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

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘What of the accusations of the barons?’ Pharaoh asked at last. ‘What reply do you make to them?’

  ‘Barons?’ Lord Intef asked. ‘Must we flatter them with such a title? By their own testimony they are criminals of the basest kind—murderers, thieves, violators of women and children. Should we look for truth in them any more than we should look for honour and conscience in the beasts of the field?’ Lord Intef pointed to them, and they were indeed half-naked and bound like animals. ‘Let us gaze upon them, Divine Majesty. Are these not the kind of men that can be bribed or beaten into saying anything for the sake of their own skins? Would you take the word of one of these against a man who has served you faithfully all his life?’

  I saw the small, involuntary nod of the king’s head as he accepted the reasoning of the man he had looked upon as a friend, the man upon whom he had heaped trust and rewards.

  ‘All you say is true. You have always served me without vice. These rogues are strangers to truth and honour. It is possible that they may have been coerced.’ He vacillated, and Lord Intef sensed his advantage.

  ‘So far I have had only words thrown at me. Surely there must be some other evidence to support such mortal charges against me? Is there one person in this very Egypt who will bring evidence against me, real evidence and not mere words? If there is, let him come forward. Then I will answer this charge. If there is no one who has this evidence, then I have nothing to answer to.’

  His words troubled Pharaoh deeply, I could see that. He gazed about the hall as if seeking the evidence that Lord Intef demanded, and then he obviously reached a decision.

  ‘Lord Tanus, what proof do you have of these things, apart from the words of murderers and criminals?’

  ‘The beast has covered his tracks well,’ Tanus admitted, ‘and he has taken cover in the densest thicket where it is difficult to come at him. I have no further evidence against Lord Intef, but there may be some other who does, somebody who will be inspired by what he has heard here today. I beg you, Royal Egypt, ask your people if there is not one of them who can bring forth anything to help us here.’

  ‘Pharaoh, this is provocation. My enemies will be emboldened to come out of the shadows where they lurk to attack me,’ cried Lord Intef in vehement protest, but Pharaoh silenced him with a brusque gesture. ‘They will bear false witness against you at their peril,’ he promised, and then addressed the congregation.

  ‘My people! Citizens of Thebes! You have heard the accusations made against my trusted and well-beloved grand vizier. Is there one of you who can provide the proof that Lord Tanus lacks? Can any of you bring forward evidence against the Lord Intef? If so, I charge you to speak.’

  I was standing before I realized what I had done, and my voice was so loud in my own ears that it startled me.

  ‘I am Taita, who was once the slave of Lord Intef,’ I shouted, and Pharaoh looked across at me and frowned. ‘I have aught that I wish to show Your Majesty.’

  ‘You are known to us, Taita the physician. You may approach.’

  As I left my seat on the stand and went down to stand before the king, I looked across at Lord Intef and I missed my step. It was as though I had walked into a stone wall, so tangible was his hatred.

  ‘Divine Egypt, this thing is a slave.’ Lord Intef’s voice was cold and tight. ‘The word of a slave against a lord of the Theban circle, and a high officer of the state—what mockery is this?’

  I was still so conditioned to respond to his voice and to succumb to his word, that my resolve wavered. Then I felt Tanus’ hand on my arm. It was only a brief touch, but it manned and sustained me. However, Lord Intef had noticed the gesture, and he pointed it out to the king.

  ‘See how this slave is in the thrall of my accuser. Here is another one of Lord Tanus’ trained monkeys.’ Lord Intef’s voice was once more smooth as warm honey. ‘His insolence is unbounded. There are penalties laid down in the law codes—’

  Pharaoh silenced him with a gesture of his flail. ‘You presume on our good opinion of you, Lord Intef. The codes of law are mine to interpret or amend. In them there are penalties laid down for the high-born as well as the common man. You would be well advised to remember that.’

  Lord Intef bowed in submission and remained silent, but suddenly his face was haggard and drawn as he realized his predicament.

  Now the king looked down at me. ‘These are unusual circumstances, such as allow of unprecedented remedy. However, Taita the slave, let me warn you that if your words should prove frivolous, should they lack proof or substance, the strangling-rope awaits you.’

