Reflections in the Nile

by J. Suzanne Frank

  She and her three boys left, returning with stripped tree trunks. With mud, niter, and crushed locusts they mixed a cement to fix the trees in the ground solidly. Then they stretched layer after layer of linen sheeting across the four trunks. Carefully, on linen and branch stretchers, they moved the survivors into the shade.

  When one of the women fainted from hunger, Chloe knew they had to eat. Ehuru had raided the palace kitchens, returning with fat, lazy fowl, honey, and flour. Though she didn't speak the language of the women, they communicated in the international and eternal way of all culinary mavericks. The flour and eggs became soup, a kind of cross between chicken dumpling and egg drop, Chloe thought, and finally they fried locusts and served them with honey, a bittersweet treat for the Apiru.

  Chloe thought the locusts’ taste was better disguised under chocolate, but there was a certain mean satisfaction in crunching the little monsters who had terrorized her for days, awake and asleep; a distinct vengeance to rip off their legs and wings before cooking them.

  When the people came in from the fires in the fields, Egyptian and Apiru working side by side, Chloe saw that they had water to rinse with and drink, then soup and locusts. For three days she worked, never seeing Cheftu but instructing Ehuru to see that he took some soup. Another village on the edge of the estate had caught fire, and Cheftu was dealing with their casualties while Chloe organized their survivors. The locusts were soon the sole foodstuff, but the well was once again sweet.

  They no longer fell from the sky, but they were still piled about three deep everywhere there had been grass. She crunched through them without thinking, her face set in a permanent expression of revulsion. The noise of their hammering jaws had become an audient wallpaper; she didn't hear it but knew it was there at all times.

  She didn't know she'd collapsed until she woke up to face a black-stained, furious, proud hemu neter spouse. They had done all they could do; it was time to go home.

  Thutmosis’ palace was still deserted, except for the slaves and the ever-present locusts. Chloe and Cheftu absently trod them into the floor on the way to their apartments and inside. Cheftu was gray beneath the soot but refused to sleep until he was cleaned. Chloe thought he would probably drown if he tried alone, so she led him toward the bath chamber and helped him unfasten his kilt and sandals as she sat him on the stool and skimmed the water for locusts.

  “It is not fresh or warm,” she warned, and Cheftu croaked in a facsimile of laughter.

  “Anything is cleaner than I am, and I have felt enough heat to last a lifetime.” He sank into the water, not caring, and Chloe began washing off the soot and grime. He was crisscrossed with scratches, and the black hair on his arms had been singed, the roots standing up like bristles. His hair was oddly burned, patches here and there, leaving small areas of his scalp pink and peeling. Chloe washed his face, noting the beard growth and trying not to irritate the angry red marks that looked like claws or fingernails. His hands were blistered from the heat; Chloe wondered how he had taken care of others when his hands were so wounded. The fingernails were cracked and torn, the small black hairs that graced his fingers torched. His eyebrows were singed, but he suffered no major damage.

  Then she saw his back. He must have stood with it directly to the fire, she thought. The blisters were raised and filling with fluid, and it looked as though a branch had fallen across his shoulder, touching his upper back and part of his upper buttocks. He had fallen asleep in the cool water but jerked awake when Chloe touched him.

  “What happened, Cheftu? What was it like? Talk to me,” she asked softly.

  He groaned and whispered, his lungs also damaged. “People were screaming, running with their bodies on fire, seeking some relief. The houses went up in moments, the smoke killing those still asleep.” He sighed heavily. “I arrived too late to do anything. Meneptah and his mother had been staying with family. It is a boon of the god that they were awake and in the square when they saw the wind change and the sparks fly.” He ran a hand over his face. “As you saw, most of the people who survived have lost their hah, or eyebrows, and have blistering burns. Those who were badly burned have died, which is merciful. We could do nothing for them.”

  Cheftu looked at his hands, the torchlight warping then-shape under the water. “I am concerned about my hands. They are my, our, life, our livelihood.” He pulled one out from the water, looking at it closely. “The burns do not go farther than the first layer or so of skin. With some oil, they should be well soon.”

