But his lordship was not thinking of beef or wineskins, nor was he showing much appetite for the array of dainties on the golden platter beside him.
While his long fingers crumbled the bread and toyed absently with the fruit, his mind was far away, in the desolate wastes of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. In one of the barren gullies of that wilderness was a certain pile of red granite boulders. It looked the same as the other piles tumbled here and there through the valley as if at the whim of a destructive giant. But to Sheftu it was not the same. Far below it, in vast and silent chambers hollowed out of the living rock, slept the one whose peace he must destroy, whose wealth he must steal, whose ka he must impoverish.
The dread of it had lain like a stone on his mind since he had dragged that message out of a reluctant Mara. Though he had not let her see it, he hated and feared his task with all his heart. But it was not the crime she thought it, nor was it certain the guardian khefts would rend his soul or even strike him blind. For there was one thing Mara had not known when she stormed and pled with him, and that was the identity of the royal slumberer. He was Thutmose I, father of the king—and of Hatshepsut. In life, his arrogant daughter had robbed him of his throne when he was ill and feeble. Would he not willingly be robbed once more, in death, if his gold could overthrow her? The prince had vowed he would, and Sheftu believed. He had to believe. Because otherwise . . .
Sheftu shook away that “otherwise,” along with the memory of Mara’s predictions as she clung to him in fear. Whatever the khefts might do, he had no choice but to descend into the tomb and come out laden. This was the last great gamble he and Thutmose had agreed on long ago, and the time had come to try it. Everything else that could be done was done. . . .
“. . . therefore if the grain remained in the warehouses until such time as—I fear your lordship is not listening.”
Sheftu pulled his attention back to old Irenamon’s reproachful voice. “Aye, aye, tell me that last again, please.”
“According to the calculations of our river experts, who are never wrong,” repeated Irenamon patiently, “this year’s inundation will be a small one, resulting in poor crops and a scarcity of grain in the months to come before Mother Nile again sends her gift to Egypt. Therefore, if a portion of your lordship’s wheat still in the warehouses were to remain there, it would command a far greater price next summer in the time of hunger—”
“I understand. Save it by all means against the time of hunger, but do not raise the price, Irenamon. The people must eat, whether they can pay or not.”
“As your lordship wishes.” Irenamon cleared his throat and rustled the papyrus. “However, we—er—sell much grain to the agents of Her Majesty for the palace kitchens. . . .”
Sheftu shot a glance at the blandly innocent old face, and hid a smile. “Charge what the buyer can pay. I leave it to your discretion.”
The old servant bowed and went on with his lists without further comment, but Sheftu knew that a fresh stream of gold from Hatshepsut’s treasuries would soon be pouring into his coffers. Unless, indeed, the treasuries belonged to Thutmose by next summer.
He felt a tremor of emotion at the thought. After six long years it was hard to believe that the end of all this was approaching. Yet the plans he and Thutmose had made so long ago were almost complete, the work almost finished. Hatshepsut’s elaborate structure of power was now like a house set upon columns of sand. Enlisting Khofra to gain control of the Army had further weakened the foundations. There remained only a few lords still stubbornly loyal to the queen, out of fear for their own fortunes and futures. These must be won over, by persuasion—and by gold, the greatest persuader of them all.
Sheftu smiled grimly, tossing bread to the pigeons strutting along the balustrade. His regard for his fellow man was not what it had been six years ago. He no longer believed, even in his heart, that there lived man or woman gold could not buy. Only their prices differed. These last cautious ones would cost a pharaoh’s fortune, and a pharaoh must supply it—he who slept beneath that pile of boulders in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. . . .
His thoughts had come full circle, for the twentieth time that morning. Sheftu left his chair abruptly, and the pigeons scattered with a drumming of wings. Irenamon stopped reading, then began to roll up his papyrus.
“My lord wearies of business,” he said tactfully. “Indeed, the morning is too fine for it. Hai, when I was your age . . . Shall I have the boat and the throw-sticks readied to divert you?”
“Nay, old friend, I’ve no time for hunting. But I pray you, let us finish these accounts another time. I must drive to the temple within the hour. Go below and tell the barber to make ready for me.”
