The Women and the Boatman

by Mark Gajewski

  “You seem especially happy today,” Great–grandmother said as I slipped the last bracelet over her wrist.

  “I am,” I said. “Uncle Hemaka told me he’s not going to make me join with Nekauba.”

  “I’ve never cared for that boy,” she sniffed. “Of all my great–grandchildren he’s the surliest and most full of himself and most unlikable.”

  “Uncle gave me permission to pursue Nykara,” I said happily. I was supposed to keep that news to myself, but I had to tell someone or I’d burst, and Great–grandmother would never give me away.

  “Dedi’s protégé. The man who kissed you last night. The one you encouraged.”

  “You could tell?” I blushed. “You must think I’m awful. I hardly know him. But I haven’t stopped thinking about him since we met. He’s not like anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “You can be sure he’s not ordinary if Dedi’s taken him under his wing,” Great–grandmother said. “Nykara I approve of.”

  That was the highest praise I could imagine.

  3448 BC

  Abar

  I stood at the edge of the boatyard, facing the river. The pleasant scent of newly–sawed wood permeated the air. A dozen or more reed boats bobbed at anchor in the narrow channel between the island and the western shore, most of them the small punts of fishermen, several, much larger, Dedi’s cargo vessels. Four boats pulled up on land were in various stages of repair, the patches of new reeds much lighter in color than the original. Near one end of the boatyard workmen were swarming over a large partially–constructed wood boat on a flat patch of ground about ten yards from the water. More men were carrying short wood beams towards it from a nearby storage area where components were laid out in orderly rows. A plume of smoke spiraled from Heth’s forge at the farthest end of the boatyard, where metal was ringing on metal. No doubt he was remaking some tool dulled with use for one of the boatmen.

  Nykara was standing to one side, conversing with a group of workers. He wasn’t hard to find; at age nineteen he already towered over everyone in the boatyard. His well–muscled chest and arms glistened with a sheen of sweat and his longish hair was plastered to his forehead. No man in Nekhen was as good–looking, as attested by the number of elite and common women who’d been relentlessly pursuing him the past months. His kilt was dirty and torn in a couple of places and he was, like me, barefoot. He was unquestionably in charge of his domain; everyone treated him with respect. Surprising, now, that I’d considered him a threat to me in the years his mother had been joined to Grandfather. It wasn’t until after he’d become Grandfather’s overseer and started meeting with me weekly I’d come to see his qualities and appreciate his dedication and intelligence. But it had taken Nykara’s potential joining to my cousin Wenher and his trip to Maadi to finally awaken my heart to him. Since the day desire had come to me unbidden he was the only man I’d wanted to be with, the only man in Nekhen I knew I’d ever love. No one was more qualified to oversee our settlement’s future alongside me either – not Rawer, not any of the elites, none of their sons. Unfortunately for me, my heart had awakened too late.

  I told my handmaid to wait where she was and headed towards the river.

  “Nykara!” I called gaily.

  He turned, surprised. A smile instantly lit his face. That was good to see. We’d experienced a couple of rocky months after the evening we’d spent on his boat the night he returned from Maadi. I’d thrown myself at him, bared my soul; he’d rejected me. That had been extraordinarily hard for me to take. No one had ever refused me anything, certainly never something so important. Our first couple of scheduling meetings thereafter had been awkward and tentative, both of us unsure how to act around the other. Eventually, by unspoken mutual consent, we’d slipped back into our old comfortable familiarity. Still, I thought I’d never get over the hurt. It was always lurking deep inside me. I blamed myself, for waiting too long to tell Nykara how I felt. If I’d only acted before he’d met Amenia... But he’d met her before I’d realized I loved him.

  Nykara took a step towards me. “Abar! What’re you doing here?” he asked with delight.

  “I came to see your boat.”

  The workmen waiting to speak with him melted away.

  Nykara pointed to a patch of shade not far away where a dozen men and women were seated, observing. “You and everyone else,” he laughed. “Someone’s always watching. No one’s seen a wood boat before.”

  I indicated the vessel under construction. “Grandfather was bragging to Father last night it’ll be finished in a few weeks.”

  Nykara’s pride was unmistakable.

  “Tell me all about it – how you designed your boat, how you built it,” I said.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I’ve never seen one being constructed before. And yes – I really want to know. Just like you wanted to know about my herd.”

  Nykara turned to the boat. “Alright. As I said the day I disembarked from Maadi, I figured out in my head what my boat should look like. Then I sketched my design on scraps of leather – the boat as a whole, then from different viewpoints, then each of its parts in detail.” He led me to the shade of a palm tree. A great rectangle of leather was spread on the bare ground, a rock holding down each of its four corners. “I transferred them all to this master document.”

  The center of the rectangle contained a side view of the boat. Above it was a view from the top. Below it a view from the bottom. Small drawings circled the larger ones.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to one corner. The drawing looked like a papyrus plant.

