Читать книгу Desert God - Уилбур Смит, Wilbur Smith - Страница 7

Aton blinked his little eyes that were set deep in their rolls of fat, and then raised them from the bao board laid out between us. He turned his gaze on the two young princesses of the royal house of Tamose who were disporting themselves naked in the limpid water of the lagoon.

‘They are no longer children,’ he remarked casually, without a trace of lascivious interest in the subject. We sat facing each other under an open barrazza thatched with palm fronds beside one of the lagoons in the backwaters of the great Nile River.

I knew that his reference to the girls was an attempt to distract my attention from his next move of the bao stones. Aton does not enjoy losing, so he is not overly scrupulous about how he wins.

Aton has always been high on the list of my oldest and dearest friends. Like me he is a eunuch and was once a slave. During the period of his slavery, and long before he reached puberty, his master had singled him out for his exceptional intellect and his acute mental powers. He wished to nurture and concentrate these gifts; and prevent them from being diluted by the distractions of his libido. Aton was an extremely valuable property and so his master employed the most renowned physician in Egypt to perform the castration. His master is long dead, but Aton has risen high above his slave status. He is now the chamberlain of the royal palace of Pharaoh at Thebes, but he is also a master of spies who administers a network of informers and clandestine agents across the civilized world. There is only one organization that exceeds his, and that is my own. In this, as in most things, we are in friendly competition with each other and very little gives us greater pleasure and satisfaction than to score a coup, the one over the other.

I enjoy his company immensely. He amuses and often surprises me with his good advice and perception. On occasion he can test my skill on the bao board. He is usually generous with his praise. But mostly he acts as a foil to my own genius.

Now both of us studied Bekatha, who was the younger of the royal princesses by almost two years, although you might not have guessed that fact, for she was tall for her age and already her breasts were beginning to swell and in the cool lagoon waters her nipples perked out jauntily. She was lithe, agile and she laughed readily. On the other hand she was possessed of a mercurial temper. Her features were nobly chiselled, her nose narrow and straight, her jaw strong and rounded and her lips finely arched. Her hair was thick and sparkled with glints of copper in the sunlight. She had inherited that from her father. Although she had not yet shown the red flower of womanhood, I knew that her time was not far off.

I love her, but truth to tell I love her elder sister a shade better.

Tehuti was the senior and the more beautiful of the two sisters. Whenever I looked upon her it seemed to me that I was seeing again her mother. Queen Lostris had been the one great love of my life. Yes, I had loved her as a man loves a woman. For unlike my friend Aton, I was gelded only after I had grown to full manhood and known the joy of a woman’s body. True it is that my love for Queen Lostris was never consummated for I was castrated before she was born, but it was all the more intense for never having been assuaged. I had nursed her as a child and had shepherded her through her long and joyous life, counselling her and guiding her, giving all of myself to her without stinting. In the end I held her in my arms as she died.

Before she went on into the underworld Lostris whispered to me something which I will never forget: ‘I have loved only two men in my life. You, Taita, were one of them.’

Those were the sweetest words I have ever heard spoken.

I planned and supervised the building of her royal tomb and laid her once beautiful but then wasted body in it, and I wished that I could go with her into the nether world. However, I knew that I could not; for I had to stay and take care of her children as I had cared for her. Truly, this has not been an onerous burden, for my life has been enriched by this sacred charge.

At sixteen years of age Tehuti was already a woman fully fledged. Her skin was lustrous and unblemished. Her arms and her legs were slim and elegant as those of a dancer, or the limbs of her father’s great war bow which I had carved for him, and which I had placed on the lid of his sarcophagus before I sealed his tomb.

Tehuti’s hips were full but her waist was narrow as the neck of a wine jug. Her breasts were round and taut. The dense golden curls that covered her head were a gleaming glory. Her eyes were as green as her mother’s had been. She was lovely beyond the telling of it; and her smile wrung my heart whenever she turned it upon me. Her nature was gentle, slow to anger but fearless and strong-willed once she was roused.

I love her almost as much as I still love her mother.

‘You have done well with them, Taita.’ Aton gave praise unstintingly. ‘They are the treasures which may yet save our very Egypt from the barbarian.’

In this, as with many other things, Aton and I were in full accord. This was the true reason why the two of us had come to this remote and secluded location; although everyone else in the palace, including Pharaoh himself, was convinced that we had met here to continue our endless rivalry across the bao board.

I did not respond at once to his remark, but I dropped my eyes to the board. Aton had made his latest move while I was still watching the girls. He was the most skilled player of this sublime game in Egypt, which was as good as saying ‘in the civilized world’. That is excepting for me, of course. I can usually best him in three games out of four.

Now, at a glance, I saw that this game would be one of my three. His last move had been ill considered. The layout of his stones was now unbalanced. It was one of the few flaws in his game that often, when he had convinced himself that victory was within his grasp, he threw caution to the winds and disregarded the rule of seven stones. Then he tended to concentrate his full attack from his south castle and allowed me to wrest control of either the east or the west from him. This time it was the east. I did not need a second invitation. I struck like a cobra.

He rocked back on his stool as he evaluated my surprise move, and when at last the sheer genius of it struck him, his face darkened with outrage and his voice choked, ‘I think that I hate you, Taita. And if I don’t, then I certainly ought to do so.’

‘I was lucky, old friend.’ I tried not to gloat. ‘Anyway, it’s only a game.’

He puffed out his cheeks with indignation. ‘Of all the inane things I have ever heard you say, Taita, that is the most crass. It is not only a game. It is the veritable reason for living.’ He really was angry.

I reached down under the table for the copper wine jug and I refilled his cup. It was a superb wine, the very best in all of Egypt, which I had taken directly from the cellars beneath Pharaoh’s palace. Aton puffed out his cheeks again and tried to bolster his anger and affront, but as of their own accord his plump fingers closed around the handle of his cup and he raised it to his lips. He swallowed twice, his eyes closed with pleasure. When he lowered the vessel he sighed.

‘Perhaps you are right, Taita. There are other good reasons for living.’ He began to pack the bao stones into their leather drawstring bags. ‘So what do you hear from the north? Astonish me once again with the extent of your intelligence.’

We had come at last to the true purpose of this meeting. The north was always the danger.

Over one hundred years ago mighty Egypt was split by treason and rebellion. The Red Pretender, the false Pharaoh – I deliberately do not speak his name; rather may it be cursed through all eternity – this traitor rebelled against the true Pharaoh and seized all the land to the north of Asyut. Our very Egypt was plunged into a century of civil war.

Then in his turn the Red Pretender’s heir was overwhelmed by a savage and warlike tribe that emerged from the northern steppes beyond the Sinai. These barbarians swept through Egypt conquering all of it by means of a weapon which we had never known existed: the horse and chariot. Once they had defeated the Red Pretender and captured the northern part of Egypt, from the Middle Sea to Asyut, these Hyksos turned upon us in the south.

We true Egyptians had no defence against them. We were driven from our own lands, and were forced to retreat southwards beyond the cataracts of the Nile at Elephantine and into the wilderness at the end of the world. We languished there while my mistress Queen Lostris rebuilt our army.

My part in this regeneration was not altogether insignificant. I am not by nature a boastful man; however, in this instance I can state without fear of contradiction that without me to guide and counsel my mistress and her son, the Crown Prince Memnon, who is now the Pharaoh Tamose, they would never have achieved their purpose.

Among my numerous other services to her I built the first chariots with spoked wheels that were lighter and faster than those of the Hyksos, which had only solid wooden wheels. Then I found the horses to draw them. When we were ready Pharaoh Tamose, who had now grown to manhood, led our new army down again through the cataracts, northwards into Egypt.

The leader of the Hyksos invaders called himself King Salitis, but he was no king. He was at the best only a robber baron, and an outlaw. However, the army he commanded still outnumbered us Egyptians almost two to one, and it was well equipped and ferocious.

But we caught them off guard and, at Thebes, fought a mighty battle with them. We smashed their chariots and slaughtered their men. We sent them scurrying, in rout, back northwards. They left ten thousand corpses and two thousand wrecked chariots on the battlefield.

However, they inflicted heavy losses upon our gallant troops, so that we were unable to pursue and completely destroy them. Since then the Hyksos have been skulking in the delta of the Nile.

King Salitis, that old plunderer, is dead now. He did not die on the battlefield from a blow by a good Egyptian sword, as would have been just and proper. He died in bed of old age, surrounded by a horde of his hideous wives and their ghastly offspring. Amongst them was Beon, his eldest son. This Beon now calls himself King Beon, Pharaoh of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt. The truth is that he is nothing but a freebooting killer, worse even than his evil father. My spies regularly report to me how Beon is steadily rebuilding the Hyksos army which we so grievously wounded at the battle of Thebes.

These reports are disturbing because we are having great difficulty procuring the raw materials to make good the losses that we suffered in that same battle. Our land-locked southern kingdom is cut off from the great Middle Sea and from trade with the other civilized nations and city states of the world, which are rich in leather, timber, copper, antimony, tin and the other sinews of war which we lack. We are also short of manpower. We need allies.

On the other hand our enemies, the Hyksos, have fine harbours in the delta where the Nile enters the Middle Sea. Trade flows into these uninterrupted. I also know through my spies that the Hyksos are seeking to forge alliances with other warlike nations.

Aton and I were meeting in this isolated spot to discuss and ponder these problems. The survival of our very Egypt was being held on the point of a dagger. Aton and I had on many occasions discussed all this at length, but now we were ready to make the final decisions to lay before Pharaoh.

The royal princesses had other plans. They had seen Aton pick up the bao stones and they took this as a signal that they were now able to command my full attention. I am devoted to them both but they are very demanding. They charged out of the lagoon splashing water in all directions and raced each other to get to me first. Bekatha is the baby but she is very quick and determined. She will do almost anything to obtain what she wants. She beat Tehuti by a length and dived into my lap, cold and wet from the lagoon.

‘I love you, Tata,’ she cried as she threw her arms around my neck and pressed her sodden mop of red hair to my cheek. ‘Tell us a story, Tata.’

Bested in the race to reach me, Tehuti had to accept the less desirable position at my feet. Gracefully she lowered her naked and dripping body to the ground, and hugged my legs to her breast while she rested her chin on my knees and looked up into my face. ‘Yes please, Tata. Tell us about our mama and how beautiful and clever she was.’

‘I must speak to Uncle Aton first,’ I protested.

‘Oh. All right then. But don’t be too long,’ Bekatha chipped in. ‘It’s so boring.’

‘Not too long, I promise.’ I looked back at Aton and switched smoothly into Hyksosian. Both of us are fluent in the language of our deadly enemy.

I make it my business to know my enemy. I have a way with words and languages. I have had many years since the return to Thebes to learn. Aton had not joined the exodus to Nubia. He was not an adventurous soul. So he had remained in Egypt and he had suffered under the Hyksos. However, he had learned everything they had to teach, including their language. Neither of the princesses understood a word of it.

‘Oh, I hate you when you speak that dreadful jargon.’ Bekatha pouted, and Tehuti agreed with her.

‘If you love us you will speak Egyptian, Taita.’

I hugged Bekatha and stroked Tehuti’s lovely head. Nevertheless I continued speaking to Aton in the language that the girls so bitterly deplored. ‘Ignore the babbling of infants. Proceed, old friend.’

Aton smothered his grin and went on, ‘So we are agreed then, Taita. We need allies and we need trade with them. At the same time we have to deny both of these to the Hyksos.’

I was tempted to make a sarcastic reply, but I had already annoyed him enough across the bao board. So I nodded seriously. ‘As usual you have come to the point unerringly and you have stated the problem succinctly. Allies and trade. Very well, what do we have to trade, Aton?’

‘We have the gold from our mines in Nubia which we discovered while we were in exile beyond the cataracts.’ Aton had never left Egypt, but to hear him tell it he might have been the one who led the exodus. I smiled inwardly but maintained a serious expression as he went on, ‘Although the yellow metal is not as valuable as silver, yet men also lust for it. With the quantities that Pharaoh has piled in his treasury we can readily buy friends and allies.’

I nodded in agreement, although I knew that the amount of Pharaoh’s treasure was greatly over-estimated by Aton and many like him who are not as close to the throne as I am. I went on to enlarge on the subject. ‘However, do not forget the produce of the rich black loam that Mother Nile casts up upon her banks with every annual inundation. Men must eat, Aton. The Cretans, the Sumerians and the Hellenic city states have little arable land. They are always hard pressed to find corn to feed their people. We have corn in abundance,’ I reminded him.

‘Aye, Taita. We have corn, and we also have horses to trade; we breed the finest warhorses in the world. And we have other things even more rare and precious.’ Aton paused delicately, and he glanced at the lovely child I was cuddling and the other who sat at my knee.

Nothing else needed to be said on this subject. The Cretans and the Sumerians of the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers were our nearest and most powerful neighbours. Both of these peoples tended to be swarthy and sable-haired. Their rulers find the fair-haired and light-skinned women of the Aegean tribes and of the royal house of Egypt desirable. However, the pale and insipid Hellenic women cannot stand comparison with our glowing Nilotic jewels.

The parents of my two princesses were Tanus, he of the fiery red curls, and the bright blonde Queen Lostris. They had bred true and the beauty of their two girls was becoming renowned across the entire world. Ambassadors from afar had already made the onerous journeys across wide deserts and deep waters to the palace of Thebes to convey delicately to Pharaoh Tamose the interests of their masters in making a marital and martial alliance with the House of Tamose. The Sumerian King Nimrod and the Supreme Minos of Crete were two of those who had sent envoys.

At my behest, Pharaoh had received both these ambassadors kindly. He had accepted the handsome gifts of silver and cedar wood that they presented. Then he had listened sympathetically to their offers of marriage to one or both of Tamose’s sisters, but then Pharaoh had explained that the two girls were still too young to contract a marriage and that they should speak again on this subject after both girls had reached maturity. That had been some time ago, and now circumstances had changed.

At the time Pharaoh had discussed with me the possible alliance between Egypt and Sumeria or Crete. I had tactfully pointed out to him that Crete would make a more desirable ally than would the Sumerians.

Firstly the Sumerians were not a seafaring race and, although they could field a powerful army well equipped with cavalry and chariots, they did not possess a navy of any distinction. I reminded Pharaoh that our southern Egypt had no access to the Middle Sea. Our Hyksos enemies controlled the northern reaches of the Nile and we were essentially a landlocked country.

The Sumerians also had limited access to the sea and their fleet was puny compared to those of other nations, such as the Cretans or even the Mauretanian people in the west. The Sumerians were always reluctant to risk the sea passage with heavily laden ships. They feared both the pirates and the turbulent weather. The overland route between our countries was also fraught with difficulties.

The Hyksos controlled the isthmus that runs between the Middle and Red Seas and connects Egypt to the Sinai Desert in the north. The Sumerians would be forced to march across the Sinai Desert much further south and then take ship across the Red Sea to reach us. This route would present so many problems to their army, not least the lack of water and the dearth of shipping on the Red Sea, that it might prove to be impossible.

What I had previously proposed to Pharaoh, and which I now outlined for Aton, was a treaty between our very Egypt and the Supreme Minos of Crete. ‘The Supreme Minos’ was the title of the Cretan hereditary ruler. He was the equivalent of our Pharaoh. To suggest that he was more powerful than our own Pharaoh would be treason. Suffice it to say that his fleet was reputed to comprise over ten thousand fighting and trading galleys of such an advanced design that no other ship could outrun them or outfight them.

We have what the Cretans want: corn, gold and lovely brides. The Cretans have what we need: the most formidable fleet of fighting ships in existence with which to blockade the Hyksos ports in the mouth of the Nile Delta; and in which to convoy the Sumerian army down the southern shores of the Middle Sea and thus catch the Hyksos in a deadly pincer movement which would crush their army between our forces.

‘A fine plan!’ Aton applauded me. ‘An almost infallible plan. Except for one small almost insignificant detail which you have overlooked, Taita my old darling.’ He was grinning slyly, savouring his revenge for the drubbing I had just given him on the bao board. I have never been a vindictive person, but in this instance I could not restrain myself from having a little bit more innocent fun at Aton’s expense. I contrived an expression of dismay.

‘Oh, don’t tell me that, please! I have thought it all out so carefully. Where is the fault in my plan?’

‘You are too late. The Supreme Minos of Crete has already contracted a secret alliance with King Beon of the Hyksos.’ Aton smacked his lips, and slapped one of his own elephantine thighs gleefully. He had confuted my proposition decisively, or so he believed.

‘Oh yes!’ I replied. ‘I presume that you are referring to the trading fort to deal with Beon that the Cretans opened five moons ago at Tamiat, the most easterly mouth of Mother Nile in the delta.’

Now it was Aton’s turn to look crestfallen. ‘When did you learn about that? How did you know?’

‘Please, Aton!’ I spread my hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘You do not expect me to reveal all my sources, do you?’

Aton recovered his poise swiftly. ‘The Supreme Minos and Beon already have an understanding, if not a war alliance. Clever as we all know you are, Taita, there is very little you can do about it.’

‘What if Beon is planning treachery,’ I asked mysteriously, and he gawked at me.

‘Treachery? I do not understand, Taita. What form would this treachery take?’

‘Do you have any inkling of how much silver the Supreme Minos of Crete is hoarding in this new fortress at Tamiat in Hyksos territory, Aton?’

‘I imagine it must be substantial. If the Supreme Minos proposes to buy the greater part of next season’s corn crop from Beon, then he would need to have a heavy weight of silver on hand,’ Aton hazarded carefully. ‘Perhaps as much as ten or even twenty lakhs.’

‘You are very perceptive, my dear friend; however, you have stated but a small part of the problems that face the Supreme Minos. He dare not risk sending his heavily laden treasure ships to cross the open seas during the season of storms. So for five months of the year he cannot send bullion to the southern shores of the Middle Sea which in winter entails a voyage of more than five hundred leagues from his island.’

Aton broke in quickly, trying to beat me to my conclusion. ‘Ah, yes indeed! I take your point. So that means that for all that period of time the Supreme Minos is unable to trade with the states and nations that lie upon this African shore of the Great Sea!’

‘During the whole of winter half the world is closed to him,’ I agreed. ‘But if he could obtain a secure base upon the Egyptian coast, his fleet would be protected from the winter gales. Then all year around his ships would be able to ply their trade from Mesopotamia to Mauretania under the protecting lee of the land.’ I paused to let him see the full magnitude of what the Supreme Minos was planning, then I went on remorselessly, ‘Twenty lakhs of silver would not be sufficient to fund a hundredth part of this activity. Five hundred lakhs is a more likely amount that he will have to hoard in his new fortress at Tamiat to carry his trade through the winter. Do you not agree that amount of silver would make any man contemplate treachery, more especially such a naturally perfidious and rapacious rogue as Beon?’

For fifty heartbeats Aton was struck dumb by the magnitude of the vision that I had presented him with. When at last he stirred again his voice croaked as he asked, ‘So you have proof that Beon, in defiance of his incipient treaty with the Supreme Minos, is planning to storm the Tamiat fortress and seize the Supreme Minos’ treasure? Is that what you are telling me, Taita?’

