The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  “I’d not need torture, my lord,” Ariana said. “Do I have your leave, then? May I do it?”

  “You may do it,” Ahmose said.

  She clapped her hands, as delighted as a child. “Thank you, my lord! I’ll begin tomorrow.”

  Ahmose smiled. He was not besotted with her, Kemni did not think, but he found her highly diverting. Nor would he be averse to seeing her in his bed. That much Kemni could see.

  What Queen Nefertari thought . . .

  Kemni tried to read her, but she was too greatly skilled in hiding behind the mask of a queen. She was studying this child with whom she must share her husband; studying and pondering. But she was letting nothing escape. It was all hidden behind that beautiful and royal face.

  Ariana seemed oblivious. She drank her wine and ate eagerly of the sweets that had come in with it, chattered and laughed, and charmed the princes utterly. Their father might not be enthralled, but they quite visibly were. Even Gebu, who was known as a man of some seriousness, and not easily swayed by a woman, was hanging on her every word.

  ~~~

  When the king had made it clear that he was weary and would take himself to bed, the princes offered themselves as escort to Ariana and her silent shadow. They might have been glad to bear her company past the door of the house where she was staying, but she laughed and bade them all farewell, and left them panting like dogs outside a door both shut and firmly barred.

  They looked ready to bay like dogs, too, but settled for a headlong expedition into the city. “For,” they said, “the night is young, and so are we.”

  Kemni did not go with them. Nor did Gebu. The two of them walked together toward the princes’ house, not speaking, until they had passed the gate. Then Gebu said, “Don’t go to bed yet. Come in and talk to me.”

  Kemni sighed faintly, but he was not yet asleep on his feet, nor had he drunk more than a cup of the king’s good wine. Queen Nefertari’s presence had kept him too much on edge. And so, if he would admit it, had his nearness to Ariana.

  Gebu’s chambers were quiet, his servants asleep, all but one who came padding out with wine, then went gratefully back to bed. Kemni sat cross-legged at the end of the prince’s bed as he had many a time before, and Gebu half-sat, half-lay at the head, and they passed the winejar back and forth.

  For a while they spoke of nothing in particular. But Gebu’s mind was on other things than the quality of the wine or the reputation of a dancing girl. After a while he said, “That is a very unusual woman.”

  “Very,” Kemni said a little dryly.

  “You sailed with her,” said Gebu. “You drove a chariot with her. Was there . . . anything else you did?”

  Kemni considered taking offense. He should. It was not a question even a prince should ask, even in friendship. But this was Gebu, as close to Kemni as a brother. For that, Kemni answered and did not challenge him to a fight. “There was nothing else we did. She was not allowed, she said to me. She meant of course that she was meant for a king. And so she is. She’s much too high for the likes of me.”

  “And yet she thinks a great deal of you,” Gebu said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  Gebu grinned at him, though he had not said anything amusing, that he knew of. “What, are you blind? She looks to you for any number of things. She’ll want you for that expedition, you can be sure of it. When she sends you out, take me with you.”

  Kemni had been annoyed, and perhaps a little bored. But this astonished him. “You want to come on that venture? What in the gods’ name for?”

  “Why, don’t you?”

  “Whoever goes will have to be stark mad. Or desperate for glory.”

  “You don’t think I’m either?”

  “I think,” said Kemni, “that you are the king’s son of the Upper Kingdom, and you can hardly risk your life in such a wild scheme.”

  “And yet you will.”

  “I’m to be her master of horse,” Kemni said. “She won’t send me out to get killed before I even begin.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Alas for Kemni’s peace of mind, he was not. But he could return to the other, the important thing. “You can’t go. Your father won’t let you.”

  “So we won’t ask him.” Gebu met Kemni’s incredulity with a bland stare. “Come, brother. You’re tired of traveling, I’m sure; you went all the way to Crete, and you’ve just now come back. I’ve been in Thebes since the gods know when. We haven’t had a battle or a skirmish in a year. We go hunting once in a great while, and we went up the river once to Abydos, and worshipped Osiris. Except for that, all there’s been to do is a round of less than onerous duties, a great deal of more than onerous reveling, and rather more boredom than I can easily stomach. We’d all be happy to start a war if it would vary the monotony.”

  “We’ll have a war,” Kemni said, “once we’re ready for it. But, brother—”

  “Brother,” Gebu said, “if you don’t take me with you, I’ll take myself.”

  “It’s likely I won’t go at all,” said Kemni.

  “You’ll go,” Gebu said. “And I’ll go with you. Now, are you going to keep all the wine to yourself, or do I get a share of it?”

