The Gardener and the Assassin

by Mark Gajewski

  “Oh? And what do you know?”

  “That you’re very much like your father, Majesty,” Heket said coyly. “Only much younger and more… vigorous.”

  “Do you see Father often, Heket? Father has so many women in his harem. He can’t have time for all of you.”

  “That’s true, Majesty. Some of my fellow concubines are captives taken during his military campaigns. Some are daughters sent by kings of other lands to curry favor. But some are women he’s accumulated simply because he desires them.”

  “Which are you, Heket?”

  “I’m not a captive and I’m not from another land, Majesty.” She laughed provocatively. “Pharaoh – life, prosperity, health – sends for me nearly every night he’s in Djeme. He summons me to this tower room often. I’m his favorite Senet partner.”

  “The painting on the wall of Father playing Senet with a woman – that’s you?” I asked.

  “It is, Majesty.”

  “The painting’s accurate?”

  “Quite. Pharaoh sees no reason for clothing when we play alone.”

  Binemwese colored. Heket didn’t.

  “I can see why, Heket,” I said. “You are a most… engaging woman.”

  “Thank you, Majesty.”

  “Why didn’t Father take you with him to Pi–Ramesses?”

  “His wife Iset threw a fit, Majesty. She doesn’t like how much time we spend together.”

  That sounded about right. “Tell me – does my brother Ramesses ever visit Father in this room when he’s in Djeme?”

  “Sometimes. But he leaves every time your father tells me to set up the Senet board. If you don’t mind my saying, your brother is a bit staid and self–righteous. He contents himself with a single wife. I don’t think he intends to visit your father’ harem when it becomes his.”

  “That’ll be his loss,” I said, gazing deep into her eyes. “In his place, Heket, I wouldn’t hesitate to visit.”

  “You’d be welcomed appropriately, Majesty,” Heket rejoined, her voice sultry.

  “I’d enjoy being welcomed.”

  “Majesty.”

  “Tell me, Heket, how do the women of the harem feel about my mother, Tiye?”

  “The truth, Majesty? Most of us prefer her to the Great Wife Iset. Frankly, Iset lords it over everyone. And her mother was a wretch, not pure–blooded like your mother.”

  “Mother longs to be Father’s most prominent wife,” I confirmed.

  “A place she deserves,” Heket said loyally.

  I spied the chief of police again. “Excuse me, Heket. I need to speak with Oneney.” The matter had been too delicate earlier, in Hednakht’s presence.

  “Of course, Majesty.”

  I left Heket and the soldiers and wound through the crowded room to Oneney. By now nearly everyone was quite drunk and many more couples had paired off.

  “Have you located the woman?” I asked Oneney in a low voice. “Neset, Mesedptah’s widow?”

  “I’ve looked everywhere, Majesty. She’s nowhere to be found. Not surprisingly. Her husband shamed her, not just by stealing from Pharaoh but by sleeping with every woman in sight. The village kenbet took her house away – not that anything salvageable remained after Amennakht and his minions trashed it, from what I heard. Her father refused to take her in. She’s disappeared from Ta Set Maat. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going. No one cared enough to ask.”

  El–ram joined us.

  “It wasn’t Neset’s fault her husband was unfaithful,” I told Oneney. “Over and over and over.”

  “Still fixated on the widow?” El–ram asked. “When this room’s full of beautiful women?”

  “I’ve bedded my share this past month, El–ram, but not the one I really want. I’ve never been with a red–headed woman. Or one so fierce. You should have seen how her eyes blazed when she attacked her husband. Such passion! Utterly wasted on him. I’d never treat her the way he did.”

  El–ram laughed hysterically. “The way he did? You condemned him to death, Majesty! Do you really think she’d overlook that and want to be with you?”

  “Maybe she’d thank me for ridding her of him,” I replied.

  El–ram snorted. “Maybe. Keep telling yourself that. In the meantime…” He crooked his finger.

  The woman he’d pointed out earlier in the evening joined us.

  “Majesty, meet Maatkare.”

  “My Lady.”

