Shaking her head in disbelief, Kate edged down onto a stool, legs too weak to hold her up any longer. Her cheeks burned with shame, yet she felt like laughing at the stark lunacy of Dave’s paranoid attack. The next instant she was raging at herself for not making him listen. At the very least she should have told him she could account for every piece of paper and tube of paint—and had the sketches and photographs to show how she’d used them—so there was no way in hell he could get a judgment against her.
That’s when it began to sink in that she’d done it again, only this time it was not only Cleo but Max she’d let down. Rationally she could accept that there was a limit to how much anyone should have to put up with … even mothers and fathers. She knew she’d been an unpredictabe combination of the tortoise and the hare, one moment racing ahead and the next slowing to a crawl, so she didn’t really blame her parents for deciding that their only child was among the lame and halt, if not a total failure. An emotional investment that never paid off. What she couldn’t accept was the way they disappeared from her life. Now the King of Boobs was casting her adrift, too. What hurt most, though, was the thought of deserting Tashat—of letting it all come to nothing.
Kate glanced at the replica of the living Tashat and was hit by a sudden storm of thoughts and ideas, like gusts of wind blowing from every direction at once. More drawings at home. Some different, some duplicates. Photographs of everything. Can repeat everything I’ve done here, so she won’t he consigned to the dark forever. Except I’ll never be able to do anything with them. Not without Dave’s permission. And I just ripped any chance of that.
Mind racing, she got up from the stool and with all the care she could muster placed the straight wig on Tashat’s head, then set the wooden tripod in a corner of the room. After that she took a few deep breaths and sat down to sort through her sketches and watercolors, dividing them into two piles. One she slid into a large envelope. The other she left on the bench after leafing through each one to make sure they all carried her trademark signature—KmcK—where it couldn’t be trimmed off. Next she marched down to the shipping room for a cardboard box, came back and filled it with her personal belongings—a few clay tools and brushes, the brown envelope, several books, her camera and portable radio, the small throw rug and the porcelain teapot.
Finally, she retrieved the blue crown from the floor, set it on top of the box, put on her coat, and laid her keys in the center of the empty table. After a last glance around to see if she’d overlooked anything, she picked up the box and started for the door. As she reached for the light switch she turned back for one long, last look at Tashat—then flipped off the lights and closed the door behind her. As she crossed the reception hall she glanced toward the cafeteria and saw several volunteers getting ready for the Christmas party but didn’t even pause.
As soon as she got home she canceled her flight to Houston. Then she left two phone messages, one for Max on his answering machine at home, and the other for Cleo. The first she purposefully kept vague. “It turns out I can’t make it to Houston after all. Something has come up. I’ll give you a call sometime next week.” The second was more succinct. “Dave just blew his stack and gave me my walking papers. If I were you, I’d lie low for a few days, come down with the flu or something until he cools off. Anyway, I’m out of here, taking Sam with me. Not sure for how long, but I’ll call you next week. Promise. Or the week after.” Then she unplugged the phone, poured herself a glass of wine, cleaned out the refrigerator, ate a sandwich, and started packing.
By sunup the next morning, she and Sam were on the interstate heading south, toward the blue skies of Georgia O’Keeffe country. The Red Land of New Mexico.
Beneath the lilies. Ammit stirs—all flesh and teeth and hunger. Orange flames shoot from the corners of her mouth. Beware the eater of hearts.
Beware the crocodile, hippo, lion. Beware the snake among the white lilies.
—Normandi Ellis, Awakening Osiris
12
Year Three in the Reign of Ay
(1349 B.C.)
DAY 21, SECOND MONTH OF PLANTING
At six Nebet seems all arms and legs, like a boy who grows too fast to remember where his toes end. Or perhaps she only seems so to me next to Aset, who at ten years moves with such purpose and grace. That the two girls remain close despite the difference in their ages surely is due to the affinity of one lively intellect for another—that and the natural compassion that caused Aset to reach out to Nebet in the first place, to free her spirit from the fetters imposed by her body.
It was Aset, too, who encouraged Nebet’s talent for drawing, a skill so unique that Tetisheri worries should it cause rivalry between them and bring their friendship to an end. But Aset makes pictures to a purpose—to tell a story—while Nebet turns a barren desert into a mysterious place of shifting shapes and colors that only she can see. So I have no such worry, for I believe the rock on which their friendship stands is their innate understanding of each other’s need to stray beyond the boundaries of the way things are and always have been. Just as it has always been for Mena and me.
Nofret brought out a platter of cakes containing bits of nuts and dates, a treat she had prepared in anticipation of our coming, while Mata, Khary’s assistant, trailed her with a pitcher of beer and a basket of fruit. When Pagosh joined us under the garden canopy, Khary left off harvesting the leaves of a young willow and the girls flopped down on the grass beside the small table, to help themselves to a cake.
“Sit and ease your back, woman,” Khary ordered my widowed aunt, whose joints now ache with age. “Otherwise, you will be waking me in the night again, begging for one of my magic potions.”
