FSF, September-October 2010 Page 8

  No such command came. The foreign magician brought gifts and flattering words, and cured a painful ulcerated sore on the Pharaoh's foot with an ointment made from rock oil and brassmaker's ore. Soon he was one of Pharaoh Merneptah's boon companions. He lodged in the King's house, and dined with the King, and everyone waited to see what would happen when my master and the foreign magician met.

  They waited in vain, for my master remained at his own house. In the mornings he served Ptah at the temple, in the afternoons he met with engineers and stonemasons, and in the evenings I read to him from ancient books or the lady Anhemet played the flute for him.

  I finally worked up the nerve to ask him one morning, “Master? Why don't you visit the King's house anymore?"

  "The King my uncle has not asked me."

  "But in the past you never waited to be called."

  "Perhaps when he tires of his foreign magician I will go see him again. Until then, I am content here."

  * * * *

  It was only a few weeks later that a messenger arrived from the Pharaoh, and I led him to my master's study. They were in there with the door shut for much of the morning, and when the King's servant finally left, my master was frowning.

  "Master? Will you be going to the King's white house?"

  "No,” he said, and smiled sadly. “The King my uncle has decided to take back all the offices and benefits he has bestowed on me, which means I must find another place to live. A much smaller one, I think."

  "This is terrible! You must go and complain to him!"

  He shook his head. “It was the King's pleasure to grant me these offices and lands, and it is the King's pleasure to take them away again. I will not beg. Don't worry, Senehem—one farm is my own. It was a gift from the Pharaoh Ramesses himself when I was young. We shall move there. The house will be a bit snug, but we'll manage. It will give us time to translate those books from Sindh."

  And so a week later my master and I boarded a boat carrying his books, his furniture, and other odds and ends down the river from Memphis. The place was out in the Delta country. The farm looked like a good one, with reeds along the river rich in birds.

  I hated it. The house was small and full of mice. The endless flat expanse of the Delta was muggy and full of haze. My home is a little village upriver near Asyut, where the sky is clear blue and there are not so many flies. Instead of a cook trained in the Pharaoh's own kitchens we had the farm steward's wife, who fed us bread and beer and onions fried in goose fat every day.

  One thing did make the house less crowded: the lady Anhemet did not accompany us. On the morning of the move she sent her own things back to the house of her father. A few days later I heard she was seen in the company of Anhur-Sefit, a young captain who had taken many prisoners in the war with Libya.

  "He is closer to her own age,” said my master when he heard of it. But that night and for several nights afterward he drank beer until he fell asleep at the table.

  And then one afternoon, on the day of the Festival of the Secret Chamber when the Pharaoh and all the court were away at Thebes, a boat came to my master's farm bearing the foreign magician.

  He was very tall, and he wore a linen robe which was soaked with sweat. His nose and cheeks were red and peeling, his hair was not white but the color of electrum wire, and his eyes were as pale as the hazy sky. “Tell your master I wish to see him,” he told me when he stepped ashore.

  I ran to the study where Seosiris was still trying to organize his books. “The foreigner is here! He wants to see you!"

  "Show him in, Senehem.” My master stood and brushed the dust off his knees.

  I led the foreign magician to the study and tried to make myself inconspicuous, but he glared at me. “I wish to speak with you alone,” he said to Seosiris.

  "I have no secrets from Senehem,” said my master. “But as you are my guest—Senehem, please leave this room at once."

  I went out into the hallway and crouched by the door to listen.

  "I hoped to meet you at court,” said the foreigner.

  "Since the King my uncle, guided by the wisdom of the gods, chose to withdraw my offices, I have been busy managing my own lands."

  "Do you know why I persuaded him to do that? I wanted to see if you are truly as great as the stories tell. It was a challenge, but you ignored it. Why do you hide here among the reeds? A man would have fought for his rights."

  "I am not a jealous man. If another enjoys the Pharaoh's gifts, my heart is glad for him. Besides, now I have more time for study and exercise."

