Casting the Gods Adrift Read online

  CASTING

  THE GODS

  ADRIFT

  GERALDINE

  McCAUGHREAN

  For Rebecca van der Vliet

  Contents

  1 A Boatful of Monkeys

  2 Ship of Heaven

  3 The Great House

  4 Man of Gold

  5 The Red Country

  6 A Dream of Wickedness

  7 The Nile-blue Cat

  8 Song of the Reedbeds

  9 Everlasting Life

  Glossary

  Historical Note

  Map of Ancient Egypt

  1

  A Boatful of Monkeys

  I know what made me careless. It was the thought of seeing a god – in person – breathing, speaking, eating, moving about. Priests had worshipped at his shrine every day for two years. Now I was going to see him in the flesh – the pharaoh. God on Earth. The thought filled my brain. How could I think about anything else? So you see, it was all my fault.

  Our ship, when we set sail that day, was a wonder to see. Even I was amazed, and I was accustomed to my father’s trade. My father, Harkhuf, dealer in rare beasts, was himself a rare, golden creature in my eyes. Mostly away in the south – beyond a dozen white-water cataracts of the Nile, beyond the southernmost districts of Egypt, beyond even Nubia – Father would reappear once or twice a year, his clothes threaded with strands of the fur of leopard, cheetah and lion. He took wild animals and tamed them into purring house pets for mayors and noblemen and, of course, for the pharaoh.

  ‘Pharaoh Amenhotep, may his names be spoken for ever, relied upon me completely for baboons,’ he used to say, cocking his nose in the air and sniffing.

  Baboons were always Father’s favourite. Well, he was born in Hermopolis, and the people down there worship Thoth the baboon-god above all the rest. Pharaoh Amenhotep loved the beasts, too. So our home was always leaping with baboons, caged or tame, and little bronze figurines of baboons crouched in the living room. All the time I was growing up, they grinned at me, or bared their teeth – I never quite knew which.

  Now the new pharaoh, son of Amenhotep III, had commanded my father to bring him animals; lots of animals, he said, for his new capital city. When word reached Father, he was breathless with delight. Despite my aunt’s objections – ‘Tutmose has his studies,’ and ‘Oh, surely you won’t take Ibrim on the river!’ – he invited my brother and me to go with him on the journey down the Nile to deliver the animals. ‘The trip of a lifetime,’ he said.

  A lifetime, yes.

  So, we set sail from Nehkeb in the Palm of Thoth, its decks laden with cages containing baboons, some smaller monkeys, a few serval cats and three dozen scarlet ibises. There were six baby crocodiles in a wooden trough, and two hunting falcons tethered to their perches with lengths of leather. The noise was cacophonous.

  Father posted me in the prow to keep watch for sandbars. The river currents shift so much sand and mud about that the navigation channels are constantly changing. The hippopotami can wreck a boat, too. The holy Nile is a treacherous river, and boats have to be so shallow to sail it that they are quite frail.

  My brother Ibrim sat up on the deckhouse roof, chanting the spell against crocodiles – we never cross water without saying it – and playing his harp. Ibrim was losing his sight, you see. He had river blindness. Not unusual. Terrible, but not unusual.

  My father would keep saying, ‘You’ll get better, son. Your eyes are improving every day.’ But even then, young as we were, Ibrim and I knew it wasn’t true. Father just wasn’t very good at coping with bad news. He made sacrifices to the goddess Ishtar. He went on pilgrimages. He hung a gold case around Ibrim’s neck. Inside it was a little rolled-up note from the great baboon-god Thoth, promising to protect him. Even so, I had to keep look-out on my own for sandbars, while Ibrim sat on the cabin roof. He had a sweet voice; I loved to hear him sing. But that day, all I could hear was the rush of water under the prow, and the baboons jabbering. All I could think about was seeing a god.

  The broad sail was furled; we were travelling with the current. Even so, the northerly wind was blowing so strongly that we made slow headway. The rowers had to pull without rest on their oars. It occurred to me that, with our cargo of livestock, we must look like the Ship of a Million Days that sails the skies crowded with its animal-headed gods. I had seen pictures; their boat had the same upward curve at prow and stern, like the curve of a hammock; it had the same two great steering boards at the back, the same oars moving with perfect symmetry. I remember wondering if the gods were looking down just then, over the side of their ship, watching us sail the holy Nile, sail down the length of the Black Land, between banks bright with flax and wheat, gardens, orchards and vineyards, square white houses and little moored reedboats.

