River god

At the climax of this exhibition the torches were extinguished and the temple plunged into darkness. In the darkness the substitution was made once more and when the torches were re-lit my Lady Lostris stood in mid-stage with a new-born infant in her arms. One of the kitchen slaves had been considerate enough to give birth a few days previously, and I had borrowed her whelp for the occasion.

'I give you the new-born son of Osiris, god of the underworld, and of Isis, goddess of the moon and of the stars.' My Lady Lostris lifted the infant high and he, astonished by the sea of strangers before him, screwed up his tiny face and turned bright red as he howled.

Isis raised her voice above his and cried, "Greet the young Lord Horus, god of the wind and the sky, falcon of the heavens!' Half the audience were Horus men and their enthusiasm for their patron was unbounded. They came to their feet in a roaring tumult, and the second act ended in another triumph for me and in mortification for the infant god, who on later examination was found to have prodigiously soiled his swaddling-cloth.

I OPENED THE FINAL ACT WITH ANOTHER of my recitations describing the childhood and the coming to manhood of Horus. I spoke of the sacred charge laid upon him by Isis, and as I did so, the curtains were drawn aside to reveal the goddess in the centre of the stage. Isis was bathing in the Nile, attended by her handmaidens. Her wet robe clung to her body so that the pale glory of her skin shone through. The indistinct outlines of her breasts were tipped with tiny rose-buds of virgin pink.

Tanus as Horus entered from the wings, and immediately dominated the stage. In his polished armour and his warrior's pride he was a perfect counterpoint for the beauty of the goddess. The long list of his battle honours in the river wars, together with his most recent exploit in saving the royal barge, had focused the attention of the populace full upon him. For this moment Tanus was the darling of the crowd. Before he could speak, they began to cheer him, and the applause continued so long that the actors were forced to freeze in their opening positions.

While the cheering swirled around Tanus, I picked out certain faces in the audience and watched their reactions. Nembet, the Great Lion of Egypt, scowled and muttered fiercely into his beard, making no attempt to hide his animosity. Pharaoh smiled graciously and nodded slightly, so that those seated behind him were made aware of his approbation, and their own enthusiasm was encouraged. My Lord Intef, never one to fly against the prevailing winds, smiled his most silky smile and nodded his head in concert with his king. His eyes, however, when seen from my vantage-point, were deadly.

At last the applause abated and Tanus could speak his lines, not without difficulty, however, for every time he paused to draw breath another outburst of cheering broke out. It was only when Isis began to sing that complete silence fell upon them once more.

The suffering of your father,

the terrible fate that hangs over our house,

all these must be expunged.

In verse Isis warned her noble son, and held out her arms to him in supplication and in command.

The curse of Seth is upon us all,

and only you can break it.

Seek out your monstrous uncle.

By his arrogance and his ferocity,

you will know him.

When you find him,

strike him down.

Chain him,

bind him to your will,

that the gods and all men

will be freed for ever from his ghastly sway.

Still singing, the goddess withdrew and left her son to his quest. Like children following a well-loved nursery rhyme, the audience knew full well what to expect and leaned forward eagerly and hummed with anticipation.

When at last Seth came leaping back on stage for the cataclysmic battle, the age-old struggle between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, duty and dishonour, the audience was ready for him. They greeted Seth with a chorus of hatred that was spontaneous and unfeigned. In defiance Rasfer leered and gibbered at them, strutting about the stage, cupping his genitalia in his hands and thrusting his hips out at them in a mocking and obscene gesture that drove them wild with fury.

'Kill him, Horus!' they howled. 'Smash in his ugly face!' And Seth pranced before them, stoking their fury.

'Kill the murderer of the great god Osiris!' they roared in a paroxysm of loathing.

'Smash in his face!'

'Rip out his guts!'

The congregation's reaction to him was in no way moderated by the fact that it knew, deep down, that this was Rasfer and not Seth.

'Hack off his head!' they screamed.

'Kill him! Kill him!'

At last Seth pretended to see his nephew for the first time, and swaggered up to him, lolling his tongue out between

his blackened teeth, drooling like an idiot so that silver strands of saliva slimed down on to his chest. I would never have believed that Rasfer could make himself more repulsive than nature had already accomplished, but now he proved me wrong.

'Who is this child?' he demanded, and belched full in the face of Horus. Tanus was unprepared for this and stepped back involuntarily, his expression of disgust unfeigned as he smelled Rasfer's breath and the contents of his stomach, the sour wine still fermenting in it.

Tanus recovered swiftly and spoke his next line. 'I am Horus, son of Osiris.'

Seth let out a mocking peal of laughter. 'And what is it you seek, boy child of a dead god?'

'I seek vengeance for the murder of my noble father. I seek the assassin of Osiris.'

'Then search no further,' Seth shouted, 'for I am Seth the vanquisher of lesser gods. I am Seth the eater of stars, and the destroyer of worlds.'

The two gods drew their swords and rushed at each other, to meet in mid-stage with a ringing clash of bronze as blade struck blade. In an attempt to reduce the chances of accidental injury, I had attempted to substitute wooden swords for bronze, but neither of my actors would have any of it. My Lord Intef had intervened when Rasfer had appealed to him. He had ordered that they be allowed to wield their real battle weapons, and I had been forced to yield to this higher authority. At least it added to the realism of the scene as they stood now chest to chest, with blades locked, and glared into each other's face.

They made an extraordinary pair, so totally dissimilar, pointing up the moral of the play, the eternal conflict of good against evil. Tanus was tall and fair and comely. Seth was swarthy and thick-set, bow-legged and hideous. The contrast was direct and visceral. The mood of the audience was as fiery and as fiercely partisan as that of the two protagonists.

Simultaneously they pushed each other backwards and then rushed in again, thrusting and cutting, feinting and parrying. They were both highly trained and skilled swordsmen, amongst the finest in all Pharaoh's armies. Their blades whirled and glinted in the torchlight so that they seemed as insubstantial as the sunlight reflected from the wind-ruffled surface of the great river. The sound of their flight was that of the wings of the birds startled from their roosts in the gloomy heights of the temple, but when they clashed together it was with the heavy ring of hammers at the coppersmith's forge.

What seemed to the observer to be the chaos of real battle was in fact a meticulously choreographed ballet which had been carefully rehearsed. Each man knew exactly how each blow must be launched and each parry timed. These were two superb athletes engaged in the activity for which they had trained their entire warrior's lifetime, and they made it seem effortless.

When Seth thrust, Horus left his parry so late that the point actually touched his breastplate and left a tiny bright scratch on the metal. Then when Horus launched himself forward in riposte, his edge flew so close to Seth's head that a coil of his coarse matted hair was shorn from his skull, as if by a barber's razor. Their footwork was as graceful and intricate as that of the temple dancers, and they were swift as falcons and lithe as hunting cheetahs.

The crowd was mesmerized and so was I. Therefore it must have been some deep instinct that warned me, perhaps even a nudge from the gods, who knows? At any rate, something outside myself made me tear my eyes away from the spectacle and glance at my Lord Intef where he sat in the front row.

Again, was it instinct or my own deep knowledge of him, or the intervention of the god who protects Tanus that placed the thought in my mind? A little of all three of these, perhaps, but I knew with instant and utter certainty the reason for that wolfish smile on my Lord Intef's handsome features.

I knew why he had chosen Rasfer to play Seth. I knew why he had made no effort to exclude Tanus from the role of Horus, even after he had found out about the relationship between him and my Lady Lostris. I knew why he had ordered the use of real swords, and I knew why he was smiling now. The massacre was not over for the evening. He was looking forward to more. Before this act was played out, Rasfer would ply his special talents once again.

'Tanus!' I screamed, as I started forward. 'Beware! It's a trap. He intends?' My cries were drowned out by the thunder of the crowd, and I had not taken a second step when I was seized by each arm from behind. I tried to struggle free, but two of Rasfer's ruffians held me fast and started to drag me away. They had been placed there for just such a moment as this, to prevent me from warning my friend.

'Horus, give me strength!' I rendered up a swift and silent entreaty, and instead of resisting them I hurled myself back in the same direction as they were pulling me. For an instant they were thrown off-balance, and I broke half-free of their grasp. I managed to reach the edge of the stage before they could control me again.

'Horus, give me voice!' I prayed, and then screamed with all my breath, 'Tanus, beware! He means to kill you.'

This time my voice carried above that of the mob, and Tanus heard me. I saw his head flick and his eyes narrow slightly. However, Rasfer heard me as well. He responded instantly, breaking the rehearsed routine. Instead of dropping back before the whirlwind of cuts and thrusts that Tanus was aiming close to his brutish head, he stepped in and, with an upward sweep of his own blade, he forced Tanus' sword-arm high.

Without the benefit of surprise he would never have made the opening into which he now launched a thrust behind which was the full weight of those massive shoulders and mighty trunk. The point of his blade was aimed an inch below the rim of Tanus' helmet and directly at his right eye. It should have skewered his eye and cleaved his skull through and through.

However, my shouted warning had given Tanus that fleeting moment of grace in which to react. He recovered his guard just in time. With the pommel of his sword he managed to touch a glancing blow to Rasfer's wrist. It had just sufficient force to deflect the sword-point a finger's-width, and at the same moment Tanus tucked in his chin and rolled his head. It was too late to avoid the blow entirely. However, the stroke that might have skewered his eye and split his skull like a rotten melon, merely laid open his eyebrow to the bone, and then flew on over his shoulder.

Instantly a sheet of blood gushed from the shallow wound and flowed over Tanus' face, blinding his right eye. He was forced to fall back before the savage onslaught that Rasfer now launched at him. Desperately he gave ground, blinking at the blood and trying to wipe it away with his free hand. It seemed impossible that he would be able to defend himself, and if only I had not been held so securely by the palace guards, I would have drawn the little jewelled dagger at my belt and rushed to his aid.

Even without my assistance Tanus was able to survive that first murderous attack. Though he was wounded twice more, a gouge across the left thigh and a nick on the biceps of his sword-arm, he kept weaving and parrying and ducking. Rasfer kept coming at him, never letting him recover his balance or his full vision. Within minutes Rasfer was blowing and grunting like a giant forest hog, and running with sweat, his misshapen torso gleaming in the torchlight, but the speed and fury of his assault never faltered.

Though no great swordsman myself, I am a student of the art. So often had I watched Rasfer at practice in the weapons-yard that I knew his style intimately. I knew he was an exponent of the attack khamsin, the attack 'like the desert wind'. It was a manoeuvre that perfectly suited his brute strength and physique. I had seen him practise it on a hundred occasions and now I divined by his footwork that he was gathering himself for it, for that one last effort that would end it all.

Struggling in the grip of my captors, I screamed at Tanus again, 'Khamsin! Be ready!' I thought that my warning had been drowned and washed away by the uproar that filled the temple, for Tanus showed no reaction. Later he told me he had indeed heard me, and that with his impaired vision that second warning of mine had certainly saved him once again.

Rasfer dropped back a half-pace, the classic prelude to the khamsin, relaxing the pressure for an instant to position his opponent for the coup. Then his weight shifted and his left foot swung forward into the lead. He used his momentum and all the strength of his right leg to launch his entire body into the attack, like some grotesque carrion-bird taking to flight. As both his feet left the ground, the point of his blade was aimed at Tanus' throat. It was inexorable. Nothing could prevent that deadly blade from flying true to its mark except the one classic defence, the stop-hit.

At the precise instant that Rasfer was fully committed to the stroke, Tanus launched himself with equal power and superior grace. Like an arrow leaving the bowstring, he flew straight at his opponent. As they met in mid-air Tanus gathered up Rasfer's blade with his own and let it run down on to the pommel, where it came up hard and short, stopping it dead. It was the perfectly executed stop-hit.

The mass and speed of the two big men were thrown on to the bronze blade in Rasfer's fist, and it could not withstand the shock. It snapped cleanly, and left him clutching only the sheared-off hilt. Then they were locked chest-to-chest once more. Although Tanus' sword was still undamaged, Rasfer had got in under his guard and he could not wield it. Both Tanus' hands, the sword still held in his right fist, were locked behind Rasfer's back as the two men heaved and strained at each other.

Wrestling is one of the military disciplines in which every warrior in the Egyptian army is trained. Bound to each other by the crushing embrace of arms, they spun about the stage, each attempting to throw the other off-balance, snarling into each other's eyes, hooking a heel to trip, butting at each other with the visors of their helmets, equally matched thus far in strength and determination.

The audience had long since sensed that this was no longer a mock engagement, but a fight to the death. I wondered that their appetites had not been jaded by all they had witnessed that evening, but it was not so. They were insatiable, howling for blood and yet more blood.

At last Rasfer tore his arm free of Tanus' encircling grip. He still clutched the hilt of the broken sword in his fist, and with the jagged edge he struck at Tanus' face, deliberately aiming at his eyes and the wound in his brow, trying to enlarge and aggravate it. Tanus twisted his head to avoid the blows, catching them on the peak of his bronze helmet. Like a python shifting its coils around its prey, he used the moment to, adjust his crushing hold around Rasfer's chest. The strain that he was exerting was such that Rasfer's features began to swell and engorge with blood. The air was being forced out of him, and he struggled against suffoca-- tion. He began visibly to weaken. Tanus kept up the pressure until a carbuncle on Rasfer's back was stretched to bursting-point and the yellow pus erupted in a stinking stream and trickled down into the waistband of his kilt.

Already suffocating, Rasfer grimaced at the pain of the bursting abscess and checked. Tanus felt him falter, and he summoned some deep reserve of strength. He changed the angle of his next effort, dropping his shoulders slightly and forcing his opponent backwards and upwards on to his heels. Rasfer was off-balance, and Tanus heaved again and forced him back a pace. Once he had him moving backwards, he kept the momentum going. Still locked to his opponent, he ran Rasfer backwards across the stage, steering him towards one of the gigantic stone pillars. For a moment none of us realized Tanus' intention, and then we saw him drop the point of his sword to the horizontal and press the hilt hard against Rasfer's spine.

At a full run the point of Tanus' sword hit the unyielding column. The metal screeched against the granite, and the shock was transmitted up the blade. It stopped those two big men in their tracks, and the force of it drove the hilt into Rasfer's spine. It would have killed a lesser man, and even Rasfer was paralyzed by it. With the last gust of his foul breath he let out a cry of agony, and his arms flew open. The broken haft of his own sword spun from his grip and skidded away across the stone pavement.

Rasfer's knees buckled, and he sagged in Tanus' arms. Tanus thrust his hip into him, and, with a heave of his upper body, hurled Rasfer over backwards. He landed so heavily that I heard more than one of his ribs crackle like dry twigs in the flames of the camp-fire. The back of his skull bounced upon the stone flags with a sound like a desert melon dropped from on high, and the breath from his lungs whistled out of his throat.

He groaned in agony. He had barely the strength to lift his arms to Tanus in capitulation. Tanus was so carried away by battle-rage, and inflamed by the roar of the crowd, that he was a man berserk. He stood over Rasfer and lifted his sword on high, gripping the hilt with both hands. He was a dreadful sight. Blood from the wound in his forehead had painted his visage into a glistening devil mask. Sweat and blood had soaked the hair of his chest and stained his clothing.

'Kill him!' roared the congregation. 'Kill the evil one!'

The point of Tanus' sword was aimed at the centre of Rasfer's chest, and I steeled myself for the down-stroke that would impale that gross body. I willed Tanus to do it, for I hated Rasfer more than any of them. The gods know that I had reason, for here was the monster who had gelded me, and I longed for my revenge.

It was in vain. I should have known my Tanus better than expect him to skewer a surrendered enemy. I saw the fires of madness begin to fade from his eyes. He shook his head slightly, as if to regain control of himself. Then, instead of stabbing down, he lowered his sword-point slowly until it just pricked Rasfer's chest. The keen point raised a drop of blood, bright as a garnet amongst the coarse hair of Rasfer's chest. Then Tanus picked up the lines of his script.

'Thus I bind you to my will, and I expel you from the light. May you wander through all eternity in the dark places. May you nevet jnore have power over the noble and the good amongst men. I give you to rule over the thief and the coward, over the bully and the cheat, over the liar and the murderer, over the grave-robber and the violater of virtuous women, over the blasphemer and the breaker of faith. From henceforth you are the god of all evil. Get you gone, and carry away with you the curse of Horus and of his resurrected father, Osiris.'

Tanus lifted the point of his sword from Rasfer's chest and tossed the weapon aside, deliberately disarming himself in the presence of his enemy to demonstrate his disdain and scorn. The blade clattered on the flagstones and Tanus strode to the running waters of our stage Nile and went down on one knee to scoop a handful and dash it into his own face, washing away the blood. Then he tore a strip of linen from the hem of his kilt and swiftly bound up the wound on his forehead to stem the bleeding.

Rasfer's two apes released me and rushed on stage to succour their fallen commander. They lifted him to his feet, and he staggered between them, heaving and blowing like a great obscene bullfrog. I saw that he was grievously injured. They dragged him from the stage, and the crowd howled its derision and hatred at him.

I watched my Lord Intef, and his expression was for the moment unguarded. I saw every one of my suspicions confirmed there. This was how he had planned to wreak his vengeance on Tanus?to have him slain before the eyes of the entire populace?and on his own daughter: to have her lover killed before her eyes?that was to have been Lostris' punishment for flouting her father's will.

My Lord Intef s frustration and disappointment now were enough to make me feel a smug satisfaction as I considered what retribution must be in store for Rasfer. He might have preferred more of the rough treatment that Tanus had dealt out to him, to the punishment that my Lord Intef would inflict upon him. My master was ever harsh with those who failed him.

Tanus was still gasping from the exertions of the duel, but now, as he moved to the front of the stage, he drew a dozen deep breaths to steady himself for the declamation that would bring the pageant to an end. As he faced the congregation it fell silent, for in blood and anger he was an awe-inspiring sight.

Tanus lifted up both his hands to the temple-roof and cried out in a loud voice, 'Ammon-Ra, give me voice! Osiris, give me eloquence!' The traditional entreaty of the orator.

'Give him voice! Give him eloquence!' the crowd responded, and their faces were still rapt with all they had witnessed, but hungry for more entertainment.

Tanus was that unusual creature, a man of action who was also a man of words and ideas. I am sure that he would have been generous enough to admit that many of those ideas were planted in his mind by that lowly slave, Taita. However, once planted, they were in fertile ground.

When it came to oratory, Tanus' exhortations to his squadrons on the eve of battle were famous. Of course, I had not been present at all of these, but they had been relayed to me verbatim by Kratas, his faithful friend and lieutenant. I had copied many of these speeches down on a set of papyrus scrolls, for they were worthy of preservation.

Tanus had the common touch, and the ability to appeal directly to the ordinary man. I often thought that much of this special power of his sprang from his transparent honesty and his forthright manner. Men trusted him and followed willingly wherever he led them, even unto death itself.

I was still overwrought by the conflict we had all just witnessed and the closeness of Tanus' escape from the trap that my Lord Intef had laid for him. Nevertheless, I was eager to listen to the declamation that Tanus had prepared without my help or advice. To be truthful, I was still a little resentful that he had declined my assistance, and more than a little nervous as to what he might come out with. Tact and subtlety have never been Tanus' most notable virtues.

Now Pharaoh made a gesture of invitation to him to speak, crossing and uncrossing the ceremonial crook and flail, and inclining his head gracefully. The congregation was silent and intent, leaning forward eagerly so as not to miss a single word.

'It is I, Horus the falcon-headed, that speaks,' Tanus began, and they encouraged him.

'It is verily the falcon-headed! Hear him!'

