King and Goddess (40 page)

Here the queen and the king of Punt received him sitting on
chairs made of the tusks of elephants. He was given another, which he took
after he had made obeisance: bowing as a prince to a prince who stands slightly
higher, but certainly not as to a king in Egypt.

The queen, seen close in the shade of the pavilion, was no
less grotesque than she had seemed on the strand. Her face was as odd as her
body, long-boned, heavy-jawed. But her eyes were those of a lovely woman, dark
and almost distressingly beautiful in that oddity of a face. Her voice was deep
and sweet, like dark honey. It was she who spoke; the king her husband was
content to sit listening.

It was a strange, hesitant colloquy. Each of them spoke in
his or her own tongue, with Bastet between, rendering it into words that the
other could understand. Her light voice faded after a while to a kind of echo.
Nehsi, accustomed to embassies in Egypt, acknowledged the strangeness and then
forgot it, focusing his mind and body on the exchange of greetings and
courtesies. It was a dance; like all dances it had its steps and its cadences.

The heart of it was buried deep, and took long to arrive at.
First these majesties of the land that they called Tomery,
Beloved
, must bow low and low again to the god of the sun, who,
they declared, was none other than Amon-Re of Thebes. They were most particular
in this regard.

“But in your country, it is said,” the queen observed, “he
rules remote and distant, except when he comes to love one of your queens. Here
is where he lives. This is the country that he loves. He is our king, our near and
present lord. We live by the breath of his mouth.”

“Our king is Amon’s own child,” Nehsi said. “She rules from
the throne of the Two Lands. She speaks with his voice; she sees with his eyes.
She is the living image of Amon.”

The queen inclined her head. “He has blessed your country
greatly; and indeed he loves it.” She paused. “So it is no rumor or falsehood.
Your king, the one whom you have raised to rule above you, is a woman.”

“Yes, majesty,” said Nehsi. “Maatkare, she is named: the
Truth of Re.”

“Re is truth,” the queen said, nodding, “and life and
strength. Is she beautiful, your king?”

“More beautiful than anything,” Nehsi said; and no matter if
he offended this most ugly of women.

She did not appear angry, or even perturbed. “It is good,”
she said, “that a king be beautiful. See, my king, how beautiful he is.”

Her king neither blushed nor looked down. He had been chosen
for his beauty, perhaps. He was younger than his wife. He had the look of a man
who took great care for the comeliness of his body, oiled and plucked it to
show it to best advantage, and exercised it to harden the smooth gleaming
muscles.

The queen stroked his arm and smiled, but her eyes were on
Nehsi, weighing him with clear intent. “You are beautiful,” she said, “and
wonderfully so. Do you have a wife, O beautiful one?”

Bastet spoke the words levelly, but her voice had roughened.
Not much, not enough for most to notice, but Nehsi was attuned to its cadences.
He glanced at her sharply. But she was being nothing and no one, wearing no
expression, simply saying what she was told to say.

Nehsi answered, since he had been asked. “No, O queen. I
have no wife.”

“Shame,” said the queen of Punt, “that a man so beautiful
should have no wife to keep him virtuous. Are you a great lion of the bedchamber,
then, O prince?”

“Lions,” said Nehsi, “are lazy beasts, drowsing the day
away. It’s the lionesses who hunt and fight and rear their young.”

“Just so,” the queen said. “But the lions will fight when
they must, when the lionesses are occupied or overmatched. Then he comes, their
great-maned king, and conquers all their enemies, and sires sons upon the
bodies of his queens.”

Nehsi flushed under the blessed darkness of his skin. “I
have been a warrior, lady, and a guardsman of the one who was then my queen. My
sons are at home in Egypt, learning to fight and hunt and rule a domain. My
daughters—”

“Such as this one?” the queen inquired.

Nehsi caught himself before he whirled roaring on the one
she smiled at. He turned with dignity.

There was Tama, whom he had thought safe under armed guard
in his ship, peering from behind a guardsman’s kilt. The man—boy, if truth be
told—looked as startled as Nehsi.

“Papa,” said Tama in the ringing silence. “You forgot to
bring me.”

