The Gardener and the Assassin

by Mark Gajewski

  The huge royal barque bobbed alongside the quay, built of cedar, more than two hundred feet long, gilded with gold and copper, adorned with carvings and rich hangings and vast quantities of flowers. There was a dais in the center of the deck for the four shrines. Priests moved up the gangplank and set them in place. The royal family and priests and dignitaries and my girls and I ascended the gangplank onto the boat. I positioned my little group as far from the royal family as I could. Ever since the day I’d ridden with Pharaoh in his chariot I’d tried to avoid the proximity of his wives. Or, rather, Iset and Tyti. Tiye treated me completely differently now whenever she encountered me inside Djeme, as a co–conspirator, dedicated along with her and Pentawere to keeping Pharaoh alive. She’d even delivered a message from Pentawere once, expressing how miserable and unhappy he was since his marriage, confirming he hadn’t consummated it and wouldn’t until Naqi’a was fluent in our language – which she was struggling to become – professing his undying love for me. I’d nearly worn out that sheet of papyrus from reading it so often.

  Oarsmen pushed the boat from the quay and poled it down the canal into the river channel. Frogs croaked from the long grass on both sides of the canal; thousands emerged annually during the inundation. The steersman turned the barque south against the very strong north–flowing current. Oarsmen took to their benches and began to row hard, churning the water. Long ropes had been attached to the front of the barque and a gang of workers on the riverbank seized one and began pulling the vessel southward, guiding it, walking slowly. Men tied several small boats to the free ends of other ropes to help tow the royal barque; their oarsmen began rowing and the ropes tightened. The eastern bank of the river was lined with massive crowds – farmers, Wasetians, officials, residents of nearby towns. Loud roars erupted as the gods and Pharaoh drifted past. On land, parallel to and keeping pace with the flotilla, heavily armed soldiers in full battle array marched beneath standards adorned with colorful plumes and bright waving pennants, members of the local Amen Division. I recognized the man leading the archers – Binemwese – a regular attendee at Pentawere’s parties. Horses and chariots followed, roiling the dust. Those observing along the shore chanted and clapped; musicians played lutes and beat drums and shook sistrums. Dancers snaked back and forth, spinning, doing flips, leaping and seeming to float gracefully through the air. Trumpeters signaled over the din. The river itself was full of small boats crammed nearly to sinking with people getting a close–up view of the spectacle.

  Pharaoh and Ramesses and Usermarenakht and the other high priests and chantresses made offerings of food and incense to the gods as the boat moved slowly south. Smoke drifted across the water. After half an hour the magnificent and graceful southern temple, Ipet–Resyt, came fully into view. It stood a very short distance east of the riverbank, the space between river and temple wall filled with befeathered drummers, young girls playing lutes, dancing girls wearing girdles of linen or precious stones turning backwards somersaults, harpists, singers, and dozens of priests carrying symbols of the valley’s divinities. Vendors were doing a brisk business bartering trinkets at small stands. Many in the crowd were already partaking of the free food and beer Pharaoh was providing for the festival.

  The royal boat docked at the temple’s stone quay. Waset abutted the temple’s landward wall, its crooked narrow dusty streets winding among workshops and animal pens, its mud–brick houses ranging in size from hovels to villas. Priests lifted the shrines onto their shoulders and carried them down the gangplank towards the entrance of the temple near the midpoint of its river–facing wall, moving slowly between lines of high officials and priests and chantresses and upper class Wasetians. I followed a dozen paces behind the royal family. In my reed basket were flowers I was to provide Pharaoh with later for him to present to Amenemopet upon his arrival in the sanctuary in the farthest reaches of the temple. Priests leading fattened festooned cattle destined to be sacrificed as part of the ceremony trailed me.

  Four pedestals were set up in front of the temple, all colorful with flowers. The priests set the shrines atop them. Dozens more busied themselves placing food offerings on low altars set up before the shrines as the royal family seated themselves beneath a sunscreen directly between the shrines and the temple. Spectators spread out in a great semicircle facing royals and altars and shrines, thousands of them, entirely occupying the temple grounds.