'Ha-Ka-Ptahr Tanus used the archaic form from which the present name of Egypt was derived. Very few realized that the original meaning was the temple of Ptah. 'I speak to you of this ancient land given to us ten thousand years since, in the time when all the gods were young. I speak to you of the two kingdoms that in nature are one and indivisible.'

Pharaoh nodded. This was the standard dogma, approved by both temporal and religious authority that neither recognized the impostor in the Lower Kingdom, nor even acknowledged his existence.

'Oh, Kemitr Tanus used another ancient name for Egypt: the Black Land, after the colour of the Nile mud brought down by the annual inundation. 'I speak to you of this land riven and divided, torn by civil war, bleeding and drained of treasure.' My own shock was mirrored on the faces of all those who listened to him. Tanus had just given voice to the unspeakable. I wanted to rush on to the stage and clap my hand over his mouth to prevent him from going on, but I was transfixed.

'Oh, Ta-Merir Another old name: the Beloved Earth. Tanus had learned well the history I had taught him. 'I speak to you of old and feeble generals, and admirals too weak and indecisive to-wrest back the stolen kingdom from the usurper. I speak to you of ancient men in their dotage who waste your treasure and spill the blood of your finest young men as though it were the lees of bitter wine.'

In the second row of the audience I saw Nembet, the Great Lion of Egypt, flush with anger and scratch furiously with chagrin at his beard. The other elderly military men around him frowned and moved restlessly on their benches, rattling their swords in their scabbards as a sign of their disapproval. Amongst them all, only my Lord Intef smiled as he watched Tanus escape from one trap only to blunder into the next.

'Our Ta-Meri is beset by a host of enemies, and yet the sons of the nobles prefer to cut off their own thumbs rather than to carry the sword to protect her.' As he said this, Tanus looked keenly at Menset and Sobek, Lostris' older brothers, where they sat beside their father in the second row. The king's decree exempted from military service only those with such physical disability as to render them unfit. The surgeon priests at the temple of Osiris had perfected the art of removing the top joint of the thumb with little pain or danger of infection, thus rendering it impossible for that hand to wield a sword or pluck a bowstring. The young bucks proudly flaunted their mutilations as they sat gambling and carousing in the riverside taverns. They considered the missing digit a mark not of cowardice, but of sophistication and independent spirit.

'War is the game played by old men with the lives of the young,' I had heard Lostris' brothers argue. 'Patriotism is a myth conceived by those old rogues to draw us into the infernal game. Let them fight as they will, but we want no part of it.' In vain I had remonstrated with them that the privilege of Egyptian citizenship carried with it duties and responsibilities. They dismissed me with the arrogance of the young and ignorant.

Now, however, beneath Tanus' level stare they fidgeted and concealed their left hands in the folds of their clothing. They were both of them right-handed, but had convinced the recruiting officer to the contrary, with their eloquence and a dash of gold.

The common people at the rear of the great hall hummed and stamped their feet in agreement with what Tanus had said. It was their sons who filled the rowing-benches of the war galleys, or marched under arms through the desert sands.

However, in the wings of the stage I wrung my hands in despair. With that little speech Tanus had made an enemy of fifty of the young nobles in the audience. They were men who would one day inherit power and influence in the Upper Kingdom. Their enmity outweighed a hundred times the adoration of the common herd and I prayed for Tanus to cease. In a few minutes he had done enough damage to last us all a hundred years, but he went on blithely.

'Oh, Ta-Nutri!' This was yet another ancient name: the Land of the Gods. 'I speak to you of the wrong-doer and the robber who waits in ambush on every hilltop and in every thicket. The farmer is forced to plough with his shield at his side, and the traveller must go with his sword bared.'

Again the commoners applauded. The depredations of the robber bands were a terrible scourge upon them all. No man was safe beyond the mud walls of the towns, and the robber chieftains who called themselves the Shrikes were arrogant and fearless. They respected no law but their own, and no man was safe from them.

Tanus had struck exactly the right note with the people, and suddenly I was moved by the notion that this was all much deeper than it seemed. Revolutions have been forged and dynasties of pharaohs overturned by just such appeals to the masses. With Tanus' next words my suspicion was strengthened.

'While the poor cry out under the lash of the tax-collector, the nobles anoint the buttocks of their fancy boys with the most precious oils of the orient?' A roar went up from the rear of the hall, and my fears were replaced by a tremulous excitement. Had this been carefully planned? Was Tanus more subtle and devious than I had ever given him credit for?

'By HorusF I cried in my heart. 'The land is ripe for revolution, and who better to lead it than Tanus?' I felt only disappointment that he had not taken me into his confidence and made me party to his design. I could have planned a revolution as skilfully and as cunningly as I could design a water-garden or write a play.

I craned to look over the heads of the congregation, expecting at the very next moment to see Kratas and his brother officers burst into the temple at the head of a company of warriors from the squadron. I felt the hair on my forearms and at the nape of my neck lift with excitement as I pictured them snatching the double crown from Pharaoh's head and placing it upon the blood-smeared brow of Tanus. With what joy I would have joined the cry of 'Long live Pharaoh! Long live King Tanus!'

Heady images swirled before my eyes as Tanus went on speaking. I saw the prophecy of the desert oracle fulfilled. I dreamed of Tanus, with my Lady Lostris beside him, seated on the white throne of this very Egypt, with myself standing behind them resplendent in the apparel of the grand vizier of the Upper Kingdom. But why, oh why, had he not consulted me before embarking on this perilous venture?

With his next breath he made the reason plain. I had misjudged my Tanus, my honest, plain and good Tanus, my noble, straight and trustworthy Tanus, lacking only in guile and stealth and deceit.

This was no plot. This was simply Tanus speaking his mind without fear or favour. The commoners, who only moments before had been clinging enraptured to every word that fell from his tongue, were now quite unexpectedly given the sharp edge of that organ as he rounded upon them.

'Hear me, oh Egypt! What is to become of a land where the mean-spirited try to suppress the mighty amongst them; where the patriot is reviled; where there is no man of yesterday revered for his wisdom; where the petty and the envious seek to tear down the men of worth to their own base level?'

There was no cheering now as those at the back of the hall recognized themselves in this description. Effortlessly my Tanus had succeeded in alienating every man amongst them, great and small, rich and poor. Oh, why had he not consulted me, I mourned, and the answer was plain. He had not consulted me because he knew I would have counselled him against it.

'What order is there in society where the slave is free with his tongue, and counts himself as equal to those of noble birth?' he blazed at them. 'Should the son revile his father and scorn the wisdom paid for in grey hairs and wrinkled brow? Should the waterfront harlot wear rings of lapis lazuli and set herself above the virtuous wife?'

By Horus, he would not spare one of them from the lash of his tongue, I thought bitterly. As always, he was completely oblivious to his own safety in the pursuit of what he saw as the right and open way.

Only one person in the temple was enchanted with what he had to tell them. Lostris appeared at my side and gripped my arm.

'Isn't he wonderful, Taita?' she breathed. 'Every word he utters is the truth. Tonight he is truly a young god.'

I could find neither the words nor the heart to agree with her, and I hung my head in sorrow as Tanus went on relentlessly.

'Pharaoh, you are the father of the people. We cry out to you for protection and for succour. Give the affairs of state and war into the hands oœ honest and clever men. Send the rogues and the fools to rot on their estates. Call off the faithless priests and the usurious servants of the state, those parasites upon the body of this Ta-Meri of ours.'

Horus knows that I am as good a priest-hater as the best of them, but only a fool or very brave man would call down the wrath of every god-botherer in Egypt upon his own head, for their power is infinite and their hatred implacable. While as for the civil servants, their lines of influence and corruption have been set up over the centuries and my Lord Intef was the chief of them all. I shuddered in pity for my dear blunt friend as he went on handing out instructions to Pharaoh on how to restructure the whole of Egyptian society.

'Heed the words of the sage! Oh, king, honour the artist and the scribe. Reward the brave warrior and the faithful servant. Root out the bandits and the robbers from their desert fastnesses. Give the people example and direction in their lives, so that this very Egypt may once again flourish and be great.'

Tanus fell to his knees in the centre of the stage and spread his arms wide. 'Oh, Pharaoh, you are our father. We protest our love to you. In return, show us now a father's love. Hear our entreaties, we beg of you.'

Up to that moment I had been stupefied by the depths of my friend's folly, but now, much too late, I regained my wits and signalled frantically for my stage-hands to drop the curtain before Tanus could do any further damage. As the gleaming folds of cloth floated down and hid him from their view, the audience sat in stunned silence, as though they did not believe all that they had heard and seen that night.

It was Pharaoh himself who broke the spell. He rose to his feet, and his face behind the stiff white make-up was inscrutable. As he swept from the temple, the congregation prostrated itself before him. Before he too went down in obeisance, I saw my Lord Intef?s expression. It was triumphant.

I ESCORTED TANUS BACK FROM THE TEMPLE to his own sparsely furnished quarters close to the dock at which his squadron was moored. Although I walked beside him with my hand on the hilt of my dagger, prepared for the consequences of his foolhardy honesty to be visited on us immediately, Tanus was quite unrepentant. Indeed, he seemed oblivious to the depths of his folly and inordinately pleased with himself. I have often remarked how a man freshly released from terrible strain and mortal danger becomes garrulous and elated. Even Tanus, the hardened warrior, was no exception.

'It was time somebody stood up and said what needed to be said, don't you agree, old friend?' His voice rang clear and loud down the darkened alley, as though he were determined to summon any awaiting assassin to us. I kept my agreement muted.

'You did not expect it of me, did you now? Be honest with me, Taita. It took you quite by surprise, did it not?' 'It surprised us all.' This time I could agree with a little more enthusiasm. 'Even Pharaoh was taken aback, as well he might be.'

'He listened, Taita. He took it all in, I could tell. I did good work this evening, don't you think so?'

When I attempted to raise the subject of Rasfer's treacherous attack upon him and broach the possibility that it might have been inspired by my Lord Intef, Tanus would have none of it. 'That is impossible, Taita. You dreamed it. Lord Intef was my father's dearest friend. How could he wish me ill? Besides, I am to be his son-in-law, am I not?' And despite his injuries he let out such a happy shout of laughter that it roused the sleepers in the darkened huts that we were passing and they shouted grumpily back at us to be quiet. Tanus ignored their protests.

'No, no, I am sure that you are wrong,' he cried. 'It was simply Raster working out his spite in his own charming way. Well, he'll know better next time.' He threw his arm around my shoulders and hugged me so hard that it hurt. 'You saved me twice tonight. Without your warnings Rasfer would have had me both times. How do you do these things, Taita? I swear you are a secret warlock, and have the gift of the inner eye.' He laughed again.

How could I stifle his joy? He was like a boy, a big rumbustious boy. I could not help but love him all the more. This was not the time to point out the danger in which he had placed himself and all of us who were his friends.

Let him have his hour, and tomorrow I would sound the voice of reason and of caution. So I took him home and stitched the gash in his forehead, and washed his other wounds and anointed them with my special mixture of honey and herbs to prevent mortification. Then I gave him a stiff draught of the Red Shepenn and left the good Kratas to guard his slumbers.

When I reached my own quarters well after midnight, there were two summonses awaiting me: one from my Lady Lostris and the other from the vanquished Rasfer. There was no doubt as to which of them I would have responded to if I had been given the choice, but I was not. Rasfer's two thugs almost dragged me away to where he lay on a sweat-soaked mattress, cursing and moaning by turns, and calling on Seth and all die gods to witness his pain and his fortitude.

'Good Taita!' he greeted me, raising himself painfully on one elbow, 'you will not believe the pain. My chest is afire. I swear every bone in it is crushed, and my head aches as though it is bound by thongs of rawhide.'

With very little effort I was able to force back my tears of pity, but it is a strange thing about those of us who are doctors and healers that we cannot find it in our hearts to deny our skills to even the most abominable creatures that require them. I sighed with resignation, unpacked the leather bag that contained my medical equipment and set out my instruments and unguents.

I was delighted to find that Rasfer's self-diagnosis was perfectly valid, and that apart from numerous contusions and shallow wounds, at least three of his ribs were broken and there was a lump on the back of his head almost the size of my fist. I had, therefore, a perfectly legitimate reason for adding considerably to his discomfort. One of the broken ribs was seriously out of alignment and there was genuine danger that it might pierce the lung. While his two thugs held him down and Rasfer squealed and howled most gra-tifyingly, I manipulated the rib back into place and strapped up his chest with linen bandages well soaked in vinegar to shrink as they dried.

Then I addressed myself to the lump on the back of his skull where it had struck the stone paving. The gods are often generous. When I held a lamp to Rasfer's eyes the pupils did not dilate. There was not the least doubt in my mind as to what treatment was required. Bloody fluid was gathering inside that unlovely skull. Without my help Rasfer would be dead by the following sunset. I thrust aside the obvious temptation and reminded myself of the surgeon's duty to his patient.

There are probably only three surgeons in all of Egypt who are capable of trepanning a skull with a good chance of success, and personally I would not put much faith in the other two. Once again I ordered Rasfer's two oafs to take hold of him to control his struggles, and to hold him face down on his mattress. By the roughness of their handling and their obvious disregard for their master's injured ribs, I surmised that they were not exactly overflowing with loving feeling towards then- master.

Once again a chorus of howls and squeals turned the night hideous and gladdened my labours, as I made a semicircular incision around the lump on his scalp, and then peeled a large flap of skin away from the bone. Now not even those two strapping ruffians could hold him down. His struggles were splashing blood as high as the ceiling of the room and sprinkling us all, so that we seemed to be inflicted with a red pox. At last, in exasperation, I ordered them to bind his ankles and wrists to the bedposts with leather straps.

'Oh, gentle and sweet Taita, the pain is beyond belief. Give me but a drop of that flower juice, I beg you, dear friend,' he blubbered.

Now that he was safely bound to the bed, I could afford to be frank with him. 'I understand, my good Rasfer, just how you feel. I also would have been grateful for a little of the flower when last you took the knife to me. Alas, old comrade, my store of the drug is finished, and there will not be another eastern caravan for at least a month,' I lied cheerfully, for very few knew that I cultivated the Red Shepenn myself. Knowing that the best was yet to come, I reached for my bone-drill.

The human head is the only part of the body that puzzles me as a doctor. At the orders of my Lord Intef the corpses of all executed criminals are handed over to me. In addition Tanus has been able to bring me many fine specimens from the battlefield, suitably pickled in vats of brine. All these I have dissected and studied so that I know every bone and how it fits into its exact place in the skeleton. I have traced the route by which food enters the mouth and passes through the body. I have found that great and wondrous organ, the heart, nestling between the pale air-bladders of the lungs. I have studied the rivers of the body through which the blood flows, and I have observed the two types of blood which determine the moods and emotions of man.

There is, of course, that bright joyous blood that, when released by the cut of a scalpel or the headsman's axe, spurts out in regular impulses. This is the blood of happy thoughts and fine emotions, it is the blood of love and kindness. Then there is that darker sullen blood that flows without the vigour and the bounding joy of the other. This is the blood of anger and of sorrow, of melancholic thoughts and evil deeds.

All these matters I have studied, and have filled one hundred papyrus rolls with my observations. There is no man in the world that I know of who has gone to such lengths, certainly none of those quacks in the temple with their amulets and their incantations have done so. I doubt any one of them could tell the liver from the sphincter of the anus without an invocation to Osiris, a casting of the divining dice and a fat fee paid in advance.

In all modesty I can say that I have never met a man who understands the human body better than I, and yet the head is still a puzzle to me. Naturally I understand that the eyes see, the nose smells, the mouth tastes and the ears hear? but what is the purpose of that pale porridge that fills the gourd of the skull?

I have never been able to fathom it myself, and no man has ever been able to offer me a satisfactory explanation, except that Tanus came closest to it. After he and I had spent an evening together sampling the latest vintage of red wine, he had woken in the dawn and suggested with a groan, 'Seth has placed this thing in our heads as his revenge on mankind.'

I once met a man who was travelling with a caravan from beyond those legendary twin rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, who professed to have studied the same problem. He was a wise man and together we debated many mysteries over the course of half a year. At one point he suggested that all human emotion and thought sprang not from the heart, but from those soft amorphous curds that make up the brain. I mention this naive assertion only to demonstrate how gravely even an intelligent and learned man can err.

Nobody who has ever considered that mighty organ, the heart, leaping with its own life in the centre of our body, fed by great rivers of blood, protected by the palisades of bone, can doubt that this is the fountain from which all thought and emotion springs. The heart uses the blood to disseminate these emotions throughout the body. Have you ever felt your heart stir within you and quicken to beautiful music, or a lovely face, or the fine words of a moving speech? Have you ever felt anything leaping around inside your head? Even the wise man from the East had to capitulate before my ruthless logic.

No rational man can believe that a bloodless puddle of curdled milk lying inert in its bony jar could conjure up the lines of a poem or the design of a pyramid, could cause a man to love or to wage war. Even the embalmers scoop it out and discard it when they prepare a corpse for the long journey.

There is, however, a paradox here in that if this glutinous mass is interfered with, even by the pressure of trapped fluid upon it, the patient is certainly doomed. It requires an intimate knowledge of the structure of the head and a quite marvellous dexterity to be able to drill through the skull without disturbing the sac that contains this porridge. I have both these attributes.

As I ground down slowly through the bone, encouraged by Rasfer's bellows, I paused regularly to wash away the bone chips and filings by splashing vinegar into the wound. The sting of the liquid added little to the patient's well-being, but revived the flagging volume of his voice.

Suddenly the sharp bronze drill bit cleanly through the skull, and a tiny but perfect circle of bone was blown out of the wound by the pressure within. It was followed immediately by a spurt of dark, clotted blood that hit me in the face. Immediately Rasfer relaxed under me. I knew, not without a sneaking pang of regret, that he would survive. As I stitched the flap of scalp back into place, covering the aperture in the depths of which the dura mater pulsed ominously, I wondered if I had truly done mankind a great service by preserving this specimen of it.

When I left Rasfer with his head swathed in bandages, snoring and whimpering in porcine self-pity, I found that I was completely exhausted. The excitements and alarums of the day had expended even my vast store of energy. However, there was to be no rest for me yet, for my Lady Lostris' messenger still hovered on the terrace of my quarters and pounced on me as I set foot on the first step. I was allowed only sufficient grace to wash away Rasfer's blood and change my soiled raiment.

As I tpttered into her chamber, barely able to place one . foot before the other, my Lady Lostris met me with blazing eyes and ominously tapping foot. 'Just where do you think you have been hiding yourself, Master Taita?' she lashed out at me immediately. 'I sent for you before the second watch, and it's now not much short of dawn. How dare you keep me waiting so? Sometimes you forget your station. You know full well the punishment for impertinent slaves?' She was in full flight, having let her impatience brew for all these hours. In anger her beauty is stunning, and when she stamped her foot in that adorable gesture that was so typically her own, I thought that my heart must burst with my love for her.

'Don't you stand there grinning at me!' she flared at me. 'I am so truly angry that I could order you flogged.' She stamped her foot again, and I felt the tiredness fall from my shoulders like a heavy load. Her mere presence had the power to revitalize me.

'My lady, what a wondrous role you played this night. It seemed to me and all who watched you that it was indeed the divine goddess that walked amongst us?'

'Don't you dare try your tricks with me.' She stamped for the third time, but without conviction. 'You'll not wriggle out of this so easily?'

'Truly, my lady, as I walked back from the temple through the crowded streets, your name was on every tongue. They said your singing was the finest they had ever heard, and had quite stolen every heart.'

