Casting the Gods Adrift

GERALDINE
McCAUGHREAN

For Rebecca van der Vliet

1 A Boatful of Monkeys

2 Ship of Heaven

3 The Great House

4 Man of Gold

5 The Red Country

6 A Dream of Wickedness

7 The Nile-blue Cat

8 Song of the Reedbeds

9 Everlasting Life

Glossary

Historical Note

Map of Ancient Egypt

I know what made me careless. It was the thought of seeing a god – in person – breathing, speaking, eating, moving about. Priests had worshipped at his shrine every day for two years. Now
I
was going to see him in the flesh – the pharaoh. God on Earth. The thought filled my brain. How could I think about anything else? So you see, it was all my fault.

Our ship, when we set sail that day, was a wonder to see. Even I was amazed, and I was accustomed to my father's trade. My father, Harkhuf, dealer in rare beasts, was himself a rare, golden creature in my eyes. Mostly away in the south – beyond a dozen white-water cataracts of the Nile, beyond
the southernmost districts of Egypt, beyond even Nubia – Father would reappear once or twice a year, his clothes threaded with strands of the fur of leopard, cheetah and lion. He took wild animals and tamed them into purring house pets for mayors and noblemen and, of course, for the pharaoh.

‘Pharaoh Amenhotep, may his names be spoken for ever, relied upon me completely for baboons,' he used to say, cocking his nose in the air and sniffing.

Baboons were always Father's favourite. Well, he was born in Hermopolis, and the people down there worship Thoth the baboon-god above all the rest. Pharaoh Amenhotep loved the beasts, too. So our home was always leaping with baboons, caged or tame, and little bronze figurines of baboons crouched in the living room. All the time I was growing up, they grinned at me, or bared their teeth – I never quite knew which.

Now the new pharaoh, son of Amenhotep III, had commanded my father to bring him animals; lots of animals, he said, for his new capital city. When word reached Father, he
was breathless with delight. Despite my aunt's objections – ‘Tutmose has his studies,' and ‘Oh, surely you won't take Ibrim on the river!' – he invited my brother and me to go with him on the journey down the Nile to deliver the animals. ‘The trip of a lifetime,' he said.

A lifetime, yes.

So, we set sail from Nehkeb in the
Palm of Thoth
, its decks laden with cages containing baboons, some smaller monkeys, a few serval cats and three dozen scarlet ibises. There were six baby crocodiles in a wooden trough, and two hunting falcons tethered to their perches with lengths of leather. The noise was cacophonous.

Father posted me in the prow to keep watch for sandbars. The river currents shift so much sand and mud about that the navigation channels are constantly changing. The hippopotami can wreck a boat, too. The holy Nile is a treacherous river, and boats have to be so shallow to sail it that they are quite frail.

My brother Ibrim sat up on the deckhouse roof, chanting the spell against crocodiles –
we never cross water without saying it – and playing his harp. Ibrim was losing his sight, you see. He had river blindness. Not unusual. Terrible, but not unusual.

My father would keep saying, ‘You'll get better, son. Your eyes are improving every day.' But even then, young as we were, Ibrim and I knew it wasn't true. Father just wasn't very good at coping with bad news. He made sacrifices to the goddess Ishtar. He went on pilgrimages. He hung a gold case around Ibrim's neck. Inside it was a little rolled-up note from the great baboon-god Thoth, promising to protect him. Even so, I had to keep look-out on my own for sandbars, while Ibrim sat on the cabin roof. He had a sweet voice; I loved to hear him sing. But that day, all I could hear was the rush of water under the prow, and the baboons jabbering. All I could think about was seeing a god.

The broad sail was furled; we were travelling with the current. Even so, the northerly wind was blowing so strongly that we made slow headway. The rowers had to pull without rest on their oars. It occurred
to me that, with our cargo of livestock, we must look like the Ship of a Million Days that sails the skies crowded with its animal-headed gods. I had seen pictures; their boat had the same upward curve at prow and stern, like the curve of a hammock; it had the same two great steering boards at the back, the same oars moving with perfect symmetry. I remember wondering if the gods were looking down just then, over the side of their ship, watching us sail the holy Nile, sail down the length of the Black Land, between banks bright with flax and wheat, gardens, orchards and vineyards, square white houses and little moored reedboats.

‘Is the Ship of Heaven made of reed, like this one, Father?' I asked.

‘No. Cedarwood. Like the pharaoh's barge,' he answered at once.

In those days, I thought he knew everything about the gods.

As we sailed past Iunet, he pointed out the Temple of Hathor, goddess of birth and far-off lands, of gold and silver and music.

‘She's protected me on all my travels,' said
Father proudly. ‘On the way back we shall visit the temple and ask the priests to perform a ritual for Ibrim and bathe his eyes in the sacred water; let him sleep nearby and dream a cure for himself. I promise! On the way home.'

