by Wilbur Smith
‘Where were you? Where did you stand?’ she insisted. I had forgotten how keenly she enjoyed my visions, and what pleasure she took in interpreting them.
‘I was riding upon the back of the serpent,’ I answered. ‘But I was not alone.’
‘Who was with you?’
‘You were at my side, mistress, and Memnon with you. Tanus was on my other hand, and the serpent carried us all.’
‘The Nile! The serpent was the river,’ she cried triumphantly. ‘You foresaw a voyage that we were making upon the river.’
‘Which way?’ Tanus demanded. He was as rapt as she was. ‘Which way did the river run?’
I made an effort to recall every detail. ‘I saw the sun rise on my left hand.’
‘South!’ he cried.
‘Into Africa,’ said my mistress.
‘At last I saw the heads of the serpent ahead of us. The body of the serpent was bifurcated, and on each branch was a head.’
‘Does the Nile have two branches?’ my mistress wondered aloud. ‘Or is there some deeper meaning to the vision?’
‘Let us hear the rest of what Taita has to tell us,’ Tanus stopped her speculation. ‘Continue, old friend.’
‘Then I saw the goddess,’ I went on. ‘She sat upon a high mountain. Both the heads of the serpent worshipped her.’
My mistress could not restrain herself. ‘Which of the goddesses did you see? Oh, tell me quickly who it was.’
‘She had the bearded head of a man but the breasts and the pudenda of a woman. From her vagina she spurted out two great streams of water into the open mouths of the double-headed serpent.’
‘It is the goddess Hapi, the river god,’ Queen Lostris whispered. ‘She generates the river within herself, and pours it out to flow through the world.’
‘What else did the vision show you?’ Tanus demanded.
‘The goddess smiled at us, and her face shone with love and benevolence. She spoke in a voice that was the sound of the wind and the sea. The sound of thunder on the peaks of far-away mountains.’
‘What did she say to us?’ Queen Lostris asked in awe.
‘She said, “Let my child come to me. I will make her strong so that she will prevail and my people will not perish in the face of the barbarian.”’ I repeated the words that still beat like a drum in my head.
‘I am the child of the river goddess,’ said my mistress simply. ‘At birth I was dedicated to her. Now she summons me, and I must go to the place where she dwells at the end of the Nile.’
‘This is the same voyage that Taita and I contemplated once before,’ Tanus mused. ‘And now the goddess commands it. We cannot refuse her.’
‘Yes, we must go, but we will come back,’ my mistress vowed. ‘This is my land, this very Egypt. This is my city, this beautiful Thebes of the hundred gates. I cannot leave them for ever. I will return to Thebes. This I swear and I call upon the goddess Hapi to witness my oath. We shall return!’
* * *
The decision to fly to the south, up above the cataracts into the wild and unexplored land beyond, was one that Tanus and I had made once before. The first time had been to escape the wrath and vengeance of Pharaoh. Now we were flying from an even more merciless foe. It was almost as though the gods were determined that we should undertake this voyage, and that they would not be denied.
There was little time for us to make our preparations for such a fateful departure. The Hyksos were coming down on us from two directions, and our pickets reported that their cohorts would be in view from the roof of the Palace of Memnon within three days at the very latest.
Tanus placed Kratas in charge of half his available force and sent him to meet King Salitis who was driving hard from Asyut in the north and was likely to be the first column to reach the necropolis and the palace. Kratas had orders to fight a running battle. Using the staves and defending every fortified position, he was to delay Salitis as long as was possible, without risking being cut off or overwhelmed. When he could hold them no longer, he was to evacuate his men on to the galleys.
Tanus himself took the other half of our army and moved south to fight another delaying battle against the Hyksos division coming at us from Esna.
While they were thus engaged, my mistress was to embark our people and all their possessions aboard the remaining ships of our fleet. My mistress delegated this duty to Lord Merkeset, but of course she made me his assistant. Lord Merkeset was not only well into his dotage, but had recently taken to himself a sixteen-year-old wife. He was not, therefore, of much use either to himself or to me. The entire planning and execution of the evacuation fell squarely on my shoulders.
