Going Forth By Day

by Mary R Woldering

  “No, no, nononono…” suddenly horrified words caught in Princess Bunefer’s throat as her joy turned into terror. “Help me. Sweet MaMa, divine Lady…”

  Several heads and forms emerged at the door as Shepseskaf sat. He noticed the deep scratches on his upper arms and felt the sting that let him know there were more marks on his back.

  “The woman. The new one… a demon has her!” One of the servants babbled and pointed back at the room where the attending women usually slept.

  The prince’s personal groom arrived up the steps, looked into the women’s quarters, darted back out and shouted: “No. Be gone.” He picked up the little statue of Bes, the bearded, squat god of household protection from its altar niche set in the wall beside the doorway, then showed it into the women’s area briefly before he took it and darted toward the prince’s room. “Highness. Are you harmed? Answer us!” He called louder outside the fine linen-draped doorway, ready to thrust the statue inside.

  Prince Shepseskaf shook, truly torn between settling back into his beloved’s arms after the best night of his life and quitting her embrace to see what devilment was going on in the women’s room. He grabbed a square-cut caftan from an open basket near his couch and dropped it over his head. Seizing his bright copper weapon from the floor beside it, he scrambled down the hall to the women’s living quarters.

  The new concubine who had been dancing in the moonlight last night lay naked and sprawled on the floor in what looked like a fit. Her chest heaved and her eyes were sightless and white. She mouthed some kind of incantation, keening it, and moaning it softly as if she had gone thoroughly mad in a bizarre kind of ecstasy. A darkness had formed at her brow.

  Prince Shepseskaf had started toward the woman on the floor. One of the handmaidens saw him make his move and sprang toward Naibe. She lay her head over her, ready to accept the spell that might overtake her in order to protect the prince. The other women in the room chattered back and forth and shrank further away.

  Nothing happened.

  All of the tumult in the room woke Naibe from her deep trance. She sat up, realized her condition, cringed and began to tremble uncontrollably. Two other handmaidens came forward, hesitantly. They helped the young woman sit, then guided her to her bed. When they found her coverlet on the floor they tried to put it around her shoulders, but it fell. She sat shivering, with her arms held tightly across her breasts. Everything about her posture seemed to tell the women that somehow, in this protected sleeping area, she had been raped.

  “Who took this woman last night?” the prince snarled at his groom and two personal chamber guards who had followed. “You know the penalty! See? She is afraid for her life, so don’t make a claim you were enticed.”

  The guards backed away from the prince when they heard the accusations begin.

  “Your highness…” one tried.

  “Quiet,” Shepseskaf snapped, “I’ll judge this.” His eyes met the shrinking handmaidens’ who knew, according to rule, that they could be executed or disfigured and the guards at least castrated if anyone was found guilty or even allowed it to happen.

  Prince Shepseskaf dropped to one knee by Naibe’s little bed in an odd genuflection. She looked up at him, tentatively. Her eyes flashed golden again and a knowing, proud little smile dotted her lips. It would have been a blessed moment but the princess, her own drape thrown around her nakedness, clung to the frame of the prince’s chamber door. Her knees sagged and she suddenly screamed in terror.

  “I knew it! I knew it. Oh beautiful Lady save our household! Strong Bes avenge me, I call you!” The sound of her wailing grew in volume. The sound of her bare feet thumping against the floor echoed as she padded down the hall to the room where guards, handmaids, the prince, and Naibe were assembled.

  “This is how she does it! I see it now! Get her out of here before she curses all of us!” the young prophetess squalled. “She is Heka. El-lilit, El-lilit!”

  Attendants turned and scurried to Princess Bunefer now, abandoning the prince and Naibe.

  She waved them away, but went to her own knees in the doorway, sobbing and bowing her head in misery like a lost little girl. “Shepsesi, my honor. Get away from her. Don’t look at her eyes …it’s in her eyes …it’s in her eyes!”

