Pagosh stepped forward to greet me as I passed through Ramose’s gate. “So, sunu, what kept you?”
My heart jumped into my throat. “Her fever returned?”
“No, but if you believed it might, why leave her to last?”
I willed my heart back down into my chest. “And because of that you withdraw the hand you extended to me in the night?”
“You speak in riddles,” he muttered, turning to lead me toward the priest’s house.
“I think you understand me only too well, friend.”
“Then come … Tenre.” It did not come easy for him. “My lord wishes to speak with you first, and the little one grows impatient. She has been waiting all day with her Jackals and Hounds, ready to play.”
“Your little goddess thinks I come to play games?”
“Aset is not one to lie.”
“No, she does not lie,” I agreed, vowing to guard my tongue more carefully. “But Jackals and Hounds is no game for a child.”
He gave me an indulgent look. “She has a kind heart and probably will let you win the first game.”
I followed him to the big room where the priest had awaited me before. “I am forever in your debt, Senakhtenre,” he said in greeting. Nor did he keep me standing this time, but invited me to join him on the padded sitting shelf. “Pagosh believes you are wise beyond your years, and I see the proof of that in my daughter’s eyes.” His generous mouth hinted at the rare smile to come, and I caught a glimpse of Aset in her father’s face. “Since the will of Amen has brought us together not once, but twice, it appears that our destinies have been joined. I would be a fool to turn away from you again, so I ask you now to become physician to my household.” I stared at him, wondering if he jested at my expense. “Your first duty would be to care for my daughter, though I would expect you to attend the other women, as well. Merit, for one.”
It is common enough for a wealthy man to employ an ordinary physician to tend the sickness and injuries suffered by his servants, fellahin, and animals, but that was not what he was asking. “I am not—” I stopped and began again. “If you believe I can perform miracles, my lord, you have been misled.”
He waved that away with an impatient hand. “I admit that I made it my business to learn why you are not like the others, and questioned every man I sent to you for treatment. So I leave the miracles to Amen. It is the wisdom you have gained from your endless questions and experiments that I desire from you. In exchange, I offer you a house of your own and food from my kitchen. Beer from my brewery and wine from my vineyard.” Ramose paused, but my thoughts ran in every direction at once. “All the eggs you need from the fowl yard,” he added, watching me with those all-seeing blue eyes. “Ten rations of beef and double that of grain each month.”
He offered me riches beyond any I ever expected in this life, but the man sat on Amen’s Sacred Council, and I have no love for priests. He also sent the priest-physicians packing when they allowed his royal wife to walk near the western horizon, a voice reminded me. My ka, I suppose.
“I see you hold back for another reason. Tell me, then, for I must be well fortified indeed if I am to disappoint both Pagosh and my daughter.”
“It is not that I do not wish to care for your daughter, my lord, but that so many others depend on me.”
“What if I find another sunu to serve them, could you not teach him your ways?”
“Perhaps, but no one else can honor the promise I made my assistant, whose wife soon will bring forth their first child.” Should he chide me for playing the role of midwife after calling me to attend his own lady, I would have the measure of the man and find it easy to refuse his offer.
“You speak of your man Khary?” I nodded, wondering what else he knew of my affairs. “Then have him send for you when her time is at hand.”
It was not until Khary came to work for me that I discovered he could read and write, and that behind his tawny cat’s eyes and gentle hands lies a wit sharp enough to hone my own. In the end I hired a second man to till my soil and have been teaching Khary to prepare my pills and potions. I did not wish to give up the idea I have been considering for some time, of dispensing our medicines and herbs to all those in need.
“I would need to maintain my house in town,” I told him, testing how deep his desire for my services might run, “and go there to replenish the medicines my assistant prepares.”
His eyes narrowed at that, but in the end he nodded. “Anything else?”
