Ancient Evenings

  “About the time I realized it would be afternoon before my King might see me, all discomfort went away, and I relaxed in the sun with other charioteers and told of my adventures, keeping the best to myself, and walked back and forth through the inner and outer square, the goodness of Ra warming my flesh, so that at last I was down to no more than my sandals and a loincloth, lolling about like half the soldiers on that ground, and the day grew lazy. I stopped for a while at the shop of the Royal Carpenter to tell him of the loss of my cart, but he was too busy to care, for he was putting together a chariot from two broken buggies, and promised to do better for me than that, since his workmen could return you six chariots ready for battle out of seven half-dismembered carcasses, and I listened to him while he stood in the middle of his shop with chariot wheels in one stack, the spokes for wheels in another pile, and heaps of broken parts on the ground. I did not know how he would ever be able to move.

  “Then I watched other infantrymen carrying paniers of water up from the ford to a large leather bag hung from three sticks in the center of camp, and horses being walked to the blacksmith shop. I watched soldiers drinking wine, and a few were wrestling, and two others led a couple of cows to the field kitchen. I smelled the sweat of the day and the odor of roasting meat. Two of the soldiers drinking wine began to skirmish with daggers. They had been doing it for a long time and knew how to lunge at each other, then stop short. A Sherden, sweating like a fountain in his red and blue woolen cape, was beating a donkey who had gotten his nose into a bag of provisions. The food so excited the beast that he promptly got an erection. The Sherden kept beating on him and the donkey kept scampering away but never lost his excitement, nor took his head out of the bag, not while I watched. Next to him, another donkey, excited by all this, was rolling in the dust.

  “Most of the men were sleeping. The afternoon grew lazier still, and I could feel the fatigue of all the days of the march that had brought these troops this far, and then felt my own fatigue, and went back to a tent I was sharing with other charioteers and fell asleep on a ground-cloth, only to be awakened by word the King would see me now. In bewilderment, still dreaming of forests and thieves, I stood up, threw water on my face from a bowl, and went over to the King’s Pavilion. I had been dreaming of the Hittites and saw a road where they planted sharpened stakes, and Egyptian soldiers were dying on them. Slowly in my dreams, bodies slid down the stakes. My bowels were cold. I took a slug of wine from a skin, and that made me sweat. Looking like a man whose insides must belong to others, I entered the great tent of Ramses the Second.

  “It was as much a fine house as a tent. He had not only His sanctuary for prayer, and His bedroom, but a dining room as well, and then a great room for anyone to whom He would give audience. On this day many officers and Generals and the Prince, Amen-khep-shu-ef, were with Him, yet when I entered He was so impatient that He began to speak before I had finished touching my head to the ground. ‘Would you,’ He asked, ‘give up the richest province of your lands without striking a blow?’

  “ ‘My Lord, I would try to fight like the Son-of-Ra.’

  “ ‘Yet, some here tell Me that the King of Kadesh is two days’ march on the other side, and dares not come nearer. He is a fool. I will let all know his shame. The stone I put up to celebrate my victory will show that the name of the King of Kadesh is equal to what you see between a whore’s thighs!’

  “It was hot in the tent from the sun coming down on the other side of the leather, and hot again from forty officers’ bodies, but the greatest heat came from my Pharaoh. He was like a fire on a hot day in the desert.

  “ ‘Who says he will not defend Kadesh?’ I asked.

  “My Pharaoh pointed to two shepherds sitting quietly in a corner. By the dust of their long robes, they looked as if they had been traveling with their animals for a hundred days. Now, with smiles that showed their teeth—the teeth that were left—they bowed seven times. Then the older spoke, but in his own language. The Overseer-of-Both-Languages, one of our Generals, exchanged the Bedouin’s words for ours, but only after each breath the shepherd took, and he took many breaths.

  “ ‘O Beloved Ramses, Adored-by-Truth,’ I heard, ‘does not the Good and Great God know happiness when He cuts off the head of His enemy? Does that not give Him more delight than a day of pleasure?’

  “I saw my Pharaoh smile.

