The Oasis (29 page)

Ramose wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes. He had kohled them heavily against the glare of the sand but still they ached. So did his backside. Scrambling up, he stood for a while beside his charioteer but he did not like the feel of the Setiu huddled down there at his feet and he soon resumed his uncomfortable position. The man was asleep, his head canted on one shoulder. He had not spoken since being removed from the prison hut. Ramose was glad that those dark eyes were now closed and he himself surrendered to an uneasy unconsciousness.

It took them three days to cross the desert, eating cold food in the evenings and lying wrapped in cloaks while the welcome cool of the hour after sunset turned to an uncomfortable chill. Before he slept, Ramose tied his prisoner to one of the chariot’s spokes. The man ate and drank without comment when bidden. There was nothing sullen or hesitant in his demeanour, merely a vast indifference. They saw no one and the desert remained empty of all sound and movement save their own.

At sunset on the third day the horses’ heads came up and their pace quickened. “They smell water,” the charioteer commented. “We are close to the Nile.” Ramose stood and looked ahead. A thin line of vegetation broke the monotony of land and sky. He watched it grow and in another hour they were jolting beneath its eaves. Beyond it lay the town of Het nefer Apu and the crowded tents and boats of Kamose’s navy.

Ramose was tired, but he had himself driven to Paheri’s quarters. After ordering the charioteer to water and feed the horses and see to the state of the chariot, he handed the Setiu into the care of Paheri’s guards with much the same instructions and had himself announced. Paheri was alone, sitting before his evening meal. He greeted Ramose warmly. “Join me,” he invited, indicating the platters grouped around him. “Or will you bathe first? What news from the oasis?” Gladly Ramose pulled up a stool, and by the time they had finished eating, he had told Paheri of Kamose’s decision and his own task.

“His Majesty will keep you informed,” he said. “As for me, I must sleep for a few hours and then be on my way. May I commandeer a skiff from you, Paheri? I want to travel by water, partly because it will save time but also so that my prisoner has less chance of escape. Send the chariot back to the oasis. I have a scroll here to be taken south to Weset. Give it to a reliable herald.”

After the amenities had been observed, Ramose excused himself, took natron from his pack, and submerged both himself and his dirty kilt in the river. By the time he and it were clean, the sun had entirely gone and he walked to the tent Paheri had allotted him through groups of men clustered around small fires whose thin smoke mingled pleasingly with the aroma of scorching meat. He had intended to make sure that the Setiu had been fed and allowed to wash, but changed his mind at the sight of the blanket folded so neatly at the foot of the cot where he was to rest. I will suffer quite enough of that vacant stare tomorrow, he thought, untying his sandals and lying back with a sigh. Besides, Paheri’s soldiers are well disciplined and do what they are told.

Drawing up the blanket, he closed his eyes and summoned the fantasy that had been his comfort and hope ever since he had stood beside his father and watched the muscles in Kamose’s strong arms tighten as he bent the bow. At first he had conjured it to displace the memory of that day, for like a recurring nightmare the sights and sounds, even the smells, of the parade ground at Nefrusi would materialize against his fierce will every time he composed himself for sleep. The feel of his father’s grip, the fingers tight with panic, clammy with terror. The acrid stench of his sweat. The utter stillness that had fallen over the men who had been loudly busy moments before, so that their shadows lay motionless and somehow sinister over the baking heat of the blood-spattered earth. The Princes ranged behind Kamose, their faces impassive, and Kamose himself, his eyes narrowing as he sighted along the arrow, the flash of light on his rings as he gripped the bow, the steadiness of his hands. The damning, cold-hearted steadiness of his hands …

Unable to banish the images that threatened to keep him in a state of misery forever, Ramose had reached out for the only rock to which he could cling and in doing so he had entered a very different prison, but a prison nonetheless. He sat with Tani on the watersteps of the Tao estate, her arm linked through his, her warm shoulder brushing his own. A cool breeze ruffled her curly hair and teased the glittering surface of the Nile into shards of reflected light. She was chattering away about something trivial, her small hands gesturing, her face now turned to him, now turned to the river, but he was not listening. Behind his set smile his attention was fixed on the gentle flutter of her scented linen against his calf, the feel of her skin touching his, the timbre of her voice.