  "Those honors could be yours again."

  "If the Pharaoh wills it, I will be grateful to him."

  "He is an old man who thinks of nothing but empty ritual and the state of his bowels!” the foreign magician burst out. “Why do you bow to him? You are of royal blood yourself—your own father Setna was Crown Prince before he died. If you are as great a magician as they say, why do you not cast Merneptah down and rule the land yourself?"

  "I told you: I am not a jealous man. The gods willed that Merneptah become lord of the living world. It would not be proper to dispute their wisdom."

  "You really believe that? A strong man does what he wishes and afterward the priests say the gods decreed it."

  "No doubt that happens. Men are imperfect creatures.” I could hear the smile in my master's voice.

  "They are imperfect because they are led by fools,” said the foreign magician. “Imagine what a wise man—or two wise men—could do with the power your uncle holds. Egypt is rich, but the wealth is all wasted on tombs and priests."

  "We think it proper to do so here."

  "It is foolish. The priests are as rich and proud as kings themselves. They challenge the Pharaoh's authority every day. Why doesn't he abolish all that nonsense?"

  "Akhenaten tried it and failed, before the days of Ramesses the Great."

  "Was he wise in magic?"

  "I doubt it,” said my master.

  "We could do it, you and I."

  "Why? Egypt is the richest land under the gaze of the Sun. Our enemies do not prosper. Our cattle are fat. Why create trouble where none exists?"

  "We could make it better. You have royal blood; with you on the throne and myself by your side we could transform Egypt. We could make it perfect."

  When my master spoke again, his voice was soft and even. I had only ever heard that tone once before, when he spoke to the father of a boy who had beaten me in the market. “I must apologize to you. Until now I thought you were merely an adventurer, come in search of riches from the hands of the Pharaoh. Such men are like mice in the granary—they may steal some corn, but they cannot eat it all. You are like a fire which leaves only ash and ruins."

  "I take it you will not aid me, then?"

  "From the instant you leave my home I shall devote every power at my command to your destruction."

  "I am not afraid of you.” I scuttled out of sight as the foreign magician opened the door and came out into the hall. “You are already beaten. I am under the Pharaoh's protection. If you assail me by magic it means exile or death for you. A pauper's grave where your body will rot, and your ghost will wander the night crying from hunger—isn't that what you Egyptians believe?"

  My master Seosiris said nothing more until the foreigner stepped aboard his boat and the rowers began paddling back upstream toward Memphis.

  "Senehem! Did you overhear what was said?"

  "Yes, Master. Was I wrong to listen?"

  "No, no. I hope you learned something from our words."

  "I'm not sure—"

  He burst out laughing. “Here is today's first lesson: two soft-bellied men past middle age should not threaten each other like a pair of angry boatmen. Now, come into my study for your second lesson: we must prepare amulets. He will start by trying to curse us."

  That very night the farm was invaded by flies—great black hairy flies which made a hissing sound. The steward and his wife fled, and the cattle were dead by mor
ning, but my master and I did not suffer a single bite.

  At daybreak my master molded a wax figure of the foreigner and tossed it into the river. At Memphis a pair of crocodiles crawled out of the river and went right into the Pharaoh's white house in search of the foreign magician, but though they reached the door of his room they could not enter, and a company of guards slew them with arrows.

  A storm struck the farm that night. Lightning blasted the date palms and hail knocked down one of the outbuildings. But we had written a spell of protection on the roof of the house, and the wind did not even make the lamp flame flicker in my master's study.

  My master sent angry spirits to trouble the foreigner's dreams. All the water in our jugs turned to poison. When the foreigner left the Pharaoh's house, a flock of ibises tried to peck his eyes out. The ghost of Prince Setna, my master's father, appeared before us groaning in agony. Darkness enveloped Memphis even at noon, and no lamps could stay lit. The earth beneath my master's house shook, throwing us both to the floor and cracking the walls. A statue of Ramesses the Great burst into the foreigner's room and nearly strangled him before he could turn it to dust. A serpent of fire crawled in the window and burned up half my master's books, until we doused it with some of the poison water.

