The Crocodile Makes No Sound

by N. L. Holmes

  “Maya? How about you?”

  “Iyah, a party!” Neferet looked around gleefully then launched into an awkward version of a dance such as professionals might perform at a party, raising her foot high and clapping her hands and swinging her braids as she leaned backward and forward.

  “You’ll give your patients apoplexy,” said Maya dryly, getting to his feet.

  Nub-nefer called to her father-in-law on the other side of the room, “Would you say she takes after your half of the family, Father?”

  “Let me show you how it’s done in our family!” Mery-ra cried, sidling up to his granddaughter and attempting to follow her moves. Pipi joined him immediately, and the three of them danced around in a circle, kicking, swaying their hips, waving their arms, and rocking back and forth with gusto but the most startling lack of grace, warbling some unidentifiable tune.

  Maya started to laugh, and then he couldn’t stop, laughing so hard his mouth hurt. He could feel snot running down his face and tried to wipe it off, but he was rendered helpless by the extremity of his hilarity. What must it have been like to grow up with Lord Mery-ra for a father?

  Nub-nefer was laughing too. When the trio had finally concluded their wild dance and dropped, panting and puffing and fanning themselves, onto their stools, she grinned at Maya. “To think I’ve tainted the children’s blood by marrying into this family.”

  CHAPTER 3

  When Hani returned from market, where he’d gone to look at some goats to have on hand for milk while the visitors were around, Nub-nefer informed him of two things. First, she said that his father and brother needed a lot of work on their dancing skills. Hani covered his blushing face in pained amusement, being only too able to picture the spectacle Nub-nefer described for him. “Now you see, my dear, that I can’t help the way I am. My mother wasn’t much of a dancer, either.”

  “Second,” his wife said more seriously, “Neferet doesn’t seem to like her apprenticeship with Khuit. Maybe she’s getting over her enthusiasm already.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t? Did she say why?”

  “She said she thinks the old woman is a witch, and she’s not interested in that.”

  Hani heaved a sigh. It never failed—no sooner did he set foot in the house than some small crisis arose. “I’ll talk to her. Unless you particularly want her to become a witch.” Nub-nefer pretended to swat him. Then he lowered his voice. “Any word about Amen-em-hut, my doe?”

  She dropped her eyes and shook her head. “Still nothing.” She looked up, and her lids were suddenly in Inundation, tears spilling over the edges. “Nothing.”

  “He’ll turn up, my love. Have faith.” He drew her against him. Crises, both ridiculous and tragic. Such is life.

  That evening, he spoke to his daughter at dinner. “Your mother tells me you don’t want to continue with Khuit, my duckling.”

  “You haven’t given up, have you?” cried Baket-iset. Nub-nefer, who was spooning food into her daughter’s mouth, held back while she spoke.

  Neferet shook her hands in energetic frustration. “No, it’s just Khuit isn’t a real doctor. Half of what she does has nothing to do with medicine. She’s experienced, and I’ve learned a lot, but she doesn’t know why she does anything.”

  “I’m not sure real sunu doctors know why, either. They just read in their casebooks that this has worked, so they do it.” Hani could see his careful plans falling apart. Now he’d have to find another lady doctor. “Anyway, I have to go back to the capital in a few days, and while I’m there, I’ll ask around. All right, my duck?”

  “All right, Papa.” Neferet beamed. “You’ll be glad when you’re old and I can take care of you.”

  ⸎

  “Hani, my friend!” Mane, the ambassador to Naharin, boomed, opening his arms magnificently and enfolding Hani in a warm hug. “Haven’t seen you for a year. Since the jubilee, eh?”

  The two men had encountered one another quite by chance in the courtyard of the Hall of Royal Correspondence. “Must be at least that long,” Hani agreed, remembering only too well the murderous heat of that day. The astonishing interview with his sunstruck superior, Lord Yanakh-amu, had finally solved his investigation into the death of Abdi-ashirta, the former leader of the hapiru. “Anything particular bring you back, or is it just a routine return to the Black Land and the arms of your family?”

