“Karema then,” I said. “Well, how do you know that I tire of all this, Karema?”
“How could you do otherwise who are not a barbarian and who have Egypt in your heart, and Egypt’s fate and—” here she looked me straight in the eye’s, “Egypt’s Lady. Besides, I measure you by myself.”
“You at least should be happy, Karema, who are great and rich and beloved, and the wife of a King who is one of the best of men, and the mother of children.”
“Yes, Shabaka, I should be but I am not, for who can live on sweetmeats only, especially when they like what is sour? See now how strangely we are made. When I was a girl, the daughter of an Arab chief, well bred and well taught as it chanced, I tired of the hard life of the desert and the narrow minds about me, I who longed for wisdom and to know great men. Then I became the Cup of the holy Tanofir and wisdom was all about me, strange wisdom from another world, rough, sharp wisdom from Tanofir, and the quiet wisdom of the dead among whom I dwelt. I wearied of that also, Shabaka. I was beautiful and knew it and I longed to shine in a Court, to be admired among men, to be envied of women, to rule. My husband came my way. He was clever with a great heart. He was your friend and therefore I was sure that he must be loyal and true. He was, or might be, a king, as I knew, though he thought that I did not. I married him and the holy Tanofir laughed but he did not say me nay, and I became a queen. And now I wish sometimes that I were dead, or back holding the cup of the holy Tanofir with the wisdom of the heavens flowing round me and the soft darkness of the tombs about me. It seems that in this world we never can be content, Shabaka.”
“No, Karema, we only think that we should be if things were otherwise than they are. But how can I help you, Karema?”
“Least of all by going away and leaving me alone,” she answered with the tears starting to her eyes.
Looking at her, I began to think that the best thing I could do would be to go away and at once, but as ever she read my thought, shook her head and laughed.
“No, no, I have put on my yoke and will carry it to the end. Have I not two black children and a husband who is a hero, a wit and a mountebank in one, and a throne and more gold and crystal than I ever wish to see again even in a dream, and shall I not cling to these good things? If you went I should only be a little more unhappy than before, that is all. Not for my sake do I ask you to stay, but for your own.”
“How for my own, Karema? I have done all that I can do here. I have built the army afresh from cook-boys to generals. Bes needs me no longer who has you, his children and his country, and I die of weariness.”
“You can stop to make use of that army you have built afresh, Shabaka.”
“Against whom? There are none to fight.”
“Against the Great King of the East. Listen. My gift of vision has grown strong and clear of late. Only to-day I have seen a meeting between Pharaoh, the holy Tanofir and the lady Amada. They were all disturbed, I know not at what, and the end of it was that Amada wrote in a roll and gave the writing to messengers, who I think even now are speeding southward — to you, Shabaka. Nay, do not look doubtfully on me, it is true.”
“Then you did well to tell me, Karema, for within a moon of this day I should have been where perhaps no messengers would have found me. Now I will wait and let it be your part to prepare the mind of Bes. Do you think that he would give me an army to lead to Egypt, if there were need?”
She nodded and answered,
“He would do so for three reasons. The first is because he loves you, the second because he too wearies of Ethiopia and this rich, fat life of peace, and the third, because I shall tell him that he must.”
“Then why trouble to speak of the other two?” I said laughing.
So I stayed on in the City of the Grasshopper, and busied myself with the questions of how to transport and feed a great army that must hold the field for six months or a year; also with the setting of hundreds of skilled men to the making of bows, arrows, swords and shields. Nor did Bes say me no in these matters. Indeed he helped them forward by issuing the orders as his own, wherein I saw the hand of Karema.
Three months went by and I began to think that Karema’s power had been at fault, or that her vision was one that came from her lips and not from her heart, to keep me in Ethiopia. But again she read my mind and smiled.
“Not so, Shabaka,” she said. “Those messengers have come to trouble and are detained by a petty tribe beyond our borders over some matter of a woman. Ten days ago the frontier guards marched to set them free.”
So again I waited and at length the messengers came, three of them Egyptians and three men of Ethiopia who dwelt in Egypt to learn its wisdom, reporting that as Karema had said, through the foolishness of a servant they had been held prisoner by an Arab chief and thus delayed. Then they delivered the writings which they had kept safe. One was from Pharaoh to the Karoon of Ethiopia; one from the holy Tanofir to Karema; and one from the lady Amada to myself.
With a trembling hand I broke the silk and seals and read. It ran thus:
“Shabaka, my Cousin,
“You departed from Egypt saying that never would you return unless
I, Amada the priestess, called you, and I told you that I should
never call. You said, moreover, that if you came at my call you
would demand me in guerdon, and I told you that never would I give
myself to you who was doubly sworn to Isis. Yet now I call and now
I say that if you come and conquer and I yet live, then, if you
still will it, I am yours. Thus stands the case: The Great King
advances upon Egypt with an army countless as the sands, nor can
Egypt hope to battle against him unaided and alone. He comes to
make of her a slave, to kill her children, to burn her temples, to
sack her cities and to defile her gods with blasphemies. Moreover
he comes to seize me and to drag me away to shame in his House of
Women.
“Therefore for the sake of the gods, for Egypt’s sake and for my
own, I pray you come and save us. Moreover I still love you,
Shabaka, yes, more a thousand times, then ever I did, though
whether you still love me I know not. For that love’s sake,
therefore, I am ready to break my vows to Isis and to dare her
vengeance, if she should desire to be avenged upon me who would
save her and her worship, praying that it may fall on my head and
not on yours. This will I do by the counsel of the holy Tanofir,
by command of Pharaoh, and with the consent of the high priests of
Egypt.
“Now I, Amada, have written. Choose, Shabaka, beloved of my heart.”
Such was the letter that caused my head to swim and set my soul on fire. Still I said nothing, but thrust it into my robe and waited. Presently Bes, who had been reading in his roll, looked up and spoke, saying,
“Are you minded to see arrows fly and swords shine in war, Brother? If so, here is opportunity. Pharaoh writes to me above his own seal, seeking an alliance between Egypt and Ethiopia. He says that the King of kings invades him and that if he conquers Egypt he has sworn to travel on and conquer Ethiopia also, since he learns that it is now ruled by a certain dwarf who once stole his White Signet, and by a certain Egyptian who once killed his Satrap, Idernes.”