“Tell me about your home,” Rhodopis said. “I’ve never been to Haxamanishiya before, nor even heard tell of it. What is it like there?”
For a long moment, Ninsina did not speak. A wagtail piped in the garden, its piercing, insistent call chiming over the distant splash of water and faint peals of laughter as the harem women took their leisure in the pond. Ninsina’s silence stretched on, but at last she drew a shaky breath and spoke.
“Haxamanishiya is a vast empire, but Babylon is the place we call home. It is a very fine and grand city. Shamiram did not lie, when she implied that your Memphis is not as beautiful. Nothing can compare to the splendor of Babylon—no city man or gods have made can touch it! Its walls are surrounded on all four sides by the river Purattu, and the river flows through the center of the city, too. It shines like electrum in the sun. And every building is as tall as a tree, with great windows that take in the whole of the world. In the evening, the desert out beyond the walls and the river turns as violet as the petals of a flower. There is a gate—the great northern entry, which we call the Ishtar Gate—all tiled in blue, with bulls and lions of gold. It is the grandest, finest thing you will ever hope to see. And everywhere you look, there are the winged lions that are our sigil—Babylonians’ sigil, that is—crouching all throughout the city.”
“Except where there are lions with the heads of eagles,” Shamiram added. It was the first time Rhodopis had seen her smile. She had a remarkably pretty smile; it set her dark eyes to sparkling with a light that would have been called mischievous, in a less dignified woman.
“And the gardens,” Ninsina said. “Every building reaches up to the sky, and each one is terraced, just like the ziggurat temples. Every terrace spills over with greenery—long vines that spill down the sides of buildings like water flowing from a fountain. And flowers—everywhere, flowers! The air is perfumed with their scent, through every season of the year.”
“You have a style with words,” Rhodopis said with real appreciation. “I just about feel as if I was there.” She blushed at her slip—the unrefined, country speech of a Thracian peasant, which neither Iadmon nor Vélona had managed to drive entirely from her tongue. But the Persians did not notice, or did not care.
“The palace gardens are the best of all,” Ninsina resumed. “Terrace after terrace—lush greenery that smells delicious in the sun, and flowers to rival the colors of a sunset. And water that pours from one terrace to the next. You can climb and explore all the day long, and never see the whole of that garden. The birds and butterflies that are drawn to the flowers—oh! The gods themselves must envy it.”
“Your father must be a very clever man, and a great king, to have made it.”
Shamiram gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “Our father Cambyses did not make the Great Gardens, nor anything else in Babylon. Our grandfather Cyrus conquered the city when Ninsina and I were just little girls, hardly past the age of weaning. After he died, our father inherited all he had won.” She drew herself up against the bed’s footboard, suddenly defensive, though Rhodopis had offered no criticism. “Our father is a very great king, though—make no mistake about that. As a young man, he learned all from Cyrus, and now he is as powerful as our grandfather ever was. Before Cyrus took Babylon, our father and his household were all but nomadic, moving from one conquered city to the next. But Babylon is his by right—ours by right. It suits him; it is his just reward from the gods. It is the place where we belong… not here in Egypt.”
“I didn’t start out in Egypt, either,” Rhodopis said. “I’m from Thrace, far to the north.”
“Is your father a king, too?” Ninsina asked.
Rhodopis giggled, surprised by the question, glad for the relief of levity. “Gods have mercy, no! My father was only a simple man. We came to Egypt looking for work. He thought to earn a good, fat lot of silver, and take it back to Thrace after a year or two, and buy a farm. He wanted to have something to pass along to my brothers, you see, when they grew up—something to keep them secure all the rest of their days.”
Rhodopis fell silent. A part of her heart was always full and warm with the memory of her family, but she hadn’t truly thought about them for a long time—longer than she cared to admit to herself. She had sealed the most tender memories off, hiding them away from herself, where they could cause her no pain.
“But how did the daughter of such a simple man end here, in the Pharaoh’s harem?” Shamiram said.
Rhodopis swallowed the lump that swelled larger in her throat with each beat of her heart. “My father was killed. Thieves… they attacked him, though it was plain to see, just looking at him, that he hadn’t any money. We had been in Egypt a long time by then—two years—and the silver my father had hoped for… well, it wasn’t working out as he’d planned.”
