River god - Smith Wilbur (чтение книг .TXT) 📗

  'Dear Taita.' It was almost a whisper. 'I hear that you have altered some of the arrangements for the opening act of the pageant, despite the fact that I personally ordered them. I could not believe that you have been so presumptuous. I had to come all this way in the heat to find out for myself.'

  I knew it was of no avail to feign innocence or ignorance, so I bowed my head and tried to look aggrieved. 'My lord. It was not I who ordered the changes. It was His Holiness, the abbot of the temple of Osiris?'

  But my lord broke in impatiently, 'Yes, of course he did, but only after you put him up to it. Do you think I do not know both you and that mumbling old priest? He never had an original thought in his head, while you have nothing but.'

  'My lord!'I protested.

  'What devious little trick was it this time? Was it one of those convenient dreams sent to you by the gods?' my lord asked, his voice as soft as the rustle of one of the sacred cobras that infested the temple, sliding across the stone flags of the floor.

  'My lord!' I did my best to look shocked by the accusation, although I had indeed given the good abbot a rather fanciful account of how Osiris in the guise of a black crow had visited me in my sleep to complain of the spilling of blood in his temple.

  Up until that time the priest had voiced no objection to the realistic piece of theatre that my Lord Intef had planned for the amusement of Pharaoh. I had only resorted to dreams when all my efforts to dissuade my lord had failed. It was deeply abhorrent to me to be party to such an abomination as my lord had ordered to be performed in the first act of the pageant. Of course I am aware that certain savage peoples in the eastern lands make human sacrifice to their gods. I have heard that the Kassites, who live beyond the twin rivers Tigris and Euphrates, cast new-born babes into a fiery furnace. The caravan masters who have travelled in those distant lands speak of other atrocities performed in the name of religion, of young virgins slaughtered to promote the harvest or captives of war beheaded before the statues of a triple-headed god.

  However, we Egyptians are a civilized people and we worship wise and just gods, not blood-crazed monsters. I had tried to convince my master of this. I had pointed out to him that only once before had a pharaoh made human sacrifice; when Menotep had slit the throats of the seven rebel princes in the temple of Seth and quartered their corpses and sent the embalmed fragments to the governors of each of the nomes as a warning. History still remembered the deed with distaste. Menotep is known to this day as the Bloody King.

  'It is not human sacrifice,' my master had contradicted me. 'Merely a well-merited execution, to be carried out in a rather novel fashion. You will not deny, dear Taita, that the death penalty has always been an important part of our system of justice, will you? Tod is a thief. He has stolen from the royal coffers and he must die, if only as an example to others.'

  It sounded reasonable, except that I knew he was not at all interested in justice, but rather in protecting his own treasure and in impressing Pharaoh, who so loved pageant and theatre. This had left me with no alternative but to dream for the benefit of the good abbot. Now my Lord In-tef's lip lifted in a smile which exposed his perfect teeth but which chilled my blood and raised the hairs on the nape of my neck.

  'Here is a little piece of advice,' he whispered close to my face. f'I suggest that you have another dream tonight, so that whichever god it was that visited you last time has an opportunity to countermand his previous instructions to the abbot and to endorse my arrangements. If this does not happen, I will find some more work for Rasfer?that is my solemn promise to you.' He turned and strode away, leaving me both relieved that he had not discovered the lovers and miserable that I was forced to go ahead with the vile display which he had ordered.

  Nevertheless, after my master had left, the rehearsal was a heartening success that revived my spirits. Lostris was in such a glow of happiness after her tryst with Tanus that her beauty was indeed divine, and Tanus in his youth and power was the young Horus incarnate.

  Naturally I was perturbed by the entrance of my Osiris to the stage, aware as I now was of the fate that my Lord Intef had ordered for him. My Osiris was played by a handsome, middle-aged man named Tod who had been one of the bailiffs until he had been caught dipping into my Lord Intef's coffers to support a young and expensive courtesan of whom he was enamoured. I was not proud that it was my examination of the accounts that had brought to light the discrepancies.

  My lord had released him from custody, where he was awaiting formal trial and sentencing, to play the part of the god of the underworld in the pageant. My lord had promised not to take the matter further if he fulfilled the role of Osiris satisfactorily. The unfortunate Tod was unaware of the hidden menace in this offer and threw himself into the act with pathetic enthusiasm, believing that he was about to earn his pardon. He could not know that, in the meantime, my lord had secretly signed his death warrant and handed the scroll to Rasfer, who was not only the state executioner but my choice to play Seth in our little production. It was my lord's intention that he should combine both roles on the following evening when the pageant was performed before Pharaoh. Although Rasfer was a natural choice for the role of Seth, I regretted having cast him in it as I watched him rehearse the opening scene with Tod, and I shuddered as I imagined how the main performance would differ from the rehearsal. After the rehearsal it was my most pleasant duty to escort my mistress back to the harem compound. She would not let me leave but kept me late listening to her excited resume of the day's extraordinary events and the role that Tanus had played in them.

  'Did you see how he called upon the great god Horus and how the god came at once to his aid? Surely he has the full favour and protection of Horus, don't you agree? Horus will not let any evil befall us, of that I am now certain.'

  There was much more of this happy fantasy, and no more talk of parting and suicide. How swiftly the winds of young love shift!

  'After what Tanus did today, the way he saved the state barge from wrecking, surely he must also have earned Pharaoh's high favour, don't you think so, Taita? With favour of both the god and Pharaoh, my father can never succeed in having Tanus sent away now, can he, Taita?'

  I was called upon to endorse every happy thought that occurred to her, and I was not allowed to leave the harem until I had memorized at least a dozen messages of undying love which I was sworn to carry to Tanus personally.

  When, exhausted, I finally reached my own quarters, there was still no rest for me. Nearly all the slave boys were waiting for me, as excited and garrulous as my mistress had been. They also wanted Jo have my opinion of the day's events, and particularly of Tanus' rescue of Pharaoh's ship and the significance of that deed. They crowded around me on the terrace above the river as I fed my pets, and vied with each other for my attention.

  'Elder brother, is it true that Tanus called upon the god for his help, and Horus intervened immediately? Did you see it happen? Some even say that the god appeared in his falcon shape and hovered over Tanus' head, spreading protective wings over him. Is it true?'

  'Is it true, Akh, that Pharaoh has promoted Tanus to Companion of Pharaoh, and given him an estate of five hundred fed dan of fertile land on the riverside as reward?'

  'Elder brother, they say that the oracle at the desert shrine of Thoth, the god of wisdom, has cast a horoscope for Tanus. The oracle divines that he will be the greatest warrior in the history of our Egypt and that, one day, Pharaoh will favour him above all others.' It is amusing now to look back on these childish prattles, and to realize the strange truths that were adumbrated in them, but at the time I dismissed them as I did the children, with mock severity.