Ancient Evenings (102 page)

“A real one?” asked Rama-Nefru of me.

“False,” I said, and it was gone, and two sweepers came behind to clean up what the oxen had left. There was silence again. The entertainment was completed. The ceremonies would commence.

The Vizier came forward. A few nobles even groaned aloud. I do not remember the name of this Vizier, but then Usermare had had so many. Once I heard Him say, “A long-living Pharaoh is the strength of the Two-Lands, and a good Vizier is good for kissing His feet. There are many good Viziers.”

This one, like most, was old, and he, too, was drunk tonight in happiness at being chosen one of the eight Masters. He gave a great many words where he could have offered a few, and spoke of Usermare as the rising sun who chased all that was dark out of Egypt. “When You rest in Your Palace,” he said, “the words of all countries come to You, for Your ears are multitudinous and mighty. Your eye is clearer than the stars and You see farther than the sun.” Here he paused, meditated on what he had said, and added, “To all who are assembled here, I say that the ear of the One is thus mighty that I need only utter a word in a far-off place but He hears it and summons me before Him. I cannot do a deed hidden from Him who sees with the eye of the Hidden One. I dare not even think of His virtues in the fear that I will not name them all, for He also knows my thoughts.”

“I can’t bear this,” Rama-Nefru whispered. “I must leave.”

“You cannot,” I said.

“I am ill.”

Heqat, seated nearby, was attempting to soothe Her. “You do not wish to leave,” said Heqat. “In the end, He will choose You.”

“My child needs Me,” said Rama-Nefru.

I could feel Her fear. It came over me like the eight Gods of the slime, and all that She saw in Her mind was also in mine. I knew the Prince Peht-a-Ra was screaming. “I must go to Him,” said Rama-Nefru. Yet Heqat’s fear of the wrath of Usermare was greater than the terrors of Rama-Nefru, and Heqat calmed Her by saying, “I will bring His weeping to an end.” Whereupon she looked across the Pavilion of King Unas all the way into a far corner where I could see Honey-Ball sitting with her family—Nefertiri had kept Her promise by half: Honey-Ball was here but most certainly not sitting with
Her
—and now I realized that Heqat stared with no small force into Honey-Ball’s eyes. It was then I felt Rama-Nefru move more easily beside me, and She said, “He is crying no longer.” I saw the face of Peht-a-Ra once more in Her thoughts, but did not wish to look further for fear His dark hair might turn to fire as I watched. The Vizier talked on and on. Honey-Ball now looked at me, and there was love in her eye like the love I had seen in the eyes of Usermare when He had given me the award, but her love I trusted more, and as if she asked a question, although I did not know what it might be, I nodded, and the tenderness I knew at the nearness of the pale presence of death itself came back.

The Vizier was reaching the summit of what he would say. “While we eat, and know the taste of the riches of our Two-Lands, while we drink, let us also tell each other that these ceremonies over the past five days have been the happy ties to draw the Entire Land, which is to say—the Two-Lands and the Pharaoh—together. Know then that in this hour, food is being passed forth from the breweries and bakeries of the Palace. Free bread and free beer go out to the people. May they have two new eyes for all the years to come. May Egypt be wealthy.”

He sat down to a loud beating of applause from a few, and much polite tapping of hands, and then with a whoop, two wrestlers came forward. Behind each was a priest. One carried the standard of Horus, the other of Set, and these wrestlers—although their bodies were enormous—entered only into a mock contest, and that was just as well. For Set soon had his thumb on the eye of Horus, while Horus, in turn, had his hand on the testicles of Set. The two priests approached, however, each to pacify his wrestler, the priest for Horus not only lifting the hand of his man from the other’s testicles, but wiping his own before leading him off. Then the priest returned at once with two sceptres to give to Usermare. Another priest, wearing the headdress of Thoth, came forward, knelt, and said aloud, “May You, the Bull of Heaven, hold these two sceptres. Thereby, may the testicles of Set be returned to the God, and the eyes of Horus be returned to the God, and may Your power, by this gift, increase in measure.” I may say that despite my gloom, I could feel much power pass through all of us in the room, and I now knew twice the strength I could muster just before, even as Usermare now held two sceptres.

Our Pharaoh stood up. He said: “In My city, the people are eating. On the East Bank and West Bank of Thebes, they are eating loaves of bread and drinking beer. For on this, the last of the five days, they have been given two new eyes. From the grain of the sun and the spirits of the moon, they have been given two new eyes.”

He put His two sceptres in a stand, and raised His arm to touch the Cobra on His Double-Crown. “Here is the eye of My Crown, which is the Eye of Horus.”

At these words, many in the Court before Him murmured, “It is the Cobra. He embraces the Cobra.” There were few who did not turn to stare at Nefertiri. Heqat, so soon as she sensed what Usermare would do next, whispered to Rama-Nefru, “Two years ago, at the last Godly Triumph, He saluted Her. Tonight, He will not.” She was right. A murmur came out of the audience when He never looked at Nefertiri. This murmur increased as Amen-khep-shu-ef raised high His goblet and drank to Her, indeed, a few gasped.

The priest who stood before Usermare intoned most solemnly, “May Your eye never sadden,” and took a censer of perfume from a golden case, and handed it to Him. Then the priest said, “Take into Yourself the fragrance of the Gods. All that cleanses us, comes from You. Your face is our fragrance.”

