Pillar of Fire Page 30

  Ankhesenamon could have commanded Nofret, and Nofret would have had to obey. But the queen was engrossed in her husband and not taking great notice of her servant. She sighed at Nofret’s refusal but did not argue with it. When she went on royal progress thereafter, she took a chosen few of her maids and left the rest in Memphis with Nofret.

  Nofret did not go to Thebes at all. She did not bear it the hatred that the king did, but she had no love for it, either. Even to discover if Leah had come there after all with the rest of the Apiru, she could not quite bring herself to go.

  Memphis with neither king nor queen in residence was no quieter, but the palace seemed echoingly empty. Most of the court was gone, either with the king or to their own estates. The servants had the palace to themselves. They might have taken the opportunity to be lazy or not to be there at all, but Nofret quickly put a stop to that. Duties were light in the royal absence, but floors still needed to be swept, servants and animals fed, and other, heavier tasks done that could be awkward when the palace was full of people: taking up and cleaning the carpets, washing the bed-linens, scrubbing and polishing the furnishings in the royal apartments.

  The servants glowered at Nofret, and some tried to slip away before she could catch them and put them to work. But once she caught those and mustered the rest, they obeyed her. She used the whip when she had to, which was not often. Mostly her voice was enough, and the terror of her glare.

  She rose of a morning, one day in Egypt’s balmy winter when the queen was gone again to the Upper Kingdom, and did as she did at every waking, and had for so long that it had set into habit: bathed in the deep basin that servants brought in, combed out her thick long mane and plaited it, weaving in the amulets of Amon and of Sobek that she had bought so long ago in Thebes, and put on a clean linen gown. It was the only one left in the press. Today would be a washing-day, then, as well as a day for scouring and airing the queen’s apartments.

  As she smoothed her gown, she paused. She never took much notice of herself except as a body to be kept clean and clothed, but today her skin felt odd, tender. The slight roughness of linen in her gown was almost more than she could stand.

  Her courses had ended only a day or two before. There was no storm coming: it was a fine clear morning and would be very hot later. No sign of the terrible storms that sometimes came in this season, fierce dry winds sweeping ahead of them a wall of dust, and lightnings cracking in it. The air itself had none of the sparking tension that would have signaled such a storm. It was all in her, on her skin and under it.

  Anyone she might have asked would have said that she needed a man. She thought of that, of seeking out someone who had shown interest, one of the guards perhaps, the young one with the lovely eyes, who was almost as beautiful as the king. But the thought of a man touching her, running hands over her newly sensitive skin, made her shudder.

  She began the day’s work as she always had, gathering the queen’s servants and meting out their duties. As she spoke she felt as if she drifted outside of her body, up near the roofbeams like a winged spirit, and listened to the stranger-self give orders. None of the servants seemed to notice anything odd. The stranger-Nofret said the words it said every morning, chose who would do this and who would do that, did everything without any interference from the wandering spirit.

  Nofret had always been very much inside of herself, one and undivided, body and spirit. It was strange to discover that the Egyptians had the right of it. They divided the spirit into seven, each a part of the whole, ka-spirit and ba-spirit, shadow, breath, heart and name, and the body itself that housed the rest. The part of her that wandered must be either the ka—the soul that lingered with the body beyond death—or the ba that flew free on falcon-wings.

  Whichever it was, it watched the body complete its giving of orders and walk through the queen’s rooms, overseeing their stripping and scouring. It was not minded to wander away. The body’s presence bound it.

  Separated from her body as if she wandered in a strange dream, Nofret watched herself all that morning. At midday, when even the most diligent rested in the heat, the body turned not toward its cool dim chamber and its couch but toward the air and the sun.

  The heat barely touched it, was more caress than hammering force. The body walked through the courts and up to the walls, eluding the guards who, like everyone else with sense, sought shelter in the shade.

