Black Ships

by Jo Graham

  “...and if the darkness around them was just another ocean,” I whispered. Something pushed at my mind, like a dream I had almost forgotten.

  “What?” Hry asked.

  “That was what a man I met in Byblos said,” I explained, coloring. I was not sure it sounded well, to hear that I had thought that I talked to a god.

  “A scholar?” Hry asked.

  “A warrior,” I said carefully. “A warrior named Mikel, who had once lived in the Black Land.”

  “Ah!” Hry sounded pleased. “Then he had some learning, clearly.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think He was curious.” I thought of the slow channels of the Delta, of the great crocodiles along the banks, of the young warrior with His shabby leather and bronze, His dusty folded wings. “He has all the time in the world to learn.”

  Hry looked at me and smiled. “And that is what you want, Daughter of Wilusa. But only the gods have all the time in the world.”

  “I know,” I said. One life could hold so little compared to all there was in the world.

  FIFTY-SIX DAYS had passed since Neas and the People went to war. I was doing some little thing when Tia came to me, the baby in a sling across her chest. “Look,” she said.

  On the river there was a white sail, one scout ship beating hard against the current, sail spread as well, making upriver with all possible speed. As she came nearer I saw as Tia had seen the smudges and smoke on her prow, the burned spot on her rail where a fire arrow had hit and been extinguished. Tia’s hand went to her mouth.

  “It’s an Egyptian ship,” I said. “A messenger.”

  “But the news...” she said. “Bai...”

  “She’s coming into the palace dock,” I said, watching her turn in the water, the right-side oars coming out of the water as one. There were eight ports, but only six oars sweeping on each side. She had lost men as well.

  “I am going to see,” I said, and ran from the courtyard toward the palace as fast as my foot would allow me. I waited for no one. Half the city would try to get there.

  I ran. My breath caught in my throat. I pushed through the people crowding toward the dock, shoved halfway back into a stall full of pottery. I could not push my way out.

  I climbed up on the greatest of the pots, clinging to the pole that held an awning above the stall. I could see over the crowd, but could not hear what the young man said who leaped to the dock and began to speak.

  What I did hear was the roar of the crowd, beginning at the front and rolling backward like a wave. I pounded the shoulder of the man before me. “What?” I screamed in Khemet. “What happened?”

  He turned to me. “A victory! A very great victory! Thanks be to Isis and Horus Her son! A great victory!”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly!” And he grabbed both sides of my head and planted a wet kiss on my nose. “A great victory!”

  I elbowed my way closer to the dock. The young captain had stepped down, gone to report in the palace, most likely, and a scribe had taken his place, reading a piece of papyrus out to the crowd over and over. I did not understand it all, but I understood much of it, because the words were simple.

  “Hear the words of Ramses, Pharaoh of Egypt. We have met the enemy on land and sea, and he has gone down in blood and tears. The sons of the Black Land have vanquished the enemy, though he was as numerous as stars in the sky. We have taken many slaves and much wealth, and many of the enemy are slain.”

  “On land and sea,” I whispered. There had been a sea battle then. Which meant our ships had been in the midst of it. But of them Pharaoh’s dispatch said nothing.

  Initial joy began to turn to whispers. We had won, but nothing was said of this division and that, nothing said of this man or another. We must all still wait to find out what we truly wanted to know.

  ON THE SEVENTH DAY our ships arrived. I was at the Temple of Thoth, and did not know until I came home in the afternoon. As I approached the barracks of the Division of the Ram I heard many voices, and then I saw above the flat roof the peak of a mast. Again in the settling heat I ran.

  There were only five ships beside the docks, five of the eight who had sailed. Who was missing? I came closer.

  Seven Sisters rode at her mooring, her deck scarred and blackened in places. Behind her was Pearl, and Amynter’s Hunter.

  I came in sight of the courtyard, and there they were, the men of the People, and all of the rest, reaching and touching and crying.

  Winged Night and Dolphin were down the dock, and my heart leaped into my throat. The ships were here. Where were the men?

