A Garden Locked

by Naomi Ruppin

  “Unless—and I know this sounds a little mad, but what if he’s not really a eunuch?”

  “A fact he’s kept hidden all these years?”

  “He’s the only slave in the palace with his own room. He dresses and undresses in private. If anyone could conceal such a thing, he could.”

  Moth stared at me, open-mouthed. I was so excited by my new idea that I could, if not forget the kiss, at least push it to the back of my mind.

  I helped Moth to build a rather impressive rock pyramid, higher than our own heads, which when done in good company turned out to be quite an entertaining way to spend an afternoon. We laughed as we chased the rocks that rolled off the mound, and I was relieved to be back on good terms with Moth. I scolded myself silently when I caught myself admiring the way the muscles in his arms knotted as he lifted a rock-filled sack. When we were finished, he went off to his room to get some well-earned sleep. I didn’t tell him of my plans. I’d already gotten him into enough trouble that day and I decided to keep him out of it this time.

  Chapter Ten

  The Bleeding Stag

  In the late afternoon, I loitered outside the left wing of the palace, peeping around the corner every few moments toward the outbuildings in the back. My heart gave a jolt when I finally saw Khepri exit the kitchen, cross the yard and go into his sewing room. I sped around to the front entrance.

  The other palace slaves were quartered in outbuildings. But as the king’s favorite, and one who was sometimes called upon at odd hours of the night, Khepri slept in a small room inside the palace, just off the servants’ dining hall. I had seen him coming out of it, but of course I’d never been inside.

  Meals in the palace were served in cycles of three: first the servants and slaves ate at inconveniently early hours, then the men, then the women and children. Although the winter dusk had yet to fall, the servants were finishing their supper. I strode briskly up and down the corridor, trying to look as if I had a good reason for being there, waiting for the last few stragglers to leave the servants’ dining hall. My heart beat uncomfortably quickly when I thought about intruding on Khepri’s privacy, and of the possibility that he might catch me at it. I sternly reminded myself that if I truly wanted to be a judge, I must be prepared to expose what people most wished to conceal.

  When the corridor finally emptied, I darted into Khepri’s room and shut the door behind me. Everything in it was pleasing to the eye; I liked it better than any other room in the palace that I’d seen, including the king’s sitting room with its bejeweled ornaments. A wooden box bed was placed against the wall—I doubted that any slave besides Khepri had a bed rather than a simple pallet. The shutters were open and the late afternoon sunlight slanted into the room and illuminated a riot of colors on the bed. It was covered with a beautiful quilt, which I immediately sat on, the better to stroke. It was made of rich gleaming scraps that must have been remnants of the garments Khepri sewed for the king. One patch was of blue silk, another of royal purple wool, yet another of white linen embroidered with tiny scarlet anemones. Two shelves above the bed were laden with objects that called out to be touched: a small vase of opaque blue-green glass holding a single dried brown thistle, a glazed ceramic dish filled with tiny seashells, a musical instrument made of seven bamboo pipes of different lengths, woven together with string. I picked it up and blew into each of the pipes softly to hear their different voices, then placed it back exactly as I had found it.

  On the opposite wall were a small table and stool. A bronze mirror hung above the table, with a pattern of grape vines etched into the rim. On the table was a ceramic washbowl and a ewer of water, surrounded by polished boxes of olive wood filled with creams and ointments, that I guessed were Khepri’s cosmetics. Again I took care not to move anything from its original place. I sat on the stool with my back to the mirror and surveyed the room again. What exactly had I expected to find? Some token of affection from Amisi? I had found nothing but evidence of Khepri’s love of beauty. I knew I should leave promptly, before he returned.

  I made one more pass over the room, looking behind, inside and under every object that might be concealing another. I felt the undersides of the table and stool and lifted up the mirror. I looked at the outer windowsill. I squeezed every part of Khepri’s pillow and felt nothing but soft wool. I sought loose floor boards and wall panels. Finally I looked under the hay-filled mattress, and that was where I found them.

