by Wilbur Smith
Nefer jumped up and sloshed across to where Mintaka sat. He lifted her to her feet as gently as if she were made of the most delicate Hurrian glass.
Dripping slime and Nile water, with her hair dangling in a muddy tangle over her face and shoulders, her maids led the Princess away to find a clean pool well screened by reeds. When she reappeared some time later she was washed clean of the last traces of slime and ooze. The maids had brought with them a change of apparel, so Mintaka was resplendent in a clean dry apron embroidered with silk and seed pearls and there were golden bracelets on her arms and a necklace of turquoise and colored glass at her throat. Her hair, though damp, was combed and plaited neatly.
Nefer hurried to meet her and led her to a giant kigelia tree under whose spreading branches a breakfast feast was laid out in the shade. At first the young couple were restrained and shy, still overawed by the momentous awakening that they had shared, but soon their natural high spirits reasserted themselves, and they joined in the banter and the chatter, although their eyes kept meeting and almost every word they uttered was aimed at the other.
Mintaka loved to riddle and she challenged him to an exchange. She made it more difficult for Nefer by couching her clues in the Hyksosian language.
“I have one eye and a sharp nose. I run my victim through and through, but I draw no blood. What am I?”
“That’s easy!” Nefer laughed triumphantly. “You are a sewing needle.” And Mintaka threw up her hands in surrender.
“Forfeit!” cried the slave girls. “Pharaoh is right. Forfeit!”
“A song!” Nefer demanded. “But not the monkey. We have had enough of him for one day.”
“I shall give you ‘The Song of the Nile,’ ” she agreed, and when she finished Nefer demanded another. “Only if you help me, Majesty.”
His voice was a robust tenor, but whenever he slipped off-key she covered his mistake and made him sound much better than he was.
Of course Nefer had brought his bao board and stones. Taita had taught him to love it, and he had become expert. When he tired of the singing he inveigled Mintaka into a game.
“You will have to be patient with me. I am a novice,” she warned him, as he set out the board. Bao was an Egyptian game, and this time he expected confidently to outmatch her.
“Don’t feel bad about it,” Nefer encouraged her. “I will coach you.”
Taita smiled because he and Mintaka had wiled away a few hours at bao in the palace of Bubastis when they were nursing her little brother. Within eighteen moves her red stones dominated the west castle and were menacing his center.
“Have I done the right thing?” she asked sweetly.
Nefer was saved by a hail from the riverbank and looked up to see a galley flying the Regent’s pennant coming swiftly down the channel. “What a pity. Just when the game was getting interesting.” He began to pack up the board with alacrity.
“Can’t we hide from them?” Mintaka asked, but Nefer shook his head.
“They have seen us already.” He had been expecting this visitation all morning. Sooner or later the Regent must hear about this illicit outing and send Asmor to bring in his errant charge.
The galley nosed into the bank below where they sat and Asmor sprang ashore. He strode up to the picnic party. “The Regent is much displeased by your absence. He bids you return at once to the temple, where matters of state await your attention.”
“And I, Lord Asmor, am much displeased by your ill manners.” Nefer tried to retrieve some of his hurt dignity. “I am not a groom or a house servant to be addressed in that manner, and neither have you shown respect for the Princess Mintaka.” But there was no escaping that he was being treated like a child.
Still, he tried to put a good face on it and invited Mintaka to sail back with him in the skiff while her maids followed in the second vessel. Taita kept tactfully to the bow, as this was their first opportunity to hold a private conversation. Not quite certain what to expect of her, Nefer was startled when, rather than bothering with polite niceties, she launched immediately into a discussion of the chances of success or failure of the peace conference between their opposing sides. She soon impressed him with her political acumen and her strong views. “If only we women were allowed to run this world, there would never have been a stupid war in the first place,” she summed up, but he could not let that go unchallenged. They argued animatedly all the way back to the temple. The journey was far too short for Nefer’s liking, and as they came into the landing he took her hand. “I should like to see you again.”
