The Sleeper in the Sands

by Tom Holland

  That night, gathering together his sons Inen and Ay, he sought to comfort them as well as he could and then, while they slept, he sat in watch by their side. Only towards dawn, as the darkness of that death-haunted night began to fade, did Joseph leave his two sons and cross to a balcony, where he stood and gazed out towards the eastern horizon. He could see, peaceful in their fields, the distant cattle, and birds soaring high from their nests into song, while on the Nile the first rays of the sun were gleaming golden, heralding the beauty of the bright day yet to come. Joseph’s heart was filled with a sudden sense of wonder, thinking upon the glories which the All-High had created; and then at once he remembered how his beloved wife was dead, and would never again see the risen sun. At the same moment he heard a footstep behind him, and turning round he saw the silhouette of Pharaoh.

  ‘I had feared that you too might have died,’ he said at last.

  ‘Died?’ King Thoth-mes’ voice sounded distant, yet harsh. He laughed suddenly, and again the noise seemed dissonant and strange. ‘But I have understood now,’ he whispered, ‘that I shall never truly die.’

  Joseph shook his head. ‘All men must die.’ He turned away to gaze back at the sun. ‘All women as well.’

  ‘Yes.’ King Thoth-mes stepped forward from the shadows into the light. ‘I have heard the news.’ He stood by Joseph’s side and Joseph, turning again to gaze upon his face, saw how strangely the sickness had made it its own, for his eyes were like almonds now and his skull vast and domed. In his stare as well he appeared strangely altered, for there seemed barely a trace of mortality within it. Yet even as Joseph thought this, a flicker of something seemed to pass across King Thoth-mes’ expression, and Joseph imagined for a moment that it might almost have been guilt.

  ‘I have ordered,’ said King Thoth-mes, ‘a tomb to be made ready for Thua in the valley’

  ‘The valley?’ Joseph stared at him in astonishment. ‘But only Kings, O Pharaoh, are laid to rest in there.’

  ‘Are you not my double? And was not Thua your wife?’

  Still Joseph gazed at him in astonishment; then he bowed his head, and kissed King Thoth-mes’ hand. But the King brushed him away, and turned instead to gaze towards the western hills. ‘Your daughter,’ he said at last, ‘I was shown her by the maid. She is very lovely’

  ‘As her mother was.’

  ‘Indeed.’ King Thoth-mes forced a pallid smile. He half-turned, then tensed and looked again towards the hills. ‘Do you think,’ he murmured at length, ‘that it is Tyi who is destined to wash the blood from the tombs?’

  ‘I have told you before, O noble King, how there is only One Who can see what is to come.’

  ‘The High Priest of Amen does not agree with you, O Yuya.’

  ‘Yet what proofs has he given?’

  ‘Of the powers of Amen? Many strange proofs.’

  ‘I would be interested to learn of them.’

  ‘Would you, O Yuya? Are you certain of that?’ Still King Thoth-mes smiled, and yet the coldness seemed suddenly returned to his stare. ‘I have glimpsed a very great darkness in the temple.’

  Joseph gazed at him intrigued, not bothering now to conceal how urgent was his interest, for King Thoth-mes had never before chosen to speak on the matter. ‘I would know,’ he said slowly, ‘what this darkness might be.’

  ‘I cannot tell you.’ King Thoth-mes paused. ‘No -- I cannot ever tell you that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have worshipped it, O Yuya. I have bowed down before it. I have been its supplicant and devotee.’

  Joseph frowned. ‘I do not understand. Why would a man such as you do such a thing?’

  ‘Because it was the darkness which preserved me my mortal form, just as the High Priest of Amen had always told me that it would. Without it, I would have become the thing you see today’ - he gestured to his face -- ‘long, long before.’

  ‘But. . .’ -- Joseph swallowed -- ‘how, O mighty King? By what means did this darkness achieve such a thing?’

  ‘You do not wish to know.’ King Thoth-mes’ smile twisted strangely as he shook his head. But then all at once his smile faded, and when he spoke again his voice was as harsh and distant as it had ever been. ‘And yet in truth,’ he proclaimed, as though to the dawn, ‘I was a fool to fear the change. This form that I wear is no disfigurement. It is true I no longer wear the aspect of a mortal, but then such is the mark of my descent from a god. For I have been told by the High Priest of Amen, O Yuya, how Osiris too, when he came down from the stars and ruled over Egypt as its King in the First Time, looked just as I do now.’

