The Oasis

by Pauline Gedge

  Through an opening on his right Ramose caught a glimpse of the bedchamber, its couch hung with gold-bordered linen, the chest at its foot resting on rearing golden fish whose open mouths supported it. A cosmetic stand inhabited the shadows, the pots and jars on its surface all shaped like shells but gleaming with the richness of desert gold. Someone was moving in there. Ramose saw the flick of a short kilt and heard a muted clatter, but it was not the person the herald was now addressing.

  A woman stood in the centre of the room, white-faced but composed, hands loosely clasped before her. Rings winked on her hennaed fingers. Gold bands encircled her bare arms. The red sheath that fell to her ankles flashed and glittered with the gold thread woven into it. Across her forehead and entwined in her high-wound hair went a thin fillet of gold with one long drop resting between her black eyebrows. The orange-hennaed mouth was parted. She was breathing rapidly, the rise and fall of her breasts making her lapis earrings tremble. “Majesty, this is Ramose son of Teti,” Sakhetsa was saying, his words muffled by the sudden pounding of blood in Ramose’s head. “Ramose, do reverence to Queen Tautha.” Ramose turned to him helplessly. There must be some mistake, he wanted to shout. This creature looks like Tani, she resembled Tani from a distance in the garden and I was fooled, but something is wrong. Apepa has tricked me. Where is Seqenenra’s daughter?

  “Thank you, Sakhetsa, you can go.” The woman was speaking with Tani’s voice. She snapped her fingers and turned with Tani’s familiar tilt to her head as a servant came out of the bedchamber and bowed. “You go also, Heket,” she said. “Wait outside.” Ramose stood stupidly as the room emptied and the doors closed quietly, his thoughts chaotic. I am dreaming, he whispered to himself. This is a nightmare and soon I will wake to find myself back in that little cell, still longing to see her.

  The woman before him took one step, her gown shimmering. She smiled wryly, faintly. “Ramose,” she said. “Apepa only told me a short time ago. He enjoys his small surprises. It is one of his few traits I dislike.”

  The interval stretched. Ramose felt its strain in every nerve. The luxurious room seemed out of focus, its dimensions distorted, its furnishings flimsy and ephemeral. Desperately he fought for an interior balance, a centre where he was sanely himself. At last he found it, and with the finding, reality fell upon him. He almost heard its crash as his surroundings regained their proper dimensions and the woman resolved herself into, into … His throat was as dry as a desert storm. “Tani?” he rasped. She bit her lip.

  “He didn’t warn you either, did he?” she said. “I’m sorry, Ramose. That was cruel of him.” Ramose swallowed.

  “Warn me of what?” he whispered. “Why did the herald call you Queen?”

  “Because I am one,” she said flatly. “Come and sit down, Ramose, you are swaying like a drunken man. Let me pour you wine.” Woodenly he obeyed her. His legs felt disconnected from the rest of his body and he almost fell into the chair. He watched her lift a jug, watched the dark red liquid cascade into the cup, watched her push it across the table towards him. Carefully he raised it to his mouth. The wine tasted sour and burned his parched throat.

  “Make me understand,” he croaked. “I do not understand.” She drew up another chair and sat looking at him solemnly. As the wine began to calm him and his interior stability grew, he thought he saw pity in those large, kohlrimmed eyes. Pity? he repeated in his mind. Oh gods, not pity! Anything but that!

  “I signed a marriage contract with Apepa,” she told him steadily. “I am now a Queen. Queen Tautha.” He was certain now that it was indeed pity in her glance. Disbelief flooded him, and a cold desolation, but the knowledge also spawned anger.

  “Why?” he demanded. “Did he threaten you, Tani? Was a contract forced on you because of Kamose’s uprising? Marriage or death, was that the choice he gave you? Was it a revenge against your brother? If so, it means nothing. It can be undone, ignored. Gods! If you only knew how the thought of you has kept me sane through all the terror of the last two years, how the memories I have cherished have been my pillow at night and my sword during the days! And you married him!” She held up a hand.

