Dream Boat (31 page)

Hang on. Claudia ticked off the deities. One of them was missing. The leader himself was absent. A figure rippled up alongside her shoulder and Claudia felt her heart thump with

relief. She did not need to turn her head to know that Junius had found her.

'Any luck?' she whispered from the corner of her mouth.

'Flavia's here all right.' He shuffled forward, so no one else could hear. 'Last night, she accidentally caught Geb with a hot pan and scalded him.'

Claudia heard her own sharp intake of breath and passed it off to a curious Mercy as the closeness of being near her beau. Mercy, glancing at the handsome lad beside her, produced another of her famous coarse winks. Dammit, so close to Flavia and I didn't bloody know!

'Unfortunately,' Junius continued under his breath, 'she was that scared of repercussions, she's gone into hiding, and that's not all. One of the laundry girls hasn't been seen, either. It's not that unusual, she's a bit of a loner by all accounts, but in view of what you told me, about six missing girls, I thought it might be relevant.'

This boy gets better and better! She was about to give him further instructions, when Mercy gave her a cautionary dig in the ribs, and suddenly Claudia was aware of how the mood had changed around her. Tension rippled round the silent crowd. As one, the commune held its breath . . .

Booo-ooom.

The single drumbeat made her jump and sent a ghostly echo round the valley.

'Behold your son, O Lord of the West.' The resonant voice of the High Priest carried far across the temple forecourt. 'Behold the Pharaoh, Mentu, father of the fatherless, husband of the widow, protector of the weak.'

Reaching into the moleskin sack which hung around his waist, the priest tossed a handful of what looked like black ash upon the fire and whoosh! smoke exploded into the air, beclouding everything.

Booo-ooom. Booo-ooom. Ba-boom.

To the new drumbeat, the smoke subsided, and as it did so, a throne rose upwards from the middle of the boat. Seated upon it, in full pharaonic regalia, was Mentu and for the first time

Claudia was able to see the man beneath the golden mask. For this new ritual - this test, whatever it might be - his face was no longer painted blue and the only embellishment to his natural features was a false chin beard of plaited hair held on with straps. Claudia leaned forward for a closer view.

Min was not, as she expected, the younger brother. Mentu was at least ten years his junior.

Around his broad and stocky shoulders hung a cloak of vulture feathers. A cobra of pure gold entwined itself around his forehead. The twin protectresses, she thought. The vulture, gentle and sheltering, whose broad wingspan gives asylum to the Pharaoh and his people, and the royal serpent, its hood raised, spitting venom. In his left hand Mentu held something which looked like a tiny shepherd's crook, and in the other what looked like a fly whisk. Claudia had a suspicion they were neither!

'Tonight,' he said, and every eye was on him, 'tonight we set a vigil for Ra, as he wrestles with the serpent in the void, to give our thanks for the joy which he has brought us in the past and which he will again bestow upon his children in the future.'

'For the gladness that thou bringest, we adore thee.'

The Pharaoh, high upon his throne, let his gaze wander over his enraptured audience. The tension in the group tightened like a spring.

'What's happening?' whispered Junius, but Claudia had no answer. Only an uneasy feeling that she was about to witness the mechanism that bound six hundred people to one man.

The silence stretched on. A buzzard, mewing in the hills, was answered by its mate. A horse whinnied in the stables. Cattle lowed.

'When I tell you,' Mentu said at last, 'that there are enemies of Ra who seek to destroy what we have built, do you believe me?'

'We believe you,' rose the chorus. 'We place our trust in thee, O lord Osiris.'

'Suppose, though, I were to tell you that, even now, there are those who seek to destroy us from within?'

The collective gasp which rose up from the crowd told Claudia that there was no set rejoinder, that Mentu had sprung a surprise on them. Was it coincidence, that Mercy's hand had now linked up with hers? She thought of Geb, suspicious of a man dressed as a guard. The minute this ceremony was over, the hairy godfather would follow up the scent. A shiver rippled over Claudia, as she wondered why the presence of one guard should so unsettle him.

