The Oasis (58 page)

“What is it, Akhtoy?” he croaked.

“Your pardon, Majesty, but Senehat is here. She says she must speak to you at once.”

“Tell her to go away. I do not want to be disturbed.” There was a flurry of whispers, then Senehat’s voice came muffled through the wood.

“Forgive me, Majesty, but I have something important to tell you. It cannot wait.” Kamose reached down for his kilt. Twice he was unable to pick it up, and when he succeeded in doing so he wrapped it clumsily around his waist.

“Come then,” he called. “But it had better be important, Senehat. I am in no mood for frivolities.”

The door opened and closed and the girl approached him, bowing as she did so. She was dressed in a plain servant’s sheath of white linen bordered in blue. Her feet were bare and a cloud of simple lotus perfume accompanied her. It seemed to smite Kamose with an almost physical force and he had to restrain himself from drawing it in through flared nostrils like a sniffing dog. “Forgive me, Majesty,” she repeated. “I have been trying to see you alone since you returned from Wawat.” Kamose studied her face but there was no hint of seduction there. Her expression was solemn. A tiny frown formed lines between the wings of her eyebrows. Kamose was conscious of a twinge of disappointment, no more than a weak pang under the smothering blanket of his exhaustion.

“Speak then,” he commanded. Her hands came up and gripped each other.

“As you perhaps know, Her Highness Princess Aahmes-nefertari asked me to bed with the noble Ramose,” she began with surprising frankness. “I agreed to do so. The Princess’s reasons for her request seemed pressing to me. I may be only a servant but I am a good Egyptian, Majesty. I have also become a good spy.” Kamose smiled at her and with the movement of his mouth came a slight lifting of his mood.

“Sit down, Senehat,” he offered, indicating his chair. “Take some wine.” She shook her head.

“No. I must not be here long. If the Lady Nefer-Sakharu suspects that I have talked with you in private, she will try to kill me.” Kamose’s eyes narrowed.

“Kill you? My dear Senehat, if my sister knew you were in so much danger she would have you removed from that woman’s influence immediately. Are you not exaggerating?”

“No! Listen to me, Majesty, I beg! I became the Noble Ramose’s bedmate some time ago. He is a fine man, kind and appreciative. I learned to care for him very much, but that did not stop me from reporting his words to my mistress. I thank the gods that his conversation has always been blameless. He loves you. He is honest. It is his mother whom you must fear.” She paused, considering what she would say next, and Kamose waited patiently. “By the time you took him south, I had become a member of the Lady Nefer-Sakharu’s personal staff,” Senehat went on hesitantly. “I wash her in the bath house and do her hair. I wait on her when she eats and I make up her couch. She accepts me because of Ramose but she seldom sees me.” The girl flushed. “She is a woman to whom servants are invisible unless as willing hands or ears without the ability to remember or ponder what they hear. She is my better in blood and station but her ka is common.” Senehat swallowed and glanced at Kamose with swift apology. “I am an Egyptian servant,” she said a trifle defiantly. “I have value under the canopy of Ma’at. Not like the slaves the Setiu tread upon.” You are a spirited and clever little witch, Kamose thought. Aahmes-nefertari chose you well.

“I understand,” he said aloud. “Go on, Senehat.”

“It is no secret amongst your retainers that Nefer-Sakharu hates you for executing her husband and taking possession of her son’s affections,” she told him frankly. “She hates your family for taking her in and showing her kindness. It is often said that favours breed resentment, is it not?” Kamose nodded. “She showed great courage and dignity on the day her husband died. So say the gossips among your staff. But it was a moment of virtue that soon passed.” Moving to the table, she picked up the jug. “May I change my mind, Majesty? Thank you.” With practised precision she poured a cup and took a mouthful of wine. “We were all glad when the Princess removed His Highness Ahmose-onkh from her influence, but that only fuelled her hostility.”

“I know all this,” Kamose prompted her gently. “You still cannot say it, can you, Senehat? Nefer-Sakharu is guilty of treason.” She made a distressed face, wiping a drop of purple liquid from the corner of her mouth with the tip of one dainty finger.

