Mara, Daughter of the Nile

  There was small use arguing with that restless whip and the look in that one eye, which had begun to gleam balefully in the Libyan’s pale-skinned, brutal face. Mara found her cloak and flung it about her with trembling fingers. She would have to do her planning on the way.

  But there was no time to plan, no time to think. Before she could conquer her confusion she was in the chariot, sweeping through the streets of western Thebes. The ride was as wild as before, but this time Mara wished it had lasted longer. In vain she struggled to make her brain function as she stepped down into the dark courtyard beside her master’s house, moved on reluctant feet through the little side door and into the hall. The same scent of wine and perfume drifted to her nostrils, the same faint echoes of merriment to her ears.

  “Cease your dawdling!” growled Chadzar, giving her a prod with the whip handle. “Think you he wants to wait forever?”

  An instant later she stepped into the small tapestry-hung study and the door closed behind her.

  “Well?” came the chilly voice of her master.

  Mara’s hand closed convulsively over the ring. “Live forever, illustrious one!” she heard herself saying. “May thy shadow seek the light, may thy—”

  “Save your pleasantries for those who wish them,” he cut in acidly. “What news have you?”

  “Honored one, I have the best of news! I was successful in preventing the king from sending away his attendants. As I promised you, every one of them was present during the interview.”

  Nahereh said nothing, merely settled himself in a chair and waited. Mara hurried on.

  “It was no small matter to convince my princess, I assure you. I coaxed and coaxed, and finally had to prod her a little. ‘My princess,’ I said to her—very severely, master—‘My princess, His Highness himself believes it better to allow these menials to be present during the audience. Come, they might suspect you are afraid of them!’ Of course she is afraid of them, master, but she does not like to admit it. And that won the game.”

  It had, indeed, won the game, though not quite in the way Mara implied. It was the king, not Inanni, who had caught the significance of that phrase “They might suspect”—he who had suddenly decided the attendants should stay in the room. Mara saw no reason, however, to mention these things to the granite-faced Son of Set in the chair before her.

  Instead she smiled as if expecting his praise, and helped herself to a sweetmeat from his golden bowl. “And so you see, I shall have this trouble no more, and there’ll be every chance to watch for that messenger—”

  “You have not found him yet?”

  “I cannot be sure,” she evaded. “However, I kept a watch on the scribe, as you instructed me. He’s of small use to you.”

  “How so?”

  “The king knows him for an enemy. What chance have I to observe anything useful with His Highness guarding every syllable, every motion—”

  “I thought you said you would have every chance!”

  “With the scribe gone, yes. But while he is there—”

  “Do I understand,” said Nahereh ominously, “that you have come empty-handed again?”

  She met his eyes and saw quite plainly that no evasion was going to work. Unless she produced some kind of information, and produced it at once, this man would sell her instantly—or do worse. Her mouth went dry with sudden fear. She had nothing to tell him—save the truth. And if she told him that . . .

  A wild scheme darted into her mind. Could she tell him a scrap of truth—a mere scrap, convincing yet not really dangerous? If she could control it . . . Nay, it was too reckless, a mere gamble—

  “Well?” said her master.

  She heard her own quick laugh, her voice speaking. “Nay, I’m far from empty-handed, master.”

  The wildest gamble! She must not think of it, with the stakes so high. . . . But what of her own stakes in this game? In fifteen minutes she could be back in her rags, dodging some new master’s stick, tossed into oblivion like a handful of rubbish. Look after yourself, Mara, nobody else will. . . . She threw the dice.

  “I have something—but I know not what to make of it. Perhaps you know that His Highness amuses himself by designing vases? Well, dozens of sketches were spread on the table there, this morning. Big ones, little ones, all inscribed and decorated. And there was one of them—” She paused, feeling herself teeter on the brink of a precipice, tingling in every nerve. To cover her dizzy fright, she turned away idly, reaching into the bowl again as she did so.

  “Pray have a sweetmeat!” invited Nahereh with heavy irony.

