Ancient Evenings (46 page)

“But it is true. I was jealous of Face-of-Ra and felt a weak smile on my lips at the way the lion listened to all that was said, then turned to his friend and Monarch. Once, when two officers spoke at the same time, each trying to gain the King’s ear, Hera-Ra was on his feet, his great blunt nose pointing in turn toward each of them, as though to fix their smell forever in his nostrils, these disputants. He was no doubt thinking that he would bite their heads off. All the while, I was telling myself that if it came to it, I would bite his nose off before he came near mine. Yes, I hated that lion.

“I had never been in a council of war before, and so I would not have known if it were always as calm as on this meeting, although the presence of Hera-Ra gave caution to all that was said. Even the quiver of his hind leg offered a suggestion of impatience, and once when he yawned at a long tale told by a scout who had discovered nothing of the enemy in his searches, it was obvious the fellow had spoken long enough.

“As each said his piece, I came to learn that many of these strange officers were Governors or Generals who ruled over many places in this region from which our Two-Lands received tribute. So my Monarch had summoned them to Gaza to report on the armies of the Hittites. Those legions seemed to have disappeared, however. There was no word of them. In Megiddo and Phoenicia the country was quiet. On the banks of the Orontes, no movement. Palestine and Syria were sleeping. Lebanon was calm.

“The Prince, Amen-khep-shu-ef, now spoke, and as He did, Hera-Ra laid his paw on the knee of the Pharaoh Who in turn covered that paw with His own hand. ‘My Father,’ said Amen-khep-shu-ef in a clear voice, ‘if I may speak My opinion.’

“ ‘No opinion could be more valuable,’ His Father said.

“The Prince, now thirteen, was already like a man. He looked more a brother than a son, and since Nefertiri, as I believe I have said, was Usermare’s sister, you could say the father was the uncle as well. It is certain Amen-khep-shu-ef spoke to the Pharaoh as to an elder brother of whom He was envious. ‘Having listened,’ He remarked, ‘to all that has been said, I am ready to think the King of the Hittites is a coward. He dare not come to us in battle but will hide behind the walls of his city. We will not see his face. So our armies must prepare to lay siege. It will be years until the last of the Hittites has fallen.’

“He not only spoke like a man, but an adviser. He had a deep voice, and if you did not look at His young face, you might have thought He was as old as His father. Certainly all who heard Him were impressed. Some of the Generals could not have followed His words more closely if they had been listening to a command of the Pharaoh, and they nodded when He was done. A few were even so brave as to ask permission of Usermare to speak, and then offered their agreement to the words of the Prince. Since they rushed forward without knowing the opinion of the Pharaoh, I thought them so stupid I would not have liked to serve in their command. Then I realized they were all of the same party, and must have spoken to each other before this council, everybody from Amen-khep-shu-ef in His white pleated skirt and jeweled sword to the roughest of our provincial Generals with chest-hair as thick as the hide of a bear, and a broken face looking as mangled by old battles as the rocks and gullies of the Place of Truth. But I soon ceased to wonder what they would gain. It was simple. If Usermare-Setpenere agreed with His son, He would not wish to lead the campaign. Given the breadth of His impatience, how could He bear a mean struggle in which His armies would be reduced by illness faster than by battle? Indeed the prospect might prove so boring that He would soon depart, leaving Amen-khep-shu-ef to conduct the siege. That could be agreeable for the Prince. In His Father’s absence, He would live as a King.

“It was obvious my Pharaoh was not happy with this discussion. I was hardly prepared to say anything at this point, but on the next instant, Ramses the Second, not having had a glance for me during all these weeks on the river, nor at Gaza, now passed over His other advisers and, as if I were the veteran of ten campaigns, inquired what I thought. I must say I had a tongue that had rested through these weeks and was in secret as lively as a horse in need of exercise. In fact I had to take care not to speak too quickly. To make the Pharaoh strain to follow your argument was a discourtesy. So I reined in my voice. Yet I still had much to say. (I had, after all, heard much gossip on the boat.) ‘Foundation-of-Eternity-in-Ra,’ I began, ‘the King of the Hittites has called forth his allies and it is said that the Mysians, the Lysians, and the Dardanians are with him, as well as the soldiers of Ilion, Pedasos, Carchemish, Arvad, Ekereth, and Aleppo. These peoples are barbaric. While they may be fierce in battle, they are also impatient.’

