Ancient Evenings (70 page)

“Yet, to me, her unhappiness seems excessive,” Hathfertiti now said in a voice of much authority. “Surely she was a spoiled woman to have carried on so.”

“In all deference to your understanding, my granddaughter, I would say that I have not yet told you all of her reasons. This punishment, petty to you, was nonetheless so painful to Honey-Ball that it changed her life and doubled her weight. When Usermare took out His short knife, grasped her foot—which is why, I expect, she fought so furiously when I seized it myself—and promptly took away the toe with one stroke of His blade, He then handed that bloody little half-worm back. They say she screamed and fled, all true as she told me, but she also embalmed the toe in natron for seventy days and kept it in a small gold case somewhat in the shape of a sarcophagus. That is the act of a woman who puts immense value on herself, but you must understand that to her family she was not a little queen, but a Queen. Her mother used to say: ‘After Nefertiri, comes Ma-Khrut.’ It was never true, of course, yet to the eyes of her family, it was. So the insult to her foot disturbed the heavens. So she saw it, and so she ate of many rare and prodigious fats, of swans, of large snakes, and of domestic boars to draw faraway spirits to her.”

“I still say: For the loss of a toe, she gave up her figure?” my mother persisted.

“She used to say,” said my great-grandfather, “that it was in obedience to Maat. Having gained many powers by the care she gave to this lost toe, she was now obliged to carry them. A larger house for a larger treasure. So she would explain herself to me, but I would say she felt most vulnerable. It is no small matter to descend the royal steps from First Favorite of the little queens to a woman whose name He speaks twice a year. Like a mummy I think she had to cover herself with three coffins.

“Besides, she had brought great dishonor upon her family. In Sais, she told me, the good families gossiped so much about her loss, that one of her sisters, engaged to a young noble, received word most suddenly that the suitor would now marry into another family. Honey-Ball sighed as she said, ‘They might as well have buried me in a sheepskin.’

“Now, in these days, she began to speak of what could prove to be another humiliation. She did not know if she would be invited to the Grand Councils. I did not see why this evening should have so royal a name, but, still, it was Usermare’s habit to give one small entertainment a year for a few of the little queens in His Palace, at least, in the part we used to call the Little Palace. He would even invite some of the nobles of Thebes. As evenings went—I knew, since I used to attend when I was a General, that the occasion would prove no great affair—a small feast, and singers and dancers. Yet for the little queens chosen, it was a rare opportunity to come out of the Gardens.

“Since there had not been a Grand Council in the last two years, gaiety stirred. Many little queens had hopes. So, too, did Honey-Ball. She even cast a few small spells, although the smoke had been too thick, she told me, and her thoughts too scattered. Her most powerful spirits were not appearing to her summons. She would never be invited, she said. ‘I do not know if I wish to be,’ she added bitterly. Of course, I did not believe her. It meant much to her. The last time, three years ago, still slender, still possessed of all her toes, she had been the first of ten little queens to be presented to Nefertiri, and the Queen asked her to sit nearby. Nefertiri even had a word for Ma-Khrut’s voice. ‘They say your throat is so sweet it encourages others to sing,’ the Queen had remarked. I wondered at these words, but Honey-Ball saw it as a grand evening.

“Now, when we learned who would be invited this year, I knew the blow to her heart. ‘It is a small matter,’ Honey-Ball said, ‘and yet the pain is not small.’ I felt her true woe. In this year with the Festival of Festivals approaching to celebrate the Thirty-Fifth Year of His Reign (and who among us did not know it was going to be the largest festival in anyone’s memory?) some little queens, of whom Honey-Ball was most certainly one, had needed an invitation to the Grand Councils to make certain that one would not be passed over at the Festival of Festivals.

“I must say her fear of missing this far greater occasion was not without basis. Most of the little queens would be able to leave the Gardens each day to mingle with many nobles in the newly built Hall of King Unas, or in the Great Court—a rare occasion for a little queen to invite her parents to Thebes. It all depended, however, on being one of the mothers of His children. His sons and daughters would be present to see their Father in His Godly Triumph. On the consequence, there being a great many such children, any little queen who had not borne His child could not with any confidence expect to be invited. Hence the Grand Councils might open the way. Honey-Ball’s dejection was deep.

“I think it was the failure of her magic that hurt her so. With our growing familiarity, she had become more modest and did not always seek to display her powers, indeed, there were nights when she was my sister, and spoke of small pains and miserable little sorrows. So I began to hear from her lips the old saying one heard often in Thebes about people in the Delta: ‘Those who inhabit the swamps, know not.’ The meaning had always been so obvious that I never questioned its truth—to live in the swamps was to be wet, pestered with insects, and weak with heat. Everything grew too easily. The balance of Maat was missing. One lived in stupor and knew not.