Rhodopis could feel Shamiram and Ninsina staring at her. She didn’t dare raise her eyes to theirs. She couldn’t have borne their sympathy in that moment. She swallowed again, and went on, surprised that her voice did not waver. “We were starving by then. It was hard—there was no work in Tanis anyway, but without my father to provide, there was little my mother could to do care for us. So she… So I…”
“I see.” Shamiram’s voice was thick with understanding. “You became a whore.”
Rhodopis blushed. “Not in the way you think. I was taken in by a kind and generous man. He educated me—taught me how to be a hetaera.”
“A what?”
“Don’t you have hetaerae in Babylon?”
“We have plenty of whores there, if that is what you mean.”
Ninsina laid a hand on her sister’s arm. “Don’t berate her. Rhodopis—that is what the Pharaoh called you, isn’t it?—Rhodopis is a kind, good girl, and the only friend we have here.” She turned back to Rhodopis. “Please, speak on. I want to know more about you.”
“Hetaerae are more than simple whores,” Rhodopis said, with no small amount of defense. “We entertain the richest and most powerful of men. We sing, we dance, we converse. We have more freedom than any other Greek women, too.”
“So,” Shamiram said, softening only a little, “the Pharaoh took you into his harem after you… entertained him?”
“No,” Rhodopis admitted. “How I came to be here in the Pharaoh’s household is a story almost too strange to be believed. Amasis received a sign from Horus, his patron god, indicating that I—of all women—should be his.”
She fell silent, wondering how to explain the falcon and the rose-gold slipper. Surely the women would think her mad. Or worse, they might think her a malicious story-teller, trying to trick them into looking like credulous fools. She thought it better to let her explanation stand on its own.
The memory of the falcon returned to her powerfully—the blue streak falling like a thunderbolt toward the water, snatching up her slipper in a wink of golden light. She shivered in uneasy awe at the recollection. Would she ever understand what the falcon god had meant by his mysterious sign, by his choice of her for the king’s harem—a commoner, a Greek, an unfortunate, barely raised above the status of a bed slave? Surely the god intended her for more than this monotonous confinement in the Pharaoh’s gilded cage.
“We are three of a kind,” Ninsina said. “All of us uprooted from our lives, our homes, and brought here at the whim of the Pharaoh.”
Shamiram rolled her eyes. Rhodopis could see plainly that she resented Ninsina’s words, resented any hint of fellowship with a common whore. But Shamiram held her tongue, and for that Rhodopis was grateful.
Ninsina took Rhodopis’ hand. “I am glad you are here with us. It’s good to know we are not alone, that someone understands.”
Sudden tears burned Rhodopis’ eyes. This was the first real kindness she had felt since coming to the Pharaoh’s harem. She squeezed the new bride’s fingers. “It is good to know we aren’t alone.”
Shamiram rose abruptly from the floor. She stretched her arms above her head, the bracelets on her wrists rattling. “Now that you have composed
yourself, Ninsina, perhaps we will see this garden. It does smell nice, though I am certain already that it cannot compare to our terraces of Babylon.”
Rhodopis led the sisters through the women’s corridor. When they reached the garden, it greeted them with a burst of color—the rich, shady greens of vine and leaf, the scarlet and gold of flowers in glorious profusion. Birdsong chimed among the branches of the sycamores; a wind stirred, laden with the cool, silty odors of the river, whispering among the feathery fronds of palms and the glossy foliage of covered arbors. The garden always brought joy to Rhodopis, provided she stayed well within the boundary of the women’s side. But Shamiram was clearly unimpressed. Even Ninsina looked rather disappointed that this was the best Egypt had to offer.
“Your terraced gardens in Babylon must be marvelous,” Rhodopis said. “But wait until you see the pond. It’s more like a lake, in truth—big enough for swimming or boating, and the water is a luxury during the hottest months of the year.”
