Queen of the Dawn A Love Tale of Old Egypt

QUEEN OF THE DAWN

lips,” answered Khian boldly. “As to what she said to me, let her tell you if she will.”

Now the blood came to the brow of Nefra, and looking down, she murmured:

“I said to the Prince Khian that I gave gift for gift and love for love, desiring him and no other man to be my lord. Now I pray your blessing on this choice of mine, my Master in the spirit, and with it the consent of the Council of the Order to our betrothal.”

“The blessing you have in full measure, Sister and Queen, and the consent I think will not be withheld. Know that we have hoped and prayed that so it would befall, and even made the happening easy, in the trust that thus, without war or bloodshed, Egypt that is severed in twain may once more become one land, acknowledging one throne. Moreover, it seemed to us who have watched you both that you two are well-fitted to each other, and we believe that you were appointed to come together. That is our answer.”

“I thank you, Father,” said Khian, and Nefra also murmured, “I thank you.”

“Aye,” went on Roy, “doubtless your hearts thank us in their happiness, yet, Prince and Queen, there is more to be said. Troubles are ahead of you and us, nor can you be united until these are overcome. Apepi threatens us. When he learns that he has been rejected, he will be very wrath, and when he comes to understand why and for whom his suit has been refused – and such a matter cannot be long concealed – what then? Is it still your purpose, Prince Khian, to bear our written answer which that messenger has left behind him, to your

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father, King Apepi, or will you choose to bide on with us, or to fly the land and hide awhile?”

Khian thought a little, then replied:

“Before I knew what fate held in store for me, I accepted this embassy and, according to custom, swore the envoy’s oath of loyal service, namely, that I would bear my message and return with its answer, if I lived, making a true report of those to whom it was sent. This oath I must fulfil or be shamed, and therefore I cannot hide away disguised here or elsewhere because my task has become dangerous. That I have adopted the doctrines of the Dawn and am affianced to a certain high lady are my private matters, or so I hold; but to sail in that ship which has been summoned from Memphis to await me in the river, and to deliver your answer to the King Apepi, is my public duty. If ill comes to me in the performing of that duty, it must be so, but if I left it unperformed I should be no honest man. I will deliver the letters and, if need be, tell King Apepi the truth, leaving the end of all to fortune, or rather to the will of That which we worship.”

Now Nefra looked at him proudly, while the others murmured: “Well spoken.”

“These are high-hearted words,” said Roy, “and they please me, Prince Khian, who know from them that our Queen has given her love to no base man. The danger is great and until it be overcome you may not marry lest your bride should be widowed almost as soon as she was wed. Yet I believe that it will be overcome and that in the end the Spirit whom we serve will guide your feet to joy and safety.”

“May it be so,” said Khian.

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“Hearken both of you,” went on Roy. “I am very old and it is revealed to me that soon I must pass hence, how as yet I do not know. Yes, I, the seeker after light, must enter into the darkness where, as I trust, I shall find light. Prince Khian, you look upon my face for the last time. All my days I have striven to bring about the unity of Egypt, without bloodshed if that might be. Now perchance in the persons of you, Prince and Queen, this unity will be accomplished and Egypt will be one again, if only for a while. That accomplishment I shall not live to see, though I trust that in after days I may hear of it from your lips elsewhere. Yet being dead I trust also that my spirit may still guide you both upon the earth although you see it not. Come hither, Khian, Prince of the North, and Nefra, anointed Queen of Egypt, that I may bless you.”

They came and knelt before the ancient priest who already seemed more a spirit than a man. He laid his thin hands upon their heads and blessed them in the name of Heaven and in his own, calling down joy and fruitfulness upon them and consecrating them to the service of Egypt – of the order of the Dawn, and of that universal Soul whom they worshipped. Then suddenly he rose and left them.

One by one, according to their degree, the members of the Council followed, and with them went Kemmah and the giant Ru, so that presently Khian and Nefra found themselves alone.

“The hour of farewell is at hand,” said Khian sadly.

“Yes, Beloved,” answered Nefra, “but oh! when and where will come the hour of re-union?”

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“I do not know, Nefra. None knows, not even Roy, but be brave, for assuredly it will come. I must go; but now I saw it in your eyes that, like myself, you thought that I must go.”

