Day of the False King (9 page)

“Semerket.”

“My friend Semerket here invited me in. He
wishes to consult with Babylon’s greatest physician.” He looked askance
at Semerket, pleading with his cloudy eyes, smiling piteously. “Isn’t
that so, son? I can see you’ve had a touch of river fever recently, am
I right?”

Semerket could have easily dismissed the old
man, but after a moment’s hesitation, he looked up at the wineseller
with a trace of defiance. “Another bowl of red for Babylon’s finest
physician.”

The old man’s tongue darted to the crusted
corners of his mouth. “A jar would be better, I think,” he said to
Hapi. “It’s devilish hot today.”

Semerket nodded.

“Show me the copper, first,” the wineseller
demanded.

Semerket reached into his belt and tossed
him the pieces.

Hapi the wine merchant delivered the jar
with the usual bonhomie that distinguished his establishment. Semerket
poured some for the old man, who eagerly raised the bowl to his lips
after nodding a quick toast to Semerket. In his haste to drink,
however, or because his hands were shaking, he spilled some wine onto
the ground. Without hesitation he removed his sash and sopped it up,
squeezing the few drops back into the bowl.

“Waste of good wine is a sin,” the old man
intoned firmly. “That’s what the Babylonians say, and I believe them.”

He seized the jar himself this time and
poured another bowlful, drinking the second more slowly.

“Ah,” he exhaled, “very soothing. Just the
thing to counter this beastly heat.”

He closed his eyes, sighing contentedly.
Semerket noticed that the old man’s trembling hands were calmer and
that color was slowly returning to his blotched face.

“Are you truly a physician?” asked Semerket.

“None finer in all Babylonia, though that’s
not saying much.” Kem-weset swallowed more wine. “They have no
appreciation for the medical arts here. Whenever anyone falls ill, do
they consult with a trained physician? No. Do they call in wizards for
a proper exorcism? Certainly not. They just move them out of their
homes, bed and all, into the Sick Square —”

“The what?”

“The Sick Square. That colossal joke where
Babylon laughs at me, at Kem-Weset, physician of Egypt.”

“But what is it?”

“What does it sound like, son? It’s a square
where they bring out the city’s sick and ailing. The wretches are
forced to call out — to total strangers, mind you — in the hope that
someone might know a cure for their affliction.”

“That sounds very backward.”

“That’s putting it mildly. But the
Babylonians have a horror of the lancet and probe. And you can’t really
know medicine, true medicine, if you’re squeamish. A body’s about
muscles and guts, sinews and organs, and all the liqueurs of life —
phlegm, bile, blood, urine, sweat, semen, shit —”

Kem-weset’s voice grew loud with his wine
and indignation. Semerket noticed Hapi glancing sharply at them from
his corner.

“Would you care for another jar?” Semerket
asked hastily, hoping to divert the old man.

“A capital idea.”

Semerket signaled the wineseller. Kem-weset
became positively giddy. “I must say, my boy, you’re being awfully
generous. What can I do for you in return?”

“I’m here in Babylon to find some friends,
to take them back to Egypt —”

“Back to
Egypt!”
the old man
interrupted, his voice charged with ecstatic longing, as if the word
Semerket had spoken were
heaven
or
paradise
. “How I
long to lie in the shadows of the pyramids and drink from the waters of
the Nile again. Alas…”

“What’s keeping you here? Did you commit
some crime that prevents you from returning?”

“Ah, no, nothing like that. I came here of
my own accord, thinking they might need a real doctor in these parts.”
The old man sighed again. “It is my mistress who keeps me here.”

Semerket blinked. Semerket tried to imagine
the mistress of such a man, but found his powers unequal to the task.
“A mistress?”

“Ah, dear me, yes. One whose heart is
granite, yet whose embrace I’ve never left without wanting more. She is
there in the bowl beside you.”

“Oh,” said Semerket, comprehending. “The
wine.”

Kem-weset nodded sadly. “I’ve no money to
return to Egypt, Semerket. I’ve given all of it away to people like
Hapi over there. I’m a physician with no patients, in a country with no
doctors, who lives from bowl to bowl. Hope of ever returning to Egypt
has withered in me.”

