“Bear with us a minute, Katie,” Max murmured into her earphones. She waited, wishing they would get their act together, which finally made her smile. How many times had she been on the receiving end of that one?
“Next we’re going to read you a list of animals. We want you to say yes when you hear the name of any animal you think is dangerous. Ready?” She said yes, then waited.
“Monkey.” Pause. “Dog. Sheep.” Pause. “Cat.”
“Yes!”
“Horse.” Pause. “Owl. Lion.” Long pause, then “Mouse.”
“Yes!” As soon as she said it she tried to take it back. “I must’ve been thinking rat.”
“That’s okay. Let’s just go on.” Pause. “Armadillo.”
“Yes … no. I’m not sure.”
“Scorpion.”
“Yes!”
“Sam.”
She started laughing, and felt the tension drain from her body, freeing her of the confusion and frustration born of never being sure she would be able to decipher or understand what was going on around her.
“That’s our pie in the sky, Kate—discovering the functional basis for humor,” Max said through the earphones with a smile in his voice. “You just lit up the entire universe. Time to quit.”
I am an idea wrapped in flesh that sprang from the belly of the sky Like a hawk I sail beyond the known into the realm of the unknown.
—Normandi Ellis, Awakening Osiris
18
Year Four in the Reign of Horemheb
(1344 B.C.)
DAY 3. THIRD MONTH OF PLANTING
Mena brought us news today that Senmut is on his way to Waset, to recruit physicians for his House of Life.
“Now that Pharaoh commands the outline scribes to draw in the old way,” Aset pointed out, “he will have to look elsewhere for one such as he wants. Horemheb even ordered the walls of my grandfather’s House of Jubilation painted over.”
Mena’s worried eyes sought mine, for she has never referred to the Magnificent Amenhotep as her grandfather before, at least not in our presence.
“Not in his wife’s apartments,” Nebet told her. “Mutnodjme forbids it.” Now that she is in training to become one of the favorites who one day will serve the Queen, Mena’s daughter comes less often than before. At eleven she favors her mother, but in every other way is herself, especially the smile that mixes an air of mystery with sensuality. Aset says Nebet lives in a place of her own making, which is as good an explanation as any.
“Pharaoh only tries to restore the proper respect for our laws,” Mena tried to explain, “to rid the Two Lands of the corruption that comes close to beggaring us.”
“Enforcing just laws and fair wages for a day’s work is one thing,” Aset argued. “Clipping the wings of a bird is something else.”
“At least no one lacks for work.” If Mena was stubborn in his defense, it was out of loyalty to his General, who has named him Chief of Pharaoh’s Physicians. But I do not criticize how my friend plays the game of politics. That he remains true at the core despite the duplicity that runs rampant among those near the throne, I credit in part to his wife and the kind of love I see between them still.
“Only because he tries to bury the truth,” Aset insisted, equally unbending. “He has ordered the names of the Pharaohs carved into the temple wall. Yet not only the Heretic’s name is missing from the list. He also leaves off Osiris Tutankhamen and Smenkhkare. And if she never existed, then what am I—a vision conjured up by some priest drunk on henbane?”
DAY 16, FIRST MONTH OF HARVEST
I tucked the scroll I brought away with me last evening into the belt of my kilt, but I had to wait until Nofret left us to confront Aset. Then I simply unrolled it and asked, “How do these get across the river? For one to somehow fall into the hands of a palace guard I could explain away as a trick of the gods. But one of Senmut’s friends who gathered at the Clay Jar to celebrate his return said he recognized the hand!”
“How should I know?” she replied without looking at me.
“You would be disingenuous with me now, after all this time?” I stopped short of asking her why everything has become so stiff and awkward between us, but at least her eyes met mine.
“I do not mean to be. It is just that I don’t want you to blame Tamin or Nofret for taking them to the market. They only want something to laugh about with their friends.” Ipwet has enlisted other women to help her meet the growing demand for her sandals, and now Tamin needs another hand to help her sell them.