  “I was not threatened or coerced,” she said in a low voice. “I wish I could make it plain to you, Ramose, to make you see …” She paused, groping for the right words and he, his attention fixed urgently on her face, grappled with an exploding rage. “I came here friendless, afraid, knowing what Kamose was planning and sure that when news of his rebellion reached Het-Uart I would be killed. I tried to live for each day, each hour. I had made up my mind that if I was to die I would succumb bravely.” She turned her hennaed palms up in a gesture of supplication or surprise. “But he was kind to me. More than kind. None of it was my fault, he said. I was not to blame for the ingratitude of my family. When Khemmenu fell, he came to me in great distress, knowing how I loved you, and he prayed that you were still safe. He gave me presents, invited me to accompany him to Sutekh’s temple, allowed me to sit on his left at the feasts. He treated me with honour, not as a hostage. I was overwhelmed. He confessed his affection for me …” Now it was Ramose’s turn to raise a hand in horrified rebuke.

  “He seduced you,” he said savagely. “And you didn’t see it. He accomplished the most exquisite revenge against Kamose that he could possibly have devised, and in spite of your intelligence, the honour you swore to uphold, you fell for his ploy! You let him give you a Setiu name. You let him take you into Sutekh’s domain.” He slapped the table violently and the wine jumped in his cup. “Damn it, Tani, you let him into your bed! How could you? How could you? You gave him what you had promised to me, gave it to a filthy foreigner! Where is the honest, fearless girl I adored? She has become Setiu and I have lost her!”

  “It was not like that,” she faltered, but he cut her off.

  “No?” he said sarcastically. “Then how was it? Did you fall in love with him like some vapid peasant girl or did common greed dictate your actions? It had to be one or the other!” He flung himself away from the table and began to pace, unable to remain still any longer. “I see that I have misjudged you from the start,” he went on bitterly. “You are shallow, Tani. I mistook your superficiality for lightheartedness and cheerful optimism. So did your family. Have you any idea what this news will do to Kamose, to your mother, when it reaches them? And believe me, it will. Apepa will wait to use it until a moment when it can do the most damage to the cause of freedom for Egypt.” He rounded on her, coming close and bending over her where she sat, wanting to hurt her, wanting to see her bleed as he was bleeding, the torrent of dying hopes and disillusionment swirling invisibly around him. “Do not be deluded into believing that the serpent loves you,” he grated. “You are nothing to him, a weapon to be used against his enemy.” She pushed him away and struggled to her feet, clinging to the arm of her chair with both hands.

  “Stop it, Ramose!” she shouted. “Enough! Enough! You are wrong! Hurt me all you want, since you feel that I deserve your condemnation, but you are wrong.” Her lips quivered. “I loved you then. I love you still. We had a dream, you and I, but that was all it was. A dream! In another age we might have married and been happy. In another age donkeys might sprout wings and take to the air. The gods propose these things, and for us they decreed a time in which our love could not mature. Larger issues are at stake.”

  “Larger issues are at stake,” he mimicked her brutally. “And how would you know that, wombed here in your brocades and gold? Do you nurse the arrogant delusion that you have made some kind of sacrifice in a grand cause by becoming a Setiu Queen? What makes you think that you are so important?”

  “I know that you can never forgive me for the anguish I have caused you,” she said in a low voice. “But, Ramose, look around you. You have been in Het-Uart for only a few days. I have been here almost two years. Apepa is releasing one hundred and twenty thousand troops against Kamose. There are more than two hundred thousand quartered here, more than half of them new men from Rethennu. Apepa sen
t to his brothers in the east for reinforcements and the Delta is full of them. Kamose cannot win. He was doomed from the start. I began to realize that within a few months of my enforced stay. I held out against Apepa’s blandishments for a long time, during which I did much thinking.” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. “I wanted you. I wanted to go home. I wished that Apepa would order my execution. But I decided both to survive and to sign the marriage contract when I knew that in the end Kamose would be brought down in defeat. As a legal Queen I have many rights that a mere hostage or even a concubine does not have. I took advantage of Apepa’s affections, yes, but not for the reasons you suppose. Kamose will fall. He will be brought here a prisoner. Then as a Queen I can intercede for him and for my family from a position of power.” She shrugged. “That is all. Believe or not, as you wish.”

