River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  The anger that seized me was a form of madness. It was aggravated by my unsteady state and sombre mood. I found that I was shaking with a rage that I had never known before. I drew the little dagger from my belt and before I realized what I was doing, I was rushing down the steps of the terrace with the naked blade in my hand. I knew that at this time of the morning Intef would be in his water-garden. I could no longer bear to think of him as my Lord Intef. The memory of every outrage he had ever visited upon me, every agony and every humiliation, was bright and clear in my mind. I was going to kill him now, stab him a hundred times through that cruel and evil heart.

  I was in sight of the gate to the water-garden before I regained my sanity. There were half a dozen guards at the gate, and there would be as many more beyond. I would never get within dagger-thrust of the grand vizier before they cut me down. I forced my flying feet to check and turn back. I slipped the dagger into the jewelled leather sheath, and brought my breathing under control. I walked slowly back to the terrace and gathered up the pathetic bodies of my pets.

  I had planned to plant a row of sycamore trees along the border of my garden. The holes to take them had already been dug. The trees would never be planted now that I was leaving Karnak, and the pits would serve as graves for my beloved creatures. It was the middle of the afternoon before I had filled the last grave, but my rage was unabated. If I could not yet have my full vengeance, at least I could give myself a foretaste of it.

  There was still a little of the sour milk left in the jug beside my bed. I held the jug in my hands and tried to think of some way in which I could get it to the grand vizier’s kitchens. It would be so fitting to pay him his own vile coin, although I knew in my heart that the idea was futile. Lord Intef was far too cunning to be taken so easily. I myself had helped him devise the system he used to keep himself secure from poison and assassination. He could not be reached without much careful planning. What was more, he would be especially on his guard now. I would have to be patient, but that was impossible. Even if I could not kill him yet, I could exact some lesser payment as a deposit against what I was determined must follow.

  Still carrying the fatal jug, I slipped out of one of the side-doors of the boys’ quarters into the street. I did not have to go far to find a milkman surrounded by his flock of nanny-goats. While I waited he stripped the rich milk from the swollen udders of one of them, topping the jug to the brim. Whoever had prepared the poison had used enough to murder half the citizens of Karnak. I knew that more than sufficient remained in the jug for my purpose.

  One of the grand vizier’s bodyguards loafed at the door to Rasfer’s chamber. The fact that he had him under guard proved to me that Rasfer was still valuable to Lord Intef, and the loss of his personal lieutenant would annoy if not seriously discommode him.

  The guard recognized me and waved me into the sickroom that smelled like a sty. Rasfer lay on his filthy bed, basting in his own sweat. However, I could tell at once that my surgery had been successful, for he opened his eyes and cursed me weakly. He must also be so certain of his own eventual recovery that he need no longer toady to me.

  ‘Where have you been, you ball-less freak?’ he growled at me, hardening my resolve and ridding me of the last traces of any pity that I might have felt for him. ‘I have been in agony ever since you drilled into my skull. What kind of physician are you—’

  There was much more in this style, which I pretended to ignore as I unwound the soiled bandage from around his head. My interest was purely academic as I examined the small wound that the trepan had left in his scalp. It was another perfectly executed operation, and I felt a certain professional regret that it would be wasted.

  ‘Give me something for the pain, eunuch!’ Rasfer tried to seize the front of my tunic, but I was too quick for him and stepped back out of his reach.

  I made a fuss of shaking a few crystals of harmless salt from a glass vial into his drinking-bowl, and then topped it up with milk from my jug.

  ‘If the pain becomes too bad, this will relieve it,’ I told him as I set the bowl near to his hand. Even at this stage, I could not bring myself to hand it to him directly.

  He heaved himself up on one elbow and reached for the bowl to guzzle it down. Before his fingers touched it, I pushed it out of his reach with my foot. At the moment I thought that this was merely a desire to prolong the anticipation, and I felt satisfaction at his distress as he whined at me, ‘Good Taita, give me the potion. Let me drink. This pain in my head will drive me mad.’