  “Thank you!” She forced a mocking grin, and her nerves quieted. She sauntered to a chair and sank down on its arm. “It seemed to me that the inscription on this one vase looked less like decoration than a message—”

  “A message!” He was on his feet and standing over her before she could draw breath, jerking her up to face him. “By Amon, you’ll cease this babbling now, and tell me what you mean!”

  “I mean it was a message.” She pulled free and sat down on the chair arm again. She felt quite cool now, and recklessly sure of herself. The tingling was gone. “It was the name of a tavern. I’ll wager it’s where the rebels meet.”

  Nahereh stared at her a moment. Then he whirled, fetched a writing block and reed pen from a box, and beckoned her curtly. “Copy it here.”

  She took the block, swiftly sketched a vase, and began to draw hieroglyphs in a border around its lip. She could hear Nahereh’s heavy breathing as he leaned over her shoulder, then a low sound, ugly with triumph, deep in his throat.

  He took the writing block, and he was smiling. “The Inn of the Falcon.”

  “Nay, you have read it wrong!” gasped Mara. In dismay she stared at the hieroglyphs she had drawn, and though they blurred and swam with her fright, she could still make out that the last one was no falcon. “You have read it wrong,” she repeated, trying to steady her voice. “It is an owl, master.”

  “Aye, but you’ve set it down wrong, girl, that’s the trouble. It was a natural error. No doubt you caught only a glimpse of the original, and it is easy to mistake the falcon symbol for the owl—”

  “Nay, I saw it clearly! It was no glimpse, I took care to study it.”

  He laughed almost amiably. “Then they, too, set it down wrong, perhaps by intention. Hai! Small good it did them! They meant the Inn of the Falcon, you may rely upon it. I know the place.”

  “You know it?” said Mara faintly. The tingling was back—it had become a roar in her ears, as if she had stepped off the precipice and were falling sickeningly through space.

  “We’ve snared them now,” he was saying, half to himself. “So the pen is their messenger! Small wonder we’ve been puzzled. . . . You did well to notice this. Aye, and I did well to buy you! But I’m seldom wrong. I know a clever slave when I see one. Come, choose a sweetmeat.”

  “It seems hardly—credible—that a great lord like you would know aught of such an inn. I fancy it’s a dirty den, jammed with waterfront riffraff—”

  “Oh, I’ve never set foot in the place. But I know of it, aye, I know of it. Stay, I must think . . .”

  Mara drew a deep breath and bit into her sweetmeat. He knew, it was too late to wonder how. There he stood rubbing his hands, thinking how he would use his knowledge. She had better help him think—and fast.

  “You will set a spy to watch this place?” she began cautiously.

  “Aye. It’s their leader we want, not a rabble of underlings.”

  “It will be a hard choice, master.”

  “Hard?”

  “To choose the spy you want.”

  “Nay, that’s no problem. Stop chattering, girl, I must think.”

  Mara chose another sweetmeat and strolled a little closer. “The innkeeper’s the problem. Have you thought of him? I know the breed, and I’ll wager h
e misses little. Especially this one. Osiris! With a plot hatching on the premises? He’ll let no stranger by him, that’s certain, as long as this leader is anywhere about. He’d throw out that scribe of yours in no time. Even the Libyan. Master, no man could get past him.”

  Nahereh was listening now; his head had turned toward her. Mara licked her fingers and flashed a glance at him. “But I could,” she added.

  His chilly face did not change expression, but there was thoughtful calculation in the gaze that ran over her from head to toe. “Could you, indeed?” he said.

  “Why don’t you try me? I’m weary of the palace and the Canaanite. I can find the inn—I’m used to such places and used to talking my way in and out of them. I promise I’m a match for any innkeeper.”

  “What of the palace sentries?”

  “I’ve made friends with a few of them already—just to pass the time.”

  “You need a taste of the whip, Miss Insolence. Who said you might thus make free with my orders?”

  “You never forbade me, master. What harm in smiling at a sentry? I think one of them would let me out for a visit to that inn.”

  Nahereh sank into a chair and drummed his thin fingers on the arm of it. “Nay, that’s too chancy. Use my name. I’ve no doubt you know it by now.”

