The Blood Star (35 page)

“You speak in riddles. Do not vex me, Selana.
Why should Kephalos hate a child like you? And if he did, what
comfort can you take in it?”

“Dread Lord—my witless Lord,” she said,
putting her hand on my cheek, as if I were the child. “Who could
claim your heart without provoking the hatred of Master Kephalos?
Someday, if you have pity on him, you will go to the slave market
and buy him a dark-eyed boy with a face as pretty as a woman’s. But
until then, should he ever cease to be my enemy, I will know I have
lost you forever.”

For this I did beat her, because I remembered
the boy Ernos, and the young dancer, the
dhakar binta
, in
the
mudhif
of my Lord Sesku, and I knew she spoke the truth.
For this I could not easily forgive her, for she seemed to dishonor
my friend.

. . . . .

Yet it was not Kephalos’ jealousy which most
directly concerned me just then, for I had not forgotten the
expression on Senefru’s face when he told me he had saved my life.
The same question echoed in my mind—why? Why would he have tarried
even an extra minute to keep me from death?

“It is his vanity,” Nodjmanefer told me. “He
spoke of it himself, that same evening: ‘It would have been so
unseemly a death for one we both hold dear—to be ground up in the
jaws of a hippopotamus, with the crocodiles getting whatever was
left. I should not like it said that I allowed such a thing to
happen to a friend.’ You could not be permitted to die by accident,
not before he has enjoyed his revenge.”

We were walking in her garden, just at
twilight. She had taken me out to show it to me, just as if I had
never been there before. Guests would be arriving for a banquet
soon, but for the moment we were alone. The Lord Senefru, with his
customary tact, was attending to reports on the poor state of the
barley harvest.

“Has he ever spoken to you of revenge?”

“No.” She shook her head, and then her
beautiful sea-green eyes fastened on me, and she smiled. “No—he has
never suggested that there exists any pretext for revenge. He
speaks of you as his friend, and acts to me as if he trusted his
wife beyond all other women. Perhaps, in his way, he even
does.”

Her gaze dropped, as if she had admitted to
something shameful. Was she ashamed? I knew not, for her life with
the Lord Senefru was closed to me. She never spoke of her
marriage—at least, never of those things that might have allowed me
to understand her feelings. It is even possible that in some way
she loved her husband, but no more than possible. Over all that she
had drawn a veil.

“If he does not speak of revenge, then let us
not speak of it either,” I said. “There is no way we can forestall
him. We can only wait and see. Perhaps at last he can even be
persuaded to let you go. Would that please you, My Lady? Then, if
you are fool enough, we could marry.”

The sad smile returned to her lips, but she
did not look at me. Perhaps she imagined I had been jesting.
Perhaps I had been, at first.

“Would that be your wish?” she asked.

“Yes—of course. Why should it not be? If you
speak the truth when you claim to love me.”

“To you, I have never spoken anything except
the truth.”

“Then, with you as my wife, how could I be
anything but happy?”

“Have I made Senefru happy?” She clutched my
arm, holding it to her. “In any case, he is unlikely enough to
consent.”

“You know best, My Lady. But think if it
would not be wise to ask him.”

“Not now.”

“As you will.”

The garden was turning cold. We walked back
toward the house in silence. I do not know what I had expected, but
somehow I had the sense of having been rejected.

Perhaps she did not love me. Did I love her?
Perhaps not—perhaps Kephalos was right that she was no
Esharhamat—but if it was not love, it would do.

Senefru was waiting at the top of the steps.
When he saw us he smiled one of his rare, unconvincing smiles.

“Lady, the servants require your calming hand
or we may all be left to starve,” he said.

The Egyptians are the most charming people on
earth. They have beautiful manners and are as light-hearted as
birds. The gods granted them every grace but did not equip them to
live in any world harsher than a banqueting hall.

