“Wse, dear one…”
Wserkaf knew the elder had heard his doubt once again. He sighed.
“Not a long session, though. I see the sun crawling toward the west,” he tensed. A slight wind from the south had begun to circle. Wserkaf felt the gooseflesh rise on his bare arm and knew whatever spiritual presence he had seen earlier had worked its way from spirit into the living world. He wondered why the old man hadn’t reacted to it.
“Yes. I was with him,” Hordjedtef began. “I was fetched from my sleep as soon as his manservant saw that he struggled that dreadful evening. Now, come forward to me, Wse, for old time’s sake.” the elder seamlessly shifted the conversation to a different level.
Wserkaf watched in personal dread as Count Hordjedtef quietly touched both of his temples with his fingertips. He jumped as a spark of energy leapt from the hand with the black leather strap.
“Wait. You’re boosting. You don’t need to do that with me. It’s close to hurting me so I won’t be able to...” he resisted, even though the tiny jolt was more annoying and tingly than anything else. He’ll see about Marai and what I have done. Wse effectively placed a temporary barrier between his thoughts and his memories of the big sojourner and whispered his invocation: “Goddess Ma-at, protected your son from all evil doers. Allow my inner sight clarity, I pray.” He breathed out, then obediently sank into the semi-trance he needed.
“Trust, Wse, between teacher and student,” the elder almost chirped and released his hands. “Just a little test; and giving the anticipated results. Relax, you’ll see.”
Though it was of little concern to him at that moment, Wse vaguely understood this would be the last time the men would use this exercise as teacher and student.
Chapter 7: Revelations
As he sank into the plush-like comfort of his trance and felt the sensation of nothingness overtake his limbs, Wserkaf felt a strange courage also steal over him. The courage to know, he breathed, to discern without influence. He saw the image of a small golden bowl half-filled with water appear on the table between him and Hordjedtef. It was not fully formed. Wserkaf still saw the table through it as the vision commenced.
He saw King Menkaure pacing the floor of his airy stateroom.
Wserkaf startled and almost roused himself because what he was seeing resembled his transmissions of memory from having touched Naibe and Ariennu. He had spent Marai’s last evening on the royal side of the river bringing him up to speed about the whereabouts of his beloved women. It wasn’t what Hordjedtef intended for him to see; of that he was certain. Perhaps the spiritual presence was indeed Djehuti, the guardian of truth. Maybe it was the spirit of the King.
Father, Wse thought internally, careful to isolate that thought from his elder. If this is your doing, know my intentions are pure and speak to me alone. Then, he returned to the vision. It wasn’t the night the king died, it was the morning after the women had been sent away, as magically seen thought his elder’s eyes. There could be no lying or distorting of the truth from that viewpoint.
“The woman named Naibe, Your Majesty; her very name is an anagram of an utterance. Now that you have calmed yourself from this morning’s shock, do please listen to me as your wise uncle and nothing more. Send no one for her or her sister in this foolishness. She is a demon, not a mortal woman. Did you not see her Neter stone rise in her head as she danced for you, as if she called it to guide her seductive power?”
At that moment, Wserkaf’s attention was drawn to a hawk lighting on the porch rail outside. But you aren’t a hawk, are you? Don’t I know… but the moment he focused, it had gone. He saw the king seated again, fidgeting and rubbing his chest as if he had felt a pain shortly after he cursed the old man.
There’s some spine! And Our Father didn’t connect the two? Gods, if Dede knew what I was seeing he’d cut this off in an instant. Hide these thoughts, my goddess Ma-at. Do not let them come forth, observed, Wserkaf continued to watch the scenario unfold.
“No Uncle, there was no spell cast on me,” he heard the king’s voice answer. “You seem to forget that as son of a god and the living presence of Ra, I am no fool to be led around by you, good medicine or not. I know sorcery when I feel it, and I fully know it is more likely that you have befuddled me for so many years, not her sweet face and form. Even so, if I suspected such a thing, I would not agree to her or Lady ArreNu being sent from me for so long a time and in such cruel company. I would simply keep them here and see they were more carefully watched. You had another reason for this madness and I will have it from you!”
