Pharaoh gave it to him and the lord chamberlain looked at it, as did Tahu. Then Sofkhatep returned the sandal to the king and said, “My intuition was correct, my lord. The sandal belongs to Rhadopis, the renowned courtesan of Biga.”
“Rhadopis,” exclaimed the king. “What a beautiful name. Who, I wonder, is she who is called it?”
A feeling of apprehension gripped Tahu's heart and his eyes twitched: “She is a dancer, my lord. She is known by all the people of the South.”
Pharaoh smiled. “Are we not of the South?” he said. “Truly the eyes of kings may pierce the veil of the farthest horizon and yet be blind to what goes on under their very noses.”
Tahu's perturbation increased and his face turned pale as he said, “She is the woman, my lord, upon whose door the men of Abu, Biga, and Bilaq have all knocked.”
Sofkhatep knew well the fears that gripped his friend's heart and with a sly and mysterious smile he said, “In any case she is a paragon of femininity, my lord. The gods have made her to bear witness to their miraculous abilities.”
The king looked from one man to the other and smiled, “By Lord Sothis, you two are the finest informed of all the South.”
“In her reception hall, my lord, thinkers, artists, and politicians gather,” said Sofkhatep softly.
“Truly, beauty is a bewitching master who allows us a daily glimpse into the miraculous. Is she the most beautiful woman you have ever set eyes on?”
Without pausing for a moment's thought Sofkhatep answered, “She is beauty itself, Your Majesty. She is an irresistible temptation, a desire that cannot be controlled. The philosopher Hof, who is one of her closest friends, has remarked quite correctly that the most dangerous thing a man can do in his life is to set eyes upon the face of Rhadopis.”
Tahu breathed a sigh of resignation, shot a quick glance at the lord chamberlain, — who understood his intention, and said, “Her beauty, Your Majesty, is of a cheap and devilish nature. She does not — withhold it from any — who ask.”
The king laughed aloud and said, “How the description of her intrigues me!”
“May the skies of Egypt rain down happiness and beauty upon my lord,” said Sofkhatep. His words took Pharaoh's mind back to the falcon, and the young king was overcome by an enchanting sensation compounded by the fine description he had heard, with its delicate dream-like texture of temptation. And as if talking to himself he wondered out loud, “Was that falcon right or wrong to chose us as its target?”
Tahu glanced furtively at his lord's face as the latter pored over the object in his hand. “It is nothing but a coincidence, my lord,” said the general. “The only thing that saddens me is to see that sullied sandal between the sacred hands of Your Majesty.”
Sofkhatep eyed his colleague with a sly self-satisfied look, then said calmly, “Coincidence? Why, the very word, my lord, is seriously overused. It is taken to imply blind stumbling into the unexpected, yet nevertheless is invariably employed to explain the happiest encounters and the most glorious catastrophes. Nothing is left in the hands of the gods except the rarest minimum of logical events. It cannot, however, be so, my lord, for every event in this world is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, contrived by the will of a god or gods, and it is not possible that the gods would create any event, however great or paltry, in vain or jest.”
Tahu was furious, and scarcely managing to stem the flood of insane anger that threatened to scatter his composure in the presence of the king, he said to Sofkhatep in a tone displaying censure and rebuke, “Do you, mighty Sofkhatep, wish to occupy the mind of my lord at this most auspicious hour, with such nonsense?”
“Life is seriousness and jest,” said Sofkhatep quietly, “just as the day contains light and darkness. It is a wise man who in times of seriousness does not remember those things that bring him pleasure, and does not spoil the purity of his pleasure with matters of gravity. Who knows, great general, perhaps the gods have known all along about His Majesty's love of beauty and have sent to him this sandal at the hands of this wondrous falcon.”
The king looked into their faces and, in an effort to bring some levity to the proceedings, said, “Will the two of you never agree for once? Be it as you wish, but in Tahu the younger man, I would have thought to find one inciting me to love, and in Sofkhatep the elder, one discouraging me from it. In any case, I feel I must incline to Sofkhatep's views on love, as I incline to Tahu's views on politics.”
As the king rose, the two men stood up. He looked at the vast garden as it bade farewell to the sun dipping over the western horizon.
“We have a hard night's work ahead of us,” he said as he started to walk away. “Until tomorrow, and we shall see.”
Pharaoh departed with the sandal in his hand and the two men bowed reverently.
They found themselves alone once again facing each other — Tahu with his tall stature, broad chest, and steel muscles; and Sofkhatep, fine and slender with his deep, clear eyes and his great, beautiful smile.
Each of them knew what was going through the other's mind. Sofkhatep smiled and Tahu's brow knit into a frown, for the general could not take his leave of the chamberlain without saying something to unburden his troubled mind: “You have betrayed me, Sofkhatep, friend, after you could not confront me face-to-face.”
Sofkhatep raised his eyebrows in denial and said, “How far your words are from the truth, General. What do I know of love? Do you not know that I am a fading old man, and that my grandson Seneb is a student at the university in On?”
“How easy it is for you to weave words, my friend, but the truth scoffs at that wise old tongue of yours. Was not your young heart once enamored of Rhadopis? Did it not grieve you that she gave to me that affection you did not win?”
The old man raised his hands in protest at the general's words saying, “Your imagination is not any smaller than the muscles on your right forearm, and the truth is, that if my heart ever once inclined to that courtesan, it was in the way of the wise who do not know greed.”
“Would it not have been more becoming of you if you had not beguiled His Majesty's mind with her beauty out of respect for me?”
Sofkhatep looked surprised, and he spoke with true regret and concern, “Is it true that you find the matter so serious or have you had enough of my jesting?”
“Neither one nor the other, sir, but it grieves me that we always differ.”
The lord chamberlain smiled, and said with his characteristic stoicism, “We shall always be bound by one unbreakable tie: loyalty to he who sits upon the throne.”
The palace of Biga
Pharaoh's cortege drew out of sight. The statues of the kings of the Sixth Dynasty were removed and the people pushed forward from both sides of the road to converge like waves, their breaths mingling, as if they were the sea parted by Moses pouring down upon the heads of his enemies. Rhadopis ordered her slaves to return to the barge. The flush of excitement that had engulfed her heart when Pharaoh appeared remained like a flame, pumping hot blood all through her body. He was just as she had imagined, a fresh young man with proud eyes, lithe figure, and sinewy well-defined muscles.
She had seen him before, on the day of the grand coronation a few months previously. He was standing in his chariot as he had today, tall and exceedingly handsome as he gazed into the distant horizon. That day she had wished, as she had wished today, that his eye might fall upon her.
She wondered why. Was it because she longed for her beauty to win the honor and esteem it deserved, or was it because she wanted deep down inside to see him as a human being, after having beheld him in all the sacredness of the gods, as one deserving of her worship? How would one ever understand such a longing, and did it really matter? For whatever its true nature, she wished it honestly, and she wished it with sincerity and great desire.
The courtesan remained absorbed in her reverie for a while, blissfully unaware of her small entourage struggling to make its way through the heaving crowd, and paying not the slightest attention to the thousands who, greedily and with great savoring, almost swallowed her up. She was carried onto her barge and stepped off the palanquin and into the cabin, where she sat down upon her small throne as if in a trance, hearing but not listening,
