The Oasis (30 page)

“I bring an urgent message from Kamose Tao,” Ramose replied evenly. “I require admittance immediately.”

“You and a hundred others,” the man scoffed. “The gate can only be opened from the inside. Where is your herald’s insignia?” Ramose grabbed his Setiu’s forearm and lifted it high.

“Here,” he said. “I am Ramose, son of Teti of Khemmenu. Get this gate opened, you witless fool. I will not stand here and beg like any commoner.” The soldier looked him over carefully and gave his prisoner a hard stare.

“I recognize you,” he said directly to the man. “You left Het-Uart weeks ago by this gate. You were captured? Why is he bringing you back?”

“That is not your business,” Ramose interposed roughly. “It is for Apepa. Send to him at once!”

“His name may not be spoken,” the soldier said loudly, but he had lost some of his bombast. Looking up he bellowed, “Hoi! Open the gate!” and Ramose, following his glance, saw the shadowy shapes of more armed men standing atop the wall. There was no answer, but presently one-half of the cumbrous portal began to groan inward and a small crack appeared. The soldier ushered them through and followed them hastily. “Wait here,” he commanded. Ramose watched him stride up the wide, torchlit passage that ran between the looming cross-sections of the wall on either side. The gate ground closed.

Cut into the rock-hard mud on either side of the rutted road were small rooms and the man who had opened the gate waved them into one of them. Benches had been set around the bare walls and a table with a jug of beer and the remains of a meal stood in the middle. Various weapons lay beside the platters. Two other soldiers looked up with quick interest as Ramose entered. He ignored them, pulling his Setiu down beside him on one of the benches. The others soon returned to the game of dice they had been playing.

Ramose and his charge sat in silence. Several hours went by and Ramose was beginning to wish that he had waited outside the city until the morning in order to make his own way to the palace, when the first soldier reappeared. With him was an officer who bowed perfunctorily. “You are indeed Ramose of Khemmenu?” he enquired briskly. Ramose nodded. “Then the One has sent a chariot for you. Untie your prisoner.” Ramose stood, hauling the man to his feet.

“Not yet,” Ramose said pleasantly. “He too has words for Apepa.” The officer flinched. For answer he came forward and, taking a dagger from his belt, sawed at the bonds until they fell away. The Setiu rubbed his wrists but his expression did not alter.

“Both of you, come,” the officer snapped. Ramose followed him out into the fresh air.

The chariot was waiting. Without further comment they were waved brusquely up, the officer stepping up also to stand behind them. At a word from the charioteer, the vehicle began to move. They emerged from the roofless tunnel of the passage and Ramose looked about him.

They were rolling briskly along a thoroughfare crowded with empty market stalls under which was piled the refuse of the day. Behind them, the endless uneven lines of cramped and jumbled mud brick houses he remembered from his youth began. A crossroad passed under the chariot’s wheels and then there were more lopsided houses, from whose naked windows soft candlelight flickered. People came and went before them or were gathered in their doorways to gossip. Sometimes the rows of homes were broken by narrow alleys, sometimes by one or two spindly and misshapen trees, under whose thin branches the dark maw of a well could be seen. Patches of beaten earth marked the presence of shrines, the small figures of the gods sheltered inside tiny porches atop stunted granite pillars with simple altars below. The hum of city life was constant, a blend of human voices, dogs barking, donkeys braying, and the rumble of ox carts, but after perhaps two miles the noise began to abate. The stench, however, did not. Compounded of donkey dung, human waste, and offal, it stung Ramose’s nostrils and adhered to his skin and clothes.

The chariot had entered a wealthier area of Het-Uart. High walls broken by discreet doors lined the road and Ramose knew that behind them the gardens and homes of the rich spread out like miniature oases. The pedestrians were fewer, quieter, more elegantly dressed, and often preceded by house guards. At another crossroads, the temple of Seth reared into view, the flags on its pylons flapping desultorily in the night breeze, one pinpoint of light piercing the darkness of the outer court where some priest was conducting his reverences deep in the interior. The officer spoke and the horses clattered left, but as they swung about, Ramose caught a glimpse of a huge gate and beyond it a vast open courtyard. The parade ground, he thought, and the barracks. How many troops does Apepa have? At least twice our number, or so the rumours say.

