Mara, Daughter of the Nile (16 page)

They fell silent as a barge passed near them on its way to a belated mooring. Its torches threw puddles of molten gold on the black water, and the voices of two oarsmen, quarreling sleepily, drifted back on the night air as it slid away downstream. A moment later the fishing punt was bobbing across its wake, angling slightly to the south to avoid the great dark hulk of a vessel standing far out to anchor. Beyond it rode two others, swaying gently in the current. More and more loomed up as the punt neared the wharves, until it was threading its way among hulls close crowded on every side. At last it bumped to a halt against a ladder. The ancient A’ank held it there while Nekonkh and Mara scrambled cautiously along its rocking length and up the water-soaked rungs to the dock.

A few minutes later they were in a street more crooked, dark, and evil-smelling than any in Menfe, lined with cracked walls and murky doorways, from which an occasional cloaked figure emerged to brush past them into the gloom.

“This is Cutthroat’s Alley for certain, little one,” muttered Nekonkh, whose hand was ready on his dagger. “Take care you keep your wits about you—and a good blade, too—should you pass this way alone. Here we are, through this door now.”

He pushed open a creaking door, like all the rest save for the weathered wooden image of a falcon swinging from a bar above it. Within was a small courtyard, dimly lit by a flare bracketed beside another door at its far end. They
made their way over rough cobblestones, past a single scrubby dom palm, to the tavern’s entrance. Nekonkh rapped, and the door swung open.

A BURST of noise and golden light flowed out around the bulky figure of a man who blocked the entrance. “
Hai!
It’s you, Captain!” he cried jovially, stepping back to motion Nekonkh and Mara past him. “Come in, come in! And who are you, my dear?”

“Her name is Blue Eye,” grunted Nekonkh, before Mara could answer. “A friend of our friend … is he here, Ashor?”

“Aye, aye, he’s here.” The innkeeper closed the door behind them, his broad face wreathed in smiles. He was a hulk of a man, vast of girth and guileless of countenance, dressed in a rumpled
shenti
and huge copper ear hoops. He pattered ahead of them, the earrings bouncing and his paunch preceding him, through a tiny entryway and into a large square room which was smoky with torchlight and smelled of beer and roasting meat.

All around the walls were cubicles, divided from each other by shoulder-high partitions, but open to the room and
the charcoal fire that blazed in its center in a great pottery pan. In the cubicles, kneeling on reed mats before low tables, were Ashor’s customers—men, for the most part, with a scattering of women and an occasional bearded foreigner. They were eating, drinking, gambling noisily at “odd and even,” or merely talking in low tones over cups of beer or date wine. One group roared drunken approval of the antics of a juggler performing his feats beside their table; at the next, two solemn old men, one fat, one thin, played an absorbed and silent game of hounds and jackals. On the other side of the room a dancing girl swayed and postured to the jingle of her tambourine and the wail of a blind musician’s flute.

In the center of all, stirring the contents of a kettle bubbling over the fire pan, stood a tiny, dried-up woman. From her sash hung a metal loop strung with ring coins, copper and silver
deben
. A curious necklace of shells weighted her narrow chest, and she had the brightest, most suspicious eyes Mara had ever seen. Her long spoon motionless, she watched the newcomers all the way across the room.

“My wife, Miphtahyah,” puffed Ashor, noting the direction of Mara’s glance. “Wonderful woman. Her hand’s at the helm here, is it not, Captain? Aye, they’d rob me blind were it not for her. By the Feather, it’s true! A babe of innocence, she calls me, trusting anyone, even these rivermen—” With a breathy laugh he dug Nekonkh in the ribs, then detoured around the beribboned dancing girl to head for a table in the farthest corner.

As they passed, Mara glanced at the girl, whose languid movements now concealed, now revealed, the cubbyhole behind her, in which a scribe sat cross-legged before his inkstand, in earnest conversation with a shaven-headed priest. At that moment the scribe looked around, and the firelight fell on his face. It was Sheftu.

Mara caught her breath, hesitating. But his eyes met hers only an instant, then moved calmly back to his writing
block. The dancing girl whirled between them again and Mara walked on. Her cheeks burned as she slipped past the innkeeper into the farthest cubicle and sank to her knees upon the woven mat.

“He’ll be with you when it suits him, Captain,” Ashor was saying. “I’ll fetch date wine to cool your throats.”

