Eye of the Moon

by Dianne Hofmeyr

  “We’ll need donkeys to get beyond the cataracts,” Anoukhet said as she dabbed gently at his face. She seemed to be trying to make amends with Tuthmosis. “We can hire ourselves out to load goods that have to be transported upstream. No one will think to look for the prince of Thebes on a donkey!”

  A hubbub of shouts coming from the marketplace and a fearful drumming of boots against stone at the end of our alleyway silenced us. Each soldier carried a copper-bladed spear and shield. In their belts were axes and swords.

  “What’s happening?” Anoukhet asked a passerby.

  “Some Medjay rode in from the desert last night. They told of three felons who stole two camels and escaped after murdering their leader!” He spit in the sand. “That’s no loss! But there’re whispers that one of the felons is none other than Prince Tuthmosis, son of King Amenhotep.”

  “What?” I couldn’t resist. “I thought he’d died and his brother ruled in his place.”

  The man shook his head. “It’s said not. There’s a rumor of skulduggery.”

  “What sort of skulduggery?”

  The man drew the wedjat Eye of Horus in the dust and looked over his shoulder. Then he came closer and whispered. “No one knows the truth—Syene being so far from Thebes. The news we get is muddled. But they say there was a plot afoot to have him murdered.”

  “To have who murdered?”

  “Prince Tuthmosis. It’s said he didn’t die of natural causes. It’s said the high priests of Thebes were involved in the plot. They preferred the younger brother so they could mold him to their wishes.”

  Tuthmosis pulled his head scarf lower. “You can’t believe rumors.” But after the man left us, he scrambled up. “We can’t stay a moment longer. We have to move quickly.”

  Down at the river the donkey men looked askance at us and laughed. “What? The three of you? We need strong-muscled men to shift the weight of the loads, not mere boys!”

  Each one we approached had something disparaging to say, and they laughed directly at Tuthmosis when they saw his face. “Two black eyes! Been in a brawl, have you? We need tough workers here, not boys who are so easily knocked about. And not one with a limp like yours, either!”

  I saw Tuthmosis’s face drain and saw him clench his fists. I thought he might lash out and urged him on. His misfortune was in truth our good luck, as his two black eyes made him not so recognizable.

  Kyky ran ahead, chasing lizards basking on the rocks in the sun and snatching up beetles that scuttled out of plaited mats or sacks being unpacked.

  A man loading up his donkeys stopped to laugh at her.

  “Have you any work?” Anoukhet asked.

  He eyed us. “Come back when you’ve grown a little.”

  “I’m strong!” Anoukhet said angrily.

  The donkey man shook his head and laughed as he bent down to pick up a huge sack, as if to demonstrate his own strength.

  Suddenly Kyky screeched. Anoukhet spun around, clutching her dagger, and threw. My heart stopped at the sound of it flying past my face. I expected the man to fall dead at our feet, the dagger straight through his heart.

  But instead he jumped aside. Only then did I see what had happened. Lying right at his feet was a terrible-looking snake—long and scaly, with two horns that stood up behind its vicious eyes. It stared at us through narrow, black, vertical slits, while a thin, dark tongue flicked.

  I leaped back as it suddenly flung its coils forward. But the snake was impaled. Anoukhet’s dagger had pinned it firmly just below the base of its skull to the hard clay of the riverbank. Its coils twisted and thrashed uselessly.

  “A horned viper—one of the most poisonous snakes in Egypt!” The man sounded shocked.

  Anoukhet snatched up the dagger from the flesh of the snake and, in one swift stroke, sliced through its neck—so fast that the snake scarcely had time to recoil its body before its head lay separate on the ground, the rest of its coils still writhing.

  I gaped at her, then found my voice. “It could have struck you!”

  She kicked the head aside and gave me a scornful look. “I’m not frightened of snakes. I took a dare once. I allowed a snake to bite me.”

  “To bite you? Why on earth?”

  “For a bet. I held it for a count. But before the count was finished, it struck.”

  “Was it poisonous?”

  “I didn’t know at the time. I watched the poison travel in a red line up my arm.”