Semerket remembered his own days as the town
drunk, in the weeks and months after Naia had divorced him. He might
have become exactly like this pathetic old man, but the gods had been
merciful, giving him honest work to do. Kem-weset, it seemed, had not
even his profession to rescue him from despair.

“Surely the Egyptians here need your skills?”

“The occasional broken bone, some stitches —
that’s about all I’m good for. I’m still living on the remnants of a
fee I got a few weeks ago for patching up some local lads. Last year I
thought I’d latched onto something, but it came to nothing. As usual.”
Kem-weset wiped at his eyes with his wine-stained sash, burying his
large nose in its folds and blowing.

Semerket poured him another bowl of wine.

Kem-weset raised his head. “Let’s not talk
anymore of sad things,” he said. “This excellent wine won’t permit us
to be anything other than joyful. Now, you were telling me that you’d
come here to find your friends?”

Semerket nodded. “But the city’s so large. I
don’t know where to begin. Even the Egyptian Quarter here is so much
bigger than I expected.”

“Some twenty thousand of us in the city
alone, last time anyone bothered to count, and that’s not including the
rest of Babylonia.”

“Twenty thousand —!” Semerket choked. “How
could the quarter hold them all?”

“We’re all over the city, Semerket, not just
in this little place.” Kem-weset waved an extravagant hand to indicate
a myriad of unseen vistas. “Egyptians are very desirable as servants,
you know, because of our elegant manners.”

Semerket considered what Kem-weset had told
him. “Naia did write that she had become a maid in the Egyptian
ambassador’s residence —”

“Menef?” Kem-weset’s voice was sharp.

Semerket nodded.

The old man’s face lit up. “But I know him!
I told you that I thought I was onto something last year — that’s who
it was. When Menef came to Babylon, I tried to interest him in making
me his official physician. But he had brought his own doctor and luck
deserted me once again.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“But of course.”

“Can you take me there?”

“I can do more than that. I’ll introduce him
to you. I’m sure he’ll remember me.” Kem-weset preened importantly, and
then sighed regretfully. “But before we go…”

“What?”

“I noticed you haven’t touched that wine
there at your side…?”

Semerket passed his bowl to the physician.

DESPITE SEMERKET’S
IMPATIENCE to get under way, Kem-weset insisted that they
return to his nearby rooms, so that he could attire himself in his
formal robes and don his physician’s collar. A tedious hour passed
before the old soak reappeared. The old man had dressed himself in a
pleated linen tunic and shawl that even Semerket, who cared little for
fashion’s trends, ascertained was of no recent vintage.

For all his obvious decay, Kem-weset seemed
jaunty enough. “Come, Semerket!” he cried, setting his walking stick
firmly on the ground. Despite the copious amounts of wine he had
imbibed that morning, he walked swiftly through the lanes and byways of
Babylon without once stumbling — the sure sign of a true and committed
drunkard, thought Semerket.

At the boundaries of the Egyptian Quarter,
they paused at the canal so that Kem-weset could determine the best
route to take to the ambassador’s residence.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been there,”
he fretted. “Now which street is it…? You’d think the Babylonians could
lay down a straight road.”

The ambassador, it turned out, lived in a
walled-off enclave alongside the embassies and legations from other
countries. It was not difficult to determine which estate belonged to
the Egyptian ambassador, for twin spires flew the crimson and azure
pennants that proclaimed it an official outpost of the kingdom of
Egypt. It was a very imposing house, befitting the embassy of the
greatest of nations, but the brightness of the mansion’s recent
whitewash and the glaring colors of its decorations made Semerket crawl
with embarrassment. Its gaudiness was almost an assault amidst all the
mud brick. Semerket abruptly recalled, too, how the temple in the
Egyptian Quarter had gone untended, and how its two elderly acolytes
starved within it.

He felt his heart harden against Menef, who
would rather make his own home a palace than see the gods of Egypt well
housed. Though he cautioned himself against leaping to conclusions, a
tiny sneer began to pull irresistibly at his lips.

As he and Kem-weset drew nearer, Semerket
heard the cacophony of many voices. Rounding the corner, he was
appalled to see that perhaps two hundred litigants waited in the
estate’s shadow. They were Egyptian nationals, and each wore the same
eager yet resigned expression of someone who knows his case to be
hopeless, yet who hopes for a miracle. As they picked their way through
the crowd, going to the guardhouse, Semerket heard their murmured
conversations.

