Free Moses by Howard Fast Page A

bracelet and belt to match. He bought a headband with a sphinx as a frontlet and a ring set with rubies.
    In regard to his mother, he learned for the first time how to purchase release from guilt. He bought her bouquets of the brightest flowers he could find, red and black and yellow poppies, Kushite nogus which were like huge white orchids, roses, and the magnificent lilies, pink and pale yellow, that were cultivated in the morass of the Delta. He selected the choicest fruit for her—the magnificent melons for which Lower Egypt was justly famous; sweet grapes; pomegranates, picked fresh on the plains of Sharon and brought at all speed in the Philistine galleys; apricots and luscious plums; and for sweets, he sought out the best golden wine molasses from Canaan and the honey that the bees made from the flower gardens of Crete.
    She had little enough appetite, and each time he brought her a gift, wine or fruit or flowers or a golden necklace, she scolded him petulantly and hinted that he was simply trying to make her forget all she heard about his carrying on with the sluts of the Great House.
    True enough, the attitude of his royal cousins who were female changed a good deal with his accolade of manhood. Now he was legitimate prey in a practical sense, and the single son of the God-King’s sister was no small match. But, more than that, Moses was an extraordinarily striking young man, and at the age of fourteen stood almost six feet in height—lean and hard. If, when judged alone, his bony face was hardly handsome, he nevertheless presented a strange and interesting contrast to his cousins.
    He had no inner drive for the conquest of women and no uncertainties about their liking for him. The sight of a lovely girl, her breasts round and firm above her transparent skirt, her lips and nipples rouged, pleased him, without any great excitement. He felt that someday he would see one who pleased him so that he would not be able to pass his days without her; but there was more than enough time for this.

[10]
    THERE WERE PARTS of the Great House where he had not been for years, and his exploration or re-exploration of odd corners was in good part an attempt to find again the golden, dreamy days of childhood, already so far in the past—as it seemed to him. One day, he stepped into a room, the door to which stood wide open, and which was open to the Nile on the opposite side. As the walls were coated with white lime, the room was filled with light. What had caught Moses’ eye was a line of wooden cubbyholes on one of the side walls, each opening containing a toll of papyrus; and as he entered the room, he saw against the opposite wall a large slanting desk of cedar, if desk it was, the lower and outer edge of its surface about four feet high, and then slanting back and upward to the wall.
    A man stood at this desk, leaning over a large sheet of papyrus that was tacked on to the cedar, and working slowly and carefully with a copper quill that he frequently dipped into an inkpot suspended from the cedar surface. Also hooked on to the edge of the board were an assortment of devices strange to Moses, rules and graded curves and triangles and T-squares, all of copper. It was the first time that Moses had ever seen a work easel.
    He had been there no more than a moment when the man, without turning from his work, said, “I imagine you are in the wrong place, Prince of Egypt.”
    â€œOh?” Did the man have eyes in the back of his head? “How do you know that I am a prince of Egypt?”
    â€œWho else enters unbidden and stays?” he answered caustically.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Moses hastened to say. “I didn’t know you were working and that I would disturb you. I didn’t know anyone was here. The door was open and I saw the rolls of papyrus.”
    Still without turning, the man snorted, “By all that is holy or unholy, what kind of a prince is this who answers politely and