The Eye of Horus (38 page)

“Most poor devils who stumble into the Eye of Horus cannot afford the services of any physician,” I replied, “let alone one in the Per Ankh. And they pay according to what they have, when they can. Otherwise”—I shrugged—“nothing. But perhaps it will put your worries to rest to know that my man dispenses certain medicines only to other physicians. Ground mandrake root, for example, and fetid nightshade.”

“I send my assistant there at times,” a physician named Irenakhty put in, “and find his herbs fresher because they do not sit on the shelf so long.”

“You worry without cause, Heri,” Khay-Min added. “Tenre’s man requires me to send a list stamped with my signet ring, to be sure it comes from me.”

“His untrained man can read?” Herihor scoffed, then fell silent at Khay-Min’s nod.

“How often does he ask you to settle with him?” one of the others asked.

“Every month,” another answered, revealing that he does the same. “If I forget, he sends a reminder. Once it was a few pills shaped like tiny birds, another time a sample of black alder bark, from Kush.” He glanced at me. “A man with ideas like that is worth his weight in gold.”

What I feared most—that they would condemn me because it is the rule of my profession that if no one knows why, then no one may seek to know—never came up. So I escaped with my skin intact, thanks to Mena’s talent for shaping a group of men to his will, though he let them believe the decision was theirs. Surely it is a paradox that in Aniba, where Senmut has gathered the outcasts from many lands—most of them considered poor or uncouth by comparison with the land of the Pharaohs—we exchanged all manner of ideas and findings from our investigations, and gained because of it. Like plants in the field, our learning thrived and grew through exposure to the light of day.

Afterward I treated Mena to a pitcher at the Clay Jar, where his levity lasted no longer than our first mug of beer. “Horemheb’s end is closer than the others suspect,” he confided in a low voice. “But before I say so I would have you examine him. It is my decision to make, but perhaps you could cover yourself in the robes of a priest to ease your way.” For a moment his eyes sparkled with humor. “I don’t suppose you would consider shaving your head?”

Horemheb’s body is like a battlefield under attack from many directions at once. His bowels run day and night until his anus turns inside out, making it painful for him to sit or walk. But he vomits up most of what he eats as well, and that, along with the yellowing of his eyes, suggests something amiss with his liver.

Mena talked openly before his General, describing to me how he had administered enemas containing honey, moringa oil, and sweet beer for the pain in Horemheb’s anus, adding a little frankincense to ease his stomach. I recommended suppositories made from the seeds and pods of itasin, white lotus leaves, and juniper berries steeped in sweet beer for him to drink, “And no more wine made from grapes.”

“For one day only,” Pharaoh muttered, “to see if you are as wise as he makes you out to be.” He motioned to Mena but kept his eyes on me. “Hand me the scroll.” When he had it in his hand, Horemheb raised himself up and slapped it against mine.

I knew without looking what it would be, but what I found shocked even me. The yellow tabby finally was revealed as a savage wildcat, gray stripes and all. With one swipe of her paw she destroyed one after another in her path, then turned on her own young to devour them as well, until—blood dripping from her mouth and claws—nothing remained but the double crown of the Two Lands.

‘Take care,
sunu”
Pharaoh warned me as he collapsed against his cushions, “lest the she-cat eat your kitten as well.”

Aset is accustomed to my being called away, especially with the pestilence following the flood worse than usual, so my leaving raised no alarms. Meri was busy helping Merit decorate the garden for Aset’s twenty-fourth feast day, and Khary, Tamin, and their children were due within the hour. That Nebet and Senmut are expected any day only adds to the excitement, for they bring their firstborn to meet his grandfather. A son named Senakhtenre!

By the time I arrived at the palace, Pharaoh lay senseless and motionless, except to cry out and try to rise from time to time as if his
ka
still fought the enemies of Kemet. Once he protested, “But for me the Syrians and Hittites would have overrun us!” He did not exhibit the tendency toward sexual arousal that accompanies an injury to the spine, so whatever afflicted him resided in his intestines, kidneys, and lungs—a conclusion confirmed by the odor of feces and urine that pervaded his room.

