4

The Walls That Time Built

In Gebal, the town that time built, time passes—Beth spies upon the Egyptian mysteries of the priests and scribes—Chosen by the King as a Temple Maiden

“Be off then, shooo, you lazy birds!” Beth cried, and flapped her arms at the pigeons. “Go off and find food for yourselves!”

The pigeons took their time, waddling and strutting over the flat-topped ramparts of Gebal, near the house of Resh, the chief mason. Then they suddenly took off together with a flutter of wings, wheeled round in a flock, and rose up into the blue sky. Beth watched them climb up above the sea horizon, round against the green of the mountainside, then gradually lost sight of them as they set off up the coast.

Beth sighed. They fly away and leave me, she thought. But usually they all came back by evening, though sometimes there might be one or two missing, and then she would wait and wait and at last have to give up waiting, and wonder what hawk or falcon had attacked and struck them down.

Her brothers, too, had gone away and left her. Zayin, the strong, the man of weapons, he had gone first. But she was used to Zayin going off on hunting or warlike expeditions. He would come back: it was unthinkable that he should come to harm. As for Nun, the resourceful, the serpent of the sea—he always came back prosperously from his ventures, though he sometimes had tales of pirates and sea fights to tell. But what of Aleph, the unworldly scribe, the slow ox? What had happened to him?

It was many days now since Aleph had gone off on his errand to the cedar forest and disappeared. The white pigeon he had taken with him should have flown home within a few hours to show that he had reached his destination, but that had never come back either. A messenger had been sent to the lumber camp to ask after him, but had failed to find Aleph or the woodcutters. And now a search party had gone up the mountain with orders to report back after a certain number of days. Today it was due back! Beth would perhaps get some news when her father returned from the palace.

Beth knew that her father was as worried as she was—but he at least had his work to think about. At home, she had too much time to sit and worry. And her conscience was uneasy. It had all begun with that writing game they had been playing. Absent-mindedly she traced the ox-head sign in the dust with her toe, then looked guiltily over her shoulder and rubbed it out. Her father had been shocked to see Aleph teaching her the signs—yet sending him up the mountain had not been a severe punishment. But had the Gods been offended? And was Aleph’s disappearance their retribution?

Beth paced restlessly along the ramparts. She could not go back to the house and sit with her thoughts. But where else could she go? She turned to the sea and her thoughts flew to Nun, steering his ship over the sparkling waves. She looked up the coast to where the headlands receded into the blue haze, and thought of Zayin at the head of his army. She faced the mountain and felt that at least she might have been allowed to join the search for Aleph. She turned toward the palace—and she made up her mind.

A little later she was making her way through the narrow streets of Gebal. This was not much of an escape from the confinement of the house that stood under the great walls. The city was crowded on to a little promontory on the coast: the palace and the temples took up the best sites with their courtyards and sacred pools, while the houses and markets had to make do with the space left over, huddling side by side and one above the other on the slopes. Beth jumped back quickly as a large ass came round the corner, driven smartly by a boy with a stick and loaded with panniers that stretched right across the street. She nearly dropped the dish she was carrying.

She threaded her way through the crowds of porters, water-carriers, fishermen, and strange sailors from the port, toward the palace yard where she knew that her father was directing the work. Now and then she felt eyes looking at her, for she was tall for her age and even her brothers sometimes told her she was pretty. But nobody made way for her.

Between the temple and the palace soldiers stood on guard. One of them stepped into her path, but without bothering to lower his spear. He was tall and handsome and his bronze helmet shone in the sun.

“Where might you be going, girl?” he asked contemptuously, with a glance at the poor dress she was wearing and the dish she was carrying.

Beth’s heart thumped a little, but she kept her eyes cast down and muttered tonelessly: “Dinner for Resh, the chief mason.”

The soldier looked her up and down as she stood there determined not to blush, and at last he said with a slight grin, “Pass, slavey,” and stood aside. Beth went on, still keeping her eyes down and her face expressionless. It had worked. She had passed for a slave girl.

