Authors: Carol Thurston
Indeed, I have tried not to judge Ramose, though Pagosh believes it is Nefertiti’s plan for them to rule the Two Lands together, like two horses harnessed to the same chariot, she from the palace and Ramose from the temple. And he may be right. But tonight, with all those I love most in this world moving about among the fragrant flowers of my garden,
their voices floating on the evening breeze, the river of happiness that flows through me by day overflowed its banks and inundated my heart.
Senmut arrived at the hour we had agreed upon the week before but without Mena, and by way of Khary’s dispensary rather than through the garden.
“Mena has been called to the palace,” he explained as we proceeded to my private place of work. My examining room and the dispensary no longer open into the place where I carry out my experiments, nor into the garden where Aset spends hours every day, reading or watching over her menagerie of animals.
“What is it this time?” I asked, since we have put our heads together more than once over the old Pharaoh’s failing health, hoping to give Horemheb time to consolidate his support among the Council of Wise Men.
“The old man outlives his teeth, even the few he has left. Putrid matter drains from his gums until the numbing salve no longer works, forcing him to ever bigger doses of mandrake. But even Mena cannot replace the water in a man’s clock when finally it runs dry. For some time now Horemheb handles not only the royal correspondence but in truth makes all of Pharaoh’s decisions.” I pulled up a stool for him at the writing table in my workroom, between the chests holding my supplies and tools, a shelf for potions, salves and other concoctions, and my collection of scrolls.
“But I bring other news,” he informed me. “A messenger arrived from Aniba bearing word that my father has gone to Osiris. So I will go up the river with my brother, who takes my father’s place. I came to bid you farewell, Tenre, and to thank you for your generosity and wisdom.”
“You have my sympathy,” I replied, though his demeanor
gave no indication that he grieved, “but I am the one who should thank you.”
“What for—allowing you to listen to my foolish questions?”
“For your astute observations and willingness to share them, even your stubbornness in arguing a point,” I replied, and was rewarded with a smile that, like Mena’s, is still quick and boyish. “Surely it will not be long until you can return.”
“With my father gone and the old ways with him, the time has come for me to serve my own people. Pharaoh’s Governor in Kush looks on Hiknefer with a fond eye because my brother was friend to Osiris Tutankhamen. So Huy is inclined to indulge his wishes, which means the time is ripe for me as well.”
“Ripe for what?” The heirs of Kemet’s vassals come to Pharaoh’s court to be educated, not only to assure their fathers’ allegiance but to train them for when their own time comes. But Senmut was not his father’s heir, and he traveled with Pharaoh’s army only to gain experience.
“To establish a new House of Life, one that I intend to make known from the highest reaches of Mother River to the Great Green Sea and beyond for the fresh breeze that blows through its open windows.” His eyes danced with enthusiasm. “A place where learned men gather to exchange ideas, whether it be how to treat the tired heart of an old man, the method used by a sculptor to shape a piece of stone, or how to increase the yield from our fields. Perhaps even you would consent to grace such a place with your wisdom.” I began to shake my head. “I do not ask for your answer now, Tenre, only that you remember. Whatever direction the winds blow in the years ahead, you will always have a place of honor in my house among men who question as you do, whether they be Hittite or Syrian, Canaanite or Babylonian, clean-shaven or—”
“Will you have no women?” Aset asked from the doorway
as Tuli came shooting across the room and crashed into Set mut’s ankles, dropping him to his knees. Nofret keeps Aset hair short and she goes about in a kilt and sleeveless tunic but there is no way to hide the color of her eyes except to keep them cast down when she leaves my walls. Yet Senmu has never inquired into why she is here, and always calls hei Wenis, the name she goes by as my apprentice.
“In time, perhaps.” He left off petting Tuli, who put his nose into my hand to let me know that his affection for me is constant if not so exuberant.
“Mena was called to the palace,” I explained, “but Senmut has come to bid us farewell. His father has passed through the reeds. Just now he was telling me about the House of Life he plans in Aniba.”
