The Blood Star (31 page)

Yet it was not my intention to wait passively
for a stranger to put his blade between my ribs. I would set a
guard around my house. I would have the docks watched. I would
discover the identity of this man who had been sent to murder me,
and I would make him understand that the ground would stain as red
with his blood as with mine. If he could be brought to accept
reason perhaps, I might not have to kill him, but I would not
shrink from it.

But for now I would put the matter from my
mind, for I had other business. I too had received a letter.

“Come and dine with me tomorrow night, one
hour after the sun has set.” It was written in the Egyptian script.
I had to show it to a scribe at the bazaar to know what it said.
The papyrus was sealed with wax bearing the scarab of Lord Senefru
and brought to me by one of his household slaves, who did not even
wait for an answer, as if it had not crossed his mind that I might
refuse.

Why should he wish to make so quick a return
on my hospitality? I had only to accept to find out, and I did not
even care very much. All that mattered was that I might once more
fill my eyes with the Lady Nodjmanefer. That seemed reason enough
to go.

Senefru lived close to the temple complex,
since, like most high officials of state, he was a priest of the
god Amun. His house was made of limestone and very large. A slave
holding a torch met me on the stairway and conducted me through a
wide central passage, past dark rooms—our footsteps echoed in that
empty space—and then out to the gardens, shimmering and mysterious
in the light of what seemed like hundreds of tiny oil lamps.

The slave, who had not spoken, left me there,
withdrawing in silence. I was alone. My host did not come to greet
me and there appeared to be no other guests. I thought it
strange.

The light made a trail to the center of the
garden, so I followed my eyes there. I found a few women waiting
attendance, hiding discreetly in the shadows, a table spread for a
feast, and, on a couch covered in gold, the Lady Nodjmanefer. She
did not even smile.

“My husband will not join us,” she said.

XI

In my arms she wept, whether from passion or
grief or something between the two I could not know.

My mouth wandered over hers as her pointed
tongue, sweeter than nectar, sought mine, and she whimpered with
pleasure. Her lips seemed parched of kisses. She would die if I
turned from her. She would perish of want.

The vague light of the oil lamps played
across her golden body, shadowing her beauty, making her seem not
of this life and world. I was haunted by her. As I forced my way
inside her, she seemed to enter my soul.

A man and woman, almost strangers, alone at
night in a garden, know that rapture of the senses which is the
common property of all. Was it no more than that? Yes, it was
more.

“I have had many lovers,” she said. “I have
loved no man save you—this moment. Now.”

I believed her. It was simply not possible to
doubt.

“I had imagined love as dead within me. I had
thought my heart had turned to dust. Yet I am alive now. I live
under the weight of your body. Your touch is all that quickens the
breath in me.”

I believe her still.

The dawn was no more than an hour away.
Already the sky seemed to shine darkly over the earth. I heard the
tap, tap, tap of a dagger blade against stone, letting me know that
someone had begun to stir within the Lord Senefru’s great house. It
was Enkidu—how, I wondered, had he known to find me here? A door
opened in the garden wall, letting in a few rays of feeble light.
It was time to leave this place.

“I must go,” I said. “I do not wish to, but I
must.”

Her arms tightened about my neck, but she was
wise and knew she could not hold me long.

“The day is a tomb,” she said. “It will hold
me lifeless until you are with me again. I will close my eyes and
die now.”

I kissed her once more, but her lips seemed
cold, as if she really were dead. I stole away from her, not daring
to look back.

It was a gray morning, and a cold wind blew
in from the river. Memphis, like an old woman with a chill in her
bones, was waking up cross—the cries of the river porters, like a
complaint to the gods, echoed up from the docks. Peddlers were
setting up their stalls near the temple gates. The proprietors of
wine shops and brothels swept their doorways, already glum at the
prospect of a slow morning’s trade. A few weary souls, looking as
if the night had taught them bitter lessons, made their way home.
Doubtless other eyes saw me as one of these.

