something that must be done. And I'm good at it.'
'You told me earlier that I had an opportunity you would never have. What if you were in my place? What would you do?'
'I don't follow,' Barca said.
'If you could remake your life …'
Barca took another sip of wine, then set the bottle aside. 'When I was a boy, in Tyre, I would go down to the quays and sit on my father's ships. Just sit there, listening. Sailors are a garrulous bunch. Always a ready tale to spin for appreciative ears. Some days, this old man would hobble on board and every man there would fall silent. Even my father would step aside out of deference. I thought him some kind of merchant king or a priest. Later, I learned the truth.
'He was a navigator. As a boy, he had sailed with Hanno around the tip of Africa. He knew the position of every star in the heavens, every shoal, every reef. What this man had forgotten about sailing most men would never know. If I could go back and make my life over, I would take a ship and sail through the Pillars of Herakles, just like that old man.'
Jauharah smiled. She said nothing for a moment, then, 'I wish I could give you your dream.'
'Don't squander your gift on me. Make a dream of your own come true,' Barca replied. Gently, he touched her cheek; caressed the line of her jaw. His fingers felt unaccustomed to such delicate gestures. She saw trepidation in his eyes. Apprehension. Even fear, if such an emotion were possible from him. She saw something else in his eyes, too. Something he had kept locked away for years uncounted, imprisoned in a cage of ice. His eyes glittered with passion. Hot, bright, intimate, a fire stoked from embers never wholly smothered.
Jauharah turned her head slightly, kissing his scarred knuckles. His hands trembled. Could these be the same hands that had dealt such death? 'You're shaking,' she whispered.
Barca made to pull away, his eyes clouding as he realized what he was doing. 'I shouldn't. .'
She laced her arms around the Phoenician's neck and pulled him closer, covering his lips with her own. Barca returned her kiss awkwardly, almost chaste. His body vibrated, tremors coursing down his spine, his legs. His arms quaked. His body fought a war against itself. Primal desire against iron discipline. He disengaged Jauharah's arms. 'I cannot.'
She hugged herself; her cheeks crimsoned. 'I'm sorry. I I assumed you had the same feelings for me.'
'That's not it.' He looked away.
'Is it my age? The fact I was a slave?'
'No!' Barca said sharply. 'No. It's nothing like that. You're one of the few women I have admired. You're strong. Strong enough to hold your own against any man. It's … I … I don't want to hurt you should something go wrong.'
The image of a young wife and her Greek lover flashed in Jauharah's mind. He was terrified the past would happen all over again. Slowly, she cupped his face in her hands, feeling the muscles of his jaw twitch. Jauharah smiled as she spoke. 'You're not the same man you were then, Hasdrabal. If you were, I wouldn't be here. You trusted me once. I trust you now. I trust you …'
Jauharah's words, her touch, melted the hardness in his dark eyes; she felt his body relax. Their lips met again, this time sharing an exquisite, languid kiss that remained unbroken as they sank down on the bed.
For some time, the only sounds that escaped their throats were the sighs and moans of passion unleashed.
15
Sais sweltered under a sickle moon.
Nebmaatra tossed in his bed, exhausted yet unable to find comfort in the arms of sleep. Outside, heat radiated from the stone of the palace walls. Inside, humidity made the darkness unbearable. Forges and foundries added their din to the sultry night as smiths worked in shifts to turn out the paraphernalia of war: whole forests of spears; arrows enough to blacken the sky; swords, helmets, and corselets of burnished bronze; shields of thick hippopotamus hide. More weapons than Nebmaatra had seen in his lifetime, enough to outfit a vast host, and all of it bound for the eastern Delta, for Pelusium.
Nebmaatra sat upright in bed, sleep an impossibility. He rose and padded over to a small table, pouring a basin of water from a bronze ewer. Gently, he laved his face, scalp, and neck. A dull ache spread from his eyes and threaded down to the muscles of his shoulders. Nebmaatra felt a subtle charge in the air, akin to that moment of calm before lightning struck. Since Pharaoh's passing, chaos ruled the streets of Sais. The city's famed linen weavers abandoned their looms; the stone-cutters and artisans cast aside their half-realized statues. Men's thoughts should have turned to the defense of their land, to preserving their culture from barbaric invaders. Instead, neighbor accused neighbor of harboring Persian sympathies. Mobs hunted phantom spies through the marketplaces and questioned loyalties at spear-point. Even the gods voiced their displeasure, through portent and prophecy. At Shedet, in the Faiyum, the priests of Sobek found the sacred crocodile dead in a lotus pool. At Thebes, rain fell on the temple of Amon. At Yeb, near the first cataract, ram-headed statues of Khnum cried tears of blood. Fear burrowed into the dike of Egypt and weakened an already decaying bulwark.
A timid knock at Nebmaatra's door presaged its opening. He turned as a young soldier crept across the threshold then stopped, startled to see his commander awake. He stammered his apologies.
'What is it, boy?'
'It … It's Pharaoh, lord,' the young Calasirian said, shaking, his scaled cuirass clashing like a dancer's cymbals. 'He's vanished from his rooms again.'
Nebmaatra swore, an expansive, all-encompassing wrath that gave sacrilege new meaning. The young soldier paled as gods were invoked and blasphemies spoken, things best not said by the dark of night. Pharaoh's rooms lay at the heart of the palace, relentlessly guarded by his Calasirians and attended by an army of servants. Psammetichus, like his father, preferred to sleep alone, visited on occasion by wives and concubines who always departed after they took their pleasure. This night, he had given orders not to be disturbed. Now Nebmaatra knew why. 'Rouse the Guard,' he ordered. 'Fetch my armor. He can't have been gone too long.'
The palace came alive as the Calasirian Guard turned out in full panoply. Slaves and nobles peered out, wondering at the sudden commotion. Torches flared. Nebmaatra's voice roared orders, detailing squads to search every nook and cranny of the palace and its grounds. 'Detain anyone who seems suspicious. Find Gobartes and keep him under guard until ordered otherwise.' Scribes, servants, and soldiers scattered like frightened birds before the commander's fury.
Neith's temple lay atop a rounded knoll, surrounded by dikes and canals that shunted the Nile's flood waters into the fields. The lands around the temple formed a bureaucratic hub, an age-old infrastructure that grew and hardened around the throne as calcium around stone. Offices and archives; granaries and storehouses, it was a microcosm of the city itself where priest and scribe worked in tandem to turn Pharaoh's will into reality.
Tonight, Pharaoh's will was to be left alone to ponder the past, present and future in relative solitude. Clad in a short kilt, a linen cloak thrown over his shoulders, Psammetichus walked barefoot beneath huge ornamental pylons, his eyes drawn to the mammoth figures of the goddess etched into the stone. Neith, patron goddess of Sais and protector of the royal house, was the Primeval Woman: hard and merciless to Egypt's foes, yet nurturing in her guise as mother of Sobek. Warriors prayed to her for strength in battle as women did for strength in motherhood. Who needed her more?
Psammetichus passed through the gate and into the temple courtyard. Here, ancient sycamores and willows lined a long reflection pool. The scent of lilies hung in the heavy air. Chapels flanked the pool, some small and austere, others like miniature temples with colonnades and galleries and monumental statues. They were his ancestors, the kings of his line: Wahibre Psammetichus, who threw off the yoke of Assyrian rule and reunified Egypt; Wehemibre Nekau, the canal-builder; Neferibre Psammetichus, who brought Nubia back under Egypt's thumb; Haaibre Apries, the hated. The tomb closest to him he knew well — it belonged to his father.
