House of Two Pharaohs, page 26
On the wall above the gate, the guards were passing the watch in idle chatter. They had no interest in a merchant hauling her wares out of Memphis.
Hidden in the back of the cart, under a mound of cloth reeking of mould, Taita simmered at the indignity of his captivity. The hide strips that bound his hands behind his back cut deeply into his flesh, and a filthy rag had been stuffed into his mouth in case he cried out for help. Every breath was an effort.
Of course, he had no intention of raising the alarm, and he had promised as much, but Gyasi could not be sure.
For what seemed like an age, the wagon rumbled through the ruts. Hurled from side to side, Taita’s joints protested with every jolt. Finally, the rocking eased and Taita imagined that the wagon had left the main road to Peru-nefer and was moving along one of the softer mud tracks that led down to the river.
When the cart finally came to a halt, Taita heard a scrabbling, then the cloth was dragged off him and he was helped out onto the soft ground by Gyasi. They were in a lonely spot, under a row of date palms. Taita could smell the river and hear the water gurgling against the bank.
Gyasi leaned in and yanked the rag from Taita’s mouth. Her knife glinted in the moonlight as she pricked it against his neck. ‘No sound,’ she reminded him.
Taita nodded.
Gyasi prodded him towards the river and they waded out to a moored skiff. The vessel was small, like the ones fishermen used everywhere along the Nile, with a thin mast and a sail the colour of rotting papyrus. To Taita’s eyes, it did not look river-worthy – the bundles of strapped reeds were sagging along the hull – but it would draw no attention.
Gyasi pushed Taita into the skiff and dragged a cloth over him. Once she had climbed aboard, Taita felt the weight of the craft shift and the lurching motion as the skiff eased out into the current.
In the suffocating dark beneath the cloth, Taita thought of Piay. He prayed his charge had found his message, and was already preparing to follow him downriver.
• • •
W
ith each gust of wind that carried the skiff further away from Memphis, Gyasi grew more comfortable, until she began to sing as she sailed. Her voice, like the rest of her, was beautiful, but Taita barely heard a word. Instead, his thoughts flew beyond their tiny craft, calculating the distance they had travelled and the direction they were heading.
Taita marked the passing of the day by the gradual rise of the oppressive heat. By the time Gyasi pulled in to the riverbank – where she untied his bonds, allowing the blood to flow again in his limbs, and handed him a water-hide – Taita felt like a waterfowl that had been roasted in a clay oven.
‘I do not wish you to suffer unduly.’ The Shuyet’s agent smiled. ‘At least, not yet.’
Under her hawklike scrutiny, Gyasi allowed her captive to wander along the riverbank to relieve himself and stretch his long, stork-thin legs. With a sad shake of his head, Taita proclaimed that he was lost and would never be able to make it back to Memphis alone, even if he could escape. Then he announced that he was looking forward to engaging with the Shuyet’s powerful mind. Taita was pleased with his performance. With each pretence, he sensed Gyasi’s suspicions ebbing, her scrutiny becoming less intense.
When Gyasi fumbled with the mooring rope, Taita took one of the pink ribbons from his wrist and tied it around the neck of the tallest bulrush.
This was how Taita’s spies operated in the wilds and how Piay had been trained. Hannu would be with him, and he had battlefield eyes. He would not miss such an obvious sign.
Helping Taita back on to the skiff, Gyasi flicked the mooring rope free before she raised her sail. Smiling to himself, Taita crawled back undercover.
• • •
Z
ahra awoke to a vision of sunlight through a window. Her mind told her that the window was the one in her chamber in Hardai – that she was home – but her eyes told her otherwise. The sunlight splintered into shards of unbearable brightness in front of them, and the stone aperture seemed to fracture, as if she was looking at two different windows at the same time. She closed her eyes. The pain in her head was like a noise, the roar of the khamsin, and over it she could hear nothing, think of nothing.
She reached up to her forehead, feeling the bandage that was tight against her skull. It was stiff with blood where her brother had beaten her head against the temple floor, but underneath she could feel a pulpy mass.
