by Howard Fast
“I won’t tell,” Moses pleaded, feeling that this was the most awful moment of his life. “I won’t tell.”
“But if you should tell?”
“You will die, Amon-Teph,” the boy stammered, his eyes filling with tears. “But I won’t tell.”
“I think you won’t,” the priest murmured. “Either because I am a fool, or because I am a good judge of men, even when they are young men. Do you think I would tell you evil things, Moses, and lead you in evil paths?”
Moses shook his head.
“No, you are very dear to me; and only the cause is worth the risk. Akh-en-Aton was a good and gentle man—and even as we look at the stars, so did he look at the sun and feel its warmth and goodness; and he said to himself—The sun’s name is Aton; and did he not look kindly upon us and give us so generously of his warm blood, then we would all perish and die in the everlasting night. What other god is like him?’”
“Akh-en-Aton wanted to kill the gods—”
“No, no, boy! What lies they tell you! Do you think that gods die so easily? Believe me, it was with no thought of killing the gods that Akh-en-Aton turned to the sun—but to make the gods what they must be, to bring them together with he-who-created-all, who shines down on us every day. We are all children of Aton, our father, and is it wrong for children to know their father as he truly is? Is it wrong for children to know that their father is good and that he gives them everlastingly of his warm gold? Why must we call him by many names and give him many aspects? He has only one that is meaningful—his great, golden heart.”
The priest was silent then and he remained silent for a long while, his eyes looking out past the marble balustrade; and as Moses watched him, the boy’s fear went away. Finally, Moses said,
“But that was a long, long time ago, wasn’t it, AmonTeph?”
“For you, yes,” the priest nodded. “For me—only yesterday. My own grandfather was a priest of Aton under Akh-en-Aton. So, you see, it was not so long ago. But now it’s late, Moses. Go to your mother.” He took the prince’s hand and kissed it; the other priests turned to Moses and nodded their heads; and Moses, full of a strange, over-whelming gladness, left the platform and walked slowly down the stone stairs.
[7]
MANHOOD PECKED AT him; he was gaining his height, and the first soft, dark down began to show on his upper lip. His limbs lengthened, and his round muscles became flat and hard. Inside him strange new juices stirred him to restless, aching, longing that was without definition and beyond his understanding, Suddenly, the world was created anew and a hundred things were singular.
Often enough the children of Ramses swam in the River Nile now. This was frowned on if not wholly forbidden, but they were yearlings who had to test their stride and strength constantly—and bolster their defiance too. When night fell, they would slip down the outside stairs of the palace to the stone quays where the royal barges were docked, drop noiselessly into the warm water, and swim out—the moment tingling with the possibility that they might encounter a crocodile that had come up out of the wild marshes of the Delta.
Sometimes the bolder among their sisters joined them, and it was thus that one night a girl called Neftu-Isis, round and ripe and budding in her womanhood, swam next to Moses. Something real or fancied frightened her and she threw her arms around him, the two of them sinking beneath the water; and he, returning her embrace, finding it like no other touch of a woman’s hands, new and wonderful and causing his whole body to tremble, held on to her even when they rose above the water again, reassuring her that there was nothing to fear—and anyway here he was, Moses, and a match for anything.
“You’re so strong,” she said, as if those words were never spoken by a woman before, and he replied, treading water with calculated ease,
“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I swim fairly well.”
She herself swam like a fish, having been raised in and out of the palace pools and fountains, but she hastened to declare, “And I swim badly, Prince of Egypt, don’t I? And I tire so easily.”
He thought her modest and enchanting, her long black hair spreading fanwise around her head in the water, and for the first time the sight of a girl’s breasts excited him. He begged her to rest on him, and with long, easy strokes he swam back to the quays. He was not sure that chance brought him to a different quay than they had embarked from. It was closer, in any case, and as the night air was cooling, he put his arms around her to warm her. They lay side by side on the stone floor of the quay, the rocks beneath them still warm from the sun, and it never occurred to Moses that she knew so much more of making love than he did. Yet she was not backward with her knowledge and, since he knew practically nothing to speak of, he was filled with worship and adoration. Though he was younger than she—she was past fourteen, some nine months from the age of marriage—he took her to his heart, decided that she was the only woman he would ever love, and lived for at least a week in a transport of joy.
It was not long before he overheard some of his royal cousins talking about her, and heard too that she had been betrothed some six months to a duke of Philistia—for Ramses used his daughters, as he did so many other people, to build political bridges. His broken heart somehow healed, but not without aid from one or another of the many princesses; and since in their code of living no store was set on virginity and because so much love had been pent up inside him, he loved generously and easily.
But he loved without being in love, and the singular wonder of the first moment was not repeated. Yet he was not like some of his royal cousins who drove themselves after women—perhaps in imitation of or perhaps in competition with their godly sire; Moses was an anomaly in, the Great House of the king, a prince with a very small store of arrogance; and perhaps for that very reason, women turned to him with a regard his age hardly warranted.
