Ancient Evenings

part one while I cannot speak of how the Gardens of the Secluded may look today, a hundred women lived there then, and it was the loveliest part of the palace. Behind its walls were many fine houses, and from each kitchen you could hear much gaiety for many of the little queens loved to eat and were merry when there was food before them. And of course they loved to drink. Each day, after all, was like the one before. The little queens arose long after sounds from the palace beyond their walls had awakened everyone but themselves, and through the morning they would dress one another and hold long conversations over what they would borrow, and tell long tales of what they had lost to one another. For if the Pharaoh happened to visit a little queen while she was wearing a borrowed necklace, it became her own necklace. Since He had seen it on her, there was no question of giving it back. Of course, His gifts were never loaned so lightly. Any adornment that came from Usermare was not to be touched by anyone else. Once, a little queen broke this rule, but she was obliged to pay a fearful penalty. Her small toe was severed from her left foot. As quickly destroy the first column of a temple built by Ramses the Great as lend one of His gifts. Afterward, this little queen did not dance, in fact, she hardly moved, and she ate tidbits, like the candied wings of birds, to restore the ache left by the stump of her little toe, and became so fat that everyone called her Honey-Ball. I was told of her when I first entered the harem.

Of course, any man who was not a eunuch would have found it unnatural to serve in the Gardens of the Secluded and know the nearness of so many female bodies. Since they belonged to Usermare, one would no more breathe their perfume too closely than drink from His golden cup. Death to be caught in the act with any one of these hundred women, and so I spoke to the little queens as if they were flowers at the edge of the pond, and did my best to show a face of stone.

I can say that such fear did not please me. Each morning I awoke in the House of the Secluded with more desire to learn the ways of these beautiful women. I saw that my peasant beginnings, no matter how they had been dignified by the achievements of a soldier, would be of no use for comprehending the airs and silly disputes of this harem where I was now the overseer, especially when I did not know if their arts of cosmetics and storytelling, of music and dance and kingly seduction, were as common in this place as an ass and a plow to a peasant, or partook of magic itself. Nor could I decide if the passing quarrels I witnessed each day were as important to the gods as any battle between two men. Indeed, they seemed to be fought as fiercely in some god's service! Truly, it was the most curious period of my life.

•

In the harem, the trees were so many, and the grounds so full with flowers I had never glimpsed before that I thought there must be more blooms than grew in all of Egypt, such reds and golden greens and flowers with violet and rose and cream and scarlet and petals so soft that the sweet lips of the little queens might have been whispering on my cheek. Never had I seen such color before, nor these black-and-yellow bridges with silver balustrades and golden posts crossing the ponds that wandered through. A green moss covered the banks, as brilliant in the soft light as any emerald. It was the most beautiful place through which I ever wandered, and a perfume came from the flowers and the fruit trees until even the blue lotus had a sweetness of odor. Since it usually had none, I did not know why I could sniff it until I saw black eunuchs on their knees painting the blue lotus with scented oils, perfuming the carob trees, and the sycamores, even the roots of the date palms whose fronds, above, deepened the shade of the garden.

In the morning, the little queens sang as they brushed one another's hair. They played with their children, gave orders to their servants. Since they could not leave themselves, their cooks were sent to the market for food, and scolded on their return for any flaws in the onions and meat. At the height of the day, the little queens ate at each other's houses and exchanged gifts, then decorated each other with flowers, or sang new songs. They trained their pet greyhounds, their cats and their birds. They told each other stories of their families and taught their children to repeat the names of the gods of the five senses and the four directions of the winds, the gods of the hours of the day and of the hours of the night and the gods in the tombs of the Pharaohs, of Isis and Osiris and Horus and Set, and of the Hidden One, Amon, Father of their own Father, Usermare. And in the late afternoon, after the little queens had slept through the heat of the day, they would meditate on their books of magic or mix their perfume and cosmetics and offer prayers and go once again at twilight to the pavilion to wait for Usermare.

Some nights, He would arrive at just that hour when the light of the early moon would fall upon the radiance of His Chariot, and I would watch from the tower gate as the Royal Runners raced ahead of Him through the street, then fell to the side and kissed the stone lions as the doors flew open. Then He raced in, leaving behind the two platoons of the Royal Guard, the fan-bearer and the standard-bearer, the mace-bearers and the lancers and they, in turn, bowed to an escort of princes and dignitaries who wheeled in their chariots and returned to their homes through the streets of Thebes, standing beside the grooms of the chariots in the near dark, their bodies jolting to the clatter.