Zahra tried to sit, but her heart raced and the roar of the khamsin grew louder, making her scream out in pain. She longed for darkness, for the cool night, to be plunged to the bottom of the black Nile, where it would be silent and cold, and she could lie tangled in the weeds where no one would ever find her.
‘Drink this . . .’ Heru’s voice came to her as if from a great distance.
‘What is it?’
‘Red Shepenn. It will help with the pain.’
The liquid was bitter, the rim of the cup cold and sharp against her lip.
‘I found you beneath the temple,’ Heru said slowly. ‘The priests had taken you to the undercroft. What happened between you and Qar? He will not speak of it.’
Zahra felt the drug begin to take effect, her breathing becoming easier.
‘The priests had laid you out as if you had already begun your journey to the next life,’ Heru said when Zahra remained silent, turning her face away from him. ‘And there have been many days when I also thought that you would never wake . . .’
‘Leave me, Heru.’
‘Do you not want to know –’
‘Leave me!’
When Heru had gone, Zahra swung her legs off the edge of the bed, then turned on to her stomach, so she could push herself upright. Her heart still pounded in her chest, but the khamsin had been quietened by the drug Heru had given her and the sunlight no longer burned her eyes.
She found her way to the window and looked down over the walls of Hardai, out over the pontoon causeway that ran from the great gate to the marsh beyond. There, a tented city had sprung up – patched and stained, hazy through the woodsmoke that came from every quarter, full of donkeys and feral dogs. How many men had Qar assembled? How many had answered the call of the Shuyet?
Closing her eyes, Zahra retched as the light and colour and noise became too much. With the Red Shepenn coursing down her chin, she sank slowly to the cool stone of the floor.
• • •
T
he flamingo balanced on one leg in the cool water, curving its supple neck around with graceful ease to groom its wing with its hooked black beak.
Brilliant pink was everywhere that morning, in the flock of wading birds scattered along the bank of the murky river, in the broad streaks that coloured the dawn sky above the steaming, desolate delta – and in the two ribbons clutched behind Taita’s back.
They had passed the night just north of Avaris, on a tongue of mud where the river split and then split again on its way to the Great Green. Gyasi had lit a fire to keep the animals away, but the insects could not be so easily driven off. Great clouds of sandflies had swirled above them as the dried reeds crackled in the flames, drawing the bats from over the water.
Gyasi had stayed awake, her back to the fire, while Taita slept in the skiff, secure in the knowledge that Paiy and Hannu would be on the river, following the trail that he had left for them.
They had been on the water for three hours now, heading north with the current as the sun began to rise.
Leaping out of the prow, Gyasi hauled the skiff towards the muddy bank. Beyond it, another, smaller waterway plunged deep into the flat landscape. Taita followed and once Gyasi’s back was turned, he hastily tied the ribbons to the tallest reed on the riverbank.
‘How far to our destination?’ Taita asked.
‘Half a day or thereabouts, along the waterways,’ his captor replied dismissively.
Taita looked over Gyasi’s shaven head, past a line of swaying sycamores to a land patchworked with pools and watercourses that reflected the sky like a polished bronze mirror. Vast lakes of reeds shivered in a gentle breeze that did little to disperse the sweaty heat, already oppressive despite the early hour. The air was thick with the reek of rot, and clouded with flies.
Gyasi shielded her eyes against the glare as she peered across the bleak marshland. ‘One wrong step and you will be pulled down to your death. Only the waterways provide safe passage, and not all of them, for hidden dangers lurk everywhere.’
Taita understood why the Shuyet had hidden here. There would be crocodiles lurking amongst the reeds, red spitting cobras and hippos, too. This was a fortress built by nature. Death waited all around.
For a while Gyasi remained looking out over the delta, while Taita squatted on the edge of the reed beds, imagining what was to come.
‘If you entertained any dreams of rescue, I expect you can see now just how bleak your prospects have become,’ Gyasi said. ‘Once you enter the marshes of the Shuyet, all hope dies.’
