Day of the False King (19 page)

Menef took her hand in his, urging her from
the couch, and handed her over to her waiting women. She tripped
suddenly, lurching forward, and her maids leapt to catch her. The
queen’s alabaster cup smashed on the floor. She turned her pale eyes on
Semerket a final time.

“I didn’t weep overmuch when the plantation
was sacked, you know. I only weep to think she might still be alive —
like that wife of yours.”

After her maids escorted the queen to her
bedchamber, Semerket, Menef, and the Asp stood awkwardly regarding one
another. Menef put a finger to his lips, and gestured that they should
withdraw into the outer courtyard, where the three conferred in
whispers beneath a flickering torch.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Menef said
in his high-pitched, oleaginous voice.

“On the contrary, I only wish I could have
heard more,” Semerket said. “But you saw to it that I couldn’t. And I
find this strange in someone who’s usually so eager to spread knowledge
throughout the world.”

Menef was uncertain what Semerket meant. “My
lord…?”

Semerket fixed him with a level gaze.
“Everywhere I go in Babylon, from Bel-Marduk’s temple to the palace
itself, I find that Pharaoh’s private wishes are known by everyone —
told to them by you.”

The chubby little ambassador was unprepared
for this direct assault. Nevertheless, he inclined his head, instantly
comprehending the crux of the matter. “My Lord Semerket is new to
Babylon, and unfamiliar with the political realities here. Much has
changed since the Elamites invaded,” he said. “If I erred by informing
certain high personages of Pharaoh’s request for the idol, it was
merely to facilitate your enterprise. If I may instruct you on the
situation…?”

The black fires in Semerket’s eyes instantly
ignited. “You may not. But
I
will instruct
you,
Lord Ambassador.”

Menef raised his head abruptly, unused to
being addressed as an underling.

“Your first and only care is the protection
of Egypt’s interest and Pharaoh’s good name —”

“As it ever has been, great lord,” Menef
murmured. “I’m surprised you’d think I’d do otherwise.”

“Yet because of you, the subject of
Pharaoh’s health is probably being discussed at this very moment in
courts from Keftiu to India.”

Droplets of sweat began to appear on Menef’s
upper lip. “Surely, my lord, it’s naive to think such knowledge can be
kept a secret for long.”

“Yes. Particularly when indiscreet ministers
such as you serve Pharaoh.”

Semerket thought he saw a flash of alarm in
Menef’s slippery expression, while the Asp’s hand moved to clutch the
hilt of his sword.

Ignoring the glowering bodyguard, Semerket
continued his harangue. “I’ll say it frankly, Menef: whether or not I
report this treachery of yours to Pharaoh will depend on the level of
cooperation I get from you from now on.”

Menef hunched his shoulders, reminding
Semerket of a tortoise seeking protection from a lion’s fangs. “What
will it take to convince you of my loyalty, Great Lord?” he asked
meekly.

“Decide first whom you serve, Pharaoh or the
Elamites.”

Menef came close to groveling. “My lord, I
do indeed apologize if I offended, but what was I to do? The king
himself asked me to look after Queen Narunte. You can see how she is
when she’s…” He gestured, not wanting to say the obvious word.

Semerket supplied it for him. “When she’s
drunk?”

Menef winced delicately, and looked around
into the shadows of the courtyard before he nodded. “My lord,” he said.
“There are many things to say, and this is perhaps not the best place
in which to say them.”

“I have only one thing more that I
will
say, Menef.” Semerket’s voice was colder than the breezes in any winter
night. “And that’s to tell you that I’ll never forgive you for sending
my wife to that plantation. Never.”

Semerket noted the quick glance Menef and
the Asp exchanged. “Again, my lord, what was I to do? The prince and
princess were newly arrived. They needed servants. The queen asked me
to send a few of mine to them —”

“The queen?” Semerket was doubtful. “She
didn’t sound as if she’d lift a finger to help her sister-in-law.”

“It was the king, then, who asked me. Who
can say? It was many weeks ago, and hard to recall.” A crafty look
crept across the ambassador’s face upon those words. “But surely, now
that your wife has been recovered, aren’t we really arguing over
nothing?”

Damn Aneku and her lies! Still wishing to
protect the former Ishtaritu, however, Semerket held his tongue.

