by T. L. Higley
“Wood is rare, it is true. But men are irreplaceable.”
Sen studied me a moment more, then took the papyrus. “I will see to it,” he said with a trace of emotion.
Father and daughter accompanied me to the door of their home, and I felt some weight of the past day lift. At least this part of Egypt’s ma’at, the structure of my management team, had been restored. The project would proceed, and all would be well.
The street had grown oddly still, and we looked both directions to find ourselves alone. And then around a corner came a crowd of mourners, led by a weeping Hasina and the body of Mentu stretched on a pallet. They bore him to the doctor’s workshop, where his seventy days would commence and his body be prepared for its journey west.
My satisfaction of a moment before evaporated in a mist of guilt and self-reproach. Mentu’s body was marching past me, and there was no divine order.
The pack of mourners pressed through the street like a rodent through the gullet of a snake. One person broke off from the attendant crowd and joined us.
My brother, Ahmose.
“It seemed an inopportune time for tax collecting,” he said by way of explanation. I introduced him to Sen and Neferet. Ahmose and Sen were an older and younger version of the same man. That they would like each other, I had no doubt. I did not fear that Ahmose might take an interest in Neferet, as he already had a beautiful wife and three adorable children at home.
And why should I care who takes notice of Neferet?
Ahmose regarded the procession. “I would not have guessed that he would be first.”
“First?” I angled my body away from him.
“Of the six of us,” Ahmose said, his eyes trained forward. “The first to cross.”
I knew of which he spoke. We had gone out, a royal hunting party of seven. We had returned only six.
I said nothing.
“Let us pray to the gods that Mentu will have justice,” Ahmose said. I felt his gaze turn to me, and I straightened my shoulders. “Better than she received.”
I tightened the linen I wore at my waist. “Sen, I would like you to be my guest at the king’s accession festival tomorrow night. We can speak then about your new duties.”
With a nod to Neferet and a glance at Ahmose, I fled in the opposite direction of Mentu’s procession.
Guilt, uncertainty, and a disturbance of divine order. It was time to visit the temple and do what I must to appease the gods.
* * *
Men are often like wayward goats, who need nothing more than a gentle switch across the forelegs to guide them in the right direction. I spent the late afternoon goading reluctant work teams and Aswan granite into place, with thoughts of Mentu crowded behind more immediate crises.
I was forced to climb the pyramid three times, over twenty courses to the entrance, to inspect the changes to the corridor. Without the casing stones yet placed, the pyramid formed natural steps. But with each course nearly as high as my shoulder, the ramps were necessary to reach the entrance, though they circled round the structure and were crowded with gangs hauling blocks upward.
Once each day I continued all the way to the top, one hundred cubits above the bedrock, simply to catch a fresh breeze and survey the plateau. From the ever-rising platform, I could see the valley temple, harbor, and even the Nile to the east, the village and quarry to the south, and the vast western desert. This day, as the sun rested, heavy and orange on the plateau’s edge, thoughts of disorder returned, along with my earlier desire to seek the gods’ favor in the temple.
I requisitioned a goat from the village, then crossed the desert to the valley temple that lay at the harbor’s edge. Eventually this temple would be used for the seventy days of purification of Khufu’s body. When completed, a processional up the causeway would escort his body to its hidden chamber in the pyramid where he would begin his journey to the west. But for now, the temple gave those of us laboring on the Horizon a place to honor the gods.
The sun’s death was complete by the time I reached the temple, and I cursed those who had delayed me. The darkness was like a heavy, forbidding veil about the temple, warning those who approached of the gravity of encountering the gods.
I climbed the steps to the impressive entrance flanked by two round columns twice the height of a man. Inside, torches and braziers attempted to light the black corners of the temple chambers, but succeeded only in casting ominous shadows upon the walls, each elaborately depicting scenes of the gods from floor to ceiling.
