by N. L. Holmes
If this brings me into conflict with the king... Hani was taut with uneasiness. He could see a shaven-headed priest and several of the royal guardsmen standing at a discreet distance. His visit would surely be reported. He wasn’t surprised; he wouldn’t have left his own daughter alone with strange men either.
“The other day, two of my countrymen asked for an audience, which I granted. They were mercenaries from Karkemish, former soldiers in my father’s army, so I figured I owed them a meeting. Anyone who had been at his side through all that awful civil war—well, I felt grateful. But it was a mistake.” She stood up, as if her nerves were twanging too violently to permit her to sit still. Hani rose as well.
“They said they had come on someone else’s part but wouldn’t reveal whose. They said... they said that my husband was thinking of repudiating his treaty with my father. That Kheta Land was peeling off vassal state after vassal state from Naharin and would soon go for my father’s throat. And that Nefer-khepru-ra didn’t plan to do anything about it.” The royal wife began to pace, her little hennaed hands twisting nervously around her golden cup.
“And they wanted you to intercede for Naharin with the king?” Hani asked.
“Yes. I told them I had no political influence at all. And that’s true, Hani. When the king and I are together, he doesn’t want to talk about politics even a tiny bit. He rebukes me when I seem to drift in that direction. So I told them that. I suggested they speak to the vizier or to that high commissioner—what’s his name? Ptah-mes. Not that Nefer-khepru-ra likes him so much, but at least such things are his business.” She was clutching at her cup as if to crush it, until finally, she glanced at her nervous hands and set the vessel with a clang on the water stand. Hani noticed that her slight accent became stronger and stronger as her emotions mounted.
He could see a scenario taking shape that was dangerous in the extreme for the daughter of Tushratta. If the king became convinced that she was lobbying for her homeland against the interests of Kemet—as he perceived them—he would be justifiably angry and perhaps accuse her of trying to drag the kingdom into a war. It could only end in her fall from favor.
“And what did they say then, my lady?” he urged.
Her voice trembling, Kiya said, “They said that if I didn’t go along with them, they would... would tell the king something he might like to know about me.”
Hani couldn’t imagine what a sheltered young girl like Kiya could possibly have to reproach herself about. She’d only been fourteen when she came to the Two Lands, and thereafter, she’d lived in the seclusion first of Neb-ma’at-ra’s House of Royal Ornaments and then in that of his successor. “Is it something very serious, my lady?” he asked gently. “Because maybe you could tell the king voluntarily, and then the two mercenaries would have no hold over you.”
But the royal wife’s crumpling features told it all. She shook her head wildly. “Oh, no. I could never. I was so stupid. Why was I so stupid?” She buried her face in her hands, and Hani heard a sort of broken hiccup that told him she was struggling with tears.
His heart was wrenched with pity for the foolishness of youth. Had she been any other young girl, he would have offered her the same fatherly comfort he might have shown Sat-hut-haru or Neferet. But he dared not touch this one. He raised and dropped his hands helplessly, not knowing how to respond.
“Please don’t tell anyone ever what I’m about to say, Hani.” Her voice descended to a whisper of shame. “I... I went to bed with an artisan. This was more than two years ago, right around the time the king noticed me and picked me out for his favor. I didn’t know he was going to fall in love with me like he has.” She gave a moan of dread. “I’d be in so much trouble if he found out. But I was just bored, Hani. Do you know what it’s like to be one of hundreds of royal wives or concubines that never even see their lord?”
Hani had to allow that he did not.
“It’s unimaginably boring. And nobody was all that nice to me because I was a foreigner. And the queen—she looks so noble and queenly, but she’s just the daughter of a cavalry officer. She can be a real fishwife if she thinks you’re at all encroaching on her favor with the king. It was awful. I was going mad with boredom.”
