Текст книги "River god"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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  As I tpttered into her chamber, barely able to place one . foot before the other, my Lady Lostris met me with blazing eyes and ominously tapping foot. 'Just where do you think you have been hiding yourself, Master Taita?' she lashed out at me immediately. 'I sent for you before the second watch, and it's now not much short of dawn. How dare you keep me waiting so? Sometimes you forget your station. You know full well the punishment for impertinent slaves?' She was in full flight, having let her impatience brew for all these hours. In anger her beauty is stunning, and when she stamped her foot in that adorable gesture that was so typically her own, I thought that my heart must burst with my love for her.

  'Don't you stand there grinning at me!' she flared at me. 'I am so truly angry that I could order you flogged.' She stamped her foot again, and I felt the tiredness fall from my shoulders like a heavy load. Her mere presence had the power to revitalize me.

  'My lady, what a wondrous role you played this night. It seemed to me and all who watched you that it was indeed the divine goddess that walked amongst us?'

  'Don't you dare try your tricks with me.' She stamped for the third time, but without conviction. 'You'll not wriggle out of this so easily?'

  'Truly, my lady, as I walked back from the temple through the crowded streets, your name was on every tongue. They said your singing was the finest they had ever heard, and had quite stolen every heart.'

  'I believe not a word,' she declared, but she was clearly having difficulty sustaining her fury. 'In fact I thought my voice was awful this evening. I was flat at least once, and off-key on numerous?'

  'I must contradict you, mistress. You were never better. And what beauty! It lit the whole temple.' She is not truly vain, my Lady Lostris, but she is a woman.

  'You awful man!' she cried in exasperation. 'I was ready to have you flogged this time, I truly was. But come and sit beside me on the bed and tell me all about it. I am still so excited that I am sure I will not sleep for a week.' She took my hand and led me to the bed, babbling on happily about Tanus, and how he must have won every heart as well as Pharaoh's with his wonderful performance and fearless speech, and how the infant Horus had beshat her dress, and did I truly think that she had sung even passing well, and wasn't I just saying so?

  At last I had to stop her. 'My lady, it is almost dawn and we must be ready to leave with all the court to accompany the king when he crosses the river to inspect his funerary temple and his tomb. You must get some sleep if you are to look your best on such an important state occasion.'

  'I'm not sleepy, Taita,' she protested, and went chattering on, only to slump against my shoulder a few minutes later, fallen asleep in mid-sentence.

  Gently, I slipped her head down on to the carved wooden headrest and covered her with a rug of colobus monkey furs. I could not bring myself to leave immediately but hovered beside her bed. At last I placed a gentle kiss upon her cheek. She did not open her eyes, but whispered sleepily, 'Do you think there will be an opportunity for me to speak to the king tomorrow? Only he will be able to prevent my father sending Tanus away.'

  I could think of no ready answer for her, and while I still dithered, she fell fully asleep.

  I COULD SCARCELY DRAG MYSELF FROM my couch at dawn, for I seemed barely to have closed my eyes to sleep before it was time to open them again. My reflection in the bronze mirror was haggard and my eyes were underscored in purple. Swiftly I touched on make-up to cover the worst of my sorry condition, enhancing the hollows of my eyes with kohl and my pale features with a brushing of antimony. Two of the slave boys combed out my hair and I was so pleased with the result that I felt almost cheerful as I hurried down to the grand vizier's private dock where the great state barge lay moored.

  I was amongst the last to join the throng upon the quay, but no one seemed to notice my late arrival, not even my Lady Lostris who was already on the deck of the barge. I watched her for a while.

  She had been invited to join the royal women. These comprised not only the king's wives, but his numerous– concubines and all his daughters. Of course these last were the cause of much of Pharaoh's unhappiness, a flock of them ranging in age from crawlers and toddlers to others of marriageable age, and not a son amongst them. How was Pharaoh's immortality to be maintained without a male line to carry it forward?

  It was difficult to believe that, like me, Lostris had not slept more than an hour or two, for she seemed as sweet and fresh as one of the desert roses in my garden. Even in mat glittering array of feminine beauty that had been hand-picked by Pharaoh's factors or sent to him in tribute by his satraps at the ends of the empire, Lostris stood out like a swallow in a flock of drab little desert larks.

