Bird in a Snare

by N. L. Holmes

  Hani froze, the situation suddenly clear to him. Aha had gone over to the heretics. Or at least, he felt he had to pretend to have done it. Hani wanted to ask him what he hoped to gain from such an allegiance, but the steps of a public embarcadero were not the place for such a conversation. He controlled the sorrow, keeping his face neutral, and said mildly, “May I still call you ‘Aha’? It’s hard to change after twenty-four years.”

  “Of course,” Aha said, stiff and on guard like a cat with all its fur bushed out. His little brown eyes were defiant. “I hope there’s no reluctance to say Hesy-en-aten, though.”

  He’d sunk into that pompous, challenging tone Hani saw so much of—and hated—in the personnel of the Hall of Royal Correspondence. Oh, my son, what’s happened to you? You’re turning into Yapakh-addi. He smiled, although he found he couldn’t hold the boy’s gaze.

  “The Aten rules Kemet now, Father,” said Aha loudly. “And the king—life, prosperity, and health to him—is his only intermediary.”

  Hani wasn’t surprised as two scribes trudged up the slope beside them and moved off in a cloud of dust along the street. Aha was very concerned to be heard saying the right things. In a strange way, that gave Hani hope. Perhaps his son was just toeing the official line of the new regime in the same way they all were, concerned not to be denounced or targeted as a reactionary—not to be demoted or decommissioned.

  It took some effort for Hani to lift his chest in a deep breath nonetheless. He didn’t much care for the Aha he saw before him. The lad had always had a self-righteous streak, and the present situation seemed to feed it. Maybe he really believed what he was saying. Is that better or worse?

  “Give my love to Khentet-ka and the little ones. We hope to see you soon, son.” Hani embraced Aha almost against the other’s will, feeling his son’s solid young body rigid inside his arms. “May the lord of the horizons watch over you.”

  “You mean the Aten, right?” Aha said defiantly over his shoulder as he hurried toward the water’s edge.

  Neither of them could wait to part; that was clear.

  CHAPTER 10

  Just to avoid shadowing his son, Hani made a point of rejecting the first boat that beckoned. Aha marched up the gangplank, stiff and self-important, the rectangular sail soon caught the wind, and the ferry swept off upstream. Hani ushered Maya on board another vessel, and the two men took a seat, staring straight ahead up the sun-sequined blue road of the Great River as their steersman guided them into the current. Hani paid the crew to use the oars as soon and as long as they were able.

  His heart sat like a rock in his stomach while his thoughts fluttered and squawked and beat themselves against the inside of his head. What kind of god turns sons against their fathers? As long as Aha had kept before his eyes the wisdom of the past, urging him to humility and kindness—and respect for his parents—he had been a good boy. Now the young ruled, imposing their brash, revolutionary ways over their wiser elders. The old truckled, pretended to change, afraid not to seem as revolutionary as—or more revolutionary than—their children.

  What a world. He supposed he would have to call his firstborn Hesy-en-aten.

  But a person’s name is part of his very soul. Hani’s gloom deepened. What happened to Aha when he cut Amen-hotep out of himself? Did he deform his ba, his identity, and become another person for real? Whoever this Hesy-en-aten was—the Favored One of the Aten—Hani didn’t like him. Even in his piety, Aha managed be arrogant. Hani wondered what Nub-nefer would make of her eldest son. He dreaded telling her, but perhaps she already knew.

  Several days later, they drew into the old quay at Waset, which was mellow with age and none too clean. Sailors and longshoremen shouted or sang as they worked. Hani did not see Aha’s boat. It had already left on its next trip, and Hani’s son was doubtless on his way home to dinner. Hani and Maya descended from their gangplank onto the quay at the hand of one of the dockworkers, and Hani settled into his land legs. They had barely spoken for the entire journey. Hani had been unable to rouse himself to an appearance of good cheer, and Maya had respected his heavy silence. Hani wondered what the secretary had heard of his conversation with Aha.

  And here they were, home. Now what? Hani’s own litter bearers awaited him, but he wanted to walk the city first. Maya trotted along uncomplainingly at his side.

