Mara, Daughter of The Nile

In the morning, Sheftu’s servant, Irenamon, finds him sleeping beside a burning lamp, for he can no longer endure a darkened room. This is the gods’ punishment for robbing the pharaoh’s tomb. Upon waking, Sheftu hurls away the collar of blue lotuses that his servant put around his flagon of milk. Apologizing to Irenamon, he says he has had trouble with a maid, a “lily” who changed into a “cobra” in his hands. At the docks, he shares his suspicions about Mara with Nekonkh, but the captain can scarcely believe it. Bitterly, Sheftu tells her about the ring, guessing that Mara did not run away from her owner but was sold to another enslaver, an agent of the queen, who placed her as the Canaanite princess’s interpreter in order to serve as his spy. Although he has intuited the truth, he cannot understand why she has not yet turned them all in. Nekonkh suggests that she must have switched sides out of love. Sheftu scoffs and insists that Mara must be waiting cynically to see which side offers the greatest rewards. He proposes a test. At the Inn of