The Oasis

by Pauline Gedge

  Tetisheri looked at him speculatively in the steady yellow glow of her lamps. Broad-shouldered and stocky, his skin gleaming with health, he filled the room with masculine vigour. His curly brown hair had been loosely tied back with a red ribbon, from which tendrils escaped to coil against his sturdy neck and frame an open, eager face. But his eyes were not smiling. They met hers gravely. She turned to Isis. “Leave the comb. You can go,” she said. “I will see myself to bed.” After the woman had closed the door quietly behind her, Tetisheri folded her arms. “You do not fool me, Prince,” she declared. “What do you want?”

  “It is not a matter of wanting,” he said mildly. “I really do not want to consult you at all. I know that your heart belongs to Kamose and that you look out upon an Egypt coloured by his every breath. Do not deny it, Tetisheri. It does not hurt me, but it does make me wary of closing the distance between us.”

  “I do not deny it,” she interjected. “But if you think for one moment that I would place my love for your brother above the good of Egypt, you are mistaken. To do so would dishonour your father’s memory and diminish me.”

  “Perhaps. I have been hoping that you would summon me to discuss last season’s campaign or at least tell me what has been going on here, but no, you prefer to take your concerns to Ankhmahor and interrogate poor Nefer-Sakharu, seeing that Kamose will not talk to you. I am not blind. Are you afraid of me, Grandmother, or am I merely a witless trifle to be dismissed?” His tone did not change. It remained moderate. His hands lay loosely on the supports of the chair and there was no tension in his body, yet his very composure only served to accent the accusatory force of his words. Tetisheri struggled against the immediate flare of anger they lit in her. He is right, she thought bitterly. I should not have ignored him. I should have listened to the voice of my own intellect.

  “I would have sought you out, Ahmose,” she said slowly, “but I did not want Kamose to imagine that he had forfeited my loyalty. That may seem to be a petty excuse, but Kamose is the King. He makes the decisions that will affect the progress of the war. I could not afford to close off the avenue between us.”

  “So you took your concerns to Ankhmahor.” He uncrossed his legs and leaned back, linking his fingers together. “Why was that? Because he is older than I, more mature, hates hunting, what? And no, before you begin to protest, he has not approached me. I noticed that Kamose’s guard had been doubled, and when I asked Ankhmahor why, he told me that you had made the request. You must decide now, Grandmother, whether you will trust me or not. If not, then I will take my need for advice elsewhere.”

  For a long time they sat motionless, staring at each other, Ahmose’s steady brown eyes meeting Tetisheri’s reflective gaze. The young whelp is challenging me, she thought, amazed. This is not jealousy, this is a demand to be accorded what he sees as his legitimate position at last. And he is right. If I attempt to justify my doubts about him now, he will judge me as weak and relegate me to the margins of his life. I must not even apologize. So be it. “I took one concern to Anhkmahor,” she began. “It was this.” She told him quickly of the omens and the oracle. “It may have nothing to do with the immediate future, but I deemed it wise to take every precaution,” she pointed out. “I also wanted Ankhmahor’s opinion of Kamose’s mental condition. If he breaks, the rebellion is doomed.” Ahmose’s eyebrows shot up.

  “It is disconcerting to hear you move so rapidly from frigidity to complete surrender,” he commented. “You are a complex woman, Grandmother. I presume that the Prince assured you Kamose’s mind would remain whole, at least for the foreseeable future.”

  “You speak of it so calmly,” Tetisheri almost shouted. “Have you lost your love for him already?”

  “No!” He pounded the arm of the chair with one clenched fist. “But I have learned the hard habit of disconnecting myself from his agony! How else do you think I was able to stand beside him and watch what the orders that issued from his mouth did to his ka? He has no route of escape from his demons, Tetisheri. I am blessed. I can achieve forgetfulness in my wife’s embrace, in the flailing of a fish on my hook, in the second when my throwing stick flies upward and all my consciousness flies with it. These things snare my nightmares and smother them. Kamose is not so lucky. We killed all day, every day, for weeks on end. Kamose goes on killing even as he sits on the roof of the old palace and stares at the sky. It will be better for him to take up a real sword again.”

  “So.” She was shaken and this time she could not hide it. “Tell me everything, Ahmose. I want to know it all.”

