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

by Wilbur Smith

  When he had drunk it all, I waited for the pupils of his eyes to contract to pinpoints, and for the lids to droop over them. Then I sent the prince away with his nursemaids.

  * * *

  On leaving Thebes I had expected to have to deal with arrow wounds, so I had brought my spoons with me. I had designed this instrument myself, although there was a quack in Gaza and another in Memphis who both claimed it was their invention. I blessed the spoons and my scalpels in the lamp flame, and then washed my hands in hot wine.

  ‘I do not think it is wise to use one of your spoons when the head of the arrow is so deep and so near the heart,’ my mistress told me as she watched my preparations. There are occasions when she speaks as though the student had outpaced the master.

  ‘If I leave the arrow, it will certainly mortify. I will have killed him just as surely as if I had chopped his head off his shoulders. This is the only way that I will have a chance of saving him.’

  For a moment we looked into each other’s eyes, and we spoke without words. This was the vision of the Mazes of Ammon-Ra. Did we wish to avoid the benevolent consequences to ourselves?

  ‘He is my husband. He is Pharaoh.’ My mistress took my hand to emphasize her words. ‘Save him, Taita. Save him, if you can.’

  ‘You know that I will,’ I answered.

  ‘Do you need me to help you?’ She had assisted me so very often before. I nodded my assent, and stooped over the king.

  There were three ways that I might have attempted to withdraw the arrow. The first would be to pluck it out. I have heard of a surgeon in Damascus who bends down the supple branch of a tree and attaches this to the shaft. When he releases the branch, the arrow is whipped out of the living flesh by the strength of the sapling. I have never tried such brutal treatment for I am convinced that very few men would survive it.

  The second method would be to push the arrow through the limb or the torso until the barbed head emerges on the far side. To achieve this, it can be driven along its original path with a mallet, like a nail through a plank. Then the barb is sawn off and the shaft drawn free. This treatment is almost as brutal as the first.

  My method is the Taita spoon. I have named the spoon after myself in all modesty, for the claims of those others are spurious, and posterity needs to be informed of my genius.

  Firstly, I examined the Hyksos arrow that I had salvaged along with the bow from the overturned chariot. I was surprised to find that the arrow-head was of worked flint rather than of bronze. Of course, flint is cheaper and easier to procure in quantity, but I have seldom known a general who tries to economize when setting out to seize a kingdom. This flint arrow-head spoke eloquently of the Hyksos’ limited resources, and suggested a reason for his savage attack upon this very Egypt. Wars are fought for land or wealth, and it seemed that the Hyksos was short of both these commodities.

  I had to hope that the arrow-head buried in Pharaoh’s breast was of the same shape and design. I matched a pair of my spoons to the razor-edged piece of stone. My spoons are of various sizes, and I selected a pair that enclosed the head snugly, masking the wicked barbs with smoothly polished metal.

  By this time, the drug had worked its full magic, and Pharaoh lay unconscious upon his cloud-white linen sheets, with the snapped-off arrow standing out as far as my forefinger from the skin, which was wrinkled with age and covered with the frosted curls of his body hair. I laid my ear on his chest once more and heard his breath sigh and gurgle in his lungs. Satisfied that he still lived, I greased the spoons that I had selected with mutton fat, to lubricate their entry into the wound. I laid the spoons close at hand and took up one of my keenest scalpels.

  I nodded to the four strong guards that Queen Lostris had selected for me while I was busy with my preparations, and they took hold of Pharaoh’s wrists and ankles and held him down firmly. Queen Lostris sat at the king’s head and placed the wooden tube from my medical chest between his lips and deep back into his throat. This would keep his windpipe clear and open. It would also prevent him from biting or swallowing his own tongue, or grinding his teeth together and snapping them off, when the pain assaulted him too fiercely.

  ‘First I have to enlarge the wound around the shaft to enable me to reach the head of the arrow,’ I muttered to myself, and I pressed the point of the scalpel down along the line of the shaft. Pharaoh’s whole body stiffened, but the men held him down remorselessly.

