Authors: Carol Thurston
Ramose looked to Mena. “If you cannot find your way to doing what I ask of you, only say so and I will understand.” Mena nodded. “Someone must send a message to Zarw.” Mena nodded again, without hesitation. “Say whatever you must to convince Ramses he is needed, with troops enough to secure both the palace and city.”
“But the royal guards hold the palace already,” Mena told him.
“Their commander is her man,” Ramose answered.
If Mena doubted the truth of that it was not for long. “Then I will go myself. We cannot afford to trust anyone else. The river flows swiftly at this time of year—”
Ramose held up his hand. “Hear me out before you decide.” He turned to me next. “Can you get a message to the Sinai?”
I knew then what he intended—and that he, too, had seen Aset’s cartoons. Yet the sheer audacity of it took my breath. “I know just the man,” I told him, and saw a wry smile light his face.
“I thought you might.” So he has known all along and simply let sleeping dogs lie, in case the day should come when he needed one of Akhenaten’s followers.
“Khary says Zarw is much changed from the days when you were there with Horemheb’s troops,” I told Mena, “so you better travel together.” Horemheb had long since appointed Ramses the Two Eyes of Pharaoh in the North, making him overseer of the king’s fields, serfs, and granaries in Lower Kemet, in addition to commanding his troops. More than that, Ramses has collected taxes enough to build a grand new town near the fortress at Zarw. “From there Khary will find a man to carry the message, someone the Heretic trusts not to set a trap.”
“Are you sure his father is not too old for such a journey?” Ramose inquired, at the same time suggesting who to send.
“What message?” Aset asked, done with evasion and secrets.
“That we will accept him back as Pharaoh with certain conditions, which I will put in writing for Tenre’s man.”
“Khary is his own man!” she blurted, fighting the helplessness that threatened her sense of
maat.
“A man of learning and wisdom. And you would do well to remember that. Nor will he carry a message he finds offensive just because it comes from the High Priest of Amen.” With those words Aset let him know that neither she nor Khary would countenance whatever he intended simply because of who he was.
Ramose must have recognized that, for he quickly laid out the conditions he would impose on Akhenaten—that he must allow the People of the Sun to worship any god they chose, and leave all military decisions to Ramses. Also, he would be allowed no more than one quarter of his treasury in any one year for the glory of Aten. “I am informed that the Heretic wearies of having no one to command but his wife and her father’s sheep,” Ramose added, “and so is likely to be amenable to such demands. It is a risk, I agree, but—” He shrugged.
“The Sacred Council agrees to this?” Aset asked.
Ramose shook his head. “That is my part—to convince enough of them
and
the Council of Wise Men that we are best served by setting a precedent for imposing conditions on the next pharaoh, which has always been our goal. Already they believe the Heretic’s Queen has her own agenda and could bring the Two Lands to its knees, ripe for the taking by the Hittites—or worse.”
Where once Ramose gave up his chance to sit on the throne for his daughter, this time he risked his life for her. And Aset knew it. “Is there nothing I can do?”
“No!” Mena and I shouted, but it was her father who gave voice to our thoughts, harsh words born of his fear for her. “You have done enough, daughter. Now I speak to you as plainly as you did to me. In following the path you believed to be
maat
, did you even once stop to think of the man who loves you more than life itself? Or Meri? Would you have
her
grow into womanhood without a mother, too, as you
did?” Aset’s face flushed, and I felt the urge to go to her, but I kept my place.
“Perhaps I expect too much of you,” Ramose continued. “If so, that is because you gave me reason, not just your quick tongue and ready wit but your compassion for others. Once you were drawn to those who limp through life like poor Ruka. Now you talk of ‘my people’—an arrogance that does not become you.”
“Enough,” I said, unable to stand by and see him tear her heart asunder. “More than enough.” I kept my voice low, a warning to both of them. “Some things once said, even by those who love each other, can never be undone.”
Mena heaved a sigh and got up to leave. “I must be away. Have Khary meet me at first light in the place where we put in our skiff. Tell him to come equipped to hunt waterfowl, in case anyone should see us.”
“I leave for town as soon as the message for Akhenaten is ready,” I agreed, and turned to Ramose. “I will make sure Khary knows what it says so he can pass the message by mouth if it comes to that.”
