“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing… For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
~ C.S. Lewis
“Kepri, wake up!”
My eyes open in an instant.
“What is it?”
Oni is bent over me on the narrow cot where I first changed my clothes yesterday morning, where I’ve finally fallen asleep after leaving Rekhetre
It’s still dark—the middle of the night—but torchlight from the hall illuminates her silhouette and enough of her face to reveal something terrible. Shock? Terror?
I push to sitting, then stand. Grab her arms.
“Oni, what is it?”
“They are coming for you!”
“What?” I glance at the open doorway. “Who is coming? Why?”
But the stomp of sandals in the hall sends more fear into her eyes. She looks left and right, as if to hide, but there is nowhere in this tiny room.
Instead, she backs herself against the wall, just beside the door, as if she can remain unseen.
Two armed men round the corner, march into the room, and grab my arms.
“What is going on?” I try to twist away, search their blank faces.
“Oni, what has happened? Where are they taking me?”
I am met with silence and dragged from the room.
Rushed down the hall, I can barely keep up with their pace.
Across the midnight-dark courtyard garden.
Is that weeping coming from the shadows at the edge of the garden?
Through more unlit halls, then pushed toward walnut-colored double doors ahead.
As if anticipating our arrival, the doors swing open on stone sockets.
Inside, two more guards secure the door.
I am shoved inside the throne room.
My attention travels to the dais at the far end, a raised platform with a ramp leading to it. The throne sits atop this platform, the side of which is covered with red and blue reliefs of bound captives of various races on a background of yellow.
Braziers burn hot and bright in all corners of the room, striping the floor with light and reflecting off the gold leaf wrapped around the four granite columns that support the vaulted ceiling. The smell of spicy incense stings my eyes.
A bevy of women stand at the left wall, wailing as though they are being tortured.
And this must be Menkaure on the gold inlaid throne, crowned with the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, gripping the crook and the flail and fanned by dark-skinned Nubians wielding ostrich feathers. He is the image of an iconic seated statue of Egypt’s pharaohs come to life. His face is stern, or perhaps angry.
Two men stand before him, their backs to me, but at Menkaure’s heated look toward the doors, they widen and turn, as if inviting me forward.
Bahadur and Sadiki.
All this because Rekhetre has refused to come to Menkaure’s bed?
These two warned me I’d be exiled if she didn’t comply. But right now, exile doesn’t sound so terrible.
Except for the stomach-clenching desire to tell my mother that her daughter is not lost, not dead.
“Ask her.”
Sadiki’s words are for the king, but his snarl is meant for me.
I raise my chin, ready to answer whatever question, and stride forward.
“Ask her how she tried to abduct the royal wife, and when that failed, how she killed her.”
My knees turn to water. I stumble.
“Wha—?”
No one moves.
Even the weeping women at the edge of the room cease their keening.
“What are you saying?” I search Sadiki’s face.
Bahadur shakes his head in disgust.
The king leans forward, his arms draped over his knees. He is angry, yes. But it is anger born of shock, even grief.
My head swivels, feeling loose on my neck. “What has happened? I don’t understand.”
But I don’t want to hear the answer. Cannot bear it.
Bahadur turns on me. “Do not pretend you know nothing. Rekhetre, Blessed of Re, is dead. At no one’s hand but yours.”
“I did not—she is dead?” The word emerges as a hoarse whisper, as though barely scraped from my throat.
I cannot breathe.
I bend over double, hands on my knees, sucking in air.
No tearful reunion. No birthdays with fancy gifts and shared laughter.
“Ignore this ridiculous ruse, my king. This preposterous display of grief. She is no more saddened than she is surprised.” Bahadur’s accusation echoes and bounces from the throne room walls.
My legs give way, and I’m on my knees.
Weeping for the mother who never knew me.
“The Storyteller was the last one to be present in the royal wife’s chamber, my king.”
“No.” I croak the word into the darkness. “No, she told me to send for Bahadur. I told the servants outside her chamber when I left.”
I lift my head, still kneeling, to face the king. “She wanted more—more of his sleeping draught—”
“And you gave it to her, didn’t you?” Bahadur’s voice is ice. “After you stole it from me as I slept on the boat. The boat you tried to use to take her from us. You gave her all of it! Enough to kill her!”
I swipe at my tears and inhale, clamping down on my grief and embracing my outrage.