‘I did not say that I have proof that it is Beon’s intention to do so. I merely asked you a question. I did not make a statement.’ I chuckled at his confusion. It was unkind of me, but I could not restrain myself. Never in our long acquaintance have I seen him so lost for rebuttal or repartee. Then I took pity upon him.

‘You and I both know that Beon is a savage oaf, Aton. He can drive a chariot, swing a sword, draw a bow or sack a city. However, I doubt he is able to plan a visit to the privy without ponderous and painful deliberation.’

‘Then who is it that is planning this raid upon the Supreme Minos’ treasury?’ Aton demanded. Instead of answering him immediately I merely sat back on my stool and smiled. He stared at me. Then his expression cleared. ‘You? Surely not, Taita! How can you plan to rob the Supreme Minos of five hundred lakhs of silver and then court the Cretan for his support and alliance?’

‘In the darkness it is difficult to tell a Hyksos from an Egyptian, especially if the Egyptian is dressed in Hyksos war array, and carrying Hyksos weapons and speaking Hyksosian,’ I pointed out, and he shook his head, once again at a loss for words. But I pressed him further. ‘You do agree that such a treacherous attack would destroy for ever any chances of Crete and the Hyksos ever forming an alliance against us?’

Aton smiled at last. ‘You are so full of guile, Taita, that I wonder how I can ever trust you!’ Then he demanded, ‘Just how large is the Cretan garrison at Tamiat?’

‘At the present time it comprises nearly two thousand soldiers and archers. Although almost all of these are mercenaries.’

‘So!’ He was impressed. He paused again and then continued: ‘How many men would you need, or should I ask rather how many men would Beon need to carry through this dastardly plan?’

‘Enough,’ I hedged. I would not reveal all my plans to Aton. He accepted that and did not press me directly. However, he asked another oblique question.

‘You would leave no Cretan survivors in the Tamiat fort? You would slaughter them all?’

‘Of course I would allow the great majority of them to escape,’ I contradicted him firmly. ‘I want as many of them as possible to make their way back to Crete to warn the Supreme Minos of King Beon’s treachery.’

‘The Cretan treasure?’ Aton demanded. ‘These five hundred lakhs of silver? What will become of that?’

‘Pharaoh’s coffers are almost empty. We cannot save Egypt without treasure.’

‘Who will command this raid?’ he demanded. ‘Will you do it, Taita?’

I looked aghast. ‘You know that I am no warrior, Aton. I am a physician, a poet and a gentle philosopher. However, if Pharaoh urges me to do so, I am willing to accompany the expedition as an adviser to the commanding officer.’

‘Who will command then? Will it be Kratas?’

‘I love Kratas and he is a fine soldier, but he is old, bull-headed and not amenable to reason or suggestion.’ I shrugged and Aton chuckled.

‘You have described General Kratas perfectly, O gentle bard. If not him, then whom will Pharaoh appoint?’

‘He will probably appoint Zaras.’

‘Ah! The famous Captain Zaras of the Blue Crocodile division of the Royal Guards? One of your favourites, Taita. Not so?’

I ignored the taunt. ‘I have no favourites.’ On occasion even I can stretch the truth just a little. ‘But Zaras is simply the best man for the job,’ I responded mildly.

When I laid before Pharaoh my plan to discredit King Beon with the Supreme Minos of Crete and to drive a wedge of steel between the two powers which were potentially the most dangerous enemies we had in all the world he was amazed at the brilliant simplicity of my design.

I had begged for a private interview with Pharaoh and of course he had granted it without a quibble. He and I were alone on the wide palm-lined terrace which encircled his throne room, overlooking the Nile at its widest point in southern Egypt. Of course beyond Asyut the river becomes wider and the current slower as it passes through the territory that the Hyksos have seized from us, and flows down into the delta before debouching into the Middle Sea.

There were sentries at both ends of the terrace to ensure that we could not be overlooked or overheard by either friend or enemy. The guards were under the direct command of reliable officers, but they kept discreetly out of sight so Pharaoh and I were not distracted. We paced along the marble paving. Only now that we were alone was it permissible for me to walk shoulder to shoulder with him, even though I had been intimately involved with him from the minute of his birth.

In truth it was I who had delivered him into this world. I had been the one who caught his infant body in my hands as Queen Lostris propelled him from her royal womb with the force of a stone from a sling shot. The very first act the prince ever performed was to empty his bladder over me. I smiled now at the memory.

I have been his tutor and his mentor since that day. I was the one who taught him to wipe his own arse, to read and write; to shoot a bow and drive a war chariot. From me he has learned how to rule a nation. Now at last he has grown into a fine young man, a doughty warrior and the seasoned ruler of this very Egypt. But we are still the very best of friends. I would go so far as to say that Pharaoh loves me like the father he never knew, and I love him like the son I never had.

Now, as he listened to the stratagem that I was proposing, he stopped walking and turned to face me with mounting wonder. When I reached the denouement of my plan he seized my shoulders in hands that were hard and strong as bronze from swinging a sword, drawing a bow and driving a team of four horses in the traces of a chariot.

‘Tata, you old scallywag!’ he shouted into my face, ‘you never fail to amaze me. Only you could have dreamed up such an outrageous plot. We must begin at once to plan the finer details. Well I remember how I hated it when you forced me to learn to speak Hyksosian; now I would be lost without it. I could never have commanded this expedition without being able to pass as one of our enemies.’

It took me several hours of tactful manipulation before I could convince him that the danger of leaving Egypt without a leader at such a crucial point in our history far outweighed the glory or other benefit that he could hope to win from a successful capture of the Minoan fortress at Tamiat and the treasure it contained. I gave thanks to Horus that he is young enough to be flexible in his thinking and old enough to have learned a modicum of good sense. Long ago I learned how to sway him to my purpose without allowing him to realize that I was doing so. In the end I usually have my own way.

At my suggestion Pharaoh appointed Zaras to command the expedition. Even though Zaras was young, only twenty-five years of age – almost the same age as Pharaoh himself – he had already made a considerable name for himself, as his military rank attested. I had worked with him many times before and I knew that his reputation was well founded. Most important was the fact that he revered me.

However, before he dismissed me Pharaoh Tamose placed in my hands the royal hawk seal. This was Pharaoh’s means of delegating all of his powers to the bearer. The bearer of the seal answered only to Pharaoh. On pain of death no man could question or hinder him in the course or commission of the royal duties.

It was customary for Pharaoh to bestow the hawk seal upon his chosen emissary with solemn ceremony in the presence of the senior members of his court, but I realized that in such a sensitive matter as this he had decided to do so in total secrecy. Nevertheless I was humbled by the trust he had shown in me.

I fell to my knees and touched my forehead to the ground before him. But Pharaoh stooped and lifted me to my feet.

‘You have never failed me, Taita.’ He embraced me. ‘I know you will not do so now.’

I went directly to find Zaras. I impressed upon him the importance of our mission and the opportunity it presented to him to establish himself in Pharaoh’s esteem. Success in this mission would set his feet firmly on the high road to advancement and royal favour. He tried unconvincingly to hide his awe from me.

The two of us drew up a list of 220 men to make up the raiding party. At first Zaras was adamant that this number was insufficient to take on the Cretan garrison of almost two thousand. When I explained the particular circumstances which I had not shared with Aton or even with Pharaoh he accepted my plan in its entirety.

I allowed him to choose his own men. I insisted only that the single attribute all the men he selected must possess was the ability to speak Hyksosian fluently. Zaras was too young to have been part of the exodus to Nubia when the Hyksos overwhelmed southern Egypt. In fact he had been pressed into the Hyksos legions at the age of sixteen. The result was that he could speak the language as though born to it, and he could pass for one of them in any circumstances. However, he was a loyal Egyptian and had been amongst the very first to revert to his true race when Pharaoh Tamose led us down through the cataracts to thrash the Hyksos at the battle of Thebes and drive their survivors in panic and confusion back into the north.

The men Zaras selected to make up the raiding party were highly trained and drilled, mostly under Zaras himself. They were all sailors as well as soldiers and had spent most of their time as fighting crews on board the river galleys, when they were not handling the war chariots. There was nothing more that Zaras needed to teach them.

I told him to divide this force into small detachments each of fifteen or twenty men so that they would not draw too much attention to themselves when they left the city of Thebes.

When I showed the royal hawk seal to the captain of the guard at the city gates he did not question me. Over three successive nights these small bands of Zaras’ men slipped out of the city during the hours of darkness and headed out into the eastern wilderness. They reassembled in the ruins of the ancient city of Akita, where I was waiting for them.

I had with me wagons laden with authentic Hyksos helmets, armour, uniforms and weapons. This was just a small part of the booty we had captured from the enemy at the battle of Thebes.

From Akita we marched on eastwards to the shores of the Gulf of Suez at the northern end of the Red Sea. The men wore Bedouin robes over their uniforms and weapons.

Zaras and I had ridden ahead of the main party. We were waiting at the little fishing village of Al Nadas on the shore of the gulf when they caught up with us.

Zaras had hired a guide whom he had employed before, and whom he recommended highly. His name was Al Namjoo. He was a tall silent man with one eye. He was waiting for us at Al Nadas.

Al Namjoo had chartered all the available fishing vessels from the villagers to ferry us across to the eastern shore. The gulf was less than twenty leagues wide at this point and we could see the low hills of the Sinai on the far side.

We crossed in the night, with only the stars to light our way. We disembarked on the eastern shore of the gulf near another tiny fishing village. This was Zuba, where one of Al Namjoo’s sons was waiting for us. He had a string of over a hundred donkeys which he had hired to carry our heavy gear. We still faced a march of almost two hundred leagues northwards to reach the Middle Sea, but the men were trained to peak condition and we moved fast.

Al Namjoo kept well to the east of the Sinai isthmus which links Africa to Asia to minimize the risk of us encountering any Hyksos troops. Finally we came out on the rocky southern coast of the Middle Sea near the Phoenician port of Ushu. This was approximately midway between the Sumerian border and that part of northern Egypt still in the hands of the Hyksos invaders.

I left Zaras and his men encamped outside the port and went ahead with two donkeys loaded with gold ingots concealed in leather sacks of corn and four picked men to help me. After three days of bargaining with the merchants of the port I had three medium-sized galleys drawn up on the beach below the Phoenician Temple of Melkart. Each of these ships was capable of carrying a hundred men. They had cost me dearly, and there was very little gold remaining in the corn sacks we had brought with us from Thebes.

I let it be known in the port that we were a band of mercenaries travelling eastwards to sell our services to the Assyrian King Al Haturr who was laying siege to the city of Birrayut. As soon as the men were embarked we shoved off from the beach. When we reached deep water and while we were still visible to the watchers in Ushu we turned and rowed eastwards towards Lebanon. However, once we were out of sight of land I reversed our course and headed back towards Egypt and the delta of the Nile.

There was a light offshore breeze blowing that favoured us. We hoisted the mainsails, and relieved the rowers at the long oars at regular intervals. We passed Ushu once again, but heading in the opposite direction. I kept our ships below the horizon, and out of sight of the port.

Although each galley was crowded with seventy men or more, we made good speed and there was curling white water under the bows of every vessel. By late afternoon of the second day I calculated that the Cretan fortress of Tamiat lay less than a hundred leagues ahead of us.

Of course I was in the leading galley with Zaras and I suggested to him that as we had left Ushu far behind us, we could now close in and keep within sight of the shore. It was much easier for me to navigate and judge our position when I had sight of solid land to guide me. At last, as the sun touched the surface of the sea ahead of us and darkness gathered behind us, I pointed out to the helmsman a sheltered but deserted bay with sandy beaches. We ran in until our keels grounded and then the men jumped overboard and dragged the boats up the sand.

The journey from Thebes to where we now lay had been long and gruelling but we were within a few leagues of our goal. There was a contagious sense of excitement and anticipation in our camp that evening, tempered by the foreboding which even the bravest men feel on the eve of battle.

Zaras had selected two of his best men to command our other galleys. The first of these was named Dilbar. He was a tall and handsome man, with muscled forearms and powerful hands. From our first meeting he had particularly engaged my attention and earned my approval. His eyes were dark and piercing, but he had a glossy pink scar from a sword-cut across his right cheek. This detracted not in the least from his good looks. When he gave an order the men responded to him readily and swiftly.

The commander of the third galley was a stocky man with broad shoulders and a bull neck. His name was Akemi. He was a jovial man with a bull voice and an infectious laugh. His weapon of choice was a long-handled axe. Akemi was the one who came to me after the men had eaten.

‘My Lord Taita.’ He saluted me. When first the men had used that title I had protested mildly that I was not entitled to it. They had ignored my protestations and I did not persist. ‘The men have asked me if you will do them the honour of singing for them tonight.’

I have an exceptional voice and under my fingers the lute becomes a celestial object. I can seldom find it within me to deny entreaties of this kind.

That night before the Battle of Tamiat I chose for them ‘The Lament for Queen Lostris’. This is one of my most famous compositions. They gathered around me at the camp-fire and I sang for them all 150 verses. The best singers amongst them joined in the chorus while the others hummed the refrain. At the end there were very few dry eyes amongst my audience. My own tears did not detract in any way from the power and beauty of my performance.

With the first glimmering of dawn the next day our camp was astir. Now the men could strip off their Bedouin robes and head-dresses and open the sacks that contained their Hyksos body armour and weapons. The armour was for the most part made of padded leather, but the helmets were bronze skull-caps with a metal nose-piece. Every man was armed with a powerful recurved bow and a quiver of flint-headed arrows, which were fletched with coloured feathers in the Hyksos style. Their swords were carried in a scabbard strapped to their backs, so the handle stood up behind their left shoulder, ready to hand. The bronze blades were not straight-edged as those of regular Egyptian weapons, but were curved in the eastern fashion.

The armour and weapons were too heavy and too hot to wear while they worked the oars in the direct sunlight. So the men stripped to their loin-cloths and laid their battle gear on the deck beneath the rowing benches between their feet.

Most of my men were of light complexion and many of them had fair hair. I ordered them to use soot from the cooking fires to darken their beards and skin, until they were all as swarthy as any Hyksos legionnaire.

When our three crowded galleys pushed off from the beach and rowed out of the bay, I was once again in the leading ship with Zaras. I stood beside the helmsman who wielded the long steering-oar in the stern. From the same merchant in the port of Ushu who had sold me the boats I had also purchased a papyrus map which purported to set out the details of the southern shore of the Middle Sea between Gebel and Wadi al Nilam. He claimed to have drawn this map with his own hand from his own observations. Now I spread it on the deck between my feet and anchored the corners with pebbles that I had picked up on the beach. Almost at once I was able to identify some of the features on the shore. It seemed that my chart was gratifyingly accurate.

Twice during the morning we spotted the sails of other vessels on the horizon, but we sheered off and gave them a wide berth. Then, when the sun was directly overhead, the lookout in the bows shouted another warning and pointed ahead. I shaded my eyes and peered in the direction he was indicating. I was astonished to see the surface of the sea along the entire horizon was churning white water as though a heavy squall were bearing down on us. This was not the season of storms.

‘Get the sails down!’ I snapped at Zaras. ‘Ship oars and have the sea anchors rigged by the bows and ready for streaming.’

The furious waters raced towards us and we braced ourselves for the onslaught of the wind. The white water emitted a mounting roar as it approached.

I took a firm grip on the wooden coaming of the hatch in front of me and braced myself. Then the seething water enveloped the hull. The uproar became deafening, with men shouting orders and oaths, and the waters dashing against the ships’ sides. However, to my astonishment there was no wind. I knew at once that this storm without wind was a supernatural phenomenon. I closed my eyes and began to chant a prayer to the great god Horus for his protection, and I clung to the coaming with both hands.

Then there was a hand upon my shoulder shaking me rudely and a voice shouting in my ear. I knew it was Zaras but I refused to open my eyes. I waited for the gods to dispose of me as they saw fit. But Zaras kept shaking me and I remained alive. I opened my eyes cautiously. But I kept on praying under my breath. Now I realized what Zaras was saying to me, and I risked a quick glance over the side.

The sea was alive with enormous gleaming bodies that were shaped like arrowheads. Again it took me a moment to realize that they were living creatures, and that each of them was at least the size of a horse. However, these were gigantic fish. They were packed so densely that those below were forcing the others to the surface in a tumult of waves and spray. Their multitudes stretched to the limit of the eye.

‘Tuna!’ Zaras was yelling at me. ‘These are tuna fish.’

Upper Egypt is a landlocked country so I have never had the opportunity to spend enough time on the open sea to have witnessed a tuna migration of this magnitude. I had read so much about the subject that I should have known what was happening. I realized that I was in danger of looking ridiculous, so I opened my eyes and yelled as loudly as Zaras, ‘Of course they are tuna. Get the harpoons ready!’

I had noticed the harpoons when I came aboard for the first time. They were stowed under the rowing benches. I had supposed that they were used to repel pirates and corsairs if they tried to board the ship. The shafts were about twice as long as a tall man. The heads were of razor-sharp flint. There was an eye behind the barb to which the coir line was spliced. And at the other end of the line was tied a carved wooded float.

Although I had given the order for harpoons, it was typical of Zaras that he was the first of any of them to act upon it. He always led by his own example.

He snatched one of the long weapons from where it had been strapped under the thwart, and as he ran with it to the ship’s side he unwrapped the retaining line. He jumped up on to the gunwale of the galley and balanced the long harpoon easily, with the shaft resting on his shoulder and the barbed flint head pointing down at the flashing shoal of fish that was streaming past him like a river of molten silver. They looked up at him with great round eyes that seemed to be dilated with terror.

I watched him gather himself and then hurl the harpoon, point first, straight down into the water below him. The shaft of the heavy weapon shuddered as the point struck and the harpoon was whipped away below the surface by the rush of the huge fish that was impaled by the flint point.

Zaras jumped back on to the deck and seized the running line as it streamed away, blurring with speed and beginning to smoke with the friction of the coarse rope against the wood of the gunwale. Three other men of the crew leaped forward to help him and they latched on to the rope and battled to subdue the fish and bring it alongside.

Four other men had followed Zaras’ example and each of them grabbed a harpoon from its place below the thwarts and ran with it to the gunwale. Soon there were knots of struggling men on each side of the boat, shouting with excitement, swearing and bellowing incoherent orders at each other as they struggled with the massive creatures.

One after another the fish were heaved on board and clubbed to death. Before the last of the harpooned fish had been killed and butchered, the rest of the mighty shoal had disappeared back into the depths as suddenly and miraculously as they had appeared.

We went ashore again that night, and by the light of the cooking fires on the beach we feasted on the succulent flesh of the tuna. It is the most highly prized delicacy in all the seas. The men seasoned the flesh with just a little salt. Some of them could not wait for it to be thrown on the coals, and they wolfed it down raw and bleeding. Then they followed it with a swallow from the wine-skins.

I knew that the next morning they would be strong and eager for the first sight of the enemy. Unlike corn or other insipid foods, meat rouses the demon in the heart of a warrior.

So that night I sang for them ‘The Ballad of Tanus and the Blue Sword’. It is the battle hymn of the Blues, and it set them afire. Every man joined in the chorus, no matter how rough his voice, and afterwards I could see the light of war shining in their eyes. They were ready to meet any enemy.

We launched the galleys again the next morning as soon as it was light enough to make out the reefs below the surface, and to find a safe passage through them.

