"Magnify the cowardice of the Rebu if you will, but it was Har-hat who made them afraid," he was saying.
The slow eyes of Rameses turned in the direction of the tacit challenge. Menes' black brows knitted at Siptah, but Kenkenes came to the rescue. A lyre, the inevitable instrument of ancient revels, was near him and he caught it up, sweeping his fingers strongly across the strings.
A momentary silence fell, broken at once by the applause of the peace-loving, who cried, "Sing for us, Kenkenes!"
He shook his head, smiling. "I did but test the harmony of the strings; harmony is grateful to mine ear."
Menes' lips twitched. "If harmony is here," he said with meaning, "you will find it in the instrument."
Again, a voice from the general conversation broke in—this time from
Rameses.
"Kenkenes hath outlasted an army of other singers. I knew him as such when mine uncles yet lived and my father was many moves from the throne. It was while we dwelt unroyally here in Memphis. They made thee sing in the temple, Kenkenes. Dost thou remember?"
"Aye," Ta-user took it up. "They made thee sing in the temple and it went sore against thee, Kenkenes. Most of the upper classes in the college here were hoarse or treble by turns, and the priests required thee by force from thy tutors because thou couldst sing. Thou wast a stubborn lad, as pretty as a mimosa and as surly as a caged lion. I can see thee now chanting, with a voice like a lark, and frowning like a very demon from Amenti!"
The princess laughed musically at her own narration and received the applause of the others with a serene countenance. She had repaid Kenkenes for his implied championship of her cause earlier in the evening.
"Art still as reluctant, Kenkenes?" the Lady Senci called to him.