Ancient Evenings (68 page)

“ ‘Come to me tomorrow night if He is not here,’ she said, and led me to the tree. I had no sooner departed than my desire was back. Yet when I returned on the following night, I was weak again. Her hand, like the shaduf, was there to lift me above myself. Once more, I knew only the walls of her body, and could not enter her gates. But she was gentle on this second night and said, ‘Come to me when you can, and on one good night, you will be as brave as Usermare Himself.’ As if to speak of how many nights it might take to acquire such knowledge, she introduced me to her scorpions. She had seven: Tefen, Befen, Mestet and Mestetef, also Petet, Thetet and Metet—I could not believe that she knew them each by name, for in the box that was their nest they moved about like beggars who owe one another nothing. Yet she would lift them out with her fingers, and lay them on her eyes and lips and never fear any sting. ‘Their names are the same as the seven scorpions of Isis,’ she told me, ‘and they are the true descendants.’ By the light of her oil lamp I could see that these scorpions covered the seven gates of her head: her eyes, her ears, her nostrils and her mouth. But then she plucked them off, and put them back in their box and kissed me. She said that the ancestors of these seven scorpions had created our seven souls and spirits. Then she sent me home. My instruction had begun.

“Now, I was, as I say, the only man living in the Gardens who was not a eunuch. So did not wish to think of the amusement that would be stirring in every house as these little queens, one by one, heard of my night with Usermare. I stayed behind the walls of my own garden and no longer went visiting through the day from one home to another. Such visits had been most agreeable for the gossip they offered, but then by way of the eunuchs, and the Chief Scribe of the Gardens, also a eunuch—of whom I will tell you later—there was no story about any Prince, Governor, High Priest, Royal Judge, Third Overseer to the Vizier, or even”—with a nod to my father—“Assistant to the First Overseer of the Cosmetic Box, that did not come back to us in the Gardens. I say to us, but the eunuchs knew the gossip first, the little queens received it next, and I was lucky to hear it last. Even so, I knew more of the good and bad fortune of everyone in Thebes than in the old days when I was a charioteer galloping through the city. So, it had been agreeable to visit the little queens, and eat their cakes, smell their different perfumes, admire their faience, or their golden bracelets, their necklaces, their furniture, their gowns, their children, until all compliments given, we would come to our greater interest which was gossip and I would hear much about many a Notable although by the end, they always spoke of Queen Nefertiri and Rama-Nefru. The little queens had their preferences, of course, like schools of priests who worship in different temples, so you could hear that Rama-Nefru would only be the favorite for this season, or as easily that She would be His beloved for many years. I soon saw that these were only a reflection of stories the little queens told about each other. For you could count on it. To listen to the tale of one was to believe that another little queen had just lost favor.

“Thereby, I came to know quite a few of their secrets, and even before I began to visit Honey-Ball at night, had an understanding of her that came in part from her friends, as well as from little queens who were not. Hearing two sides of the same story was like eating two foods at once—together were they digested in the belly. Long before I climbed over her tree, or heard Honey-Ball sing by the lake, I knew of her loss. Indeed I could all but hear the echo. I had seen men killed by the thousand and their bodies eaten, but that might weigh less in the balance of Maat than the woe felt by these little queens for the amputation of one toe. In the Gardens of the Secluded, Honey-Ball had been His Favorite—on that, her friends and those who did not like her were nearly ready to agree. She had not been fat then, and even the eunuchs did not dare to look at her when she bathed, so voluptuous was her beauty. Ma-Khrut was her name for all occasions. But she was vain, vain even for a little queen, indeed after all I heard of good and bad about her, it became my conclusion. She was vain. So she traded to Heqat—the ugliest of the little queens!—a necklace that once belonged to Usermare’s mother. Then she dared to tease our Pharaoh. She told Him she had exchanged the necklace for a bowl of alabaster, and could Sesusi find her another bowl to match? They were alone in her bed when she said this. He stood up, seized His knife, and holding her foot by the ankle, severed the toe. Mersegert, that Goddess of Silence who never shut her mouth, told me that the screams of Ma-Khrut can still be heard over many a pond on a still night, and her enemies spoke of how she rushed to have the little toe wrapped, and then embalmed. Some said that after this night she was constant in her study of magic. She grew fat, and her garden sprouted rare herbs and rank ones, her rooms were filled with stuffs she collected. Where once she had had the finest alabaster of any little queen, now the bowls were chipped. There was much handling of the roots and skins and powders that moldered in them. Foul smokes were always rising from the fire-pots in the chamber where she performed her ceremonies and you could sniff the dung of birds and lizards or snakes in cages of all sorts. Needless to say, she not only had names for these beasts, but also for various stones and branches she kept, not to speak of her wrappings of spiderweb, her spice, her herbs, her snakeskins, whole and minced, her jars of salt, her dried flowers, her perfumes, her colored thread, her consecrated papyrus, and many jars of oil, native and foreign, some from plants and trees strange to me, some to be used beneath the light of the moon and others at the height of the sun. She knew the name of many a rare root of the fields that I had never seen before, and hair of all description, a curl from the brow of many a little queen, and more than a few of the eunuchs.