“The stew should cook a bit longer,” Nofret agreed, easing her ample buttocks down on the bench beside him, “time enough for one of Aset’s stories.” She motioned to Mata. “Bring some chips and a piece of charcoal from the fire.” She looked to Aset. “Surely you have a new one to tell us, sweetie.”
“Let me think,” Aset mused, slipping the last of her sweet bread to Tuli while she waited for Mata to bring the limestone flakes Khary keeps to figure our accounts before he enters the sums on papyrus. Then she selected a piece of charcoal and began outlining a hound, a mastiff in all but his short legs.
“Reliable’s mother and father were nomads who wandered across the plains and mountains, following their sheep. Some people would call them street dogs, I suppose, since they had no country to call their own.” Pagosh gave me a wry smile, knowing she chided him for his poor opinion of her ill-begotten companion. “But they learned many things in their travels and grew very wise, so when they saw how fertile our Black Land is, they decided to settle down and raise a family.
“Reliable was the runt of their first litter. His legs were too short and his ears too big, but he never let any of his father’s sheep get lost. That is how he got his name.” She set the stone flake on the ground where we all could see what she had drawn. “Anyway, like his father before him, Reliable was the best herder in all the Two Lands. His highborn masters rewarded him well for his faithful service, and in time he even could wear a collar of gold.” Working upside down, she drew a collar around the hound’s neck. “But his lady wife was never able to give him children, and that made him very sad.” Next she added tears below his eyes. Earlier, when Reliable’s parents became wise, her voice had deepened. Now her mouth drooped at the corners. “His fur grew shaggy and his muzzle turned gray. Finally, hair began to sprout like wild wheat from his eyebrows and ears, causing him to look like a heron about to take flight, and everyone began to call him Old Reliable.”
She picked up another chip and started a new drawing. ‘Then one day his eye fell on one of Tuli’s cousins, a girldog named Northwind, a beautiful young thing with a coat the color of Aswan marble.” This time the dog she drew was delicate of limb and demeanor, and walked upright on her shapely hind legs. “Reliable’s other wife had gone to Osiris by then, so he made Northwind his wife—be
cause she made him feel young and strong again. He gave her many wonderful gifts, and so the gods decided to let him have the child he had wanted for so long.”
She drew an elaborate bead collar around Northwind’s neck and a round disk dangling from her ear, with lines radiating out from it. Even without the hands ending each ray, no one could mistake the symbol of Aten. Nor, from the moment she mentioned the hair sprouting from his eyebrows and ears, did any of us doubt that Old Reliable was Ay—the onetime Master of the Horse to several “rich masters” who in the end succeeded them on the throne. Or that Ankhesenamen was Northwind, the constant breeze that enables our boats to navigate upstream against the current of the Nile, which I took for the royal hand that guides the course of the Two Lands.
“No hound could possibly reach such a great age without making many friends, and one was a cat named Bastet, a majestic beast with the bearing of a great lady. She was so beautiful, in fact, that the gods who created her were always arguing about whether they had given life to another god by mistake, rather than a meow. Though she was no longer young, her tawny fur hid her sharp bones, and her great yellow eyes and dainty pink tongue drew males the way honey draws bees.” Aset set the third chip next to the other two. “One day when Bastet came to visit, Old Reliable decided to consult her about his wife, because Bastet had been a mother many times over and he believed her wise in the ways of females. His beloved was spitting up every bite of food she swallowed, until he feared she might vomit up his child.” Aset met my eyes for the first time. “Tenre and Mena know better, of course, but Old Reliable thought Bastet might favor him with some secret spell known only to mothers, out of gratitude for all his years of loyal service.”
She paused, making us wait while she added a few more lines. “So you can imagine what a terrible shock it was when Bastet told him the reason his lady wife sickened was that Northwind had allowed other hounds to mount her.” Nofret caught her breath and inched forward on the bench, eager to learn the identity of the young Queen’s lover, but Aset had sketched three playful puppies. One was a miniature Northwind, another resembled Reliable, and one looked like Tuli with a spotted coat.
“When his wife brought forth a spotted cur, every person in the Two Lands would know that Old Reliable was not the father of Northwind’s puppies, Bastet told him, and advised him to send Northwind far away lest he risk being shamed.”
“Old Reliable agreed?” Nofret guessed, anticipating Aset.
“At first he refused to believe her and even scolded Bastet for repeating such street gossip. But she told him she had seen Northwind and her lover in the very act of making puppies.” She glanced at Nebet, then me. “Bastet is a natural hunter, you see, because her yellow eyes allow her to see in the dark.” The next drawing showed Reliable and Bastet standing on their hind legs, swiping at each other with their front paws. “Old Reliable demanded that Bastet tell him the name of the traitor who dared mount his wife, but she refused. Instead she offered to come live with him in Northwind’s place, out of fondness and respect for his age, and to save him from public embarrassment. All men everywhere would envy him then, she said, since the gods soon would make her one of them.” She picked through the limestone chips, looking for a smooth one. “You will never guess what Old Reliable did then. He—” She paused, shook her head, and smiled to herself.
“What? Get on with it, girl!” Mena burst out, though he knows she does it on purpose to hold us in her hand.
