Heart of the Lotus

by Mary R Woldering

  “But,” Khentie frowned. “Why did she never mention this among the women of the temples; that he forced her, raped her; that’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

  Other, other, other… The purring echoed through their thoughts.

  “They were courting already, and he had expressed his intent to her mother to take her as wife. She had agreed, but they had not consummated their bodily acts,” Wserkaf shook his head in dismay. “These thoughts have just come pouring into my heart as secrets revealed, Khen. I’m ashamed that I am nearly an old man finding it out. No wonder father despised my flight to study with that old serpent.”

  “Why would she deny him her body, if they were sealed? Was there something else that troubled her about him?” she puzzled.

  “I don’t know. All my father ever said was that in some way she lost her trust of him. He found her weeping in the garden because of her decision and comforted her. I had no idea…”

  Both paused to reflect, but soon the musical cadence began again.

  “What will we do about it?” Khentie pulled his head down to her breasts to comfort him.

  “I want to do something, but what’s the point other than shaming his memory. She’s dead nearly four and twenty years, and still, my father never attempted any sort of justice.”

  “If he even knew,” she muttered.

  Wserkaf knew his mother’s refusal to join with his mentor’s body was certainly unnatural. Part of preparation for marriage was the enjoyment of exploring each other as friends, to see if harmony was possible. An unmarried person fasted from such pleasure only in preparation for the holiest of events.

  Maybe she thought…

  “Other. Oh. Mother. The voices are saying Mother,” she smiled, suddenly wise.

  Wserkaf pressed himself against her gently, then nuzzled her neck, reveling in her breath on his face. His lips traced her sighing open mouth. The purring sensation swelled again, then faded.

  Wserkaf understood. The idea that Hordjedtef had dared to force his mother, a high priestess and Daughter of the God, here all those years ago sickened him.

  All part of the plan, he mused. You pursued her, but fell short of loving her. You wanted the box not for the knowledge it contained, but for its power; so you could overthrow your brother Djedephre and become king. Your own wife had died, and so you pursued your brother’s daughter because of her lineage and legendary access to the flint box. She became suspicious of your motive.

  The purring became oddly harmonic. The inspector stared at his hands again, unsure of his next move.

  “Put your hands like this,” Khentie corrected him, turning him so that his own back was against the wall with his hands placed down. Hers were stretched up. Now they resembled an image of the eternally copulating brother and sister gods Geb and Nut. Earth and Night Sky. “Think we’re supposed to imitate the god pose.”

  Khentie began to move gently, swaying her hips against him, teasing. Seeing her eyes were closed, he shut his own eyes for several moments to heighten his enjoyment of her dancing against him. His hands drifted up to touch her.

  “Keep your hands in the lower position, Wse,” she rasped. “I think something wonderful is about to happen.”

  Chapter 14: Sacred Discovery

  As he reclined against the wall with Khentie pressed against him, Wserkaf thought the wonderful thing she foresaw was going to be the thrill of lovemaking in a strange place.

  When they had been much younger, Wse and she had often sought out daring places where people might catch them making love: the granary, a shed in the garden, by the reflection pool, among the reeds by the marsh where the fishers cast nets or where women came to do the wash. He almost laughed aloud, but the expression caught in his throat when he noticed a rising, floating sensation.

  Although Wserkaf’s thinly sandaled feet were touching the beaten earth floor of the chamber, and his back was against what he thought was the final chamber door, he noticed he was now lying flat on his back with his wife sprawled atop him. The purring noise grew louder, obscuring all other thoughts.

  One of his hands slipped from the depression and strayed outward on the way to her arm to hold her close but felt only air. The edge of the wall was missing. Wse froze and opened his eyes. Then Khentie, noticing that he startled, opened hers. The slab had tilted backward without a change in sound. Now it resembled a flat table. The purring stopped. When they turned over, Khentie and Wse saw a quiet, oddly lit room behind the slab.

