by N. L. Holmes
Now the boat was drawing out of the current. Its steersman leaning on his great oars, it glided diagonally toward the quays, and Hani could make out people walking about—sailors and longshoremen and the crowds of passengers who were always headed up- or downriver in a ferry. It was midmorning, and the city was in full motion. Big yachts—all painted and gilded, their sterns like papyrus stems—flat commercial vessels, and humble little boats that could only hold a man or two swarmed the quays, docking and pushing off constantly like birds on a pond. From where Hani stood, it was hard to tell that the city had been virtually emptied out with the construction of a new capital and the suppression of the temples of Amen-Ra and his family.
The boat scraped along the pier, and the sailors rushed to throw out the stone anchors and heave their painters for their counterparts ashore to tie up. At last, the gangplank slid out, its end fell with a crash to the ground, and the passengers began to disembark. Maya was singing under his breath at Hani’s side. Hani considered joining him, but he was notoriously tone deaf—his family was always quick to throttle him if he started warbling a tune. He laughed at himself, in the best of moods.
Hani had left his staff at Akhet-aten, so he and Maya and the newly freed slaves set out alone toward their respective homes, carrying their baggage. As they walked along together before their paths parted, Hani asked Maya, “What are you going to name the baby?”
“We thought Mai-her-pri, Lion on the Battlefield.”
“Excellent choice,” Hani said, remembering that Mai had become Sati’s nickname for her husband. They parted company at the street where Maya and Sat-hut-haru lived, and Hani continued, with Bin-addi’s family trailing behind. Now he permitted himself to sing. “The one, the sister without peer, the handsomest of all. She looks like the morning star. Hey ho, ho, ho. What are the rest of the words?”
A man passing in the other direction looked at him askance, and Hani realized he had been singing rather more loudly than he’d intended. He reduced his song to a hum as he swung along the road. The neighborhood was quiet now that so many bureaucrats had moved to Akhet-aten. His footsteps on the dry road sent up little puffs of dust. A wren was making its sweet, abrupt call from a tree in a neighbor’s walled garden, and the honeyed scent of figs was in the air. Hani heard a woodpecker from somewhere.
He approached his own house, with its high wall and gateway painted red and the branches of the broad sycomore fig hanging over in a peninsula of welcome shade, and drew a big sigh of contentment. He set down his baggage and knocked.
A’a appeared immediately. His usually cheerful face was drawn. “Oh, my lord! Thank all the gods you’re back! They’re inside.”
Fear raced up the back of Hani’s neck like the red wave of the Inundation. “What is it, A’a? Is there trouble?”
“Better the mistress of the house tells you, my lord.” The old man stepped back and hung his head, avoiding Hani’s eyes.
“A’a, take these people to the servants’ quarters and make them comfortable,” he said distractedly, gesturing to Bin-addi and his family, and he set off toward the house.
Hani was stiff with anxiety by the time he’d crossed the garden and mounted his porch. Nub-nefer met him at the door and threw herself into his arms. He could feel her rocking with sobs. Alarm flared up in his stomach, a burst of bright flame.
He said breathlessly, “What is it, my dove? One of the children?”
“Oh, Hani, it’s Baket-iset. Day before yesterday she started feeling bad, with a headache and a fever. Then she threw up. Now she’s getting those horrible lumps everywhere. It’s plague.”
It had found them on their little island of innocence. Horror washed over Hani, leaving him speechless. They clung to one another like two shipwrecked boatmen, hanging onto a spar for dear life.
Then she drew back. “I sent one of the servants to the capital, hoping to intercept you, but I didn’t know when you’d pass through. Neferet’s in Waset, and Aha is visiting her, so they’re on their way. Come to Baket, my love. She may not know you, though. She’s deep into a delirium.” Nub-nefer brushed at her eye with the back of her hand, her mouth twisting with the effort to keep herself together.
Hani’s heart was banging in his chest. “How did this happen? She never leaves the house.”
“I think it was one of the girls who helps me take care of her. She didn’t show up for work for several days, and when I inquired, her mother told me she had died.”
Hani lurched after his wife to the downstairs bedroom where Baket-iset lay in semidarkness. Sat-hut-haru sat at her sister’s side, bathing her face with a wet towel. Had she had the use of her limbs, Baket would have been flailing, but she just tossed her head wildly, crying out unintelligible words.
