by Wilbur Smith
I was waist-deep and wading ashore when I was enchanted by the melodious tones of Serrena calling my name: ‘Tata, do you not know that this part of the river is the haunt of crocodiles, and of men who are even more dangerous?’ As ever, she knew when I needed her most. She came rushing down the bank of the Nile to rescue me. Of course, Rameses was not far behind her and equally solicitous.
Even though I had last seen them the previous day, I had missed both of them sorely. The two of them having saved my life once again; as soon as we reached dry land we could move on to more monumental events.
‘We have set a day for our marriage—’ Rameses began breathlessly.
‘—it’s for the day after tomorrow at noon!’ Serrena ended for him.
‘I hope it will be as good as the one I gave you.’
‘Nothing could be that good, ever again.’ She came up on tiptoe to kiss me.
All warlike endeavours were set aside until after the wedding, although if Utteric Bubastis wished to debate our decision we were prepared to accommodate him. To this end I carried my sword on my hip as I danced with the pretty girls. I had learned the hard way never to trust Rameses’ half-brother. The crenelated walls of Abu Naskos on the far side of the Nile were lined with hundreds of curious heads as he and his rogues watched us and tried to work out what the marching bands and the dancing throng were playing at.
All our women wore garlands of wild flowers on their heads and the younger and prettier females were bared to the waist, which I found an agreeable condition. As the wine flagons were passed from hand to pretty little hand the dancing became more abandoned, the music louder and the words of the chorus more risqué. Some of the more enlightened young ladies slipped away into the forest with their fancy or in some cases with their fancies and returned glowing with more than mere bonhomie.
Each of the sixteen kings made a speech wishing the bride and groom eternal happiness and then they loaded them down with exotic and extravagant gifts. These included elephants and mahouts to ride them, ships and slaves to row them, poems and poets to sing them, trumpets and drums and musicians to play them, diamonds and sapphires and crowns to display them, fine wines and flagons of silver and gold to make them more pleasurable to drink.
However, I had chosen two hundred of our most warlike warriors and prevailed upon them to moderate the amount of wine that they imbibed during the day. Meanwhile Hurotas, Hui and I had picked out positions along the bank of the Nile which were the most inviting for Utteric’s cut-throats to launch a sneak night attack from. When the sun set and night fell the sounds of music and hilarity continued unabated, or rather increased substantially in volume.
Hurotas, Hui and I quietly led our picked men out of the camp to the ambush positions along the bank of the Nile which we had chosen during the hours of daylight. I did not inform Rameses of our intentions. I knew him as well as I knew myself by now. He would have insisted on joining us. However, I was reluctant to add her husband’s corpse to the list of Serrena’s wedding gifts on the morrow.
We did not have too long to wait. After an hour or so the sounds of hilarity in the camp behind us began to abate; during the next hour they ceased almost entirely. Utteric’s captains chose their moment well; I knew that it was highly unlikely that Utteric himself would take any part in a night attack.
There was a sliver of yellow moon showing above the dark loom of the far bank, and its reflection danced on the surface of the river. It made an admirable backdrop for the mass of small boats that swarmed across the water from Abu Naskos towards where we waited.
‘Right into the tiger’s mouth.’ Hurotas chuckled softly beside me. ‘I couldn’t have arranged it better myself.’
‘I don’t agree,’ I whispered back. ‘They are at least three cubits too far upstream.’
‘About as far as a pretty girl’s left leg,’ he pointed out. ‘I find that distance perfectly acceptable.’
However, I let them come even a little closer, until the men in the bows of the leading boats jumped overboard and landed waist-deep, then started to pull the boats the last few cubits to our bank.
‘Yes?’ I asked Hurotas.
‘Yes!’ he agreed, and I put my two fingers between my lips and blew a piercing whistle. My archers were holding their arrows nocked at full draw. At my whistle they loosed as one man and the night air was filled with the fluting of the wind in hundreds of fletchings. This was followed by the thumping of the arrowheads as they slammed into human flesh and the screams of wounded men as they went down struggling in water that reached over their heads.
Chaos swept through Utteric’s flotilla. Some of the boats tried to turn away and collided with others who were following close behind them. These capsized and floundered. Men screamed briefly as the weight of their armour pulled them under the waters. Others screamed longer and stronger as our archers flailed them.
Then some of our men ran forward carrying burning torches and lobbed them on to the piles of dry brush which we had piled at intervals along the river-bank. The tinder flared at once, and the flames leaped up to light the night and reveal in stark detail the boats and the men aboard them. Our archers had been launching their arrows at shadows; their salvoes had been erratic. But now their aim tightened and the slaughter was more effective. Fewer than half the enemy boats succeeded in turning back for the western bank, and even those were half filled with their wounded and the dead.
Then our men put aside their bows and waded into the shallows, unsheathing their knives to deal with the wounded that remained and make sure they were carried away by the current or taken to the bottom of the river by the weight of their armour.
