Ancient Evenings (100 page)

“I have read only the last of these words,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “I do not know of the other portions, although they are most powerful and curious to Me.”

“It leaves me much confused,” said Menenhetet, “that my words are unfamiliar. I have only my memory to trust, and our Khaibit, as we know, lies in wait to deceive our Ka. Can it be that what I remember hearing on this day might be instead a hymn celebrated by a few High Priests of Amon among themselves, which is to say that I am now not remembering these words from my first life but from my second?”

“It is most remarkable,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “I know of such secret hymns—more even than Khem-Usha who is busy with government—yet I know nothing in the temple literature that would describe Amon as the Lord of the Mind or the Governor of the Ancestors of the Underworld.” He shook His head and sighed. “No matter.”

“What I tell,” said Menenhetet, “is the truth I remember. I would never wish to be Your navigator and mishandle the oar.”

“I call the error—if it is an error—most curious and would never think it evil, unless the Gods wish evil between us.”

“You have more faith in the Gods at this hour than this afternoon,” said my mother, but with such simplicity and recognition of what she had truly discerned that neither my Father nor my great-grandfather smiled, and Ptah-nem-hotep said at last, “It is true. Tonight the presence of My Double-Crown is felt in a manner I did not know before. Let Us honor both you and Menenhetet,” whereupon He kissed me.

“No Pharaoh is more wise than Yourself,” said Menenhetet.

“I am honored,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

Yet, even as the air is bruised when a bird is hit by a throwing-stick and falls to earth, so the echo of the hymn of the High Priest to Amon-Ra hovered between them, and I felt suspicion within my Father. I cannot say that He now trusted Menenhetet as well. If the first blow to my happiness had been the curse of Nef-khep-aukhem, this was the second. Despite their kind words to each other, I now felt a separation between my Father and great-grandfather, as if they no longer pulled upon the same burden together, but searched in different caves for separate treasures, and I, seeking to hold them together, felt at last a child’s fatigue, and wished to weep.

“Go on,” said my Father after a silence. “I would not care to interrupt you further.”

“As I remember,” said Menenhetet after another silence, “the High Priest was no sooner done with his words than another priest opened a gold cage out of which flew four geese in panic that their wings would not lift them quickly enough. Once up, however, they circled about the Court of the Great Ones, and flew away together to the South, later, as we were told, to separate so that they could carry the word to the four quarters of heaven. Now, as they disappeared, the High Priest said in full Authority-of-Voice, ‘Horus receives the White Crown and the Red Crown. Ramses receives the White Crown and the Red Crown.’ Yet I did not see how He had received either, since He was already wearing both. Only the words had been given to Him. Then another priest made Him an offering of a golden sickle and a sheaf of corn. A eunuch blessed by the priests came forward, kissed Usermare’s feet, and lay on the ground with the root of the sheaf in his black hands. The Pharaoh held it by the top, and cut the stalk in the middle. Then ears of corn were strewn before the bull, and the animal was taken off to sacrifice.

“Now all of us who served in the Court came forward one by one to kiss His hand, embrace His knees, or bow to the ground depending on our nearness to Him, and when it was my turn, He gave me a splendid greeting and told me to go to the Throne Room and wait, and there, indeed, He followed me and a few others when He was done receiving homage.

