by Judith Tarr
~~~
In the end, Kemni rode on the back of anger: anger at the foreign king, and anger that he should be driven out of Egypt in his own king’s name, to beg yet another foreign king to aid in the winning back of Lower Egypt. Anger sustained him when he could not bid farewell to his friends or to any of the princes but Gebu; even when he received nothing from his king at parting but a box that proved, on his opening it, to be filled with pieces of silver. That was wealth—but hardly enough to win the favor of a king.
He left the palace quietly, casually, as if he had gone out merely in search of amusement, and made his way through the waking city, down to the quays and the ships.
The ship from Crete, like Kemni’s own embassy, was made to seem less than she was. Her name, he had taken the trouble to discover, was Dancer. She was worn, the painted eye on her prow much faded with waves and weather, the sail once purple now dulled to a cloudy grey. Her crew of black-ringleted sailors took little apparent notice of Kemni as he stepped none too ineptly aboard, but they were aware of him. He could feel it on his skin, and in the space between his shoulderblades.
Naukrates the captain was notable here not in his splendor—he affected none—but for that he stood under a canopy on the deck, and all the others looked to him for their orders. Not that they did that often. They had the air of men who had served long and well under the same captain, on this same ship. Everything on her was familiar, and every man had his place and his purpose.
Kemni had no part in this smooth working of men and ship. He found himself shifted quickly and irresistibly to a space near Dancer’s horned prow, up against a heap of stowed cargo. There, it was clear, he was to stay, and forbear from interference.
It was well for him that he had so little pride to lose, he reflected wryly as he made himself as comfortable as he could amid the boxes and bales. In so little a semblance of lordly state, on a ship that had evidently seen better days, Kemni sailed out of the harbor of Thebes. No crowds cheered him on. No great lords of Egypt saw him on his way. He went as any common traveler might go, unmarked and unregarded.
And that was exactly as the king had wished it. Kemni endured it for no other reason. He was still angry. He meant to stay so, for Egypt’s sake, until he stood in front of the king in Knossos, and spoke the words that his king had given him to say.
He would not need those words for yet a while. He settled therefore and determined to be invisible, cargo as the boxes and bales were cargo, riding the river away from the city that had been home to him for the past hand of years. He did not look back. Thebes was as clear in memory as he would ever need it to be.
His eyes fixed on the river ahead. The water was full of boats. Every fisherman was out, it seemed, and every trader, and every man or woman of whatever degree, who had any need at all to be out and about. He saw a flotilla of funeral boats with women wailing, carrying the stark encoffined dead to a tomb on the western bank. He saw a lord in a bright barge with a boatful of musicians in his wake, making the air sweet with the sound of pipe and timbrel and harp. He saw traders of several nations, each in his own manner of ship: Nubian, Egyptian, Asiatic. But only his was a ship from Crete.
The river ran strong and deceptively slow, in this its season of waiting before the flood that would spread it wide over the valley of Egypt. The day dreamed its way into evening, and thence into a night of bright stars. They did not beach the ship even here in Ahmose’s kingdom, but sailed nightlong, riding the river down toward the sea. Kemni would have slept among the cargo, indeed had fallen into a drowse, but a hand on his shoulder brought him suddenly awake.
He blinked up at a face he knew, but where he had known it, or how, he did not just then remember. It was a Cretan face, and young, all eyes and black curls. At first glance he could not have told if it was male or female; but when he sat up and the Cretan drew back, he saw well enough that it was a man, or boy rather, naked and brown and irresistibly cheerful.
He babbled at Kemni in his own language, quick and light as water running. When Kemni simply stared, he sighed a little—just enough to be perceptible—and said slowly, with an atrocious accent, “Captain says come. You come. Yes?”
“Yes,” Kemni said. He rose and stretched, working stiffness out of neck and shoulders and back. The Cretan boy grinned at him. He grinned back, as a lion grins, baring fangs.
The boy laughed. “You come,” he said.
