The Shepherd Kings (3 page)

“You knew I didn’t,” said the one called Naukrates, “or
you’d not have come looking for me.”

Gebu laughed and spread his hands. “Very well then. I hoped
you’d still be in the city.”

Naukrates spread his hands and bowed, a graceful, foreign
gesture. “And what is it that I can do for you?”

Gebu glanced back at Kemni, who had chosen to remain near
the door. “This is my brother in blood and battle, a lord’s son of Lower Egypt.
His name is Kemni.”

“Kemni,” the Cretan said. His tongue softened it, gave it a
lilt that was more pleasant than not.
Kemeni
,
it sounded like. It was a greeting, and a welcome.

He made no move, but as if he had given a signal, servants
padded in, soft on bare feet, bearing chairs, a table, jars and cups and bowls:
all the makings of a small feast. Kemni marveled a little that a house so
evidently deserted, unguarded, undefended, should after all be so well
tenanted.

Foreign secrets. The wine was foreign, too, but the food was
familiar enough. Whoever the cook was, Kemni would have wagered silver that the
man was Egyptian.

Proper manners required patience. One had to eat though one
had eaten one’s fill with the king; drink, and speak of nothing, and dance the
dance of strangers meeting. One did not ask what one was itching to ask, nor
indicate through glance or shift of body that one was ready to leap out of
one’s skin with impatience.

Naukrates was the captain of a ship from Crete. He told
tales of the Great Green, the sea that flowed at the bottom of the world, and
all its ways and its creatures, and the peoples who lived along its shores.
They were wonderful tales. And through them Kemni saw something else.

This was not a simple merchant captain. That he was here,
that he had passed the barriers the foreign kings had raised on the river south
of Memphis, spoke for a determination beyond the ordinary. The wealth of this
house, the number and quality of servants, made Kemni suspect that here was one
of rank perhaps equal to Gebu. He had the air, the calm expectation that when
he spoke, men would listen; and when he commanded, men would obey.

Rather subtly, so that at first Kemni was barely aware of
it, the current of conversation shifted. They had been speaking of trade, and
of navigating the river of Egypt. It was inevitable that they speak of the
foreign king who squatted athwart the delta of the river, and ruled the
trading-houses of Memphis.

“Once we were the Two Lands,” Gebu said: “Upper Egypt, which
was Thebes and the long narrow valley of the river; and Lower Egypt, which is
Memphis and the Delta. Two lands. Two worlds, as it were, Upper Egypt as narrow
sometimes as a man can walk in an hour, bounded by the desert; and Lower Egypt
with its green marshes and its damper airs.

“And now only Upper Egypt is ours. Lower Egypt belongs to
the invaders out of Asia, the lords from Retenu. Half a score of years ago we
took it back—but we lost it as soon as we had won it, because we could not hold
it all, not against both the foreign kings and the kings of Nubia.”

“I suppose,” said Naukrates, “that one could simply endure.”

“One could,” said Gebu.

“Or one could . . . act on it.”

“One might,” Gebu said. “And how would that serve you?”

“Simply enough,” Naukrates answered. “Egypt has always been
rich in trade. These foreign kings are willing enough to take what we offer,
but they close off the greater wealth of Egypt, and the trade that comes with
it, from places far away on the world’s edge.”

“Gold,” said Gebu. “Ivory.”

“Elephants and apes and fowl like living jewels.” Naukrates sighed.
“The foreigners trade with Nubia, to be sure. But the tribute their king
demands is ridiculous.”

“Any king’s tribute is ridiculous, if you ask a trader,”
Gebu said.

“His is more ridiculous than most,” said Naukrates. “He
looks to the land, to the kingdoms of Asia, and to the trade that comes from
the sunrise countries. He thinks little of us who come from the sea.”

“Whereas we who sail in boats on our river that can be as
broad as a sea— we understand the trade that comes in ships from across the Great
Green.”

“Just so,” Naukrates said.

Kemni listened in silence. He was beginning to see, perhaps,
what this signified.

Crete lay far away, an island in the Great Green. Between
Thebes and Crete lay not only water but the whole broad stretch of Lower Egypt.
And Lower Egypt was held captive by kings out of Asia.

