Mara, Daughter of the Nile

by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

  “He may demand it,” said Mara slowly.

  She left the cabin, drank in the sun-drenched air and the fresh, clean smell of water and canvas sails and wind—miraculously restored to her again—then sought the privacy of her pile of hides.

  All is changed now, she reflected. Yet all is still the same.

  Tomorrow, when they docked at Abydos, she would proceed with her former plans as if nothing had happened today. But what a difference there was! She now had knowledge that would buy her freedom from her new master in an instant, and perhaps shower her with gold as well. In fact, she had wealth already, in the shape of that jewel-encrusted ring—which of course would never leave her sash. All her dreams were beginning to come true. As for revenge—Osiris! She had that tenfold, a hundredfold. . . .

  Then why, she thought, am I not happier?

  She moved restlessly on the soft skins, puzzling over the queer flat taste of her triumph. Finally she raised herself on one elbow and frowned out across the green and sparkling river, which was struck with fire where the sun’s rays touched it.

  Lord Sheftu. A great nobleman, he was—as far from the likes of her as the very sun up yonder. He must have been amusing himself in truth, these seven days!—seeking her company, flaunting his charming manners, even holding her in his arms a moment. But it was clear what he thought of her. Guttersnipe!

  At that moment Sheftu walked along the edge of the deck and paused, leaning on the rail. She could not see his expression, for his profile was black against the dazzling sky. But there was weariness in his pose, and he looked lonely, human—far different from the deadly menace who had lounged against that bale. Perhaps it was true, that he had no stomach for this day’s work.

  Mara turned away angrily, not wanting to look at him, not wanting to think of the fact that the price of her freedom was his destruction.

  CHAPTER 6

  Frightened Princess

  Saankh-Wen proved to be a squat, middle-aged man with a stupid face and eyes that seemed half-asleep. He barely looked at Mara when she showed him the scarab and asked for instructions.

  “Interpreter? Aye, I remember now. You’re to find the Inn of the Lotus, it’s close by, just yonder where you see the donkey turning into the alley. They’ve got their orders there—mention my name.”

  Mara started in the direction he indicated, glancing about her curiously. The wharfs of Abydos were not so different from those at Menfe, though the traffic had an unfamiliar character. There was less merchandising here, fewer foreign vessels. Instead there were funeral barges. She counted eight in the harbor this moment. Abydos was the most ancient and sacred of all cities; the god Osiris himself was thought to be buried here, and all who could afford it arranged for their funeral processions to make pilgrimage from their own cities to this Gate of the Underworld before the final ceremonies of entombment.

  The Inn of the Lotus was easy to locate, since it had a carved wooden flower swinging over its doorway. Mara entered, identified herself to the vacant-faced woman in charge, and was directed up an outside staircase. In the room above, a coal-black slave girl awaited her. Mara discovered almost immediately that she was deaf and dumb.

  Thoughtfully she followed the girl into an adjoining bath chamber, where great jars of water stood about the walls and the stone floor sloped to a center drain. The queen’s man had made very sure of secrecy in this process of transforming her from a ragged slave into a person “above suspicion.” The woman downstairs was vague and stupid, this one was deaf and dumb, and Saankh-Wen himself incurious.

  All the better for me, reflected Mara, remembering the menace in Sheftu’s voice that morning when he had warned her again against trickery. The Silver Beetle was to loiter upriver until noonday, when the barge of the princess should overtake it. After seeing for themselves that Mara was safely on board, Sheftu and Nekonkh would proceed to Thebes, and she would be free—to carry out her own plans.

  She frowned. It gave her little pleasure to think about those plans. She turned her attention instead to the enjoyable ministrations of the slave girl.

