by Brad Geagley
He felt his heart harden against Menef, who would rather make his own home a palace than see the gods of Egypt well housed. Though he cautioned himself against leaping to conclusions, a tiny sneer began to pull irresistibly at his lips.
As he and Kem-weset drew nearer, Semerket heard the cacophony of many voices. Rounding the corner, he was appalled to see that perhaps two hundred litigants waited in the estate’s shadow. They were Egyptian nationals, and each wore the same eager yet resigned expression of someone who knows his case to be hopeless, yet who hopes for a miracle. As they picked their way through the crowd, going to the guardhouse, Semerket heard their murmured conversations.
“…a mistake, we shouldn’t have been sent here…”
“A crooked judge was my downfall.”
“If he will only review the facts of my case, they speak plain…”
“It was such a little crime…who did it harm?”
Semerket inhaled deeply. Would his own story sound so implausible and desperate? The difference was that he had in his possession two writs of freedom from the pharaoh of Egypt himself. Semerket reminded himself that he was only asking the ambassador for information concerning Naia and Rami’s whereabouts, not for any official intercession on their behalf.
He anxiously turned to Kem-weset. “Can you get us in there ahead of these others? If Menef does indeed know who you are…?”
A momentary glint of doubt clouded the physician’s eye. Gone was Kem-weset’s jaunty bravado, replaced by diffidence. “That is, yes…probably. I’ll speak to the guard ahead. I’m sure he’ll remember me—though it was some months ago, you must remember…”
Tentatively Kem-weset approached the small sentry house beside the gates. He raised his hand in a shaky greeting. The clerk continued to mark a clay tablet with his stylus, ignoring him. Kem-weset cleared his throat noisily.
“Good sir—a moment?”
The pimply clerk glanced at Kem-weset from beneath his lowered lids. When he saw who it was, the clerk grimaced slightly. He turned to murmur something to a nearby guard. The guard was a young man, anxious to make an impression, and immediately affixed a fierce glower to his features. He came from the shack to bark rudely into Kem-weset’s face, “Back of the line, old sot!”
Yes, thought Semerket dismally, they did indeed know Kem-weset here.
When the old physician protested, saying that he wished an interview with Menef—that the ambassador would surely remember him, that he was a physician of some renown in Egypt—the young guard struck him savagely across his throat with the shaft of his spear. Kem-weset collapsed onto the ground like a sacrificed heifer, to lie gasping in the dust of the street, clutching his neck.
With a cry, Semerket ran to the old man’s side. Kem-weset’s eyes bulged from their sockets, tears oozing as he struggled for air. Quickly Semerket felt the physician’s neck, and ascertained that his trachea had not collapsed. When Kem-weset could breathe again, Semerket raised his eyes to gaze into the young guard’s face.
What the guard saw in those black eyes caused the young man to reconsider his own fierce glare for a moment. The youth blinked uncertainly, and swallowed. “You, too,” he said, attempting again to be gruff and threatening, “go to the rear and wait like everyone else.”
Semerket merely continued to stare at him. The lad suddenly remembered his courage and feinted at Semerket with his spear, obviously expecting him to cower. But Semerket abruptly wrenched the spear from his hands and broke it in two across his knee.
As Semerket threw the two ends into a nearby canal, cheers erupted from the crowd of supplicants. The young soldier, alarmed, sprinted to the sentry house to speak in earnest tones with the clerk. They both stared anxiously at Semerket, who was now advancing on them.
Before Semerket had a chance to confront them, however, the gates to the embassy unexpectedly opened from inside. The crowd surged forward, and Semerket had to struggle to keep them from trampling the still-prone Kem-weset.
A richly uniformed herald appeared and stood upon a stone. He loudly proclaimed that the ambassador would grant no more audiences to anyone that day, as he had been summoned to the royal palace. A great groan of disappointed anger rose in the throats of the crowd, sounding like a giant animal suddenly roused.
At the sound, an entire cohort of guards suddenly appeared from behind the gates and began to clear a pathway through the mob, herding the people away with the shafts of their spears. Semerket strained to see behind them and into the estate. He glimpsed a large carrying chair at the front door of the main house, ready for use.
A short, plump man emerged into the sunlight, sleek and spoiled as a temple cat, and stepped into the chair. From the richness of his robes and the glint of real gold in his elaborately braided wig, the man could only be Menef himself. With his hawk-tipped staff of office gripped firmly in his hands, he was raised high on the shoulders of his liveried bearers.
Semerket shook his head in derision, for no fewer than forty men carried Menef. He almost laughed aloud—no one, not even the great Ramses III himself, had been carried by so many bearers. This Menef’s ostentation was unbelievable! Semerket suddenly wished he had brought his own badge of office that Pharaoh had bestowed on him, for he sensed that Menef might be intimidated by such a jewel.
