Mara, Daughter of the Nile Read Online Free PDF

life. I think he will decide to stay here.”
    Sheftu’s heart sank. But he said only, “Perhaps he may yet be persuaded.”
    “The old are sometimes stubborn, master,” said Ebi.
    Sheftu smiled grimly. “The young are sometimes even more so! He’ll come to Thebes if I have to carry him there in chains.”
    “I wish you good fortune, then.” Ebi stopped before a door. “He is here. Enter, if you will.”
    Drawing a long breath to calm his nerves, Sheftu opened the door and stepped into a quiet, sunny room. It was of familiar design, spacious, rectangular, windowless. But the two outside walls stopped some feet short of the ceiling, and through this open space, which was divided by graceful columns, light and air poured down into the room. In its center, in a chair beside a low table, sat the man Sheftu had come to see—Khofra, the warrior hero of all Egypt. Veteran of countless foreign campaigns, leader of men and for many years chief general of all the armies under the First Thutmose, Hatshepsut’s father, Khofra was now, at sixty, enjoying a peaceful old age. But he was far from feeble. His eyes still flashed dark fire under his white eyebrows, and the hand he stretched out to Sheftu was vigorous and firm.
    “Well, my boy. Were you observed?”
    He laughed soundlessly at the expression on Sheftu’s face, and waved his visitor to a seat. “No, no, naturally not. You are discretion itself, as skilled in mummery as you are in guile. One would never recognize the gold-hung son of Lord Menkau in those simple rags. I must congratulate you. You look neither more nor less distinguished than everythird man one meets in the street, and so are practically invisible.”
    “That was my aim, Honored One.” Sheftu forced himself to sit down unhurriedly, place relaxed hands on the arms of his chair and smile with a confidence he was far from feeling. “When you come to Thebes to offer your services to the queen as head of her armies, I promise none but you and Ebi and the king will ever have known of my connection with the affair.”
    “
When
I come?” said the old man drily. “I did not know I had made the decision.”
    “A mere formality! Yesterday I spread the facts before you, revealed our plans and begged your assistance, without which we must fail. Today I come to hear your answer.”
    “And you have not the slightest doubt what that answer will be?” inquired Khofra, even more drily.
    “Not the slightest,” said Sheftu.
    For a moment their eyes met, the old man’s ironic and a little sad, Sheftu’s dark and steady. Khofra gave a laugh that was half a sigh, and moved restlessly on his cushioned chair.
    “Look you, my boy,” he said. “I was young once, I know what you are feeling. I, too, loved my pharaoh; I rode in my chariot against his enemies and was fearless, and smote them down in great numbers and brought their severed hands and ears to his tent and was happy when he smiled. Together we subjugated the whole southern land of Nubia, even beyond the third cataract of the Nile. Together we rode northward against the Keftyews and the Canaanites and gazed at last on the strange Euphrates, the river which flows the wrong way. Together we returned to the Black Land with prisoners by the thousand—with an empire! But we were not together after that, not ever again, my friend. Pharaoh knew me not, once the empire was gained. He valued me not, loved me not, wanted me not. I was forgottenas though I had never been.” The old general broke off, looking down at his hands.
    “
Haut meryt
, you are mistaken!” protested Sheftu. “There is no name better remembered or more honored than yours in all the Black Land.”
    “Honor I never cared for—nor fame nor riches—then or now. ‘Beloved General,’ you call me—” Khofra raised his head. “That was what I wanted, to be pharaoh’s friend at home as well as on the battlefield. But pharaohs do not love men, they use them. No, Lord Sheftu, I have seen