The Blood Star Read online

  “Teach her to read! Have her instructed in sums!”

  Kephalos swept his hands back across his shaven head as if this latest of my follies would be the end of him. For a moment he seemed too vexed even to speak, but this could not last.

  “My Lord, think what you do,” he managed to gasp out at last. “She is the daughter of a Doric pig farmer—read! She was born, at best, to be the concubine of a drunken tavern keeper and to have her backside rented out by the quarter hour. Teach such a creature to read and you will make her the curse of any man stupid enough to have her under his roof—and such men will not be plentiful, since, for all her bronze-colored hair, she is a repulsive little toad. Hearken to the wisdom of age, Master. Practical knowledge may be one thing, but a woman who has learned more letters than those which make up her own name is a burden upon mankind and good for nothing but to promote the misery of the world.”

  Nevertheless, I went ahead with my plan. I hired a scribe from the marketplace to come every second day and open to her the mystery of numbers, and on the alternating mornings I sat down with her after breakfast, a wax tablet across my knees, and began to teach her the alphabet.

  At first, at least where writing was concerned, she seemed to be of Kephalos’ opinion.

  “What would you have me read?” she asked, with some asperity. “To do sums is of use, but I can tell the difference between one coin and another without having to read it.”

  “And if you should receive a letter?”

  “I know no one who can write except you and Master Kephalos. He would sooner cut off his hand, and a letter from you would only be full of lies. I think I would be foolish indeed if I ever trusted you far enough away from me that we would have occasion for letters.”

  “I am not your property, Selana.”

  “No—I am yours. Can the Lady Nodjmanefer write?”

  “I doubt it, as the Egyptians have as many letters as words and she is not a scribe. What has she to do with it?”

  “With writing, if you speak the truth, not a thing; but with you, much. Teach her to write, since she is often gone from you. I am not so foolish as she.”

  She snatched the wax tablet from my knee and hurled it across the room, so that it hit the wall and shattered.

  “She is a great lady and I am only a slave, but you will tire of her first!” she shouted. “Remember, love is a punishment from the gods, but what is your property you have forever.”

  She then cursed me furiously and ran away. I promised myself I would have her beaten, but I did not. I did nothing. Two days later she returned, kissed my hand in submission, and said she would learn letters if it was my will.

  “Why have you changed your mind?” I asked.

  “I remembered that I am a slave in your house and must learn obedience.”

  “Do not mock me, Selana.”

  “Very well then. I will learn to read for the pleasure of annoying Master Kephalos.”

  “And what grievance have you with him?”

  “None. In fact, he has recently done me a great service—he has set my mind at ease. You cannot guess how, can you, Dread Lord.” She smiled in the manner of an accomplished harlot, mocking me. “No, you cannot guess. For it is true what your concubines say, that men are all great simpletons. Yet if Master Kephalos is not jealous of the Lady Nodjmanefer, then I have nothing to fear from her—and he still hates me. I am comforted.”

  “You speak in riddles. Do not vex me, Selana. Why should Kephalos hate a child like you? And if he did, what comfort can you take in it?”

  “Dread Lord—my witless Lord,” she said, putting her hand on my cheek, as if I were the child. “Who could claim your heart without provoking the hatred of Master Kephalos? Someday, if you have pity on him, you will go to the slave market and buy him a dark-eyed boy with a face as pretty as a woman’s. But until then, should he ever cease to be my enemy, I will know I have lost you forever.”

  For this I did beat her, because I remembered the boy Ernos, and the young dancer, the dhakar binta, in the mudhif of my Lord Sesku, and I knew she spoke the truth. For this I could not easily forgive her, for she seemed to dishonor my friend.

  . . . . .

  Yet it was not Kephalos’ jealousy which most directly concerned me just then, for I had not forgotten the expression on Senefru’s face when he told me he had saved my life. The same question echoed in my mind—why? Why would he have tarried even an extra minute to keep me from death?