  “The shepherd spoke in a long slow grave voice as deep and full of echo as any prophet, ‘O You-who-are-the-Majesty-of-Horus-and-Amon-Ra, You-Who-are-firm-on-His-horse-and-beautiful-in-His-chariot, know that we have come to Your throne of gold’—and indeed my Usermare-Setpenere was sitting on a small chair of solid gold—‘to speak for our families. They are among the greatest of the great families who are sworn to Metella, King of Kadesh and chief of the Hittites. Yet our families say that Metella is our chief no longer, because his blood has become the color of water. His force is to Yours as the eye of the rabbit to the eye of the bull. Metella sits in the land of Aleppo and cannot find the courage to march to Kadesh. So our families have sent us to You, as a pledge of their desire to become Your subjects.’

  “ ‘I am honored,’ said Usermare-Setpenere, ‘because I know you tell the truth. He who does not tell the truth before Me is a man who will soon lose the limb that makes children. Behold, he must look upon his lost parts with both eyes before his eyes are sent to join the lost parts.’

  “Never had I heard my Pharaoh speak that way, but then I had never felt such heat come off His body. ‘I believe these men are telling the truth,’ He said, ‘how dare they lie?’ But in the same anger, He turned to me and said, ‘Do you believe them?’ When I was silent, He laughed. ‘You don’t? You believe they are so brazen as to deceive your Pharaoh?’

  “ ‘I believe them,’ I said. ‘I think they tell the truth that is the truth of their family. Yet it is several days since they have left. While they have been making their journey to us, so may the armies of the King of Kadesh have also been traveling. O You-of-the-Two-Great-Houses,’ I said, so frightened that I also struck my head seven times to the ground, ‘in the dawn, this morning, as I descended from the hills, I saw to the north, near Kadesh, an army.’

  “ ‘You say an army?’

  “ ‘I saw the light of an army. I saw the light that is made by lances, and swords, and the polished metal on shields.’

  “ ‘But you did not see the swords?’ asked the Prince Amen-khep-shu-ef. ‘Only the light?’

  “ ‘Only the light,’ I admitted.

  “ ‘The light is from the river that flows around the walls of Kadesh,’ said the Prince. A good many of the Generals laughed. When our Pharaoh did not, however, they were silent. Now I knew why the heat that came from my Pharaoh was so strange. Hera-Ra was not by His side. I remembered then how much of the heat used to come from the beast. Yes, the Generals were now silent before Usermare-Setpenere the way once they had been silent before Hera-Ra.

  “ ‘On your travels, what did you hear about the King of Kadesh?’ I now was asked.

  “ ‘That Metella hides in the forest near the city,’ I said quickly. ‘That he has a large army. That he will come on us suddenly.’

  “ ‘It is untrue,’ roared the Pharaoh. Under the black and green of His cosmetic, I saw how the whites of His eyes were red. ‘It is untrue,’ He repeated, ‘yet I believe it is true.’ He glared at me as if I had taunted Him.

  “A discussion began whether to break camp in the dawn and march to Kadesh with the first two divisions, or, whether—and here I could not keep silent and was soon in the debate—it would be wise to wait one more day. Let the last two divisions come through the gorge. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘we can march onto the great plain with a horn to the left and a horn to the right.’ I said ‘horn’ because I remembered that on the day we traveled to His tomb, Usermare had told me how Thutmose the Great never said ‘wing’ or ‘flank.’ He spoke of His armies as if He had a head and two horns, a Mighty Bull.

  “My Pharaoh nodd
ed. He looked into Himself and saw His Chariot at the center of a great army on a great field with two horns, and I thought He would give the order to wait. But Prince Amen-khep-shu-ef also knew His Father, and said, ‘On that great field we may wait for another week, while the King of Kadesh does not come. Our men will fight with each other. They will desert. We will look foolish, and our horn will crumble.’

