Katuti took the roll from his hand, read it through, and then returned it.
“The troops you equipped have conquered the allied armies of the Ethiopians,” she said gravely, “and are bringing their prince in fetters to Thebes, with endless treasure, and ten thousand prisoners! The Gods be praised!”
“And above all things I thank the Gods that my general Scheschenk—my foster-brother and friend—is returning well and unwounded from the war. I think, Katuti, that the figures in our dreams are this day taking forms of flesh and blood!”
“They are growing to the stature of heroes!” cried the widow. “And you yourself, my lord, have been stirred by the breath of the Divinity. You walk like the worthy son of Ra, the Courage of Menth beams in your eyes, and you smile like the victorious Horus.”
“Patience, patience my friend,” said Ani, moderating the eagerness of the widow; “now, more than ever, we must cling to my principle of over-estimating the strength of our opponents, and underrating our own. Nothing has succeeded on which I had counted, and on the contrary many things have justified my fears that they would fail. The beginning of the end is hardly dawning on us.”
“But successes, like misfortunes, never come singly,” replied Katuti.
“I agree with you,” said Ani. “The events of life seem to me to fall in groups. Every misfortune brings its fellow with it—like every piece of luck. Can you tell me of a second success?”
“Women win no battles,” said the widow smiling. “But they win allies, and I have gained a powerful one.”
“A God or an army?” asked Ani.
“Something between the two,” she replied. “Paaker, the king’s chief pioneer, has joined us;” and she briefly related to Ani the history of her nephew’s love and hatred.
Ani listened in silence; then he said with an expression of much disquiet and anxiety:
“This man is a follower of Rameses, and must shortly return to him. Many may guess at our projects, but every additional person who knows them may be come a traitor. You are urging me, forcing me, forward too soon. A thousand well-prepared enemies are less dangerous than one untrustworthy ally—”
“Paaker is secured to us,” replied Katuti positively. “Who will answer for him?” asked Ani.
“His life shall be in your hand,” replied Katuti gravely. “My shrewd little dwarf Nemu knows that he has committed some secret crime, which the law punishes by death.”
The Regent’s countenance cleared.
“That alters the matter,” he said with satisfaction. “Has he committed a murder?”
“No,” said Katuti, “but Nemu has sworn to reveal to you alone all that he knows. He is wholly devoted to us.”
“Well and good,” said Ani thoughtfully, “but he too is imprudent—much too imprudent. You are like a rider, who to win a wager urges his horse to leap over spears. If he falls on the points, it is he that suffers; you let him lie there, and go on your way.”
“Or are impaled at the same time as the noble horse,” said Katuti gravely. “You have more to win, and at the same time more to lose than we; but the meanest clings to life; and I must tell you, Ani, that I work for you, not to win any thing through your success, but because you are as dear to me as a brother, and because I see in you the embodiment of my father’s claims which have been trampled on.”
Ani gave her his hand and asked:
“Did you also as my friend speak to Bent-Anat? Do I interpret your silence rightly?”
Katuti sadly shook her head; but Ani went on: “Yesterday that would have decided me to give her up; but to-day my courage has risen, and if the Hathors be my friends I may yet win her.”
With these words he went in advance of the widow into the hall, where Paaker was still walking uneasily up and down.
The pioneer bowed low before the Regent, who returned the greeting with a half-haughty, half-familiar wave of the hand, and when he had seated himself in an arm-chair politely addressed Paaker as the son of a friend, and a relation of his family.
“All the world,” he said, “speaks of your reckless courage. Men like you are rare; I have none such attached to me. I wish you stood nearer to me; but Rameses will not part with you, although—although—In point of fact your office has two aspects; it requires the daring of a soldier, and the dexterity of a scribe. No one denies that you have the first, but the second—the sword and the reed-pen are very different weapons, one requires supple fingers, the other a sturdy fist. The king used to complain of your reports—is he better satisfied with them now?”
“I hope so,” replied the Mohar; “my brother Horus is a practised writer, and accompanies me in my journeys.”
“That is well,” said Ani. “If I had the management of affairs I should treble your staff, and give you four—five—six scribes under you, who should be entirely at your command, and to whom you could give the materials for the reports to be sent out. Your office demands that you should be both brave and circumspect; these characteristics are rarely united; but there are scriveners by hundreds in the temples.”
“So it seems to me,” said Paaker.
Ani looked down meditatively, and continued—“Rameses is fond of comparing you with your father. That is unfair, for he—who is now with the justified—was without an equal; at once the bravest of heroes and the most skilful of scribes. You are judged unjustly; and it grieves me all the more that you belong, through your mother, to my poor but royal house. We will see whether I cannot succeed in putting you in the right place. For the present you are required in Syria almost as soon as you have got home. You have shown that you are a man who does not fear death, and who can render good service, and you might now enjoy your wealth in peace with your wife.”
“I am alone,” said Paaker.
“Then, if you come home again, let Katuti seek you out the prettiest wife in Egypt,” said the Regent smiling. “She sees herself every day in her mirror, and must be a connoisseur in the charms of women.”
Ani rose with these words, bowed to Paaker with studied friendliness, gave his hand to Katuti, and said as he left the hall:
“Send me to-day the—the handkerchief—by the dwarf Nemu.”
When he was already in the garden, he turned once more and said to Paaker
“Some friends are supping with me to-day; pray let me see you too.”
The pioneer bowed; he dimly perceived that he was entangled in invisible toils. Up to the present moment he had been proud of his devotion to his calling, of his duties as Mohar; and now he had discovered that the king, whose chain of honor hung round his neck, undervalued him, and perhaps only suffered him to fill his arduous and dangerous post for the sake of his father, while he, notwithstanding the temptations offered him in Thebes by his wealth, had accepted it willingly and disinterestedly. He knew that his skill with the pen was small, but that was no reason why he should be despised; often had he wished that he could reconstitute his office exactly as Ani had suggested, but his petition to be allowed a secretary had been rejected by Rameses. What he spied out, he was told was to be kept secret, and no one could be responsible for the secrecy of another.
As his brother Horus grew up, he had followed him as his obedient assistant, even after he had married a wife, who, with her child, remained in Thebes under the care of Setchem.
He was now filling Paaker’s place in Syria during his absence; badly enough, as the pioneer thought, and yet not without credit; for the fellow knew how to write smooth words with a graceful pen.
Paaker, accustomed to solitude, became absorbed in thought,