  I worked swiftly, for I have learned that speed is crucial in an operation of this nature, if the patient is to survive. I opened a slit on each side of the shaft. The human skin is tough and elastic and would inhibit the entry of the spoons, so I had to get through it.

  I dropped the knife and took up the pair of lubricated spoons. Using the arrow-shaft as a guide, I eased them deeper and deeper into the wound, until only the long handles still protruded.

  By this time Pharaoh was writhing and twisting in the grip of his restrainers. Sweat was pouring from every pore of his skin, and running back over his shaven skull with its stubble of thin grey hair. His screams rang through the tube in his mouth, and reverberated through the hull of the barge.

  I had taught myself to ignore the agonized distress of my patients, and I slid the spoons deeper into the widely distended mouth of the wound until I felt them touch the flint of the arrow-head. This was the delicate part of the operation. Using the handles like a pair of tweezers, I levered the spoons apart and worked them over the arrow-head. When I felt them close of their own accord, I hoped that I had entirely enclosed the coarse flint and masked the barbs.

  I took a careful grasp of the handles of the spoons and of the reed shaft of the arrow, and pulled back on them all together. If the barbs were still free, they would have immediately snagged in Pharaoh’s flesh and resisted my pull. I could have shouted aloud with relief as I felt it all begin to yield. Still, the suction of the wet and clinging flesh was considerable, and I had to use all my strength to draw the shaft.

  Pharaoh’s agony was dreadful to hear and behold, as the mass of reed and stone and metal was dragged through his chest. The Red Shepenn drug had long ago ceased to be of any effect, and the pain was raw and savage. I knew I was doing fearful damage, and I could feel tissue and sinew tearing.

  My own sweat ran down into my eyes and burned and half-blinded me, but I never released my pull until suddenly the blood-smeared arrow came free in my hands and I staggered backwards across the cabin and crashed into the bulkhead. I leaned against it for a moment, exhausted with the effort. I watched the dark, half-congealed blood trickle and spurt from the wound for a long moment, before I could rally myself and stagger back to stem it.

  I smeared the wound with precious myrrh and crystallized honey, and then bound it up tightly with clean linen bandages. As I worked, I recited the incantation for the binding up of wounds:

  I bind thee up, oh creature of Seth.

  I stop up thy mouth.

  Retreat before me, red tide.

  Retire before me, red flower of death.

  I banish you, oh red dog of Seth.

  This was the recitation for a bleeding wound caused by blade or arrow. There are specific verses for all types of wound, from burns to those inflicted by the fangs or claws of a lion. Learning these is a large part of the training of a physician. I am never certain in my own mind as to just how efficacious these incantations are; however, I believe that I owe it to my patients to employ any possible means at my disposal for their cure.

  In the event, Pharaoh seemed much easier after the binding-up, and I could leave him sleeping in the care of his women and go back on deck. I needed the cool river airs to revive me, for the operation had drained me almost as much as it had Pharaoh.

  By this time it was evening, and the sun was settling wearily upon the stark western hills and throwing its last ruddy glow over the battlefield. There had been no assault by the Hyksos infantry, and Tanus was still bringing off the remains of his vanquished army from the river-bank to the galleys
anchored in the stream.

  I watched the boatloads of wounded and exhausted men passing our anchored barge, and I felt a deep compassion for them, as I did for all our people. This would be for ever the most dire day in our history. Then I saw that the dust-cloud of the Hyksos chariots was already beginning to move southwards towards Thebes. The clouds were incarnadined by the sunset to the colour of blood. It was for me a sign, and my compassion turned to dread.

  * * *

  It was dark by the time that Tanus himself came aboard the state barge. In the light of the torches he looked like one of the corpses from the battlefield. He was pale with fatigue and dust. His cloak was stiff with dried blood and mud, and there were dark, bruised shadows under his eyes. When he saw me, his first concern was to ask after Pharaoh.

  ‘I have removed the arrow,’ I told him. ‘But the wound is deep and near the heart. He is very weak, but if he survives three days, then I will be able to save him.’

  ‘What of your mistress and her son?’ He always asked this, whenever we met.

