Reflections in the Nile

by J. Suzanne Frank

  Chloe reached for more grass, automatically breaking it into three sections; Cheftu, oh God, she thought, please help me!

  A noise in the corridor stopped her. Her only chance of escape would be to rush the jailer. The door opened slowly and Chloe crouched, her muscles protesting. An enormous Kushite woman held out a long spear, training it on Chloe's breast. She motioned forward and Chloe rose, a cubit from impalement. Once outside Chloe was thrown against the wall and her wrists refastened. She moaned in pain as the new leather bit into the open wounds. Her eyes smarted as she was pushed forward, up the main hall of the temple.

  Help me, she thought.

  CHEFTU, THUTMOSIS, AND A SMALL CONTINGENCY of guards pushed through the sparse undergrowth to the side of the temple. It was mostly underground, the crumbling lioness statue half-hidden by vegetation.

  Leaving the guards placed strategically, Cheftu and Thut walked through the dark hallways. Cheftu's perfect memory recalled the map he had once seen as a sem -priest, and he led them through the hypostyle hall, with its crumbling pillars, to the cross-passageway. Voices were audible behind them, and they stepped into the shadows moments before two huge women, pulling Chloe, came around the corner.

  Thut's insistent hand on his arm was the only thing that kept Cheftu from leaping out and taking Chloe. Her face was creased with pain, and he saw her arms were behind her, tied at both the elbow and wrist, the way Pharaoh tied foreigners. The men followed at a distance. The sound of voices grew louder, and Cheftu realized with a start that they were singing about the glory of vengeance and blood. It was a horrible, archaic song, quite unlike the music he had heard during his years in Egypt.

  Thut pulled Cheftu's arm and prevented him from walking into the main chamber openly. They crept around the edge, in the shadows of the columns. The singing had quieted down, and one of the priestesses was seated on a silver chair. She was dressed in a white robe and a Sekhmet headdress. Cheftu realized he had seen it and her before—at the Temple-of-the-Ka-of-Ptah, in Noph. She had been the incarnation of Sekhmet and had bitten RaEm's wrist, a bizarre ritual, he'd thought. This was why: she's mad.

  They cut the bindings from Chloe's arms, and Chloe gasped as they pulled off the leather. Cheftu saw nothing but red for a few moments as he heard the priestess's chilling laughter—a response to Chloe's pain. Thut's hand was like rock on his forearm, and Cheftu knew they needed to listen. If there was corruption in the priesthood, Thut needed to clean it out. Cheftu ground his teeth in the darkness.

  The figure on the chair stood up and walked forward. “My murdering priestess-sister,” she said.

  Cheftu and Thut exchanged glances; no one had prepared Chloe for ReShera's face when she pulled off the mask.

  Chloe stepped back with a cry. “You live!”

  ReShera laughed. “And you shall not, dear sister.”

  Chloe's face was white in the moonlight. “I do not understand.”

  “I doubt you do, RaEmhetepet” she said. “Until recently you never understood me. So I shall explain—it gives me such pleasure to watch you quiver before my eyes.”

  “Then who died?” Chloe asked.

  ReShera stared. “What?”

  “Someone died. I sent someone to her death Who was it?”

  ReShera's face became another mask, one bleached with hate whose black eyes brimmed with madness. “My beloved Basha.”

  It took a moment for ReShera's words to penetrate all those minds present, hidden and unhidden. “Beloved?” Chloe repeated.

  “Aye. She had been mine since she was a girl! I shaped her, molded her, created her to be a creature to serve Sekhmet. I protected her from your violence!” ReShera hissed. “Only because of you is she gone. You, who would sleep with any rutting beast, except the prince! You, who stole my brother and took his life! You think yourself so much more valuable than any other! As did the goddess HatHor—but she is also weak. Better to serve the goddess Sekhmet. She devours her enemies! Takes their power that way! As I shall yours, priestess.”

  “How did you do it?”

  ReShera looked confused, and Chloe repeated the question. “You were worshiping with us, yet Basha was sent? How did you do it?”

  “I did not kill her,” ReShera said stonily. “You murdered my beloved Basha. You did!”

