We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own… We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors. One of the things we feel after reading a great work is “I have got out.” Or from another point of view, “I have got in.”
~ C.S. Lewis
After the guard’s admonishment, I tumble onto my stool beside Rekhetre and grab for the stone cup set in front of me. Some kind of liquid has been decanted into it, and I’m thirsty enough to drink anything.
The cup contains wine, albeit diluted to taste like grape-scented water. I gulp it down, slaking my thirst in part, and glance at a serving girl with a jug.
She senses my meaning and brings more.
I sip this one with more care. The last thing I need is to get too tipsy to think.
Rekhetre continues to use a bit of bread to push a paste—perhaps lentils—around a stone platter, eating little.
Is she waiting for me to launch into a story? She seems unaware of my existence.
I take the opportunity to fill up on some kind of heavily spiced meat, roasted and still dripping with juices, and finish the watered wine.
But Rekhetre soon tires of the meal entirely and pushes her stool from the table with a deep sigh.
Sadiki is at her elbow in a moment, his body wedged between me and the royal wife.
“You are finished, King’s Wife, Blessed of Re?”
“Yes. I have no appetite. I will go to my father’s temple this morning. Come to my chamber when all is ready.” She stands, then glances down to meet my eyes. “Bring the Storyteller. She will accompany me to the sacrifices.”
Three other women stand alongside the royal wife and follow her from the dining chamber.
Sadiki grabs my upper arm—again—and pulls me to my feet.
I twist away. “That’s unnecessary.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Is it? I get the impression you are reluctant to fulfill your duties.”
I raise my chin to meet his gaze. “To her father’s temple, then?”
I have no idea where this temple might be. But Sadiki doesn’t seem the type to let me find my own way.
“Follow me.” He pivots toward the doorway and leaves me behind in three quick strides.
I trot to keep up, still awkward in this tight dress.
We exit the dining chamber opposite the way I entered, but the halls look much the same—frescoes of fish and fowl, with hunters stalking, arrows at the ready.
Sadiki pauses to bark orders at various men we pass in the halls, covering everything from the arranging of a litter to transport Rekhetre to a mortuary temple, bread and beer to be sent with her, and notification sent ahead to have a priest and a ram ready.
I grimace at this last instruction. Will I be forced to participate in some bloody ritual?
We emerge from the palace complex into a different garden, with another half-wall surrounding it.
I take in the horizon as far left and right as I can see, but there are no pyramids. We must have come out on the other side.
“Stand here.” Sadiki points at the ground, as though he expects me to step on that bit of gravel and remain inert.
I fold my arms over my chest and stare him down.
“Argh!” He throws his hands heavenward and stalks to a cluster of men at the next squared doorway into the palace.
His gestures, most of them pointed in my direction, speak volumes.
Several of the men glance at me, nodding.
And then he’s back, scowling as usual.
“You will attend the sacrifices at the mortuary temple with Rekhetre, God’s Wife and Blessed of Re. Do not think to step away from her presence. You will be watched.” He moves in closer, his breath warm on my cheek. “I expect to hear of her willingness when you return, so choose your words carefully.”
“Willingness?”
His eyes narrow. “Rekhetre must send word to her husband that she is ready and cheerful to come to his bed tonight. Menkaure, Lord of the Son of Horus, has waited long enough.”
Wow.
“And if she does not?”
“Then her Storyteller has failed to bring her happiness and set her mind aright.”
I lift my shoulders in a tiny shrug. I need more information, though it seems like a dangerous game to pursue.
Sadiki pulls back, his lips curled in a snarl. “You think you are above punishment?”
“No story I am able to tell can control Rekhetre’s actions.”
Sadiki’s hand flashes through air like a striking snake.
The slap across my cheek knocks me sideways.
I spin on the man, hand to my face. Mouth agape and stomach clenched in fear and pain.
“You will speak of the Royal Wife with respect!” A vein running from above his left eye back over his bald head bulges blue-green against his dark skin.
I have committed some breach of etiquette, perhaps with my familiar use of her name? But I have never been slapped by a man in my life. It takes all my restraint not to knee him in the groin.
He leans in once more. “If she does not return from the temple with word that she will visit her husband tonight, you will be cast out. And we will see how your confidence serves you when you have nothing but a city which despises you and the wide desert beyond.”
Sadiki disappears into the palace, but one of the group of men he’s instructed is at my side before I have time to think about sprinting out of here. This one is bald and bare-chested as well, but with aging crinkles at the corners of his eyes. When he smiles, he reveals a gap where an upper canine should sit.
He extends a hand toward the garden wall and half-bows. “This way.”
More polite, at least. Even if I’m still some kind of prisoner.
Beyond the wall sits what appears to be a small, square tent. The fabric is white, but heavy crimson tassels dangle from each upper corner, connected by swags of braided ropes in orange and yellow. From each swag hangs a series of jingly copper pieces, roughly circular like coins.
