allowed Memnon to assume the duty that was rightfully mine. I hid with the dead, when I should have been with the living who needed me more. I have ever been a coward.
There was no coffin to hold Tanus' mummified body. I would make him one when at last we reached the fleet at Qebui. I had the Ethiopian women weave a long basket for him. The mesh of the weave was so fine that it resembled linen. It would hold water like a pot of fired clay.
WE CARRIED HIM DOWN FROM THE mountains. His Shilluk easily bore the weight of his desiccated body. They fought each other for the honour. Sometimes they sang their wild songs of mourning as we wound our way through the gorges and over the windswept passes. At other times they sang the fighting songs that Tanus had taught them.
I walked beside his bier all that weary way. The rains broke on the peaks and drenched us. They flooded the fords so that we had to swim ropes across. In my tent at night, Tanus' reed coffin stood beside my own cot. I spoke aloud to him in the darkness, as if he could hear and answer me, just as we had done in the old days.
At last we descended through the last pass, and the great plains lay before us. As we approached Qebui, my mistress came to meet our sad caravan. She rode on the footplate of the chariot behind Prince Memnon.
As they came towards us through the grassland, I ordered the Shilluk bearers to lay Tanus' reed coffin under the spreading branches of a giant giraffe acacia. My mistress dismounted from the chariot and went to the coffin. She placed one hand upon it, and bowed her head in silence.
I was shocked to see what ravages sorrow had wrought upon her. There were streaks of grey in her hair, and her eyes were dulled. The sparkle and the zest had gone out of them. I realized that the days of her youth and her great beauty were gone for ever. She was a lonely and tragic figure. Her bereavement was so evident, that no person who looked upon her now could doubt that she was a widow.
I went to her side to warn her. 'Mistress, you must not make your grief clear for all to see. They must never know that he was more than just your friend and the general of your armies. For the sake of his memory and the honour that he held so dear, hold back your tears.'
'I have no tears left,' she answered me quietly. 'My grief is all cried out. Only you and I will ever know the truth.'
We placed Tanus' humble reed coffin in the hold of the Breath ofHorus, beside the magnificent gold coffin of Phar-oah. I stayed at the side of my mistress, as I had promised Tanus I would, until the worst agonies of her mourning had subsided into' the dull eternal pain that would never leave her again. Then, at her orders, I returned to the valley of the tomb to supervise the completion of Pharaoh's sepulchre.
Obedient to my mistress, I also selected a site further down the valley for the tomb of Tanus. Though I did my very best with the material and craftsmen available to me, Tanus' resting-place would be the hut of a peasant compared to the funerary palace of Pharaoh Mamose.
An army of craftsmen had laboured all these years to complete the magnificent murals that decorated the passages and the subterranean chambers of the king's tomb. The store-rooms of the tomb were crammed with all the treasure that we had carried with us from Thebes.
Tanus' tomb had been built in haste. He had accumulated no treasure in his lifetime of service to the state and the crown. I painted scenes upon the walls that depicted the events of his earthly existence, his hunting of mighty beasts and his battles with the red pretender and the Hyk-sos, and the last assault on the fortress of Adbar Seged. However, I dared not show his nobler accomplishments, his love for my mistress and his steadfast friendship to me. The love of a queen is treason, the friendship of a slave is degrading.
When at last it was completed, I stood alone in Tanus' modest tomb, where he would spend all eternity, and I was suddenly consumed by anger that this was all I could do for him. In my eyes he was more a man than any pharaoh who had ever worn the double crown. That crown could have been his, it should have been his, but he had spurned it. To me he was more a king than ever Pharaoh had been.
It was then that the thought first dawned upon me. It was so outrageous that I thrust it from me. Even to contemplate it seriously was a terrible treason, and offence in the eyes of men and the gods.
However, over the weeks that followed, the thought kept creeping back into my mind. I owed Tanus so much, and Pharaoh so little. Even if I was damned to perdition, it would be a fair price to pay. Tanus had given me more than that over my lifetime.
I could not accomplish it alone. I needed help, but who was there to turn to? I could not enlist either Queen Lostris or the prince. My mistress was bound by the oath she had sworn to Pharaoh, and Memnon did not know which of the two men was his natural father. I could not tell him without breaking my oath to Tanus.
In the end there was one person only who had loved Tanus almost as much as I had, who feared neither god nor man, and who had the brute physical strength I lacked.
'By Seth's unwiped backside!' Lord Kratas roared with laughter when I revealed my plan to him. 'No one else but you could have dreamed up such a scheme. You are the biggest rogue alive, Taita, but I love you for giving me this last chance to honour Tanus.'
The two of us planned it carefully. I even went to the lengths of sending the guards at the entrance to the hold of the Breath of Horus a jug of wine heavily laced with the powder of the sleeping-flower.
When Kratas and I at last entered the hold of the ship where the two coffins lay, my resolve wavered. I sensed that the Ka of Pharaoh Mamose watched me from the shadows and that his baleful spirit would follow me all the days of my life, seeking vengeance for this sacrilege.
Big, bluff Kratas had no such qualms, and he set to work with such a will that several times during the course of the night, I had to caution him against the noise he was making as we opened the golden lids to the royal coffin and lifted out the mummy of the king.
Tanus was a bigger man than Pharaoh, but fortunately the coffin-makers had left us some space, and Tanus' body had shrunk during the embalming. Even so, we were obliged to unwind several layers of his wrappings before he fitted snugly into the great golden cask.
I mumbled an apology to Pharaoh Mamose as we lifted him into the humble wooden coffin, painted on the outside with a likeness of the Great Lion of Egypt. There was room to spare, and before we sealed the lid we packed this with the linen bandages that we had unwrapped from Tanus.
AFTER THE RAINS HAD PASSED AND THE cool season of the year returned, my mistress ordered the funeral procession to leave Qebui and set out for the valley of the tomb.
