Mara, Daughter of the Nile (2 page)

Nekonkh grasped blindly at a safe question, whose answer tradition had taught him. “The First Thutmose—he
who was pharaoh in my youth—he lives with the gods now. He will protect Egypt from their anger.”

“For Hatshepsut’s sake?” came the mocking whisper. “For the sake of the daughter who snatched his throne without waiting for him to die? Captain, he disowned her himself, he chiseled her name off all his monuments.”

“I know not for whose sake, I know nothing!” snarled Nekonkh. “You’ll not trick me into speaking treason, I tell you! Hatshepsut is pharaoh. So be it! Maybe young Thutmose is not fit to rule. Aye, that’s it! Only a weakling could be held down so long by a woman—like a rabbit in a snare!”

There was no answer for a moment. When Sheftu spoke again his voice was grim and quiet, without a trace of mockery. “You are mistaken, Captain,” he said. “Thutmose is no rabbit, he is a lion. And the snare is not made that will hold a lion forever.”

Nekonkh turned slowly. “By the Blessed Son!” he exclaimed. “Which camp are you in, young man? Who speaks treason now?”

Sheftu eased back against the gunwale, his face bland and expressionless. “Why, no one, my friend,” he murmured. “We spoke only of snares and rabbits.”

Suddenly he smiled. It had an astonishing effect, that smile. It lighted up his dark irregular features with a charm that seemed to warm the world. The nervous sweat dried on Nekonkh’s brow, and his throat relaxed. He was even conscious of an obscure exhilaration, a sense of well-being. He found himself grinning genially.

“Aye, aye, you’re quite right, mate,” he agreed. “Snares and rabbits. Nothing more.”

Sheftu bowed and took himself off to the other end of the ship, and there was no more conversation that day. But Nekonkh watched his passenger with feverish interest from that hour on. By the time the
Silver Beetle
docked at Menfe he was convinced that Sheftu was not and never had been a scribe’s apprentice; in fact he strongly suspected that the
youth was one of those very fools—or heroes—who had secretly rallied about the king.

Furthermore he realized with a reckless sort of excitement that he, too, would be glad to offer his life to such a cause, for the sake of this extraordinary young man, his fettered king, and the Egypt they both loved.

Now, two days after docking, the new cargo was stowed and all was ready to sail. But still there was no sign of Sheftu. He had left the vessel as soon as it tied up, having arranged to return with it to Thebes when the time came. Then he had vanished into the tangle of mud-brick buildings, twisting streets, and hurrying, shouting, sweating humanity that was Menfe. He had not come back.

Restlessly Nekonkh paced his scrubbed acacia deck, from gunwale to cabin, from cabin to sweeps, back again to gunwale. Ominous pictures rose in his mind—Sheftu seized by some spy of the queen, Sheftu questioned by torture, Sheftu hanging head downward from the city walls.

What a fool I am, thought Nekonkh desperately. Why do I fret over the young rogue? For all I know he’s reporting
me
to the queen’s men this instant! … No, by Amon, when he spoke of the king he spoke his heart, I’d stake my last copper on it! If I had told him—if I had offered myself and my ship to him and the king—then he would have let me know his plans, what to do if he did not come back.
Hai!
That I knew more—or else nothing at all! What a fool I am! Why doesn’t he come?

Eastward from the wharfs, in another part of the city, a young slave girl of about seventeen years sat in a sunny corner between her master’s storerooms and his garden wall. She was bending over a papyrus roll held carefully in her lap, and her lips moved as she read.

Spend the day merrily.
Put unguent and fine oil together to thy nostrils,
Set singing and music before thy face.
Cast all evil behind thee, and bethink thee only of joy,
Till comes that day of mooring in the land that loveth silence.
Spend the day merrily …

“
Mara!
” The harsh voice shattered the quiet of the garden. The girl snatched up the papyrus and stuffed it into her sash, half turning away from the grim-faced woman who had appeared in the storeroom door. “So there you are, Miss Blue-Eyed Good-For-Nothing!” the woman said angrily. “Idling away your time while the rest of us work like the slaves we are! Up with you! The master’s
shentis
must be starched and pleated!”

“I wish they clothed his corpse,” muttered Mara, flashing a venomous look over her shoulder.