I stand again, shaking my head. Seeking Menkaure’s eyes.
“She was alive when I left her. She wanted Bahadur brought.”
Menkaure looks between the three of us ranged in front of him like an impossible choice.
“Why would I kill her?” My voice trembles. “I—I loved her.”
The pharaoh turns to Sadiki, as if the bodyguard holds the answer.
“I cannot say, Majesty, Divine Golden Falcon. She was found on her bed, an empty cup, smelling of her usual sleeping draught, at her hand.”
“Did she—did she appear—forced?”
Sadiki’s glare turns on me. “No. There was no indication of any sort of struggle. But perhaps her Storyteller convinced her—”
“Perhaps Bahadur left her with too much!” My voice rises, high-pitched.
The women grieving at the edge of the chamber remain silent.
The physician Bahadur holds up a hand as if to silence me. “Ridiculous. The royal wife was very familiar with the quantity needed, and the dangers of taking too much. Even if I had left more behind—”
“It was intentional.” These words—this realization—slips from me like an exhale, like all the air siphoned from my lungs.
All three men stare at me.
“She knew you would force her—that she would be expected to bear another child. She told you—” I whirl on Sadiki, jab a finger in his direction—”she told you she would not have another child, couldn’t bear the idea of another loss, of giving her heart to another—” My breath fails me, words strangled to nothing.
“You accuse me, then, Storyteller?” Sadiki rises to his full height, chin lifted.
“Why not? You hang about her like a—like a mother hen! You should have known how desperate, how despairing—”
“And that is why we brought you! To distract her with your stories!” Sadiki’s words are heated but laced with grief.
“Pah!” Bahadur’s scoffing derision is like an arrow shot into the conversation. “Stories she tells of a woman who lost her child!”
Menkaure shifts forward. “Is this true, Storyteller?”
I breathe out for a beat, glancing between the three men. “No. I mean, yes, but not like that—it was meant to be a hopeful tale—”
The king is on his feet, glaring down on me. “You were to help her forget the past! Not cause her to dwell in it, to live all of it over again!”
Heat rises in my chest. “You think she would ever forget? That a mother could ever forget the loss of her own child? Then you are a fool! There is no forgetting, there is only healing. And that was what my story was meant to do! To begin, at least, the healing.”
I have not been unaware of the gasps of the women at my disrespect, nor the way Sadiki and Bahadur have taken a step backward, as though to distance themselves from whatever lightning strike I have earned.
“Healing.” Menkaure repeats the word with a touch of sadness, but mostly scorn.
And for the first time—how has this not occurred to me yet?—I realize this man is my father.
“Healing,” he repeats. “Well then, you have failed, Storyteller. You have failed utterly.”
I try to suck in a breath, but the air catches somewhere between my lips and my chest, leaving me empty. Hollow.
I bow my head, and all the heat drains to the tiles beneath me.
“Yes.” I squeeze my eyes closed at the pain of it, at the utter unchangeableness of all of it, and the forlorn desolation of being un-mothered once again. “Yes. I have failed.”
My words spill like hard marbles, rolling and echoing through the silent vault of the throne room, left to reverberate as a pronouncement of guilt.
“Take her,” Menkaure finally says.
Where or to whom, I don’t know, as I will not open my eyes against the sting of tears.
But then my arms are gripped, and his meaning is clear.
I open my eyes to the hold of the two guards from the doorway.
I am being dragged backward, off my feet.
I do not care.
“She should be executed.”
This from Bahadur, his eyes on my throat, eyes like razor blades.
It is a perfect tableau. The three men arranged in angry symmetry, with Pharaoh at the center, higher on his dais, and the physician and bodyguard staring down the desperate and tear-stained woman near-to-fainting in the grip of two stone-faced guards. The huddled group of mourners at the wall, wide-eyed and whispering.
We all hang suspended here a moment, waiting for the artist to sketch us quickly, to be painted later.
And then the moment breaks, and Menkaure waves me away, away from his presence.
“Confine her until I make my decision.”
Is he considering Bahadur’s suggestion that I be executed?
The cold wriggle of fear in my belly gives me strength enough to gain my feet.
“Majesty—” It may be my last chance to defend myself.
But Menkaure is shaking his head, turning away, dropping to his throne to sit half-turned, his forehead propped with stiff fingers.
And the guards do not wait for his attention.