Reflections in the Nile (25 page)

C
HEFTU TURNED ON HIS COUCH
. Ra streamed brightly through the garden door; it must be past the noon meal, he thought. Still weary, he remembered the hard stone pillow from the night before and lay indulgently in the clean linens. The clear blue sky and the swaying palm fronds refreshed him; he was content. Thutmosis had been skeptical about bis “prediction” that had brought him back to Avaris, a simple trick Cheftu rigged. Being a seer had its uses. The portents had been dark, Cheftu had only deepened the contrast. His lie had gained him readmittance to the palace and four more days without Thut or any others, save the palace guards.

A scrabbling at the garden door drew his attention. Drawing the sheet across his naked body and rubbing a hand vigorously across his face, he walked out.

His Israelite Meneptah, a gift from Alemelek, stood before him. Cheftu reached forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “It is good to see you, most worthy student.”

Meneptah crossed his chest in a gesture of respect
“Hemu neter.
Health, life, and prosperity.”

Cheftu looked at him. “Why did you not notify Ehuru of your presence? It is late, but would you share the Perfuming with me?”

Meneptah's brown gaze dropped. “Nay,
Hemu neter.
I come to you because I believe there has been an …” He stopped. “Please, master, come with me.”

Knowing the Meneptah would never venture this boldly to see him unless there was some great urgency, he returned to his room, dressed, and followed the Israelite's fast pace through the winding paths until they converged on a road. Ra was hot on their uncovered heads, and Cheftu felt the gold screws in his earrings begin to burn from the sun. “Meneptah, if I had known we were walking to Noph, I would have brought my chariot,” he half jested.

“It is not much farmer,
Hemu neter.
” They walked in heavy silence for a while longer, then Meneptah left the road and followed a scratched-out path through the heavy green underbrush. Cheftu pulled a whisk from his belt and swatted at the swarms of determined mosquitoes. They stepped into a clearing, and Cheftu saw mud-bricked town houses huddled together. An Apiru village.

Meneptah hurried to the second house and sent the door flying against the wall.

Cheftu followed him through a dark warren of rooms. Meneptah knelt beside a pallet on the floor and pulled back the window curtain. Cheftu felt as if Set's hand had seized his throat and was siphoning all the air from it. The sun's piercing light revealed a battered figure lying on the mat, mud covered, bruised, and wrapped loosely in a linen sheet.
RaEmhetepet.

“Where did you find her?” Cheftu growled to Meneptah. “How long has it been?”

A makeshift litter swung between Meneptah and one of his cousins as they walked back to the palace. Cheftu reached out a steadying hand. RaEm's skin was boiling, a true sign of the
ka
fighting against an intruder. Cheftu's wrath built and burned as he reflected on Meneptah's tale. Thank the gods one of the Israelites had found her this morning.

Where could she have been that her evening ended in an irrigation ditch by an Apiru village? Who had left a priestess for dead? Obviously not the prince regent. Phaemon was vanished, Pakab was in Waset, so it must have been Nesbek. Her other dissolute lords were ensconced in Upper Egypt.

The group turned onto the road, and Cheftu wondered if she should be taken to her own apartments. He decided she would be safer in his; why had Basha not come to him? She knew he was responsible for the priestess. Nay, he and Meneptah would take turns guarding her until Cheftu had some answers. This did not add up.

He looked at the swaying litter beside him. Her brown skin was unnaturally flushed, and there was a deepening bruise around one eye … it would be a while before she could open it fully. There was a gouge in the flesh close to her jawline. Any closer and it could have taken off her earlobe. Cheftu felt his gorge rise at the thought of what instrument did this. He knew RaEm had a reputation for less than accepted appetites; was abusing and being abused one of them?

He remembered tagging along with his older brother to one of the seedier brothels. Though he had been losing his dinner from cheap wine, some older boys spoke of a woman in black who would whip you for an extra thrill and an extra fee.

A brief grin flashed across his face when he thought about the boy he had been. Naive. Egypt was all he had wanted, all he had lived for, all he had absorbed. Ironic now that Egypt was all he had.

They had almost reached the heavily guarded palace gates, and Cheftu shook his head, dispelling the memories. They had no room in his life. He was Cheftu
sa'a
Khamese, physician to Pharaoh and inheritor of his family nome.