Yet, if there were nights when everyone knew He was coming, other times He surprised all. Sometimes, the little queens waited eagerly for Him when He did not come. Having been given signs by their gods that the occasion was favorable, they were now obliged to assume that other gods had intervened, or had their prayers been spoken in an unclear voice? They would raise a hand for their servant and, furious with the perfume they had chosen (which could also have betrayed them) would walk down to the lake and wash in the moonlight, bathing away the scent of its failure.

There were little queens who might dress every night for thirty nights with much attention yet never be spoken to once by the King. Then, as I came to understand, they were by the end like defeated soldiers and did not try to charm the King again for many months but would stay in their homes and teach their children and wait until another season had come. If they failed on the Flood, they might even wait through all of Sowing and Harvest until the fields were bare again. Some never tried a second time. There were little queens who had lived for ten years in the Gardens of the Secluded and never saw His Splendor--it was enough if they could serve as friend to a little queen who was, for a while, a Favorite.

•

In the dry season, after I had been Governor of the House of the Secluded for many months, Usermare arrived one night so late at the Gardens that the disappointed women were already bathing in the lake. He was drunk. Never before had I seen Him so. "I have been drunk for three nights on kolobi," said Usermare, "and it is the strongest brandy in all of Egypt. Yes, drink kolobi with Me," said Usermare as He came through the Gates, and I bowed and said, "No honor is greater," and gulped it out of the golden goblet passed to me. Usermare asked, "Is the kolobi hard to swallow?" When I did not reply, He said, "Does what I say have an evil smell? Drink!"

On this night, Usermare went down to the lake. It was a place He had never visited for so long as I had been there and thereby He surprised the few little queens who were bathing in the moonlight. Indeed they were frolicking before the eunuchs who waited on the shore, holding their robes. Now, they gave a squeak and a cry and the splashing sound of bathers trying to hide themselves. Usermare laughed until one could smell His brandy in the air.

"Come out of the water and amuse Me," He said. "You've played long enough."

So they emerged, some more beautiful under the moon than they could ever be in the light of the sun. Some were shivering. A few of the most timid little queens had not been near to Usermare for the longest time. One woman, Heqat, named after the Goddess of Frogs, had been, on occasion, His companion and another, the fat one, Honey-Ball, had even been a Favorite until her toe was cut off. Now, she bowed before Him but with a flash of her eyes so intense that even in the night, the white of her eyes was whiter than linen. Although Honey-Ball was very fat, she carried herself as if she were the greatest little queen of them all, and did not look fat at this moment but powerful. Her hips were like the hips of a horse.

Then they were all out of the water, and their eunuchs put forward golden chairs so that they might sit about Him in a semicircle, but Usermare asked, "Who will drink the kolobi with Me?" and of them all, only Honey-Ball reached forward her hand. He gave it to her and she drank and handed back the cup and I poured more kolobi for the Pharaoh.

"Tell Me stories," said Usermare. "I have been drinking this brandy of Egypt for three days, and I would have done better to swallow the blood of a dead man. I have awakened each morning with a blow in My head from the ghost, but I do not know which ghost."

The smell of His brandy lay on the night air, full of the wounds of the grape. Usermare had lungs to breathe the flames of fire itself, but the little queens sat with throats full of unseen smoke. Heavy was their fear of the invisible fire of the brandy.

"Heqat," He said, "amuse Me." He burped. The queens giggled hopefully as if the sound might lap at the edge of His fire and soothe it. Tonight, however, He had had so much of the kolobi that they laughed in great doubt, not knowing if their mirth was soothing His temper, or inflaming it.

"Great and noble Two-House," said Heqat, "I would wish to tell a story that does not displease You."

"Tell no stories of frogs, then. You are much like a frog yourself."

Usermare always spoke to Heqat in just this manner. It was apparent He could not bear her appearance. She was the ugliest of the little queens, and for that matter could be the ugliest in many a group of women.

Now, in the darkness, by the bank of the lake, Heqat said, "In Syria, to the east of Tyre, the brides of many men are bought at auction. The most beautiful bring a good price to their family, but for ugly women in whom there is no interest, the father of the bride must pay the groom. So there comes an hour in the auction, when the passage of money changes its course, even as the tides of the Very Green wash out and then wash back. Much money is paid by the father of the ugliest bride."