“I should like that well enough,” she replied, without withdrawing her hand.
“Soon,” he insisted.
“Soon enough.” She smiled and gently took back her hand. He felt strangely bereft as he watched her walk away toward the temple.
My lord, you were present at the divination of the Mazes of Ammon Ra. You know of the dire charge placed upon me by the gods. You know that I can never flout their express wishes and that therefore I am committed to your interest. I had good reason to assist the boy in what was only, after all, a harmless escapade.”
Naja was not so easily placated. He was still furious that Nefer had given Asmor the slip and managed to spend the morning out in the swamps with the Hyksosian princess.
“How can I believe that when you aided Nefer? Nay! You instigated this piece of folly.”
“My lord Regent, you must realize how crucial to our enterprise it is that I retain the young Pharaoh’s complete trust. If I appear to flout your orders and authority, then this will make the boy believe that I am still his man. It will make the difficult task laid upon me by the Mazes easier to accomplish.”
Diplomatically Taita turned aside each of the Regent’s accusations, until he was no longer ranting but merely grumbling bitterly. “It must not happen again, Magus. Of course I trust your loyalty. You would be a fool indeed to fly against the express strictures of the gods. However, in the future whenever Nefer leaves his quarters he must be accompanied by Asmor and a full escort of his men. I cannot take the chance that he will disappear.”
“My lord, how goes the negotiation with the Shepherd Chieftain? Is there aught that I can do to help you ensure a successful outcome in this matter?” Adroitly Taita set the hounds on a different scent, and Naja followed them.
“Apepi is indisposed. This morning he had a coughing fit so intense he brought up blood and had to leave the conference chamber. Even though he cannot attend himself, he will not let any other speak on his behalf, not even Lord Trok, who usually has his confidence. Only the gods know how long it will be before the great bear returns to the conference. We may be forced to waste days or even weeks.”
“What is Apepi’s ailment?” Taita asked.
“I do not know—” Naja broke off as an idea occurred to him. “Why did I not think of it before? With your skills, you will be able to cure whatever ails him. Go to him at once, Magus, and do your utmost.”
As he approached the King’s apartments, Taita could hear Apepi from across the courtyard. He sounded like a black-maned lion caught in a trap, and the roars grew louder as Taita entered the chamber. As he stepped over the threshold he was almost knocked over by three priests of Osiris fleeing the royal presence in terror, and a heavy bronze bowl crashed into the doorsill. It had been thrown across the room by the Hyksosian king, who sat naked on a muddle of furs and tangled bedsheets in the middle of the chamber.
“Where have you been, Warlock?” he roared, as soon as he saw Taita. “I sent Trok to find you before dawn. Why do you come only in the middle of the afternoon to save me from those infernal priests with their stinking poisons and hot tongs?”
“I have not seen Trok,” Taita explained, “but I came as soon as Lord Naja told me you were indisposed.”
“Indisposed? I am not indisposed, Warlock. I am at the point of death.”
“Let us see what can be done to save you.”
Apepi rolled over onto his hairy belly and Ta
ita saw the grotesque purple swelling on his back. It was the size of both the King’s bunched fists. When he touched it lightly with a fingertip Apepi bellowed again and broke out in a running sweat. “Gently, Taita. You are as bad as all the priests in Egypt together.”
“How did this come about?” Taita stepped back. “What were your symptoms?”
“It started with a bitter pain in my chest.” Apepi touched it. “Then I started coughing, and the pain became sharper. I felt something move in here, and then the pain seemed to move to my back, and there was this lump.” He reached over his shoulder with one hand to touch the swelling, and groaned again.
Before going further, Taita administered a draft of the Red Shepenn, the sleeping flower. It was a draft that would have knocked a baby elephant off its feet, but though Apepi’s eyes crossed and his voice was slurred he was still lucid. Taita palpated the swelling again, and the King groaned but made no other protest.
“There is some foreign object lodged deep in your flesh, my lord,” he stated at last.