  The prince tenderly smoothed Naibe’s hair and gripped her hands as she smiled quietly up at him. As if he had wakened from a second dream, he suddenly noticed his hysterical wife and felt torn once again between the two women.

  “Go…” Naibe breathed, smiling and content but blowing a little breath on the princes face. “Go to her, please… I… release you…” Naibe blew another breath on him, then turned her face away.

  He rose and went to Princess Bunefer, urging her back down the hall to their room.

  “Beloved, shhh. Something wonderful…” his arms reached down to hold her tiny frame close to him.

  “But it hurts me! It hurts me, Shepsesi! This is not of our Mama. This is not! “Princess Bunefer insisted as her beloved led her to his stateroom and urged the guards to keep everyone else, including physicians and healers away.

  Naibe-Ellit listened to their voices fade into the distance as they returned to the Prince’s bedchamber. She wanted to scream, to laugh, and to cry aloud at the same time. This time, the heka event wasn’t uncontrolled as it had been when she defended herself from Wserkaf’s charm. His innocent blessing placed on her family the day before Marai left had opened a portal to something dark and scary. This time the heka was pleasant for her. She knew Bunefer wanted a child and knew the prince didn’t have his heart into taking a second wife. He really didn’t want a concubine either. He wanted his wife cured and able to bear his child. Her stay would have become meaningless for both of herself and the prince very quickly. Now you both see why I can’t stay, she whispered into the air. Now you know why. She didn’t want to be part of this household. The handmaidens who had clustered about her to help saw she had calmed herself, but were too worried about the young prophetess Bunefer’s response to help her now. They whispered among themselves, but moved away from her bed after one gave her some wine to drink. She sensed their secret thoughts quite clearly.

  Stay away from the new girl.

  Did you see? She tried to trick his Highness.

  She must have gone to one of the lower servants, felt some shame and made a lie.

  Our beautiful Bunefer will see her secret. She’ll be gone soon, just like the other one. Don’t worry.

  Naibe-Ellit laughed a little, but as the sense of magic faded so did her own memory of the exact sequence of events. She knew she had wanted to run away and to somehow end up causing more trouble for Wserkaf by proclaiming her new love for him, but ended up dancing to elevate her own spirits. The prince had found her. Did he approach me? Did he actually find himself inspired to rape me when I called the Lady as I danced? No! The Lady inspires lust and love, not violence and conquest. Did he bring me to his bed gently, use me and then cast me in the floor of the women’s bedchamber? No, I would have remembered that kind of disrespect. Was I so bedazzled by my own dance than any male could have approached and mounted me? Hardly! I know I did this on purpose. I just forgot how I did it… It just came through me or… She bowed her head, almost shyly, knowing she had commanded this. Now the handmaidens who had been whispering about her moved even further away. Quickly, they dressed and moved to other parts of the palace.

  El-lilit? Lilitu?? Ashera’s hand? Is that what the princess called me? Naibe’s heart fluttered just a little. The Lady Ashera was the goddess I called and through her call came Lilitu the Avenger? But I sent no evil, just a little trick. Her essence? I was with him. I know his ways, but the princess was there and yet not all three of us, as some men like. She lowered her head a little again, as if averting her own eyes from the humbling truth.

  She had been with the prince. She felt the stickiness of man-seed on her inner thigh. It hadn’t been any other man. The prince had been with his consort too and soon would
have no other memory except that a goddess very much like Hethrt and Divine Raet had kissed and danced with him in the moonlight and that his own sweet princess wife, a prophetess, had called her down inside of her to make the spark of a child in her womb.

  What will he remember of me? She mistily smiled. Maybe only that I was there somehow, Naibe lay back on her bed in the now empty women’s quarters and replaying the fading memories to herself as she slowly tried to recover from the night.

  Marai sat on his wicker-frame bed across from the inspector priest. The clarity of the memory of these events stunned the sojourner. Wserkaf had never experienced or heard more than vague rumors of the images he projected through the linen veil and Marai’s hand on his shoulder. Marai saw everything as clearly as if he had been living inside Naibe’s Child Stone while these events took place.

