‘So you want to die do you, Set’s child of a whore?’
As he spoke he ran the sword up the prisoner’s leg. Barratarna could feel the metal scraping his calf, the guard made a circular motion with the sword around his kneecap, up his inner thigh. He tapped the bolt going through the prisoner’s flesh, grinned at the flinching this caused, and continued slowly upwards. The sword stopped moving and the guard let the tip rest on the Naharinan’s genitals.
‘Mmm, want to die eh?’
For what seemed like minutes, the guard stared into the eyes of the prisoner. He could see the pain in those eyes, the pitiful pleading and woeful wretchedness. The guard’s eyes moved downwards to where the tip of his sword rested.
‘It seems as if a part of you has already got its wish,’ he roared, turning away.
All three guards appearing to find this funny, laughed loudly as they walked back to the circle, slapping Broken-Nose on the back as they went. He went through the sword movement in the air in front of him again and again, repeating his last words, drawing louder laughter from his comrades. He reiterated the story for the guards who remained seated. Due to their proximity to the cart they must have heard it all already, but this didn’t stop him repeating it just to add further humiliation.
‘Seems like the gods have granted, this little part of you, its wish,’ he embellished, making the story even funnier in his opinion. Barratarna lowered his head as far as the nose chain let him and started to cry quietly, despairing, desolate, alone. Without hope. He must find a way to die. This agony must be ended somehow, by some means. Some children found their way to the cart and began shouting insults at the big man in chains. His spirit now completely broken, Barratarna closed his eyes. He wished he could do the same to his ears, his mind, his life.
*
Ahead, Djoser didn’t stop to eat. From the pouches at his side he took his water jug and drank greedily from it. It was hot today and he continued riding through the time of greatest heat. The animal beneath him seemed unconcerned, oblivious. Its stride was constant, as was its chewing. The rider put a dried date in his mouth and began to chew; he almost spat it out when he discovered himself chewing in time with the camel beneath him. It had only been a day but he had already been with this animal too long. As light began to fade, as the sun god was entering the akhet and the first hour of his perilous nightly journey was about to begin, Djoser approached Iunet. There was no sign of any grand barges moored along the quayside. Just the usual commercial craft, ferrying people and goods from one side of the river to the other, or along the river from town to town. Even as darkness approached, the area around the moorings was filled with activity.
Certain that the person he needed to meet hadn’t yet sailed through, Djoser decided against going to the house of his father’s friend at this hour. He would find lodgings and arrive fresh, bathed and changed in the morning.
*
As Djoser picked at a plate of waterfowl and figs, down the road, Barratarna’s cart was pulling up beside the same tavern Djoser had stayed in the night before.
The soldiers pulled up outside, unhitched the horses, took them to the rear of the inn and ordered the stable keeper to look after them for the night.
‘Don’t expect any payment; we’re under special orders from the Lord of the Two Lands.’
Looking at the rough, mean, broken-nosed soldier with the rancid breath and evil sneer, the stable keeper, whose name, had the soldiers been bothered to ask, was Khayu, didn’t argue. He knew the Lord of the Two Lands would never ask for his soldiers or their beasts to be housed without payment. Khayu knew these soldiers would be carrying the means to have settled the meagre cost of an overnight stabling of the horses. He knew equally well they intended to use these means to satisfy their greed and lust. As often before, Khayu felt sorry for the girls working in the tavern tonight, he hoped none of them would be badly injured. As the brutish soldier turned away, Khayu allowed himself a slight smile.
‘They can’t kill you for what you think, so concentrate on stopping your mouth saying the words inside your head, concentrate, concentrate…’
He found himself gripping the horses’ reins so tightly his nails cut into the flesh of his palm.
‘Come on then you poor fellows,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault those men will never know who their fathers are. You’ll never guess, yesterday we had a camel stay here.’
Khayu heard the sound of chains and the scream of a man which turned quickly to a whimper. He knew better than to go and see the cause, he would bide his time and check it later.
The soldiers entered the tavern, raucously ordering beer and food. Khayu, who was a lifelong friend of the innkeeper, knew they would have the same thoughts about these men. However, experience and fear of their ability with the knife, sword or whip would mean the innkeeper, like Khayu, would keep his thoughts to himself, serve them his good beer to start with and later when they were too drunk to know, the slops maybe mixed with stale grease from the kitchens or other foul liquid together with a special sleeping potion. He may not receive payment for the food and drink, but he would make sure they would be too drunk and drugged to harm any of the girls working in his tavern. They would certainly pay tomorrow when they woke up. He had a lot of experience in dealing with this kind of ‘guest’. Give them what they ask for – it’s their own fault if they get exactly that.
Khayu fed and watered the horses, instructing one of the boys working for him to rub them down with straw. He noticed the raw welts where they had been needlessly whipped too hard. He applied a soothing ointment which his wife and daughters made from plants growing beside the river. With the horses settled he took a torch and moved to the front of the inn. The cart was there opposite the inn door, what looked like a sack of grain lying in the back. As he approached, the burning oil in his torch threw some light on the shape, it was a man, or had been. A miasma of decaying vegetation and human detritus surrounded the cart.