She
needed
him. For the first time ever.

The most pressing problem was how to get her inside without anyone seeing and reporting. A familiar shout made him motion the Apiru behind some low bushes, and he approached the gate.

The commander smiled in recognition. Then Cheftu saw it fade when he noticed the bloodied
shenti
and the lack of makeup and collar on one of the
erpa-ha
of Egypt. Ameni jumped down from his chariot, waving away the remaining guards. “Life, health, and prosperity,
Hemu neter
”

“I would have your oath of secrecy, soldier.”

Ameni crossed his chest. “It is yours,
Hemu neter.
”

“The priestess staying here was wounded and left for dead. We must tend to her and assure no one sees her weakness. Hatshepsut, living forever! herself will want to know how this has happened and who dared to kill the most powerful moon-priestess of HatHor.”

The soldier's face was rigid, but Cheftu saw a little of the color fade. He bowed quickly. “I will serve your lordship for me good of Egypt.”

Cheftu smiled quickly. “It is good to know, my friend. I need to get her inside unnoticed.”

He bowed. “It is done, my lord.”

“The gates are open, go quickly,” Cheftu said to the Apiru. He instructed Meneptah to hurry ahead and have Ehuru prepare a room for the lady. Also to find a trustworthy slave from among Meneptah's people.

They carried her in and lowered her body onto the sleeping couch in an adjoining room. Cheftu assembled his instruments to begin his examination. Observation was key; her hair was matted and sticky from a combination of mud in the ditch and the fat from a perfume cone. … He looked more closely at the gouge on her neck. It was scabbed over and crusted with mud. Apparently she got it
before
she was left to die. He pulled the remains of the sheet down farther. The savage bite on her shoulder was festering. Cheftu's lips curved in distaste.

He yanked off the linen altogether.

Cheftu felt the blood leave his face as his stomach churned. RaEm had been cruelly beaten. Her belly was purple and red from the abuse, her legs and crotch black and blue. He could trace the marks of the multitailed whip that had wound around her body. That was the gouge in her neck. There was another opposite, on her waist, and a third on her upper thigh.

By the gods!
Cheftu choked back the revulsion he felt, looking at her fine limbs, swollen and discolored, caked with streams of her own dried blood.

Meneptah brought a pitcher of recently purified water, and Cheftu gently washed blood from her wounds. He applied an herb paste to the cuts, in case there was infection, and covered her with sheets to prevent a chill.

RaEm was deeply unconscious, yet occasionally she jerked, as if on the end of a child's toy. Cheftu removed the mud scabs from the gouges and was applying a final poultice to the one on her neck when the scent of fresh blood reached his nostrils. Shouting for Meneptah to get more cloths, Cheftu wrenched the linen off RaEm.

She lay in a pool of her own blood, her color fading even as her life hemorrhaged away.

Acid burned his belly. Rapidly he checked for other signs, cursing himself. RaEm had taken, or been given, a poison that was serving as an abortifacient. He had seen it before. The poor male slave who had died earlier in the week—he had had no child to give and so had choked on his own bloody vomitus as he'd bled internally.

Had Pharaoh ascertained that he, Cheftu, would not give the poison to her? Had she found another accomplice? His mind flickered back to the final meeting before they had left Waset. “A confidential medical mission” was what Pharaoh had said as Senmut had handed Cheftu the packet of poisonous herbs. The way Ra-Em was found in the temple had raised even more questions, adding fuel to the flame of Hatshepsut's paranoia. The blood on RaEm's hands had belonged to someone else, but whom?

Now
this
blood. Was it self-inflicted? Had RaEm taken the easiest path, as she was inclined to do, or had the poisoned duck the other night been intended for her and not the prince?

A corner of his mind registered the chanting priests, their voices rising and falling in the corridor. They had been summoned. Even they knew the woman was dying. Or were they expecting it? Where were the HatHor priestesses?

Blood poured from her, and soon her unborn child would. If only he truly were a magus, really did have powers outside himself … if that were true, he would save her and spend a lifetime accepting her gratitude. Cheftu slapped himself mentally. Whatever changes had taken place in RaEm, she would more likely spend a lifetime flaunting her health before him with other men than thank him.

