by Hank Lawson
Chapter 12
CRUSH LIKE MIDNIGHT
Mehi no longer visited the shoreline; An-khi no longer came running. Since his last meeting with her, he had twice approached the entry to Paser’s estate and both times guards chased him away. Afterward, for five sunsets, he wandered onto the ridge behind her estate. He kept watch until daylight chased him away.
One night, breaking his string of sentries and knowing he wouldn’t sleep, Mehi kept a promise with Djedi to help dig for roots in the cooler evening.
Beside him, the magician squatted, white robe tenting around him into a pyramidal shape on ground softened by the receded Inundation. “I don’t believe I’ve dug so close to the river this time of year.”
In the faltering light, Mehi cast his eyes to the river while images of An-khi crested in his mind. Like waves without the force to break over, each thought hovered and dammed up against the one before. The Nile’s march mocked him.
“Mehi, recall as a child when you could play forever … in sunlight that spread out beyond all borders? When you achieved timelessness? Are you listening?”
“Yes,” Mehi said, not taking his eyes from the river’s steady rhythm. “As a child.”
“Well, my way of discovering timelessness is magic, yours is your An-khi.”
“Uh ... that ended.”
Djedi righted himself to face his young friend. His right eyebrow perched above his odd-set eyes. “I’m sorry, Mehi. I love An-khi too.” He placed his hand on Mehi’s shoulder. “Inundations subside and return.”
Mehi jerked from the Nile toward the magician, knocking away Djedi’s hand. “What’s come back is the tomb-robbery.”
“Tomb-robbery? You mean your father’s tomb-robbery?”
“It feels like the Gods are saying ... it’s my crime.” Mehi replaced his gaze onto the Nile, speaking slowly. “Just before Pabes fell, our eyes locked—it seemed a long time—I saw he expected to learn about dying from me. What could I tell him? The only thing I see is from where I’m standing. Sebek burst his borders. He’s gone on. Nothing’s blocking him.”
Djedi blinked. He dug in his bag. With piercing gaze and grim smile, the magician handed several items to his friend. “These will help you to see where you’re going.” He added a last idea. “Sometimes, we love with patience.”
Mehi arrived home after midnight and, despite the cold, went to bed on the roof. He needed to be alone. As Djedi had instructed, he rolled up the strip of linen with the names Lailarnkouch, Arsenofrefren and Arkentekta drawn on it, poured oil over it, and set it aflame. “Ligoterench, the Thunderer, the Eon, who consumed the snake and exhausted the moon and lifted the orb of the sun, O Gods, give me the information I desire.”
Mehi lay down but his excitement frustrated any rest. He rose twice to repeat the incantation, fearing the spell wouldn’t work if too much time had elapsed between it and sleep. When he stopped trying, Mehi settled into sleep and dream.
A hawk circles in the sky and shimmers. Gold sparkles down from the hawk when the tips of its wings touch below its body. Circling and circling, the hawk cries. An object falls from its beak. On Mehi’s palm, a circle of suns spangle in one brilliance shining, shining, shining. Out of nowhere, his brother Sebek snatches it away.
Waking in the dark echo of Sebek’s laughter, Mehi was sure he knew what the dream meant.
Minutes later, Mehi strode along the shoreline in a darkness so silken it felt like the finest linen. There, he gathered the stones revealed to him in his dream. Gods had placed them there for him to find, sprouting from the sand. “They’re all alive.” Had they always been here glowing, dazzling, waiting? When he’d plucked enough, he tied the stones together with halfa grass. A horrible weight lifted from Mehi like night from dawn.
Upon climbing the ridge near the governor’s estate, he remembered he had no way to get to An-khi. She didn’t know that things had changed; she didn’t know his dream.
He put the necklace in a cloth he tore from his loincloth. Next, he found a boy—who Mehi frightened by running at him from the darkness—told him to take the cloth to the estate and ask for An-khi. Mehi re-climbed the ridge.
She’ll see the necklace is from me. She’ll come to me again.
Night was lifting like indigo veils when Mehi’s loved one emerged in white.
Yes, this is as perfect as the dream.
Over the dark sand, An-khi stormed at Mehi. “What is this?” She held out the stones as if they were foul fruit.
