The Eye of Horus

by Carol Thurston

  I motioned her in. “This is Prince Senmut.”

  She put her palms together and bowed. “Are you the physician who returned with General Horemheb?” Senmut nodded, caught the full force of her bright blue eyes, and broke into a smile that has its own power to startle, simply because his black skin makes his teeth look so white. “My name is Aset,” she murmured, returning his smile.

  Something about the look they exchanged reminded me that it will not be long until her monthly bleeding begins. She has read about the changes taking place within her body, but Pagosh says she has been asking Merit the kind of questions only another woman can answer, such as what it feels like to have a man’s penis enter her body. I do not worry that Merit will frighten her with the horrors some women experience at the hands of a brutal man, for Pagosh loves his wife with a tenderness I find rare among men, but I plan to instruct Aset in how to keep from getting with child, to assure that she will have some say in her own destiny. But whichever high-and-mighty lord her father chooses for her husband, I doubt it will be a Nubian prince—beautiful as he may be in her eyes.

  Hoping to distract him, I pointed to the map. “This was Aset’s idea.”

  “But sh—she is just a girl!” Senmut stammered.

  Aset’s eyes met mine. “My sister sends for me. I am to spend the night with her.”

  “Again?” I did not like it but could not tell her why. “Pagosh—”

  She anticipated me. “You know he is not allowed into her private apartment, Tenre. No man is. Except Pharaoh.” Her eyes flashed with mischief. “And you.”

  “Go on, then, but I must speak with your father if you continue to miss your classes. Perhaps he will want to hire a tutor to come here instead.”

  “Why not let her attend the palace school with Nebet?” Mena suggested.

  “My lady mother already spoke to my father about it,” she told him, news to me. “He said no daughter of his was going to be a Royal Ornament, to serve others.” That, on the other hand, did not surprise me. “He fears they will teach me some ungodly heresy, though he knows I do not believe everything my teachers tell me. And I do not need any tutor but you, Tenre.” She glanced at Senmut, all girlish innocence. “Not everyone is so fortunate, of course, so they still have much to learn, especially about girls!” She put her palms together and bowed to Senmut, then Mena and me.

  Senmut waited until she was well away. “That is the daughter of the Heretic’s Queen, the one whose name is forever on Nebet’s tongue? Is she always so—”

  “So what?” Mena inquired.

  “Simple, I suppose. Transparent.”

  “As transparent as the Nile at full flood,” Mena agreed, trying to keep a smile from giving him away. “Supposing our worldly friend ever manages to find his tongue in her presence, Tenre, how long would you give him before she ties it in knots?”

  I pretended to give the question serious thought. “Two minutes at most. Less, if he encounters her and Nebet at the same time.”

  Senmut took our teasing with good humor, so I gave him a friendly push toward the door. “You must sample Khary’s latest brew. It will make a man of you.”

  DAY 8, FOURTH MONTH OF PLANTING

  I came up from my couch like a striking cobra to see a shadow jump back in alarm. In the same instant I recognized his form and muttered, “Have a care, my friend. The night may come when my heart stops just at the sight of you. What is it this time?”

  “The Queen,” Pagosh whispered. “Aset sends for you.”

  It was only then that I remembered she had gone to the palace. I leaped to my feet, grabbed my hip wrap from a nearby stool, and fastened it around me. “Does the Queen bleed?” I asked, and started to my examining room for my bag of medicines.

  “Aset said only that she cannot rouse her.”

  I looked up at the clerestory windows. “Why try at this time of night?”

  “I did not stop to ask, sunu.” Every time he calls me that I feel a chill in my bones. “I warned Ramose,” he continued, “but he cannot refuse her. The she-cat who gave her life puts more distance between them only to let him know who holds the reins.”

  By the time we reached the palace the half-formed suspicions that feed my dreams had blossomed into a fearful premonition. Every window and balcony glowed with light, while black tongues licked at the path across the courtyard—shadows cast by enough torches to light a royal procession. “If it is as I think,” Pagosh murmured as we approached the Queen’s apartment, “send her out and I will take her to the house of your friend, for she will need the arms of a real mother to hold her on course this night.”