They strolled along pathways paved in white bricks, toward the great expanse of the lake. Contained within limestone walls, the surface of the water winked and shimmered in the afternoon sun. Flat, round lotus leaves carpeted the lake around its edges; here and there the first of the lotus flowers held their bright heads up above the water. The spikes of their petals seemed to glow like lamps, flame-gold or sunset-pink, and the air was sweet with their honey-rich scent. A pair of red boats drifted near the lake’s center, far beyond the field of lotuses. Rhodopis could not see which of the harem women reclined in the boats, for the curtains were drawn on their square-topped shade canopies, hiding the occupants from sight. But she could hear the music of harps and intermittent laughter.
“It is lovely,” Ninsina admitted. “Perhaps not as pretty as our terraces, but pleasant still.”
“I have had enough of boats,” Shamiram said drily. “If a lion were to appear in the garden just now, it wouldn’t be enough to force me onto another boat. I would rather the lion ate me.”
“You’ll come to enjoy boating, with time,” Rhodopis promised. “It is a good distraction on a hot day.”
Shamiram turned away from the lake, gazing out toward the garden’s farthest boundary. “What is there? Those two great, black, rounded things?”
Rhodopis followed the direction of her stare. “The stone urns,” she said uneasily. “They’re only decorative.”
“But very large. I will go and see them.”
Rhodopis heard the note of command in Shamiram’s simple words. She was expected to accompany the Pharaoh’s new wife; to refuse would be an offense, and a mere concubine could not risk angering a wife of Amasis. But the very sight of the urns, and the boundary they demarcated, left a queasy sensation deep in her stomach. She scars on the soles of her feet itched, and she could all but see Psamtik’s face looming close to her own, could hear his arrogant, threatening laughter in her ears.
“There is nothing special about the urns,” she said. “Just two great stone vases. The lake is ever so much nicer—”
“There is nothing special about the lake, either.” Shamiram rolled her eyes. “Water, water—you Egyptians and your water! We have a great river in Babylon, too, you know. If you have seen one garden pond, you have seen a thousand.”
Shamiram turned on her heel and strode toward the urns. Rhodopis cast a desperate look at Ninsina; the younger sister shrugged. “Shamiram feels out of her depth, and it brings out the worst in her. But she is a good, kind woman. You’ll come to see it, once she has settled here in the Pharaoh’s household.”
Ninsina set off across the garden, hurrying to catch up with her sister. Rhodopis had no choice but to follow.
The three women covered the distance in silence. Before they reached the boundary, Rhodopis could already detect the tell-tale sounds of Psamtik practicing with his spear: the whisper of its flight, and a moment later, the vibrating thud as it sank into the bale of flax stems he used for a target. Each impact sent a shiver up her spine. Her heart pounded faster with every step, until, by the time Shamiram stopped between the stone urns and stood gazing into the king’s garden, Rhodopis felt as if her chest might burst from the frantic pressure of her own pulse.
Timidly, she peered beyond Shamiram into the king’s garden. There was Psamtik, exactly as she had dreaded. He was perhaps a hundred paces away. His back was turned to the women, but power and pride were evident in his every movement. He braced his foot against the bale to wrench the spear free, and his arms and back tensed, the muscles of his body swelling with the force of a brutish, animalistic strength. Rhodopis swallowed the bitter taste rising in the back of her throat.
Psamtik’s spear came free from the target with a sighing sound—like the sigh of a creature surrendering its life, Rhodopis thought grimly. The king’s son turned, propping the bronze-tipped spear against one shoulder, and began prowling back across the garden to take aim and hurl his weapon again. He caught sight of the trio of women between the urns. Psamtik paused, grinned—and even at a distance, Rhodopis felt the chill of his smile.
“Who is he?” Shamiram asked.
Rhodopis couldn’t tell whether Shamiram was merely curious, or whether something about the king’s son drew the woman. Better not to be pulled in by that one, she longed to say. You’ll end like a moth in a lamp’s flame. But if she mistook Shamiram, if she offended her…
Rhodopis’ mind raced, testing and discarding every possible response she might make. “He is Psamtik,” she said slowly, carefully. “The king’s son and heir. It is best to avoid him, my lady. He is dangerous.”
“Dangerous? How do you mean?”
Rhodopis shrugged uncomfortably. Memory of the conversation she’d had with Khedeb-Netjer-Bona came back to her. He is dangerous like a young lion, savaging the offspring of the one who came before. He is dangerous like a leopard, hunting in the night, chasing you through the darkness, through the brush and thorns of the garden…
A faint call, far back in the depths of the women’s garden, rescued her from the need to answer. “Rhodopis! Rhodopis, where are you?”
