Текст книги "River god"
Автор книги: Wilbur Smith
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The hall that we entered was the armoury that housed the collection of weapons and accoutrements of the battlefield and the wild chase, both practical and ceremonial, which the king would take with him into the afterworld. With my Lord Intef's concurrence, I had arranged for the craftsmen to be at their benches so that the king would have the opportunity of watching them at work.
As Pharaoh passed slowly down the row of benches, his questions were so astute and technical that those nobles and priests to whom he addressed himself could provide no answers, and they looked around frantically for someone who could. I was summoned hastily from the back of the crowd and pushed forward to face the king's interrogation.
'Ah, yes,' Pharaoh grimaced bleakly as he recognized me. 'It is none other than the humble slave who writes pageants and cures the sick. No one here seems to know the composition of this electrum wire that binds the stock of the war-bow that this man is making for me.'
'Gracious Pharaoh, the metal is a mixture of one part of copper to five parts of silver and four of gold. The gold is of die red variety found only in the mines of Lot in the western desert. No other gives the wire the same pliability or elasticity, of course.'
'Of course,' the king agreed wryly. 'And how do you make the strands so thin? These are no thicker than the hairs of my head.'
'Majesty, we extrude the hot metal by swinging it in a special pendulum that I designed for the purpose. Later we can watch the process in the gold foundry, if Your Majesty so wishes.'
Thus during the rest of the tour I was able to remain at the king's side and to deflect some of his attention away from Lostris, but I still could not find the opportunity to speak to her alone.
Pharaoh passed down the armoury to inspect the huge array of weapons and armour already in store. Some of these had belonged to his forefathers and had been employed in famous battles; others were newly manufactured and would never be used in war. All of them were magnificent, each a pinnacle of the armourer's art. There were helmets and breast-plates of bronze and silver and gold, battle swords with ivory hilts set with precious stones, full-dress ceremonial uniforms of the commander-in-chief of each of the king's elite regiments, shields and bucklers in hippo-hide and crocodile-skin, all starred with rosettes of gold. It made a splendid array.
From the armoury we crossed the atrium to the furniture store, where a hundred cabinet-makers laboured with cedar and acacia and precious ebony wood to build the funeral furnishings for the king's long journey. Very few substantial trees grow in our riparian valley, and wood is a scarce and costly commodity, worth very nearly its weight in silver. Almost every stick of it must be carried hundreds of leagues across the desert, or shipped downstream from those mysterious lands to the south. Here it was piled in extravagant stacks, as though it were commonplace, and the fragrance of fresh sawdust perfumed the hot air.
We watched while craftsmen inlaid the head-board of Pharaoh's bed with patterns of mother-of-pearl and woods of contrasting colour. Others decorated the arm-rests of the chairs with golden falcons and the back-rests of the padded sofas with the heads of silver lions. Not even the halls of the royal palace at Elephantine Island contained such delicate workmanship as would grace the rock cell of the king's tomb.
From the furniture treasury we passed on to the hall of the sculptors. In marble and sandstone and granite of a hundred differing hues, the sculptors whittled and chipped away with chisel and file so that a fine, pale dust hung in the air. The masons covered their noses and mouths with strips of linen on which the dust settled and their features were powdered white with the insidious stuff. Some of the men coughed behind their masks as they worked, a persistent, dry cough that was peculiar to their profession. I had dissected the corpses of many old sculptors who had worked thirty years and died at their trade. I found their lungs petrified and turned to stone in their bodies, thus I spent as little time as possible in the masons' shop lest I contract the same malady.
None the less, their products were wondrous to contemplate, statues of the gods and of Pharaoh himself that seemed to vibrate with life. There were life-sized images of Pharaoh seated on his throne or walking abroad, alive and dead, in his god form or in the shape of a mortal man. These statues wouMJine the long causeway that led from the funerary temple on the valley floor up into the wall of black hills from which his final tomb was even at this moment being excavated. At his death the golden hearse, drawn by a train of one hundred white bullocks, was to bear his massive sarcophagus along that causeway to its final resting-place.