“ ‘It is true,’ said Honey-Ball. ‘It is true except for those about whom it is not true.’ And she went on to tell me how her family, of twenty generations in the city of Sais, had had the pride to overcome the apathy of their swamp country. ‘Our desire,’ she said, ‘is to stand in balance to our neighbors who know not.’ Then I would be obliged to listen as she pondered the depth of the Nile and the height of the stars, the Gods of the deep water in the river channels, and the Gods of the shallows near the banks, the warnings of the stars whose eyes never closed, and the stars who blinked. How it annoyed her that I did not even know the month of my birth. She would unroll a papyrus to show me charts that could measure the date of one’s death by the hour one was born. ‘How long will you live?’ I asked her, and she replied, ‘For many years. My life is long.’ Then she sighed and said, ‘But I will lose more than my little toe, and soon enough. So say the stars.’ Her sigh was heavy.

“Even after the Grand Councils were past, and I could assure her that it was not a grand affair, and neither Queen Nefertiri nor Queen Rama-Nefru had even been present, Honey-Ball’s spirits did not improve. For Oasis and Mersegert spoke of it as full of light and wonder, and said they received many attentions. Honey-Ball said, ‘Sesusi does not value me because I am from Sais.’ The pit of this drear mood was that in the last few days, to avenge herself against Usermare’s indifference, she had given much to her rites, and received little. Each night, she had performed a ritual to turn-the-head-of-Usermare, and had cried forth the names of Gods Who had much weight, her voice quivering with exaltation. But next day, the sum of all she had exhausted in herself, was most visible on her face.

“I began to ask myself how any magician could turn His neck? Usermare was able to call on a thousand Gods and Goddesses: He had a myriad above, and now, after His marriage to Rama-Nefru, a Hittite myriad of Gods below.

“Yet, each night, as I lay beside her, much as if her magic was able to turn my neck far better than our Pharaoh’s, I was not bored with her unhappy moods, and loved her. We could each drink in the other’s sorrow. I would lie beside her, my face between her breasts, and steep myself in the solemnity and deep resolve of her heart until I did not think she was silly for suffering over the Grand Councils, but understood that she saw it as one more injury to her family. It would be a true misery if she could not invite them to the Festival of Festivals. I was coming to understand that this family was raised higher in her heart than Usermare. In her two great breasts lived all that she would cherish, her father, her mother, her sisters, and myself. Feeling myself in her flesh, I thought that if she was slow to stir, and I might never again enjoy the liveliness and wickedness and love of the dance that women with pert breasts might bring to bed, that could not weigh against our sweet deep silence, its warning in one’s flesh that the love I would find in this massive bosom would not be small nor soon pass. Listening to the secret intentions of her heart as its beat came to me out of the depth of her flesh, I knew she had decided against all caution to trust me—which could only mean that she must work her spells from out of my heart as well as her own, bind us so closely that an error in the magic I learned could cause a great rent in hers. So I also knew that if I did not stand up straight away in the dark and leave her room, never to be alone with her again, I would lose the power to command what was left of my will. Yet so strong was the power of her heart that I felt no panic to move, and indeed, was a slave already, and close to her.

“That night she initiated me, and I took my first step toward Horus of the North. Of course, these matters are full of treachery and peril. Now, looking upon the result, I do not know if I was set properly on my way to the power and wisdom of a magician.”

FIVE

“In that square chamber which held her altar, there were no windows. The ceiling was as high as the floor was long. In the center, she had had inlaid on the stone, a broad circle in a narrow band of lapis-lazuli, while against all four walls, low tables of ebony held her boxes, and high chests her costumes. Other than the door, the only opening was a wind-catcher on the roof into which smoke from the altar could rise.

“On the night she initiated me, I remember every act, but I will not relate it now in the exact order for fear it could be abused. I know that You, Good and Great God, may not be pleased if I fail to tell You all that is true, and in its proper place, yet there is no truth in a magical ceremony but for the performing of it. Even as I have trusted You, and confessed to matters that no one in my fourth life has known before, so must You now trust me and know that in all I say, my first desire is to safeguard Your Throne and the Two-Lands upon which it sits.”

Ptah-nem-hotep inclined His head. “Your words are polite but have a rude edge, for they assume that we are equal and must trust each other, whereas you know better. It is for you to trust Me. However, I will listen to the way you tell it and may ask for no more. The magic I seek is of a higher nature than the one you now relate. To the measure that you bring the secrets of the past forward into My thoughts (so that the past lives in My limbs like My own blood) you will have performed an honorable work of the highest magic. I do not object at this moment, therefore, if you conceal the exact order of your ceremony of initiation.”

