by Jerry Dubs
Now she had other duties.
She sighed and told herself that the priests of Thoth would attend to Menathap’s body. And Nebka would investigate the attack on King Kha-Sekhemwy, who was, after all, Nebka’s father, too. These things were beyond her control.
She thought once more of Re’s nightly battle to survive and be reborn. How could he face each day knowing what the night would bring? She wondered if the gods themselves had any control over their own lives, or was each moment, every hour and second to be a constant struggle?
Was that what Waja-Hur had tried to tell her? Was it her duty to discover her role and then to make it happen? How could she do that, she was just a girl. No, she thought, not a girl, a young woman and soon to be Queen of the Two Lands.
Queen.
She thought of the hours she and Ipwet had played in the garden as Hetephernebti practiced and pretended to be her mother. It seemed a lifetime ago.
Raising her head, Hetephernebti kissed the top of Ipwet’s shaved head and, leaning away from her, took the young girl’s shoulders in her hands. She felt guilty to see the tears in Ipwet’s eyes.
“Why are you crying?” she asked gently.
“Because you were,” Ipwet sobbed and then she smiled hopefully through her tears. “Shouldn’t I cry?”
Hetephernebti felt her heart grow full again and she feared that she would start crying again. Ipwet, so sweet and loving, had not been told what had happened last night.
“Come, Ipwet,” she said, taking the girl’s hand. “Sit down. I have things to tell you.”
***
An hour later a messenger came from Nebka. Hetephernebti was to prepare herself; she and Nebka would be married at noon.
“Why is there such a hurry?” Ipwet asked as she paced around Hetephernebti’s room. “Will there be a feast? There isn’t anybody here, how could they even have a feast? Half of the cooks left with the army and the rest went home. How can you even get a feast ready in one morning? It takes that long just to pluck a goose! And how can they expect you to marry when your mother just died? I’ve never been to a real wedding before. When Iput married she just moved into Hemka's house, well actually his mother’s house because he lives with her since his father died, and they told each other they were married.
“I guess it’s different for you because you’re going to be the queen. Oh, does that mean that you’ll be changing rooms? I like this room because you can see the garden pond from here, but I guess there are other rooms, oh, I’m sorry, Nebti.”
Hetephernebti was sitting on her stool by her dressing table examining small jars of kohl. She had untied and removed the leather cover from the wide, flared lip of a small alabaster jar. It was filled with udju, a green powder. Beside it was a container of gray galena and beside that an ivory jar filled with white cerussite flakes.
A flat wooden palette and several narrow sticks for applying the makeup lay on the table beside the kohl. A fat jar filled with thick oil, the adhesive for the colored powders, stood beside the make-up.
“I should be helping you,” Ipwet said, hurrying to Hetephernebti’s side.
Hetephernebti shook her head.
Earlier she had told Ipwet about Menathap dying and about Djoser and King Kha-Sekhemwy being killed. As the awful words traveled from her heart to her mouth they had left a thick trail that had started to turn into a barrier between her knowledge and her feelings. She knew that she would always mourn their deaths, but she knew that everyone died and she had to move on from her tears.
The living had to advance, moving ceaselessly forward as the god Re.
Hetephernebti would move forward.
If Nebka was now the king and if she was to be his queen, then she would be the best queen she could be. She would embrace her role. For Hetephernebti that meant concentrating on each small step and taking each step correctly and confidently.
Advancing ceaselessly forward, that was the way to ma’at, she told herself.
“No, Ipwet, I would rather paint my eyes myself. Could you go to my mother’s chambers? There is a gown with a wide strap over the left shoulder. It has beads along the hem. And a cape. She had a blue one. Could you find those, please?”
As Ipwet started to run from the chamber, Hetephernebti called after her. “And myrrh. There was a blue bottle of perfume from Punt.”
“Yes, Nebti,” Ipwet said excitedly. She felt good having a job to do and she was determined not to let Hetephernebti down.
