Eye of the Moon (10 page)

There was a snigger from one of the oarsmen. “A divine dog!”

“Well spoken of the great god Sobek! How is it that you know so much of him?” The torchlight flickered across his coarse features and wild mane as he waited for my reply.

I bit my lip. I was always saying too much. Speaking too freely. Why couldn't I hold my tongue?

“Captain!” Wosret called out impatiently from beneath the canopy. “Enough of this time wasting! Hurry with your questioning. Make sure they are who they say they are. Then let's be on our way.”

“Yes, sir.” The captain nodded as he peered across the water. “So where's your dog?”

I hesitated. Tuthmosis crouched forward and whispered under his breath. “Tell him we've already thrown it overboard!”

“The dog is here, sir!”

“Idiot! What'll you do now?” Tuthmosis asked.

The captain held the torch high. A path of gold rippled across to us. “What are you whispering about? Where
is
the dog?”

I grabbed a skin Ta-Miu had given us, snapped the cord that bound it, and gathered it up in my arms, holding it as if it had a dog's weight of muscle and bone. “Here, sir!”

“Well, girl—offer it to Sobek, then! Throw it in!”

“Yes, sir! But I don't know the proper incantations.”

“Say what you want. Just get on with it!”

“To the great god Sobek. May he not crush two humble peasant girls between his mighty teeth. May he arise from the water and take our offering that we most humbly and earnestly—”

“Enough! Enough! Sobek has heard you! So have we all! Cast your dog before him now, without further preamble or speech making!”

I hurled the skin bundle into the water on the side closest to the reeds and watched the water take it, praying it wouldn't spread out and float toward their boat into the path of the torchlight. For a moment it seemed to catch the current but then was trapped by a clump of reed. Before they could notice anything suspicious, I picked up my paddle and whacked it down hard and then called back to the captain. “It wouldn't do for a dead dog to drift alongside the royal barge, sir!”

Suddenly Wosret appeared in the prow alongside the captain.

“Who is this girl? How does she know this is the royal barge?”

“I can . . .” I bit my lip. I had almost said
read
! But no peasant girl would be able to read. “I can see by the red sail and the handsome decoration, it
has
to be a boat of some importance!”

Wosret leaned over the railings. He stood twisting his ring and staring at us across the water in silence. I held my breath and kept my head bowed. Next to me so did Tuthmosis.

Then Wosret pointed at him. “That one—your sister—she's a silent one.”

“She grieves, sir. The dog was her favorite pet.” I was glad the night air had turned my voice husky. With my servant's wig and deep voice, I prayed Wosret wouldn't recognize me—or Tuthmosis in his girl's tunic and wig.

“Where is your father that he allows two girls alone on the river at night?”

“Celebrating, sir! It's the Sophet Festival.”

The captain nodded. “Drunk, probably! Eh?”

“Maybe so. There's a new king to be celebrated, sir.” I kept my eye on Wosret while I spoke.

“That we know, girl!”

I nodded but kept silent.

The captain held the lamp a little higher and then turned to Wosret. “Should we take them on board?”

Wosret shook his head impatiently. “We're wasting time. Just find out what they know.”

The captain nodded and called down. “We're on the lookout for two traitors. A prince and a young girl. Have you seen them come this way?”

“If we'd seen a prince, sir, we'd have followed him. We're poor peasant girls, sir. A prince would have done us well.”

“Well, watch out for one. Be sure to report to an official if you come across a prince who limps.”

“A prince with a limp, did you say? It wouldn't be Crown Prince Tuthmosis, sir?”

Behind me, I heard Tuthmosis's sharp gasp.

The captain shook his head. “What foolish girls you are, eh? Tuthmosis is dead! How else would his brother, Amenhotep, be king? It's another prince we search for.”

Wosret snapped his fingers at the captain. In the flare of the lamps I saw his garnet ring clinging to his hand like a bubble of blood. “Let's waste no more time! Darkness is descending. Row on! They can't have gotten far!”

We sat in silence after they passed, until their wake stopped washing against us and our boat finally stopped rocking. The night grew dark around us.

Finally Tuthmosis let out a deep sigh as if he had been holding his breath. “That was stupid, Isikara.”

I found I was shivering. “I hate him! I
loathe
Wosret!”

“But you didn't have to taunt him.”

“I wanted him to feel guilty.”

“A man like Wosret never feels guilt.”

“I
had
to say something. He's killed my father! He's made him drink the poison cup.”

“You don't know that for sure.”

“I
do
know! My father would've followed otherwise. Why else hasn't he? And why else would Wosret be out on the river looking for us at night? They've discovered my father replaced you. You heard Wosret!
They can't have gotten far
. . . . He knows! He's after us! And he's killed my father!”

“But you didn't have to pretend to throw the dog into the river! Now we've lost our blanket!”

“What?” I gasped. “You brute! What do blankets matter when I've lost my
father
? There were
two
in the bundle.” I hurled another skin into his lap.

We stared at each other unflinchingly. Then he turned abruptly and reached into the woven basket. He plucked out a flask of sweet fig wine, pulled the stopper with a sharp plop, and drank some. He held it out to me. “Have some of this. You're not yourself and neither am I. Remember”—his voice dropped lower—“I've
also
lost a parent.”