“Aye, aye, so wish we all,” retorted the other. “But Zasha’s far from in his tomb, and his stick’s livelier than he is, as you’ll know if he comes home from his jewel trading and finds you skulking here. Come, now, up with you!”

“I come. Go away, Teta.”

“Nay, I’ll not go until I see you on your feet, and starting for the pressing rooms. Move, now!” Teta leaned farther out the door and peered suspiciously over Mara’s shoulder. “What’s that you’re hiding, you thieving wretch? One of the master’s scrolls again, I’ll take my oath!
Hai-ai!
Remember the last time! He all but took the flesh off your shoulders, stupid, isn’t once enough? Put it back, make haste, or I won’t answer for your life … Reading!” she grumbled, turning back into the house as Mara scrambled to her feet and ran in the direction of the Room of Books. “Idle as the mistress herself, when there’s ironing to be done, and a thrashing is all she’ll get for her high-and-mighty airs!”

May the
kheft
-things take that Zasha and all his kin! fumed Mara as she ran up the red-graveled path. Better not
to live at all than to live like this! I swear the dogs in the market place have a better life!

She pulled open the heavy door and slipped across the cool clay pavements of the Room of Books, to shove the papyrus to its place among the others on the shelves. For a moment she stood, letting her envious gaze rest on one neat roll after another—
The Proverbs of Ptah-hotep
,
The Prophecies of Neferrohu
,
The Book of Surgery
,
The Eloquent Peasant
,
Baufra’s Tale
—forbidden treasure houses of wisdom and poetry and ancient fable which it was a crime for her to touch. Yet Zasha could read no more of it than could his vain and empty-headed lady, who spent most of her time before a mirror. He could write no more than his name, but must call in a scribe on every occasion. Mara’s lip curled. Beast! Slave though she was, she could both read and write, thanks to a former master. And she spoke Babylonian as well as her own tongue.

But what good did it do her? Zasha was rich, and that was what counted. He was rich and he was free.

She turned to look wistfully about the room, and as she did so the old memory returned to haunt her. It was all so long ago and vague now that she never knew whether it was real or imagined, but somehow, somewhere, maybe only in a dream, she had known a room like this; like this only finer—high-ceilinged and luxurious, with rich furnishings and shelves of scrolls.

There were times when her conviction was strong that she had once lived a different life. Sometimes—very seldom now that she had grown older—there had even come the fleeting vision of a face, a beautiful smiling face with blue eyes, like her own, and the dim recollection of someone bending over her and laughing …

A dismal rumbling from her stomach brought her back to the present. Someone will be bending over me with a stick soon, she thought. I had best be gone from here.

Her stomach protested its emptiness once again, making
her feel lightheaded and dizzy, as she hurried out of the room and across the garden. She clenched her teeth and pulled her sash tighter. One thing she could never remember was a time when she had not been hungry.

“Well, Teta, the scroll is returned,” she remarked as she entered the storeroom. “Where are the precious
shentis
of that swineherd, that son of wretched Kush, beloved of crocodiles—”

“
Ast!
Behold them in their usual place!” rasped Teta, pointing. “That tongue of yours will flap once too often, Reckless One! Be silent and useful, for once!”

Teta turned back to her task of sealing wine jars, and the earthy smell of the clay she was using mingled with that of the hot starch as the two worked for a while in silence. Presently a new fragrance drifted in through the open door, from the direction of the kitchen nearby—the fragrance of roasting waterfowl.

“Ahhhhh!” groaned Mara, stopping in the midst of wringing out one of the linen kilts. “Great Amon, is there anything at all to eat in this place?”

Teta tamped down a pottery bung, tied it firmly with linen, capped it with clay and pressed down Zasha’s seal before she answered. Then she half turned, gesturing toward the shelves that lined the walls. “Plenty,” she said sarcastically. “Help yourself.”

Mara’s eyes traveled over the shelves, stacked with jars and kegs, and sacks of dried fish—all sealed and untouchable, save at the order of the mistress. Then she finished wringing out the
shenti
, flung it in the basket, and gave another yank to her sash.

“Someday,” she said through her teeth, “I’m going to have gold. So much gold that I could eat roasted waterfowl every day. So much that I could buy Zasha and his simpering wife and all his relatives, and toss them to the crocodiles!”