  “Oh, far from routine.” Mane’s chubby face grew sly. “Keliya is here too. In fact, he’s the main agent of this present visit. He’s here on Tushratta of Naharin’s behest to pay a visit to his daughter, Lady Taduhepa—Kiya, as she’s known here.”

  “The King’s Beloved Wife? Things seem to be looking up for our little princess. She has apparently captured our sovereign’s heart.”

  “Yes, well, Tushratta just wants to be sure.” Mane’s voice dropped. “Tushratta is by no means happy with our king. I think he’s afraid Nefer-khepru-ra is preparing to drop their treaty.”

  Hani contained the anger that invaded him every time he thought about the king’s foreign policy and said neutrally, “I wouldn’t be surprised. And Naharin must be uneasy, with the Hittites getting closer and closer to their heartland. So, Keliya plans to do a little snooping while he’s here?”

  Mane’s voice returned to its normal powerful volume. “Oh, that’s too strong a word, my friend. You know what a perfect gentleman our good Keliya is.”

  “I hope to see him while he’s here.” Hani was genuinely fond of the young Mitannian, who had become like a brother to him six years before, when the two of them and Mane had made the long journey from Naharin with the little princess Taduhepa.

  “That can certainly be arranged.” The sly look had returned to Mane’s round face, reducing his eyes to slits, and Hani had an uneasy feeling that he was about to become implicated in something. “In fact, the Beloved Wife of the King has requested to see you. You wouldn’t object to meeting Keliya in her presence, would you?”

  A chill rippled up Hani’s back. “She requested to see me? Whatever for? I’m trying to avoid the court.” And if there were one aspect of court he wanted to evade, it was the inevitable partisan split between the queen and the Beloved Wife, whose ascendant star could not be pleasing to Great Queen Nefert-iti.

  “I don’t know what for, Hani. Do you think the royal women confide their longings to me? No such luck!” Mane indulged in a hearty bray of laughter. “But I do know that she’s powerful at the moment, and if I were you, I wouldn’t waste any time in complying.”

  Hani pursed his lips. He realized he’d just been drafted. “Of course, I shouldn’t...” he said suspiciously.

  “It will be like old times, my friend,” Mane assured him, smiling beatifically. “You and me and Keliya and the little princess.”

  “Who must be—what? Twenty years old by now?” Hani fell silent, thinking. He couldn’t ignore a summons by the King’s Beloved Wife, clearly. “You know,” he said just above a whisper, “I’m trying to stay beneath the king’s notice. My wife’s family are priests of Amen-Ra, Mane.”

  Mane’s thick eyebrows rose then pleated sympathetically. “I think I knew that. But... well, what can I say? I’m just the messenger.”

  Hani nodded, disturbed. When trouble came looking for a person, it came like a crocodile under the water—there was often no way to hide, and all at once, there it was. “All right. When do you want to go?”

  “Are you based here in the new capital now? Do you need to go home to Waset to tell your family?”

  “I’m staying here with friends for a while, until my business at the Hall of the Royal Correspondence is done. I can go to the palace anytime you want.”

  “Not to the palace, Hani. To Pa-maru-en-pa-aten, the Sunshade of the Aten.”

  Hani grunted skeptically. That was too much Aten for his taste. “Is this a liturgical meeting, then?” he asked a little sarcastically.

  “Not at all, friend. Wait till you see this place. The maru is not exactly a temple. It’s a place where
the Sun Disk shows off what he can do.” Mane grinned.

  Hani gave a bark of cynical laughter. “I think we saw enough of that at the jubilee. So, give me a time, and I’ll be there.”

  “Right now, Hani. Let’s go now, before it gets any hotter.” Mane hooked his friend’s arm in his and steered him out of the courtyard and into the processional street.

  Hani was starting to feel he had been swept downstream by the fierce current of the Inundation. Despite his reservations, he let himself be hustled along the street. He stared around him at this new city, built out of nothing in the desert. It had four years of mellowing on it, the mud brick growing soft under the lashing sand from the desert and even an occasional sprinkle of rain. The colors were already peeling in places. Trees rustled over the tops of some of the courtyard walls, and the scaffolding that had covered much of the architecture had been dismantled. But still, it had a look of rawness. Few real streets intersected the splendid main avenue. When the government moved, people had rushed in so hastily to grab plots and build that the residential sections looked more like a jumble of separate villages than anything planned. Everything was dust and gravel except for the whitewashed splendor of the temples and palaces.

