by Judith Tarr
In such a case, it was not greatly wise for Iry to speak; but her mother, after all, was her mother. She said in Egyptian, without rising or leaving her corner, “Mother, the woman asks you what you are doing here.”
The Lady Nefertem raised one perfect brow. “I live here,” she said.
Iry bit her lip. It would not be wise to laugh. No, not in the slightest. In Retenu she said, “This is her house, madam.”
The foreign lady spun about in a whirl of veils. How she bore them, Iry could not imagine. They must suffocate her. And that, no doubt, was the root of her ill humor, even more than the insolence of those whom she reckoned but slaves. “Her house! How dare she?”
“Perhaps,” said Iry mildly, “because it is.” She looked the woman up and down, bold to insanity and knowing it, but she did not care. “May I ask who you are?”
“You may not!” That was the woman who had ridden the dun horse, outraged and with hand clapped to swordhilt, as if she had been a man.
But the other woman—who Iry thought was older, though it was difficult to tell—spoke with surprising coolness. “I am your mistress here. And who is this?”
“Our mistress here,” Iry answered. “Are you his mother or his wife?”
The eyes within the veils widened slightly, startled; taken off guard. “I am neither. I am his elder sister. I keep his house for him.”
“He has no wife?”
“Who are you to ask such questions?” the rider demanded. “I shall have you flogged.”
But the other had paused, as if something in Iry’s voice, her manner, even her impudence, struck her as greatly interesting. “He has no wife,” she said.
“Well then,” said Iry. “He’ll not get this one.”
“Can she not speak for herself?”
“She doesn’t choose to,” Iry said.
“This is outrageous,” said the rider. “Maryam, let us dispose of them both!”
“I think not,” said the one called Maryam.
As if she had made a momentous decision, she let fall her veils. Her face was not beautiful, but neither was it ugly. It was, for these people, rather ordinary: strong-featured, solid-chinned, with an arched nose and thick black brows. She had not inherited the golden eyes that marked her brother and her sister. Hers were dark and direct, fixed on Iry with a hard, clear stare.
“Tell me your name,” she said to Iry.
Iry did not see any profit in defying her. “My name is Iry,” she said.
“How refreshingly brief,” said Maryam. “And who is this one?” She tilted her head at the Lady Nefertem.
“This is Nefertem,” Iry said, “the lady of the house.” She did not see that this foreigner needed to know what the Lady Nefertem was to her. There was little resemblance, everyone agreed. Iry took after her father, who though handsome enough had not boasted of great beauty.
This Maryam did not seem inclined to ask if Iry was the lady’s kin. She studied the Lady Nefertem, who ignored her with queenly disdain, sitting still and expressionless as she could do for hour upon hour. Where her mind was, or what she did there, Iry could not imagine. It must have been pleasant enough: her mouth bore the hint of a smile.
“She goes far away,” Maryam said as if to echo Iry’s thought. “Or does she merely lack the wit to understand what passes in the world?”
That too had been a thought of Iry’s, but bitter with shame. That shame fed anger, and anger escaped in a spit of words. “She is not the fool here. Now get you gone. The old lord’s women had a place allotted them. Ask Teti the steward; he’ll show you the way to it.”
“But,” said Maryam levelly, “this is the women’s house.”
“This is the Lady Nefertem’s house,” Iry said. “You will have a house of your own. You’ll find it’s adequate. Some might even call it luxurious.”
“And if we choose to take this one?”
“You may try,” Iry said.
“Enough!” cried the rider, so sharp that even the Lady Nefertem swam out of her reverie to stare. “Maryam, if you will not silence this slave, I will.”
“No,” Maryam said. “No. I’ll speak with our brother. And,” she said with a glance at Iry, “if he bids us cast out these monsters of insolence, then we will do it.”
The rider snorted. “Khayan! When has he ever gainsaid a woman?”
“Egyptian women,” said Maryam.
Her sister only laughed.
