Bird in a Snare

by N. L. Holmes

  “Yah, girls! What’s going on here?” Hani demanded in mock severity as the couple entered. Neferet looked up from her knees, guilty but giggling as she backed out from under Baket-iset’s couch, her little brown bottom first, a napkin in her teeth. Sat-hut-haru covered her mouth in an unsuccessful effort to stop laughing.

  “Papa, my dog has just recovered her lost bone,” said Baket-iset, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Come here, you bad dog, and give me that.”

  “Neferet, dear, you’ll hurt your knees,” Nub-nefer objected as she lifted the “dog” to her feet. “Take that dirty thing out of your mouth. It’s been on the floor.”

  “We were pretending I was Baket’s dog, Mama.” Neferet barked for added realism.

  “Your knees are absolutely black.” Her mother sighed, brushing them with the surrendered napkin. She gave her youngest daughter’s braided sidelock a tug. “You’re incorrigible, you little tomboy.”

  Hani chuckled. “And what does Ta-miu think of the new dog?” he asked, looking around for Baket-iset’s cat.

  Baket-iset said, “She’s stayed out of the room since the dog came, Papa. She disappeared with her tail all bushed out.”

  “Probably eating Papa’s birds somewhere,” Sat-hut-haru predicted direly.

  Nub-nefer sighed. She turned to her husband as if reluctantly inviting him to break the spell of good humor with his news.

  Hani’s laughter dried up, and when he spoke, his voice was serious. “I have to make a long trip, girls. It may take me as long as a year.” He saw from the corner of his eye that Nub-nefer had completely recovered her aplomb. She was composed and matter-of-fact in the presence of the children. His words were greeted with a chorus of groans. Neferet threw her arms around Hani’s waist and howled, “Arooo.”

  Hani knuckled her shaven scalp affectionately. “I’m sorry, girls... and puppy. King’s business.”

  “Where are you going this time, Papa?” Baket-iset asked.

  “A’amu. Do you remember Abdi-ashirta, who dined with us some weeks ago? He’s been assassinated. The king wants me to investigate.”

  The girls gave another outcry. “Oh, he was so kind,” Baket-iset said for them all.

  His perceptive eldest daughter’s judgment was as accurate as the Weighing of the Heart that awaited the dead. Whatever his flaws, Abdi-ashirta had been basically goodhearted. Who knew what would replace him? And that brought back to his mind Nub-nefer’s fears about what would come after their good king became Osir. Some strange battle was brewing around them, he feared. Isfet—Chaos—was rising and beating back the goodness of ma’at, the order of the world. The age-old struggle had descended upon him and his family.

  ⸎

  “How would you like to visit Nefer-khepru-ra’s new temple at Ipet-isut, Father?” Hani asked Mery-ra the next morning.

  Mery-ra turned to his son in surprise. “You haven’t seen it?”

  “No,” Hani said, raising his eyebrows. “Have you?”

  Mery-ra shrugged. “No, but everyone is talking about it. I’m surprised you’re taking the time just now, though. You must have things to do before you go.”

  Hani blew a disturbed breath out through his mouth. “Nub-nefer is extremely upset about it... and everything else the coregent has done. She seems to think all chaos is going to break loose when he comes to the throne.”

  Mery-ra looked more serious than usual. He shot his son a sideways glance. “Amen-em-hut has been saying that a lot. He’s said it to me as well. He needs to watch his tongue.”

  “But is it true?” Hani turned a quick eye on Mery-ra. “Don’t answer that, Father—at least not aloud.”

  The old man pursed his lips. “I thank the gods neither you nor your brother are priests of Amen-Ra. I shouldn’t be surprised if dark days are coming for that bunch.”

  “But Nub-nefer is a chantress. Her father and brother have both been Third Prophet. We can’t live as if nothing is happening.”

  “Nothing has happened yet, son. Our good god Neb-ma’at-ra is still among the living.”

  But for how long? wondered Hani, remembering his last audience. He would never say such a thing out loud, lest it be perceived as an attempt to put a curse on the king. “Life, prosperity, and health to him,” he said. And, the gods knew, he wished the Living Haru many years of healthy and prosperous life.