“Now He was alone with eight of us, and said that in honor of our efforts, our devotion to Him, our loyalty, our courage and our discretion—whereupon I thought He looked distinctly at me—He had brought us together for the most special pleasure. He would now bestow on each of us, for this last night of the Triumph, a title. Tonight, we would serve as Masters of the Ceremonies of the Collation, and, He said, we would also hold this title in perpetuity and thereby arouse the awe of others for the rest of our lives. We would be known as His Eight Masters (upon which I immediately thought of the eight Gods of the slime—although I could tell by a look at the faces about me that the others most certainly did not). Now, to His Vizier, His Treasurer, His Chief Scribe, His Major-domo, and to a few of His Generals including myself, the awards were bestowed. We now possessed, we were told, titles that went back to the first Pharaoh, ‘Old titles and great ones,’ said Usermare. As each of us came forward, we were handed a golden scarab and Usermare intoned our new name. The Vizier became the Unique Companion of Usermare, and the Treasurer was called the Master of All that Grows for the King, while Pepti—who this day to my small surprise had been appointed Chief Scribe—was now honored again as the King’s First Acquaintance in the Morning. Another, a General, who had gone on many successful mining expeditions (and had a skin as leathery as Sebek the crocodile) became Master of the Gold that Comes from the Earth, and the other three went forward—I cannot now think of their titles—but I, who was last, was told as I seized His hand, ‘What would I ever do without My noble driver?’ and He not only held my fingers with an emotion as fine as any offered to me by Rama-Nefru, but looked at me with eyes of love I had not seen Him show to me in many a year. ‘Much depends on you,’ He whispered—to my full ignorance of what He was talking about—and then He turned to the others and said that after much consideration, I would be called ‘Master of the Secrets,’ which when said in full, as in ancient times, would go: ‘Master of the Secrets of the Things that Only One Man Knows.’ This would be my title tonight, He said, and for the rest of my days, and I do not know if I had a glimpse then of other lives to come, but I nearly wept, and did later, so soon as I was alone—which was not for near to another hour, since we celebrated with our Pharaoh over a cup of kolobi, and looked at each others’ scarabs and spoke among ourselves as Masters with the names of our new titles. No, it was not until I was back in the Columns, alone in my empty chamber, that I burst into tears, but then I did not cease sobbing for so long I could have been the Nile in flood. I had not cried once since leaving my village, but now I even cried for the hour I was taken into the army. For this, today, was the only gift Usermare had ever given me. So I wept from each of the Two-Lands in my heart. I do not believe we can ever know a great emotion until the noblest and commonest impulses in ourself are present at once. Even as Horus with His weak legs is a fool among Gods, yet the feathers of His breast cover the sky, so I wept because I did not love my King well enough any longer to be loyal to this great gift He had given, and on the other hand, wept because I hated His heart for stirring my old love of Him. Now, I felt no desire to take the dreadful revenge of which Nefertiri had hinted to me. So I wept out of both eyes each time I thought of the wondrous title I now owned, and such it was: ‘Master of the Secrets of the Things that Only One Man Knows.’ ”

“Yes, it is beautiful, and most suitable for you,” said Hathfertiti, but her voice was not as warm as her words.

“That afternoon,” said Menenhetet, “should have been the conclusion of the Coronation, and yet I cannot say that it was any end at all. In the Collation that night, Usermare was crowned again, and many ceremonies, as I say, were mixed with entertainments. It was certain that by evening, everyone was celebrating already, yet we did not know the full peace that comes only with a true Coronation.”

“No, you did not,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “but that is because a Coronation is not a ceremony, nor a sacrifice, and cannot be achieved within one prayer, but, like the life of the Pharaoh Himself, needs all the shrines and more than a few of the contests. Even the lice, as you have suggested, partake of this exceptional turn of the fortunes in the Two-Lands, inasmuch as the Pharaoh, after thirty or more years, is now so powerful as to crown His own Double-Crown. Not only is He being fortified, therefore, at such a time, but the Gods as well. So all the Gods must be included. If not by Their own name, then by the body of another God who will share the name, yes, and the spirits must rise, not all at once, no more than the earth in all its valleys and terraces can be turned at once, but clod by clod. So is all of Egypt lifted here and replaced, ceremony by ceremony, so, at least, have I concluded from the depths of My studies. The hymn in the Court of the Great Ones on this last afternoon was only the largest event in a number of events as great as the number of the nomes, the people, the beasts, and all the Gods.”

“Even as a High Priest,” said Menenhetet, “I would not have been able to say it so well.”

“I agree,” said my mother to Ptah-nem-hotep,
“You
are the Master of the Secrets,” but my Father for the first time since they had returned to the patio was annoyed by a remark of hers, and slapped her thigh for such giddiness of speech, pleasing Hathfertiti even more. “May I call myself the Unique Companion of Ptah-nem-hotep?” she asked with all the sauce in her voice of a favorite who would never be replaced, and I heard her next thought, I alone, for only I was nimble enough to know my mother’s quickest moments. “I,” she told herself, “am the true Master of the Secrets.”

THIRTEEN

My mother was so pleased with this honor she had bestowed on herself that a sweetness rose from her tired arms and passed over my Father and me. The three of us sat on the couch, feeling the same balm, and I hovered once more near the pleasures of my sleep. The recollections of my great-grandfather were now less disturbing than before, and so I did not need to listen to his words, and allowed his thoughts to unfold as they would.

The Night of the Collation, he began, did not take place in the Festival Hall of King Unas but on a plaza in the Court of the Great Ones about which walls of reeds had been put up to enclose us. There was no roof. Still, it was called the Pavilion of King Unas, and we were sheltered overhead by trellises of vines and flowers supported only by narrow posts in order that all should have a fine view of the Pharaoh (which would not be true in the great Festival Hall with its heavy stone columns) no, the evening took place as if we were neither within a palace nor wholly open to the sky, but like the Gods, living between.

