Day of the False King

by Brad Geagley

  Seeing him awake, the young men gathered around Semerket to question and pester him. “Is it true you’re going to Babylon to bring back the devil’s idol for Cousin Ramses?” asked the youngest.

  “I’m going there to find my wife,” Semerket said, choking back his stomach. He was shocked to learn that the lad knew of his quest for the idol of Bel-Marduk. Ramses must have confided the secret to Elibar.

  “Egyptian women are harlots.” This from the eldest.

  “My wife is no harlot,” Semerket said firmly, an edge to his voice.

  “Yet our father tells us she is not really your wife at all,” said the tallest son. “He says she divorced you to marry another man, a traitor who raised his hand against our dead Uncle Ramses. Is that true?”

  Semerket’s stomach churned dangerously. “She wanted a child,” he managed to gasp. “I couldn’t give her one. She didn’t know he was a traitor when she married him.”

  “Is that why you Egyptians allow your women the freedom to bed whomever they choose? Must they search everywhere, then, for men who can give them sons?”

  “That isn’t why we allow freedom to women—”

  “Look what happened to Uncle Ramses—killed by his own wives. How shameful is that? In our land, you would never hear of such disgrace. Women should keep to their homes, raising their children and spinning the good wool.”

  Semerket truly did not feel up to such debate, but attempted to answer the lad reasonably. “Men and women in Egypt take their example from the marriage of Isis and Osiris,” he explained. “Osiris could not be King of the Dead without the help of his wife.”

  At this, Elibar’s sons burst into contemptuous laughter. “But they are false gods,” said the third oldest. “They don’t exist! How can you even mention them to us?”

  This comment provoked the young men to lapse into their native tongue, all shouting together and gesticulating violently, turning their backs on Semerket. He took the opportunity to slip away unnoticed and join Elibar at the ship’s prow.

  The ship rolled suddenly, and Semerket was surprised to find he suffered no accompanying urge to vomit. In fact, the mutton stew in the swaying cooking pot smelled almost tempting. Perhaps he had at last obtained his—what did the captain call them?—his “sea legs.”

  In the prow, beneath an awning, Pharaoh’s cousin Elibar was praying, with his shawl drawn around his head. Semerket waited for the man’s muttering and keening to cease before he spoke.

  “Your sons are very passionate,” Semerket said when Elibar opened his eyes.

  Elibar canted his head to regard the four young men. “It’s a good thing for men to be passionate about their beliefs,” he said with his usual deliberateness. “Sometimes, only a deeper conviction gives us an advantage over our enemies. Sometimes, it’s all we have.”

  “I would have thought it was your god who gave you the advantage.”

  Elibar shrugged, indicating that the sentiment was understood.

  “They certainly despise Egyptians, though,” Semerket said, looking back at the youths.

  “Perhaps you didn’t know that the Habirus were once enslaved by the Egyptians,” explained Elibar, “or so our tradition tells us. But we prayed to our god, and he sent a hero to rescue us; his name was Moses.”

  Semerket, who had never heard this story before, shook his head doubtfully. “But Moses is an Egyptian name, or at least half of one.”

  “Moses was a Habiru who was drawn from the Nile and raised as a prince in Pharaoh’s Golden House. So, yes, you can say that he was an Egyptian—or at least half of one.”

  “Why have I never heard of your ‘hero’?”

  “Perhaps because he lived over three hundred years ago.”

  “Elibar,” said Semerket with a trace of condescension, “in Egypt, that’s like saying ‘yesterday.’ ”

  Elibar regarded him skeptically, smiling to himself, but saying nothing.

  “Do you believe the story?” Semerket asked.

  At that moment, a school of fish suddenly swarmed near the surface, breaking the water in a flurry of froth and furious spume. Their silver flanks sparkled in the rays of the rising sun. A few sailors took a moment to cast lines into the sea in the hope of snagging a meal.

  Elibar answered Semerket in a low voice, so that his words would not carry on the winds to his sons. “I will tell you what my cousin Ramses believes, if you’re of a mind to listen, for he claims to have read the suppressed scrolls.”

  Semerket shifted uncomfortably. All too often knowledge of the truth brought with it its own kind of penalty. Nevertheless, he nodded, indicating that Elibar should speak.

  Elibar leaned in close. “Ramses says the Habirus first invaded Egypt alongside the Hyksos. One of them, Youssef, even rose to become high vizier under the Hyksos king. He was given the task of exterminating the native Egyptians in the Delta, and drove their survivors south into Thebes. Ramses insists the Habiru legend is actually wrong side up—that it was the Egyptians who were oppressed by the invaders.”

  Semerket shrugged. Every Egyptian knew of the Hyksos. Their invasion was the national scar on the nation’s conscience, and their expulsion Egypt’s greatest victory.

  “When the native southern kings at last prevailed,” Elibar continued, “they enslaved those Habirus who had stayed behind and slew their every male child.”

  “The usual punishment dealt to Egypt’s invaders,” said Semerket reasonably. “It’s told about the Libyans, the Shardanas, Danites, the Sea Peoples—any of the tribes who invaded Egypt.”