This isn’t the dream. “You’re angry. Why are you angry?”
“I’m wakened and told a scared little boy has this dirty cloth for me. So I know you’re up here spying on me again. What is this?”
“It’s a gift, An-khi. A necklace. I made it because—”
“Gift? You’re trying to buy me?”
“Buy you? Buy you? It will bind us. It’s a special gift.”
An-khi sneered. “It’s easy for you to give. That’s what you want to do.”
“No, An-khi, you’re not listening.” Mehi couldn’t think of what else to tell her: A hawk circles in gold; why couldn’t she see it?
“I know exactly what you’re saying. You want sacrificing to be enough. It avoids my father.” An-khi flung the cloth and stones back to Mehi. The string snapped. The freed stones thudded against him and dropped to the ground.
“An-khi!” Mehi stooped to them.
“I didn’t mean that.” An-khi rocked back on her heels. “But that’s where rocks belong, Mehi.”
As Mehi touched the stones, he glanced up at An-khi. The image of her pointing at the broken necklace slowed and slowed until it stagnated into unnatural calm—like the Inundation struck dead. Dead. In this stiff sleep, An-khi and Mehi stopped as finally as the stones had stopped, immovable as pyramids and petrified by magic no magic could dispel.
He stared at the stony An-khi as the other An-khi was saying, “Since you don’t do anything, accept the facts.”
Mehi didn’t speak. Why should he respond to that An-khi?
That An-khi sighed and withdrew from him.
Moments later, Mehi too walked from the place. He knew that he remained staring at An-khi pointing.
Torchlight took hold of a clearing encircled by seven acacias outside the town of Per-Medjed. Ptah High-priest Siptah and Vizier Shaf stood together, faces withdrawn within hoods,. They waited with fifty others for a play to begin. Even the acacia leaves rustling in a warm breeze seemed to be waiting.
To a sudden pounding of drums, a man wearing a loin cloth and a boar mask jumped from behind an acacia. He leapt crazily, knees wide, dancing before the audience, stopping briefly to squat as if defecating. But the mask meant he was a chief. Leaping up again, the boar chief pointed at another actor in the audience. This actor carried a flail and a crook—a king.
The boar chief waved an arm to show his storehouse of gold—a linen sheet of saffron yellow—and then pointed to the other side of the road at a young woman. She held two feathers indicating she was a princess. The king cowered before the chief and bowed to kiss the dirt as he circled toward the princess.
When the king reached the young woman, he railed at her in pantomime, shaking his arms, then shaking her. Meanwhile, in rhythm with the drumming, the boar chief thrust his pelvis in the princess’s direction. He mugged hideously to the audience.
The king pushed the princess toward the boar chief’s lair. Her hands to her face, she wept. The drums knocked out sounds of a storm as the poor woman, finally digging her feet to hold her place, ever so slowly skidded into the beast’s arms. The boar chief then dragged her behind the storehouse of gold.
Several in the audience gasped. The beast gored the woman to drive her behind the gold sheet and into his lair.
Alone in the clearing, the king slunk back to the storehouse of gold. He ripped down the linen and stole away with his prize tucked under his arm, casting furtive glances and hisses at the audience. The displaced sheet exposed the monster boar, his back to the citizens. He was
thrusting back and forth at the princess, who faced the audience, eyes weeping. The musicians banged out a horrific noise.
Then, perfectly mirroring the boar at the opposite side of the clearing, the king began thrusting his hips at the gold he held in his hands.
The music stopped on a blast of dissonance just as the king jerked around, now wearing with a boar mask himself. He bared fangs. Many in the audience shrieked and hid their faces. Then they applauded.
Vizier Shaf tilted toward two citizens talking behind him.
“Could a king be so mean?” asked the woman, a child at her knee.
“Why not?” said a white-haired man. “The play’s about Khufu and his younger princess.”
“No.”
“He can’t raise the Nile, so he’s using his daughter to get more gold out of the Wawat. Everybody knows that.”
The woman giggled. “He couldn’t be so evil.”
Stepping from the crowd, Shaf indicated the High-priest should draw away with him. “Well done.”
Siptah bowed slightly. “Most gracious.”
