“They work in the left gang. My husband was a painter in the right. You see, when a tomb is excavated two gangs work in it, side by side. One of the reasons my father arranged my marriage to Mesedptah when I was twelve was to strengthen ties between the gangs. Didn’t turn out so well.”
Pentawere called for more wine and after the serving girl poured it I quickly drank mine down and the serving girl refilled my cup immediately. Speaking about myself made me nervous. I was becoming warm and lightheaded from the wine.
“None of what you told me explains how you became a gardener.”
“A talent inherited from my grandfather.”
“I met Meniufer this morning.”
“Colluded with, you mean.”
Pentawere smiled.
“He’s my mother’s father,” I replied. “He cared for Ta Set Maat’s fields when young. But when your father went to war against the Tjehenuians and Sea Peoples he joined the army as an archer. Grandfather was badly injured in his last battle and hasn’t had full use of his left leg since. Pharaoh appointed him an assistant gardener at the Ramesseum. Grandfather took it upon himself to create the garden in Djeme’s forecourt. Gardener is his true calling. Pharaoh was so pleased with his new garden he eventually gave Grandfather oversight of every garden on the west and east banks. I was practically Grandfather’s shadow before my marriage. He taught me everything there is to know about growing things. After my husband was executed Grandfather let me stay with him and work for him. That brought me to your father’s attention.”
Two serving girls appeared, one with a basin of water, another with a strip of clean white linen. Pentawere and I dipped our hands into the basin in turn to clean them and then dried them on the linen.
Suddenly a wild cry swept through the hall and barefoot dancers rushed into the open space between the royals and everyone else’s tables, accompanied by flautists and singers and women clapping their hands to set a tempo. The dancers were young and beautiful, legs long, bellies flat, some with their long hair unbound, others in braids, their lips and cheeks and eyes colored. Some wore transparent light loose robes that reached to their ankles, with belts and narrow girdles around their hips adorned with beads or ornaments. Others wore opaque skirts, a few only bead or linen girdles. Several had images of Bes tattooed on their thighs. They bowed to Pharaoh and then began to swirl about the front of the hall in time to the music – acrobatically, rhythmically, bending low, leaping high, occasionally bending nearly double backwards and sweeping their braids across the ground, gyrating in a non–stop cavalcade of color and activity. The space gradually constricted as spectators, mostly men, crowded close. The dancers’ anklets and bracelets and belts of gold and turquoise and carnelian and lapis lazuli beads rattled in time to their movements. In moments they were all breathing hard, nostrils flaring, bodies glistening with sweat. I was enthralled; I’d never seen such a performance before. I snuck a glance at Pharaoh and Pentawere; they too were completely under the dancers’ spell. Every guest had risen from his or her chair to get a better look. Sweat flew from the women and landed on the spectators and none seemed to mind. Many were clapping, others crying out enthusiastically. I joined my voice to theirs.
When at last the dancers were done performing they rushed out of the hall to the cheers of everyone assembled there.
“Marvelous, weren’t they?” Pentawere asked. His eyes were shining. He was breathing hard.
“They were, Pentawere.” I realized I was breathing hard too. The dancers had awakened something deep inside me. I took a long drink from my fifth cup of wine. Or sixth. Or more. I’d lost count. I didn’t care. I was feeling very good.
“Shall we walk in the garden?” Pentawere suggested.
I nodded and stood too quickly and, lightheaded, stumbled. Pentawere caught me and set me on my feet and we both laughed hysterically. He was more than slightly drunk too. He clutched my hand and led me through the warren of tables and from the banquet hall and into the garden in the center of the per’aa. It was much cooler outside. The moon was high and peered over the per’aa’s walls and tall palms threw long shadows across the flowers. The moon reflected amidst the lotus in the pool, the flowers raising their faces towards the light. Pentawere and I perched on the low limestone wall next to the canal near where I’d dug up flowers a few days ago. I leaned against him without realizing it. Insects hummed and frogs croaked. Water gurgled behind us.
“Can you believe it, Neset?” Pentawere asked. “Mother told me during the parade today that I should be Pharaoh. She said it never should have been Ramesses. She was right. I’m the one men look up to and follow. You saw that tonight – we could barely eat because so many officials and soldiers wanted to talk to me. Ramesses and Duatentopet sat alone. But I was born too late. He’s only heir because our older brothers are dead.”