I breathed deeply, then dragged the reluctant goat inside. The gods demanded purity and exacted justice. I had none of the first, and feared the second. Upon my death, Anubis would weigh my heart against the feather of truth. Should my heart prove lighter than the feather, my soul would be judged worthy to pass into the paradise of afterlife. Yet did any among us truly believe his heart would not outweigh a feather?
I crossed through the first chamber, anxious to be finished with this necessary task. In the second chamber, a square recess in the wall held the figure of Ra, the sun god. Above it, carved in relief, was a depiction of Ra as a man, the sun disc balanced on his head, traveling in his sky boat through the day, then stepping into his night boat to sail the underworld by night. Beside the recessed figure, a three-legged brazier burned incense at knee height. Though the ceiling was lost in the shadows high above me, the incense seemed to hang just above my head, weighting the warm room with its heavy perfume.
I shivered, despite the warmth. The goat at my thigh bleated.
A flicker of shadow was all the warning I had before a silky voice spoke at my elbow. “You have come to offer a sacrifice?”
I jumped away from the voice, toward the burning incense, and spun. Firelight played across a face, familiar in spite of the years that had passed.
“Rashidi?”
The little priest bowed low, bringing his head to the level of my belt. His memorable pointed nose still dominated his features. He stood upright again, a full head shorter than I. “Hemiunu,” he said, his lips thin.
“It’s been a long time.”
“I have been serving in the Temple of Ra.”
I pushed the rope holding the goat to him, though he had no authority here. “I am sorry about the loss of your position in On.”
His small black eyes rose to meet mine and steadied there. “Are you?”
I had been careful that Khufu’s dismissal of the priests and moving of the Ra worship would be seen to come from the king and not me. From the disapproval that radiated from Rashidi, I wondered if he suspected otherwise.
A flutter of white nearby sucked our attention toward the entrance.
“Hemi!” Merit drew up short and stood framed in the chamber entrance. She wore no heavy wig tonight, and her hair floated about her face. Her fingers drifted to her throat. “What are you doing here?”
I bowed to my love and the Great Wife. “I brought a sacrifice. I will ask the gods to restore ma’at after the death of Mentu.”
Rashidi led the goat into the shadows, and his voice wove its way back to us. “Ma’at cannot be restored when those the gods appoint refuse to obey.”
Merit and I watched the darkness where Rashidi had seemed to evaporate. She finally spoke. “He has always been strange, hasn’t he?”
I moved back toward the brazier, longing for the heat to penetrate my chilled bones. “Did you also come to offer a sacrifice?”
Merit sighed and studied the statue of Amun, seated on his throne, in the recessed wall. “I came to offer my questions.”
I rubbed damp palms together and faced her. “It is not easy to know the will of the gods.”
Merit slid beside me, her eyes still on Amun, touched my forearm with her four fingertips, and kept them there.
“Do you ever doubt, Hemi?” she said. “Doubt everything we have been taught about the gods?”
I tried not to move, so as not to disturb her fingers, and hoped that Rashidi was occupied with the goat. The fa
miliar warmth spread from her touch, loosening the ever-present tension between us.
“I have more doubts than certainties, I’m afraid.” My mouth felt dry.
Her eyes roamed my face, and her other hand joined the first on my arm. “What doubts? Tell me.” She stood so close that the night’s chill now fled.
“The afterlife is promised if our hearts are pure,” I whispered. “But I know no one whose heart is pure.”
“Yes!” Her eyes lit with a conspiratorial glow. “It seems a futile hope, from the womb! How can we go on hoping to reach the afterlife, when in the honesty of our souls, we know we are unworthy?” A desert breeze worked its way into the temple and lifted wisps of her hair from her face. “And they are ever changing, the gods. So many, all competing. Atum for our parents. Ra for us.” She stared up at me, eyes bright. “Do you ever wish for one god who does not change, Hemi?”
Looking down at her there, with her fiery eyes and her beautiful lips, I felt myself in grave danger. I stumbled backward and let her hands fall. “I try to focus on a different kind of eternity, Merit. Pharaoh’s pyramid will be my immortality.”