  “It is his vanity,” Nodjmanefer told me. “He spoke of it himself, that same evening: ‘It would have been so unseemly a death for one we both hold dear—to be ground up in the jaws of a hippopotamus, with the crocodiles getting whatever was left. I should not like it said that I allowed such a thing to happen to a friend.’ You could not be permitted to die by accident, not before he has enjoyed his revenge.”

  We were walking in her garden, just at twilight. She had taken me out to show it to me, just as if I had never been there before. Guests would be arriving for a banquet soon, but for the moment we were alone. The Lord Senefru, with his customary tact, was attending to reports on the poor state of the barley harvest.

  “Has he ever spoken to you of revenge?”

  “No.” She shook her head, and then her beautiful sea-green eyes fastened on me, and she smiled. “No—he has never suggested that there exists any pretext for revenge. He speaks of you as his friend, and acts to me as if he trusted his wife beyond all other women. Perhaps, in his way, he even does.”

  Her gaze dropped, as if she had admitted to something shameful. Was she ashamed? I knew not, for her life with the Lord Senefru was closed to me. She never spoke of her marriage—at least, never of those things that might have allowed me to understand her feelings. It is even possible that in some way she loved her husband, but no more than possible. Over all that she had drawn a veil.

  “If he does not speak of revenge, then let us not speak of it either,” I said. “There is no way we can forestall him. We can only wait and see. Perhaps at last he can even be persuaded to let you go. Would that please you, My Lady? Then, if you are fool enough, we could marry.”

  The sad smile returned to her lips, but she did not look at me. Perhaps she imagined I had been jesting. Perhaps I had been, at first.

  “Would that be your wish?” she asked.

  “Yes—of course. Why should it not be? If you speak the truth when you claim to love me.”

  “To you, I have never spoken anything except the truth.”

  “Then, with you as my wife, how could I be anything but happy?”

  “Have I made Senefru happy?” She clutched my arm, holding it to her. “In any case, he is unlikely enough to consent.”

  “You know best, My Lady. But think if it would not be wise to ask him.”

  “Not now.”

  “As you will.”

  The garden was turning cold. We walked back toward the house in silence. I do not know what I had expected, but somehow I had the sense of having been rejected.

  Perhaps she did not love me. Did I love her? Perhaps not—perhaps Kephalos was right that she was no Esharhamat—but if it was not love, it would do.

  Senefru was waiting at the top of the steps. When he saw us he smiled one of his rare, unconvincing smiles.

  “Lady, the servants require your calming hand or we may all be left to starve,” he said.

  The Egyptians are the most charming people on earth. They have beautiful manners and are as light-hearted as birds. The gods granted them every grace but did not equip them to live in any world harsher than a banqueting hall.

  The fashionable ladies of Memphis kept cats and thought themselves as seductively predatory, and half the young men of the city wore the elegant uniform of the princely militia, which had not fought in a war for three hundred years—Pharaoh was no fool and did not think of cutting stone with a wooden ax. An officer’s whip or a woman’s lovers, these were playthings, toys in the hands of rich and idle children living in
a dreamy paradise of pleasure and intrigue.

  Was Nodjmanefer really no different from all the rest of them? Sometimes I could not help but wonder.

  No, she was not.

  “A woman is tied to her husband by other things than love,” she said. “I cannot leave my lord unless he releases me—I cannot.”

  “We could quit this place,” I said. “There is more to the world than Memphis, more than Egypt. We could find a refuge somewhere beside the wine-dark sea of the Greeks and be happy together.”

  “I would ask for no more than this,” she said. “I would go with you into the Land of the Dead. But I cannot leave my lord, even for you and the white sand beaches of the Northern Sea, if he will not let me go. I know you cannot understand, but perhaps with time you will learn to forgive.”

  No, she was not like the rest of them.

  So I waited. And I lived my life—her life, the only life this brothel called Egypt held for either of us—forgetting there could be any other.

  Until the day I was reminded.

