THREE

I knew they were her tones. All the while I had lived in my great-grandfather’s thoughts, I had heard her speaking. Now, his eyes rolled up like the eyes of the dead, and out of his throat came the voice of Honey-Ball.

“Kazama, I did not see you leave,” she said. “But I laughed with the others for He made a woman of you. You jerked like a worm on the hook of His strength. Yet, now, I do not think of Sesusi, but of the injury to your proud heart. You feel soft like the earth when the river flows over. Tell me it is not so.”

“It is so,” said my great-grandfather speaking in his own voice out of the very heart of this spell, and yet, by the diminishing light of the fireflies, I knew he was calm once more, his voice older than any I had heard and looked one hundred years old, more than a hundred. The patio smelled like old stone. I was trying to remember some opening of my own jaws in a vault so dank I could not breathe. The voice of Honey-Ball spoke again, however, and I was back in every murmur of the night. Through the mouth of Menenhetet, I heard her say, “How I felt the pain of your thoughts. They suffered the convulsions of a belly when a child is born. Is it so, Kazama?”

“It is so,” said Menenhetet.

“In that hour, you could not say if you were a man or a woman. You could only wonder why men pass over into women, and women into men.”

When the last echo of her voice was gone, Menenhetet’s head came forward, and he looked at all of us as if he had slept for a hundred years. His face came back from the old age that had lain upon it, and I never saw him look so young, a man of sixty who could have stood among us for forty and stronger than a charioteer. My father ceased his snoring to come awake, and my mother had a look of satisfaction on her lips, as if she had tasted nothing so much as the center of a secret.

“Yes,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “tell us more of this Honey-Ball for she sounds nearly so curious as My great ancestor, may I be welcomed by Him in the Blessed Fields,” and He made a loud smacking sound with His mouth to remind us that it was still the Night of the Pig, and piety might offer less protection than sacrilege. “Yes,” He said, “tell us before the dawn burns our eyes. Soon Hathfertiti and I may wish to find our sleep.” With a laugh of great gaiety—in the first true sound of real happiness I had heard from Him, our Pharaoh came to His feet and kissed my father on the brow.

“It is so,” said my father.

“Speak again in the voice of Honey-Ball,” cried Ptah-nem-hotep to my great-grandfather, as if He, too, had been drinking kolobi.

“Divine Two-House, I slept for a moment and feel well-rested. Did You hear her voice?”

Ptah-nem-hotep laughed.

“It must be true,” said Menenhetet. “I think of her now.”

“Yes, go on,” said our Pharaoh. “I would enjoy it.”

“If I remember,” said my great-grandfather, “the night was without a moon when I left the house of Nubty, and, to my unhappy eyes, as dark as the most awful of my thoughts. I found the pond where the black swan liked to stay at night and tried to speak to her, yet I could think of nothing but my shame. It was then I took a second vow. Shame, like any other poison, needs its own outrageous cure. I decided to seek the courage of madness itself. I would dare what no one else was ready to dare, and put myself in the bed of one of the little queens.

“It was bravery itself to breathe twice on one thought such as this. For it is on the second breath that others hear what you think. Yet I knew I must speak the vow clearly. So I told myself, but I was shaking so much the swan began to shudder as well. Her wings clapped, and little waves went out from her body to set the water of the pond to frothing loudly. I was certain every house in the Gardens of the Secluded would awaken. Then the pond was still again. I began to think of Honey-Ball. Out of the breasts of that round woman rose a tenderness for me that was like the rise of the river when the earth is dry, and the pig’s snout came up behind me then and nuzzled my thigh.

“Let me not speak of the days it took until I made my first visit, nor of each fear I managed to conquer only to lose my footing on the next fear. All such tales are the same. I do not know that I could have entered her house if in my dreams, I was not always walking toward it. How I wished to lie on my back like Usermare and know her mouth at the lower gates.

