Max arranged our passage for the next morning. From this point on, his language skills would be essential, for everywhere south of Naukratis the common people would speak only their own Egyptian tongue, though Max assured us that the educated would be able to speak Greek.
Max returned from his excursion with an unexpected visitor. It was the Nauarch, Admiral Charitimides, with ten officers in tow.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine so far, sir,” I said.
“I’m actually here to see Inaros. It looks like there won’t be another fleet action any time soon. Scouts report no activity in any ports to the East. It’s even quiet up in Phoenicea, the traders tell me.”
“That’s good news, sir.”
“Only if you like being bored,” the Nauarch said. “I plan to lead our sailors onto land, to help our Egyptian allies in the next battle. The Persians have to hit us somewhere, you know.”
“Yes, sir,” I said politely.
“Oh, I got a message from your boss, Pericles.”
“A message for me?” I said, startled.
“No, for me, but you might like to know. A Spartan army marched against Athens,” he said calmly.
“What!”
“Our lads met them at Tanagra. The battle was a draw.”
“Dear Gods, why?” I said. “We were at peace when I left.”
“That’s the interesting part,” Charitimides said. “We captured some of their auxiliary troops. From them Pericles learned that a Persian ambassador has been visiting Sparta. A Persian in Sparta—seems rather odd, don’t you think? They say this Megabazos fellow turned up with a boat load of gold and bribed the Spartans to hit us.”
“That sounds bad.”
“No, it’s good. It means the enemy is scared of us in Egypt. Pericles thinks it’s a strategic diversion.”
“What does that mean, sir?”
“Just as we are in Egypt to force the Persians to send their troops here, so the Persians are paying the Spartans to cause a ruckus back in Hellas, so that we have to return home.”
“Are we going home, sir?” I asked.
“Good Gods, boy, of course not!” he exclaimed.
“Oh.”
“The enemy wouldn’t spend that gold unless they feared my men. So my fleet is staying right here. Anyway, it appears our lads back home have seen off the Spartans. What’s your next move?” Charitimides switched from grand strategy to intelligence work in a single breath.
“We depart for Memphis tomorrow, sir,” I said.
“The place is crawling with enemy troops.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll probably get killed, but that’s the way it goes when you serve your country, eh?” He clapped me on the shoulder.
Charitimides chuckled at my expression and took his leave. The Nauarch acted like everyone’s favorite uncle, but I’d never met a man more determined to fight.
Despite the warning, we got a shock two days later, when our boat docked at Memphis, the capital of Egypt.
Persian soldiers. They patrolled the docks and the wharves and no one seemed to take any notice. They wore their standard floor-length uniform of heavy cloth without any accommodation to the incredible heat. Some carried spears and shields upon their backs. The spearmen patrolled in squads. Other men were armed with bows and quivers full of arrows. The bowmen had taken up position on the roofs of the warehouses and the other high points.
It was a stark reminder that we were in a country divided by war. It also drove home the extent to which Inaros had returned Egypt to the Egyptians. He might be Libyan, but the soldiers who fought for him so willingly were Egyptian. In the north, where Inaros had conquered all, you would never have guessed that this was a country occupied by a foreign power. Here in the capital, we were in a Persian province, no doubt about it.
The Persians were obviously on the lookout for any advancing military, but they didn’t give us a second glance. I brushed past one as I came down the wharves. He smiled at me with perfect teeth and very sunburned skin.
“What do they think we are?” I whispered after they had passed us by.
“They think we are foreigners,” Maxyates replied calmly. “Do any of us look local?”
We didn’t.
Funnily enough, Herodotus was the least concerned of us.
“I come from Halicarnassus,” he reminded me, when I asked. “I’m used to seeing Persian troops in the street.”
I had managed to forget that Herodotus was, technically, a citizen of this empire. Diotima and I had also once lived in a place with Persian occupying troops in the street—in Asia Minor—but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
I had expected Memphis to be a big city, but I never thought it would be so crowded. We had to push our way through from the docks to the center of the city. Athens had narrow streets, but in Memphis there were places where you had to walk single file to squeeze between the buildings. In Athens there is a law to ban people from building over the street—everyone ignores it, but at least there’s a law. In Memphis they didn’t bother with even the pretence to stop builders encroaching.
It seemed half the women in Memphis wanted me to buy their chickens. We could barely take ten steps in any direction without a mass of squawking feathers being thrust in our faces and toothless women demanding we pay them money. Small children would take this opportunity to pickpocket. Herodotus found that out the hard way.
