The Yoke Part 72

face. Later a drifting boat nosed about among the reeds at the water's edge. Presently one of the crew cried out, and a second voice said:

"Nay, fear not; it is an ape, by the feel of him. Toth is with us. It is a good omen; let him not go forth."

Silence fell again, for the boat drifted on.

At last dawn-lights reddened about the horizon; stars faded out of the uppermost as naturally as if they had been there during the three days of unlifting night. All Egypt showed up darkly in the coming day.

Kenkenes, in his couch of reeds, slept on peacefully. The mid-morning sun shone in his face before he awakened.

He leaped to his feet, cramped and stiffened by his long inactivity, and looked about him. Near by was a disturbed spot of wide circ.u.mference. Here had the struggle taken place. Here, also, some of the sand was stained with the blood of the Nubian, who had been wounded by Rachel. Fresh footprints led toward the water. He followed them with a wildly beating heart. There were no marks of a little sandal.

At the Nile edge the deep line cut by a keel was still visible in the wet sand. His own boat and the other were gone. All other signs had been obliterated, for the wind had been busy during the darkness.

Across the cultivated land, or rather the land which would have been wheat-covered but for the locusts, he saw the huts of rustics, and to each of these he went, asking of the pallid and terror-stricken tenants if Rachel had come to them. Gaining no information, he went next to Masaarah, appeasing his hunger with succulent roots plucked from the loam beside the river. The quarries were deserted, the pocket in the valley, where the Israelites had pitched their tents, was as solitary as it had ever been. There was no place here to shelter the lost girl.

There were the huts to the north of the Marsh and the deserted village of Toora to search. He retraced his steps.

As he came again before the tomb he went to it. Half-way up the steps he stopped.

On a blank face of the rock, sheltered by a jutting ledge above it, was an inscription, a little faint, but he ascribed that to the poor quality of the pencil and roughness of the tablet. This is what he read:

"Her whom thou seekest thou wilt find in the palace of Har-hat, in the city."

Perhaps under other circ.u.mstances Kenkenes would have understood correctly the origin and intent of the writing. Already, however, his fears pointed to the palace of Har-hat as the prison of Rachel, and this faint inscription was corroboration. It appealed to him as villainy worthy of the fan-bearer. It was like his exquisite effrontery.

Kenkenes whirled away with an indescribable sound, rather like the snarl of an infuriated beast than an expression of a reasoning creature. Das.h.i.+ng down the sand, he plunged into the Nile and swam with superhuman speed for the Memphian sh.o.r.e.

He defied death as a maniac does. The river was a mile in width and teeming with crocodiles. But the same saving Providence that s.h.i.+elds the adventurous child attended him. He clambered up the opposite bank and struck out for Memphis on a hard run.

He had but one purpose and that was to find Har-hat and strangle him with grim joy. The rescue of Rachel did not occur to him, for in his excited mind the simple touch of the fan-bearer's hand was sufficient to kill her with its dishonor.

He did not remember anything that Rachel had told him concerning her life in Memphis, or that Har-hat was in Tanis, and Masanath like to be the only resident in the fan-bearer's palace. His reasoning powers abandoned their supremacy to all the fierce impulses toward revenge and bloodletting of which his nature was capable.

Though it was day when he entered the great capital of the Pharaohs, the streets were almost deserted, and every doorway and window showed interiors brilliant with a mult.i.tude of lamps. Memphis was prepared against a second smothering of the lights of heaven.

The few pedestrians Kenkenes met fell back and gave room to the dripping apparition which ran as if death-pursued. One told him on demand where the mansion of Har-hat stood, and after a few slow minutes he was within its porch. He flung himself against the blank portal and beat on it. He did not pause to await a response. He felt within him strength to batter down the doors if they did not open.

Presently an old portress came forth from a side entry and Kenkenes seized her. Fearing that she might cry out and defeat his purpose, he put his hand over her mouth.

"Your master," he demanded hoa.r.s.ely. "Where is he? Answer and answer quietly!"

For a moment she was dumb with terror.

"Gone," she gasped at last when Kenkenes shook her.

"Where? When?" he insisted.

"To Tanis, eight months since!"

"Was an Israelite maiden brought here? Answer and truly, by your immortal soul!"

"Many months ago, aye, but she departed three days ago for Goshen," the old woman answered falteringly.

"And she came not back?"

"Nay."

"Swear, by Osiris!"

"By Osiris--"

"And the Lady Masanath?"

"Gone, also, to Tanis with Unas, this morning."

"Thou liest! In the dark?"

"Nay, I swear by Osiris," she protested wildly. "The light came in with the hour of dawn."

Kenkenes released her and hurried away. He did not doubt that the old woman had told the truth. He had overslept the light. Unas could not have taken Rachel and Masanath to Tanis together. The Israelite would have been sent on before.

There was yet Atsu to question, and then--on to Tanis to rescue Rachel or to avenge her.

He met no one until he reached a bazaar of jewels near the temple square. An armed watchman stood before the tightly closed front of the lapidary's booth, above the portal of which a flaring torch was stuck in a sconce.

"The house of Atsu?" the watchman repeated after Kenkenes. "Atsu is no longer a householder in Memphis."

"When did he depart?"

"Eight or nine months ago, at the persuasion of the Pharaoh."

The lightness of the man's manner irritated the already vexed spirit of the young artist.

"Be explicit," he demanded sharply. "What meanest thou?"

"He was stripped of his insignia and reduced to the rank of ordinary soldier," the man answered, "for pampering the Israelites. He is with the legions in the north."

"Hath he kin in the city?"

"Nay, he is solitary."

Kenkenes walked away unsteadily. The nervous energy that had upborne him during his intense excitement was deserting him. His hunger and weariness were a.s.serting themselves.

He turned down the narrow pa.s.sage leading to his father's house. And suddenly, in the way of such vagrant thoughts, it occurred to him that the inscription on the tomb had been pointedly denied by the old woman's statements.

"Ah, I might have known," he said impatiently. "Rachel put the writing there for me when she left the tomb for the shelter Masanath offered her in Memphis."

The admission cheered him somewhat, but it did not repair his exhausted forces. By the time he reached his father's door he was unsteady, indeed, and beyond further exertion.