Day of the False King (33 page)

PRINCE MAYATUM’S
MAJOR-DOMO COUGHED
discreetly at the door
to his bedchamber, holding a terracotta lantern in his hand. When the
sounds of slumber continued unabated, the man hissed to the servant
girl lying beside the prince. “Wake him,” he said. “For pity’s sake —
his brother’s guards are all over the front hall!”

The girl’s eyes shot open. Whenever the
prince demanded her for the night, she was careful never to disturb him
when he slept, not even to leave the room to make water. She had
discovered over the few weeks she had been in his house that if she
inadvertently roused him from sleep, it often engendered a hard slap —
or worse, another bout of rough lovemaking. Already bruises around her
throat were beginning to darken, inflicted by the prince’s hands where
he had held her as he climaxed.

The girl’s eyes grew wide and pleading. She
shook her head so slightly that it might have been a tremor. “No!” she
mouthed silently. “You do it!”

Cursing his luck, the man tentatively
approached the prince’s side. “Highness,” he whispered, leaning down to
the royal ear. “Highness, wake…”

There was a stirring on the bed. It was a
moment before Mayatum recognized who had called to him. Mayatum reached
out to pinch the major-domo’s fleshy upper arm. “I told you I wasn’t to
be wakened until noon.”

Stifling his yelp of pain, the man spoke in
a soothing voice. “I would never dare to disturb your slumber, Great
Prince, were it not for that fact that Pharaoh has sent his heralds for
you.”

Prince Mayatum sat up, swinging his legs to
the floor. It was the middle of the night. “What are they doing here at
this hour?” he whined petulantly.

“They gave no reason, Highness — only that
you must go to Djamet at once.”

While the prince and his butler spoke, the
servant girl crept noiselessly from the bed, passing the other servants
who waited, cringing, outside the door to dress and barber their
master. The major-domo himself quickly laid out the vestments that
Mayatum would wear.

Naked, Mayatum wandered into his privy and
sat on the bench in his tiled bath, yawning. He was not much concerned
with the summons; convinced that he had so far successfully enacted the
part of loyal brother and patriot. As his valet poured scented water
over his shoulders, he ruminated on the reasons why Ramses had called
for him at such an odd time of day.

Irresistibly, a smile stole over his lips.
Perhaps his half-brother was dying at last. Ramses had not been well
during the few times that Mayatum had seen him during the previous
months. Now that Semerket was dead, killed by the loyal Menef in
far-off Mesopotamia, there would be no foreign idol to cure the
rottenness in his brother’s lungs. Mayatum frowned, remembering that
for six months he had heard nothing from Menef, no confirmation that
Semerket’s assassination had indeed occurred. But he remembered that
Babylon was yet again in the throes of establishing a new dynasty, and
this undoubtedly explained the slowness of the post.

Then a happy thought occurred to the prince.
Perhaps Mayatum had been summoned so that he could be named official
regent to Ramses’ young son, his nephew. His smile grew wider still as
he tenderly contemplated his young charge, so sadly soon to lie within
the Great Place in a tomb next to his father’s, another of those
forgotten boy-kings Egypt produced with such frequency.

A shadow crossed Mayatum’s handsome face.
Alert to his fickle moods, his barber stepped hastily backward,
avoiding the prince’s pinching fingers. But Mayatum was not thinking of
the barber, but of his mother Tiya.

She should be here, he thought bitterly.
Tiya should be the one going to Djamet Temple. How she would have
relished it, this triumph over her husband’s Canaanite whore, mother of
Ramses IV. Upon this thought, Mayatum’s smile grew even more malignant.
He positively chuckled as the valet fastened the leopard skin around
his shoulders, denoting him the high priest of On, then placed
Mayatum’s most formal wig upon his head.

Preceded by his attendants, Mayatum made his
way to the temple barge that awaited him at his private wharf. Mayatum
lived a few leagues north of the city, on his own vast estate, situated
far away from the stink and sprawl of Thebes. Not for him the cramped,
private apartments at Djamet, so coveted by other nobles because of
their proximity to Pharaoh. Living in so teeming a place would not
allow him to practice his secret pastimes — ones that he preferred to
keep far from the prying eyes of his family. His thoughts turned
reminiscently to the little serving girl who had shared his bed that
night. He must remember to ask whether she had any relatives still
among the living who might miss her and start to ask questions after
she had disappeared.

