The Oasis (32 page)

Courtiers brushed by them in clouds of sweet perfume, jewels tinkling and linen afloat, their servants trotting behind them clutching listless cats with sapphire eyes, or cosmetic boxes, or scribes’ palettes. Many were draped in tightly woven tasselled cloaks of intricate pattern and hectic colours and some wore floor-length skirts of the same thick wool. Ramose, knowing this to be a Setiu mode of dress, thought scornfully that it would look better covering a bare floor. Few took any notice of him and those that did merely gave him a disinterested glance.

At last the soldier paused before a set of double doors at the end of a wide green-tiled passage. To either side the god Seth sat, his granite eyes staring back the way Ramose had come. The horns sprouting amid his stone ringlets had been tipped in gold and many lapis necklaces hung on his narrow chest. Ramose, hating him, averted his gaze as Nehmen rose from between the statues and the soldier stepped back. The Chief Steward smiled. He seemed more rested today. The loose, haggard look had gone from his meticulously painted face. “Greetings, Ramose,” he said affably. “I trust you slept well. The One expects you.” He did not wait for an answer. Pulling open the doors, he waved Ramose inside.

Light smote Ramose at once, a burst of dazzling brightness that had him blinking and confused. But after a moment he realized that he was standing at one end of a vast hall whose ceiling soared up into high dimness and whose gleaming floor ran away to meet a dais at the farther end that swept from wall to wall. Behind the dais a row of pillars marched and between them the sun poured in, flooding the immense space with its glory. Ramose could see trees out there, trembling on a breeze, and hear the muted cacophony of birds. He could also see the row of soldiers lined up like statues themselves, each facing outward towards the glare of early afternoon.

But it was not these things that caused him to pause, a lump coming to his throat. A chair sat in the centre of the dais, a throne, it was the Horus Throne, alone in its power and beauty beneath its tall canopy of cloth of gold. The Staff of Eternity and the Stool of Wealth on its curved back were festooned with ankhs, the symbols of life, and the snarling lions’ muzzles at the end of each arm roared a warning. The delicate turquoise and lapis wings of Isis and Neith rose like fans from the armrests and below them on each side a King strode, Crook and Flail in his hands, Hapi behind him and Ra before. Ramose could picture the great Eye of Horus that filled the rear, the Wadjet Eye set there to protect the King from any attack from behind. Oh, Kamose, Ramose cried out soundlessly. Dear friend. Glorious Majesty. Will those holy ankhs ever feed life into your skin? Will the goddesses ever enjoy the delight of holding their protecting wings around you? Do they suffer the same humiliation you endure every time Apepa settles his foreign carcase onto that cool gold and puts his feet upon the royal footstool?

Someone coughed politely at his elbow and he swung around clumsily. A man was waiting, clad all in white, holding a white, silver-tipped staff. “I am Chief Herald Yku-didi,” he said. “Follow me.” He paced the hall to the right of the dais, and seeing him come, the soldiers on the doors he was approaching opened them. “The noble Ramose,” he intoned, the first time Ramose had heard his title called in Het-Uart, and Ramose walked in.

It seemed to him that the room was full of people. Apepa himself, resplendent in yellow linen shot with gold thread and a yellow helmet, was standing before a wide table. To his right sat a younger man Ramose did not recognize, but presumed from his resemblance to the King that he was yet another son. To his left sat someone Ramose was sure he ought to know. Swarthy, with coarse features and a nose that dominated his face, he sent a trickle of familiar apprehension down Ramose’s spine. He wore no paint or jewels apart from a thick gold band on his muscular upper arm. One ring adorned his blunt fingers, a silver oval with some design on it that Ramose could not make out. A plain black-and-white striped helmet covered his head, its rim cutting across a broad forehead above sharp black eyes. Beside him another man watched Ramose cross the floor with considerable interest. He wore a red ribbon around his ringleted dark hair and his beard glistened with oil. Behind Apepa stood the same vizier Ramose had seen yesterday and at his feet his scribe had already laid his palette across his knees.

Ramose did not at first see the Setiu he had come to think of as his own. He, like the Chief Herald, was dressed all in white. His beard had gone and his hair was very short. If it had not been for the supreme indifference of his stare, Ramose might not have known him. So he was in fact also a Royal Herald. Would Kamose have released him so readily if he had known that he was more than a common soldier? Ramose mused, coming to a halt at the end of the table. He eyed its contents while he mentally calmed himself. Scrolls, Kamose’s letter among them, plates of honey cakes and figs, a cluster of wine cups and two flagons, and a map of the western desert spread out under Apepa’s slim, manicured, bejewelled fingers. Ramose repressed a shudder. The time of testing had come. Bowing deeply from the waist he straightened, put his hands behind his back, and lifted his eyes to Apepa’s face.

