The Golden Goblet: Chapter 2

Turning from the Street of the Goldsmiths, Ranofer entered a sun-baked thoroughfare thronged with workers from every part of the City of the Dead—artisans, laborers, apprentices—whose guttural speech and varied odors filled the air around him.

Turning from the Street of the Goldsmiths, Ranofer entered a sun-baked thoroughfare thronged with workers from every part of the City of the Dead—artisans, laborers, apprentices—whose guttural speech and varied odors filled the air around him.

Turning from the Street of the Goldsmiths, Ranofer entered a sun-baked thoroughfare thronged with workers from every part of the City of the Dead—artisans, laborers, apprentices—whose guttural speech and varied odors filled the air around him.

Their hands, those strong and supple hands now gesturing or fingering their amulets or swinging idly at their sides, were the cleverest in the world, for these were the glassmakers and papermakers, the weavers, carpenters and potters, the sculptors, painters, embalmers, masons and coffin builders of Hundred-Gated Thebes, and Thebes, as all men knew, was the center of the universe.

Death provided a constant market for the wares of the City of the Dead, and the living bought much for themselves as well.

Gebu had two aspects, one noisily jocular, one ferociously quiet.

He stood a moment, took an irresolute step backward, then swerved suddenly and ran down a lane between two of the flower fields near the river.

Once past the flower fields the lane narrowed to a path that meandered through the thickets edging the river.

The ground turned marshy here; patches of sedge and papyrus marked pools of shallow water, and the farther Ranofer went the more the bushes of the thicket gave way to clumps of slender, rustling reeds higher than his head.

There were smears of river mud on his bare knees and his shenti, and on the gnarled hand with which he held the reeds aside as he gazed with mild astonishment at the boy.

Closing the gate behind him, he stopped and looked about warily.

His legs were massive columns, his face a crag, with a granite-hard jaw and eyes black as chunks of obsidian beneath their painted lids.

One of the eyes winked spasmodically at intervals, lending an eerie liveliness to an otherwise motionless countenance.

Instantly he was aghast at his own temerity.

His speculative eyes went over the boy, so deliberately and in such pitiless detail that Ranofer became vividly aware of every defect in his unprepossessing small person—the ribs that showed, the undernourished arms and knobby knees, the dusty rag of a shenti that always hung askew on his hips.

His speculative eyes went over the boy, so deliberately and in such pitiless detail that Ranofer became vividly aware of every defect in his unprepossessing small person—the ribs that showed, the undernourished arms and knobby knees, the dusty rag of a shenti that always hung askew on his hips.

“Worthless One!” The heavy hand slapped back and forth across Ranofer’s face, almost negligently, yet with a force that twisted a crick into his neck and set his ears ringing.

Gebu was no longer worried, he was only contemptuous.

“Your bread! When did it come to be yours? By Amon, you have grown too toplofty of late, behaving like Pharaoh instead of the gutter waif you are. Aye, a waif, and remember it! Where would you be this moment, had I not offered you food and lodging out of the goodness of my heart? Sleeping in the dust of the streets, aye, and fighting the dogs for their leavings. Instead, you live comfortably on my bread.”

Gebu’s last warning had needed no underscoring.

Staring up through the ragged branches of the acacia to the stars, spangling the dark sky, he could see only the kindly face of Rekh the goldsmith rising before him in reproach.

The reproachful face faded from his mind, and his tension vanished, driven out by the exalted sense of heroism with which his own words had filled him.

The reproachful face faded from his mind, and his tension vanished, driven out by the exalted sense of heroism with which his own words had filled him.

He began to picture himself, a larger, more muscular self, nearly Gebu’s size, standing with proudly upflung head before the stonecutter, defying him, smiling coolly at his raging, easily side-stepping his poorly aimed blows, and walking at last from the hateful courtyard without deigning to glance back.

Then the evil day of death had come, and old Marya had told Ranofer, weeping, that there would be scarcely enough coppers left for bread after his father’s tomb was furnished, and the embalmers paid, and the offerings made to the priests of the Necropolis.