The man took her basket from the ground and, squatting, began to collect those loaves of bread that seemed like they might be salvaged. After a moment, Ashayt joined him. This alley was little used, and that was a good thing. Some of the bread was broken and a few loaves more had landed in a puddle of what she thought was camel urine, but most were merely dusty and could still be sold.
“Can you speak?” he asked after a time, and she nodded but no words seemed to come to her lips, and so she continued to collect bread in silence. The man stopped and watched her, amused.
“Do you speak?”
Ashayt made an effort to find her voice and managed a single word. “Yes.”
“You are not from here.”
“No.”
“What is your name? Where are you from?”
“I am called Ashayt. I come from the south. From the deserts outside of Tjenu.”
“Well, I cannot say it is good to meet you, my lady Ashayt, for it has cost me a sack of turquoise worth fifty deben, but neither can I say I am entirely unhappy with this event. I am called Amun Sa, son of Hêtshepsu, son of Nifé-en-Ankh. I am third-cousin by marriage to King Pepi, Lord of all the Earth and descendant of Ptah the Maker, may he rule forever.”
Ashayt, confronted so suddenly with the knowledge that the man who stood before her was nobility, of a social standing so far above her own that it was inconceivable that he was even speaking with her, found herself again at a loss for words. She went immediately to her knees, bowing before him and putting her forehead to the sand. When at last she was able to speak, she began pouring forth a litany of apology, begging for forgiveness for her running into him.
“Please, girl … Ashayt, stop. Enough. I beg you, I … Ptah have mercy upon me, in the name of the King, I command you to stop!”
This last was delivered in such a tone that Ashayt understood she was not to argue – she was only to obey. It was a tone that only a man of royal upbringing would have even known how to use, and she followed his command instinctively. She stopped apologizing, snapping her mouth shut, but continued to lie prostrate before him.
“Well, that’s a start. Now, please, stand up. I see more of this already each day than I care to.”
Ashayt did as he told her, keeping her gaze low, unable to meet his eyes.
“Why won’t you look at me?” Amun Sa asked her, and, after a moment, he spoke again in that tone of command. “Answer me.”
“It is not right, my Lord,” Ashayt answered. “I should not … I must not even speak to you. I do so now only because you command it.”
“Why do you feel this way?”
“You are cousin to the King!”
“Third-cousin. By marriage. My father’s wife’s great-grandfather was the tenth son of the great King Teti of Seheteptawy, borne by his third wife, the Queen Khuit. I am just a scribe, and not a King.”
“Yet you are of noble blood, my Lord, and I am nothing, a peasant girl from the desert and a baker of bread. I have cost you your jewels, and their worth is more than I could ever hope to pay back. Oh, please forgive my clumsiness and allow me to rid you of my presence.”
Amun Sa studied her for some time, long enough that at last Ashayt was forced to look up and meet his eyes, if only for a moment, to confirm that he was still there. When she did this, she felt again that thrill of desire running like a bright streak through her, and a shiver went down the entire length of her spine. She quickly glanced back to the ground. At last Amun Sa spoke.
“I offer forgiveness for your clumsiness gladly, for truly I think the fault belongs to that damned pickpocket. As for ridding me of your presence, that I cannot allow. I find your presence pleasant.”
Ashayt felt her cheeks warming, but she said nothing.
“May I accompany you to the market, Ashayt-from-the-desert?”
“If it would please you, my Lord,” Ashayt said.
“Then let us be on our way, for it would please me very much.”
Amun Sa bent, and picked up her basket, and started forth. Ashayt, confused and startled both by this stranger’s actions and by the overwhelming desire within her that she could not seem to force down, stared for a moment in surprise. Then, with no other options immediately available to her and no reason to search for any, she followed him.
* * *
They became lovers, of course. Ashayt supposed that her desire for Amun Sa had been naked on her face, in the way she moved, in the way she spoke. For his part, Amun Sa had never seemed to suffer from even a moment’s hesitation. He would tell her later that he had wanted her from the very moment he had helped her stand up in that dusty alley.