  “But only the Habirus produced a Deliverer.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Semerket ironically, “the Slave King raised in a palace.”

  Elibar regarded him patiently. “Will you hear more?”

  “Go on.”

  “Ramses believes Moses was one of his own ancestors, a Prince Thut-moses, a nephew of Queen Hatshepsut. My cousin says that Prince Thut-moses made common cause with the Habirus, planning to use them as warriors in his attempt to take the throne. But the coup failed. Only the intervention of Hatshepsut allowed him to escape Egypt, together with a handful of Habirus. It was then that he began to worship a single god of the desert, where he wandered like a crazed wizard for many years.”

  Semerket was silent for a moment. “Why do you tell me these things?” he asked.

  “To illustrate, perhaps, that all life is merely a point of view—that nothing is what it seems.”

  “You tell that to me, clerk of Investigations and Secrets?” Semerket laughed shortly.

  “I mean it as a warning, Semerket, to guide you perhaps to where you are going. You must remember that Mesopotamia is a different world from Egypt altogether. It’s disordered and chaotic. Often you cannot see what is right in front of you; often you will see what is not there.”

  There was a sudden yelp of glee from one of the sailors. He had snagged a large fat fish, enough to feed them all that night. Others ran to help him scoop it from the sea.

  Elibar pointed. “That’s how it will be for you, Semerket—like that fish there, ripped from the only world it ever knew into one it never imagined. Not even the air you breathe will be the same.”

  “I’m not so complete a fool as you may think,” muttered Semerket. “I’ve been to Babylonia before, you know, though not as far as the capital; I can even read their language, though slowly.”

  “Perhaps that will be enough,” Elibar said doubtfully.

  They watched the big fish struggle on the deck, gasping and snapping futilely at its captors. Finally, the laughing sailors fell on it, clubbing it to death with their oars.

  A tiny droplet of fear crept into Semerket’s soul. He would have liked to ruminate over Elibar’s words, to twist them around in his mind and dredge them of their hidden meaning—but suddenly, from the lookout’s nest above the sail, came the shout:

  “Land!”

  They had sighted the coast of Asia. Semerket uttered a quick prayer of thanks; at least now, i
f the ship foundered there would be a chance of making it to shore.

  By noon, the ship had joined the long line of others that were crowding into Tyre’s newly built harbor. As the sailors prepared to moor the ship, Semerket returned to where he had stored his travel sack. Within it was the glittering badge of office that Pharaoh had given him, designating him Egypt’s special envoy. It was a thing of heavy and magisterial beauty, a falcon whose outstretched wings covered most of his chest. Semerket had not yet donned it; the first lands through which he would travel had once been colonies of Egypt and their inhabitants still harbored bitter resentments toward their one-time masters. Sometimes they killed the occasional Egyptian wayfarer to settle old scores. “Evil has an Egyptian mother,” was the saying in these Asian lands.

  Also within the leather pouch, beside the letters that manumitted Rami and Naia, were five clay tablets that Pharaoh had given him. Inscribed with the strange, wedge-shaped characters of Babylonia, they entitled him to draw monies from temple counting houses throughout Mesopotamia. Each of the five tablets bore Semerket’s thumbprint, for the Babylonians believed that the swirls and loops etched into every person’s thumb were unique. The temple priests believed they could tell if the bearer was truly the person to whom the monies were entitled. Semerket found this to be an absurd notion, but if all it took was his thumbprint to freely access Pharaoh’s bullion, who was he to dispute the custom?

  In the pouch with the clay tablets were the only other items he had brought along with him. The first was the brittle piece of palm bark from Rami. The second was another letter, Naia’s only message to him from Babylon, inscribed on a piece of papyrus she had filched from the ambassador’s waste pits. Perhaps for the hundredth time, Semerket unfolded the brittle paper to read:

  My Love,

  I have arrived in Babylon, and the Egyptian ambassador has placed me in his house as a maid. I am well and Rami is with me. We are content here, though everyone talks of the coming war with Elam. A merchant who leads a caravan to Thebes promises he will deliver this letter to you. Kisses to you and Huni, a thousand times. You are not to worry.

  Naia.

  Semerket’s heart began to beat with excitement when he heard the splash of the anchor stone. He realized that only a couple of hundred leagues separated him from his beloved.

  “I’m here, Naia,” he whispered. “Do you feel it? Look up, and you will see me.”

  SHAUL, THE ELDEST SON of Elibar, together with a few of his father’s more burly shepherds, escorted Semerket to the Babylonian border. Though the land differed in no way from the rolling hills in which they had been traveling for at least a week, Semerket knew the land to be Babylonian by the tall, slim boundary stone that marked it. He stepped from Shaul’s four-wheeled chariot to the ground. Dutifully, he knelt and kissed the earth, thanking the gods for his safe arrival.

  The boundary stone stood flat and gray at the junction of two roads, carved with the names and images of the Babylonian gods, invoking their curses should anyone violate the hospitality of the people living behind it. Fierce gryphons with slashing claws stood sentry on either side of the stone, promising swift punishment to those who disregarded its warnings.

