Moses (7 page)

[8]

IN THE MIDDLE of his fourteenth year, six months past his thirteenth birthday, Moses left the war-court where the children were trained, never to return; for it was the end of his training in arms and the end of his formal education and schooling as well. From this time on he was to be considered a man with many of the rights of a man and a prince of the Great House.

He would now have the right to purchase and own slaves—men and women—for his first princely legacy of gold would come to him from Ramses. He would have the right to ask for a woman in marriage, provided that a marriage was not arranged by his mother or by the God-King. He would have the right to his own quarters, if he desired to leave his mother's apartment. He would have the right to come and go as he pleased, to hunt in the desert or in the marshes of the Delta, to bear arms, and even—provided Ramses granted his permission—to go out with one of the many punitive expeditions that ranged the borders and flung back the constant barbarian inroads. He would have many other rights, but that most important privilege of all did not come with the simple chronological acquisition of manhood: that was the right to wear upon his finger the sacred cartouche inscribed with one of the godly attributes of royalty that a prince might own—the
whu
, which was the divine right of command. Only Ramses himself could grant this right to a prince, and only by naming him in the line to the throne.

Yet, notwithstanding, the glory of manhood was a great deal, and he came to his mother straight from the war-court, burdened proudly with all the panoply of war-dagger and sword and oxhide buckler, laminated bow and quiver of arrows, Kushite stave and javelin—such a weight that he could hardly walk, but trying to indicate that it was merely a feather, nothing at all—and what prince of Egypt was not capable of carrying an armoury on his back?

With Enekhas-Amon, the years dealt ever less kindly, and more and more she had become a recluse in her chambers. For the past year she had attended none of the fêtes or spectacles or formal courts, avoiding almost all of the few friends who remained to her. Aside from three women slaves of long service and Moses, she saw only Seti, her physician, and Amon-Teph, who had fallen into the habit of calling upon her every week or so. Her headaches came more and more frequently, each attack making her weaker and lessening her powers of recovery; and in the process of languishing and self-pity, the last remnants of her beauty disappeared, leaving her haggard and thin.

But today she was all pride, as close to happiness as she had been in a long time; and rather than a long-limbed, sunburned boy, bowed down with a ridiculous weight of weapons, she saw a man of passion and strength and vengeance, who with his mighty right arm would beat any and all opposition.

Moses recognized the rare glow on her features, and as she stood up, he laid down the arms and embraced her. Already he was a full head taller than she, and as he held her and felt her head against his bare breast and the wetness of her tears of pride, he was deeply touched and by no means without guilt for the days when he had wasted the endless hours of play with never a care for her. He told himself that now it would be different, that now he had a degree of understanding that was no part of childhood.

She apologized for her foolish tears, and wondered what he could think of her behaving this way?

“I could think only the best of you, my mother.”

She wanted him to stand back, away from her, so that she could look at him again; and she feasted with her eyes as if she were hungrily consuming food—food enough to make her whole and well again. “What a fine, strong man he is!” she thought to herself; and indeed he was handsome enough for all her pride, his legs lean and strong, his back straight and wide, and his shoulders the powerful shoulders of the man he was becoming.

“You are all that I ever dreamed, my son, and only one thing is missing.”

“And what is that?” he smiled.

“The divine cartouche on your finger,” she whispered.

“Mother, my mother,” he said, feeling older and wiser and more free from passion than she could ever be, “who am I to think about the throne of Egypt?”

“Who? The only one. Who else can stand beside you as the Prince of Egypt?”

Moses shook his head. “My mother, the God Ramses has a hundred sons and more—and how many daughters? As for me, I am not even sure I am his son.”

“Why do you say that?” she snapped suddenly. “Have I ever told you that? Who has?”

“Gossip.”

“And you believe gossip—common gossip?”

“How could I live in this house and not believe gossip?”