  “I did,” Chloe agreed soothingly, in hopes of getting the truth. “How did I do it?”

  “You slipped out of the temple and got her from the tunnels where she was staying. She was weak and hungry, and it was easy to get her to eat drugged food and change clothes. You walked her to the White Chamber and sat her down, then snapped the name necklace off her and put on your own. Then you heard the prince and ducked. Once he was violating Basha and you saw that she liked it, you were filled with anger and left. I have been playing dead all this time. Hatshepsut, living forever! was seeking a reason to eliminate you. She knew I was well.” ReShera smiled, an eerily beautiful woman who had stepped over the chasm into madness.

  ReShera reached into her sash, then put her hand into her mouth, adjusting the silver extended-incisor mouthpiece. “So now I must take your power, RaEm, and give it to Basha. Do you know from what we gain power, RaEm?” ReShera asked conversationally, not waiting for an answer. “There are two ways. The contemporary way is to learn your secret name, then erase it.” She smiled, a wide, predatory grin. “The other, more ancient way, is to drink your blood. Life flows through us in our blood. A permanent Inundation, if you will.”

  Chloe trembled. The revulsion she felt for the insanity in this room coursed through her veins. Bile filled her mouth, and with a grimace she pushed it back down. She must find ReShera's weakness, work from that. “So, you are going to kill me because you hold me responsible for the death of your lover? How can that be? Basha should not have even been there. She was not a priestess. I did not send her into Thutmosis, you did.”

  ReShera ignored her and continued her tirade. “You are responsible!” she shrieked. “For Basha's death and the destruction of Egypt! We needed a strong woman on the throne, but you worked behind her back, plotting her downfall, to put a man on the throne.” Her words were venomous, ridiculing. “Then you murdered two guards of Sekhmet and entered into an unholy liaison with that man.”

  “What man?”

  “The magus.”

  “Why did you make me miscarry?” Chloe asked calmly.

  ReShera stepped close, her smile poisonous, wicked, and exquisite. “For my brother, Phaemon.”

  “Phaemon? Your brother?” The face from her nightmares flashed before her. A man, his eyes changing from passion to terror as a blade was pushed into his belly. Chloe almost felt the rush of hot blood over her hands. The smell… by me gods! She looked up at ReShera's face. The same cheekbones and wide winging eyebrows. The counterpart perfection of form.

  “Aye. Phaemon, the soldier you seduced during one of your debauched revels with Nesbek. You killed him. You destroyed him so fully that night that he will never walk in the West!” ReShera's voice filled with tears, almost pitiful. “So it was fair you lose someone, too.”

  Chloe, overwhelmed by the revelation, shook her head as though to clear it. If she did not move quickly, her chance to jump ReShera would be gone. “When?” she asked ReShera.

  “When? The night he met you in HatHor's chamber here in Waset! It was your assignation spot; in your depravity you defiled your role and your goddess by mating when you should have been praying! You are the reason the desert god won! You weakened Amun-Ra! I have the small satisfaction that Phaemon wounded you, because you were ill for days afterward.”

  Chloe stood in shock. The night she came through—the red on her hands, the familiar acrid smell, which even then was associated with fear. She had been covered in blood! Had RaEm killed the soldier before she switched places with Chloe? Assuming they had traded? Then where was the weapon? The body? If RaEm had gone into the future as Chloe, where was the missing soldier? Had he, or rather his body, gone into the future also? H
e was ReShera's twin … born on the twenty-third of Phamenoth. Was it possible?

  “Because of the death you gave to Phaemon, you also will never walk in the West! I will pluck out your eyes! Sever your limbs! Scar that face and body you value so highly! I will drink your blood and feast on your heart! Do you know what I will do to your seat of pleasure? That ultimate vanity that has led you so far astray … ?”

  ReShera was in Chloe's face, describing with unholy glee the future that awaited her, but Chloe dismissed the vitriol the woman was throwing at her, ignoring the spittle that landed in her hair and on her face. ReShera had a knife in her belt but nothing else, and she was so angry that she paid little heed to Chloe.