“Hey, bring back my purse!”
Fortunately I’d already taken his money bags from him—for a man who had traveled so much, he was astonishingly naïve. I had the money firmly tied against my chest. Those bags contained our only means of support, and all my wages.
I asked Maxyates if Memphis was always like this. He shrugged. “So many people are willing to live like ants. I don’t understand it either.”
I understood now the reluctance of Inaros’s political advisor to send troops into this labyrinth. Soldiers trying to force their way through these passages . . . the slaughter among the civilians would be fearful. Nervous men who had no idea where they were, surrounded on all sides by buildings from which a knife could emerge at any moment. Not knowing what they’d find around the next blind corner, but knowing the enemy was waiting for them somewhere, such men would be prone to kill anything that moved and then look to see what they’d hit. I could just imagine one of these small girl-pickpockets creeping up on a jumpy soldier with his sword in hand. No, it would never do. If finding the crook and flail would save the people in these streets then it had to be done.
We somehow emerged into a large agora. Though they didn’t call it that. They called it something else but I didn’t catch the name. There was an inn that Inaros had recommended to us. We found it easily, with Max’s help. Then I choked at the inn’s prices. I should have realized that someone called Prince of Libya would work to a different budget than normal people.
Herodotus took his money bag from me and paid without demur. The good news was, the rooms were the most comfortable I’d seen at any inn, anywhere. They had real beds made of wood, not merely a sack of hay on the floor. There was a cupboard for our clothes, two chairs, a basin, a chamber pot that was actually clean. A window looked over the agora and beyond that, rising in the distance, a fine view of a magnificent building, surely a temple, though it looked nothing like the ones we had in Hellas. That was directly to the south.
The innkeeper was used to tourists. He told us which road out of town would take us to the pyramids, then warned us that to see them properly we would need to leave at first light, and be prepared for a long day.
Herodotus was desperate to see something at once. Our host recommended the Palace of Apries, built by a long-dead Pharaoh. The palace was close by and one of the smaller monuments. You know you’re in a place of monumental architecture when one of the smaller buildings is a king’s palace.
“Allow a whole day for the Temple of Ptah,” the innkeeper warned us.
“Is that the magnificent building I saw out our window?” I asked.
He said it was, that the Priests of Ptah would welcome any donation, and that the Temple of the Apis Bull was situated immediately behind.
Herodotus almost swooned at the thought of such tourist attractions.
“Do not donate to one god and not the others,” the innkeeper warned us. “Lest the spurned god be offended and cast a curse upon you. Whatever you do, don’t return to the inn if you’ve been cursed by anyone. I don’t need this place burning down.”
The innkeeper, his wife and his teenage daughter were all loaded down with charms, necklaces and bracelets. All three of them jangled every time they moved. Three or four charm necklaces each, more bracelets than I could count on each wrist—the wife explained that each bracelet had been magicked in a different way to ward against various curses—and rings on every finger to protect against the evil eye. Any evil curse that came through the door to this place wouldn’t stand a chance.
I left Herodotus in the care of Diotima and Max. My wife was if anything a better bodyguard than I was—for some reason I’d had bad luck in the past with keeping people alive—and Max was available if muscle was required. Their plan was very simple: to see everything worth seeing in the city.
“We’ll start from the north and work our way down,” Diotima said. She produced a wax tablet and started a list. “The Palace of Apries, then the Temple of Ptah, the Palace of Merenptah, the Temple of Ramses—”
“You couldn’t possibly see all that in a day,” I pointed out.
“Who knows how long it will take?” my wife said happily. “Days, probably.”
“Many days, certainly,” Max added. “As philosophers it is our duty to converse with the wise priests of the temples, to learn what we can.”
“Good thinking, Max,” Diotima said.
Herodotus rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We must not forget the pyramids, and the outlying temples. Perhaps a month?” he suggested.
It occurred to me that I was sending two philosophers and an author out to play in a city full of ancient wisdom. I would have to hope they remembered to come home.
Nevertheless the arrangement suited me very well. I intended to go in search of the mysterious Djanet. Inaros’s agent probably didn’t want a small committee to turn up and blow her cover. Besides, though I trusted Herodotus, I didn’t trust him completely.
Inaros had told me that the singer could be found at an inn close by the fort. The moment the others left to explore the city to the north, I departed south.
