Ancient Evenings (79 page)

May I say She knew me very well, for Her first act now that we were alone, was to go to a golden coffer that stood upon a large chest, and from it remove a disc of ebony as wide as one’s brow, and with a handle of electrum. Carrying it carefully, so that I could only see the back of this ebony disc, She sat beside me and placed it by its base on the table. Then She said, or so I thought, “Have you ever looked into a fine
revealing
?”

Once again, I was bewildered. I did not believe She could be speaking of the night when Amon came to Her and gave Amen-khep-shu-ef to Her belly, but, in truth, I was much embarrassed by the directness of such a question, for I supposed She could not mean anything like “conception” which was certainly one of the meanings of “revealing,” but, no, not by the light smile on Her face—no nearness to Amon there! So I took another meaning for the word, and wondered if She meant, “Have you ever looked into a foulness?” but again, by Her expression, I knew that could hardly be so. At last, and with what relief, I concluded that She had said, “Have you ever looked into a fine river?” for indeed I had, who has not seen the quiet Nile when the water is calm and clear, and your own face ripples on the surface of the small waves, so I nodded and said, “Yes, I know nearly all of the Nile,” much relieved, whereupon She reached up, pinched my cheek, brought a candlestick near to us, and turned the ebony disc around. I drew back in fright. By the glow of the flame, I saw the face of a man who had something like my own face, but more intimate than the surface of all those rippling waters where I had half-seen it before. Now, I truly saw my own features on this perfect plate of polished silver, and how much I looked like you, Nef-khep-aukhem, husband of my granddaughter, Hathfertiti, yes, I had the expression of one who serves the Good and Great Gods, and was startled by how much caution now dwelt in a man who had once been a charioteer. How smooth and worried were my cheeks. All those rubbings from the cheeks of Honey-Ball! A tomb of corruption must be my heart! That was the first thought at seeing my face, and it came from the side of myself that is noblest in spirit, nearest to the brave Gods, and most demanding of myself, but the next voice I tell you was from the sweetmeats of myself, and they were delighted with this look at me. I thought myself handsome, and knowledgeable in the desires of women, indeed, I was so handsome that I stirred unmistakably and almost came forth like a hound in a frolic, that intoxicating was the sight of myself. Then I was full of fear because I realized it was not my own face I saw, but my Ka, which lived on the surface of this silver, this polished lake of silver. Nefertiri stroked my cheek with the most mocking touch of Her fingertips, and said, “Ah, the dear man does not know a mirror.”

“Never a mirror like this,” I managed to say back to Her, but I could hardly speak. “Why this,” I wanted to say, “will change all that there is.” For I knew that if every soldier and peasant could see his Ka, why then all would want to act like Gods. Oh, I had looked into common mirrors, scratched and dull, their surface so impure that one’s eyes and nose twisted as one moved it about, but this was a mirror like no other, it must be the finest in all of Egypt, a true
revealing
—ah, there was the word She had used—and my Ka was before me, and we looked at each other.

Then I understood once again how cruel it must be to wander in Khert-Neter with no tomb for a home, nothing but the banks, the monsters, and the flames of the serpents. For I saw that my Ka was virtually me and there before me and so alive. He was the one who would be destroyed in the smoke and the stink. I wished to cry out against such monstrosity. So vivid was all I saw of this face, that even the light of the candle seemed like the flames of Khert-Neter, and I knew that I loved my Ka and it did not matter how much corruption was in those features when my life was also in them. Then I gasped. For by a turn of Her wrist on the handle of this “revealing,” so did I see Her Ka, not mine, and Her indigo eyes, blue as evening in the flame of the torch, looked back at me from the polished disc, and I could dare to lay my eyes full into the eyes of Her Ka, this One, at least, of Her Fourteen, and by my expression must have told Her how much love I knew for Her since She blinked as if She also saw the shadow of unseen wings. I think it was then She knew that I must kill Her if Usermare was dead. By way of the mirror we looked at one another until the tears came forth in both our eyes.

Yet by the strength of our gaze into each other, so did I enter Her thoughts for the first time, and before we were done, I took Her hand—I dared and took Her hand—and was able by way of Her fingers (just so well as with Usermare) to enter Her heart. The thoughts were not small. She was thinking of the night Amon had come to Her bed, and She conceived Amen-khep-shu-ef. Yes, the jealousy of Usermare was well-founded. My own had begun at the touch of Her palm in mine. For I saw Her in the lap of the God and nobody was more powerful than the Hidden One. The rush of Her thoughts came over me in this gallop like a thumping of horse’s hooves, a true set of blows to pay for daring to touch Her fingers, but then She was calm again, and wicked, and leaned forward to whisper in my ear, “Is it true that Ma-Khrut cannot keep her hands off you?”