But Maryam, it was clear, had made up her mind. She summoned all those who had come in with her, and sent them out again. She went with them; but first she paused, looking long at Iry’s face, as if to remember it.
Iry neither flinched nor looked away. She had never been so wild before, or so careless of her own safety. Was this what it was to be a woman? How strange. She had seen such things in boys who became men, but when a girl became a woman, she most often shrank and dwindled into herself.
Whatever the cause of it, she would live for yet a while. The Retenu were gone, the women’s house clean of them, though how long that would last, or what would come of it, Iry could not foresee.
V
The new lord’s sisters and the rest of his women—maids, servants, and concubines—took up residence in the lesser house, apart from the women’s house though connected to it by a garden. If they voiced their complaint to him, Iry did not know of it. Maybe, when they saw the house, they had seen the wisdom of silence.
The women’s house was inescapably Egyptian. This one had been made new by the old lord’s chief wife, built and ornamented in the Retenu fashion: heavy draperies, heaps of carpets, furnishings that would not have been amiss in a tent in the desert. To a Retenu it would be both beautiful and luxurious, though Iry found it suffocating.
And so they settled, each in her place, with no more disruption than one might expect of a house full of Retenu. Iry undertook to be as invisible as she had ever been: belated prudence after the beginning she had made, but, she hoped, not too late.
For a while it seemed she had succeeded. No one troubled her. She performed such duties as she had, and evaded that of pouring the lord’s wine in the evenings, trading that office for a daily stint in the laundry. It seemed a fair exchange, and a safe one.
She saw him often enough, from a prudent distance. He had informed a scrupulously expressionless Teti that since he intended to make this the chief of his houses, he wished to know every corner of it, and every corner of the estate, too, all up and down the river. Every morning, when it was as cool as it could be in this season, he rode out in his chariot to visit this village or that. Every afternoon, in the cool of the hall, he sat to hear petitions and judge disputes.
These were matters that Teti had always seen to, under Iry’s father as well as the Retenu who supplanted him. This young lord had ambitions of ruling in every aspect of his domain: great foolishness in Iry’s estimation, though he seemed to think it a great good deed. Certainly he seemed pleased with himself when she saw him.
Teti was not so pleased. In front of his lord he maintained a mask of decorum, but when he went home to his wife, he was . . . difficult. That was the word she used.
“Difficult,” she said to the Lady Nefertem at their morning audience, shaking her head and glaring at the daughters who would have elaborated on the word. “He’s always been the one to say what comes and goes in these lands. Now he has to stand aside while that interloper does it. Really, lady, if this goes on, I’m afraid he’ll turn rebel.”
“Is it rebellion to serve the true king?” the Lady Nefertem asked, so soft and yet so clear that Iry doubted she had heard it. But they were all staring, Tawit and the five Beauties, and even the maids.
The lady seemed as impervious as ever. She smoothed one of the many pleats in her gown, then pleated it again, meticulously, till it was folded to her satisfaction. Then she said, “There are too many Retenu in this house. We should be rid of them.”
“That . . . won’t be easy,” Tawit said with what, for her, wa
s considerable caution.
“What, are you a coward?” the lady asked her.
“No, lady,” said Tawit. “But prudent, and fond of this skin, however unlovely—that, I am.”
The Lady Nefertem sniffed delicately. That was all the commentary she offered, and all she needed to offer.
Tawit did not linger long after that. Iry felt a small shiver down her spine as the steward’s wife swept her daughters ahead of her, out of the room and away. If Tawit’s conception of prudence extended to informing the foreign lord that the Lady Nefertem entertained thoughts of rebellion, then none of them was safe. Not the lady, not any who waited on her. And not Iry, who was, after all, her daughter.
Iry was not afraid, not precisely. The time for fear had passed when she knew that the man to whom she had been so rude was the new lord of the house. He had done nothing to her then—less than nothing. He was a soft man, complacent. He did not think that any Egyptian, still less an Egyptian woman, could be a match for him in wit or will.
