Pillar of Fire Read online

  “Ah,” sighed the eunuch who had been her grandmother’s house-steward, “how beautiful you are!”

  She did not seem to hear him. They had painted her face and eyes far more heavily than she had been used to permit. She looked like a painting on a coffin, no more life or substance to her, and no will to protest, either.

  Nofret could not bear it any longer. She was there on sufferance, those prigs of royal servants had made that very clear. But she was the younger queen’s own maid, and for years her only one.

  She slapped Ankhesenpaaten hard, backhanded, first one cheek and then the other. The servants gaped like idiots. There were no guards—those were all outside the door, where they could leer and lay wagers as they pleased.

  Ankhesenpaaten rocked under the blows. Her eyes barely flickered.

  Nofret whirled on the gaggle of servants. “Out!” she raged at them. “Out!”

  Oh, they were fools. They had the habit of obedience, and she had the voice of command that she had learned from her father. They could never have heard a battlefield bellow from a maidservant before.

  They fled like the geese they were, flapping and honking as geese always will. She slammed the door shut on the last of them and faced her lady.

  Ankhesenpaaten had not moved. Nofret planted herself in front of her, taking advantage of superior height and bulk, and set fists on hips. “Who took my lady away from me and put a plaster doll in her place? It must be a great magician, and evil, to do such a thing. But I’m not afraid of magic. I want my lady back.”

  Ankhesenpaaten blinked once, slowly. Her arms were warm as Nofret took hold of them, but cold inside, and stiff.

  “Who took the heart out of you,” Nofret demanded of her, “and hid it in a dusty tomb? What happened to your bravery? Who is this coward who wears my lady’s face?” Nofret shook her. “Where is my lady? Give her back!”

  Her lady drew a breath, quicker than the one that had gone before. Her eyes closed, opened again. They were flat, black, no warmer or more human than a snake’s.

  At least, thought Nofret, they were alive. She was beginning to regret gaining even that much. Maybe it was better for the child if she stayed in the place to which she had retreated, where she did not have to see or hear or feel, or be anything to anyone but a living image set on a throne.

  She was not made to live without a heart. Already she was fading. The thin and wanton gown hid nothing of her budding body: sweet faint curve of breast and hip; jut of ribs between.

  Nofret sat her down roughly on what was nearest: the end of a couch. There was food on a table, arrayed to tempt a child-bride’s nervous appetite, and a jarful of watered wine. Nofret poured a cup of wine, seized a round of bread, slapped cheese and a slice of roast goose onto it, rolled it up and thrust it at her lady. “I’ve had enough of your nonsense. Eat.”

  Ankhesenpaaten set her lips tight and turned her head away.

  Nofret gripped her jaw as if she had been a recalcitrant filly, levered it open and shoved the bread-roll in.

  Ankhesenpaaten gasped, choked, fought. Nofret held on. “Eat,” she said, “or strangle. I don’t care which.”

  Ankhesenpaaten ate. Her heart might recoil, but her belly had a mind of its own, and it was hungry.

  Nofret almost laughed. Having browbeaten her lady into eating, now she found herself refusing to feed her more than a bite or two, lest she sicken and vomit it up. “Wine now,” she said, “and just a little.”

  Ankhesenpaaten glared through her mask of paint. She was awake at last, blessedly aware, and absolutely furious.

  Fury was good. Fury was real. It was alive. It roused, it focused, it cleansed like fire.

  “I hate you,” said Ankhesenpaaten between the wine and the bread. She had enough sense to sip the one and nibble the other, now that she had come to herself.

  Nofret laughed, half-choking. “I am so—glad—” Gods. Her voice was breaking. Had she grown as weak as that?

  “I was happy where I was,” said Ankhesenpaaten. “It was peaceful. Nothing mattered. Nothing hurt. Now everything hurts. I hate you!”

  “Life hurts,” said Nofret. It was easy to be cruel— though not as easy as melting into tears of relief. “You’ll die when your time comes. I’ll even help you. But that’s not yet, no matter how much pain you fancy you endure.”

