by Tanith Lee
Beyond the pylons, the enormous court, three hundred, four hundred feet across. It was already in shadow, but a shadow that was gold. Two tanks of water flamed, and fish leapt in them like blinking yellow eyes.
Across the court rose the portico, with the two vast statues, one Ousir, crowned by his reed, of a light green stone, the flail in one hand, and a sickle in the other. The second statue was of the artisan-maker, Ptah himself. He wore the mummy-wrappings of the tomb on his body; but for his head and feet. His emerging head was a man’s head, beautiful and remote, graced with the sidelock of a child. He held a wand, tipped by the symbol of life.
The songs of the priestesses ended.
Deep silence came that was not silence at all. Far away the River moved, and in the streets were sounds, cicadas from the gardens, a child calling, somewhere the grunt of an apparatus for drawing water. Insects buzzed in haloes of light. The sky darkened to clear red.
The girl was assisted from her litter and stood before the goddess. She raised her hands, the girl, and then, turning, saluted Ptah the Maker of Life and Ousir the Lord of the Dead.
Then, Sekhmet was carried into the temple, and the girl, small in Sekhmet’s fire of shadows, walked after.
In the long halls, whose pillars were square and painted black and ochre and green, offerings were made, on the altars of bread, wine and oil, and one, quickly, on the altar of blood.
The day died, and the night came, and all the torches were lit and the hanging bowls on chains of bronze.
Deep in the temple other holy noises moved, and breathed, as in the precincts of Sekhmet they did not. But here the doors led down into a labyrinth, and so to the gate of the land of Death. In his other form, Ptah waited there, the hawk-headed dwarf, Sokar.
The girl who was Sekhmet walked on behind the goddess.
They entered a vast stone room, and here, on a sort of altar, the girl lay down, and they parted the linen from her lower belly and legs and unclasped her girdle.
The Bull came, led by two priests who did not look at her, for to see the loins of Sekhmet was a danger.
But the Bull looked, knowing he must.
He was fair in his shade, though not so pale as the girl. On his broad forehead was the white triangle of Zehuti. He lowered his head, and sniffed at her genitals.
The girl did not flinch. This was needful.
And he was very gentle, smelling of perfume and bovine good health, and of the onions they gave him because he was a god, although the priests must never eat them.
The fine hairs of his nose prickled against her satin skin, and inadvertently, she laughed.
The Bull raised his head.
He was the incarnation of Amun, and looked now into her face, mildly.
Then she thought, The next to touch me will be a man. And then: No. Ptah will touch me.
The gentle Bull was led away, and they re-established her clothing and lifted her, and she and Sekhmet continued to the marriage chamber.
Her name was Ankhetari. She had been chosen many years before, as sometimes happened, from a village by the River. Here, at the rising of the water, the floors of the huts on their mound had grown wet. She had heard always the music of the River and the groaning of wooden things which took up the River and brought it in among the fields.
Then came the still interiors of the temple. She remembered her journey to the city in the golden boat, the priestess Nefertun with her blue nails. The high bank of Men-Nefer. And after that there had been the Temple of Sekhmet, the goddess with the red sun disc upon her head. The Lioness, bringer of plague and fire. Sekhmet, who could destroy like time, the wife of Ptah the Maker.
In the beginning, Ankhet had known her mother had committed adultery, but this was a terrible secret, for such a crime merited disfigurement. Even Ankhet’s ‘father’ had protected the mother from it.
In the temple, where they trained her to serve the aspect of God who was the lioness, Ankhetari knew that they also understood she was not wholly theirs. That they strove therefore to bind her to their ways. To train her like a vine.
But since she did not know herself what she might be, it did not much matter to her.
Yet he, it seemed, her husband for this night, selected to represent for the city, and for her, the god Ptah—he too had been chosen, plucked out of the River in a basket. He was six or seven years her junior.
