by Judith Tarr
Nehsi’s eyes widened slightly. He had not seen the shot, having been engrossed in something or other—probably a nap—at the time; only heard the cry as the bird came down, and the scramble to fish it out of the water before a crocodile found it.
Bastet must have taken his expression for incredulity. “Yes, that was I,” she said with a flicker of temper. “I was trying to make myself useful.”
“Clearly you need to be useful,” Nehsi said. “Very well, then. Play the nurse if you will, but have a care. If she escapes again and is hurt, I may remember that a traveler can find guides and interpreters in any country he comes to. Punt is by no means unknown to Egypt—there may be Egyptians there even now.”
“But none who speaks the language as one born there,” Bastet said with a remarkable recovery of calm. “I won’t let your lion-cub escape. Even,” she said, “if she bites me.”
“I won’t bite you,” Tama said. “I don’t do that.”
“Good,” said Bastet.
39
Bastet got on very well with Tama, kept her in order to an impressive degree, and even kept her quiet when there was need of it A long voyage was difficult for a child so young. Even a ship as large as this one was still a small thing under the vault of heaven, with nowhere to run that was not full of men or oars or baggage. She could not swim in the river: quite apart from the fact that it was swollen with the flood, it was full of crocodiles. Any one of them would have been delighted to dine on such a morsel as Tama was.
They sailed through Egypt as swiftly as they might go, pausing only to take on water or provisions. It was a long way into Punt, and the flood would not last forever; while it ran high, they must cross the channel into the sea.
That was north of Memphis and then east on a narrow arm of the river, wider now with flood. They had passed out of the humid marshes of the Delta and into the Red Land again, across the bleak outer reach of Egypt. The Bitter Lakes stretched in a chain with river between, harsh with salt, curving south toward the arm of the eastern sea.
Here was the edge of Egypt. On the right hand as they worked their way east and south was the outlier of the Red Land. On the left lay the broad desert of Sinai, where servants of the king mined turquoise and malachite and copper. There was danger here if they were delayed, if the passage was broken or blocked, if they ran aground before they reached the sea.
Wild tribesmen lived in this desert, children of the sand, who made their living leading caravans across the desert. They would raid ships in the bitter lake and in the channel that the kings had dug, for anger at the profit they were losing; for sailors paid them no tribute for crossing their country, nor hired them to guard their passage.
Nor did Nehsi doubt that every tribe in Sinai knew what this fleet of ships was, laden with gifts for the lords of Punt. He alone, as a prince of Egypt, would fetch a splendid price, whether they offered him unharmed to his king in the Two Lands or sold him gelded in the markets of Asia.
He forbore to trouble his sleep with such terrors. His fleet was superbly armed and guarded, and his sailors were fighting men, men who knew well the art of defending their ship. As they passed under oar and sail through the land of the tribes, they mounted strong guard by day and kept watch at night. Tama he removed, much against her will, from her bed beside Bastet, and took into his own, safe in the cabin within a circle of armed men.
Perhaps their show of armed force prevented attack; or maybe the gods protected them. They passed the Bitter Lakes and came unmolested to the kings’ channel. The flood, that had reached its height while they were in the Delta, had begun to subside. But there was water enough, Nehsi hoped, to carry them through to the sea.
Here was the worst danger of ambush. The channel was clear—he had sent men ahead to be sure of it, men with strong backs and light boats, who made certain that neither sand nor reeds encroached upon the passage of a fleet of ships. They had built upon the labors that the king had decreed in this past year and more, opening the passage and making it as wide as they might, so that not only this fleet but many after it should make the passage. Her ambitions were as noble as she herself was: she meant this to be but the first of many such voyages, her greeting and welcome to the lords of Punt, who thereafter would be her friends and allies.
All that shrank in his mind to simple fact: the sky overhead, blue vault of heaven; the channel in its deep-dug banks; the beds of reeds and the stretches of sand and stone, and the watch kept by day and night against raids from the desert. His scribes kept count of the days, recorded the length of each journey from sunrise to sunset. Nehsi let his own reckoning slide into the long stream of days, each much like the one before: sailing ever and ever on to the Great Green, as people in Egypt called the sea.
