The Blood Star (32 page)

The street was perhaps twenty paces wide, yet
there were people everywhere now and to fight one’s way through
them was not the work of a moment. Yet I must hurry or I would lose
my chance.

A soldier angrily swung his arm after me as I
dashed past him. My foot caught on a basket full of figs and they
went tumbling onto the ground. An old woman darted in front of me.
I caught her in my hands just in time to keep her from falling, and
she screeched at me like a hawk. Her cries rang in my ears—probably
they all thought I was a thief in flight—but I did not stop.

I reached the alley. He was gone. There was a
street beyond, but I had a glimpse of a man’s shadow against the
alley wall. His? By now my sword was drawn, but he was gone. I saw
no one in a black robe. I followed one street and then another, but
he had escaped.

Yes, of course—he planned it thus. He only
wanted me to know he had found me.

Yet I could not find him. The man in the
black robes seemed to have vanished from Memphis. Kephalos employed
spies and paid out a fortune in bribes to brothel keepers and
porters, and still he uncovered no trace of a foreigner with one
finger missing from his left hand.

“He is gone, Lord,” he said. “How can he
possibly have eluded our search, a stranger with such an obvious
disfigurement? He has fled for his life.”

Yet I was not so sure.

I made a point of spending part of every day
in the bazaars and among the dockside taverns, places where, if
someone were watching out for me, he would not have much trouble
finding me. I spent days and days thus. I never saw the man, never
found the slightest trace of him, yet I felt his presence. It is a
strange feeling, to be watched in secret. It preys upon the
nerves.

Enkidu sensed him too. Enkidu, whose eyes and
ears nothing escaped, would now and then bolt away, only to come
back a few minutes later, shaking his head and frowning. The man
whose quarry I had become was very cunning if he could elude
Enkidu. I did not find this a comforting reflection.

I tried to drive the matter from my thoughts.
It seemed that the man had left the city. I was safe enough. There
was a guard posted around my house, so at least I would not have to
worry about having my throat cut while I slept. What more could I
do without becoming a prisoner of my own fears? If one man desires
to kill another, he will always find his chance.

And, remembering the murder of my friend
Prodikos, I wished him all speed, for his chance would also be
mine.

“I will kill him,” I said to Enkidu. “This is
a madman, who murders for pleasure. I will not hesitate. One does
not hesitate with a rabid dog—one kills it.”

Pharaoh’s arrival in Memphis was the occasion
for a ceaseless round of celebrations and banquets. The great and
powerful of the city vied with one another in the costliness of
their jubilees, and this even though Pharaoh himself came to none
of them—it would have been unthinkable for the god-king to mix thus
with his subjects, as a man among other men.

Pharaoh, indeed, was merely the pretext, for
the Egyptians will make a festival of anything. No one really cared
about Pharaoh. The revels continued even after he had left.

I was invited everywhere. My presence was
desired at every feast. Indeed, I was part of the entertainment,
like the musicians and the acrobats, for I was a novelty and the
Egyptians are like children in their love of novelty.

Besides, the harvests had been bad that year
and hardship was everywhere. While the peasants starved in silence,
the land owners looked about for new means of financing their
extravagances. Many a brightly colored bird found itself pecking at
the dry earth, and most of these seemed to end by coming to
Kephalos for a loan. Very shortly it seemed that everyone, from
Prince Nekau down, owed us money—I say us, for I was graciously
allowed a share of the profits.

At any rate, great wealth acts as a sovereign
guarantee of one’s place in society.

The fashion that year was for river parties.
A barge, strung with colored lanterns, would be anchored in the
middle of the Nile and guests to the banquet would have themselves
rowed over in their own little pleasure boats, similarly decorated.
Sometimes there would be two or three such barges on the water and
people would float from one to the next, carried along by
restlessness and the languid current. The twinkling lights made a
pretty enough sight from the shore, so it is possible the people in
town enjoyed these diversions as much as anyone. For myself, I grew
quickly bored with this folly and would have stopped attending had
it not been for Nodjmanefer.