They were skirting another wall. It seemed to stretch ahead forever, a smooth, high bastion that Ramose placed, after several minutes, as the outer limit of the palace estate. Then the chariot slowed, swerved, and jerked to a stop before a set of tall cedar doors. A much smaller postern door stood open and here a herald was waiting, liveried in blue and white, the colours of Egyptian royalty. But his staff of office owed nothing to Egypt. It was a long white spear-like stick from which red ribbons trailed. On its tip rested the head of the god whose colour was blood. Seth grinned at Ramose beneath his conical cap and curling gazelle’s horns. He did not much resemble Egypt’s Set, the red-haired, wolfen god of storms and chaos, in spite of the Setiu’s assurance that the two gods were in fact one and the same.

The officer who had brought them got back into the chariot without a word, but the herald smiled at Ramose and bade him enter. Yet another door closing behind me, Ramose thought as he and his companion obeyed. I must not call to mind the miles between me and the oasis. I must remember that somewhere within this maze Tani is eating or being painted or talking with a friend. I must keep thinking of her. Perhaps she senses my presence. Perhaps even now she is pausing, lifting her head as though she hears some whisper beyond the glow of her lamp, frowning in bafflement as her heartbeat quickens.

The herald was leading him along a broad path across acres of lawn dotted with many trees. Other paths branched off from it. Here and there Ramose glimpsed the glint of pale light on water. Statues lined the way at regular intervals, strange forms, many of which he could not name, although they reminded him vaguely of his own familiar gods. They were almost all bearded and horned. He had run carelessly between them as a child, that he knew, but now in the bluish moonlight they seemed cloaked in a foreign mystery. As they ended, the shrubs and ornamental flowerbeds began. The herald crossed a gravelled court where many litters had been set down, their bearers sitting or lying in the grass that bordered it, and now Ramose could hear music and the cheerful din of feasting.

The front of the palace soared to meet him, rows of pillars at whose feet soldiers and servants congregated, illuminated by many flaring torches. To the right, Ramose could make out the source of the clamour. It was spilling out from a hall that opened directly onto the pillars. He could see crowds of glittering courtiers moving to and fro, bathed in bright lamplight. Straight ahead was the reception area, but it was in semi-darkness and the herald turned left, leading Ramose and his stoical companion around the side of the palace to a small door set halfway along the wall. Opening it, he bowed Ramose inside but prevented the Setiu from following him. “There are refreshments for you on the table,” the man said affably to Ramose. “Feel free to eat and drink as you wish. The wait may be long, but eventually you will be summoned. I am told that you have a message for the One. Is it spoken or written?”

“Written.” Ramose drew the scroll from his pack and handed it over. The herald took it, bowed again, and closed the door softly behind him.

Ramose let out his breath and looked around. The room was small but comfortably furnished with low gilded chairs and one elegant table on which stood a platter of cold fowl, a few slices of black bread, crumbles of brown goat cheese scattered on the curling crispness of tender new lettuce leaves, various sweet pastries and a flagon of wine. Cushions of vivid colours in a tightly woven pattern of whorls lay here and there on the bare wooden floor. The ochre walls also were bare but for a frieze running near the ceiling on which the same close design of maze-like circles were depicted in black paint. A warm and steady glow came from three alabaster lamps on stands in the corners and in the fourth corner a golden shrine glinted. It was shut. Ramose did not bother to open it.

Going at once to the door through which he had come, he flung it open, only to see the head of a helmeted guard turn towards him. Closing it hastily, he crossed the room to the one other door that might have allowed a way of escape, but it too was watched, the man in the dim passage beyond it extending a warning arm when Ramose appeared. Not that I want to escape, Ramose thought grimly as he retraced his steps. I must see this thing through to its end. But I am a little afraid.

On impulse he turned his back to the opulent shrine, and going to his knees he conjured a vision of Thoth, god in Khemmenu, re-creating in his mind the portals of the temple there as he crossed the outer court and the shadow that always fell across his face as he strode barefoot into the inner court. He faced the shuttered sanctuary behind which the god with his beautiful curved ibis beak and wise black eyes stood. Deliberately Ramose brought Thoth’s image into view behind his eyelids and he began to pray.

