by Hank Lawson
Chapter 8
NIGHTSHADE
On an airless evening, Khufu drew beside Theormi’s bed in her sick room. Doctors and attendants bowed to him and withdrew from the chamber. Two guards waved palm fronds over the patient. “How is my lady?”
“In the finest humor, my God-king.” By her elbows, Theormi lifted herself on the dozen multicolored pillows around her. A gray tinge persisted in her face but her eyes beamed the lambent curiosity Khufu had first seen in them.
“Better and better. More relief to your King with every visit.”
“Thank you, your Majesty. It pleases me to relieve you of worry.”
Khufu adjusted the gold and blue silken nightgown that had fallen from her shoulder. “I can tell you now—Hordedef tested your wine. It was unripe nightshade.”
“Poison.”
“In itself, that’s little clue. Nightshade grows commonly, in my own garden in fact. Hordedef concluded that many guests could have poisoned the wine or goblet except for the likely suspects, the Ptah priests.”
“The wine must have masked that horrid smell when I was recovering.”
“Yes.”
“Uh, like fetid garlic. Well, I apparently will survive, and the King treats me to luxury. I don’t complain.”
Khufu’s eyes glinted. “Odd that this tragedy frees me to indulge you at last with every finery,” he said waving his arm at the forty-foot square chamber with servant’s compartment, wardrobes and the vanity mirror, headboard and several chairs engraved with gold. “Fit tribute to the woman who saved the God-king. Even the Queen can’t deny you my attention.”
Theormi smiled. “And there, when I woke, was the God-king at my side.”
“Where else would I be? And credit Merhet’s quickness in catching you.”
“Merhet.”
“As well, Djedi’s and Pese’shet’s potions. For a week you wrestled against the poison like it was a crocodile. But I believe you have drowned that rascal.” Khufu sat, gently, on the edge of her bed. He leaned down to lay an ear upon Theormi’s chest. “In here, life pulsed too strong for poison. You defeated death like a Goddess.” His eyes softened on her. “Each God is matched with a Goddess.”
Theormi’s eyes misted. She dragged her arms from under the bed linens. Khufu helped her to lift them. She reached around and coursed her hands across his back. He wrapped his arms around her.
Theormi coughed. Her next cough was thicker. They separated.
“Theormi?”
She couldn’t catch her breath. One cough forced itself on another and quickened into choking.
“Doctors, doctors.”
Red saliva bubbled onto Theormi’s lips.
“Doctors!”
Three physicians entered and encircled the bed, Khufu giving way. “She’s bleeding again. When I squeezed her.” A doctor wiped Theormi’s face as she hacked blood, spraying him.
“What is wrong here?” Khufu shouted. “Haven’t you cured her, you cows?”
“Sire, she recovers,” said one doctor. “These emissions are less frequent and less massive.”
“Call for Djedi and Pese’shet again. I don’t trust you.”
“At once, your Majesty.” The doctor hurried from the room.
Blood spattered down Theormi’s chin. A moist pink tinted her linens.
Khufu wrested himself from the sick bed, but the opposite wall blocked his path. He glared at it, as to see through it. “Theormi and the Queen Mother sick. Why is my majesty not adequate to cure them?”
The retching reflex he’d experienced again and again since Theormi’s poisoning once more chewed in Khufu’s gut. On the wall, he pictured a map of his country. Over it crept a blight, like the blood soaking into Theormi’s linen. The delta, Annu and all the miles south to the cataract sickened in a bloody flux, the red of desert, chaos and death.
“Tem, tem, tem.” Khufu’s saliva spattered the wall. His gut grinded. If he could not purge himself of this bloody image, he could at least create his own pain.
Through her coughs, Theormi called to him. “Khufu. King.”
He turned to her. Realizing his outburst had worried her, Khufu subdued himself.
Cough calmed and linens changed, Theormi dozed. Needing to walk off his anger, Khufu stomped out.
Why do Gods withhold their love? What more must I do?