  “El–ram tells me you’re the youngest son of Pharaoh,” Maatkare said. She’d been drinking, lots; her cheeks were rosy and her eyes shiny. “What does a youngest son do?”

  “I oversee Father’s military installations at Pi–Ramesses – the harbor, the stables, the manufacture of chariots and weapons. Everything needed to support my brother Ramesses’ campaigns.”

  “Have you fought against the wretches, like your brothers?”

  That broke the mood of anticipation. A reminder of my inadequacies. “No,” I said dispiritedly. “I’m returning to the North tomorrow to resume my duties in Pi–Ramesses.”

  “Do you have a wife, Majesty?”

  “Many women, but no wife,” I replied. I finished my cup of wine. “Someday Father will order me to marry a wretch to strengthen a political alliance. That’s my fate.” One I intended to push against.

  “Pharaoh has spared you so far?”

  “There’s too much turmoil beyond the valley’s borders, Maatkare. The Sea Peoples upset the balance of power in the North and East. Until the world stabilizes Father won’t arrange a match. I’m the last unattached son – Father doesn’t want to waste me on a useless alliance.”

  Maatkare took hold of my arm with both hands. “Perhaps, before you’re forced to marry a wretch, you’d like to enjoy yourself with a valley woman, Majesty?” she asked seductively.

  “Why not?” I said without enthusiasm.

  She’d reminded me of my unimportance; it was hard not to hold that against her. I knew I’d forget her name by morning. I’d leave the bed we were about to share long before she awoke and embark for the North and once there resume my meaningless duties. And take up with more nameless forgettable women. That too was my fate. A not entirely unpleasant aspect of it.

  1157 BC: 29th Regnal Year of Ramesses, Third of His Name

  Days of the Demons

  Neset

  In the pre–dawn gloom I scaled the mud–brick steps of the tower overlooking Djeme’s entrance gate. Pharaoh Ramesses usually spent each evening with his wives and children and grandchildren and select concubines in two rooms located in the tower, one atop the other, each with a single very large window. The tower was positioned a little back of and between two guard towers, overlooking the courtyard just inside Djeme’s wall. Pharaoh had been regularly using the rooms the last six months, ever since he’d moved his permanent residence south from Pi–Ramesses. That process had taken close to two years. Djeme’s per’aa and environs bustled now with high–ranking administrators and army commanders and servants and support staff and their families, all relocated here to serve him. While Pharaoh had always spent the valley’s most important annual holidays in Djeme – the Opet Festival, the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, the Days of Demons that spanned the close and beginning of each year – he was now residing here full time, only occasionally traveling to other towns to celebrate their major festivals.

  Flowers in long wooden boxes filled with soil lined the edge of the stairway, with more in large earthenware pots where the steps made abrupt turns. Abutting the foot of the stairs were substantial trees in huge pots. During the day they provided shade.

  I climbed the steps to the upper room and entered and looked out the window. I loved the view from this spot. The sky was beginning to lighten over the eastern desert, the black of night changing to the rose and old gold of morning. Directly east of me were Djeme’s harbor and the two canals that connected it to the river and the justified pharaohs’ temples of millions of years that edged the broad stubble–covered swee
p of recently harvested emmer and barley fields that stretched to the still–dark river. The north–south canal intersected the east–west canal immediately before me.

  Pharaoh’s royal barque bobbed gently beside a stone quay in the harbor. It was at present a dark indistinct shape, but I knew it well from having stared at it in awe countless times – two hundred feet long, its yellow hull striped with green bands and decorated with images of Pharaoh trampling his foes, and three falcon–headed gods spearing foreigners, and the goddess Maat with outstretched wings. The large central cabin was also brightly painted. Red pennants fluttered from the gold–tipped mast and poles atop the papyrus–shaped bow and stern. Smaller cabins at bow and stern were decorated with scenes of Pharaoh smiting his foes. The furled sail was decorated with squares of red and white and blue. Both steering poles were attached to painted posts and topped with images of Pharaoh’s head and ostrich feathers. Gold and silver and copper clad countless surfaces. There was no vessel like it in the valley.