“I see that you have recovered from your arduous journey, Ramose son of Teti,” Apepa said, his hennaed mouth curving in a slight smile. “Washed and rested. Good. It is my wish that you should know into whose presence you have been summoned.” Why must he persist in linking me with my father’s name? Ramose wondered with a spurt of annoyance. He did it last night also. Does he think that in doing so he will force to remembrance my father’s loyalty to him and the fate he endured as a result of it? As though I need such reminding! “To my right is my eldest son, the Hawk-in-the-Nest Apepa,” the King was saying. “To my left the General Pezedkhu and beside him the General Kethuna, Commander of my personal bodyguard.” Of course, Pezedkhu, Ramose reiterated to himself. The ablest tactician Apepa has. Seqenenra’s doom and the spur Kamose puts to his need for revenge. No wonder my ka quivered when I saw him. “Behind me is my Vizier and the Keeper of the Royal Seal, Peremuah. You already know my herald Yamusa. And before me …” his long fingers smoothed the map, “… is a subject of concern to us all. Yamusa has acquainted us with some surprising facts. We wish you to corroborate them. We understand now how he was captured.” The smile vanished. The royal lips set in a hard line. “How long has Kamose quartered troops at the oasis of Uah-ta-Meh?” Ramose kept his face still.

“I cannot say, Your Majesty.”

“How long does he intend to keep them there?”

“I cannot say.”

“How many soldiers are under his command at the oasis?” Ramose deliberately shifted from one foot to the other.

“Your Majesty,” he said in a low voice. “My orders were to deliver my Lord’s message to you. That was all. I am not permitted to do more than that.”

“And yet you expect me to allow you to speak to the Princess Tani? Oh yes, she lives,” Apepa said impatiently, seeing Ramose’s expression. “You expect this in return for—what? Dutifully delivering the crudest, most abusive missive I have ever seen?” His voice rose. “I am supposed to thank you and then fulsomely offer you your heart’s desire as payment for such blasphemy? How cloddish are you, son of Teti? What secret contempt do you harbour for me, how disdainfully do you regard my intellect?” His hand came down on the map with a ringing slap. “You may thank the gods that you stand here alive today instead of being tossed headless onto one of Het-Uart’s piles of offal! Answer my questions!” Ramose, listening carefully to the emotions behind the tirade of words, knew without a doubt that insecurity was there, and uncertainty, and a tinge of fear. Apepa had known nothing of the force at the oasis before yesterday. His complacency was shaken. He trusted the word of his herald Yamusa, yet he did not want the information brought to him to be true. It must be corroborated before he would believe. Ramose grinned to himself in spite of the peril of his position.

“I beg your forgiveness, Munificent One,” he said softly, humbly. “But I have confidence in the honour that you, as the living embodiment of Ma’at, personify. I appeal to that honour. I have discharged my responsibility to my Lord. Therefore, let me return to him unsullied by any betrayal.”

“Your mouth is filthy with a secret sarcasm.” Apepa leaned across the table. “You do not believe that I am the living embodiment of Ma’at. You do not worship me as your King. Your adoration goes to the upstart son of a petty southern noble whose delusions of godhead amount to sheer presumptuous insanity. Look what he has done to you, Ramose! Killed your father, stolen your inheritance, smashed your future, and then magnanimously allowed,
ALLOWED
you to end up here where your life itself can be taken from you. And you call this man your friend? Your Lord?” He raised his hands in a gesture of mystified exasperation. “Look around you. At the immensity of my palace, the wealth of my courtiers, the size and strength of my city. This is Egypt! This is reality! Now will you talk to me?”

He had the gift of persuasion. Ruefully Ramose acknowledged it, as the power of Apepa’s argument tried to insinuate itself under his guard. The King was no amateur at the art of subtle enticement. He was inviting Ramose to see himself as a poor deluded provincial following an equally foolish provincial dreamer, and indeed Ramose had to consciously remind himself that the whole of the country from Weset to Het-Uart now belonged to the Taos, and no matter how mighty Het-Uart and this palace appeared to be, it was Apepa and his shrinking area of influence that was the mirage, not Kamose. “I am sorry, Majesty,” he said diffidently. “Your words may be true, but I am honourably bound to do only what I was commanded. Your herald has surely told you everything you wish to know.”