  Waset, the City of the Scepter, was unchanged as far as his eye could discern—unruffled by the winds that swirled up out of the desert. Ahead, looming over the houses, ghostly and shimmering in the heat, was the mighty fortress of Amen, symbol of kingship, age-old knowledge, and unimaginable wealth and power. It was Kemet, in a way, the portion of the Hidden One himself—impregnable, inextinguishable, unchangeable.

  But a lump of lead seemed to sit in Hani’s stomach as he remembered the stifled uncertainty about the recent Festival of Drunkenness. Kemet had changed. A blanket of fear lay over her joyous people. Neighbors who had once greeted one another with unfeigned affection now eyed each other warily. Here in the city of Amen especially, where so many priests made their home, he could feel the fear, resentment, and suspicion hanging like a red sandstorm in the air. And now the same fear suffocated him. His own family had been struck.

  Hani shaded his face with a hand and stared up at the sky toward the shimmering disk of the sun, the Aten. But it was too powerful, and he had to shift his eyes or be blinded. Is that what has happened to our king? He forced down the thought, although it took a brutal effort.

  At last, he turned back and waved down his bearers. He was almost desperate for the peace of his own home. Maya bade him goodbye and headed down the street toward his mother’s house.

  Hani’s city property wasn’t terribly large, but within its high walls resounded no echo of the world outside. Palms and fruit trees, sycomore figs and perseas waved overhead, casting welcome shade against a sun that seemed suddenly hostile. Cicadas filled the air. The gatekeeper greeted him with too much heartiness. Hani thought he detected fear in the man, and it was contagious.

  The litter bore him past flowers and vegetables planted profusely in squares and rows and past the long pool that cooled and perfumed the air. Some of his ducks bobbed and gabbled on the surface, doubled by the mirroring water. How he loved this house, which had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him. It should pass eventually to Aha, but that idea disturbed him now. Perhaps the lad will cut down all the trees to let the Aten in.

  In the midst of its garden stood the residence, squat, thick walled, and freshly whitewashed, with its inviting columned porch. The door was open, and only a reed mat—swaying slightly with someone’s recent passage—hung there to keep out the flies. The doorkeeper jumped to his feet at the approach of the litter and ran to help his master out. His wrinkled old face was alight with joy. Or is it relief?

  Hani clapped him on the arm, beaming with pleasure and something deeper—a profound sense of having regained safe harbor after a particularly perilous voyage. “Thank you, A’a. Where’s the lady of the house?”

  “Inside, my lord. She... she doesn’t go to the temple anymore.”

  Hani pushed aside the mat and entered the welcome coolness, his footsteps clicking on the shiny plaster floor. He slipped out of his sandals and let the soles of his feet relish the smooth, cool surface. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness of the interior, but then they flowed lovingly over the familiar sights of his parlor. He needed to reassure himself that the shrine was still present in its niche. His eyes lingered over the small statue of the King of the Gods, surrounded by fresh flowers, the comforting little figure of Bes, rude and ugly, and the hippopotamus goddess Ta-weret, the Great One, who guarded women and children. They were there. His home was still a haven of unchanging peace.

  “Hani, my love,” cried Nub-nefer from the interior door. “I thought I heard your voice.” She glided toward him over the smooth floor, barefoot and graceful as a girl, and threw her arms around his neck. “Did Maya not co
me back with you?”

  “No. I said goodbye to him, and he left. Was he expected to eat with us?”

  “I suppose not, although I want him to know he’s always welcome.” She led him by the hand into the bathing room, where she no doubt understood he would want to freshen up before lunch.

  As Nub-nefer started to go, Hani held out a hand and caught her arm. “My love, have you talked to Aha lately?”

  Her face grew hard, then her mouth buckled. “A curse be on that boy,” she murmured, dropping her eyes.

  Hani put an arm around her and drew her toward him. He asked quietly into the top of her wig, “You know he’s changed his name, then?”

  She nodded violently as if unable to trust herself to words. She buried her face against Hani’s chest. “What have we done wrong, Hani?”

  “Nothing, my dearest. He’s a grown man. He has to make his own choices. I’m sure he’s not the only one who’s playing this game.” Even as he tried to reassure her, gloom sat upon him like a monkey on his shoulders, covering his nose so he couldn’t breathe.