They walked from the crossroad and each other.
Mid-evening darkness embraced the lovers entwined upon the Per-O rooftop as if it were a secret cove. Khufu snuggled with Theormi fragrant of sweet rush. Her eyelids wiggled like fish were darting underneath. She danced even in her sleep.
Khufu looked out to the west’s red desert—his mother’s death, the Nile’s recession, the halting of pyramid construction for another year, the regicide attempts, worms and Ptah priests—yet, he drank sweet water. He soaked up this oasis with Theormi. He could melt his fiber into the Nile and overflow it and boost the barley fields, now half-high, into a second yield.
Theormi garbled, “Gay moundings, gray mouthings.”
Last night, the two had discussed the possibility of invading Wawat. Theormi argued—her eyes and voice lively as flames—that the Wawat people didn’t deserve harm merely because they lived near gold. Warmed by her protection of an unknown people that matched his protection of Egypt’s citizens, he realized his own qualm over invasion. He scorned ever more Hordedef’s weak debate.
“Gold in gray mountains.”
The word “gold” pricked Khufu’s ear. “Theormi?”
“Gold mountain.” Her eyes fluttered.
“What are you seeing?”
“Medja.”
He jostled her. “Sister, wake yourself. You spoke about gold in a mountain.”
She blinked, her eyes unfocused. “Odd mountain ... not gray.” Her eyes closed like a lotus and she began to murmur back into sleep.
“Theormi.” He jostled her again. “Are you talking about the gray mountain range ... the gold mines there?”
Her eyes opened and sharpened. She sat up, rubbing her face.
“Are you talking about gold in the gray mountain range?”
“I heard a voice ... a voice I know, describing an odd mountain.”
“The gray mountain range in southern Egypt?”
Theormi paused. “It must be. But this mountain is dark—almost black—amid gray ones.”
“There’s no such mountain there. Not that I’ve seen. How can you dream it?”
“I don’t think it’s a dream. I mean, not originally. It’s also a memory. Someone told me about it ... sometime.”
“Sweet woman, this is the Gods’ message. I also dreamt of gold last night. The Horus hawk winged in a majestic circle over Egypt and me. His sunrays dropped gold into my hand. Sacred gold. I believe in your dream.”
“Did I say ‘Medja’?”
“You were trying to say my sacred name.”
As if exploring her dream, Theormi looked down. “No, I don’t think so.”
“There are the Medja people in Ta Sety. Perhaps your native land, before enemies enslaved you. Perhaps your father the Medja king told you about the mountain. Or perhaps it was one of the Gods.”
Theormi smiled.
“Never mind. I believe you. The Inundation is dying, but new gold is ours.” Khufu leapt to this feet. “You give me what I need, Theormi.”
“Then invasion won’t take place?”
“Not now.” He was running as he kissed her, and then pounded down the stairs yelling for the palace to awaken.
In the wake of Theormi’s dream—invasion of Wawat peaceably forgotten—the Per-O bustled into action to form a caravan to the black mountain. Only Queen Meritates, brooding on pillows in her suite, remained idle.
Upon her suite’s silken lounge, Theormi laid on her lap a book regarding irrigation she’d been reading in the glow of an alabaster lamp. Five nights after Khufu’s caravan left Annu, she reaffirmed her decision not to tell Khufu about her strange encounter with Prince Merhet in the palace corridor. But something else troubled her. The word “Medja” resonated in her mind. Whose voice had told her about the mountain?
In any case, she prayed that her lover—animated for the first time since his mother’s passing—would find the black mountain, deep veins of gold inside it, and avert war.
Deciding to retire to bed, Theormi alerted to the sudden sound of stomping feet outside her suite. Queen Meritates and her captain flurried in. He pointed his spear at Theormi. She stood. Without a word, the captain swung her by her arm toward the door. The three swept out of the suite.
The captain jabbed Theormi through the corridor to Prince Merhet’s door and then, at Meritates’ signal, into the suite. He withdrew. Inside, Merhet tilted at the far wall, peering up through the high window at the night sky. When he swiveled to Theormi, his expression shifted from that of a blank goat to that of a frothing dog. Was he thinking she’d come to him as a prostitute. When the Queen entered the chamber, the prince’s appearance resumed its blankness.
