The Eye of Horus (26 page)

What caught Kate’s attention immediately were the sandstone fertility figures, all representing the fecund human female, mounted so they appeared to float in space. Little more than three to five inches tall, they made everything else seem insignificant by comparison, because those colorless stone objects symbolized continuity. Birth and rebirth. Something that was at the same time immense and unme-surable.

When she finished the last case and turned to look for Max, she found him only a few feet away, waiting, giving her all the space and time she needed. That struck her as symbolic, too.

“Want to leave instead of looking at the other stuff?” he asked, anticipating her. “We can always come back another time.”

Kate nodded. “Nothing could compete with this. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Back outside they were hit by a cold dry wind that sent leaves cartwheeling down the sidewalk. “Feels like a blue norther,” Max muttered, grabbed her hand, and ran for the car, where he revved the motor to get the heater going.

They drove several blocks in silence, until Max couldn’t stand it any longer. “Okay, out with it. I can hear the wheels spinning way over here.”

“Remember how the Egyptians put small models of things the deceased might need in their tombs? Little figures they called
ushabti
to work for the dead person. A house, stables with cattle and other livestock. Surely a physician would need a scribe’s palette.” She turned to him. “One made of ivory, since that would exhibit the same radiodensity as old bone. Those hollow tubes could be reed pens.”

“You think that’s what’s in his mouth, a miniature palette? Maybe to give him back the ability to speak, like touching the mummy’s eyes with the sacred adze to return his sight?”

Kate shrugged. “I was thinking more of giving him the ability to write, because that’s what he was known for.”

“A medical treatise that got him into a peck of trouble?” Max couldn’t help laughing. “No wonder Dave felt uncomfortable with you around.”

“That narrow cylinder also could be a scroll instead of a reed pen.”

“I don’t remember any layering, but I’ll check it out. Tomorrow, while you talk with Tinsley. Lift whatever it is out of the oral cavity and bring up a composite. But that fits something else I’ve been thinking about. Remember what I
said about his eyes being open, that for the Egyptians to see was to know? Without light there was no seeing. That has to be where our concept of enlightenment came from. Maybe what we’ve got is a physician ahead of his time and condemned for it, just as the early alchemists, or scientists, in Europe were persecuted as familiars of the devil.”

“It fits. Oh god, yes, Max. It fits.”

That afternoon she worked on several orthopedic illustrations, and again the next morning. Then, after lunch Saturday, she dropped Max at his office and drove his car, since it carried a “Physician” parking sticker, to the Medical Center for her meeting with Mike Tinsley. By the time she got back to the South Main Imaging Center it was past four o’clock. The few cars in the parking lot were gone, and it felt more like six, thanks to the clouds moving in from the Gulf, another turnaround in the weather.

She rang the bell and was let in by Max, who seemed inordinately pleased to see her, hardly able to keep from smiling and in a hurry.
Shades of the Cheshire cat
, she thought, and this time was prepared for what was coming. The object they had speculated about was indeed a miniature scribe’s palette, with landscapes incised into the top and two longer sides.

“I have to get this down on paper,” Kate decided, digging in her purse for the little notebook she always carried.

“I can transfer all these images to a disk so you can view them at home on my computer,” Max told her.

Kate continued with the quick sketch. “I wouldn’t want you to think I’m not impressed with this fantastic technology,” she reassured him, “because I am. That’s what’s so sad, that we didn’t have it before—”

“Before so much was destroyed? Yeah, I know. Same feeling I get when I think how long it’s been, and how wrong we’ve been about how the brain works.” Something in his voice made Kate glance up. “That’s what the latest imaging technology means, especially fast MRI. For the first time in
history we can look at how the normal brain functions, not just those that are damaged. By looking at the resting brain, then asking a subject to do something, we can trace nervecell activity and map the brain. In the beginning we found a lot of localization. Now, because we have better machines, we’re seeing more complexity—that multiple areas are activated.”

“Is that what you’re doing in your research?”

“A small piece of the map, yes. At least that’s what it started out to be. It turns out life isn’t so simple.” He gestured at her sketch. “I’ll bet your brain looks like the Milky Way when you do that.”

“Yeah, well, this image you just manufactured is why I’m not too optimistic that I can find enough work to live on. Medical students today study anatomy with computers instead of the real thing, view one male and female cadaver that have been sliced like sandwich meat and then digitized so any organ can be put together or separated out. I’m becoming obsolete faster than the black rhino is going extinct.”

“I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole, not until you tell me what went on with Mike Tinsley,” Max responded.

