The Blood Star (44 page)

I wrapped her corpse in the pad from her
sleeping mat, tying it tight with whatever linen I could find—I
used one of her gowns, I remember. Then I carried her out to the
garden, where I found a spade, picked up a few of the great flat
stones around the fountain, and buried her there. Then I replaced
the stones and covered every trace of my work. No one would ever
suspect. She would lie there forever, safe from her husband’s
wrath, unknown to all save me.

XVIII

I had no consciousness of time as I sat on
the stone bench in Nodjmanefer’s garden, but I must have been there
several hours. When the sound of the garden gate swinging shut
brought me to myself with a start, I could see from the length of
my own shadow that it was already late into the afternoon.

“So she is dead, is she,” Kephalos said in a
soft, expressionless voice. “I can see she is. I can read it in
your face, Master. I had rather thought she would be.”

“What happened here?” I asked, surprised at
the way my own voice seemed to catch in my throat. All at once I
was shaking with emotion, as if I had only just discovered my own
feelings—as if, until that moment, I had been listening for the
sound of her voice and only now realized that I would never hear it
again.

Kephalos sat down beside me, resting his
hands on his knees like a man who has at last finished a long day’s
labor and can afford the luxury of weariness.

“I hardly know. The soldiers came to your
house first, and I escaped with the servants. The servants have not
come back, by the way. The gods alone know what has become of them
by now.”

“In that case I wish the gods joy of their
wisdom. When was this?”

“Five days past—six, really, since it was
late enough at night that I had to flee for my life in a sleeping
tunic. I hid in the cellar of the house my Lord Userkaf is having
built on the Street of the God Bes, and I do not envy him the
accommodation since it is only half finished and already has rats.
I came back the next morning and have been awaiting your return
ever since. We are safe for a time—this is probably the safest
place in the city, since they have already been here and, in any
case, do not often invade these precincts. Pharaoh, it appears, has
extended the divine grace of forgiveness to the wealthy and
confines his wrath to the starving and the homeless. Perhaps that
too is a mercy, for most of them are certain to perish anyway.”

“Then it was Pharaoh’s soldiers who
came?”

“Yes—without doubt. They are the only
soldiers in Memphis, for Prince Nekau’s militia melted away like
frost at the first word the Libyans were coming. And now that you
are back, Dread Lord, I think we would be wise if we too melted
away. There is much hostility to foreigners now, as if somehow we
were the ones to bring this trouble upon them; nevertheless, your
servant has contrived to make certain preparations. . .”

“Where will I find Senefru? Just tell me
that, Kephalos, and I will trouble you no more.”

“It is best, Master, if you forget the Lord
Senefru,” he answered, putting his hand upon my arm. But in a
sudden flash of anger I stood up, shaking him off.

“Just tell me! Tell me where he is, and if it
be not already in his tomb, I will kill him.”

But Kephalos only waggled his head, beholding
me with sad eyes, as though I were a child indulging in a
tantrum.

“My Lord, he is not dead, and you cannot kill
him. Three days after you set out for Naukratis he departed the
city in secret to join the approaching army and only returned when
the gates were thrown open in submission. As of this hour he is in
Tanis with Pharaoh, or on his way there. It is said that he will be
prince now in Nekau’s place. You cannot reach him, and it would be
your death even to try.”

He was right, of course—I saw that at once,
for all that I would gladly have traded my own life for Senefru’s.
I tried to think, to find some path to revenge, but there was none.
Grief and impotent rage clouded my mind so that I had to sit down
again, not upon the bench with Kephalos but on the flat stones that
covered Nodjmanefer’s grave. Senefru’s triumph seemed to dig its
claws into my flesh, and there was no way I could make it let
go.

“Come into the house, Master. It is not
entirely safe out here. Come inside and take some food and wine.
Then sleep.”

I spent the night in my own bed, racked by
dreams that did not wait upon sleep but started as soon as I closed
my eyes. I watched them murder Nodjmanefer, I listened to her
screams and felt the sword in my own bowels when they killed her.
Over and over, as if she would be compelled to die forever and I to
witness it. In the morning I was feverish and Kephalos gave me some
drugged wine that kept off dreams, and I slept into the
afternoon.

