Текст книги "River god"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 47 (всего у книги 48 страниц)

  'That will do well enough for a start,' he winked at me. 'Now point me towards the nearest tavern, you old reprobate.'

  FASTER THAN ANY SHIP COULD SAIL against the current, I carried the news to Elephantine. I was one man in the chariot, and the horses ran lightly. I changed the teams at every relay station along the south road, and galloped on without a check. The grooms handed me a flask or a crust of corn-bread and cheese as they changed the horses, and I never slept or even rested.

  During the night, the stars and the moon revealed the path to me, and Horus guided my weary hands upon the traces,

  for though' I ached in every limb and I reeled on the footplate with fatigue, I met with no mishap.

  At each relay station and in each village along the way, I shouted the joyous news. 'A victory! A mighty victory! Pharaoh has triumphed at Thebes. The Hyksos is cast down.'

  'Praise to all the gods!' they cheered me. 'Egypt and Ta-mose.'

  I galloped on, and they still speak of my ride to this day along the south road. They tell of the gaunt rider with wild bloodshot eyes, his robe thick with dust and the stains of dried blood, his long hair blowing in the wind, the harbinger of victory, bringing the news to Elephantine of the battle that set Egypt on the road to freedom.

  I drove from Thebes to Elephantine in two days and two nights, and when I reached the palace, I barely had the strength left to stagger into the water-garden where my mistress lay, and throw myself down beside her couch.

  'Mistress,' I croaked through cracked lips and a throat that was parched with dust, 'Pharaoh has won a mighty victory. I have come to take you home.'

  WE SAILED DOWN-RIVER TO THEBES. THE princesses were with me to keep their mother company and to cheer her. They sat with her on the open deck and sang to her. They rhymed and riddled and laughed, but there were tones of sadness in their laughter and deep concern in their eyes as they watched over my mistress.

  Queen Lostris was as frail as a wounded bird. There was no weight to her bones and her flesh was as translucent as mother-of-pearl. I could lift and carry her as easily as I had done when she was ten years of age. The powder of the sleeping-flower was no longer able to still the pain that gnawed into her belly like some terrible clawed crab.

  I carried her to the bows of the galley when at last the walls of Thebes opened to our view around the last bend in the river. With an arm around her thin shoulders I supported her, as we delighted together in all those long-remembered scenes, and lived again a thousand joyous memories of our youth.

  But the effort tired her. When we docked below the Palace of Memnon, half the populace of Thebes was waiting to welcome her. Pharaoh Tamose stood at the head of this vast throng.

  When the litter-bearers carried her ashore, they cheered her. Although most of them had never laid eyes upon her, the legend of the compassionate queen had persisted during her long exile. Mothers lifted up their infants for her blessing, and they reached out to touch her hand as it trailed from the edge of the litter.

  'Pray to Hapi for us,' they pleaded. 'Pray for us, Mother of Egypt.'

  Pharaoh Tamose walked beside her litter like the son of a commoner, and Tehuti and Bekatha followed close behind. Both the princesses smiled brightly, though the tears jewelled their eyelids.

  Aton had prepared quarters for the queen. At the door I sent them all away, even the king. I laid her on the couch beneath the vine arbour on the terrace. From there she could look across the river to the shining walls of her beloved Thebes.

  When darkness fell, I carried her to her bedchamber. As she lay upon the linen sheets, she looked up at me. 'Taita,' she murmured, 'one last time, will you work the Mazes of Ammon-Ra for me?'

  'Mistress, I can refuse you nothing.' I bowed my head and went to fetch my medicine chest.

  I sat beside her bed, cross-legged upon the stone slabs, and she watched me prepare the herbs. I crushed them in the alabaster pestle and mortar, and heated the water in the copper kettle.

  I raised the steaming cup and saluted her with it.

  'Thank you,' she whispered, and I drained the cup. I closed my eyes and waited for the familiar but dreaded slide, over the edge of reality, into the world of dreams and visions.

  When I returned, the lamps were guttering and smoking in their brackets, and the palace was silent. There was no sound from the river or from the sleeping city on the far bank, only the sweet trill of a nightingale in the gardens, and the light breath of my mistress as she lay upon her silken pillow.