“I see nothing humorous in this. The story is not only violent but seditious.” I was not being entirely truthful, for Aset can make even the most vicious animal appear comical just by the way he bends a leg or raises one eyebrow. But lately her wit has sharpened and her picture-stories begin to exhibit a bite they did not have before. This one showed a big baboon with his mantle puffed out and ears extended like the brown quartzite figure that once stood before the tomb of the Magnificent Amenhotep—until Horemheb had it removed to his own tomb. Next to him a big rat stood on his hind legs cracking a whip over a herd of goats, whose feet were shackled by the wooden blocks used to restrain prisoners. The baboon cleared a path with his axe, lopping off a goat’s foot here, an ear there, then a nose, while behind him a river of blood rose until it spilled into the green fields on either side.
“People see what they want in them.”
“They see exactly what you mean for them to!” That I raised my voice in anger to her shocked me more than her, but still she refused to leave off defending what she did.
“It is the act of a barbarian to chop off the hand of a man who steals bread because his children are hungry. If I do not say it, who will? Clean-shaven men like my father?” She shook her head. “To commit such an act in the name of a god does not make it maat.”
I would not disagree and she knew it, but that did not lessen the danger to her. “Any more of these and you could lose your own hand,” I warned, intending to leave it at that. Instead, my injured pride took control of my tongue. “Do you consider me so—so tiresome, then? Lately it seems that you—
Her left hand moved as if to reach out to me, then stilled. “What ties my tongue is fear of disappointing you, of failing to be what you want me to be, for I am not and never will be all you believe me to be. Who do you see when you look at me—an innocent young girl, free of guile or evil intent?” She shook her head. “How could I be? I am my mother’s daughter. In that at least I have no choice.”
“In no way are you like the woman who gave you life, either by nature or intent,” I assured her. “Sometimes I think you care more for others than yourself. A little girl with a malformed hip, clumsy Ruka, Resh the potter—all open like a flower to your sun because you shower them with kindness and love. Even a street dog.”
At that a smile began to tug at the corner of her mouth, giving me the courage to let my last arrow fly. “Do not forget that you are your father’s daughter as well. Should you need proof of that you have only to look in your mirror.” The smile spread from her mouth to her eyes. “What is the secret of those blue eyes, I wonder?” I mused, to keep her smiling. Instead she took me seriously.
“Surely you do not believe that nonsense about the hard parts of the body coming from the father and the soft from the mother!” she chided. “Uzahor once told me that his father’s mother had blue eyes. Yet none of her children did, nor their children. If my eyes are a gift from my father, why did Uzahor’s grandmother have no children with eyes like hers?”
I shrugged and spread my hands, for I have no answer. But the news she imparted so carelessly confirmed what I already suspected—that Uzahor was Ramose’s father. Indeed, that would help explain why Aset inherited not only Uzahor’s vast collection of scrolls but his villa in Western Waset, making her a wealthy woman in her own right. For now it sits empty, maintained by one of the old man’s faithful retainers, a constant reminder that Ramose will have no trouble arranging an advantageous
match for her. Nor can that be long off now. Already Aset is five months beyond her fifteenth feast day, and it has been two years since Uzahor passed through the reeds.
As we parted, she touched my hand and gave me a bittersweet smile. “What I fear most, Tenre, is that you will tire of my questions—my childishness.”
Surprise took my tongue and scrambled my thoughts. Surely she understands me well enough to know that I have never considered her questions childish. Could she have heard something in one of the letters Pagosh brings from the High Priest? Why else imagine that I might leave her, unless someone—Pagosh, perhaps?—put the idea to her that I contemplate marriage?
“It is far more likely that you will be the one to leave me, precisely because you are no longer a child.” I thought surely my sad smile must have given me away, for she curled one arm around my neck and put her cheek to mine, an embrace as unexpected as it was different from the hug of a child.
