Casting the Gods Adrift Read Online Free PDF Page B

as soon as we were alone …
    I expected to see Harkhuf as he had looked when he left – bent and broken and grey with misery. But he was transformed.He was thinner, his movements were quick and sharp, his eyes bright as sparks from an axe, and his jaw muscles rigid. He seized me by the elbow and pulled me close to him – not in an embrace, but to whisper in my ear. ‘I have news for you! Later. At the house.’
    â€˜So do I,’ I said, grinning at the knowledge of my marvellous secret.
    I never got the chance that day to mention the stela. At home, my father sent Ibrim to practice, and sat down, hard up against me on the couch, his eyes darting wildly right and left. He jumped up to check for eavesdroppers at the door, at the window, then returned to the couch.
    â€˜On my way home I stopped at Edfu, at the Temple of Hathor the Protector. I bathed in the holy springs.’
    â€˜Why? Are you ill?’ My heart sank inside me. I knew he was still thinking of a cure for Ibrim, still hoping for Ibrim to recover his sight.
    â€˜For the sake of your brother, stupid! And that night I had a dream! I did! The plainest dream I ever dreamed in my life. The gods revealed themselves to me, Tutmose!’
    A flicker of wonder and dread crept through me, for all my conversion to Aten. ‘Was I in the dream?’
    He could not hear me. ‘One day, Tutmose, you must paint my dream on the wall of my tomb: Ibrim, his eyes big as cymbals, and the Criminal, and a great cobra—’
    â€˜A cobra?’
    â€˜I dreamed, Tutmose, that Ibrim was cured – was perfectly whole again. I dreamed of Akhenaten sitting on his throne. And rearing up over him was a hooded cobra in the very act of striking!’
    I was almost disappointed. ‘That’s his crown, Father. The triple crown with the cobra coiled around, rearing up to strike. And Ibrim
is
made whole. He’s happy. Didn’t you hear him tell you down at the quay? He plays now for Queen Nefertiti herself; in the royal orchestra! He’s very happy.’ I might as well have been talking underwater.
    â€˜Don’t you see what it means, Tutmose?’ said my father, grasping my shoulders, almost breathless with delight. ‘The gods are calling for vengeance on their detractor!They want Akhenaten destroyed! And we must do it for them!’

7
The Nile-blue Cat
    Out of a soft reed pannier Harkhuf pulled a wooden box, and set it down on the bench where we ate our daily food. Then he pulled on the scarlet gloves – those detested gloves that the pharaoh had presented to him, and lifted off the box lid.
    I thought they were eels at first, wriggling around, knotting and unknotting. Then I realised. They were snakes – deadly poisonous Nile asps.
    â€˜No, Father. You can’t,’ I breathed. ‘How can you kill a god?’
    â€˜Isis did.’ He had his answers well rehearsed; he had been over and over them so often in his overheated brain. ‘The goddess Isis made a snake to poison Amun-Rahimself, ha ha! Poisoned the father of all the gods! That was how she won herself a place on the Ship of a Million Days!’
    I wanted to say, ‘There is no god but Aten. There never was an Isis or a magic snake. It’s a story, a myth.’ But I did not. I said, ‘But Isis cured Amun-Ra afterwards. How will you cure the pharaoh?’
    The light of madness was in his eyes.
    â€˜I shan’t! No one shall! Monsters will tear at him in the Underworld, from everlasting to everlasting. But
you
, Tutmose,
you
!’
    â€˜
Me
?’
    How was I to be involved in this insane scheme? Was I to be a part of it, this blasphemy, this plot to kill a god?
    â€˜What are you making at the moment? For the Great Criminal Akhenaten. At the workshop.’
    I shrugged. ‘A cat. A cat in blue faience.’
    â€˜Bast. The cat goddess. Very good.’
    â€˜No, no,’ I insisted. ‘Just a blue cat. For Pharaoh