“I think it best we leave soon,” he said. “I
know where there is a boat hidden, although the knowledge cost me
more silver than I care to remember. If we can reach the harbor we
will be safe.”

“Why did you stay, Kephalos?”

“Because I knew you would be back, Lord.”

Yes. I believed him. Somehow I could no
longer bear it. I covered my face with my hands and wept like a
child.

I am an old man, and I will not trifle away
what time the gods have spared me by making an adventure of our
escape from Memphis. If the patrols had caught us we would have
been executed as looters—Pharaoh’s soldiers enjoyed a monopoly on
looting and guarded it jealously—but we reached the harbor without
incident, almost as if a path had been cleared for us.

Kephalos’ boat was hidden under a pile of
dirty straw in an empty grain warehouse, the last place anyone
would have thought to look for it, and we carried it down to the
water, raised sail, and were three hours downriver before the sun
rose.

We had only to float on the bosom of the
Nile. Our food would last us until we reached the Delta, and after
that we had only to pull in at villages along the way to barter for
food and ask directions. We slept on the boat, taking turns with
the steering oar, and never stopped anywhere, not even at
Naukratis, for more than an hour. Thus we made good time in our
flight, a clean journey with no mishaps.

I believe it would have gone better with me
if our journey had been filled with hazards, for as things were I
had too much time to brood. There were too many long, empty nights,
with Kephalos snoring in the stern of the boat, when I had nothing
to think about except how I had left Nodjmanefer behind in Memphis,
dead and unavenged.

We arrived in Buto after seventeen days. One
morning we simply lowered our sail, coasted up to the wharf, tied
up, and walked away from our boat as if it had ceased to exist.

The first thing we did was to find the public
baths and wash off the filth of our journey—one does not trust
one’s body to the Nile, since the crocodiles might consider it
disrespectful. Then we went to the bazaar and bought clean clothes.
We both had almost a month’s growth of hair and beard, but we had
decided not to visit a barber since we had both had enough of the
Egyptians and had thus decided to be Greeks once more. Then we went
in search of Enkidu and Selana.

They were not hard to find—all that was
required was to return to the waterfront and ask after the foreign
giant with hair the color of wheat.

“He comes here every morning and afternoon,”
we were told, “with a maiden who is his voice. You have only just
missed them.”

We went to a tavern and drank wine for two
hours, and they were there when we returned.

Enkidu of course offered me no greeting
beyond his usual cold glare.
What kept you?
he seemed to be
asking, as if I had only just stepped out of the room—but Selana
wept and threw her arms around my knees, and then cursed me for a
reckless fool. She asked no questions, then or later, probably
because she had already guessed the answers. I had returned without
Nodjmanefer; therefore Nodjmanefer could only be dead. We followed
them back to their tavern, where rooms had been prepared against
our arrival and left waiting the previous ten days. That night we
feasted solemnly, in joyless luxury, and I retired early, feeling
spent and empty.

For almost a month I had taken what rest I
could on the ground or at the bottom of a reed boat, stinking of
tar and stale water. I had lived with anxiety and despair, and
these from moment to moment, with no space for anything else. Now
my bed was a freshly woven mat on a well-swept floor, and there was
no one about with a reason to kill me. I was safe, I was clean, I
was quiet in my mind and only a little drunk. My passion of grief
had worn itself out, leaving only a sullen bitterness, like an old
bruise that is still sore to the touch even after its pain is gone.
Yet I could not sleep. My mind, released at last from the web of
danger and sorrow that had held me fast minute by minute, would not
be quiet.

Three years in Egypt—what had it all been
about? Nodjmanefer was dead, and I had had some hand in slaying
her. I was not blameless. There was enough guilt that Senefru could
afford to share it with me. What had I imagined myself to be
doing?

“
Visit Memphis and gorge on it,”
Prodikos had advised me, in what seemed now like another existence.
“Afterwards, have a good vomit to purge your bowels of such
follies and then continue with the rest of your life.”

And I had gorged until my belly was
rotten.