  “It’s a wooden sleeve that’ll fit over the boat’s prow. There’s another for the stern.”

  “Your wood boat will look like the reed boats in Grandfather’s fleet?”

  “Mostly, modified based on a few things I’ve learned traveling hundreds of miles up and down the river. This will be by far the largest vessel ever constructed, Abar. It’ll carry more cargo than any two of Dedi’s current boats, yet will take fewer crewmen to operate than others far smaller.”

  “Meaning increased profit.”

  “You’re correct,” Nykara said.

  “Once the design was done – what then?” I asked.

  “I cut from acacia and other types of trees planks and beams and stanchions and poles in the sizes and shapes I need, to serve as patterns for my sawyers. Heth forged dozens of copper tools – saws, axes, adzes, drills – and I taught my boatmen to use them. They’ve since created the pieces following the patterns – about a thousand in all.”

  “So many?” I asked. “Truly?”

  “Boats are complex, Abar,” Nykara answered. “Once we created the components we laid them in orderly rows on the ground over there.” He pointed to the storage area I’d noticed earlier. Men were still carrying lengths of wood from it to the assembly area. “Then I studied them for nearly a week, envisioned where each piece should fit, mentally assembled the boat in my mind – like a puzzle. Then I put a mark on each piece denoting the quadrant of the boat where it belonged – front left, front right, rear left, rear right. The men rearranged them on the ground accordingly.”

  “You can really look at a piece of wood and tell where it goes?” I asked skeptically.

  “Dedi says it’s a gift,” Nykara replied simply. “If I stare at the pieces long enough I can actually see the finished boat. Even Dedi can’t do that with a reed boat.”

  That seemed quite amazing to me too. “Then what, Nykara?”

  “The real work – assembly. Shall we?” Nykara led me to the boat. The sides were already so high I couldn’t see inside – my head barely reached the bottom of Nykara’s collarbone. I was inches shorter than most women in Nekhen. He glanced down at me uncertainly.

  “Don’t just stand there. Lift me up,” I ordered.

  Nykara took hold of my waist with both hands and set me atop his right shoulder so I could peer over the side of the boat, one of his arms draped across my shins to
hold me steady. Years of rowing and boat building had made him extraordinarily strong; I must have seemed to him no heavier than a container of emmer. I gloried in his touch. I wished I could have more. Several of the boatmen laboring inside the hull paused and stared at me as my head appeared. They were in the midst of a jumble of beams and supports and struts and pieces of wood laced together with strands of rope. All of them nodded respectfully, then went back to work.

  “First we constructed the bottom section of the hull,” Nykara said. “See how it’s made of many panels joined end to end, each three planks wide?”

  “I do.”

  “To start we laid three acacia planks next to each other on the ground, each about four feet long and a foot or so wide. We drilled seam holes along all four edges of each plank. We fastened the adjoining planks together by weaving rope made from sheep’s wool through the holes. When we finished we had our first hull panel.”

  “Won’t water leak between the planks?”

  “When we put the boat in the river and the rope gets wet it’ll pull the planks together and form a watertight seal.” Nykara must have sensed my disbelief. “Trust me, Abar, it will. At least, it has with all the reed boats we’ve made. To make sure, we’ll slather resin thickly along the seams as well. Anyway, after we constructed the first panel, we made a second and joined its narrow end to the narrow end of the first, and so on, until the hull was the desired length.”

  “Fifteen panels in all, I see.”

  Nykara lowered his voice. “Would it surprise you to know most of these boatmen can’t count.”

  “Rawer?”

  Nykara shook his head no. He took hold of my waist, set me down on the ground. “To finish the hull we curved each end upward – my wood boat follows the same basic design that’s been used since men first made reed boats to travel the river. Once the hull was finished we added the strakes – these planks in front of us that make up the sides – fastening the first plank to the bottom hull panel, then the second plank to the first, until the sides were the proper height. Of course, each strake is made up of multiple planks joined end to end, as you can see, just like the hull panels. We finished the outside of the boat several days ago. Now the men are constructing the deck. It’ll rest on a frame of crossbeams reaching from one side of the hull to the other.”

  He lifted me again so I could see inside once more. “To make the frame we fastened together our longest and thickest timbers to make a central beam the length of the boat.”

  “Like the spine of a fish,” I said.

  “Exactly. Those workmen are laying crossbeams over and at a right angle to the central beam and securing their ends to the sides of the boat with wooden dowels.”

  “The crossbeams are like a fish’s bones.”