“Say that I was drawn as one bar of black-copper-from-heaven is seduced toward another, for on a night when Usermare did not visit the Gardens of the Secluded, I presented myself at her door. Although on that visit I did not even try to sit beside her, I asked on leaving if I could come tomorrow, and she agreed but said, ‘No one must see you here again at night,’ and she led me out to a tree by her own garden wall over whose branches I might climb. That way I could enter without awakening her maidservants or eunuchs. Touching the branch, I remembered a night when I sat with my back against another tree on the way to Kadesh, and I nodded, and she put her hand to my neck and rubbed it slowly. A strength came to me from her plump fingers like the force I once received from the Lebanese wood.

“After I left, I could not sleep again. In the night the power of her attraction was upon me. I had never liked women so heavy as herself, and yet the thought of such plumpness stirred like a sweet wind in my belly. I confess I felt all but equal to one of those eggs in the middle of a ball of dung that our scarab beetle pushes up the riverbank, for in the midst of trying to sleep, I was as rich as Khepera Himself, and warm, and full of earth, and knew again the smells of our Egyptian dung so replete with all that rots and dies and still reeks of the old greed, and wondered if this were the odor of Honey-Ball’s flesh when her perfume was gone. Yet I also felt full of gold, and saw a golden sky beneath my closed eyes and heard its thunder as though the light of Ra, not content with offering light to corn, to the reeds, to the glint of the river, and to that richest ore of earth, gold itself, had also to warm all filth and penetrate to the very center of this oven of dung that was my pleasure. With that, I sat up, hating the foul attraction I might find in her arms, yet determined to know her, for I was worse than dead. My shame, carried for so many years, was now inflamed.

“So I got up and walked through the gardens, and climbed the tree outside her walls, crossed the branch and dropped within her garden. She was waiting for me in her room, but I fell into her arms with such fear that my sword was like a mouse. She felt larger than the earth. I thought I embraced a mountain. On that night, I did not have the strength to enter a lamb. The trickle drawn forth from me had none of the serpent’s flame or the radiance of Ra, I flew on the wings of no bird, but was dragged out of myself, and indeed, she pulled me forth, her hand plucking me up and down until the waters were lifted to the end of my belly and beyond. I knew what it was to come forth in fear. I did not even feel shame when we were done, but much relief. Soon I could be gone.

“She was not in the same haste, however, to see me leave. By my side, she gave a heavy sigh, heavy as the shadow of a large bird when it crosses your shadow, and said, ‘I will lead you out to the tree.’ But even as I was putting on my sandals, she took me in another direction, and we passed through a door into a room that had many odors from the powders of beasts and animals long dead, and in a corner by a niche was a small bowl of alabaster with oil in it, and a burning wick. By its light, she took three fingers of powder from a jar, stirred that in wine, drank half and gave me the other half. I knew a taste older than a coffin.

“She laughed at my face. It was a laugh loud enough to wake others, but she put a heavy hand on my shoulders, as if to tell me that her servants would not be surprised by any noise she might make in the night, and I knew, since she was speaking to me with barely a word, that the drink we had taken together was a bridge from her throat to mine. Over it would pass my thoughts. So I knew also that this room next to the chamber where she slept was her abode on any night when she could not close her eyes, and then, indeed, my nose told me as quickly of little sacrifices performed in here. I could see the altar, a table of granite, and sniff the old blood of many a small animal who had given up its last fears to her. Then I knew that even as I had lain in my bed and felt the beetle of Khepera stirring my bowels, so was the powder in this wine come from a beetle she had captured and dried (after its head had been removed). She must have pounded it, sifted it, then spoken the words of power. Now, together, we had drunk that wine, and that caused me to think again of our dung beetle. We are so in awe of its strength that we do not study its subtler habits. But I, as a boy, had spent many afternoons on the riverbank with no more for amusement than the beetle to watch, and I had seen them push the ball up the bank to the hole where they would bury it. That dung would serve as food for the eggs laid within. Yet if you confused two beetles and changed their balls, they still strained to the task and did it for the other’s eggs. I tell you this because I understood, standing next to Honey-Ball, that she had been putting our purposes together and mixing our thoughts until Usermare would never envision us side by side. Before I left on this night, as if she would own more of me than He did, she cut off the ends of my fingernails with a sharp little knife, collected these parings and minced them small with her knife. Then she ate them in front of me. I did not know if I was with a woman, a Goddess, or a beast. ‘If you are here for love of me,’ she said, ‘your hands will learn caresses. But if you were sent by Usermare, your fingers will share the pain of the leper before they fall off.’ Again, she smiled at the expression on my face. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘I trust you—a little bit,’ and she kissed my lips. I say ‘kiss’ because that was the first night I could truly try it. I had known the secret whore of Kadesh and my woman in Eshuranib and many a peasant girl and I had known the sharing of our breath which is agreeable. Peasants tell each other, ‘Nobles eat from plates of gold so they also know how to touch each other’s mouth.’ Here, she lay her lips on mine, and kept them there. I felt swathed like a mummy, only it was in wrapping of a cloth finer than I had ever felt. Her tongue was sweeter than any finger, and yet like a small sword when it pressed into my mouth. No, say it was like a little serpent that undulated in honey.