  She sat very still while his voice filled the dim, warm air around them. He hid nothing from her, describing so calmly and vividly the stink of carnage, the conflagrations, the bewildered wails of the women, the restless nights often broken by the reports of scouts who moved up and down the river under the cover of darkness, that she did not even need to close her eyes to see it all unfold within her mind.

  When he had finished recounting the details of Kamose’s sweep north, he turned to an assessment of each Prince’s position of responsibility, together with a conjecture regarding each one’s loyalty and attitude toward Kamose, himself and Hor-Aha. “Het-Uart will not fall this year unless Apepa can be lured out of his citadel,” he finished. “Kamose is determined to besiege the city again, but it will be time wasted. The Princes will remain with him for one more season, I think, but if there are no results by the next Inundation, they will begin to petition him to let them go home and see to their nomes and estates.”

  “Then what should he do?” she asked, her voice husky from disuse, her head still full of bright and terrible images. He blew out his lips.

  “I want to hear your opinion first,” he said. “And may we have beer, Grandmother? All this talking has dried up my throat.”

  What are you? she thought, as she called Uni from his stool outside her door and sent him for refreshments, and even as the question came clear and cold it was followed by a rush of sorrow. You are not Kamose. You are not the King. I wish that it was your brother sitting across from me, discussing these matters with such lucidity and skill. “He should garrison Het nefer Apu, although the town is really too far from the Delta,” she said. “He should build a large fort at the Delta’s root, at Iunu, and fill it with permanent troops to prevent Apepa from coming south. He should fill Het-Uart with spies, people who can take up work in the city, and thus gradually acquire a picture of everything from the structure of the gates to the number and direction of the streets to the location and staffing of the military barracks. He also needs to know the tenor of the inhabitants. All that would take time.” She hesitated.

  “The passage of time is driving him mad,” Ahmose pointed out. “Both of you wanted a swift, sustained push north and a speedy end to the weight of Apepa’s foot on our necks. But, Tetisheri, it is not to be, and it seems to me that you have accepted the fact. Kamose has not. He will not. I am tired of arguing with him.”

  “But you will not desert him!” she blurted. “You will not quarrel publicly, Ahmose!”

  “Of course not,” he retorted. “You still see me as a fool, don’t you, Grandmother? I will say this to you once.” He leaned forward, lifting one admonitory finger. “I hate the Setiu. I hate Apepa. I swear by my father’s wounds, by my mother’s grief, I will know no peace until an Egyptian King reigns again over a unified country. I do not agree with Kamose’s strategies, but as his true subject I will support him because he and I, all of us, want the same thing.” He sat back and folded his arms. “Kamose has become like a chariot horse with blinkers. He can no longer see to right or left, but like such a horse he is running in the right direction.” With a knock on the door Uni entered, quietly setting out beer and pastries and trimming the lamps before discreetly retiring. Ahmose drained his cup in one gulp and refilled it. Tetisheri watched him carefully. After a moment she wet her lips.

  “Who holds the reins, Ahmose?” she murmured. “Does Hor-Aha?” He considered the question, sta
ring into his beer, then he looked up.

  “The General is ambitious and imperious,” he said. “There is no doubt that he is a brilliant tactician. He has complete control over his Medjay but not over Kamose, I think, although Kamose trusts his advice before he trusts mine. Frankly, Grandmother, I have come to dislike him. But I keep that to myself. I do not want to alienate him while he is still useful.”

  “His Medjay?”

  Ahmose grunted. “A slip of the tongue. Hor-Aha’s mother, Nithotep, was Egyptian, you know. I fancy she lived near the fort at Buhen in Wawat and made a living by washing the soldiers’ linen.”

  “No, I did not know,” Tetisheri responded. “What of his father?” Ahmose shrugged.

  “Obviously a tribesman, given the General’s colouring and features. But Hor-Aha regards himself as a citizen of this country. He takes pride in it. He will not betray his King.” He selected the largest pastry and bit into it with relish, licking the honey from his fingers and gracing Tetisheri with a sudden wide grin. “Now that Kamose has made him a Prince, he wants a nome to govern. Kamose has promised him something in the Delta.”

  “How ridiculous!” Tetisheri snapped. “We cannot have a tribesman governing a nome.” Ahmose’s teeth gleamed at her. “Don’t worry, Majesty,” he said softly. “It will be a very long time before the Delta is stable enough for proper government. We need not concern ourselves with that problem just yet.”

