The Oasis

by Pauline Gedge

  “It is a serious accusation, Highness,” he reminded her carefully. “There is no proof of such a heinous plot.”

  “We have Senehat’s evidence of the woman’s hatred,” Aahmes-nefertari retorted. “And there is no doubt that she lied regarding her movements last night. I will take no further chances with her, Ankhmahor. She must stand with the Princes to be judged.”

  “The execution of noblemen will send tremors of insecurity throughout the army as well as the citizenry,” he pointed out. “Those men who had been prepared to join the rebellion, whose sense of discernment had been swayed, will fear the same fate. That is bad enough. But to shoot a woman …” He spread out his hands. “Such an act will shock Egypt and you will run the risk of losing much support.”

  “Well, what alternative do we have?” Aahmes-nefertari flared, too tired for diplomacy. “We must show as strongly as possible that we are in control and we intend to remain so. If that means ruthlessness, then we will be ruthless, and sleep all the better at night for knowing that once again the seedling of betrayal has been rooted out. Once again, Ankhmahor.” She rose from her stool beside the couch but did not let go of her husband’s limp hand. “Ever since my father chose to move against Apepa out of pure desperation, we have fought the invisible tentacles of treachery. Too often the enemy has worn the smiling face of a trusted servant, even a relative. I am so sick of having our kindness rewarded with perfidy, our dream for a liberated Egypt obstructed by men who speak fair but have deceit in their hearts. How do we cling to an ability to trust?” Her shoulders slumped and she ran a shaking hand through her sticky hair. “Look at what trust has done to Kamose, to my husband! If you can propose a solution other than execution for all of them I am willing to hear it.”

  “You are right,” Ankhmahor admitted reluctantly, “and as yet I can think of no alternative. But, Highness, should we not wait until Ahmose recovers before any irretrievable decision is made? What would His Highness want to do?” She gave a strange, twisted smile and sank back onto the stool.

  “His Highness has always argued for moderation,” she said huskily. “You of all people know this, Ankhmahor. Throughout Kamose’s campaigns it has been my husband who pleaded for clemency, for restraint. The anger of a man who offers water to someone who is thirsty, only to be slapped in the face for his kindness will be far greater than that of the man who ignores a beggar’s need and is promptly attacked. I promise you that when Ahmose opens his eyes he will want vengeance, and it will begin with extermination. I will consult with my mother and grandmother of course, but you may be assured that they will share my desire for the death of Intef and Iasen. Perhaps for Mesehti and Makhu also. We shall see.” He obviously had no answer to that. She could see the truth of her words in his face. Sighing, he asked to be dismissed.

  Aahmes-nefertari slept fitfully in spite of her weariness, waking still tired to the following dawn. A bath refreshed her a little and a small meal even more. After opening her shrine and praying for her husband’s recovery, she visited the children, sent Senehat back to Ramose’s quarters, spoke to the physician, who had nothing new to tell her, and made her way to her grandmother’s rooms. As she approached, Uni came to his feet before the closed door and bowed. She greeted him absently. “Highness, please try to persuade my mistress to take some nourishment,” he asked her, his brow furrowed with concern. “She has eaten nothing since His Majesty’s body was carried into the house but she is drinking too much wine.”

  “Where is my mother?” Aahmes-nefertari wanted to know, aware of the usual tiny spasm of apprehension at the prospect of confronting Tetisheri.

  “I believe she has gone to the prison this morning,” he replied. “She wished to speak with the Lady Nefer-Sakharu.”

  “I see.” Even a month ago I would have shrunk from facing Grandmother alone, Aahmes-nefertari thought, but I can do it now. I can do many things now. Uni held the door open for her and she walked through.

  Tetisheri’s shrine was also open, an incense burner set before it sending out wreaths of bitter grey smoke that filled the shuttered space with a choking haze. Aahmes-nefertari, coughing, went at once to the window hanging and raised it. Plumes of burning myrrh flowed past her as she turned back. Isis had just finished straightening the linen on Tetisheri’s couch and Tetisheri herself was sitting beside it, a cup full of wine clenched in both hands and a half-full flagon on the table. A dish of fresh bread, figs and brown cheese lay untouched on the floor. The servant looked harried. “Isis, bring hot water and cloths,” Aahmes-nefertari instructed her. “Your mistress needs washing. Hurry up.”

