by N. L. Holmes
“Let’s go look at the ostrich,” Hani said, unable to control the eagerness in his voice. “I want to see the wishbone.”
⸎
The next morning, Hani and Mery-ra were awake early, and by midday, they were ready to head upriver the half an afternoon’s journey to Hani’s country place. But as Hani rose from his lunch, he heard a clatter and voices at the gate. A moment later, Neferet came running into the salon and threw herself into his arms. It took him a few heartbeats to realize she was in tears.
“What is it, my duckling?” he cried in concern. His first fear was that someone had attempted some violence against his family in Akhet-aten.
But Neferet was speechless with loud sobs, clinging to his waist. Hani guided her back to one of the stools he and Mery-ra had vacated and seated himself. She plopped into his lap and buried her face in his chest.
“Here, my love. Tell me what’s happened.”
Pa-kiki appeared in the doorway, his hands outstretched helplessly. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her, Papa. She just exploded into my room the other evening and said she wanted to go home. I managed a few days off for the festival and brought her back, but I can’t stay.”
Hani’s stomach clenched with dread. What could have happened to make a strong, cheerful girl like Neferet dissolve into tears for days? “Calmly, duckling. Tell your papa what’s wrong. Did someone do something to you?”
She shook her head so hard her braids flicked him in the face. Hani saw she was making an effort to regain control of herself. Finally, she looked up, her eyes brimming, her lip caught in her teeth. “I don’t want to go back, Papa.”
“You know you don’t have to, Neferet. But why? You were enjoying it so.”
The girl dropped her eyes, and murmured, “It’s not like what I thought it would be.”
“How so, my love?”
She took a deep breath, as one might before jumping into the water, and said in a rush, “Lady Djefat-nebty has started taking me with her to treat the Royal Ornaments, the ladies of the harem...”
Hani’s blood ran cold, but not for Neferet.
“I thought that would be fun. But there was this one older woman whose breast was all eaten out, and she was in terrible pain, and there were worms in it and everything. Oh, Sekhmet have mercy, Papa! You can’t imagine how horrible it was. And she was moaning and screaming. Oh!” Neferet clamped her hands to her ears as if she could still hear the poor woman, and her face was twisted with the agonizing memory.
Hani cringed. That seemed like a lot for a thirteen-year-old to have to confront. He said gently, “But at least you were able to help her, my love.”
“All we could do was give her poppy juice to knock her out, Papa. And then Djefat-nebty put her hand in that wound and started cleaning out the worms. I thought I’d vomit.” Tears started bubbling out of Neferet’s eyes. “It’s just as bad as Khuit’s. I thought with rich people it would be better. There wouldn’t be all those flies laying eggs in people’s eyes and bloated, starving little children and people whose whole face was swollen up, oozing pus from an infected tooth. But it’s the same. It’s just the same.” She pressed her face to her father’s chest again, and he rubbed her back sadly.
“Ah, my little duckling. I’m afraid everybody’s the same, all right, whether they’re rich or not, whether they have the king’s favor or not.” What a hard way to learn that lesson. “So that’s why you wanted to leave Khuit? There was too much misery?”
“It’s the worms I can’t take, Papa. And people rotting away alive. I thought it was just poor people, and that if I studied with a real sunet, I wouldn’t see things like that.”
He said quietly, “I think, my love, that if you can’t take the sight of misery, you’d better find something else to do than practice medicine. And there’s no shame in that. I’m not sure I could do it.”
“But...” Her tear-stained visage had regained a little of its stubbornness. “But I want to take care of Baket-iset.”
“That isn’t always clean either, duckling. Mama and the servants have to do everything for her.”
Neferet sat up on Hani’s knee and stared at him, her square little face settling into an expression closer to her usual resolution. “Lady Djefat-nebty said to take a week and think about it and then come back or not, depending on what I decided.”
“So she knows you’re having trouble?”
Neferet nodded energetically then looked up, guilty, from under her bangs. “She said the same thing had happened to her, but I didn’t believe her.”