The closer we came to the many mouths of the Nile Delta the more certain I became of our position, until in the late afternoon we sailed past an estuarine mouth which was bounded on the east side by a low forested headland and on the west by an exposed mud-bank. On the headland facing the sea stood a rudimentary tower of mud-bricks that were painted with limewash. The roof of the tower had collapsed, as had most of the wall on the seaward side of the construction. However, enough of it was still standing for me to be certain that this was the navigational marker for the Tamiat channel, probably erected there by some long-dead Egyptian mariner.

I ran to the foot of the single mast and clambered up it until I reached the sloping yard of the lateen sail. I wrapped my legs around it and hugged the mainmast. From this vantage I had a clear view inland and I immediately picked up the square outline of a man-made structure which just showed above the treetops far inland. Like the channel marker it also was painted with limewash. I was in no doubt at all that this was the watchtower of the Minoan trading fort and treasury which we were seeking. I slid back down the yard and as my feet hit the deck I shouted at the helmsman: ‘Put up your helm! Turn three points to starboard!’

Zaras strode across to where I stood. ‘Yes?’ he asked. Usually he is genial and gregarious, but at a time such as this he becomes a man of quick decisions and even quicker reactions.

‘Yes!’ I agreed, and he gave a brief cold smile and a curt nod to the helm to confirm my order. We turned out towards the open sea. The other two galleys followed us around. Now we headed obliquely away from the shore. However, as soon as we passed the next headland and were screened from the surveillance of any sentry on the tower of the Tamiat fortress, I ordered another change of course. We headed back directly towards the labyrinthine swamps of the delta.

I knew from my map where to find what looked to be a secure anchorage. We lowered the masts and laid them flat on the decks while we poled our way through the dense banks of papyrus and bulrushes into the sheltered lagoon that I had chosen. Here we were completely screened by dense vegetation. We anchored a boat’s length apart in the shallow murky water with our keels only just clear of the mud of the bottom. We were able to wade between the boats with the water at the deepest parts of the lagoon reaching only as high as our chins.

While we watched the sun set and the moon rise, the men feasted on what remained of the smoked tuna steaks. Zaras waded quietly from galley to galley, selecting eight of his best men and warning them to be ready before sunrise the next morning to accompany us on a reconnaissance.

An hour before dawn we crowded into two of the skiffs that we had towed behind the galleys. We paddled across the wide lagoon to the shore nearest the headland on which I had spotted the watchtower of the fort.

I could hear the cries of swamp birds and the susurration of their wings passing over us in the darkness. As the light strengthened I could make out the long flighting lines of waterfowl and their arrowhead formations against the brightening sky. There were wild ducks and geese, storks, herons, cranes with long necks and trailing legs, ibis and egrets and fifty or more other species. They rose in huge flocks from the surface of the lagoon as we rowed through them. At last the sun pushed itself above the horizon and the vast expanses of the delta around us were revealed. It is a wild and desolate place, unfit for human habitation.

We had to drag the skiffs through the shallows and hide them in the reeds when we at last reached firmer ground. I was uncertain of the layout of the fort and its surroundings so we groped our way through the dense stands of reeds and bulrushes ever more cautiously.

Abruptly we came out upon the bank of a deep channel which cut through the papyrus beds from the south in the direction of the open waters of the Middle Sea. It was about 150 paces wide, and I could see that it was too deep to wade. On the opposite bank of the channel I was able to make out the flat roof of the watchtower we had spotted the previous day. The helmeted heads of at least three of the guards were showing above the parapet as they patrolled their beats.

Suddenly I heard the unmistakable sounds of a moving vessel coming up the channel from the seaward direction of where we lay, and I cautioned my companions to silence. The creaking of the rigging, the voice of the seaman chanting the soundings in the bows and the thud of the oars in the rowlocks increased in volume until suddenly an enormous seagoing vessel appeared around the bend in the channel.

I had never seen a ship of this type or size before; however, I knew from descriptions that my spies had sent me that this was a Cretan trireme. She was both a cargo vessel and a warship. She was triple-decked, with three banks of oars.

Her long, pointed bows were reinforced with sheets of beaten bronze for ramming enemy ships. She had two masts, which would enable her to spread a goodly area of sail, although these were now furled as she threaded the narrow channel under oars. She was a lovely vessel, with long clean lines and a high transom. Looking at her it was not difficult to understand why Crete was the pre-eminent naval power of the world. This was the fastest and most powerful ship on all the seas. Even though she was heavily burdened and low in the water no other vessel could challenge her. Nevertheless I wondered what cargo she carried in her holds.

As she drew level with where we lay hidden in the reed beds, I was able to study her officers. There were three of them in the stern, standing aside from the four crewmen who were manipulating the long steering-oar. Although the cheek-pieces of their armour masked most of their features they seemed to be taller and more robust than our average Egyptian. I could see that their kilts were of the finest linen and that their weapons were lovingly polished and engraved. These were more warriors than they were merchants.

As she passed us the breeze wafted the stench of the ship to where we lay. I knew that her upper bank of long oars was rowed by her crew, who were fighting men more than they were beasts of burden. At an order from their captain they could jump up from the rowing bench and seize their weapons which lay at their feet. They would fight like men and share in the prize money.

However, the lower banks of oars were pulled by slaves who were shackled to the deck timbers. The stench I smelled was that of these unfortunates who would live their whole lives on the benches. They would row, sleep, eat, defecate and ultimately die where they sat.

The Cretan galley swept on past us and then we heard the shouted orders of her officers. The upper bank of oars rose from the water like the wings of a silver seagull as they were shipped, and only the lower banks continued dipping and pulling delicately as the ship turned into the final bend of the channel, heading towards the glistening white walls of the fortress which showed in the distance above the nodding heads of the papyrus banks.

Then a most extraordinary event occurred; something for which I was completely unprepared. A second ship, almost identical in every respect to the first, rounded the bend of the channel and rowed past where we lay. She also was low in the water, carrying a weighty cargo.

Then to my utter astonishment and delight a third heavily burdened trireme came down the channel and sailed past us. She followed her two sister ships towards the fort.

I realized what had happened. Three months previously I had been informed by my agents that the three treasure ships were prepared to sail from the principal Cretan port of Aggafer. However, it had taken many months for this information to reach me. In the meantime the departure of the convoy must have been delayed by unforeseen circumstances, the most probable reason being unfavourable weather conditions. My agents had been unable to warn me timeously of this delay.

I had expected to reach the Tamiat fort only long after the convoy had arrived, discharged its cargo and departed again on its return voyage to Aggafer.

The chances of me arriving at Tamiat at exactly the same time as the treasure convoy was so remote that it must have been arranged by divine intervention. From an early age I have known that I am a favourite of the gods, particularly of the great god Horus to whom I pray. How else could I have been gifted from birth with so many talents and virtues? How else have I been able to survive so many terrible perils and mortal dangers that would certainly have destroyed any lesser being? How else have I been able to stay so young and handsome and my mind so sharp when all those about me wrinkle, turn grey and fade away with age? There is something about me that has set me aside from most other mortal men.

This was yet another example of Horus’ favour and indulgence. I whispered my thanks to him and swore that I would make a lavish sacrifice to him at the very first opportunity. Then I crawled closer to where Zaras lay, and tugged his sleeve.

‘I must cross this channel and get closer to the Cretan fort,’ I told him.

There are two enigmas in our very Egypt that I have never been able to come to terms with. The first is that although we use the horse as beast of burden and the chariot as our primary weapon of war almost no Egyptian will ride astride. The second enigma is that although we live on the banks of a mighty river almost no Egyptian is able to swim. If you ask one of them why this is so, they will usually shrug and answer: ‘The gods frown upon such uncouth behaviour.’

I have already asserted that I am different from most others. I hesitate to suggest that I am in any way superior. I think it is sufficient to point out that I am both an expert horseman, and a strong and tireless swimmer.

I knew that Zaras has neither of these skills, although to give him full credit I have never seen him bested when he had the reins of a chariot in his hands. Thus I had ordered him to bring with him a buoy made from the bark of the cork tree to keep him afloat. The two of us stripped to our breech clouts and entered the channel. Zaras had his sword strapped to the cork float. I carried mine on my back. Zaras blew and puffed like a bull hippo, while I swam like an otter and reached the far bank of the channel before he was halfway across.

When he managed to complete the crossing I helped him ashore. Then, when he had regained his breath, we crept stealthily through the reeds towards the Cretan fort. When we reached a position from which he had a good view of the building I realized why the Cretans had selected this site. It was on the highest point of a narrow ridge of limestone which poked up through the soft alluvial soils and provided a strong foundation on which they had anchored their fortress.

This limestone intrusion divided the flow of the main channel to form a moat around the fort. There were a number of different types of vessels anchored in the basin formed by the sweep of the river around the fortress. Most of these craft were mere barges which I presumed the Cretans had used to carry building materials. There was not a single sea-going ship amongst them. The exception to this was the squadron of three magnificent triremes which had rowed past our hiding place earlier.

These were not anchored in the basin, but were already moored to the stone wharf directly below the main gate of Tamiat fortress. The gate stood wide open, and there was a gathering of uniformed soldiers on the wharf to welcome the new arrivals. I could see by the plumed helmets and gold decoration they sported that many of these were high-ranking officers.

In the time that it had taken Zaras and me to swim across the channel and reach our present position the crews had opened the hatches of the leading trireme and a chain gang of half-naked slaves was beginning the task of unloading her cargo. The slaves were working under the charge of a number of overseers who wore half-armour and short swords on their belts. All of them wielded whips of plaited rawhide.

The slaves were carrying a succession of identical wooden chests ashore over the gangplanks. Although the chests were not very large they were obviously heavy for the slaves staggered under the weight. The whole unloading process moved too slowly for the satisfaction of the overseers who harangued and ranted at the working gang.

As we watched, one of the slaves lost his footing while stepping from the gangplank to the wharf. He fell heavily and dropped the chest he was balancing on his head. It crashed to the stone slabs and burst open.

I felt my heart jump against my ribs as I saw the brilliant flash of sunlight reflected from the metallic surfaces of the silver ingots as they spilled out in a heap on to the wharf. The bars were small and rectangular, no longer than a man’s hand; however, there were twenty or more of them packed into the chest. A single chest of these bars would most likely have been sufficient to pay for the building of the great trireme which had carried it across the Middle Sea. All my hopes and expectations had been fulfilled. Here was the vast treasure that I had anticipated.

Three of the overseers gathered around the prostrate slave and wielded their whips with gusto, swinging the lashes from high above their heads to crack against his sweat-shiny skin. The man screamed and writhed and tried to cover his head with his arms. One of the lashes caught him in the face and popped his right eyeball out of its socket. It dangled on its optic cord against his cheek as he rolled his head from side to side. At last the slave lay unconscious, no longer able to protect himself. One of his tormentors stooped and grabbed his heels, dragged him on his back to the edge of the wharf, and then heaved him over the side. The body splashed into the river and sank swiftly, disappearing below the muddy surface.

On the wharf the other slaves responded at once to the shouts of the overseers and the cracking of their whiplashes. The file of half-naked men began to move again, tottering under their burdens as though the work had never been interrupted.

I tapped Zaras’ shoulder to get his attention and then we both crawled back deeper into the reed beds. Once we were safely hidden I led him around to the far side of the fort and the bank of the other branch of the river. It took me an hour or so of cautious and careful manoeuvring before I could find a vantage point from which I was able to overlook the strategic layout of the fort and its surroundings. Now I was able to verify in person the reports I had received from my spies.

Although the walls of the fort were formidable and probably even impregnable, the area they enclosed was not very large. There was a severely limited amount of space on the ridge, insufficient for anything more than the treasury alone, and barracks to house a detachment of guards to beat off any attempt to land by a small raiding party coming up one of the channels from the sea.

However, the Cretans must also have realized that they required a much larger force of several thousand men on hand to oppose any larger enemy force that might land on the coast and march inland to mount a more determined attack on the fort. They had solved this problem by stringing a pontoon bridge across both channels of the river, so that the fort sitting on the island in the centre of the river could be reached swiftly by defending Cretan troops from either bank.

From where I lay I had a good view across the most easterly channel to the flat dry ground beyond. This was where the Cretans had built their fortified camp, which provided barracks for the main body of their army. They had surrounded the camp with a protective palisade of sharpened logs, which stood twice the height of a man. I calculated that this camp would be capable of housing two or three thousand soldiers.

There was a watchtower at each corner of the square enclosure, and I could see that the roofs of the buildings within the palisade were plastered thickly with black mud from the river-bank which had dried hard. These would afford protection from the fire-arrows that an enemy might shoot over the walls.

From the gate in the wall closest to the river the Cretans had built a passageway of dried black mud-bricks to the head of the pontoon bridge. This would protect their troops from enemy arrows when they sallied forth from the camp.

They had used a series of longboats anchored side by side across both channels of the river to serve as the pontoons for their bridge. Over these they had laid a causeway of hewn planks. This bridge ensured that large numbers of troops could be rushed from the camp to wherever they were needed most.

‘They have planned it all thoroughly.’ Zaras gave his opinion as he surveyed the fortifications.

‘That is what the Cretans are most famous for … thoroughness,’ I agreed, but I was still studying the ground, seeking out any weakness in the Cretan defences. Search as I might I could find only one. That was the pontoon bridge itself, but I was confident that I could deal with that.

I switched my attention back to the wharf where the three great triremes still lay moored. I considered the manner in which the Cretans were unloading the cargo of the first ship. I could see that it was not very efficient. If I were presented with this task I would rig tripods and pulleys over the open hatches and hoist the chests of silver up to deck level on pallets. There I would have carts ready to trundle the chests across the wharf and into the gates of the fort.

The Cretan slaves were manhandling each chest individually up the ladder from the bottom of the hold to the main deck. At this rate it would take several days to unload each ship.

I was worried. I had not truly recognized the immensity of my own task until I saw it laid out before me. It was one thing to speak lightly of handling hundreds of lakhs of bullion, but it became entirely another matter when I was presented with the physical weight and bulk of such a treasure and the problem of seizing it and transporting it hundreds of leagues over sea and mountain and desert while being pursued by a vengeful army.

I began to worry that I had taken on an impossible task, and thought dismally that perhaps the only solution if I was ever able to get my hands on such a vast cargo was to take it out into the deep waters of the Middle Sea and to dump it overboard where it would be forever beyond the reach of both King Beon and the Supreme Minos.

Then I would flee with all my men who had survived the wrath of the Cretans back to the safety of Thebes. Perhaps the Supreme Minos could then be persuaded that King Beon was the culprit, but I doubted it.

The solution did not come to me at once, and even I had to wrestle with the problem for almost an hour while Zaras and I lay there in the papyrus beds. Then suddenly the solution struck me like a thunderbolt. It was so ingenious that even I was stunned by the beauty of it.

I thought I would explain it all to Zaras, but then I decided not to overpower him with something so simple and yet so devilishly complex.

I looked up at the sun. It had reached its zenith some time ago and was already halfway down the sky again. I looked back at the trio of treasure ships and I think I grinned. I sensed that Zaras was watching me intently. I think he knew that I was on to something at last, and he was waiting eagerly for my orders, which I was not yet ready to reveal to him.

‘Enough!’ I told him. ‘We must go.’

‘Where to, Taita?’

‘Back to the boats. We have a great deal of work to do before nightfall.’

The sun was setting when at last Zaras and I managed to swim and wade back to where we had left our three small boats in the lagoon. The men were overjoyed to see us again. I think they had convinced themselves that we had been discovered and killed by the enemy, leaving them leaderless and thrown back on their own limited resources. They scrambled to obey my orders.

The first of the many challenges facing me was to get every single one of my heavily armed and armoured men, almost none of whom were able to swim, across the deep channels of the river to reach the fort.

To this end I selected the smallest and lightest of our three boats. Then I made the men strip the ropes and other useful loose items from the remaining two hulls. I thought of burning these, but the Cretans would surely have seen the smoke and sent men to investigate it. Instead I ordered my men to knock the bottoms out of them and scuttle them in the deepest part of the lagoon.

Then we dragged the single boat that I had selected through the shallow waters to the eastern bank of the lagoon, nearest the fort. From there I needed every single one of my men to manhandle it across the dry ground to the river channel. I ordered them to attach the anchor ropes that we had salvaged from the two scuttled boats to the bows of this one that we had retrieved.

With a hundred men hauling on each rope the keel of the boat acted as a skid, and the hull slid readily enough over the papyrus stalks which were flattened beneath its weight. Nevertheless we had almost half a league of dry ground to cover before we reached the main channel of the river. By that time it was close to midnight and the waxing gibbous moon was high in the sky.

I allowed the men a short time to rest on the river-bank, and to don their armour and to wolf down a cold meal. Then with muffled oars and carrying fifty men at each crossing we began to ferry them over the channel. When every one of them was across, I divided our little force into two groups.

The larger group of 150 men I sent with Zaras to creep through the reed beds until they were as close to the main gate of the fort as possible without being in danger of discovery by the sentries. They were to conceal themselves there until they received my signal.

Before we parted I explained to Zaras what I planned. I would row up the channel with a crew of fifty men. My intention was to attack and destroy the pontoon bridge which connected the main enemy camp to the island on which the treasury stood. Before we parted company I embraced Zaras briefly, and I repeated my orders to him so that there could be no misunderstanding.

Then I sent him away, while I clambered on board the waiting galley and gave the order to my rowers to ply the oars. The current was swift and strong, but my men heaved away lustily and, hugging the bank of the channel furthest from the fort, we made good speed upstream. Soon we could see the limewashed tower of the fort gleaming in the moonlight. The sight encouraged my oarsmen to still greater effort.

We came around the final bend in the channel and the fort lay before us. The three triremes were as I had last seen them, moored against the stone wharf. The moonlight was bright enough for me to make out that two of them were still riding low in the water; still fully laden with their cargoes of bullion. The third trireme was standing a little higher. Much of her cargo must have been unloaded. Nevertheless I estimated that she still had more than half her load of treasure chests in her holds.

There were no Cretan sentries anywhere in sight. There were no lights showing aboard any of the great ships. However, there was a fire glowing at one end of the wharf and there were torches burning in brackets on each side of the gates of the fort.

I lifted the bronze helmet from my head and placed it on my lap. Then I adjusted the bright yellow cloth that was knotted around my throat to mask the lower half of my face. This is an extraordinary type of cloth known as silk. It is extremely rare and worth a hundred times its own weight in silver. It comes from a land at the edge of the world, where it is spun not by men but by worms. It is possessed of magical powers. It can turn away evil spells and such diseases as the plague and the Yellow Flowers. However, now I used it simply to hide my face.

My features are so distinctive that there is always a strong possibility that they will be recognized by either friend or foe. Beauty comes at a price. After that of Pharaoh himself my face is probably the best known in the civilized world, by which I mean Egypt. When I replaced my helmet I was faceless in the ranks of faceless men.

As we rowed closer to the wharf the torch flames threw just sufficient flickering light for me to make out the blanket-wrapped forms of the sentries crouching close to the warmth of their watch fires.

It was obvious to me that the Cretan officers had not wished to spend the night in the crowded fort with all their men. At nightfall they must have gone back across the bridge with the majority of their men to the comforts of their elaborate camp on the further bank of the channel. This suited my purpose well enough.

