Day of the False King

by Brad Geagley

  “Please, sir,” whispered the heavier one, “it won’t do for you to keep surprising us this way. What if someone important should see us together? What would they think?”

  “We’d lose our job, that’s what,” added the other man, his voice as taut as a lute string. “It’s hard enough since the invasion to get honest work. Just go on walking, sir, like you was doing. We won’t bother you if you don’t bother us. Live and let live, that’s what we say.”

  “How’d you like to work for me?”

  Both men were speechless for a moment. Then the thin one exploded in protests, regardless of who saw them, saying that a dungeon—or worse—awaited them if they changed allegiances. Semerket gathered from the man’s repeated entreaties to the sixty thousand gods of Babylon that the Elamites were not liberal-minded in such matters.

  “Let me rephrase it,” Semerket said. “What if I pay you not to follow me? In that way you can collect two salaries at once.”

  Again, the thin man began to bewail his fate, but his compatriot’s face took on a shrewd expression beneath its folds of fat. “Let us hear this gentleman out,” he said, “for even though he’s an Egyptian, there may be some sense in what he says.”

  Semerket quickly sketched his proposal: for the next week they could earn a gold piece per day if they were to let him go about his business alone. It amounted to almost a whole year’s salary, he said, since he would be paying them in Egyptian gold. Moreover, at the end of the week, Semerket promised, he would dutifully present himself to King Kutir, and no one would be the wiser.

  “But what do we tell the Elamite captain who pays us?” asked the fat one. “He wants a report detailing your movements at the end of every day.”

  “You’ll follow me to the Egyptian temple in the morning,” Semerket blithely assured the two spies. “And every evening I’ll come out the same way. You can report that I’ve been praying all day, and as far you can tell, it’s true. Everyone thinks Egyptians are god-crazy, anyway; it’ll be easy for you to convince your captain.”

  The larger of the two spies contemplatively stroked his scanty beard. Even at rest, the breath going in and out of his lungs sounded like a punctured bellows. “I confess it’s more appealing to me than following you around the city all day, going in circles as you do. I’m a large man, as you can see, more accustomed to the comfortable benches of the occasional wineshop. The thought of collecting two salaries at once is very tempting—very tempting.”

  “We’ll be caught,” the other man whispered anxiously. “They’ll find out. The Elamites will flay the skins from our bodies. They’ll throw us into the Insect Chamber—”

  “Why?” said Semerket reassuringly. “Do they set spies to spy upon their spies?”

  “I’d put nothing past them,” the thin man said glumly. “You don’t know them like we do.” He grimaced, thinking perhaps of the punishments that would be his.

  In the end, however, the two Dark Head spies agreed to Semerket’s plan, though they warned him that if he did not emerge from the temple at sundown as he had promised, they would go immediately to the Elamite captain to report him missing. Semerket agreed to their single condition. A little more copper persuaded them to divulge the best route to the Egyptian Quarter. Under their guidance, he was able to reach it in a fraction of the time it had taken him on the previous day.

  At the Egyptian temple, Semerket told Senmut and Wia that he must go over its rear wall so that he could explore Babylon without anyone’s knowing he did. But Senmut showed him a long, underground passageway instead, damp from the waters of the Euphrates and smelling foully of waste, which connected the temple grounds to a distant alleyway. Wia gave him the ancient key that opened its bronze gate, and Semerket was at last alone in Babylon.

  “WINE,” he said. “Red.”

  As he frequently did when he first arrived in a strange city, Semerket went to a tavern. The owners of such establishments usually were the touchstones for all the gossip and intrigue of the neighborhood. As a rule, they were garrulous sorts, willing to share what they knew for a little cash, or even for a bowl of their own wine.

  There was a surfeit of such places from which to choose in Babylon’s Egyptian Quarter, and he sat in a shop that occupied the corner of a small square. The term “shop” was a misnomer, however, for only a single tattered awning barely kept the hot sun from Semerket’s back. Everyone who passed could peek inside to see who drank there. Even at this relatively early hour there were more than a few patrons sitting on the pavement, huddled over their bowls of wine, like vultures over a corpse.

  The owner himself brought the bowl to where Semerket sat, and Semerket gave him a copper snippet.

  “Not enough,” said the man shortly.

  “Then you must import your wine directly from the Heavenly Fields, friend,” Semerket said, smiling to show that he was joking.

  The man regarded him with a blank expression. “Wonderful—a sense of humor. Now my day can begin. Three coppers, friend.”

  “Three?” Semerket had never paid so much for wine before, even in Thebes’ finest inns.

  “There’s been a war here, in case you hadn’t noticed. When trade is down, the price goes up. Three copper pieces, or get out.”

  With a sourness that suddenly matched the innkeeper’s, Semerket pulled out two more bits of copper from his sash and added them to the one already in the man’s hand. The shop owner was about to depart when Semerket stopped him, attempting to arrange his features into something resembling cordiality.

  “Wait,” he said, “for that much copper I’d like some advice to go with it.”

  “Advice?”

  “Help, then. I’m new to Babylon.”