  Many boats were moored near Pharaoh’s, belonging to officials from throughout the valley who’d traveled to Waset to celebrate the Days of the Demons with his Southern courtiers. I spotted Sopdet low in the sky, as I’d expected; Grandfather had taught me to predict the star’s annual reappearance, an ability passed down for several hundred generations in my family. Sopdet marked the opening of the year and the beginning of the inundation in the Far South at Abu’s cataract. Before long the river would swell and run swiftly from the cataract all the way to Ta–mehi, the massive river delta in the Far North, overflowing its banks and covering the entire valley from desert plateau to desert plateau. Djeme was going to be a lively place the next five days with so many visitors.

  I scanned the distant eastern hills. They were becoming visible as Re neared the horizon behind them. I glanced at the memorial temples beside the canal. They were beginning to take on color. I turned and moved to the room’s western, inner wall, gazed down on the forecourts of the complex and the temple and stables and barracks, and the garden I’d lovingly tended the past two years. Birds were beginning to chitter and call in the trees that shaded it.

  Pharaoh’s per’aa edged the left side of his temple. It was one of many in the valley; Pharaoh and his family traveled constantly and had small per’aas in every major town, all constructed of mud–brick. Each was provisioned by local officials or temples or Pharaoh’s own estates. I’d been inside Djeme’s per’aa many times the past six months, primarily to decorate Pharaoh’s audience hall and corridors and public spaces with freshly cut flowers before anyone in the royal family awakened. Pharaoh loved flowers and insisted on being surrounded by them. I knew my way around the per’aa as well now as I once had my own village – the anteroom, the audience hall with its raised alabaster dais for Pharaoh’s throne, corridors leading to Pharaoh’s bedroom and bathroom and the harem complex and the rooms occupied by members of his family. All were decorated with brightly colored wall paintings and glazed tiles featuring bound foreign captives – Nehesyuians, Shasu, Hittites, Setjetians, Retunians. Hundreds of pounds of gold and copper and silver covered the walls and doors and statues and gods’ shrines and furnishings throughout the per’aa. Some doors and windows were framed with fragrant richly–grained cedar from the hills near Kepen in Setjet. Ceiling beams in the larger rooms had been transported from there as well.

  Re suddenly leapt above the horizon and kissed the valley and western hills with gold. Sunlight and shadow gave life to deeply carved figures in massive battle scenes on the walls of the pylon at the entrance of Ramesses’ temple. I whispered a prayer to Meretseger, the goddess who watched over the Great Place and the justified pharaohs from on high, asking her to protect me this day.

  I descended to the lower room and moved to the corner nearest the door and bent to my task, softly singing the old hymn to Horakhty – “You shine in heaven, and heaven is luminous, without clouds.” I carefully pulled aside a baffle in a large pottery reservoir. Water began streaming through an earthenware channel into long boxes set on the side of each step, some diverted to slowly soak the flowers planted within, some bypassing that box and flowing into the one on the step below. While I waited for the liquid to reach ground level I lifted a dripping waterskin I’d brought with me and began watering the plants in individual pots along the base of the stairs by hand.

  “I don’t recall there being flowers on these stairs until quite recently.”

  Startled, I turned. An old man, probably in his early sixties, corpulent, his ears decorated with gold earrings, was inspecting the greenery halfway up the stairs. His fine linen shendyt put my rough skirt to shame. I assumed he worked in the per’aa directly for the royals, perhaps as a harem overseer or some such. He wasn’t dressed like a common temple servant.

  “They were my idea,” I explained. “I’m told Pharaoh loves flowers.”

  “A well known fact. He’s been planting trees and establishing gardens throughout the valley for years.” The old man squinted up at me. “And you are?”

  “Neset, My Lord. My grandfather, Meniufer, oversees Pharaoh’s gardens, both in Djeme and the other temples of millions of years on the west bank, and in the great temples on the east bank too.”

  “Ah, yes. Meniufer.”

  “Do you know him, My Lord?”

  “We fought together against Tjehenuians and Sea Peoples.”

  “Then you helped save our valley from wretches, My Lord. All of us owe you a debt of thanks.”

  “Have you ever heard Pharaoh’s account of the battle against the Sea Peoples?” the old man asked.