  It did not surprise me to find Ankhesenamen’s physicians clustered in her sleeping room, consulting their scrolls, while a trio of priests chanted prayers at the foot of her couch. She lay on her back with a white linen sheet covering her legs and the swell of her belly, leaving her small breasts exposed. As I pulled the insect netting aside I noticed a folded blanket across the foot of her couch. Everything, it seemed, had been straightened and neatened, including the Queen.

  I put two fingers to the base of her throat and found her already cool to the touch. Even so, I peeled back one eyelid to confirm what my fingers told me, then stared at her countenance in silence. As I did so, I heard the creaking harness of restless horses, then the muffled whistle from somewhere behind me, before Tutankhamen’s Horus of the Sky came plummeting toward earth. My eyes burned with the salt of my tears as my heart cried out to the gods. How could Isis and Hathor allow one of their own to suffer such grievous hurts? Wasn’t it punishment enough, whatever Ankhesenamen’s sins, to lose one babe after another, then her young husband and, finally, her only son?

  When my eyes cleared again I noticed the tiny red vessels crawling beneath the skin at the edge of her nostrils, and before anyone could stop me, I bent to examine the soft inner lining of her lower lip. There I found more tiny vessels engorged with blood—and felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

  Still the Queen’s physicians continued to consult their scrolls, though they must have known that her akh had departed her body. Perhaps they sought to save her babe, I thought, and put my ear to her belly, followed by the open palm of my hand. I felt nothing but an overwhelming sadness.

  “My sister has gone to Osiris?” Aset asked from across the Queen’s couch, though she had been nowhere in sight when I arrived. I nodded. “Her babe, too?” I nodded again. “That is what I thought, but I told Pharaoh to wait for you if he wished to be certain.” She spoke with the calmness of a wounded animal who faces his executioner with resigned acceptance.

  I circled the royal couch and held out my hand, all I dared offer her in the presence of the priests, for I could tell the child in her was weeping even if the woman she was becoming held her tears in check. “Pagosh waits to take you to Nebet and Sheri.” She let out a shuddering sigh as we left with Tuli at our heels, and only turned back for one last glimpse of her beloved sister as we passed from the room.

  We were in the hallway leading to her sister’s antechamber when a rustle of voices announced Pharaoh’s coming, and every forehead touched the floor. A moment later he was upon us with his entourage of advisers trailing behind him.

  He saw Aset and stopped. “So, little sister, your physician finally has arrived.” Deep creases ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and white hair sprouted from his ears. Old Reliable. I met his eyes for the first time since the falcon hunt that ended with me holding a dying Tutankhamen in my arms. “Well, speak up, sunu. What about my son? Can you not at least save him?”

  “I am sorry to be the bearer of more bad news, Majesty, but he passed through the reeds with the Queen. The babe would have been too small to live outside her body in any case.”

  “That is what the others said.” He sighed, as if releasing his last hope of eternity. “But after all the tales our little sister spins about the magic you can perform, I expected more from you.”

  “It is not my doing, M
ajesty Grandfather, if you mistake wisdom for magic.” I wished Aset would hold her tongue, for I wanted to be away from that place.

  “Spoken like a true princess.” A smile touched the old man’s lips, and I saw that he indulged her out of affection. “But tonight changes everything, for you as it does for me. You would do well to stay far away from this place, for there is nothing to be found here but sorrow.” He bent to scratch Tuli’s ear, and when he straightened all softness was gone from his face. “But you will come with me, sunu. I have need this night of one who can distinguish between the smoke of illusion and a failing of the flesh.”

  DAY 9. FOURTH MONTH OF PLANTING

  I went to Nebet’s rooms first, where Tetisheri rose like a ghostly nimbus from a chair near the doorway. “Oh, Tenre,” she whispered as she put her cheek to mine, “how my heart weeps for her. She holds Tuli so tight he can hardly breathe.”

