River God Read online

  I poured them from the bag and began to fondle them, concentrating all my powers upon them. Soon they began to feel warm as living flesh to my touch, and I experienced the familiar sensation of depletion as my own strength flowed.from me into the ivory discs. I arranged the Mazes face-down in two random stacks and invited Pharaoh to take up each pile in turn, to rub them between his fingers and to concentrate all his attention upon them at the same time as he repeated his questions aloud: 'Will I have a son? Will my dynasty survive?'

  I relaxed completely and opened my soul to allow the spirits of prophecy to enter. The sound of his voice began to penetrate into my soul, deeper and deeper with each repetition, like missiles from a slingshot striking upon the same spot.

  I began to sway slightly where I sat, the same way that the cobra dances to the flute of the snake-charmer. The drug took its full effect. I felt as though my body had no weight to it and that I was floating in air. I spoke as if from a great distance and my voice echoed strangely in my own head, as though I sat in a cavern below the surface of the earth.

  I ordered the king to breathe upon each stack and then to divide it into halves, setting aside one half and retaining the other. Again and again I made him split each pile and then combine the remainder, until he was left with only two of the coin-shaped Mazes.

  For the last time he breathed upon them and then at my instruction placed one in each of my hands. I held them tightly and pressed them to my breast. I could feel my heart pounding against my clenched fists as it absorbed the influence of the Mazes.

  I closed my eyes and from the darkness saw shapes begin to emerge, and strange sounds filled my ears. There was no form or coherence to them, it was all confusion. I felt dizzy, and my senses blurred. I felt myself grow lighter still, until I seemed to float in space. I allowed myself to be carried upwards as though I were a blade of dry grass caught in a whirlwind, one of those dust devils of the Saharan summer.

  The sounds in my head became clearer, and the dark images firmed.

  'I hear a new-born infant cry.' My voice was distorted, as though my palate had been riven at birth.

  'Is it a boy?' Pharaoh's question throbbed in my head, so that I felt rather than heard it.

  Then slowly my vision began to harden, and I looked down a long tunnel through the darkness to a light at the far end. The ivory Mazes in my hands were hot as embers from the hearth and seared the flesh of my palms.

  In the nimbus of light at the end of the tunnel I saw a child, lying in the bloody puddle of its own birth-waters, with the fat python of the placenta still coiled upon its belly.

  'I see a child,' I croaked.

  'Is it a boy?' Pharaoh demanded from out of the surrounding darkness.

  The infant wailed and kicked both legs in the air, and I saw rising from between the chubby thighs a pale finger of flesh surmounted by a cap of wrinkled skin.

  'A boy,' I confirmed, and I felt an unexpected tenderness towards this phantom of my mind, as though it were truly flesh and blood. I reached out to it with my heart, but the image faded, and the birth cry receded and was lost in the blackness.

  "The dynasty? What will become of my line? Will it endure?' The king's voice reached me, and then was lost in a cacophony of other sounds that filled my head—the sound of battle trumpets, the shouts of men in mortal conflict, and the ring of bronze. I saw the sky above me, and the air was dark with flights of arrows arcing overhead.

  'War! I see a mighty battle that will change the shape of the world,' I cried to make myself heard above the sounds of conflict that filled my head.

  'Will my line survive?' The king's voice was frantic, but I paid it no heed, for there was a mighty roaring in my ears, like the sound of the khamsin wind, or the waters of the Nile boiling through the great cataracts. I saw a strange yellow cloud that obscured the horizon of my vision, and the cloud was shot through with flashes of light, which I knew were the reflection of the sun from weapons of war.

  'What of my dynasty?' Pharaoh's voice tugged at my mind, and the vision faded. There was a silence in my head and I saw a tree standing upon the bank of the river. It was a great acacia in full leaf, and its branches were heavy with fruit pods. On the topmost branch was perched a hawk, the royal hawk, but even as I watched, the hawk changed shape and colour. It was transformed into the 'double crown of Egypt,' red and white, the papyrus and the lotus of the two kingdoms entwined. Then, before my eyes, the waters of the Nile rose and fell, and rose and fell again. Five times in all I saw the waters flood.