As the light came towards him, Barratarna began whimpering.
‘He’ll throw rotten food at me. He’ll use me as a toilet. Not again, I can’t take any more. Why won’t the gods let me die?’
The flame approached. No insults were hurled, no mocking laughter, only light, a shadowy form behind it. Barratarna waited. When he felt the bearer could hear him without shouting, he pleaded with the approaching shadow.
‘In the name of all your gods please help me.’
His voice, normally shrill, was tinged with anguish and desperation, sounding more hyena than human.
‘Calm down my friend,’ came the unexpected reply.
Perhaps he hadn’t heard correctly or had misunderstood. Barratarna was used to diplomatic languages; this person was speaking in a colloquial Kemetian which he struggled to understand.
‘Calm down, my friend,’ the voice said again or at least Barratarna hoped that’s what he said. ‘The gods and those children of worms, inside the tavern, have not treated you well, but you need not be afraid of me.’
Khayu stopped suddenly. His light illuminated the state of the blood stained wreck, crumpled in the cart, showed the bolts through his thighs and ring through his nose.
‘For the love of Ptah,’ he said, calling on the god of blacksmiths. ‘Can I get you some water?’
Barratarna nodded pathetically, he felt so parched his vocal chords seemed to have seized up.
Khayu walked briskly away. The light disappeared behind the building. With the fading light, Barratarna’s hopes withered.
‘He’s gone to bring friends, to laugh at me. He’s so disgusted he’s gone to vomit.’
As the light returned, Barratarna’s heart sank. Not only one torch this time; three. More humiliation and mockery on its way. He braced himself for the verbal abuse. No revilement came. Instead, the man was with two young boys, one carrying a water pitcher, the other a jar.
‘M
y name is Khayu, friend.’ It was the deep and gentle voice of the first torch bearer. ‘Here, please try and drink some water.’
He held a beaker through the cage. Barratarna tried to move, but couldn’t.
‘Can’t,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, lie still, I’ll try to help you.’
The door to the tavern opened, noise, from inside, increased. Khayu turned in panic. If one of the soldiers was coming out he would have to flee and hope he was not recognised. Fortune was on his side tonight. It was one of the girls.
‘They stink. I need air,’ she said to no one in particular.
Khayu exhaled. He turned his attention back to the pitiful pile in the cart.
‘Come my friend, I’ll pour the water gently. Take your time. Drink what you can.’
Khayu patiently poured drops of water onto Barratarna’s lips. The water was like a soothing balm on his throat, slowly he felt his vocal chords moistening.
‘Thank you,’ he managed to say. He looked at Khayu.
‘Would you really like to help me?’
‘I can’t release you,’ came the reply. ‘You’re a prisoner of my King; I can’t go against the judgment of the living god. I would be hanged or worse, my family thrown out on the street to beg or whore. I can’t.’
‘No, I don’t mean release me. At least not in the sense you’re clearly thinking,’ his voice came in short gaspy breaths. ‘I want you to kill me. Release me to the fates my gods will decide. I’m not able to take this torture and humiliation any longer, please kill me.’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t risk that either,’ Khayu said compassionately. ‘In the morning, if those guards find you dead they’ll go berserk. Judging by the work involved in creating your punishment, it seems the desire is to keep you alive. Suffering as much as possible, but alive. If you die, their superiors will seek retribution from the soldiers guarding you.’
Barratarna knew this to be true, but he was desperate.
‘They know you’re not going to die tonight of natural causes. At least one of their number should be standing guard over you. Their arrogance, greed and lust have got the better of them. Finding you dead in the morning, will panic them. Afraid for their own lives, they’ll do everything their evil minds can concoct to blame someone else. My friends and relatives are here in this village, all very close to this spot. I can’t risk their lives or health, as much as I want to help you. No. I’ll do all I can to ease your pain, but I can’t release you to your gods.’
Barratarna’s head dropped. It had been too much to ask. Khayu took the jar from the boy standing next to him, exchanging it with his torch.
‘Hold the light steady; I need to see what I’m doing.’
He took ointment from the jar. It was the same ointment he had used on the horses earlier. Horse skin was after all, in Khayu’s experience, not so different to human. He carefully applied the salve to the wounds he could reach. Luckily, the cage was small, the man large.
‘I’m going to cover your wounds with this ointment and river mud, so those guards won’t notice it. If I know the innkeeper well, and I do, they’ll be too busy thinking about their heads and guts to be bothered about you. Maybe tomorrow will be easier for you.’
Barratarna tried his best to look grateful, and he was thankful. The ointment seemed to have an immediate numbing effect. However, the release from pain was not the release he craved. He must find a way to end it.
Khayu and the boys left Barratarna as he was falling asleep. Hopefully his night would be torment free. The stable keeper wished he could help the prisoner more. He didn’t care what the man had done. Whatever it was, it didn’t deserve this treatment, doled out by the brutes snoring, heads on tables, inside the tavern. At least the innkeeper wouldn’t have to use bedroom space to house them tonight.