“It is no small thing to accuse a noblewoman,” she replied. “Even now I shrink from it, although I have been relaying her words to my mistress for a long time. But not this. This is for Your Majesty only. Before you went into Wawat, Nefer-Sakharu did her best to turn the noble Ramose against you. Every day was spent in dripping her venom into his ears. He was upset. At first he tried to argue with her but later he kept silence. She refused to hear him. Some of the things she told him were lies. He questioned me closely regarding the way she was being treated here because her constant assault on him had begun to bear the fruit of doubt. I reassured him and he believed me. All this I reported to Her Highness. Then you went away and the Princes came.” She paused to take another sip of wine with a servant’s practised economy of movement. “Before they came, Nefer-Sakharu had begun to write to them. Every week she dictated letters. But she was stupid. She used one of the household’s scribes and he of course showed what he had taken down to your royal grandmother. I understand that there was no real harm in the scrolls, only an attempt to befriend the Princes. The harm came later.” Setting down the cup, she put her hands behind her back and looked at Kamose squarely. “When the Princes arrived, she overwhelmed them at once with invitations, visits, little gifts. She was constantly in their company and I with her to arrange her cushions, set up her canopy, refresh her face paint. All things you in your generosity had made available to her. She told them the strength of your defenders here on the estate and in Weset. She suggested that they might take control of your soldiers and so limit your power. That way you would be forced to listen more closely to their advice and their desires. She reminded them that you had executed an aristocrat, that you had no respect for their station, that their blood would not protect them from your ruthlessness, that you were using them.”

“That much is true,” Kamose interposed. “I have used them. I continue to use them.”

“Yes, but benevolently, and you have promised them great rewards in return for their support. You even gave them the Gold of Valour!” Senehat said emphatically. Kamose allowed himself an inward smile. She was loyal, this little one. “When she saw that they made no objections to her complaints, she became more bold,” Senehat continued. “‘Kamose is nothing but a butcher,’ she said to them. ‘He has murdered innocent Egyptians. He is not to be trusted. Write to Apepa and ask him what he will give you in exchange for Kamose’s head.’ Then the Prince Intef spoke up. ‘I have already done so,’ he said. Then Prince Meketra said, ‘So have I. Kamose is an upstart and we are tired of his war. We want to return to our holdings and live in peace.’”

I gave Khemmenu back to that man, Kamose thought with a spurt of dull pain. I restored him to his princedom. How can he, how can any man, be so faithless? “What of the others?” he asked faintly. He did not for a moment doubt Senehat’s story. It had the dismal ring of a bitter truth about it.

“The Princes Makhu and Mesehti argued violently against them,” Senehat told him. “Prince Ankhmahor was not there. I think they deliberately waited until he was busy elsewhere. They knew that he could not be corrupted.” She shrugged. “In the end Prince Makhu and Prince Mesehti agreed to make no mention to you of the negotiations that had passed between Apepa and the other two if they would cease such treason at once. In return they agreed to support a request to delay the next campaign for another year. That is all, Majesty. When word flew among the servants that three Princes had been arrested, I knew I had to come to you. I could not come before.” She unclasped her hands and spread her fingers before him. “I was not present at every deliberation between the Princes and Nefer-Sakharu after that. They could have changed their minds, cast off their insanity, and I did not want to accuse without proof. Ipi tells us in the servants’ quarters that the proof of their perfidy came out at your meeting.”

“But not all of it,” Kamose said slowly. “I did not know that they were in contact with Apepa. Oh gods. The poison is so subtle, trickling even into the centre of my security.” He felt his belly cramp suddenly, and fought to stay upright. Breathing deeply he waited, and at last the stabbing began to ebb. “I will have to arrest her too,” he murmured. “She cannot be allowed to roam free, spreading her malice. Ramose, I am so sorry.” He conjured a smile. “Senehat, you have done well. Your memory is excellent and so is your use of language. It is a pity that women do not become scribes. What may I give you in return for your loyalty?” Senehat set the cup carefully back on the table, walked to the window and lowered the rush hangings, then went to stand by the door. Kamose realized that her actions had been largely unconscious as she pondered his offer.

“I would like to leave your service and attach myself to the noble Ramose’s household when all the fighting is done,” she answered him candidly. “I have been happy in your employ but I will be happier with him.” Lucky Ramose, Kamose thought wryly.

“He does not love you,” he said softly.

“I know,” she responded simply. “But it does not matter.”