  While still I stared with burning eyes, abruptly the sky above the tree darkened with flying insects, and a dens« cloud of locusts descended upon the tree. They covered it completely. When they rose again the tree was devastate* and bare of the last trace of green. Not a leaf remained on the dry brown twigs. Then the dead tree toppled and fell ponderously to earth. The fall shattered the trunk and the crown was smashed into pieces. The fragments turned to dust and were blown away on the wind. Nothing remained but the wind and the driven sands of the desert.

  'What is it that you see?' Pharaoh demanded, but it all faded and I found myself once more seated on the floor o> the king's bedchamber. I was gasping for breath, as though I had run a great distance, and salt sweat scalded my eyes and poured down my body in rivulets to soak the linen of my kilt and to form a pool on the tiles beneath me. I was shaking with a burning fever and there was that familiar sick and heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew would be with me for days to come.

  Pharaoh was staring at me and I realized what a haggard: and dreadful sight I presented to him. 'What did you see?' he whispered. 'Will my line survive?'

  I could not tell him the truth of my vision, so I invented: another to satisfy him. 'I saw a forest of great trees that reached to the horizon of my dream. There was no end ta their number and on top of each tree there was a crown, the red and the white crown of the two kingdoms.'

  Pharaoh sighed and covered his eyes with his hands for a while. We sat in silence, he in the release that my lie had given him, and I in sympathy for him.

  At last I lied softly. 'The forest that I saw was the line: of your descendants,' I whispered, to spare him. 'They reach to the boundaries of time, and each of them wears the crown of Egypt.'

  He uncovered his eyes, and his gratitude and his joy were; pathetic to watch. 'Thank you, Taita. I can see how the: divination has taxed your strength. You may go now and rest. Tomorrow the court will sail for my palace on Elephantine Island. I will have a galley set aside for the safe passage of you and your mistress. Guard her with your life, for she is the vessel that contains the seeds of my immortality.'

  I was so weak that I had to use the frame of the bed to lift myself to my feet. I tottered to the door and steadied myself against the jamb. However, I was not so weakened that I could not think of my duty to my mistress.

  'There is the matter of the marriage sheet. The populace will expect to have it displayed,' I reminded him. 'Both your reputation and that of my mistress is at stake.'

  'What do you suggest, Taita?' This soon he was relying on me. I told him what must be done, and he nodded. 'See to it!'

  Carefully I folded the sheet that covered the royal bed. It was of the finest linen, white as the high cirrus clouds of summer, embroidered with the rare silk thread that the trade caravans occasionally bring in from the East. I carried the folded sheet with me when I left the king's bedchamber and made my way back through the still dark and silent palace to the harem.

  My mistress was sleeping like a dead woman, and I knew that with the amount of the-Red Shepenn I had given her, she would sleep the day away and would probably only wake that evening. I sat beside her bed for a while. I felt exhausted and depressed for the Mazes had drained my soul. The images they had evoked still troubled me. I felt certain that the infant I had seen was that of my mistress, but then how could the rest of my vision be explained? There seemed to be no answer to the riddle, and I set the thought aside for I still had
work to do.

  Squatting beside Lostris' bed, I spread the embroidered sheet upon the floor. The blade of my dagger was sharp enough to shave the hair from my forearm. I picked out one of the blue rivers of blood beneath the smooth skin on the inside of my wrist, and I pricked it with the point of the dagger and let the dark slow blood trickle on to the sheet. When I was satisfied with the extent of the stain, I bound up my wrist with a strip of linen to staunch the bleeding, and bundled the soiled sheet.

  The slave girl was still in attendance in the outer chamber. I ordered that Lostris was to be allowed to sleep undisturbed.

  Knowing that she would be well cared for, I was content to leave her, and climb the ladder to the top of the outer wall of the harem.

  The dawn was only just breaking, but already an inquisitive crowd of old women and loiterers had gathered below the walls. They looked up expectantly when I appeared.

