Mara, Daughter of the Nile (8 page)

“So be it. Buy the garments of him, and buy
him
, too. You must not be in his debt. Here!” His hand went into his girdle, and came out again holding a heavy ring fashioned of electrum, a costly mixture of gold and silver. It was encrusted with tiny garnets and lapis lazuli in a design of lotus flowers. Mara drew a long breath as she took it. Zasha the jewel trader had never handled anything like this.

“Give him that,” said Sheftu, “for his help and his silence. But tell him nothing save that you have fled from Zasha.”

“I understand.” Mara slipped the ring into her own sash, where it nestled against the queen’s tiny scarab. Again she struggled with inward mirth.

“The next problem is installing you as interpreter,” Sheftu went on. “That is more difficult. I dare not be seen. Who captains the princess’ ship, Nekonkh? Is he Egyptian?”

“Aye. One Saankh-Wen. A thick-witted fellow, but—”

“Can he be bought?”

“Doubtless.” Nekonkh rubbed his chin. “But would he talk later? He’s a garrulous sort, especially in his cups.”

Mara was growing impatient, anxious to have done with it. Once the details were settled, she would be far safer from Sheftu’s probing mind. As to Saankh-Wen, no problem existed, though she dare not tell them so. Come, use your head! she thought. You must manage this part too …

“Even in his cups,” she said, “would a man talk of his own misdeeds? Perhaps a soft glance and a glib tongue would be of more use here than bribery. If a man is bribed, and feels guilty later, he can blame those who bribed him. But if he is led to substitute one interpreter for another because blandishments sound sweet to his ear—whom can he blame later but himself? He would scarce boast of his own foolishness, would he?”

“And all men are fools,” added Sheftu blandly.

Not you, my friend! thought Mara. Aloud, she said with
a shrug, “This one might be. The captain says he’s thick witted.”

“Aye,” growled Nekonkh uneasily. “But the idea seems chancy …”

“Perhaps not.” Sheftu was studying Mara with amusement. “This maid understands the arts of blandishment, Captain. I witnessed a little encounter of hers with a baker’s boy, back in Menfe, that gave me real pleasure. I believe we can risk it. If it fails, there will still be time to try something else. We’ll not leave Abydos until she gives the signal.”

“Then all’s settled?” inquired Mara.

“Aye. Except for the message you are to give the king. Tell him I have—” Sheftu hesitated, and changed the sentence. “Tell him the war hawk is coming.”

“The war hawk is coming? But what does it mean?”

Sheftu smiled. “It is the king I wish to enlighten, Blue-Eyed One, not you.” He got up from the table. “We’ll arrange our signals tomorrow. But now we must separate, or the crew will be marveling at all this tongue wagging.” He started for the door, but paused before Mara, still smiling faintly. “Lest you be wondering, it will
not
be feasible to slip away from me in Abydos, to sell my ring, or to do anything at all save what we have planned. Make no mistake about that. If my prince is endangered, I care not what color eyes I close forever.”

He moved past her and out of the cabin. Shaken a little in spite of herself, Mara rose to follow, but Nekonkh stopped her with a touch on her arm. She turned to find him gazing down at her with a troubled frown.

“He’s a hard master, that one,” he whispered, jerking his head toward Sheftu’s retreating figure. “I sweated for you, when he sat there swinging his leg and juggling your life about in his two hands. But you should not have eavesdropped!”

“I’m not afraid of him. He’ll do me no harm as long as
I’m useful to him. But, Captain—how he must hate the queen and love his prince.”

“Aye … but I think he loves Egypt even more. To my notion that’s what makes him throw away his gold and his life like this, and use men as if they were tools. That’s why he holds a bludgeon over the head of even a friendless maid like you, little one, and turns your wits to his own purpose, and takes chances that could end in murder …” Nekonkh shook his head. “Aye, he’s reckless, and perhaps mad. But—Amon help me—I think I’d follow him to the River of the Dead and back!”

“He may demand it,” said Mara slowly.

She left the cabin, drank in the sun-drenched air and the fresh, clean smell of water and canvas sails and wind—miraculously restored to her again—then sought the privacy of her pile of hides.

All is changed now, she reflected. Yet all is still the same.

