by Daniel Caet
If Sadith had been tense during the whole conversation this time I could almost hear how her body was about to break with the indignation of that ridiculous request but, somehow, Sadith proved to be an expert in the art of self-control and nobody noticed anything.
“Of course, my queen, as you wish. Is the lady Nasutferire here?”
“Yes, here I am.” A girl of about sixteen or seventeen years came out of the crowd of young people accompanying the queen.
“Can I take your hand?” Sadith said as she extended hers.
The girl held out her hand with absolute shyness and Sadith closed her eyes to concentrate. At that moment something happened that I could not foresee or control. My mind went into Sadith's and involuntarily I found myself seeing the same thing she saw, feeling what she felt and even breathing her very air. The images were clear as if looking at a reflection in a river of crystal-clear water. The girl was married to a man older than her, a man who would rape her mercilessly on their wedding night, mistreat her and constantly abuse her. A moment later the image changed, the girl was in the arms of another man, the merchant's son, and with him she would find not only love but she would conceive the children that the father could not give her. One last image, the girl next to two small ones attends the funeral of the merchant; next to her, the father of her children smiles at her, they were free.
I was expelled from Sadith's mind in a much more painful way than I had entered. I returned to my body just in time to see how Sadith was talking to the girl.
“I see love in your future and two healthy and beautiful children. The merchant is your destiny and without him nothing of all this will exist.”
Half a lie. I wondered what the girl would think when she saw what she must suffer next to the merchant before she could be happy and if she would curse Sadith then, but that was none of my business.
“Fantastic, nothing better we could wish for our little Nasutferire. Tonight, we will celebrate for her happiness. Lady Tyri,” the queen said, turning to look directly at Sadith, “we no longer need you, you can go. Next time I hope you do not take so long to answer my calls.”
“Of course, my queen, I will let the pharaoh know that I must be available for your needs at all times,” said Sadith, bowing slightly. Only I could see the sarcastic smile on her face. Immediately the queen changed the song.
“It does not matter. There is no need for you to disturb my husband with little things, I will talk to him later” responded with her face red of anger.
“As you like, my queen,” Sadith said as she turned and left the royal apartments.
I followed Sadith through the palace to her chambers without being told a word. When we got to her rooms I could not stand the silence anymore.
“Are you going to explain to me what is between you and the queen?”
“What is between us is very simple, it is called hate. What you just saw is just another of her pathetic attempts at proving that her rank is above mine, she has not yet understood that I do not care in the least.”
“But, I do not understand, you told me that she brought you here, if she hates you so much, why does she let you stay in court?”
“It's obvious, isn’t it?” she said as she sat on a large wooden chair that reminded me of Seti's throne. “She cannot risk that I disclose her secrets.”
Seeing that I did not understand what kind of secrets she could refer to, Sadith sighed and continued.
“As I told you yesterday, during all the time that I have been taking care of your children I have always subsisted thanks to my talent as midwife and healer. When Ankh was born, and her mother left us, we came to live in a village on the outskirts of Thebes and once again, as I had done a thousand times before, I started using those talents to pass as a normal family and our life was happy. One night, knocks at the door woke us. When I went down to open I found some soldiers of the pharaoh’s, my reputation as a midwife had reached the ears of the queen and she needed my help for one of her ladies. There was no possibility of refusing so I went with the soldiers and took Ankh with me, who was twelve years old at the time. The soldiers took us to the palace and when I arrived I discovered that it was not one of her ladies but the Queen herself who needed my help. She was pregnant with Princess Henutmire and had been in labour for two days without any result. The doctors at the court were beginning to fear for their lives, and out of fear for Seti's anger, they dared not take any action. One of the ladies had suggested my name because I had helped her sister, and the queen had ordered that I was sought immediately. It was not easy for me, but I managed to save the mother and the little one. When I put her in her arms the queen began to mourn inconsolably, and regret having brought something so beautiful to the world when she could not guarantee her safety. At that time, I could not understand anything, but the pain of a mother is something that has always won me over so, in my compassion, I offered the queen a prediction about the future of her little girl. In my vision, although it was not clear, the girl ended up being one of the queens of Egypt. That revelation was such a relief for Tuya that she grabbed my hands in gratitude, unintentionally provoking another vision, one that she would have always wanted to hide, the true identity of the little girl's father, the then real treasurer, Sarureptah.
“Ankh's husband?” I asked without believing it.
“The same. As soon as Tuya realised what had just happened, she understood that she could not let me go, so she gave orders for us to stay in the royal palace where we have remained since then.”
“But why have not you run away? With your powers you would have no problem doing so.”
