The Forest of Myrrh (Imhotep Book 3)

by Jerry Dubs

  “I meant it as a compliment, Ma’at-ka-Re. I have never met anyone whom I have admired more,” he said, hoping that she would interpret the vague compliment in whatever way would please her the most.

  She stared at him for a moment and then began to laugh. “Well said, Lord Imhotep, well said.” Then still shaking her head, she turned serious. “As I was saying, I was showing the immensely admired Akila some of the treasures I am taking to Ta Netjer and when I showed her one of them, she gasped. When I pressed her about it, she made up a lie about being shocked by its beauty, but all the while her eyes were searching for you.

  “And so ... ” she brought her hand from behind her back and showed Imhotep what she had held hidden.

  He stared at it in disbelief and horror.

  “It is the knife of Horus,” Pharaoh Hatshepsut said as she watched Imhotep’s stupefied reaction. She held the knife out to him and watched in fascination as Imhotep dropped his staff and backpedaled.

  Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s eyes darted from Imhotep’s frightened face to the stone knife she held. “What is it?” she asked, her voice a command, not a question.

  Shaking his head, Imhotep fought his emotions. The ancient knife was an inanimate object, nothing more than ivory and stone. It is just a knife, he told himself.

  Steeling himself he stepped forward and he put out his hand to take the knife from Pharaoh Hatshepsut. Gently he traced the familiar, worn etchings on the ivory handle – the falcon head of Horus on one side, the eye of Re on the other. Closing his eyes he ran his finger along the blade’s edge.

  “This is the knife of King Djoser, whose eternal home is the pyramid I built,” he said sadly. “He carried the knife with him always, tossing and catching it in his hand while he and I studied the drawings of his tomb. When he died the knife was given to me by his son and I gave it to my son.”

  He pictured King Djoser, his always serene face smiling as he flipped the knife and caught it again. He heard again the love in Tjau’s voice when he had given the knife to him, and then, although he squeezed his eyes tight to forestall the other images that the knife evoked, he saw General Khaba driving the knife into the back of King Sekhemkhet and then accusing Tjau of killing the king.

  “It was stolen from Tjau, my son, and came into the hands of Merneith, priestess of Neith.” He turned and spat the name from his mouth.

  “Then this knife was used to kill King Sekhemkhet, King Djoser’s son and successor. It caused my son to be killed and led to my entombment.”

  He handed the knife back to Pharaoh Hatshepsut. “I thought it was lost,” he said.

  Pharaoh Hatshepsut took the knife back and held it close to her face. Looking past the ancient blade to Imhotep’s stricken face, she said, “This knife must have great heka.”

  Imhotep shook his head. “Whatever magic it had, it acquired through bloodshed.”

  “Blood is power, Lord Imhotep, look at Re when he appears each morning. He is filled with blood.” Examining the ancient blade, she said, “If this is truly the knife of Djoser, if it has survived this long only to find my hand ... ” She ran her fingers over the ivory handle and smiled.

  “Its ka and mine are linked through a thousand years of royal blood.”

  Fate

  The seventy-foot-long ships rode low in the water, each weighed down with thirty rowers; four reefers to handle the large single sail that billowed from the palm trunk mast that rose to the height of five men above the ship; two steersmen to hold the helm, two long oars at the stern of the ship; a chanter to keep the rowers in rhythm; a pilot and a captain.

  The rowers sat on benches made of thick planks that were fixed through the ribs of the ship’s hull. Beneath their feet and beneath small shelters at each end of the ship were stored food and trade goods: glass-bead necklaces and gold and silver bracelets and collars.

  Imhotep sat cross-legged by the stern of the third ship, his lap supporting a drawing board that held a papyrus on which he was painting a butterfly fish. He was drawing the graceful arc of its wide, fantail when a shadow moved across his papyrus.

  “What if we are wrong?” Akila said, sitting beside him.

  “The tail looks a lot like the arch we use at the top of the pillars for a lotus plant, doesn’t it?” he said, pointing the end of his brush at the painting. “And the dorsal fin, it has the same curve as the short wigs they wear in this era.”

