The Horus Road (55 page)

Ahmose stood watching her. He was not untouched by her distress, but a tide of sheer malicious joy was filling him, making him smile. A part of him saw it grow with righteous horror but he could not control it. Apepa was dying. Not the quick and easy death of an arrow through the chest or a sword thrust through the neck but slowly, in exquisite torment. It was a vengeance better than any he could have conjured up himself. Amun had seen the impregnability of Sharuhen. He had reached inside the city and struck Apepa down. He had honoured the trust and perseverance of his servants. He had answered their petitions and had sent Tetisheri the dream to tell them so. By this act of divine retribution the god had set his mighty seal on Egypt forever and Ma’at was finally made whole. Let him suffer, Ahmose thought savagely. Let Amun’s hand squeeze ever tighter about him until he has drunk the bitter wine of anguish to the lees and life has fled.

But then another notion insinuated itself beneath the turmoil of hostility and dark pleasure and he took one step towards his sister. “No,” he said firmly. “I will not give you poppy to take into Sharuhen. I do not care whether Apepa dies in torment or happily unconscious under the spell of the drug as long as he makes an end. However, if you will bring him here to me together with the Horus Throne and the Royal Regalia, he can have all the poppy he needs.” Her head jerked up. He saw the colour drain out of her cheeks until she was ashen under the delicate brown of her skin. The fingers clutching the linen convulsed.

“Ahmose!” she choked. “Have you no pity?”

“None.” He dragged the stool over and sat so that their knees were almost together. “This is the man in whose name our father was crippled, for whom Kamose was murdered,” he said harshly. “This is the man who would have had Aahmes-nefertari married to a commoner, Grandmother sent to a harem for old women, and Kamose posted forever to the border fort at Sile. He condemned me to live out my days in Kush under Teti-En, fighting the tribes who would not submit to him. If Kamose had not taken hold of his courage and begun his revolt, the family would have been not only divided but utterly humiliated.” He sat back and folded his arms. “And this is the man for whom you plead. No. My compassion does not extend that far. I have given you a choice. Go back empty-handed or bring him out with the sacred things he stole. How much compassion have you?” She flung the sopping linen away and came to her feet. Sobs spasmodically racked her but she had regained control of herself.

“I did not come to bargain!” she flared. “I came believing in the mercy of a brother. But he has eaten his heart and there is nothing left but a demon!”

“Believe what you will,” Ahmose retorted coldly. “I care nothing for Apepa and very little for you.”

“You will kill him as soon as he appears!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Unless you lie, he is dying already. You have my word that my physician will assume his care if my throne and my crown come with him. Now what will you do?” She stumbled to the tent flap and he swivelled on the stool to watch her.

“You have become more cruel than I could ever have imagined, Mighty Bull of Ma’at,” she said in a strangled whisper. “You have gored me to the marrow. Of course, I will bring him out. Only the most hardened criminal could bear to sit beside him and watch his suffering and I love him. His family will curse you, and I curse you too.” She fumbled with the flap.

“Bring him at once,” Ahmose called as she pushed her way out. Jumping up, he ran after her. She was fleeing towards the city, her hair coming loose, her robe dragging on the ground. “Send Mesehti to pick her up with the chariot and drive her the rest of the way,” he ordered Ankhmahor. “Then find Turi. He is to assemble fifty men and wait outside the southern gate. She will reappear with Apepa. Turi will escort them back here.” Ankhmahor’s eyes lit up.

“Majesty, how did you make this happen?” he asked. Ahmose blew out his lips.

“You will see how very soon,” he said. He felt ill himself. A sudden pang of guilt shot through him, but he straightened his shoulders and it faded. I am sorry, Tani, he said to her silently. It is not true that I no longer care for you, but I could not see this opportunity go by. You are less important than the symbols of Egypt’s stability. Akhtoy was hovering nearby and Ahmose crooked a finger at him. “Have another tent erected next to mine and summon my physician,” he ordered. “And tell Hekayib to bring a jug of wine. This day promises to be very long.”

