by Naomi Ruppin
As the heavens for height and the earth for depth,
So the heart of kings is unsearchable.
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
They were both in keeping with the arrogance of the king I was familiar with. Now it was my task to search out a matter, doggedly if not gloriously, even if it involved the king’s own heart. Wearily I resolved to renew my investigation early the next morning.
§
I had fallen into a troubled sleep, when a sound outside my tent woke me. I heard someone clearing their throat, then silence. I drew back my tent flap and looked out. It was Khepri again, still looking distraught and disheveled.
“I’m sorry to disturb you again, Abigail,” he said. “But you said you wanted to talk.”
“I…yes, I did. Please come in.” I held the flap and stood aside for him to enter, hastily trying to marshal my thoughts.
“I’d like you to come with me, if you would.”
I hesitated a moment, thinking of Khepri’s shaving knife and the accusation I was about to make, then I stepped outside. I trusted Khepri, even if he had betrayed my father. I followed him through the tents, and to my surprise I realized that he was leading me not out of the encampment but towards Amisi’s tent. So they’d decided to make a joint confession.
When we reached Amisi’s tent, Khepri held back the flap for me and I entered. Amisi was sitting on her pallet next to the sleeping baby, with two cushions arranged in front of her. A single oil lamp provided some feeble illumination. Anubis was prowling around the tent, casting lion-sized shadows on its walls. It was hard to see in the gloom, but I thought Amisi looked as though she’d been crying. She nodded to me and gestured to the cushions, and Khepri and I sat.
“Good evening, Amisi,” I said awkwardly. “Are you…have you named the baby yet?”
“Not yet,” she answered.
We sat for a moment in strained silence until Khepri spoke softly to Amisi in Egyptian.
“No,” she said, “I will say.”
She looked at me, took a deep breath and spoke again, in a voice that threatened to dissolve in tears.
“Abigail, I want to say the truth to you. About the baby’s father.”
My heart was beating very fast as I answered, “I’m glad, Amisi. I really think it’s best. I’m sure…that is, I hope the king will show mercy to you and Khepri.”
“Khepri? Why Khepri?” Amisi looked puzzled.
I too was puzzled.
“Aren’t you…isn’t Khepri the…?”
Khepri and Amisi both stared at me, then looked at each other and laughed long and loud as I gaped at them. Finally they calmed themselves.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Khepri said. “This is really no time for laughter. But to answer your question, no.”
Heaven preserve me, I thought, I’ve gotten it horribly wrong again.
“Then I’m sorry,” I said. “Terribly sorry. I thought you loved Amisi.”
“I do, of course,” Khepri said, “but as a dear friend.”
“And I thought…I thought I’d discovered…that you’re not truly a eunuch.” I was thankful for the darkness, which I hoped hid my flaming cheeks.
Khepri gasped softly, shook his head and said, “As the king said, you’re full of surprises, Abigail. I didn’t know I was under investigation too! I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself. But right now it’s more important that you hear Amisi.”
Confused, I decided the best thing I could do would be to keep silent until Amisi had finished. She composed herself and began.
“I have not many friends here. At first maybe because the language is not mine. Or because the women think me a heathen. I don’t know. They wouldn’t talk to me. Many times I would go to the stables to see the horses. As I told you, my father is a horse breeder and I used to help him care for his animals. Here, too, I would sometimes bring food to the horses, and sometimes I watched the young boys training in the field. One day Gideon spoke to me.”
I caught my breath, questions crowding onto my tongue. While I was having trouble keeping silent, Amisi was struggling to keep on speaking. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, and Khepri put a hand on her shoulder. She drew a ragged breath and went on.
“He asked me if I knew horses, and I told him how I did. We talked more. I told him about caring for horses and he helped me find the words I didn’t know. Sometimes I would wait for him in the stables and sometimes he would wait for me. We turned to friends. More…more than friends. Until then I was alone. Except for Khepri.”
Amisi smiled at Khepri gratefully, then she looked steadily into my eyes.
“I met Gideon many times. But always in the day, always at the stables. I swear to you that I told you truly: we did not betray the king. Now I wish we had. I wanted to. But Gideon would not.”
“But…but then who…?” I could not help bursting out.
Amisi’s hands balled into fists, she shut her eyes tightly and shook her head, as if trying to fight off a memory.
“It was at the Feast of Aviv. I dined in the great hall with the king and many wives and guests. There was much food and much wine. Many men…looked at me. But one more than others. He was the seer.”
“What?” I looked at Khepri for an explanation.
“The prophet. It was Nathan,” he said.
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
“Go on, Amisi.”
“I went outside to make water. He must have followed me to the women’s latrine. On my way back he stepped out of the bushes and grabbed my arm. He dragged me to the ground, behind the bushes where no one could see. And he…he forced himself on me.”
Amisi was now weeping openly. I think I would have wept too had not a sweeping rage kept my eyes dry.
“Did you cry out?”
