The Eye of Horus (32 page)

Kate tried not to laugh at the thought of him loading up at the Village drugstore and word getting around, scandalizing his neighbors in this upscale Republican neighborhood. “You must have quite a reputation as a ladies’ man by now,” she mused. “Then why—”

“I promised no strings attached, remember? Almost fell off the wagon more than once. Then tonight, well, I was beginning to think this might be it. Talk about schizo!
You’re
the one who warned me off, with that little tidbit about how you don’t sleep around. I figured that meant you weren’t
interested, or didn’t know me well enough yet, or something.” He wrapped his arms around her and put his lips to her hair. “I really made a mess of it, didn’t I?”

Kate shook her head. “We both did.”

“Think it’s too late?” He lifted her chin to meet the kisses he began scattering with agonizing slowness across her cheeks and eyelids, then around the corners of her mouth, before finally taking pity on her. And himself. Kate opened to let his tongue slide between her lips, ending the waiting and wanting.

At some point in the last few days, watching his hands sketch invisible objects, Kate’s awareness of them had turned to longing. Now those hands were evoking sensations that intensified her awareness of herself even as she learned him by touch, too, creating an entire sketchbook of new pictures in her head.

“Sometimes, late at night,” she murmured against his neck, “I used to wonder if I had conjured you up out of my imagination.” She smiled as he backed toward the bed, taking her with him. Then he was sliding his hands down to the curve of her hips, to hold her against him while he slipped the buttons on her pajama top. A moment later he leaned forward to caress the heartbeat in her throat with his lips and tongue, before moving down to her breast.

“Where’s Sam?” Kate whispered into Max’s neck, never able to drop off to sleep unless she knew.

“Curled up on the floor next to me, snoozing away peaceful as you please.”

She smiled with her eyes closed and moved her lips across the warm skin beneath his jaw, then rolled over onto her other side. As the emotional roller coaster she’d been riding all day finally began to level out, she became aware of the steady rise and fall of his chest against her back.

“You remember that first day in the museum?” he asked, giving the lie to the old saw that men don’t like to talk afterward. “What was your first impression of me?”

“Beard. Pushy.”

“I thought I kept it pretty neat.”

She moved her head against the pillow. “Not bushy. Pushy.”

“Oh!” He sounded surprised or maybe insulted. “How old did you think I was?”

“Too old,” she teased. “Fifty … until you smiled.” She snuggled down into her pillow. “I’m too sleepy to play true confessions. Can we do this in the morning?”

“Just one more thing.” He paused long enough for the fogginess of encroaching sleep to settle over her again. “There’s nothing keeping you in Denver anymore, is there?” She could feel him holding his breath.

“Only Cleo and all my stuff.”

“Then stay here. Take however much of the house you need for your work. We could rearrange or redo—”

“You’re asking me to stay here, with you?” She turned to look at him. Moving to Houston was one thing. Living with him was something else. “Shouldn’t we think about this for a while, not jump into—”

“If that’s what you want, but I already have—thought about it. Too long.”

“How long?”

“Since the last time I was in Denver, but I figured you weren’t about to desert Tashat, that she was the real reason you were putting up with Dave Broverman. God, Kate, you
have
to want to finish what you started—both heads and the life-size figure—for publication if nothing else.” Kate didn’t want to talk about that, not now, anyway. And she couldn’t be sure he hadn’t thrown it in as a diversion, to keep her from saying no.

“I just think we both need some time, to see if we can learn to talk to each other. Be straight with each about our feelings. Not let things get all muddled like they did tonight.”

Waking to find Pagosh standing beside my couch no longer overwhelms me with panic, but this time he was not alone. A man swathed in the shabby garments of a supplicant priest stood behind him. I leaped to my feet, grabbed a kilt from the nearby chest, and wrapped it around my hips all in one, ready for whatever would come. In that same instant—call it a premonition or something in his stance—I knew who it was.

“Wake Aset and instruct her to prepare to travel down the river,” Ramose said, pushing the coarse brown linen from his clean-shaven head. “Quickly, for we must be away before Re-Horakhte lights the morning sky.”

Out of habit I put my palms together, then stood paralyzed as it struck me that he meant to take her! “Why?” I blurted out.

“Rouse her, then we will talk.”

“I will see to it,” Pagosh volunteered, pausing only to light a lamp from the one in the shrine to Thoth before disappearing down the hall. I lit another lamp and led Ramose to my examining room, for I am accustomed to being in charge there and I felt in need of every advantage I could get.

Tuli came running ahead of her, and Ramose went down on one knee, even allowing the excited little dog to lick his bronze face. Aset stopped at sight of her father, confusion flooding her face when he stood to greet her. Then a delighted laugh bubbled from her throat, making me smile in spite of myself.

“Father!” She threw her arms around his neck, knocking him off-balance. Ramose showed no sign of objecting and instead buried his face in her hair, savoring what he had been denied so long. “Oh, how I have missed you.” Aset sighed.

“As I have missed you, little goddess,” he whispered.

Pagosh went down on one knee to stroke Tuli’s ear, despite having cursed the little dog’s affectionate ways only moments before, while I watched and waited.

