by Hank Lawson
Chapter 14
SHADOW PRINCE
One night away from a new moon, the present crescent was sliding into its hood. Mehi exited the Per-O replaying in his mind his most remarkable experience in school yet. Mid-afternoon, something had caused his bleary eyes to glance up from his sheets and, not three feet away, Prince Hordedef stood smiling down at him. So all of the nobles’ sons could hear, Hordedef announced to the commoner, “I understand we are brothers.”
Mehi’s mouth formed an oval but no words came out.
“Don’t you think it appropriate for us to introduce ourselves?”
“Uh,” was Mehi’s reply. “It’s just that Djedi ...”
“Yes, not only a son of the God-king but also a friend of the Royal Magician. It’s grand to know you, dear Mehi.” The prince offered his hand which Mehi took.
“Yes, um, your Honor.”
“Call me Hordedef.” With their handshake completed, the prince’s hands folded together at his waist. “Allow me to confess how proud I am of you. You may not be privileged as the other young men here, but you work as diligently as any. You merit the God-king’s and Djedi’s invaluable support.”
“My mother taught me, ‘You are royal by your effort.’”
With that, Hordedef’s face dimmed. With sadness, it seemed to Mehi. Princes don’t sadden, do they?
The prince answered, “Those royal by their effort are often more royal than those merely born to it.” In a twinkling, he had brushed away the dark clouds. “Welcome, brother Mehi.” Hordedef bowed.
Unsure what to say, Mehi managed, “Thank you.” The second prince had actually bowed to him.
Still amazed, standing in a cool breeze under the sheerest sliver of a moon, Mehi saw seven boys from his class near the Per-O’s six-foot wall, torchlight arrayed along its top lighting them in harsh shadows. They surrounded another student, Khenti, a smallish, nervous boy. His chin trembled. A second boy Mehi knew as a loud bully was trying to remove Khenti’s palette from his hands by twisting it back and forth. “Master’s going to flay you for losing your palette,” he taunted Khenti. “Beat you red like a pig.”
Khenti clamped onto the palette, bending down to protect it and himself. Two boys beside him slugged Khenti in the ribs. His eyes glistened as he bit into his bright red lips, trying to hold on.
The bully drew back. He cocked a fist, aimed it at the small boy’s face. Khenti cringed.
“Stop!”
The boys whipped around. The bully said, “What the hatestt do you want, peasant?”
What they were doing was simply wrong. Hadn’t schooling or their noble parents taught them that? Rich people must notice that barley, still a quarter from full height this late in the season, would not produce a second crop this year. To lessen the suffering, nobles and poorer folk must stay together.
The bully laughed. “I knew you were stupid, peasant, now I see you’re too dumb to talk.” He pointed at Mehi. “Come here.” Three boys grasped Mehi and slung him inside their circle next to Khenti. All seven boys closed in around the two.
Mehi had to stop his voice from wavering. “Nobles don’t act this way.”
“Nobles put peasants in their place. We’ll start with you.”
From behind, someone struck Mehi on the ear. Rather than feel pain at his ear, Mehi felt as if his heart was shriveling. In it, his respect for Egyptian nobles also shriveled.
Two nobles’ sons jumped Khenti, beating his back while pulling at his palette. Mehi stepped toward the crying boy. A boy punched Mehi in the stomach and another rapped his jaw. He didn’t punch back, needing his hands to hold onto his own palette, no matter how hard they beat him. But when one of the boys kicked Khenti who had gone to the ground covering up in a ball, Mehi hurled his palette over the boys’ heads. Three ducked. He shoved them—he shoved nobles. Two more swung at him. Then, Mehi backhanded one across the cheekbone. The cracking sound halted them all.
At that moment, Mehi realized that he was a foot taller than these younger boys. How had he not noticed that before? They weren’t noble anymore. Just nasty, ignorant boys scrounging courage for themselves in a crowd.
