Pillar of Fire Read online

  Something in her snapped. “Out,” she said, trembling with the effort of speaking softly. “Get out.”

  Of course they ignored her. A physician with flint and steel ignited a bowlful of something ghastly: more dung, and the hair of something that had not lived clean.

  Very carefully Nofret eased from beneath her lady’s head. The queen was deep in fever-dream. Nofret was able to pry the thin fingers loose from her arm. The stripes and ache of bruises shocked her. She shut them out of her mind.

  There was a feather fan in a stand beside the bed. It made a most effective broom. She swept them all out, priests and doctors, maids and ladies and hangers-on—all of them. She slammed the door on the last of them and shot the bolt, and stood breathing hard, the fan drooping in her hands.

  “Oh,” she said after a while. “Oh, gods.” She dropped the fan, let it fall where it would, stumbled back to her lady.

  Ankhesenpaaten lived still. She was not bleeding any more than a woman should after she has a baby. She was breathing. She was not aware, but when Nofret took her in her arms, she came as a child to its mother.

  Hot, thought Nofret. So hot. She gathered her lady up, finding her a light burden, no more than bone and fragile skin. Walking as smoothly as she could, she carried Ankhesenpaaten to the pillared hall of the queen’s bath.

  There was no one there, but a lamp was always lit, and the pool was always filled with clear water. Nofret lowered herself into it, and the princess with her, and sat on the ledge in the lamp’s glimmer.

  It was like sitting in a pool in a forest somewhere far away, where Egypt’s sand and heat were but a fever-dream. Somewhere in the mountains beyond Hattusas, in beauty and in quiet, where no one had ever heard of the Aten or known the king who worshipped him.

  Somewhere, she thought, flowing with milk and honey: rich land, land that had never been Egypt. She made a song and sang it. Her voice was untrained but it was true, and in this half-dream of hers she remembered the tongue she had not spoken since she was a child, the language of Hatti.

  She sang to the queen of Egypt a song of Hittite children, a simple song, rather silly, of a bear on a mountain. His adventures were many and absurd, and completely incomprehensible to one who did not speak Hittite.

  Ankhesenpaaten lay quiet in Nofret’s arms. Nofret stiffened. But she breathed. Was she less fever-hot? Nofret could not tell. She had a little fever herself, she realized. It did not matter very much. She was not going to die till she was old and wicked. She had informed the gods of that long ago.

  The water lapped the edge of the pool. The lamp flickered. There were always whispers in the roof, especially at night. The dead were gathering, laying wagers on whether and when this lady would flutter among them. She was clinging to her body still, as the living persisted in doing.

  “You won’t have her,” Nofret said to the dead. They were Egyptian dead: bird-bodied, human-headed. Some were like hawks, some like vultures, and a few, ruffling and cooing, like doves in the roofbeams. She did not look to see if she knew any of their faces.

  “You can’t have her,” she said. “Your Two Lands need her. I need her.”

  Ankhesenpaaten stirred. She was slippery with wet. She began to slide in Nofret’s grasp. Nofret snatched, gasped as her lady’s head sank beneath the water.

  Oh, she was dead. Nofret knew it. She did not struggle to breathe. She sank like a stone, and like a stone she was lifeless.

  Nofret dived after her. Swimming was an art she barely knew, but she could paddle, and she was not afraid of water. She caught the inert body in her arms and flung herself out of the pool.

  The touch of air, the coolness of it after the water, something, woke Ankhesenpaaten to thrashing, coughing life. Nofret nearly dropped her in shock. She flailed free, dropped, fell sprawling.

  But she was awake. She rolled onto her back, gasping, coughing, choking. Nofret, helpless, could not even hold her—she would not allow it.

  At last she stopped choking and lay still. Her breath came hard but steady. Her eyes were open. They flicked from pillar to ceiling to lamp to Nofret’s face. There they held. “Nofret,” she said.

  A name was power. Nofret’s old name, her Hittite name, was gone, forgotten. No one could wield it against her.