Menenhetet touched his forehead seven times. “I thank the great wisdom of Your mind,” he said. “This much is safe to tell: Honey-Ball had purified her circle of lapis-lazuli with many preparatory rites, and invoked friendly Gods to be our witness (although some had names I never heard before). Then, before we began, she asked, ‘Are you ready to join my Temple?’ When I said yes, I could feel a swelling in my chest larger than the clamor of battle, so she asked again, and once more, and after listening carefully, as if the beating of my heart could tell her more than my voice, she said at last to her Gods, ‘He was asked three questions, and three times he knew the same answer’

“Now we stood within the circle of lapis-lazuli and she blessed my naked body in an order that was most precise. This I also tell: She passed incense by my navel and my forehead, by my feet and my throat, by my knees and my chest, and gave a last pass to the hair of my groin. Then she anointed the same seven places with drops of water, with pinches of salt, by the flame of a candle that she brought near enough to warm me, and last with drops of oil. I was now blessed and prepared.

“From the altar she took a knife with a fine white marble handle and a point so sharp your eye would bleed if you continued to look at it. Now she removed her gown of white and stood before me naked as myself. With this knife, she pricked me on the belly just below my navel, and mixed my blood with hers, for she did the same thing to herself, and in the same place. From there, she repeated each step of the blessing, taking a drop of blood from my forehead and hers, from my big toe and hers, out of my right breast and hers, and a drop of blood from each of us just above the hairs of the groin. And each drop of blood clung like a tear to the point of the knife until it was brought to the same spot on her body so that when we were done, our blood was mixed in these seven abodes and we stood together by the altar, grave, naked, and equally marked.

“Now, I was ready for the consecration to her Temple. Within the circle, with only a burning wick in a saucer of oil for illumination, she had me lie down on the stone, raised high a scourge, and struck me twice, four times, then fourteen times.

“I had been whipped often as a boy. I had been left to crawl away and look for mud to staunch the bleeding. In my first life, no matter how high my rank, nobody could ever have mistaken me for a noble—I had too many welts on my back. A whipping had no strange taste for me. Yet to be scourged by Honey-Ball was unlike other lashings. She laid on the strokes with a lightness of touch that carried far. If you were to toss a pebble into a pond and succeed on your next attempt to drop a second pebble into the center of the first circle, and at just the right instant (so that you would create no confusion on the going-out of the wave but would deepen the ripple) then you would be close to Honey-Ball’s art. Pain permeated me in the way that scented oil will reach into every corner of the cloth. On other nights, she had taught me much about how to kiss, and I lived in the wealth of such embraces, and knew why kissing was a sport for nobles: Now, I came to pass through the vales of the scourge. A vertigo close to intoxication came into my thoughts, which is to say I passed into an adoration of my own pain, for I felt as if it purified me of all disgrace. While I could nearly not endure it, and might have leaped into the sky out of the very torture of the touch of the flail, a tenderness nonetheless came from her. How can I explain such a clash of sentiments? Let me say she laid on the scourge with perfect strokes, once to the cheek of each bare buttock, then twice to each buttock, then once to all the fourteen aching parts of the body of Osiris that for all I knew was now my own as much as it belonged to the God. She scourged me once upon my face with my eyes closed, and once with my eyes open, once to each of the soles of my feet, upon each of my arms, and each of my fists, on my back, and on my belly, on my chest and my neck. At the last it was once upon my testicles and once like a snake did the scourge whip around my limp worm. High in clouds of fire I even listened while Ma-Khrut recited in the clearest voice after each slash, ‘I consecrate you with oil,’ and oil she laid on every one of those flames from the fourteen strokes of the scourge until the fires cooled and were more like the warmth of my own body. Then she said, ‘I consecrate you with wine,’ and brought the astringent of wine to the fourteen flames, and my skin shrieked again. To which she bathed me lightly in cool water until the steam rose out of my heart from the quieting of the blaze, and said, ‘I consecrate you with fire,’ but she merely passed the smoke of the incense bowl by each sore place. Then she said at last, ‘I consecrate you with my lips,’ and kissed me on the brow with my eyes open and again with my eyes closed, kissed me on each of the soles of my feet and on the large muscle in the crook of each arm, kissed the knuckles of my fists, and my back, and my belly, my chest, my neck, and then finished by licking me long around the circle of my testicles, and most gently on the head of my sword which rose out of the soft swamp of my loins until it was as mighty as a crocodile. Then she said, ‘I make you First Priest of the Temple of Ma-Khrut Who Dwells in Osiris. Vow that you will be loyal, vow that you will serve,’ and when I cried out that I would (for this was the last of fourteen vows she had demanded through each of my fourteen parts) why then she lowered herself upon me like a wondrous temple of sweet shuddering flesh, and whispered my Secret Name, and with a welling-up of every one of the fourteen oases where I had swallowed the sweats of pain, my river came forth in flood.