Pan's Flute

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  When he had made a tour of the gardens and courtyards, he headed toward the building where the princess lived. His hesitation had disappeared; at least, he believed so. He went up the steps of the terrace without stopping. He passed through the prostrate slaves and, going through the colonnade, he opened the door and went in. The first room was deserted. Thutmose headed toward the chamber where his sister slept.

  When he went into it, he perceived a young woman clad in red who watched him come in.

  Among the innumerable captives brought on the eve of battles or after the capture of cities, the king could not remember ever having seen eyes of such mysterious beauty, variable at every movement of the eyelids, combined with a more enveloping and profound life. The mouth too was surprising, an admirable flower of red flesh in which, dazzling and soft, the white gleam of the teeth appeared, and whose vague, curious, sensual half-smile astonished the conqueror of the Ninevites.

  Motionless at first, she took a step; that simple movement revealed the ardent harmony of her body. Then, bowing, she waited in silence for Thutmose to speak.

  “Who are you?” said the king. “You resemble the daughters of the Gulf who read destiny...”

  “I am Gaila,” she replied, “daughter of Rub, chief of the Bene-Asher, who reigned over great pastures. And I have received the gift of seeing the future. Before your messengers had arrived in Thebes, I had announced your victories in the Hennar and the Euphrates. I also know, king of kings, what projects are brooding in your heart, and the dangers that they will make you run.”

  He considered her with anxiety, suspicion and admiration.

  “What are these dangers?” he said, abruptly.

  She met the king’s eyes, and did not turn her own away.

  “Those that threaten rebel sons.”

  The king’s suspicions increased; his face was covered with anger. “Is it to Queen Hatsheput that you announced my victories?” he cried, in a menacing voice.

  But she responded without disturbance: “The queen does not know me.”

  “It’s necessary to swear it!” he said harshly. “Those of your race swear on the heads of their fathers.”

  “By my father, dead in the furnace, and by my vengeance, to which I have consecrated my life, I swear, King of Thebes, that I have never spoken to Queen Hatsheput.”

  He calmed down. His doubts vanished. He knew that Hatsheput was too proud to deign to act directly against a rival, and he had no suspicion of the obscure link that united Aoura and Setne.

  “Why have you come?” he said. “And where is my sister Aoura?”

  “I’ve come for love of her. My life belongs to her. The dangers you run, she is running with you; and in saving you, it is her that I am saving.”

  He did not detest those words; he was pleased to believe that this charming creature had a free and voluntary soul. As the conversation went on, he discovered a beauty more numerous in her, a life more extraordinary, a rare and doubtless unique quality.

  Already, the caprice that he had experienced for his sister was partly displaced toward the witch; he softened to the new desire. He did not struggle against that desire. The shade of Ahmose, which he venerated and feared in the same measure as the great gods, twice evoked, troubled him obscurely.

  In a low voice he said: “You have not said what perils I am running.”

  “The alliance of all your enemies and the arrival of barbarian peoples similar to the Shous, who live far beyond Nineveh, Ecbatana and Syria...armies ten times more numerous than those you have fought.”

  The king’s visage palpitated with warrior ardor. “I do not fear all the peoples of the world.”

  “No, but your lieutenants surrounded, a wound that renders you incapable of command, and, in sum, the will of the gods?”

  She was speaking quietly, in a grave, soft and mysterious tone. The king sensed the unknown forces passing over him that caused conquerors to bow down. “And if I yield to your advice?” he asked.

  “The gods will disunite your enemies. Each will want to fight on his own account; you will crush them one after another.”

  They had drawn closer together. Thutmose’s hand had encountered the slave’s arm. At that contact, he shivered all the way to the ankles.

  “Tell me what it is necessary to do,” he murmured.

  “It is necessary to search for the man who ought to know Aoura. Consult the will of your sister; name the best of your warriors to her, in order that she should choose. For your other actions, events will guide you. It is not good that a man should know in advance all that he must do. Fortune too soon predicted becomes insipid, and in any case, a king such as Thutmose, when the will of the gods is not too strong, can even vanquish fate itself.”