He had not addressed the totem of his city for many months, not being able to bear the memories such an act would have brought with it, but now he poured his fears and doubts into the god’s feathered ears, begging for wisdom, for the right words to say to Apepa whose presence saturated this place, for strength to hold his purpose firm. When he had finished, he was suddenly aware of a healthy hunger, and drawing up one of the chairs he set upon the food, relishing the tang of garlic in the oil with which the salad had been drenched and washing it all down with wine whose dry bite delighted him. Then he sat back in the calm silence that surrounded him, aware that in praying and eating his equilibrium had returned. I’m very dirty, he thought. I need to wash myself before facing Apepa, but perhaps the omission of water here was deliberate, to put me at a disadvantage.

He had thought that he might lie on the floor with one of the cushions under his head and go to sleep for a while but found himself wide awake and peacefully alert. You are with me, Great Thoth, are you not? he said soundlessly to the god. You have not abandoned me, your son, in this place of blasphemy. He smiled, sighed, and settled himself in patience.

The night deepened. Even here in this quiet place that began to seem more and more divorced from any reality outside it, Ramose was aware of the journey of the hours towards a dawn that was still a long way off. He saw them clearly with the eyes of his ka, a succession of dark, indistinct shapes flowing away in the wake of Ra as he moved through the body of Nut in order to be reborn, taking with them the grief and loneliness of his past. There was no sense of a weight leaving him, merely a subtle buoyancy that reminded him of the effortless endurance of boyhood when he and his companions might heedlessly swim, wrestle and run all day with bodies that never tired.

He was still sitting upright in the chair when the door finally opened to admit a tall clean-shaven man in a floor-length white kilt and silver armbands. “I am Sakhetsa, herald to His Majesty,” he said, the slight hesitation in his voice betraying his surprise at finding Ramose wide awake. “His Majesty will see you briefly before he retires. Come with me.” Obediently Ramose got up and left the room that had somehow become a sanctuary that had held his god.

He was soon lost. Following the herald’s fluttering linen, he paced one torch-lit corridor after another, passing closed doors and open ones that gave onto darkness, walking through dim courtyards in which the muted tinkle of fountains played tuneless music, gliding between rows of pillars beneath ceilings that echoed to his footsteps. Everywhere there were guards lining the monotonous ochre of the walls, large men standing motionless with their leather-gloved hands resting on the hafts of giant axes, and above them ran the labyrinthine motif that had decorated the upper walls of the room where Ramose had waited. The palace was asleep in the few hours between feasting and the renewed bustle of dawn, sunk in a fleeting hush.

After what seemed a long time, Sakhetsa paused before frowning double doors of chased cedar, exchanged a few words with the soldiers on either side of it, and Ramose stepped through it after him. Here the passage was smaller and brighter, the doors off it more elaborately decorated. At the farther end were more double doors. A man rose from his perch on a stool before them. Like the herald, he was dressed in white, but his robe was bordered in gold. One thick golden armband encircled his upper arm and ankle. He was an older man, his face seamed under the traces of paint, his earlobes sagging with the weight of the golden ankhs dragging from them. He looked tired. The kohl encircling his eyes had smudged and the eyes themselves were bloodshot. Nevertheless he smiled thinly. “I am Chief Steward Nehmen,” he said curtly and nodded over Ramose’s shoulder. Ramose turned in time to see Sakhetsa walking back down the long corridor. Nehmen gestured impatiently and Ramose, stiffening his spine, walked into Apepa’s presence.

He had not much time to survey his surroundings, but he glanced about as Nehmen called his name. The room was large, well-lit, and beautiful in a way he could only describe lamely to himself as foreign. The walls, where they were not hung with woven mats in the same glowing colours and designs as the cushions he had seen, were painted with scenes of white-tipped mountains at whose feet an ocean lapped. Little ships sailed on that green expanse and beneath them various exotic sea creatures swam.

To the left, the panorama was broken by the outline of a door on which a massive bull was depicted with nostrils flared and horns painted gold. To the right, a servant was in the act of closing another door, on which some kind of sea god was represented, Baal-Yam, Ramose supposed, his beard entangled in weeds and his legs hidden in a swirl of white water. Tall lamps like seashells clustered in the corners. The legs of one of the chairs standing not far from him had been carved into the likeness of bare-breasted girls holding up the seat. They wore short pleated skirts and their hair was piled high in tiers of ribboned curls. The chair’s backrest contained the plump curves and blunted snout of a dolphin, and more silver dolphins held up the bowls and cups resting on the table beside which Apepa sat, his legs crossed, his ringed hands folded on his knee.