“If that were so, I would not be asking you!” Apepa snapped. “And let me remind you that according to your own account you pressed for this assignment in the secret hope that in carrying out your orders you might fulfil your own small purpose. Did Kamose know of it?” Ramose shook his head, lying easily.

“No.”

“Then you are not as scrupulous as you like to pretend.” He was quiet for a few seconds, his kohled eyes roaming Ramose’s face speculatively, then he leaned back and beckoned Yamusa, whispering something in the man’s ear. Yamusa nodded once, bowed, and strode from the room. Apepa returned his attention to Ramose. “The question is this,” he went on conversationally. “Is your desire to see the Princess greater than the correct discharging of your duty? I rather think it might be.” Ramose took a step forward.

“Majesty,” he began, injecting a note of desperation into his voice, “I do not think that I can tell you anything more regarding the oasis than your herald. He was there, he saw everything! You do not need me! Give me a sight of Tani, I beg you, and then let me go!”

Apepa smiled. The vizier smiled. Suddenly all of them were smiling, and with a leap of his heart Ramose knew that he was about to win. At the expense of his reputation in the sight of these men, but win nevertheless. He hoped that he looked suitably agonized. “He did not see everything,” Apepa objected. “And even if he did, there are many things I want to know that he could not possibly tell me. How many Princes Kamose has suborned, for instance. Whether or not he has been negotiating with the Kushites. Whether or not he has left troops at Weset.” All at once he sat down and laid his arms across the map, giving Ramose a direct look. “You may have a sight of the Princess if you give me one piece of information,” he said. “How long have those troops been settled at Uah-ta-Meh?” Ramose swallowed noisily, ostentatiously.

“Majesty, you swear?”

“I swear by the beard of Sutekh.”

“I suppose such information can do no harm, seeing that it pertains to what is past,” Ramose said haltingly. “Very well. Kamose sent them to the oasis after the last campaigning season. Then he went home to Weset.”

“Thank you. Kethuna, take him through to the reception hall.”

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Ramose knew it even as the General was rising and coming around the table. The eyes on him held contempt as well as relief. Bodies had loosened. There was whispering and fidgeting. Apepa’s son lifted one of the flagons and poured himself wine while he passed some casual remark to his father.

Only Pezedkhu did not move. He sat twisting the silver ring on his brown finger, his head on one side, his gaze full of a cool assessment. He does not trust my little act, Ramose thought as he turned to follow Kethuna. He senses the insincerity behind it. He judges well. All I can pray is that he interprets insincerity as weakness.

Kethuna led him back the way he had come, into the huge hall and up onto the Throne dais, bringing him to a stop just behind the row of soldiers. Between two brawny shoulders Ramose could look out upon a wide and pleasant garden. Fruit trees rained their white and pink blossoms onto the green lawns. The taller sycamores cast patches of shade under which groups of courtiers, mostly women, sat or lay in a bright disorder of cloaks, cushions and board games. Directly ahead at the end of one of the many paths criss-crossing the expanse a large pool glittered in direct sunlight, its surface clotted with lily pads and the pale spears of white lotus blooms. “We will not have long to wait,” Kethuna said. “She always walks in the gardens after the noon meal, before she takes to her couch to sleep the afternoon away. See! There is the vizier! He is looking for her.”

Wildly Ramose cast his eyes this way and that. So many women out there, he thought incoherently, so many colours, faces, yet I will know her the moment I see her. Tani! I am here! Suddenly he spotted Peremuah with his blue-and-white staff, parading slowly among the chattering butterflies, pausing to speak to this one or that. He was bowed to as he went. Twice Ramose saw a braceleted arm raised to point a direction. Then the vizier glided out of sight. Ramose found himself clutching his kilt with both hands. He could hardly breathe.

Peremuah reappeared, and this time he was walking beside a slight figure swathed in a multi-hued cloak whose tassels spread out on the ground behind her as she moved. Her hair crowned her small head in tiers of dark curls wound with yellow ribbons and a fillet of gold spangled across her high forehead. More gold wrapped her ankles and glinted on her wrists as she gesticulated to the man beside her. Her face was turned away but it was Tani, Tani in the lively gait, Tani in the tilt of her head, Tani in the well-remembered fanning of the quick fingers.