Chapter 13
BRIGHT PRINCE
“Have you found her?” Khufu’s question assaulted Hordedef on the prince’s first step into the God-king’s suite. “Stand, fool, and answer me.”
The prince stopped halfway into his kneel. He rose, blanching. “Sire, the woman—”
“Use her name.”
“Theormi has not been seen by anyone in the palace these two weeks.”
Khufu tossed up his hands and began stalking like a caged lion. “Did she just drift out of time?” He whirled around at his son. “Where are your wits? You were clever once. Now idiocy reigns in you. Is this another worm devouring me?” From a shelf on the wall, Khufu grabbed his latest journal and dashed it across the floor.
“Father, I seek to please you. Yet I always fail.”
“We arrived home at midnight to find Theormi gone. It is now one hour past dawn. Yes, you do fail.” Khufu spanked the suite’s pond, jewelfish scattering and water splashing against the wall twenty feet away.
“Majesty, I can say this: I believe the Queen’s guardsmen are involved.”
Khufu spun again toward Hordedef. “The Queen. This smells of the Queen. Why did you hold this back?”
“Theormi’s maid, Buhra by name, last saw Theormi in her lady’s rooms when Buhra received a summons from the Queen’s captain. When she had completed the trivial task and returned, Theormi was no longer in her suite.”
“Bring me the captain.”
“Sire, he is at the country estate.”
“Then—”
“Yes, Sire, I’ve dispatched a runner to command the captain’s appearance. Also, Sire, I have found that Prince Merhet is also at the estate.”
“Well, good. He’ll protect her.”
“Sire, there is more. Guards that night report Merhet’s peculiar departure. Heru ordered the guards into his suite and indicated his bed where Merhet lay. He ordered them to,” Hordedef read from his journal, “‘escort Prince Merhet to his estate and maintain him there until the moon became full. The God-king must not see him this way. Don’t speak with him. He’s muddled, correct?’”
The King gaped. “Prince Heru ordered this?”
“The guards took notice of a bloody bandage on Merhet’s hand. Heru explained it away as, ‘That’s his unbalance.’ He meant, both of them supposed, that Merhet had committed some self-injury. Heru repeated his instruction that they should not return Merhet to the palace until the next full moon.”
“Full moon?”
“The guards conveyed him to the estate until the Queen’s captain arrived and directed the guards to return to the palace.”
“Where is Heru?”
God-king Khufu and Prince Hordedef tramped to Heru’s suite. Khufu pushed open the doors. In the dark, shades drawn, Heru slept.
“Still sleeping, prince?” Khufu said, loud enough to wake the prince with a brief squeak of alarm. Khufu charged toward his son’s bed and threw open the gauze curtains from the canopy. “A world dances without you.”
Pulling his nightgown’s hood around his face, Heru sat upright but looked away from his father.
“What have you heard about Theormi’s disappearance?”
“And the strange talk,” Hordedef added, “about Merhet gone to the estate?”
“Strange voices?” Heru’s fingers climbed inside his hood to his ears. “They’re speaking of Theormi.”
“What’s that?” Khufu’s face grew hot.
Hordedef said, “Wake up, brother. This is important. We suspect a plot in the palace regarding the lady Theormi. I must bring it into the open to clear myself with the King.”
“You come here because ... you suspect someone?”
“Yes, someone close to the King, you see. Perhaps only a servant, someone capable of physical violence, who—”
Heru tugged the hood tight around his face.
Khufu pointed at the window. “Hordedef, open the shades. Let Ra uncover the sand from this skink.” Hordedef moved to the window.
Heru cried out, “I was attacked.”
Not yet reaching the shades, Hordedef turned back to him. “What? Say again.”
“I was attacked two nights ago—in this chamber.”
“Heru,” said Hordedef coming nearer.
The younger brother pulled back, waving away Hordedef. “No, I’m fine.”
“Why didn’t you report this?”
“Ah ... I’d taint a member of the royal family.”
The King flinched. “What are you saying?” He stepped before Heru.