I eyed him angrily. “It's not the same for you!”

“How do you know?”

“Because you're a prince!”

“Do princes not have feelings?”

I glared straight back at him. How could he of all people know how I truly felt? I wanted to thump my fists against his chest. Instead I snatched the flask from him, took a quick gulp, and almost choked at its strength.

“There's nothing wrong with me! It's
you
who's strange!” I snapped as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I'm fine!” But suddenly I felt my stomach heave, and before I could help myself, I was spewing over the side of the boat.

“Isikara?” He put a hand on my shoulder.

I shrugged him off. “I'm fine!”

“But . . . ?”

“Leave me alone.” I bent over the side of the boat and spewed into the water again. “I'm just . . . just angry and . . .”

“And what?”

“And . . . perhaps scared . . . ?”

He sat back in the boat and began to laugh.

I looked back at him. “What? Curse you, Tuthmosis! At a time like this, you laugh? You really are a brute.”

“Sorry. But I never thought I'd hear you admit that.”

“What?”

“Being scared.”

“And I thought I'd never hear you say sorry!” I snapped back at him.

“We could've been killed by them. No one would've known. Our bodies thrown to the crocodiles in the darkness. We'd have disappeared forever!”

“So?” I eyed him.

He was looking at me strangely. “But it didn't happen, did it?”

I shook my head.

“It didn't—because of
you
. You managed to bluff Wosret! Have you seen the ring he wears? When I was a boy, he used to tell me that with that ring he had power over everything on earth. He could make things happen.
Anything
he wanted. And I believed him. But you outwitted him. We should drink a toast! We've seen the last of him. The last—until I've gathered my army against him.”

“We'll
never
see the last of him!” The bile rose up in my throat again.

Tuthmosis reached out and shook my shoulder.
“Don't say that. What lies ahead will be different. But we'll live the days as they come. My father's kingdom stretches as far as the Second Cataract of the Great River. Beyond that, in the land of Nubia, we'll be free of Wosret. I'll gather an army to fight him. To fight for my crown.”

I looked back at him and willed myself to believe in what he said.

We pulled the boat up among the papyrus reeds and spread the skin blanket on top of some grass that lay flattened beneath a grove of palm trees. We took out the dates and millet cake and slices of roast fowl Ta-Miu had packed.

A smell of wood smoke and sounds of drums and rowdy voices drifted back to us from Thebes as we ate. I stood and scooped up some smooth flat pebbles, walked to the water's edge, and flicked them angrily one after another across the water. If Wosret had been there, I'd have liked one to have found his heart.

The stones skimmed the surface and jumped along like agitated flying fish. Even Katep would have been impressed with my skill. But if Katep had been here, I might not have been in this mess.

Eventually, even the frogs fell silent and darkness came down like a star-spangled cloak. Tuthmosis pulled the skin over us and soon he was breathing deeply. I lay and felt for the knots on my bracelet, praying to Hathor for protection. Then I asked for forgiveness as well for twice calling Tuthmosis a brute.

I must have fallen asleep, because later something woke me. There was a swish of grass and someone treading softly but firmly. A huge, dark shape appeared in the long grass. Then I heard a snuffle, the sound of grass being pulled and snapped, and a deep rumble of guts. There was a foul smell.

It wasn't a person. It was a hippopotamus! And it was
very
close. I knew these animals came out of the river at night to feed. We were lying right in its path. I could hardly breathe as I nudged Tuthmosis.

“Tuthmosis!” I whispered close to his ear.

“Wh-what?” He turned over grumpily.

“Shh!”

There was silence as the hippopotamus stopped eating. I imagined its ears swiveling and twitching around to catch the sound of us. One snap of those huge jaws, and we'd be done for!

But the sound of grass being pulled and snapped started up again.

“There's a hippopotamus. Next to us.”

“Lie still,” he whispered back. “They have poor eyesight.”

I lay rigid with my arms stiffly at my sides, too terrified even to breathe, and prayed the grass farther down toward the river was sweeter tasting than the grass we were lying on.

“Tuthmosis . . . ?” I whispered later when I sensed the beast had moved farther away. There was no reply, except the sound of even breathing.

All thought of sleep had gone. I lay with my eyes wide open and watched the moon come up—fuller now than the fine thread I'd seen on the morning that was supposed to have marked the ritual of crocodile bathing at the Temple of Sobek. I'd lost track of the days. But one thing I
was
sure of—Tuthmosis was
not
going to be the best of protectors.

I felt for my moonstone amulet and prayed to Hathor again—this time to ward off evils, not just for my sake, but for Tuthmosis's sake as well.

Then I searched the sky to find the stars that outlined Sah, the hunter with his bow and arrow. Katep's
constellation. I willed Katep to be searching the stars as well. To be looking up from the desert in Sinai and to be thinking of me. I thought of my father's words:
If you've learned the constellations and the stars, then wherever you are in the world, you'll never be lost
.

I held on to that thought. I would
not
be lost! Not even in spirit. As long as the hunter, Sah, was in the sky, I was safe. This was just as well, because we were to come across the royal barge again sooner than expected.