by Wilbur Smith
Closer to Bubastis the encampments became more numerous, tents, huts and hovels crowded right up to the walls and ditches that surrounded the garrison town. The more fortunate among the plague victims lay under tattered roofs of palm fronds, scant protection from the hot morning sunlight. Others lay out in the trampled mud of the fields, abandoned to thirst and the elements. The dead were mixed with the dying, those wounded in the fighting lying side by side with those ravaged by streaming dysentery.
Although his instincts were those of a healer, Taita would do nothing to succor them. They were condemned by their own multitudes, for what could one man do to help so many? What was more, they were the enemies of this very Egypt, and it was clear to him that the pestilence was a visitation from the gods. Should he heal a single Hyksos, it would mean that there was one more to march on Thebes and put his beloved city to flame and rapine.
They entered the fortress and found that conditions were not much better within its walls. Plague victims lay where they had been struck down by the disease, and the rats and pariah dogs gnawed at their corpses, and even at those still alive but too far gone to defend themselves.
Apepi’s headquarters was the principal building in Bubasti, a massive sprawling mud-brick and thatch palace in the center of the town. Grooms took their horses at the gates, but one carried Taita’s saddlebags. Lord Trok led Taita through courtyards and the dark shuttered halls where incense and sandalwood burned in bronze braziers to cloak the plague stench that wafted up from the town and the surrounding encampments, but whose guttering flames made the heated air scarcely bearable. Even here in the main headquarters the groans of plague victims rang eerily through the rooms, and huddled figures lay in dark corners.
Sentries stopped them outside a barred bronze door in the deepest recesses of the building, but as soon as they recognized Trok’s hulking figure they stood aside and allowed them to pass through. This area was Apepi’s private quarters. The walls were hung with magnificent carpets and the furniture was of precious wood, ivory and mother-of-pearl, much of it plundered from the palaces and temples of Egypt.
Trok ushered Taita into a small but luxuriously furnished antechamber, and left him there. Female slaves brought him a jug of sherbet and a platter of ripe dates and pomegranates. Taita sipped the drink but ate only a little of the fruit. He was always abstemious.
It was a long wait. A sunbeam through the single high window moved sedately along the opposite wall measuring the passage of time. Lying on one of the carpets, he used his saddlebags as a pillow, dozing, never sinking into deep sleep, and coming instantly awake at every noise. At intervals he heard the distant sound of women weeping, and the keening wail of mourning somewhere behind the massive walls.
At last there came the tramp of heavy footsteps down the passage outside, and the curtains over the doorway were thrown open. A burly figure stood in the doorway. He wore only a crimson linen kilt belted below his great belly with a gold chain. His chest was covered with grizzled wiry curls, coarse as the pelt of a bear. There were heavy sandals on his feet and greaves of hard polished leather covered his shins. But he carried no sword or other weapon. His arms and legs seemed massive as the pillars of a temple, and were covered with battle scars, some white and silky, long-ago healed; others, more recent, were purple and angry-looking. His beard and dense bush of hair were grizzled also, but lacking the usual ribbons or plaits. They had not been oiled or combed and were in careless disarray. His dark eyes were wild and distracted, and his thick lips under the great beaked nose were twisted as if with pain.
“You are Taita, the physician,” he said. His voice was powerful, but without accent, for he had been born in Avaris and had adopted much of the Egyptian culture and way of life.
Taita knew him well: to him Apepi was the invader, the bloody barbarian, mortal enemy of his country and his pharaoh. It took the exercise of all his self-control to keep his expression neutral and his voice calm as he replied, “I am Taita.”
“I have heard of your skills,” said Apepi. “I have need of them now. Come with me.”
Taita slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and followed him out into the cloister. Lord Trok was waiting there with an escort of armed men. They fell in around Taita as he followed the Hyksosian king deeper into the palace. Ahead the sound of weeping became louder, until Apepi threw aside the heavy curtains that covered another doorway, and took Taita’s arm to push him through.