Khayu, on many occasions, was obliged to kill a horse or donkey to stop its suffering from sickness or serious injury. He felt he could take a life, but his beliefs meant he could not go into the after world with such a death burdening his heart. ‘Hail Ha-Hera, who comes forth from Ra-Stet I have not slain a human.’ He had been practicing the spells.
Barratarna woke when the light from the sun touched his eyelids. His agony was not as bad as it had been, so he was again thankful for his new found, temporary friendship. He hoped his next acquaintance would be prepared to put a sword through his ribs and into his heart. It seemed like hours later when the first of the soldiers came out of the tavern. A cursory look towards Barratarna, a groan, clutching of stomach, retching in the gutter.
Slowly, one by one, the soldiers emerged. Each looking grey skinned, squinting their eyes against the Aten’s light. Each holding heads or stomachs, some trying to hold both. It was a comical scene but Barratarna didn’t laugh. He was too concerned that anything which might have to be discharged from their bodies would be disgorged over him. His worry was without need. The innkeeper’s hospitality had the required effect. They were all too concerned about how they were feeling, to be bothered about making Barratarna’s life more miserable. In fact they gave not the slightest thought to their charge, such was their pain.
The Innkeeper came out of the building carrying a large pitcher of water.
‘A drink gentlemen?’ he said with a smile. The broken nosed soldier seemed to reach for his knife and he began to growl.
‘What was the poison you gave us last night, innkeeper?’
‘Please sir, you yourself were complementing me on the quality of my beer. You said it was the best you had ever tasted. Perhaps you drank too much of it. Anyway it’s only water I’m offering you today. The best way to reduce your discomfort is to get some water inside you. If you want it, it’s here. Help yourselves.’
‘I’m warning you now Innkeeper,’ threatened broken nose, ‘don’t think I, or we, are going to pay you for what we had last night.’
‘Not at all my friends, I wouldn’t dream of taking money from men in the service of the Lord of the Two Lands. Think of it as part of my homage to the work you’re doing. It has been my pleasure to have served you, a real pleasure. You’re always welcome here.’
Smiling, he walked back through the doorway.
Another soldier, leading the horses, appeared. He managed to hitch them up to the cart and without bothering to haul Barratarna to his feet they moved off in silence. A frequent groan or other extraneous bodily sound was all Barratarna would hear from them for the next several hours.
*
Further north, Djoser was also rising. He had shared his bunk with more than a few, small, hungry creatures and scratched himself as he walked out and down to the river to bathe. There were many people at the river, some doing as he intended, to rid themselves of yesterday’s grime, others meeting in groups, talking. Across the other side he could see the boats with the men and boys in the daily throwing stick challenges. All around him was the chatter of everyday people, the screams and laughter of little children, the raucousness of the hunt for food from the other bank. Yesterday it was the smells and sights of his country he had hungrily savoured. This morning it was more the sounds. The ordinary commonplace noises he had heard every day of his life but yet, he felt, he had never heard. Rather, perhaps he had never listened before.
Today he did. He absorbed every morsel, the wife complaining about her overweight, over amorous drunken husband, the mother chatting excitedly about her youngest child’s first steps. The men talking about the upcoming festival. The boys and girls talking about nothing, as only the young can do, with great fervour. For the first time in his life Djoser was not hearing a discordant noise. He could hear voices; he could hear stories of the lives of contented people.
His land was one of peace and prosperity.
chapter eighteen
The inundation was on its way. New life was coming. In this city, dedicated to Hathor, people were unafraid. There was work and fo
od enough for all. The Governor was fair, taking no more in taxes than decreed by the Vizier. Young men, growing up never knowing war, conflict or hunger. For those who didn’t want to work in the fields, employment was to be found on the hundreds of ongoing building projects. For a lucky few the opportunity to study, maybe one day becoming a scribe, was an option.
Scribes held the Two Lands together. Everything was recorded. Taxes, stockpiles of food and armoury, building projects, trade goods, medical treatments. Reports of everything happening in the sepats were prepared for the King’s heralds, the eyes, ears and voices of the Lord of the Two Lands.
A boy growing up in a town like Iunet had no real prospect of ever reaching the exalted height of a herald, but as a scribe, his prospects were good. At the beginning of known history, Djehuti, the god of scribes, taught his acolyte, Kheti, the importance of following this profession. His teachings explained why it’s better to be a scribe than a farmer, or cabinet maker, better than a jeweller or goldsmith, weapon maker or sandal maker.
From Djehuti to Kheti, from Kheti to his son and, ever since, from generation to generation, everyone studying to be a scribe was taught the story, having to write passages from it.
‘Whatever a scribe’s place is, in a house, he will never be poor.’
Djoser wondered if anyone had ever committed these teachings to writing. Scribes would never go hungry, but had anyone ever written the whole story down? If they had, Djoser had never seen or heard of it. Maybe the power of words is greater for not being written. Passed from generation to generation. From scribe father to scribe son, from teacher to student, part of the secrets of being a scribe. Each putting their own interpretation on the words. If it was written down it would be fixed. It would be available to all – or at least all those able to read, but it would be formalised.
The Awakening Aten Page 21