Black Ships (21 page)

I ran. My breath caught in my throat. I pushed through the people crowding toward the dock, shoved halfway back into a stall full of pottery. I could not push my way out.

I climbed up on the greatest of the pots, clinging to the pole that held an awning above the stall. I could see over the crowd, but could not hear what the young man said who leaped to the dock and began to speak.

What I did hear was the roar of the crowd, beginning at the front and rolling backward like a wave. I pounded the shoulder of the man before me. “What?” I screamed in Khemet. “What happened?”

He turned to me. “A victory! A very great victory! Thanks be to Isis and Horus Her son! A great victory!”

“Truly?”

“Truly!” And he grabbed both sides of my head and planted a wet kiss on my nose. “A great victory!”

I elbowed my way closer to the dock. The young captain had stepped down, gone to report in the palace, most likely, and a scribe had taken his place, reading a piece of papyrus out to the crowd over and over. I did not understand it all, but I understood much of it, because the words were simple.

“Hear the words of Ramses, Pharaoh of Egypt. We have met the enemy on land and sea, and he has gone down in blood and tears. The sons of the Black Land have vanquished the enemy, though he was as numerous as stars in the sky. We have taken many slaves and much wealth, and many of the enemy are slain.”

“On land and sea,” I whispered. There had been a sea battle then. Which meant our ships had been in the midst of it. But of them Pharaoh’s dispatch said nothing.

Initial joy began to turn to whispers. We had won, but nothing was said of this division and that, nothing said of this man or another. We must all still wait to find out what we truly wanted to know.

O
N THE SEVENTH DAY
our ships arrived. I was at the Temple of Thoth, and did not know until I came home in the afternoon. As I approached the barracks of the Division of the Ram I heard many voices, and then I saw above the flat roof the peak of a mast. Again in the settling heat I ran.

There were only five ships beside the docks, five of the eight who had sailed. Who was missing? I came closer.

Seven Sisters
rode at her mooring, her deck scarred and blackened in places. Behind her was
Pearl,
and Amynter’s
Hunter.

I came in sight of the courtyard, and there they were, the men of the People, and all of the rest, reaching and touching and crying.

Winged Night
and
Dolphin
were down the dock, and my heart leaped into my throat. The ships were here. Where were the men?

I began to push my way through the throng, when Kos caught me about the waist and lifted me up in a huge hug. “Thank you for taking care of Tia and the child,” he said.

“Where is Xandros?” I asked, and was surprised to hear my voice catch so.

Kos put me down and looked into my face, as though he had thought of something for the first time. He smiled. “Don’t fear for him; he’s right over there by Neas. Not a scratch on him, for all that we boarded two Achaian warships.”

Somewhere a wail went up, from some woman who had just heard worse. Lide was bustling around, helping men lift down the wounded from
Pearl
’s deck, slung in linen stretchers between two poles. There were nine or ten who could not walk, and Lide was everywhere among them, pushing the bearers and telling them where to go.

Neas stood near them. As one boy came past, carried between two men, Neas leaned down and took his hand, clasping it wrist to wrist as a kinsman and a friend. It was Kassander, Amynter’s eldest son. The wrappings around his leg were brown with dried blood. Lide all but pushed Neas away and took charge of him.

Xandros looked up across the crowd as though I had called his name and smiled. Our eyes met.

“Sybil?” a voice said at my elbow. “Will you come? One of the wounded has died and we need you. He is a man of
Winged Night
’s crew named Harmos.”

“I will come,” I said. I followed him into the room where Lide had laid out the wounded and went about my office.

H
E WAS BURNED
that night on the banks of the Nile, as the others who had died in the battle had been burned on a great pyre at her mouths. The Egyptians thought this horrifying beyond belief, but they did not prevent it, as long as it was only the dead of the People we burned.

There were so many. Neas spoke their names over the fire with Harmos. So many men I had known so little, so many lost. Three ships were gone entirely. Beside the fire, Neas told us what had happened in a voice as good as any bard’s.

“When Pharaoh came to Tamiat,” he said, “he sent us on to Ashkelon with twenty Egyptian ships. He had more than a hundred ships in all, but the others had close to two hundred. When we got to Ashkelon it had been sacked.” He looked out over the People, the faces limned in firelight. He did not need to describe it. They had seen a city sacked, and what comes after.

“We turned back to Egypt, because we knew now that the fleet must be between us and the main Egyptian fleet at Tamiat. And it was so. We sailed for a full day, and at morning on the second day we saw them before us.”

