Ancient Evenings (82 page)

She did not look well. I did my best to soothe Her. I explained that any sorcery powerful enough to pull out the roots of an enemy had to create a considerable disturbance. One could not send such illness to another without suffering a part of it oneself. I did not ask Her why, if she could use the leavings of Usermare so adroitly as to crash His head to the marble, She need suffer feelings of fastidiousness here. I understood, however. A woman knows more fear at attacking another woman with her magic than a man. Nor did I even dare to speak of Pepti’s last instruction to me. Each night, for seven nights, of which this was the first, I must go to the Khebit Kheper for another wrapping. Each night Nefertiri would receive a new message.

Indeed, on the second night, it was worse. She was told to take the blond fibers that She had kept beneath Her headrest for the first night and now hold them in Her hand while She slept; on the third night She had to put them in a sack around Her belly; by the fourth, around Her neck. Be certain that by the seventh night, She slept with it between Her thighs and was no longer so outraged. The magic was having a most powerful effect.

By then, there was no one in the Court who had not heard of the suffering of Rama-Nefru and the dreadful purge of Her stomach. I saw Her myself on the fifth morning. The King held Her in His arms, and Her body contracted like a snake and sprung forth, contracted and sprung forth, while the Royal Doctor held a golden saucer to Her mouth. I was asked to leave the room. I knew the Golden Bowl was also in use. From the roots of Her stomach and the roots of Her entrails was She discharging. Later that day, I heard Her hair had begun to fall out. So did the word pass through Court like the rise of the river.

Usermare called on Heqat. The little queen was summoned from the Gardens, a Syrian to treat a near-Syrian, and Heqat asked for the shell of a tortoise from the shores of the Very Green. Doctors and messengers went through every market of Thebes before such a curious object was found, and Heqat boiled it to a jelly, then mixed in the fat of a hippopotamus just killed. They used this pomade every day, but it was said Rama-Nefru had already lost Her hair.

Nefertiri never ceased speaking of Heqat. “To be ill is misfortune enough,” She said, “but to be nursed by a woman with a face like a frog is a catastrophe. Tell Me, did Sesusi ever make love to Heqat?” When I nodded, She shook Her head in admiration. “He is a God,” She said. “Only a God could enjoy Honey-Ball and Heqat.” She looked at me again. “And on the same night?” I nodded. “He is sprung from the loins of Set,” She said. But Her expression could not have been more merry. “You must tell Me all about you and Honey-Ball.”

“I do not dare,” I said.

“Oh, you will tell Me.” Her good spirits could hardly be measured. I wondered why Nefertiri was bothered so little by Usermare’s continuing loyalty to Rama-Nefru. This dreadful illness did not seem to drive Him away. Indeed He had not made even one visit to the Gardens in all the days Rama-Nefru was sick. Yet the splendid mood of Nefertiri diminished so little that I began to wonder if it were a folly caused by the magic—a subtle working of the balance of Maat. Indeed, Nefertiri began to limp a little in these days from a twinge in Her bone where the thigh entered the hip, and this limp, so long as I knew Her, never went away. Yet, speak of folly, it had no effect that I could see on Her fine mood—She ignored it. She was a Queen and there were more intimate matters of concern. Once, She even said, “Sesusi will always tell you of His loyalty”—She pealed with laughter—“but He is very easily bored. He will remain true to Her until the day He cannot endure Rama-Nefru for one more instant. Then He will send Her, bald head and all, back to the Hittites with a wig, a
blue
wig, and they will declare a great war on us for the insult. Amen-khep-shu-ef will find glory instead of growing old with little sieges, and Usermare will grow very old with Me. I will yet know the power of Hat-shep-sut!” She held my hand as She spoke, and I could feel the fever in it.

Others must have begun to reason in Her way, however. The visits of high Officials to Her Court were now more frequent. Before, there had been days when you could see no one in Her Chambers but the Keepers of Her Apartment, the Keepers of Her Wardrobe, the Keepers of Her Kitchen, the Keepers of Her Carriage, plus a number of old, petty, and garrulous friends. Now the Governor of the Treasury of Upper Egypt came one morning with his scribes, eight of them—to show the extent of his courtesy—and Privy Councillors visited, Princes, judges, even the Governor of the Palace, a Lord Chamberlain—old men, many of them, and to my eye not the most powerful nor the closest of Usermare’s Councillors, rather, old friends, it seemed to me, of the days when Nefertiri stood alone as Queen. I would have been more certain of a turn in Her fortunes if nobles closer to Rama-Nefru were among the visitors.

