by Jerry Dubs
Standing with his hands on his hips he looked across the low wall of blocks that marked out the first mastaba, the base of his pyramid. He nodded his head and repeated, “A hundred paces. It is a good number.”
And Meryt, after a surprisingly short labor, delivered a daughter they named Maya.
Seeing his parents’ attention drawn to the new baby, Tjau, now fifteen and long shorn of his youthful sidelock, pressed his argument that he was old enough to join the army.
That evening as Meryt held her new daughter to her breast, she tried to calm Imhotep.
“I talked with Sati,” she said, stroking Maya’s dark hair.
Imhotep stifled a sigh.
“She said Tjau could join Siptah’s Cobra Company.”
“But he could be a scribe, he knows how to draw, he has an excellent hand. Or I could use him as a doctor. He has a calm manner. He would be perfect. There’s no good reason ... ”
Meryt laughed. Startled, Maya pulled back from her mother’s breast and started to cry. Stroking her daughter’s cheek with the back of her fingers, Meryt sang softly. Comforted, the baby returned to her feeding.
“What is so funny?” Imhotep asked, his anger simmering.
“You,” Meryt answered. “Do you know you were speaking in your language?” Imhotep had tried to teach her English over the years, but Meryt saw no reason to learn a language that only she and Imhotep would know; it could only be used to keep secrets, which she despised.
“I was?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “You do it when you’re angry. It is probably a good thing that no one understands it. Although I heard Bata speak it once when he stubbed his toe in the doorway.”
Imhotep forced himself not to laugh.
“We were talking about Tjau,” he said in as calm a manner as he could.
Meryt shook her head. “No, you were talking about what you want Tjau to do.”
“He’s only fifteen,” Imhotep answered.
She smiled. “I was only thirteen once when I met this mysterious man and fell in love and my life changed ... ”
Imhotep shook his head. “I don’t know why I even try to argue with you.”
“I don’t know either,” Meryt agreed.
She leaned forward so Imhotep could take their now sleeping daughter.
“She pooped,” Meryt said, swinging her legs off the bed.
Imhotep kissed his daughter’s head and then said, “How can someone who looks so sweet smell so awful?”
He laid her on a nest of blankets and began unwrapping her cloth diaper. Looking over his shoulder at Meryt, he unconsciously assessed the dark circles around her eyes and her ginger movements.
“When would Tjau leave?’ he asked.
“In a few weeks,” Meryt said. She went to Imhotep and leaned against him, resting her head against his back. “It will be fine, Imhotep.”
***
Re rose and Re set, Khonsu passed through a dozen cycles of changes and a year passed.
In the Two Lands shoppers haggled good-naturedly in the markets, black-billed ibises flapped to landings in the marshes and the days of the new king’s reign blended seamlessly with memories of the last king and the land was at ease.
To Imhotep’s relief, Tjau survived his first expedition with the army. When he returned home, Imhotep, who knew that he would never use it, decided to give his son King Djoser’s knife.
His eyes glistening in gratitude, Tjau held the stone and ivory knife as if it were a gift from a god. He tried to thank Imhotep, found himself unable to speak and instead bowed and hurried away.
Imhotep followed his son to the boy’s bedroom. Tjau carefully removed a thin mud brick from his wall exposing a niche. He wrapped the knife in a cloth and placed it in the secret spot.
After a moment, when he could trust his voice, Tjau said, “Thank you, father. It is a gift I will always cherish, and never use. It belonged to a god.” He looked at his father with a question in his eyes. “Some say it belonged to two gods.”
Imhotep shook his head.
“King Djoser would want his knife used. It is a tool, Tjau. It shouldn’t be kept hidden away. Wear it in your belt and used it proudly.”
Tjau thought for a moment and then retrieved the knife from its hiding place. His fingers caressed the carved handle, tracing the lines of the gods carved there. He held the weapon and tested its balance.
“King Djoser always tossed it in the air letting it flip over and then catching the handle again. I was always worried that he would err and catch the blade.” Imhotep smiled. “But he never did.”