  “What about your back?”

  “It does not matter. I have no medicines left.” He shrugged, wincing. “Get me oil and a feather. Stroke the oil on and we will hope for the best.” He finished rubbing off what black he could and staggered from the pool. She heard his snores before she was out of the water.

  A knock sounded on the door and Chloe, startled out of sleep, answered it, still tying her robe. It was a royal guard, and he handed her a scroll, inclined his head, and instructed Chloe to give it to Lord Cheftu, erpa-ha.

  “He was wounded and is resting.”

  The instructions were to open it immediately, the guard said, so reluctantly she walked into the bedroom and knelt by Cheftu, kissing him gently on the forehead. “Beloved, you must wake up.” She touched his shoulder and then jumped back as he rose to his feet, swearing when he felt the pain in his back. His hair stuck out in singed clumps, and he was wearing a formidable frown; when he saw Chloe he lay back down.

  “Thought someone woke me,” he mumbled, already half-asleep.

  “I did. This is for you. From the prince.” She extended her hand with the papyrus.

  He read it in silence, one hand propping up his chin. “Ramoses was called in and heard the prince's request that the locusts leave. Thut says that Ramoses did not demand anything for removing the plague. He did not repeat his request for freedom. However, he seemed regretful.” Cheftu rolled the papyrus and sank his face into the oil-drenched linens. The temperature in the room was rising rapidly, and Chloe felt her robe sticking to her body.

  “How do you feel this morning?” she asked quietly. “I was not sure if I should cover your back or leave it uncovered.”

  Cheftu turned to her, one eye visible above the rise of the couch. “Did you use the oil?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then all we can do is let the body begin to heal. I really should make an amulet; maybe an entreaty to Sekhmet to alleviate some of the pain,” he mused.

  “Would another bath help?”

  “It would feel like heaven”—he swatted an inquisitive locust off the couch—“but would soften the skin so that when I put a bandage on, it will stick like mud brick to my back. You will have to tear it off every time to clean the wound.”

  “That is barbaric!” Chloe said. “Have you no other solutions?”

  “There are no solutions! That is what I would recommend to any of my patients. I can do no better. There is no proven ‘cure’ for burns.” Chloe poured more oil on his back, and Cheftu sighed as it cooled and relieved, momentarily. “I would do a lot for a bottle of good cognac right now,” he said.

  She smiled at the back of his head. “I do not have cognac, but the woman in the kitchen gave me a bottle of something to drink when she heard you were burned.” She walked to the table in the receiving room and brought it back.

  Cheftu sniffed at the neck. “Rekkit water of some kind.”

  “Can you tell what's in it?”

  “A lot of alcohol,” he said with a short laugh. He took a swig, and Chloe saw his mouth twist in distaste, but he continued to drink. More than half the bottle was gone by the time he handed it back.

  She lay down next to him, their bodies inches apart. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Nay. Many good people died, whether they were Apiru or not does not matter.”

  “Ehuru said you saved some people.”

  “Ehuru exaggerates. God saved them, I simply ran in and picked them up.” His voice was
muffled, speaking into the bed linens.

  “When did you get your burns?” Chloe asked quietly.

  “When we got there, the flames were moving from house to house by the moment. I ran for the last house. Inside there was a young boy, maybe five summers old, cowering in the corner. He was surrounded by fire, and I could hear his cries above the crackle of the flames. Baked locusts were all around. I ran forward, urging him to get on the table and jump to me. The flames were not licking very high yet. Finally he did, and when I had him in my arms I turned to run out the door, but it was filled with flames. So I ran to the clerestory window.

  “I do not remember how we got out, but Ehuru said the beam struck me as I was crawling through the window. I must have fainted.” He fell silent.

  “The boy?”

  “Little Caleb? He has some blackness in his lungs, but he is fine otherwise.” They lay in silence together until she heard his breathing, deep and regular. Chloe inched off the bed, kicked the locusts out of her sandals, and left the room.