The story had succeeded in capturing Him. There were murmurs from the little queens. "It happened," said Heqat, "that one woman was so ugly her new husband grew ill when he looked at her. Yet, one night soon after her marriage, she was befriended in a dream by the Goddess Astarte who said, 'I am bored by beauty. I find it common. So I take notice of you, poor ugly girl, and offer these words of magic. They will protect your husband and sons from every disease but the one chosen to kill them.' Then Astarte disappeared. The husband of this ugly woman, however, grew so rich in vigor that he made love to his ugly wife every night and they had many children who were also healthy. When at last the husband died of the one disease chosen to kill him, the woman asked to be auctioned again. By this time her power to take good care of those who lived closest to her was so well known that she commanded the highest price at the auction. More was paid for her than for the loveliest bride. Thereby, every principle of beauty was turned about on that day. Now, in my land, they cannot tell the good-looking women from the ugly, and they honor long, crooked noses."

She bowed. Her tale was done. A few of the little queens began to giggle, but Honey-Ball commenced to laugh. Her mirth came from a powerful throat, yet the sound was so rich at its foundation and spoke so well of the recollection of old pleasure, that I thought it beautiful.

"Have more kolobi," said Usermare. "Take a good swallow. Your tale is next."

Honey-Ball bowed. Her waist was as thick as the waist of any two women beside her, but she bowed well enough to touch her knee.

"I have heard of a goddess," she said, "who has rose-colored hair. None know Her name."

"I would like to see such a goddess," said Usermare. His voice was as powerful as her voice.

"Great Ozymandias," she said, and there was mockery as delicate as the lift of a wing in the manner she spoke the name, for it was the one by which nations to the East would call Him, "if You were to see this rose-colored goddess, You would hold Her, and then She would be a goddess no more but a woman like any of us."

The little queens giggled with great happiness. The insult was safely contained in the compliment, and Usermare could only reply, "Tell your tale, Hippo, before I give a squeeze to your belly, and the banks of this lake are covered with oil."

"A million and infinity of apologies," said Honey-Ball, "for delaying Your amusement. Oh, Great Ozymandias, the skin of this goddess with rose-colored hair was white, and so She loved to lie in a marsh by the green of the wet marsh-grass. There came one day a shepherd who was also beautiful, and stronger than other men. He wanted Her as soon as he saw Her, but She said, 'First, you must wrestle in My pool.' He said, thinking to tease Her, 'What if I lose?' Oh, She told him, he must give Her a sheep if he lost. The shepherd seized Her hair, and pulled Her to him. Her head smelled as sweet as the rose, but his hands were trapped by the thorns in Her hair. So She seized him by the thighs and threw him, and sat on his head. Then he discovered thorns in the hair of the other forest. Oh, his mouth was bleeding before She let him go. He had to give Her a sheep. Next day, he came to fight again, and lost, and gave up another animal. He fought every day until his flock was gone, and his lips were a sorry mouth."

Now, Honey-Ball began to laugh and could not stop. The power of her voice, like the first rising of our flood, had a strength to pull in all that was on the banks. One by one, other little queens began to laugh, and then the eunuchs, until all were sharing the spirits of this story.

Maybe it was the kolobi, or it could have been the whim of the King, but when the merriment of the little queens did not cease, He, too, began to laugh and drank half a goblet, and passed what was left to Honey-Ball. "Ma-Khrut," He said, "you are True-of-Voice, indeed," and by the way I heard it, resonant as a bell, I knew that Ma-Khrut had been her name in the days when she was slender and beautiful and most well regarded, for Ma-Khru is a title given only to the greatest and wisest of priests, He-Who-Is-True-of-Voice, he who utters the sounds of the most profound prayers in the clearest and firmest tones (since in that manner he is able to send back in recoil, like an army in flight, all gods who might interfere with the prayer). None but High Priests are granted such a title of respect. Yet here was Honey-Ball given the name of Ma-Khrut. It could only (continued on page 118)Ancient Evenings(continued from page 82) mean, She-Who-Is-True-of-Voice.

"Usermare-Setpenere," said Honey-Ball, "if I speak with clarity, it is because of the awe I know at the sounds of Your name."