  For a moment, the sojourner wanted to break the link of veil and touch to ask the inspector more questions, but Wserkaf sat in a deep meditative trance, still fully open to all of the thoughts and scenes flooding him. His face turned slightly up as he remained relaxed and his eyelids twitched slightly from time to time as if he was dreaming. Marai sighed out once again and re-joined the “dream” as it continued to spill its hidden truths to both men.

  The initial frenzy in the crown prince’s bedchambers turned into a riot of other emotions as the next few days passed. During the daytime of the first day after, Prince Shepseskaf sought out Naibe. The young woman knew he hoped to look into her dangerous golden eyes in order to regain some of his nagging lost memory.

  “My dear Lady, come to me…” he typically ordered her whenever he encountered her.

  At first she worried he might be angry, but he gently caught her arm and treated her tenderly. She looked up into his black eyes, smiled tentatively, and then looked down, fully shy and demure.

  “I haven’t hurt you, have I?” he asked. “You had a dark place on your brow and your senses had taken flight when the women found you.”

  She shook her head and giggled a little. Her newfound power and her activities of the night had quickly become a point of mischief for her. “Oh never, Your Highness!” she smiled. Each time she looked up at him, she felt more confident. “You are too kind, and ever gentle. Why do you worry so?” she teased him.

  He frowned, still having no clear memory of the first liaison.

  The same sequence of events continued over the next few days. Each evening, Shepseskaf asked Naibe to come to him after the household slept. Then, each time he gazed into the golden sparkle that issued from her eyes, he forgot again. Each late night began with Naibe going to him. Each morning, the princess would always be the one who woke in his arms and filled his memories.

  Early in the following week, when the prince visited the king on daily business, Princess Bunefer beckoned to the young woman quite firmly. “Lady Naibe. Come to the hall near the garden shed. Now.”

  Suddenly worried again, Naibe put down her stitchery. When the two women were alone together, the princess stood, looking up at her for several anxious moments. The woman’s expression was a tangled mixture of astonishment, disgust and worship.

  Naibe almost laughed aloud because long ago she had been even shorter and rounder than the princess who stood in front of her. Looking down at another woman, particularly one as powerful and important as Princess Bunefer suddenly struck her as hilarious.

  “Why have you chosen to enchant us so severely, Lady Naibe?” the princess’ voice remained calm and polite. Her hands gripped each other as if she wanted to rip her mittens to shreds. “Do you know we could ask your life of you?”

  Naibe knew the woman wanted scream, slap her a dozen times, and curse her in her confusion. “Yes,” Naibe’s voice hushed, but she added in a multi-layered voice that was part vocal and part silent. But you won’t, will you, because you’re truly enjoying this. As an afterthought, she added aloud. “It’s not an enchantment, not really.”

  “You’re certain and will swear before your gods and ours that you’ve cast nothing on us?” Bunefer’s voice remained plain and disciplined. She squeezed all of the emotion out of her speaking voice and needed to squash it harder the more upset she became. Soon her voice sounded entirely flat and so far forward into her polished teeth that it sounded as if she was lisping.

  Naibe steadfastly shook her head. She knew the plainer the princess’ voice became, the more upset the she grew. A little thought crept through her own soul that this “power of charming” she had begun to manifest was helping her heal the ache in her heart. She still sorrowed greatly over the loss of both Marai and over Wserkaf’s ultimate rejection of her, but all of this bedevilment visited on Shepseskaf’s family was a little like a sweet form of revenge even though she bore them no ill will at all.

  “I’ve done nothing, kind Highness,” Naibe repeated, but the more she insisted on her innocence the more Bunefer remembered being with her husband. The memories seemed to be clearer whenever the two of them made eye contact, because Bunefer saw the spark of gold in Naibe’s eyes. “I just like to dance for my Lady Ashera under the light of the moon, to give praises to her by letting my body sing to her in its joy.”