'I believe not a word,' she declared, but she was clearly having difficulty sustaining her fury. 'In fact I thought my voice was awful this evening. I was flat at least once, and off-key on numerous?'

'I must contradict you, mistress. You were never better. And what beauty! It lit the whole temple.' She is not truly vain, my Lady Lostris, but she is a woman.

'You awful man!' she cried in exasperation. 'I was ready to have you flogged this time, I truly was. But come and sit beside me on the bed and tell me all about it. I am still so excited that I am sure I will not sleep for a week.' She took my hand and led me to the bed, babbling on happily about Tanus, and how he must have won every heart as well as Pharaoh's with his wonderful performance and fearless speech, and how the infant Horus had beshat her dress, and did I truly think that she had sung even passing well, and wasn't I just saying so?

At last I had to stop her. 'My lady, it is almost dawn and we must be ready to leave with all the court to accompany the king when he crosses the river to inspect his funerary temple and his tomb. You must get some sleep if you are to look your best on such an important state occasion.'

'I'm not sleepy, Taita,' she protested, and went chattering on, only to slump against my shoulder a few minutes later, fallen asleep in mid-sentence.

Gently, I slipped her head down on to the carved wooden headrest and covered her with a rug of colobus monkey furs. I could not bring myself to leave immediately but hovered beside her bed. At last I placed a gentle kiss upon her cheek. She did not open her eyes, but whispered sleepily, 'Do you think there will be an opportunity for me to speak to the king tomorrow? Only he will be able to prevent my father sending Tanus away.'

I could think of no ready answer for her, and while I still dithered, she fell fully asleep.

I COULD SCARCELY DRAG MYSELF FROM my couch at dawn, for I seemed barely to have closed my eyes to sleep before it was time to open them again. My reflection in the bronze mirror was haggard and my eyes were underscored in purple. Swiftly I touched on make-up to cover the worst of my sorry condition, enhancing the hollows of my eyes with kohl and my pale features with a brushing of antimony. Two of the slave boys combed out my hair and I was so pleased with the result that I felt almost cheerful as I hurried down to the grand vizier's private dock where the great state barge lay moored.

I was amongst the last to join the throng upon the quay, but no one seemed to notice my late arrival, not even my Lady Lostris who was already on the deck of the barge. I watched her for a while.

She had been invited to join the royal women. These comprised not only the king's wives, but his numerous- concubines and all his daughters. Of course these last were the cause of much of Pharaoh's unhappiness, a flock of them ranging in age from crawlers and toddlers to others of marriageable age, and not a son amongst them. How was Pharaoh's immortality to be maintained without a male line to carry it forward?

It was difficult to believe that, like me, Lostris had not slept more than an hour or two, for she seemed as sweet and fresh as one of the desert roses in my garden. Even in mat glittering array of feminine beauty that had been hand-picked by Pharaoh's factors or sent to him in tribute by his satraps at the ends of the empire, Lostris stood out like a swallow in a flock of drab little desert larks.

I looked for Tanus, but his squadron was already lying well upstream, ready to escort Pharaoh's crossing, and the reflection of the rising sun turned the surface of the river into a dazzling silver sheet that blinded the eye. I could not look into it.

At that moment there was the steady boom of a drum, and the populace craned to watch Pharaoh's stately progress down from the palace to the royal barge.

This morning he wore the light nemes crown of starched and folded linen, secured around his forehead with the gold band of the uraeus. The erect golden cobra, with its hood flared and its garnet eyes glittering, rose up from his brow. The cobra was the symbol of the powers of life and death that Pharaoh held over his subjects. The king was not carrying the crook and flail, only the golden sceptre. After the double crown itself, this was the most holy treasure of all the crown jewels and was reputed to be over a thousand years old.

Despite all the regalia and the ceremonial, Pharaoh wore no make-up. Under the direct rays of the early sun, and without make-up to disguise the fact, Mamose himself was unremarkable. Just a soft little godling of late middle age, with a small round paunch bulging over the waistband of his kilt and features intricately carved with lines of worry.

As he passed where I stood, it seemed he recognized me, for he nodded slightly. I immediately prostrated myself on the paving, and he paused and made a sign for me to approach. I crawled forward on hands and knees, and knocked my forehead three times on the ground at his feet.

'Are you not Taita, the poet?' he asked in that thin and petulant voice of his.

'I am Taita the slave, your Majesty,' I replied. There are times when a little humility is called for. 'But I am also a poor scribbler.'

'Well, Taita the slave, you scribbled to good effect last night. I have never been so well entertained by a pageant. I shall issue a royal edict declaring your poor scribblings to be the official version.'

He announced this loud enough for all the court to hear, and even my Lord Intef, who followed him closely, beamed with pleasure. As I was his slave, the honour belonged to him more than to me. However, Pharaoh was not finished with me yet.

'Tell me, Taita the slave, are you not also the same surgeon who recently prescribed to me?'

'Majesty, I am that same humble slave who has the temerity to practise a little medicine.'

"Then when shall your cure take effect?' He dropped his voice so that only I could hear the question.

'Majesty, the event wiE take place nine months after you have fulfilled all those conditions that I listed for you.' As we were now in a surgeon-and-patient relationship, I felt emboldened to add, 'Have you followed the diet I set you?'

'By Isis' bountiful breasts!' he exclaimed with an unexpected twinkle in his eye. 'I am so full of bull's balls, it is a wonder that I do not bellow when a herd of cows passes the palace.'

He was in such pleasant mood that I tried a little joke of my own. 'Has Pharaoh found the heifer I suggested?'

'Alas, doctor, it is not as simple as it would seem. The prettiest flowers are soonest visited by the bee. You did stipulate that she must be completely untouched, did you not?'

'Virgin and untouched, and within a season of her first red moon,' I added quickly, making it as difficult as possible to put my recipe to the test. 'Have you found one who meets that description, Majesty?'

His expression changed again, and he smiled thoughtfully. The smile looked out of place on those melancholy features. 'We shall see,' he murmured. 'We shall see.' And he turned and mounted the boarding-ladder of the barge. As my Lord Intef drew level with me, he made a small gesture, ordering me to fall in behind him, and so I followed him up on to the deck of the royal barge.

The wind had dropped during the night and the dark waters of the river seemed heavy and quiet as oil in the jar, disturbed only by those streaks and whirlpools upon the surface where the eternal current ran deep and swift. Even Nembet should be able to make the crossing in these conditions, although Tanus' squadron stood by in most unflattering fashion, as if Tanus was preparing to rescue him from error once again.

My Lord Intef drew me aside as soon as we reached the deck. 'You still have the power to surprise me sometimes, my old darling,' he whispered, and squeezed my arm. 'Just when I was seriously beginning to doubt your-loyalty.'

I was taken aback by this sudden flush of goodwill, since the welts from Rasfer's lash across my back still ached. However, I bowed my head to shield my expression and waited for him to give me direction before committing myself, which he did immediately.

'I could not have written a, more appropriate declamation for Tanus to recite before Pharaoh if I had tried myself. Where that imbecile Rasfer failed so dismally, you retrieved the day for me in your usual style.' It was only then that it all fell into place. He believed that I was the author of Tanus' monumental folly, and that I had composed it for his benefit. In the uproar of the temple he could not have heard my shouted warnings to Tanus, or he would have known better.

'I am pleased that you are pleased,' I whispered back to him. I felt an enormous sense of relief. My position of influence had not been compromised. It was not my own skin I was thinking of at that moment?well, not entirely. I was thinking of Tanus and Lostris. They would need every bit of help and protection that I could give them during the stormy days that lay ahead for both of them. I was grateful that I was still in a position to be of some use to them.

'It was no less than my duty.' Thus I made the most of this windfall.

'You will find me grateful,' my Lord Intef replied. 'Do you remember the piece of ground on the canal behind the temple of Thoth that we discussed some time ago?'

'Indeed, my lord.' We both knew that I had hankered after that plot for ten years. It would make a perfect writer's retreat and a place to which I could retire in my old age.

'It is yours. At my next assize, bring the deed to me for my signature.' I was stunned and appalled by the vile manner in which it had come into my possession, as payment for an imagined piece of treachery on my part. For a moment I thought of rejecting the gift, but only for a moment. By the time I had recovered from my shock we were across the river and pulling into the mouth of the canal that led across the plain to Pharaoh Mamose's great funerary temple.

I had surveyed this canal with only minimal help from the royal architects, as I had planned virtually single-handed the whole complicated business of the transport of Pharaoh's body from the place of his death to the funerary temple where the mummification process would take place.

I had assumed that he would die at his palace on lovely little Elephantine Island. Therefore his corpse would be brought down-river iri the state barge. I had designed the canal to accommodate the huge ship snugly. So now she slipped into it as neatly as the sword into its scabbard.

Straight as the blade of my dagger, the canal cut through the black loam soil of the riparian plain two thousand paces to the foot of the gaunt Saharan foothills. Tens of thousands of slaves had laboured over the years to build it, and to line it with stone blocks. As the barge nosed into the canal, two hundred sturdy slaves seized the tow-ropes from the bows and began to draw her smoothly across the plain. They sang one of the sad melodious work chants as they marched in ranks along the tow-path. The peasants working in the fields beside the canal ran to welcome us. They crowded to the bank, calling blessing on the king and waving palm-fronds, as the great barge moved majestically by.

When at last we slid into the stone dock below the outer walls of the half-finished temple, the slaves made the tow-ropes fast to the mooring-rings. So precise was my design that the. entry port in the bulwark of the state barge lined up exactly'with the portals of the main gate to the temple.

As the huge vessel came to rest, the trumpeter in the bows blew a fanfare on his gazelle horn, and the portcullis was raised slowly, to reveal the royal hearse waiting in the gateway attended by the company of embalmers in their crimson robes and fifty priests of Osiris in rank behind them.

The priests began to chant as they trundled the hearse forward on its wooden rollers, on to the deck of the barge. Pharaoh clapped his hands with delight and hurried forward to examine this grotesque vehicle.

I had taken no part in the conception of this celebration of bad taste. It was entirely the work of the priests. Suffice it only to say that in the naked sunlight, the superabundant gold-work shone so brightly as to offend the eye almost as painfully as did the actual design. Such weight of gold forced the priests to pant and sweat as they manhandled the clumsy ark on to the deck, and it listed even the great ship alarmingly. That weight of gold could have filled all the grain stores of the Upper Kingdom, or built and fitted out fifty squadrons of fighting ships and paid then- crews for ten years. Thus the inept craftsman attempts to hide the paucity of his inspiration behind a dazzle of treasure. If only they had given me such material to work with, they might have seen something different.

This monstrosity was destined to be sealed in the tomb with Pharaoh's dead body. No matter that its construction had contributed largely to the financial ruin of the kingdom, Pharaoh was delighted with it.

At my Lord Intef's suggestion, the king mounted the vehicle and took his seat on the platform designed to carry his sarcophagus. From there he beamed about him, all his dignity and royal reserve forgotten. He was probably enjoying himself as much as he ever had in all his gloomy life, I reflected with a pang of pity. His death was to be the pinnacle to which most of his living energy and anticipation were directed.

On what was clearly an impulse, he beckoned my Lord Intef to join him on the ark and then looked around the crowded deck as if seeking someone else in the throng. He seemed to find who he wanted, for he stooped slightly and said something to the grand vizier.

My Lord Intef smiled and, following his direction, singled out my Lady Lostris. With a gesture he ordered her to come to him on the ark. She was clearly flustered, and blushed under her make-up, a rare phenomenon for one who was so seldom caught out of countenance. However, she recovered swiftly, and mounted the carriage with girlish, long-legged grace that as usual carried every eye with her.

She knelt before the king and touched her forehead three times to the floor of the platform. Then, in front of all the priests and the entire court, Pharaoh did an extraordinary thing. He reached down and took Lostris' hand, and lifted her to her feet, and seated her beside him on the platform. It was beyond all protocol, there was no precedent for it, and I saw his ministers exchange looks of amazement.

Then something else happened of which even they were not aware. When I was very young there had lived in the boys' quarters an old deaf slave who had befriended me. It was he who had taught me to read men's speech not only by the sound of it, but also by the shape of their lips as they formed the words. It was a very useful accomplishment. With it I could follow a conversation at the far end of a crowded hall, with musicians playing and a hundred men around me laughing anxl shouting at each other.

Now, before my eyes I saw Pharaoh say softly to my Lady Lostris, 'Even in daylight you are as divine as was the goddess Isis in the torchlight of the temple.'

The shock of it was like the blow of a fist in my stomach. Had I been blind, I berated myself desperately, or had I merely been stupid? Surely any imbecile must have anticipated the direction in which my capricious meddling must incline the order in which the dice of destiny might fall.

My facetious advice to the king must inevitably have had the effect of directing his attention towards my Lady Lostris. It was as though some malignant impulse below the surface of my mind had set out to describe her precisely to him as the mother of his first-born son. The most beautiful virgin in the land, to be taken within the first season after her moon had flowered?it was her exactly. And then, of course, by casting her as the leading female in the pageant, I had managed to display her to the king in the kindest possible light.

What I suddenly realized was about to happen was all of it my fault, as much as though I had deliberately engineered it. What is more, there was nothing I could do about it now. I stood in the sunlight so appalled and stricken with remorse that for a while I was deprived of the powers of speech and of reason.

When the sweating priests shoved the hearse off the deck and through the gateway, the crowd around me started after it and I was borne along with them willy-nilly, as though I were a leaf upon a stream without direction of my own. Before I was able to recover my wits I found myself within the forecourt of the funerary temple. I began to push my way forward, jostling those ahead of me to get past them and to reach the side of the hearse before it came to the main entrance of the royal mortuary.

As one team of priests pushed the vehicle forward, a second team picked up the wooden rollers that were left behind it and ran forward to place them ahead of the ponderous golden vehicle. There was a short delay as the carriage reached that area of the courtyard that had not yet been paved. While the priests spread straw ahead of the rollers to smooth the passage over this rough ground, I slipped quickly around the back of the row of huge carved stone lions that lined the carriageway, and hurried down this clear space until I was level with the ark. When one of the priests tried to bar my way and prevent me reaching the side of the vehicle, I gave him such a look as would have made one of the stone lions quail, and spat a single word at him that was seldom heard in the temple confines and caused him to step hurriedly aside and let me pass.

When I reached the near side of the ark I found myself directly below Lostris, close enough to stretch up and touch her arm, and to hear every word she addressed to the king. I could tell at once that she had completely recovered her poise which Pharaoh's unexpected interest in her had disturbed, and was now setting out to be as agreeable as possible to him. Miserably, I recalled how she had planned to do exactly this, and to use his favour to secure his agreement to her marriage to Tanus. As recently as last evening I had dismissed it as girlish prattle, but now it was happening, and it was beyond my power to prevent it or to warn her of the dangerous waters into which she was steering. If, earlier in this chronicle, I have given the impression that my Lady Lostris was a flighty child with not a thought in her pretty head other than romantic nonsense and her own frivolous enjoyment of life, then I have fallen short in my efforts as historian of these extraordinary events. Although still so young, she was at times mature far beyond her years. Our Egyptian girls bloom early in the Nile sunlight. She was also a diligent scholar, with a bright mind and a thoughtful and enquiring side to her nature, all of which I had done my very best over the years to foster and develop.

Under my tutelage she had reached the stage where she could debate with the priests the most obscure religious dogma, could hold her own with the palace lawyers on such matters as the Land Tenure Acts and the extremely complicated Irrigation Act that regulated the usage of the waters from the Nile. Of course, she had read and absorbed every single one of the scrolls in the palace library. These included several hundred of which I was the author, from my medical treatises to my definitive essays on the tactics of naval warfare, together with my astrological scrolls on the names and natures of all the heavenly bodies, and my manuals on archery and swordsmanship, horticulture and falconry. She could even argue with me my own principles of architecture, and compare them to those of the great Imhotep.

Thus she was perfectly equipped to discuss any subject from astrology to the practice of war, from politics or the building of temples to the measurement and regulation of the Nile waters, all of which were subjects that fascinated Pharaoh. In addition she could rhyme and riddle and coin an amusing pun, and her vocabulary was almost as extensive as my own. In short, she was an accomplished conversationalist, with a ready sense of humour. She was articulate and had an enchanting voice and a merry little laugh. Truly, no man or god could resist her, especially if she could offer to someone without a son the promise of an heir.

I had to warn her, and yet how could a slave intrude upon the congress of persons so infinitely high above his own station? I skipped nervously beside the carriage, listening to my Lady Lostris' voice at its most enthralling as she set herself out to engage the king's fancy.

She was describing to him the manner in which his funerary femple had been laid out to conform to the most propitious astronomical aspects, those of the moon and the zodiac at the time of Pharaoh's birth. Of course she was merely repeating knowledge that she had gleaned from me, for I was the one who had surveyed and orientated the temple to the heavenly bodies. However, she was so convincing that I found myself following her explanations as though I was hearing them for the first time.

The funeral ark passed between the pylons of the inner court of the temple and rolled down the long colonnaded atrium, past the barred and guarded doors to the six treasuries in which were manufactured and stored the funerary offerings which would go with the king to his tomb. At the end of the atrium the acacia-wood doors, on which were carved the images of all the gods of the pantheon, were swung open, and we entered the mortuary where Pharaoh's corpse would one day be embalmed.

Here in this solemn chapel the king dismounted from the carriage, and went forward to inspect the massive table on which he would lie for the ritual of mummification. Unlike the embalming of a commoner, royal embalming took seventy days to accomplish. The table had been sculpted from a single block of diorite, three paces long and two wide. Into the dark, mottled surface of the stone had been chiselled the indentation that fitted the back of the king's head, and the grooves which would drain the blood and other bodily fluids released by the scalpels and the instruments of the embalmers.

The grand master of the guild of embalmers was standing beside the table, ready to explain the entire process to the king, and he had an attentive audience, for Pharaoh seemed fascinated by every gruesome detail. At one stage it seemed that he might so far forget his dignity as to climb up upon the diorite block and try its fit, very much as though it were a new costume of linen presented by his tailor.

However, he restrained himself with an obvious effort, and instead devoted himself to the mortician's description of how the first incision would be made from his gullet to his groin, and how his viscera would be lifted out cleanly and then divided into their separate parts?liver, lungs, stomach and entrails. The heart, as the hearth of the divine spark, would be left in place, as would the kidneys with their associations with water and thus with the Nile, the source of life.

After this edifying instruction, Pharaoh minutely examined the fqur Canopic jars that would receive his viscera. They stood on another smaller granite table close at hand. The jars were carved from gleaming translucent alabaster the colour of milk. Their stoppers were fashioned in the shapes of the animal-headed gods: Anubis the jackal, Sobeth the crocodile, Thoth the ibis-headed, Sekhmet with the head of a lioness. They would be the guardians of Pharaoh's divine parts until his awakening in the eternal life.

On the same granite table that held the Canopic jars, the embalmers had laid out their instruments and the full array of pots and amphorae that contained the natron salts, lacquers and other chemicals that they would use in the process. Pharaoh was fascinated by the glistening bronze scalpels which would disembowel him, and when the embalmer showed him the long pointed spoon that would be pushed up his nostrils to scoop out the contents of his skull, those cheesy curds over which I had pondered so long and fruitlessly, the king was fascinated and handled the grisly instrument with reverential awe.

Once the king had satisfied his curiosity at the mortuary table, my Lady Lostris directed his attention to the painted bas-relief engravings that covered the walls of the templi from floor to ceiling. The decorations were not yet completed, but were none the less quite striking in their design and execution. I had drawn most of the original cartoons with my own hand, and had closely supervised the others drawn by the palace artists. These had been traced on to the walls with charcoal sticks. Once the tracings were in place, I had corrected and perfected them in free-hand. Now a company of master sculptors was engraving them into the sandstone blocks, while behind them a second company of artists was painting in the completed bas-relief.