  Kemni opened his mouth, but shut it again, and passed the winejar in silence. He had not thought Gebu could be such a fool. Truly, it must be dull in Thebes, if even that most calm-minded of men was demanding to be taken on an expedition that could get him killed.

  If the gods and Ariana had any sense, Kemni would go nowhere but to the estate that Ahmose had promised his bride; and someone else would risk his neck on that wild errand. Kemni could but hope.

  When the jar came back to him, he drank so deep that Gebu protested. His head whirled with so much wine so quickly; some distant part of him knew that he would rue it in the morning. But he did not care. He was too much vexed with kings and queens—and yes, with princes, too. He was happy enough, just then, to take refuge in wine.

  III

  Ahmose the king, Great House of Egypt, Lord of the Upper Kingdom, took to wife Ariana daughter of Minos, priestess, mistress of the Labyrinth of Crete, on the seventh morning after she had come to Thebes. It was nothing like the great royal festival that she had promised him after his war was won. They went separately to the temple of Amon that was near the palace, each with a small escort—and one of Ahmose’s companions was his queen, the Great Wife Nefertari.

  They had gone, as far as anyone knew, to pay respect to Amon and to pray for the kingdom’s prosperity. Ariana in her turn was known to be taking in the sights of the city, and happened, just at that hour, to have paused in the temple.

  And so, in one of the inner chambers, they came before the high priest and spoke the words that bound them one to the other. With all the trappings of state ceremonial stripped away, it was a simple exchange of contracts, and a speaking of vows that were both binding and brief. A plain man of the city might marry a woman equally plain, with the same words and gestures.

  Ariana did not seem to care that the rite was so short. Ahmose, as always in her presence, was clearly diverted. Perhaps, Kemni thought with a rush of daring, he was as bored as his son Gebu. Even a king might succumb to tedium, after all; and Ariana was anything but tedious.

  Once the words were said and the vows and the contracts written and signed and sealed and laid away in the high priest’s own coffer, the king and his new queen went again their separate ways. Ariana professed no regret at the lack of a wedding feast, though her husband said as they parted, “We will dine together. It’s not the great feast that it should be, but it will have to suffice.”

  “We’ll do our feasting later,” she said, “when your war is won. Good day, my lord. Look for me at evening.”

  Ahmose left then, but as Ariana lingered, waiting for it to be prudent to follow, a voice spoke out of the temple’s shadows. “Wait,” it said.

  It was no goddess speaking, and no spirit, either. Queen Nefertari moved slightly, so t
hat they could see her standing by one of the great pillars that held up the roof. Kemni had been sure he saw her depart with the king. Had she worked a magic, then? Or had he seen only what he expected to see?

  Not that that mattered. She was here, with a single maid for company, and she faced her fellow queen with no air of either awe or friendliness.

  Ariana greeted her with respect, as was fitting, but neither shrank nor cowered. She was not afraid. She even smiled a little. “Thank you for coming to this wedding,” she said in her voice that was so light, and so much like a child’s.

  And yet she was no child, and Kemni thought that Nefertari knew it. The Great Wife inclined her head. She did not speak. She might be hoping to discomfit Ariana with silence.

  Ariana had never been discomfited in her life. She went on as if there had been no pause, nor any expectation of an answer. “I hope we may not be enemies. There’s much we both may do to help our husband, and much he needs of us, if he’s to be the king he was meant to be.”

  “And you expect,” Nefertari asked coolly, “to accomplish such a thing?”

  “I was sent here to do it,” Ariana said, “and to help you. Your gods love you, lady. They’ve made you a great queen, and will make you greater.”

  “You flatter me,” said Nefertari.

  Ariana shrugged. “It’s the truth.” She looked about her with interest, and began to wander a little. As if she could not quite help herself, Nefertari followed. Their way was curving and sometimes circuitous, but it led toward the outer gate.

  Neither was dressed as a queen, but as a lady of substance. They would not be recognized unless they wished to be. Kemni was sure they both knew it, and rather reveled in it. One might have thought them allies, if not friends; though that was not, at least yet, what they were.

  Ariana would alter that, he thought. He well knew the allure of that light prattle. It was difficult to resist her.

  Perhaps a woman might find it easier, but she was very charming. Nefertari said little, letting her run on.

  When they reached the gate where Nefertari’s chair was waiting, Nefertari did not offer to share it with her fellow queen. Ariana bade her farewell with no sign of offense, and went back on foot as she had come, as a sightseer in this city of kings.

