Ramses, Volume II

by Christian Jacq

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You’ll probably think me too forward, but I’m not used to polite society.”

  “Get on with it, then.”

  “An old man named Nebu has just been named high priest and First Prophet of Amon.”

  “A position you hoped would be yours, unless I’m mistaken.”

  “Our late prelate made no secret of the fact that I was his chosen successor, but the king passed me over.”

  “It’s dangerous to question his decisions.”

  “Nebu will never be able to manage Karnak.”

  “Bakhen, my brother’s friend, will be the one really in charge.”

  “Forgive me for being blunt, Your Highness, but do you find this arrangement satisfactory?”

  “I accept it as the Pharaoh’s will.”

  Doki was disappointed. As he feared, Shaanar was in Ramses’ camp now. He composed his crocodile face and rose to leave.

  “I won’t take any more of your time.”

  “Just a moment. If I understand you correctly, you refuse to accept the situation.”

  “The king is trying to undermine Amon’s clergy.”

  “Do you have the means to oppose him?”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “Whom do you represent?”

  “The majority of the administration, as well as the priests.”

  “And are you prepared to act?”

  “Sir, I beg your pardon! Outright sedition is not for the clergy.”

  “Make up your mind, Doki. You don’t seem to know what you want.”

  “I need help.”

  “First prove to me that you’re serious.”

  “But how?”

  “That’s for you to determine.”

  “I’m only a priest, a—”

  “You’re a man of action or you’re a nobody. If all you’re going to do is bemoan your fate, I’m not interested.”

  “What if I managed to discredit the Pharaoh’s yes-men?”

  “Do it first, then come and see me. You understand, though, that this conversation never took place.”

  Doki’s spirits lifted. He left Shaanar’s residence with a headful of impossible schemes. Sooner or later, he’d hit on one that would work.

  Shaanar was skeptical. This Second Prophet had possibilities, but he seemed a bit indecisive. Once Doki realized what a serious step he’d taken, he’d probably back off. But no potential ally could be discounted, and this way he would find out what the little priest was made of.

  Ramses, Moses, and Bakhen inspected the construction under way at Karnak, a project Seti had envisioned but left his son to complete: a vast hall of columns. Delivery of the huge stone blocks was on schedule. The various work gangs were coordinating their efforts to raise the towering pillars, which represented papyrus stalks rising from the primordial ooze.

  “How are things going with your workmen?”

  “Sary gave me some trouble, but I think I brought him back in line.”

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “He’s too hard on his workers. I suspect that he’s also skimping on their rations and pocketing the difference.”

  “Let’s take him to court.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Moses with a hint of amusement. “I’d rather be able to keep an eye on him. The moment he goes too far, I’ll be on his case.”

  “If you press him, he may file countercharges.”

  “Never fear, Your Majesty. Sary’s too much of a coward for that.”

  “Wasn’t he your professor once?” interrupted Bakhen.

  “Yes,” answered Ramses. “And a good teacher, too. But something came over him. After what he did to me, most other men would have banished him to the desert. I’m hoping that honest work will straighten him out.”

  “It hasn’t yet,” said Moses, shaking his head.

  “I know you’ll get results, though it won’t be here. In a few days we’re heading north, and you’re going to come along, Moses.”

  His friend looked less than pleased “The colonnade . . . it’s not finished!”

  “I’m putting Bakhen in charge as Fourth Prophet of Amon. You’ll brief him before we go. He’ll see to the hall’s completion and also oversee my additions to Luxor. Rows of colossal statues in the forecourt, a pylon gateway, obelisks—it will be wonderful! Keep things moving, Bakhen. I may only be granted a short time to live, and I want to dedicate this masterpiece.”

  “I’m honored by the trust you place in me, Majesty.”

  “I don’t name straw men, Bakhen. Old Nebu will do his job well, and so will you. He’ll run the temple and the estates, you’ll do the building. Both of you will alert me to any difficulties. Now get to work and forget about everything else.”

  Pharaoh and Moses left the construction site and walked down a lane of tamarisks toward the chapel of Ma’at, the goddess of truth and justice.

  “This is where I come to meditate,” the king confided. “It calms my spirit and helps me see more clearly. I envy the priests. The soul of the gods is in every stone here. Every chapel reveals their truths.”

  “Why are you taking me away from Karnak?”

  “You and I have work to do. Remember when we were schoolboys discussing the future with Ahsha, Ahmeni, and Setau? I was convinced that only Pharaoh had true power. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and it would have consumed me if my father hadn’t taken me in hand. Even when I’m at rest, that power moves in me, telling me to build.”

  “You have a new project?”

  “On such a scale that I can’t even tell you yet. I’ll need to think more during the journey. If I decide to proceed, there’s a major role for you.”

  “I have to admit you surprise me.”

  “Why?”

  “I was sure you’d forget your old friends and concentrate on the court, the corridors of power.”

  “You misjudge me, Moses.”

  “But won’t power change you?”