Mehi grabbed one boy by the robe and tossed him five feet away to the ground. “Get out,” he yelled, his voice as deep as a grown man’s. “Get.”
Every boy stepped back. As did the bully, before he spat at Mehi’s feet. “We got what we wanted. We put him in his place.” He laughed. The others laughed with him, if weakly. They swaggered off.
Mehi shook his head. Had he really wished to be like them? Vomit climbed up his throat.
As Khenti was picking himself from the ground, Mehi offered his hand. Khenti swatted it away. “I don’t need your help, peasant. Now they’re going to think I’m in with you.” The boy’s glare pierced Mehi. “I held out. A little longer and they would’ve let me in their gang.” Khenti fumed past Mehi in the direction the boys had taken.
Mehi vomited at his feet.
Before the ensuing dawn and the moon drooping over his shoulder, Mehi peered at dull stones on the ground in the sandy hills east of Mer. He hadn’t gone home last night and considered only briefly how that was like his father. Mehi tried not to think. But he had to decide whether or not to attend school in the morning. Tiny boys with tiny minds. He might owe the great Prince Hordedef his attendance, and school might wash him of his family’s sins, but the pyramid did that. An-khi had done that.
Mehi heard his name, or did he? He tipped up his head and saw An-khi—for a moment.
“Mehi?” Wabt called again some distance off, carrying a lamp. “That is Mehi, isn’t it?”
“Wabt? Wabt. Yes. I am ... just walking. Hello.” Mehi was sure he failed to hide the hope falling from his face. Perhaps she was too far away to notice.
“There’s not anyone up here much,” she said. “And it’s you.”
As Wabt approached, Mehi examined her for what he had mistaken for An-khi. “How are you, Wabt? It’s funny we should meet out here.”
“Tu, funny.” When close enough that her lamp glowed on both of them, she stopped. “I’m sorry about you and An-khi.”
“Why, uh, I was just up here ... walking.”
Wabt flew out a hand toward him. “I know that. I know.”
Mehi regarded Wabt’s eyes. They cast brightness over him. “Well ... thank you.”
“I hear you’re in scribe school—in the God-king’s own school.”
“Oh, that.” Mehi felt his face blush. “I’m a starter, behind the others. It’s a joke really.”
“It’s an honor. You deserve it.”
Mehi drew himself up. “I do like it there. It’s like the pyramid. Well, maybe not as much. I like it. First, everything with An-khi and then this being a scribe comes along. I sit beside nobles’ sons ... well. Prince Hordedef introduced himself to me. “
“A real prince? Really? Mehi—the friend of a prince. That’s amazing.”
“Tu.” Mehi rocked back on his heels. “How about you?” he thought to ask.
Wabt smiled on one side of her mouth. “I was a mistress in a household.”
“At Har-Her-nekht’s?”
Wabt nodded. “We’d known each other for a season or two and he said, ‘My house is large enough, you’d fit in easily.’ A jab at my size probably. He promised me I would be the one woman there, thinking he meant I’d be the First Wife.”
Mehi remembered this story differently. “What else could you think?”
“It seems that what he calls a ‘woman’ only handles the staff. So, I went there expecting to be a wife and wound up being a woman. Now that I’m out of the house, I guess I’m not even a woman.”
“You can still joke about yourself.”
“Before someone else does.”
“So, you left?”
“Har-Her-nekht said it was a thrift move. Something about my amount of eating.” She laughed. “I don’t believe he liked me.”
“I’m sure he enjoyed you.”
The brevity of Wabt’
s reaction to the word “enjoyed” might have masked anything less potent. Her face fell as pale as the white as her eyes, their pupils rolling back until the eyes were all white. She had once described to Mehi the men who “enjoyed” her but wouldn’t marry her. Mehi suspected Wabt at Har-her-nekht’s house was more than a “woman” if not quite a wife.
But Wabt cheered as swiftly as Prince Hordedef had two days before. She again smiled. “Would you like to take a walk?”
“Tu.”