  “Really?” he gasped aloud. “This is just like I remembered in my dream, I think,” he felt confused because two memories of the same event lay atop each other. The first dream had been of him and Khentie with the wooden box in the other room. The more he thought about it, he realized this was the room he had seen in the dream.

  A small dais with a telltale long stone box on it could be seen in the ambient light of the chamber.

  “Oh, look! Oh, by the gods, look, Wse! It’s there, just waiting for us.” Khentie’s voice chimed, her gentle yet firm arm gripping him just the way he had remembered it in his dream.

  “Khentie –” he felt his lips say but he wasn’t sure if a sound had come out.

  “Yes, beloved, you see. We found it right where your father said it was!”

  The susurrations of purring melody restarted then formed into a man’s voice that spoke inside their thoughts like a spirit in the dark.

  Keep these safe, younger light.

  They belong to the ages.

  No one king shall own them

  No one kingdom shall guard

  The knowledge found within.

  “Who is that?” Wse called sharply, his eyes straining and seeking every corner, then he realized it was absurd for him to speak aloud to unspoken thoughts. By the look on her face, he knew Khentie had heard the message too.

  “I don’t think that’s Hordjedtef. He wouldn’t dare. Besides, the voice sounds higher than his.” Wse scrambled from the slab, not even concerned that it might upright itself and close, trapping both him and his wife behind it once their weight had left it.

  In the distance, they sensed noises of tentative footsteps and shuffling. It wasn’t the owner of the disembodied voice. It was the one they first suspected.

  “Oh damn. That’s him,” Wserkaf grumbled, “and right as we are finding the box. Wonder if his spirit minions beat a gong as he slept!”

  Wserkaf heard the faintest of calls in the distance.

  “Wse, are you down there?”

  And he brought servants.

  Ghostly arms reached around him as if they embraced him from behind. At first he thought Khentie touched him, but when he looked to one side he saw the ethereal shape of his mother standing next to her.

  Don’t answer yet. It’s important, the ghostly woman whispered into his thoughts. He knows he is losing all he ever sought.

  Khentie recoiled, sensing the spirit and understanding who it was even though she had never met Wse’s mother. Her own eyes were fastened on a second ghostly form. This one was a short, round old man; the owner of the higher sounding voice that urged them to protect the secrets.

  “Wse, do you see…” Khentie placed her hands in the position of a dispelling incantation over the second apparition.

  “I know who it is by the way he appears. Don’t worry. It just means we’re really meant to do this because so many are returning from the West to give witness. I only wish Dede was standing here right now just to see the spirits aligning themselves on our behalf,” Wserkaf almost laughed in his excitement. He turned to the short, ghostly figure. “I see Great Djedi of Sneferu, am I right?” he asked.

  The apparition smiled, nodded, and put a ghostly finger to its lips.

  It is time. The vision of the old man spoke into his thoughts. Take the hands of the beloved of the gods – the divine mother walking. Touch you the box as one.

  Wserkaf remembered that moment when he and Hordjedtef had taken the box of neter stones from Ariennu’s goods when th
e women were brought to them. His teacher had said, with the voice of some authority: we must touch the box as one. Khentie and he looked at each other, open-mouthed, then reached forward to touch the box in unison.

  The flood of emotions that swept over him was beyond reason. When Wserkaf had jointly touched the box of neter stones with Hordjedtef months earlier, he felt little if anything other than the stirrings of his imagination. The inspector looked in his wife’s eyes and knew she felt the same. As they lifted the box from its place and put it on the tilted-slab door to the chamber, the apparitions faded.

  “It’s so light”, he whispered, straining his ears for the sound of Hordjedtef making his way down the path. “It’s stone; flint I was told, but it feels lighter than the air-stones that float on the water of the Green Sea. Empty maybe?” he smoothed his fingers along the edge, noticing how perfectly the carved lid fit over the base. It wasn’t latched or bound, but sealed tight when the top rested on the bottom. He lifted the lid easily and set it aside. The first thing he noticed were several golden tubes the length of a man’s fingers. These lay on top of folded, but oddly un-aged papyrus

  “Khentie, feast your eyes…” Wserkaf’s voice rasped in excitement. “These are gold; not a jewel on them, but no less fine. This papyrus looks freshly rolled and pressed, but it can’t be new.” He lifted the sheets and found assorted tablets of a different texture than most ostraca. The tiniest of characters had been carefully etched on them.