  There were two items under the mattress: a narrow leather pouch and a small roll of cloth. I opened the pouch’s drawstrings and upended it, then drew a sharp breath when a copper knife fell out onto the bed. Its blade was very sharp but not very long, and it was square at the tip rather than pointed. There was something more in the pouch so I shook it again and out dropped a dark gray whetstone.

  Next I unrolled the cloth. It was a small tapestry, which just covered Khepri’s pillow when I spread it out. It was exquisitely sewn from tiny pieces of the same lavish fabrics as the quilt, and embroidered with colored threads of wool and silk. It showed a thicket of brambles, in the center of which was a single lily crowned with six white petals. A stag had thrust its antlers into the thorns and had become entangled in them; its face was bleeding beads of crimson thread, which I traced with my fingers. It was both beautiful and disturbing. I sat for a moment gazing at it and memorizing its details.

  Then voices in the corridor reminded me that Khepri could return at any moment. I rolled up the tapestry, returned the knife and whetstone to their pouch, and placed them both back under the mattress. I glanced around the room to make sure it looked precisely the same as I had found it, waited for utter silence in the hallway, and slipped out of the room. I hurried back to my tent and sat on my bed, which now looked dismally dull with its plain brown blanket, to think.

  Slaves were strictly forbidden to own weapons, for fear of the rare occasions when they visited violence on their masters. It was not unheard of for a slave to take a meat-carving knife to a cruel master. But slaves in the palace were treated well, and if anything, Khepri’s room was evidence of how very generously he in particular was treated.

  An uncomfortable thought occurred to me. One could certainly say that the king’s wives and daughters were also well-treated, in material terms. Yet I’d recently come to question the way the king behaved towards them, myself included, and to consider it unjust to the point of cruelty. But at the same time, I had not given a second thought to the scores of people under my own roof who were born, captured or sold into slavery, Khepri among them. I could marry and have children, leave the palace for another home, and were I a man, I could have chosen my means of livelihood. A slave could do none of these things. What determined a person’s freedom of choice but the fortune of their birth, and sometimes the force of another person’s will imposed upon them? Didn’t a slave have much more reason to resent, even hate, the duress of his master, than a woman that of her husband or father?

  Whether or not Khepri considered himself fortunate might depend on whom he compared himself to. I knew nothing of his childhood and youth. He’d been the king’s slave for over fifteen years and I had rarely known him to appear anything but lighthearted. Surely he’d long become resigned to his station in life. Unless something had changed. Unless, for instance, he had fallen in love with one of the king’s wives.

  I thought of the beautiful little tapestry, clearly wrought by Khepri’s needle. Nothing could be a more poignant image of forbidden love. Both the stag and the lily were common symbols of romantic love—the stag of the man, the lily of the woman. Like a lily among thorns is my darling—the words arose in my mind, a line from a popular song. In the song, the phrase expressed the desirability of the loved one above all others. But in Khepri’s picture, the thorns appeared to symbolize a cruel barrier that tore at the stag’s flesh, and allowed him to see but not reach his beloved.

  As far as I knew, Khepri was a eunuch. I had heard that the practice of keeping eunuchs as servants and court
iers was a common one in other lands, though it was not so in my own. I had only a tentative understanding of what was involved in making a man into a eunuch, and my mind shied away from imagining what must surely be a horrific act. I’d also heard that depending on the age it occurred, it had various effects on a man’s body—made his head relatively small in adulthood, his legs longer, and caused him to tend to stoutness. Khepri looked like a perfectly normal man, except for his beardlessness—he was a striking, even beautiful man. Did this mean that he was not, in fact, a eunuch?

  He and Amisi were both Egyptian and both beautiful. I did not have to conjecture about their closeness—I had seen Khepri’s tenderness towards Amisi myself, and Khepri himself had spoken of it. Was it farfetched to imagine that they loved each other?

  Then there was the knife. Why did Khepri keep a forbidden weapon hidden in his room? Against whom could he intend to wield it? A guard, while escaping from the palace with Amisi? Or, as a death sentence was hanging over her head, simply against anyone who tried to harm her? Or the king himself, who however indifferent a partner he was to Amisi, was still her husband and therefore a rival? Was my father’s life in danger?