We had to take into consideration the fact that the area was to be the scene of joyous nuptials on the morrow. We wanted to avoid the groans and whimpers of those combatants who had survived and the stench of those who had been more fortunate.
By noon on the day following all signs of the conflict had been obliterated. The ashes and the puddles of dried blood on the river-bank had been covered with white sand. The current had taken the floating corpses northwards to the sea, or their armour had anchored them in the dark and deep pools where the crocodiles and other denizens of the Nile were according them their last rites.
We had thrown a cordon of bronze around our camp on the eastern bank of the Nile opposite the fortress of Abu Naskos. The horses were in the traces of the chariots; and every one of our ten thousand warriors was on full alert and armed from the studs in the soles of his sandals to the peak of his bronze helmet.
Princess Serrena had finally chosen her Matrons of honour to accompany her to the altar dedicated to Isis the Egyptian goddess of love and marriage, and to the Lacedaemon goddess of love, Aphrodite. She had started out with sixteen ladies, a wife of each of the petty kings. But this had led to bitterness and acrimony, to tears and recrimination amongst the wives who had not been chosen. Serrena and Queen Tehuti had been forced to raise the number first to thirty-two and finally to forty-eight, but their only stipulation was that the wedding gifts were increased by the same amount. It was a solution which satisfied everyone – not least Serrena. The gifts were piled high in front of the altar to the goddesses. The massed bands of the regiments were assembled behind them, taking it in turn to belt out the battle hymns that were a challenge to our foes on the opposite bank of Mother Nile and a rallying call to our allies who stood foursquare beside us.
As the midday hour approached so the music became louder and more frenetic, the bared swords beat a tattoo on the glittering bronze shields and ten thousand voices blended like the thunder of the heavens. Then as the hour struck a sudden silence so complete that it was an assault to the human ear overwhelmed all the world.
The ranks of the ten thousand opened soundlessly and the tall and commanding figure of Pharaoh Rameses, the new ruler of our very Egypt, stepped forward. He marched to take his place before the altar to the goddesses Isis and Aphrodite; then, as he turned to face the gateway to the women
’s camp where Serrena was secreted with her Matrons of honour, he raised his right arm and the singing began.
At first it was sweet, warm and low as a summer breeze off the waves of the indolent ocean. Then it rose into a paean of joy and an ode to love. The gates to the women’s camp swung open and through them danced two files of women dressed in garments of rainbow colour. There were twenty-five women in each of the columns. Their feet were bare and their hair was dressed with ribbons and flowers. They laughed and sang, clapping their hands or strumming on the lyre and cithara and other strung musical instruments. The right-hand column was led by Queen Tehuti and the left-hand column by her sister, Princess Bekatha.
Between the two ranks walked a man and two women. The man was King Hurotas decked in gold and jewels. He wore rubies in his crown and diamonds on his slippers. His gown was of purple silk and his breeches were of cream silk. His booming mirth was so infectious that his men could not restrain themselves but laughed with him.
The female figure on his right arm was tall and lithe. She reached as high as Hurotas’ shoulder but she was covered from the top of her head to the tips of her toes with cloth of gold which sparkled in the noonday sunlight. Yet she carried herself with such grace and energy that despite the fact that her face was veiled no person who looked upon her could doubt who she was for a single instant.
Pharaoh Rameses of Egypt reached out to her with both hands and King Hurotas whirled his daughter into a pirouette and sent her twirling across the gap that separated them to end up in a deep curtsey at the feet of her bridegroom. Rameses took her hands in his and lifted her upright. Then he reached out for the cloth of gold which covered her head and with a flourish whirled it away, leaving Princess Serrena revealed in her true glory from the top of her shining head whose remarkable golden tresses were dressed with gossamer and pearls, down over the rippling multi-hued silk which clung to every swell and hollow of her body and limbs.
Human or divine, there was not one of us present that day who did not acknowledge her as the most splendid creature we had ever laid eyes upon.
They began to dance and we danced with them. Only when the sun set and darkness fell did the bride and groom retire to the lodgings that had been prepared for them. However, the celebration continued unabated for the rest of that night.
I danced with both Tehuti and Bekatha and then I slipped away and went back to my own tent without tasting a drop of Hurotas’ excellent wine, which I confess tested my resolve to nigh on its limit. I slept until two hours before sunrise, then I roused myself in the darkest hour of the night and went down to the river, picking my way carefully around the drink-sodden carcasses which were scattered at random like the casualties of a savage battle.
With only the stars to guide me and dressed in my loin-cloth with my knife in its sheath and the purse containing my fish tiles slung around my neck I waded out until the water reached my chin and then I began to swim. I passed the familiar first island without a pause and headed for the second. I was beginning to fear that I had missed it in the darkness when suddenly it loomed ahead of me lit by the first inkling of the dawn. I angled in to come at it from the downriver side, using the island’s own bulk to break the flow of the current.