  “You cannot imagine—”

  “Oh, but I can,” said Nofret. There was another cup beside the winejar, meant for the king no doubt, but Nofret took it and filled it to the brim and drank deep. It was good wine, well watered: heady. “You are a queen. I’m a slave. Slaves know a great deal about pain.”

  “I have never even struck you,” said Ankhesenpaaten through clenched teeth. “Maybe I should begin.”

  “It’s your right,” said Nofret, “highness.”

  Ankhesenpaaten snatched the cup out of Nofret’s fingers, spattering wine. She drained it with defiance that would cost her dear when her stomach took exception to the shock of too much wine after too long an abstinence.

  It went swiftly to her head: her cheeks flushed under the thickness of paint. Her eyes glittered. “I’ll have you flayed and bathed in salt.”

  “You would hate yourself for it,” Nofret said.

  Ankhesenpaaten stared at the bread in her hand as if she had forgotten it was there. She bit off a little, chewed it slowly. “You should not have roused me,” she said.

  “If you don’t want to go through with this,” said Nofret, “you can run away. I’ve found ways to go, places where no one will know us. If we went north, toward the desert—”

  “Why would I run away?” asked Ankhesenpaaten.

  “You said—” Nofret bit off the rest. “Why should I not have roused you? So that you could go to your marriage bed in blissful ignorance?”

  “So that I would never have to feel anything, or remember.”

  “Including this?”

  “Everything.” Ankhesenpaaten closed her eyes. Her hands went to her face, felt of the paint. “This is horrible. I want it off.”

  Nofret was delighted to oblige. No Egyptian would abandon eyepaint for anything short of direst sickness, but the rest came off as it had gone on, thick as plaster on a wall. The face under it was, in Nofret’s estimation, much the lovelier for it. A little color for the lips, that was all it needed. Another wig: one a good deal less gaudy, only lightly dusted with scent.

  It would have been great pleasure to snatch her away altogether, but the princess would have none of that. “I know my duty,” she said. She stood, small and lovely and very brave in her wisp of a gown. “I’m ready now.”

  Nofret drew breath to argue, but gave it up. Maybe it was the god’s hand on her, or the weight of truth. This would be so whether she willed it or no. She could run away from it if she chose. She could not prevent it, or even alter it.

  No Hittite liked to feel powerless. Even a Hittite slave. Someday, Nofret swore to herself, she would see that the king paid for what he did this night. Paid high. Paid, if possible, with everything that he held dear.

  Seventeen

  The young queen’s servant might prepare her bed, might see her settled in it, arrayed temptingly for her husband’s delight. But once he came in, as awkward, as absurd, as arrogant as ever, Nofret was dismissed. She had to go: it was the king who commanded.

  Her lady might have wanted her to stay. If so, she said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on her husband—her father, her king. They made Nofret think of small helpless creatures, and of cobras.

  Nofret retreated, calm as one can be in an ice-cold rage.

  She spent the night outside that door, sitting with her back to the wall, arms wrapped about knees. The door was heavy and well set on its hinges. No sound came from within. No shrieks of pain or of pleasure. No laughter; no sobbing. Nothing.

  She felt in her skin the slow wheel of stars toward the dawn. The sun was a swelling warmth, a promise of fire. Once or twice she nodded, and for a little while she slept.

/>   The guards stood watch outside the king’s suite, three doors distant. The king’s servants were abed or elsewhere. No one hovered or strained to hear, and no one tried to watch. There was no bawdry in this wedding, nor had there ever been when the king took a bride.

  Smenkhkare’s friends and favorites had tormented Meritaten till she nearly wept, but she had laughed, too, besotted with her husband and lover. Their wedding night had been one long raucous carouse, from bedding of the bride to her emergence at sunrise in the arms of her grinning husband.

  For Ankhesenpaaten there was none of that. As soon as the sun cleared the horizon, Nofret tried the door. It was not, for a wonder, barred.

  The room within was dim. Most of the lamps had burned out. Only one was still flickering, consuming the last of the oil. The air was close, still, heavily scented with perfumes and with something that made Nofret think of rutting goats. She gagged on it.

