Isis Wept

by Stephan Loy

  “Djafa Seniram, what brings you to Abydos? All is well with your Bedouin brothers, I hope?”

  The man nodded. His eyes cut through a slit in his layered clothing. “All is well,” he said in the thick accent of his nomadic people. His arm jerked, holding out the bow. “A gift. A payment. We are indebted to your lady.”

  Osiris took the bow, and examined it. “Very fine work, Djafa Seniram. It’s also very old. A family relic, I assume.” He sought the rider’s eyes. “My queen has earned this gift?”

  “Yes. We Bedouin worship no gods, but we pay our debts.”

  “You are welcome into our fold, Djafa Seniram.”

  The rider snorted, then looked down the road as if ready to leave. “Your god Ra, the one of the sun, he kills our people. We await our own god, the one and true.”

  Osiris watched the man’s chiseled profile. He was glad Set had not approached. This nomad would have incensed the god of storms, not a good move for one who wandered the vast, wild desert, the very cradle of storms. After a moment, Osiris nodded, tapped the camel’s head, and released its harness.

  “Thank-you for the gift, Djafa Seniram. It will find a place of honor in my home.”

  The Bedouin said nothing. He snapped his camel’s reins, turning it to amble up the road. The assembled masses watched him leave. After a while, far past the palace wall, he turned off the road, and vanished between two buildings.

  The king’s retainers met him at the palace gate. They deluged him with reports on household affairs, requests for audiences, and prayers for divine intercessions. Osiris ignored them except for ordering the launch for Qebera and directing accommodations for the horses. He wanted no part of bureaucrats just then; they weren’t his impression of home. He marched away from them, across the wide courtyard, past bowing servants, and through the main hall with its lofty stone ceiling and the double row of palm columns holding it up. He left this public chamber for the interior gardens, then turned left along the path to the queen’s apartments. There the retainers broke off their pursuit, finally getting the point.

  Osiris flung open the cedar doors to the queen’s suite and stepped into a large central hall, modestly furnished. A few divans of woven rushes stood upon the hard gypsum floor along with a plethora of rugs, tables, and a brazier unused in the summer heat. Light filtered in through narrow barred rectangles near the high ceiling, dimly illuminating yellow walls painted with a graceful floral decor. Several dark doorways interrupted those walls, all openings bare but for their bordering blue frames. A single lamp augmented the windows, a clay bowl containing a linen wick steeped in oil. It flickered near the back of the hall, close to the private rooms. Together, windows and lamp revealed a deserted chamber.

  Osiris smiled, and closed the doors behind him. He dropped the Bedouin bow on a low, ornate table, then took up the oil lamp and marched through one of the doorways back toward his wife’s bedchamber.

  No one met him there.

  Nonplussed, he returned to the main hall. He checked a few guest rooms on the way, and found them unused. “Isis!” he called. “Where are you, goddess? Your husband is home!”

  No answer.

  He poked his head into the spinning room. Except for the loom, the spinning wheel, and the queen’s collection of ivory and ebony flax cards, the room stood empty. He walked back to the pantry, but found it bare, as always. Gods required no food; they ate only for pleasure, their treats brought in from the palace kitchen. Osiris pursed his lips, no longer wondering at his wife’s coy game. He wondered instead if she were home at all.

  And where were the servants, those priestesses who followed Isis everywhere?

  “Oh, don’t give up so easily,” a voice whispered from within his head.

  Osiris cocked an ear to follow that tug in his mind, and smiled when he realized where it coaxed him. He moved across the central hall and stopped at the alcove into the queen’s bath chamber, that spacious enclosure with the smooth bed of stone surrounded by magnificent murals of the residing earth goddess. Along those walls, she reveled in her command of the forces of life, growth and procreation. The bath chamber was a room as much for seduction as for hygiene.

  “I love you,” Osiris heard in his head. He stepped as if compelled into the bath chamber, the lamp held up away from his eyes.

  The goddess kneeled on the bathing stone, her long black hair bundled high and held in place by bone pins, the only thing she wore. A linen-draped priestess stood just beside the stone, holding a towel as an offering to her queen. About the stone stood the bath water jars and the sponges used to reverently cleanse the most perfect body in Ra's universe. Oil lamps flickered in the corners, illuminating the posed scene in golden, wavering light.