“I must be allowed to treat all your workers and their families, since whatever pestilence attacks them could be visited on those you wish most to protect.” I dared much should Ramose take as heresy what I said about the spread of pestilence among rich and poor alike. Perhaps some sixth sense told him I would not come otherwise.
“Then I rely on you to do as you see fit. Only be sure you do not neglect my daughter.” He gave me a thoughtful glance. “My animals, too?”
“If I am to gain the confidence of your daughter.”
He almost smiled. “We are agreed, then?”
“I would like to consider my decision over the night, if you will permit it.”
“Then think about this, as well. I do not fault Merit for loving her overmuch, but she cannot protect Aset from the cruelties she will encounter in the temple school, from both the priests and her schoolmates. At times, perhaps, even from me. I do not wish to see her spirit crushed, nor do I want her spoiled by indulgence, and the path between is a narrow one. The same path you often walk in hurting a child in order to heal.”
“But I have no experience in the raising of children, my lord.”
“You do not give over easily, do you, sunu? Another reason I need you. Call it an experiment, then, if that is what it takes. Give me a year. At the end of that time we will talk again.” He glanced up at the clerestory windows. “It is time for me to bid Amen-Re farewell, while you see to my daughter. We will talk again tomorrow, but whatever you decide, Senakhtenre, be assured that you have a friend in the house of Ramose.”
An hour later I found myself bargaining with his daughter as well. “Bastet refuses to nurse her kittens,” she insisted. “If I do not feed them, they will cry all night.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeated, watching her replace the carved wooden sticks. Was there some advantage in playing the floppy-eared hounds I didn’t know about? “The chill of evening soon will lie upon the land.”
“But evil demons hide in that dark corner and only wait for you to leave to make me sick again.” Tuli let out a pitiful howl, adding his voice to hers.
“Then put on something to keep warm, and I will take you up on the roof,” I told her, while Pagosh listened in silence.
“I am warm enough.” She jumped off the kitten couch, ready to go. She looked at me, and ran to a clothes chest. Grabbing the first tunic she found, she slipped it over her head and wriggled it down to her knees.
“Where are your sandals?” I asked.
“I don’t need any.” Apparently one look was all it took for her to tell I would not give over on this, either. “Why?”
“So you will form the habit of wearing them. There are worms in the dirt, and one kind can enter your body through breaks in the skin between your toes.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widened. “But my sandals hurt my toes. Sometimes they make me fall. What if I should break my arm or my head? Surely that is worse than having a worm crawl between my toes.”
“Then we must find you a pair that do not hurt.” While she slipped on her sandals I reached into my goatskin bag for one of the carved animals I carry to distract a sick child. “A blind man carved this from a piece of papyrus root.” I held out the little lion.
“Truly? How, if he cannot see?”
“By feeling with his fingers until the shape fits the picture he carries in his memory. Just because a man loses his sight does not mean he cannot remember what he has seen.” She closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the animal’s body and legs, s
topping to test his ruff of dried papyrus heads, and finally the tail. Then she opened those blue eyes and gave me a smile I shall never forget. “You may keep it if you like.”
“I will treasure it always. Will you tell the blind man that for me?”
I nodded, pulled a blanket off her couch, and lifted her in my arms. Pagosh led us to the steps leading up to the roof, with Tuli running ahead, then circling back. He was too excited to go slowly but unwilling to let Aset out of his sight.
The fiery orb of the sun was just beginning to slide behind the western cliffs, and a cloud of dust hovered over the red sand, like smoke rising from the burning desert. I lowered her to a bench beneath the palm-frond canopy and for a while we sat taking in the scene around us. As boys Mena and I used to climb the red cliffs that guard the Place of Truth, to stand high above the mud-brick houses below and look across the river to the Eastern Desert and distant mountains, wondering what lay beyond them. Now we looked toward the fine houses around Pharaoh’s palace and the village of the necropolis workers nestled in the low, rocky hills.
