Warlock: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  When she had gone Taita sat for a while collecting his thoughts, reviewing his plans. He could not do it alone, and he would have to rely on others, but he had chosen the best and most reliable. They were ready to act, and they had been waiting for his word. He could delay no longer.

  At his bidding the slaves brought kettles of hot water and Taita washed Nefer carefully from head to foot and rebandaged his wounds, placing a dressing of lambs-wool over the gaping opening in his thigh that was still draining.

  When he had finished, he warned the guards not to let anybody pass, and barred all the entrances to the chamber. He prayed for a while and then threw incense on the brazier and in the blue and aromatic smoke made an ancient, potent incantation to Anubis, the god of death and cemeteries.

  Only then did he prepare the elixir of Anubis in a new and unused oil lamp. He warmed the mixture on the brazier until it was the temperature of blood, and took it to the bed where Nefer was sleeping quietly. Gently he turned his head to one side and placed the spout of the lamp in his ear. He poured the elixir into the eardrum, a heavy viscid drop at a time. Carefully he wiped away the excess, taking care that it should not touch his own skin. Then he plugged Nefer’s ear with a small ball of wool and pushed it deeply into the passage until it could not be detected by any but a detailed examination.

  He emptied what remained of the elixir onto the coals of the brazier, and it flared in a puff of acrid steam. Then he filled the lamp with oils and lit the wick. He placed it with the other lamps in the corner of the chamber.

  He went back to the bed and squatted beside it. He watched Nefer’s chest rise and fall to his breathing. Each breath was slower and the intervals between them longer. At last they ceased altogether. He placed two fingers on Nefer’s throat beneath his ear, and felt the slow deliberate pulsing of the life force within him. Gradually that also faded away until it was only a flutter like the wing of a tiny insect that took all his skill and experience to detect. With the fingers of his left hand he counted the beating of the life force in his own neck, and compared the two.

  At last his own beat was three hundred to a single barely detectable flutter in Nefer’s neck. Gently he closed the boy’s eyes, placed an amulet on the lids in the traditional preparation of the corpse. Next he bound a strip of linen over them, and another strip under his jaw to keep his mouth from gaping open. He worked quickly, for there was danger in every minute that Nefer remained under the influence of the elixir. At last he went to the door and removed the locking bar.

  “Send word to the Regent of the Upper Kingdom. He should come immediately to hear terrible tidings of Pharaoh.”

  Lord Naja arrived with surprising alacrity. Princess Heseret was with him, and they were followed by a crowd of their intimates, which included Lord Asmor, the Assyrian doctor Noom and most of the members of the council.

  Naja ordered the others to wait in the corridor outside the royal apartments, while he and Heseret came into the chamber. Taita rose from beside the bed to greet them.

  Heseret was weeping ostentatiously and covering her eyes with an embroidered linen shawl. Naja glanced at the bandaged body laid out stiffly on the couch, then glanced at Taita with a question in his eyes. In reply Taita nodded slightly. Naja masked the gleam of triumph in his eyes, then knelt beside the bed. He laid one hand on Nefer’s chest and felt the warmth slowly ebbing to be replaced by a spreading coolness. Naja prayed aloud to Horus, who was the patron god of the dead pharaoh. When he rose to his feet again he took Taita’s upper arm in a firm grip.

  “Console yourself, Magus, you did all that we could require of you. You will not lack reward.” He clapped his hands, and when the guard hurried through the door he ordered, “Summon the members of the council to assemble.”

  They filed into the room in solemn procession and formed up around the bed three deep.

  “Let the good doctor Noom come forward,” Naja ordered. “Let him confirm the Magus’ pronouncement of Pharaoh’s death.”

  The ranks opened for the Assyrian to reach the couch. His long locks had been curled with hot tongs and dangled to his shoulders. His beard had also been curled in the fashion of Babylon. His robe swept the floor and was decorated with embroidered symbols of strange gods and magical patterns. He knelt beside the deathbed and began an examination of the corpse. He sniffed at Nefer’s lips with a huge hooked nose from whose nostrils protruded clumps of black hair. Then he placed his ear against Nefer’s chest and listened, during a hundred beats of Taita’s anxious heart. He had placed much store in the Assyrian’s ineptitude.

