Antiquities: Five Stories Set in Ancient Worlds Page 5

  Fanbearer on the right of the king;

  Master of the Secrets of the Palace;

  Overseer of Offices of the King;

  Overseer of the Generals of the Lord of the Two Lands;

  Seal Bearer of King of Upper and Lower Egypt;

  High Steward;

  Mouth Who Appears in the Entire Land;

  True Royal Scribe;

  One Who has Authority Over the Library;

  Overseer of all Overseers of Scribes of the King.

  As Pharaoh, I had many other titles. I ruled after He Who Shall Never Again Be Named, and spent most of my reign righting what had been unbalanced, restoring what had been cast down and neglected. I cast out corruption in my government and punished those who mistreated slaves or cheated the poor. I led military campaigns to reclaim all the lands lost during the reign of He Who Shall Not Be Named.

  At the end of my life, I looked back and was satisfied with all I had accomplished to the glory of Egypt and the honor of the gods. I had chosen my successor and trained him well; I left my kingdom in strong hands.

  I lived long enough to prepare my tomb with all the things I would need in the life to come: spells and prayers on the walls, all the instructions and the maps I would need to navigate to the land of light; pictures of me and my chief royal wife making offerings to the gods that would renew themselves so we always had tribute to offer; images of food and drink, of the perfect garden full of trees ripe with figs and dates, of the finest blue pool with its stand of papyrus, its leaves and flowers of blue lotus, and the shadows of fish below its surface; pictures of all the things I most liked to do in life: hunting lions from my best chariot, bird-hunting in the marshes with my wife, our dead daughters, and our cat, a banquet with guests and musicians, sailing on the Nile.

  Also within my tomb I put many ushabtis, statues of helpers who would do all labor in the afterlife; and fine furniture, jewelry, and clothes, perfumes and ointments, all the tools of the everyday — everything I could imagine needing in the life beyond.

  My chief royal wife died a year before I did. I saw that she had all the necessary ceremonies and preparations, and laid her to rest in my tomb, in hopes that we would meet again.

  I set in my tomb statues of myself and my wife. I had our cartouches carved on the walls so that our names would live forever.

  My priests performed all the necessary rituals for me after my death. Forty days my body lay in the preserving salts, and afterward my priests anointed it, speaking the right words, and wrapped it in pure linen, placing amulets among my wrappings where they would protect and aid me.

  My priests spoke the Opening of the Mouth for me and touched me with the sacred adze to loose all my parts from the bonds of Seth so that I could use my senses after death. They sang the hymns that counseled my heart not to witness against me, and all the hymns that would let me change shape, and eternally make offerings to the gods in the afterlife. They placed my body within its three coffins and then into its granite sarcophagus. They closed my tomb and sealed it with my name.

  In the underworld, I went before the Forty-Two Assessors in the Hall of the Two Truths with confidence, and declared my innocence of evil to each truthfully. As my heart was weighed on the scales of Maat, I did not worry that the Devourer of Hearts would eat it and cast me forever out of the afterlife. And indeed my heart balanced with the Feather of Truth, and the Devourer let me pass.

  After the judgment, I went before the Throne of Osiris and was made welcome into the life to come.

  In my tomb the six parts of my soul rejoined each other: the five names that combined to make my one name; my body, made to last forever by the attentions of my priests after my death; my shadow; my akh, that part of me from the realm of the gods, which is eternal; my ka, the vital force that gave me life and held my personality, the spirit that lived in my heart; and my ba, the part of my soul with the freedom to wander, which had left my body when I died and did not return until I had safely passed all the tests of the gods.

  Then I knew paradise.

  My wife had also successfully passed through the Hall of the Two Truths. She waited for me in the land of light, and even as our hymns had said, we were restored to greenness, to youth and vigor.

  Every day the priests brought food to the altar in my mortuary temple so that my ka could feed. Every day chantresses and dancers came into my sanctuary and performed so my ka could watch and listen. My wife and I attended and enjoyed.