As the old man turned toward the stairs, Sheftu laid an apologetic hand on his shoulder. “Forgive my inattention, Faithful One. I have much on my mind.”
Irenamon’s face lighted hopefully. “Indeed! Can it be that—My lord has perhaps met some young lady?”
“Young lady?” With some difficulty Sheftu achieved a careless smile. “Patience, Irenamon. Someday, I promise thee, my mother’s long-empty place at the table will be filled. But at present—Ai, get thee gone, now!”
Young lady!
Turning irritably as the majordomo hobbled down the stairs, Sheftu signaled the slave to pour him a cup of milk. But even the lotus twined about the flagon brought to mind two mocking eyes, blue as enamel under slanted brows. Why, in Amon’s name, must he think so continually of that waif! For a waif she was—remember the marketplace at Menfe, remember her waking on the boat, a smudge on her face and wild defiance in her pose. Yet a dozen times a day he found himself thinking of the fluid way she walked, dwelling, fascinated, on some elusive curve of her cheek or throat, becoming preoccupied with the shape of her mouth. Aye, and remembering—far too vividly—the yielding warmth of her in his arms. . . . Osiris! He had all but made love to her last night in the tavern courtyard, all but forgotten she was an unprincipled little vagabond bound to him only by a threat and a bribe. He must not forget! The maid could worm secrets from the Sphinx himself!
His lordship set the cup down hard and descended the stairs. The devil! He had talked too much last night, why not admit it? He, Sheftu the Discreet. She knew far more than he had ever intended her to know, yet he’d had to fight the urge to keep talking. Have you not learned, he asked himself caustically, not to trust every maid who weeps on your shoulder?
He walked down a corridor and through a richly furnished sitting room, as blind to their sunny, familiar comfort as he was deaf to the greetings of a couple of house slaves who wished him good morning as he passed. How easy it would have been, there in the moonlight, to throw away all caution, to hold her tight in his arms and whisper that she must not fear; no khefts would harm one who came only to carry the dead king’s gifts to his living son—to tell her even the name of the royal slumberer, and the place where he lay—Sheftu went cold at the thought. Had the maid bewitched him, that he would court destruction merely to dry her tears? He must come to his senses! He was acting as witless as that young—that handsome young sentry of hers.
“. . . but I fear I misunderstood. Does my lord wish me to return later?”
Sheftu swung around. He was standing in the middle of his own apartments, but had no more recollection of arriving there than he had of the presence of the barber, though the fellow must have spoken before. He collected his wits with some difficulty, cursing Mara and his own befuddled senses.
“Nay, I want you now, Thoth,” he muttered, stripping off his dressing gown. “Prepare your razors at once, I’m in haste.”
The feel of the cooling salves and the razor sliding over his chin restored a sense of normality to the day, and he was grateful for the barber’s silence, which enabled him to compose himself. As the fragrance of sandalwood from the last lotion rose on the air, Sheftu stood up, running a hand over his jaw.
&
nbsp; “You are expert as ever, Thoth. Send my dresser in at once, and tell one of the grooms to harness Ebony and Wind-of-Swiftness to my lightest chariot.”
Ten minutes later Lord Sheftu spun out of the courtyard and down the Street of Sycamores toward the river. Plumes tossed above his horses’ sleek black heads, the sunlight flashed from his gold collar and from a thousand bits of colored glass set into the spokes of his chariot wheels. Driving off the ferry into the crowded streets of eastern Thebes, he flung a handful of coppers to the expectant throng of waterfront urchins, then turned into the Avenue of Sphinxes, which bisected the city and brought him straight through the tall bronze gates of the Temple of Amon.
He stepped down, looking for someone to hold the horses. The huge courtyard swarmed with beggars, hurrying priests, white-clad Thebans buying frankincense and temple offerings from the hawkers whose booths lined the walls. Sacrificial fowl squawked and fluttered in their cages, lambs bleated plaintively. The smell of dust, animals, and sacred unguents mingled with the fragrance of a mass of fresh lilies on a flower-seller’s stall.
“Haiii! Rejoice, master!”