  I saw the knife again in my mind’s eye. There was something about its curious size and shape…then I actually smacked my forehead. The answer had been staring me in the face, so to speak. The blade I had found was no weapon—it was a shaving knife. I had said it myself. The only thing remarkable about Khepri’s appearance was his beardlessness. Men who were eunuchs from a young age grew no facial hair. But a man, a man whole in body who wanted to pose as a eunuch, might shave his face so that he looked like one. I suddenly remembered when I had impulsively kissed Khepri’s cheek by the well, a few days before. I had thought that his makeup felt gritty. But what I’d felt had been the whiskers that the makeup concealed. Khepri was a man, a true man—I was sure of it. And being a man, he could be the father of Amisi’s child.

  “Heaven preserve me!” I groaned aloud.

  I was extremely fond of Khepri. The king was extremely fond of Khepri. Even if Khepri and Amisi had together betrayed the king, I couldn’t find it in my heart to blame either one of them. Khepri had vouched for Amisi’s innocence and had urged me to clear her name. Had he been lying to me all this time? Did I now hold his fate in my hands as well as Amisi’s?

  §

  “You’ve done it, Abigail. You really solved it.”

  I had stopped by Moth’s room after the evening meal to report my findings.

  “I don’t know about that. I can’t really consider this solid proof that Khepri’s the father. So now I don’t know what to do.”

  Moth hopped off his bed and started pacing the room. Since it was a tiny room, he swung swiftly back and forth like the tongue of a bell.

  “What do you mean? You have to tell the king.”

  “But…but I’m not completely sure yet.”

  “All the evidence points to Khepri. Why else is he concealing what he is?”

  “Whatever the reason, he was doing it long before Amisi ever came to the palace.”

  “Even worse. Who knows what’s been going on in the women’s court all these years? He’s so popular with all the wives. He’s a fox set to guard the chickens! Why are you shaking your head?”

  “I can’t believe it. I like Khepri!”

  “I don’t know him that well. But I like Gideon, and you were quick enough to accuse him. Anyway, liking has nothing to do with it. You wanted to be a judge, so it’s your duty to reveal the truth.”

  “Is that my duty? Or is it to seek justice?”

  Moth stopped pacing, grabbed my shoulders and actually shook me.

  “Abigail, will you stop! Moral debates were a fine game when we were children. Are you forgetting why this all started? Tell the king now, win your wager and send Nathan to Azazel!”

  His face was a finger’s length from mine, and I had the ridiculous thought that his amber eyes were two kettles of khat brew boiling over and that his grip on my shoulders was pleasing if painful. I looked down at my lap.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I said softly. “But I was too quick to accuse Gideon—you said so yourself. I can’t tell the king yet. I must talk to Khepri first.”

  §

  Between having risen at noon, and the new burdensome thoughts I had to keep me awake, I slept badly again that night. So I was particularly resentful when Timna shook my shoulder in the frigid winter dawn.

  “Lady! Lady, I bring you news!”

  “What is it?” My mind desperately wanted to be submerged in sleep again, and I couldn’t imagine what could be so urgent at that dismal hour.

  “Amisi has given birth! I came to tell you first thing.”

  I sat up immediately.

  “Did she! What is it?”

  “A regular baby.” Timna sounded disappointed, perhaps that it was not a tiny cat-headed god. “A girl.”

  “Thank you, Timna. You did well to wake me. I’ll go see her as soon as I can.”

  Excitement and apprehension drove the sleep from my mind as I dressed. It was now nine months from the Feast of Aviv and a little over a week past the grace period the king had allowed. I had a week left of the time the king had given me to come up with an answer.

  When I arrived at Amisi’s tent, I was met by a soft mewing cry. I hesitated outside, reluctant to enter uninvited but not wanting to oblige Amisi to rise if she was resting. Finally I pulled the flap aside and saw Amisi lying on her sleeping pallet with a small bundle beside her. Anubis was curled up next to the bundle, and both he and Amisi returned my gaze.

