Now, before my eyes I saw Pharaoh say softly to my Lady Lostris, 'Even in daylight you are as divine as was the goddess Isis in the torchlight of the temple.'
The shock of it was like the blow of a fist in my stomach. Had I been blind, I berated myself desperately, or had I merely been stupid? Surely any imbecile must have anticipated the direction in which my capricious meddling must incline the order in which the dice of destiny might fall.
My facetious advice to the king must inevitably have had the effect of directing his attention towards my Lady Lostris. It was as though some malignant impulse below the surface of my mind had set out to describe her precisely to him as the mother of his first-born son. The most beautiful virgin in the land, to be taken within the first season after her moon had flowered?it was her exactly. And then, of course, by casting her as the leading female in the pageant, I had managed to display her to the king in the kindest possible light.
What I suddenly realized was about to happen was all of it my fault, as much as though I had deliberately engineered it. What is more, there was nothing I could do about it now. I stood in the sunlight so appalled and stricken with remorse that for a while I was deprived of the powers of speech and of reason.
When the sweating priests shoved the hearse off the deck and through the gateway, the crowd around me started after it and I was borne along with them willy-nilly, as though I were a leaf upon a stream without direction of my own. Before I was able to recover my wits I found myself within the forecourt of the funerary temple. I began to push my way forward, jostling those ahead of me to get past them and to reach the side of the hearse before it came to the main entrance of the royal mortuary.
As one team of priests pushed the vehicle forward, a second team picked up the wooden rollers that were left behind it and ran forward to place them ahead of the ponderous golden vehicle. There was a short delay as the carriage reached that area of the courtyard that had not yet been paved. While the priests spread straw ahead of the rollers to smooth the passage over this rough ground, I slipped quickly around the back of the row of huge carved stone lions that lined the carriageway, and hurried down this clear space until I was level with the ark. When one of the priests tried to bar my way and prevent me reaching the side of the vehicle, I gave him such a look as would have made one of the stone lions quail, and spat a single word at him that was seldom heard in the temple confines and caused him to step hurriedly aside and let me pass.
When I reached the near side of the ark I found myself directly below Lostris, close enough to stretch up and touch her arm, and to hear every word she addressed to the king. I could tell at once that she had completely recovered her poise which Pharaoh's unexpected interest in her had disturbed, and was now setting out to be as agreeable as possible to him. Miserably, I recalled how she had planned to do exactly this, and to use his favour to secure his agreement to her marriage to Tanus. As recently as last evening I had dismissed it as girlish prattle, but now it was happening, and it was beyond my power to prevent it or to warn her of the dangerous waters into which she was steering. If, earlier in this chronicle, I have given the impression that my Lady Lostris was a flighty child with not a thought in her pretty head other than romantic nonsense and her own frivolous enjoyment of life, then I have fallen short in my efforts as historian of these extraordinary events. Although still so young, she was at times mature far beyond her years. Our Egyptian girls bloom early in the Nile sunlight. She was also a diligent scholar, with a bright mind and a thoughtful and enquiring side to her nature, all of which I had done my very best over the years to foster and develop.
Under my tutelage she had reached the stage where she could debate with the priests the most obscure religious dogma, could hold her own with the palace lawyers on such matters as the Land Tenure Acts and the extremely complicated Irrigation Act that regulated the usage of the waters from the Nile. Of course, she had read and absorbed every single one of the scrolls in the palace library. These included several hundred of which I was the author, from my medical treatises to my definitive essays on the tactics of naval warfare, together with my astrological scrolls on the names and natures of all the heavenly bodies, and my manuals on archery and swordsmanship, horticulture and falconry. She could even argue with me my own principles of architecture, and compare them to those of the great Imhotep.
Thus she was perfectly equipped to discuss any subject from astrology to the practice of war, from politics or the building of temples to the measurement and regulation of the Nile waters, all of which were subjects that fascinated Pharaoh. In addition she could rhyme and riddle and coin an amusing pun, and her vocabulary was almost as extensive as my own. In short, she was an accomplished conversationalist, with a ready sense of humour. She was articulate and had an enchanting voice and a merry little laugh. Truly, no man or god could resist her, especially if she could offer to someone without a son the promise of an heir.
I had to warn her, and yet how could a slave intrude upon the congress of persons so infinitely high above his own station? I skipped nervously beside the carriage, listening to my Lady Lostris' voice at its most enthralling as she set herself out to engage the king's fancy.
She was describing to him the manner in which his funerary femple had been laid out to conform to the most propitious astronomical aspects, those of the moon and the zodiac at the time of Pharaoh's birth. Of course she was merely repeating knowledge that she had gleaned from me, for I was the one who had surveyed and orientated the temple to the heavenly bodies. However, she was so convincing that I found myself following her explanations as though I was hearing them for the first time.
The funeral ark passed between the pylons of the inner court of the temple and rolled down the long colonnaded atrium, past the barred and guarded doors to the six treasuries in which were manufactured and stored the funerary offerings which would go with the king to his tomb. At the end of the atrium the acacia-wood doors, on which were carved the images of all the gods of the pantheon, were swung open, and we entered the mortuary where Pharaoh's corpse would one day be embalmed.
Here in this solemn chapel the king dismounted from the carriage, and went forward to inspect the massive table on which he would lie for the ritual of mummification. Unlike the embalming of a commoner, royal embalming took seventy days to accomplish. The table had been sculpted from a single block of diorite, three paces long and two wide. Into the dark, mottled surface of the stone had been chiselled the indentation that fitted the back of the king's head, and the grooves which would drain the blood and other bodily fluids released by the scalpels and the instruments of the embalmers.
The grand master of the guild of embalmers was standing beside the table, ready to explain the entire process to the king, and he had an attentive audience, for Pharaoh seemed fascinated by every gruesome detail. At one stage it seemed that he might so far forget his dignity as to climb up upon the diorite block and try its fit, very much as though it were a new costume of linen presented by his tailor.
However, he restrained himself with an obvious effort, and instead devoted himself to the mortician's description of how the first incision would be made from his gullet to his groin, and how his viscera would be lifted out cleanly and then divided into their separate parts?liver, lungs, stomach and entrails. The heart, as the hearth of the divine spark, would be left in place, as would the kidneys with their associations with water and thus with the Nile, the source of life.