  I made a show of shaking out the sheet before I draped it over the ramparts of the outer wall. The bloodstain in the centre of the cloud-white ground was the shape of a flower, and the crowd buzzed with gossip at this badge of my mistress's virginity and her bridegroom's virility.

  At the rear of the crowd stood a figure taller than those around him. His head was covered by a striped woolen shawl. It was only when he threw this back and exposed his face and his head of red-gold hair that I recognized him.

  'Tanus!' I shouted. 'I must speak to you.'

  He looked up at me upon the wall, and his eyes were filled with such pain as I wished never to see again. That stain upon the sheet had destroyed his life. I also had known the agony of lost love and remembered every detail of it even after all the long years. Tanus' heart wound was fresh and bleeding still, more agonizing than any hurt that he had received on the battlefield.

  He needed my help now, if he were to survive it. 'Tanus! Wait for me.'

  He threw the shawl over his head, covering his face, and he turned from me. Unsteady as a drunkard, he stumbled away.

  'Tanus!' I shouted after him. 'Come back! I must talk to you.' He did not look round, but quickened his pace.

  By the time that I had climbed down from the wall and run out of the main gates, he had disappeared into the maze of alleys and mud huts of the inner city.

  I SEARCHED FOR TANUS HALF THE MORNING, but his quarters were deserted and nobody had seen him in any of his customary haunts.

  At last I had to abandon the search, and to make my way back to my own rooms in the quarters of the slave boys. The royal flotilla was preparing to sail for the south. I had still to assemble and pack my possessions if my mistress and I were to be ready for the departure. I forced aside the sense of gloom that the Mazes and my glimpse of Tanus had left me, and I set about bundling up my possessions and breaking up the only home that I had ever known.

  My animals seemed to sense that something untoward was happening. They fretted and chirped and whined, each trying in his own way to attract my attention. The wild birds hopped and fluttered on the paved terrace outside, while in the corner nearest my bed, my beloved Saker falcons stretched their wings and raised the feathers along their backs, and screeched at me from their perches. The dogs and the cats and the tame gazelle crowded around my legs, trying to brush against me, and hindered my efforts to pack my possessions.

  In exasperation I noticed the jug of soured goat's milk beside my bed. It is one of my favourite drinks, and the slave boys make certain that the jug is always refilled. My animals also enjoy the thickened milk, so to distract them I carried the jug out on to the terrace and filled their clay drinking-bowls. They crowded around the bowls, pushing and shoving each other, and I left them and went back to my task, closing the awnings of rush matting to keep them out.

  It is curious how many possessions even a slave can gather about him over a lifetime. The boxes and bundles were piled high against one wall before I was at last finished. By this time my mood of depression and weariness was almost prostrating, but I was still sufficiently alert to be aware of the silence. I stood for a while in the centre of my room, listening uneasily. The only sound was the jingle of the tiny bronze bells on the jesses of my female falcon where she sat in the far corner and watched me with that intent, implacable gaze of the raptor. The tiercel, smaller but more handsome than she, was asleep on his own perch in the other corner, with the soft leather hood of the rafter covering his eyes. None of my other pets made a sound. Not one of the cats mewed or hissed at the dogs, nor did the wild birds chirrup or sing, none of my puppies growled or tumbled over each other in boisterous play.

  I went to the rash awning and drew it aside. The sunlight burst into the room and blinded me for a moment. Then my vision returned and I cried out with horror. They were scattered upon the terrace and down into the garden every bird and animal.

  They lay in the abandoned attitudes of death, every one of them where he had fallen. I rushed out to them, calling my favourites by name, kneeling to pick one of them up in my arms and hugging the slack warm body as I searched for signs of life., There was no flicker of it in any of them, though I went to each of them. The birds were small and light in my hand, their marvelous plumage undimmed by death.

  I thought that my already heavy heart must now burst: with the sheer weight of my grief. I knelt on the terrace with my family scattered around me and I wept.

