by Gary Corby
You are probably wondering about my plans. I will not spend my inheritance in the battle against the Persians. That fight was lost when my grandfather fell. I will not give the crook and flail to be carried by Inaros, who is no brother of mine. Nor will I carry the crook and flail myself. A singer from Memphis could never be king.
Instead I go now to the south, where I shall be a Princess of Aethiopia. I told you once before that the royal families had kept in touch. The king there is old. The prince is in need of a wife of royal credentials. Credentials such as, for example, the crook and flail of the pharaohs. So it is that a singer from Memphis might never be king in her own land, but she shall be queen in a distant one.
I thank you for finding my dowry. I could not have done it without you.
In a scribbled note at the bottom she had added:
Sorry I had to hit you, Diotima.
“She would have made a fine Pharaoh,” Herodotus said.
I could only agree.
Friends and Enemies
We buried Markos in the desert, beside the pyramid of Imhotep. I had wanted to place him within, but lacking an embalmer to prepare the body, that would have been impossible.
Spartan law requires that no man can have his grave marked, unless he dies fighting for his country. I took the view that Markos had more than fulfilled that obligation. Over his grave I placed a sign that read: Markos. A fine man.
That job done, we closed the pyramid and resealed the entrance. It took us most of the day. We had to do it ourselves because the frightened workmen never returned. Fortunately we had brought plenty of drinking water, some of which we poured down our backs for relief from the heat.
Then we rode back to the inn, exhausted, wounded and deflated. We had to beg for our rooms back. Word of the disaster at the tomb of Imhotep had already been spread by the men who fled the scene. The innkeeper told us we could stay, but only if we departed next morning. There was some question whether either Barzanes or I would be fit to travel by then, but there was no choice. Diotima took to doctoring us, by the end of which Barzanes and I were covered in bandages. Markos had done a thorough job on both of us. You had to admire a man who could take on two top agents and come so close to beating them both.
As we sat in the inn’s common room that night, drinking beer and nursing our pains, Barzanes said, “Athenian, I wish to ask you a question.”
“Yes?”
“When you fired the crossbow, why did you not kill us both?”
“I had only a single shot,” I said.
“Do not attempt to fool me,” Barzanes said softly. “The crossbow is powerful enough to kill two men with a single shot. You have seen this for yourself. So I ask again. It was in your power to eliminate us both, but you did not. Why?”
I toyed with my beer, wondering how to answer. I chose my words carefully. “Back in Memphis at that inn, we swore an oath of non-aggression.”
“I remember it,” he said.
“The thing is, Barzanes, you kept that oath. The Tjaty told me that he warned you about Markos. He couldn’t understand why you didn’t attack Markos first. But I understood. I don’t break my oaths either.”
Barzanes thought about my words. He said, “Your integrity is great. You would have made a fine Persian.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“By the way, Athenian, I believe you owe me a crossbow.” Barzanes looked me in the eyes as he spoke, to let me know he meant it.
I shook my head slowly. “I’m sorry, Barzanes, but I can’t let you send the crossbow back to Persia. It’s too powerful.”
“I certainly cannot let it go to Athens!” he said. I had to concede that in his position I would have said the same thing.
I’d known this was coming, and I already had an answer. “Barzanes, we’ve both had a bad day. Do you really feel like fighting about this?”
“Not I,” he said.
“Then here’s a simple answer. Let’s destroy the accursed thing.”
Barzanes didn’t need to think about it. “Your suggestion is good,” he said.
We borrowed an axe, but neither of us had the strength to wield it. Herodotus did the honors. He threw the broken wood onto a pile for the inn’s fire, and the metal pieces into the lake.
“Job’s done,” he said.
The job was indeed done. We could all go home.
The Aegyptos Solution
Inaros was not nearly so angry as I expected.
Diotima and I had insisted upon a private audience when we returned to Naukratis. Inaros had instantly noticed two missing from our party: Maxyates and Djanet. He had nodded and led us into a private chamber. This time however there was to be no intimate discussion around a dining table. We stood while he sat and listened to our tale. We didn’t make a very good job of it.
“There have been certain miscalculations,” Inaros said, when we finished. “Both on my part and yours. I grieve for Maxyates.”
“I’m sorry we failed.” It was all I could say.
Inaros held up a hand. “Failure is a relative thing. You might have brought me something more valuable than the crook and flail.”
I blinked. “We might? What?”
“The location of the lost tomb of Imhotep.”
“I fail to see the value, Inaros,” Diotima said.
“The Public Service will be desperate to know where to find Imhotep’s House of Eternity. You yourself, Nicolaos, noted how the bureaucrats revere Imhotep. As a bargaining chip, it is most powerful, even more so than the insignia which they would have acknowledged only reluctantly. I can trade the tomb for the White Fort.”
“Barzanes has the same information,” I warned him.
“But the tomb is in Libya, where I am strong. If I had known that the tomb of Imhotep was on offer, I would have asked for that instead of the crook and flail. You have done well, in the face of difficulties I had not anticipated. I shall certainly say so to Pericles.”
