by Wilbur Smith
Twice during the days that followed, Pharaoh and all his train went ashore to inspect the monuments that Akh-Horus had raised to his passing at the crossroads of the caravan routes. The local peasants had preserved these gruesome piles of skulls as sacred relics of the new god. They had polished each skull until it shone like ivory, and bound the pyramids with building clay so that they would stand through the years. Then they had built shrines over them and appointed priests to serve these holy places.
At both these shrines my mistress left a gold ring as an offering, joyously accepted by the self-appointed guardians. It was to no avail that I protested this extravagance. My mistress often lacked the proper respect for the wealth that I was so painstakingly amassing on her behalf. Without my restraining hand, she would probably have given it all away to the grasping priesthood and the insatiable poor, smiling as she did so.
On the tenth night after leaving Elephantine, the royal entourage camped on a pleasant promontory above a bend in the river. The entertainment that evening was to include one of the most famous story-tellers in the land, and usually my mistress loved a good story above most other pleasures. Both she and I had been looking forward to this occasion and discussing it avidly since leaving the palace. It was therefore to my surprise and bitter disappointment that the Lady Lostris declared herself too fatigued and out of sorts to attend the story-teller. Although she urged me to go, and take the rest of our household with me, I could not leave her alone when she was unwell. I gave her a hot draught and I slept on the floor at the end of her bed, so that I could be near if she needed me during the night.
I was truly worried in the morning when I tried to wake her. Usually she would spring from her bed with a smile of anticipation, ready to seize and devour the new day, a glutton for the joy of living. However, this morning she pulled the covers back over her head and mumbled, ‘Leave me to sleep a little longer. I feel as heavy and dull as an old woman.’
‘The king has decreed an early start. We must be aboard before the sun rises. I will bring you a hot infusion that will cheer you.’ I poured boiling water over a bowl of herbs that I had picked with my own hands during the most propitious phase of the last moon.
‘Do stop fussing,’ she grumped at me, but I would not let her sleep again. I prodded her awake and made her drink the tonic. She pulled a face. ‘I swear you are trying to poison me,’ she complained, and then, without warning and before I could do anything to prevent it, she vomited copiously.
Afterwards she seemed as shocked as I was. We both stared at the steaming puddle beside her bed in consternation.
‘What is wrong with me, Taita?’ she whispered. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.’
Only then did the meaning of it all dawn on me.
‘The khamsin!’ I cried. ‘The cemetery of Tras! Tanus!’
She stared at me blankly for a moment, and then her smile lit the gloom of the tent like a lamp. ‘I am making a baby!’ she cried.
‘Not so loud, mistress,’ I pleaded.
‘Tanus’ baby! I am carrying Tanus’ son.’ It could not be the king’s infant, for I had successfully kept him from her bed since her starvation sickness and her miscarriage.
‘Oh, Taita,’ she purred, as she lifted her nightdress and inspected her flat, firm belly with awe. ‘Just think of it! A little imp just like Tanus growing inside of me.’ She palpated her stomach hopefully. ‘I knew that such delights as I discovered in the tomb of Tras could not pass unremarked by the gods. They have given me a memory that will last all my lifetime.’
‘You race ahead,’ I warned her. ‘It may be only a colic. I must make the tests before we can be sure.’
‘I need no test. I know it in my heart and in the secret depths of my body.’
‘We will still do the tests,’ I told her wryly, and went to fetch the pot. She perched upon it to provide me with the first water of her day, and I divided this into two equal parts.
The first portion of her urine I mixed with an equal part of Nile water. Then I filled two jars with black earth and in each of them planted five seeds of dhurra corn. I watered one jar with pure Nile water, and the other with the mixture that my mistress had provided. This was the first test.
Then I hunted amongst the reeds in the lagoon near the camp and captured ten frogs. These were not the lively green and yellow variety with leaping back legs, but slimy, black creatures. Their heads are not separated from their sluggish, fat bodies by a neck, and their eyes sit on top of the flat skull, so that the children call them sky-gazers.