  I looked for Tanus, but his squadron was already lying well upstream, ready to escort Pharaoh's crossing, and the reflection of the rising sun turned the surface of the river into a dazzling silver sheet that blinded the eye. I could not look into it.

  At that moment there was the steady boom of a drum, and the populace craned to watch Pharaoh's stately progress down from the palace to the royal barge.

  This morning he wore the light nemes crown of starched and folded linen, secured around his forehead with the gold band of the uraeus. The erect golden cobra, with its hood flared and its garnet eyes glittering, rose up from his brow. The cobra was the symbol of the powers of life and death that Pharaoh held over his subjects. The king was not carrying the crook and flail, only the golden sceptre. After the double crown itself, this was the most holy treasure of all the crown jewels and was reputed to be over a thousand years old.

  Despite all the regalia and the ceremonial, Pharaoh wore no make-up. Under the direct rays of the early sun, and without make-up to disguise the fact, Mamose himself was unremarkable. Just a soft little godling of late middle age, with a small round paunch bulging over the waistband of his kilt and features intricately carved with lines of worry.

  As he passed where I stood, it seemed he recognized me, for he nodded slightly. I immediately prostrated myself on the paving, and he paused and made a sign for me to approach. I crawled forward on hands and knees, and knocked my forehead three times on the ground at his feet.

  'Are you not Taita, the poet?' he asked in that thin and petulant voice of his.

  'I am Taita the slave, your Majesty,' I replied. There are times when a little humility is called for. 'But I am also a poor scribbler.'

  'Well, Taita the slave, you scribbled to good effect last night. I have never been so well entertained by a pageant. I shall issue a royal edict declaring your poor scribblings to be the official version.'

  He announced this loud enough for all the court to hear, and even my Lord Intef, who followed him closely, beamed with pleasure. As I was his slave, the honour belonged to him more than to me. However, Pharaoh was not finished with me yet.

  'Tell me, Taita the slave, are you not also the same surgeon who recently prescribed to me?'

  'Majesty, I am that same humble slave who has the temerity to practise a little medicine.'

  "Then when shall your cure take effect?' He dropped his voice so that only I could hear the question.

  'Majesty, the event wiE take place nine months after you have fulfilled all those conditions that I listed for you.' As we were now in a surgeon-and-patient relationship, I felt emboldened to add, 'Have you followed the diet I set you?'

  'By Isis' bountiful breasts!' he exclaimed with an unexpected twinkle in his eye. 'I am so full of bull's balls, it is a wonder that I do not bellow when a herd of cows passes the palace.'

  He was in such pleasant mood that I tried a little joke of my own. 'Has Pharaoh found the heifer I suggested?'

  'Alas, doctor, it is not as simple as it would seem. The prettiest flowers are soonest visited by the bee. You did stipulate that she must be completely untouched, did you not?'

  'Virgin and untouched, and within a season of her first red moon,' I added quickly, making it as difficult as possible to put my recipe to the test. 'Have you found one who meets that description, Majesty?'

  His expression changed again, and he smiled thoughtfully. The smile looked out of place on those melancholy features. 'We shall see,' he murmured. 'We shall see.' And he turned and mounted the boarding-ladder of the barge. As my Lord Intef drew level with me, he made a small gesture, ordering me to fall in behind him, and so I followed him up on to the deck of the royal barge.

  The wind had dropped during the night and the dark waters of the river seemed heavy and quiet as oil in the jar, disturbed only by those streaks and whirlpools upon the surface where the eternal current ran deep and swift. Even Nembet should be able to make the crossing in these conditions, although Tanus' squadron stood by in most unflattering fashion, as if Tanus was preparing to rescue him from error once again.

  My Lord Intef drew me aside as soon as we reached the deck. 'You still have the power to surprise me sometimes, my old darling,' he whispered, and squeezed my arm. 'Just when I was seriously beginning to doubt your-loyalty.'

  I was taken aback by this sudden flush of goodwill, since the welts from Rasfer's lash across my back still ached. However, I bowed my head to shield my expression and waited for him to give me direction before committing myself, which he did immediately.