  With a glance of pure relief Isis left and Aahmes-nefertari went to the old lady, prying the cup from her fingers and tossing its contents out the window. Tetisheri did not protest. She watched her granddaughter with a languid gaze and Aahmes-nefertari realized that Tetisheri was more than a little drunk. Picking up the dish from the floor, she selected a fig and held it out. “Eat, Grandmother,” she insisted. “You must have some nourishment.” Tetisheri blinked slowly.

  “I can smell Meketra,” she said with exaggerated care. “I could smell the stink of sedition on him when he was alive and now I inhale the stink of his corruption.” Aahmes-nefertari placed the fig on her palm.

  “I am going to close your shrine now,” she said distinctly, “and empty the incense burner. Put the fig in your mouth, Tetisheri.”

  “I don’t want food,” Tetisheri said, wrinkling up her nose like a stubborn child. “I have been praying for Kamose. But praying for Kamose is not as good as praying with him, is it?” Aahmes-nefertari had gone to the shrine and shut its gilded doors. The incense had gone out of its own accord. Turning back, she saw tears dribbling down Tetisheri’s lined cheeks and felt a stab of panic. This was the woman with a will that had never been broken. Hers was the rigid backbone against which all of them measured their own strength. If Tetisheri snaps, we will be completely adrift, Mother and I, she thought. I cannot cope with this! Squatting in front of her grandmother, she retrieved the fig and took both gnarled hands in her own.

  “Kamose is dead,” she said emphatically. “Even at this moment he lies under the knives and hooks of the sempriests. No amount of wine will bring him back to us, Tetisheri. No prayers will usher him through your door. I loved him also and I grieve for my loss, but Ahmose still lives. Do you not care about him?”

  “No,” Tetisheri replied tonelessly. “Not now, not today. I am tired of carrying so much weight, Aahmes-nefertari, tired of my own strength. Let me alone.”

  “Then do you no longer care about Egypt’s fate?” Aahmes-nefertari persisted. “Ahmose will be King when the seventy days of mourning for Kamose are over. Does it not matter to you that Egypt still has a King?” Tetisheri took her fingers from Aahmes-nefertari’s grip.

  “Yes, it matters,” she said. “But that King is not Kamose. It should be Kamose. You should have married him, not his brother.” Aahmes-nefertari had to stifle a sudden urge to take her by her frail shoulders and shake her viciously.

  “There are decisions to be made regarding the fate of the Princes,” she said deliberately. “Mother and I need your advice, Tetisheri, we need all your faculties.” Tetisheri turned glazed eyes upon her.

  “What is there to decide?” she slurred. “Kill them all. Send them to the Judgement Hall and let Sobek crunch their bones.” Aahmes-nefertari came to her feet and stood with hands on hips, looking down on her grandmother.

  “You will be washed and you will drink some milk and then you will sleep off your drunkenness,” she ordered. “I will send the physician to you to see that you have not made yourself ill. We are all suffering, Tetisheri. We should be used to it by now, shouldn’t we? But I for one am not.” I do not want to be the strong one, she wanted to add. That has always been you. Please come back to us, Tetisheri.

  At that moment Uni opened the door to admit Isis and another servant bearing a steaming bowl and towels. Aahmes-nefertari addressed the steward. “If I am ne
eded, I will be at the prison,” she told him. “Your mistress is to be washed and given milk and put back to bed. Do not let her argue with you, Uni. Not this time. Isis can fetch the physician. Leave the window uncovered. The air in here is very stale.”

  I am furious with you, Tetisheri, she thought as she strode through the house. Furious and hurt. Kamose was the one brilliant star in your black sky, so bright to your dazzled, selfish old eye that you could not see the lesser star burning close to it. Was it a genuine love you felt for him, or a greedy possessiveness that came into full flower when Father died? Perhaps you cannot love. Perhaps Kamose simply fitted the mould of kingship and character you had devised in your own mind, and Ahmose did not. I ache on your behalf, my dearest husband, and my whole soul cries out its loss for you, my Kamose, yet I am denied the indulgence of grief. There is too much to do. I will never forgive Grandmother this self-pitying lapse. Our lives still hang in the balance and breaking the seals on wine jars will not save us. So her mind raced on, churning with the chaos of her emotions, until she came to the outer gate of Kamose’s prison, answered the challenge of the guards to either side, and walking through, saw Ramose coming towards her over the hard-packed earth before the door.