  Somehow this Egyptian usename, this word that people used in speaking to her, had become a true name, too. Maybe because it was Egyptian, and Egyptians had first known the power of names. She felt it in herself: the closing of cords about her heart, gentle but inexorable, tugging, drawing her out of herself and into this lady’s hand.

  Such a frail lady, so thin, so racked with fever. But she was a king’s daughter, and she had worn the crown of a queen. Holding fast to Nofret’s hands, she pulled herself upright. “Tell me. Tell me—what—”

  “You’ve been ill,” Nofret said. “I think you’re going to get better.”

  The dead chittered furiously in the roof. Ankhesenpaaten took no notice of them. She freed one hand to rest it on her middle. “I dreamed—” Her face went utterly still. “Is it dead?”

  “Your daughter,” said Nofret, “is—” The dead were shrieking—but not this time with rage. With laughter. “I saw her alive. I don’t know if she lives. She was so young and so small . . .”

  “She is dead,” said Ankhesenpaaten. It did not seem to matter to her. She would not remember the birthing, or the child when it was born. Before that it had not been real to her, nor had Nofret tried to make it so. It had been her way of fighting fear, the fear that every woman knew when she conceived a child. Birth could be death: of the child, of its mother.

  It eased her way now, that numbness. Nofret was glad of it. Even if it meant that Ankhesenpaaten was numb to the heart and would never be otherwise—at least she was alive. At the very least she was that.

  oOo

  The child—Ankhesenpaaten-too, she was named—was not dead after all when her mother came to herself. But she did not live long. She was too small, too weak. While she lived she was like a newborn kitten, mewing as she groped for her nurse’s breast; but when she found it she did not know how to suck.

  Ankhesenpaaten saw her once, and once only, while she was alive. She was brought to her mother wrapped in linen swaddlings, so tiny within them that she was hardly to be seen.

  When the nurse tried to lay her in her mother’s arms, Ankhesenpaaten pushed her away. The nurse drew back affronted. Ankhesenpaaten was oblivious. She looked for a long moment at the tiny red face in the white linen swathings, then turned her head to the wall.

  The nurse was a foolish woman, and vain. She tried to press her burden once more on her lady. Nofret drove her out before Ankhesenpaaten could begin.

  When Nofret came back to the bed, Ankhesenpaaten was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. She had been looking better till then. Now she seemed little more than a dead thing. But she still had voice to speak. “I don’t want to see her again. She came too soon. She’s wrapped in death, did you see? She belongs to Osiris, not to anything living.”

  “I saw,” said Nofret, very low. She tucked the coverlet about her lady, pleased to see that her hands were steady.

  A horror of these people, of this place, rose up in her. It had not done that in a long while—longer than she could remember. It startled her enough that she almost turned and ran.

  Almost. She was stronger now than cowardice, or else she was inured to it. She coaxed Ankhesenpaaten to drink the draught that the physician had mixed for her—nothing particularly vile this time, though it smelled bitter, and the princess grimaced at the taste.

  Nofret sat till her lady fell asleep. That was not very long. She was weak still, though strong enough to be exasperated by it.

  When her lady’s breathing had quieted, Nofret rose softly. There were always maids hovering. One slid to take Nofret’s place. Nofret left her to it.

  oOo

  With the queen so ill and so many people trampling in and out, Nofret had to go elsewhere if she wanted to
sleep. Rather than subject herself to a chattering flock of maids, she had spread a pallet in a small room not far from her lady’s chamber. She kept her store of belongings there in a box that her lady had given her: her two linen gowns, a collar of faience and glass beads, a pair of sandals, a few oddments that had come to her from here and there. She was becoming quite the lady of property, she thought, dizzy with lack of sleep. She stumbled to the pallet without troubling to light the lamp, not needing to see where it was. She knew her own place even in the dark.

  Something grunted as she dropped down, and shifted under her. Something softer by far than a reed mat, and warmer.

  She reacted in pure instinctive fury. She went for the face with claws full extended.

  “Nofret!”