“The reason why we have not left has been precisely Ankh,” she said with a certain resignation. “Tuya immediately told Seti everything about my prediction. If Seti had any doubt as to whether the child was his, it disappeared when he was told that she would be the queen of Egypt. I guess he thought that only a member of the royal house could marry a pharaoh. Seti has a bad head for history, but very good for business. Having a clairvoyant at home is an advantage that he could not miss. I have no doubt that Tuya fed the idea and to make sure that the lock of our prison closed completely, she convinced Seti to arrange the marriage between Sarureptah and Ankh in gratitude for my help. You see, she's not a bad strategist. Despite all this, we could still have left if it had not been because life got into the middle and Ankh fell madly in love with who was to become her husband. I do not know if it was the innocence of a girl or the games of the future husband, but for Ankh there could be no greater pain than thinking about leaving her side and so, for the love that I feel for her, we stayed in the palace. The wedding took place a year later, as soon as Ankh became a woman. Sarureptah did not have any kind of contemplation with her and twice she got pregnant in the first two years, and twice Ankh had to live the loss of her children in the first months of pregnancy. During all that time, Sarureptah has continued his romance with the queen at the same time he has woven his spider web to climb the power ladder and become Seti’s right hand. And unfortunately, it has worked well. Ankh is still in love with him in some way, but she is not alien to his various romances and perversions. Anyway, a few months ago Ankh got pregnant again, tying up our hands and feet once more for any possible escape.”
Sadith's words made my blood boil. I could not conceive how anyone could behave so despicably with a being as sweet as Ankh. If I had wanted to be with them and be able to protect them, now that I knew what the situation really was, my determination was even greater. Those two women faced enemies inside and outside the palace, and we still did not know who were the most dangerous.
“Don't worry, you will not lack opportunities to protect her” she said in response to my thoughts, “because I want you to spend all day with her from today, go where she goes, watch while she sleeps and become her shadow if that were necessary.”
“But ... what has changed? Yesterday you did not want me to stay with you in any way,” I asked without understanding anything.
“Let's say that I've realised that I can only fight fire with fire. If we see ourselves in the situation of having to defend ourselves from a human or supernatural attack, Ankh will have more options if she has both of us by her side because neither of us will tremble at the time of killing if necessary.”
Her eyes stared at me as if they were reading, not my mind, but my heart and somehow, I knew that among all the creatures of the world, only she could venture into the darkness that I would find in my interior and only she would not care.
“Now go, the room next door is Ankh’s, past her door you will find a small room with a bunk. That room will be yours and it communicates directly with hers. She does not know who you are, only that a new slave chosen by me will take care of her needs, so be discreet. I hope that with what you have seen today you understand that the players on the palace board are many and we do not know if any of them is a piece of Seth’s or Narmesh’s, so you must be permanently alert.”
I nodded with a smile and turned to go to the door while she turned her back to go to her terrace. Suddenly, a horrible pain lodged in my mind making me feel as if my whole body burned in flames and Sadith's voice resounded in my head.
“Just one thing, Helel! If you try to enter my mind again this pain will be a caress compared to what I will do to you.”
And somehow, I knew she was not lying.
My room turned out to be a dark, windowless cubicle where there was barely room for the cot that turned out to be as uncomfortable as the one I had the night before. The back wall opened into some narrow, short corridor that led discreetly into Ankh's rooms. I do not know if it was the claustrophobia that place caused me, the lack of fresh air, the bed or the unbearable night heat of Thebes, but once again it was impossible for me to sleep and I decided to get up and venture into the palace trusting that nobody would see me at night. I knew that if they found me the least I could expect were a few dozen lashes, but being cautious was never one of my virtues. I walked through the corridors illuminated only by strategically placed torches at corners and intersections. The oil burners that were able to illuminate much larger spaces were reserved for the rooms of the royal family and the rest of the inhabitants of the palace. I inevitably got lost in that labyrinth in my search for an exit to one of the patios of the palace where I could feel that I could breathe again. All the corridors looked alike, columns and walls painted in bright colours with everyday scenes of the lives of its inhabitants or plants and animals. After a while of walking aimlessly, everything seemed the same and I thought I was walking in circles. Suddenly, one of the corridors led to another much larger and with a different decoration full of figures painted in golden tones and I realised that I should have reached the wing of the palace reserved for the royal family. Just the place where I should not be. If they found me there at night without any explanation as to why, it was probably not the whip that flew through the air, but my head. I immediately plunged back into the darkness of the corridor through which I had come, but the sound of footsteps coming from the golden corridor made me stand for fear of being found. I bent down to dive completely into the pitch-black corridor and from there I could see two royal soldiers approaching, escorting someone between them. When they approached the intersection of the corridors I could see that who walked among them was a girl about thirteen years, dressed in the rags of slaves, but not those who worked in the palace, those who work in the fields and in the construction of temples. Her dark hair and sandy face clearly indicated her origin, Hebrew. When they passed by the place where I was, I approached stealthily to the corner of the two corridors to see where they were going, and I could see how a large double door opened to the back revealing a large room where a tall figure dressed only with a linen kilt and his eyes painted with kohl. Rameses. The girl was introduced by the soldiers inside the room and the doors closed behind her. The soldiers disappeared on the other side of the corridor and I went back into the darkness, wondering what the meaning was of what I had just seen.
