The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [278]
Look on the face of Love; that you may be properly a man.
Do not, at least, run away.
Chapter 38
IT WAS THE fifteenth day of August, the day of the Feast of the Assumption, and the Nile, rising, stood at last at the Great Mark that meant harvest, and life.
Cairo, Metropolis of the Universe, lies between deserts, and the Ceremony of the Abundance of the Nile, the Wafa el-Nil, was the crown of its year, for it marked the moment when the mighty river, travelling for hundreds of days from its unknown source in the Earthly Paradise, delivered the mysterious summer inundation whose rich black mud, spreading into the fields, would nourish corn and cotton and sugarcane, bean and date palm, watermelon and cresses, and feed the children of Egypt that year.
The mud and the water which – dashing along aqueducts, rushing into cisterns and wells and springing through sluices and channels – turned the baked land into lakes and moated parterres and nielloes of dancing, glittering silver, of fresh sweet water come, like a miracle, in the parched height of summer.
When, on the fifteenth of August, the Watchers on the island of Roda saw the water had risen to fifteen cubits and sixteen qirats on the Nilometer, the thirty-two feet or qefa of tradition, they rode shouting and clashing their cymbals through the city and up to the Citadel, upon which the Sultan Qayt Bey caused it to be announced that the Ceremony of the Abundance of the Nile would take place that day. Retiring, he donned his ceremonial many-horned turban (known as the Syrian Water-Wheel), and prepared to ride out to his parade ground on his white horse with the golden saddle and stirrups, and his harness with the great pearls, and three rubies the size of fowls’ eggs upon his back saddle-bow. (Allah be praised.)
The word came to the people. As the Heralds and Criers rode about town, the workshops closed, the stewards of rich merchants hung out precious cloths, and the women put their children into fine tunics and slippers. The cooks burned their fingers packing their ovens and filling the vats full of oil for the pastries; while all those who sold in the markets made sure that their best goods were prepared to set out for the evening, when the children of Cairo (Allah be thanked, it is the Wafa el-Nil) would be hungry.
Meanwhile the emirs of ten and five thousand, the Heads of Alleys, the Masters of the Sword and the Pen began to gather up at the Citadel, where the young men were already practising their drill, and the senior Mamelukes were racing back from their privileged lodgings, their blackamoors scampering alongside with their weapons. The great emirs paced in more slowly: the Grand Emir Yachbak; the Second Emir of twenty thousand lances; the Emir Akhor, the Comptroller; the Agents of the Exchequer; the official Bearer of the Sultan’s Slippers; the Katib al Sirr, the Clerk of the Secrets. The Emir Madjlis, the Master of Ceremonies was everywhere. The tall fringed caps looked like a flock of red lanterns; the turbans like puffs of smoke, or piled curds, or sugar-cones shawled in black; the shot and watered silks glimmered and the swords flashed to make the eye water, while the kettledrums prattled and barked and the trumpets assaulted the ear. (Allah alone is omnipotent, who has sent us this joy.)
It had all been prepared. Only the precise date could not be told beforehand, or the extent of the flood. The best might still be to come: a height of eighteen cubits, nineteen perhaps, if the fire-signals from upriver were to be believed. More than twenty, if it came, was not a blessing. But Allah disposed.
The sun rose. In the city, the guests of the second degree began to assemble: heads of guilds, nobles and sons of Mamelukes, Men of the Turban. Then merchants from the superb Islamic khans: the Persians, Syrians, Turks. Then