However, before I could turn my mind to this, I had to take care of my horses. Even at this early stage I realized with stark clarity that they were the key to our survival as a nation and a civilized people. With those animals that we had captured at Esna, we now had several thousand in our herd. I split this herd into four parts so that they could more readily find grazing on the march. Further, the smaller herds would throw up less dust, and it would be easier for them to avoid the Hyksos scouts.
I sent Hui and my charioteers and grooms south with these herds towards Elephantine, with orders to avoid the river-bank down which the Hyksos chariots were advancing and to keep inland, closer to the edge of the desert.
Once the horses were despatched, I could turn my attention to the humans. I realized that we were limited by the number of ships available as to how many of our people were able to accompany us on the long voyage. I was certain that almost every Egyptian wanted to be part of the exodus. The cruelty and ferocity of the Hyksos were evident in every city they burned and in every atrocity that they inflicted on our people. All the unknown dangers of the African wilderness were preferable to these bloodthirsty monsters who were racing down upon us in their chariots.
In the end I calculated that we could accommodate only twelve thousand souls aboard the escaping fleet, and I reported this to my mistress.
‘We will have to be ruthless in those we select and those we leave behind,’ I told her, but she would not listen to my advice.
‘These are my people. I would give up my own place rather than leave one of them to the Hyksos.’
‘But, Majesty, what about the old and the decrepit? The sick and the very young?’
‘Every citizen will be given the choice of coming with us. I will not leave a greybeard or a beggar, a day-old infant or a leper. They are my people, and if they cannot go, then Prince Memnon and I will stay with them.’ Of course, she mentioned the prince to make doubly certain of her victory over me.
The ships would be gunwale-deep under this great weight of humanity, but I had no choice. Still, I had some satisfaction in first embarking all the most useful and creative citizens. I chose men from every trade and profession, masons and weavers, coppersmiths and potters, tanners and sail-makers, scribes and artists, shipbuilders and carpenters, all of them leaders in their particular discipline. These I saw safely on board the waiting transports. It gave me a particular pleasure to allocate the most uncomfortable berths in the most squalid vessels to the priesthood and the law scribes, those blood-sucking fleas on the healthy body of the state.
When all of these were boarded, I allowed the rabble to come swarming on to the wharf below the temple.
As a result of my mistress’s intransigence, I had to be careful in choosing what cargo we would load. There would be no room for idle fripperies. I gathered up the weapons and tools and the raw materials that we would need to build up another civilization in the unknown lands. For the rest of the cargo I tried in every way to reduce weight and bulk. For instance, rather than grain and fruits, I loaded the seeds of every desirable plant in clay jars sealed with pitch and wax.
Every deben-weight of cargo that we loaded in our holds meant that something else must be left behind. Our voyage might last ten years or a lifetime. The road would be hard. We knew that the great cataracts lay ahead of us. We dared not burd
en ourselves with anything but the most essential, but then there remained my mistress’s promise to Pharaoh. There was barely room for the living—how much space could we afford to give over to the dead?
‘I gave my vow to the king as he lay dying,’ my mistress insisted. ‘I cannot leave him here.’
‘Your Majesty, I will find a secure hiding-place for the king’s body, an unmarked grave in the hills where no man will find him. When we return to Thebes, we will exhume him, and give him the royal burial that you promised him.’
‘If I break my vow, the gods will desert us and our voyage will be doomed. The body of the king must go with us.’
One glance at her expression warned me that there would be no profit in further argument. We opened the massive granite sarcophagus and lifted out the six inner coffins. Even these were so bulky that it would have needed a galley to carry them alone.
I made a decision without consulting Queen Lostris. I had the workmen remove only the two innermost golden coffins. These we covered with a thick linen canvas shroud which we stitched over them as protection. The size and weight were thus reduced to acceptable proportions, and we stowed these two canvas-covered coffins in the hold of the Breath of Horus.