Not all of Lower Egypt lay passive under the conqueror’s
heel. Kemni knew that—perhaps none better. He was the son of a lord from Lower
Egypt. His father had bowed his head to the invader. But Kemni had not. Kemni
had taken arms with his uncle, his father’s brother, likewise a lord of the
conquered kingdom, and gone to fight for the king of Upper Egypt. The uncle had
died for it. Kemni had lived, but he had not gone back to his lands. Gebu had brought
him to Thebes and made a prince of him, and cherished him as a brother.

Crete was a great power on the sea. Its ships and its
fighting men were a wonder of the world.

Suppose, thought Kemni, that Upper Egypt had not had to
fight alone.

Suppose that it could ally with Crete, and crush the
foreigners between. Then might it not at last, after a hundred years, succeed
in taking back what belonged to it?

~~~

While his thoughts wandered, so had the conversation. They
were speaking now of gods and of wonders, of dreams and visions. But before
Kemni could open his mouth to speak, that too had shifted. Now Gebu said, “You
sail soon, I suppose.”

Naukrates nodded. “We’ve lingered here overlong. I’d like to
be home for the dancing of the bull. We do that, you know, at the year’s end.”

“Yes,” said Gebu, in Kemni’s silence. “When you go, can you
take a passenger?”

Naukrates shrugged slightly, a very Cretan shrug: expressive
of much, not all of it clear for an Egyptian to read. “I might,” he said. “Can
he pay his passage? Or should I put him to work?”

“He can pay,” Gebu said, “but he might be of use. He’s not a
bad sailor, as men go in Egypt.”

Naukrates’ brow went up. Kemni knew what the sailors of
Crete thought of Egyptians and their boats. Children playing in puddles, he had
heard one of them say once.

And why, wondered Kemni, was Gebu seeking passage to Crete?
Not rebellion, surely. Not running away from his father and his people and the
war that, Kemni was sure, was coming soon.

Embassy. Yes. And how subtle, and how secret. If the king in
the north learned of this before the Cretan ship passed the last port of Egypt,
he could capture and destroy every man on it, and the alliance with it.

Then Naukrates said, “So you fancy yourself a sailor.”

His eyes were not on Gebu. He looked Kemni in the face.

Kemni felt a perfect fool. Of course he was the one they
were speaking of. Why else would he be here? He was well enough loved, but he
was hardly privy to the king’s secrets. Unless he could be of use.

After rather too long a pause, he gave Naukrates such answer
as he could. “I fancy myself well enough, but I’ll never pretend to be a sailor
on the Great Green.”

The Cretan’s dark eyes glinted. “What, a modest Egyptian?
Has the world ever seen such a thing?”

“The world may want to know why I go to Crete,” Kemni said.

“Because the gods chose you,” said Gebu. “Do you refuse? You
can if you like. It’s a long way to go for little more than a dream.”

Kemni stiffened at that. “Did your father pray for a sign,
then? And I was his answer?”

“That’s between my father and the rest of the gods.”

Kemni’s breath hissed between his teeth. “You want me to
leave Egypt.”

“Leave Egypt, go to Crete, speak with the king in the
Labyrinth. And,” said Gebu, “come back with a token of the alliance. A living
one, if promises be true.”

“They are true,” Naukrates said. “For a compact such as
this, the only true bond is living flesh.”

“A wife for the king.” Gebu sighed a little. “I asked to be
given the task, you know. But the gods asked for you.”

“One dream,” Kemni said. “One vexatious nightmare. Can you
say you’ve never had any such thing?”

“I never dreamed of this,” said Gebu.

“Very well,” Kemni said crossly, and no matter what the
Cretan captain was thinking. “I’ll go. But promise me something.”

“Whatever you like,” Gebu said.

“When I come back,” said Kemni, “don’t simply make me rich.
Give me horses and a chariot, and let me learn the way of them.”

Kemni had never seen Gebu so flatly astonished. “Horses? Why
would you want
that
?”

“So that I can conquer the conqueror,” Kemni said.

“Well,” said Gebu after a pause. “I did say
anything
. I’ll speak to my father. If it
can be done, he’ll do it.”

“That will do,” Kemni said, then caught himself. But Gebu
did not rebuke him for presumption. He only laughed and cuffed Kemni’s ear, and
called for the wine to go round again. “In your honor,” he said, “and in honor
of the embassy.”

Kemni must have been mad. Even if the king had commanded
it, to agree to sail in secret out of Egypt, to speak for the king before the
king of Crete—Kemni had no subtlety. He could fight a battle, sail a boat,
amuse a prince. But embassies were for the wise, and for great lords and
princes. Not for the adopted brother of a lesser prince.

All he had was a dream. It seemed a fragile thing on which
to hang the fate of Egypt.

But it was decided. The king said so. “The gods chose you,”
he said when Kemni tried to protest. “They will guide you. Trust in them.”

Kemni had no choice. The king had spoken. And Naukrates the
Cretan was sailing in the morning.

Kemni would go alone. He might have had a servant, or a
guard, but he declined. It was a secret embassy, after all, and must be hidden
from the Retenu.

And that too, perhaps, was why he had been chosen. A lord of
higher rank and position might have insisted on a greater show. The offer of a
guard or a single servant would have insulted such a personage. And the proper
entourage of a great lord would have been recognized long before it passed the
ports of the Delta, and his embassy and his secret been uncovered, and all of
it destroyed.

This was not battle of the field, man to man and the gods
must choose the victor, and yet battle it was. That it must be fought in secret
was a great shame, but never as great as that Egypt herself lay divided, and a
king out of Asia ruled over the half of it.