“Yes, Khian, so I thought, and think. Therefore go, and swiftly, before my heart breaks. Remember all, Khian, and every word that has passed between us. Now one thing more. I charge you by our love that whatever you may hear concerning me, even if they tell you that I am wed elsewhere, or faithless, that you believe nothing, save that while I live, here or in the Underworld, I am yours and yours alone, and that rather than pass into the hands of another man I will surely die. Do you swear this, Khian?”

“I swear it, Nefra; also that as you are to me, so I will be to you.”

Then with murmured words of love again they clung and kissed till soon, at a sign, for she could speak no more, Khian loosed her from his arms. He loosed her, he bowed to her, and she bowed back to him. Then he went. At the doorway he turned to look on her. There robed in the virginal white of the Sisters of the Dawn, wearing no ornament or mark of rank and yet looking most royal, she stood still as a statue, gazing after him while one by one the heavy tears welled from her deep eyes. Another instant and like some gate of doom the door swung to behind him and she was seen no more.

In his chamber Khian found Tau, the second Prophet of the Order, awaiting him.

“I come to tell you, Prince, that your ship is ready at the river bank, to which your goods with the presents sent by King

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Apepi have been borne,” he said, adding, “Ru will escort you thither.”

“Yes, Tau, but who will escort me back?” he asked, sighing heavily. “I feel like one who has dreamed a happy dream and awakened to the world and know it but a dream which will never be fulfilled.”

“Take courage, Prince, for I hold otherwise. Yet I will not hide from you that the peril of all of us is great. We learn that Apepi masses troops, as he says, to protect himself against the Babylonians who threaten him, but who can be certain? I would that we had questioned that messenger as was my purpose. But he slipped away while we thought that he was waiting for our letter.”

“So would I, Tau, but he is gone and now it is too late.” “Prince,” went on Tau in a low voice, “it may be that for

a while the Order of the Dawn, and with it a certain lady, must vanish from Egypt. Yet if this comes about, do not believe that we are lost or dead who shall but have gone to seek help, whence as yet I may not reveal even to you, though perchance you may guess. We hate war and bloodshed, Prince, but if these are forced upon us, we shall fight, or certainly I shall fight who in my youth was as you are, a soldier and have commanded armies. Therefore, remember that while I live and indeed while a Brother or Sister of the Dawn lives throughout the world, and as you saw on the night of the Crowning, they are many, dwelling in many lands, that lady will not lack a defender or a home. And now, farewell till perchance in a day to come I see you and that lady wed and afterwards crowned

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as King and Queen of the Land of the Nile, reigning from the Cataracts to the sea. Again, Brother, fare you well.”

Once more Khian walked across the stretch of desert that lay between the Sphinx and the palm grove by the bank of the Nile, but this time his companion was no hooded youth with the voice and the hands of a woman, but the Ethiopian Ru who, as he went, addressed him in a kind of soliloquy, after this sort:

“So, Lord, you really are the Prince Khian, as rumour said and the Lady Kemmah and I guessed from the first, and now you are affianced to my Queen, for which I hate you because ever since you came she has hardly had a look or a word for me. Yet to be honest, as such things must happen, I would rather it was to you than to any one else, because you are a soldier and I like you, also a man of courage, as you showed when you learned to climb those pyramids which I should never have dared to do. So I shall be glad to serve you when you are married, though if you do not treat my Queen well, beware of this axe, for then, if you were fifty Pharaohs and a hundred gods, with it I would still cleave you to the chin. No doubt you think that you are very clever to win her love, as certainly you have done, but there you are mistaken. You did not win her love and she did not win yours. It was those old priests of the Dawn who arranged everything and by their magic threw a spell upon both of you because they wished to bring all this about for purposes of their own. Believe me, that as they have joined you together, so they can separate you if they choose, and by their incantations, make you hate each other. Only I don’t think they will as that would not suit them, and you see

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you are both of you members of the Order of the Dawn, and therefore will be supported by them in all things that you may desire.”

“I am glad to hear that,” interrupted Khian, when at length Ru paused to take breath.

“Yes, yes. Lord, it is a very good thing to be one of the Order, or even its servant as I am, because then everywhere you have a friend. Therefore never be afraid, however desperate your case may be, even if the hangman is putting his rope about your neck; for certainly Roy, or another far away, will utter one of the spells, or speak a word of power, and someone will appear to help you. That is why I am quite sure that in the end you will marry my Queen if both of you continue to want each other, and that all of us will escape from the jaws of that roaring lion, your father the King Apepi, although he does think that he has our heads in his mouth.”

“How will you all escape, Ru?”

