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.