Together, the two poked along the desert.
For two months since the day after her sister Snebtisi’s funeral, Paser had forced his surviving daughter to accompany him during his long days of official duties as Governor of Aneb-Hetch, First Province of Lower Egypt. He offered her no tasks and few words beyond “Sit” when they arrived at the Governor’s offices in the Hituptah treasury building and “Time for home” before they left. An-khi expected that his purpose in this arrangement was to limit her associations with potential suitors. She had never fostered so much sympathy for her sister as she did now. Had Paser’s possessive control contributed to Sneb’s early death?
Not allowing the waste of her days, An-khi read anything she could lay her hands on: Nilometer and granary reports, census, tax records, grievance petitions, building and irrigation plans. On the education rolls, she found with excitement the name of Mehi from the village Mer. He had enrolled at the Annu royal school.
The Per-O itself. She wondered whether becoming a scribe wouldn’t release Mehi’s power.
An-khi admitted to her regret regarding Mehi. She had exaggerated to Mehi the incidence of officials who were adopting the royal practice of father marrying daughter. In fact the only official she knew who had contemplated it was her father. In any case, Paser hadn’t mentioned their marriage since receiving a letter from Prince Hordedef nearly a month ago. In part it read, “While it is sublime for royalty to emulate the gods with the practice of familial marriage, it is less than sublime for governors to emulate royalty for any reason.”
But Paser had found other ways to emulate the God-king. Earlier today, he met with an architect to discuss his tomb, insisting on a pyramidal shape. The carved inscription on the north face would read, “I gave bread to the hungry and clothing to the naked. It was I who buried every person who had no heir. I have given a wife to every wifeless one.”
All these lies galled An-khi, but it was the last one that enraged her. Two months in constant contact with Paser had ultimately demonstrated that her childhood view of his perfection had been childish. Yes, he had successfully risen as governor, but his heart had been at least partially blinded by the flattery that surrounded his position. As his opinion of himself grew, his observance of ma’at shrank. What was a man’s force if it could not overcome the baubles of acquisition?
Night had fallen like an axe on the treasury building when Paser met with the tax collector. On pillows at his low table, the governor spoke more to the tax collector’s assistant, the one with the whip. “Make your whip bite like a cobra until all of its poison is drained into the criminal’s back. But even more vital: Muffle not one ounce of the whip’s sound of ‘crack.’ The sound you make is for those watching. With their ears, they will remember to pay their taxes timely and in full. They will retain good fear.”
An-khi’s buildup of bile spilled out. “Criminal, father? These are folks who simply can’t meet the tax rates because of our recent poor Inundations. The census tells us that. Isn’t it your job to inform the Per-O of this reality?”
Paser glared at his daughter. “Shut up.”
An-khi was shocked into silence, not by Paser’s command but by the realization that Paser had “shut up” his other daughter in her grave. In An-khi’s silence, she vowed she would not shut up.
An hour past sundown in the corridor of the Per-O’s royal bed suites, Theormi twisted in the grasp of the Queen’s captain. A month after her imprisonment began, if not yet free, she at last returned to the palace. Before them, Queen Meritates swept into Prince Hordedef’s study without announcing herself. He was sitting on his divan tabulating into a legal book by lamplight. The captain shoved Theormi toward the prince.
Standing, Hordedef nodded to Theormi. “Captain, report!”
Meritates flicked her hand. “The captain reports to the Queen. I have identified who immersed our dear Merhet into the mischief at the country estate—this whore to the King.”
“Theormi?”
“The whore possesses no name.”
The prince turned his face to hide—Theormi thought—his irritation. “Your Majesty,” Hordedef said, turning back, “as of yet I do not know what transpired at the estate. Your captain was to report to me upon the instant of his return.”
“He reports to the Queen.”
“But, you see, I understand nightshade played a part at the estate, and since nightshade nearly killed the king, I expected—“
“This odalisque seduced my Merhet, heated his blood and dashed him to ruin. Irrefutable evidence denotes that she connived to render the kingdom to her own feculent hands.”