Hani made a rueful grimace, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound like a rebuke. It was too late for that. He wondered how she’d even found herself alone with an artisan. Except that the city and the palace, endlessly under construction, had been swarming with them, no doubt. “How did these two mercenaries find out about this, do you think?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know on whose behalf they came. Is it some Mitannian? Yet they seem not to mind if they ruin me. And you know what that would mean for the treaty they seemed to care so much about. My father would smash it over his knee.” Kiya drew a deep, desperate breath as if her burden had become too heavy to bear. She dabbed valiantly at her eyes with the back of a hand. Finally, she dropped into her chair. In a tiny voice, she said, “Help me, Hani, please.”
Hani bit his lip, thinking hard. Should I agree to help her? One little slip, and I could fall under the king’s disfavor—or the queen’s—as quickly as Kiya. And what, indeed, can I accomplish? If she had really been so indiscreet, there was no solution. She could try to buy everyone’s silence, but the king could always outbid her. At last, he said quietly, “I’m not sure what you want me to do, my lady.”
“Find out who’s blackmailing me. Make them understand that I can’t help them—that I’m ruined either way. Tell my father even. I don’t know. But don’t let the king put me away.”
Hani shook his head hopelessly. “My lady, I have less than no influence with the king our lord.”
“I’m pregnant, Hani.” Kiya’s voice was raw, even in a whisper. “If this child is a son, he’ll be the king of the Two Lands. Don’t let them put me away.”
Hani’s heart sank. No wonder she was so desperate. “Won’t that protect you?”
“Not once the queen has found out about everything. She’ll twist it until Nefer-khepru-ra thinks it’s the artisan’s son.”
“Are you sure it’s not?”
“Absolutely. I haven’t even seen him for more than a year. He finished the plaster mask, and I’ve never seen him since.” Her long eyes were tear swollen but desperately sincere.
A spear of suspicion skewered Hani through the middle. “Plaster mask?” he repeated, hoping that wasn’t what it sounded like.
“Yes. You know—he was carving my likeness in plaster so he could use it for stone sculptures later.”
“So your artisan was a...”
“A sculptor.”
Ammit take him, Hani thought, sinking under a terrible misgiving. “Do you know his name?”
“No, not even. It’s not like we had some prolonged affair. Just for the few months he was working on the mask.”
“Whose workshop, do you remember?”
Kiya looked frightened by all the questions. “I don’t know whose workshop. It’s the fellow the king uses for a lot of his statues.”
“Bak? Djehuty-mes? Iuty?”
“I don’t know, Hani. He has a workshop here someplace.” She got to her feet again and took a step toward him. “Are you going to help me?”
“Does the name Kha-em-sekhem mean anything to you, my lady?”
Kiya shook her head, but her eyes widened in fear. Hani said earnestly, “Please be honest with me, my dear lady. I can’t do anything for you unless you tell me everything you know, because it’s possible this man himself is the one blackmailing you.”
She hung her head. “I don’t know his name.”
We’re not off to a good start. So why am I even considering helping her? Hani had to admit that it was, in part, for the sake of his niece.
At last, he said reluctantly, “I’ll do what I can if you promise me to be frank. Anything you know could be of use to me.”
Kiya looked up, her eyes alight with hope. “Oh, Hani, thank you! Is there anyth
ing I can give you in return?”
Suddenly inspired, Hani asked, “Do you happen to have a female physician, my lady?”
⸎
Hani met Maya at the Hall of the Royal Correspondence, as they had agreed to. He described for his secretary the magical garden that was the Pa-maru-en-pa-aten and told him in broad terms about the interview with the Beloved Royal Wife.
“I think we’ll first speak to Lady Djefat-nebty, the royal wives’ physician, and then start visiting sculpture studios. It shouldn’t take long to ask her if she’d take an apprentice, whereas we may need to spend some time with this Kha-em-sekhem.”
“Where does she live, my lord?” asked Maya.
Hani chuckled. “Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll have to talk to Kiya’s chamberlain.”
After a long period of wandering around trying to find the right bureaucrats to talk to, they tracked down the chamberlain, a certain Huy, at the smaller royal residence in the middle of the city. The official told them grudgingly where the doctor lived, and braving the heat of late morning, Hani and Maya set out again for the southern end of Akhet-aten. They found the sunet’s villa not long before Hani’s stomach told him it was the hour of lunch for those who, like himself, had the luxury of a third daily meal.