The dominant colour I had chosen for these designs was blue in all its variation: the blue of the starling's wing, the blues of the sky and the Nile in the sunlight, the blues of the petals of the desert orchid and the shimmering blue of the river perch quivering in the fisherman's net. However, there were other colours as well, all thqse vibrant reds and yellows that we Egyptians love so well.

Pharaoh, accompanied closely by my Lord Intef, in his capacity of Keeper of the Royal Tombs, made a slow circuit of the high walls, examining every detail, and commenting on most of them. Naturally the theme I had chosen for the mortuary was the Book of the Dead, that detailed map and description of the route to the underworld that Pharaoh's shade must follow, and the depictions of all the trials and dangers he would confront along the way.

He paused for a long while before my drawing of the god Thoth, with his bird head and long curved ibis beak, weighing Pharaoh's disembodied heart on the scales against the feather of truth. Should the heart be impure, it would tip the scales against the feather, and the god would immediately toss it to the crocodile-headed monster that waited close at hand to devour it. Softly, the king quoted the protective mantra laid down in the book to shield himself from such a calamity, and then passed on to my next engraving.

It was almost noon before Pharaoh had completed his inspection of the mortuary temple and led the way out into the forecourt where the palace chefs had laid out a sumptuous open-air banquet.

'Come and sit here, where I can speak to you further on the matter of the stars!' Once again the king ignored precedent to place my Lady Lostris close to him at the banquet table, even moving one of his senior wives to make a place for her. During the meal he directed most of his conversation towards my mistress. She was now completely at her ease and kept the king and all those around her enthralled and merry with her wit and charm.

Of course, as a slave I did not have a seat at the table, nor could I even inveigle myself within range of my mistress to warn her to moderate her demeanour in the king's presence. Instead, I found myself a place on the pedestal of one of the granite lions, from where I could look down the length of the banquet table and watch everything that took place there. I was not the only observer, for my Lord Intef sat close to the king and yet withdrawn, watching it alj with glittering, implacable eyes, like a handsome but deadly spider at the centre of his web.

At one stage of the meal a yellow-billed kite wheeled high over head, and uttered a screech, a sardonic and mocking cry. Hurriedly I made the sign against the evil eye, for who knows what god it was that had taken the form of the bird to muddle and confuse our petty endeavours?

After the midday meal it was customary for the court to rest for an hour or so, especially at this the hottest season of the year. However, Pharaoh was so wrought up that today he would have none of it.

'Now we will inspect the treasuries,' he announced. The guards at the doors of the first treasury stood aside and presented arms as the royal party approached, and the doors were swung open from within.

I had planned these six treasuries not only as store-rooms to hold the vast funerary treasure that Pharaoh had been collecting for the past twelve years, ever since his accession to the double throne, but also as workshops in which a small army of craftsmen and artisans was permanently employed in adding to that treasure.

The hall that we entered was the armoury that housed the collection of weapons and accoutrements of the battlefield and the wild chase, both practical and ceremonial, which the king would take with him into the afterworld. With my Lord Intef's concurrence, I had arranged for the craftsmen to be at their benches so that the king would have the opportunity of watching them at work.

As Pharaoh passed slowly down the row of benches, his questions were so astute and technical that those nobles and priests to whom he addressed himself could provide no answers, and they looked around frantically for someone who could. I was summoned hastily from the back of the crowd and pushed forward to face the king's interrogation.

'Ah, yes,' Pharaoh grimaced bleakly as he recognized me. 'It is none other than the humble slave who writes pageants and cures the sick. No one here seems to know the composition of this electrum wire that binds the stock of the war-bow that this man is making for me.'

'Gracious Pharaoh, the metal is a mixture of one part of copper to five parts of silver and four of gold. The gold is of die red variety found only in the mines of Lot in the western desert. No other gives the wire the same pliability or elasticity, of course.'

'Of course,' the king agreed wryly. 'And how do you make the strands so thin? These are no thicker than the hairs of my head.'

'Majesty, we extrude the hot metal by swinging it in a special pendulum that I designed for the purpose. Later we can watch the process in the gold foundry, if Your Majesty so wishes.'

Thus during the rest of the tour I was able to remain at the king's side and to deflect some of his attention away from Lostris, but I still could not find the opportunity to speak to her alone.

Pharaoh passed down the armoury to inspect the huge array of weapons and armour already in store. Some of these had belonged to his forefathers and had been employed in famous battles; others were newly manufactured and would never be used in war. All of them were magnificent, each a pinnacle of the armourer's art. There were helmets and breast-plates of bronze and silver and gold, battle swords with ivory hilts set with precious stones, full-dress ceremonial uniforms of the commander-in-chief of each of the king's elite regiments, shields and bucklers in hippo-hide and crocodile-skin, all starred with rosettes of gold. It made a splendid array.

From the armoury we crossed the atrium to the furniture store, where a hundred cabinet-makers laboured with cedar and acacia and precious ebony wood to build the funeral furnishings for the king's long journey. Very few substantial trees grow in our riparian valley, and wood is a scarce and costly commodity, worth very nearly its weight in silver. Almost every stick of it must be carried hundreds of leagues across the desert, or shipped downstream from those mysterious lands to the south. Here it was piled in extravagant stacks, as though it were commonplace, and the fragrance of fresh sawdust perfumed the hot air.

We watched while craftsmen inlaid the head-board of Pharaoh's bed with patterns of mother-of-pearl and woods of contrasting colour. Others decorated the arm-rests of the chairs with golden falcons and the back-rests of the padded sofas with the heads of silver lions. Not even the halls of the royal palace at Elephantine Island contained such delicate workmanship as would grace the rock cell of the king's tomb.

From the furniture treasury we passed on to the hall of the sculptors. In marble and sandstone and granite of a hundred differing hues, the sculptors whittled and chipped away with chisel and file so that a fine, pale dust hung in the air. The masons covered their noses and mouths with strips of linen on which the dust settled and their features were powdered white with the insidious stuff. Some of the men coughed behind their masks as they worked, a persistent, dry cough that was peculiar to their profession. I had dissected the corpses of many old sculptors who had worked thirty years and died at their trade. I found their lungs petrified and turned to stone in their bodies, thus I spent as little time as possible in the masons' shop lest I contract the same malady.

None the less, their products were wondrous to contemplate, statues of the gods and of Pharaoh himself that seemed to vibrate with life. There were life-sized images of Pharaoh seated on his throne or walking abroad, alive and dead, in his god form or in the shape of a mortal man. These statues wouMJine the long causeway that led from the funerary temple on the valley floor up into the wall of black hills from which his final tomb was even at this moment being excavated. At his death the golden hearse, drawn by a train of one hundred white bullocks, was to bear his massive sarcophagus along that causeway to its final resting-place.

This granite sarcophagus, only partially completed, lay in the centre of the masons' hall. Originally it had been a single block of pink granite quarried from the mines at Assoun, and ferried down-river in a barge especially constructed for that purpose. It had taken five hundred slaves to haul it ashore and drag it over wooden rollers to where it now lay, an oblong of solid stone five paces long, three wide and three tall.

The masons had begun by sawing a thick slab from the top of it. Upon this granite hd a master mason was fashioning the likeness of the mummiform Pharaoh, with his arms crossed and the crook and flail gripped in his dead hands. Another team of masons was now engaged,in hollowing out the interior of the main granite block to provide a nest into which the cluster of inner coffins would fit perfectly. Including the huge outer sarcophagus, there would be seven coffins hi all, fitting one within the other like a child's puzzle-toy. Seven was, of course, one of the magical numbers. The innermost coffin would be of pure gold, and later we watched it being beaten out of the formless mass of metal in the hall of the goldsmiths.

It was this multiple sarcophagus, this mountain of stone and gold housing the king's wrapped corpse, that the great golden hearse would carry along the causeway to the hills, a slow journey that would take seven whole days to complete. The hearse would stop each night in one of the small shrines that were spaced at intervals along the causeway.

A fascinating adjunct to the hall of statues was the ushabti shop at the rear where the servants and retainers who would escort the dead king were being carved. These were perfect little manikins of wood representing all the grades and orders of Egyptian society who would work for the king in the hereafter, so as to enable him to maintain his estate and the style of his existence in the underworld.

Each ushabti was a delightfully carved wooden doll dressed in the authentic uniform of his calling and bearing the appropriate tools. There were farmers and gardeners, fishermen and bakers, beer-brewers and handmaidens, soldiers and tax-collectors, scribes and barbers, and hundreds upon hundreds of common labourers to perform every menial task and to go forward in the king's place if ever he were called upon by the other gods to work in the underworld.

At the head of this congregation of little figures there was even a grand vizier whose miniature features closely resembled those of my Lord Intef. Pharaoh picked out this manikin and examined him closely, turning him over to read the description on his back.

My name is Lord Intef, grand vizier of the Upper Kingdom, Pharaoh's sole companion, three times the recipient of the Gold of Praise. I am ready to answer for the king.

Pharaoh passed the doll to my Lord Intef. 'Is your physique truly so muscular, my Lord Intef?' he asked with a smile just below the surface of his dour expression, and the grand vizier bowed slightly.

'The sculptor has failed to do me justice, Your Majesty.'

The last treasury that the king visited that day was the hall of the goldsmiths. The infernal glow of the furnaces cast a strange glow on the features of the jewellers as they worked with total concentration at their benches. I had coached them well. At the entrance of the royal entourage, the goldsmiths knelt in unison to make the triple obeisance to Pharaoh, and then rose and resumed their work.

Even in that large hall the heat of the furnace flames was so sulphurous as almost to stop the breath, and we were soon bathed in our own sweat. However, the king was so fascinated by the treasure displayed for him that he seemed not to notice the oppressive atmosphere. He went directly to the raised dais in the centre of the hall where the most experienced and skilful smiths were at work upon the golden inner coffin. They had perfectly captured Pharaoh's living face in the shimmering metal. The mask would fit exactly over his bandaged head. It was a divine image with eyes of obsidian and rock-crystal, and with the cobra-headed uraeus encircling the brow. I truly believe that no finer masterpiece of the goldsmith's art has ever been fashioned in all the thousand years of our civilization. This was the peak and the zenith. All the unborn ages might one day marvel at its splendour.

Even after Pharaoh had admired the golden mask from every angle, he seemed unable to tear himself too far from it. He spent the remainder of the day on the dais beside it, seated on a low stool while box after cedar-wood box of exquisite jewels were laid at his feet and the contents catalogued for him.

I cannot believe that such a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one time. To make a bald list of the items does not in the least way suggest the richness and the diversity of it all. None the less, let me tell you at the outset that, there were six thousand four hundred and fifty-five pieces already in the cedar-wood boxes, and that each day more were added to the collection as the jewellers worked on tirelessly.

There were rings for Pharaoh's toes as well as his fingers; there were amulets and charms, and gold figurines of the gods and goddesses; there were necklaces and bracelets and pectoral medallions and belts on which were inlaid falcons and vultures and all the other creatures of the earth and the sky and the river; there were crowns and diadems studded with lapis lazuli and garnets and agate and carnelians and jasper and every gemstone that civilized man holds dear.

The artistry with which all this had been designed and manufactured eclipsed all that had been created over the preceding one thousand years. It is often in decline that a nation creates its most beautiful works of art. In the formative years of empire the obsession is with conquest and the building-up of wealth. It is only once this has been achieved that there is leisure and a desire to develop the arts, and?more importantly?rich and powerful men to sponsor them.

The weight of gold and silver already used in the manufacture of the hearse and the funeral mask and all the rest of this breathtaking collection of treasure was in excess of five hundred takhs; thus it would have taken five hundred strong men to lift it all. I had calculated that this was almost one-tenth of the total weight of these precious metals that had been mined in the entire one thousand years of our recorded history. All of this the king intended taking with him to the tomb.

Who am I, a humble slave, to question the price that a king was willing to pay for eternal life? Suffice it only to state that in assembling this treasure, while at the same time conducting the war against the Lower Kingdom, Pharaoh had, almost alone and unaided, plunged this very Egypt of ours into beggary.

No wonder, then, that Tanus in his declamation had singled out the depredation of the tax-collectors as one of the most terrible afflictions visited upon the populace. Between them and the robber bands that ravaged unchecked and unhindered through the countryside, we were all ruined and crushed under the financial yoke that was too heavy for any of us to bear. To survive at all, we had to evade the tax collector's net. So as he set out to beggar us for his own aggrandizement, the king made criminals of us at the same moment. Very few of us, great or small, rich or poor, slept well at night. We lay awake dreading at any moment the heavy knock of the tax-collector upon the door.

Oh, sad and abused land, how it groaned beneath the yoke!

LAVISH QUARTERS HAD BEEN PREPARED in the necropolis in which the king would spend that night upon the west bank of the Nile, close to his own final resting-place in the gaunt black hills. The necropolis, the city of the dead, was almost as extensive as Karnak itself. It was home to all those associated with the building and the care of the funerary temple and the royal tomb. There was a full regiment of the elite guard to protect the holy places, for the usurper in the north was as avaricious for treasure as was our own dear king, while the robber barons in the desert became each day bolder and more daring. The treasuries of the funerary temple were a sore temptation to every predator hi the two kingdoms, and beyond.

hi addition to the guards there were the companies of the craftsmen and the artisans and all their apprentices to house. I was responsible for the records of wages and rations, so I knew exactly how many there were. On the last pay-day their number had been four thousand eight hundred and eleven. Added to this, there were over ten thousand slaves employed upon the work.

I will not weary myself by listing the numbers of oxen and sheep that had to be slaughtered each day to feed them all, nor the cartloads of fish that were brought up from the Nile, nor the thousands of jars of beer that were brewed daily to slake the summef thirst of this multitude as they laboured under the watchful eye and the ready lash of the overseers.

The pecropolis was a city, and in that city was a palace for the king. It was with relief that we moved into it to spend the night, for it had been a wearying day. But once again there was little rest for me.

I tried to reach my Lady Lostris, but it was almost as if there existed a conspiracy to keep me away from her. According to her little black maids, first she was at toilet, and after that she was in her bath, and then she was resting and could not be disturbed. Finally, as I still waited in the antechamber of her quarters, a summons reached me from her father, and I could linger no longer, but must hurry to my master.

As soon as I entered my Lord Intef s bedchamber he dismissed all the others in the room. When we were alone, he kissed me. I was once more surprised by his benevolence and disturbed by his excited manner. Seldom had I seen him in such mood, and always before it had adumbrated calamitous events.

'How often the gateway to power and fortune is found in the most unexpected place!' he laughed at me, and caressed my face. 'This time it lies between the thighs of a woman. No, my old darling, don't play the innocent. I know just what a cunning hand you have taken in all of this. Pharaoh has told me how you cajoled him into it by promising him a male heir to his line. By Seth, but you are the cunning one, are you not? Not a word to me of your design, but you schemed it all on your own account.'

He laughed again, and twisted a lock of my hair between his fingers. 'You must have divined my ultimate ambition all along, even though we have never discussed it openly. So you set out to achieve it for me. Of course, I should have you punished for your presumption,' he twisted the lock of hair until tears started into my eyes, 'but how can I be angry with you when you have placed the double crown within my grasp?' He released the tress of my hair and kissed me again. 'I have just come from the king's presence. In two days, at the culmination of the festival, he will announce his betrothal to my daughter, Lostris.' I felt a sudden darkness behind my eyes, and a chilly dew formed on my skin.

'The wedding will take place the same day, immediately after the closing ceremony of the festival, I saw to that. We don't want any delay in which something might happen to prevent it, do we?'

Such a swift royal wedding was unusual but not unheard of. When brides were chosen to seal a political union, or to consolidate the conquest of a new territory, the wedding often took place the very same day it was decided. Pharaoh Mamose the First, forefather of our present pharaoh, had married the daughter of a conquered Human chieftain on the actual battlefield. However, such historical precedents were of little comfort to me now as I faced the bleak maturation of my worst fears.

My Lord Intef seemed not to notice my distress. He was too concerned with his own immediate interests, and he went on speaking. 'Before I gave my formal consent to the union, I prevailed on the king to concede that if she bore him a son then he would elevate my daughter to the rank of principal wife and queen consort.' He clapped his hands in unrestrained triumph.

'Of course, you realize what that means. If Pharaoh should die before my grandson is of age to rule, then I as his grandfather and closest male line would become regent?' He broke off suddenly and stared at me, and I knew him so well that I- understood exactly what was running through his mind. He was bitterly regretting that indiscretion, nobody should ever have heard that thought expressed. It was purest treason. If Lostris bore a son to Pharaoh, then the father would not live long thereafter. We both understood that. My Lord Intef had given voice to regicide, and he was considering removing the only one who had heard it spoken, the humble slave, Taita. We both understood that clearly.

'My lord, I am only grateful that it has turned out the way I planned it. I admit now that I have worked deviously to place your daughter in the king's way, and that I described her to him as the mother of his future son. I used the pageant as a show-piece to focus his attention upon her. However, I could not bring myself to speak to you of such momentous affairs until they had been successfully engineered. But there still remains a great deal for us to do, before we can count ourselves secure?' and I began swiftly to extemporize a list of all that might go awry before he could gain control of the crown and the golden sceptre of Egypt. Tactfully I made it clear how much he still needed me if he were to achieve his design. I saw him relax as he followed my arguments, and I knew that at least for the immediate future I was safe.

It was some time before I could reasonably escape from his presence and hurry to warn my Lady Lostris of the terrible predicament in which I had placed her. However, before I reached her door I realized that my warning to her would serve no purpose other than to distress her to the point of dementia or even suicide. I could waste no further time if I were to prevent events from rushing to their tragic conclusion.

There was only one person to whom I could turn now.

I LEFT THE NECROPOLIS AND SET OFF alone along the tow-path of the canal, back towards the river-bank where I knew that Tanus' squadrons were encamped. The moon was only three days from full and it lit the jagged hills of the western horizon with a cold yellow radiance and threw black shadows on the plain below.

As I hurried along, I recited to myself a full list of all the possible calamities and misfortunes that might befall Tanus, my Lady Lostris and myself in the days ahead. I was goading myself the same way that a black-maned desert lion lashes up his temper with the bony spike in the end of his tail before he charges at the huntsman. Thus I was in fulminating mood long before I reached the bank of the Nile. I found Tanus' encampment without difficulty, hard by the bank of the Nile and the mouth of the canal. The ships of the squadron were anchored below the camp. The sentries challenged me and then, when they recognized me, led me to Tanus' tent.

Tanus was at late supper with Kratas and four other of his subordinate officers. He rose to greet me with a smile and offered me the beer tankard in his hand. "This is such an unexpected pleasure, old friend. Sit down beside me and have a pull of my beer while my slave brings you a cup and platter. You look hot and out of sorts?' I cut short these pleasantries by rounding on him furiously. 'To Seth with you, you great senseless oaf! Do you not understand what jeopardy you have placed us in? You and that flapping jawbone of yours! Do you have no thought for the safety and the well-being of my mistress?' In truth I had not meant to be so harsh on him, but once I had started, it seemed that I was unable to control my emotions, and all my fear and anxiety came tumbling out in a flood of invective. Not all that I accused him of was true or fair, but it made me feel better to have it out.