  “A man changes according to the goals he sets himself. My sole concern is the glory of Egypt, and that will never change.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sary fumed. The king’s brother-in-law and former tutor, reduced to being foreman of a sorry bunch of bricklayers, when he had once headed the royal academy! With another of his old students, Moses, always on his back, the overgrown thug! Day after day, Sary found the physical hardship, the taunts, more difficult to bear. He had tried to turn the workers against the Hebrew superintendent, but Moses was so popular that the attempt failed miserably.

  Yet Moses was only following orders. Sary knew he must start at the top. He wanted revenge, revenge on the source of all his unhappiness.

  “I hate him, too,” admitted his wife, Dolora, nestling deeper into her pillows. “But what you’re proposing scares me half to death.”

  “What have we got to lose?”

  “I’m afraid, darling. Schemes like this have been known to backfire.”

  “So? Right now you’re a social outcast; I’m literally covered with mud. How can we go on like this?”

  “I understand, Sary, really I do. But would we have to go that far?”

  “Are you with me, or will I have to do it alone?”

  “I’m your wife.” He helped her to her feet.

  “Have you thought it over carefully?”

  “I’ve thought of nothing else for the last month.”

  “What if word gets out that we—”

  “Not a chance.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’ve covered everything.”

  “Is that really possible?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Isn’t there any way around—”

  “No, Dolora. Now, are you with me?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Inconspicuously dressed, the pair walked down a lane leading to a section of Thebes where many immigrant workers lived. Dolora clutched her husband’s arm nerv
ously, hesitating at every turn.

  “Are we lost, Sary?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are we almost there?”

  “Not much farther now.”

  Inquisitive stares greeted them. But Sary marched stubbornly on as his wife grew increasingly apprehensive.

  “Here we are.”

  He knocked at a low red door with a dead scorpion nailed to it. An old woman answered. The couple went down a wooden stairway leading to a sort of small, damp grotto ablaze with oil lamps.

  “He’s here,” announced the old woman. “Sit on these stools and wait.”

  Dolora preferred to remain standing. The place gave her the shivers. Black magic was against the law in Egypt, yet certain sorcerers still dared to sell their services at exorbitant prices.

  The plump and obsequious Lebanese magician padded toward his clients.

  “Everything is ready,” he announced. “And the consideration?”

  Sary emptied a leather pouch into the man’s right hand: ten chunks of perfect turquoise.

  “The object you are purchasing has been placed within the grotto. Next to it you will find a fish bone. Use that to write the name of the person upon whom your spell is cast. Once you smash the charm, that person will fall ill.”

  As the magician spoke, Dolora retreated behind her shawl. When he left, she grabbed her husband by the wrists.

  “Let’s leave. I can’t bear it!”

  “Steady. It’s almost over.”

  “Ramses is my brother!”

  “He was your brother. Now he’s our worst enemy. No one will help us, Dolora. We have to help ourselves. It’s safe; he’ll never be able to trace us.”

  “There’s no other way?”

  “It’s too late to back out, Dolora.”

  Deep in the grotto, on a sort of altar painted with crude designs of grotesque animals and leering faces, sat a thin limestone tablet and a long fish bone whittled to a point. The stone was speckled with brown. The magician had probably soaked it in snake’s blood to make the spell even deadlier.

  Sary began to scratch the hieroglyphic symbols for Ramses’ name into the limestone. His wife shut her eyes in horror.

  “Now you,” he ordered.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “The spell won’t work unless it’s performed by a married couple.”

  “I don’t want to kill my brother!”

  “He won’t die. The magician swears it. He’ll become an invalid, Shaanar will become his regent, and we can go back to Memphis.”

  “I can’t.”

  Sary placed the fish bone in his wife’s right hand and closed her fingers around it.

  “Write ‘Ramses.’”

  He guided her trembling hand as she completed the crude inscription. Now for the last step: breaking the tablet. Sary picked it up, while Dolora again hid her face. She refused to witness such depravity.

  Hard as he tried, Sary could not smash the tablet. The thin limestone seemed hard as granite. He groped for a rock on the floor of the grotto and angrily pounded the magic tablet, but could not even make a dent in it.

  “I don’t understand. It’s only limestone, it’s thin . . .”

  “Ramses is protected,” screamed his wife. “Nothing can harm him, not even black magic! Let’s leave here as fast as we can.”

  Sary and Dolora wandered through the unfamiliar streets. With a panicky feeling in the pit of his stomach, Sary was having trouble retracing his steps. Doors slammed in their faces, eyes peered from slits in shutters. Despite the heat, Dolora still huddled behind her shawl.

  A thin man with a hawklike profile approached them, an eerie gleam in his dark green eyes.

  “Might you be lost?”

  “No,” replied Sary. “Out of our way!”

  “Just trying to help.”

  “We’re all right.”

  “These streets can be dangerous.”

  “We can take care of ourselves.”

  “You wouldn’t stand a chance against armed bandits. A man carrying precious stones is asking for trouble in these parts.”

  “I’m carrying nothing of the sort.”

  “You paid the Lebanese magician in turquoise, didn’t you?”