But this modestywhich—won him not only the love of women but also the friendship of some of the gentler, if usually younger, of his royal brothers—did not spring fullgrown; it was helped to develop by the princely astronomers who had, in a measure, made him their ward. Whatever the ultimate goal they planned—the ultimate destination they chose for Moses and for themselves—it remained unrevealed to the boy; and as circumstances developed, it would so remain for many years. He accepted their apparent love for him or the strange reverence they bore him because they were gentle people and the creed they taught him was a gentle creed.
They never lured him to the tower or urged him there. When he came by himself they welcomed him gladly, and when a week or ten days went by without his coming, they didn’t reproach him. Amon-Teph remained his teacher, and step by step there was unfolded for him the story of Aton.
He learned how for untold generations the lord and creator of all things had looked with compassion and pity upon the Land of Egypt—for while Aton, the sun, was the father and maker of all, he had chosen the Land of Egypt for his special blessing, and had given to Egyptians the sacred knowledge of truth and justice. Yet, in spite of this, the Egyptians turned their faces from him and worshipped many strange and cold gods, turning more and more to death and the shadow-world of death. So little did they comprehend Aton that they built mountains of stone that lesser gods might mount to the level of Aton—never knowing that to approach Aton would be to invite destruction, even as he who looks at Aton too long will find that the god has taken his sight away for ever.
For this Aton pitied them and often discussed their folly and wickness with his son, who dwelt within his bosom. The name of the sacred son of Aton was Shay, which meant destiny, or the ultimate realization of all things. Finally, Aton decided that he must send his holy son to mankind, to redeem them and to make them conscious of their ultimate destiny; and even though it meant leaving the everlasting beauty of his father, Shay agreed. Whereupon, Shay descended to earth and entered the body of the most godlike man he could find—Amen-Hotep, the ruler over Egypt. This occurred in the sixth year of the reign of this holy king; and when it ha
ppened, he knew that it had happened and he changed his name to Akh-en-Aton, declaring by this name that he was consecrated to Aton and that he would war against all gods other than the one true god.
Yet in the end the gods of darkness and hate returned to the Land of Egypt. Akh-en-Aton died, and his son was a weakling and without the spirit of Shay within him. All who were evil and rapacious and hungry for power turned against Aton and, led by the dark plotter, the god Osiris, they triumphed; and those who served Aton died by the thousands. That was less than a century ago, yet today the faith of Aton was kept alive only by a handful and only at the risk of their own lives.
“So you see, Moses,” Amon-Teph said to him, “not all priests are as alike inside as they are outside, even as not all princes are cut out of the same cloth. This palace swarms with priests who came to power when they murdered the old priesthood of Aton; and because they could destroy whom they liked by charging them with the heresy of Aton, they have ever spread and increased their power. So long as the God Ramses rules, they will be held in some check, for he has an iron hand and jealousy of his own power. But god help us all if a weakling comes after him! Then the priests will pluck Egypt clean as a bone.”
[8]
IN THE MIDDLE of his fourteenth year, six months past his thirteenth birthday, Moses left the war-court where the children were trained, never to return; for it was the end of his training in arms and the end of his formal education and schooling as well. From this time on he was to be considered a man with many of the rights of a man and a prince of the Great House.
He would now have the right to purchase and own slaves—men and women—for his first princely legacy of gold would come to him from Ramses. He would have the right to ask for a woman in marriage, provided that a marriage was not arranged by his mother or by the God-King. He would have the right to his own quarters, if he desired to leave his mother’s apartment. He would have the right to come and go as he pleased, to hunt in the desert or in the marshes of the Delta, to bear arms, and even—provided Ramses granted his permission—to go out with one of the many punitive expeditions that ranged the borders and flung back the constant barbarian inroads. He would have many other rights, but that most important privilege of all did not come with the simple chronological acquisition of manhood: that was the right to wear upon his finger the sacred cartouche inscribed with one of the godly attributes of royalty that a prince might own—the whu, which was the divine right of command. Only Ramses himself could grant this right to a prince, and only by naming him in the line to the throne.
Yet, notwithstanding, the glory of manhood was a great deal, and he came to his mother straight from the war-court, burdened proudly with all the panoply of war-dagger and sword and oxhide buckler, laminated bow and quiver of arrows, Kushite stave and javelin—such a weight that he could hardly walk, but trying to indicate that it was merely a feather, nothing at all—and what prince of Egypt was not capable of carrying an armoury on his back?
With Enekhas-Amon, the years dealt ever less kindly, and more and more she had become a recluse in her chambers. For the past year she had attended none of the fêtes or spectacles or formal courts, avoiding almost all of the few friends who remained to her. Aside from three women slaves of long service and Moses, she saw only Seti, her physician, and Amon-Teph, who had fallen into the habit of calling upon her every week or so. Her headaches came more and more frequently, each attack making her weaker and lessening her powers of recovery; and in the process of languishing and self-pity, the last remnants of her beauty disappeared, leaving her haggard and thin.
But today she was all pride, as close to happiness as she had been in a long time; and rather than a long-limbed, sunburned boy, bowed down with a ridiculous weight of weapons, she saw a man of passion and strength and vengeance, who with his mighty right arm would beat any and all opposition.
