Ancient Evenings (78 page)

Yet, how I enjoyed each day with Nefertiri. In all the hours I had spent with Honey-Ball, I still did not know how to treat her. She had been as much a priest, a beast, and a fellow soldier as my own woman, and besides we were always working at one ceremony or another. Or so I remembered our life together after fifteen days away. Still, I tossed at night until I could have been in a storm at sea. I did not know if it was I who longed for her, or she for me, but, Execution-of-the-Pig or not, there was some longing left and I understood again how much she suffered from the loss of her little toe, since the suddenness of our separation now had many strange effects upon me. One morning I even woke up with her little toe throbbing in mine. So I knew how agitated was Honey-Ball, and how far from separated we were still, indeed when with Nefertiri, I could feel Honey-Ball sending me favors or withdrawing them. I might pour a wine with a decorum as perfect as a Goddess coming to drink from Her own pool, and know it was Honey-Ball’s hand that guided the calm measure of mine, or, equally, I could leave a ring of moisture on the table from the base of the golden pitcher, and be certain my former mistress had led me to dribble a few drops off the lip

Yet, give me an hour alone with Nefertiri, and I knew happiness. She spoke so well. It was magic. With Honey-Ball, I sometimes felt, when most dejected, that magic had the weight of a ritual practiced much too much in the caverns of the night. Sitting beside Nefertiri, however, I learned of the other magic that rises from the song of birds or the undulation of the flowers. It is certain She seduced the air with the sweetness of Her voice.

It hardly mattered of what She spoke. She had been obliged to be together so much with the people of Her Court that She delighted in the smallest conversation with me, and wanted to know about the hours of my life which I would tell to no one else. Soon I realized that in all the years of Her marriage to Usermare, She had never spoken at length to anyone who lived in the Gardens of the Secluded, and so She always wished to hear of the little queens. There was not one whose name She did not know, for She had learned much about them from their families who were always eager to tell about the early lives of their little Princesses, lost to them. She corresponded prodigiously, and on many a day I sat on Her patio with Herself and Her scribe, a dwarf called Nightingale, whose back was hunched but whose small hand was exquisite, and watched them write letters. Often, he would read to Her and She would reply Herself, Her own hand at the palette, Her own calligraphy a gift to those who would read the papyrus. Sometimes, She would show me Her work, and I was so seduced as to feel I had received a dear caress. The purity of Her divine little sticks and snares and pots and curves, the colors of Her letters, and the precious life of the birds She painted made the papyrus tremble in my hand as if the wings of the birds furled by Her fine brush upon the page were now unfettered and could glide through my fingers in their flight. Golden were the hours I sat beside Her while She composed these letters.

One night, She had Amen-khep-shu-ef brought together with myself for dinner, and it was clear Her purpose was to encourage friendliness between us, or, failing that, bring us to some recognition of how we were each servants of Her “great need” as She came at last to put it, and it was then I came to understand something about the grandest ladies. One could not be a Queen without a
great need.
Whether Hers might be to injure Rama-Nefru, lay revenge on Usermare, or establish the Prince of Her flesh, Amen-khep-shu-ef, in succession to His Father—who could know? I remembered soldiers with terrible wounds in their stomachs. If they could bear the pain, their dignity became their highest honor. Those Gods one could respect the most seemed to gather about them. I thought of one charioteer who spoke to me in the calmest tones while the moon was rising, then he died. No sign of his pain did he show, yet I felt all of it.

Now, Nefertiri spoke to us of the lightest matters, of the amatory exploits of Her greyhound, Silver-Heart, who, sitting beside Her, kept looking at each of us as She spoke, and my Queen mused on how Silver-Heart mourned for his family left behind in the incense countries to the east of the Red Sea. Hearing that, Silver-Heart mourned, indeed howled as if to oblige his mistress, and She gave another sweet peal of laughter in which was all of Her unhappiness, all of what I call Her great need that I, in the soft light of Her dinner table, was so ready to serve.

