She soon grew weary of his talking and, as her thoughts wandered to the mysterious phial, she felt a yearning for the end. Her eyes scoured the spot where the litter had lain just a short while before. Her heart screamed out that she should end her life here and now. She decided to get rid of Benamun so she said, “What you are suggesting is wonderful, Benamun. Let me think for a while, alone.”
His face shining with joy and hope, the young man asked her, “Will I have to wait long?”
And she said, “You will not have to wait long, Benamun.”
He kissed her hand, rose to his feet, and left the room.
Shayth came in almost immediately after, just as Rhadopis was about to get up off her seat, but before the slave could say a word, Rhadopis ordered her away again. “Fetch me a jug of beer,” she said, and was rid of her.
Shayth went back to the palace. Meanwhile, Benamun had strolled down to the pool and was resting on a seat by its edge. He was now in a state of rapture and delight, for hope was bringing nearer his goal of taking his beloved goddess to Ambus, far from the misfortune hanging over Abu. Then she would belong to him and he would find comfort with her. He prayed to the gods to come down to her in her loneliness and to inspire her toward the right decision and a felicitous outcome.
He could not bear to sit for long, and he stood up to walk leisurely round the pool. When he had completed the first lap he saw Shayth carrying a jug, making hurriedly for the room. His eyes followed her until she disappeared behind the door. He decided to sit down again and had only just done so when he heard a chilling scream ring out from inside the room. He leapt to his feet, his heart in his mouth, and raced over to the source of the commotion. He found Rhadopis sprawled on the floor in the center of the room, the slave girl kneeling by her side, bending over her, calling her, touching her cheeks, and checking her pulse. He rushed over to her, his legs trembling, panic and alarm clearly visible in his wide eyes. He knelt down next to Shayth and taking Rhadopis's hand between his own, he found it cold. She seemed like one asleep, save that her face was all pale, tinged with a gentle blueness. Her ghostly lips were slightly parted, and locks of her black hair lay disheveled on her breast and shoulders while others had tumbled onto the carpet. He felt his throat slowly parch, his breath unable to escape as he asked the slave in a hoarse voice, “What is wrong with her, Shayth? Why isn't she answering?”
The woman answered in a voice like a wail, “I do not know, sir.
“I found her when I entered the room just as you see her now. I called her but she did not respond. I ran over to her and shook her but she did not come to, and no sign of consciousness showed in her. O Lord, my lady. What is the matter with you? What has afflicted you to make you like this?”
Benamun did not utter a word, but looked long at the woman crumpled on the floor in terrible stillness. As his eyes looked about her they alighted on the fiendish phial beneath her right elbow, the stopper removed. He let out a sorrowful moan as his trembling fingers picked it up. All that remained inside — were a few drops clinging to the glass and as his eyes moved between the phial and the woman, the truth became clear. A shudder ran through his slender body that tore him all to shreds. He moaned in agony and the slave turned to him as he exclaimed in a panic-stricken voice, “O God, how terrible!”
Shayth fixed her eyes on him as she asked him in apprehension and alarm, “What is it that horrifies and disturbs you? Speak, man. I am almost out of my mind with confusion.”
He paid no attention to her, and addressing Rhadopis as if she could hear him and see him, he said, “Why have you taken your own life, why have you taken your own life, my lady?”
Shayth screamed and beat her breast with her hands, saying, “What are you saying? How do you know she has taken her own life?”
He threw the phial violently against the wall and it smashed into pieces, then he said in bewilderment and dismay, “Why did you annihilate yourself with this poison? Did you not promise me that you would seriously consider coming with me to Ambus, far away from the troubled South? Were you deceiving me so that you could put an end to your life?”
The slave looked at the shards of broken glass, all that remained of the phial, and said in disbelief, “Where did my lady obtain the poison?”
Shrugging his shoulders inconsolably, he said, “I brought it to her myself.”
She was filled with rage and screamed at him, “How could you do that, you wretch?”
“I did not realize that she wanted it so that she could kill herself with it. She deceived me, as she did just now.”
She turned away from him in dismay and burst into tears, and pored over the feet of her mistress, kissing them and — washing them — with her tears. The young man — was swamped — with desolation as he fixed his bulging eyes on Rhadopis's face, which was now shrouded in eternal stillness. He — wondered in his desolation how oblivion could apprehend such beauty as the sun never before had shone upon, and how such burning overflowing vitality could quiesce and don this pale and withered hide that would soon display signs of corruption. He longed to see her, if only for a fleeting moment, the breath of life restored to her, her graceful walk, a smile of joy beaming from her resplendent face, an expression of love and seduction. Then he could die and it would be his last memory of this world.
Shayth's wailing irritated him intensely and he chided her, “Cease your racket!”
He gestured to his heart and continued, “Here is the place of noble grief. More noble than weeping and wailing.”
There still remained in the slave's heart the faintest glimmer of hope, and looking at the youth through her tears she implored him, “Is there no hope, sir? Perhaps it is just a severe faint.”
But in his grief-stricken voice he said, “Neither hope nor expectation shall bring her back. Rhadopis is dead. Love is dead. All my delusions are scattered asunder. Oh, how dreams and delusions toyed with me. Now, though, everything is over. Fearsome death has roused me from my slumber.”
The last rays of the sun slipped below the horizon, its blood-red face slowly disappearing in a glowing haze. Darkness crawled in, covering the universe in a raiment of mourning.
In her grief, Shayth had not forgotten her duty toward the corpse of her mistress. She was well aware that she would not be able to accord it the reverence and care it was due in Biga while all around her lady's enemies lurked, waiting to sate their revenge upon the body. She confided her fears in the young man whose heart was on fire right next to her. She asked him if the two of them might transport the body to the town of Ambus, and there deliver it into the hands of the embalmers and lay it to rest in the Besar family mausoleum. Benamun agreed with her suggestion, not only in his words but also in his heart. Shayth summoned some slave girls, and they brought in a litter. They placed the body on it and drew a sheet over it. The slaves carried the litter down to the green boat, which immediately set sail down river to the North.
The young man sat at the head of the body not far from Shayth, while a deep silence lay over the cabin. That sad night, as the boat was drawn slowly northwards by the choppy waters, Benamun strayed through distant vales of dreams: his life passed before his eyes, in images following fast upon the heels of one another, depicting his hopes and dreams, the pain and longing he had endured, and the happiness, felicitation, and joy that he had thought would one day be his lot in life. He sighed from the depths of his broken heart, his eyes fixed on the shrouded body upon which his hopes and dreams had been wrecked, scattered asunder, and dispersed, like sweet dreams put to flight when one awakes.