Moses (11 page)

[12]

YET MOSES WAS as little given to depression as he was to fancied slight or insult. Life and health burned too strongly, and if his cousins made no friend of him, they did not exclude him from their pack-like testing of manhood. With a dozen of them he took the long journey across the Delta to the ancient city of Buto, which was once, long ago, the capital of Lower Egypt, but now a poor and provincial place given over in great part to the breeding and sale of horses. There was also in Buto, to entertain the horse merchants and buyers, a great house of prostitution, known throughout Egypt for the variety and beauty of its women, who were purchased by special agents in the slave markets of Philistia, as well as in those of Egypt.

There, for the first time, Moses chewed the famous khat of Arabia, drank wine with it, and spent the hours of darkness in a nightmare of wild debauchery, drugged dreams and drugged lovemaking. His recollections the following morning, filtering through a splitting headache, filled him with shame and despair. The young man he saw, staggering through the night with his divine relatives, treating women with brutal, even sadistic lechery, firing himself with aphrodisiacs and wine, proving his manhood with blows and foul oaths—this young man was himself, seen now with hatred and disgust. He crawled out of there in the light of morning, hiding his face from the disc of Aton. Staggering, pitching drunkenly, he found a patch of white sand and lay face—down until at last he fell asleep. But while he slept, he dreamed, and in his dreams, his godhood left—and he shaped his dreams to provide the worse penance and torture he knew: to be cast down and turned into one of the slave people of Goshen, to work in the festering swamp under the blazing sun till at last, racked with pain, he collapsed from a fatigue too compelling for even the overseer's whip. It was only then that the burning rays of Aton became soothing and beneficent—and he, in turn, still in his pain, repeated the psalms of Aton that Amon-Teph had taught him. And when he repeated the most sacred psalm to Aton, the hymn to the god of all gods, then gently and lovingly his pain disappeared. He woke with his lips moving and speaking,

“Oh, Aton, how manifold are thy works,
Though some are hidden from the sight of man,
Though art the single god, no other like thee,
And thou hast created earth as thou desired.”

It was past midday, and a tall monument cast its shade upon Moses. He rose, stiff and sore in every limb, and went to the barber, who washed him, anointed him and combed his hair clean. Then the barber shaved him, for already his down was turning into dark beard; and while shaving him, the barber commented upon the fact that so many of royal and godly blood had been his customers this day. “Such an honour is rarely done me, O Prince of Egypt,” he prattled. “I have a little wealth set aside, and perhaps if I pay for an embalming and good linen wrapping and a modest tomb, this divine contract will act as a spell to put off the wicked and jealous gods of that other place and give my soul sanctuary. Do you think so, Prince of Egypt? I cannot tell you how I have dreamed of immortality—which, of course, is something that you who are godly take for granted. But as a simple barber, it is another matter entirely, and I cannot tell you how often I have lain awake at night trembling with the fear of death and extinction. A poor man must accept such things and, believe me, I tried to. But now—now—well, tell me, what do you think, O holy one, O Prince of Egypt?”

“I think you are an idiot,” Moses said petulantly, “and your talk makes me sick.” But the moment it was out, Moses felt ashamed, and he despised himself for taking out his own misery on this pathetic little man—who, in fear that he had angered one of the young gods, hastened to say,

“You have said the truth, O Prince of Egypt. I am a fool and an idiot. So my wife tells me each day. Even my children say so. Thank you, O lord, for telling me the truth out of your own unselfish sense of profound justice. When you leave here, I will do obeisance and prostrate myself and kiss the ground where you walked. Only forgive me my presumptuous insolence.”

Moses' eyes became wet and his stomach tightened as he listened to the barber, who pressed the point out of increasing fear,

“Will you forgive me, God-Prince?”

“I forgive you,” Moses forced himself to say.

“I thank you and seven generations of my blood will venerate you, O God-Prince.” His gratitude continued, as verbose and flatulent as all else he had said, and Moses escaped from him and his shop with relief.