  Between these devotions, we lived as I had planned, with all the images of the tomb made real, as fragrant and pleasant as anything I had known in my previous life. I hunted lions in the desert but did not suffer from the heat or sand. My wife and I hunted ducks in the marshes and brought them home for the ushabtis to prepare.

  Each day we performed the rituals of offering to the gods. Each day we received the blessings of the afterlife. When my wife and I went sailing on the river, there was always a breeze, and always it was scented with the spices of the homeland. Every meal we ate, whether offered by priests or prepared by the ushabtis, tasted divine.

  Each day was precious. Day piled on day, and I treasured them all.

  Gradually, my wife and I stopped sending our kas to the mortuary temple, for gradually, there was less there to eat, less music to delight us, fewer people performing the funerary offices in our names. It did not matter, for we had everything we needed inside our house of eternity, which was a whole world of joy, forever.

  And then the promise of eternity was broken.

  “Where is your vulture pectoral?” I asked my wife one perfect morning.

  She placed her hand to her breast. “I don’t know. What has become of your golden flies of valor necklace?”

  “Where are your carnelian earplugs?”

  “Where is our blue faience senet set?” She set her hand against my chest. “What has become of your green jasper heart scarab?”

  I looked away from my wife, gazed from our columned portico across the river toward the desert above the cliffs, where the sun was just rising, its light driving the stars before it from the sky.

  “Our table,” she said. “Our breakfast. Our servants.”

  I looked toward the inner court, where at this time every day the ushabtis set our breakfast: bread, beer, pomegranates and figs and dates. No table stood there, and there was not even the smell of bread in the air, only the scent of dust. I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, we were in darkness, and I stood on my head.

  “Djeser!” cried my wife.

  “Mut!” I tried to reached for her. Oh, how weak were my arms! How dark were my eyes! How came we to be in the land of night? Had our shadows swallowed us?

  She wailed, a high thin cry like a mourner in a funeral procession.

  I reached for my beloved but found her not. After a moment, I fell. I lay on my stomach. I searched for strength, and found only a little. Never had I been so weak, not even when I had died.

  I crawled toward my wife. “Osiris. Son of Nut. Ruler of Eternity. King of Gods. Lord of the Living, and King of the Dead! Help us, we pray,” I said. I felt feeble and battered and older than I had in life, and my nose and mouth were full of dust. My wife’s wail went on without interruption.

  How had we lost our morning and our light? Had we done something to offend the gods?

  There was a taste in the air, the sour taste of deceit and betrayal, desecration.

  I found my wife's hand and gripped it. Her skin was dry and rough; I could feel all the bones beneath it. She stopped wailing and choked, then sobbed.

  Then we were gathered up into the hands of the god. He set us back into our morning in our house on the west shore of the river. He did not speak to us, but left us there.

  Mutnodjmet and I held each other. In the embrace, we felt as though we were still ourselves, but when I finally released her and we stared into each others' eyes, I saw that she was old, and her hair was white as it had never been in life, when we had re
course to our favorite wigs and all the powers of the dyers’ arts.

  “Djeser,” she whispered, staring at my left side below my ribs. She traced the incision the priests of Anubis had made to remove my inner parts. In all our life since death, that wound had been invisible; the priests had placed a wax plate incised with a wadjet eye over the cut, and made it go away.

  I stroked her hair and studied her age in the lines of her face, the sag of her chin and breasts.

  She smiled. Her beauty was still there.

  Holding hands, we went into our house. All our treasures were gone: our games, our jewelry, our furniture, our servants.

  On the back wall of the house, though, were the images I had had scribed onto the walls of my tomb: the loaves of bread that stood for a thousand loaves; the offering trays piled high with haunches of beef, plucked ducks, figs, grapes, lotus blossoms; stands with bottles of wine in them...there were our names, and there were our images, images of us doing things we loved.