I suppose she loves me in her way, just as she loves Pagosh and Mena, or Khary. But mine for her is not that of teacher or guardian. Asleep she invades my dreams. Awake my eyes seek her even when she is absent, until I have no peace whether with her or away from her. Let her walk into a room and the blood races to my loins as well as my face, while the roaring in my ears deafens me to all but what I cannot have and should not even contemplate. Lately, in the dark of night, I even feel the touch of her lips and hands on me, torturing me until I must guard her from myself now, as well as the strangers who come to my door.
Year Five in the Reign of Horemheb
(1343 B.C.)
DAY 12, FOURTH MONTH OF PLANTING
Never has the feeling come over me so strongly that life repeats itself as when I followed Pagosh across the courtyard of Amen’s great temple. Yet much has changed there. The black granite statue of Tutankhamen standing between Amen’s knees lies shattered on the ground, a sight that overwhelmed me with sadness and longing for a time of innocence long gone. The Heretic’s temple to Aten, where Nefertiti once lifted the sword of battle above her crowned head, has been torn asunder as well, leaving only a heap of rubble to mark where it stood.
“Would it not be wiser for us to meet somewhere else?” I had protested when he came for me as Re’s fiery orb slipped behind the western cliffs. “Better to meet where he holds audience with any who have reason to approach him,” Pagosh had muttered, with the same tight-lipped urgency, “whether it be Pharaoh’s emissary or the High Priest of Ptah. Anyway, it is not for others to question who the High Priest sees.”
Yet now, as we skirted the base of Horemheb’s new pylon, which dwarfs even the great gateway built by the Magnificent Amenhotep, he tried to reassure me. “The way we go no one will see us, and the walls of Ramose’s private chamber are thick as a tomb.”
We approached the chambers that surround the sanctuary, each more sacred and secret by virtue of its nearness to the dwelling place of the god, and passed under a columned arcade where perfumed oil filled the wall sconces. In the distance I could hear the drone of chanting priests performing their ablutions on the shores of the Sacred Lake, and a moment later we stepped out into the open again, into the glonous glow of a copper sky. I slowed my steps to savor Re’s parting gift, a spectacle that always awakes in me an intense awareness of being alive, even as the great god goes to his death. When my eyes returned to earth I confronted a massive stone block stained with the blood of countless cattle, geese, and goats, a grisly reminder of where I was. And why.
I hurried to catch up with Pagosh and found him waiting for me at a small pond, which we crossed on stepping-stones. By the time we came to a narrow wooden door I was completely lost, and told him so. “Only the apprentices charged with keeping Amen’s house come this way,” he explained, “so do not get your feet tangled in the brooms.”
The vestibule was lit by two small oil lamps sitting atop a half wall, one of which Pagosh took to light our way along a narrow corridor. On the walls were the bearded enemies of the Two Lands, hands bound behind their backs, with the great Thutmose leading the parade atop his favorite elephant. Pagosh put his hand to the great beast’s belly, and a section of the wall slid back without a sound.
“Quick, before it closes again,” he said, then went to touch his flame to one wick after another, until a golden glow suffused the entire room, a place so wondrously alive that I recognized it at once as the zoo Aset had been searching for when she wandered by mistake into the god’s sacred place. “I see you recognize it,” he commented as I turned round and round to take it all in.
“Does Ramose know—”
“Why else choose this place for his sanctuary? At least here she is with him in spirit, if not in the flesh.”
Ramose came through the door at that moment, and I went down on my knees in deference to the High Priest, if not the man. “On your feet, sunu,” he ordered as he swept by me. “There is no use presenting a false face to me now. I know you too well.”
I rose and watched him strip off his priestly trappings, tossing them onto a stone bench heaped with colorful cushions—first his white nemes, then the finely pleated robe, fol lowed by two gold armlets and a heavy ring, and lastly, his jeweled pectoral. When he turned to face me he wore only a pleated hip wrap tied with a purple belt.
“Well, can you no longer control her?” An angry scowl creased his brow. “What must I do, bury her in some cold temple with a gaggle of shriveled old crones to watch her day and night? Deny her even a chip of stone to write on lest she commit treason against her god? Not to mention her King!”
