she values my intelligence and listens to my advice—therefore I will make her great, and with her, and through her, I will wax mighty. If Ani mounts the throne, we wilt guide him—you, and I, and she! Rameses must fall, and with him Mena, the boy who degraded my body and poisoned my soul!”
During this speech the old woman had stood in silence opposite the dwarf. Now she sat down on her rough wooden seat, and said, while she proceeded to pluck a lapwing:
“Now I understand you; you wish to be revenged. You hope to rise high, and I am to whet your knife, and hold the ladder for you. Poor little man! there, sit down-drink a gulp of milk to cool you, and listen to my advice. Katuti wants a great deal of money to escape dishonor. She need only pick it up—it lies at her door.” The dwarf looked at the witch in astonishment.
“The Mohar Paaker is her sister Setchem’s son. Is he not?”
“As you say.”
“Katuti’s daughter Nefert is the wife of your master Mena, and another would like to tempt the neglected little hen into his yard.”
“You mean Paaker, to whom Nefert was promised before she went after Mena.”
“Paaker was with me the day before yesterday.”
“With you?”
“Yes, with me, with old Hekt—to buy a love philter. I gave him one, and as I was curious I went after him, saw him give the water to the little lady, and found out her name.”
“And Nefert drank the magic drink?” asked the dwarf horrified. “Vinegar and turnip juice,” laughed the old witch. “A lord who comes to me to win a wife is ripe for any thing. Let Nefert ask Paaker for the money, and the young scapegrace’s debts are paid.”
“Katuti is proud, and repulsed me severely when I proposed this.”
“Then she must sue to Paaker herself for the money. Go back to him, make him hope that Nefert is inclined to him, tell him what distresses the ladies, and if he refuses, but only if he refuses, let him see that you know something of the little dose.”
The dwarf looked meditatively on the ground, and then said, looking admiringly at the old woman: “That is the right thing.”
“You will find out the lie without my telling you,” mumbled the witch; “your business is not perhaps such a bad one as it seemed to me at first. Katuti may thank the ne’er-do-well who staked his father’s corpse. You don’t understand me? Well, if you are really the sharpest of them all over there, what must the others be?”
“You mean that people will speak well of my mistress for sacrificing so large a sum for the sake—?”
“Whose sake? why speak well of her?” cried the old woman impatiently. “Here we deal with other things, with actual facts. There stands Paaker—there the wife of Mena. If the Mohar sacrifices a fortune for Nefert, he will be her master, and Katuti will not stand in his way; she knows well enough why her nephew pays for her. But some one else stops the way, and that is Mena. It is worth while to get him out of the way. The charioteer stands close to the Pharaoh, and the noose that is flung at one may easily fall round the neck of the other too. Make the Mohar your ally, and it may easily happen that your rat-bites may be paid for with mortal wounds, and Rameses who, if you marched against him openly, might blow you to the ground, may be hit by a lance thrown from an ambush. When the throne is clear, the weak legs of the Regent may succeed in clambering up to it with the help of the priests. Here you sit-open-mouthed; and I have told you nothing that you might not have found out for yourself.”
“You are a perfect cask of wisdom!” exclaimed the dwarf.
“And now you will go away,” said Hekt, “and reveal your schemes to your mistress and the Regent, and they will be astonished at your cleverness. To-day you still know that I have shown you what you have to do; to-morrow you will have forgotten it; and the day after to-morrow you will believe yourself possessed by the inspiration of the nine great Gods. I know that; but I cannot give anything for nothing. You live by your smallness, another makes his living with his hard hands, I earn my scanty bread by the thoughts of my brain. Listen! when you have half won Paaker, and Ani shows himself inclined to make use of him, then say to him that I may know a secret—and I do know one, I alone—which may make the Mohar the sport of his wishes, and that I may be disposed to sell it.”
“That shall be done! certainly, mother,” cried the dwarf. “What do you wish for?”
“Very little,” said the old woman. “Only a permit that makes me free to do and to practise whatever I please, unmolested even by the priests, and to receive an honorable burial after my death.”
“The Regent will hardly agree to that; for he must avoid everything that may offend the servants of the Gods.”
“And do everything,” retorted the old woman, “that can degrade Rameses in their sight. Ani, do you hear, need not write me a new license, but only renew the old one granted to me by Rameses when I cured his favorite horse. They burnt it with my other possessions, when they plundered my house, and denounced me and my belongings for sorcery. The permit of Rameses is what I want, nothing more.”
“You shall have it,” said the dwarf. “Good-by; I am charged to look into the tomb of our house, and see whether the offerings for the dead are regularly set out; to pour out fresh essences and have various things renewed. When Sechet has ceased to rage, and it is cooler, I shall come by here again, for I should like to call on the paraschites, and see how the poor child is.”
CHAPTER XIII.
During this conversation two men had been busily occupied, in front of the paraschites’ hut, in driving piles into the earth, and stretching a torn linen cloth upon them.
One of them, old Pinem, whom we have seen tending his grandchild, requested the other from time to time to consider the sick girl and to work less noisily.
After they had finished their simple task, and spread a couch of fresh straw under the awning, they too sat down on the earth, and looked at the hut before which the surgeon Nebsecht was sitting waiting till the sleeping girl should wake.
“Who is that?” asked the leech of the old man, pointing to his young companion, a tall sunburnt soldier with a bushy red beard.
“My son,” replied the paraschites, “who is just returned from Syria.”
“Uarda’s father?” asked Nebsecht.
The soldier nodded assent, and said with a rough voice, but not without cordiality.
“No one could guess it by looking at us—she is so white and rosy. Her mother was a foreigner, and she has turned out as delicate as she was. I am afraid to touch her with my little finger—and there comes a chariot over the brittle doll, and does not quite crush her, for she is still alive.”
“Without the help of this holy father,” said the paraschites, approaching the surgeon, and kissing his robe, “you would never have seen her alive again. May the Gods reward thee for what thou hast done for its poor folks!”
“And we can pay too,” cried the soldier, slapping a full purse that hung at his gridle. “We have taken plunder in Syria, and I will buy a calf, and give it to thy temple.”
“Offer a beast of dough, rather.”65 replied Nebsecht, “and if you wish to show yourself grateful to me, give the money to your father, so that he may feed and nurse your child in accordance with my instructions.”
“Hm,” murmured the soldier; he took the purse from his girdle, flourished it in his hand, and said, as he handed it to the paraschites:
“I should have liked to drink it! but take it, father, for the child and my mother.”
While the old man hesitatingly put out his