A few days later I was walking down a street in Naukratis when I was suddenly confronted by the man who had coshed me, and carried me to the Temple of Bast. The same man who acted for the Tjaty of Egypt.
I backed away quickly and brought up my hands in self-defense, expecting an assassination attempt at any moment.
“You must relax,” he said calmly. “I am here to extend an invitation.”
He led me to a fine house in one of the better streets, on the opposite side of the city to where Inaros had his residence.
The courtyard within was very beautiful, and filled with cats of all colors and descriptions. I instantly had a feeling of foreboding, which was confirmed when I spied a large cushioned chair, and sitting in it the Tjaty of Egypt. There was, inevitably, a white cat in his lap. It was asleep.
“Greetings, Nicolaos,” said the Tjaty.
“Isn’t Inaros likely to imprison you?” I said by way of greeting. “You have come to your enemy’s headquarters!”
The Tjaty smiled. “There is no difficulty. I am in Naukratis by invitation of the one you mention. Inaros still requires the cooperation of the Public Service if he hopes to capture Egypt, let alone rule it. Though we are enemies, we are also friends.”
“I find that difficult to understand.”
“It is an Egyptian way of thinking. Let me put it more simply. If Inaros shuts me up in prison, my fellow Public Servants will never surrender the White Fort to him. Thus I am safe here as long as I pose no direct threat. I invited you to this house to thank you. You have delivered beyond my expectations, Nicolaos.”
“I have?”
Then it occurred to me that everything had fallen together the way the Public Service wanted. The crook and flail were gone. So too was the only descendant of the last Pharaohs. Inaros would never be able to prove his royal blood. Markos was dead, by my hand.
I was astonished
to realize I had done everything the Tjaty had demanded of me.
He chuckled. It was an evil sound.
“You have done well. We are in your debt. Who is your banker?”
“Banker?”
I didn’t have a banker. The only bankers I knew were embezzlers.
“We need to pay you of course. I couldn’t possibly ask you to carry home all the gold we intend to give you, your boat might sink. In any case, I find these matters are best arranged through intermediaries, don’t you? It makes the source of the money so much harder to trace.”
It occurred to me that the Tjaty didn’t yet know about the tomb. No doubt Inaros had invited the bloated bureaucrat to bargain. But even that news would please the Tjaty.
“If I ever again require a Hellene agent, I will be sure to call you.”
The Tjaty laughed, which woke the cat. The cat looked at me and smiled.
The Nauarch, Admiral Charitimides, released Kordax from naval duty to take us home.
Charitimides clapped me on the back and said, “Glad to see you made it back alive. You had no problems, I suppose?”
“None to speak of, sir.” There was no other acceptable answer to a man like the Nauarch. He was a man who commanded two hundred ships of the line. A problem had to be of epic proportions to equal what he dealt with every day.
“Ah well, it’s been quiet for us, too, but I’m hearing reports of a Persian army on the move. I suppose you need to report to Pericles?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come back when you’re done. I think I can promise you some good fighting.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Herodotus saw us off at the docks. He insisted upon staying in Egypt.
“There’s still more I want to see,” he said.
Diotima and I had to leave Egypt as soon as possible. Inaros had made that clear at our final meeting. We knew too much. I was worried about Herodotus for the same reason.
“Are you sure?” I asked him. “It might be dangerous.”
“More dangerous than being with you?” he scoffed.
“You may have a point.”
Herodotus patted the pouch hanging by his side. “Anyway, I have safe passes handwritten by both Inaros and Barzanes. With them I can go anywhere in perfect safety, and I still have to finish my book. Inaros has promised me a lifetime supply of papyrus.”
That was going to cost Inaros more than he realized.
I said, hesitantly, “Herodotus, about your book . . .”
“Yes?”
“It would be a good idea if you didn’t mention . . . that is, if you didn’t say anything about—”
“What happened?” he finished for me.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to preserve Markos’s memory, I don’t want Barzanes getting into trouble for the deal he did with us, Djanet wouldn’t thank you for it, and I don’t need the whole world knowing I’m an agent.”
“But I was hoping to put you in my book,” Herodotus said.
“Sorry.”
Herodotus sighed. “Perhaps it’s just as well. Frankly, if I wrote about this, no one would believe it.”
“Prepare to depart,” Kordax called.
Herodotus waved. Sailors pulled in the gangplank. Oarsmen pushed off, and Dolphin began the long journey back to Athens.
Author’s Note
Welcome to the end of the book! Since it is the end, I’m going to talk about what’s real and what’s not in the story that you’ve just read. If you haven’t finished the book, this would be a good moment to turn to the front, because everything from this point on is spoilers.
The war of independence fought by Egyptian rebels against the Persian Empire is completely real. The rebels were brilliantly led by a charismatic Prince of Libya named Inaros. The Athenians did send an enormous fleet to help them. Together they won a massive victory on both land and sea, and the beaten Persian army then garrisoned themselves in the White Fort at Memphis, to await reinforcements from home. So far, so real.