  ‘First let’s talk a while, good Rasfer. Did you hear that the Lady Lostris asked for me as her parting gift from Lord Intef?’

  Even in his pain, he grinned at me. ‘You are a fool if you think he will let you go. You are a dead man.’

  ‘The very words Lord Intef used. Will you mourn for me, Rasfer? Will you weep for me when I am gone?’ I asked softly, and he began to chuckle, then broke it off and glanced at the bowl.

  ‘In my own way, I have always been rather fond of you,’ he grunted. ‘Now let me have the bowl.’

  ‘How fond of me were you when you castrated me?’ I asked, and he stared up at me.

  ‘Surely you do not still bear a grudge for that? It was long ago, and besides, I could not disobey the orders of Lord Intef. Be reasonable, Taita, let me have the bowl.’

  ‘You laughed as you cut me. Why did you laugh? Did you enjoy it so much?’

  He shrugged and then winced at the pain that the movement caused him. ‘I am a jovial man. I always laugh. Come now, old friend, say you forgive me and let me have the bowl.’

  I nudged it towards him with my foot. He reached out and seized it, his movements still uncoordinated. A few drops slopped over the rim as he raised it greedily to his mouth.

  I didn’t realize what I was about to do, until I had leapt forward and struck the bowl out of his hands. It hit the floor without shattering and rolled into the corner, splashing milk up on to the wall.

  Rasfer and I stared at each other. I was appalled by my own stupidity and my weakness. If ever a man deserved a death by the agony of poison, it was this one. But then I saw again the contorted bodies of my pets strewn across the terrace, and I knew why I had not been able to allow Rasfer to drink. Only a fiend could commit such an act. I have too high a regard for myself ever to descend to the ignominy of the poisoner.

  I saw understanding dawn in Rasfer’s bloodshot eyes. ‘Poison,’ he whispered. ‘The bowl was poisoned.’

  ‘It was sent to me by Lord Intef.’ I don’t know why I told him this. Perhaps I was trying to excuse myself for the atrocity that I had almost committed. I don’t know why I was behaving so strangely. Maybe it was still the aftereffects of working the Mazes. I staggered slightly as I turned for the door.

  Behind me Rasfer began to laugh, softly at first and then louder, until great gusty bellows of laughter seemed to shake the walls.

  ‘You are a fool, eunuch,’ he roared after me as I ran. ‘You should have done it. You should have killed me, for now as surely as I have a hole between my buttocks, I will kill you.’

  As I had expected, when at last I returned to her chamber my Lady Lostris was still asleep. I settled at the foot of her bed, intending to wait for her to wake on her own. However, the rigours and the exertions of the past day and night had been too much for me. I slumped down and fell asleep, curled like a puppy on the tiles.

  * * *

  I woke under attack. Something struck the side of my head such a painful blow that I was on my feet before I was properly awake. The next blow took me across the shoulder and stung like the bite of a hornet.

  ‘You cheated me!’ my Lady Lostris screamed at me. ‘You did not let me die.’ She swung the fan again. It was a formidable weapon, the bamboo handle was as long as twice the span of my arms, and the comb at its head that held the fan of ostrich feathers was of solid silver. Fortunately she was still groggy from the drug and from oversleeping, and her aim was erratic. I ducked under the blow, and t
he momentum of it swung her around so that she collapsed on the bed again.

  She dropped the fan and burst into tears. ‘I wanted to die. Why did you not let me die?’

  It was some time before I could approach her, and put one arm around her to comfort her. ‘Did I hurt you, Taita?’ she asked. ‘I have never beaten you before.’

  ‘Your first attempt was a very good one,’ I congratulated her ruefully. ‘In fact you are so good at it that I do not think you need practise it further.’ Theatrically I rubbed the side of my head, and she smiled through her tears.

  ‘Poor Taita. I do treat you so badly. But you did deserve it. You cheated me. I wanted to die and you disobeyed me.’

  I saw it was time to change the subject. ‘Mistress, I have the most remarkable news for you. But you must promise to tell no one of it, not even your maids.’ Not since she had first learned to talk had she been able to resist a secret, but then what woman can? The promise of one had always been enough to distract her, and it worked yet again.