It seemed to Cheftu that when he looked into her now green eyes, there was another person looking out at him. Someone whose beauty resided not only in costume and jewelry, but in character and goodness. She was genuinely bewildered when he spoke of the past And her touch! What had caused the change in her reaction to him? And his to her? It went beyond a physical desire—though that was a constant battle—to a recognition, basic and elementary. By the gods, he didn't know what it was.

Cheftu gritted his teeth, and yanked himself back to the present. A beating
and
poison. Someone was determined to kill RaEm. Was it Pharaoh's will? To go against the will of Pharaoh was death and inconceivable to an Egyptian mind. He smiled grimly. Praise Ptah, that did not affect him.

Meneptah raced in, another of Cheftu's medicine kits on his shoulder, fresh linen cloths in his hands. Cheftu grabbed the linen and began to staunch the flow of blood. He washed it away with warm water, his eyes stinging as he thought of the child who would never be; for the child that, by the Feather, he had once wished to be his. A quick examination showed it would be a matter of decans.

He took her hand and knelt beside the couch.

“RaEm, can you hear me?” Her pupils wandered behind tightly closed lids. He caressed her slender fingers in his own strong grip. “RaEm, it is forbidden for anyone to touch you. A pure priestess must be treated only by her sisters. However, they are not here.” You are not pure, he added mentally. “You must let me know what you are feeling. You are losing the child, RaEm. Did you take something? Did someone give you something? I must know what poison holds you, RaEm. You must tell me what happened.”

She moaned softly and was scaldingly hot. Calling for colder water, he bathed her through the hours, trying to ease her temperature. Fever killed suddenly with miscarriages.

“Have you had anything to drink? RaEm, where have you been?” His words were a litany, repeated endlessly as he dissolved mandrake root in a weak wine and soaked linen cloth in it. Patiently he dribbled the mixture down her throat. The herbs would ease her pain as she woke. If she awoke.

During the night Cheftu alternated between bathing her and making her drink. Through the smoke of incense he could see her swollen eye and the white patches of linen covering her wounds. The chanting in the corridor rose and fell, a monotonous hum that threatened to lull him to sleep.

Meneptah sent for his cousin D'vorah, and the two of them helped RaEm onto the birthing bricks as her body convulsed with premature contractions. She could not sit upright, so the Israelites each held an arm, placing her calves to either side of the stone, where Cheftu knelt, waiting for the unborn. Sometime during the interminable night, amid her halfhearted groans and cries, a small package of flesh was forced from her womb. Cheftu gave Meneptah orders to find a small sarcophagus and turned away, his hps pressed into a tight line. Then he cleansed her body, ridding it of the infection. Soon, may it please Amun, her fever would lessen.

Who had been the father? RaEm's relationship with Phaemon was well-known; ReShera had introduced them. Would a guard of the Ten Thousand and brother of a priestess have touched RaEm when she was in her serving season? Where was Phaemon? How could he make her endure this pregnancy alone?

When Ra finally greeted the world, RaEm had broken into a sweat and Cheftu felt the worst danger was past. He ordered the clerestory windows uncovered to dilute the suffocating incense wafting in from the priests in the corridor.

RaEm slept through the day, waking at times to scream and beg in a broken, indiscernible voice, until Cheftu held her hands and soothed her with quiet words.

At the end of the second day Meneptah came to his side, startling him out of one of the many Bast-naps he had taken.

“My lord, bestir yourself and go bathe.”

“I cannot, I dare not leave her. When she wakens she will be frightened. She will not recognize the room,” Cheftu croaked. Meneptah allowed himself a brief grin as he glanced toward Ehuru in the darkened corridor.

“When she awakens and sees you she will believe herself to be in the company of a
khaibit,
” he said, and brought a bronze mirror from behind his back. Cheftu was inclined to agree with him. Bleary, bloodshot eyes stared at him from a glob of running kohl. The dark shadow of several days’ beard masked his face. His chest and kilt were spattered with bloodstains, and his fingers were dark green from crushed herbs. He groaned. Even his hair hurt.

“You are quite correct,” he said slowly as he glanced at RaEm. She was sleeping peacefully now.