What few villagers remained eyed her as she passed with a mixture of curiosity and mistrust. They sat in doorways, on benches, their hands busy with such make-work as they could find, mending nets and sharpening copper hooks. Most were aged and infirm; their reluctant kin had left them behind, taking everything else of value and vanishing into the waste. To Jauharah, these elders were the true riches of Raphia: men and women with a lifetime of experience to draw upon; a lifetime of tales and stories. Barca called them dull, but their simple wisdom comforted her.
She crossed the bare patch of packed and rutted earth that served as Raphia's bazaar, pausing by the tent where the soldiers took their meals. They sat together in twos and threes, hollow-eyed, shattered from heat and exhaustion, eating bread and dried figs and drinking water.
'Are there any wounded among you?' she asked.
They shook their heads. 'We were posted off to the north,' one of them offered, scratching at a scab forming on his grimy forearm. 'Near the boulders called the Tits … begging your pardon. The attack came on the main road. Arrow storm. I thank Horus I am not a Persian.' A dozen heads bobbed in assent.
Jauharah set her basket down and checked a bandaged forehead. The soldier winced as her fingers lifted the edge of the linen. 'Have the orderlies clean that,' she told him softly. 'And the rest of you keep water handy. This heat is as deadly as a spear or a sword.' They nodded, smiling, as she caught up her basket and continued down to the sea.
At the verge of the beach Jauharah shaded her eyes. The Atum lay down the strand beside a palisade of upright oars, canted to expose her hull. Under Senmut's guidance, half the sailors scraped and cleaned the planking, the surf washing at their ankles. The rest worked at patching sail and mending rope. Jauharah could hear snatches of song that faded into coarse laughter. A few noticed her, glancing up from their work. That sense of menace she had felt so strongly after boarding the ship was gone, replaced with an almost sisterly affection. She had saved the lives of several of their comrades along the road from Gaza; that gave her worth in their eyes.
She moved up the beach, away from the sailors, sand crunching underfoot. She passed several inviting spots before choosing one screened by a spur of worn rock. The pool, a depression high up on the beach, away from the crash and hiss of the breakers, was fed by a brackish spring; it had a natural sandstone curb, and its bottom was easily visible through the crystalline water.
She stripped off her filthy shift and tossed it aside, enjoying the feel of the sun and wind on her naked flesh. Carefully, she slipped into the pool. The water, waist-deep and warm, had a wholesome feel that drove away the darkness of the past few days. She washed her hair, scrubbed her body, and shaved herself as best she could with her small razor. Afterward, wrapped in a feeling of cleanliness, she floated in the pool, her eyes closed.
'You're almost purring,' a voice said, soft from exhaustion.
Far from being surprised, Jauharah opened an eye, smiling. Barca sat near the pool's edge. 'Every time I turn around,' she said, 'I catch you watching me. Why?'
'Better I keep an eye on you than someone else.'
'That's not an answer,' she said, playfully splashing water over his foot. 'At least, not an answer that would set a woman's heart to fluttering.'
Barca rested his elbows on his knees, cradled his head in his hands. He tried to knuckle away an ache behind his eyes. 'How soon can you move the wounded to the ship?' he asked, his voice little more than a whisper.
Jauharah pursed her lips. 'Some of them should not be moved, but if needs must, it can be done in two hours at most. Why?„
Barca exhaled. 'We can do no more here. It's time we see to getting ourselves to safety before our escape can be blocked. I fear I've cut it too close. The Persians' probes are becoming too uniform, as if they have found a way around the hills and are trying to divert our attention. If we stay longer, Raphia will become our tomb.'
'What of the Phoenicians?'
'I'm too exhausted to worry about them.' He closed his eyes. Jauharah could see lines of concern etching his face. He had not slept more than two hours at a stretch since leaving Gaza; he led every ambush, sometimes two or three a day. From what she could tell he ate sparingly. He was eroding before her eyes, wearing away like a boulder in a raging river.