Khufu rumbled like an earthquake down the Per-O corridor—servants and officials peeling away from his temblors. In his mind, he pictured High-priest Siptah. “Dropping poison in wine ... Set your dams before me. Set them higher, crueler.”
Outside, moonlight muted the garden like a fathom of sea water. Two redstarts squawked back and forth from sycamores on either side of the basalt avenue. “You peace-breakers?” Khufu called to them. “Only Gods can disturb this peace.” His mind fell to such a disturber. The Ptah priest devils poisoned Theormi. How has Hordedef missed it?
Hearing a noise behind him, the God-king whirled around to Prince Hordedef approaching. “Son.” Khufu opened his arms. “We must combine our minds and unearth these beetles.”
The God-king then recognized the package that Hordedef held. His arms fell.
The prince came forward. Khufu took the package without relinquishing his glower from the prince’s face. The previous package marked “Determined” had contained an eye.
“Sire, since the trespass on your life in the delta and the slaying of the Hap, I’ve investigated—”
“More bad news, prince?”
Hordedef shifted his weight to his left leg. “Much that I detected, I’d prefer to have overlooked. The Royal Captain recounted to me that for two years Vizier, then Prince, Shaf often charged him to transport the vizier to a particular wharf in Gebtu. There, Shaf disembarked while commanding his guards to remain on board.”
“You spied on the vizier?”
“Majesty, in the interest of—”
“Unless commanded by your God-king, you will not spy upon the vizier, your superior.” Khufu waved a hand. “Continue.”
Hordedef blanched. “Sire, I visited this wharf. An aged man in that district, who presented himself to me, said he had for six months been hired by Prince Shaf to care for a calf with the Hap markings.”
“Is that all, prince?”
“Walking southwest for five miles, the old man and I came to an abandoned lean-to hut. Exploring, I uncovered postholes marking a twenty by twenty space. Within this area, evidence of royal barley—”
“Conclusion, prince. Finish.”
Hordedef hurried out, “Shaf housed the calf with the Hap markings for six months before the incumbent Hap’s death.”
“Ah.” Khufu threw back his head and took in the sky’s many shades of blue. “Shrewd.”
“Shrewd, Sire? Don’t you see, by holding the Hap successor, Shaf in all probability killed or coerced the Hituptah priests to kill the incumbent Hap?”
“The vizier discovered the Hap successor and, to promote his legend, he simply waited for the Hap’s death to exploit it.” Khufu straightened his skirt and angled an eyebrow. “Anything else, prince?”
Hordedef did not move. “No, Sire, nothing.” The prince’s eyes beseeched his father’s face. “I’ll leave you alone ... to your garden.”
The package in one hand hanging at his side, Khufu transfixed on his son’s return to the Per-O. He fingered the package and thought of enemies as Hordedef slipped into the palace’s shadows.
Khufu trudged through his garden to the pomegranate trees. He reached to a ripe fruit but the package was in that hand. With the other hand, the God-king broke off a fruit. Jabbing it with his thumb, he burst it open, revealing glistening seeds. He bit into one half and then the other. Juice squiggled down his chin and neck. His mouth barely closed over the bitter mass. The old vermifuge properties. Run the worms right out.
Khufu dropped his hands and peered again into the Per-O shadows. This worm in my perfect state, the Gods must be punishing me. “What have I done?” In his eyes, the garden’s color
s drained gray. He saw himself in ashen silhouettes. Gray masks. Gray eyes. Gray souls.
He charged toward the palace, feet slamming down. Khufu barged through the garden door, flinging out his arms. “Torches. Light every torch. No shadows. Now.”
Servants scampered to ignite torches in their sconces.
“Bring more light.” Khufu raged through the corridors, punching the air, scaring away stewards. His eyes narrowed as he examined on the walls shadows as fleshless as thought. “Fire the torches. Every torch. No dark place.”
Already panting, servants ran into the corridor with lamps, candles and torches.
