Mara, Daughter of The Nile

For several days, Sheftu waits anxiously for the priest Djedet to give him word that all is ready. Meeting with Khofra, who now commands the queen’s bodyguards, he discusses Hatshepsut’s many failings as a ruler, including her obscenely expensive obelisks, which she is financing by diverting funds from the army. Both men have noticed the slow depletion of the military and even of the queen’s own bodyguards. Sheftu believes that the stony-faced Lord Nahereh, the brother of the architect Senmut, is behind these budget cuts. He shares his plan to poison the queen’s mind against Senmut by spreading rumors of the architect’s disloyalty. He reminds Khofra that Hatshepsut has often discarded her favorites in the past. Later that evening, Sheftu is approached by a bald priest who whispers the message he has been waiting for: “Tomorrow. The hour of the fifth mark” (156).

Lounging with Inanni in the palace gardens, Mara caresses the jeweled electrum ring that Sheftu gave her weeks ago to bribe her into Inanni’s service. She knows that Sheftu would probably kill her as a spy if he discovers that she still has the ring, but she finds herself unable to part with such a beautiful thing. Now, seeing Sheftu approach, she yanks the ring from her finger and hides it in her sash just in time. She leads Sheftu to an isolated summerhouse at the suggestion of Princess Inanni, who suspects that the two of them are lovers. Mara tells Sheftu of the new closeness between Inanni and the king, who overheard the princess praising his sketches of vases and soon gave one to her. However, she reports that the princess is still deeply homesick, and she implores Sheftu to let Inanni return to Canaan once Thutmose is in power. Just then, they hear two nobles approach, so they fall silent. The two men are gossiping about a serious quarrel between the queen and Senmut. Sheftu gloats that his campaign of rumors has begun to bear fruit. After they pass, Sheftu tells Mara that his tomb-robbing venture is set for the next day and should only take about two hours. Ignoring her protests, he tells her to meet him at the Inn of the Falcon afterward, at the mark of seven.

On the roof pavilion after dinner, Mara asks Princess Inanni why she left her alone with Sheftu in the garden. Inanni reveals that she knew the young lord wanted to talk to Mara, not to herself; moreover, she has known for some time that the king has no intention of marrying her and that there is some “great trouble” at the royal court in which she has been a pawn. She explains that she did not reveal her knowledge earlier because she did not want to add to Mara’s anguish. Mara feels humbled that the princess, whom she looked down upon, is actually more intelligent than she realized and has been pitying her. Guided by a sudden impulse of honesty, she tells Inanni that she is an enslaved woman who has been planted in her service by two powerful opponents who wish to spy on each other. Her dilemma, she says, is that she can free herself and become rich only by betraying Sheftu, whom she has come to love. Intuitively, Inanni suggests that Mara has also fallen in love with Sheftu’s cause, the insurgency of the young king Thutmose, who has shown himself to be strong, resourceful, wise, and—to Inanni herself—surprisingly kind. Inanni opines that Thutmose is a much better person than Hatshepsut. Mara does not deny this but protests that she has no reason to favor one royal over another; Thutmose, after all, has ordered his best friend Sheftu to risk his life and soul by robbing a tomb. Inanni tells her that “Egypt is not pharaoh” (170) and clarifies that Egypt consists of Mara herself and all the others who live there: laborers, enslaved people, fishermen, carpenters, and all their friends and families. She suggests that Mara might have trouble grasping this because she has never known a family or had friends. Inanni goes on to describe the wisdom of her father, a local king, who ensured that even the poorest of his people had enough to eat in times of famine; his nobles agreed to share their grain so that Canaan itself might survive. Mara has trouble relating this story to her own experience. Preparing to go to her meeting with Nahereh, Mara slips on her electrum ring for luck and tells Inanni that if all goes well, Thutmose will soon be in power and the princess will be free to return to her beloved Canaan.