Enekhas-Amon sighed and lay down upon her couch again. “It tires me to fight you, my son. Perhaps you are right, and he isn't your father. But suppose a greater god had fathered you?” She asked this wistfully as she lay there, the last bit of youth and hope flickering across her worn face; and Moses felt weighed down with pity for her and yet a little angry at such childishness. He was old enough to know that no god had sired him, if indeed—as Amon-Teph sometimes wondered—any god had ever sired a mortal man.

He shook his head, looking at her gently and compassionately.

“Is it because you are a man that you know everything now, my son? Or is it because you are a man that you have decided I am just a foolish woman who knows nothing of any consequence?”

“Please, my mother,” he begged her, “don't accuse me of such things. If I am a man now, it's because you gave me the means of manhood. And perhaps because I am a man, or the beginning of a man at least, I know now that there is a smell of something awful here—which I never knew before—and I don't think that you and I, my mother, will ever sleep easily under the same roof as the God Ramses. I have been thinking that now it is time for us to leave this palace. I never asked you whether we have wealth of our own, but if we have even a little, we can go away. I have heard that Luxor in Upper Egypt is a good place to live, and it is such a distance that the God Ramses will forget us—”

“He doesn't forget so easily,” Enekhas-Amon smiled, amused to hear her son, who only yesterday was a little boy, speaking with such grave and earnest conviction, “and I'm not at all sure that he would allow us to leave. He likes bothersome things to remain close at hand where he can watch them, and I think, Moses, that it is a little childish to talk of a smell of something awful here. This Great House is just what it is—a very large house. There are still some things you don't understand—and that is my fault more than yours. As for wealth, you will be one of the richest men in Egypt, and I could hardly give you an accounting out of my poor memory of the copper mines, the gold mines, the herds of cattle and the fields of wheat that belong to me. I don't think about them because they brought me little enough in the way of happiness—just as I don't think of the ships that are mine that sail the great sea from end to end, bringing us the wealth of a hundred lands. Of all that, Amon-Teph has an accounting, and all of it will be yours. Don't urge me to travel to places that are only fables to you, my son. I am a sick woman, and here I will die—and in not too long a time, I'm afraid. And yet I am not afraid. You are the only one I will leave with regret.”

“Don't talk like that, my mother!” Moses cried. “I wish my tongue had withered before I spoke to give you grief!”

“Boy, boy,” she soothed him, “nothing you said gave me grief. My grief is all inside me, where it has always been. How can you understand, with your youth and health? Every day the pain in my head is worse—and only this morning, Seti urged me to let them open my skull so that the foul vapours can escape and give me some peace.”

A look of bare terror came over Moses face and he fell on his knees before her couch, taking her hand and pressing it to his cheek, begging her, “No, no—please, my mother, don't do it! Don't let them! They will kill you just as they always kill with trepanning! Amon-Teph told me and he swore he would die before he let anyone open his skull! And he said that Seti isn't a doctor, not a real doctor, but a puffed-up fool and a magician too! Don't let them!”

Enekhas-Amon was pleased rather than disturbed by this outburst; it helped her to know that the boy cared so deeply, for she was so uncertain and mistrustful of love that even Moses had to prove his devotion over and over. She stroked his hair lovingly, reassuring him that not Seti but the finest surgeons in Egypt would perform the operation—if, indeed, it had to be undertaken. That was still in the future and, as for Amon-Teph, he, top, knew a little less than everything. Yet he was a good man, she hastened to say, turning the boy's tearful face up to her and looking into his eyes.

“A man doesn't weep, my son; and as for Amon-Teph, heed him well when he teaches you. He will teach you to be the kind of man Egypt has forgotten. There are few such teachers left in Egypt.”

“You know?” Moses whispered. “You know the things he teaches me?”

“How could I help knowing? Even if Amon-Teph had not told me? Night after night—well, Moses, we have out dreams for you. I know little about the gods, but a great deal about politics, and the two go hand in hand. Do you think it was for want of a god to stand sponsor for you that I called you Moses and only Moses? I am sure that the God Ramses himself suspects the meaning of the strange name you bear, which is only half a name, and which foolish people laugh at. Let them laugh, my son. Let the God Ramses laugh, for he knows too much and too little of who you truly are—and perhaps it was wrong for me to keep the truth from you for so long. Well, just a little longer now. You are a man already, but there is still height and strength and knowledge—another year, another two years. Meanwhile, bear yourself like a god, my son-not simply as a prince of Egypt but
the
Prince of Egypt. Let all who see you know that—not by word, but by the way you walk, by your abiding truth and
justice
, by your look and your bearing. It will not be long now.”

