The Women and the Boatman

by Mark Gajewski

  Numerous reed boats of various shapes and sizes were tied up in a row along the river near Rawer’s boatyard, and large groups of visitors were walking from them on the path across the stubble–covered strip towards the lower settlement. Some were following men carrying emblems atop slender poles; those emblems represented the gods of individual families and the settlements and hamlets north and south along the river that had sworn allegiance to Aboo. The festival was attracting men and women and children from all over the valley.

  We were, all of us, dressed in our finest, our hair elaborately styled, decorated with flowers and pins of bone or ivory, or tied with colorful bits of linen. Like my cousins, I was wearing a gauzy white linen skirt I’d made myself, my falcon talisman, my gold circlet, and my falcon anklet. I’d colored my eyes with malachite and I’d pulled my hair forward over my right shoulder. It tumbled loosely halfway to my waist. I’d painted falcons with malachite from my shoulders to my wrists and from my hips to my ankles. I carried resting on my shoulder a reed basket containing red bottles and egg–shaped black jars I’d made as festival offerings, symbols of death and rebirth, much like the inundation itself. Everyone else treading the path with me also carried some item or other. It wasn’t by choice; Aboo had established an offering quota for each person for each festival and there was no shirking that mandate.

  We were all excited. We looked forward to this, the year’s largest festival, particularly the feast. Many of us commoners were far too hungry far too often. We’d go to sleep tonight with full bellies. The women and girls were laughing and singing and chattering, the younger children dashing back and forth and shouting. Even the men were less reserved than usual. I was particularly happy; I’d get to spend the day with Nykara as soon as the ceremony was over.

  After a long walk we approached the entrance to the oval court in the heart of the lower settlement. My older cousin and her family were waiting to one side, in the shade of one of the reed–walled storehouses holding raw materials for what had once been Dedi’s and were now Rawer’s craftsmen. I broke from our group and rushed ahead to greet them. Peseshet threw her arms open wide and I hugged her tight. I hardly ever got to see her; I spent so much time producing pottery and calling on the sick I rarely had the opportunity to visit her farm along the river north of the settlement. I hugged my nephew Ibi and my niece Aat in turn. At age twelve, Ibi was nearly as tall as me. Aat, a year younger than her brother, was already showing signs of someday being a beautiful woman, far prettier than me. Yuny, Peseshet’s man, ignored me as always. I was a woman and he had no particular use for me.

  Soon the rest of my family caught up. Auntie and my cousins greeted Peseshet’s family heartily; Yuny stonily ignored both my uncles. He’d thought to someday inherit a share of the pottery works due to his joining with Peseshet; it was clear he never would. I handed my basket of offerings to Ibi. Then, led by Uncle Hemaka and Uncle Sanakht, my relatives merged with the multitude pressing through the shaded portico into the oval court, the true heart of Nekhen, a sacred space. I stood beneath the portico and waited for Aboo to arrive. I scanned the court’s already packed interior. Everything important that happened in our settlement happened here. Banners of red linen fluttered atop the four towering spruce columns marking the entrance. To my right, high overhead, the copper–clad falcon, Nekhen’s god and symbol, glittered in the sun atop its ribbon– and feather–decorated pole. A very deep trench abutted the wall opposite me, into which the remains of today’s sacrificed animals would be dragged. It was already filled with a plethora of weathered white bones from past festivals – gazelles, aurochs, hippos, hares, turtles, crocodiles, even catfish and perch.

  Thanks to my prominence, my relatives were situated at the front of the crowd, near the elevated three–step stone platform shaded by a sunscreen and topped with four leather–bottomed chairs from which Aboo and Abar and Rawer and I would preside. Between my family and the foot of the dais was an unoccupied space where offerings would be made and allegiance pledged. Nekhenians and hamlet–dwellers continued straggling past me; the court was nearly filled with people, except for a narrow path winding from its entrance to the elevated platform. Each person bowed to me respectfully as they passed; I still wasn’t used to that. I estimated there were more than three thousand people from all walks of life crammed tightly together inside. A couple thousand more, arriving late, would have to remain outside; there’d be no room for them within the walls. They’d have to be content with gorging themselves at the feast afterwards. Everyone was anxious for the festivities to begin, for the rituals performed this day were sacred and designed to bring us together and protect us from chaos.