“Give it some deep thought, then, my love. Talk to your mama about it. Better still, talk to Baket-iset. Father and I are going to the country place to set it up for Mama and Baket and Sat-hut-haru. They want to get out of the city.”
“Can I go too?” She jumped up and began to bounce on her toes, hands fisted eagerly. “It’s quiet there, and I can think hard.”
“Well...” It wasn’t every day Neferet sought quiet.
“Please, Papa? I’ll bring my medical basket. You never know when you or Grandfather might turn an ankle or be stung by a bee.”
“Ask your mother.”
She bounced off to find Nub-nefer, and Hani took his basket of clean clothes and toiletries to the door. He heard Mery-ra clumping in from his room, humming tunelessly.
“You ready, Father?” Hani asked.
“Ready, my boy. Was that Neferet or a herd of wild asses I just heard galloping through the house? Why is she back?
Hani told him about the girl’s crisis of nerve. “Djefat-nebty is a hard master to expose a little girl to things like that.”
“I think she’s wise, son. Better that a doctor finds out in advance if sickness is more than she wants to confront.”
Pa-kiki passed through the vestibule, heading for the gate. “I’m off to the capital again, Papa. Somebody tell me if Neferet needs to come back up.”
“Thank you, son. This is very generous of you. And I’ve heard never a word of complaint.” Hani remembered Aha grumbling over a much less onerous task. Ha clapped the boy on the shoulder. “Travel safely. May the lord of the horizon watch over you.”
Pa-kiki waved cheerfully and disappeared amid the greenery. A few moments later, Neferet showed up with her basket, saying, “Mama said I could go,” and Hani, his father, and the girl set off down the dusty lane toward the Great River.
⸎
It wasn’t so far upriver to the country house. The small ferry got them there in the hottest part of the day and, since the River was still high with its flood waters, left them right at the edge of one of the fields. The black soil, with standing puddles full of rich, greenish water simmering under the sun, smelled of life and plenty. Newly planted lettuces and onions in rows and cucumbers, melons, and lablab beans staked to low fences ran inland from the water’s edge. Beyond, Hani saw fields destined for wheat and barley, black and muddy, almost dry enough to sow. He needed to keep that in mind. If the spring harvest was good, they would have more to send to Pipi. But he especially wanted to check the supply in the granary.
At his side, Mery-ra huffed, “Whew. Hot.”
“The plants love it.” Hani watched a pelican rise and circle over the land and then float above the River as if it were sailing its own invisible stream in the air. He drew a deep breath of satisfaction. “Let’s put our things up, and then I vote for an afternoon in the marshes before we get to work.”
“It’ll be cooler on the water, all right,” Mery-ra agreed.
They trudged between the fields, skirted the orchards, and made their way through the courtyard. The farm was strangely silent. “Where is everybody?” Neferet asked.
“Feast day,” Mery-ra reminded her. “They’re probably all in the village.”
They passed the cup-shaped well and big grain silos—whitewashed domes, like a clutch of enormous eggs. Hani remembered the ostrich in the cellar and laughed.
“Why are you laughing, Papa?” Neferet asked.
Hani let them into the house, where they were enveloped by the cool darkness. “Throw your things down anywhere. We can assign rooms later.” He dodged into the kitchen—with its own little court, half-roofed with reeds—and looked around to see if any water had been drawn. In the corner, a big jar sweated invitingly, and Hani ladled water into a gourd he always kept hanging on a peg by the door.
“I hope they’ve left us food,” Mery-ra said, peering around. He looked under an overturned basket. “Cheese.” A melon and a pomegranate sat in a smaller basket. “No bread?”
“We can get wheat out of the granary and make our own,” Neferet suggested.
“I don’t think it’s as easy as that, my dear,” her grandfather said fondly. “Maybe your young knees are up to grinding flour, but mine certainly aren’t.”
Fortunately, Hani found some dryish flatbreads in the food safe suspended from one of the beams. “We’ll be all right tonight. We can have the servants make more tomorrow.” He held up the gourd. “To the marshes, loyal troops!”