There was nothing sexual about the images. Ramose knew that to allow them to become so would be to summon a greater distress than the one they were designed to supplant. So in the embrace of his fantasy he was soothed into sleep. Sometimes the fantasy merged with dream and he and Tani stayed together until the dawn, but sometimes his father returned and Tani faded away, an ephemeral ghost under the power of Teti’s agony. Thus Ramose in his waking hours was convinced that only by possessing his love in the flesh, by fulfilling the promises they had made to one another in happier times, could he lay the past to rest.

He had known, with the helpless pain of a son’s affection, of the disastrous defects in his father’s character. He had forgiven Kamose his King for an unavoidable act of retribution, but he wrestled with the sharp division he saw between Kamose in his panoply of Kingship and Kamose his friend. He respected and feared the King but his love went to his friend. Yet there was no longer a clearly discernable contrast between the two, and Ramose was afraid that friend was slowly being swallowed up by divinity. He knew where his duty and his loyalty lay but could not easily recover the joy he had once felt in holding to those virtues. So he clung to Tani, the memories and the last reckless hope of a future resolution.

In the morning he ate a frugal meal of fresh bread, crisp new lettuce leaves and brown goat cheese before making his way to the water and sending a guard to fetch his Setiu. A small skiff lay moored to the bank, its crew of two rowers and a helmsman waiting for him, its one triangular sail still collapsed against its mast. Ramose boarded it and checked that the precious scroll for Apepa was still in his pack, then he seated himself and watched as the prisoner was led onto the deck. The man had obviously been allowed to wash and tidy himself. His hair and beard were combed and sleep had refreshed him. Curtly Ramose bade him sit with his back to the mast and ordered the guard who had escorted him to tie him to the wood. They cast off in the bright new sunlight, the helmsman seeking the current that would carry them north.

The first day took them almost to the entrance to Ta-she. They had sailed peacefully through a quietness that at first delighted Ramose. After his months in the oasis and his routine assignment as a scout in the desert, the lush greenness of spring seemed paradisaical. But soon he became aware that of the many shadufs he could see along the irrigation canals that fed the tiny fields, very few were manned by peasants lifting the water to pour on the fertile earth, and those he did see were women. Villages lay silent or partially tumbled. For every field thick with young crops, there were two where the sowing had been done but weeds had been allowed to tangle the new growth. Sometimes children appeared splashing naked in the shallows or watching while the oxen in their charge sucked up the Nile water, and at those moments Ramose could pretend that Egypt had not changed, but otherwise the country presented an air of melancholy under the optimism of the season. Kamose has done his work well, Ramose thought. He has cut a swathe of destruction so wide that there is no one left with the will to oppose him.

The second evening saw him tethered at Iunu, but he did not leave the boat to explore the city. His charge still had not spoken, apart from curt requests for water or shade. Ramose had complied, seeing to the man’s needs with a view to the report he would doubtless give Apepa. He had even allowed him to swim, with the two sailors also in the water and Ramose watching him from the bank. At night he remained tied to the mast, lying in a huddle on a blanket and snoring occasionally.

Entering the Delta, Ramose took the wide eastern tributary, passing Nag-ta-Hert at noon of his third day afloat. The ruins of the Setiu fort Kamose had besieged and then razed lay empty and forlorn under the blazing sun. Evidence of Kamose’s depredations lay everywhere as Ramose’s boat moved north. Vineyards lay wrecked, orchards cut down, and Ramose shrank from the memory of those weeks when the troops surrounded Het-Uart and the River Raiders, so named by Kamose himself in a fit of black humour, ranged to and fro through the Delta, killing and burning where they wished. Ramose himself had been kept beside the brothers, waking each day to the looming presence of the city’s mighty walls, riding with Kamose in his chariot as he circled Het-Uart, and in the hours of despair when nothing was required of him, standing gazing up at the roof of Apepa’s palace and praying for a glimpse of Tani. Then Kamose had ordered the soldiers away and the women no longer clustered like flocks of multi-coloured birds to peer down at the men below.

Ramose did not doubt that the waterways of the Delta were full of Apepa’s scouts, but they were also full of craft other than his and he did not concern himself with any challenge. He saw no Setiu soldiers. Apepa’s influence seemed to begin and end at the gates of his city. He must know what has happened to Egypt, Ramose mused as his craft tacked to the west in preparation to enter the final stream leading to the canals surrounding Het-Uart. Doesn’t he care? Or is he waiting for Kamose to exhaust himself and go home for good? The prisoner was watching him again, and this time as Ramose met his gaze, there was puzzlement and a gleam of appraisal in the eyes like black beads.

