few days had passed after the incident while hunting when Pharaoh received his heir apparent, among whose close cohorts was Djedef son of Bisharu. This was a more delightful surprise than anything for which the inspector's son had dared hope or dream. Nonetheless, he walked behind Prince Khafra with a heart steadied by surpassing courage, traversing the long corridors with their towering columns and colossal guards, until they appeared before him whose majesty made heads turn away.
Reclining on the throne, the king did not display his now-advanced age except with a few white hairs thrusting out from beneath the double crown of Egypt, and the slight withering of his cheeks. There was also a change in the look of his eyes, shifting away from the sharpness of power and coercion to the contemplation of wisdom and knowledge.
The prince kissed his great father's hand. “Here, my lord,” he said, “is the brave officer, Djedef son of Bisharu, whose astounding courage saved my life from the claws of certain death. He has come before you as your sacred will desired.”
Pharaoh leaned forward to offer him his hand, and the youth kissed it, kneeling in deep religious respect. “By your valor, O Officer,” Khufu said to him, “you have merited my satisfaction.”
“My lord, Your Majesty,” Djedef said, with a tremulous voice, “as one of the king's soldiers I know of no higher goal than to sacrifice my life for the sake of the throne, and my homeland.”
Here Prince Khafra intervened. “I beg my lord the King's permission to appoint this officer chief of my guards.”
The young man's eyes widened — he was caught completely unawares. The king answered the prince by asking Djedef, “How old are you, Officer?”
“Twenty years old, Your Majesty,” he replied.
Khafra saw the reason for Pharaoh's question. “Long life, wisdom, and knowledge are virtues befitting the priests, O lord,” he said. “As for the intrepid warrior, he disdains the limitations of age.”
“Whatever you want is yours, Khafra,” said the king, smiling. “You are my heir apparent: I cannot deny your wish.”
Djedef threw himself down at Pharaoh's feet and kissed his curved staff. At this, Khufu said to him, “I congratulate you for his Pharaonic Highness Prince Khafra's confidence in you, O Commander Djedef son of Bisharu.”
Djedef swore an oath of loyalty to the king, and the audience ended. The young man left Pharaoh's palace as one of the commanders of the Egyptian army.
This was a day of unparalleled joy in the house of Bisharu, as Nafa told Djedef, “My prophecy came true. Let me paint you in your commander's uniform.”
But Bisharu interrupted him with his coarse voice, now even thicker after the loss of four teeth. “Your prediction didn't produce Djedef,” he declared, “rather, it was his father's firmness, in that the gods fated him to be the son of a father among those who are close to Pharaoh.”
Zaya never laughed or cried as she did on that ecstatic day. Her thoughts drifted back to the darkness of the distant past, enfolded in twenty years gone by. She remembered the tiny infant whose birth gave rise to perilous prophecies, stirring a small war in which his true father had fallen victim: Oh, what memories!
When Djedef withdrew unto himself that evening, he fell into a peculiar mood of grief and apprehension, as though in reaction to the transcendent joy that had overfilled the whole day. Yet there were other reasons for it that did not cease to gnaw at his heart, as flame consumes chaff. He stared at the stars in the heavens through his window and sighed, “You alone, O stars,” he thought, “know that the heart of Djedef- the happy commander — is more intensely gloomy than the darkness in whose immortal depths you dwell.”
24
The following day, Djedef took his glorious position as chief of the heir apparent's guards. The prince had improved things by transferring the senior officers of his guard to different formations in the army, replacing them — with others. The men received their new head with hospitality, respect, and awe, and he had hardly settled in the commander's chair in his new chamber when Officer Sennefer asked his permission to enter. Djedef granted it and the man came in, his face flushed, giving Djedef a military salute.
“O Chief,” said Sennefer, “my heart was not satisfied with just the usual official congratulations, so I sought you out, so that I might tell you personally of my admiration and affection for you.”
Djedef smiled fondly at him as he replied gently, “I appreciate these noble feelings fully, but I've done nothing to deserve your thanks.”
Moved, Sennefer said, “Perhaps this, my friend, will console me for the loss of your treasured companionship.”
“Our comradeship will not end,” the young man rejoined, still smiling, “because I intended from the first moment to make you my deputy.”
Joyfully, Sennefer declared, “I will not leave your side, O Leader, in good times or bad.”
Several days later, Djedef was invited to a meeting with the crown prince — for the first time — as the chief of his guards. And it was the first time that he would be alone with Khafra, observing up close the grimness of his expression and the severity of his features.
As a matter of habit, the prince went straight to his main point immediately. “I am announcing to you now, O Commander,” he said with purpose, “that you are summoned, along with the leaders of the army and governors of the provinces, to a meeting hosted by His Majesty the King, for consultation about Mt. Sinai. The order has been given that we will fight the tribes of Sinai. After long hesitation, the will to plunge into the hardships of war has at last been fortified. Egypt will once more see her sons massing — not to build another pyramid — but to put paid to the desert nomads who threaten the safety of the Blessed Valley.”
Zealously, Djedef replied, “Permit me, Your Highness, to offer to your lofty dignity my congratulations for the success of your policy.”
The iron features smiled. “I am so enormously confident of your valor, O Djedef,” Khafra said, “that I'm keeping a pleasant surprise for you, that I will reveal to you after the declaration of war.”
Dj edef returned from his encounter with the prince in a light-hearted mood, asking himself what this pleasant surprise that Khafra promised him could be. True, the prince had raised him up in the blink of an eye from a minor officer to a mighty commander. So what other good news of glory and happiness could he be hiding? Does his fortune hold in store for him new reasons for pride and joy?
The day of the great meeting arrived. The commanders and governors of Upper and Lower Egypt all came, as Pharaoh's reception hall saw the chiefs of the nation on an equal footing, like the beads of a necklace, to the right of the unshakeable throne, and to its left. The governors sat in one row and the commanders in another, the princes and ministers taking their places behind the throne. The heir apparent sat in the center of the princes, while the priest Hemiunu occupied the same place among the ministers. Sitting at the head of the governors was Prince Ipuwer, while across from him sat Supreme Commander Arbu, chief of the military leadership, whose hair, like the king's, had now turned white.
The chief chamberlain of the palace proclaimed the arrival of His Pharaonic Majesty. Everyone present stood up; the commanders gave a military salute, and the governors and ministers bowed their heads in obeisance. Khufu sat down, granting permission to the others to take their seats. The king — wore a band of lion skin over his shoulders, so that all those who had not known it before, saw that Pharaoh had invited them for a council of war.
The meeting was short, but gravely decisive. Pharaoh was strong and vigorous, and his eyes regained their luster of old. He told the great men of his kingdom, in his overpowering voice that filled those who heard it with reverence and awe: “O governors and commanders, I have invited you because of a momentous matter, upon which hangs the safety of our country and the security of our faithful subjects. His Highness Prince Ipuwer, governor of Arsina, has informed me that the tribes of the Sinai continue to attack the outlying villages, and to threaten the caravans of the traders. Experience tells us that the police are not able to subdue them sufficiently to rid the country of their wickedness, for they lack the means to invade the strongholds by which these men are protected. The time has come to destroy these redoubts and to put down the rebels, to drive away their evil from our most