The Temple of the Sun’s Glory had wanted him, for he was a beautiful baby, a clever baby. But Khuen-Aten, the king’s daughter, had not had him. Ptah took him, and now he was to be Ptah.
The outer room was of dark stone, and the lamps hung down through it in drifts of shady light. The shadows glowed as they had in the sunset. There was the scent of incense, khufre, oils of flowers.
The women left her by the altar, where the thin smoke rose and quivered at her breath, before the golden box that held concealed the image of Ptah.
It might strike her dead, were she to break the seal, and stare in, Sekhmet they had left to one side. She might break the seal, and only she.
In a moment he would enter the room.
Ankhetari waited.
She was twenty-two years old, mature for a woman of Atert-Meht, the Upper Land. Yet she looked only fifteen, young, and perfect. Under the mask of Sekhmet, Ankhetari was more beautiful, yet with the beauty still of a mask. Her black hair would reach, unbound, to the backs of her knees. Her eyes also were black, but in the way of the River by night.
The doors opened, and Ptah came into the room.
As she looked younger than she was, so he, who was, they had told her, only sixteen, looked like a man, older than she.
He was straight and tall. Unlike the god, his head was not shaven or bound up, he wore—as she did—a massive wig, black locks that reached his shoulders, somehow not throwing his lean body out of proportion.
He was clothed in linen, his waist belted by gold, with the symbols of Ptah, hands and implements, the emblem of Life and For Ever.
She had never seen a face like his.
But then, cloistered with women, she had seen few men close, and these were guards or priests—yet this one was more a priest than any of them.—
One ran before him, and set on the altar a vase, and Ptah’s priest who was Ptah went to it, and broke it with his fist, so little jewels of oil and coloured glass lay on the stone.
He looked at her, and the other man went away.
The doors shut again, and outside, the great bar fell.
‘I am Reptah,’ he said. He was arrogant, cold and powerful as the pillars at his back, upholding the roof of the room.
‘I am Ankhetari.’
Now they had made confession to each other, from their hearts. Their earthly names.
She said, ‘But I welcome you as Ptah.’
And he answered, ‘And you are welcome, lady. As Sekhmet who is Flame.’
His eyes, as was usual, were black. Like hers—and not like. If her eyes were the night River, his were the day River in shade. Some hint of lightness there, some ghost like the bird soul hovering, ready to fly out.
She had not been afraid, because it was her duty. And yet she was a virgin, and she knew, unlike the dulcet Bull of Amun, this man must pierce her, enter her, perhaps wake her womb to child.
Did she desire him? He was handsome and fine. But so young, even if he did not look it. Cruel with indifference.
They went, without any further dialogue, past the altar, into the second room behind the first.
Here things had been set for them, that they might bathe in the night, as a priest must, and again at dawn, that they might relieve themselves behind a painted screen. Food was set by, simple and plain, and wine, and two cups, a shallow bowl for a woman, the tall goblet of a man.
The bed was a bed for sex, inclined only slightly at the head, but with two headrests for sleep, like crescent moons.
She thought, it would be a night of Eset’s searching for her husband, Ousir, a bright star above the crescent lunar
boat.
But they would not see it, since there were no windows.
Ankhetari lay down meekly on the bed, and spread her legs a little, her hands loose at her sides.
Then, he laughed.
‘Not as you did for the Bull,’ he said. And then, more soberly, ‘Take off your mask, at least, lady. I might want to taste your upper lips.’
Ankhetari, who knew nothing of sexual etiquette, who had had, in her time with Sekhmet, no sexual fantasy, all her sensual emotion drawn in to the goddess, obeyed him. She drew off the golden mask and put it carefully on the floor, where a wonderful woven rug was, of crimson and green.
‘And the wig...‘he said. ‘Do they shave your head?’
‘No.’
‘Then let’s both of us take off those. The night isn’t cool yet.’
Compliantly, Ankhetari raised the red wig, and her own hair tumbled out, escaping silk, all over her breasts and shoulders and arms.
He watched her. Then he too lifted off the coffin of wig.