  “Aye, Lord Nahereh,” said Mara demurely. “Your fame is far too great in Thebes to—”

  He silenced her with a gesture. “Can you leave that princess of yours without her knowledge?”

  “Easily.”

  He rose and strode to a chest in the corner, leaving Mara giddy with relief. “Come here,” he ordered. He had unrolled a papyrus; as she approached she saw it was marked into squares and rectangles, like the rooms of a great house. “This is a plan of the palace,” he told her. “Here is the guardroom, here is your own chamber, near this stair, here are the king’s apartments. And here”—he jabbed a finger at a small square off one of the courtyards—“is a study reserved for my own use when I am at the Golden House. Do you think you could find it?”

  Mara nodded. “Aye. Down this passage and to the right. It would be the third door?”

  “The fourth. Now look you.” He rolled up the papyrus and thrust it back into the chest. “Go tomorrow night to the Inn of the Falcon. Go every night. You have only to give the sentry my name. I will send for you in three days, but if you learn aught before that, I want no delay in hearing of it. Go to my study at once if you have news. If I am not there, you will find someone who will bring you to me.”

  “I hope,” remarked Mara, “that this someone drives better than your Libyan.”

  “It will be the Libyan.” He gave her an unpleasant smile. “What you had best hope, Impudent One, is that you can make good those boasts of yours.”

  “Did you not say yourself that I was clever?”

  “Aye. Only take care you do not become too clever for your own good. Now go.”

  He jerked his head toward the door, and she went, trying to ignore his last remark. She was none too sure she had not already done that very thing. Still, she had won her gamble, she thought as she joined Chadzar in the hall. The margin had been slimmer than she cared to think about, but she had satisfied the stony-faced one, saved her own neck, and saved Sheftu’s too by arranging her own appointment as the spy. Moreover, she no longer need worry about Reshed, who had grown increasingly unreasonable lately. She could now walk past any sentry on the grounds by mentioning Nahereh’s name. She had planned well. The only thing she had not planned was that Nahereh should ever know the real name of the inn.

  She followed Chadzar across a passageway. A servant flung open the door at its end and came hurrying toward them with a tray of empty plates. Attracted by the gust of music and laughter, Mara glanced into the room beyond him, caught a glimpse of blue-wigged ladies and courtiers grouped in a semicircle about a sumptuous table, with great platters of fruit, and a harpist playing—and just before the door swung shut, a figure darted into her range of vision, and there was a flash of golden balls.

  She stopped so suddenly that the hurrying servant almost crashed into her. He clutched frantically at his tray, and the Libyan pulled her on down the hall, muttering in annoyance.

  “Does your master always hire entertainers for his parties?” Mara asked him breathlessly.

  “Would I know, Impudent? He doesn’t invite me to them. Nor you either, I’ll wager. Make haste. I’ve other things to do tonight than answer empty-headed questions.”

  Mara scarcely heard him. There were hundreds of jugglers in Thebes, of course. But if the one she had glimpsed was Sahure, then she was baffled no longer by her master’s knowledge of the Inn of the Falcon. Sahure did hire himself out whenever a chance offered—“I have seen high and low, princesses and slaves. . . .” He was always boasting about it. Aye, it all fitted—into a pattern that had almost ruined her gambling! Perhaps the ring had saved her once again.

  Thoughtfully she stepped into the chariot and braced herself for the bruising ride home. Sahure had not seen her, that was a smile from the gods. So long as Lord Nahereh did not decide to visit the inn himself, all was still safe. But she was glad Sheftu knew nothing of what had happened tonight. She hoped he would never know how fast and loose she had played with the fate of Egypt and his king.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Mark of Five