Aset went to bid Mena farewell. “Shall I send Pagosh to watch over Sheri while you are gone?” she whispered, still feeling the lash of her father’s tongue.
“Senmut and Nebet are there, but I thank you for remembering her.” He did something then I have never seen him do before—put both arms around my wife and pull her close. “Your father only loves you too much,” he whispered. “I recognize the sickness because I suffer from it myself.” He looked at me then, with that boyish grin. “Not that Tenre would know anything about that.”
I walked with him to the gate, to have a few words in private. “The Heretic is not worth even one of the white hairs on your head, so part company from Khary when you draw near to Zarw, in case he has been seen consorting with the outcasts.”
“Will he go willingly into the lion’s mouth?”
“If not, it will be me you see on the bank of the river at
first light. At the very least he will give me a name and the way into their camp.”
He nodded. “Guard your goddess well, my friend. The tabby will try to rid herself of whatever dirties her golden coat, lest even the street dogs she runs with find her too fle-bitten.”
I took his advice and warned Pagosh not to let Aset out of his sight, then made my way into town in the dark, alone, wishing all the way that Tuli was with me to warn off any marauding street dogs. Also because I needed someone to talk to. As I expected, Khary accepted the mission to Zarw without hesitation, his eyes sparkling with eagerness for adventure. But I warned him to take care lest he leave his children without a father, then rubbed salt in the wound by reminding him that Tamin is still an attractive woman, and would be even more so should she inherit his considerable worldly goods.
Aset was still awake when I returned and so eager to couple with me that once was not enough. When I was slow to become aroused the second time, she took me into her mouth to coax my penis erect with her tongue and lips, then lifted her hips to meet my thrusts with a ferocity that set my blood afire, calling forth a burst of bright stars behind my eyelids. For a while I floated among them in the night sky, until Aset clasped me to her with a desperateness that brought me plummeting back to earth.
I rolled away to let her know that I could do no more. Still she continued to cling. “Do you think I deceive you and will go with Mena after all?” I asked. She shook her head. “You are afraid?”
“Not really. It is just—”
“You are safe within these walls, but I will see to putting more men on the gates.”
“It’s not that,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “The only thing I truly fear is—is that you will leave me behind. Like Tuli.”
Max and Kate spent the afternoon wandering through the great temple of Amen-Re, with its Sacred Lake and magnificent columned hall, which hadn’t yet been built when Tashat lived. Then, as the sky came awash with crimson and gold, they retraced their steps to sit on the remnant of an ancient stone wall to watch the sun slip behind the weathered cliffs beyond the Valley of the Kings.
“Do you read hieroglyphs from right to left or left to right?” Max asked.
“Both,” Kate answered. “Also up and down. But the scroll will be in hieratic.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I forgot.” He paused. “Why the hell didn’t they write any vowels? Does that make sense to you?”
“Certain sounds could have a magical effect, so they were considered sacred. Remember when you called me an artist of consummate knowledge and skill? You can call it whatever you want, but that changed everything for me, beyond reason or explanation.” Max smiled and brought the back of her hand to his lips.
A half hour later they headed back to the hotel, where he ordered a bottle of wine and grilled sandwiches from room service, claiming he was too tired to go out. But Kate knew he was chomping at the bit, anxious to be near a phone when seven o’clock rolled around. He surprised her by holding off until ten after before putting in the call.
“Nabil has discovered there are two scrolls, one inside the
other,” Seti told him straight off. Beyond that he was pretty closemouthed, except to say that it probably would take Hosni another full day and perhaps more, to complete unrolling and photographing both scrolls. “You might as well stay a few days more. Nabil will work through the weekend, but I cannot say if he can be finished by Monday.”
“Any idea yet what the illustration is?” Max asked.
“It appears to be some sort of anatomical drawing, but that is more for you to tell us—you and Kate.”
In the end Max accepted that they wouldn’t know any more before Monday, if then, but he wasn’t willing to wait any longer than that to return to Cairo. As soon as he hung up with Seti, he put in his usual call to Marilou, who was keeping Sam.
The next morning they got up early, took a ferry across the river, and hiked into the desert to the Colossi of Mernnon, two huge misnamed figures that once stood before the funerary temple of Amenhotep III. From there they could see the sandy foothills where the noble families of Thebes had built their tombs, most of them opened by archaeologists and simply left to weather, without their inscriptions and wall paintings ever being documented.