“This comes as no great surprise to me, Warlock. Evil men, most of them Egyptians, have been sticking foreign objects into my flesh since I last sucked on my wet-nurse’s paps.”
“I would have thought it was an arrowhead or a blade, but there is no entry wound,” Taita mused.
“Use your eyes, fellow. I am covered with them.” The king’s hairy carcass was indeed laced and blotched with old battle scars.
“I am going to cut for it,” Taita warned him.
Apepi snarled, “Do it, Warlock, and stop yapping about it.”
While Taita selected a bronze scalpel from his chest, Apepi picked up his thick leather belt from the floor and doubled a length of it. He bit down on it, and composed himself to the knife.
“Come here!” Taita called to the guards at the door. “Come and hold the King.”
“Get out, you idiots!” Apepi countermanded the order. “I need no man to hold me still.”
Taita stood over him, calculated the angle and depth of the cut, then made one swift, deep incision. Apepi let out a muffled bellow from between clamped teeth, but did not move. Taita stood back as a fountain of dark blood and thick yellow pus erupted from the wound. A gut-wrenching stench filled the chamber. Taita laid aside the scalpel and ran his forefinger deep into the opening. Blood bubbled up around it, but he felt something hard and sharp in the bottom of the incision. He picked up the ivory forceps that he had placed ready to hand, and probed the opening until he felt the tip strike something solid.
Apepi had stopped yelling, and he lay without movement, except the involuntary shuddering of his back muscles. He breathed with loud porcine snuffles through his nose. At the third attempt Taita gripped the object with the jaws of the forceps, and tugged at it until he felt it give and start to rise toward the surface. It came out—the last inch with a rush of pus and detritus—and Taita held it up so that the light from the window fell upon it.
“An arrowhead,” he announced, “and it’s been in there for a long time. I am amazed it did not mortify years ago.”
Apepi spat out the belt and sat up, chuckling shakily. “By the hairy testicles of Seueth, I recognize that pretty little bauble. One of your ruffians shot that into me at Abnub ten years ago. At the time, my surgeons said it lay so close to my heart that they could not reach it, so they left it in and I have been gestating it ever since.”
He took the triangle of shaped flint from Taita’s bloody fingers and beamed at it with proprietary pride. “I feel like a mother with her first-born. I will have it made into a charm to wear around my neck on a gold chain. You can weave a spell over it. That should ward off any other missiles. What do you think, Warlock?”
“I am sure it will prove highly efficacious, my lord.” Taita filled his mouth with hot wine and honey from the bowl he had prepared and used a hollow brass tube to syringe out the pus and blood, squirting it deep into the wound.
“What a waste of good wine,” Apepi said, lifted the bowl with both hands and drained the remainder of the contents to the dregs. He hurled it against the far wall and belched. “Now, as a reward for your services, I have an amusing tale for you, Warlock, that harks back to our last conversation on the tower top at Bubastis.”
“I am listening with fixed attention to your lordship’s every word.” Taita bent over him and began to bandage the open wound with linen strips, murmuring the incantation for the binding up of wounds as he did so:
“I bind thee up, thing of Seth.
I stop thy red mouth, thing of great evil.”
Apepi interrupted harshly, “Trok has offered a lakh of gold as a bride price for Mintaka.”
Taita’s hands stopped moving. He stood with the bandage wound half around Apepi’s barrel chest. “What did you answer him, Majesty?”
He was so distressed that the royal title slipped out before he could check himself. This was a dangerous and unforeseen development. “I told him the bride price was five lakhs.” Apepi grinned. “The dog is so hot for my little bitch that his prong is standing up between his eyes and blinding him, but despite the booty he has stolen from me over the years, even he can never find five lakhs.” He belched again. “Do not worry, Warlock, Mintaka is too valuable to waste on someone like Trok, when I can use her to chain your little pharaoh into my realm.”
