Heart of the Lotus

by Mary R Woldering

  “Oh. Yes, let’s do that,” Wse gestured to the servants who then climbed into the pool and began to tug at the stems under the water.

  “If we hurry, maybe we can surprise her. Plant them in her private pool while she is at temple later today.” He thought of dinner the night before last with the new king and the wife they now shared. He had comforted her before they had settled into the guest room at the royal palace.

  Not often enough do we see each other now, my love, he had said. Your duty to the god is more needful than your place with me. Time will come, he had whispered into her short dark hair. Maybe we will be old, but I will swear before all that is sacred that we’ll not spend the rest of our days apart…

  While Sahure and the men studied the problem of the water wheel, Wserkaf wandered through the house, looking at the emptiness and remembering all that had happened there.

  Here’s the place where Marai almost came through the wall in a bull’s rage. It’s all been repaired now. Looks like nothing ever happened. The water in the pool where sweet Naibe comforted herself when she first came to us… he stared at the ripples in the water a slight distance from the place where the men struggled to free the wheel and papyrus. He turned from the pond to the lower guest room where he and the young Shinar woman exploded into passion in each other’s arms. That had its own haunting shimmer. Those were the recent things. He also saw himself and Khentie as a young couple, the birth of their sons and short, sad times of the three children gone too soon; a silly monkey named Didju who survived until last year.

  There’s not much else to do here. The charts and calculations are either in Khmenu or Per-A-At. This is just memory now, no longer a home.

  Once every two or three weeks he would journey back to Ineb Hedj to see Khentie, but the memories here were almost too painful for him to stay at his old house. He threw off his outer garments and waded into the pool to help the men.

  Near midday they were wet, covered in mud head to toe, and finished.

  Wse pulled the corded latch into place and fastened the new gates, then caught up with his son and the servants. They struggled through the walled neighboring estates to the palace like common laborers as they carried the jars of plants and the parts of the water wheel.

  A chair with six bearers approached, coming from the palace.

  Damn him!

  Wserkaf knew at once that it was Count Prince Hordjedtef and quickly stepped aside, hiding his face. If I wasn’t loaded down with this pot of shoots I could have cloaked my passage against him seeing me. It’s too late. I feel his eyes… I hope he understands I’m headed to the palace, arms weighed and men with me, Wserkaf reflected, still attempting some form of invisibility. And it won’t matter a bit to him.

  “Sahu…” Wse sighed, miserable at the thought of having his afternoon stolen by a teacher he no longer respected.

  “I understand, Father.” the youth turned and rolled his eyes as he glanced up and the elder man borne on his litter and the way the procession of the bears had ground to a stop.

  Knows what I’m in for, Wse shook his head.

  Wserkaf handed his jar of cuttings to his son and watched as the servants redistributed the things they were carrying among themselves.

  “Tell your mother, if I am not there by the time she comes from her temple work, that I will follow as soon as my business with Great One concludes.” Wserkaf had a feeling this meeting would run long, and because of that he glanced up at the elder, shielding his eyes against the sun with his hand, then waved the men in his party on.

  “Will we meet for long? I’m looked for at the palace in the afternoon, Great One.”

  “I’m certain you are expected,” the elder quipped dryly, insult added to the tone of his words.

  Long meeting and I’m trapped. He’s about to unload on me for avoiding him in the recent days. This much I know, Wserkaf turned to tag silently along beside the sedan chair until it arrived at the old man’s town estate. Maybe Sahure took the hint that Khentie might need to have me fetched if it runs too long.

  Something bothered the inspector about the expression he read on his elder’s face.

  Does he know about…? He was about to form the word “Marai” in his thoughts, but stopped, wondering if Hordjedtef had somehow discovered about the sojourner’s recovery. He had never allowed such a thought to come forth in his elder’s presence. He had begged Khentie and the king to never speak of it and to even strike his name from their thoughts. There it is again, that look. The Inspector flinched and guarded his thoughts even more zealously because he caught the red glimmer of distant recognition in the elder prince’s eyes.

