“Then you think that when we go west we die indeed, and that Osiris is but another name for the sunset, Bakenkhonsu.”

The old Councillor shook his great head, and answered: 

“No.  If ever you should lose one whom you greatly love, take comfort, Prince, for I do not think that life ends with death.  Death is the nurse that puts it to sleep, no more, and in the morning it will wake again to travel through another day with those who have companioned it from the beginning.”

“Where do all the days lead it to at last, Bakenkhonsu?”

“Ask that of Ki; I do not know.”

“To Set with Ki, I am angered with him,” said the Prince, and went away.

“Not without reason, I think,” mused Bakenkhonsu, but when I asked him what he meant, he would not or could not tell me.

So the gloom deepened and the palace, which had been merry in its way, became sad.  None knew what was coming, but all knew that something was coming and stretched out their hands to strive to protect that which they loved best from the stroke of the warring gods.  In the case of Seti and Merapi this was their son, now a beautiful little lad who could run and prattle, one too of a strange health and vigour for a child of the inbred race of the Ramessids.  Never for a minute was this boy allowed to be out of the sight of one or other of his parents; indeed I saw little of Seti in those days and all our learned studies came to nothing, because he was ever concerned with Merapi in playing nurse to this son of his.

When Userti was told of it, she said in the hearing of a friend of mine: 

“Without a doubt that is because he trains his bastard to fill the throne of Egypt.”

But, alas! all that the little Seti was doomed to fill was a coffin.

It was a still, hot evening, so hot that Merapi had bid the nurse bring the child’s bed and set it between two pillars of the great portico.  There on the bed he slept, lovely as Horus the divine.  She sat by his side in a chair that had feet shaped like to those of an antelope.  Seti walked up and down the terrace beyond the portico leaning on my shoulder, and talking by snatches of this or that.  Occasionally as he passed he would stay for a while to make sure by the bright moonlight that all was well with Merapi and the child, as of late it had become a habit with him to do.  Then without speaking, for fear lest he should awake the boy, he would smile at Merapi, who sat there brooding, her head resting on her hand, and pass on.

The night was very still.  The palm leaves did not rustle, no jackals were stirring, and even the shrill-voiced insects had ceased their cries.  Moreover, the great city below was quiet as a home of the dead.  It was as though the presage of some advancing doom scared the world to silence.  For without doubt doom was in the air.  All felt it down to the nurse woman, who cowered close as she dared to the chair of her mistress, and even in that heat shivered from time to time.