I held my tongue to let him vent his frustration rather than have him act in the heat of anger, then be bound by an unreasoned decision. When he reached for the scroll on his writing table and slapped it into my hands, I felt the cold fingers of fear squeeze the air from my lungs.
I took my time, unrolling it bit by bit to see a ram kneeling on the bricks to give birth to a lamb. Next, the lamb—a yellow globe with rays ending in human hands over its head—is led to a big stained stone block, where a giant ram waits, ready to make sacrifice to the god. I unrolled it more and saw several ram-headed mice dripping gold and jewels huddled over a brazier, imbibing the fumes from a bowl of burning yellow seeds. One held an orange coal between his fingers. A bone needle penetrated the protruding tongue of another and blood dripped from the dagger embedded in the cheek of still another. Hands, ears, and noses dripped blood from a cloud of smoke above their heads, even a dismembered female breast. At the end, a huge ram-headed rat stood on his hind legs, trying to keep three balls in the air. I puzzled over how he fit what had gone before, until I noticed that he wore a pleated hip wrap with a purple belt. Since the ram is the holy animal of Amen, the ram-headed mice had to signify his priests—in this case, priests of the highest order, all under the influence of some hypnotic substance. Sabean frankincense from the look of it, a shrub with resinous yellow seeds.
“Well?” Ramose demanded, his patience at an end. “Will you dissemble and say her intent is simply to amuse, that she means no disrespect and commits no disloyalty?”
“Surely the meaning lies in the eye of the beholder,” I replied. It is known that certain priests and oracles use hallucinatory plants to induce visions in order to forecast or interpret certain events, but to suggest that the Sacred Council is guided not by Amen but the smoke of self-indulgence and greed is a sin of the highest order. Some would even call it treason.
Ramose laughed, but not because he was amused. “This is only the latest, not the first. Another time it was the baboon who so fears the lambs that he must slit their defenseless throats, leaving the ground beneath him barren and brown while the earth under the lambs is made fertile by their blood and so sprouts green. She is not satisfied with skewering the rich and royal. Now she ridicules Amen’s Sacred Council as well.”
“Your daughter has always been one to stand up for the runt of the litter,” I pointed out. “Surely it comes as no surprise that she feels as she does about the sheddi
ng of blood under Pharaoh’s Edict of Reform.”
He sighed as if the wind had died from his sail, leaving him suddenly becalmed. “It appears that she believes Amen himself gives life to the Rebel’s flock by trying to eradicate them. Did I mistake her meaning?” I shook my head and he stared at me for a moment. “Even I will not be able to keep her safe if she continues,” he admitted finally.
I could not say that in the very act of begetting her he had put her in danger. “Aset will never be safe so long as any man believes she is his path to the throne,” I pointed out instead, “but she follows the teachings of Thoth and Isis, as you intended. Surely you take pride in her strong sense of maat.”
“Never speak to me again with an oily tongue!” he thundered. “Whatever she has become, you and I must share the blame as well as the credit!”
“But you are the one who chose me,” I replied, “just as you are the solid rock on which she built her house, the light that holds the darkness at bay for her. No wonder she holds you so high … too high, perhaps, for even the High Priest of Amen to rise to her expectations. If you drop one of the balls now and then—” I shrugged, for I had no doubt that Ramose was the juggler at the end of her picture-story.
The bargain he had struck with Horemheb to erase the Aten heresy from the memory of the People of the Sun and at the same time constrain his lady’s boundless ambition has always been a double-edged sword. That is because, instead of falling into disarray after Akhenaten went into exile, the Heretic’s followers kept faith with their god by erecting shrines and approaching Aten themselves. In this way did they discover they had no need for a priest to intercede on their behalf. And should such a practice spread, the power of the Amen priests would be threatened as never before, even under the Heretic. Now Aset threw the risk Ramose took for her back in his face by portraying his god for what Horemheb made him—as cruel and evil as any mortal who ever lived.
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