From there he went to the corrals, where he found the others of the royal party. They appeared to have made a better recovery than he, for they were hungrily munching bread and dried fish even while they argued on the good and bad points of the horses in loud, boastful terms. The only other customers present were a party of landed noblemen from Upper Egypt, who, Moses noticed, looked upon the princes with distaste and no little contempt; whether because of their bad manners, or their obvious ignorance of horses, or a still strong and bitter hatred by most of Upper Egypt for the dynasty of Seti, Moses did not know. But as he chewed the bread and fish his cousins gave him he watched these hard-faced lords of the Upper Nile with interest and curiosity, for it was in their land that Aton had come to power over all the gods. They wore the wide and heavy golden collars of the South, bright-red linen kilts that fell to below their knees, and high-laced sandals; and they carried iron swords and wore polished iron bracelets as a sign of their power. Their physical resemblance to himself was immediately apparent to Moses, though it was less precise a resemblance than that of the slave people of Goshen, for while they were similar in the long cast of head and the thin, high-bridged nose, they had none of the hawk look, the flaring nostrils and wide mouth that made Moses' face so unusual in Egypt.

Then Moses forgot them, for one of the slaves of SetiPash, the owner of this breeding farm, brought into the corral a yellow horse that took Moses' heart so quickly and complete that he knew he would have no peace until he owned it. It was large horse, much larger than any of the Egyptian breed, broad of girth and with a long, cream-coloured mane of hair that swayed like a banner as the horse pranced and reared in the full excitement of life and strength. It had no sooner appeared than Moses vaulted the fence and ran to it, that he might claim it first. But he was alone, and he saw his cousins watching him with smiles of derision for desiring so unorthodox a beast.

But Seti-Pash also ran to welcome the sale and bowed low to Moses, telling him not to heed the sneers of those who did not know the difference between a horse and a donkey; for here was such a horse as came rarely into the hands of an Egyptian dealer, a three-year-old bought by a Phoenician trader from breeders on the island of Crete, whose horses were legendary the world over. Yet its price was only a little more than the price of a fine Egyptian animal.

“I want it,” Moses said shortly, opening his pouch and taking out a handful of plain rings. “These are pure gold, made to a measure of six to an iron sword. How many for the horse?”

“O godly one, I should give it to you out of my reverence for the Great House, but I am a poor man who somehow must always sell for less than he buys. I ask only twenty rings.” He looked up into Moses' angry eyes, still full of the bitterness the prince felt over the night before, and began to plead a justification of his price. Sick at the man's deceit, Moses took a handful more from his pouch, more than the twenty requested, and threw them down on the dirt and horse dung. As he led the horse away, he snapped,

“I will not haggle with you. Clean the dung off twenty and give the rest to your whores!”

As he took the horse through the corral gate, he saw the lords of Upper Egypt approaching him, and they asked him if they could examine the horse. He nodded, and they walked around it, noting its points and discussing it. Then one of them said to Moses,

“It's a strange but fine horse, O Prince of Egypt, yet I wonder that you took him. Your godly brothers seem amused at your choice.”

“They are not my brothers but my cousins, and I care little whether or not they are amused.”

“Oh? You seem an angry man, O Prince of Egypt. We are noblemen of the city of Karnak, so we have had some dealings with angry men, and we are here in the Delta to buy horses and iron bars for forge work—and we noticed you, if I may say so, O Prince of Egypt, not only because of your height and godly bearing, but for your appearance. We do not see many faces like yours in Lower Egypt. Is it then that the God Ramses is not your father?”

“I am the son of his divine sister, the Princess Enekhas-Amon,” Moses replied, seeing no reason not to tell them who he was, since they were courteous enough and interested in his horse, now tugging at the halter and champing at the ground.

“Oh?” again. “You will forgive me, O Prince of Egypt, but the name of your godly mother surprises me. Amon is a name of Upper Egypt, indeed of my own region, and I have been led to believe, perhaps falsely, that such names were forbidden in the Great House.”

