Enslaved by the Desert Trader

by Greta Gilbert

  The force of his attraction to her verged on the overwhelming. She was a woman in full, unfolding before him like a lotus flower. He stared down at her face in awe. ‘You are the most beautiful imposter that this world has ever seen,’ he said, and then he moved his lips close to her ear. ‘I want you so badly...’

  Days later, Tahar would go over and over that moment in his mind, wishing he had never said those words. It had been hearing him voice his desire, he realised, that had reminded her of her own desire. It had wrenched her from the dream. The impossible, impractical, unreasonable dream of their love.

  He felt her body stiffen. ‘Then take me,’ she said, but her voice was flat and without feeling. ‘Yes, take it.’

  She opened her eyes and he saw that they had changed. They were not rolling with ecstasy, but aware and steady. Her lips were no longer chafed and reddened with the evidence of his kisses. She held them in a thin, colourless line.

  Take it, she had said, and it was as if all the desire had been squeezed out of her words so that only a hollow kind of fear remained.

  She opened her legs wider and turned away. ‘Go ahead,’ she said. She drew in a breath and closed her eyes. ‘Take it.’

  He felt as if he had been snapped in two. Take it. She was referring to her maidenhood. She did not want him—not at all. This was a trap. Now her strange, probing questions of hours before made sense. She did not want him. She did not wish for his touch. She wished for him to take her virginity. She wanted to be rid of the thing that gave her so much value to him.

  Tahar stepped backwards, stunned. ‘You do not want me,’ he choked. ‘You seek to trick me.’

  ‘I seek vengeance against he who would sell me for profit,’ she said, her lips quivering. ‘I seek justice.’

  He dragged himself from the pool, the pain of his unfulfilled desire making his whole body ache. She stayed in the water, and he could see that she was sobbing.

  How could he have been so foolish? How could he not have seen the obvious signs? Her sudden interest in him, her impulsive flirtation, the brazen boldness of her touch...

  ‘Ha!’ he shouted in bitterness. He was like the Khemetians, believing only what he wanted to believe—that she could want him, could love him, even—and not the truth that was right in front of his nose: that she hated him more and more each day.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The royal dancer was buxom and well-muscled: a vision of Hathor, Goddess of Love and Abundance. Hemp oil glistened upon her sumptuous golden buttocks, and her firm, naked breasts were hennaed to accentuate their perfect roundness. Upon her head was fixed a golden crown of horns; between the two horns hung Ra’s fiery ball.

  The music commenced. Her movements were effortless, liquid. She began her journey across the expanse of the royal audience hall, keeping her footfalls light upon the tiles. As she ran she released a gauzy blue veil. It undulated gently behind her like a wave. The chorus of harps grew louder and she unfurled another blue veil to join the first. She did this several more times—stealing gracefully towards the pillars until the music crescendoed and a spectacular moving wave of cloth filled the space.

  ‘Halt!’ King Khufu commanded.

  The musicians paused. The dancer ceased her motions. Ra’s first light shot through the high windows, just missing the blue veil as it collapsed upon the floor. The dancer stared at the lifeless sea of cloth, her face a sheet of white.

  King Khufu swallowed his wine, saying nothing. Hundreds of highborn guests stared at the King in wide-mouthed disbelief.

  After several moments Imhoter stood up from the priests’ table. He had long ago been elevated to King’s Advisor and Holy Seer, but today he wore the ceremonial leopardskin cloak of his former position as High Priest. He walked towards the base of the high throne, adjusting the leopard’s head so that it would not face the King directly.

  ‘Permission to speak?’ he asked humbly, keeping his eyes down and his palms up in obeisance.

  ‘Speak, Imhoter.’

  ‘Does the dance not please the King?’

  ‘The dance, the dancer—none of it pleases me,’ the King growled. ‘It is all rubbish.’

  Imhoter felt his heart twist. For many weeks he had been preparing for the Feast of Hathor—the most important feast of the year. He’d wanted to create a spectacle worthy of the Goddess of Love and Abundance, and had settled upon the illusion of water flowing across the royal terrace in the form of a floating blue veil.