“I did not—” Nehsi caught himself again. He jabbed with his
chin. The guard, blushing furiously, reached to catch her. But she was gone,
darting across the tent, coming to a halt in front of the queen of Punt.

Nehsi suppressed a groan. Before he could swoop down on her
and clap a hand over her mouth, she said in her clear uncompromising voice,
“I’ve never seen anything like you before.”

Bastet, damn her, rendered the words in the language of
Punt—at least, she must have done, because the queen laughed. It was wonderful
laughter, richer even than her voice in speech, like deep music. “Come here,”
she said, and beckoned.

Bastet did not need to interpret that. Tama, who could be
perfectly obedient when she had a mind to be, did as she was told. She climbed
into the lap amid those billows of flesh, and she let herself be embraced, and
did not either shriek or object.

The queen held her at arm’s length, looking her over with
evident approval. “You do your father justice,” she said. “You’ll be a beauty
when you’re grown.”

“No one is as handsome as Papa,” Tama said. She frowned.
“Why does Bastet have to talk for you? Can’t you talk like a normal person?”

“I know a little Egyptian,” the queen said, “but not enough.
Would you like to teach me?”

Tama nodded.

“Well then,” said the queen. “Ask your father if I may
borrow you while he tarries here. He might say no, mind you. A father is well
advised to keep his daughter close.”

“With that child,” Nehsi said, “such a feat is near
impossible.”

“I’ll come and teach you,” said Tama, “but I have to be with
Papa, too. He needs looking after.”

“So do all men,” the queen said, “and beautiful men in
particular.”

“Papa is the most beautiful man in the world,” said Tama.
“I’ll teach you. First you must learn to say my name. It is Tama. Sometimes
people say Tamit, which means ‘she-cat,’ but my proper name is Tama.”

“Tama,” said the queen of Punt obediently.

Tama nodded. “You learn well,” she said, sounding so exactly
like the tutor Nehsi had hired to teach his sons their letters, that he
resolved to interrogate the man when at last he came home again, and discover
how often his imp of a daughter had intruded on her brothers’ lessons.

The queen of Punt was pleased: she looked almost comely as
she smiled. “I shall be a good pupil,” she said to Tama. And to Tama’s father:
“Rest if you will; eat, drink, ask for whatever pleases you. I’ll return your
daughter before evening.”

Nehsi opened his mouth, shut it again. When he spoke, it was
hardly more than a sigh. “As you wish, O queen.”

Tama was an admirable ambassador to the queen of Punt.
Nehsi, resigned but watchful, sent a man with her who carried no weapon but who
was strong enough and skilled enough to defend her.

It was not that Nehsi feared she might be attacked. But he
did not know these people. They might reckon that he had given his daughter to
their queen, and be dismayed when he wanted her back again.

He did not try to prevent her going to the queen. That was
admirably done; worthy, if he dared think it, of his own king.

While Tama taught the queen to speak a few words of
Egyptian, the rest of the embassy traded splendidly with the people of Punt.
Their beads and gowns and mirrors were received as if they had been gold. In
return they gained all the wonders that the captain had spoken of, and more.

Nehsi had made it clear that he would be most pleased to
trade in the glory of this country, the incense-trees that made the air so
richly pungent. They brought him boughs and bundles so strongly scented that
the nose gave up in despair. They took him to the hills where the trees grew.
He stood in the midst of them and looked about, and knew what he truly,
honestly wished to do.

“Can these be taken back with us?” he asked through his
interpreter.

His guides murmured among themselves, taking so long about
it that he grew impatient and was about to speak. Then the leader of them said,
“For that, we must ask the queen.”

She was with Tama, as always. She greeted Nehsi in Egyptian,
and not too terribly accented, either; though those few words clearly exhausted
her store of knowledge. Thereafter she spoke through Bastet—or through Tama,
who in teaching this queen her own tongue had become astonishingly fluent in
the language of Punt.

Through the two of them Nehsi presented his petition. “My
king loves myrrh beyond any other unguent,” he said, “and cherishes the trees
that grow in her garden. It would be a great gift to her, and great joy, if we
were to bring back such of the trees as our ships can carry.”

