But he stared at Helen, beads of perspiration dampening his upper lip.
“You must speak to Nekoptah,” he said, once Helen had finished her tale. The dinner was long finished; slaves had removed our plates and now nothing was on the low table at which we sat except wine cups and bowls of pomegranates, figs, and dates.
“Yes,” agreed Nefertu. “I’m certain that he will advise the king to invite you to live here in Wast, as a royal guest.”
Helen smiled, but her eyes went to me. I said nothing. She knew I would leave as soon as I could. Once I knew that she was safe, and that Lukka and his men were accepted in the army, then I could leave.
I said, “The lady brings a considerable treasure with her. She will not be a burdensome guest.”
The two Egyptians saw the humor in my statement and laughed politely.
“A burden to the king,” giggled Nefertu. He had drunk a fair amount of wine.
“As if the great Merneptah counted costs,” agreed Mederuk with a well-trained smile. His wine cup had not been drained even once. I looked at him closely. His smooth plump face showed no trace of emotion, but his coal-black eyes betrayed the scheming that was going through his mind.
Chapter 37
I left Helen’s bed before sunrise and silently padded through the door that connected to my own room. The sky was just starting to turn gray and the room was still dark, yet something made me halt in my tracks and hold my breath.
Just the faintest whisper of movement. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I remained stock-still, my eyes searching the darkness, trying to penetrate the shadows. There was someone else in the room. I knew it. I sensed it. Still straining to see, I recalled exactly the layout of the room, the placement of the bed, the table, chairs, chests. The windows and the door to the hall…
A slight scraping sound, wood or metal against stone. I leaped at it, and banged painfully into the blank wall. Recoiling backward, I staggered a step or two and sat down on my rump with a heavy thud.
I had run against the wall precisely where one of the false windows was painted. Was it actually a hidden door, so cleverly concealed that I could not discern it?
I got slowly to my feet, aching at both ends of my spine. Someone had been in my room, of that I was certain. An Egyptian, not the Golden One or one of the other Creators. Sneaking around in the dark was not their style. Someone had been spying on me — on us, Helen and me. Or going through my belongings.
A thief? I doubted it, and a swift check of my clothes and weapons showed that nothing had been taken.
I dressed quickly, wondering if it was safe to leave Helen alone and sleeping, wondering if the intruder wanted me to wonder about her and stay away from Lukka and the parade ground. Nefertu had warned me about palace intrigues, and I was thoroughly puzzled.
A scratching at my door. I yanked it open and Nefertu stood there, dressed and smiling the polite meaningless smile that served as his way of facing the world.
After greeting him, I asked, “Is it possible to place a guard at Helen’s door?”
He looked genuinely alarmed. “Why? Is something amiss?”
I told him what had happened. He looked skeptical, but strode off down the hall to find the guard corporal. A few minutes later he returned with a guard, a well-muscled black man dressed in a zebra-hide kilt with a sword belted around his middle.
Feeling somewhat better, I went off to the parade ground outside the barracks.
Lukka had his two dozen men arrayed in a double file, their chain mail and armor glistening with fresh oil, their helmets and swords polished like mirrors. Each man also held an iron-tipped spear rigidly erect, at precisely ninety degrees to the ground.
Nefertu introduced me to the Egyptian commander who was to inspect the Hittites. His name was Raseth, a swarthy, heavyset, blustery old military man, bald and blunt as a bullet, with arms that looked powerful despite his advancing years. He limped slightly, as if the years had added too much weight to his body for his bandy legs to carry.
“I’ve fought against Hittites,” he said to no one in particular as he turned toward the troops lined up for him, “I know how good they are.”
Turning toward me, he tugged at the collar of his robe, pulled it down off his left shoulder to reveal an ugly gash of a scar. “A gift from a Hittite spearman at Meggido.” He seemed proud of the wound.
Lukka stood at the head of his little band, his eyes staring straight ahead at infinity. The men were like ramrods, silent and unblinking in the early sun.
Raseth walked up and down the two ranks, nodding and muttering to himself while Nefertu and I stood off to one side, watching.
Finally Raseth turned abruptly and limped back toward us.
“They fought where?” he asked me.
I briefly described the sieges at Troy and Jericho.
Raseth nodded his head knowingly. He did not smile, he was not the type of officer who smiled in front of troops.
“Engineers, eh? Well, we don’t engage in many sieges,” he said. “But they’ll do. They’ll do fine. The king’s army welcomes them.”
That was the easiest part of the day.
From the barracks Nefertu led me across a wide empty courtyard. The morning sun was just starting to feel hot against my back, throwing long shadows across the smoothed dirt floor. Along the back wall of the courtyard I saw a cattle pen, and a few humpbacked brahmas shuffling around, their tails flicking at flies. The breeze was coming off the river, though, and I smelled jasmine and lemon trees in the air.
“The royal offices,” Nefertu pointed toward a set of buildings that looked to me like temples. I noticed that he looked nervous, tense, for the first time in all the long weeks I had known him. “Nekoptah will see us there.”
We headed up a long, slowly rising rampway, flanked on either side by statues of Ramesses II, all of them larger than life, each of them the same: a powerfully muscled man striding forward, fists clenched at his sides, a strangely serene smile on his handsome face. Not a flaw in body or face, perfectly symmetrical, utterly balanced. The pink granite of the statues caught the morning sun and looked almost like warm flesh.
I felt as if a living giant were gazing down at me. Or a god. One of the Creators. Despite the sun’s warmth, I shuddered.
At the end of the statue-lined ramp we turned left and passed a row of massive sphinxes: reclining lion’s bodies with the heads of bulls. Even reclining, the sphinxes were as tall as I.
“The lion is the symbol of the sun,” Nefertu explained. “The bull is Amon’s totem. These sphinxes represent the harmony of the gods.”
Between the forepaws of each sphinx was a statue of — who else? At least these were merely life-size.
“Are there no statues of Merneptah?” I asked.
Nefertu nodded his head. “Oh, yes, of course. But he reveres his illustrious father as much as any man of the Two Kingdoms. Who would want to tear down statues of Ramesses to replace them with his own? Not even the king would dare.”
We approached a huge doorway, flanked on either side by two more colossal statues of Ramesses: seated, this time, his hands filled with the staff of office and the sheaf of wheat that symbolized fertility. I began to wonder what it must be like to ascend to the throne after the reign of such a monarch.