  Chloe leapt, grabbing the perfect little body, snatching for the knife in the woman's sash. She held it to ReShera's throat, calling out to the guards. “You have heard the accusations of this priestess,” she said. “I would not dare any of you to step forward and defend this woman.” She twisted her hostage's arm behind her body, holding the knife at ReShera's throat. She called out, “Be wary. If indeed this story is true and I killed the brother of a fellow priestess with whom I shared my body, and in the Silver Chamber, on the most fearful night of the year, what other blasphemies could I commit?” Chloe smiled, hoping she looked at least half-mad.

  “Drop your weapons.” They did. “Lie down.”

  Cheftu and Thut sat in stunned, admiring silence, watching the battered woman take her hostage out. “I had no idea such abominations existed within the priesthood,” Thut said slowly. “Cheftu, where is Phaemon? Where is the body? Did your lover kill this man?” he asked quietly as they watched Chloe cross the room.

  Cheftu thought rapidly; how could he explain? What had happened? “If they cannot find a body, how can she be accused of murder?” he whispered. “ReShera is mad. She drinks blood. She might have killed him and now wants to lay the crime at Ch … uh, RaEm's feet just as she tried to blame her for Basha's death.”

  As soon as Chloe left the chamber there was a stifled clatter of weaponry as the women followed her … and ran into Thut's guards. “I join my troops,” Thutmosis told Cheftu. “Until the twenty-third, neter. And then I will have my answers.”

  Cheftu stalked Chloe into the dark rooms below. She opened one of the doors and threw in her struggling hostage, then slammed the door. There was no lock, so she wedged the knife through the latch and raced past him, up and out of the temple. He followed her, noting the soldiers who merged into the shadows as she passed. “The prince needs your assistance,” he commanded them, and pointed to the chamber that held ReShera.

  He wanted to speak, to embrace her, yet what could he say? He'd not helped her, but only watched as she'd fought bravely for her life. She did not need him. If he arrived at the boardinghouse before her, she need never know how he'd failed. He could say he'd hidden away from the soldiers and was unable to return home at night. After all, as a male priest it would be his death if anyone knew he'd been here. That was a feeble excuse. Cheftu knew he would never forget Chloe's courage as she'd accepted blow after physical and mental blow, then had rescued herself.

  God had indeed chosen well.

  THE SHIP PULLED AWAY FROM THE DOCK, heading to Noph. Chloe stretched as she reclined on the couch, facing the water. Thut had finally given up. Cheftu said he was nervous about the timing, uncertain whether they would get to Noph. But here they were, on the way, a night sailing, an impossibility without Cheftu's bribery.

  Chloe looked across at him. They had settled for hiding in the open. Cheftu was shaved and trimmed, and though his clothes were not those of an erpa-ha any longer, they did fit the profile of a tradesman and his wife. He was talking to the garrulous old captain, and occasionally a snatch of their conversation drifted over to Chloe. She looked at the ghost white city as they glided by. Waset.

  She would not see it in this time again.

  How did she get there? What did she know? Apparently Luxor was the doorway in, and somewhere in the Temple-of-the-Ka-of-Ptah was the doorway out. One could not go “in” through the “out” door.

  Would Cheftu go with her or try to return to France? Did anything still live there for him, or was it over and he eternally displaced? How could she travel to twentieth-century America and he to nineteenth-century France at the same time? Imhotep hadn't said there was a window of opportunity, though it stood to reason that with twenty-three of everything else, they would also need to be there in the twenty-third minute. Was that only the twenty-third minute, though? Chloe didn't know, but in less than a month she would find out.

  She'd see Cammy again. Watch TV. Read papers.

  And mourn. Deeper and harsher than even Mimi's passing would be the loss of Cheftu. The vision before her blurred. Cheftu… Perhaps he would tell her his full name and she could find his gravesite. A chill enveloped her. She didn't want to find his gravesite. She wanted him beside her. She wasn't cut out to be a tragic figure, to be part of a doomed love affair. So why was she here … preparing to be separated forever?

  At least there was something she could take. She pushed away from the rail and walked over to her couch. She would provide Cammy with some more drawings and herself with a more lively memory.

  The days would pass quickly now; pray God the nights would be slow.