Three times Heru shunted away his head as Khufu followed to the left and right, meaning to read his son’s face. The prince placed a hand to his nose and mouth. “Whom do you suspect?”
Hordedef rubbed his jaw. “Well, Shaf has the most to gain—”
Heru’s head shot up. He glared into Hordedef’s eyes.
“Are you saying,” whispered Hordedef, “It was Shaf who attacked you?”
Khufu’s arm whipped out. “No.”
Heru said, “I intended not to speak of this. I am the honest twin.”
Hordedef cocked his head. “Shaf’s greed is real, yes, but attacking one of our brothers? This is beyond him.”
Heru shouted, “He’ll attack Khufu next.”
Khufu and Hordedef stared at Heru.
Heru’s voice hushed once more. “You can imagine Shaf as suspect, can’t you? Can’t you, Hordedef? His ambition attacked you. Attacked you. Think of it.”
“He has had secret mercenaries, but—”
“Good, Hordedef.”
Khufu groaned. He felt his heart being chopped on a kitchen block.
Hordedef said, “If the larger plot is against the God-king, then the Ptah priests must figure into this.” His eyes fired bright. “The mercenaries. The additional payroll. Could Shaf’s mercenaries be the priests’ agents? In exchange for Shaf’s agreement to re-open the temples when he is King? Is he that bold?”
Khufu’s face and upper body twisted away from the two princes. “No son of mine ... never.”
The second prince rubbed his temple. “What proof is there?”
Heru nodded. “Shaf will kill our father the first night of the next full moon. Ten nights away.”
Khufu’s face turned red. “How can you possibly know this?”
Hordedef spoke more to himself than his brother. “Why with the full moon?”
Heru shook his head. “Help me, Hordedef.”
Khufu chopped a hand through the air. “Halt this grisly speculation about your own brother.”
“Sire, shouldn’t we proceed—to protect you? I must once and forever prove myself to you. My worth.”
Khufu squeezed shut his eyes. He felt the night’s Underworld creep into and redden his heart.
Hordedef said, “The Ptah priests intend to mock the sun religion with the moon in its full phase. They might claim, ‘Witness the puny Ra religion, its god on earth is struck down by Ptah’s moon.’ With it, Shaf casts suspicion back on the priests, veiling him.”
“Brilliant, Hordedef,” the twin prince said. “That’s Shaf’s plan, certainly.”
Hordedef pounded a fist on his palm. “That would be just Shaf’s shrewdness.”
Khufu charged Hordedef, shoving both hands at the chest. “Ma’at! Where’s your proof?” He then snarled at Heru. “You accuse a prince? Speak.”
Heru pulled the linens around his face as his hands went to his ears. His voice muffled , he said, “That night, I awoke to my own scream and Shaf pinning me in his assault. I spat blood. I couldn’t scour my mouth of it. It choked me. I opened my mouth to the sun. My tongue flowed with thick blood, thick, bright, black blood.”
Khufu felt his mouth drop open.
“Shaf cooed to me, ‘Quiet, Heru. Don’t talk. Hear the voices. The voices know the purdah that takes Theormi from us while Khufu breathes. Heru, I know what to do.”
Khufu knew this crazed rambling. From Heru’s twin Merhet. Instantly, Khufu’s blood boil settled from
rage to sorrow. He ached as if sparrows were dying on perches of his bones.
“Hear the moon’s foul oaths,” Heru continued. “I could not block out its bloody voice. I spat faster and harder. The sky lit up in silver, and the moon went black. Its luster flooded my mouth, eyes and pores like a black-blood waterfall.”
“Brother, brother,” Hordedef said.
To Hordedef, the King gestured for them to leave. “Heru, say no more. Rest. Rest now.”
Heru muttered something Khufu was glad he couldn’t hear.
In the corridor, Khufu said, “Son, your brother suffers the disease of his twin.”
“You know of Merhet’s malady? We thought we’d hidden it from you.”
“You attempted the impossible.”
“I’m sorry, Father. I’ll see to Heru.”