  “Did she tell you anything?” I kept my voice low since the doorway to Nebet’s sleeping room stood undraped.

  “Only that you instructed her to wait for you here.”

  I nodded and stepped through the doorway. A shielded lamp had been lit in a wall niche, and I saw that she lay with Tuli tucked into the curve of her body.

  “Is that you, Tenre?” she whispered.

  “I thought you were asleep,” I said, smoothing the curls from her face as I squatted beside her. “Are you ready to go home?”

  “Do I have to?” She sat up, dumping Tuli off on the floor. The dog trotted through the doorway, probably to go relieve himself, so I motioned for her to scoot over and sat on the couch.

  “No. Where were you when I arrived at your sister’s apartment?”

  “Behind the curtain of that little alcove where we often played games, on a pallet her servingwoman fixed for me. Ankhes liked for me to stay nearby.”

  I enclosed one of her hands between both of mine. “Why were you trying to wake her in the night?”

  “Tuli kept nudging me with his cold nose, and he doesn’t do that unless—Ankhes always had to use the latrine in the night, and I thought she might have called me, or needed something. I found her lying all crooked, with Thutmose’s blanket halfway over her face, so I pulled the blanket away. But I could not hear her breathe, even when I put my ear to her chest. I did shake her, but very gently.”

  “Where were her servingwomen?”

  “Ankhes does not—did not—like to have anyone else in her room. She said their snoring kept her awake.”

  “You folded the blanket and laid it across her feet?”

  She nodded. “I put my finger into her mouth, too, the way you taught me, so as not to push anything down her throat.” She raised up to see my face in the dim light. “She was not breathing yet her heart spoke to me from the great vessel in the side of her neck, Tenre, truly, though I do not see how that could be.” The anguish in her voice tore at my heart. “I was trying to decide what to do when it—it just stopped.”

  “Did you touch her anywhere else?”

  “I turned her on her side and patted her back while one of her women went for the palace physician, so she would know someone was with her. Did I do something terrible?” So did she reveal the paralyzing fear that had taken hold of her, that she had in some unknown way sealed her sister’s doom.

  “I would have done the same. It may be that her heart grew weak from carrying the burden of a babe. I will ask Mena what he thinks, but you must go to sleep now. Sheri stays nearby, in the other room.” I tried to comfort her with the touch of my hands as I urged her back down, then bent to brush her cheek with my lips. “I have seen many a physician lose his wits when confronted with such a situation. You did well.”

  “Truly?” she whispered, clasping my arm to hold me there.

  “Truly,” I replied without hesitation, for I did indeed speak the truth. Without warning she raised up to wrap her arms around my neck and gave in to the tears in her heart. I held her small body and stroked her back while she sobbed a stream of barely intelligible babble about the gods “taking everyone.” As for the rest, I understood only a name here and there, including mine.

  By the time Tuli returned, she had succumbed to exhaustion, so I signaled him to jump up beside her and covered them both. Afterward I stood watching her, wondering what she might have seen that she could not speak of it, even to me—and saw her pull him against her, needing even in sleep to be sure the gods did not take him, too.

  When I joined them a few minutes later, Mena was reclining on the sitting shelf in his library while Pagosh paced about like a caged lion.

  “Sit and refresh yourself,” Mena invited, pointing to the persea fruits, dates, and breads on the table next to him, along with a carafe of wine and two empty goblets. I filled both of them and handed one to Pagosh.

  “Well, did you learn how the dirty deed was done?” he muttered.

  I told them all I had seen and let them chew on that while I did the same with a piece of bread.

  “Aset denies that she saw anyone,” Pagosh stated, “but I know better.”

  Mena leaped up like a man stung by a scorpion. “You saw someone go into the Queen’s sleeping room? Why in the name of Set didn’t you say so?”

  Pagosh ignored him. “Aset has never been one to dissemble and so gives herself away when she does. She refuses to see what she cannot bear to know.” He was right, and there was only one person she ever lied about, to herself as well as others. But I wanted to hear him say it.

