Chapter 9
MORNING OATHS
Khufu perceived light. An onslaught of light. It crossed spears with the dawnlight thrusting through the suite’s high windows. Khufu’s eyes dazzled to the point of pain, yet he would not shade his fascination. His hunger for light had not been slaked by the tour of his pyramid. Welcoming this incandescence upon him, Khufu spread his legs.
He distinguished a flame—of a silver torch—and then the arm that upraised it. Theormi’s arm. The torchlight flooded off her gold and silken gown that clasped her from ankle and shoulder, and crowned her with a standing collar behind and inches above her head as she posed at Khufu’s curtains. On a dais conveyed by four guards, she presented one leg through a slit in the gown, the foot on the back of a gold lioness statue. Theormi’s right hand drew a rope attached to the statue’s splayed jowls as if prompting it to roar.
Warm and ample as a summer moon, his lover’s voice said, “I return like the Inundation.”
“As Sba aabti.”
“Seeding the recession, I grow black and lustering.”
“Yes, poetry.”
“Here, in my season, who loves me? Who will plant my womb? Who will till my vulva?”
Khufu no longer stood still.
Upon his command, a procession of servants collected and carried from the greenhouse into his suite bunches of pink roses, yellow-centered daisies, red poppies and the blue lotus. They created space for them by removing all but two of the twenty lamps set up before his tour.
When again alone with Theormi, Khufu eyed her and smiled as he plucked lotus petals that he let float down onto his linen bed.
Theormi turned her palms out to him. “I long for your poetry, King.”
He circled her. Theormi’s gold gown still radiant in the sunshine, shone on him as sure as sunrays. His heartbeat sped.
In the moment you declare yourself
no one’s possession,
I must have you
Theormi nodded. “I once thought being a servant—your servant—offered my only path to you. The actual path was through me. I must tell you a story.”
“Is it short?”
“I feel something new in me. Sba nu mu, the dance of light.”
“Stars on the water. Do they open in you like a blue lotus opens in the Nile?”
“Tu, Khufu.”
“You describe the ‘Subtle Body.’”
“That’s a good name for it. With this dance, I begin to love everything.” Theormi started orbiting Khufu as he had her, revolving to beam on him. “Here is my story:
I do not forsake my pride
To say
I must have you.”
Her orbit spiraled to him. When eye to eye with her, Khufu scanned Theormi’s nose from its tip to the erratic hairs between her brows. Her eyes’ black glint hinted as if for a secret like a lotus in a dark room. Wet heat dampened his scalp and soles of his feet.
Theormi traced her eyes along his wide lips, flat nose and raven’s eyes. She remembered a night they shared watching a lunar eclipse as black as Khufu’s eyes shone now. She tugged his tunic to the floor.
From her shoulders, the God-king slipped the straps of her gown. “Theormi, be naked as water; I’ll be naked as fish.”
She drew the fingers of her right hand down his jaw, collarbone and the middle of his chest, gathering their moisture. “I wake to your wheat field perfume in the first morning.”
Placing two fingertips on her temple, Khufu weighed the pulse beating there. He nestled a fist on her sternum, then glided it upward between her breasts. “I charge like a bull.” He palmed her hips, smooth as gems.
Heat pricked Theormi’s calves, spine and temples. She nuzzled her temple to his and heard both their heartbeats. “When the bull paws the ground, his rippling thrills me.”
Khufu griped her waist. His hand trembled.
Theormi flicked a long fingernail against the God-king’s breast. “Tell me your nipples will stand and dance.”
“Like drunkards.”
Fragrances of figs in burning cream blossomed from them.
Khufu fetched a silver comb and, when behind Theormi, ran it through her hair, relishing the rebound of its waves.
Extending her arms behind her, Theormi scratched her fingernails up his thighs.
Khufu dropped the comb. He raked his fingers deep through her hair, heaving her head back to his chest.
In his hands, Theormi rotated about. She licked his neck as moist as a fig, and tapped his moist forehead. “From deep in the Nile, we start the water flowing.”
“We cleanse the other like the dead.”
They lay on the bed of lotus. Petals clung to their damp skin The two suckled thigh to thigh, breast to breast, mouth to mouth. While their fingers and palms roved, the couple moved like a shoal of moonfish—swift then languorous. Each new position seemed perfect, yet another followed.