Then I dived down to the foundation of the island on the bottom of the river. By this time the light was strengthening sufficiently for me to compare the formation of this second island to the first. I was astonished to find that it was close to identical in almost every respect. It was the same size, or as close to it as makes little difference. It was steep too, as was the first, rising sheer from the bottom of the river. Now I could be certain that both of them had been built by humans, probably by the same man or men.
It must have involved a great deal of work, and for little or no repayment or advantage. Neither of the two islands I had so far visited was high enough above water to be useful as a signal tower; in fact they seemed to have been deliberately built low as if to escape detection. The fact that they were constructed in deep, fast water emphasized the difficulty of the work undertaken by the ancient peoples. I considered the possibility that these were the remains of a dam or lock, but they were set too far apart and there were no indications on the bank of the river that there had been an attempt to channel water away for any purpose, such as irrigation or domestic usage.
By now it was light enough for me to see the hand- and footholds and to climb the wall to the top of the structure. As I climbed I realized that this was an identical round tower with a flat top, but not as badly weathered as the first tower. When I reached the top I saw that there were traces of chiselled stonework of advanced design that had weathered over the ages. I started digging and dislodging the masonry, but each stone was perfectly cut and assembled with hairline joints to its neighbour. It was a laborious task. After several hours I had gone down only waist deep and was preparing to abandon the task, or at least to hand it over to a gang of common labourers. My fingernails were cracked and chipped. I am proud of my hands and have often been commended by the ladies for the condition in which I maintain them. I lifted what I promised myself was absolutely the final slab from the excavation, and then I was startled by the one that lay beneath it. I could see only the top edge of it but it was unique and distinctive. I snatched the purse that hung over my shoulder and with fingers that shook slightly I drew out the fired clay tile which Ganord had bequeathed to me. I measured it against the buried tile, and it was an exact match for size.
At that I abandoned all thoughts of handing over this excavation to others, especially common workmen.
I drew my knife from its sheath and started gently easing the strange tile from the bed which it had occupied for countless millennia. At last it came away in my hands. I scrambled from my shallow trench and squatted with the new tile on my lap. I admit that before I settled down I glanced at the ground beneath my naked buttocks to ascertain that Inana had placed no sharp ceramic splinters beneath me. Then I could apply my full attention to my new acquisition, or rather my new ancient acquisition.
It was identical in size and shape to my fish tile, but in all other respects it was completely different. The fish tile was green; this one was vivid blue. This tile depicted a stylized seabird – a shearwater perhaps – although it could equally have been an ostrich. The artist had not made it clear which his intention had been. In addition this tile was demarcated by three dots rather than the four on my fish tile.
I was already starting to refer to the two islands as Fish Island and Bird Island. I glanced across the river towards the fortress of Abu Naskos and wondered if the other two islands which I had not yet explored had also been named by the ancients, perhaps Crocodile and Hippopotamus Islands. The thought made me smile.
I returned to my excavations and found that there was a complete course of identical bird tiles running around the ancient shaft. Naturally I was intrigued by this and continued digging down in hope of further discoveries. However, within a very short distance I came up short against a fault line. There had clearly been a shift in the earth’s crust which had damaged the sub-strata. Nothing made sense any longer.
All I had learned was that the ancient peoples had sunk two shafts, one on Fish and the other on Bird Island. I had no way of knowing how deep and to what purpose they had undertaken this tremendous amount of work. The shaft beneath my feet had been churned into rubble.
‘What if Fish and Bird Island are joined in some magical manner?’ I did not say that, I did not even think it. I knew it was Inana imitating my voice. She seems to take endless pleasure in teasing me.
I tried to resist her suggestion. To what purpose would the two islands be joined? I had proven to myself that man can only exist for a very limited period beneath the surface of the water. I had dived to the bottom of the Nile River and other shallow bodies of water, but only for a very short space of time.
I looked across at Fish Island and measured the distance with my eye. My spirits quailed when I considered trave
lling even one-tenth so far on a single breath of air. I jumped to my feet and paced up and down in agitation. I stamped on the ground but it was solid with no suggestion of an excavation beneath it.
‘What if there was a tunnel like a rabbit’s warren joining the two islands?’ I mused, and immediately shook my head. ‘Water finds its own level.’ That was a truth that I had worked out for myself when I was still very young. ‘A rabbit’s warren fills with water just like any other hole in the ground.’
But I knew I had missed something. I pondered it anew. ‘Why don’t my lungs fill with water when I dive to the bottom of the Nile?
‘Because I seal them off by holding my breath.
‘So if the walls of the tunnel are waterproof and the entrances of the tunnel are above water level then the tunnel is also waterproof. There is no way for water to enter.
‘Ah, there is the catch! The walls of the tunnel are not waterproof. They are made from earth, and earth is porous.’
‘But if the ancient men had discovered another impervious substance to line the walls of their tunnel then they would have been able to walk beneath the waves.’ This last was said in Inana’s sweet and enchanted tones, and I looked up and saw her leaning elegantly against a tree overlooking my excavations. As usual her reasoning was convoluted, but she had led me by a roundabout route to something like the truth.