  “Her temple paintings don’t mention that she was on this expedition,” Akila said.

  Imhotep dipped his brush into the paint jar and started drawing the concave curve that led to the fish’s mouth.

  “They recorded what they wanted,” Imhotep said. “Just like governments and historians always do. Modern politicians rewrite history even as it’s happening.”

  “History is written by the victors, I know,” she said.

  “It’s more than that,” Imhotep said. He carefully drew the round eye of the fish. “Maybe there were only three ships in the expedition, but Hatshepsut decided that five sounded more impressive. Maybe they didn’t get to Punt, but she wanted to claim some kind of success. Remember President Bush and his ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech? And the Nicea Council? People are always modifying stories to reflect what they believe ... or what they want other people to believe. They make up ‘facts’ to support beliefs instead of creating theories based on facts.

  “Everyone likes a story that fits what they already think.”

  Akila crossed her arms.

  “That’s fine, Tim, but what if this expedition is a failure? How can we have any confidence in history if it is so full of fabrications?”

  “This fish looks worried,” Imhotep said as he painted the downward curve of its mouth. “Of course it is lying on a wooden plank instead of darting around in the water. It should be worried.”

  “It’s been a week and we haven’t seen any settlements. And have you noticed that Ahmose is putting ashore earlier each day?” Akila said.

  “He wants to give the soldiers time to hunt and give the rowers time to rest,” Imhotep said. He reached over and smoothed the fish’s fin.

  “No one actually knows were Punt is,” Akila worried. “It might be on the Horn of Africa, or it might be across the Indian Ocean or farther down the coast.”

  Imhotep pursed his lips as he studied the fish’s gill covering and pectoral fin.

  “It’s like a roller coaster,” Imhotep said.

  “What is?”

  “This,” Imhotep looked at Akila and then at the ship and surrounding water. “All of this. We’re here, we’re on this ship and we’re going ... somewhere. It's like when you get on a roller coaster and it nears the top of the first drop and maybe you’re scared, but there isn’t anything you can do, so you just take a breath, throw your arms in the air and take the ride.”

  “Seriously?” she said. “Life is a roller coaster?”

  “Well, I mean we’re committed to this course, we can’t turn the ships around. We can help gather food. You can tend to illnesses and I can paint the fish we catch, but we’re on these ships and we’re headed down the Red Sea.”

  “So you’ve become a fatalist?” she asked.

  He looked at her sharply.

  She nodded. “Sorry. I know that you don’t just accept fate.”

  “I had a friend who was a serious chess player, read books and studied,” Imhotep said. “He said that he liked chess because it was like life.” Imhotep put up a hand to stall her protest. “There are rules in chess. There is a border. You can make any sequence of moves, some of them good, maybe make mistakes. Every game is different, some quiet, some active and crazy. But they all take place within a defined area under a set of rules.

  “So, my friend argued that for us, we live in this universe governed by rules like the speed of light and the strength of gravity and our need for oxygen and water and food. But within that prescribed universe we can do whatever we want, whatever we can manage. But sometimes there are very few options and
we have to do what is required, not what we want. Other times there are combinations open to us or the board is wide open and we can launch whatever course we want.”

  Akila waited.

  “I’ve had a bizarre life, I know that,” he said. “I’ve moved through time and I’ve changed my life. But right now, right here, I’m on this ship headed to the land of Punt. I don’t think it is my destiny, but it is where I find myself now.”

  Akila leaned back against the curved planks of the gunwale. She could feel dampness through her robe, the seepage of water through the reeds that served as caulking. Imhotep resumed his painting.

  The fish lay still, its dead eye unblinking, and Akila thought about fate and about Tim’s birthmark that was shaped like the reed symbol of his cartouche and how the letters of Imhotep also spelled Tim Hope.

  Pwenet

  It was called the Great Green, but at dusk the water was the color of lapis lazuli. At dawn, as Re washed the sky with his light, the water was a pale blue, the caps of the small waves splashes of white.

