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Updated: May 21, 2025
As I was handsome and sang well, a music master took me into his band, brought me to Thebes, and wherever there was a feast given in any great house, Beki was in request. Of flowers and money and tender looks I had a plentiful harvest; but I was proud and cold, and the misery of my people had made me bitter at an age when usually even bad liquor tastes of honey.
Called Coje Bequi by De Faria; or rather Khojah Beki, or Beghi: But most of the foreign names are so corruptly given that it is difficult to rectify them. Astl. I. 44. b. According to De Faria, this house was granted not without great difficulty, and was taken possession of by Correa with sixty men. Astl.
A few hours later Ameni sent to invite the Regent to breakfast. "Do you know who the witch Hekt is?" asked Ani. "Certainly how should I not know? She is the singer Beki the former enchantress of Thebes. May I ask what her communications were?" Ani thought it best not to confide the secret of Pentaur's birth to the high-priest, and answered evasively.
The old woman muttered a few unintelligible words; then she collected herself, stretched out her lean neck, and asked, as she fixed her sparkling eyes on the man before her: "Did'st thou ever, when thou wert young, hear of the singer Beki? Well, look at me, I am she." She laughed loud and hoarsely, and drew her tattered robe across her bosom, as if half ashamed of her unpleasing person.
Look at the flocks of doves fluttering around the ruins; they are seeking their cotes in vain. And the cat with her kittens yonder. Go and take them, Beki; it is our duty to save the sacred animals from starving to death."
She got up, and went towards the door, but the Regent called to her to stop, and asked: "Is Assa the father of your son, the little Nemu, the dwarf of the lady Katuti?" The witch laughed loudly. "Is the little wretch like Assa or like Beki? I picked him up like many other children." "But he is clever!" said Ani. "Ay-that he is. He has planned many a shrewd stroke, and is devoted to his mistress.
Trembling and with clenched teeth, but still mistress of herself, she let him come close to her, and then, calling him by his name: "Beki" in low, caressing tones, as soon as he recognized her, she laid her hand on his shaggy head to scratch his ears, as he loved it done. Paula and her companion were standing behind a column in the deepest shadow.
"Perhaps it is one of Nun's kindred, who has been forgotten," said Hornecht, and Bai eagerly added: "It is an interposition from the gods! Their sacred animals have pointed out the way by which I can render a service to the man to whom I am so much indebted. Try to get in, Beki, and bring the youth out."
She bowed before him with a demeanor that was more like the singer Beki than the sorceress Hekt, and begged him to take the only seat she possessed. When, with a wave of his hand, he declined to sit down, she said: "Yes yes be seated! then thou wilt not be seen from the valley, but be screened by the rocks close by. Why hast thou chosen this hour for thy visit?"
"I am no longer Beki, I am Hekt," said the old woman shortly. "As you will! In truth, if I had ever heard Beki's singing, I should be bound to still greater gratitude to her than I now am to Hekt," said Ani smiling. "Still, I cannot quit the wisest woman in Thebes without asking her one serious question. Is it given to you to read the future?
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