Traveling on foot took longer and was exhausting, but Max seemed to understand that Kate was trying to experience what it was like to walk the dusty town, or ferry across the river to join a funeral procession into the desert. At times she gave him a running commentary that would have put most tour guides to shame, other times she would fall silent as the tomb. Too tired for anything else by the time they returned to Luxor, they decided to leave the antiquities museum to Saturday, and found it far more intimate than the one in Cairo, especially the rooms where the smaller artifacts glowed like jewels.
That night after dinner they were dawdling over coffee, loath to call it quits, when Kate brought up something that had nothing to do with Egypt. “What does it mean to forget,
Max—to not be able to remember something that you once could but can’t anymore. Are the things we forget still there in our brains only we’ve lost the directions for finding them?”
“It depends on how strong the memory was in the first place. Things that didn’t make much of a mark, that weren’t very ‘memorable,’ tend to fade with time. But a visceral reaction to something—what some people call a gut feeling—is actually a product of our memories. Even minor emotional stress, if it pumps adrenaline and noradrenaline into the bloodstream, can prime the brain to take special note of the circumstances that instigated a particular reaction. Why? Did you forget something?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up the pen the waiter had left for Max to sign their credit voucher and began doodling on the back of the bill. “Sometimes it feels like it. Other times I—I remember things I have no reason to. Like yesterday, at Karnak, inside the temple. I knew what was coming around the next corner, in the next… whatever. The whole time we were there I felt on the verge of remembering more, kind of like a word on the tip of your tongue.” She glanced up. “I need to go back, Max. Do you mind?”
He didn’t answer, nor was he looking at her. He was staring at the little monkey she’d just drawn—with her left hand.
Kate dropped the pen so fast it rolled halfway across the table.
“You know,” Max began, covering her hand with his, “everyone used to think that female chimpanzees hung out only with the males in their own neighborhood. If one did happen to get it on with a nonresident, their offspring would be killed by the resident males. Then DNA testing came along and guess what? It turns out that female chimps have been sneaking out to meet other guys all along, because they found a whole bunch of extracurricular babies, all alive.” A smile lit his eyes. “Anybody who thinks we’ve got
everything all wrapped up in a tidy package needs his head examined.”
They were passing through the great pylon gateway built by Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, when Kate heard what sounded like a long, eerie scream. She cringed as the shadow of a huge bird passed overhead and then stopped, hesitant to go on, afraid of what she would find ahead.
“Something the matter?” Max asked.
“Didn’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“I don’t know. A screeching bird, maybe.”
Max took one look at her face and said, “Let’s go sit in the shade for a while.” He pointed to the nearby bench.
“Not here. Please. I need to—I can’t breathe.” She left him standing there, dumbfounded, and started back the way they had come. When she broke into a run Max took off after her. By the time he caught up she had slowed to a walk and was looking around, searching for him.
“Where did you go?” She was on the verge of tears and knew he could hear it in her voice. “I couldn’t find you—”
Max guided her over to a fragment of wall facing away from the temple and pulled her down beside him. “I didn’t go anywhere, Katie. You took off so fast it took me a few minutes to catch up, that’s all. Let’s just sit here and catch our breath, then you can tell me—”
“Something awful happened back there,” Kate whispered without looking at him. “Not … just now. A long time ago. It felt—I don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around her ribs and held on, trying to stop the shivers that were shaking her whole body. “I’ve never been to Egypt before, yet this place feels familiar.” Afraid he would see how terrified she was, she stared at her feet. “Is something else wrong with my brain, Max—something you haven’t told me?”
“No! Nothing. Truly, Kate. Sure, you probably feel a greater empathy for the ancient Egyptians, because of Tashat.
But the minor disconnect you
do
have—your word, not mine—is unimportant in the global sense of brain function.”
Several older women in shorts and floppy-brimmed hats, obviously a tourist group traveling together, turned curious eyes in their direction. Max ignored them. All he cared about was her.