  I thought she was sleeping. But the moment I lifted my trembling hand to wipe the cold and nauseous sweat from my face, she opened her eyes. 'Poor Taita, was it so bad?'

  It had been worse than ever before. My head ached and my vision swam. I knew that I would never work the Mazes again. This was the last time, and I had done it for her alone.

  'I saw the vulture and the cobra stand on either side of the river, divided by the waters. I saw the waters rise and fall one hundred seasons. I saw one hundred sheaths of corn, and one hundred birds fly over the river. Below them, I saw the dust of battle and the flash of swords. I saw the smoke of burning cities mingle with the dust.

  'At last I saw the cobra and the vulture come together in congress. I saw them mating and entwined on a sheet of pure blue silk. There were blue banners on the city walls and banners of blue flew on the temple pylons.

  'I saw the blue pennants on the chariots that drove out across the world. I saw monuments so tall and mighty that they would stand for ten thousand years. I saw the peoples of fifty different nations bow down before them.'

  I sighed and pressed my fingers into my temples to still the throbbing in my skull, and then I said, 'That was all my vision.'

  Neither of us spoke or moved for a long while thereafter, then my mistress said quietly, 'One hundred seasons must pass before the two kingdoms are united, one hundred years of war and striving before the Hyksos are at last driven from the sacred soil of this very Egypt. It will be hard and bitter for my people to bear.'

  'But they will be united under the blue banner, and the kings of your line will conquer the world. All the nations of the world will pay homage to them,' I interpreted the rest of my vision for her.

  'With this I am content.' She sighed and fell asleep.

  I did not sleep, for I knew that she still needed me near her.

  She woke again in that hour before dawn which is the darkest of the night. She cried Out, 'The pain! Sweet Isis, the pain!'

  I mixed the Red Shepenn for her. After a while she said, 'The pain has passed, but I am cold. Hold me, Taita, warm me with your body.'

  I took her in my arms and held her while she slept.

  She awoke once more as the first timid rays of dawn crept in through the doorway from the terrace.

  'I have loved only two men in my life,' she murmured, 'and you were one of those. Perhaps in the next life, the gods will treat our love more kindly.'

  There was no reply I could give. She closed her eyes for the last time. She stole away quietly and left me. Her last breath was no louder than the one before, but I felt the chill in her lips when I kissed them.

  'Goodbye, my mistress,' I whispered. 'Farewell, my. heart.'

  I HAVE WRITTEN THESE SCROLLS DURING the seventy days and nights of the royal embalming. They are my last tribute to my mistress.

  Before the undertakers took her away from me, I made the incision in her left flank, as I had done for Tanus. I opened her womb and took from it that terrible incubus that had killed her. It was a thing of flesh and blood, but it was not human. When I cast it into the fire, I cursed it, and I cursed the foul god Seth who had placed it in her.

  I have prepared ten alabaster jars to hold these scrolls. I will leave them with her. I am painting all the murals of her tomb with my own hand. They are the finest I have ever created. Each stroke of my brush is an expression of my love.

  I wish that I could rest with her in this tomb, for I am sick and weary with grief. But I still have my two princesses and my king to care for. They need me.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  On 5 January 1988, Doctor Duraid ibn al Simma of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities opened and entered a tomb on the west bank of the Nile in the Valley of the Nobles. The reason why this tomb had not been previously excavated was that in the ninth century AD an Islamic mosque had been built over the site. It was only after long and delicate negotiations with the religious authorities that the excavation was permitted.

  Immediately upon entering the passage that led to the burial chamber, Dr Al Simma was greeted by a marvellous display of murals which covered all the walls and the ceilings. They were the most elaborate and vivacious that he had ever encountered in a lifetime spent studying the monuments.

  He told me that he knew at once that he had made a significant find, for from amongst the hieroglyphics on the walls stood out the royal cartouche of an Egyptian queen who had not been previously recorded.

  His excitement and anticipation increased as he approached the burial chamber, only to be dashed as he saw that the seals upon the doorway had been damaged, and the entrance had been forced. In ancient times, the tomb had been robbed and stripped of its sarcophagus and all its treasures.