They had not lain together that night, nor for weeks afterward, but he had been waiting for her at the market the next day, and the day after that. As he helped her sell her bread, they told each other of their lives. Ashayt learned that Amun Sa was twenty-six, and had been married to the daughter of a powerful governor since the age of fifteen. He and his wife hated each other, and they spent time together only when absolutely necessary.
“She is an ill-bred, illiterate shrew that cares only for acquiring jewelry and stuffing her face with delicacies – while the people her father governs starve,” he told Ashayt one day as they walked along the river’s edge. Ashayt, who could not read herself and who had never tasted anything that might be described as a delicacy, had kept her mouth shut.
“I wish so very much to be rid of her,” Amun Sa muttered, mostly to himself, as they walked along the river’s edge.
“Could you not leave her and take for yourself … another woman?” Ashayt asked him, careful to keep her voice neutral.
“I would do so gladly, but we were wed at the command of my King, and I have been forbidden to divorce.”
“Yet you do not wish to be with her.”
“I do not. She has taken command of my finances like a good wife but wastes our income on nonsense. She has borne me but two children, and not because she is barren, but rather because it is an effort to kindle any desire for her, an effort to bring her to my bed, and an effort even more to convince her to perform her duties as a wife.”
Ashayt, who at the time had only a vague notion of what those duties entailed, felt her cheeks warming. I would perform them for you, she thought. I would do whatever you asked.
Amun Sa was looking at her now and she could not meet his gaze, but she knew he must have guessed at some of these thoughts for she heard him laugh quietly. He stopped walking and stood looking out at the expanse of blue water, typically so wide, but grown now sluggish and thin from drought. Ashayt stood next to him, also looking out, wondering why the Gods had put this man before her yet saddled him with an unbreakable marriage.
“I should let you return to your family,” Amun Sa said after a time.
“They will not miss me yet for a little while,” Ashayt said. It was not precisely the truth, but neither would her foster parents object if she returned home later than normal.
“Yet I must let you go. I must, for both of our sakes.”
“Why, my Lord?”
“I fear that if I remain any longer in your presence, I will ask you to do things with me that men and women sometimes do, when they are free. When they wish to show that they care for each other. That they desire each other.”
It was the most direct statement of his feelings for her that he had yet made, and Ashayt felt a rush of adrenaline at his words. She chose her response carefully.
“My Lord Amun Sa, if you were to ask me to do these things with you, I would not refuse you.”
“I am a married man and cannot take you for a wife. We could never be much more than ghosts, moving together in the dark but fleeing when the light comes, and if there are children, they will be the children of ghosts. They would have to live without knowing their father’s name. You should go and find another man, one who can make for you a proper husband, with a fortune for you to care for, who will be father to your children and—”
Ashay
t touched the fingers of her hand to his shoulder, and felt there flesh that was jerking, shaking. Goosebumps rippled across his skin as she stroked it, and Ashayt found herself fighting against the desire within her to press herself against him, force him to hold her, force him to make her his. She wanted to do this, but knew she must not. It must be his choice, his decision, his desire.
“There is no other man,” she said. “Neither here in this city nor outside of its walls. There is no other and I would not wish it so even if I could. My Lord, you know what I will say, if you ask … but you must ask.”
Amun Sa turned to look at her now, still trembling, his dark eyes almost black in the slowly setting sun. He reached his hand out and ran it once down the side of her face, his touch like a gentle summer breeze, and Ashayt closed her eyes.
“Please ask,” she whispered.
Amun Sa put his hands on her shoulders and was silent for a moment longer. Ashayt stood still, eyes closed, barely daring to breathe.
When Amun Sa spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Ashayt, do you love me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then tell me so.”
