Year of the Hyenas (43 page)

“I have
considered it,
Majesty.”

“Then you will
allow
me to reward you?”

“Your Majesty,
I will.”

“Name it then.”

Semerket took
a breath
and began. “There are three prisoners, family members of the
conspirators, that I beg you to pardon—the wife and child of Nakht, the
steward of your harem, and the boy Rami, son of the tombmaker Paneb.”

“Never.” The
word cut
like a knife. Semerket instantly sensed the old man’s righteous,
unquenchable wrath against those who had betrayed him. “I will never
forgive them. Never.”

Semerket
dropped his
head. “You said to name what I want, and I have.”

A terrible
silence
reigned.

“Is he always
so
pig-headed?” muttered Pharaoh at last, looking askance at his vizier.

“I’ve found
it’s
easier to ask the Nile to flow backward, Your Majesty,” Toh sighed,
“than to ask such a man as this to change his mind.”

The crown
prince
stepped forward hurriedly and knelt before his father. “May I remind my
father that I am alive because of this man’s intervention. I would ask
Pharaoh to at least know the reasons for his request.”

“Well?”
growled the
king, sitting back down on his couch. “Speak them.”

Semerket took
a breath
and began, silently asking the gods to free his tongue. “In exchange
for his confession,” he said, “I promised Foreman Paneb that I would
save his son.”

“This Paneb,”
said
Pharaoh, slowly. “Not only was he the killer of the priestess, but he
was also the foreman of the team that rifled so many tombs. A strange
candidate for such a favor.”

Semerket
raised his
head. “It is in memory of the boy’s mother that I also ask. Hunro was
my only friend among the tombmakers. She, too, died at the hands of
the conspirators, Your Majesty, because she helped me.”

“Hmmph. What
about
this other woman, then—this wife of Nakht? Why do you plead for her?”

“I was once
married to
her, Great King.”

The pharaoh
snorted.
“And she left you for that traitor? Then she is guilty of the crime of
bad taste, deserving nothing less than death!”

“She wanted
children,
Pharaoh. I could give her none. The fault was mine.”

He saw
Pharaoh’s eye
begin to harden.

“I still love
her,
Your Majesty,” he added, “more than my life. Even when she went to live
in another man’s house, I could not stop loving her.”

There was a
terrible
silence. Semerket’s head ached from the strain of speaking so many
words, and he fell again into obeisance, resting his forehead on the
cool tiles. The pharaoh stared at him, like an eagle stares at a hare.

“This is my
judgment,”
Pharaoh said at last.

Instantly a
nearby
scribe took up a stylus and wax tablet.

“Naia, the
wife of the
traitor Nakht, and Rami, the son of the traitor Paneb, are spared
execution.”

Semerket’s
breath
gusted from him in relief. “Thank you, Great King!”

“Do not thank
me so
soon, Semerket. I am not yet finished.” He turned again to the scribe,
directing him to continue writing. “They will be exiled, never again to
step foot in Egypt or drink from the waters of the Nile. They will be
sent as indentured servants to Babylon, and there live out their days.”

“Pharaoh—!”
protested
Semerket.

“Do not ask
any more
for them, Semerket. My gratitude has limits.”

“What—what,
then, of
Naia’s child?”

“Let her take
the
child with her if she wants, or let her give it away. I care nothing
for infants. Now go and bid your farewells to this Naia of yours, and
the lad, too; a ship carrying our new ambassador leaves for Babylon
this very day.”

A spasm of
pain
gripped Pharaoh, and he grimaced, clutching his side. The crown prince
called sharply for a physician, and courtiers began to scramble about
like alarmed ants. During the fracas, Semerket slunk away.

Once Semerket
had
departed the terrace, the crown prince hurried to him. They stood at
the top of the stairs that led into the main room of the palace. “Don’t
blame my father overmuch, Semerket.”

Semerket shook
his
head. He was still in shock, unable to speak.

“Though he
doesn’t say
it,” the prince continued, “this business has truly shaken him. He had
convinced himself he was beloved, you see. Then to find out that
everything he believed in was a lie—well, that is why he needs you in
his last days. You risked your life to save his, and it comforts him to
have you near. Please come back. You remind my father that he counts
for something in at least one person’s heart.”