~~~
Naukrates the captain sat at ease in his cabin under the deck, in the gentle rocking of water, by the light of lamps that burned sweet oil. There was no gleam of gold here, no blatant luxury, but to eyes that knew how to see, this was a great lord’s place, and no doubt of it. The lamps were made of bronze, simple work but exquisitely fine. The coverlets on the bunk built into the curved wall of the hull, the cushions that made it comfortable, were somewhat worn but beautifully made, the work of a fine needle: noble surely, perhaps even royal. Another such weaving covered what must be a sea-chest of respectable size; and what was in that, Kemni could guess.
It was serving as a table now. Kemni had not expected a king’s banquet, but this was a fair feast for a ship that made no pretensions to luxury. The wine was Cretan, and very fine. The bread was well milled and baked just so; and there was oil to dip it in, rich and pungent-sweet, pressed from the olives of Crete. The roast duck and the platter of fishes from the river, each cooked in a different herb, would have been reckoned elegant enough even for the king. And there were onions, too, and lettuces, and bits of green to cleanse the palate, and after those, cakes made of honey and spices.
Kemni sat back at last, full almost to bursting, and belched his appreciation. “My compliments to your cook,” he said.
Naukrates smiled. “He’ll thank you, I’m sure.”
“Even though I’m an Egyptian, and therefore worth little?”
“Ah,” said Naukrates. “You understand us too well.”
“Egyptians think the same of Cretans,” Kemni said. “It’s the way of the world.”
They sat for a little while in silence. Kemni watched the lamps sway as Dancer rolled gently on the current. He could hear the sounds of a ship at night: men snoring, rigging creaking, the soft pad of the watch on the deck above his head. Warm wind wafted through the port. Someone was playing on a flute, very soft, very sweet.
“Tell me now,” said Naukrates, “why you were given this charge.”
“I, of all who could have been sent?” Kemni spread his hands. “I look to be of little account, don’t I? Even for an Egyptian.”
“I think there is more to you than one might think.” Naukrates reached for the winejar and filled both their cups. He took up his own, but did not drink at once, turning it in his fingers instead, watching Kemni over the rim of it. “Tell me who you are.”
“My name is Kemni,” Kemni said after a pause. “My father was a lord, not a great one but respectable enough, up in the Delta past Memphis. Our family lived in that holding, which we called the Golden Ibis, since before there was a lord in the Two Lands.
“Then came the foreign kings, whom we call the Retenu. My grandfather fought them, but was defeated. He kept his holding, held it and ruled it as best he might, but paying tribute to a king who was never born in Egypt. When he went to the Field of Flowers, where no doubt he received a just and ample reward, his son took the lordship after him. That was my father. He was a quiet man, little inclined to contest an overlord’s will. He married late. I was born when he was already old. He may still be living; I don’t know. I left him when I was old enough to fight, went with my mother’s brother to offer myself to the king in Thebes.
“He took us as his servants, as was right and proper. And we fought in battle against the invaders. We won—we were triumphant. We took the greater part of the Lower Kingdom, and laid siege to their capital, to Avaris itself. My uncle died there with a Retenu arrow in his heart. I was wounded. Maybe I should have died. But the gods were watching over me. I never knew I was h
urt: after my uncle fell, I fought my way through a wall of enemies and found myself back among my own people. We fought till there was no one left to fight; and then I found myself back to back with a man who looked at me and said, ‘Great Horus, they’ve spitted you like an ox!’”
“And had they?” Naukrates inquired.
“Almost,” Kemni said. “I was lucky. The spear hadn’t pierced anything vital. I was a pitiful object for a while, and my new battle-brother had much to do to look after me, especially after we broke the siege at Avaris and ran clear south to Nubia to defend the kingdom’s borders, but in the end I was as well as ever. By then I knew that my comrade in arms was one of the king’s sons, and one way and another he’d taken me into his house. There I’ve lived since, and served the king as I may, and I suppose prospered. But I’ve never gone back to the lands that should have been mine. I’ve been branded rebel. The Retenu would slaughter me on sight. Not that I care for myself, but my mother, my father if he still lives—they would suffer if I came back.”