This granite sarcophagus, only partially completed, lay in the centre of the masons' hall. Originally it had been a single block of pink granite quarried from the mines at Assoun, and ferried down-river in a barge especially constructed for that purpose. It had taken five hundred slaves to haul it ashore and drag it over wooden rollers to where it now lay, an oblong of solid stone five paces long, three wide and three tall.
The masons had begun by sawing a thick slab from the top of it. Upon this granite hd a master mason was fashioning the likeness of the mummiform Pharaoh, with his arms crossed and the crook and flail gripped in his dead hands. Another team of masons was now engaged,in hollowing out the interior of the main granite block to provide a nest into which the cluster of inner coffins would fit perfectly. Including the huge outer sarcophagus, there would be seven coffins hi all, fitting one within the other like a child's puzzle-toy. Seven was, of course, one of the magical numbers. The innermost coffin would be of pure gold, and later we watched it being beaten out of the formless mass of metal in the hall of the goldsmiths.
It was this multiple sarcophagus, this mountain of stone and gold housing the king's wrapped corpse, that the great golden hearse would carry along the causeway to the hills, a slow journey that would take seven whole days to complete. The hearse would stop each night in one of the small shrines that were spaced at intervals along the causeway.
A fascinating adjunct to the hall of statues was the ushabti shop at the rear where the servants and retainers who would escort the dead king were being carved. These were perfect little manikins of wood representing all the grades and orders of Egyptian society who would work for the king in the hereafter, so as to enable him to maintain his estate and the style of his existence in the underworld.
Each ushabti was a delightfully carved wooden doll dressed in the authentic uniform of his calling and bearing the appropriate tools. There were farmers and gardeners, fishermen and bakers, beer-brewers and handmaidens, soldiers and tax-collectors, scribes and barbers, and hundreds upon hundreds of common labourers to perform every menial task and to go forward in the king's place if ever he were called upon by the other gods to work in the underworld.
At the head of this congregation of little figures there was even a grand vizier whose miniature features closely resembled those of my Lord Intef. Pharaoh picked out this manikin and examined him closely, turning him over to read the description on his back.
My name is Lord Intef, grand vizier of the Upper Kingdom, Pharaoh's sole companion, three times the recipient of the Gold of Praise. I am ready to answer for the king.
Pharaoh passed the doll to my Lord Intef. 'Is your physique truly so muscular, my Lord Intef?' he asked with a smile just below the surface of his dour expression, and the grand vizier bowed slightly.
'The sculptor has failed to do me justice, Your Majesty.'
The last treasury that the king visited that day was the hall of the goldsmiths. The infernal glow of the furnaces cast a strange glow on the features of the jewellers as they worked with total concentration at their benches. I had coached them well. At the entrance of the royal entourage, the goldsmiths knelt in unison to make the triple obeisance to Pharaoh, and then rose and resumed their work.
Even in that large hall the heat of the furnace flames was so sulphurous as almost to stop the breath, and we were soon bathed in our own sweat. However, the king was so fascinated by the treasure displayed for him that he seemed not to notice the oppressive atmosphere. He went directly to the raised dais in the centre of the hall where the most experienced and skilful smiths were at work upon the golden inner coffin. They had perfectly captured Pharaoh's living face in the shimmering metal. The mask would fit exactly over his bandaged head. It was a divine image with eyes of obsidian and rock-crystal, and with the cobra-headed uraeus encircling the brow. I truly believe that no finer masterpiece of the goldsmith's art has ever been fashioned in all the thousand years of our civilization. This was the peak and the zenith. All the unborn ages might one day marvel at its splendour.
Even after Pharaoh had admired the golden mask from every angle, he seemed unable to tear himself too far from it. He spent the remainder of the day on the dais beside it, seated on a low stool while box after cedar-wood box of exquisite jewels were laid at his feet and the contents catalogued for him.
I cannot believe that such a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one time. To make a bald list of the items does not in the least way suggest the richness and the diversity of it all. None the less, let me tell you at the outset that, there were six thousand four hundred and fifty-five pieces already in the cedar-wood boxes, and that each day more were added to the collection as the jewellers worked on tirelessly.