  Cheftu lay asleep for the better part of three days. He woke to take some chicken stew and water. Ehuru came in the second day he was asleep, and they alternated over Cheftu's care. Chloe either continued her series of drawings and sketches or slept on her time off. One day she went to the village, where they were rebuilding, making mud-and-locust bricks. D'vorah was healing but busy with the remaining village children. Their master and the foreman had not returned yet.

  The locusts were still everywhere, but they had stopped eating the day Moshe said they would. They just were. Then one morning Chloe woke before the sun, and when she went outside she had to rub her eyes to make sure she wasn't dreaming. The ground was moving! Like a black-and-gold carpet, the locusts were moving, marching across the ruined gardens and palace, methodically walking west.

  Then, as if following the orchestration of a giant hand, they lifted wings and rose, up into the air, the mass of them, riding the westerly wind to the sea. Chloe ducked to avoid those taking flight close to her and watched in amazement as the star-strewn night was obliterated with the glittering mass. She stood for hours, watching as the cloud grew smaller and smaller. The only locusts left were the old and sick, still hobbling westward ho!

  For almost a week things were normal, Chloe thought.

  At least as normal as time-traveling back to an ancient culture, falling in love, getting married, and planning treason could be. Not to mention drinking blood and tripping out on prehistoric peyote. Aye, if that was your idea of normal, things were way cool.

  The slaves had returned, the palace was clean, and everyone was preparing to receive Hatshepsut, living forever! A large feast was to be held in three days, and the hairdressers and ancient couturiers were being snatched up by the incoming nobility who had left their servants at home.

  Cheftu was up and moving around, a loose linen shirt covering his back, and he was taking smaller amounts of the drink the cook had provided. Chloe had not gone back to the kitchens since the return to normalcy. Cheftu had treated a variety of people, from the ladies who were ill from so much river travel to the burned slaves whom Meneptah ministered to under the hemu neter 's supervision. Cheftu had not been home before the fifth watch in as many days. Doctor's jobs had not changed much in the intervening years, Chloe thought. They still spent all their waking hours in practice.

  She walked alone through the gardens, ruined by the locusts yet vainly sending forth green shoots, which would be collected for Hat's feast. It was almost time for the noon meal, Chloe thought, walking toward the flat-roofed palace.

  Suddenly, night fell like an anvil. Chloe quickly looked up. The sun was faintly visible through the enormous black cloud that now hung between heaven and earth. Then it became darker, and Chloe realized she couldn't even see her white gown in the darkness. She heard cries from the people in the palace, invoking Ra. Their shrieks became more panic filled as it grew darker. Chloe knew, however, that the gold god in Waset had no more to do with this sudden darkness than her sister, Camille.

  It was the last plague before Passover.

  She could almost see her old boyfriend Joseph's family's table in Florence, the extended family wearing their finest clothes, each silver place setting accompanied by delicate gold-etched blue Venetian glass goblets, in which each person had dipped a finger and recited the plagues in unison. “Blood, frogs, gnats, flies, cattle, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the firstborn.”

  Each drop of ruby red wine represented one of the ways God had used the elements to bring Egypt to its knees and free the Jews. Chloe stared upward.

  She could see absolutely nothing. Even her sense of direction seemed to be obscured, and she hardly knew the way back. Using the frightened cries as an auditory beacon, she began walking toward the palace. The whitewashed walls might as well be covered in pitch, she thought, for all the good they are doing me. She continued walking forward hands outstretched She touched something solid and felt around the sides. A door. As she stepped inside, the cries that had been faint became raucous. Male and female voices echoed within the mud-brick walls, sounding like a terrified army.

  “Why does someone not light a torch?” she asked aloud trying to sense whether anyone was there. After feeling around and tripping more than once, she came to the conclusion that she was in their apartments, or in ones so similar that it didn't really matter. She felt along the wall for a torch, then lit it. At least she thought she did. The sounds were all there, the sputter as the flame caught and grew. But no light. Nothing.