She would like to see him fall, struck down by an Egyptian sword. That would be sweet, and more than sweet. And if every Retenu in Egypt was driven out, and Egypt was made whole again under its true and proper king—that would be sweetest of all.
~~~
Tawit did not betray her lady, or if she did, nothing came of it. Perhaps the Retenu were contemptuous; or perhaps they were simply distracted. They were awaiting yet another arrival, one of much more moment than the arrival of the lord’s sisters and his women.
As greatly perturbed as they were, Iry would have expected an overlord at least, or the king himself. But it was no mere male who advanced upon them, and no mere king. The one who came in a wagon as a woman of respect and standing, a wagon drawn by milk-white oxen and escorted by a company of women on the backs of horses, was no lesser eminence than the lord’s own mother.
The Lord Khayan himself awaited her in the outer court, standing with his young men as he would have done for the coming of the king. His sisters waited, too, with their veiled women: a royal welcome.
The wagon creaked and grumbled to a halt. One of the oxen shook its broad white head, scattering flies. The mounted women sprang from their horses’ backs and stood as guards stand, fanning out from the wagon to the lord and his men. It only needed a clamor of trumpets; but there was no music but the lowing of an ox.
There was a pause. Iry, watching from the shade of a pillar, admired the way in which this foreign woman drew every eye to the curtain behind which she sat. Only when she had complete silence, when even the oxen had stilled, did the curtain draw aside.
She was in shadow still, a dark figure, black-robed, black-veiled. She rose slowly, with grace that the Lady Nefertem would have admired, and took the guard’s hand that reached to her, and stepped down on the broad back of a second.
Oh, she was regal, that one. She was not particularly tall, for a Retenu; Iry was little smaller. Yet she held herself perfectly erect. She accepted her son’s deep bow and his kissing of her hands as no more than her due, and let her daughters perform their own obeisance.
Iry held her breath, waiting for the woman to demand that she be taken to the women’s house. But when she was led away to the lesser house, she said no word. She had not spoken at all, that Iry had heard.
That was great power and presence, to stand silent and reap such respect. Iry’s mother could do it, too; but she simply did not care. This was a keener mind, Iry suspected, and a sharper awareness of the world.
~~~
With his mother in residence, the Lord Khayan was all too obviously determined to stay in these lands of the Sun Ascendant and be lord of them. As to why . . .
“The horses,” Pepi said. Pepi had been a master of arms in Iry’s father’s day. He had taken a great wound in battle when his lord died, and been sent home; and so remained in the Lower Kingdom when the rest of the army had marched away from its victories to a slow defeat.
Pepi was an oddity. He was not afraid of horses. More: he liked them. He had kept the stables for the old lord. The new lord had his own master of horse, but Pepi knew the ways of the house and of the stables that the old lord had built. He knew how to make himself invaluable; and he listened wherever he could, and remembered what he heard.
Not that Iry would venture to that realm of snorting monsters. Pepi and old Huy the scribe were friends—unlikely enough as a pairing, the frail old scribe and the stocky old warrior, but firm enough for all that. They liked to sit together in the mornings, sharing their bread and beer.
That morning Iry had a little time to herself before she had to set to work scouring soiled linens. She had not visited Huy in an unconscionable while, and she had a craving for one of his stories.
She found him not greatly inclined to tell a story, but Pepi was full of gossip from the men’s side. “The lord is a master of horses,” he said, “one of the great ones of the conquerors. He’ll be the king’s own horsemaster, it’s said, when the old one dies. Did you see the horses that he brought with him?”
“I did,” said Iry. She did not mean to speak, but it seemed she could not help it. Just the mention of them brought back memory: clouds about the moon, and white manes streaming. “They weren’t . . . like other horses.”
