Ancient Evenings (72 page)

“All this while, the cries of children playing outside my house were in my ears. How many there were! Retching over the ghost of the kolobi, I could hear (as I had never before) the sound of their games, larger even than the cries of the birds. These children’s shouts flew in all directions. Now I heard them as they bathed in the pools and chased the geese, or climbed high in the trees to talk to the birds. Over my head came a gabble of nurses scolding, mothers scolding, long whimpers and every kind of laughter, all these children, every one, sons and daughters of Usermare. Watching these children, there were tears in my eyes. As strange and sweet as a fall of rain in a desert, I was remembering my daughter, born of Renpu-Rept, dead for so many years. I still supposed she would look like a child. Then I was moved by the thought that Honey-Ball was one of the few little queens who had not borne any of Usermare’s children. Could it be that she was so rare as not to love His loins, and might in truth prefer mine? I felt close to my heart at this instant and could hate her no longer. She had been ready, after all, to die with me.

“So, if I had awakened with every oppression, now I could breathe again. My heart stirred at her generosity. It was as if I understood, and for the first time, how no one would provide for my future travels so well as this woman. It brought me to understand the true power of a family. As Ra had His godly boat for travel through the dark river of the Duad, so were a wife and children one’s own golden vessel on such a trip. Honey-Ball and I had been wed by the secret ceremony of marriage—knowing each other’s buttocks, we shared the property of our flesh. Now, I would have children with her. Yes, I told myself, we must escape from these Gardens. I, like Moses, would flee with her into the Eastern Desert. From there, we might travel to New Tyre. How, with her great knowledge, could we fail to prosper in such a curious city?”

On these words, Menenhetet looked up at my mother and at Ptah-nem-hotep to see whether they would agree with his rich belief in the virtue of marriage, but to his surprise, and to mine, for I had been listening only to my great-grandfather’s voice, I could now witness that they were most certainly gone. During his talk, they had fled. My poor father was still asleep.

SIX

Not only could I still feel my mother’s presence, but she was not far away, and I knew our Pharaoh was with her. Since my great-grandfather, however, had no one now but myself to listen, he no longer offered his voice. Instead, his thoughts were given to the silence of the night, out to the Gods and spirits in the darkness beyond the light of the fireflies. I knew that in whatever room, or on whichever path of the garden my mother might be, the story of my great-grandfather and Honey-Ball was visiting her by every silent path of the night, by the scent of flowers and in the breeze through the palms. I even knew that as much as my mother had desired to leave, my great-grandfather was not that much displeased for he could still feel our Pharaoh’s attention, quick with thirst to hear the story. Indeed, the night had never been more alert.

Once again I began to lose all sense of my own age, even as the echo of a sound may wonder whether it is the sound itself. So I sat in all the power of his silence, and heard the murmur of long-gone voices, even the whisper of little queens as they passed through the royal palms on their way to the lake, yet I felt so close to my great-grandfather while he sat staring silently at me, that his meditations rose like water from a spring and I was wiser in knowledge than when he spoke aloud, and saw him on the night he crossed the gardens to ask Honey-Ball if she would flee with him to New Tyre. It was then he remembered the story Heqat told of the ugly woman who kept her husband free of every disease, and he laughed aloud. Honey-Ball’s face was beautiful as he held her, and her body was as great as the wealth of Usermare, yet he knew she must be the ugly woman of whom Heqat had spoken. He would never suffer any ill while he lived with her, nor would their children. She would protect them all. So he loved her for these riches, and when, late at night, he slipped back to his own house, he could not sleep for the clarity of the sentiments he felt. He could smell the keen air of every morning they would know in the mountains on the long road from Megiddo to Tyre, and even the perils appealed to him as pleasures. He could show Ma-Khrut the resources of his courage once they were in the forests. More than ever before, he felt bold as a God.

On the next night, therefore, in the sweet silence that followed love, full of honor, and most content that they had embraced without a ceremony of magic on this night nor the night before, but had come forth in all the quiet yearning of a brother and sister, he held her face between his hands, much aware of the great sky above her house where the Gods might be listening, and whispered of how they would yet be wed and live with many children. And as he spoke, he knew the perils of the journey, for he perceived how much they would need her magic to reach any other land.

She answered, “It is better here.”

He had a clear view through her eyes of all she would give up: the jars and boxes that held her amulets, her powders, and her animal skins. She saw them as equal to a city, even as the fortress of her powers, but so soon as he was ready to tell her that she would have all of that again in another place, she asked, “How dear will children be to you?”

“We must have many.”

“Then you do not want to run away with me,” she said. Her eye had no tears, and her voice no sorrow as she told the story, yet when she finished, she began to weep. The child of Usermare had been in her belly, she said. And she had lost that child, her first child, on the night Usermare cut off her toe.

“I do not believe that,” he said.

“It is true. I lost the child, and I lost what was in me to make other children.” Her voice was as firm as the roots of the largest tree in the Gardens of the Secluded. “That,” she said, “is the true reason I grew fat.”

In the pain of listening to her, his thoughts ran past like riderless horses.