Tomorrow, when they docked at Abydos, she would proceed with her former plans as if nothing had happened today. But what a difference there was! She now had knowledge that would buy her freedom from her new master in an instant, and perhaps shower her with gold as well. In fact, she had wealth already, in the shape of that jewel-encrusted ring—which of course would never leave her sash. All her dreams were beginning to come true. As for revenge—Osiris! She had that tenfold, a hundredfold …

Then why, she thought, am I not happier?

She moved restlessly on the soft skins, puzzling over the queer flat taste of her triumph. Finally she raised herself on one elbow and frowned out across the green and sparkling river, which was struck with fire where the sun’s rays touched it.

Lord Sheftu. A great nobleman, he was—as far from the likes of her as the very sun up yonder. He must have been amusing himself in truth, these seven days!—seeking her
company, flaunting his charming manners, even holding her in his arms a moment. But it was clear what he thought of her. Guttersnipe!

At that moment Sheftu walked along the edge of the deck and paused, leaning on the rail. She could not see his expression, for his profile was black against the dazzling sky. But there was weariness in his pose, and he looked lonely, human—far different from the deadly menace who had lounged against that bale. Perhaps it was true, that he had no stomach for this day’s work.

Mara turned away angrily, not wanting to look at him, not wanting to think of the fact that the price of her freedom was his destruction.

SAANKH-WEN proved to be a squat, middle-aged man with a stupid face and eyes that seemed half-asleep. He barely looked at Mara when she showed him the scarab and asked for instructions.

“Interpreter? Aye, I remember now. You’re to find the Inn of the Lotus, it’s close by, just yonder where you see the donkey turning into the alley. They’ve got their orders there—mention my name.”

Mara started in the direction he indicated, glancing
about her curiously. The wharfs of Abydos were not so different from those at Menfe, though the traffic had an unfamiliar character. There was less merchandising here, fewer foreign vessels. Instead there were funeral barges. She counted eight in the harbor this moment. Abydos was the most ancient and sacred of all cities; the god Osiris himself was thought to be buried here, and all who could afford it arranged for their funeral processions to make pilgrimage from their own cities to this Gate of the Underworld before the final ceremonies of entombment.

The Inn of the Lotus was easy to locate, since it had a carved wooden flower swinging over its doorway. Mara entered, identified herself to the vacant-faced woman in charge, and was directed up an outside staircase. In the room above, a coal-black slave girl awaited her. Mara discovered almost immediately that she was deaf and dumb.

Thoughtfully she followed the girl into an adjoining bath chamber, where great jars of water stood about the walls and the stone floor sloped to a center drain. The queen’s man had made very sure of secrecy in this process of transforming her from a ragged slave into a person “above suspicion.” The woman downstairs was vague and stupid, this one was deaf and dumb, and Saankh-Wen himself incurious.

All the better for me, reflected Mara, remembering the menace in Sheftu’s voice that morning when he had warned her again against trickery. The
Silver Beetle
was to loiter upriver until noonday, when the barge of the princess should overtake it. After seeing for themselves that Mara was safely on board, Sheftu and Nekonkh would proceed to Thebes, and she would be free—to carry out her own plans.

She frowned. It gave her little pleasure to think about those plans. She turned her attention instead to the enjoyable ministrations of the black slave girl.

The jars of water were poured over her, her hair was
cleansed and trimmed and her body rubbed with scented unguents until it glowed. Then, leading her back into the first room, the slave pointed to a little carved chest that stood in one corner. Mara opened its lid, and the last of her uneasy humor vanished. There were piles of snowy linen, leather sandals—she had never owned sandals in her life, even the common sort woven of palm fiber—there were a few pieces of jewelry, colored sashes, a warm white woolen cloak, deeply fringed. There was a whole wardrobe in that chest, even to the pots and vials containing scents and cosmetics. It was not too lavish. It was scaled perfectly to the needs of a priest’s daughter, the role Mara was to play. But to her it was unimaginable luxury. And as she shook the garments out one by one and looked at them, she felt again the fierce determination that nothing, nobody must stand in the way of her possessing such things always, freedom and gold and a life worth living—gardens with lotus blooming in the fishpool, roast duck and honey on the table, rows and rows of papyrus scrolls on the shelves in a beautiful room …

So she dreamed, as the black girl dressed her in an ankle-length sheath of white linen, secured the wide straps over her bare brown shoulders and wound a cinnamon-colored sash twice about her waist, looping it in front so that the ends fell luxuriously to her sandals. Her hair was combed to glossy smoothness, scented and delicately oiled; her eyelids were properly painted, with brows and lash line elongated almost to her temples. There were gold bands for arms and ankles, too, and a broad collar formed of cylindrical beads enameled the same deep radiant blue as her eyes.