There were rings for Pharaoh's toes as well as his fingers; there were amulets and charms, and gold figurines of the gods and goddesses; there were necklaces and bracelets and pectoral medallions and belts on which were inlaid falcons and vultures and all the other creatures of the earth and the sky and the river; there were crowns and diadems studded with lapis lazuli and garnets and agate and carnelians and jasper and every gemstone that civilized man holds dear.
The artistry with which all this had been designed and manufactured eclipsed all that had been created over the preceding one thousand years. It is often in decline that a nation creates its most beautiful works of art. In the formative years of empire the obsession is with conquest and the building-up of wealth. It is only once this has been achieved that there is leisure and a desire to develop the arts, and?more importantly?rich and powerful men to sponsor them.
The weight of gold and silver already used in the manufacture of the hearse and the funeral mask and all the rest of this breathtaking collection of treasure was in excess of five hundred takhs; thus it would have taken five hundred strong men to lift it all. I had calculated that this was almost one-tenth of the total weight of these precious metals that had been mined in the entire one thousand years of our recorded history. All of this the king intended taking with him to the tomb.
Who am I, a humble slave, to question the price that a king was willing to pay for eternal life? Suffice it only to state that in assembling this treasure, while at the same time conducting the war against the Lower Kingdom, Pharaoh had, almost alone and unaided, plunged this very Egypt of ours into beggary.
No wonder, then, that Tanus in his declamation had singled out the depredation of the tax-collectors as one of the most terrible afflictions visited upon the populace. Between them and the robber bands that ravaged unchecked and unhindered through the countryside, we were all ruined and crushed under the financial yoke that was too heavy for any of us to bear. To survive at all, we had to evade the tax collector's net. So as he set out to beggar us for his own aggrandizement, the king made criminals of us at the same moment. Very few of us, great or small, rich or poor, slept well at night. We lay awake dreading at any moment the heavy knock of the tax-collector upon the door.
Oh, sad and abused land, how it groaned beneath the yoke!
LAVISH QUARTERS HAD BEEN PREPARED in the necropolis in which the king would spend that night upon the west bank of the Nile, close to his own final resting-place in the gaunt black hills. The necropolis, the city of the dead, was almost as extensive as Karnak itself. It was home to all those associated with the building and the care of the funerary temple and the royal tomb. There was a full regiment of the elite guard to protect the holy places, for the usurper in the north was as avaricious for treasure as was our own dear king, while the robber barons in the desert became each day bolder and more daring. The treasuries of the funerary temple were a sore temptation to every predator hi the two kingdoms, and beyond.
hi addition to the guards there were the companies of the craftsmen and the artisans and all their apprentices to house. I was responsible for the records of wages and rations, so I knew exactly how many there were. On the last pay-day their number had been four thousand eight hundred and eleven. Added to this, there were over ten thousand slaves employed upon the work.
I will not weary myself by listing the numbers of oxen and sheep that had to be slaughtered each day to feed them all, nor the cartloads of fish that were brought up from the Nile, nor the thousands of jars of beer that were brewed daily to slake the summef thirst of this multitude as they laboured under the watchful eye and the ready lash of the overseers.
The pecropolis was a city, and in that city was a palace for the king. It was with relief that we moved into it to spend the night, for it had been a wearying day. But once again there was little rest for me.
I tried to reach my Lady Lostris, but it was almost as if there existed a conspiracy to keep me away from her. According to her little black maids, first she was at toilet, and after that she was in her bath, and then she was resting and could not be disturbed. Finally, as I still waited in the antechamber of her quarters, a summons reached me from her father, and I could linger no longer, but must hurry to my master.
As soon as I entered my Lord Intef s bedchamber he dismissed all the others in the room. When we were alone, he kissed me. I was once more surprised by his benevolence and disturbed by his excited manner. Seldom had I seen him in such mood, and always before it had adumbrated calamitous events.