  The shop owner’s lip curled a fraction. “Go to one of the temples if you need charity. We’re fresh out.”

  “It’s information I want.”

  The man looked at him for a moment, eyes suddenly flat and ominous. “And you thought the wineseller could let you in on what’s happening in our little world, eh? A few bowls of wine, a few coppers, and I’d tell you anything you want to know—is that it?”

  “Something like it.”

  “Here’s some ‘advice,’ then, and on the house: this is Babylon, friend, not Egypt.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Then you should also be aware that any time some stranger from Egypt comes looking for information around here, it usually means someone ends up dead, or arrested, or hauled away for a turn in the Sinai mines. Stick your nose someplace else. We tend to get jittery when anybody starts asking questions—they’re usually bounty hunters.”

  “I’m not a bounty hunter. I only want to find my friends,” Semerket said, his voice becoming insistent. “Surely that’s not—”

  The wineseller bent down to where Semerket sat, bringing his heavy face close to Semerket’s. “The only want of yours I’m interested in,” said the man, enunciating, “is whether or not you want more wine.” He paused. “Do you want more wine?”

  “No.”

  “When you do, I’ll be over there.” The man pointed to the brick bench where his wine jars were stacked, and left him.

  Semerket looked around the shop. Most of the people had overheard his conversation with the owner and now assiduously avoided his gaze. Only one person seemed friendly, an elderly man whose sagging jowls quivered excitedly when Semerket turned in his direction. The man lingered hopefully at the outer reaches of the canopy, in the white sunlight, and when the shop owner turned away, he gesticulated feverishly so that Semerket might call him into the shop.

  Semerket inclined his head, indicating that the old man should join him. When he sat down, however, Semerket instantly regretted it. Stubble blossomed on his chin, and wine stained his grimy robes.

  The old man brought his quivering hands together, saluting Semerket in the Egyptian fashion. “Thank you, young man, thank you,” he burbled, taking a seat. “Most kind of you, indeed.” A miasma of stale wine and garlic ins
tantly stole over Semerket like a dank river fog.

  The shop’s owner appeared at their side. “Damn you, Kem-weset!” he said. “It gives my place a bad name when the likes of you comes begging.”

  “You have it all wrong, Hapi, dear fellow,” the old man interrupted quickly, ducking his head as if he expected a blow. “This young man—” He nudged Semerket in the ribs.

  “Semerket.”

  “My friend Semerket here invited me in. He wishes to consult with Babylon’s greatest physician.” He looked askance at Semerket, pleading with his cloudy eyes, smiling piteously. “Isn’t that so, son? I can see you’ve had a touch of river fever recently, am I right?”

  Semerket could have easily dismissed the old man, but after a moment’s hesitation, he looked up at the wineseller with a trace of defiance. “Another bowl of red for Babylon’s finest physician.”

  The old man’s tongue darted to the crusted corners of his mouth. “A jar would be better, I think,” he said to Hapi. “It’s devilish hot today.”

  Semerket nodded.

  “Show me the copper, first,” the wineseller demanded.

  Semerket reached into his belt and tossed him the pieces.

  Hapi the wine merchant delivered the jar with the usual bonhomie that distinguished his establishment. Semerket poured some for the old man, who eagerly raised the bowl to his lips after nodding a quick toast to Semerket. In his haste to drink, however, or because his hands were shaking, he spilled some wine onto the ground. Without hesitation he removed his sash and sopped it up, squeezing the few drops back into the bowl.

  “Waste of good wine is a sin,” the old man intoned firmly. “That’s what the Babylonians say, and I believe them.”

  He seized the jar himself this time and poured another bowlful, drinking the second more slowly.

  “Ah,” he exhaled, “very soothing. Just the thing to counter this beastly heat.”

  He closed his eyes, sighing contentedly. Semerket noticed that the old man’s trembling hands were calmer and that color was slowly returning to his blotched face.

  “Are you truly a physician?” asked Semerket.

  “None finer in all Babylonia, though that’s not saying much.” Kem-weset swallowed more wine. “They have no appreciation for the medical arts here. Whenever anyone falls ill, do they consult with a trained physician? No. Do they call in wizards for a proper exorcism? Certainly not. They just move them out of their homes, bed and all, into the Sick Square—”

  “The what?”

  “The Sick Square. That colossal joke where Babylon laughs at me, at Kem-Weset, physician of Egypt.”

  “But what is it?”

  “What does it sound like, son? It’s a square where they bring out the city’s sick and ailing. The wretches are forced to call out—to total strangers, mind you—in the hope that someone might know a cure for their affliction.”

  “That sounds very backward.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. But the Babylonians have a horror of the lancet and probe. And you can’t really know medicine, true medicine, if you’re squeamish. A body’s about muscles and guts, sinews and organs, and all the liqueurs of life—phlegm, bile, blood, urine, sweat, semen, shit—”

  Kem-weset’s voice grew loud with his wine and indignation. Semerket noticed Hapi glancing sharply at them from his corner.

  “Would you care for another jar?” Semerket asked hastily, hoping to divert the old man.