She put away the little copper mirror at last, with a sigh of content. It had been a long time since she had enjoyed even the near-necessity of eye paint, which all Egyptians, men and women, considered essential to a decent appearance. And the rest was elegance undreamed of. The sandals did pinch a little, of course, where the strap passed up
between her toes, and the high-curling tips would trip her if she didn’t watch out. She was not accustomed to such grandeur. Never mind, she would grow accustomed to it! Only a guttersnipe went barefoot.

Followed by the slave, who padded silently behind her carrying the chest, she returned to the wharf. Saankh-Wen was now sitting on a folding stool on the deck of the princess’ barge, staring apathetically at the cooks moving about on the attendant kitchen boat, which was moored nearby. Mara glanced up, shading her eyes.

“Let down a ladder, please.”

He turned toward her, then leaned over the gunwale, his sleepiness gone. “You’re the interpreter?” he asked uncertainly.

“Yes.”

“The same one?”

“Of course. I identified myself not half an hour since.”

“Aye. Aye.” His thick lips curled in a smirk. “But you look different now.”

“Indeed?” Mara gave him a perfunctory smile, careful neither to offend nor encourage him. She did not wish him to remember her longer than was strictly necessary. “Will you let down the ladder?” she repeated.

He hastened to obey. When she stood beside him on the deck, her head held high, her eyes cool, he stopped gaping and became more respectful. “The princess and her train will return soon. You’re to wait in there. I’ll stow your chest.”

“Very well.”

As the slave woman walked across the wharf and out of her life as silently as she had come into it, Mara made her way to the pillared pavilion which occupied most of the deck space of the barge. There was space on each side for twelve oarsmen, but there was neither mast nor sail, and the captain’s cabin had been removed in order to enlarge the quarters occupied by Inanni and her women. Mara
pushed aside one of the hanging carpets that formed the pavilion’s walls, and stepped in. The first thing she did was to kick off the unaccustomed sandals. Then, comfortably barefoot, she began to look about her.

Dazzled by the sunlight outside, she could not at first distinguish one object from another in the shadowed interior. But as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom she began to make out couches and low tables, clothing boxes and all the feminine hodgepodge of trinkets, mirrors, jewelry and scents necessary to an entourage of a dozen women. The better she could see all this, the more astonished she became. She stepped quietly about the place, examining with curiosity and not a little revulsion the strange possessions of these barbarians. How different they were from anything Egyptian! The jewelry was crude and tasteless, the boxes uncarved, and the scattered clothing so vulgar in its gaudy colors that Mara’s civilized Egyptian nose wrinkled disdainfully. All clothing should be white. In Egypt, even a slave knew that much.

Except for the furniture, which like the barge had been built in Thebes, there was nothing in the pavilion which looked as if it might have any connection with a high-born princess.

Princess! scoffed Mara inwardly. Probably some shepherd’s daughter, whose father bullied a few neighbors into calling him king.

Turning her back on the untidy room, she stretched full length on one of the couches and fell to wondering what life might be like in pharaoh’s palace.

She had not long to wait before the cries of a runner, “
Abrek! Abrek!
”—“Take care, take heart to thyself!”—warned her that the train of the princess was approaching. Hastily groping for her sandals, Mara listened as the hubbub reached the water’s edge. Saankh-Wen barked an order, evidently for the bearers to set down the litters and allow the women to emerge, for in a moment the air was filled
with the sibilant mumble of Babylonian. As the women filed on board, it sounded as if a hundred great bumblebees had been loosed on deck.

Mara rose, and walking to the carpet wall of the pavilion, pushed a hanging aside and stepped out. She found herself face to face with the Canaanite princess.