'How often the gateway to power and fortune is found in the most unexpected place!' he laughed at me, and caressed my face. 'This time it lies between the thighs of a woman. No, my old darling, don't play the innocent. I know just what a cunning hand you have taken in all of this. Pharaoh has told me how you cajoled him into it by promising him a male heir to his line. By Seth, but you are the cunning one, are you not? Not a word to me of your design, but you schemed it all on your own account.'
He laughed again, and twisted a lock of my hair between his fingers. 'You must have divined my ultimate ambition all along, even though we have never discussed it openly. So you set out to achieve it for me. Of course, I should have you punished for your presumption,' he twisted the lock of hair until tears started into my eyes, 'but how can I be angry with you when you have placed the double crown within my grasp?' He released the tress of my hair and kissed me again. 'I have just come from the king's presence. In two days, at the culmination of the festival, he will announce his betrothal to my daughter, Lostris.' I felt a sudden darkness behind my eyes, and a chilly dew formed on my skin.
'The wedding will take place the same day, immediately after the closing ceremony of the festival, I saw to that. We don't want any delay in which something might happen to prevent it, do we?'
Such a swift royal wedding was unusual but not unheard of. When brides were chosen to seal a political union, or to consolidate the conquest of a new territory, the wedding often took place the very same day it was decided. Pharaoh Mamose the First, forefather of our present pharaoh, had married the daughter of a conquered Human chieftain on the actual battlefield. However, such historical precedents were of little comfort to me now as I faced the bleak maturation of my worst fears.
My Lord Intef seemed not to notice my distress. He was too concerned with his own immediate interests, and he went on speaking. 'Before I gave my formal consent to the union, I prevailed on the king to concede that if she bore him a son then he would elevate my daughter to the rank of principal wife and queen consort.' He clapped his hands in unrestrained triumph.
'Of course, you realize what that means. If Pharaoh should die before my grandson is of age to rule, then I as his grandfather and closest male line would become regent?' He broke off suddenly and stared at me, and I knew him so well that I– understood exactly what was running through his mind. He was bitterly regretting that indiscretion, nobody should ever have heard that thought expressed. It was purest treason. If Lostris bore a son to Pharaoh, then the father would not live long thereafter. We both understood that. My Lord Intef had given voice to regicide, and he was considering removing the only one who had heard it spoken, the humble slave, Taita. We both understood that clearly.
'My lord, I am only grateful that it has turned out the way I planned it. I admit now that I have worked deviously to place your daughter in the king's way, and that I described her to him as the mother of his future son. I used the pageant as a show-piece to focus his attention upon her. However, I could not bring myself to speak to you of such momentous affairs until they had been successfully engineered. But there still remains a great deal for us to do, before we can count ourselves secure?' and I began swiftly to extemporize a list of all that might go awry before he could gain control of the crown and the golden sceptre of Egypt. Tactfully I made it clear how much he still needed me if he were to achieve his design. I saw him relax as he followed my arguments, and I knew that at least for the immediate future I was safe.
It was some time before I could reasonably escape from his presence and hurry to warn my Lady Lostris of the terrible predicament in which I had placed her. However, before I reached her door I realized that my warning to her would serve no purpose other than to distress her to the point of dementia or even suicide. I could waste no further time if I were to prevent events from rushing to their tragic conclusion.
There was only one person to whom I could turn now.
I LEFT THE NECROPOLIS AND SET OFF alone along the tow-path of the canal, back towards the river-bank where I knew that Tanus' squadrons were encamped. The moon was only three days from full and it lit the jagged hills of the western horizon with a cold yellow radiance and threw black shadows on the plain below.
As I hurried along, I recited to myself a full list of all the possible calamities and misfortunes that might befall Tanus, my Lady Lostris and myself in the days ahead. I was goading myself the same way that a black-maned desert lion lashes up his temper with the bony spike in the end of his tail before he charges at the huntsman. Thus I was in fulminating mood long before I reached the bank of the Nile. I found Tanus' encampment without difficulty, hard by the bank of the Nile and the mouth of the canal. The ships of the squadron were anchored below the camp. The sentries challenged me and then, when they recognized me, led me to Tanus' tent.