Left alone, Hetephernebti picked up her mirror, a polished bronze disk mounted on an ivory handle. The top of the handle, just below the downward curving umbel that protected Hetephernebti’s hand from the sharp edge of the disk, was carved into the lion head of the goddess Sekhmet, daughter of Re.
Hetephernebti stared at herself, trying to see beyond the face of the devastated young girl who looked back at her. She wanted to see her ba. She wanted to reassure herself that she had the strength to prepare herself for marriage to Nebka, the will to absorb the tragedies from the night and and the power to advance as Re did every morning.
She looked into the mirror, praying to see the Queen of the Two Lands looking back.
Queen of the two lands
Sailing to the summit of Nut’s celestial arch, Re chased the shadows under the garden wall. The wedding hour approached and from the window of Hetephernebti’s room came a ceaseless chatter: Ipwet in full flight.
“Do you see how the beads pull the linen downward? It makes the robe hang perfectly straight. And I love your eyes, Nebti. I wish Iput could see them. She used to love to put on makeup, but she doesn’t have time any more. They look like a goddess’ eyes. Really! The curve is just right. I thought the cape would hang down too low in the back, but it doesn’t.”
Ipwet fluttered around Hetephernebti like a sparrow, touching a shoulder, shaking the linen at her narrow hips, stepping back to appraise her, dashing forward to brush an invisible speck from the translucent gown.
Hetephernebti tried to angle the hand mirror to see more of herself, but the bronze disk was too small and dull. She had to trust Ipwet’s eyes.
She could see her chest, however, and she wasn’t pleased. Her mother had large breasts and the robe that Hetephernebti was wearing had been sewn for her mother. Ipwet had gathered and tacked the linen at the sides to pull the material tighter, trying to create the appearance of maternal breasts beneath the gown, but the result was unimpressive. Hetephernebti looked down at her small cleavage and sighed. There wasn’t anything she could do about it, she was what the gods had made her, she thought.
She tried to put her disappointment aside and frowned. That was what Djoser did so well. He examined a problem and solved it if possible, if not, then he seemed to be able to put it completely out of his mind.
No, she told herself. Don’t think of him, it will only bring tears and I’ve spent too much time putting makeup on my eyes.
Suddenly, Hetephernebti realized Ipwet had grown silent. She looked at her and saw the young girl trembling as she stared at the doorway.
Nebka was standing there. He wore the royal nemes, a blue-and-white striped headcloth whose broad ends were draped across the front of his shoulders. The nemes was held in place with a golden seshed circlet decorated with a cobra head, called a uraeus, rising from the front.
His bare chest and arms glistened with oil and in his right hand he carried the was-scepter, a lion-headed, ebony shaft that ended in two prongs, symbol of the king’s dominion over the land.
Hetephernebti was speechless. For the past two months when she tried to visit him, her half-brother Nebka had been no more than a shadow moving in rooms barred to her. Now he stood before her as king. Seeing the royal nemes on his head reminded her of her father’s death and heartache rose in her throat.
Unlike her father and her brother, Nebka was tall and slightly built. His shoulders were hunched from leaning over tables to study reports and his arms were thin with knobby elbows, callused at their points. His
chest was unmuscled and his shoulders bony.
His face was narrow and his nose a thin beak. His eyes, deep-set and cautious, gave his face the appearance of a worried hawk. When their eyes met, he smiled but his small mouth rose in self-satisfaction rather than happiness.
Hetephernebti suddenly felt like nothing more than an accessory to his royal costume.
“Come, sister,” he said, his voice reedy and tight.
Ipwet had never been in the same room as a king. She had seen King Kha-Sekhemwy from a distance, a confident, regal image striding past a doorway. She had been in the garden with Hetephernebti when Queen Menathap visited. She hadn’t actually spoken to the queen but the queen had nodded at her once.
She had talked with Prince Djoser when he visited with his sister. In fact, Ipwet had had a crush on him. He had been so handsome and strong and funny. And friendly.