  The king had drawn back curtains from a window. The shutter was open, first sunlight glimmering through. He lay in it, face down, praying as he always prayed, oblivious to anything about him.

  Ankhesenpaaten was still asleep. She curled in the bed, thumb in mouth, looking even younger than she was. Nofret did not want to touch her or wake her, or see what might be in her eyes.

  Maybe, Nofret thought. Maybe…

  No hope of that. There was blood among the coverlets, blood on Ankhesenpaaten’s thighs, dried and dark.

  The anger that had slept in Nofret all night long drew into a hard cold knot in her center. She settled herself on the floor beside the bed and waited till her lady sighed, stirred, opened eyes blurred with sleep.

  There was nothing in them that had not been there before. No misery. No dullness of defeat. She was always irritable on first waking, frowning as she looked about, yawning and stretching each separate muscle, like a cat.

  She saw the man on the floor. It was difficult not to see him: he took all the light to himself. Nothing changed in her expression. It did not soften, nor did it go stiff with anger. She sighed a little, that was all, and sat up. “I’ll bathe this morning, I think,” she said, perfectly calm, perfectly composed.

  Foreign, thought Nofret. Utterly foreign.

  oOo

  Ankhesenpaaten the queen was no more or less than Ankhesenpaaten the princess had been. She did her duty in the marriage chamber, did it without complaint, and said nothing of it to Nofret. Nofret did not ask; did not want to know.

  Maybe to Egyptians such things truly did not matter. Maybe Ankhesenpaaten was too much a child still to be troubled by them.

  Nofret, enough the elder to know what women knew, did not know this that made a woman of a maiden. Since she disposed of her master in Mitanni, she had not let any man come close enough to threaten her innocence. It was easier than some people seemed to think. A slave was nothing and no one. A slave who belonged to a queen carried some of that queen’s immunity, at least in Egypt.

  And maybe Nofret was too ugly for Egyptian taste. Guards liked to vex her with catcalls and lewd suggestions, but guards were idiots. No one else ever looked at her, that she knew of.

  She was glad. Bad enough that she had to deliver her lady to that chamber every evening. She did not need a pack of panting males into the bargain.

  oOo

  The king lingered in Thebes long past both funeral and wedding. He was a lazy man, Nofret thought; once he had settled somewhere, he hated to move. It was a wonder that he had ever left Thebes to begin with, let alone built a whole city on virgin land between Thebes and Memphis. Maybe it truly was his god who had commanded it.

  Nofret in Thebes found time as she had in Akhetaten, to explore the ways of the city. She did not explore the city of the dead, nor cultivate the acquaintance of the living priests and laborers who inhabited it. She had seen too much death—and, she could admit if she must, been too disconcerted by the Apiru in the laborers’ village of Akhetaten. Here she turned face and mind to the city of the living.

  No sudden friendship found her here. No goat escaped from captivity to gain her a friend. But wonders there were in plenty, and markets that had been open since Egypt was new.

  There were gods in Thebes. In Akhetaten there had been none. Everything was burned away in the light of the Aten.

  Here the Aten ruled by the king’s decree, but Amon was only silenced. He was not destroyed, nor was he driven out. Nofret felt him in the paving stones under her feet, caught the scent of him in the air. It was a hot smell, like scorched linen, or like offerings burning on an altar.

  The altars themselves were cold, the temples sealed, deserted. But Amon lived. His people did not forget him. They swore by him in the streets, invoked him with wails of mock anguish while they haggled in the market, called one another by his name or one of his secondary names: Rahotep, Merit-Amon, Neferure. Nofret, in a spirit of defiance against the king, bought an amulet from a vendor on the steps of a silent temple, a pretty thing of the blue glass that was called faience, shaped like a man with a ram’s horns. It would make her fruitful, the seller said with a wary eye cocked for the king’s guards, and give her strong sons, and protect her from importunate lovers.

  “And will it defend me against crocodiles?” she asked, meaning to be facetious.

