Ancient Evenings (87 page)

As if my mother had an intimation of how this weight might increase on my heart, she beckoned, and I sat down between her and Ptah-nem-hotep Who put His arm around me. The hand of my Father was as tender and wise as the silver light on the Eye of Maat, and, oh, what a warmth came forth from my mother! I nestled between them in the nicest confusion since each was full of the odors of the other, and I felt like a small animal in all the redolence of its nest while they lay back and pleased themselves with sharing my heart, now so full of sweetness. I gave a little sigh of contentment.

That may have been the sound to bring my great-grandfather forward from his sleep. He opened his eyes, took in who had come, and left, and began, without any greater sense of disturbance, to speak. His voice was his own again, with no sound of the accents of my Father. Yet so deep were the caverns in which he had lain, that my great-grandfather must still have been in a spell. Though his eyes passed from one of us to another, and all he said was clear, still he did not seem to notice how our Ramses held Hathfertiti as closely as a wife. He spoke only of matters that concerned himself, and as if nothing had intervened, as if, indeed, the Festival of Festivals had not commenced, but was still a month away. So, listening to him might have been full of a sense of much dislocation if not for my Father’s arm. Otherwise I might as well have been lifted from one boat to another in a mist, indeed, each boat so quickly out of the other’s sight that you could not tell if they were going in the same direction.

My parents did not seem to suffer this vertigo, however, ever, and calmed by them, I began to appreciate that what Menenhetet had to say was so clear I did not need to hear his voice, nor feel obliged to know whether he spoke aloud. My Father, I soon discovered, happened to be listening in the same manner. For He was convinced that the finest secrets of His great ancestor were soon to be acquired. So I could feel His attention lift from His weary limbs to the appetite for understanding that was in His heart. Even more than His pleasure in my mother, or His joy in me, must have been the taste of this desire. Lying so near to Him, it kept me awake. I did not even mind that we were no longer with Usermare on the first day of the Festival, but back with my great-grandfather in the Palace of Nefertiri. If a story was like a flower, and once interrupted, was plucked, roots and all, well, I told myself, a story might also be like the garment of a God, and a God could change His clothes.

FOUR

I do not remember how I said goodnight to my Queen Nefertiri, Menenhetet began. I only remember the next morning, because I awakened late in my own bed to a happiness I had never felt before. I could not wait to see the great Queen Who had become my lady. This happiness was perfect. I was so rich in the recollections over which I had just slept and these memories were so balanced by the pleasures I hoped to feel soon again, I knew such worth in my opinion of myself and such peace in my achievements, that my heart was like a sacred pool.

May I say it was a happiness I was not to know again. Major-domo came in with a message to report to the Vizier at once, and this command was so exceptional that I was soon on my way. In the chambers of the Vizier I was told that Usermare, on awakening this morning, had given orders to transfer me from the service of Nefertiri to the Palace of Rama-Nefru. The move was to be made this morning. All that I owned could be carried by my servants to this office of the Vizier where other servants, now to be my new gardener, new butler, new cook, new keeper-of-the-keys, and new groom, all in the livery of Rama-Nefru, would transport them the rest of the way. I was now Companion of the Right Hand to Rama-Nefru.

The happiness with which I awoke was, as I say, never to be known again, not in any of my four lives, and for good cause. There was no sentiment as dangerous to one’s security, I had now discovered, as happiness itself. I cannot believe that I would otherwise have so separated my attention from the heart of my King. Not for so long as a night’s sleep! In sleep I might travel through those markets and palaces where my dreams could take me, but now I knew I must never wander too far from my Monarch’s heart. Happiness had left me without a sentry. So I had neither warning of the shift, nor a sure suspicion from whom it had come. I did not know if the Hittite Queen had cajoled Usermare into making such a change so that She might spite Nefertiri, or whether He had awakened to the sure knowledge that I had sported on His flesh, tasted it, left my taste. Yet, if that were so, why would He now put me where He did?

When I went to see Nefertiri, my confusion became chaos. She was pleasant, but distant, as if I were the one who had plotted for such a move. She did not refer to the loss of me as a triumph for Rama-Nefru, not once, and so I could not know if She were troubled, or too proud to show a hurt. In the few moments I had to be alone with Her (and I could not delude myself that She wished to see me for long but could not—no, She chose to keep the meeting short) it was clear: She was not altogether disturbed. Indeed, She had the look of relief I had seen on other women when escaping from an imprudence. She held my hand, and spoke of patience, and said at last, “Perhaps you will observe Rama-Nefru for Me,” and when I bowed at this invitation to be Her spy, and made the formal gesture of kissing Her toe, I nonetheless whispered up Her skirts, “When will I see you again?” My heart and loins were in such an uproar they could have been grappling with one another. She did not tremble from my breath upon Her legs, but kissed me on the forehead, and most solemnly. Whether this was to be taken as Her vow, or more as a caress to calm a nervous horse, was more than I could know. “It is wisest if you do not come back,” She said, “until there is much to tell Me of Rama-Nefru.”

At last, however, She let me look into Her wondrous eyes, deep as the royal-blue of evening, and all that I wanted to see was in them—love, loss, and the tenderness of flesh that has shared a few secrets with your flesh. I was sick, I say, with confusion.

By afternoon, the move was done; by evening I had my first audience with Rama-Nefru, and it was short as well. She greeted me in a sweet voice charmingly laden with the accent of the Hittites, and told me that Her need for my services was great (although She did not mention a single matter upon which I might begin). Then She added that I must talk to Heqat, who could instruct me about Her people. “We are simple next to the Egyptians,” my new Queen said, “but then no nation has desires that are easy to learn.”