  Standing by the prow of the lead ship as Re stood directly overhead, Pharaoh Hatshepsut thought the water had become a mirror of Nut’s blue belly. Movement caught her eye and, looking up, she saw an eagle diving, its wings folded as it fell toward the water. Suddenly it spread its black wings, revealing a dark brown coat beneath its white neck and head. Extending its yellow talons, it plucked a fish from the water, beat its wings heavily and took to the sky.

  She smiled as the bird skimmed across the water, rising slowly toward the heavens.

  The journey had been hard and uncertain, but she hadn’t felt so alive since she had ridden beside her father in the far eastern desert, chasing the desert dwellers and then the hated Asiatics. She was away from the court in Waset. She didn’t sit in judgment, she didn’t listen to the squabbling of priests and merchants, she didn’t wear her false beard or the heavy crown of the Two Lands.

  She felt adventurous and free. She felt young again.

  “Long life, Pharaoh Hatshepsut,” Admiral Ahmose said as he joined her and gripped the top of the gunwale.

  “Admiral Ahmose,” she said.

  “The sea eagles fly great distances, but they roost on land,” he said, nodding toward the eagle.

  He looked back toward the mast. A sailor was perched on the top beam, both hands gripping the palm trunk as he stared ahead.

  “There is land on either side of us,” Pharaoh Hatshepsut said.

  Ahmose nodded. “Desert to the west and hard mountains to the east. But the land has been slowly changing, getting greener. There are different types of trees and the men say that the water has less salt. And the water itself, as I’m sure you have noticed, is more restless.”

  Pharaoh Hatshepsut nodded. Then smiling she nodded toward the line of boats that followed them. “I’m sure that Ty would attest to the motion of the water.”

  “Land!” the sailor atop the mast shouted. “Straight ahead!”

  - 0 -

  The brown speck on the sea grew larger and soon the travelers could see that it was an island and then the lookout called again. “More land, off to the east!”

  Ahmose signaled to the chanter to slow the ship to allow the second ship, where Akila and Imhotep rode, to draw abreast of them.

  Akila and Imhotep had seen the island and the land that jutted out into the sea from the east. “If that is where modern Yemen will be,” Akila said, pointing to the east, “then we are near the southern straits, near the Gulf of Aden.”

  “Land to the west!” the lookout called.

  “They are going to want us to tell them where to go,” Imhotep said as the ships drew closer.

  Akila laughed. “I have no idea. The Land of Punt might as well be Shangri-La. I’m not an historian, but I don’t think anyone ever discovered where Punt was, or is.”

  Imhotep sniffed. He turned to the east and sniffed, then to the west.

  Shrugging, he looked sheepishly at Akila. “I was hoping to smell campfires.”

  “Lord Imhotep!” Admiral Ahmose called as the ships drew side-by-side. “Are we there? Is this Ta Netjer?”

  “The drawings in Hatshepsut’s temple show huts up on stilts and trees, palm trees and myrrh trees,” Akila whispered to Imhotep.

  “Ask the lookout if he sees any villages or fishing boats,” Imhotep called to Ahmose.

  “No movement,” the lookout shouted in answer after Ahmose had called up to him. “Just rocks and sand.”

  Ahmose turned away from Imhotep.

  “Stay to the west,” he called to the men at the twin tillers. “There is more open water there.”

  The rowers resumed their earlier pace, the wind caught the single sail and Pharaoh Hatshepsut stood at the prow, smiling into the wind.

  - 0 -

  The sea grew wider after they passed the island and Admiral Ahmose ordered the steermen to bring the ship onto a southwestern course to keep the shore in sight.

  Seeing the course change, Imhotep saw told Akila, “I hope Ta Netjer is in Africa and not Asia.”

  Reassuring both Imhotep and herself, she said, “Well, the temple paintings describe the expedition, so it must be successful. Isn’t that your reasoning: It was, so it will be?”

  “Unless we’re changing history,” he said. “I know I keep saying it did happen so it will happen, but I’m not sure that is right.”

  He rested his arms on the gunwale and, staring into the distance, he said, “All those years ago, I entered the Two Lands through the Tomb of Kanakht. After Brian was killed and buried there it became known as the Tomb of Ipy. So from my memory’s point of view history changed.