“Pentawere!” I cautioned. “You’re drunk. You shouldn’t say such things out loud.” I looked around fearfully. “What if someone overhears? They’d accuse you of treason.”
He laughed. “Relax, Neset. What mother doesn’t wish great things for her son? What I care most about is commanding Father’s army, as I told you yesterday. The ambition you told me to fight for.”
He took my hand and we stood and I linked my arm in his for support and we began to stroll through the garden.
“What was your husband like?” Pentawere asked.
“Kind enough, at first. But after he figured out I’d never give him a son he turned cold. He wasn’t affectionate at all. He never once told me he loved me. I discovered why the day he died.” I shook my head. “He was so cruel! I just didn’t know it.”
Pentawere stopped and turned so he faced me and lightly stroked my cheek with his fingertips. “I’d never be cruel to you, Neset.”
Based on how I’d seen him treat the lowliest people we’d encountered these past two days I believed him. I thrilled to his touch. His fingers made my skin tingle. “His two previous wives didn’t give him children either.”
“Maybe the fault was his, not his wives.”
“Mesedptah didn’t see it that way. The other two died in childbirth and freed him to move on to other women. He resented me because I lived. That gave him license in his mind to cheat on me. Apparently everyone in Ta Set Maat knew except me – ‘place of truth’ indeed. What does that say about me, that I never guessed?” I would never have told Pentawere any of this if I was sober, but my mind was too muddled with wine to care about the impression I was making. Thoughts I’d kept bottled up for years, unexpressed, were spilling out of me unfiltered and I had neither the will nor the strength to stop them.
“It says you trusted too much one who deserved no trust,” Pentawere said. All at once he drew me close and kissed me, long and gently.
I’d never been aroused by a kiss before. But I was by his. I drew back after a bit, embarrassed.
“My room’s close by,” Pentawere said huskily.
I knew why he wanted to go there. For the first time in my life I wanted the same thing. But I couldn’t share Pentawere’s bed. Even half drunk I knew I couldn’t. “You’re Pharaoh’s son,” I objected. “I oversee a garden. We can’t.”
“You’d begrudge us pleasure because of the difference in our statuses?”
“Someone would see me coming out of your room, Pentawere, and tell Pharaoh. I’d lose my position. As modest as it is I love it. Being your father’s overseer allows me to be independent and live my life the way I want. I won’t risk my future for a tumble in your bed. No matter how pleasurable. So I’m not going with you to your room. As much as I want to. Nothing good can come of it for me. Only sorrow.”
“No woman’s ever turned me down before.”
I couldn’t tell if he was more disappointed or amazed.
“I’ve never wanted to be with any man before tonight, Pentawere,” I admitted. “But let’s face it – tomorrow I leave for Djeme and you’re staying in Pi–Ramesses. We’ll never see each other again.” I link
ed my hands around his neck and pulled him down to me and kissed him as I’d never kissed any man before. Then I broke our embrace. “But I’ll never forget you, Pentawere.” And then I spun around and dashed towards my room while I still had the strength and will to, wondering if I’d just made the worst decision of my life. Or the best.
***
Peret (Seed)
Neset
***
“Have you seen your father or anyone else from Ta Set Maat?”
I was on my knees, pressing dirt with my fingers around the roots of a small shrub in the garden in Djeme’s forecourt. Scribe Amennakht stood before me, frantic, sweating, panting. He’d been running. Hard. Behind him were the village’s junior and senior foremen, Khonsu and Anhirkawi, along with two deputies and two proctors. All had been running. All looked at a loss. To see one of them at Djeme, away from the village or the Great Place or Ta Set Neferu, was unusual. To see all seven, in this state, was unprecedented.
“No, My Lord,” I replied, sitting back on my haunches. I raised a hand to keep the sun out of my eyes. “You know I haven’t been in the village in years.” Not since everyone there took the part of my thieving lecherous husband. And because so many of you still believe I was involved in tomb robbing too and got away with it and treat me like a criminal. “Aren’t they in Ta Set Neferu, excavating a tomb for Pharaoh’s son?”