  Even with her heart broken and the threat of suicide hanging over her, she sniffed back the last of her tears and ordered, ‘Tell me!’

  Recently, I had accumulated a good store of secrets to choose from, and I paused for a moment to make my selection. I would not tell her of the poisoning of my pets, of course, nor of my glimpse of Tanus. I needed something to cheer her rather than to depress her further.

  ‘Last night I went to Pharaoh’s bedchamber and I spoke to him for half the night.’

  The tears rose to the surface of her eyes once more, ‘Oh, Taita, I hate him. He’s an ugly old man. I don’t want to have to—’

  I wanted no more in that vein, in moments she would be weeping again, so I hurried on, ‘I worked the Mazes for him.’ Instantly I had her complete attention. My Lady Lostris is totally fascinated by my powers of divination. If it were not for the deleterious effect that the Mazes have upon my health, she would make me work them every single day.

  ‘Tell me! What did you see?’ She was riveted. No thought of suicide now, all sadness forgotten. She was still so young and artless that I felt ashamed of my trickery, even though it was for her own good.

  ‘I had the most extraordinary visions, mistress. I have never had such clear images, such depths of sight—’

  ‘Tell me! I declare I will die of impatience if you don’t tell me immediately.’

  ‘First you must swear secrecy. Not another soul must ever know what I saw. These are affairs of state and dire consequence.’

  ‘I swear. I swear.’

  ‘We cannot take these matters lightly—’

  ‘Get on with it, Taita. You are teasing me now. I order you to tell me this very moment or, or,’ she groped for a threat to coerce me, ‘or I shall beat you again.’

  ‘Very well. Listen to my vision. I saw a great tree upon the bank of the Nile. Upon the summit of the tree was the crown of Egypt.’

  ‘Pharaoh! The tree was the king.’ She saw it at once, and I nodded. ‘Go on, Taita. Tell me the rest of it.’

  ‘I saw the Nile rise and fall five times.’

  ‘Five years, the passing of five years!’ She clapped her hands with excitement. She loves to unravel the riddles of my dreams.

  ‘Then the tree was devoured by locusts, and thrown down and turned to dust.’

  She stared at me, unable to utter the words, so I spoke for her. ‘In five years Pharaoh will be dead, and you will be a free woman. Free from your father’s thrall. Free to go to Tanus, with no man to stop you.’

  ‘If you are lying to me, it will be too cruel to bear. Please say it is true.’

  ‘It is true, my lady, but there is more. In the vision, I saw a new-born babe, a boy child, a son. I felt my love go out to the infant, and I knew that you were the mother of the child.’

  ‘The father, who was the father of my baby? Oh, Taita, tell me please.’

  ‘In the dream I knew with absolute certainty that the father was Tanus.’ This was the first deviation from the truth that I had allowed myself, but once again I had the consolation of believing that it was for her benefit.

  She was silent for a long time, but her face shone with an inner glow that was all the reward I could ever ask for. Then at last she whispered, ‘I can wait for five years. I was prepared to wait all eternity for him. It will be hard, but I can wait five years for Tanus. You were right not to let me die, Taita. It would have been an offence in the face of the gods.’

  My relief buoyed me up, and I now felt more confident that I would be able to steer her safely through all that lay ahead.

  * * *

  At dawn the following day the royal flotilla sailed south from Karnak. As the king had promised, my Lady Lostris and all her entourage were on board one of the small, fast galleys of the southern squadron.

  I sat with my mistress on the cushions under the awning on the poop that the captain had arranged especially for her. We looked back at the lime-washed buildings of the city shining in the first tangerine tints of the rising sun.

  ‘I cannot think where he has gone.’ She was fretting over Tanus as she had a score of times since we had set sail. ‘Did you look everywhere for him?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ I confirmed. ‘I spent half the morning scouring the inner city and the docks. He has disappeared. But I left your message with Kratas. You can be sure Kratas will deliver it to him.’