All the while, Nefertiri would complain to me in the happiest tones. “I enjoyed My days more,” She said, “when you and I could spend the hours of the evening looking into the mirror,” and She would touch me lightly under the ear, or draw Her fingertips along my arm. Never had I felt sensations that traveled so far in me from so delicate a touch, unless it was in my memory of the secret whore of the King of Kadesh. Her eyes spoke to me now without a mirror, Her fingers teased my neck, and when we were alone, Her gowns became more transparent. I had known there were marvels one could weave of linen, and many ladies on great occasions would wear the gauzes of Cos, so that you could see their bodies beneath their gowns as clearly as their husbands would see them later, but I was to learn that even in these thin veilings of woven-air, even finer than the woven-air worn by my granddaughter tonight, were some of a lightness to make you swear that spiders had spun the thread. Nefertiri kept them in the subtlest colors so that you could not swear whether her gown was tinted like the yellow rose or if it were the light of the candle, but the gold of Her body was visible to me, and when the beauty of Her breasts touched Her linen, the golden-pink of the nipple of Nefertiri deepened in the shadows to a rose-bronze.

I would stir, I would growl mightily in the silence, but only to myself. I was a lion without legs. Never was I more aware of the poverty of my beginnings than when I measured the emptiness of my strength before Her Ka-of-Isis, and knew that even if Nefertiri were to minister to me with the crudest arts of Honey-Ball (which doubtless She would not) I might still be numb and equal to the dead. When it comes to making love to a Queen, a peasant carries a boulder on his back.

So I stared at Her in the mirror, putting all the hunger of my limp loins into the ferocity of my eyes. With my eyes I desired Her, and with such adoration, enriched the air with honey. She seemed to enjoy these evenings when the others were gone and we were alone. Her desire for me looked ready to rise with the river beyond the Palace walls, but my loins felt like a land where it rained and the mist was cold. I thought of Her low opinion of the family of Ma-Khrut with their twenty generations, and wondered why She desired me at all. I concluded (was it the wisdom of Ma-Khrut in my ear?) that no insult could be more profound to Usermare than the touch of peasant flesh on Hers.

So, She sat beside me, evening after evening, in a gown of woven-air, while I, transfixed by every view She gave of the grove beneath Her belly, began to feel like a priest ready to kneel before the altar more than like a warrior able to enter Her gates. Yet, at last, this must have begun to please Her profoundly for there came a night when She chose to tell how Amon made love to Her, and I wondered how I, who could never have the loins of a Pharaoh, was supposed to rise out of the ashes left by Her tale.

“In the year I was a young bride,” She began, “Usermare was the most beautiful of all the Gods but I saw the Hidden One. His spear grew out of My husband’s sword like the fork of three branches that springs from the loins of Osiris, and I saw lightning flash and wild boars fought with hippopotami. The darkest of His three spears entered the cavern of Set, yet My Ka-of-Isis could swallow the Secret Name of Ra (which is the second branch) and His third sword (that was like the arrow of Osiris) lifted in a rainbow above Our bodies and We drove in His chariot over the sun. That night I became the Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt.”

I did not recognize my Queen as She told this story. I must have glimpsed the First or the Last Ka of Her Fourteen. Never was She more beautiful. The lights in Her eyes were like phosphorescence on the midnight sea. I knelt and placed my face upon Her feet. They trembled at the touch.

My Queen’s ankles had the scent of perfume on a stone floor and felt as cold as my loins, but then, Her toes were equal to my loins, and I took those cold feet and thrust them beneath my short skirt, and lay my face on Her knees. Her toes turned to the hair of my groin, and nestled there like frightened mice. I felt how She was alone and like a fire in an empty cave. All the while those toes nibbled at my bush until they lost the chill of the flower that perishes on the stone, and were like mice, furtive and sly.