Grief and fear shot through Hani like a barbed arrow. Lady Sekhmet, spare her. This is so unfair; she’s never had any joy in her life, and now this... He crouched beside her couch and laid a hand on her withered arm. “Baket, my swan. Papa’s here.”
She was as hot to the touch as a brazier. Behind him, Nub-nefer began to cry, and Sat-hut-haru’s face buckled. He realized they felt that, now that he’d arrived, the girl was going to die, and his nose burned with incipient tears.
“Pa-kiki comes every evening after work. Mut-nodjmet is taking care of the children. I told her not to let them come.” Nub-nefer looked up, her face stricken.
“Where is Father?” Hani asked.
Sat-hut-haru said in a shaking voice, “I made Grandfather leave, Papa. He’s old. I was afraid he might catch it.”
Hani nodded, although when a rustle in the doorway made him turn, he was not surprised to see Mery-ra standing there sorrowfully. Mery-ra said, “I’ve begged Lady Sekhmet to take an old man and spare this young girl.”
But I don’t want to lose you either, Father, Hani thought helplessly. I don’t want tragedy to strike anyone I love.
Baket-iset was throwing her head back and forth frantically. “No! No!” she cried. “Take your hands off me.”
Hani and Nub-nefer exchanged a look of confusion.
“I’m going to tell my father!” Baket said.
“Is she delirious?” Hani asked in a quiet voice. The hair was standing up on his arms at a terrible suspicion that had just awakened within him.
Nub-nefer shrugged her ignorance, unable to speak. Tears and mucus ran unheeded down her chin as she stroked Baket-iset’s arm.
Baket gave a scream that pierced Hani’s heart. “I’m falling!” she shrieked. “Help! Oh, help me, someone!”
Hani froze and stared up at Nub-nefer. “She’s not hallucinating—she’s remembering.” He grasped his daughter’s thin, lifeless fingers in his bigger hand. “Papa’s here, my love. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“He pushed me!” Baket-iset cried in the high-pitched voice of terror. “I’m falling!”
Nub-nefer’s eyes grew wide with dismay. She bent over her daughter and pushed back her sweaty hair tenderly. “Who pushed you, my dearest?”
Hani held his breath. Can this really be a true memory come back to haunt the girl after seventeen years? He could see them all on the boat together late in the evening, just docked after sailing home from Neb-ma’at-ra’s jubilee—he and Nub-nefer at the waterside gunwales, casting one last look out over the sunset-gilded River, the younger children playing somewhere on the deck among the crowd. Baket-iset—where had she been? He hadn’t seen her for a while, his graceful little swan. And then suddenly, people were shouting. He’d flown to the shoreside edge of the vessel in time to see her falling head over heels through the opening where they would all disembark. He’d thrown himself after her, even as his daughter slid screaming down the ribbed boards of the gangplank, onto the stone quay, and into the water.
“Yes,” he murmured, afraid to hear an answer. “Who pushed you, my swan?”
She probably didn’t even perceive his question but was simply living out the whole horrible event in her feverish mind. Sweat dripped from her s
carlet face, and she tossed her head in anguish. She screamed again. “He pushed me! Papa! Help me! It’s the man with one eye!”
Hani’s breath stopped. The room around him seemed to go silent and distant, and he heard others speaking as if through a wall. He was in an empty, echoing place, alone with his worst suspicion—one that he’d never even admitted to himself, it was so unlikely. Someone had done this to her. He whispered between clenched teeth, “Amen-nefer.”
No one seemed to hear him; they were both focused on soothing Baket-iset. Hani jumped to his feet and staggered to the door, not knowing what to do with himself.
Mery-ra, camped in the doorway with tears running down his cheeks, asked as Hani passed, “What is it, son? What’s wrong?”
Hani, nearly blinded, had no idea where he was going. I have to think somewhere quiet. His heart was hammering, pumping up rage from some well he didn’t even know existed in him. “She was pushed, Father,” he whispered, forging past the older man.
Mery-ra gaped at him. “What? How do you know?”
“She remembers. It was so horrible she must have put it out of her mind for all these years. But it’s come back to her.” Hani turned on Mery-ra, his breath sawing in his nose. “And I know who did it.”
