When I was in the temple I used to think that after I became a priest I should find contentment in the using of the power that I was striving to gain. But now that I shared the Double Crown my heart was often filled with longing for the quiet strength of Ney-sey-ra, and after his companionship the conversation of the nobles and of my attendants was like shrill pipings on a single reed after a splendid harmony of harps and flutes.
Always must I be Pharaoh, remote and wise and undisturbed. With no one save Neyah could I put off this garment of control. I could not even be impatient when the mirror showed my hair unsmooth, nor, if the outline of my eye was smudged, could I throw the wax upon the floor, as I sometimes longed to do. Always I had to preserve an unflawed calm, as though the light around me shone like pearl instead of being flecked with the red of anger. None knew that I often felt like a harp too tightly strung, which at a touch gives forth harsh discords; that crowns and wigs and ceremonial robes were heavy after a tunic and loose hair; that to sit immobile on a throne tired my muscles, which were used to freedom. In the temple I had been much alone; but now, except when I was sleeping, or in my sanctuary, people were always with me, people to whom I must be wise and kind, people whom I might hurt by an unthinking word, which, if spoken by another, they would not heed. She to whom they gave their loyalty, whose wisdom they revered, was but an image of me that they held in their hearts. There was no one who knew my secret doubts and fears, or heard the foolish, angry words that did not pass my lips, but shouted in the silence of my thoughts. Neyah and I were together, yet I was lonely: for though I had his companionship, I longed for that double link where each to each is like the balanced scale. I could not tell Neyah of my longing, because I feared he would be sorrowful if he knew that though I ruled beside him, I still felt the loneliness of all women who do not have a man to share their lives.
Dio was often in my thoughts, and I longed for his return; he was the only person who knew me not as priest or Pharaoh, but as Sekeeta.
Five moons had passed since he had left for the quarries in the South, and the moon was again at full circle. That night Dio would be waiting for me by the lake. Soon after sunset I went to my room, telling my attendants that I was tired and wished to be alone, and that no one must come near me until I summoned them.
Then I left the palace through the private garden, where my father’s herbs sent forth their pungent scent, across the vineyards, and along the little path between the reeds. Some heavy animal crashed through the night and startled me. On each side of the narrow path the water between the reeds was black as bitumen.
Then, reflected on the water, I saw a light, which shone through the open doorway of the little pavilion by the lake. There Dio waited for me. As I went through the door, he held out his arms to me. And I went into them like a tired traveller who reaches home.
Many times I met Dio there, or in the Meadow of Ra. I told him I was one of the Queen’s attendants, and so he understood that I was not always free to come to him.
On the days when I could not meet him, we left messages for each other in the hollow fig tree that grew up the outside wall of the palace garden. Sometimes he would leave a drawing and sometimes a poem.
One day he sent me:
The dry pool in my courtyard
Is filled with sweet water and blue lotuses
Because you looked at it.
My barren garden is filled with flowers
Because your feet trod its paths.
My vines bow down with the weight of grapes
Because you touched their bare stems.
My abandoned fields are alive with singing-birds
Because they heard your voice.
My broken harp pours forth its melody
Because it heard you sing.
My poor house has become a palace
With courts and colonnades
Because it shaded you from the noonday sun.
And I, who am but a worker in stone,
Should be greater than Pharaoh
If you gave unto me your heart.
and I answered:
If I were the gentle north wind,
Your forehead would always be cool.
If I were a jar of wine,
Your cup would never be empty.
If I were the river,
Your garden would never know drought.
If I were your sandal,
Your foot would feel no stone upon its path.
If I were a basket of fruit,
You would never feel hunger.
If I were a spear,
No enemy would reach you in battle.
But I am only a woman
And I have not even a heart to give you
For it its yours already.
And later I found in the hollow fig tree:
I saw my love sleeping:
A garden tranquil under the moon.
I saw my love waking:
The sun dispels the river mists.
I saw my love weeping:
Stars are the tears of the night.
I heard my love laughing:
The night-bird sings at noon.
I saw my love walking:
The cool wind from the north ripples the corn.