“ ‘Come to me tomorrow night if He is not here,’ she said, and led me to the tree. I had no sooner departed than my desire was back. Yet when I returned on the following night, I was weak again. Her hand, like the shaduf, was there to lift me above myself. Once more, I knew only the walls of her body, and could not enter her gates. But she was gentle on this second night and said, ‘Come to me when you can, and on one good night, you will be as brave as Usermare Himself.’ As if to speak of how many nights it might take to acquire such knowledge, she introduced me to her scorpions. She had seven: Tefen, Befen, Mestet and Mestetef, also Petet, Thetet and Metet—I could not believe that she knew them each by name, for in the box that was their nest they moved about like beggars who owe one another nothing. Yet she would lift them out with her fingers, and lay them on her eyes and lips and never fear any sting. ‘Their names are the same as the seven scorpions of Isis,’ she told me, ‘and they are the true descendants.’ By the light of her oil lamp I could see that these scorpions covered the seven gates of her head: her eyes, her ears, her nostrils and her mouth. But then she plucked them off, and put them back in their box and kissed me. She said that the ancestors of these seven scorpions had created our seven souls and spirits. Then she sent me home. My instruction had begun.

“Now, I was, as I say, the only man living in the Gardens who was not a eunuch. So did not wish to think of the amusement that would be stirring in every house as these little queens, one by one, heard of my night with Usermare. I stayed behind the walls of my own garden and no longer went visiting through the day from one home to another. Such visits had been most agreeable for the gossip they offered, but then by way of the eunuchs, and the Chief Scribe of the Gardens, also a eunuch—of whom I will tell you later—there was no story about any Prince, Governor, High Priest, Royal Judge, Third Overseer to the Vizier, or even”—with a nod to my father—“Assistant to the First Overseer of the Cosmetic Box, that did not come back to us in the Gardens. I say to us, but the eunuchs knew the gossip first, the little queens received it next, and I was lucky to hear it last. Even so, I knew more of the good and bad fortune of everyone in Thebes than in the old days when I was a charioteer galloping through the city. So, it had been agreeable to visit the little queens, and eat their cakes, smell their different perfumes, admire their faience, or their golden bracelets, their necklaces, their furniture, their gowns, their children, until all compliments given, we would come to our greater interest which was gossip and I would hear much about many a Notable although by the end, they always spoke of Queen Nefertiri and Rama-Nefru. The little queens had their preferences, of course, like schools of priests who worship in different temples, so you could hear that Rama-Nefru would only be the favorite for this season, or as easily that She would be His beloved for many years. I soon saw that these were only a reflection of stories the little queens told about each other. For you could count on it. To listen to the tale of one was to believe that another little queen had just lost favor.