  In Egypt, the desert is never far away. A hour’s ride from Memphis and the green valley of the Nile seems as unreal as a memory—it is a world of sand and ragged mountains the color of buckskin, which the hot, unforgiving wind has carved from solid stone. Here the ancient Pharaohs yet reign, hidden in the quiet of their secret tombs. Here time seems to have lost its meaning. Here I came now and then, to hunt the gazelle and the lion, to forget the world for a while, and to be alone.

  Yet never quite alone, for there was always Enkidu, his feet almost dragging the earth as he rode thirty paces behind me on one of the swift, strong Libyan ponies which the whole world admires. He was as constant as a shadow, and as silent. He was not a companion so much as a presence, like fortune or the favor of the gods. It was much the same as being alone.

  I had ordered a chariot built for me—the Egyptians make good chariots, smaller than those of the east but agile—and when I grew weary of even the sound of my own voice I would hitch up my pair of fine Arab horses, a present from Kephalos and swift as darting birds, and I would drive off into the emptiness of the desert.

  It was here, where I thought myself safely out of reach, that death almost found me.

  On hunting days I liked to rise at least two hours before dawn, bathe in cold river water, and breakfast lightly, for a man feels more alive when there is not much lying in his belly. At first light I made sacrifice to Ashur, Lord of Heaven and Earth, to Shamash, Giver of Destinies, and also, after my encounter with the hippopotamus, to Seth, Full of Strength and Master of Lower Egypt—this from simple caution and also the sense that a traveler in strange lands should not ignore their gods. Then I mounted my chariot and drove off with the rising sun at my back.

  It is a wonderful thing to feel the horses’ strength through the reins, to hear the clatter of their hooves and know that the sand rises in plumes from beneath the wheels. That morning I felt the dry desert wind in my face and I rejoiced in life. I felt as the immortals must—full of breath, mighty, invulnerable.

  In the midst of the desert there is a valley, hedged by bluffs, accessible through a single narrow pass, like a notch cut through the hills that shelter and conceal it. Here there is shade and sometimes water, the runoff from the highlands all around. Here there is nearly always game. Here I went to test my luck.

  It was good that day.

  The pass ran over uneven ground, and I had to proceed slowly to keep from breaking an axle. Besides, for some reason the horses were skittish that morning. They seemed afraid of the place, as if they smelled a lion. But there was no lion.

  At first I thought it was the sound of thunder. I glanced up, yet the sky was clear. Then I saw the dust and the first fine spray of stone, and I understood.

  It was an avalanche—it was coming straight down almost where we stood.

  The horses by then were mad with fear, but the pass was too narrow to turn round in, and there was no time. They tried to bolt—they would have run straight into the path of the slide. I yanked on the reins, struggling to hold them back, but they only reared in panic and started trying to scale the steep sides of the pass to turn back. I could not hold them. I could not. I was nothing to them. They did not even know I was there.

  They were hopelessly tangled in their runners now, trapped and helpless. Still they reared, snorting and neighing, beside themselves with terror. Their hooves tore at the walls of the chariot—the platform shook beneath my feet. At last, just as the stones reached us, they flipped the chariot over. They seemed to be trying to climb across it. I felt something strike me in the chest, taking the wind out of me with a rush. The horses would tear me open with their hooves—I was being buried. I felt an unbearable pain in my left arm. I couldn’t breathe. The darkness closed around me. . .

  How long had I been unconscious? Not long, I think. I awoke to find myself under the chariot, pinned down by one of the horses—he still stirred a little, but he was nearly dead. I felt such pity that I almost wept, though my whole body was like one long bruise. He had shielded me, and probably saved my life—for a time. I could not see the other.

  Was I dying? Everything hurt. I felt as if I should be dying. I discovered the the fingers of my right hand still moved, and the arm with them. I tried the left, then the two legs. My head, I found, only felt shattered. By a miracle, I had been spared.

  If I was not crushed beneath the weight of a dead horse. Could I get free? It seemed not.

