by Overton, Max
As if in answer, little Tasherit cried out weakly and sneezed, a spray of bright blood covering her pillow. Ay stepped forward and wiped his grand-daughter's face gently with the edge of the sheet. She moaned, her fever-bright eyes wandering, unfocused.
"What else have you prescribed, Shepseskare?" Ay asked, controlling his temper.
"There is nothing else that will work. The prayers are to Sekhmet though I of course address them through the Aten. I can prescribe tinctures and oils for the pain, but only prayer will cure her."
"What of frankincense mixed with honey and milk? I have heard that can be used."
"I think I would know if that would be useful, Tjaty. Now I really must ask you to leave. This girl is sick and needs my prayers." Shepseskare resumed his mumbled prayers, turning his back on Ay.
Ay bent over and kissed little Tasherit on her fevered forehead before walking quietly from the room. He leaned in the doorway and looked back, tears pouring again from his eyes.
"Uncle?"
Ay turned to see Beketaten standing a few paces away. She wore a coarser weave linen shift that hung from her slim shoulders on thin straps. It was altogether less revealing than the gossamer-thin garments worn by the whole royal family. Ay thought it more suitable under the circumstances and felt his heart warm toward the girl. He smiled, wiping away his tears.
"Will she be all right, uncle? The physician would not tell us."
"I don't think he knows, Beketaten. It is with the gods now." He saw a puzzled expression on the girl's face and considered his words carefully. "Should I say it is up to the god, Aten, instead?"
Beketaten now thought carefully and Ay hid a small smile. A girl who does not rush into words , he thought. I wonder who taught her that .
"It is the king's decree that the Aten is the only god," Beketaten said slowly. "Yet for countless years Kemet has had many gods. Does saying they don't exist remove them? Dare I say that the king is mistaken?"
"Dare think it, but do not say it. Not yet. There may come a time ..." Ay's voice trailed off and he looked beyond Beketaten to the next bedchamber. "What of Setepenra?"
Beketaten shook herself. "She is very sick, uncle."
"What of the rest of you?"
"Well enough, I think, though the queen has a cough, as do I. It may not be anything. There were many coughs and fevers in Waset when I left there. Even the old queen ..." Beketaten stopped, blushing. "My mother, uncle--your sister. Even she complained of fever and a headache. She was feeling very poorly when she left for Waset yesterday."
"We will hope it is nothing, Beketaten, for all of you. Now, there is a physician with Setepenra?"
"Yes, but not like any physician I have seen. He does not pray at all."
"Really?" Ay smiled again, enjoying the talk with his young niece. "I would like to meet him."
The physician proved to be a young man dressed in an ordinary kilt of medium quality linen. He wore sandals and armbands of woven jute fibers around the biceps of his arms. When Ay and Beketaten entered the bedchamber, the young man was bent over the little girl in the bed, with what looked like a short cow's horn connecting her chest with his left ear.
"What are you doing?" Ay asked.
"Shh!" The physician waved an arm at them, motioning them to keep silent. After a few moments he straightened up and gently turned the little girl onto her stomach. Setepenra, though conscious, made no sound, her body limp and yielding.
"What are you doing?" Ay asked again.
The young man grinned. "Hello again, Scarab." He contemplated the older man. "And you are?"
"I am Tjaty Ay and this child you are attending is my granddaughter. I would like to know who you are and what you are doing. You are supposed to be treating Setepenra for the plague."
"Nebhotep. I was listening to her heart but now I am going to listen to her lungs. And yes, I am treating Setepenra for the plague."
"Listening to her heart? What do you mean? It talks to you?"
Nebhotep laughed, his young face breaking out into a cheerful grin that made him look like a mischievous teenager. "It talks, Tjaty, but not in words." He eased Setepenra onto her back again. "Have a listen, like this." He demonstrated how he used the hollow cow's horn.
Ay looked warily at the horn then bent his head over the little girl, fitting the tip of the horn, its sharp end cut off and filed, into his ear and putting the broad end onto the spot indicated by Nebhotep. He listened.