The scent of it grew stronger with every day. It seeped into his bones: salt and seawrack, fish and weed and a sharpness that had no name but sea-scent. And then at last, still early of a morning, the channel that had been all his world for so long opened endlessly wide.
Then he heard the surge and sigh of the sea, the waves washing the shore. It was narrow here as seas went, though broader than any river; one could see both shores, and laugh at the small figures running on the left hand, brandishing tiny sticks of weapons, even letting fly a shaft or two over the water.
The tribes had come at last to raid his ships; but they had come too late. “Surely,” Nehsi said to the wind that freshened, catching the sail and lifting his boat till it leaped upon the waves, “the gods have held us in their hands.”
~~~
They worked their way down the shores of the world. It was wider than Nehsi had ever known, even knowing the length and breadth of Egypt. This was vaster by far, full twice and thrice, four times, even five times the length of his country that he had thought so great.
The crew of his ship were amused, though they tried to be polite about it, since after all he was a great prince. They called themselves men who had seen both earth and sky, who were wise to every wind that blew. It was not an empty boast. Their hearts were wider than he had known before, their eyes accustomed to horizons that made the edges of Egypt seem narrow and circumscribed.
“And yet it is a great country,” he said to Bastet as they sailed past a stretch of mountains that seemed to hold up the sky. “The greatest in the world.”
“But the world is larger by far,” she said. She seemed more at ease than he was. She had been born in Egypt, but she had grown up hearing tales of Punt and all the lands between, speaking their languages, remembering them as a child could whose mother told tales both vivid and richly wrought. She told them to Nehsi on the long days of voyaging, when the wind bore them without need of oars, and much of the crew could take its ease.
Her uncle had told the truth after all. Her crippling shyness at the beginning, which she never either excused or explained, had warmed and opened into a wonderful ease. Tama had wrought that. It was impossible to maintain a polite distance with that child finding more mischief to get into than one could possibly imagine, considering how small a ship was.
They had taken to dining together in the evenings. Nehsi was careful to see that everyone knew the privilege of his table, inviting as many as could fit in the cabin, and varying it every day; but Bastet was always there. And sometimes, if he was so inclined, it was only the two of them and Tama, and maybe the captain Sinuhe.
They ate what they could shoot or trade for, drank beer brewed from their store of barley, and kept the wine for great occasions, since some of it at least must come intact to the King of Punt. It was enough for comfort: surprising, a little, as far from home as they were.
Comfort was rare enough else. The farther south they sailed, the stranger land and water seemed. And they began to run into weather.
Nehsi had heard outlanders complaining that Egypt had no weather. It could be hot or less hot or even almost cold. Clouds came, went. Once in a rare while it rained. In certain seasons storms of sand roared out of the Red Land, or a fier
ce wind that maddened men and beasts, and often brought swarms of locusts, or stinging flies.
But honest weather as it was reckoned on the rest of the world—which seemed mostly to be storms of rain—Egypt seldom had.
Not so here on the eastern sea. Calm they could contend with: the oarsmen broke out oars and rowed. Storms of wind were frightening, and in one the sail rent in two; they had to pull ashore for a day or two, on guard against attack, and mend it. But when the clouds rolled in, so deep a grey they seemed almost black, and the water roiled, laced with foam, and rain began to lash their cheeks, the strong men of Egypt shivered and cursed.
The sailors laughed at them. “Call this a storm?” they said. “Now when we sail the Great Green, the northern sea, when it’s winter and the wind blows as keen as knives—that is a storm. This is a sea-goddess’ kiss.”
It was bitter enough for Nehsi’s taste, which no doubt proved that he was soft. He lent a hand as he could, which was not much in a ship as well manned as his. Mostly he huddled in the dim close air of the cabin with Tama and her self-named nurse, and struggled to keep the child entertained.
