The passing years brought beauty and strength as gifts to Den. Her hair shone like new copper, and her body was as slender as a young boy’s. She used to go on expeditions to far countries, searching for new animals and birds to bring back to Kam, just as my father had searched for plants and trees. She was the pride and the fear of the Master of Chariots, for if danger stretched out his hands towards her she laughed him into the shadows. She was beloved throughout the Two Lands, for whether she was with an old scholar or a young noble, a captain-of-captains or a hound-boy, she made each feel that he was her equal and that she had chosen him for her companion. Her anger was swift, but it was outpaced by her sympathy and her generosity.
One of her favourite companions was Horem-ka, son of the Vizier of Iss-an. He was a captain of the Royal Bodyguard, and except when he was in attendance on Pharaoh, he lived on his own estate, which was near to the Royal City. He was a strong man both in heart and in body. His skin was red-brown with the sun, and his hands had the broad palms of a warrior; his brows were level as the wings of a hawk, but his mouth was the friend of laughter.
Though there were many who loved her, when Den was nineteen she had still not chosen her husband.
One day news was brought that a lion, which was no longer swift enough to catch antelope, had taken a child from one of the villages, two days’ journey to the south of the Royal City. Den went with Neyah upon the lion hunt. And she returned, not in a chariot as she had set forth but in a curtained litter. The wheel of her chariot had broken while she was challenging for the quarry, and she had been thrown out and kicked on the head by a following horse.
For four days she lay as though she were dead. Only the faint beating of her heart showed that the silver cord was still unsevered. So slender was her hold on Earth, that it seemed that her spirit was like a bird that rustles its wings before its last flight. She breathed embalmed in sleep, and neither seer nor healer could stir her from this strange tranquillity.
Her body was quiet as a statue as I watched beside it. Then I heard someone come into the ante-room and the voice of Horem-ka demanding to see my daughter. The servants told him that he must not enter. But he swept them aside, and they parted before him as reeds bow before a great wind. The curtain of the doorway clattered on its rings as he pulled it back. The room was dark, except for the dim light of one alabaster lamp, and I think he never knew that I was there. He knelt beside Den and held her hand, calling her by the little soft names that lovers use. And his voice followed her to those far lands where her spirit wandered; and her spirit heard his voice, and she returned to her body. She opened her eyes for a moment and smiled at him, murmuring his name contentedly as a drowsy child. Then in the shelter of his arms she slept, no longer in sleep in the semblance of death, but to the refreshing of her body.
On the third day of the second month of the Harvest in the twenty-first year of my reign, Den and Horem-ka were united before the Gods.
As Horem-ka was not of the royal blood, he would not be Pharaoh, but only the Royal Husband, when Den came to the throne. Neyah announced him to be the first in the line of succession after Den, if she died before she bore an heir; for though Horem-ka had not the blood of Meniss in his veins, our tradition lived in his heart. He became the Royal Vizier, for Rey-hetep had grown weary of office, being seventy-six years of age. In the armies he ranked second only to Neyah, and in all save name he was the son of Pharaoh.
He and Den together had the strength of the two sides of a pylon, and they were balanced each to each like the two sides of the Scales. Now that Den had found peace, which the beloved dweller in her heart had brought to her, she was no longer impatient of the ways of wisdom, and she listened to the voice of her memory, from which her knowledge of people had been born. Ney-sey-ra gave her of his counsel, and in the voices of priests she found that joy that once she had found only in the swiftness of chariots.
With Horem-ka she travelled throughout Kam. They talked with the viziers, and they went among the people in the market-places; they talked with priests and temple counsellors, with vintagers and with women gathering in the harvests; so that our people knew that when the Crook and the Flail passed into her hands, they were the same ones that Neyah and I now held, and the contentment of their lives would be unbroken by our death.
Nearly two years after their marriage, a son was born to them and Den asked me to choose a name for him. And to my grandson I gave the name Seshet-ka, after him who was the son of my heart, though his body had been fashioned by Neyah and Sesket.