  “The Pharaoh nodded to that as well. Now, the council was concluded. He gave the order. We would break camp in the dawn. That evening, Usermare-Setpenere stood on the cage that held His lion. One night in the forests of Lebanon, Hera-Ra had eaten one of our soldiers. So a cage had been built for him next morning. Now our Pharaoh spoke to all of us from the top of that cage, while Hera-Ra roared beneath.

  “ ‘The battle of Megiddo was won by the Great Pharaoh, Thutmose the Third. The King, Himself, led the way of His troops. He was mighty at their head like a flame. So will I be mighty at your head.’ The soldiers cheered. I knew again that I was part of an army, for the evening was red once with its own light, and red again with our cheers. ‘Thutmose went forth to slay barbarians,’ said our King, ‘and none was like Him. He brought back all the enemy Princes even though their chariots were wrought with gold.’ We cheered again. Each time our Pharaoh spoke of gold, we cheered. ‘All fled before Thutmose,’ said our King, ‘In such fear did they run that their clothing was left behind.’ A great snickering laugh huge as a river of mud came out of us. ‘Yes, they abandoned their chariots of gold and silver’—we gave a sigh like the whisper of moonlight on water—‘and the people of Megiddo pulled their soldiers over the wall by what was left of their skin. In this hour, the armies of Thutmose could have captured the city.’ Here, our King paused. ‘But they did not,’ He said. ‘Our soldiers gave all their attention to the plunder left on the field. So they lost the treasures that were in the city. The men of Megiddo were stretched on the field like fish, but the army of Thutmose picked at their bones like gulls.’ A groan came up from us. ‘Do not act,’ said Ramses, ‘like gulls. The city that was not taken on that day had to be besieged for a year. The army of Thutmose had to work like slaves to cut down forests so that they could build walls to approach the walls of Megiddo. And the work was not done until all of the wall of Megiddo was surrounded by the wall of Thutmose. It was a year’s work. The city starved, but in that time, they also hid their gold. It was lost to us. No good slaves were taken. Only the dead and the plague-ridden greeted the armies of Thutmose. So I say to you that we will fight a great battle, but none of you will take plunder until I give My word! It is Asiatic hands I want to see on the pile, not Egyptian.’

  “We cheered. We cheered with fear in our throats and disappointment in our loins at the thought of less plunder, but we cheered, and the lion roared. Next morning at dawn after a night when few of us could sleep, we broke camp and crossed the ford at Shabtuna. Although the water in the deep places came to our chest, not a man nor a horse was drowned. Disturbed, however, in their nests at the riverbank, beetles gathered like clouds and came between us and the sun. The swarm of their flight was so thick that it left us in shadow. No one saw a good sign in the rising of these beetles.

  “Once we were across, we formed our ranks and set out on the great hard plain in the valley of the Orontes that leads to Kadesh. Its soil is as baked as a parade ground. May I say that our horses and our chariot wheels rode over the bodies of all the beetles that had tired of flight. We left the mark of our route as much behind us as if we had trampled through a field of berries. Beetles were in our hair and clothing like a pestilence.

  “Again I could feel the impatience of my Ramses. He was in the vanguard of the march. His charioteers, taken together with His Household Guard of the strongest Sherdens and Nubians, giants all, had, counting everyone, not five hundred men. We were certainly in the van. There was a clear distance behind us and the first troops of the Division of Amon. Worse. Looking back from a rise, I could see how far we had marched this morning across the plain. But the troops of Ra were just crossing the ford. It would be half a day before the Division of Ptah could follow. As for Set, those men were still jammed in the gorge. They would be no use to any of us until night.

  “All the same, I was happy to be in the van. The dust was less. Clouds rose from the hard-baked clay of this plain that were thick enough to drive away the beetles, and such clouds drifted back on Amon and its five thousand marching men. It would have been like passing through smoke to ride with that division.

  “How we must have been visible from Kadesh! Through the dust, we could see it in the distance where the sky met the hills. The city was not an hour’s ride away on a fast horse, but would take us until afternoon, I knew, because now we were winding through lightly forested rises, and could see ahead no more and so could not go forward without pause, but had to send out scouts, then wait for their return.