“So you have clear cause,” Naukrates said, “to want the invaders gone.”
“Oh yes,” said Kemni. “Yes, I have cause.” It was an old anger, that one, honed and polished like an antique sword. “I told my battle-brother once that I would do anything to drive the Retenu out of Egypt. Even—yes, even leave Egypt.”
“Egyptians never leave, do they?” Naukrates said.
“Why should we want to?”
The Cretan shrugged, half-smiling. “We sail the world over. Home is here,” he said, and struck his breast lightly with his fist, over the heart. “The land we come from, it is beautiful, but our souls yearn for the sea. We’re sea-people, children of the wind. We ride on the wave’s breast. When we come back to Earth Mother, we come as her beloved, to rest for a while before we go back to the sea.”
“All that we are is in Egypt,” Kemni said. “The Red Land that borders it. The Black Land that is the heart of it. And the river that makes it all one. It is all we need, and all we ever look to need.”
“What strange people you are,” said Naukrates.
“No stranger than you,” Kemni said.
“Only promise,” said Naukrates, “you’ll not wither and die out of sight of your Egypt. I’ll be hard pressed to explain that to your king—or to mine.”
“I hope I’m a stronger soul than that,” Kemni said a little stiffly.
“Ah. I’ve offended you.” Naukrates did not sound unduly troubled. “Then let me offer further offense. Embassies prosper by the talents of their interpreters. If you would be pleasing to the great ones of my country, you would speak to them in their own tongue.”
“Would you ask that,” Kemni asked, “if I had been a great lord in a golden barge, with armies of servants?”
“No,” Naukrates answered promptly.
“Well,” said Kemni. “Well then. I’ll have little enough else to do, I suppose.”
“We’ll find uses for you,” Naukrates said, “and while we do that, we can teach you to speak in words that the sea will understand.”
~~~
Kemni had never heard of such a thing before. To be turned into a pupil, like a small boy in the scribes’ school—except that his teachers were many, indeed most of the sailors on the ship, and his schoolroom was the ship itself, riding down the river toward the conquered country. And thereafter, if the gods were kind and the conquerors sufficiently blind, out upon the sea, the Great Green that he had heard of but never seen.
There was no sharp line between his king’s lands and the lands that bowed to the conqueror king. Much had remained the same: the villages and towns, the cities spread along the river, the traffic and commerce of Egypt. But as Dancer sailed northward, Kemni began to see signs of the invader. A donkey caravan winding along the river’s edge. A robed and heavy-bearded man sitting uncomfortably in a boat, being rowed the gods knew where. And most striking of all, a troop of chariots racing from Black Land into Red Land, with a glitter of spearheads and a bright gleam of armor. Whether they were riding to the hunt or to a battle, Kemni did not know. He would have given heart’s blood to learn the answer; but he could have no part of it. Not now. Not by his king’s decree. He must preserve his secrecy until he had passed out of Egypt.
He kept to such shadows as there were, and did his best not to seem conspicuous. One brown wiry person must seem very like another, though his hair was cropped close and not grown out in ringlets. He lent a hand where he was needed, and learned the words that went with whatever he did, and managed, after the first long day, to be much too busy for boredom, and much too exhausted in the nights to do more than sleep. Dreams let him be. He was doing as the gods bade; they kindly left him to it.
III
They came to Memphis on a day of heavy, humid heat. The Cretans were gasping in it. Kemni roused to it, for he had been born in this country, bred in it, raised and nurtured there. This city had been his city, this world his world.
And he could not walk in it, not if he would do his king’s bidding. He had to lurk and skulk and hide here more than he ever had before.
They would linger in the city for a day and a night, and depart on the second morning. Naukrates had cargo to unload and cargo to take on—for this was truly a trading voyage, whatever else it might also be. He could hardly conceal a ship of this size or fashion, nor did he intend to try.
Because the riverside was crowded, and because they preferred to remain afloat where they were not so vulnerable, they rode at anchor and ran boats to the shore. Kemni kept to the cabin as much as he could bear to. Even he found the air close there, the heat oppressive, and no breeze to cool it. There was a fan, and water sweetened with wine, for such relief as those might give.
