Day of the False King (3 page)

“At least the ship’s moving again,” he
thought sourly.

On the previous day, the crew had not been
allowed to ply their oars, for it was the Sabbath of Elibar’s strange
and only god. Even food was forbidden them. Not that Semerket could
eat. For almost the entire three days of the voyage, he had been so
sick he thought he was going to die. Strangely, he seemed to be the
only one aboard affected by the malady. If he survived, he vowed to
himself, he would never again sail abroad on this salt sea, no matter
how much time it might save him.

The ship began its relentless pitching and
tossing as it skimmed across the white-topped waves, assisted by the
ten pairs of rowers. Semerket felt his guts twist again into painful
knots. The captain must have seen his beleaguered expression, for he
came aft and bent down to speak reassuringly to him.

“Now, now, sir,” the captain said, “no need
for that face. Coastal waters soon and we’ll be moored in Tyre by
nightfall.”

Semerket nodded, unable to speak, and
attempted once more to stand. This time he was successful. He looked in
the direction of the ship’s prow and saw that Elibar and his four sons
had already gathered around the bronze cooking brazier.

Elibar saw him standing, and cheerfully
hailed him from the fore-deck. “Can you manage something to eat today,
Semerket?” he asked in Egyptian. “We’ve slaughtered a sheep to break
the fast.”

Semerket shook his head weakly. In response,
he heard the low snickers of Elibar’s sons, who had joined them in
Egypt’s northern capital of Pi-Ramesse where they had been visiting
their aunt Ese, Pharaoh’s mother. Though the youngest of them was still
beardless, they were all strong, competent men, tall in stature and
hard in appearance. Their eyes were the bright and piercing bronze of
hawks, and their skin darkened from weeks spent herding their father’s
immense flocks of sheep. They had been quick to tell Semerket that
though their ancestors had settled in Canaan, they considered
themselves members of the Habiru tribe — or tribes (Semerket gathered
there were more than one). Their country was a new one called Israel,
or perhaps it was Judea; they conversed so rapidly in their strangely
accented Egyptian that Semerket was unsure. Whatever its name, it
seemed to be a nation where there were no kings, but rather judges,
ruling by the consent of their fierce desert god.

Seeing him awake, the young men gathered
around Semerket to question and pester him. “Is it true you’re going to
Babylon to bring back the devil’s idol for Cousin Ramses?” asked the
youngest.

“I’m going there to find my wife,” Semerket
said, choking back his stomach. He was shocked to learn that the lad
knew of his quest for the idol of Bel-Marduk. Ramses must have confided
the secret to Elibar.

“Egyptian women are harlots.” This from the
eldest.

“My wife is no harlot,” Semerket said
firmly, an edge to his voice.

“Yet our father tells us she is not really
your wife at all,” said the tallest son. “He says she divorced you to
marry another man, a traitor who raised his hand against our dead Uncle
Ramses. Is that true?”

Semerket’s stomach churned dangerously. “She
wanted a child,” he managed to gasp. “I couldn’t give her one. She
didn’t know he was a traitor when she married him.”

“Is that why you Egyptians allow your women
the freedom to bed whomever they choose? Must they search everywhere,
then, for men who can give them sons?”

“That isn’t why we allow freedom to women —”

“Look what happened to Uncle Ramses — killed
by his own wives. How shameful is that? In our land, you would never
hear of such disgrace. Women should keep to their homes, raising their
children and spinning the good wool.”

Semerket truly did not feel up to such
debate, but attempted to answer the lad reasonably. “Men and women in
Egypt take their example from the marriage of Isis and Osiris,” he
explained. “Osiris could not be King of the Dead without the help of
his wife.”

At this, Elibar’s sons burst into
contemptuous laughter. “But they are false gods,” said the third
oldest. “They don’t exist! How can you even mention them to us?”

This comment provoked the young men to lapse
into their native tongue, all shouting together and gesticulating
violently, turning their backs on Semerket. He took the opportunity to
slip away unnoticed and join Elibar at the ship’s prow.