  To Imhoter’s eyes the dance had been beautiful—a marvel of movement and colour. The guests, too, had appeared delighted by the mirage. Imhoter had even heard a few awestruck gasps. It was only a feast, but the drought had fomented doubt among the highborns about Khufu’s authority as King. Imhoter had been trying to inspire their awe and also their fealty.

  ‘And the dancer is unappealing,’ the King added, stroking the long black column of his ceremonial beard. ‘She is not Hathor.’

  From the corners of his eyes Imhoter noticed several guests exchange worried glances. As part of the Feast of Hathor, the King—Horus Incarnate—was supposed to join with the dancer who had been selected as Hathor Incarnate. By spilling his royal seed inside Hathor, the King would help ensure the arrival of the flood. It was a tradition that had never been broken.

  But in the days since the Libu raid on the grain tent the King had been angry and impulsive. Instead of rising to face the challenge of feeding his people he had sent the rest of the King’s Guard into the Red Land in search of the Libu raiders. It was a futile mission, for it was well known that the many different Libu tribes came together only for raids.

  Imhoter had tried to persuade the King to call the soldiers back, but the King would not hear of it. Now it appeared the King was making another grave error, for he would not rise to the occasion of the Feast of Hathor: he was refusing to join with the woman.

  As Imhoter fumbled for words another priest stood. He was tall and very thin: his eyes were set inside deep pockets and his skin was so taut over his bones that he appeared almost mummified. Menis was his name, and he was as old and rich as a tomb.

  ‘My King, I must say that I, also, am displeased.’

  Imhoter knew that Menis was not speaking of the dance, for the wretched old priest had lost his appetite for beauty long ago. What Menis craved was power.

  ‘I am touched by Osiris,’ he often whispered in the corridors of the palace. ‘I am meant to rule.’

  Menis had always been loath to describe his origins, but by plying him with wine and flattery Imhoter had discovered Menis’s disdain for common folk, including his own father—a ‘lowly’ farmer. As a boy, Menis had refused to join his father in the fields. Instead he had loitered on the steps of his village temple, filthy and starved, begging for the honour of shaving the priests’ toes.

  When the holy men had finally opened their gates to Menis he had been almost grown, and his heart had become twisted with bitterness and ambition. By the time he’d been draped in the fine cloths of a wab priest the garments had no longer been good enough for him.

  Unlike the other wab priests, Menis often trod the river paths between the villages of Lower Khemet. He offered blessings to the sick and the mourning, explaining that he could grant the favour of the God of Death and Rebirth. All he asked was a small offering to help him on his travels.

  By his thirtieth summer Menis had accumulated enough wealth to buy his first plot of land. He’d charged his farmers rent, in the form of a third of their harvest, and had soon begun to hold feasts—each more elaborate than the last, and each thrown in honour of the High Priests of Memphis. In his fortieth summer he was made one of them.

  ‘I have read the ancient scrolls,’ Menis had once told Imhoter, ‘and I have learned that only the strong survive.’

  Now in his sixtieth year, Menis had accumulated so many
arouras of land that he was by far the wealthiest priest in the kingdom. The old priest enjoyed the support of dozens of nomarch mayors, and a host of tenant farmers willing to fight for him in exchange for rent. If the floodwaters of Hapi did not arrive soon, Imhoter knew that Menis would attempt to capture the throne. Beneath Menis’s fragile, skeletal exterior was a hyena ready to pounce.

  ‘Speak your mind, Menis,’ said King Khufu now, his eyes dancing with derision.

  ‘Your will, Great One,’ said Menis, bowing low and stealing a glance at the other priests. ‘As Your Majesty well knows, we, the priests of Memphis, continue to work tirelessly to encourage the arrival of Hapi, the life-giving flood.’

  Khufu nodded. The hyena was circling.

  ‘Today is the Feast of Hathor—the holiest of days—when we honour the Goddess of Love and Abundance, who is also mother of the flood, and ask for her blessing.’

