Reflections in the Nile

by J. Suzanne Frank

  What was going on? Where was she getting this information? Was she being hypnotized? Brainwashed? What was this? Chloe punched the bed in frustration, and Basha bolted to the other side of the room. Something told Chloe she would not see Anton at breakfast.

  The quaking Basha retrieved her tray and escaped out the curtained door, glancing warily behind her at RaEm … no, Chloe. I am Chloe.

  No, the “other” said.

  I am, Chloe told the “other.”

  Agreed, said the voice, mildly. You are both.

  Both?

  Both.

  How could she be RaEmhetepet and still be Chloe? What had happened to her in the sea of confusion between arriving here, in an altar room, and leaving mere, an old temple? She had not changed her physical location, yet somehow she had been sucked back into time.

  Chloe almost slapped herself for that stupid thought. No bloody way.

  That was something out of Cammy's Star Trek, not what happened to single tourists on their birthdays. She could understand the language—and it definitely was not English, French, Arabic, or Italian. She couldn't separate her mind long enough from itself to analyze the words. This was too exceedingly strange; there must be another explanation. Could she be going mad?

  The insanity theory was looking better and better.

  Chloe looked toward the door, if you could call a white sheet a door. No one was there. Grabbing the skin on the back of her hand, she pinched and twisted, digging her nails into her flesh. Her eyes watered and angry half-moon marks showed on her hands. She was awake.

  Yanking back the sheet, she looked carefully at her body. There was the scar from Cammy's motorcycle accident on her knee, the countless faint discolorations on her feet from blisters, mosquito bites, and small cuts. She held out a hand. It was the same—long elegant fingers that were hopeless at any keyboard except a computer, short oval nails, and a faint scar on her palm from a long-ago dog bite.

  Yet the skin was not fair, not freckled. Cautiously she reached up and tugged some hair away from the band at her nape. It felt the same: thick, coarse, and board straight It was the same length, but instead of copper, it was black, so black as to shine faintly blue. Chloe dropped her trembling hand.

  Oh my God.

  Before she had time to compose herself, Basha came back through the door with two dark-eyed men. Chloe searched the memories that flooded her mind, trying to place things in some semblance of order, sorting through the “other” mind that was also in her head.

  No luck.

  One man walked to her side.

  “RaEm,” he said, his look taking in her body, “what is this illness that has befallen you?” He sat on the bed beside her and grasped her hand. His words were polite but distant He was young and handsome, a white kilt wrapped around his waist and his upper body impressively muscled. To one-half of her mind he was familiar, his presence comforting but surprising.

  The other half of her mind was reeling from the heavy eye makeup and gorgeous jewelry he was wearing, not to mention his elaborate hairstyle. Was he wearing a wig? The other man was older but dressed in the same skirt, his wide shoulders covered in a gold-and-leather collar. He looked on, no expression readable on his fleshy bronze features.

  Basha laid a gentle hand on the seated man's shoulder. “My Lord Makab, your sister will be healthy again. She will be singing and dancing before the goddess once more. Do not trouble yourself. She will be well.”

  A bolt slid into place. This was her older brother, Makab, a young noble who lived in the country. In accordance with Egyptian custom, she had inherited all the property when their parents died years ago. Hesitantly she returned the pressure of his handclasp. He turned from Basha and focused on Chloe's hand. “You know me, then?” Her affirmative nod brought his glance to her face. Then, startled, he drew back, dropping her hand as though it were a scorpion as he traced ankhs into the air. “Holy Osiris! Your eyes!”

  From the corridor came the sounds of many feet. A squat man walked in, torchlight shining onto his bald head. “Make way for the noble Hapuseneb! High Priest of the Great God Amun, who rules Upper and Lower Egypt! Father of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, living forever!” So saying, he banged his staff on the floor and stood back. A taller, older man, clad in a leopard skin and an ankle-length kilt, came into the room.

  Everyone stood back and bowed: Chloe sat dumbfounded. She'd always known she had a lot of imagination, but the details in this particular flight of fantasy were incredible.