“I hope they won’t be at table,” Hani murmured as they stood at the gate, waiting for the doorkeeper to fetch his mistress.
But the man returned after a moment to beckon them into the house. It was quite an impressive place—a mansion, really—with a newly planted garden surrounding the house. The vestibule was beautifully painted, high of ceiling, and floored with decorated gypsum like the palace itself. Hani and Maya followed the servant into the salon, where, between colorful columns, a man and a woman sat in chairs upon the dais.
Hani made a respectful bow to the lord and lady of the house. “I am Hani son of Mery-ra, attached to the foreign office of the Hall of the Royal Correspondence. I thank you for agreeing to meet with my secretary and me.”
The man in his chair was very large—tall and fleshy, with shaven head and ear spools, his full, unexpectedly red lips disagreeably downturned. “I’m Pentju, God’s Father of the Aten, chamberlain of the king’s house, and physician. This is my wife, Lady Djefat-nebty. She doesn’t treat male patients.”
The lady at his side looked perfectly capable of answering for herself. She was perhaps five years younger than her husband—about Hani’s age—and tall and spare, with an angular, forbidding face imprisoned between the locks of a long wig. She was as unsmiling as Pentju.
Hani assured them quickly, “I’m not here seeking a physician to cure me, my lord, my lady, but rather someone who might be willing to take my daughter on as an apprentice. She’s eager to become a sunet.” He combed their faces with his eyes, but they stared at him expressionlessly. “She had begun to study with a village healer, but we felt her training was probably not very learned. My daughter is beginning to read and write script—”
“How old is she?” the woman interrupted in a deep, sharp-edged voice.
“She’s thirteen, my lady.”
Lady Djefat-nebty made a considering frown with her long mouth. “And just now starting to learn to read?”
Hani was tempted to say, “She has wanted to be a horse up to now, and she didn’t feel she needed to read,” but he refrained, instead nodding polite acquiescence. Gods, this woman is a tough one.
“I can’t make a decision without seeing the girl. Bring her tomorrow.”
“Forgive me, my lady. We live in Waset. It will take me at least a week to bring her back here.”
“Well, she can’t very well study in Akhet-aten if she lives in Waset, can she?”
Struggling to hold back some sarcastic comment, Hani said mildly, “Fortunately, my son lives here. She can stay with him.”
All at once, there came an infernal ruckus from within the house, and a naked little boy of six or so came barreling into the room, dragging a contraption of sticks and rope, clearly of his own construction, behind him. “Mamaaa...” he began in a prolonged whine.
To Hani’s amazement, the sunet’s sour face relaxed into the lines of purest maternal indulgence. “Sweet one, Mama is busy. I’ll be with you soon, all right?” The boy clattered off, dragging his machine. She turned back to Hani, and far from returning to their hostile expression, Lady Djefat-nebty’s eyes twinkled with complicit humor. “In a week, then.” She rose, and her husband did the same, towering even over his tall wife.
“My thanks, my lady. We’ll be here. My lord.”
Hani and Maya made their way out the front door even as the lord and lady of the house disappeared into the back. Doubtless it’s the little fellow’s lunchtime, Hani thought with a grin.
No sooner had they reached the street than Maya blew out a heavy breath, as if he had been holding it. “Iy. I hope Neferet is ready for that one. The girl’d better learn to keep her mouth shut.”
Hani just chuckled. “My guess is our lady doctor isn’t quite as ferocious as she seems. What really concerns me is that her husband is a priest of the Aten. Neferet needs to keep her mouth shut for sure.”
Hani decided to stop by Aha’s house on their way to the sculptors’ studios so they could grab a bite to eat. “I feel like that little boy. I’m huuungry.” He imitated the childish whine.
But before they reached the road that led to Aha’s, they found themselves passing through the city market. The smells of food were too much for Hani. He pointed to a baker’s stall. “Let’s just get something here and eat as we walk. I’ll get bread, if you want to pick out something else.”