Her chin dropped to her chest at the mention of Khufu. It is always this way with us, when we encounter each other alone unexpectedly. We pretend for a few moments that it is only the two of us. Then one mentions Khufu, and the spell is broken.
“He thinks of nothing else, either,” Merit said, a sadness in her voice. “He is frantic to see it finished as soon as possible. He flies into a fury when he hears of a delay.”
“Even Pharaoh fears his mortality.”
Rashidi appeared beside us again, as though summoned from the dust by the gods. He held a large alabaster bowl of raw meat and entrails. Merit wrinkled her nose, then turned away. “I must return to the palace. The Beloved of Ra will be asking for me.”
I watched her go, wondering if my effort to appease the gods here in the temple had now been negated by the thoughts of Merit that were resurrected each time I saw her face.
Rashidi’s nasal voice drew me back to the sacrifice at hand. “I thought you desired to restore ma’at, not create more disorder.”
I flexed my shoulders and wished I had brought my staff. “The building project will ensure the afterlife for all of us. My attention there will bring divine order.”
He shrugged and moved toward the inmost chamber, through a doorway tall enough to admit a god. I followed. Inside, a larger fire burned on an altar, with hefty joints of oxen smoking at its center.
Rashidi dipped his bare hands into the bowl of gore and lifted dripping fingers. I looked into the flames, letting them burn away the image. The gods demanded my sacrifice, but did they insist that I enjoy the ritual? Rashidi tossed my offering to the flames, then intoned words too dark and deep for me to understand. I felt the weight of omen descend through the temple and settle on my shoulders.
Rashidi stared into the flames and spoke in flattened tones, as if reading my heart there in the embers. “You care only for your own goal, your own name, Hemiunu. You avoid what is necessary, what is important, to further your own ambition.”
I shifted and considered that it was time to leave.
“Only when you turn your back on your own ambition,” he continued, “and do what you know to be right, will the goddess Ma’at restore her blessing.”
Ashes from the charred meat clawed their way upward through the smoke-filled chamber. Some landed on my lips, and I thought I could taste the blackened flesh. Smoke burned my eyes.
“I must concentrate on the pyramid,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck.
Rashidi’s eyes reflected the firelight as he gazed at me, tiny double flames that seemed lit from within. “You must sacrifice yourself to bring justice.” His voice was like the hiss of a serpent in the fiery chamber, but then he lifted it to a surprising volume and delivered his prophecy like a hound baying at a feral scent. “Sacrifice yourself, Hemiunu! Or there will be more suffering, more pain, more disorder!”
I chose to leave the temple now, feeling that I had fulfilled my duties of sacrifice and had done all I could for the gods for one night.
As I crossed under the granite lintel, past the two mighty columns, and stumbled onto the sandy plateau, Rashidi’s voice seemed to echo behind me, over me, and out across the valley below. Like an ox-hide drum, calling men to judgment.
FIVE
Sacrifice yourself, Hemiunu! Or there will be more suffering, more pain, more disorder!
Throughout the next day and into the evening I found myself looking over my shoulder in anticipation of the next disaster. I drove the men hard to make up yesterday’s slack, but we were forced to quit early, as it was the Day of Accession and the king’s yearly festival would begin in late afternoon with a procession from palace to temple.
I stood at attention outside the palace entrance, with thousands of others who thronged the road to the temple. Khufu emerged on his gilded sedan chair, carried on poles by four brawny slaves. He wore the double crown, red and white, and inclined his head gently toward his people, while a fan bearer on either side kept him cool in spite of this tremendous effort. I occupied my mind with calculations and a frustrated reassessment of schedules based on the recent shortened workdays, the tension of the numbers creeping up my back and shoulders.
When Khufu had made his obeisance to the gods and been deposited back at the Great House, I departed to my own more modest home to get ready for the feast which would begin at sunset.