Tjau flipped the knife halfway, gingerly catching the blade. Then he tossed it again. The knife rotated three times before coming to stop in Tjau’s hand. “Everyone knows about King Djoser and his knife, father. We all practice it.”
Bringing his eyes shyly from the knife to his father’s face, he said, “In the army, when people found out that I was your son, they were afraid and confused; they kept their distance from me. No one would tell me why until finally Siptah told me. Many think you are a god. They believe your heka is powerful enough to defeat Sobek, perhaps even Seth.”
Imhotep’s impulse was to laugh, but he saw how serious his son was and he knew that here in the Two Lands it wasn’t unreasonable to believe that gods walked the earth. Djoser had proclaimed himself a living god. So had Sekhemkhet.
He put his hand on Tjau’s shoulder, surprised to feel the thickness and strength there. When had that happened, he wondered. Nodding toward the bed, he sat and waited for his son to sit beside him.
“You know that I was born in another place and in another time, Tjau. The stories from our time have lived for five thousand years, they were told in my time.”
Tjau nodded his understanding.
“That is how I sometimes know things that haven’t happened. It isn’t magic, Tjau. I am not a god.”
“But the miracles. People talk of them, father,” Tjau protested. “They say you brought mother back from Seth’s grasp. You defeated Sobek. You made King Sekhemkhet’s arm whole again. You paralyzed an assassin by pointing your hand at him. There are so many stories ... ”
Imhotep shook his head again. Here in a land that never changed it was difficult to explain the idea of progress. Fishermen used weighted nets as their fathers had. Traditions were passed by word of mouth and there were few overlapping generations so the stories always seemed new and compelling.
There was no need for change.
“It wasn’t magic, Tjau. Honestly. There are medicines in my land that I have used that might have seemed like magic. And the stories are exaggerated. I didn’t fight Sobek, I ... nevermind.” He saw disbelief in his son’s face. Tjau was sure that his humble father was much greater than he really was.
What father would want to dispel that? Imhotep thought.
He leaned over and hugged Tjau.
“You’ve become a strong man, Tjau. I was wrong to worry about you joining the army. And you know that I would never use a knife, except to saw through one of Bata’s meals. So, take King Djoser’s knife, the knife of a god. Honor it. Honor King Djoser’s memory. And honor your mother and me. I cherish your respect, but as your father, not as a god.”
Standing, he offered his right arm to his son. Tjau stood, and blinking back tears, took his father’s arm in a formal embrace.
Imhotep left his son’s room to find Maya stumbling around the central room, her hands moving from chair to bench to cabinet as she tried to keep her balance on fat legs. Sitting on the floor, her eyes alight with happiness, Meryt was watching her daughter and cooing to her.
Imhotep sat on the floor beside his wife and began to believe that the gods had grown tired of tormenting him.
And then Bata arrived to tell Imhotep that he was summoned to court.
The Prince Departs
A guard hurriedly escorted Imhotep from the palace entrance to King Sekhemkhet’s private chambers where he found the king pacing in front of
Rudamon, Sekhemkhet’s private physician, who stood unmoving beside the throne.
“Imhotep, Imhotep,” Sekhemkhet said, sounding like the young man Imhotep had first met. “I need your help. Nebmakhet is ill.” He turned to glare at Rudamon who kept his eyes downcast.
“I am sorry to hear that, King Sekhemkhet,” Imhotep said. “Rudamon is an excellent ... ”
“Yes, Imhotep, Rudamon is an excellent physician, I know. I need something more. I need a god, Imhotep. I need someone with heka that is stronger than blood, strong enough to keep Wepwawet at bay.”
A wave of fear swept through Imhotep and a vision of pale Merneith painted as the god Sobek rose in his imagination. He closed his eyes, trying to banish the image of the strange, painted woman.
It was illogical for him to think of her whenever magic was mentioned or whenever an ill foreboding crept into his mind. She was miles away in the delta. She was a woman in a society where men held the power. She was no warrior and held command of no army. Yet she haunted his thoughts.
