by Jerry Dubs
There was a grunt as one of the men shifted his position and then the scraping sound of a clay pot sliding across the stone floor. Nebka continued, “I can’t. It isn’t the same.”
The quiet, liquid sound of someone drinking.
“She brought me lettuce and radishes,” Nebka said. He laughed.
“And?”
“It worked for a little, but ... she left crying.” He laughed again, but to Hetephernebti’s ears it sounded forced, a bully trying to impress another bully.
“Look, Nebi ...” Babaef said softly.
“I know, I know.”
When Babaef spoke again the emotion had left his voice. “Nebka, you know what you have to do. We planned each step. Everything is going as we expected. We have to stay with it.” He sighed and then continued, “When the army moves there are a thousand things to organize: food, water, weapons, training, choosing leaders, taking care of stragglers, scouting, organizing messengers. Unpleasant jobs that have to be done. This isn’t any different.”
“I know that,” Nebka said, anger creeping into his voice. “Who do you think governed this country while Kha-Sekhemwy was off chasing glory? Who dealt with the governors? Who sent the tax collectors? Who ordered the counting of the harvest because the governors always lie? Who appointed the judges and ordered the repairs to the wharves and the killing of the rats in the granaries?”
Hetephernebti heard footsteps cross the floor. Afraid to move and possibly stumble in the darkness, she flattened herself against the wall. The light from the window diminished as someone blocked the opening. She heard a sigh and then a light splashing on the stones as one of the men urinated out of the window.
“I understand, Nebi,” Babaef said, his voice right beside her, tone conciliatory, “I know you have a great burden overseeing the Two Lands. That’s why we did this. Kha-Sekhemwy didn’t govern and the gods know he didn’t know the first thing about leading an army. So we removed him from the throne. Your idea of persuading Kha-Sekhemwy to take Djoser along so we could eliminate that loose end at the same time was brilliant.
“When there is a battle,” Babaef continued as he turned away from the window, “we train the men, we plan the campaign and then finally we have the excitement of the battle. I live for that, Nebi. Such a feeling! The knowledge, no it’s more than that because it is knowledge that isn’t held only in your heart, it spreads through your body, into your arms and legs, even to your stones, it’s the knowledge that there is only might and victory. One mistake, one moment of weakness and you are dead. Not the death of an old man in his sleep, comforted with the certainty of being reborn in Khert-Neter. No, it’s the risk of dying away from the Two Lands, your ka lost forever.
“But then there is the aftermath, killing the wounded enemy, binding the ones who will be slaves, tending our own injuries, recording the weapons we have taken, the food, even the clothing. I’m sure it is no less tedious than many of the audits you do. So many ledgers, eh?”
“What you’re talking about isn’t just bookkeeping, Babaef,” Nebka said. “I can bend my thoughts to numbers and reports. I can strain my eyes and force my attention, but this,” he paused and then continued, “I have no control over it. I tried. But she holds no interest for me. I am what I am.” There was a pause and then he said, his voice stronger, “We are what we are.”
“Still … ” Babaef answered, “there must be a sign that you are a maker of men … ”
“Like Min, yes I know,” Nebka sighed.
“You could send someone to her, to take your place,” Babaef said softly. “Or you could send her to her brother and parents in Khert-Neter. Well, with her mother, at least. Kha-Sekhemwy and Djoser’s kas are wandering the desert.”
“Kill her?” Nebka said. “She’s the queen.”
Babaef laughed. “And Kha-Sekhemwy was the king. Don’t you understand, Nebka, you can do anything. You are the king.” He paused a moment and then continued, “You could say she died in childbirth, that happens all the time, and the people would love it. They love a sad story, especially when it involves their rulers.”
Standing in the darkness outside the window Hetephernebti bit her lip and pressed her hands against the wall, pushing them hard, feeling the bite of the rough surface, pushing her hands harder until they scraped against the stone and brought her pain.