  “But, Tani,” he said urgently, “what makes you think that Kamose has no hope of winning Egypt back? You have been infected with the blindness that seems to be affecting everyone in the palace and probably also in the city. You see only the richness of this place, the number of soldiers in the barracks, the impregnability of the city. Do you even know that Kamose now holds the whole country except for Het-Uart? That he has campaigned ruthlessly and there is only Apepa himself left to oppose him? Apepa knows this, but his courtiers obviously do not. Including you.” He opened his mouth to go on, to tell her of her brother’s plan to tease Apepa’s troops out of the city and into destruction, but all at once he saw the danger in doing so. He could not trust her, and that knowledge broke his heart. His anger fled.

  “No, I did not know,” she said quietly. “I knew of Khemmenu and the fall of the fort at Nefrusi, but I was led to believe that these were isolated victories, that Kamose could not control the peasants and the towns and villages would give him no aid.”

  “He burned them all,” Ramose told her curtly. “He is taking no chances.” She raised her eyes, huge with unshed tears, to his.

  “I am glad,” she whispered. “Oh so glad, Ramose. Perhaps I have been duped, as you say. What will Kamose do now? And what about you?” Ramose deliberately ignored her first question.

  “I am to march with General Kethuna to the oasis of Uah-ta-Meh,” he said matter-of-factly. “Apepa means me to die there.” She pursed her lips and searched his face thoughtfully.

  “Kethuna is a reasonably good general but a petty man,” she said. “Pezedkhu would make sure that you had a fighting chance for life but Kethuna will not. I can try to bribe him.”

  “No.” Ramose slumped back into his chair and drained his cup, setting it carefully and studiously on the table before him. “Perhaps Apepa expects you to do just that and it would be a kind of test of your loyalty.” He smiled up at her faintly. “Believe me, Tani, I am not stupid. I will do everything I can to stay alive.”

  “If you do, if you can,” she began haltingly, “please do not tell Kamose what I have become. To see you is punishment enough for me.” He ran both hands over his face, a gesture of fatigue and resignation.

  “What a tangled toil all this has become,” he said wearily. “I had foolishly imagined that when we met you would fall into my arms with cries of joy and together we would plan an escape from Het-Uart, running free to Kamose, then back to Weset. My mother is there now, you know.” She was silent, staring at him without expression. He waited for a response, and receiving none, he rose. “Apepa has kept his word,” he remarked. “I have spoken with you. How he must be laughing! You have become even more beautiful than I remembered, my Tani. I think it is time for me to return to my miserable little room.”

  “I do not want you to love me any more, Ramose,” she said soberly. “There’s no future in it.” He grunted.

  “There is a future,” he corrected her. “But neither of us may be in it. May the totem of your nome take care of you, Tani.”

  “And may Thoth of Khemmenu go with you, Ramose,” she replied, her voice shaking. “May the soles of your feet be firm.” If she had taken one step towards him, however hesitant, he would have pulled her into his arms. But the moment passed. He walked to the door and glanced back. She was standing stiffly, her hands at her sides, crying quietly. He was not able to close the door behind him.

  Once back in his cell he called for wine, and when it had been delivered, he sat on the couch and proceeded to get drunk, filling the cup and draining it with cold deliberation. He could not think, and he did not want to feel.

  He woke at dawn with a pounding headache and a raging thirst, both of which he welcomed. It was better, he reasoned as he ate, was bathed, and dressed for the last time in the palace, to suffer physical distress than to inhabit a sound body that would allow the howling pain in his soul to come forward. As soon as he had finished tying his sandals, the soldier watching him handed him his pack and ordered him out. Ramose followed him through the still sleepy halls and into a garden glittering with early sunlight on dew. There they halted, for Apepa himself was waiting, surrounded by his yawning entourage. Ramose, his head splitting and his eyes throbbing, did not bow. “You do not need to worry, son of Teti,” Apepa said by way of a greeting. “I will take care of her. My Chief Wife Uazet is very fond of her.” Ramose stared at him defiantly. He knew that he was being baited and he should not respond. He did not want to give Apepa the satisfaction of knowing that his goad had found its target but mulishly he no longer cared.

  “I hate you,” he said clearly, his voice ringing out in the limpid morning air. “The whole of Egypt hates you. You do not belong here and one day you will be driven from this sacred soil.” He stepped closer and with an almost insane delight he saw Apepa move back. “Your god is powerless against the combined forces of the holy divinities who have decided to engineer your downfall,” he finished. “I bid you farewell.” He expected an immediate reaction, a sword to sever his aching head from his neck, perhaps, or at least a roar of rage, but Apepa did no more than raise his plucked eyebrows. The attendants’ murmurs died away into a shocked silence. Turning from them with disdain, Ramose strode towards the palace gates, his soldier escort hurrying at his heels.