  The jars of water were poured over her, her hair was cleansed and trimmed and her body rubbed with scented unguents until it glowed. Then, leading her back into the first room, the slave pointed to a little carved chest that stood in one corner. Mara opened its lid, and the last of her uneasy humor vanished. There were piles of the purest white linen, leather sandals—she had never owned sandals in her life, even the common sort woven of palm fiber—there were a few pieces of jewelry, colored sashes, a warm white woolen cloak, deeply fringed. There was a whole wardrobe in that chest, even to the pots and vials containing scents and cosmetics. It was not too lavish. It was scaled perfectly to the needs of a priest’s daughter, the role Mara was to play. But to her it was unimaginable luxury. And as she shook the garments out one by one and looked at them, she felt again the fierce determination that nothing, nobody must stand in the way of her possessing such things always, freedom and gold and a life worth living—gardens with lotus blooming in the fishpool, roast duck and honey on the table, rows and rows of papyrus scrolls on the shelves in a beautiful room. . . .

  So she dreamed, as the girl dressed her in an ankle-length sheath of white linen, secured the wide straps over her bare brown shoulders and wound a cinnamon-colored sash twice about her waist, looping it in front so that the ends fell luxuriously to her sandals. Her hair was combed to glossy smoothness, scented and delicately oiled; her eyelids were properly painted, with brows and lash line elongated almost to her temples. There were gold bands for arms and ankles, too, and a broad collar formed of cylindrical beads enameled the same deep radiant blue as her eyes.

  She put away the little copper mirror at last, with a sigh of content. It had been a long time since she had enjoyed even the near-necessity of eye paint, which all Egyptians, men and women, considered essential to a decent appearance. And the rest was elegance undreamed of. The sandals did pinch a little, of course, where the strap passed up between her toes, and the high-curling tips would trip her if she didn’t watch out. She was not accustomed to such grandeur. Never mind, she would grow accustomed to it! Only a guttersnipe went barefoot.

  Followed by the slave, who padded silently behind her carrying the chest, she returned to the wharf. Saankh-Wen was now sitting on a folding stool on the deck of the princess’ barge, staring apathetically at the cooks moving about on the attendant kitchen boat, which was moored nearby. Mara glanced up, shading her eyes.

  “Let down a ladder, please.”

  He turned toward her, then leaned over the gunwale, his sleepiness gone. “You’re the interpreter?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Yes.”

  “The same one?”

  “Of course. I identified myself not half an hour since.”

  “Aye. Aye.” His thick lips curled in a smirk. “But you look different now.”

  “Indeed?” Mara gave him a perfunctory smile, careful neither to offend nor encourage him. She did not wish him to remember her longer than was strictly necessary. “Will you let down the ladder?” she repeated.

  He hastened to obey. When she stood beside him on the deck, her head held high, her eyes cool, he stopped gaping and became more respectful. “The princess and her train will return soon. You’re to wait in there. I’ll stow your chest.”

  “Very well.”

  As the slave woman walked across the wharf and out of her life as silently as she had come into it, Mara made her way to the pillared pavilion which occupied most of the deck space of the barge. There was space on each side for twelve oarsmen, but there was neither mast nor sail, and the captain’s cabin had been removed in order to enlarge the quarters occupied by Inanni and her women. Mara pushed aside one of the hanging carpets that formed the pavilion’s walls, and stepped in. The first thing she did was to kick off the unaccustomed sandals. Then, comfortably barefoot, she began to loo
k about her.

  Dazzled by the sunlight outside, she could not at first distinguish one object from another in the shadowed interior. But as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom she began to make out couches and low tables, clothing boxes and all the feminine hodgepodge of trinkets, mirrors, jewelry, and scents necessary to an entourage of a dozen women. The better she could see all this, the more astonished she became. She stepped quietly about the place, examining with curiosity and not a little revulsion the strange possessions of these barbarians. How different they were from anything Egyptian! The jewelry was crude and tasteless, the boxes uncarved, and the scattered clothing so vulgar in its gaudy colors that Mara’s civilized Egyptian nose wrinkled disdainfully. All clothing should be white. In Egypt, even a slave knew that much.

  Except for the furniture, which like the barge had been built in Thebes, there was nothing in the pavilion which looked as if it might have any connection with a high-born princess.

  Princess! scoffed Mara inwardly. Probably some shepherd’s daughter, whose father bullied a few neighbors into calling him king.

  Turning her back on the untidy room, she stretched full length on one of the couches and fell to wondering what life might be like in pharaoh’s palace.