Yet for me youth and passion and the hot
flame of life had come back. Happiness and hope, which end being
much the same, so swelled my breast that I hardly seemed able to
breathe. I had found a goddess, and she had called me her
beloved.

When I returned to my house I found Kephalos
waiting for me.

“Prodikos is dead,” he announced. “I had word
last night from Naukratis, in a letter from his kinsman. They found
him in his warehouse eight days ago, with his throat cut. It must
have happened the night before, even on the very day on which he
had written to me.”

He still held the letter in his hand. He held
it out to me, as if offering proof of what he said, but I did not
need proof. I only wondered why the man with the finger missing
from his left hand should have found it necessary to kill Prodikos,
who had meant no harm to anyone.

“A murdered man does not rest quietly,”
Kephalos went on. “I will offer millet cakes and wine to appease
his ghost.”

“And I would give him his murderer’s blood to
drink—I pray to Holy Ashur that the one who did this wickedness may
be delivered into my hands.”

“Be not rash, My Lord, for death follows upon
the lust for vengeance, like a sore head after a night of wine. You
are not to blame that Prodikos was killed.”

“Am I not, Kephalos?” I smiled at him, though
my liver was full of wrath. “Am I not?”

That day and the next night and the day and
night after, I kept to myself. When my women attempted to come near
I drove them off with curses. I would see no one. I sent no word to
the Lady Nodjmanefer. I stayed in my garden, even in the dark. I
ate nothing, but I drank wine, and enough that my remorse never
lost its sharp edge. As a mother cradles her child, thus did I
cherish this bitterness in my heart.

Some sins a man is powerless to avoid.
Prodikos had been my friend—and for that he had been killed. From
this pollution I could not cleanse myself.

I did not wish to. Only more blood would wash
it away. I would find this murderer. I would strip him of his life,
and then. . .

It seemed so simple.

At last I grew ashamed of sulking. I went
into my house, slept, ate, and turned my steps toward the city.
Only now, when I ventured beyond my own gates, I wore a sword.

People stared at me—they said nothing, but
they stared. The Egyptians did not carry weapons. Yet had they no
eyes? There was more here to make men afraid than just one assassin
bent on the life of a stranger.

Smiling Memphis, clutching to her bosom a
dagger of her own. Did no one else see what I saw? Were they all
blind that they walked thus among snares?

One did not have to look far to search out
the dangers. The docks were lined with beggars, and along the
city’s outskirts had grown up squalid camps filled with those whom
starvation had driven in from the countryside. Memphis was crowded
with misery, and misery can quickly translate into violence.

A people settle by a mighty river. She is
generous and feeds them. Yet if they will grow numerous and strong,
becoming a great nation in the world, they must make the river
obedient to their will. This is not the work of a day or a year or
even a lifetime, but of centuries. Canals must be dug, and levees
erected that the waters may be controlled. A whole system of
irrigation must be constructed, and all this must be maintained by
ceaseless labor. And the people must put a mighty king over them to
see that the labor is performed. Hence the kings of Ashur and of
Babylon. Hence Pharaoh.

Yet in Egypt the canals were filling with
silt, and the dikes were left unrepaired. And the people starved.
And in their hearts they blamed Pharaoh for their wretchedness, for
he was no longer mighty.

Or so it seemed to me, for no one said so
aloud.

And today the city was crowded, because
Pharaoh had arrived from Tanis, and everyone hoped for a sight of
the blessed god-king.

I had wondered why the bazaars were so
deserted. Soldiers had come through and closed the stalls, for it
was considered sacrilege to do business on the day when Pharaoh
would issue forth from his palace (Prince Nekau’s house, taken over
for the occasion) to be carried on his chair of state to the great
temple, there to do honor to the god Ptah, patron of the city,
sacred potter on whose wheel was turned the egg from which the
world hatched. The street that ran between the two, guarded on both
sides by rows of stone lions, had only that morning been freshly
sprinkled with white sand from the western desert, and now, even as
the drums pounded, announcing the approach of Egypt’s divine ruler,
naked girls scattered flower petals along the route and the priests
jangled cymbals and recited prayers. I stood with a crush of people
near the obelisk of King Amenemhat, waiting to behold this
miracle.