  “My lady,” he said in a low, beautiful voice, “the khefts have left you. This is good.” He stepped closer to her and Chloe dropped her gaze, some instinct warning her that if her “brother” was frightened by her eyes, this priest of Amun might feel even more strongly. Provided he even existed outside her own mind, her left brain railed.

  “The Great House is concerned about her defensive priestess. Please tell us what happened.”

  Basha stepped forward and made a motion. “Your Eminence, the lady has not regained her voice.”

  Hapuseneb gazed thoughtfully at her for a second and then away, back to Chloe. “When you are well, then, we will receive you.” He came closer and Chloe looked intently at his chest, hoping her eyes were lowered enough. Apparently they were. He inclined his head and left the room. An uncomfortable silence filled the chamber, and one by one the ornately dressed and made-up well-wishers bade Chloe a good rest and left.

  WASET

  THE GOLDEN CHARIOT RACED through the eastern desert, eating up the henti under the benevolent winter sun. Pharaoh held the reins tightly in her red-gloved hands, the ends wrapped around her gold-belted waist. Senmut, her grand vizier, held on to the side, watching not the sands before them but the slender body of the woman who had given him the world. He glanced behind them; two chariots were following, slowly enough to give Pharaoh the illusion of privacy, just as they had camped out of sight last night in the desert He looked over Pharaoh's head as they left the trail and raced across a series of rising dunes. A ridge of mountainous desert framed the horizon. Hatshepsut slowed her speed; her newest toy might lose a wheel in the depths of the warm sand.

  A rock face rose rapidly before them, its shade carving a bluish shadow in the sand. Hat secured the horses and jumped down, wiping dust from her face with the back of her gloved hand. Senmut stepped down beside her, his architect's eye taking in the sandstone block that jutted out of the ground, reaching toward the sun. A gods-made obelisk. Hat watched him as he mentally measured.

  “Beloved architect,” she said after they had walked around its large base twice, “you have built for me the most splendid of all mortuary temples in the western crescent.”

  “It is a minute tribute to your own beauty, Pharaoh,” he replied as they stood in the shadows. She flashed a brief smile.

  “However, I fear it would be unwise for me to make it my resting place for all eternity.” Senmut opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand in silence. “My nephew Thutmosis hates me. I will not speak ill of him, for he is born of the god and of the royal bed and has my father's sacred blood in his veins. I should just feel safer if I knew my tomb would be undisturbed because it would be unround.”

  Senmut looked at the rocks around him. “You would wish to be buried on the east bank of the Nile?” His tone was dubious. Death was synonymous with the west bank, as life was with the east bank. “What if, in future dynasties, they build cities out here? Egypt is growing, and if the irrigation systems are improved, who is to say this could not be arable?”

  “I am to say!” she commanded. “I am Egypt!” She turned from him, running her hand across the gritty stone. “Please, precious brother, build a chamber deep under the earth, covered by this rock, so that our rest will be undisturbed.”

  Senmut halted a few cubits away, staring at her in shock. Her wide lips, lips he knew so well, spread into a smile.

  “We shall be together for all eternity,” she said.

  “We?” his staggered thoughts
questioned: “We?” He ran to her and fell to his knees, grasping her around the waist, his body trembling with emotion. To be buried with the god-goddess he loved; for all eternity to look at her golden perfection, to serve her … Senmut looked up into her face, her lips parted now in sensual anticipation.

  He stood up and pulled off her red leather henhet crown, freeing her long ebony hair to fall about her face. After wrestling with his belt, he left both it and his kilt in the sand and advanced on Hat. She took a step farther back, so she was standing against the stone, her eyes large and dark in her wrenchingly beautiful face. He kissed her face, savoring their mutual hunger, taunting and twisting her gold-dusted breasts until they jutted into his chest. He ran a hand underneath her boy's kilt and found the warm welcome that still shook him with desire.

  She moaned and leaned back against the stone, her breath hot pockets in the cool shade. He raised her off her feet as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist. They began the give-and-take of any man and woman, forgetting for a while the pressures and intrigues of her royal status. She pulled him deeper, and Senmut braced his legs as they began to shudder with release. Her body shook with her suppressed cries, his in delighted surrender. They fell to the ground slowly, still intimately entwined.