  Isis looked her husband up and down, her eyes sparking with mirth and watery light. Her voice, however, was distant.

  “Impertinence,” she said. “Has no one taught you to knock?”

  Osiris said nothing. His breath had escaped him.

  In a fluid movement, Isis rose to her feet. She turned to her retainer. “Leave us,” she commanded. “This impertinent slave will serve me.”

  The woman left unnoticed. Osiris saw only the splendid, unblemished perfection of his wife. He ached to touch her brown skin, to feel the hint of muscle that showed beneath her softness, to caress her full, proudly firm breasts. His eyes traced the flowing curves of her hips, the slight -- again, perfect -- roundness of her belly. It contoured toward that arousing black triangle from which beads of water sparkled like jewels. A body of power, Osiris thought, full of sensual promise.

  Then he realized he stood close to her, and blinked. She had mesmerized him again, this goddess, with her consuming, seductive presence. Osiris reached for her, wanting to explore that wonderful flesh.

  She stopped him with a glance to his hand, then slowly raised her eyes to his. “Towel me,” she ordered.

  Osiris stooped for the towel the priestess had dropped. “Yes, my love and queen,” he intoned with mock reverence. “Whatever you desire, I must provide.”

  Isis stepped down from the stone and onto the gypsum floor. “I hear impertinence even now, you slave. Why do you mock me? Do you not realize I am your goddess and queen?”

  Osiris eased the towel against her neck and shoulders, moving steadily lower. “Oh, yes,” he said. “You are my goddess; I certainly realize that.” He moved the towel slowly about the mounds of her breasts, squeezing gently. After a few moments of such teasing strokes, he attended her nipples, but only with the barest touch of linen. She lost her pretense at majesty then, and moaned. Her nipples strained erect. Well, Osiris thought, his mouth dry for her, how better to arouse the mother goddess if not through her life-giving breasts?

  “I’ve missed you so much,” Isis said in ecstatic snatches of breath.

  “But no more,” her husband promised. He dropped the towel, and took her in his arms.

  She found no difficulty disposing of his kilt.

  Qebera returned home to the animated welcomes of four naked daughters. They accosted him with such delight that they almost toppled him into the sand. His only son, Hordedev, stood with Sanni back from the melee, just outside the door of the family’s tiny hovel. All present bore the mark of their land: dark skin, lean bodies, and hollowed, tired eyes. Even the little ones showed wear in their hands and eyes.

  “Ah, you rascals!” Qebera roared, and snatched a giggling child by the waist. “You’re a delaying force, sent to keep me from my sovereign’s side! Off with you, then! Don’t you know I’m a great battle lord?” He plopped his prisoner to the ground, then shooed the bunch away in a herd. They didn’t go far, but stayed giggling out of reach.

  Qebera approached the doorstep of his home with an air of shy penitence. Eight months was a long time, long enough to let things go in the house, to miss the planting after the annual floods, even to miss the harvest. Mainly, though, it was plenty of time to vex -- even to alienate -- the wife he so respected and loved. She stood befor
e the three-room hovel she made so warm, a woman never beautiful, cheated even of youth by hard years as a farmer’s wife. Her face sagged from adversity, and her waistline was ruined by five chancy birthings. But her eyes showed intelligence from within their wrinkled cavities and her lips were a line of strength. To Qebera, such qualities blessed her with beauty beyond that of goddesses. His wife stood a champion upon the earth.

  “Sanni,” he said in a voice approaching reverence, standing before her as a pilgrim stands at the altar of his journeys. “Sanni, I’ve been a poor husband, away far too long. Will you take me back?”

  The woman raised one eyebrow. “It depends. Is this a triumphant homecoming, or a pause between adventures?”

  “Who can say?” Qebera sighed. “Can a mortal know the ways of gods? I'm home, and gladly so. But if Osiris sends for me in an hour, I would surely go.”