“I …” Ashayt paused, not in doubt or fear but simply because she had never said these words, and they felt new to her lips. She took a breath, looked into his eyes, nodded.
“I love you, Amun Sa.”
She could see his desire in his eyes and thought for a moment that he would sweep her from her feet right at this very spot, take her to him and kiss her, bring her to some secluded place and show her what it was to lie with a man. With a visible effort, he took hold of himself, and he smiled at her.
“And I love you, Ashayt, so I ask you: will you come to me tonight, and lie with me, and love me as I love you?”
“I will. Only tell me where, and when, and I will come.”
“There is a fisherman’s shack, not far from the market, on the western bank where two palm trees lean together to form a cross. The man who owns it does not use it during the night, and when we were young my friends and I would stay there sometimes, fishing for eels. There is a bed, and a place for a fire. I will be there when the moon comes above those trees, and I will wait there for you. I will wait until the sun rises, if I must.”
“I will not make you wait,” Ashayt told him. “I will come to you when the moon is in the sky. I would … I would go with you now, if it was your wish.”
Amun Sa smiled at her, leaned in, pressed his lips to the skin between her neck and shoulder, and whispered, “Do not tempt me.”
Ashayt shivered, sighed, tried in vain to slow her beating heart. Never before had a man put his lips on her body in such a way, and the touch of them overwhelmed her, filled her with desire. The thought of what else might be in store, later that night, was nearly too much to bear.
“Tonight, my love,” Amun Sa told her, and Ashayt nodded.
“Yes, tonight. At the fisherman’s shack when the moon is above the two palm trees that form a cross. Yes.”
Amun Sa looked into her eyes for another interminable moment, and Ashayt wished with all her heart that he would seal their arrangement with a kiss, but he turned instead and set off toward the city, and he did not look back.
Ashayt closed her eyes and stood listening to the noise of water on stone, the rush of wind in the reeds, the call of birds in the palms. She smiled, and looked up at the sun still hanging so far above the horizon, and began her own journey home.
* * *
When the creature took her, Ashayt had been meeting with her new lover for little more than six weeks. Amun Sa would find her in the market at some point during the day, and help her with her sales, and after they would take walks and talk together. On some days he would not show up at all, and Ashayt would understand with an aching disappointment that his affairs had kept him away that day and that she would not be with him under the moonlight that night.
She wondered how long the wild joy inside of her would last. She knew at some point that darker thoughts would begin to tinge the edges of her happiness, like spilled wine seeping into wet linen, spreading its wicked fingers out ever wider over time. She knew that she would grow jealous of Amun Sa’s wife, angry that she could not take her place at his side, terrified of what would happen when she inevitably found herself with child and without a husband. She knew that all of this would come, but as of yet it had not. As of this sixth week in their illicit affair, she felt only love – and the overwhelming desire to partake of his body and to give her own over to him.
It was on the journey back from just such a rendezvous that the creature came. They had made the mistake of falling asleep together in the hut, limbs entangled, the sound of each other’s breathing a lulling drone. Amun Sa had for a time whispered beautiful things in her ear. He had again petitioned the king for permission to divorce, and had hopes that this time the answer might be different. He had heard word that his wife’s father was falling out of favor with the royal court, that politicians all across the kingdom were overstepping their bounds, using the drought as a means to further their own ends. It might be possible, it might …
They had slept, and in the early hours of the morning Ashayt had awoken with a start, convinced that someone was watching them. Some presence seemed to have filled the hut, like a great, dark cloud looming over her, and yet there was no one to be seen in the small room. The only exits were the door, firmly barred, and a tiny hole in the roof to accommodate the smoke rising from the fire. The thatched roof could not have supported even a young girl, let alone the sort of adult who might desire to spy upon a sleeping couple. There could be no one who watched them, and yet it seemed—
Amun Sa stirred next to her, mumbled something inaudible, and all at once it seemed that the presence fled, pulling away from her mind like a receding tide. Within moments it was gone, and there was only the crackling of the fire and the slow breathing of the naked man beside her. Ashayt disentangled herself from Amun Sa with care, trying not to wake him, and stepped to the door. She removed the bar and pulled the door open just enough to glance outside, but there was nothing to be seen except the stars and the moon and their doubles in the river.