And a feat of seamanship that was, I thought, to find so small a thing as a fleet on the sea. And no small feat of diplomacy, to bring the Egyptian ships with them as though Neas commanded them, not the other way around!

“They had just begun to engage the Egyptians. Fire arrows were flying, and the Egyptian ships moved in under oars, while the wind was behind the great flotilla.” Neas smiled. “But we were behind them.”

Some of the faces stirred in the firelight. Tia held Kianna to her breast, Bai’s arm around her shoulders. I had thought perhaps they might at last come to some understanding. She leaned against his scarred shoulder, and the baby was quiet.

Neas’ voice was clear and rich, his face burnished with fire. “We came down upon them like a wolf upon sheep. We were in their rear with twenty-eight ships before they knew we were there. It was in that first melee, as they turned to defend themselves, that
Swift
was rammed by a big twenty oarsman from Lydia. It overran her, and she sunk. Many of her men swam to safety, though, for she was close by
Winged Night
and
Cloud.
These are the names of the ones who did not.” And he named them all, reciting each with a pause between. With each name there was a collective groan, for each was someone’s friend, someone’s brother.

“
Dolphin
came alongside the Lydian ship,” Neas said, “and the Nubians and our men boarded her. Karosanas was killed, and Kassander was wounded.”

Karosanas, I thought. The big, silent oarsman in the last row below the stern, with his thick beard and broken nose. And Kassander, the messenger boy. I looked across the fire, and Xandros’ face was calm, calm as resting underwater. I could see him in my mind at the tiller, black hair flying. He would have used his sword, if they were so close to the stern, leaped down among the rower’s benches, lithe and swift and deadly.

“The Lydian ship sank,” Neas said. “And she would have taken
Dolphin
down if she had not backed her oars and gotten free.”

Kos, I thought. I could hear him shouting the count, Xandros at the tiller again. “Left side on two. Right side. All back!” And somehow they had responded. Against all hope,
Dolphin
had backed away from the wreck that would have pulled her under the green water.

I had lost the thread of Neas’ narrative.
Lady’s Eyes
and
Seven Sisters
had driven forward into a storm of fire arrows, driving straight for Neoptolemos’
Chariot of the Sun.
They had caught
Lady’s Eyes’
sail alight, and she had rammed
Chariot of the Sun
with her decks blazing.

“Jamarados fell on that deck,” Neas said quietly. “He fell to three Achaians, and two he took with him into the Underworld. He was a brave captain, a wise friend, and a dear counselor. All of the People shall miss him. As I shall.” He stopped and his throat worked, and for a moment he was silent.

“But Neoptolemos did not fall,” he said. “He leaped to the deck of another Achaian ship that came near, and
Lady’s Eyes
burned to the waterline and sank. These are the names of the men who died, for only two of them came to
Seven Sisters.
” And he told out the names of Jamarados’ crew, all but two men. The other twenty-eight were dead.

The Nubian bowmen had done well. From the decks of
Cloud
and
Pearl
they had peppered the Shardan ships with arrows, until at last one of them managed to close with
Cloud.
The fight was fierce and sharp on her deck, the bowmen aboard
Pearl
afraid to shoot into the melee for fear of hitting
Cloud
’s men. Twelve of the bowmen fell aboard
Cloud
and ten of her crew before the Shardan were thrown into the sea. Her oars crippled and her tiller crushed, the remaining crewmen from
Cloud
were taken aboard
Pearl,
along with eight men who were wounded.
Cloud
sank into the sea.

All in all, more than eighty of the enemy ships were sunk, and Egypt lost nearly forty.

“All about this middle sea,” Neas said, “women are weeping and children are fatherless. All about this world we know, men will never return. But we, the men of the People, have returned!” He lifted a great pottery bowl full of wine, drank and smashed it. Around us, a shout went up. Bai breached a great amphora of wine, and Tia and Polyra began passing it about.

Neas stood up. The pyre burned on. “The honored dead!” he shouted.

“The honored dead!” came the shout back, then “Ela, Son of Aphrodite! Aeneas! Aeneas!”

Xandros’ face was flushed as he shouted. “Ela! Son of Cythera!”

One of the rowers began a beat on the drums, and in a few minutes the snake dance began winding its way around the fire. Harmos, I thought, was having a funeral like a king.

I stepped away from the dancers, into the cooler air away from the rippling fire. I did not dance.