• • •
T
he skiff eased across the poisonous black water, its oily surface streaked with rainbows. The wind was far weaker here, and Gyasi had to constantly adjust the sail to catch what breeze there was. Soon, Taita guessed, she would have no choice but to row. Everything his captor had said about the place was true. Through his many years, he had travelled far and wide, but he had never experienced a place as inhospitable as this. At that moment, he would even have welcomed the cauldron heat of the Sinai.
Yet the marshland was not a dead place. It throbbed with sound – the chit-chittering of frogs in the reeds and the raucous honking of huge flocks of geese filling the colourless sky. Dragonflies flitted above the dark pools, bejewelled and glittering in the sunlight, while otters slid up and down the banks, searching for prey, and monitor lizards moved sinuously through the water.
‘The marsh looks like death, but within it, there is life,’ Gyasi said. ‘This is what Anubis means to those who follow the Shuyet.’
The waterway wound sinuously between the muddy banks, making it impossible to see ahead, past the towering vegetation. Here and there new channels would branch off, and Taita noticed that Gyasi’s eyes would flicker warily as they passed some of them, hinting, he thought, at the dangers that lay within.
Night was falling. The pools darkened and shadows lengthened. Taita wondered how his captor would find her way through the treacherous landscape without a lamp to guide them.
Barely had the thought crossed his mind when he glimpsed a light ahead, flickering through the reeds.
As they rounded a long mound covered in tangled vegetation, Taita gasped with surprise. A constellation of flickering lights spread out before him across a large island at the centre of a network of stagnant pools, all of it hidden from anyone approaching by the natural formation of the landscape.
Here was the Shuyet’s fortress.
The structure was formidable, the walls rising up to blot out the starlit horizon. Squinting into the fading light, Taita saw guards holding lanterns as they moved along the walls, and other men at work at the edge of the water, hauling supplies from small vessels.
This was where the Shuyet’s army had retreated. But this was no broken mass, huddling in ramshackle tents – the stronghold looked impregnable.
Taita marvelled at the construction. How long must it have taken the Shuyet to build? How many men must he have sweated under the lick of the taskmaster’s whip? Here indeed was the genius of the adversary who had confounded them at every turn, a master schemer who had chosen the most secure place for this citadel, and then by the power of his will had ensured his dream was given form.
‘Hardai . . .’ Gyasi said, breathing out the name so that it sounded like a prayer. ‘This place cannot be conquered. The Shuyet designed it so that as long as there are people willing to defend it, it will not fall. And there will never be a lack of those willing to fight, and die, in the name of Anubis.’
For all of her confidence, Taita could see that Gyasi was eager to reach the island before the land was completely hidden, and she leaned harder on the oars as they approached the fortress.
As they closed on a jetty, Taita looked up at the walls of Hardai – the amber bricks made from the thick clay of the delta – and the citadel that rose behind them. He imagined an army trying to take the stronghold. Archers positioned along the walls would easily cut down any approaching force, and those who did make it to the island fortress still had the high walls to contend with. A siege would be worse; the men camped in the marsh would quickly fall sick – marsh fever, poisonous water, dysentery. Gyasi was right – as long as there were men willing to fight for the Shuyet, Hardai would not fall.
Having secured her skiff, Gyasi took Taita’s arm and hauled him to his feet. Taita did not resist. Instead, as they made their way from the jetty towards the imposing gate, he surveyed the faces of the men and women they passed. He was sure that the Shuyet would still be recruiting men from across the Lower Kingdom, but he could see that the river battle had tested the morale of his forces.
As they made their way through the gate, Taita saw just how thick the brick walls were – four full paces. Inside the fortress, the barracks had been built up against the ramparts, adding extra strength to the defences. And from the central square, the citadel rose above the rest of the buildings – a circular keep, built of stone robbed from buildings across the Lower Kingdom. Perhaps it had been here before the fortress was built, Taita thought to himself – the den of a river pirate – but he could think of no legend or fable that told of such a place.