  'I could not have written a, more appropriate declamation for Tanus to recite before Pharaoh if I had tried myself. Where that imbecile Rasfer failed so dismally, you retrieved the day for me in your usual style.' It was only then that it all fell into place. He believed that I was the author of Tanus' monumental folly, and that I had composed it for his benefit. In the uproar of the temple he could not have heard my shouted warnings to Tanus, or he would have known better.

  'I am pleased that you are pleased,' I whispered back to him. I felt an enormous sense of relief. My position of influence had not been compromised. It was not my own skin I was thinking of at that moment?well, not entirely. I was thinking of Tanus and Lostris. They would need every bit of help and protection that I could give them during the stormy days that lay ahead for both of them. I was grateful that I was still in a position to be of some use to them.

  'It was no less than my duty.' Thus I made the most of this windfall.

  'You will find me grateful,' my Lord Intef replied. 'Do you remember the piece of ground on the canal behind the temple of Thoth that we discussed some time ago?'

  'Indeed, my lord.' We both knew that I had hankered after that plot for ten years. It would make a perfect writer's retreat and a place to which I could retire in my old age.

  'It is yours. At my next assize, bring the deed to me for my signature.' I was stunned and appalled by the vile manner in which it had come into my possession, as payment for an imagined piece of treachery on my part. For a moment I thought of rejecting the gift, but only for a moment. By the time I had recovered from my shock we were across the river and pulling into the mouth of the canal that led across the plain to Pharaoh Mamose's great funerary temple.

  I had surveyed this canal with only minimal help from the royal architects, as I had planned virtually single-handed the whole complicated business of the transport of Pharaoh's body from the place of his death to the funerary temple where the mummification process would take place.

  I had assumed that he would die at his palace on lovely little Elephantine Island. Therefore his corpse would be brought down-river iri the state barge. I had designed the canal to accommodate the huge ship snugly. So now she slipped into it as neatly as the sword into its scabbard.

  Straight as the blade of my dagger, the canal cut through the black loam soil of the riparian plain two thousand paces to the foot of the gaunt Saharan foothills. Tens of thousands of slaves had laboured over the years to build it, and to line it with stone blocks. As the barge nosed into the canal, two hundred sturdy slaves seized the tow-ropes from the bows and began to draw her smoothly across the plain. They sang one of the sad melodious work chants as they marched in ranks along the tow-path. The peasants working in the fields beside the canal ran to welcome us. They crowded to the bank, calling blessing on the king and waving palm-fronds, as the great barge moved majestically by.

  When at last we slid into the stone dock below the outer walls of the half-finished temple, the slaves made the tow-ropes fast to the mooring-rings. So precise was my design that the. entry port in the bulwark of the state barge lined up exactly'with the portals of the main gate to the temple.

  As the huge vessel came to rest, the trumpeter in the bows blew a fanfare on his gazelle horn, and the portcullis was raised slowly, to reveal the royal hearse waiting in the gateway attended by the company of embalmers in their crimson robes and fifty priests of Osiris in rank behind them.

  The priests began to chant as they trundled the hearse forward on its wooden rollers, on to the deck of the barge. Pharaoh clapped his hands with delight and hurried forward to examine this grotesque vehicle.

  I had taken no part in the conception of this celebration of bad taste. It was entirely the work of the priests. Suffice it only to say that in the naked sunlight, the superabundant gold-work shone so brightly as to offend the eye almost as painfully as did the actual design. Such weight of gold forced the priests to pant and sweat as they manhandled the clumsy ark on to the deck, and it listed even the great ship alarmingly. That weight of gold could have filled all the grain stores of the Upper Kingdom, or built and fitted out fifty squadrons of fighting ships and paid then– crews for ten years. Thus the inept craftsman attempts to hide the paucity of his inspiration behind a dazzle of treasure. If only they had given me such material to work with, they might have seen something different.

  This monstrosity was destined to be sealed in the tomb with Pharaoh's dead body. No matter that its construction had contributed largely to the financial ruin of the kingdom, Pharaoh was delighted with it.