  I went to the wall and touched the image of bread, felt its crust come alive under my hand. I closed my fingers over it and pulled it from the wall.

  I held a loaf of bread in my hand.

  My wife touched it. She stared up at me.

  I broke the loaf and handed half to her.

  We ate.

  The bread was not as fresh as that baked every morning by our ushabtis, nor even that the priests had left for us in the mortuary temple, but it was bread. It was sustenance.

  My wife took figs from the wall and handed one to me. If it tasted a little dusty, still it was sweet.

  Best of all, when we studied the wall after our meal, all the images were still there.

  We had lost much, but we still had life.

  We were old, but we grew no older.

  The sun still shone on us; we still had the river, the desert, and each other. And so we lived, as day piled on day.

  One day I woke and she was not there.

  I knew before I opened my eyes. Her warmth, her breath, her presence, all aspects of her were gone.

  I opened my eyes and discovered that I was gone.

  Where I have gone, I do not know. The air tastes different, and the voices I hear speak in tongues I do not recognize. The world is cold. I am without the power of speech or movement; all my powers except those of perception have vanished. People I do not know touch me without my permission, and worse.

  It comes to me after a short eternity in this place that they have violated what little of my soul is left.

  My name is not here. My body no longer responds to me. My akh has fled, so that I cannot even approach the gods with a plea for help or mercy. The lights are brighter here than any I have seen before, so that my shadow is strong beneath me, but it cannot move unless someone moves me. My ka flickers. My ba has taken its outer shape: a human-headed bird, the form of exploration. It sits on my chest, staring into my face.

  I see in my ba’s eyes that I no longer look like myself. When my ba can no longer recognize me, it will leave me and wander the earth, homeless for eternity.

  Here comes the woman again, the one in a white tunic. She holds a knife in her hand. It is not the first time she has come to me with a knife.

  My ba’s head lifts. It stretches one wing, then another.

  As the woman leans forward and touches my side with the knife, my ba takes flight. It rises up through the vault of the ceiling and is gone.

  The woman is the Devourer of Hearts.

  I let my ka blow out.

  Then I am flying, high above a city larger than any I have ever seen.

  The world is so wide!

  Who was I a moment ago?

  It is gone. It is gone.

  Below me sun gleams on the river. I fly south.

  The Listeners

  It was hot in the women's quarters under the roof, even though the sun had gone down an hour ago. No breeze came through the small, high window to stir the air and give a breath of night. The flames of the oil lamps were steady as weighted threads. The air smelled of dust, sweat, and olives. The mistress, her eight-year-old daughter Panthea, three other female slaves, and Nysa sat spinning thick thread for winter cloth on this summer evening.

  They had the door of the main room open, listening to the men in the men's room below. The men had finished their meal at dusk, and afterward a hetaera named Kalonike played melodies for them on a double flute. She was a pleasure woman famous for her musical ability; only the wealthiest could afford to hire her. The master was entertaining someone important tonight.

  Nysa, at fourteen the youngest slave in the household, loved the melodies; she tried to hold them in her mind. Her mistress wouldn't allow her to get out her flute and try them tonight, not while the women were all listening for news, not while the men might hear. Nysa teased brown wool into thread between her fingers as her drop spindle whirled between her knees. Some women's work could be done in silence, the better to listen to the world below.

  The music ended. Coins clinked against the mosaic floor of the men's room, and the soft voice of the famous hetaera murmured thanks and good night. One of the male slaves escorted her across the courtyard and let her out through the gateway.

  Now the men were talking, but they were only one or two bowls drunk, not loud enough for the women to hear the conversation.

  "Nysa," the mistress said, "Go find out what the men are saying."

