The Blood Star (39 page)

And so much, at least, was within reach. It
was in Naukratis, waiting.

Below me, under the cold summer moon, I could
see the Nile glistening in the distance. And between us was
Memphis, destroying itself by degrees. The night made everything
visible, and by the simple device of hiding what did not
matter.

It was still dark when we made our way down
to the river, where a barge was already provisioned and manned—I do
not know how Kephalos had managed everything so quickly, but he
had.

It was a small pier, used only by pleasure
craft and well away from the bustling stretch of deep water where
the trading vessels tied up. At that hour it was quite empty; the
loudest sound was that of the frogs croaking down at the water’s
edge. Kephalos had insisted on accompanying us with an armed guard,
but in the quarter hour’s walk from our house near the temple
district we had encountered no one except a beggar woman asleep in
a doorway, who had been astonished when Selana woke her with a
little purse of silver coins. Otherwise, we were quite
alone—Memphis was too weak and weary to trouble herself about
us.

I felt like a criminal escaping on the very
eve of his execution. Behind us the city seemed deserted—a doomed
city awaiting the final catastrophe. Perhaps this was what it would
be if I could not persuade the Greeks of Naukratis to lend Prince
Nekau the money he needed, but I had to admit that my own motives
were private and selfish. I did not care about Memphis. Greek
silver was the price Senefru demanded for his wife, and I would get
it for him if I could.

Enkidu stood by the gangplank, waiting to
leave. Beside him, hardly reaching as high as his belt, was Selana.
They both seemed to be wondering why I still lingered behind. I
could not have told them.

Then I knew. In the darkness I heard the
slap, slap, slap of naked feet, the short, quick steps of men
carrying something. Then I saw them—first a yellow blaze of
torchlight, then four slaves wearing the livery of my Lord Senefru
and carrying a sedan chair. They set it down on the pier and a hand
opened the curtained door. It was Nodjmanefer.

We had little time and no privacy. In front
of so many people there could be no embrace, only a word or
two.

“I will be back as quickly as I can,” I said.
“There was no opportunity to send you notice.”

“I know this—from Senefru. He told me as soon
as he had seen you. It was only that. . . I could not let you go in
silence.”

Her eyes were shining. Screened by my cloak,
our hands touched and joined. It was all the farewell we would
have.

“Does he mean to let you go? If he does not,
if he has lied to me, I will come back and kill him.”

“He will let me go,” she said, her voice
little more than a whisper. “He will—now. Tiglath, my belly is
heavy with child.”

I cannot describe what I felt then. I do not
even remember clearly, for the recollection is stained with too
much grief. But my bowels melted with tenderness and a kind of
pity, I know that. And I know that if ever I loved Nodjmanefer, it
was in that moment.

“Are you sure?” I asked, quite unnecessarily.
Was it not the question every man asks?

“Yes, I am sure. It is your child—I am sure
of that too, and so is Senefru. This is why he will let me go.”

And then, with no word spoken, she turned
from me and left. The curtain closed around her chair and her
slaves carried her away. I waited until I could no longer see her,
until I could no longer see the light of her torch, and then I
remembered why I had come to this dark, still place.

I embraced Kephalos, who admonished me one
last time to be careful with my life, and then I climbed up the
gangplank to the barge, where Selana was waiting, standing behind
Enkidu’s leg as behind a wall, scowling at me.

“Is she the reason you go to Naukratis?” she
asked bitterly, having already guessed the answer. “Then certainly
you are a fool.”

Another time I would have beaten her for such
insolence, but not then. I only threatened it, and told her to find
a place to unroll her sleeping mat. I could not have been angry—I
was even fool enough to be amused.

We would make good time to Naukratis. The
current was with us, so it would not be necessary to tie up every
night. I was full of hope as Ashur’s sun rose over the eastern
mountains. Everything I wanted seemed at last within reach.

In the gray morning light I watched a monkey
scrambling about on the bluff above the riverbank. He seemed
greatly pleased with himself as he capered back and forth, eating a
piece of green fruit which he held in his paw—where he had found it
in that barren landscape I cannot guess, so perhaps he had a right
to be pleased.

