Part 16 (1/2)
”Do not be afraid, Master If there is trouble I will swear that I told the Great King that lady's name”
”Yes, Bes, but hoould that fit in with the story, seeing that I was brought out of the boat for this very purpose?”
”Quite easily, Master, since I will say that you were led frory with ypt even a dwarf cannot be killed because he has declared a certain lady to be the most beautiful in the world But, Master, tell me, when did you learn to love her?”
”When ere boy and girl, Bes We used to play together, being cousins, and I used to hold her hand Then suddenly she refused to let rown up then, though she was younger, understood that I had better go away”
”I should have stopped where I was, Master”
”No, Bes She was studying to be a priestess and o away So I went down south hunting and fighting in command of the troops, and met you, Bes”
”Which perhaps was better for you, Master, than to stop to watch the lady A Still, I wonder whether the holy Tanofir is _always_ right You see, Master, he thinks a great deal of priests and priestesses, and is so very old that he has forgotten all about love and that without it there never would have been a holy Tanofir”
”The holy Tanofir thinks of souls, not of bodies, Bes”
”Yes, Master Still, oil is of no use without a lamp, or a soul without a body, at least here underneath the sun, or so ere taught orshi+p the Grasshopper But, Master, when you ca, what happened then?”
”Then I found, Bes, that the lady A possible, had taken her first vows to Isis, which she said she would not break for any ht have done so without crih I was dear to her, as a brother would have been had she had one, and she swore that she had never even thought of anotherwho dreamed only of the heavenly perfections of the lady Isis”
”Ump!” said Bes ”We Ethiopians have Priestesses of the Grasshopper, or the Grasshopper's wife, but they do not think of her like that I hope that one day soer than herself will not cause the lady Amada to break her vows to the heavenly Isis Only then, perhaps, it o off to the East on account of such fool's talk But here is a village and the horses are spent Let us stop and eat, as I suppose even the lady A afternoon we crossed the Nile, and towards sunset entered the vast and ancient city of Memphis On its white walls floated the banners of the Great King which Bes pointed out tothat wherever ent in the whole world, it seemed that we could never be free from those accursed symbols
”May I live to spit upon theely, for as I drew near to Arew ten times more hateful to me than they had been before
In truth I was nearer to Aht, for after we had passed the enclosure of the tehtiest in the whole world, we caate weto offer the evening sacrifice of song and flowers, clad, all of theers ith the flowers, in front of alked another priestess shaking a _sistruabout the tall and slender shape of this priestess that stirred me When we cah the thin veil she wore I could see her dark and tender eyes set beneath the broad brow that was so full of thought, and the sweet, curved mouth that was like no other wo above her breast showed the birth-from my horse and ran towards her She looked up and saw , then tender, and I thought that her red lips shaped my name Moreover in her confusion she let the _sistrum_ fall
I muttered ”Amada!” and stepped forward, but priests ran between us and thrust me away Next moment she had recovered the _sistrum_ and passed on with her head bowed Nor did she lift her eyes to look back
”Begone, one, whoever you may be Because you wear Eastern armour do you think that you can dare the curse of Isis?”
Then I fell back, the holy ie of the Goddess passed and the procession vanished through the pylon gate I, Shabaka the Egyptian, stood by my horse and watched it depart I was happy because the lady Amada was alive, well, and ns of joy and confusion at seeinga holy office which built a wall between us, also because it seemed to me an evil omen that I should have been repelled from her by a priest of Isis who talked of the curse of the Goddess Moreover the sacred statue, I suppose by accident, turned towards ht, seeht as Shabaka hundreds of years before the Christian era, but as Allan Quateriven sothem, yet never quite lost the sense of his own identity of to-day, I was amazed
For I knew that this lady Ah clad in different flesh, as that other lady hoical _Taduki_ fumes which had power to rend the curtain of the past, or, perhaps, only to breed dreaht have been
To the outward eye, indeed she was different, as I was different, taller, er and slimmer hands than those of any Western wo Moreover that nall's face, was more constant on that of the lady Amada It brooded in the deep eyes and settled in a curious sether huht ho had looked on hidden things and heard voices that spoke beyond the limits of the world
So all hter of a hundred kings, whose bloodbut a woh so of our co of another nature whereof we have no ken, had entered to fill its place And yet these tomen were the same, that I _knew_, or at any rate, much of them was the same, for who can say what part of us we leave behind as we flit froain elsewhere in the abys too was quite identical--the birthmark of the new moon above the breast which the priests of the Kendah had declared was always the seal that uardian of the Holy Child
When the procession had quite departed and I could no longer hear the sound of singing, I remounted and rode on to reat lady Tiu, which was situated beneath the wall of the old palace facing towards the Nile Indeed my heart was full of this mother of mine whom I loved and who loveddead; so long that I could not reone by since I saw her face and in eight ht , perhaps had been gathered to Osiris Oh! if that were so!
I shookahead of h the crowded street in which, at this hour of sundown, all the idlers of Meathered They stared atin Memphis, and with little love, since from my dress and escort they tookof the East Soh and presently turned into a thoroughfare of private houses standing in their own gardens Ours was the third of these At its gate I leapt from my horse, pushed open the closed door and hastened in to seek and learn