  I began to push my way through the throng, when Kos caught me about the waist and lifted me up in a huge hug. “Thank you for taking care of Tia and the child,” he said.

  “Where is Xandros?” I asked, and was surprised to hear my voice catch so.

  Kos put me down and looked into my face, as though he had thought of something for the first time. He smiled. “Don’t fear for him; he’s right over there by Neas. Not a scratch on him, for all that we boarded two Achaian warships.”

  Somewhere a wail went up, from some woman who had just heard worse. Lide was bustling around, helping men lift down the wounded from Pearl’s deck, slung in linen stretchers between two poles. There were nine or ten who could not walk, and Lide was everywhere among them, pushing the bearers and telling them where to go.

  Neas stood near them. As one boy came past, carried between two men, Neas leaned down and took his hand, clasping it wrist to wrist as a kinsman and a friend. It was Kassander, Amynter’s eldest son. The wrappings around his leg were brown with dried blood. Lide all but pushed Neas away and took charge of him.

  Xandros looked up across the crowd as though I had called his name and smiled. Our eyes met.

  “Sybil?” a voice said at my elbow. “Will you come? One of the wounded has died and we need you. He is a man of Winged Night’s crew named Harmos.”

  “I will come,” I said. I followed him into the room where Lide had laid out the wounded and went about my office.

  HE WAS BURNED that night on the banks of the Nile, as the others who had died in the battle had been burned on a great pyre at her mouths. The Egyptians thought this horrifying beyond belief, but they did not prevent it, as long as it was only the dead of the People we burned.

  There were so many. Neas spoke their names over the fire with Harmos. So many men I had known so little, so many lost. Three ships were gone entirely. Beside the fire, Neas told us what had happened in a voice as good as any bard’s.

  “When Pharaoh came to Tamiat,” he said, “he sent us on to Ashkelon with twenty Egyptian ships. He had more than a hundred ships in all, but the others had close to two hundred. When we got to Ashkelon it had been sacked.” He looked out over the People, the faces limned in firelight. He did not need to describe it. They had seen a city sacked, and what comes after.

  “We turned back to Egypt, because we knew now that the fleet must be between us and the main Egyptian fleet at Tamiat. And it was so. We sailed for a full day, and at morning on the second day we saw them before us.”

  And a feat of seamanship that was, I thought, to find so small a thing as a fleet on the sea. And no small feat of diplomacy, to bring the Egyptian ships with them as though Neas commanded them, not the other way around!

  “They had just begun to engage the Egyptians. Fire arrows were flying, and the Egyptian ships moved in under oars, while the wind was behind the great flotilla.” Neas smiled. “But we were behind them.”

  Some of the faces stirred in the firelight. Tia held Kianna to her breast, Bai’s arm around her shoulders. I had thought perhaps they might at last come to some understanding. She leaned against his scarred shoulder, and the baby was quiet.

  Neas’ voice was clear and rich, his face burnished with fire. “We came down upon them like a wolf upon sheep. We were in their rear with twenty-eight ships before they knew we were there. It was in that first melee, as they turned to defend themselves, tha
t Swift was rammed by a big twenty oarsman from Lydia. It overran her, and she sunk. Many of her men swam to safety, though, for she was close by Winged Night and Cloud. These are the names of the ones who did not.” And he named them all, reciting each with a pause between. With each name there was a collective groan, for each was someone’s friend, someone’s brother.

  “Dolphin came alongside the Lydian ship,” Neas said, “and the Nubians and our men boarded her. Karosanas was killed, and Kassander was wounded.”

  Karosanas, I thought. The big, silent oarsman in the last row below the stern, with his thick beard and broken nose. And Kassander, the messenger boy. I looked across the fire, and Xandros’ face was calm, calm as resting underwater. I could see him in my mind at the tiller, black hair flying. He would have used his sword, if they were so close to the stern, leaped down among the rower’s benches, lithe and swift and deadly.

  “The Lydian ship sank,” Neas said. “And she would have taken Dolphin down if she had not backed her oars and gotten free.”