Standing rigid behind her husband’s favorite, Meritates ordered her son, “Take this woman.”
Theormi whipped around toward the Queen. What did she say? Theormi was about to protest as the God-king’s favorite when she heard Merhet, his voice small and distant, ask “Take her?” She turned back to Merhet to see him shiver from head to toe. Sweat seeped onto his hairline.
Meritates said, “Dislodge her with you to the country estate while Khufu rummages for this ridiculous mountain.”
The prince gulped. His pupils dilated. His face twitched.
“You understand what I speak of, of course. Take her as a man. I recognize that you covet her.”
Merhet’s mouth opened into an oval.
“Your father has pledged her to you.”
Theormi was about to blurt out the lie of this, but stopped herself for the cold contempt in Meritates’ eye.
“I’m married,” Merhet said finally, his eyes dragging the floor.
“Well, at any rate, she’d be your fourth level wife. She deserves less.”
Abruptly, Merhet bounded across the room until his plump body came upon Theormi. As if remembering she was in the room, he stopped in mid-stride before her, rotated and threw himself back to the window, rubbing his ears.
“My goodness, son,” remarked Meritates, her eyebrows upraised, “you pace like the God-king.”
The prince lurched again from the wall. And again, he came to and retreated from Theormi, licking his lips and sweating at his hairline.
“My Sheps estate will be my wedding gift. I sympathize with your abhorrence of the Per-O. Remove this woman there and establish the estate as your own.” Monitoring his zigzag which continued into its now fourth circuit, Meritates said, “You should possess what you desire.”
Ending one circuit, Merhet flattened himself against the wall and, angling back his head, clung his view to the darkness outdoors. “Must we talk of this tonight, Mother? The full moon rises. I was just leaving.”
Theormi pricked up an eyebrow. She knew that tonight the moon was black, a new moon. The prince had earlier confused the moon’s phases during his crazed story regarding Princess Merysankh. His disturbance, whatever it was, fixated on the moon.
The
Queen, too, seemed troubled by the prince’s behavior. She was silent a moment. Her voice lowered. “Where do you go these nights, Merhet?” The tremor in her voice surprised Theormi.
“I go out, Mother. I visit ... friends, but only on the full moon. I must go.” He started another circuit.
“What about the woman?”
Standing in front of An-khi but not looking at her, Merhet shook his head. “I can’t. No, no.” He revolved back to the window.
“I tell you, you can. Moreover you should.”
The prince slapped his hands to his face. His fingers crawled into his ears.
“Merhet, are you in pain? Shall I call the doctors?”
He chuckled through gritted teeth.
“Well, Merhet? The woman?”
“No.” His voice squeaked. “Quit talking.”
Meritates bristled. “Do not speak to me in that manner.”
Squashing his hands hard over his ears as if for some agonizing squeal, Merhet hauled himself from the window and, finally, quick-stepped around Theormi toward the chamber door.
“Khufu knows how important she is to you,” the Queen called after him. “He gladly offers her. She’s yours.”
At this, two steps from his door, the prince dropped his hands from his ears. Separated from the two women, he mumbled as if to someone beside him, “After the sun rises, there’s no escape.”
The Queen arched an eyebrow. “Say again?”
“The sun scorches. I escape with the full moon.”
“Then you’ll take the woman tonight with the full moon? Is that what you are saying?”
Merhet’s head cocked to one side. A moment later he smoothed his tunic. Stiff-legged, he scuttled from the chamber.
Theormi saw that Meritates, by her scowl, shared her concern for Merhet. But when their eyes met, the Queen’s eyes recaptured their contempt. “Captain.” The guard reported to the chamber. “Remove this woman to the Sheps estate.” Meritates glided out of the chamber.
The captain cut off Theormi’s call of “Queen?” by snatching her from behind. He gagged her with cloth then began dragging her out of the palace. She kicked her heels at the tiles, trying to drive herself backward. The captain punched her on the temple. Even when she regained her balance, it left her groggy.
Had the Queen lost her mind?