The words from Babaef and Nebka were a never-ending trail of dung beetles, dark, vile and dirty, pushing soiled black spheres of evil, of violence, theft, lies, treachery.
She closed her eyes and tried to envision Re, his light driving away the words, his heat refilling her, but she saw instead a dirty papyrus, its surface, once as clean as the desert after a windstorm, now smudged with dung trails, and torn and scratched.
Suddenly someone touched her arm. Before she could open her mouth to scream, a familiar, callused hand clamped over her mouth and Kheti tugged her away from the window. Her legs seemed unable to move and then she was lifted, held, and protected by Kheti as he quietly backed away from the rear wall of General Babaef’s house.
***
Beside the roadway, clear of the bushes and trees, Kheti lowered Hetephernebti to her feet, but kept an arm around her.
“You were back there so long, my queen. I was worried,” he said.
She stepped away from him toward the edge of the road, back toward the house.
The words I heard couldn’t be real, she thought. The air must have taken the sounds from their lips and warped them.
She needed to go to King Nebka and General Babaef and ask them to explain the true meaning of what she had heard.
Did they truly kill her father and brother? How could the gods allow such a thing?
Suddenly Kheti was in front of her, his rough hands firmly grasping her shoulders, his scarred head bent close to her. Turning to his face she saw his brown eyes, the dark centers wide with fear and concern. She saw each crease around his eyes, his broad flat nose and the stubble of hair pushing out from above his lip and along his cheek like the tips of reeds above the river’s surface. She saw his lips moving, his tongue slowly coiling and uncoiling like Apophis, the monster snake who swallows Re each night.
The image wavered and she felt tears run down her cheeks, and in her heart she heard the words echoed over and over again . . . eliminate that loose end . . . your ka lost forever . . . send her to her brother and parents.
Her legs buckled and she slipped from Kheti’s grasp. Her knees landed on the road and Kheti bent low to sweep an arm around her small waist. Effortlessly he raised her and held her in his arms.
Gently cradling his queen, Kheti glanced once at the general’s house behind them and then turning he began a slow jog up the dark road toward the heart of Waset.
***
Hetephernebti dreamed she was a passenger on Re’s golden barge. She floated through the sky, rocking gently as the god’s boat navigated Nut’s celestial arc. She was warm and protected and happy.
Below her Geb supported the river and the desert and the mountains and the delta and the temples and the markets. He supported the children as they chased each other or swam in the river or threw wooden balls and he supported the women as they ground wheat and baked bread or nursed their babies or wove linen cloth or squatted over the birthing blocks, and he supported the men as they plowed the fields or fished or cut reeds or quarried stone or hunted in the desert. He supported the basking crocodiles and stalking desert cats and spraying, shaking hippos and the fleet antelopes and gazelles, and the hidden lizards and snakes and scorpions.
Their voices and spirits sang, each melody different and each melody harmonious, and ma’at was satisfied.
Then she dreamed that a dark mist, like smoke from a wet fire, swept through the air. Through its dark lens she saw a desert lion bring down an antelope, its teeth sinking into the animal’s quivering throat and a snake struck, a scorpion stung, a crocodile twisted with a goat in its deathly grasp, and a mother cried in agony as she held her still chi
ld and an emaciated man sat in the sand, leaning against a rock, his legs pulsing with parasitic worms.
Seth the Typhon crept into her dream, his curved snout sniffing at the ground, his forked tail flicking as he walked. He looked up from the ground and opened his dog mouth. From it came Nebka’s false laughter.
“Sshhh, my queen,” Kheti said.
Hetephernebti sat up. She was in her mother’s room, sitting on her mother’s bed. Disoriented, she wondered what she was doing in the queen’s chambers.
She looked at Kheti and a fist of cold resignation gripped her. She was here because her mother was dead. Her mother was dead because she had learned that King Kha-Sekhemwy and Djoser had been killed. And they had been murdered because Nebka wanted the throne and because his lover, Babaef, wanted the army.