Hordedef’s eyes swung to Theormi. She mouthed “No” to him. The captain shook her.
Meritates said, “Indeed, this past fortnight, precious Merhet apprised me that this seductress had distressed him utterly with her craven, foreign ways. He threatened to marry this cunning harlot and abandon the palace permanently.”
Hordedef asked, “How did Prince Merhet appropriate Theormi from the palace to be with him at the estate?”
Meritates shuffled her feet, her first movement not involving her hand. “It appears, son, that you detect little of that which is swirling around you. The whore’s guile deluded poor Merhet into delivering Prince Heru to the estate.”
Furrows bunched over Hordedef’s brows. He shook them away. “Queen, you see, the King and I conversed with Heru here at the palace. He reported that his commanding of Merhet was—” Hordedef stopped himself. “You said … Heru was at the estate?”
“You now appraise the measure of depravity this whore disgorged upon our poor Merhet.”
Hordedef’s face sagged. Theormi understood the implication; the Queen’s word wedged Khufu into a wretched position. Theormi tried to convey to him by flicking her brows that she could answer this accusation.
“If you may, your Majesty,” Hordedef said, “please be discreet for the present. We shall act accordingly.”
“I will be as discreet as Ammit should you not perform as you are obliged and stake this whore in the desert to be raped by scorpions and hawks.
Moving toward Theormi, Hordedef said, “Appropriate punishment, certainly, your Majesty.”
“You may be certain I shall surveil your proceedings. This strange woman’s touch is evil.”
Hordedef called for Hartese. The bodyguard escorted the Queen and captain from the room.
When they had gone, Theormi said, “Prince, it was Prince Heru at the estate, but I had nothing to do with it. The Queen—“
He led Theormi to his divan where they sat. “I don’t believe the Queen’s point of view in this. However, I do not yet understand this confusion about Heru and Merhet. How can you be certain the prince at Wam-her was Heru?”
“First, there was the overwhelming odor of nightshade.”
“Ah.”
“That put me to mind of conspiracy. Frankly, dear prince,” Theormi paused and looked down, “I began to think of the Queen because she had been instrumental in my exile to Wam-her. But, then, the prince’s complexion. He was dark-toned even in a sickly state. You know how pale is Prince Merhet.” Hordedef nodded. “Too, this prince was more muscled.”
Hordedef’s eyes flitted. “It follows that when Merhet addressed Father and me, he was masquerading as Heru. But why?”
“What did he say to you two?”
Hordedef’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, his manner was odd, every bit as odd as Merhet can be. He rambled out the strangest story. Khufu and I inferred he—t
hinking it was Heru—had had taken on Merhet’s disorder.”
“What story?”
“Referring to ‘blood’ and ‘attack,’ he stated that Shaf would attack the King. On the ‘full moon.’ He repeated ‘black-blood’ and ‘full moon’ again and again.”
Theormi’s heart clutched. “Prince!” She snatched Hordedef’s arm. “The full moon. Last month, Merhet told me a bizarre story about the full moon. I thought it was just one of his obscene rants. It seems, following the King’s Heb-Sed, he intruded upon Princess Merysankh’s bedchamber and witnessed her menses. He claimed this restored something he lacked. And seeing the full moon somehow empowered him, transformed him. Too ... too, I had some feeling he was aggrieved that I was a woman of the king.”
“Sufficient to attack Father?” Hordedef grimaced and shook his head as if in pain.
“Oh Hordedef, I’m sorry but you don’t know this; at the estate, Heru had lost a finger. Brutally hacked off.”
The prince closed then opened his eyes. “Merhet?” Theormi nodded. Hordjedef’s eyes lost focus as if gazing far off. “The estate doctors noted the use of nightshade to subdue the prince.” Again, Theormi nodded. “At the jubilee for the new Hap ... nightshade in the goblet meant for Khufu ...”