  Nysa twisted her thread in a loop so it wouldn't unravel, then set her drop spindle on the floor, stood, and stretched. She slipped out the door and crept along the upper balcony, which looked out over the central courtyard. Lamplight spilled from the open door of the men's room across the way, lying like dusty gold over the family altar, where the household made a daily offering to Zeus and their patron gods. Shadows and laughter came from the room. Nysa huddled against the railing of the balcony perpendicular to the men's room, hugging her knees and peeking through the slats for a glimpse of the forbidden. The men reclined on couches around the walls of the room, with small tables in front of them. Multiple-wicked lamps on the tables warmed plates of food. Two of the male slaves walked from table to table, offering watered wine and a platter of olives to the diners.

  "Doesn't it trouble you to treat people like animals?" asked one of the men. He had a barbarian accent she couldn't identify.

  "What are you talking about? Hey, Megakles, bring that wine pitcher over here," the master said.

  "These slaves," said the barbarian.

  Kyprios came out of the room, an empty platter in his hands. He crossed to the kitchen with it. He was the handsomest of the male slaves in the household, but he knew his own beauty too well. He used it to get things from free men and citizens. Sometimes he came away from men's nights with gifts or coin. He never shared.

  "We don't treat slaves like animals," said the master. "I don't let donkeys into my house. I don't let lions work in my kitchen. I don't let hounds weave my wool or press my olives or tread my grapes. We treat them like slaves. They are far more worthwhile than animals."

  "In my country, we do not keep slaves."

  "Your country must be poor, then. Megakles, pour more wine for our untutored guest. Have you ever tasted such a lovely flavor? We grow the best grapes in the region."

  "Drakon," said Aristides to the master, "I noticed your youngest female slave in the market yesterday, attending Megakles while he shopped. Will you breed her soon?"

  "Nysa? I don't know. Perhaps. She's fourteen; old enough, surely. She has a sharp eye — spots cheats at the market faster than anyone else in the household, has a swift hand at weaving, and she's musical — ”

  "And attractive," said Aristides. He was the master's closest friend. Nysa hid in the women's quarters if she could whenever he visited. She liked neither his eyes nor his hands on her. "If she were a free woman, I might write poetry to her. Since she's not, may I pay you to use her?"

  The master laughed, and murmured something too low for her to hear. Then he sa
id, "She has the makings of a useful and productive slave. I don't know that I want to spoil her with childbirth yet."

  "I could make it worth your while," said Aristides. "For your love of me, won't you grant me this boon?"

  Nysa's hands clenched into fists.

  "Do you want your child to nest in the womb of a slave?" asked someone else. "Let it be born a slave? Put it in your wife's womb, where it belongs."

  Yes, Nysa thought. Do that.

  "My wife has given me three fine sons," said Aristides. "What I want now is pleasure, and that girl has the look I like, almost a boy in her slimness, and her face is radiant with youth, and unblemished."

  "You speak like a man in love," said the master. His voice had softened. Aristides was his oldest friend, and could coax him into or out of anything.

  Fear lodged in Nysa's liver.

  "Hsst!"

  She glanced up. Eudokia, the senior female slave, beckoned to her from the doorway of the women's quarters. Nysa rose and crept to her. They went over the threshold and shut the door gently behind them.

  "What are they discussing?" asked the mistress in a low voice.

  "Nothing of merit. No politics, no business," Nysa murmured.

  "No philosophy?"

  Nysa smiled. They were all entertained by philosophy, but the mistress had a hunger for it. Whenever Nysa returned from the market, the mistress commanded her presence and made her repeat whatever strange theories the men in the stoa had been talking about that day. Some free men could spend all day talking to each other in the shade between the columns of the stoa; they didn't have to hurry from one vendor to the next to supply the household with fresh fish or figs or goat's cheese. "No philosophy," Nysa said. "They're only speaking of women not their wives. There's some barbarian there who doesn't know our customs."

  "Drakon said he invited a wood trader to his symposion tonight. Someone from the north, almost over the edge of the world. Did my husband speak of a woman not his wife?" The mistress's tone sharpened on the last question.

  "No. It was Aristides only."

  "Aristides." The word was cold even in the hot night air of the women's quarters. Nysa had not known that the mistress, too, disliked her husband's closest friend.