Persian Rose (White Lotus Book 2)

by Libbie Hawker

  “Very well, then. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Rhodopis nodded, swallowed hard… and stepped out into the yard. Time seemed to slow around her as she moved directly toward Cambyses; the sound of his drilling was drowned beneath a fearful, continuous rushing in her ears, like a storm at its wildest pitch, or a mountain river in flood. Vaguely, she was aware of the distress of the women—their shouts and frantic gestures, their pale faces and outstretched hands as she stepped directly into the path of the king and his man—into the path of their flying blades. Rhodopis did not respond to the women, did not even glance in their direction. She sent up a silent plea for their forgiveness, and pressed on.

  The women’s shouts did serve to alert Cambyses, however. He glanced over the shoulder of his guard, caught sight of Rhodopis coming toward him, grim-faced and small. His eyes widened with surprise, even as he raised his shield to deflect his opponent’s blow. It fell with a clash that seemed to reverberate inside Rhodopis’ head. The next moment, Cambyses backed away, shouting, “Down! Blade down!” The guard stumbled to a halt, lowering his sword. Then he sank obediently to one knee before Cambyses, awaiting the king’s next command.

  Cambyses brushed past the man. Chest heaving, sweat already beading on his skin, the king smiling in a rather confused manner as Rhodopis stopped and stood staring up into his face. She had ascended high in the king’s favor, she knew. Her display of loyalty, here in this very courtyard, was vibrantly fresh in Cambyses’ memory. That was why she must act now—Phanes had been insistent on that point, and very persuasive. She must strike immediately, must make Cambyses see the sense in the plan while his feelings for Rhodopis were still as warm as a new bridegroom’s.

  Rhodopis knew the time was now, yet she could not speak. She clutched her own hands with a terrible, tight grip; she trembled as she looked up at Cambyses. Every pleasant night she had spent in his bed flashed through her mind at once, every hour they’d spent in laughter or simple conversation, every wave of pleasure he had made to ripple through her body. Immediately in the wake of that poignant vision, a wrench of regret ripped at her heart. Rhodopis had grown to… well, not to love Cambyses, exactly. But she liked and respected him. She had enjoyed lying with him, talking with him, as she had never enjoyed any other man. She would everything now, cast it all away—that glad sense of belonging, her status as a king’s wife, even the tentative, fragile roots she had just begun to put down in Babylon.

  “Nitetis,” Cambyses said, bewildered. “What is it, my rose? You look so pale. Has something gone wrong?”

  Rhodopis fell to her knees before the king, lifting her clenched hands in a gesture of hopeless pleading. But she did not lift her face; she could no longer bear to look at him. “My king—my husband! I cannot live with the guilt any longer. I have come to make a confession.”

  “A confession?” Cambyses spoke quietly, voice was edged by a sudden frost.

  “Yes,” she said. “I must confess to you who and what I really am—here before everyone, for you have always conducted the business of your kingdom before the eyes of your women. They, too, must know the truth.”

  With her head bowed low, all Rhodopis could see was the point of Cambyses’ sword as it lowered slowly toward the ground. It came to rest in the dust.

  “Speak,” he said shortly.

  Rhodopis swallowed the great, painful lump in her throat. She would have preferred to make her confession in the privacy of the king’s chamber, but Phanes had insisted: the scene must play out before the eyes of as many witnesses as possible. Cambyses was sometimes rash and short-tempered, the physician had explained—but he never lost his composure where his women or his subjects could see. It was a point of pride with him, to think carefully and clearly whenever anyone was near enough witness to his affairs. Cambyses had always pronounced sound, thoughtful judgment when he was being observed.

  Bolstered by that knowledge, Rhodopis pressed on. “My king and husband, I am not what I seem to be.” She spoke as loudly as she could, letting every person present hear the tale. The women had fallen silent. Even the murmur of the city far below seemed to dim and recede, as if all of Babylon strained to listen. “I am not the daughter of Pharaoh Amasis. I am only a woman from his harem, and a woman of low standing, at that. When you demanded a daughter in marriage, the Pharaoh thought it a grievous insult, for Egypt has never given a daughter to any foreign king, in all the nation’s long history. But Amasis also knew that the might of Haxamanishiya grows every day; he could not deny you. He sent me to you, instead of a true daughter. I am the Pharaoh’s ruse. And…” She had to breathe deeply before she could force the final confession from her throat. “And I came to Babylon as the Pharaoh’s spy.”