“Nothing ‘went on.’ He showed me a few photographs, described what he wants, and asked me for suggestions. I agreed to do a few examples, and that was it.”

“For how much?”

“We didn’t talk money.”

“Why the hell not? You’re a consummate artist with the knowledge and skill to equal his with a knife and chisel.”

“I’m going to watch this new surgical procedure he’s developed first, before I decide, if you don’t mind me hanging around through Monday.”

Max nodded and went to his desk to begin putting things away. “Are you about finished? Sam’s been cooped up in the house all afternoon.” Kate watched him, but surreptitiously. It wasn’t like Max to be evasive, or impatient.

“Almost. Did you know the Egyptians used a three-
hundred-sixty-five day calendar, same as ours, with twelve months, each thirty days long?” she asked. “Difference was, they had only three seasons and the new year began around the middle of July, when the Nile flooded the land—the season of inundation.”

“What did they do with the extra five days?”

“Holidays, to celebrate the birthdays of the gods. Osiris, Isis, Horus, that bunch.”

“Well, I find it pretty damn hypocritical for Set to kill his brother, and Nepthys to sleep with Osiris when he’s married to her sister, while ordinary mortals had to stand before Osiris and swear they never committed murder
or
adultery.”

“Yin and yang,” Kate mumbled. “Can’t have good without bad, white without black and all that jazz. What do you think of Mike Tinsley?”

“He’s okay, why?”

“Oh, just—you know what they say about surgeons.”

“What, that they’re arrogant? Ignorant beyond belief about everything else?”

He’d walked right into it. “That they’re even more antisocial than radiologists.”

The place reeked of sheep’s urine and rotten eggs, which meant that the
sesh per ankh
had been there before me to make sacrifice to Amen and burn the yellow powder to drive off evil spirits. Aset’s husband had to be in his late sixties, yet he looked much older, especially with his eyes closed. Like a man on his deathbed.

Lamps had been set at each corner of Uzahor’s couch, leaving everyone and everything else in the smoky shadows, while one old priest chanted a mournful supplication to the gods of creation. The women of his family sat cross-legged on the floor, faces half-hidden by identical white shawls—Aset among them, I assumed, since she had left my house two nights before—while several men stood talking in hushed tones. The only one I recognized was Ramose.

Tuli ran to greet me, baring his teeth in a smile and nudging his nose into my hand. He wore a new collar with prancing
red horses stitched to the white leather band. I made obeisance to him first, then the family, before Ramose motioned me to the old man’s side.

“Only say what you need and I will see it done,” he told me straight off, ordering me to treat his old friend no matter what.

“First I must listen to the voice of his heart and examine him with my hands.” From the rapid rise and fall of Uzahor’s bony chest it was plain that he found it difficult to breathe. “Does he complain of pain?”

“His wife says his left arm has given him no peace for several days.” Which wife, I wondered. “When I arrived some hours ago, I thought he looked pale, but he said he felt tired and nothing else.”

“Has he worsened since the priests burned the yellow powder?” I took the old man’s hand in mine to examine his fingernails and found them as colorless as his face.

“No. Aset was right, then?” Ramose inquired. “The sulfur can cause sickness as well as prevent it?”

“Yes, should the fumes turn noxious.” I put my fingers to the base of Uzahor’s throat to confirm that his heart ran shallow and fast, then leaned down to smell his mouth, seeking the sour fruit odor of the sickness that can cause a man to fall into an unnatural sleep. But I could smell little but the stench of rotten eggs. Next I exposed the old man’s abdomen to feel for any hardening or swelling in his vital organs, while I tried to think of a way to get fresh air into the room without embarrassing the God’s Father before his underlings. “What does his own physician say?” I asked.

“That a man’s body wears out the same as a sandal.”

“He is here?”

Ramose shook his head. “My—” He glanced at Uzahor. “Though he loves me well, my old friend prefers to speak to the gods himself rather than through a priest. He sent his physician to the temple to deliver a message to the Hearing Ear, just before he fell into a deep sleep, as you see him. I
suppose he sent the poor man away to save his pride, for he is not a bad physician, only a complacent one.”

To me they are one and the same, but I held my tongue as I bared Uzahor’s feet.

“Sometimes, Tenre, you remind me of my old friend. I wonder if that is why I raised the stakes higher than I ever intended the day I asked you to join my household, when you had the temerity to haggle with me.”

