The Blood Star Read online

  I walked about, holding a gold wine cup I hardly touched, listening to gossip, paying and receiving compliments, telling lies about myself and being lied to in turn. The smile on my lips seemed frozen in place, something I would eventually be obliged to have removed by force.

  Nekau, Prince of Memphis and Saïs, came very late. Kephalos introduced us and we spoke for a few minutes while Nekau picked over the food on his plate as if he expected to find a scorpion concealed beneath it. He was not a large man, yet he looked fat, as if there were nothing under his skin except jelly. He seemed nervous, almost frightened, like one anticipating some vague disaster. I had the impression he was very far from being a fool. He did not stay long, but this, I was told, was the etiquette.

  And at last, just before dawn, it all came to a merciful end. The last guest was carried home in his litter and the slaves set about cleaning up. I found my bed.

  My women, like good slaves, were still waiting for me, and it was just as well. I felt strangely alert for one who had not slept—it was like the nervous edge I had known so often before a battle, when I knew I might be dead in the next hour but had almost ceased to care, as if fear itself had become a kind of pleasure. I felt like that.

  Each profession has its wisdom, and a concubine knows when her master is close to his lust. I sat on a stool while my women sponged me with hot scented water, and one of them knelt between my knees and, covering my manhood with her lips, brought me dextrously to my full power. I went into her, rolling her over on her back like a turtle.

  Afterwards I drank a cup of wine to restore myself and wondered why I had felt so little pleasure in the act. This little fever of fleshly passion was still with me, as if I had touched no woman in days. I remembered the Lady Nodjmanefer and experienced a giddiness between desire and grief—this would never do, I thought, being both unnatural and unmanly.

  I retired to my pillow with a wine jar and two more of my women, thinking to burn myself to ashes. They were both glad enough to crawl to their own beds by the time I had done with them, my body washed in sweat and my groin and back aching. At last sleep closed my eyes to bitterness.

  . . . . .

  “A man has appeared in Naukratis who makes inquiries after our young friend. He seems to speak no tongue but Aramaic, so he is not one of us. I think he must come from the Eastern Lands. There is nothing to distinguish him, except that the smallest finger of his left hand is missing. What am I to tell him?”

  This was contained in a letter Kephalos received from Prodikos just three days after my arrival in Memphis. It seemed so inevitable that I was almost relieved.

  “How shall I instruct him?” Kephalos asked, his brow creased with worry—he knew as well as I what that missing finger meant.

  “To tell the truth,” I answered. “Half the Greek colony in Naukratis knows I have settled in Memphis, so someone will reveal it. I do not think this is a man to be trifled with, and I would not have Prodikos put himself at risk for my sake. I cannot hide from him, Kephalos, for it is scratched on the god’s tablet that he shall find me. Let Prodikos tell him where to look that our business may be settled quickly.”

  “As you wish, Dread Lord, but I think you have gone mad.”

  He left me, shaking his head in dismay as he walked back to his own quarters. No doubt he did think me mad.

  Yet it was not my intention to wait passively for a stranger to put his blade between my ribs. I would set a guard around my house. I would have the docks watched. I would discover the identity of this man who had been sent to murder me, and I would make him understand that the ground would stain as red with his blood as with mine. If he could be brought to accept reason perhaps, I might not have to kill him, but I would not shrink from it.

  But for now I would put the matter from my mind, for I had other business. I too had received a letter.

  “Come and dine with me tomorrow night, one hour after the sun has set.” It was written in the Egyptian script. I had to show it to a scribe at the bazaar to know what it said. The papyrus was sealed with wax bearing the scarab of Lord Senefru and brought to me by one of his household slaves, who did not even wait for an answer, as if it had not crossed his mind that I might refuse.

  Why should he wish to make so quick a return on my hospitality? I had only to accept to find out, and I did not even care very much. All that mattered was that I might once more fill my eyes with the Lady Nodjmanefer. That seemed reason enough to go.