  At the very summit of the palace, high up over the city, Nofret’s body perched on the parapet. The wind caught her spirit and tugged at it, toying with it, coaxing it to drift far out over the city’s roofs, the glorious rich green of the tilled lands, the mud-brown of the river. And then, it wheedled, it would carry her right out of the lands of the living toward the tombs of the old kings, the Pyramids that seemed to send up shafts of light into the endless sky.

  But the body, bound to it as with a thread, resisted. For a long moment the spirit was perfectly balanced, half in the wind, half in the body. Then the body reached out and drew it in, gulped wind and spirit both, and was abruptly, dizzyingly whole.

  oOo

  Nofret wavered on the edge of the wall. The wind buffeted her, suddenly strong. She braced against it, moving warily away from the edge. She was dizzy and sick, and more than a little scared.

  “Lady, are you well?”

  She started and spun. A man was standing there, wearing a helmet and a great bronze collar and a fine linen kilt, and carrying a spear. It was the handsome guard, the one all the maids sighed after.

  He did not look beautiful to her now, only strange. “You seem ill, lady,” he said in his soft light voice. “Come, there’s water in a jar by the tower. I’ll fetch you a cup.”

  She wanted to refuse, but her tongue would not obey her. He led her to the tower that marked the southward corner of the wall, dipped water from a clay jar there, offered it to her. His face was all limpid concern.

  Suddenly she was furiously angry. If he had seized her and tried to rape her, or even pressed his attentions on her, she would not have minded half so much. This chaste solicitude made her want to claw his eyes out.

  Her body, disregarding the frantic spirit, took the cup, even smiled before it drank. He smiled back. He had a beautiful smile, of course. Everything about him was simply lovely. Nor did he have the air that many handsome men had, of knowing too well how good he was to look at. He knew, he could hardly avoid it, but it did not seem to matter to him. He was like the king in that, and like the queen.

  She watched her hand reach out and brush his cheek. It was smooth, hardly bearded yet, and that well shaven in Egyptian fashion. He blushed lightly under the bronzing of sun and wind, but did not pull away.

  The cup was empty. She had drunk the whole of it, not even aware that she was doing it. He took the cup from her hands and laid it aside as carefully as if it had been fine glass and not mere rough clay.

  She could not even remember his name. Seni, Seti, something of the sort. Names were power in Egypt. She knew that, whose birthname was hidden and all but forgotten. She groped for it, but it was nowhere in her. Had she lost it this morning? Was that why she was all so strange?

  The guard’s eyes on her had gone strangely soft. They were reflecting her own, maybe. He leaned toward her. His kiss was dry, warm, eager but restrained.

  How fortunate, she thought, that chance and the gods gave her a man like this and not one who would long since have knocked her down and done as he pleased. This was a man of patience, a gentle man. He was much better than she deserved.

  The tower was empty, and dark after the searing brilliance of the sun. Her eyes came to themselves long after her body did. It lay on something more hard than soft, a reed mat perhaps, and its gown was lost somewhere. So were his kilt and helmet, though he still had his bronze collar. Its edge pressed on her breast, not quite painful but too evidently there. He was a little shorter than she, a little narrower. His body was shaved smooth all over, a faint rasp of stubble on her skin, evident as th
e collar was, not quite enough to repulse her.

  A distant part of her wondered precisely what she was doing here. The rest knew very well. She was lying with the beauty of the guard, each of them sadly derelict in duty, and neither caring in the least.

  When he pierced her, the pain was sharp, and not remote at all. She saw how his eyes widened. He had not expected to meet that barrier—not in her who was notably older than he. He started to recoil, but she caught him in strong arms, wrapped legs about his hips, bound him to her. He struggled briefly, by instinct, but another instinct was stronger still. With a sigh he yielded to it.

  She waited for the pleasure that everyone said came after the pain. The pain sank to an ache, but of pleasure there was little, except in the rocking rhythm, the closeness of another body, the sharp scent of sweat. His breath quickened, his rhythm with it. Then abruptly he was done, rigid against her, and flooding warmth inside of her.