She was gentle in manner, and certainly most courteous. I was much moved for the way She had suffered. I did not know if all Her hair was gone, but She wore a golden wig, much more brilliant, though of a less refined color, than Her own pale-gold, and the hue of this wig showed how ill She must have been. Her skin was green in its shadow and sad in its lack of luster, and a considerable sadness was in everything She said. I began to wonder, since She had such small idea what to do with me, whether Usermare had not made this change to divert Her. Was I a new interest for His sick Princess? This question now coming upon all the others, sent me away from Her chamber with an ache in my head that was worse than the feelings of a God buried alive.

So I cannot say I was of much use to myself or to anyone the first day. While the Palace of Rama-Nefru had been given so lovely a name as the Columns of the White Goddess, and was a lively place to visit whenever Usermare was there (what with the officers of His Guard congregating in every courtyard) I found it somber when He left. The baby, Her Prince Peht-a-Ra, lived in a wing enclosed by a new wooden fence of tall posts with spikes at the top. Around that barrier was stationed most of the Queen’s Guard. Rama-Nefru’s soldiers, loaned to Her by Usermare, not only walked around the fence but down the corridors within, and there were even soldiers on duty with the nurse in the Prince’s own chamber. I would come to know Rama-Nefru, but I hardly saw the baby—He was guarded too closely. Nor did it improve my first impression of these Columns of the White Goddess to recollect that the Goddess in question was Nekhbet, the Vulture. While Rama-Nefru did not look like any bird of prey, the Palace, all the same, had a taint in the air. A whiff of carrion rose from the garden where Her plants had animal meat ground into the compost, and thereby gave the odor of a wild bird’s nest high on a cliff with the shreds of a few victims scattered about.

Of course, it was a Hittite palace. If it were white on the outside, and had as many columns as its name, and so could not have looked more Egyptian—but for that hideous fence!—it was Hittite within, or what I thought Hittite must be. Rama-Nefru had covered the walls of many rooms with pale purple tile that came from Tyre. No finer color existed for the pale gold that Her hair used to be, but then the more I looked, the more I understood that Rama-Nefru looked to decorate Her palace with fine materials from the lands between Thebes and Kadesh, as if these would prove the most beneficial substances for Her marriage. So Her furniture was made of copper from Sinai and timber from Lebanon, of malachite, turquoise and alabaster from the lands between. How dark were Her rooms, but how strong! As I wandered through, and many of Her chambers were empty for hours at a time, I longed for the Palace of Nefertiri where one could also pass from room to empty room, yet all were open to patios and of white marble, and alive with light. Now I had the sadness of knowing that I must lose my hours in this stronghold while understanding so little of the Hittites. When I would look at the personal servants walking about within, heavy and bearded men who, no matter how hot the day, still wore their wool garments, I would think of what a gloomy people they must be. I knew nothing of their Gods nor of their sentiments, but on my first sunset in the Columns, and on each sunset thereafter, I noticed that these Hittite servants had a long droning song to offer the evening, and their voices wailed with much misery. Heqat, who soon became my first friend here, was able to tell me what the words meant in Egyptian, and their meaning was cheerless if not downright terrible.

“What seems good to us, is woeful to
Them
,

“What feels bad for us,
They
say is good,

“Who can know
Their
thoughts?

“
They
are as concealed as the waters.”

“Who are ‘they’?” I asked of Heqat. “Do the Hittites speak of Egyptians?”

“Oh, no,” she told me. “ ‘They’ are the Hittites’ Gods.”

Of course, Heqat was not a Hittite herself, but a Syrian. Nonetheless, the two countries were much nearer to each other than to Egypt, and she had much to tell about Rama-Nefru, and did. She spoke to me with the intimacy of those who had served the body of Usermare-Setpenere together, so I had not been talking to Heqat long before I learned a good deal.

In my loneliness, I was ready to see more of her than ever I did in my days in the Gardens, and soon discovered that this ugly little queen was also lonely here. She had no home to keep, nor advice to give, nor gossip to hear, and no beer-house with the other little queens, only her attendance on Rama-Nefru. So we spoke often and she taught me about the Hittites. They were much different from the Assyrians, I was soon told (I had always thought they were nearly the same) but, no, the Hittites came down to Kadesh from the North, and had only been living in that country for the last four or five Kings. All the same, they had learned a lot from the Assyrians and dressed like them, even as the Libyans and the Nubians knew how to imitate the Egyptians. Only these Hittites, said Heqat, were more a vagabond people. They had also learned from the Mittani and the Babylonians, the Medes, all the others, although—with all said—they were most like the Assyrians.

I could not believe how odd they were. Whenever they had to live through many years of trouble they would decide to cleanse their cities of ill fortune. At such times, mothers could not scold their children, nor masters castigate their servants, and all lawsuits were forbidden. They burned cedar in huge bonfires at the crossroads, and psalms were sung at night. They would also repair all the damage and wear on the old temples. I learned that this was very important, since they thought the weakening of the timbers in an old building also showed a weakening of the bonds between the Gods and the people. Then Heqat tried to tell me about a code of laws that the Hittites copied from a king named Hammurabi, but I could not believe such statutes. Hammurabi ordered death as the penalty when a proprietor of a wine-shop dared to shelter an outlaw, and he had other laws that said you could burn a priestess if she went into a wine-shop. A wife who stole something from her husband might be executed. Yet if she stole something from a neighbor’s house, they could only cut off her nose! After a while, I began to follow the reasoning. If a woman was in a fight with a man, and crushed one of his testicles, they cut off one of her fingers, but if both testicles were damaged, they tore out her eyes.