She would have been out dancing in the rain, easy prey for the waves that lashed up over the prow. He had to keep a solid grip on her and tell her stories till his voice was hoarse; and then Bastet took up the task. Thereafter they did turn and turn about, amusing Tama while the rain hammered down and the boat heaved and rocked in the swell.
The storm lasted three days. Nehsi lost count early, but the scribes kept the reckoning, and Sinuhe the captain appeared well able to tell day from night, even such black and filthy days as these were.
They could not put in to shore while the storm ran. It drove them ahead of it—a storm out of the north, so that they hastened into the south at impossible speed. The sailors labored day and night to keep the ships afloat, and to keep them together as they could. It seemed that the gods favored the voyage, wished them all to come to Punt as soon as might be; but cared little how they suffered in the doing of it.
Even the passengers did their turns at bailing-bucket and steering oar. Nehsi, the strongest of them, left his daughter to her nurse and took the longest watches. He had to be ordered to sleep by a shadow-eyed and perpetually dripping captain: driven into his cabin, and knocked flat on the bed there. It was already full of Tama and her nurse, a fact of which he did not become aware until he woke with a double armful of warm and breathing sleepers.
Tama curled in the middle, finger in mouth. Bastet had folded her body about the child’s. The two of them fitted smoothly into his side.
He loathed to move, but the sheer unwontedness of quiet after the roar of the storm made him twitch. And light: it shone through the ports, dazzling his dark-accustomed eyes.
He crept out as softly as he could, taking great care to disturb neither of the sleepers. Sun half-blinded him. It was just risen, riding low over the hills of Sinai. The sea surged and rolled under it, agitated still but never as it had been.
The storm had passed. The sky was a clear and cloudless blue. The waves were no higher than they might have been on a day of brisk wind, as this was. Warm wind, soft wind, with a scent in it that made him think of spices.
The ship’s timbers steamed with wet. He had forgotten what dryness was; his whole body was sodden, heavy with water. He stripped off the leaden weight of his kilt and left it lying, and went to lend a hand with the last of the bailing.
Most of his sailors were naked, too, letting the sun bake them dry. They rid the ship of its burden of rainwater, all but the brimful barrels that would see them, the captain said, nigh as far as Punt. He was pleased. They had water enough, their ship was undamaged, and the rest of the fleet made its way back to them as the day wore on, all but one ship; and that came in sight just at sundown. In the morning it would catch them.
Merenptah the master of cooks had somehow kept a fire going through the storm. At evening he laid out a feast: fish of the sea, bread fresh-baked, a cheese that had been aging in a secret barrel. He even produced a prize, a jar of dates preserved in honey, such sweetness as Nehsi had not tasted since he left Egypt.
Nehsi, exhausted with daylong labor, ate swiftly and in silence, hardly aware of who ate with him. Tama was there, he knew that; but she let him be. So did Bastet. He ate till his hunger was sated, and sought a bed that was—for a miracle—dry.
~~~
This time when he woke it was still night, though late. The moon rode high. The stars shone beyond the ports of his cabin, that lay open to the breezes. They were cool but not cold, and he was warm under a blanket he did not remember wrapping himself in, with the same double warmth beside him that he remembered, dimly, from the morning before.
Tama again, and Bastet beyond her. Tama’s face was a shadow in the moonlight. Bastet’s he saw clearly, its lines carved clean, limned in silver. The hair that he had never seen, hidden as it was under headscarf or wig, was uncovered. She wore it cut shoulder-long, a riot of midnight curls. Pity, he thought, to conceal it. Plaited and weighed down with beads, it would make an admirable imitation of a wig.
He rubbed his own close-cropped skull and grimaced. Ah, well; but what he grew was as thick as a fleece, and beastly hard to keep in order. Egyptian fashion suited him well enough.
He folded his hands under his head and gazed up at the moon, the blind eye of Horus as Egyptians called it. What it was called in Nubia he did not remember. He was a Nubian by blood but never by upbringing. In that he was all Egyptian.