For the month following our first encounter I
was hardly ever able to speak to her alone. Yet as her husband’s
power and her own beauty recommended her to the world, I could at
least see her. For our paths to meet I had only to accept enough
invitations.

She would glance in my direction and smile
and turn away, having forgotten, it seemed, that I was alive. Had
she? I wondered. Had it meant so little to her? And was I touched
by this deeper than in my vanity? I did not know. I only knew that
my gaze longed to dwell upon her face, and that I did not care very
much if I was making a fool of myself.

One night the Lord Senefru did not accompany
her. She sat with a group of her friends, wearing a red wig trimmed
in gold and looking lovelier than the dawn. I was not far away and
could hear her laughter, like the tinkling of bells. The sound at
once thrilled me and made me wretched, for I was sure by then that
I had lost her.

The banquet lasted longer than usual and the
river wind had started to turn cold. People were beginning to
leave. I stood near her, just a pace or two behind, as we waited
for our boats to pull alongside and take us home. She had not even
looked at me that evening.

“Oh, dear,” I heard her say.

It was something of a jest, really. Her
oarsmen had gotten drunk and were asleep in the prow of the boat—I
remember how one of them lay with his arm over the side, his
fingers trailing in the water. Neither of them would be good for
anything before daylight.

And then she turned back to me with a smile
of amused perplexity on her lips. Not to anyone else, but to me. We
might have been alone there.

“Perhaps My Lady will allow. . ?”

She held out her hand to me, and the thing
was settled. I would take her home. We would not reach the shore
for perhaps half an hour. For that time, at least, I would have her
to myself.

The Egyptians are good boat builders, but
their pleasure craft are slow and cumbersome to handle. The
passenger lies under a canopy in the stern, and two rowers are
obliged to stand in the front, plying their oars through locks
placed inconveniently forward. This is no doubt intentional, since
they must thus at all times keep facing front and cannot intrude
upon the privacy of their masters. After all, no one is in a
hurry.

Certainly I was not. Nodjmanefer lay beside
me. I could smell her perfume in the still, moist air, and her
breasts shone in the moonlight like polished brass. My heart seemed
to choke me, but I did not care if we never finished this
journey.

“I thought you had forgotten me,” I said,
touching her face with the tips of my fingers, almost as if I had
to reassure myself that she was there. “Perhaps you had.”

“I am here because I could be nowhere else.
It would have been better for us both if we had never met, but at
last it shall be I who suffers more for it. Men do not love as
women do, and you, I think, will never love me.”

“I love you already.”

But she only touched her brow to my cheek and
was silent. I kissed her and slid my hand across her breasts, and
she breathed in long, ragged sighs that would suddenly catch in her
throat. If I had tried to go into her she would not have resisted,
but I did not. I would not treat her like a harlot.

“Senefru will have your oarsmen beaten when
he hears,” I said. I could not understand why I spoke of such
things—except, perhaps, to punish her for making me care that she
was not a harlot.

“He will not punish them because he will not
hear. The wine was drugged.”

“Then you planned this?”

“Yes. Did you think I could wait
forever?”

There was a tavern near the waterfront, the
sort of place where the sleeping mats smell of pitch. We went there
and I gave the landlord three silver coins for a room and a jug of
spiced wine. He did not seem surprised to see us, but doubtless he
did a brisk trade in high-born ladies and their lovers, and where
in Memphis do such things surprise anyone?

A woman’s pleasure in the flesh is greater
than a man’s. Perhaps this is why in all nations Love is a
goddess.

Yet I had not meant to speak of love. I did
not love Nodjmanefer. She was right in that, but women are always
wiser than men. Love and passion, though tangled together, are not
the same. Save for my mother, I have loved but two women in my
life, and Nodjmanefer was not one of them. I did not understand
this then, however.

Still, passion can carry the burden of much
tenderness, until it is so nearly like love, as tears are like
seawater, that no man can tell one from the other. No man can, but
women are not so easily deluded.

Thus, when I think of us as we were in that
little tavern room, my heart swells with pity for Nodjmanefer, who
had a claim to more than simply my lust, even if in that moment I
believed I withheld nothing.