  ‘Is the Ship of Heaven made of reed, like this one, Father?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Cedarwood. Like the pharaoh’s barge,’ he answered at once.

  In those days, I thought he knew everything about the gods.

  As we sailed past Iunet, he pointed out the Temple of Hathor, goddess of birth and far-off lands, of gold and silver and music.

  ‘She’s protected me on all my travels,’ said Father proudly. ‘On the way back we shall visit the temple and ask the priests to perform a ritual for Ibrim and bathe his eyes in the sacred water; let him sleep nearby and dream a cure for himself. I promise! On the way home.’

  ‘She gave me my gift of music,’ Ibrim said softly, from his perch on the roof. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t ask for more.’

  But Father chose not to hear.

  We sailed only when there was daylight. The river, with its shifting mudbanks and shoals of sand, was too dangerous in the dark. As we sailed past Thebes, Father described the wonders of the Temple of Karnak there – nearly eight hundred lionesses carved in black granite, and the avenue of sphinxes, a sacred lake, gateways taller than twenty men. ‘A hundred thousand people work here, Tutmose,’ he said. ‘Many of my animals live here.’

  I thought he had been everywhere, seen everything, my wonderful father.

  But, he had not sailed downstream beyond Thebes – not for twenty years. Pharaoh Amenhotep III had kept court at Thebes. The new pharaoh had shifted ground. So on we sailed, past Thebes and Luxor. The further we sailed, the quieter Father became, lost in thought, contemplating his first meeting with Amenhotep’s son. The new king. The new god on earth, ruler over all Egypt. There were strange rumours spreading up and down the Nile. The new pharaoh had changed more than his capital city; he had also changed his name – to Akhenaten (Spirit of Aten).

  I, too, was lost in thought. What did a god look like? Would he speak to me? What should I say if he did? The sun was harsh on the moving water, hot on my shaven head, my naked body. I screwed my eyes shut against the brightness. I closed them, but my lids still glowed red. I covered my aching eyes with my hands.

  And that was when we struck the sandbar.

  2

  Ship of Heaven

  The rowers fell on their backs, cursing and struggling to keep their oars from slipping away into the river. I was thrown flat along the prow. The reeds scratched my face. From stem to stern, cages fell over and lay at crazy angles in the bottom of the boat, the animals inside shrieking and screaming. Ibrim slid, yelling, off the deckhouse roof and landed on the rush baskets full of bird seed. The small monkeys clung to one another, round-eyed, baring their sharp little teeth. The falcons’ perches snapped and hung over the side like broken branches. The reed bundles which made up the Palm of Thoth crackled and crumpled upwards as she settled harder and harder aground.

  On the distant riverbank, a single mould-green crocodile raised its grisly head and stared. Its angular le
gs took a few sidling steps and it sank from sight under water until only its upper jaw showed. Splash. Splash. There were others coming.

  My father stumbled along the boat, stepping over the fallen rowers. I was expecting him to shout and rage at me, but he was too busy soothing and shushing the animals. The rowers were glaring at me, shouting prayers and reciting the crocodile spell. But father went on righting cages, apologising to the animals, hardly noticing as they bit the fingers gripping their cages. The cheetah was a ball of golden muscle and fur, clawing at her cage, chewing at the slats, spitting and arching her back into a shape as unnatural as the broken boat’s. The ibises, in a cage by my feet, were beating themselves ragged against their bars, against each other, handfuls of slender feathers bursting out around my ankles.

  ‘Let them go, fool! Let them go!’

  I realised Father was speaking to me, telling me to unlatch the cage and loose the beautiful birds he had so painstakingly trapped, before they broke all their wings or drowned along with the boat. I did it.