  Sanni huffed. “Well, you’re honest enough. Come in, then. I’ll get you bread and beer.” She turned, shoving aside the rough linen curtain that served as their front door. In an instant, Qebera stood alone outside with his son. The girls had scattered throughout the yard. Nefera, the oldest at only eight years, ensured the men a bit of peace.

  “Hordedev,” Qebera said, slapping the boy’s shoulder. His son stood almost as tall as he. “You grow faster than rushes, young man. What news of the land?”

  “The river looked after us in your absence,” Hordedev replied. He looked the credible farmer in his dirty loincloth, the telltale grime of backbreaking labor packed under his fingernails. Qebera smiled at the boy’s apparent competence. Hordedev was new to authority. His child’s sidelock was only recently cut. “We brought in more emmer than we could store, and almost as much barley. Most of the barley is fermented to beer. We worked with the neighbors to build a new granary, finished a month after harvest. We hold the contents in partnership against taxes.” He held the curtain open for his father, then ducked into the house behind him.

  “You’ve done well,” Qebera said as his eyes adjusted to the interior dark. “You'll own this land some day, Hordedev, and no better manager could ever be found. You didn’t let your neighbors get the better of you where that granary’s concerned?”

  “Old Negev witnessed the arrangements and committed them to memory. While he lives, there will be no arguments, and it’s just until taxes.”

  They occupied a small home, though larger than many. The front room measured five paces square and housed the farm tools and the family’s two goats. Its only light came through the door. Beyond stood the family space, a chamber ten paces deep and five wide, lit by two barred rectangular openings high up on the walls. In larger dwellings, a staircase to one side would lead to the roof, a place of comfort during broiling summers. But this house claimed no such luxury, just a third room in the back, a kitchen.

  Sanni sat cross-legged on the family room’s dirt floor, leaning over a low, rough table. She hacked at crumbly bread with a flint knife. Two bowls of beer stood at her elbow, awaiting thirsty throats.

  “Beer!” Qebera cheered. “I’m hallucinating, I tell you, mad in the desert beneath the broiling sun.”

  Sanni glanced up, her face chastening.

  “Hordedev tells me we’re rich,” Qebera said as he lowered himself to the floor beside his wife. He handed one bowl to his son and claimed the other for himself.

  “As rich as we’ll ever be,” Sanni said. “It was Isis’s doing. She came one day at the seeding. She said hello, and asked after you.”

  “The goddess-queen, asking after me?”

  “An excuse. She looked very casual, but she came to bless your crops.”

  Qebera accepted this as easily as the sand in his clothes. The goddess would make such a simple, private gesture. But, he saw fun in the news. “I don’t know. Perhaps she finds me handsome, and wishes to tempt me away from you.”

  Sanni looked at him sidewise, then burst into laughter. “You?” she croaked, handing him his bread. “Not even I find you handsome!”

  Qebera looked insulted. “Well, I admit, I could use some cleaning up--”

  “The Nile would run dry trying to clean you up!”

  Qebera feigned a hurt expression, and his wife laughed all the harder. The soldier-farmer relished that sound as he relished the dry bread he tore with his teeth. The food was old, heavy, and rough with grain and embedded sand, but after months of lizards and stringy hares, it settled in his stomach like the richest dessert. He washed it down with the warm beer, a full-bodied drink and one of a farmer’s few luxuries.

  After a moment, Sanni regained control. She shook her head as she smiled down at the table, wiping away tears. “Oh, Qebera,” she said, “you’re a lousy farmer and an absentee husband, but you so lift my heart with joy.”

  Qebera leaned over to kiss her on the temple.

  For a moment, the three sat quietly in the gloom, then Sanni shrugged. “So, what adventures this time? We saw you with those fidgeting beasts. You looked rather foolish, dancing about to avoid getting kicked.”

  “Those ‘fidgeting beasts’ are horses, a gift from Ur, in Sumer. That was the only sizable kingdom we encountered on this trip, and they nearly wouldn’t receive us. The king there is a high priest of something or other, and knows nothing of Osiris.”

  “So, what magic did our lord and god use to lessen the rudeness of your reception?” She prepared him another slice of bread, this one spread with honey from a jar at her knee. She did not fix one for Hordedev.