“The King is to blame. His perfecting love withheld,” Khufu glanced at Hordedef, “withheld from his children. Send a contingent to the estate with this news. Return Theormi to me.”
Two hours past dawn in the eastern delta Sheps estate, Theormi feared the worst; the Queen’s guards were laying the bed in her chamber that served as her prison cell. Until this moment the guards had frustrated her every comfort during her imprisonment. She had just roused from a hard night on the floor.
When the guards had finished, the Queen’s captain barked at Theormi, “Get on the headrest.”
Theormi didn’t move.
Sharply but pausing between each word as if speaking to an imbecile, the captain said, “Get on the bed and put your head on the headrest.”
In the otherwise bare chamber, decorated with a desert hunt mural, Theormi edged around the low bed and, fully dressed, sunk under the bed linen. She placed the back of her head on the alabaster rest. All the while, her eyes measured the captain.
“Throw your clothes out.”
She told him, “When the King kicks your head into the lake, your body won’t be with it.”
“Do as I say.”
Squirming, Theormi untied her robes and underclothes. She dropped them to the floor.
Checking that he’d readied everything, the captain exited. Ten minutes later, he returned. He and five guards shuffled into the room carrying a hooded man—prostrate as if under a spell. His silken robes indicated a prince. With a fell chill, Theormi feared it was Merhet. The Queen would have set up this madness. They set him on the bed, and at once an odor from him, thick and foul like spoiled fruit, washed over her. The weight of it dragged her down like an undertow.
Pulling the linen over the prince, the captain smirked. “In the morning, you will be as good as married to good Prince Merhet.”
“I am Khufu’s favorite.”
“The Queen decreed you a harlot.” Her captain spread wider his greasy smile. “Moreover, the King has been sent your letter stating your concern for his suffering all of your wanton ways, so, you have accepted Prince Merhet’s fine offer of marriage.”
One mad folly after another. “These lies won’t stand. They can’t.”
“When the Queen speaks, her words establish truth.”
Theormi fought against the feeling of being buried alive. She devised a different argument. Nodding at Merhet, she said, “The prince is hurt or ill.”
“That’s just his finger.”
Theormi saw the bandaged hand.
“When her Majesty learned that Prince Merhet was making for the estate, she commanded me after him. His witlessness simplified my task.”
Theormi’s confusion buzzed in her. “But he can’t ... if he’s not awake, he can’t be a husband.”
“Ah, exactly the beauty of the Queen’s design. I will testify that you, naked as a maggot, slept with the prince throughout the night. At dawn, you will be married.”
To Theormi, the headrest seemed like a vise.
“Sleep sweetly, copulators.” He strode from the bedchamber.
She tried to stare through the ceiling for the sun that looked upon Khufu. The prince cast his nauseating net over her. It sucked her down. She slumped into a ghastly fog.
That smell, what is that?
Theormi’s recognition of an odor began to stir her mind. Was the prince dead? Was he moldering? She shook her head and then slapped her face. Sharpening her senses, she gained enough clarity to edge up and scan the prince. He was still breathing. This isn’t death. This odor ... I’ve smelled this before. Something near me. A memory. Fetid, sickening memory.
Again, Theormi began to slump into stupor. But realizing it, like a dousing of cold water, alerted her: It’s ... yes—nightshade.
Nightshade had all but killed her. She endured that odor for weeks.
She felt her insides swirl in opposing directions. She was poisoned—again.
The guards. They must have drugged me.
No, Theormi wasn’t poisoned; she inhaled nightshade’s fetid garlic odor, its stench nauseating her. She leaned toward the prince. Merhet’s own wet breaths billowed out the odor. Her stomach turned. Nightshade, not an injury, had disabled the prince. He reeked of it.
Theormi recalled the Per-O doctors’ ministrations when she was under nightshade’s influence. She retrieved water and a towel. Removing Merhet’s hood, she wiped his face and dripped water into his mouth. She wondered whether his face wasn’t leaner than she remembered. With much more color? This face had welcomed rather than disdained the sun. Theormi reasoned it out. This was Heru, Prince Heru, Merhet’s twin.