“This place is enough to make any of us question our own reality—everything we learned in school and accepted as true until now. So our brains have to search for ways to make sense of what we’re seeing and feeling, to somehow make things fit our existing memories. For most of us this place is a miracle. It dwarfs us. Inspires awe. That puts it right at the edge of comprehension, something else we share with the people of Tashat’s time. We may have developed a lot of technology they didn’t have, and we certainly know more about the laws of physics, but I doubt they loved their dogs any less than we do. Or that they weren’t driven by greed and meanness and love, just like we are. Seti told me a story the other day. Seems the museum had some ancient flutes restored and asked a couple of professional musicians to come in and play them. Guess what?” He paused. “The ancient Egyptians used the same scale we do.”
That got Kate’s attention. She looked at Max and dropped her arms.
“That means the spatial maps in our brains have stayed pretty much the same.” He paused, letting that sink in. “Do you remember what I said about Egyptology and medicine having a lot in common, that’s there’s still too much we don’t know?” Kate nodded. “Well, what we
do
know is that genes can mutate as a result of environmental carcinogens. And that severe trauma—extreme fright or pain—can affect the brain, not just the psyche. Some recent studies even showed shrinkage of both the right and left hippocampus among veterans who suffered combat trauma. So it’s possible that extreme experiences, whether intense emotions or physical trauma, are in some way impressed on the genes, probably by chemicals generated within our own bodies
which cause changes that are passed forward in time from one generation to another.”
She soaked up every word, grateful for the balm of reason he was applying to her runaway fear, and in that moment realized that he knew her better than she knew herself. Max was her touchstone, her path to the reality of who she was. And who she would become.
“Thanks to a few molecular biologists who, like you, weren’t content with the conventional wisdom, we know now that genes determine a lot of our behavior. The fact that we learn from experience, for instance, because we can remember. Genes are our ancestral memories, of life as the human species has lived it on this earth.” When he took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes, the great temple of Amen faded into oblivion. “Something unexplainable happened to you back there. Let’s just leave it at that for now … and keep our eyes wide open.”
She smiled into his eyes, then leaned forward to brush his lips with hers before grabbing his hand to pull him up with her. “Don’t just sit there burnin’ daylight, Max. Time to go pack our duds. That plane to Cairo leaves at seven-fifteen, remember?”
Back at their hotel, Kate repacked her bag, then wandered out to the balcony for one last look across the river. She raised her camera to zoom in on Hatshepsut’s funerary temple, trying to pretend the cars and tourists didn’t exist, only the brooding, waiting desert and wind-eroded cliffs.
Swinging around to her left she picked up remnants of the timeworn pylons that once soared a hundred feet or more into the cloudless blue sky, and beyond that the massive columns shaped like bundles of papyrus reeds. Amen’s great northern temple was, as Max said, immense, in both concept and actuality. But like a work in progress, its ruined walls, stelae and gateways looked unfinished, as if waiting for completion by the next mortal god to sit on the throne of Horus.
“We’ll come back, Katie,” Max said from behind her.
“Next time we’ll hire a felucca and sail up the river to Edfu, camp out under the stars, and visit the place where Horus triumphed over evil.” He came to lean on the railing beside her, and waved an arm at the scene spread out before them. “It just grabs hold of you and won’t let go, doesn’t it?”
Kate lowered her camera. “The sky is bluer than I’ve ever seen it, even in Colorado, and the greens greener, maybe just by contrast with the desert. But the sun feels hotter and the nights colder. Darker. Like death. It’s no wonder the Egyptians were obsessed with the sun and haunted by what they couldn’t see. By what lay in shadow.” Reluctantly, she turned to go back inside, but Max caught her arm, then stroked the side of her cheek with two fingers.
“Remember when you asked me why I never got married, and I said I was too involved in my work, that it took all my time?” Kate nodded. “Well, I lied. Or maybe I didn’t really know. I do now. I was waiting for you.”
He fished in his pocket and pulled out the ivory necklace, let it slide through his fingers for a second, then unhooked the catch and slipped it around her neck, keeping the oval ring toward the front so he could see to fasten it again. When he dropped his hands, the timeworn ram’s head lay where it belonged, Kate thought—over her heart. A wave of happiness tinged with regret made her want to laugh and cry at the same time, but she put the sadness away. The past was just that—behind them.
Instead she touched her lips to his and whispered, “I’m glad you didn’t get tired of waiting and take up with an older woman. She would never have been right for you.”