The little queens murmured their assent. Their piety was added to the mist on the lake. To pronounce the many names of Usermare properly was said to be a power great enough to rock the earth.

"That is good," said Usermare. "I hope you always say My name with care. I would hate to cut off the toe of your other foot."

One of the little queens gasped so unexpectedly she could be heard. The others ceased to laugh. Honey-Ball turned her head as if slapped. Still, she murmured, "Oh, Sesusi, I will become twice as fat."

"No bed in the House of the Secluded will then be strong enough to bear you," He told her.

"Then there will be no bed," she answered, and her eyes flashed again. I was much affected. The power of her presence on this night was not like other occasions when she was merely fat and limped about on feet sore from her weight. Tonight, ensconced on a gold bench, for the golden chairs were much too narrow, she seemed massive, yet majestic as a Great Queen, at least in this hour. Certainly, if the story told by Honey-Ball had immediate power over my Monarch, it was to arouse His desire. One could almost feel the glow of His belly. It rose in my great Pharaoh like a fire beneath the flame of kolobi. The eunuchs began to chant. Their hands struck their thighs with many little taps in a rhythm so quick I could hear the chirping of the crickets and the hoofs of horses. One of these eunuchs even had a way of running his finger-tips over his knees with a slipping sound to give you the patter of a brook or the slap of the smallest waves. To this accompaniment came forth many moths and butterflies from the dark and they flew in and out of our ears as if we were water-grass and they as numerous as little fish. Honey-Ball began to hum, and her voice was so resonant that once again I could not recognize the woman I saw. Other times, she had seemed without shape in her clothes, yet from the moment she came out of the water tonight, her body looked firm, and she was not without beauty. Like some who are fat, her flesh was slack in dejection, but could fill with blood when she was happy.

Tonight, she sang a ballad of the love of a farm girl for a shepherd, a sweet and innocent song, and Usermare drank kolobi to the sound of it and wiped His eyes. Like many powerful men, He liked to weep a little on hearing tender sentiments. But not for too long. Soon Honey-Ball sang the next verse. The melody was the same but now the shepherd had no interest in the girl, and looked instead at the buttocks of his sheep, a wicked ballad. Honey-Ball began to cry out in the pleasurable cries of the beast as it was taken. "Oh," she groaned in a voice to wake us all, "Oh," and the air throbbed.

Usermare was now ready. "Come," He said to her. "You, Heqat, Nubty, Oasis!" With a voice that did not bother to conceal the heat of His slow fires on this night, He added, "Let it be at the house of Nubty." Then, as if a thought had just come to His hand, like a dog licking His fingers, Usermare said, "Menenhetet, you are to come with Me," and He took my hand, and that way, we walked together.

•

I already knew that these hundred little queens did not always wait for an offering of pleasure from our divine Ramses, but sometimes ended by making love to each other. This discovery--true mark of the peasant--was objectionable to me, even if it should have been familiar. I grew up in a crowd of boys who were always on each other. Our expression for a powerful friend was He-Who-Is-on-My-Back. So as a boy, there was nothing I did not know of being on the others' bodies, although my pride, since I was strong, had been that nobody was on mine. Still I could not bear to think of these women with one another, nor the way by which the most powerful of the little queens often treated the gentler ones as if they were slaves. On those nights when His Chariot did not enter the Gates, and you would not hear the thunder of His fornication, there would rise up instead the sweeter cries and harsher screeches, the moans and music of many a woman in many a room. It was common whenever women were at such play that one would pluck a harp to accompany the others. And I, hearing such sounds, could not, in my mind, forswear the sights. To see a little queen at the sweetmeat of another was to gorge my blood. But then I did not have the royal disregard of my Monarch. We all knew that He liked to watch His little queens romp with one another. "Oh, yes," He would say, "they are the strings of My lute and must learn to quiver together."

I, however, used to think of this as part of the filth that rose on the flood, a pestilence. It seemed to me that for a woman to love another woman more than her Pharaoh was equal to praying for the plague. So marched the legions of all those thoughts in me that were loyal to Usermare; but now as I walked through the Gardens with my hand in His, I became another man and was tolerant of their games and again I coveted the little queens for myself.