  Dolora clung more tightly to her husband.

  “Do you believe everything you hear?” countered Sary.

  “Both of you were careless. I believe you forgot something?” The thin dark man produced the slab of limestone bearing Ramses’ name.

  Dolora turned away and buried her head on her husband’s shoulder.

  “Are you aware that an act of black magic perpetrated against Pharaoh is punishable by death? Rest assured, however, I have no intention of turning you in.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To help, as I already told you. See the house to your left? Go inside, your wife needs something to drink.”

  The dirt-floored dwelling was humble but clean. A plump young blonde helped Sary ease his wife onto a wooden bench with a reed mat on top of it, then fetched Dolora some water.

  “My name is Ofir,” said the thin dark man. “And this is Lita, great-granddaughter of Akhenaton and rightful heir to the throne of Egypt.”

  Sary was too amazed to speak. Dolora was slowly coming around.

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Sary turned toward the fair young woman. “Is this man lying?”

  Lita shook her head, retreating into a corner of the room, as if removed from her surroundings.

  “Don’t mind her,” Ofir advised. “She’s been through so much that the road back to normal life will be long and difficult.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “As a child, she was threatened with death, beaten, imprisoned, forced to renounce her faith in Aton, the One God, and ordered to forget her name and her parents. In other words, they tried to destroy her soul. If I hadn’t come along, she’d be no more than a raving maniac.”

  “Why are you helping her?”

  “Because my own family was persecuted, like hers. We live only to seek our revenge, which will place Lita on the throne of Egypt and banish false gods from this holy land.”

  “Ramses isn’t the cause of your suffering!”

  “Of course he is. He belongs to an evil dynasty that has deluded and tyrannized the people.”

  “How do you manage to live?”

  “Aton still has his followers, who give us food and shelter in the hope that our prayers will be answered.”

  “There can’t be many left.”

  “More than you’d imagine, but completely underground. Even if Lita and I were the only two, we’d keep on fighting.”

  “A tired old heresy,” protested Ramses’ sister. “No one cares a thing about it anymore.”

  “You should,” Ofir said firmly.

  “Let’s get out of here,” begged Dolora. “These people are out of their minds.”

  “I know who you are,” revealed Ofir.

  “You don’t!”

  “Dolora, the Pharaoh’s sister, and your husband, Sary, who used to be Ramses’ tutor. He’s mistreated you both and you want revenge.”

  “That’s no concern of yours.”

  “I retrieved the fragment of limestone you used to cast a spell on him. If I bring it to the vizier and testify against you . . .”

  “This is blackmail!”

  “Join our cause and the evidence disappears.”

  “What’s in it for us?” asked Sary.

  “Using magic against Ramses is an interesting concept, but not just any magic will work. The spell you tried would have been adequate for a mere mortal, but not a king. At his coronation, Pharaoh’s body was surrounded with special protective forces. They need to be removed, layer by layer. Lita and I can see to that.”

  “What do you ask in exchange?”

  “Bed and board, a place where our followers can meet in secret.”

  “Don’t listen,” Dolor
a whispered to her husband. “The man is dangerous. No good will come of this.”

  Sary turned to face the sorcerer.

  “It’s a deal,” he said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Ramses lit the oil lamps to reveal the naos, Karnak’s innermost sanctuary, which he alone was allowed to enter, or the high priest as his designate. The shadows parted to reveal the holy of holies, a pink granite chapel containing the earthly image of Amon, “The Hidden One,” whose true form no human being would ever know. Slowly burning incense cones perfumed this most sacred of places, where divine energy became incarnate in both the Visible and the Invisible.

  The king broke the clay seal affixed to the door, pulled the latch to the naos, and opened the doors of the reliquary.

  “Wake in peace, creator of all life. Look upon your son whose heart is full of love for you, who comes to seek your counsel so that his every deed fulfills your purpose. Wake in peace and shine upon this earth that lives only through your love. Let your divine energy flow through every living thing.”

  The king shone the light on the holy statue, unwrapped the colored bands of linen around it, purified it with water from the sacred lake, anointed it with unguents, and rewrapped it with fresh, clean cloth. Then, bringing them to life with his voice, the Pharaoh presented the offerings—the same ones the priests would be placing on every altar at Karnak—a ritual followed each morning in every temple throughout the land.

  At last came the supreme offering, in the name of Ma’at, the immortal law.

  “Through her you live,” the king told Amon. “Her fragrance invigorates you, her dew nourishes you. Your eyes are the law, your whole being is the law.”

  Leaving the Divine Power with a fraternal embrace, Pharaoh closed the doors of the naos, latched it shut, and resealed it with clay. As high priest, Nebu would next perform this rite in Ramses’ name.

  When Ramses left the naos, the entire temple was astir. Priests were clearing the altars of the portion of consecrated food that was designated for human consumption; breads and cakes were coming out of the temple ovens; butchers were cutting meat for the noon meal, craftsmen beginning their day’s work, and gardeners cutting flowers for the chapels. The day would be peaceful and happy.