My people were glad that I was to bear a child, for it would be acknowledged doubly royal, as if it were not only mine, but Neyah’s also. The father of the child of a queen who is married to her brother is never named. And those of my people who are children in spirit and are not yet beyond the need of legends hold that the royal title, Son of Horus, when it is borne by such a child, is not only a title, but a truth.
My body had always sat lightly upon me, but now it held me to Earth, and when I crossed the Causeway to the Gods, I brought back no memory. I prayed that Neyah might return before my child was born, so that he should sit beneath the Scales, where now I was alone.
Women whose lovers are dead think on their memories; they have but to sleep to meet their love, yet Dio had left me even in my dreams. I could not love him, lest it should fill my heart and cloud my wisdom, which belonged to my people; and I could not hate him, for I bore his child, who would be worthy to rule over Kam.
I tried to think of my little span of love as though it belonged to another woman’s life; to look through other eyes than mine on two shadowy figures in a lover’s song.
When I left the temple, Thoth-terra-das had come with me as my scribe. To him I was still the one who had shared his love for words. Because of his office, he knew of my sorrow; and he said to me, “Remember, Sekeeta, how I taught you to burnish joy with words, so that its radiance might be a silver disc to reflect happiness into the shadow of your troubled days. When you mould your thoughts with words, you can see them clearly and separate from yourself, see the unfading radiance of past joy beside the fleeting littleness of grief. Take not sorrow for your companion to shadow your footsteps with its echoing tread, but turn it into a statue and walk on alone and leave it, a statue beside an empty path.”
And so for my sorrowful heart I sought the gentle benison of words.
In Minoas the white jasmin is flowering,
But I will not see it wither upon its branches.
The wind blows through the valley of wild tulips,
Scattering the petals, which have lost their brilliance.
The paths are purple with wild thyme,
But my feet shall not tread forth their sweetness.
The beaches are white in the sound of the sea,
But they shall bear no record of my passing.
The moon throws the shadow of the oleanders
Into a room that is as empty as my heart.
I must draw the gentle curtains of sleep,
Although no waterfall sings outside my window,
And so beyond my bitter Earth find peace,
Deeper than the drowsy contentment of doves.
When the time came for my child no longer to be housed in my body, Neyah was still three days’ journey from the Royal City.
I longed to be as other women, who bear their children alone upon the bed-place with the love of their husbands to give them courage. But my child must be born upon the royal birth-chair, while I talked to the priests in attendance to show that my will was master of my body and that pain could not make me cry out against its onslaughts.
With me was Ptah-kefer, who watched to see that all was well with my body. When the child was born he would look upon those who came to speed it upon its journey; and, seeing its companions, he would know if it were one long in years or young in spirit who returned to Earth. With me also was a healer priest, ready to strengthen the child if it were exhausted by the ordeal of birth. Behind me waited Maata to take the child and bathe it in warm oil and wrap it in charged linen, even as she had once been the first to take me into her arms. With her was Pakee, who would tend my body when I could relax my hold upon it and leave it to her care.
The robe of birth, clasped at the neck by a golden winged moon, hung round me to the floor. Under its wide sleeves I drove my nails into my palms; and it was quieting to the mind like a sword-thrust that makes the heart forgetful of sorrow. I felt the sweat running down my face like the feet of moths. I never knew that Earth held so much pain; in scarlet waves it flung itself against the cliff of my will, but before I was engulfed it drew back to gather itself a greater fury. No priest who is in a man’s body can know how fierce the pull of Earth can be upon a woman; yet must I talk of priestly things, my words unhurried and my breath uncaught.
I talked of the new highway between Men-atet-iss and Abidwa. I tried to think of each cubit of the road, holding my mind to the quiet peace of its shady length. I felt that my self-control was like a single flame, which I shielded between my hands while it was beset by a tempest that sought to quench it and leave me to drown in a dark sea of pain. I tried to think of all the multitudes on Earth, and to remember that what I was undergoing had been shared by the mothers of every one of them: but pain and fear are prisons in which we are alone.
I heard my voice still talking of shade-trees when, in the last onslaught of pain’s white-hot swords, my child was born. I heard it crying…and the eyes of the healer priest drove me from my body, and I knew peace.
Away from Earth I was refreshed, and when I returned to my body it was gentle to me. I opened my eyes and saw Pakee watching beside my bed. She told me that Ptah-kefer had said that my child would be a worthy holder of the Flail, and he should bear the name of Den, which he had once borne as a warrior, although now he had returned to Earth as a girl-child.