  ~~~

  How Ariana fared on her first night as a king’s wife, Kemni did not want to know. But the god or spirit who vexed him with dreams was not minded to leave him in ignorance. He dreamed that he hovered as a winged spirit above the king’s great bed. And there below him was Ariana, more beautiful than ever in her nakedness, dancing the old dance with that man who was as old as her father.

  He did not want to be angry, or to feel the sting of jealousy. But over that too he had no power. He had bedded an Ariana nigh every night in Crete, but never this one; never the one who had sent them all.

  Even in his dream, watching her coax that tired aging man to rise and love her as a man should do, he wondered if Nefertari dreamed also, or if she lay awake, brooding over this stranger who had come to trouble her world.

  ~~~

  Kemni’s world had been troubled since somewhat before he met Ariana, who was now a queen of the Upper Kingdom. She did not keep the state that one would expect, nor retreat into the world of women’s secrets. A bare three days after she had become one of Ahmose’s queens, she left to take possession of the estate she had asked for. It was some considerable distance down the river, and much closer therefore to Lower Egypt, north of the holy city of Abydos.

  There was nothing to mark it out from among the many such noble estates along the river; and indeed, any who rowed or sailed past would see fields of barley and emmer wheat, villages of farmers, and up past the river’s edge, the low rise of wall that was the house itself. But behind it, where one would expect the tilled land to give way to barren desert, the earth had obliged Ariana’s purpose by curving and folding and shaping itself into a broad low plain that, by a happy accident, received a finger of the river’s flood in season, and out of season was sustained with greenery through the offices of a watercourse such as farmers were used to maintain for the nourishing of their fields.

  There Ariana brought the horses that the king had given to Kemni, on none other than the Dancer of Crete. They traveled uneasily, but scarcely more so than the sailors, who lived in imminent terror of a hoof bursting through the hull. But Ariana went with them, whispered and sang to them, and calmed them enough that they could endure this great indignity.

  There were servants waiting for her, chosen by the king, and, as he had promised, a greater herd of horses and long-eared asses, all that his kingdom could muster. There also had gone a number of his apprentices in the art of chariotmaking. They seemed little enough to begin a great war, but she professed herself content.

  There was no change in her since she was made a wife. Sometimes a woman bloomed; sometimes she gained a bruised look, like a flower battered by the wind. Ariana remained herself. She did not weep or pine to take leave of her husband. He seemed more moved by the parting than she: lingering a fraction longer than he might have done, and following her with his eyes as she embarked on her uncle’s ship.

  As far as the world had need to know, he was bidding farewell to that odd embassy, honoring it with his royal presence. People would remark on that; would wonder at it and spread rumors of it, but they would not, if the gods were kind, stumble upon the truth.

  When the ship cast off from the harbor of Thebes, Kemni left again the city that he had come to consider his own. This time he was not alone among the mariners of Crete. Prince Gebu came with him, and a company of the prince’s guards and servants. They were going on a lark, they professed, for life in Thebes had grown unbearably dull. Since that was in fact the truth, they did not need to stain their spirits with a lie—even a lie in the king’s service.

  “We’ll pass the judgment all the sooner once we die,” Gebu said as they sailed past the outer edges of Thebes. He had not lingered or yearned backward as Kemni would have liked to do. His face was turned unfailingly toward the northward stretch of the river. Kemni had not seen him so bright or so eager since—by the gods, since the last battle they had fought in. And that was years past.

  “You should have gone to Crete,” Kemni said.

  Gebu lifted a brow. “What, I?”

  “You,” said Kemni. “You’re the king’s son. You know the words to say, the things to do. I did nothing but stumble. It’s the gods’ own miracle I never fell.”

  “It seems to me,” said Gebu, “that you did better than stumble. That you flew.” He tilted his head toward Ariana where she stood by the prow. She was a marvelous sight, dressed again as a Cretan lady, with her lovely breasts bare to the sun of Egypt. A maid—new gift from her husband—did her best to shade her with a canopy, but she was in no mood to be protected.

  “The gods called you for her sake,” Gebu said. “She has a great fondness for you. She’d not have taken so to me, I don’t think.”

  “Do you know that?” Kemni demanded.

  Gebu shrugged. “My belly knows it. So does yours, or you’d not be blushing like a girl. That embassy needed you. This one . . . well, and this one, too, but for once I can trail behind and share a little of your glory.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Kemni said. “It’s not fitting.”

  “Ah, poor child,” Gebu said without sympathy. “I’ve made you wriggle. And well I should, when you’re being such a fool. Chin up, little brother, and strut a little. You’re a power in the kingdom now, whether you like it or no.”

  “I don’t think I like it,” Kemni muttered.

  “You’ll learn,” said Gebu.

