“We are the Royal family, you idiots!” I protested. The commotion soon brought out Ti-Ameny, who whispered to the leader of the guards and soon we were walking into the spacious, light-filled entrance to the palace.
“It is grave,” Ti-Ameny began. “He was struck by pains in his chest during a meeting with his Council. Fortunately, Amka was there and was able to minister to him.”
“How bad is grave?” mother asked coldly. Ti-Ameny was momentarily taken aback by mother’s tone. She first looked around her before answering.
“He is pale and he has difficulty breathing. I have seen this before, many times. His heart will soon be weighed on Anubis’ scale.” I shuddered, thinking of mother’s earlier curse.
Despite my mother’s angry swearing against my father throughout my life, curses that were sometimes justified but often exaggerated, I felt a strong pang in my heart over Ti-Ameny’s dire prediction. I know that my father often slighted my mother with his actions. Whether he intended to do so I couldn’t properly judge from mother’s reactions alone. He married her and then shunned her, that much was obvious. He created a child with her and then mostly ignored us. But, although I saw him irregularly, when I did Djer was always friendly to me, although distant and formal. I never looked at him as my father. He was not like the fathers I saw throughout the court, mostly loving men who doted on their wives and children. The only time I saw Djer treat a child warmly was when he was with Mery. My heart ached now with that memory.
“Is he in pain?” I asked of Ti-Ameny.
“I think not. Amka has given him an herb that keeps his senses dulled.”
“Can we see him?” I persisted. Ti-Ameny shot a look at my mother.
“Not at this time,” she replied slowly. “Herneith, Wadjet, Mery and his advisors are all there. The room is crowded. I’m sure you understand,” she said casting her glance from my mother to me.
We went back to our rooms to await word of Djer’s condition. Shepsit asked me to stay with her in her bedroom, so her servants brought in a bed for me to sleep on. But it was hardly needed for I paced anxiously, sometimes leaning over the balcony brickwork or peering toward Mother Nile shimmering under Ra’s disk below us.
It is said by the Horus priests that if a person survives a dire illness through the night he has a greater chance of returning to health. So when we awoke we waited for word from the palace. Just after Ra rose into a cloudless sky, we received that word; a series of blasts from the ram’s horn. During the long night, King Djer had begun his journey to the Afterworld.
Within moments we heard wailing throughout the Royal Court. Women in the courtyard rent their finest garments in grief. Handmaidens ran through the alleys, screaming, spreading the news of the King’s death. Men fell to the ground, beating their chests in anguish. Horus priests from the temples of Inabu-hedj, as well as priestesses from the Temple of Isis scurried earnestly to their temples to receive offerings and chant prayers during this propitious time. Looking out from mother’s balcony, I could feel ma’at’s tender hold on our land begin to quiver and slip away. The life balance of the Two Lands was in mortal danger. A chill ran through me as I contemplated images of the evil mut spirits gathering, their foul bodies slithering just outside the Two Lands, probing for openings into our world and seeking opportunities to create the death and chaos for which they were created. I imagined Apep the serpent god sounding his horn, summoning the mut demons from every crevice in the underground. My hands sweated and I trembled with fear.
The next seventy days were a terrible time, in Upper Kem at least, for I’d heard from mother that many of our relatives in Lower Kem had secretly celebrated Djer’s death. Despite four generations of unification, my Delta people still felt slighted by those from Upper Kem who lorded their power over them. Since I was old enough to remember, visits with my relatives were always filled with back room whispering and late night plotting. And mother, may Isis bless her, was always in the thick of it.
Three days after my father’s death, a delegation of senior Horus priests arrived by boat from Nekhen to prepare the king for his journey, for only they were allowed to touch the body of the brother of Horus. Wedding and birth celebrations and parties of any kind were cancelled throughout the Two Lands. Wherever one walked, women gathered in small groups and spoke in hushed tones, frequently accenting their remarks with the hand sign across the brow made to ward off the evil eye. Cripples waited in the heat, in long lines, to bring offerings to the priests and priestesses in the temples. Children were quickly scolded for wandering out of their parents’ sight, so great were the people’s fears of mut spirits seeking to create illness among our youth. Caravans no longer wound through the desert and business dealings were put on hold.
