River god - Smith Wilbur - Страница 95

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  I held my breath, the siting of the court was an affair of state. To remove from one city to another was a decision which affected the lives of thousands of citizens. It was not one to be made on the light whim of a child not yet sixteen years of age.

  Pharaoh looked amazed at the request, and scratched his false beard. *You want to live in Thebes? Very well, then, the court will move to Thebes!' He turned to me. 'Taita, design me a new palace.' He looked back at my mistress. 'Shall we site it there, on the west bank, my dear?' He pointed across the river.

  'It is cool and pretty on the west bank,' my mistress agreed. 'I shall be very happy there.'

  'On the west bank, Taita. Do not stint yourself in the design. It must be a fitting home for the son of Pharaoh. His name will be Memnon, the ruler of the dawn. We will call it the Palace of Memnon.'

  With such simple ease my mistress saddled me with a mountain of labour, and accustomed the king to the first of many such demands in the name of the child in her womb. From this moment on, Pharaoh was not disposed to deny her aught that she asked for, whether it was titles of honour for those she loved or liked, alms for those she had taken under her protection, or rare and exotic dishes that were fetched for her from the ends of the empire. Like a naughty child, I think that she enjoyed testing the limits of this new power she wielded over the king.

  She had never seen snow, though she had heard me speak of it from my fragmentary childhood memories of the mountainous land where I had been born. My mistress asked for some to be brought to her to cool her brow in the heat of the Nile valley. Pharaoh immediately commanded a special athletics games to be held, during which the hundred fastest runners in the Upper Kingdom were selected. They were despatched to Syria to bring back snow to my mistress in a special box of my design, which was intended to prevent it melting. This was probably the only one of all her whims that remained unsatisfied. All we received back from those far-off mountain peaks was a damp patch in the bottom of the box.

  In all other things she was fully accommodated. On one occasion she was present when Tanus presented a report to the king on the order of battle of the Egyptian fleet. My mistress sat quietly in the background until Tanus had finished and taken his leave, then she remarked quietly, 'I have heard it said that Lord Tanus is the finest general we have. Don't you think it may be wise, divine husband, to promote him to Great Lion of Egypt and place him in command of the northern corps?' Once again I gasped at her effrontery, but Pharaoh nodded thoughtfully.

  'That same thought had already occurred to me, my dear, even though he is still so young for high command.'

  The following day, Tanus was summoned to a royal audience, from which he emerged as Great Lion of Egypt and the commander of the northern wing of the army. The ancient general who had preceded him was palmed off with a substantial pension and relegated to a sinecure in the royal household. Tanus now had three hundred galleys and almost thirty thousand men under his command. The promotion meant that he stood fourth in the army lists, with only Nem-bet and a couple of old dodderers above him.

  'Lord Tanus is a proud man,' the Lady Lostris informed me, as if I were completely ignorant of this fact. 'If you should ever tell him that I had any hand in his promotion, I shall sell you to the first Syrian trader I come upon,' she threatened me ominously.

  All this time her belly, once so smooth and shapely, was distending gradually. With all my other work I was obliged to relay daily bulletins on this progression, not only to the palace, but also to army headquarters, northern command.

  I BEGAN WORK ON THE CONSTRUCTION of the Palace of Memnon five weeks after Pharaoh had given me the original instructions, for it had taken me that long to draw up the final plans. Both my mistress and the king agreed that my designs exceeded their expectations, and that it would be by far the most beautiful building in the land.

  On the same day that the work began, a blockade runner who had succeeded in bribing his way past the fleets of the red pretender in the north docked in Thebes with a cargo of cedar wood from Byblos. The captain was an old friend of mine and he had interesting news for me.

  Firstly, he told me that Lord Intef had been seen in the city of Gaza. It was said that he was travelling in state with a large bodyguard towards the East. He must therefore have succeeded in crossing the Sinai desert, or he had found a vessel to carry him through the mouth of the Nile and thence east along the coast of the great sea.

  The captain had other news that at the time seemed insignificant, but which was to change the destiny of this very Egypt and of all of us who lived along the river. It seemed that a new and warlike tribe had come out of an unknown land to the east of Syria, carrying all before them. Nobody knew much about these warrior people, except that they seemed to have developed a form of warfare that had never been seen before. They could cross vast distances very swiftly, and no army could stand against them.

  There were always wild rumours of new enemies about to assail this very Egypt. I had heard fifty like this one before, and thought as little of this one as I had of all the others. However, the captain was usually a reliable source, and so I mentioned his story to Tanus when next we met.

  'No one can stand against this mysterious foe?' Tanus smiled. 'I would like to see them come against my lads, I'll show them what the word invincible truly means. What did you say they are called, these mighty warriors who come like the wind?'

  'It seems that they call themselves the Shepherd Kings,' I replied, 'the Hyksos.' The name would not have slid over my tongue so smoothly if I understood then what it would mean to our world.

  "The shepherds, hey? Well, they will not find my rascals an easy flock to herd? Jie dismissed them lightly, and was much more interested in my news of Lord Intef. 'If only we could be certain of his true whereabouts, I could send a detachment of men to arrest him, and bring him back to face up to justice. Wherever I walk on the estates that once belonged to my family, I feel the spirit of my father beside me. I know he will never rest until I avenge him.'

  'Would that it were so easy.' I shook my head. 'Intef is as cunning as a desert fox. I don't think we will ever see him in Egypt again.' As I said this, the dark gods must have chuckled to themselves.

  AS MY MISTRESS'S PREGNANCY ADVANCED, I was able to insist that she limited her many activities. I forbade her to visit the hospitals or the orphanage, for fear of infecting herself and her unborn infant with the vermin and the diseases of the poor. During the heat of the day I made her rest under the barrazza that I had built in the water-garden for the grand vizier. When she protested at the boredom of this enforced inactivity, Pharaoh sent his musicians to the garden to entertain her, and I was persuaded to leave my work on the Palace of Memnon to keep her company, to tell her stories and to discuss Tanus' latest exploits with her.

  I was very strict with her diet, and allowed her no wine or beer. I had the palace gardeners provide fresh fruits and vegetables each day, and I carved all the fat off her meat, for I knew that it would make the child in her belly sluggish. I prepared each of her meals myself and every night when I saw her to her bedchamber, I mixed a special potion with herbs and juices that would strengthen her infant.

  Of course, when she suddenly declared that she must have a stew made from the liver and kidneys of a gazelle, or a salad of larks' tongues or the roasted breast of the wild bustard, the king immediately sent a hundred of his huntsmen into the desert to procure these delicacies for her. I refrained from telling Lord Tanus of these strange cravings of my mistress, for I dreaded to learn that rather than prosecuting the war against the false pharaoh, the northern army had been sent into the desert to hunt gazelle or larks or bustard.

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