On a Balcony Read Online Free Page A

intelligence.
    Abruptly the current carried them round a bend and Thebes lay before them, the whole vast complex of buildings on either side of the river, with Karnak and Luxor too, the great, cancerous, palpitating mass of the Amon temples, the enormous city of the dead, backing up to the cliffs, all gleaming, shining, rich, and powerful , almost hiding the sprawling white mass of the palace, in an endless hive of sacerdotal power. And there, beyond, rising out of the plain, backed by the huge bulk of their silver and lapis-lazuli temple, stood the colossi of Memnon, the twin statues of Amenophis III and his wife Tiiy, gazing blandly at nothing, from a great height.
    “I do not like it either,” said Ay. It was an innuendo , but not a harmless one. Ay was for once in earnest. “And the boy is only a boy. Let him have his head. He should not be difficult to get under control. One has only to like him a little.”
    He smiled again and went to put on clothes more suitable to an entry into the city. For already the air was full of the restless clamour of the crowds. They would pull up to the jetty very soon.
    Horemheb was surprised. It was unlike Ay ever to make a definite statement about anything, much less than to hint at a possible conspiracy. But he had not the time to think about it. They were landing and there was much to do.
    He had thought they would go straight to the palace, but instead they docked on the eastern shore, for the prince wished to make an oblation.
    It took some time to assemble the necessary retinue. The priest would have to be warned they were coming and the streets, in so far as that was possible, cleared.
    A trip through the city was never a pleasant experience . If the necropolis workers were not rioting on the western shore, then the temple workers were rioting on the eastern. A vast horde of office seekers, sycophants,unemployed workers, hangers-on at half a dozen separate courts, 40,000 useless priests, and the inmates of the theological and military colleges made disorder permanent. There was always mischief there, and if there was none, the army invented it, out of sheer boredom with having nothing else to do. For an army needs something to fight. It should not stay cooped up in the capital, while the Empire slips away.
    Life! Prosperity! Health! shouted the crowd, sometimes in irony, or sometimes out of goodwill. But it would stone you one minute and rob you the next, all the same, and then where would your life, prosperity, and health be?
    Nor did it help matters that out of all character the prince was a reckless charioteer who always took the reins himself. He had that passion for speed at any cost which is the delight of the impotent, and since he could always pay the cost, the passion never went unassuaged . He did not even know how to sit a horse, but he did know how to drive one. Even as a child, his wet hand had closed round his first whip with the intent fury of someone whose physical passion has at last found the one outlet its body makes possible. And the crowds loved it, of course. Crowds always love to see someone else do something dangerous. He would always be loved by the crowds. It was another aspect of his character that Tiiy and Ay had been so foolish as to overlook.
    They at last drew up before a temple, but not the Amon temple, to Horemheb’s surprise. Years ago Amenophis III had built within the Amon compound a small temple to his own private ecclesiastical hobby, the royal household god, Aton. It was a tiny white building dwarfed by the huge stone walls of the Amon temple which surrounded it, and was usually seedy and run down, for Pharaoh had forgotten about it years ago, as the priests of Amon had known he would. Theycould afford to humour him in these small things, since he humoured them in all important ones.
    Now it had apparently been furbished up. At any rate its whitewash was new. The pritice disappeared inside. Ay and Horemheb, with some reluctance, followed ,