Pillar of Fire Read online

  Nofret had to stop in the hot close air of the tomb, in the reek of sweat and lamp-oil, and remember how to breathe. The men, intent on their work, barely noticed her. But Johanan finished what he was doing, called one of the others to oversee the next bit, and made his way toward her through the crowded careful order of the workmen.

  There was something about him as he came, taller and broader than ever, covered with plaster dust and stripped to his loincloth, that made her want to weep. She bit her tongue to stop the tears, and swallowed hard. By the time he reached her she was able to say with some semblance of steadiness, “I need to find your grandmother. Is she here?”

  “Why, no,” he said. “She was going to spend the day weaving the bridal veil for Levi the priest’s daughter. Who sent you all the way up here?”

  “Dina,” said Nofret, too tired even to be angry. “I didn’t know she disliked me that much.”

  Johanan led her out into the sun’s heat that was stronger even than the heat of the tomb, but cleaner, like fire on the skin. He set her under the workmen’s canopy and gave her water to drink, and crouched while she drank it.

  She, looking at him, began to laugh. She could not help it. He was so filthy, all grey and smeared with plaster, with sweat making runnels down it, streaking the grey with the warm brown of his skin.

  He endured her laughter in remarkable patience. “I do look awful, don’t I?” he said. “So do you. You look as if the hounds of Set are after you.” He said it lightly, but then he sobered, abruptly, absolutely, as his own words had struck home. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is the king dead?”

  “Better for us all if he were,” said Nofret. “He’s not even ill. That’s Amon and the priests, turning hope into prophecy. They’ll kill him if they can. King or no king.”

  A second, slightly taller and broader shape loomed behind Johanan. Aharon’s deep voice was like a hand on Nofret’s head, calming her in spite of herself. “If he’s not dead yet, he will be soon. We’ve had orders to finish the tomb before the moon wanes again.”

  Nofret’s mind would not take it in, could not count days or phases of the moon. But Johanan was quicker than she, or simply less tired. “Nine days. Give or take one.” He turned to frown at his father. “That doesn’t make sense. It takes them seventy days to embalm a body. Why are they—?”

  “They want it well ready when he comes,” Aharon answered. “It won’t be. We’ll barely get the king’s chamber done as it is, and the new chamber will have to wait.”

  “So hasty,” said Nofret. “It isn’t like this in Thebes, is it? There you’d have years to do it right and finish everything.”

  “Thebes is old,” said Aharon. “Akhetaten won’t get much older, I don’t think. It was built on barren land, and it will die before it bears fruit.”

  He was calm about it, without regret that she could see. That was the desert tribesman in him, she supposed: bred to move on always from desert place to desert place, pausing in the oases but calling no one place his home.

  Johanan spoke briskly, calling them both back to the moment. “Why are you looking for Grandmother? You could have just waited at home till she came there.”

  “I did leave my lady there,” Nofret said. And as his eyes widened: “She needed to know something. I thought your grandmother would be able to answer her.”

  “What—” Johanan caught his father’s eye and did not say the rest of it. Instead he said, “We’ll go back down with you.”

  Nofret did not object as both of them fetched their clothes, bundled and slung them over their shoulders, and brought one of the workmen’s waterskins to sip from on the way. Desert practicality. She would never have it, not bred in the bone as these people did.

  The way back was long and exhausting. None of them spoke. Nofret was glad of the silence. There was comfort in their presence, and that was enough: two strong men whom she trusted, one in front of her, one behind, on that steep and narrow road.

  oOo

  After so much haste and so much struggle, Nofret was almost furious to find her lady in Aharon’s house, sitting at Leah’s feet, nibbling dates dipped in honey and looking as comfortable as if she had always been there. Nofret, footsore, breathless, covered with dust, simply stood and stared.

  “Go and bathe,” Leah said to her. There was no great force of command in the words, but Nofret could think of nothing better to do than obey.