  “I was carrying a weight in my chest like the heart of a dead man. Yet, I felt neither weak nor spineless, but even in the midst of my oppression, alert, as if throngs were waiting inside me for the battle to begin. I tried to think of what I would do if I were Metella, the King of Kadesh, and where in these woods would I choose to attack the Household Guard of the Pharaoh so that I could capture my great Ramses? Then it seemed to me I would prefer to wait until half the division of Amon was past, or even half the Division of Ra, so that I could strike at a large force when it was stretched out on the trail of the forest as long and vulnerable as a worm you could cut in half. Still, the effort of trying to think as if I were someone other than myself, especially a foreign King, made me know vertigo, and I supposed I was living with a fearful gift from the secret whore of the King of Kadesh. Maybe I was not trying to think like this Metella so much as I was indeed living in the thoughts that came from his heart. If that were so then our vanguard would go forward untouched and the Division of Amon as well. It would be on Ra that the thunder would fall.

  “My fear was replaced by woe. At this instant, we were in no danger, yet in a greater danger. I could never tell this to Usermare-Setpenere. He was riding with His son Amen-khep-shu-ef in my place. That left me as a driver for no one better than the Overseer-of-Both-Languages. This fellow was a General called Utit-Khent, but, of course, this name, ‘Mistress of Expeditions,’ was only an army joke. He was said to have a rectum like the mouth of a bucket. So I knew again my Pharaoh’s anger. He would have me share a chariot with such a man. Of course, He was now listening to the advice of His son. So soon as He discovered the power of my thoughts to reach into the thoughts of our enemy, so might I be His driver again. In the meantime, Utit-Khent babbled along about the dust, but in so clever a way I began to laugh for, lo, he pointed out there were Gods for every fish and cat, and the God of beetles was a Great God, but no God ever bothered to inhabit the dust. You could not name such a God. He was harmless, this General, a clown for other Generals, he commanded no men, and had been a flunky for Prince Amen-khep-shu-ef, but I had to wonder if this poor Utit-Khent had once been a strong soldier but had grown weak serving the father of Usermare. Maybe, that Pharaoh Seti had held him by the hair.

  “We were not on a bad trail, indeed it was more like a road wide enough for one chariot to pass another. That was comfortable and it was cool in the forest under the heat of midday, but none of us were comfortable—Kadesh was too near. Besides, you had to wonder where a squadron of chariots could strike at us. While the forest reached to the road in most places, still we also crossed fields, and an army could hide at their edge. Five thousand men could charge down on five hundred, yet now my good King, impatient at delay, did not bother anymore to send out scouts. He must have believed the gates to Kadesh were open.

  “Into the early afternoon we traveled, and passed another wood, and many a cultivated field, even saw a farmer or two who ran off at the sight of us, but we kept moving with the Orontes at our right, and the river was shallow here and slow-moving, and had several fords wide enough for an army, if this was where Metel
la wished to attack from the other bank. Still, nothing happened, and we came around a turn in our road and saw before us, there in full view to the north, the walls and towers of Kadesh, and no Hittite army was drawn up in front of it. There was nothing before us but the river which wound around its walls to the left. We had been marching so long to reach this town, so many days on the Nile and in the desert and the mountains, that I think my good King could not stop, not yet, but must keep going while He passed the city on our right hand. Soon, the walls would be behind us, and here, as if confused by the absence of any soldiers, or even any face in the windows of the towers of Kadesh, in this silence of the hills where the largest sound was the groaning of our chariot wheels, not a large sound, for we hardly strained on the level ground, Ramses the Second finally gave the order, and in a thin wood with many small fields and scattered trees, we halted beside the river in a place too steep to cross. The three open sides to our square that looked out on the land were quickly faced off with our shields, and an earthworks to support the shields was begun by the Nubians right about the Pharaoh’s pavilion. Here we waited in silence, no sound but the digging. The Division of Amon soon followed, and built a larger square around our square, which enabled the King’s Guard to move back from the Orontes. Now, the Division of Amon had the river for a fourth side. There was still not a sound from the town.