Tanus' expression changed and he held up one hand as though to shield himself. 'Whoa! You take me unawares. I am unarmed and unable to defend myself from such a murderous assault.' In front of his officers his tone was jocular, but his smile was thin as he seized my arm and steered me out of the tent into the darkness, and half-dragged me beyond the regimental lines into the open moonlit fields beyond. I was like a child in the grip of that right hand that was trained to wield the sword and draw the great bow Lan-ata.

'Now puke it up!' he ordered me grimly. 'What has happened to put you in such vile humour?'

I was still angry, but more afraid than angry, and my tongue took flight again. 'I have spent half my life trying to protect you from your own stupidity, and I am sick of it. Don't you understand anything of life? Did you truly believe that you would be allowed to escape unscathed from the incredible folly into which you threw all of us last night?"

'Are you talking about my declamation at the pageant?' He looked puzzled, and released the crushing grip on my arm. 'How can you say it was folly? All my officers, and every other person I have spoken to since then, are all delighted with what I had to say?'

'You fool, don't you see that the opinions of all your officers and all your friends count for the price of a rotten fish in the scheme of things? Under any other ruler you would already be dead, and even this weak and vacillating old man of ours cannot afford to let you escape the consequences of your insolence. It is more than his throne is worth. There will be a bill for you to pay, Tanus, Lord Harrab. Horus knows, it will be a heavy bill.'

'You' are speaking in riddles,' he snapped at me. 'I did the king a great service. He is surrounded by fawning toadies who feed him the lies they think he wants to hear. It was past time that he learned the truth, and I know in my heart that once he considers it, he will be grateful to me.'

My anger began to evaporate before his simple and steadfast belief in the triumph of good. 'Tanus, my dearest friend, what an innocent you are! No man is ever grateful for having the unpalatable truth rammed down his throat. But apart from that, you have played directly into the hands of my Lord Intef.'

'My Lord Intef?' He stared at me hard. 'What of my Lord Intef? You speak of him as though he were my enemy. The grand vizier was my father's dearest friend. I know that I can trust him to protect me. He swore an oath to my father as he lay on his death-bed?'

I could see that despite his sunny disposition and our friendship, he was becoming truly angry with me, probably for the first time in his life. I knew also that, although it was slow to rouse, Tanus' anger was something to fear.

'Oh, Tanus!' I curbed my own anger at last. 'I have been unfair to you. There is so much that I should have told you, and never did. Nothing was as you thought it. I was a coward, but I could not tell you that Intef was your own father's deadliest enemy.'

'How can this be true?' Tanus shook his head. 'They were friends, the dearest friends. My earliest memories are of them laughing together. My father told me that I could trust my very life to my Lord Intef.'

"The noble Pianki, Lord Harrab believed that, it is true. His faith cost him his entire fortune, and in the end his life which he placed in Intef's hands.'

'No, no, you must be mistaken. My father was the victim of a series of misfortunes?'

'And every one of those misfortunes was engineered by my Lord Intef. He envied your father for his virtues and his popularity, for his wealth and his influence with Pharaoh. He realized that Lord Harrab would be appointed grand vizier before him and he hated him for all these things.'

'I cannot believe you. I cannot bring myself to believe you.' Tanus shook his head in denial, and the last of my anger was snuffed out.

'I will explain it all to you, as I should have done long ago. I will give you all the proof you need. But there is no time for it now. You must trust me. My Lord Intef hates you even as he hated your father. Both you and my Lady Lostris are in danger. In danger of more than simply life itself, in danger of losing each other for ever.'

'But how is that possible, Taita?' He was confused and shaken by my words. 'I thought that my Lord Intef had agreed to our union. Have you not spoken to him, then?'

'Yes, I have spoken to him,' I cried, and I seized Tanus' hand and thrust it up under the back of my tunic. 'That was his reply. Feel the welts left by the lash! He had me flogged for even suggesting the marriage between you and my Lady Lostris. That is how much he hates you and your family.'

Tanus stared at me speechlessly, but I saw that he believed me at last, and so I was able to come to the subject that was dominating my thoughts more even than his intemperate speech, or the vendetta that the grand vizier had conducted so successfully against him over so many years.

'Hear me now, my dear friend, and brace yourself for the very worst tidings yet.' There was no other way to tell him, except as directly as Tanus would have told me. 'Far from agreeing to your marriage, my Lord Intef has this very night pledged his daughter's hand to another. She is to be married immediately to Pharaoh Mamose, and after she bears his first son she will become his principal wife and consort. The king will make the announcement himself at the end of the festival of Osiris. The marriage will take place that very same evening.'

Tanus swayed on his feet and in the moonlight his face turned ghostly pale. Neither of us could speak for a long while and then Tanus turned away from me and walked out alone into the field of standing corn. I trailed behind him, keeping him in sight, until at last he found an outcrop of black rock and seated himself upon it with the weary air of a very old man. I came up softly and seated myself below him. Deliberately I remained silent until he sighed and asked quietly, 'Has Lostris consented to this marriage?'

'Of course not. As yet she probably knows nothing about it. But dp you think for one moment that her objections would count against the will of her father and the king? She will have no say in the matter.' 'What are we to do, old friend?'

Even in my distress I was grateful to him that he used the plural, including me, reassuring me of our friendship. 'There is one other probability that we must face,' I warned him. 'And that is that in the same speech that Pharaoh announces his betrothal to Lostris, he will order your imprisonment, or worse still, issue your death warrant. My Lord Intef has the king's ear and he will certainly put him up to it. In truth he would have good reason. You are certainly guilty of sedition.'

'I do not care to live without Lostris as my wife. If the king takes her from me, then he is welcome to my head as a marriage gift.' He said it simply, without histrionics, so that I had difficulty in feigning anger and putting the edge of contempt into my voice.

'You sound like a weak and pitiful old woman, giving herself up to the fates without a struggle. What a fine and undying love is yours, if you will not even fight for her!'

'How do you fight a king and a god?' Tanus asked quietly. 'A king to whom you have sworn allegiance, and a god who is as remote and as unassailable as the sun?'

'As a king he does not deserve your allegiance. You set that out clearly in your declamation. He is a weak and dithering old man who has divided the two kingdoms and brought our Ta-Meri bleeding to her knees.'

'And as a god?' Tanus again asked quietly, as though he were not really interested in the answer, although I knew him to be a devout and religious man, as so many great warriors are.

'A god?' I made my tone derisive. 'You have more of the godhead in your sword-arm than he has in all his soft little body.'

'Then what do you suggest?' he asked with deceptive mildness. 'What would you have me do?'

I drew a deep breath and then blurted it out. 'Your officers and your men would follow you to the gates of the underworld. The populace loves you for your courage and your honour?' I faltered, for his expression in the moonlight gave me no encouragement to continue. He was silent for twenty beats of my racing heart and then he ordered me softly, 'Go on! Say what you have to say.'

'Tanus, you would make the noblest pharaoh that this Ta-Meri, this mother-land, has known for a thousand years. You with my Lady Lostris on the throne beside you could lead this land and this people back to greatness. Call out your squadrons, and lead your men down the causeway to where that unworthy pharaoh lies unprotected and vulnerable. By dawn tomorrow you could be ruler of the Upper Kingdom. By this time next year you could have defeated the usurper and have reunited the two kingdoms.' I leaped to my feet and faced nun. 'Tanus, Lord Harrab, your destiny and that of the woman you love await you. Seize them in both your strong warrior's hands!'

'Warrior's hands, yes.' He held them up before my face. 'Hands that have fought for my mother-land and have protected her rightful king. You do me a disservice, old friend. They are not the hands of a traitor. Nor is this the heart of a blasphemer, that would seek to cast down and destroy a god, and take his place in the pantheon.'

I groaned aloud in my frustration. 'You would be the greatest pharaoh of the Isist five hundred years, and you need not proclaim your godhead, not if the idea offends you. Do it, I beseech you, for the sake of this very Egypt of ours, and of the woman that we both love!'

'Would Lostris still love a traitor as she loved a soldier and a patriot? I think not.' He shook his head.

'She would love you no matter what?' I began, but he cut me short.

'You cannot convince me. She is a woman of virtue and of honour. As a traitor and a thief, I would forfeit all right to her respect. What is of equal importance, I would never respect myself again, or consider myself worthy of her sweet love, if I did what you urge. Speak of it no more, as you value our friendship. I have no claim to the double crown, nor will I ever make such claim. Horus, hear me, and turn your face away from me if ever I should break this pledge.'

The matter was closed, I knew him so well, that great infuriating oaf, whom I loved with all my heart. He meant exactly what he said, and would cleave to it at any cost.

"Then what will you do, damn your stubborn heart?' I. flared at him. 'Nothing that I say has any weight with you. Do you want to face this on your own? Are you suddenly too wise to heed my counsel?'

'I'm willing to take your counsel, just as long as it has sense to it.' He reached out and drew me down beside him. 'Come, Taita, help us. Lostris and I need you now as never before. Don't desert us. Help us find the honourable way.' 'I fear there is no such thing,' I sighed, my emotions bobbing and spinning like a piece of flotsam caught in the Nile flood. 'But if you will not seize the crown, then you dare not stay here. You must sweep Lostris up in your arms and bear her away.'

He stared at me in the moonlight. 'Leave Egypt? You cannot be serious. This is my world. This is Lostris' world.' 'No!' I reassured him. 'That is not what I had in mind. There is another pharaoh in Egypt. One who has need of warriors and honest men. You have much to offer such a king. Your fame in the Lower Kingdom is as great as it is here at Karnak. Place Lostris on the deck of the Breath of Horus and send your galley flying northwards. No other ship can catch you. In ten days, with this wind and current, you can present yourself at the court of the red pharaoh in Memphis, and swear allegiance to?'

'By Horus, you are determined to make a traitor of me yet,' he cut across me. 'Swear allegiance to the usurper, you say? Then what of the allegiance I swore to the true Pharaoh Mamose? Does that count for nothing with you? What kind of man am I, that can make the same oath to every king or renegade that crosses my path? An oath is not something to be bartered or reclaimed, Taita, it is for life. I gave my oath to the true Pharaoh Mamose.'

'That true Pharaoh is the same one who will marry your love, and will order the strangling-rope to be twisted around your neck,' I pointed out grimly, and this time even he wavered.

'You are right, of course. We should not stay in Karnak. But I will not make myself a traitor or break my solemn oath by taking up the sword against my king.'

'Your sense of honour is too complicated for me.' I could not keep the tone of sarcasm from my voice. 'All I know is that it bodes fair to make corpses of us all. You have told me what you will not do. Now tell me what you will do to save yourself, and rescue my Lady Lostris from a hateful fate.'

'Yes, old friend, you have every right to be angry with me. I asked for your help and advice. When you gave it freely, I scorned it. I beg your patience. Bear with me a while longer.' Tanus sprang to his feet and began to prowl about like the leopard in Pharaoh's menagerie, back and forth, muttering to himself, shaking his head and bunching his fists, as if to face an adversary.

At last he stopped in front of me. 'I am not prepared to play the traitor, but with a heavy heart I will force myself to play the coward. If Lostris agrees to accompany me, and only if she agrees, then I am prepared to take flight. I will take her away from this land we both love so well.'

'Where will you go?' I asked.

'I know that Lostris can never leave the river. It is not only her life and mine, but her god also. We must stay with Hapi, the river. That leaves only one direction open to us.' He raised his right arm, gleaming with muscle in the moonlight, and pointed south. We will follow the Nile southwards into the depths of Africa, into the land of Gush and beyond. We will go up beyond the cataracts into the un-fathomed wilderness where no civilized man has ever gone before. There, perhaps, if the gods are kind, we will carve out another Ta-Meri for ourselves.'

'Who will be your companions?'

'Kratas, of course, and those of my officers and men who are game for the adventure. I'll address them tonight and give them the choice. Five ships, perhaps, and the men to work them. We must be ready to leave by dawn. Will you go back to the necropolis and fetch Lostris to me?'

'And me?' I asked quietly. 'You'll take me with you?'

'You?' He laughed at me. Now that the decision was made, his mood took flight, high as the bating falcon launched from the gloved fist. 'Would you truly give up your garden and your books, your pageants and your building of temples? The road will be dangerous, and the life hard. Do you truly want that, Taita?'

'I could hot let you go alone, without my restraining hand upon your shoulder. What folly and danger would you lead my mistress into, if I were not there to guide you?'

'Come!' he ordered, and clapped me on the back. 'I never doubted that you would come with us. I know that Lostris would not leave without you, anyway. Enough chatter! We have work to do. First, we will tell Kratas and the others what we intend, and let them make their choice. Then you must go back to the necropolis and fetch Lostris, while I make the preparations for our departure. I'll send a dozen of my best men with you, but we must hurry. It is past midnight, and well into the third watch.'

Silly romantic fool that I am, but I was as excited as he was as we hurried back to the regiment's encampment below the temple and the causeway. I was so elated that my sense of danger was dulled. It was Tanus who picked out the sinister movement in the moonlight ahead of us and seized my arm and drew me beneath the shelter of a stunted carob tree.

'An armed party,' he whispered, and I saw the glint of bronze spearheads. There was a large band of men, thirty or forty, I estimated.

'Bandits, perhaps, or a raiding party from the Lower Kingdom,' Tanus growled, and even I was alarmed by the stealthy behaviour of the armed men ahead of us. They were not using the tow-path of the canal, but creeping through the open fields, spreading out to surround Tanus' encampment on the river-bank.

'This way!' With a soldier's eye for ground he picked out a shallow wadi that ran down to join the river, and he steered me to it. We jumped down and ran doubled over until we reached the perimeter of the camp. Then Tanus sprang out of the wadi and roused the camp with a bellow.

'Stand to arms! On me, the Blues! Form on me!' It was the rallying cry of the Blue Crocodile Guards, and it was taken up at once by the sergeants of each company. Instantly the camp boiled to life. The men sleeping round the fires leaped to their feet and snatched up their stacked weapons, while the officers' tents burst open as though the men within had never slept but had been waiting, tensed and ready for Tanus' command. Sword in hand, they raced to their stations, and I saw Kratas in the forefront.

I was amazed by the swiftness of their response, even though I knew that these were all battle-tested veterans. Before I could draw a dozen excited breaths they had formed in their phalanxes, with overlapping shields and long spears thrust outwards facing the darkness. The strange band out there in the night must have been as startled as I was by this militant display, for although I could still make out the vague shapes of many men and the gleam of their weapons in the gloom, the murderous charge we were all expecting from them never materialized.

The instant that Tanus had his formations in line, he ordered the advance. We had often debated the advantages of offensive action over defence, and now the massed squadrons moved forward, poised to break into a full charge at Tanus' command. It must have been a daunting spectacle to the men out there in the darkness, for a voice hailed us with an edge of panic in its tone. 'We are Pharaoh's men on the king's business. Hold your attack!'

'Hold hard, the Blues!' Tanus stopped the menacing advance, and then called back, 'Which pharaoh do you serve, the red usurper or the true pharaoh?'

'We serve the true king, the divine Mamose, ruler of the Upper and the Lower Kingdoms. I am the king's messenger.'

'Come forward, king's messenger, who creeps around in the night like a thief. Come forward and state your business!' Tanus invited him, but under his breath he told Kratas, 'Be ready for treachery. The smell of it is thick in the air. Have the fires built up. Give us light to see.'

Kratas gave the order and bundles of dry rushes were flung on to the watch-fires. The flames leaped up, and the darkness was thrown back. Into this ruddy glow the leader of the strange band stepped forward and snouted, 'My name is Neter, Best of Ten Thousand. I am the commander of Pharaoh's bodyguard. I bear the hawk seal for the arrest and detention of Tanus, Lord Harrab.'

'By Horus, he lies in his teeth,' Kratas growled. 'You are no felon with a warrant on your head. He insults you and the regiment. Let us at them and I'll thrust that hawk seal up between his buttocks.'

'Hold!' Tanus restrained him. 'Let us hear the fellow out.' He raised his voice again. 'Show us the seal, Captain Neter.'

Neter held it aloft. A small statuette in glistening blue faience, in the shape of the royal hawk. The hawk seal was the king's personal empowerment. The bearer acted with all the force and validity of Pharaoh himself. On pain of death, no man could question or hinder him in the course and commission of the royal business. The bearer answered only to the king.

'I am Tanus, Lord Harrab,' Tanus conceded. 'And I acknowledge the hawk seal.'

'My lord, rny lord!' Kratas whispered urgently. 'Do not go to the king. It will mean your certain death. I have spoken to the other officers. The regiment is behind you, nay, the entire army is behind you. Give us the word. We'll make you king before the new day breaks.'

'My ear is deaf to those words,' Tanus told him softly, but with a weight of menace in his tone more telling than any growl or bellow. 'But only this once, Kratas, son of Maydum. Next time that you speak treason, I will deliver you to the king's wrath with my own hands.'

He turned from Kratas to me, and drew me a little to one side. 'It is too late, old friend. The gods frown on our enterprise. I must trust myself to the king's good sense. If he is truly a god, then he will be able to look into my heart and see for himself that it contains no evil.' He touched my arm, and that light gesture was to me more significant than the warmest embrace. 'Go to Lostris, tell her what has happened, tell her why it has happened. Tell her I love her and, whatever happens, I will do so through this life and the next. Tell her I will wait for her, to the ends of eternity, if need be.'

Then Tanus ran his sword back into the scabbard at his side and with empty hands stepped forward to meet the bearer of the hawk seal. 'I stand ready to do the king's bidding,' he said simply.

Behind him his own men hissed and growled, and rattled their swords against their bucklers, but Tanus turned and quieted them with a gesture and a frown, then strode out to confront Neter. The king's guard closed in around him, and then at a trot they moved away along the tow-path of the canal, back towards the necropolis.

The camp was filled with angry, bitter young men when I left it and followed Tanus and his escort at a discreet interval. When I reached the necropolis, I went directly to my Lady Lostris' quarters. I was distressed to find them deserted except for three of her little black maids, who in their usual lazy and lackadaisical manner were packing the last of their mistress's clothing into a cedar-wood chest.

'Where is your mistress?' I demanded, and the eldest and most insolent of them picked her nose as she gave me an airy reply, 'Where you can't reach her, eunuch.' The others tittered at her powers of repartee. They are all of them jealous of my favour with my Lady Lostris.

'Answer me straight, or I'll whip your insolent backside, you little baggage.' I had done so before, so she relented and muttered sulkily, "They have taken her to Pharaoh's own harem. You have no influence there. Despite your missing balls, the guards will'never let you pass amongst the royal women.'

She was right, of course, but still I had to make the attempt. My mistress wouM need me now, as much as she ever had in all her life.

As I feared, the guards at the gate to the king's harem were intractable. They knew who I was, but they had orders that no one, not even the closest members of Lostris' retinue, was to be allowed to go to her.

It cost me a gold ring, but the best I could achieve, even with that extravagance, was the promise that one of the guards would take my message to her. I wrote it out on a scrap of papyrus parchment, a bland little attempt at encouragement. I dared not relate all that had befallen us, nor the peril in which Tanus now stood. I could not even mention him by name, and yet I had to reassure her of his love and protection. As an investment, it was not worth the price I was forced to pay. Hardest of all to bear, I learned later that my gold had been entirely wasted and that she never received the message. Is there no man we can trust in this perfidious world?

I was not to see either Tanus or my Lady Lostris again until the evening of the last day of the festival of Osiris.

THE FESTIVAL ENDED IN THE TEMPLE OF the god. It seemed once more that all the populace of Greater Thebes was packed into the courtyards. We were jammed so tightly that I could scarcely breathe in the press and the heat.

