by Jo Graham
It was then that my father decided that Gahiji needed something to occupy him during the day. He was sent to the school at the Temple of Thoth. Each morning he would leave with his bit of pottery and chalk, his lunch tied up in a linen cloth, to spend all day sitting with the other boys and learning how to write. In Egypt it is not only the children of the nobles who do so. Most freeborn boys learn at least a little for a few years, enough to keep accounts and understand contracts and sales. But girls do not go to the Temple of Thoth.
I was jealous, lonely, and wild to learn. Also, I imagine my grandmother found me a nuisance in the house, bored all day and missing Gahiji. Before the season ended she had convinced the scribe who taught Gahiji to let me join his class. I was five years there. I loved it and would have stayed if it had not been for Pharaoh.
My father was summoned to Thebes to bring his hunting cats and serve the throne. It was a very great honor, and a marvelous chance for him, so I did not doubt that he should take it. I was sorry to leave the temple, my friends and my grandmother, but I was also excited.
Gahiji was angry that I was going. “You will never come back, cousin,” he said. “You will forget us in the North.”
I shrugged. “I will not forget you. It is you who will forget me. Someday when you come North as an archer and a soldier you will walk past me in the street and not know me.”
At this he brightened considerably. “That’s true,” he said. “I will have my turn. I’ll be an archer, and you will still be a girl!”
My father and I left Elephantine immediately, walking along the Nile on the way north. We did not take a barge for the same reason we did not use horses or donkeys – the cheetahs do not like boats, and horses do not like them. We had two cats with us, both females about a year old, sisters from the same litter. They were fairly well trained, but to sit quietly on a barge was beyond them. It took us two weeks upon the road before at last we saw the capital.
I was born and bred in a city, but not such a city as Thebes. It stretched as far as the eye could see on the eastern bank of the river, temples and palaces and great markets crowding for attention, houses of two or even three stories built of mud and brick, fields green with the harvest and the water gleaming sharply in all the irrigation canals. The palace came right down to the water, and rows of shapely trees along a stone embankment showed where there were pleasure gardens. At the flood the river must come right up to the top of the embankment, but now, at the harvest, there was a drop fully a man’s height to the water.
Across the river, on the western shore, the docks of the temples on the riverbank gave to the red hills and the valleys of tombs. Ancient and white, the temple of some long dead Pharaoh glimmered. The sun sank beyond the hills, leaving the riverbank in shadow beneath a sky of purest blue.
We had quarters waiting for us in one of the alleys behind the palace. We did not go there, however, but instead directly to the menagerie at the palace where we would settle the cats. It was a neatly build brick building inside a courtyard with a high wall. My father nodded approvingly at the wall, which was twice his height and too high even for our nimble hunters to leap. Inside, there were three big box stalls and two enclosures. Clearly this had formerly been a stable for breeding. At some time past bars had been affixed to the windows. Some of them, like the walls, showed claw marks. There were no other animals there any more, however.
We settled the cats in as night fell. They were restless. I thought that no matter how well cleaned the place had been it still smelled of other cats to them. And perhaps we were also still in scent of the royal stables.
“We shall stay here tonight,” my father said. “I do not like to leave them alone this way.”
I nodded. “I’ll get some bedding for us to put in one of the stalls.” It would be too chilly otherwise.
One of the local trainers was hanging around. “I’ll send a slave to bring you some food from the kitchens. There is meat for the cats, but you will want something for yourselves.”
The slave brought not only bread, but a pot of beer and some fried fish crispy with breadcrumbs and savory with spices. My father and I sat back against the wall and had our dinner while the cats snarled and purred over a big sack of pig guts that had been provided for them. Outside, it grew dark.
“My daughter,” he said, “our life is good.”
I grinned and leaned back against the sun warmed wall. “It is. And I can’t wait to explore Thebes and see the great temples, even the palace itself!”
He nodded mildly. “You will be careful, for Thebes is a great city, not a glorified provincial town like our Elephantine. And you will be careful in the palace, for palaces are always beds of intrigue.”
“That sounds exciting,” I said.
“You think so now. But you have not seen the power of kings to punish and destroy,” he said. “Go sometime to the place of public execution and you will see what I mean and learn caution. It is best to serve kings well, but not closely.”
I shrugged. I would have liked to have seen the king at least. Pharaoh Menkheperre was an old man, and Nubian like us. He was the grandson of that Piankh who had restored order to Upper Egypt in the wake of great disturbances, and his dynasty had held the throne for seventy years now, first his son Pinedjem, then his elder grandson Masaherta and now his younger grandson. Menkheperre had reigned both as High Priest of Amon and Pharaoh for forty years, and he had sons and grandsons aplenty to follow him. The royal family was huge, and the nursery that had in some times past had held only a single frail heir was now full with the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Pharaoh. After trials, the Black Land prospered. As it should.