The fashionable ladies of Memphis kept cats
and thought themselves as seductively predatory, and half the young
men of the city wore the elegant uniform of the princely militia,
which had not fought in a war for three hundred years—Pharaoh was
no fool and did not think of cutting stone with a wooden ax. An
officer’s whip or a woman’s lovers, these were playthings, toys in
the hands of rich and idle children living in a dreamy paradise of
pleasure and intrigue.

Was Nodjmanefer really no different from all
the rest of them? Sometimes I could not help but wonder.

No, she was not.

“A woman is tied to her husband by other
things than love,” she said. “I cannot leave my lord unless he
releases me—I cannot.”

“We could quit this place,” I said. “There is
more to the world than Memphis, more than Egypt. We could find a
refuge somewhere beside the wine-dark sea of the Greeks and be
happy together.”

“I would ask for no more than this,” she
said. “I would go with you into the Land of the Dead. But I cannot
leave my lord, even for you and the white sand beaches of the
Northern Sea, if he will not let me go. I know you cannot
understand, but perhaps with time you will learn to forgive.”

No, she was not like the rest of them.

So I waited. And I lived my life—her life,
the only life this brothel called Egypt held for either of
us—forgetting there could be any other.

Until the day I was reminded.

In Egypt, the desert is never far away. A
hour’s ride from Memphis and the green valley of the Nile seems as
unreal as a memory—it is a world of sand and ragged mountains the
color of buckskin, which the hot, unforgiving wind has carved from
solid stone. Here the ancient Pharaohs yet reign, hidden in the
quiet of their secret tombs. Here time seems to have lost its
meaning. Here I came now and then, to hunt the gazelle and the
lion, to forget the world for a while, and to be alone.

Yet never quite alone, for there was always
Enkidu, his feet almost dragging the earth as he rode thirty paces
behind me on one of the swift, strong Libyan ponies which the whole
world admires. He was as constant as a shadow, and as silent. He
was not a companion so much as a presence, like fortune or the
favor of the gods. It was much the same as being alone.

I had ordered a chariot built for me—the
Egyptians make good chariots, smaller than those of the east but
agile—and when I grew weary of even the sound of my own voice I
would hitch up my pair of fine Arab horses, a present from Kephalos
and swift as darting birds, and I would drive off into the
emptiness of the desert.

It was here, where I thought myself safely
out of reach, that death almost found me.

On hunting days I liked to rise at least two
hours before dawn, bathe in cold river water, and breakfast
lightly, for a man feels more alive when there is not much lying in
his belly. At first light I made sacrifice to Ashur, Lord of Heaven
and Earth, to Shamash, Giver of Destinies, and also, after my
encounter with the hippopotamus, to Seth, Full of Strength and
Master of Lower Egypt—this from simple caution and also the sense
that a traveler in strange lands should not ignore their gods. Then
I mounted my chariot and drove off with the rising sun at my
back.

It is a wonderful thing to feel the horses’
strength through the reins, to hear the clatter of their hooves and
know that the sand rises in plumes from beneath the wheels. That
morning I felt the dry desert wind in my face and I rejoiced in
life. I felt as the immortals must—full of breath, mighty,
invulnerable.

In the midst of the desert there is a valley,
hedged by bluffs, accessible through a single narrow pass, like a
notch cut through the hills that shelter and conceal it. Here there
is shade and sometimes water, the runoff from the highlands all
around. Here there is nearly always game. Here I went to test my
luck.

It was good that day.

The pass ran over uneven ground, and I had to
proceed slowly to keep from breaking an axle. Besides, for some
reason the horses were skittish that morning. They seemed afraid of
the place, as if they smelled a lion. But there was no lion.

At first I thought it was the sound of
thunder. I glanced up, yet the sky was clear. Then I saw the dust
and the first fine spray of stone, and I understood.

It was an avalanche—it was coming straight
down almost where we stood.

The horses by then were mad with fear, but
the pass was too narrow to turn round in, and there was no time.
They tried to bolt—they would have run straight into the path of
the slide. I yanked on the reins, struggling to hold them back, but
they only reared in panic and started trying to scale the steep
sides of the pass to turn back. I could not hold them. I could not.
I was nothing to them. They did not even know I was there.