I placed five of each of the sky-gazers in two separate jars of river water. To the one I added my mistress’s intimate emission and I left the other unadulterated. The following morning, in the privacy of my mistress’s cabin on board the galley, we removed the cloth with which I had covered the jars and inspected the contents.
The corn watered by the Lady Lostris had thrown tiny green shoots, while the other seeds were still inert. The five sky-gazers who had not received my mistress’s blessing were barren, but the other more fortunate five had each laid long silvery strings which were speckled with black eggs.
‘I told you so!’ my mistress chirruped smugly, before I could give my official diagnosis. ‘Oh, thanks to all the gods! No more beautiful thing has happened to me in all my life.’
‘I will speak to Aton immediately. You will share the king’s couch this very night,’ I told her grimly, and she stared at me in bewilderment.
‘Even Pharaoh who believes most things I tell him, will not believe that you were impregnated by the seeds blown in on the khamsin wind. We must have a foster-father for this little bastard of ours.’ Already I considered the infant ours, and not hers alone. Though I tried to conceal it behind my levity, I was every bit as delighted with her fecundity as she was.
‘Don’t you ever call him a bastard again,’ she flared at me. ‘He will be a prince.’
‘He will be a prince only if I can find a royal sire for him. Prepare yourself. I am going to see the king.’
* * *
‘Last night I had a dream, great Egypt,’ I told Pharaoh. ‘It was so amazing that to confirm it I worked the Mazes of Ammon-Ra.’
Pharaoh leaned forward eagerly, for he had come to believe in my dreams and the Mazes as much as any of my other patients.
‘This time it is unequivocal, Majesty. In my dream the goddess Isis appeared and promised to counter the baleful influence of her brother Seth, who so cruelly deprived you of your first son when he struck down the Lady Lostris with the wasting disease. Take my mistress to your bed on the first day of the festival of Osiris, and you will be blessed with another son. That is the promise of the goddess.’
‘Tonight is the eve of the festival.’ The king looked delighted. ‘In truth, Taita, I have been ready to perform this pleasant duty all these past months, had you only allowed me to do so. But you have not told me what you saw in the Mazes of Ammon-Ra.’ Again he leaned forward eagerly, and I was ready for him.
‘It was the vision as before, only this time it was stronger and more vivid. The same endless forest of trees growing along the banks of the river, each tree crowned and imperial. Your dynasty reaching into the ages, strong and unbroken.’
Pharaoh sighed with satisfaction. ‘Send the child to me.’
When I returned to the tent, my mistress was waiting for me. She had prepared herself with good grace and humour.
‘I shall close my eyes and imagine that I am back in the tomb of Tras with Tanus,’ she confided, and then giggled saucily. ‘Although to imagine the king as Tanus is to imagine that the tail of the mouse has become the trunk of the elephant.’
Aton came to fetch her to the king’s tent soon after the king had eaten his dinner. She went with a calm expression and a firm step, dreaming perhaps of her little prince, and of his true father who waited for us in Thebes.
* * *
Beloved Thebes, beautiful Thebes of the hundred gates—how we rejoiced as we s
aw it appear ahead of us, decorating the broad sweep of the river-bank with its temples and gleaming walls.
My mistress sang out with excitement as each of the familiar landmarks revealed itself to us. Then, as the royal barge put in to the wharf below the palace of the grand vizier, the joy of home-coming went out of both of us, and we fell silent. The Lady Lostris groped for my hand like a little girl frightened by tales of hob-goblins, for we had seen her father.
Lord Intef with his sons, Menset and Sobek, those two thumbless heroes, stood at the head of the great concourse of the nobles and the city fathers of Thebes that waited upon the quay to greet the king. Lord Intef was as handsome and suave as I had imagined him in my nightmares, and I felt my spirits quail.
‘You must be vigilant now,’ the Lady Lostris whispered to me. ‘They will seek to have you out of their way. Remember the cobra.’