It is not like Ramose to ramble, if indeed that was what he was doing, or openly to exhibit emotion. But he has long been an enigma to me, so perhaps I only imagined that his thoughts wandered in the past out of distress at the prospect of losing his friend. I pressed the flesh above Uzahor’s toes and around the anklebone, to confirm that the swelling was not—like oil in a goatskin bag—the kind that comes and goes under the fingers. I noticed that two of his toenails were missing while the others had turned to chalk. I re-covered his legs, put my ear to his chest, and heard the beat of a distant drum muffled by shifting currents of air, a sound with the soft edge that meant he was drowning in his own fluids.

“We must raise his head.”

“Pagosh!” Ramose called. An eerie sense of familiarity came over me, another experience I cannot explain. “Bring cushions to put under his shoulders.” Ramose glanced at me. “Anything else?”

“His wife”—I caught myself—“his Principal Wife, is she present?”

“Her name is Sati.” He motioned to a woman who hurried to join us. Despite the cloud of white hair billowing around her head, the grace of her body was reflected in her face, where the waters of life ran silent but deep. Not that I mistook her for a placid cow. Just the opposite, judging by the way her black eyes appeared to breathe in the shifting light from the lamps, like live coals in a banked fire. Nor did they waver from mine until I put my palms together and lowered my chin in a bow.

“Welcome, Senakhtenre. May the great god bless and protect you,” she murmured, returning my gesture. “The house of my Lord Uzahor is honored by your presence. How may I serve you?”

“Could we send the others away? Except Aset, in case I should need her assistance.” I saw Ramose motion to someone else. “Perhaps you could ask them to approach the shrine to the god who protects this house, and ask him to restore your husband to health. After that, order someone to open the windows to let the outside air blow through.”

When I turned back to Ramose, I encountered a different pair of blue eyes—eyes I would know anywhere in this world or the next. Otherwise, I suppose, I might not have recognized her, for she wore a long black wig styled in a multitude of narrow braids, each tied with a tiny carnelian Knot of Isis. Around her throat lay a wide collar of rodshaped turquoise and lapis lazuli beads, drawing my eyes down to her breasts under a white gauze robe that did little to conceal her ripening body. I forced myself to put my palms together, but my hands trembled so that I had to lower my head to them lest someone suspect we were more to each other than a tutor and his onetime pupil.

When I glanced up again her eyes danced with mischief, as if she took pleasure in my confusion. “We must raise him up,” I told her.

Without a word she hurried to the sitting shelf and grabbed a cushion in each hand. Ramose went to the other side of Uzahor’s couch to help me lift him, while she slid the cushions under his head and shoulders. And with every move, the tiny carnelian amulets played a muted tune. I caught the aroma of almond oil laced with cassia blossoms, ginger, and peppermint, and knew she wore the perfume I had specially blended for her to mark the occasion when she left childhood behind. It suited her, I thought, not for the first time, its sweetness curbed by something sharp and tangy, hinting at the strength hidden beneath that soft, feminine facade.

“Hyena’s tongue?” she whispered when I had the old man propped up. She waited for my nod, then took what she needed from my goatskin bag and hurried away. My eyes followed her and collided with Pagosh’s black scowl. A few minutes later she was back with the warmed draught, hands trembling, perhaps because she has seen too much of death in her thirteen years. Now Anubis was on the prowl again, about to steal another of those she cared for.

“I added a little ginger, to ease his stomach.” She tried to rouse Uzahor enough to swallow what we spooned into his mouth, but much of it ran down his chin. Then, respecting Sati’s higher status, she went to stand behind her father, who sat watching his old friend with doleful eyes.

“There is little to do now but wait,” I explained, mostly for Sati’s benefit, who stood with her hand covering one of her husband’s. Tuli jumped up on the couch, licked Uzahor’s other hand, then settled himself within reach should he wake. Everyone grew quiet after that, waiting. I glanced up at the scene on the wall, where a single hunter aimed an arrow at his prey—a wild-eyed gazelle with neck and ears erect, vibrating with the excitement of the chase—and recognized it for what it was, an image of sexual arousal. Which only drove my eyes back to Aset.

She had outlined her eyes in black and dusted the lids with yellow ocher, reminding me of all the hours we have spent in my garden, discussing some treatment while she prepared her colors—grinding the yellow earth from the base of the cliffs or the burnt almond shells that produce a dark, purplish black. Afterward she would pour the fine powder into a length of hollow reed and plug it with papyrus pith before tucking it into her drawstring bag, where she carries the little papyrus-root lion, still her most prized possession—something I have never understood. It is of little value to anyone but the children she entertains with stories of his exploits in the Western Desert, where he outwits every hunter no matter how skilled or brave.

