When I appeared before the officers bearing Myra in my arms, a great laugh went up. One cried out, "How shall this plunder be divided?" Another answered, "Let the little one be taken and sold in the slave market." To which a third replied, "Who then will carry her to Sais?"
But the officer who acted as judge, behind whom stood Amasis watching all, asked of me,
"Do you demand this child as your share of the loot, Count Ramose?"
"Yes," I answered. "I saved her from the battlefield and I demand her and all that she wears upon her body."
"Strip her!" cried one. "Her shift may be of gold."
The officer hesitated, but Amasis said,
"By the gods, are we babesearchers? If the Captain Ramose wishes for a child who he says that he has found upon the battlefield, let him take her and welcome, with all that is on her. Who knows? Perhaps he found her before he left Egypt!" he added laughing, as did the others. So that danger passed with a soldier's jest, and bowing, I went on.
On the second day from this of the dividing of the spoil, our return march began. The army being heavy laden and weary and having nothing more to fear, travelled slowly and in no close array. One of the reasons why Amasis was so beloved of the soldiers that afterwards they made him Pharaoh, was that he never oppressed them or forced them to hard tasks that were not needed, such as the fortifying of camps in an empty land. Hence each man went much as he would though none was allowed to straggle or to leave the host, and I was able to keep the child Myra close to me and often riding on my horse. Thus it happened that from the first she grew to love me and if we were separated for long, would weep and refuse her food.
So at last we came to Pelusium where to reach Sais the army must cross the mouths of the Nile. Here Amasis sent for me and Belus.
"I have bad news for you," he said. "Apries your father is in an evil mood; even our great victory over the Babylonians does not rejoice him overmuch; almost might one think that he would have been better pleased had we been driven back, perhaps because he thinks that a certain general is more talked of in Egypt today, than is Pharaoh's self. Nor is this all. As he can find fault with little else he is angry because I did not obey his order to send to him your head, Ramose, and with it Belus still carrying his upon his shoulders; for his spies have told him that you are with the army and have been promoted by me in reward of your deeds. Again he bids me fulfil his commands, saying that the Syrians have given him much trouble concerning you and demand your life continually."
Now I looked at him in question, but Belus asked outright,
"Is such your purpose, General?"
"I do not know," he answered. "A man must think of himself sometimes and I cannot always be troubled by Pharaoh about a young Count and a certain physician and diviner. Such a matter would be a small cause over which to quarrel with Pharaoh, though it well may be that we shall quarrel ere all is done, as I think you read in your stars, Belus. Hearken. This war is finished and your service is over. There are many boats sailing down the Nile, some of them large ships bound for Cyprus and elsewhere, taking with them soldiers whose service is ended or who have been wounded and seek their homes; also merchants. Now here I set few guards and if tomorrow when I make public search for the Count Ramose and Belus the Babylonian, that I may deliver them to Pharaoh, they cannot be found, am I to blame? I have spoken."
"And we have heard," answered Belus.
Then Amasis shook us by the hand in his friendly fashion and thanked me for my small share in the war, saying that he had watched me and that I might make a good general one day, if I gave my mind to arms and ceased from dreaming like a lovesick girl. "Or," he added with meaning, "perhaps something higher than a general, you who have old blood in you."
To Belus also he said that time alone would show whether he were a true diviner, but that certainly he was the best of physicians, as many a sick and wounded man in the army knew that day. Nor was this all. As we were leaving the chamber, for we spoke together in a house, Amasis called me back and thrust into my hand a bag, saying that it was my share of the spoil which I might find useful in my wanderings, which bag I found afterwards was filled with Babylonian gold. The sight of that gold, I remember, made me feel ashamed when I thought of the priceless pearls that had been hidden from him, till I recalled that these were not mine, but little Myra's inheritance.
Thus I bade farewell to the great captain Amasis whom I was to see no more for years. Indeed I bade farewell for ever to the Amasis I knew, for when we met again and he had exchanged a general's staff for Pharaoh's sceptre, in many ways he was a very different man.
Next morning at the dawn a merchant and his assistant, for as such we were disguised, with their servant, a peasant woman and her child, having hired passages, sailed amidst a motley crowd upon a ship bound for certain ports along the coast and afterwards for the isle of Cyprus. To Cyprus in the end we came in safety and as I think, unknown of any, for all were intent upon their own affairs, moreover the sea being rough, in no mood for watching others. Also the most of them left the ship at the coast ports.