An old peddler had spotted him, set down his tray of consecrated bread, and hurried forward to catch the horses’ reins. Tossing him a few deben, Sheftu made his way through the crowd and into the vast, columned corridors of the temple proper.
He found the priest he sought in a tiny anteroom off the Shrine of Hathor. Djedet was a calm, portly man with a face like a moon, wearing the leopard skin of the sem rank over his white linen robes. He was tying up onions into the hollow, circular bunches proper for the offering table, but at sight of Sheftu he paused.
“Your lordship, rejoice!” He came forward at once, beckoning a subordinate to take over his task. “There is some matter in which I may serve you?”
“Aye. It concerns the mortuary shrine of my father’s tomb. I wish to increase the number of loaves and honey jars left for his ka each month. And in addition—”
“A thousand pardons, my lord. Pray come into more comfortable quarters, that I may offer you refreshment. My private chamber will serve . . .”
Sheftu followed the solid, stately figure out of the anteroom and down a hall lined with columns so massive they made even Djedet seem fragile as a splinter. Once the door of the little room had closed firmly behind them, the priest’s impassive manner vanished.
“Is it the signal? Shall I order the—”
“Nay, my friend. The time is not yet. Indeed, the time will never be, unless you and I can perform one last impossibility.” Sheftu sighed, the heaviness of his dread settling over him again. “Sit you down, Djedet. I will tell you what we must do.”
The priest’s round face grew graver and graver as he listened. When Sheftu had finished, the little room was silent. Then Djedet rose ponderously and walked to the table, where he stood staring down at a pile of scrolls. “You have a plan?” he muttered.
“Aye. We will need two diggers—men we can trust to be silent. Ashor can find them. And to ensure their silence, after the task is done I will send them to my farthest estate, to live in luxury—and solitude—until it is safe to loose them. I know a river captain who will arrange all that. As for your part, you must obtain the Royal Seal.”
Djedet swung around, eyes bulging. “But I cannot do that! Only the high priest of the City of the Dead—”
“I know. But you must accomplish it somehow. Listen.”
Djedet listened, his expression changing slowly. He moved back to his chair and sank into it, his face intent, his voice low as he put a question or two. At last he nodded. “I think it can be done. Unless the guards at the Valley . . .” He chewed his lip a moment, then shrugged heavily. “Ai, the plan is shot through with danger; but what is not, these days? Better we die, my lord, than Egypt.” He rose, touching forehead and chest. “I will do my best, and send word. May the gods be with us.”
Better we die than Egypt, repeated Sheftu to himself as he walked slowly back down the corridor. His eyes moved to the columns rising close-set and massive on either side, stretching up and up until their carvings were lost in the dim reaches far above him. Old beyond memory they were, like Egypt itself, and they would stand unchanged a thousand years more. Aye, and so would Egypt, no matter who had to die! One death alone would be enough, thought Sheftu grimly—that of a bejeweled and willful queen. . . .
He turned a corner and strode along a passage, neither noticing nor caring where it led. A few moments later, roused by the faint, irregular beat of hammers, he stopped and looked around him. Scowling, he realized he had strayed into the North Wing. Not since last summer had he come to this place, and he had sworn then he would never come again.
Slowly he pivoted to his left. There, only a few paces distant, was the entrance to the hall the First Thutmose had built as his kingly gift to the god. Sheftu walked toward it, his face set, the tap-tap of goldsmith’s hammers growing louder in his ears. At the tall doorway he stopped, looking into a huge room flooded with sunshine.
There, in the middle of the roofless hall, stood the queen’s new obelisks. They were no nightmare, then, but seven hundred tons of solid reality—monstrous needles of stone ninety-seven feet tall, soaring straight up into the brilliant sky. Sheftu’s gaze traveled their length, part of which was at the moment obscured by scaffolding upon which gold workers swarmed. Well he remembered the day last summer those shafts came floating down the river from the quarries, on a flotilla of linked barges that seemed to stretch back to Nubia. No man had ever seen their like, for they had been cut from single blocks of granite, without a seam or a joint, and—because the queen was impatient—in only seven months’ time. There was an inscription on them swearing to it.
