Khu: A Tale of Ancient Egypt (12 page)

Odji
pondered the boatman’s message as images of a thriving village over which he ruled flitted through his mind. There was a cruelty to Odji’s thin mouth that made the boatman nervous. The boatman kept glancing anxiously about him. He knew he was in danger here, and did not wish to be caught conspiring against the king. The punishment for high treason was death—death by decapitation. But that was not all. His filthy remains would be scattered in the desert, and left for the wild animals to devour. This terrible fate would leave him incapable of crossing the great divide to the Field of Reeds in the Afterlife. Without a body and proper burial, his immortal soul
ka
would forever be doomed to roam restlessly in the Netherworld.

“When will the revolt take place?” Odji
asked, distracting the boatman from his dismal thoughts. Odji hoped it would happen soon before Mentuhotep returned from Kush.

“King Khet
y is probably on his way from Nen-nesu as we speak,” the boatman said. “The annual Festival of Osiris will be celebrated in Abdju soon.”

Odji frowned. “Why would he go then?” he wondered aloud.

“I think he wants to time the revolt to coincide with the festivities.”

“
With the Festival of Osiris?” Odji was confused. It did not make sense to him. For a moment he wondered if the boatman got his facts mixed up. The man was getting on in years.

“That is all I know,” the boatman said
, shrugging his thin shoulders. He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another as he spoke. His sun-darkened skin was stretched tightly over his wiry frame, and the lines on his weathered face gave him a look of being perpetually worried.

A gray short-haired cat watched him with aloof eyes from the shade of a doorway
lying beyond the main entrance to the palace compound, and the boatman touched a hand to the amulet hanging from his neck. He felt guilty and wondered if the gods were watching as well.

“
Ankhtifi is there already, with a small army of his own,” the boatman added. His eyes darted around nervously, making sure no one was in too close proximity to overhear their conversation. But no one even glanced their way.

“Ankhtifi?”

“Yes,” the boatman said, “King Khety’s supporter. The chieftain of Nekhen.”

Odji nodded absentmindedly. He was imaging himself again as a lord. It was a far cry from the boy who was born to simple peasants.

An ox-drawn cart passed by on its way to the village. It hauled a crop of melons, cucumbers, leeks and onions. A man and his son led the beast of burden through the street, tugging on the animal’s yoke. They did not even glance at the gatekeeper and the thin, older man with whom he was talking.

No one noticed the avarice
gleaming in Odji’s eyes. And as the boatman took his leave of Odji, hurrying to head back to his small vessel so he could get away from Thebes, Odji once again slipped into his reverie, dreaming of the day when he would oversee a small village of his own.

King Wakhare Khet
y III, Ruler of Lower Egypt, stood in the pavilion of his palace in Nen-nesu. He had just dismissed his advisors and needed a moment alone to think. A servant was clearing away two platters of food and several cups of heqet that had been set on a long side table standing between two columns. Khety exhaled as he stepped down from the dais where his throne sat. He walked over to the table where he had left his cup earlier. The servant paused from her work to refill his cup with heqet before bowing and leaving with the platters.

Today
Khety received word that Ankhtifi had arrived in Abdju with a small army. This was good news. It was what he had wanted, and what he had been planning for several seasons now. Yet he felt a little ambivalent at how these long-awaited events were finally unfolding.

The king walked over to the edge of the pavilion with the cup in his hand. He took a sip of
the heqet and stared out at the view. His palace sat on a piece of land which rose sharply from the Nile’s western bank. It was set higher than the crop fields growing closer to the water’s edge. A village lay south of the palace, and west of the fields. From its elevated ground, the palace commanded stunning views of the River Nile and the lush floodplains to the east, as well as of the desert ridges, sand plains, and rocky plateaus stretching interminably to the west.

There were no clouds in the vast blue sky, and the
king interpreted that as an augury boding well for his plans. He needed the gods to smile upon him, for tomorrow he would depart for Abdju, where he would be joining Ankhtifi with his own army of men. The timing was perfect, for it happened to be the Festival of Osiris which was celebrated annually in Abdju. Hopefully no one would suspect anything untoward.

King Khety
had descended from the Akhtoy lineage known as the House of Khety which rose to power from their seat in the district of Nen-nesu, after the disintegration of the Old Kingdom. His forefathers were buried near the great tombs of the sixth dynasty kings at Saqqara near Inebou-Hedjou. Over the last hundred years, Nen-nesu’s dominance in the northern territories, and the power of the House of Khety had grown to extend over most of Lower and Middle Egypt as far south as Amarna and the province of Zawty. But that power was ridden with corruption and greed spreading out like fine fissures over the land, allowing the infiltration of all sorts of ills from thieving and bloody raids, to natural disasters including plagues and drought.

Nen-nesu was the cult center of the ram-god
Heryshef, Ruler of the Riverbanks. But the ram-god’s temple lay in ruin. Many of the temples of the north had been pillaged over the decades, and nothing had been done to rebuild them, so that their painted walls and pitted columns were crumbling in decay. Supplies were scarce as it was, and people were hungry.

Many of the royal necropolises had been plundered as
well. Even in prosperous times the living robbed the dead. But with the breakdown of the centralized authority from the early dynasties, all within the fractured lands was vulnerable to robbers. Various rulers vied for power like wolves fighting for dominance over a pack whose alpha male had died. Thus the ancient tombs had been destroyed, and their relics left to decay under a careless sun. And Khety did not waste time, effort, or funds in rebuilding any of them—funds he did not possess and sorely needed.