Dominating the crowded chamber was a large contingent of priests from the temple of Isis in Avaris. Taita’s lip curled as he recognized them by their headdress of egret feathers. They were chanting and shaking sistrums over the brazier in one corner in which cauterizing tongs glowed red hot. Taita’s professional feud with these quacks went back two generations.
Apart from the healers, twenty others were gathered around the sickbed in the center of the floor, courtiers and army officers, scribes and other officials, all looking solemn and funereal. Most of the women were kneeling on the floor, wailing and keening. Only one was making any attempt to nurse the young boy who lay on the couch. She seemed not much older than her patient, probably thirteen or fourteen years of age, and she was sponging him down with heated, perfumed water from a copper bowl.
With a single glance Taita saw that she was a striking-looking girl, with a determined, intelligent face. Her concern for her patient was evident, her expression loving and her hands quick and competent.
Taita switched his attention to the boy. His naked body was also well formed, but wasted by disease. His skin was blotched with the characteristic stigmata of the plague, and dewed with perspiration. On his chest were the raw and inflamed wounds where he had been bled and cauterized by the priests of Isis. Taita saw that he was in the final stages of the disease. His thick dark hair was sodden with sweat, it hung over his eyes, which were sunk into plum-colored cavities, open and bright with fever but unseeing.
“This is Khyan, my youngest son,” Apepi said, as he went to the bedside, and looked down at the child helplessly. “The plague will take him, unless you can save him, Magus.”
Khyan groaned and rolled onto his side with his knees drawn up in agony to his lacerated chest. With an explosive spluttering sound a mixture of liquid feces and bright blood spurted from between his shrunken buttocks onto the soiled bed linen. The girl who was nursing him at once cleaned his backside with the cloth, then wiped up the mess on the sheets without any sign of distaste. In the corner the healers renewed their chants, and the high priest took up a pair of hot tongs from the charcoal brazier and came toward the bed.
Taita stepped forward, barring the man’s way with his long staff. “Get out!” he said softly. “You and your butchers have done enough damage here.”
“I must burn the fever out of his body,” the man protested.
“Out!” Taita repeated grimly, then to the others who crowded the chamber, “Out, all of you.”
“I know you well, Taita. You are a blasphemer, and a familiar of demons and evil spirits.” The priest stood his ground, and brandished the glowing bronze instrument menacingly. “I do not fear your magic. You have no authority here. The Prince is in my charge.”
Taita stepped back and dropped his staff at the feet of the priest, who shrieked and sprang back as the rod of tam-bootie wood began to writhe, hiss and snake toward him over the tiles. Suddenly it reared up head-high, its forked tongue darting between thin grinning lips and its beady black eyes glittering.
Instantly there was a yelling stampede for the door. Courtiers and priests, soldiers and servants panicked, clawing and elbowing their way through the press to be the first out. In his haste to escape, the high priest knocked over the brazier, then screamed as he danced barefoot on the scattered coals.
Within seconds the chamber was deserted except for Apepi, who had not moved, and the girl at the sickbed. Taita stooped and picked up the writhing serpent by the tail. Instantly it was straight, rigid and wooden in his grasp. He pointed the restored s
taff at the girl at the bedside. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“I am Mintaka. This is my brother.” She laid her hand protectively on the boy’s sweat-damp curls, and lifted her chin with a defiant air. “Do your worst, Magus, but I will not leave him.” Her lips trembled and her dark eyes were huge with terror. She was clearly overawed by his reputation and by the serpent staff that Taita was pointing at her. “I am not afraid of you,” she told him, then moved around the bed until it was between them.
“Good,” said Taita briskly. “Then you will be of more use to me. When did the boy last drink?”
It took a moment for her to gather herself. “Not since this morning.”
“Can’t those quacks see that he is dying of thirst as much as of the disease? He has sweated and voided most of the water from his body,” Taita grunted, and picked up the copper jug from beside the bed to sniff the contents.