His own hair was also black as the wig, but it shone. It fell down his back, as hers did, to the knees. His hair was very strong, and again she thought of the River.
Then he filled the two cups with the red wine, and brought them. He sat on the bed and handed her the shallow cup.
‘Are you afraid?’
‘No.’
‘Yes, you are. You’re lying to me.’
‘I’m not afraid, Reptah, First Born of Ptah.’
He raised his black brows. ‘You honour me. But I am. Afraid. I don’t like,’ he said, coldly, ‘to share.’
Ankhetari said, ‘But you share the thought with me.’
‘So I do. Maybe I can do the rest, then.’
‘We must.’
‘Oh no. I can deflower you with anything. My hand, or some suitable object in the room.’
‘But,’ she replied, ‘won’t it be—pleasure? They said—’
‘For me, supposedly. But for you, girl, an act of great pain. Like giving birth, but going the other way.’
‘Do we blaspheme?’ she asked in wonder.
‘It isn’t blasphemy. Your seal must be broken and I must put something of myself inside you. My finger would do. And I must spill my seed for Ptah, but I’ve done that before.’
‘What is it like?’
‘Strange,’ he said. ‘A gift to the dark. Have you never touched yourself—where the Bull touched you?’
‘Often, of course. When I bathe.’
‘And did you never sense anything?’
Ankhetari lowered her eyes. ‘Yes. Then I took my hand away.’
They drank a little.
A wick muttered in an oil lamp, and a vapour went up. They looked at it, and then looked back at each other.
‘Let me see you naked,’ he said.
Ankhetari put down her chalice, and slipped from the couch. She undid her girdle and let it fall, with the skirt of byssus, to the rug.
She was very slender, but curved like a vase. They had shaven off all hair from her body, even from the mound of sex. Secretive and enclosed, the cup of her loins, like a lotus on a stem of shadow.
He observed her, and she must allow this, although now, for the first time, she felt a sort of anger. She wanted to say, Why must you look at me? His gaze was not friendly, not respectful. It seemed he hated her.
Then he got up, undid the fastening of his garments and let them drop.
His body was lean and muscled like a lion’s, like a carving, wide at shoulder, narrow and straight at hip. They had taken all his body hair also and, without cover, the snake lay at his groin, large but motionless, of a tense dull colour. It was not erect, as they had explained to her it should be. He was quiescent. She had not stirred him.
Disdainfully he said, ‘My body doesn’t pay yours homage, lady. Forgive my body. I’ve been beaten for allowing it pleasure, and now it expects pain as a reward.’
Ankhetari said, cold as he was, ‘Find some object, then, and take my virginity. If it isn’t a blasphemy. Then you can go to sleep.’
And from her eyes, to her astonishment, two large tears sprang, leapt on to her cheeks, streamered down. She had not wept for years, not since the early days in Sekhmet’s courts, when she had missed the crude family in the wet hut, and her adulterous mother.
But Reptah seemed perturbed by the two matched tears. He said, ‘I didn’t mean to distress you. No. If we must, then we’ll lie together. Stretch out again, Ankhetari.’
‘You don’t distress me. I’m only nervous now. Yes. Let’s do it and have done with it. It doesn’t matter if you hurt me. I won’t cry out.’
She lay down, and he, as if making an abrupt decision, lay beside her.
And the sides of their bodies touched.
Until that moment, there had been no actual fleshly contact between them.
Skin scraped softly skin, and through both of them seemed to pulse a ripple, a current, so both sat upright. They stared at each other.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘Knowledge,’ he said. ‘Once I touched the feet of the statue in the shrine. That was like this. And yet—it wasn’t—like this.’
Ankhetari reached out slowly with her right hand, and put it on his right shoulder. He shuddered, and she felt go through her, the length of her arm, into her breasts and belly, a warm spasm like light or heat, yet something else.