“Make the palace a sun. Drive out the worms into Ra’s light and their deaths.”
The next night in the Throne Room, torches and lamps blazed from every wall. They blanched the gold, lazuli and jade murals into a ghostly God Ra, Nile and papyrus. Enthroned Khufu gave no indication as to why he had cancelled the reception for the King of Feka to summon the princes together. Hanging his head, Khufu avoided his sons’ faces. He edged his feet from shadows cast by his throne.
In sunlight, all things are revealed. Without shadow, nothing can hide. No shadow, no enemy. The Ptah priests must concede to God Ra. They deserve what they force me to. We will perfect Egypt as the Gods command.
Without lifting his head, the God-king spoke. “Determined: It is time to strike back at the Hituptah priests. We will succeed. I am determined. Beginning this moment, I forbid offerings at the Ptah Temple. You princes will ensure it. To perfect Egypt—as I must—the Ptah priests’ abuse of the people must be purged. We’ll teach our enemies their impotence.”
The princes only gawked at their father. Except for Hordedef. He rose with the help of his cane. “Please consider, Majesty ...”
Khufu jerked his head up, black eyes boring on Hordedef. “Speak! Son!”
The prince blinked. He glanced about him at his brothers and began speaking hesitantly. “Given the abhorrent attempt on your life, you’ve endured beyond where we mortals might measure. Your anger is justified. Nevertheless, for everything sacred, please consider a more discreet response. Let us hear more discourse. For instance, we haven’t yet collected evidence of Hituptah’s guilt.”
“You believe me too feeble to render authority?”
“No, Majesty, no.” Hordedef’s voice shook. “We may well come to your present solution even though a Temple’s closure is unprecedented. Bear in mind, officers,” Hordedef said, scanning his brothers, “priests write the history for all eternity. What is known of you and our God-king will be known through them.”
“The Gods favor us,” Vizier Shaf said, rising with the smallest smile. “We cannot be wrong.”
Hordedef’s eyes bulged, his voice pitching. “So we, being us, are perfectly flawless? They, being them, are perfectly witless?”
“You, second prince,” barked the God-king, stabbing a finger at Hordedef, “speak to me with dulcet tones yet to my vizier, who speaks for me, you speak bitterly. Is what you say to him what you shadow from me?”
“Certainly not, King. I pay respect where it is due.”
“Then pay it to the vizier. Your younger brother is your better.”
Several princes started.
Hordedef’s body drooped on his smaller leg. “I recognize your agitation, Majesty. I trust you value the honor I pay you with my honest appraisal though it might contradict your own.”
“From the moment of my Ka’ab’s passing, my one hero has been his ghost. His ghost is your better too.”
The second prince’s eyes closed and his body hunched before he dumped himself onto his pillow.
Khufu shook a fist at the princes. “You will take to the hills and valleys and seek out those who would rot our ideal Egypt.” His cheeks puffed wide and crimson. His voice echoed into the Hall. “Drive every wormy feces from my nation. Chase out all shadows. You will be determined.”
As the other princes traded questioning expressions, Vizier Shaf said, eyes glinting, “Yes, your Majesty, we will be determined. Our two feet we will plant deep, so strong will our determination be. Determined with both feet.”
Those words. The words written on the package. Is everyone in this conspiracy? The God-king sagged in his throne, exhausted.
“You have your orders.”
The princes filed out tense and silent, apart from Vizier Sebek who hummed a marching tune.
Under a gibbous moon, Sebek carried his pried mongoose up a path of flat stones the indigo hue of spent coals that proceeded up a low hill along the desert. At the path’s end, he heard several voices. Through a collection of boulders, he spied a clump of men, dirty and threadbare, sitting around a fire, playing games with bits of papyrus. Sebek staked away the mongoose in the dark.
When he entered the firelight of the five men, they each recoiled. Each had gray hair, stooped backs and gnarled knuckles. And, for the moment, mouths and eyes wide with alarm. One then said, “Dear gentlemen, it’s merely a boy hungry for our hot soup.”