Tanus was at late supper with Kratas and four other of his subordinate officers. He rose to greet me with a smile and offered me the beer tankard in his hand. "This is such an unexpected pleasure, old friend. Sit down beside me and have a pull of my beer while my slave brings you a cup and platter. You look hot and out of sorts?' I cut short these pleasantries by rounding on him furiously. 'To Seth with you, you great senseless oaf! Do you not understand what jeopardy you have placed us in? You and that flapping jawbone of yours! Do you have no thought for the safety and the well-being of my mistress?' In truth I had not meant to be so harsh on him, but once I had started, it seemed that I was unable to control my emotions, and all my fear and anxiety came tumbling out in a flood of invective. Not all that I accused him of was true or fair, but it made me feel better to have it out.
Tanus' expression changed and he held up one hand as though to shield himself. 'Whoa! You take me unawares. I am unarmed and unable to defend myself from such a murderous assault.' In front of his officers his tone was jocular, but his smile was thin as he seized my arm and steered me out of the tent into the darkness, and half-dragged me beyond the regimental lines into the open moonlit fields beyond. I was like a child in the grip of that right hand that was trained to wield the sword and draw the great bow Lan-ata.
'Now puke it up!' he ordered me grimly. 'What has happened to put you in such vile humour?'
I was still angry, but more afraid than angry, and my tongue took flight again. 'I have spent half my life trying to protect you from your own stupidity, and I am sick of it. Don't you understand anything of life? Did you truly believe that you would be allowed to escape unscathed from the incredible folly into which you threw all of us last night?"
'Are you talking about my declamation at the pageant?' He looked puzzled, and released the crushing grip on my arm. 'How can you say it was folly? All my officers, and every other person I have spoken to since then, are all delighted with what I had to say?'
'You fool, don't you see that the opinions of all your officers and all your friends count for the price of a rotten fish in the scheme of things? Under any other ruler you would already be dead, and even this weak and vacillating old man of ours cannot afford to let you escape the consequences of your insolence. It is more than his throne is worth. There will be a bill for you to pay, Tanus, Lord Harrab. Horus knows, it will be a heavy bill.'
'You' are speaking in riddles,' he snapped at me. 'I did the king a great service. He is surrounded by fawning toadies who feed him the lies they think he wants to hear. It was past time that he learned the truth, and I know in my heart that once he considers it, he will be grateful to me.'
My anger began to evaporate before his simple and steadfast belief in the triumph of good. 'Tanus, my dearest friend, what an innocent you are! No man is ever grateful for having the unpalatable truth rammed down his throat. But apart from that, you have played directly into the hands of my Lord Intef.'
'My Lord Intef?' He stared at me hard. 'What of my Lord Intef? You speak of him as though he were my enemy. The grand vizier was my father's dearest friend. I know that I can trust him to protect me. He swore an oath to my father as he lay on his death-bed?'
I could see that despite his sunny disposition and our friendship, he was becoming truly angry with me, probably for the first time in his life. I knew also that, although it was slow to rouse, Tanus' anger was something to fear.
'Oh, Tanus!' I curbed my own anger at last. 'I have been unfair to you. There is so much that I should have told you, and never did. Nothing was as you thought it. I was a coward, but I could not tell you that Intef was your own father's deadliest enemy.'
'How can this be true?' Tanus shook his head. 'They were friends, the dearest friends. My earliest memories are of them laughing together. My father told me that I could trust my very life to my Lord Intef.'
"The noble Pianki, Lord Harrab believed that, it is true. His faith cost him his entire fortune, and in the end his life which he placed in Intef's hands.'
'No, no, you must be mistaken. My father was the victim of a series of misfortunes?'
'And every one of those misfortunes was engineered by my Lord Intef. He envied your father for his virtues and his popularity, for his wealth and his influence with Pharaoh. He realized that Lord Harrab would be appointed grand vizier before him and he hated him for all these things.'
'I cannot believe you. I cannot bring myself to believe you.' Tanus shook his head in denial, and the last of my anger was snuffed out.
'I will explain it all to you, as I should have done long ago. I will give you all the proof you need. But there is no time for it now. You must trust me. My Lord Intef hates you even as he hated your father. Both you and my Lady Lostris are in danger. In danger of more than simply life itself, in danger of losing each other for ever.'