  He bowed as he came to a halt, his expression strained, and his first words were of concern for Ahmose.

  “He is still unconscious,” Aahmes-nefertari told him. “There is no change. Have you been to see your mother, Ramose?” He nodded miserably.

  “She fumes and accuses and protests her innocence,” he said. “She expects me to set her free, as though I have more authority than Simontu. What will happen to her, Highness? Will she be tried?” Aahmes-nefertari considered him warily before replying. He was obviously under great stress but she was in no mood to indulge him.

  “You were Kamose’s close friend,” she said. “Those who plotted against him included Nefer-Sakharu. There is some evidence that she had received orders to kill my son. What would you do with her?”

  “She is my mother,” he said wretchedly. “How can I answer your question? The gods do not judge benignly those who do not honour their forebears. Yet she has committed treason and connived at my lord’s death.” His brown eyes were full of anguish as they met hers. “You are going to execute her, aren’t you, Aahmes-nefertari?” At his use of her name, Aahmes-nefertari was flooded with memories.

  “Whatever is done must be done quickly,” she told him. “Egypt must see that retribution is swift, final, there must be no hesitation or the Princes’ disaffection may spread. Worse, Apepa may sense a weakness and move to take the country back, particularly with Ahmose wounded and unable to issue any commands.” She touched him gently. His skin was hot and she repressed an urge to run her fingers over it, to step closer to him and beg from him a purely masculine reassurance. “Only Mother and I stand between all Kamose achieved and utter disaster,” she almost whispered. “I do not think it will be possible to save Nefer-Sakharu.” Do not plead with me, Ramose, she spoke to him silently, urgently. Do not beg for a wrong to be twisted until it appears to be a right. Do not ask me to warp the divine decrees of Ma’at for the sake of filial allegiance. Please remember Si-Amun! He smiled sadly.

  “I am ashamed,” he said. “Of my father, my mother, yet I love them both. I am the most unfortunate man to be living in this troubled age, Highness. I think that peace will always be denied me.” Bowing again he stepped around her, and she was left to continue on until she came to the thick wooden doors of the prison.

  Simontu’s office, to the left of the passage leading to the cells, was large and bare. From his seat behind the desk he rose and greeted her with reverence. Yes, her mother was still within, questioning the Prince Intef. She had been with him for an hour or more. He would tell her Aahmes-nefertari was here.

  Taking his chair, Aahmes-nefertari waited. The building was quiet, more than half-empty she knew, and she wondered, not for the first time why Kamose had chosen to restore it. Had he planned to fill it with Setiu offenders once he had taken Het-Uart? The workings of his mind had always been mysterious and now there would never be an answer.

  Her mother came in shortly. Aahmes-nefertari rose respectfully and for a moment the two women regarded one another. Then Aahmes-nefertari said, “Tetisheri was drunk when I went to see her earlier and Ramose is distraught. What shall we do?” Aahotep waved her daughter down and lowered herself into the chair facing the desk. She was wearing blue, the colour of mourning. Her face had been carefully painted. A thin band of gold hung with tiny jasper scarabs encircled her forehead and her plain, shoulder-length wig, and gold glinted on her long fingers.

  “My arm aches,” she remarked. “I had it massaged but it is still sore. Much strength is required to drive a blade into a man. I had not realized. Still …” She gave Aahmes-nefertari a grim smile. “It is a pain I welcome. I have had my soiled sheath folded and put away in a separate box. It is not pride, Aahmes-nefertari. It will serve to remind me of our vulnerability if the time ever comes when we feel ourselves to be invincible.” Aahmes-nefertari did not reply and presently Aahotep continued. “I have been here since dawn, questioning Intef and Iasen. I do not think that they have any concept of their own danger even though I killed Meketra. They believe that because we are women and thus to be discounted we will do nothing until Ahmose recovers, and they are confident that he will not only pardon them but understand their dissatisfaction with Kamose. Oh they have not said these things in so many words,” she finished as Aahmes-nefertari leaned forward with an outraged protest on her lips, “but their attitude is barely deferential. They have not changed much since Kamose bullied them into action two years ago.”