  “And there wasn’t any record of a woman’s body being found in the tomb when I was in the modern world the first time, but then when I took Maya to you, I saw a reference to a woman’s body being discovered there. When I went back in time I trapped Merneith there. I didn’t plan it, but once it happened, I realized I was planting the body that would be found later.”

  “What are you saying?” Akila said, becoming alarmed.

  “Since we talked the other day I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of fate. I don’t think we can sit back and expect things to happen because they happened according to the history that we remember. Nothing is guaranteed.

  “So just because you and I remember a temple with paintings doesn’t mean that temple will be built or that there will be a successful expedition to record. If I had failed to build the Step Pyramid, then it wouldn’t have just magically appeared.”

  Akila studied him for a moment.

  “So this expedition could fail? We could all disappear into history?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Imhotep answered. “I don’t believe that we are puppets and I don’t believe things are foreordained. I think that each step we take is new. I think we have to make this trip successful and that we could fail.”

  He turned toward the strange shore.

  “Nothing is guaranteed,” he repeated.

  - 0 -

  Two days later they saw smoke floating above the tree tops and, continuing along the westward curve of the land, they found themselves in calmer waters. The wind, still blowing from the north, was pushing them away from the land, so Admiral Ahmose ordered the sails struck.

  “Boats!” the lookout called.

  Ahmose and Pharaoh Hatshepsut walked excitedly to the starboard side of the ship and stared toward land. Three small boats, long and narrow, rode through the small waves.

  As the boats came closer Ahmose said, “They are nothing more than floating trees.” He pointed at the boats. “See,” he said, “they are a single tree, hollowed out and shaped.” He looked past the boats toward the land, its skyline a series of green arcs. Shaking his head he said, “There are so many trees, Pharaoh Hatshepsut. I could build a huge navy for you.”

  She nodded, watching the boats, moving now in a single line as they approached the ship. Each boat carried five men, four of them paddling
, two to a side, and the fifth person squatting in the prow of the boat. They appeared to be unarmed, although there was a small tangle of netting lying on the flat hull behind the bow.

  The lead man in the nearest boat called out a greeting that neither Admiral Ahmose nor Pharaoh Hatshepsut understood.

  “Do you not speak the language of the Two Lands?” Ahmose shouted back.

  Smiling and bobbing his head, the man scuttled a step to talk with the rowers. Then he called out to the second boat and the men in it rowed to him. After a few seconds of conversation, the second boat nosed closer to Admiral Ahmose’s ship and the lead man said, “Greetings. You are of the Two Lands?”

  “Yes,” Admiral Ahmose said. “Is this Ta Netjer?”

  “Pwenet!” the man shouted back.

  Pharaoh Hatshepsut gripped Ahmose’s arm tightly. “We have done it, Ahmose. Pwenet is what the natives of Ta Netjer call their land. We have reached the land of the gods!”

  Arrival

  The dugouts led the ships deeper into the bay, past rocky beaches lined with scrub trees and, farther from the water’s edge, by taller palm trees.

  The pilot leaned over the bow of the lead ship, watching the water for discolorations and shadows that would mark rocks or reefs. Behind him, the chanter watched the pilot’s hands, calling out to the rowers only when the pilot signaled.

  One of the dugouts had darted ahead, skipping quickly over the small, breaking waves. The other two kept pace with the ship, leading it, one on each side to show the safe channel, yet Ahmose was cautious, unwilling to risk running aground this close to their destination.

  Pharaoh Hatshepsut had disappeared beneath the canopy to prepare herself to meet the king of Ta Netjer, and Admiral Ahmose, standing by the pilot, had absent-mindedly changed into a clean kilt.

  Word had spread through the five ships, and the soldiers had shipped their oars and begun to gather their swords and bows leaving only the sailors to row. Imhotep and Akila were changing into formal robes, Nehsy was organizing the cache of gifts that Pharaoh Hatshepsut had brought and Ty, his wrist covered with the linen wrap Imhotep had given him, was leaning over the side of the ship, wondering what surprises Governor Seni had arranged.