His midsection was beginning to pulse
pleasantly as the gilded ship rounded the bend in the river, bringing
Djamet Temple into view. When he saw it, however, the pleasant feeling
in his groin died away, replaced by a dull knot of disquiet. Instead of
the mournful chants and dirges he expected to hear, signifying the end
of his brother’s life, Djamet Temple was alive with lights and
celebration, and the music of drums, panpipes, and lutes wafted over
the water to him. The docks were crowded with the barques of other
nobles and gentry, summoned in the dead of night just as he had been.

As the sailors rushed to tie his ship to the
pilings, Mayatum stared in dismay at the avenue in front of the temple,
lit by bonfires and smoky with thick clouds of incense cascading from
great stone censers. Then he saw the reason for all the commotion: a
bizarre and splendid wagon had halted before the gates of the Great
Pylons. There must have been a hundred oxen tethered to its reins, and
the thing was painted in bright, barbaric colors, its sides inset with
gems and gilded traceries that twinkled in the firelight. In its bed,
the wagon bore some kind of shrine, the doors of which had been thrown
open to the night. But whatever had been inside it was gone.

As Mayatum stepped forward onto the dock, he
saw that an entire train of accompanying carts and drays extended down
almost the entire concourse to the Nile. The noise and congestion
around the temple were intolerable, and he had to wait as his
attendants lashed at the people, shouting at them to step aside so that
Prince Mayatum might pass inside the gates.

The moment he was through the Pylons, the
pounding of drums insinuated itself into the ground beneath his feet.
He made his way with the rest of the puzzled, excited courtiers to the
rear of the temple grounds, where a great pavilion awaited them. Purple
curtains hanging from silver rings kept its interior hidden. But
lanterns and torches illuminated it from within, making it blaze like a
comet in the night sky.

Pharaoh’s elite Shardana guards met him at
the pavilion’s entrance, and they indicated that Mayatum was to go into
a small ancillary hall around the corner — a private reception, they
told him. There, he found his brother surrounded by his favored
courtiers. Mayatum noticed that Ramses was arrayed in his most formal
robes of pleated linen. His head bent under the red and white crowns,
and his thin neck sagged under the weight of jeweled collars, heavy
pectorals, and chains of gold. But Mayatum also saw that Pharaoh’s eyes
shone brightly (though this may have been from fever) and that his
normally pallid complexion was livid with color (though this may have
been from the rouge). When Ramses glanced in his direction, Mayatum
made quick obeisance before him.

“Brother!” exclaimed Ramses. “You are here
at last. Now the ritual can begin.” He nodded to an attendant, who
hurried into the pavilion. Ramses bent to lift Mayatum to his feet. “I
wanted you particularly to come tonight, to see it for yourself.”

“But…what am I to see, Majesty?”

“Something about which you must be sure to
tell my other half-brothers in Pi-Ramesse. I wanted them both here, of
course, but I could not tarry another moment. So you must describe to
them exactly what you see here tonight.”

“I will of course do whatever Pharaoh
desires.”

The drums from the pavilion increased their
fierce tempo, and the attendant returned, whispering into Pharaoh’s
ear. Pharaoh took off at a quick pace, going through the tent’s flap
and into the pavilion. Mayatum stared after him with foreboding.
Pharaoh’s odd, smiling manner troubled him deeply.

The remaining courtiers deserted the small
tent and Mayatum was alone, save for two loiterers. Being royal,
Mayatum scarcely noted them. But as he looked about for his own
attendants, he chanced to notice that the two people — a lad and a
beautiful woman — were now looking directly at him with piercing
glances. Such an act was in flagrant defiance of royal protocol.

Mayatum’s eyes began to snap fire — a prince
of the royal blood must never be gawked at — and hot words of
condemnation bubbled to his lips. But he choked them back when he
looked fully at the woman. There was something reminiscent in her
glance, now as scornful as his own. He tried to think where he had seen
her, she with her skin the color of smoke, with her eyes like the Nile
at flood…

“Do you not recognize me, Great Prince?”
murmured the woman, as if reading his thoughts.

