Mara, Daughter of the Nile (5 page)

He stopped abruptly. From her outstretched fingers dangled a massive gold chain.

The captain grunted. “Hmmmm.
Hai
, what a trinket that is, to be sure. Is it not too heavy for you, little one? Pray let me bear the burden.” He took the chain into his own
square-fingered hand, flashed an appraising look into her face, then jerked his head toward a stack of hides at that end of the deck farthest from the spot where Sheftu had climbed aboard three minutes before. “You can sleep there,” he muttered. “We weigh anchor in five minutes.”

Part II—The River

MENFE’S three great pyramids dwindled into sharp triangles of sun and shadow as the
Silver Beetle
left the harbor behind her. She pushed south against the current, her embroidered sail bellying in the north wind like a winged thing freed at last from ropes and trappings. Mara, curled upon her pile of hides near the stern of the ship, was luxuriating in a freedom far more glorious.

To be rid of Zasha was bliss enough! But to be rid of all masters for a time, to walk where she would, say what she chose, above all to plunge straight into a new life full of exhilarating danger—Blessed Osiris! Could it all be true?

She felt in her sash for the little scarab, and its hard reality sent a tingling along her spine. It was true, right enough. Now what came next? Sail to Abydos, find a man called Saankh-Wen, give him the scarab and leave the rest to him. Meanwhile she had only to delight in the cool breeze on her face, the gentle, leaping motion of the ship—seven sparkling, lazy, soothing days of it. She snuggled deeper into the pile of skins and drifted blissfully to sleep.

It was some time later that she opened her eyes to find a tall young man staring down at her. At once she was wide
awake. Who was this? She gathered her feet under her, every muscle tensed for quick movement.

For a moment they remained thus, gripped by mutual surprise. Sheftu was so amazed at seeing the same slave girl for the fourth time that day—and here on this ship, of all unlikely places—that at first he could say nothing at all. Then he noticed her strong, deep breathing, her narrowed eyes and her quivering readiness for flight, and realized that he had startled her badly. What a wild thing she was! Her whole attitude spoke more clearly than words of the life she must have led.

“Do not fear me,” he said gently.

She did not relax. “I fear no one. Who are you? Why do you gape at me?”

“I am a passenger on this boat, like yourself. My name is Sheftu. I was gaping because I am surprised to see you here.”

“Why shouldn’t I be here, if I choose?”

“Nay, wait a bit! I’m not questioning your rights. But it’s very strange—” He hesitated. It had suddenly occurred to him that her repeated appearances in his life that day might be something more than coincidence. Had the queen set spies upon him? His own attitude became guarded; but with him, suspicion took the outward appearance of guileless charm. He flashed her his disarming smile and gestured smoothly.

“Please. It was very rude of me to gape. I crave pardon. Suppose we begin our acquaintance all over again.”

She would not have been human had she not reacted to that smile. “If you like,” she murmured. To herself she thought, I must get over my slave’s ways! I have every right to be on this ship and I need fear no one on it.

Sheftu sat down beside her and at once began to talk about a great stone image they were passing, telling the legends of the ancient king who had built it there on the shore. His manner was perfect; it contained just the mixture
of friendliness and reserve best calculated to reassure her. Meanwhile, he was thinking fast, checking back on his movements of the day and examining the few facts he knew about her. He concluded finally that she could have no possible connection with the queen’s followers, and thus was not dangerous to him. But what was she doing here? The answer leaped suddenly to his relieved mind. She had fled from that man who had dragged her along the street. She was a runaway!

He smiled now more engagingly than before, realizing that he had a powerful weapon to hold over her if need be. He finished his story softly: “And they say that the
ba
of the old king himself flutters about the statue at night in the form of a bat, looking at the face and the inscriptions, making sure his image and his name have not been forgotten in the land of Kemt.”

She shaded her eyes for a last glimpse of the great, craggy, granite face disappearing downriver. “A strange tale that is,” she said. “And well told. I’ve never heard better, even from the old yarn spinners who sun themselves in the temple courtyard.”

He sketched a little bow of acknowledgment. “Perhaps I have followed the wrong trade,” he remarked with a grin.

