. It would interfere with the ordained course of the Holy Nile, and in their anger the gods would visit doom upon us.”

“I think he was right,” Seti-Keph said solemnly.

“I would expect you to think so. Anyway, back and forth went the messengers for half a year, while the engineer fretted away the days and almost went mad with frustration. That was when I met him and we became friends, for he was an image-breaker, as I am, and we are the closest fraternity on earth, you may believe me. We lived in an old house of sundried brick then, and more or less to pass the time, he drew the plans for this house and had his idle slaves build it. So you see, if Egypt got no dam, I at least got a house, and a very nice one, don't you think?”

“I think it is the most wonderful house I ever saw,” Moses agreed. “Was the man who built it called Neph?”

The general excitement and interest over that led to Moses' talking more than he wanted to—and after he had told them of his own experiences with Neph, the conversation died away, and they sat in silence, watching the gorgeous play of colour upon the escarpment. Yet in Moses, the turbulence of his thoughts churned parts of him unknown and untouched and the wonder of this waking dream enthralled him even more than the twilight glory of light on the cliffs. That it was Neph, his own beloved Neph, who had built this house might have seemed a far-fetched coincidence, had it not been for what the doctor said of the image-breakers,”the closest fraternity on earth.” Was it that way, then—and was Amon-Teph to live for him again and again? For it was always Amon-Teph, the first of them in his life, who appeared in his mind—whether through the caustic irony of Seti-Keph or the practical wisdom of Neph or the strange and sometimes frightening philosophy of this little doctor who lived alone on the edge of Egypt. What had they in common? Was it because they doubted? But Neph had not doubted when he proposed to build a great stone wall across the valley and hold back the River Nile. How furious Neph must have been at the priests—and it was no wonder that he hated the gods so! No, it was not doubt but questioning—always questioning. He recalled now one of the many times he had spoken to Neph concerning Aton-and Neph had said impatiently, “You think too much of the gods, Moses. Why should you have to know if Aton is the only god?” “But you know, Neph—” And Neph had looked at him with such sadness that Moses became afraid. Neph said, “The only god is truth, Moses, and that is not given to any man to know.” But weren't men like these aware of some of the truth? Why had Neph never told him of this plan to dam the river? Was it because they were a closed fraternity, these men, and could commune only with each other? Certainly they were so different from others that they might well be a race apart.

Aton-Moses broke the silence, saying, “I am curious, O Prince of Egypt, concerning your name—if I may be? For, unlike mine, it is only half a name.”

Moses returned slowly from the maze of his own thoughts, and Seti-Keph said, to put the matter to rest, “The prince of the half-name. Why not? If he wants it so—”

Moses spoke almost dreamily, “It is half a name given to me by my beloved mother, the Princess Enekhas-Amon. The other half she would give me some day—so she thought. But she died. Ramses, who calls himself the God-King, murdered her.”

There was a strained silence after he spoke, until Seti-Keph said, “Here we are good companions, O Prince of Egypt, and we talk freely and we trust each other's honour. But there are some things that should never be said.” It was not a reprimand; it was simply an, observation.

“And do you know the other half?” Aton-Moses asked softly.

“Yes—” to the only man he ever met or heard of who bore it himself. “But it died with my mother, and my half-name is enough. I am used to it.”