  A man entered the court carrying an image of our goddess, our ancient protector, Bat, atop a slender pole – she of the spirit, portrayed as a cow with a human face, her horns incurving sharply. Next came a man carrying a wood falcon atop a slender pole, the god of Nekhen who watched over us from the sky. Next came a scorpion, a minor god, then a vulture, the goddess Nekhbet from Nekheb across the river, its mother–protector. As the largest settlement beholden to Aboo, its goddess and symbol took precedence over those from the valley’s hamlets. The four standard carriers moved to the end of the oval court behind Aboo’s platform and set their poles in holes in the arc’s center.

  Music drew my attention to the procession waiting to enter the court. At its head were two dozen women wearing opaque white skirts, their hair colorful with flowers. They were playing drums and shaking rattles and striking together ivory clappers and singing. Aboo stood behind them holding a crook and flail in his hands. A leopard skin was draped over his shoulders and a bull’s tail was affixed to the back of his belt and tall white plumes were bound to his brow. Abar was behind him, as she’d been at every celebration since her stepmother’s death. She was as always beautiful, regal, her skirt white and sheer, carnelian and gold glittering at throat and waist and wrists and ankles, eyes dark with malachite and lips red with henna. I hadn’t seen her since the end of the week–long afterbirth ritual a month or so ago. She caught sight of me and smiled.

  Tentopet cradled Shery in her arms directly behind Abar, the two of them shaded by a reed sunscreen held aloft by a serving girl. Tentopet had fully recovered her health in the week she’d spent resting in the birth bower; luckily, she and Abar had immediately hit it off. I was glad there was someone in Aboo’s house for Abar to converse with. Hunur, the oldest of Abar’s three sisters, was beside Tentopet, shepherding the two younger.

  Rawer waited next to Abar. He was carrying Aboo’s limestone mace, a singular honor. He was, as always since his joining to Abar, puffed up with self–importance, looking down on everyone around him, acting as if Aboo’s position was already his and all of Nekhen owed him obedience. I couldn’t stand to look at him. He’d caused so much sorrow for Abar and Nykara and me. He was no more competent as fleet overseer now than he’d been when Dedi was alive. He’d recently given up all pretense of operating the fleet himself; he’d delegated that to the equally–incompetent Senebi and spent most of his time hunting with Aboo. I wasn’t about to confirm him as ruler when the time came.

  Behind Rawer and Abar a man bore the image of an elephant atop a pole, Aboo’s personal emblem. Behind the elephant–bearer were more men with the emblems of the hamlets and Nekhen’s leading families who bore allegiance to Aboo – I stopped counting at fifty – there were lions and bulls and hippos and gazelles and ostriches and various birds. Behind the last of them were lined up Nekhen’s elites and the leading men of the surrounding valley, the brewer Pipi and the woodcutter Harkhebi and the potter Teti and the herdsman Salitis in the front rank.

  The procession started forward and passed through the gate. I stepped into line at Aboo’s right. He smiled and greeted me. We snaked through the narrow lane between the two halves of the crowd all the way to the base of the elevated platform at the oval’s end. As always, I raised the talisman high and blessed everyone who called my name. Then Aboo and Rawer an
d Abar and I ascended the three steps and took seats in the shade – me at Aboo’s right, with Abar on my right; Rawer at Aboo’s left. Young girls moved behind us and started waving fans of long white ostrich feathers back and forth to cool us. I was grateful for that. The people sweating in the hot sun before me looked miserable. Not so long ago I’d been among them. The leading men filed into place to the left of the platform, on my right. Abar’s half–sisters and Tentopet took seats there as well. The standard–carriers stuck their poles in the holes flanking the scorpion and Nekhbet and the falcon god and Bat in the arc of the court behind the dais.