“Look, Tenre.” She pulled one arm free of the blanket. “See the canal to Pharaoh’s House of Jubilation? That is where my sister Ankhesenpa lives, and Merankh.”
I stared at the rambling complex of royal apartments, understanding for the first time what she meant when she had promised Tuli not to leave him, even to go across the river with her lady mother. “Ankhesenpa?” I repeated, since she used the Queen’s old birth name, which had been changed when she married her mother’s brother, Tutankhamen.
“Pharaoh’s Great Royal Wife. Now that I am well I will visit her, to cheer her up. Her little babe came into the world asleep, and none of Pharaoh’s physicians could wake him. Ankhes is the one who taught me how to make rag dolls, for Tuli, so he will not be so lonely when I am at the temple.”
“And Merankh?”
“He is Tutankhamen’s great huge hunting hound. Except he barks when he is not supposed to and scares the birds away before my uncle can loose an arrow or throw a stick. At times he even knocks me down with his tail, though he does not mean to.”
For a while we sat watching Re sail his boat toward the western horizon, listening to the stillness. It seemed to me as if every living creature held his breath, waiting for the goddess to cry—except Tuli, whose tongue lolled from the side of his mouth while Aset stroked his back with a bare foot.
I was trying to think of a story to amuse her when my eyes fell on a lotus-covered pond. Banked to contain the water flowing into it from a nearby collecting tank by way of a canal, it contained a thin sheet of water even with the harvest season near an end.
“Do you know what those are?” I asked Aset, pointing.
“I think—” She stretched taller and whispered what sounded like, “Yes, but where could they have come from?” Then in a voice full of excitement she exclaimed, “It is a great herd of elephants! See how they flap their big ears to fan themselves in the heat?” She glanced at me. “Don’t you see them, Tenre?”
I glanced down to find her watching me with the unwavering gaze of a child who never gets enough to eat. “Of course, I only wanted to be sure. They appear to be the rarest kind, too—the ones with blue eyes.”
“As blue as mine?” Still she watched me.
“Uh—no, not quite,” I replied, after looking again. The big green leaves did look like elephant’s ears. “But then I have never seen any as blue as yours, even on a monkey.” She laughed with delight, a soft sound that bubbled in her throat.
To keep her smiling I told her about the vervet monkey Khary was training to pick figs from the sycamores, who eats two for every one he puts in his basket. By the time I finished, the sky was awash with color and the shadows below the red cliffs were reaching across the valley, like fingers trying to hold on to the thin strip of river.
“Did you know that before the world began there was nothing but water, anywhere? Until one day a blue lotus rose from the water.” Apparently she thought it was her turn to tell me a story. “When the lotus opened its petals, a beautiful goddess was sitting in its golden heart—the one we call Re. Light streamed from her body to banish the darkness. But she was lonely, so she imagined all the other gods and goddesses, and gave them life simply by naming them. Nut, our Mother Sky. Geb, the earth, and Shu, the air that separates them.” She paused. “Did you know the lotus blossom closes its petals every evening and vanishes back into the water? One day perhaps she will not return at all and there will be nothing but darkness ever again.”
All the wriggling had caused her blanket to fall to the bench, so I wrapped it around her shoulders and tucked in the corner. “The lotus blossom opens in the morning and closes in the evening. Some never reopen, others do for perhaps three or four days. Then it sinks under the water, where it gives birth to a number of seeds, so there is no reason to worry or feel sad.”
“How can you know that?”
“When I was a boy I spent many an hour watching the blossoms open and close.”
“Why?”
I lifted her onto my lap to shield her from the breeze as Re reached between the cliffs to kiss Mother River farewell, setting the sky afire with streaks of crimson and gold. “My father had me learn my numbers by counting the lotus blossoms in our pond. When a seed is ready, tiny sacs of air lift it to the surface of the pond, where it drifts until they dry and pop open. In that way the seed falls to the bottom in a new place, where it puts down roots and sends up another plant.”