  ‘Queen Lostris is tired, for she helped me with the operation. But she is with the king now. The prince is as bonny as ever and sleeps now with his nurses.’

  I saw Tanus reel on his feet, and knew that he was close to the end of even his great strength. ‘You must rest now—’ I began, but he shook off my hand.

  ‘Bring lamps here,’ he ordered. ‘Taita, fetch your writing-brushes and ink-pots and scrolls. I must send a warning to Nembet, lest he walk into the Hyksos trap even as I did.’

  So Tanus and I sat half that night on the open deck, and this was the despatch for Nembet that he dictated to me:

  I greet you Lord Nembet, Great Lion of Egypt, Commander of the Ra division of the army of Pharaoh. May you live for ever!

  Know you that we have encountered the enemy Hyksos at the plain of Abnub. The Hyksos in his strength and ferocity is a terrible foe, and possessed of strange, swift craft that we cannot resist.

  Know you further that we have suffered a defeat and that our army is destroyed. We can no longer oppose the Hyksos.

  Know you further that Pharaoh is gravely wounded and in danger of his life.

  We urge you not to meet the Hyksos in an open field, for his craft are like the wind. Therefore take refuge behind walls of stone, or wait aboard your ships, to turn the enemy aside.

  The Hyksos has no ships of his own, and it is by means of our ships alone that we may prevail against him.

  We urge you to await our coming before committing your forces to battle.

  I call the protection of Horus and all the gods down upon you.

  It is Tanus, Lord Harrab, Commander of the Ptah division of the army of Pharaoh, who speaks thus.

  I wrote out four copies of this message, and as I completed each, Tanus called for messengers to carry them to the Lord Nembet, Great Lion of Egypt, who was advancing from the south to reinforce us. Tanus sent two fast galleys speeding up-river, each with a fair copy of the despatches. Then he put his best runners ashore on the west bank, the opposite side of the river from the Hyksos army, and sent them off to find Nembet.

  ‘Surely one of your scrolls will win through to Nembet. You can do no more until morning,’ I reassured him. ‘You must sleep now, for if you destroy yourself, then all of Egypt is destroyed with you.’

  Even then he would not go to a cabin, but curled on the deck like a dog, so that he could be instantly ready for any new emergency. But I went to the cabin to be near my king and to give comfort to my mistress.

  I was on deck again before the first glimmer of dawn. I arrived to hear Tanus giving orders to burn our fleet. It was not for me to question this decision, but he saw me gape incredulously at him, and when the messengers had been sent away he told me brusquely, ‘I have just received the roll-call from my regimental commanders. Of the thirty thousand of my men who stood yesterday on the plain of Abnub to meet the chariots of the Hyksos, only seven thousand remain. Five thousand of those are wounded, and many will still die. Of those who are unwounded, very few are sailors. I am left with only sufficient men to work half our fleet. I must abandon the rest of our ships, but I cannot let them fall into the hands of the Hyksos.’

  They used bundles of reeds to start the fires, and once they were set, they burned fiercely. It was a sad and terrible sight to watch, even for me and my mistress, who were not sailors. For Tanus it was far worse. He stood alone in the bows of the state barge, with despair and grief in every line of his face and in the set of those wide shoulders, as he watched his ships burn. For him they were living things, and beautiful.

  Before all the court my mistress could not go to his side where she belonged, but she took my hand surreptitiously, and the two of us mourned for Tanus and for all Egypt as we watched those gallant craft burn like torches. The roaring pillars of flame from each vessel were sullied with black smoke, but still their ruddy light rivalled the approach of the sunrise.

  At last Tanus gave the order to his hundred remaining galleys to weigh anchor, and our little fleet, laden with wounded and dying men, turned back into the south.

  Behind us, the smoke from the funeral pyre of our fleet stood high into the early morning sky, while ahead of us the yellow dust-cloud stretched taller and wider along the east bank of the Nile as the chariot squadrons of the Hyksos drove deeper into the Upper Kingdom, towards helpless Thebes and all her treasures.