  “Ahmose,” she said wonderingly, “have we just become accomplices?”

  “Allies, Majesty,” he replied firmly. “Allies. Together with Kamose, we always were.” He rose and stretched. “Thank you for your august ear. Do we understand one another a little better now? May I go?” She nodded, holding out her hand. He took it in both of his, and bending he kissed her cheek. “Sleep well, Tetisheri,” he said and the door closed firmly behind him.

  Her couch beckoned, its white sheet turned back. She was aware of an enormous tiredness but she did not move, sitting staring into the silence, her mind racing. Not until the last lamp began to gutter did she pull herself up, but it was only to snuff the feeble flame. Placing a cushion on the chair Ahmose had vacated, she lowered herself onto it, set her elbows on the table, and gazed unseeingly into the darkness.

  The beginning of the month of Khoiak and the Feast of Hathor, goddess of love and beauty, marked the following day. Tetisheri, after a short and restless night, stood irritably with her female relatives at Hathor’s shrine near the centre of Weset to pay tribute to the mild, cow-headed deity. She had never felt much veneration for Hathor, believing less in the power of beauty to sway the deliberations of men than in a woman’s wit and intelligence, and she plied her whisk with impatient vigour at the flies attracted to her sweat.

  The river had reached its highest level and would now begin to sink. The sun was almost imperceptibly less intense but hot nevertheless, and Tetisheri wanted to tear the incense holder from the priest’s hand and finish his sonorous chant for him so that she could climb back into the litter waiting for her on the edge of the respectful crowd. Mindful, however, that Hathor had once been a vengeful goddess who had bathed Egypt in blood, she had brought a trinket to offer and a scroll detailing the amount of grain and other goods the priests might expect through the coming year. It was naturally far less than the assessment due to Amun, but Hathor’s main temple at Iunet would be flooded with gifts and worshippers on this occasion and the family need only concern itself with maintaining her small shrine and its modest complement of servants in Weset.

  In spite of her own lack of proper zeal, Tetisheri was touched to see Aahmes-nefertari’s devotion. The girl prostrated herself on the dusty stone with genuine reverence, whispering the prayers sung aloud and kissing the feet of the statue with eyes closed as though she were approaching a lover. The reason for her devotion became apparent once the women had retired to the seclusion of the grape arbour, where Kamose and Ahmose were waiting for them, wine, dried figs and date cakes laid out on linen in the leaf-dappled shade. “I need more than that,” Tetisheri grumbled as the men rose to greet them. “I ate very little and we left early for the shrine. Where is Uni? I want fresh vegetables and gazelle meat.” Ahmose had poured wine for her and was holding out her cup.

  “In a moment, Grandmother,” he said. “Come and sit down. Aahmes-nefertari has an announcement to make.” He smiled at his wife, who had not settled herself on the cushions strewn about. She smiled back and took a deep breath.

  “I have been saving my news for this day, Hathor’s day,” she said. “I am pregnant. The physician tells me that the baby will be born sometime in Payni, just before the harvest begins.”

  “So let us toast the conception of another Tao!” Ahmose broke in. He put an arm around the girl’s shoulders and drew her close. “No matter what the future might bring, the gods have decreed that our blood flows on.” Aahotep raised her cup and laughed delightedly.

  “Well done,” she said. “It is a magnificent omen. I am to be a grandmother yet again!”

  “And I a great-grandmother,” Tetisheri observed. “My congratulations, both of you. I wonder what the sex of the child will be. We will consult the oracle, and an astrologer of course.” Her words were directed at Aahmes-nefertari’s flushed face, but her eyes were surreptitiously on Kamose. He was smiling with everyone else and Tetisheri could detect no shadow of sadness or resentment in his expression. He is wholeheartedly glad, she told herself. He does not begrudge Ahmose this happiness at all. He really does not want it for himself.

  But Kamose, sensing her glance, turned his face towards her and that assumption quickly dissolved under a more sober realization. He knows he will not survive, she thought. Somehow he believes that his own marriage, the getting of royal children by him, is utterly unimportant because Ahmose will be the one to sit on the Horus Throne and perpetuate Tao gods in Egypt. Perhaps he has always suspected it. Oh, my darling Kamose! His smile, as he met her gaze, became wry, and he raised his wine in a salute to her before holding the cup to his mouth. “Tetisheri, what is the matter?” Aahotep asked anxiously. “You look suddenly grey. Are you ill?”