We pass through an opening in the half-wall, and I trip over one of two heavy wooden poles.
This, then, is the litter Sadiki called for.
I glance at the man accompanying me.
He pulls aside the curtain of the litter with a flourish, as though I am royalty myself.
Do I thank him? The wrong word can get you slapped around here.
I settle for a quick bow of my head and a smile and climb inside.
The heat dissipates immediately within the white cocoon, and I sink into cushions in teal and peach and heather, my eyes fluttering closed for a moment and the tension in my shoulders loosening a notch or two.
What am I doing here? Threatened with exile if I don’t convince a pharaoh’s wife to “entertain” him? If the Garden in the empty lot beside the bookshop has only been an entrance, as the Gardener implied, then this here, this crazy place I’ve landed, is meant for me. Some sort of test I’ll need to pass before I return. Though I have no way of knowing this for certain, every story I’ve ever encountered assures me.
To be ushered into this deeper place took a willingness to give the Garden the beginnings of my story as a gift without thought of my own need. And a readiness to push through the resistance that meets all creative work, which makes it feel too difficult to achieve. But I found both and brought my gift—a story of a woman accidentally falling into ancient Egypt.
What must I learn to leave this place?
Must I write my way back to the twenty-first century?
The litter rocks slightly, as though a hand has braced against it, and the curtain opens.
Rekhetre crouches her way inside and lowers herself beside me.
She’s more alert than I’ve yet seen her. Perhaps at breakfast she was still sleeping off the effects of the ancient version of Ambien.
Her smile for me is fleeting and only politeness, then her chin is tucked against her chest.
Without warning, the front of the litter vaults from the ground.
I grab Rekhetre’s arm with a gasp.
The back of the litter lifts to match the height of the front.
I snatch my hand from her arm. “I am sorry!” If speaking her name earns a slap, what does grabbing the royal arm get you?
But she laughs, a light and airy sound, and produces the first smile I’ve seen.
“One would think you had never been lifted in a litter, Kepri.”
I shake my head and shrug at my own foolishness.
“You are more serious than my last Storyteller.” She begins this announcement with a smile, but the final word emerges choked and broken.
“What was her name?” I smooth a cushion’s rumpled fabric, my tone casual.
The litter begins to move, a jolting but silent ride on the shoulders of unseen servants.
“Ekisi-betta. And Renpet loved her mightily. The Storyteller did not deserve what happened to her.”
The answer is whispered from a place of grief, and her head is turned to the opening of the litter, where shards of the palace garden flash past.
Renpet must be the baby she asked me about last night. Do you know something… about my baby? Is there confusion about Renpet’s whereabouts?
“We will make a sacrifice for Renpet today. Pray to the gods for a safe return.”
Where does a baby go?
And what happened to my predecessor?
Now is not the time to press for more information. Rekhetre’s cheeks are wet with tears.
For a Storyteller whose sole duty is to make the royal wife cheerful, I’m failing miserably.
Am I expected to begin a story now? My mind’s a blank.
But Rekhetre is silent again.
I will wait until asked.
We continue without speaking, and before many minutes there is a pitch forward and a jolt backward as the litter is lowered to the ground.
The curtain is swept aside, and a woman’s hand extends through the opening.
Rekhetre grasps the proffered hand and is pulled to the outside, to the servant girl with the white scar across her smooth cheek.
I am left to struggle through the cushions on my own, to make my way to standing.
But the view is well worth any struggle.
I turn a circle, aware my jaw has dropped.
We have been deposited in the walled outer courtyard of a temple. Behind us, two boats with square white sails float in a sparkling harbor abutting the courtyard. A narrow channel of water flows out of the harbor, to a canal beyond, presumably leading to the Nile.
But it is the area beyond the temple which staggers the imagination.
To my right, the Great Sphinx itself stares impassively across the desert, its face still intact, and its blue-and-gold-striped nemes headpiece glowing with fresh pigment. Below the massive pharaoh’s head and lion’s body, a swarm of bare-chested men wield stone hammers and copper chisels at the paws, which are still being hewn from a single piece of solid limestone.
The three pyramids hover over us, the middle pyramid linked to the Sphinx by a stone causeway ahead of us, and the third and smallest pyramid to our left. This third is Menkaure’s pyramid, and it’s clear now that it is unfinished. There is still a series of steps from the bottom to halfway up the base, where the smooth limestone facing obscures the steps all the way to the top. From this distance the men working on it look like a throng of ants building their hill.
What was I expecting?
I will go to my father’s temple.
Rekhetre’s words led me to believe we would visit some small temple within a city.
But no—of course. Menkaure’s wives were probably also his sisters, or half-sisters, at least.
The massive funerary complex and middle pyramid built to honor and bury Menkaure’s father, Khafre, are monuments built to Rekhetre’s father as well.