Theormi said. “Merhet.”
Hordjedef rubbed his forehead. “Then it was Merhet who ordered guards to restrain Heru at the estate until the full moon. And, Merhet told me about Vizier Shaf what I wanted to hear.”
“Is Merhet so mad—excuse me prince—that he’d reveal his own plan to assault Khufu?”
Hordedef said, “Or is this one more of Shaf’s conspiracies?”
“Or the Queen’s?”
“Merhet.” The prince shook his head. “If he was accusing himself ... that means he planned to attack Khufu on the full moon. But that passed on the seventh. Khufu didn’t return until the eleventh. So, if he still plans this madness, we have until the full moon next month.”
“No!” Theormi twisted sharply to slap her hand on his wrist. “The new moon is tonight. Now! The new moon.”
“What?!”
“When he violated his sister’s chamber, the new moon suddenly became full. At least to him.”
“Yes, well, it was a new moon that night.”
“And the night the Queen took me to his suite, he said that he was about to walk out onto the full moon. But the moon was black that night. A new moon. That means—“ She jerked upright.
“He’ll attack the King tonight.” The prince shot up, hand to forehead. “Theormi, you and I must convince Khufu to leave the palace. Immediately.” They began exiting the chamber.
“We can’t tell him why,” she said. “It would devastate him to learn about Merhet.”
“As well, we are unsure of the Queen’s role in this. In any case, Khufu would not believe my speculation concerning another prince. We must let the plot play out. And rid the threat once and for all.”
“How can we persuade Khufu to leave the palace while letting the plot play out?”
“I have a way.”
“One more thing, prince. The God-king and I have not visited for four weeks. For that reason alone, he won’t easily depart his suite.”
“I know.”
Strange quiet gripped the palace. Theormi, Hordedef and bodyguard Hartese hustled up the corridor to the God-king’s suite, wall torches flickering. She considered the words she’d use to lure Khufu from the palace.
Hordedef asked the two posted guards, “Has the God-king had visitors this evening?”
The guards saluted. “No, good prince.”
Hordedef’s face relaxed a moment before become taut again. “Hartese,” the prince said, drawing the others away from the guards, “in a few moments we’ll send the King from his suite.”
“Send him?” Hartese laughed. “I’d like to see that.”
“Hear me.”
Hartese flinched.
Hordedef’s eyebrows twitched and his eyes darkened. “The God-king will exit his private passage onto the gardens. You will follow him. You will trail him anywhere and everywhere. You won’t at any second remove either of your eyes from him. If you do, I will remove both your eyes.”
Hartese gulped. “This is hot language for you, prince. Why not his guards? What’s stalking the God-king that I can’t be with you?”
Hordedef grasped Hartese’s shoulders. “Tonight I prove myself. So you will safeguard the King with all the love you have granted me. Do you understand?”
“Yes—the King is Hordedef. But what of the prince?”
Hordedef disregarded the question. Walking with Theormi past the guards into Khufu’s suite, she heard him mumble, “I will prove myself.” In the God-king’s chamber, bright with lamp and torch, Khufu read a book of law by the lotus pond. She and the prince kissed the floor.
“Theormi.” Khufu gathered her up in his arms. His embrace bent her backwards.
The prince said, “Majesty, I’ve just come in from the night.”
Khufu’s eyes traced over Theormi. “Out of the shadows, son?”
Hordedef’s voice took on a lilt. “The moon like a beloved’s face cleaves a brilliant black evening, your Majesty.”
Khufu cast eyes toward his son.
“This is the month when nights last longest. Stars shoot from taut bows and crisscross the night like garlands of blue lotus.”
Khufu squinted at the night outside his high window. “My kind of night.”
Theormi said, “I would love a walk with the King in his night.”
Khufu chuckled. “More than a romp with the King in his bed?”
“Couldn’t we accommodate both desires, the greater excitement serving as the climax?”
