Djedef stared at the priest with a searching look, pervaded by hesitation. But then he shrugged his massive shoulders dismissively, as though taking the matter lightly. He called out to Sennefer, ordering him to draw shut the flap over the tent's entrance, adding that no person should be permitted to approach it. Sennefer carried out Djedef's commands, and when he departed, Djedef looked at the messenger.
“Give me what you have,” he demanded.
When the messenger was sure that they were alone in the tent, he lifted the black cowl from his head. Luxuriant black hair cascaded from under it, the locks falling over his shoulders in a flurry, painting a halo around a marvelous head. Then the messenger's hand reached toward his beard and pulled it off with a refined twist, as he opened his eyes that had been deliberately narrowed. A radiant face appeared, beaming a light through the air of the tent, along with the first rays that the sun sent forth over the desert's vastness outside.
Djedef ‘s heart flew about in his breast, as he exclaimed with a tremulous voice, “My Mistress, Meresankh!”
He rushed toward her like a panicked bird, and knelt at her feet, kissing the fringes of her loose-fitting robe. The princess fixed her gaze in front of her with a timid, bashful expression, while her lissome body trembled. All the while, she felt the young man's hot breath flowing through the fabric of her trousers, blowing upon her perfumed thighs. Then she stroked his head with her fingertips and whispered softly, ‘Arise,” and the young man stood up, his eyes flashing with a joyful, delighted light.
“Is this real, My Mistress? Is it true what I hear? And what I see?” he stammered.
She gazed upon him with a look of surrender as though saying to him, “You have overcome me totally, so I have come to you.”
“The gods of joy are singing all at once within me at this moment. Their songs have accompanied me through these months of torment and their sleepless nights. Their melodies have cleansed my heart of the bitterness of distress and shadows of despair. O Lord! Who would say that I'm the one whom yesterday life had scorned?”
The emotion showed on her face as she said in a shaking voice, like the cooing of a dove, “Did life truly treat you with scorn?”
As his eyes devoured the lips from which her speech had issued, he replied, “Yes, it treated me harshly, and I actually wished for death. The soul who craves death is that which has lost hope. I've never been a coward, My Mistress, so I remained loyal to my duty. Yet the sense of futile triviality tortured me.”
Then he added, “This and the melancholy weighed heavily upon me, and my eyes — were veiled with gloom.”
She sighed and rejoined, “I was fighting my pride, struggling with myself, for it tormented me always.”
“How cruel you were to me!”
“I was even cruder to myself,” she said. “I remember that day on the bank of the Nile. That day a strange unease kept filling my heart. Later I learned that my heart was fated to awake through your voice from its deep slumber. This fact, I discovered, left me split between the thrill of adventure and the fear of the unknown. Then I remembered your nobility and your self-confidence, so I rebelled. And whenever I cast my eyes upon you, I was harsh with myself, and with you, as well.”
Then he sighed, and said with yearning, “How I suffered for my vain delusions! Do you remember our second meeting, in His Majesty's palace? You scolded me violently and rebuked me severely. Just yesterday you wouldn't hear out my grievance, and left me without a word of goodbye. Do you know how much agony and pain I have endured? Alas! If only I had known what was to come! My most desolate times would have been my happiest. I pleaded to the gods over my torment. How they must have laughed at my ignorance!”
“And the gods witnessed my arrogance and were amused by my contempt,” she said, smiling. “Have you ever seen such a farce as ours before?”
“And when the farce is over, it is time to mourn. All I can think of is the precious time that has been lost to us!” he said.
Groaning regretfully, she said, “The blame is on my head.”
He regarded her tenderly. “I would sacrifice myself to protect you from all evil,” he said.
Smiling sweetly, she replied, “I think that time is being cruel to us today.”
He moaned sorrowfully and peered at her with downcast eyes. So she said as the spirit of hope spread through her being, “There is a long future, lit with hope, lying before us. Wish for life as you once wished for death.”
“Death shall never hold sway over my heart,” he said, with happiness and joy.
“Don't say this,” she said, putting a finger over his mouth.
But then he said, with an insane passion, “What can Death do to a heart that love has made immortal?”
“I shall stay in the palace — I shall not leave it,” she vowed, “until I hear the horn sound the tidings of your triumphant return!”
“Let us pray to the gods to shorten our separation!”
“Yes, I'll pray to Ptah, but in the palace, not here,” she said, “because we do not have enough time.”
As she replaced the cowl on her head, it pained him to see her pitch-black hair disappear once again beneath it.
“I hate to be parted from such a dear limb of my own body,” he said.
She looked at him, her eyes glinting with the light of love and expectation. Yet she imagined that his face was growing dark as his breast was pounding, and that his brow was shadowed by storm clouds. Disquiet conquered her as she asked him, “Of what are you thinking?”
“Prince Ipuwer,” he answered, tersely.
Laughing, she replied, “Hasn't what the gossips were saying about him some time ago yet reached you? How strange…. Nothing is hidden in Egypt, even the secrets of Pharaoh's palace. But you've learned only one thing, while you don't know others. The prince is a sublime person, of virtuous character. He spoke with me one day while we were alone, on the subject that had been announced. I apologized and said to him that I'd be comfortable to remain his friend. No doubt he felt disappointed, but then he smiled his magnanimous smile and told me, “I love truth and freedom — and I would hate to so demean such a noble soul as yours.’ “
Djedef said with exhilaration, “What a magnificent man!”
“Yes, he is decent, indeed.”
“Is there not one thing on our horizon that might call for pessimism?” Djedef stuttered. “I mean… I do fear Pharaoh!”
She lowered her eyes shyly. “My father would not be the first pharaoh to make one of his subjects a member of his own family.”
Her answer delighted him and her shyness intoxicated him.
He leaned toward her in painful passion, stretching his hand toward hers — when it was about to reattach the beard to her face — in fear that the gorgeous, luminous visage would vanish. She surrendered her hand to his, and her acquiescence was a bewitching act of sweetness. The young man knelt down again before her, kissing her hand with mad enchantment, as she said to him, “May all the gods be with you!”
Then, putting the false beard back on her chin, and pulling down on the cowl until its edge touched her eyebrows, she returned to her former guise as the crown prince's messenger. Before turning her back to him, she reached within her breast and withdrew the little beloved portrait that nature had made the spark for this beautiful infatuation, and gave it to him wordlessly. He took it with mad love and passion, kissing it with his mouth before burying it in his own breast in its original, familiar place. Then she flashed him a smile of goodbye, before — to make him laugh — giving him a military salute and marching, in soldierly fashion, outside.
The youth that she left reeling with delirium, his face beaming with the light of hope, was not the one she saw at her arrival — dejected, distracted, and confused. His love was aroused once more and revived after it had become lifeless. In that spectacular moment, fantasies of his heart's past visited his imagination — Nafa's lovely gallery; the lush green banks of the Nile; the band of pretty peasant girls. Then he remembered his sadness and despair, and wrapped himself once more in the pelt of patience before recalling the glowing promise that he perceived amidst the flood of despondent sorrow. The reality of life and love seemed to him like a river bearing water to a burgeoning garden, with flowers blooming and birds warbling from the sweetness that it brings. But should its springs dry up, the garden trellises would be bare, its beauty would wither — and it would be nothing more than an abandoned patch of desert.