by Wilbur Smith
‘Hurotas is right,’ I said with all the force I could muster. ‘Every moment is precious. We must ride for Port Githion immediately. We have to get out to sea and attempt to pick up Panmasi’s scent before it fades.’
Despite my bravado the darkness of the moonless night hampered us, and it was well after midnight before we reached the harbour.
While Rameses, Hurotas and Hui were preparing their ships for sea with desperate haste I was given the hateful task of riding to the citadel to break the news to Tehuti and Bekatha of the loss of their children. It is probably unkind of me to suggest that neither Hurotas nor Hui had the courage to do this for themselves. However, by now I was inured to the horrors that had been inflicted upon all of us.
I went first to deliver the mutilated corpse of Palmys to Bekatha. When her maids had awakened her from her bed, I held her in my arms and tried to explain to her the dreadful fate that had overtaken her youngest son. I think she was still befuddled by the wine she had imbibed earlier. She kept assuring me that Palmys had taken his dinner and was already asleep in his bed.
Gently I led her through to the antechamber where my men had laid him. Despite my efforts to cover up his injuries – washing the blood from his face and combing out his hair, then closing the lids of his empty eye sockets and binding up his disembowelled stomach – he was still a terrible sight for any mother to be presented with. She recoiled from him and clung to me for a few moments, and then threw herself upon his body, wailing and shaking with despair.
After a while I was able to persuade Bekatha to drink a powerful sedative that I had prepared from my medicine chest and waited with her until it took effect. Then I summoned one of her other sons to take over her care from me, and I went to find Tehuti.
This was even more harrowing for me than her younger sister’s display of grief.
I sent her maids away to wait in one of the outer rooms and then I went through to her bedchamber. She was asleep on top of her blankets, lying on her back wearing an ankle-length nightdress. Her lovely long hair was combed out and shining like the snows on the peaks of the Taygetus in the light of the moon suddenly streaming through the high windows. She looked like a young girl again. I lay down beside her and took her in my arms.
‘Taita!’ she whispered without opening her eyes. ‘I know it is you. You always smell so good.’
‘You are right, Tehuti. It is I.’
‘I am so afraid,’ she said. ‘I had a terrible dream.’
‘You must be brave, Tehuti, as brave as you always are.’
She rolled over in my arms to face me. ‘You have sad news for me, and I can sense it. It is Serrena, isn’t it?’
‘I am so sorry, my darling.’ I choked on the words.
‘Tell me, Taita. Don’t try to shield me from the truth.’
She listened to me in abject silence, pale-faced and stony-eyed in the glow from her night-lamp which she kept lit to scare away the hobgoblins. When I had stumbled my way into silence she asked me quietly, ‘You say it is Utteric who did this?’
‘It can only be him.’
‘Will he hurt her?’
‘No!’ My voice rose in vehement denial to cover my uncertainty. Utteric was mad. He did not act or think like other men. ‘She has no value to him if she is killed or mutilated.’ I crossed the fingers of my left hand as I said it. I did not want to annoy the gods by making sweeping assertions.
‘Will you find my baby and bring her back to me, Tata?’
‘Yes, Tehuti. You know I will.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘It is best that you go now, before I make a complete idiot of myself.’
‘You are the bravest woman I know.’
‘Bekatha will need me. I must go to her.’ She kissed me. Then she stood up and donned the cloak that lay on the table beside the bed and walked from the room with dignity. But as she closed the door behind her I thought that I heard a muffled sob; however, I might have been mistaken for Tehuti was not one much given to weeping.
The top edge of the sun had cleared the horizon before I finally reached Port Githion again. I found that Hurotas was aboard his flagship in the harbour, and when I too went aboard to report to him he was just finishing a conference with the sixteen petty chieftains of the alliance. All of them had affirmed their oaths and their undertaking to him: An offence to one is an offence to all.
