Authors: Carol Thurston
“Go and change into whatever you wear as the physician’s boy. Pagosh will be waiting at the rear gate to take you from here. Speak to no one along the way and keep your eyes cast down.” She reached up and gave him a hug, then darted a wide-eyed glance at me. Ramose watched her until she was out of sight before turning to me. “It was Uzahor’s wish to return to Abydos, the place where he entered this world. Those who have outlived him here consider him eccentric in any case, in part because he preferred one woman to several.” He came near to smiling then. “He always claimed his sexual pleasure was the more intense because of it, but—”
“How, then, did he explain taking a second wife?”
“By sacrificing the truth of his wisdom and experience to the jibes of his friends, out of love for me.” Ramose gazed at the lifeless face. “He always found his own path. Even more so since Aset. He once told me that she was my greatest achievement, no matter how high I rose in position or wealth.” A bittersweet smile took his lips. “Just knowing he was here—” His throat worked to swallow his grief, so I stilled my curious tongue instead of asking what he planned now and stood like an accused man before Pharaoh’s judges, waiting to hear my sentence pronounced. Expecting exile.
“Now I must ride the storm alone,” he mumbled when he found his voice again, then fixed his blue eyes on mine.
I spoke first, clothing my promise in a warning. “I will do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”
“If ever I doubted it, Tenre, that time is long past. But we must move quickly. His daughter goes to Memphis to a marriage already arranged. Sati will accompany him to Abydos and live nearby in the house that has been in his family since the time of the great Thutmose. For the next few weeks, while we mourn him here, no one from this house will mention Aset, but you must put a guard on her lest she leave your walls.”
“Her word will be sufficient,” I replied, then dared to ask, “Uzahor left no sons?”
For a moment he stared at me. Then he shook his head and continued as before. “For now Merit and Pagosh must remain here.”
“And afterward?”
“You would add two more to your menagerie?” I nodded. “Then I will leave it for them to decide. Pagosh will bring her clothes when he can, probably after dark, but if at any time you get wind of something that does not smell right, send word to me by your man Khary, so I will know the message is not a ruse.”
It was not the first time Ramose has aroused my suspicions even as he granted me reprieve, for it is one thing to
know that Khary manages my dispensary and another to recognize him by sight, even for a priest who is on speaking terms with the king of the gods.
I was finishing my midday meal when I looked up to find Khary hurrying along the path between his private garden and mine, followed by a man carrying a large basket on one shoulder, whom I took for a vendor. As they neared I saw that Tuli led the way, wagging his tail, and felt a twinge of uneasiness at his acceptance of the stranger who wore a striped nemes and dirty rag looped over one eye and cheek.
“Where do you want it?” Khary asked, as if I had ordered what the man carried.
“How in god’s name should I know?”
When the one-eyed man lifted the basket from his shoulder and set it on the ground, the stink of his unwashed body descended on me like a cloud of flies on a pile of fresh dung. I did not recognize the crisscrossed sticks he carried, so I picked one up and held it to my nose. He bent to push the sticks aside, revealing a folded length of unbleached linen. I shrugged, wondering why Khary bothered me with replenishing our supply of bandaging, but before I could speak he lifted the cloth to reveal something blue. Lapis, from the look of it. And turquoise!
I grabbed his arm, turning him until I could see the satisfied smile break across his bronze face. “By Thoth but you stink, Pagosh.” I had been expecting him in the dark of night, not with Re-Aten high in the sky. “Your sense of humor grows bold with age.” Khary began to laugh, setting Tuli to running circles around our feet.
“It was not meant to be funny,
sunu.”
Pagosh pulled the dirty rag from his head and waited for the commotion to subside. “If I can fool you, I need not worry.”
“I’ll wager you did not get past Aset.” He shrugged and
refused to meet my eyes. “Surely you must have seen her. She watches Khary’s son on the mornings Tamin goes to market to sell Ipwet’s sandals.”
“We spoke.”
I motioned him to the other chair. “You brought her belongings?”
