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Updated: June 3, 2025
Thereon old Atoua crept forward from the shadow of the columns, and earnestly told those things that have been written. "Ye have heard," said my father: "do you believe that the woman who was my wife spake with the Divine voice?" "We do," they answered. Now my uncle Sepa rose and spoke: "Royal Harmachis, thou hast heard.
"Of the rest of those seven-and-thirty nobles," I went on, making no answer, "are two-and-thirty missing. Some are dead, as Amenemhat is dead; some are slain, as Sepa is slain; and some, perchance, yet labour as slaves within the mines, or live afar, fearing vengeance." "It is so," they said: "alas! it is so. Harmachis the accursed betrayed the plot, and sold himself to the wanton Cleopatra!"
I lifted my head, and a ray of hope crept into the darkness of my heart; for when men fall they grasp at feathers. Then, I spoke for the first time: "And those with me those who trusted me what of them?" "Ay," she answered, "Amenemhat, thy father, the aged Priest of Abouthis; and Sepa, thy uncle, that fiery patriot, whose great heart is hid beneath so common a shell of form; and "
And so amidst their laughter I withdraw to my watch-tower, and, dashing that shameful chaplet down amidst the instruments of my craft, made pretence to note the rolling of the stars. There I waited, thinking on many things that were to be, until Charmion should come with the last lists of the doomed and the messages of my uncle Sepa, whom she had seen that evening.
I thought of Charmion in the little chamber watching what she held to be the arts of Cleopatra, and of her bitter speeches. Lastly, I thought of what my uncle Sepa would say of her could he see her now, and of the strange and tangled skein in which I was inmeshed. And I laughed aloud the fool's laughter that was my knell of ruin!
He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath. "Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness. "All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries. If it would like you, I will sepa "
And often I wondered if this talk and prophecy of the things that were to be was but a dream born of the brains of men whose wish ran before their thought. I was, indeed, of the Royal blood, that I knew: for my uncle, Sepa the Priest, showed me a secret record of the descent, traced without break from father to son, and graven in mystic symbols on a tablet of the stone of Syene.
"And I," I said, "am Harmachis, son of Amenemhat, Hereditary High Priest and Ruler of the Holy City Abouthis; and I bear letters to thee, O Sepa!" "Enter," he said. "Enter!" scanning me all the while with his twinkling eyes. "Enter, my son!"
But this I know: I spoke so fiercely that she cowered before me as she had cowered before my uncle Sepa when he rated her because of her Grecian garb. And as she wept then, so she wept now, only more passionately and with great sobs. At length I ceased, half-shamed but still angry and smarting sorely. For even while she wept she could find a tongue to answer with and a woman's shafts are sharp.
Then act, Harmachis act, I say, and strike home for Khem, rid the land of the Roman and the Greek, and take thy place upon the throne of thy divine fathers and be a King of men. For to this end thou wast born, O Prince!" On the next day I embraced my uncle Sepa, and with an eager heart departed from Annu back to Abouthis.
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