  In the distance, he heard…

  “Wserkaf,” Hordjedtef called out. “I know you’ve come down here and I know why you have. Elder Userre told me all about it right away, so if you fancy to believe there’s intrigue and any truth in what those sojourners fed you, there really isn’t any.”

  If he compelled my father… Wserkaf froze. He wondered once again how Hordjedtef had discovered so much about what they were doing and how he could counter it with flawless defenses.

  “Don’t pay attention to him,” Khentie urged. “He’s coming down here and we can’t stop him or hide the box. I’ll try to think of something.”

  “Think fast, then. I’ll just see if there’s anything of special rarity in here that he’d really be wanting. So far, it’s just ancient writings.” Strange, the priest thought. Everything’s so disorganized. Who would’ve – Humph! Now, look at that! The papyrus was the easiest to read. He held it up to the lamp and recognized the lyric quality of Hordjedtef’s writing.

  This was the “Going Forth by Day” passage. He had committed it to memory for all the funeral rites in which he was asked to serve as a priest and representative of the god.

  “This can’t be what he wants. It’s common knowledge.” Wserkaf took one of the golden tubes on top of the stack and noticed wax plugs were in each end. “Go ahead, Khentie. See if you can slow him down,” Wserkaf pried the wax at the end of one tube.

  Khentie moved past him towards the edge of the slab closest to the wall, but paused before climbing onto it. “Wse, listen. I think he’s arguing with the men he brought. He’s not coming any closer right now but he might soon. Just hurry.”

  Wserkaf emptied out a roll of semi sheer material that shimmered in the lamplight. He unrolled it and lamented that that the light was not brighter.

  It’s flexible enough to be rolled. Characters on this too. More writing and no time to know. He shrugged and continued digging for something worthy of Hordjedtef’s greed, then returned his gaze to the characters on the sheet and gasped when saw them more clearly.

  “This – this – these are –” he tried to speak, but his astonished words caught in his throat.

  “What? What is it?” Khentie glanced back at her consort.

  “Star Charts,” he breathed out. “I think these must be the ones the god Imhotep left, but it’s what they’re written on. I can’t tell much about it in this light but –”

  Khentie touched the shiny surface and marveled.

  “Perhaps not even made by men, Wse; not even the by Great Architect,” her eyes blinked in astonished wonder. “This is something made of wonder from the star places, see?” her fingertips smoothed the surface. As she did, what he could see of the mysterious printed characters faded and re-formed.

  Wserkaf wanted to study that effect and to study the contents of the tubes at length, but then he heard his mentor’s distant voice coming nearer, railing at the men who had come with him.

  “This place is not cursed, you wretched cowards. That is only the shade of my own mentor coming to welcome me.” Silence. “Go on then! Run away and offer your sacrifices – worthless candidates. Think that is scary, you wait a few years until you face the Pit of Chaos trial. You’ll know scary, then – en – en” his chatter echoed at the end of each phrase but he moved no closer.

  “He knows he’s better not to come down here alone. He’ll fall and break a bone if he isn’t careful,” Wserkaf busily inserted the material back in the tube. He needed to take this box and everything in it out of these chambers, but Hordjedtef was waiting. He pressed out the wax, stuffed it in the hole, and then stared as it re-formed and sealed itself as if by magic. The tube looked as it had never been opened.

  Thin flat slabs with the same mysterious translucency lay beneath the tubes. These were easier to read. They were written in the same combined hieratic script but used only the most basic, easy-to-decipher, symbols. These laid out precepts and codes of moral conduct like Hordjedtef’s work on the subject.