  “Well, these Urians or whatever they’re called are river people, like us. But they don’t quite have our level of skill. Osiris noticed some farmers hauling water in jars to their gardens. They struggled up and down the banks like donkeys, so he left the city’s locked gate and taught those men how to build a proper irrigation ditch fed by a shaduf. They didn’t know what a shaduf was! When Osiris showed them how to build its frame, then use a counterweighted arm with a bucket on one end to lift their water from the river and so save hours of labor, they were amazed. We stayed with those farmers seven days. When their king noticed the irrigation system and saw that it worked, he welcomed us straightaway.”

  Hordedev grunted understanding. The people of Osiris were preeminent farmers.

  “So, Set is in town,” Qebera said after a pause. “He walked with us from the temple quay.” He didn’t mention the storm god’s poor opinion of humans. They’re like dogs dressed in robes.

  Hordedev frowned, but covered his expression with a sip of beer. “He’s been here three days, he and the goddess Nephthys. I guess he tired of the dead earth of his desert.” He flinched at his own words. It was unwise to speak ill of gods.

  Qebera froze, and noticed Sanni doing the same. He had hoped for usable gossip on the storm god’s intentions. True, Set was brother to the king and queen, but he rarely came to Abydos unless Osiris was already home. To do otherwise was a challenge to Ma’at, sure to end in trouble. What did he want? Qebera no longer felt it safe to ask. He tried to resume a more natural disposition, and searched his thoughts for safer words to speak.

  He cringed as Hordedev, incautious in youth, drove the subject on.

  “You’ve met his queen, haven’t you, father? How does she put up with him?”

  Mostly, Qebera knew, she didn’t. As captain of Osiris’s guard, he had often stood duty in the royal residence while the gods ignored him as if he were a dog. He had heard much from their mouths, and had always pretended not to. He had heard that Nephthys despised her husband, that she avoided her home in Upper Egypt while Set was in residence. She wanted children, but the god of the desert was as barren as his kingdom, so her needs went unfulfilled. Nephthys told Isis everything -- they were friends as well as sisters. What Isis heard, Qebera often heard as well. Still, none of it was his business, less so Hordedev’s. Qebera squirmed before speaking.

  “The trials of the goddess Nephthys are great, but not the business of humans. Let’s not speak of them again.” His son seemed to accept the rebuke; he
shrugged from behind his bowl. Satisfied, Qebera continued. “Instead, if our presently available goddess could refill these drinks, and perhaps fill one for herself...”

  Sanni fluttered a hand in dismissal. “I’m not a drunkard like you. I’ll have my beer at dinner.”

  “I insist,” Qebera said. “It’s a special occasion.”

  Sanni huffed the ages-old complaint of the set-upon woman, but she had only to reach behind her for one of several bowls placed against the wall. In a moment, all three adults held full bowls of beer.

  “A toast,” Qebera announced, raising his drink. “To Osiris, who brings us the wonders of this world, and to Isis, who makes them work.”

  They drank in agreement with the truth of his words.

  The queen’s bed was huge, its mattress stuffed with soft, beaten flax and covered in layers of linen. There she renewed her marital union with vigor enough to kill a mere human. But, these were gods, with all the capacity that birthright implied. And they were, after all, in love.

  Osiris lay on his back, his fingers intertwined behind his head. He trained his eyes on a section of ceiling. He was satisfied for now, so he avoided looking at his wife, the sight of whom stoked a hot desire. Isis lay on her side, propped up on an elbow. She ran teasing fingertips along her husband’s flank.

  “Your thoughts?” she asked. “Affairs of state, or the state of your affairs?” She grinned at her perceived cleverness.

  Osiris groaned at the remark, looked at her sidewise, and corrected that mistake. He wanted to talk. “You’re insatiable.” He laughed, and watched the ceiling. “So, what keeps you busy the long months I’m absent? Is there another happy god in Egypt? Is that why Set is around?”

  She pinched him. “How dare you! You know that if I were pleasuring Set, his mood would surely improve. Do you think me so incompetent?”

  “Oh no,” Osiris said with mock gravity. “You were created for lovemaking; that’s undeniable. So, I wonder why Set is always so sour. Is Nephthys less skilled than you? Perhaps I should find out.”