  That threat and the poisonous bane of Lord Intef’s gaze upon me made me stutter. ‘While I was the slave of the grand vizier, I was his messenger and his emissary to the barons. I know all these men.’ I pointed to the captives that Kratas held near to the throne. ‘It was I who carried Lord Intef’s commands to them.’

  ‘Lies! More words, lacking proof,’ Lord Intef called out, but now the edge of desperation was in his voice. ‘Where is the proof?’

  ‘Silence!’ the king thundered with sudden ferocity. ‘We will hear the testimony of Taita the slave.’ He was looking directly at me, and I drew breath to continue.

  ‘It was I who carried the command of Lord Intef to Basti the Cruel. The command was to destroy the estate and the fortune of Pianki, Lord Harrab. At that time I was the confidant of Intef, I knew that he desired the position of grand vizier to himself. All these things that Lord Intef commanded were accomplished. Lord Harrab was destroyed, and he was deprived of Pharaoh’s favour and love, so that he drank the Datura cup. I, Taita, attest all these things.’

  ‘It is so.’ Basti the Cruel lifted his bound arms to the throne. ‘All that Taita says is the truth.’

  ‘Bah-Her!’ shouted the barons. ‘It is the truth. Taita speaks the truth.’

  ‘Still these are only words,’ the king mused. ‘Lord Intef has demanded proof. I, your Pharaoh, demand proof.’

  ‘For half my lifetime I was the scribe and the treasurer of the grand vizier. I kept the record of his fortune. I noted his profits and his expenses on my scrolls. I gathered in the bounty that the barons of the Shrikes paid to Lord Intef, and I disposed of all this wealth.’

  ‘Can you show me these scrolls, Taita?’ Pharaoh’s expression shone like the full moon at the mention of treasure. Now I had his avid attention.

  ‘No, Majesty, I cannot do so. The scrolls remained always in the possession of Lord Intef.’

  Pharaoh made no effort to conceal his chagrin, his face hardened towards me, but I went on doggedly, ‘I cannot show you the scrolls, but perhaps I can lead you to the treasure that the grand vizier has stolen from you, and from the people of your realm. It was I who built his secret treasuries for him, and hid within them the bounty that I gathered from the barons. It was in these store-rooms that I placed the wealth that Pharaoh’s tax-collectors never saw.’

  The king’s excitement rekindled, hot as the coals on the coppersmith’s forge. He leaned forward intently. Although every eye in the temple was fastened upon me, and the nobles were crowding forward the better to hear each word, I was watching Lord Intef without seeming to look in his direction. The burnished copper doors of the sanctuary were tall mirrors in which his reflection was magnified. Every nuance of his expression and every movement he made, however slight, was clear to me.

  I had taken a fatal risk in assuming that his treasure still remained in the secret places where I had stored it for him. He might have moved it at any time during the past two years. Yet moving such quantities of treasure would have been a major work and the risk of doing so as great as letting it rest where it lay. He would have been forced to take others into his trust, and that was not easy for Lord Intef to do. He was by nature a suspicious man. Added to which was the fact that, until recently, he had believed me dead, and my secret with me.

  I calculated that my chances were evenly balanced, and I risked my life on it. Now I held my breath as I watched
Lord Intef’s reflection in the copper doors. Then my heart raced and my spirits soared on the wings of eagles. I saw from the pain and panic in his expression that the arrow I had fired at him had struck the mark. I had won. The treasure was where I had left it. I knew that I could lead Pharaoh to the plunder and the loot that Lord Intef had gathered up over his lifetime.

  But he was not yet defeated. I was rash to believe it would be so easily accomplished. I saw him make a gesture with his right hand that puzzled me, and while I dallied, it was almost too late.

  In my triumph, I had forgotten Rasfer. The signal that Lord Intef gave him was a flick of the right hand, but Rasfer responded like a trained boar-hound to the huntsman’s command to attack. He launched himself at me with such sudden ferocity that he took all of us by complete surprise. He had only ten paces to cover to reach me, and his sword rasped from its scabbard as he came.