  Where was Enkidu? He would have to dig me out. With his great strength. . .

  But when I turned my head to look back, I saw that the pass was blocked. Almost the whole mountain had come down behind me.

  He would be hours reaching me through all that. Probably he would assume I had been killed. I was thrown back on myself.

  Yet I did not feel real despair until I heard the voices of men.

  “He must be dead,” I heard one of them say, in Egyptian.

  “Yet you will look,” another answered. “You will not be paid until I have his right hand, with the mark of the bloody star upon the palm. That is the proof that it is he and no other.”

  “Oh, very well. But we will be all day clearing away this mess.”

  I could not see them. I knew not how many there were. They were coming down to find me, to cut off my hand for a trophy.

  I had to get out from beneath the chariot.

  My ribs felt broken. I ran my hand over them and found they stung like a nest of scorpions—a rock had scraped the skin raw. Better that, I thought, than that they should be caved in like rotten barrel staves.

  I tried pushing against the chariot, although there was hardly any room to move my arms. Nothing—it was useless.

  I tried again. No, useless. No—yes. Perhaps yes. This time it seemed to stir a little.

  My left elbow was badly swollen, but the joint, though sore, was unbroken and I could still work it. I pushed once more against the weight of the chariot and managed to lift it perhaps half a span from my chest. I filled my lungs with air and pushed again.

  A large, irregularly shaped rock rolled loose and hit my arm, just above the bruised elbow. I felt a sharp twinge of gut-wrenching pain that forced me to drop the chariot. When I had stopped cursing I realized that the platform no longer lay on my chest, that the rock was holding it up. I could crawl out from underneath now. Somehow I felt like apologizing.

  I could not see my attackers, but from the noise of their progress they seemed to be about a third of the way down from the summit of the bluff. I had no more than a few minutes.

  I had been carrying three javelins, a bow and a quiver of arrows. And of course my sword was still in my belt. As soon as I was out from beneath the chariot I reached back and retrieved the bow and the arrows and one of the javelins—the other two were broken.

  The air was still full of dust, and rocks were still settling into place. I stayed low, crouching behind the body of one of the dead horses. The men coming down to collect my hand
had not seen me.

  But I saw them. There were five of them, as ragged a tribe of bandits as you could imagine—it was almost an insult to be ambushed by such as these.

  They wore gray tunics that did not even reach to their knees, and dangling from their belts were the long curved daggers worn by soldiers—that was probably what they were, runaway soldiers who lived by robbing graves and the occasional piece of villainy. Their heads and beards showed half a year’s absence from the razor, which in Egypt meant that they were outlaws, cut off from the decent part of humanity, little better than beasts. Three of them carried war spears and one had a bow in his right hand. The last had no weapon and appeared to be the leader. I decided he would be the last to taste death.

  My horses lay dead, spattered with blood, their bellies ripped open and their backs broken. I was alive only through the power of my sedu, the favor of the Lord Ashur. Anger burned in my bowels, for I would be avenged. I did not care if there were five or five hundred—they were corpses.

  When they were halfway down, and within range, I stood up. I let them look at me, that they might know I was not afraid.

  But they were. They stopped short—this they had not expected. I strung my bow, selected an arrow, couched it, took aim, and let fly. The man who was closest, the man with the bow, took my point full in the chest and dropped dead with a groan.

  One summoned the courage to throw a spear, but it fell short. I raised my bow and killed him. My arrow found his guts, that he might suffer a time before he died.

  The other men had seen enough. They turned and ran, clambering over the rocks like mice.

  Two of them I did not care about—they could wait until I had leisure to think of them—but the leader, the one without a weapon, him I wanted, and alive. I aimed low. The first arrow missed him, whining as the iron point glanced off a stone, but the second buried itself in the calf of his right leg. Blood streamed down. He screamed, looked down to see what had happened, plucked out the arrow and threw it aside, then turned and hastened on in his flight. Yet he was not so agile now.