Usermare waved the censer, and all tried to breathe the scent, for this was perfume that could be used only by the Pharaoh, and only on this night. A hush lay upon us. The perfume came from the herbs of the garden on whose door was painted the black pig of Set. We could smell it now—powerful was the scent—and the odor of Usermare was not like any that we had known before, but sublime and bestial at once, like the winding sheet of Osiris and the spoor of Hera-Ra.

The scent of the perfume had not dissipated, however, when twenty servants brought in a pillar twice the height of a man, and laid it carefully on the floor before the Throne. I had seen the backbone of Osiris raised in many a ceremony, but never one so high as this, and here made of marble, where before they were of papyrus stems. Moreover, the eyes and body of Osiris were carved into the middle of the pillar to speak of how the tree had grown around Him at Byblos.

Usermare stepped down from His Throne, removed His Double-Crown, set it within a golden shrine on a golden stand, and picked up a rope of papyrus attached to the head of the pillar. Amen-khep-shu-ef joined Him, and one by one, twenty of His sons came forward to stand at twenty ropes, while sixteen of His daughters also came forward from many a table, each to be handed a sistrum and necklace by the priests. When Rama-Nefru whispered to me, “Those necklaces are ugly,” I made an unhappy face and told Her, “They are supposed to be an umbilical cord and placenta,” which added to Her confusion (and mine) so soon as each of the Princesses, receiving the gift, was quick to say: “May Hathor give life to My nostrils.” But then I understood the prayer, and it was simple. What else would an infant just parted from its navel cord wish to request, but air?

The Pharaoh and His sons began to pull on the ropes. As They did, the sons recited:

“O, Blood of Isis,

“O, Splendor of Isis,

“O, Magic Power of Isis,

“Protect our Great Pharaoh.”

So soon as the pillar began to lift at one end, priests came forward again and began to beat each other with sticks. “They are merciless to each other,” exclaimed Rama-Nefru with real interest, and before it was over, half the combatants were on the ground. All the while, one side kept crying out, “I fight for Horus,” the other, “I will capture Horus,” but when the battle was done, the forces of Set fled from the room, dragging their bruised and bleeding friends behind them, and the pillar was quickly raised to the vertical. That drew another great cheer.

The sixteen daughters of Usermare sang:

“Isis is faint on the water.

“Isis rises on the water.

“Her tears fall on the water.

“See, Horus enters His mother.”

At that moment—was it that no one should fail to understand what had just been sung?—Nefertiri took the hand of Amen-khep-shu-ef and gave it a lingering kiss.

I do not know if She was certain that She would next be called, but indeed Her share of the entertainment was upon us. Usermare rose, and said in a voice to silence all things, “Let the Chief Concubines of the God fill the Palace with love,” and Nefertiri came forward and was joined by six blind singers, and indeed they were called such names as the Pleasure of the God, for their voices were beautiful beyond compare. If they were blind, then by the wisdom of Maat their voices had become more beautiful. As they sang, Nefertiri kept time with a sistrum, shaking it most lightly in the beginning when their voices were more delicate than the zephyrs of this night, but soon their song grew louder and caressed the breath of all of us.

Nefertiri stood with Her arm around one of the blind girls. I supposed it was the daughter of the servant that the guards of Usermare had beaten to death in the house of Nefertiri. For the Queen now looked with contempt at Her Pharaoh. This was Her hour in the Festival, and no one would usurp it. I saw Usermare grow pale, which I had never seen before, and all the nobles were weeping as they listened to these blind Concubines of the God. For nothing could be more moving to any of us than blindness, that scourge from the sands of Egypt itself. That is our affliction and the worst fate to fall on us, so we all wept for the beauty in the voices of these blind girls and, as they sang, I could feel Usermare’s shame that the servant of Nefertiri had been killed.

“O, yonder milk cows,

“Weep for Him,

“Do not fail to see Osiris

“As He goes up,

“For He ascends to heaven among the Gods.”

I cannot say if Nefertiri was ever more beautiful. Her breasts were like the eyes of the sun and moon, and Her face was the noblest in the Two-Lands. It was then I saw that She was looking at me, and I felt a happiness like none I had known this night, and took a vow, “Oh, that She is looking at me in the hour I die.”

“Osiris is above Him,

“His terror is in each limb,

“Their arms give support to You,

“And You will climb to heaven

“By the way of His Ladder.”

For so long as the Concubines continued to sing, Nefertiri would be mistress of the harem of Amon, of all the Secluded of the Hidden One. She would be equal to the Goddess Mut. Her power was great. Even Rama-Nefru was sobbing. So, desire passed through the Pavilion. Let Nefertiri return to the power She had lost! She was the Queen of all who were in this place, and I saw that Rama-Nefru’s lips were bleeding where She had bitten them.

The singers were done. Of all the silences that had come on the Collation, none was so profound as the one in which we waited while the Throne of Amon that was kept in the Temple of Karnak, the ancient, holy throne in which the God used to sit when He was no more than the God of the nome of Thebes a thousand years ago, and not known yet as the Hidden One, was brought out with reverence by the priests and placed next to Usermare. The First Consort of the King would be invited to sit in the Throne of Amon. But Who would Usermare now consider to be the First Consort of the King?

Before such a choice could be made, the last Coronation had to be performed. Bak-ne-khon-su, having become the oldest High Priest in the Two-Lands, came forward, and accompanying him were two young priests carrying the golden shrine. Bak-ne-khon-su opened the doors and removed the White Crown and the Red Crown, but he was so old it took all his strength to hold them. Usermare bowed before the sight with such devotion that I knew His love of the Double-Crown was like the love of another man for his mate when the love is happy and never fades and so is always pleasing and strange.