“I will not remove the folds from your skin or the magic from your mind.” He stroked her genital folds. He felt her stretch to him.
His phallus burned in Theormi’s hand. “I snare the red fish.” She bent to him. “It leaps glistening. I swoop like a hawk.”
Khufu’s body sprouted thick water like the Inundation. Still, he was burning hot as if on fire. He thought of Gods and Goddesses.
Theormi felt her womb offer up a fine oil. Aware her fragrance was darkening like the singeing of figs and merged with his scent of hemp and juniper, she guided Khufu’s flesh to her opening.
He rocked forward and steadied himself into her. At once, Khufu felt at home, but one in the wilds or perhaps in the stars.
The travel of his heat stung her.
Theormi’s fingers, tongue and vulva slid around him. Desiring more heat she sped her hips. She bucked for relief, vaginal walls softening, opening wider. She held Khufu’s eyes with hers.
Their bones and blood reached for the other. He must wedge tight in her deepest embrace; she must envelop him everywhere. Tumbling downstream, the lovers fathomed the other with each cycle of hip cock, sheathing and uproot.
Theormi bowed back.
Bless my lover who inspires such hunger and feast.
Their scents burnt like scalded honey.
Khufu set himself behind her to align their bodies, to point them in one direction, the same view. He knew he must experience a woman’s way. “Ecstasy is forgetting the self.” Petals fell from Khufu’s chest onto Theormi’s spine. There he saw two scars in the image of flames. “What’s this? These scars?”
“Oh, I don’t think of them.”
He kissed the scars, adding the tip of his tongue.
“Hmn, I don’t feel them now.”
Visions of God and Goddess, King and Queen, royalty and commoner spirited like Inundation currents in Khufu’s mind. He considered his citizens delighting in love like his love for Theormi. Every commoner could attain it. But no. Numb to their majesty, they would laugh at the thought.
Theormi wondered whether Egyptians were as content as she and her lover. Are they laughing, loving? Do they offer and accept adoration?
Their far-flung thoughts propelled them. Glide of body against body, salt against salt, even arms and thighs fondled as nimble as fingers. They probed and soothed with breath and caress. Each sought the other beyond the veils of flesh and muscle. Each sought a deeper body, a subtle body. They pursued it with faith that it existed in the lover. They expected it in their hands.
Khufu recited, “Pesh, pesh, arch the legs like wings—to fly.”
“Pesh-t, arch the bow.”
Both offered their selves and welcomed the other. They focused on their mate’s subtle body in its shrine, knowing it admitted only one who approached it as blindly as hope and as gently as to leave no mark. It admitted only another subtle body. Recessed, enshrined, chaste, each subtle body illuminated the other in its passage.
Theormi said, “Pesh-it, curved halves of heaven.”
“Pesh-it.”
They rose up. Poised. Neit
her sensed the lover’s fierce seizing that marked both long afterward. They strained to balance self and the other, cresting like the Inundation’s perfect moment. Each severed the self on the sharpest blade. Voluptuous. In unison, they cried, arched, pesh. This moment excluded all others.
Theormi and Khufu eased their grips. Slowing, not stopping, Sba amenti and Sba aabti settled into each other like water in a field. Breath rustled in their bellies until they smoothed altogether.
Their subtle bodies soon hooded again like the bow of a priest. They nestled in peace.
Khufu welcomed love’s hush in his limbs and mind. “Theormi, I want you to know my name.”
“Name?” she said dreamily.
“My Horus name. My Ra priests sanctified me with the sacred name on my first coronation.”
Theormi brought up her head, blinked and focused on Khufu. “The name I was never to know.” She waited.
“Medjau.”
The name reminded Theormi of something. Something beloved. “Medjau.” By this honor, this man proved his royalty in convincing Theormi of hers. She loved a king and discovered herself ever more a queen.
Moments later, cuddled like pesh-it, the pair spoke in whispers of creating a divine child.
As if on a mist, the first blush of the following morning drifted through the eastward windows of Khufu’s suite. Under the bed’s canopy, Theormi’s eyes glistened as they lingered over her lover, asleep on his side by her. She traced a finger across his shoulder. Rising, she retrieved her gown and draped the sheer material over her God-king. She retreated to admire his shadowed muscles. In the thin light, imagining Khufu as a sleeping bull, Theormi spread her arms like a bird of prey and orbited the bed in a rhythm she hummed to herself. Footfalls soft, even ghostly, her skin and muscle danced in and out of dawn’s pale hues. No sound rose save the whisper of Theormi’s song.