“How I wish I could have been there with you, to watch the seeds bob to the surface of the pond.” She sighed, then was quiet for so long I thought she had fallen asleep. Reluctant to disturb her, I sat watching Re spread a blazing sheet of orange across the quiet surface of the Nile, until—without warning—she twisted around to peer at my face.
“Must I always be sick before you will come to see me?” I knew then that my decision had been made for me, with just one word. Why?
“Soon I will be here every day, for I am to become physician to your father’s household. Perhaps then you will come to visit me.” A brilliant smile lit her enormous blue eyes, making me want to give her something more. “But next time I will take the Hounds, while you play the Jackals.”
5
They were crowded into one of two side rooms that looked out through a glass window to the scanner, where Tashat lay with her head just inside the gantry of the huge white cylinder—like an ancient sacrifice about to be sucked into the gaping maw of some hungry monster.
“Let’s begin at five millimeters,” Max suggested to Phil Lowenstein, who sat at the control console, “from the vertex of the skull to the cervicothoracic junction. I want enough measurements to produce an exact replica.”
“You name the tune and I’ll play it.” Phil’s long fingers moved over the keyboard, sending commands to the scanner. He was taller than Cleo, with a lanky build and feet to match his hands.
“That’s the equivalent of snapping a picture every five millimeters,” Kate whispered to Cleo, “from the top of the skull to the base of her neck.” She calculated how many “slices” that would produce and came up with 125—of the head alone!
With his part done, Phil swiveled around on his stool, hardly able to keep his eyes off Kate’s old roommate. Cleo had dressed conservatively for the occasion in a beige ribbon-knit sheath and fringed silk piano scarf that dipped almost to her knees in back, a twenties collectible that pointed up her Irish-setter red hair. “Do you think that’s how she really looked in life?” Phil inquired.
“The Egyptians believed the spirit left the body each morning and returned in the evening, so the funerary mask had to at least resemble the person it belonged to. But how closely?” Cleo shrugged and spread her hands, setting off the castanetlike clicking of a half-dozen Bakelite bracelets.
“Here comes the first one,” Max announced, moving back so Kate and Cleo could see each image or “slice” as it came up on the monitor. “Keep in mind that
what we’re seeing on the left is Tashat’s right side. This rounded shape is the outline of the cartonnage”—he leaned forward to point to the wavering gray lines—“and these are layers of bandaging. This thicker outline is the skull, which shows white because the radiodensity of bone is high compared to the soft tissues.”
New images came and went at a fairly fast clip, requiring their eyes to constantly process and release each complex image, usually before Kate was ready. Max let several go by before he spoke again.
“Remember what I said about the seams or sutures in the skull closing at different ages?” He glanced at Cleo. “The first starts closing at twenty-two, the second at twenty-four, and the last one at twenty-six. See this line?” He pointed again. “This is the second suture. It looks fuzzy because the edges are starting to feather. That means it’s beginning to close.”
“You’re saying Tashat was Kate’s age?” Cleo inquired.
Max sent Kate a quizzical glance. “If you mean between twenty-four and twenty-six, yes,” he confirmed. “I don’t see any sign that the last suture is beginning to close, but I’ll wait until we see the epiphyses before making a final judgment.”
“Epif—what’s that?” Cleo mouthed to Kate.
‘The growing ends of the long bones in the arms and legs, hands and feet,” Phil replied, “where the soft cartilage eventually turns into bone.”
Cleo glanced at Max. “Okay, but if the last one starts to close at twenty-six, how would you know if someone is—oh, say your age?”
Kate wanted to kick her, but Max took no notice of Cleo’s heavy-handed remark. “The sutures reach closure in the same order—at thirty-five, forty-two, and forty-seven—so we’d extrapolate more or less the same way. Generally we have the most success between twenty and fifty-five, since other changes occur with puberty and senility. In females the epiphyses close three to four years after menarche, for instance.”
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