  When she came back, leaving the men to their own bathing, neither woman had moved. She sank to the heaped rugs, took the cup Leah handed her, found it full of heavily watered wine. It was cool in her throat, and the bread that came with it was fresh, and tasted better than anything she could remember eating. She had thought herself beyond hunger, but once she had taken a bite she found that she was ravenous.

  The others waited patiently for her to eat and drink her fill. It was strange to see them together, and in such amity, too. Haughty Ankhesenpaaten should never have been so much at ease with a mere commoner, kin or no.

  It seemed that Nofret did not know her lady as well as she had fancied.

  The men came in just as the edge of Nofret’s hunger began to grow blunt. They were clean, damp, and dressed in their best coats, looking more like brothers than like father and son. Johanan was clearly the younger: his eyes on the queen were frankly curious, his father’s calmer, less taken aback by her presence here. Johanan, Nofret thought, should be accustomed to it by now; the king himself had sat in nearly the same place.

  The men both ate as Nofret had, though maybe with greater restraint. It was Leah who decided that courtesy had been sufficiently observed. She said, “When you’re finished, get your sandals. We’re going up to the palace.”

  Johanan gulped down a last bite so quickly that he choked. His father and Nofret joined forces in pounding his back. When he could breathe again, he sat back with eyes streaming, scarlet-faced, staring at his grandmother.

  She gave him no satisfaction. She rose without anyone’s help, a bit stiff but agile enough. Aharon was quick to present her with sandals and shawl, a little less quick with his own. Johanan, lagging last, hopped on one foot, tugging at his sandal-strap.

  Nofret waited for him at the door. “You don’t have to run,” she said. “You know the way.”

  He simply stared at her till he had to bend over or fall, to fasten his sandal.

  She grinned at him, though her heart was somewhat in sympathy. She did not know what Leah had spoken of with her lady, either. But she, at least as well as Johanan, knew better than to ask. When it was time for them to know, they would know. Until then, they could beg till they wept, but she would not say a word.

  Twenty-Seven

  An Egyptian, a Hittite, and three Apiru walking together into the city near sunset drew some notice from the guards, but less than Nofret might have expected. She wondered, not entirely facetiously, whether Leah had done something—a small working, a touch of magic—to distract them.

  Probably not. Far stranger people had passed those gates, and in far greater state. Five people on foot, dusty and tired, were hardly worth noticing, unless they vexed a prince.

  Leah led them, walking with a strong stride in spite of her years. She turned not toward the palace but toward the great temple of the Aten. She seemed to know her way, though as far as Nofret knew she had not left the workmen’s village, except for the tombs, since it was built.

  The others followed in silence. Nofret was stumbling on her feet. The first time Johanan held her up she snarled at him, but after that she let him be conspicuously stronger than she was. He was conspicuously bigger, after all. Let him carry half of her in addition to himself. He would tire of it soon enough.

  Not that he seemed to. No more than Aharon did, carrying the queen in his arms when she faltered, and she allowing it, never too proud to let someone be her slave.

  They were a peculiar procession through the courts of the temple, the big shaggy men in their woolen coats an outrage among the smooth-shaven,
linen-clad priests. Those had clear thoughts of remonstrating, but the queen raised herself in her bearer’s arms and said in a clear imperious voice, “These have my countenance. Go away.”

  They knew her then, bowed to the ground and did as she bade. She eased back against Aharon’s shoulder, content as a cat is, in royal comfort. But there was a shadow in her eyes.

  oOo

  The king lay before the altar in the innermost temple. Offerings were heaped all about him, great banks and mounds of bread, jugs of beer, winejars, flowers withering in the day’s heat, fruits of the earth arrayed on platters and in baskets, baked meats singing with flies. He was oblivious to them. Gaunt as he was in his linen kilt, Nofret wondered when he had eaten, if he had eaten at all, since the day began.

  Aharon lowered the queen to her feet. She swayed, clutched at him, steadied. Nofret just behind her was no better.

  Leah walked calmly among the offerings to stand over the king. “Get up,” she said. She was brisk, matter-of-fact.

