“Of that, your Highness, I can recall nothing, or very little,” then, doubtless remembering what she had just said to me, she made obeisance and passed from the chamber.
“She can tell falsehoods as sweetly as she does all else,” said Seti, when he had watched her go. “Oh! what a woman have we here, Ana. Perfect in beauty, perfect in courage, perfect in mind. Where are her faults, I wonder? Let it be your part to search them out, since I find none.”
“Ask them of Ki, O Prince. He is a very great magician, so great that perhaps his art may even avail to discover what a woman seeks to hide. Also you may remember that he gave you certain warnings before we journeyed to Goshen.”
“Yes—he told me that my life would be in danger, as certainly it was. There he was right. He told me also that I should see a woman whom I should come to love. There he was wrong. I have seen no such woman. Oh! I know well what is passing in your mind. Because I hold the lady Merapi to be beautiful and brave, you think that I love her. But it is not so. I love no woman, except, of course, her Highness. Ana, you judge me by yourself.”
“Ki said ‘come to love,’ Prince. There is yet time.”
“Not so, Ana. If one loves, one loves at once. Soon I shall be old and she will be fat and ugly, and how can one love then? Get well quickly, Ana, for I wish you to help me with my report to Pharaoh. I shall tell him that I think these Israelites are much oppressed and that he should make them amends and let them go.”
“What will Pharaoh say to that after they have just tried to kill his heir?”
“I think Pharaoh will be angry, and so will the people of Egypt, who do not reason well. He will not see that, believing what they do, Laban and his band were right to try to kill me who, however unwittingly, desecrated the sanctuary of their god. Had they done otherwise they would have been no good Hebrews, and for my part I cannot bear them malice. Yet all Egypt is afire about this business and cries out that the Israelites should be destroyed.”
“It seems to me, Prince, that whatever may be the case with Ki’s second prophecy, his third is in the way of fulfilment—namely that this journey to Goshen may cause you to risk your throne.”
He shrugged his shoulders and answered: