River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  However, in the end the consequences were beneficial. If I had been a man entire, they would never have let me go to Masara.

  * * *

  They came for me in the night and led me shivering through the passages to Masara’s cell. The room was lit by a dim oil lamp and smelled of vomit. The girl was curled on a straw mattress in the centre of the floor, with her vomit puddled on the stone floor beside her. She was in terrible pain, groaning and weeping and holding her stomach.

  I set to work immediately, and examined her carefully. I was afraid that I would find her stomach as hard as a stone, the symptom of the swelling and bursting of the gut that would drench her insides with the contents of her intestines. There was no remedy for this condition. Not even I, with all my skills, could save her, if this was her affliction.

  To my great relief I found her stomach warm and soft. There was no fever in her blood. I continued my examination, and though she groaned and screamed with agony when I touched her, I could not find any cause for her condition. I was puzzled and I sat back to think about it. Then I realized that although her face was contorted with agony, she was watching me with a candid gaze.

  ‘This is worse than I feared.’ I turned to her two female attendants and spoke in Geez. ‘If I am to save her, I must have my chest. Fetch it immediately.’

  They scrambled for the door, and I lowered my head to hers and whispered, ‘You are a clever girl and a good actress. Did you tickle your throat with a feather?’

  She smiled up at me and whispered back, ‘I could think of no other way to meet you. When the women told me that you had learned to speak Geez, I knew that we could help each other.’

  ‘I hope that is possible.’

  ‘I have been so lonely. Even to speak to a friend will be a joy to me.’ Her trust was so spontaneous that I was touched. ‘Perhaps between us we will find a way to escape from this dreadful place.’

  At that moment we heard the women returning, their voices echoing along the outside passage. Masara seized my hand.

  ‘You are my friend, aren’t you? You will come to me again?’

  ‘I am and I will.’

  ‘Quickly, tell me before you must go. What was his name?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one who was with you on that first day beside the river. The one who looks like a young god.’

  ‘His name is Memnon.’

  ‘Memnon!’ She repeated it with a peculiar reverence. ‘It is a beautiful name. It suits him.’

  The women burst into the room, and Masara clutched her healthy little belly and groaned as though she were at the point of death. While I clucked and shook my head with worry for the benefit of her women, I mixed a tonic of herbs that would do her some good, and told them that I would return in the morning.

  In the morning Masara’s condition had improved, and I was able to spend a little longer with her. Only one of the women was present, and she soon became bored and wandered away to the far side of the room. Masara and I exchanged a few quiet words.

  ‘Memnon said something to me. I could not understand. What was it he said?’

  ‘He said, “I will come back for you. Be brave. I will come back for you.”’

  ‘He could not mean that. He does not know me. He had met me only fleetingly.’ She shook her head, and tears filled her eyes. ‘Do you think he meant it, Taita?’ There was a haunting plea in her tone that moved me, and I could not allow her to suffer more than she had already.

  ‘He is crown prince of Egypt, and a man of honour. Memnon would not have said it unless he meant every word.’

  That was all we could say then, but I came back the next day. The very first thing she asked of me was, ‘Tell me again what Memnon said to me,’ and I had to repeat his promise.

  I told Arkoun that Masara was improving in health, but that she must be allowed out each day to walk on the battlements. ‘Otherwise I cannot answer for her health.’

  He thought about that for a day. However, Masara was a valuable asset for which he had paid a horse-load of silver bars, and at last he gave his permission.

  Our daily exercise periods slowly extended, as the guards became accustomed to seeing us together. In the end Masara and I were able to spend most mornings in each other’s company, strolling around the walls of Adbar Seged and talking endlessly.

  Masara wanted to know everything that I had to tell about Memnon, and I racked my memory for anecdotes about him to entertain her. She had favourite stories which I was obliged to repeat until she knew them by heart, and she corrected me when I erred in the retelling. She particularly enjoyed the account of how he had rescued Tanus and me from the wounded bull elephant, and how he had received the Gold of Valour for his deed.

  ‘Tell me about his mother the queen,’ she demanded, and then, ‘Tell me about Egypt. Tell me about your gods. Tell me about when Memnon was a baby.’ Always her questions returned to him, and I was glad to appease her demands, for I longed for my family. Speaking about them made them seem closer to me.

  One morning she came to me distraught. ‘Last night I had a dreadful dream. I dreamed that Memnon came back to me, but I could not understand what he said to me. You must teach me to speak Egyptian, Taita. We will start today, this very minute!’

  She was desperate to learn and she was a clever little thing. It went very quickly. Soon we were talking only Egyptian between ourselves, and it was useful to be able to speak privately in front of her guards.

  When we were not talking about Memnon, we were discussing our plans to escape. Of course, I had been thinking of this ever since our arrival at Adbar Seged, but it helped to have her thoughts on the same subject to compare with my own.

  ‘Even if you escape from this fortress, you will never pass through the mountains without help,’ she warned me. ‘The paths are like a skein of twisted wool. You will never unravel them. Every clan is at war with the next. They trust no strangers, and they will cut your throat as a spy.’

  ‘What must we do, then?’ I asked.

  ‘If you are able to get away, you must go to my father. He will protect you and guide you back to your own people. You will tell Memnon where I am, and he will come to save me.’ She said this with such shining confidence that I could not meet her eyes.

  I realized then that Masara had built up an image of Memnon in her mind that was not based on reality. She was in love with a god, not a stripling as young and untried as she was herself. I was responsible for this, with my clever stories about the prince. I could not wound her now and shatter her hope by telling her how forlorn all these imaginings truly were.

  ‘If I go to Prester Beni-Jon, your father, he will think I am one of Arkoun’s spies. He will have my head.’ I tried to extricate myself from the responsibilities she had laid upon me.

  ‘I will tell you what to say to him. Things that only he and I know. That will prove to him that you come from me.’

  She had blocked me there, so I tried a different escape. ‘How would I find my way to your father’s fortress? You have told me that the path is a tangled skein.’

  ‘I will explain the way to you. Because you are so clever you will remember everything I tell you.’

  By this time, naturally, I loved her almost as much as I loved my own little princesses. I would take any risk to shield her from hurt. She reminded me so strongly of my mistress at the same age that I could deny her nothing.

  ‘Very well. Tell it to me.’ And so we began to plan our escape. It was a game for me, which I played mostly to keep her hopes alive and her spirits buoyant. I had no serious expectation of finding a way off this pinnacle of rock.

  We discussed ways of making a rope to lower ourselves down the cliff, although every time I looked over the causeway from the terrace outside her cell, I shuddered at that gaping void of space. She began to collect scraps of wool and cloth which she hid under her mattress. From these she planned to plait a rope. I could not tell her that a rope long enough and strong enough to support our
weight and take us down to the floor of the valley would fill her cell to the ceiling.

  For two long years we languished on the height of Adbar Seged, and we never were able to devise a plan of escape, but Masara never lost faith. Every day she asked me, ‘What did Memnon say to me? Tell me again what he promised.’

  ‘He said, “I will come back for you. Be brave.”’

  ‘Yes. I am brave, am I not, Taita?’

  ‘You are the bravest girl I know.’

  ‘Tell me what you will say to my father when you meet him.’

  I repeated her instructions, and then she would reveal to me her latest plan of escape.

  ‘I will catch the little sparrows that I feed on the terrace. You will write a letter to my father to tell him where I am. We will tie it to the sparrow’s leg, and it will fly to him.’

  ‘It is more likely to fly to Arkoun, who will have us both thrashed, and we will not be allowed to see each other again.’

  In the end I escaped from Adbar Seged by riding out on a fine horse. Arkoun was going out on another raid against King Prester Beni-Jon. I was commanded to accompany him, in the capacity of personal physician and dom player.

  As I walked my blindfolded horse across the causeway, I looked back and saw Masara standing on her terrace looking down at me. She was a lovely, lonely figure. She called to me in Egyptian. I could just make out her words above the sough of the wind.

  ‘Tell him I am waiting for him. Tell him I have been brave.’ And then softly, so I was not certain that I had heard the words right, ‘Tell him I love him.’

  The wind turned the tears upon my cheeks as cold as ice, as I rode away across Amba Kamara.

  * * *

  The night before the battle, Arkoun kept me sitting late in his tent. While he gave his last orders to his commanders, he stropped the edge of the blue sword. Once in a while he would shave a few hairs off his wrist with the steely, glittering blade to test the edge, and nod with satisfaction.

  At last he rubbed down the blade with clarified mutton fat. This strange, silver-blue metal had to be kept well greased, otherwise a red powder would form upon it, almost as though it was bleeding.

  The blue sword had come to exert the same fascination on me as it had on Tanus. Occasionally, when he was in a specially benevolent mood, Arkoun would allow me to handle it. The weight of the metal was surprising, and the sharpness of the edge was incredible. I imagined what havoc it could wreak in the hands of a swordsman like Tanus. I knew that if we ever met again, Tanus would want every detail of it, and so I questioned Arkoun, who never tired of boasting about it.

  He told me that the sword had been forged in the heart of a volcano by one of the pagan gods of Ethiopia. Arkoun’s great-grandfather had won it from the god in a game of dom that had lasted for twenty days and twenty nights. I found all this quite plausible, except the part of the legend about winning the weapon in a dom game. If Arkoun’s great-grandfather had played dom at the same standard as Arkoun, then it must have been a very stupid god who lost the sword to him.

  Arkoun asked my opinion of his battle plan for the next day. He had learned that I was a student of military tactics. I told him his plan was brilliant. These Ethiopians had as much grasp of military tactics as they had of the play of the dom stones. Of course, the terrain would not allow full use of the horses, and they had no chariots. Nevertheless, their battles were fought in a haphazard and desultory manner.

  Arkoun’s grand strategy for the morrow would be to split his forces into four raiding parties. They would hide among the rocks and rush out, seize a few hostages, slit a few throats, and then run for it.

  ‘You are one of the great generals of history,’ I told Arkoun, ‘I would like to write a scroll to extol your genius.’ He liked the idea, and promised to provide me with whatever materials I required for the project, as soon as we returned to Adbar Seged.

  It seemed that King Prester Beni-Jon was a commander of equal panache and vision. We met his forces the following day in a wide valley with steep sides. The battlefield had been mutually agreed upon some months in advance, and Prester Beni-Jon had taken up his position at the head of the valley before we arrived. He came forward to shout insults and challenges at Arkoun from a safe distance.

  Prester Beni-Jon was a stick of a man, thin as a staff, with a long white beard and silver locks down to his waist. I could not make out his features over that distance, but the women had told me that as a young man he had been the most handsome swain in Ethiopia and that he had two hundred wives. Some women had killed themselves for love of him. It seemed clear to me that his talents might be more gainfully employed in the harem than on the battlefield.

  Once Prester Beni-Jon had had his say, Arkoun went forward and replied at length. His insults were flowery and poetic, they rolled off the cliffs and echoed down the gorge. I committed some of his pithier remarks to memory, for they were worth recording.

  When Arkoun subsided at last, I expected that battle would be joined, but I was mistaken. There were several other warriors on both sides who wished to speak. I fell asleep against a rock in the warm sun, smiling to myself as I imagined what sport Tanus and a company of his Blues would enjoy against these Ethiopian champions of rhetoric.

  It was afternoon when I woke and started up at the clash of arms. Arkoun had loosed his first assault. One of his detachments raced forward against Prester Beni-Jon’s positions, beating their swords against their copper shields. Within a remarkably short space of time they returned with great alacrity to their starting-point, without having inflicted or suffered casualties.