Reaching Salamis, the greatest and most beautiful city of Cyprus, we hired a lodging there in a humble street, giving out that we were strangers who had escaped from Tyre which was beleaguered by the Babylonians, and taking new names.
Here at Salamis we dwelt for many years, Belus, whom I called my uncle, the brother of my mother, practising as a physician, also in secret as a diviner, under the name of Azar, and I as a merchant who dealt in corn and copper and was known as Ptahmes. Nor did we labour in vain, for although we made no show during those years we grew rich.
The mean street in which we dwelt, one running down towards the sea at a point where the ships anchored, once had been a great thoroughfare inhabited by rich merchants. Now these had deserted it for other quarters where the highborn dwelt around the palace of their chieftain who was called King of Salamis, for in Cyprus there were many kings who, at this time, owned the Pharaoh of Egypt as their overlord. Yet their stone and marble palaces remained, turned to seamen's lodges, marts where every kind of merchandize was sold to mariners, thieves' quarters, or even brothels.
The house to which we had come by chance, had been perhaps the greatest of these palaces. Built of white stone or marble, it contained many fine chambers surrounding a courtyard, and behind it was a large garden with a fountain fed from a spring, where grew some fig trees and an ancient olive, but for the rest covered with nettles and rank growth. This house, or rather palace, wherein at first we had hired but a few rooms, by degrees we bought for no great price, so that at length it was all our own. Leaving the front unkempt and dirty as of old, also those spaces and the portico where I bought and sold, thus to deceive curious eyes, and with them an outer lodge that once had been a shrine dedicated to the worship of some Cyprian god, in which Belus dispensed medicine or, in a back chamber, made divinations, I set myself to repair the rest of that great building.
By degrees with thought and care, by help of skilled artists of Cyprus and of Greece, I made it beautiful as it had been in the day of its splendour when it was the home of merchant princes. I scraped its marble halls and columns, I mended the broken statues that stood around them, or procured others of a like sort and perhaps by the same sculptors, to stand upon their pedestals; I dug the dirt from the mosaics on the floor and hired good workmen to relay what was lacking; to clean out the marble baths that had been filled with rubbish and set the furnaces in order; to repaint the walls whence the frescoes had faded, and I know not what besides. Lastly I restored all the great garden that had become a refuse heap, rebuilding the high wall about it, making paths and flowerbeds and setting a summerhouse under the ancient fig and olive trees that happily none had troubled to cut down.
Thus it came about that, although no one would have so believed who looked at it from the dirty street where drunkards roamed at night, slatterns screamed and fought and children played or begged of the passerby, within the discoloured front like to that of the temple of some forgotten god, lay a mansion wellordered, white and beautiful, filled with willing servants sworn to us under the oaths of some order of which Belus was a chief; a home worthy to be inhabited by the great ones of the earth.
Why did I do all these things and why did Belus help in the work? For sundry reasons. First because then as now I loved all that is beautiful, all that lights the soul through the windows of the eyes; and secondly because I, who was a scholar when I ceased to be a merchant, needed calm and quiet and fit places in which to store my manuscripts, where I could study them in peace. Yet behind all this lay a deeper reason. I was a celibate, one who because of a terror that had struck me in my boyhood, had forsworn woman and determined to fill her place with philosophy and learning, also with the study of religion and of the nature of the gods and of men, and of how these may draw near to the Divine.
The arts of magic and divination, however, I left alone, having always held these to be unlawful, though Belus who practised them after the fashion of the Babylonians, the great masters of starlore and of sorcery, thought otherwise. Yet when we reasoned about the matter, he confessed to me that these were twoedged weapons which often cut those who wielded them, also that the answers which spirits gave, for the most part might be read in more ways than one. Still at times he was a good prophet. For example when he foresaw that trouble would be brought upon me by the beauteous queen Atyra, and that the general Amasis would rise to Pharaoh's throne which then no one else so much as guessed, except perhaps Amasis himself, in whose mind Belus may have read it.
For the rest, these gifts of Belus were of great service to us, inasmuch as they brought us into the councils of the highest in the land, for these of Cyprus were very superstitious and would pay great sums for oracles and horoscopes, protecting those who furnished them from all harm, since such foreseeing men were looked upon as prophets favoured of Heaven.
