The Eye of Horus (6 page)

“No one knows for sure whether he followed Akhenaten or was only his coregent. If it was the latter, Smenkhkare’s reign was simultaneous with the final years of Akhenaten. Nefertiti
did
disappear from public view during the last three years of her husband’s reign, but nobody knows where they started counting with a coregent, either. That’s one reason there are different chronologies of the pharaohs.”

‘Too damn many pieces of the puzzle are missing,” he muttered, threading his fingers through his hair. “Too much we may never know.” Worried that he was beginning to feel
overwhelmed, Kate tried to think of something she could give him to hold on to, that wasn’t in doubt.

“I’ll admit to some wishful thinking, but I can’t accept the reasoning of someone like Dave Broverman any more than you can. Not yet. Because there’s another verse on her cartonnage.” Kate paused, then began to recite it for him.

“At first a voice cried out against the darkness, and the voice grew loud enough to stir black waters.

“It was Temu rising up, his head the thousand-petaled lotus. He uttered the word and one petal drifted from him, taking form on the water.

“He was the will to live. Out of nothing he created himself, the light. The hand that parted the waters, uplifted the sun and stirred the air.

“He was the first, the beginning. Then all else followed, like petals drifting into the pool.

“And I can tell you that story.”

The priest’s servant came for me again, but while Aten sailed high in the sky. This time we went around the priest’s main residence, to a smaller house connected to it by a covered walkway, where he led me to a large room guarded by life-size statues of the ram-headed god—Amen in his ancient form. The sleeping couch in the center of the room was shaped like a kitten with its tail arrested in midswing while its head turned to watch over the little girl on its back.

“How long since you first noticed something was amiss?” I asked the girl’s nurse-mother, who I recognized at once for she had changed little in the nearly four years since I saw her last, except for the deep shadows beneath her eyes.

‘Three days. First she fussed about a piece lost from one of her games, or when Tuli did not come the instant she called, which is not her way.”

“She also would not eat,” Pagosh put in, “and stopped talking. That is not her way, either.” I could feel the heat from the girl’s body even before I put my fingers to her neck, so it did not surprise me that her heart spoke too fast.

“She felt too warm to my hand,” Merit continued, “but who does not when Re takes so long to cross the sky?”

“Are any of the other children sick?”

“There are no other children in the house of Ramose. Only this one”—Merit’s voice faltered as tears flooded her eyes—“small girl.”

“Bring a lamp so I can see into her mouth. And you—Pagosh—see that a brazier is lit, but outside. Then uncover the windows and have someone bring a fan, since there is no breeze for the wind-catcher on the roof to capture.”

Holding the lamp in one hand, I squeezed the girl’s cheeks, and saw that her throat was swollen and inflamed. But it was the white spots on the back wall of flesh that concerned me most. “Let her lie on the ropes and continue bathing her with water,” I instructed Merit, “while I prepare a draught for her throat. Wet her face, neck, and chest, even her legs, then turn her over and do the same again.”

Pagosh brought a servant girl with an ostrich-feather fan, then led me to the terrace where he had lit the brazier. I handed him a bronze ewer containing dried sage and bark of willow, instructed him to fill it with clean water, and set it over the flame. “Your lord cannot spare another serving-woman to help her nurse-mother care for his daughter, even when she is sick?” I inquired.

“Merit does not trust anyone else with Aset. Only me, so say what you need.”

I scooped two spoons of pulverized soil from an old cattle pen into my mortar, along with a few pieces of rotten bread. “A pitcher of beer will do for now.”

“Later,
sunu,
after you tend to the girl.”

The stiff-necked lout thought I meant to drink the beer myself! “You really expect me to believe that Merit trusts the girl with you?”

He gave me a hard look, yet he spoke in a softened voice. “Merit is not only my wife and the mother of my son, may his
ka
live in eternity, but the beloved of my heart. She knows I would protect Aset as if she were the child of my own loins, for she was a gift from the goddess after Osiris took our son.”

Understanding hit me like the gust of a hamseen blowing in from the Western Desert—Merit’s dead babe had been this man’s son. “Merit also trusts me, does she not?” I asked. He nodded. “Then we have little choice but to trust each other.” The least I could do was put him at ease about what I intended, I thought, and why. “We must replace the fluid burned away by the fever. That is why she will need more than the few sips of beer she gets with this decoction for her throat. Perhaps you could ask one of the kitchen servants to press the juice from a pomegranate.”