They were hopelessly tangled in their runners
now, trapped and helpless. Still they reared, snorting and
neighing, beside themselves with terror. Their hooves tore at the
walls of the chariot—the platform shook beneath my feet. At last,
just as the stones reached us, they flipped the chariot over. They
seemed to be trying to climb across it. I felt something strike me
in the chest, taking the wind out of me with a rush. The horses
would tear me open with their hooves—I was being buried. I felt an
unbearable pain in my left arm. I couldn’t breathe. The darkness
closed around me. . .

How long had I been unconscious? Not long, I
think. I awoke to find myself under the chariot, pinned down by one
of the horses—he still stirred a little, but he was nearly dead. I
felt such pity that I almost wept, though my whole body was like
one long bruise. He had shielded me, and probably saved my life—for
a time. I could not see the other.

Was I dying? Everything hurt. I felt as if I
should be dying. I discovered the the fingers of my right hand
still moved, and the arm with them. I tried the left, then the two
legs. My head, I found, only felt shattered. By a miracle, I had
been spared.

If I was not crushed beneath the weight of a
dead horse. Could I get free? It seemed not.

Where was Enkidu? He would have to dig me
out. With his great strength. . .

But when I turned my head to look back, I saw
that the pass was blocked. Almost the whole mountain had come down
behind me.

He would be hours reaching me through all
that. Probably he would assume I had been killed. I was thrown back
on myself.

Yet I did not feel real despair until I heard
the voices of men.

“He must be dead,” I heard one of them say,
in Egyptian.

“Yet you will look,” another answered. “You
will not be paid until I have his right hand, with the mark of the
bloody star upon the palm. That is the proof that it is he and no
other.”

“Oh, very well. But we will be all day
clearing away this mess.”

I could not see them. I knew not how many
there were. They were coming down to find me, to cut off my hand
for a trophy.

I had to get out from beneath the
chariot.

My ribs felt broken. I ran my hand over them
and found they stung like a nest of scorpions—a rock had scraped
the skin raw. Better that, I thought, than that they should be
caved in like rotten barrel staves.

I tried pushing against the chariot, although
there was hardly any room to move my arms. Nothing—it was
useless.

I tried again. No, useless. No—yes. Perhaps
yes. This time it seemed to stir a little.

My left elbow was badly swollen, but the
joint, though sore, was unbroken and I could still work it. I
pushed once more against the weight of the chariot and managed to
lift it perhaps half a span from my chest. I filled my lungs with
air and pushed again.

A large, irregularly shaped rock rolled loose
and hit my arm, just above the bruised elbow. I felt a sharp twinge
of gut-wrenching pain that forced me to drop the chariot. When I
had stopped cursing I realized that the platform no longer lay on
my chest, that the rock was holding it up. I could crawl out from
underneath now. Somehow I felt like apologizing.

I could not see my attackers, but from the
noise of their progress they seemed to be about a third of the way
down from the summit of the bluff. I had no more than a few
minutes.

I had been carrying three javelins, a bow and
a quiver of arrows. And of course my sword was still in my belt. As
soon as I was out from beneath the chariot I reached back and
retrieved the bow and the arrows and one of the javelins—the other
two were broken.

The air was still full of dust, and rocks
were still settling into place. I stayed low, crouching behind the
body of one of the dead horses. The men coming down to collect my
hand had not seen me.

But I saw them. There were five of them, as
ragged a tribe of bandits as you could imagine—it was almost an
insult to be ambushed by such as these.

They wore gray tunics that did not even reach
to their knees, and dangling from their belts were the long curved
daggers worn by soldiers—that was probably what they were, runaway
soldiers who lived by robbing graves and the occasional piece of
villainy. Their heads and beards showed half a year’s absence from
the razor, which in Egypt meant that they were outlaws, cut off
from the decent part of humanity, little better than beasts. Three
of them carried war spears and one had a bow in his right hand. The
last had no weapon and appeared to be the leader. I decided he
would be the last to taste death.