“And a bundle of scrolls from Uzahor’s library,” he replied, dropping onto the empty stool. “There are more, but my donkey is all skin and bones. The others were already taken to haul grain from the fields. It will require one more trip at least.” I filled a clay mug with beer and handed it across to him. He feigned indifference, but even the date palms and willows were wilting under the brutal onslaught of the sun.
“I will unload the other basket from your poor beast,” Khary offered, probably to let us talk in private, “and put him to graze in what remains of the kitchen garden. A mouthful or two will sweeten his temper.”
Pagosh chewed a bite of bread and cheese, then washed it down with beer. “Mena came this week as usual?” he asked. I nodded. “He encounters nothing unusual across the river?”
“Horemheb worries about what the Hittites do now that Mursili sits in his father’s place. An envoy from Hattusas arrived and demands reparation for the untimely end of the prince they sent to Ankhesenamen. It seems he was full brother to Mursili.”
“So the crow comes home to roost,” Pagosh muttered.
“Does Ramose expect trouble from that quarter?”
“Is Pharaoh bent on ridding the Two Lands of the Heretic’s followers?” he replied, since it is forbidden now even to speak the rebel’s name, let alone worship his god.
“To worship Aten is not necessarily to follow the Heretic,” I pointed out.
“Tell that to Horemheb.”
“His Edict of Reform has been inscribed on the temple wall, to assure that ignorance will be no defense when wrongdoers are called before Pharaoh’s judges. Horemheb
must have had the Sacred Council’s approval, so they all have a taste for blood. Even a petty thief fears the words he cannot read once he has seen a man’s hand chopped off.” I tipped up the pitcher to refill his mug. “Pharaoh has made no move toward Nefertiti, so Aset will be safe for the same reason, even if word gets around about Uzahor. Anyway, the man who signed the marriage contract now is High Priest of Amen.” Pagosh kept his gaze trained on the plot where the fennel and purple thyme bloomed, as if to delay telling me the bad news.
“Does Ramose say what he plans for Aset?” I asked.
“I know that his love for her is that of a father. If he cares more than most fathers for their daughters—well, Aset is not like most daughters.”
I recalled Ramose saying the same, but a lot of silt has come down the river to muddy the water since then. “The question is, does he love someone or something else more?”
“After so many years of your tutoring,
sunu
, it is a wonder Aset trusts anyone.”
“I could say the same about you,” I countered.
“Ramose told me of your offer,” he said, still not looking at me. “I thank you from my heart, Tenre, but it is better that we return to him.”
“We are not without resources here now that so many physicians from the House of Life send their assistants to the Eye of Horus for pills and potions, if that is what worries you. Khary hears more about what goes on than an entire army of spies, especially if it is to do with which officer is Pharaoh’s latest favorite, or whose wife lies with another man. Or woman.”
He bit into a fig from the bowl on my table. “Netted like a bird in your garden, I might do something foolish and betray you both.”
“You? Foolish?” Bemused, I could only shake my head. “What about Merit? Or did you give her a choice?” He bent to retrieve something from the basket, then handed me a scrap of papyrus.
“She sent this to show that she practices what Aset taught her.” I looked at what had been written on it.
My thoughts go with you.
“From the beginning whenever Aset came to Uzahor’s villa, she would read to Merit. A love poem written in another time or a story with a lesson hidden in it, turning it into a game. Once she read to her from the journal kept by a great Queen whose heart was torn asunder by the loss of her babe. Afterward Merit told me she could feel the Queen’s pain in her own heart. It made her believe in the magic of words. And to know that a Queen could suffer as she did made her feel less alone. Not so—so flawed.” He scowled. “That is her word, not mine, and I have forbidden her ever to use it again.”
He fell silent for a moment, leaving me to wonder how he can say so much with so few words. “That Merit never had more babes I believe to be the will of the goddess, who intended us for another purpose. So Merit returns willingly to the High Priest, to mingle with the women who serve his
tahut
.” He drained the last of his beer and heaved himself up, disturbing Tuli’s dreams of chasing a rabbit. “My wife would never admit it, but having Aset taken from her has allowed her time to become friends with other servants in the neighborhood.” He twirled the dirty rag around one forefinger. “A young widow named Amenet, for one.”