'I hope,' Claudia told Mercy, disengaging her fingers, 'Mentu's not referring to that nice young couple who came with me from Rome.'

Mercy said nothing, and slipped instead a protective arm around her shoulders. Oh, you're good, Mersyankh. You're 
very
good.

Mentu waited for his flock's discomfiture to settle. 'Seth, the Dark Destroyer, the Devourer of Souls, moves among us daily,' he said solemnly, 'tempting us to join him in his anarchy and chaos, to undermine what we have built.'

'Seth, the Dark Destroyer cannot touch us, we are pure.'

Aha, the sermon was back on track. From the way the chorus tripped neatly off their tongues, the members were used to responding to references to this Seth character who, it would appear, represented disorder and annihilation, the antithesis of what the commune stood for. Vaguely, Claudia remembered snippets of the myth. Seth was the evil god, whose lust for power eventually got him ostracised and thrown into the desert, and whose rage whips up dust and sand storms.

'Unless our hearts are pure,' Mentu said, 'unless we can assure the Judges of the Dead that we have committed none of the Forty-two Deadly Sins that deny us access to the Underworld, Seth will gobble up our souls and condemn us to eternal desolation.'

'O Lord Osiris, let our hearts weigh light against the Feather of Truth.'

'I cannot expect you to accept my word on trust,' said the Pharaoh. 'I must earn the right to your respect - oh yes!' He held up his hand to quell the protests. 'Only by seeing

for yourselves can you truly follow me along the Path of Righteousness to walk the Fields of the Blessed for eternity.'

All around her, the chorus rang out
'Praise be to Ra!'
and Claudia knew she was about to be shown Mentu's secret weapon at long last.

Through my father, Ra, I can bestow upon you my own immortality . . .'

So that was it! The key to Mentu's power! A giggle simmered deep inside her breast. Roll up, roll up, come and join the circus! She looked at the Pharaoh, sitting on his royal throne and scratching at his royal birthmark. You cunning son of a bitch. Eternal life in return for a few offerings of gold and silver, jewels and gemstones . . . Ha! You're nothing but a common charlatan, and any minute now you'll start a game of 'Find the Lady', fooling everyone with your tricks and sleight of hand!

Well, it wasn't necessarily these people's fault. Pyramidiots they might be, but many a fool has been parted from his money for less! Let's see, how
do
you prove yourself immortal, Mentu? A padded vest, in which a bag of blood has been concealed, so that when you're stabbed through with a sword, you're seen to bleed - to die - and then, hey presto! A few words of mumbo-jumbo, a few rites and rituals, and yippee, it's a miracle. The Pharaoh lives!

Penno, the temple warden with the big ears, was leading forward a small black goat by its gilded horns to where the High Priest held a goblet high above his gleaming pate. Claudia nodded. The potion would be fed to that poor goat, who'd die of whatever deadly concoction Shabak had knocked up, and then the great man himself would step up to 'drink' the poisoned brew.

Fine. If these peabrains were so stupid as to imagine Mentu could die and be reborn in twenty minutes, then Claudia was not complaining. As far as she was concerned, this drippy bunch could stick their invidious fawnings where Ra's rays didn't shine.

Meanwhile, she had work to do!

For Orbilio to imply that he was on the staff had been a slight embellishment on the actuality. In fact, it had been a downright bloody lie.

He pushed aside the heavy door which opened in to the bakery. Outside, the quern was still, the horse collar dangling forlornly from the pole which traversed the rotary grinding cone and Marcus rejoiced for the absent donkey, who must get pretty dizzy going round and round, even in short shifts. Indoors, the dry air tickled at his nose and made him sneeze. Baskets of grain lined up for milling queued patiently against the back wall. Sacks of flour hunkered beneath scrubbed trestle tables, over which tomorrow scores of bare-backed workers would sweat buckets kneading dough. Orbilio placed his hand flat against the chimney wall, not surprised that the great oven in the wall had been kept going. Fires like that took too much time to build up once they'd died, it was best to keep them ticking over. There was still plenty of charcoal in the leather bucket.