“We will miss you, my lord.” She appeared flustered, like a boy embarrassed by the admission. “Will you return?”
“Not to stay, but to visit my friends, yes.”
“Nebet?” she inquired, watching him closely. Did she still find him a novelty or was her fascination more than curiosity, isolated as she is from boys her own age?
“Of course. And Tenre, who I have invited to teach in my House of Life. Perhaps he will bring you along, to teach others how to outline the maps you make of the vessels that carry blood.”
“You know my name is not Wenis, do you not?” Her lips softened into a shy smile when Senmut nodded. “Then it hurts nothing for me to thank you again for—for saving me from that old Nubian, and explaining … everything.” Her eyes always look bigger and rounder when they fill with tears. “I am so sorry about your little sister. Nebet told me what happened to her.”
“Promise me you will remember that nothing of any importance was taken from you that day. You are as whole as I am.” A flash of white teeth, then, “Or Nebet.”
Aset matched his smile. “You truly would have a woman in your House of Life?”
“I just said so.”
“Then I would consider it an honor if you would call me sister.”
For once Senmut was slow to find his tongue. “The honor is mine, Lady Aset. Indeed, I would deem myself the chosen of Amen if you would call me brother in return.”
That brought more joy to her eyes. “Is Mena invited, too?”
“Only if he brings his family with him,” Senmut returned. It struck me then that the words they exchanged meant more to them than to me, as if they knew something I did not. I felt like a father whose children have moved beyond his reach, not in distance but understanding, and for the first time I envied another man simply for his twenty-two years.
“In the meantime,” he added, “it would please me to receive a letter from time to time with news of my friends.”
“From your … sister?” Aset waited for him to nod before she turned and without another word left the room, wearing a satisfied little smile.
Such behavior is a mystery to me, yet there is no one I can ask for help but Sheri. And I do not always have the opportunity before I must make a response, appropriate or not. But I still cannot think of Aset as a married woman or treat her with the decorum proper for another man’s wife, even if her marriage has not yet been consummated. The fire burning in my belly comes from wondering how long that will continue now that her monthly flow has begun.
When I looked to Senmut, he was pulling a thin scroll from the bag he carried over his shoulder. “Mena instructed me to give you this.”
One glance was enough, for Aset’s animals are always in motion, like the pig flapping his ears as he jumps off a bee stack because he believes he can fly. Nor do any lines separate one picture from another. “Why send this to me?”
“I came upon it in the latrine of the barracks where I am assigned. Surely you recognize her hand. She tells in pictures how the old High Priest met his end watching two of his favorites, young boys from the temple school. See the
clay tablets strapped to their backs?” I nodded. “In the beginning the skittish young colts head toward the pond, where the old crocodile lies waiting—all but his nostrils and eyes hidden beneath the muddy water. One colt turns away, refusing to drink from the pond, while the others not only drink but frolic in the water. Except these two, who leave the pond to play a different game”—he pointed to where one colt mounted another from behind—“in full sight of the old crocodile. That is when he begins to change from gray to black, the color of death. The excitement was too much for his old heart. Surely you see the irony in Paranefer being brought down by the corruption of his own
ka.”
He grasped both my shoulders then, in a gesture of friendship. “For me, Tenre, you are the brightest star in the night sky, and so you will remain no matter how many months or years lie between this day and the day we next meet.”
I could not hope to match the graciousness of his words, so I embraced him as a brother. Nor did I try to hide the tears in my eyes as I walked with him to the gate to delay the moment of parting, for in truth I was as reluctant for him to leave as once I was to see Mena sail with the morning light.
Like the last piece in a game of senet, the Old Master of the Horse had nowhere else to go. That he passed through the reeds peacefully was, to me, more than he deserved. Khary treated the news with characteristic equanimity, pointing out that one of the heavenly joys of departing this life is that Pharaoh now can take another man’s wife should he wish, a privilege denied him so long as he occupied the throne. By the time Mena entered my garden by way of the back alley, Khary had gone to his own house and Aset was inside reading, so we settled under the canopy with a pitcher of beer, where we could speak freely about what concerned us most.