With the King dead, ma’at, that delicate balance between the forces of good and evil that we so depended upon for our very existence, was endangered. People awoke hesitantly each morning, frightened that Ra may not have risen in the sky. Every stumble, every child’s scraped knee was viewed as an omen. Shamans throughout the lands were busy interpreting such events, as well as the confused dreams of the rich and powerful. Even the dead of the wretched rekhi couldn’t be buried properly since the King’s ka was in limbo. Instead, much as our ancestors did many generations ago, they were placed on their sides in simple shallow pits in the desert, with only a few jars of food and possessions to serve them in the Afterlife.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when one of Mery’s handmaidens arrived and summoned me to the palace one afternoon. I hurried there, not having seen my cousin for two or three ten-days. Both my mother and I were starved for information. The rumors within the palace were that she took the death of Djer very hard, but even with that I wasn’t prepared for the scene that greeted me.
As I came into her wing of rooms, nothing initially seemed unusual. Her servants scurried around, sweeping out the ever-present desert sand, dusting the mud brick columns, trimming the abundance of potted plants and removing bowls of spoiled fruits and replacing them with fresh ones. But, when I entered Mery’s private bedroom, I was startled. Wadjet wasn’t present, probably engaged in one of the endless meetings over succession that must have occupied his attention. Mery’s clothes were tossed on her bed. Her sandals lay in the middle of the floor, one overturned, as if she’d kicked them off and forgotten them. A piece of apple, now browned and soft, lay near the bedpost, large black flies hovering around it.
“Mery?” I called tentatively. Something stirred in the corner of the room and I immediately turned toward the sound. Mery was curled like a baby, a light shawl covering her slight body. As I approached her, the smell of vomit was strong.
“Oh, Nubiti!” she moaned. “It hurts. It’s the baby, my baby.” As I squatted toward her, Ti-Ameny entered the room. Our eyes met for the briefest of moments, but I read in them the severity of the situation.
I gently took Mery’s hand in my own and she immediately grabbed it in both hers and pulled it toward her face. Tears wet my hand. Her body felt hot to the touch. Ti-Ameny moved to my side.
“My princess, you must allow Nubiti and I to move you to the bed,” she whispered, as she took Mery’s arm firmly and eased her from the floor. Mery groaned and clutched her abdomen. As we led her, sobbing, to her bed, the tapping of Amka’s wooden staff suddenly announced his arrival.
“Why was I not summoned immediately?” he demanded angrily of Ti-Ameny. She silenced him with a look that would have halted a lion in full charge. Once we had made Mery comfortable, Ti-Ameny made room at the bedside for Amka. He quickly went to work with his characteristic efficiency, feeling her pulse and looking into her eyes and throat. In all the years I’d known him, he hadn’t changed one bit. His bald head accented his dark, penetrating eyes. His skinny frame made his large hands and hooked nose look almost comical.
When he was done, he asked me to leave the room, while he and Ti-Ameny performed a more intimate examination. I stood outside waiting. One of Mery’s servants approac
hed me to inquire how she was, but one of my stern looks in her direction soon disabused her of the notion that she’d dare address the Second Queen’s daughter without being summoned.
In a short while, Ti-Ameny came to get me. “It is bad,” she began. “She has miscarried.” I noticed spots of blood on the front of Ti-Ameny’s robe. “She has been terribly depressed at Djer’s death. Not even Wadjet has been able to console her. They had a special relationship, she and the King. Amka believes the baby had to escape her body because her sadness was too much for any child’s ka to bear.”
At that moment confused emotions overcame me in quick order. As a woman, and as Mery’s older sister, I felt a small part of the pang of loss that Mery must be feeling. Yet, just as quickly my mind grasped the sheer enormity of this turn of events and the good fortune it potentially held for me. I wanted to race out to tell Shepsit about our unimagined opportunity. Yet, I held my place and didn’t let my face betray me. I went back into Mery’s chambers and in front of her two most important ministers I held her close and spent the next few hours comforting her as her handmaidens changed her sheets and washed her frail body and tiny breasts. Amka left and returned with an herb dissolved in wine to calm her and she eventually slipped into a deep, but restless sleep. I used that as the excuse I sought to leave her bedside.