“Should I?” Mayatum said tightly, annoyed
that she should address him so boldly. By rights, she should have
waited until he had spoken to her. He disliked how informal his
brother’s court had become, when any courtier felt free to burble
anything to a member of the royal family without invitation. When it
was his turn on the throne, he thought —

“I thought you would remember the occasion,”
the woman continued blithely, determined to interrupt his sanguine
thoughts. She turned to the youth beside her. “My friend here met you
at the same time. Perhaps you recall
him
…?” The youth’s
expression was strangely malevolent, and he did not even bow his head
to the prince.

“Am I expected to remember everyone I meet?”
asked Mayatum coldly. “My life in Egypt is full —”

“But it wasn’t in Egypt that we met, Great
Prince,” the woman interrupted him. “It was during your recent visit to
Babylon.”

Mayatum paled. No one was supposed to know
of his secret visit to Mesopotamia, where he had commanded Menef to
kill the wife and friend of the hated Semerket. “But I’ve never been to
Babylon…” he began to sputter.

Once again the woman defiantly interrupted
him. “I spilled a tray of sweetmeats upon your lap. Do you remember
now?”

Mayatum felt a film of sweat break upon his
upper lip. Now he knew who they were. By the gods — by the gods — were
they ghosts, then? Spirits come to bedevil him? He began to back slowly
from the tent, his shaking hands clutching the linen drapes behind him.
They were supposed to be dead!

The woman laughed charmingly to see him so
undone. “I can admit it now,” she said, “spilling the food was no
accident. I do hope you’ll forgive me, but you’d said such distressing
things about my husband that night, you see.”

Mayatum was at the tent flap, and he turned
quickly, only to careen into a slim, long-limbed man with eyes of
blackest jet.

“Semerket!” he gasped.

“Highness.”

Mayatum marveled how in that single word,
uttered in such a flat and toneless way, there could be found such
malevolence. Semerket, not even inclining his head, shot a glance over
the prince’s shoulder to the woman and lad.

“It’s time,” he said.

Mayatum was alone in the tent, now. He was
soaked with sweat and his hands were shaking uncontrollably. He was
feverishly thinking that if Semerket had returned — if Semerket’s wife
and friend were truly alive — then Pharaoh must know of his own secret
journey to Babylon, and how he had plotted with Menef to kill one of
Pharaoh’s most trusted envoys. Sudden images of his dead brother
Pentwere danced in his mind. Mayatum suddenly felt the slick, braided
white cord of silk slipping over his head, just as it had Pentwere’s —
how it tightened beneath his chin as it was thrown over the cedar beam
and made secure. Then he imagined himself stepping forward from the
stool into space — and heard the sudden crack of his own neck breaking —

Mayatum screamed aloud. He would have run
from Djamet then had not Pharaoh’s Shardana guards been waiting for him
outside the tent. When he emerged, shaking and sweating, they urged him
firmly into the purple-curtained pavilion.

What he saw there confirmed all his darkest
fears. The magi of Bel-Marduk whirled in frenzied circles before their
golden idol, spinning faster and faster to the shrill piping of
priestesses and the primordial pounding of their drums. The magi held
sharp knives in their frenzied hands, and they slashed at themselves in
ecstasy, so that blood ran from their limbs and spattered the faces and
robes of the courtiers who stood nearest them. Mayatum could already
see that Pharaoh, standing in their center, was sodden with red. The
furor of the music increased so that Mayatum felt that even his heart’s
own beating had been seized by it. Then, at a final roar of the drums,
the magi ceased their frantic twirling and the musicians fell silent.

The high magus stepped forward, his hands
dripping green bile from the liver he had ripped from a she-goat,
intoning a short prayer in Babylonian as he genuflected before the
idol. With a gesture, he beckoned Pharaoh to approach the god with him.
Before Pharaoh’s family, before his court, before all the important
personages who were the witnesses for the rest of Egypt, Ramses turned
and seized the idol’s outstretched hand in his.

Mayatum saw for himself how Pharaoh’s limbs
became infused with sudden strength, how his shoulders appeared no
longer so rounded, how his neck straightened beneath the heavy crowns,
saw that his stance became more solidly planted upon the earth. And
then Mayatum saw the look of triumph in Pharaoh’s suddenly unclouded
eye.