I was feeling wretched, for I had slept little for two nights in succession on account of the worry and the strain. Apart from the uncertainty of the fate of Tanus, I had been further burdened by my Lord Intef with the onerous duty of arranging the wedding ceremony of the king to his daughter, a duty that ran so contrary to my own desires. Added to which, I was parted from my mistress, and I could scarcely bear it. I do not know how I came through it. Even the slave boys were concerned about me. They declared that they had never seen my beauty so impaired, or my spirits so low.

Twice during Pharaoh's interminable speech from the throne, I found myself swaying on my feet, on the very point of fainting. However, I forced myself to hold on, while the king droned out the platitudes and half-truths with which he sought to disguise the true state of the kingdom and to placate the populace.

As was only to be expected, he never referred directly to the red pharaoh in the north or the civil war in which we were embroiled, except in such broad terms as 'these troubled times' or 'the defection and insurrection'. However, after he had spoken for a while it suddenly became plain to me that he was referring to every one of the issues that Tanus had raised in his Reclamation, and attempting to find remedies for each of them.

It was true that he was doing so in his usual inept and vacillating fashion, but the simple fact that he had taken notice of what Tanus had said braced me and focused my wandering attention. I edged forward in the press of humanity until I had a better view of the throne, by which time the king was speaking about the impudence of the slaves and the disrespectful behaviour of the lower classes of our society. This was another issue that Tanus had mentioned, and I was amused to hear Pharaoh's solution. 'From henceforth the slave-owner may order fifty lashes to the insolent slave, without recourse to the magistrate to sanction such punishment,' he announced.

I smiled when I remembered how this same king had almost wrecked the state twelve years previously with another proclamation that ran in the exact opposite direction to this latest pronouncement. Still idealistic at his coronation, he had set out actually to abolish the ancient and honourable institution of slavery. He had wanted to turn every slave in Egypt loose and make him a free man.

Even at this remove in time, such folly is still incomprehensible to me. Though I am myself a slave, I believe that slavery and serfdom are the institutions on which the greatness of nations is founded. The rabble cannot govern itself. Government should be entrusted only to those born and trained to it. Freedom is a privilege, not a right. The masses need a strong master, for without control and direction anarchy would reign. The absolute monarch and slavery and serfdom are the pillars of a system that has allowed us to develop into civilized men.

It had been instructive to see how the slaves themselves had rebelled at the prospect of having freedom thrust upon them. I had been very young at the time, but I too had been alarmed at the prospect of being turned out from my warm and secure niche in the lioys' quarters to scavenge on the rubbish-heaps for my next crust of bread with a horde of other freed slaves. A bad master is better than no master at all.

Of course, the kingdom had been thrown into chaos by this folly. The army had been upon the brink of revolt. Had the red pharaoh in the north seized the opportunity, then history might have been written differently. In the end our own pharaoh had hastily withdrawn his misguided decree of manumission, and managed to cling to his throne. Now here he was little more than a decade later proclaiming increased punishments for the impudence of a slave. It was so typical of this hesitant and muddling pharaoh that I pretended to mop my brow in order to cover the first smile that had creased my face in the last two days.

'The practice of self-mutilation for the purpose of avoiding military service will in future be strongly discouraged,' the king droned on. 'Any eligible young man claiming exemption under this dispensation is to appear before a tribunal of three army officers, at least one of whom is to be a centurion or officer of superior rank.' This time my smile was one of reluctant approval. For once Pharaoh was on the right tack. I would dearly love to see Menset and Sobek displaying their missing thumbs to some hardened old veteran of the river wars. What tender sympathy they could expect! 'The fine for such an offence will be one thousand rings of gold.' By Seth's bulging belly, that would make those two young dandies pause, and my Lord Intef would have to meet the fine on their behalf.

Despite my other concerns, I was beginning to feel a little more cheerful, as Pharaoh continued, 'From this day forward it will be an offence punishable by a fine of ten gold rings for a harlot to ply for trade in any public place, other than one set aside by the magistrates for that purpose.' This time I could barely prevent myself from laughing aloud. Vicariously Tanus would make puritans and honest men of all of Thebes. I wondered how the sailors and the off-duty soldiers would welcome this interference in their sporting lives. Pharaoh's period of lucidity had been short-lived. Any fool knows the folly of trying to legislate to man's sexual foibles.

Despite my doubts as to the wisdom of the king's remedies, still I found myself overtaken by a tremulous excitement. It was clear that the king had taken serious notice of every issue that Tanus had brought forward in his declamation. Could he now go on to condemn Tanus for sedition? I wondered.

However, Pharaoh had not finished yet. 'It has been brought to my notice that certain officials of the state have abused the trust and faith that I have placed in them. These officials, concerned with the collection of taxes and the handling of public funds, will be called upon to account for the monies placed in their care. Those found guilty of embezzlement and corruption will be summarily sentenced to death by strangulation.' The populace stirred and sighed with disbelief. Would the king truly seek to restrain his tax-collectors?

Then a single voice at the back of the hall cried out, 'Pharaoh is great! Long live Pharaoh!' The cry was taken up until the temple rang with the cheering. It must have been an unusual sound for the king to hear, that spontaneous applause. Even at the distance that I was from the throne I could tell that he enjoyed it. His lugubrious expression lightened and the double crown seemed to weigh less heavily on his head. I was certain that all of this must improve Tanus' chances of escaping the executioner's noose.

When the cheering eventually subsided, the king went on in his particular style to diminish everything that he had just achieved. 'My trusted grand vizier, the noble Lord Intef, will be placed in sole and absolute charge of this investigation of the civil service, with the full powers of search and arrest, of life and of death vested in him.' There was just the softest echo of applause to greet this appointment, and I used it to disguise a sardonic chuckle. Pharaoh was sending a hungry leopard to count the birds in his chicken-coop. What sport my Lord Intef would have amongst the royal treasuries, and what a redistribution of the nation's wealth would now take place with my master doing the counting, and milking the tax-collectors of their secret hoards of savings!

Pharaoh had a rare talent for capsizing or running the noblest sentiments and intentions on to the rocks with his blundering helmsmanship. I wondered what other folly he would manage to perpetrate before he finished speaking that day, and I did not have too long to wait.

'For some time it has been a cause for great concern to me that a state of lawlessness exists in the Upper Kingdom, placing the lives and the estates of honest citizens in the gravest jeopardy. I had made dispositions to deal with this state of affairs at an appropriate time. However, the matter was recently presented to me in such an untimely and ill-advised manner as to reek of sedition. It was done under the dispensation of the festival of Osiris. However, that dispensation does not cover treason or the crime of blasphemy, an attack on the person and divinity of the king.' Pharaoh paused significantly. It was clear that he was speaking of Tanus, and I was once again critical of his judgement. A strong pharaoh would not explain his motives to the people, or seek to win their approval for his actions. He would simply have ,pronounced sentence and have had done with the matter.

'I speak, of course, of Tanus, Lord Harrab, who played the role of the great god Horus at the pageant of Osiris. He has been arrested for the crime of sedition. My councillors are divided on the subject of this person's guilt. There are those amongst them who wish him to pay the supreme penalty?' I saw my Lord Intef, standing below the throne, avert his gaze for a moment, and it confirmed what I already knew, that he was the chief amongst those who wished to see Tanus executed '?and there are those who feel that his declamation at the festival was indeed inspired by divine forces and that it was not the voice of Tanus, Lord Harrab, that spoke out on these matters, but the veritable voice of the god Horus. If this latter be the case, then clearly there can be no culpability to the mortal through whom the god chose to speak.'

The reasoning was fair, but what pharaoh worth the double crown would deign to explain it to this horde of common soldiers and sailors and farmers, of tradesmen and labourers and slaves, most of whom were still suffering from the ill-effects of too much wine and revelry? While I still pondered this, the king gave a command to the captain of his bodyguard who stood below the throne. I recognized him as Neter, the officer who had been sent to arrest Tanus. Neter marched away smartly and returned a moment later, leading Tanus from the sanctuary at the rear of the hall.

My heart leaped at the sight of my friend, and then with joy and hope I realized that he was unbound, there were no chains on his ankles. Although he carried no weapons and wore no badge of rank, and was dressed in a simple white kilt, he walked with his accustomed elastic step and jaunty grace. Apart from the,healing scab on his forehead where Rasfer had struck him, he was unmarked. He had not been beaten or tortured, and I felt my optimism revived. They were not treating him as a condemned man.

A moment later all my hopes were dashed to pieces. Tanus made his obeisance before the throne, but when he rose to his feet again, Pharaoh looked down upon him severely and spoke in a voice without pity. 'Tanus, Lord Harrab, you stand accused of treason and sedition. I find you guilty of both these crimes. I sentence you to death by strangulation, the traditional punishment of the traitor.'

As Neter placed the noose of linen rope around Tanus' neck to mark him as one condemned to die, a groan went up from the people who watched. A woman wailed, and soon the temple was filled with cries of lamentation and the ululation of mourning. Never before had such a display accompanied the passing of die death sentence. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the love which the populace bore Tanus. I wailed with them and the tears broke from my lids and streamed down my face to pour like a waterfall on to my chest.

The bodyguards fell upon the crowd, using the butts of their long spears in an attempt to beat the mourners into silence. It was in vain, and I screamed out over their heads, 'Mercy, bountiful Pharaoh! Mercy for the noble Tanus!'

One of the guards struck me on the side of the head, and I fell to the ground half-stunned, but my cry was taken up. 'Mercy, we beseech you, oh divine Mamose!' It took all the efforts of the guards to restore some order, but still a few of the women were sobbing.

Only when Pharaoh raised his voice again were we at last silent, so that every one-of us heard his next pronouncement. "The condemned man has complained of the lawless state of the kingdom. He has called upon the throne to stamp out the bands of robbers who ravage the land. The condemned man has been called a hero, and there are those who say that he is a mighty warrior. If this be true, then he himself would be better suited than any other to carry out those measures he demands.'

Now the people were confused and silent, and I struck the tears from my face with my forearm as I strained to catch the next word. 'Therefore, the sentence of death is deferred for two years. If the condemned man was truly inspired by the god Horus when he made his seditious speech, then the god will assist him in the task I now place upon him.'

The silence was profound. None of us seemed able to understand what we were hearing, although hope and despair filled my soul in equal measure.

At a signal from the king one of the ministers of the crown stepped forward and offered Pharaoh a tray on which lay a tiny blue statuette. Pharaoh held it aloft and announced, 'I issue to Lord Harrab the hawk seal of the pharaohs. Under the auspice of the seal he may recruit all the men and materials of war that he deems necessary to his task. He may employ whatever means he chooses, and no man may prevent him. For two full years he is the king's man, and he answers only to the king. At the end of that time, on the last day of the next festival of Osiris, he will come before the throne once again, wearing the noose of death around his neck. If he has failed in his task, the noose will be tightened and he will be strangled to death on the spot where he now stands. If he has completed his task, then I, Pharaoh Mamose, will lift the noose from around his neck with my own hands and replace it with a chain of gold.'

Still none of us could speak or move, and we stared in fascination as Pharaoh made a gesture with the crook and the flail. 'Tanus, Lord Harrab, I charge you with the task of eradicating from the Upper Kingdom of Egypt the outlaws and robber bands that are terrorizing this land. Within two years you will restore order and peace to the Upper Kingdom. Fail me at your peril.'

A roar went up from the congregation, wild as the sound of storm surf beating on a rocky shore. Though they cheered unthinkingly, I lamented. The task that Pharaoh had set was too great for any mortal man to achieve. The cloud of death had not been lifted from over Tanus. I knew that in two years from today he would die on the very same spot where he now stood so young and proud and tall.

FORLORN AS A LOST WAIF, SHE STOOD alone in the midst of the multitude, with the river that was her patron god at her back and before her a sea of faces.

The long linen shift that fell to her ankles was dyed with the juice of shellfish to the colour of the finest wine, a colour that proclaimed her as a virgin bride. Her hair was loose. It flowed down on to her shoulders in a soft dark tide that shone in the sunlight as though with an inner fire. On those shining locks she wore the bridal wreath woven from the long stems of the water-lily. The blossoms were an unearthly cerulean blue, with throats of the clearest gold.

Her face was as white as freshly ground cornflour. Her eyes were so large and dark that they reminded me heart-breakingly of the little girl whom, in years gone by, I had so often woken from the grip of nightmare, and lit the lamp and sat beside her cot until she slept again. This time I could not help her, for the nightmare was reality.

I could not go to her, for the priests and Pharaoh's guard surrounded her, as they had all these days past, and they would not let me near unto her. She was lost to me for ever, my little girl, and I could not support the thought of it.

The priests had built the wedding canopy of river rushes on the bank above the Nile, and my Lady Lostris waited beneath it for her bridegroom to come to claim her. At her side stood her father, with the Gold of Praise glittering around his neck and the smile of the cobra on his lips.

The royal bridegroom came at last, to the solemn beat of the drum and the bleat of gazelle-horn trumpets, and to me this wedding march was" die saddest sound in all the earth.

Pharaoh wore the nemes crown and carried the sceptre, but behind the pomp and the regalia, he was still a little old man with a pot-belly and a sad face. I could not help but think of the other bridegroom who might have stood under the canopy beside my mistress, if only the gods had been kinder.

Pharaoh's ministers and high officials attended him so closely that my view of my mistress was obscured. Despite the fact that it was I who had been forced to arrange every detail of it, I was excluded from the wedding, and I had only glimpses of my Lady Lostris during the ceremony.

The high priest of Osiris washed the hands and the feet of both the bride and the groom with water freshly drawn from the Nile to symbolize the purity of their union. Then the king broke a morsel from the ritual corn-loaf and offered it to his young bride as a pledge. I glimpsed my mistress's face as he placed the crust between her lips. She could neither chew nor swallow but stood with it ia her mouth as though it were a stone.

Once again she was hidden from my view, and it was only when I heard the crunch of the empty jug that had contained the marriage wine as the bridegroom shattered it with a blow of his sword, that I knew that it was done and that Lostris was for ever more beyond the reach of Tanus' arms.

The crowd beneath the canopy opened and Pharaoh led his newest bride forward to the front of the platform to present her to the people. They showed their love for Lostris in a chorus of adulation that went on and on until my ears rang and my head swam.

I wanted to escape from the press and go to find Tanus. Although I knew that he had been released from detention and was once again at liberty, he had not attended the ceremony. He was perhaps the only man in Thebes who had not come to the riverside today. I knew that wherever he might be, he stood in as dire need of me as I was of him. The only small comfort that either of us might find on this tragic day was with each other. However, I could not tear myself away. I had to see it out to the final harrowing moment.

At last my Lord Intef came forward to take his farewell of his daughter. As the crowd subsided into silence he embraced her.

Lostris was like a corpse in his embrace. Her arms hung limply at her side, and her face was pale as death. Her father released her, but kept a grip on her hand as he turned and faced the congregation to offer the ritual gift to his daughter. Traditionally, this gift was made over and above the dowry that went directly to the bridegroom. However, only the nobility observed this custom, which was designed to give the bride an independent income.

'Now that you go from my house and from my protection to the house of your husband, I bestow upon you the gift of parting, that you will remember me always as the father that loved you.' The words were inappropriate to the circumstances, I thought bitterly. My Lord Intef had never loved another living soul. However, he continued the ancient formula, as though the sentiments were his own. 'Ask any boon of me, my beloved child. I will refuse you nothing on this joyous day.'

It was the usual practice for the extent of the gift to be agreed in private between father and daughter before the ceremony, hi this case, however, my Lord Intef had told his daughter unequivocally what she was entitled to ask for. He had done me the honour of discussing the matter with me the previous day, before .informing Lostris of his decision. 'I don't want to be extravagant, but on the other hand I do not wish to appear parsimonious in Pharaoh's eyes,' he had mused. 'Let us say, five thousand gold rings and fifty feddan of land?not on the riverfront, mind you.'

He had, with my prompting, finally decided on five thousand gold rings and one hundred feddan of prime irrigable land as being a suitable gift for a royal wedding. On his instruction I had already drawn up the deed of grant for the land, and set aside the gold from a secret store that my master kept out of the way of the tax-collectors.

The matter was settled. It remained only for Lostris to give voice to the request before her groom and all the wedding guests. But she stood pale and silent and withdrawn, seeming neither to see nor hear what was going on around her.

'Speak up, my child. What is it that you desire from me?' My Lord Intef s tones of paternal love were becoming strained, and he shook his daughter's hand to rouse her. 'Come, tell your father what he can do to make this happy day complete.'

My Lady Lostris stirred as though coming awake from a dreadful dream. She looked about her and her tears welled up and threatened to break over her quivering eyelids. She opened her mouth to speak, but what came from her throat was the weak little cry of a wounded bird. She closed her lips again and shook her head speechlessly.

'Come, child. Speak out.' My Lord Intef was having difficulty sustaining an expression of paternal affection. 'Name your marriage gift, and I will give it to you, whatever it is that you desire.'

The effort that Lostris had to make was apparent to me, even though I stood so far from her, but this time when she opened her mouth her request rang out over our heads, clear as the music of the lyre. There could not have been a soul in the crowd who did not hear every word of it.

'For my gift give me the slave, Taita!'

My Lord Intef reeled back a pace as though she had thrust a dagger into his belly. He stared at her aghast, his mouth opening and closing without a sound escaping. Only he and I knew the value of the gift that Lostris had demanded. Not even he, with the store of wealth and treasure that he had garnered over a lifetime, could afford such a payment.

He recovered swiftly. His expression was once more calm and benign, though his lips stretched tight. 'You are too restrained, my darling daughter. A single slave is no fitting gift for Pharaoh's bride. Such stinginess is not in my nature. I would rather you accepted a gift of real value, five thousand rings of gold and?'

'Father, you have always been too generous with me, but I want only Taita.'

My Lord Intef smiled a white smile, white teeth, white lips and white rage. While he still stared at Lostris I could see that his mind was racing.

I was the most valuable of all his possessions. It was not simply my wide range of extraordinary talents that made up the full measure of my worth to him. Even more, it was that I knew intimately every convoluted thread of the intricate tapestry of his affairs. I knew every informer and spy in his network, every person whom he had ever bribed and who had bribed him. I knew which favours were outstanding on each account, which favours remained to be settled, and which grudges were still to be paid off.

I knew all his enemies, a long list; and I knew those he counted his friends and allies, a much shorter list. I knew where every nugget of his vast treasure was hidden, who were his bankers and his agents and his nominees, and how he had concealed the ownership of great tracts of land and stores of precious metals and gemstones in the legal labyrinth of deeds and titles and servitudes. All of this was information that would delight the tax-collectors and cause Pharaoh to revise his opinion of his grand vizier.

I doubted that my Lord Intef himself could remember and trace all his wealth without my assistance. He could not properly order and control his sprawling, shadowy empire without me, for he had kept himself aloof and separated from the most unsavoury aspects of it. He had preferred to send me to take care of those details which, if discovered, might incriminate him.

So it was that I knew a thousand dark secrets, and I knew of a thousand fearful deeds, of embezzlement and extortion, of robbery and bloodiest murder, all of which taken together could destroy even a man as powerful as the grand vizier.

I was indispensable. He could not let me go. And .yet, before Pharaoh and the entire population of Thebes, he could not deny Lostris her request.

My Lord Intef is a man full of ire and hatred. I have seen such rage in him that must have made Seth, the god of anger, start up and take notice. But I had never seen such fury as now that his own daughter had him cornered.

'Let the slave Taita stand forward,' he called, and I saw that it was a ruse for him to gain a respite. I pushed my way as swiftly as I was able to the foot of the wedding platform, to give him as little time as possible to plan his next mischief.