They gamely trudged back down through the farmland toward the River. Hani was only partially sure he’d left the boats tied up in their usual place of embarkation, at the bottom of a sloping footpath screened by enormous fig trees. Ripe fruit was hanging on the trees, and the whole air was perfumed by the unmistakable honeyed scent of fig. As they approached, a cloud of bossy jays rose, squawking. Wasps circled. Neferet ducked and swatted as she passed.
They emerged onto the bank to find it naked. “Oh, I put the boats away. Stay here. I’ll go up to the boathouse.” Hani left his father and daughter sitting on the slope in the shade of the fig trees and headed back up toward the fields. “I won’t be a minute,” he called over his shoulder.
Hani strode up the steep path from the riverbank, enjoying the strong movement of his legs and the action of drawing deep breaths of fresh country air into his lungs, relishing even this brief moment of solitude. Not that he didn’t enjoy the company of his father and daughter, but he saw them both a lot—Mery-ra every day—and his household had grown a little too public in the last few months. It was rather like living in the marketplace, with relatives and foreign visitors everywhere one turned. For all that he enjoyed people—as Mery-ra never ceased to remind him when pooh-poohing his desire for an assignment in the archives—he needed to get away.
Hani looked forward with a powerful longing to this afternoon on the River, among the reeds and the ducks. Even with companions, it wouldn’t be so constraining as his little garden, where one could never really escape the cries of the children—or more recently, of the Amurrites and snide, sullen Aziru, poor man, smarting under the king’s deliberate unavailability. Anuia, in and out, wailing and hopeless. Maya and Sat-hut-haru, who seemed to spend all their time at Hani’s these days, chattering excitedly about the baby.
He walked on between the fields rich and wet with the receding water of Flood season. There was the row of palms he and Pipi had planted as boys, now tall and laden with dates, swaying slowly in the breeze like a line of dancers with weighted pigtails. The sky was as blue as a piece of glass; one could almost reach up and touch it, that exquisite ceiling of the world.
His little shed was just ahead—a square, low, windowless box of mud brick with a triangular vent over the door. He began to whistle a tuneless version of an old song and even broke into the words, since no one could hear him. “My heart devised to see her beauty, while sitting down in her house. Hey-ho, ho-ho... I can’t remember the rest of it.” He was chuckling to himself as he prepared to lift the bar from the door, thinking already of his little reed boat and the water beneath it and the satisfying effort of paddling against the fulsome swell of the marsh water. But he had left it unbarred.
Hani swung back the door and propped it in place with a bucket, remembering too late that he’d have to carry the boat by himself. He wasn’t sure he could get it through the opening very easily. He straightened up—and stared into the feverish eyes of a man clutching a pruning knife in his fist.
CHAPTER 8
Hani jumped backward like a frightened cat, his heart thundering, before he could wrap his mind around what he saw. “Amen-em-hut!”
“Hani,” said the priest faintly. He dropped the knife with a clatter. In the near darkness, he was a wraithlike bearded figure, wild-eyed and ready to bolt, like a cornered animal. The room stank of sweat and dung.
“By the Hidden One, man. What are you doing here?” Hani extended his hands to his brother-in-law, who took them, trembling. He seemed to have trouble standing up. Hani supported him to a seat on a sack of manure, where he slumped wearily.
Amen-em-hut squinted against the light, holding up a hand to block it. “I’m hiding. What do you think?”
“In my boat shed? Why didn’t you go into the house? The servants would’ve let you in.”
“I don’t want anybody to know I’m here, Hani. I’ve already endangered you and Nub-nefer by hiding on your property. I need to go somewhere else. Forgive me.”
“Not at all. Your only offense was not asking me for help.” Hani put an arm under the smaller man’s armpits and helped him stand. “Come inside with me, by all that’s decent. Nub-nefer would never forgive me for leaving you here like this.”
Amen-em-hut made a broken sound that might have been a chuckle or a sob. “I dared not tell her or Anuia where I was going. I know they’re worried, but if the medjay interrogate them, it’s better they know nothing.”
