Reflections in the Nile

by J. Suzanne Frank

  He missed Alemelek, the trust, the lack of fear. Their complete understanding.

  There was no reason to rush back to the palace. Doubtless RaEm was locked in Nesbek's arms. He forced his mind away from the vision of her lovely brown limbs tangled with that scorpion. Would he never be free of her web? Just when he had come to terms with having loved a fantasy in his youth, he had met her again. Although she was not the same woman. Or was she?

  Bleary-eyed, he forced himself to be still. In the distance he heard a muttered exchange as the guards changed duty. Then he slept.

  CHLOE DREW A DEEP, SETTLING BREATH and stepped down from the litter. Nesbek's delta house was a large white block in a thicket of biological fecundity, and she could already hear coarse male laughter on the heavily perfumed air. She walked up the path and into the courtyard.

  She saw nothing except bodies everywhere. Intermingled. Men with women with women with men with men. Holy shit! It was a genuine, no-holds-barred orgy! Bile rose in her throat as blood rushed to her face. What had she gotten into? Anxiety rose in her like fever, and sweat broke out on her back and upper lip.

  Nesbek was sprawled on a low couch, one fawning male licking his toes, an overdone woman fondling him openly. Nesbek himself had his hands on a slave girl barely in her teens. He pushed them away when he saw Chloe, shouting for silence. His gold teeth glittered in the torchlight.

  The writhing, undulating mass of humanity ceased momentarily in its headlong search for gratification.

  “The Lady RaEmhetepet, my betrothed,” he shouted. “She shall share with us her amazing talents!” He turned a darkened glare her way, growling, “I trust you have exorcised that cold spirit? Do not shame me, RaEm. Hurt me.” Then he smiled.

  Chloe gulped. For a split second she could hear those same words— “Hurt me”—in another voice, and she saw bloodied hands and a man's face. It flashed through her mind in a millisecond, but Nesbek's salacious grin obscured the vision.

  Show time.

  She tried to look away from the collection of body parts, most in someone else's possession. There was no place to focus, which was proving difficult anyway. She remembered what her speech teacher from high school said and imagined everyone in long underwear. She hadn't seen most of these people before, but the “other” recognized them. Hell, the real RaEm could name everyone in the room, although the prince was missing.

  Chloe heard a thin, reedy note rise and knew even before the prodding of the “other” that it was her cue. Clenching her teeth, she dropped the cloak. The room grew expectantly silent. Chloe felt lusty glances race across her form. Her breasts were covered only to their silver-painted tips by a silver-and-turquoise collar. The beads around her hips were even more humiliating. Even though it was culturally permitted, she felt nekkid —sick and sleazy. Dear God, she thought, don't let Mimi watch this! She raised her arms and cautiously let in RaEm's mind.

  An overwhelming surge of power flooded her being, and she realized with a start that dancing was the one thing RaEm truly gloried in doing. Her passion was so great that a little of the feeling had overflowed into her rational memory. Afraid she would end up a part of the orgy if she let RaEm have her way, Chloe took RaEm's guidance in small and tidy lumps. Consequently Chloe was less sensual and skilled than RaEm. Fortunately, so many of the guests were tripping on an ancient amphetamine that Chloe doubted they recognized her as a fraud.

  As the tempo increased she spun, ducked, twirled, and gyrated. The room spun, ducked, and most definitely gyrated with her. In fact, it began to do some things she did not have the agility to follow. She ceased her whirling and landed in a semigraceful heap on the floor. The applause was weak. When she looked up, she saw the “audience” had directed its attention to the doors.

  She was still panting from her dance when she saw what, or rather who, had gained the party's attention. Two Apiru slaves, bound and naked, were led toward her. Chloe closed her eyes briefly. She was having trouble seeing, and she had to concentrate on getting to her feet without further dislodging her already askew beadwear. Her head throbbed and there was a painful tightness in her chest. Her leg muscles were spasming. She leaned against a column, trying to regain some equilibrium. Then Nesbek met her at the raised stage and handed her a whip. He kissed her on the mouth, squeezing her breast, though Chloe felt it only distantly. “Do what you do so well. We have waited a long time for this,” he whispered before slapping her bottom with a beaded flail.