For Nebka she was no more than an ornament, a symbol that allowed him to sit on the throne. They had been publicly married and so she was no longer needed to legitimize his claim to the throne. She wasn’t needed to lie with him, he had General Babaef for that.
If Nebka ever discovered that she knew that he and General Babaef had killed King Kha-Sekhemwy and Djoser — poor Djoser! — he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, and she didn’t know how she could ever be in the same room with him without her hate screaming from her eyes.
The first time he saw her face he would read her secret.
“I must go,” she said to herself.
Misunderstanding, Kheti stood and looked around the room for the water closet. He wondered if he should call Ipwet to attend the queen.
Hetephernebti gripped Kheti’s arm. He turned back to her and said, “Yes, my queen? Should I get one of your servants?”
Hetephernebti turned her head in thought. She said, “Who can I trust?”
The look of fear on her face struck Kheti. He wasn’t used to being around young women; his own daughter had died in infancy and his wife had never gotten pregnant again. He knew Hetephernebti was old enough to marry, but to his eye she was just a little girl.
He didn’t know what she had seen or heard at General Babaef’s house, but something had frightened her so much that she had passed out. Something had struck her heart.
He wished his wife were here. Kawit would know what to do.
And so he stood there mute, waiting for his queen to command him.
“Kheti,” she said, “will you help me?
“Of course, my queen,” he said.
To the River
Hemka was nineteen years old and liked to be told what to do.
When he was little his mother told him what to do. When he was older, his big brother told him what to do. Then he joined the army and his sergeant told him what to do. Then he married Iput. Now it was her turn.
Hemka didn’t think about his life. When someone asked him how things were going, he always said, “Great!” And they were.
He and Iput had two healthy sons, a small house on the outskirts of Waset, just a few houses away from his mother who often watched their children, and there was enough salt and oil left over from his pay to barter for beer and linen and extra food.
He had met Iput when he had been a guard at the palace. They had smiled at each other whenever she had walked past him. Then she started to linger, asking him his name and then about his family and then about what he liked to do. Each time she had brushed against him, just a light contact against his arm or his leg or his kilt. Before long he found his kilt rising to greet her and then one afternoon she had grabbed him by his kilt-covered handle and pulled him to a storeroom where they wrestled and laughed and made love.
Soon she was with child and she told him that they were going to marry. When her belly grew full she left the palace and arranged for him to leave, too, taking a job with one of her cousins who ran a gang of guards on the wharf.
Now Hemka kept watch over barges that arrived too late in the day for the goods to be unloaded. The work was boring but Hemka didn’t mind. He liked the afternoon sunshine and the way the water sparkled as Re drew closer to the western horizon. He liked the cool air that rose from the water after the sun set and he liked the way the darkness fell from the sky, so slowly that he didn’t notice it and then all of a sudden it was black.
On days when he didn’t work, his mother would watch their two boys and he and Iput would walk through the market, holding hands, listening to the sounds, looking at the people, eating freshly baked bread, feeling happy that they had found each other. They would walk upstream along the river and swim and make love.
His life flowed to an easy rhythm and he felt blessed by the gods, unlike some of his friends who had lost children or had wives who were quarrelsome. He and Iput never quarreled. There was no reason, the house was her responsibility and so he was happy to honor her requests; it was one less thing for him to think about.
And so he felt doubly disturbed now as Iput and Ipwet quietly argued on the flat roof of their house. He was below them in the home’s only room with his two sons who were crawling over him and playfully fighting with each other. But above their playful squeals he heard his wife and sister-in-law.
Ipwet had arrived before dawn, waking her sister and taking her to the roof to talk. Two hours later they were still there. Their voices were calmer now, whatever disagreement they had earlier now put aside. The boys, who had awakened a few minutes ago, would soon get tired of playing and want their mother’s milk.