“Why, Lord, by finding friends who are stronger than Apepi. There is the King of Babylon, for instance, our Lady’s grandfather who can put two spearmen in the field for every one of Apepi’s, to say nothing of a multitude of chariots drawn by horses, which Apepi has not got. The Order has plenty of brothers at the Court of the King of Babylon; some of them were here on the night of the Crowning, and I know that messages have been going to them almost every day. Never mind how they went – that’s a secret. I should not wonder if we went, too, before long, and then perhaps I may see some more fighting before I grow too old and fat to use my axe. As you are

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affianced to our Queen, I do not mind talking of these things to you.”

“No, of course you don’t,” answered Khian.

“Talking of messages reminds me of messengers,” went on Ru, “or rather of one messenger. I mean that fellow who came from Apepi this morning and slipped away afterwards, which he would never have done had I been guarding him instead of those silly priests.”

“What of him?” asked Khian.

“Oh! only that he was a queer sort of fellow, and more, I think, than he seemed to be. Did you see his eye, Lord? It was like that of a hawk, very proud, too, such an eye as a great noble might have, and when he heard the Queen’s answer, it grew full of rage and all his body shook beneath those shawls. More – there were other strange things. Thus, when he came to the hall he limped as though he were very lame, but some people who were working in the fields told me that they saw him running down to the Nile like a hunted jackal.

“Now how can a lame man run like a jackal? Also I hear that when he came to the boat which was waiting for him, those who were in the boat or watching on the shore, prostrated themselves as though he were some Great One, but he leapt aboard and cursed them, calling them slaves – as a Great One does. That is why I think he was more than he seemed to be, just like yourself, Lord, who were announced as the Scribe Rasa and yet are really the Prince Khian. But here we are at the palm grove where more than a month ago I stole your baggage while you were asleep, as the Queen, who was only a princess then, put it into my head to do, for from childhood she has

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loved such jests. And look, there is your ship, the same that brought you hither, and there are the priests with your packages.”

“Yes, Ru, there they all are who I wish were somewhere else. And now here is a present for you, Ru, a chain of fine gold that I have worn myself. Keep it in memory of me and hang it about your neck when you attend upon the Queen, that it may make her think of one who is absent.”

“I thank you, Lord, though it seems that you seek to kill two birds with this stone of a gift, which I may show but may not sell. Well, lovers will think of themselves first, and I hope that one day if we should stand together in war – Why, look! Here comes the Lady Kemmah, walking faster than I have seen her do for years. I think she must have some words for you.”

As he spoke Kemmah arrived.

“So I have caught you, Prince,” she said, puffing. “A pretty task for an old woman to toil across that sand in the heat like a cow after a lost calf, just to please a maiden’s fancy.”

“What is it, Kemmah?” asked Khian anxiously.

“Oh! little enough. To give you this which a certain one might as well have done herself, had she thought of it, and to pray you to wear it always for her sake, remembering that thereby she acknowledges you as her king as well as her lover, which of course she has no right to do, any more than she has a right to send you what she does. I told her so but she flew into a rage and said that if I would not take it, she would bring it herself as she could trust it to no one else. A pretty sight indeed that a Queen should be seen tearing across the desert

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after a departing scribe, for so the common people still believe you to be. Therefore come I must or bear her wrath.”

“I understand, Lady Kemmah, but what do you bring? You have given me nothing save words.”

“Have I not? Well, here it is,” and she produced from her robe some small object wrapped in papyrus on which was written, “The gift of a Queen to her King and Lover.”

Khian undid the papyrus. There within lay the royal signet of Nefra, the same which he had seen set upon her hand on the night of Coronation.

“This is the Queen’s ring,” said Khian, astonished.

“Aye, Prince, and the King her father’s ring before her, that which was taken from his finger by the embalmers after the battle, and his father’s before him, and so on back and back for ages. Look, on it is cut the name of Khafra whose tomb I think you saw the other night, though if he ever wore it I cannot tell. At least it has descended through countless generations from Pharaoh to Pharaoh, and now it seems must pass as a love gift to one who is not Pharaoh but yet is charged to wear it as though he were.”

“As perchance he may be yet, by right of another, Lady Kemmah, though the matter does not trouble him overmuch,” answered Khian, smiling.

Then he took the ancient hallowed thing and, having touched it with his lips, set it on a finger of his right hand that it fitted well, removing thence, to make place for it, another ring on which was engraved a crowned and lion-headed sphinx, the symbol of his house.

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