  The ibises burst out around me, battering my face with their scarlet wings, so that my world turned red. They fountained into the sky, piping shrilly. But the tethered falcons were past help. They were being pulled under the water as the boat settled lower. Their struggles brought the crocodiles in, slowly, glidingly. They were in no hurry. Their feast would not escape them; this basket of assorted meats that was gradually breaking up in front of their noses.

  Father opened cages with trembling, hasty hands. ‘Hold on, Ibrim!’ he told my brother. ‘Get up higher, boy! Good boy!’ But he went to help the animals first. The reeds that made up the deepest part of the boat were sodden now, awash with river water. One by one, he opened the cages. His baboons lumbered out to sit on the sides of the boat, feet tucked up, backs hunched, long arms dangling, like miserable old men.

  The crew would not let father loose the cheetah. They threatened to knock him overboard if he so much as went near the frenzied beast. Bad enough to drown, without being savaged, mid-river, by a wild cat. The boat shivered and hissed, and began to break apart.

  Suddenly, a shadow flowed over us all like spilt ink, and a ship twice our size glided alongside. Had the Ship of Heaven indeed been watching us from the sky and swooped down to help us? I truly thought it had.

  The baboons leaped in huge elegant bounds over our heads and into the rescue ship. The crew scrambled clumsily to safety over its smooth, painted sides. I edged my way round to where Ibrim was clinging to the steering paddle, and with my arm around his shoulders waited for help. ‘Don’t cry,’ I said. ‘Don’t cry.’ Only afterwards did I realise it was I, not he, who was crying.

  Two oars, painted blue with pure white blades, reached out to us from the other vessel. I wrapped Ibrim’s arms tight around one and, hugging the other myself, was lifted out of the Palm of Thoth by a huge, black-skinned, Nubian steersman. As I crossed the yawning gap, I looked down and saw a crocodile open the yellow shutter of an eye, startled to be robbed of his meal.

  My father, too, was offered an oar’s end to lift him clear. But he refused to be rescued until he had opened every cage, loosed every animal. At last, with his feet splashing through black, silty water, sinking deep into the fabric of the boat, he struggled aft towards the cheetah. But in her panic and fury, she hurled herself at him, overturning the cage which rolled through a gaping split in the boat and sank out of sight into the river. Crocodiles moved in under the hulk. Only then did my father allow himself to be lifted to safety with the blue-and-white oars.

  The top-spar of the beautiful rescue ship was now alive with baboons swinging by their hands and feet, grimacing at the people below. I saw several little girls huddled together in the prow, pointing up at them and laughing uncertainly. The ship’s rowers were now easing the barge upstream, away from the sandbar, leaving the Palm of Thoth foundering in midstream like a bale of straw pulled apart by rats.

  Rather than watch ours sink, I looked around at the boat that had come to our rescue. The deckhouse was more sublime than most houses I had ever seen on shore, with blue-and-white chequered walls and a gold-leaf balustrade. At the door stood a man and woman, hand in hand. They could have been westerners – spirits from the Land of the West where the fortunate go when they die. Their clothes were of gauzy white linen, and they wore jet-back wigs and amulets of gold and silver.

  But they were not spirits, of course. They were gods. For we were aboard The Splendour of Aten. We had been redeemed from drowning by its captain, the god-king himself. ‘Lie down on your face and pray,’ I whispered to Ibrim. ‘We are in the presence of the pharaoh!’

  3

  The Great House

  I think my father was more afraid now than with the crocodiles gaping after him. He was in the presence of the pharaoh, watching the pharaoh’s shipment of animals disappear into the boiling brown turmoil of the sandbank. He fell down along the deck, his face pressed against the boards, his breath breaking from him in little sobs of abject terror.

  But, to his astonishment, the pharaoh bent down and raised him to his feet. ‘Never fear, man, never fear! Give thanks to almighty Aten that he preserved you from the crocodiles!’

  ‘But your animals—’ blurted Father.

  I could see the imprint of the cedarwood deck on his cheek.

  ‘There are always more animals. Calm yourself. Your children are safe. Is that not more reason to celebrate than to grieve? They are your sons, I take it?’ He laid his hand on my shaven head – a god’s hand on my head! – and ordered the rowers to pull away into the wider river, away from the sights and sounds of the sandbank.

  We sailed on downstream, towards the distant white cubes of el-Amarna.