  “And then?”

  “I waited to die. But I didn’t.”

  I stared back at her. Was there nothing she wouldn’t do?

  She shrugged. “It was a dare. I’ve come across plenty of horned vipers in the desert. They lie in ambush, waiting for their prey under a rock. They sidewind and dig into the sand so only their horns show.”

  She’d used almost the same words for the Medjay: They bury themselves in the sand and shelter under rocks, waiting to do evil. She’d been speaking of Naqada then. The same dagger that killed the snake had killed him. I thought of the rearing cobra dangling dangerously in Tuthmosis’s father’s tomb. I prayed for Hathor’s protection now—Hathor, protector of women, goddess of the moon.

  Anoukhet cut a thin, precise line down the belly of the viper and eased the flesh away from the skin with the tip of her forefinger. Her hands worked quickly and accurately.

  The man found his voice. “You struck like a bolt of lightning. How did you know the viper was behind me hiding under the rock?”

  “Kyky warned me. I heard the scraping sound of its scales before I saw it. A viper rasps them together as it coils back before a strike. You disturbed it when you crouched next to the rock.”

  “Praise Horus! I’ll take you on. We need someone who’s fast with a dagger. There are thieves and felons here alongside the cataracts. There’s been a murder, they say, and three felons are in Syene, ready to do murder again. Anyone as skilled as you with a dagger will be good to have on the donkey trail.”

  “Three murderous felons, you say?” She laughed and threw the flesh of the snake to some dogs, who began to scrap over it immediately. She nodded toward us. “What about them? Will you take them on as well?”

  The man eyed us and then shrugged. “There’ll be no pay except food.”

  Anoukhet stood up and wiped the blood off her hands. She meticulously rolled the viper skin into a coil and put it into her saddlebag. Then she met his eye with a casual glance, but I saw the curve at the corner of her lips. “That’s enough!”

  “Well, get to it fast, then, and load the donkeys. We need to leave before the day gets too hot. But first, here—eat some food for strength.” He handed us some bread, an urn of buttermilk, and a handful of dates.

  The buttermilk slipped down my throat as sweet as honey.

  Perhaps it was Hathor who’d sent Anoukhet to us.

  The bags of grain were heavier than I imagined and the donkeys we loaded them onto seemed too small for the weight of them. But the boat was eventually unloaded and ready to be hauled empty up the river by the Nubian slaves.

  We were already on our donkeys in front of the loads when we were stopped by two soldiers. For a moment as they eyed us, I thought they’d order us down. Tuthmosis had pulled his head scarf around his face. It hid his swollen black eyes. I prayed Anoukhet would be silent.

  The donkey owner spoke up. “They’re just boys helping me transport this load across the cataracts. I hired them not for their muscle but their cheapness.”

  The soldiers nodded and passed on to the next group. I caught Tuthmosis’s look and smiled back at him.

  It was too hot to hurry the donkeys. A dry wind had sprung up and blew the dust around us in eddies. Flies buzzed around our faces, drawn by the sweat of the donkeys. Along the rocky path lay the whitened bones of some poor creature. Perhaps an ailing donkey too tired to take another step?

  We went up a rise alongside the river. From here I got my first view of the landscape of Nubia. Under a sky hazy with heat, it had
a brassy appearance. In front of us lay a golden yellow plateau of sand. Beyond this were jagged peaks and twisted ravines and a confusion of black rocks and savage-toothed hills that seemed like metal cast and beaten by the sun.

  It stretched into the far distance in a purple blur—like a place of utter despair that once I’d entered, I’d never return from.

  Eventually we lost sight of the river and came to a hard, flattened landscape where we rested under some scraggy thorn trees. Later the sun dropped away and we happened upon a group of traders whose music and singing drifted to us through the smoky green evening light. Around their fires, groups of men and a few grunting camels, donkeys, and shaggy black goats were sharing whatever meal there was.

  We off-loaded our donkeys and sat to one side of their circle.