  “How do you mean that?” The princess stopped wringing her hands and dropped them quietly by her side. “Our songs to MaMa Hethrt and our moves are magical praises. We echo and build her love and fertility through our joyous dance. Is that what you think you are doing too?”

  “Well, every joy is a kind of passion,” Naibe whispered. She knew the princess felt powerless around her and with each passing moment of this new inquiry, Bunefer felt more ill at ease. Naibe was tempted to use her multi-layered whisper-voice again just to break down the wall of doubt the princess was erecting. “But, to know passion is to know…” Naibe paused, quickly realizing the depth of her own sudden knowledge. She had wanted to say that the most intense of passions quickly sought their own darknesses and that it ended in revenge and madness. Deka. That is Deka and that’s why she couldn’t be with Marai, she thought, but she stopped short of saying anything else. The princess would hear her thoughts. She quickly spoke aloud to distract the tiny woman.

  “I do want to learn more. I’ve done nothing to cause his Highness harm” she explained. “I don’t even know so much about She who aids me” she quietly looked down and pointed her toe in a stepping pose. “For so long my wits were confused. I was even considered to be an idiot by most, but I knew enough somehow to call on her aid when it mattered. Maybe she took pity, Your Highness, and healed me. I just know she’s a little like your Hethrt or your Raet, but she stays in the form of a woman, not a gentle cow. So, please, just accept my gift, because you have both been so kind to me in my time of great sorrow. For that, I would like to see you great with your children.”

  Naibe’s explanation satisfied Bunefer for that time, but still didn’t trust what the young woman was telling her. Later that week, the princess took Naibe to the outer areas of the temple of Hethrt. The prophetess placed her where the lowest of initiates were allowed to learn and observe the work of their elder sisters.

  Naibe showed the girls and young women who were assembled, her form of dancing. She compared them with the ceremonial styles and tried to convince the princess and her assistants that, although her moves were incredibly sensual, they were not inherently magical.

  The visit only cleared the tension between the women slightly. Despite the good humor spreading throughout the prince’s household, there were even more whispers of mistrust by the end of the second week.

  Khentkawes came to Shepseskaf’s estate for a visit the following day, after she saw Naibe dancing in the temple. She was civil and polite as usual, asking Naibe how her life was here. She mentioned that her beloved had sailed for Khmenu a day ago and would not be returning for the passage of two moons. Unspoken, she included the words ‘And while he is away he’s safe from you. Don’t you dare use your heka on my son Kakai again!’

  The three women and the princesses’ at
tendants sat in Bunefer’s open plaza, gossiping about a variety of things: fragrances, artful ways of draping sheer “long cloth” about an ordinary kalasaris to make it look absolutely fussy with pleating. They sorted out threads from a scrap basket and braided them with gold, the way Naibe had showed them when she lived at Wserkaf’s house.

  The moment the young woman rose to go the rear of the house to visit the shaded privy, she heard the level of whispering rising. It was far too easy for her to see into their secrets, even when she was at toilet. She returned slowly, hid in the shade and listened as the women spoke about her.

  “I don’t believe she drains my beloved, so… no, I would suppose she can’t be a true Lilitu or other Shinar Baal,” Bunefer whispered. “She has awakened his virility. He pursues me like a youth and cannot rest without sending for me to give my love to him.”

  Naibe sensed excitement in the princess voice, but also sensed a bitter tone in Khentkawes answer. “I did not see that in my Wse. He feared me, perhaps. I did notice my own energy and abilities decrease. After Lady Naibe left us, Wse had begun to fast and was so overwhelmed with remorse that he could not meet my eyes or hear my words when I spoke to him. I can only hope he has healed himself of the loin-sickness through his devotion to Wisdom, once he returns.”

  Loin-Sickness! Naibe thought of bursting into the plaza in her own defense. Wseiri did not suffer from any such thing. He was moved by pity and entrapped by our situation, she grumbled, but checked her thoughts and continued listening.

  “All of the power the young creature wields, though!” Bunefer exclaimed. “If she can pull it from us both yet claim she is innocent, what shall we do about her?”