“And what is your trade?”

“I am apprentice to a scribe in Thebes,” he lied glibly. “One Huaa. A fine old man, but with a tendency to overeat—a tendency his apprentices would gladly imitate, had they the chance.”

She smiled. “You scarce look underfed.”

“Nor am I. But no credit to Huaa.”

This time she laughed outright. “I see we have experience in common. Are you hungry now? Here.”

She reached into her sash and produced the last two honey cakes she had filched from the baker’s boy earlier that day. She offered one to Sheftu, who took it with thanks, hiding his mirth. “So you are a scribe,” she went on, biting
into her own flaky morsel. “I once had a—I once knew a man who followed that trade.”

“So?” murmured Sheftu. Her quick retreat from the word “master” had not escaped him.

“He was in the service of a district chief, on the northern border of Egypt. There were many foreigners there.”

“Foreigners flock to Egypt as birds to a marsh,” observed Sheftu. That is how she learned Babylonian, he thought.

She pointed suddenly. “Look. There on the sandbank.”

He turned. The sand bar was nearly hidden by long, brownish-green, sinister forms. His flesh crawled a little in spite of himself. Crocodiles! They lay sluggish and motionless, all facing north, with their great pale mouths wide open to the prevailing wind. He thought of the crocodile-headed god, Sebek, and felt for the amulet at his wrist.

Then he turned back to the girl. “That is why I have no fear of death,” he remarked.

“The crocodiles? What have they to do with it?”

“Everything. I was born on the 23rd day of the third month of the Season of Growing.”

Swift comprehension crossed her face. Everyone knew that the fate of those born on that day was to be eaten by crocodiles. They both looked back at the sandbank, but it was she who shuddered.

“They will have me in the end,” murmured Sheftu. “But meanwhile I need fear nothing else.” He turned to her with a shrug. “I shall cheat them as long as possible, until I am an old, old man. See!”

He extended the wrist from which his amulet dangled. It was a twist of flax thread strung with seven green glazed beads, and knotted seven times. One large flat bead, of carnelian, was inscribed on both sides. Her lips moved as she read the hieroglyphs.

“Oh, thou, who art in the water, behold! It is Osiris who is in the water, and the eye of Horus and the great scarab protect him … Get ye back, beasts of the waters! Do not
show your face, for Osiris is floating toward you … Beasts of the waters, your mouth is closed by Ra, your throat is closed by Sechmet, your teeth are broken by Thoth, your eyes are blinded by the great magician. Those four gods protect Osiris and all those who are in the water.”

So she can read, and perhaps write, too! thought Sheftu, again surprised. “You see, I am well protected,” he said aloud.

“Perhaps.” She raised her vivid eyes to his face. They were skeptical.

“You have no faith in magic?”

“I have little faith in anything,” she said carelessly. “But I am glad I do not know how, or when, I am to die.”

“What was the day of your birth?”

“I know not, nor does anyone else. Perhaps I was not born at all, but am a
kheft
-maiden, as Zasha used to say!”

“Zasha?”

She laughed. “A man I knew once. A stupid fellow. He was convinced I had the Evil Eye.”

“
Hai!
Stupid he was, indeed! How could evil come from anything so beautiful? Blue is the color of the sky, the lotus, the turquoise. These things are all good.”

She flushed a little; evidently compliments were new in her experience. “You are very trusting on short acquaintance,” she said drily.

“In your case I have good reason,” he assured her, smiling to cover any hidden meaning the remark might have. “But you seem not to trust me. You’ve not even told me your name.”

“My name is Mara.”

“Mara! ‘Truth of Ra.’ You see? Who could distrust one with such a name?”

She laughed, tilting her head to squint up at Ra, the sun god, whose golden bark sailed far westward now toward Libya and the Land of Darkness. Sheftu made use of the moment to study her profile intently. A gamin’s face, he had
thought as he watched her in the market place. Yes, it was that. Her cheeks were sloping and shadowed, thin with years of hunger; her chin was obstinate and her mouth had a sardonic curve, as though it had learned well to lie. It was a skeptical face, a clever and unscrupulous one. But there was an elusive quality of wistfulness about it that fascinated Sheftu.