The moon – it hung far too low in the sky. Dawn was near, she thought, and they had spent many hours more in the hut than they ever had before. Surely someone would have missed them by now.
“My love, you must wake,” she said, closing the door and turning away from it. She went to the bed and knelt beside it, taking her plain linen dress from the ground as she did so. She touched Amun Sa’s shoulder and, when this failed to wake him, shook it gently. Amun Sa stirred, groaned, blinked his eyes.
“Wake up. Wake up! Oh, no.” Ashayt went to shake him again, but Amun Sa took her wrist in his hand and held her arm steady. He opened his eyes.
“I am awake,” he said. “What troubles you?”
“Oh, I have been a fool! I allowed myself to fall asleep, and now … it is near dawn, my Lord. The moon has fallen nearly to the hills.”
“Your parents will know you have been away,” Amun Sa said, concern in his voice. He sat up and rubbed a hand across his face.
“Stupid, stupid,” Ashayt was muttering, standing now and struggling into her dress. She could feel Amun Sa’s eyes on her body as she did so and felt, even then, the warm rush of pleasure that came with being desired.
“It is as much my fault as yours,” Amun Sa was saying. He too was standing, finding his clothing – much finer than hers – and beginning to dress. His wig, perched originally on a simple three-legged table, had fallen on the floor during their lovemaking, and he grabbed it now and hastily brushed the dust from it.
“I do not worry for myself,” Ashayt said.
“But your parents—”
“They are not my parents, they are my … my guardians, and anyway, I am too old and too strange to be made wife to any other man. They do not command me, and I would not listen if they tried.”
“You are not strange,” Amun Sa said, and Ashayt
made a noise of frustration, wishing he would hurry, even as her heart filled with joy at these words. She turned, smiling, and pressed her lips to his, hard, feeling his teeth behind them. Amun Sa dropped his wig into the dust again and put his hands around her back, but Ashayt pushed him away.
“I worry for you,” she told him. “You will be missed, and how will you explain your absence?”
“I do not care. To whom will I explain myself? My frigid wife? Our slaves? There is no one in my household who would dare question my actions, and my wife knows her father has lost favor with the king. If she is even aware that I was gone – which I doubt – I will hear no word from her about it.”
“Your slaves will talk,” Ashayt said. She had finished dressing, had put on her own simple wig, and was standing at the door, waiting for him.
“Let them talk, then,” Amun Sa said. He finished making himself presentable and came to join her. “Let them think what they will.”
Ashayt shook her head. “It will make its way back to the King eventually, and whether he favors your wife’s father or not, he will be displeased. Until you can be rid of your wife, we must be discrete. My Lord … my love, there is nothing discrete in sneaking back to our homes as dawn breaks.”
She could see that Amun Sa understood the truth in her words, and also that this truth frustrated him greatly. He paused for a moment, looking at her with his deep, dark eyes but not speaking.
“Go,” Ashayt said, and when he didn’t move, she opened the door for him and stepped out into the sand. “Go!”
Amun Sa remained for a moment more rooted to his spot. He opened his mouth to speak, and Ashayt put her hand to his lips.
“Please, Amun Sa. Because I love you and would not see you put in danger, I beg you, please … go.”
He went, touching her cheek as he did so, striding off into the dark toward his home. Ashayt watched him leave and, when he was out of sight, looked over her shoulder, past the river and to the east. The hills had not yet begun to glow in the way that said dawn was near, but neither did they blend into the inky blackness of night: sunrise was coming. By the time she got home, it would be time to make the bread. She closed the door of the fisherman’s hut behind her and began her trip.
The II AM Trilogy Collection Page 82