Mid-morning, hair bouncing on her shoulders, An-khi walked onto the yellow glazed tiles of her father’s manor. Her parents’ clothier exhibited a new collection for the governor and Lady Heria. Standing near a column balancing a mound of clothes on her forearms, pale Snebtisi said, “Finally, An-khi. We’re always waiting for you.” Sneb hacked a great cough in so small a person. Its sound echoed off the twenty-foot high ceiling. “I’m utterly famished.”
An-khi wanted to reply that Snebtisi ate no more than a pipit anyway, but sensed her sister bore enough at that moment.
“We did miss you at the morning meal, An-khi,” said Heria, her amethyst bracelets clacking. “Were you delayed with your young friend?”
Snebtisi hung her eyes up toward the ceiling. “She gets a boyfriend and I’m a prisoner in this house.”
“Don’t upset yourself,” Paser said. “You’re well aware that you are too ill to be out on your own.”
“I’ll be ill forever if I don’t get a husband. All of my friends have been married for years and years already.”
“There, there Little White One.” Paser turned his back his daughter to ask the clothier, “What do you think of this smock?”
The clothier nodded toward it. “The latest thing, qaa. Note the embroidered curlicue at the neckline—the First-Judge of the First House donned that exact design at the Per-O just these two months past.”
Paser’s brows lifted. “At the Per-O, you say?
“Qaa.”
The governor handed the garment to a servant who stood, like Snebtisi, holding several garments. “The ‘Yes’ pile.”
Heria placed a blue robe upon the ten garments on Snebtisi’s arms. “This is a ‘maybe.’” An-khi nearly chided her sister for her mere “maybe” status.
Head back, nostrils peaking above the clothes, Snebtisi moaned. “Mother, please make up your mind. My arms are absolutely aching.”
“In a minute, darling.”
Snebtisi stamped a foot. “May I go to my room, Father?”
“We’ll need you a few minutes more.”
“I want to write a letter to Nesamon.”
“Dear,” said Heria, exposing the gum atop her two front teeth, “your father has allowed you an involvement with the young man despite your health. Won’t you offer but a measure of patience?”
“Patience? I never get to see Nesamon however much I’m allowed to.”
“Stop!” Paser’s shout sent Snebtisi shrinking behind the clothes.
“And this, Paser, what do you think?” Heria held up a scarlet gown decorated by a sycamore branch and leaves.
“Is that what they’re wearing in Annu?”
“Ah, master,” the clothier flourished an arm, “this is what they will wear next season.”
Heria’s eye glittered. She folded the gown onto the “Yes” pile.
“Mother,” Paser cautioned his wife, “until this appears and is fashionable in Annu, we should not obtain it, don’t you agree? With the drought reports, those in the Per-O are particularly sensitive.”
With no change of expression, Heria shifted the gown to the “No” pile.
Snebtisi’s voice snuffled up from behind the clothes. “You don’t want me to marry.”
“Please, Snebtisi,” said Heria, glancing at Paser.
“You don’t. You don’t.” She poked her head above the clothes.
“I won’t hear this,” Paser said, his voice rising, “in front of our visitor.”
“You’re afraid. You’re just afraid.” Sneb’s eyes began to redden and tear. “You confine me here to protect the tem estate.”
Paser kicked the “No” pile into the air. “How dare you curse on my estate.” He pointed a shaking arm at Snebtisi. “You don’t dictate to me. I do what I must.”
Snebtisi, Heria and An-khi all cowered.
Seeing An-khi, Paser shifted his hand from pointing at Snebtisi into waving it to An-khi. “Younger daughter, tell us about your morning.”
“Father, Mother, I have something to ask you.”
“My, An-khi,” Paser said, “your recent smiles must be in anticipation of your father’s birthday. Don’t you believe so, Mother?”
“You know what it is, Father.” An-khi hugged Paser’s head, he bending down for her.
“It is splendid that you are happy, daughter,” Heria said, her voice pitching up at the ends of her sentences, making them sound like questions even when they were not. “I am concerned, though, that this boy is not quite up to our station. Isn’t he beneath you?”
“Beneath me? He’s an heroic young man, Mother.”