  “How will he answer the tribunal in the Duat? What name will he give the Lord Djehuty?” Nub-nefer looked up at him, her kohl-darkened eyes swimming, but her voice trembled suddenly with hatred. “Has he any idea of the harm he’s doing? The souls who will be lost because of him?”

  Hani laid a finger over her lips and said, with an effort at brightness that was belied by the lead in his heart, “Is dinner ready yet, my dear? I’m starving.”

  She must have understood, because she said lightly, “We’re eating in the pavilion because it’s so hot. Pa-kiki and the girls are already there.”

  After his shower, Hani made his way out to the pavilion. Neferet ran skipping toward him as his calloused feet crunched across the gravel. “Papa! I saw an owl today! In broad daylight. It was in the pomegranate tree.”

  “It wasn’t injured, was it?” Hani took her hand and let her draw him into the shade of the vine-covered porch.

  “I don’t think so. It just watched me for a little bit with eyes this big, then it turned its head almost all the way around, then it flew away. Hooo! Hooo!” She flapped her arms. “Like that.”

  Chuckling, Hani stooped to kiss Baket-iset, and Sat-hut-haru cried, “But where is Maya?”

  “He’s eating with his own family today,” Hani said over Pa-kiki’s shoulder as he embraced his son.

  “Can’t I ever eat with them, too?” the girl demanded in a tone that made it sound as if she had begged and begged in vain.

  “Why, of course, my dear. If they invite you,” said her mother placidly, rearranging Sat-hut-haru’s braids with her fingers. Hani marveled yet again at how quickly Nub-nefer could gather her forces and lay aside sorrow—as far as the world could see.

  ⸎

  Hani rose at dawn the next day, only to find his father was already up and dressed. The two of them sat down knee to knee in the salon, each with a soft bun for breakfast.

  “You know, Hani,” said Mery-ra, “today is the Festival of the Great Procession of Osir. Do you suppose they’ll even hold it? Or maybe they’ll call it the Great Procession of the Aten.” He grinned wryly, staring into his lap as if afraid to catch his son’s eye and risk being chastised for sarcasm.

  But Hani just heaved a sigh and said, “I don’t know, Father. I no longer know what to expect from day to day. I just stay away from court, do my job, and pray to the gods this will pass over.”

  “What I was coming around to was that I think I’ll pay a visit to our tomb. Say a little prayer for your mother. Do you want to come with me?”

  “Hold our own private festival?” Hani looked up gratefully at his father. “I’d love to. Maybe Nub-nefer would want to accompany us. I guess it would be too much for Pipi to show up.”

  Mery-ra laughed. “You know, he turns up more often than you think while you’re away.”

  “He does? Why never when I’m here?”

  “Maybe coincidence. Or maybe he feels you judge him. I don’t know.” The old man shrugged, his smile a little misty.

  Hani asked his father humbly, “Do you think I judge him, Father? I don’t mean to. He’s made the choices he feels are best for him. Why should I care?”

  “Because you love him, of course. No, I don’t think you’re judgmental. But he may think you are, just because your life is so much more successful than his.”

  “So much more conventionally successful, at least.”

  Hani thought of Lord Ptah-mes and the other grandees, whose very success brought them so many more anxieties. He was satisfied to be mercifully low in the court hierarchy, where he could hide in the shadows of the higher-ups. But he appreciated the life of comfort and small luxuries his status provided his loved ones. His brother, also a scribe, was curiously unmotivated to improve his family’s conditions. He worked as little as possible, lived no better than an artisan, and spent heedlessly whatever he earned, to the delight of his equally profligate wife. Yet Pipi was happy, always laughing, proof against any gloom.

  “I almost envy him these days,” Hani admitted. “Or anyone who’s able to keep their equanimity in these times. He’s a good man.”

  Mery-ra shot his son a deeply tender look, and Hani clapped him on the arm with an appreciative squeeze. Since Nub-nefer was still sleeping, the two of them found in the larder a basket of grain and fruit for offerings and picked an armful of flowers as they passed through the garden. They set off toward the River to find a ferry.