⸎
The servants had told Maya the lady of the house was at her parents’ place. After a joyful greeting with little Henut-sen and his adorable new son, whom he left with their nurse, he took seven-year-old Tepy, and together, they set out toward Gammother and Gamfather’s. There was a strange solemnity about the gatekeeper and Hani’s other servants that made Maya uneasy. He grasped Tepy by the hand, and the two of them mounted the porch side by side.
“My lord?” he called, but no one answered. Yet as soon as he had entered the salon, he saw Lord Hani and Lord Mery-ra standing face to face, their expressions grim as death.
“What is it, my lord? Is something wrong? Is Sat-hut-haru all right? Isn’t she here?” A cold hand of fear gripped Maya’s heart.
At his mother’s name, Tepy cried out happily, “Mama! Is she here?”
Lord Hani steered Maya away from the inside of the house. Maya could see from up close that Hani’s usually cheerful face was ravaged with grief and something that resembled rage. “She’s here, taking care of her sister. Baket has been stricken with the plague.” It seemed Hani could barely get the words out. At his side, Mery-ra gulped wetly.
Maya’s jaw dropped in horror. He could feel the blood draining from his face as if he’d pulled a plug. “Sekhmet help us!”
“Get little Tepy out of here, son,” said Hani urgently. He laid a hand on Maya’s shoulder and pushed him toward the door.
Maya’s blood ran cold. Plague! And Sat-hut-haru is inside there with it. Bes, protect her, he prayed in a babble of silent plea. Protect her. Protect her. “Should I go, then, my lord?” he stammered, although Hani had already answered that question.
“I think that would be safer. Sati may be here for... a while.”
Maya took his firstborn by the little hand, and the two of them made hastily for the door, Tepy dragging his feet and stumbling in his reluctance. “Bye, Gamfather. I wanted to show you my tooth. It wiggles,” he called over his shoulder.
All you gods—Maya wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his free hand—it’s among us. It has struck our little island. Sickness and death have breathed even on us. It’s not just a story people are telling. Oh, Sekhmet, keep little Mai-her-pri safe. Because this horror is real.
⸎
Neferet and Bener-ib came storming in later in the afternoon, as did Aha, looking crumpled. Baket-iset was quiet at last and unaware of all around her. Aha, in his wilted splendor, fell to his knees beside his sister’s bed and wept. The two girls began their ablutions and prayers with frantic efficiency. Neferet folded down the patient’s sheet and began to feel under her arm and in her groin.
After a moment, she looked up at Bener-ib then turned to her father, her eyelids starting to shrivel with tears. Yet there was a pathetic note of hope in her voice. “She’s got it, all right. But this isn’t the worst kind, Papa. If it doesn’t go into their lungs, some people survive.”
Strong, healthy people, no doubt. Hani kept his pessimism to himself.
Nub-nefer and Sat-hut-haru sat clinging to one another on the floor beside Baket-iset’s bed. At her daughter’s words, Nub-nefer looked up at Hani with desperation in her kohl-streaked eyes. “She’s young. Maybe...”
But Hani murmured, determined not to take a fool’s refuge in false optimism, “Do not say, ‘I am young to be taken.’ You do not know your death.” How had he ever dared to write words of wisdom to instruct others, when he was so far from perfect resignation himself? Take me instead of her, he pleaded again, in the parent’s most desperate prayer. I’ve at least had a chance to live.
Mery-ra, who was standing at Hani’s side, asked in a hushed and tender voice, “How long does she have, Neferet, my girl?”
Neferet exchanged a look with Bener-ib, who said, in her shy, brutal way, “If she’s going to die, not long. It’s been at least three days already. Today. Tomorrow.”
Nub-nefer emitted a loud wail and fell to her face upon the patient’s mattress, Sat-hut-haru folding on top of her, and Aha howled with undisguised grief. Hani would have longed for such a release, but he felt frozen—in denial, perhaps, a refusal to permit such an obscenity. Mery-ra clutched at his arm. Hopelessly, Hani drew the amulet of Serqet from around his neck and laid it on his daughter’s body.
And that was how Pa-kiki found them when he burst into the room. “Mama! Papa! Is she...?”
Hani shook his head and laid an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Today or tomorrow, the doctors say.”