It took me a long time to find my way back but finally I arrived at my cubicle. For a while I could not stop thinking about the girl and the reason for her presence in the palace, and I could only think of one reason. Rameses had the prerogative to do what he pleased with his father's slaves, but I was sure that he had as many concubines and lovers as he wished; and, on the other hand, it was obvious that he knew that, should he be discovered, his Father would disapprove or otherwise he would not resort to the shelter of the darkness of the night.
With those thoughts in my head and exhausted by my nocturnal wanderings through the palace I was finally able to sleep, but if I expected to rest I was completely wrong. My night was full of dreams of Liliath. The image of the Hebrew slave melted in my mind and her face transformed into Liliath's, her black hair into her fire-coloured hair and her body into that body I knew so well. I could feel the warmth of her skin against mine, the smell of her hair that I had never been able to forget, and I felt how my body responded to her image as it had always done, surrendering without conditions. The humidity of the dream ended up awakening me, and I saw how my body had spilled in response to the memory of Liliath. A part of me felt bad, I hated that she still had that control over my being, that it was so easy for her to alter and control me even in the form of memory. While I cleaned and changed my clothes another part of me felt even worse, the part of me that missed her.
I had barely finished dressing when a voice behind me caught me completely by surprise.
“Are you the new one?” said a young and especially small girl with a wig too big for her head.
“Well, it depends, the new what?”
“Are you the new slave of my lady Ankhsemkepté or not?”
“Yes, it's me” I answered with a smile that was not reciprocated.
“Then follow me, my lady needs you,” she said, hardly looking at me, turning to disappear through the access to Ankh's rooms.
I followed the girl and entered the room next to my cubicle. Ankh was in the center of the space, tall and thin except for the small bulge at the height of her belly that denoted her early pregnancy. When I approached her, I bent my head and bent my body forward in a sign of respect as Sadith had taught me. When I raised my face again and met hers I felt that I was short of breath. Her eyes were the colour of honey and her head was adorned with a large black wig decorated with small pieces of red ceramic, but her face was the spitting image of Liliath’s. The resemblance was so great that I was paralysed looking straight into her face as a slave should never do with her mistress, but although she obviously noticed it, she did not say anything.
“My mother told me that your name is Helel and that you are a trusted slave. I trust my mother's criteria fully, so from now on you will be at my service. This girl is Ptehsure, my only company and the only person with whom you can talk about my things. She knows everything about me and will know what to do in each moment. You will see many other women around me while you are at my service. You should not address any of them or discuss any of my affairs in their presence, you understand? Unfortunately, my own house is a nest of vipers so be careful where you step.”
Ankh said all that without an iota of acrimony or resentment. She had a deep understanding of her situation in the palace and had accepted that these were the waters in which she ought to swim. In her resignation and the way she faced a clearly hostile environment I could see that Sadith had taught her well.
“We are going to leave the palace. In the eyes of everyone we go to the temple of the goddess Nut on the south bank of the river, but our destiny will be a different one. You should not say a word about this, and you will do what I tell you at all times, it is imperative that no one in the palace knows where we are going. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lady,” I replied, intrigued by what it was that she intended to do.
“Very well. Pteh, you know what you should do, in the eyes of everyone I am making an offering to the goddess for my littl
e one and I will return at sunset.”
“Yes, my lady, nobody will know anything, but be careful, I beg you.”
“You know that where we go, I have nothing to fear, stay calm,” she said, stroking her face lightly and her words intrigued me even more.
We left the palace through one of the side doors. On the street, four servants were waiting for us, carrying a small palanquin so that the terrible sun of Egypt would not touch the skin of their mistress. We walked a small stretch down one of the streets that descended to the river when Ankh suddenly stopped and went to one of the servants.
“I've changed my mind, I will not need your services today, the sun is not as strong as these last few days. I will continue the rest of the way to the temple of Nut only with my slave, thank you.”
The servants turned around without questioning the word of their mistress and returned to the palace. We followed our path, and when they had disappeared from our sight, Ankh addressed me.
“Probably there will be many things that you will not understand today, but you must do what I tell you. These men will reinforce our little trap and they will swear at all times that today we left the palace to go to the temple of Nut.”