Now I do not know if it was my thoughts She could hear, or the lonely desires of Honey-Ball, or, whether, given the free passage of eunuchs, so much like birds, from the kitchens of one palace to the gates of another, Nefertiri had heard it all as gossip. Still, what a clamoring in my heart if I was now part of the common gossip.

I did not answer. I thought that if I pretended the question was not understood, why the dignity of a Queen might keep Her from asking again. I did not yet understand, so exquisite were Her manners, that Nefertiri’s desires were as close to the roar of the lion as Usermare Himself. “Come,” She said, “is it true? Ma-Khrut has said it.” Now, I had to wonder if Ma-Khrut was so intimate with the Queen that they spoke to one another through trusted friends.

I could have smiled like a fool, or merely looked wise, but some strength out of the heart that once spoke in me as a brave man drew my eyes back to the mirror, and I reached forward with my fingers and turned the handle so that we could speak again from the eyes of my Ka into Hers, and I said, “If it were not for the loveliness that surrounds Your Majesty, I would think often of Ma-Khrut.” In such an instant I understood that the true desire for revenge is like a serpent. If its tail rested in the pits of my dream its head spoke in the eyes of my Queen. We both felt the breath of Ma-Khrut, as if she did not give us her blessing so much as the power to use her curse. Nefertiri and I still looked at one another through the mirror, but now it might as well have been the high bank of a river past which flood waters wash in the great force of a bend. We saw each other with all the surprise one might know when looking at a stranger in the marketplace—yes, by Her size and by the poise of Her hips, so equal to mine, does that woman draw me forward, and by Her age as well—She is my age, and has my wisdom, She is a stranger who could be my mate. So I saw Her, and knew She saw me, She as a woman, not a Goddess, and I as a man, not a servant. It was wondrous to me how we met in all that is equal, and were so well met. We smiled tenderly at one another. Alas. That Ka was only one of Her Fourteen.

Still, we were as tender as new-found friends, and She took my hand again and began to explain to me, now that we were near, a matter I had never understood before. Yet much which had been incomprehensible to me in the Gardens of the Secluded was now restored to its place, and it gave me much new knowledge of my Pharaoh. I saw why He came back from Kadesh as another man. For She told me how on the day of the great battle when the Hittites broke through, and Usermare prayed in His tent, He had asked Amon to give Him the strength to meet His foe, and the Hidden One had told Him that His wish would be granted. “You do not ask Me for a long life,” were the words of Amon, “and so You will gain much strength.”

“He has lived,” said Nefertiri, “for twenty-nine years since that day, but He still waits for the hour when Amon will come to take Him.

“That is why He is now with a woman of the Hittites,” said Nefertiri. “He hopes Amon will not dare to go to war with Hittite Gods.” I saw the anger in Her eyes. “He knows great fear when He sleeps with the Hittite Princess and tries to be close to Her Gods. For He still wants Me.” Her voice was as deep as the night, and as grave as the weight of the stone that She would lay upon His tomb. “I despise Sesusi,” She said, “for His fear.”

ELEVEN

Sometimes, sleeping alone in the House of the Companion of the Right Hand, I would awake in the middle of the night and feel Honey-Ball near to me. There was not a bat who passed through my window, nor a bird scattering the hush of the night who could not have been a visitor from her garden, and I felt the Gods rising like the inundation. Just as villages would soon become islands, so would my fortunes ride on a floodwater. I knew I must seize whatever was offered.

I say this because the next offering was foul, and I was sick of such practices. Yet nothing that came my way offered more service to Nefertiri. Once, Honey-Ball, while mixing the dung of her cat with the ashes of a plant and the blood from her arm, said, as if to herself, “It is the leavings of Sesusi that I need the most,” and I felt a revulsion so large that the food in my stomach nearly came forth into the stew of her magic. Yet I never forgot her words. For I understood they were true. I brooded much on the nature of such stuff when I lived in the Gardens of the Secluded—how could I not? Sometimes it was as near to me as the earth to my feet. I even supposed that dung must be the center of all things, and that was its reason for departing from us by the center of the body—a true compact between Set and Geb! Certainly I came to the sad conclusion that excrement was as much a part of magic as blood or fire, an elixir of dying Gods and rotting spirits desperate to regain the life they were about to lose. Yet when I thought of all the transformation that dung contains (since it is not only good crops which sprout from it, but one has to take account of the dogs who eat it, and the flies who swarm over it) I began to think of all those Gods, small and mean as pestilence itself, Who dwell next to such great changes. “How dangerous is this excrement,” I said to myself, and knew one terrible thought, even if I could not explain it. To hold the leavings of another must be equal to owning great gold and wealth.