Not far behind the grand vizier stood Rasfer. During our absence he had obviously received high promotion. He now wore the head-dress of a Commander of Ten Thousand and carried the golden whip of rank. There had been no improvement in his facial muscles. One side of his face still sagged hideously and saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. At that moment he recognized me, and grinned at me with half his face across the narrow strip of water. He lifted his golden whip in ironic greeting.
‘I promise you, my lady, that my hand will be upon my dagger and I will eat nothing but fruit that I have peeled with my own hands while Rasfer and I are in Thebes together,’ I murmured, as I smiled at him and returned his salute with a cheery wave.
‘You are to accept no strange gifts,’ my mistress insisted, ‘and you will sleep at the foot of my bed, where I can protect you at night. During the day you will stay at my side, and not go wandering off on your own.’
‘I will not find that irksome,’ I assured her, and over the following days I kept my promise to her and remained under her immediate protection, for I was certain that Lord Intef would not jeopardize his connection to the throne by putting his daughter in danger.
Naturally, we were often in the company of the grand vizier, for it was his duty to escort the king through all the ceremonies of the festival. During this time, Lord Intef played the role of loving and considerate father to the Lady Lostris, and he treated her with all the deference and consideration due to a royal wife. Each morning he sent her gifts, gold and jewels and exquisite little carvings of scarabs and godlets in ivory and precious woods. Despite my mistress’s orders, I did not return these. I did not wish to warn the enemy, and besides, the gifts were valuable. I sold them discreetly and invested the proceeds in stores of corn held for us in the granaries of trustworthy merchants in the city, men who were my friends.
In view of the expected harvest, the price of corn was the lowest it had been for ten years. There was only one direction it could go, and that was up, although we might have to wait a while for our profits. The merchants gave me receipts in the name of my mistress which I deposited in the archives of the law courts. I kept only a fifth part to myself, which I felt was a very moderate commission.
This gave me some secret pleasure whenever I caught Lord Intef watching me with those pale leopard’s eyes. That look left me in no doubt that his feelings towards me had not moderated. I remembered his patience and his persistence when dealing with an enemy. He waited at the centre of his web like a beautiful spider, and his eyes glittered as he watched me. I remembered the bowl of poisoned milk and the cobra, and despite all my precautions, I was uneasy.
Meanwhile the festival rolled on with all the ceremony and tradition, as it had for centuries past. However, this season it was not Tanus’ Blues but another squadron that hunted the river-cows in the lagoon of Hapi, while another company of actors played out the passion in the temple of Osiris. Because Pharaoh’s decree was observed and the version of the play was mine, the words were as powerful and moving. However, this new Isis was not as lovely as my mistress had portrayed her, nor was Horus as noble or striking as Lord Tanus. On the other hand, Seth was winsome and lovable in comparison to the way that Rasfer had played him.
The day after the passion, Pharaoh crossed the river to inspect his temple, and on this occasion he kept me close at hand throughout the day. On numerous occasions he openly consulted me on aspects of the works. Of course I wore my golden chain whenever it was proper to do so. None of this was missed by Lord Intef, and I could see him musing on the favour the king showed to me. I hoped that this might further serve to protect me from the grand vizier’s vengeance.
Since I had left Thebes, another architect had been placed in charge of the temple project. It was perhaps unfair that Pharaoh should expect this unfortunate to be able to maintain the high standards that I had set, or to push the work forward at the same pace.
‘By the blessed mother of Horus, I wish you were still in charge here, Taita,’ Pharaoh muttered. ‘If she would part with you, I would buy you from your mistress, and keep you here in the City of the Dead permanently to supervise the work. The cost seems to have doubled since this other idiot took over from you.’
‘He is a naïve young man,’ I agreed. ‘The masons and the contractors will steal his testicles from him and he will not notice that they are missing.’
‘It is my balls that they are stealing,’ the king scowled. ‘I want you to go over the bill of quantities with him and show him where we are being robbed.’