The quest for the crook and flail however is entirely the product of my demented imagination, as are the four agents who hunt for it.
Two of the quest party were real people. The first of these, you might be surprised to learn, is Diotima. She was one of the outstanding philosophers of her time, possibly the world’s first great female philosopher, since we know of none before her. We know for sure she was the teacher of Socrates. How she came to that position in my story world is related in The Pericles Commission.
The other real member of the quest party is, of course, Herodotus.
Herodotus invented history. That is, he came up with the idea to write down what had happened in the past, so that people in the future could know about it. The very word history is classical Greek and means inquiry. Herodotus also recorded the habits and cultures of the ancient world, for which he is credited with inventing anthropology. These days we call his book The Histories. It is overwhelmingly the most famous book of history ever written.
Herodotus came from a city called Halicarnassus. The same place is called Bodrum today, and it’s a lovely tourist town on the Turkish coast. In Nico’s time the city was very much Greek, but was ruled by the Persians. Thus when Nico is told that an agent who is Greek but working for the Persians has been sent to Egypt, Herodotus seems a natural candidate.
Herodotus took great delight in recording all the strange and wonderful customs of the people of the ancient world—at least all of those of which he heard tale, and it’s obvious he collected everything he could from every traveler he met. In the days before the internet and global villages, the variety in human life was far wider and richer. If you want an example, try this description he gives of Libya (which, in my world, he learned from Maxyates). The Penguin edition says:
. . . Libya is inhabited by tribes who live in ordinary houses and practice agriculture. First comes the Maxyes, a people who grow their hair on the right side of their heads and shave it off on the left. They stain their bodies red and claim to be descended from the men of Troy. The country round here, and the rest of Libya to the westward, has more forest and a greater number of wild animals . . . It is here that the huge snakes are found—and lions, elephants, bears, asps and horned asses, not to mention dog-headed men, headless men with eyes in their breasts (I merely repeat what the Libyans say), wild men and wild women, and a great many other creatures . . .
You can see from this passage where I found one of my more unusual characters. Herodotus is sometimes mocked for the bit about dog-headed men. Yet he makes it clear that he’s merely passing on what he’s heard, which shows how he went about his inquiries, or book research as we would call it. For what it’s worth, there’s a modern theory that the dog-headed men were baboons, and the wild men and wild women could have been gorillas.
Clearly at some point Herodotus had been talking to Libyans, and I was very happy to supply him the opportunity.
In this book, every time Herodotus begins a sentence with “Did you know . . .” he repeats something that you can find in The Histories.
Nico wonders about the source of Herodotus’s wealth. So do modern scholars. To have made all the tours that he appears to have done would have required an enormous amount of money. For that reason, many doubt he visited all the places he writes about. It’s highly likely he did rely on the tales others brought back with them from exotic locales, such as India. The one place that we know for sure that Herodotus visited in person is Egypt.
•
In the book, Herodotus is much taken by the women of Naukratis. It looks like a random, made-up detail, but is absolutely true. In The Histories he devotes a surprisingly large section to how lovely the ladies were. One gets the impression a certain amount of personal research was involved.
Nor was Herodotus the only one to fall under the spell of t
he courtesans of Naukratis. In the century before him, a man named Charaxus—who just happened to be the brother of Sappho, the famous poet—regularly traveled to Naukratis as a trader. There he met a charming and very beautiful slave-courtesan by the name of Rhodopis. Charaxus was completely smitten. Much to his sister’s disgust, he spent a small fortune to buy the lady her freedom. Rhodopis instantly dumped Charaxus (he was obviously expecting to marry her), and instead set up her own house of ill repute, from which she became rich. This caused the world’s greatest poet to dedicate an entire poem to describing what an idiot her brother was.
The crook and the flail really were the insignia of the pharaohs. Needless to say, there were many versions of the crook and flail over the millennia, with hundreds of pharaohs to hold them. The only examples that survive in reasonable condition are the ones found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.
In the author note of my second book, The Ionia Sanction, I mentioned how the Greeks mangled the names of Persians. What they did to Egyptian names was even worse. I’ve called the last Pharaoh of Egypt Psamtik, because that’s the simplest of the many variants you’ll find in print. He’s also referred to as Psammetichus and Psammenitus.
The very name of the country, Egypt, is Greek. Or more correctly, not Egypt, but Aigyptos. The Egyptians in their own language called their country the Black Land, which is a reference to the color of the rich silt supplied by the Nile. Every year the Nile would flood, which spread that black silt across the farms and thus made Egypt the breadbasket of the ancient world.
The ancients also thought of Egypt as two quite different nations. On a map, Lower Egypt is at the top, and Upper Egypt is at the bottom. The weird naming is because the Nile runs from the south (Upper) to the north (Lower). Upper Egypt was the Land of Reeds. Lower Egypt (the Delta end) was the Land of Papyrus. Each had its own crown, and the Pharaoh wore the Double Crown.