  It did Hani good to be on the water with no official duties, no one to interview, no orders to seek from the king—no destination except his family tomb. He breathed in deeply the warm sweet air of morning, which was already buzzing to the song of cicadas. Overhead passed a troupe of ibises, wheeling in unison against a sky of rose quartz. Any day now, the priests from farther south would bring word of the start of the Flood. This season, this hour never failed to make him think of the beginning of creation—the morning of the world. It was hard not to be optimistic after all.

  They reached the west bank, stepping across the luminous reflection of the shore and onto the reality. The city of the dead stretched before them, little pyramid-roofed whitewashed shrines dotting the bleak yellow terrain. The tombs of kings and nobles were hidden in the cliffs still farther west. Hani saw southward of them the gigantic statues of Neb-ma’at-ra that marked the entrance to the late king’s mortuary temple. At least Nefer-khepru-ra hadn’t stopped the worship there.

  Together, the two men crossed the barren rock-strewn path that scarred the desert and penetrated deeper into the Red Land, heading toward the cliffs—the Mountains of the West, the land of the dead.

  “It’s peaceful here,” Hani murmured. There was no sound except the cicadas, the distant twitter of a bird, and the crunch of their footsteps on the gravel. Hardly a breath of wind stirred, yet there was a mellow coolness to the early-morning air.

  “The neighbors don’t make much noise,” Mery-ra agreed with a grin.

  Hani slowed to accommodate his father’s pace. “No, I mean, it isn’t gloomy. All these people we’ve loved—people who made us—are happy in the Field of Reeds. The Lady of the West is present, motherly and comforting. Don’t you feel it?”

  Mery-ra punched his son’s arm. “You get this streak from your mother’s side of the family, my boy. But now that you mention it, that’s true. Mostly, I’m thinking about how good it is to be nearly finished with our tomb. One more thing out of the way. At my age, that’s a source of great consolation.”

  Hani saw the familiar trail fork off to the left, and he took his father’s arm as they struggled over the rougher ground. Ahead, against a distinctive outcropping of the cliffs, stood the whitewashed little facade of their family house of eternity. A ladder and various bits of artists’ scaffolding lay on the ground. The workmen were not yet finished with the decoration inside. No doubt, they came when they were able to get away from the building of the new capital.

  “You know,
” said Hani, “we ought to set a guard here as long as the tomb is open. Anybody could wander in.”

  “But there’s nothing to steal yet. It’s more likely that some fox would find her way inside and whelp her pups.”

  Hani crouched and took up the fire drill that lay just inside the door. After a moment, he had a light going. Mery-ra handed him one of the torches that lay nearby. The old man sniffed. “Smells like these have been used recently. Good. The artists must have been at work.”

  The torch made a brave little puddle of light as the men entered the darkness of the antechamber. Hani touched the torch to others bracketed on the walls, and all at once, the room glowed, bright with freshly painted colors and gay scenes of daily life. Statues of Mery-ra, Pipi, and Hani with their wives sat on plinths against the wall, just under life-size and colored like real people with russet skin, white clothing, and black wigs. Their smiling faces gazed out across the heads of their visitors.

  Mery-ra laughed delightedly. “I haven’t been so slim for forty years! They’ve done a nice job with the painting. That’s your mother to perfection, isn’t it?” He approached the wall to admire the images of his family enjoying the ideal life of the Field of Reeds. Suddenly, he turned to Hani, his eyes wide with shock.

  “What is it, Father?” Hani asked, drawing closer. His heart stepped up a beat.

  The color had fled Mery-ra’s broad face as if some artist had scrubbed it away. “Bring the torch here, son. Look at this.”

  Hani drew close and raised the flickering torch. He followed his father’s pointing finger to the explanatory text that accompanied every picture. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing, and his stomach clenched as if he had been struck.

  “My name!” he cried at last in horror. “It’s been defaced. Every time Amen-hotep occurs, the Amen has been chiseled out!”

  The two men hustled from scene to scene, torch held close, and their steps became frenzied. Aha’s name, too. And Nub-nefer chantress of—the god was gone. From Mut-benret, Hani’s mother, someone had obliterated the name of Mut. In the scene where Neb-ma’at-ra had conferred on Hani gold and honors, even the king’s birth name had been hacked away.