“If you wonder why I do not go there anymore,” I said to save him the trouble of asking, “it is nothing to do with her. Amenet is pleasing enough to look at, and talented in the ways to satisfy a man. But it is not
maat
that I continue with her when I have no intention of making her my wife. Already I have too many women in my life. Nofret and Tamin. Ipwet. Surely that is enough for any man to put up with.”
“Wait much longer,
sunu,
and you will leave no children to say your name after you pass between the mountains to the west.”
“If what I do in this world is not reason enough to be remembered, then my name does not deserve to live. Like
you, Pagosh, I believe it is the will of the gods that I care for the children of others rather than my own.” He nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief, too soon as it turned out, for he had one more arrow in his quiver.
“I notice you did not mention Aset among the women you must put up with. Why is that, I wonder?” He did not wait for an answer, but started off across my garden, leaving me to ponder what he left unsaid.
A man Khary knew as a boy came to him in the night seeking help for his wife. Lulled by the darkness, and because Aset has not been outside my walls for two months, I allowed her to come along, a thoughtless act that put her within a breath of disaster.
On the way Khary told us that Pepi had been sentenced to ten years’ hard labor in the mines of the Sinai for stealing bread, and on returning to the city of his birth found work cutting stones for the pylon Horemheb erects before the temple of Amen. The mud hovel Khary led us to looked clean enough, except for the smoke issuing from a single oil lamp. But that a workman has no salt for his lamp, to keep it from fouling the air he breathes, is a sign of unjust wages and more a measure of the one who pays him.
“I believed my god would heal all sickness if we but followed his example to be clean and treat all living things with love,” Pepi confessed, “but I could not stand and do nothing but pray.” Some of his teeth were missing, and his breath was noisy, a sign of the lung sickness that afflicts so many men who work cutting stones, but his only concern was his wife.
“That she bleeds is not a good sign,” I agreed. I could feel no movement in his wife’s belly, so I gave her a potion to help expel the babe—whether breathing or not—while Aset tried to soothe the woman with words of encouragement.
Khary had stepped back outside, I thought to preserve the woman’s dignity though I know now that it was to stand guard.
When the contractions came harder she began to cry out, curling her body over the agony in her belly. When Pepi tried to comfort her, Aset came to where I knelt on the floor between her legs. “Is it time yet?”
I shook my head. “But not much longer.”
“Did you notice the face of Aten on the wall above the lamp?” she whispered. “The orange disk glows as if the sun still lives. And her name is Thuya, like the mother of old Queen Tiye.” I nodded but made no reply, for we already knew that Pepi had lived for a time among the nomads of the Sinai, as does the Heretic even now, and had married the daughter of a Shasu shepherd. But in worshiping his god here they went against the law of the Two Lands.
“Take me, my god, I beg you,” Thuya cried at the height of one long tightening, in a voice that brought tears to my heart. “Let Mose be my shepherd to show me the way, for I can bear no more.” So did she call Akhenaten what his followers name him among themselves now.
“Aten’s face shines upon you, Thuya,” Aset assured her, moving to take her hand, “even now, though you walk in the shadow of the valley of death. Be not afraid, for he is with you.” Her words seemed to comfort Pepi’s wife, or perhaps that was when the babe’s head finally pushed through the barrier that had held him back.
“Pharaoh’s wolves are coming!” Khary hissed as he burst into the room. “Pepi, snuff that flame.” The stonecutter leaped to his feet while Khary grabbed Aset and shoved her into a dark corner, unwrapped his kilt and threw it over her, head and all. That was when I first noticed two small children asleep on the floor.
“Not a sound,” Khary warned, and to Pepi, “do what you can to keep her quiet.”
In the silence that followed we marked the approach of Pharaoh’s Aten police by the dogs they roused, and I thanked
the gods we had not brought Tuli. Only a tattered rag draped the doorway to shield us from prying eyes, nor was there another way out. We were trapped like rats in a cage, in the dark. But I could feel with my fingers, and knew the babe’s head was about to emerge from his mother’s body. A minute later I cupped the babe’s head in one hand, and felt for a tiny shoulder with the other. Coated with the slippery paste that greased his way, I almost dropped him when he kicked his feet and let out a pitiful mewling, a sound more catlike than human.