Chapter Nineteen
A soft light penetrated the white linen that covered the wood-framed pavilion in which Bak and Kenamon sat. The fabric rippled in the breeze, making fluttery, whispery sounds, and sent vague shadows darting across the scrolls, utensils, and bags and bundles of medicaments laid out on a reed mat beside the priest. The odors of frankincense and juniper wafted through the open portal of a connecting pavilion. Murmurs outside, men's voices softened by the presence of royal guards, announced the passage of soldiers and nobility. Distant laughter, the smack of spear against spear, an occasional bellow, told of soldiers practicing the arts of war. A low never-ending rumble spoke of the rapids outside the fortress walls.
'The swelling will remain for a few days, as will the discoloration.' Kenamon rewound the linen bandage holding Bak's lower arm and hand firm against the wooden splint. An oily green salve oozed out along the edges of the fabric. 'It's as I told you yesterday: The break should heal without problems, but you must treat the arm as you would a newborn babe: gently, kindly, making no demands on it.'
'Rest assured, my uncle, I'll not try to use it again. It hurts too much.'
The elderly priest, seated on a low stool in front of his patient, gave Bak the same severe look he had used when he was a child. 'The pain is there to remind you that you must take care. You ignore it at your peril.'
Bak, scooting back on the thick pillow he sat on, gave the old man a lopsided smile. 'How can I stand in a guard of honor with my arm tied to my waist?'
Kenamon shook his head in mock disgust. 'Guard of honor! Hah! You should see yourself.'
Bak knew what he looked like: bruised, battered, and bandaged. A wounded sparrow. A man praised by all within the garrison and city of Iken, soldiers and civilians alike, for laying hands on Puemre's murderer and for surviving the rapids. A man who had knocked a king to his knees, a divine being who had not yet deigned to summon him.
'Perhaps it's just as well,' Kasaya had said. 'He was very angry when last I saw him on the ship. Better to bear nothing than to have your hands lopped off because you trod on his royal pride.'
Kenamon, on the other hand, had counseled patience, saying the king had been busy, praying long and often for the health of his son, receiving people who had traveled great distances in the hope of an audience, and renewing past friendships with men such as Huy and Senu. Bak preferred to believe the priest rather than Kasaya. After all, Amon-Psaro had lived many years in Waset, learning the civilized ways of Kemet.
'Now let me look at your shoulder,' Kenamon said, drawing close a bowl containing a brownish paste that smelled bitter like wormwood but carried other, more subtle, odors, too.
Bak turned around obediently and let the priest cut away the bandage he had applied the previous day, revealing an area of scabby, bruised flesh as large as the palm of a hand, one of several places scraped raw in the rapids. Kenamon cleaned the wound and spread the ointment over it, murmuring prayers while he worked, magical incantations that would drive away the demons of sickness..
Whether eased by the poultice or the prayers, the fire in Bak's broken arm soon waned to a smolder, and he let himself relax under the priest's capable hands. Kenamon rebandaged the shoulder and went on to a deep, ragged cut on the arm, drawn together beneath a thin slice of fresh meat bandaged tightly over the injury. Removing the meat, he probed the wound in search of infection. Bak let his thoughts drift, his eyelids droop. A soft moan, as delicate as the mewing of a tiny kitten, roused him from his torpor and stilled the priest's hands.
'He's awakened?' Bak asked, glancing toward the connecting pavilion, trying not to show concern. He had heard rumors all morning that the prince seemed almost healed, but he feared the tales more wish than reality.
Kenamon quickly scraped the salve from his fingers to the edge of the bowl and wiped the residue on a clean square of linen. Hurrying to the portal, he looked inside. His face relaxed into a smile. 'Amon-Karka is dreaming,' he whispered. 'Something happy. Come see the way he smiles.'
Bak scrambled to his feet and hastened to the priest's side. The small bony child lay sprawled across his sleeping pallet, holding close against his cheek a wooden lion with movable tail and lower jaw. The toy was a gift from Aset. The boy's breathing was slow and easy, with no coughing or desperate panting or noisy and fearsome wheezing.