King Khety was not overly concerned about
the state of his dilapidated lands at the moment. He had more important things to keep him occupied. He wanted to keep hold of his throne in Nen-nesu and of Lower Egypt in general. He also wanted more power; a power extending to Upper Egypt, so that he could reunite the divided lands under his rule. Resources were scant, and he needed all of them spent on his efforts to capture Upper Egypt’s throne. He had his sights set on Thebes where King Mentuhotep’s throne was set firmly into the land of Upper Egypt. And King Khety was relying on Ankhtifi to help him take that throne from Mentuhotep.

Ankhtifi had been
King Khety’s ally for many years. Ankhtifi’s own father had once served Khety’s predecessor in the House of Khety that ruled Lower Egypt in Nen-nesu on the west bank of the Nile. Although Ankhtifi had outwardly remained neutral in the political schism between the thrones of Lower and Upper Egypt, his loyalty lay with Khety. Ankhtifi’s neutral pretense was critical to the preservation of his township in Nekhen, especially given Nekhen’s close proximity to Thebes. He did not wish to turn King Mentuhotep against him.

Khety pondered the news he received today
as he stepped outside the pavilion to wander through the walled gardens of his palace. It was his favorite place to think. The jasmine was in full bloom, and it filled the air with its heady perfume from where it crept possessively over the thick limestone columns supporting the pergola above him. Grapevines wove through the overhead beams, shading the walkways that were framed by flower beds next to one of several ponds stocked with ornamental fish. An orchard grew beyond that.

Filled with a blend of anxiety and anticipation,
Khety paused to pluck a sprig of the jasmine by one of the columns. He could not help wondering if he had made the right decision in summoning Ankhtifi to Abdju. But he knew that if he had not done so, nothing would ever change. And it was time to expand the House of Khety which had been left to him by his father, and by his father’s father before him. It was time to push south and capture the throne of Upper Egypt from his nemesis Mentuhotep.

Khety
thought of the Theban king as he twirled the stem of the jasmine sprig between his fingers. The milky sap left a sticky residue on his skin which he ignored as his thoughts turned to his rival in Upper Egypt. He envied Mentuhotep. He begrudged everything about him: his kingdom, his wives, his children, his gold mines in Kush… the list was endless. He knew Mentuhotep was wealthy—far wealthier than he certainly was. Khety’s spies had told him so, and the prosperous state of the Upper Kingdom’s lands was proof enough of this. But it was more than his wealth that Khety desired. Mentuhotep seemed happy. Khety’s spies often mentioned the Theban king’s contented and satisfied demeanor—something which came from having everything he had ever wanted. Yes, it was his happiness that Khety mostly envied.

Khety had no heir
s of his own. His first two wives had died in childbirth many years before, when he was a young man. After a long period of mourning, he had finally taken another wife at the insistence of his advisors. Shani—his third wife—had proved strong and fertile, and had borne him four children in quick succession: two boys, followed by two girls.

Khety inhaled the fragrance of the
sprig of jasmine as he braced himself against the painful memories that flooded his being like the Nile waters during the Season of Inundation. He could still remember the delighted squeals of his young children as they ran playing through the gardens; the very same gardens where he now stood. He could almost catch a glimpse of them hiding among the trees, or chasing each other through the shaded paths, or frolicking and tumbling on the soft velvety grasses. Those happy shrieks had ceased shortly after his eldest son had celebrated his seventh Season of Inundation.

His son’s
sudden illness had left the child immobile. It had begun with a sore throat accompanied by a high fever, which grew very painful so that he could no longer eat nor drink. Then all of his joints became painfully inflamed—his elbows, knees, wrists and ankles—so he could not walk. He was breathless and extremely fatigued. After that, he had quickly withered into a shrunken sack of bones in less than the course of a moon. Then his younger siblings fell ill just as suddenly, and all of them died of the same mysterious ailment which left them so weak, their hearts simply stopped beating.

Shani had been heavy with
child at the time, expecting their fifth baby. Khety remembered the haunted look in her eyes as she struggled night and day by her children’s bedsides, willing them to regain their health. Her beautiful eyes were sunken with dread, as she moved about in a harrowing daze of angst and disbelief. She refused to leave them, even after he had ordered her to get some rest in her own private quarters. She had stayed put in their room, trying to get them to sip warmly brewed infusions, placing compresses on their swollen throats and limbs, lighting incense in the room, and encircling their beds with amulets to ward off the evil ravaging their little bodies. Priests and doctors from near and far had come with every imaginable remedy, chanting endless spells and invocations known to bring healing. But nothing anyone did had made a difference. The tragedy had caused Shani to miscarry before her time, and she died along with the child she had been carrying.

Cursed
. It was as though he had been cursed.

Khety
shut his eyes tightly against the anguish that was always present, just beneath the surface of his forced composure. Why else would death come to smite all those whom he had dearly loved? It had been hard enough to lose his first two wives. He had not wanted to remarry after their deaths, and had closed himself off to any relationships for years. But with the passing of time, the scars of his wounds had faded from an angry red into something less caustic, so that he had allowed himself to be talked into taking another wife.

Shani had been a dream come true.
In a time when marriages were formed as dynastic alliances, theirs had unexpectedly blossomed into love. They had been immensely happy together. And with the birth of each of their children, their love had only grown stronger.

Perhaps the gods had been jealous
of him. All Khety knew was that when death ripped Shani and his children from his bosom, he had nearly lost his mind. Something within him died along with them; something loving and tender and kind. And when the doors to their tombs had been shut and sealed, echoing loudly through his ravaged soul, a door within his heart slammed shut like the bars of an iron cage.

The king was staring into the past
with his brow furrowed, the jasmine still held under his nose. These gardens had become his private sanctuary after their deaths, and were strictly off-limits to anyone other than the servants who tended them.