  The women burst out with a startled shout, a wordless exclamation that came at once from more than a dozen throats. A few yelled insults and curses; someone cried, “Strike off the head of that traitorous bitch!”

  But Cambyses said nothing. The point of his sword shivered in the dust, a testament to his rage-tightened grip on its hilt. Rhodopis’ face burned with shame. Tears blurred her vision, then dropped into the dust. Through all the preparations she had made with Phanes—rehearsing the words, refining their plan—she had never expected to feel genuine remorse for what she had done to Cambyses.

  “How dare you deceive me,” Cambyses said, so softly Rhodopis almost couldn’t hear him over the sound of the women’s protests. “You and Amasis.” He spat on the ground, very near where Rhodopis knelt.

  Then, with one swift flash, his sword raised. Rhodopis tensed, but her heart stilled, and the peace of certainty came over her. The tears cleared from her eyes. It was over; she had reached the end, the ultimate confluence of fate and strife. She would feel the bite of Cambyses’ blade, its cold caress on the back of her neck, and then… nothing.

  “Please, my king!” Phanes threw himself down in the dust beside Rhodopis, kneeling in exactly the place where Cambyses had spat. “I beg of you: hear what this woman has to say. I only just learned her story, myself. She came to me in confession, you see, for her guilt weighs too heavily on her heart; she cannot bear it any longer. I told her she must speak to you herself, and confess the truth, for her loyalty to Haxamanishiya is real—as is her devotion to you. My king, you saw her yesterday, repudiating Egypt before the eyes of your court. She has risked the displeasure of the Pharaoh—indeed, she has risked her life and safety—and dedicated herself to you. I beg of you, my king: hear her.”

  “Speak, woman,” Cambyses barked. “And Phanes, hold your tongue. My patience is very thin.”

  “Pharaoh Amasis is your enemy, my king, but I am not.” Rhodopis’ throat was quite dry; her words quavered as they came, for Cambyses’ sword was still raised. He had not made up his mind to spare her life—not yet. “I am not Egyptian, but Greek—and for years, I lived in bondage in the city of Memphis.”

  There was a pause. Silence had returned to the courtyard. Cambyses said, “You are a slave?”

  “Yes, my king—once. But after I was a slave, I was a hetaera.”

  Again, that tense, tormenting silence. “Go on,” Cambyses said flatly.

  “When I was a hetaera, my king, I had access to the most powerful men in all of Egypt. I heard their thoughts, their plans… I could influence them to take up the causes I favored, for all men are susceptible to such manipulations when they lie with a woman.”

  “I dare say that’s true,” Cambyses growled. The disgust was plain to read in his voice, and Rhodopis could infer his thoughts: What weaknesses have I betrayed to this spy while she lay in my arms? Has she sent word already to Egypt?

  Rhodopis continued quickly, before Cambyses could act on his anger. “In truth, my king, it is those men who run the country—the merchants and nobles—not the Pharaoh. He is only the body that warms the throne, but he is too weak and malleable to rule. The Greek merchants know how to use him; they play him like the strings of a harp.”

  “What is your point?” Cam
byses said. “Come to it quickly; the chatter of an enemy offends my ears.”

  “Yes, my king. My point—my proposition—is this: many of my former patrons are traders with crucial influence in Greece. You know, my king, that Greece is the only ally to which Amasis can turn, if he feels himself trapped and threatened. Greece is his only friend now, for he has made enemies everywhere else—even within his own kingdom. Throughout Egypt, men murmur against him; they pray for his downfall. Yet I know which men to influence, which to compel. I know how to drive a secret wedge between Amasis and Greece. I can cut the Pharaoh off from his only hope for salvation.”

  Cambyses said nothing for a long, shuddering moment. Then he said shortly, “Phanes.”

  “I have listened carefully to this woman’s plan, my king,” Phanes said. “I believe it is sound—as sound a plan as we may hope or pray to find. Amasis may have sent this woman to you to with the intent to deceive, but the gods themselves brought her to Babylon to serve you. We all witnessed how she treated the Egyptian ambassador; we know where her heart lies. What cause did she have to repudiate Amasis? What could have motivated her, except true loyalty to Haxamanishiya? We have waited patiently for the right moment to strike at the Pharaoh. I believe that moment has finally arrived. This woman is better kept alive, my king, and employed in your own cause.”

  Cambyses did not move, did not relax. Rhodopis clenched her teeth, waiting, certain that any moment she would hear the whistle of the king’s sword as it cleaved the air—as his killing blow fell toward her small, defenseless body.

  But the point of his sword lowered again, coming to rest in the dust before Rhodopis’ face.