  Nevertheless, Dr Al Simma was able to date the tomb with reasonable accuracy to that dark night of strife and disaster that overwhelmed Egypt in about 1780 BC. For the next century the Two Kingdoms were in a state of flux. We have little record of the events of this period, but from the chaos eventually rose a line of princes and pharaohs that finally expelled the Hyksos invader, and lifted Egypt into its period of greatest glory. It gives me pleasure to think that the blood of Lostris and Tanus and Memnon ran strongly in their veins.

  It was almost a year after the tomb was first opened, while Dr Al Simma's assistants were copying and photographing the decorations of the walls, that a section of the plaster fell away to reveal a hidden niche in which stood ten sealed alabaster vases.

  When Dr Al Simma asked me to assist in the transcription of the scrolls contained in the vases, I was both honoured and filled with trepidation. I was not, of course, qualified to work on the original scrolls, which were written in the hieratic script. This work was done at Cairo Museum by a team of international Egyptologists.

  Dr Al Simma asked me to rewrite this original transcription in a style that would make it more accessible to the modern reader. With this end in view I have included some anachronisms in the text. For instance I have, in places, used such comparatively modern measures of distance and weight as miles and ounces. I have also indulged myself with words such as 'djinn' and 'houri' and 'hooligan' which Taita never employed, but which, I feel certain, he would have used if they had formed part of his vocabulary.

  Very soon after beginning work on the texts all my reservations began to evaporate as I became totally involved in the times and character of the ancient author. Despite all his bombast and vainglory, I developed an affinity and affection for the slave Taita that reached back over the millennium.

  I am left with a realization of how little the emotions and aspirations of man have changed in all that time, and a lingering excitement that to this day somewhere in the Abyssinian mountains near the source of the Blue Nile the mummy of Tanus still lies in the unviolated tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.

  EXPLORE THE MYSTERIES OF THE SEVENTH SCROLL?

  WILBUR SMITH'S NEXT UNFORGETTABLE

  EPIC NOVEL, COMING SOON FROM

  ST. MARTIN'S PRESS. AN EXCERPT FOLLOWS:

  "The Seventh Scroll." She whispered, and steeled herself to touch it. It was three thousand years old, written by a genius out of time with history, a man who had been dust for all these millennia, but who she had come to know and respect as she did her own husband. His words were eternal, and they spoke to her clearly from beyond the grave, from the fields of paradise, from the presence of the great Trinity, Osiris and Isis and Horus, in whom he had believed so devoutly. As devoutly as she believed in another more recent Trinity.

  She carried the scroll to the long table at which Duraid, her husband, was already at work. He looked up as she laid it on the table-top before him and for a moment she saw the same mystical mood in his eyes that had affected her. He always wanted the scroll there on the table, even when there was no real call for it. He had the photographs and the microfilm to work with. It was as though he needed the unseen presence of the ancient author close to him as he studied the texts.

  Then he threw off the mood and was the dispassionate scientist once more. "Your eyes are better than mine, my flower," he said. "What do you make of this letter?"

  She leaned over his shoulder and studied the hieroglyph on the photograph of the scroll that he pointed out to her. She puzzled over the character for a moment before she took the magnifying glass from Duraid's hand, and peered through it again.

  "It looks as though Taita has thrown in another cryptic of his own creation just to bedevil us." She spoke of the ancient author as though he were a dear, but sometimes exasperating, friend who still lived and breathed, and played tricks upon them.

  "We'll just have to puzzle it out, then," Duraid declared with obvious relish. He loved the ancient game. It was his life's work.

  The two of them laboured on into the cool of the night. This was when they did their best work. Sometimes they spoke Arabic and sometimes English; for them the two languages were as one. Less often they used French, which was their third common language. They had both received their education at universities in England and the United States, so far from this Very Egypt of theirs. Royan loved the expression "This Very Egypt" that Taita used so often in the scrolls.

  She felt a peculiar affinity with this ancient Egyptian in so many ways. After all she was his direct descendant. She was a Coptic Christian, not of the Arab line that had so recently conquered Egypt, less than two thousand years ago. The Arabs were newcomers in this Very Egypt of hers; while her own blood line ran back to the dawn of sanguine man, to the time of the pharaohs and the great pyramids.