Khufu nuzzled his nose to Theormi’s cheek and breathed in its fragrance. “Or neither if I attend tonight’s state dinner. Another evening of homage.”
Hordedef said, “The stars’ many hues tell tales, Majesty. Like lovers arm in arm, they whisper, ‘Luscious Egypt, perfect Egypt.”
Khufu cocked his head toward the window as if to listen. His eyes gleamed.
“The night requires but a God-king to bestow it with purpose.”
Khufu scanned Hordedef. “Your words portray the night but words draw darker shadows.” Khufu shook his head. “No, I’m obligated to the nation tonight.”
Hordedef and Theormi exchanged expressions of panic. He said, “Grant your second son the honor. Grace me with the privilege of standing for the great God-king Khufu.”
This time, Khufu inspected the prince as if a sour smell. “Not being named vizier stuck in your gut. Your appetite is so miserable that any morsel like substituting for me tonight satisfies it.” The God-king’s lips puckered and pricked up at its edges. “You’ll remain a prince. No pyramid will serve you. You’ll die as mere Hordedef.”
Theormi squirmed in her lover’s arms. He saw, she was sure, her pained face.
“Yes,” Khufu said, now seeing deep into her eyes, “tonight, live your fantasy, Hordedef, as a great king while Khufu walks amongst his people.” Encircling an arm behind Theormi, he headed with her to his garden door.
Hordedef called after his father. “You can’t tour outdoors in stealth wearing king’s clothing. Please exchange your cloak for mine.”
“The God-king in an underling’s cloak?” Khufu repaired to his bath and, a minute later, emerged in peasant clothes. “A prince like my Mehi wears these.”
As she and Khufu exited, Theormi peeked back at the prince moving toward the King’s wardrobe. Her stomach gripped.
Escaping palace staff promenading in the garden, Theormi and Khufu strolled down to and past the lake, onto the broad Annu boulevards and into the village alleys. Their fingers, arms and kisses mingled amongst the huts of families at supper. All the while the moon floated plump and golden.
Only then did Khufu ask Theormi about her leaving the palace for the estate.
“I unforgivably miscalculated your homecoming and overstayed my
visit. But, this moment, I’m with Khufu.” To distract him, Theormi swung up her hand at the sky. “Has the moon ever—?”
“That doesn’t answer it,” said Khufu, sounding pained. “I know you better than that.”
Theormi clasped her hands in his. “Trust me to tell you … when the moon is less full. Why waste our walk with it?”
“Heru reported that Merhet was there with you.”
Theormi shuddered.
“What? Why do you quake at that?”
“Please, Khufu, it’s nothing.”
He studied her. “No, you are fearful. Cold fear.” Khufu nestled his arms around his lover. “You—and Hordedef—hide something, some shadow from me.”
“King, let’s leave this for after … later.”
“After. You repeated “after.” After what? The full moon? Heru repeatedly cited the full moon.”
Theormi’s energy drained as if into a hole at her feet.
“You’re hiding something ... to protect me?” Khufu shook her. “What?”
Tears welled in Theormi.
“The moon.” The God-king threw back his head to the moon, its light etching his taut brow and chin. His pupils waxed full. “My son.” Before he finished the second word, Khufu was running.
Prince Hordedef moved to Khufu’s wardrobe. From one of the three cedar cabinets, he retrieved a white cloak, draping it from his shoulders. He arranged its cowl around his ears. The second prince flexed his frame—shoulders back, chest out, legs apart, knees stiff—and propped his arms inside the cloak to seem more expansive. Like his father.
The prince strode into the center of Khufu’s chamber, past the bed and canopy, lotus flowers in vases, lotus pond, scepters, ritual books, and opened volumes of poetry. He snuffed out the torches in the wall sconces, allowing only the light of one small lamp. He stood in shadows, his back toward the tall silver door.
Hordedef closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and let it out. Shoulders, arms, hips and legs seemed to settle. A muscle, perhaps two, twitched. His hands opened, fingers loose. He waited.