  Senefru lived close to the temple complex, since, like most high officials of state, he was a priest of the god Amun. His house was made of limestone and very large. A slave holding a torch met me on the stairway and conducted me through a wide central passage, past dark rooms—our footsteps echoed in that empty space—and then out to the gardens, shimmering and mysterious in the light of what seemed like hundreds of tiny oil lamps.

  The slave, who had not spoken, left me there, withdrawing in silence. I was alone. My host did not come to greet me and there appeared to be no other guests. I thought it strange.

  The light made a trail to the center of the garden, so I followed my eyes there. I found a few women waiting attendance, hiding discreetly in the shadows, a table spread for a feast, and, on a couch covered in gold, the Lady Nodjmanefer. She did not even smile.

  “My husband will not join us,” she said.

  XI

  In my arms she wept, whether from passion or grief or something between the two I could not know.

  My mouth wandered over hers as her pointed tongue, sweeter than nectar, sought mine, and she whimpered with pleasure. Her lips seemed parched of kisses. She would die if I turned from her. She would perish of want.

  The vague light of the oil lamps played across her golden body, shadowing her beauty, making her seem not of this life and world. I was haunted by her. As I forced my way inside her, she seemed to enter my soul.

  A man and woman, almost strangers, alone at night in a garden, know that rapture of the senses which is the common property of all. Was it no more than that? Yes, it was more.

  “I have had many lovers,” she said. “I have loved no man save you—this moment. Now.”

  I believed her. It was simply not possible to doubt.

  “I had imagined love as dead within me. I had thought my heart had turned to dust. Yet I am alive now. I live under the weight of your body. Your touch is all that quickens the breath in me.”

  I believe her still.

  The dawn was no more than an hour away. Already the sky seemed to shine darkly over the earth. I heard the tap, tap, tap of a dagger blade against stone, letting me know that someone had begun to stir within the Lord Senefru’s great house. It was Enkidu—how, I wondered, had he known to find me here? A door opened in the garden wall, letting in a few rays of feeble light. It was time to leave this place.

  “I must go,” I said. “I do not wish to, but I must.”

  Her arms tightened about my neck, but she was wise and knew she could not hold me long.

  “The day is a tomb,” she said. “It will hold me lifeless until you are with me again. I will close my eyes and die now.”

  I kissed her once more, but her lips seemed cold, as if she really were dead. I stole away from her, not daring to look back.

  It was a gray morning, and a cold wind blew in from the river. Memphis, like an old woman with a chill in her bones, was waking up cross—the cries of the river porters, like a complaint to the gods, echoed up from the docks. Peddlers were setting up their stalls near the temple gates. The proprietors of wine shops and brothels swept their doorways, already glum at the prospect of a slow morning’s trade. A few weary souls, looking as if the night had taught them bitter lessons, made their way home. Doubtless other eyes saw me as one of these.

  Yet for me youth and passion and the hot flame of life had come back. Happiness and hope, which end being much the same, so swelled my breast that I hardly seemed able to breathe. I had found a goddess, and she had called me her beloved.
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br />   When I returned to my house I found Kephalos waiting for me.

  “Prodikos is dead,” he announced. “I had word last night from Naukratis, in a letter from his kinsman. They found him in his warehouse eight days ago, with his throat cut. It must have happened the night before, even on the very day on which he had written to me.”

  He still held the letter in his hand. He held it out to me, as if offering proof of what he said, but I did not need proof. I only wondered why the man with the finger missing from his left hand should have found it necessary to kill Prodikos, who had meant no harm to anyone.

  “A murdered man does not rest quietly,” Kephalos went on. “I will offer millet cakes and wine to appease his ghost.”

  “And I would give him his murderer’s blood to drink—I pray to Holy Ashur that the one who did this wickedness may be delivered into my hands.”

  “Be not rash, My Lord, for death follows upon the lust for vengeance, like a sore head after a night of wine. You are not to blame that Prodikos was killed.”