The bulk of Pharaoh’s treasure, all the gold and silver and the precious stones, was packed into cedar-wood boxes. I ordered the goldsmiths to strip the bullion from the discarded coffins and from the wooden frame of the great funeral sledge, and melt it down into bars. I was secretly delighted to be the instrument of destruction of that tasteless monstrosity. The treasure chests and the bars of bullion were carried down to the wharf and loaded on board the waiting ships. I distributed these so that every ship carried at least one chest or a stack of bullion bars. In this way, the risk that the entire treasure could be lost at a single stroke of misfortune was greatly reduced.
There was much of the funerary treasure that we could not take with us, all the furniture and the statuary, the ceremonial armour and the boxes of ushabti statues, and of course the ungainly framework of the hearse from which I had stripped the gold. Rather than have it fall into the hands of the Hyksos, we piled all of this in the temple courtyard, and I personally hurled a burning torch on top of the mountain of treasure, and watched it burn to ashes.
All this was done in dreadful haste, and before the last ship was loaded the lookouts on the roof of the palace shouted the warning that the dust-clouds of the Hyksos chariots were in sight. Within the hour, our exhausted and battle-weary troops who, under command of Tanus and Kratas, had been fighting the long grim rear-guard action, began to pull back into the necropolis, and to embark on the waiting galleys.
I met Tanus as he came up on to the causeway at the head of a squad of the guards. So far, by dint of courage and sacrifice, he and his men had managed to win a few extra days for us to complete the evacuation. They could do no more, and the enemy was driving them in.
When I waved and called his name, Tanus saw me and shouted over the heads of the crowd, ‘Queen Lostris and the prince? Have they gone aboard the Breath of Horus?’
I forced my way through the throng to his side. ‘My mistress will not leave until all her people are on board the ships. She ordered me to take you to her as soon as you arrived. She is waiting for you in her quarters in the palace.’
He looked at me aghast. ‘The enemy are pressing us hard. Queen Lostris and the prince are more precious than all this rabble. Why did you not force her?’
I laughed. ‘She is not an easy lady to force. You should know that as well as I do. She will leave none of her people to the Hyksos.’
‘Seth blast that woman’s pride! She will get all of us killed.’ But his harsh words were belied by the expression of pride and admiration on his dusty, sweat-streaked face, and he grinned at me. ‘Well, if she will not come on her own, we shall have to go and fetch her.’
We pushed our way through the long lines of passengers, laden with bundles of their possessions and carrying their infants, that were streaming down to the dock to go aboard the ships. As we hurried along the causeway, Tanus pointed over the battlements at the ominous clouds of dust bearing down upon us from both directions.
‘They are moving faster than I had believed possible. They have not even halted to water their horses. Unless we speed up the embarkation, they will catch us with half our people still ashore,’ he said grimly, and pointed down on to the wharf below us.
The wharf was wide enough to allow only two vessels to come alongside at one time. The masses of refugees clogged the causeway and congested the entrance gates to the dock. Their weeping and lamentation added to the confusion, and at that moment someone at the rear of the column screamed, ‘The Hyksos are here! Run! Save yourselves! The Hyksos are here!’
The panic spread through the crowd and it surged forward mindlessly. Women were crushed against the stone gates, and children were trampled under foot. All order and control were breaking down, decent and dignified citizens and disciplined soldiers were being reduced to a desperate mob struggling for survival.
I had to use the sharpened stave I carried to force a way through them, as Tanus and I fought our way back towards the palace. At last we broke out of the crowd and ran to the palace gates.
The halls and corridors were empty and deserted except for a few looters who were picking through the empty rooms. They ran when they saw Tanus. He was a dreadful sight, gaunt and dusty and battle-worn, with a ruddy stubble of beard covering his jaw. Ahead of me, he burst into the private quarters of the queen, and we found her chamber unguarded and the door standing wide. We rushed through it.