Imhotep, the only man to become a god without climbing the steps to the throne, had placed the heart at the center of a network of forty-six vessels, any of which could become overfilled or obstructed. He also believed that they carried blood, air, food, sperm, mucus, tears, urine, and feces, just as our canals carry water and life-giving mud from Mother River to our fields. But Mena and I have learned that some vessels carry only blood, in both the living and dead—the ones Aset has entered on our map.

“Look well, Tenre,” Mena murmured. “Is this what you and I look toward in ten years’ time?” Mena’s hair is as thick as ever, though the white begins to conquer his eyebrows as well, turning his bronze face even darker. The skin under his chin is not so tight, either, but his back remains straight, maybe because he wills himself to stand eye to eye with his wife. That, surely, is why we both flourish when other men begin to wilt on the vine.

“Sheri and Nebet,” I murmured for his ears only, “Aset and Meri, beloved in truth as well as in name.
They
are the ones who cause the blood to rush through our bodies, washing away the hatred and disappointment and envy that shrivel other men’s souls.”

As darkness fell over the city of Amen, Pharaoh’s ministers and advisers began to gather, along with the High Priest and his entourage, to send Horemheb on his journey with appropriate ceremony and prayers. Nefertiti made a brief appearance as his life force leaked from his penis along with his urine, but not his Queen. Only one man shed any tears, recalling a time and place when he marched into battle with his General. Nor do I fault my boyhood friend for that, though I found Horemheb’s passing far too gentle, given the pain and violence he has visited upon his people.

Senmut and Nebet arrived in Waset as the workshops and taverns were closing their doors, but they came across the river anyway, to show their son to his namesake. At eight months the babe is as happy as he is handsome, neither as dark-skinned as his father nor so light as his mother but a blend of the two. Senmut insists he takes after me in always wanting to explore where he is not wanted.

Aset bubbles with laughter now that her friend has come, more than at any time since Tuli went to Osiris, despite the cloud that hangs over all of us because no one knows who
the General’s successor will be. Ramose spends his days at the temple offering prayers for Osiris Horemheb’s soul and overseeing everything else, for priests both high and low are overburdened at such times. Even the priests who teach classes for the young spend their days copying out prayers and spells for others, who are reminded of what the future holds for them.

A rheumy-eyed old wickmaker selling his wares in the street yelled to me as I passed this morning, warning one and all that the Heretic returns to Waset with an army at his back. When I asked what army, he babbled on about the Shasu, or Abiru—he was missing so many teeth I cannot say for sure. “The Shasu follow their grazing sheep,” I told him, hoping to put an end to one rumor at least, “not the Heretic. They are a clannish bunch, so someone plays you for a fool if he says men who mistrust all but their own blood follow an outsider. Anyway, they have no weapons, only their shepherd’s crooks.” He reminded me that Aten already has sent a plague of insects to devour our crops, and withheld the life-giving waters of Mother River because the priests drove the rightful king from the Two Lands. Now, he claimed, Mose came to wreak his final vengeance, on one and all.

It has been twenty days and still no word. That can only mean the sides are evenly drawn between those who back the High Priest’s choice and Horemheb’s appointees to the Council. Khary believes that the priests cannot deny the army commanders, and so will choose Ramses.

“That may be,” I agreed, “but why choose a man in his sixtieth year?”

“He was Horemheb’s right hand, and has sons who have sons of their own, evidence that his family’s roots have not become shriveled with age.”

“Like the roots of the great Amenhotep’s family?” I replied. He shrugged. “Do you think to spare me an insult to my wife? If so your concern is misplaced. There is no love between her and her mother.” Still he pretended ignorance, leaving me to worry more about what he did not say than what he did. We were finishing the inventory we do before ordering more medicinal roots and such from the trader who brings them by caravan from ships that ply the Red Sea, when a woman came in asking for the magic potion Khary had given a friend. She said her husband upbraided her for not bearing more children, leaving him short-handed in the fields. While Khary prepared what she wanted she regaled him with the story of another friend, who can see into the future and predicts the High Priest will become coregent to his daughter, who is of royal blood!