  When Hat could speak again, she said, “You will build for us, my amazing architect.” It was a statement.

  “Aye, My Pharaoh,” he said, and held her close.

  They spent another few hours in the sun, the royal architect and his Majesty, pacing around, analyzing how to tunnel far beneath the earth. Hat did not want any outward marker, any temple. She wanted everything underground. The rock itself would be enough of an indicator to any future worshiper. No one would know. It would be their secret.

  They coupled again in the sand, slowly and completely, then slept until their tent of shade was broken by the traveling of Ra's barque. Hat gave Senmut the reins, and he headed them back to the Nile, the sand streaked with red and gold as Ra lost his strength at the hour of atmu.

  CHEFTU REINED IN HIS HORSES and threw the lead to the waiting slave. He leapt lightly to the ground, then set off quickly to the Great House. Pharaoh had called a meeting, and the messenger had caught Cheftu as he was returning from the house of a dying friend. Cheftu cursed himself as he had been doing since Alemelek's death.

  How could he not have known? How could he have been so obtuse? At least the package from the man was safe … for the time being. He passed a quick hand over his headcloth, collar, and earrings as he walked through the palace's empty torchlit corridors. Most of the Egyptian guards had been replaced with Kushites, further indications of how far Pharaoh's paranoia for her throne had gone. He paused before the beaten-gold doors that led to Pharaoh's private audience chamber while his titles were intoned.

  “His High Lord Cheftu, Erpa-ha, Hemu neter in the House of Life, Seer of the Two Lands, Healer of Illnesses, Proclaimer of the Future, He Who Speaks in Amun's Ear, Beloved of Ptah, Befriended of Thoth.” With the bang of the chamberlain's staff, Cheftu entered the room.

  It looked like a council of war. Pharaoh Hatshepsut, living forever! stalked impatiently across the room, clad in a filmy evening robe of silver cloth, the vulture and cobra of her office firmly upon her brow.

  High Priest Hapuseneb sat on a stool, one leg swinging in time to Hat's pacing. His shaved head gleamed in the lamplight, catching a glint of gold in the eyes of the dead leopard that was his badge of office.

  His High Chief Steward and Grand Vizier to the King, Senmut, was glaring at some documentation, his strong peasant's back turned to Pharaoh and Cheftu.

  Two “royal reporters,” as spies were now called, were eating in the company of another vizier. Hat spun round and faced Cheftu. “Haii, good my Lord Cheftu.” She extended a hand, over which he bowed with a perfunctory kiss.

  “My Majesty, living forever! Life! Health! Prosperity! How may I serve?”

  Hatshepsut gestured to a silver-gilded chair, and Cheftu seated himself. “I hear you have just lost a dear friend.” Cheftu looked down. “My condolences, physician. May he dance in the fields of the afterworld. Has he been taken to the House of the Dead yet?”

  Cheftu, nervous and suspicious, replied with a modicum of his usual aplomb. “Nay, My Majesty. He was from the East and wanted to be buried in the ways of his forefathers.”

  Hatshepsut's lips pressed together in an Egyptian distaste for any barbarian custom. “Very well, my lord.”

  Cheftu smiled. “My Majesty shows great favor in asking about the details of my poor life. Although I am sure that is not why I was called here.”

  Hatshepsut answered with a smile. “Indeed not, my lord. My high priestess of HatHor,” Pharaoh said, and Cheftu felt his stomach knot, “has taken ill in some strange circumstances. Enlighten him, Hapuseneb.”

  The high priest sat straight in his chair. “She was serving the goddess, and for all intents and purposes seems to have…” His voice trailed off, the last words spoken quietly: “I know not what.”

  Cheftu forced his voice to be even. “Forbidden contact?”

  “Only the gods know, Hemu neter.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  Hapuseneb exchanged a quick glance with his pharaoh. “She was bruised,” he murmured. “Not wounded.”

  “She is recovering? Can she tell us who… who is responsible?”

  “Aye, she is recovering, but strangely enough, she has no voice to convey what happened.”