How, in Amon’s name, had mortal hands accomplished it? It was all but impossible. So was raising the obelisks here, within the temple itself. But here Hatshepsut wanted them, and here they stood, though it had been necessary to tear out many of her father’s beautiful cedar columns and the whole roof of the hall to make room for them. Bitterly Sheftu stared at the wreckage, remembering the crack of the lash and the antlike swarm of men straining on ropes, dropping, dying, being trampled by their fellows as with a shuddering slow movement the great shafts rose into place—monuments to Hatshepsut’s pride and malice.
And now—Sheftu’s eyes moved to the scaffolding, through which a growing surface of pale yellow glittered in the sun. Furiously he turned and strode back toward the courtyard, the faint tapping of the goldsmiths’ hammers following him. Through the sound he could hear again Hatshepsut’s voice: “My Majesty is not pleased. The obelisks are mere dull stone and so unworthy of the Daughter of the Sun. I desire that they reflect Ra’s beams from every surface. They shall be cased in electrum. . . .”
Extravagance upon extravagance, until the very gods must be outraged! She would bring ruin upon the Black Land. . . .
The temple’s dim quiet ended abruptly as Sheftu stepped into the noise and dust and mingled odors of the outer courtyard. It was like plunging into another element, and the shock steadied him and dissipated his wrath.
Fool, anger gets you nowhere, he told himself as he gathered his horses’ scarlet reins and popped the whip over their flanks. Let her have her obelisks—she will soon have nothing else. As for the task ahead, think no more of it now. Djedet will arrange all. You have nothing to do but wait.
CHAPTER 15
The Signal
But waiting was hardest. A day dragged by, then another, without word from the priest. Sheftu had spoken to Ashor early; the diggers were arranged for and waiting, though they knew not what their task was to be. Nekonkh was waiting, the Beetle provisioned and ready to spirit the men away. The king was waiting for word, Mara waiting to carry it, Sheftu waiting, in a torment of suspense, to act.
For the first time in six years the wheels of his secret life had ground to a dead halt. All plans hinged on one now,
and that one hung like an unanswered question on the air, growing hourly more urgent. It was all Sheftu could do to grace the court of Hatshepsut with unchanged serenity, to behave as usual under the eyes of his household. Hardest of all was to hide from Mara the strain he was feeling, to parry her questions and then laugh at her anger. Each night she came to the inn for news, and he could tell her nothing. Their conversations were like duels. Rather than dreading the task which still hung over him, he now began to long for it, that the issue might be settled. Inactivity ached like a tooth.
Soon after noon on the fourth day, restlessness led him down to the barracks of the queen’s bodyguard, whose quarters and parade field occupied a large open area to the rear of the palace grounds. He found Khofra sitting on a hard chair in his severe and cell-like quarters, waiting for the bugle which would summon him to his afternoon inspection of the troops.
“Come in, my lord, come in!” the old man greeted him, waving to a second, and even harder, chair. “Sit down, and test the rigors of military life! Though I promise this is luxury compared to what those poor devils on the parade grounds yonder call their own. Ai, well, there’s no other way to make soldiers of them. Hard chairs, hard beds, hard fighting.”
“And a general as hard as they,” suggested Sheftu, sitting down.
Khofra gave his soundless laugh. “Aye, they look up to me, knowing I’ve slept on rocky ground oftener than they’ve slept in their couches. They’re coming on, Lord Sheftu, they’re shaping up. Someday we’ll have an army here, instead of a crowd of idlers. But I warn you—” The old general lowered his voice, and his face grew grim. “I’ve promised them action. Campaigns, foreign battlefields, victories like those we knew in the old days, for the glory of Egypt. Take care you produce them.”
“Never fear! There’ll be action in plenty once Thutmose takes command. By the Feather, our empire’s in a sorry mess, Haut Khofra!” Sheftu got up and began to pace. “Every week a new dispatch comes in. There’s another uprising in Nubia, a bad one, and an outbreak on the border farther north. Worse yet, the King of Kadesh has stirred up every city king in northern Palestine and Syria—they’re banding together to defy us, and the queen does nothing, nothing! Our governors are going frantic, they need more men, more gold—”