  He rose slowly, blinking, peering at her as if he had been asleep.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  She knew the temple as she knew the city, with a knowledge that could only be god-given. She led him to his sunrise-porch, now shadowed with evening, for the sun hung low on the other side of the temple. It was a quiet place, and kept the day’s heat, but not so much as to be oppressive. No one hovered, no one strained to listen as priests had done in the inner temple.

  The men were on guard, Nofret noticed. She had never seen either carry a weapon—slaves did not. But in Aharon’s sash, somehow, a long dagger had appeared, and in Johanan’s another. Concealed up their sleeves till now, she suspected, or under their coats. They were not mighty weapons beside a soldier’s spear or a prince’s bow or sword, but they were deadly enough. Her back was cold at the nearness of them. They made it real, and not a story. Death could come here. People could try to kill the king.

  These people could—these who were his kin, whom she had trusted.

  She had to trust them still. She had no choice. They were guarding the king, and not waiting to kill him.

  Leah sat on the king’s couch in the pavilion, leaving him nowhere to sit but on the pavement or on one of the steps. He chose to stand, swaying slightly. His long fingers twitched at his sides. He looked more than half entranced.

  No one, Nofret observed, remarked that the prophetess of the slave-people usurped the place that belonged to a king. The king least of all.

  He spoke before anyone else could, and not in particular to any of them. “The Aten has revealed himself to me,” he said, “in words of fire.”

  “What has he told you?” Leah asked, precise as a priest in a ritual.

  “That I should . . .” The king faltered. He blinked, peered at her again, this time as if he honestly saw her. “You came. He said you would. Is it . . . is it then so late?”

  “If anything,” she said, “it’s later. What did he say to you?”

  “He said,” said the king, “that I must die.”

  Someone’s breath caught. Nofret did not think it was her own. Her lady’s, maybe.

  Neither king nor prophetess took the least notice.

  “I must die,” said the king, “but I must . . . not . . .” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I must die, but I must live. But not as Osiris who is forever risen. The god calls me. I must go up—I must go. Where the sun is, where it burns.”

  “He’s raving,” Nofret muttered, maybe to herself, maybe to Johanan who stood next to her.

  He did not hear her. No one did. They were all watching the king.

  “I must go,” the king said, “into the desert. I must follow the god. By night he is a pillar of fire. By day he—is—”

  Leah stood and did a thing that Nofret would never have dared, no, not if she had been a queen in Egypt. She struck the king hard on both cheeks, one blow and then another.

  He rocked under them, but awareness came back into his eyes, and something like sense into his face. He raised his hands to his cheeks. He looked perfectly and humanly astonished.

  “There,” said Leah, satisfied. “That should clear your head for you. So the god is calling you into the Red Land. Sensible of him, in the circumstances. The Black Land hasn’t been delighted with your rule of it.”

  “I was not a good king,” he said. He seemed to regret it in his vague and absent fashion. “Nor have I served my god well. He is angry. He calls me fool, weak servant, poor and stumbling slave. ‘Out!’ he commands me. ‘Out into the desert! There in the land that I have made, bow down, worship me. Serve me as I wrought you to do, I who am, I who will always be.’”

  “But,” said Leah, “you are Pharaoh, Great House of Egypt.”

  “I am nothing!” he cried. “Dust and ashes, a breath of wind, a white bone in the red sand. I am a dead thing, a word unspoken. When I am gone I shall be all forgotten.”

  “If the god wills,” said Leah, “then it shall be. But you’ve not died yet. You’re still king, though your kingdom may wish it otherwise.”

  “I am dying,” he said. “I will die. The god says so.”

  “He does,” a new voice said. “He does indeed.”

  They all stared at Ankhesenpaaten, even the king. She lifted her chin under the weight of their eyes. “You don’t see, do you? Even you, Father. You’re too full of the god.”

  “I do,” said Leah, “but it’s not mine to say.”