“I’m sure. Does his father provide for his wife?”
An-khi’s face shadowed. “Mother, why doubt us, when we love?”
“Oh Gods,” Snebtisi groaned, rolling her eyes. “I’ll still be married before you.”
Without looking at Snebtisi, Paser said to her in monotone, “You’ll not marry until I say.”
Heria knelt to feed a morsel of raw lamb to a caged orange cat. “It is apparent to the open eye, An-khi, either you become a man’s chief wife or you become his mistress. Which would you choose?”
“I choose Mehi, Mother.”
“You are accustomed to a tidy wealth, thanks to your father.”
“Mehi will acquire such a wealth—given time.”
“Will he keep you in tidy clothes? Never in all my life have I worn on consecutive days the same under-clothes. Will you be able to say the same?”
“That’s well enough, Mother,” Paser cut in. “We need not worry ourselves with our younger daughter’s situation when Snebtisi is the one in line to inherit the property. We’ve found a positioned husband for her that will protect the estate.”
“I found him.” Snebtisi coughed.
“I’m glad for your concern, Mother,” said An-khi, “but everything will be fine with us. I know you’ll love Mehi.”
“Yes,” Paser said, “we do already, child. Don’t we, Mother? Invite ... ”
“... Mehi.”
“Invite this boy to dinner—sometime. We’ll be happy with ...” A bright yellow tunic distracted Pase
r. “Uh—”
“—Mehi.” Paser had just assented to her marriage to Mehi. An-khi repressed a smile so that only her sister could see it. “Thank you, Father. Mother?”
“I’m certain he’s a good boy.”
An-khi rushed to embrace her mother. “You’ll see, Mother. You’ll see where we lead.”
Another day of ridding rich people of cobras and horned vipers, Sebek swaggered up the stone path into camp carrying the mongoose under one arm and a sack holding his latest bounty under the other. Without speaking to his gang, but grateful that for once none of them greeted him with their dull banter, he settled down on a boulder and began to appraise whether he could start trading up his surplus for more valuable items.
Mose served him roasted goose, but then didn’t move to sit down. He said, “Chief, we made another big harvest today.”
Sebek didn’t respond, irritated by the silly question. The other men ate their supper in silence but looked sidelong at Mose and Sebek.
Sebek finished eating, tossed down his bowl and began plotting for the next day’s haul. Looking up, he flinched to find Mose still standing over him. “Are you waiting to burp me? Why are you standing there, goon?”
Mose said, “Boss, we were talking—and wondering, weren’t we?” He sized up the others. “Well, we were wondering why don’t we just lay off tomorrow and kind of take it easy. You know, just a day off. We can’t eat all the food we got now.”
“Tu, boss,” Abana said. “We had our way today. It’s time for a day off.”
Sebek bolted upright, shoving Mose backward. “You lazy dogs. You get decent work for the first time in your lives and you want to quit it first thing.”
“No boss, just take a few days off.”
“A few days?” Sebek pointed at them. “Anybody who wants even one day off can walk out of this camp right now.”
“Hey boss, you don’t have to get sore—”
“No, boss, you don’t have to get sore,” said a high voice from the dark. Sebek recognized it with a start.
They wheeled around. The large man with the reed hat walked out of the shadows, displaying a knife blade for them to see. Two tramps tried to run off in the opposite direction but the con man’s tall accomplice brandishing his knife blocked them. They sat back down where they were and ducked their heads. Mose shook Wakha awake.
“Now that we’re together,” the man said to Sebek, “I must compliment you, young man. What a commotion. Such a plague of snakes all in a sudden. You see, my friend and I, after our recent suspension of activities, wish to reclaim our modest holdings in the local pest-ridding business.”
Sebek thrust out his chest. “Do you think we’re just going to let you take it? We outnumber you.”
The man rolled back his head and laughed. “How will four old men, one imbecile and a child stop us?”
The con man was right—Sebek was alone against these two men and their knives. Hunger already stabbed his gut.
“So, if you don’t mind,” said the man, walking to the mongoose, “we’ll take little Tesh-Tesh with us and be on our way.” He pried the mongoose from Wakha’s hands.
Sebek flinched.
The con man stuck his knife at him. “No notions, youngster.”
Sebek turned his head to glare at the cowering beggars. The man and his accomplice backed out of the firelight together, waving their knives.
