Three Novels of Ancient Egypt

“And when the farce is over, it is time to mourn. All I can think of is the precious time that has been lost to us!” he said.

Groaning regretfully, she said, “The blame is on my head.”

He regarded her tenderly. “I would sacrifice myself to protect you from all evil,” he said.

Smiling sweetly, she replied, “I think that time is being cruel to us today.”

He moaned sorrowfully and peered at her with downcast eyes. So she said as the spirit of hope spread through her being, “There is a long future, lit with hope, lying before us. Wish for life as you once wished for death.”

“Death shall never hold sway over my heart,” he said, with happiness and joy.

“Don't say this,” she said, putting a finger over his mouth.

But then he said, with an insane passion, “What can Death do to a heart that love has made immortal?”

“I shall stay in the palace — I shall not leave it,” she vowed, “until I hear the horn sound the tidings of your triumphant return!”

“Let us pray to the gods to shorten our separation!”

“Yes, I'll pray to Ptah, but in the palace, not here,” she said, “because we do not have enough time.”

As she replaced the cowl on her head, it pained him to see her pitch-black hair disappear once again beneath it.

“I hate to be parted from such a dear limb of my own body,” he said.

She looked at him, her eyes glinting with the light of love and expectation. Yet she imagined that his face was growing dark as his breast was pounding, and that his brow was shadowed by storm clouds. Disquiet conquered her as she asked him, “Of what are you thinking?”

“Prince Ipuwer,” he answered, tersely.

Laughing, she replied, “Hasn't what the gossips were saying about him some time ago yet reached you? How strange…. Nothing is hidden in Egypt, even the secrets of Pharaoh's palace. But you've learned only one thing, while you don't know others. The prince is a sublime person, of virtuous character. He spoke with me one day while we were alone, on the subject that had been announced. I apologized and said to him that I'd be comfortable to remain his friend. No doubt he felt disappointed, but then he smiled his magnanimous smile and told me, “I love truth and freedom — and I would hate to so demean such a noble soul as yours.’ “

Djedef said with exhilaration, “What a magnificent man!”

“Yes, he is decent, indeed.”

“Is there not one thing on our horizon that might call for pessimism?” Djedef stuttered. “I mean… I do fear Pharaoh!”

She lowered her eyes shyly. “My father would not be the first pharaoh to make one of his subjects a member of his own family.”

Her answer delighted him and her shyness intoxicated him.

He leaned toward her in painful passion, stretching his hand toward hers — when it was about to reattach the beard to her face — in fear that the gorgeous, luminous visage would vanish. She surrendered her hand to his, and her acquiescence was a bewitching act of sweetness. The young man knelt down again before her, kissing her hand with mad enchantment, as she said to him, “May all the gods be with you!”

Then, putting the false beard back on her chin, and pulling down on the cowl until its edge touched her eyebrows, she returned to her former guise as the crown prince's messenger. Before turning her back to him, she reached within her breast and withdrew the little beloved portrait that nature had made the spark for this beautiful infatuation, and gave it to him wordlessly. He took it with mad love and passion, kissing it with his mouth before burying it in his own breast in its original, familiar place. Then she flashed him a smile of goodbye, before — to make him laugh — giving him a military salute and marching, in soldierly fashion, outside.

The youth that she left reeling with delirium, his face beaming with the light of hope, was not the one she saw at her arrival — dejected, distracted, and confused. His love was aroused once more and revived after it had become lifeless. In that spectacular moment, fantasies of his heart's past visited his imagination — Nafa's lovely gallery; the lush green banks of the Nile; the band of pretty peasant girls. Then he remembered his sadness and despair, and wrapped himself once more in the pelt of patience before recalling the glowing promise that he perceived amidst the flood of despondent sorrow. The reality of life and love seemed to him like a river bearing water to a burgeoning garden, with flowers blooming and birds warbling from the sweetness that it brings. But should its springs dry up, the garden trellises would be bare, its beauty would wither — and it would be nothing more than an abandoned patch of desert.