Cairo Surrender Ch. 03-04

There came a day, shortly after the two young princes had reached their majority, that a great plague was going through the land. The wise crones of the caves advised the people that the surest protection against this scourge was the flesh of the pomegranate, and the trees of the kingdom were soon stripped bare of the life-preserving fruit.

Bakari, secluded with the crown prince Nebtawi in the highest tower of the black marble palace scorned these medieval folk medicines of the crones of the darkness. He peeled over the most modern texts of the day, and thus the prince Nebtawi was bled daily to keep the toxins that would protect his body flowing freely, and Bakari marked it as a favorable sign that the youth's skin took on a more translucent quality with each passing day.

Hondo had listened to his chief counselors and was being bled daily as well. However, he wasn't in the protected environment of the high tower, and while still on the battlefield at the eastern border, he contracted the plague.

He was brought back to the black palace on a bier borne by six virginal sons of the six leading noble families of the realm to the beating of drums in a dirge that Bakari declared would hold off the grasping fingers of death until, through more bleeding, Hondo could regain his strength and throw off the attack of the plague.

At the first news of the king's plight, Najja was seized and removed from the battlefield and returned to the black palace and locked up in the garden of the harem—to await his fate, depending on how Hondo fared.

Such was the consternation in the palace that, as Hondo weakened, all of the senior ministers and generals congregated around his sick bed. This included Bakari, who neglected to lock the crown prince in the high tower when he departed in haste to take his rightful place in the counsel around the sinking body of his king. The prince Nebtawi, of course, was kept as far away from the plague room as possible.

Bored and curious—and now all alone, Bakari never having left him unattended before, Nebtawi descended the stairs of the high tower and wandered through a palace that mostly was completely new territory to him, as sheltered as his life and preparation had been. At length, he came to the gate of a garden enclosed by high stone walls topped with shards of colorful glass. He could see that there were trees and luxurious vines inside the garden—and the key to the gate was in the lock. So, he twisted the key in the lock and pushed on the door. It opened, and he walked into the most lush garden he had ever read about. He had never actually been in one, as Bakari considered plants of any sort as carrying threatening diseases.

His eyes were wide with wonder as he walked down a path bordered by leafy greenery that reached out to him as he passed and beckoned him farther into the center of the world he'd never seen before.

He gasped as he came into the center of the garden, where there was a stone-floored area with burbling fountains at the four points of the compass. In the center of the cleared area was a delicately proportioned tree upon which hung plump, rosy-red fruit.

His gasp, however, was not for the strange and wonderful foliage, but for the young man who sat on a bench under the tree and was nosily devouring fruit from the tree. He had the remains of dripping fruit in each hand and he was happily slurping away, turning from one hand to the other.

He looked up and winked at Nebtawi, and Nebtawi felt his heart leap and other parts of his body stir as well.

The young man was magnificent. He wore only skirts of leather over white cotton and leather sandals with lacings that worked up his calves almost to his knees. He had gold armbands at his bulging biceps, the mark of high rank, so Nebtawi did not shrink from him as he would normally from someone he had just happened upon—although he couldn't remember Bakari ever having permitted that to happen. The young man was heavily muscled and perfectly proportioned. His skin was golden brown, marking him as a man of the open air. But his hair was the whitest of white.

Just like Nebtawi's hair.

Nebtawi was mesmerized by this discovery. He'd never seen a person with hair that was whitest white beyond himself. He had never seen his mother, the senior queen, who did have hair of whitest white, nor, even less, been told that he had any siblings, no less a twin brother.

He was observant enough to realize that this was a mirror image of himself—except a far more robust one than himself. And for the first time in his life, a doubt crept into his being. There was something about this man, something full of life—a life fuller, more robust, more meaningful than his own. But as soon as the thought entered Nebtawi's mind, he dismissed it—or at least pushed it to the side, because it just would not leave his consciousness altogether. There was no one of more privilege and more rewarded in life than he, Nebtawi, was. He was the heir to the Great Hondo. Bakari had constantly told him that all meaning was centered in his, Nebtawi's, life.

"Pomegranate?" Najja asked him with a smile, holding out a half-eaten plump fruit.

Nebtawi shrank away a step. "No. I cannot. It is forbidden. It is unclean."

"It may save your life," Najja said in a jovial voice that took all of the seriousness of the proposition out of the telling. He smiled again broadly. He knew exactly who this was. Najja had not been sheltered from anything. And he enjoyed seeing the delicate, fine-boned young beauty of a man in front of him with skin he could almost see through. But handsome, just like he, Najja, was handsome, both sons having taken after the beauty of the senior queen, who had come to this land as a treasure of regal bearing and awesome beauty.

"It is said to be protection from the plague," he repeated.

"Old crone tale," Nebtawi said haughtily. "Bakari says so."

"Bakari says so, does he?" Najja said with a heartily, not unfriendly laugh. "Suit yourself. Of course, even if it doesn't guard against the plague, it is delicious, and so I will eat of it."

"Who are you?" Nebtawi asked in somewhat halting tones, not quite as sure of himself as he was before.

"Why I am you," Najja roared. "I am you in the world, not in your ebony tower. I am life and fullness . . . and love."

"Love?" Nebtawi asked in a tentative voice. It was obvious he knew nothing of the term.

"Yes. And pain and pleasure—and of pleasure from pain."

"Pleasure from pain?" Nebtawi asked. "There cannot be such a thing. They are opposites. Bakari says so." This was all so confusing to Nebtawi. New and challenging. Nebtawi was not accustomed to be challenged or to be presented with a conundrum that did not have the answer inked at the bottom of the scroll. In Bakari's world there was a logical answer for everything and there was always a white and black and right and wrong.

Still, he was attracted by this new experience—this brash, very familiar man, in a lush garden. All new experiences for Nebtawi. And even more than attracted, Nebtawi was aroused. Of course he didn't know that he was, that this was the name for how tingly and hardening and sensitive his body was beginning to feel. And arousal was something that only increased as Najja stood and loosened his leather skirt and let it fall to the ground—followed by the cotton one—and showed Nebtawi yet one more thing he'd never seen before. A man's sword—in full hardness and curved up toward his belly. Nebtawi saw the swords of men before, and he had one himself, which, as he reached down, he felt was becoming a twin of the other man's. But he'd never seen a sword such as that, not in its fullness. It was a horse's member, not one of man.

"Yes, pleasure can come from pain, just as one such as I can be the same as you. Opposites but just the same." Najja said this with an engaging, mesmerizing smile. "Come I will show you. We are opposites and still the same. And we were born joined and will be joined again now. We can be one, moving as one, and having great pleasure doing so." He was stretching his arms out, hands slicked with the juices of the pomegranates.

And, Nebtawi, in a trance, walked toward Najja, as the more robustly formed of the twins sat back down on the bench and drew his brother onto his lap and demonstrated how pain could grow into pleasure.

Mere days later, the Great King Najja presided over the funeral of his predecessor, Hondo. The counsel was short and without rancor, as being buried with Hondo, to help see him into the other world were many of the court who had joined him in succumbing to the plague—including the great and wise counselor Bakari, and a young prince, Nebtawi, who had been so weak when the plague attacked him that he died in a matter of hours—but whose passing was hardly marked by the people of the kingdom who only knew of—and heartily approved of—the ever-present existence of the accessible, robust, fun-loving, and powerful Prince Najja.

How much more tragic would it have been, though, if the prince Nebtawi had died without ever having lived?