  “Bring the girl and meet me in my chamber, Phanes,” Cambyses said. “We have much to discuss.”

  II

  Watcher

  14

  Eulalia in Memphis

  The litter sank to ground in the dusky courtyard. Rhodopis peeked cautiously through the gap in the thick curtains, taking in the first sight of her new home. The house was small, yet finely built, its two stories and rooftop terrace standing demurely behind a high wall covered in a tapestry of vines. Beyond the garden, thick with many years of growth, the Nile flowed smooth and purple in the twilight.

  She sank back for a moment against the cushions, letting the curtains swing shut again. She had kept them firmly drawn, sheltering herself from view, from the moment she had boarded the litter back at the public quay, where her boat had landed earlier that same evening. She breathed deeply, tasting the humid Egyptian night. It was rich with familiar smells of wet vegetation and the spice of winter-blooming flowers. Rhodopis savored her final moments of absolute privacy behind the veil of her curtains. Now that she was back in Memphis, the disguise she had adopted wouldn’t last long. Sooner or later, she would be obliged to venture out into Memphian society, and once she did, it was only a matter of time before her face or her voice was recognized. She had a mind to delay that moment for as long as she could.

  “Close the gate,” she called to the litter-bearers.

  “At once, Mistress.”

  Servants and slaves had called ‘Mistress’ in Babylon, but the title landed strangely in her ear here in Memphis. She half expected the bearers to chuckle over the improbability—Rhodopis, a ‘Mistress!’ But those men, like all the rest who would make up her household staff, seemed entirely earnest. Calm yourself, Rhodopis thought. There is no reason for them to doubt you, nor reason for them to suspect who you truly are.

  The entire staff had furnished and vetted by Phanes, on behalf of King Cambyses. Indeed, Phanes had been the architect of Rhodopis’ disguise; while she had traveled back across the tedious desert and down the coast toward Egypt, Phanes had worked diligently with ink and scroll, pigeon and rumor, constructing through fiction and innuendo a full-fleshed history—even an established reputation—which Rhodopis now donned like some robe of dazzling glory. She was Rhodopis no longer—nor was she Doricha, nor Lady Nitetis. She was Eulalia: sophisticated, eminent, the high-class hetaera come from her native land of Lesvos to increase an already considerable fortune among the grand old glories of Memphis. Daughter of an elite family, Eulalia hoped to brush elbows with the finest and most powerful men in the world—and thus increase not only her personal wealth, but that of her noble line, too. Such was the story, the shield behind which Rhodopis would crouch, praying it concealed her well enough that she could complete her true task in Memphis and abscond back to Babylon in one piece.

  Rhodopis, the simple, fresh hetaera and newcomer to the Pharaoh’s harem, may have been unused to such lofty titles as ‘Mistress.’ But Eulalia would accept such niceties as no more than her natural due. She rose gracefully from the litter, nodding coolly to the guards, and stood for a moment in the courtyard. All its dark plantings were flush with the bloom of the wet season. Rhodopis resisted the urge to pull her short linen cape more tightly around her shoulders. After little more than a month in Babylon, dry and hot as the inside of a mudbrick oven (by day, at least), the chilly damp of the Nile Valley was startling. Moisture hung so thickly in the air, it seemed to Rhodopis that she ought to be able to see it. It weighed down her cape and her linen dress, clinging to her skin with an oppressive weight. The sooner she was inside her new house, shut away from the eyes of Memphis, the better.

  She nodded toward Amtes, still in the litter. Amtes uncoiled herself from the cushions with a stretch and a sigh. As she stood, the pale glow of twilight fell upon her face, picking out the lines and dots of Amtes’ own disguise—black ink, carefully applied each morning to her cheeks, forehead, and chin, an imitation of the strange tattoos worn by the women who had grown up far to the south, beyond the Nile’s white-water cataracts. The false tattoos were Amtes’ best hope for anonymity—for she, too, risked being recognized by the Pharaoh or his people.

  Phanes had approved of Amtes’ continued service, though he had spent two days interrogating her, carefully prying and rooting through her every word and gesture until he felt certain she was true Kmetu—committed to the Two Lands entirely, but with no particular attachment to Pharaoh Amasis or his family. Rhodopis had been so relieved to keep Amtes close that she had wept for joy when Phanes brought the news. Amtes woman was fearless, staid—a pillar of calmness and strength, even in the midst of a mad and dangerous world. Once Phanes had given his blessing, Amtes had proven herself remarkably enthusiastic about the restoration of a true, traditional Kmet. She had vowed to resume her work as messenger—this time, dispatching messages to Babylon instead of Egypt. “It is all one to me, which way the pigeons fly,” Amtes had said when she’d returned to Rhodopis’ chamber after the lengthy interrogation. “So long as I do the will of Kmet’s true gods.”