  Khufu nodded again. The beast had smelled blood.

  ‘The remaining Apis bull has been prepared for sacrifice.’

  A preliminary bite...

  ‘The dancer, Hathor Incarnate, has fasted, has been bathed, shaved and anointed, and is ready to receive you. Now more than ever the land of Khemet requires your seed. The Libu raid upon the grain tent has left the land of Khemet without grain—’

  Pounce.

  ‘Enough, Menis!’ exclaimed the King, who clearly did not need to be reminded of his failure to protect the last of the royal grain stores. ‘Your audacity is breathtaking. I am the King of Khemet. I am a god who consorts with gods. I am the embodiment of their will and you are nothing!’

  The King smoothed his wrap and took a breath as Menis fought to conceal his triumph. He had pushed the King too far, and the beleaguered monarch had revealed weakness before his guests.

  ‘Go now!’ the King barked at the dancer. ‘I command you!’

  The distraught woman gathered up the swaths of cloth that surrounded her and darted across the terrace.

  ‘Wait!’ Menis called to the woman. ‘You must not leave. You have not yet performed your sacred duty.’

  The young woman paused. Tears traced their paths down her well-anointed cheeks.

  The King pounded his sceptre upon the ground. ‘Leave now, woman. That is an order from your King. Imhoter, see her out.’

  Imhoter rushed to the young woman’s side.

  Menis turned to the King. ‘Your Highness does not wish to join with the Mother of the Flood, the Goddess of Plenty Incarnate?’ His tone was rich with exasperation. He looked out over the guests as if they were his own subjects.

  Having regained his composure, the King laughed. ‘I have joined with many Goddesses of Love and Abundance, and they have given me an abundance of children.’ Several of the nobles chuckled. ‘What they have not given me is Hapi,’ the King concluded, and Menis’s wrinkled lips twisted into a scowl.

  Khufu and Menis continued to spar. Imhoter could hear their haughty voices growing ever louder as he found the servants’ exit and the stairway that led down to the street. The young woman beside him had lost the buoyancy in her step. The glow in her cheeks had faded and she sobbed quietly, unaware of the beauty she had embodied, the wonder she had evoked with her dance. She had told a tale—the tale of the flood—and she had told it well.

  She reminded Imhoter of a woman he had known long ago.

  ‘Young Hathor,’ Imhoter said to her as she began to descend the stairs, ‘you are as beautiful as the sky that gives birth to the sun.’

  The girl ceased her flight. She tilted her head towards Imhoter, listening closely.

  ‘Do not despair, for you have fulfilled your duty. You have honoured the Gods, and the Goddess will bless you for it.’ Imhoter removed the most delicate of the rings on his fingers and placed it into her hand. ‘Take this and go. You have earned it.’

  The young woman wiped her tears and a sad smile spread across her face. ‘I cannot accept your ring, Venerable One. It is much too fine.’

  She held out the ring, but Imhoter refused to take it back.

  ‘Your dance was more beautiful than a thousand gold rings, dear woman. Now, go and be well.’

  Tiny tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and her hand closed around the ring. ‘I am honoured and humbled by your kindness.’ She bowed deeply and departed upon lighter feet.

  Imhoter returned to the royal terrace to find Khufu draining another goblet of wine. His guests picked at their food, peering at him with accusing eyes. Even the leopard’s head on Imhoter’s shoulder seemed to stare at the King in reproach.

  The deed had not been done. The King had not joined with Hathor, Goddess of Love and Abundance, Mother of the Flood. He had not spilled his seed and fulfilled his duty as King. In the guests’ minds, the flood was now even less likely to come.

  Suddenly, King Khufu stood. He raised his sceptre and spoke: ‘The source of the Great River is the Island of Abu, a month’s journey upriver,’ he pronounced.

  Imhoter’s mind raced. No, don’t do this. Do not leave the great city without its King.

