The wife of Mena, who was fond of flowers, had soon learnt them all, and she taught willingly, for she loved children.
She soon had favorites among the children, and knew some as being industrious and careful, others as idle and heedless:
“Ay! ay!” she exclaimed, bending over a little half-naked maiden with great almond-shaped eyes. “You are mixing them all together. Your father, as you tell me, is at the war. Suppose, now, an arrow were to strike him, and this plant, which would hurt him, were laid on the burning wound instead of this other, which would do him good—that would be very sad.”
The child nodded her head, and looked her work through again. Nefert turned to a little idler, and said: “You are chattering again, and doing nothing, and yet your father is in the field. If he were ill now, and has no medicine, and if at night when he is asleep he dreams of you, and sees you sitting idle, he may say to himself: ‘Now I might get well, but my little girl at home does not love me, for she would rather sit with her hands in her lap than sort herbs for her sick father.’ ”
Then Nefert turned to a large group of the girls, who were sorting plants, and said: “Do you, children, know the origin of all these wholesome, healing herbs? The good Horus went out to fight against Seth, the murderer of his father, and the horrible enemy wounded Horus in the eye in the struggle; but the son of Osiris conquered, for good always conquers evil. But when Isis saw the bad wound, she pressed her son’s head to her bosom, and her heart was as sad as that of any poor human mother that holds her suffering child in her arms. And she thought: ‘How easy it is to give wounds, and how hard it is to heal them!’ and so she wept; one tear after another fell on the earth, and wherever they wetted the ground there sprang up a kindly healing plant.”
“Isis is good!” cried a little girl opposite to her. “Mother says Isis loves children when they are good.”
“Your mother is right,” replied Nefert. “Isis herself has her dear little son Horus; and every human being that dies, and that was good, becomes a child again, and the Goddess makes it her own, and takes it to her breast, and nurses it with her sister Nephthys till he grows up and can fight for his father.”
Nefert observed that while she spoke one of the women was crying. She went up to her, and learned that her husband and her son were both dead, the former in Syria, and the latter after his return to Egypt. “Poor soul!” said Nefert. “Now you will be very careful, that the wounds of others may be healed. I will tell you something more about Isis. She loved her husband Osiris dearly, as you did your dead husband, and I my husband Mena, but he fell a victim to the cunning of Seth, and she could not tell where to find the body that had been carried away, while you can visit your husband in his grave. Then Isis went through the land lamenting, and ah! what was to become of Egypt, which received all its fruitfulness from Osiris. The sacred Nile was dried up, and not a blade of verdure was green on its banks. The Goddess grieved over this beyond words, and one of her tears fell in the bed of the river, and immediately it began to rise. You know, of course, that each inundation arises from a tear of Isis. Thus a widow’s sorrow may bring blessing to millions of human beings.”
The woman had listened to her attentively, and when Nefert ceased speaking she said:
“But I have still three little brats of my son’s to feed, for his wife, who was a washerwoman, was eaten by a crocodile while she was at work. Poor folks must work for themselves, and not for others. If the princess did not pay us, I could not think of the wounds of the soldiers, who do not belong to me. I am no longer strong, and four mouths to fill—”
Nefert was shocked—as she often was in the course of her new duties—and begged Bent-Gnat to raise the wages of the woman.
“Willingly,” said the princess. “How could I beat down such an assistant. Come now with me into the kitchen. I am having some fruit packed for my father and brothers; there must be a box for Mena too.” Nefert followed her royal friend, found them packing in one case the golden dates of the oasis of Amon, and in another the dark dates of Nubia, the king’s favorite sort. “Let me pack them!” cried Nefert; she made the servants empty the box again, and re-arranged the various-colored dates in graceful patterns, with other fruits preserved in sugar.
Bent-Anat looked on, and when she had finished she took her hand. “Whatever your fingers have touched,” she exclaimed, “takes some pretty aspect. Give me that scrap of papyrus; I shall put it in the case, and write upon it:
“ ‘These were packed for king Rameses by his daughter’s clever helpmate, the wife of Mena.’ ”
After the mid-day rest the princess was called away, and Nefert remained for some hours alone with the work-women.
When the sun went down, and the busy crowd were about to leave, Nefert detained them, and said: “The Sun-bark is sinking behind the western hills; come, let us pray together for the king and for those we love in the field. Each of you think of her own: you children of your fathers, you women of your sons, and we wives of our distant husbands, and let us entreat Amon that they may return to us as certainly as the sun, which now leaves us, will rise again to-morrow morning.”
Nefert knelt down, and with her the women and the children.
When they rose, a little girl went up to Nefert, and said, pulling her dress: “Thou madest us kneel here yesterday, and already my mother is better, because I prayed for her.”
“No doubt,” said Nefert, stroking the child’s black hair.
She found Bent-Anat on the terrace meditatively gazing across to the Necropolis, which was fading into darkness before her eyes. She started when she heard the light footsteps of her friend.
“I am disturbing thee,” said Nefert, about to retire.
“No, stay,” said Bent-Anat. “I thank the Gods that I have you, for my heart is sad—pitifully sad.”
“I know where your thoughts were,” said Nefert softly. “Well?” asked the princess.
“With Pentaur.”
“I think of him—always of him,” replied the princess, “and nothing else occupies my heart. I am no longer myself. What I think I ought not to think, what I feel I ought not to feel, and yet, I cannot command it, and I think my heart would bleed to death if I tried to cut out those thoughts and feelings. I have behaved strangely, nay unbecomingly, and now that which is hard to endure is hanging over me, something strange-which will perhaps drive you from me back to your mother.”
“I will share everything with you,” cried Nefert. “What is going to happen? Are you then no longer the daughter of Rameses?”
“I showed myself to the people as a woman of the people,” answered Bent-Anat, “and I must take the consequences. Bek en Chunsu, the high-priest of Amon, has been with me, and I have had a long conversation with him. The worthy man is good to me, I know, and my father ordered me to follow his advice before any one’s. He showed me that I have erred deeply. In a state of uncleanness I went into one of the temples of the Necropolis, and after I had once been into the paraschites’ house and incurred Ameni’s displeasure, I did it a second time. They know over there all that took place at the festival. Now I must undergo purification, either with great solemnity at the hands of Ameni himself, before all the priests and nobles in the House of Seti, or by performing a pilgrimage to the Emerald-Hathor, under whose influence the precious stones are hewn from the rocks, metals dug out, and purified by fire. The Goddess shall purge me from my uncleanness as metal is purged from the dross. At a day’s journey and more from the mines, an abundant stream flows from ‘the holy mountain-Sinai,’ as it is called by the Mentut—and near it stands the sanctuary of the Goddess, in which priests grant purification. The journey is a long one, through the desert, and over the sea; But Bek en Chunsu advises me to venture it. Ameni, he says, is not amiably disposed towards me, because I infringed the ordinance which he values above all others. I must submit to double severity, he says, because the people look first to those of the highest rank;