  “Yes. To hold the central beam up we use stanchions – those braces resting with one end on the bottom of the hull.” Nykara set me down again. “See those deck panels in the storage area? We assembled them a week ago. When the frame is done we’ll place those panels on top of it. Then we’ll add a pavilion amidships – a rectangular wood frame with sides and roof of reed mats – then a long steering oar. We’ll construct wood sleeves in the shape of papyrus stalks, like in the drawing I showed you earlier, and we’ll slip them over the ends of the hull at bow and stern. They’ll rise high over the deck. There’ll be a place at the bow to secure masses of palm fronds so we can take advantage of the wind when we move upstream. We’ll add small wood struts along each side for the oarsmen to sit on, and loops of leather on the top strake they can slip their long oars through when they’re rowing. Lastly, we’ll make fenders of resin–impregnated linen to protect the hull when we reach a landing place. We’ll stow the fenders inside the boat as we travel. We’ll hang them over the outside of the hull as we near shore.”

  “Grandfather says you’re a genius when it comes to designing boats. I believe it.”

  “That means a lot, coming from you,” Nykara said sincerely.

  The sun was high overhead. Nykara led me into the shade of a palm tree at the edge of the river and we seated ourselves on the ground facing the boat.

  “How did you learn to do all this, Nykara?” I asked. I’d never given the construction of boats any thought and had never asked him about this facet of his work before.

  “After I went with Dedi to Abu to get stone for the oval court, he gave me more responsibility so he could see what I was capable of. I’d known how to use all of the boat builders’ tools for a while, but only on limited tasks. He removed every limitation. With practice, I could soon cut and shape reeds faster and more surely than any other workman. I discovered I had a sixth sense about how to best fit bundles of reeds together, so Dedi began teaching me how to design boats. We worked on two small vessels together, then he let me do one on my own, the one I took to Maadi – with his oversight. It took me a month to design it, a second to help the other boatmen make the components, and a third to assemble everything.” He sighed. “That seems so easy, looking back. Especially compared to this boat.”

  I lightly squeezed his hand. “Funny, isn’t it? Everyone passing by sees a wood boat. But we see a revolution and, someday, Nekhen’s ruler leading every settlement in this section of the valley.”

  “And you’ll be the driving force behind it,” Nykara assured me.

  “Maybe.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The last couple of months Rawer’s been pressing Father hard to join us immediately, since Father’s promised me to him. But Father keeps putting him off.”

  “Because of me?” Nykara asked.

  “Now that you run Grandfather’s entire operation, Father’s absolutely certain you’ll be named Grandfather’s heir. Father’s expected for a long time he’s going to lose the clout that comes with the fleet and so, as you know, he’s been trying to use my sisters to build an alliance with three elite families.”

  “Which they plan to use a decade from now to push Rawer aside.”

  “Father knows about it now, because I explained it to him. Without revealing how I knew.”

  “How’d he take it?” Nykara asked.

  “Not well.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “Keep negotiating, to keep the elites from figuring out he knows. Meanwhile, thanks to a recent contact from Pipi, he’s shifted his focus from the long term to the short term.”

  “Ah! Pipi’s made his proposal to Aboo.”

  “Not the proposal. A proposal.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I overheard them. Pipi framed his offer in terms of Wehemka having Father’s blood and combining it with mine to keep Father’s line alive in our children. He talked about Rawer’s incompetence. He talked about Rawer losing control of the fleet to you, and Father needing to replace his lost wealth. He talked about an alliance to join our families to make that happen.”

  “How did your father react?”

  “Pipi’s proposal woke him up. Father finally realized I’m more valuable to him than my sisters are – their joinings to elite families won’t be useful to him for at least a decade, when they’re grown.”

  “But Aboo can arrange an alliance with Pipi using you right now and increase his wealth immediately,” Nykara said. “He must be tempted.”

  “Oh, he is.”

  “How do you feel about it? You’ll escape Rawer. But you told me before you don’t want to be joined to Wehemka either.”

  “Because he has a trace of Father’s blood, he’ll believe he’s as important to our pairing as me and so he’ll trivialize me. Once he becomes ruler he’ll treat me exactly like Rawer would. Plus, he’s very much like Rawer – he cares more about himself and the wealth he can gain from the people in the valley than he does about Nekhen. He’ll make me abandon Grandfather’s quest.”

  “Pipi didn’t mention me in his proposal?”

  “I’m sure he held back the possibility of your inclusion in the alliance in case he needs to sweet
en his offer. Which he most assuredly will.”

  “Why? Has a second elite approached your father about you?”

  “You once told me I wielded my charms like a weapon, Nykara. As of a month ago I’ve been getting lots of practice.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’ve started openly flirting with every elite son except Wehemka, to make each of them believe he has a chance to join with me.”

  “You’re creating a bidding war for your hand,” Nykara said with admiration. “Ingenious!”

  “Pipi’s just one of many elites who’ll be approaching Father now. I’m counting on Father being greedy enough he won’t finalize any alliance as long as he thinks some elite may make him a better offer. And every elite who thinks he has a chance to join with me probably won’t agree to be subservient to any other elite until he knows for certain he’s out of the running. A few well–placed smiles and whispers on my part may stop any grand alliance from being formed at all.”