Whenever he had visited Hetephernebti and Ipwet had been there he had included her in their conversation. When he had asked her questions about her family, he had listened attentively to her answers. Sometimes she had stuttered and at other times she had talked so much that he had thrown his head back and laughed.
All the while he would look directly into her eyes.
It had made her nervous.
But not as nervous as seeing King Nebka wearing the royal nemes, carrying the royal scepter, wearing golden arm bands and carrying a stern look on his face. She didn’t know what to say or how to act, so she threw herself on the floor, lying face down until he turned away.
“Ipwet,” Hetephernebti whispered, “get off the floor. He doesn’t expect you to grovel.”
Ipwet wasn’t sure what grovel meant but she thought maybe King Nebka did expect her to do it. She would ask her sister. Anyhow, she felt safer down here, out of sight.
Hetephernebti prodded Ipwet with her bare foot.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
Ipwet nodded.
“Sister?” King Nebka called impatiently from the hallway and Hetephernebti hurried from the room.
***
Ipwet was checking the covers of the makeup jars when Hetephernebti, Queen of the Two Lands, returned to her room. She was so startled to hear footsteps that she almost dropped the ivory jar she was holding.
It seemed to the nervous servant that only a few minutes had passed since Hetephernebti had left the room.
“What happened, Nebti? Did he change his mind?”
Hetephernebti stalked past her, her arms locked straight and her small hands clenched into fists. “No,” she said. “We married. We didn’t go to a temple. There was only him, Wakare and Kanakht.”
“No music?”
“No, Ipwet, no music, no flowers, no dancers, no incense, no priests, no feast, no anything.”
“But you did marry, he said the words?” Ipwet said in as small a voice as she could.
Hetephernebti, who had been pacing, stopped at the window. She put her hands on the warm stone and looked out into the garden and then up into the sky.
Re was still advancing.
So would she.
She controlled her voice as she said, “Yes, Ipwet. He said I was his wife and I said he was my husband and so the Great House is made whole again. Wakare recorded the act and as soon as the words left my mouth Kanakht told me I could return to my chambers.”
“I don’t understand,” Ipwet said. She put down the ivory jar and walked to the window with Hetephernebti. “Why aren’t you with him? Shouldn’t you be having sex? Isn’t that what getting married means?”
Hetephernebti turned from the view and leaned against the window ledge. Ipwet stood a few feet away, but Hetephernebti felt as if the servant girl was standing far across the western desert. There was such a gulf between their lives.
“Your sister fell in love with a man, his name is Hemka, isn’t it?”
Ipwet nodded, proud that the Queen of the Two Lands knew her brother-in-law’s name. “And then they had sex,” Ipwet volunteered. “Or maybe the sex was first, I don’t know.”
Hetephernebti tried to smile, but her mouth refused to cooperate. Instead black-tinted tears rolled down her cheek.
Nebka hadn’t even held her hand. She wasn’t a child, she understood that they were marrying because she was Menathap’s daughter and their marriage cemented Nebka’s claim to the throne.
But they were married now. Married! They should love each other and have children and sit beside each other in court. She would walk beside him when he went to the temple and they would stroll in the garden holding hands and talking about their children and their future and the future of the Two Lands.
She remembered how her mother’s eyes looked when she talked about the king. She wanted to feel like that.
A tear dropped from her face and landed on her hand. She raised her hand and looked at the trail the tear had left. She hadn’t realized that she was crying.
Everything seemed unreal: Kanakht’s words that her father had been killed and that Djoser was dead, the sight of her mother collapsing and now a wedding without love. She closed her eyes and hoped that the world that lived within her would be different than the world outside.
But she knew that they were the same.
She pictured Nebka’s office, one wall a row of open windows admitting bright sunlight, a long table overflowing with rolls of papyrus, a wooden cabinet filling a long wall, a scattering of stools and chairs.
They had stood there, Wakare and Kanakht, motionless and silent as sleeping cranes. She had followed Nebka into the room and paused as the king walked over to the two older men near the long table. When she didn’t join them, the three men slowly turned their faces to her and for a moment they looked like a temple carving — lifeless lines scratched on hard stone.