Sensing Semerket’s indecision, Menef became
all unctuousness. “I feel we’ve started badly here, my lord, first
outside the embassy — where you really should have made yourself known
to me — and now tonight at the palace. If you will permit me, I’ll make
it up to you. Would you please be my guest tonight at an entertainment?”

“I’m hardly inclined —”

“But it’s a most extraordinary
entertainment, the singer Nidaba. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

“Nidaba?” Semerket pricked up his ears.

“Yes, my lord, an extraordinary woman, a
most accomplished singer. They say hers is the greatest voice in the
world. Will you come? Will you allow me to demonstrate my hospitality
to my most honored guest?”

Semerket hesitated. He had wanted to explore
this singer’s house since Senmut and Wia had mentioned it to him
earlier. “Yes,” he said abruptly. “I’ll come.”

“And, of course, you must share my chair.”
Menef smiled toothily.

Semerket instantly remembered the
ostentatious equipage in which the ambassador traveled, with its forty
liveried bearers. He shuddered.

“If I must,” he said.

NIDABA’S HOUSE WAS NEAR
the old quarter, at the ancient center of Babylon. Her concierge, a
Syrian clad in the florid garments of his race, flung open the gates
and hurried over to the grotesque carry chair and its forty bearers. He
and Menef fell into each other’s arms. When they had unclasped, the
Syrian’s gaze shifted almost imperceptibly to Semerket. “My. Isn’t the
map of the Nile all over
your
face.”

Menef made the introductions.

“ ‘Special envoy from the Pharaoh’?”
murmured the man, reaching out to finger Semerket’s falcon badge. “Wait
until she feasts her eyes on this.” He scanned the courtyard for
available seats. “Well, we’d better hide you far away, hadn’t we?
Otherwise this little trinket will surely be in her treasure box before
morning.”

The concierge, generously tipped by Menef,
led them to a grouping of couches at the edge of the courtyard. The Asp
melted discreetly away, to watch over them from the shadows. Just as
Semerket and Menef became comfortable, a thin, cringing fellow wrapped
in an enormous robe crept furtively to their divan.

“Pardon me, good lords,” he said, opening
his robe slightly. Stuffed into its interior pockets were a variety of
clay tablets and rolled papyri. “Would the gentlemen be interested in a
letter of transit to Nineveh, perhaps, signed by the vizier himself?”

“Do I look like a fugitive to you?” asked
Menef irritably.

“Joppa, then? Ilium?”

“Go away, you rogue.”

“Perhaps you have one to sell? I pay good
gold for them.” He jingled his leather purse significantly.

The sudden appearance of the Asp cut short
the man’s wheedling. One glance at the Asp’s bared yellow teeth was all
it took to send the man fleeing across the courtyard. Semerket noticed
that many such peddlers filled the rooms. He remembered old Wia’s
saying to him that at Nidaba’s house one could buy the kinds of things
not sold in the regular marketplace.

Semerket turned abruptly to Menef. “I wonder
how Nidaba can flourish like this. Is she perhaps a member of this gagu
I’ve heard so much about?”

Menef turned an incredulous eye on him.
“Let’s just say she’s not the sort of woman the gagu would admit and
leave it at that.”

But Semerket could never leave anything “at
that” and opened his mouth to demand the reason. Just then, however, a
voice pealed richly from the upstairs gallery. “Hello, my darlings!”

Nidaba stood behind the balustrade, her arms
flung wide in greeting. The men abandoned their gambling games in the
back rooms to come running into the courtyard. Those who sat in divans
rose to their feet, cheering loudly, intoning her name as though she
were a goddess.

Nidaba descended the stairway one step at a
time, spying her favorites among the crowd, calling out warmly to them.
“How are you, sweetheart? Oh, marvelous!…There you are, my spirit, safe
home at last! I was fantastically worried!” Her speaking voice was
indeed lovely, Semerket admitted, a low, simmering tenor. As Nidaba
paused on the final step, one of her waiting women gave her the leash
fastened to a pet cheetah. Nidaba was now ready to circulate.

Semerket sat back down on the divan,
allowing a serving maid to refill his bowl of beer. He amused himself
by looking about the villa, staring into the distant rooms. He watched
as documents were produced and examined, as gold and silver exchanged
hands, as kisses were traded to seal pacts.