Suddenly, out of the sun, an eagle swooped,
its wings folded back, dropping like a stone. I saw, but the monkey
did not. Not until the eagle struck, snatching away life with its
cruel talons, did the monkey drop his prize.

The eagle circled back and plucked up the
dead monkey from the ground, carrying it higher and higher until
both were lost in the sun’s bright disk.

XV

“Five million emmer! Tiglath, my dear young
friend, such a sum! I could not raise five hundred on Prince
Nekau’s name, not if he offered Memphis and Saïs together as
security. I fear you have come on a fool’s errand, for everyone in
Egypt knows that that well has long since run dry.”

Glaukon, who had lived in Naukratis for
thirty years and yet, out of contempt for the Egyptians, had never
shaved off his iron gray beard, sat in his counting house, a small
room with bare plastered walls where every day bargains were struck
involving enough to keep a man in wealth forever. His elbows rested
on the table and his hands were neatly laced together to support
his head. Prodikos had been his partner in trade and closest
friend, and from him he had, in a sense, inherited a benevolent
interest in my affairs. His had been the first name to occur to
me—Glaukon will know how to manage this business, I had thought. He
will not fail me. I was bitterly disappointed, but probably I
deserved to be.

“No, do not look at me thus,” he said,
frowning and leaning back in his chair. “Have the grace to know
that what you ask is simply impossible. I could as easily swim from
here to Cyprus and back as persuade the merchant council of
Naukratis to loan the sum of five million emmer to Prince Nekau,
who has squandered the wealth of two of Egypt’s richest
nomes
, who does not own so much as a linen loincloth for
which he is not already in debt, and whom Pharaoh, if this were not
enough, has decided to hang by the heels from the city walls. Five
million emmer! All the Greeks in Egypt are not worth such a sum. We
are rich, but not that rich.

“I am sorry, my friend, but the prince is a
bad risk, and we cannot afford to offend Pharaoh.”

His hands came apart and he held them out to
me, palm up, as if to suggest how utterly the matter was outside
his control. As far as he was concerned, it seemed, there was
nothing more to be said, and if I could not understand the obvious
then explanations would be in vain.

All at once an idea seemed to enter his mind.
His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head a little to one side.

“Tell me, if you can—if you will, my
friend—was it the prince himself who approached you in this matter,
or some other?”

“It was my Lord Senefru,” I answered, since
to do so violated no confidence. I was surprised, in fact, that
Glaukon had needed to ask.

“Senefru, you say!” He pursed his lips, as if
that had been the last name he might have expected to hear. “He is
a cunning old dog and knows how the land lies—I would have thought.
. . Yet in these questions of statecraft even a clever man is
sometimes blinded by hope or ambition or old loyalties. Sometimes
there is no accounting for how things fall out.”

“Yet I cannot return to him
empty-handed”—very well, I thought, if I am a fool then at least I
will be a stubborn one—“I know that Kephalos has been employing you
to send my wealth out of the country. How much is left that I can
collect at once?”

“A hundred thousand emmer, give or take. . .”
He shrugged his shoulders, as if we were discussing trifles.

“Then be so good as to collect it for me, to
be held in Prince Nekau’s name until you receive instructions. And
my house in Memphis, how much will that bring in a quick sale?”

“With the household slaves?”

I nodded.

“Perhaps another twenty thousand. Yes, of
course, I will undertake to guarantee that much.”

“Then prepare the agreements.”

I rose to leave, my heart filled with
resentment which I knew even then was foolish, for why should I
think myself ill-used if Glaukon, to whom this was all purely a
matter of profit and loss, refused to oblige me by ruining himself?
Yet I did think myself ill-used, and perhaps it showed. And perhaps
Glaukon saw it.

“Let us not part in bitterness,” he said,
putting his hand upon my arm, as if afraid I might break and run.
“It is not my doing, or even the Greeks—it is Pharaoh. Do you
imagine he did not foresee this? And his agents have made it clear
that whoever gives aid to Prince Nekau forfeits his patronage. We
are strangers here, Tiglath. We need Pharaoh.”