Shepsit hugged me and squealed with delight when I told her the news of Mery’s miscarriage. Once we’d calmed down, she brought out an urn of fine wine from her closet to celebrate quietly, since libation was forbidden during the King’s mourning period. Due to the mourning there was little we could do at present other than plan, so we spent the better part of what remained of the day discussing the several directions that were suddenly open to us. But first, we drank a toast to Apep, the god of the Underworld, and the most powerful god of the Delta, who had brought to us this unexpected fortune. We drew and redrew plans, for mother was far more cautious than I. As Ra set in the sky, we discussed what must be done next. With that accomplished, we both slept well.
Just beyond another ten-day, Djer’s funeral finally took place. The Horus priests had commandeered the temple in Inabu-hedj for their secret rituals and for seventy days they prepared Djer’s body for his journey. Once they began, no one could see or touch the priests. Food was delivered and left outside the temple walls. Rumors circulated wildly each of those days. Some claimed the guards heard King Djer moaning throughout the preparations. Others claimed that Djer’s ka was seen walking the temple grounds. Anyone allowed to wander near to the temple heard the priests chanting and singing for hours at a time, sometimes at Ra’s ascension, and at other times during the deepest parts of the night.
For me the time between Djer’s death and burial was a luxury. I spent days dictating my words to my trusted Delta scribes, planning and making lists of things I had to do to further our ambitions.
Days before the funeral, crowds began to gather in the town such as I’d never seen before. Even the Sed Festival crowds, estimated at up to fifty thousand in a good year, were dwarfed by the masses congregated for Djer’s funeral. The King’s guards believed that the population of Inabu-hedj had swelled from twenty thousand inhabitants to more than one hundred thousand.
On the morning of the funeral, I awoke to the sounds of rams’ horns being blown from the Temples of Horus and Isis. Although we were hundreds of cubits from the closest temple, almost immediately I heard chants and prayers of welcome to Ra resonating in the thick morning air.
No one in the palace ate anything that morning for, like Djer himself, we’d be symbolically journeying with him to the Afterlife. He would be laid to rest in his mastaba, the lid of his coffin closed and the tomb sealed. Then he’d continue without us to his meeting with Anubis and, if his heart were found to be lighter than a feather, he’d be allowed to partake of the storerooms of meals that accompanied him. I’d never heard a priest state how long the journey to the Afterlife took, but as a symbol of our mourning, no one but children and the elderly would partake of a morsel of food until later that day.
But it was far more than a day without food for Mery. So deep was her grief, neither Ti-Ameny nor Amka could persuade her to eat much. When I saw her a few days after the funeral, she was gaunt, her eyes unnaturally sunken, and her skin as pale as papyrus paper. But mostly it was her ba that seemed to be affected, since she was merely a listless shell of her former youthful, energetic self.
Ti-Ameny used my visit to meet with Amka in an adjoining room and so I situated myself in a spot where I could observe them while talking with Mery. I watched as they poured over papyrus scrolls that Amka took from various clay jars. Amka animatedly pointed from scroll to scroll and Ti-Ameny nodded in obvious agreement.
“Our beloved Djer’s now in the Afterworld,” I ventured hesitatingly to Mery. She didn’t respond, but stared quietly out toward Mother Nile.
“It is so soothing,” she offered after several minutes. “Mother Nile flows and flows and flows.” She sighed and rested her head on the balcony wall. “I wonder what it would be like to gently slip under her waters,” she whispered so softly I had to lean forward to hear her.
“Mery, you mustn’t say that! It is forbidden!” I admonished.
“I only mean that it would probably be so pleasant, so peaceful, to surrender to her life-giving waters… to be nourished by her sweet embrace.” She closed her eyes and appeared to drift off to sleep.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she added with a start, still resting her head on the balcony wall, as if she had not the strength to support it.