At Nahereh’s house, Mara’s excuses fail to placate her “icy” master, and she realizes that her survival depends on offering him something that seems useful. Inventing a story about seeing a sketch by the king bearing the hieroglyph of an owl, she suggests that the rebels meet in a tavern named for the bird. However, to her dismay, Nahereh interprets this as a reference to the Inn of the Falcon, saying that she must have misread the hieroglyph. Praising her cleverness, Nahereh says that he will have the inn watched until the leader shows up, whereupon he will “snare” them all. Thinking fast, Mara offers to spy on the inn herself, claiming that she is bored with the palace. Her master agrees but gives her only three days to produce the leader, promising dire consequences for her failure. As Chandar marches her roughly to the door, Mara catches a glimpse of dancing balls in an adjoining room and realizes that the juggler Sahure is entertaining Nahereh’s guests. Luckily, he does not see her. Shocked and confused, Mara guesses that the slippery juggler must have told Nahereh about the Inn of the Falcon.

At a banquet honoring the governor of Kush, Sheftu waits for the mark of five, concealing his agitation. Adding to his worries, some of the guests saw him earlier in the company of Mara and tease him about his attraction to this insignificant woman. Alone with Count Kha-Kheper, a disaffected noble, Sheftu broaches taboo subjects: the depletion of Egypt’s armies and empire, the corruption of Lord Senmut, and the greed and fecklessness of Queen Hatshepsut herself. To Kha-Kheper, Sheftu whispers that he has legions of soldiers, priests, and even other nobles ready to rise up against the queen at his signal. Kha-Kheper allows that he would be open to a bribe—for the good of Egypt, of course. Minutes later, Sheftu slips out of the party unnoticed and rides his chariot to the City of the Dead. In the guise of a priest, he meets with his two diggers and the priest Djedet, and they begin the dangerous trek into the Valley of the Tombs under the hawk-like gaze of the valley’s guards. Djedet, the “second official” of the Necropolis, tries to get past the guards with a story that the tomb of Thutmose I has been desecrated, but one of the guards stubbornly insists on accompanying them. As they approach the tomb, Sheftu overpowers the guard. Hoping to spare his life, Sheftu orders him tied up, but the guard’s dogged resistance forces Sheftu to kill him. Laying his body on the back of their donkey, the four men wend their way by flickering torchlight to the tomb’s buried entrance.

Haunted by the gravity of what he has just done and of what he must do, Sheftu orders his diggers to break the royal seal on the tomb’s door. As Djedet whispers placating prayers to the god of death, Anubis, the party enters the utter darkness and stale, dry air of the habitation of the dead. Winding through narrow passages, they descend into the tomb. Sheftu is worried that the murdered guard’s comrades may soon come looking for him and feels a terrible urgency. Finally, the party locates the pharaoh’s burial chamber. Facing the golden splendors of this room, one of the diggers panics, and Sheftu must restrain him from smashing one of the ushabti (guardian statues) with a rock. The men fill their baskets with treasure, even obeying Thutmose’s command to strip his father’s mummy of its precious ornaments. As their lone torch smolders and threatens to die completely, Sheftu tries frantically to find the way out, groping through the “formless monster” of the pressing darkness. However, they have made little progress when the torch dies completely, plunging them into total darkness.

At the Inn of the Falcon, midnight approaches, and the regulars worry about the strange absence of Sheftu. The eyes of Miphtahyah, his nursemaid, are wet with tears. Mara, who has been waiting five hours for him and knows about his terrible mission, has begun to despair. The reassurances of Nekonkh fail to cheer her, and the insinuating queries of Sahure the juggler send her into a violent rage. Again, she wonders if Sahure might be a traitor. Then, with a cry of relief, she sees Sheftu enter the inn. Shakily, he tells her of his ordeal and admits that it was pure chance that allowed him to find the way out of the maze-like tomb. Confiding that he thought he would never see her again, he adds, “What a difference five hours can make in the way a man thinks!” (210) Passionately, they embrace. Kissing her full on the lips, Sheftu says he will “never” let her go and declares his love for her. She reminds him that he is a lord and she is an enslaved woman, but he asserts that none of that matters anymore after his five hours of terror in the dark. Insisting that he is serious about sharing his life with her, he clasps her hand—and feels the electrum ring on her finger. Horrified by her carelessness, Mara hastily makes excuses, saying that the man she intended to bribe let her keep the ring. Sheftu smiles and says smoothly that the “lucky” ring may have saved his life. Asking her to rendezvous with him the next evening, he departs, leaving Mara worried that his words are ironic and that she has forever lost his trust.