•

On this night, the little queen, Nubty, had a statue of Anion whose belly was no larger than my hand. Yet the staff that rose between His golden legs was not hidden, no, to the contrary, it was half as long as the god Himself was high, and Usermare knelt before this little god, and raised His own hands as if to say that all of Him was in service to Amon. Then, He put His mouth around the gold member of Amon.

"No man has ever penetrated My mouth," said Usermare, "but I am happy to kiss the sword of the Hidden One, and know the taste of gold and rubies." Indeed, on the tip of this gold member of the great God Amon, on the knob itself, was a large ruby.

Then, He rose, and Heqat and Oasis removed His neck plate and His skirt of linen. "Here, Meni," He said to me, "pray to Me as if I am now the sword of the Hidden One," and His phallus was in my face, and I did not dare but to swallow it, and felt the flood of the Nile rise in Him. My head was bobbing like a boat and the little queens giggled as the heat of His kolobi rushed into my throat and down the inside of my chest. There, I have told you the worst, the first of the humiliations I was to know on this night before my Pharaoh. It is this that has delayed me, this which is difficult to tell. Yet now I feel as if a stone is lifted. So I will tell you the rest. For much was done.

The little queens anointed Usermare. Tonight, as on other nights when I had not been there, He would sit like the God Amon, while the little queens would wipe all old cosmetic from His face and apply new rouge and eye shadow. They would take off His garments, and dress Him in fresh linen, then speak verses over the jewelry they laid on Him. Each piece removed was kissed by one of the little queens, as well as each garment they replaced. Since in those days I did not fully understand the difference between kissing and eating--which peasant could?--I thought they were making these small sounds with their lips to show that the taste of the linen of the Pharaoh was good.

To my astonishment He gave Himself up to the little queens as if He were a woman. He lay on His back with His powerful thighs in the air, His knees further apart than the width of His great shoulders, and my hand was held in His with such force I could hardly have freed (continued on page 124)Ancient Evenings(continued from page 118) myself. Yet that was only at the commencement.

Toward the end, He held my hand softly and I could feel His pleasures as they swelled into Him out of the cunning mouths of the little queens; indeed, even now, I can tell you of all that was in Usermare as He grew ready to come forth. I was able to know Him in those moments as none who are not a Pharaoh can ever know so Good and Great a God. When the four little queens knelt before the great and beautiful body of Usermare, I came to know Him. Heqat had taken His feet in her mouth and licked between His toes like a silver snake that winds through golden roots, and Oasis, with the skill of long practice, had given light licks and long kisses to the sword of Usermare even as Nubty knew His ears and His nose and the lids of His eyes with the tip of her tongue, yes, all of these caresses from Heqat, Oasis and Nubty passed through His fingers into me and I felt more beautiful than all the flowers in the Gardens of the Secluded and lived in the air of a rainbow while there He lay, legs apart, His knees bent. It was then that Honey-Ball brought her lips to that mouth of Usermare which lived between his buttocks and she kissed Him there, her tongue coming forth into His gates, and she knew the entrance to His passage. He lay there, and with my hand, I was with Him. So I knew what it was to be in the boat of Ra going up the river of the Duad in the Land of the Dead, and that was a wondrous place to see from such a boat, with serpents and scorpions at every turn, flames in the mouths of beasts more terrible than I had ever known, and Blessed Fields whose grass was sweet even in the night. Usermare floated through the Land of the Dead and saw the sun and the moon as His cousins. Then the river began to rise into the ruby of His sword there in the sweet lips of Oasis, and I heard Him shout, "I am, I am all that will be," and even as the women cried out, He came forth and the ghost of the kolobi was like a fire with red and emerald light in me.

So did I come forth at His side, all the powers of His own rising having surged through His fingers into mine, but then my coming forth was blasted back as if I knew that soon I would be owned from mouth to anus, the great Monarch soon to command the two ends of the river that ran through me, and it was true, for Usermare was now ready to stand forth as a man and He was interested in none of the mouths that lived between the thighs of His four little queens, but took my poor anus instead and before the women, made a woman of me. "Aiiigh, Kazama," they cried with many giggles, and it was then I learned that Kazama was their name for me. Slave Driver was the thought they held when they spoke the name to each other, but now the slave driver had become the slave. "Aiiigh, Kazama," they cried in their laughter. But I did not. Holding His hand, I had lived in the waters of paradise. Not so with His sword. That gave me no vision. I swore that this was the last time He penetrated my bowels even if He cut off all I had and left me in the compound of the eunuchs.