Giving a hitch to his ample
shenti
, he waddled away, and Nekonkh lowered himself beside Mara, settling back on his heels with a grunt. “You saw him, did you?”

“Aye, and he saw us! But little sign he gave of it.”

“He’s not here to dance attendance on you, little one. He has more on his mind these days than a pair of blue eyes.”

The blue eyes glared at him, and he chuckled softly, shaking his head. “
Hai
, I warned you to steer well around him, that day on the
Beetle
. If you’ve run aground, maid, it’s no fault of mine!”

“I’ve done naught of the sort, and the devil with you! Why did that woman out yonder watch me so?”

“You mean Miphtahyah? Why, it’s her business to watch who comes here, and the falcon lends her his eyes for the task. She’d make a fine helmsman … Ho, Ashor. Set the cups here, I’ll play the host.”

Nekonkh took the wine jug from the perspiring innkeeper, who beamed and paddled off again, his earrings bobbing. With a broad thumbnail Nekonkh broke the seal, and the sharp fragrance of date wine filled Mara’s nostrils. She was watching the amber liquid gurgle into a cup when a shadow fell across the table.

“Live forever, honored strangers,” Sheftu said smoothly. “You wished my services? A contract written? Perhaps a list of cargo set down accurately?”

He was leaning in the entrance to their cubicle, his inkstand under one arm, two reed pens stuck jauntily behind his ear. Even in the long robe and coarse linen headcloth of a scribe, his pose was as easy, his grace as careless, as in the court of Hatshepsut.

“Nay, no contract,” rumbled Nekonkh, getting to his feet. “But this maid here—”

“Ah, a love letter, then. Guaranteed to thaw the coldest heart.”

He grinned down at Mara, and her retort died on her lips. As he turned to murmur something to Nekonkh, she struggled to regain her composure. What was it about his smile? Its warmth? Its sudden intimacy? It rushed to the head like strong wine.

She was aware of nothing but him, as he stood there outlined against the noisy, torchlit room. All day she had nerved herself for this meeting, fearing to find him again the curt and glittering stranger he had been in the lotus garden. Now, all in a moment, her fears had vanished. Here was no gold-hung lord, but her companion of the
Beetle
—warm, teasing, dangerous. Her spirits rose like a sail.

With a nod of farewell, Nekonkh moved out of the cubicle and across the room toward a group of rivermen gaming in another corner. Sheftu slid in beside Mara.

“So you accomplished it,” he murmured, seating himself cross-legged, in the scribe’s manner, and setting his inkstand on the table.

“Aye. But no thanks to you.”

“Was it such a task?”

“Task? Why, at first I knew not even where to start! A hard master you are, Sashai. ‘Get thee outside the walls,’ you say, as if it were nothing! Then away you stroll, with never another thought of it—”

He laughed, handing her the cup Nekonkh had filled, and pouring another for himself. “But why should I think of it? I have every confidence, my Lotus-Eyed One, in your capacity for guile, not to say chicanery—”

“
Ast!
I’ll wager I could learn guile from you.”

“Nay, pull in your claws. Were you not as you are, you’d be no use to me.”

Mara sipped from her cup, feeling a glow that had nothing
to do with wine. The flutist’s sweet wail threaded through the jovial uproar of the tavern; laughter was warm about her; the juggler’s balls spun brighter than shooting stars. Even the dreadful message she must deliver slipped like a
kheft
into the farthest outskirts of her mind.

“You’ve not told me,” said Sheftu, “what you think of the Inn of the Falcon.”

“Ahh, I like it well! Save for that old woman with the beady eye out there.”

“Miphtahyah? Nay, but she’s worth all the rest put together. A marvel of a woman.”

“So her husband said,” remarked Mara skeptically.

Sheftu regarded her with amusement. “Perhaps it is all in the point of view. I’ll admit her virtues would be less apparent to one attempting to snatch a loaf or two from under that beady eye.”

“I’m done with loaf snatching! But she could watch me no closer were I after her money ring.”

“Well, she has reasons. First, you are new here. Second, she is jealous as a she-leopard of every pretty maid who comes anywhere near me.”

“Near
you
? But I thought—”

“Aye, Ashor’s her husband. But I’m her child, or so she feels. Miphtahyah was my nurse, from infancy.”