"What is that? It sounds like a temple drum, played very fast."
"It is her heart."
Ay stood up and handed the horn back to the physician. "What is it doing and why?"
Nebhotep shook his head. "That I do not know. The heart is supposed to be the seat of emotion and intelligence. Why it should make a noise is a mystery to me. It is not the sickness, as healthy people also have beating hearts, though the beat is slower, more like the temple drums."
Ay frowned, his mind racing as it tried to assimilate this new information. "And the lungs? You said you were going to listen to them too. Do they beat also?"
"Listen for yourself." Nebhotep turned Setepenra over and motioned for Ay to repeat his performance with the cow's horn. "What do you hear?"
"I don't know. It is faint but it is not a beat, it is a bit like the wind in the palm fronds when they clatter together or...or ..." He cast his mind about for a likeness.
"Like a sheet of papyrus crumpled in the hand?" Nebhotep took a small piece of papyrus sitting with other pieces covered in scribbled notes from a table and crushed it in his fist, the dry fibers crackling audibly.
"Yes. That's it," Ay exclaimed. "A sort of crackling sound. And we all make this sound?"
"No. Only if you are very sick and you have a sickness of the lungs. I do not yet understand why the lungs of a sick person should sound different from those of a healthy person but I am working on it."
"And is this work of any help in curing my little Setepenra?"
"No." Nebhotep shook his head. "She will die before sunset." He turned the princess over and made her comfortable, stroking her forehead gently.
Ay sat down on the edge of the bed and held the little girl's hand. Beketaten stood behind the head of the bed and directed a gentle breeze down on the fevered child with a small reed fan. Setepenra looked blearily up at the older man. "Unc'e Ay?"
"Yes my little blossom, I am here, and so is Beket."
Setepenra swallowed and dissolved into a minor paroxysm of coughing. She settled back down against the pillows, panting. "It hurts, Unc'e," she whispered, closing her eyes.
Ay leaned forward and wiped away a fleck of blood from the corner of her mouth with a scrap of cloth. His eyes misted over and he looked back up at Nebhotep. "There is nothing you can do? There is no cure for plague?"
"I have been treating her, Tjaty, but there are no recognized remedies for plague." He hesitated. "There is something that sometimes works if you catch it before the blood starts. I have tried it on a few people in the city."
"How many lived?"
Nebhotep moved over to the table near the bed and started going through a large wicker basket. "One."
"Out of how many?"
Nebhotep shrugged. "Fifty or more. I told you, the problem is catching it early enough. Most people don't call for a physician until they start spitting up blood." He pulled out several linen packages from the basket and unrolled them.
"Fifty? I had no idea there was so much plague in Akhet-Aten."
"More every day. For some reason it started when the first of the foreign visitors arrived. The first person I treated was a member of the Syrian party."
"What is this treatment? A lot of prayer, I suppose."
"Actually none at all, though you can pray if you like."
Ay looked at the young physician shrewdly. "You sound as if you do not believe in the gods."
"Shall we say I am unconvinced?" Nebhotep turned from the table and his examination of the contents of the packages. "I have alway
s relied on my skill, my knowledge, cleanliness in all things, and trial. I listen to my elders," he smiled faintly. "And sometimes I find something worth hearing, especially from country midwives. Does my disbelief matter, Tjaty?"
"Not at all." Ay looked back at Setepenra, who had fallen into a troubled sleep. "What is this treatment?"
"Milk, boiled with honey, frankincense, a few other herbs that are regularly used for minor ailments, a little bit of hippopotamus dung. Personally, I think the dung is optional."
Ay grimaced. "It sounds foul."
Nebhotep grinned. "Oh, it gets worse. That sort of concoction is fairly often used. My innovations are the boiling and mold. An old woman of Men Nefer told me about that. She says that consuming large quantities of the blue-green mold that grows on rotting bread and fruit will cure internal diseases if you catch them early enough. She even puts the mold on wounds and claims it speeds healing. I have not tried that yet."
"But your mixture works?"
"Yes, sometimes."