  Wserkaf laughed inwardly, because the elder had claimed the work had come from divine inspiration; dictated by Djehuti himself. And yet, he knew ancient legend stated a code of laws was written on tablets cut from precious stone. He held the lamp closer, trying to see if he could determine the composition, but then saw something else at the bottom of the box. Wserkaf dug under the several tablets and tubes.

  “Ho – what?” he drew out the object. “No.”

  “Your Wdjat?” Khentie gaped.

  “It can’t be mine, but it looks just like it,” he answered, holding it up in the available light. He remembered his mother had tearfully given his own crystalline medallion to him the day he left to study with the priests of Djehuti.

  “Didn’t you give yours to Lady Ariennu, the healer?” Khentie leaned against the platform to get a better look at it.

  “I did, but this is the eye facing the other direction. I didn’t know there were two.”

  “I see that now, but why do you think two were made and not as one design with left and right in the same piece as is usual. Do you think two of them were needed?” Khentie rubbed his shoulders as he stared and studied the crystalline piece but they both heard grumbling getting nearer in the tunnel.

  “Wse. Answer me. Are you well? Has something happened to you?”

  “He knows better,” Wserkaf whispered, then added. “One side for seeing and the light eye of Ra. The other side is for truth; the moon eye or Djehuti eye, that bastard!” he murmured. “If he knew all along that there were two, but told me there was just the one, come from the Djed Djedi the magician on his death, this changes everything.”

  The voice of Djed Djedi whispered once again in his thoughts.

  Speak to him, Wserkaf Irimaat. Take these things and learn them well. Do not blame him who has tried before. He wished to know the secrets, but his heart was too full of anger. Know what is true and why it has been hidden. Once it is known, it must be used wisely. If you have seen in your own elevated heart of hearts that you or the time in which you exist is unready, return it and keep it hidden as I did. Truth is for all. It is why one studies it, if one is to rule. I am now of the ages. I am now at peace.

  The specter faded. The chamber felt empty, yet full of light.

  “I think he’s gone to the stars for good now,” Wserkaf’s head whipped around and he saw Khentie’s bowed and reverent head as she spoke a blessing for the departed ones and then turned her attention to the presence of Hordjedtef.

  Wserkaf, was still stunned by the knowle
dge that there was a second wdjat. He had always wondered about the slightly blunt edge on one side of the disc he had given to Lady Ariennu. He had assumed there had been a flaw in the stone that had prevented a smooth edge being rendered by the craftsman. He set it on top of the smooth tablets beneath the papyrus and the tubes, then noticed the iris of the eye motif engraved on the surface begin to glimmer. The script beneath it appeared larger for easier reading. Staring closer, he saw the characters inside the eye change not only in shape but in language.

  The writing changes and becomes our formal text, he mused. But look here… he continued until he heard more shuffling, this time closer.

  “Wserkaf… son of my heart. Speak to me if you can. Your Majesty…” it sounded as if the old man was at least halfway down the long hall outside the puzzle door.

  “We’re still here, Great One. We’re safe. Stay where you are, there are traps down here.” Wserkaf called out. Even though he knew there was little time, he found himself riveted to the function of the new wdjat.

  Khentie, satisfied the elder might stay rather than endanger himself, focused on the box with her husband once more.

  Very quietly, the Inspector moved the disc over some cone shaped Sanghir writing, without reading it. “There. See. The very thing Marai tried to tell him. The very reason he wanted to destroy him,” Wserkaf’s breath halted in excitement. “No one god, goddess, or group of them – no one land or people – to have dominion over another. All to live in peace and truth. Wisdom to be given only when all have become ready to see it. The wisdom is for all! This is why it was hidden, not because it shows how to build a fabulous monument. The monument was not meant to be of stone. It was a pyr-akh to the stars when all ascend, yet only those whether of the gods or not can do so. This is why! That’s what he was looking for. Quick. Hide it in your sash and let’s take this box out. If he asks where this wdjat is, we’ll know he’s lying to us.” He handed the medallion to her.