  “The visit to the shrine and then my announcement has been too much for you, Majesty,” Aahmes-nefertari said kindly, and Tetisheri bit back a scornful reply. I could stand forever in one place if I had to, and take the shock of any news, good or bad, better than you, she wanted to say. The child in your womb should have been Kamose’s seed, not his brother’s. Ahmose was watching her with a level, sympathetic scrutiny, and once again she was forced to quell the tide of bitterness she felt. This resentment will pass, she tried to say to him with her eyes. It is the death throes of an old woman’s fantasies, nothing more.

  “This wine is sour on an empty stomach,” she managed gruffly. “Isis! Find Uni and make him bring me food! Now sit here beside me, Aahmes-nefertari, and tell me how you are faring.” She patted the cushion at her side and the girl obeyed.

  “The physician says that if I carry the baby high it will be female,” she said eagerly. “And if low, then male. But it is too soon for him to predict either. I do not feel at all ill, Majesty.” Her hands flew to her cheeks. “I’m sorry for talking so fast. I am both excited and afraid.” Aahotep leaned across and patted her knee.

  “You will give Egypt many children, Aahmes-nefertari,” she said. “We are all so happy for you.” Aahmes-nefertari gave her mother a grateful glance.

  “Ahmose does not care whether we have a boy or a girl,” she said. “But I think a girl would be best. That way Ahmose-onkh …” Her voice trailed away and her gaze dropped to her lap.

  “Do not be ashamed of what you were about to say.” It was Kamose who spoke. He was lying on his side, head propped on one palm, his eyes on the moving tracery of vine leaves above him. “We must never lose sight of the painful realities of these days. If you produce a girl, the divine blood will be passed to her through you, and Ahmose-onkh in marrying her will obtain his godhead. Providing, of course, that Ahmose
is dead.” He sat up, crossing his legs and squinting at her through the patterned shadow. “Our line is royal anyway,” he went on, “and sometimes there has been no sister to refine and reanimate it. But when there is, it is better, stronger. Ma’at is renewed.”

  “These are hard things to consider, dear brother,” she said softly, still staring into her lap. “And it does not escape my attention that even though you are Majesty, you speak as though you do not intend to perpetuate our line yourself. I fear for you, Kamose.”

  No one broke the silence that followed. It spread and deepened, a weight of despondency that froze all movement. The wine remained unfinished in the cups and Uni, coming around the corner of the house with food-laden servants behind him, saw the family briefly as a collection of rigid statues.

  The month of Khoiak passed uneventfully. Gods’ days came and went: the Feast of Sacrifice, the Opening of the Tomb of Osiris, the Feast of the Hoeing of the Earth, the Feast of the Father of Palms; there were eleven temple festivals in all to occupy those made idle by the flood. It was a time the peasants loved, for they were exempt from building projects on holy days and could not labour in the fields because of the water.

  Slowly the Nile began to return to its banks and the heat lessened. Life in the house had settled into a pleasant routine and, but for the regular reports from the Uah-ta-Meh oasis and Het nefer Apu, the family might have imagined a return to the peace and stability of earlier years. Ahmose hunted and fished occasionally but now preferred to keep his wife company as she followed her small round of domestic duties. Aahotep was busy with the gardeners and with Simontu, the Scribe of the Granaries, who had been selecting staff for Kamose’s now-completed prison until he was summoned to calculate and apportion the amount of seed to be sown that year.

  Tetisheri, revitalized by the cooler temperatures and determined to wrench her mind from her former preoccupation with the campaign, decided to begin a history of her family and sat beside the pool dictating to her scribe. As for Kamose, he continued to spend many hours with the patient Behek beside him on the roof of the old palace. Sometimes preoccupied servants who happened to glance up and over the dividing wall on their way through the gardens saw Seqenenra in the hunched silhouette and muttered a quick prayer before recognizing his son. But in spite of his need for privacy, Kamose seemed to have recaptured much of his mental equilibrium. His face had lost the drawn, haunted look that had so shocked his grandmother, and new flesh overlaid his wiry muscles.