My preparations were simple. I shaved my face and head quickly, then placed my shaving knives in an even line from smallest to largest as is my habit. I ignored the usual cosmetics and jewelry, except for a gold armband to circle the midpoint of my upper arm, and donned a white robe with a gold belt. I would leave my staff behind. Though I was careful about my routine, I did not particularly care to spend much time in my house. An empty treasury, still waiting to be filled.
My haste to the Great House did not stem from excitement over the feast. These evenings of pomp and supposed hilarity never reached into my heart with their fingers of glee. And there were far too many of them. Before the Great Hall had grown cold from tonight’s celebration, the Festival of Hapi would be upon us, with games of skill and more feasting. I usually tried to excuse myself, to escape from these activities early. Tonight, however, I had a greater purpose.
I passed through the palace gate, under the mighty arch. The garden path led me to the palace entry, between two lines of palm trees and flaming torches. My gaze drifted upward to the palace walls. A woman watched me from where she sat on the deep ledge of a window.
The feast had already begun when I stepped into the Great Hall of Pillars. The room swarmed with nobles, officials, courtiers, and administrators, all jockeying for the best positions at the low stone tables that had been placed among the pillars. At the edges of the room, miniature replicas of the great pillars held alabaster lamps of burning oil atop their fluted capitals, bathing the painted walls in gold.
Rashidi’s words had struck deep, and although I could not walk away from the project, I also believed that ma’at would not be put right until I had found justice for Mentu. To this end, I planned to use my appearance at tonight’s festival to speak to the one man I believed could best handle the search for the killer.
Musicians lined the front of the hall, and I noted that the leading harpist in the kingdom had been engaged for the evening. His twenty-stringed harp was among the finest I had seen, and I felt a flicker of jealousy at the ornate column and neck. Music filled the Great Hall, mingling with the rising conversation and reverberating off the stone walls. The drinking had not yet begun and already the noise grated against my ears.
I searched the hall for the man I’d come to see. He would be easy to locate, the Nubian whom I had engaged to keep a watchful eye and a firm hand on the work site. Axum’s basalt-black skin and eyes as white and round as full moons were most intimidating, and even the bravest of the laborers could not
stand up to the intensity of his gaze.
Slave girls came to anoint my head and adorn me with a necklace of lotus flowers. I allowed the anointing but could not be bothered by flowers. Across the room, Senosiris lifted a hand in greeting. His daughter stood at his side, watching the festivities with the wide eyes of one new to the pleasures of the privileged.
I spotted the Nubian, Axum, standing apart from the gaiety, at the back of the hall, his back braced against a mighty column.
“Axum!” My voice evaporated in the din. I started toward the Nubian, but a hand around my upper arm held me fast. Behind me, a slender woman pulled up close.
“I’ve been waiting for a man more exciting than these dull politicians to appear,” she said.
I had to bend my head to catch her words, and Tamit interpreted my movement as an invitation. She pecked a kiss on my cheek.
“You give me too much credit, Tamit. I am as dull as any other politician.”
She stifled a laugh and encircled my arm with both her own. “Then tell my why every woman in the kingdom without a husband has her eye on Hemiunu.”
I lifted my gaze above her head to find Axum again. He still stood against the far column. “I have someone I must speak to, Tamit. You will excuse me?”
She sighed like a woman who is bored with everything life has given her. “You will sit beside me for the feast, Hemi. I’ll be certain of it.”
“As you wish.”
Tamit’s flirtations were far from a novelty. Khufu’s cousin on his mother’s side had been a coy girl when the seven of us were young together, and she had since become a tenacious woman. She’d buried one husband in a grand mastaba in Memphis and was hard at work finding another.
It will not be me.
Axum raised his white orbs as I approached. His shaved head glistened in the torchlight. Though the desert night was cool, the torches, the bodies, and the hot food made the hall stifling as though it were midafternoon.
“Axum, I must speak to you.” The Nubian faced me fully, his attention mine. “You have heard about Mentu’s murder?” I asked.