He stood up and lifted one thickly muscled arm, trying to peer under it at his bandaged back, like an old rooster with his head under his wing. “You have made me into a mummy before my time,” he laughed, “but it’s a neat job. Go and tell your regent that I am ready to risk another whiff of his perfume, and I will meet him in the conference chamber again in an hour’s time.”
Naja was mollified by Taita’s success, and the message from Apepi. Any inkling he might have had of Taita’s disloyalty was expunged. “I have that old rogue Apepi at the brink,” Naja gloated. “He is about to make even more concessions than he realizes, which is why I was so angry when he broke off the conference and went to his couch.” He was so delighted with himself that he could not remain seated. He jumped up and paced the stone floor. “How is he, Magus? Did you give him any potion that might cloud his mind?”
“I sent a dose down his gullet that would have stunned a bull buffalo,” Taita assured him. Naja crossed to his cosmetics chest and sprinkled perfume from a green glass vial into the cup of his hand and stroked it down the back of his neck. “Well, I shall take full advantage.” He started toward the door, then looked back over his shoulder. “Come with me,” he ordered. “I might have use of your powers before I am done with Apepi.”
Binding Apepi to the treaty was not the easy task that Naja had suggested it would be. He showed no ill effect from either his wound or the medication, and he was still ranting, shouting and banging his clenched fist on the table long after the watchman on the temple walls had called the midnight hour. No compromise Naja offered seemed enough for him, and at last even Taita was exhausted by his intransigence. Naja adjourned the conference and, to the crowing of the roosters in the courtyard, staggered off to bed.
The next day, when they met again at noon, Apepi was no more amenable to reason, and if anything the negotiations were even more stormy. Taita used his best influences to calm him, but Apepi allowed himself to be wooed only very slowly. So it was only on the fifth day that the scribes could begin to write down the terms of the treaty on the clay tablets in both the hieratic script and hieroglyphics, translated into Hyksosian and Egyptian. They labored late into the night.
Up to this time Naja had excluded Pharaoh Nefer Seti from the conclave. He had kept him occupied with trivial tasks, lessons with his tutors and practice at arms, meetings with ambassadors and delegations of merchants and priests, all of whom sought concessions or donations. In the end Nefer had rebelled, so Naja sent him out hawking and hunting with Apepi’s younger sons. These outings were not the most amiable of events, and the first day had ended in a loud dispute over the bag, which had almost led to an exchange
of blows.
On the second day, at Taita’s suggestion, Princess Mintaka joined the hawking party to act as peacemaker between the two factions. Even her older brothers held her in considerable awe, and deferred to her when at any other time they might have drawn their weapons and rushed to wreak havoc on the Egyptian party. In like manner, when Mintaka was riding beside him in his hunting chariot, Nefer’s warlike instincts were lulled. He took little notice of the threatening, boastful behavior of her loutish siblings and enjoyed her wit and erudition, to say nothing of her close physical presence. In the confined cockpit of the chariot they were often thrown together as they bounced over the rough ground in pursuit of the fleeing gazelle herds. Then Mintaka would grab and hold him, even when the immediate danger was past.
When Nefer returned to the temple after the first outing, he sent for Taita, ostensibly to describe the day’s sport to him, but he was vague and distracted. Even when Taita questioned him on the performance of his favorite falcon, Nefer showed no great enthusiasm. Until he suddenly remarked dreamily, “Does it not amaze you, Taita, just how soft and warm girls are?”
By the morning of the sixth day the scribes had completed their work and the fifty tablets of the treaty were ready to be ratified. Now Naja sent for Pharaoh to take part in the proceedings. Likewise, all Apepi’s offspring, including Mintaka, were to be present at the ceremony.
Once again the courtyard of the temple was filled with a glittering congregation of royalty and nobility as, in stentorian tones, the Herald Royal began to read out the text of the treaty. Immediately Nefer was absorbed by what it contained. He and Mintaka had discussed it in detail during the days they had spent together, and exchanged significant glances whenever they thought they had detected a flaw or an oversight in the terms. However, these were few, and Nefer was certain that he detected Taita’s shadowy influence in many areas of the long document.