  “Emptier, like my own home these days,” Wserkaf spoke under his breath to distract the elder from reading his thoughts as the two men emerged into Hordjedtef’s front plaza. No throng of servants mustered to attend them this early afternoon; no students engaged in humility lessons were there to serve them. He wondered at the other break in decorum. The old man was fastidious and would have demanded washed feet, hands, and a clean garment. Hordjedtef acted as if he didn’t notice Wse was covered in mud.

  “Have your things been sent up the river?” Wse asked, wondering at his former teacher’s lack of response. I’ll wager he just had the king’s things sent to the palace. Likely he just saw Khentie too. I can feel he brought some misery there. I need to see what that’s about when I get there later, Wserkaf buried those thoughts as the old man began to speak.

  “Yes, indeed they have. Do come along though, dear one. We’ll almost have to serve ourselves, I’m afraid. There are some who haven’t gone, and they are up fixing a meal,” Hordjedtef pointed to the roof-kitchen and urged Wserkaf to follow him. “I’ll fetch one to wash you in a moment,” his voice still charmed and even managed a chuckle that caught itself between merriness and annoyed sarcasm.

  Wse took his elder’s arm, eased him into his chair in the audience area, and dutifully plumped the pillows that went behind his teacher’s back. The inspector glanced around the areas that had been so familiar, picking out the elder’s pet hounds sauntering and lounging in the shaded areas.

  So frail now, Wserkaf thought, almost moved with pity. It’s like the light is going out of his life and yet he covers it with silence and hardness so I can’t see how frightened, how desperate he is.

  As the old man shifted in his chair, he indicated to the inspector that he should sit on the empty low woven cane table that had replaced the usual guest’s stone bench. Then, he beckoned on of the servants to usher Wserkaf to the bath area for a foot wash.

  When Wse had dried his feet and dusted as much dried mud from his clothing as he could, then he straightened his garments, returned, and sat. The men were silent for a long time, each trying to read the other’s thoughts with limited success. They didn’t speak aloud until the elder’s servants descended the stair with refreshments for them both.

  As the men set the food on the slightly higher portable table between them, Wse glanced at the shaded alcove at the painted walls, remembering the story of the way Marai had studied and learned to read almost instantly. His eyes traveled to the altar and he noticed the small statuette of Ptah, but not the familiar Djehuti which had graced the other side of the incense basin.

  Missing? Where is the figure of Lord Djehut? Most of the time when he visited his elder, he never paid attention to the plain home altar. Today, something drew his attention to that spot as if it wanted him to notice. Why would he send that one ahead to Nekhen and not the other one? he wondered, but just that bit of attention stirred the elder priest. Wserkaf quickly privatized that though with a pensive and disarming smile.

  “So good to be at your side again, Great One. I apologize over my earlier complaint.”

  Hordjedtef didn’t answer until after the servants left, then he looked directly at Wserkaf and spoke in voice that struck the inspector as petulant:

  “You’ve avoided me, Wse. I’ve been sad,” he looked away from his disciple again.
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  “As have I been sad,” the younger priest replied, knowing his elder had encountered the dark wall he kept over his own deeper thoughts. The air of mistrust became almost painful.

  “Do we have a problem, Wse?” the elder asked at length. “Now that you have spent some weeks in your father’s house learning the responsibilities you will one day undertake there? You have had sufficient time to contemplate your duty?” the elder gazed steadily, his eyes emitting a tiny spark of inquisition.

  “Know that I advised his Majesty against your overseeing the both the House of Djehut and the House of Ra. I know I retire and your father has not been well, but there are other good candidates to oversee the post at Per-A-At. It was never intended to be an inherited post.”

  “His Majesty requested I oversee both houses, Great One. You know that. You also know I initially objected because in doing so I will have so many duties away from Ineb Hedj. I won’t even have the glory of being an advisor, as you have been.” Wserkaf sipped the frothy beer, allowing the goblet he held to obscure both his expression and his thoughts.

  You think it’s personal, Wse sighed inwardly. Even if it is on the part of our new Majesty, I wish you wouldn’t look at me with eyes that no longer trust me.

