Page:Wisdom's daughter; the life and love story of She-who-must-be-obeyed (IA wisdomsdaughterl00hagg 0).pdf/241

Rh Prophetess, he answered, bowing, it has protected me. It has lifted me up so that now, save for the King of kings, my master most august, he added with a sneer in every word, I am now the greatest one in the whole world. I give life, I decree death. I lift up, I cast down; satraps and councillors crawl about my feet; generals beg my favour; gold is showered upon me. Yea, I might build my house of gold. There is nought left for me to desire beneath the sun.

Except certain things to which, thanks to the cruelty of the King of kings, or those who went before him, you cannot attain? For example, children to inherit all this glory and all this gold, Bagoas, although you live among so many of those who might be mothers.

He heard, and his face, that I noted had grown thinner and more fierce since last I saw him, became like to that of the devil.

Prophetess, he hissed, surely you are one who knows how to pour acid into an open wound.

That thereby it may be cleansed, Bagoas.

Yet your words are true, he went on, unheeding. All this splendour, all this wealth and power I would give, and gladly, to be as my fathers were before me, gently bred but humbly owners of a patch of land between Thebes and Philae. There they sat for a score of generations with their women and their children. But where, thanks to the Persians, are my women and my children? In the western cliff yonder there is a sepulchre. In the chapel of that sepulchre above the coffins of those who lie beneath is an image of him who dug it. He lived some fourteen hundred years ago in the days of Aahmes, he who won back Egypt from the Hyksos kings, the invaders who held it as the