  She stared, speechless, at the heavy leather thongs that flared into a multitude of ends. Chloe, afraid that she was now seeing double, tried to count the straps. When she reached ten for the second time, she gave up. Where the bloody hell was this place? What was she supposed to do?

  Nesbek, drunk and supported between two naked and oiled young men, turned from the bound slaves to his guests. “Now, my honored lovers, let that which we have long awaited, begin. Inflame us, RaEm,” he said, backing away.

  Chloe looked at the slaves, trying to sharpen their fuzzy images. A young man, probably fifteen or sixteen years old, and a girl about the same age, were tied to posts, spread-eagle. Neither of them spoke a word. They stood with bowed heads, backs to the crowd, accepting their fate. These kids should be worried about the prom, Chloe thought, though she knew in this time they were beyond marriageable age.

  An arc of pain shot through her. Her mind went blank. Pain reached up from her back into her chest, and she flinched, causing the end of the whip to twitch. The Apiru girl recoiled in response, her fear bringing a pleased muttering from the crowd. Their anticipation surrounded Chloe like a putrid smog, a heightening of sexual tensions in the incense-scented room. Small animal sounds reached her ears; the “other” explained what they were. Chloe swallowed bile again.

  A second cramp gripped her. Chloe stood still, grinding her teeth as her body became a playground of sharp and dull prods, pokes, and stabs. The Apiru girl was crying, and the boy whispered to her in their own language. A pep talk by the tone of it, Chloe thought muzzily. She gasped, fell to her knees, and dropped the whip as another spasm seized her. Behind her eyelids she saw flashes of red and black, the patterns dizzying in their continuous changing. She opened her eyes in a moment of lucidity.

  The guests were grumbling, and Nesbek stared at her, his face ashen. “Do not shame me!” he mouthed with a look of such loathing that she felt it even through the ever-intensifying agony in her body. Cupping her belly, Chloe sank to the floor. Through strobelike flashes of iridescent red, splotches of chartreuse, and lines of black, she saw Nesbek standing over her, his arms widespread, holding back the crowd. Amid cries of “Leave her, she's ill!” and a tussle of bodies, she felt herself lifted. After a brief blackout she was tied between the posts, Nesbek's shouts of “Nay!” vibrating through her body. She couldn't see, couldn't hear, but the fury of the disappointed party was palpable.

  The cramps drove her down, hunching over her knees, trying to control her anguish. She bit into her lip and tasted blood. Part of her mind realized the muffled shrieks she heard were her own. The sensations in her body were so intense, she didn't even feel the first kick or punch.

  For what seemed like eternity she hung between new and growing tortures in her womb and those elsewhere on her body. Vainly she tried to speak, but the bestial murmuring of the advancing crowd drowned out her mutterings. Finally a painless and peaceful sensory night fell across her. Chloe felt nothing else.

  CHEFTU TURNED ON HIS COUCH. Ra streamed brightly through the garden door; it must be past the noon meal, he thought. Still weary, he remembered the hard stone pillow from the night before and lay indulgently in the clean linens. The clear blue sky and the swaying palm fronds refreshed him; he was content. Thutmosis had been skeptical about bis “prediction” that had brought him back to Avaris, a simple trick Cheftu rigged. Being a seer had its uses. The portents had been dark, Cheftu had only deepened the contrast. His lie had gained him readmittance to the palace and four more days without Thut or any
others, save the palace guards.

  A scrabbling at the garden door drew his attention. Drawing the sheet across his naked body and rubbing a hand vigorously across his face, he walked out.

  His Israelite Meneptah, a gift from Alemelek, stood before him. Cheftu reached forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “It is good to see you, most worthy student.”

  Meneptah crossed his chest in a gesture of respect “Hemu neter. Health, life, and prosperity.”

  Cheftu looked at him. “Why did you not notify Ehuru of your presence? It is late, but would you share the Perfuming with me?”

  Meneptah's brown gaze dropped. “Nay, Hemu neter. I come to you because I believe there has been an …” He stopped. “Please, master, come with me.”

  Knowing the Meneptah would never venture this boldly to see him unless there was some great urgency, he returned to his room, dressed, and followed the Israelite's fast pace through the winding paths until they converged on a road. Ra was hot on their uncovered heads, and Cheftu felt the gold screws in his earrings begin to burn from the sun. “Meneptah, if I had known we were walking to Noph, I would have brought my chariot,” he half jested.