Wserkaf sensed the old man’s words speaking into his own soul, but also understood Hordjedtef was attempting to manipulate his thoughts. It was soothing and subtle like a hand gently stirring the water in the perceived bowl. He hoped the elder hadn’t noticed his growing doubt of what he saw.
“Do you see then, Wse, how distressed these women had left our Majesty; how interested in their company, to the point of obsession, he had become? It was to no good end for him to be swept up so greatly by the lure of a skilled ka-t, when great matters of the universe were at risk. They were toying with a god as if he had been a mere man,” Hordjedtef insisted.
“I do see it, Great One,” Wserkaf whispered, noticing he felt increasingly dizzy as he fought the old man’s attempt to observe his innermost thoughts.
Toying with a god as you have been all along! Gods he is strong! The prince bowed forward, instinctively deflecting the elder’s energy. He’s twisting the reality to suit his purposes, as always. It just makes sense… mad sense, when it comes through him like this. I need to come up for a moment. He took a deep breath and allowed his eyelids to flutter, indicating discomfort and the need to speak in the present.
“I see that Our Father wished to send for them, yet his will was not followed.”
“But, understanding that as you do now, I hope you notice why it was not,” Hordjedtef insisted.
Wserkaf steeled himself, hoping the truth he had sensed would outweigh the fantasy he was being fed. When he lapsed back into the vision, he saw the king pacing, wringing his hands, and then slumping, frustrated, in his casual chair. When servants brought the midday meal, they fled because he threw it across the room. After that, the king stood and threw more things at the wall and, with the roar of the bull his name portrayed, began to pitch carved boxes, vessels, and furniture out onto the plaza below. The physicians and Hordjedtef returned with medication.
“Get away from me, you blood-sucking demons. Find me more of my flower tea. My only true healer makes it,” he shrieked. Wserkaf sensed through his vision that the king sat all morning sipping it and drumming his fingers nervously as he waited for a report from the docks to see where the fleet might be. He thought about sending men to get the women, but as more hot tea was brought to calm his racing heart and pounding temples he became increasingly distracted.
I’ve never seen him this way, Wserkaf reflected inwardly. Says much that he didn’t have a stroke that very moment. Aha. There… He saw through Count Hordjedtef’s eyes as the man sprinkled the tea with some of his medicinal powder. At first, the king shot an evil look at the elder and was about to refuse it, but the Count explained it was such a slight amount of the Sweet Horizon that it would only serve to strengthen the calmative nature already in the tea. Sweet Horizon, Wserkaf thought. There it is. I have him by his own admission and he didn’t even try to cover it up for me. But who would believe what I saw since it’s still in the realm of a vision and backed by my word alone. He would simply discredit me to his minions throughout the priesthood.
“Yes Lord, I do sense the truth; that he needed your care in that first day, to break the hold of the elder woman.” Wserkaf admitted, trying to sound as if he approved of his teacher’s intervention. Satisfied his effort had worked, he breathed out again as the elder waved his hands to strengthen the image of the golden bowl. The resulting vision showed a jump forward in time.
Here, the king appeared much improved
, healthy, and fit as if he had recovered from the bout of misery and anger over the missing women. Wserkaf heard him merely ask his “wise uncle” when they would return so he could welcome them permanently into his home.
“I see it now, Great One,” the prince sighed, unable to find fault in anything he witnessed. “I see he improved and was better than he had been in months. You have not falsely led me,” Wserkaf whispered from his trance but couldn’t shake the idea that there was still more not being revealed. Wse knew the king would never have changed so greatly in a few days without great heka or medicine being used on him. He knew he had to go deeper, but to do that he had to trust his elder as a guide. That was the hard part.