The suite’s silver door opened. Twenty feet behind the prince, footsteps tapped on the faience tiles. They paused. They started again, padding across the floor toward the prince in the shadows.
They stopped. An arm’s reach away. A new shadow crept above Hordedef’s shoulder. He turned, looked up at the knife. In Merhet’s hand.
The knife swung down.
“Merhet.”
Merhet’s dagger sliced into his brother’s ribs. Hordedef slumped, his hands grasping for balance, trailing down Merhet’s gown. Gown and wig disguised him as a harem woman.
“Fool.”
Merhet saw his victim’s face and croaked an animal’s scream. His brother’s head cracked against the turquoise tiles. Merhet drew away, his gown sweeping over Hordedef’s face. Merhet’s steps clacked from the room.
“Come back, you fool.”
The room was quiet.
“Merhet.” Hordedef’s arms flailed. His knuckles rapped the tiles. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. “Guards.” The prince could only whisper.
Theormi fell behind Khufu racing to the palace. Hartese sprinted past her. By the time she reached its entrance, she had lost sight of either man. The entrance guards were absent. She didn’t catch up to her lover until she reached his suite. On the floor, Khufu hugged Hordedef to his chest, the prince’s blood pooling on the turquoise tiles. Hartese panted nearby.
A guard ran out past her. “Doctors!”
“Son. Son. I know why you sent me away. Reunited in time only to watch you die?”
Hordedef’s eyes slit open.
“Stay with me.”
Theormi knelt beside Khufu. The prince seemed to focus on his father’s face. Hordedef managed a smile on one side before his eyes shut again.
“Stay with me.” Bringing Hordedef closer, Khufu placed his son’s back on his lap. But he then stiffened before sliding his arm from under the prince. He stared at the thumb glistening with blood. “See, son,” Khufu said, “my thumb entered you. How thick it is, son. As hot as Ka’ab’s.”
Hordedef’s eyes fluttered.
The father embraced his prince. “You’ll accompany me forever.”
“I have always.” Hordedef slumped.
“These are your final words? No, Hordedef. No. Doctors, come running.” Khufu groped over the still limbs and then clamped his hand on the wound. The God-king’s cold laughter pealed against the chamber. “See, I have no sons. I killed them all. Dead. Dead to me. Sons. Come running.” Khufu’s eyes tinged red. “Lie beside your brother. Smell the blood. Eat your last meal.”
In attempt to sedate her lover, Theormi could only massage his shoulders.
Shaf, Dedephor and Khemtatef sped into the suite. A doctor followed, stooped to the prince and began to examine the wound by lifting the prince’s shoulder.
“Don’t move him,” Khufu shouted, knocking the doctor to the floor. “Defiler. Tomb-robber. Don’t touch him.”
Shaf said, “King, the doctor must tend to him.”
“Tomb-robbers. Hordedef, your pyramid endures despite their treachery.”
“Officers! Now!” Shaf said to Dedephor and Khemtatef.
Each prince took one of Khufu’s arms. He fought them off. “Free your hold of me.” His eyes glared like those of an attacking tiger and sweat dripped down his puffing cheeks. “Dead sons, you touch the body of a desecrated father.”
“Please, Khufu,” Theormi said.
The two princes once more tried to ease the God-king’s arms from beneath their brother.
“Don’t separate us,” Khufu raved. “I need to stay ... touch him.”
The tugging disturbed Hordedef’s body as the doctor attempted to treat the wound, blood smearing over the tiles.
Shaf ordered the princes, “Quit your gentleness. Seize him.”
Theormi helped them to get their hands around their father. The two brothers drew the God-king away as Hartese and Shaf carried the second prince to the bed. Khufu kicked at the tiles and shrieked across the chamber. “Dead sons taking me from my dead son. I mistook him as shadow. Hordedef? The fault is mine. Your injury is mine. How does an immortal grieve? How do I bear madness? You’re the one smart enough to know.”