  “It is not much farmer, Hemu neter.” They walked in heavy silence for a while longer, then Meneptah left the road and followed a scratched-out path through the heavy green underbrush. Cheftu pulled a whisk from his belt and swatted at the swarms of determined mosquitoes. They stepped into a clearing, and Cheftu saw mud-bricked town houses huddled together. An Apiru village.

  Meneptah hurried to the second house and sent the door flying against the wall.

  Cheftu followed him through a dark warren of rooms. Meneptah knelt beside a pallet on the floor and pulled back the window curtain. Cheftu felt as if Set's hand had seized his throat and was siphoning all the air from it. The sun's piercing light revealed a battered figure lying on the mat, mud covered, bruised, and wrapped loosely in a linen sheet. RaEmhetepet.

  “Where did you find her?” Cheftu growled to Meneptah. “How long has it been?”

  A makeshift litter swung between Meneptah and one of his cousins as they walked back to the palace. Cheftu reached out a steadying hand. RaEm's skin was boiling, a true sign of the ka fighting against an intruder. Cheftu's wrath built and burned as he reflected on Meneptah's tale. Thank the gods one of the Israelites had found her this morning.

  Where could she have been that her evening ended in an irrigation ditch by an Apiru village? Who had left a priestess for dead? Obviously not the prince regent. Phaemon was vanished, Pakab was in Waset, so it must have been Nesbek. Her other dissolute lords were ensconced in Upper Egypt.

  The group turned onto the road, and Cheftu wondered if she should be taken to her own apartments. He decided she would be safer in his; why had Basha not come to him? She knew he was responsible for the priestess. Nay, he and Meneptah would take turns guarding her until Cheftu had some answers. This did not add up.

  He looked at the swaying litter beside him. Her brown skin was unnaturally flushed, and there was a deepening bruise around one eye … it would be a while before she could open it fully. There was a gouge in the flesh close to her jawline. Any closer and it could have taken off her earlobe. Cheftu felt his gorge rise at the thought of what instrument did this. He knew RaEm had a reputation for less than accepted appetites; was abusing and being abused one of them?

  He remembered tagging along with his older brother to one of the seedier brothels. Though he had been losing his dinner from cheap wine, some older boys spoke of a woman in black who would whip you for an extra thrill and an extra fee.

  A brief grin flashed across his face when he thought about the boy he had been. Naive. Egypt was all he had wanted, all he had lived for, all he had absorbed. Ironic now that Egypt was all he had.

  They had almost reached the heavily guarded palace gates, and Cheftu shook his head, dispelling the memories. They had no room in his life. He was Cheftu sa'a Khamese, physician to Pharaoh and inheritor of his family nome.

  She needed him. For the first time ever.

  The most pressing problem was how to get her inside without anyone seeing and reporting. A familiar shout made him motion the Apiru behind some low bushes, and he approached the gate.

  The commander smiled in recognition. Then Cheftu saw it fade when he noticed the bloodied shenti and the lack of makeup and collar on one of the erpa-ha of Egypt. Ameni jumped down from his chariot, waving away the remaining guards. “Life, health, and prosperity, Hemu neter”

  “I would have your oath of secrecy, soldier.”

  Ameni crossed his chest. “It is yours, Hemu neter.”

  “The priestess staying here was wounded and left for dead. We must tend to her and assure no one sees her weakness. Hatshepsut, living forever! herself will want to know how this has happened and who dared to kill the most powerful moon-priestess of HatHor.”

  The soldier's face was rigid, but Cheftu saw a little of the color fade. He bowed quickly. “I will serve your lordship for me good of Egypt.”

  Cheftu smiled quickly. “It is good to know, my friend. I need to get her inside unnoticed.”

  He bowed. “It is done, my lord.”

  “The gates are open, go quickly,” Cheftu said to the Apiru. He instructed Meneptah to hurry ahead and have Ehuru prepare a room for the lady. Also to find a trustworthy slave from among Meneptah's people.