“The High Priest of Ptah leaves for Mennefer at dawn,” Ramose told her, “and has agreed to take you with him. You will be under his protection there, not because I order it but as a favor to an old friend. It remains but for me to prepare a document transferring a block of credit in gold from my name to his, for your use.”

“Why?” By keeping her eyes on his face she tried to learn more than he might be willing to say.

“It has become too dangerous for you here.”

She rephrased the question. “Why now, after all this time?”

Ramose looked in the wrong direction if he expected succor from me. “Why?” he repeated. “Your picture-scrolls.”

She stepped away from him as if from a blow and dropped
her eyes for the first time. Yet she did not make excuses or apologize. “Horemheb has more friends in Mennefer than in all the rest of the Two Lands together,” she pointed out. “It is where he came into this world.”

“Someone has learned that Aset did not go to Abydos?” I inquired.

“I had a message only an hour ago. A royal emissary came to Abydos with orders to return Aset here. Sati delayed him long enough to give her messenger the advantage before informing him that Aset had gone on pilgrimage to Dendera, to the temple of Hathor. It will not take him long to discover she is not there. A day or two at most and Pharaoh’s emissary will be at the temple, asking what I know of your sacrilegious picture-stories.”

Aset’s face flushed, but she stood her ground. “Suspicion will fall on you no matter what you say, unless you point the finger at me.”

“I can fend for myself, daughter. It is you I can no longer protect … from your mother. It was she who stirred Pharaoh to inquire after you in Abydos.”

“Oh!” Aset looked at her feet, yet she refused to apologize or beg forgiveness. When her head came up she gave me a haughty stare. “I am a woman now, Tenre, despite what you think. A woman of some property.”

“As if I needed reminding,” I muttered.

She turned to her father. “It would not be
maat
for me to leave you or Tenre to face the consequences of what I did with knowing intent. I shall go to my own house, the one Uzahor left to me.”

“Refusing to do as I say would not be
maat,
either,” Ramose countered, closing the trap she set for him. “I am still your father.”

Seeing her defenses crumble, Aset scooped Tuli up in her arms, a sight that tore my heart. For it means what it always has—that she believes the only one she can depend on never to abandon her is a scruffy street dog. “I will not go,” she insisted, setting into motion her carnelian
tyet,
which
she wears day and night in the belief that the knot in the girdle of Isis has the power to protect her, even from her own mother.

“It will not have to be for long,” Ramose tried, hoping to persuade her rather than order her to obey him. “When your scrolls no longer heat his blood, Pharaoh’s attention will be drawn to something or someone else, and you can return.”

“I will not go without Tenre.” She moved to my side, clutching Tuli to her breast.

Pagosh emerged like a wraith from the shadows. “We waste precious time,” he advised Ramose. “Send both of them, but up the river to Aniba. Pharaoh will never think to look there, and Prince Senmut can see that no harm comes to her better than any servant of Ptah, High Priest or no.”

Ramose opened his mouth—to object, I think—but closed it when she spoke first. “Oh, Paga, yes. What a wonderful idea!” She set Tuli on the floor, hardly able to contain herself. “You could hint to Pharaoh’s man. Father, that I tricked Sati with that story of a pilgrimage. And confide to him that you suspect I have run off with a lover. That would solve everything, wouldn’t it?”

Ramose’s blue eyes sought mine. “Speak up,
sunu.
Are you willing to take my daughter to Aniba?”

Old suspicions about her feelings for Senmut burrowed into my flesh like a fiery serpent, causing an itch that demanded scratching. “On one condition,” I replied, risking everything on one throw of the sticks. ‘That you sign a contract making her my wife.”

I thought Aset’s eyes would pop from her head, though the High Priest did not move a muscle. I held his gaze, determined that he should believe I would not waiver in my demand, for he is a man of consummate skill at hiding his true feelings.

“And why should I do that?” he inquired, as if I had suggested he pay me two cows or a horse for my services.

“To give me legal right to have her with me at all times, to keep her safe.”

“You want me to believe a marriage that is merely a legal convenience would satisfy you?”

“No.” It seemed as if he and I were destined by the gods to bargain over his daughter, again and again. But this time I wanted something/row her, not for her. “Nor am I willing to enter into any arrangement with you unless your daughter agrees to it.”

“Agrees to what?” he snapped.

“Stop talking as if I am not here, both of you!” Aset burst out. “You behave like a cat with a mouse,” she admonished her father, then turned to me, “and you like a snake with no backbone. My father would no more force me to take a man I do not want than you would.” That was news to me. “It is for me to decide if your offer has merit.”

I glanced at Pagosh and got a curt nod, along with a look that said it was up to me now—that my time finally had come.

“Then I will spell out exactly what I would expect. I will not be another Uzahor, a grandfather to you in all but name. I want a wife who will share my thoughts and cares and fears in the light of day, as well as my couch at night.”

“All
night, like Sheri and Mena?” Surely she asked only to be sure she did not mistake my meaning, making me worry that
she
would be the one to deny me, not her father.

I nodded and told her what only she might understand. “That and much more, I think, if we are willing to find our own way.”