Moses recognized the rare glow on her features, and as she stood up, he laid down the arms and embraced her. Already he was a full head taller than she, and as he held her and felt her head against his bare breast and the wetness of her tears of pride, he was deeply touched and by no means without guilt for the days when he had wasted the endless hours of play with never a care for her. He told himself that now it would be different, that now he had a degree of understanding that was no part of childhood.
She apologized for her foolish tears, and wondered what he could think of her behaving this way?
“I could think only the best of you, my mother.”
She wanted him to stand back, away from her, so that she could look at him again; and she feasted with her eyes as if she were hungrily consuming food—food enough to make her whole and well again. “What a fine, strong man he is!” she thought to herself; and indeed he was handsome enough for all her pride, his legs lean and strong, his back straight and wide, and his shoulders the powerful shoulders of the man he was becoming.
“You are all that I ever dreamed, my son, and only one thing is missing.”
“And what is that?” he smiled.
“The divine cartouche on your finger,” she whispered.
“Mother, my mother,” he said, feeling older and wiser and more free from passion than she could ever be, “who am I to think about the throne of Egypt?”
“Who? The only one. Who else can stand beside you as the Prince of Egypt?”
Moses shook his head. “My mother, the God Ramses has a hundred sons and more—and how many daughters? As for me, I am not even sure I am his son.”
“Why do you say that?” she snapped suddenly. “Have I ever told you that? Who has?”
“Gossip.”
“And you believe gossip—common gossip?”
“How could I live in this house and not believe gossip?”
Enekhas-Amon sighed and lay down upon her couch again. “It tires me to fight you, my son. Perhaps you are right, and he isn’t your father. But suppose a greater god had fathered you?” She asked this wistfully as she lay there, the last bit of youth and hope flickering across her worn face; and Moses felt weighed down with pity for her and yet a little angry at such childishness. He was old enough to know that no god had sired him, if indeed—as Amon-Teph sometimes wondered—any god had ever sired a mortal man.
He shook his head, looking at her gently and compassionately.
“Is it because you are a man that you know everything now, my son? Or is it because you are a man that you have decided I am just a foolish woman who knows nothing of any consequence?”
“Please, my mother,” he begged her, “don’t accuse me of such things. If I am a man now, it’s because you gave me the means of manhood. And perhaps because I am a man, or the beginning of a man at least, I know now that there is a smell of something awful here—which I never knew before—and I don’t think that you and I, my mother, will ever sleep easily under the same roof as the God Ramses. I have been thinking that now it is time for us to leave this palace. I never asked you whether we have wealth of our own, but if we have even a little, we can go away. I have heard that Luxor in Upper Egypt is a good place to live, and it is such a distance that the God Ramses will forget us—”
“He doesn’t forget so easily,” Enekhas-Amon smiled, amused to hear her son, who only yesterday was a little boy, speaking with such grave and earnest conviction, “and I’m not at all sure that he would allow us to leave. He likes bothersome things to remain close at hand where he can watch them, and I think, Moses, that it is a little childish to talk of a smell of something awful here. This Great House is just what it is—a very large house. There are still some things you don’t understand—and that is my fault more than yours. As for wealth, you will be one of the richest men in Egypt, and I could hardly give you an accounting out of my poor memory of the copper mines, the gold mines, the herds of cattle and the fields of wheat that belong to me. I don’t think about them because they brought me little enough in the way of happiness—just as I don’t think of the ships that are mine that sail the gre
at sea from end to end, bringing us the wealth of a hundred lands. Of all that, Amon-Teph has an accounting, and all of it will be yours. Don’t urge me to travel to places that are only fables to you, my son. I am a sick woman, and here I will die—and in not too long a time, I’m afraid. And yet I am not afraid. You are the only one I will leave with regret.”
“Don’t talk like that, my mother!” Moses cried. “I wish my tongue had withered before I spoke to give you grief!”
“Boy, boy,” she soothed him, “nothing you said gave me grief. My grief is all inside me, where it has always been. How can you understand, with your youth and health? Every day the pain in my head is worse—and only this morning, Seti urged me to let them open my skull so that the foul vapours can escape and give me some peace.”
A look of bare terror came over Moses face and he fell on his knees before her couch, taking her hand and pressing it to his cheek, begging her, “No, no—please, my mother, don’t do it! Don’t let them! They will kill you just as they always kill with trepanning! Amon-Teph told me and he swore he would die before he let anyone open his skull! And he said that Seti isn’t a doctor, not a real doctor, but a puffed-up fool and a magician too! Don’t let them!”
Enekhas-Amon was pleased rather than disturbed by this outburst; it helped her to know that the boy cared so deeply, for she was so uncertain and mistrustful of love that even Moses had to prove his devotion over and over. She stroked his hair lovingly, reassuring him that not Seti but the finest surgeons in Egypt would perform the operation—if, indeed, it had to be undertaken. That was still in the future and, as for Amon-Teph, he, top, knew a little less than everything. Yet he was a good man, she hastened to say, turning the boy’s tearful face up to her and looking into his eyes.