The chair began to move forward. At that moment, a slimly built, sinewy man stepped forward through the gate. Seeing the crowd, the man’s underslung jaw suddenly contorted into a wide grin that did not correspond with the flat menace of his ophidian eyes. The smile was a ghastly parody of good humor, a veritable rictus of disdain and spite. In a low voice, the man directed the guards to lash out at the crowd with their whips, to clear a pathway for the ambassador’s approaching chair. Inexorably, the guards began to advance, flailing their short whips of hippopotamus hide at the people. Screams rang out, but still the stubborn mob would not disperse. Semerket felt the rush of air as one of the whips cracked too near his cheek. Rage began to build inside him.
The herald began to bawl instructions. “On your faces!” he said. “On your faces before Pharaoh’s Beloved Friend!”
Semerket blinked in surprise. “Beloved Friend” was a rank usually held by only blood relations of Pharaoh.
Despite the royal epithet, the crowd continued to ignore the herald, and the grinning man realized that the whips were having no effect on the mob. He shouted orders to his men, and they brought the points of their spears forward. Only this quick action prevented the mob from overwhelming the ambassador.
As Menef’s chair was carried past, Semerket shouted up, “Ambassador, where are your servants Naia and Rami?”
Menef jerked his face in Semerket’s direction, his small eyes staring down in sudden alarm. Quickly, he directed his bearers to stop. “Who is that? What do you want?” cried Menef in a thin, petulant voice.
“Pharaoh wants them back, Menef, and expects your obedience.”
“Who are you? Am I supposed to keep track of every whore and delinquent sent me, then? I’m not a wet-nurse, you know. Come back later, or tomorrow, if it’s so important, and wait in line like everyone else.” Menef turned to face forward again. With a nervous gesture, he bade his bearers move on.
Semerket would have kept walking beside the chair, pestering the ambassador, had not the commander of the guards suddenly appeared before him, grinning his macabre smile. Semerket noticed the man’s tiny tattoo at the corner of his eye, a miniature asp, looking like a dirty tear.
Semerket attempted to lunge past him, but the Asp stood in his way, a block of unyielding stone. He shoved Semerket aside so that he half-fell into the dust. The Asp still grinned, silently daring Semerket to attempt another move toward Menef.
By this time, however, the ambassador was already far down the street, followed by his horde of desperate, importuning petitioners. Seeing the ambassador surrounded, the grinning man turned, almost reluctantly, and ran to catch up with his employer.
Only Semerket and Kem-weset rem
ained in the now-quiet avenue. When Semerket bent to help the physician to his feet, he was distressed to see how the old man winced piteously, as if he expected Semerket to strike him.
“No,” said Semerket, low, as to a child, “I’m only trying to help you stand. Why would you think otherwise? Here now, lean on me. Are you ready?”
The old man nodded slightly, unable to speak, and Semerket hoisted him upward. Kem-weset staggered slightly, but was able to stand on his own. Keeping a tight grip on the old man’s bony shoulder, Semerket slowly walked him back to the Egyptian Quarter.
Semerket tried to think of something he could say that would comfort the physician, but his tongue was a useless sliver of wood in his head. They had reached the perimeters of the Egyptian Quarter. A sudden stab from his forehead’s scar gave him inspiration.
“Kem-weset,” he asked, rubbing his brow, “would you favor me with a look at an old injury of mine?”
The physician did not answer, or even acknowledge that he had heard. He continued to plod down the street, and his head seemed too heavy for his neck to bear.
“It’s this old wound of mine—here, on my forehead.” Semerket walked quickly to stand before the old man, forcing him to stop. He held his head close so that Kem-weset could see the jagged mark. “It stings like fire sometimes, and makes my head throb like a temple drum. Nothing but sleep will ease it. Can you help me?”
In the ensuing quiet, Semerket thought that perhaps the blow from Menef’s young guard had driven the wits from the old man’s mind. In the long shadows cast by the afternoon sun, standing beside the canal that girded the Egyptian Quarter, Kem-weset’s wavery voice came to him at last. “You would consult with me?”
“Are you not the finest physician in Babylon?”
Kem-weset was silent for another moment. Then he brought his face close to Semerket’s, looking at the scar with a professional eye. The old man’s shoulders straightened imperceptibly as he turned to Semerket and spoke the ritual words.
“I will undertake your cure,” Kem-weset said. “Come to me when you are next in pain.”
IN THE SEARING RED LIGHT of the setting sun, the ziggurat Etemenanki was a beckoning flame. Always keeping its tumescent profile in front of him, Semerket was able to traverse Babylon’s serpentine pathways rapidly. In a short time, he found himself crossing the great bridge that spanned the Euphrates, arriving on the other side of the river where the ziggurat towered. Kem-weset had said that the Square of the Sick was located somewhere nearby, and he wanted to reach the square before curfew was called.
He was curious to see the square, of course, in the way all foreign travelers seek the novel and esoteric, but he had another reason for going there as well. If Rami were indeed injured, as Pharaoh’s cousin Elibar said he was, perhaps he would find him among the sick and ailing there. At worst, it might be that one of the ill could tell him if they had seen an Egyptian lad among their company.