  Joseph gazed at King Thoth-mes in silence, at his distended face, his swollen skull and his strangely slanted eyes.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I think . .’

  King Thoth-mes smiled bitterly. ‘You do not need to conceal your disgust, O Yuya, for I can see it in your face. Yet for the sake of the friendship which we have known in our time, be honest with me -- come -- tell me what you think.’

  ‘That Osiris was a demon, and that his blood was cursed indeed.’

  King Thoth-mes’ smile still lingered, frozen on his lips. ‘How can you say so,’ he exclaimed suddenly, ‘when it was by his teaching that Egypt was founded, and mighty monuments built, and the sciences of the universe first revealed? What else could he have been but a mighty god?’

  ‘He was a jinni, perhaps, who would not bow down before the only true God.’

  ‘The only true God?’ King Thoth-mes gazed at Joseph a moment, then suddenly laughed. ‘You are a wise man, O Yuya, with the power to glimpse and interpret the future, and it may be that your god is a great god after all. And yet I tell you, your powers are nothing, nor your understanding, compared with those of the High Priest of the temple of Amen.’

  ‘But the worship of Amen is that of darkness. Why, O King, you have told me so yourself!’

  ‘Not of darkness alone. There are other mysteries too -- O Yuya, such mysteries! -- for it is the heir to a wisdom which has counted the stars and measured the earth, yes, and banished the realms of death. For beyond the tomb, I tell you, Osiris waits.’

  Joseph laughed with a sudden, bitter contempt. ‘You may believe what you wish, O King, but still -- you will be dead.’

  King Thoth-mes narrowed his eyes. For a moment Joseph sought to meet his stare, but its gleam was too bright, its depths too profound, in a way that he had never observed in it before. He shuddered and sought to turn, but the King, releasing the grip upon his arm, seized him by the chin and forced his face back round. Feeling the pressure of King Thoth-mes’ fingers, Joseph grew suddenly aware of their strength - a strength so terrible that it seemed barely human at all.

  He struggled in vain to shake himself loose. ‘In the valley,’ he exclaimed, summoning all his scorn, ‘beyond the western hills, are the tombs not filled with the bodies of the dead, all of them your forefathers, all of them sharing in the blood of Osiris?’

  King Thoth-mes answered him with scorn of his own. ‘You may think what you wish.’

  Joseph gazed at him in astonishment and a sudden fearful doubt. ‘What are you saying?’ He shook his head. ‘I do not understand . . .’

  ‘No, you do not, and I was a fool to think you might. What can you, a foreigner, a stranger, ever hope to know? And yet if only, O Yuya, you were not so obdurate, so blind . . .’

  Joseph frowned. ‘If only, O Pharaoh, if only - then, what?’

  ‘It may be that Thua would still be alive.’

  Both men stood in silence a moment; then Joseph shook his head and sought to turn away, but King Thoth-mes, with the power which seemed to wait within his eyes, would not release him from the gleam of his stare. Joseph staggered; he could feel his sinews giving way; he did not wish to kneel, yet he could not help himself. Down he fell prostrate, and King Thoth-mes laughed at the spectacle.

  ‘Can you doubt now,’ he whispered, ‘the greatness of my powers? And yet to prove indeed that they are wh
at is claimed, and that the High Priests of Amen have told me the truth, I have been told to expect an infallible sign.’

  ‘A sign?’

  ‘A child,’ said King Thoth-mes, ‘born to my Queen.’

  ‘But where is the wonder in that?’

  ‘You will know,’ King Thoth-mes answered, ‘when the child is born.’

  ‘How?’

  King Thoth-mes stood in silence a long while. ‘I had long dreaded it,’ he whispered at last, ‘for the sign will be a terrible and loathsome one. Now, though . . .’ -- he shrugged -- ‘I am no longer afraid. For I will know, when the child is born -- a child, O Yuya, of hideous aspect - that my own entry to the Kingdom of Osiris is near!’

  Joseph gazed up at the face of King Thoth-mes, his friend, and he thought suddenly that he no longer knew it at all, for it seemed to belong wholly to an alien thing. Despite himself he began to crawl backwards, but then, even as he turned to shrink away, shuddering with sudden panic and fear, he saw a deep gleam of pain within King Thoth-mes’ stare and he knew that his friend was still a mortal after all. He sought to steady himself, to rise to his feet and take King Thoth-mes in his arms; but then, even as he prepared to do so, he started and froze.