“…a mistake, we shouldn’t have been sent
here…”

“A crooked judge was
my
downfall.”

“If he will only review the facts of my
case, they speak plain…”

“It was such a little crime…who did it harm?”

Semerket inhaled deeply. Would his own story
sound so implausible and desperate? The difference was that he had in
his possession two writs of freedom from the pharaoh of Egypt himself.
Semerket reminded himself that he was only asking the ambassador for
information concerning Naia and Rami’s whereabouts, not for any
official intercession on their behalf.

He anxiously turned to Kem-weset. “Can you
get us in there ahead of these others? If Menef does indeed know who
you are…?”

A momentary glint of doubt clouded the
physician’s eye. Gone was Kem-weset’s jaunty bravado, replaced by
diffidence. “That is, yes…probably. I’ll speak to the guard ahead. I’m
sure he’ll remember me — though it was some months ago, you must
remember…”

Tentatively Kem-weset approached the small
sentry house beside the gates. He raised his hand in a shaky greeting.
The clerk continued to mark a clay tablet with his stylus, ignoring
him. Kem-weset cleared his throat noisily.

“Good sir — a moment?”

The pimply clerk glanced at Kem-weset from
beneath his lowered lids. When he saw who it was, the clerk grimaced
slightly. He turned to murmur something to a nearby guard. The guard
was a young man, anxious to make an impression, and immediately affixed
a fierce glower to his features. He came from the shack to bark rudely
into Kem-weset’s face, “Back of the line, old sot!”

Yes, thought Semerket dismally, they did
indeed know Kem-weset here.

When the old physician protested, saying
that he wished an interview with Menef — that the ambassador would
surely remember him, that he was a physician of some renown in Egypt —
the young guard struck him savagely across his throat with the shaft of
his spear. Kem-weset collapsed onto the ground like a sacrificed
heifer, to lie gasping in the dust of the street, clutching his neck.

With a cry, Semerket ran to the old man’s
side. Kem-weset’s eyes bulged from their sockets, tears oozing as he
struggled for air. Quickly Semerket felt the physician’s neck, and
ascertained that his trachea had not collapsed. When Kem-weset could
breathe again, Semerket raised his eyes to gaze into the young guard’s
face.

What the guard saw in those black eyes
caused the young man to reconsider his own fierce glare for a moment.
The youth blinked uncertainly, and swallowed. “You, too,” he said,
attempting again to be gruff and threatening, “go to the rear and wait
like everyone else.”

Semerket merely continued to stare at him.
The lad suddenly remembered his courage and feinted at Semerket with
his spear, obviously expecting him to cower. But Semerket abruptly
wrenched the spear from his hands and broke it in two across his knee.

As Semerket threw the two ends into a nearby
canal, cheers erupted from the crowd of supplicants. The young soldier,
alarmed, sprinted to the sentry house to speak in earnest tones with
the clerk. They both stared anxiously at Semerket, who was now
advancing on them.

Before Semerket had a chance to confront
them, however, the gates to the embassy unexpectedly opened from
inside. The crowd surged forward, and Semerket had to struggle to keep
them from trampling the still-prone Kem-weset.

A richly uniformed herald appeared and stood
upon a stone. He loudly proclaimed that the ambassador would grant no
more audiences to anyone that day, as he had been summoned to the royal
palace. A great groan of disappointed anger rose in the throats of the
crowd, sounding like a giant animal suddenly roused.

At the sound, an entire cohort of guards
suddenly appeared from behind the gates and began to clear a pathway
through the mob, herding the people away with the shafts of their
spears. Semerket strained to see behind them and into the estate. He
glimpsed a large carrying chair at the front door of the main house,
ready for use.

A short, plump man emerged into the
sunlight, sleek and spoiled as a temple cat, and stepped into the
chair. From the richness of his robes and the glint of real gold in his
elaborately braided wig, the man could only be Menef himself. With his
hawk-tipped staff of office gripped firmly in his hands, he was raised
high on the shoulders of his liveried bearers.