by Wilbur Smith
Palmys had been a popular and well-beloved lad and several hundred mourners walked with us up into the Taygetus Mountains to the cave complex where all the relatives and close companions of King Hurotas and Admiral Hui were interred. The mummy case which contained Palmys’ remains was drawn on a wooden sledge by ten black oxen.
Bekatha walked behind it, with her grim-visaged husband Hui supporting her on one hand and Tehuti on the other. She was wailing inconsolably. Her three surviving sons pressed close behind her with the men of their regiment coming up behind them. They were all in full armour, singing the tunes of glory, the battle songs of their regiment. It was a splendid display and a fine tribute to a gallant young warrior whose life had been so cruelly cut short.
Even I who have seen countless young men entombed or burned to ashes on the funeral fires could not help but be moved by the occasion. I hungered and thirsted for the day of vengeance. We entered the valley of Ares: the son of Zeus, who is the god of the violent and cruel face of war.
The cliffs on each side rose sheer into the sky, leaving the depths of the valley in sombre shadows. The oxen dragged the mummy case to the entrance of the tomb, a deep and jagged crack in the face of the mountain. They could go no further and the teams were released and driven back the way they had come. Now the comrades of Palmys came forward and manhandled the sarcophagus into its final resting place. Bekatha threw herself on top of the mummy case, sobbing and wailing her grief, until Tehuti and Hui between them could draw her away. They led her back to the citadel the way we had come.
Much too slowly for my battle-eager heart the petty chieftains began to assemble their battalions, arriving from every direction and sailing into Githion Bay in their flotillas. Flecking the azure waters with their frosty white sails, they dropped their anchors off the foreshore. The port of Githion was by now so packed with shipping that it was possible to stroll from one side to the other across their decks, stepping over the narrow gaps that separated their hulls.
Gradually the open fields along the banks of the Hurotas River filled with the tents and shelters of the multitudes of armed warriors that came ashore, and the valley echoed with the clash of sword on shield and helmets and the cries of the drillmasters as they exhorted their legions to greater endeavour.
I spent hours each day on the mountain heights scanning the waters for one set of sails amongst the throng: those of the Levantine trader’s barque returning from the south and bearing the demands of Pharaoh Utteric. There were more weeks of waiting before I finally picked out the distinctive blue-dyed sails far out on the waters of the bay. This colouration is derived from the juices of a rare sea snail, and possesses powers of protection from hazardous seas and even more dangerous corsairs. I hoped against hope that this sighting was a good omen but I doubted that this was the case, bearing in mind whence it came.
The harbour was too congested to allow access to the Levanter. I had to row out in a small fishing boat to meet him. Ben Zaken, for that was his name, conceded that he bore a message from Pharaoh Utteric Bubastis the Great and Good – another of Utteric’s misnomers. However, he refused to hand it over to me. He insisted on delivering it in person to King Hurotas as was his solemn and sworn duty. I knew that he considered it was also his solemn duty to collect every deben of his reward from Hurotas. I tried to argue with him that he should let me have a sight of the message, so that I might convey the most distressing parts of it to Hurotas and Tehuti in a gentle and diplomatic manner, but he was adamant.
Ben Zaken and I rode up the valley to the citadel where we found both of Serrena’s parents waiting impatiently. There was a short delay while Ben Zaken counted out and then argued over the amount of his reward, but Hurotas turned his full fury upon him and he retired with a pained expression and muttered complaints at such harsh treatment.
When Hurotas, Tehuti and I were alone in the council chamber Hurotas broke the seal on the small alabaster receptacle that Utteric had sent us. It contained a papyrus scroll and a sealed phial of opaque green glass, such as those in which I, and other learned physicians, keep our most rare and valuable medications or specimens.
Hurotas placed these apparently mundane objects in the centre of the table, and we stared at them in silence for a while. Then Tehuti spoke softly: ‘This terrifies me. I don’t want to know what is in them. But I can sense the evil they contain.’
Neither Hurotas nor I answered her, but I knew that all of us felt the same way.
Finally Hurotas seemed to shake himself as though he was waking from a nightmare. He wiped his face with his open hand and blinked his eyes as if to clear them. He reached for the scroll of papyrus and examined the wax seal that secured it. Then he drew his dagger from the sheath on his belt and ran the point under the seal, splitting it from the papyrus. The scroll crackled stiffly as he unrolled it and held it up to the light from the high window. Hurotas’ lips moved as he began to read the hieroglyphics upon the page to himself.