  Inen, his son, was standing in the doorway, his face very pale and his black eyes very wide. Joseph breathed in deeply, then crossed to him and picked him up in his arms. ‘How long have you been here?’ he demanded in concern. ‘How much have you heard?’

  Inen’s eyes grew wider, but he did not reply.

  King Thoth-mes smiled. ‘What matter if he heard it all?’ He tousled Inen’s unruly black hair. ‘What harm can it be for a child to hear the truth?’

  ‘The truth?’ Joseph whispered as he set his son down. ‘The truth, O King? But Inen is only a child. How can I expect him to understand the truth, and not be damaged by all that he has heard, when there is the example of you, a grown man, before him?’

  All the life seemed to bleed from King Thoth-mes’ face. ‘Be careful what you say’ he whispered, ‘for all that you be my friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Joseph, truly angry now, ‘and it is because I am your friend that I must tell you, while you are still able to hear me and understand, what I think. Come to your senses! What need do you have for the sorcery of the priests, their mutterings of secrets and death-haunted mysteries, their promises of an eternity which they refuse to explain? Look about you, O King! See the Nile, lit blue by the rays of the sun, where we have sailed together so often on your barge, eating fish caught fresh from the sweet flowing waters, watching the swoop of brightly coloured birds, enjoying all the infinite beauties of your land. These delights, O great Pharaoh, I have known because of you. There can be no magic, no sorcery, mightier than such pleasures -- and that, O my friend . . . that is what is true.’

  King Thoth-mes stood frozen a moment; then he reached for Joseph’s hand, and he gripped it so tightly that Joseph could not be certain whether it was from an excess of anger or of love. ‘I am the heir to Osiris -- nor can I help it.’

  ‘All I beg you, O Pharaoh, is to beware of the priests, for I dread their intentions and the lure of their sorcery’

  King Thoth-mes smiled. ‘Yet they promise me immortality, and all the pleasures which you have listed, all of life’s sweet delights, will then be mine for the passage of eternity’ He kissed Joseph once, then twice upon the cheeks. ‘My only sorrow, O Yuya, is that neither you nor Thua will be there by my side.’

  Then he turned brusquely, as though afraid to say more, and hurried away; and Joseph, watching King Thoth-mes leave, felt a strange weight settling on his heart. He sighed and bent down to pick Inen up. To his consternation, however, his son shrank away from him. ‘What is it?’ Joseph whispered. ‘Inen, please come to me.’

  But Inen did not answer, and his eyes appeared wide with hostility and doubt.

  ‘Inen, please.’ Joseph stretched out his arms, but still his son shrank back. He began to shake his head.

  ‘Inen, what is it?’

  ‘Is it true,’ his son asked suddenly, ‘the things that Pharaoh said?’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘That the priests might have kept my mother from death?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And yet he forced you to your knees. I saw it, O my father. I saw you on your knees. So it must be that the priests spoke the truth after all.’

  Joseph stood frozen a moment, uncertain what to say. ‘Pharaoh did not mean to do it,’ he whispered. ‘For that brief moment, he was no longer himself.’ Then he reached out once again, and this time Inen did not shrink away but allowed himself to be folded in his father’s embrace. Joseph hugged him a long while, then kissed him on his brow and bore him back to where his brother still lay asleep. ‘Do not fear,’ Joseph whispered, kissing him once again, ‘for there is One who will guard you, as He has always guarded me.’ Then he rose, and turned and walked from the room, but as he reached the door he paused and turned again. He could see Inen still sitting against the wall perfectly motionless, his face deathly pale. Joseph smiled, trying to conjure a response from his son; but Inen would not answer and his eyes seemed very cold. Joseph sighed, and bowed his head. ‘Only the All-High,’ he thought to himself, ‘can order the ways of this world. Yet I pray that He help me to comfort my son.’ Then he left the room, vowing as he did so that he would return there that same day, when all his business of state had been completed, to console his two sons and to aid them in their grief.