“Thereby, I came to know quite a few of their secrets, and even before I began to visit Honey-Ball at night, had an understanding of her that came in part from her friends, as well as from little queens who were not. Hearing two sides of the same story was like eating two foods at once—together were they digested in the belly. Long before I climbed over her tree, or heard Honey-Ball sing by the lake, I knew of her loss. Indeed I could all but hear the echo. I had seen men killed by the thousand and their bodies eaten, but that might weigh less in the balance of Maat than the woe felt by these little queens for the amputation of one toe. In the Gardens of the Secluded, Honey-Ball had been His Favorite—on that, her friends and those who did not like her were nearly ready to agree. She had not been fat then, and even the eunuchs did not dare to look at her when she bathed, so voluptuous was her beauty. Ma-Khrut was her name for all occasions. But she was vain, vain even for a little queen, indeed after all I heard of good and bad about her, it became my conclusion. She was vain. So she traded to Heqat—the ugliest of the little queens!—a necklace that once belonged to Usermare’s mother. Then she dared to tease our Pharaoh. She told Him she had exchanged the necklace for a bowl of alabaster, and could Sesusi find her another bowl to match? They were alone in her bed when she said this. He stood up, seized His knife, and holding her foot by the ankle, severed the toe. Mersegert, that Goddess of Silence who never shut her mouth, told me that the screams of Ma-Khrut can still be heard over many a pond on a still night, and her enemies spoke of how she rushed to have the little toe wrapped, and then embalmed. Some said that after this night she was constant in her study of magic. She grew fat, and her garden sprouted rare herbs and rank ones, her rooms were filled with stuffs she collected. Where once she had had the finest alabaster of any little queen, now the bowls were chipped. There was much handling of the roots and skins and powders that moldered in them. Foul smokes were always rising from the fire-pots in the chamber where she performed her ceremonies and you could sniff the dung of birds and lizards or snakes in cages of all sorts. Needless to say, she not only had names for these beasts, but also for various stones and branches she kept, not to speak of her wrappings of spiderweb, her spice, her herbs, her snakeskins, whole and minced, her jars of salt, her dried flowers, her perfumes, her colored thread, her consecrated papyrus, and many jars of oil, native and foreign, some from plants and trees strange to me, some to be used beneath the light of the moon and others at the height of the sun. She knew the name of many a rare root of the fields that I had never seen before, and hair of all description, a curl from the brow of many a little queen, and more than a few of the eunuchs.

“Each morning she drew a new talisman for herself on papyrus purchased the day before by her most trusted eunuch, Kiki, which was the name for an oil made from the castor bean. It was a girl’s name as well, although it did not matter—you could call a eunuch anything. Castor-Oil was just as good as the name of her second favorite, Sebek of Sais, so described for his mournful resemblance to the crocodile. The way those two eunuchs looked at each other while serving at her morning ceremony, you would have thought the crocodile had fear of being cooked in the castor-oil. Just so awesome was Honey-Ball. All the same, that woman could charm the snakes she kept, and by no more than the movements of her heavy arms—so much like large snakes themselves—or by her magic words. It was this last she employed to call spirits forth, since, as she would yet explain to me, no presence can resist its Secret Name—it hears it so seldom.”

“I have heard many descriptions of these spirits about us,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “but you make them sound like strange birds or beasts.”

“Ma-Khrut would often say that our thoughts, once they are mixed with the breath of the Gods, become creatures. They are invisible but they are still creatures. Some spirits even dwell together like birds of the same plumage or congregate to become as powerful as armies. They can gather in a mass like mountains, or great cities on the river.”

“It is true,” said Hathfertiti. “I have known emotions so powerful that they will live long after I am gone,” and she looked at the Pharaoh with all the depth of her capacity to show such emotion.

“Yes,” said Menenhetet, “it is not uncommon for those with strong feelings to create a few spirits. But once they are made, not many of us can call them back. That is because we do not know the Secret Name. Ma-Khrut, however, had a power to move spirits near and far and knew which substances to employ. She could choose, so to speak, between the blood of a bull and the blood of a frog. While it is royal, even divine, to hear someone else’s thought on the moment it awakes in the other, Honey-Ball knew how to travel alone down those invisible rivers which are formed by the thoughts of us all. When I was a priest in my second life, I learned how to draw near to the vast force that rises to the heavens as soon as the servants of Amon, and the worshippers who attend the ceremony, contemplate the Hidden One together. As we travel along the waters of a common prayer, our thoughts are as alike as the little waves of the river. Priests, thereby, can serve as helmsmen to the vessel of their large congregation.