'But how is that possible, Taita?' He was confused and shaken by my words. 'I thought that my Lord Intef had agreed to our union. Have you not spoken to him, then?'
'Yes, I have spoken to him,' I cried, and I seized Tanus' hand and thrust it up under the back of my tunic. 'That was his reply. Feel the welts left by the lash! He had me flogged for even suggesting the marriage between you and my Lady Lostris. That is how much he hates you and your family.'
Tanus stared at me speechlessly, but I saw that he believed me at last, and so I was able to come to the subject that was dominating my thoughts more even than his intemperate speech, or the vendetta that the grand vizier had conducted so successfully against him over so many years.
'Hear me now, my dear friend, and brace yourself for the very worst tidings yet.' There was no other way to tell him, except as directly as Tanus would have told me. 'Far from agreeing to your marriage, my Lord Intef has this very night pledged his daughter's hand to another. She is to be married immediately to Pharaoh Mamose, and after she bears his first son she will become his principal wife and consort. The king will make the announcement himself at the end of the festival of Osiris. The marriage will take place that very same evening.'
Tanus swayed on his feet and in the moonlight his face turned ghostly pale. Neither of us could speak for a long while and then Tanus turned away from me and walked out alone into the field of standing corn. I trailed behind him, keeping him in sight, until at last he found an outcrop of black rock and seated himself upon it with the weary air of a very old man. I came up softly and seated myself below him. Deliberately I remained silent until he sighed and asked quietly, 'Has Lostris consented to this marriage?'
'Of course not. As yet she probably knows nothing about it. But dp you think for one moment that her objections would count against the will of her father and the king? She will have no say in the matter.' 'What are we to do, old friend?'
Even in my distress I was grateful to him that he used the plural, including me, reassuring me of our friendship. 'There is one other probability that we must face,' I warned him. 'And that is that in the same speech that Pharaoh announces his betrothal to Lostris, he will order your imprisonment, or worse still, issue your death warrant. My Lord Intef has the king's ear and he will certainly put him up to it. In truth he would have good reason. You are certainly guilty of sedition.'
'I do not care to live without Lostris as my wife. If the king takes her from me, then he is welcome to my head as a marriage gift.' He said it simply, without histrionics, so that I had difficulty in feigning anger and putting the edge of contempt into my voice.
'You sound like a weak and pitiful old woman, giving herself up to the fates without a struggle. What a fine and undying love is yours, if you will not even fight for her!'
'How do you fight a king and a god?' Tanus asked quietly. 'A king to whom you have sworn allegiance, and a god who is as remote and as unassailable as the sun?'
'As a king he does not deserve your allegiance. You set that out clearly in your declamation. He is a weak and dithering old man who has divided the two kingdoms and brought our Ta-Meri bleeding to her knees.'
'And as a god?' Tanus again asked quietly, as though he were not really interested in the answer, although I knew him to be a devout and religious man, as so many great warriors are.
'A god?' I made my tone derisive. 'You have more of the godhead in your sword-arm than he has in all his soft little body.'
'Then what do you suggest?' he asked with deceptive mildness. 'What would you have me do?'
I drew a deep breath and then blurted it out. 'Your officers and your men would follow you to the gates of the underworld. The populace loves you for your courage and your honour?' I faltered, for his expression in the moonlight gave me no encouragement to continue. He was silent for twenty beats of my racing heart and then he ordered me softly, 'Go on! Say what you have to say.'
'Tanus, you would make the noblest pharaoh that this Ta-Meri, this mother-land, has known for a thousand years. You with my Lady Lostris on the throne beside you could lead this land and this people back to greatness. Call out your squadrons, and lead your men down the causeway to where that unworthy pharaoh lies unprotected and vulnerable. By dawn tomorrow you could be ruler of the Upper Kingdom. By this time next year you could have defeated the usurper and have reunited the two kingdoms.' I leaped to my feet and faced nun. 'Tanus, Lord Harrab, your destiny and that of the woman you love await you. Seize them in both your strong warrior's hands!'