The God-king’s screaming diminished into the hall.
To regain his repose, Khufu required an hour and the doctors’ positive reports on Prince Hordedef. He’d survive. Theormi had summoned Djedi and Pese’shet who saw to the recovery of father and son. Commanding that no one follow him, the God-king proceeded outdoors and circled the Per-O. On the palace’s barest ground, absent of vine, tree or flower, he found Prince Merhet wearing one of Theormi’s gowns and a wig.
Head tilted at the moon glowing on him from a black infinity, Merhet seemed not to notice his father. Muttering into his fists at his mouth, Merhet appeared like a rat at cheese. “I can kill a prince. I can kill a King. I can kill a prince. I can kill a King.”
Khufu’s shoulders drooped, his chin falling to his chest.
Vizier Shaf and two guards emerged from the darkness. Shaf stepped beside his father. God-king and vizier watched Merhet chant, “I can kill my brother. I can kill my father.”
The God-king squinted. “And you have other brothers to kill. Sisters too, should you like.”
“I can kill a prince. I can kill the King.”
Shaf said, “Merhet ... Hordedef is not dead. He will not die.”
Merhet cackled. “I need no death to confirm I can kill.” He resumed his chant, gazing up into the shaft of moonlight. He smiled his little smile.
Fists square on his hips and elbows splayed, Khufu’s dark eyes fastened on his dark prince. “I agree with you, Merhet. You’ve proven your ability.”
Merhet lowered his eyes from the moon to peep at his father. The prince then cracked the knuckles of both his hands. “Am I dead?”
No one moved except Shaf. He shut his eyes.
“Moments a
go, I woke as out of a fever,” Khufu said in a hiss. “I knew you were under the moon. What disturbs me most is not that you hate me, but that you are a coward.”
“I can kill a prince. I can kill a King.”
Khufu’s eyes narrowed. He marched to Merhet, pounding the ground. When within arm’s length, sudden as a mongoose, he clutched his son’s throat in both hands. “This is your pride? That you can kill?” Moonlight beamed on father and son. “Shaf, give me a spear.”
“Sire?”
Khufu shook his hand at Shaf. The vizier handed a guard’s spear to his father. Seizing Merhet’s eyes with his own, Khufu jerked the spear toward him. “Take this.”
Merhet didn’t move. He whimpered.
“Here.”
The prince remained rigid.
Khufu snatched Merhet’s hands from his mouth and clapped the spear’s shaft onto them. “There, bear up your weapon.” The God-king stepped back. “Display for us your noble ability to kill.” He thrust out his chest and rapped it. “Right here.”
Shaf and the guards tensed, readying to leap forward. In Merhet’s slack hands, the spear dangled. His eyes enlarged.
Khufu flipped up his son’s arms so the spear aimed down at the God-king’s chest. “As a warrior.” The God-king presented his torso not a foot from the spear point. “Well, assassin, here’s your chance. Kill Khufu, Egypt’s God-king.”
Shaf edged closer to them.
Merhet’s hands quivered. The spear swayed.
“Is it too heavy for you? Go. Killing is yours. Isn’t murder your calling?”
The spear tumbled from Merhet’s hands to the ground. Shaf and the guards relaxed. Khufu sagged. Father and son stood together. Bending back, Merhet once again transfixed himself on the moon. “The voices. The beautiful songs. I can kill a prince.”
As weary as if he’d carried Merhet in his arms these twenty years, Khufu said, “Yes, you can kill a prince. See, you’ve killed yourself.”
Merhet bared his mouth wide to the moonlight. “Light burns me, and flesh and muscle peel away and I’m free, free. Like a snake and a snake and a snake and I’m lighter and lighter ’til I’m a white light floating free as an unlaced spider web.”
Khufu rotated a quarter-turn from his son and ran a palm over her forehead. Walking into the shadows he said to Shaf, “Care for your brother. He’ll chill soon.”