“Sit with us,” said another.
They shifted to allow Sebek the seat closest to the fire. Two fumbled to pour him soup into a scummy bowl, a curved pot shard. The youngest, Wakha, rocked back and forth, grinning like Sebek’s imbecile brother, and laughed at the wrong times. The others repeatedly replaced a shawl on his shoulders that kept falling off. Sebek didn’t fear these sops.
He drank their barley soup. Its thick warmth and tang coated his insides. The fire’s sparks flittered into the air.
The first codger to speak, Mose, squeezed shut one eye and cocked his head in Sebek’s direction. “I see, boy, that you are one of us ‘Betweeners.’ You don’t need home nor family nor pyramid. We are adventurers loving travel as free as the moon.” The others nodded.
Sebek stopped himself from laughing. He knew these men were just nehar—wandering tramps. He did not leave home to while away his time beside a fire with addled mates. No longer in a hurry to get to the Bekhan Trail, Sebek saw here men he could use to begin his fortune.
Amongst the shadows, Sebek told the five tramps about the con game in the village. The men hung on every word. When he said, “Although the animal appeared the very model of gentleness, it becomes more powerful than a cobra,” the men interrupted him to repeat that to each other.
He retrieved the mongoose.
When Wakha saw Tesh-Tesh, he ripped the rope from Sebek’s grasp before Sebek could react. Wakha lifted to his cheek, petted and cooed over the animal. Eventually it slept in his lap.
Sebek told the men, “You don’t want to hunt in trash for food. You want fine meals. You want what rich people got.”
“How do we do that?”
“We will run our own game. But we’ll raise the stakes. You band of ragtags will eat roasted goose and drink black beer.
Two men lolled out tongues. Two others got up, grabbed the other’s forearm and danced in circles, waving their free arm behind them. Their laughter was their consent to Sebek’s plan.
Before dawn, four of Sebek’s tramps prowled for snakes while Sebek scouted for a rich man’s home in the northern district. Next, he gave Wakha a sack he’d woven with halfa grass and told him, with a push, to take it onto the grounds. Sebek moved out of sight and waited for the inevitable.
In a few moments, Sebek heard shouting and profanity. Carrying Tesh-Tesh, he strolled to take view of the estate’s ranting owner waving his fist and chasing the ever-smiling Wakha off the property while the snakes free of the sack slithered under radish and garlic plants, scaring off ducks, goats and workmen in all directions.
Upon hearing the tragic news that snakes had invested the estate, Sebek tendered, “Would a trained snake-catcher be of value to you rich people?”
“Yes, please, hurry,” said the owner.
“Oh, it would? By the way, would there be beer, bread, trinkets and a duck or two in return? Wouldn’t that be a fair price for the only snake-catcher in Gebtu?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I’m happy t
o pay the fee.”
Sebek needed no one.
Eight evenings later in her chamber, Theormi gazed into a six-foot bronze mirror on the wall. Her maid Buhra ran an ivory comb through her lady’s long hair. They prepared for Theormi’s visit to Khufu following his tour of Upper Egypt and the pyramid. Glancing at the reflection of Theormi’s eyes, Buhra giggled.
“Maiden, what are you on about?”
Buhra pulled back. “If you please, Mistress—excuse me for my rudeness, but—can you tell me what it’s like ... with the God-king?” She giggled again. “I would faint.”
“Would you now.”
“I would shrivel and blow away.”
“Well, he stands a complete man.”
“A man? How can you call him a man? He’s the god on earth.”
Theormi smiled. “Of course, no man compares. He’s taught me to deliver more of myself.” She paused. “It’s to the point now that, at moments, he fears me as much as I feared him.”
“Afraid of you? He’s the landlord of all Egypt. How could the God-king be afraid of a harem girl?”