'I am here, my lord,' I cried, and he stared down at me with those deadly eyes. We have been together so long that he can speak to me with a look almost as clearly as with the spoken word. He stared at me in silence until my heart was racing and my fingers fluttered with fear, then at last he said in soft, almost affectionate tones, 'Taita, you have been with me since you were a child. I have come to regard you as a brother more than as a slave. Still, you have heard my daughter's request. I am by nature a fair and kind man. After all the years it would be inhuman of me to discard you against your wishes. I know that it is unusual for a slave to be given a say in his own disposal, but then your circumstances are indeed unusual. Choose, Taita. If you wish to stay in your home, the only home you have ever known, then I cannot find the heart to send you away. Not even at the request of my own daughter.' He never took his eyes off me, those terrible yellow eyes. I am not a coward but I am careful of my safety. I realized that I was staring into the eyes of death, and I could not find my voice.

I tore my gaze from his, and looked towards my Lady Lostris. There was such appeal there, such loneliness and terror, that my own safety counted for nothing. I could not desert her" now, not at any price or under any threat.

'How can a poor slave deny the wish of Pharaoh's wife? I am ready to do the bidding of my new mistress,' I cried out at the top of my lungs, and I hoped that my voice had a manly ring to it and was not as shrill as it sounded in my own ears.

'Come, slave!' my new mistress ordered. 'Take your place behind me.'

As I mounted the platform, I was forced to pass close to > my Lord Intef. His white, stiff lips barely moved as he spoke: for my ears alone. 'Farewell, my old darling. You are a dead; man.'

I shuddered as though a poisonous cobra had slid across my path and I hurried to take my place in the retinue of my mistress, as though I truly believed that I could find safety in her protection.

I STAYED CLOSE TO LOSTRIS DURING THE rest of the ceremony and I waited on her personally at the wedding feast, hovering at her elbow and trying to make her eat a little of the meats and fine fare that was spread before her. She was so wan and sickly that I was certain that she had eaten nothing in the last two days, not since her betrothal and the condemnation of Tanus.

In the end I succeeded in getting her to take a little watered wine, but that was all. Pharaoh saw her drink and thought that she was toasting him. He lifted his own gold chalice, and smiled at her over the rim as he returned the toast, and the wedding guests cheered the couple delightedly.

'Taita,' she whispered to me as soon as the king's attention was diverted by the grand vizier who sat at his other hand, 'I fear that I am going to vomit. I cannot stay here another moment. Please take me back to my chamber.'

It was an impudence and a scandal, and had I not been able to adopt the role of surgeon, I could never have achieved it, but I was able to creep on my knees to the king's side, and to whisper to him without causing an undue comment amongst the wedding guests, most of whom were well along in wine at this stage.

As I grew to know him better, I found that Pharaoh was a kindly man, and this was the first proof he gave me of it. He listened to my explanations and then clapped his hands and addressed the guests. 'My bride will go to her chamber now to prepare for the night ahead,' he told them, and they leered and greeted the announcement with lewd comment and lascivious applause.

I helped my mistress to her feet, but she was able to make her obeisance to the king and leave the banquet hall without my support. In her bedchamber she threw up the wine she had drunk into the bowl that I held for her, and then she collapsed upon the bed. The wine was all her stomach contained and my suspicion that she had been starving herself was confirmed.

'I don't want to live without Tanus.' Her voice was weak, but I knew her well enough to recognize that her will was as strong as ever.

Tanus is alive,' I tried to console her. 'He is strong and young and will live for another fifty years. He loves you and he promises to wait for you to the end of time. The king is an old man, he cannot live for ever?'

She sat up on the fur bedcover and her voice became stern and determined. 'I am Tanus' woman and no other man shall have me. I would rather die.'

'We all die in the end, mistress.' If only I could distract her for the first few days of this marriage, I knew I could see her through. But she understood me too well.

'I know what you are up to, but all your pretty words will do you no good. I am going to kill myself. I order you to prepare a draught of poison for me to drink.'

'Mistress, I am not versed in the science of poison.' It was a forlorn attempt, and she crushed it effortlessly.

'Many is the time that I have seen you give poison to a suffering animal. Do you not remember your old dog, the one with abscesses in its ears, and your pet gazelle that was mauled by a leopard? You told me that the poison was painless, that it was the same as going to sleep. Well, I want to go to sleep and be embalmed and go on to the other world to wait fpr Tanus there.?

I had to try other persuasion. 'But what about me, mistress? You have only this day taken possession of me. How can you abandon me? What will become of me without you? Have pity on me.' I saw her waver, and I thought I had her, but she lifted her chin stubbornly.

'You will be all right, Taita. You will always be all right. My father will take you back gladly after I am dead.'

'Please, my little one,' I used the childhood endearment in a last attempt to cajole her, 'let us talk of this in the morning. Everything will be different in the sunlight.'

'It will be the same,' she contradicted me. 'I will be parted from Tanus, and that wrinkled old man will want me in his bed to do horrid things to me.' Her voice was raised so that the other members of the king's harem might hear every word. Fortunately most of them were still at the wedding feast, but I trembled at the thought of her description of him being relayed to Pharaoh.

Her voice became shriller with the edge of hysteria in it. 'Mix me the poison draught now, this instant, while I watch you do it. I order you to do it. You dare not disobey me!' This command was so loud that even the guards at the outer gates must be able to hear her, and I dared not argue longer.

'Very well, my lady. I will do it. I must fetch my chest of medicine from my rooms.'

When I returned with the chest under my arm, she was up from the bed and pacing around her chamber with glittering eyes in that pale, tragic face.

'I am watching you. Don't try any of your tricks on me now,' she warned me, as I prepared the draught from the scarlet glass bottle. She knew that colour warned of the lethal contents.

When I handed the bowl to her, she showed no fear, and paused only to kiss my cheek. 'You have been both father and loving brother to me. I thank you for this last kindness. I love you, Taita, and I shall miss you.'

She lifted the bowl in both hands as though it were a wassail cup rather than a fatal potion.

'Tanus, my darling,' she toasted him with it, 'they shall never take me from you. We shall meet again on the far side!' And she drained the bowl at a swallow, then dropped it to shatter on the floor. At last, with a sigh, she fell back upon the bed.

'Come, sit beside me. I am afraid to be alone when I die.'

Taken on her empty stomach, the effect of the draught was very rapid. She had only time to turn her face to me and whisper, 'Tell Tanus again how much I loved him. Unto the portals of death, and beyond.' Then her eyes closed and she was gone.

She lay so still and pale that for a moment I was truly alarmed, afraid that I had misjudged the strength of the powder of the Red Shepenn which I had substituted for the essence of the deadly Datura Pod. It was only when I held a bronze hand-mirror to her mouth that the clouded surface reassured me she still breathed. I covered her gently, and tried to convince myself that in the morning she would be resigned to the fact that she was still alive, and that she would forgive me.

At that moment there was a peremptory knock upon the door of the outer chamber and I recognized the voice of Aton, the royal chamberlain, demanding entrance. He was another eunuch, one of the special brotherhood of the emasculated, so I could count him as a friend. I hurried through to greet him.

'I have come to fetclTyour little mistress to the king's pleasure, Taita,' he told me, in high girlish tones so incongruous with such a large frame. He had been gelded before puberty. 'Is she ready?'

'There has been a small mishap,' I explained, and led him through to see Lostris for himself.

He puffed out his rouged cheeks with consternation when he saw her condition. 'What can I tell Pharaoh?' he cried. 'He will have me beaten. I will not do it. The woman is your responsibility. You must answer to the king, and stand before his wrath.'

It was not a duty that I relished, but Aton's distress was real, and at least I had my medical status to afford me some protection from the king's frustrated expectations. Reluctantly, I agreed to accompany him to the royal bedchamber. However, I made sure that there was one of the older and more reliable slave maids in attendance in my mistress's outer chamber before I left her alone.

Pharaoh had removed his crown and his wig. His head was shaved as bare and white as an ostrich egg. The effect startled even me, and I wondered how my mistress would have responded to the sight. I doubt that it would have raised either her ardour or her opinion of him.

The king seemed as startled to see me as I was to see him. We stared at each other for a moment before I fell to my knees and made my obeisance.

'What is this, Taita the slave? I sent for another?'

'Merciful Pharaoh, on behalf of the Lady Lostris I come to beg your understanding and indulgence.' I launched into a harrowing description of my Lady Lostris' condition, larding it with obscure medical terms and explanations that were intended to divert the royal appetite. Aton stood beside me, nodding in emphatic corroboration of all I had to say.

I am sure that it would not have worked with a younger and more vigorous bridegroom, ready and rearing to get to the business, but Mamose was an old bull. It would have been impossible to tally all the lovely women who over the past thirty years or so had enjoyed his services. In single file they would probably have encircled the city of Thebes of a hundred gates, possibly more than once.

'Your Majesty,' Aton interrupted my explanations at last, 'with your permission, I will fetch you another female companion for the night. Perhaps the little Human with the unusual control of her?'

'No, no,' the king dismissed him. 'There will be plenty of time for it when the child is recovered from her indisposition. Leave us now, chamberlain. There is some other matter that I wish to discuss with the doctor?I mean, with this slave.'

As soon as we were alone the king lifted his shift to display his belly. 'What do you think is the cause of this, doctor?' I examined the rash that adorned his protuberant paunch, and found it to be an infestation of the common ringworm. Some of the royal women washed less frequently than is desirable in our hot climate. I have noted that filth and the contagious itch go together. The king had probably contracted the infection from one of them.

'Is it dangerous? Can you cure it, doctor?' Fear makes commoners of us all. He was deferring to me now as would any other patient.

With his permission, I went to my quarters to fetch my medicine chest, and when I returned, I ordered him to lie on the ornate gold and ivory marquetry bed while I massaged an ointment into the inflamed red circle of skin on his belly. The ointment was of my own concoction and would heal the rash within three days, I assured him.

'In a great measure you are responsible for the fact.that I have married this child who is your new mistress,' he told me as I worked. 'Your ointment may cure my rash, but will your other treatment provide me with a son?' he demanded. 'These are troubled times. I must have an heir before I am another year older. The dynasty is in jeopardy.'

We physicians are always reluctant to guarantee our cures, but then so is the lawyer and the astrologer. While I procrastinated he gave me the escape I was searching for.

'I am no longer a young man, Taita. You are a doctor and I can tell you this. My weapon has been in many a fierce battle. Its blade is no longer as keen as once it was. Of late it has failed me when I most had need of it. Do you have something in that box of yours that would stiffen the wilting stem of the lily?'

'Pharaoh, I am pleased that you have discussed this with me. Sometimes the gooVwork in mysterious ways?' we both made the sign to avert evil before I went on, 'your first congress with my virgin mistress must be perfectly executed. Any faltering, any bending from our purpose, any failure to raise on high the royal sceptre of your manhood, will frustrate our efforts. There will be only one opportunity, the first union must be successful. If we have to try again there will be the danger of your fathering yet another female.' My medical grounds for this prognosis were rather insubstantial. Nevertheless, we both looked grave, he graver than I did.

I held up my forefinger. 'Had we made the attempt tonight, and?' I said no more, but let my forefinger droop suggestively, and shook my head. 'No, we are fortunate to have been given another chance by the gods.'

'What must we do?' he demanded anxiously, and I was silent for a long while, kneeling in deep thought beside his bed.

It was difficult not to let my relief and satisfaction become apparent. Within the first day of my mistress's marriage, I was already working my way into a position of influence with the king, and I had been offered a perfect excuse for keeping her maidenhead intact for at least a little longer, long enough perhaps for me to be able to prepare her for the brutal shock of her first act of procreation with a man whom she did t love and who was, indeed, physically distasteful to her. I told myself that with clever management of the situation, I might be able to draw out this period of grace indefinitely.

'Yes indeed, Your Majesty, I can help you, but it will take some time. It will not be as easy as curing this rash.' My mind was racing. I had to wring every drop out of this sponge. 'We will have to go on to a very strict diet.'

'No more bull's balls, I beseech you, doctor.'

'I think you have had enough of those now. However, we will need to warm youf blood and sweeten your generative fluids for the fateful attempt. Goat's milk, warm goat's milk and honey three times a day, and of course the special potions I will prepare for you from the horn of the rhinoceros and the root of the mandrake.'

He looked relieved. 'You are certain this will work?'

'It has never failed before, but there is one other measure that is essential.'

'What is that?' His relief evaporated, and he sat up and peered at me anxiously.

'Complete abstinence. We must allow the royal member to rest and regain its full strength and force once again. You must forsake your harem and all its pleasures for a while.' I said this with the dogmatic air of the physician that cannot be gainsaid, for it was the one sure way to ensure that my Lady Lostris would remain untouched. However, I was worried by what his reaction would be. He could conceivably have flown into a rage at the thought of being denied his conjugal pleasures. He might have rejected me, and I could have lost all the advantage that I had so newly won. But I had to take the risk for the benefit of my mistress. I had to protect her just as long as I was able.

The king's reaction surprised me. He simply lay back on his headrest and smiled complacently to himself. 'For how long?' he asked quite cheerfully, and I was struck by the realization that my strictures had come as a relief to him.

For me, to whom the act of love with a beautiful woman would always be an unattainable and elusive dream, it took an immense effort to understand that Pharaoh was content to be relieved of a once pleasurable duty that, by reason of being so often performed, had become onerous.

There must have been at least three hundred wives, and concubines in his harem at that time, and some of those Asian women were notorious for their insatiable appetites. I tried to sympathize with the effort that it must require to act like a god night after night, and year after year. The prospect did not daunt me as the actuality seemed to have wearied the king.

'Ninety days,' I said.

'Ninety days?' he repeated thoughtfully. 'Nine Egyptian weeks of ten days each?'

'At least,' I said firmly.

'Very well.' He nodded without rancour and changed the subject easily.

'My chamberlain tells me, doctor, that apart from your medical skills, you are also one of the three most eminent astrologers in this very Egypt of ours?'

I wondered why my friend the chamberlain had qualified his assertion. For the life of me I could not think who the other two might be, but I inclined my head modestly. 'He flatters me, Your Majesty, but perhaps I do have some little knowledge of the heavenly bodies.'

'Cast a horoscope for me!' he ordered, sitting up eagerly.

'Now?' I asked with surprise.

'Now!' he agreed. 'Why not? For on your orders there is nothing that I should rather be doing at this moment/ That unexpected smile of his was really quite endearing, and despite what he meant to Tanus and my mistress, I found myself liking him.

'I shall have to fetch some of my scrolls from the palace library.'

'We have all night,' he pointed out. 'Fetch whatever you need.'

The exact time and date of the king's birth were well documented and I had in the scrolls all the, observations of the movements of the heavenly bodies made by fifty generations of astrologers before me. While the king watched avidly, I made the first cast of the royal horoscope, and before I had half finished it I saw the character of the man, as I had observed it, perfectly endorsed by his stars. The great red wandering star, that we know as the eye of Seth, dominated his destiny. It was the star of conflict and uncertainty, of confusion and war, of sadness and misfortune, and in the end of violent death.

But how could I tell him all these things?

I extemporized and put together a scantily veiled resume of the well-documented facts of his life, and laced these with a few less well-known details that I had gathered from my spies, one of whom was the royal chamberlain. Then I followed with the usual assurances of good health and long life that every client wants to hear.

The king was impressed. 'You have all the skills that your reputation made me expect.'

"Thank you, Your Majesty. I am pleased that I have been able to be of service.'. I began to gather up my scrolls and my writing instruments preparatory to taking my leave. It was very late by now. From the darkness beyond the palace walls I had already heard the first cockerel crow.

'Wait, Taita. I have not given you permission to leave. You have not told me what I really want to know. Will I have a son and will my dynasty survive?'

'Alas, Pharaoh, those matters cannot be predicted by the stars. They can give only the general inclination of your fate, and the overall direction that your life will take, without making clear such details?'

'Ah, yes,' he interrupted me, 'but there are other means of seeing into the future, are there not?' I was alarmed by the direction in which his questions were leading, and I attempted to head him off, but he was determined.

'You interest me, Taita, and I have made enquiry about you. You are an adept of the Mazes of Ammon-Ra.' I was distressed. How had he found this out? Very few knew of this esoteric gift of mine, and I wanted it to remain thus. However, I could not blatantly deny it, so I remained silent.

'I saw the Mazes hidden at the bottom of your medicine chest,' he said, and I was relieved that I had not attempted to deny my gift and been caught out in the lie. I shrugged with resignation, for I knew what was coming.

'Work the Mazes for me, and tell me if I am to have an heir and whether or not my dynasty will survive,' he ordered.

A horoscope is one thing; it requires only a knowledge of the configuration of the stars and their properties. Some little patience, and the correct procedure will result in a fairly accurate prediction. A divination by the Mazes of Am-mon-Ra is another matter entirely. It requires an expenditure of the life-forces, a burning up of something deep inside the seer that leaves him worn out and exhausted.

These days I will go to lengths to avoid having to exercise this gift. It is true that on rare occasions I can still be persuaded to work the Mazes, but then for days thereafter I am spiritually and physically depleted. My Lady Lostris, who knows of this strange power of mine, also knows of the effect that it has upon me, and she has forbidden me, for my own sake, to practise it, except occasionally on her behalf.

However, a slave cannot deny a king, and with a sigh I reached for the leather bag in the bottom of my chest that contained the Mazes. I set the bag aside and prepared a mixture of the herbs that are necessary to open the eyes of the soul, to enable them to look into the future. I drank the potion, and then waited until the familiar but dreaded sensation of rising out of my own body assailed me. I felt dreamy and far from reality as I brought out the leather bag which contained the Mazes.

The Mazes of Ammon-Ra consist of ten ivory discs. Ten is the mystical number of the greatest potency. Each disc represents a single facet of human existence, from birth to death and the hereafter. With my own hands I had carved the symbols on the face of each of the Mazes. Each one was a tiny masterpiece. By constantly handling and breathing upon them over the years I had endowed them with part of my own life-force.

I poured them from the bag and began to fondle them, concentrating all my powers upon them. Soon they began to feel warm as living flesh to my touch, and I experienced the familiar sensation of depletion as my own strength flowed.from me into the ivory discs. I arranged the Mazes face-down in two random stacks and invited Pharaoh to take up each pile in turn, to rub them between his fingers and to concentrate all his attention upon them at the same time as he repeated his questions aloud: 'Will I have a son? Will my dynasty survive?'

I relaxed completely and opened my soul to allow the spirits of prophecy to enter. The sound of his voice began to penetrate into my soul, deeper and deeper with each repetition, like missiles from a slingshot striking upon the same spot.

I began to sway slightly where I sat, the same way that the cobra dances to the flute of the snake-charmer. The drug took its full effect. I felt as though my body had no weight to it and that I was floating in air. I spoke as if from a great distance and my voice echoed strangely in my own head, as though I sat in a cavern below the surface of the earth.

I ordered the king to breathe upon each stack and then to divide it into halves, setting aside one half and retaining the other. Again and again I made him split each pile and then combine the remainder, until he was left with only two of the coin-shaped Mazes.

For the last time he breathed upon them and then at my instruction placed one in each of my hands. I held them tightly and pressed them to my breast. I could feel my heart pounding against my clenched fists as it absorbed the influence of the Mazes.

I closed my eyes and from the darkness saw shapes begin to emerge, and strange sounds filled my ears. There was no form or coherence to them, it was all confusion. I felt dizzy, and my senses blurred. I felt myself grow lighter still, until I seemed to float in space. I allowed myself to be carried upwards as though I were a blade of dry grass caught in a whirlwind, one of those dust devils of the Saharan summer.