“The General will climb the steps to the throne with
Ramose’s blessing,” he predicted. “The priests know Horemheb has garnered more favor in the past two years, not less, thanks to Ay’s muddled wits. Between them Horemheb and Ramses hold the loyalty of the regimental commanders, all but a few who grumble no matter who sits above them. Amen’s Sacred Council knows the next Pharaoh must have the army behind him, to protect our frontiers and gold routes if nothing else, and Horemheb has more experience in governing. It was Ay who steered Tutankhamen’s hand, not Nefertiti.”
“His end, as well,” I reminded him. “But experience has nothing to do with it.”
“I know you distrust him still, Tenre, but Ramose would not have allowed Horemheb to make life miserable for the priests and followers of Aten, thereby currying favor among Amen’s priests both high and low, unless it suited him. No man pulls the High Priest’s string. By now every priest in the Two Lands will know of Horemheb’s order that taxes be collected on Aten’s temples and other holdings. Anyway, what other choice do they have?”
Aset, I almost said, but I did not want to tempt the gods by supplying the answer to their dilemma. “If it is so obvious to you that Ramose is pulling Horemheb’s string, rather than the other way around,” I pointed out instead, “Nefertiti would long since have found a way to end it.”
He drained his cup, then reached for the pitcher to refill both his and mine. “She is blind even to the possibility of failure. Think what she has gotten away with, Tenre. Stealing the breath from her grandson and then the Queen, the child of her body, with her own hands.” He shook his head. “Did Hathor call down the wrath of the gods on her head? No! Amen-Re made her his High Priestess, the God’s Chief Concubine.”
What he said had the ring of truth for I have seen Nefertiti’s arrogance firsthand, even with Anubis breathing over her shoulder. But I could not forget that the Sacred Council once refused to accept Amenhotep’s Shasu Queen as Consort
of Amen, thereby rejecting her son as the son of Amen, and in the end provoked Akhenaten to reject
them.
“I still think the priests will reject your General, lest they sow the seeds of their own destruction. No one can deny that the blood of the Magnificent Amenhotep flows in her veins.”
“As it does in Aset’s,” he replied.
“That is why I worry. At least Ramose does not delude himself. He may have ordered all mention of the priests’ part in the catastrophe with the Heretic removed from the temple scrolls, but he did not purge his own library.”
“One more reason to believe he will help his cohorts see the wisdom of choosing Horemheb and leave Nefertiti where she is. Why put more power in the hands of a woman they already distrust?”
“Are you sure no others on the Sacred Council wield sufficient influence to counter the High Priest’s wishes?”
He shook his head. “The seventy days of mourning end just before the Festival of Opet, a propitious time to introduce Amen’s newly adopted son. Also, because of the rampaging water, the priests must make a spectacle of Amen’s visit to his southern temple.”
“Ramose risks much if he
does
decide to betray his wife.”
“Not if he demands that Horemheb outlaw the worship of Aten,” Mena countered. “That would pull the cat’s claws and keep her busy protecting her back, so she cannot attack when his is turned.”
I am not so sure of that, either, but I did not want Mena to think I argued for the sake of argument alone, so I contented myself with watching the sky brighten with stars, while darkness slowly engulfed my heart. For I have come to care for Ramose the man even if I do not trust his priestly motives. Pagosh says he still shares his wife’s couch, at least on occasion if not so frequently as before. Surely that will come to an end should he champion her rival. Worse, it will make Ramose the target of her revenge. And that is a lot to ask of any man.
Max suggested they go out to celebrate, but Kate begged off, saying she’d had enough excitement for one day. Which was true. “Besides, nothing could top the show you and Tom McCowan put on for me.” That was true, too, but New Year’s Eve was a night for noise, which she had never liked.