‘She gave me my gift of music,' Ibrim said softly, from his perch on the roof. ‘Perhaps I shouldn't ask for more.'

But Father chose not to hear.

We sailed only when there was daylight. The river, with its shifting mudbanks and shoals of sand, was too dangerous in the dark. As we sailed past Thebes, Father described the wonders of the Temple of Karnak there – nearly eight hundred lionesses carved in black granite, and the avenue of sphinxes, a sacred lake, gateways taller than twenty men. ‘A hundred thousand people work here, Tutmose,' he said. ‘Many of my animals live here.'

I thought he had been everywhere, seen everything, my wonderful father.

But, he had not sailed downstream beyond Thebes – not for twenty years. Pharaoh Amenhotep III had kept court at Thebes.
The new pharaoh had shifted ground. So on we sailed, past Thebes and Luxor. The further we sailed, the quieter Father became, lost in thought, contemplating his first meeting with Amenhotep's son. The new king. The new god on earth, ruler over all Egypt. There were strange rumours spreading up and down the Nile. The new pharaoh had changed more than his capital city; he had also changed his name – to Akhenaten (Spirit of Aten).

I, too, was lost in thought. What did a god look like? Would he speak to me? What should I say if he did? The sun was harsh on the moving water, hot on my shaven head, my naked body. I screwed my eyes shut against the brightness. I closed them, but my lids still glowed red. I covered my aching eyes with my hands.

And that was when we struck the sandbar.

The rowers fell on their backs, cursing and struggling to keep their oars from slipping away into the river. I was thrown flat along the prow. The reeds scratched my face. From stem to stern, cages fell over and lay at crazy angles in the bottom of the boat, the animals inside shrieking and screaming. Ibrim slid, yelling, off the deckhouse roof and landed on the rush baskets full of bird seed. The small monkeys clung to one another, round-eyed, baring their sharp little teeth. The falcons' perches snapped and hung over the side like broken branches. The reed bundles which made up the
Palm of Thoth
crackled and crumpled upwards as she settled harder and harder aground.

On the distant riverbank, a single mould-green crocodile raised its grisly head and stared. Its angular legs took a few sidling steps and it sank from sight under water until only its upper jaw showed.
Splash. Splash
. There were others coming.

My father stumbled along the boat, stepping over the fallen rowers. I was expecting him to shout and rage at me, but he was too busy soothing and shushing the animals. The rowers were glaring at me, shouting prayers and reciting the crocodile spell. But father went on righting cages, apologising to the animals, hardly noticing as they bit the fingers gripping their cages. The cheetah was a ball of golden muscle and fur, clawing at her cage, chewing at the slats, spitting and arching her back into a shape as unnatural as the broken boat's. The ibises, in a cage by my feet, were beating themselves ragged against their bars, against each other, handfuls of slender feathers bursting out around my ankles.

‘Let them go, fool! Let them go!'

I realised Father was speaking to me, telling me to unlatch the cage and loose the
beautiful birds he had so painstakingly trapped, before they broke all their wings or drowned along with the boat. I did it.

The ibises burst out around me, battering my face with their scarlet wings, so that my world turned red. They fountained into the sky, piping shrilly. But the tethered falcons were past help. They were being pulled under the water as the boat settled lower. Their struggles brought the crocodiles in, slowly, glidingly. They were in no hurry. Their feast would not escape them; this basket of assorted meats that was gradually breaking up in front of their noses.

Father opened cages with trembling, hasty hands. ‘Hold on, Ibrim!' he told my brother. ‘Get up higher, boy! Good boy!' But he went to help the animals first. The reeds that made up the deepest part of the boat were sodden now, awash with river water. One by one, he opened the cages. His baboons lumbered out to sit on the sides of the boat, feet tucked up, backs hunched, long arms dangling, like miserable old men.

The crew would not let father loose the cheetah. They threatened to knock him
overboard if he so much as went near the frenzied beast. Bad enough to drown, without being savaged, mid-river, by a wild cat. The boat shivered and hissed, and began to break apart.

Suddenly, a shadow flowed over us all like spilt ink, and a ship twice our size glided alongside. Had the Ship of Heaven indeed been watching us from the sky and swooped down to help us? I truly thought it had.

The baboons leaped in huge elegant bounds over our heads and into the rescue ship. The crew scrambled clumsily to safety over its smooth, painted sides. I edged my way round to where Ibrim was clinging to the steering paddle, and with my arm around his shoulders waited for help. ‘Don't cry,' I said. ‘Don't cry.' Only afterwards did I realise it was I, not he, who was crying.

Two oars, painted blue with pure white blades, reached out to us from the other vessel. I wrapped Ibrim's arms tight around one and, hugging the other myself, was lifted out of the
Palm of Thoth
by a huge, black-skinned, Nubian steersman. As I crossed the yawning gap, I looked down
and saw a crocodile open the yellow shutter of an eye, startled to be robbed of his meal.