Every one of them had undertaken to set sail during the next few days for their homelands and there to muster their separate armies in readiness for the campaign that loomed ahead for all of us. This was momentous news indeed. I, for one, had expected two or three of our sworn allies to renege on their obligations if they were ever called upon to make good on them. I congratulated Hurotas and Hui, and then I told them that I had informed their wives of the abduction of Serrena and the murder of Palmys. They were as grateful to me and as ashamed of themselves as I expected them to be – in that neither of them had showed the courage to deliver the terrible news to their spouses and to face the first waves of their grief and despair.
‘Well and good,’ I told them. ‘But now we must go after Panmasi. The time for talking is over. The killing time is close at hand.’
At last I was free to hurry along the wharf to where the Memnon was shortening up her mooring lines, in preparation to casting off.
‘I thought you would never be ready to leave,’ Rameses told me grimly as I clambered on board. I had not seen him smile since he had learned that Serrena was missing. ‘Where in the honour and dignity of the great god Zeus have you been hiding yourself, Taita?’
‘Is that an accusation of cowardice?’ I asked him in a tone that made him blanch and recoil a step.
‘Forgive me, Taita. I should never have said that to you, of all people alive. But I am half mad with anguish.’
‘So am I, Rameses. That is why I never heard you say what you just did.’ I went on at once: ‘Have you brought my pigeons on board?’
‘A full cage of twelve of them; all of them female because they are the strongest, fastest and most determined, like all women, as you have remarked to me more than once.’ At that I heard the familiar cooing coming up the companionway from the lower deck. Rameses smiled faintly, probably for the first time since he had lost Serrena.
‘They heard your voice. They love you, Tata, as we all do.’
‘Then prove it to me by getting this ship under way immediately, if not sooner,’ I said sternly and went below to my beauties.
Beside the birdcage in my cabin I found my writing case on the desk where it should have been, and a roll of papyrus beside it. I immediately set about composing a short but lucid message to send to Weneg in his wine shop in the shadow of the walls of Utteric’s palace in Luxor. I told him I was entirely certain that it was Utteric who had ordered the abduction of Serrena; however, it was Panmasi who had carried out the deed.
Panmasi was on his way to Egypt and we were in pursuit, but he had more than twelve hours’ head start on us. There was a strong chance that we would be unable to catch him before he reached Egypt. If this turned out to be the case, then Utteric would almost certainly hold Serrena either at the palace of Luxor or within the Gates of Torment and Sorrow. I asked him to confirm my evaluation of the crisis, and to keep me informed of anything further that might be of value to us in our attempts to find and rescue the princess.
Once I was satisfied with my composition I wrote it out on three separate copies of lightweight papyrus paper. I always repeat my messages thrice. This is to ensure that at least one copy is received in good order. The skies are a dangerous place for plump young pigeons, for they are patrolled zealously by hawks and kestrels; but past experience had convinced me that at least one out of three of my birds would manage to return safely to the coop in which it had been hatched.
Thus I selected three of the strongest birds from the cage and secured an identical message to each of their legs. Then I carried one of these up to the poop deck under my arm, and left the oth
er two in their cage.
As I came out on deck I was relieved to see that we had cleared the harbour and were headed into the open sea. I then released my first bird into the wind. It circled the ship three times and then winged away on a southerly heading. At intervals of an hour I released the remaining two birds and watched them disappear over the horizon. We followed them more sedately in the Memnon.
The wind was fresh out of the north-west, so we ran before it on a broad reach, our best point of sailing. We raised the island of Crete in six days of sailing and then the African coast in five days more. During this time we stopped and boarded nine strange vessels to search them. All of them took us for pirates and tried to escape us. So we had to run each one down in a stern chase. This accounted in a large measure for the time it took us to make the southern run from Port Githion to the mouth of the Nile River. It was no surprise to me that Serrena was not on board any one of the vessels that we intercepted but Rameses and I could not take the chance of missing her.
I prayed to Artemis that if Serrena were already locked behind the Gates of Torment and Sorrow, the goddess would not allow the dreaded Doog to have his way with her. It was no comfort to me to know that Pharaoh himself would not choose to take that route with her. He preferred to follow paths not so sweetly perfumed as hers.