Yet I suspected that Amen-khep-shu-ef was not likely to be my friend. Like Nefesh-Besher, He had a cast in one eye and never looked at you so much as His sight flew over your head like a bat. He, too, made me think of the Hittite who had come across the field of battle to fight, sword against sword, with Usermare. While Amen-khep-shu-ef had the long bridge of His father’s nose, the curve of His nostril was crueler than the arc of a scimitar—no, He would never love me. He loved His Mother too much, and with the wrong mouth as we used to say in the charioteers. Indeed, She even called Amen-khep-shu-ef by His little name as if the thought of His spear was always in Her thoughts. “Amen-Ha,” She would say, “why do You frown so?” and I, seated in the middle of the long table, felt smaller than myself, and not at all in the conversation. He spoke to Her only of matters about which I knew nothing, of His brothers and their wives, of hunts in the desert when She had accompanied Him, of a day most recently when She had stood beside Him in a boat of papyrus while He struck down eight birds on five casts of His throwing-stick and the last bird had fallen into Her lap: there was a purity of understanding between Them I could not enter.

She made efforts to bring the conversation to me. When I complimented Her on the beauty of her writing, I was treated to a little explanation on the rarity of the school to which She had been sent as a child. It was one of the very few of the Houses of Instruction in Egypt where girls might go, but many were the difficulties for the teachers. The students happened all to be Princesses, or, at the least, the daughters of Nomarchs (as was Honey-Ball, daughter of the Nomarch of Sais, and a classmate of Nefertiri, I would yet discover) and so could hardly be whipped by their teachers. “Yet,” She said, “as every scribe must tell you: ‘The ears of a boy are in his seat, and he learns best when he is flogged.’ Yet where were they to strike a Princess? No, they could not. Still we suffered. The ears of a girl are in her heart, and we wept when we made errors, and I could never learn to count. Each time I drew the sign for seven, I could think of nothing but the little cord that held My robe together. After all, the writing is the same.”

“Sefekh,” said Amen-khep-shu-ef. “I never thought of that.”

“Sefekh,” She said. “It is the same. I always mixed one with the other, and then the seams came apart in My head. All untied!” “Sefkhu,” mother and son said then both at once, and Their mirth could frolic over this fine word, so near to the other, but it meant taking off one’s clothes. I tried to smile, yet They knew words I did not, and laughter lived between Them like a wind I did not share. Of course, it was not the first time I had come to think that our language was too subtle, for I was well aware, having been tricked more than once, that the best Egyptians from the finest families know how the same sound can have many meanings and be written several ways. I thought, “I am as low as dung before Them, yet They use this same sound ‘dung’ to mean ‘bleached linen.’ Who is to know what They mean? They conceal much from those who were born beneath Them and then will turn a word into the opposite of itself.”

But then, going back so far as my first days in the charioteers, I had noticed that what characterized a noble most, even more than their fine accent, was much private wit. As a simple charioteer, I had often not known at all what they were saying. How could I when each one of our words in Egyptian has so many meanings? They might use the sound for “breasts” which is the word
menti
but they would be speaking of eyes. Yet another word for eyes is
utchat
, eye-of-a-God, also the word with but a little difference in tone, for “outcast.” One had to be clever to serve these nobles when they could play with many a meaning for each sound. All the same, no one had ever done this so well as Nefertiri. By a lilt in Her throat when She said “
hem-t
,” She could change a “hyena” into “precious stones.” That, too, was magic—Her wonderful use of the inflections of words until light sparkled on every sound. How She would move from one meaning to the next! “
Khat
,” She could say in disgust, but you had to know, by Her expression, whether She was talking of a “swamp,” a “quarry,” or the “Land of the Dead.”

Still, such games did not go on too long this evening. In His royal manner, Amen-khep-shu-ef was more a soldier than a noble, and not able to play at this so well as His Mother, indeed, left to Himself, He had a solemn dogged mind. Despite His effort to talk of matters where I did not belong, He was obliged at last, with the help of Her sympathy for me, to come back to a subject where I could offer a few remarks myself, and yet I cannot say I was happier that She turned the conversation to war since His exploits had usually been more celebrated than mine. “Foolhardy,” was how He was always described by the Generals closest to me, but even then, being handed the worst end of each story about Him, I knew how brave He was, and in the Gardens of the Secluded, although they never saw Him, the Prince was much admired by the little queens.