“I understand.”

And I did, truly. How were little men like
Glaukon and his friends to stand against Pharaoh, who with a word
could ruin them? And what motive had they to try? Pharaoh had
chosen to destroy Prince Nekau, and had selected the famine as his
instrument. The matter was settled.

“And, Tiglath. . .” He glanced furtively
about, although there was no one except ourselves in the tiny
room—it was merely a reflex, the sort of thing which betrays a
man’s true state of mind. “It is whispered, my friend, that Pharaoh
means to act quickly. He already has his agents in Memphis, who
will provide him with a pretext, so it will not be long. Take my
advice and do not return. Send word to Kephalos to remove your
household, but do not go back yourself. The city will be in
turmoil, and at such times everything goes a little mad. There are
those who say you have made powerful enemies. Any mischief is
possible.”

“I thank you for your warning, Glaukon, but I
must go back. I have no choice.”

He nodded, smiling the way one does when
confronted with a willfulness one is helpless to move. Thus we
parted.

I was staying at a tavern near the
waterfront, but I did not return there at once. The morning
coolness had not yet fled, and it was pleasant to be outside and
out of sight of the river. Besides, I did not wish to return to
Enkidu and Selana, neither of whom knew of my business or would
care if they did, and hide my sense of failure from their
indifferent eyes. For a few hours, at least, I wished to be among
strangers.

I wandered into the bazaars and discovered
that Naukratis had not changed so very much in three years. There
was less to buy, and the price of food had increased perhaps ten or
twentyfold, but matters were not as desperate here in the Delta as
they had become upriver. In Naukratis, this was merely a time of
adversity, and as such could be counted on to pass away.

A cup of wine was five pieces of silver—and
that was watered. I drank three cups to cool my belly, since it was
good for little else, and went back to take dinner at the
tavern.

“Someone called for you,” Selana told me,
even as she held the bowl in which I washed my hands. “A man—a
stranger.”

“What was his business, then?”

I dried my fingers on a bit of linen.
Probably, I thought, he was some acquaintance from a previous
visit—yet why hadn’t he waited and taken dinner with me?

“I do not know. He spoke to the landlord, who
told me. The landlord said he was a foreigner. Not a Greek,
something else. He dressed like an Egyptian, but he spoke the
tongue badly.”

The landlord’s wife came in with my dinner.
She was perhaps sixteen and pretty, and she had been married only a
year. She liked to flirt, but her husband, who was forty, was
besotted with her and took it as a great compliment that men found
her attractive. He hardly ever beat her, and in such a place there
was little else to encourage her to virtue. I asked her how the
landlord had known the stranger was not Greek.

“In Naukratis, if a foreigner speaks Egyptian
no better than this one, he speaks Greek.”

“Then where do you think he came from?”

“If they are not Greek, one foreigner is like
another,” she said, shrugging her fine brown shoulders. Like most
women in her class, she wore only a loincloth and a short linen
skirt that did not even cover her thighs, so with every movement
her breasts stirred enticingly. “Khonsmose thinks he was from the
Eastern Lands.”

Khonsmose was her husband, and when Egyptians
say a stranger is “from the Eastern Lands” it only means that he is
not black, not a Libyan, and not a Greek.

“Had he a finger missing from his left
hand?”

“If he had, Khonsmose did not mention
it.”

The subject clearly was without much interest
for her, but that did not matter. She smiled, showing me her small
white teeth. She liked the way I had been looking at her.

When dinner was over, Selana poured me
another cup of wine, as if she thought I had not grown drunk
enough.

“The landlord’s wife will visit your sleeping
mat tonight if you give her twenty silver pieces,” she said.

“And how is it you know that?”

“Because she promised me I would have two if
I told you.”

“I was in the bazaar today. A cup of wine
there costs five.”

“I think the landlord’s wife should regard
herself as fortunate if she gets ten. Her backside is too big, and
she smells of onions.”