River god - Smith Wilbur - Страница 117

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  'I trust this contraption of yours as much as I trust those cursed brutes who tow it,' he grumbled, but I was persuasive, and at last he stepped up gingerly on to the footplate and we were off.

  At first I kept the horses to an easy trot, until I felt him relaxing and, despite himself, beginning to enjoy the exhilarating ride. Then I pushed them into a canter. 'See the speed of it. You can be upon the enemy before he knows you are there,' I exulted.

  Tanus laughed for the first time, and I was encouraged. 'With your ships you rule the river. With this chariot you rule the land. Between the two, you rule the world. Nothing can stand against you.' I was careful not to disparage his beloved ships, or to make unfavourable comparisons.

  'Is this your best speed?' he shouted in the wind and the pounding of hooves. 'With a fair wind, Breath of Horus is faster than this.' Which was a lie and a challenge.

  'Hold on to the sides and take a deep breath,' I warned him. 'I am going to take you up where the eagles fly,' and I let Patience and Blade go.

  No man has ever travelled faster. The wind seared our eyes, and the tears pouring from them were blown back into our hair.

  'Sweet breath of Isis!' Tanus shouted with excitement. "This is?' I never knew what he thought this was. Tanus never finished his sentence, for at that instant our off-wheel hit a rock and the rim exploded.

  The chariot capsized and somersaulted, and both Tanus and I were thrown high and clear. I struck the hard earth with a force that should have crippled me, but I was so concerned with how Tanus would be affected by this little mishap, and how my dreams and plans would be dashed, that I felt no pain.

  I bounded to my feet and saw Tanus crawl to his bleeding knees twenty paces beyond me. He was coated heavily with dust and seemed to have lost the skin from one half of his face. He tried to maintain his dignity as he pushed himself upright and staggered back to the wrecked chariot, but he was limping heavily.

  He stood for a long minute gazing down at the shattered ruins of my creation, and then abruptly he let out a roar like a wounded bull, and launched such a mighty kick at it that it flipped over again, as though it were a child's toy. He turned on his heel without even a glance in my direction and limped away. I did not see him again for a week, and when we did meet, neither of us mentioned the chariot.

  I think that might have been the end of the matter, and we would never have assembled our first chariot squadron, if it had not been for the fact that the stubbornness of my mistress's pride surpassed even that of her lover. She had given me the original order, and would not now retract it. When Tanus tried to inveigle her into doing so, he merely made my position stronger. Hui and I rebuilt the chariot within three days, and another identical to it.

  By the time the embalmers in the funerary chapel had completed the ritual seventy days of royal mummification, we had our first squadron of fifty chariots, and had trained drivers for them.

  SINCE WE HAD RETURNED TO THE PALACE of Memnon from our defeat at the battle of Abnub, my mistress had been occupied with the business of state thrust upon her by the regency. Long hours were spent with her ministers and advisers.

  It was now that the initial training which I had given her in the Palace of Elephantine was to bear fruit. I had taught her to pick her way unerringly through the labyrinth of power and influence/She was just twenty-one years of age, but she was a queen, and ruled like one.

  Very occasionally she encountered a problem which particularly vexed or perplexed her. Then she sent for me. I would drop my work in the armoury or the stables or in the small scribery that she had set aside for me just down the corridor from her audience chamber, and I would rush to her side.

  On occasion I spent days sitting below her throne and steering her through some troublesome decisions. Once again, my ability to read the lips of men without hearing their words stood us in good stead. Some nobleman at the back of the audience never realized, as he plotted or schemed with his neighbour, that I was relaying his exact words to my mistress. She swiftly acquired a reputation of sagacity and prescience. Neither of us enjoyed much rest during these dark and worrisome days.

  Even though our days were full, our nights were long. Those interminable councils of war and of state lasted well past midnight. No sooner was one crisis averted, than another loomed before us. Each day the Hyksos threatened us more directly, and Tanus' hold on the river-line weakened.

  Slowly, a sense of doom and despair permeated all of us. Men smiled little and never laughed out loud. Even the play of the children was muted and subdued. We had only to look across the river, and the enemy was there, gathering himself, growing stronger each day.

  After seventy days, the mummification of Pharaoh was completed. My early efforts in preserving the king's body had been highly successful, and the grand master of the guild of embalmers had commended me in the presence of my mistress. He had found no evidence of decay when he removed the king's corpse from the olive jar, and even his liver, which is the part most subject to mortification, was well preserved.

  Once the king had been laid out on the diorite slab in his mortuary chapel, the grand master had inserted the spoon up his nostril and scooped out the curdled contents of his skull which the pickle had hardened to the consistency of cheese. Then, still in the foetal position, the king was placed in the bath of natron salt with only his head left uncovered by the harsh fluid. When he was removed from the bath thirty days later, all the fatty tissue had dissolved, and the outer layers of the skin had peeled off, except for that of the head.

  They laid him upon the mottled stone slab once again and straightened him into an extended position. He was wiped and dried, and his empty stomach was filled with linen pads soaked in resins and wax and then sutured closed. Meanwhile, his internal organs were desiccated and placed in their milk-coloured alabaster Canopic jars, which were then sealed.

  For the remaining forty days, the body of the king was allowed to dry out thoroughly. The doors of the chapel had been aligned with the direction of the warm, dry prevailing winds, so that they blew over the funeral slab. By the end of the ritual period of seventy days, Pharaoh's body was as dry as a stick of firewood.

  His nails, which had been removed before he was soaked in the natron bath, were replaced and fixed in position on his fingers and toes with fine threads of gold wire. The first layer of pure white linen bandages was wound into place around his body, leaving his head and neck exposed. The binding was meticulous and intricate, with the bandages crossing and criss-crossing each other in elaborate patterns. Under the bindings were laid charms and amulets of gold and precious stones. The bandages were then soaked with lacquer and resins that dried to a stony hardness.

  Now it was time for the ceremony of Opening-the-Mouth, which traditionally was performed by the dead pharaoh's next of kin. Memnon was too young to take this part, so his regent was called in his stead.

  My mistress and I went to the chapel together in the gloom of dawn, and we were witnesses as the linen sheet that covered the king was drawn aside. Pharaoh's head was miraculously preserved. His eyes were closed and his expression was serene. The embalmers had rouged and painted his face, and he looked better in death than he had in life.

  While the high priest of Ammon-Ra and the grand master of the guild of embalmers prepared the instruments for the ceremony, we sang the Incantation against Dying for the Second Time.

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