Semerket smelled the square before he saw it—that curiously sweet scent of decay and human waste that accompanies all sickness. By simply following his nose to where the scent was strongest, he at last entered into the square from a side alleyway.
The Square of the Sick was enormous even by Egyptian standards, with thousands of Babylon’s ill and injured lying side by side in the open air, a solid mass of writhing, living flesh stretching from one distant wall to another. Some lay on the bare ground, while others, the nobles, reclined in large beds of carved wood. Their moans and sighs filled his ears, crying out to passersby in various tones of desperation—wails, too, as families gathered to mourn their dying loved ones.
Semerket kept his head lowered, refusing to meet the imploring gazes of those who called out to him, scanning the square from side to side, careful not to catch anyone’s glance. He jumped at the sudden appearance of a strangely attired priest, outfitted in copper-hued robes patterned like the scales of a fish.
Dimly, Semerket recalled that the Babylonians prayed to some water god—Ea, he believed the deity’s name to be—who battled the demons that caused their maladies. He saw that those fellows he had once believed to be beekeepers, the undertakers of Babylon, also labored in the square. They culled the dead from the rows of sick, taking them on stretchers into a far tent where vats of honey awaited their remains. Still other attendants bore ewers of water, together with bandages and salves for the ill.
Gradually Semerket came to recognize that the city’s sick had not been so wantonly abandoned as Kem-weset had intimated, but were well tended by the fish-robed priests and their acolytes. As he penetrated further into the square, Semerket noticed, too, that the priests had grouped the unwell according to the nature of their ailments. It was an ingenious system, he realized, making it easier for both Babylonians and tourists to go directly to where they could offer their help and counsel in the most efficient fashion.
Semerket screwed up his nerve to approach one of the priests. “Can you tell me—? Those with head injuries?” he asked.
The priest pointed, coppery fish scales gleaming in the sun’s last rays, to the far corner of the square. Semerket went there without speaking to anyone. In truth, some of the square’s inhabitants were of such horrifying appearance that he could not regard them without becoming ill himself. Ghastly wounds, hideous swellings, and deformities of every sort met his horrified gaze. By staring straight ahead, however, becoming deaf to their pleading words, he was able to reach his destination without incident.
When he reached the area the priest had indicated, he gazed around, looking for Rami’s face. Most of the people sequestered in the area were recent victims of war, judging from their wounds. One man stared at him from beneath a bandage that revealed only a single fierce eye. The eye seemed intelligent enough, however, and Semerket approached him.
“I’m sorry to disturb you…” Semerket said.
The man did not move his head, but the one eye stared up angrily into Semerket’s face.
“I’m looking for an Egyptian lad. His name is Rami. He was struck in the head. Have you seen him?”
Fierce Eye continued to stare, but made no answer.
“It happened about twelve weeks ago, by my reckoning,” Semerket continued. But he ceased to speak when he saw the single tear that trickled down Fierce Eye’s cheek and onto the pavement.
“Don’t expect an answer from that one,” came the words from behind.
Semerket whirled around. A boy carrying a water pail approached him. The boy knelt and dipped his ladle, bringing it to Fierce Eye’s mouth. Most of the water ran down Fierce Eye’s chin to pool in his lap, but some of the liquid made it into his mouth.
“He can’t talk,” the boy explained, bringing another ladle full of water to the man’s lips. “The gods stunned his mind, and now he can’t move a finger. What were you asking him?”
Semerket repeated his question.
“An Egyptian boy?” the boy mused. “There’re no Egyptians here that I can recall—your people don’t like our medicine much.”
Semerket knelt beside the boy, to gaze into Fierce Eye’s face. “In Egypt, we’d have a physician open his skull.”
The boy suppressed a shudder. “I’ve heard they don’t last very long when you do.”
Semerket shrugged. “At least they don’t linger, either. What a terrible life he has.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the boy philosophically, wiping Fierce Eye’s mouth with a rag. “At least here I feed him every day and wait on him like he’s a noble. If you think about it, he’s probably never had it so good.”
“Still…” Semerket stood, shaking his head doubtfully. He hoped that when his own Day of Pain came, the gods would be merciful and kill him outright. He looked about the square, searching for Rami, but in the fading light of dusk, the faces of the sick were indistinguishable from one another.
The boy spoke to him. “Have you any other cure to suggest, other than to open his skull?” he asked.
“No,” answered Semerket
, still looking into the faces of the sick, “it’s the only cure I know—”
He broke off, the words dying on his lips. Semerket quickly retraced the path his eye had taken; once again, he had seen someone he thought he knew.
“Marduk—?” he said aloud in wonder. Then Semerket yelled, “Marduk!”
Not fifty paces away, his one-time slave was speaking to one of the ailing. Marduk jerked his head up when he heard his name. Even in the twilight, Semerket thought he saw his eyes widen in surprise. Without hesitating, Marduk bolted for a nearby lane.