  Semerket watched as Shaul and his companions turned their chariots, returning to the west. He waited until they disappeared over the rise; then, fighting an almost panicky feeling of abandonment, he began to walk down the road that led south.

  It took him the entire afternoon to reach the next city. In all that time, he saw no one on the road. To his relief, just as the sun began to fall behind the western hills, he caught site of the ancient walls of Mari. A haze of black smoke hovered above the city, thicker than the usual smut of cooking fires. As he came nearer, he saw that the walls bore witness to siege engines recently used against them. Holes gaped in their brown brick flanks, and scars of soot and smoke zigzagged crazily across their ramparts.

  In all the other cities of Mesopotamia through which he had passed with Shaul and his companions, the noise of human traffic and habitation had risen loudly to greet them. At Mari, he heard only the occasional screeches of the carrion vultures wheeling in high circles above. As he came nearer the walls, he saw bodies heaped haphazardly in the fields on either side of the road. The temperature had risen precipitously as he ventured further south, and the bloating corpses seemed to melt together like fat left in the sun. His nostrils curled at the sinister smell of rotting meat, overlaid as it was with the pervasively acrid scent of human waste.

  From behind the damaged city wall, he unexpectedly heard male voices yelling in excitement. A gang of Elamite soldiers suddenly burst through the ruined city gate, kicking a leather ball, passing it to one another between their feet.

  The squad of soldiers stopped abruptly when they saw Semerket standing in the road. The ball came bounding over to where Semerket stood, and he set off to catch it for them. When he bent down, however, he saw that the leather wrapping covered a perfectly distinct human head. Semerket recoiled, allowing the head to roll into the field of corpses, losing it in the long shadows.

  “Who are you?” one of the men asked in poor Babylonian.

  Semerket spoke haltingly. “I’m Semerket, from Egypt. I’ve come to meet with your king Kutir and bring him Pharaoh’s blessing.” Now that he had left the former colonies of Egypt, he felt it safe to call himself by his own name.

  When the lieutenant had translated his words, the Elamites smiled cordially and nodded. “Welcome to the kingdom of Babylon, Egyptian, or what’s left of it,” the soldier said in his queerly accented Babylonian.

  Semerket’s gaze wandered to the ruins behind the gate. “What happened to this town, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Its people gave—how do you say it? Hiding? Protection…?”

  “Shelter?”

  “Yes! Just so! They gave shelter to Isin traitors. Our brigade was sent here to…” The lieutenant paused to once again search for the correct word. “…to demand that they turn the Isins over to us, or be destroyed.”

  Semerket looked about. The citizens of Mari evidently had not yielded to the Elamites’ request.

  “Is everyone dead, then?”

  “Eh.” The lieutenant shrugged philosophically. “Most fled to swamps. Very disappointing. Mari is poor city. No gold for soldiers, you know. No loot.”

  Stepping over fallen bricks and charred lumber, Semerket turned to the lieutenant. “I don’t suppose there’s an inn where I could take rooms? I’ve walked most of the day, and would be glad of a bed.”

  “Priests of Bel-Marduk keep a hostel for travelers—but they, too, flee to marshes.”

  “What about food?”

  The lieutenant shook his head, but then his eyes brightened with joy. “You eat with us! With officers! We share our rations with you and you tell us stories from Egypt. Come…come.”

  Just as the last rays of the sun deserted them, they reached the Elamite headquarters. From a half-burned-out building at the far end of the walkway, he heard a cacophony of voices spilling into the courtyard, all speaking a gregarious Elamite.

  “This way,” said the lieutenant, pointing. “We take our meals in the cooking shed, yonder.”

  As Semerket entered the ruined shed, the soldiers gathered there turned to stare at him—twelve of them, Semerket counted. Old instincts in him made him note all the doors and exits. When he was sure of their location, he turned his attention again to the men. They sat on the floor on a carpet, in the center of which was a large steaming kettle.

  The lieutenant spoke rapidly to them in his own tongue. Semerket could not follow most of it, but thought he recognized per-ah, the Elamite word for “Pharaoh.” Ramses came out “Rah-may-seeyu”—at least, that is what Semerket assumed the word meant.

  The commander was a short, thick plug of a man with sinewy arms lavishly scarred from battle. Without rising, he hailed Semerket from the carpet.

  “Egyptian!” he called in his gravelly voice, speaking a more unintelligi
ble Babylonian than even the lieutenant. “Here! Come!” He indicated a seat of honor beside him.

  Semerket walked carefully around the perimeter of men and took his place beside the commander. A slave lingering near the hearths, a man of Semerket’s age, staggered forward, gripping a ewer and a basin. Chains, Semerket noticed, bound the man’s legs together.

  The slave placed the basin on Semerket’s lap. In perfect Egyptian he said, “I am going to wash your hands now, sir.”

  Semerket’s head shot up. His expression must have been one of shock, for instantly the Elamite officers roared out in protest, jumping to their feet and reaching for their swords. They lunged at the slave as if they would hack him to pieces on the spot.