“Honey-Ball had no such congregation to draw upon. But she knew how to call separate spirits forth, and could coax them to draw up others. I say she worked harder than any priest.”

“Tell us, then, of the wonders she performed,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

Menenhetet touched his head seven times to his hand. “I do not speak of the true wonders of an age that could know battles between Horus of the North and Horus of the South. No, I would tell You instead of the Gardens of the Secluded, and of her house and garden within. Not a large house by the measure of the Secluded, and outside the walls was the Palace and all the temples of Usermare.

“So, to take proper account of her work, one must measure it against the vast number of prayers the priests sent up. What a multitudinous river of spirits was kept flowing between Usermare and the glorious sun of Amon-Ra.

“Whereas Honey-Ball had only her own ceremonies. Yet these she would perform for all of a day and sometimes into the night. Sometimes when I visited at night she would be in the room where she kept her altar. Much time might go by in obedience to the purity of her ceremony before I could speak. All the while, she made no move that was not perfect, and if you ask me what I mean, I could not tell you, except that the triangle she would draw in the air with the tip of her wand proved to be no ordinary triangle, but before my eyes looked ready to blaze into flames. Her voice as she uttered her invocations had the tones of the opening and closing of doors, the fall of great stones upon the flat bed of other stones, the slithering of lizards and the flapping of wings when many birds spring up into the sky at once. The sigh of the wind came into her chest when she took a deep breath, and the roar of a lion was back of her throat as she spoke, yet all of this was but a natural part of her work, and she had many other tasks. There were the pots, for instance, on her altar fires and many ingredients to be fortified by words of power before being put into those pots. Sometimes, in preparation for a ceremony, she spent the day in reading from the rolls of papyrus that Castor-Oil or Crocodile brought back to her from the libraries of the temples, and she would copy passages onto her own papyrus. Of all the little queens, she was the only one who could write as well as a Chief Scribe, and sometimes I would pick up some of these old temple rolls and open them to their tiny painted birds and the papyrus would tell me much I could not name, so powerful were the thoughts contained.

“Watching her write, I would think of all the little scribes I had known who engaged in such tasks, and I would brood on the power of this act, and ask myself why such puny men were able to appeal so greatly to the Gods even though, when they spoke, they were never true-of-voice but frail as reeds, scratchy voices most of them. Yet the words they painted onto the papyrus were able to bring forth the power that rests in silence. So they could call on forces the true-of-voice would never reach. After all, to speak is to offend the power of silence.

“She respected that power. Once I saw two small lacerations on the inside of her upper arm, little cuts that ran in the same direction, side by side, but then she had sliced each cut in punishment upon herself for saying a word when she had vowed to be silent. On other days, she would speak, but never mention herself. If she wished to dine, she would tell the servants, ‘Eating is begun.’ She wished, when necessary, to live outside herself as if not in the room, move from her body to her Ka so that her Ka could walk out from her and look at her.

“That enabled her to work to many a purpose. Some were large, and some as petty as a ceremony to repay a small injury. She knew, as would everyone here, how to keep mosquitoes away, and was so adept at such practices that she never had to draw any circle about her head or recite appropriate prayers. Instead, at the first whine of such little beasts, she would raise her closed hand and open it. Away they would fly. You could hear the cry of their retreat.”

“I have unguents so powerful in their odor that mosquitoes will never come near,” said Hathfertiti, “and I use them when I cannot remember the prayer for the circle, or my fingers feel weak. I do not see where your Honey-Ball is more advanced than myself.”

“Since she lost the favor of the King, and you may have gained it, there is much in what you say,” replied my great-grandfather.

Ptah-nem-hotep was delighted. “Your family,” He said to Hathfertiti, “is never without a reply. Nonetheless, I would be careful not to speak too poorly of this Ma-Khrut.”