“Then we’ll have hot chocolate instead of champagne,” he decided, “at least to start. And the first one who mentions Tashat or Egypt or”—he grinned and she knew he was thinking of Dave Broverman—“has to clean up the kitchen. Why don’t you heat the milk while I build a fire in my study and put on some music?” He glanced to where Sam sat with his ears pricked. “Better bring some of that new crunch while you’re at it so we don’t have to trek back to the kitchen soon as he sees us having something.”
Kate smiled to herself as she got out the makings for hot chocolate. Sam seemed to bring out the indulgent parent in Maxwell Cavanaugh, ever mindful of the dog’s welfare and happiness. Was that how he felt about her, too? Why else would he stock up not only on red wine but cocoa and marshmallows? She thought back, recalling the look in his eyes when he reached up to skim a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes, and later, in the backyard, his offended “Look, let’s get something straight,” then “What are we going to do about Tashat?” And now, today, the way he had turned the meeting with Tom McCowan into a kind of surprise party.
She filled the mugs and put them on a tray along with Sam’s bowl of crunch, then followed the music to his study. As soon as she crossed the threshold it felt as if she’d walked through the false door in an Egyptian tomb, passing from one world to another. She took in the dark parquet floor and lush Persian rug, walls lined with shelves bulging with journals and books, then the big blond desk and matching turnaround, complete with computer and printer. On the wall behind it, two viewboxes had been mounted low enough for Max to examine an X ray by simply swiveling his chair around.
He was kneeling in front of the slate-faced fireplace, so she went to set the tray on his desk, which was covered with a thick sheet of glass. That’s when she noticed the two photographs under one corner of the glass. One was of her and Sam playing in the snow in that high meadow up behind the Flatirons. The other showed a dark-haired woman with a teenage boy and girl standing on either side of her, taken in Max’s backyard. All three wore shorts and held tennis rackets, as if they’d just stepped off the court, faces flushed and hair flying every which way. Kate couldn’t help feeling a poignant sort of envy, but at Max’s age it would have been unusual for him not to have married, even if he wasn’t now.
“Are these your kids?”
He turned to see what she meant, then shook his head. “Niece and nephew. That’s my sister, Marty. She’s a tennis pro at a private club just outside Washington, but the last time they were here those two demons put us both to shame, not just me. Must be in the genes since my father traveled the pro circuit for a while. He started Marty and me early, to be sure we could get scholarships to college if anything happened to him. I always suspected there was more to it than that, but—”
“You’ve never been married?” He didn’t bother to look around, just shook his head. “How come?”
This time he shrugged. “Too busy, too involved in my work—who knows?”
“You never even came close?” She knew she should stop but couldn’t.
Max didn’t answer right away, maybe to let her know that she had stepped over the line. Then, “I thought about it once, but no, I wouldn’t call it close.” He put a match to the twisted newspapers he’d stuffed under the grate as he asked, “Were you surprised when your parents divorced?”
“Not really.” She joined him on the floor when he moved back from the heat, crossing her legs and dropping down to watch the flames lick at the rust-colored bark of the Texas cedar. “They split right after I left for college, sold the house where I grew up, and took off in opposite directions. I was seventeen, a premed major, but I’d been drawing as long as I can remember so I took art courses in the summer, to learn more about techniques and materials. One summer I got a job drawing animation cells, learning to break an image down into layers, which turned out to be good experience for a medical illustrator. I thought of that when you mentioned stacking those CT cross sections to build a three-dimensional head.” She paused. “No, I knew my parents had problems … besides me, that is. It’s just—I think I was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“Why do you say that?”
Kate stared at the fire, remembering. “Something changed after we moved from a small town in central Illinois to a suburb of Chicago, when I was ten. The school was different, much bigger, and the teachers let kids talk whenever they wanted. It took me a while to catch on to what I was supposed to be doing. One teacher nagged me about not paying attention and made me sit in the front row like a retarded second-grader. Mom decided something must be wrong with my hearing and took me for tests, but they said my ears were okay. My father accused me of doing it just to make trouble or to get attention. Anyway, that’s when the arguing started.”
“Doing it? What’s ‘it’?”
“I don’t know, missing stuff.”
“Is that what you meant about having reason to know you’re not deaf?”