“This is foul with priest poison and plague humors.” He hurled it against the wall. “Go to the kitchens and find another jug. Make sure it is clean. Fill it from the well, not with river water. Hurry, girl.” She fled and Taita opened his bag.
Mintaka returned almost immediately with a brimming jug of clean water. Taita prepared a potion of herbs, and heated it on the brazier.
“Help me give it to him,” he ordered the girl when it had brewed. He showed her how to position her brother’s head and to stroke his throat as he dribbled the water into his mouth. Soon Khyan was swallowing freely.
“What can I do to help you?” the King asked.
“My lord, there is nothing for you here. You are better at destroying than at healing.” Taita dismissed him without looking up from his patient. There was a long silence, then the tramp of Apepi’s bronze-studded sandals as he left the chamber.
Mintaka soon lost her terror of the Magus, and as a helper she was quick and willing. She seemed able to anticipate Taita’s wishes. She forced her brother to drink while Taita brewed up another cup of medicine from his bag on the brazier. Between them they were able to get this down his throat without losing a drop. She helped him smear a soothing ointment on the burns that covered his chest. Then between them they wrapped Khyan in linen sheets and soaked them with well water to cool his burning body.
When she came to sit beside him to rest for a moment Taita took her hand and turned it palm-up. He examined the red lumps on the inside of her wrist, but Mintaka tried to pull her hand away. “Those are not plague spots.” She flushed with embarrassment. “They are only flea-bites. The palace is crawling with fleas.”
“Where the flea bites, the plague follows,” Taita told her. “Take off your shift.”
She stood up without hesitation and let it drop around her ankles. Her naked body, though slim and nubile, was also athletic and strong. Her breasts were in first bud, the perky nipples pricking out like ripening mulberries. A triangle of soft fluff nestled between her long shapely legs.
A flea hopped from her pale belly. Deftly Taita picked it out of the air and crunched it between his fingernails. The insect had left a chain of pink spots around her neatly puckered belly button.
“Turn round,” he ordered, and she obeyed. Another of the loathsome insects ran down her back toward the deep cleft between her hard round buttocks. Taita pinched it between his fingers and crushed its shiny black carapace. It popped in a spot of blood. “You will be the next patient if we don’t get rid of these little pets of yours,” he told her, and sent her to fetch a bowl of water from the kitchens. On the brazier he boiled up the dried purple flowers of the pyrethrum plant and washed her down from head to toe in the brew. He snapped four or five more fleas that tried to escape the pungent douche by leaping off her drenched skin.
Afterward Mintaka sat beside him while her naked body dried, and chatted unselfconsciously as they picked over her clothes companionably, removing the last fleas and their eggs from the seams and pleats. They were fast becoming good friends.
Before nightfall Khyan’s bowels voided once more, but sparingly, and there was no blood in the stool. Taita sniffed the feces, and the stench of the plague humors was milder. He administered a stronger distillation of the herbs, and between them they forced Khyan to drink another jugful of well water. By next morning the fever had broken and Khyan was resting more comfortably. He urinated at last, which Taita declared to be beneficial, even though his water was dark yellow and acrid. An hour later he passed more water, lighter in color and not so evil-smelling.
“Look, my lord,” Mintaka exclaimed, stroking her brother’s cheek, “the red blotches are fading, and his skin feels cooler.”
“You have the healing touch of a nymph of paradise,” Taita told her, “but do not forget the water jug. It is empty.”
She raced away to the kitchens, and came back almost immediately with a brimming jug. While she gave it to him, she began to sing a Hyksosian lullaby, and Taita was delighted by the sweetness and clarity of her voice: “Listen to the wind in the grass, little darling, Sleep, sleep, sleep. Hear the sound of the river, my little baby, Dream, dream, dream.”
Taita studied her face. In the Hyksosian way, it was a little too broad, and her cheekbones too prominent. Her mouth was large, her lips full, her nose strongly bridged. Not one of these features was perfect in itself, but each was finely balanced with and matched to all the others, and her neck was long and graceful. Her almond-shaped eyes were truly magnificent under arched black brows. Her expression was alert and bright. Hers was a different kind of beauty, he thought, but beauty none the less.