Sebek scraped himself up the narrow crevice. His hips wedged fast. He had no idea how long he’d been in the pit below or how he ‘d come to be there. Thirst scratched him. His tongue had swollen. With one last heave, he wrenched himself up. He landed on level ground, but slumped over his left side. He wavered, about to fall. Before he steadied himself, several minutes passed in which he heard a far off lion’s roar. Certain it was the sound of his confusion and anger, he hit the butt of his hand against his forehead. Where was he? What was he doing here?
His eyes drifted across the horizon of dark desert waste, finding no answers. Around him, scrub brush jutted up through gray sand. A first-quarter moon was his only companion. He looked down and, rather than question his nudity, he saw his skin was golden. All around him was an ashen gray, yet he sparkled gold.
Was he hallucinating? Diseased? Or dead? Yes, he must be dead.
He scratched at his skin. It caked under his fingernail. He pinched it out and then balled the soft substance between his fingers. “Gold.” Sebek’s grand voice surprised him. “I’m gold. Look at me. I’m a gold man.” He twirled about, stumbling, almost falling. “I’m—”
Twenty feet behind him, a lion growled. Not turning, Sebek bolted. The lion’s paws thumped the ground where Sebek had just stood. Its roar vibrated his ribs. Crying and laughing, reflexes firing, he scrambled up a rock ledge. In the open, the lion or its pride would run him down. He crawled on his knees for several feet. The lion roared just below. Sebek looked up to a rock face dead end. The lion’s claws clacked on the rock. He felt its hot breath on his calves.
Sebek found no higher escape to climb to. He pawed over the wall. A loose rock. He grasped it, grubbed it, wrested it from the wall. He turned but the rock, too heavy, fell from his hands. The lion—lioness—poked her head above the ledge. She coiled to jump onto it. Scooping the rock with his forearms, Sebek hefted it and then, balancing it, rolled his hands behind it as he pushed it to his face. The lioness squeezed onto the ledge, three feet from Sebek, roaring. Her breath heated Sebek’s pelvis. His spine stiffened. His rock slipped forward, nearly out of his fingers. His palms caught up to it and sped it down at the lion’s head.
He held it there.
The rock had struck the lioness just above the eyes. She didn’t move. Her eyes glazed. Sebek lifted the rock. The animal growled if not quite a roar. Still, Sebek shivered to his toes. He cracked the rock down.
The lion groaned. It shuddered. Sebek’s blood roused. He picked up the rock, seemingly lighter now. He brought it down. Again and again. His gold hands bled. Down, down, down.
Finally, the rock fell from Sebek’s hands, grazing his leg as he collapsed exhausted next to the dead animal.
On his knees, panting, blood from his hands and the lion’s head trickling onto the rock ledge, Sebek hacked part cough and part laugh. He reeled to his feet over the beast. About to roar out his exploit as a desert god, he heard human voices.
He stumbled over the lion and down the rock toward the noise. Once up the hundred feet of a plateau, he gazed down on the campsite of caravan lit by campfires and torches.
Sebek wondered how he could use these people. It was a god’s right to take their water and anything else he wished. He inspected the animals, banners, palanquins. Instantly, a supreme hate, sharper than his memory of its cause, crackled through him. A god’s hate. He recognized the caravan belonged to God-king Khufu.
In sight of the gray mountain range, Khufu’s caravan, including Shaf and Hordedef, settled into camp following their twentieth day of an aching journey. Gazing out from his palanquin throne set before his green pavilion, Khufu expected to uncover Theormi’s mountain the next day. Riders sitting around campfires chattered about new gold. About them stood the dozen small tents and royal pavilions.
In silhouette on a ridge fifty yards away, a man jumped up and down screaming. “Khufu, God-king Khufu, come for more gold? I am what you seek. I am pure gold. Slaughter me for your gold-hunger. I’m your best citizen. Love me.”
“What is that man?” said Khufu to his guards and princes about him. “Retrieve him.”
Hordedef said, “Perhaps a fugitive from the gold mines. Slave or criminal.”
The cackling man, slippery as a catfish and naked as the desert, dodged the guards long enough to anger them. When they at last corralled him to the camp, the naked man hissed like an angry crocodile.
Shaf sniffed. “He’s barely more than a boy.”