Sheftu’s childhood nurse! The old woman assumed quite a different aspect in Mara’s eyes, and her whole idea of the Inn of the Falcon underwent a rapid change. She had thought it a retreat Sheftu had merely chanced upon; now she realized it must exist solely to serve his purposes.

“And Ashor?” she questioned.

“He was head of my father’s stables for many years—and my first companion.” Sheftu was smiling a little, remembering. “Aye, we were fast friends. Many’s the time I’ve ridden between his knees in my father’s chariot, holding the rein ends and pretending to drive. When I did learn, it was he who taught me. I can see him now, jouncing about
beside me, clutching his wig and yelling ‘Pull left! Pull right!’ ”

Sheftu laughed outright, and Mara smiled, fascinated by this glimpse of a childhood so different from her own. “And were you never frightened?” she asked him.

“Not I, but I’ll wager Ashor was, sometimes. We took a spill or two before I learned what I was doing. One of them broke my arm, and I stayed home from school while Miphtahyah coddled me.”

“School,” echoed Mara. Visions of scroll-filled shelves danced through her mind. “Did you read the ancient writings? Old tales, and poetry? What was it like, your school?”

He gave her an odd look. “Not like other schools, Blue-Eyed One. I fear I learned more politics than poetry.” He hesitated, playing with the amulet on his wrist, then went on. “I was educated at the palace nurseries, along with a few other noblemen’s sons. It was there I met my—friend.”

“So young?” exclaimed Mara. She had supposed Sheftu and the king had met at court, as youths near grown.

“Aye, I was only nine or ten when I first saw him. He was older, of course. But he seemed to—take a fancy to me. As for me, I worshiped him. He was—well, you’ve seen what he’s like.”

“Aye, I have!” Mara thought of the caged lion of a man she had met yesterday—restless, brilliant, moody—and tried to imagine him as a princeling. “Did the queen keep guards and spies around him even then?”

Sheftu nodded, turning his wine cup in his hands. “She’s always feared him.” He hesitated, as if debating whether to go on, then added, “She tried hard to make a priest of him, as I suppose you know.”

“A priest!”

He laughed. “The temple of Amon is an excellent place, little one, for burying excess royalty. It would be hard to say how many younger sons of pharaohs have spent their
lives tying up offerings and burning incense instead of making things uncomfortable around the palace. However, in this case—”

There was a tiny pause. He covered it with his most engaging smile, and reached for the wine jug. “Let me fill your cup, Blue-Eyed One, and summon the dancing girl. I fear I have bored you.”

You mean you fear you have said too much, thought Mara, wondering how to get the rest of the story without appearing to probe for it. Her curiosity was thoroughly aroused. This had all the earmarks of a tale not intended for her ears—therefore she had every intention of hearing it.

“It is the dancing girl who would bore me, Sashai, but I confess I am puzzled by your story. Our friend is certainly no priest now.”

“Nay, he is not,” agreed Sheftu blandly.

“Strange,” murmured Mara. “It is not hard to become a priest, but hard indeed to cease being one. In fact, I know of no way—unless a man disgrace his vows in some fashion—”

“There was no disgrace!”

Mara raised her eyebrows and waited. There was a flicker of wry amusement in Sheftu’s eyes but otherwise he made no acknowledgment of having been neatly trapped. As readily as if it were his own idea, he explained. “It was a miracle which released him, little one. A holy miracle, clearly the work of Amon himself.”

So that was it! In a rush memory came back to Mara. There had been a time, some years ago, when the market place at Menfe had been alive with whispers of a miracle. She could recall little knots of people gathered around Theban sailors and merchants, and herself, a ragged child, squirming through their legs in an effort to hear the tale. She had heard it, right enough, and had noticed that it grew more marvelous with every telling. Half awed and half
disbelieving, she had ended by shrugging the whole thing off as being of less concern to her than her empty stomach.

“Ah, yes, the miracle,” she murmured now. “Its fame spread even to Menfe.”

“Marvelous are the ways of the gods,” said Sheftu piously.

Mara smiled. She was beginning to understand, and what she understood delighted her. “A truly wonderful thing it must have been,” she agreed. “It came to pass during a great festival, am I not right? Under the very nose of the queen, with all the populace looking on. The great golden image of Amon had been borne through the streets, then back again to the temple on the shoulders of the priests, while the incense rose in clouds and the people leaped for joy—”