He deliberately did not think of the woman lying so close beside him. He had brought no woman with him. It was a singular omission, but one that he had not thought to remedy. A lord who dragged his women behind him wherever he went had always struck Nehsi as a bit of a fool. Had he no self-discipline? Could he not find ample consolation wherever he was?
Besides, none of his maidservants had been eager to go. All of those who had been willing were men. There were women on one or two of the other ships, companions to his noble companions. Sailors did not bring their wives or their lovers. It was ill luck, they said.
And here was the lordling’s daughter from Bubastis, named after that city’s goddess, sound asleep and perfectly innocent, with his daughter in her arms. That she was beautiful he never forgot. That she was female was unmistakable.
A man could ease himself over the side. Sailors never minded, though they might grin and offer commentary. Nehsi was too proud to resort to that. He remained where he was, while the moon sank from its zenith and the boat rocked gently on the breast of the sea. He was amused, rather. Wry. A little embarrassed.
None of which he would ever admit to Bastet. She was young enough to be his daughter. Clearly she had no interest in him, except that he was Tama’s father. To her he would be an old man. He had six-and-thirty years by his closest reckoning: well into middle age. She must have had fifteen, if she had so many. An infant; a child.
Not that that had ever stopped or even slowed him with a maidservant, but she was well born. Her father had trusted him to keep her safe on this journey.
So he would do, then, though his manly parts ached with restraint. They had seldom been denied before.
It would do them good, he thought, even as he slipped out to cool them, and the rest of him, in seawater.
40
Rather fortunately for Nehsi’s peace of mind and body, the storm had brought the fleet almost to the borders of Punt. They had yet a narrow mouth of the sea to pass through, dangerous with reefs; and the storm had shifted them. They picked their way through, gauging depth with line and oar, and more than once levering a boat off a reef that had not been there when its captain sailed these waters before. But they passed through, if slowly.
Then Nehsi saw that, as wide as the sea had seemed, it was but a narrow thing beside this vast and sighing expanse of water. Here was the Great Green itself—and yet, the mariners told him, it was nothing to the ocean beyond. There the land dropped out of sight altogether, and any who sa
iled there must travel by sun and stars.
No one of Egypt ever had, that anyone knew of. This was as far as sane men went, along this sandy shore with its fringes of reef.
It was hot here, even compared with Egypt in summer; and damp, a heat as heavy as the worst of the Delta. The breezes that wafted from the land were pungent with spices.
“This whole country smells like a temple,” Nehsi observed as they sailed in close to the land. When he drew a breath, he grew dizzy.
“Wait till you’re actually in it,” the captain said. “You’ll think there must be a priest under every bush and stone, waiting to chant this rite or that.”
Nehsi grinned, leaning on the rail of the lookout’s post. Spray bathed him as the ship breasted the sea. He licked the salt from his lips and peered under his hand at the sandy anonymity of the shore. Far inland, he thought he could see the rise of hills or mountains, though perhaps they were only clouds.
“Oh, no, that’s mountains,” Sinuhe said when he asked. “It’s desert in there, and mountains rearing over it. Makes our Black Land look soft and lush, it does, though our Red Land gives it a fair contest for horrors.”
“So where do they live?” Nehsi asked. “What do they live on?”
Sinuhe’s glance hinted that he should know that, and to be sure he did, but he wanted to hear it now, in sight of this country. It made it real somehow; turned dry and wordy knowledge into living substance.
In any case he received the answer he wanted. “There’s rivers enough,” Sinuhe said, “which gives them water to drink and to feed their crops and herds, and fine defense against invaders. And they trade. Incense, of course. Ivory. Ebony, gold, unguents. Terebinth, kohl. Monkeys. Hounds. Panthers and slaves.”
Nehsi whistled between his teeth. “They’re rich.”
Sinuhe nodded. “Gloriously rich. And eager to trade for our bits of linen and mirrors, and a sword or two or a spear, and a few barrels of our blue glass beads.”