  Kos, I thought. I could hear him shouting the count, Xandros at the tiller again. “Left side on two. Right side. All back!” And somehow they had responded. Against all hope, Dolphin had backed away from the wreck that would have pulled her under the green water.

  I had lost the thread of Neas’ narrative. Lady’s Eyes and Seven Sisters had driven forward into a storm of fire arrows, driving straight for Neoptolemos’ Chariot of the Sun. They had caught Lady’s Eyes’ sail alight, and she had rammed Chariot of the Sun with her decks blazing.

  “Jamarados fell on that deck,” Neas said quietly. “He fell to three Achaians, and two he took with him into the Underworld. He was a brave captain, a wise friend, and a dear counselor. All of the People shall miss him. As I shall.” He stopped and his throat worked, and for a moment he was silent.

  “But Neoptolemos did not fall,” he said. “He leaped to the deck of another Achaian ship that came near, and Lady’s Eyes burned to the waterline and sank. These are the names of the men who died, for only two of them came to Seven Sisters.” And he told out the names of Jamarados’ crew, all but two men. The other twenty-eight were dead.

  The Nubian bowmen had done well. From the decks of Cloud and Pearl they had peppered the Shardan ships with arrows, until at last one of them managed to close with Cloud. The fight was fierce and sharp on her deck, the bowmen aboard Pearl afraid to shoot into the melee for fear of hitting Cloud’s men. Twelve of the bowmen fell aboard Cloud and ten of her crew before the Shardan were thrown into the sea. Her oars crippled and her tiller crushed, the remaining crewmen from Cloud were taken aboard Pearl, along with eight men who were wounded. Cloud sank into the sea.

  All in all, more than eighty of the enemy ships were sunk, and Egypt lost nearly forty.

  “All about this middle sea,” Neas said, “women are weeping and children are fatherless. All about this world we know, men will never return. But we, the men of the People, have returned!” He lifted a great pottery bowl full of wine, drank and smashed it. Around us, a shout went up. Bai breached a great amphora of wine, and Tia and Polyra began passing it about.

  Neas stood up. The pyre burned on. “The honored dead!” he shouted.

  “The honored dead!” came the shout back, then “Ela, Son of Aphrodite! Aeneas! Aeneas!”

  Xandros’ face was flushed as he shouted. “Ela! Son of Cythera!”

  One of the rowers began a beat on the drums, and in a few minutes the snake dance began winding its way around the fire. Harmos, I thought, was having a funeral like a king.

  I stepped away from the dancers, into the cooler air away from the rippling fire. I did not dance.

  In a moment I looked up. Neas was standing behind me. The firelight glinted golden off his hair, off the great golden armband that he wore.

  “Welcome home, Prince Aeneas,” I said formally.

  “Sybil,” he said.

  I sat down on the stone railing that separated the courtyard from the dock. “You have done well.”

  Neas sat beside me. “As well as I might,” he said. “We have lost so many men. But I do not think there will be another battle like this for an age. On land Pharaoh’s army met the raiders who had landed and those who had come overland from Ashkelon. They say he killed thousands. It will be a long time before they come again.”

  “Perhaps the isles will know some peace,” I said.

  Neas shook his head. “How will that be? There are fewer men still to fish and to farm. There are more people desperate. I think there will be more pirates rather than less, more people driven to desperation as we are.”

  “But for now we are safe,” I said.

  “Yes,” Neas said. “For now.” He stretched his hands out, and in the light they looked gloved in flame. “He’s a good king. Young Ramses. That’s what his men call him. Old Ramses ruled forever, they say. He’s a fair man and an honorable one. And he knows what he owes us for falling on the enemy’s rear like that.”

  “Did you win the battle for him?” I asked.

  “No, but it would have been a lot more expensive. He’s the kind of king who counts his men’s lives.” Neas glanced up toward the fire, toward the dancers.

  “As are you,” I said.

  “I do not want to be a king,” Neas said.

  “So Jamarados said,” I said, before I thought.