  CHEFTU WATCHED HER IN THE MOONLIGHT and for a moment just drank in the features and physique he knew and loved so well. Chloe glanced over her shoulder, then reached into the pouch at her waist and scattered something in the water. He moved closer as she methodically emptied the pouch. Stepping forward, he touched her shoulders, and after the initial surprise, she sank back against his chest. He nuzzled her neck, smiling at her mews of pleasure.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watching the world go by.”

  Lips on her neck, he grabbed her fist and caressed it with his long fingers. “What are you throwing out to Sobek?” he whispered, his fingers gently prying hers apart. His attention sharpened when he felt the tiny seeds in her palm. He spun her around, looking at her in shock. “What are you doing? Why do you throw these away?”

  “I no longer want to prevent a pregnancy,” she said, meeting him face on. “Damn you, memories will be all I have! Why can I not have your child? Our child?” Her defiance turned into tears, and Cheftu looked up into the black sky. Once, this was all he'd wished for: this woman, better than any dream, and the days to watch their children grow.

  He pulled her close. “It is not to be, chérie.”

  “Why not?” she cried. “Why is this sacrifice necessary? Why can we not be together?”

  “Haii-aii! Beloved, I wish I knew the answers, but I don't. However, you cannot make a child and raise it without two parents. It will be un batârd, a horrible future … no education, no decent marriage. I will not do this.” He tilted her head back. “I am surprised you would.”

  “The world is different now,” she said sulkily. “A bastard is your boss, not the child of an unmarried mother. Still … my family would be shamed. They are never going to believe this wild tale of an ancient world and the love we share.” She began to cry again. “Why me? Why were we chosen to live this? I never asked to be wantonly used by God … I am not like you. I am not a puppet on a string.”

  Cheftu blanched in the moonlight. “You are not being wantonly used by God; you and I are tools, not puppets. You have made choices that led to this path. This may be your destiny, but like anyone else, you can turn away. God selected you because he knew your heart, your courage, and your tenacity.” He dropped her hands and turned to the water gliding by, molten silver threads catching light and reflecting it, urging the ship forward.

  “I do not know whether I even believe in God,” Chloe said angrily. “He is cruel to give and take indiscriminately. I may not even fulfill this ‘destiny.’” She watched Cheftu as if expecting and fearing his rejection.

  At length he spoke, his heavy French accent almost obscuring the English words. “I have been in this
land and time for fifteen years. I will turn thirty-two when you leave, and I will live the rest of my life … um … who knows how. I have sacrificed to idols, I have been inducted into five degrees of the seven in the priesthood of Waset. I have heard demons, I have seen people die from fear. I have absolved sins as if it were my right.” He turned to her. “Once have I complained to God. Then I discovered that his plan was better. I did not understand at that moment, but time proved it true. Not because I am a good or righteous man, but because le Dieu c'est bon. He has given me life, friends, family in two centuries, health, my mind. Granted, it has not always been easy, but he has guarded me. Always, though, the choice of my reaction was mine alone.

  “Our decisions create us, Chloe.

  “I could have stepped back into time and traveled again. We have found most of the clues in these short days—I could have done the same earlier! I could have chosen madness or to kill myself or to rape, pillage, and murder. These are all things that are and were choices for me. Somehow God specifically picked me, Jean…” He stopped himself, then went on:

  “Who I was is no matter. He knew how my heart would behave and placed me here. Why? To be, like any other time, a tool for him to use. A method of loving people with my arms, of serving people with my skills, of sharing with my heart. It matters little where I live—” He choked. “I would that it were with you, but that is not to be, not any way we can imagine.” He sighed. “Still, that is no excuse for us to blame God.”

  He turned, his eyes shining. “We have had the most, Chloe! We have climbed the Pyramids, talked with pharaohs, seen the deliverance of God! He spared our lives, specifically, again and again and again! Think of it: we were not hit by the killing hail, we survived the desert, the soldiers, starvation, and thirst. If this is the price we pay, then so be it!”

  “I—I do not understand your faith,” she stuttered out. “I have never understood God that way.” She swallowed. “I know the things we have seen, but I cannot truly believe in the hand you claim is behind it.”