“He breathes a little easier,” she whispered. I nodded and
let my eyes follow the drape of Sati’s gown to the floor, only to discover that she wore a pair of Ipwet’s sandals. Finally, Uzahor’s eyelids began to flutter, a sign that he was waking. But I have seen many an old man return from such a sleep to a place he did not know. It took a while before he gave Sati a weak smile and tried to speak. She put her ear to his lips, then left him to go to a wooden chest standing on crossed duckbill legs, and returned with an ivory scribe’s palette.

“Aset,” Uzahor rasped. Tuli pricked up his ears.

“Yes, my lord husband, I am here.”

“For you.” He pushed the narrow pen case at her. A hunting scene was inscribed on one side, in the lifelike style of another time, now banned—thanks to Ramose and his parochial cohorts.

“Oh, no, my lord,” Aset protested, “this was a token of the Magnificent Amenhotep’s high regard for you, and must go to one of your children.”

Uzahor groped for her hand. “You … send me … message.”

“I will, my lord, I promise.” She smiled despite her tears. “I will remember your generosity through all eternity, too, just as I treasure the kindness you have shown me in this world. You and Sati.”

Uzahor turned his pale, watery eyes on me, so she said, “This is the physician I told you about. Senakhtenre.” He stared at me for a time, then heaved a tired sigh and closed his eyes. But almost at once he came awake again, a frantic look on his face as he sought someone or something he could not find.

“Mose … Ramose,” he called in a faltering voice, a plea so filled with heartache that I felt my gut tighten in pity.

The High Priest leaped to his feet and took Uzahor’s frail hand between both of his. “I am here. Nor will I leave you. The transgression was mine, not yours. Yet you kept faith with me through everything, even at the risk of going before Osiris with a stain on your heart.” Ramose eased down onto the edge of Uzahor’s couch and smiled at the old man. “You
were right. I cannot escape the boy I once was, so I have waged constant war with my own
ka,
until I grow tired of the battle. But I cannot lie to you, either, and say I would willingly relive those years in order to do any different.” He stared unseeing into the past, at what only he and his friend could know, all the while stroking the back of Uzahor’s frail hand with his thumb. “Never to have pitted myself against her quick wit? Or watched her eyes light up when she laughs? Never to feel the touch of her hand in trust, or love? The rush of pleasure that comes with knowing she is mine?” Ramose shook his head. “Even to think of it brings the chill of death to my heart.”

So did the High Priest confess his obsession with the woman who had stolen his free will, yet Uzahor smiled as if he forgave him whatever offense Ramose alluded to.

“Pharaoh’s jackals will not come near you,” Ramose assured his old friend, “now or in the years to come. So be at peace and rest. Sati has ordered a rich broth from the kitchen, to make you strong as a bull again.” That same little smile was still on Uzahor’s face when he drifted into what appeared to be a natural sleep.

I instructed Pagosh to inform Uzahor’s family and servants to go to their beds, while Sati sank down on the foot of his couch to keep watch. But without any warning, the old man began struggling to rise, and finally lifted both frail arms to the sky.

“Aten comes!” he cried, a joyous smile creasing his weathered face. Then, as if the effort had sapped the last of his strength, his breath escaped from his open mouth, taking his
ka
with it, and the husk of the man he had been fell back against the cushions.

Tuli let out a long, mournful howl, then began licking the old man’s hand. I moved to listen to his heart, to confirm what I already knew. From the look on Sati’s face she did, too, so I closed Uzahor’s sightless eyes, straightened his blanket, and folded it neatly across his chest, to give her time to recover herself. She dropped to her knees beside her
husband’s couch, took his lifeless hand, and pressed it to her forehead as the elderly priest began an incantation to Osiris.
“Blessed be Osiris. Blessed be the son of earth sprung from the egg of the world. Blessed be the son of heaven, dropped from the belly of the sky. Blessed be the god in his names, salvation of priests and goatherds, king of kings, lord of lords. Priest and man, his body shimmers turquoise green.”
When he finished she put her lips to Uzahor’s hand for the last time, rose and wrapped her dignity about her like a shawl, and went to inform the others who kept vigil in the antechamber to his room.

I wondered if Ramose had known that his friend worshiped the Heretic’s god even after Horemheb’s proclamation made it a crime. Why else would the old man cry out to Aten instead of Amen-Re or Osiris? Unless he had only been reliving his youth, as so many old men do, in the time of the Magnificent Amenhotep, who championed Aten above other gods. By the time his son, who styled himself Aten’s one and only, was gone from the Two Lands, Uzahor must have been at least fifty and set in his ways.

Aset took Tuli in her arms to quiet his whining and went to her father’s side, but Ramose continued to stare at the wasted shell of his beloved friend. It was not until the mourners outside began to wail that he roused himself to give her instructions.