Authors: Pauline Gedge
“That cold foreigner,” he said scornfully. “She will not help me. She refuses to ally herself with any one of us for fear she may have gambled on a loser if the wrong son inherits the Horus Throne. But I am determined to win. I am Commander of the Infantry, I have the army behind me, yet it is vital that I achieve Divinity with the blessing of my father, not with force after he is dead. Egypt must not suffer civil war.” He came close to me again, too close for politeness, so that even though he was not touching me I felt overwhelmed by his power. “I do not make this request lightly,” he went on in a low voice. “I understand that unless you approach my father with the utmost delicacy your words could be misconstrued. Yet I trust both your tact and the fascination you hold for him.”
“Highness, you overestimate both,” I managed weakly, my eyes fixed on the movement of his mouth. “I would be risking more than three days of banishment if I anger him a second time.”
“I will make it worth your while to try,” he urged. “The Heir inherits his father’s harem when he becomes Pharaoh, you know that don’t you? He may discard or use the women as he pleases. You are very young, my Lady Thu. I would choose to keep very few of my father’s hundreds of concubines, and you would be one of them. The rest would of course be dispersed to the various harems of retirement. You would be safe from such a terrible fate when the Double Crown sat on my head, indeed, I would pile riches and preferments at your feet. Is that not worthy of a few words in my father’s ear from time to time?”
He had leaned even closer to me with the intensity of his words, and I could contain myself no longer. With a fierce, despairing inner wrench of surrender I closed the tiny gap between us. Now at last my fingers met the glorious resistance of his body and my mouth opened under his. His lips were as assured, as enticing, as I had always imagined they would be. I felt him grasp my waist and ease my body against his. So young, so firm, I thought giddily. Fire and heat. Solidity, not the yielding flabbiness of Pharaoh’s flesh. Pharaoh’s flesh …
Gasping I pulled myself out of the Prince’s embrace.
“What a fool you must think me, Highness!” I cried out, half-mad with the desire and the rage battling inside so that I felt deathly ill for a moment. “I hazard my very existence for your sake, and what have you promised me in return? Nothing. Nothing! Suppose your father, by some remote possibility, listens to me and designates you his Heir? He goes to sail in the Heavenly Barque and you don the Double Crown and inherit the harem. Then you are free to forget your fine promises of this night, to ignore me or banish me as well as to take me to your bed and then discard me! No. It is not enough.” He was breathing heavily, and as I watched, a thin trickle of sweat coursed down his neck and onto his chest.
“Well, what do you want then?” he asked in exasperation. “Gold? Land?” I pressed both hands to my forehead. I was shaking all over as though I had a fever.
“No, Highness,” I said, dropping my arms and striving to be calm. “I want you to dictate a scroll making me a queen of Egypt in the event that you become King. I want the scroll witnessed by a priest and any scribe you trust, and then given into my care. And do not forget that I can read very well.” He stared at me in astonishment, then his handsome face broke into lines of amusement and he began to chuckle.
“By Amun I do pity my father,” he grinned, “for surely I see the wiles that have ensnared him. You are an impudent little witch, my Lady Thu. Very well. I will consider your proposal if you will consider my request.” Suddenly I felt well again, and strong.
“You will?”
“Yes.”
“I thank you, Highness!” Bowing elaborately I walked to the door.
“Where are you going?” he demanded. “I have not dismissed you yet.” I halted but I did not turn around. I was afraid that if I did so I would fly into his arms, onto his couch, and thus wreak my own destruction.
“Dismiss me then I beseech you, Prince,” I said quietly. “For the respect I bear to your father.” There was a silence which was not broken, and after a time I opened the door and went resolutely away.
That night I had the dream again. I was kneeling in the desert as before, my mouth and nostrils choked with sand, my naked back blistering with the heat of the sun. Fear was all around me, but this time a voice muttered and whispered within it, the words, if words they were, rapid and unintelligible. Nor could I determine whether the voice had a sex. It droned on chillingly, rising and falling without taking breath, and in the midst of my terror I strained to hear what it was saying, for I knew that if I could catch its meaning I would be free. I woke entangled in sweat-soaked sheets with nausea churning in my bowels, and arms flailing I struggled to sit up. Through the open door of my bedchamber I could see Disenk in the faint first light of dawn, curled up peacefully on her mat, but this inner room was still sunk in darkness.