  At ten o'clock Royan made coffee for them, heating it on the charcoal stove that Alia had left for them before she went off to her own family in the village. They drank the sweet strong brew from thin cups that were half filled with the heavy grounds. While they sipped they talked as old friends.

  For Royan that was their relationship, old friends. She had known Duraid ever since she had returned from England with her doctorate in archaeology and won her job with the Department of Antiquities, of which he was the director and professor.

  She had been his assistant when he had opened the tomb in the Valley of the Nobles; the tomb of Queen Lostris of the Ramessidian line of pharaohs, the tomb that dated from 1780 BC.

  She had shared his disappointment when they discovered that the tomb had been robbed in ancient times and all its treasures plundered. All that remained were the marvellous murals that covered the walls and the ceilings of the tomb.

  It was Royan herself who had been working at the wall behind the plinth on which the sarcophagus had once stood, photographing the murals, when a section of the plaster had fallen away to reveal in their niche the ten alabaster jars. Each of the jars had contained a papyrus scroll. Every one of them had been written and placed there by Taita, the slave of the queen.

  Since then their lives, Duraid's and her own, seemed to have revolved around those scraps of parchment. Although there was some damage and deterioration, in the main they had survived three and a half thousand years remarkably intact.

  What a fascinating story they contained of a nation attacked by a superior enemy, armed with horse and chariot that were still alien to the Egyptians of that time. Crushed by the Hyksos hordes, the people of the Nile were forced to flee. Led by their queen, Lostris of the tomb, they followed the great river southwards almost to its source amongst the brutal mountains of the Ethiopian highlands.

  Here amongst those forbidding mountains, Lostris had entombed the mummified body of her husband, the Pharaoh Mamose, who had been slain in battle against the Hyksos.

  Long afterwards Queen Lostris had led her people back northwards to this Very Egypt. Armed now with their own horses and chariots, forged into hard warriors in the African wilderness they had come storming back down the cataracts of the great river to challenge once more the Hyksos invader, and in the end to triumph over him and wrest the double crown of upper and lower Egypt from his grasp.

  It was a story that appealed to every fibre of her being, and that had fascinated her as they had unravelled each hieroglyph that the old slave had penned on the papyrus.

  It had taken them all these years, working at night here in the villa of the oasis after all their daily routine work at the museum in Cairo was done, but at last all of the ten scrolls had been deciphered, all except the seventh scroll. This was the one that was the enigma, the one which the author had cloaked in layers of esoteric shorthand and allusions so obscure that they were unfathomable at this remove of time. Some of the symbols he used they had never encountered before in all the thousands of texts that they had studied in their combined lifetimes. It was obvious to them both that Taita had not intended that the scrolls should be read and understood by any eyes other than those of his beloved queen. These were his last gift for her to take with her beyond the grave.

  It had taken all their combined skills, all their imagination and ingenuity, but at last they were approaching the conclusion of the task. There were still many gaps in the translation and many areas where they were uncertain whether or not they had captured the true meaning, but they had laid out the bones of the manuscript in such order that they were able to discern the outline of the creature it represented.

  Now Duraid sipped his coffee and shook his head as he had done so often before as he said, "It frightens me. The responsibility. What to do with this knowledge we have gleaned? If it should fall into the wrong hands." He sipped and sighed before he spoke again. "Even if we take it to the right people, will they believe this story that is three and a half thousand years old?"

  "Why must we bring in others?" Royan asked with an edge of exasperation in her voice. "Why can we not do alone what has to be done?" At times like these the differences between them were most apparent. His was the caution of age, while hers was the impetuosity of youth.

  "You do not understand," he said. It always annoyed her when he said that; when he treated her as the Arabs treated their women in a totally masculine world. She had known the other world where women demanded and received the right to be treated as equals. She was a creature caught between those worlds?the Western world and the Arab world.

  Duraid was still speaking and she had not been listening to him. She gave him her full attention once more. "I have spoken to the Minister again, but I do not think he believes in me. I think that Nahoot has convinced him that I am a little mad." He smiled sadly. Nahoot Guddabi was his ambitious and well-connected deputy. "At any rate the minister says that there are no government funds available, and that I will have to seek outside finance. So, I have been over the list of possible sponsors again, and have narrowed it down to four. There is the Getty Museum, of course?but I never like to work with a big impersonal institution. I prefer to have a single man to answer to. Decisions are always easier to reach." None of this was new to her, but she listened dutifully.