  She knew that voice too late to keep from falling on top of him, soon enough not to claw his eyes out. The light from the doorway, now that she bothered to use it, was just bright enough to show her Johanan’s face, his eyes white-rimmed, her clawed fingers a bare hand’s thickness away from them.

  She drew back carefully, on her knees, sitting on her heels. Johanan sat up just as carefully. His hands were shaking as he explored his face, making certain that everything was where it belonged.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re as ugly as ever.”

  He muttered something in Apiru. And then in Egyptian: “No thanks to you.”

  “Serves you right for sleeping in my bed.”

  “I wasn’t—” A yawn caught him. As it passed, he admitted, “Well. Maybe I did. I was waiting for you. You were taking forever.”

  “I was keeping my lady alive.”

  “She can do that without you.”

  Nofret thought of glaring at him. Thought of shouting. Knew that if she tried either, she would burst into tears. She settled for a tight few words. “Maybe I need to think she can’t.”

  “Maybe,” said Johanan. He drew up his long legs and clasped his knees.

  He looked superbly comfortable. Which was interesting considering that he had never been in this room before, still less sat on her bed. When he came to the palace past the grins of the guards, he had always visited her decorously in a garden or in one of her lady’s chambers, or followed her on forays into the city.

  “Who told you to come here?” she demanded of him.

  He cocked a brow at her. “I don’t know. Somebody. One of the maids. She said I could wait somewhere else if I liked, somewhere with her.”

  “I’ll bet she did,” muttered Nofret. The maids thought Johanan simply delightful. He knew it, too. He was grinning at her, and no doubt at the memory of the maid who had been so brazen.

  She did her best to wipe the grin off his face. “Well. And why didn’t you take her up on it?”

  “Because I’m an idiot,” he answered cheerfully. “And because I knew what you’d do to me if I tried.”

  “I don’t own you,” said Nofret.

  “No,” he said.

  Suddenly Nofret was tired beyond words. She just managed to say what she needed to say. “Are you here for a reason, or just to keep me awake?”

  “You can sleep,” he said. “I won’t mind.”

  She was sorely tempted to do just that. But curiosity was stronger in her than exhaustion. “What did you come for? I didn’t forget that you were supposed to visit. Did I?”

  “No,” he said. “You didn’t forget. I came to fetch you, to show you something, but it can wait. You need to sleep.”

  Oh, she did indeed. Her middle was cramped with it, her body aching. And yet . . .

  “Sleep,” said Johanan. “I’ll be here when you wake.”

  “Don’t you have a tomb to build? A wall to carve?”

  “I have my father’s leave,” he said. “Sleep.”

  His voice was like a spell, an enchantment of sleep. He lifted her as she sagged, laid her on her pallet. The last thing she remembered was his face bending over her, black brows drawn together a little as if in worry.

  “I’m not,” she tried to tell him. “I’m not sick.” But the words did not come out, and sleep came flooding in.

  Twenty-Three

  Nofret fell asleep to Johanan’s face, and woke to it, bending over her, watching her. Her dreams had been dark, full of flames and weeping. She raised a hand that seemed impossibly heavy, and touched his cheek, ruffling the young curly beard. “I’m not sick, am I?”

  “You were,” he said. “All night long.”

  She breathed deep and carefully. No coughing racked her. She felt of her face. Hot, but not fever-hot. “Thank you,” she said, “for not calling the doctors.”

  He grimaced. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Here,” he said, lifting her by the shoulders, holding a cup to her lips. “Drink. It’s only water.”

  It was. She drank deep, and the last of it holding the cup in her own hands. She was wobbly, but she could sit up. She gave him back the empty cup and thought about standing.

  Her heart quailed. But she was stronger than cowardice. She made herself get up.

  Her head whirled. She stumbled against him. He was like a wall, solid and strong. He held her up till she could stand by herself, not trying to stop her, not rebuking her for being nine kinds of idiot.

  The longer she stood, the easier it was. She had not been so very ill, then. A bit of fever, no more than a long night’s sleep could cure.

  Her heart stopped. “My lady! Gods. I forgot—”

  She ran past Johanan. She was aware that he followed, but did not trouble to stop him.