It was Minneferet. Grateful for the excuse to turn away from Psamtik, Rhodopis hurried back along the path. She cupped her hands around her mouth, calling, “We’re here!”
Minneferet appeared on a distant path, around the shoulder of a thick-blooming hedge. She waved urgently.
“Come along, if you please,” Rhodopis said to her companions. “We must be wanted—or at least, I am wanted.”
When she reached Minneferet, she was nearly out of breath. The Persians trailed more languidly on the path behind her.
“What is it?” Rhodopis said. “Is something wrong?”
“Only that Pentu wants you at once,” Minneferet said. “He was peeved, not to find you in the new brides’ rooms.”
“They wanted to see the garden.”
“Best tell him—not that he’ll care. He said the Pharaoh wants to see you right away, this very minute. Otherwise I wouldn’t have troubled myself to come and look for you.”
“The Pharaoh… again? Has something angered him?”
Minneferet grunted in annoyance. “How am I to know? No doubt Pentu will tell you all about it. He’s waiting inside the corridor. Hurry up now, or you’ll lose your status as the king’s favorite.” Minneferet did not seem troubled by that prospect. “I’ll see the new wives back to their quarters.”
Rhodopis cast one quick glance at the Persian sisters, offering them a smile, which she hoped they would take for an apology. Then she lifted the hem of her skirt and ran toward the palace.
5
The Falcon’s Purpose
For the second time that day, Rhodopis left the women’s quarters flanked by a pair of the Pharaoh’s guards. Still flushed and half breathless from her sprint through the garden—and from her conversation with the terse and scowling Pentu—she walked as fast as propriety allowed, yet still she felt her speed was not sufficient in the guards’ estimation. They remained pre
cisely abreast of Rhodopis, careful not to step ahead of the king’s favorite, but their hard-set jaws and tense bodies spoke of their haste and impatience. There was no chance of her going to Amasis to entertain in his bed. She knew as much, even when the guards turned down the corridor that led away from the audience hall and toward the king’s private chambers. If this had been a routine summoning to the king’s bed, the guards would never have been in such a state.
The reason for their agitation became clear a good fifty paces away from the king’s door. A man was shouting inside Amasis’ chamber, roaring like a bull beset by a cloud of stinging flies. Rhodopis’ eyes widened. It must be Psamtik, attacking the old lion at last, just as the chief wife feared. Her courage and poise both failed; she faltered, paused.
“Don’t be frightened,” one of the guards said. His words were clipped with impatience. “The Pharaoh is angry, all right, but he’s not cross with you.”
“The Pharaoh?”
“Of course, my lady.” The guard chuckled. “Who else would dare to shout inside the king’s own rooms?”
Rhodopis had no time for relief. A new anxiety filled her as she started forward again. Amasis never lost his temper; for all his shortcomings, he was reliably gentle and composed. To hear him now, bellowing and cursing, made her nearly sick with worry. If ever anything flew in the face of Egyptian maat, it was Amasis pushed beyond composure or control.
“I won’t have it,” the king cried, his voice muffled behind his door. “I tell you, I won’t!”
The guard knocked; Amasis fell silent on the instant. After a moment he said, “Come.” The word was thick with effort; even without seeing his face, Rhodopis knew he struggled to marshal his dignity, his self-control.
The door swung open. Rhodopis stepped inside, ready to go to the king at once, to do whatever she could to soothe the storm of his anger. But again she paused, frozen tensely on the threshold. There in the center of the room stood Khedeb-Netjer-Bona. Her arms were folded below her breasts. Those shrewd, all-seeing eyes tracked Amasis as he paced from one end of the spacious apartment to the other. The chief wife, dressed in an intricately pleated, blood-red gown and crowned by the simple yet elegant golden circlet of the rearing cobra, stood as a pillar of serenity amid the Pharaoh’s unexpected rage. When she heard the door squeal on its bronze hinges, she glanced over her shoulder with a casual toss of her head. Khedeb-Netjer-Bona nodded, pleased to see Rhodopis trembling on the threshold.
Persian Rose (White Lotus Book 2) Page 7