The room reeked. of frankincense, juniper, wormwood, and beer. The pungent odor wafted from a bowl on the floor beside the prince. A reed straw protruded from an identical bowl turned upside down to serve as a lid. Kenamon, Bak knew, had dropped a hot stone inside, heating the liquid remedy, and the prince had breathed in the fumes through the straw.
Amon-Karka nuzzled the toy, smiling, and repeated the sound, more a contented sigh than a moan.
Bak laughed softly, half-ashamed of how worried he had been. 'I know you're more capable than most, my uncle, but I didn't expect so quick and miraculous a cure.'
'The lord Amon has guided my heart and my hands, young man. I'm his tool, nothing more.' The reminder was gentle but firm, an adult telling a child a fact he should take for granted.
'Without sufficient knowledge and skill, you'd not have been able to obey the god's wishes.'
'I blame your father for your impertinence.' Kenamon's voice was gruff, but his eyes twinkled with merriment. 'He should've remarried, taking into his household a woman who'd teach you the respect you lack.'
Bak had thanked the lord Amon many times that he had been spared a stepmother. 'Your apprentice said you had clues to the malady, yet how could you? Until yesterday, you never laid eyes on the boy.'
Kenamon looked in at the prince, his expression a mix of self-satisfaction and compassion. 'I asked many questions of the couriers who came from Amon-Psaro, and I talked with men who've lived in his capital. Through the months, I learned much of Amon-Karka's sickness and the way he lives and even the weather. I came to know as much about him as his servants do, and more, I think, than his father knows.'
'And from among the details of his life, you plucked out the clues to his illness.' Like a policeman searching out a murderer, Bak thought, though so illustrious a physician as Kenamon might not appreciate the comparison.
Kenamon walked back to his stool and sat down. 'By the time we sailed into Buhen, I knew he suffers most during the months before the river rises, when the winds blow hard from the western desert. I knew he grows ill when he travels or when he drives a chariot or plays with his dogs.' He took a daub of ointment on his fingers and waited for Bak to settle down on the pillow. 'I thought I knew the cause-it's common enough in children-but I couldn't be sure.'
Kenamon spread the ointment over the cut. 'The reports I heard during his journey from Semna seemed to verify my diagnosis. When they brought him to me here and he responded so quickly to medication and prayer, I knew I was right. He has a breathing sickness that befalls many children. Most outgrow it; some never do.'
Bak thought of the lord Amon and the long journey he had made from the land of Kemet. He thought of the great tribal king who had traveled from far-off Kush in the firm belief. that the greatest of the gods would answer his prayers. 'Have you told Amon-Psaro his son may never recover?'
'He knows I can do nothing but ease the boy's symptoms.' Kenamon wrapped a bandage tight around Bak's arm to hold the cut together and tied the ends in a small, neat knot. 'I've told him how best to protect the boy from further attacks. Other than that, all we can do is pray and make suitable offerings.'
'Then I'll get well, won't IT' The childish voice drew both men's eyes to the doorway and Amon-Karka leaning against an upright, rubbing one leg with the other foot. Before the priest could answer, the prince's large dark eyes darted toward his patient. 'You must be Lieutenant Bak, the policeman who saved my father's life. The one who went through the rapids.'
Without thinking, Bak spoke as he would to an ordinary child. 'How'd you guess?'
The boy laughed, delighted by the quick rejoinder. 'Because you're bandaged all over, halfway to being a mummy.'
Bak grinned. 'Are all princes so impertinent?' Amon-Karlgn wrinkled his nose at the smelly room behind him, sauntered over to the two men, and plopped down beside Kenamon. 'Can I watch?' His eyes leaped from the priest to Bak. 'Will you tell me about the rapids? And the man you chased? And how you knew he wanted to slay my father?'
Bak hoped, if ever he got to meet Amon-Psaro, that he would be as bright and open-hearted as his son.
'Lieutenant Bak.' The herald's voice resonated with authority. 'Son of the physician Kames of the southern