  He held her tightly for a long moment. Then he let go, dropping down, already half asleep. That too everyone told of, how some men slept as soon as they were spent, and even a few women.

  But not Nofret. She lay motionless beside a sleeping stranger, with an ache deep inside her, and no sense that she had gained anything but a few moments’ pain. The day’s strangeness was unaltered. She was if anything even more alien to herself, though her spirit chose to keep its place and not go wandering again.

  She got up slowly. There was blood on her thighs. She found a rag hung on a peg, wet it in water from the jar outside, washed herself carefully with hands that kept trying to shake. Then she washed out the rag with equal care, till all the blood was gone from it. She was still bleeding a little, as she did in her courses. She bound the clean wet rag in place, put on her rumpled gown, did what she could to make order of her hair.

  The guard was still asleep, snoring softly. He would be reprimanded or worse if his captain learned that he had abandoned his post to lie with a woman. She should wake him, get him dressed and armed again, and send him back to his duty. But if she roused him he would want to kiss her again, and maybe go back to bed-play. Men did that, the maids had told her. Either they took what they wanted once and forgot the woman who had given it, or they kept coming back, pressing, insisting, being a nuisance.

  This one would want more. She read it in the way he lay, loose like a child, smiling in his sleep. He was really quite lovely, a beautiful boy, with his smooth brown skin and his slender hands. She was moved to kiss him, simply because he was so pretty, but she did not.

  She left his helmet and spear beside him and said a prayer to Hathor who watched over lovers, that he would wake in time to escape his captain’s wrath. Then she left him, treading carefully lest she shake her spirit loose from her body. But it seemed firmly bound now, wound about the ache in her center. That much at least she had done: brought body and spirit together again, and kept them so, for all they tried again to scatter.

  Thirty-Four

  The guard’s name was Seti. He waited several days before he came round, but come round he did. He came in the evening when Nofret had won a few moments’ quiet for herself, choosing his moment by good luck or careful inquiry. He brought a gift, a lotus bloom and a jar of date wine.

  Nofret was mildly astonished to see him standing in the doorway of her cell of a room, looking lovely and shy but just a little cocky. She was supposed to be flustered and flattered and utterly delighted, no doubt, that he would not only remember her but deign to favor her with his presence.

  Before she could order him out, he smiled a perfectly charming smile and said, “I don’t suppose you want to see me, but I had to come.”

  She opened her mouth to say something terrible and unforgivable. But her tongue was of another mind. It said, “I hope you didn’t get into too much trouble with your captain, for sleeping on duty.”

  He flushed slightly. “No. Oh, no. The gods were kind. I was awake and at my post before anyone knew.”

  “Good,” said Nofret. She meant it. She did not bear him any ill-will. He was pretty, he was charming, he was much better than she deserved.

  He bowed and offered her the lotus flower. She had to take it or see it dropped at her feet. Its scent was sweet. She sneezed. He laughed a little breathlessly; so, after a moment, did she.

  Somehow they ended in her bed, with the flower forgotten on the floor, and his kilt and her gown beside it. Her body seemed to have a will of its own when it came to this of all men. She did not even know if he could carry on an intelligent conversation. Intelligence had very little to do with what he was doing to her, and she to him.

  He seemed to think that that was enough. All the words he breathed in her ear were the kind of words that the lustiest of the maids swore they prayed for. Silly words, ridiculous words, words with kitten-love in them. How he could be besotted with her she could not imagine, but so he seemed to be. Maybe it was simply that she was the chief of the queen’s servants, and he gained honor among his fellows in adorning her bed.

  oOo

  She gained the envy of the maids, and at least one vow to take him away from her. She might not have minded if the woman had succeeded. It was all very awkward. She could not quite seem to confess that she felt nothing for Seti but a kind of bemusement.