He caught her hand before she could withdraw it, he held her hand in his and said, no longer cold but hard as metal taken from a fire, ‘We have the same blood. Strangers in this land. They put me out in a basket in the River because I was nothing of theirs. And you—’
‘My father,’ she whispered, ‘but who he was—’
‘There were legends of Set hunting again in the marshes,’ he said, ‘and he fornicated with the women among the reeds. He came snuffling to the huts like a red pig with eyes as blue as lapis lazuli.’
‘Are we cursed, then?’
‘The god knows. But we’re one. Brother and sister. Kindred. Not the children of the Upper Land.’
Something made her glance, and she saw that now he was upright, huge, like a statue, and too big for her, but in that moment, she wanted his invasion, wanted to be crushed and rent and taken, by him.
He kissed her and his tongue moved in her mouth and she could only lie against him, lost in the marvel of it, this first possession.
When he eased her gently on to her back, he lay over her, his feet clasping hers, his hands either side her head. He kissed her deeper and more deeply, and she felt the weight of him, and could not move, as if he anchored her to the earth.
Then he began on her body, seeking apparently to find out all of it. He mouthed her breasts, turning her nipples into sweets of joy. He kissed the scented pits of her arms, the softness inside the joints of her arms, he moulded her waist with his hands and tongue, and changed her navel to flame. At the gate of her sex he hesitated, but then his tongue found out this also, and an exquisite melting delight caused her after all, despite what she had said, to cry aloud.
He told her that she tasted of mint and honey.
He tongued her feet and the places behind her knees, he put even her hair between his teeth.
As he entered her, her entire structure seemed to give way, to break, and to reform.
She loved the pain, as if it were not pain at all, and somewhere she heard the sistrum bells, the notes of harps, in her ears of her veins.
And then he carried her, like the River, towards death.
She said to him that she was dying.
He told her this was not so, even though it was like that.
And then she did die, and out of her her soul burst, a blue bird with a human face, and she flew up into the ceiling, which was painted by golden stars. From there she saw the crisis of his own pleasure. Beheld him sink upon her. And then she opened her eyes, and she was beneath him, and she lived.
She knew at once terrible sadness, for she had not wanted to exist b
eyond that moment. To be obliterated with him—that was the culmination of all things. There could be no reason to live, and no life, beyond their union.
But after a little while he drew her up, and they bathed in the sacred water, sprinkled by petals, in which had dippered the beaks of ibises.
And after that, he made love to her a second and a third time.
Each occasion was like or better than the first. Each death more perfect. Each rebirth more sad and slow and dark.
Finally she wept.
He held her, and they did not speak.
They lay down, with the crescents under their necks, and saw the heavenly ceiling, until they slept.
Near dawn, the far outer door was loudly struck, waking them.
The lamps had burned out, but through a hundred tiny apertures, faint pearly light was seeping.
Soon Ra would ride up from the River of the dead and cleave the horizon. On the face and flanks of the great Sphynx in the desert, the goldenness of the sun would spread like oil. In the temple between the paws of the Sphynx, they would offer to the sun wine and flowers and blood. And from the obelisks of the city the sunbeams would ray out in blistering mathematical lines. The horns would sound over the high gates. Morning, in Egypt.
But for Ankhetari, a day of darkness. They would part. They would never glimpse each other again.
She felt a small soreness to one side of her neck. In his transports, he had bitten her, drawn blood like the blood of the sacrifice. Something of hers was always now in his body. And in her womb, perhaps, his seed. Although she doubted it. She felt empty there. And in her heart.
They bathed and dressed themselves. Still they did not speak, not until they came to the outer chamber with the altar.
‘I don’t want to go away from you,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can meet.’
‘How? It would be death.’
‘We’re married. Husband and wife.’
‘Only for one night.’
‘You don’t believe so,’ he said. ‘You’re mine. In this life, in the life beyond life, in the golden fields of for ever, where Lord Ousir walks with the sickle.’
‘I may never reach eternity,’ she said. ‘I may be devoured for my sins.’