  He was led to a waiting chariot where his guard handed him over to an officer and retreated without a word. Then his hands were tied together and he was taken back the way he had first come, down through the city streets and straight out onto the narrow plain between Het-Uart and its protecting canal.

  He entered chaos. Clouds of dust obscured his view and in it men and horses resolved and dissolved suddenly like phantoms. Everywhere there was noisy confusion. Men shouted, horses whinnied, donkeys being loaded with provisions caught the prevailing mood of agitation and set up a hoarse and continuous braying. Ramose’s charioteer cursed under his breath as he tried to negotiate a way through the choking mob. I could escape now, Ramose thought. I could jump from the rear of this vehicle and vanish into the pandemonium before this man could turn his head. But just as he was tensing to launch himself to the ground the chariot stopped, the charioteer flung the reins to a boy already holding other harnesses, and the moment passed. Deftly the officer took the thong trailing from Ramose’s imprisoned wrists and knotted it to the chariot’s rim. “Stay here,” he said unnecessarily, and disappeared. Sighing, Ramose sank to the floor, ignoring the boy’s curious glances. His head still ached.

  He had no way of telling how long he sat there, for the murk stirred up by the soldiers forming ranks continued to obscure the sun, but his joints had begun to protest their confinement long before. He was brought a full water skin and a bag of bread, which he put in his pack, and then he was led to stand in the centre of a troop of infantry waiting quietly for the order to march. One of his wrists was tied loosely to the soldier on his left. He saw Kethuna whirl by in his chariot, but the General did not even glance his way. Far ahead a standard was raised, a large, red-painted wooden fan on a tall pole, and at once a command was shouted. “At last we set out,” the soldier muttered. “It’s bad enough that I became betrothed last week, and now I must s
hepherd you and see that you don’t make a run for it. What’s your name?” The column began to move. Ramose shrugged his pack higher on his shoulder.

  “I don’t think my name matters very much any more,” he replied curtly. “But I am Ramose, late of Khemmenu in the Un nome.”

  “I hear Khemmenu is in the nothing nome now,” the soldier grunted. “The enemy sacked it. Did you lose relatives in that fight? Or were you in on the slaughtering?” He shook the length of leather joining them. “Are you a common criminal or a spy?”

  “All of us here are in the nothing nome,” Ramose said grimly, and at that the soldier pressed him no longer.

  If he had been free to swing both his arms, Ramose might have almost enjoyed the first few days of the expedition, as Kethuna’s sixty thousand men snaked through the Delta. It was the end of the month of Phamenoth, the weather cool, the orchards dropping the last of their blossoms, the vineyards making patterns of different shades of green with the dark grape leaves stirring over the lighter hue of the tiny grapes themselves. The water in the canals and tributaries calmly reflected a high, blue sky. Around Het-Uart, the depredations caused by Kamose’s Raiders the year before could still be seen. Burned trees stood black and skeletal. Withered vines rustled sadly in the scented breeze. Patches of scorched earth marked the places where bodies had been fired and occasionally the bones of cattle littered the paths, but as the host neared the western edge of the Delta’s lush cultivation the paradisiacal nature of Lower Egypt was restored.

  On the evening of the third day, they camped under the shelter of the last grove of palms before the desert began. Ramose and his jailer joined a group of soldiers sitting around one of the many cooking fires that lit up the deepening twilight. The other men talked as they ate, but Ramose was silent, his eyes on the hillocks of sand stretching away before him. His wrist was chafed but he did not mind the small niggle of pain. His thoughts flowed from Tani to Kamose to the probability of his impending death and back again. Examining his heart, he found no bitterness towards the girl he had loved for so long, indeed, it came to him that he had exaggerated the emotion to enable himself to survive the horror of Khemmenu and the following days of despair. Nevertheless, the core of his tenderness for her was still there, warm and steady, and he knew that it would outlast his death and the weighing of his ka. It was a thing of eternity, fated within the rightness of Ma’at.