  Then Noom took a long silver pin from the hem of his robe and opened Nefer’s limp hand. He pricked the point deeply up under the fingernail and watched for a muscular reaction or for a drop of blood to form.

  At last he stood up slowly, and Taita thought that there was evidence of deep disappointment in his curled lip and lugubrious expression as he shook his head. Taita reflected that he had certainly been offered untold rewards to use the silver pin to other effect. “Pharaoh is dead,” he announced, and those around the bed made the sign against the evil eye and the wrath of the gods.

  Lord Naja threw back his head and gave the first cry of lamentation, and Heseret, standing behind him, took up the wailing cry in her lovely soaring voice.

  Taita hid his impatience while he waited for the mourners to file past the couch, and one by one to leave the chamber. When only Naja and Heseret, Noom and the viziers of the nomes of the Upper Kingdom remained, Taita stepped forward again. “Lord Naja, I beg your indulgence. You are aware that I have been Pharaoh Nefer Seti’s tutor and servant since his birth. I owe him respect and duty, even now in death. I beg you to grant me a boon. Will you allow me to be the one to convey his corpse to the Hall of Sorrow, and there to make the incision to remove his heart and viscera? I would take that as the greatest honor you could bestow on me.”

  Lord Naja thought for a while, then nodded. “You have earned that honor. I charge you with the duty of conveying Pharaoh’s sacred body to the funeral temple, and of beginning the process of embalming by making the incision.”

  The old warrior, Hilto, came swiftly to Taita’s summons. He had been waiting in the guardroom at the palace gates. With him he brought the Nubian shaman, Bay, and four of his most trusted men. One of these was Meren, the friend and companion of Nefer’s childhood. He was now a handsome ensign of the guards, tall of stature and clear of eye. Taita had asked for him particularly to take part in these duties.

  Between them they carried the long woven basket that the embalmers used to transport their cadavers to the funerary temple. The empty basket appeared heavier than one might have expected.

  Taita let them into the death chamber and whispered to Hilto, “Swiftly now! Every second is precious.”

  He had already wrapped Nefer in a long white winding sheet, with a loose fold of linen covering his face. The pallbearers laid the basket beside the couch and lifted Nefer reverently into it. Taita packed bolsters around the body to cushion it during the move, then closed the lid and nodded. “To the temple,” he said. “All is in readiness.”

  Taita trusted his bag to Meren, and they moved quickly through the passages and courtyards of the palace. The sounds of mourning and lamentation followed them. The guards lowered the points of their weapons and knelt as the dead pharaoh passed. The women covered their faces, and wailed. All the lamps had been extinguished, and the fires in the kitchens had been drawn so that no smoke rose from the chimneys.

  In the entrance courtyard a squadron of Hilto’s chariots was drawn up with the horses in the traces. The bearers laid the long basket on the footplate of the leading chariot and secured it with leather straps. Meren placed Taita’s leather instrument bag in the cockpit, and Taita mounted and took the reins. The rams’ horns of the regiment sounded a dirge, and the column moved out through the gates at a walk.

  The news of Pharaoh’s death had spread through the city like the plague. The citizens crowded around the
gates, wailing and ululating as the column passed. Crowds lined the route along the river. Women, howling their grief, ran forward and threw the sacred lotus blossoms onto the basket.

  Taita pushed the horses into a trot, then into a canter. He was desperate to get the basket into the sanctuary of the funerary temple. The temple of Nefer’s father had not yet been demolished even though Pharaoh Tamose had been taken months ago to his tomb in the bleak hills to the west. No temple had yet been built for Nefer: he was so young that the expectation of his life stretched far ahead of him. His death now was untimely and left them no alternative but to use the building prepared for his father.

  The tall, rose-colored granite walls and portico of the temple were set upon a low prominence overlooking the green river. The priests, hastily assembled, were waiting to greet the column. Their heads were freshly shaven and anointed with oil. The drums and sistrum beat a slow tempo as Taita drove up the wide causeway and halted the chariot at the foot of the staircase that mounted to the Hall of Sorrow.