She studied me for one long, excruciating moment. “Truly?” Her face remained too solemn to bode well for my prospects of winning this game, but I gave her the only answer I could. “Truly.”

Her entire countenance lit up, eyes sparkling like stars, even before her lips parted in that glorious smile. “I believe we could have that, too, and more. Much more.”

Was she agreeing to become my wife or to something my stumbling wits could not take in? I could not say, for there are times when I feel like a dumb ox in the presence of her nimble wit, led by a ring in the nose across a fresh field.

An instant later she stood at my side, slipped her hand into mine, and turned to face Ramose. “I will take the physician Senakhtenre for my husband, Father.”

A smile started somewhere inside me while my heart threatened to leap from my chest, yet somehow I managed to keep my feet on the ground while I waited for Ramose’s reply.

‘To make such an important decision in haste—” he began.

Had I Pagosh’s faith in him I might have believed the High Priest picked his way carefully out of concern for his daughter’s happiness, but I found it more likely that he weighed the loss to his bargaining power should she come to me.

“I have waited for Tenre a long time, haven’t I, Paga?” She barely paused. “Surely the goddess meant us for each other from the moment we each set foot in this world. Otherwise, Osiris would have taken me that night I was so sick. And it was Isis who sent him to bring me forth from my mother’s body. You yourself once told me
that!”

His eyes grew suspiciously shiny as he gazed at her, until I wondered if he saw her as she had been then, but he shook off his memories and gave me a hard look. “Have you no more to say? Time grows short and Pagosh chafes at the rope.”

“All that needs saying has been said,” I replied, “except what is to be written into the marriage contract.”

“You should be kissing my feet,
sunu,
not haggling over terms!” Ramose muttered, half-angry and half-amused—or so I thought from the way his lips toyed with a smile. But then, as I have said before, he is a man of infinite guile.

“Aset’s property and possessions are to remain in her name,” I told him. “Nothing is to be conveyed to me. She also is to have the right to manage and receive property without my approval.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” he said, shaking his head. Aset squeezed my hand, telling me to hold my tongue. “What else? Spit it out so we can be done.”

“She must approve all rights and obligations required of either party, but should she divorce me, for any or no reason, the entire marriage settlement, no matter how small or large, is to be restored to her, not the usual one-third portion.” In truth I wanted nothing from him, but to refuse it would be to negate her worth.

I saw him glance at Pagosh. “Anything else?”

“There also is no need to make provision in case of adultery, on her part or mine. The rest is for Aset to say. And you.” This time I squeezed
her
hand.

“Such charity! The man leaves me crumbs and expects my gratitude!” Ramose exclaimed to the ceiling.

“As Thoth is my witness, my lord,” I dared to add, “I vow to protect and care for your daughter in sickness and health, through the dark of night the same as when Re sails his boat across the sky, from this hour until my final breath. And beyond, if that is possible.” I started to say I would willingly risk any hope I might have of eternity for his daughter, but did not want him to accuse me again of speaking with an oily tongue.

Instead I glanced at Pagosh and found a smile hovering about his lips. I knew then that the contest was mine. Mine and his, since he is the one who sowed the seeds of Ramose’s trust in me.

A soft glow lit the eastern horizon as we readied to sail. Merit came to the river to see us off, issuing a flurry of lastminute admonitions to Aset. Then they hugged one last time, both weeping and talking at the same time. Afterward they stood waving to each other as that place on the shore grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared from our sight. And so, with the wind at our backs, we embarked on a new life in a place neither of us can even imagine.

For a time Aset’s face alternated between glowing happiness and a terrible sadness, reflecting a sense of exhilaration at the prospect of the unknown adventure that lies before us, and sorrow at leaving everyone she holds dear. Except Tuli.
Pagosh is to return to Waset after he sees us safely into Senmut’s hands, though he promises to return within the year, bringing us word of Ramose and Nebet. And Khary, who continues the Eye of Horus but with Mena to oversee it.

We stood together on the deck watching the passing scene, first a few mud-brick hovels edging the green fields—shelter for the fellahin who work them—then a man guiding a plow hook drawn by a single oxen, the blade set at a sharp angle in the wooden shaft in order to dig deep into the soil. Beyond the green strip to the west lay rocky hills and cliffs, while to the east a vast expanse of desert stretched to the spine of the mountains, forming an impenetrable barrier to the marauding peoples beyond the Red Sea.

It was not until we passed a long line of women and children carrying pitchforks and rakes that Aset broke her silence. “You are giving up so much, Tenre. The city you call home. Your friends. The Eye of Horus. The garden it has taken you years to grow. Even the place where you carry out your experiments.”

“My friends are your friends as well, and the Eye of Horus continues without me. In time, as your father said, the risk to you will pass. Until then we will continue healing the sick as before, perhaps in Senmut’s House of Life.” I tried not to allow the suspicion lurking in my thoughts to come forward—that in the end she had found a way to join her life to his.

“What did I risk, really?” she mused. “A month, another year perhaps, imprisoned within the walls of your garden, living half a life, hiding my true feelings?” She watched the sail fill rather than meet my eyes, then, “Did I force you to do what you now regret?”