  The queen nodded slightly. Nofret’s belly tightened. This was what they had spoken of while she was clambering up to the king’s tomb. It was something terrible. The queen was bearing it as she had learned to do, but her eyes had a look to them, a white shock, a horror of it that her bravery could not banish.

  “You must die,” she said to her father, “before the Two Lands. You must die and be no longer king.”

  Johanan’s breath hissed between his teeth. He saw it, Nofret thought. So did she, and not before time. Horrible, yes—to an Egyptian. To a foreigner it made remarkable sense.

  “The king will die,” Leah said. “He’s ill, the whole world knows it. His days are numbered. But the man who has been the king, the god’s voice and servant—he will do as his god commands. He will go out into the desert, into the Red Land, under the burning eye of the god.”

  “And die there,” the king said, “in all that he was, and be reborn.” He smiled, a sweet smile, like a young child’s. “Oh, yes! Yes, you see. You understand.”

  “I understand,” said Leah, “that the king will lay down his office and become what he has always and more truly been, the prophet of his god.”

  “But to do that,” the queen said, again as in a ritual, “the king must be seen to die, and be embalmed, and buried in his tomb.”

  “People die every day,” said Aharon. “Priests can be bribed, and embalmers convinced to regard the body they’re given as the king’s own. The king will have to work his own deception on his physicians. Can he be ill, so ill that he’s like to die, and seem to do even that?”

  “The god will guide me,” the king said. He was alight—exalted. And no wonder, if he was getting free of his kingship at last.

  Nofret watched her lady carefully. Three Apiru and a Hittite could contemplate the abdication of a king with something resembling aplomb, and the king of course was mad. But her lady was Egyptian and a queen. No king ever abdicated in Egypt. He died, or his death was arranged, but he never laid down his crown and lived.

  The queen seemed calm, seemed able and willing to face this that to an Egyptian was unthinkable. Still Nofret watched her. She must see that there was no choice in the circumstances, except to let the king be killed. His kingdom had repudiated him. Even his court was turning against him.

  “This does mean,” Leah said, as practical as ever, and sane in it—a sanity that these proceedings desperately needed—“that you yourself, girlchild, must play such a part as queen never played before. You’ll have to watch him die where the world
can see; and when he’s known to be dead, it will fall to you to help him escape. Then you’ll mourn over the body of a stranger, and see it buried. Then when it’s buried, you’ll have to go on, to be queen, to take another king.”

  “But not yet,” said the queen. “Smenkhkare is young, and if not strong in spirit, at least he’s vigorous in body. He may outlive us all.”

  “He may not,” said Leah. “You’ll carry on with the secret in your heart, where it could eat away at your substance. Can you do that, child? Are you strong enough?”

  “I’ll have to be,” she said.

  Leah nodded. She seemed satisfied. Nofret was not—but Nofret had no say in this. She had had too much already. If she had not brought her lady to Leah—if Leah had not come here—

  It would have happened no matter what Nofret did. Nofret was as much the god's slave as anyone else. Whichever god it was. Amon might not mind himself if the Aten’s servant lived, if only the Aten was banished into the desert.

  “But where will you go?” she heard herself say. “How will you keep yourself alive?”

  The king answered her, somewhat to her startlement: she had not thought him aware of anything but his god and his escape from the tedium of being king. “I will follow the god, and go where he leads.”

  “He’ll go north,” Leah said, “and east, into the desert that was our homeland before we came here. Our kin are still there, the people who stayed behind when we came into Egypt. They’ll look after him and keep him hidden. Egypt will never know that its king is a tribesman among the tribes of Sinai.”

  Nofret shook her head so hard it made her dizzy. “It will never work. Egypt rules in Sinai, or it did. He’ll be found and killed.”

  “The Aten will protect me,” said the king: his old litany, as mindless as it had ever been, and as terribly true.

  “Well then,” she said. “How will you get out of Egypt? There’s a garrison at every river crossing, and agents of the priests in every village. If any of them even begins to suspect what you’ve done, you’ll be caught. If you even get out of Akhetaten. You’ve no more sense of the world than a newborn kitten.”