  "Then there is Herr Von Schiller. He has the money and the interest in the subject, but I do not know him well enough to trust him entirely." He paused, and Royan had listened to these musings so often before that she could anticipate him.

  "What about the American? He is a famous collector." She forestalled him.

  "Peter Walsh is a difficult man to work with. His passion to accumulate makes him unscrupulous. He frightens me a little."

  "So who does that leave?" she asked.

  He did not answer for they both knew the answer to her question. Instead he turned his attention back to the material mat littered the working table.

  "It looks so innocent, so mundane. An old papyrus scroll, a few photographs and notebooks, a computer print-out. It is difficult to believer how dangerous these might be in the wrong hands." He sighed again. "You might almost say that they are deadly dangerous."

  Then he laughed. "I am being fanciful. Perhaps it is the late hour. Shall we get back to work? We can worry about these other matters once we have worked out all the conundrums set for us by this old rogue, Taita, and completed the translation."

  He picked up the top photograph from the pile in front of him. It was an extract from the central section of the scroll. "It is the worst luck that the damaged piece of papyrus falls where it does." He picked up his reading glasses and placed them on his nose before he read aloud.

  "There are many steps to ascend on the staircase to the abode of Hapi. With much hardship and endeavour we reached the second step and proceeded no further, for it was here that the prince received a divine revelation. In a dream his father, the dead God Pharaoh visited him and commanded him, 'I have travelled far and I am grown weary. It is here that I will rest for all eternity.' "

  Duraid removed his glasses and looked across at Royan. "The second step. It is a very precise description for once. Taita is not being his usual devious self."

  "Let's go back to the satellite photographs," Royan suggested, and drew the glossy sheets toward her. Duraid came around the table to stand behind her.

  "To me it seems most logical that the natural feature that would obstruct them in the gorge would be something like a set of rapids or a waterfall. If it were the second waterfall that would put them here?" Royan placed her finger on a spot on the satellite photograph where the narrow snake of the river threaded itself through the dark massifs of the mountains on either hand.

  At that moment she was distracted and she lifted her head. "Listen!" Her voice changed, sharpening with alarm.

  "What is it?" Duraid looked up also.

  "The dog." She answered.

  "That damn mongrel." He agreed. "It's always making the night hideous with its yapping. I have promised myself to get rid of it."

  At that moment the lights went out.

  They froze with surprise in the darkness. The soft thudding of the decrepit diesel generator in its shed at the back of the palm grove had ceased. It was so much a part of the oasis night that they noticed it only when it was silent.

  Their eyes adjusted to the faint starlight that came in through the terrace doors. Duraid crossed the room and took the oil lamp down from the shelf beside the door where it waited for just such a contingency. He lit it, and looked across at Royan with an expression of comical resignation.

  "I will have to go down?"

  "Duraid." She interrupted him. "The dog!"

  He listened for a moment, and his expression changed to mild concern. The dog was silent out there in the night.

  "I am sure it is nothing to be alarmed about." He went to the door, and for no good reason she suddenly called after him.

  "Duraid, be careful!" He shrugged dismissively and stepped out onto the terrace.

  She thought for an instant that it was the shadow of the vine over the trellis moving in the night breeze off the desert, but the night was still. Then she realized that it was a human figure crossing the flagstones silently and swiftly,coming in behind Duraid as he skirted the fish pond in the centre of the paved terrace.

  "Duraid!" She screamed a warning, and he spun around, lifting the lamp high.

  "Who are you?" he shouted. "What do you want here?"

  The intruder closed with him silently. The traditional full length dishdaasha robe swirled around his legs, and the white ghutrah head cloth covered his head. In the light of the lamp Duraid saw that he had drawn the corner of the head cloth over his face to mask his features.

  The intruder's back was turned towards her so Royan did not see the knife in his right hand, but she could not mistake the upward stabbing motion that he aimed at Duraid's stomach. Duraid grunted with pain and doubled up at the blow, and his attacker drew the blade free and stabbed again, but this time Duraid dropped the lamp and seized the knife arm.