Semerket turned to gaze again into the
courtyard, only to realize that he now stared directly into the face of
the cheetah. With a strangled cry, Semerket leapt back against the
cushions. The big cat took a few uncertain steps backward, straining to
hide behind the skirts of her mistress.

Collecting himself, Semerket raised his head
to stare into the eyes of Nidaba.

“Don’t be afraid of Inanna,” she said in her
low, sultry voice. “She’s really quite docile.”

“I…I was taken by surprise,” Semerket
stammered, rising to his feet.

He noted that Nidaba was far from the
voluptuous odalisque she appeared from afar, being in fact rather
reedy. She was very tall for a woman, and her robes of rare silk picked
out her angular form. Semerket noticed that she had painted her face to
create a countenance that might not even have existed in real life, a
masterpiece of subtle shadings of ocher and cochineal, highlighted by
powdered fish scales.

“Such black eyes,” Nidaba crooned, staring
at him. “I’ve never seen blacker. Do they match your heart?”

It was the kind of question deserving the
kind of witty riposte he had always been incapable of producing
quickly. “I — I don’t know,” Semerket stammered out.

As her concierge had done, she reached out
to fondle the falcon badge that hung from his neck. Nidaba’s eyes
became full of acquisitive greed. “You’ve no idea what I would do to
possess that,” she said, her voice full of sordid insinuation. “You’ll
give it to me as a gift, no? To seal our friendship?”

“No.”

Nidaba laughed regretfully. She let the
badge go, and it fell heavily to his chest. To his intense relief, she
began to turn away. She paused, however, and spoke to him from over a
bare shoulder. “You are still welcome in my house, Semerket, though you
have been very cruel to me. But I have heard others speak well of you,
and I am of a forgiving nature.”

Raised voices suddenly intruded from the
gardens, preventing Semerket from asking who had spoken well of him.
The concierge broke through the horde of men surrounding Nidaba to
whisper urgently into her ear. The word “Elamites!” was murmured and
Nidaba threw a warning glance around the courtyard.

The Dark Heads in the back rooms and
courtyard instantly faded away, some even slipping over the walls into
the streets behind the villa. Such behavior confirmed what Semerket had
suspected, that Nidaba’s house was a hub of Dark Head resistance.

A group of drunken Elamite officers suddenly
burst into the courtyard, laughing loudly. Nidaba strode leisurely
toward them, smiling seductively, the cheetah’s leash in hand. Semerket
noticed with satisfaction how a couple of the Elamite officers hung
back as the cat approached.

“Captain Khutran!” Nidaba trilled to their
leader, dressed in glittering armor of overlapping metal discs. “This
is a surprise.”

“Not an unpleasant one, I hope!” he brayed.
Khutran clung to the shoulders of his companions, so drunk he could
barely stand.

“You seem very pleased with yourselves
tonight,” Nidaba purred to the officers. “Have you something to
celebrate, then?”

One of the captains spoke up, “Khutran here
has been promoted — and by the king himself, no less! He’s now colonel
of the garrison forces!”

Semerket grunted to himself, satisfied.
Already Kutir had replaced Shepak. He wondered if his friend had been
told the reason for his reassignment, and hoped that Shepak realized
that it brought with it the promise of survival.

“So we thought,” Khutran shouted, “screw any
Isin attack! Screw the Babylonians! Let’s go over to Nidaba’s and hear
some love songs tonight, for we’re all in a lusty mood!” He reached to
pull Nidaba toward him, but she sidestepped his drunken lunge. A
warning rattle issued from deep inside the cheetah’s throat.

“I’ve another song in mind,” answered
Nidaba, “to mark the occasion of my lord Khutran’s promotion.”

The concierge appeared to escort the
Elamites to their seats. With their armor rattling loudly, the soldiers
finally sat. A hush fell over the crowd, and servants went about the
villa extinguishing the lamps, giving many who hid in the back rooms
another chance to escape. Only the dais at the center of the courtyard
remained lit by lanterns, shining down on a hassock upholstered in rich
purple.

A palpable excitement charged the crowd when
a serving woman brought Nidaba a lyre. As the crowd quieted, Nidaba
tuned the strings of her instrument, taking her seat. Then Nidaba
plucked a fierce, loud note, and her voice rang out in the night air —
a thing of such vitality and power that Semerket was hard-pressed to
believe it came from a human.