“Each morning she drew a new talisman for herself on papyrus purchased the day before by her most trusted eunuch, Kiki, which was the name for an oil made from the castor bean. It was a girl’s name as well, although it did not matter—you could call a eunuch anything. Castor-Oil was just as good as the name of her second favorite, Sebek of Sais, so described for his mournful resemblance to the crocodile. The way those two eunuchs looked at each other while serving at her morning ceremony, you would have thought the crocodile had fear of being cooked in the castor-oil. Just so awesome was Honey-Ball. All the same, that woman could charm the snakes she kept, and by no more than the movements of her heavy arms—so much like large snakes themselves—or by her magic words. It was this last she employed to call spirits forth, since, as she would yet explain to me, no presence can resist its Secret Name—it hears it so seldom.”

“I have heard many descriptions of these spirits about us,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “but you make them sound like strange birds or beasts.”

“Ma-Khrut would often say that our thoughts, once they are mixed with the breath of the Gods, become creatures. They are invisible but they are still creatures. Some spirits even dwell together like birds of the same plumage or congregate to become as powerful as armies. They can gather in a mass like mountains, or great cities on the river.”

“It is true,” said Hathfertiti. “I have known emotions so powerful that they will live long after I am gone,” and she looked at the Pharaoh with all the depth of her capacity to show such emotion.

“Yes,” said Menenhetet, “it is not uncommon for those with strong feelings to create a few spirits. But once they are made, not many of us can call them back. That is because we do not know the Secret Name. Ma-Khrut, however, had a power to move spirits near and far and knew which substances to employ. She could choose, so to speak, between the blood of a bull and the blood of a frog. While it is royal, even divine, to hear someone else’s thought on the moment it awakes in the other, Honey-Ball knew how to travel alone down those invisible rivers which are formed by the thoughts of us all. When I was a priest in my second life, I learned how to draw near to the vast force that rises to the heavens as soon as the servants of Amon, and the worshippers who attend the ceremony, contemplate the Hidden One together. As we travel along the waters of a common prayer, our thoughts are as alike as the little waves of the river. Priests, thereby, can serve as helmsmen to the vessel of their large congregation.

“Honey-Ball had no such congregation to draw upon. But she knew how to call separate spirits forth, and could coax them to draw up others. I say she worked harder than any priest.”

“Tell us, then, of the wonders she performed,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

Menenhetet touched his head seven times to his hand. “I do not speak of the true wonders of an age that could know battles between Horus of the North and Horus of the South. No, I would tell You instead of the Gardens of the Secluded, and of her house and garden within. Not a large house by the measure of the Secluded, and outside the walls was the Palace and all the temples of Usermare.

“So, to take proper account of her work, one must measure it against the vast number of prayers the priests sent up. What a multitudinous river of spirits was kept flowing between Usermare and the glorious sun of Amon-Ra.

