Mara, Daughter of The Nile

The next evening, Nekonkh supervises the loading of the Friend of the Wind with ordinary cargo. He worries that his workers have loaded the vessel unevenly, but Sheftu mocks his belief that the boat will actually sail. As the hour of eight passes and all remains quiet, Nekonkh’s faith in Mara appears to be vindicated, but to the captain’s horror, soldiers charge from the alleys to search the boat. Again, Nekonkh pleads to take Mara away rather than kill her, but Sheftu bitterly tells him to follow orders. As the two of them slip away to confront Mara, Nekonkh tries to reconcile himself to her death, reminding himself of her presumed cold-bloodedness. In an alley near the Inn of the Falcon, Mara sees them emerge from the darkness and shows no fear, only pleasure and mild surprise. Without preamble, Sheftu accuses her of betraying them, saying she greedily walked into their “trap.” Mara swears on her ka that she is innocent and claims that Sahure the juggler is the true traitor. Sheftu reveals that he knows she is the property of Hatshepsut’s men and has lied to him from the start.

He draws a knife to kill her, but instead of shrinking away, Mara throws herself at Sheftu and kisses him passionately on the mouth. Overcome by emotion, Sheftu drops his knife, then flings Mara into Nekonkh’s arms, telling him to take her out of Egypt forever. As Nekonkh tries awkwardly to comfort the weeping maiden, Sheftu darts off to warn his compatriots at the Inn of the Falcon. Mara confesses to the captain that she was indeed bought by Nahereh to spy on the king and his friends, but that, loving Sheftu, she has since switched sides completely. Nekonkh tells her that he will spirit her away to the island of Crete, where she may yet make a good life for herself. Fearfully, Mara asks him to peer around the corner of the alley to make sure the way is safe. When he returns, she is gone. Knowing that Sheftu may kill him if he does not recapture the “slippery maid,” Nekonkh begins a desperate search.

Mara dashes down an alley. She knows that she must find her master Nahereh and somehow learn whether he intends to raid the Inn of the Falcon, especially since he has found nothing on the Friend of the Wind. She knows that if Nahereh finds Sheftu there disguised as a scribe, the game will be up. Bursting into Nahereh’s house, she begs him for protection from the rebels, whom she claims have discovered her duplicity. However, Sahure the juggler steps out of the shadows and accuses Mara of consorting with the rebels at the Inn of the Falcon long before Nahereh sent her there as a spy. Both he and Nahereh accuse her of being a traitor and scoff at her claims that she did not report the story about the Friend of the Wind to Nahereh because she knew it was a trap. Now, Sahure tells Nahereh that a young scribe named Sashai is the link between the rebel leader and the plotters at the inn. With an icy calm that chills Mara’s blood, Sahure names and describes all the inn’s regulars. Calling his soldiers, Nahereh orders a raid on the Inn of the Falcon for that very night, hoping to capture Sashai and all of his comrades. He orders Mara to be confined to her chambers with a guard at the door, hinting that he will torture her later for more information. However, once she returns to the princess’s suite, Mara tells Inanni everything. The loving princess comes up with a plan to disguise Mara in Syrian clothes so that she can slip out of the palace and warn Sheftu and the others.

Mara and Inanni, thickly cloaked in gaudy Syrian “draperies,” emerge from the princess’s suite, fooling the guard. Minutes later, Inanni returns alone, and her weaver friend Sherimi smuggles Mara past the gate sentry by passing her off as a “new apprentice.” Running into Nekonkh on the way to the inn, Mara breathlessly tells him about the imminent raid. He is wary of her because she tricked him and abandoned him in the alley, so he hesitates until the clamor of approaching soldiers makes him leap into action. Pulling Mara into a boat, he fords the river. On the other side, Mara tells Nekonkh to warn everyone in the tavern to flee, vowing to wait for him—a promise she means to keep, for once. Soon, Nahereh’s men, including the vicious Chadzar, enter the Inn of the Falcon and find it deserted. However, they find Mara hiding in an alley. Having squandered her chance to escape, Mara unleashes her pent-up emotions in a loud, triumphant laugh. In a rage, Chadzar lashes her repeatedly with his whip.

Marched by Chadzar into the Golden House, hands tied behind her back, the dazed Mara finds herself in the wrathful presence of her master Nahereh and his brother, the architect Count Senmut. Suddenly, the angry queen, who has been roused from her sleep, enters. Count Senmut boasts that he, with “some help” from his brother, has “struck the death blow” (252) to Thutmose’s plot against her life. Although the movement’s leaders have slipped away, he reassures the queen that the treacherous spy, Mara, can identify them. Mara has a dire premonition that Hatshepsut and Senmut will destroy Egypt with their vanity and greed. The queen turns to Mara and offers to spare her life if she gives up the name of the rebel leader. Mara denies any knowledge of him despite Chadzar’s torture. Finally, fearing that Mara may die under the lash, Hatshepsut offers to free her from enslavement and reward her with gold in exchange for the leader’s name. When Mara refuses, Nahereh suggests another approach, saying his “informant” has told him that a certain scribe named Sashai, well-known to Mara, is the leader’s go-between. He accuses Mara of risking her neck to save this Sashai, but she counters that she did it to save others “like herself.” As the baffled Nahereh abuses her, Mara realizes the truth of Inanni’s insight; “Egypt” is not its rulers but its people. They are the ones for whom she has risked life and limb, for they are all her family. As the lash falls again and again on her shoulders, Mara tries a last gambit to save her life, telling the queen that Sashai is not a scribe but a stonecutter, short and stout, with a curled wig and a scar on his chin. However, Nahereh summons his spy, the juggler Sahure, who contradicts her story in every detail, describing Sashai as tall, lean, and unblemished. In a frenzy of rage, Hatshepsut orders Mara to be beaten. As the lash cuts repeatedly into her flesh, she loses consciousness.