  The vendor rummaged through his tray of amulets, hesitated between a pair, chose the one of smooth greenish stone with a hole drilled through it for a string. It was another of the Egyptians’ man-gods, but less manlike than some, a crocodile standing upright and grinning with remarkably lifelike expression. “Sobek,” he said. “He rules the crocodile. Ask him when one menaces you, and he’ll protect you.”

  Nofret was going to refuse a second amulet, but then she shrugged. Why not? She had a little barley left. She had been meaning to trade it for a sop of bread in honey. But she was not hungry, not really, and Sobek’s grin made her want to grin in return.

  Still she hesitated. “Isn’t he a god of ill fortune?” she asked warily.

  “He can be,” the vendor said. He was an honest man, as his kind went. “But if you serve him well, he gives you fair return. He’ll guard you against nightwalkers, too, and lay a curse on your enemies, if you invoke him properly.”

  “Not if it costs me extra,” she said. She took both amulets in her hand. They did not seem angry to be thrown together. The Aten was enemy enough for both.

  The vendor gave her a string for them and helped her plait them into her hair. She did not care if the king saw. Let him punish her if he pleased. She would rather welcome it.

  Armed against crocodiles and importunate lovers, assured of fertility when she chose to exercise it, she wandered on through the city. When the sun touched the roof of Amon’s temple, she would have to take the ferry back to the king’s palace, but that was some time away yet. She had barely begun to explore the old city. The new would wait for another day, since it seemed that the king would not be leaving soon.

  The gods were everywhere. People were as defiant as Nofret was, though maybe with lesser reason. How defiant, she saw with a shock of—not recognition, not exactly. Pleasure, that was it.

  It was the mark of a city that while the houses of its gods and princes were lofty and splendid, most of it was simple to squalor. On a street in back of the street of temples, where even the temples were plain brick walls with here and there a low mean door, Nofret saw a gathering of men who looked suspiciously like bravos in a back street of Hattusas. They were young, they were large for Egyptians, they had a particular look that made her step backward quickly.

  Before she could retreat, the way filled behind her. The young men ahead were, she realized with a small shock, priests. They were shaved clean, and they wore linen robes as priests did, and on each breast was a sigil in gold or electrum, remarkably like the amulet of Amon plaited into Nofret’s hair. They carried wooden cudgels, which they looked as if they knew how to use.

  The men behind her were older, some of them, and burlier. They wore the kilts and breastplates
of the city guard. Some of them had swords. All had spears.

  She knew the look of a battle in the making. And here was she, wearing Amon’s amulet, naked and alone and temptingly female.

  There was nowhere to escape. Her eye, casting frantically, found the niche of a doorway. It would not conceal her, but it might keep her out of the way.

  She dived into the poor shelter even as the king’s men ran toward the priests of Amon. Nobody spoke, even to bark a command. This was a battle they had fought before: spear and sword against cudgel and raw cold anger. The clack of wood on wood, the thud of wood on flesh, the sound of breath drawn quick, overwhelmed the sounds of the city.

  This was war. She had known it before, heard it, seen it in people’s eyes as they spoke of their gods against the Aten. Here she saw another face of it.

  The fight swayed back and forth along the street. Nofret, alert for paths of escape, felt along the door behind her. It was wooden, cracked and old, with a string for a latch. Somewhat to her surprise the latch yielded to her tug on it.

  Without stopping to think, she slipped through the opening and kicked the door shut. It had a bar. She thrust it home.

  Then, and none too soon, she looked to see where she was. There was light ahead, a flicker of lamplight, showing her a narrow passage, no higher it seemed than the entrance to a tomb. She crept along it. The air reeked of old incense, rancid lamp-oil, long-dead flowers.

  No doubt of it. She was in a temple. Its outer doors would be sealed, but someone was living inside and using the door she had come through, she supposed, to come and go. It was careless of the city guard to have left that door unblocked.

  Maybe that was what the priests of Amon were fighting for. It seemed useless defiance else to engage in battle with the king’s men. Maybe they were defending this place, and someone in it.

  If so, Nofret was no safer here than she had been in the street. There were whole companies of the city guard to reinforce the one that fought in the street. There might be armies of priests, too, but one or the other would come in here when the battle was over and find her. And she was the young queen’s servant.