She is walking forward, toward the causeway.
I follow.
The servant girl, whose name I’ve learned is Oni, is at my heels.
We walk in silence, leaving the temple at the harbor behind us, advancing on another temple ahead, at the base of Khafre’s pyramid.
We reach the entrance hall in minutes and pass through to a columned court containing various tall niches with life-sized statues of the dead pharaoh tucked into each.
The acrid smell of burning tar reaches me, pricking a nostalgic memory of childhood bicycles and neighborhood friends riding the hot summer streets.
We cross to a deeper chamber, under a lintel inscribed with painted hieroglyphs—crowned falcons and cobras and vipers—in the oval of a cartouche.
Inside, a man stands immobile beside a flaming altar, his white linen dress and white sandals immaculate, a leopard skin fastened by a strap over one shoulder and hanging to his thighs. He is dark-skinned, heavily bejeweled, and ancient. The smell of roasting meat is thick in the air.
Thankfully, it would seem we’ve missed the animal’s execution.
The priest bows deeply from the waist, arms hanging before him as though he would touch his toes, in acknowledgment of Rekhetre.
“God’s wife.”
“You have laid the sacrifice?”
He dips his head. “As you instructed.”
Do I sense some defensiveness?
He meets my glance but quickly looks away.
Rekhetre approaches the altar. She does not require me to join her.
The priest turns to face the altar with her.
“You will say the prayers for my child.”
He immediately begins uttering something in words I cannot decipher.
A chill rises on my arms, across my neck.
Minutes pass and still the priest’s intonation continues.
Rekhetre’s back is to me, but she sways on her feet.
I am mesmerized by the chanting and by the royal wife’s slow and rhythmic dance which mirrors the dance of the flames.
And then it is over.
The priest’s voice cuts out, sharp and quick.
Rekhetre shakes herself as though stepping from a stupor. She turns, nods once to the priest, glances at me as she passes, and exits the temple.
I hurry to follow.
She is crossing the courtyard in long strides. But at the perimeter, she sinks to a stone bench as though her strength has failed.
I hesitate, then slide onto the bench beside her.
“Will it do any good? Any of it?” Her voice is a bare whisper, pleading.
I grasp her hand, a deep sympathy welling inside me for this young mother.
She studies our clasped hands. “Tell me a story, Kepri.”
I lift my eyes to the harbor and canal, to the little village on our right that was likely built for the workmen creating the great monuments on this plateau. To the Great Sphinx who posed riddles to the Greek Oedipus.
“Will you tell me your story, instead?” I broach the question carefully. “Sometimes it can help to tell of the things that hurt us most.”
She shrugs. “There is little to tell. Nothing to know. It is three months since someone stole my child from me, and took my Storyteller on the same night. They are both dead, I am certain. And I am tortured by it, knowing my baby’s spirit is lost, with no body to embalm and bury. Without the body, I cannot even hold to the hope of our meeting again in the afterlife.”
“Why would someone—”
“Every royal child is a target. And a threat to all other royal children.”
Oh, that is horrifying. Has Menkaure’s other wife, perhaps Rekhetre’s own sister, had this young woman’s child murdered to avoid any chance of seeing him placed on the throne?
I wrap an arm around her shoulders.
She leans into me, weeping. Clasps my other arm around her and rests her forehead on my shoulder.
“I fear—” Her voice is broken. “I fear I cannot live without Renpet.”
What can I do in the face of this kind of grief? Does story have the power to heal even this pain?
“I will tell you of something wonderful,” I say, whispering the words over her head.
She sniffs and waits.
“I will tell you of a woman who once walked through a special place—a magical garden—and when she emerged, she found herself far, far away. Not only in distance, but in years.”
Rekhetre lifts her head, gazes into my eyes.
I nod. “Yes, she found herself many centuries removed. Into the future. A future holding mysteries and wonder. And the things she witnessed were far beyond her imagining.”
“What things? What did she see?”
I smile. “I will tell you, but not here. Not now. Should we return to the palace?”
It’s a classic storytelling technique, the cliffhanger. Perhaps inspired by my location and the proximity to the Arabian lands of One Thousand and One Nights, where Scheherazade wove her tales, night after night, to keep the king awaiting the next installment and her head still on her shoulders.
Rekhetre shakes her head. “I want to sail.” She glances beyond the wall, as if certain to find someone.
Oni appears. She must have been waiting for such a signal.
“Send word to the palace. I will take a barque to Swenett and return in a few days. And I wish for Bahadur to join us.”
Bahadur. Where have I heard that name?
Ah, the physician. The one who administers the drugs I fear she has come to rely upon.
And returning in a few days? A trip upriver will mean missing Sadiki’s deadline and Rekhetre’s expected appearance in her husband’s bedchamber.
And what will that mean for me?