He nodded and hurried away to get the beer. When he returned I poured some into my bronze cup and added three measures of the powder from my mortar. “I must give her this first, while you take the willow tea from the brazier. When it has cooled bring it to me.”

He lifted the hot pot with his bare hand, set it on the tiled table, and covered it with a cloth. “I will return for it when you say.”

We found Aset thrashing about, trying to escape the flames that threatened to consume her. I dipped a goose feather into the pitcher of cloudy beer and let it drip between her parched lips, praying all the while that Re would sail faster to give ease to this child of his brother Amen. That thought soon gave birth to another.

“Her mother knows she is sick?” I asked Merit, who shrugged and refused to meet my eyes. “What of her father?”

“He comes both day and night, and makes offerings to Amen for her life.”

The afternoon passed into twilight and then darkness while I dripped beer, then willow tea and fruit juice down the girl’s throat. Merit finally agreed to rest on the pallet Pagosh placed on the floor while I continued to drag the wet cloth over Aset’s body, again and again, praying all the while that Thoth had guided my hand. For all rotted animal dung is not the same.

I lost all sense of time then, until I sensed another presence in the room and turned to find the priest standing behind me. “She will live?” he asked in a low voice.

“Only Thoth can know that,” I replied, wondering if he felt true fondness for his daughter or only concern for the means by which he might gain greater power. “If Osiris does not take her in the night, she will be better by morning. Now I battle the fever with the only weapon left to me, the water of life.”

How long Ramose remained I never knew, for he disappeared as silently as he had come. I glanced around to relieve the stiffness in my neck and back, and noticed the baskets filled with the little girl’s toys. One contained rag dolls and a wooden puppet with movable limbs, her only playmates if what Merit said was true.

“Please do not leave me!” she cried out suddenly, bringing Pagosh to his feet. “Oh, Tuli … please come back!”

“Who is this Tuli she calls for?” I asked him.

“A street dog who has become her shadow. He even sleeps on the foot of her couch. Yesterday he seemed to know she was sick and whined until I put him out.”

“Only come back and I promise never to leave you again, Tuli,” she cried again, “not even to go across the river with my lady mother.”

“Go find the dog and bring him here,” I instructed Pagosh.

A few minutes later he returned with a small dog straining at the leash, though in truth he looked more like a rat, from his half-chewed ears and dirty gray coat to his nearly hairless tail. Only his eyes distinguished him, one blue and the other amber. I motioned him up onto the couch, and put one of her hands to his back.

“He just appeared one day, a pup not fully grown,” Pagosh explained, “with his ribs sticking out and a great tear in his belly. Aset had me carry him to the physician-in-ordinary to my lord’s cattle and slaves, but he refused to treat the animal, so Aset cared for him herself, by pouring sour wine on the wound and feeding him scraps of meat. That night nothing would do but I must fix a pallet for him in here, so she could keep a lamp burning against the darkness—‘when all snakes bite and every lion leaves its lair.’ By morning she had named him what he is, she said—brave.” I thought the story a bit overblown, and I suppose he must have read it in my face. “If you doubt that one so young can know what it is to be brave
sunu,
it is because you do not know her.”

He returned to his place by the door and the drip of the water clock seemed to grow louder after that. I began to ponder how we measure time. Since day and night each are divided into twelve parts, the length of an hour varies with the season. But we are in the season of long days, when the hours of the night are shorter than at any other time of year, so why did they
feel
so long? I was still mulling that question when Osiris rose up on the other side of her couch, to stand with his arms crossed over his chest, crook in one hand, flail in the other.

“You cannot take her!” I protested.

“Why not?” The Lord of the Netherworld appeared unperturbed by my outburst.

“Because it would break poor Tuli’s brave heart.” My eyes fell on the lock of hair Merit had pulled back and tied with a strip of leather and a carnelian amulet—the knot in the girdle of Isis, talisman of her namesake and guardian. “Surely you would not deny the mother of your son, the mighty Horus who avenged your death!”

Like smoke, he curled in upon himself, mingling with the shadows in the corner of the room. That surprised me, too, for I was taught that Osiris takes when and where he pleases, without appeal. I continued to wet the cloth and drag it across her chest, until at last it seemed to me she felt a little
cooler. After another hour or so her cheeks finally gave up their angry color. I knew then that I had chosen well, and let the cloth fall back into the bowl, drew a thin blanket up to her chest, and sat back to rest a bit.