The courtyard of the palace was ringing with the sound of bronze chisels on hard stone and the air was full of fine white dust. Masons were chipping doggedly at the faces of half-squared blocks: slaves were hauling on ropes attached to a vast monolith while other slaves thrust rollers underneath it; a tripod of beams stood over a pit, holding a pulley and rope on which more workers heaved, raising rubble from a deep excavation. Beth blinked in the drifting dust and looked round for her father. There he was, talking to some priests. She went up to the group, keeping her head lowered, and said in a low voice, “Your dinner, chief mason.”

“Set it down, set it down,” said Resh, and went on talking in an agitated voice to the priests. “It shall be done as you say, Your Reverence, it shall be done, I assure you.” He bowed and the priests turned aloofly away. Resh looked after them in an abstracted manner, and said in Beth’s direction, “Well, girl, what are you standing there for? Is there any message?” Then he turned his head and recognized his daughter.

“Beth!” he exclaimed in a shocked voice. “What are you doing here? And dressed as a slave girl?”

“I’ve come to ask if there is any news, Father,” said Beth. “I couldn’t bear to stay at home any longer, waiting.”

“News? News?” repeated her father. “What kind of news? Explain yourself, girl!”

“Oh, Father, news of Aleph, of course. Has the search party returned?”

“No it has not. And the best thing you can do, young woman, is to return home yourself. We have enough trouble here already.”

“Do you think Aleph will come back, father?”

“It looks as if none of them will come back,” said her father distractedly. “Our best lumber team, twelve yoke of oxen, the search party, forty baulks of timber needed for the new palace. … And why are you dressed like that?” he asked again, as if he had noticed her for the first time.

“I thought people wouldn’t notice if I dressed like the slave who comes every day. I know you don’t like me coming here but—”

“Of course I don’t. Women are not allowed here.”

“Except slaves, Father.”

“Yes, of course. But they don’t count.”

But they have more freedom than I do, thought Beth. “Good-bye, Father,” she said aloud. “I’m sorry there’s no news of the workmen.” She turned to go.

“Beth!” she heard her father call as she walked away from him.

She looked round and said, “Yes, Father?”

“What was that you said the other day about a pigeon?” her father asked.

“A pigeon, Father?”

“You said Aleph took a pigeon with him. Has that come back?”

“No, Father. That hasn’t come back either.”

Resh said no more, but Beth could see that he was thinking of her brother as much as she was.

As Beth moved off toward the gateway her eyes wandered round the courtyard, and she wondered what secrets were here that women were not allowed to see. Stones being fitted to make a wall—no great secret about that. A great tapering obelisk with a pointed top, lying on its side, but empty of any decoration or inscription. The hole in the ground seemed more interesting: judging by the length of rope needed to haul up the baskets from the bottom it must be deep. She edged toward it and peered down the square shaft through solid rock. A well? What was secret about a well? Now what were the veiled hints she had heard in her family, about the old kings of Gebal being buried in deep shafts in the rock, with all their treasures? And in secret, so that no impious hand would ever be able to desecrate the place where they lay? That might be it. Did not they also kill the slaves who dug the burial chambers? She shivered a little and slipped away unobtrusively toward the gate, passing on her way something that looked like an unfinished drinking trough for a giant ass.

She was glad when she got back to the house, and felt safer. It was better, perhaps, not to be a slave. She changed her dress and combed out her hair only just in time, because her aunt looked into the room.

“Where have you been all the morning, Miss?” asked her aunt suspiciously.

“Oh, dressing, and looking after my pigeons,” replied Beth carelessly, plying the Cretan comb decorated with dolphins, a present from Nun after one of his trips.

“Is that all?” sniffed her aunt, still suspicious.

“Oh, I saw that Father got his dinner.”

“Well, now,” exclaimed her aunt, “I do believe you are beginning to grow more thoughtful! As long as you don’t take it into your head to go off in the street alone.”