Ramose felt no desire to enlighten him. Already the sun was setting and the gates would be closing. Now the boat was nosing into a canal and there ahead, beyond the trees and shrubs feeding on the moist soil beside the water, beyond the wide expanse of water and the flat plain pounded to the rigidity of stone by the thousands of feet both human and animal passing over it, reared the southern aspect of Het-Uart’s fifty-foot-high wall. All its five gates were heavily guarded, Ramose knew. Staring thoughtfully through the twisting lattice of tree branches, he debated whether or not to camp beside the canal for the night. Many other boats were tying up, their crews squatting in the grass above the waterline to undo their food packages or unrolling blankets out of the way of the loaded donkeys that would be lining up for admittance to the city at dawn. The canal’s banks were alive with merchants, farmers with fresh produce, worshippers waiting to visit the great temple of Seth or the lesser shrines of the Setiu’s barbaric gods: Yam the sea god, Anath the consort of Seth with her cow’s horns and bovine ears in a blasphemous likeness to Hathor, Samash the sun god and, of course, Reshep, he of the gazelle’s horns and tasselled skirt who brought death to the enemies of the King. Ramose remembered them all from childhood visits, but more vivid was the memory of Reshep lying in the dust of Nefrusi before Kamose’s soldiers hacked him to pieces and flung him on the fire with the slain.

But there were also little knots of Setiu soldiers on the banks, men with curved swords at their belts and armoured leather jerkins, and Ramose could imagine their response if his prisoner called out to them. They might arrest him as a spy. On the other hand, they might kill him at once. Ramose approached the man. “I am returning you to your master,” he said without preamble. “I have a message for him myself. Therefore I do not intend to spend the night here. You and I will go up to the gate. If you try to attract the attention of these soldiers here, I will not hesitate to cut your throat.” Without waiting for an answer he turned to his crew. “Thank you,” he said. “Go back to Het nefer Apu and tell Paheri that I have reached the city. Go at once. Put up somewhere quiet until the morning.”

He picked up his pack, walked along the ramp, and stood on the bank, his prisoner beside him, while the sailors cast off. He knew he should be making his way towards the city while the last rays of sunlight still lingered, but he paused, watching the oars dip as the skiff backed away from the shore and then swung around with its prow pointed towards the south and freedom. A burst of homesickness shook him, a mingling of loneliness, fear of what he must do, and a longing to be sitting on the deck of the graceful little craft as it beat slowly past the other crowded moorings. The helmsman was raising the sail to catch the last of the evening wind, the north wind that would blow him to safety. With an inward shiver, Ramose took the end of the rope that bound the Setiu’s wrists and together they began the approach to Het-Uart.

It had been many years since Ramose had visited the city. He had come occasionally with his parents to present gifts to Apepa on the Anniversary of his Appearing, when the governor of every nome was expected to affirm his loyalty to the King, but the journey had been tedious and Ramose, not particularly excited by the life of the court, had elected to stay at home once he reached his manhood. Still, he remembered the feeling of being dwarfed when as a child he had come under the shadow of the towering walls. That awareness had not come to him with Kamose, but it returned now that he was alone. He did his best to shake it off, but as the mighty exterior drew nearer, dim where the leaping slashes of orange light from the gate torches did not reach, it simply intensified. More than a hundred feet thick, he said to himself. The walls are more than one hundred feet thick at the top and even thicker at the level of the ground. No Egyptian army can ever conquer this place by siege, and once inside I will never get out.

Chiding himself for thoughts that could only blunt his wits, he came up to the gate and halted, glancing back swiftly at the haphazard pattern of cooking fires littering the plain through which he and the Setiu had picked their way. The citizens of the Delta and those shut out of the city were settling down for the night. There were six guards on the gate itself, brawny men in leather boots, caps and jerkins, their curved swords sheathed at their waists but vicious-looking axes propped against the wall behind them. They registered not the slightest apprehension as Ramose came up to them. “The gate is closed,” one of them said contemptuously. “You must wait your turn to enter the city in the morning.” In the poor light he obviously had not seen the Setiu’s lashed hands.