  She had not long to wait before the cries of a runner, “Abrek! Abrek!”—“Take care, take heart to thyself!”—warned her that the train of the princess was approaching. Hastily groping for her sandals, Mara listened as the hubbub reached the water’s edge. Saankh-Wen barked an order, evidently for the bearers to set down the litters and allow the women to emerge, for in a moment the air was filled with the sibilant mumble of Babylonian. As the women filed on board, it sounded as if a hundred great bumblebees had been loosed on deck.

  Mara rose, and walking to the carpet wall of the pavilion, pushed a hanging aside and stepped out. She found herself face to face with the Canaanite princess.

  At first glimpse, Mara could not help smiling. Inanni was overfed and dumpy, with untidy brown curls clinging damply to her forehead and escaping here and there from the long shawl she wore over her head. Half smothered and sweating in her bulky woolen draperies, which swathed her from head to toe and were striped and embroidered all over in garish colors, she looked every inch the gawky barbarian. But her eyes moved Mara to sudden pity. They were enormous, timid, frightened dark eyes, and they stared at the Egyptian girl as they must have stared at countless strange faces and customs that had come up to bewilder her in this foreign land.

  “Who are you?” she whispered helplessly.

  “Your interpreter, Highness,” returned Mara in Babylonian, smiling more sympathetically this time, and dropping briefly to one knee.

  Inanni’s relief, at hearing a familiar tongue spoken by one of these arrogant Egyptians, was pathetic. She gave a great sigh of pleasure, and turned excitedly to the dozen gaudily clad and perspiring serving-women who huddled behind her. “It is an interpreter! She speaks Babylonian!” she cried, as if they could not hear for themselves. And at that all the plump faces lighted up, and those who understood Babylonian turned to explain the joyful news to those who spoke only their local dialects, and for a while nothing at all could be heard except their excited jabbering.

  At last, though, Inanni gestured them to silence and turned eagerly to Mara. “Oh, please,” she begged, “find out from that man there, who commands the ship, if we may leave this place soon and row on to Thebes! So long have we been on this river—so many, many tiresome days, and no one explains anything—and a week now we have been in the temple yonder, while the priests mumble strange things over us, and make us wash and wash and wash until we are like to drown! What is it all for? Are we never to leave off traveling and washing?”

  “Patience, my princess,” soothed Mara, stifling a grin. “I can answer your questions without talking to Saankh-Wen. Any foreigner journeying to pharaoh’s palace must undergo the ceremonies of purification. But it is over now. We leave immediately, and before another night and day we will moor in Thebes.”

  “Ah, thanks be to the beautiful Ishtar! Thanks to Baal in his temple! Come, let us go in out of the sun, I am like to die of heat!”

  Still chattering like a congregation of peahens, the women swarmed inside, and safe now from masculine eyes, began to shed their thick shawls and scarves and cloaks, and to fling themselves panting on couches.

  “I shall never grow used to this climate!” groaned the princess, running her hand through her sweat-dampened hair. “And I’m told that it is far hotter in the season of flood! How do you live under such a sun?”

  “We dress for it,” Mara pointed out in amusement. “We, too, would smother and gasp for air in those heavy woolens. We wear wool only at night, when the air is cold. You will find yourself more comfortable, my princess, when you possess an Egyptian wardrobe.”

  Inanni glanced at Mara’s bare shoulders and sheer narrow garment and blushed crimson. “Oh, I could never wear those things!” she gasped. “Shocking! My brothers told me this was a dangerous and wicked land, for all that the temples are paved with silver!”

  Mara laughed outright at this. “We are not wicked, only sensible. You may grow wise too, after a summer spent on the Nile!”

  She refrained from adding that it would also be well for Inanni and her women to grow thinner, both for coolness’ and fashion’s sake. The vision of these fat Syrians in the narrow Egyptian sheaths filled her with mirth.