Blessed goddess Ma-at reveal all to me without passion, moral, or opinion, that I may truly see reality and not illusion. He prayed with his private and most interior voice, hoping his elder hadn’t noticed some layers of his protégé’s consciousness had not been laid bare.
As if by deeper miracle, the image of the king, meek and woozy from medication, filtered over the vision Hordjedtef was sending. The two images separated. The elder believed his inspector saw what he wanted. Wserkaf saw the other reality set beside it.
The king appeared grateful and was generally all smiles in both, but whenever the elder left the room, one vision showed him relaxing and the other showed him causing himself to vomit up everything Hordjedtef had given him and follow it with whatever was left of Ariennu’s little white flowers crushed and made into a tea.
Each evening, when he was certain he had no further business to attend, he prepared for the few hours of sleep he allowed himself to take. Wserkaf saw the king tell his guards he was not to be disturbed and even sent away his fan attendant. Once he was alone, he sat in the floor of his stateroom, opened a chest, and took out a lovely little shabti.
Wserkaf knew at once that the king had commissioned a small, carved onyx image of an eastern style goddess that looked like just like Naibe. He nearly lost control of the two separate visions. The images began to merge. Hordjedtef cleared his throat, but in an instant settled as if it had been an elder’s bout of morning phlegm.
Silence: true Ma-at speak within illusion. Blessed Ma-at within the heart’s illusion; goddess Naibe please let me see, sweet one, how you tried to ease his heart when you were gone. Wserkaf repeated quietly into his own thoughts, erecting another partition between his thoughts and those of his former teacher.
He saw Menkaure place the little statuette on a cedar altar. In Hordjedtef’s projected vision, the statue was of Hethara as the divine cow. The king put red flowers at its tiny feet and lit a small bowl of incense. Soon he began to smile, to whisper and to pray to it. One night he added a tiny lapis necklace to its throat. Another night he put a crown of golden flowers on its soft black wool wig.
As he watched the true half of the vision, Wserkaf realized the king was ill and growing weaker. By day, he appeared healthy and vital. Each evening he would fall apart, lie on his side, and grasp the little idol as he prayed. If you hadn’t been gone, sweet Naibe, Wserkaf thought quietly, you could have become another wife for him; a commoner, but one to ease his great heart into the West.
Maybe she did give him strength in the last weeks before his death. What happened? He knew he had to speak aloud and state his observation about Hordjedtef’s version of the truth before his separate pathway was discovered.
“I see now that your intent was to aid him; your methods were sound.” The inspector took a deep breath, then focused on the image of the bowl. The image began to change into the wheel he and his sons had just pulled out of his pool. He heard Naibe laughing in his own memory as the water went around it and splashed among the pink sesen. Her laughter and her gentle sighs of ecstasy swept through him once more.
Look beloved and we will both see his finest moment together; when he became free of the dark that terrified him. Wserkaf heard the woman’s gentle voice enter his thoughts.
Naibe? Have you been here all along in spirit? He froze for a moment. Oh, not dead. Dear goddess not you too, if he has killed you… he gasped internally.
“Wse,” the elder’s voice cautioned him, snapping him back to the image of the wheel, which had become a bowl again. Wserkaf stealthily divided the visions again, but felt himself struggle to maintain them.
“Focus,” Hordjedtef repeated. “Yes, I’ve felt her spirit too. She who would still put treachery in your heart, whispers to it. Discern these things carefully, just as I have taught you,” his hands waved, working the image. “Now you will see the dread night, dear one, of which you have been so curious.”
This time Wserkaf’s vision revealed the king seated out on his balcony in his portable state chair. His ever-present lamps and candles flanked the seat. It was night. King Menkaure looked up at the stars; at the great Methurt, the river of milk in the sky. Among those stars, he pointed out his goddess’ star and quietly, caressed her idol. It was the anniversary of his daughter’s death. He had asked to be alone. The vision Hordjedtef put forward was the king tiredly concluding business for the evening.