  The two men trudged upriver in the mounting warmth of a late-summer morning. Gradually, the higgledy-piggledy density of the city thinned out until their crunching footsteps were the only sound except for an occasional shout from the embarcaderos. A dry breeze mercifully evaporated the sweat that prickled on Hani’s temples and basted his sides. He saw the green of fields and beyond that the River, where a cloud of small birds rose and wheeled together across the water. Someone must have brought River mud up onto the desert hardpan to try to grow crops. For the most part, the city lived off farms on the opposite bank. On its way into the capital from some outlying aristocratic mansion, a chariot passed them, leaving them suffocating momentarily in a whirlwind of ocher dust.

  We seem to be heading away from all habitation and into the desert. Hani shot an inquiring sideways glance at Mane.

  As if he’d read Hani’s thoughts, Mane assured him, “We’re almost there.” He pointed ahead to where a white expanse of wall rose up from the desert, shimmering in the glare like something out of a dream. The men drew nearer, and Hani saw soldiers and priests milling about, departing from and entering its single portal. He shaded his eyes with a hand and gazed up at the walls of the vast, isolated enclosure. No roofs of buildings showed above the whitewashed brick, but trees, mostly palms, waved their inviting foliage. He could suddenly smell water, and it reminded him how thirsty he’d become.

  He shot Mane a questioning look. Mane seemed pleased with himself. He drew Hani after him to the gateway, where two of the king’s Nubian guardsmen, prinked out in plumes and leopard skin, stood at attention.

  “Mane son of Pa-iry and Hani son of Mery-ra, summoned by the King’s Beloved Wife,” the little man announced.

  One of the guardsmen turned away and repeated the announcement to a servant, invisible in the interior, and a moment later, the servant reemerged and greeted the two men with a deep bow. “Our lady will receive you.”

  Hani and the ambassador to Naharin followed the man through the door into a colonnaded passage, dark and cool, beyond which he could see only the glare of the out-of-doors. Their sandals echoed on the smooth gypsum flooring. Silhouetted at the edge of the colonnade, like a second row of living columns, stood an attentive rank of immobile guardsmen.

  And then the three men passed into the Maru-aten itself, and Hani let out a gasp of wonder in spite of himself. It was an enormous walled garden with a big rectangular lake in the middle and trees all around and flowers in dense alternating beds. The place was lushly green, as only cut channels, wells, and the work of innumerable gardeners hauling River silt and manure could make the desert grow. Even the high enclosure walls were embellished with scenes of garden and water, so that Hani was hard-pressed to say where reality left off and illusion began.

  At his side, Mane chuckled. “Not what you expected, is it, my friend?” he whispered. Hani could only shake his head, wide-eyed. Birds twittered in the trees and hopped about the gravel paths, delighting in this oasis full of joy.

  Ra be praised—it’s like the Field of Reeds! Hani thought, overwhelmed. A place of manifestation of the benevolence of the sun, indeed—call him what you will. That all of this had been done in only four years, while an entire city rose up around it, seemed beyond comprehension.

  The servant stopped them. “One moment, gentlemen, while I notify the Beloved Royal Wife that you have arrived.”

  As he set off toward one of the columned pavilions that dotted the periphery of the enclosure, Hani stared around, marveling. “I’ve never seen anything like this. And it’s considered a sacred place? I think I understand that.”

  “No cult is carried out, but it’s not too hard to imagine a prayer or two rising from the Maru, is it?” Mane looked mightily pleased at Hani’s awed reaction.

  The servant reappeared and bade them follow him. They marched across the immaculate walkway and through the plush, well-watered greenery and delicate flowers of late summer, alive with butterflies. A breeze rustled the stiff fronds of date and doum palms overhead. With great strokes of white wings, an egret lowered itself gracefully through the air into the sunken margins of the lake, which were planted as a marsh. Hani drew a deep breath of contentment, even though he knew that whatever had brought him to the royal precinct meant him no good.