Startled into movement she had joined them and, with a nod from Wakare, Nebka said that he was taking Hetephernebti as his wife. Then he blinked once and nodded to her. She said that she was taking Nebka as her husband.
She meant to reach out to him then, to lift her hand with the easy grace of her mother and offer it to her new husband. She had meant to step to him and lift her face to his, touch his lips with hers. She had hoped to feel her heart flood with light and heat and to suddenly beat faster.
But the silence of the stone chamber was disturbed only by the wheezing sound of Wakare as he bent over the table and recorded the marriage and she stood there, frozen in fear and confusion.
Then Nebka turned his back to her to look over Wakare’s shoulder and Hetephernebti felt Kanakht’s hand on her shoulder.
“You should return to your chamber, Hetephernebti,” he said softly as he steered her toward the doorway.
She blinked back her tears now and looked at Ipwet who was still waiting for her to explain.
“In the royal family we marry because of who we are not because of who we love,” she said. “Marriage is different.”
“That’s not good,” Ipwet said.
Hetephernebti sighed. “That’s how it is. I can’t change that. But, my mother and father did love each other. I don’t know if they started out in love, but they did come to love each other. I know it. I saw it.”
“And they had sex,” Ipwet said, “because you’re here. So . . .”
“Perhaps there will be another ceremony, something larger for everyone to enjoy,” Hetephernebti mused. “Maybe this ceremony was to satisfy ma’at, to keep the Two Lands in balance with a king and a queen. The gods know about it because we said our names and because Wakare recorded it. Yes,” she said, “I must have misunderstood. Everything will be right. Everything will advance.”
“You know what?” Ipwet said. “I should get Iput.”
“Why?”
“Well, your mother isn’t here and someone should tell you about the sex. Just in case.” Ipwet liked to hear her sister talk about what she and her husband did at night. It was scary and exciting and Iput always made it sound like fun, imitating Hemka’s grunts and his thrusting and the funny face
s he made when he finished.
Hetephernebti smiled at Ipwet’s innocence, but a trill of fear ran through her. Sex wasn’t a secret. Children didn’t wear clothes until they reached puberty, and reed gatherers, farmers and fishermen usually worked without wearing even a loincloth, so she knew what men looked like.
When one of the older pupils at Djoser’s barracks had his foreskin removed, her brother had worried that the soldiers he commanded wouldn’t respect him because he hadn’t undergone the passage to manhood. He had showed her his foreskin and they had talked about why it would be removed. It didn’t make sense, but they were confident that they would understand it when they were older.
Although the mechanics of having sex didn’t frighten Hetephernebti, she was anxious about what she would feel. She wanted to please Nebka. She wanted to be a good queen. She wanted to have many children. It was what the Two Lands required.
But she longed to devote herself to the gods.
She thought back to Waja-Hur’s words. She needed to discover what her heart really wanted and the gods would aid her.
But she didn’t know how to tell the difference between duty, desire, and destiny.
“Nebti?” Ipwet said.
Hetephernebti shook off her thoughts. “Yes?”
“I’ll go get Iput.” When Hetephernebti didn’t answer, Ipwet reminded her, “For the sex.”
Lettuce and Radishes
The river’s floodwaters continued to subside. Each morning Re, reborn and ever victorious, began his fiery journey across the cloudless sky. A week turned into a second week and then a third and Hetephernebti’s heart began to heal.
General Babaef returned from Mafkat. The soldiers were subdued, stunned from the death of their king and exhausted from their fast march across the desert. In addition to the fleet of flat-bottomed boats they dragged with them three headless, castrated bodies, the skin so abraded from being pulled across the sand that the forms were barely recognizable as dead men. Babaef proclaimed that they were desert-dwellers, part of the group of assassins who had ambushed King Kha-Sekhemwy while he slept. Their bodies were to be cut into pieces and strewn up and down the Two Lands, fed to crocodiles, jackals, and vultures.