“Auntie!” Beth protested, making round eyes. “As if I would!”

Her aunt left the room. As if I’d take it into my head to go into the street, thought Beth. As if I’d take it into my head to climb the mountain! As if I’d take it into my head to lead an army across the desert! As if I’d take it into my head to go to Knossos and see the Queen! As if I’d take it into my head to fly away like my pigeons! As if I would! She threw her little hand-mirror on to the floor, but the polished bronze merely clanged and bounced, and she picked it up and put it on the bed with her comb.

She went and joined her aunt and cousins at the midday meal, and listened to them chattering on about who had just had a baby, and the troublesome ways of slaves.

Beth slept in the hot afternoon, awoke still feeling cross, and occupied herself with some little pots of cosmetics Nun had brought her from Egypt. But she soon got bored with altering the shape of her eyes and climbed on to the wall again. It was empty of pigeons. She looked around the sky. There were flocks of birds over the sea that might be hers, or they might be seagulls. There were others circling high in the evening sky. She picked up a long bamboo wand with a piece of rag on the end and began to wave it to attract the pigeons’ attention. How she wished she could whistle like the man across the road who also kept pigeons. Several flocks of different sizes were coming in from the coast and circling over the city, and she tried to make out her own flight with its pair of pure-white birds. Then she remembered, there would only be one white bird. The other was still in the mountains with Aleph. One flock circled lower, and she went on waving; then she stopped to scatter some grain over the roof—just enough to lure them home. They were supposed to find their own food among some country bumpkin’s crops: her father would not allow her a lot of good food to be spared from the kitchen.

The birds were fluttering around her and settling on her shoulders. She pushed some off, and offered her favorites palmfuls of grain, speaking to them as they cooed to her. “There you are, Midnight. Had a nice day?” she asked the black one. “Get off, Rocky!” she said to a brown one. “I fed you yesterday!” The white one came and perched on her hand. “Ah, my Lady Snowy, where is your husband? Still up in the mountain with that foolish brother of mine? What are they up to together, eh? Well, why don’t you go and fetch him back? You’ve got wings, you can go where you like! If I were you I’d be searching the mountains, right up to the peaks where there’s snow the color of you. Coo? Well, what’s the use of you?”

The red sun was dropping toward the sea, the birds were settling on their perches, and it was time for her father to return for his evening meal.

Resh was cross and silent at supper. When Aunt asked him why he was not eating he snapped that he felt something was eating him, and when Beth asked him sympathetically what it was, he said it was worry, worry, worry, and nothing but worry. He said it had not been like this in the old days; you just got on with your job then and work was a pleasure. But now it was rush and bustle all the time, finish a new temple here, make a tomb there, enlarge the palace somewhere else. And you could not rely on anyone either: the workmen were lazy and incompetent, timber got lost in the mountains, and even the stone they worked was not what it used to be. He Did Not Know What the Times Were Coming to!

“And to cap it all—” Resh began to say, before a mouthful stopped him (Help! Beth thought, he’s going to tell Aunt what I did this morning), “To cap it all there’s going to be an offering.” The women were silent, wagging their heads sympathetically.

“What’s an offering?” Beth asked.

Her aunt told her not to ask silly questions, everybody knew what an offering was.

Resh turned to her aunt. “Perhaps you’ll tell us what it is then!” he said.

“Well, dear, it’s—it’s a thing the priests do,” said Aunt vaguely.

“If it was a thing the priests did, would it worry me?” demanded Resh. “It’s a thing everyone in Gebal, has to do. Every man jack of us.”

One of the cousins clicked her tongue. “Oh dear,” she said, “you’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“I don’t mean women,” said Resh quite rudely. “I’ve no shortage of them.”

“Yes, Father,” said Beth sweetly. “Aren’t you lucky to have us all to look after you?” Aunt and cousins looked at her with alarm, but she went on, “What do the men have to do, then.”