Amenherkoshef, Pentawere’s half–brother, commander of Ramesses’ cavalry, had passed away unexpectedly a few weeks earlier, another of Pharaoh’s sons fated to die young. Orders had come a week ago to excavate his tomb, and quickly. Grandfather had told me Ta Set Maat hadn’t seen such excitement in years.
“The village is empty! Sixty workers have gone missing!” Amennakht flailed his arms. He was more agitated than I’d ever seen him.
“Pharaoh’s son has flown to the Afterlife,” said Anhirkawi. “Time is short. The embalmers will be done in less than seventy days. Pharaoh’s payment will be prompt if we’re done with the tomb by then.”
“Likely a bonus, too,” added Khonsu.
“They’re behind Henketankh, the third Thutmose’s temple of millions of years!” shouted Khaemwase, the village doorkeeper, from the tunnel underneath the tower rooms just inside Djeme’s entrance. He’d also been running. He motioned them to hurry.
Amennakht half–ran towards the entrance. The others hastened to follow. Curious, I joined them.
Their destination lay nearly a mile north of Djeme, the last in the long line of temples along the westernmost of the two north–south canals that cut across the cultivated plain somewhat parallel to the river. Tens of thousands of workers swarmed those temples daily – clerks, scribes, porters, priests, farmers, craftsmen, woodcutters, cooks and the rest. It wasn’t surprising the village’s workers had been able to disappear among so many. But why?
Amennakht strode determinedly along the west bank of the canal, the most direct route, the village officials and me in his wake. To our left rose the high hills that guarded the Great Place and Ta Set Neferu and Ta Set Maat, themselves dwarfed by the Qurn. Five much smaller hills lay between those hills and the river, each pockmarked with hundreds of tombs. The southernmost were cut into the hill called Qurnet Murai, most belonging to officials who’d served between the reigns of the second Ramesses and now. To its north was Qurna, its tombs dating to the time of the first Thutmose and his successors. Khokha contained tombs from the years preceding the current pharaoh and his father Setnakhte.
Behind that hill, backed against sheer cliffs, were the ruins of three memorial temples – the second Mentuhotep’s, the third Thutmose’s, and Hatshepsut’s. Mentuhotep’s was nearly a thousand years old and had been neglected for centuries. It had clearly been the model for Hatshepsut’s, which was by far the most spectacular of the three. She’d ruled the land equally with her stepson Thutmose. After her death Thutmose had nearly destroyed her temple out of spite. He’d thrown down hundreds of giant statues of the female pharaoh and smashed them to bits. Her name had been removed wherever it appeared. What had once been extensive gardens fronting the temple had been torn up. Only drifts of sand marked them now. What I’d give to restore them. Thutmose’s temple, the smallest, was nestled between the two. An earthquake had sent great sheets of rock tumbling onto it centuries ago. For all intents and purposes it had ceased to exist. I assumed it had been destroyed in his lifetime, thus the additional temple along the canal that was our destination.
The hill Assasif contained about forty tombs from the decades preceding the current pharaoh. The next, Dra Abu el–Naga, was the resting place of kings who’d ruled only the South in the years the Chiefs of Foreign Lands occupied Ta–mehi. Farthest north was the hill of el–Tarif, the tombs carved into it dating to the Mentuhoteps.
To our right, across the canal, were recently–planted fields of emmer, a second canal, more fields and, half a mile on, the river. We soon began to pass a cluster of temples, each fronted by a colorful garden cared for by Grandfather, each surrounded by a wall, each with its own small harbor joined to the canal. Barges were docked in many of those harbors, each carrying as many as six hundred fifty sacks of grain for the temple storehouses, the yield of more than seventy acres of farmland. The first temple we encountered had been built by Osiris–pharaoh Ay and usurped by his successor, Horemheb. Next came that of the second Thutmose and then one erected by Amenhotep, son of Hapu, the architect who’d served the third Amenhotep.