  They entered an open colonnade that overhung a paved porch. Hani saw the sparkle of water somewhere in the shadows. And before him stood their little princess, her arms outstretched.

  “Mane, you got him to come! Hani! How glad I am to see you. It’s like old times!” she cried in delight.

  But of course, it wasn’t exactly like old times. The little girl who would have taken the two men in her innocent arms was now a twenty-year-old woman and the favorite wife of the Great King of the Two Lands. Hani and his colleague folded in a deep court obeisance, one hand to their lips.

  When they rose, Hani glimpsed, standing behind the royal wife, his friend Keliya, a big grin on his droopy face. He was unchanged. But Taduhepa—Hani needed to remember she was Kiya now—had changed profoundly in six years. She had grown up. Tall and slender still, with a graceful long neck, she had developed the curves of a woman. Her heart-shaped face and full lips were adorned with artistically applied cosmetics, and her big almond eyes looked twice as enormous edged with kohl. She wore a short Nubian-style wig, angled below the ears to become even shorter in back. It was the latest style, and it had never looked better than upon this glittering young princess. No wonder the twenty-six-year-old king had noticed her among his inherited stable of wives.

  “My lady is as radiant as... the Aten of morning,” Hani said, stumbling a little over the name he was so reluctant to pronounce. But he couldn’t afford to let this visit make him any more suspect than he was. “And this maru—it’s a setting worthy of your beauty.”

  “It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Nefer-khepru-ra has the most perfect taste, and he’s so generous.” She was bubbling like any little bride, proud to be loved by her husband. It occurred to Hani that the king’s generosity was carved out of the livelihood of tens of thousands of employees of the temples of Amen-Ra. Still, he only smiled.

  “But you must be thirsty. How thoughtless of me.” Kiya turned and, from a small stand behind her, produced two golden cups and a slender-necked ewer from which she poured out two big drafts. She held them out to the two emissaries. They each accepted with a little bow. The water was ice-cold, Hani realized, chilling his palms.

  Hani held his cup up in a toast. “Life, prosperity, and health to our king and to his Beloved Wife.”

  Mane echoed him in a booming voice, and Keliya, a cup already in his hand, lifted his with them. They all drank, and water had never tasted so delicious. The royal wife gestured to a strew of cushions that lay about, and after waitin
g for her to seat herself upon her gilded chair, the men took their place on the floor.

  The gypsum paving was painted with marsh scenes—calves gamboling among the reeds and wild birds, more natural than life, rising into the sky. The painting was like nothing he’d ever seen; it was so detailed, so delicate that it seemed to flutter in an unseen breeze. Along the midline of the colonnade ran a series of interlocked T-shaped pools—the sacred symbol for pool, he noted with amusement, so that they seemed to proclaim their identity with playful aquatic voices.

  “Forgive me, my lady. I can’t stop staring around,” he said apologetically, drawing his eyes back to hers.

  “I feel the same way, Hani. This is a place of deep and beautiful magic for me. And it’s all mine—only my husband and I can come here without an invitation. The queen has her own maru.” Kiya’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t think it’s as pretty as mine.” She lifted her cup to her lips and locked eyes impishly with Hani over the rim. But when she set it down, her expression had grown more serious, even a little frightened. “I need to talk to you about something, Hani. I hope you can help me. Keliya and Mane thought you could.” She shot a worried glance toward her countryman and the ambassador to Naharin.

  “We can absent ourselves if you prefer to speak to him alone, my lady,” Keliya murmured self-effacingly in Egyptian.

  “Do you mind, my friend?” she replied shyly. Keliya and Mane bowed and meandered off to another pavilion some distance away. The royal wife leaned toward Hani. He scented an intoxicating drift of floral perfume. “I may be in trouble.” Her adorable face had tensed, her lip caught in her teeth. “You’ve got to help me, Hani. I need to know what’s going on and put an end to it before the king finds out.”

  Hani’s stomach took an ominous dip. “If it’s within my power, my lady, you know I’m at your service.” He tried to sound reassuring—the royal wife was just a frightened girl, after all, hardly older than Pa-kiki.