Sekhemkhet had stopped talking and was staring at Imhotep.
“You were gone, Imhotep. Your eyes are worried. What do you see?”
Imhotep shook the shadows from his mind. “Nothing, King Sekhemkhet.”
The king studied him a moment longer and then turned away. “Follow me,” he ordered.
***
Nebmakhet, now four years old, sat rigidly in a small wooden chair in his bedroom. Queen Djeseretnebi knelt beside him, washing his thin legs with a linen cloth that was stained pink.
Kneeling beside his wife, King Sekhemkhet leaned his head close to hers. He whispered a few words and then she turned her head to look at Imhotep. Her face was devastated by grief, she was already envisioning her son dead and taken from her.
Imhotep knelt between the king and queen.
“What has happened?” he asked Queen Djeseretnebi.
“He cries when he makes water and when he does, it is red,” she said.
“And his shit is watery,” Sekhemkhet said with a soldier’s directness. “He can’t control it and his stomach hurts him.”
Imhotep nodded as if this information meant something to him. He had found that giving his patients confidence was half the cure. It had been his experience that their own immune systems and time provided the other half.
He looked up at the small boy who was breathing unevenly and staring straight ahead, trying to control his fear and his pain. Rising, Imhotep leaned over Nebmakhet and gently rested his forehead against the boy’s shaved head.
The boy’s skin was on fire. Imhotep forced himself to maintain contact with the feverish boy.
“I will do everything I can to help you, Prince Nebmakhet. Your blood is the blood of kings and queens. Your ka is strong, your ba is powerful. Your grandfather was Divine of Body, your father is Horus and you have the strength and blessings of the gods.”
Withdrawing from the boy, Imhotep stepped away and nodded for the king to join him.
“He is a brave boy, King Sekhemkhet. He is fighting hard. His body is afire from the battle within.”
Sekhemkhet waved his hand, dismissing the diagnosis. He was interested in only one thing. “Will he live, Imhotep? You touched your head to his. What did you see?”
“I saw pain, my king. I will do everything that I can, but I am a man, not a god.”
“Save my son,” King Sekhemkhet said and walked away.
***
Imhotep sent a messenger to Meryt to tell her where he was and that he would be away until the prince was healed. Then he sent for Rudamon.
While he waited, he went to the palace garden and sat by a pond there, leaning against the trunk of a willow tree.
When he had first arrived in the Two Lands as Tim Hope he had been carrying a backpack with a first-aid kit and a small amount of medical supplies. He had exhausted those supplies quickly, helping Meryt and later Prince Teti, without considering that the aspirin and pain pills would never be replenished, that the first-aid cream would never be replaced and that the instant ice packs, once used, were gone forever.
He understood hygiene and basic first aid. He knew enough to boil water and to use clean utensils when eating. He avoided fish that smelled old and meat that was more than two days old.
But he was an artist, not a doctor.
Sitting alone he tried to reason through the problem. If the boy had been older and in a fight or if he had been in an accident, then the blood could mean there were internal injuries. So he could check for bruising and ask about falls. If there were no signs of an injury, then the blood in the urine meant ... what? He had no idea, except that it was something he couldn’t heal.
He wondered what would happen if he failed.
Suddenly he saw Khaba’s scowl as the soldier limped across King Sekhemkhet’s room. Khaba was Imhotep’s only medical failure. And he had never forgiven him.
***
“I don’t know what is wrong with Prince Nebmakhet,” Imhotep said quietly to Rudamon when the physician found him in the garden.
Rudamon nodded. “I have seen blood in the urine of soldiers and old men, but not in a child,” he said.
“How did you treat it?” Imhotep asked.
Rudamon looked away and then turning his face slowly to Imhotep he said, “I gave the soldiers lots of beer to flush the blood from them and then I waited for them to heal. For the old men, I mixed scrapings of mandrake root in beer for them to drink. It eased their pain. And I burned frankincense if they had it.” He shrugged. “Then I waited for them to die.”
Imhotep closed his eyes.
