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"And not a moment since she swore that it was I who made her sun to move, and that Tuat itself were sweet so I were there." "O Ma ," the lady cried, threatening him with her fan. "Thou Defender of Truth, smite him!" Kenkenes laughed with delight. "Nay, nay, Nechutes!" he cried. "Thou dost betray thyself. Never would Ta-meri have said anything so bald.
With satisfaction in his manner Nechutes conducted his guest into a comfortably furnished tent, and showed him a mattress overlaid with sheeting of fine linen. "Shame that thou must defer this soft sleeping till the noisy and glaring hours of the day," Kenkenes observed as he fell on the bed.
"Where hast thou been?" he finally asked. "In the profoundest depths of trouble, Nechutes, nor have I come out therefrom." The cup-bearer's face showed compassion even in the dusk. "Nay, now; thine was but the fortune a multitude of lovers have suffered before thee," he said, with a contrite note in his deep voice. "It was even odds between us and I won. Hold it not against me, Kenkenes."
Meneptah turned his troubled eyes hurriedly toward the east. He must not miss the sunrise. At that moment, unheralded, the disk of the sun shot above the horizon as if blown from a crater of the under-world blurred, milky-white, without warmth. He turned away and faced Nechutes, bending before him; behind the cup-bearer, a stately stranger Kenkenes.
"Hold! He is not appointed of the prince. He was Meneptah's choice and his alone," Nechutes interrupted. "It is rumored that Rameses is not over-fond of him." "He will be put to it to hold his high place in the face of the prince's disfavor," Kenkenes cogitated. "Nay, but he presses the prince hard for generalship. It must be so, since he could win the king's good will over the protest of Rameses.
There he found that the queen and Seti, with all the queen's retinue, had departed on a pilgrimage to the temple of the sacred ram at Mendes for the welfare of the soul of Rameses. Masanath was in Pelusium mourning for her sister who died with the first-born. The others, Har-hat, Hotep, Nechutes, Menes, Seneferu, Kephren the mohar, all except the palace attendants had accompanied the king.
Nechutes and Menes, by united efforts, barely prevented him from doing self-murder. The earnest attempts of the priest to quiet him were totally useless. Nothing could have been more shocking. The violent scene wrought Masanath's already over-strained nerves to the highest pitch of distress.
Kenkenes immediately guessed why the cup-bearer was hurt, but the lady was innocent. He knew that he had but to speak to restore Nechutes to favor. Meanwhile the lady, amazed and deeply offended at the desertion of the cup-bearer, had turned her back on him. Kenkenes arose. Ta-meri sat up in alarm. "O, do not go. You have but this moment come," she said.
He wore a shenti of yellow, over it a kamis of white linen, a kerchief bound with a yellow cord about his head, and white sandals. He was the nephew of the king's cup-bearer, who had died without issue at Thebes during the past month. His elder brother had succeeded his father to a high office in the priesthood, but he, Nechutes, was a candidate for the honors of his dead uncle.
"And Siptah, she brought with her " the sculptor interrupted softly. Nechutes cast an expressive look at Kenkenes and went on. "And the courting hath begun." Silence fell, and the lady looked at the two young men with wonder in her eyes. "Nay, but that is interesting," Kenkenes admitted, recovering himself. "Tell me more."
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