“Whereas Honey-Ball had only her own ceremonies. Yet these she would perform for all of a day and sometimes into the night. Sometimes when I visited at night she would be in the room where she kept her altar. Much time might go by in obedience to the purity of her ceremony before I could speak. All the while, she made no move that was not perfect, and if you ask me what I mean, I could not tell you, except that the triangle she would draw in the air with the tip of her wand proved to be no ordinary triangle, but before my eyes looked ready to blaze into flames. Her voice as she uttered her invocations had the tones of the opening and closing of doors, the fall of great stones upon the flat bed of other stones, the slithering of lizards and the flapping of wings when many birds spring up into the sky at once. The sigh of the wind came into her chest when she took a deep breath, and the roar of a lion was back of her throat as she spoke, yet all of this was but a natural part of her work, and she had many other tasks. There were the pots, for instance, on her altar fires and many ingredients to be fortified by words of power before being put into those pots. Sometimes, in preparation for a ceremony, she spent the day in reading from the rolls of papyrus that Castor-Oil or Crocodile brought back to her from the libraries of the temples, and she would copy passages onto her own papyrus. Of all the little queens, she was the only one who could write as well as a Chief Scribe, and sometimes I would pick up some of these old temple rolls and open them to their tiny painted birds and the papyrus would tell me much I could not name, so powerful were the thoughts contained.

“Watching her write, I would think of all the little scribes I had known who engaged in such tasks, and I would brood on the power of this act, and ask myself why such puny men were able to appeal so greatly to the Gods even though, when they spoke, they were never true-of-voice but frail as reeds, scratchy voices most of them. Yet the words they painted onto the papyrus were able to bring forth the power that rests in silence. So they could call on forces the true-of-voice would never reach. After all, to speak is to offend the power of silence.

“She respected that power. Once I saw two small lacerations on the inside of her upper arm, little cuts that ran in the same direction, side by side, but then she had sliced each cut in punishment upon herself for saying a word when she had vowed to be silent. On other days, she would speak, but never mention herself. If she wished to dine, she would tell the servants, ‘Eating is begun.’ She wished, when necessary, to live outside herself as if not in the room, move from her body to her Ka so that her Ka could walk out from her and look at her.

“That enabled her to work to many a purpose. Some were large, and some as petty as a ceremony to repay a small injury. She knew, as would everyone here, how to keep mosquitoes away, and was so adept at such practices that she never had to draw any circle about her head or recite appropriate prayers. Instead, at the first whine of such little beasts, she would raise her closed hand and open it. Away they would fly. You could hear the cry of their retreat.”

“I have unguents so powerful in their odor that mosquitoes will never come near,” said Hathfertiti, “and I use them when I cannot remember the prayer for the circle, or my fingers feel weak. I do not see where your Honey-Ball is more advanced than myself.”

“Since she lost the favor of the King, and you may have gained it, there is much in what you say,” replied my great-grandfather.

Ptah-nem-hotep was delighted. “Your family,” He said to Hathfertiti, “is never without a reply. Nonetheless, I would be careful not to speak too poorly of this Ma-Khrut.”

“The wisdom of the Ninth is great,” replied Menenhetet. “For it is true. A little queen who had too cruel a word for Honey-Ball might as well have been stung by her scorpions. Since the Ka of Honey-Ball knew how to wander away from her body, she would on occasion even welcome an attack by many mosquitoes. How many times did I not see her sleeping helplessly on her bed, or so you would have declared, for that heavy body was covered with mosquitoes enough to kill another. Yet she was outside of herself. Afterward, on her return, she had the use of their venom in her veins. One little queen who had spoken ill of Honey-Ball was so bitten by the largest mosquitoes after such a night that she could not leave her house for days. That swollen were her features.

“It is a small story to tell of her powers. I would offer a better one. Each night that Usermare remained away from the Gardens, I would awake in the dark, and with the pig nuzzling at my desire, I would be drawn to the branch that carried me over her wall. With a good look to be certain no eunuchs were near, I would leap up from the land where I was Governor and drop over into that garden within the Gardens where so much grew that was strange, and I had no power. Each night I would hold her in my arms, but my sword was like a snake with a broken neck, and when she kissed me, I did not know how to live in the pulsing of her lips. The full weight of her mouth had the heaviness of honey poured upon itself.