He lay on his couch with the wine cup balanced on his naked chest, listening to the servants raising the other tent and carrying cot, table and chairs inside. He had opened his shrine, lit incense, and prostrated himself in thanksgiving to his god. He had also prayed that Tani would not be prevented from bringing him his prize. What if Apepa’s sons objected or his Chief Wife Uazet threw herself on her husband and refused to let him go? But surely if the man was in such agony they would all be glad of a chance to see his pain relieved. What this might mean regarding the fate of Sharuhen itself he did not know. Nor did he care. Heart pounding erratically, he felt the culmination of his destiny come swiftly to a climax. The god had moved. The chain of events resulting from his action were up to the King.

It was evening before he heard the sounds for which he had been waiting. A swell of excited voices, the rattle of chariot wheels and the tramp of many feet brought him hurrying outside. Two curtained litters were being set down and Turi was dismissing his curious men. Tani was dismounting, and with a shake of the reins Mesehti turned the horses back towards their stalls. Tani did not look at Ahmose. Beckoning to several of the Followers, she drew back the first litter’s drapery. At once the air was filled with the stench of rotting flesh. Several of the Followers flinched as they bent and lifted the pallet and its groaning burden within but Tani did not. Neither did Ahmose.

The physician and his assistant were waiting by the cot. Gently the Followers laid Apepa down and withdrew. Tani collapsed into one of the chairs. The physician drew back the stained sheet, and in spite of himself Ahmose gave a cry. Apepa was naked but for a loincloth already soiled with his excrement. One leg was shaking and trembling uncontrollably. The other was an almost unrecognizable mess of weeping pus. Maggots were wriggling and crawling over the pieces of streaked bone protruding from the suppurating perforations and the odour in that enclosed space was now overpowering. Only the physician seemed unmoved. “Bring a bowl,” he snapped at his assistant. “First we must pick off all these parasites. While I am doing that, you can get hot water to wash him.” He already had the poppy ready. “You realize, Majesty, that he will die in a matter of hours,” he said to Tani. “Nothing can be done for a fracture of this kind. Not even Egyptian physicians would have been able to save him. All I can offer him is the blessing of unconsciousness.” She swallowed and nodded, her features twisted with grief.

Ahmose stepped closer, trying to find a point of affinity between his memory of Apepa’s face and the contorted image on the pillow. The man whose likeness had been seared into his mind had been taller than most, with long, shapely legs and broad shoulders. His neck had been long also, almost too precarious to support a most un-Egyptian head of high cheekbones, a pointed chin, brown eyes set too close together and a mouth whose corners turned down to give him a sullen look. Laugh lines had fanned out across the temples. Ahmose remembered them vividly. But the face shiny with fever sweat, the mouth drawn back in a rictus of pain, the sunken eyes, bore no resemblance to the King draped in gold-shot linen and hung with jewels who had mounted the Throne he had brought with him to Weset from Het-Uart and had sat in judgement over the family. This was a human being reduced to the condition of a wounded animal.

All at once Apepa’s eyes opened. He was panting rapidly, each outward breath a whimper, but he was struggling to speak. Slowly he focused on Ahmose. In spite of Ahmose’s revulsion he bent lower, seeing Tani grasp her husband’s hand on the edge of his vision. “Ahmose Tao,” Apepa whispered. “Little did I know on that day when you stood before me in Weset what forces of bitterness and desperate obstinacy I was releasing with the pronouncement of my sentence against you and your family. I have paid dearly for my blindness.”

“So did my father and my brother, Awoserra Apepa,” Ahmose replied. “So did a great many Egyptians. It has been a bloody and vicious few years.”

“And now you are King. I underestimated both your pride and your perseverance. My gods have deserted me. They have left me to die in your tent like an unwanted beast. I fled to Sharuhen but I am back in Egypt. I am back in Egypt!” His voice trailed away into a series of cries and mumbles and his eyes rolled back in his head. Ahmose straightened.

“Give him the poppy if he can swallow it,” he ordered. The assistant was behind him with the bowl. Ahmose stepped away. He did not think that his stomach would allow him to watch the maggots being caught without rebelling in disgust. Holding his breath, he left the tent.

Turi and his soldiers were still clustered protectively around the second litter. Ahmose strode to it, taking in deep breaths of the warm, unscented air as he went. He nodded once and the curtains were pulled open. The red light of the westering sun struck the Horus Throne, turning its gold to fire. A ripple of amazement ran through the men. Some of them knelt. “Lift it out,” Ahmose ordered. Several soldiers raised it gingerly, set it on the ground, and hastily stepped away. Two boxes lay on its seat. Ahmose hesitated before exposing their contents, then gathering his courage he opened the first. The Double Crown lay beneath his gaze, the smooth, conical white hedjet of Upper Egypt glowing a delicate pink with the red deshret beside it. He touched them reverently.