Prince Heru would have had nothing to do with her capture.
“Guards! Guards!”
“Come along, Mehi, come along,” said Royal Magician Djedi, towing his friend by the elbow to the Per-O gate three hours into the morning.
“What’s this about?” Mehi stopped altogether. “They’re not going to let me in there.” Spread across a hill large enough only for the palace’s many levels and annexes, the Per-O could have contained four of Paser’s estates. Its rectangular, whitewashed mudbrick shapes shone so brilliantly that it might have been polished limestone or a complex of ice—blocked and frosted like in a mythical tale.
“It’s what I had in mind when I requested Khufu to make the proclamation.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Why not take me to one of Khufu’s new schools like the one in Hituptah?”
“You’ve been here before.”
“I barely remember that.”
White robe fluttering in a breeze, Djedi poked Mehi through the gateway. “Getting you to move is like giving birth to hooks.”
The guard said, “Old man Djedi, where’re you heading with that sprout?”
“I told you,” Mehi said.
The magician tugged his white beard as he turned, walked back and leaned at the guard as if aiming himself. Djedi held out the papyrus roll proclamation and said something Mehi couldn’t hear. His friend rejoined him as the guard called after him, “So I’m sorry, aren’t I?”
“What did you say to him?”
“I said, ’Call a magician an old man and risk your teeth dropping into your next bowl of porridge.’”
“That papyrus won’t get us in. Somebody will stop me.”
Djedi gritted his teeth. “Your poor mother.” He snagged the back of Mehi’s neck and ushered him through the courtyard of palms and flamingos, ponds and grapevines. Aromas of sugar and greens mingled in the air. Djedi’s hand as his hub, Mehi spun about, trying to take all it in.
The magician showed the document to the two palace entrance guards. Instantly, without so much as a change of expression, they opened the two twelve-foot tall doors. Djedi glanced at Mehi. “Some believe in the God-king’s written word, even if you don’t.”
Mehi stepped into an entryway where twenty-foot high columns receded fifty feet down a corridor. Colors of crimson, emerald and saffron depicting falcons, ibis, bulls, geese and lions in the delta covered the columns and ceiling. He gawked like the commoner he was. “I don’t belong here.”
Djedi squared himself to Mehi and clasped his friend’
s shoulders. He aimed his double-angled eyes into Mehi’s eyes. “Know you belong here as much as a prince. That is what the proclamation proclaims.”
Mehi gulped.
“Tell me you believe it.”
Mehi nodded once.
Djedi straightened. “I suppose that will have to do.”
The pair coursed onto the corridor’s turquoise and gold tiles. Mehi swiveled in the expanse and decoration, bowing to officials and servants alike. Along an open courtyard that featured a pool of turquoise water, Djedi and Mehi stopped at one of the corridor’s several doorways. Inside, on the floor, sat ten boys of different ages, all younger than Mehi. They regarded his peasant clothes up and down in. He pretended not to notice.
“Wait here.” Djedi went to the schoolmaster at the head of the class.
The master scanned Djedi’s papyrus and then the creature at the doorway. His thin, gray eyebrows stiffened—as did his face. Mehi shrank as small as a mouse.
Djedi returned and curled his arm around Mehi’s back. “You’ve missed the initial lessons, but you’ll catch up. Learn all you can. You said you wish to burst your borders like your brother has, with a career that doesn’t risk you on the pyramid. What bursts borders more than learning?”
Mehi thought, But I like the pyramid. Still, the withdrawing Nile had parted from him for another six months.
“From now on, no dawdling. Class starts at dawn.” Djedi winked at Mehi and shuffled off.
An attendant handed the commoner a writing reed, water pot, papyrus and palette with its red and black inkwells. In Mehi’s hands, these objects seemed as magical as those in Djedi’s bag. He found a place to sit on the floor.
Mehi was setting the tools on his thighs as he saw the other boys had when a slender man with pale face and glistening eyebrows entered the chamber. The schoolmaster moved aside. The elegant man glided to the front of the class with the grace of a royal felucca. When he faced the students, Mehi saw that sharpness in his eyes separated him from common men.