Once we reached the mouth of the Nile River we patrolled it for three more days. We kept below the horizon during the daylight hours but closed with the land during the hours of darkness. On the fourth day Rameses and I were both agreed that it was futile to remain any longer on station here. We knew that by this time Serrena was almost certainly in Egypt, given how long it had been since she had been abducted. So we turned back on to the north-westerly heading and retraced our route to Port Githion in Lacedaemon. The wind was no longer in our favour. The days dwindled away with infuriating sluggishness.
When we were finally in sight of Port Githion we were hailed by a fishing vessel coming out from the harbour. We heaved to and waited for the trawler to come alongside. The person who had stopped us turned out to be another one of Admiral Hui’s sons, a strapping and engaging lad named Huisson
‘Uncle Tata!’ he shouted as soon as he was close enough for his voice to carry. ‘We have had news of Serrena. She is safe and well.’ He continued shouting his message as our vessels closed. ‘A Levantine trader plying to Egypt delivered a message from the court of Utteric in Luxor to our good king, Hurotas. Utteric boasts that his agents have seized our cousin Princess Serrena and that he is holding her hostage in Luxor. He is offering to arrange an exchange for her, but on his own terms.’
I felt a great surge of relief at these tidings; followed almost immediately by a plunge of despair. The relief was for the fact that Serrena was alive. My despair was that Utteric was holding such a vital bargaining counter in his slimy paws.
Huisson came on board the Memnon and we sailed into Port Githion, discussing all the implications of these developments with anxiety and trepidation. As soon as we had moored our ship, I told Rameses and Huisson to wait for me whilst I went to collect the messages that my pigeon-handler’s birds had brought him. He ran to meet me with a sheath of papyrus slips in his hand, all of them sent by Weneg in Luxor. They made bitter reading for me and I was in tears when I had finished.
According to Weneg, Panmasi and his captive, Princess Serrena, had reached Luxor eighteen days previously. That was three days before we on the Memnon had reached the mouth of the Nile in pursuit of him.
Weneg had been a spectator in the crowd of several hundred citizens that had assembled on the docks, by order of Pharaoh Utteric Bubastis, when Serrena had been marched ashore stark naked and with her feet unshod and the glorious tresses of her hair hanging to her waist, but not so low as to cover her pudendum.
Weneg recorded how the citizens of Luxor had been reduced to silence by her beauty, and by the shock at the humiliating treatment being accorded her. Of course none of the spectators had any idea as to who this stranger might be.
On the jetty her captors forced Serrena to her knees while one of the royal grooms sheared off the tresses of her glorious hair. A low hum of protest rose from the watchers.
Utteric glared at them, trying to ascertain which of them were defying him. This forced them to silence. Then Utteric turned and beckoned to Doog, the royal tormentor and executioner. He came forward with alacrity, followed by a band of his masked henchmen who were leading a team of oxen pulling a dung cart. They lifted Serrena to her feet and heaved her into the body of the cart. They pinioned her to an upright beam there, so she was unable to cover her nudity. Then with a drummer leading the way, they paraded her through the streets of Luxor where the populace lined the route and were incited by Doog’s men to shower her with insults and ordure. Finally they led her up into hills to the Gates of Torment and Sorrow. She disappeared through the gates and they slammed shut behind her. Weneg had not seen her since.
When I had finished reading Weneg’s account of her humiliation I left Port Githion and climbed to the summit of the Taygetus Mountains. I ran most of the way to subdue my distress with hard physical effort. From the mountain peak I shouted my outrage to the gods on Mount Olympus, and warned them that unless they took better care of their daughter I would have to assume that responsibility from them.
Perhaps it was just the climb to the mountain peak, but I was feeling much more certain of myself and what I had to do when I descended and found Rameses and Huisson waiting for me with the horses saddled. We set off immediately for the citadel. When we reached it we hurried to the council chamber where we found that King Hurotas and Admiral Hui were in earnest conclave with three of the petty chieftains. Hurotas jumped up and rushed to me as soon as I entered the chamber.