Suddenly, he heard the patter of light footsteps on the ceiling, the sounds crossing over him to the stairs at the side of the house.
The boys stopped wrestling when Iput and Ipwet came into the house. Ipwet went to them and, kneeling, started to tickle them while Iput took Hemka’s arm and tugged him to the back corner of the room.
“The queen needs our help,” she said, her eyes looking past him at her little sister. “She is in danger, Hemka.”
The queen in danger? Hemka didn’t understand. How could the queen be in danger? She was the queen! She lived in the palace and had servants and all the food she could ever need and she had guards.
“You’ll need to borrow a boat tonight.”
He turned as the boys’ laughter grew louder. Ipwet was rolling around on the floor with them, pretending to be a snake, but her eyes were on him and Iput.
“A boat?”
“Yes.”
“Why do we need a boat?”
“Because you are taking Ipwet and the queen to Zau.”
***
Hetephernebti spent a nervous morning, startling each time a shadow moved past her doorway or one of her servants appeared. Finally she could take it no more. Claiming that she was feeling ill, she dismissed all of her servants except Ipwet.
Although her stomach was in turmoil, it was from nerves, not illness; tonight she was leaving her life behind.
Once she and Ipwet were alone, she placed three oil bottles, some small jewels and a few gold bracelets in a small linen sack. She prepared a folded linen cloth blotted with blood from a goat, evidence that she was menstruating in case Nebka sent for her.
She would retire early and then after Re had disappeared, she and Ipwet would follow him.
***
Iput persuaded her cousin to leave a reed boat, large enough to carry Hemka, Ipwet and Hetephernebti, near the wharf. She told him that Hemka would be away for a few days and when he asked why, she told him because he would be. Her cousin, afraid of Iput and all the other women in his family, had sighed and nodded his head.
Then Iput had told Hemka he would be taking Hetephernebti and Ipwet into the delta and putting them ashore away from any towns or houses. Ipwet had told her that Hetephernebti didn’t want anyone to know their destination. Her sister had been unable to explain why the queen wanted to disappear, only that she was afraid to stay in the palace or even in Waset.
Iput understood.
During the year she had spent at the palace with her sister as one of Hetephernebti’s attendants, she had always felt uncomfortable. There were
too many niches in the hallways, too many dark corners and closed rooms. She didn’t like Kanakht’s haughty presence or Wakare’s scornful glare or Nebka’s arrogant disregard. The guards had been sullen, bored men, except for innocent Hemka.
Hetephernebti had also been different from the other residents of the palace. She had been aware and considerate of everyone around her. Djoser had also been kind. Iput had liked the prince, always enthusiastic, yet patient. He had a hawk’s piercing gaze and a lion cub’s playful energy, yet beneath it lay a promise that one day he could be powerful and dangerous. She was sorry he had been killed.
If she was Hetephernebti, whose father and brother had been killed and whose mother had just died, Iput would be fearful, too.
And so Iput had decided that she would do everything she could to help the young queen.
***
Outside the queen’s chambers, hot light from wall torches danced on the stone, and smoky vapor curled up the walls, drawn to ventilation holes cut in the ceiling. Sniffing and wiping his nose, Senbi scuffled past the torches.
An army veteran, Senbi walked with a limp, the result of a poorly set ankle broken in a fight with bandits along the southern trade route five years ago. There was always a dull ache in the ankle and now his nose had turned to water. With a finger he pushed one nostril shut and turning his head snorted out through the open nostril. He wiped his nose again and then dried his hands on his kilt.
He paused by the queen’s doorway and, placing a hand on the door frame, he leaned in and looked across the room.
The queen’s chambers were at the rear of the palace facing away from the river. The doorway beside Senbi opened to a small antechamber lit now with a single oil lamp. Across the room another doorway led to a reception room, a larger chamber where cushioned benches lined three of the walls. A carved wooden chair, Hetephernebti’s throne, sat a few feet in front of the fourth wall.