"Will you take off your veil now?" I asked her, but Creusa only shook her head.
I forgot! That was my duty.
I lifted the fabric and fixed my gaze on the woman with whom I was destined to spend my life.
Not a beauty, but quite nice. And she was very young and very frightened.
She looked about fifteen. Chubby cheeks, an upturned nose, brown eyes fringed with thick lashes, and smooth fair skin.
My wife wasn't often in the sun, and when she was, she hid under a veil.
She certainly wasn't up to that girl on the ship, but she was quite alright.
"Come to me!" I extended my arms. "I won't hurt you in word or deed."
"Really?"
Creusa looked at me with the trusting gaze of hazel eyes and pressed against me awkwardly.
"You're a warrior, and warriors are... like that... I often hear Hector's wife crying secretly after he takes her. He's so rough! I'll be a good wife to you, Aeneas," she hastily added, and her lips trembled slightly. "Just don't hurt me, please!"
"I won't hurt you," I promised. "But only if you're not quarrelsome or a gossip. I can't stand such women. Come on, eat first."
"I haven't eaten or drunk anything since yesterday evening," the girl honestly admitted and looked at me gratefully. "Mother said I must sit motionless until the feast ends. And that I couldn't get up and leave, even if I really needed to pee."
"Dig in!" I waved my hand, and my wife with a voluptuous moan grabbed a pheasant leg with small white teeth.
I poured her wine, and she hastily gulped almost half a cup at once.
Creusa ate greedily, and I sat nearby, unable to believe it myself.
I'd been thrown into another time, and now I had a family: a father and a wife. And I didn't know my wife at all.
Hadn't even figured out yet if her hips were wide enough to bear me healthy children.
Maybe I should talk with her, understand what was in her soul.
"Tell me..." I turned to Creusa but immediately fell silent.
My wife had fallen on her side and fallen asleep with the pheasant leg clutched in her hand.
She'd been so exhausted by this wedding.
Poor child.
Rapanu sat on the ship's bow, dangling his bare feet down.
He loved sitting like this, almost touching the foamy wave, and looking at the boundless blue.
Though it was boundless only to the right. To the left sprawled the port of the glorious city of Ugarit, where they were returning after months of sailing.
Merchants tried not to let land out of sight, otherwise the abyss would swallow the unwise like a lion a mouse.
Traders feared the sea. They dared not plow its expanses when the sun hid below the horizon, and pulled the ship ashore as soon as evening came.
Everyone did that, and so did Rapanu's father, who commanded this vessel.
The ship's bow went up and down, and the kid almost touched the restless sea surface with his toes.
Each time his heart clenched in fear that the god Yammu would grab and drag him to the bottom.
But the god apparently didn't need youths just entering manhood today.
The gods had been amply propitiated before sailing: father had thrown a ram into the sea after cutting its throat with his own hand.
A rich sacrifice! Yammu should give them an easy road across the expanses of the Great Green, and Baal-Hadad should spare them from storms on the way.
The Great Green!
That's what the arrogant Egyptians called the sea—they fiercely despised all other peoples—and Rapanu really liked that expression.
It was so beautiful!
Last year they'd been with father to the port of Per-Ammon, which stood on the easternmost branch of the great Nile.
A rich city, no smaller than Ugarit, where seven or even eight thousand people lived.
Father said Egypt was so big you could sail the Nile for several months, all the way to Nubia. All these lands obeyed the great king with the unpronounceable name Usermaatre-Meryamun—Strong in Truth of Ra, Beloved of Amun.
Terrible name, though everyone knew he was simply called Ramesses.
Just like the one who'd once fought at Kadesh with the king of the land of Hatti, lord of the North.
Old Ramesses had ruled so long that the grandchildren of those who'd fought with him in that battle had died. But after it came peace.
An extraordinarily long peace that had given everyone unprecedented prosperity.
The family of respected merchant Uertenu had felt this themselves.
Their house in Ugarit yielded to few except the royal palace. Though it was hard to call it a house.
A huge structure of sun-baked brick, seventy by seventy cubits in size, was a whole labyrinth of master's chambers, servants' rooms, warehouses with goods and pantries where grain and oil were stored.
Just on the first floor of this house were thirty-four rooms!
The merchant's family lived richly, to everyone's envy, and the reason was simple: respected Uertenu was in favor with King Ammurapi.
Rapanu looked at the sea and smiled.
He, son of the third wife, was his father's favorite. He read and wrote, having mastered Akkadian, Hittite, Cypriot, Canaanite, Hurrian and Luwian languages. And his native one, of course.
The people of the Suteans, whom the Babylonians called Amorites, had founded Ugarit, a city standing at the crossroads of trade routes.
It was here that the "Incense Route" from Arabia intersected with the road from Babylon along which fabrics and tin traveled.
Here people communicated and did business in a dozen dialects.
That's why merchants had to know them all, plus the language of the Egyptians and Achaeans who lived in Mycenae and Crete.
A merchant's lot wasn't easy. So much you needed to keep in your head. Just the measures of weight and length alone. They were different in each country, and sometimes in each city.
Only the names were common—shekel and talent. Blink and you're at a loss.
The smile slid from Rapanu's face when they approached the city closer.
That guy from Troy was right—they were easy pickings.
Two towers had collapsed to their foundations, along with sections of walls near them, and over the years King Ammurapi had barely begun clearing the rubble.
There wasn't the trade there used to be—the price of this work was now impossible for him.
And even the fact that strangers had taken the city of Byblos by assault, and Amurru, the southern neighbor, had been wiped to powder, didn't affect anything.
King Ammurapi had only just cleared a couple of sections, piling the brick fragments into huge heaps.
Speaking of grain.
He and father had talked with people at the market and decided not to go to Hattusa. Roads weren't safe now. Sometimes nomads attacked, sometimes rioting peasants.
The warriors of the king of kings Suppiluliuma no longer maintained the usual order, and the land of Hatti was sliding into the abyss.
They'd sold their goods in Troy and filled the ships' holds with amphorae of grain.
Nothing else was needed in native Ugarit, which was languishing from hunger.
"Sea Peoples will come soon, father," Uertenu said grimly and pointed at the fortress. "We're finished. No army, walls destroyed! Even a small detachment of Cretans will take us."
"The gods won't allow this to happen," merchant Uertenu answered, but indecision was heard in his voice. "Tomorrow I'll go to the king, talk with him. You'll come with me. You need to understand the business."