  They carried her in and lowered her body onto the sleeping couch in an adjoining room. Cheftu assembled his instruments to begin his examination. Observation was key; her hair was matted and sticky from a combination of mud in the ditch and the fat from a perfume cone. … He looked more closely at the gouge on her neck. It was scabbed over and crusted with mud. Apparently she got it before she was left to die. He pulled the remains of the sheet down farther. The savage bite on her shoulder was festering. Cheftu's lips curved in distaste.

  He yanked off the linen altogether.

  Cheftu felt the blood leave his face as his stomach churned. RaEm had been cruelly beaten. Her belly was purple and red from the abuse, her legs and crotch black and blue. He could trace the marks of the multitailed whip that had wound around her body. That was the gouge in her neck. There was another opposite, on her waist, and a third on her upper thigh.

  By the gods! Cheftu choked back the revulsion he felt, looking at her fine limbs, swollen and discolored, caked with streams of her own dried blood.

  Meneptah brought a pitcher of recently purified water, and Cheftu gently washed blood from her wounds. He applied an herb paste to the cuts, in case there was infection, and covered her with sheets to prevent a chill.

  RaEm was deeply unconscious, yet occasionally she jerked, as if on the end of a child's toy. Cheftu removed the mud scabs from the gouges and was applying a final poultice to the one on her neck when the scent of fresh blood reached his nostrils. Shouting for Meneptah to get more cloths, Cheftu wrenched the linen off RaEm.

  She lay in a pool of her own blood, her color fading even as her life hemorrhaged away.

  Acid burned his belly. Rapidly he checked for other signs, cursing himself. RaEm had taken, or been given, a poison that was serving as an abortifacient. He had seen it before. The poor male slave who had died earlier in the week—he had had no child to give and so had choked on his own bloody vomitus as he'd bled internally.

  Had Pharaoh ascertained that he, Cheftu, would not give the poison to her? Had she found another accomplice? His mind flickered back to the final meeting before they had left Waset. “A confidential medical mission” was what Pharaoh had said as Senmut had handed Cheftu the packet of poisonous herbs. The way Ra-Em was found in the temple had raised even more questions, adding fuel to the flame of Hatshepsut's paranoia. The blood on RaEm's hands had belonged to someone else, but whom?

  Now this blood. Was it self-inflicted? Had RaEm taken the easiest path, as she was inclined to do, or had the poisoned duck the other night been intended for her and not the prince?

  A corner of
his mind registered the chanting priests, their voices rising and falling in the corridor. They had been summoned. Even they knew the woman was dying. Or were they expecting it? Where were the HatHor priestesses?

  Blood poured from her, and soon her unborn child would. If only he truly were a magus, really did have powers outside himself … if that were true, he would save her and spend a lifetime accepting her gratitude. Cheftu slapped himself mentally. Whatever changes had taken place in RaEm, she would more likely spend a lifetime flaunting her health before him with other men than thank him.

  It seemed to Cheftu that when he looked into her now green eyes, there was another person looking out at him. Someone whose beauty resided not only in costume and jewelry, but in character and goodness. She was genuinely bewildered when he spoke of the past And her touch! What had caused the change in her reaction to him? And his to her? It went beyond a physical desire—though that was a constant battle—to a recognition, basic and elementary. By the gods, he didn't know what it was.

  Cheftu gritted his teeth, and yanked himself back to the present. A beating and poison. Someone was determined to kill RaEm. Was it Pharaoh's will? To go against the will of Pharaoh was death and inconceivable to an Egyptian mind. He smiled grimly. Praise Ptah, that did not affect him.

  Meneptah raced in, another of Cheftu's medicine kits on his shoulder, fresh linen cloths in his hands. Cheftu grabbed the linen and began to staunch the flow of blood. He washed it away with warm water, his eyes stinging as he thought of the child who would never be; for the child that, by the Feather, he had once wished to be his. A quick examination showed it would be a matter of decans.

  He took her hand and knelt beside the couch.

  “RaEm, can you hear me?” Her pupils wandered behind tightly closed lids. He caressed her slender fingers in his own strong grip. “RaEm, it is forbidden for anyone to touch you. A pure priestess must be treated only by her sisters. However, they are not here.” You are not pure, he added mentally. “You must let me know what you are feeling. You are losing the child, RaEm. Did you take something? Did someone give you something? I must know what poison holds you, RaEm. You must tell me what happened.”