  At my Lord Intef's suggestion, the king mounted the vehicle and took his seat on the platform designed to carry his sarcophagus. From there he beamed about him, all his dignity and royal reserve forgotten. He was probably enjoying himself as much as he ever had in all his gloomy life, I reflected with a pang of pity. His death was to be the pinnacle to which most of his living energy and anticipation were directed.

  On what was clearly an impulse, he beckoned my Lord Intef to join him on the ark and then looked around the crowded deck as if seeking someone else in the throng. He seemed to find who he wanted, for he stooped slightly and said something to the grand vizier.

  My Lord Intef smiled and, following his direction, singled out my Lady Lostris. With a gesture he ordered her to come to him on the ark. She was clearly flustered, and blushed under her make-up, a rare phenomenon for one who was so seldom caught out of countenance. However, she recovered swiftly, and mounted the carriage with girlish, long-legged grace that as usual carried every eye with her.

  She knelt before the king and touched her forehead three times to the floor of the platform. Then, in front of all the priests and the entire court, Pharaoh did an extraordinary thing. He reached down and took Lostris' hand, and lifted her to her feet, and seated her beside him on the platform. It was beyond all protocol, there was no precedent for it, and I saw his ministers exchange looks of amazement.

  Then something else happened of which even they were not aware. When I was very young there had lived in the boys' quarters an old deaf slave who had befriended me. It was he who had taught me to read men's speech not only by the sound of it, but also by the shape of their lips as they formed the words. It was a very useful accomplishment. With it I could follow a conversation at the far end of a crowded hall, with musicians playing and a hundred men around me laughing anxl shouting at each other.

  Now, before my eyes I saw Pharaoh say softly to my Lady Lostris, 'Even in daylight you are as divine as was the goddess Isis in the torchlight of the temple.'

  The shock of it was like the blow of a fist in my stomach. Had I been blind, I berated myself desperately, or had I merely been stupid? Surely any imbecile must have anticipated the direction in which my capricious meddling must incline the order in which the dice of destiny might fall.

  My facetious advice to the king must inevitably have had the effect of directing his attention towards my Lady Lostris. It was as though some malignant impulse below the surface of my mind had set out to describe her precisely to him as the mother of his first-born son. The most beautiful virgin in the land, to be taken within the first season after her moon had flowered?it was her exactly. And then, of course, by casting her as the leading female in the pageant, I had managed to display her to the king in the kindest possible light.

  What I suddenly realized was about to happen was all of it my fault, as much as though I had deliberately engineered it. What is more, there was nothing I could do about it now. I stood in the sunlight so appalled and stricken with remorse that for a while I was deprived of the powers of speech and of reason.

  When the sweating priests shoved the hearse off the deck and through the gateway, the crowd around me started after it and I was borne along with them willy-nilly, as though I were a leaf upon a stream without direction of my own. Before I was able to recover my wits I found myself within the forecourt of the funerary temple. I began to push my way forward, jostling those ahead of me to get past them and to reach the side of the hearse before it came to the main entrance of the royal mortuary.

  As one team of priests pushed the vehicle forward, a second team picked up the wooden rollers that were left behind it and ran forward to place them ahead of the ponderous golden vehicle. There was a short delay as the carriage reached that area of the courtyard that had not yet been paved. While the priests spread straw ahead of the rollers to smooth the passage over this rough ground, I slipped quickly around the back of the row of huge carved stone lions that lined the carriageway, and hurried down this clear space until I was level with the ark. When one of the priests tried to bar my way and prevent me reaching the side of the vehicle, I gave him such a look as would have made one of the stone lions quail, and spat a single word at him that was seldom heard in the temple confines and caused him to step hurriedly aside and let me pass.