  When the old man raised his hand to hush his former protégé gently, Wserkaf saw the “nau” strap wrapped around his hand and then noticed the slightly stained linen bandage on the palm of his hand beneath it.

  Haven’t seen him wear that since before Menkaure’s death… Something smells about it; that he would think he needs it to fortify himself, he frowned, diverting the elder.

  “Did you hurt your hand? I see the strap and a bandage.”

  “And I saw your eyes go to my blessing table and take note that one of my little ones was not there,” the elder’s gaze lowered in genuine sadness. “It fell and broke yesterday as I performed some devotions. I supposed it did not wish to part from this old place. There was no way to repair it. I cut my hand in trying to gather and handle the pieces.”

  Wserkaf swept his own raised fingertips over the elder’s hand in his own blessing, but when he did he sensed the image of glimmering, moon-shaped shard that had been part of the base form in his thoughts. Looks like the same thing my wdjat was crafted from. Painted over crystal? Is that a sign? From whom?

  The elder shifted uncomfortably and indicated the tray of warm rolls and sauce that neither of the men had touched.

  “I know your fear, dear Wse, and I know you ought to have no need of it. It means nothing, this wound. It is so like the distance that has come between us in recent times,” he refreshed Wserkaf’s cup and handed it to him. “So much has happened, and now you do not come around to see me as you once did. You are still infected from contact from the sojourners, aren’t you?” the elder asked.

  Wserkaf grasped his own hands around his crossed knees so the vague tremble in them wouldn’t show. The old man was reading him again. At one time, he welcomed the skilled exchanges and probes into each other’s consciousness. Now, they were a threat.

  “You were charmed by them, and though you have prayed and cleansed yourself, you still need to get yourself righted. I had to see if you were yet clear enough on this to be impartial in the interpretation of the final truths which will be given you as you ascend to this post,” he paused. “I could cleanse you today if you wish.”

  “Great One,” Wserkaf returned. “I am no longer troubled. What you perceived was imaginary. All that ailed me was just the thought that your treatment of them was too harsh. I saw no threat from the man and even less from his beloveds.” He craned forward, elbows on his knees and hands now unclasped.

  “They were unclean sojourners, Dear One. That was threat enough,” the elder parried.

  “What I saw…” Wse continued, suddenly enlivened, “was that they came to us almost fully aware of inner mystery. They only needed our refinement. By your own teaching, was not the wisdom of Ma-at for all to seek? Was not her protector Djehuti, to allow access to this knowledge?”

  “All meant all men and women of God’s blood. That is known even to instinct. I thought, because of the blood that runs through your own heart, you would know this.” The elder corrected him.

  “Then here is where we differ, Great One,” the inspector sipped at the beer. “Sojourners or those of humble birth should have access if they are bright enough. Can you not see we ought to have…” he began, but the elder held up his frail hand to silence his protégé.

  At that point Wse noticed something dark, like a detached shadow, moving behind the old man.

  What is? he thought, but stopped his thought. When Marai was… he stopped again because he almost let the thought about Marai having been in his home surface. When the bull came through him… What? Wserkaf sat uncomfortably straighter, noticing that the elder appeared unaware of the shadow drifting from the area of the altar to the chairs and back.

  “Yes, I see what you say, Wse. I, too, saw him as a curiosity first and then as an excellent man, but because of his unbending and often disrespectful character, I knew he would never be ready for some of the tenets we teach.”

  Wserkaf noticed a serpent-like look drift over his former teacher’s face that reminded him of ‘someone walking by his own tomb’. He frowned. Because you knew he had outwitted you and proved wiser. Wserkaf buried that errant thought as deeply as he could, but at that moment he wanted to jump up and shout that the real lesson he took from the sojourner’s demise was that Hordjedtef, as a guardian of wisdom, had proven himself quite capable of destroying anyone who opposed him or wished to stop his influence… whether it was a sojourner or a king.

  “The use of Sweet Horizon, though?” Wserkaf frowned. “Would not terror of the unknown have been enough to conquer him? It is for any other untried fool who boasts his way into the wisdom tests.”