Still keeping as far from the wharf as the channel allowed we rowed quietly past the moored galleys and the looming walls of the fort. As we left those behind I could make out ahead of us the row of longboats that formed the pontoon bridge strung out across the channel.

We rowed on up the main channel until I judged we were at least two hundred yards upstream of the pontoon bridge. Then I turned our boat across the current and I aimed our bows at the centre of the long narrow pontoon bridge. I gave a quiet order to the rowers to stop heaving and to ship their oars, and we let the current run us down on the centre of the bridge.

At the last moment I put the helm over and we turned broadside to the bridge and came to rest with our starboard side pressed by the current hard against the causeway.

My men were ready for this. Two small groups of three men each jumped from the bows and stern of our ship and made her fast to the bridge. The rest of them armed with axes and swords swarmed over the ship’s side on to the pontoons. Without waiting for further orders they began to chop at the ropes that secured the line of longboats to each other.

The sounds of the blows had certainly carried across the channel to the camp on the far bank, for almost at once we heard the Cretan drums start to beat the call to arms. Pandemonium broke out in the camp; the shouted orders of the sergeants, the clatter and clash of arms on shields, the rattle of armour and the clamour of the drums carried back to us. Then the flare of light as the torches were lit and the reflection of their flames sparkled off the polished metal of shields and breastplates.

A long column of trotting infantry burst out of the mouth of the passageway that led from the palisade wall of the camp to the head of the pontoon bridge. Four abreast the Cretans charged out on to the narrow bridge, and it heaved and rocked under the stamping of their metal-studded sandals.

Swiftly the enemy front rank bore down upon our wrecking team, which was revealed by the glare of the torches. Still the mooring ropes between the pontoons resisted the axe-blows of my men. When only fifty paces separated them I heard one of the officers who led the charge shout an order. I did not understand the language, but the meaning was immediately clear.

Without checking their rush along the causeway the leading Cretan infantrymen heaved back and then hurled a volley of spears. The heavy missiles fell amongst the team of my men who were still hacking at the bindings that held together the line of longboats. I saw a javelin strike one of my fellows in the back and transfix him so that the point emerged a good yard from his chest. He toppled over the side of the longboat on which he was balancing and was sucked down into the black waters. None of his comrades even glanced up from their task. Grimly they continued swinging their axes at the hempen ropes that bound the pontoons together.

I heard a sharp report as a rope parted, and then the grinding and crackling of timbers of the hulls bearing against each other as more of the lines holding the longboats together gave way.

Then at last the bridge was cleaved asunder. But the two disjointed halves were still held together by our own ship which was strung between them. I found myself screaming wildly at my axe-men to come back on board. Of course I was not troubled for my own safety. My only concern was for the safety of my brave lads.

The torrent of armoured Cretans came on unchecked over the pontoons. They rushed at us in a solid phalanx, bellowing their challenges and hurling their javelins. My own men were scrambling back into our little boat and cowering down as the missiles slammed into the timbers of our hull.

Now I was shouting for someone to sever the ropes that still locked our vessel into the centre of the bridge. In the uproar my orders were drowned out. I could not make myself heard. I grabbed an axe from one of my men who was crouching in the bilges and ran to the bows.

A Cretan came at me down the causeway. Both of us reached the bows at the same time. He had thrown his javelin and was struggling to unsheathe his sword which seemed to be jammed in its scabbard. It came free as we met each other.

I could see that he was grinning under his helmet. He thought that he had me at his mercy and that he was about to kill me. He drew back his sword and aimed a thrust at my chest, but I had seen his eyes move, signalling his intention, so I was able to anticipate the blow. I twisted my body and the point of his sword flew under my armpit. I locked my arm over his elbow.

Now I had him fully extended. He tried to pull free, but the causeway heaved under him, throwing him off balance. At that critical moment I released the lock I had on his sword-arm. He was unprepared for that, and he tottered backwards, extending both arms towards me as he tried to regain his balance.

I swung my axe, aiming at the only part of his body that was not covered with metal: the wrist of his sword-hand. I was also unbalanced in the rocking and heaving boat, so it was not a perfect stroke. It did not sever his sword-hand cleanly, as I intended. But it slashed down to the bone on the inside of his wrist. I heard the tendons pop as they parted. His fingers opened involuntarily and the sword fell from them and rattled on the planks of the bridge. He reeled backwards into one of his companions who was crowding up behind him. Clinging to each other the two of them went over the side of the bridge and hit the surface of the water with a tall splash. The weight of their armour dragged them under immediately.

The axe was still in my hands and the two mooring lines that secured the bows of our ship to the pontoon bridge were stretched in front of me so tightly that the water was spurting out of the twists of the rope. I lifted the axe above my head and then swung down, aiming it at the thicker of the two ropes, putting all my weight and power into this stroke. The rope parted with a snap like a bowstring. Our boat canted over sharply as the full weight was thrown on to the single, thinner rope. I swung again and that rope jumped apart, twisting and unravelling in mid-air. The bows of our boat bobbed up as the weight and drag were taken off them, and we swung free across the current.

The effect on the bridge was far more dramatic. Each of the segments of the bridge was still firmly attached to their moorings on the river-banks. However, in the middle of the channel they were no longer bound together and the current snatched them apart swiftly. I watched as the dense pack of Cretans was thrown about by the causeway bobbing and lunging wildly under their feet.

Their shifting weight intensified the instability of the floating pontoons. Men in heavy armour lost their balance and staggered about drunkenly, barging into each other, throwing each other overboard.

I watched in horror as one of the pontoons capsized and a score of men were hurled over the side. Within minutes the greater part of the Cretan horde was struggling in the dark waters and drowning like rats in the bottom of a well.

What made it more tragic for me was that these were not even our enemies; all this destruction I had deliberately engineered to trick them into becoming our allies. It gave me very little consolation to know that I had done this for my very Egypt and for my Pharaoh. I was appalled by the consequences of my actions.

Then, with an enormous effort of will, I thrust aside my guilt and remorse. I knew what had been done could not be undone. I tried to put the drowned men out of my mind and thought instead about my own people and the losses that we had suffered. I forced myself to turn away, and pushed my way back to where I cut the line that held us attached. I was shouting at my crew, taking out my anger on them. Roaring at them to take up their oars again, shoving them back to the rowing benches, kicking and slapping those who hesitated in bewilderment.

At last I had the steering-oar in my hands again and the men were beginning to pull in unison. I put the helm over and steered us back towards the stone wharf under the main gate of the fort where the treasure ships were moored.

I jumped from our little boat as soon as the bows touched the stone steps of the wharf, and Zaras was there to meet me, sword in hand and panting with exertion but grinning like an idiot.

‘We have captured all three of the treasure ships, and even the fort is ours!’ he told me as he pointed with his bloodstained blade at the gates of the fort, which stood wide open. ‘The uproar you created at the pontoon bridge was a fine distraction. We cut down the guards at the fort while they were still watching your performance, and totally unaware of our existence. I don’t think that any of them escaped, but even if they have they won’t get very far.’ He paused to catch his breath and then demanded, ‘How did it go with you at the bridge, Taita?’ I was pleased to hear that even in the heat of battle and victory he was remembering to speak Hyksosian.

‘The bridge is down and half the enemy were thrown into the river and drowned,’ I told him curtly, and then I turned to Akemi, who had run up when he saw me come ashore. ‘Take command of this boat and keep a dozen men with you to row.’ I pointed to the cluster of small unmanned craft anchored in the basin formed by the sweep of the river. ‘Take with you torches and fire-pots and burn those boats, before the Cretans can get their hands on them and use them to ferry their men across to attack us again tonight.’

‘At once, my lord,’ Akemi replied.

‘Keep only the largest of them,’ I went on. ‘That big lugger at the end of the line. Don’t burn that one. Bring it back here and we will leave it tied up at the wharf when we depart.’

Both Akemi and Zaras looked at me askance; however, it was Zaras who dared to question my orders. ‘Leave it for the Cretans? Why would we want to do that?’

‘We want to do that so the senior Cretan officers are able to sail back to Crete with all despatch and warn their king of the treachery of his Hyksos allies. Even the mighty Minos of Crete will be sorely hurt by the loss of five hundred lakhs of his silver. When he receives the news, he will thirst for King Beon’s blood.’

I waited on the wharf and watched Akemi and his crew pull away from the wharf, heading back into the basin of the river. I saw him transfer four of his men into the big lugger. They set a jib sail and brought her back to the wharf below where I stood.

Out in the basin Akemi stood in the bows of our little boat. His men rowed him along the line of anchored boats and Akemi hurled a flaming torch into each of them as he passed. Only when all of them were burning fiercely was I satisfied. I went back to find Zaras in the confusion.

‘Bring these men with you, and come with me,’ I told him, and I ran down the stone wharf to where the nearest Cretan trireme was moored. ‘I want you to take command of this ship, Zaras. But I will sail with you.’

‘Of course, master,’ he answered. ‘Some of my men are already aboard her.’

‘Dilbar will captain that one.’ I pointed at the second trireme. ‘And Akemi will take the third Minoan treasure ship.’

‘As you command, master.’ It seemed that Zaras had promoted me from plain Taita to master. However, he was still sufficiently familiar with me to ask impudent questions. This he did immediately.

‘Once we are out in the open sea, in which direction will we sail? Will we head east for Sumeria or west for the Mauretanian coast?’ Then he even condescended to offer me a little fatherly advice. ‘We have allies in both those countries. In the east there is King Nimrod, the ruler of the Land of the Two Rivers. In the west we have a treaty with King Shan Daki of Anfa in Mauretania. Which of them will it be, Taita?’

I did not reply to him immediately. Instead I asked my own question. ‘Tell me, Zaras, which king or ruler in the entire world would you trust with a treasure of five hundred lakhs of silver?’

Zaras looked bemused. He had not thought about that. ‘Perhaps … well, certainly not Shan Daki. His people are corsairs, and he is the King of Thieves.’

‘What about Nimrod?’ I suggested. ‘I am not certain I would trust him with a piece of silver larger than my thumb.’

‘We have to trust somebody,’ he protested, ‘unless we find a deserted beach and bury the silver on it, until we can return to reclaim it?’

‘Five hundred lakhs!’ I reminded him. ‘It would take a year to dig a pit deep enough, and a mountain of sand to cover it.’ I was enjoying his confusion. ‘The wind favours us!’ I looked up at the Minoan ensign, the golden bull of Crete, which still flew at the masthead of the trireme I had allotted to him. ‘And the gods always favour the bold and the brave.’

‘No, Taita,’ he contradicted me. ‘The wind does not favour us. It is blowing in from the sea, directly up the channel. It is pinning us against the land. It will take all our oars to get us out into the open waters of the Middle Sea. If you trust neither Shan Daki nor Nimrod whom then do you trust? To whom should we turn?’

‘I trust only Pharaoh Tamose,’ I told him, and he let his frustration with me show for the first time.

‘So is your plan to return to Pharaoh by the same route we followed here? Shall we carry the treasure on our heads from Ushu through the Sinai Desert, and swim with it across the Red Sea? From there it will only be a short walk to reach Thebes. Pharaoh will be surprised to see you; of that you can be sure,’ he scoffed at me.

‘No, Zaras.’ I smiled back at him indulgently. ‘From here we are going to sail south down the Nile. We are going to sail all three of these Cretan monsters and the silver in their holds directly back to Thebes.’

‘Have you gone mad, Taita?’ He stopped laughing. ‘Beon commands every yard of the Nile from here as far as Asyut. We can’t sail three hundred leagues through the Hyksos hordes. That really is madness.’ In his agitation he had switched back from Hyksosian into Egyptian.

‘If you speak Hyksosian anything and everything is possible!’ I contradicted and rebuked him. ‘Anyway, we have already scuttled two of our boats and I am going to burn the third before we leave Tamiat, just to make certain that we leave no traces of our true identity behind us.’

‘In the name of the great mother Osiris and her beloved son Horus, I think that you really believe what you are saying, Taita.’ He started to grin again. ‘And your plan is to drive me as frothing-at-the-mouth mad as you already are, so that in my madness I will agree with you. Is that it?’

‘In battle, madness becomes sanity. It is the only way to survive. Follow me, Zaras. I am taking you home.’ I started up the gangplank to the deck of the trireme. There were twenty of Zaras’ men there before me. I saw that they already had control of the ship and every man aboard her. On the deck the Cretan crew were kneeling in a row with their heads bowed and their arms pinioned behind their backs; most of them were bleeding from fresh wounds. There were only six of them. Zaras’ men stood over them with drawn swords.

‘Good work, lads.’ I gave them encouragement. Then I turned back to Zaras. ‘Now, have your men strip the uniforms and armour from the prisoners, and send them ashore under guard.’ While he gave the orders, I ran down the companion ladder to the upper rowing deck. The benches were unmanned and the long oars were shipped. But I had fifty of my own men to fill them again. With barely a pause I dived down the next companionway that led to the lower slave deck. The reek came up to meet me. It was so powerful that I gasped, but I kept on down.

There were smoky oil lamps burning in the brackets set in the low roof which gave just enough light for me to make out the ranks of almost naked bodies crouching on the rowing benches or resting their heads on the long oars in front of them as they slept. Those of them who were awake looked up at me with blank and incurious eyes. As they moved the chains on their ankles clanked.

I had thought to make a little speech to them, perhaps offering them their freedom once we reached Thebes if they would row strong and long. But I abandoned this idea as I realized that they were only partly human. They had been reduced to the level of the beasts by their vile durance and cruel treatment. My kindly words would mean nothing to them. The only thing they still understood was the lash.

Almost doubled over to save my head from striking the low upper deck I ran aft down the walkway between the slave benches until I reached the door that I was certain would lead into the cargo hold. There was a heavy brass lock on the door. Zaras followed me closely. I stood aside and let him prise the lock loose with his sword and kick the door open.

Then I lifted one of the oil lamps from its bracket and held it high as I entered the commodious cargo hold. The chests of silver bullion were stacked from deck to deck. However, there was a large and gaping hole in the centre of the pile. I made a quick estimate of the number of the precious chests that had already been taken ashore by the Cretans. I reckoned it to be a hundred at the very least.

For a craven moment I considered abandoning that small part of the treasure and sailing away with what we had on board, but then I thrust the thought aside.

While the gods are smiling, Taita, take full advantage before they frown again, I told myself, and I turned back to Zaras. ‘Come with me. Bring as many men as you can spare.’

‘Where are we going?’

I pointed to the empty space in the stack of chests. ‘We are going to the fort to find where the Cretans have stored those missing chests. There is enough silver in those alone to equip an entire army and to place them in the battlefield. We must prevent any part of it falling into Beon’s hands.’

We hurried back to the deck, and then Zaras followed me down the gangplank to the wharf. Ten of his men came behind us, bringing the captured Cretan sailors with them. They had stripped them naked. Inside the gates of the fort we found Dilbar and thirty of his men guarding the men and slaves that they had captured ashore.

I ordered Dilbar to strip these captives also. I needed as many of the Cretan uniforms and as much of their armour as we could find. The Minoan officers all wore necklaces, rings, armlets and wristlets of silver and gold and precious stones.

‘Take those from the prisoners also,’ I instructed Dilbar. I picked out two of the more exceptional pieces of jewellery from the pile and slipped them into my leather pouch. Like most women my two princesses do so love pretty and shiny trinkets.

I turned my attention to the captured slaves, who stood stolidly in their chains. I saw at once that although they were a mixed bag, which included Libyans, Hurrians and Sumerians, the majority were Egyptians. In all probability they had been captured by the Hyksos and handed over to the Cretans to help them build the fort. I picked out one of them, who had an intelligent face and who seemed not yet to have succumbed to despair.

‘Take that one into the next chamber,’ I ordered Dilbar, and he grabbed the Egyptian and dragged him into the antechamber of the fort. There I told him to leave us. When he had gone, I stared at the slave in silence for a while. His attitude was one of resignation but I saw the defiance in his eyes that he was trying to conceal.

Good! I thought. He is still a man.

At last I spoke to him softly in our own sweet language. ‘You are an Egyptian.’ He started and I saw he had understood me. ‘What regiment?’ I asked him but he shrugged, feigning incomprehension. He looked down at his own feet.

‘Look at me!’ I ordered him and I removed my bronze helmet and unwound the silken cloth that covered the lower half of my face. ‘Look at me!’ I repeated.

He lifted his head and started with surprise.

‘Who am I?’ I asked.

‘You are Taita. I saw you at Luxor in the Temple of Hathor when I was a child. My father told me you were one of the greatest living Egyptians,’ he whispered in awe, and then he threw himself at my feet. I was moved by this show of veneration, but I kept my voice stern.

‘Yes, soldier. I am Taita. Who are you?’

‘I am Rohim of the Twenty-sixth Charioteers. I was captured by the Hyksos swine five years ago.’

‘Will you return with me to our very Egypt?’ I asked, and he smiled. There was a tooth missing in his upper jaw, and his face was bruised. He had been beaten but he was still an Egyptian warrior and his reply was firm.

‘I am your man to the death!’

‘Where did the Cretans store the chests that they forced you to unload from the ship yesterday?’

‘In the strong room at the bottom of the stairwell, but the door is locked.’

‘Who has the key?’

‘The fat one with the green sash. He is the master of slaves.’

I had seen the man he described kneeling with the other prisoners. ‘Does he also have the keys to your chains, Rohim? You will need them, for you are a free man again.’ He grinned at the thought.

‘He keeps all the keys on a chain around his waist. He hides them under his sash.’

I learned from Rohim that over eighty of the slaves in the fort were captured Egyptian archers and charioteers. When we unchained them they worked with gusto to carry the silver chests back from the fort and stack them in the hold of Zaras’ trireme.

While this transfer of silver chests was taking place Rohim led me to the armoury. When we broke open the door, I was delighted to see the array of uniforms, armour and weapons that were stored there.

I ordered all this equipment to be taken to the ships and packed in the main rowing deck where it could be easily reached when we needed it.

Finally we locked all the captured Cretans into their own slave barracks, and we boarded the three waiting triremes.

I had divided our available men equally between the three ships, so all the rowing benches carried their full complements. At my orders the slaves still chained in the lower decks had been given a meal of hard bread, dried fish and beer that we had found in the store-rooms of the fort. It was pathetic to watch them cramming the food into their mouths with calloused hands blackened with filth and their own dried excrement. They gulped down the beer we gave them until their shrunken bellies could hold no more. Some of them vomited it back into the bilges between their bare feet. But the food and friendly treatment had revived them. I knew they would serve me well.

As the dawn was glimmering in the eastern sky we were ready to sail. I took my place in the bows of the leading trireme beside Zaras with the Hyksos helmet crammed down on my head and my nose and mouth covered with the silken scarf.

Zaras called the order to cast off, and the drum on each rowing deck sounded the stroke. The long oars dipped and pulled and rose again to the tempo of the drums. I passed the order to the men on the steering-oar, and we turned into the main channel of the river. The two other triremes turned in succession behind us. In line astern we headed boldly southwards for the Hyksos capital and two hundred leagues of enemy-held river.

The smoke from the boats that were still burning drifted in a dense bank across the river, from time to time blanketing the Cretan camp on the far side. But when a gust of the northerly wind parted the curtain of smoke I saw that my own crews were not the only ones who had been taken by surprise when I headed south.