  Despite the million things he had to organize before his trip, Hani set off with his father and Maya toward the southern end of the city, where the Greatest of Shrines rose above the houses of men. They made a detour around the mighty walled enclosure of the Ipet-isut to where the coregent’s new temples were still under construction at the edge of the eastern desert. The freshly built wall of the sacred precinct rose, sharp and formidable, from what had only recently been an alluvial mudflat.

  Young Maya whistled at the magnitude. “Right in the Amen priests’ faces, aren’t they?”

  “No doubt.” Hani shaded his eyes and stared around. The golden sandstone of the pylon gate was in darkest shade against the rising sun, and from their towering cedar flagpoles, the long red banners hung limp in the morning’s still air. Their shadows projected across the road like the horns of some immense creature ready to gore the temple of Amen-Ra. Around the doors, the painted decorations were still garishly fresh. “Quite a place. This is the one they call the Gem-pa-aten, the Sun Disk is Found.”

  The gates stood wide. Hani looked up and saw that the lintel was cut away over the center. Mery-ra caught the direction of his eyes and gaped, his head back. “What’s that all about? Have they not finished it?”

  “Does that destabilize it, do you suppose?” Maya murmured, skittering through the gateway as if he feared it would fall on him. Already, the three men were confronted by things they didn’t understand. It occurred to Hani that no shadow fell across their heads as they entered the topless gate.

  A few shaven-headed priests of the Aten and workmen carrying a long ladder passed at a distance, but no one challenged the visitors; the vast court in which the temple itself was embedded was part of the public area. Under the glaring sun of a spring morning, it was as ornate and brightly decorated on the interior as it was massive and inexpressive on the outside, a kind of man-made geode. Hani stared around him at the painted walls, seeking in vain the expected scenes of divine cult. Already, confusion had disoriented him. A row of enormous statues against the south wall drew his eye, and he drifted in that direction, half-afraid of what he would see. He sensed his father and secretary trailing in his wake.

  “Mut, mother of us all!” Mery-ra exclaimed at Hani’s back. “What is this?”

  Hani stared up at the first of a long row of lofty statues fronting the piers that punctuated the painted wall. That they depicted the younger king, Hani had no doubt, because the elements of Nefer-khepru-ra’s distinctive face were recognizably present although in an exaggerated, almost cartoonish form. Even seen from below, the chin extended endlessly, and the slitted, sinister eyes gazed down above an ambiguous smile.

  And below that... was it man or woman who held the sacred regalia? The clothing was masculine, but... Hani gaped in spite of himself, unable to tear away his offended eyes from the bulbous hips, the swelling thighs, the... breasts. Atop the figure’s headdress rose the tall feathers of the god Shu.

  Maya made a retching noise in his throat.

  “By all that’s holy,” gasped Mery-ra. “The coregent doesn’t look like that. What’s he trying to say?”

  The hair on Hani’s neck was standing on end as if he were somehow endangered simply by the proximity of this malevolent image, whose eyes seemed to pierce him. He felt like an insignificant insect at its feet. He cast a nervous glance across the sun-drenched court and saw a shaven-headed priest watching them, faceless against the light. Perhaps they’d stood too long in one spot. The priests had to know what people were saying in front of the statues. How has Nefer-khepru-ra even found men to serve this cult?

  “Let’s go,” Hani s
aid in nervous haste. “I think we’ve seen enough. Amen-em-hut isn’t exaggerating.”

  Mery-ra exploded in a loud, outraged voice, “This is contrary to ma’at.”

  But Hani hissed, “Quiet, Father. No one say anything until we’re out of here. Now, go.”

  The three of them strode as rapidly as possible back to the gateway, Maya’s little legs skipping along to keep up. But there was nothing amusing about their withdrawal. Hani could almost hear the slithering of Apep, the Chaos Serpent, at their heels as the men hustled through the gate and into the road. Only in the cold shadow of the wall did he dare, at last, to draw a breath. Throat knotted, he glanced at his companions.

  Maya and Mery-ra stared back at him with round eyes. “Perhaps he’s trying to look like Hapy,” the young man said hopefully. “An androgynous fertility god.”