“That is a great thing you ask,” the queen said. “The trees
are our greatest treasure. If we give them to you, you’ll not come back to
trade with us again, or to make us rich.”

“On the contrary, O queen,” Nehsi said. “My king would
promise, I’m sure, not to plant the trees save in her own garden, nor to trade
in their fruits or their seed. These would be for her own pleasure, and for her
delight.”

“Well,” said the queen. “And you would promise to come back
often, and trade with us?”

“For myself I may not promise such a thing,” Nehsi said,
“but for my country I can do it. You have known Egypt for time out of mind. It
will be pleased to trade with you, and not only for your incense-trees. Your
riches are immense and beautiful, and much to be desired.”

“Your words are sweet,” the queen said, “and your daughter
is delightful. I’ll not trade for my trees, O prince. I’ll give them to your
king as a gift. This is the sun-god’s country; she is his daughter. I’ll send
her this remembrance of him, and of us who also are his children.”

~~~

When the queen of Punt gave a gift, she did not give it by
halves. A handful of days after she had announced the giving of the gift, as
Nehsi went down to his ships from the camp that they had made on the strand
near the town, he found them in uproar. On the shore stood a very fleet of
carts, each drawn by a team of donkeys; and in each cart, wrapped with as great
care as the mummy of a king, lay a shape of root and bole and branch, redolent
of temples.

Thirty-one myrrh-trees. Thirty for the king’s pleasure, and
one because, as its tender declared, it would pine for its grovemate else. They
were wrapped in spells and in the goodwill of the people of Punt, sustained by
their own earth packed carefully about the roots. Nehsi himself saw them laden
in his ships, a few for each, and each with its attendant, to look after it and
cherish it until it came to Egypt.

He had lingered because there was so much to do, and because
the queen had grown so fond of Tama. But the season advanced, and he yearned
for his own country again; and even more than that, the face of his king.

Once the yearning began, it sharpened to pain. A poor
explorer, he; he traveled so long and so far, and in the end he fell ill of
homesickness.

He thought he concealed it well. He even spun out his
departure in proper and courtly fashion. The most difficult part of it, the
return of Tama from the queen’s house, he left till nearly last. But time ran
on, and he had to go. His ships were ready, their cargo laden and stowed, even
to the trees that stood up like strange masts. All that was left was to gather
his people, and to bid the people of Punt farewell.

There was a feast, the night before they would depart. The
king and the queen of Punt spread tables in the Egyptian fashion, but as
always, in their own way: under the same pavilion in which they had first received
Nehsi’s embassy, its walls rolled up so that it lay open to the breezes. The
tables were strewn with flowers, the serving-maids clad in them and in precious
little else. There was a whole ox roasted for their pleasure, and a whole
sheep, and a procession of other and stranger beasts and birds, fruits, greens
and roots that grew in the earth.

Nehsi sat beside the queen of Punt. Tama was in the queen’s
enormous lap, being fed dainties and spoiled horribly. There had been no
discussion as yet of her departure. Cowardice on Nehsi’s part, perhaps. If
there must be a battle, he preferred that it be brief.

It was a grand feast. His people had got on well with the
people of Punt; there were friendships made, alliances confirmed, and not a few
women who would weep when the ships set sail. One or two sailors had come to
him begging for leave to bring a wife on the voyage home. Nehsi, who had not
been born a fool, sent them to their captain.

As he had expected, they slunk away, heads hanging. Sailors
loved and left women wherever they went. A woman of Punt, abandoned in Memphis
or Thebes, might well have cause to curse the man whose love ran cold as soon
as he set eyes again on the women of Egypt.

Not that the ships would be empty of people from Punt. The
trees had their attendants; and the king had asked that one of his sons be
permitted to join the voyage with his wives and his servants and a prince or
six, to come as envoy before the king of Egypt. That, Nehsi could hardly
refuse. His ships would be laden to the limit, and would sail the slower for
it, but it would be a triumphant return, gods willing, to the quays of the Two
Lands.

Tonight, his last night in the God’s Land, he knew the
stabbing of regret. He would not be sorry to leave the heavy heat, the perpetual
strangeness, the people whose language he had never properly learned to speak.
And yet he had grown fond of this strange country. It was like a living temple
of Amon.