  * * * *

  On the seventh day my master told me, “The Pharaoh will return from Thebes soon. I cannot attack the foreigner directly when the King is in the white house at Memphis."

  "You mustn't give up now, Master! Call the ghouls out of the desert to devour him. Or curse his manhood so that it withers and rots."

  "Hush, Senehem. I have a mission for you. Take this box of gold and go up to Koptos. I want you to seek out the lost book of Thoth. My father sought it long ago, but abandoned the effort. Now we need it. Hire as many workers as you need. I will give you the name of builders there who know me."

  "Koptos? Master, it will take me a fortnight to travel there, even with swift horses. You cannot stay here with no one to watch while you sleep!"

  He rummaged on the shelf of scrolls we had rescued from the flames. “Take a boat and read this once the sails are set. It will speed you on your way. Now don't waste any more time arguing. I have strong protections, and with the Pharaoh in residence the foreigner will have to spend time waiting on him. I will manage alone."

  I hired a boat at Busiris the following morning and read the spell. At once a mighty wind began to blow from the north, raising waves on the river and making the reeds lie almost flat. The sail filled as tight as the head of a drum and the mast creaked and bent with the strain. The boat moved upriver with the speed of a galloping horse. The terrified boat master clung to the tiller, his knuckles white with fear as we swerved around rocks and other boats. The four rowers whooped and laughed.

  Behind us our wake stretched back white and foaming in a wide arrowhead shape that made waves on the shore. In the bow I hung on to the boat's side and called out warnings to the pilot as we shot past farms and cities. The wind made my sidelock stick out straight in front of me.

  As we passed Memphis I saw the long white bulk of the King's house and whispered a curse of my own against the foreign magician. A crowd gathered by the river to watch the boat go past. Twice on the voyage I saw hippopotami trying to get in front of the boat to wreck it, but both times they were beset by crocodiles until the boat was safely past.

  Above Memphis the land changed from the wide flat green expanse of the Delta to a narrow strip of black land between ridges of red hills. The air changed from hazy to dry, and soon my body was covered with a crust of dried sweat and dust. My heart was glad as I breathed the clear air.

  At midday we passed Henen-Nesut, where the Pharaoh and his company were being entertained on their way back to the capital. I could see the royal barge and its escorts drawn up on the bank. Soldiers in a boat hailed us, and paddled furiously to catch us, but I gave the boat master more gold and he steered away from them. Soon they were bouncing helplessly in our wake.

  It was just past sunset on the same day I set out that my boat arrived at Koptos. The mighty wind died away to a soft breeze. I helped the boatmen paddle to shore. The master of the boat fell to his knees on the solid ground and kissed the dust.

  That night I slept at the temple of Min, and at first light began hiring workmen and boats. My master's orders were clear: in the center of the river off Koptos I was to search for an iron box containing the lost book of all-knowing Thoth. The magical words in that book were strong enough to make the gods themselves bow their heads. It would give any magician who read it supreme power over all things.

  That very morning my hired men put out in boats dragging hooks along the river-bottom from bank to bank. I set up a series of stakes as far apart as a man's outstretched hands, running for a mile along the riverbank. The men in the boats could sight a line between a pair of stakes and thus drag the river-bottom in an orderly fashion. In all I had four boats out searching, and promised each man a bushel of grain for a day's work.

  They rowed back and forth, straining against the current to follow a straight line across the river. The hooks brought up animal bones, fishermen's nets, rocks, and mud. One boat ran over a sleeping crocodile and in his excitement the man in the stern dropped the rope and I had to buy a new cord and hook. I announced a reward of twenty jars of beer and a pair of gold rings to whichever boat crew found the iron box.