"Sometimes is better than never." Ay leapt to his feet and strode purposefully into the antechamber. He grabbed two servants in the doorway who were staring with interest into the bedchambers and half-dragged them back into Setepenra's room. "Tell them what you need, Nebhotep. Enough for the royal family first, then the palace."
"They will not take it, Tjaty. I have found people to be very conservative unless they feel as if they are dying and it is too late by then."
"Let me worry about that, Nebhotep. As Tjaty I can command anyone except the king and queen--and maybe even them. Tell the servants what you need."
"Very well. I need a large pot full of milk, enough for two hundred people to have a cup full each. Start a small pot also with enough for twenty. Place the pots of milk on a fire and bring them to a boil--it must be boiling, that is very important. While the milk is heating gather together honey, frankincense, elderberry, heavet fruit, asif plant, cucumber flowers, green dates, garlic and a little hippopotamus dung. I will come down to the kitchens and prepare the mixture myself when the milk is boiling."
The servant gulped. "Whe...where do I find hippopotamus dung, sir?"
"From a hippopotamus, I would have thought. Go to an apothecary at the House of Life. He will certainly have some." Nebhotep chased the first servant off then took the other one to the table, where he showed him the contents of one of his linen packages. "This is green mold. It occurs on bread and some rotten fruit. I want you to go into the city and collect as much as you can. Make sure it is green mold, not white or black. Bring the loaves and the fruit intact. Don't try and remove the mold. You'll need some helpers, as I need a lot of it. Five bushel baskets at least."
The servant departed with a papyrus note from Ay charging everyone to obey the man's demands without question.
"I'm glad you thought of that, Tjaty. Left to my own actions, he would have returned in an hour or two without anything."
"There's no point in having power if you can't use it," Ay observed.
"Uncle, I need to sit down. I'm not feeling very well." Beketaten put the reed fan down and came around to the side of the bed and sat heavily on it. "I'm sure it is nothing, uncle. I just feel very tired."
Nebhotep crossed to the bed quickly and put a hand on the princess' forehead. "You are warmer than you should be. Do you have a cough? Any difficulty breathing?"
Beketaten yawned and shook her head. "No, just very tired, suddenly." She leaned back against one of the bedposts and closed her eyes. "I'll be alright in a minute."
Nebhotep met Ay's concerned gaze. "If you want to pray, Tjaty, pray that your palace servants are quick."
The first batch of milk boiled quickly and Nebhotep left Setepenra in Ay's hands to go down to the kitchens. He returned an hour later with a large jar of the concoction and a copper cup. "You first, Tjaty." He poured the mixture into the cup; green flecks swam in a fetid milky brown fluid.
Ay sniffed it and wrinkled his nose. "It looks foul and smells fouler."
"And it will taste worse. Drink it."
Ay drank and gagged, finally draining the cup. He handed the cup back to the physician. "Thank the gods that's over. It is terrible."
Nebhotep smiled as he refilled the cup and gave it to Beketaten. "You will need to take a cup twice a day for three days, Tjaty. If you are still alive after three days, the medicine has worked. Now, can you get the rest of the royal family to take it?"
"They will if I have to hold their noses and pour it down their throats." Ay watched incredulously as Beketaten drained the cup without obvious distaste. "That was the same stuff?"
"It is not that bad, uncle. Last year when I had lesions in my mouth, the physician in Waset treated me with a milk and scribe's excrement mix. Now that was really foul."
"You do know you weren't supposed to swallow that?" Nebhotep asked gently. "The proper treatment is to apply it to skin lesions after the scab has fallen off. The physician should have used a mouthwash of milk and baby's urine."
"So I was told," Beketaten said with a grimace. "But you try not swallowing with a mouthful of that."
"Well, it doesn't seem to have done you any harm."
"You are going to give Setepenra some?" Ay asked.
Nebhotep shook his head. "She would not be able to keep it down and it is too late anyway. She is dying." He put the cup beside the jar of milk and dipped a cloth in cold water, wringing it out and holding it to the little girl's hot skin. "All we can do now is make her as comfortable as possible."