  Pharaoh and Ramesses rose from their seats and moved behind the altars. As co–ruler, Ramesses had the place of honor. Usermarenakht and the other high priests were already gathered there. Methodically, they lit offerings on fire. Yellow flames danced and black smoke ascended to the heavens.

  I didn’t pay attention to the ceremony. My eyes were locked on the sunscreen, on Pentawere. I hadn’t seen him on the quay or the royal barque, for he’d been lost in the mass of celebrants. He was with his wife. Naqi’a. The woman I’d given up Pentawere for. The woman I’d refused to let him cheat on with me. She was beautiful, dark–eyed, far too young, as richly dressed as the rest of the royal women. She looked completely lost. A girl barely older stood a little behind her, leaning close, whispering in her ear. Probably her translator. Which meant she wasn’t fluent in our language yet. Which meant, if Pentawere was true to his word, that she was still a virgin. Pentawere didn’t look at Naqi’a nor she him. I’d rarely seen two people so stiff and formal around each other. So different from Pentawere and me. We’d talked and laughed without pause whenever we were together, as if we were the only people in the world, our hands always touching, constantly sneaking kisses. This was the first time I’d seen him since I’d sent him from my hut five months ago and it took every ounce of strength to keep from racing to him and throwing myself into his arms. It was good distance separated us; otherwise, I feared I’d do something foolish that would give us away. Being so close yet so far away was utter torture.

  Suddenly, Pentawere’s eyes met mine and his face lit up. My heart felt as if Re had just leapt into the morning sky. Tiye had been right that day on my estate – Pentawere belonged to me. Naqi’a had stolen him from me. Even if she became his wife in more than just name, why should I feel remorse if Pentawere cheated on her with me? Truth was, she’d come between us, not the other way around. She had no right to Pentawere no matter what Pharaoh had commanded. Tiye had shown me the truth of it.

  Beketaten nudged me. “Your part’s almost here,” she whispered.

  Pharaoh raised his glittering crook and flail high. In this part of the ceremony he was going to renew the gods’ ancient cults.

  “Gods of the valley! Since the day I became Horus–pharaoh I have donated vast amounts of land and many gold statues to your temples throughout the length of the valley, from south of the first cataract to the Wadjet Wer in the North. I have renewed and expanded the temples of the Osiris–pharaohs who came before me. I dispatched a trading expedition to the land of Punt and offered you the best of what was brought back. I sent my emissaries to the land of Atika in Retenu, to the great copper mines. Such a thing had not been heard of since the time of any earlier pharaoh. The mines yielded copper that was loaded into tens of thousands of containers on my boats and brought to you. I have fought campaigns to secure the valley from the threat of barbarian settlers. I have built extensively at Waset on both banks since the early years of my reign, surrounding the temple at Djeme with plain white walls and then building a fortress with a girdling wall, high and strong, with ramparts and battlements. From the bounty of this valley I have given you a quarter million hectares of land, herds of cattle, flocks of poultry, more than eighty–six thousand farmers and craftsmen and priests and scribes and other officials to care for you. Today I confirm that those donations shall continue, and be added to, that you shall be fed and clothed and honored for eternity.” He swept his eyes over everyone crowding the processional way. “From my storehouses each day I provide food for more than four thousand people in Waset and on the west bank. Today I have provided an additional
eleven thousand extra–large loaves of bread and nearly four hundred jugs of beer, enough to feed the thousands of my people who have come to Waset from north and south along the river to celebrate the Opet.”

  His pronouncement was met with resounding and sustained cheers from the onlookers.

  Pharaoh stepped back from the altars. Priests lifted the barques in turn onto their shoulders with the carrying poles. The chantresses began to rattle their sistrums and menat necklaces, women to beat their drums.

  Opet meant “harem;” Ipet–Resyt was where Amen annually celebrated his divine marriage. While many pharaohs had added to and modified the elegant temple in front of me over the last hundreds of years, according to stories told at night in Ta Set Maat the third Amenhotep and Ramesses the Great were most responsible for its current form. The priests carried the barques into the peristyle courtyard at the front of the temple through the ceremonial entrance directly opposite the quay; that entrance lay between two colossal seated statues of Ramesses the Great.