  Further insults were exchanged, and then it was Prester Beni-Jon’s turn to attack. He charged and retired with equal verve and similar results. So the day passed, insult for insult, charge for charge. At nightfall both armies retired. We camped at the foot of the valley and Arkoun sent for me.

  ‘What a battle!’ he greeted me triumphantly, as I entered his tent. ‘It will be many months before Prester Beni-Jon will dare take the field again.’

  ‘There will be no battle on the morrow?’ I asked.

  ‘Tomorrow we will return to Adbar Seged,’ he told me, ‘and you will write a full account of my victory in your scrolls. I expect that after this salutary defeat Prester Beni-Jon will soon sue for peace.’

  Seven of our men had been wounded in this ferocious encounter, all by arrows fired at extreme range. I drew the barbs and dressed and bandaged the wounds. The following day I saw the wounded loaded on to the litters and walked beside them, as we started back.

  One of the men had received a stomach wound and was in much pain. I knew he would be dead from gangrene within the week, but I did my best to ease his suffering and to cushion the bouncing of the litter over the rougher sections of the track.

  Late that afternoon we came to a ford in the river, one that we had crossed on our way to give battle to Prester Beni-Jon. I had recognized this ford from the description that Masara had given me of the countryside and the route to her father’s stronghold. The river was one of the numerous tributaries of the Nile that descended from the mountains. There had been rain over the preceding days, and the level of the ford was high.

  I began the crossing, wading beside the litter of my patient with the stomach wound. He was already delirious. Halfway across the ford I realized that we had underestimated the height and strength of the water. The flood caught the side of the litter and swung it sideways. It twisted the horse around, dragging the poor animal into deeper water where its hooves lost purchase on the gravel bottom.

  I was hanging on to the harness, and the next moment the horse and I were both swimming. We were washed away downstream in the icy green flood. The wounded man was tumbled out of the litter, and when I tried to reach him, I lost my hold on the horse’s harness. We were swept apart.

  The wounded man’s head disappeared below the surface, but by this time I was swimming for my own life. I rolled on to my back and pointed my feet downstream. This way I was
able to fend off the rocks with my feet, as the current hurled me against them. For a short while some of Arkoun’s men ran along the bank beside me, but soon the river swept me through a bend and they could not find a way around the base of the cliff. The horse and I were alone in the river.

  Below the bend, the speed of the current slackened, and I was able to swim back to the horse and throw one arm over its neck. For the moment I was safe. For the first time I thought of escape, and realized that the gods had made an opportunity for me. I muttered a prayer of thanks, and used a handful of the horse’s mane to steer it on down the middle of the river.

  We had come downstream several miles and it was dark before I steered my horse into the bank. We clambered ashore on a sand-bar. I judged that I was safe from pursuit and recapture until morning. None of Arkoun’s men would venture down the gorge in darkness. However, I was so chilled that my whole body shivered in uncontrollable spasms.

  I led the horse to a sheltered place out of the wind, and then pressed my body to his flank. His wet hide steamed in the moonlight. Gradually the warmth of the animal permeated me, and my shivering subsided. Once I was half-warmed, I was able to gather up driftwood from the sand-bank. Using the Shilluk method, I managed with much difficulty to start a fire. I spread my robes out to dry, and crouched over the fire for the rest of that night.

  As soon as it was light enough to see the path, I dressed myself and mounted the horse. I headed away from the river, for I knew that Arkoun’s men would concentrate their search along the banks.

  Two days later, following the directions that Masara had given me, I reached one of the fortified hilltop villages in the domain of Prester Beni-Jon. The headman of the village expressed the intention of cutting my throat immediately and taking my horse. I made full use of all my persuasive gifts, and eventually he agreed to keep the horse but lead me to the fortress of Prester Beni-Jon.