The Pyramid Chapter 9

PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS

Had the wide world been searched for the purpose a more striking contrast could not have been found—Netokris—refreshed, but still languorous after her bath and breakfast—and the creature who squatted on the floor there in front of her.

He was jet black, short and broad, had a huge and hideous head, made to appear still larger by the crinkly mane of black outstanding wool. The blackness of his skin was accentuated by the white sheet he had drawn about him.

No one else was there. No one was visible in the garden below. The palace—a city of detached buildings in itself—was almost completely silent, save for the all but inaudible splash of fountains, the occasional trill of imported birds, the barking of tame baboons, the snarling complaint of caged animals. The myriad sounds of Memphis, even, busy about its daily tasks, scarcely reached them, save as an intermittent croon when nearer sounds were lulled.

Still early morning, but the air was warm—warm and fragrant.

The black squinted up at his mistress with the bright, unabashed eyes of an animal.

“You’ve killed,” he grunted. “I smell blood.”

Netokris, from her divan, looked down at him unwinkingly, unsmilingly.

“You tell me what is already old, Kashta.”

“You killed young Ambos, he from the Province of the Fox,” Kashta went on unperturbed, as though speaking to himself.

“Well, what of it?” the queen went on. “You’ve told me that I must kill them all.”

“All those who took part in the murder of Metemsa: but Ambos was not of these.”

“He was ready enough to take Metemsa’s place,” sneered Netokris. “You should have seen the light in his eyes as he put his hand on my litter. By Typhon! Can’t you bring that sort of a look, Kashta, into the eyes of Menni, the governor?”

An added glitter came into the eyes of the black.

“You’d better let Menni alone,” he advised.

“What do you mean?”

Kashta returned the stare of Queen Netokris. It was easy to see that his position was an extraordinary one. Not another man in Egypt would have dared to look at her—not only a queen, but a goddess, Isis on earth—like that!

“You came into my hands a nameless orphan,” he said steadily. “False prophets and counterfeit magicians occasionally rise to the top here in Egypt, but in Ethiopia—the ancient Meroe—not there. Bless the day I took you in and began your education!

“Do you remember the day I sent you out to the banks of the Nile with the spell which would bring the Pharaoh, Metemsa, to your feet? Who else could have brought the nameless orphan up to the level of gods and goddesses?

“Metemsa killed by the jealous princes, you reign. We plan for them an early death to make your place solid. Your beauty, my wisdom—and you rule the world; yet you prate about a look in this fellow’s eyes as though you were a fig-seller!”

Netokris looked long and steadily at Kashta. And Kashta looked back. It was he who again broke the silence.

“Oh, no you won’t, my daughter,” he said. “You won’t kill Kashta.”

Ordinarily the queen would have been asleep by this time. She preferred to sleep through the hot and drowsy day, reserving the nights for her pleasures, her meditations, and her magic. An extraordinary woman!

She admitted freely enough all that Kashta had said concerning the dominant part that he had thus far taken in her career; but, ever since her divine husband Metemsa was murdered, she had felt that in some way she had emerged from her old bondage.

Was she not, after all, Isis on earth, soul of the gods? There was other magic than that which Kashta had taught her—the younger, more highly evolved magic of the country she had come to rule. Why shouldn’t she have not only power, but love as well? What would it profit her to rule the world if she couldn’t rule the heart of the one man in it she desired?

For a long time after the black priest of Ethiopia had left her she paced the floor of her bedroom.

Rather an open porch than a room—marble floor covered with thick rugs, a wide, striped awning on the open side, so rigged as to catch every breeze that stirred across the gardens.

With Menni at her side on the double throne, all their rivals safe in the tombs of their ancestors—that would be empire indeed! They would live as gods.

Netokris threw herself on her couch, tried to sleep; but the moment her eyes were closed she was once more living through the events of the night. At first, as she thought of how she had offered herself to this youth in the room under the pyramid, she was filled with anger and shame.

If she could only kill him, as she had brought down sudden death on young Ambos! But she knew that happiness lay not in this direction. That would be the last resource—a poor resource at the best, revenge instead of love.

She could at least kill Berenice—this yellow-haired slave to whom Menni thought he was bound. And then—

The thought, while it brought her a measure of consolation, merely increased the fever that was burning in her heart and brain.

Suddenly she sat upright, reflected a moment or two, then went over to an inlaid chest in one corner of the apartment and drew from it a blue scarf. This she threw about her head and shoulders. No disguise, but sufficient to warn all who encountered her that she was not to be seen.

She passed rapidly through an adjoining room where a score of women were lounging about—silent, some of them asleep in the tepid, perfumed air. A start or two, but beyond that none paid attention. It was dangerous to show attention when her majesty had put on the insignia of invisibility.

It was as though her invisibility was no mere fiction as she passed through the room beyond where members of the guard were on watch—foreigners, all of them. Potentates have always preferred foreigners for a body-guard, and Netokris—or Kashta, at any rate—was no exception.

She descended a flight of stone stairs and crossed the deserted garden over which her bedroom looked and passed into a wing of the largest building inside the palace walls—a huge structure surrounded by a double row of lotus pillars painted red and green and gold, the Temple of Ptah.

Overhead was the fleckless blue sky. Round about was the dark-green shrubbery. The painted peristyle made a magical contrast.

Guards everywhere—black and brown for the most part, but here and there a group of fair-haired slaves from Macedonia. It was from Macedonia that her governor had come, most likely, for he also was fair-haired and gray-eyed, albeit he had been reared in a princely house of the lower kingdom.

Netokris had passed a dozen groups of guards, had descended two flights of stairs and entered a low stone corridor lined with statues of the gods. Before one of these statues—apparently a part of the wall itself—she paused and gave it a quick, caressing movement of her hand. The statue swung out from the wall, revealing a narrow door. As Netokris entered the statue swung back into place again, leaving no trace of where she had passed.

She found herself in a low chamber almost completely dark. What light there was came up from a small square opening in the floor, a few yards away.

Hastily, as though impatient to see what she had come to see, she ran forward toward this opening, knelt there and peered down.