  “Amisi, may I come in?”

  She nodded and I entered and went to kneel beside her.

  “Congratulations. I hope you and the baby are well.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Amisi looked pale and exhausted, like one who’s just returned from a harrowing journey. Childbirth had taken a great toll on her. I looked at the baby. Only her small face was visible within the blanket that swaddled her. I studied it. She had settled back to sleep and wore an expression of fierce resentment, as if she were using all her might to reject the cold, unfamiliar world she had somehow arrived in. She had a patch of black down on her head, which I stroked gently. Then I ran my finger over her round cheek, which was so soft it was like touching warm water. I searched her tiny wrinkled features for any resemblance to the king or to Khepri but found none, nor did she particularly look like Amisi for that matter.

  “What’s her name?” I asked Amisi. She didn’t return my smile.

  “I don’t know. I have not thought.”

  The baby started mewing again, and for the first time I wondered what her fate would be if I should prove that she was not the king’s child. Or if I should fail to prove that she was.

  “Amisi, is there anything you want to tell me?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  The baby was crying louder now and I waited for Amisi to pick her up, but she didn’t.

  “Maybe she’s hungry,” I said.

  “Oh. Yes.” Amisi sat up and took the baby into her arms, but her expression was so blank the baby might have been a sack of grain.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to feed her.” I turned to go.

  “Abigail.”

  “Yes?” I turned back in surprise. Amisi had never used my name before.

  “I am sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “Trouble.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Fallen

  Later that day, I went to my tent to try and make up for lost sleep, but of course sleep didn’t come. I tried to think of what I should say to Khepri. My mind swirled, scrubbed and wrung the problem as if it was a dirty garment I was trying to wash. Should I hint that I had found the culprit and see if he would confess of his own accord? Should I accuse him outright and see what he would say? Should I start by telling him what I’d found in his room?

  The next morning I was determined to speak to him, though
I still hadn’t been able to decide exactly what to say. Tired of my own endless deliberation, I intended to hurl myself into the conversation and trust to the inspiration of the moment. After breakfast I set out from the women’s court, hoping to find Khepri either in the king’s chambers or in his own room, and if not, to try his sewing room. As I was climbing the stairs to king’s chambers, I met Khepri coming down.

  “Khepri, I must speak to you!” I said, too loudly, then added belatedly and more softly, “Good morning.”

  “I have no time to tarry, Abigail.” Khepri neither stopped nor slowed down, so that I was forced to pivot and trot down the stairs after him. I hastened my strides so I could look at this face.

  “I suppose you know that Amisi’s given birth to a girl,” I said, watching him closely for his reaction.

  “Yes.” His face remained impassive. “They are both well. Forgive me, Abigail, but I must go and prepare the king’s pavilion for the spectacle.”

  “Oh, is that now?” I clenched my fists in frustration. In my preoccupation, I’d forgotten about the spectacle. Was Khepri really in such a hurry, or was he avoiding a conversation with me? In any case, there was nothing to be done about the delay. I decided I might as well go and watch; Moth would be participating. I hoped that he’d managed to get a good night’s sleep. “Later, then, Khepri. Save me a seat in the pavilion!”

  “I will.” Khepri smiled and hurried on his way. I wondered how much longer I would be able to count on his good will. I doubted it would be the case after sundown of that very day.

  A short while later I joined the crowd of chattering wives, concubines and children streaming out of the palace and out to the horse run. The king’s women had little enough excitement in their sheltered lives, so they welcomed any opportunity for entertainment.

  It was a sunny day, but breezy and cool. The air was glass-clear and the surrounding hills were sharply drawn onto a brilliant blue sky. When we passed by the stables I saw that many of them were empty. On the grassy oval of the practice field, the boys were standing in a spearhead formation, and the horses were waiting in the surrounding dirt path, harnessed to chariots. Harel stood facing the boys, with a ram’s-horn strung across his chest.