As soon as our caravan had crossed the causeway and pulled into the central courtyard of Adbar Seged, Masara was whisked away by her female gaolers into the labyrinth of stone passageways, and I was led to my new quarters which abutted those of Arkoun.
I was allotted a single stone cell. It was dark and draughty. The open fireplace blackened the walls with soot and gave out little heat. Though I wore the woollen robes of the land, I was never warm in Adbar Seged. How I longed for the sunlight on the Nile and the bright oasis of my very Egypt! I sat on those wind-swept battlements and pined for my family, for Memnon and Tanus, for my little princesses, but most of all for my mistress. Sometimes I woke in the night with the tears chilling my face, and I had to cover my head with my sheepskin blanket, so that Arkoun would not hear my sobs through the thick stone wall.
Often I pleaded with him to release me.
'But why do you want to leave me, Taita?'
'I want to go back to my family.'
'I am your family now,' he laughed. 'I am your father.'
I made a wager with him. If I won a hundred successive boards of dom from him, he agreed that he would let me go and give me an escort back down the Nile to the great plains. When I won the hundredth game, he chuckled and shook his head at my naivety.
'Did I say a hundred? I think not. Surely it was a thousand?' He turned to his henchmen. 'Was the bargain a thousand?'
'A thousand!' they chanted. 'It was a thousand!'
They all thought it a grand joke. When in a pique I refused to play another board with Arkoun, he hung me naked from the walls of the citadel by my heels until I squealed for him to set up the board.
When Arkoun saw me naked, he laughed and prodded me. 'You may have a way with the dom board, but it seems you have lost your own stones, Egyptian.' This was the first time since my capture that my physical mutilation had been revealed. Once again, men called me 'eunuch', much to my shame and mortification.
However, in the end the consequences were beneficial. If I had been a man entire, they would never have let me go to Masara.
THEY CAME FOR ME IN THE NIGHT AND led me shivering through the passages to Masara's cell. The room was lit by a dim oil lamp and smelled of vomit. The girl was curled on a straw mattress in the centre of the floor, with her vomit puddled on the stone floor beside her. She was in terrible pain, groaning and weeping and holding her stomach.
I set to work immediately, and examined her carefully. I was afraid that I would find her stomach as hard as a stone, the symptom of the swelling and bursting of the gut that would drench her insides with the contents of her intestines. There was no remedy for this condition. Not even I, with all my skills, could save her, if this was her affliction.
To my great relief I found her stomach warm and soft. There was no fever in her blood. I continued my examination, and though she groaned and screamed with agony when I touched her, I could not find any cause for her condition. I was puzzled and I sat back to think about it. Then I realized that although her face was contorted with agony, she was watching me with a candid gaze.
'This is worse than I feared.' I turned to her two female attendants and spoke in Geez. 'If I am to save her, I must have my chest. Fetch it immediately.'
They scrambled for the door, and I lowered my head to hers and whispered, 'You are a clever girl and a good actress. Did you tickle your throat with a feather?'
She smiled up at me and whispered back, 'I could think of no other way to meet you. When the women told me that you had learned to speak Geez, I knew that we could help each other.'
'I hope that is possible.'
'I have been so lonely. Even to speak to a friend will be a joy to me.' Her trust was so spontaneous that I was touched. 'Perhaps between us we will find a way to escape from this dreadful place.'
At that moment we heard the women returning, their voices echoing along the outside passage. Masara seized my hand.
'You are my friend, aren't you? You will come to me again?'
'I am and I will.'
'Quickly, tell me before you must go. What was his name?'
'Who?'
'The one who was with you on that first day beside the river. The one who looks like a young god.'
'His name is Memnon.'
'Memnon!' She repeated it with a peculiar reverence. 'It is a beautiful name. It suits him.'
The women burst into the room, and Masara clutched her healthy little belly and groaned as though she were at the point of death. While I clucked and shook my head with worry for the benefit of her women, I mixed a tonic of herbs that would do her some good, and told them that I would return in the morning.
In the morning Masara's condition had improved, and I was able to spend a little longer with her. Only one of the women was present, and she soon became bored and wandered away to the far side of the room. Masara and I exchanged a few quiet words.
'Memnon said something to me. I could not understand. What was it he said?'
'He said, 'I will come back for you. Be brave. I will come back for you.' '
'He could not mean that. He does not know me. He had met me only fleetingly.' She shook her head, and tears filled her eyes. 'Do you think he meant it, Taita?' There was a haunting plea in her tone that moved me, and I could