“You have come here before?” she asked,
almost playfully. She put her arms about my neck, her face buried
in my chest. “You have been here with other women?”

“Never to this place, but to others not much
different. And never with a woman like you.”

The thought of Esharhamat, precious as life,
came into my mind of its own will. Esharhamat, whom I loved and
never hoped to see again—I wondered if Nodjmanefer grasped that I
lied to her.

“I have been here before. Other lovers than
you have brought me here.”

“Why do you speak to me of these things?”

“That I would hide nothing from you. And that
later, after I have lost you, you may regret our parting less.”

“Am I just one among many, then?” I asked,
since I would rather hear her speak of her lovers than of our
parting—of anything rather than of our parting.

“You are not one among many. You are only
you. Understand that I am not so blind I cannot see how you are
different.”

I listened, but the words seemed to mean
nothing. I wanted only to feel the comforting weight of her body
against mine and to listen to her slow breathing, so slow that she
almost seemed to be asleep.

“I have tired of other men, but I will never
tire of you,” she went on, as I have heard men whispering prayers
to themselves, to comfort their dying. “That is how I know I will
lose you, for whatever has brought you here will take you away
again.”

Love is a goddess—if her name is Ishtar or
Aphrodite or Inanna or Saris or Hathor or Isis, she is the same.
And if love is a curse, as the Greeks will have it, then it is one
which falls more heavily upon women than upon men.

Nodjmanefer loved me. It would be her
undoing—yet she loved me. In the Land of Ashur they call the Lady
Ishtar mistress both of love and war. All perish before her
might.

Yet all seemed to follow smoothly. I met with
Nodjmanefer when I could and saw her often, alone and in the
company of her husband.

The Lord Senefru was not an easy man to
fathom. I had no doubt, then or later, that he knew I was bedding
with his wife, yet, although he did not give the impression of one
easily to forgive a slight, it was as if this matter did not touch
him. His manner to me was cordial, even friendly, and I was a
frequent guest in his home, as was he in mine. He spoke to me often
and at length, even seeking my opinion on matters which no doubt he
understood better than I did. He seemed to court my good
opinion.

Yet he was not a base man. It was not from
hope of gain that he tolerated me—more than tolerated me—for he
never sought either gift or favor.

Perhaps, I thought, he has grown weary of his
wife. Perhaps he has ceased to care. If ever I allowed myself to
believe this I committed a grave error, but it was nevertheless
true that Senefru sought me out, making me his friend and the
confidant of his secret thoughts. Or so I imagined.

He owned an estate on the fifth channel of
the Delta, a place where he went when he wished to escape from life
in Memphis, and because the hunting and fowling were good there and
he had a taste for such sport. He rarely invited anyone to this
retreat, so it was all the more remarkable that I should have been
his guest, not once but several times. His country house there was
large, and he maintained apartments separate from those of his
wife. Under the circumstances it was easy enough to find my way to
her sleeping mat. It was almost as if the husband had become the
lover’s confederate.

“He will not surprise us together,”
Nodjmanefer told me. “He would never do anything so clumsy and
direct.”

“He knows, then?”

“He has said nothing, and his manner to me
has not changed, but he knows. I am sure he knows. I beg you,
Tiglath, put no trust in him—I feel sometimes as if we were living
poised on the blade of a knife.”

She would speak no more of it. If we were
alone and I chanced to mention him, Nodjmanefer would turn the talk
to something else. It was as if her lord were merely a painful
memory, but, perhaps closer to the truth, the three of us had
become trapped in our own silence.

During the day I was much with my host, in
pursuit of game. The Nile is thick with waterfowl, which common men
snare with nets, but among gentlemen it is considered great sport
to hunt ducks with nothing but a curved throwing stick. We would
float down the river in a tiny reed boat and, when we came close
enough, stand up and shout to startle the birds into the air. To
hit a rapidly moving target with nothing but a stick is no
insignificant feat, and men would starve to death if they depended
on this means of supplying their bellies. Senefru was considered
quite skilled and never killed more than one or two birds a day. My
own average was much worse.