Mara, Daughter of the Nile: Part IV

Perhaps tonight he would be surly, if he had lost at his gaming with the stableboys, or been reprimanded by his captain for some mistake or other.

He patted her shoulder; his arm went about her tentatively, casually.

“What’s the harm in a kiss?"
“None, perhaps. But such haste is not seemly! Why, I only this evening learned your name!"

His voice held bravado, but was a little uncertain all the same.

Leaving him gazing after her, bemused, she hurried away into the darkness.

Ai! it’s good to speak my mind when I feel like it! I’ve behaved so priggish of late I’m like to smother of my own mincing and mouthing!

Ai! it’s good to speak my mind when I feel like it! I’ve behaved so priggish of late I’m like to smother of my own mincing and mouthing!

“I smell the river," murmured Mara, drawing a long breath of the familiar, heady reek.

He led the way southward along a steep embankment—for the river was sinking lower, in its yearly rhythm—and made for a tall stone image some forgotten pharaoh had erected to his glory there on the shore. At the foot of the image, moored irreverently to one granite toe, lay a fishing punt.

He was a hulk of a man, vast of girth and guileless of countenance, dressed in a rumpled shenti and huge copper ear hoops.

As they passed, Mara glanced at the girl, whose languid movements now concealed, now revealed, the cubbyhole behind her, in which a scribe sat cross-legged before his inkstand, in earnest conversation with a shaven-headed priest.

He was leaning in the entrance to their cubicle, his inkstand under one arm, two reed pens stuck jauntily behind his ear.

All day she had nerved herself for this meeting, fearing to find him again the curt and glittering stranger he had been in the lotus garden.

I have every confidence, my Lotus-Eyed One, in your capacity for guile, not to say chicanery—

One of them broke my arm, and I stayed home from school while Miphtahyah coddled me.

“Marvelous are the ways of the gods," said Sheftu piously.

For all his insouciance, for all his gold, he lived a life as precarious as her own.

Goodly discourse is more hidden than the precious green stone, and yet it is found with slave girls over the millstones.

All in an instant he had retreated behind that façade of charming banter, where neither thrusts nor wiles could reach him.

How had she ever imagined she felt close to this enigma?

Or had he really opened his mind to her, in a moment of earnestness, and then regretted it?

Glancing impatiently at Sahure, she found her gaze caught and held by a pair of dark, cynical eyes, profoundly old, profoundly weary, as if they had long ago seen everything, and found value in nothing.

“Nay, call me not juggler, but friend. My heart is no gilded plaything.” The balls rose in a golden fountain above his hand, then resumed their steady circling, but his gaze never left Mara’s face.

But it was not the crime she thought it, nor was it certain the guardian khefts would rend his soul or even strike him blind.

"...therefore if the grain remained in the warehouses until such time as—I fear your lordship is not listening.”
Sheftu pulled his attention back to old Irenamon's reproachful voice.

"According to the calculations of our river experts, who are never wrong,” repeated Irenamon patiently, "this year’s inundation will be a small one, resulting in poor crops and a scarcity of grain in the months to come before Mother Nile again sends her gift to Egypt..."

The old servant bowed and went on with his lists without further comment, but Sheftu knew that a fresh stream of gold from Hatshepsut’s treasuries would soon be pouring into his coffers.

He had all but...forgotten she was an unprincipled little vagabond bound to him only by a threat and a bribe.

Have you not learned, he asked himself caustically, not to trust every maid who weeps on your shoulder?

The feel of the cooling salves and the razor sliding over his chin restored a sense of normality to the day, and he was grateful for the barber’s silence, which enabled him to compose himself.

Djedet was a calm, portly man with a face like a moon, wearing the leopard skin of the sem rank over his snowy linen robes.

Well he remembered the day last summer those shafts came floating down the river from the quarries, on a flotilla of linked barges that seemed to stretch back to Nubia.

Extravagance upon extravagance, until the very gods must be outraged! She would bring ruin upon the Black Land.

Nekonkh was waiting, the Beetle provisioned and ready to spirit the men away.

Hardest of all was to hide from Mara the strain he was feeling, to parry her questions and then laugh at her anger.

Riffraff, eating their bellies full at Your Radiance’s expense!

A baldpated little man in the garb of a priest appeared suddenly from nowhere, cast an idle look about him, then stopping a pace or two from Sheftu, stooped to adjust his sandal.

Inanni sighed and plucked another skein of white wool from the workbasket.

Now she rose, brushed off her skirt with trembling hands, and sauntered forward as nonchalantly as she could.

“A fine tale, and told by one who does not believe in ruining things with false modesty. I congratulate you, little one, on your cleverness, your sagacity, your—”