  Mystified, Chloe recalled the last arrangement of the room. She found a stool by scraping her shins on it and sat down to think. How long did this plague last? She tried to remember that one Passover meal; what had they said about the plague of darkness? Damn! I sure wish I'd paid more attention to the story, she thought, instead of wondering what Joseph had been thinking about me…. Oh, well, if need be, she could just sit here for the duration. Nothing had lasted too long, though we could have done with half as many locusts and still called it a major plague. Still, God had been pretty merciful, she thought objectively.

  Chloe smiled into the darkness, relieved that for once she knew what was going on. Her smile faded as she heard the genuine terror in the voices around her. Screams, cries, pleading with Ra not to abandon them.

  Her heart began to hurt for these people—in their eyes, their god was dead Hesitant, and afraid of the surfeit of information she might receive, she turned to the “other.” She barely had time to close the mental door before she drowned in ancient thought. Sorting carefully, sitting in the dark, she looked at the world from RaEm's perspective.

  All she saw was chaos.

  Ma'at had been cast down. The eternal balance of the universe was off-kilter. There was no rhyme or reason, only pain, confusion, and betrayal. Even RaEm, for all her sadistic sexual practices and betrayal of her religion, was numb.

  To RaEm, the darkest depths of Egyptian hell, the pathways through the underworld, were now here. Darkness, creatures seeking human destruction, uncertainty, and death hovered anywhere light could not flourish. This wasn't just an eclipse or whatever Chloe's twentieth-century mind rationalized. It was the end of the world. Unimaginable horror was being realized. The Egyptians were superstitious. Like most primitives, they perceived evil in darkness, and good in light. This plague was evil personified—and the stark terror it invoked in the Egyptian soul was enough to drive one to madness.

  RaEm's mind cried out to the goddess she had dishonored and the eternal sun god who was no longer visible. She raged and wept and cowered, begging and pleading for light. Chloe closed the mental door. She couldn't handle RaEm's shaking bewilderment. The fear and dread were too all-encompassing.

  The darkness seemed like a living thing, heavy as a woolen blanket and as smothering. Chloe held up her hand and couldn't see it before her face. Her natural impatience was not going to let her rest for these days while Egypt cowered. Where was Cheftu? Slowly she got to
her feet and shuffled toward the garden door. The fresher air greeted her, and she felt the flooring change beneath her sandals.

  It was no longer the springy grass of weeks ago, but the earth still had more give than the stone pavement. She craned her head back, searching for light of some sort: sun, moon, stars, alien spaceships, she didn't care. They just weren't visible. Trying to visualize an aerial map of the palace, she began to walk cautiously toward the main audience chamber.

  It was much quieter now—Chloe couldn't sense any people around her, and the grounds seemed ominously quiet. She tripped over the raised edge of a tiled path and stepped onto it. If her memory was accurate, this would lead to Thut's private audience chamber. She shuffled along, her arms outstretched for protection.

  A piercing cry from the east made Chloe jump and swear. It came again, high and keening, sounding more like a warning than anything else. The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps encouraged her to step close to a wall, any wall, and she heard a runner pass her, breathing evenly, heading toward Thut's chambers.

  How did he know where he was going? she wondered, and stepped away from the wall. Halfway down the long corridor—at least she assumed it was the long corridor—Chloe heard the resounding echo of doors being thrown against the outside walls and the clatter of armor and a multitude of sandals. A rumble of male voices bounced around her, so that she was retreating as the voices advanced, but without gauging their actual proximity.

  Thut's voice came to her, obviously displeased. “This could not be worse timing! When I consulted my horoscope this morning and it said a red rooster would crow for me today, I should have sensed disaster! This deity of the Apiru is determined to bring Egypt to her knees. Will it not be a surprise for Ramoses when Hatshepsut, living forever! confronts him!”

  Aii! Apparently Pharaoh had arrived.

  Chloe flattened out against the wall as the group came toward her. She could see nothing, the darkness was so intense. Thut's voice had taken on its customary tone of command as his company turned into a passageway.