The troops from the Cretan camp who had survived the destruction of the pontoon bridge were drawn up on the open river-bank in full battle array. The officers commanding them had chosen a point where the navigable channel ran close to the bank. The ranks of their archers were lining the edge of the water, as close as they could get to the channel. They were prepared for us to attempt to run the gauntlet towards the north to reach the open sea. Their bows were strung and every one of them had an arrow nocked and ready to draw.

Four of their senior officers, those with the tallest plumes in their helmets and the most decorations glittering on their breasts and shoulders, were mounted. They sat their horses behind the formations of archers, preparing to direct the arrows of their men at us as we passed on our way down to the Middle Sea.

Their astonishment was apparent as they watched us make the turn into the southern branch of the channel and begin to sail away from them. For a short while none of them reacted. Only when the trireme commanded by Dilbar followed our ship into the turn did they start to move. Then when Akemi, whose ship was bringing up the rear of our squadron, followed us around the voices of the Cretan officers shouting orders became frantic. They carried clearly to me across the water, and I laughed as I watched them spurring their horses back along the river-bank in a futile attempt to head us off.

The Cretan archers broke their perfectly ordered ranks and in an untidy rabble ran after their officers, but as we began remorselessly to pull away from all of them they stopped. They lifted their bows and sent volley after volley of arrows arching after us on a high trajectory. However, these all fell pitifully short and plopped into the wake of Akemi’s ship.

The mounted officers refused to abandon the chase. They flogged their mounts and drove them down the towpath to try and catch up with our flotilla. When gradually they came level with Akemi’s trireme they drew their swords. They stood in the stirrups shouting abuse and wild challenges across the water at Akemi’s men.

Akemi had my strict orders not to shoot arrows at the Minoans. Although they would have made an easy target for his archers on the upper deck of his trireme, he and his crew ignored them. This seemed to infuriate the Minoans. They galloped up the towpath, passing first Akemi’s ship and then that of Dilbar. At last they came level with where I stood in the leading ship.

On my orders our men made no attempt to conceal themselves. The quartet of Cretan officers was able to examine our authentic Hyksos uniforms and accoutrements from a distance of a mere hundred paces as they pounded along the towpath keeping pace with our ship.

By this time they had pursued us for well over three leagues, and their horses were beginning to tire rapidly. When the onshore breeze from the Middle Sea began to rise in volume, driving us southwards, we pulled away from them steadily. The towpath deteriorated into swamp. The hooves of the horses threw up clods of black mud and the struggling animals sank to their knees in the muck. They were forced to abandon the pursuit. They reined in their horses and watched forlornly as we sailed away from them.

I was well pleased with how it had all turned out. The Minoan officers had seen all that I had wanted them to see, which was three shiploads of Hyksos pirates with five hundred lakhs of the Supreme Minos’ silver bullion heading southwards down the river towards the capital city of King Beon at Memphis.

Now it was time to begin the transformation into our next role. I gave the orders for the Cretan uniforms and weapons that we had captured at the Tamiat fort to be brought up on deck. Then our men, laughing and joking, stripped off their Hyksos uniforms and gear and replaced them with the full panoply of Minoan military splendour, from gilded helmets and engraved swords to knee boots of fine soft leather.

Both Akemi and Dilbar had my strict orders not to allow their men to jettison their discarded Hyksos uniforms into the river. If these were to be washed down by the current and retrieved by the Minoan troops at Tamiat, then my deception would be discovered.

It would not take a great leap of imagination for the Cretans to realize how we had bamboozled them. So I had the discarded Hyksos equipment bundled up securely and packed away below decks.

With the wind directly behind us, our sails bulging and our banks of oars rising and falling like the silver wings of a wedge of great white swans in flight, we ran on southwards. These Minoan triremes were the largest and swiftest ships afloat. Despite the massive burden of men and silver they carried their speed was exhilarating. Added to the speed there was an infectious excitement in knowing that we were heading homewards which put my men in high spirits.

As we left the delta and its myriad tributaries behind us and sailed out at last into the main river the three ships of our flotilla spread out into a line abreast and raced each other southwards. The crews shouted challenges and friendly abuse from one trireme to the other.

We flew past anchored fishing boats and swiftly overtook other small vessels laden with produce and trade goods. In passing I could look down into them from the height of our upper deck. I saw a few Egyptian faces amongst the crews who stared up at us in astonishment as we passed them, but most of them were Hyksos.

It is a simple matter for me to tell the difference between these two races. My Egyptians are a handsome people with lively and intelligent faces, high foreheads, large widely spaced eyes, and finely etched features. In short, one is usually able to tell at a glance that they are a superior race.

The Hyksos on the other hand have very few of these attributes. I am not in any way mindlessly prejudiced against them. However, I do have every reason to loathe them with a deep and bitter hatred. They are thieves and bandits; every one of them, with no exception whatsoever. They delight in cruelty and torture. Their coarse and guttural language offends the ears of civilized men. They worship Seth who is the foulest of all the gods. They have stolen our land from us, and enslaved our people.

But I am not a bigot. I abhor those who are. Indeed I have tried my very best to find laudable traits in the Hyksos national character. All the gods know that it is not my fault that I have discovered none.

Now as I looked down upon examples of this unfortunate race, an idle thought occurred to me that at some time in future it might be appropriate for me to express my disapproval in a more definite and unambiguous manner. I should make a gesture that even King Beon might fully recognize as being well deserved.

That will be a joyous day indeed for all Egyptians, I mused. I smiled, and then the thought hardened in my mind: Why should that day not be sooner rather than later? The entire plan sprang into my mind almost fully formed, conception to birth taking place in moments.

I had seen a number of papyrus scrolls and a writing tablet in the captain’s cabin on the lower deck. The Cretans are a literate people. They employ a variation of cuneiform not dissimilar to that of the Sumerians. I can read and recognize the symbols although I confess that at that time I was not yet conversant with the Minoan language.

As one would expect, the Hyksos are entirely illiterate. However, I had learned through my spies that they have captured and enslaved Egyptian scribes whom they force to read, write and translate our hieroglyphics for them.

I also knew that they had learned from these same scribes the use of birds in sending their messages swiftly over great distances. Like the apes the Hyksos are great imitators; although they are seldom able to solve a problem with original thought, they are often able to plagiarize the inventions of greater minds than their own.

I excused myself from Zaras with a few short words and hurried down into the cabin below the main deck. The writing equipment was where I had last seen it. It was contained in an ornate casket decorated with miniature paintings of Thoth, the ibis-headed god of writing.

I sat cross-legged on the deck and opened the writing case. To my delight I saw that apart from the papyrus scrolls of different sizes and shapes, and a selection of brushes and ink blocks, the case contained four miniature pods the size of my thumbnail, skilfully woven from strands of hair from a horse’s mane. The pods could be knotted to the leg of one of the common pigeons that we breed for eating. These birds also have a strange ability to return unerringly to the same coop in which they were hatched from the egg, unwittingly carrying with them one of the tiny message pods attached to their leg.

Swiftly I chose a scrap of papyrus small enough to fit into a pigeon pod. Then I selected the finest of the writing brushes and ground a fresh batch of ink from the block of carbon.

I did not have to ponder the composition of my message for it was clear in my mind. When necessary I am able to form hieroglyphics which are not only tiny and closely painted but also lucid and legible, for I have been gifted with a fine writing hand.

‘To mighty Beon, Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt.’ I opened with the customary salutation. Of course he was none of these things, but those attributes are amongst those to which he aspires. ‘I, Supreme Minos of Crete, greet you. As an earnest of my friendship and favour I am sending to Your Grace three of my great treasure ships laden with tribute. They will sail on the second day of the month of Epiphi from my outpost at Tamiat in the delta of the Nile. I trust that they will reach your palace at Memphis on the fifth day of that same month. I have delayed informing you of these events until the final hours to prevent this intelligence falling into the hands of evil men before it comes to your noble attention. I trust in your amity to receive these gifts in the same spirit of respect and accord as that in which they are sent.’

As soon as the ink on it dried I rolled my little scroll carefully and placed it in one of the pigeon pods. This I sealed with a glue of gum arabic. Then I left the cabin and descended to the lower deck and went to the door of the cargo hold.

The lock had not been repaired since Zaras’ rough treatment. It opened readily to my hand. I closed it again behind me. The chest which I had opened to inspect its contents stood apart. The lid was not firmly secured. I prised it open again with the dagger which was part of my Cretan costume. Then I knelt beside it and took out one of the silver ingots. It was heavy but I placed it in the pouch on my belt. Then I returned to the upper deck and took my place at Zaras’ side. I spoke to him quietly so that none of the crew could hear my words.

‘Within the next hour we should reach the river port of Kuntus where Beon maintains a customs post to collect taxes from all passing ships—’

Zaras interrupted me with a chuckle. ‘That is of no consequence, Master Taita. We will not be long delayed. I will brush them aside like mosquitoes …’

‘No, Zaras. You will back your oars and sails to let the customs boat come alongside. When it does you will show them all respect. I must bespeak the tax collector, because I need his cooperation.’ I turned away to the ship’s side before he could pester me with more questions. The truth was I was uncertain of what to expect when we reached Kuntus.

We sped on up the river, taking all other shipping by complete surprise. We were the swiftest ships on the Nile. Even a man on horseback could not outrun us to give prior warning of our approach. As soon as they saw us coming up against the stream every boat tried to avoid us, either by running into the bank or by dropping their sails and turning to the north to allow the current to carry them out of our way. They did not know who we were. But in these uneasy times fraught with the smoke clouds of war looming over all the world no sensible man took chances.

When we swept around another wide bend in the river I saw the port of Kuntus lying on the east bank ahead of us. I recognized it by the tall stone-built watchtower on the hill above the town. There was a large black flag waving from a pole set on top of the tower. This was the emblem of the tax collector. I knew that he would have men posted on top of the tower to watch for any vessel that tried to slip past without paying its dues.

As we sailed closer to the port a felucca flying another black tax flag shoved off from the stone jetty of the port and set a course to intercept us in mid-river. I ordered Zaras to furl our own sails and back oars to enable the felucca to come alongside. There were a number of heavily armed Hyksos grouped on the open deck of the felucca. Zaras leaned over the side of our ship and commenced a shouted conversation with one of them, who told us that his name was Grall and that he was the provincial tax administrator.

I was greatly relieved by the fact that this conversation was in Hyksosian. If this creature Grall had addressed us in Minoan it would have been extremely awkward to try to explain how nobody on board a Minoan trireme spoke a word of the language. In that instant I determined that at the very first opportunity I would begin a study of the subject. With my ability to master foreign languages I was confident that within a mere few months I would be able to pass as a native of Crete.

From the deck of the felucca Grall was demanding in the name of King Beon to be allowed to board our ship. As I had coached him, Zaras did not demur but immediately ordered our crew to lower a rope ladder to enable Grall to come aboard. He was a wiry little man and he swarmed up the rope with the agility of an ape.

‘Are you the master of this ship?’ he demanded of Zaras. ‘It is my duty to inspect your ship’s manifest.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ Zaras agreed. ‘But first let me invite you to my cabin to partake of a glass of our excellent Minoan wine and then you shall have whatever else you require.’ He took the little man by the arm in a friendly grip and ushered him down the companionway to the master’s cabin.

Up until this time I had kept myself well in the background. Now I waited until I heard Zaras slam the door of the cabin beneath my feet. Then I followed them quietly below deck.

Zaras and I had planned this meeting carefully, and I had taken the precaution of drilling a peephole in the bulkhead through which I could watch and hear everything that took place within the cabin. Now I saw that Zaras had seated the visitor facing my peephole. Grall bore more than a passing resemblance to a poisonous giant toad. He had the same wide mouth and beady eyes. In addition his face was decorated with large warts. When he swallowed a mouthful of the wine which Zaras had poured for him his entire throat contracted as though he were gulping down a water rat, which is the favourite fare of the giant toad. I found myself fascinated by this exhibition, which was so true to nature.

‘Of course you are aware that King Beon has accorded our shipping diplomatic exemption from taxation.’ Zaras was speaking respectfully and reasonably.

‘It is for me to determine whether or not you qualify for that exemption, Captain.’ Grall lowered his wine mug. ‘However, even if you do qualify I may have to charge you for my expenses.’ His smile was sly and knowing. ‘But it will be a paltry sum, I do assure you.’

‘Of course.’ Zaras nodded. ‘All of us must live. However, I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to you in private. I need to send a message to Memphis informing King Beon of our imminent arrival. I am conveying to him a large amount of silver bars as tribute from our Supreme Minos.’ Zaras reached under the table and produced the silver ingot which I had given him earlier. He placed this on the table top between them. ‘Here is a sample.’

Grall set aside his mug slowly and fastened his gaze on the ingot. His eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets. His toad’s mouth hung open slackly so the wine dribbled over his lips and ran down into his scraggly beard. He seemed bereft of the power of speech. Probably he had never laid eyes on such a treasure in his entire lifetime.

‘I wondered if you have carrier birds here at Kuntus; birds that can fly to Memphis and take my message to your king to alert him ahead of our arrival at his capital city?’ Zaras continued.

Grall croaked and nodded his head. He was unable to answer coherently or to take his eyes off the glistening bar of silver.

‘Perhaps we should look upon this ingot as the payment for your invaluable services.’ Zaras nudged the silver bar an inch towards him. ‘A token of the accord that exists between our two great nations.’ Zaras placed the pigeon pod containing my missive beside the ingot. ‘This is the message that must be sent to your King Beon, if it so pleases you.’

One of Grall’s hands crawled across the table like a great hairy spider and spread itself over the silver ingot. He lifted it reverently and pushed it down the front of the stained leather jerkin that he wore, and knotted the fastenings. His hands were trembling with emotion. The ingot made a considerable bulge under his jerkin, but he clasped it to his breast as tenderly as a mother giving suck to her infant.

He came unsteadily to his feet and with his free hand picked up the pigeon pod. ‘I understand now that you are involved in affairs of high state, Your Honour.’ He bowed deeply to Zaras. ‘Please forgive my intrusion. Of course I consider myself to be privileged to be given the honour of flying your message to King Beon with one of my birds. The king will have your message in his hands before sunset this very evening. Even in this magnificent ship of yours you will not be able to reach Memphis before noon the day after tomorrow.’

‘You are extremely kind. Now I will escort you safely back on board your felucca,’ Zaras offered, but Grall was already halfway up the companion ladder to the upper deck.

Zaras and I watched the felucca racing back to Kuntus. We delayed long enough to see Grall scramble from the felucca to the jetty and then hurry into the village. Only then did I nod at Zaras. We spread our sails and ran out our banks of oars to resume our southerly course.

I looked back over our stern and saw a horseman leave the scattered buildings of Kuntus and gallop up the track to the watchtower on the headland. I shaded my eyes against the sun and watched him pull up at the base of the tower and toss his reins to a waiting groom, then drop to the ground and hurry into the tall building.

A short time later the same man reappeared on the top platform of the tower. He was silhouetted against the sky as he lifted both his arms above his head. A purple pigeon fluttered from his cupped hands and whirled aloft on swift wing-beats.

The bird circled the tower three times and then settled on to a determined southerly heading. It came down the middle of the river, climbing swiftly. But as it passed directly over our ship it was still low enough for me to imagine that I could see the shape of the tiny pod fastened to one of the legs that was tucked in under its tail fan.

We sailed on into the south for the rest of the afternoon. Then, as soon as the sun sank below the hills on the west bank, I ordered Zaras to find a safe anchorage for the night. He chose a stretch of shallow water in a bend of the Nile out of the main current.

I knew that Grall had been correct in his estimate, and that we were still a day and a half’s sailing north of Memphis. Zaras set an anchor watch on board each of our vessels. Then he posted additional sentries ashore to ensure that no bandits could creep up on us under cover of darkness.

As we ate our dinner around one of the camp-fires I discussed with my three captains the tactics of ramming an enemy ship. I had studied the theory of this manoeuvre during the writing of my celebrated treatise on naval warfare. I detailed for them how to inflict the greatest amount of damage on an enemy ship and its crew, without destroying your own vessel and murdering your own men in the process. I reiterated that the most important fundamental is to teach your men the brace position that they must adopt before collision with an enemy ship.

In all other respects it was a quiet and uneventful night. We were astir again before daybreak and as soon as it was light enough to discern the channel we hoisted the anchors and set sail again. The wind had strengthened during the night, blowing strongly out of the north-east. It drove us onwards so briskly that the spray splattered in over the bows to wet our faces as we stared ahead. The men were in high spirits. Even the slaves who were still chained in the lower decks had responded well to the increase in their rations and to my promise of manumission once we reached Thebes. I could hear them singing even where I stood at the helm.

I think that I was probably the only one on board who had misgivings about our enterprise. All had gone so well since we left Thebes that the men were beginning to believe that I was infallible and that they were invincible. I knew well enough that both these assumptions were false. Even I did not know what we would find when we reached Memphis. I began to regret bitterly that I had been so bold as to alert Beon to our arrival. In retrospect I thought that it would have been so much better and safer to creep by his capital with muffled oars during the night. It did nothing for my peace of mind when Zaras came to where I was brooding at the ship’s side and slapped me on the back with such bonhomie that the blow staggered me.

‘Despite your reputation, I never realized that you are such a reckless daredevil, Taita. I know no other who would have dreamed up any of these escapades of yours. You should compose a ballad to celebrate your own heroics. If you don’t then I may be obliged to do so on your behalf.’ He guffawed and slapped me again. It hurt even more than the first blow.

Although this was Egyptian territory that we were sailing through, it had been seized by our enemies many years ago. I had not revisited this part of the river since my boyhood. This was all unfamiliar territory to me, as it was to every other man aboard, with one exception.

That was Rohim of the Twenty-sixth Charioteers, the Egyptian slave that I had found and freed in the fort at Tamiat. He had been a captive of the Hyksos for five years and half that time he had been chained on the rowing benches of a galley that patrolled this section of the Nile.

He stood behind Zaras and me as we navigated the trireme southwards with sails straining and every oar driving hard. He was able to point out the twists and turns in the navigable channel long before we reached them, and to warn us of hidden obstacles below the surface.

When night fell we anchored for the night. But at sunrise the next morning we were once again under sail and boring on up the Nile. This was the fifth day of the month of Epiphi, the day which I had warned Beon to expect our arrival at Memphis.

We sailed on for four hours until eventually we entered a narrow dog-leg bend that ran between low bluffs. We emerged from this into a straight run of calm water that stretched out for a good two leagues ahead of us.

‘This is the last run before we reach Memphis,’ Rohim told us. ‘The channel turns to the left hand at the end of this strait and the city of Memphis is spread out over both banks directly beyond the turn.’

‘Avast heaving!’ I ordered Zaras. ‘Let the men at the oars rest until we reach the turn. Let them drink from the water-skins. They must be ready to bring us up to ramming speed as soon as I call for it.’ The other two triremes followed our example as soon as we shipped our oars. The three of us continued down the strait under sails alone.

The river was alive with shipping of every type and size; from galleys to luggers and longboats. These behaved in a completely different manner from any boats we had encountered up until this time. Although they gave way to us respectfully, they did not try to run from us. The crews waved and shouted friendly greetings as we passed.