  ~~~

  The estate was called Bull of Re, which Ariana reckoned fitting, and Kemni found a little disturbing. It was too much like the dream that had begun it all for him, and the bulldancing. But it was a pleasant place, a house of an older style, now out of fashion but Ariana declared herself charmed by it. The odd tw
ofold nature of it, estate like any other before, hidden valley behind, pleased her immensely; and more so when she saw the valley populated with herds of horses and asses.

  She was less pleased with her apprentices’ attempts at chariotmaking. “Men’s lives ride in them,” she said. “They must be perfect.”

  But she was not ready, yet, to steal the enemy’s masters of the art. There was much to do with the estate first, and its inhabitants both animal and human. There were a handful of chariots in various states of repair and disrepair, that would suffice for training the horses and asses. There was harness to be made, men to be trained; and of them all, only the Cretan women—both—able to guide and teach.

  “You learn quickly,” Ariana said to Kemni. “Now learn as you’ve never learned before. Learn swift, learn well. Live, eat, breathe this that we teach you. Then teach it to whoever else will learn.”

  Kemni did not trouble to protest. Ariana would not have heard him. She seldom commanded anyone, but she asked in ways that no mere mortal could refuse. When she bade him learn, learn he must. He was given no other choice.

  The king had sent a company of men to the Bull of Re, picked young men of the royal armies. Some Kemni knew; of those, a handful had been in his own company of a hundred, when there were battles to fight. They were his, they all said. The king had sent them to serve the Cretan women, but they would look to Kemni for their orders.

  It was a rebellion, quiet and rather touching. But Kemni could not let it go on. He faced them in the courtyard of the wing that would be their barracks, the whole lot of them dressed and armed for inspection, and said flatly, “I’ll be your commander. But your obedience belongs to the queen.”

  “The queen? Queen Nefertari?”

  Kemni met the eyes of the man who had spoken. He was an insouciant young thing, a lord’s younger son from the look and bearing of him, with a glint of gold in the ornaments that graced his person. His name, Kemni recalled, was Seti. It was a name somewhat out of favor in this part of Egypt: the foreign kings had taken the god Set for their own, and imbued him with the powers of their own king of gods.