Three Novels of Ancient Egypt

She disapproved of the way he was describing her freedom and she vented her indignation. “Would you hurl such vile accusations at me when my only fault is that I have not allowed myself to be a hypocrite and tell a man falsely that I love him?”

“And why do you not love, Rhadopis? Even Tahu, the mighty warrior, who has fearlessly plunged into the hazards of war in the South and the North, who was raised on the backs of chariots, has loved. Why do you not love?”

She smiled mysteriously. “I wonder if I possess an answer to your question?” she asked.

“I do not care about that now. That is not why I came. I am asking you what you are going to do.”

“I do not know,” she said quietly and with astonishing resignation.

His eyes glowed like hot coals, consuming her in a fury. He felt a mad urge to smash her head into pieces, then suddenly she looked at him and he sighed deeply. “I thought you would be more jealous of your freedom.”

“And what do you suggest I should do?”

He clasped his hands together. “Escape, Rhadopis. Escape before you are carried off to the ruler's palace as a slave girl to be placed in one of his countless rooms where you would live in isolated servitude, waiting your turn once a year, spending the rest of your life in a sad paradise that is really a miserable prison. Were you created, Rhadopis, to live such a life?”

She revolted furiously at the thought of such an affront to her dignity and pride, and wondered if it might really be her misfortune to live such a miserable life.

Would it really be her destiny in the end — she, to whom the cream of Egypt's manhood flocked to woo — to compete with slave girls for the young pharaoh's affection, and content herself with a room in the royal harem? Did she want darkness after light, to be enveloped in destitution after glory, to be satisfied with bondage after complete and utter mastery? Alas, what an abominable thought, an unimaginable eventuality. But would she flee as Tahu wished? Would she be happy with flight? Would Rhadopis, whom they worshipped, whose beauty no other face possessed, and with whose magic no other body was endowed, flee from slavery? Who, then, would crave mastery and power over men's hearts?

Tahu stepped closer. “Rhadopis, what are you saying?” he implored.

She was angry again. “Are you not ashamed, Commander, to incite me to flee from the countenance of your lord?” she mocked.

Her biting sarcasm struck him deep in his heart, and he reeled from the shock. “My lord has not seen you yet, Rhadopis,” he blurted as he felt the bitterness rise in his throat. “As for me, my heart was wrested from me long ago. I am a prisoner of a turbulent love that knows no mercy, that leads me only to ruin and perdition, trampled under the feet of shame and degradation. My breast is a furnace of torment — which burns more fiercely at the thought of losing you forever. If then I urge you to flee, it is to defend my love, and not to betray His Sacred Majesty at all.”

She paid no heed to his complaints, nor to his protestations of loyalty to his lord. She was still angry for her pride, and so when he asked her what she intended to do, she shook her head violently as if to dislodge the malicious whisperings that had taken hold there, and in a cold voice full of confidence, she said, “I will not flee, Tahu.”

The man stood there, grave-faced, astonished, desperate. “Are you to be content with ignominy, prepared to accept humiliation?”

“Rhadopis will never taste humiliation,” she said with a smile on her lips.

Tahu was fuming. “Ah, I understand now. Your old devil has stirred. That devil of vanity and pride and power, that protects itself with the eternal coldness of your heart and relishes to see the pain and torment of others, and sits in judgment of men's fates. It heard Pharaoh's name and rebelled, and now it wishes to test its strength and power, and to prove the supremacy of its accursed beauty, without regard for the crippled hearts and broken spirits and shattered dreams it leaves in its demonic wake. Ah, why do I not put an end to this evil with a single thrust of this dagger?”

She regarded him with a look of composure in her eyes. “I have never denied you anything, and always have I warned you about temptation.”

“This dagger will suffice to calm my soul. What a fitting end it would be for Rhadopis.”

“What a sorry end it would be for Tahu, commander of the royal forces,” she said calmly.