  At a motion from Aboo, those in the crowd closest to us came forward to deposit their festival offerings on the right side of the dais. Once everyone’s were piled there Aboo and I would present them to the falcon god and the god of the inundation. As the first group returned to their places more people surged forward. Peseshet and Yuny and Ibi and Aat presented baskets filled with fruit from their farm; Auntie and my cousins lengths of fine linen they’d woven. They all gazed at me proudly as they made their offerings, basking in the reflection of my status. They treated me quite differently in public than they did at home, when jealousy was their usual emotion. As Ibi deposited my jars on the growing pile I noted Nykara half–hidden in the crowd behind him. He was bent over, trying not to draw attention to himself; otherwise, he would have towered over everyone. He was carrying a model boat of wood, nearly three feet long; not only did the boat have a pavilion, but four oarsmen were seated on each side, pulling at red–painted oars, with a steersman at the stern and a captain watching over everything. By its workmanship I was certain Nykara had created the model himself. He approached the platform quickly, set down his boat, melted back into the crowd. He hadn’t glanced at anyone on the dais; he still avoided so much as catching sight of Abar. He felt extremely guilty for what had happened to her and his inability to prevent it. I assumed he’d take the first opportunity to slip out of the oval court altogether. He didn’t trust himself to be around Rawer either. We’d rendezvous later.

  It took hours for everyone to deposit their offerings. Meanwhile the sun climbed the sky and it got very hot. Servants filled and refilled cups of wine for we four on the dais and the elites; everyone else suffered in silence. After the last of the commoners made their offerings Aboo and I rose. We descended the platform and stepped to the curve in the oval court where the poles topped with the images of Bat and the falcon god stood. I solemnly chanted the words of the ritual, presenting everything next to the platform to the valley’s deities and the god of the inundation, blessing everything with the talisman. That concluded the first part of the ceremony.

  We returned to the open space before the platform. A servant removed the leopard skin from Aboo’s shoulders and the plumes from his head. Rawer handed Aboo a long flint knife with a finely carved ivory handle.

  A herdsman led a large cow into the oval court by a tether and walked it through the crowd to Aboo and me. Two more herdsmen tied its front and hind legs together with strips of leather, then pushed the bawling beast onto its side. Aboo raised the knife high.

  “From the bounty of my menagerie I offer my animals to sustain you, my people!” he cried.

  A young girl brought me a large decorated earthenware bowl, one I’d made especially for this ceremony. The herdsman and two others held the cow somewhat steady. I dropped to my knees and jammed the bowl tight against the cow’s neck. This was the part of every festival I hated with a passion. With a quick movement, Aboo slit the cow’s throat. Blood spurted onto my arms and legs and chest and face. I’d learned the hard way the first time I’d assisted Great–grandmother to keep my eyes closed when Aboo wielded the knife, and to keep my lips pressed firmly together to keep blood out of my mouth. I caught the bulk of it in my bowl. By the time it was full the cow was dead. Several men dragged the carcass through the center of the crowd and through the oval court’s entrance to an area where smoke from cookfires was already rising into the sky. Blood streaked the dust in the cow’s wake. I wiped blood from my face as best I could.

  The first cow was followed by a second, and a third, and then by numerous sheep and goats and pigs. I continued to collect the blood. Aboo was wealthy and he never held anything back during a festival, especially not one as important as this. The pending feast promised to be massive. When he’d slaughtered all his domestic animals a herdsman led a gazelle into the courtyard, one of those captured by the elites during the recent hunt. The most important part of the festival was about to begin.

  Aboo was as drenched in blood now as I was, and sweating profusely, as were the men assisting him. He raised his knife high once again. “I am master over the wild animals of this valley. I capture them, as proof I control them and the chaos they bring. As I slay them, so do I slay chaos.”