My mistress sat alone on the terrace under the spreading vine, with Prince Memnon on her lap. She was pointing out to him the fleet of ships on the Nile below the terrace, and the two of them were enthusing over the spectacle.
‘Look at the pretty ships.’
Queen Lostris stood up smiling when she saw us, and Memnon slid off her lap and ran to Tanus.
Tanus swung him up on to his shoulder, and then embraced my mistress with his free hand.
‘Where are your slaves? Where are Aton and Lord Merseket?’ Tanus demanded.
‘I sent them to the ships.’
‘Taita says that you refused to go yourself. He is very angry with you, and rightly so.’
‘Forgive me, dear Taita.’ Her smile could light my life, or break my heart.
‘Rather beg the forgiveness of King Salitis,’ I suggested stiffly. ‘He will be here soon enough.’ I seized her arm. ‘Now that this rude soldier of yours has at last arrived, can we please go to the ships?’
We hurried from the terrace and back through the palace corridors. We were entirely alone, even the looters and the thieves had disappeared like rats into their holes. The only one of us who was completely unconcerned was Prince Memnon. For him it was another jolly game. Sitting astride Tanus’ shoulders, he dug in his heels and shouted, ‘Hi up!’ as he had learned from me when we were riding Patience.
We raced across the palace gardens to the stone staircase that led up on to the causeway. That was the shortest way to the temple dock. As we hurried along the causeway, I realized that circumstances had changed drastically in the time that had passed since we had left to fetch my mistress and the prince from the palace. Ahead of us the causeway was deserted, the last of the refugees had gone on board the ships in the dock. Beyond the stone battlements I could see their masts moving slowly down the canal towards the open river.
With a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, I realized that we were the last persons left ashore, and that we still had half a mile to cover before we reached the empty dock. All of us stopped together, and watched the last galleys sail away.
‘I told the captain to wait,’ I groaned, ‘but with the Hyksos so close, their only concern is with their own safety.’
‘What can we do now?’ my mistress breathed, and even Memnon’s happy cries dried up.
‘If we can reach the river-bank, surely Remrem or Kratas
will see us and send in a skiff to pick us up?’ I suggested, and Tanus agreed immediately.
‘This way! Follow me!’ he cried. ‘Taita, see to your mistress.’
I took her arm to help her along, but she was as strong and agile as a shepherd boy and ran easily at my side. Then suddenly I heard the horses, and the squeal of chariot wheels. The sounds were unmistakable and terrifyingly near at hand.
Our own horses had left three days ago, and must be well on their way to Elephantine by this time. Our own chariots were dismantled and loaded in the holds of the departing fleet. The chariots I heard now were still out of sight below the wall of the causeway, but we knew to whom they belonged.
‘The Hyksos!’ I said softly, and we stopped in a tight little group. ‘It must be one of their advance scouting parties.’
‘It sounds like only two or three of their chariots,’ Tanus agreed, ‘but that is enough. We are cut off.’
‘It seems that we have left it a little late,’ said my mistress with a calmness that I knew was feigned, and she looked at Tanus and myself with complete trust. ‘What do you suggest now?’
Her effrontery flabbergasted me. Her obstinacy was entirely responsible for our predicament. If she had followed my urging we would all of us have been on the Breath of Horus and making our way up-river to Elephantine by this time.
Tanus held up his hand for silence, and we stood and listened to the sounds of the enemy chariots driving along the pathway at the foot of the wall. The closer they came, the more certain it became that this was only a small advance party.
Suddenly the sounds of turning wheels stopped, and we heard the horses blowing and stamping, then men’s voices speaking a harsh and guttural tongue. They were just below us, and Tanus made another urgent signal for silence. Prince Memnon was not accustomed to restraint, nor to keeping the peace against his inclinations. He also had heard and recognized the sounds.
‘Horses!’ he shouted in his usual high and ringing tones. ‘I want to see the horses.’