‘No!’ Tehuti spoke sharply. ‘Read it aloud. I must also know what its contents are.’
Hurotas baulked at her demand. ‘I was trying to shield you.’
‘Read it!’ Tehuti repeated, and he grimaced but then capitulated and began to read aloud.
TO ZARAS AND HUI:
THE CRAVEN DESERTERS FROM THE GLORIOUS ARMY OF EGYPT.
I HAVE THE LITTLE HARLOT NAMED SERRENA. SHE IS IN MY DEEPEST DUNGEON WHERE YOU WILL NEVER FIND HER. HOWEVER, I AM WILLING TO EXCHANGE HER FOR THE FOLLOWING CONSIDERATIONS.
ITEM ONE. YOU WILL REPAY TO ME THE AMOUNT OF THREE HUNDRED LAKHS OF SILVER. THIS IS THE PRECISE AMOUNT WHICH YOU, AS JUNIOR OFFICERS IN THE ARMY OF MY FATHER PHARAOH TAMOSE, HAVE STOLEN FROM ME OVER THE YEARS SINCE YOU DESERTED FROM THE ARMED FORCES OF THIS VERY EGYPT.
ITEM TWO. YOU WILL HAND OVER TO ME THE PERSON WHOM YOU ERRONEOUSLY REFER TO AS PRINCE RAMESES. THIS CRIMINAL IS IN FACT A LOWLY SLAVE WHO PRETENDS TO ROYAL EGYPTIAN BLOOD. HE HAS DESERTED HIS POST IN THE ARMY OF EGYPT. HE MUST BE DELIVERED INTO MY HANDS TO BE PUNISHED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.
ITEM THREE. YOU WILL ALSO HAND OVER TO ME THE PERSON WHOM YOU ERRONEOUSLY REFER TO AS LORD TAITA. THIS CREATURE IS IN FACT A NECROMANCER AND A PRACTITIONER OF THE DARK AND EVIL ARTS OF WITCHCRAFT. HE IS IN ADDITION A LOWLY SLAVE WHO HAS ABSCONDED FROM HIS MASTER. HE MUST BE DELIVERED TO ME TO BE PUNISHED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.
YOU HAVE ONE MONTH TO RESPOND TO THESE MY DEMANDS IN FULL. EVERY MONTH IN WHICH YOU FAIL TO MEET THIS MY DEADLINE I WILL SEND YOU A REMINDER. I ENCLOSE THE FIRST OF THESE REMINDERS IN THE GREEN GLASS PHIAL HEREWITH.
PHARAOH UTTERIC BUBASTIS OF EGYPT (ALSO KNOWN AS THE INVINCIBLE)
All three of us turned our eyes upon the innocuous-seeming green glass phial that the alabaster jar contained. It was Tehuti who broke the dreadful silence that had all of us in its thrall.
‘I don’t think I can bear much more of this. I knew this creature, Utteric. He was the first-born child of my brother Pharaoh Tamose, which makes him my nephew. He was a sickly and timid child, so I thought he was innocuous. How sadly I misjudged him. He is the epitome of all evil.’ She spoke in a whisper, which was broken up by her choking sobs, so it was barely possible to make sense of the words. But she never took her eyes off the green glass phial. ‘I shudder to think what he has sent us. Will you open it please, Taita?’
‘One of us must,’ I agreed and I took up the phial and examined the stopper. I saw it was carved from soft wood and had been sealed into the mouth of the phial with beeswax. I twisted it carefully to break the seal and the stopper popped out of its own accord with a soft hiss as though driven by gas. I tipped out the contents on to the table top and the three of us stared at it in dread silence.
It was a human forefinger. It had been severed at the third joint. It was slim and elegant in shape and the skin was smooth and unblemished: the finger of a young noblewoman unmarred by labour or neglect.
Tehuti let out a keening wail of despair and recoiled against the chamber wall, staring at the gruesome
object in horror as she realized what it was.
‘Utteric has begun to dismember my darling Serrena. Is nothing too obscene for him?’ She turned and fled from the chamber, while Hurotas and I stared after her in dismay.