Ay left Nebhotep and Beketaten to attend to Setepenra's final comforts and, taking the jar and cup, went to dose the rest of the royal family. By sunset, princesses Neferneferouaten-tasherit and Setepenra had joined their elder sister Meketaten in death. The palace was filled with the sounds of grief and not inconsiderable amounts of retching as the palace staff followed the royal family's example and started their first dose of medicine under the supervision of Nebhotep and Ay.
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Chapter Twenty-Four
The plague in its two forms swept through Akhet-Aten with the same ferocity as the country as a whole. Only about one in ten people actually caught the disease, misfortune striking some families but not others, but everyone was affected as an already tottering economy foundered. Nobody could explain the hit and miss incidence though it was noticed that the areas around the docks and the city granaries had a higher incidence of the swelling plague whereas areas near the temples had more cases of the bleeding plague. Nobody thought it relevant that mice and rats teemed around the docks and granaries and the temples were places where large numbers of people congregated. One in ten caught the disease but of those that fell ill, half of the swelling plague victims died and nearly all the bleeding plague sufferers. Perhaps the one thing that prevented the plague from being totally destructive was that people shut themselves away when they sickened, limiting deaths to their nearest and dearest.
The bleeding plague struck the palace especially hard but the death rate was only moderate. In fact, it was heaviest among the royal family, but only in the first days of the sickness. Three of the young princesses died but while others got sick, Nefertiti and Beketaten most of all, none died after administering Nebhotep's medicine. The palace staff suffered a one in three loss to the bleeding plague and one in four to the swelling but this was considered an act of mercy by the god or gods. Some, even among those families that lost members, offered up quiet but heartfelt thanks that they were themselves spared. The population of Akhet-Aten as a whole felt the Aten had spared them and deepened their faith, but in Kemet, and especially in Waset, the plague was seen as a judgment by the gods against the Heretic King.
Amun's city of Waset escaped lightly but one death in particular brought an agony of grief to a city that had suffered so much in the past year. Queen Tiye had complained of a cough while in Akhet-Aten for the Heb-Sed festival. This was followed rapidly by headaches, chills and muscular pain, but she emba
rked for the voyage back to Waset the following day. The cool river breezes would calm her, she thought. She woke up the next morning in her stateroom on the royal barge 'Aten Gleams' as it forged slowly upriver, her body racked with pain and firm but tender swellings in her groin, armpits and neck. The skin over the swellings was smooth and red but despite their hot look, was quite cool to the touch.
Alarmed, the ladies of the Queen's bedchamber sent urgent word to the barge master who put in at the nearest village to seek help from a local physician. He came, he saw, but could do nothing except apply a poultice of scribe's excrement mixed with milk and honey. The physician went away scratching a flea bite and reciting the proper prayers but either he made a mistake in his recitation or else the village scribe whose night soil container had been raided for its valuable contents was lacking in virtue, because the queen died at noon.
The body was packed in natron and the barge master put off immediately, determined to carry the queen's corpse to Waset as quickly as possible. Three days later, while 'Aten Gleams' was still many thousands of paces from its destination, the village physician fell ill with a fever. Another three days and he was dead, most of the villagers following him into the West before the month was out. One of the few survivors was the scribe with the inefficacious excrement.
Waset was stunned when the barge pulled into the royal wharf with its sad cargo. Many of the rowers were also sick and two who died had been tipped overboard to float away and do mischief downriver. Tiye, no longer queen, was dispatched to the royal House of the Dead to be properly prepared and Smenkhkare, as eldest scion of the Per-Aa , or House of Amenhotep, stepped in to arrange the burial. Despite his youth, and only with the help of Huya, royal scribe and steward of the great royal wife, he organized the opening of Nebmaetre's tomb and the preparation of a niche within it for her. He also brought in the goldsmiths and ordered some splendid gold ornamentation for the nested coffins. Word was sent by fleet chariot overland to Akhet-Aten but a message came back that Akhenaten would not attend his mother's funeral. He had made a vow never to leave the City of the Aten.