I tried not to peer into those dense shadows in case the power that had held me doubled over in my dream should be lurking there, mute now but still full of malevolence. Earlier I had not wanted to consider my confrontation with the Prince. I had hurried back to my comfortable womb, Disenk at my side, both of us very tired, and fallen between my sheets where sleep had claimed me. But now I sat limply, staring at the barely discernable outline of my legs under their covering of linen, and remembered all he had said.
Gradually it came to me, with a sadness I had never felt before, that my cherished vision of Pharaoh’s beautiful son had been an illusion. His apparent kindness was a sham, a ploy to ensure his own comfort. Every smile, every act of selflessness, increased his value in the eyes of the court and served to swell his popularity. I did not doubt that his mystery, his reputation for remoteness and the solitary pursuits that took him, alone, onto the desert and into the Nile in the dark hours, was a carefully calculated act to remove him from an association with any one faction in the minds of those circling the arena of power in Egypt. Above it all he could be seen as full of new possibilities, a fledgling god of honesty and lofty impartiality who could only compare favourably with his useless brothers.
But he was as ambitious, as venal and greedy, as any. He wanted Godhead. He wanted the divinity the Double Crown would bestow, and all the authority that accompanied it. He was jealous of his father also. Whether he loved the King or not was unclear, but he had not been able to hide his lust to appropriate all that belonged to the elder Ramses, and that included me. I should have been flattered but I was not.
It also came to me, like a savage blow from a friend I had trusted, that the Prince only wanted to use me. It was not I, Thu, being invited to aid in Egypt’s salvation, it was the concubine who held Pharaoh in the palm of her painted hand and who could thus be fitted into the Prince’s larger schemes and then forgotten.
They all want to use me, I thought miserably. Hui, the Prince, even Pharaoh himself. There is no one who truly cares for my welfare. Pa-ari has grown away from me. Disenk may hold some affection for me but she would give the same loyalty to whoever employed her. Only my land will not betray my care. No matter what, it will receive me with love.
I could no longer ignore the sickness curdling up into my throat. Sitting on the edge of the couch I folded my arms tight against my breast and began to rock to and fro. Hopelessly, grimly, I tried to cling to my exploration of the Prince’s character but it was impossible. A more disturbing reality was intruding, and at last I could not hold it back. “Oh gods,” I whispered. “Oh, please, no,” and the sound went scuttering and scrabbling around the room like claws on rock, like the malicious voice of my dream. My doom had fallen. I knew that I was pregnant.
Then I let the anger come. It was a guard, a defence against the anguish of a great defeat. Rising, I paced the floor and cursed Hui who had brought me to this place, cursed Pharaoh who would now abandon me, cursed the gods of the Fayum whom I had offended and who had taken this pitiless revenge on me. My words hissed out like venom, and still I could not exhaust the well of poison burning my tongue and scoring my heart.
I did not come to myself until I felt a touch on my arm. Disenk stood anxiously beside me, wrapped in a sheet, and I realized that I could see her clearly in the strengthening light. “Thu, whatever is the matter?” she asked. I came to a halt, chest heaving, fists clenched. Very well, I thought. Very well. I can fight this. I can still win.
“Disenk, bring me my physic box,” I ordered. She opened her mouth to speak again but closed it when she saw my expression, and went into the other room. I sat in my chair and waited. Presently she laid the box on my lap.
“I will bring you food?” she said, but I shook my head.
“No. Leave me.”
When I was alone I lifted the lid and began to go through my medicaments. I was looking for my phial of savin oil but I could not find it. Frowning, I emptied the box, setting out on the table each container. The savin oil had gone. I paused, thinking. It was a dangerous drug, too dangerous to prescribe in any but the tiniest doses, and I was sure that my box had held a good supply. Where was it? I had not broken the seal on it since my arrival in the harem, for aiding in the abortion of a royal child was the gravest of offences. Had I taken it out to make room for something else? Given it back to Hui? In my agitation I could not remember doing either.