“Oh Mery, my Mery god,”
The inspector heard the king’s whisper to the little doll:
“Sweet Naibe showed me that you never took your life; that it was all a witless and foolish acted out tryst that got too rough and went wrong because of the wine you also loved. But, they should have told me the truth. I knew your heart and how you loved to play.
He knew. He knew what Khentie suspected. But, why did he never confront such a lie? Why was he even civil to Maatkare or to Great One for his part in the lie to cover his grandson’s shame? Wserkaf buried another thought deep in his heart.
He saw the king call for writing tools, then shakily scrawl a coded message on a scrap of hide. He rolled it tightly enough to fit in a slot in his chair.
Not noticed? the inspector breathed out to obscure his thoughts further.
Wserkaf saw the king pick up an unconsumed cup of wine, on impulse. When he finished it, he let the cup fall from his nerveless hands. By his reaction to the drink, the inspector decided the cup had contained his calming medication. Soon, he regained enough strength to hold the shabti of Naibe close to his breast and begin to talk to her about the constellations they saw from that position.
Touching--and sad, Wserkaf thought.
Soon, as the effects of the drug filled him, he put on his crown and his formal regalia, then went to sit in the chair again. On the way to it he fell near the little altar. He held the little doll, whispered to it, and petted its hair as if he was asking her if she got hurt when he fell.
Wserkaf noticed in his own vision that a servant had heard the crash and the guards came in. In Hordjedtef’s doctored vision, the king had stumbled after his attendants helped him put away his documents. The men fetched his physician and sent for a very sleepy Hordjedtef to come from his home. By the time Great One arrived, the king was sitting in the floor, clutching the doll. On finding the wine cup empty, the high priest poured him a new and much stronger mixture of drugged wine, then tried to take the idol from him. He couldn’t.
Couldn’t he see how Our Father was affected by medicines already? Or did he no longer care? Wse wondered how the king’s condition had possibly escaped the old man’s trained eye, even if he was half-asleep.
By the time Shepseskaf arrived, his father was seated on the balcony again. The men in attendance saw he was smiling and speaking well. A crisis had apparently been averted by prompt medication. Wse envisioned the king showing the idol to Shepseskaf and quite forcefully, pulling his son’s head down to whisper something to him. He gave him the doll, and told him to look away.
When Shepseskaf stared at the doll, he seemed to marvel at it.
“Looks like Lady Naibe…” Shepseskaf showed to the vizier. Then as he was telling the others in the room that his father was better and to return to their homes, he heard the telltale sighing wheeze: “My goddess I come to you…” The men, the physician, the vizi
er, and attendants all turned to look and saw Menkaure slumped to one side in his chair, dead.
He seemed better. He had come to love Naibe as a goddess, as all men she touches do, Wserkaf mused as privately as he could while he feigned slipping into a deeper trance. Wserkaf knew his mentor could retire respected now. The secret would always be safe because there was no proof of bad behavior or murder. The hidden manipulation and master plan was becoming evident.
Maatkare was in Ta-Seti. With his temperament, the young general could be sent word to stir up some trouble, put it down, and return so glorious that he would be able to raise as many troops as he needed to conquer the region. His adoring warriors would roll over an unpopular king. Hordjedtef, now retired, would have set all in motion flawlessly.
It’s too easy to see now. None of this can be random, that’s easy to see if it’s fallen together in such a fine order, but how long has this been going on? How many years has this been planned? All his life? he breathed out. What did Menkaure whisper to Shepsesi in his last moment? Only he can tell me. For now, though…
“I have seen the truth, Lord,” Wserkaf formed his response as carefully as his master had constructed the lies that manipulated it. “I do not doubt you any longer. I see you had the best interests of the Two Lands close to your heart at all times.” He breathed, breaking his trance for a moment and looking up, earnestly. “Our Great Menkaure found joy on his last day and will rise up in bliss. I saw that he spoke to his bodily son; to let him know it was his time. He was upright and mighty of spirit until the end. He faced it bravely and without fear.”
Heart of the Lotus Page 9