“It’s a counting, you might say, as much as an offering,” her father said. He was usually prepared to explain things to Beth, though she did not always listen. “All the men of Gebal have to come before the King, to be numbered, and of course they have to give him something to show what sort of men they are. In this way the King knows how powerful his kingdom is.”

“He gets some nice presents, too,” said Beth, but her aunt told her not to be frivolous.

“But why should you be worried about a thing like that, Father?” Beth persisted. “You’re quite rich, aren’t you? And you’re clever at carving and things. You could make something nice for him, I’m sure.”

“I think the King knows what I’m worth to him. It’s not that.” Resh brooded in silence for a while, then burst out, “But how am I going to look as a family man, with no sons at my side? There’ll be my own foreman with seven sons—and me, what have I got to show?”

“You have three fine sons, dear,” said Aunt soothingly.

“But where are they?” cried Resh, banging the table with his fist. “What can I say to the King? ‘One’s gone off hunting in the desert, one’s flirting with the women of Knossos, and another’s simple in the head and got himself lost in the woods’?”

“Oh, Father, that isn’t fair,” said Beth, and flushed. “I’m sure Zayin and Nun and Aleph would come back if they knew you wanted them.” But her father went on muttering: why couldn’t he have a family that stayed at home and supported him. Beth could see that he was really worried.

“Oh, Father,” she sighed, “I wish I was some use instead.”

At that her father looked hard at her, then hid his face in his hands and said in a muffled voice he hoped it would not come to that. It was not in fact a very happy meal.

The summer days passed in Gebal and still there was no news of the sons of Resh. The search party had returned after combing the mountains and forests and finding nothing. The days and nights became hotter and stickier and more breathless. Whenever she could, Beth got up on to the city wall to catch what air there was. She envied the people who lived outside the walls, though most of them were poor, or foreign. Her father said that not long ago even good Giblite families could live outside the walls and feel safe, but these were troubled times and it was better to be inside. From the walls, Beth could see the ragged boys splashing in the harbor. How cool it must be for them, she thought. When she had been small, she had run about with the children who lived near the port. She was not allowed to do that any more—whether it was because her father was richer and more important or because she was older and more of a woman, she wasn’t sure. But what was there for her to do?

One morning of oppressive heat she found herself putting on her old shabby dress again and tying her hair with a cloth. She had not really thought what she was going to do, and she had not even the excuse for going to the palace that she had had the last time. But she had got to the point when she had to get out of the house on her own again. She told the slave girl that she was going to carry the master’s dinner to the palace, and the girl was quite happy not to have to make the journey in the heat.

The guards seemed more vigilant than last time when she approached the palace yard. A soldier in armor lowered his spear and pointed it at her, and asked what her business was in a stern voice. She did as she had done before, standing with lowered eyes and muttering: “Dinner for Resh, the overseer.”

But the sentinel merely replied, “No one allowed in,” and stood there. Beth flushed with anger at such obstructiveness.

“Is my fa—is my master to go without his food?” she burst out.

The soldier merely looked at her curiously, said it was not his business and she had better move along.

Beth turned away and stood in the shade on the other side of the open space by the palace, holding the dinner bowl and not knowing what to do. She felt like crying with frustration. Then she saw another soldier marching up to the one she had just spoken to. The guard was changing. She heard the first say to the second something like “Same orders,” and the soldier marched away. Beth looked at the relief guard. It was the handsome young man who had let her in before. She waited until the first soldier was out of sight, then she went slowly up to the other. She did not bother to wipe the tears of frustration out of her eyes, but looked up at the soldier.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” she said. She knew he was not a sergeant.

“Hullo, girl,” said the soldier.

“I am the servant of Resh, the overseer.”

“He knows how to pick them, then. What’s your name?”

Quickly she thought for a name. “Aina,” she said. “I am a slave, a captive. But I was not a slave in my own country.”

“You don’t look like one,” said the soldier gallantly.

“I must see my master,” said Beth.