Then what of the physic nut? I shook the clay pot holding the deadly things. They were usually ground up and mixed with palm oil to kill rats in the granaries but the seeds of the small tree made an efficient purge. Too efficient. Their potency was uncertain and the same dose could either empty the patient or kill her. Kill me. Quickly I tossed the phials and jars back into the box and slammed the lid shut. “Disenk!” She came running, still obviously bewildered, but she had put on her sheath and combed her hair. “I am going to Hui’s house,” I told her. “I will go on foot. I do not want guards or litter bearers to gossip about my movements today and you must keep this a secret. If I am summoned, tell the messenger I am drunk or in the bath house or visiting the other women—anything. I don’t care what you say, but do not let it be known that I have left the harem. Lend me one of your sheaths and your plain sandals. Get me a basket I can carry, and that thick linen cloak of yours with a hood that you wear sometimes when the nights are cool. I know we are now at the beginning of Shemu but no one will notice, I think. Hurry up!” She stared at me, her eyes round.
“Thu, tell me what is wrong,” she begged. I considered, then relented. She was my body servant. She would know sooner or later anyway, particularly if my efforts to rid myself of my fatal burden proved useless.
“I am pregnant,” I said shortly, and turned away so that I could not see her expression. “Bring me the things I have asked for.”
While I waited for her a thought struck me, and leaning against the table I began to giggle and then to laugh hysterically. The month of Pakhons had begun. It was three months to my Naming Day. In three months I would be all of sixteen years old.
An hour later, wrapped in a cloak and clad in a servant’s sturdy sheath, my feet laced in Disenk’s unadorned sandals, I answered the desultory challenge of the guards on the harem gate and set off along the river road. The rush basket on my arm held my box of medicines covered by a cloth. The sun had now risen fully and the morning was already breathlessly hot. I had not walked any distance for a long time, and soon my ankles and calves were aching in spite of the regular exercises I did. The path was busy with the traffic of servants, hawkers and donkeys who kicked the dust into a fine pall that had me coughing as they elbowed past.
The distance to Hui’s house was not great by water, but on foot it seemed to take an eternity of heat, grit and noise. Blisters formed and broke on the sides of my feet where Disenk’s ill-fitting sandals rubbed, but at least the discomfort served to take my mind off the enormity of my trouble and I reflected grimly, as yet another donkey loaded with produce forced me to step aside, that I probably would not last a week in Aswat, so soft had I become.
But finally Hui’s pylon came into sight. Before walking under it I descended his white watersteps, and sitting in the shade of his tethered barge I sank my feet, sandals and all, into the river. The bliss of such coolness was indescribable and for a while I gazed out upon the sparkling water, the palms on the opposite bank tossing in the breeze, the skiffs breaking the surface into foam as they glided past, with a lightening heart. But the mood fled. I rose and entered Hui’s domain.
The porter beside the pylon challenged me. I could not have avoided him, but he seemed completely disinterested in my strange appearance and let me go on with a curt bow. The garden was deserted, imbued with the heavy, pleasant silence that always blanketed the Master’s estate, and so was the courtyard as I broke through the trees and opened the gate, treading the hot, blinding pavement and pausing between the imposing pillars.
No one was there, and I could see right to the end of the long passage. The rear door was open onto sunny greenery. The tiled floor gleamed. Removing Disenk’s smothering cloak and her caked, dusty sandals I brushed off my feet and walked resolutely straight to Hui’s office. The door was closed but I could hear his voice within, the steady drone of a dictation. Love and a strange kind of grief welled up in me as once more I wanted to crawl onto his knee like a child and curl against his warm chest. I knocked and the voice rose irritably.
“Enter!” I did so. Hui was behind the desk with Ani on the floor at his side, palette under his hand. At the sight of me he scrambled up and bowed. Hui rose. “Thu! Gods, I hardly recognized you! Whatever has gone wrong?” I moved forward and sank into a chair.
“Hui, Ani,” I acknowledged them wearily. “I am very thirsty. Is there any beer?” At a nod from Hui the scribe bowed again, smiled at me uncertainly, and went out. Hui crossed to a jug on one of the shelves, poured for me, and handed me a cup. I drank gratefully. “I have walked from the harem,” I said, wiping my mouth and setting the empty cup on the desk. “No one but Disenk knows that I am here and I cannot stay long. I need your help, Hui. I am pregnant.”