“I tried to, but he covered my mouth. He knew about Gideon. I don’t know how. Someone must have seen us in the stables. He said if I made a sound or told anyone, he would tell the king we had betrayed him and we would both die.”
“So you told no one?”
“No one.”
“Not even Gideon?”
“Especially not Gideon. I knew if I told him, he would kill Nathan. And then Gideon would die. At first I tried to forget it happened. But then I found I was with child. Even more than before, I felt…I felt…”
Amisi turned to Khepri and asked him something in Egyptian. His eyes widened and he took her hand and squeezed it.
“She felt profaned,” Khepri said to me.
“I didn’t want Gideon to look at me. I told him we must not see each other again. It was too dangerous anyway. I lied to him.” Amisi stopped to wipe the tears that were spilling down her cheeks and went on. “I told him I was pregnant with the king’s child, and that had reminded me of my duty. Khepri found me weeping one day after that. Finally I told him what happened.”
“I thought she should tell the king,” Khepri said. “But she was sure she wouldn’t be believed. It was her word against Nathan’s, and she’d waited so long to say anything. But more than that, she was afraid for Gideon’s life. She made me swear to tell no one. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth, Abigail. But it wasn’t my secret to tell.”
“Why are you telling me now, Amisi?” I asked.
“Now he can no longer harm Gideon,” she said.
“But what about you? Are you not afraid for yourself?”
“No. I matter to no one now.”
I was dismayed by the bleakness of her words.
“What about your child?”
“I feel she is…not my child.”
I had no reply to that. Useless to say that the child herself was blameless.
“Let me understand your wishes, Amisi. You want me to go to the king with this knowledge?”
“Amisi matters to me,” Khepri broke in vehemently. “I want you to fight for her life, Abigail. Nathan has comm
itted the most loathsome and degrading act one human can perpetrate on another. He must receive retribution. Use the truth, now that you know it, to seek justice. As for the best way to go about it, that will probably take some consideration.”
He was right. I was overwhelmed, and I would need to think carefully and at length about everything I had just learned. But first I had to make sure I had all the information.
“Amisi, going back to the Feast of Aviv. Could anyone have seen Nathan follow you outside?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could anyone have seen or heard him attack you? Someone else at the latrine, perhaps?”
“I don’t know. I think not.”
“Did anyone see you come back from the latrine?”
“No. After he…after, I went to my tent, not back to the great hall.”
“Is there anything else you can remember about that night that might be helpful?”
Amisi shook her head and said, “I have lived the last nine months trying not to remember.”
Chapter Twelve
The Red Shoe
Back in my tent I sat cross-legged on my bed, my head feeling like a cushion overstuffed with wool, about to burst. I didn’t know how to start sorting out my thoughts, so I decided to review the facts I’d learned in the order in which I’d heard them.
I had been right about Amisi’s relationship with Gideon, after all. I felt a brief moment of triumph, but then reprimanded myself. Gideon now lay dead and Amisi was grief-stricken. Was it true to say they’d betrayed the king? Amisi had sworn it was a chaste betrayal and I believed her. They had fallen in love. Should she have broken off the relationship when she realized this had happened? I couldn’t bring myself to blame her for clinging to the only love she’d found in her foreign and hostile home. And now she had lost it.
Nathan had raped Amisi. I felt sickened with disgust and rage. How could someone who called himself a man of God be so corrupt, so bestial? This was the evil that Khepri had alluded to. And how had Nathan dared to force himself on one of the king’s women inside the king’s own walls? Whatever uneasy alliance existed between the two of them, surely the king would have Nathan put to death if he found out. For years, decades, Nathan had been skulking in the king’s shadow like a scavenger, feasting on crumbs of the wealth the king carelessly amassed. Had Nathan’s sense of entitlement overstepped its bounds, abetted by the feast’s free-flowing wine?
Nathan must have allies and spies throughout the palace; he’d hinted as much himself when he asked about my investigation. Small wonder he had taken an interest! One of them had become aware of Amisi’s and Gideon’s relationship and had told Nathan. Perhaps the fact that Nathan thought Amisi was an adulteress did away with any compunction he might have about attacking the king’s wife. And he had done so at the women’s latrine, the one female-only facility in the palace that was unguarded. Its odor was enough to keep most people from lingering too close.
Nathan’s knowledge of the relationship between Amisi and Gideon had been the sword he’d held over her head; he’d been complacently sure it would prevent her from going to the king. And it had, until now. Until Gideon had been killed and Amisi had nothing left to lose, or so she felt.
And now she’d told me. Why shouldn’t I go immediately to the king and tell him, and put an end to Nathan and his evil doings? I had such a strong desire to do so that very instant that I rose to stand. But my better judgment stilled my feet. Surely if I did this, Nathan would retaliate by telling the king that Amisi had committed adultery with Gideon. Would the king believe Amisi that there had been nothing physical between her and Gideon? Would it even matter to him? Would he put her to death anyway? And would he believe me and Amisi against Nathan’s word? Given the truth about Gideon, Amisi would certainly have a motive to lie about being raped by another man. And, I suddenly realized, I too had a motive to lie. Suppose the king thought that I had simply failed to discover the truth about Amisi’s pregnancy and, desperate to avoid marrying Nathan, I had fabricated the rape story with Amisi, to our mutual benefit?