The schoolmaster announced, “Children, you are very fortunate indeed, for lecturing you today and in subsequent days is a master you naturally admire, the royal son of the great God-king, second to the vizier, Royal Prince Hordedef.”
Mehi gasped. He was within steps of a prince. Not only that, this was the very prince who wrote the Instruction of Wisdom his mother had him recite during his lessons.
“Some of you know him as ‘Uncle’ or another familial reference, but in this class you shall address him as ‘Your Honor.’”
“Sons,” began the great prince, “you pursue the noble career of scribe.” The prince’s lips moved with his words in the same grace as his stride. “Palace, pyramid and temple require the scribe. Educated in law, trade and diplomacy, you may aspire to the height of vizier himself.”
“Tu,” Mehi mouthed.
One arm behind his waist, Prince Hordedef crossed the front of the chamber in measured strides. “If a man records his thoughts with ink and papyrus, he achieves clarity. Clarity stimulates creativity. And creativity begets a better man. We will commence with a drop water to honor legendary Vizier Imhotep, the patron of scribes.”
Mehi copied the boys’ dabbing water onto their papyrus sheets.
“Here is your lesson.”
The boys dipped their pens in the ink and bent over their papyrus.
“I am royal not by others’ homage but by their affection.”
The initiates scribbled. Mehi covered his ignorance by dipping his reed in the ink but could only hold it above the paper. He peeked at the work of boys around him. Their pens whispered secrets he didn’t know. The schoolmaster repeated the prince’s phrase. Mehi felt stupid. He knew how to write few words but the names of his family, pyramid gang, and some Gods.
Blank as the sheet on his knees, Mehi yearned to return to the pyramid where he belonged.
When Hordedef departed, the schoolmaster dictated. Mehi felt as muddled as he had on the dark ridge outside An-khi’s estate. Though he copied the first or second hieroglyph of a boy beside him, it wasn’t enough to soothe him. He bore down his thumb and finger against his reed until his knuckles whitened and then weakened.
Following a meal of roasted crane, bread cakes and black beer—food so delicious, Mehi had to hide his smile from classmates, accustomed to such treasure, and to hide his smuggling of portions in his tunic for Khety, now working all day in the fields—the schoolmaster distributed a legal glossary to copy. Mehi saw on his sheet a confusion of marks. After a minute, he recognized one figure he’d seen at the Hituptah temple.
All he had to do was copy these drawings. He hungered for it. After several strong lines, Mehi pleased himself, that is, until he peeked at the delicate figures of the boy beside him. In contrast, Mehi’s were blobs. Am I good enough to learn this?
Unsure, he inked his reed and tried once more. The first curve. He settled back to consider it. That’s beautiful, he decided. There, a second one.
He lagged behind the others scratching away.
Mehi tried again. And again. Checking his reed caused him to forget the figure he was copying. He had to search for it on the page. Meanwhile, ink ran down the reed and sprinkled across the sheet.
The other boys, when they dipped their pens, hardly glanced at their inkwell. Not knowing how they managed this, Mehi tested An-khi’s lesson: “Repeat what succeeded before.” On his first attempt to imitate their actions, he missed the well completely. On the second, he dunked the reed to its bottom. But, gradually, he drew up the proper amount of ink with just the quickest glimpse of his tools. And he began to hone his hieroglyphs into shapes similar to those of the other boys.
That morning, Mehi had considered himself too common to learn, but by late afternoon, copying took on ease. Its importance to him surprised Mehi. He gave to it as he gave to the pyramid. It soothed his loneliness for An-khi, Sebek and the pyramid.
Toward twilight, fighting fatigue in his head and hand, he clicked his reed in the well and then scratched across his papyrus in a steady rhythm. He was learning to write. The words he wrote chanted in his ears. He heard nothing of the other boys or their pens. The reed like a magic wand set free his festering words of love as if he were tumbling in the Inundation. Faster. Faster. Faster.
Mehi did not stop when the master called the end of class.