  Hordjedtef didn’t answer, but Wserkaf sensed him thinking:

  You think I murdered him? And if I did create a scenario for his accidental rout? What of it? The truths we protect are merely safer. Why question? It is as I suspected. “The Neter stones…” Hordjedtef cleared his throat and changed the subject to cover his private and darker thoughts. “You believe in your heart that I obsess over them and have often asked yourself why that is. I have often sensed that the spirits within the stones, what this departed sojourner called the ‘Children’, are not as benevolent as one might think. They are, rather, evil tricksters from another realm, bent on getting the so-called secret keys into the hands of usurpers. Once I followed what Great Djedi showed me, but then I began to piece it together with my own study. Only then did I realize the truth. Not all was being told to me. Either my master never learned all the truth, or he was unfortunately out of league with Ma-at herself.”

  “But you still sought them,” Wserkaf added. “Why?”

  “To bring them all here, so they might be contained together in a safe place with the rest of the sacred findings Master Djedi and I were able to locate. Controlled, they might reveal if there were more things to find. He told me as he passed from this world that he had secreted them in Per-a-At in the crypts. Your own father knew of them himself. There once existed a sacred trust among the priesthoods at a time when we were all young lions. So, unless your own mother never told him the locations…” Hordjedtef’s expression grew poignant as if he remembered something a little too fondly. He took a cup. “She was, as you know, the anointed of Ra.” He refocused. “When they have been located, trick from truth will be determined by the wisest among us.”

  “There it is again, Great One. Limit access to these things because they might be dangerous? That’s not Ma-at,” Wserkaf argued, unable to keep silent. “They aren’t magic. They are building plans and methods. Great Khufu knew it, and knew he had only part of them. Do you intend to protect and maybe even destroy the building plans and star maps so that later generations will see the works and believe them created by the gods themselves and not inspired by wise tradition? Is it
your intent to limit the passing on of this wisdom? Will it be only given to those you have judged fully obedient to you so the wisdom remains intact and controlled before you pass in to the Field of Reeds? You think you could be the Benu? The master of wisdom? All that I have seen…” Wserkaf paused, realizing he had become so animated that he was on his feet and starting to sweat. He knew he had never allowed himself such an undisciplined display and sat heavily, waiting for a rebuke.

  Hordjedtef’s expression remained calm, not surprised, but it contained something else the Inspector couldn’t identify. An odd shadow cast down from the elder prince. Something was in that shadow. He wanted to leave for the palace, but felt a wave of calm sweeping over him.

  “You’ve allowed yourself to become angry, Wse, but that is good to see,” his voice stayed at a whisper. “Were you any other subordinate in my tutelage, or younger in it yourself, I would have you expelled from my presence, but I cannot. It seems evident that you were right, however. The sojourners had little to do with your rebellion in past days. They only have provided excuse and vehicle. What you feel is old.” The man took a deep breath, drained the beer in his cup, took up Wserkaf’s abandoned cup, and poured more in it. “It is good for us to air these disquiets before you ascend to my post. You know I could never harm you.”

  Wserkaf sipped, carefully, half-wondering if some thought altering preparation had been slipped into the beer to cause him to shout at the elder.

  No. He drank the same thing and doesn’t shout or sweat. Perhaps… he thought of the spirit in the shadow but noticed it had vanished.

  “I should go. Continue this another day. I’ll be looked for by His Majesty.”

  “Yes, yes…” Hordjedtef nodded, suddenly sarcastic. “Go you will, but first I will answer your question of how Great Menkaure died, since you believe my hand was in that too.

  What? Wserkaf worried. How does he intend… Wse suddenly realized his angst had opened his thoughts. He and Hordjedtef had both used the technique on the sojourner Marai during his training, and when he himself was young, the old man had used it on him and the other acolytes. He knew the elder would attempt the illusion of the golden bowl. He was to obey, comply, and open his thoughts to error free facts. If I could believe they were not tilted in any but an upright position. He needed to distract him.