In a moment I looked up. Neas was standing behind me. The firelight glinted golden off his hair, off the great golden armband that he wore.

“Welcome home, Prince Aeneas,” I said formally.

“Sybil,” he said.

I sat down on the stone railing that separated the courtyard from the dock. “You have done well.”

Neas sat beside me. “As well as I might,” he said. “We have lost so many men. But I do not think there will be another battle like this for an age. On land Pharaoh’s army met the raiders who had landed and those who had come overland from Ashkelon. They say he killed thousands. It will be a long time before they come again.”

“Perhaps the isles will know some peace,” I said.

Neas shook his head. “How will that be? There are fewer men still to fish and to farm. There are more people desperate. I think there will be more pirates rather than less, more people driven to desperation as we are.”

“But for now we are safe,” I said.

“Yes,” Neas said. “For now.” He stretched his hands out, and in the light they looked gloved in flame. “He’s a good king. Young Ramses. That’s what his men call him. Old Ramses ruled forever, they say. He’s a fair man and an honorable one. And he knows what he owes us for falling on the enemy’s rear like that.”

“Did you win the battle for him?” I asked.

“No, but it would have been a lot more expensive. He’s the kind of king who counts his men’s lives.” Neas glanced up toward the fire, toward the dancers.

“As are you,” I said.

“I do not want to be a king,” Neas said.

“So Jamarados said,” I said, before I thought.

His lips tightened. “I will miss Jamarados,” he said.

“So will I,” I said. And I meant it.

“We will stay here a time,” Neas said. “The ships are in bad repair, all of them except
Pearl.
And we all need rest.”

“We do,” I said. He seemed content not to dance, but rather to sit by me. Perhaps rest was the bounty Neas sought of Egypt. Rest, and an end to the turnings of the labyrinth.

DESIRES

T
he next morning I went to the Temple of Thoth. When I returned, Neas was waiting for me.

“A messenger has come,” he said, “bidding us to a feast in six days’ time. Pharaoh is holding a great banquet to celebrate the victory. I am to go, as well as four men of my choosing and as many as five women. One should be you, but I do not think that there are others who should go. Egyptians are not as we are, and do not understand that we do not display our women in public.”

I glared at him. “In Pylos,” I said, “women attended public festivals, if not private dinners.”

Neas colored. “Have you...em...seen what Egyptian women wear...at feasts...? I mean, I did in Tamiat and...”

I almost laughed. “I have seen what they wear in the temple, and what they wear in the markets. Honestly, Neas! Have you not seen breasts before?”

His face was scarlet. “Not rouged,” he said. “And they...er...paint their nipples.”

“You must have been looking rather closely, then,” I said.

He ducked his head, and I thought with a pang that perhaps he had been.

“I will certainly go,” I said, tossing my hair back. “I see no reason why I should not attend as the Egyptian priestesses do. And I will see if there are any other women of the company who would care to make up the number. Who are the men to be?”

“Xandros,” he said promptly, “and Maris,
Pearl
’s captain. Amynter, though he’s not likely to enjoy it.”

I thought not. Amynter was rather conservative and set in his ways, for all that he was an excellent sailor. He had a suspicion of foreigners, and had never learned a word of any other tongue, something of a trick for a man who must trade. Jamarados would have been better, but Jamarados was dead.

“The last should be my father,” Neas said. “Of course.”

“Of course,” I said, thinking that Anchises and Amynter could keep each other company. Maris had a young wife, Idele, one of the women recovered in Millawanda, so she should come if she wished. I thought that she was clever and curious, despite her slavery. She had miscarried right after we had come to Egypt, but with her husband home safe she seemed to have brightened.

In the end, there were only three women, not five. Many of them did not want to go, whether afraid of mixing with the Egyptians or careful of their good names. Tia could not go, because she must nurse the child. Idele did want to come, and so, to my surprise, did Lide.

“It’s not often I’ll have the chance to see a royal Egyptian banquet,” she said. “If I have to go stark naked I will!”

“I don’t think we’re actually to be naked,” I said, but I had no idea what was proper to wear.

So I asked Hry.

His eyes crinkled and he smiled. “Oh, you will look well,” he said. “All of you. You should all come to the temple and dress. I will find suitable clothes for each of you.”

I tried to demur, but he stopped me. “Consider it my gift. Consider it hospitality repaid for the generosity of Priam in Wilusa. And tell that to your prince. He, especially, should look fine. I will manage it all!”

And so at noon on the sixth day we all came together to the Temple of Thoth, Xandros and Amynter with the air of men expecting their execution.