I saw Pharaoh once, at one of the great festivals in the year after we came to Thebes. He was carried through the streets to the Great Temple of Amon at Karnak, and I went to watch, standing with the other children in the crowds along the street. He was an old man. I could not tell, as he was sitting in a litter decorated with gold and with palm leaves, how tall he was, but the skin of his face was wrinkled, and he held the crook and flail stiffly, as though his joints hurt.
And yet people cheered him. Menkheperre was loved. In his youth he had forged a treaty with the Other Pharaoh, Psusennes who claimed the throne in the North, in Lower Egypt. For fifty years Upper and Lower Egypt had struggled, each claiming that their Pharaoh was the legitimate ruler, each claiming the entirety of the Black Land. Menkheperre had agreed to a treaty line, and each Pharaoh had married the other’s sister. Now they were brothers in law, and their heirs were twice kin. If we were not one kingdom as we had been in the old days, we were not a kingdom torn by war.
Each year the river rose and fell. Each year brought a new kitten or two for training. I worked with them at some length, pacing them and training them to go after decoys with teeth and claw, teaching them to stand on a lead and to wait. Much of what our cats must do was wait. They were to stand beside Pharaoh’s throne at audiences and look fierce, the very soul of the Black Land.
I also learned to shoot a bow.
This was the fault of one of the young Nubians in Pharaoh’s guard. He was a distant relation by marriage, and so when he was posted to Thebes my father invited him to dine with us. His name was Zuka, and he was sixteen.
I wondered at the time that he should volunteer to take me to the edge of the desert to shoot. I did not expect young men to waste time with me. I had forgotten that I was growing older. At thirteen I was tall and slender, small breasted and light on my feet, the sort of girl he would marry in a year or two, when he could support a wife. Of course he was thinking ahead, eating with my father and spending time with me. I understand that now.
What I knew at the time was that he praised my aim. My arms grew strong from drawing his compound bow, and it was not long before I could shoot well and swiftly. “It is in your blood,” Zuka said, finding a reason to put his arm around my shoulders to correct my draw a little. “You are the daughter of many fine warriors.”
; “If I were a boy I should be a soldier,” I said. “I would like to go to the lands of the Meshwesh, and north to Ashkelon.”
“I have been to Ashkelon,” he said. “And it is not so fine. And it is not ours anymore. The Peleset hold it, and if we come we must come as envoys. They took it with great burning and looting a long time ago.”
“Not so long,” I said. “I have seen the inscriptions. That was in the Second Ramses’ day, and not even two centuries have passed since then.”
“That is a long time,” Zuka said. “When you compare it to the length of a summer’s day. There are days that should last forever.”
I laughed. “Maybe there are.”
He was handsome, with his shaven head and fine body, but I was not moved. Though I was tall, my body was still the body of a child, and my heart was not ready to call any man my brother. And so I did not understand why he sulked a little when we returned to my father’s house, and did not smile at me.
In due course of time perhaps I would have married him. But it was not to be. In the winter, at the height of the growing season when I had just turned fourteen, my father returned from the palace greatly upset.
I brought him water, and sat him in the shade. I knelt beside him and waited until he would speak, for he was almost speechless with what he had to say. At last he reached for my arm.
“You are a good child,” he said. “And you do not deserve this misfortune.”
“What misfortune?” I said. Fear struck me, but at the same time came the thought that he could not have displeased Pharaoh too badly and be allowed to return to his home lamenting, rather than being flung into prison or executed. “How have you displeased Pharaoh?” I asked.
“I have not displeased him, daughter,” my father said, and he took another long drink of water. “I have pleased him, and that is worse. He says my cats are well behaved and beautiful.”
“So they are,” I said. “But how does this constitute misfortune?”
“He has determined to give a pair of them as a gift to some petty king of the Peleset with whom he wants to trade for precious woods. I am to go accompany them and tend them, while an ambassador presents his compliments and seeks a trade. This is a misfortune beyond belief! That I should be sent from the Black Land into this kind of exile for as long as the cats shall live!” He lamented further, and took another drink.
Then he shook his head and squeezed my hand. “I will miss you, daughter. I had thought to see you married and happy, and perhaps have a grandchild on my knee.”
I gasped. “The cats will not live so long, father. Five years, perhaps, if the pair you choose are not too young when you go. And I am not old! Besides, where do you plan to leave me? I cannot stay in Thebes alone!”
“I will send you back to your grandmother in Elephantine,” he said. “She will be glad to see you, and will find you a good husband while I am far away. For five years is a long time at my age, daughter. And who knows if I will ever return from that uncivilized place?”
“Surely it cannot be so bad,” I said, remembering all I had learned of those lands at the temple and from Zuka. “They were ours once, not long ago. Ramses the Great conquered them, and Thutmose.”
“They’re not ours now,” my father said. “They belong to the Peleset. There is some petty king who has emerged in the valley of the Yordana River who controls the forests and hill country. Menkherperre does not make war like Ramses. He seeks trade. And I do not doubt his wisdom.”
Neither did I. Times had changed. I had learned that at the temple. In days past our chariots were our strength. Now it was our archers who defended us from Peleset and Meshwesh armed with strong iron. And once, long ago, there had been no chariots and no horses. Our oldest scrolls and pictures showed this – Pharaoh going into battle on foot, armed with a long spear.