Parallel to those three, east of the canal, was the rear of the third Amenhotep’s temple, the largest on the west bank, covering more area than the entirety of Ipet–Isut across the river. Amenhotep had intentionally built it on low ground so that all but the inner sanctuary flooded during the inundation, reappearing when the river receded as if a new creation, symbolizing order and rebirth in the land. But the walls had been made of mud–brick, and the sandstone pylons and columns had been too heavy for the fields beneath them to support, so when an earthquake shook the valley within a century of its construction the temple had collapsed. Ever since, pharaohs had been taking dressed stone from the grounds to use in their own building projects, and so the memorial temple was now practically in ruins. All that remained were a few massive statues and a huge stela with a dedication text and many statues of granite and quartzite and other fine stone – a sphinx with the body of a crocodile, many of the lioness–headed goddess Sekhmet, two colossi of Amenhotep striding towards the north, wearing the white crown and a pleated kilt. Many smaller statues were scattered amidst drifted sand.
The largest statues, two imposing colossi towering sixty feet over the plain, still flanked what had been the temple’s entrance. Each had been carved from a single block of sandstone by the famed sculptor Men. I’d often visited them at the first light of dawn, approaching through a knee–high field of ripening grain, the statues red in the sunlight, shadowed indentations giving them life, beyond them a line of trees, then desert, then hills abruptly rising, their ridges drenched with sunlight, wadis outlined with shadows. It was a view that never failed to stir me.
Past Amenhotep son of Hapu’s temple we encountered more in rapid succession, each nearly adjoining its neighbor, the narrow spaces between occupied by the houses of priests and well–off officials and the mud huts of stablemen and beekeepers and brewers. First was Merenptah’s, close to sixty years old, then Tawosret’s, the newest. Only a handful of years separated the end of her reign from the beginning of the current pharaoh’s. But Tawosret’s temple was already in ruins, its dressed stone taken by the third Ramesses for use in his building projects; he’d had no compunction about erasing evidence of a self–proclaimed female pharaoh.
The next temple belonged to the fourth Thutmose. Beside it was the Ramesseum of Ramesses the Great, the most magnificent and important temple of all, the model for Djeme. He’d been a mighty builder; his temples and per’aas and warehouses and colossal statues dotted the land from the shore of the Wadjet Wer to well beyond the First Cataract and
deep into the South. The Ramesseum was one of his crowning achievements. I’d wandered the grounds many times, one of thousands traversing the corridors and narrow streets of the complex’s vaulted mud–brick storehouses and workshops and libraries – priests, craftsmen, brewers, bakers and other temple servants. Those storehouses were the source of most of what was used to feed and clothe the residents of Ta Set Maat and those who served in the temple precinct. I’d visited its spectacular hypostyle hall, seen columns and colossal statues, garden–filled courtyards, carvings of Ramesses in sunken relief. The rooms were brightly–colored with scenes on every wall and ceiling and column. One showed Ramesses in a chariot fighting the Hittites at Qadesh, the famous battlefield strewn with dead. Hathor peered from just below the capitals of many columns; other capitals were decorated with lotus blossoms, their leaves painted green, their flowers pink or red. On one ceiling Re traveled the night sky through the body of the goddess Nut.
Once I’d stumbled on a statue there of a young seated Ramesses that I found absolutely arresting. He wore a blue military crown decorated with a uraeus. He was dressed in ceremonial clothing – a long pleated tunic with flared sleeves and a trapezoid–shaped kilt. He wore a broad collar with rows of beads and pendants and held a scepter in his right hand. His firstborn son and his Great Wife, Nefertari, were carved standing against his throne. His sandaled feet rested on nine bows, symbolizing all the enemies of the valley that he’d crushed. I’d never seen another statue as fine.
Beyond the Ramesseum was the smallest temple, that of the second Amenhotep, barely larger than a couple of storerooms at Djeme, and then the slightly larger temple of Siptah.
Scattered around these smaller temples were many private homes. I knew their owners, a few personally, the rest by reputation – a slave, a widow, a Sardinian mercenary, a priest, a goatherd, a quartermaster, a stable master, a farmer, a soldier, several coppersmiths, embalmers, cattle–branders, beekeepers, sailors, scribes, and even wretches – descendants of Sea Peoples and Tjehenuians and Hittites captured in battle and now in Pharaoh’s service. Peasants’ huts were intermixed with the fine houses of wealthy officials.
The Gardener and the Assassin Page 22