  Those last words pleased the king violently. His hand pressed more tenderly on the round arm of the slave.

  “Very well!” he said. “Aoura will designate her husband, and you will pay the ransom!”

  He had seized her; their breasts touched; the king’s desire was entirely detached from Aoura. Understanding that it was necessary to wait, however, in order to give the full price to the ransom, and also—she proudly insisted—in order that Thutmose should retain a finer memory, she said in a low voice: “Go now, king of kings. Give me two days to submit. Thus you will please the gods…”

  She interrupted herself, with a faint smile, and added, in an even lower voice: “And you will also please your servant more...”

  He hesitated, palpitating with lust, but Gaila’s profound eyes, with an infinite softness, dissolved his will. He also sensed, confusedly, that he would have a strange pleasure himself in obeying and waiting. He yielded.

  “Have Aoura summoned,” he said.

  VI

  It was the day of Osiris. Setne was inspecting troops in the camp of Thebes, but he was scarcely putting any ardor into it. He had not seen Gaila again for three days. He had searched for her in vain throughout the city, and returned in vain ten times to the house of the old women where she had lived while he was at war in Asia.

  A papyrus, brought by a man of the people the days before, had predicted a great happiness for him. At first he had been certain that the message came from Gaila, and then he had began to doubt. And he lived uncertain and miserable in the dread of having lost his slave, despairing of the future, no longer believing in Aoura’s amour. Even the favor of Thutmose seemed precarious to him. The king remained enclosed in his palace, neglecting his war chiefs. Setne believed that he divined the cause of that; every time he thought about it, he felt full of a disgust for life.

  The sun reached the highest point of the sky. The city and the camp were asleep; only Setne was walking among the barracks, tracked by anxiety. He came to his old phalanx. It was camped almost in the same spot where, in the spring of the preceding year, he had encountered young Prince Amenhotep. His heart beat faster with astonishment and emotion.

  Immense periods seemed to have gone by, so prodigious had life been. Everything that the slave had predicted in Ankhi’s gardens and the little house in Thebes had been realized. The favor of the formidable king had descended upon the obscure chief, the vast army of Thebes recognized, after that of Thutmose, the authority of Setne, son of Raneferka.

  Like a brilliant painting on the wall of a temple, the Tanite saw once again the desert of Nomi, the land of the dragons, the night of the tigers, the strange People of the Waters and the extraordinary queen who had trembled against his breast. Was it possible? Had those things really happened to the man who, such a short time before, had been exercising two hundred men in the camp of Thebes?

  He had a great quiver of pride and strength, and he braved destiny. He could die; he had undertaken a career as vast as if he had lived for a hundred years. And while he contemplated Thebes, motionless in the dazzling light, the sacred Nile, the land of Egypt flourishing in the concluding flood, and the sleeping phalanx with which his glory had commenced, the faces of Aoura and the nomad rose up, so clearly that he
made a gesture of seizing them.

  His soul weakened. It wanted ardently still to savor the joy of living, it was roaring with lust and amour. The past joy rendered the dread of the future more frightful. He uttered a hoarse sigh, and turned his gaze toward the pale palace that rose up between two temples, in a forest of columns, over a lake of trees and flowers. His entire being convulsed with desire and fear.

  An agile troop passed over the plain. Setne recognized the nomad auxiliaries. He had recruited them himself, at the hazard of skirmishes, and had obtained that Intar would be their chief. The sight of them made him shiver. Marching toward then, he made them stop with a sign. Intar advanced toward the Tanite, laughing; his violent eyes, his white pointed teeth and his face the color of old leather—the entire being that hatred or sadness rendered sinister—was now illuminated by joy.

  “Are you happy, Intar?” the Egyptian asked.

  “You have made me happy,” the nomad relied, ardently.

