in the Mohar she had found an ally she might depend on to the uttermost.
Paaker had carefully examined the scene of his exploit before the king’s arrival. Under the windows of the king’s rooms, at least forty feet from the ground, was a narrow parapet resting on the ends of the beams which supported the rafters on which lay the floor of the upper story in which the king slept. These rafters had been smeared with pitch, and straw had been laid between them, and the pioneer would have known how to find the opening where he was to put in the brand even if he had been blind of both eyes.
When Katuti first sounded her whistle he slunk to his post; he was challenged by no watchman, for the few guards who had been placed in the immediate vicinity of the pavilion, had all gone to sleep under the influence of the Regent’s wine. Paaker climbed up to about the height of two men from the ground by the help of the ornamental carving on the outside wall of the palace; there a rope ladder was attached, he clambered up this, and soon stood on the parapet, above which were the windows of the king’s rooms, and below which the fire was to be laid.
Rameses’ room was brightly illuminated. Paaker could see into it without being seen, and could bear every word that was spoken within. The king was sitting in an arm-chair, and looked thoughtfully at the ground; before him stood the Regent, and Mena stood by his couch, holding in his hand the king’s sleeping-robe.
Presently Rameses raised his head, and said, as he offered his hand with frank affection to Ani:
“Let me bring this glorious day to a worthy end, cousin. I have found you my true and faithful friend, and I had been in danger of believing those over-anxious counsellors who spoke evil of you. I am never prone to distrust, but a number of things occurred together that clouded my judgment, and I did you injustice. I am sorry, sincerely sorry; nor am I ashamed to apologize to you for having for an instant doubted your good intentions. You are my good friend—and I will prove to you that I am yours. There is my hand-take it; and all Egypt shall know that Rameses trusts no man more implicitly than his Regent Ani. I will ask you to undertake to be my guard of honor to-night—we will share this room. I sleep here; when I lie down on my couch take your place on the divan yonder.” Ani had taken Rameses’ offered hand, but now he turned pale as he looked down. Paaker could see straight into his face, and it was not without difficulty that he suppressed a scornful laugh.
Rameses did not observe the Regent’s dismay, for he had signed to Mena to come closer to him.
“Before I sleep,” said the king, “I will bring matters to an end with you too. You have put your wife’s constancy to a severe test, and she has trusted you with a childlike simplicity that is often wiser than the arguments of sages, because she loved you honestly, and is herself incapable of guile. I promised you that I would grant you a wish if your faith in her was justified. Now tell me what is your will?”
Mena fell on his knees, and covered the king’s robe with kisses.
“Pardon!” he exclaimed. “Nothing but pardon. My crime was a heavy one, I know; but I was driven to it by scorn and fury—it was as if I saw the dishonoring hand of Paaker stretched out to seize my innocent wife, who, as I now know, loathes him as a toad—”
“What was that?” exclaimed the king. “I thought I heard a groan outside.”
He went up to the window and looked out, but he did not see the pioneer, who watched every motion of the king, and who, as soon as he perceived that his involuntary sigh of anguish had been heard, stretched himself close under the balustrade. Mena had not risen from his knees when the king once more turned to him.
“Pardon me,” he said again. “Let me be near thee again as before, and drive thy chariot. I live only through thee, I am of no worth but through thee, and by thy favor, my king, my lord, my father!”
Rameses signed to his favorite to rise. “Your request was granted,” said he, “before you made it. I am still in your debt on your fair wife’s account. Thank Nefert—not me, and let us give thanks to the Immortals this day with especial fervor. What has it not brought forth for us! It has restored to me you two friends, whom I regarded as lost to me, and has given me in Pentaur another son.”
A low whistle sounded through the night air; it was Katuti’s last signal.
Paaker blew up the tinder, laid it in the bole under the parapet, and then, unmindful of his own danger, raised himself to listen for any further words.
“I entreat thee,” said the Regent, approaching Rameses, “to excuse me. I fully appreciate thy favors, but the labors of the last few days have been too much for me; I can hardly stand on my feet, and the guard of honor—”
“Mena will watch,” said the king. “Sleep in all security, cousin. I will have it known to all men that I have put away from me all distrust of you. Give the my night-robe, Mena. Nay-one thing more I must tell you. Youth smiles on the young, Ani. Bent-Anat has chosen a worthy husband, my preserver, the poet Pentaur. He was said to be a man of humble origin, the son of a gardener of the House of Seti; and now what do I learn through Ameni? He is the true son of the dead Mohar, and the foul traitor Paaker is the gardener’s son. A witch in the Necropolis changed the children. That is the best news of all that has reached me on this propitious day, for the Mohar’s widow, the noble Setchem, has been brought here, and I should have been obliged to choose between two sentences on her as the mother of the villain who has escaped us. Either I must have sent her to the quarries, or have had her beheaded before all the people—In the name of the Gods, what is that?”
They heard a loud cry in a man’s voice, and at the same instant a noise as if some heavy mass had fallen to the ground from a great height. Rameses and Mena hastened to the window, but started back, for they were met by a cloud of smoke.
“Call the watch!” cried the king.
“Go, you,” exclaimed Mena to Ani. “I will not leave the king again in danger.”
Ani fled away like an escaped prisoner, but he could not get far, for, before he could descend the stairs to the lower story, they fell in before his very eyes; Katuti, after she had set fire to the interior of the palace, had made them fall by one blow of a hammer. Ani saw her robe as she herself fled, clenched his fist with rage as he shouted her name, and then, not knowing what he did, rushed headlong through the corridor into which the different royal apartments opened.
The fearful crash of the falling stairs brought the King and Mena also out of the sleeping-room.
“There lie the stairs! that is serious!” said the king cooly; then he went back into his room, and looked out of a window to estimate the danger. Bright flames were already bursting from the northern end of the palace, and gave the grey dawn the brightness of day; the southern wing or the pavilion was not yet on fire. Mena observed the parapet from which Paaker had fallen to the ground, tested its strength, and found it firm enough to bear several persons. He looked round, particularly at the wing not yet gained by the flames, and exclaimed in a loud voice:
“The fire is intentional! it is done on purpose. See there! a man is squatting down and pushing a brand into the woodwork.”
He leaped back into the room, which was now filling with smoke, snatched the king’s bow and quiver, which he himself had hung up at the bed-head, took careful aim, and with one cry the incendiary fell dead.
A few hours later the dwarf Nemu was found with the charioteer’s arrow through his heart. After setting fire to Bent-Anat’s rooms, he had determined to lay a brand to the wing of the palace where, with the other princes, Uarda’s friend Rameri was sleeping.
Mena