Thus drawing gain from all these sources, trade, medicine, and divination, living under our false names, we grew both wealthy and powerful, though with politics and plottings we would have naught to do, and outwardly remained humble and of no account.
To tell all the truth, there was a further reason why I made that old palace which to the passerby seemed a mere relic of past greatness, so beautiful within, filling it with everything that was perfect and lovely. Myra was that reason. From the beginning, as I have said, this child loved me as a father, aye, and more, seeing that even in early youth a maid will favour other men besides her own father, because Nature so teaches her. With Myra it was otherwise. She clung to me alone, though Belus she liked well enough, also she loved her nurse, Metep, in a fashion. And as she loved me, so I loved her; indeed she was my all, the eyes of my head and the heart within my breast. Had she died, swept off of some sickness, of which there were many in Cyprus especially in the hot season, I think that I should have died also, or perhaps have slain myself that I might follow her to the Shades.
Therefore my desire was that those sweet innocent eyes of hers should never look save upon what was gracious and uplifting, and that on the tablets of her mind should be written nothing that was not pure and holy. I was her tutor also; in the mornings and after my trafficking was done in the evening, we studied together, reading the Grecian poets when she was old enough, or sometimes the hieroglyphics of Egypt, of which I expounded the hidden lore.
Belus took a hand in this game also, teaching her the wisdom of Babylon, its writing and its tongue; showing her the motions of the stars and how the world moved among them; telling her, too, the history of Israel and other nations, and instructing her in figures. So this child grew learned beyond her years, for her mind was quick and bright, though at times she had her thoughtful moods. In body she grew also, tall and straight and very fair to see, darkeyed yet with hair the brown colour of ripe corn which told, perhaps, of the inter mingling of her Hebrew blood with some more western stock. Thus at last in that hot land, she came near to womanhood and her mind growing ever, ripened till, although more wayward, it was the equal of my own and in certain ways its master.
One day Belus came upon us seated side by side studying an old manuscript with the lamplight shining on our faces, and stood contemplating us with that strange, secret smile of his playing round his withered lips. Our work done Myra rose and went upon a household errand. When she was gone Belus said,
"You two make a handsome pair and look so much of an age, that some might think that you were not father and daughter, as it is given out you are."
"Nor are we," I answered with a start, "at least in blood."
Then I was silent, for the thought troubled me.
"Has not the time come," went on Belus, "when this maiden should be told how she fell into your keeping?"
"Perhaps," I answered. "Do you tell her, Belus, for I cannot."
Tell her he did, in what words or when I do not know. At least on the following evening at the hour when we were wont to work, Myra came and sat opposite to me, her chin resting on her hand, looking at me with her large eyes from which I think tears had flowed, for her face was troubled.
"So, Father," she said at length, "you are not my father. I am no one's child and all that Metep has said to me about my mother who died when I was born is false."
"Has Belus been speaking with you, Myra?"
"Yes. He has told me all, saying you thought I ought to know, now when I am no more a little girl. I wish he had been silent," she added passionately.
"Why, Myra?"
"Because if I am not your daughter you will cease to love me, while I cannot cease to love you."
"Certainly I shall never cease to love you while I live, Myra, nor after perhaps."
Her face brightened.
"Then all is not black as I feared, for if you ceased to love meoh! what shall I call you?"
"Ramose, when we are alone, but Father as of old before others."
"if you ceased to love meRamoseI think that I should die. So it is and so it will ever be."
Now I grew frightened, although my heart leapt with joy at those sweet words.
"Perchance a day may come, Myra, when you will learn to love someone better than you do me."
"Never!" she answered fiercely"Never!" and she struck the table with her little hand. "I know what you mean. Do we not read of marriage in books and was not Metep once married? Do not say that you wish me to marry, for I will never marry. I hate all men, save you and Belus."
"They will not hate you, I fear."
"What does it matter what they do? I have seen them; it is enough. Tell me quickly that you do not wish me to marry."
"No, no, Myra, I wish that we should go on as we arealways."
"Ah! I am glad. That makes me happy."
Here a new and dreadful thought struck her, for she added with a gasp,
"But you might marry, you whom all must love; and that I could not bear."
"Be silent, foolish one," I broke in. "I shall never marry. On that matter I have sworn an oath."
"Oh! that is good tidings. Yet," she added slowly, "Belus says that it is not wise to swear oaths when we are young, since we seldom keep them when we are old."