I saw my love open her arms to me:
So I know that when I enter the Celestial Fields
I shall find nothing that is unfamiliar to me.
Dio and I were together by the river. There was a cool evening breeze, and the water broke in little sighing waves against the bank.
“Dio, why do you love me, when all the things I tell you about you disbelieve? You could find a hundred dancing-girls more beautiful than I am. You don’t believe that love is long in time; you think it’s something that suddenly happens between two people, like the chips of dry palmwood that smoulder and then flower into flame at the whirling of the fire-stick.”
“My Sekeeta, why do you always ponder on the reason for things? Isn’t it enough that I love you? I don’t know why it is that beside the memory of you the loveliest dancer seems like a fat Nubian grinding corn; or why, when I have heard your voice, the sweetest singer is like the screaming of a chisel on a whetstone. But I am content that it is so. You are very beautiful, my Sekeeta, and if I were a great sculptor you would know that for yourself. And the stories you tell me are more beautiful than the legends of the time when Earth was young and the Gods walked with men in the Gardens of the West.”
“Oh, Dio, your poor country! I should like to go there and talk to your people. Have they so little truth that what they have they believe to be but the legends of a story-teller?”
“You would love that country. They would teach you how the beauty of the present can be caught so that it seems as though it would endure into eternity, as the flight of a bird is caught for the future in stone. There would be laughter in your eyes and you would sing to the joy in your heart. I should crown you with roses and white jasmin and we should run together on white beaches in the sound of the sea. We should climb high mountains together, so high that the clouds were beneath our feet. We should sleep under the stars and walk together through valleys of wild tulips.…There we will have a white house with a garden such as you have never seen, on a steep hillside, with a waterfall to sing us to sleep, and wide terraces down to the sea. We will have white doves, so tame that they shall perch upon your shoulder on their coral coloured feet: and their voices shall echo our contentment. And the walks shall be of thyme and the hedges of rosemary. And all the flowers of my country shall make that place beautiful for you in their season. If we were there now, the hills would be scarlet with anemones, and the oleanders budding over your window. We will always be together; and my eyes shall be filled with your beauty until at last I can carve it in stone. And thousands of years after we are dead, they may find my statues of you, and then they will know that, though man has searched for beauty ever since Earth was young, once it lived as a woman in Minoas.”
He was lying with his head on my lap, and I stroked his eyes so that he must keep them shut and could not see the tears in mine. He but told me of the things we had done together in dreams. I could remember the valley of wild tulips and see their pointed petals as clearly as if they grew in Kam and I had seen them when awake. Why was I born to wear a crown and but to dream of wreaths of jasmin? When he found out who I was, I might lose him upon Earth. Would he have understanding when he slept, or would even my dreams be sorrowful? This happiness might last such a little while; yet would the memory of it be a part of me always, and when at last I entered the Celestial Fields I could live this present throughout eternity.
Although I had told Dio that I would never leave the palace, he did not believe me. He thought that I was dazzled by a high position and that I set too great an importance on the friendship of the Queen. He hoped that soon the glamour of the court would grow dim for me and I should be content to go with him to his home in the Delta.
Dio hated the Queen. To him she symbolized all the pomp and ceremony that he despised. He said she must be selfish and without compassion to make me stay with her when I could find happiness with him. When I defended her and tried to make him understand how difficult was the life of a Pharaoh, he would not listen. I knew that soon he would find out that she and I were one, and I wondered which picture would remain in his heart: the Queen he hated, or the woman that he loved.
I had prayed to Ptah that I might bear his child. And when I knew that Ptah had listened to my voice, I told Dio. And he said that no longer could anyone come between us, and that he would claim audience with the Queen and demand from her my freedom to be his wife.
I would have told him then, but it was late and I had to return to the palace. So I asked him to meet me on the next day at the sunset hour and until then to claim no audience.