“Impossible,” said the soldier. “No one’s allowed in. Special orders.”

Beth was going to ask “Why?” but decided against arguing. Instead she turned away sorrowfully. “They will beat me if I don’t carry out my errand,” she said.

The soldier looked uncomfortable. “They flog me, too, if I disobey orders.”

Beth turned back quickly. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. “Would they? Then I must go away. It is better for me to be beaten than you.”

The young soldier had been made to appear less than heroic. “I’m not afraid what they’ll do to me,” he said. “Look, maybe there’s no harm in you just nipping in and out again. I’ll take the responsibility,” he added proudly.

Beth gave him a look of gratitude and admiration. “Oh, thank you, Captain,” she said. “You are kind,” and leaving him a smile, she darted past before he could change his mind. That worked, too, she thought to herself, pleased with the success of her wiles, though what her father would have said …!

Things in the palace yard seemed quieter than they had been last time. The gangs of laborers were not there. The great stone had been set up on end and there was a handful of men working on it, perched on wooden scaffolding. Beth crept closer to see what they were doing. There was no clanging of heavy stone-mason’s tools now, only a tapping and tinkling of little hammers and fine chisels. The men who were working were not muscular slaves but priestly looking men with intent faces. On one surface of the stone an elderly man was working with a pen and black ink. On the other sides, men were following the outlines he had made, cutting them into the stone. Beth stared, fascinated: there were birds and bees and beetles, snakes and fishes, little men walking and kneeling, and other signs which meant nothing to her, all neatly arranged in lines and columns. How she wished she could join them, and pass the time usefully drawing little creatures! But she knew that was impossible: this was the sacred writing of the priests, the secret of kings and gods. Aleph might learn it some day, if he was still alive. But she never could.

The men went on working without speaking or looking up. But as she stood there one of them dropped his mallet, almost at her feet. Without thinking, she picked it up and handed it back. The man muttered a word of thanks, then gave her a look of outraged astonishment. He had not expected to see a girl there, Beth thought. She glided away as quickly as she could without attracting any more attention.

She could not see her father anywhere; indeed, the whole place seemed strangely deserted. The paved court, too, looked as if it had been swept and tidied for some important occasion. And what was that great square object, standing half in the shadow of the wall, half in the dazzling noonday sun, wrapped and swathed in heavy cloth?

Beth heard measured footsteps approaching round a corner. Suddenly afraid, she ran and hid behind the swaddled Thing that stood against the wall, pulling a loose corner of the cloth round her. She heard voices coming nearer.

“And what,” said one voice, that seemed to be weary and strong, gentle and cruel at the same time, “is That?”

“That?” came another, rather pompous voice. “That, your Most Sublime Majesty, is a Stone. Wrapped up, as you see, to—ah, to protect it from the Weather.”

“Hmm!” came the first voice. “How thoughtful of somebody!” And the footsteps passed on, but Beth, stifling as she was in the stuffy cloth, had frozen in terror. “Sublime Majesty” were the words she had heard. It must be the King!

So that was why the palace yard was swept and deserted: King Abishram was making one of his rare tours of inspection. Beth summoned up the courage to peep from her cloth round the corner of the mysterious block. The procession of priests, soldiers, counselors and courtiers was passing on into the front court where the stone with the inscription stood. Perhaps that was what the King was going to see. Beth looked again at the back view of a figure at the rear of the procession, which seemed familiar. It was her father! Father walking with the King!—or at least in the same procession. Well, she couldn’t go up to him now and offer him his dinner. But her fear of being discovered was overcome by a great curiosity as to what was going on.

She gave the King’s retinue time to pass clear of the great doorway that led into the next court. Then, still carrying the dish, she stole to the doorway and peeped round. The King was standing before the stone of inscriptions, the scribes were kneeling in the dust before him, and the High Priest was holding forth.