  Had we come overland from Ipet–Isut we would have entered the temple through its magnificent northern entrance. There a pylon soared into the sky, its stone walls etched with monumental images of Ramesses the Great’s victory over the Hittites at Qadesh. Pennants rippled atop massive cedar flagpoles partially recessed in the pylon’s walls. Two red granite obelisks – one more than seventy feet tall, the other over eighty – etched with inscriptions, painted, standing on bases with statues of four baboons on each side, flanked the entrance between the two towers of the pylon. Two twenty–foot tall seated statues of Ramesses rested between the obelisks and the pylon, with smaller statues of one of Ramesses’ daughters and his great wife Nefertari beside his legs. River gods binding the valley together were depicted on the sides of his thrones. Two giant statues of a striding Ramesses stood before each tower as well.

  But we’d come by boat. We entered the peristyle court and turned right. It was a magnificent space, almost two hundred feet long and one hundred–sixty wide. A double row of seventy–four tall columns edged the four sides, supporting a narrow roof around the perimeter. I counted eleven colossal statues of Ramesses interspersed among the columns. The majority of the court was open to the sky. The priests had already placed the barques on their stands in the shaded shrine just to the right of the main temple entrance, built by the third Thutmose and rebuilt by Ramesses the Great and today filled with flowers by my girls. Four graceful papyriform columns supported the roof of the unwalled shrine.

  Those spectators who could shoved their way into the hall, for even commoners were allowed inside this portion of the temple during the Opet. I glimpsed part of the town through the doorway called The Great Gateway of the Pharaoh of the Upper and Lower Valley Ramesses, Whom All the Common People Adore That We Might Live. The doorway was in fact decorated with images of men and women adoring that justified pharaoh. Soldiers were keeping commoners bunched together in the east part of the temple, away from those of higher status. The royal family was standing in the shade provided by the narrow strip of roof; everyone else was baking in hot sun. I caught a brief glimpse of the omnipresent Kairy; he was watching both the crowd and the fourth Ramesses.

  I studied the walls of the court as Pharaoh and the high priests presented offerings to the gods. The walls were decorated with scenes of Ramesses the Great performing today’s rituals. In one, seventeen of his sons were leading sacrificial garlanded bulls towards the first pylon of this very temple, its pennants flying. Since he’d had more than fifty he must have completed work on this temple in the first part of his reign, before the majority were born. An imposing statue of Ramesses powerfully and confidently striding forward along with his great wife Nefertari stood in the left rear of the court; seated statues of Ramesses also rose beside the door that led into the next section of the temple. Many inscriptions on the walls had been plastered over and repainted, repairs necessary, I knew from old tales, because the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten had chipped out all references to Amen in this temple. I saw numerous small statues of pharaohs and gods scattered about, the third Amenhotep and Horemheb and Amen and Armant’s goddess Iunyt among them.

  I had work to do. I slipped unnoticed around the crowd of worshipers into the next chamber. I’d stored some of the garlands and bouquets Pharaoh was to present to the gods here yesterday to keep them from fading in the hot sun during today’s procession. The chamber was a dark and forbidding and awe–inspiring place after the brightly–lit first court and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Once they did I caught my breath. Seven mighty seventy–foot high columns on each side of the narrow hall supported the roof, each capital carved in the shape of an open papyrus blossom. The outer walls were as high as the columns; the only light came from small clerestory windows at ceiling level. I moved to the right front wall and picked up my flowers and studied the scenes carved there. They portrayed Pharaoh Tutankhamen celebrating the Opet festival.

  A son of Akhenaten, he’d restored the old gods and made Waset the Southern capital again after his father’s death. His work on this temple had been an attempt to reverse Akhenaten’s assault on the gods. Tutankhamen had died young, well before all the craftsmen had been relocated from Akhetaten back to Ta Set Maat. Due to the limited number of craftsmen available, a tomb smaller and simpler than any of his predecessors or successors had been excavated for him in the Great Place. My ancestor Ika had helped decorate its few walls, along with a handful of specialists hurried south to finish the tomb within the seventy–day mummification period.