‘They are expecting us,’ I told Zaras complacently, trying to hide my relief. ‘It seems that our pigeon found its way back to its loft.’

Zaras looked at me with unconcealed astonishment. ‘Isn’t that what you planned? Were you expecting anything less, master?’ he demanded and I shook my head and turned away. I find it daunting that men expect me to perform miracles as a matter of routine. I know that I am more astute and wily than most other men, but to my mind luck is preferable to brains and luck is a fickle mistress. I am never sure when she will desert me.

I walked down the rows of benches and here I met the same childlike trust and limitless expectations. The men greeted me with smiles and silly little jests, which I returned as guilelessly. However, my true purpose was to check that the bows that lay hidden under the benches were strung and the quivers beside them were filled with arrows.

With the wind blustering in from dead astern we were tearing through the water and the final bend in the river seemed to race to meet us. Without any semblance of urgency, still smiling and exchanging repartee with the men, I made my way back to my station at the helm.

I glanced over each side of our hull to make certain that the triremes of Dilbar and Akemi were in their arrowhead attack formation flanking us. Both Dilbar and Akemi raised their right arms to salute me, and to signal their readiness for battle.

I nodded at Zaras as we swept into the bend and called out one word: ‘Oars!’

We spread our wings, the feathered blades of the oars skimming the surface.

‘Pull!’ I gave the command and the blades dipped and caught the water and shot us forward, almost doubling our speed. The drummers set the stroke rate, increasing it as our speed built up.

Suddenly we were through the bend. The banks of the river opened on each side of us and the city of Memphis lay ahead of us. The dazzling sunlight reflected from the marble walls and towers, from the domes and towers clad in gold leaf. The splendour of the palaces and temples spread before us almost rivalled those of my beloved Thebes.

Each bank of the river was lined three and four deep with small craft, and every craft was packed with humanity. Their multitudes were beyond counting. Most of the boats were draped with bunting of white and red; these I knew were the Hyksos colours of rejoicing and happiness. The crowds were waving palm fronds in greeting. Their voices rose in a tumult of song and wild ululation.

The wide lane down the centre of the Nile had been left completely devoid of shipping to welcome us. At the far end of this watery highway was anchored a cluster of magnificently painted barges and river galleys. In their centre was the royal barge that dwarfed anything else on the river, with the exception of our trio of triremes.

‘Increase the stroke to ramming speed.’ I raised my voice above the uproar to shout at Zaras. ‘The red barge in the centre of their line must be that of Beon. Aim for it.’

I reached up with both hands and made certain that my silk mask covered my lower face to just below my eyes, and then I jammed my bronze helmet down firmly on my skull. I wanted to be entirely certain that no member of Beon’s court would ever be able to recognize me at some awkward time in the future.

The two men on the steering-oar kept the bronze ram on the bows of our trireme aimed unwaveringly at the centre of King Beon’s state barge. The other two triremes of our squadron held their station half a ship’s length on either side of us and slightly behind us, so that we would be first to strike. Our drummer pounded out the rowing stroke for ramming speed, and I listened to my own heartbeat matching it almost exactly.

The distance between us and the red barge closed swiftly from four hundred paces to two hundred. I could see that the barge was anchored by the bows and by the stern, so that it was broadside to the current. In the centre of the upper deck was a high-stepped pyramid, surmounted by a tented canopy. Under the canopy I could make out the throne and on it sat a large human form. But it was still too distant for me to be sure of any details.

Surrounding the throne was drawn up an honour guard of pikemen, all of them fully armed and armoured. Their helmets and breastplates made a warlike and glittering show.

On each side of the royal barge was anchored a line of smaller vessels. These were crowded with the courtiers who made up Beon’s entourage. It seemed to me that there were several hundreds of them, but it was impossible to judge their numbers with any accuracy because they were packed so closely, and most of the women were hidden behind the taller men. All of them were laughing, cheering and waving. Some of the men were in ceremonial armour and ornate metal helmets. The others, male and females both, were dressed in lustrous and exotic materials of every conceivable colour. They were as fantastic and multi-hued as a cloud of freshly hatched butterflies, fluttering, whirling and dancing in the wind.

In a smaller vessel, which was moored alongside the great royal barge, a band of musicians played barbaric Hyksos music. This was a cacophony of drums and lutes, of animal horn trumpets, woodwinds and reed pipes.

We were racing down so swiftly on the royal barge that I was now able to make out the details that had previously been obscured by distance. On the summit of the pyramid-shaped dais, under the painted canopy, on his throne of beaten silver sat King Beon. He had taken that throne after the death of King Salitis, his father.

I recognized him on sight. I had seen him before on the battlefield of Thebes. He had been the commander of the Hyksos left flank, with forty thousand infantry and archers under him. He was not the kind of man that one would readily forget.

He was colossal. His white robes were voluminous as a tent, billowing around his protuberant belly. His beard was curling black and plaited into thick ropes, some of which hung to his waist while others were thrown back over his shoulders. Woven into the plaits were chains and ornaments of bright silver and gold. He wore a high-crowned helmet of polished silver that was studded with ornate patterns of glittering jewels. His aspect was magnificent, almost godlike. Even I, who loathe all things Hyksos, was impressed.

King Beon had one hand raised, with the open palm turned towards us in greeting or in blessing; I was uncertain which he intended, but he was smiling.

In a few terse words I pointed out to Zaras the most vulnerable point in the hull of the royal barge where the strain on the ship’s main timbers was centred. This was slightly forward of the high podium.

‘Take that as your mark, Zaras, and hold true on it right up to the moment of impact.’

By now we were so close that I could see that King Beon was no longer smiling. His lower jaw was hanging open, exposing his brown-stained front teeth. Abruptly he closed his mouth. At this late juncture he had realized that our intentions were hostile. He dropped his hairy paws on to the armrests of his throne and tried to push himself to his feet. But he was ungainly and slow.

The courtiers packed into the barges on each side of his royal vessel suddenly became aware of the menace of our racing triremes bearing directly down on them. The wild screams of the women carried clearly to where I stood. The men were struggling to reach the sides of the anchored barges, unsheathing their weapons and challenging us with futile war cries and bellows of rage. I saw many of their women knocked down and trampled. Others were carried forward to the ship’s side. They jumped or they were shoved overboard into the Nile. We came down on this confusion like a mountain avalanche.

‘Oars!’ Zaras shouted the command loudly enough to be heard above the wailing and shrieking of the Hyksos. The rowers on each side of our trireme lifted their oars to the vertical position and clamped them in their buckets so they would not be sheared off by the impact. Our speed was undiminished as we covered the last few yards of open water.

At the last moment before impact I dropped to my knees on the deck and braced myself against the rowing bench in front of me. I saw that the men around me were at last taking my instruction seriously. Every one of them was doubled over with his arms locked around his thighs and his face pressed to his knees.

We struck the royal barge precisely on the point of aim that I had given Zaras. The massive bronze ram on our bows sheared through her timbers with a crackling roar. Most of our own men were thrown from the rowing benches to the deck by the collision, but I managed to keep my grip on the sturdy hardwood bench. I was able to see everything that was happening around me.

I watched as the full force and weight of our trireme was concentrated on one small area of the royal barge’s side. Like the blade of a heavy axe striking a log of kindling, we cut through her cleanly. The severed halves of her hull rolled under our bows as we trod her under.

As she went over I saw the Hyksos guardsmen flung from the steps of the royal pyramid in swirling profusion, like the autumn leaves from the high branches of sycamore tree in the gale winds of winter. King Beon was thrown highest of them all. His white robes billowed about his gross body, and the tangled braids of his beard lashed his face. He dropped back into the river with his arms and legs flailing. The air trapped in his robes floated him on the surface not thirty paces from where I was dragging myself upright, using the rowing bench as a support.

On either side of me the other triremes of our squadron smashed into the smaller barges of the Hyksos formation. They rolled them over effortlessly, ripping through their hulls, catapulting the panic-stricken passengers from the decks into the river.

The wreckage of the royal barge scraped down the sides of our trireme, to an uproar of tearing sails, snapping ropes, splintering timbers and the agonized shrieks of men being crushed between the grinding hulls. Our own deck was canted over at a severe angle, men and loose equipment sliding towards the port side.

Then our lovely ship shook herself free of the wreckage, and with almost feminine grace she regained her equilibrium and came upright in the water.

Zaras was yelling again for ‘Oars!’, and the men responded quickly enough. They heaved the heavy oars from the buckets and settled them in their rowlocks.

‘Reverse the stroke!’ Zaras shouted again. Only the rowers on the rear benches were able to reach the water with their oars. The men in the forward benches were blocked by the wreckage of the floundering royal barge.

Those who were able to do so dug in their blades and with a few powerful strokes pulled us free. Within seconds the severed sections of the royal barge filled with water. They rolled over and went down. An eruption of trapped air roared up to the surface.

I glanced over at the other two triremes. Dilbar and Akemi were bellowing orders at their men. Their crews clambered swiftly back on to the rowing benches, set their oars and picked up the stroke from the beat of the drums. The helmsmen were steering them back into formation on our leading ship.

Between us the surface of the river was covered with bobbing human heads, splashing and struggling bodies and shattered wreckage. The cries of drowning men and women were as piteous as the bleating of sheep being driven through the gates of the abattoir when they smell the blood.

For a long minute I watched the carnage in horror. I was almost overwhelmed by guilt and remorse. I could no longer force myself to look upon these doomed creatures as merely Hyksos animals. They were human beings struggling for life itself. My heart went out to them.

Then I saw King Beon again and my feelings changed in an instant. My wayward heart returned to me as swiftly and unerringly as a pigeon to its loft. I remembered what Beon had done to two hundred of our finest and bravest archers when his Hyksos brutes had captured them during the battle of Naquada. He had barricaded them in the Temple of Seth on the hill above the battlefield and burned them alive as a sacrifice to his monstrous god.

Now Beon was clinging to a shattered plank from his royal barge with one hand; while in his other hand he was wielding his bejewelled sword, using it to chop at the heads of the women of his harem who were trying to take refuge on his plank with him. He drove them away ruthlessly, unwilling to share his perch with a single one of them. I watched him strike at a girl child who was no older than my darling little Bekatha. His blade split her skull down to her chin as though it were a ripe pomegranate. While her bright blood spurted out to incarnadine the water around her, Beon called her a filthy name, and struck her again.

I stooped quickly and picked up the recurved war bow from under the rowing bench in front of me. The arrows had spilled from the quiver around my feet. I nocked one of them as I straightened up and drew to full stretch. Like any expert archer I always loose as the bowstring touches my lips. However, this time my hands were shaking with fury and the arrow flew wide.

Instead of taking Beon in the throat where I had aimed, my arrow pinned his forearm to the plank on which he lay; the plank for which he had killed his own child bride.

Zaras and the others who were watching me howled with glee. They know how well I can shoot and they thought I had deliberately winged Beon. I nocked another arrow, and this time I admit that I was playing to my audience. I deliberately nailed Beon’s sword-arm to the plank, so he was stretched out on the timber baulk in the attitude of crucifixion. He howled like the cringing jackal he was.

I am by nature a compassionate man, so I did not allow him to suffer much longer than he richly deserved. My third arrow went into the precise centre of his throat.

The crews of all three of my triremes followed my example. They seized their bows and crowded to the sides of our vessels to shower arrows on the floundering wretches in the water below them.

I was powerless to prevent it happening, or perhaps I lacked the motivation and inclination to do so. Many of my men had lost their fathers and brothers to these unwholesome wretches. Their sisters and mothers had been ravished and their homes burned to the ground by them.

So I stood by and watched the flower of Hyksos nobility being pruned down to the very quick. When the last floating corpse, bristling with arrows, was carried away on the current I regained control of my men and cursed them back to their seats on the rowing benches.

Totally unrepentant, still howling with bloodthirsty glee, they hoisted the sails and heaved back on the oars. We left the Hyksos to the mercy of their foul god Seth, and we raced on southwards towards Thebes and the true Kingdom of Egypt.

The border between our very Egypt and the territory that the Hyksos hordes had overrun was never clearly demarcated. The fighting seemed to fluctuate on a daily basis as attack followed counter-attack, and the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed across the land.

We had left from Thebes on the fifth day of the month of Payni. At that time Lord Kratas had driven the Hyksos invaders back twenty leagues north of the town of Sheik Abada. However, we were now well into the month of Epiphi, so much could have changed in our absence. But we still had the element of surprise on our side.

Neither the Hyksos front-line troops nor our own men fighting under Lord Kratas would be expecting the miraculous appearance of a fleet of Minoan warships in our Nile, over four hundred leagues from the shores of the Middle Sea.

There were no ships on the southern stretches of the Nile, either Hyksos or Egyptian, that could oppose our triremes. We had just proven that we were unstoppable. Of course, the Hyksos might fly pigeons to try and warn their troops who stood between us and Egypt. But pigeons are free spirits and fly only to where they were hatched, and not to any other destination that their handlers might prefer.

We did not anchor at nightfall; because we were now in familiar waters and we knew every bend and sandbar, every channel and every obstacle in this section of the river.

Six days and nights after we left Memphis, a few hours before midnight, just as the moon in its first quarter was rising, we passed through the encamped armies.

The watch fires of the opposing legions were spread out for several leagues along both banks of the Nile. There was merely a narrow strip of darkness between them, which demarcated no-man’s-land.

Our own ships showed no lights, except a tiny shaded lamp on the stern so we could keep contact with each other in the darkness. These dim lights were not visible from the river-banks. I did not wish to be recognized by either army so we kept to the middle of the river. We sailed through unchallenged, until at last we were back in our very Egypt.

In the dawn we ran into a small flotilla of eight river galleys coming towards us from the direction of Thebes. Even at a distance I could see that they were laden with Egyptian troops, and they were flying the blue colours of Pharaoh Tamose. I knew that these must be Egyptian supply vessels bringing up reinforcements for Lord Kratas’ army.

As soon as they saw our strange squadron bearing down on them every one of them put over the helm and tried to fly from us in panic. During the previous few days I had ordered my men to stitch together crude but effective blue pennants in preparation for just such an encounter. Each of our triremes hoisted one of these at the masthead and the galleys pulled into the bank and let us pass. The crews stared after us in astonishment as we sailed on towards Thebes with only a passing salutation. I am certain none of them had ever seen ships like our triremes.

This was a meeting that I would have avoided if it were at all possible. It was far better that the fate of the treasure triremes remain forever a mystery to the Supreme Minos in Crete. He must never doubt that the Hyksos were the false allies that robbed him of his hoard of silver bullion. To achieve this I had to ensure that our captured prizes, colossal and conspicuous as they might be, disappeared without trace. This was a task that might have daunted a lesser man, but I had already devised the solution.

In the time before our people were driven from their homeland by the Hyksos, before the exodus, our ruler had been Pharaoh Mamose. At that time I, Taita, was the slave of Lord Intef who was the Nomarch of Karnak and grand vizier of all the twenty-two nomes of Upper Egypt. However, amongst his numerous other titles and honorifics my master was also the Lord of the Necropolis and the Keeper of the Royal Tombs.

He was responsible for the upkeep of the tombs of all the pharaohs past and present, living and dead. But much more importantly he was also the official architect of the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.

My Lord Intef had never been gifted with any creative skills. His talents were vested more in havoc and destruction. I doubt that he could have designed a cattle pen or even a pigeon coop, let alone an elaborate royal tomb fit for a pharaoh. While retaining for himself the royal gratitude and favours that went with the title, he left the arduous work, that which was not to his liking or which was beyond his limited abilities and skills, for me to attend to.

My memories of Lord Intef are not happy ones. It was he who commanded one of his minions to take the gelding knife to me. He was a cruel man and utterly ruthless. But, in the end, I had decisively settled the score between us.

Long before that happy day it was I who designed every chamber and tunnel and funerary hall of Pharaoh Mamose’s magnificent tomb. Then I supervised and directed the builders, the masons, the artists and all the artisans that were called upon to labour in this enterprise.

Pharaoh Mamose’s outer sarcophagus was carved from a gigantic single block of granite. It was sufficiently commodious to encompass a nest of seven silver coffins, which fitted neatly one within the other. The innermost of these was intended to contain Pharaoh’s embalmed corpse. All this added up to a burden of massive bulk and weight. This had to be transported in great reverence two thousand yards from the funerary temple on the banks of the Nile River to the tomb in the foothills of the Valley of the Kings.

To accomplish this transit I surveyed and built a canal that ran as straight as any arrow from the bank of the Nile across the riparian plain of black soil to the entrance of the royal tomb. This canal was wide enough and deep enough to accept Pharaoh’s funeral barge.

Pharaoh Mamose had been overtaken by destiny and had never lain a single day in his tomb before the Hyksos drove us out of our land. When we embarked on the long exodus we were commanded by his wife, Queen Lostris, to carry his embalmed body with us.

Many years later, Queen Lostris ordered me to design and build another tomb in the savage Nubian wilderness thousands of leagues further south. That was where Mamose now lay.

The original tomb in the Valley of the Kings had stood empty all these years. More importantly for my plans, the canal that I had built from the funerary temple on the bank of the Nile to the royal tomb was still in an excellent state of repair. I knew this because only a short while previously I had ridden along the bank with my two little princesses to show them their father’s empty tomb. I must admit that neither of them showed much interest in this lesson in the history of their own family.

Even after all these years I was able to recall the precise dimensions of Mamose’s funeral barge. My memory is infallible. I never forget a fact, a figure or a face.

Now I measured the overall dimensions of our requisitioned Minoan treasure triremes. Then I ordered Zaras to anchor briefly in calm water, while I swam down to the trireme’s keel and measured the amount of water she drew with her full cargo of bullion in the hold. These measurements varied somewhat from ship to ship.

I returned to the surface well pleased with the results of my investigations. Now I was able to compare the dimensions of Pharaoh Mamose’s funeral barge with those of the captured triremes. The funerary canal would accommodate the transit of the largest of my triremes with ten cubits to spare on each side of the hull, and with clearance of fifteen cubits of water under the keel. What was even more encouraging was that all those years ago I had lined the canal with granite blocks and I had designed a system of locks and shadoofs to keep it always filled with Nile water.

It has been my experience that if you defer to the gods with the full reverence and respect that they deserve and expect, they are often inclined to return the compliment. Although they can be capricious, this time they had remembered me.

I planned the last leg of our journey to arrive at the entrance to the funerary canal shortly after the setting of the sun. In darkness we tied up at the stone jetty below Pharaoh Mamose’s funerary temple. Of course Mamose is now a god and has his own temple overlooking the Nile. It is but a short walk from the jetty on which Zaras and I landed.

It is not a very imposing temple. I must accept the responsibility for that. When we returned to Thebes after the exodus and we defeated the Hyksos at the battle of Thebes, my mistress Queen Lostris was determined to dedicate a temple to her husband, the long-dead Pharaoh. She wanted to honour him and at the same time render up thanks for our safe return from the wilderness.

Of course she summoned me to build the temple. When I saw the extent and sumptuousness of the edifice she had in mind I was shocked and alarmed. It would have overshadowed and outshone the grand palace of the Pharaohs which would face it from the opposite bank of the river. Pharaoh Mamose had almost reduced this very Egypt to penury with the erection of his two tombs: the one here at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings and the other even more complex and expensive tomb in Nubia.