“The wisdom of the Ninth is great,” replied Menenhetet. “For it is true. A little queen who had too cruel a word for Honey-Ball might as well have been stung by her scorpions. Since the Ka of Honey-Ball knew how to wander away from her body, she would on occasion even welcome an attack by many mosquitoes. How many times did I not see her sleeping helplessly on her bed, or so you would have declared, for that heavy body was covered with mosquitoes enough to kill another. Yet she was outside of herself. Afterward, on her return, she had the use of their venom in her veins. One little queen who had spoken ill of Honey-Ball was so bitten by the largest mosquitoes after such a night that she could not leave her house for days. That swollen were her features.

“It is a small story to tell of her powers. I would offer a better one. Each night that Usermare remained away from the Gardens, I would awake in the dark, and with the pig nuzzling at my desire, I would be drawn to the branch that carried me over her wall. With a good look to be certain no eunuchs were near, I would leap up from the land where I was Governor and drop over into that garden within the Gardens where so much grew that was strange, and I had no power. Each night I would hold her in my arms, but my sword was like a snake with a broken neck, and when she kissed me, I did not know how to live in the pulsing of her lips. The full weight of her mouth had the heaviness of honey poured upon itself.

“In such moments I could not taste the pleasure. Too full was my recollection of her face at the gates of Usermare. Warmth rose at the memory of her mouth on Him, and I was like a woman again, so rich was my pleasure, but nothing like a man—so little was I able to stir myself. And all this pleasure only turned around in me like oil that is never poured from a jar. I began to hate how clearly I could see her mouth on Him and even began to dislike her, that dull weight of her body, the odor beneath her arms as it came through the perfume. Like many another fat woman, it seeped out to the damp eaves.

“But on one night, after seven nights of failure, she said, ‘You live in His wrath. I will make a boat to rise above Him.’ Upon my closed eyelids, shut in weariness, and close to despair, she drew with her fingernail, lightly but firmly, the hull of a ship. In the darkness these lines were as clear to my closed eyes as fire. And as I saw each part of the ship, so did she say its customary name in her own voice, but reply with a whisper for the Secret Name. The sound of this second voice seemed to come out of the straining of the wood, the pull of the ropes, or the smack of the sail when the wind took it. I heard the groans of the oars in their locks, and did not dare open my eyes for fear I might lose the image of this vessel.

“I am the Keel,’ she said, and in the other voice, replied: ‘My Secret Name is Thigh of Isis.’ Then the first voice said, ‘I am the Rudder,’ and the answer came: ‘In my Name is Leg of the Nile.’

“The more closely I listened, the shorter became her speeches until she had to say no more than ‘Oars’ and the reply would come from the creaking of the boat itself: ‘Fingers of Horus.’

“Soon, she was speaking only to one ear, and I was hearing the Secret in the other. ‘Bow,’ said she, and ‘Chief of the Provinces’ was the response. ‘Sail,’ she said. I heard the whisper: ‘Sky’

“ ‘Tying Post,’ said Honey-Ball, which brought forth: ‘Dweller in the Shrine.’

“ ‘Pump,’ declared Honey-Ball, and then her own deep voice spoke out: ‘The-Hand-of-Isis-wipes-away-the-blood-of-Horus.’ With that, her hand took my poor dead snake and pumped it. Like a wind that touches the water as lightly as Your fingertips, so did the breath from her nose blow over the top of all she held in her hand, until at last she said, ‘Mast,’ and without moving, muttered, ‘Bring-back-the-lady-before-she-leaves.’ On those words, she put her mouth on the blunt head of my poor snake, but it was dead no longer and more like a wounded sword. Then as the boat moved forward in the water, so did her mouth ride up and down the waves, and I do not know if it was Ra I saw in my body, or the royal pleasure of Usermare, but she lay back, and pulled me over. It was so quick, I plunged. I even screamed. Fire and rocks threw me about, then cast me out of her as I came forth, but my boat flew over the edge of the sky. She was kissing my mouth. So I knew. My flesh had dared to enter where only a Pharaoh could dwell. I was still alive. So soon as Usermare read my thoughts, I would certainly be dead. Yet I had never taken a breath with such exaltation.

“But she drew the circle of Isis about my head—a double circle—and the gates to my mind were closed. ‘Go,’ she said, ‘and come back tomorrow.’ ”