  “No doubt you’re right,” Hani agreed, tight-lipped. “We must say nothing of our misgivings. After all, none of us are priests or artists; we won’t have to deal with whatever this is that’s going on. We must continue to serve the Living Haru and, after him, whomever the gods raise to the throne of the Two Lands.”

  “Thank all the Great Ones I’m more or less retired,” Mery-ra rumbled. He clapped his son on the back. “You, on the other hand...”

  “Father,” Hani said, his voice taut with urgency, “please see to it that Nub-nefer keeps her opinions to herself in my absence.”

  “Absolutely, my boy.”

  “It’s important. Maybe a matter of life or death.”

  “Understood, son. Although she’s not one to obey when she doesn’t want to.” Mery-ra raised a shaggy eyebrow.

  “I’ll talk to her, make sure she comprehends.” Hani thought of his wife’s wild-eyed distress the day before and wondered if such an understanding were possible. “Nefer-khepru-ra has some theological agenda in mind, I don’t doubt. This all means something perfectly... perfectly sane.”

  He would have given a lot to talk with Amen-em-hut at that moment and have his brother-in-law explain what this bizarre new style of representation presaged. There had to be a reason for it. But Hani was no priest, and he was glad of it, because that way, he could reassure himself in perfect honesty that he had no idea what this all meant.

  The feathers of Shu, the first generation of gods after the Atum, the All, split... a new beginning. Is that what it means? But of what? What new thing is comparable in magnitude to the beginning of the world?

  That was of no importance. As a servant of the Hall of Royal Correspondence, his only duty was to obey the king—no matter who wore the double crown—and help to forward Kemet’s foreign policy. I must keep my eyes focused on that objective.

  The three men set off home through the dust of the road and the rising heat of day, each sunk in his respective thoughts. They flanked the Ipet-isut, vast as a whole city within its massive, serpentine wall. The Gem-pa-aten was huge, but it couldn’t compare to this. There was nothing like the fortress of Amen-Ra in the entire world, and Hani had seen a good many foreign temples. Its solidity comforted him somehow. Nothing could trouble such a god as the Hidden One, who from this spot—the site of the very first land to emerge from the waters of nothingness—had reigned for a thousand years over the Two Lands. His priests were legion, his wealth uncountable. No wind from the desert could shake him, the maker of kings.

  But in fact, Hani had been infected by the same formless fear that had hold of his wife. He detected a stench of evil clinging to him, as if he’d stepped in something vile and brought it trailing along as he fled—something so putrid that it repelled even the carrion birds.

  ⸎

  Hani would have liked to spend the final evening before his departure in an atmosphere of joy with his family. And he did, up to a point. But he was unnaturally preoccupied. Nub-nefer caught his eye after a particularly uneasy silence and squeezed his hand. Hani saw Baket-iset watching with her perceptive gaze from her couch. She knows—she whom I would above all have spared. He observed with gratitude Mery-ra, laughing and teasing the younger children, making sure that the mood stayed close to normalcy. It wouldn’t do to have the youngsters catch their parents’ anxieties. Hani could remember how carefully his father and mother had protected Hani and his brother from any unsettling grown-up concerns. There were years enough ahead as they grew to shoulder the uncertainties of the times.

  “Papa,” Pa-kiki called across the room, “will you take me to A’amu someday?”

  “Of course, son.” Hani smiled. “But you need to be good at your reading and writing first. The Amurrites think all Egyptian boys are unnaturally smart, and we don’t want them to find out otherwise.”

  The boy stared at his father, as if uncertain whether he was teasing or not, then relaxed as Hani burst into laughter.

  “What about Egyptian girls?” demanded Neferet. “Aren’t they smart, too?”

  “Smart and beautiful. Amurrite girls throw themselves into the Great Green in despair when they see an Egyptian.”

  “I feel sorry for them,” murmured Sat-hut-haru. “We’re not all smart and beautiful.”

  “You’re not smart, and I’m not beautiful, you mean.” Neferet grinned.

  In spite of her name—Neferet, “beautiful.” The sharp little rascal.

  “All of my granddaughters certainly are both,” Mery-ra assured Sat-hut-haru.

  Neferet snickered. “Even Cousin Meryet-mut? She’s dumb as a stone.”

