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“It tires me to fight you, my son. Perhaps you are right, and he isn’t your father. But suppose a greater god had fathered you?” She asked this wistfully as she lay there, the last bit of youth and hope flickering across her worn face; and Moses felt weighed down with pity for her and yet a little angry at such childishness. He was old enough to know that no god had sired him, if indeed—as Amon-Teph sometimes wondered—any god had ever sired a mortal man.
    He shook his head, looking at her gently and compassionately.
    â€œIs it because you are a man that you know everything now, my son? Or is it because you are a man that you have decided I am just a foolish woman who knows nothing of any consequence?”
    â€œPlease, my mother,” he begged her, “don’t accuse me of such things. If I am a man now, it’s because you gave me the means of manhood. And perhaps because I am a man, or the beginning of a man at least, I know now that there is a smell of something awful here—which I never knew before—and I don’t think that you and I, my mother, will ever sleep easily under the same roof as the God Ramses. I have been thinking that now it is time for us to leave this palace. I never asked you whether we have wealth of our own, but if we have even a little, we can go away. I have heard that Luxor in Upper Egypt is a good place to live, and it is such a distance that the God Ramses will forget us—”
    â€œHe doesn’t forget so easily,” Enekhas-Amon smiled, amused to hear her son, who only yesterday was a little boy, speaking with such grave and earnest conviction, “and I’m not at all sure that he would allow us to leave. He likes bothersome things to remain close at hand where he can watch them, and I think, Moses, that it is a little childish to talk of a smell of something awful here. This Great House is just what it is—a very large house. There are still some things you don’t understand—and that is my fault more than yours. As for wealth, you will be one of the richest men in Egypt, and I could hardly give you an accounting out of my poor memory of the copper mines, the gold mines, the herds of cattle and the fields of wheat that belong to me. I don’t think about them because they brought me little enough in the way of happiness—just as I don’t think of the ships that are mine that sail the great sea from end to end, bringing us the wealth of a hundred lands. Of all that, Amon-Teph has an accounting, and all of it will be yours. Don’t urge me to travel to places that are only fables to you, my son. I am a sick woman, and here I will die—and in not too long a time, I’m afraid. And yet I am not afraid. You are the only one I will leave with regret.”
    â€œDon’t talk like that, my mother!” Moses cried. “I wish my tongue had withered before I spoke to give you grief!”
    â€œBoy, boy,” she soothed him, “nothing you said gave me grief. My grief is all inside me, where it has always been. How can you understand, with your youth and health? Every day the pain in my head is worse—and only this morning, Seti urged me to let them open my skull so that the foul vapours can escape and give me some peace.”
    A look of bare terror came over Moses face and he fell on his knees before her couch, taking her hand and pressing it to his cheek, begging her, “No, no—please, my mother, don’t do it! Don’t let them! They will kill you just as they always kill with trepanning! Amon-Teph told me and he swore he would die before he let anyone open his skull! And he said that Seti isn’t a doctor, not a real doctor, but a puffed-up fool and a magician too! Don’t let them!”
    Enekhas-Amon was pleased rather than disturbed by this outburst; it helped her to know that the boy cared so deeply, for she was so uncertain and mistrustful of love that even