  There were two of Kratas’ men standing between us, but their backs were turned to him, and Rasfer barged into them and knocked them off their feet, so that one of them sprawled across the stone flags in front of Tanus and blocked his path when he tried to spring to my aid. I was on my own, defenceless, and Rasfer threw up his sword with both hands to cleave through my skull to my breast-bone. I lifted my hands to ward off the blow, but my legs were frozen with shock and terror, and I could not move or duck away from the hissing blade.

  I never saw Tanus throw his sword. I had eyes for nothing but the face of Rasfer, but suddenly the sword was in the air. Terror had so enhanced my senses that time seemed to pass as slowly as spilled oil dribbling from the jar. I watched Tanus’ sword turning end over end, spinning slowly on its axis, flashing at each revolution like a sheet of summer lightning, but it had not completed a full turn when it struck, and it was the hilt and not the point that crashed into Rasfer’s head. It did not kill him, but it snapped his head over, whipping his neck like the branch of a willow in the wind, so that his eyes rolled back blindly in their sockets.

  Rasfer never completed the blow he aimed at me. His legs collapsed under him and he fell in a pile at my feet. His sword flew from his nerveless fingers, spinning high in the air, and then fell back. It pegged into the side of Pharaoh’s throne, and quivered there. The king stared at it in shocked disbelief. The razor edge had touched his arm, and split the skin. As we all watched, a line of ruby droplets oozed from the shallow wound, and dripped on to Pharaoh’s cloud-white linen kilt.

  Tanus broke the horrified silence. ‘Great Egypt, you saw who gave the signal for this beast to attack. You know who was to blame for endangering your royal person.’ He leaped over the downed guardsman and seized Lord Intef by the arm, twisting it until he fell to his knees and cried out with pain.

  ‘I did not want to believe this of you.’ Pharaoh’s expression was sorrowful as he looked down on his grand vizier. ‘I have trusted you all my life, and you have spat upon me.’

  ‘Great Egypt, hear me!’ Lord Intef begged on his knees, but Pharaoh turned his face away from him.

  ‘I have listened to you long enough.’ Then he nodded to Tanus. ‘Have your men guard him well, but show him courtesy, for his guilt is not yet fully proven.’

  Finally Pharaoh addressed the congregation. ‘These are strange and unprecedented events. I adjourn these proceedings to consider fully the evidence that Taita the slave will present to me. The population of Thebes will assemble once again to hear my judgement in this same place at noon tomorrow. I have spoken.’

  * * *

  We entered through the main doorway to the audience hall of the grand vizier’s palace. Pharaoh paused at the threshold. Although the wound from Rasfer’s sword was slight, I had bandaged it with linen and placed his arm in a sling.

  Pharaoh surveyed the hall slowly. At the far end of the long room stood the grand vizier’s throne. Carved from a solid block of alabaster, it was hardly less imposing than Pharaoh’s own in the throne room at Elephantine. The high walls were plastered with smooth clay and on this background were painted some of the most impressive frescoes that I had ever designed. They transformed the huge room into a blazing garden of delights. I had painted them while I was Lord Intef’s slave, and even though they were my own creations, they still gave me a deep thrill of pleasure when I looked upon them.

  I have no doubt that these works alone, without consideration of any other of my achievements, would support my claim to the title of the most significant artist in the history of our land. It was sad that I who had created them was now to demolish them. It detracted from the triumph of this tumultuous day.

  I led Pharaoh down the hall. For once we had dispensed with all protocol, and Pharaoh was as eager as a child. He followed me so closely that he almost trod upon my heels, and his royal train fell in as eagerly behind him.

  I led them to the throne wall and we stopped below the huge mural depicting the sun god, Ammon-Ra, on his daily journey across the heavens. Even in his excitement, I could see the reverent expression in the king’s eyes as he looked up at the painting.

  Behind us, the great hall was half-filled with the king’s train, the courtiers and the warriors and the noble lords, to say nothing of the royal wives and concubines who would rather have given up all their rouges and paint-boxes of cosmetics than miss such an exciting moment as I had promised them. Naturally, my mistress was in the forefront. Tanus marched only a pace behind the king. He and his Blues had taken over the duties of the royal bodyguard.