“Now I saw the King close His eyes, as if a thought unpleasant to Himself had passed through His mind, and Hera-Ra yawned in my face. Already, I had spoken too much. I can say that the crease between my buttocks began to itch, and the loins of this lion were so unruly that I could swear they began to swell. A red tip appeared, and all for the word
impatient.
All the same, the seriousness of our discussion obliged Ramses the Second to separate His temper from His irritations. He gave a thwack to the back of the lion, as if to say ‘Do not frighten this soldier until he has finished speaking,’ and gave a nod. He would forgive me for reminding Him that there could be similarities between a barbarian and Himself. I went on, therefore: ‘These enemy soldiers want our bodies to roast by the fire. They want plunder. If that does not happen soon, they will talk of going back to their own countries. If I were the Hittite King, I would not wish to keep such troops for a siege. I would want to bring them into battle.’

“ ‘Then where are they?’ asked my King.

“I bowed, I struck my head to the ground seven times for I did not wish to insult Ramses the Second a second time by disclosing my reply too quickly. Instead, I addressed Him by so many of His great names that the tongue of Hera-Ra lolled in pleasure, and then I said, ‘The King of the Hittites knows every hill and valley of Lebanon. I fear, Good and Great God, that the Hittites will try to come down on our flank as we march.’

“I knew the Prince Amen-khep-shu-ef was furious. I had made an enemy. But I also saw that our King was as the center of a wheel on a chariot. We, who were advisers, were His spokes. We could never be friends with one another. ‘The peasant who knows so much about horses that he has become Your First Charioteer,’ said Amen-khep-shu-ef, ‘speaks of impatient barbarians as if that is the truth on which we may depend. But where is the King of the Hittites? No enemy walks in our sight. No spy speaks to us. I say they hide in their forts and will stay there. Barbarians do not possess that royal strength some see as impatience. Rather they are stupid like cattle and can wait forever.’ The Prince now looked at me with all the force of the oldest son of Usermare-Setpenere. Although He resembled His mother and had dark hair, His Father’s confidence was in His manner. Any thought that came to Him was an offering from the Gods and so could not be false—so said His manner.

“Yet, I believe He had now offended His Father. For if the Gods spoke more quickly to Amen-khep-shu-ef than to the Pharaoh, there was cause for rage.

“ ‘You talk,’ said Usermare-Setpenere, ‘with a voice worthy of a King-yet-to-come-forth. But You are a young bird. You must break out of Your egg before You fly. When You are older, You will have learned more about the battles of Thutmose the Third. You will follow the campaigns of Harmhab. Maybe You will know by then that it is not wise to speak with certainty about a battle that has not begun.’

“A heavy sound came out of all of us, a grunt, indeed, of the satisfaction uttered when a truth is deep. ‘Hear the Pharaoh, He has said it,’ we all said. And Hera-Ra roared for the first time in this council.

“I saw a flush on the face of the Prince, but He bowed. ‘May-Your-Two-Houses-be-great, would You give us Your desires?’

“Usermare said that He had decided to break camp and march from Gaza to Megiddo. From there, He would go down the valley to Kadesh, but He would not advance more rapidly on any road than His detachments on the ridges flanking the march. He would also send scouts by other routes to Kadesh. One squad of charioteers would cross the Jordan. Another would take the road to Damascus. I—and I looked up as He spoke my name—I would be sent on the road to Tyre. I could take a squad, He told me. But when I looked into His blue eyes, I knew that until I had been alone long enough to follow each of my thoughts down to the bottom, I would have weakness in my belly, not strength. Indeed, I wondered if I could lead men well with the scorn of the Pharaoh still smarting on my buttocks. So I bowed and asked if I could travel by myself. It would be quick, I said, and He had need of His troops.