Now my mistress, whom I adored and worshipped, planned to bring the nation low yet again with the erection of another astonishing building in his memory.

Fortunately I have considerable sway over her only son, the present Pharaoh Tamose, who is a sensible lad. To a much lesser extent I had learned from long and bitter experience how to control the wilder excesses of my queen. The dimensions of the temple to Mamose that we eventually settled upon were half the size of the tax collector’s building in Thebes, and I even managed to do away with the marble floors.

An establishment of this size no longer required the services of as many priests as my queen had in mind. I whittled away at her resolve until finally she threw up her hands in resignation and agreed to my counter-proposal of four priests, as opposed to her original estimate of four hundred.

Now when Zaras and I made our way up from the river to the rear entrance of the temple and walked into the nave without announcing our arrival we discovered the four religious gentlemen rather more than moderately inebriated on cheap palm wine. They were in the company of two young ladies who for some arcane and obscure reason were without clothing. They were engrossed in a prayer ritual with two of the priests of Mamose, which seemed to consist of rolling around on the floor of baked mud-bricks, clinging together and uttering cries of wild abandon. The two unoccupied priests stood over them clapping their hands and extorting the worshippers to a more strenuous display of religious devotion.

It was some little time before any of them became aware of our presence. At that point the ladies hurriedly retrieved their apparel and disappeared through the secret door behind the statue of the god Mamose. We did not see them again, nor were they mentioned in our subsequent conversation with the priests.

The priests of Mamose are well disposed towards me. Since the death of Queen Lostris I have made myself responsible for the payment of their monthly stipends. The four of them knelt in front of me, genuflecting vigorously and in the name of the god calling down blessings on my head.

As they knelt at my feet I produced the hawk seal of Pharaoh from under my cloak. They were struck dumb with awe. The high priest crawled to my feet and tried to kiss them. He smelled overpoweringly of sweat, cheap wine and cheaper femininity. I stepped back and Zaras dissuaded him from further demonstrations of piety with the flat of his sword across his bare buttocks.

Then I addressed the four of them briefly but firmly, warning them strictly that the presence of three large warships moored at the wharf outside their front door must never be mentioned or admitted to anybody but Pharaoh Tamose in person. In addition armed guards would be placed over their temple and the empty tomb at the far end of the canal both day and night. Only those men under the command of Captain Zaras were in future allowed to enter the sacred precincts. These same guards would ensure that the four priests themselves would remain strictly incarcerated within these precincts.

Finally I commanded the high priest to hand over to me the large bunch of keys to the tomb and all the other monuments under his charge. We left them still protesting their duty and devotion to me and Pharaoh, and their strict obedience to my orders. Zaras and I returned to our ships.

The fall in the ground from the entrance to the Valley of the Kings to the dock on the river was less than twenty cubits but it required four separate locks to lift each of our triremes that height before we could bring them to the tomb. We rowed the first ship into the lock below the temple and then closed the gates on it. The water level in the lock was five cubits lower than that in the canal.

I demonstrated to my three captains how to open the ground paddles. Water from the upper canal then drained down into the lock and slowly lifted the enormous ship up to the same level as the upper canal. Once the gates were closed behind her, fifty men on the tow lines were standing ready to drag the great trireme down the canal to the next lock, while behind her the process was being repeated to raise the second trireme.

None of my men had ever seen anything to match this, which was not surprising because I had invented the system myself. There was not another like it in all the world. They were elated and excited by what they perceived to be witchcraft. But there was usually hard work involved in my kind of magic.

Fortunately I had over two hundred men to apply to this labour. These included the slaves that had been chained below by the Minoans. They were now freed men but they were obliged to work for their freedom.

The water that was drained from the higher canal to lift the boat had to be replaced. I achieved this by pumping up fresh water from the river by means of a battery of shadoofs. These were counterweighted bucket chains each served by two men. It was an involved and laborious business that had to be repeated four times with each trireme.

Before each boat was lifted through the first lock the sails and masts were lowered flat on the upper deck. Then the hull was covered by woven reed mats until it resembled a shapeless mound of trash. When the citizens of Thebes awoke the following morning and looked across the river they would see nothing untoward on the far bank. The three great triremes had disappeared as though they had never existed.

It was almost sunrise the next day before we had towed the ships across the plain and moored them at the entrance to Mamose’s tomb. The men were exhausted so I ordered Zaras to issue them with extra rations of dried fish, beer and bread, and let them rest through the hot hours of the day.

I walked back along the towpath of the canal to the temple. The priests seemed to have recovered from the strenuous rituals, devotions and prayers of the previous evening. They rowed me across the river in the temple skiff. I was on my way to report on the success of our expedition to Pharaoh.

This was a pleasant duty to which I was looking forward immensely. My devotion to Pharaoh is exceeded only by that I had for his mother, Queen Lostris. Of course, it is futile to compare superlatives so I deliberately do not mention my royal princesses in this equation. Let it suffice to say that my devotion to the royal family extends to all its members.

My tame priests landed me on the steps below the bazaars of the waterfront of the city, which were already thronged despite the early hour. I set off through the narrow streets towards the palace gates. Under my battered helmet and filthy face mask nobody recognized me, although a gang of small ragamuffins danced around me calling me vile names and throwing stones at me. I caught one of their missiles in mid-air and returned it with considerably more force than I received it. The urchin who was clearly leader of the gang screamed with pain and clutched at the wound in his scalp, which was fountaining copiously, and he led his followers in the flight for safety.

When I reached the palace gates I removed my disguise, and the captain of the household guards recognized me at once. He saluted me respectfully.

‘I must see Pharaoh!’ I told him. ‘Send a messenger to tell him I am waiting on his pleasure.’

‘I offer you my apologies, Lord Taita.’ I did not correct him. I was becoming accustomed to my new title. ‘Pharaoh is not in Thebes, and we do not expect his imminent return.’

I nodded. This came as a disappointment, but as no real surprise to me. Pharaoh spends the greater part of his time and energy in prosecuting the interminable campaign against the Hyksos in the north. ‘Then take me to the chamberlain, Lord Aton.’

When I reached his private rooms Aton rushed to embrace me at the door. ‘What tidings, old friend?’ he demanded. ‘How went our venture?’

‘Grave tidings indeed.’ I assumed a gloomy expression. ‘The treasury of the Supreme Minos in his fort at Tamiat has been plundered, and King Beon has been murdered.’

He held me at arm’s length and stared into my face. ‘You jest with me, good Taita,’ he accused me. ‘All honest men must weep to hear it told! Who would commit such heinous crimes?’

‘Alas! Both committed by the same hand, Aton. One that you might recognize, mayhap?’ And I held up my right hand before his face. He stared at it with cleverly feigned mystification. To have survived so long in the role of royal chamberlain one had to be a gifted thespian.

Then he shook his head and began to chuckle, softly at first, but the volume of his mirth built up swiftly until he was snorting and hooting with glee. He staggered around the room bumping into the furniture and laughing. His belly and every other part of him were shaking with laughter. Then abruptly he stopped laughing and fled to the adjoining closet. There was a moment of silence, but before I could follow him there came a sound like the flooding of the Nile through the cataracts. It went on for some considerable time before Aton returned to where I waited. Now his expression was once more serious as he adjusted his robes.

‘You are fortunate, my dear friend, that I reached the pot in time, or you might have been drowned like King Beon.’

‘How do you know Beon was drowned?’

‘I have ears and eyes other than those you see in my face.’

‘If you know so much, then tell me about the treasure of the Minos.’

‘I have heard nothing of that.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Is there aught you might have learned about it?’

‘Only that you were wrong.’

‘In what way was I wrong?’

‘You told me that the treasure might amount to a hundred lakhs, did you not?’ He nodded and I went on:

‘You sadly miscalculated.’

‘Can you prove it to me?’ he demanded.

‘I can do better than that, Aton. I can let you weigh it,’ I assured him. ‘However, I must get a message to Pharaoh before we leave the palace.’

Aton pointed to his writing case, which lay open in a corner of the room. ‘Write your message and Pharaoh will have it in his hand before nightfall,’ he assured me.

My message was short and cryptic. ‘Please be patient with me,’ I begged Aton as I handed it to him, ‘but I have not bathed or worn fresh apparel for almost two moons. I must visit my own quarters here in the palace before I return with you to the tomb of Mamose.’ I did not think it worth mentioning that neither had I seen my two little princesses since my return.

As soon as I reached my quarters I sent one of my slaves to the quarters of the royal women to convey a message to Their Highnesses.

The two of them arrived with the force and fury of the khamsin wind out of the desert just as I was stepping into my hot tub. They are the only ones in all the world that I allow to see me unclad, except for my slaves. However, my slaves are all eunuchs as am I, so they are of no account.

Now Tehuti and Bekatha perched on the marble surround of my tub and pestered me with questions. They took no notice of my nudity. Once many years ago Bekatha had spoken for both of them on the subject: ‘You are just like me and Tehuti; all three of us look so much neater without all those dangly things hanging in front of us.’

Now she paddled both her neat little feet in my tub and complained, ‘It’s been so boring since you went away. Whatever were you doing that took you so long? You must swear that next time you will take us with you.’ I poured a pitcher of hot water over my head to avoid taking the oath she had set for me.

‘Did you bring us a present, Taita? Or did you forget?’ Tehuti took over the interrogation. As the elder sister she has a firmer grasp on the intrinsic value of things.

‘Of course I brought you both something. How could I ever forget you two little pests?’ I replied, and they clapped their hands with delight.

‘Show us!’ Bekatha chirruped.

‘Oh yes, darling Taita,’ Tehuti agreed. ‘Please show us. We do so love you.’

‘Then fetch me my pouch.’ I pointed to where it lay on my couch in the adjoining room, and as always Bekatha was first to reach it. She came dancing back to me, brandishing the leather pouch. Then she flopped down on to the marble slabs with her legs crossed under her, and the pouch in her lap.

‘Open it!’ I told her. With my princesses firmly in mind, I had selected two pieces of jewellery from the loot we collected from the Minoan officers whom we captured at Tamiat.

‘Is there something in there wrapped in red cloth?’ I asked and Bekatha squealed with excitement.

‘Yes, my best and most lovely Taita. Is it mine? Is the red one mine?’

‘Of course it is.’

Her hands were shaking with excitement as she unwrapped the small parcel. As she held up the golden necklace her eyes filled with tears of delight. ‘It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!’ she whispered.

Suspended from the chain were two golden figures. Although they were tiny they were complete in every exquisite detail. The largest was an image of a charging bull. Its head was lowered ready to butt with its viciously curved horns. Its eyes were tiny green stones that glittered angrily. Its humped shoulders epitomized brute strength and fury. It was attacking the other figure: the slender form of a beautiful girl. She seemed to dance just beyond the reach of those deadly horns. There was a garland of flowers around her head, and the nipples of her breasts were red rubies. Her head was thrown back as she laughed at the raging bull.

‘She is so quick that the bull will never catch her.’ Bekatha bounced the necklace between her hands to make the figures dance.

‘You are quite right, Bekatha. She is the charm against danger. While you wear it danger can never catch you. The bull dancer will keep you safe from all harm.’ I took the necklace from her hands and fastened the clasp behind her neck. She looked down at it and shook her shoulders to make the figurine dance against the lustrous skin of her boyish chest. She was lovely when she laughed.

Tehuti had waited quietly for me to give her my attention, and I felt a little guilty as I turned to her. I don’t like to show favourites. ‘Your present is in the blue cloth, Your Royal Highness.’

She unwrapped it carefully and gasped as the ring sparkled. ‘I have never seen anything shine so bright,’ Tehuti cried.

‘Place it on your middle finger,’ I told her.

‘It’s too big. It just slides around.’

‘That’s because it’s a very special stone. You must never show it to a man, except …’

‘Except what?’

‘Except if you want him to fall in love with you. Otherwise you must keep it concealed in the palm of your hand. Remember that the magic will only work once. So be very careful to whom you show the ring.’

She wrapped her fingers tightly around it. ‘I don’t want any man to fall in love with me,’ she replied firmly.

‘Why not, my sweetling?’

‘Because if they do, then they try to put a baby inside you. When the baby is in, it does not want to come out again. I have heard the women in the harem scream, and I don’t want that.’

‘One day you may change your mind.’ I smiled. ‘But the stone has other qualities that make it special.’

‘Tell us. Why is it so special, Taita?’ Bekatha was not deterred by her sister’s silly scruples.

‘One reason is because it is the hardest thing in the entire world. Nothing can cut it, and nothing can scratch it, not even the sharpest bronze dagger. That’s why they call it diamond: “the Hard One”. Water cannot wet it. But it sticks to the skin of the woman who owns it like magic.’

‘I don’t believe you, Taita.’ Tehuti looked dubious. ‘It’s another of your made-up stories.’

‘You just wait and see if what I tell you is true. But remember …’ I wagged my finger at her sternly. ‘… don’t ever show it to a man unless you love him very much, and you want him to love you forever.’ I will never know why I told her that, except that the girls love my stories and I never like to disappoint them.

I stood up from the tub and called for Rustie, my head slave, to bring a towel to dry me.

‘You are going away again, Taita,’ Tehuti accused me. She has a grown woman’s instincts. ‘You come back for just an hour, and then you are gone again. Perhaps this time it will be forever.’ She was close to tears.

‘No! No!’ I dropped the towel and embraced her. ‘That is not true. I am going only as far as your father’s empty tomb on the east bank.’

‘If you are telling the truth, then let us come with you,’ Bekatha suggested.

‘Oh, yes please! Let us come with you, dear Taita,’ Tehuti insisted.

I paused to consider the suggestion, and I found that it appealed to me as much as it seemed to do to my girls.

‘There is just one problem with that idea.’ I feigned reluctance. ‘What we are going to do is a big secret and you will have to swear not to tell anyone else about what you see and what we do there.’

‘A secret!’ Bekatha cried and her eyes sparkled at the thought. ‘I swear, Taita. I swear by all the gods I shall never say a word to another living soul.’

The three treasure ships were still moored alongside the wharf at the entrance to Pharaoh Mamose’s tomb when the princesses, Aton and I arrived there.

Zaras and his men had worked well in my absence. Following my instructions they had rigged screens of reed matting around the tomb precincts to prevent us being overlooked from the surrounding hills. I was determined to work all night to get the triremes offloaded. However, Hyksos spies might creep in closer under cover of darkness, and of course we would have to work by torchlight. The screens would be vital in maintaining our secrecy.

Using the experience I had garnered at Tamiat, I had worked out in detail how I should best proceed with the offloading. Now I supervised and instructed Dilbar and a gang of his men as they fashioned heavy pallets of dressed timber which they prised up from the deck of the first trireme. These were eight cubits square and would fit into the hatches of the holds. Then on the upper deck of each ship I rigged tripods and pulleys over the hatches. From these my men lowered the pallets into the hold, where other teams of workers packed the chests of bullion on to them.

Then the chests were hoisted up to the deck in batches of twenty, swung outboard and lowered to the wharf.

‘What is in those chests, Taita?’ demanded Tehuti. I touched the side of my nose in a conspiratorial gesture.

‘That is the big secret. But very soon I will show you what it is. You will just have to be patient for a little longer.’

‘I never like having to be patient,’ Bekatha reminded me. ‘Even for a little longer.’

A long line of men received the chests as they were unloaded from the pallets. The line stretched from the wharf through the entrance to the tomb, down four flights of stairs, and then along the painted and decorated tunnels, through the three vast antechambers until they reached the four treasuries. The treasuries were sited closely around Pharaoh’s burial chamber with its empty sarcophagus awaiting the embalmed corpse which never arrived. This vast complex had been hewn from the living rock, an endeavour which had taken me and two thousand labourers twenty years to accomplish, and of which I am still rightfully proud.

‘You girls can be of great help to Uncle Aton and me,’ I told the princesses. ‘You can count and you are able to write, something that only one in a hundred of these other dolts are able to do.’ I jerked my head at the line of toiling half-naked men.

The two girls entered into the roles of bookkeepers as though it were a game. They were delighted to show off their schooling.

I had left instructions with Zaras and in my absence he had set up two heavy balance bars in the first treasury. Now Aton and I each manned one of these. As the chests were suspended from the arm of the apparatus we called the weight to the girls. Bekatha worked with Aton while I had Tehuti as my assistant. They wrote down each weight on a long roll of papyrus and kept a running total after every tenth chest.

When the first treasury was filled it contained 233 lakhs of pure silver. I sent the men up to the surface and gave them an hour to rest, eat and drink. When we were alone in the treasury I took the respite to make good my promise to the girls to show them what the chests contained. I prised open the lid of one and took out an ingot, which I allowed them to handle and admire.

‘It isn’t as pretty as my necklace,’ Bekatha remarked as she stroked the charm at her throat.

‘Does all of it belong to you, Taita?’ Tehuti asked thoughtfully as she looked around at the stacks of chests.

‘It belongs to Pharaoh,’ I replied and she nodded seriously. I watched her making the calculation. She is good with figures. At last she smiled as she reached a total.

‘We are very pleased with you, Taita.’ She used the royal plural as if by right.

When the men returned I put them back to work. They moved the balance bars to the second treasury chamber which was slightly smaller than the first. In this we found space to store a further 216 lakhs of silver.

At this stage Zaras came in from the wharf to report that the first two triremes had been completely unloaded, but that there was still a substantial weight of treasure in the third and last ship to be brought ashore.

‘The dawn is close, Lord Taita,’ he warned me, for I had lost all track of the passage of the night, ‘and the men are almost exhausted.’ There was a trace of censure in his tone, and his expression was lugubrious. I thought to give him the sharp end of my tongue, for I am not accustomed to being criticized by my underlings, and I was myself tired, but not exhausted. Despite my willowy physique, my stamina is greater than that of most men, but I restrained myself.

‘Your men have worked well, Zaras, as have you. But I am going to call upon your indulgence a little longer. I will come to the wharf with you to assess how much remains to be done.’

At this point I made a fateful mistake.

I glanced around at Tehuti as she squatted on her stool behind me with her head bowed over her papyrus scroll. Her hair had flooded down in a dense golden wave to screen her face. She had not found the time from her labours to comb it up again.

‘Tehuti, you have worked like a slave girl,’ I told her. ‘Come with me to the surface. A breath of cool night air will revive you.’

Tehuti stood up. She tossed her head and threw the hair back from her face and she looked at Zaras. He looked back at her.

I saw the pupils of Tehuti’s green eyes dilate in the lamplight, and at the same time I heard the dark gods laugh. It was a far-off and mocking sound, but I knew instinctively that our little world had changed dramatically.

The couple stood as still as a pair of marble statues, staring at each other.

I tried to look at Zaras through her eyes. Although I am a better judge of feminine rather than masculine beauty I saw for the first time that he was handsome far past the normal. Even though I knew his lineage was unremarkable, there was an imposing aura that surrounded him. He had noble poise and bearing.

I knew that his father was a merchant in Thebes who had built up a large fortune by his own efforts. He had seen to it that his son had received the finest education that silver could buy. Zaras was clever and quick-witted, and as fine a soldier as his military rank attested. However, his antecedents were lowly and he was certainly no match for a princess of the royal House of Tamose. In any event Pharaoh would decide who would make that match, with a little advice from me.