  A man tapped lightly against a hide-covered tambourine that made soft jingling sounds, and he sang in a quiet, plaintive voice. A boy played a reed pipe alongside him. Anoukhet strolled across to them. She sat wordlessly in the sand, picked up the boy’s flute, and put it to her lips and began to play.

  The thin reed music quavered through the air. And the man’s voice rose and fell with sounds that seemed not to come from his throat, but from somewhere deep inside him, filling the night with unknown longing.

  I looked across at Tuthmosis. Then I reached into my girdle bag and drew out my father’s Senet box.

  “Will you teach me the game?”

  We laid out the pieces and settled down in sand that still held the warmth of the sun. We played until the coals burned down and the night turned grape blue at our backs.

  20

  THE BELLY OF STONES

  We had been traveling with the donkey men for more than a moon along the Great River when we reached the Second Cataract and the forts of Semna and Kumma. The forts of Buhen and Askut had been left far behind. We were beyond the reach of Egypt.

  The donkey owner was impressed by our work. To dodge the eye of Egyptian soldiers, we’d volunteered for extra duties that kept us out of sight. The other donkey men thought us too shy to join them when they went off drinking in the markets. But our experience in Syene had taught us to be careful.

  One afternoon we sat beneath a straggly mimosa tree near part of the river that was called the Belly of Stones. Some boys were shouting and playing nearby. Below us the river swept past, dashing and throwing itself from rocky ledge to rocky ledge between islands of strange, water-worn shapes.

  I narrowed my eyes against the glare. The boys had thrown off their wraps and were shooting the rapids, sitting astride pieces of wood and clinging on in the foaming torrent—sometimes tossed up high and sometimes disappearing as the waves dashed them wildly along. One boy came down a slope of water on his stomach, his arms fighting the water like the spokes of a chariot wheel. The boys finally clambered out and flung themselves down near us, burying their bodies in the warm sand, giggling and squirming until the sand clung to them like the skin of a snake.

  I flung some flat pebbles across the water to see how far they would skip. But the water was too rough. I squinted through the sunlight at Tuthmosis. “How far south still?”

  Anoukhet shrugged impatiently and disturbed two red dragonflies. They had been darting and flitting about with jerky movements and flashing wings as they tried to settle on her. “We have to have a plan.”

  “I have one,” Tuthmosis said.

  “What is it?”

  He indicated with his thumb. “There’ve been Egyptian garrisons in all these forts. Even here at Semna and Kumma. But they’re the last forts. Beyond here, we’re in Kushite territory.”

  I had a feeling of dread. We’d traveled so far. Thebes was a dream from another life. “Who are the Kushites?”

  “Southern Nubians,” Anoukhet answered without looking up. One of the dragonflies had settled on her shoulder like a tattoo. I thought of Ta-Miu and her little cat tattoo and wondered if she’d escaped punishment.

  Tuthmosis nodded. “Fierce warriors. Experts with bow and arrow and no fear of close combat and hand-to-hand struggle. They love nothing better than a skirmish. The land of Kush is rich in copper and gold and amethysts. My father wanted control over it but the Kushites fought hard. They refuse to fall under Thebes. They hate the Egyptians.”

  I glanced at him quickly. “That won’t help us. They’ll know Anoukhet is Nubian, but we’re Egyptian.”

  “They hate Thebes. But when I explain how my throne was stolen from me, they’ll back me. I’ll have no difficulty in persuading the Kushites to act against Thebes.”

  Anoukhet squinted back at him. She was playing with a piece of grass—tickling a beetle as it crawled over flakes of rock and at the same time trying to prevent Kyky from snatching it. It was a shiny creature with glassy wings and a silver green body spotted with bronze. So beautiful, it could have been worn as a brooch. “Ha! They might act against Thebes, but why should they help restore you as ruler of Egypt? And what if they don’t believe you’re the son of King Amenhotep?”

  “I’ll have to prove who I am. They want a fair ruler as their neighbor. Not someone like my father who threatened to take their gold, their lands, and their women. I’ll make a pact with them. An oath of promise.”