Was it for such a reason that all who visited the Court would wear as much gold as they possessed? I still remember how in the Great Square between the Wide Palace and the Little Palace, the gold would glisten on their bodies like sunlight on the surface of the Lake of Maat. By its bank was a patio of white marble under a gold roof, and in that cool place all used to congregate, every nobleman and rich merchant in Thebes, and every man of consequence who had traveled up the river from the Delta or down from the nomes of Upper Egypt. Like cattle who come down to the river to drink, they were all there, and that would yet contribute to my offering.

To enter the Wide Palace was not permitted without a papyrus from the Office of the Gates, and the Little Palace was forbidden to all but intimate servants of Usermare. So, on this patio between, by the Lake of Maat, the wealthy of Egypt would wait for Usermare to pass in His route from one Palace to another. He was always carried, and eight visitors would bear Him—eight chosen from the hundred and more who waited for word to issue from the doors of either Palace that the Good and Great God was coming forth. These visitors would then become a mob, jostling with one another like the first froth of the rising waters for the right to carry Usermare on the Golden Belly (which was what we called His palanquin) but then this was the only time when such fellows could serve Him. The other moves He might make from Court to Temple or to the streets of Thebes or down to the Royal Boat-House were carried out by officers assigned to His Guard who served at a particular position, indeed, there used to be a name for each of them—Third Bearer of the Right Limb of the Golden Belly was the kind of title. The Guard were, however, not used on the many trips He took between the Wide Palace and the Little Palace. For that, any merchant esteemed enough to enter through the Double-Gate by the river, could, if fortunate, obtain the privilege of carrying Him those few hundreds of steps around the Lake of Truth (that is, the Lake of Maat) into the doors of the other Palace. It was not a long trip, but one heard of men who waited through a hot afternoon by the doors of either Palace, there in all the most terrible hours of the heat, crushed against one another, stinking in the oven of the sun if they did not carry their perfumes—woe to the body who stank in the nostrils of Usermare!—but in that terrible press, some would prevail, some would seize the honor (and talk about it for the rest of their lives). No matter how exhausted from the hours of waiting, they were delighted to cheer in unison carrying Him and His Golden Belly with His Seat upon it. They would cheer even as they ran, and never seem to fear that any would drop dead from the pace at which they went, while another crowd of prominent men from far-off nomes would wait at the next doors in the hope He would soon come out again That was when I knew how high was my own station. I looked with contempt upon men who would make such fools of themselves. If, when General-of-all-the-Armies, I did not yet have entrance to the House of Adoration (which was our other name for the Little Palace) still I rode in my chariot behind His Chariot through the streets and out to the courses where we had our races in the deserts to the East, and when His route was not so long, and He chose to be borne on His Golden Belly, I had a place to His right, second on the bearing-pole behind His Vizier of Lower Egypt, a weak fellow whose load I used to help support. Then, in the Gardens, as Governor of the House of the Secluded, I had held His five fingers. Now, as Companion of the Right Hand, I had entrance to the Little Palace at any hour and by any door. How could it be otherwise if my King lived in fear of His Son and His Wife? He had told me to tell Him all I heard. Often He would summon me and ask many questions. Rarely, however, would I please Him since He did not hear what He was waiting for—a tale of Nefertiri’s disloyalty, or an intrigue by Her son. Instead, I used what skill I had to suggest that little could be learned until She came to trust me more. I made much, however, of small sighs from Her lips, and the cruel expression on the mouth of Amen-khep-shu-ef. By exaggerating such trifles, I succeeded on the one hand in convincing my King that I was loyal to Him—no easy matter—yet allowed Him to conclude that there was no sure evil to be found in His Wife or His Son. That also pleased Him. But then a Monarch with a Double-Crown must have Two-Lands to His mind: if Upper Egypt desired true tales of treachery, Lower Egypt was delighted with Her fidelity. All the same, after Nefertiri told me of His great and secret fear of Amon, I decided to let Him know what She had said, even if I hardly knew how I dared to confess so much. He had received me in His bed in the great room where He slept, and in His arms, Her golden hair covering His chest, was Rama-Nefru, yet I told it all, and with no pain that I was betraying Nefertiri. Indeed, I believe She knew I would tell it to Him, and wanted it so. Certainly, She grew greater in all our eyes as I repeated Her words, “I despise Him for His fear.”