“Hesy is here, should I call for him?” Rudamon asked.
Hesy was priest of the god Sekhmet, the lion protector of the king. Emaciated from continuous fasting, his skin was stretched tight over his skull making his eyes seem enormous. He spent his days prostrate before the statue of Sekhmet, accepting only small pieces of bread dipped in honey as sustenance.
“Yes,” Imhotep said. “And send word to Abdju to the Temple of Osiris and ask Kagemni to come also. We can use all the prayers and spells they can bring.”
A breeze stirred the willow branches and the shadows waved over Imhotep’s face. Rudamon studied his friend’s face. He had never seen him so worried.
Rudamon had first met Imhotep fifteen years earlier when the strange man had arrived in the Two Lands and taken over care of Prince Teti’s injury. Rudamon had set Teti’s broken arm immediately after the injury, but an infection had swollen the wound. Rudamon had worried that Imhotep would blame him for any disfiguration Teti might have developed. Instead Imhotep had publicly praised Rudamon, telling King Djoser that Rudamon had saved Teti’s life.
He promised himself now that he would do anything he could to return the favor.
***
Imhotep spent the rest of the day with Prince Nebmakhet.
He examined him for bruises. There were none.
He collected samples of the boy’s urine and his stool in dark wooden bowls. The urine was red with blood and came in small trickles released while the boy cried and clenched his fists in pain. There was fresh blood in his runny stool, also. Imhotep set the two bowls on a table by the window and returned to sit by the boy and his distraught mother.
“Can you heal my son?” Queen Djeseretnebi asked.
It was a ritual question and Imhotep had been taught that there were three possible answers. He could say that he could treat the illness or, if he was less certain of success, he could say that he could contend with it. The third answer, the one the patient never wanted to hear, was that the doctor could not treat the illness.
Imhotep knew that there was a risk. Because of his reputation, if he said he could contend with the illness, King Sekhemkhet and Queen Djeseretnebi would assume that Imhotep would be successful.
He decided to simply be truthful. “I have never seen this before in a child, Queen Djeseretnebi.”
She searched his eyes for a clue to the meaning of h
is response.
Imhotep continued, “I have sent for Kagemni and I was told that Hesy is here. He will come, too. We will pray, we will cast spells, we will burn incense. We will do everything that can be done, dear sister. We will call upon Osiris and Isis, we will beseech Hathor and Thoth and Sekhmet.”
“Can you heal my son, Imhotep?” she asked insistently.
“I will use all of my powers, Queen Djeseretnebi. But please understand that I am a man, not a god.”
She glared at him, fear and anger in her eyes, and then her son coughed. She turned away, but Imhotep’s heart burned from the heat of her dread.
***
“We must burn a mouse. That is the first step. Before anything else. Everyone knows that,” Hesy declared. The priest’s voice was high-pitched and thin, as if the air was whistling through his nose and not his mouth. He looked at Imhotep, Rudamon and Kagemni, challenging them to contradict him.
The four of them were standing by the window of Prince Nebmakhet’s room. The boy was sleeping on a cushion of pillows, a silver chamber pot rested on the floor beside him and three attendants sat cross-legged around him.
Queen Djeseretnebi had left to bathe, eat, and nap. She was pregnant again and knew, with a mother’s foreboding, that another heir would be needed. And so she would rest and grow another child within.
“I agree,” Rudamon said, “and mandrake, we should give him mandrake.”
“Not too much,” Hesy warned, looking sharply at the physician. “It could put him to sleep forever.”
“No, no, not a lot,” Rudamon agreed. “Just a few shavings.”
They turned to Imhotep. He nodded agreement and then suggested, “What about water lilies? For his stool.” Meryt had told him that her mother swore by juice made from boiled water lilies as a cure for diarrhea.
Hesy swayed back and forth and Imhotep wanted to reach out to steady the frail priest. Regaining his balance, the priest stopped moving long enough to shake his head. “I don’t know about water lilies,” he said. “But we need a mouse. We are wasting time talking about vegetables and flowers.”