  “Am I not, Kephalos?” I smiled at him, though my liver was full of wrath. “Am I not?”

  . . . . .

  That day and the next night and the day and night after, I kept to myself. When my women attempted to come near I drove them off with curses. I would see no one. I sent no word to the Lady Nodjmanefer. I stayed in my garden, even in the dark. I ate nothing, but I drank wine, and enough that my remorse never lost its sharp edge. As a mother cradles her child, thus did I cherish this bitterness in my heart.

  Some sins a man is powerless to avoid. Prodikos had been my friend—and for that he had been killed. From this pollution I could not cleanse myself.

  I did not wish to. Only more blood would wash it away. I would find this murderer. I would strip him of his life, and then. . .

  It seemed so simple.

  At last I grew ashamed of sulking. I went into my house, slept, ate, and turned my steps toward the city. Only now, when I ventured beyond my own gates, I wore a sword.

  People stared at me—they said nothing, but they stared. The Egyptians did not carry weapons. Yet had they no eyes? There was more here to make men afraid than just one assassin bent on the life of a stranger.

  Smiling Memphis, clutching to her bosom a dagger of her own. Did no one else see what I saw? Were they all blind that they walked thus among snares?

  One did not have to look far to search out the dangers. The docks were lined with beggars, and along the city’s outskirts had grown up squalid camps filled with those whom starvation had driven in from the countryside. Memphis was crowded with misery, and misery can quickly translate into violence.

  A people settle by a mighty river. She is generous and feeds them. Yet if they will grow numerous and strong, becoming a great nation in the world, they must make the river obedient to their will. This is not the work of a day or a year or even a lifetime, but of centuries. Canals must be dug, and levees erected that the waters may be controlled. A whole system of irrigation must be constructed, and all this must be maintained by ceaseless labor. And the people must put a mighty king over them to see that the labor is performed. Hence the kings of Ashur and of Babylon. Hence Pharaoh.

  Yet in Egypt the canals were filling with silt, and the dikes were left unrepaired. And the people starved. And in their hearts they blamed Pharaoh for their wretchedness, for he was no longer mighty.

  Or so it seemed to me, for no one said so aloud.

  And today the city was crowded, because Pharaoh had arrived from Tanis, and everyone hoped for a sight of the blessed god-king.

  I had wondered why the bazaars were so deserted. Soldiers had come through and closed the stalls, for it was considered sacrilege to do business on the day when Pharaoh would issue forth from his palace (Prince Nekau’s house, taken over for the occasion) to be carried on his chair of state to the great temple, there to do honor to the god Ptah, patron of the city, sacred potter on whose wheel was turned the egg from which the world hatched. The street that ran between the two, guarded on both sides by rows of stone lions, had only that morning been freshly sprinkled with white sand from the western desert, and now, even as the drums pounded, announcing the approach of Egypt’s divine ruler, naked girls scattered flower petals along the route and the priests jangled cymbals and recited prayers. I stood with a crush of people near the obelisk of King Amenemhat, waiting to behold this miracle.

  Times beyond counting I had seen my father, the Lord Sennacherib, honored with such processions. The people would cheer him, shouting “Ashur is king, Ashur is king!” and would throw gold coins in his path that the shadow of his chariot might pass over these and bless them. The people of Ashur loved their kings.

  Yet the Egyptians stood in silence, watching the approach of their pharaoh as if he were a criminal on his way to execution. As he passed they lowered their eyes. One might have supposed they were ashamed.

  I did not lower my eyes. I wished a look at this god who was not stone or wood, but flesh and bone like any man. I wished to see Pharaoh Taharqa, Lord of the Nile Valley. I did not know why, but it seemed important, as if our paths might someday cross again.

  They would, many years later, yet this was the only time I ever saw him.