I broke the silence at last. ‘You must go after her,’ I told Hurotas. ‘Although she may not recognize it herself, she needs you now, as never before. Go after her. Give her comfort. I will wait for you here.’ He nodded agreement and hurried from the chamber, leaving the door ajar as he went.
After a few moments while my wits recovered from the horrifying shock I approached the table again. I leaned over it to examine the disjointed finger more closely and dispassionately. I could see no reason to doubt what it purported to be: the finger of a young female, probably of aristocratic breeding. I had never examined Serrena’s hands meticulously but this digit appeared to belong to her, except … there was something incongruous about it. I puzzled over it for a while before I remembered the soft hiss of escaping gas when I had removed the stopper from the glass phial. I leaned closer to the severed finger and sniffed. Despite the light frosting of salt that had been applied as a preservative there was the unmistakable odour of putrefaction issuing from it.
I was so intent on the enigma that I had discovered that I did not hear Hurotas return through the open doorway, and I was totally unaware of his presence until he spoke softly behind me.
‘Divine flesh does not rot,’ he said.
I spun around and stared at him in consternation. ‘What did you say?’ I demanded inanely.
‘I think you heard me well enough, old friend.’ He nodded at me sympathetically.
‘Yes. I heard you,’ I agreed in confusion. ‘But what did you mean by … what you said?’
‘Divine flesh does not rot,’ he repeated, and then he said something else: ‘That finger cannot possibly belong to Serrena.’ He nodded at the sorry remnant that lay on the table. ‘For Serrena is divine.’
‘You knew!’ I exclaimed, and he nodded a third time. ‘How did you know?’ I insisted.
‘I also had a dream,’ Hurotas explained. ‘The goddess Artemis came to me in that dream and told me how Serrena had been conceived.’ He paused, and he was as subdued as I had never seen him before. ‘Artemis told me: Your wife bears the child of your heart, but not the child of your loins.’
‘Have you told Tehuti about this?’ I asked, and he shook his head.
‘No, I would never do that. It might destroy our trust in each other and our happiness. That is why I have come back to you. I want you to tell her why you know that this is just another disgusting subterfuge of Utteric’s. I want you to preserve our trust in each other, me and Tehuti.’ He took my arm and shook it, but gently. ‘Will you do it for me, for us?’
‘Of course!’ I assured him and I went out into the sunlit garden where I knew I would find Tehuti. She was sitting by the fish pool, which was one of her favourite haunts. She looked up at me as I stood over her. Her expression was desolate.
‘What am I to do, Taita? I cannot give you and my nephew Rameses over to the clutches of that monster and yet I cannot let him dismember my only daughter.’
‘You need not make either of those two fatal decisions.’ I sat beside her and placed my arm around her shoulders and hugged her. ‘You see, my darling Tehuti, divine flesh never decomposes.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘That finger is rotting, despite the salt in which it has been packed. It is not divine flesh; therefore it does not belong to Serrena. Utteric has had it severed from some other unfortunate young woman.’
She stared at me and her shoulders straightened and squared with renewed strength and determination. ‘You are right, Taita. I smelled it when you opened the phial. But I thought little of it. But now you have explained it, it makes positive proof.’
‘Yes, but we must never let Utteric have any inkling that we have not been taken in by this ruse of his.’
‘Of course not!’ she agreed. ‘However, what about my husband? Promise me that you will never tell Hurotas who is truly the father of Serrena.’
‘Your husband is a lovely man and a great king, but I doubt he knows a god from a goat. He would never suspect that it is possible to fall pregnant in a dream. Furthermore, he trusts you without reservation,’ I assured her. I am a glib and fluent liar when forced to it.
I hesitated before I made the decision whether or not I should tell Rameses of my firm intention to enter Egypt clandestinely in an attempt to reach Serrena and afford her comfort and support, even if I was unable to procure her release from vile captivity. Finally I went to his quarters in the citadel and, after searching them to make certain we were completely alone, I blurted it out. I ended with an injunction to him not to breathe a word of my plan to another living soul.
Rameses listened to me in silence; and when I finished speaking he shook his head ruefully.
‘I have also made exactly the same resolution. But I was not going to tell even you,’ he confessed.
‘Does that mean that you are coming with me?’ I pretended to be taken aback, although that had been my intention.
‘What a frivolous question, Tata.’ He hugged me briefly. ‘When do we leave?’