  ‘Ah yes! Harkhuf! Your name is known to me!’ said the pharaoh genially. ‘You did great service to my father.’

  ‘May his name live forever,’ said Father.

  ‘I hope you will fetch me many animals too. The queen and I are very fond of animals, and so are my daughters. Monkeys and cats, for preference. My daughters are particularly fond of cats.’

  I snatched a glance at the little girls who had come to the doorway of the stateroom, dressed in linen so gauzy thin that they seemed to be wearing clouds. I gasped at the sheer beauty of them. Their pleated skirts were clasped at the hip with gold, and each girl wore a collar of lapis lazuli.

  ‘And birds for my aviary, yes!’ the pharaoh was saying. ‘I love their colours and their song… That reminds me. Did I hear singing from your boat, before she struck the sandbar? Was it you, boy?’

  He turned to me a face more like a woman’s than a man’s, a wig of extraordinary curly hair bunching out from under his plumed headdress.

  The smile was so encouraging, I stopped trembling in the instant. ‘That was my brother, Ibrim! I can’t sing a note!’

  ‘Tutmose is a worthless boy,’ agreed my father.

  ‘Ah, but you are surely good at something?’

  Now the queen was speaking to me. Day of days! A god and a goddess speaking to me! I was so overwhelmed that Ibrim had to answer for me.

  ‘Tutmose is a great maker of things. He is clever with his hands! Clay models. Wood carvings. Just wonderful! Last year he made me a little elephant… I don’t see very well, but even by touch I can tell—’

  ‘Ibrim, be silent!’ hissed my father, horrified by our temerity.

  ‘Then there is a place for you all, at el-Amarna, it seems,’ said the pharaoh. ‘Wash off that Nile mud, good Harkhuf. We shall soon be reaching the quay.’

  Nubian slaves brought bowls of clean water, and we washed. I bent my face over a washing bowl, and when I looked up again, I saw el-Amarna slipping up to meet the boat. It looked just as if it had dropped from the sky an hour before – a city of pale clay buildings, all new, all clean, all perfect. Huge pylon gateways, palaces and silos of stored grain all soared towards the burning blue sky. Squatting around them were smaller, cube-shaped houses, and everywhere there was colour and noise and movement
and smells enough to make my head spin.

  In a bakery, a man was taking honey cakes out of a clay oven. A dwarf was walking a pair of pet dogs along the shore. A row of bronze axe heads caught the sun – for sale outside a metalworker’s shop. In every house yard, incense trees cast little pools of shade where cats slept, old men snoozed, or women sat washing lentils or chopping leeks. Naked children ran about playing leapfrog or football, or towing little toys about on string. The smoke from the cooking fires rose up to mingle with steam from freshly washed clothes. Men with brick-red skin were building yet more soaring walls of brick, while in the dark houses pale-skinned women stayed hidden from the sun’s ferocious heat.

  We seemed to be expected to follow the royal family, so we did – up one of the vast smooth ramps which led to doors high in the palace walls. Through countless anterooms, the pharaoh led us through his pharaoh – his ‘great house’. I remember thinking how strange it was to call a king a ‘great house’; but then I suppose a pharaoh does afford his people shelter and safety, so in that way he is like a house. We passed through a hall with, oh, fifty pillars holding up a painted ceiling. Then we were on the King’s Bridge, on top of the city’s gateway, in a covered walkway with a view right over el-Amarna. The pharaoh stopped and so did we.

  ‘Welcome, my friends,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the city of Aten, the only god.’ He turned to one of the courtiers who bobbed along in his wake like seagulls behind a plough. ‘Take my animal collector to a temple where he can ask the priests to give thanks to Aten. Then find him somewhere to live. Tutmose here is to study handcrafts; the blind one is to study music under the royal musicians.’

  ‘Oh, but my son isn’t—’ Father wanted to explain how Ibrim was not blind – far from it! He wanted to say how his eyes were getting better every day. But he dared not contradict the king.

  ‘We greatly prize music here,’ said Queen Nefertiti, resting the tips of her fingers on Ibrim’s shoulder. ‘You must not fear the dark, Ibrim. Aten shines into every life, in some way.’