Nuit, the star-covered goddess of the sky, looks down on nocturnal Egypt and its sleeping thousands. Idly, she watches the stealthy movements of a “scribe” (Sheftu) and a riverman (Nekonkh) as they meet with other shadowy figures in Thebes’s dark alleys. Eventually, the scribe goes off on his own and makes his way into the courtyard of a big walled villa. As Nuit’s attention moves on to other things, Sheftu enters his house and asks his servant Irenamon if any soldiers have come by. Irenamon says that all has been quiet, and Sheftu realizes that he has cruelly wronged the faithful Mara and perhaps even put her in mortal danger. As Nuit watches, Sheftu lashes his chariot through the city streets, stopping only to meet with Nekonkh, who then goes alone to the headquarters of the pharaoh’s bodyguard. Inside, Nekonkh tells the old General Khofra to rouse his troops and march on the royal palace at the mark of four, insisting that Sheftu’s life depends on it. Meanwhile, Nekonkh plans to summon the nobles, priests, and common folk who have sworn loyalty to Thutmose.

Within the palace, the savagely beaten Mara regains consciousness. As Nahereh and the queen threaten her with more violence, a gold-decked Sheftu strides confidently into the room. Mara sinks deeper into despair, knowing that the juggler Sahure will soon recognize him as the scribe Sashai. With lofty sarcasm, Sheftu mocks Senmut and Nahereh’s investigation into the so-called conspiracy, which has yielded no rebels, no intelligence, and nothing but a half-dead girl who knows nothing. Hatshepsut tells him that Mara has refused all bribes of freedom and riches, and Sheftu is genuinely surprised. At this point, the juggler Sahure tells Hatshepsut that he recognizes Sheftu as the scribe Sashai from the Inn of the Falcon. At first, angered by this accusation against one of her court favorites, Hatshepsut is soon convinced by Sahure’s evidence.

Sheftu confesses but contrives to implicate Senmut at the same time, falsely claiming that they planned it all together. Enraged, Senmut leaps at him with a knife, and after a brief struggle, Sheftu stabs the master architect to death. Upon being sentenced to die, Sheftu warns the queen that her own hours are numbered, for her enemies are everywhere. Momentarily aghast, the queen offers Sheftu all the titles and properties of the late Senmut, plus any treasure he desires, if he returns to her side. In response, he goes to Mara and whispers that his comrades are late in coming and that all may be lost. When Hatshepsut asks him mockingly if Mara is his “treasure,” he replies that she is “the greatest treasure in Egypt—a maid whose loyalty cannot be bought” (271). Having discovered his weakness, Hatshepsut orders Mara to be beaten to death in front of him unless he reveals every detail of the conspiracy. As Sheftu struggles desperately with the guards who hold him back, Chadzar begins whipping the half-dead Mara with renewed vigor. Just then, Khofra’s soldiers storm into the room. Nahereh is slain, and Hatshepsut and the fleeing Sahure are apprehended. Nekonkh swaddles Mara in his cloak just as she slips into oblivion. When she awakens, the room is lined with Thutmose’s soldiers, and the king himself presents Hatshepsut with a golden cup of poison so that she may die by her own hand. Stoutly boasting that her own glory will live on through her magnificent works, Hatshepsut goes into an adjoining room to drink the poison. Placing a massive gold chain around Mara’s neck, Thutmose honors her as the one who “saved” Egypt and himself and orders her to keep her shoulders bare henceforth to display the scars from Chadzar’s whip, which are “medals of gallantry greater than any [he] could bestow” (275).

As Sheftu leads Mara away, she asks him if she can share the news with Princess Inanni and tell her that she is free to return to Canaan. Sheftu promises that this will happen but says that he must take Mara home to his villa on the street of sycamores, where she will live the rest of her life as his countess. Settling onto the luxurious cushions of a canopied litter borne by four Nubians, Mara feels that she has finally achieved her destiny. Sheftu teases her about her new status, joking that a “countess-guttersnipe” is far more interesting than a “lady born.” Thinking of the life she left behind in Menfe, Mara asks Sheftu to buy and free Teta, the enslaved older woman who served with her under Zasha. He replies that freeing an enslaved person will be easy now that they have “freed a king” (279). As the litter passes through the gates of Sheftu’s lavish villa, cheering Thebans throng the streets, celebrating the ascension of King Thutmose III. Sinking toward the west, even the sleepy sky goddess Nuit notices that “a new day [has] dawned for the land of Egypt” (279).