An unaccustomed wind came through the pillars of the patio, not steadily, but enough to touch my thoughts, and on one of these winds, I felt pain stir in the hair of Rama-Nefru, still and dry like drying leaves, vulnerable to every breeze, and Nefertiri must have known my thoughts for as I looked up, and withdrew my head from Her knees, so did She seem to know that it was better to speak, and She told me how She came to recognize that the bleached hair in the tail of the bull which came from Ma-Khrut was of no commonplace animal but from an Apis bull of Festival, the kind that is tended by priests and washed in hot baths. Its body, She explained, is always perfumed with sweet unguents and odors of sandalwood, and for such bulls, the priests even lay out rich linen each night for the creature to lie upon. On the day it is to be slain, they lead the bull to the altar, and wine that has been tasted by the priests is sprinkled on the ground like drops of rain. Then the head of this bull is cut off and the marble of the altar-floor runs red. She raised Her arms and said, “I learned, however, that My tail had been stolen after the bull’s death, and by one of the priests. To pay his gambling debts, the priest sold it to a rich family.”

She shrugged—not at all the gesture of a Queen. “I might as well tell you,” She said, “that the young priest who sold the tail is My youngest son, Kham-Uese, and He is a poor excuse for a Prince, and a dishonest priest. You have met Him.”

When I looked at Her in surprise, She said, “He passed with you through the Door of the Black Pig. He is Overseer of the Golden Bowl.”

“Is that an office fit for a Prince?” I could not stop myself from asking.

“Not even for the son of a little queen. But His theft was discovered. The Temple made ready to embalm the bull and lo! there was no tail. So, He confessed. A priest from a poor family would lose his hands for such a violation, but not a Prince. Instead, He was made the Overseer of the Golden Bowl. His father rarely speaks to Him.”

Before I could begin to think of this curious Prince Who had been so weak in the performance of His duties, at least with me, She said, “A single theft brings much disorder to magic, but then the tail was stolen again, and sold to Ma-Khrut for a high price. I must say you could feel its powers. I did not have to hold it for long before I could discern that this was a true beast of Apis, and so I was happier. I inquired of Kham-Uese and He told Me that, even as a calf, it had been splendid, black with a white square on his forehead, and on his tongue the marking of a black beetle. Not one in a million-and-infinity of bulls is so perfect in these signs.”

Nefertiri placed Her hand on my knees, and I felt the warmth of Her body. “When I was young,” She said, “in the year before Amon came to Me, an Apis bull was chosen for a Festival to honor Seti, the Father of Usermare. They searched through all the nomes for an animal with proper markings until such a creature was found near the Delta, and the priests sent him up the river to Memphi. There, the bull, to great acclamation, was led through the city and fed cakes of wheat mixed with honey, and roasted goose, and a crowd of boys was brought forth to sing hymns to him. Then the bull was put to pasture in the Sacred Grove of the Temple of Ptah and cows were set aside for him. How beautiful he was. I know because I was visiting relatives in Memphi before My marriage to Sesusi. My aunt, a woman with an everlasting appetite for men, took Me with her to the Sacred Grove of Ptah. There I saw how none but women were allowed to look at this bull of Apis, for when he was near, some would place themselves full in his view, and lift their skirts, and expose all that they had, and all that they were, to the eyes of the animal. I saw My aunt do this. She was a lady of exalted birth and almost a Goddess. Still she put her thighs apart and grunted like a beast, and the bull pawed the ground.

“I felt too young to expose Myself, but the pleasure of My aunt entered My navel, and after My marriage to Sesusi, on the night Amon came to Me, His eyes had the light that was in the eyes of Apis, and I spread My legs like this.” So did She now raise Her skirt of woven-air, open Her thighs, and take my face into her Ka-of-Isis. The smell was noble as the sea, and the spirits of many silver fish lived between Her lips. I kissed Her and lay with my mouth on all that was open to me, and She began to quiver in many a part. I felt the hooves of the bull of Apis ride into Her belly and through the grove of Her bush. The Ka-of-Isis was wet on my mouth, and I believe She was carried on the Boat of Ra.

I, however, gained no more than I had learned by way of my mouth. When She was calm again, and had put back Her skirt, I was near to Her, and happy that a part of me would know Her forever, but the rest of me was no warmer than before.

Yet, as if She knew the ways of my becoming better than myself, She told another story and thereby I learned of the great love of Queen Hat-shep-sut for the architect Senmut who was a man of the people and not of noble birth. But Hat-shep-sut adored him, and he built Her many palaces and temples, and even brought Her two obelisks from a quarry, and covered their summits with twelve bushels of electrum.