Quickly I stepped between the couple, breaking their eye contact. Tehuti looked at me as though I were a stranger whom she had never seen before. I touched her hand, and she shuddered slightly and her gaze refocused on me.

‘Come with me, Tehuti,’ I commanded. I watched her face. With a huge effort she regained control of herself.

‘Yes, of course. Forgive me. My thoughts were elsewhere, Taita. Of course I will go with you.’

I ushered her towards the door of the treasury. Zaras fell in behind her. There was elasticity in his step and an expression of awe mingled with elation suffused his features. I knew him well, yet I had never seen him in this state.

Once again I interposed myself between the young couple. ‘Not you, Captain Zaras. See to it that the balance bars are transferred to the next treasury, and then the men can take another short rest.’ These were trivial orders to give to an officer of his rank, but he had to be distracted from his present dangerous fascination.

Only now I realized that Tehuti and Zaras could never have met before. She lived in the little world of the palace harem, from which she was only allowed to emerge with a strict system of chaperonage surrounding her. I was perhaps the most important link in that protective chain.

As a beautiful princess her virginity was of inestimable value to the Crown and the State. It was possible, of course, that Zaras might have seen her from a distance during one of the royal processions or in the pageantry of the religious festivals. However, he had never served in the household guards. All his military service had been at the battlefront or in the training and exercise of his troops. I was certain that until this day he had never been close enough to her to have any inkling of her extraordinary presence and beauty.

I snapped a quick instruction to Zaras: ‘Feed the men and give an extra noggin of beer to each of them. Let them rest until I give the word to resume.’ Then I led the two princesses up to the surface, leaving Zaras staring after us.

When we emerged from the gates to the tomb I paused to glance into the east, and I saw that the roseate harbingers of the dawn were already staining the eastern sky. Then I looked down the ranks of men and realized that many of them were reeling with exhaustion. Zaras had been correct in both respects.

I hurried up the gangplank of the third trireme and as I reached the deck there was the sound of trumpets and of chariot wheels fast approaching from the direction of the river and the city on its far bank. I hurried to the ship’s rail and peered into the darkness across the plain.

There was torchlight and such commotion out there that could mean only one thing: Pharaoh had received my message and had returned to Thebes. My heart beat faster as it always does when I know that the royal presence is near. I ran back down the gangplank, shouting for additional torches and for an honour guard to assemble, but Pharaoh was too quick for me.

His chariot came thundering out of the night with the rest of his squadron strung out behind him. Pharaoh had the reins wrapped around his wrists and when he saw me he shouted a joyous greeting and leaned back on the reins.

‘Well met, Taita. We have missed you.’ He threw the reins to his co-driver and jumped down to the ground while the wheels were still turning. He kept his footing like the skilled charioteer he is, and he reached me in a dozen swift strides. He seized me in a crushing embrace and swung me off my feet in front of all my men, oblivious to my dignity. But I can forgive him anything and I laughed with him.

‘Indeed, Majesty. It has been far too long. An hour without your presence is like a week without sunshine.’

He set me on my feet and looked about him with an enquiring expression. I saw now that he was filthy with the dust and grime of a hard campaign, but that he was invested also with the grace and nobility of a true pharaoh. He saw his sisters waiting to greet him and pay their respects. He embraced them both in turn, and then he came back to me.

He pointed out the three great triremes lying at the wharf. ‘What ships are these? Even with their masts unstepped and their oars shipped they are twice the size of any other I have ever seen before. Where did you find them, Taita?’ The message I had sent him was cryptic and devoid of details. However, he did not wait to receive my answers to his questions, but he went on immediately, ‘And who are all these ruffians? I sent you off with a handful of men and you return with your own little army, Taita.’

He swept his gaze along the ranks of men that reached from the wharf down into the depths of the royal tomb. Those closest to us dropped the chests of bullion they were passing and threw themselves to the ground in obeisance.

‘Please do not let appearances deceive you, Mighty Majesty. No ruffians here. All brave men and true warriors of your Egypt.’

‘But what of these ships?’ He turned back to study the triremes with intense interest. ‘How do you account for them?’

‘Pharaoh, let me take you to a place where we can talk more freely,’ I implored him.

‘Oh, very well, Taita. You have always loved your little secrets, have you not?’ He strode away towards the gates of the tomb without looking back at me. I followed Pharaoh Tamose down into his putative father’s tomb.

He paused as he entered the first treasury chamber, and he studied the stacks of wooden chests that filled the capacious room. I thought he might enquire again about the contents of the chests, but I should have known better that he would not lower his dignity to do so.

‘It is strange that each of these chests should be branded with the emblem of the Supreme Minos,’ was all he said before he walked on into the next chamber, then into the third where Aton knelt before him.

‘And it is odder still that my dignified chamberlain should be party to this monkey business of yours, Taita.’ Pharaoh lowered himself on to an uncompleted stack of the chests, stretched his legs out in front of him and regarded the two of us with an expression of intense curiosity. ‘Now tell me, Taita. Tell me everything!’

‘Perhaps it is better that I show it to you, Pharaoh,’ I demurred, and went to the chest I had opened for his sisters. I set the lid aside and I lifted out the same shining ingot that I had shown to the princesses. I went down on one knee to offer it to him. He took it from my hands and turned it slowly in his own. With his fingertip he traced the hallmark that was stamped into the metal. Again this was the rampaging bull of Crete.

At last he asked softly, ‘It has the weight and feel of veritable silver. Surely it cannot be so?’

‘Surely it can be and it is, Pharaoh. Every chest you see here is full of the same ingots.’

He was silent again for a long time, and under the dust and sun-bronzing of his face I saw him flush with intense emotion. When he spoke again his voice was hoarse.

‘How much is there, Tata?’ He used my familiar name, which was always an expression of his gratitude and affection towards me.

‘Every one of these chests is full, Mem.’ In return I used his baby name. I was the only one to whom he ever granted that liberty.

‘Stop your silly games. Tell me how much silver you have brought back to me? I am struggling to encompass the magnitude of it.’ His tone was still awed.

‘Aton and I have weighed the greater part of it,’ I replied.

‘That does not answer my question, Tata.’

‘We have weighed only the bullion from the first two Minoan ships, and a part of that from the third and last. So far the total is four hundred and forty-nine lakhs, Pharaoh. There is probably another one hundred lakhs still to be weighed, although it might be as much as one hundred and fifty.’

Again he was silent, shaking his head and frowning. At last he spoke once more. ‘Almost six hundred lakhs. That is enough to erect a city twice the size of Thebes with all its temples and palaces.’

‘And then to build ten thousand ships and still have sufficient left over to fight a dozen wars, my Pharaoh,’ I agreed softly. ‘Enough to win back all of your very Egypt from the Hyksos barbarian.’

‘You have given me the wherewithal to cut down and destroy Beon and all his multitudes,’ Pharaoh agreed; his voice quickened and rose with the vision of it.

‘You are too late, Pharaoh.’ Aton came to his feet and moved in front of me to get the attention of Pharaoh. ‘Beon of the Hyksos is dead and drowned already.’ He stepped back and pointed at me with a flourish. ‘Taita has killed him,’ he declaimed.

Pharaoh’s gaze swivelled back to me. ‘Is this which Aton avows true? Have you killed Beon in addition to all your other services to my Crown?’ Pharaoh demanded.

I bowed my head in acquiescence. I find boastfulness abhorrent in any man, more especially in myself.

‘Tell me about it, Taita. I want every detail of the death of that monstrous animal.’

Before I could reply Aton cut me off. ‘Please give me your royal attention once more, my Pharaoh.’ He bowed to the king. ‘This is a tale that deserves all your royal attention. After our final triumph over the Hyksos tyrant it will become part of our glorious military history. Future generations will sing of it to their sons, and the sons to their sons. I beg Your Majesty to allow me to arrange a triumph this evening which will be attended by every member of the high council of state and all your royal family. It will be a triumph during which we will be able to pay due honour to a feat of arms which has probably never been equalled in our history.’

‘You are right, Lord Aton. Taita has laid before me a feast that cannot be swallowed at a single gulp. We must savour every mouthful. I must inform my council of this incredible stroke of fortune. Eight of my councillors are ensconced in my palace in Thebes, near at hand. Lord Kratas follows close behind me from the north and you, Taita, and Lord Aton are already here. We can assemble the full council within three or four hours.’

‘Ample time for you to bathe and rest, my Pharaoh.’ I glanced down at his attire.

‘It is good honest dirt, Taita, and paid for in Hyksos blood.’ Pharaoh grinned at me. ‘But as so often is the case, you are right. Have my slaves heat the water for my bath.’

By the time the high council of Egypt was fully assembled the third and last trireme had been unloaded and the bullion from its hold weighed on the balance. The formal triumph had been prepared and the sun was setting.

I went to inform Pharaoh, expecting him to be resting. To relieve him of the necessity of travelling to his palace and returning again before nightfall, I had ordered that his father’s burial chamber be set aside as his temporary lodging. It had never contained a corpse and so the chamber was not tainted with death. It was a quiet cool place and well aired by vents drilled through the rock to the surface. His servants had set up his cot and all his portable campaign furniture here.

Far from resting I found Pharaoh very much awake and alert, pacing the chamber and dictating despatches to three of his secretaries. He was dressed in a clean uniform, over which he wore a polished bronze breastplate embossed with gold. His hair was freshly washed and curled. He was as handsome as his mother had been beautiful.

When I went down on one knee before him, he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. ‘No, Taita,’ he chided me. ‘It is my fast intent to make you a nobleman and a member of my inner council before much longer. You must no longer kneel to me.’

‘Pharaoh is too gracious. I do not deserve such honour.’ I adopted my self-effacing role.

‘Of course you don’t,’ he agreed. ‘I do it only to prevent you from endlessly bobbing up and down in front of me. By Seth’s in-growing toenails, as Kratas might say, I swear you make me giddy. Stand up tall and tell me the full tally of the treasure you have garnered for me.’

‘I promised you 600 lakhs, my Pharaoh, but we are twenty lakhs short of that amount.’

‘That is enough and more than enough to win me back my kingdom, and for you to keep your head atop your shoulders.’ At times the royal sense of humour tends towards the ghoulish. ‘Are the other members of my council assembled?’

‘Every single one of them, including Lord Kratas. He arrived an hour ago.’

‘Take me to them.’

When we came out through the gates of the tomb I realized at once the magnitude and extent of what Aton had contrived in my honour. Pharaoh led me down between the ranks of royal guardsmen in full ceremonial uniform to the great tent that had been set up on the bank of the canal.

When we entered his entire court was already there, waiting to greet us. This included the royal family: his two sisters and his twenty-two wives and his 112 concubines. Then there were the noble lords, his military generals and the state councillors and their high-ranking staff; every man and woman in all of Egypt that Pharaoh dared trust with the secret of the Minoan millions was gathered here to greet me.

They rose to their feet in unison as we entered and the men drew their swords to form an arch for Pharaoh and me to pass beneath. At the same time a massed band of lutes and wind horns in the desert outside the tent burst into a heroic march.

It took Pharaoh and me some time to reach the seats that had been prepared for us. Every person in the assembly wanted to touch me, to grip both my hands and to shower me with compliments and salutations.

At close intervals around the wall of the tent stood enormous jars of wine, each of them taller than a man. When at last the entire company was seated the servants filled large goblets with red wine from the jars and set one in front of Pharaoh. He waved it away.

‘Taita is the one we are here to honour. Serve him the good red wine and let him be first to drink of it.’

Every eye in the great tent was on me as I came to my feet and raised the goblet towards Pharaoh.

‘All honour towards Pharaoh. He is our very Egypt. Without Pharaoh and Egypt we are but dust. All our petty strivings are nothing.’ I brought the goblet to my lips and I drank a deep draught while all those lords and ladies came to their feet and shouted my name. Even Pharaoh smiled.

I sensed that the less I said the more they would love me, so I bowed to Pharaoh and sat down again.

Pharaoh stood over me and laid his right hand on my shoulder. Then he spoke out in a strong clear voice that carried to every corner of the great tent.

‘Lord Taita has met with my favour,’ he began simply. ‘He has performed for me and for Egypt a service as great, or greater even, than any man before him. He deserves to be honoured by me and by every Egyptian born and yet to be born.

‘I have elevated him to the nobility. From henceforth he shall be known as Lord Taita of Mechir.’ Pharaoh paused and there was a polite silence in which most of the illustrious company tried to conceal expressions of mystification. Mechir is a village on the east bank of the Nile, thirty leagues south of Thebes. It is a cluster of nondescript mud huts, and a population made up of an equally nondescript assortment of specimens of the human race. Pharaoh let us ponder this conundrum for a short while.

‘I have also granted to him, to have and to hold for all time, all the royal estate situated on the east bank of the River Nile between the southern wall of the city of Thebes and the town of Mechir.’

A gasp of astonishment went up from the assembly. The river-bank from Mechir down to Thebes is thirty leagues of the richest irrigable land in the entire royal estates.

In a single breath Pharaoh had made me one of the ten richest men in Egypt.

I looked suitably stunned and delighted by his magnanimity. However, as I kissed his right hand the naughty thought did occur to me that since I had made him one of the richest kings in the world neither of us had suffered too bitterly by this exchange of favours.

Now Pharaoh lifted his silver goblet of wine and smiled around the assembled company. ‘My queens, my princes and princesses, my lords and ladies, I give you the toast. Here are gratitude, honour and long life to my Lord Taita.’

They came to their feet with cups held high, and they shouted out together, ‘Here are gratitude, honour and long life to Lord Taita.’

It was probably the first time in our history that an Egyptian pharaoh had toasted one of his own subjects. But now he resumed his seat and gestured for the rest of the company to do the same.

‘Lord Aton!’ he called down the length of the table. ‘The wine is excellent. I know that the banquet will be no less.’ Aton has the reputation of being the greatest connoisseur in the land. Some say that this is the main reason he had reached the exalted status of Master of the Royal Household.

Reputations are not always deserved. Aton is good but not the best. The fillets of Nile perch he served had been insufficiently salted, and the desert bustard was a trifle overdone. In addition he had allowed the palace chef too liberal a hand with the Baharat spice. If I had been given the task I suspect that the fare would have been better prepared, but the wine was good enough to dilute these trivial shortcomings.

The company was in fine and boisterous fettle by the time Aton rose to introduce the eulogy. I had given passing thought as to which poet I might have chosen if I had been in his sandals. Naturally I was disqualified from selection by the fact that I was the subject of the composition. So I expected it would probably be either Reza or Thoiak that Aton had selected for this great honour.

In the event Aton stunned us all. Although he gave credit and praise to the recognized bards of Egypt, he tried to justify his final decision by emphasizing the fact that the one he had chosen had been an eyewitness to the actual events. Of course, this was a preposterous idea. Since when have the facts been of any great importance to a good story?

‘Great Pharaoh and royal ladies, please draw close and lend your ear to a valiant officer of the Blue Crocodile Guards who sailed with Lord Taita.’ He paused dramatically. ‘I give you Captain Zaras.’

The assembly was unmoving and unmoved as Zaras stepped in through the curtains of the tent and bent the knee to Pharaoh, who looked as surprised as any person present. I thought that I was probably the only one in the assembly who had ever heard of Captain Zaras of the Blue Crocodile Guards. Then something snicked into place in my mind as neatly as a blade into its scabbard.

I glanced quickly at Princess Tehuti where she was placed between Lord Kratas and Lord Madalek, who was Pharaoh’s treasurer. Now she was sitting forward on her stool with her face aglow and her expression rapt, staring at Zaras. She was not so blatant as to draw attention to herself by applauding or in any other manner signifying her approval of Aton’s choice; but I knew she had done it. Somehow she had forced Aton to make this ridiculous decision.

I have never underestimated the diplomatic skills of my two princesses but this seemed to smack of witchcraft. I switched my attention to Bekatha and I saw instantly that she was part of the conspiracy.

From the opposite end of the banquet table she was rolling her eyes and pulling inane faces, trying to catch her elder sister’s attention. Tehuti was studiously ignoring her.

I was as angry as I have ever been. But also I was filled with compassion for Zaras. He was a fine young man and a good officer and I had come to love him as a father might love a son. Now he was standing up before all the world to make himself into a laughing stock. These two heartless royal vixens had contrived this terrible cruelty.

I looked back at Zaras. He seemed to be oblivious to the disaster that was rushing down on him. He stood tall and handsome and composed in his uniform. I wished that there was something I could do to save him, but I was helpless. Perhaps he might be able to stumble his way through an awkward recitation like a schoolboy, but forever his efforts would be compared by these strict judges to those of Reza and Thoiak or even, the gods and goddesses forbid it, to the acclaimed masterpieces penned by my very own hand.

Then I was aware of a soft susurration of female voices, a sound like bees on a bed of spring flowers in my garden as they sucked up the nectar. I looked back at the company and I saw that Tehuti was not the only woman who was appraising Zaras. Some of the older women were even more blatant in their interest. They were smiling and whispering behind their fans. Zaras had never been at court and thus they had never laid their lascivious eyes upon him before.

Then Zaras made a commanding gesture and the tent went still and quiet so I could hear a distant jackal wailing out in the desert.

Zaras started to speak. I had heard his voice giving orders to his men, commanding them in the din of battle or encouraging them when they faltered, but I had never realized the timbre and depth of it. His voice rang like a bell and soared like the khamsin over the dunes of the desert. It thundered like the storm sea on the reef, and soughed like wind in the high branches of the cedar.

Within the first few stanzas he had captivated the entire company.

His choice of words was exquisite. Even I could probably not have greatly improved upon them. His timing was almost hypnotic, and his narrative was irresistible. He swept them along like debris caught in the floodwaters of the Nile.

When he described the flight of the three arrows with which I slew the Hyksos impostor Beon, all the lords of Egypt leaped to their feet and shouted their acclamation, while Pharaoh seized my upper arm in a grip so fierce that the bruises it left on my flesh persisted for many days thereafter.

I found myself laughing and weeping along with the rest of the audience and in the end I stood up with them to applaud him.

As Zaras uttered the final stanza he turned towards the entrance of the great tent and spread his arms.

‘Then cried aloud noble Taita to all the gods of Egypt and to his Pharaoh Tamose, This is but a token of the prize I have won for you. This is but a thousandth part of the treasure I lay before you. This is the proof and testimony of the love and duty I bear towards you, Pharaoh Tamose.’

Out in the desert a solemn drum began to beat and through the entrance of the tent paced ten armoured and helmeted warriors. They bore between them a pallet on which was piled a glittering pyramid of silver bars.

As one person, the entire audience came to its feet in a tumult of praise and exaltation.

‘All hail to royal Pharaoh!’ they cried, and then, ‘All honour to Lord Taita!’

When he had finished speaking they would not let Zaras go. Pharaoh spoke with him for several minutes, the men shook his hands or pounded his back, while a few of those women who had taken wine giggled and rubbed themselves against him as a cat will do.

When he came to me we embraced briefly and I commended him, ‘Well written and well spoken, Zaras. You are both a warrior and a poet.’

‘From a bard of your renown, Lord Taita, I rejoice to hear it said,’ he replied and I was touched to see that he meant it. He left me and moved on through the company. He did not make his ultimate destination obvious, but finally he bowed in front of Princess Tehuti.