To my immense frustration, once again I found that learning another portion of the truth, even the truth in its entirety, didn’t resolve my investigation but opened up new avenues of complication. If I wanted to have a chance of both saving Amisi’s life and winning my wager, I would have to prove that Nathan raped Amisi. Otherwise I would find myself married to the very wretch I had failed to convict. This thought caused my hands to shake, and I balled them into tight fists which I pressed to my eyes, then I forced myself to ignore that monstrous prospect for the moment and continue to think logically.
How I was to go about finding proof when there were apparently no witnesses, I had not the faintest idea. I collapsed onto my bed again. Pushed to the back of my mind until now, I suddenly remembered Khepri’s ambiguous response to my supposed discovery about him. What did it mean? Was I right? But it would have to wait. There were only so many mysteries I could try to fathom at once.
I was awake early the next morning and pacing in agitation around the Hall of the Throne, when a large crowd of men and boys streamed out of the palace. I saw Moth among them and ran to catch up and walk him to the gate. I was bursting to tell him everything I’d learned the night before, but there was no time.
“Moth. You’re going to the funeral?”
“Yes. It will take half the morning to walk to Gideon’s village.”
“Well, I hope…I hope it’s easy walking,” I said foolishly, unable to think of anything better to wish him. “I’ll come to your room around noon—maybe you’ll be back by then.”
Moth was carried away on the tide of funeral goers. There were no women in the group; most likely none of the palace women had known Gideon very well. Except for Amisi, secretly grieving alone in her tent. Unfortunately, I would now have to go and torment her further.
When I entered Amisi’s tent, I found Khepri stretched out on the rug, close to Amisi on her pallet, with the baby and the cat nestled between them. They were all asleep. As I stood there hesitating, Khepri opened his eyes and sat up.
“Good morning, Abigail,” he said. He was extraordinarily unkempt, nothing like his usual faultlessly-groomed self. His braids were a twisted birds’ nest, the kohl around his eyes was even more smeared than the night before, and—could it be? Surely I saw the shadow of whiskers emerging from his smudged face paint? My expression must have served as a mirror, because he clapped his hands to his cheeks and said, “I look like a demon from the underworld, don’t I?”
“Well…you might want to tend to your face before waiting on the king,” I said, adding, “Good morning, Amisi,” as she had stirred and opened her eyes. Even exhausted and heartsick, she was still more beautiful than most women on their wedding day.
“Khepri, can you stay with the baby?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “Why?”
“I want Amisi to come with me. Amisi, are you able? Just for a short while.”
“Yes,” she said, “But first I must make water.”
“That’s where we’re going anyway,” I said. She looked at me, wide-eyed. “I want you to show me exactly where Nathan attacked you.”
Amisi pressed her lips together, stood and said, “We go.”
We left Khepri undoing his braids and combing his hair with his fingers. As we went among the tents, I slowed my pace, seeing that walking was still painful for Amisi after giving birth. We exited the encampment from the rear gate, passing by the menagerie. We could see the sad giraffe’s head and neck protruding above the encircling wall, and he cocked his head to one side and blinked his long-lashed eyes at us as we drew nearer. Amisi held up her hand and smiled, and to my amazement the giraffe bent down his long neck and nosed her hand, though she had no food to give him.
“Poor creature,” she said. “With his long legs, he wants to run, but cannot.”
We continued to the women’s latrine. The servants and merchants who entered from the palace’
s back gate were not greeted with imposing structures or avenues of palm trees. Their path was flanked by the women’s latrine on the left and the men’s latrine on the right. Efforts had been made to mask the presence of these long, low buildings, which had better success regarding sight than smell. Castor bushes were planted in a wide ring about each building, their huge many-fingered leaves acting as a dense green veil. Within them was another wall of greenery, this one of jasmine bushes. And within these, a ring of silver sage plants hugged the ground. The sage offered nothing in the way of concealment or fragrance, but its large soft leaves, covered with silken fibers, were very convenient for using inside the latrine. The odor that assailed our nostrils was a rather sickening mixture of human waste, jasmine blossoms, and the white vinegar that was used to rinse down the latrines and repel insects. The menagerie was far less offensive.
“I’ll wait for you out here,” I said to Amisi after we’d passed through the opening in the thicket. She went inside to use the latrine. Several other women were paying morning visits, and I moved aside to a spot that wouldn’t block their path.
I thought of Nathan lurking somewhere near, on the night of the Feast of Aviv. I turned to face the palace. Now, in the light of day, if someone were to look down from the palace windows or balcony they would see me clearly. But in the dark, a man could easily conceal himself among the bushes. And Nathan’s threats had kept Amisi from crying out.