  What he wanted of her in the body she found easy enough to give. She even had pleasure in it. It was shocking the first time, expected and yet beyond expectation. Thereafter, and as both of them grew more adept at pleasing one another, it was delightful. She began to think longingly of it when he was not there, though she never allowed it to obsess her. She was much too stubborn a creature for that.

  He had the body, all that he could ask for, and yet he wanted something of the spirit, too, or said he did; and that she did not have.

  There was no one to whom she could say such things. The one she thought of was nowhere in Egypt. Even if he had been, he might not have understood. Friend or no, Johanan was a man. Men had dreams; they constructed whole palaces of fancy, with queens inside of them, and courts of airy love.

  Women had to be more practical. They drank their herb-brews, prepared their potions, kept vigilance lest they produce a child. What irony, thought Nofret, if her precautions failed and she produced the son that her lady had always dreamed of. Son of a slave and a guardsman—but son nonetheless.

  Which the gods avert. She did not want her belly filled with Seti’s offspring, however beautiful or charming it might turn out to be. She did the things that the maids prescribed, preposterous or repellent though they were. It seemed that they worked: her courses came in their ordered round, as regular as the moon. She thanked the gods for that, and vowed to send Seti away; but her tongue would never say the words. It, like the rest of her body, was much too fond of the things that he did and said to it.

  And after all, what harm was there in it? He was happy. Her body had learned to sing deep in the bones, and more sweetly the longer he played on it. She kept her duties still, and so did he. They were not like the lovers of story who forgot everything in the intoxication of one another.

  oOo

  She did not fail in her duty, not at all, but she discovered that it was taking less of her heart and her time. She found herself one bright and burning day with a whole afternoon to herself. Everything that could be done for the queen’s return had been done. The palace was in order. She had set most of the maids free to take their leisure. Those who remained went drowsily about their few tasks, none urgent, and none that required Nofret’s presence.

  It was rather disconcerting to realize that she was not needed, nor had she anything pressing to do. It was like old days in Akhetaten.

  Seti was on guard duty and would not be free till evening. She had no particular desire to seek him out, nor any to take him away from his post. Before he mattered to her, she had done it; but not now. She knew too much of him: his mother in the city, who relied on his wages for her own bread and beer; his brother who dreamed of a post in the guard but who w
as too young yet to seek one; his sisters who would be wanting husbands when they were a little older. All that edifice of family could topple if Nofret tempted him again to be derelict in his duty.

  It was an odd, free sensation to know that no one needed her, nor had she anywhere to be until the evening. She took it with her out of her little room, wandering as she used to do in Akhetaten, with no particular aim or purpose. She might go to the city; she might not. She might choose to stay in the palace, amid splendors grown almost comfortable with use.

  She had a favorite place, a garden court with fruit-trees, and a fountain with fish in it. It was nothing to the magnificence of the gardens proper, nor was it much frequented. It was smallish and old and somewhat neglected. Some ancient queen had built it, had overseen the planting of the trees and the setting of the fountain.

  She was long gone to her tomb. Her courtyard lived still, the grandchildren of the grandchildren of her trees bowed under the weight of their fruit.

  Nofret plucked a pomegranate from the one tree of its kind, a ragged and splintery thing with a propensity for dropping branches on the unwary head. But its fruit was sweet. She ate it sitting in the shade of a less unchancy tree, buried the rind carefully and with a prayer to the spirit of its mother tree, and sat licking the blood-red juice from her fingers.

  A murmur of voices brought her to the colonnade. As seldom as anyone came to this court, it was not far from the courts of welcome where strangers were received into the palace. Once or twice before she had been here when embassies came, and once greeted a lordling from a distant nome of Egypt, who had taken a wrong turning and was much dismayed to find himself in a deserted garden. She had salved his pride and set him on his way, and got no thanks for it either; but that was the way of it with even the least of princes.