I was obliged to admit, despite all my desire to think less of Him, that no commander had ever had so great a reputation for conducting successful sieges. We took care when I was General-of-all-the-Armies to have the Division of Amen-khep-shu-ef away on the frontiers of Syria, but I never ceased to hear of the towns He took by siege, and some were strong cities never before fallen. He built forts to roll forward on wooden wheels, and one was even three stories high to equal the wall he would face. No labors were too endless for Him. He dug moats around towns so that none of the women and children could slip out—the wails of the starving gave strength to His troops, He would say. Yet the little queens spoke less of such cruel and stubborn skills than of His daring. So if I heard once in the army, I would hear again in the Gardens of how He not only climbed the face of high cliffs to accustom Himself to problems He would encounter on the battlements of cities, but had taught one squadron of His charioteers to climb nearly as well as Himself. On His last siege in Libya, to which His Father had dispatched Him in the hope He would stay away, Amen-khep-shu-ef and His men had been able to scale the walls without ladders on the first night of a siege before a single trench had been dug! His armies had only reached the place that afternoon. All talked of it. A siege that did not last a night! It was clear that Amen-khep-shu-ef wished to let everyone in Egypt know that He would be greater than Usermare.

Of course, there had been constant gossip in the Gardens over His prospects. Would Amen-khep-shu-ef ascend the Throne? Or might the Pharaoh choose another Prince? Rama-Nefru had given birth already to twins, and though one had died in His first week, the other thrived. Rare was the day, however, and rare the gossip, that did not carry a hint of some threat against little Peht-a-Ra who, having been given this mighty name of Lion-of-Ra, was also called by His Father, Hera-Ra. Of course, to spend a season in the Gardens of the Secluded was to learn, if you listened to the little queens, that no Prince ever followed His Father to the Throne before ten of His half brothers by other women had been brought to a sudden death. I heard so many stories of death in beer-houses, on the field of battle, in bed with treacherous women, or suffocated in the cradle, that I believed none, not until I saw the size of the guard around the Palace of Rama-Nefru, and found myself thinking of the obstacles awaiting Peht-a-Ra before He, half a Hittite, would be King of Egypt.

I must still have been brooding on such matters, for at the end of dinner, Amen-khep-shu-ef took me by surprise. After making clear mention to His Mother of the beauties of the noble lady who waited for Him in Thebes tonight—I could see He wished to leave Her jealous—He spoke directly to me at last. The point was clear, and He made it in contempt. “You are a friend to My Father’s ear,” He said.

“No man like myself can make that claim.”

He smiled. He would remind me that He might yet be my King. And a meaner one. He said, “Speak well to My Father Who rewards you.”

Not only was He much pleased at the cleverness of these last remarks, but His Mother clapped Her hands, and kissed Him full on the mouth before He left.

“What do you tell His Father?” She asked of me.

“Not a great deal,” I said. “The Good God does not listen.” I sighed. “It is sad to be the wretch whose limb is crushed between two great stones.” Happily, I managed to put a smile on my face, sly and wicked I knew, and She smiled back. “You are as helpless as oil,” She said, “and have nothing to fear from two great stones.”

This joke is a fine example of what I mean by Her use of our language. “Helpless” and “oil” had the same sound and so were typical of Her magic, light as the wings of a starling. Indeed, it obliged me to ponder why the same sound could make you think both of oil and of helplessness, even as the word for “think” can mean as easily that you are thirsty, or you are a vase, or are dancing, or are ready to stop. Our word for “meditate” was next to “blasphemy,” even as our little sound for “ponder”—
mau
—could also mean “the light-of-a-God.” Or it could speak of your “anus.” There was no end to the nets that held our thought. Could it be that Nefertiri, because She wrote these words so often, knew how the drawing of a little God or some curlicue at the end of a word could take one’s meaning away from the light of the sun to the darkest coffin on the inside of your belly? Often, She would amaze me with the delicacy of Her offering. I, who was used to the urgent strength of Ma-Khrut, now came to appreciate how light was the touch of those who are near to the Gods. I knew, despite Her adoration of Her tall son, that She was also glad to be alone with me, but then it was in the nature of a great Queen and Consort of the God to live as if, truly, like Usermare Himself, She, too, had not one Ka but Fourteen, and so there were many women in Her, and each could find its pleasure in a different man.