Lide and Idele and I were ushered into a long bathing room. It was open to the sky, but stood in shade at this time of day. The spaces between the columns were filled with palms and other plants in enormous pots, making a green screen that entirely separated us from the bathing room of the men nearby.

A maidservant stood by me with a pot of scented oil and a razor. “As the priestesses do?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely. Everything as you do. Except for my hair.”

I had already learned that in the Black Land most women of rank shave their heads entirely. The lovely intricate braids they wear are wigs.

“I must keep my hair, as it is part of my office,” I said in Khemet.

She nodded, and set about oiling and shaving everything else. When she had done, I plunged in the pool and washed it all away. It was very strange, seeing my body in the water, naked as a child’s. Not a hair on my legs or arms, even my pubis nude, as I had not seen it since I first began to change into a woman.

Lide splashed in after me. She too looked odd. Lide gave me a sideways grin. “I can see how it would be cooler. You know, the maid says that some Egyptian women bathe twice a day? And they pluck their hair out so it will never grow back. Men too. They start plucking their beards as soon as they begin to grow.”

“So that’s why all those smooth faces,” I said. A thought struck me. “How did you and the maid understand each other?”

Lide snorted. “And me in the market every day? Trading those endless fava beans the princess sent us for a little variety? How long should it take to learn enough to chat? I picked up the tongue in Byblos while we were there too.”

I smiled. “Amynter never picks up a word.”

“Amynter never talks to a native.” Lide swam a couple of strokes in the pool, and I was reminded suddenly of the flax river. Lide had held me up in the water when I was a child just learning to swim. I had forgotten that. Suddenly I missed my mother.

Lide must have seen it in my face, or perhaps she too was reminded of the river that had been our home. “Ah, child,” she said. “Your mother would be proud of you now, were she here to see you. I set your leg, you know, when the chariot hit you, but you would have died without her nursing. She was a stubborn woman. That’s where you get it.”

Her arms floated out from her sides in the clear water, her eyes far beyond me. “She was on the ship with me from Wilusa, when we both fell to King Nestor’s lot. She was a pretty girl, and she’d had a lot of attention. They’d hurt her pretty badly. Some of us died. But not her. She had a spirit in her that wouldn’t break. By the time we got to Pylos it was clear she was with child. One of the other girls who was that way threw herself overboard in the night and drowned. After that I made sure to sit close by your mother at night.”

She looked at me, raised one eyebrow. “She guessed what I was about. She looked at me with a gimlet eye, just like you do, and said, ‘Lide, I’m not going to kill myself. I’m going to raise a son who will cut their balls off!’”

I laughed, and then stopped. “But I wasn’t a son,” I said.

“No, you weren’t,” Lide said. “And you’ve done more than she could ever have imagined you’d do. You’ve gotten us all safe to our kinsmen, and led us to a safe port. Your mother would be very proud of you.”

I burst into tears, standing waist deep in an Egyptian bathing pool.

Lide came and put her arms around me. “There now, child. Never a word of complaint from you, strange and god-touched as you are. You’re a solitary creature, but even so you need some people of your own.”

I didn’t say anything, just cried on her shoulder.

“Come now,” she said. “Come and let the girls make you pretty. That’s something you’ve never done, I imagine.”

“No,” I said, still sniffing a little. “It doesn’t matter if Death is pretty.”

“Tonight you aren’t Death,” she said.

I
DRESSED
in the twilight. Hry had told the maids that I should dress like their own senior priestesses, and the girls had taken that seriously. There was a gown of sheer white linen, so thin that I could see the outlines of my hairless limbs quite clearly beneath it. The skirt was crimped and stiffened into dozens of folds the width of my finger, and it fastened beneath my breasts with a girdle of gilded leather. Above, my breasts were rouged and each nipple painted dark and lovely. Over my shoulders went a short cape of thin linen, dipping to my waist in front and back, pleated in elaborate folds. Over that went a collar of gold and glass, set with hundreds of tiny pieces of red and blue. On my bare arms went bracelets of gold, and a pair of gold hoops hung from my ears.

The maids were uncertain what to do with my hair, but at last they braided it in twelve sections, securing the ends of each one with gold wire. Then they painted my face.

I had never had anyone do it for me. It is not proper to wear Pythia’s paint until you are Pythia, and I had not taken an acolyte. Kianna, I thought, would have this office someday, but it would be long years before her little hands would be steady enough to paint my eyes.