  Almost at once they could hear Saankh-Wen’s bellowed orders and the bustle of casting off. In a short time the barge was maneuvered through the funereal traffic in the harbor, and as they picked up speed on the open river the cool north breeze began to drift through the pavilion. Most of the Syrians went gratefully to sleep, but for some time Inanni kept Mara busy with questions about Egypt, and the king, and the golden palace for which they were headed. Mara gave what answers she knew, and glibly invented the others. But finally the princess, too, dropped into uneasy slumber, and Mara rose and tiptoed out to the open deck. The fragrance of roasted meat from the attendant kitchen boat had warned her that noonday was near.

  Standing at the prow shading her eyes against Ra’s dazzling beams, she soon located the Silver Beetle standing off the west bank. As she watched, the broad sail rose rib by rib, like a gigantic fin, and the vessel moved into the middle of the stream. The closer it came, the faster Mara’s heart pounded. She searched its trim decks, so familiar to her and yet somehow different and strange because she stood apart from them now; she spotted Nekonkh bellowing some order up into the rigging, and could almost feel the tug in her own body as the wind filled the sail.

  And at last she saw Sheftu, a still, sun-flooded figure with his face in shadow, leaning with that deceptive laziness near the great sweep at the stern. He gave no sign, nor did she, though for a moment they could almost have clasped hands over the narrow stretch of green water between them. Then slowly the distance widened as the Beetle gathered speed and drew ahead of the more ponderous barge.

  Not until the sail grew small in the distance did Mara turn back to the shadowy pavilion, feeling lonely and unreasonably depressed. Soon she would walk the gleaming pavements of the Golden House, pharaoh’s palace—but soon also she must face her second meeting with that new master.

  The war hawk is coming. It meant nothing to her, but no doubt it would to the granite-jawed one. Ah, gods of Egypt, what a little time Sheftu had to live!

  PART 3

  THE PALACE

  CHAPTER 7

  Royal Summons

  The Princess Inanni was in a sad state. After an entire Egyptian week—ten days—in the Golden House, she was still unable to conquer the awe and terror her new home inspired in her. She awoke, calling nervously for Mara, at the entrance of the first long-eyed Egyptian servant in the morning, and each evening had to be coaxed into the great golden, beast-headed couch that was her bed. The creature’s pink-ivory tongue and gleaming
teeth terrified her; she could not, could not get comfortable on the exquisitely carved ebony headrest which was so much cooler than her hot Syrian pillow. And in-between waking and sleeping there were further ordeals—the cold bath twice daily, senseless torture which Egyptians accepted as a matter of course; the vigorous massaging afterward, the forcing of combs through her tangled, hip-length hair, her vain attempts to master the art of eating with a spoon instead of the fingers.

  On top of all this, she had not yet so much as laid eyes on the queen, or on the young king she had traveled so far to marry. Her pride was outraged, she was in tears half a dozen times a day at this cavalier treatment—yet the magnificence of the palace so overawed her that she hardly dared touch the furnishings of her own apartments.

  Mara really felt sorry for her.

  She herself was drinking in the luxury as parched ground drinks the waters of the Nile. As Inanni’s closest companion—for the princess clung to her desperately as the one person who could and would explain away some of the countless bewilderments—she had actually been given a slave of her own, to bathe and dress her. She dined magnificently off roasted waterfowl and incredible pastries, she had shady gardens to walk in and fresh flowers for her hair and neck as many times a day as she desired.

  True, she still kicked off those bothersome sandals whenever she had a chance, and had to keep sharp watch over her tongue lest it slip into the vocabulary of the streets. One highly colored phrase would give her away instantly to the palace servants, most of whom were freeborn and as far above her in station as she pretended to be above them. Secretly she was a little in awe of them. It took self-control not to show it; it took gall to send them fetching and carrying as if she were some great lady.

  But gall Mara had, in plenty, and Inanni’s helpless confusion was not hers. She had been a slave in luxurious houses, as Inanni had not; only the scale of this grandeur and her own changed role were new to her. Also, she was a natural mimic blessed with a sense of humor and a cool nerve—which Inanni certainly was not—and her precarious life had made her as adaptable as a chameleon. How often had she stood, ready with comb or fresh linen, beside Zasha’s lady’s dressing table! Now she was the one who snapped her fingers for others to obey—and she had not forgotten a single haughty gesture. She took mischievous delight in using them all.