  “A capital idea.”

  Semerket signaled the wineseller. Kem-weset became positively giddy. “I must say, my boy, you’re being awfully generous. What can I do for you in return?”

  “I’m here in Babylon to find some friends, to take them back to Egypt—”

  “Back to Egypt!” the old man interrupted, his voice charged with ecstatic longing, as if the word Semerket had spoken were heaven or paradise. “How I long to lie in the shadows of the pyramids and drink from the waters of the Nile again. Alas…”

  “What’s keeping you here? Did you commit some crime that prevents you from returning?”

  “Ah, no, nothing like that. I came here of my own accord, thinking they might need a real doctor in these parts.” The old man sighed again. “It is my mistress who keeps me here.”

  Semerket blinked. Semerket tried to imagine the mistress of such a man, but found his powers unequal to the task. “A mistress?”

  “Ah, dear me, yes. One whose heart is granite, yet whose embrace I’ve never left without wanting more. She is there in the bowl beside you.”

  “Oh,” said Semerket, comprehending. “The wine.”

  Kem-weset nodded sadly. “I’ve no money to return to Egypt, Semerket. I’ve given all of it away to people like Hapi over there. I’m a physician with no patients, in a country with no doctors, who lives from bowl to bowl. Hope of ever returning to Egypt has withered in me.”

  Semerket remembered his own days as the town drunk, in the weeks and months after Naia had divorced him. He might have become exactly like this pathetic old man, but the gods had been merciful, giving him honest work to do. Kem-weset, it seemed, had not even his profession to rescue him from despair.

  “Surely the Egyptians here need your skills?”

  “The occasional broken bone, some stitches—that’s about all I’m good for. I’m still living on the remnants of a fee I got a few weeks ago for patching up some local lads. Last year I thought I’d latched onto something, but it came to nothing. As usual.” Kem-weset wiped at his eyes with his wine-stained sash, burying his large nose in its folds and blowing.

  Semerket poured him another bowl of wine.

  Kem-weset raised his head. “Let’s not talk anymore of sad things,” he said. “This excellent wine won’t permit us to be anything other than joyful. Now, you were telling me that you’d come here to find your friends?”

  Semerket nodded. “But the city’s so large. I don’t know where to begin. Even the Egyptian Quarter here is so much bigger than I expected.”

  “Some twenty thousand of us in the city alone, last time anyone bothered to count, and that’s not including the rest of Babylonia.”

  “Twenty thousand—!” Semerket choked. “How could the quarter hold them all?”

  “We’re all over the city, Semerket, not just in this little place.” Kem-weset waved an extravagant hand to indicate a myriad of unseen vistas. “Egyptians are very desirable as servants, you know, because of our elegant manners.”

  Semerket considered what Kem-weset had told him. “Naia did write that she had become a maid in the Egyptian ambassador’s residence—”

  “Menef?” Kem-weset’s voice was sharp.

  Semerket nodded.

  The old man’s face lit up. “But I know him! I told you that I thought I was onto something last year—that’s who it was. When Menef came to Babylon, I tried to interest him in making me his official physician. But he had brought his own doctor and luck deserted me once again.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “But of course.”

  “Can you take me there?”

  “I can do more than that. I’ll introduce him to you. I’m sure he’ll remember me.” Kem-weset preened importantly, and then sighed regretfully. “But before we go…”

  “What?”

  “I noticed you haven’t touched that wine there at your side…?”

  Semerket passed his bowl to the physician.

  DESPITE SEMERKET’S IMPATIENCE to get under way, Kem-weset insisted that they return to his nearby rooms, so that he could attire himself in his formal robes and don his physician’s collar. A tedious hour passed before the old soak reappeared. The old man had dressed himself in a pleated linen tunic and shawl that even Semerket, who cared little for fashion’s trends, ascertained was of no recent vintage.

  For all his obvious decay, Kem-weset seemed jaunty enough. “Come, Semerket!” he cried, setting his walking stick firmly on the ground. Despite the copious amounts of wine he had imbibed that morning
, he walked swiftly through the lanes and byways of Babylon without once stumbling—the sure sign of a true and committed drunkard, thought Semerket.

  At the boundaries of the Egyptian Quarter, they paused at the canal so that Kem-weset could determine the best route to take to the ambassador’s residence.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve been there,” he fretted. “Now which street is it…? You’d think the Babylonians could lay down a straight road.”

  The ambassador, it turned out, lived in a walled-off enclave alongside the embassies and legations from other countries. It was not difficult to determine which estate belonged to the Egyptian ambassador, for twin spires flew the crimson and azure pennants that proclaimed it an official outpost of the kingdom of Egypt. It was a very imposing house, befitting the embassy of the greatest of nations, but the brightness of the mansion’s recent whitewash and the glaring colors of its decorations made Semerket crawl with embarrassment. Its gaudiness was almost an assault amidst all the mud brick. Semerket abruptly recalled, too, how the temple in the Egyptian Quarter had gone untended, and how its two elderly acolytes starved within it.