  Rhodopis took Amtes’ arm. They walked toward the little house, Rhodopis moving with a languid sway, doing her best to minimize her unseemly eagerness to scamper inside and heave a sigh of relief behind a private and firmly closed door. Memphis seemed to intrude all around her. Its noises and smells crowded over the garden wall, surrounded her like the ranks of an army. The calls of merchants, striving to sell the last of their wares before all light vanished from the sky, played thinly against a burst of raucous laughter from a nearby wine-house. Fowls squawked in a neighboring garden, arguing over their roost, and a child shouted at the birds in coarse Egyptian. Mud from the river warred with the odors of goat dung and charred bread, lamp oil and a stray drift of myrrh from some inner-city shrine. How strange it was to be back. Rhodopis had never expected to see Memphis again; to return after a few short turns of the moon seemed all but impossible. Yet here she was, strolling through the Egyptian twilight as if no fears nipped at her heels, as if everything was maat as the moon and stars.

  The city’s familiarity did nothing to quell the sickness in her stomach. The return trip from Babylon had been far more difficult than her first excursion. Rhodopis had been obliged to travel in considerably less comfort. She was a wealthy hetaera now, not a King’s Daughter. Her new ide
ntity afforded some luxuries—but not nearly as many as a princess of Egypt could expect. Rhodopis’ camel train had been far rougher, less comfortable; she had actually been forced to ride in the saddle, with her skirts split and bunched up around her thighs, instead of lying in a shaded, cushioned litter. The ships that had carried her down the sea coast and up the long, silver flatness of the Nile had been considerably less impressive than Amasis’ boats. Yet despite the discomfort and hardship, Rhodopis had arrived in Memphis faster than she had expected. She did not know yet whether she must count that speed a blessing or a curse. Certainly, she did not feel adequately prepared to be in Memphis again.

  A small staff of servants appeared under the portico as Rhodopis and Amtes approached. They bowed in welcome, but Amtes sent them off at once. “Our mistress is hungry, and very tired from the journey. Lesvos is a long way off, you know. Bring a good meal to her sleeping chamber. Is there a bath built into the floor? Yes? Excellent. I’ll have it filled with hot water, and bring the best oil in the house. I will bathe Mistress Eulalia myself, and then we’ll take to our beds, and we’re not to be disturbed until three hours after sunrise. Mistress needs her rest, after so many trying days.”

  The staff leaped to obey Amtes’ commands. Rhodopis stifled a giggle. “You ought to be the mistress, not I. You were born to command.”

  “Perhaps I ought to take real tattoos, if they make me seem so imposing.”

  “You’d have been a great hand at running a stable full of hetaerae.”

  “Perhaps I’ll take up the business once our work here is settled. There’s a fortune to be made in that kind of work, so I hear.”

  “There is, but if we succeed, you’ll have to go to one of the Greek kingdoms to run a stable. If Phanes has his way, the Greeks won’t hang about Egypt much longer.”

  Cheerful lamp light filled the sitting room of Rhodopis’ small but elegant home. The single, sleek couch, wrapped in blue silk, was finely made, with angular keys of ivory set into the wood at its lower edge. Two ebony chairs stood nearby, waiting for the guests Eulalia might entertain in her own home. A spacious table large enough for three to dine dominated the room below a woven wall hanging, which depicted a sea dotted with green islands—a scene from Lesvos, Rhodopis assumed. The scents of rose and myrrh lingered in the air, spiced by a faint breath of cinnamon. It was tasteful and refined, rich without being ostentatious—exactly the sort of home a hetaera would purchase when she was ready to strike out on her own. Phanes had done his work well. Of course, the estate—along with a new wardrobe of clothing, the home’s staff, and the litter that had carried Rhodopis from the quay—had been purchased with Cambyses’ silver. But every detail of Rhodopis’ new life in Memphis had been overseen and orchestrated by the clever physician. Phanes had assured Rhodopis that he would filter all the money through a warren of merchants. His network sprawled across Egypt and Greece; it would take the most inquisitive man months to untangle the threads of her assets and trace Lady Eulalia’s wealth back to Cambyses and Babylon. And if the gods were good, Rhodopis would conclude her business long before then.