Kate nodded. “Over the years I’ve had other tests, all with the same result. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”
“You didn’t miss very much if you started college at seventeen, let alone got into med school.” A piece of cedar popped, shooting sparks in every direction, and Sam ran to hide behind the couch. Kate started to get up, but Max reached for her hand and sandwiched it between both of his to keep her there. “He’s all right. Tell me what happens when you miss stuff.”
“I guess I’m easily distracted, because, well, sometimes I just seem to—lose it. Mostly when too much is going on at once or there’s a lot of noise. It’s as if I can’t concentrate or focus my thoughts, or—I don’t know, it’s hard to describe.”
He nodded, then didn’t say anything for a while, making Kate wish she’d kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want him to think she was making excuses for what had to be her own fault. Not that she wanted it to happen. Sometimes she could predict when it was going to happen, other times not. That was the worst. But she truly did not know what went wrong, only that something did.
“I’m not sure how to say this, Kate,” he began, not looking at her. She’d heard that before and could guess what was coming—another admonition to get her act together. To try harder. “But you’d make a damn good physician, with your analytical mind and eye for detail. If you ever decide you want back in—well, I have a lot of friends in the medical community here and I’d go to bat for you in a minute.” Kate kept her eyes straight ahead, afraid she might be misinterpreting what he meant. “But I’d sure hate to see you waste that other thing you’ve got—your own special way of expressing an idea with such fluid vitality. Nobody taught you that. It comes from what you feel and the way your mind works, not just what you see.”
She didn’t stop smiling until he reached up to turn her face so she had to look at him. “When you took off like that
I kind of lost it. First my temper. Jesus, I was angry at you! For making me feel so damn helpless. Then I started to worry about how you must be feeling, out there alone. Now—well, maybe I’m beginning to understand what I couldn’t before. Having that dumb jerk give you the boot was déjà vu all over again, wasn’t it? Only this time it was me, not your parents.”
“Something like that,” Kate admitted, as it dawned on her that Max could be angry about what she did or didn’t do and still not walk away. Like Sam. “Only I wasn’t booted out of med school,” she added, wanting to set the record straight. “I left because I thought it was the right thing to do.”
His blue eyes searched her face, making her feel almost naked.
“I just remembered something—be right back.” She pulled her hand out of his, jumped up, and ran upstairs for the small box she’d secreted away in her camera bag, then hurried back to sit on the floor again and handed it to him.
“Your grandmother’s necklace. Cleo asked me to bring it, before—well, you know.” Max opened the box and stared at the necklace, so long she wondered what he was thinking. “Your grandmother must’ve been an interesting woman,” she ventured, hoping he would tell her more about the woman who obviously held a special place in his affections.
He smiled, then chuckled. “A woman with strong passions and great strength of character. She also was quite a beauty, even when she was eighty. My dad used to say his mother was ‘odd,’ to excuse the fact that she was different.” He went quiet, staring into the fire, as if remembering something. “Ever notice how some men gravitate toward women who are the exact opposite of their mothers? Well, that was my dad. I doubt my mother ever had an opinion of her own. She always deferred to him. Not that she wasn’t a caring person. But I suppose that was the way she was raised.”
“Maybe,” Kate agreed, thinking of her own mother, “but then you’d have to say the same thing about your father—that men back then were conditioned to be the boss. Yet
from what you just said about your grandmother, that’s not how she would have raised him. So it’s probably more about some people needing to be in control.”
That’s when it dawned on her—something so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. “You knew all along that glass necklace wasn’t ancient, didn’t you?”
“I guess,” Max admitted without meeting her eyes. “Listen, that champagne should be cold by now.” He made as if to get up, then stayed where he was. “I figured I needed to know if whoever looked at this one knew what they were talking about.” He hefted the box with the ivory necklace. “So yes, I knew where she got it and all the rest, because I gave it to her back when I was in college. Found it in a vintage clothes shop.”