  When I reached the near side of the ark I found myself directly below Lostris, close enough to stretch up and touch her arm, and to hear every word she addressed to the king. I could tell at once that she had completely recovered her poise which Pharaoh's unexpected interest in her had disturbed, and was now setting out to be as agreeable as possible to him. Miserably, I recalled how she had planned to do exactly this, and to use his favour to secure his agreement to her marriage to Tanus. As recently as last evening I had dismissed it as girlish prattle, but now it was happening, and it was beyond my power to prevent it or to warn her of the dangerous waters into which she was steering. If, earlier in this chronicle, I have given the impression that my Lady Lostris was a flighty child with not a thought in her pretty head other than romantic nonsense and her own frivolous enjoyment of life, then I have fallen short in my efforts as historian of these extraordinary events. Although still so young, she was at times mature far beyond her years. Our Egyptian girls bloom early in the Nile sunlight. She was also a diligent scholar, with a bright mind and a thoughtful and enquiring side to her nature, all of which I had done my very best over the years to foster and develop.

  Under my tutelage she had reached the stage where she could debate with the priests the most obscure religious dogma, could hold her own with the palace lawyers on such matters as the Land Tenure Acts and the extremely complicated Irrigation Act that regulated the usage of the waters from the Nile. Of course, she had read and absorbed every single one of the scrolls in the palace library. These included several hundred of which I was the author, from my medical treatises to my definitive essays on the tactics of naval warfare, together with my astrological scrolls on the names and natures of all the heavenly bodies, and my manuals on archery and swordsmanship, horticulture and falconry. She could even argue with me my own principles of architecture, and compare them to those of the great Imhotep.

  Thus she was perfectly equipped to discuss any subject from astrology to the practice of war, from politics or the building of temples to the measurement and regulation of the Nile waters, all of which were subjects that fascinated Pharaoh. In addition she could rhyme and riddle and coin an amusing pun, and her vocabulary was almost as extensive as my own. In short, she was an accomplished conversationalist, with a ready sense of humour. She was articulate and had an enchanting voice and a merry little laugh. Truly, no man or god could resist her, especially if she could offer to someone without a son the promise of an heir.

  I had to warn her, and yet how could a slave intrude upon the congress of persons so infinitely high above his own station? I skipped nervously beside the carriage, listening to my Lady Lostris' voice at its most enthralling as she set herself out to engage the king's fancy.

  She was describing to him the manner in which his funerary femple had been laid out to conform to the most propitious astronomical aspects, those of the moon and the zodiac at the time of Pharaoh's birth. Of course she was merely repeating knowledge that she had gleaned from me, for I was the one who had surveyed and orientated the temple to the heavenly bodies. However, she was so convincing that I found myself following her explanations as though I was hearing them for the first time.

  The funeral ark passed between the pylons of the inner court of the temple and rolled down the long colonnaded atrium, past the barred and guarded doors to the six treasuries in which were manufactured and stored the funerary offerings which would go with the king to his tomb. At the end of the atrium the acacia-wood doors, on which were carved the images of all the gods of the pantheon, were swung open, and we entered the mortuary where Pharaoh's corpse would one day be embalmed.

  Here in this solemn chapel the king dismounted from the carriage, and went forward to inspect the massive table on which he would lie for the ritual of mummification. Unlike the embalming of a commoner, royal embalming took seventy days to accomplish. The table had been sculpted from a single block of diorite, three paces long and two wide. Into the dark, mottled surface of the stone had been chiselled the indentation that fitted the back of the king's head, and the grooves which would drain the blood and other bodily fluids released by the scalpels and the instruments of the embalmers.

  The grand master of the guild of embalmers was standing beside the table, ready to explain the entire process to the king, and he had an attentive audience, for Pharaoh seemed fascinated by every gruesome detail. At one stage it seemed that he might so far forget his dignity as to climb up upon the diorite block and try its fit, very much as though it were a new costume of linen presented by his tailor.

  However, he restrained himself with an obvious effort, and instead devoted himself to the mortician's description of how the first incision would be made from his gullet to his groin, and how his viscera would be lifted out cleanly and then divided into their separate parts?liver, lungs, stomach and entrails. The heart, as the hearth of the divine spark, would be left in place, as would the kidneys with their associations with water and thus with the Nile, the source of life.

  After this edifying instruction, Pharaoh minutely examined the fqur Canopic jars that would receive his viscera. They stood on another smaller granite table close at hand. The jars were carved from gleaming translucent alabaster the colour of milk. Their stoppers were fashioned in the shapes of the animal-headed gods: Anubis the jackal, Sobeth the crocodile, Thoth the ibis-headed, Sekhmet with the head of a lioness. They would be the guardians of Pharaoh's divine parts until his awakening in the eternal life.