The ship rolled suddenly, and Semerket was
surprised to find he suffered no accompanying urge to vomit. In fact,
the mutton stew in the swaying cooking pot smelled almost tempting.
Perhaps he had at last obtained his — what did the captain call them? —
his “sea legs.”

In the prow, beneath an awning, Pharaoh’s
cousin Elibar was praying, with his shawl drawn around his head.
Semerket waited for the man’s muttering and keening to cease before he
spoke.

“Your sons are very passionate,” Semerket
said when Elibar opened his eyes.

Elibar canted his head to regard the four
young men. “It’s a good thing for men to be passionate about their
beliefs,” he said with his usual deliberateness. “Sometimes, only a
deeper conviction gives us an advantage over our enemies. Sometimes,
it’s all we have.”

“I would have thought it was your god who
gave you the advantage.”

Elibar shrugged, indicating that the
sentiment was understood.

“They certainly despise Egyptians, though,”
Semerket said, looking back at the youths.

“Perhaps you didn’t know that the Habirus
were once enslaved by the Egyptians,” explained Elibar, “or so our
tradition tells us. But we prayed to our god, and he sent a hero to
rescue us; his name was Moses.”

Semerket, who had never heard this story
before, shook his head doubtfully. “But Moses is an Egyptian name, or
at least half of one.”

“Moses was a Habiru who was drawn from the
Nile and raised as a prince in Pharaoh’s Golden House. So, yes, you can
say that he was an Egyptian — or at least half of one.”

“Why have I never heard of your ‘hero’?”

“Perhaps because he lived over three hundred
years ago.”

“Elibar,” said Semerket with a trace of
condescension, “in Egypt, that’s like saying ‘yesterday.’ ”

Elibar regarded him skeptically, smiling to
himself, but saying nothing.

“Do you believe the story?” Semerket asked.

At that moment, a school of fish suddenly
swarmed near the surface, breaking the water in a flurry of froth and
furious spume. Their silver flanks sparkled in the rays of the rising
sun. A few sailors took a moment to cast lines into the sea in the hope
of snagging a meal.

Elibar answered Semerket in a low voice, so
that his words would not carry on the winds to his sons. “I will tell
you what my cousin Ramses believes, if you’re of a mind to listen, for
he claims to have read the suppressed scrolls.”

Semerket shifted uncomfortably. All too
often knowledge of the truth brought with it its own kind of penalty.
Nevertheless, he nodded, indicating that Elibar should speak.

Elibar leaned in close. “Ramses says the
Habirus first invaded Egypt alongside the Hyksos. One of them, Youssef,
even rose to become high vizier under the Hyksos king. He was given the
task of exterminating the native Egyptians in the Delta, and drove
their survivors south into Thebes. Ramses insists the Habiru legend is
actually wrong side up — that it was the Egyptians who were oppressed
by the invaders.”

Semerket shrugged. Every Egyptian knew of
the Hyksos. Their invasion was the national scar on the nation’s
conscience, and their expulsion Egypt’s greatest victory.

“When the native southern kings at last
prevailed,” Elibar continued, “they enslaved those Habirus who had
stayed behind and slew their every male child.”

“The usual punishment dealt to Egypt’s
invaders,” said Semerket reasonably. “It’s told about the Libyans, the
Shardanas, Danites, the Sea Peoples — any of the tribes who invaded
Egypt.”

“But only the Habirus produced a Deliverer.”

“Ah, yes,” said Semerket ironically, “the
Slave King raised in a palace.”

Elibar regarded him patiently. “Will you
hear more?”

“Go on.”

“Ramses believes Moses was one of his own
ancestors, a Prince
Thut
-moses, a nephew of Queen Hatshepsut.
My cousin says that Prince Thut-moses made common cause with the
Habirus, planning to use them as warriors in his attempt to take the
throne. But the coup failed. Only the intervention of Hatshepsut
allowed him to escape Egypt, together with a handful of Habirus. It was
then that he began to worship a single god of the desert, where he
wandered like a crazed wizard for many years.”

Semerket was silent for a moment. “Why do
you tell me these things?” he asked.

“To illustrate, perhaps, that all life is
merely a point of view — that nothing is what it seems.”

