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It was on the following night, very late, while the Prince, Ki, Bakenkhonsu and I, Ana, sat talking, that suddenly the lady Merapi broke in upon us as she had risen from her bed, wild-eyed, and with her hair flowing down her robes. "I have dreamed a dream!" she cried. "I dreamed that I saw all the thousands of my people following after a flame that burned from earth to heaven.
When Ki was gone, I said: "I told you that night-haunting thing was his familiar." "Then you told me folly, Ana. The knowledge that Ki has he does not get from moths or beetles. Yet now that it is too late I wish that I had asked the lady Merapi what her will was in this matter.
Or if he will not tell you, learn it from the lips of the maiden who is named Merapi, Moon of Israel, the daughter of Nathan the Levite. Stand forward, Merapi, daughter of Nathan." Then from the throng at the back of the hall came forward Merapi, clad in a white robe and with a black veil thrown about her head in token of mourning, but not so as to hide her face.
I tell of Merapi, who was named Moon of Israel, and of her people, the Hebrews, who dwelt for long in Egypt and departed thence, having paid us back in loss and shame for all the good and ill we gave them. I tell of the war between the gods of Egypt and the god of Israel, and of much that befell therein.
Being a woman only two things would have kept her away, one that she feared and hated him, which she denies, and the other that she liked him too well, and, being prudent, thought it wisest not to look upon him more." When she heard the first of these words, Merapi glanced up with her lips parted as though to answer.
There before us stood Merapi, clad in white, with a simple wimple about her head made fast beneath her chin with that scarabæus clasp which Seti had given to her in the city of Goshen, one spot of brightest blue amid a cloud of white. She looked neither to right nor left of her.
"Prince of Egypt!" he said, drawing back astonished, then added sullenly, "Well what does the Prince of Egypt with my affianced?" "He helps her who is hurt to her home, having found her helpless in the desert with this accursed straw," I answered. "Forward, driver," said the Prince, and Merapi added, "Peace, Laban, and bear the straw which his Highness's companion has carried such a weary way."
The lady Merapi also said as much to me, but I noted that always she shunned Ki, whom she held in mistrust and fear. Then came the hail, and some months after the hail the locusts, and Egypt went mad with woe and terror. It was known to us, for with Ki and Bakenkhonsu in the palace we knew everything, that the Hebrew prophets had promised this hail because Pharaoh would not listen to them.
Then she lifted both her hands above her head and said: "I, Merapi, daughter of Nathan of the tribe of Levi of the people of Israel, swear that I will speak the truth and all the truth in the name of Jahveh, the God of Israel." "Tell us what you know of the matter of the death of this man, O Merapi." "Nothing that you do not know yourself, O Prince.
When this came to be known throughout the land a rage seized the Egyptians against Merapi who, they remembered, had called down woe on Egypt after she had been forced to pray in the temple and, as they believed, to lift the darkness from Memphis. Bakenkhonsu and I and others who loved her pointed out that her own child had died with the rest.
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