  I shook my head no.

  “As for those who reached my frontier, their seed is not, their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever,” he recited. “As for those who came forward together on the seas, the full flame was in front of them at the river mouth, while a stockade of lances surrounded them on the shore, prostrated on the beach, slain, and made into heaps from head to tail.”

  “Are you a scribe, My Lord, that you recall the account so well?”

  He laughed. “No. I just have a good memory for that type of thing.”

  “Have you read of Ramesses the Great and his victory over the Hittites?”

  “Of course. You’re familiar with the battle?”

  “The first husband of my neighbor in Ta Set Maat collected many tales. I’ve read the papyrus about Qadesh. It’s stirring.” I lowered my voice. “Though exaggerated. Pharaoh was lucky to escape that battlefield with his life.”

  “Oh? You know this how?”

  “An ancestor, Duaenre, served in Pharaoh’s bodyguard at Qadesh. The tale passed down from him in our family is very different from Pharaoh’s.”

  “No matter. Ramesses proclaimed he’d achieved a great victory for nearly six decades and depicted it in temple after temple. As well as the subsequent peace treaty he forged with the Hittites, recorded on a wall within Ipet–Isut. So, now it is a great victory.” He chuckled. “I take it you’re from Ta Set Maat, Neset?”

  “I grew up there, My Lord. My ancestors have excavated and decorated royal tombs since the founding of the village. But now I live here in Djeme with Grandfather. He finds it hard to get around sometimes. I help him.”

  “How is it you can read?” the old man asked.

  “Almost everyone’s literate in Ta Set Maat, My Lord,” I said. “Our jobs require it.”

  “Even a gardener’s?”

  “Are you familiar with the third Thutmose’s temple, Akh–Menou – Brilliant of Monuments – in Ipet–Isut?”

  “Certainly.”

  “In the room called the Botanical Garden he listed all the plants he’d brought back from his various expeditions outside the valley. In fact, one of my ancestors, Tjanuni, was Pharaoh’s scribe on those expeditions and created the list. Anyway, using it I’ve identified gardens on the west bank that still contain descendants of some of those plants.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “Someday, if
Grandfather and Pharaoh approve, I’d like to create a garden with specimens of all that still survive at the entrance of Thutmose’s temple of millions of years. His original garden there has been neglected for generations. It’s drifted over with sand now, completely lifeless.”

  “You’re ambitious for position in Pharaoh’s bureaucracy?”

  “Oh, no, My Lord,” I assured him hastily. “I simply want to honor Pharaoh Thutmose. He was perhaps the mightiest ever to rule the valley, according to his temple inscriptions, conquering hundreds of towns, creating the world’s first empire, receiving tribute beyond counting. Even Ramesses the Great couldn’t surpass him, except perhaps in the building of temples and raising of statues.” I suddenly realized what I’d just said to someone who might directly serve Pharaoh. “Not that his current majesty, Ramesses – life, prosperity, health – isn’t a great pharaoh as well,” I added. “He is. I meant…”

  The old man laughed. “I doubt Pharaoh would dispute the greatness of those particular predecessors. He’d be happy to be mentioned in the same breath as Thutmose and Ramesses. He took Ramesses the Great’s name as his own, after all, even though he’s not descended from him, and named his sons after Ramesses’ sons.”

  “I’m a widow, My Lord. None of my three daughters survived childbirth. A garden would be something to live on after me, to mark that I’d lived.”

  “Our accomplishments do indeed survive us,” the old man concurred.

  “Pharaoh awarded Grandfather flies of valor three separate times, the last at the Window of Appearances in Djeme’s per’aa,” I said proudly. “He earned two fighting against the Sea Peoples and the third fighting against the Tjehenuians. Grandfather commissioned a statue for his tomb on the hill Qurnet Murai showing him wearing them. He still talks about the day he was honored here, of being led by fan bearers and household officials into the temple courtyard to stand before the window, of Pharaoh emerging onto the wooden balcony, of the reliefs on each side of the window that showed Pharaoh smiting his enemies, of the stone heads of those enemies affixed to the wall, of the flies being placed around his neck. He still wears all three sets every day.