“Ah,” said Pepi with a lift of the brows. “You saw those, did you? Those are something beyond the ordinary run of horses. But of ordinary horses too he has a great number. He’s to breed horses for the king’s chariots. Those he’s brought with him are among the best to be had.”
“But what does that have to do with his insistence on living here?” Iry demanded.
“Much,” Pepi answered. “These lands, he says, are admirable for the raising and keeping of horses. The grass is rich, the fodder ample. The fields are broad and well watered. And the road is near, but not too near; it’s easy to run the herds of young stallions up to the king’s city when it comes time to break them to the chariot.”
“There are other places that would serve as well,” Iry said.
“But none as well situated, or with as large and suitable a house.” Pepi drained his cup and belched comfortably. He reached for the jar to fill his cup again. “No, he’s not leaving at any time soon, except when he’s called to wait on his king. He likes it here.”
“How can he? We detest him.”
“Do you think he cares for that?”
Iry set her lips together and glowered in silence. Pepi patted her hand with beery familiarity. “There, there, child. It’s a nuisance, but it’s the gods’ will. And maybe, after all, it won’t last so long.”
“Are you a rebel, too?” Iry asked him.
He stared at her as if she had begun to babble nonsense. She thought he might say something, but he drained his cup of beer instead. When he was done with that, the current of conversation shifted—deliberately, she might have thought, if Pepi had been a clever man. But Pepi was not clever. He was blunt, he was honest, but clever—no.
Iry did not press him. No Egyptian bore well the lot of the conquered. Everyone dreamed of driving out the Retenu and paying tribute to a true king again. And those who acted on it died or were sent into exile. That lesson she had learned from her father and her brothers and her kin.
She left the two old men to their beer and their memories. She should be tackling the day’s heaps of linen, but she found herself wandering down through the courtyards to the gate. It stood open at this time of day and with the lord in residence and the country at peace—if there was war, it was far away to the south, where Egypt was still Egypt. The guards stood at ease, lazy yet alert. They took no particular notice of Iry, though she walked past them into the open air.
She had not stood outside of these walls in longer than she could remember. It was the same air, the same sun, but strange, because there was no end to it. No walls to close it in. Only the thick moist air of the Delta, and the River retreating, leaving the black earth behind that was the wealth of Egypt. Egypt was Two Lands, Upper and L
ower, south and north, yet it was also Red Land and Black Land, raw dusty desert and rich growing land.
She stood in the Black Land, and the Red Land was far away. The fields stretched before her, bright already with new green. The River flowed high still, but in a little while it would return to its lesser banks, and leave the Black Land for men to till.
The road underfoot was much worn and rutted with hooves and chariot wheels. Human feet never trampled it so badly, nor the feet of oxen either, bearing their burdens to and from the lord’s house. Horses and their longeared cousins were marking the land as nothing else had done before.
When she had her bearings, and the dizziness of open space had gone away, she turned her face toward the hill to the north and east. Even before she had reached the summit, she knew where the horses were. She could hear them: snorting, stamping, shaking the earth as a herd of them sprang into a gallop.
Horses did not run like gazelles. They were heavier, more solidly bound to earth. But those who were running, the horses of the moon as she had come to think of them, had a power and a grace that she had seen in no animal before. They skimmed the ground. They danced on it. They seemed to laugh as they ran, tossing their heads, kicking up their heels.
She could almost imagine that they ran for her. She stood atop the hill, and they ran below her like a streamer of cloud in a strong wind.
The others, the darker ones, the reds and browns and blacks and duns, grazed or ran in their own herds. But she had eyes for none but the moon-horses.
One of them curved away from the sweep of the herd, running lightly up the hill. It was darker than some, dappled like the moon, with a broad forehead and a great dark eye. Its mane was blue-silver, its tail blue-white. Its little ears were pricked, intent on her.
Iry reflected, distantly, that she might do well to be afraid. There was no human creature within sight. The herdsmen were gods knew where. She was all alone between earth and sky, no wall and no defense against the creature that approached her.