  His gaze wandered over the troop, then, with an ecstatic tenderness, over a veiled palanquin carried by six eunuchs. A curtain lifted. Setne saw a milky face, coppery hair, and the bright eyes of the Persian woman who had been captured in the gorge of the Hennar with the Ninevite caravan.

  “For the gift that you have made me of that woman,” Intar murmured, “I will be your slave eternally.”

  When the nomads departed again, Setne felt his heart even heavier. The sun was declining; the shadows of the tents and barracks began to extend over the plain. A slight breeze rippled the Nile. Already, the army was waking up.

  Then, from the northern pylon of Thebes, three heralds of Thutmose appeared, clad in red, preceded by a fanfare. They advanced slowly. Their arrival announced a grave event; the military chiefs got up as they approached, attentively. For a long time they remained silent, and then the trumpets fell silent. The oldest cried, in a voice that could be heard two thousand cubits away: “King Thutmose, king of kings, summons his servant Setne!”

  Setne advanced, full of anxiety, uncertain whether he was to receive a new favor of whether Thutmose, having discovered Aoura’s secret, wanted to exile a rival. He followed the heralds without saying anything, impatient with their slowness, but it was necessary not to think of making them walk any faster.

  They reached the palace; the king was in the enameled hall that had served, since Ahmose for judging powerful chiefs and monarchs, or for decreeing great recompenses.

  Thutmose was seated on a cedar chair encrusted with ivory and silver. Queen Hatsheput was sitting beside him. They were alone; only a few servants could be seen prostrate at their feet, faces to the ground.

  “Approach, my servant,” said the king. “Today is the day of Osiris. You promised me to ask me a great favor. What shall I give to the conqueror of the Euphrates?”

  In spite of his anxiety, those words transported Setne, for he adored his master. Tremulously, he said: “You have heaped me with favors, King of Thebes. I have searched in vain for another that I might desire. No one is as able as you to recompense his servants.”

  Thutmose smiled. He believed in the Tanite’s sincerity.

  “What can we do for Setne?” he asked, turning to the queen.

  Hatshetput fixed her bovine eyes on the chief and said, in her heavy voice: “What would you prefer, chief of great courage: all the taxes of the nome of Tanis, for your entire life, or to mingle your race with that of your kings?”

  He went very pale, and trembled on his legs. His thought escaped him, vertiginously. For a minute, he was unable to respond.

  “You’re hesitating?” said Hatsheput.

  “Oh no!” he cried, impetuously. “I’m not hesitating. What are all the tributes of all the people of the earth compared with a union with the race of Ahmose, Thutmose and Hatsheput? But your words fill me with astonishment and dread!”

  Then Thutmose, leaning his ivory staff on the young man’s shoulder, said: “Go and seek the consent of Aoura. Afterwards, we shall fix the day of your union...”

  A slave conducted Setne. He reached the raised terrace that preceded the princess’s apartments. There he felt a kind of weakness. Prodigious as his good fortune appeared to him, everything seemed pale compared with this supreme victory. Undoubtedly, he had audaciously coveted the daughter of kings, he had trusted in Gaila’s prediction and his fortune to be accomplished in accordance with his wish, but in the depths of that prodigious adventure, everything had seemed shadows, dreams, moving and delicious visions, not realities, whereas now he was marching toward Aoura as his phalanges had to encounter the Ninevites.

  He took a few paces more. A door opened of its own accord; he saw the young princess, in the midst of her maidservants. She was clad in the same garment of gold and hyacinth as on the day of Thutmose’s arrival. Her breasts stood forth as proudly as if they were naked; her small white feet reposed on a carpet of acacia flowers; her legs were scintillatingly clad, tapering, round, delicate and quivering on the saffron wool of her chair.

  She got up as Setne approached.

  “The king has sent me, holy princess…to ask you whether you will consent to unite yourself with your servant.”

  She was slightly troubled. A charming languor appeared in her beautiful eyes; she dispersed her slaves with a gesture.

  “It is the will of the gods…,” she said, in a low voice.

  They were very close to one another, Setne half-prostrate before her. He straightened up when she had spoken.