  There is little enough one can tell about a man sitting on a carrying chair, rigid as a block of granite. His arms were crossed over his chest and in his hands he carried a whip and a shepherd’s crook. The crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt were on his head, and strapped to his chin was a little black box to symbolize the beard of authority. Thus has every pharaoh appeared in public since the Scorpion King united the two lands two thousand years ago—or so the story goes.

  Taharqa himself was not an Egyptian. His dynasty had come out of the Land of Ethiopia less than a hundred years before. He was tall and strong-looking and his skin was black, so that he looked as if he had been carved from obsidian. I never heard any Egyptian express an opinion of him—Pharaoh is sacred, even when he is a foreigner—but I would learn many years later, and from personal experience, that he was a man of energy and ability and a good soldier, a better ruler, perhaps, than his people deserved.

  If he was still Egypt’s god, he was not its ruler—not as the pharaohs of old had been.

  Taharqa hardly even possessed title to the double crown, since it was not he but Mentumehet, Fourth Prophet of Amun and Prince of Thebes, who ruled in Upper Egypt. The priest was called the Living God’s deputy, yet he it was whose word was law in the ancient seat of pharaohs and who worshiped at the most holy of shrines, the Temple of Amun. And it was not much different in the Lower Kingdom.

  Pharaoh controlled Tanis and the eastern towns, and the army—mostly Libyans, since no Egyptian will enlist for a soldier unless he is starving—owed its loyalty to him. The rest of Egypt paid him tribute, called him “Lord,” and dreaded his interference in their affairs, but it was with the local princes that the bulk of the power lay. They bickered among themselves, yet they would all resist if Pharaoh tried to make good his claim to absolute rule.

  The time for being great in Egypt was over.

  He passed before us, this god-king, carried on a golden chair to the Temple of Ptah, and behind his procession the street became once more clogged with ordinary humanity. The flower petals were trampled beneath the sandals of barley merchants and weavers, beggars and slave dealers and prostitutes and scribes. It was over.

  Yet perhaps not.

  I was preparing to leave—the sun was hot and I entertained thoughts of a cup of wine. I had dismissed Taharqa and his dreams from my mind, since who was I to care about the ambitions of princes?

  Still, at the last moment and for reasons hidden from me even at the time, just before the thickening crowds would have blocked him from view, I turned back and caught sight of a man sitting in an alleyway on the other side of the street.

  There was little enough to distinguish him save that the lightness of his skin showed him to be a foreigner, and Memphis was filled with th
ose. His skull was covered with a tight-fitting leather cap, and he wore a black robe with sleeves long enough to conceal his hands. I might never have noticed him had his eyes not been locked on my face—he wanted me to notice him. Our gazes met and he smiled a tight, uncomfortable little smile, as if everything were understood between us.

  He was Prodikos’ murderer. He was the man who had inquired after me in Naukratis. Nothing had ever been so clear to me in my life.

  And then, of course, he disappeared behind the moving crowd.

  The street was perhaps twenty paces wide, yet there were people everywhere now and to fight one’s way through them was not the work of a moment. Yet I must hurry or I would lose my chance.

  A soldier angrily swung his arm after me as I dashed past him. My foot caught on a basket full of figs and they went tumbling onto the ground. An old woman darted in front of me. I caught her in my hands just in time to keep her from falling, and she screeched at me like a hawk. Her cries rang in my ears—probably they all thought I was a thief in flight—but I did not stop.

  I reached the alley. He was gone. There was a street beyond, but I had a glimpse of a man’s shadow against the alley wall. His? By now my sword was drawn, but he was gone. I saw no one in a black robe. I followed one street and then another, but he had escaped.

  Yes, of course—he planned it thus. He only wanted me to know he had found me.

  Yet I could not find him. The man in the black robes seemed to have vanished from Memphis. Kephalos employed spies and paid out a fortune in bribes to brothel keepers and porters, and still he uncovered no trace of a foreigner with one finger missing from his left hand.

  “He is gone, Lord,” he said. “How can he possibly have eluded our search, a stranger with such an obvious disfigurement? He has fled for his life.”