The lengthy speech tired her, and though Moses pressed her, she lay silently on her couch, her eyes closed; and not a word more would she say.

[9]

THERE WAS A sense of balance and reality in Moses that made him less vulnerable to wild dreams and heady illusions; and to his way of thinking there was less reason to bear himself as a god—which was a highly speculative and confusing notion at best—than there was to bear himself like a man—which was a factual condition and one that offered untold advantages and excitements.

Like his royal cousins who had come into the same estate, he soon tired of the novelty of carrying forty or fifty pounds of war equipment through the day and, like them, he pared it down to a bronze dagger. While even this constituted braggadocio in so peaceful and orderly a place as the Great House of Ramses, it bolstered his new status to feel the cold scabbard against his thigh. With gold in his pouch, he shopped the teeming market place of the city, savouring, along with his delicious sense of freedom, the colour and excitement of life in a busy international bazaar; for here, only a hundred yards or so from the water front and the immense docking facilities that Ramses had built for his beloved city, were the merchants and the products of all the world—silks from the legendary land of China where, it was said, people were yellow of skin with slanting cat's eyes; beautiful ivory carvings from the equally legendary Ganges cities; dried fish and black wool from Troy; regal purple wool and linen from Phoenicia; fat figs and worked silver from Philistia; hard smoked sausage and willow bark from Sardinia; cedar from the hills of Lebanon; salt from the sea people—the pirates of Myrmidia, Locria and Argos; wrought gold and wine from Crete; pepper and cloves from the merchants of Hatti, who brought it from the very ends of the earth; pottery from Achaea and Salamis; feathers and hides from the land of Kush; caged lions and leopards from unnamed lands to the south of Kush; khat and dates from the Bedouins of Arabia; and succulent, dried fruit from the gardens of Babylon.

And even more fascinating than the wonderful display of goods were the men who sold them; for the Egypt of Ramses was no longer the hidden land, walled in by desert and sea. Quite the contrary, it was the hub and market place of the whole world—the land of knowledge, tolerance for all strangers, and worldly sophistication. Here Moses saw painted barbarian Caucasians pleading for someone to trade them iron, bits of iron, any iron—the magic metal which the Egyptians were now beginning to work—for their beautiful furs, so unnecessary in this land of everlasting sunshine; here were the merchant lords of Mesopotamia with their long woollen robes, their conical hats, their greased, curled hair and beards, their round faces and their curling nostrils; here were the Sea Rovers, with their tenfoot spears and their huge, circular and brightly painted shields; here were desert Bedouins, in their dirty, torn robes, haughty suspicious and reserved; here were men of Kush, coal-black and deep-voiced; Philistines, superior and disdainful; hard-handed, hard-muscled sea captains and supercargoes of Phoenicia; Hittites; Canaanites; painted, half-savage traders from Shekelesh and Sherden; and even the haughty, bronzed-clad princes of distant Etruria.

And here, too, was the slave mart, where only Egyptians were the sellers; for this was a family and hereditary monopoly in Lower Egypt and all foreign dealers were forced to deal with them and through them. Here Moses would stand in fascination—not in moral judgment, for this was as much a part of his life as the sand and the sky—but held by a feeling that was not without moral content and guilt; watching the huddles of poor, naked, chained wretches, the children, the babes drinking their mothers' milk of servitude, the boys and girls, the maidens and young men, the old and the sick and the stricken—and it was a new feeling that Moses experienced when, with the twilight and end of a market day, he saw the servants of the slave-dealers thrust knives into the hearts of the unsaleable, the weak and diseased beyond repair, so as to save the cost of feeding them through future markets.