He was glad of them when the harbormaster’s man came in his gilded boat to inspect the ship and its cargo; for that voice, high and somewhat affected, and that self-consciously ponderous step on the deck were terribly familiar. Ptahmose had been a frequent guest in Kemni’s father’s house: kin in somewhat distant fashion, and keenly interested in the holding’s fortunes. If Kemni had been a daughter and not, thank the gods, a son, Ptahmose might have hinted at marriage.
And now he was the harbormaster’s servant, and no doubt his coffers were well lined with silver and with foreign gold. Kemni clung tightly to the shadows and prayed that neither Ptahmose nor his trampling company of guards would carry on their inspection belowdecks.
But he seemed content to loiter above, drinking Naukrates’ wine and eating the cook’s fine cakes. Kemni knew well how fine they were: a napkinful had found its way down to his hiding place. The cook, who loved no one, disliked Kemni less than most.
After an endless while, Ptahmose and his men removed themselves from the ship. Naukrates went with them, or close behind them. There was no urgency in it, that Kemni could hear or sense.
He was sweltering in the dim box of the cabin, but he did not leave it just then. He lay on the bunk. Perhaps he slept. He might have dreamed; but he did not choose to remember.
~~~
When he sat up with a start, the heat had abated a little. The cabin was dimmer than ever. Dancer was as quiet as she could be, a sunset quiet.
He came out carefully, keeping to shadows. The deck was all but deserted. Most of the crew had gone ashore. Those who remained were quietly watchful. No ordinary sailors, those. Kemni knew the look of fighting men.
Naukrates might seem unconcerned, but he was well on guard. Kemni eased a little, seeing that.
His frequent place on the deck had altered. Some of its familiar boxes and bales were gone. Others had taken their place. Kemni found a shadow to rest in, with even a whisper of breeze, and no more stinging flies than strictly necessary. It was almost pleasant.
As he lay there, quiet but alert, like the watch, some few of the crew came back—early, from the greetings they received. He could understand a little of it, not every word but enough. They had met a friend, or an ally, or someone equally well dispos
ed toward them. They were bringing that one to the ship. And indeed there was a stranger among them, a figure as shadowy as Kemni tried to be. It was wrapped in a mantle even on such a night as this, its movements almost soundless, slipping through the kilted or naked crewmen. They gave way as it passed, as men would to one of greater rank than they.
For a while Kemni wondered if Naukrates had come back, for some reason in disguise. But this was a smaller figure, lighter on its feet, and quicker, too. Before he was fully aware of its intent, it was standing over him, a shrouded shadow, and deep within the darkness, a gleam of eyes.
He hoped the stranger could see more of him than he could of—her?
Yes, her. It was not anything he saw, but his skin knew, and the marrow of his bones. She did not move like a woman, nor stand like one; she had a man’s sure step and his arrogant carriage. But he could not, once he knew, mistake her for anything but a woman.
She spoke in the Cretans’ language. Her voice was low, but it was clear. “This is the one?”
The captain of the watch had come up behind her. “Yes,” he said.
“He looks harmless enough,” she said. “Tell him he will dine with me.”
“I will dine with you,” Kemni said. His tongue was not as quick as his ears, yet, but he could say that much, and even be understood. “But first, tell me who you are, and why I should do what you tell me.”
“Because I tell you,” she said.
Kemni’s brows rose. Egypt had its fair share of imperious women, but he had never seen one quite as imperious as this.
No one else seemed startled or even amused. The sailors conducted themselves as if this were only as it should be; and in Crete, who was to say that it was not?
Kemni, who was a guest in this place, determined to conduct himself as a guest should do. This woman, whoever she was, did not dine below as the captain did. For her they raised a canopy on the deck, and lit it with lamps, then closed it in with hangings of fine Egyptian linen, covered over with plainer, duller stuff to deceive any eyes that might see. And when all was ready, they let Kemni in.