'Come, let me bathe you,' she said. Her tone left no room for argument.
Barca stood, stripped off his armor and kilt, and drove his sheathed sword point-first into the sand. With a groan, he sank into the pool. Jauharah floated up behind him and laved water onto his shoulders and back. He closed his eyes, going limp in her care. Once his body was clean, Jauharah wet his hair and washed it with aromatic oil, massaging his scalp with gentle fingers. After she rinsed his hair, Jauharah urged him to lay back, his head resting on her breasts, as she deftly trimmed the wild edges of his beard. She finished, intertwining her body with his in the sun-warmed water.
'It's been years since a woman …' Barca trailed off. Jauharah said nothing, her fingers brushing a loose strand of hair off his forehead. His brow furrowed. 'This morning, as we ambushed the Persians, I had no rage, no fury. I felt,' Barca chose his words carefully, 'sorrow. For their loss, for what I had to do to them to insure your safety, and mine. What you do to me … what I feel is dangerous for a man in my position.'
'What do you feel?'
Barca remained silent for a long while. Jauharah could tell he was engaged in something he rarely did. He was searching deep inside himself. Finally, he spoke. 'There is a small voice inside my head that curses me for a fool, that chides me for trading my edge in battle for a few hours of pleasure. Before that night in Gaza, I lived on hatred, on rage, on a dark deed I thought unforgivable. Now …' Barca lapsed into silence, his brows knotted, his eyes turned inward.
'Do you regret that night in Gaza?' Jauharah said, the bitterness in her voice surprising even her. 'I do not wish to be a burden to you, physically or mentally.'
Barca silenced her with a kiss. 'It is not you or our time together that I regret. It is my life before Gaza. Understand, I lived as a dead man. I breathed, and my heart beat and blood pumped. But I was only passing time until violence separated my body from my ka. I've wasted the last twenty years on regret. I don't plan to waste what time I have left.'
Barca kissed her again with a tender passion; a long kiss accompanied by stroking fingers and caresses. Jauharah moaned and held him tight. It was not a furious ardor that drove their lovemaking, but a gentle, insistent ache inflamed by touch and the nearness of their bodies. For a time, both succeeded in forgetting the world around them.
After a while the Phoenician stirred. 'We'd better be getting back,' he said, glancing at the sun. It had passed its zenith, morning giving way to afternoon.
'If only all of this could pass us by,' she sighed. 'Just one day and night together without the pall of violence hanging over us is all I ask.'
'Perhaps that day will come,' Barca said. 'But not today. Not now.' He rose from the water and helped her out. Drop lets of moisture shimmered against her brown skin as she toweled off and slipped into her shift. She ran a comb through her hair. The sun would do the rest.
Meanwhile, Barca went about rearming. Jauharah watched in fascination as a metamorphosis occurred; a transformation. Kilt, sandals, greaves, corselet, each element of armor donned in its turn, as a mason sets individual stones in a wall. Finally, the carapace of bronze, so like the shell of a crab, that protected more than the flesh within — it camouflaged the vulnerability of the man who wore it. Barca glanced up, and Jauharah saw his transformation as more than physical. His eyes reflected the cold, unyielding strength of the bronze. In its embrace he would have no doubts, no concerns. His actions would be beneficial to his allies; swift and deadly to his foes. In that, Jauharah found a measure of comfort.
'Jauharah,' Barca repeated. 'Are you ready?'
She blinked, smiling. She had been so lost in thought that she did not realize he was speaking. 'Yes.' He nodded, and they set off together.
Gulls wheeled overhead, their mournful cries lost amid the crash and hiss of breakers. In the distance, Senmut and his sailors knocked the canting beams aside, floating the Atum in the surf. Their hurrahs were faint.
'Who is that?' Jauharah said, pointing at a figure sprinting toward them.
'Huy,' Barca murmured.
The young soldier, his corselet dulled even in the brilliant afternoon sun, crunched through the damp sand,