  Ra, the sun god, had once more sailed his golden bark across the sky of Egypt. Over the high blue dome and into the West he had moved, as from time immemorial—unhurried, serene, remote from the anxious scurryings of his white-clad worshipers below. He left darkness in his wake as he dropped behind the desert hills and began his night’s slow journey through the Land of the Dead. Now long hours passed as he sailed the Dark River. At last he climbed into the East again, heralded by a rosy glow, bringing a burst of radiance as he crossed the horizon. Incense rose on the morning air from a thousand altars; cries of thanksgiving and entreaty came faintly to his ears, and the smoke of burned offerings assailed his nostrils. He was indifferent. Aloof, rigid in his perfection, wreathed in everlasting flames, he sailed slowly to his zenith and down his unchanging path once more into the West.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was half after the mark of four, and Lord Merab’s party for the governor of Kush was at its height. At each end of the long reception hall stood tables loaded with refreshments, draped with flowers. Slaves hurried in and out among the beribboned columns, pouring wine, placing cones of scented ointment on the heads of guests, and replacing necklaces of lotuses with fresh ones. Two bands of musicians played alternately; dancing girls whirled.

  Lord Sheftu stood beside a garland-hung column near the courtyard door, smiling serenely at the long-drawn hunting tale of His Excellency Pesiur, Master of Granaries, and wishing him and his ever-wagging tongue at the end of the earth. A fool at best, Pesiur was a cursed nuisance now, chattering away the precious moments. For Lord Sheftu to be seen at this reception had been important; for Sashai to escape, unnoticed, was becoming more vital every minute. A vision of the water-clock formed in Sheftu’s mind, with its level rising nearer and nearer the mark of five, when he must meet Djedet and the others in the City of the Dead. . . .

  “Well told, friend Pesiur, and bravely done! I can see your arm hurls a mighty spear. And now if you will excuse me—”

  But no, Pesiur was off again, on desert lions this time, then veering to court gossip without a pause for breath. Sheftu gazed across the room, his head aching from the heavy fragrance of wine and perfume, and from his own exasperation. The laughter of women tinkled about him; they lifted jeweled hands to sip their wine or held lotus blossoms to one another’s nostrils with gestures of stilted grace, and occasionally cast lingering glances at young Lord Sheftu. The men strolled idly, stopping to exchange flatteries, gathering in little groups to mutter with their heads together, laughing at the antics o
f the pet gazelle which gamboled in the middle of the room with Lord Merab’s naked children.

  And yonder, beyond the children, stood Count Kha-Kheper, his handsome, leonine head bent in thought. Sheftu would have given his largest storehouse at that moment to know just what the count was thinking. Was he brooding about those vineyards the Architect had stolen from him? Or remembering the days of his youth, when he had been a commander of archers for the old pharaoh? Or reflecting on the plight of those same proud archers now, whose shrunken ranks and poor equipment Sheftu had only a few moments earlier been describing to him?

  I must find out, thought Sheftu. It is dangerous to leave it like this.

  Yet outside the light was fading, the minutes stealing away. Osiris! Would this chattering Pesiur never leave off?

  “. . . most attentive to the Canaanite princess, have you not, Lord Sheftu?”

  Sheftu snapped alert. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ah, now, the truth, man!” Pesiur’s wig was slightly askew, his broad face flushed with delight at his own joke. “Tell me, is it the princess’ embroidery that attracts you? Or could it be the blue eyes of that little interpreter who goes with her everywhere?”

  Fortunately for Sheftu, there was no need to answer. Pesiur was content with his own roar of laughter, and went on talking immediately. “Ai, you’re not the first one, I’ll wager, my friend—and it’s certain you won’t be the last. She’s a well-favored little maid. Where the devil did they find her?”

  “I believe,” said Sheftu distantly, “she joined the princess’ suite at Abydos. Look yonder, my lord. They bring the mummy.”

  A pair of slaves had appeared from the Hall of Pantries, carrying between them the wooden image of a mummy, rigid and deathlike in its painted wrappings. Other slaves, bearing huge garlanded bowls of wine, followed the Displayers of the Rigid One. According to custom, the procession began a circuit of the room, chanting, “Gaze here, drink and be merry; when you die, such will you be,” amid loud laughter and cries of thirst from the guests. Even Pesiur surged after the wine carriers, cup aloft, and Sheftu seized the moment. He walked swiftly around the other end of the room, where Count Kha-Kheper was already moving toward him.