Much else was different on this night. The Pharaoh did not enter last, but first, took up His Seat on a raised wooden terrace with a heavy carpet upon which had been placed a gold throne with four painted wooden pillars for the canopy. Each of His guests bowed to Usermare as they entered, and to each woman He sent a necklace and a wreath of flowers, for each man, a gold goblet, and these were set on stands already full of fruit and flowers. Servants would pass the best wines from the finest vineyards of Khara, Dhakla, Fayum, from Tanis and Mareotis and Peluseum, and Hittite beer, darker than our Egyptian drink, was even served at Rama-Nefru’s table, a strange beer with a smell of caves and roots, its malt molted more than ours, and made of the sprouts as well, a warlike beer, I think.

I can say that all the guests including the Princes and Princesses were in their seats when the three Queens appeared. Esonefret was first with Her seven sons and daughters, but, as usual, was so seldom considered or talked about in the daily life of the Court that She created no excitement once again, and indeed, Her children were as plain as Herself. Rama-Nefru was next and came forward into the Hall wearing two high feathers on Her crown, and in a robe of woven-air so transparent that the sight of Her superb little belly was less dazzling than the gleam of the small pale forest above Her thighs. Then came Nefertiri. She presented Herself in a splendor no other woman could equal. If much of Her body was not visible beneath Her heavy pale-gold raiment (the color to remind all of Rama-Nefru’s lost hair) still Her gown ended not a hand’s width above Her navel, and She wore no more than a collar to cover Her neck and a circlet of gold for Her hair. Thereby, one could not look at any sight but the Queen’s breasts. They were equal to a young woman’s. Their valley had the shadows of a temple, and the air in my nostrils quivered with desire. I had had Her last night but for the breasts. As if to prepare for this evening, She had refused to expose them. Still, their beauty lived in my palms from our first night when my fingers had leavened all of Her flesh. So I had to believe that the immanence of these breasts was in part from the fine work of my hands. This thought, however, had a short life, for Her entrance nearly produced a disturbance. Nefertiri smiled at all of us, the People of the Royal Circle seated near the Pharaoh, and the People of the Royal Court in the corners, then extended Her arm to the table where Her sons were seated, and Amen-khep-shu-ef stood up, came forward, and led Her to a place beside Him. At that, all who were in the Pavilion also stood up, and there were tumultuous cheers for the hero and His mother, indeed, such a demonstration with such lifting of goblets and such a casting of flowers before Her path, that a mighty desire spoke forth from this assemblage as if to say, “She is ours, not a Hittite.” Even from where I sat beside Rama-Nefru, which was at a distance from Usermare (for He had put Her on His left and Nefertiri on His right, each on a dais equally apart from His own elevation—Esonefret was also on a dais but in the rear of the Hall!) I could discern that He had not been expecting this ovation. When it did not cease but continued so forcefully that lords and ladies renowned for their decorum were nonetheless clapping hands in the Royal Circle, and from the corners of the room came whistles, Usermare stood up with His Sceptre and His Crook raised high, thereby arousing greater applause, though not so much as I would have thought. Then all sat down. Beside me, I could feel Rama-Nefru, and when She took my fingers beneath the table, Her skin had the cold of Northern lands. “I told Him this would happen,” She whispered. I, however, had had no warning myself other than the enthusiasm in Thebes for the return of Amen-khep-shu-ef all of this day, but after the nature of Nefertiri’s entrance and Her son’s greeting, and the number of nobles who were in no doubt about standing and cheering, I realized that Her appearance had been much planned. It was obvious that when Her son was by Her side, I was near neither to the Queen’s thoughts nor to Her strength in our city. That left me overcome by how far I had drifted away from such concerns. I looked back upon the soldier I used to be and thought of his great skill in knowing the ambitions of all around him, indeed knowing them so well that he had become General-of-all-the-Armies. I was no longer that man. I might as well have died already. For what was I like now but some poor devotee of the perils and sweet meats of love, Master of the Secrets, indeed. I had been working so closely with women that I now knew too little about the strength of men. And I wondered at my own vanity to suppose that he who killed the Pharaoh, meaning myself, could then be Pharaoh, I, who no longer had a soldier loyal to me, while out there were all the legions of Amen-khep-shu-ef.