  “That is a simple enough matter. Hand her papyrus and ink. She is educated and can write her account.”

  Hapuseneb glanced at Hat. “I fear it is more complex. My lady seems to be a kheft-maiden.”

  In spite of his calm demeanor, Cheftu's grip on the chair's arm intensified for a few moments. “I beg an explanation, Your Eminence.”

  “She seems lost and confused. Reports have come to me that she did not recognize her own brother, her serving girl from childhood, or Lord Nesbek, her betrothed. She seems to have forgotten the simplest details of life. It is very strange.”

  Cheftu calmed a little. “That is of little account, Your Eminence. In my travels I have seen people who receive a blow to the head and cannot remember their own name and nationality, let alone anyone else's. In time it will return. Has the lady been examined?”

  “I too have heard of memory sickness,” Hapuseneb said with a grim smile. “But I have never heard of it changing the color of a person's eyes.”

  Cheftu's gut clenched. Was this some trick? Calmly he said, “Eye color?”

  Hapuseneb leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. “I believe you are aware of the appearance of Lady RaEmhetepet?”

  Cheftu colored slightly but answered, “I am.”

  “Then you are aware her eyes are, or were, of the darkest brown.”

  “Aye.”

  “Well, they no longer are. They are as green as malachite from Canaan.”

  “I see.”

  Pharaoh turned to him. “You may not see now, favorite, but you will. We need you to go to the priestess. To examine her and see what you can find. It is simple enough; whether her needs are solely physical or if she also needs to have khefts cast from her, you can heal her.”

  “Demons? My Majesty …”

  “I know it will be awkward, given your past associations, but since she is once again betrothed, it will be a simple fact-finding mission. Makab is also here, visiting.”

  Cheftu bowed his head in acquiescence. He had no choice. This was one of the joys of being the king's favorite seer. However, it would be good to see Makab. It had been many Inundations. He assumed he was dismissed and began to back to the door. No one turned their back on Pharaoh, living forever!

  “Cheftu!” Hat called.

  “My Majesty?”

  “Do the signs declare anything unusual, my seer?”

  Cheftu thought for a moment. “Ancient prophecy is about to be fulfilled in the destiny of Kallistae, in the Great Green.”

&
nbsp; “The Keftiu? The same who trade here in Waset and Avaris? What prophecy concerns them?”

  “The Aztlan empire has been nearly destroyed twice since Chaos, My Majesty. This time the destruction will be complete. I fear its repercussions not only in the Great Green, but even to Egypt. Perhaps these are the unusual portents you speak of?”

  Hatshepsut stared at him for a moment, then her gaze darted to Hapuseneb. “No miraculous births?”

  “Births, My Majesty?” Cheftu looked at her in slight confusion. “None that are foretold.” His gaze dropped to Hat's concealed waist and then to the floor. She laughed delightedly.

  “Have you never erred since I made you Proclaimer of the Future?”

  “By the grace of the gods, I have been correct, My Majesty.”

  A secret and triumphant smile played around the edges of Hat's wide mouth. “That is well, favorite. I grant the god's discernment and wisdom in your quest.”

  Well and truly dismissed, Cheftu crossed his chest in obeisance and left. Once outside he drew his cloak of office around him as a shield against the cool night air. He leapt into his chariot and took the reins, starting up the wide sycamore-shaded avenue to his house, swearing fluently, all thoughts of the priestess gone.

  CHLOE WAS AWAKENED AND TAKEN TO HER BATH, where after being soaked, exfoliated, shaved, and massaged she was wrapped in a long white sheath and seated before a makeup table. When they approached her with sandals, Chloe realized she was wearing a dress, not a robe.

  What about underwear?

  Realizing all the slaves were watching her with more than a little fear, Chloe tried unobtrusively to look at her body in the sheath. The linen was so fine, one could see right through it. She blushed. No wonder they shaved so carefully.

  She looked down at the delicate sandals presented to her—and gulped. Size nine was not huge in her day and time—she knew quite a few women with size ten and above—but the way everyone was staring at her long narrow feet, she guessed they were the size of a soldier's today. A male soldier's.