  “For Thoth’s sake, spit it out!” Mena yelled, impatient with Pagosh’s cryptic ways.

  “She must have seen her mother,” Pagosh said. Mena looked to me.

  I nodded. “Aset found a blanket over the Queen’s face, and I found a thread from that same blanket caught in the torn nail of her forefinger. There were other signs as well—engorged blood vessels in her nose and mouth—that something was used to cut off her breath, probably the blanket. In her condition it did not take long.”

  Pagosh turned his tired eyes away. “Poor little Ankhesenamen was safe so long as her mother believed she could bear only stillborn babes. Then Tenre brought her son into this world alive …” He stopped, letting us draw our own conclusion.

  I could not help wondering if Ramose had been in league with his lady. “Did her father know Aset had gone to stay the night with her sister?”

  “I took her across the river on his orders, and the message asking for Aset came from the Queen, not her mother.”

  “So Nefertiti could not have known Aset would be there?”

  Before Pagosh could answer, Mena turned to me and blurted out, “How far do you trust this man? Aset’s eyes are blinded by love, but yours are not. Do not forget that he serves Ramose as well as his daughter.”

  Pagosh refused to meet my eyes, as if he feared that all the years we have conspired to the same purpose counted for nothing with me now, in the presence of my boyhood friend. I took my time, searching for the right words, and remembered the first time Pagosh had come to my door, his heart eaten by grief over the loss of his son. The child of his loins. And then that day almost four years later, when we fought Osiris for Aset’s life—the child of his heart.

  “I doubt there is anything Pagosh does not know about what I do or think,” I told Mena, “yet I sleep like a babe, as he himself can attest.”

  “I only needed to be certain before I spoke.” Mena motioned Pagosh to the stool beside me and reached for the carafe of wine. “Nefertiti takes the advantage wherever she can find it, and used Ankhesenamen’s message to the Hittites to gain favor with Ay—to put him in her debt.”

  “Aset tried to tell us what was going on,” I recalled, too late. “Remember what Old Reliable said? ‘It is my time now, after years of watching the others come and go in their magnificent feluccas.’”

  “Now Pharaoh eats the fruit of his own arrogance,” Pagosh put in, “for he has lost both Northwind and his chance to found a new royal family.” He let out a sigh. “The Sacred Council
will wait no longer.”

  “For what?” Mena inquired.

  “To position themselves to claim the throne of Horus, what else?”

  That brought Mena to his feet. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Thanks to Ramose, Amen holds more land now than before the Heretic stripped them of their fields and gold. But that does not mean they can never again be thrown into the streets like so much dung. For that there is only one way—to hold the throne themselves. Why else would Ramose ally himself with the Heretic’s Queen?”

  “But if Nefertiti already had what she was after with the priest,” Mena argued, “why try to strike a bargain with Old Reliable?”

  Pagosh shrugged in that detached way, which I know to be a false front. “She may have scented something rotten in the air, for the priests do not trust her and never will. Not so long as Akhenaten lives.” That he evaded my eyes made me fearful that more disasters were yet to come. “That is why Ramose will put her away and take his own daughter for his wife.”

  The words fell like pebbles on the surface of a quiet pond, plummeting to the bottom of my soul. I heard Aset’s voice as if from afar. “Mahu says I am to be wife to a priest of Amen, even though I am not fully royal.”

  “May Osiris turn a deaf ear to Thoth first!” Mena cursed. “If her mother gets wind of this—and you are right about what happened to Ankhesenamen—Aset will be next!”

  “Not if, when,” Pagosh added. “The she-cat has more spies than Tuli has fleas.”

  I felt like a man swept away by the Inundation. That Ramose might actually desire his daughter warred with the realization that I would rather it be him than any other priest. He, at least, took pride in her love of learning. An idea came to me then, a possible way out of an impossible dilemma.

  “I have a plan,” I said, “but we must act quickly.” I looked to Mena. “Are you sure that Ay has no child to succeed him, even by one of his other women?”