  “Did they refer to Mesehti and Makhu?” Aahotep folded her arms and placed them on the table.

  “No. We must send someone to Akhmin and Djawati to find them, that is if they have not journeyed straight to the Delta to pledge their loyalty to Apepa.”

  “They may indeed have gone home, but according to Senehat they argued in favour of Kamose,” Aahmes-nefertari pointed out. “If they wanted no part in the plot and yet still felt some loyalty to the other Princes, what choice did they have but to run?”

  “They could have warned him!” Aahotep flared. “The cowards!”

  There was another hiatus. Aahmes-nefertari watched her mother. Aahotep’s jewelled fingers tapped out an absent rhythm on the scored surface of the table. She was breathing deeply, her full breasts rising and falling under the soft blue sheath, her dark brows drawn together in a frown, and all at once Aahmes-nefertari saw her in a different light. It was as though the easy categories into which she had placed her without reflection—mother, wife, mistress of a household— drew back to reveal the true and much more complex facets of her personality. She is indeed my mother, Seqenenra’s wife, the arbiter of the house, Aahmes-nefertari reflected with surprise, but I saw all those things in relation to myself. Even when she and Tetisheri and I used to meet to discuss the responsibilities Kamose placed upon us, I saw her as somehow woven into the family, not existing apart from it. Aahotep alone, without those trappings, Aahotep herself, is something detached. “Mother,” she ventured at last, slightly awed at her revelation, “Ahmose would not pardon them. Nor would he understand. They have mistaken his mild demeanour for weakness.”

  “I know.” Aahotep sat back. “They must be dealt with quickly before others begin to assume that rebellion carries no punishment. I feel sorrow for their wives and children, but they must be executed immediately.”

  “And what of Nefer-Sakharu?”

  “She is the poison that drips slowly and eventually contaminates all that it touches,” Aahotep said gruffly. “What else can we do with her but end her life also? Exile her and her tongue will still wag. We are not safe from her wherever she might go.”

  “Then I suggest that we send Ramose after Mesehti and Makhu. That way he will not be forced to see his mother finally disgraced or feel compelled to stand with her. I want to mourn for Kamose
,” Aahmes-nefertari finished, getting up. “I cannot do so until every other consideration is settled.” Aahotep stood also.

  “Then we are agreed?”

  “We are.”

  “Good. I will tell Hor-Aha to select ten Medjay archers and tomorrow morning the army will assemble on the parade ground to watch the executions. Aahmes-nefertari …”

  “Yes?” Her mother had paused and was biting her hennaed lip.

  “It is a terrible thing that we are doing. Killing Egypt’s nobles. Killing a woman. It is as though …” She gestured around the thick, naked walls of the chamber. “It is as though I too am in prison, a place where choices are no longer possible.” Aahmes-nefertari came around the desk and took her mother’s cold hand in both of hers.

  “We did not begin this,” she said quietly, “but it is our fate to end it. I must go to Ahmose. Come with me, and then we will go to the temple and pray. By the time we return, Grandmother may be awake and sane enough to offer us advice.”

  “I cannot imagine her proposing a more compassionate alternative,” Aahotep retorted. “She will want them dead at any cost.” To that there was nothing Aahmes-nefertari could say. Still hand in hand, the two women went out into the blinding midday sunlight.

  In the evening they met with Tetisheri. Pallid and enfeebled by her bout of drinking, she had nevertheless regained her lucidity and was vehemently adamant that the Princes should die. “Why should we spare them?” she snapped. “They murdered Kamose without compunction and but for your courage, Aahotep, they would have killed Ahmose too. Sweep them away. They are not fit to call themselves Egyptian.”

  “Then we are in complete agreement?” Aahmes-nefertari asked. “There must be no doubts, no brooding later.” Tetisheri shot her a contemptuous look from the bundle of sheets under which she was resting.