The irony of that didn’t escape Kate, but she still wasn’t ready to let it go. “Then I was right that she treasured it because of who gave it to her. And I’d prefer a glass of the house red, unless that would spoil your party.”
Relieved, grinning, he grabbed her hand to pull her up with him. “I am
not
my father, Katie, in case you haven’t figured that out.”
Something tickled Kate’s cheek. “Stop it, Sam,” she whispered. When it happened again, she rolled over and came up against a warm, immovable object. “Get down. It’s too early.”
“Burning incense produces phenol.” A man’s voice. “Carbolic acid. D’you think the Egyptians knew that?”
“Didn’t like crowds,” she mumbled into the pillow. “Unhealthy. Could smell the noxious odors of their bodies.”
“Ah, yes, the deadly miasmas that rise from the human body.” A hand massaged her back through the covers. “Sam was getting worried.” When he heard his name, Sam jumped up on the bed and nudged her face with his cold nose.
“Not fair. Two against one.”
“It’s almost ten o’clock. Are you sure you feel okay?”
“Sleepy,” Kate mumbled. “Eyes won’t open.” She had spen
all night trying to escape one harrowing experience after another—approaching the rapids of a river in a kayak with her arms tied to her sides, knowing she was going to turn over, not knowing if she would ever come back up, drawn into the yawning maw of a giant scanner only to emerge at the other end bound in the shroud of a mummy—until finally, too tired to fight any longer, the sense of helplessness and loneliness breached the dam she’d built to hold it back and came pouring down her cheeks, drowning her in salt. Or was it natron?
“Cold out?” she asked.
“Rainy. I thought we’d try to make the Menil Museum before lunch. They’ve got some things you might want to see. Marilou called. Invited us for brunch Sunday. Said to bring Sam along so he can meet her two mutts. I told her I’d check with you.”
She opened one eye, took in the blue chambray shirt and faded jeans, and reached up to circle his neck with her arms. “I’m so glad I came.”
“Me, too.” He rested his cheek on her head.
“I almost didn’t, until I remembered how you always listen and take whatever I say on its merits instead of personalizing everything, or passing judgment. Not because you’re trying to impress me or anything. It’s just the way you are.”
“That bastard really did a job on you,” Max mumbled.
“What I’m trying to say is thank you. For yesterday. Tom McCowan. Everything.”
He gave her a squeeze. “I’ll go scramble some eggs.” He got up, and Sam jumped down to follow him. As he started out he said, “I called my old chief of radiology at Michigan, by the way, to get a name at the dental school. Thought I’d call and see if whoever has those old films will take a look at ours.”
Suddenly in a hurry, Kate showered in record time, brushed her teeth, and pulled on a pair of jeans, then ran for the stairs, still buttoning her shirt.
After breakfast she called Mike Tinsley, the orthopedic
surgeon who was looking for a medical illustrator, at home. He suggested meeting tomorrow afternoon, even though it was Saturday, and Kate agreed. As she hung up she was already planning to do a couple of sketches, just to have something to show him.
By the time they left the house a cloud had settled over the city, cutting off the tops of the high-rise buildings they passed on the short drive to the Menil, a museum built to house the collection of Dominique and John de Menil.
“John died several years before her, but they were a force in Houston’s cultural scene. You might even say they put it on the map,” Max commented as he parked along the curb. “But this building is all Mrs. de Menil. No committee of public-spirited citizens would ever have come up with anything like this.” The flat-roofed, single-story white frame building sat in the middle of a double block surrounded by a vast expanse of green grass and trees. “It’s too intimate. Not Texas big.”
When Kate saw the floating white walls and pine floors—painted black, then left for visitors’ feet to reveal the grain of the wood—she understood what he meant. From the high-ceilinged open entrance hall Max guided her to a small room where the architecture gave way to what it was meant to display—in lighted glass cases built into the walls and a large freestanding pedestal. But it was what was in those cases that spoke so eloquently of Dominique de Menil’s eye for the essence of ancient civilizations—small objects from Sumer and other early settlements scattered across the plain of Mesopotamia. The Fertile Crescent.