“Surely that bucket will never hold water,” Khary told her. ‘The High Priest’s daughter is not only married but a woman of twenty-four years, who has no need of a regent to guide her hand.”

I thought nothing could shock me anymore, but she did. “The husband is of no consequence and easily done away with, a commoner. And you are not of this world if you believe the Sacred Council would trust a woman of any age alone on the throne.”

“You believe it is true, then, that the two Queens lie together?” one of the men peering over his shoulder asked the amulet carver. I slowed my steps and Senmut did the same, pretending an interest in his wares to get a look at the scroll in his hands. Aset and Nebet had gone to Ipwet’s shop
to choose sandals for her to take back to Aniba, with Pagosh watching over them despite my wife’s objections.

“Whoever draws them always has spoken the truth before,” the amulet carver replied. “Why doubt him now? Better worry instead whether the Heretic’s Queen will name another woman her Principal Wife if she takes the throne. The only one who can satisfy both the priests and generals is the High Priest’s daughter, granddaughter of the great Amenhotep. What they should do is get rid of her aging husband and marry her to Ramses’ son.”

Senmut nudged my arm, and we moved on. “Do not listen to such rubbish!” he advised, keeping his voice low. “Aset tries to damage Nefertiti’s cause out of fear that her father might fall under her mother’s spell again.”

I shrugged as if it were of no consequence to me, but her picture-stories are on every tongue, wherever I go. Last week I saw them passed from a dockworker to sailors who carry goods from one town to another, even into Nubia. One shared with me a scroll in which she repeated the story of the sacrificial lamb, but this time after they cut his throat, the priests set his body afire. Out of the smoke a new shape began to take form—the lamb’s ears stretching to become arms while his haunches straighten into the fleshy thighs of a man. In the end, his head is one with the sun, and his hands reach toward the priests of Amen, who cringe in horror at what they have loosed on themselves. She had exaggerated the man’s thick lips and pendulous earlobes until he looked sad. Then, in the very next scene, angry flames leap from his eyes as he raises his bronze staff of kingship—the one with the serpents twining themselves upon it—and calls on his god to bring insects and pestilence down upon their heads.

It is because I know what feeds her stories about the Heretic returning to claim his throne that I cannot help shuddering at the thought of what she risks.

It was after dark when Ramose called us both to his high-ceilinged reception room. When we learned that he had sent Pagosh for Mena as well, we knew something threatened us all. “The Heretic’s Queen intends to seize the throne,” he said without preamble, watching Aset in case the news should knock her from her moorings, “without waiting for the seventy days of mourning to end.”

Aset’s breath came like the wind filling a sail. “How can she if you withhold the blessing of Amen?”

“She claims already to have Amen’s blessing. Otherwise, she could never have ruled as coregent. She also has the support of the mangy dogs who complain that they get nothing but crumbs from Amen’s table.”

“Priests of Amen?” I asked, to be sure I understood him.

Ramose nodded. “Renegades, along with the nomarch of Waset and others of the same ilk, who chafed under Pharaoh’s Edict because it cut into their take.”

“When will she make her move?” Mena asked.

“My men question one of the traitors even as we speak, but I doubt it will be long now. Thirty-two of the seventy days have passed already, so we must act.”

“It is all my doing,” Aset murmured, and sank onto the edge of the sitting shelf like a rag doll with all the stiffness washed out of her. “I have brought nothing but trouble down on you, Father, from the moment I came into this world.”

Ramose is not a demonstrative man, but he went to her and took both of Aset’s hands in his. “I would have you no other way, daughter. You have always pleased me beyond any other. I am the one who lost my way, until you came.”

She stared at their hands. “But I asked too many questions and went where I wasn’t supposed to. You said so yourself.”

His lips twitched. “I was wrong.” At that she looked up, then threw her arms around his neck and held on as she did when a child. “Come, we must see what is to be done.” She nodded against his neck, then gave him one last squeeze.