  Ankhesenpaaten was lying in her bed, motionless but visibly alive: her breast rose and fell with the deep breaths of sleep. Her face was pale and dreadfully thin, but there was a whisper of color in the cheeks. She was no warmer than a woman should be, sleeping in the warmth of Egyptian summer.

  Nofret looked on her with a deep sigh of relief. She was well. She would live.

  There were things to do, things that the queen’s personal maid should see to while her lady slept. Nofret did them, with a second pair of hands to help.

  Johanan did not say anything. He simply did what he thought needed doing. The younger maids stared and covered giggles, which he ignored. Some of the older ones looked thunderous. A strange man in this place, however young he might be, was a shocking impropriety.

  Nofret doubted that her lady would care. Johanan was no threat to any woman, unless she wanted him to be.

  When everything was done as it should be, Nofret lingered, watching her lady. The queen was deep asleep. She would sleep the day through, Nofret suspected, and the night too, till she was healed of her sickness. Then, if the gods were kind, she would wake parched and ravenous, and be herself again, weak but growing stronger as she ate and drank and remembered how to be alive.

  oOo

  Nofret led Johanan out by the hand, and none too soon by the look of him. When they were outside the palace walls, under the sky, he shook himself all over and stretched till his bones cracked. “Lord of Hosts! How do you live in there? It’s as close as a tomb.”

  “Not hardly,” said Nofret. “Tombs are never that big.”

  “You haven’t seen the tombs of kings in Memphis,” he said. He stretched again, simply because he could do it, and drank deep breaths of city-reeking air. “Those are bigger than this. By far.”

  “I saw the Pyramids,” Nofret said tartly, “when I came down from Mitanni. I heard what they’re like inside. Solid stone, and a king in the middle.”

  “Just so,” said Johanan. He caught her hand and pulled her after him. “Come on. It’s just the time to see what I want you to see.”

  oOo

  The road to the workmen’s village had never seemed so long before, or the sun so strong, beating on her head. She was still a little fevered, and weak with it.

  Johanan insisted that he had to stop three times for water or a jar of beer, and once for a round of bread with meat rolled in it. She let him imagine that he deceived her. He was thirsty, she believed that, and hu
ngry too—that big frame of his needed a great deal of provender—but he did not need to eat or drink as often as that. She, however, did: she could not take in much at once or her stomach revolted, but a little while later she needed more again.

  From the last of the water-sellers he bought a skinful, and from a vendor a palmleaf basket filled with little cakes, which he carried with him as he went. Nofret trailed after him, breathless already, and they were not even out of the city.

  He kept insisting that he needed to rest, too. When he paused just past the walls, claiming a mighty weariness, she snapped at him. “Stop pretending! I’m as weak as a rag and you know it.”

  “Well, and I’m lazy,” he said, unruffled. “It’s going to be hot today, don’t you think?”

  “Like fire in a forge,” she sighed, letting temper drain away. She was not angry with him, not for being sensible and understanding that she was still a little ill. She was furious at herself. Weakness was nothing that a Hittite ever learned to contend with. Among warriors, weak was dead. Even women were expected to be brave, and to be strong.

  She got up somewhat before her body would have wanted to be ready, sipped from the waterskin, went on. It was a long walk to the village. She did the last of it leaning on Johanan, hating herself for it but rather liking it, too. He was sweating in the sun, a pungent smell, but clean. It smelled like him—like Johanan.

  He did not lead her to his father’s house as she had expected, but to another part of the village, where sturdy women ground barley between stones for the workers’ bread, and bakers baked it in ovens, and brewers made beer of the bread that would not be eaten. Some of the bakers and brewers were Apiru, easy to see among the clean-shaven Egyptians, with their striped coats and their long curly beards. None of the Apiru women worked at grinding the flour or kneading the bread; those were Egyptians, naked or kilted, breasts bobbing as they ground stone on stone and grain between. One of them grinned at Johanan as he led Nofret past, a gap-toothed, snub-nosed, unbeautiful lump of a woman, but bright-eyed and full-breasted and altogether appealing.