  Hilto and his warriors lifted the basket and climbed the staircase with it balanced on their shoulders. The priests fell in behind them, singing mournfully. Before the open wooden doors of the Hall of Sorrow the pallbearers paused, and Taita looked back at the priests.

  “By the grace and authority of the Regent of Egypt, I, Taita, have been charged with lifting Pharaoh’s viscera.” He fixed the high priest with a mesmeric gaze. “All others will wait without while I perform this sacred charge.”

  There was a hum of consternation among the brotherhood of Anubis. This was a solecism, against tradition and their own authority. But Taita held the priest’s eye sternly, then slowly lifted his right hand holding the Periapt of Lostris. The priest knew, by fearful repute, the power of that relic. “As the Regent of Egypt has decreed,” he capitulated. “We will pray without while the Magus performs his duty.”

  Taita led Hilto and the bearers through the doorway and they solemnly laid the basket on the floor beside the black diorite slab in the center of the Hall of Sorrow. Taita glanced at Hilto, and the grizzled old commander marched to the doors with great dignity and shut them in the faces of the assembled priests. Then he hurried back to Taita’s side. Between them they opened the basket and lifted out Nefer’s wrapped body. They laid it on the black slab.

  Taita turned back the fold of cloth that covered Nefer’s face. He looked pale and lovely as an ivory carving of the young god Horus. Gently Taita turned his head to one side, and nodded at Bay, who placed the leather instrument bag close to his right hand and opened it. Taita selected the ivory forceps, slipped the points into Nefer’s ear and drew out the woolen plug. He filled his own mouth with dark ruby-colored liquid from a glass jar, and through a gold tube carefully sluiced the dregs of the elixir of Anubis from Nefer’s eardrums. When he looked deep into the ear passages he was relieved to see that there was no inflammation. Next he introduced a soothing ointment into the ear orifices and replugged them. Bay had the antidote to the elixir ready in another vial. When he opened the stopper it released a sharp odor of camphor and sulfur. Hilto helped them to lift Nefer into a sitting position and Taita administered the entire contents of the vial.

  Meren and the others had been watching this with blank incomprehension. Suddenly Nefer coughed harshly and, with superstitious dread, they sprang back from the slab and made the sign against evil. Taita massaged Nefer’s bare back and he coughed again, vomiting a little yellow bile. While Taita kept working steadily at reviving him, Hilto ordered his men to their knees and made them swear a dreadful oath of secrecy as to all that they were witnessing. Shaken and pale, they swore their lives into jeopardy.

  Taita placed his ear to Nefer’s back, listened for a while, then nodded. He massaged him again, and listened once more. He signed to Bay, who took a twist of dried herbs from the bag and lit the end at one of the temple lamps. He held it under Nefer’s nose. The boy sneezed and tried to turn his head away. Satisfied at last, Taita rewrapped him in the linen sheet, and made another sign to Bay and Hilto.

  The three turned back to the basket. The others gaped as Taita lifted out the false bottom and revealed another corpse laid in the compartment beneath. This body also was wrapped in a white linen winding sheet.

  “Come!” Hilto ordered. “Lift it out!”

  Under Taita’s sharp eye and Hilto’s stern instruction they exchanged the two bodies. They laid Nefer in the hidden compartment in the bottom of the basket, but did not yet replace the false bottom. Bay squatted beside the basket to watch Nefer and to check his condition. The others laid the strange corpse on the diorite slab.

  Taita swept away the winding sheet and revealed the body of a youth of about the same age and bodily shape as Nefer. He had the same thick dark hair. It had been Hilto’s responsibility to procure this corpse. In the present climate in the land this had not been difficult. The plague was still flourishing in the poorer outlying areas of the nome. In addition, there were the nightly gleanings from the streets and alleys of the city, the victims of brawling, outright murder, or footpads.