“A hoarse murmur came forth from more than a few of the Captains and Generals around me. A man by himself on strange roads would have to face new beasts without a friend. He could meet new Gods. My Pharaoh nodded, however, as if I had said the right thing, and I wondered if He wished to respect me again.”

SIX

“On the journey, I learned, however, what it is to be lonely. I had never been so much by myself before. Now that I am coming to the end of my fourth existence, I am left with memories of people who lived near to me once and now are dead. But in my first life, I had always found myself among many people, and that permits but one kind of thinking. Others talk; we reply. It is usually without thought. On important occasions, it is true, a voice might come into my head and speak for me and sometimes it was so powerful a voice, I knew it belonged to a God or His messenger. But now, going to Tyre, there came an hour when I could no longer listen to my two horses, nor to the complaints that came from the frame and wheels of the chariot, and I became alone in such a way that whole processions of thought passed through me, as if I were no longer a man but a city through which soldiers were marching.

“Of course, these were not my feelings on the first day, nor the second or third. In the beginning, there is such terror to find oneself alone that no thought has the liberty to speak—it is rather as if you walk beneath the walls of a fortress waiting for the first stone to drop. My eyes, I remember, were like birds, and flew from sight to sight, never resting. Nor were the horses comfortable. I was not traveling in my own battle chariot which was agile and weighed little. For the rigors of this trip I had chosen a training cart used to much abuse and newly repaired. I had also selected two strong but stupid horses who would be able to work all day even if they were much confused by commands they had heard in a hundred voices. I was sure I could train them to my purposes, and did, but my first request was that the horses not wear out, and these were born with stamina.

“One was called Mu, an old word for water, and it would have been an odd name for a horse except that Mu never failed to urinate at every halt. The other was Ta. He was close to the land and always fertilizing it.

“I set out by riding across the long flat valley that leads from Gaza to Joppa, and it was near to familiar country for me. The soil was as black as our own after the Nile recedes, and the heat was no different, nor the look of the villages and huts. Except I did not see a face on all of the road, not for all of the morning and afternoon of the first day. Of course who would be about to approach me? I rode with the reins around my waist, my spear in one quiver, my bow and arrow in another, my shield hooked to the prow of the chariot, and my short sword in its scabbard. I had a scowl on my face, a helmet on my head, and a coat of mail on my chest and back. I must say that in those days we did not know how to make a coat of mail from metal. Mine was of thick quilted stuffs with strips of leather, a coat so heavy you paid for its protection as your strength wilted in the heat. Still, I wore it like a house around my heart. Although I may have looked fierce, my tongue was as dry as an old piece of meat salted in natron and I could hardly breathe. The horses and I passed through nothing but these empty villages, their silence also breathing in my ear. Since we had already pillaged everything, you could find nothing. No food, no flocks, no people. Nothing in these empty huts but the spirit of each abode. I rode on, looking to the hills on either side of the valley, and in the night, when I made camp, I could see fires in fortified towns high on the ridges, and knew that the villagers who had fled were up there standing watch on the walls. In the valley beneath, I stopped just off the road and tried to sleep and heard my heart beating beneath me all night. Then in the morning I set out to the same silence. Even the blue of the sky was like a wall above, so much did I feel alone.

“Still, it was familiar ground, and that was better than what came next. The black soil gave way to a reddish-brown country full of sand and clay, colors common enough, but then some trees began to show themselves on the low hills, and soon there were more of them, then considerably more. They were nothing like our high palms, but short trees with thick, stunted trunks and twisted limbs, the most unhappy looking creatures, as if the wind had been a torture every day of their lives. I did not feel comfortable with these woods, nor did the horses, and soon we were in our first bad place. Brush had begun to grow, and you could not see anything but the road. A thicket more dense than any of our Egyptian swamps settled in next to the trees. Sometimes we crossed little streams and hardly knew it for the road was so muddy that water was always flowing in the ditches. Now I dismounted from the chariot as often as I went up on it, and kept pushing the wheels through the mud until in one swamp of this low forest, I saw a crocodile go sliding away. That put me back on the chariot again. In the marshes I was devoured by insects.