He found himself wishing that this Mara, this waif, this runaway, did not have to pass so soon out of his life. Next instant he turned away from her impatiently, wondering if he had lost his mind. The life he had chosen as the king’s henchman had no room in it for bright-eyed maidens. Nor did the life he was born to—that of Lord Sheftu, son of the late wealthy noble Menkau—have any place in it for a common slave girl, save to iron his snow-white
shentis
.

And despite the amulet on his wrist, he doubted whether either life would permit him to cheat for long the crocodiles who were his destiny. He walked these days with death at his elbow.

Frowning, he studied once more the unsolved problem of finding a messenger to send to the king. It was a knotty one. Since the discovery and swift murder of the old palace servant he had used before, the queen’s innumerable spies would be wary of everyone who came within hailing distance of Thutmose. No one would be above suspicion.

Except, he mused, someone from the outside, unknown to king and queen alike and therefore apparently a partisan of neither …

He chewed his lip, playing with the notion. A foreigner? It was an unlikely idea, but he was desperate. What foreigner, then? He thought suddenly of the Canaanite princess. It was possible—but only just. He knew nothing of her, except that her welcome from Thutmose, who would never dream of marrying her, would be chilly indeed. Such a snub would hardly arouse in her undying loyalty toward the king! She might even turn vindictive and bring all his
followers’ careful plans tumbling down about their ears. No, thought Sheftu, not the Canaanite princess.

“Your thoughts are not pleasing to you, friend Sheftu?”

He turned quickly. Mara had been watching him, and he was certain at once that no slightest change in his expression had escaped her. She was no fool, this girl.

He smiled and began talking easily of the voyage, of where they would tie up for the night, of the wonders yet to be seen tomorrow. But at the back of his mind an idea was beginning to take form—an idea so startling that he did not even stop to examine it at present. Time enough for that when he was alone to think it out clearly, to test and try it, to make quite sure it was not mad.

For seven days the
Silver Beetle
beat her way southward, her sails fat with the breeze off the Great Green—the Mediterranean. On either side of her gently dipping prow the long land of Egypt slipped by like an unwinding scroll, revealing fields and marshes, mud-walled villages, fishermen straining at their nets. Often the high chanting of priests drifted out from shore as a procession filed into some painted temple; the water’s soft hiss blended with the occasional scream of a kite far overhead. Green bee-eaters flashed over greener meadows, farmers worked beside the creaking water wheels and little boys ran shouting along the banks. And always there was the sense of gliding motion, the song of wind in the rigging, the bright, clean air.

Mara wished the voyage would never end. Each morning she woke fresh to the miracle of her freedom; each night she lay in the moonlight speculating about the new life awaiting her in Thebes. Between times there was food in plenty—good food—and long, lazy hours of companionship with the young man she knew only as Sheftu.

They were much together, for there was small chance to avoid each other in the narrow confines of the ship, even had they wanted to. They strolled the scrubbed deck,
watched the crew at work, or lounged side by side on the stacked hides, each busy with his own thoughts. What Sheftu’s were Mara would have given much to know. He tended to grow preoccupied, almost remote; now and then she caught him studying her with an expression she could not understand at all. But he could side-step her deftest question with an ease that exasperated as much as it amused her.

She soon shrugged aside her curiosity. What did it matter? She liked his company, she loved to lean beside him at the gunwale listening to his stories of the ancient ones, while the sails slapped overhead and the sparkling water threw little gold reflections over his dark face. And when he chose to be alone she could always amuse herself otherwise.

It was interesting to wonder about the captain, for instance. Mara had known plenty of rivermen in her seventeen years, but never one so nervous. When she and Sheftu were together, he was always somewhere in the background, standing about aimlessly or absorbed in unconvincing duties which invariably happened to lead him within watching distance of his passengers. She wondered if he feared they planned to swim ashore with some of his precious cargo. It was curious; he seemed always to be seeking a chance to find Sheftu alone, yet each time such an opportunity arose, he shied off as if he could not make up his mind to seize it.