“Yes,” I responded.
“The funeral procession… they tell me it was marvelous to behold.” This last comment intrigued me.
“But Mery, you were there.”
“I suppose I was.” She hesitated for many seconds, as if her mind were mired in quicksand. “I do not remember it. It was more a dream than a real happening.” It was then that I realized that Amka’s medicines must have put her in a dream state to enable her to be at her husband’s side through the ordeal. I silently thanked Isis that such weak afflictions of the ba had never affected me, despite the disappointments that my mother and I had faced over the years and her quickness to criticize my behaviors.
More the pity that Mery was so weak, for Djer’s funeral was an event that would mark people’s lives. Forever more, rekhis and royalty alike would refer to that day as a milestone, a day against which all others would be measured. I once heard one of my maidservant’s daughters say many years later that she turned twelve in the year of Djer’s death, not even mentioning that the year was also marked by her marriage and first pregnancy and a birth from which she nearly died.
For me, Djer’s death represented another milestone, for the outpouring of love for my father also taught me a valuable lesson, one that I wouldn’t share with my mother. My view of my father was terribly skewed. I hadn’t realized how protected I was within the walls of the palace, nor how one-sided was my mother’s feelings toward my father. Seeing thousands upon thousands of common Kemians weeping openly for their King shocked me. During the funerary procession I forced myself to stare straight ahead, not knowing how to handle the emotions of the throngs that mobbed us. They tore their garments, threw flowers and grabbed onto our chair platforms to walk a few yards with us telling us their tales of Djer’s mercy and fairness before they were pushed away by the King’s guards. Djer was loved, more than I thought possible.
That night, as I sat upon my bed, I swore an oath to Isis to cast a wider net in gathering information, an oath that would later prove critical to my successes. My mother would be one source of information. She would no longer be my main source.
One other oath I swore to myself, never to allow myself the weaknesses of Mery’s ba. I would always remain strong and unyielding, focused on my vision. I knew I was better than Mery and time would vindicate our cause, the ascendancy of Lower Kem over haughty Upper Kem.
I slipped contentedly under the light linen
sheet of my bed and for the first time in many ten-days I felt a sense of hope, of a future full of promise. I was elated. I envisioned my eventual role as Queen of the Two Lands, wearing the gold crown and jewels and the finest gowns designed by Kem’s best craftsmen. Their skill made me appear thinner and hid my large breasts. People sought favors from me and bowed low as I was carried through the streets. Suitors gazed upon my curves with obvious lust.
The feathery sheet caressed my sensitive skin and I shivered as it touched my nipple. I grabbed my breasts and squeezed them tightly. Turning on my side I felt that my Wings of Isis were moist and slippery and I squeezed my thighs to intensify the pleasure between my legs.
I thought to just fall asleep, but the delicious feel of my inner pleasure was not to be denied. Not tonight. Ever so gently I caressed my inner thighs, teasing my sensitive skin and increasing my excitement. When I finally touched the pleasure spot between my wings, I gasped, for it felt delightful beyond imagining. I rubbed it tenderly now, rocking slowly back and forth. When I could stand it no longer, I reached for the blanket that sat on the chair next to my bed. I rolled it tight and placed it between my thighs. I rubbed against it, at first slowly, then faster and faster until the sensations brought me to the very edge and I slipped beyond my mortal bounds. My eyes rolled back in my head and I groaned aloud as I flew aloft with Isis, wave after wave of pleasure flowing through my body. Completely spent, I slept soundly as I hadn’t done in many ten-days.
Slowly, Mery began to recover from the spell she was under, in no small part due to the role I played, and played well. Both Amka and Ti-Ameny were impressed with my virtuous behavior and told me so many times and even Wadjet nodded his approval from time to time. It was easy for me, for I felt little for spoiled Mery and even less for her whining and pitiable weakness. For my efforts I was amply rewarded. I had access to Mery’s heart and to all the goings-on in the Royal court and, most especially, the Royal bedroom.
The Dagger of Isis (The First Dynasty Book 2) Page 5