She got up from the bed and lit a pot of incense. With every smoke he took into his throat, he had the certainty that his life was shorter by each one of these scents, and the hour of his most unlucky hour was coming in, even as his breath was going out. On the inside of her belly would his last seed expire.

Unable to bear the misery of their silence, he began to make love to her again, but he felt thick with stupor. He might as well have been asleep in a swamp and lay beside her, wondering whether the power of the circle drawn forty-two times around his head might keep her from knowing how foul were the pits of his mood.

She did not speak, but upon them, sour as the odor of old blood, was the weight of her purposes. No love would ever be so near as the triumph of her craft. Lying silently by her side, he spent the night waiting for that hour before the dawn when he must leave. He did not wish to stay, but the depth of her thoughts (which he could not enter) lay upon him like the carcass of a beast, and indeed they passed the night like two much-wounded animals.

Yet, in the last interval before he left, she allowed him to come close once more to her thoughts. As a traveler on a barge can listen to the murmurings of the Nile and know the spirit of the water, so did he perceive that she was searching through her wisdom for a ritual that could strike Usermare with force.

Nor was he surprised in the morning when he returned to her house and saw, by the nature of her preparations, that she would make an Address to Isis.

Honey-Ball had spoken of how dangerous this ceremony could be. Her choice was as bold as his own plan to escape, and a breath of love returned. His daring might have inspired hers. So, Menenhetet refused all food offered to him this day, touching neither melon nor beans nor goose, and went early to the house of Honey-Ball. It was common for Menenhetet to take his dinner with one or another little queen, even a good omen. The appearance of the Governor might induce a visit by Sesusi Himself. On this evening, however, neither he nor Honey-Ball took more than a dish of cooked wheat on a plate made of papyrus. Then, in full view of her eunuchs, and of any little queens strolling by the house, he left. He even lingered in the lane outside her walls and spoke to other little queens and waited for the darkness. There would be no moon tonight, and a visit by Sesusi was unlikely. So soon as the eunuchs of Honey-Ball were dismissed, he came back over the wall.

Honey-Ball was wearing white sandals and a gown of transparent linen. Her perfume spoke of white roses and her breath was sweeter than her perfume. He wondered if it was the presence of Isis rising from the wheat they had eaten. Honey-Ball had a breath that could come forth like a blossom, or reek of foul curses, and on many a night, he knew the stench of the Duad. On this evening, however, her breath was calm, and the red amulet of Isis about her waist gave composure.

Now, she entered upon the invocation. Honey-Ball would call upon Isis in the voice of Seti the First. Ma-Khrut might be esteemed by many powers and spirits, but only a Pharaoh would be admitted to those elevations where Isis dwelled. Indeed, Honey-Ball had found a spell in the Royal Library of Usermare that would call forth the full powers of Isis if spoken by a dead Pharaoh. So she must summon such a Ka. Enveloped in His presence, she could speak like a King.

She stepped outside the circle, therefore, to remove her gown, and took out a white skirt, golden sandals, and a golden chestplate large enough to cover her breasts. Then, to the astonishment of Menenhetet, she opened another chest and withdrew a Double-Crown of fine stiff linen made, he realized, by her own hands, and it was more than a cubit in height. She placed this upon her head, with a chin-beard to her mouth, and by the time she stepped into the circle and laid the red amulet on the altar, her full mouth was now altered into the stern lips of Seti—at least as Menenhetet knew him by many a temple drawing.

Then in a voice of much authority she began the invocation that would bring the Ka of that Pharaoh forth.

While Menenhetet lay on his back, his head against the altar, and her foot upon his chest (so that he looked up at a body and face as fierce and massive as the great Pharaoh who had been the Father of Usermare) Honey-Ball began to recite a poem:

“Four elements

“In their scattered parts,

“Will bring their hearts

“To these events.

“May the Ka of Seti come to birth,

“May the Ka of Seti know our earth.

“Air, water, earth, fire,

“Seed, root, tree, fruit,

“Breathe, drown, bury, birth,

“Air, water, fire, earth,

“O Seti, come to me.”

She said it, and Menenhetet, lying beneath her, repeated it, their voices in unison, and the lines were said many times. As she spoke, she lay pinches of incense on the burning pots beside his body until the room was heavy with smoke, and the heat of her heart rose higher. Her voice moved through air so thick her breath shifted the smoke like clouds.

“O You,” she said, “Who were the greatest of Pharaohs and the Father of the Great Usermare, and are twice the greatness of this Pharaoh, Your Son, Who is called Ramses the Great, know, then, the sound of my voice that calls to You for I am Ma-Khrut, the daughter of my father, Ahmose of Sais, who was born in Your Reign.

“Great Seti, Greatest of all Pharaohs, let Yourself be known by Your Power, by Your Rage, and by the Glories of Your Reign. For Your Son, Usermare-Setpenere, has torn down Your Temple in Thebes. He has turned to the wall all the great words that are spoken of His Father Seti. In these Temples, praise for His Father is silent. The stones have been choked. If You hear me, may Your First Ka descend upon me like a tent.” She was silent. Then she said: “O Seti, come to me.”