  It was some time before I could bring myself to think about the cause of this tragedy. Then I stood up and went to one of the empty bowls that lay on the tiles. They had licked it clean, but I sniffed at it to try and fathom the nature of the poison that had been intended for me. The odour of soured milk disguised any other smell; all I knew was that it had been swift and deadly.

  I wondered who had placed the jug beside my bed, but it did not matter whose hand had carried the vessel to me. I knew with utter certainty who had given the order for it. 'Farewell, my old darling. You are a dead man,' Lord Intef had told me, and he had not waited long to transform the words into the deed.

  The anger that seized me was a form of madness. It was aggravated by my unsteady state and sombre mood. I found that I was shaking with a rage that I had never known before. I drew the little dagger from my belt and before I realized what I was doing, I was rushing down the steps of the terrace with the naked blade in my hand. I knew that at this time of the morning Intef would be in his water-garden. I could no longer bear to think of him as my Lord Intef. The memory of every outrage he had ever visited upon me, every agony and every humiliation, was bright and clear in my mind. I was going to kill him now, stab him a hundred times through that cruel and evil heart.

  I was in sight of the gate to the water-garden before I regained my sanity. There were half a dozen guards at the gate, and there would be as many more beyond. I would never get within dagger-thrust of the grand vizier before they cut me down. I forced my flying feet to check and turn back. I slipped the dagger into the jewelled leather sheath, and brought my breathing under control. I walked slowly back to the terrace and gathered up the pathetic bodies of my pets.

  I had planned to plant a row of sycamore trees along the border of my garden. The holes to take them had already been dug. The trees would never be planted now that I was leaving Kamak, and the pits would serve as graves for my beloved creatures. It was the middle of the afternoon before I had filled the last grave, but my rage was unabated. If I could not yet have my full vengeance, at least I could give myself a foretaste of it.

  There was still a little of the sour milk left in the jug beside my bed. I held the jug in my hands and tried to think of some way in which I could get it to the grand vizier's kitchens. It would be so fitting to pay him his own vile coin, although I knew in my heart that the idea was futile. Lord Intef was far too cunning to be taken so easily. I myself had helped him devise the system he used to keep himself secure from poison and assassination. He could not be reached without much careful planning. What was more, he would be especially on his guard now. I would have to be patient, but that was
impossible. Even if I could not kill him yet, I could exact some lesser payment as a deposit against what I was determined must follow.

  Still carrying the fatal jug, I slipped out of one of the side-doors of the boys' quarters into the street. I did not have to go far to find a milkman surrounded by his flock of nanny-goats. While I waited he stripped the rich milk from the swollen udders of one of them, topping the jug to the brim. Whoever had prepared the poison had used enough to murder half the citizens of Karnak. I knew that more than sufficient remained in the jug for my purpose.

  One of the grand vizier's bodyguards loafed at the door to Rasfer's chamber. The fact that he had him under guard proved to me that Rasfer was still valuable to Lord Intef, and the loss of his personal lieutenant would annoy if not seriously discommode him. '

  The guard recognized me and waved me into the sickroom that smelled like a sty. Rasfer lay on his filthy bed, basting in his own sweat. However, I could tell at once that my surgery had been successful, for he opened his eyes and cursed me weakly. He must also be so certain of his own eventual recovery that he need no longer toady to me.

  'Where have you been, you ball-less freak?' he growled at me, hardening my resolve and ridding me of the last traces of any pity that I might have felt for him. 'I have been in agony ever since you drilled into my skull. What kind of physician are you—'

  There was much more in this style, which I pretended to ignore as I unwound the soiled bandage from around his head. My interest was purely academic as I examined the small wound that the trepan had left in his scalp. It was another perfectly executed operation, and I felt a certain professional regret that it would be wasted.

  'Give me something for the pain, eunuch!' Rasfer tried to seize the front of my tunic, but I was too quick for him and stepped back out of his reach.

  I made a fuss of shaking a few crystals of harmless salt from a glass vial into his drinking-bowl, and then topped it up with milk from my jug.