  It seemed that the gods had turned their backs on Egypt and deserted us completely, for the wind, which usually blew so strongly from the north at this season of the year, died away completely, and then sprang up again with renewed vigour from the south. Thus we were forced to contend with both current and wind, and our ships were deeply laden with their cargoes of wounded. We were slow and heavy in the water, with the depleted crews slaving at the oars. We could not keep pace with the Hyksos army, and it drew away from us inexorably.

  I was absorbed with my duties as physician to the king. However, on every other vessel in the fleet, men whom I could have saved were dying in their scores. Every time that I went on deck for a little fresh air and a short break from my vigil at the bedside of Pharaoh, I saw corpses being thrown over the side of the other galleys near us. At each splash there was a swirl of crocodiles beneath the surface. Those awful reptiles followed the fleet like vultures.

  Pharaoh rallied strongly, and on the second day I was able to feed him a small bowl of broth. That evening he asked to see the prince again, and Memnon was brought to him.

  Memnon was already at the age when he was as restless as a grasshopper and as noisy as a flock of starlings. Pharaoh had always been good with the boy, if inclined to overindulgence, and Memnon delighted in his company. Already he was a beautiful boy, with clean, strong limbs and his mother’s skin and great dark green eyes. His hair was curled like the pelt of a new-born black lamb, but in the sunlight, it was sparked with the flames of Tanus’s ruddy mop.

  Pharaoh’s delight in Memnon was even more poignant than usual. The child and the promise that he had wrung from my mistress were his hope of immortality. Against my wishes he kept the child with him until after sunset. I knew that Memnon’s boundless energy and his demands for attention were tiring the king, but I could not intervene until it was time for the prince’s supper and he was led away by his nurses.

  My mistress and I stayed on at the king’s bedside, but he fell almost instantly into a death-like sleep. Even without his white make-up, he was as pale as the linen sheets on which he lay.

  The next day was the third since the wounding, and therefore the most dangerous. If he could survive this day, then I knew I could save him. But when I woke in the dawn the cabin was thick with the musky stench of corruption. When I touched Pharaoh’s skin, it burned my fingers like a kettle from the hearth. I called for my mistress, and she came stumbling through from her alcove behind the curtain where she slept.

  ‘What is it, Taita?’ She got no further, for the answer was plain upon my face. She stood beside m
e as I unbound the wound. The binding-up is a high art of the surgeon’s skills, and I had sewn the linen bandages in place. Now I snipped the threads that held them and peeled them away.

  ‘Merciful Hapi, pray for him!’ Queen Lostris gagged at the stench. The crusted black scab that corked the mouth of the wound burst open, and thick green pus poured out in a slow and viscous stream.

  ‘Mortification!’ I whispered. This was the surgeon’s nightmare, this evil humour that struck upon the third day and spread through the body like winter fire in the dry papyrus beds.

  ‘What can we do?’ she asked, and I shook my head.

  ‘He will be dead before nightfall,’ I told her, but we waited beside his bed for the inevitable. As the word spread through the ship that Pharaoh was dying, so the cabin filled with priests and women and courtiers. We waited in silence.

  Tanus was the last to arrive, and he stood at the back of the throng with his helmet under his arm, in the position of respect and mourning. His gaze rested not on the death-bed, but upon Queen Lostris. She kept her face averted from his, but I knew that she was aware of him in every fibre of her body.

  She covered her head with an embroidered linen shawl, but above the waistband of her skirt, she was naked. Since the prince had been weaned, her breasts had lost their heavy burden of milk. She was as slim as a virgin, and childbirth had not scarred her bosom or her supple belly with silver lines of striae. Her skin was as smooth and unblemished as though it had been freshly anointed with perfumed oil.

  I laid wet cloths upon Pharaoh’s burning body in an attempt to cool the fever, but the heat evaporated the moisture and I was forced to change them at short intervals. Pharaoh tossed about restlessly and cried out in delirium, haunted by all the terrors and monsters of the other world, who waited to receive him.

  At times he recited snatches from the Book of the Dead. From childhood the priests had taught him to memorize the book that was the key and the map through the shades to the far fields of paradise:

  The crystal path has twenty-one turnings.