Theormi spun around at Buhra, but bit her tongue in time to avoid lashing out. She heaved a sigh. “Perhaps ‘challenged’ says it better. He lives for a challenge.”
“You survived your challenge, that’s sure. I was so afraid for you those two weeks. Doctor said you should have died.”
In her memory revived the sickening odor of nightshade. “That’s passed. There’s a future now. There will be more of him to love.”
Wide-eyed, Buhra bolted around Theormi to face her. “Then you do love him. You love the God-king. I knew it.”
Theormi flicked away her eyes to avoid Buhra’s gaze. She didn’t want to disclose any inkling of her wonder over whether saving the God-king and escaping her own death had inspired her lover. Were his gifts of her own suite and maid as well as luxurious gowns in addition to the royal education all in preparation for Theormi to become a queen and accompany him in his aerie? Was it even possible?
“Mistress, you’re thinking something. What’re you thinking?”
“An idea.”
Buhra’s face clenched as if for a cramp. “Idea? Why does a harem girl need ideas when she’s the God-king’s favorite?”
Theormi’s face flushed hot. “I won’t be in a harem forever.”
Buhra ducked behind her mistress and resumed combing. She bit her lip, seeming about to cry.
Theormi patted her maid’s hand. “Never mind, my little swallow.”
Buhra sparkled a smile.
Khufu’s lover plucked a blue lotus from a vase beside her and crushed its petals along her throat, its sweetness spilling out. She draped a veil over her face. “Quick now, retrieve the gold gown with the collar.”
The maiden tiptoed to an alcove. “I’m glad for you that the God-king’s home after seeing his pyramid. His pyramid is the best ever, that’s what everybody says. He’ll be in a happy mood.” She brought the gown. “And he’ll be excited,” she added with another giggle.
Theormi slipped from her cloth. Buhra shimmied the gown around her mistress. They stepped back from the mirror to admire Theormi’s reflection. The crystalline fabric not only revealed but also magnified Theormi’s flesh underneath. Warm flesh of her face, neck and shoulders glowed upon the gown like a crown.
Buhra broke their silence. “This is why the King has granted you these private rooms and why I’m permitted to serve you. We harem girls worry about losing our beauty but, mistress, stay as you are, and you will be in the God-king’s harem a respectable period of time. Don’t you worry.”
Theormi gaped at her maid. She realized how far she had come since she saw the world as small as did Buhra. She patted Buhra’s cheek.
Hurrying into the Hituptah winery, open for the God Sokar festival two hours before midnight, Mehi and An-khi inhaled sweet, rich scents of grape juice and fermenting wine swelling from earthenware vases. They climbed up a ladder on the circular vat, twenty feet across, to join ten other celebrants on a reviewing platform. Inside the vat, five men wearing only loincloths in the thick heat grasped wooden poles, which stretched across the top, while tromping on a two-foot layer of grapes in precise rhythm to the music of two harpists on the platform. An-khi pointed and Mehi cheered. Many visitors sang. Juice oozed out of four vents around the wooden vat. Heady aroma gushed up to them all.
Earlier that evening with hundreds of Egyptians at the fertility festival, Mehi and An-khi called to the “driving of the beasts,” cattle festooned with green ribbons; “prepared the earth” with silver hoes handed out at one of various booths; and slurped dates slathered in honey. When the lamplit barge carrying the forty-foot falcon image of God Sokar floated past them watching from shore, An-khi reached for and held Mehi’s hand. At that moment, his worry over their angry words about the pyramid vanished. Despite the low Inundation and the end of pyramid season, he had An-khi.
One of the men dancing on the grapes looked up at Mehi. “Women adore a dancer. It tells your lady what a good lover you are.”
Mehi blushed. He lowered his eyes. But Mehi felt the promise of freedom in a future secured like God Sokar’s going forth to seed the fields.
An-khi said, “Let’s go.”