  The King’s voice echoed across the great hall. ‘We do not need any more feasts or dances or joinings with virgins. They do not help bring Hapi. Only I, Horus Incarnate, can convince Hapi to come. To do this I shall appeal to Khnum, God of the Great River, directly. On my soul, we shall have our flood. Tomorrow I journey to the Isle of Abu.’

  The people appeared pleased. One by one they stood and began to applaud. They had come to be entertained, after all, and with this startling pronouncement the King had not disappointed them.

  Imhoter glanced at Menis. The old priest’s eyes sparkled like tiny black jewels.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She never should have done it. She never should have tried to seduce Tahar. She should have simply waited until they’d arrived upon Abu and then made her escape.

  But, nay, she’d had to act. After almost two cycles of the moon he had not wavered—he was going to sell her into marriage against her will. What choice had she had? Each day they had got closer to Nubia and closer to the inevitable exchange. She could not simply escape into the desert. She had tried that already. The only manner of stopping his malicious scheme, it had seemed to her, was to sabotage it from within.

  Foolishly, she had thought it would be easy—like stealing a fig from a street vendor’s carefully constructed tower. But this time the moment she had pulled at a single fruit the entire tower had come tumbling into her lap.

  It had been that kiss. She had not been prepared for that at all. The feel of his lips upon hers had awakened a thirst that the water of a thousand wells could not quench. He had been tender and insistent. Guiding. Probing. Loving. She’d had no idea that a simple kiss could make her forget the terrible life he intended for her, and as she’d kissed him back she had realised for the first time the depth of her own feelings. She trusted him. She cared for him. She admired him. She...

  She was overmatched. Seduction was a game whose rules she did not understand—a game of which she had neither experience nor understanding. A game she should not have rushed to play. Not with him.

  Now she watched his hands wrap the twine about her wrists over and over, wishing she could go back in time. She wanted to feel his arms engulfing her again. She wished to drink again from those strong, capable hands and to kiss each of his fingers a dozen times.

  Seth’s blood, she was a fool. She could not accept her desire for him. Her body had acted against direct orders from her mind. But it had been more than that. It had been as if the moment he had embraced her all the disordered parts of herself had fallen neatly into line, and she’d wanted to stay with him like that for ever.

  Or maybe the Red Land had finally driven her mad.

  It mattered not. Whatever chance they’d had, she had ruined it. Whatever bird had taken fl
ight that night, she had clipped its wings.

  Now he gathered her up and seated her before a date palm trunk. The tenderness had disappeared from his touch. He grabbed her sharply by the ankles and wrapped her legs around either side of the trunk. He went to work with the twine once more, encircling her ankles again and again, just as he had done the day he’d captured her.

  I want you so badly, he had said, and it had been those words that had broken the spell he had cast upon her. When she’d heard them she had thought of what she wanted—which, in that moment, had been him. Him, him, him. Him all around her, against her, intertwined with her. But then what? That was the question her soul had asked. No moment of ecstasy could ever measure up to a lifetime of servitude. Stay away from men, her mother had warned, and this man was no different from any other. If he wanted her—really wanted her—he would have to set her free.

  ‘I am leaving,’ he told her now. ‘I won’t be back until sunset.’

  He had placed her in a position as humiliating as it was clever. Her arms and legs straddled the trunk of the date palm and were tied together at the wrists and ankles, so she appeared to be hugging the tree. It was a wretched embrace. Even if she could free her hands she would never be able to reach the twine around her feet.

  Again, she was outplayed.

  He placed a water bag between her arms, grabbed the horse’s reins, and began leading the beast away from camp.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Kiya, then added, ‘With my grain.’

  ‘It is not your concern.’

  ‘It is my grain. Of course it is my concern.’

  Tahar stopped. ‘Nay, it is my grain now, and you are still my captive.’

  Nothing had changed between them, and yet the word split whatever had remained of her heart in two. Captive.

  ‘I shall draw attention to our camp,’ she continued, humiliation searing her thoughts. She lifted her head and called loudly, ‘Where do you wander, oh, Tahar the Trader, with such a heavy load?’ Her insides squeezed with bitterness.