I knew that this interlude, when I could be with Dio in a secret garden, was drawing to its close, and I must leave this sanctuary of green quiet and walk with him in the clear light of day. For the sun does not stand still upon his journey across the sky nor can the lives of men be without change. I had rejoiced to share in the freedom of lovers, to feel my Earth encompassed by my love and to know the glad heritage that Min had given to mankind. But it is foolish not to take pleasure in the fresh green of the young leaves because one sighs for the tracery of bare branches against the moon or longs for the leafy shade of summer. Now we must work together to the glory of Kam.
I planned the pattern of our lives together.…The buildings that still live in Dio’s mind shall flower in stone. There shall be new temples up and down the land, where people shall be taught as I have been taught. From across the sea shall come cedarwood for doors; barges shall bring white limestone from the North and rose-red granite from the quarries of Za-an. I will gather craftsmen from the Two Lands, masons and sculptors, carpenters and scribes, and I will make gardens to enshrine this stone, with lotus pools set among trees meticulously placed. I will build a little palace in the South, where rocky islands challenge the river’s flow. Even the furniture shall be of Dio’s thought; it shall be flawless, out of precious woods: inlaid with the smooth sheen of oyster shell, with lapis lazuli to reflect the sky, and lines of ivory, and fillets of gold. My curtains shall be patterned with flying swans, cleaving above the reeds in their arrow flight; the plaster walls shall blossom to lotuses, and even the floors shall be of cedarwood. I will make Dio master of a great estate, as though he were a son of Pharaoh by a secondary wife. When he journeys through the land to see his buildings he shall have a barge of forty oars, and he shall drive his own horses in a chariot. I have raised him to the stature of the name of a god, for though none other shall know it, he will know that Pharaoh, Child of Horus, is his child.
How foolish I have been to sorrow that I was born to the Royal House; if I were Sekeeta only, I could have been his wife before the priests, but I could have given him nothing but my love. Had his eyes been open to the Light, I would have long since told him of my heritage, for the little things of Earth can matter not to those who know of the great wings of time and of their unhurrying sweep through space. They see mankind stripped of their earthly rank, and they know that riches may be a little fisher girl and poverty own a thousand chests of gold; that two who love each other walk through Earth in many guises, speak to each other in a hundred tongues, lie in each other’s arms in palaces, or are re-united in a shepherd’s hut. Yet why did I ever fear that his love would die when he knew that Sekeeta and Pharaoh were one? He will see that my hair holds the same lustre although I wear the White Crown, know that my lips are still warm under his although they have moved to speak the Oath of Pharaoh, and that my hands are still the long narrow hands he loves although their fingers know the Crook and Flail.
To-morrow evening I shall meet him, and no longer will my heart hide my unspoken thoughts. Henceforward there will be no barriers between us, and in the strength of his companionship I shall be a greater servant of the Gods. Soon we shall laugh together at his words when he used to tell me that he hated the Queen—hated her when he held her in his arms! And he will learn that for hate to live, hate and understanding must be kept apart; for if they meet, a child will be born to them, whose name is love.
Next morning, as I sat in audience, it seemed that two women sat upon one throne: Pharaoh, who gave the justice of the Crook and Flail, and Sekeeta, who dreamed of the joy that she would know when in the evening her happiness cast out fear and in its clear security she at last found peace.
The day was hot and the hours seemed very long. Then, just as I was about to declare the audience closed, the scribe read out ‘Hykso-diomenes’.
The lover’s phrases still echoed in my heart, which were to have told him that his Sekeeta was Za Atet. As he walked up the long room towards me, his eyes were on Natee lying at my feet. Now I should know if his love was long in time or if the hoped-for depths were a shallow pool, which the sun of truth would turn to desert. The story of the second Meniss flashed through my mind; once he had sat immobile on a throne and watched to see if they who came towards him held gift or dagger in their hands.
Then Dio stood before me. He lifted up his head and looked at me. And I saw bewilderment changed to hatred in his eyes. And without speaking he turned and left the audience room.
That evening I was told that Hykso-diomenes had left the Royal City, and that the models for the new temple buildings were lying broken in the courtyard of his empty house.
Sekeeta was no longer. The Queen was the only reality. The Queen who had amused herself with her architect.