Times beyond counting I had seen my father,
the Lord Sennacherib, honored with such processions. The people
would cheer him, shouting “Ashur is king, Ashur is king!” and would
throw gold coins in his path that the shadow of his chariot might
pass over these and bless them. The people of Ashur loved their
kings.

Yet the Egyptians stood in silence, watching
the approach of their pharaoh as if he were a criminal on his way
to execution. As he passed they lowered their eyes. One might have
supposed they were ashamed.

I did not lower my eyes. I wished a look at
this god who was not stone or wood, but flesh and bone like any
man. I wished to see Pharaoh Taharqa, Lord of the Nile Valley. I
did not know why, but it seemed important, as if our paths might
someday cross again.

They would, many years later, yet this was
the only time I ever saw him.

There is little enough one can tell about a
man sitting on a carrying chair, rigid as a block of granite. His
arms were crossed over his chest and in his hands he carried a whip
and a shepherd’s crook. The crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt were on
his head, and strapped to his chin was a little black box to
symbolize the beard of authority. Thus has every pharaoh appeared
in public since the Scorpion King united the two lands two thousand
years ago—or so the story goes.

Taharqa himself was not an Egyptian. His
dynasty had come out of the Land of Ethiopia less than a hundred
years before. He was tall and strong-looking and his skin was
black, so that he looked as if he had been carved from obsidian. I
never heard any Egyptian express an opinion of him—Pharaoh is
sacred, even when he is a foreigner—but I would learn many years
later, and from personal experience, that he was a man of energy
and ability and a good soldier, a better ruler, perhaps, than his
people deserved.

If he was still Egypt’s god, he was not its
ruler—not as the pharaohs of old had been.

Taharqa hardly even possessed title to the
double crown, since it was not he but Mentumehet, Fourth Prophet of
Amun and Prince of Thebes, who ruled in Upper Egypt. The priest was
called the Living God’s deputy, yet he it was whose word was law in
the ancient seat of pharaohs and who worshiped at the most holy of
shrines, the Temple of Amun. And it was not much different in the
Lower Kingdom.

Pharaoh controlled Tanis and the eastern
towns, and the army—mostly Libyans, since no Egyptian will enlist
for a soldier unless he is starving—owed its loyalty to him. The
rest of Egypt paid him tribute, called him “Lord,” and dreaded his
interference in their affairs, but it was with the local princes
that the bulk of the power lay. They bickered among themselves, yet
they would all resist if Pharaoh tried to make good his claim to
absolute rule.

The time for being great in Egypt was
over.

He passed before us, this god-king, carried
on a golden chair to the Temple of Ptah, and behind his procession
the street became once more clogged with ordinary humanity. The
flower petals were trampled beneath the sandals of barley merchants
and weavers, beggars and slave dealers and prostitutes and scribes.
It was over.

Yet perhaps not.

I was preparing to leave—the sun was hot and
I entertained thoughts of a cup of wine. I had dismissed Taharqa
and his dreams from my mind, since who was I to care about the
ambitions of princes?

Still, at the last moment and for reasons
hidden from me even at the time, just before the thickening crowds
would have blocked him from view, I turned back and caught sight of
a man sitting in an alleyway on the other side of the street.

There was little enough to distinguish him
save that the lightness of his skin showed him to be a foreigner,
and Memphis was filled with those. His skull was covered with a
tight-fitting leather cap, and he wore a black robe with sleeves
long enough to conceal his hands. I might never have noticed him
had his eyes not been locked on my face—he wanted me to notice him.
Our gazes met and he smiled a tight, uncomfortable little smile, as
if everything were understood between us.

He was Prodikos’ murderer. He was the man who
had inquired after me in Naukratis. Nothing had ever been so clear
to me in my life.

And then, of course, he disappeared behind
the moving crowd.