The sounds in my head became clearer, and the dark images firmed.

'I hear a new-born infant cry.' My voice was distorted, as though my palate had been riven at birth.

'Is it a boy?' Pharaoh's question throbbed in my head, so that I felt rather than heard it.

Then slowly my vision began to harden, and I looked down a long tunnel through the darkness to a light at the far end. The ivory Mazes in my hands were hot as embers from the hearth and seared the flesh of my palms.

In the nimbus of light at the end of the tunnel I saw a child, lying in the bloody puddle of its own birth-waters, with the fat python of the placenta still coiled upon its belly.

'I see a child,' I croaked.

'Is it a boy?' Pharaoh demanded from out of the surrounding darkness.

The infant wailed and kicked both legs in the air, and I saw rising from between the chubby thighs a pale finger of flesh surmounted by a cap of wrinkled skin.

'A boy,' I confirmed, and I felt an unexpected tenderness towards this phantom of my mind, as though it were truly flesh and blood. I reached out to it with my heart, but the image faded, and the birth cry receded and was lost in the blackness.

"The dynasty? What will become of my line? Will it endure?' The king's voice reached me, and then was lost in a cacophony of other sounds that filled my head?the sound of battle trumpets, the shouts of men in mortal conflict, and the ring of bronze. I saw the sky above me, and the air was dark with flights of arrows arcing overhead.

'War! I see a mighty battle that will change the shape of the world,' I cried to make myself heard above the sounds of conflict that filled my head.

'Will my line survive?' The king's voice was frantic, but I paid it no heed, for there was a mighty roaring in my ears, like the sound of the khamsin wind, or the waters of the Nile boiling through the great cataracts. I saw a strange yellow cloud that obscured the horizon of my vision, and the cloud was shot through with flashes of light, which I knew were the reflection of the sun from weapons of war.

'What of my dynasty?' Pharaoh's voice tugged at my mind, and the vision faded. There was a silence in my head and I saw a tree standing upon the bank of the river. It was a great acacia in full leaf, and its branches were heavy with fruit pods. On the topmost branch was perched a hawk, the royal hawk, but even as I watched, the hawk changed shape and colour. It was transformed into the'double crown of Egypt,' red and white, the papyrus and the lotus of the two kingdoms entwined. Then, before my eyes, the waters of the Nile rose and fell, and rose and fell again. Five times in all I saw the waters flood.

While still I stared with burning eyes, abruptly the sk;; above the tree darkened with flying insects, and a dens® cloud of locusts descended upon the tree. They covered ii completely. When they rose again the tree was devastate* and bare of the last trace of green. Not a leaf remained on the dry brown twigs. Then the dead tree toppled and fell ponderously to earth. The fall shattered the trunk and thci crown was smashed into pieces. The fragments turned to dust and were blown away on the wind. Nothing remained but the wind and the driven sands of the desert.

'What is it that you see?' Pharaoh demanded, but it all faded and I found myself once more seated on the floor o> the king's bedchamber. I was gasping for breath, as though I had run a great distance, and salt sweat scalded my eyesi and poured down my body in rivulets to soak the linen o) my kilt and to form a pool on the tiles beneath me. I was shaking with a burning fever and there was that familiar sicM and heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew would be with me for days to come.

Pharaoh was staring at me and I realized what a haggard: and dreadful sight I presented to him. 'What did you see?' he whispered. 'Will my line survive?'

I could not tell him the truth of my vision, so I invented: another to satisfy him. 'I saw a forest of great trees thali reached to the horizon of my dream. There was no end ta their number and on top of each tree there was a crown, the red and the white crown of the two kingdoms.'

Pharaoh sighed and covered his eyes with his hands fon a while. We sat in silence, he in the release that my lie had) given him, and I in sympathy for him.

At last I lied softly. 'The forest that I saw was the line: of your descendants,' I whispered, to spare him. 'They reachi to the boundaries of time, and each of them wears the crowni of Egypt.'

He uncovered his eyes, and his gratitude and his joy were; pathetic to watch. 'Thank you, Taita. I can see how the: divination has taxed your strength. You may go now andl rest. Tomorrow the court will sail for my palace on Elephantine Island. I will have a galley set aside for the safe passage of you and your mistress. Guard her with your life, for she is the vessel that contains the seeds of my immortality.'

I was so weak that I had to use the frame of the bed to lift myself to my feet. I tottered to the door and steadied myself agaiiist the jamb. However, I was not so weakened that I could not think of my duty to my mistress.

'There is the matter of the marriage sheet. The populace will expect to have it displayed,' I reminded him. 'Both your reputation and that of my mistress is at stake.'

'What do you suggest, Taita?' This soon he was relying on me. I told him what must be done, and he nodded. 'See to it!'

Carefully I folded the sheet that covered the royal bed. It was of the finest linen, white as the high cirrus clouds of summer, embroidered with the rare silk thread that the trade caravans occasionally bring in from the East. I carried the folded sheet with me when I left the king's bedchamber and made my way back through the still dark and silent palace to the harem.

My mistress was sleeping like a dead woman, and I knew that with the amount of the-Red Shepenn I had given her, she would sleep the day away and would probably only wake that evening. I sat beside her bed for a while. I felt exhausted and depressed for the Mazes had drained my soul. The images they had evoked still troubled me. I felt certain that the infant I had seen was that of my mistress, but then how could the rest of my vision be explained? There seemed to be no answer to the riddle, and I set the thought aside for I still had work to do.

Squatting beside Lostris' bed, I spread the embroidered sheet upon the floor. The blade of my dagger was sharp enough to shave the hair from my forearm. I picked out one of the blue rivers of blood beneath the smooth skin on the inside of my wrist, and I pricked it with the point of the dagger and let the dark slow blood trickle on to the sheet. When I was satisfied with the extent of the stain, I bound up my wrist with a strip of linen to staunch the bleeding, and bundled the soiled sheet.

The slave girl was still in attendance in the outer chamber. I ordered that Lostris was to be allowed to sleep undisturbed.

Knowing that she would be well cared for, I was content to leave her, and climb the ladder to the top of the outer wall of the harem.

The dawn was only just breaking, but already an inquisitive crowd of old women and loiterers had gathered below the walls. They looked up expectantly when I appeared.

I made a show of shaking out the sheet before I draped it over the ramparts of the outer wall. The bloodstain in the centre of the cloud-white ground was the shape of a flower, and the crowd buzzed with gossip at this badge of my mistress's virginity and her bridegroom's virility.

At the rear of the crowd stood a figure taller than those around him. His head was covered by a striped woolen shawl. It was only when he threw this back and exposed his face and his head of red-gold hair that I recognized him.

'Tanus!' I shouted. 'I must speak to you.'

He looked up at me upon the wall, and his eyes were filled with such pain as I wished never to see again. That stain upon the sheet had destroyed his life. I also had known the agony of lost love and remembered every detail of it even after all the long years. Tanus' heart wound was fresh and bleeding still, more agonizing than any hurt that he had received on the battlefield.

He needed my help now, if he were to survive it. 'Tanus! Wait for me.'

He threw the shawl over his head, covering his face, and he turned from me. Unsteady as a drunkard, he stumbled away.

'Tanus!' I shouted after him. 'Come back! I must talk to you.' He did not look round, but quickened his pace.

By the time that I had climbed down from the wall and run out of the main gates, he had disappeared into the maze of alleys and mud huts of the inner city.

I SEARCHED FOR TANUS HALF THE MORNING, but his quarters were deserted and nobody had seen him in any of his customary haunts.

At last I had to abandon the search, and to make my wajfcback to my own rooms in the quarters of the slave boys. The royal flotilla was preparing to sail for the south. I had still to assemble and pack my possessions if my mistress and I were to be ready for the departure. I forced aside the sense of gloom that the Mazes and my glimpse of Tanus had left me, and I set about bundling up my possessions and breaking up the only home that I had ever known.

My animals seemed to sense that something untoward was happening. They fretted and chirped and whined, each trying in his own way to attract my attention. The wild birds hopped and fluttered on the paved terrace outside, while in the corner nearest my bed, my beloved Saker falcons stretched their wings and raised the feathers along their backs, and screeched at me from their perches. The dogs and the cats and the tame gazelle crowded around my legs, trying to brush against me, and hindered my efforts to pack my possessions.

In exasperation I noticed the jug of soured goat's milk beside my bed. It is one of my favourite drinks, and the slave boys make certain that the jug is always refilled. My animals also enjoy the thickened milk, so to distract them I carried the jug out on to the terrace and filled their clay drinking-bowls. They crowded around the bowls, pushing and shoving each other, and I left them and went back to my task, closing the awnings of rush matting to keep them out.

It is curious how many possessions even a slave can gather about him over a lifetime. The boxes and bundles were piled high against one wall before I was at last finished. By this time my mood of depression and weariness was almost prostrating, but I was still sufficiently alert to be aware of the silence. I stood for a while in the centre of my room, listening uneasily. The only sound was the jingle of the tiny bronze bells on the jesses of my female falcon where she sat in the far corner and watched me with that intent, implacable gaze of the raptor. The tiercel, smaller but more handsome than she, was asleep on his own perch in the other corner, with the soft leather hood of the rafter covering his eyes. None of my other pets made a sound. Not one of the cats mewed or hissed at the dogs, nor did the wild birds chirrup or sing, none of my puppies growled or tumbled over each other in boisterous play.

I went to the rash awning and drew it aside. The sunlight burst into the room and blinded me for a moment. Then my vision returned and I cried out with horror. They were scattered upon the terrace and down into the garden every bird and animal.

They lay in the abandoned attitudes of death, every one of them where he had fallen. I rushed out to them, calling my favourites by name, kneeling to pick one of them up in my armsi and hugging the slack warm body as I searched for signs of life., There was no flicker of it in any of them, though I went to eachi of them. The birds were small and light in my hand, their mar-velous plumage undimmed by death.

I thought that my already heavy heart must now burst: with the sheer weight of my grief. I knelt on the terrace with my family scattered around me and I wept.

It was some time before I could bring myself to think about the cause of this tragedy. Then I stood up and went to one of the empty bowls that lay on the tiles. They had licked it clean, but I sniffed at it to try and fathom the nature of the poison that had been intended for me. The odour of soured milk disguised any other smell; all I knew was that it had been swift and deadly.

I wondered who had placed the jug beside my bed, but it did not matter whose hand had carried the vessel to me. I knew with utter certainty who had given the order for it. 'Farewell, my old darling. You are a dead man,' Lord Intef had told me, and he had not waited long to transform the words into the deed.

The anger that seized me was a form of madness. It was aggravated by my unsteady state and sombre mood. I found that I was shaking with a rage that I had never known before. I drew the little dagger from my belt and before I realized what I was doing, I was rushing down the steps of the terrace with the naked blade in my hand. I knew that at this time of the morning Intef would be in his water-garden. I could no longer bear to think of him as my Lord Intef. The memory of every outrage he had ever visited upon me, every agony and every humiliation, was bright and clear in my mind. I was going to kill him now, stab him a hundred times through that cruel and evil heart.

I was in sight of the gate to the water-garden before I regained my sanity. There were half a dozen guards at the gate, and there would be as many more beyond. I would never get within dagger-thrust of the grand vizier before they cut me down. I forced my flying feet to check and turn back. I slipped the dagger into the jewelled leather sheath, and brought my breathing under control. I walked slowly back to the terrace and gathered up the pathetic bodies of my pets.

I had planned to plant a row of sycamore trees along the border of my garden. The holes to take them had already been dug. The trees would never be planted now that I was leaving Kamak, and the pits would serve as graves for my beloved creatures. It was the middle of the afternoon before I had filled the last grave, but my rage was unabated. If I could not yet have my full vengeance, at least I could give myself a foretaste of it.

There was still a little of the sour milk left in the jug beside my bed. I held the jug in my hands and tried to think of some way in which I could get it to the grand vizier's kitchens. It would be so fitting to pay him his own vile coin, although I knew in my heart that the idea was futile. Lord Intef was far too cunning to be taken so easily. I myself had helped him devise the system he used to keep himself secure from poison and assassination. He could not be reached without much careful planning. What was more, he would be especially on his guard now. I would have to be patient, but that was impossible. Even if I could not kill him yet, I could exact some lesser payment as a deposit against what I was determined must follow.

Still carrying the fatal jug, I slipped out of one of the side-doors of the boys' quarters into the street. I did not have to go far to find a milkman surrounded by his flock of nanny-goats. While I waited he stripped the rich milk from the swollen udders of one of them, topping the jug to the brim. Whoever had prepared the poison had used enough to murder half the citizens of Karnak. I knew that more than sufficient remained in the jug for my purpose.

One of the grand vizier's bodyguards loafed at the door to Rasfer's chamber. The fact that he had him under guard proved to me that Rasfer was still valuable to Lord Intef, and the loss of his personal lieutenant would annoy if not seriously discommode him. '

The guard recognized me and waved me into the sickroom that smelled like a sty. Rasfer lay on his filthy bed, basting in his own sweat. However, I could tell at once that my surgery had been successful, for he opened his eyes and cursed me weakly. He must also be so certain of his own eventual recovery that he need no longer toady to me.

'Where have you been, you ball-less freak?' he growled at me, hardening my resolve and ridding me of the last traces of any pity that I might have felt for him. 'I have been in agony ever since you drilled into my skull. What kind of physician are you?'

There was much more in this style, which I pretended to ignore as I unwound the soiled bandage from around his head. My interest was purely academic as I examined the small wound that the trepan had left in his scalp. It was another perfectly executed operation, and I felt a certain professional regret that it would be wasted.

'Give me something for the pain, eunuch!' Rasfer tried to seize the front of my tunic, but I was too quick for him and stepped back out of his reach.

I made a fuss of shaking a few crystals of harmless salt from a glass vial into his drinking-bowl, and then topped it up with milk from my jug.

'If the pain becomes too bad, this will relieve it,' I told him as I set the bowl near to his hand. Even at this stage, I could not bring myself to hand it to him directly.

He heaved himself up on one elbow and reached for the bowl to guzzle it down. Before his fingers touched it, I pushed it out of his reach with my foot. At the moment I thought that this was merely a desire to prolong the anticipation, and I felt satisfaction at his distress as he whined at me, 'Good Taita, give me the potion. Let me drink. This pain in my head will drive me mad.'

'First let's talk a while, good Rasfer. Did you hear that the Lady Lostris asked for me as her parting gift from Lord Intef?'

Even in his pain, he grinned at me. 'You are a fool if you think he will let you go. You are a dead man.'

"The very words Lord Intef used. Will you mourn for me, Rasfer? Will you weep for me when I am gone?' I asked softly, and he began to chuckle, then broke it off and glanced at the bowl.

'In my own way, I have always been rather fond of you,? he grunted. 'Now let me have the bowl.'

'How fond of me were you when you castrated me?' I asked, and he stared up at me.

'Surely you do not still bear a grudge for that? It was long ago, and besides, I could not disobey the orders of Lord Intef. Be reasonable, Taita, let me have the bowl.'

'You laughed as you cut me. Why did you laugh? Did you enjoy it so much?'

He shrugged and then winced at the pain that the movement caused him. 'I am a jovial man. I always laugh. Come now, old friend, say you forgive me and let me have the bowl.'

I nudged it towards him with my foot. He reached out and seized it, his movements still uncoordinated. A few drops slopped over the rim as he raised it greedily to his mouth.

I didn't realize what I was about to do, until I had leapt forward and struck the bowl out of his hands. It hit the floor without shattering and rolled into the corner, splashing milk up on to the wall.

Rasfer and I stared at each other. I was appalled by my own stupidity and my weakness. If ever a man deserved a death by the agony of poison, it was this one. But then I saw again the contorted bodies of my pets strewn across the terrace, and I knew why I had not been able to allow Rasfer to drink. Only a fiend could commit such an act. I have too high a regard for myself ever to descend to the ignominy of the poisoner.

I saw understanding dawn in Rasfer's bloodshot eyes. 'Poison,' he whispered. 'The bowl was poisoned.'

'It was sent to me by Lord Intef.' I don't know why I told him this. Perhaps I was trying to excuse myself for the atrocity that I had almost committed. I don't know why I was behaving so strangely. Maybe it was still the aftereffects of working the Mazes. I staggered slightly as I turned for the door.

Behind me Rasfer began to laugh, softly at first and then louder, until great gusty bellows of laughter seemed to shake the walls.

'You are a fool, eunuch,' he roared after me as I ran. 'You should have done it. You should have killed me, for now as surely as I have a hole between my buttocks, I will kill you.'

As I had expected, when at last I returned to her chamber my Lady Lostris was still asleep. I settled at the foot of her bed, intending to wait for her to wake on her own. However, the rigours and the exertions of the past day and night had been too much for me. I slumped down and fell asleep, curled like a puppy on the tiles.

I WOKE UNDER ATTACK. SOMETHING struck the side of my head such a painful blow that I was on my feet before I was properly awake. The next blow took me across the shoulder and stung like the bite of a hornet.

'You cheated me!' my Lady Lostris screamed at me. 'You did not let me die.' She swung the fan again. It was a formidable weapon, the bamboo handle was as long as twice the span of my arms, and the comb at its head that held the fan of ostrich feathers was of solid silver. Fortunately she was still groggy from the drug and from oversleeping, and her aim was erratic. I ducked under the blow, and the momentum of it swung her around so that she collapsed on the bed again.

She dropped the fan and burst into tears. 'I wanted to die. Why did you not let me die?'

It was some time before I could approach her, and put one arm around her to comfort her. 'Did I hurt you, Taita?' she asked. 'I have never beaten you before.'

'Your first attempt was a very good one,' I congratulated her ruefully. 'In fact you are so good at it that I do not think you need practise it further.' Theatrically I rubbed the side of my head, and she smiled through her tears.

'Poor Taita. I do treat you so badly. But you did deserve it. You cheated me. I wanted to die and you disobeyed me.' I saw it was time to change the subject. 'Mistress, I have the most remarkable news for you. But you must promise to tell no one of it, not even your maids.' Not since she had first learned to talk had she been able to resist a secret, but then what woman can? The promise of one had always been enough to distract her, and it worked yet again.

Even with her heart broken and the threat of suicide hanging over her, she sniffed back the last of her tears and ordered, 'Tell me!'

Recently, I had accumulated a good store of secrets to choose from, and I paused for a moment to make my selection. I would not tell her of the poisoning of my pets, of course, nor of my glimpse of Tanus. I needed something to cheer her rather than to depress her further.

'Last night I went to Pharaoh's bedchamber and I spoke to him for half the night.'

The tears rose to the surface of her eyes once more, 'Oh, Taita, I hate him. He's an ugly old man. I don't want to have to?'

I wanted no more in that vein, in moments she would be weeping again, so I hurried on, 'I worked the Mazes for him.' Instantly I had her complete attention. My Lady Los-tris is totally fascinated by my powers of divination. If it were not for the deleterious effect that the Mazes have upon my health, she would make me work them every single day.

'Tell me! What did you see?' She was riveted. No thought of suicide now, all sadness forgotten. She was still so young and artless that I felt ashamed of my trickery, even though it was for her own good.

'I had the most extraordinary visions, mistress. I have never had such clear images, such depths of sight?'

Tell me! I declare I will die of impatience if you don't tell me immediately.'

'First you must swear secrecy. Not another soul must ever know what I saw. These are affairs of state and dire consequence.'

'I swear. I swear.'

'We cannot take these matters lightly?'

'Get on with it, Taita. You are teasing me now. I order you to tell me this very moment or, or,' she groped for a threat to coerce me, 'or I shall beat you again.'