Wakha watched Tesh-Tesh fading away. His smile fell. He bolted after his pet.
“Wakha!”
His friends chased after him. The con man spun about and dashed into the dark with Tesh, but the surprised accomplice reeled when Wakha bumped him in his wild strides. The tramps ducked under his flailing knife.
Sebek saw his chance.
He sprinted forward, knocked the knife out of the staggering man’s hand, picked it up, swung back his arm, and then plunged the knife into the man’s ribs. Twice. The man made a sound like the hiss of a snake and slumped to Sebek’s feet. Sebek stood over the tall man, listening to his breaths fall silent.
Sebek concluded that he should return to his original plan and head for the Bekhan Trail.
“Mehi, Mehi.”
The next sunset in their shoreline niche under the crossed palms, Mehi turned for An-khi’s call. Her flesh and smile gleamed. He ran to her.
Through the barley field just showing sprouts, An-khi raced toward him where they’d met as children and as adults. She had planned to tease him by withholding her news, but gave up that plan as soon as she saw his grinning face. “Father said, “’Yes.’”
Where they embraced, clover clustered about their toes, heralding the change of season. Beside them, the Nile pealed like a million beads of faience racing through a copper sluice. Low sunlight glinted in the rapids strands of silver and jade. An-khi stretched up and kissed Mehi’s cheek. He fingered the circle her lips anointed.
“Mehi, we can make our home. My father agrees.”
He clenched her to him, as much to secure himself on the ground as to hold her. “Then we will. It’ll be our pyramid.”
The two lay down in the clover, nestling, the soles of their feet toward the Nile. The river whirled a breeze around them. Warm spray flecked their skin and spiked the air with scents of crushed limestone and sage. With mouth, nose and cheek, each face caressed its image on the other. Their lips smoothed together from corner to corner.
An-khi saw in his hair silvered strands like whitecaps. “Nothing will darken you in my arms.”
Mehi saw her face as fresh as dawn. “I could trap you always in this light.”
“Trap me?”
“Here’s a poem my mother taught me.”
“Please.”
She comes walking on the village road
Dust rises in her steps
Water splashes in her vase
She comes to our home
To be kissed by me
For me, you are the one who comes walking.” Mehi paused. “An-khi? I’ve started it.”
“It?”
“Our home. That day you were with Sebek, I had started it.”
“Mehi, take me there.”
Clouds scudded across the sun. Mehi and An-khi huddled closer. Her eyes ebbed into soft wells.
She began their favorite game. “If you feel as I do, you cross the river with a heart so moist it drowns the crocodile who separates us.”
“If you feel as I do, you wish to drink our kisses, sweet as melon.”
Behind them, they heard a scurrying and a squeak. A cat stalked in a bush.
“It’s probably just wanting a female cat in there,” Mehi said.
“Why would she be hiding?”
They rocked in their lover’s grip. Arms and legs moving wet with the Nile, they imagined themselves swimming in warm waves. The two played through the other’s clothes, slowly unveiling their bodies to the spray and breeze.
An-khi skimmed the back of her fingernails down her lover’s chest. “Ah, you deserve royal robes and here you are dressed in shes tepi.”
“Touching you, I am a majesty.”
Their bodies strong together, they explored without choice or control. They reeled with her urge and then his. Arms wrapped, fingers clutched. Palms glided along shoulder and hip. Amid kisses, words licked too.
“I envy the air around you.”
“I wake from a dream and find that you’ve survived it.”
“I’ve never been as awake as this.”
The wild cat wrestled with something in the sand. Mehi and An-khi offered each other’s lips their tongue or throat.
“Mehi, my breast is wet.”
“I want my last breath to be between your breasts.”
“Don’t wait, Mehi.”
He placed his fingers at the top of her legs. Her eyes fluttered.
Under the slowing fires of sunfall, their lungs and heartbeats sounded the only rhythm in the world. Mehi groaned long and low. An-khi’s fingers squeezed out three neat furrows of sand. In the couple
’s shuddering and gasps, each upheld the other.
Minutes later, light-headed and limp, Mehi and An-khi gazed into the river’s million currents, wondering at the stillness of the lover in each one’s arms. Not a thing but the Nile moved or would likely ever move.
At their feet, a tug like an undertow seemed to draw them toward the river. Mehi thought himself as content as possible until An-khi said, “I am content.”