“Look!” She broke off the song and laughed. “He is awake.”
Khyan’s eyes were open and he was looking up at her.
“You have come back to us, you horrid little beast.” When she laughed her teeth were square and very white in the lamplight. “We were so worried. You must not do that again, ever.” She hugged him to hide the tears of joy and relief that suddenly sparkled in her eyes.
Taita looked beyond the pair on the bed and saw the bulky figure of Apepi in the doorway. Taita did not know how long he had been there, but now he nodded at Taita without smiling, then turned and disappeared.
By that evening Khyan was able to sit up with a little help from his sister, and to drink from the soup bowl she held to his lips. Two days later his rash had disappeared.
Three or four times a day Apepi visited the chamber. Khyan was still too weak to rise, but as soon as his father appeared, he touched his heart and his lips in a gesture of respect.
On the fifth day he tottered from the couch and tried to prostrate himself before the King, but Apepi stopped him and lifted him back onto the pillows. Even though his feelings for the boy were clear, Apepi had little to say and left again almost immediately, but in the doorway he looked back at Taita and ordered him to follow with a curt inclination of his head.
They stood alone on the summit of the highest tower of the palace. They had climbed two hundred steps to reach this height, and from here they had a view upriver over the captured citadel of Abnub, which lay ten miles upstream. Thebes was less than a hundred miles beyond that.
Apepi had ordered the sentries to go down and leave them alone in this lofty place, so that they would not be spied upon or overheard. He stood staring out over the great gray river toward the south. He was in full war costume, hard leather greaves and breastplate, sword-belt studded with gold rosettes, and his beard was plaited with crimson ribbons to match his ceremonial apron. Incongruously he wore the golden uraeus, the vulture and cobra crown, over his dense silver-shot curls. It infuriated Taita that this invader and despoiler considered himself Pharaoh of all Egypt, and wore the sacred regalia, but his expression was serene. Instead he tuned his mind to catch Apepi’s thoughts. They were a tangled web, so deep and devious that even Taita could not discern them clearly, but he could sense the force within that made Apepi such a dreadful adversary.
“At least something they say of you is true, Magus.” Apepi broke the long silence. “You are a physician
of great skill.” Taita remained silent.
“Can you work a charm to heal the plague in my army as you have in my son?” Apepi asked. “I would pay you a lakh of gold. As much gold as ten strong horses can carry.”
Taita smiled bleakly. “My lord, if I could work such a charm I could as well conjure a hundred lakhs out of the thin air without the effort of curing your ruffians.”
Apepi turned his head and returned his smile, but it lacked any humor or goodwill. “How old are you, Warlock? Trok says you are over two hundred years old. Is that true?”
Taita gave no indication of having heard him, and Apepi went on, “What is your price, Warlock? If not gold, then what can I offer you?” The question was rhetorical and he did not wait for an answer, but stamped away to the northern parapet of the tower, and stood with his fists on his hips. He looked down over the encampments of his army, and the cremation fields beyond. The fires were still burning and the smoke drifted low across the green waters of the river and out into the desert beyond.
“You have won a victory, my lord,” Taita said softly, “but you do well to contemplate the pyres of your dead. Pharaoh will have reinforced and regrouped his forces before the plague burns itself out and your men are ready to fight again.”
Apepi shook himself with annoyance, like a lion shaking off flies. “Your persistence irks me, Warlock.”
“Nay, lord, it is not me but the truth and the logic that irk you.”
“Nefer Seti is a child. I have defeated him once, I will do it again.”
“What is more crucial to you, there is no plague in his army. Your spies will have told you that Pharaoh has five more legions at Aswan, and another two at Asyut. They are already on the river coming north with the current. They will be here before the new moon.”
Apepi growled softly, but made no response. Taita went on relentlessly, “Sixty years of war have bled both kingdoms white. Would you pass on the legacy of Salitis, your own father, sixty years of bloodshed? Is that what your sons will inherit from you?”