  Their bodies touched; an equal intoxication hastened their respiration.

  Setne felt on his mouth the sacred and magnificent mouth of the daughter of kings.

  VII

  The king of Egypt remained Gaila’s lover for six months. She was Thutmose’s only veritable amour, the only one of whom he retained a delicious memory through his life of a great conqueror. Neither the jealousy of Hatsheput, who was discontented with the perseverance of that liaison, nor the revolts in Syria, could separate him at first from the daughter of the Gulf. She was faithful to him. She paid loyally for the marriage of Aoura and the vengeance against the despoilers of the Bene-Asher.

  The heart of Setne bled because of the absence of the woman who had been his slave. He could not destroy his love for her; he hid in Thutmose’s gardens in order to see her pass by; Aoura’s caresses could not charm his pain.

  In the sixth month, however, the imminent war occupied Thutmose. The nomad took advantage of it. She made him know the future. He knew that the gods ordered their separation. As that prediction coincided with others that the famous scribes had made to him, he believed in it. Nevertheless, he resisted. A hot ember of passion persisted in his heart. Moreover, he experienced for Gaila an attachment more durable than amour. She inspired a superior confidence in him, and her prophesies seemed to him the most valid of all.

  One day, he said to her: “I want to obey the gods, Gaila, but they have not ordered me to forget you, nor to neglect your science…and how will I be able to consult you if you depart?”

  “I can live with your sister Aoura, my Lord. She desires that; I would be happy with her.”

  “It will be as you request. You shall have riches at your desire. I have also prepared the vengeance against your enemies. The best of my chiefs will retake the pastures of your ancestors from the men of Daour.”

  He looked at her tenderly. Like a country one is abandoning after long days of joy, he saw her in all her beauty, and was profoundly saddened. But he never went back on his word. She had already raised an insurmountable mountain between them.

  He said then: “Daughter of the Gulf, Thutmose does not forget! I have known very sweet pleasures through you, which I will regret for a long time. In any case, my shadow will extend over you to protect you, and I want you to retain, for as long as you live, a little of my power. You will possess the land of Sikeren, two thousand oxen, a thousand donkeys, five thousand sheep, five hundred slaves and authority over the ten towns that depend on that land.”

&nb
sp; The next day, Setne received the order to mobilize ten thousand men. First he was to retake the patrimony of the Bene-Asher, and then dissipate the coalitions of nomad tribes that had formed to the east of the Red Gulf, while Thutmose would march against the Syrians.

  In four days, the Tanite had finished his preparations. Aoura had obtained permission to accompany her husband; Gaila brought her infant brother, in order to have him recognized by the tribe of his fathers.

  The expedition’s march was rapid. Setne had agile troops under his orders, hardened to marching, among whom were Intar’s nomads and the troops that had followed him to the land of the Men of the Waters. Gaila’s presence rejoiced his heart, but, as if still enveloped by the amour of Thutmose, she inspired a kind of dread in him. She seemed renewed. The caresses of the king of Thebes had effaced the memory of all the violences suffered by the slave, and even her union with Setne, so that he spoke to her as if she were, like Aoura, the daughter of a royal race.

  One evening, when they were no more than eight days from the pastures of Daour, the fires of the camp were reddening the plain and the hill, and the desert extended its profound frissons, its asphodels, its harsh grass, its rare islets of date palms and cacti and its prodigious lakes of stars, Aoura said to her husband: “Why are you hiding yourself from me?”

  He was mute with shock. She smiled, gentle and mocking.

  “I penetrated your heart a long time ago. I know who it is for whom you agitate by night on your couch, and on whom your gaze is fixed during the marches, with so much trouble and chagrin. I don’t experience any astonishment in consequence. Her beauty has already troubled my soul; even my brother Thutmose, who had laughed at amour, was unable to escape her. There is no woman who is comparable to her.”

  “Oh yes!” cried Setne, vehemently. “The one who reposes by night against my bosom cannot be surpassed by any other: I would die if she were to be taken away from me!”