‘The sooner the quicker!’ I retorted.
I released my customary trio of pigeons to Weneg in his wine shop in Luxor to warn him of our impending arrival in Luxor. Then Rameses and I went to say our farewells to King Hurotas and Queen Tehuti. Both of them were much heartened to hear of our plans to go to the succour of Serrena. Tehuti gave me an extraordinary and valuable gift to give to her daughter if and when we were able to reach her. I promised to guard it with my very life and to pass it over to Serrena at the first opportunity.
Then Rameses and I sailed on the Memnon. During the southward voyage we rehearsed the roles we had agreed upon. I became a bumbling simple-minded buffoon, and Rameses was my unkempt keeper. He led me around on the end of a shepherd’s crook. My speech was garbled and my gait stumbling and unbalanced. We procured our costumes from a couple of beggars at the gates of Port Githion. One of my servants negotiated the purchase, so they were not associated with us. However, they were authentically ragged, filthy and malodorous. Fortunately we were not called upon to don them until we came in sight of the Egyptian coastline.
We in the Memnon hovered on the horizon until night fell; and then we ran in darkness southwards again until we were able to make out the loom of the land. When this happened we launched the small felucca that we carried as deck cargo on board the Memnon. Finally we said our farewells to the crew and left them to make their way back to the island of Spartan Lacedaemon, while the two of us dressed in our rags sailed our felucca into Wadi Tumilat, one of most insignificant of the nine mouths of the mighty River Nile.
When dawn broke we were already four or five leagues upriver, just one of dozens of small craft that thronged the Egyptian waters. However, the flow of the river was against us, and so it was many more weary days before we reached the golden city of Luxor. By this time our dishevelled and unshaven appearance was completely authentic, rather than merely contrived, so that when Rameses led me by my staff, with my head nodding, eyes rolling and feet shuffling, into Weneg’s wine shop, that worthy did not recognize either of us and he tried to shoo us back the way we had come. When we were finally able to convince him of our true identity Weneg was at first astonished and then overjoyed. We sat up most of that first night, discussing Princess Serrena’s possible and probable whereabouts, and sampling the wares of the wine shop, which were a credit to our host’s good taste. At the same time I took the opportunity to hide, under a pile of wine jugs in the cellar beneath the wine shop, the gift that I had brought from Queen Tehuti to be given to her daughter Serrena at the very first opportunity.
After considering all the other possibilities, we finally agreed that Serrena was most probably the guest of the horrible Doog. She had last been seen in his company, being paraded throu
gh the streets of Luxor. Of course there was always the possibility that this was exactly what Utteric and his minions wanted us to believe, while they were holding her elsewhere in one of the numerous other prisons which had sprung up since Utteric had ascended to the throne of Pharaoh. However, the chances were that Utteric favoured the Gates of Torment and Sorrow for his most illustrious guests, if only for the appeal of the name. I was the only one of our company ever to have had the good fortune to have entered those salubrious premises. Thus I was given the task of drawing up a map of the interior from memory.
My eyesight is also famously acute. Always providing that the light is good, I am able to recognize without difficulty the features of any person at a distance of up to a league, which is the distance a man can walk in an hour. Thus I was further allotted the task of keeping watch over Doog’s establishment during the day from the surrounding hilltops. If the truth be told, I selected this particular task for myself. I longed to catch even a distant glimpse of the divine female whom I loved so dearly, if only to bolster my own resolution and determination to wrest her from the clutches of those foul creatures, Utteric and Doog.
Through friends of his, Weneg was able to provide me with a flock of a dozen or so scruffy black sheep. Each morning, brandishing my shepherd’s crook, I drove these animals out into the hills that overlooked the road between the city of Luxor and the prison. From this vantage point I spent most of the daylight hours keeping watch over my sheep and, surreptitiously, over all the traffic that passed along the road. I soon noticed that almost all the passengers conveyed to the prison were on a one-way ride. They never returned from the Gates of Torment and Sorrow. In this respect I was able to count myself extremely fortunate to be the exception.
Of course, Rameses wanted to accompany me on these daily expeditions. But I deterred him by asking him two simple questions: ‘Have you ever seen a pair of shepherds guarding a single flock of a dozen sheep? And if you ever did wouldn’t you be a trifle suspicious?’