  The flame of the fallen oil lamp was guttering and flaring. The two men struggled in the gloom, but Royan saw a dark stain spreading over her husband's white shirt front.

  "Run!" He bellowed at her. "Go! fetch help! I cannot hold him?" The Duraid she knew was a gentle person, a soft man of books and learning. She could see that he was outmatched by his assailant.

  The pain roused Duraid. It had to be that intense to bring him back from that far place on the very edge of life to which he had drifted.

  He groaned. The first thing he was aware of as he regained consciousness was the smell of his own flesh burning, and then the agony struck him with full force. A violent tremor shook his whole body and he opened his eyes and looked down at himself.

  His clothing was blackening and smouldering, and the pain was as nothing he had ever experienced in his entire life. He realized in a vague way that the room was on fire all around him. Smoke and waves of heat washed over him so that he could barely make out the shape of the doorway through them.

  The pain was so terrible that he wanted it to end. He wanted to die then and not to have to endure it further. Then he remembered Royan. He tried to say her name through his scorched and blackened lips but no sound came.

  Only the thought of her gave him the strength to move. He rolled over once and the heat attacked his back that up until that moment had been shielded. He groaned aloud and rolled again, just a little nearer to the doorway.

  Each movement was a mighty effort and evoked fresh paroxysms of agony, but when he rolled onto his back again he realized that a gale of fresh air was being sucked through the open doorway to feed the flames. A lungful of the sweet desert air revived him and gave him just sufficient strength to lunge down the step onto the cool stones of the terrace. His clothes and his body were still on fire. He beat feebly at his chest to try to extinguish them but his hands were black burning claws.

  Then he remembered the fish pond. The thought of plunging his tortured body into that cold water spurred him to one last effort and he wriggled and wormed his way across the flags like a snake with a crushed spine.

  The pungent smoke from his still cremating flesh choked him and he coughed weakly, but kept doggedly on. He left slabs of his own grilled skin on the stone coping as he rolled across it and flopped into the pond. There was a hiss of steam and a pale cloud of it obscured his vision so that for a moment he thought he was blinded. The agony of cold water on his raw burned flesh was so intense that he slid back over the edge of consciousness.

  When he came back to reality through the dark clouds he raised his dripping head, and he saw a figure staggering up the steps at the far end of the terrace, coming up out of the garden.

  For a moment he thought it was a phantom of his agony, but when the light of the burning villa fell full upon her, he recognized Royan. Her wet hair hung in tangled disarray over her face, and her clothing was torn and running with lake water and stained with mud and green algae. Her right arm was wrapped in muddy rags and her blood oozed through, diluted pink by the dirty water.

  She did not see him. She stopped in the centre of the terrace and stared in horror into the burning room. It was like looking into the depths of a furnace, and she believed Duraid must still be in there. She started forward but the heat was like a solid wall and it stopped her dead. At that moment the roof collapsed, sending a roaring column of sparks and flames high into the night sky. She backed away from it, shielding her face with an upraised arm.

  Duraid tried to call to her but no sound issued from his smoke-scorched throat. Royan turned away and started down the steps. He realized that she must be going to call help. Duraid made a supreme effort and a crow-like croak came out between his black and blistered lips.

  Royan spun around and stared at him, and then she screamed. His head was not human. His hair was gone, frizzled away, and his skin hung in tatters from his cheeks and chin. Patches of raw meat showed through the black crusted mask. She backed away from him as though he were some hideous monster.

  "Royan." He croaked and his voice was just recognizable. He lifted one hand towards her in appeal and she ran to the pond and seized the outstretched hand.

  "In the name of the Virgin, what have they done to you?" She sobbed, but when she tried to pull him from the pond the skin of his hand came away in hers in a single piece, like some horrible surgical rubber glove, leaving the bleeding claw naked and raw.

  Royan fell on her knees beside the coping and leaned over the pond to take him in her arms. She knew that she did not have the strength to lift him out without doing him further dreadful injury. All she could do was hold him and try to comfort him. She realized that he was dying; no man could survive such fearsome injury.