“Your Divine Majesty will of course be able to read for Himself the inscription His servants are raising to His perpetual memory,” the priest was saying. “But,” he went on hastily, “His humble servants will not expect His Majesty to perform such a menial task as reading for Himself. His Divinity will perhaps permit His servants to expound the text for Him.”

I wonder if the King can read, thought Beth to herself. As the voice of the High Priest started intoning, she strained her eyes to follow the procession of little signs that marched across the face of the pillar, and almost persuaded herself that she was reading them line by line. The slim, pointed obelisk became a poem instead of a decorated stone. The words went like this:

I

ABISHRAM

KING OF GEBAL

FAVORED OF THE

GODS, OF THE LADY

BALATA-GEBAL, OF

RESHEF, GOD OF

BATTLE, OF ISIS, OSIRIS,

AND RA: I, ABISHRAM OF

GEBAL, COMMANDER OF

MANY ARMIES, COMMANDER

OF MANY NAVIES, EQUAL TO

PHARAOH HIMSELF, ARMED TEN

THOUSAND MEN, SENT THEM

TO THE NORTH TO SUBDUE THE

BARBARIANS. I BUILT A THOUSAND

SHIPS, I CUT TEN THOUSAND

CEDARS AND SENT THEM TO MINOS

IN EXCHANGE FOR MUCH GOLD.

I, ABISHRAM OF GEBAL, CUT MY

DWELLING OF DEATH IN THE LIVING

ROCK OF GEBAL SO THAT I MAY ABIDE

FOR EVER WITH MY PEOPLE AND MY CITY.

I, ABISHRAM OF GEBAL, COMMANDED A NUMBERING

OF MY PEOPLE AND MY WEALTH …

The voice of the High Priest broke off. “The work, is, of course, unfinished,” he said. “Does it please Your Divine Majesty so far?”

“I feel flattered,” said the King.

“Your Majesty is most gracious,” said the High Priest, bowing. “When the Offering and the Numbering is complete, we shall inscribe the details on the pillar. Though, of course, if Your Majesty wishes, and as it is well known all over the world that Your Majesty is Lord of a thousand thousands, we may put that number in immediately, if Your Majesty wishes?”

“No,” said the King shortly. “Count first, then inscribe.”

The King turned abruptly to go. Beth, suddenly panic-stricken, dodged back toward the pillars of the great door. But at that moment the dish, which she had rested on a projection of the stonework, fell with a clatter and smashed all over the pavement.

Beth saw the horrified gaze of the High Priest, who had been standing on the plinth of the monument and was the first to see her. Then the King followed the priest’s gaze, and Beth saw and felt his piercing black eyes resting on her. And now the whole of the royal retinue had turned and were looking at her. She was too petrified to do anything. Two soldiers darted forward, took Beth by the arms, dragged her toward the King, and threw her in the dust before him.

“And what,” came the voice of the King, “is that?”

The High Priest looked hard at Beth. “Only a slave, Your Majesty. She shall be put to death for spying.”

“Deal with the matter,” said the King wearily.

Beth was too frightened to speak or look up. Then she heard a voice she knew—her father’s, quavering with agitation.

“If it please you, my lord High Priest, the—the creature was not spying. She was bringing me my dinner. She is my—my slave.”

“Your slaves are badly trained, Chief Mason,” said the priest contemptuously. “It will be enough to have her soundly flogged. See to it.”

The two soldiers picked Beth up again, but her father was beside her, kneeling in the dust before the High Priest. “Your Exaltation!” he was pleading. “She is a tender maiden, not accustomed to being beaten, and free born. She is not a slave, she is—she is my daughter!”

There was a silence, and it was the King who spoke.

“Let us see her face,” said the King.

Beth fearfully lifted up her head, and looked straight into the face of the King, with its curled beard, powerful nose, and the two deep black eyes that seemed to be weighing her up.

“She would seem,” the King spoke at last, “to be suited to become one of our maidens of the temple. Arrange it, High Priest!”

And Beth looked at her father, and could not tell whether she saw relief, sorrow, or pride in his face.