  I looked out over the river. Three men were trying to swim their camels across. The man in front held his camel’s bridle rope in his mouth, urging him through the water while he swam alongside the grumbling beast. Behind the first camel, another man led two more tied head to tail. A man at the back did his best to keep them all moving in the same direction against the current.

  That’s what lay ahead for us. An impossible task. Trying to get the Kushites on our side would be like swimming against an even fiercer and riskier current. “Will your word stand?”

  Tuthmosis scowled. “Of course! My word is the same as the word of Horus. I’m the god-king.”

  “Yes . . . but do the people in the land of Kush honor the same gods? They might not care about Egyptian gods.”

  Tuthmosis clicked his tongue. He seemed impatient—impatient that I would doubt him. “The gods don’t belong to Egypt alone.”

  Anoukhet shot a look at him. “When will we leave to find the Kushite army?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I glanced back at him. “So soon?”

  Anoukhet swatted the dragonfly from her shoulder. “We’ve waited too long. I’m ready for confrontation!”

  Tuthmosis laughed. “You’re always ready for confrontation, Anoukhet.”

  The boys had crept up on us. They’d discovered Kyky and wanted to play with her. A boy had found a chameleon on a piece of reed. He held out a dead fly and we watched the chameleon’s long tongue strike out. On the reed the chameleon was the greenest of greens. On the boy’s hand it turned a murky brown.

  If we’d known then that the boys were spies, we might have behaved differently toward them.

  The nights next to the river had turned bitterly cold. I was grateful to Kyky for snuggling between Anoukhet and me and warming my neck that night. The next morning, we stamped warmth back into our legs and began gathering our belongings. We thanked the donkey men for the time we’d spent with them. So as not to raise their suspicions, we told them that news of a sick relative meant we had to return to Syene.

  We were preparing to leave when the boys from the river came running to announce soldiers gathering just a short distance south in the desert.

  “What sort of soldiers? Egyptian or Nubian?”

  “Nubian.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The oldest of the boys nodded. “My brother is a soldier with the Kushite army. I know these are Kushites. Their tunics have threads of red.”

  Tuthmosis smiled. “The time has come.”

  I took him by the arm. “Is this the only way?”

  “You can’t lose heart now, Kara. Not after all this time. This is what we’ve come for. To raise an army against Wosret!” He moved in closer and whispered, “Just remember, until we know we can tr
ust these Kushites, behave like boys. Two women aren’t safe with rough soldiers.” He looked between us. “How good are you both with bow and arrow?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve only ever used a throw-stick.”

  Anoukhet laughed as she slapped the dagger on her thigh. “Don’t be scared for my part, Tuthmosis. I’m as accurate with a bow as I am with my dagger. I can manage any bow and arrow—or any man, for that matter!”

  I saw her eyes flash and imagined she could. She had the height and the legs to draw a bow well—even a longbow.

  We pulled on our boots, which were beginning to wear thin, and then gathered our meager belongings, making sure our daggers were in our belts. I felt for my girdle bag to check for the Senet board and my mother’s bronze mirror. Then we bade our farewells to the donkey men, left the river behind, and trudged up the arid dunes ahead, with Tuthmosis in the lead.

  He and Anoukhet seemed glad to be moving on. But I hung back, fearing the moment we would meet the Kushite army. Fear is not enough to describe what I should’ve been feeling.

  We’d been walking for some time when we reached the crest of the highest rise. Tuthmosis and Anoukhet both stopped dead in their tracks ahead. I struggled to catch up. And then I almost choked at what I saw.

  From the opposite rise right to the base of the valley and spread across as far as the eye could see in all directions were soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. An entire encampment. The noise of them rose up like locusts feeding their way through a field. Or swarms of angry, disturbed bees.

  They stood with their dark oiled bodies gleaming, quivers and bows slung across their backs, sunlight sparking off their metal spearheads and shining against their polished leather shields, looking as if their weapons had just been forged in some fire mine. There were so many of them, so densely packed together, they appeared to be hammered out of one mighty metal sheet that spread itself over this dune and the next and the next. A vast shield of beaten armor.

  I couldn’t stop the sharp cry that escaped me. My voice echoed out over the dunes.