  A week went by, and my crews pulled up a third of the stakes, but there was no sign of the box. I worried about my master—without my help, how could he protect himself from the foreign magician's attacks? Each time I saw a boat coming upstream I dreaded what news it might bring.

  When I had been at Koptos nine days a barge arrived but did not land. It was a very grand one, with a dozen pairs of oars and much gold on the high curving sternpost. The crew tossed the anchor-stone overboard just downriver from where my hired boat crews were working. I saw barefoot crewmen in pleated linen kilts on deck, but the passenger remained inside a closed pavilion.

  I feared that the foreign magician might interfere with the work, but my men were not plagued by flies or serpents. The grand barge stayed clear of our working area, but whenever I glanced at it I could see men on deck, watching.

  Two days after the barge arrived one of my hired men found something. The fool didn't even keep quiet about it, as I reminded all of them each morning before they set out. He started jumping up and down and shouting. I called to one of the other boats and had myself rowed out to the middle of the river.

  "What have you found?” I called out as my boat came alongside his.

  "My hook caught on something. I pulled and pulled and finally it broke loose, and look! This is what came up!"

  It was a curved piece of iron, broken at one end, in the shape of an ibis head with a long beak. It looked like a handle. The workmanship was marvelous, and looked very old.

  "Well done. See if you can snag it again and bring up the whole thing.” I waved to one of the other boats and had the crew round up the others to help. We dragged that part of the river all afternoon. There was definitely something down there. Hooks snagged in the same place, but the thing on the bottom was too heavy or too solidly wedged to pull out. We tied a goatskin full of air to the end of one line that had caught on the bottom there, and left it until morning.

  On shore I ordered more rope and made arrangements to hire more men. My plan was to run a line from the box to the riverbank and have a huge crew on the shore haul it out.

  That night my workmen had a merry celebration. The men who found the box shared their twenty jars of beer with the others, and I paid for a couple of fat sheep to be roasted. They sang bawdy songs under the stars, but I retired early to the forecourt of the Temple of Min, and slept on a wool mat in a quiet corner.

  In the darkest time of the night I heard a great commotion. A boy ran to me as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Young master! Come quickly! Something is happening in the river!"

  I sprinted afte
r him to the riverbank. The mysterious barge had moved during the night to where we had left the float. And if that wasn't bad enough, I could see the figure of the foreign magician standing at the bow of the ship, chanting with arms extended. The water before him split, as though flowing around an invisible rock. The cleft in the river widened until my float toppled in and vanished from sight. When the gap in the water was twenty yards wide, the foreign magician stopped and called for his men to lower him to the river bottom.

  "Ten jars of beer for any man who will row me out there!” I shouted. “Twenty! Fifty!"

  One wiry fellow a few years older than myself stepped forward. “If your offer is an honest one, I'll do it."

  "Fifty jars, I swear by the avenging son of Osiris."

  He rowed me out. The water of the river swirled and foamed as we came closer to the hole the foreign magician had made in the water.

  "It's too rough!” my boatman cried out when the edge of the opening was only a few yards away. “I don't dare go closer."

  I measured the distance with my eyes, whispered a prayer to Hapi and Sobek, and dove off the prow of the boat into the water. For all my life I have been a slow runner, and I am terrible at ball games and hunting, but I have always been a good swimmer. Twelve strokes under the water brought me to the edge of the hole. It was like a great curtain of foam rising from the bottom of the river.

  I gave one more kick and swam out into open air. I tumbled into the muck at the bottom of the river and bruised my face on a stone. When I could lift my head again I saw the foreign magician glaring at me. Behind him, two of his men were clearing the last stones off of an iron box the size of a child's coffin.

  "You're too late, little one,” the foreign magician said to me. “I have the book of Thoth. Your master is truly beaten.” He turned to his men. “Haul it up quickly, fools! I cannot hold back the river forever."

  "It's too heavy,” said one of them. “We'll need a thicker line."

  The magician gave an irritated sigh. “Never mind about that. Break open the lock. I care about the book, not the box."