He fondled the wooden handle of the mighty iron paddle on which the loaves were pushed into the oven, and thought it wasn't all a lie. That bit about reporting to Geb, for instance - that was true. One of the security guards had told him. He'd also told him that sentries weren't allowed down here, not unless they'd captured someone, otherwise they were not permitted past the inner fence, which, like the outer barrier, ringed the far side of the hills. No, the guard had admitted, neither he nor his fellow mercenaries knew much about what went on here, it meant certain death

to even gossip or conjecture, and since they were paid such bloody good wages, he for one wasn't prepared to piss into his own honey pot. Their job, he added firmly, was to patrol the perimeters - to keep outsiders out and to keep insiders in and yes, that included women, although to his certain knowledge no girl had escaped, much less half a dozen.

Nevertheless, under pressure, he did admit that, despite the restrictions placed upon his movements and his lips, he'd picked up enough about this mongrel organisation to know that the Brothers were packaging Egypt more as untutored Romans imagined it, than a true reflection of real life in the province. Orbilio tended to agree. From regular dinner parties with a man who had served under the Governor of Egypt he'd learned that the genuine culture, with its religious beliefs and laws, daily practices, had little in common with this bastardised society. This valley here was way off key. A distinct duff note in the music of the Nile.

Checking that the coast was clear, he closed the bakery door quietly behind him and, keeping to the shadows, crossed over to the brew house. Hm. The door was locked. He rattled the handle twice, put his shoulder to the woodwork and, when it wouldn't budge, moved on, the sour smell of barley beer clinging like a leech.

It had bothered him, at first, that people were prepared to follow Mentu blindly like they did. Then he realised that the trick was to make them believe something which, on the surface, was so utterly unbelievable that then they'd' swallow anything, no matter how incredible it seemed. Two years experience in the Security Police suggested that Mentu would need to pull a pretty fancy stunt to have them swallow the bullshit that he fed them, and the guard had pretty much confirmed this. Something to do with a padded vest, an archer and a pig's heart, he had said.

Next on the right stood the granary. In the doorway, Marcus paused. Not a whisper. He slipped inside. The threshing floor had been swept so thoroughly there was not a single ear of wheat or barley to be seen, not even wedged down in the

gaps between the paving slabs. Winnowing fans hung from hooks and an upper gallery ran along one wall overhead. He sniffed and recognised the aromatic scent of tansy. Useful herb, he thought. Its jagged leaves add a bit of pep to stews and sausages, its yellow button flowerheads brighten wreaths and garlands, and - according to the mystics - tansy wine can make a man immortal. (Or so Jupiter told Ganymede, and look what happened there!) Tansy, however, is also effective at keeping mice at bay and that's why he smelled it here, inside the threshing house.

Soft of tread, he climbed the wooden steps. A field mouse, had it not been deterred by the liberal sprinkling of herbs, could not have moved more quietly. A pulley mechanism operated up here, cranking up baskets of wheat and barley fresh from the threshing floor which were then swung through this hatch here (he squeezed his own body through the narrow doorway) and emptied into the corn bins for storing until the following harvest. Gazing down on to the soft golden hills below, Orbilio felt the chill contrast between the gentle art of reaping grain and his own chosen occupation.

Sometimes, he thought, his hand automatically closing round the scimitar which hung around his waist, sometimes his work was bloody hard.

Take that guard, for instance. The one who'd told him so much about the commune and its security arrangements. The bastard had actually
boasted
about how he'd impaled 'some stupid little jerk' to make his death appear accidental, even to stuffing a gag in his mouth, and laughed when he said it took the kid fourteen hours to die. Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose to quell the nausea. No matter how many times he re-lived that episode where the mercenary bragged about his killing skills, the edge was never blunted. Each time it made his skin go clammy, hurt his head and made his stomach churn.

Almost as much as it had when he brought the rock down hard upon the braggart's head.