They painted my eyelids lapis blue and outlined them in kohl. My cheeks were stained with rouge, and my lips tinted like my nipples. When at last they held a burnished mirror up for me to see I hardly recognized myself. Looking out of the mirror was a dark-eyed Egyptian girl, small and light, with curving breasts and eyes that flashed fire, and a long, secret smile.

“You are beautiful,” one of the maids said. “This is what we call beauty in the Black Land.” Her hand traced my cheek lightly. “You have good bones. You will be beautiful in death.”

“I am Death,” I said absently, turning the mirror. For a moment I almost saw another face there, crowned with the uraeus, the sacred serpent of Egypt.

“Ah,” she said, “but in the Black Land, Death is beautiful. When you stand before Osiris’ throne you must be careful, for the beauty of Isis is blinding, like the beauty of the moon when you have been long underground.”

And I felt Her, like a whisper at my side.
This is My face too,
She said.

“This is my face too,” I said, touching my lips with wonder.

Outside the room I heard Hry. “Come on, Daughter of Wilusa! Bring the women and come! The litters are waiting in the courtyard, and the hour is here!”

We came out into the torchlit courtyard. Neas was waiting beside the first litter, where he would sit with Hry. He too had been shaved, and he wore a knee-length skirt of fine linen, pleated like mine and stiffened. On his arm shone the princess’ bracelet. Beside him was Xandros.

His black hair was held back with a clasp of gold, and his linen skirt fastened with a belt of gilded leather. His limbs were shaved, and his smooth brown chest gleamed with scented oil, myrrh, and rose and something else besides. When he saw me his mouth dropped open. He dragged at Neas’ arm.

Neas turned, and his mouth dropped open too. But he was a prince, and faster on the recovery than Xandros. “Sybil?”

“Prince Aeneas,” I said with great dignity, coming and standing beside him. If I moved slowly my limp was hard to see.

“You look different,” Xandros said.

Neas smiled. “You look beautiful.” His eyes said that he meant it. I was not used to men looking at me that way, and somehow to have Neas look at me like that was oddly disconcerting.

“Come, come!” Hry said. “We cannot be late. Everyone, please get in the litters!”

He gestured Neas to the first one. I dropped back and got in the second with Xandros. I did not want to ride with the look of scorn I had seen on Anchises’ face, or the dismay on Amynter’s. I almost smiled as I saw Lide get in the litter beside Anchises. Let him try to lecture her!

The litters were lifted by the temple bearers. Boys went ahead carrying torches. Xandros was silent. At last he ventured a sideways look. “You look nice,” he said. He kept his eyes carefully above my neck, but I saw when I turned my head how they glanced down to my breasts and stomach, half bared in the fine linen.

“Thank you,” I said. “I think you look nice too.” And that was all we said until we reached the palace.

O
N ORDINARY DAYS
the Egyptians dine on stools about a table, or perhaps just sitting on the floor. For banquets, however, cushions were spread about long, low tables, and guests sat or reclined as they wished. On a dais at the end of the hall were three tables facing outward, where Pharaoh and his highest officials would eat. The center one was for the king himself, and no one shared it with him. The one to his left was for the Princess Basetamon.

She wore pure white tonight, but the great collar of lapis and gems she wore was so large that it reached almost to her waist. Her hair was dressed high and laden with jewels. Rings glittered on her fingers attached to pieces of gold mesh that fastened about her wrists, so her hands were covered in gold. Beside her, her brother watched out of dark Egyptian eyes, the double crown upon his head.

We were escorted to cushions at the far end of the hall, with ships’ captains and lesser priests. We had barely begun to recline before the musicians struck up a song on harp and flute, and servants came around with the first of the meal.

I was served stuffed duckling with tender hearts of palm, seared fish upon a bed of melokhia greens, olives from Achaia, and mussels from the deeps of the sea. There was wine as well, sweet and dark red, from Byblos and the lands that border it, cakes made with almond flour and iced with sesame paste.

We were eating and talking, looking about, when a servant came to Neas. “Prince Aeneas,” he said respectfully, “the Princess Basetamon requires you to attend her.”

Neas looked up. “Oh. Well. Then.” He got up and followed the servant. I watched him bow almost to the floor as he greeted her, then prostrated himself to Pharaoh.

“He shouldn’t do that,” Anchises said sharply.

“Be quiet,” I said.

“It’s important,” Amynter said. “If Pharaoh thinks well of us, then perhaps we can stay in his service. We fought well enough.”