  He killed the gazelle, and then hares and turtles and crocodiles and a young hippopotamus and several baboons and even a giant catfish that was still flopping as it was carried into the court, as well as the largest perch I’d ever seen. After each wild animal was slain, however, men dragged its carcass to the deep trench lining the longest side of the court and pushed it in. After the ceremony the beasts would be covered with clean sand and beneath it they would rot. Their meat was for the gods, not us.

  After Aboo killed the last of the wild animals, many women carrying large jars of water appeared. They poured them one at a time over Aboo’s head and mine, rinsing off a great deal but far from all of the blood that covered us. Several women dried our faces with long pieces of linen. Aboo and I resumed our seats on the dais, his kilt and my skirt and long hair dripping, water and blood puddling redly under our chairs. A sudden loud cry from the entrance of the oval court caused everyone in the crowd to turn in that direction, expectantly.

  There was a special component to this year’s festival. The crowd stirred as a man was led into the court, his arms tightly bound behind him with leather thongs. Just a week ago, in a fit of lust and rage, he’d killed the daughter of a flint knapper who lived not far from Uncle Hemaka’s house. Today he was to be executed for his crime.

  He’d struck her from behind so violently the left side of her skull was missing when her badly–hidden body was found amidst some rocks at the edge of the plateau where he’d dragged her. Because of my skill I’d been called to help prepare her body for burial. I’d done the best I could, cutting off the bulk of her bloodied hair, arranging what was left to disguise the gaping wound so her injury wouldn’t be obvious to the mourners who laid her in her grave. Her body had been wrapped as usual with various swaths of linen, but in addition her arms and legs and torso had been anointed with resin and covered with strips of orange bark from a rare and fragrant tree. Where her family had found it they wouldn’t tell me. I suspected Nykara had supplied it. He had a very tender heart. In a departure from the usual practice, the pottery buried with her had also been killed, broken and scattered to either side of her body.

  The murderer had also taken the life of one of Merenhor’s hunters who’d been assigned to track him down. I’d helped prepare his body too. The fatal blow had embedded fragments of his skull deep in his brain. That wasn’t his only head wound. He’d been struck behind his ear some years before. I distinctly remembered helping Great–grandmother tend to him then. He’d also broken several ribs and both wrists sometime in the past. His torso was heavily scarred. Some said he’d received his wounds in fights, others while hunting wild beasts.

  Two guards half–dragged the murderer, struggling futilely against his bonds, to the base of the platform and forced him to his knees. He was a herdsman who watched over Salitis’ cattle. Rawer stood up. He held in his hands Aboo’s mace – a pear–shaped chunk of limestone attached to a length of wood, inscribed with an image of Aboo capturing an elephant. Rawer handed it to Aboo. Aboo descended the steps of the dais to the murderer’s side. He raised the mace high in the air with his right hand and addressed the crowd.

  “This man ha
s killed two of my people. He has brought chaos among us. For this, he must die.”

  Aboo seized the man’s long hair with his left hand, twisted it in his fingers to hold the head steady. The murderer was shaking violently, too terrified to beg for mercy. Suddenly Aboo swung the mace with all his might against the side of the murderer’s head, crushing his skull with a dull thunk. Aboo released his hold and the murderer toppled sideways onto the earth.

  Everyone in the oval court cheered.

  Aboo placed his bloody mace on the ground. Then, like Dedi had done when he executed the barbarians he’d captured in the western desert, Aboo scalped and decapitated and cut the arms and legs from the murderer’s body. While gory, the punishment was deserved. Unlike the barbarians, who’d been burned, the murderer was going to be buried in the same cemetery where Great–grandmother lay. In his grave his head and arms and legs would be replaced by pots and sticks and baskets. That way he wouldn’t be able to feed himself in the next life and so would be truly dead and unable to harm those of us who still lived. It was a horrible fate, and one not lightly meted out, but in the end one designed to protect us.

  Aboo, blood–drenched once more, gazed upon the dismembered body, then addressed the crowd. “Today I have asserted my control over chaos. And so the inundation now swelling the river will renew our valley and sustain our lives. Let us feast in thanksgiving!”