“They are not forbidden,” Moses answered slowly, wondering what the man was driving at, “but I suppose they are frowned upon. There is no other name like it in the royal family, but a few people are named from Amon. I am sure you know that here on the Delta, our god of the sun is Re—not Amon, as in your land—and my divine grandfather, Seti, is a god of power and worship in our land.”

“Yes, of course,” the man nodded, looking at Moses with additional interest. “My name, O Prince of Egypt, is Amon-Moses, so you can understand my curiosity. Would it be your own divine pleasure to tell us your name?”

Moses shrugged. “My name is Moses.”

“Yes—the child is given—but of what god, if I may ask?”

Moses smiled without humour. “My name is Moses, man of Karnak—no name or half a name, as one pleases. It is my name and enough for me. If you would make more of it, I am at your disposal, and perhaps you will find that here on the Delta we are not inferior to the men of your land in settling a quarrel.”

“All the gods forbid that I should seek a quarrel with you, O Prince of Egypt. If I have said anything that I should not have said, then I beg your forgiveness, and I will abase myself before you if you should desire.”

“It is for me to beg your forgiveness,” Moses said unhappily. “I am so filled with anger at myself today that I turn it on anyone and everyone I meet. Let us part in love and justice.”

“So let us part,” the men of Upper Egypt said, bowing before him.

Then he led the yellow horse around the corral to where his cousins were still buying and bickering. They began to snicker as he approached, and they exchanged what they considered to be clever remarks about Moses and the horse, pointing out that since both had strange qualities, to put it gently, they would make an interesting and compatible pair on the streets of the city of Ramses. Thin-lipped, his nostrils quivering with rage, Moses led the horse up to them and said quietly but coldly,

“Go on then, you royal bastards, and I'l kill the next one of you who makes a remark about me or my horse!”

They became silent and still—the slur so incredible, so utterly blasphemous, that at first no reaction was possible. At last one of them, the same Ramses-em-Seti whom Moses had laid hands on in the war-court so long ago, found his voice and said,

“A strange insult to come from you, nameless one. We have tolerated you a long time, but that time is over. Get away from us now before we shed blood.”

Leading the horse, Moses walked away—walked on and on, like a man in a dream, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his mind blank and thoughtless. When he came to himself he was on the outskirts of the city and the sun was dropping into the horizon. From a peasant he bought four loaves of bread and a sack of clean water. The bread of that time, baked in flat, hard cakes about eight inches in diameter, was pierced in the middle and strung on a rope of braided grass. As did the peasants, Moses slung the bread and the water from his neck, mounted his horse, and, bareback, rode on into the night. He stroked the horse as he rode—and the horse appeared to respond to his need for friendship and comfort. When it became too dark to see, Moses dismounted, tethered the horse to a scrubby tree, ate a piece of bread and drank some water, and then found a dry spot of warm sand, where he lay down and fell asleep.

So in two days he made his way across the Delta, sometimes in mud, sometimes on the dry, baked surface of the king's road, forded branches of the Nile that were mere trickles in the dry season, had himself and his horse ferried across the wider branches, and finally arrived home in the City of Ramses.

[13]

HE SOMETIMES THOUGHT, in the afteryears of recollection, that the year which followed his purchase of the yellow horse was the lonely year of his life, an empty year; but in that, he was wrong, for this year which brought Moses to his seventeenth birthday was a year of transition and change in a manner Moses hardly knew.

He was isolated as never before, even the girls turning from him, friendless except for Amon-Teph and Neph, the builder—but they were two good friends, and he spent many long hours with one or the other, hours on the observatory listening to the tales and legends and dogma of Aton—the one god who was all gods. From Neph he soaked in other lore, though he would not return with the engineer to the island of the morass and the slave people of Goshen—and in time he spoke to Neph of Aton.

Neph was hardly surprised, and indicated that he had anticipated something of the sort. He told Moses that many men in Egypt held a part of their hearts for Aton—the gods of the night being easier to destroy than the great, golden orb of Aton. Moses, however, argued in the theological terms of his training that after all, even the mighty Aton died each night, to be reborn the following morning and, such being the case, who ruled during the hours of night?