“But Pharaoh
is loved…”

“A pharaoh is
feared.
He is worshipped. Adored. But loved? Semerket, I am under no illusions;
the red and white crowns are far more wonderful things to see than to
wear.” Prince Ramses laid his hand upon Semerket’s shoulder. “You and I
will talk together in the days ahead; I do not forget my friends.”

Semerket bowed
until
the crown prince had returned to his father, then went downstairs into
the main room of the palace. To his surprise, he spied the immensely
tall Yousef, lieutenant to the King of the Beggars, standing amid a
group of his fellows at a far wall. They all were clad in their best,
most outlandish garments, cadged undoubtedly from many a Theban noble’s
waste heap. The beggars waited in front of a niche that held a silver
vase filled with glorious new lilies. Almost hidden in the beggars’
midst was a miniature chariot drawn by a ram.

The Beggar
King was
clean, for once. Semerket was forced to admit that legless as he was,
the king exuded a regal air that many blood-born nobles might envy.
When he saw Semerket approaching, he hailed his ally gleefully,
flicking the reins against his ram’s backside and driving to where
Semerket stood.

“Semerket,
savior of
the kingdom! Man of the hour! Friend of kings!”

Semerket
scowled at
his compliments. “I can’t believe you’re here, Majesty. Have you become
respectable at last?”

“My brother
the
pharaoh himself commands me to attend him. At one time or another,” he
smirked nonchalantly, “everyone wishes to meet me in person. They say
he will even request a favor of me.”

“What sort of
favor?”

The Beggar
King
shrugged.

“Pharaoh and
his
advisors are being very mysterious,” said Yousef.

“But of course
I shall
grant it, whatever Pharaoh asks,” said the Beggar King. “We are brother
sovereigns, after all.”

At that moment
the
palace chamberlain came to murmur to the king that he and his company
were awaited on the terrace. With their joyful farewells ringing in his
ears, Semerket headed again for the temple pylons. From the corner of
his eye he noticed that the vase of silver in the niche was missing.

Ah well,
Semerket
thought—it’s none of my concern. He had sadder things to think about;
he was going to the prison at Amun’s Great Temple, to tell Naia that
Egypt was no longer her home.

SEMERKET STOOD ATthe docks. It was
noon. Rami, hands bound behind him, stood at his side. A fast river
transport in the royal harbor made ready to depart for the north, and
last-minute crates and bales were being stowed on its decks. It was a
new ship of shallow draft but wide beam, constructed in the manner of
Phoenician vessels, with a keel and ribs. This meant that the ship was
capable of voyaging not only upon the river, but also out on the salt
seas beyond—something most Egyptians in their keelless boats dreaded.

The new
ambassador to
Babylon had already gone aboard, along with his gifts for Babylon’s
king. As they waited for Naia to be delivered to them, Semerket looked
over at Rami. Though he affected an adolescent’s disdain, Semerket
could tell he was terrified, and that he probably blamed Semerket for
his misery. The lad had lost everything because of the man beside
him—his home, his parents, even the girl he was to have married.

“Rami,”
Semerket said,
“I’m sorry how everything turned out. I wanted you to live in my
brother’s house with me, in Thebes.”

“You?” the lad
spat.
“I’d rather live with hyenas.”

For a while
you did,
thought Semerket, but he did not say it. Firmly he placed his hand on
Rami’s shoulder, looking deeply into his eyes. “Anyway, I’m sorry,” he
said. “Truly.”

The boy said
nothing,
dropping his gold eyes sullenly, and went quickly aboard the ship. He
would not stand any longer beside Semerket.

In despair,
Semerket
gazed down the wide avenue that bordered the wharves. In the distance
he saw Naia walking in the company of temple guards. The baby squirmed
in her arms, made fretful by the noises and sharp smells of the docks.
He embraced them both when she arrived, without speaking, and they
stood together for endless moments, saying nothing, oblivious to all
and everything around them.

All too soon
the
impatient captain yelled to them from the deck that Naia was to come
aboard instantly. Semerket snarled an epithet in his direction.