  Hilto had considered all these sources. However, in the end he had found, in circumstances so perfect to the quest that they could not have been coincidental, the ideal substitute for the young Pharaoh. The city bailiffs had arrested this lad in the very act of slitting the purse of one of the most influential millet merchants in Thebes, and the magistrates had not hesitated to sentence him to death by strangulation. The condemned lad was so like in body and general complexion to Nefer as to be able to pass as his brother. In addition, he was well set-up and healthy, not like the starvelings and plague victims. Hilto had spoken to the commander of the city guards who had been charged with carrying out the execution, and during this friendly exchange three heavy gold rings had found their way into that worthy’s purse. It was agreed that the strangulation be delayed until Hilto gave him the word, and that it would be carried out with as little apparent damage to the victim as the executioner’s skill could encompass. The prisoner had been given justice that very morning and his body was not yet cold.

  The canopic jars were arranged in the small shrine at the end of the hall. Taita ordered Meren to fetch them and open the stoppers ready for filling. While he was doing this, Taita rolled the corpse over and made a sweeping incision down his left side. There was little time for surgical finesse. He thrust his hand into the opening and drew forth the viscera, then, using both hands, he worked the scalpel deep into the interior of the corpse. First he cut through the diaphragm to gain access to the chest cavity, then reached deeper, past the lungs, liver and spleen, until he could sever the windpipe above its juncture with the lungs. Finally he rolled the corpse over, ordered Meren to hold the buttocks apart and with sure strokes freed the sphincter muscles of the anus. Now all the contents of the interior of the chest and abdomen were unanchored.

  He brought them out onto the diorite slab in a single mass. Meren blanched, swayed on his feet and clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “Not on the floor, in the sink,” Taita ordered brusquely. Meren had fought against Apepi’s regiments in the north. He had killed a man and been unaffected by the carnage of the battlefield, but now he fled to the stone basin in the corner and puked noisily into it.

  Bloodied to the elbows, Taita began to separate the liver, lungs, stomach and entrails into piles. As soon as this was done he took the entrails and stomach to the sink, wherein already reposed Meren’s contribution. He flushed out the contents of the dismembered stomach and entrails and packed them into their jars. He filled every jar with the pickling natron salts, and sealed the stoppers. Then he washed his hands and arms in the bronze basins filled with water expressly for that purpose.

  He glanced inquiringly at Bay, and the Nubian nodded his bald, scarified head, reassuring Taita as to Nefer’s condition. Working with controlled haste, Taita stitched the abdominal incision closed. Then he bandaged the head until its features were hidden. When that was done, he and Hilto ca
rried the corpse to the large natron bath and lowered it into the harsh alkali mixture, until only the bandaged head was not immersed. It would remain in the bath, with the head covered, for the next sixty days. At the end of that time the priests would remove the bandage, and discover the substitution. By that time, however, Taita and Nefer would be far away.

  It took only a little longer to sluice down the slab with leather buckets of water, and to pack Taita’s instruments, before they were ready to leave. Taita knelt beside the basket in which Nefer lay, and laid a hand on his naked chest to feel the warmth of his skin and to check his breathing. It was slow and even. He drew down one eyelid and watched the pupil react to the light. Satisfied, he stood up and gestured for Hilto and Bay to cover the hidden compartment. When this was done and they began to replace the basket lid, Taita stopped them. “Leave it open,” he ordered. “Let the priests see that it is empty.”

  The bearers lifted the basket by its handles and Taita led them to the doors. As they approached, Hilto threw them open, and the assembly of priests craned forward. They gave the empty basket only a cursory glance as it was carried out, then rushed into the Hall of Sorrow with almost indecent haste to take over the duties that had been usurped from them.

  Ignored by the crowds that had gathered outside the temple, Taita’s men loaded the basket onto the leading chariot and drove in a column back to the city.

  When they entered the main gates they found the narrow streets almost deserted. The populace had either flocked to the funerary temple to pray for the young Pharaoh or hurried to the palace to await the announcement of his successor, although there was little doubt in anyone’s mind as to who would be the next pharaoh of the Upper Kingdom.

  Hilto drove the chariot to the guards’ barracks near the east gate, and the basket was carried through the back entrance of his private quarters. Here, everything was in readiness to receive Nefer. They lifted him out of the bottom compartment and Taita, with Bay assisting him, went to work to revive Nefer fully. Within hours he was well enough to eat a little millet bread and drink a bowl of warm mare’s milk and honey.