  On the same granite table that held the Canopic jars, the embalmers had laid out their instruments and the full array of pots and amphorae that contained the natron salts, lacquers and other chemicals that they would use in the process. Pharaoh was fascinated by the glistening bronze scalpels which would disembowel him, and when the embalmer showed him the long pointed spoon that would be pushed up his nostrils to scoop out the contents of his skull, those cheesy curds over which I had pondered so long and fruitlessly, the king was fascinated and handled the grisly instrument with reverential awe.

  Once the king had satisfied his curiosity at the mortuary table, my Lady Lostris directed his attention to the painted bas-relief engravings that covered the walls of the templi from floor to ceiling. The decorations were not yet completed, but were none the less quite striking in their design and execution. I had drawn most of the original cartoons with my own hand, and had closely supervised the others drawn by the palace artists. These had been traced on to the walls with charcoal sticks. Once the tracings were in place, I had corrected and perfected them in free-hand. Now a company of master sculptors was engraving them into the sandstone blocks, while behind them a second company of artists was painting in the completed bas-relief.

  The dominant colour I had chosen for these designs was blue in all its variation: the blue of the starling's wing, the blues of the sky and the Nile in the sunlight, the blues of the petals of the desert orchid and the shimmering blue of the river perch quivering in the fisherman's net. However, there were other colours as well, all thqse vibrant reds and yellows that we Egyptians love so well.

  Pharaoh, accompanied closely by my Lord Intef, in his capacity of Keeper of the Royal Tombs, made a slow circuit of the high walls, examining every detail, and commenting on most of them. Naturally the theme I had chosen for the mortuary was the Book of the Dead, that detailed map and description of the route to the underworld that Pharaoh's shade must follow, and the depictions of all the trials and dangers he would confront along the way.

  He paused for a long while before my drawing of the god Thoth, with his bird head and long curved ibis beak, weighing Pharaoh's disembodied heart on the scales against the feather of truth. Should the heart be impure, it would tip the scales against the feather, and the god would immediately toss it to the crocodile-headed monster that waited close at hand to devour it. Softly, the king quoted the protective mantra laid down in the book to shield himself from such a calamity, and then passed on to my next engraving.

  It was almost noon before Pharaoh had completed his inspection of the mortuary temple and led the way out into the forecourt where the palace chefs had laid out a sumptuous open-air banquet.

  'Come and sit here, where I can speak to you further on the matter of the stars!' Once again the king ignored precedent to place my Lady Lostris close to him at the banquet table, even moving one of his senior wives to make a place for her. During the meal he directed most of his conversation towards my mistress. She was now completely at her ease and kept the king and all those around her enthralled and merry with her wit and charm.

  Of course, as a slave I did not have a seat at the table, nor could I even inveigle myself within range of my mistress to warn her to moderate her demeanour in the king's presence. Instead, I found myself a place on the pedestal of one of the granite lions, from where I could look down the length of the banquet table and watch everything that took place there. I was not the only observer, for my Lord Intef sat close to the king and yet withdrawn, watching it alj with glittering, implacable eyes, like a handsome but deadly spider at the centre of his web.

  At one stage of the meal a yellow-billed kite wheeled high over head, and uttered a screech, a sardonic and mocking cry. Hurriedly I made the sign against the evil eye, for who knows what god it was that had taken the form of the bird to muddle and confuse our petty endeavours?

  After the midday meal it was customary for the court to rest for an hour or so, especially at this the hottest season of the year. However, Pharaoh was so wrought up that today he would have none of it.

  'Now we will inspect the treasuries,' he announced. The guards at the doors of the first treasury stood aside and presented arms as the royal party approached, and the doors were swung open from within.

  I had planned these six treasuries not only as store-rooms to hold the vast funerary treasure that Pharaoh had been collecting for the past twelve years, ever since his accession to the double throne, but also as workshops in which a small army of craftsmen and artisans was permanently employed in adding to that treasure.