The screech of an owl broke the stillness of the twilight. Once it faded, Taita was struck by how silent the fortress was. He sensed a suffocating atmosphere of fear lying across the place, as if the men and women who resided there were afraid to raise their voices when the day’s labours had come to an end.
Gyasi pulled Taita to the citadel’s gate. Guards stood on either side of the entrance. They knew Gyasi, Taita could see, despite her changed appearance, and bowed respectfully in greeting, even as their eyes flitted curiously in his direction.
‘Open the gate,’ Gyasi demanded. ‘I need to see Heru.’
The guards pushed open the gate, and Gyasi escorted Taita inside. They crossed a small courtyard, and stepped into a large, airy entrance hall. Unlike the outer shell of the citadel, it was finely finished, in the manner of the grand buildings of Memphis – the walls were smooth and painted with scenes of men fishing in the delta, the lines perfect. Taita admired the craftsmanship as they crossed the enormous hall. Only the best architects and masons could have conceived of such work, let alone completed it.
‘This palace is a marvel,’ Taita exclaimed.
Gyasi snorted. ‘The Upper Kingdom is not the only realm in Egypt that is blessed with great craftsmen. Perhaps you forget who built the great monuments. Long before Thebes, there was Memphis.’
‘I remember more than you might think,’ Taita replied.
As they moved from the entrance hall into a smaller antechamber, the choking, rotting odour from the marsh assailed them, compelling Taita to cover his nose and mouth with his sleeve. Gyasi smiled. ‘This location was not chosen for its invigorating air,’ she said.
Lamps had been lit along the corridors, and their dancing light twisted Gyasi’s features as she guided Taita along the flagstones, disfiguring her handsome face. Perhaps this was the true Gyasi, Taita thought, as she ushered him into a low-ceilinged chamber. Perhaps she had revealed herself to him fully now that she had no need for concealment.
‘Wait here,’ Gyasi commanded.
As soon as he was alone, Taita turned his attention to the room in which he found himself. In the centre stood a piece of furniture unlike anything he had ever seen before – a throne carved from a single piece of ebony. Reaching out, he let his fingers trail across the wood, feeling the old magic still trapped within it resonate through his body.
Taita stepped back from the throne as soon as he heard voices approaching. A tall man with burning eyes, wearing a black robe, marched into the room. He was accompanied by Gyasi and two muscular guards wearing leather cuirasses and carrying long javelins. This must be the man known as ‘the scribe’, Taita decided.
‘Lord High Chancellor,’ the tall man said as he approached. The guttural accent of the Lower Kingdom was barely detectable in his speech, but there was no doubting his origins – the blood of the people of the delta ran strongly in his veins.
Taita bowed in feigned humility. ‘And whom do I have the pleasure of greeting?’
‘I am Heru,’ the tall man replied. ‘I serve the god Anubis himself, the great Shuyet.’
Taita nodded.
‘I have heard much about you since you arrived in Memphis,’ Heru said. ‘Though I must admit, I find it difficult to believe it all.’
‘Tell me what it is you have heard, and I will tell you whether or not it is true,’ Taita said calmly.
‘That you were once a eunuch-attendant to Queen Lostris of the Upper Kingdom,’ Heru said contemptuously. ‘That you served Pharaoh Mamose, and that you were there when the Hyksos invaded, and witnessed his great defeat on the Plains of Adnub.’
‘That is the truth,’ Taita confirmed.
‘That would make you ancient. And yet, to look at you, you appear younger than I am.’
‘The gods have blessed me.’
Something about this response made Heru smile. ‘Perhaps it has something to do with your condition. Where one strength is stolen, another emerges.’
‘Perhaps, but all men must come to terms with losing what was taken from me by force. And yet, they do not live longer for the lack of it. Virility is not everything.’
Heru laughed at this. ‘I believe the Shuyet would agree.’
Taita smiled – Heru’s words confirmed what he had long come to believe.
‘What now?’ Taita asked.
‘Now you will be weighed in the balance.’ Turning to Gyasi, Heru nodded. ‘Prepare yourself,’ he boomed as Gyasi ducked through the door into the passageway. ‘The Shuyet is coming.’