  In the first scene on the wall in this room Tutankhamen greeted Amen and Mut and Khonsu, as we’d done this morning; in the next he made offerings at Ipet–Isut’s quay. I moved along the wall, careful not to crush any of my flowers. In the next set of scenes Tutankhamen followed the gods onto their boat, sailed the river with them, stood before them in their shrine in the courtyard I’d just left. On the wall directly ahead he greeted the three gods inside this very space.

  I was just about to move to another wall when a figure slipped into the hall behind me.

  Pentawere. He glanced furtively over his shoulder at the door he’d just passed through, turned in my direction. The moment his eyes adjusted to the semi–darkness he caught sight of me. He quickly closed the space between us. I hastily set my basket on the ground. He caught me up in his arms, lifted me off my feet, swung me around. He set me down. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close.

  “I’ve missed you so much, Beloved,” Pentawere said fiercely. He kissed me, pushed back my hair, caressed my cheeks with his fingers. “I can’t stand being apart from you.” His eyes bored into mine.

  My skin tingled at his touch. “I miss you too.” I stiffened, glanced at the doorway. “We can’t let Pharaoh catch us. Your wife’s in the next room.”

  “Wife in name only. Still. As I promised.”

  “Your mother told me.”

  “I don’t love Naqi’a, Neset. I love you. You love me. I’m going to marry you.”

  “You’ll really put her aside if we wed, like your mother said?”

  “Yes. I don’t care about her. I did my duty to Father when I married her. I won’t let him keep us apart anymore. When I’m Pharaoh no one will keep us apart.”

  “Did your mother tell you we made our peace?”

  “She did. I can’t tell you how happy that made me. So there’s truly no one to stop us.”

  Chantresses entered the far end of the chamber. Priests were carrying the shrines deeper into the temple, the ceremonies in the first court having concluded. The chantresses were singing, their melody soaring, filling the chamber with glorious sound. The chamber caught their voices, lifted them, wrapped them around me. Hairs rose on the back of my neck. I felt as if I was merging with the kas of the gods. I’d never heard any singing as wonderful. This sacred space had been made for sacred song.

  Pentawere looked hurriedly over his shoulder at the approaching celebrants. “Come to me in the gard
en tonight, Neset.”

  I wanted to more than I could say. I knew if we met in the garden I’d wake up in Pentawere’s bed tomorrow morning. We’d restrained ourselves far too long and I didn’t want to wait anymore. But if we were caught in Pentawere’s room Pharaoh would be furious. He’d ruin both our futures. “It’s too dangerous, My Love. Your father ordered me not to see you. We should wait a few days and arrange a safer meeting place.”

  “Come to me, Neset.” Without looking back Pentawere slipped around the columns and rejoined the procession.

  My mind was racing. What should I do? Go to him tonight and defy fate? Stay away and deny my heart? How was I supposed to know which choice was right, what the consequences would be if I chose incorrectly? They might be drastic. I picked up my flowers and stationed myself beside the door that led into the adjacent sun court. It was completely open to the sky and extraordinarily bright now that Re was straight overhead. Beyond the sun court lay the holiest parts of Ipet–Resyt, including the sanctuary where Pharaoh would conduct the most important part of today’s ceremony and emerge rejuvenated. Only a few people in the procession would pass beyond the sun court with him. I was privileged to be one of them. As were Pentawere and Naqi’a and Iset and Tiye. Thoughts of Pentawere filled my mind. I still felt his touch on my cheek, his kiss on my lips. I loved him. I craved him. I wanted to be with him tonight, for the entire night. I pondered a moment, weighed the consequences, made a decision. I’d go to Pentawere in the garden if it was the will of the gods – or rather, a second god. I already knew the falcon god wanted us to be together.

  On feast days such as this gods’ statues were oracles. If asked a question they’d indicate their answer by moving one way or another. I impulsively stripped two petals from the flowers in my basket. I placed one to the right of the sun court’s doorway and the other to the left. Then I prayed to Amen–Re for guidance. If I should go to Pentawere tonight as he’d asked the god should move to the left. Otherwise, to the right.