  Yet in the end he was to be gravely delayed. That afternoon, as had happened to Thua the evening before, the Queen was taken suddenly into her confinement, and when the news was brought to Joseph it was accompanied by an order to attend at once on Pharaoh. Joseph found him by the doorway which led into the Harim, gazing out beyond the Palace towards the flow of the Nile. ‘I am doing as you advised,’ King Thoth-mes said without glancing round, ‘and imprinting the beauties of life upon my mind. See, the blueness of the sky and the greenness of the fields, and the grace of the birds soaring high before the sun! How can the world be evil when it contains such things of wonder?’

  Joseph opened his mouth to answer, but then suddenly, from the depths of the Harim, there rose a scream, long and dreadful, before at last it fell away Despite himself, remembering the same sound he had heard the night before, Joseph winced; and King Thoth-mes, as he turned round, saw him do so.

  ‘The labour is many months early,’ he whispered.

  Joseph bowed his head. ‘All may still be well.’

  For a long while King Thoth-mes did not reply. ‘I have been thinking much,’ he said at last, ‘of what you said to me this morning. Then, some hours back, I fell asleep, and I dreamed the dream once again which I described to you long before, the same which you had dreamed as you slept above the valley’

  From behind him, Joseph heard the sudden sound of feet running, and he half-turned to see who it was. But King Thoth-mes seized him by the arm and drew him very close. ‘That first time,’ he whispered, ‘when I told you my dream . . .’ - he swallowed -- ‘I did not tell you all.’

  Joseph started. ‘What, then, did you omit?’

  King Thoth-mes swallowed again. The footsteps were drawing nearer, and it struck Joseph suddenly that his companion was afraid. ‘Here,’ said the King, drawing a scroll of papyrus from under his cloak and smuggling it into Joseph’s hands, ‘read this well.’ Then he stepped backwards and Joseph, turning, saw that a stranger had entered the room, shaven-headed, and holding a staff on which was surmounted the talisman of Amen.

  The priest bowed low.

  ‘What news?’ King Thoth-mes asked.

  ‘The Queen,’ the priest answered, ‘your sister, O King . . .’

  He left the rest unspoken and, turning, began to lead the way into the depths of the Harim. When he saw that Joseph was accompanying King Thoth-mes, however, he halted and attempted to forbid him access; but King Thoth-mes ordered him to be silent and continue on his way. The priest bowed a
gain, with evident reluctance, but he did as he was commanded, and it was not long before the three of them had arrived by the place of the Queens confinement. Joseph hesitated before entering, reluctant to intrude; but then he heard, from ahead of him, King Thoth-mes cry out, and at once he followed him into the chamber.

  He too, gazing at the scene before him, could not restrain a gasp. ‘May the All-High have mercy upon her,’ he whispered, looking at the Queen, for she lay in a filthy pool of mingled blood and sweat, and a hideous gash had been torn across her belly. It seemed impossible to Joseph, gazing upon the wound, that the Queen could have survived it; but even as he thought this, she moaned very softly, and he saw a single tear well and then start to roll down her cheek. King Thoth-mes crossed to her and gently raised her in his arms, staining his white robes with his sister-Queen’s blood; and Joseph, watching them together, remembered what the King had said to him earlier that day, that he was the heir to Osiris and could never die. Joseph felt a touch of something cold very deep inside him, at the horrible thought that such words might be the truth. And if they were, he wondered suddenly, then what of the infallible sign which the High Priest had promised, the marvel which would prove the truth of all his claims?

  He looked again at the hideous wound to the Queen. ‘The child,’ he exclaimed urgently, ‘where is the child?’

  King Thoth-mes turned to glance at him, his face a mask of agony and foreboding. At the same moment, from the shadows, a man stepped forward, shaven-headed like his fellow but with a golden collar and a cloak of leopard-skin, and Joseph knew that these marked him as the High Priest of Amen. Despite himself, Joseph took a pace backwards, and the High Priest, observing this, smiled very faintly. Then he clapped his hands, and a servant girl came forward with a bundle in her arms. The High Priest took it from her, and as he did so Joseph saw that the bundle was stirring violently. The High Priest parted the cloth in which the infant had been swaddled, and for a moment -- as he inspected it -- Joseph imagined that his eyes betrayed a terrible void, more lonely than he had ever dreamed might exist. But then the thin smile returned and, plucking away the swaddling sheet, the High Priest held what had lain beneath it up to the light.