“This has been a tiring day,” he said. “Yet in the course of it I have not failed to note one and another of you who have shown me insufficient respect during the revels, no doubt in the hope that I should choke myself and never regain my throne. Drive those sleepers out with whips, chase the rabble from the courtyards, and put this fool into the jar of eternity if he is dead, for I am weary of him.”
Kaptah was rolled on to his back, and the physician, having examined him with shaking hands and dim eyes, declared, “He is as dead as a dung beetle.”
Servants bore in a great earthenware urn such as Babylonians use for the entombing of their dead, and into this Kaptah was put, the top being then sealed with clay. The King gave orders that the jar was to be carried down to the vaults beneath the palace and placed among those of previous false kings.
At this point I intervened, saying, “This man is an Egyptian and circumcised like myself. Therefore, I must embalm his body after the Egyptian custom, and for his journey to the Western Land I must furnish him with all necessary things so that he may eat and drink and take his pleasure after death without the necessity of toil. This may take thirty days or it may take seventy days, according to the rank the dead man has held during his lifetime. With Kaptah I think it will take but thirty days, as he was my servant. After that time I will bring him back to his place among his predecessors, the other false kings, in the vaults beneath your house.”
Burnaburiash listened curiously and said, “So be it. Do with him as you will since it is the custom of your land; I shall not quarrel over customs, for I also pray to gods I do not know to propitiate them for sins I may unknowingly have committed. Prudence is a virtue.”
I bade the servants carry Kaptah out in his jar and put him in a carrying chair that stood waiting by the palace wall. Before leaving I said to the King, “For thirty days you will not see me, for during the period of embalming I cannot show myself among men, lest I transmit to them the devils that swarm about the corpse.”
On reaching the carrying chair I pierced a hole in the clay that sealed the jar, to give Kaptah air to breathe, and then returned secretly to the palace and the women’s house. The eunuchs rejoiced to see me, for they feared that at any moment the King might come.
But when I had opened the door of the room in which I had left Minea, I returned at once, tearing my hair and lamenting. “Come and see what has happened, for there she lies dead in her blood with the bloodstained knife beside her, and her hair also is bloody!”
The eunuchs came and were aghast-for eunuchs have a great horror of blood-and they dared not touch her but began weeping and crying out in terror of the King’s wrath.
I said to them, “We are involved in the same misfortune, you and I. Quickly bring a mat in which I may roll the body; then wash the blood from the floor, that none may know what has occurred. For the King anticipated much pleasure from this girl, and his wrath will be terrible if he learns that you and I in our blundering have let her die as her god required. Make speed, therefore, to put another girl in her place-one from a foreign land for choice, who does not speak your tongue. Dress her and adorn her for the King, and if she resists, beat her with sticks before his eyes, for this is especially pleasing to the King, and he will reward you richly.”
The eunuchs perceived the wisdom of my words, and after bargaining with them for a while, I gave them half the silver they declared to be the price of a new girl. They brought me a mat in which I rolled Minea, and they helped me to carry her across the dark courtyards to the chair already occupied by Kaptah in his jar.
When we reached the river bank, I bade the porters lift the jar down into the boat, but the mat I carried myself and hid below the deck. Then I said to the porters, “Slaves and sons of dogs! This night you have heard and seen nothing, should anyone ask you. To remind you of this I give each one of you a silver piece.”
Prancing with delight they shouted, “Truly we have served an illustrious lord, but our ears are deaf, and our eyes are blind, and we have seen and heard nothing this night.”
I let them go, well knowing that they would get drunk without delay, as has been the way of porters in all ages, and that in their cups they would babble of all they had seen. As there were eight of them and they were burly men, I could not kill them and throw them into the river as I might have wished.
As soon as they were gone, I woke the boatmen. In the light of the rising moon, they unshipped their oars and pulled away from the city, yawning and cursing their fate, for their heads were dizzy with all the beer they had drunk.
Thus I took flight from Babylon, though for what reason I did all this I cannot say; doubtless it was written in the stars before the day of my birth, and was inevitable.
BOOK 7
Minea
1
We succeeded in getting clear of the city unchallenged by the watch, for there was free access to the river at night, and I crept beneath the deck to lay my weary head to rest. But still there was no peace, for Minea had unrolled herself from the mat and was washing herself clean of blood, scooping up the river water in her hands while the moonlight sparkled in the drops that fell between her fingers.
She looked at me unsmilingly and said in reproach, “By your advice I have made myself filthy, and I smell of blood and shall surely never again be clean, and it’s all your fault. What’s more, when you carried me, you squeezed me much harder than was necessary so that I could not breathe.”
Her talk annoyed me, and I was very tired, so I snapped at her, “Hold your tongue, accursed woman! When I think of all you have made me do, I feel like throwing you into the river, where you could wash to your heart’s content. Had it not been for you, I should now be sitting on the right hand of the King of Babylon, and the priests of the tower would impart to me all their wisdom, concealing nothing, and I should be the wisest physician in the world. For your sake I have forfeited the presents I might have earned by the practice of my calling. My gold is dwindling, and I dare not present the tablets that entitle me to draw money in the temple counting houses. All this is on your account, and I curse the day I saw you; every year on this day I shall wear sackcloth and ashes.”
She trailed her hand in the moonlit river, the water cleaving before it like molten silver, as she said in a low voice and with her face averted, “If this is so, let me jump into the river as you desire. Then you will be rid of me.”
She rose and would have leaped in, but I seized and held her, saying, “Have done with this folly! If you jump in, all my contriving will have been in vain. In the name of all the gods let me sleep in peace, Minea, and do not bother me with these whims, for I am very tired.”
With this I crawled under the mat and drew it closely about me, for the night was chilly although spring had come and storks were crying among the reeds. She crept in beside me, murmuring, “If I can do nothing else, I can at least keep you warm.”
I was too weary for further argument but fell asleep and slept soundly in her warmth, for she was young and her body like a little stove beside me.
When I awoke, we had come far upstream, and the boatmen were grumbling. “Our shoulders are like wood, and our backs ache. Do you seek our death? Is your house afire that we must race to quench it?”
I hardened my heart and said, “Whoever slackens will feel my stick; you will take your first rest at noon. Then you may eat and drink, and to each of you I shall give a mouthful of date wine to revive you, and you will feel as airy as birds. But if there is any murmuring, I shall invoke all the devils against you; for you must know that I am a priest and a magician.”