It seemed hard, but no one had ever given me
better counsel. The god, I knew, had spoken through Prodikos’
mouth.

The next morning, early, I stole into
Kephalos’ room and shook him awake.

“Go down to the docks,” I said, crouching
over his sleeping mat. “Find us a ship that will take us away from
this place. Do it now, for Egypt burns the soles of my feet.”

For a moment he only stared, blinking up at
me like an owl that has been stunned by the light.

“My Lord—now?” he asked finally. “By the
gods, my head buzzes like a nest of hornets, for I was stiff with
wine last night. I have not been in bed these three hours. . .”

“Now. Do it now.”

“Seventeen days,” he muttered, rubbing his
eyes. “Seventeen days we are on the river, trapped in a boat no
bigger than a coffin. One night on dry land, where there is food
and drink and a clean bed, and now he would be on his travels
again. Cursed is the man whose lord the gods have touched with
madness—is there any wine hiding still in that jar? Here—hand it to
me. . .”

Thus, that very night, as soon as the land
winds had risen, we left the black lands of Egypt behind us. The
morning found us on the Northern Sea, bound for Sidon.

We sailed on a Phoenician merchant ship bound
for her home port in Byblos but trading up and down the coastal
cities, so we stopped at Joppa and Tyre before reaching Sidon. We
were favored by wind and weather, and the voyage lasted ten
days.

Our captain was a friendly, open-hearted man,
as I have found is usually the case with sailors, but he was a
Phoenician and thus very sharp and cunning in all matters of
business. Like so many of his race, he was intelligent, spoke
several tongues, and had been everywhere men live within sight of
the sea.

The Phoenicians are one of several nations
whom the chronicles of the kings of Ashur, referring to all the
peoples who lived along the coast of the Northern Sea between Egypt
and Lydia, lumped together as “Canaanites,” which means, as does
the Greek word, “the red people.” Except that they trade in the
purple dye for which they are famous, I have never discovered why
they are so called, but I do know that the Phoenicians are as
different from, say, the Hebrews, who are herders of goats and
tenders of vines, as the men of Ashur are from the Elamites or the
Chaldeans. The Phoenicians are sea people, as restless as the
desert nomads of Arabia. They live for adventure and wealth, which
to them are almost the same thing, and they build their cities as
if they distrusted the solid land—such a place was Sidon.

The city occupied both an outcropping of the
mainland and an island that follows the coast in a lazy curve and
is joined to it by a stone causeway. The island was the port and at
its northern end offered seagoing vessels safe harbor even in
winter, when the waves are held back by a stone embankment, the
blocks of which are up to six paces long. Its southern end is a
long sandy shoreline perfect for beaching smaller craft. Thus Sidon
was everywhere open to the sea, as if to an avenue of escape,
whereas the face she presented to the land was that of a mighty
fortified citadel.

I write of her as she was that first day,
when we tied up along her outer harbor and stepped ashore. It was
long ago, and today she may lie in ruins—it would not surprise me,
for I saw the hand that would break down her walls and I heard the
voice that sentenced her to death. But cities are stronger than men
and can come to life again even after you have killed them. Sidon
may flourish today, but I think of her as a stone corpse which the
sand and sea have reclaimed for their own.

Yet she was not so when I first beheld her.
She was bursting with life that first day, and I felt, when I saw
her, as if I were stepping out from the darkness into the
light.

Sidon was then perhaps the most beautiful
city in the world. She was a city of gardens; every rooftop, every
spare patch of ground was a blaze of color. Flowering vines crept
over the walls of houses and the air was strong with their
scent.

But if the first thing one noticed was the
sheer beauty of the place, it was not long before the ingenuity of
its construction made as great an impression. The harbor seemed to
be unprotected, since there were no visible fortifications, but
along its southern end the water was too shallow for warships and
the northern end was protected by a series of artificial islands
rendering it necessary for heavier vessels to approach the port
singly, thus making attack from the sea almost impossible. Within
the city, houses were built to include a system of drains, so that
in winter and early spring, when the rains fall, there was hardly a
drop that is not caught and held, for the Sidonians put no faith in
the wells that lie beyond their gates.