One report had it that the present Pharaoh was a Syrian, born before Thi’s parents came down into Egypt.
It was hinted that Yakab the Chancellor was his true father. Had they not both the same extraordinarily attenuated figure? Did not both suffer from the same racking cough? Did not both speak with a marked lisp? Thi, the Queen-Mother, was almost stout; the late Pharaoh had been a corpulent man, in his youth possessed of unusual strength. The face was that of Thi, perhaps, but the body that of Yakab the Chancellor!
Yes, it was plain that Thi had done away with Pharaoh’s former wife, the Lady Hanit; that Menna and Thi had planned the murder of the true heir to the throne, the Lady Hanit’s son, in order that Yakab’s son, by Thi, might ascend the Egyptian throne.
Finally it was whispered that the murdered Prince still lived; that he had escaped from Menna, son of Menna, into whose baleful charge he had been placed.
All unwittingly, Ramses had been drawn into this maelstrom of palace intrigue. His name was frequently mentioned in connection with the probable succession to the throne.
The subject of a successor to the Horus Throne was one of great importance at this moment. Queen Noferith had borne the king but girls—“five little beams of Shu the sun-god” their royal father had playfully called them. And of these one had recently become the perfume of the heavenly lotus which the sun-god holds to his august face!
Pharaoh felt sure that Ramses himself knew nothing of these rumors. In many a bitter discussion with his mother and Menna the Overseer Pharaoh had frequently stated his conviction that Ramses would utterly condemn such traitorous thoughts should they ever come to his ears.
Pharaoh had loved Ramses like a brother. He had admired him as some superior being. For a time neither Menna’s craftily embellished reports nor Thi’s openly avowed hatred of Enana’s grandson could turn Pharaoh from his blind trust in the good faith of his boyhood’s hero.
Himself ever a sickly child, Pharaoh had sighed for his coming of age, that he might take the field with Ramses, and be himself a witness of the latter’s many deeds of valor.
For years had Pharaoh pictured himself in the famous Warbonnet of the Pharaohs, that bright blue headdress which Thothmes and a long line of heroic forebears had carried far into the ranks of their stricken foes and, with one exception, returned in safety to their acclaiming people. Yes, even King Sequenen’s horrible death, at the hands of the Hyksos invaders, was better far than his present life of inaction, a life varied only by tiresome harem plots, counterplots and the probabilities of a general religious or civil upheaval.