Pharaoh. Уилбур Смит

Weneg could not look me in the eyes for shame as they carried out Pharaoh’s commands. When I was secured they pushed me face down on to the floor once more.

      Suddenly Pharaoh Utteric Turo started up from his throne and paced up and down in front of me. I dared not raise my head so I could not see him but I could hear his sandals clacking on the marble. I could judge from their increasing tempo that he was lashing himself into a fury.

      Abruptly he bellowed at me, ‘Look at me, you treacherous pig-swine!’

      Immediately one of Weneg’s men behind me grabbed a handful of my hair and hauled me backwards into a sitting position, and pointed my face towards Pharaoh.

      ‘Look at that ugly, simpering and self-satisfied face! Tell me, if you dare, that is not guilt also written in gigantic hieroglyphs from ear to ear across it,’ he challenged everybody in the great hall. ‘I shall now relate to you the list of crimes against me and my family that this lump of excrement has committed. You will learn how richly he deserves the traitor’s death that I have prepared for him.’ He was starting to tremble with the force of his anger as he pointed the forefinger of his right hand into my face. ‘His first victim that I know of for certain, although there were probably scores before her, was my paternal grandmother Queen Lostris.’

      ‘No! No! I loved Queen Lostris,’ I burst out in anguish, unable to contain myself at the mention of her name. ‘I loved her more than life itself.’

      ‘That is probably the reason you murdered her. You could not have her so you killed her. You killed her, and boasted of your foul deed in the scrolls you left in her royal tomb. Your actual written words, which I have seen with my own eyes are: I killed the evil thing of Seth that was growing in her womb.’

      I moaned at the memory of the growth that the foul god Seth had placed inside her body. In my medical tracts I have given it the name of ‘carcinoma’. Yes, I plucked that monstrosity from her dead body, mourning the fact that all my skills as a physician were inadequate to save her from its onslaught. I cast it into the flames and burned it to ashes, before I began the mummification of her still beautiful remains.

      However, I did not have the words to explain all this to her grandson. I am a poet who rejoices in words, but still I could not find the words to defend myself. I sobbed brokenly but Pharaoh Utteric Turo continued remorselessly with his list of accusations against me. He smiled with his lips, but his eyes were like those of a standing cobra: filled with cold and bitter hatred. The venom he spat at me was every bit as noxious as that of the snake itself.

      He related to the assembled noblemen and scions of royalty how I had stolen a vast fortune in gold and silver from the royal treasury which his father Pharaoh Tamose had placed in my trust. As proof of my treachery he cited the fabulous fortune in landed estates and treasure which I had accumulated over the years. He flourished a scroll and then read aloud from it. This purported to record all my embezzlements from the treasury. These amounted to well over a hundred million lakhs of silver; more silver than exists on all our earth.

      The charges were so preposterous that I did not know where to begin my rebuttal. All I could think of in my defence was to deny the accusations and repeat over and over: ‘No! That’s not the way it happened. Pharaoh Tamose was like a son to me, the only son I ever had. He gave all of that to me to reward me for the services I carried out on his behalf over the fifty years of his life. I never stole anything from him, not gold nor silver, not even a loaf of bread.’

      I might not have spoken for Pharaoh went on listing the charges against me: ‘This assassin Taita used his knowledge of drugs and poisons to murder another precious royal woman. This time his victim was my own beautiful, gentle and dearly beloved mother, Queen Saamorti.’

      I gasped to hear that monstrous trollop so described. I had treated many of her slaves that she had personally emasculated or beaten half to death. She had delighted in mocking me cruelly over my damaged and mutilated manhood; bemoaning the fact that others had been ahead of her with the gelding knife. Her handmaidens had been gainfully employed in smuggling a seemingly endless train of male slaves into her elaborate sleeping quarters. The obscenities she practised with these sorry creatures had probably resulted in the birth of the very person who stood before me now reading out my death warrant: His Mighty Majesty Pharaoh Utteric Turo.

      One thing I knew with the utmost certainty was that the potions and medicines which I administered desperately to Queen Saamorti had not been sufficiently therapeutic to cure the filthy diseases which one or more of her myriad paramours had squirted into her lower bodily orifices. I wish her peace, although I am certain that the gods in their wisdom will deny it to her.

      However, this was not the end of the horrific accusations that Pharaoh Utteric had to bring against me. The next was as far-fetched as all the previous charges lumped together.

      ‘Then there was his flagrant treatment of two of my royal aunts, the Princesses Bekatha and Tehuti. It is true that my father managed to arrange a marriage for both of them with the most powerful and fabulously wealthy monarch in the world, the mighty Minos of Crete. Pharaoh, my father, sent these royal virgins in a caravan to their wedding with the Minos. Their retinue reflected our own wealth as a nation. It was several hundred persons strong. The treasure that was the dowry of my sisters was almost two hundred lakhs of fine silver bars. My father Pharaoh Tamose once again placed his trust in this sordid criminal and reprobate you see before you: Taita. He gave him command of the caravan. His assistants were two military officers named Captain Zaras and Colonel Hui. My information is that this creature, Taita, succeeded in reaching Crete and marrying my sisters to the Minos. However, in the eruption of Mount Cronus caused by the rage of the eponymous god Cronus, he who is the father of the god Zeus and has been chained for all eternity by his son in the depths of the mountain …’

      Here Pharaoh paused briefly to catch his breath, and then hurried on with his wild accusations: ‘The Minos was killed by the fall of rocks when the island of Crete was devastated by the eruption. In the ensuing chaos those two pirates, Zaras and Hui, abducted both my aunts. They then hijacked two of the vessels which belonged to my father Pharaoh Tamose’s fleet and fled northwards into the unexplored and savage archipelagos at the far end of the world. All this was against the will of my aunts, but with the connivance and encouragement of the accused scoundrel, Taita. When he returned to our very Egypt Taita told Pharaoh that his sisters had been killed in the volcanic eruption, and Pharaoh called off the search for them. Taita must bear the full guilt for their abduction and the hardships they must certainly have suffered. That dastardly deed alone warrants the death sentence for its perpetrator.’

      Once again the only verdict I could truthfully plead was guilty: guilty of allowing the two young women that I love more even than they love me the opportunity to find true fulfilment and happiness after they had done their duty to the utmost. But once again I could only gape at my accuser and maintain the silence which I had promised to Bekatha and Tehuti when I sent them to find happiness with the men they truly love.

      Pharaoh turned away from me, drew himself to his full height and gazed upon the ranks of noblemen and princes, who were stunned into stillness and silence by his revelations and accusations. He regarded them one at a time, drawing out the suspense. Then at last he began to speak again. I expected no mercy from him, and he did not disappoint my expectations.

      ‘I find the prisoner guilty of all the charges brought against him. He is to be deprived of all his assets, be they large or small, fixed or moveable, situated anywhere in the world. They are all forfeited to my treasury, nothing excepted.’

      A buzz ran through the ranks of his audience, and they exchanged envious glances for they all knew what riches this short recital entailed. It was common knowledge that I was the richest man in Egypt after only Pharaoh. He let them discuss it between themselves for a short while before he held up one hand for silence and they immediately froze. Even in my dreadful predicament I was amazed at how terrified they all were of their new Pharaoh, but I was learning the wisdom of their fear.

      Then Pharaoh giggled. This was the moment when first I realized that Utteric Turo was raving mad, and that he placed neither restraint nor control on his own madness. That high-pitched giggle was a sound that could only be