“You tell that to me, clerk of
Investigations and Secrets?” Semerket laughed shortly.

“I mean it as a warning, Semerket, to guide
you perhaps to where you are going. You must remember that Mesopotamia
is a different world from Egypt altogether. It’s disordered and
chaotic. Often you cannot see what is right in front of you; often you
will see what is not there.”

There was a sudden yelp of glee from one of
the sailors. He had snagged a large fat fish, enough to feed them all
that night. Others ran to help him scoop it from the sea.

Elibar pointed. “That’s how it will be for
you, Semerket — like that fish there, ripped from the only world it
ever knew into one it never imagined. Not even the air you breathe will
be the same.”

“I’m not so complete a fool as you may
think,” muttered Semerket. “I’ve been to Babylonia before, you know,
though not as far as the capital; I can even read their language,
though slowly.”

“Perhaps that will be enough,” Elibar said
doubtfully.

They watched the big fish struggle on the
deck, gasping and snapping futilely at its captors. Finally, the
laughing sailors fell on it, clubbing it to death with their oars.

A tiny droplet of fear crept into Semerket’s
soul. He would have liked to ruminate over Elibar’s words, to twist
them around in his mind and dredge them of their hidden meaning — but
suddenly, from the lookout’s nest above the sail, came the shout:

“Land!”

They had sighted the coast of Asia. Semerket
uttered a quick prayer of thanks; at least now, if the ship foundered
there would be a chance of making it to shore.

By noon, the ship had joined the long line
of others that were crowding into Tyre’s newly built harbor. As the
sailors prepared to moor the ship, Semerket returned to where he had
stored his travel sack. Within it was the glittering badge of office
that Pharaoh had given him, designating him Egypt’s special envoy. It
was a thing of heavy and magisterial beauty, a falcon whose
outstretched wings covered most of his chest. Semerket had not yet
donned it; the first lands through which he would travel had once been
colonies of Egypt and their inhabitants still harbored bitter
resentments toward their one-time masters. Sometimes they killed the
occasional Egyptian wayfarer to settle old scores. “Evil has an
Egyptian mother,” was the saying in these Asian lands.

Also within the leather pouch, beside the
letters that manumitted Rami and Naia, were five clay tablets that
Pharaoh had given him. Inscribed with the strange, wedge-shaped
characters of Babylonia, they entitled him to draw monies from temple
counting houses throughout Mesopotamia. Each of the five tablets bore
Semerket’s thumbprint, for the Babylonians believed that the swirls and
loops etched into every person’s thumb were unique. The temple priests
believed they could tell if the bearer was truly the person to whom the
monies were entitled. Semerket found this to be an absurd notion, but
if all it took was his thumbprint to freely access Pharaoh’s bullion,
who was he to dispute the custom?

In the pouch with the clay tablets were the
only other items he had brought along with him. The first was the
brittle piece of palm bark from Rami. The second was another letter,
Naia’s only message to him from Babylon, inscribed on a piece of
papyrus she had filched from the ambassador’s waste pits. Perhaps for
the hundredth time, Semerket unfolded the brittle paper to read:

Semerket’s heart began to beat
with excitement when he heard the splash of the anchor stone. He
realized that only a couple of hundred leagues separated him from his
beloved.

“I’m here, Naia,” he whispered. “Do you feel
it? Look up, and you will see me.”

SHAUL, THE
ELDEST SON of Elibar, together with a few of his father’s more
burly shepherds, escorted Semerket to the Babylonian border. Though the
land differed in no way from the rolling hills in which they had been
traveling for at least a week, Semerket knew the land to be Babylonian
by the tall, slim boundary stone that marked it. He stepped from
Shaul’s four-wheeled chariot to the ground. Dutifully, he knelt and
kissed the earth, thanking the gods for his safe arrival.

The boundary stone stood flat and gray at
the junction of two roads, carved with the names and images of the
Babylonian gods, invoking their curses should anyone violate the
hospitality of the people living behind it. Fierce gryphons with
slashing claws stood sentry on either side of the stone, promising
swift punishment to those who disregarded its warnings.