“We can’t put
it off
any longer, my love,” Naia said. She was robed in a simple sheath of
mourning gray, and wore a head scarf of the same plain material. She
should have been dressed as a queen, thought Semerket bitterly, not a
servant.

“I will come
for you,”
he said to her, taking her free hand.

“You cannot.”

“I will. You
know I’ll
do it.”

“Oh, Ketty,
why do you
always make things harder than they need to be? Let us say goodbye here
in Thebes, and forever. Put me out of your mind.”

“I won’t. I
can’t.”

She was
suddenly very
angry. “You are a cruel man!” she said in a wail.

The child
began to
wail too, and Semerket stood looking helplessly at them both. “How can
you say that, when you know I love you so?”

Naia looked at
Semerket, and there was a strange light in her eye. She kissed the
child desperately then, as if she would crush the baby to her. “What I
need to take with me now,” she told him, “is the knowledge that you are
not suffering. You don’t know how much I need it. It will be the only
thing to give me strength to endure—the next thing I must do.”

He did not
like her
strange tone, nor the odd, determined glint in her eyes. Before he
could speak his fears, however, she abruptly thrust the child into his
arms.

“Take him,”
she said.

When Semerket
could
only stare, she cried again, harshly, “Take him!”

Semerket was
shocked
into taking the now-squalling Huni, and held him to his chest. He could
not speak, for again his tongue was lifeless in his mouth.

“I want him
raised as
an Egyptian, by the best man I have ever known and ever will. He is
our
son,
Semerket—remember that. Though Nakht fathered him, the gods gave us a
child in the only way they could. It doesn’t matter how we got him—he is
ours
. I bore him, and now
you must rear him.”

“Naia!” He was
aghast.

“That’s why
you must
be happy here in Egypt for me. For if you are not—if you mope and pine
for me, and drink yourself sodden—I will know our son cannot be happy.
Can you do that for me?”

He forced
himself to
nod.

The captain
yelled at
them again, threatening to send down guards to forcibly drag Naia
aboard. Reluctantly, Semerket and Naia moved to the gangplank.

Semerket
looked at her
helplessly. “Naia… the only thing I can think of now is that flower you
saw, after we were first married, in the eastern deserts. Do you
remember it?”

“The strange
purple
flower, high on that cliff. Yes, I remember. I joked that I wanted it
for my garden.”

He was weeping
now,
unabashedly. People on the docks stared. “I could have climbed that
cliff. Why didn’t I?”

“Oh, Ketty—it
doesn’t
matter.”

“Every day
since I met
you, I’ve looked for your face in all the women I see. None of them is
alive to me—only you are alive. But I know now I’ll never see your face
again, anywhere.”

With a cry she
turned
away and hurried on board, not once looking back at her husband and
child. The crew was quick to drag the dripping anchor stone to the
ship’s deck, and the rowers thrust their oars into the Nile. The ship
turned, bow heading to the north, and the river god caught the vessel
in his arms and gently pushed it forward. The rowers changed positions,
and dipped their oars again. The ship increased its speed, and sailed
swiftly past the docks and into the center of the river.

Semerket, with
his
child in his arms, watched as it disappeared in the bend of the river.
But even when he could no longer see the tip of its mast, he did not
move. He was thinking, instead, how perverse the gods were. Where once
he had despaired of ever having a son, he now had Naia’s.

And he was the
unhappiest man in Egypt.

QUEENTIYA OPENEDher eyes and saw the old man at the
cell’s door.

“Toh!” she
said in
surprise.

“Greetings,
lady,” the
vizier said. “The pharaoh in his mercy has decreed that you are to
live.”

“I don’t
believe it.”
She had no modesty. “Why should he show me mercy now when all my life
he has humiliated and bedeviled me?”

“Who knows?
Perhaps he
grows sentimental in his old age, lady. He has sent this wine to you as
a gesture of his goodwill. Will you drink some?”

“No doubt it
is
poisoned.”

“If you think
so, then
I will drink some with you.” He poured a bowlful.

“You drink
first, old
man!” she commanded.

Toh raised the
bowl to
his lips and took a sip.