As I got closer I saw that the White Fort really was white. The walls were made of limestone. The soldiers I passed didn’t give me a second glance. They had nothing to fear from a single man, or so they thought. The gates were open but the guards posted there wouldn’t let me in. Persian confidence didn’t extend that far. They had no qualms though about passing through various local Egyptians who led donkeys loaded with supplies: quality fruit and vegetables and heavy containers of beer.
The Persians had cleared away the houses surrounding the fort. The rubble told me it had been a recent demolition. I didn’t need a military man to tell me why they’d done that: the Persians were expecting to be besieged, and they didn’t want to give their attackers any easy access to the top of the walls. I was willing to bet that at the tops of those turrets there’d soon be plenty of rocks to drop and oil ready to boil and pour. I for one wouldn’t want to be standing at the base when that happened.
The White Fort sat directly beside the river. It meant there was one side from which the fort couldn’t be attacked. It also meant the people inside would not go thirsty. Inaros had told us that the White Fort had never been taken. I could believe it.
I still hadn’t found the tavern where Djanet the agent sang. I solved that by walking back to the guards at the gate. “Where do you men go to drink?” I asked them in Persian.
The Eye of Horus was one of the better sort of taverns frequented by soldiers. Which is to say, even the officers came there to drink. The board out front had, inevitably, been painted with an Eye—the symbol was a single, stylized eye with a line above it for eyeliner and a funny squiggle below—the name and the sign designed to keep away bad luck. Even in the short time we’d been in the country, I’d come to realize that Egyptians were the most superstitious of people. But I guessed that a horde of off-duty soldiers who didn’t want to be bothered while they got quietly drunk would have contributed to the good luck, by keeping away anyone spoiling for a fight. Say what you like about Persians, they knew how to deal with troublemakers.
I stood at the door to survey the scene. Even in late afternoon, there were innumerable Persians sitting at the benches. Some of them were already slumped over the tables. Maybe they’d been on night duty. Among the drinkers were plenty of natives, easily recognizable by their dress, their hair and their accents. There was no segregation. The natives and the soldiers were happy to socialize. They laughed and smiled together. They all chattered in Persian, even the locals. It went to show how much the city had accepted Persia.
Someone at the back of the room was playing a flute. It was dark in that corner, but as my eyes adjusted I could see that the flute-player stood upon a small stage, and that a woman stood beside him. The woman crooned a song. She was tall, and dark, and lissome.
I would have to get her attention, for surely this must be Djanet. I thought about waving, but decided that would be a disaster. I must under no circumstances let the Persians in this room know that she was an agent for Inaros. So instead I took a table as close as I could, wondering how I could get her attention. In the meantime I enjoyed the song.
The music didn’t sound like normal Hellene music to me. The notes were different, the tunes like nothing I’d heard before, and the rhythm was strangely engaging. I had tried over the last days to pick up a few words of the local language, with help from Maxyates. Max had told us he was a natural student, but he had also proved a natural teacher who was very patient with my attempts to speak Egyptian. Now I applied my hard-won linguistic expertise to the lyrics.
I bent my ear to understand the words. As far as I could tell, Djanet seemed to be singing that I resembled a small hunting dog. I guessed that probably wasn’t right. I made a mental note to ask Max for more lessons.
I tapped my hand on the table in time to the music. That caused the serving wench to think I was impatient for my drink. She hurried over with a mug of the local beer. It wasn’t wine, but it was better than nothing.
The appearance of the serving girl gave me an idea. I would write a note to Djanet and have the girl carry it to the singer. Men wrote notes to tavern singers all the time. The singers almost always ignored the suggestions in the notes. No one would take notice of such an approach. I pulled a piece of broken pottery toward me—like most inns, the tables had a few pieces lying about—and scratched a message, telling the singer that a mutual friend had suggested I look her up while I was in town. As written it was the usual sort of salacious scribble, but I was sure any agent good enough for Inaros would see the true meaning.
I had just finished writing the note, and was about to signal for the serving girl, when I saw a man walk in. I think my heart must have stopped at that moment, if only for an instant. Because I knew that new arrival, and I never, ever thought to meet him at a tavern in Egypt. We had met before, and the last time Diotima and I had been lucky to escape with our lives.
I would know that dark hair anywhere, and the beard, black as night and curled into immaculate ringlets. I knew if I came close enough, I would stare into dark eyes that seared with remorseless, pitiless intelligence. For there, standing at the entrance of a tavern in Memphis, was the man named Barzanes, who was the Eyes and Ears of the Great King of Persia.