“It is the pshent,” Turi exclaimed in awe. Ahmose could not answer. His heart was too full. Lovingly he opened the second. Banded in gold and lapis the heka and the nekhakha nestled in their beds, bathed in Ra’s scarlet glory. Scarcely able to believe that they were there before him, Ahmose traced their shapes with one adoring finger.

“The Crook of Mercy and the Flail of Justice,” he breathed. “Amun, I thank you for these gifts though they come in the midst of pain and death. I pray that I may always be worthy to wield them, remembering that though I am your Incarnation I myself am but a servant of Ma’at.”

He did not sit on the Throne. The temptation never crossed his mind. It was neither the time nor the place and the beautiful chair itself seemed to forbid him to do so. But hungrily he scrutinized every intricate detail: the turquoise and lapis wings of Isis and Neith on the gold of its sides where the goddesses raised their arms to protect and enfold the King, the backrest of finely tooled gold inlaid with jasper and carnelian made into the likeness of the stool of wealth and the staff of eternity from which many ankhs hung, the mighty Eye of Horus at the rear and the snarling lions’ muzzles on which his hands would lie. “Turi,” he called, his voice thick with emotion. “Have these things packed securely and escorted to Weset with a suitable number of troops to guard them. See me when you are ready to go. I will dictate a scroll to the Queen to go with them.” He thought of the room in the new palace where the Throne would sit on its lordly dais, its aura of power and splendour filling the awesome space, the light of dozens of lamps sparkling in the traceries of pyrite on the lapis floor and being magnified by the golden walls. He could not quite believe that all the symbols of his kingship were here, sitting on the uneven gravel of a foreign desert, exuding a dignity that rendered their poor setting completely insignificant. For some minutes he simply stared at them, unwilling to move out of the circle of their mute influence, and he stumbled when finally he turned away and took the few steps into his tent.

Suddenly hungry, he asked Akhtoy to bring him food, and he had just finished his meal when the physician was announced, a faint odour of decay wafting with him. The man bowed. “The patient has fallen into a coma,” he told Ahmose. “He will not wake again, I think. I could not help him, Majesty. I am sorry.”

“Stay with him though and have more poppy ready in case he does become conscious,” Ahmose said. “I promised Queen Tautha that he would be cared for until he dies.” The physician heard the hint of a query in his words.

“I will be very surprised if he survives until dawn,” he offered. “He is rotting even before his ka leaves his body. He does not look strong but he has a great determination to live.”

“That is strange considering he has lost everything.” Ahmose paused. “Thank you. You are dismissed. Send the Queen to me.”

It was some time before Tani was admitted. Dusk was falling and Hekayib had trimmed and lit the lamp, removed Ahmose’s sandals and kilt, and helped him into a sleeveless tunic before taking up his post outside. Ahmose saw her approach him with a concern which he hid. She looked exhausted, her eyes hollowed, her lips pale. “Come and sit,” he said. “You need sleep, Tani. Are you hungry? Let me pour you some wine.” She found a chair, took the cup from him listlessly and sat staring into the depths of the liquid as though she was not sure what it was.

“The physician told me that he will be dead by morning,” she said tonelessly. “I am bereft, Ahmose. Without him I am utterly adrift. To the Setiu I am an Egyptian foreigner and to Egyptians I am a woman who has relinquished her birthright. He loved and protected me. What can I do now?” He eyed her cautiously. She was not usually given to self-pity.

“What do you want to do?” he asked noncommittally. “I presumed that you would take his body back inside Sharuhen and rejoin his family there.” Her head shot up.

“Take him back inside Sharuhen?” she repeated as though he had said something insane. “But, Ahmose, he must have a fully royal Egyptian burial!”

“What?” He set his cup down on the table with such force that the wine slopped over his hand. Roughly he shook off the drops. “Will you add blasphemy to your foolishness, Tani? The man not only came from a long line of usurpers but he was Setiu. A foreigner. Let his own people burn him or dig a hole for him or whatever the inhabitants of Rethennu do with their corpses. What is the matter with you? Have you lost your wits?” He had spoken as though Apepa were dead already, and Tani’s mouth set in a thin line.