River god - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные онлайн книги читаем полные версии .txt) 📗

  I was able to find a few young unemployed scribes and disenchanted priests who loved people more than gods or money. My mistress took them into her employ. I led this little band on nocturnal hunts through the back alleys and slum quarters of the city. Nightly we gathered up the street orphans. They were a filthy, verminous bunch of little savages, and very few of them came with us willingly. We had to pursue and catch them like wild cats. I received many lusty bites and scratches in the process of bathing their filth-encrusted little bodies and shaving their hair that was so thick with lice and nits that it was impossible to drag a comb through it.

  We housed them in one of my mistress's new hostels. Here the priests began the tedious process of taming them, while the scribes started on the long road of their education. Most of our captives escaped within the first few days, and returned to the gutters where they belonged. However, some of them stayed on in the hostel. Their slow transformation from animals to human beings delighted my mistress and gave me more pleasure, than I had suspected could ever come from such an unlikely source.

  All my protests against the manner in which my mistress was wasting our substance were in vain, and I vowed that if I were to be embalmed and laid in my tomb before my allotted time, the blame would surely rest entirely with these two young idiots whom I had taken under my wing, and who rewarded me by consistently ignoring my best advice.

  Needless to say, it was my mistress and not me whom the widows and the cripples blessed and presented with their pitiful little gifts of wilting wild flowers, cheap beads and tattered scraps of papyrus containing poorly written texts from the Book of the Dead. As she walked abroad, the common people held up their brats for her blessing and tried to touch the hem of her skirt as though it were some religious talisman. She kissed the grubby babies, a practice which I warned her would endanger her health, and she scattered copper pieces to the loafers with as much care as a tree drops its autumn leaves.

  'This is my city,' she told me. 'I love it and I love every person in it. Oh, Taita, I dread the return to Elephantine. I hate to leave my beautiful Thebes.'

  'Is it the city you hate to leave?' I asked. 'Or is it a certain uncouth soldier who lives here?' She slapped me, but lightly.

  'Is there nothing you hold sacred, not even love that is pure and true? For all your scrolls and grand language, you are at heart a barbarian.'

  THUS THE DAYS PASSED SWIFTLY FOR all of us, until one morning I consulted my calendar and discovered that over two months had passed since my Lady Lostris had resumed her marital duties on Pharaoh's couch. Although she still showed no evidence of her condition, it was time to apprise the king of his great good fortune, his approaching paternity. When I told my mistress what I intended, only one matter engaged her consideration. She made me promise that before I discussed it with the king, I must first tell Tanus that he was the true father of the child she was carrying. I set out to fulfil my promise that very afternoon. I found Tanus at the shipyards on the west bank of the river, where he was swearing at the shipwrights and threatening to throw them into the river to feed the crocodiles. He forgot his anger when he saw me, and took me on board the galley that they had launched that morning. Proudly, he showed me the new pump to remove water from the bilges, if the ship should ever be damaged in battle. He seemed to have forgotten that I had designed the equipment for him, and I had to remind him tactfully.

  'Next you will want me to pay you for your ideas, you old rogue. I swear you are as stingy as any Syrian trader.' He clapped me on the back, and led me to the far end of the deck where none of the sailors could overhear us. He dropped his voice.

  'How goes it with your mistress? I dreamed about her again last night. Tell me, is she well? How are those little orphans of hers? What a loving heart she has, what beauty!

  All of Thebes adores her. I hear her name spoken wherever I go, and the sbund of it is as sharp as a spear thrust in my chest.'

  "There will soon be two of her for you to love,' I told him, and he stared at me with his mouth agape like a man suddenly bereft of his senses. 'It was much more than just the khamsin that struck that night in the tombs of Tras.'

  He seized me in a hug so powerful that I could not breathe. 'What is this riddle? Speak plainly, or I shall throw you into the river. What are you saying, you old scallywag? Don't juggle words with me!'

  "The Lady Lostris is carrying your child. She sent me to tell you so that you should be the first to know it, even before the king,' I gasped. 'Now set me free before I am permanently damaged.' He released me so suddenly, that I almost fell overboard.

  'My child! My son!' he cried. It was amazing how both of them had made that immediate assumption of the poor little mite's gender. "This is a miracle. This is a direct gift from Horus.' It was clear to Tanus in that moment that no other man in the history of the world had ever fathered an infant.

  'My son!' he shook his head in wonder. He was grinning like an idiot. 'My woman and my son! I must go to them this very moment.' He set off down the deck, and I had to run to catch him. It took all my powers of persuasion to prevent him from storming the palace and bursting into the royal harem. In the end, I led him to the nearest riverside tavern to wet the baby's head. Fortunately a gang of off-duty Blues was already drinking there. I ordered and paid for a butt of the tavern's best wine and left them to it. There were men from some of the other regiments in the tavern, so there would probably be a riot later, for Tanus was in a rumbustious mood and the Blues never needed much encouragement to fight.

  I went directly from the tavern to the palace, and Pharaoh was delighted to see me. 'I was about to send for you, Taita. I have decided that we have been too niggardly with the entrance-gates to my temple. I want something grander?'

  'Pharaoh!' I cried. 'Great and Divine Egypt! I have wonderful tidings. The goddess Isis has kept her promise to you.

  Your dynasty will be eternal. The prophecy of the Mazes> of Ammon-Ra will be fulfilled. The moon of my mistress; has been trodden under the hooves of the mighty bull off Egypt! The Lady Lostris is bearing your son!'

  For once all thought of funerals and temple-building was driven from Pharaoh's mind, and, like Tanus, his very first instinct was to go to her. Led by the king, we rushed through the palace corridors, a solid stream of nobles and courtiers turbulent as the Nile in spate, and my mistress was waiting for us in the garden of the harem. With the natural wiles of the female, she had composed the setting perfectly to show off hert loveliness to full effect. She was seated on a low bench with flower-beds around her and the broad river behind her. For ai moment I thought the king might throw himself to his knees; in front of her, but even the prospect of immortality could nott cause him to forget his dignity to that extent.

  Instead, he showered her with congratulations and compliments and earnest enquiries after her health. All the while: his fascinated gaze was fastened on her belly from which i the miracle would in the fullness of time emerge. Finally he; asked her, 'My dear child, is there anything that you lack: for your happiness? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable during this trying time in your life?'

  I was filled once more with admiration for my mistress. She would have made a great general or corn trader, for her sense of timing was impeccable. 'Your Majesty, Thebes is the city of my birth. I cannot be truly happy anywhere else in Egypt. I beg you in your generosity and understanding to allow your son to be born here in Thebes. Please do not make me return to Elephantine.'