~~~

In the end, Kemni rode on the back of anger: anger at the
foreign king, and anger that he should be driven out of Egypt in his own king’s
name, to beg yet another foreign king to aid in the winning back of Lower Egypt.
Anger sustained him when he could not bid farewell to his friends or to any of
the princes but Gebu; even when he received nothing from his king at parting
but a box that proved, on his opening it, to be filled with pieces of silver.
That was wealth—but hardly enough to win the favor of a king.

He left the palace quietly, casually, as if he had gone out
merely in search of amusement, and made his way through the waking city, down
to the quays and the ships.

The ship from Crete, like Kemni’s own embassy, was made to
seem less than she was. Her name, he had taken the trouble to discover, was
Dancer
. She was worn, the painted eye on
her prow much faded with waves and weather, the sail once purple now dulled to
a cloudy grey. Her crew of black-ringleted sailors took little apparent notice
of Kemni as he stepped none too ineptly aboard, but they were aware of him. He
could feel it on his skin, and in the space between his shoulderblades.

Naukrates the captain was notable here not in his
splendor—he affected none—but for that he stood under a canopy on the deck, and
all the others looked to him for their orders. Not that they did that often.
They had the air of men who had served long and well under the same captain, on
this same ship. Everything on her was familiar, and every man had his place and
his purpose.

Kemni had no part in this smooth working of men and ship. He
found himself shifted quickly and irresistibly to a space near
Dancer
’s horned prow, up against a heap
of stowed cargo. There, it was clear, he was to stay, and forbear from
interference.

It was well for him that he had so little pride to lose, he
reflected wryly as he made himself as comfortable as he could amid the boxes
and bales. In so little a semblance of lordly state, on a ship that had evidently
seen better days, Kemni sailed out of the harbor of Thebes. No crowds cheered
him on. No great lords of Egypt saw him on his way. He went as any common
traveler might go, unmarked and unregarded.

And that was exactly as the king had wished it. Kemni
endured it for no other reason. He was still angry. He meant to stay so, for
Egypt’s sake, until he stood in front of the king in Knossos, and spoke the
words that his king had given him to say.

He would not need those words for yet a while. He settled
therefore and determined to be invisible, cargo as the boxes and bales were
cargo, riding the river away from the city that had been home to him for the
past hand of years. He did not look back. Thebes was as clear in memory as he
would ever need it to be.

His eyes fixed on the river ahead. The water was full of
boats. Every fisherman was out, it seemed, and every trader, and every man or
woman of whatever degree, who had any need at all to be out and about. He saw a
flotilla of funeral boats with women wailing, carrying the stark encoffined
dead to a tomb on the western bank. He saw a lord in a bright barge with a
boatful of musicians in his wake, making the air sweet with the sound of pipe
and timbrel and harp. He saw traders of several nations, each in his own manner
of ship: Nubian, Egyptian, Asiatic. But only his was a ship from Crete.