  But Nub-nefer objected, tipping her head in warning, “Now, Neferet, that isn’t nice. Your cousin is as smart as she needs to be.”

  “And you, little sister, are far too smart in the mouth!” Baket-iset added with mock sternness. “Somebody is going to have his hands full with you for a wife.”

  Just don’t let her hear anything against the coregent and repeat it aloud, Hani thought uneasily. Oh, Nub-nefer, my dear one, don’t let her hear you say anything, even inside the house.

  His father looked up at him, his thick eyebrows a little quirked as if he could discern his son’s thoughts.

  Hani changed the subject. “Where is Qenyt?”

  His wife gratefully took up the shift of topic. “She’s in the garden, fishing.”

  “Is she smart or beautiful?” Pa-kiki wanted to know.

  Neferet began to stalk around with slow heron-like motions, her fingers pointed before her like a beak. She pecked at her brother with a groan of a cry. Hani chuckled at the sheer accuracy of the heron call. The girl was smart, all right. He hoped it wouldn’t get her into trouble.

  But Pa-kiki grabbed his sister and turned her over his knee, bare bottom up. “I’ll ‘graaa’ you, you insolent bird...”

  “Yesterday she was a dog, and now she’s a bird,” sniffed Sat-hut-haru with the dignity of a thirteen-year-old who had surrendered her sidelock and taken on the clusters of braids of an adolescent young lady.

  “When she’s really a monkey!” cried Pa-kiki. “She’s replaced me as the family monkey.”

  “I’m really a horse,” Neferet informed everyone. She climbed to her feet again and brushed herself off, then began to prance around, picking up her feet and shaking her head. “A beautiful black horse with a star on her forehead.”

  The whole family laughed.

  “What kind of animal are you, Papa?” she asked. “If we were all animals, what kind would you be?”

  “I’m a duck,” he decided to a gale of laughter. “Nub-nefer, my dear?”

  One by one, they each picked the animal they thought was most like them—a cat, a goose, a jackal, a dove.

  “What about Maya?” Neferet asked.

  “A hedgehog!” said Pa-kiki. “They have short legs.”

  “And he can be prickly.” Mery-ra chuckled, to Nub-nefer’s disapproval. Hani tried not to laugh, but since they were all being turned into animals, he couldn’t see that it targeted his secretary unfairly.

  “And the king’s a hippopotamus!” Neferet crowed.

  Silence fell with an almost phy
sical thud. The children’s laughter died as they caught sight of the adults’ faces. Nub-nefer’s eyes grew suddenly wide and fixed, and Hani stopped breathing for a horrified moment. His father stared about for any of the servants who might have overheard.

  The little girl, realizing her words had fallen amiss, stammered, red-faced. “Life, p-prosperity, and health to him...”

  Hani said, more harshly than he had ever spoken to his children, “Neferet, we never, ever show disrespect for the king.” Fear made him bark at her. Fear made his heart hammer in his chest. But why, in the safe confines of my own home? He could feel the sweat break out on his shaven scalp.

  “I just meant he was—”

  “Enough. We speak only in the most respectful tones of the Living Haru.”

  Neferet’s face began to pucker, and Sat-hut-haru slid from her father’s knee as if he were radiating his disquietude as a brazier radiates heat. Nub-nefer was frozen at his side, not daring even to look at him.

  Why, all of a sudden, am I so full of fear? Why should I pounce on a child for something Neb-ma’at-ra himself would probably laugh at? Take your own advice, man: “Speak sweetly, and you will be loved.”

  Just then, he heard voices in the vestibule. Aha appeared in the doorway, looking as if he were dressed for an audience at court. His kilt and full-sleeved kaftan were white as egret feathers; blue-faience earspools gleamed under the tight curls of a voluminous court wig. “Hello, everyone. I came to say goodbye to Father.”

  The two girls ran to Aha and began to cover him with kisses. Hani was washed with relief at the interruption. He rose and held out his arms, grateful not only that Aha’s arrival had rescued him from a remorselessly uncomfortable moment but also that his firstborn had even bothered to come. “Son, it’s good to see you. It will be a while until we next meet, I fear.”