Hordedef gestured to the young man’s hands. “See the blood on his fingers?”
Khufu noticed something else. “That’s gold on his chest. Bring him here.” Guards hefted the man toward the God-king on his palanquin throne. Khufu scratched his finger on the man’s chest and the man giggled. “Quiet.” Khufu rubbed the dust between his thumb and finger, rolling it into a ball. “Where was this gold that you might wallow in it?”
“I was born of it. I am gold. I am Egypt’s gold.”
“Get this scoundrel water. He’s addled.”
“Water. Yes, water.” The crazed man bolted for the water vase a guard was removing from a donkey. Other guards blocked him.
Khufu commanded, “Give me the water.” He drew the vase out of the man’s grasping reach. “There will be water and food too, but first explain where you came to be covered in gold.”
When Khufu repeated the question, the naked man stopped stretching for the vase. He laughed. “Fools say their lover stays with them whenever they part, but I part with my lover’s guts on me. Witness her.” Opening his arms to display his torso, he giggled again.
Vizier Shaf spat. “A lunatic.”
Hordedef said, �
��He may have slept in a gold deposit.”
Khufu nodded. “Answer me, slave, where did you sleep with the Lady Gold? I wish to entertain her. Show her to me.”
“For my God-king? For my own just King who rewards his citizens with a mountain of gold? Yes, my God-king. I’ll lead you.”
Khufu waved to the guards and they allowed the man to drink. He guzzled it all but for what he spilled down his chest, washing away a streak of gold.
He led them out, but lost his way and his focus in the darkness. The caravan wandered after him until Hordedef suggested, “Khufu, perhaps a promise of reward when he locates the mine ...”
“Citizen, what is your name?”
“Name?” He paused, seeming to search around him for the answer. “Sebek. Sebek.”
“The Crocodile God? Very well. So, Sebek, God-king Khufu, the good god, grants you a wish. What do you desire above all else?”
His eyes blank, the man said, “Travel.”
“Is that all?”
“And lead traders to strange lands.” Sebek’s face flushed and his eyes sparkled.
“A noble career. Granted. Find for your God-king your Lady Gold.”
“Thank you, Khufu, with love, with love. Gracious. Thank you. Your Highness—”
Khufu leaned toward Shaf. “If as a slave he hated me, as a trader he loves me.”
Sebek rediscovered the way, if not immediately. When found, the dark mountain, a hill in actuality, loomed as a black void amid the gray mountains spreading away in both directions. Khufu’s gold ministers swooped on it. One found the crevice into which Sebek had no doubt stumbled. Climbing down it, the minister shouted confirmation. This mountain brimmed with gold.
Amidst shouts and cheers, Khufu inspected an extracted gold nugget on his palm. It inspired the same joy that Theormi in her gold gown had caused him. He clutched the means that would ensure his pyramid and secure his people. Like Theormi’s subtle body, it revealed itself to him. “Theormi,” he whispered to himself, “this is our Mehi.”
After a survey of the area, Hordedef reported. “Majesty, on a ledge at the far side, a dead lioness lies still wet with blood. Its own blood. Recall the bloody hands of this Sebek?” The prince added, “He bears watching.”
Khufu did not remove his eyes from the gold. “I can’t listen to your gloom just now, son.”
Sometime between midnight and dawn, a shadowed figure slipped into Prince Heru’s Per-O suite. In bed, Heru slept. The intruder eased back the translucent netting from the canopy’s golden frame. Over the sleeping prince, the intruder whipped down a wooden mallet, cracking it against Heru’s head. The prince groaned. The intruder staggered back.
Heru gasped and then fell quiet.
The intruder again approached the prince. With a copper dagger, he or she ripped strips from the canopy’s netting. Bending a knee onto the bed, the intruder placed the strips underneath the prince’s right hand, extended his forefinger, aimed the dagger, and thrust it down. It snapped the bone and severed the finger. The prince’s hand jerked from the intruder’s grasp. His scream was short.
The intruder wrapped some of the strips around the bleeding, plucked up the severed finger, wrapping it also, and placed it in his or her palm, closing a fist around it.
The figure brought up the robe’s hood and moved back out the door.