Teta laughed shrilly. “
Hai
, tell me another, stupid! A slave
you are and a slave you’ll be, if you don’t die before your time from the beatings you get for your impudence. Gold!
Hai!
Gold!”

Yes, gold! thought Mara. And jewels, and linen so sheer you can see through it, and little alabaster pots like the mistress’ to hold the paint for my eyelids, and freedom, freedom! A slave I’ll
not
be all my life! Someday there’ll be a chance—and though it cost my neck I’ll take it, snatch it!

She hurled the last kilt into the basket and swung the basket to her head. “Farewell, Teta,” she muttered, starting for the pressing rooms. “Take care you don’t faint of emptiness where the mistress can see you—it might offend her!”

“Gold!” retorted Teta, still chuckling under her breath. “
Hai!
Gold!”

Mara slammed the door behind her. She crossed the courtyard to the pressing rooms with the smooth, swinging stride made second nature to those who habitually carry burdens on the head. Setting the basket on a stool beside the narrow table she went to poke up the fire that was to heat the irons.

Spend the day merrily
, echoed the
Song of the Harper
ironically in her mind.
Bethink thee only of joy, till comes that day of mooring in the land that loveth silence … Lo, none that hath gone may come again
.

Aye, and who knew when that day of mooring would be upon one, swift and final? Here were the hateful fluting irons, the steaming
shentis
of that son of crocodiles, Zasha; outside the air was soft, the sky blue as the eye of heaven.

Suddenly Mara flung the poker into the fire with all her strength. She whirled out of the room and across the red-graveled path to a dom palm that grew beside the garden wall. Up she scrambled like a squirrel, her bare toes clinging to the rough bark. At the top of the wall she glanced once over her shoulder toward the closed storeroom door, then leaped down on the other side.

Freedom, brief and costly though it might be, was hers for a little while. She was laughing aloud as she plunged into the nearest alleyway and through the next street, in the direction of the market place.

ON THE SHADOWED side of one of the mud-brick buildings that edged Menfe’s thriving market place, Sheftu stood quietly, with folded arms. His position commanded a good view of the entire area—merchants’ and bakers’ stalls, shops of silver-workers, weavers, glassblowers and makers of sandals. Here a potter spun his wheel and shaped the clay, chanting supplications to Khnum, ram-headed deity of all potters, who had once shaped man himself on a divine wheel. There, in a shady corner, a barber plied his trade, jostled by roving fishmongers. The square was thronged with shoppers—the white-clad, copper-skinned, black-wigged inhabitants of Menfe with their baskets and their squabbling voices and their long, painted eyes.

They took no notice whatever of Sheftu, whose ordinary white
shenti
and headcloth made him inconspicuous, and whose immobility made him seem merely part of the shadow in which he stood. Outwardly casual, he was inwardly as alert as a cat at a mousehole. His eyes, the only
part of him that moved, flashed restlessly over the crowd, searching, probing, overlooking nothing. He had been waiting a long time.

Presently his attention was drawn to a little commotion in a far corner of the square. A group of soldiers, pushing officiously through the crowd, had shoved a ragged girl against a passing litter, so that she collided with one of the Nubian bearers. He in turn lost his balance, staggered and almost dropped his corner of the litter; whereupon the bejeweled great lady inside thrust her head between the curtains and began to scold furiously.

“Begone, rabble!” shouted the servant in attendance behind the litter. He sprang forward, yelling imprecations, and began to lay about him with his stick, his blows falling impartially upon the bearer and the unfortunate girl, who screamed back at him with equal fury, in both Egyptian and Babylonian. Suddenly she dodged out of his reach, ducked with remarkable agility between the legs of an ass and vanished into the crowd. An instant later, however, she reappeared some distance behind the litter, strutting along in the wake of the self-important attendant in a perfect imitation of his pompous swagger. The bystanders roared and slapped their thighs.

Sheftu was grinning too. He was sorry when with a final mocking impudence, the girl melted once more into the crowd.

Her lithe image still in his mind, Sheftu returned to his vigilant scanning of the market place. The messenger was late. A glance at the sun told him that he dared not wait much longer, that if the promised signal did not come soon, it would never come, and all his arguments and pleas of yesterday had failed. He stirred restlessly in his shadowed corner, and gnawed his lip.