“At first Bastet believed the thought of lying with her was simply too much for his old heart, for already he had suffered one blow—that Northwind’s puppies were not his. But Old Reliable was laughing, so hard that tears began to run down his cheeks, and he could hardly get his breath.” She paused to draw a few lines. “When finally he could speak again, Old Reliable gazed at her with his watery grandfather’s eyes and said, ‘You have waited too late, Bastet. It is my time now, after all the years of sitting on the banks of Mother River watching the others come and go in their magnificent pleasure boats. My place is assured, for whatever the color of Northwind’s issue, the royal scribes will name them mine.’” The last piece of stone showed Old Reliable with a wide, satisfied smile. “And then he said something I thought very strange indeed. ‘You forget that Northwind’s children will carry the blood of my father no matter who fathers them, something I could never be sure of with you.’”
Amid the boisterous laughter and questions that followed, Mena leaned closer to tell me Pharaoh had received a message from Zarw that Horemheb would soon return to Waset. “He sent the Hittites running for Hattusas already?” I asked.
“Only to the Euphrates, though he loosed two entire regiments against a much smaller Hittite-Syrian force. Worse yet, while he marched over land with his troops, the thieving Myceneans stole into Ugarit and sailed off with his great new ship.”
“What of Senmut?”
“He travels to Waset with the General.” He paused to watch Nebet and Aset, who now sat kicking their feet in my garden pool. “It is not like Horemheb to be so careless about guarding his back. The need to get here before Osiris comes for his old mentor must be nagging him like a rotten tooth.”
“What will he do when he hears about the Queen’s condition?”
He shrugged, then a wry grin twisted Mena’s generous mouth. “Have you seen her? I would not have believed Ay could keep word from leaking out for so long.”
“Perhaps he worried that Horemheb would return with troops at his back,” I suggested, never sure of my footing when it comes to palace intrigue.
“Why worry about a man in Canaan or Syria when Paranefer and his Sacred Council sit waiting just across the river, like a flock of hungry vultures? A month or more ago Sheri began regaling me with tales of how Pharaoh sips the nectar from a different flower in his harem every night. I thought she only painted suggestive pictures to heat my blood, for they did that. When finally I told her to cease lest I be tempted to acquire a few exotic blossoms of my own, I discovered it is not a subject my wife takes kindly to, even in jest. She suggested it would be a frivolous expense at best, since I cannot begin to match the old man’s stamina, let alone his inventiveness—that he knows many ways to please a woman, not just two or three.” He looked chagrined even in the telling. “I turned tail and sued for peace at once. Later I learned the stories came from two of the Queen’s favorite Royal Ornaments, who serve as her companions. But after the story Aset just told us, I suspect he planted the stories just to make sure no one doubts the babe is his. Pharaoh is sixty-five, don’t forget—an age when most men have lost the vigor to service a woman.”
DAY 7, FOURTH MONTH OF PLANTING
Mena is a frequent visitor to my house in Waset on the days I go there to replenish my supply of medicaments, but Senmut’s unannounced appearance sent Nofret scurrying to prepare a proper offering for our royal guest.
“I made the mistake of telling him about our map,” Mena explained, barely able to contain his ingenuous smile. “He insisted on tagging along to see it for himself.”
“Mena talks of little else, until he repeats himself like a feeble grandfather,” Senmut shot back. Mena and I exchanged a grin, for it was apparent that more than Senmut’s eyes and smile remain the same.
“We learned many things while you were away,” I said, to whet his appetite. “This, for one.” I grasped Mena’s forearm, turned his hand back side up, and supported it level with mine. Then I applied my forefinger to a vessel that lies just under the skin, between the second and third fingers. As blood filled it the vessel began to bulge, but only in the direction of his fingertips. Toward the wrist it flattened and became less visible with each passing moment.
“He has no cut on his hand or arm through which the blood can run out?” Senmut asked. I shook my head. Mena held his tongue as well, for we tested ourselves now. “Unlike urine or feces, the blood does not demand out. Yet it appears to flow like a river,” Senmut mumbled to himself, “so where does it go?” He glanced
up. “That is the question, isn’t it?”
I laughed only because his answer pleased me beyond measure. “Yes, but—”
“Show him the map,” Mena said, so we went at once to my examining room, where I unrolled a long scroll. The idea to make a map of all the vessels that contain blood—only blood, not air or urine or anything else—was Aset’s. But to locate them properly within the outline of the human form took all the notes and sketches Mena and I have made over the years, knowledge drawn from the bodies in the Per Nefer as well as the wounds we treated.
“It is only in the red vessels that we hear the voice of the heart,” Mena pointed out, to explain why Aset had painted some vessels red and others blue. Senmut forestalled him with a raised hand, preferring to find his own way. First he traced a path with his forefinger, from the heart up into the neck and the brain, then from the heart to the groin and down a leg. “The metu that you painted red contain the bright red blood that spurts from a wound,” he decided, still leaning over my table.
“They also have thicker and tougher walls,” Mena added.
“While the blue ones are soft and carry the darker—”
“Tenre?” Aset called from the garden, just before she appeared in the doorway. “Paga has come to take me across the river.” Her eyes came to rest on Senmut’s back. “Oh, I am sorry.”
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