Even if Pahure reached the tree and pulled himself onto the mudbank, he doubted the steward would get away. Too many people were running along the shore, keeping pace.
Still, he wanted to be the man to snare the vile criminal.
Pahure leaped upward and grabbed a limb, which bowed beneath his weight. As he began to pull himself out of the water, Bak swam to him and caught hold of his legs. The steward clung with both hands and tried to shake him off.
The limb drooped further. Bak’s hands slid down the wet legs, stopped at the ankles. He jerked as hard as he could, heard the sharp crack of breaking wood. Though not broken through, the limb bent lower, dropping Pahure into the water to his waist.
With a grim but victorious smile, Bak looked up at the man he had caught. He saw no fear on Pahure’s face, only a firm determination to fight to his last breath. Beyond the steward, he glimpsed a group of spectators running toward the tree, several armed soldiers gathering around, and four nearly naked, heavily muscled men, each carrying a good size rounded rock, identifying them as competitors in a throwing contest.
The closest soldier raised his spear and, his mouth clamped tight with determination, thrust the weapon. At the same time Bak heard a sickening thud. Pahure went limp and half slid, half fell into the water, while the spear sped harmlessly over his shoulder. As he vanished beneath the surface, Bak saw that the side of his head had been crushed.
Startled, he glanced up at the soldier, who looked equally surprised. Beyond, Bak glimpsed the rock throwers, one with a triumphant smile on his face, the others encircling him, smothering him with praise.
Chapter Nineteen
“They’re coming! They’re coming!”
The child’s voice rang out sharp and clear, carried by some whim of the gods all across the landscape in front of
Ipet-isut. Every eye turned westward, every man and woman stretched to his or her tallest, eager to see the first pair of towboats enter the canal. What had been a soft murmur of voices rose to an expectant clamor.
So many people had come to see the lord Amon return to his northern mansion that the crowd standing on the raised paths pressed against the row of royal guards lining the arti ficial lake in front of Ipet-isut and the canal to the river.
Humble men and women unwilling or afraid to push them selves forward, people without means and accustomed to no better, stood among the trees and brush to either side in the standing water left by the retreating flood. Children perched in the trees, looking out over the multitude of heads.
Bak, having received a summons while donning clean clothing at his Medjays’ quarters, had hastened to join
Amonked on the raised limestone platform that overlooked the lake. Known to have the ear of his royal cousin, the
Storekeeper of Amon had been given a place of distinction from which to view the approaching procession of boats.
Crowded onto the platform with them were ranking priests and dignitaries from throughout the land of Kemet.
Officiating priests stood at the edge of the lake in front of the platform, some holding lustration vessels, the rest filling the air with incense that rose in a cloud, making Bak’s nose itch. Four royal servants holding ostrich feather fans waited nearby. Standard-bearers stood at the lower end of the shal low stairs that led up to the processional way connecting the lake to the sacred precinct.
“He’s dead?” Amonked had to shout to be heard.
Bak did not have to ask to whom he referred. “I dove down after him without delay, but even if I’d caught him be fore he entered the water, it would’ve made no difference.
The rock struck him hard enough to’ve slain an ox.”
The strident blare of a trumpet, close enough to destroy a man’s hearing, rent the air. The first two towboats swung into the far end of the canal, each carrying on its bow an en shrined gilded image of the sovereign of Kemet in a sym bolic pose of victory. The second pair carried similar shrines and images, as did the following vessels.
Behind the towboats, guided into the canal by men stand ing on the riverbank, came the long, slender royal barge on which Maatkare Hatshepsut and Menkheperre Thutmose had journeyed from Ipet-resyt. Enthroned side by side within a shrine, they were swathed in long, tight, white ju bilee robes. While the barge made its slow, deliberate pas sage down the canal, voices rose in adoration, muting the beat of the drums marking time for the towboat oarsmen and muffling the sounds of sistra and clappers.
“What in the name of the lord Amon did he intend?”
Amonked shouted.
Bak could but shrug. The question was not new. Everyone who had watched Pahure’s last desperate attempt to leave the water had asked it of him. “I can only believe he thought the men on shore would be easier to evade than me. Or per haps he hoped to die there, a quick and painless death at the hands of a soldier.”
“A coward’s way,” Amonked said, scowling.
“Would you want to face impalement or burning?”
The golden barge of the lord Amon slipped into view.
Voices swelled in a fresh round of acclaim as the long, sleek vessel was maneuvered around the tight turn into the canal.
Though it was linked by rope to the royal barge, a company of soldiers stationed along the paths to either side towed the vessel in the wake of its predecessor. The task was not diffi cult, an honor bestowed by the royal pair.
In the lull of voices while all who watched practically held their breaths, waiting for their sovereigns’ barge to touch land, Amonked said, “We know what prompted him to take Woserhet’s life and Meryamon’s, but did he ever say why he believed, after more than three years had passed, that
Maruwa would reveal mistress Meret as a traitor?”
“He had no chance. I fear that’s one question which will never be answered.”
“His death was far quicker and easier than it should’ve been.” Amonked, his expression severe, wiped the sweat from his face and neck with a square of linen. “I trust the other men involved in his foul scheme will suffer appropri ate punishment.”
“The chief priest will no doubt press the vizier to see jus tice done.”
The royal barge bumped against the landing stage. Crew men scrambled out to span the narrow gap with a gangplank, while others held the vessel steady. The dual sovereigns stepped out of the shrine and, with the dignity born of their office, removed the robes that had enshrouded them, passed them and the associated regalia to a priest and, with the help of aides, donned more appropriate attire for the final pro cession into Ipet-isut.
The trumpet blared again and Maatkare Hatshepsut, dressed much as she had been eleven days earlier, strode across the gangplank, head held high, the very image of grandeur. The moment her feet touched earth, the crowd roared. At the same time, Menkheperre Thutmose bounded onto the shore in two long strides. How much of the acclaim was directed toward him was impossible to tell. Bak wanted to believe the young king shared in equal measure with
Maatkare Hatshepsut the adoration of his people.
The instant the barge was empty of its illustrious passen gers, the crewmen jumped back on board and withdrew the gangplank so the craft could be towed out of the way, mak ing room for the barge of the lord Amon. The priests on the landing stage stepped forward to purify with water the earth upon which their sovereigns trod and to cleanse the air around them with a scent so pungent it made Bak sneeze.
The servants moved up to wave the ostrich feather fans over the heads of the royal pair.
Amonked shouted something Bak could not hear, took his arm, and ushered him off the crowded platform. The broad, open area, delineated by low walls, between the platform and Ipet-isut, hummed with the voices of priests, ranking bureaucrats, and nobility. All along both walls stood tables heaped high with offerings of food and