  His lips tightened. “I will miss Jamarados,” he said.

  “So will I,” I said. And I meant it.

  “We will stay here a time,” Neas said. “The ships are in bad repair, all of them except Pearl. And we all need rest.”

  “We do,” I said. He seemed content not to dance, but rather to sit by me. Perhaps rest was the bounty Neas sought of Egypt. Rest, and an end to the turnings of the labyrinth.

  DESIRES

  The next morning I went to the Temple of Thoth. When I returned, Neas was waiting for me.

  “A messenger has come,” he said, “bidding us to a feast in six days’ time. Pharaoh is holding a great banquet to celebrate the victory. I am to go, as well as four men of my choosing and as many as five women. One should be you, but I do not think that there are others who should go. Egyptians are not as we are, and do not understand that we do not display our women in public.”

  I glared at him. “In Pylos,” I said, “women attended public festivals, if not private dinners.”

  Neas colored. “Have you...em...seen what Egyptian women wear...at feasts...? I mean, I did in Tamiat and...”

  I almost laughed. “I have seen what they wear in the temple, and what they wear in the markets. Honestly, Neas! Have you not seen breasts before?”

  His face was scarlet. “Not rouged,” he said. “And they...er...paint their nipples.”

  “You must have been looking rather closely, then,” I said.

  He ducked his head, and I thought with a pang that perhaps he had been.

  “I will certainly go,” I said, tossing my hair back. “I see no reason why I should not attend as the Egyptian priestesses do. And I will see if there are any other women of the company who would care to make up the number. Who are the men to be?”

  “Xandros,” he said promptly, “and Maris, Pearl’s captain. Amynter, though he’s not likely to enjoy it.”

  I thought not. Amynter was rather conservative and set in his ways, for all that he was an excellent sailor. He had a suspicion of foreigners, and had never learned a word of any other tongue, something of a trick for a man who must trade. Jamarados would have been better, but Jamarados was dead.

  “The last should be my father,” Neas said. “Of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, thinking that Anchises and Amynter could keep each other company. Maris had a young wife, Idele, one of the women recovered in Millawanda, so she should come if she wished. I thought that she was clever and curious, despite her slavery. She had miscarried right after we had come to Egypt, but with her husband home safe she seemed to have brightened.

  In the end, th
ere were only three women, not five. Many of them did not want to go, whether afraid of mixing with the Egyptians or careful of their good names. Tia could not go, because she must nurse the child. Idele did want to come, and so, to my surprise, did Lide.

  “It’s not often I’ll have the chance to see a royal Egyptian banquet,” she said. “If I have to go stark naked I will!”

  “I don’t think we’re actually to be naked,” I said, but I had no idea what was proper to wear.

  So I asked Hry.

  His eyes crinkled and he smiled. “Oh, you will look well,” he said. “All of you. You should all come to the temple and dress. I will find suitable clothes for each of you.”

  I tried to demur, but he stopped me. “Consider it my gift. Consider it hospitality repaid for the generosity of Priam in Wilusa. And tell that to your prince. He, especially, should look fine. I will manage it all!”

  And so at noon on the sixth day we all came together to the Temple of Thoth, Xandros and Amynter with the air of men expecting their execution.

  Lide and Idele and I were ushered into a long bathing room. It was open to the sky, but stood in shade at this time of day. The spaces between the columns were filled with palms and other plants in enormous pots, making a green screen that entirely separated us from the bathing room of the men nearby.

  A maidservant stood by me with a pot of scented oil and a razor. “As the priestesses do?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Definitely. Everything as you do. Except for my hair.”

  I had already learned that in the Black Land most women of rank shave their heads entirely. The lovely intricate braids they wear are wigs.

  “I must keep my hair, as it is part of my office,” I said in Khemet.

  She nodded, and set about oiling and shaving everything else. When she had done, I plunged in the pool and washed it all away. It was very strange, seeing my body in the water, naked as a child’s. Not a hair on my legs or arms, even my pubis nude, as I had not seen it since I first began to change into a woman.