A short while later, the two men reunited with a handful of olives from the north, wrapped in a big leaf, and a pot-shaped loaf of bread so fresh it was still steaming. “Olives in honor of our old friend Rib-addi,” said Maya.
“A generous thought. But how will we eat them without spilling them all? I have it!” Hani tore the bread in two, gobbled out the soft interior of half of it—much to Maya’s amusement—and dumped his share of the olives into the cavity. Laughing and savoring the fresh, yeasty bread and salty olives, they made their way toward the southeastern neighborhoods of the city.
By the time they had approached the area where Hani’s sources had assured him the sculpture workshop of Djehuty-mes was located, they were licking their fingers and dusting crumbs from the knots of their kilts. “This is the biggest of the studios. If our Kha-em-sekhem doesn’t work here, they may at least know where he is.”
The workshop was surrounded by a high wall that enclosed the entire corner of the block. Above, Hani could see the second story of the house where the master must live. From within the open gate of the work yard came a cacophony of hammering, metallic screeching, and resounding clangs.
“What do they do in there?” asked Maya, putting his hands over his ears.
“Carve stone, I guess. That can’t be quiet.”
A little timidly, they moved through the gate and into the court, and Hani had the sudden sense of having happened onto some island of stone people. In addition to statues in various stages of completion, ranging from knee-high to bigger than life-sized, which stood or sat here and there on rollers on the ground or upon sturdy tables, the men at work were so covered in beige dust that they might have been living statues themselves. The noise of chisels and hammers was both deafening and curiously delicate, sometimes stuttering in fast, light filigrees of tap-tap-tapping that made Hani think of a woodpecker at work. There seemed to be an army of artisans, most of whom were carving away, but others were hauling pieces on sledges, painting finished sculptures, or sawing energetically at nearly raw pieces of stone. Hani found himself fascinated by a whole process he’d never given a moment of thought.
A burly man with a rag tied over his head approached them rapidly. “What can I do for you?” he cried above the din.
“Are you Djehuty-mes?” Hani asked at the top of his voice.
But the man shook his head and
pointed at his ear. “Let’s go inside.”
They followed him into the workshop proper, where more delicate work seemed to be carried out and whole walls of shelving were stacked with statuettes, broken stone body parts, and blocks of plaster. An array of tools lay on a big worktable, where a boy was laboriously sharpening them with fine sand and moringa oil.
“This reminds me of Mother’s studio, but on a massive scale,” whispered Maya.
The rag-headed man was dust dyed like all the others. His eyes and mouth seemed to be edged eerily with red since the moist lids and inner lips were the only part of him not whitened, including the little square patch of beard on his chin. “I’m Djehuty-mes. What can I do for you?” he said in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice.
Hani introduced himself respectfully then said, “I’m interested in buying a small stele of the Aten for my home shrine. Have you anything already made up?”
The master sculptor led them to a table where such stelai were laid out in plenitude—round-topped plaques of varying sizes. Upon them were depicted the king and queen and their two older daughters, palms raised in worship toward the Sun Disk, who blessed them with his rays, descending with little hands at the ends. The painted figures were executed in sunken relief in the same disturbing style as the statues at the Gem-pa-aten.
Hani refrained from any expression of disgust, picked one, and paid the sculptor. Then he drew closer. “Does a man named Kha-em-sekhem, by any chance, work here, master?”
Djehuty-mes looked uncertain. He wasn’t especially tall, but he had a pair of shoulders and arms that wouldn’t have been out of place on a bull, if bulls had shoulders and arms.
I could look like that if I hammered stone all day, thought Hani with a hidden grin.
Yet the sculptor’s face was mild and soft with large, gentle eyes. He was in his fifties, Hani guessed. Not a young man to be engaged in such heavy work.
“Why are you looking for him?” Djehuty-mes asked in his childlike voice.
“My niece in Men-nefer is hoping to marry him. Her father is a little concerned about a man so much older than she, whose family no one knows, who lives in another city—well, you see what I mean. And apparently, he’s been married before. All of which makes our family uneasy. I’d like to ask you what sort of person he is. If he works here, of course.”