‘Have you heard the news?’ he cried. ‘We have received a message directly from Utteric, brought by a Levantine trader. You were right, Taita! It was indeed Panmasi, Utteric’s underling, who seized my Serrena. He gloats on it without shame. She was the one who saved his life, and this is how this pig-swine has repaid her. But now we know the worst of it, and we know where they are holding her. But the most important thing by far is that they have not injured her. They have only humiliated her in the most loathsome manner.’
‘Yes.’ I embraced Hurotas to reassure him. ‘Huisson has told me as much. He says Utteric is offering to trade.’
‘I do not trust him. Utteric is a venomous snake. In the end we will almost certainly have to go to war with him,’ Hurotas declared. ‘We will have to see what price he is demanding. It will not be cheap, that is the only thing we can be very certain of. But by silver and by blood I will pay him what he deserves,’ he promised me grimly and then turned to the three petty chieftains at the council table. ‘These are the chieftains Faas, Parviz and Poe.’
‘Yes, I know them well.’ I greeted the three of them.
‘Of course, I had forgotten.’ Hurotas looked slightly abashed. ‘But I am distracted by the news about my Serrena. Forgive me, Taita.’
‘Have you relayed the good news to Tehuti?’ I demanded.
‘Not yet,’ Hurotas admitted. ‘I myself only heard less than an hour ago. Anyway, she has gone out riding and I don’t know where to look for her.’ Hurotas paused expectantly, and of course I knew what he wanted of me.
‘I think I know where she is. With your permission I will go to her,’ I suggested.
‘Yes! Go at once, Taita. Her heart has been broken. You, of all people alive, know how to lighten her mood.’
I rode to the royal lodge on the bank of the Hurotas River. I left my horse at the hitching rack and walked through the empty rooms calling her name, but all of them were deserted. So I left the building and went down to the river-bank.
I heard the splash of water before I reached the pool in which the two of them, mother and daughter, had spent so much of their time swimming. I came around the river bend and I saw her head, with her dense hair slicked down on her skull, as she swam into the current. She
had not seen me, so I found a seat on a boulder at the water’s edge and watched her with pleasure. I knew that she was subjugating her inner pain with hard physical exertion, just as I had done by climbing to the summit of the Taygetus.
Back and forth she swam across the flood until I felt my own muscles aching. Then she came into the bank below me and stood to her full height in the shallows. She was naked, but her body was as sleek and muscled as I remembered it thirty years previously. She waded to the bank; she had still not seen me sitting quietly on my rock.
Then I stood up and she saw me. She stopped and stared up at me with trepidation. Then I smiled down at her, and instantly her lovely face echoed mine with delight. She ran towards me, bursting the surface of the river into foam.
‘Thank you! Thank you, Taita!’ She laughed through her tears of relief.
I laughed with her. ‘How did you know that I brought glad tidings?’
‘By your face! By your beautiful smiling face!’ She ran up the bank and threw her cold wet body into my arms. We hugged each other and she demanded, ‘Where is she?’
‘She is a captive in Utteric’s prison.’ I did not want to pronounce the name ‘Torment and Sorrow’.
The smile fled from her face. ‘In Luxor?’ she asked.
‘She is well and unhurt,’ I assured her. ‘Utteric is willing to negotiate her release.’
‘Oh, how I wish I could go to her!’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. I shook my head.
‘No! You would never come back, but Serrena will. It may take time, but I swear to you that I will bring her back to you,’ I said simply. ‘I will leave just as soon as I can make the final arrangements. I do not think I will be able to get to her where she is being held, but even if somehow I can let her know that I am close it will bolster her courage and alleviate her suffering a little.’
‘All of us owe you so much, Taita. How can we ever repay you?’
‘A smile and a kiss is all I ask from you, Tehuti. Now I must go to your sister. She also needs me.’
‘I will come with you. Tomorrow is the day that she and her husband will entomb their youngest son, Palmys. Yet another victim of foul Utteric.’