“Very well. Ipi can write your release and it will be filed until later. I will have Nefer-Sakharu arrested in the morning. Will you be safe until then?”

“I think so,” she said gravely.

“Then you are dismissed. Be good to him, Senehat.”

“Always, Majesty.” In a flutter of ribbon and a swirl of linen she was gone.

He wanted to rush out and arrest Nefer-Sakharu at once, drag her to the prison, stand her and the perfidious Princes against a wall and have them executed at once, but reason prevailed. Calling Akhtoy, he ordered hot water so that he could be bathed in his own rooms, and when it came he stood with eyes closed while his body servant washed away the tears and sweat and grime of this terrible day. The water had been scented with lotus oil. Inhaling the moist air he smiled with weary resignation. Ramose deserved Senehat and he wished his friend whatever fragile happiness he could seize from the ruin of his life.

Once he was alone, he pulled back the sheet on his couch and lay down, blowing out the lamp and waiting while his sight adjusted to the dimness. Slowly the outline of the covered window emerged, a square of faint greyness filled with the dark striated pattern of the reeds. Light from the torches in the passage outside slid under the door, becoming pale and diffused as it met the blackness of the floor. His ceiling with its spangle of painted stars was all but invisible, the stars themselves no more than indistinct ashy patches that glowed white during the day. I should go at once to Ahmose, he told himself. He and Aahmes-nefertari should be told what Senehat had to say. Nefer-Sakharu and the Princes must be tried in public so that Egypt will not condemn me as a callous butcher when I order their deaths. I no longer care to what conclusions Apepa might jump when he hears of such disunity within our ranks. They must serve as an example to any others whose loyalty might be wavering.

Butcher. He stirred anxiously beneath the sheet. They called me butcher. Is that what I am? Is that how Egypt will remember me, as a wild beast who murdered peasants and burned villages in a long fit of bloodlust? I must have time to expunge those deeds, necessary though they were, he thought. I must mount the Horus Throne. Amun, you must give me time in which to rule with justice, to see my country prosper, to promote good trade, rebuild the temples crumbled through neglect, all the things that could never come to pass without the two years I have spent in ripping apart what was.

The frenzy of his earlier grief had left him with a pounding head and though he was tired, sleep would not come. His thoughts circled the Princes, Nefer-Sakharu, Senehat, Aahmes-nefertari’s account on the way back from the temple, and he could not quiet his mind. He considered getting up and making his way to his grandmother’s quarters, but he did not want to hear one of her tirades, not tonight. He wanted silence and stillness before the storm he would be forced to unleash in the morning.

Despair filled him. On impulse he left his couch, and kneeling in the darkness before his Amun shrine he began to pray. “I do not want to go on,” he whispered to his god. “I have lost the heart for it. My Princes are deserting me. Their contempt stings me to my very bones. All my work and worry, all the sacrifices of my family, the bereavements, the tears, the terror, it has all come to this. I am empty. I can do no more. Release me, mighty Amun. Give me leave to lay it all aside if only for a little while. Your divine hand has been heavy on my shoulder. Lift it I beg, and do not condemn me for my weakness. I have done all a man could do.”

After a long while he felt the torrent of his desperate words dry up and as they did so a peace began to steal over him, quieting his mind and soothing away the tensions of his body. You have been praying for your death, a voice inside him mocked him kindly. Is that what you really want, Kamose Tao? To give up and slink into obscurity? What would your father say? “He would commend me for trying,” Kamose whispered back. “Be silent now. I think I can sleep.” Reaching up, he pulled a pillow onto the floor, and setting his head on it and one hand under it, he closed his eyes. He would go on, he knew, until Egypt was cleansed or the gods took his life. He was a warrior, and there was no alternative.

He woke with a start, his heart already racing, wondering if someone had called his name. His hip and one shoulder ached from lying on a hard surface, and after a moment he got up and tossed his pillow onto the couch, intending to follow it, but in the act of doing so he paused. There was something wrong. Senses straining, he probed the darkness. Dim light still filtered around the edges of the covered window. The silence was absolute. The furnishings of his room were nothing more than vague humps. He could not tell how long he had been asleep but he felt rested and it seemed to him that dawn could not be far away. Frowning, he stood irresolute, the trailing sheet of his bed brushing his thigh. Something wrong. Something small. The silence too deep perhaps. The darkness too dense.