Pa-kiki began to sniff hard, and he sank to his knees at his sister’s side, his face in his hands.
After a moment of anguished silence, Hani asked his father under his breath, “Where is Khawy?”
“I sent him away, son. It seemed no place for an outsider, no matter how beloved. I told him to go to a beer house.”
Hani nodded and heaved a weary sigh that seemed to empty his very soul from his chest. Grief had turned him into a leaden creature, unable to feel, speak, or move coherently. Perhaps he’d already descended into the Duat, and only his shadow remained.
Behind him in the bedroom, a loud wail went up. Fear chilled him, raising the hairs on his neck. The women were keening and tearing at their clothes, their hair, their faces. Nub-nefer let out a howl like a wounded animal.
Mery-ra clutched his arm. “Has she passed into the West?”
The two men lurched back to Baket-iset’s bedside to the blood-freezing sound of mourning women. Hani sank to his knees with his sons and seized Nub-nefer’s hand. “Is she... has she crossed to the West?”
His wife could only nod, tears streaming down her face, which was twisted with grief.
Hani felt the tears begin to burn in his eyes and start their descent down his cheeks. My daughter, my beautiful swan. I will never see you again on this earth.
But suddenly, Neferet straightened up from where she lay upon her sister’s chest. “Wait, everybody—she’s not dead! She’s still breathing!”
The wails ceased as if they had been turned off, and everyone huddled over the patient’s still body, hoping to hear a breath. Her bosom was indeed rising and falling—the most beautiful sight Hani had ever seen.
Neferet sponged her sister’s face and wrists with cool water. “If we can just get her fever down... I’ll stay with her for the rest of the night. Mama, why don’t you and the others try to get some rest? You’ve been here alone for a long time.”
No one had much heart for leaving, but Aha and Sati lay down on the floor, and Pa-kiki fell asleep leaning against the wall. As for Nub-nefer, she sat steadfastly at her daughter’s bedside. After some time had passed, her head lolled until she was asleep, too, her forehead on the edge of the couch. Hani and Mery-ra sat shoulder to shoulder on the floor, whi
le the two young doctors kept wringing out towels in cold water and applying them to Baket-iset’s face and neck. Every so often, Neferet would moisten the girl’s lips with a slurry that smelled of moldy bread.
The night passed with excruciating slowness. Nub-nefer awoke with a start and reached out for Hani’s hand. “Is she...?”
“Still with us, Mama, and I think her fever is coming down.” Neferet was swaying with exhaustion, but she managed an optimistic smile. Mery-ra was slumped over, snoring into his lap. The other three children lay, dead to the world, on the floor.
Hani settled shoulder to shoulder with his wife, strengthless and resigned, hardly daring to hope. Once more, the hours crawled by in a slow, funereal procession. The little lamp beside the bed was flickering, low on oil. Finally, it went out.
“I’ll refill it,” Hani said quietly to Nub-nefer.
He rose and, holding the empty lamp, made his stumbling way to the kitchen, felt around for the big jar of moringa oil, and ladled a little into the clay bowl of the lamp then lit the wick with a coal from the oven. A small orange flame leaped up between his hands, like a soul reclaimed from death. Hani stared out at the kitchen court, where a moonless night stretched overhead. It might have been his imagination, but he had a faint sense of the darkness beginning to lighten above the silhouette of the second story.
Holding up the newly relit lamp, he made his way back to Baket’s bedroom, where he strained his eyes at the black shapes of his family around him, faithful in vigil, and he prayed, Save them all, Lady of Healing. Please don’t let any of them die. It was selfish, he knew—the beautiful life of an akh awaited them. But how could he endure to be parted from them—never to see them again, to smell them, to touch them? It was worse than death. He thought of Ptah-mes and how he seemed to have been changed forever by his wife’s murder, and Hani understood. He set the lamp back on its tall stand.
Neferet had stayed valiantly awake, despite her blinking red eyes, with Bener-ib at her side. The two young doctors continued to offer the patient tiny sips of willow tea and their moldy-smelling potion and to apply the cold towels, although they were almost too tired to wring them out. Their movements had a drunken awkwardness about them that elicited Hani’s pity and gratitude. On the floor, Mery-ra stirred and sat up, rubbing his eyes.