“I could go with you, father,” I said. “I would not mind seeing Peleset lands. And it will not be for so long.”
He shook his head. “Kadis, that is foolishness.”
“Why not?” I asked. “I do not want to go back to Elephantine. I could come with you. You are not going to the ends of the earth, but only to places that are well known and where we have long had trade. And you are going with a king’s gift. You will be an honored guest, not a man with no means and no status. Why should I not join you there for a few years until you may return home? Why should I not see the world too? Besides, you’ll need some help with the cats, and there is not a boy here you will want to bring.”
My father smiled. “You are the jewel of my eye. I have been too indulgent with you, and have treated you too much as the son that we never had. You are right that there is no boy here who has half as much skill with the cats as you do.”
“I can help you,” I said. “And it is just for a few years. It will be exciting.” I put my hand on his knee. “Remember, if I were a boy I could be going to war.”
Then he laughed. “You know you will get anything you want from me, as always, Kadis!”
“You know I will miss you if you make me stay,” I said. “Truly, father. I want to go with you.”
He hugged me tightly. “And I would miss you. I suppose you may come. And I do need the help with the cats.”
Vesuvius
79 AD
Long ago, Neas dreamed on the beach below Vesuvius, dreamed of fire in the sky and a burning city, dreamed himself looking back. Here is the other end of that dream, in which Marcus Gerontius Tasso dreams of Neas.
Marcus Gerontius Tasso was twenty-six, a soldier, a sailor, and a child of the East. His grandparents were Etrurian, certainly, under Roman rule for centuries, but his father had gone out to the East in hopes of making money, now that all those ancient lands were part of the Empire. And he had found what he sought. Importing fruit was a lucrative business. Dried dates, apricots, peaches and sesame paste were all important produce that shipped from Caesarea in Judea to the rest of the Empire.
Fruit importing was not for Marcus. He was the oldest, and his father’s heir, and so of course he was the impractical one in a practical family. Both of his younger brothers were better merchants. He was the one with wild dreams of glory, of duels with Parthian champions and night marches across the desert. He was the one who was like his mother.
Now he stood on the deck of his ship, standing out from Stabiae, watching the world explode. The sky was on fire. Mount Vesuvius rained ash and pumice down on them, even so far away, and the morning sky was dark as twilight. Dark clouds rolled down the slopes of the mountain, swallowing greenery and vineyards, houses and livestock and people. Already he could see fires in the towns, Herculaneum swept under. He had been here on leave, two years ago with his parents when they were in Italy. He had stayed in this town, been a guest in these homes.
On the next ship he heard Admiral Plinius giving the orders. They would sail into the gates of the underworld and take off as many survivors as they could.
He gave the orders and the rowers picked up the beat, the ship going forward. Pieces of pumice floated on the surface of the sea like scraps of papyrus. Burning stones rained down. He ordered the ships boys to have buckets of water at the ready when they landed on the deck. He was doing twenty things at once, everywhere on the deck, watching the town coming nearer.
And then, for a moment, everything was still. It seemed to him that the town was gone entirely, not engulfed in fire and lava, but never built, that green lands curved around the bay, three black ships drawn up on white sand beaches. They were little ships, less than half the size of his trireme, fragile looking. People were sleeping on the beach. Except for one man. On the nearest ship a tall man was looking straight back at him, light brown hair held back with a leather thong, bare-chested and strong. His blue eyes met Marcus’ with a jolt.
Fire, and a burning city.
There were swimmers in the water.
“Careful with the lower bank!” Marcus shouted. “You there, get some ropes over. By Jupiter, this isn’t an enemy fleet act
ion! These are our people, the ones we’ve come to rescue! Careful with the oars!”
A young man about his age was treading water, a naked baby held above his head. Marcus threw the rope himself, waited to see if he would get it. It slithered near him in the water, and he bobbed up and down, but at last got it. Marcus towed him to the side, but he couldn’t climb with the child.
“Tie the baby on!” Marcus shouted down over the din. He hauled the baby up the side, then dropped the rope back down, but the man was gone. They were drifting closer to the docks. He hoped the man had gone up some other rope, but he couldn’t wait to see.
“Get the lower bank in!” he yelled. They were going to break their oars against the stone wharf.
There was the strangest sense of unreality to it. The light in the sky, the burning world. The double image of the peaceful beach he had seen. Getting swimmers aboard from a burning city…
It seemed like days later that they put out again, racing against the black clouds that flowed down the mountain, a firestorm, a smothering blanket of ash. It was probably less than an hour.
“Row!” he yelled, “Pull for your lives!”
One of the ships was burning. Burning stones had caught her.
“Row!” Their decks were crowded with people, some of them collapsed on the deck, retching from the fumes. Fifty? A hundred? Out of how many thousand? Out of how many people he had known, how many shopkeepers from streets he had walked, girls from the taverns he had visited?
Out to sea the skies were clear and it was morning, the pall of cloud rising like a column.