I was of course flattered by his regard, and there was nothing spiteful in my pointing out to Pharaoh the lapses of taste that the new architect had perpetrated when he redesigned the pediment to my temple façade, or the shoddy craftsmanship that those rogues in the guild of masons had been able to slip past him. The pediment was permeated with the decadent Syrian style that was all the rage in the Lower Kingdom, where the common tastes of the low-born red pretender were corrupting the classical traditions of Egyptian art.
As for the workmanship, I demonstrated to the king how it was possible to slip a fragment of papyrus between the joints of the stone blocks that made up the side-wall of the mortuary temple. Pharaoh ordered both the pediment and the temple wall to be torn down, and he fined the guild of masons five hundred deben of gold to be paid into the royal store-rooms.
Pharaoh spent the rest of that day and the whole of the next reviewing the treasures in the store-rooms of the funerary temple. Here at least he could find very little to complain of. In the history of the world never had such wealth been assembled in one place at one time. Even I, who love fine things, was soon jaded by the abundance of it, and my eyes were pained by the dazzle of gold.
The king insisted that the Lady Lostris remain at his side all this time. I think that his infatuation with her was slowly turning into real love, or as close a facsimile of it as he was capable of. The consequence of his affection for her was that when we returned across the river to Thebes, my mistress was exhausted, and I feared for the child she was carrying. It was too soon to tell the king of her condition and to suggest that he showed her more consideration. It was less than a week since she had returned to his couch, and such an early diagnosis of pregnancy even from me must arouse his suspicion. To him she was still a healthy and robust young woman, and he treated her that way.
* * *
The festival ended, as it had for centuries past, with the assembly of the people in the temple of Osiris to hear the proclamation from the throne.
On the raised stone dais in front of the sanctuary of Osiris, Pharaoh was seated on his tall throne so that all the congregation could have a clear view of him. He wore the double crown and carried the crook and the flail. This time there was an alteration to the usual layout of the temple, for I had made a suggestion to the king which he had been gracious enough to adopt. Against three walls of the inner temple he had ordered the erection of timber scaffolding. These rose in tiers halfway up the massive stone walls, and provided seating for thousands of the notables of Thebes from which they had a privileged and uninterrupted view of the p
roceedings. I had suggested that these stands be decorated with coloured bunting and palm-fronds, to disguise their ugliness. It was the first time that these structures were built in our land. Thereafter, they were to become commonplace, and they were built at most public functions, along the routes of royal processions and around the fields of athletic games. To this day they are known as Taita stands.
There had been much bitter competition for seats upon these stands, but as their designer, I had been able to procure the very best for my mistress and myself. We were directly opposite the throne and a little above the height of the king’s head, so we had a fine view of the whole of the inner courtyard. I had provided a leather cushion stuffed with lamb’s-wool for the Lady Lostris and a basket of fruits and cakes, together with jars of sherbet and beer, to sustain us during the interminable ceremony.
All around us were assembled the noblest in the land, lords and ladies decked out in high fashion. The generals and admirals carrying their golden whips and proudly flaunting the honours and standards of their regiments, the guild masters and the rich merchants, the priests and the ambassadors from the vassal states of the empire, they were all here.
In front of the king extended the courts of the temple, one opening into another like the boxes in a children’s puzzle-game, but such was the layout of the massive stone walls that the gates were all perfectly aligned. A worshipper standing in the Avenue of Sacred Rams outside the pylons of the main gate could look through the inner gates and clearly see the king on his high throne almost four hundred paces away.
All the courts of the temple were packed with the multitudes of the common people, and the overflow spilled out into the sacred avenue and the gardens beyond the temple walls. Though I had lived almost my entire life in Thebes, I had never seen such a gathering. It was not possible to count their numbers, but I estimated that there must have been two hundred thousand assembled that day. From them rose such a hubbub of sound that I felt myself but a single bee in the vast humming hive.