  The king turned back to Tanus now. ‘Have your men bring forward the Lord Intef!’

  Treating him with elaborate and icy courtesy, Kratas led Intef to face the wall, but he interposed himself between the prisoner and the king and stood with his naked blade at the ready.

  ‘Taita, you may proceed,’ the king told me, and I measured the wall, stepping out exactly thirty paces from the furthest corner and marking the distance with the lump of chalk that I had brought with me for the purpose.

  ‘Behind this wall lie the private quarters of the grand vizier,’ I explained to the king. ‘Certain alterations were made when last the palace was renovated. Lord Intef likes to have his wealth close at hand.’

  ‘Sometimes you are garrulous, Taita.’ Pharaoh was less than captivated by my lecture on the palace architecture. ‘Get on with it, fellow. I am aflame to see what is hidden here.’

  ‘Let the masons approach!’ I called out, and a small band of these sturdy rogues in their leather aprons came down the aisle and dropped their leather tool-bags at the foot of the throne wall. I had summoned them across the river from their work on Pharaoh’s tomb. The white stone-dust in their hair gave them an air of age and wisdom that few of them deserved.

  I borrowed a wooden set-square from their foreman, and with it marked out an oblong shape on the clay-plastered wall. Then I stepped back and addressed the master mason. ‘Gently now! Damage the frescoes as little as you can. They are great works of art.’

  With their wooden mallets and their chisels of flint, they fell upon the wall, and they paid little heed to my strictures. Paint and plaster flew in clouds as slabs of the outer wall were stripped away and thumped to the marble floor. The dust offended the ladies and they covered their mouths and noses with their shawls.

  Gradually from under the layer of plaster emerged the outline of the stone blocks. Then Pharaoh exclaimed aloud and, ignoring the flying dust, he drew closer, and peered at the design that appeared from beneath the plaster skin. The regular courses of stone blocks were marred by an oblong of alien-coloured stone that followed almost exactly the outline I had chalked upon the outer layer of plaster.

  ‘There is a hidden door in there,’ he cried. ‘Open it immediately!’

  Under the king’s urging, the masons attacked the sealed doorway with a will, and once they had removed the keystone, the other blocks came out readily. A dark opening was revealed, and Pharaoh, who had by now taken charge of the work, called excitedly for torches to be lit.

  ‘The entire space behind this w
all is a secret compartment,’ I told Pharaoh, while we waited for the torches to be brought to us. ‘I had it constructed on Lord Intef’s orders.’

  When the torches were brought, Tanus took one of them and lit the king’s way into the gaping secret door. The king stepped through, and I was the next to enter after him and Tanus.

  It was so long since I had last been in there that I looked around me with as much interest as the others. Nothing had changed in all that time. The chests and casks of cedar and acacia wood were stacked exactly as I had left them. I pointed out to the king those cases to which he should first devote his attention, and he ordered, ‘Have them carried out into the audience hall.’

  ‘You will need strong men to carry them,’ I remarked drily. ‘They are rather heavy.’

  It took three of the biggest men of the Blues to lift each case and they staggered out through the jagged opening in the wall with them.

  ‘I have never seen these boxes before,’ Lord Intef protested, as the first of them was carried out and laid on the dais of the grand vizier’s throne. ‘I had no knowledge of a secret chamber behind the wall. It must have been built by my predecessor, and the cases placed there at his command.’

  ‘Your Majesty, observe the seal on this lid.’ I pointed it out to him and the king peered at the clay tablet.

  ‘Whose seal is this?’ he demanded.

  ‘Observe the ring on the left forefinger of the grand vizier, Majesty,’ I murmured. ‘May I respectfully suggest that Pharaoh match it to the seal on this chest?’

  ‘Lord Intef, hand me your ring if you please,’ the king asked with exaggerated courtesy, and the grand vizier hid his left hand behind his back.

  ‘Great Egypt, the ring has been on my finger for twenty years. My flesh has grown around it and it cannot now be removed.’

  ‘Lord Tanus.’ The king turned to him. ‘Take your sword. Remove Lord Intef’s finger and bring it to me with the ring upon it.’ Tanus smiled cruelly as he stepped forward to obey, half-drawing his blade.