  ‘Five years without him, will they ever pass?’

  * * *

  The voyage up-river passed pleasantly enough in long, leisurely days spent sitting on the poop-deck in conversation with my mistress. We discussed every detail of our changed circumstances in great depth, and examined all that we might expect and hope for in the future.

  I explained to her all the complexities of life at the court, the precedent and the protocol. I traced for her the hidden lines of power and influence, and I listed all those whom it would be in our interest to cultivate and those whom we could safely ignore. I explained to her the issues of the day, and how Pharaoh stood on each of them. Then I went on to discuss with her the feeling and the mood of the citizenry.

  In a large measure I was indebted to my friend Aton, the royal chamberlain, for all this intelligence. It seemed that over the last dozen years every ship that had come down-river from Elephantine Island to Karnak had carried a letter from him to me full of these fascinating details, and on its return to Elephantine Island had carried a golden token of my gratitude back to my friend, Aton.

  I was determined that we would soon be at the centre of the court and in the mainstream of power. I had not trained my mistress all these years to see the weapons that I had placed in her armoury rust with disuse. The sum of her many accomplishments and her talents was already formidable, but I was patiently adding to it each day. She had a keen and restless mind. Once I had helped her to throw off the black mood that had threatened to destroy her, she was, as always, open to my instruction. Every chance I had, I fired up her ambition and her eagerness to take up the role I had planned for her.

  I soon found that one of the most effective means of enlisting her attention and cooperation was to suggest that all this would be to the eventual benefit and advantage of Tanus. ‘If you have influence at court, you will be better able to protect him,’ I pointed out to her. ‘The king has set him an almost impossible task to fulfil. Tanus will need us if he is to succeed, and if he fails only you will be able to save him from the sentence that the king has placed upon him.’

  ‘What can we do to help him carry out his task?’ At the mention of Tanus I immediately had all her attention. ‘Tell me truly, will any man be able to stamp out the Shrikes? Is it not too difficult a mission, even for a man like Tanus?’

  The bandits that terrorized the Upper Kingdom called themselves the Shrikes, after those fierce birds. Our Nile shrike is smaller than a dove; a handsome little creature with a white chest and throat and a black back and cap, it plunders the nests of other birds and makes a grisly display of the
pathetic carcasses of its victims by hanging them on the thorns of the acacia tree. Its vernacular name is the Butcher Bird.

  In the beginning the bandits had used it as a cryptic name to conceal their identity and to hide their existence, but since they had grown so strong and fearless, they had adopted it openly and often used the black and white feather of the Butcher Bird as their emblem.

  In the beginning they would leave the feather on the doorway of a home they had robbed or on the corpse of one of their victims. But in those days, so bold and so organized had they become that at times they might send a feather to an intended victim as a warning. In most cases that was all that was necessary to make the victim pay over a half of all he owned in the world. That was preferable to having all of it pillaged, and having his wives and daughters carried off and raped, and he and his sons thrown into the burning ruins of their home to boot.

  ‘Do you think it possible that even with the power of the hawk seal Tanus will be able to carry out the king’s mission?’ my mistress repeated. ‘I have heard that all the bands of the Shrikes in the whole of the Upper Kingdom are controlled by one man, someone that they call the Akh-Seth, the brother of Seth. Is that true, Taita?’

  I thought for a moment before I answered. I could not yet tell her all I knew of the Shrikes, for if I did so, then I would be forced to reveal how such knowledge had come into my possession. At this stage that would not be much to her advantage, nor to my credit. There might be a time for these disclosures later.

  ‘I have also heard that rumour,’ I agreed cautiously. ‘It seems to me that if Tanus were to find and crush this one man, Akh-Seth, then the Shrikes would crumble away. But Tanus will need help that only I can give him.’

  She looked at me shrewdly. ‘How can you help him?’ she demanded. ‘And what do you know about this business?’

  She is quick, and hard to deceive. She sensed at once that I was hiding something from her. I had to retreat swiftly and to play on her love of Tanus and her trust in me.