When next I opened my eyes, the light of Re-Horakhte was streaming through the clerestory windows. I looked first to see if the girl still breathed, and found her watching me with eyes the color of the afternoon sky. Surely they are a gift from her father, I thought, though hers are a clearer blue, unsullied perhaps by all his eyes have seen. She lay still except for the hand stroking Tuli’s ear, and showed no fear at waking to find a stranger beside her couch. Even so, I stayed quiet so as not to alarm her, until I saw the hesitant beginnings of a smile. She seemed to be testing me, so I returned her gift in kind—and was rewarded with a smile of such joy that I was helpless to do anything but try to match it.

That was how Pagosh found us when he came to see how she fared. “Paga!” she whispered in a scratchy voice, raising her arms to him. He bent to hug her, but mumbled, “You are not to get up, little one, until the physician says you are healed.”

“He is a
sunu?”
she whispered, blue eyes suddenly too big for her face.

Pagosh nodded. “The one named Senakhtenre. Remember what Merit told you about the night you came into this world?”

Still she stared at me, causing me to wonder if she saw in me the physician who had refused to treat her dog. “My friends call me Tenre,” I offered, to calm her fears.

“Is that what
you
call him, Paga?” she whispered into his neck.

“It is an honor to be offered the friendship of such a man,” Pagosh replied, avoiding a direct answer.

“Then you can call me Aset, for that is what
my
friends call me. Isn’t it Tuli?” The dog wagged his tail, then licked her foot.

“Aset?” Merit rose from her pallet, then began laughing
and crying at the same time when Pagosh handed the girl into her keeping. “I will fetch a cup of broth and some fruit,” he muttered, though I suspect he went to inform Ramose.

“You are squeezing me too tight, Mother,” Aset complained, “and those ropes have scratched my back.” Merit reached for a blanket and wrapped it around her.

“Put fresh padding on her couch,” I told Merit, then spoke to Aset. “Will you promise to drink all the juice and water Merit brings you?” She nodded. “And rest when you feel tired?” This time she was not so quick to agree. “Tuli is impatient for you to be well, so you can play with him. So am I.” At that, laughter sparkled in her eyes, all the reward I needed for sitting through the night with a sick child.

I handed a packet of dried sage to Merit to steep in hot water, to help soothe her throat. “You also can have all the fruit you want,” I told Aset. “Do you like watermelon?” She nodded, making her curls dance. “Then rest for now.” I pointed to the dog. “Him too.” I picked up my goatskin bag. “I will return tomorrow to see if you have followed my instructions.” By the time I reached the door her eyes were closed in pretend sleep.

I was down by the river, tending a man who had dislocated his shoulder while loading one of Pharaoh’s trading vessels, when I heard someone call my name.

“Tenre! Hallo.”

I was sure my ears deceived me. Then the crowd of soldiers and vendors parted, and I caught a glimpse of a familiar face. “Mena!” I shouted, and ran to him.

“You said this was where I would find you when I returned.” He clapped me on the back, pulling me into the embrace of brothers, then made a show of drawing away to cast his eyes over me. “Let me see how you fared without me.”

Mena and I first found kinship in playing ghoulish pranks on the priests in the temple school. Later, it had been his unfailing optimism that sustained me through the lower grade of the priesthood, a requirement for entry to the Per Ankh and medical training. But once there, neither of us could stomach the decision not to treat, so we set out to test every prescription handed down from the time of the great Imhotep, and ended by bribing a slave in the Per Nefer to look the other way while we discovered for ourselves how the great vessels lay between the heart and lungs.

“Did you just arrive?” I asked, fearing that he had long since returned to Waset and now was about to embark again, without even seeking me out. I could see that he was much changed, more by his eyes than the white at his temples.

He pointed to where three bearded slaves coaxed a pair of skittish horses from the deck of a twin-masted ship. “With General Horemheb. Have you not heard that he comes to take the Princess Mutnodjme for his wife?”

“I beg most humbly that you will forgive my intolerable ignorance, Lord Merenptah.” I bowed my head to hide the grin I could not keep from my face. “Surely the messenger you sent ahead to announce your glorious coming must have been waylaid by pirates on the Great Green Sea. Otherwise, with or without the General who names himself Greatest of the Great and Most Powerful of the Powerful, every whore in this backwater of Pharaoh’s great empire would have been waiting to greet you.”