He followed her down the ladder and outside. They drank down their wine samples handed to them by young women at the winery entrance. Mehi thrilled to the gods’ liquid coursing into his body. It touched him with wonder. An-khi, though, wrinkled her nose. “Nefer, but fine.” She clapped Mehi on the shoulder. “I’ll race you.”
In loam beside the river, Mehi strode in An-khi’s footprints as she left them. When he worked on the pyramid, his feet on its stone were as close as he’d ever come to its mysteries. But An-khi? Could he come close enough to know her mysteries?
Evening heat charmed out their body oils. The river rushed and whirled, spray misting the air and them. The night opened to him so wide that it seemed to allow the stars more room to shine with sterling brilliance. Simply running with An-khi, why do I feel more of myself? When she touches me, I feel more of what’s around me. “Remember when we were children and a day would last forever? How we lost ourselves in endless sunlight? These days, it’s night before we know it.”
“Tu,” An-khi said over her shoulder. “I think it’s because adults are so busy. They don’t notice time passing. Did you ever hear that story about the man who went to sleep under a magic spell and wakened fifty years later?”
Her low, soft rasp warmed Mehi like campfire. By bestowing him with An-khi and work on the pyramid, the Gods had surely forgiven him for his family’s crime. “You mean when he woke and realized his life was almost over?”
“I lost those years away from Mer. I’m alert, awake. Excitement speeds us. Back then, days lasted so long we did a thousand things.”
“Do you know what Osiris is said to have cried out to Isis from the womb?”
An-khi turned and smiled. “’Hurry to me.’”
“Yes.”
“Who first discovered love?” An-khi called. “How long ago? Haven’t you wondered? How did people live before love was discovered? Did two young lovers under the sun create it? Or an older, wiser couple?”
“You want me to hop in here just anywhere?”
An-khi ran backward a moment to show him a mocked serious expression.
Mehi stopped running. An-khi too. He reached out his hand. She offered hers. Despite their run, they cinched their breaths. He said, “I can’t say directly, but I know this: If it had been me, the male lover felt a hundred things. I don’t think he worried about what it was or what name to give it, but he felt it and followed it.”
An-khi’s dimple deepened with her smile.
Some days earlier, when An-khi had suggested that many ancient pyramids of older civilizations might have once stood here before they crumbled to sand. Mehi realized his father’s tomb-robbery had caused him to stop thinking of the future. All his thoughts had become engaged in regaining Egy
pt’s acceptance. Until now.
He pressed An-khi’s palm. “I’ve lately dreamt one wish.” He searched into An-khi’s recessed eyes. “I haven’t believed it possible. That it could be for me.”
“Mehi?”
He couldn’t control his breathing any longer. “I can settle a house. I can have a piece of Egypt. I can settle a house.”
An-khi’s eyes pinpointed on his.
“With you An-khi. I want a house with you.”
An-khi’s free hand whipped to her cheek. “Mehi, do you think we could?” Her deep breaths swelled her breasts.
“If you want it.”
“You’re thinking bolder than me now.”
“I was reasonable before I met you.”
An-khi cupped her hand around her chin, speaking as if planning. “I’ll ask my parents for the right. Their clothier visits in a couple of days. He distracts them.”
Was she accepting his marriage proposal? “Distracts them?”
An-khi didn’t answer, seemingly distracted herself.
Mehi saw himself going to the pyramid by dawn and returning to An-khi by night. The simple perfection of it. “I remember Ra on the dawn we met and the brightness in your face; I wish to see that face forever.”
This pulled An-khi from her thoughts. She displayed a smile as sweet as Mehi ever saw.
“Mehi, you wondered how the first female in love felt about the male. I will tell you—when you wonder, conclude that I am content.”
The couple gazed into each other.
“Then, you’re saying ...?”
An-khi whispered, “Yes.”
Their arms encircled one another, bodies clinging. Sand warm under their feet, skin hot wherever they touched, Mehi and An-khi pressed fingers across the other’s back as if probing for treasure. On their lips mingled the wetness of their kisses.
Part 2
RECESSION SEASON