My daughter’s hair was the colour of pale copper, as if the copper of her father’s hair had been alloyed with gold; and for this I gave her as her little name ‘Tchekeea’.
As I looked at her I thought of Dio.…To him a fair white wall of stone, eager and waiting for him to carve upon it until it lived beneath his hand, was greater than any gift that I could give him; and gold was but another metal to be moulded into beauty. To him a temple depended, not upon its teaching, but upon the purity of its line. Although there was nothing I could give him, to his daughter I will give a throne, and I will never bear another child who could dispute it with her. He never knew how much I longed to leave my heavy heritage and put my happiness before the guidance of a great people. Now perhaps he will laugh to think that his child has been fathered upon the Gods. Women who come to me, telling me of their hearts, wonder at my understanding, thinking it is the fruit of great wisdom; they do not know it is only that I share the foolishness of women with them.
Neyah returned when my daughter was three days old. As soon as he reached the palace he came to my room. His eyes were on the child’s red hair as he stood beside the bed-place. In a voice cold and smooth as stone, he said, “Horus has grown scarlet feathers since I left.”
Then he turned to leave me. I called to him, and he unwillingly came back and stood waiting for me to speak.
I was lonely for him, and yet very angry. I thought, What of his smooth women? They are like four chattering parrots, gay-coloured and stupid. They live but to put kohl upon their eyelids and to paint their nails. Their bodies are smooth, but they are empty statues. They are sensuous as cats, and much less wise. When I go to their apartements they glide into the shadows when they see me. As long as I am Pharaoh they can be nothing. Why should I mind them? To him they are like a fine bow-case, or a keen-scented dog, or a chariot that turns more swiftly than the rest; and of course he is kind to them and brings them ivory and necklases and precious oils. They fear me. I am Pharaoh of the Two Lands; its boundaries are sea and desert and mountains. My spirit can fly from my body to the threshold of the Gods. Yet I am jealous of ordinary women, women whose dominion is the four walls of their room, whose throne is but the mats upon their bed-place, whose vision of attainment is no further than the body of a man. For me to envy them is as though I longed for the contentment of oxen munching in their stalls. How he must hate this child! He has three children and I know their mothers. But he shall never know the father of my child. Three of his nobles, a captain, and his chief scribe, all have this strange, this copper-coloured hair. He shall never know which he should greet as brother.
Long had I kept these thoughts well leashed. But now, when the pull of Earth was heavy, they slipped from the well-fenced pastures of the mind. For moons and moons my body had been a prison, and the sword of my will had been deep-shrouded in heavy cloth, so that unbidden thoughts broke down their barriers and trampled savagely within the secret places of my heart.
He waited for my answer.
I was so lonely for him, yet I said, “I think you have no red-haired woman. That is stupid of you: you would find that they give you strange pleasures you have missed.”
Then he left me, and I was all alone.
When Tchekeea was twelve months old, she fell ill of a plague that swept through the land; and it seemed that she must die of it. Her face and body were patched with livid blue, and first she would burn with a strange inward fire and then grow icy in my arms. She took no food, except milk and wine dropped through a reed between her lips.
Neyah stayed with her night and day, and in his arms she found peace, which she could not find in mine. And on the tenth day her dry forehead became cool and damp, and Ptah-kefer said that the danger had passed and she would live.
And when she became strong again, it was to Neyah that she ran for comfort for a hurt, or to share with him her pleasure in a toy. And the child that had once been a spear between us became the strongest link in the golden chain that bound us together.
I sorrowed to think that I had turned my face from his children, and I went often to the women’s quarters and talked with the secondary wives, and I learned to understand their way of thought. I took them presents and gave them treasures; and at first, when I saw their pleasure in a bracelet or a pleated robe or a jar of some new unguent, I gave it with secret scorn. But then I grew to know them and to understand that these things were to them as a spear is to the warrior, or a tablet to the scribe. And to their children I gave love and protection, even as Neyah had given it to Tchekeea.
And so I learned that jealousy is a great evil. For, to a jealous one, love is like a collar of silver that he clutches in his hands, fearful that a thief may take it; and if he loses it he thinks that all is lost. But each one of us is like a sun; and his rays, which be love and friendship, fall upon many; and all on whom they fall shall feel no greater warmth if their brother is standing in the shade.
And this will I teach to all men and to all women who share the sorrow that once was so bitter upon my lips.