“Of course. But you can’t live like this for long. What have you been eating? You’re skin and bones.”
They moved up the path toward the house through the orchard, shuffling at the priest’s pace. He looked terribly weak and sick, holding a hand up to protect his eyes from the unaccustomed light.
“Not much. Your servants very conscientiously lock everything up at night. Fruit, when I could find some. Grain. What I could steal from your pigs.”
The poor man, Hani thought, his heart wrenched with pity. What an indignity. “Where did you sleep in there?”
“In your boat.” Amen-em-hut laughed giddily. “I could certainly use a bath.”
“Of course. The house is yours. Use whatever you need. Eat, for the sake of all that’s holy. Sleep in a bed. No one would ever look for you here.”
But Amen-em-hut seemed unconvinced of that. He shot a worried look at Hani. “I don’t want to bring danger down on you and Nub-nefer, Hani.”
“Don’t worry, my friend. I can send the servants to the city and leave you here alone if you want, but I really don’t have any doubts about their loyalty. Why would they even know the police are after you?”
They hobbled past the grain silos and the animal pens and into the garden. Unoccupied, the yard was utterly silent. The servants had fed the geese and the pigs and turned the cows out before they headed to the village for the festivities.
Hani pulled up the door bolt one handed and ushered his brother-in-law into the cool interior. “Are the police after you? What happened to make you take off like that, Amen-em-hut? Anuia said they had interrogated you, roughed you up, but that you didn’t give her any details beyond that.”
He led the priest to a stool. Then he headed toward the sweating jar that stood just inside the door of the kitchen and ladled water into a ewer. He snagged a cup from the wooden shelves hanging on the wall then found the cheese sitting under its overturned basket and brought that too. In a moment, he’d returned to Amen-em-hut and poured him a big cup of water, which the priest guzzled down eagerly.
“They said to keep my mouth shut or they’d shut it for me, and I had no intention of shutting my mouth.”
Hani suppressed a sneer of disgust. In his eyes, a bully was always a weak figure. No king of any dignity would descend to threatening his subjects into agreeing with him. Still, he supposed no king would be likely to ignore calls t
o assassinate him, either. Hani’s heart was heavy. This was a complex matter. “You’ve got to stop talking about assassination, Amen-em-hut,” he said soberly. “The king might tolerate objecting to the closing of the Ipet-isut, but he won’t allow sedition.” He passed his brother-in-law the cheese, and Amen-em-hut tore into it with hungry teeth. Hani pulled up another stool and sat knee to knee with him. “He might send the police after your family if he can’t find you and the threats continue.”
Amen-em-hut looked up, his eyes haggard and uneasy. “Do you think he would descend so low?”
“Absolutely. You all need to get far away from Thebes and stay out of sight. It’s going to be the silent who survive.”
“Survive? I want to bring the whole regime down, Hani, not just survive. If I have to die to do it, that’s a reasonable price to pay. He has alienated the goodwill of the King of the Gods. How can anything but disaster lie in wait for the kingdom?” Amen-em-hut’s voice, weak with hunger, cracked, but a fierce flame of hatred set his handsome face alight. Hani had seen such a look on his wife’s face. Her family was intense.
“If they kill you, that’ll be the end of your resistance, my friend. Survival is the best tactic. ‘Your silence will overthrow your enemies. The crocodile makes no sound, yet fear of it is ancient.’”
Amen-em-hut snorted. “You and your aphorisms.” But he smiled at Hani as if embarrassed by his own fervor. “Listen, brother, let’s not argue. I’m grateful to you. You know that, don’t you?”
Hani reached across and clapped him on the shoulder. “I do. Let’s get you something else to eat.”
“Maybe later. My stomach’s been hurting a lot. I don’t want to overdo it by eating too much at once.”
The two men rose. Hani had just opened his mouth to say he would take Amen-em-hut to the bedroom, where he could stretch out, when he heard the outside door swing open. They both froze and stared back toward the vestibule, rigid with fear. Hani grabbed his brother-in-law’s arm, ready to hustle him out of sight, but there was no time.