•

If I remember 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 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 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 certain every house in the Gardens of the Secluded would awaken. Then 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.

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. 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 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 eunuchs, when I nodded she put her hand to my neck and rubbed it slowly, and a strength came to me from her plump fingers.

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.

So I got up and walked through the Gardens, and climbed the tree outside her wall, crossed the branch and dropped within. She was waiting for me, 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 go 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." Instead, we passed 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 ajar, 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.

Indeed, my nose told me as quickly of little sacrifices performed in here. I could sniff the old blood of many a small animal who had given up its last fears on her altar. Then I knew that the powder in this wine must have come from the dung beetle, pounded, sifted, then altered by words of power, for why else would I think of it? We are so in awe of that beetle's strength, which can push balls of dung much larger than itself up a riverbank, that we do not study its subtler habits. But I, as a boy, had spent many afternoons on the river with no more for amusement than the beetles 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. Before I left on this night, as if she would own more of me than Usermare did, she cut off the ends of my fingernails with a sharp little knife, collected these parings and minced them small with her (continued on page 162)Ancient Evenings(continued from page124) 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 laid her lips on mine and kept them there. I felt swathed like a mummy only it was in wrapping of a cloth finer than any 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."

Now, I was, as I say, the only man living in these Gardens who was not a eunuch. So I 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, there was no story about any Prince, Governor, High Priest, Royal Judge, Third Overseer to the Vizier 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 faïence or their golden bracelets, their necklaces, their rings, their furniture, their gowns, their children, their own gardens, their servants, the exploits of their great relatives (since often they were daughters from the best family of their home); but then, all compliments given, we would come to our greater interest which was gossip, and I would hear much about 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 Queen 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 tales of the Pharaoh's Great Consorts 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, I had an understanding of her that came in part from her friends, as well as from little queens who were not. Long before I climbed over her tree, or heard Honey-Ball sing by the lake, I knew of her loss. I had seen men killed by the thousand, 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. Mersagert, 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 firepots 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 spider web, 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 including a curl from the brow of many a little queen and more than a few of the eunuchs.

•

Each night that Usermare remained away from the Gardens, I would awake in the dark, and with a heart that beat worse than any bird you might seize in your hand, I would be drawn to the branch that carried me over her wall and, with a good look to be certain no eunuchs were near, 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. 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 that of many another fat woman, it seeped out to the damp eaves.

But on one night, after seven nights of failure, she said, "You live so much in His wrath that I must take you away. 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 I saw these lines she drew on me, and they were as clear to my closed eyes as fire, yet without flames, only the brightness of the lines. 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 it went full out. I heard the groans of the oars in their locks, and did not dare open my eyes for fear I might lose the pleasure of seeing this vessel under full sail.

"I am the Keel," she said and, in her second voice, replied, "My Secret Name is Thigh of Isis." Then the first voice said, "I am the rudder," and the answer came, "In my hidden 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 saying the first name to one ear, and I was hearing the Secret Name in the other. "Bow," said she, and "Chief of the Provinces" was the response. "Sail," she said. I heard the whisper: "Sky."

"Pump," declared Honey-Ball, and then her own deep voice spoke out: "The-Hand-of-Isis-wipes-away-the-blood-of-Horus." With that, she took my poor dead snake and pumped it in her hand, but then the word for my member was almost the same as the word for pump.

Like a wind that touches the water as lightly as a finger-tip, 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 go up and down as we rode the waves, and I do not know if it was Ra I saw in my body, or the royal pleasure of Usermare, but I was ready to sail, and at that, she lay back, and pulled me over her. 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.

Quickly, 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."

•

No risk in the Battle of Kadesh was ever the equal of this, for when the battle was over, it was done, but now I would be on guard every day of my life. No matter. I could not wait for the next night. Through all that morning, as I discharged the little duties that came my way, I was also possessed of a vigor which had me near to laying hands on several little queens. I felt as if I were still on the boat--or what was left of my boat!--and sailed with the sun.

At evening, He arrived, so I could not see her. Usermare spent His time with other queens, but still I could hardly take the chance to visit Honey-Ball. His presence kept the eunuchs awake and stirring in every bush. Besides, the little queens were also listening to each sound. The night was like a dark ear. I could still have made the attempt, yet with Usermare only a house or two away, I might find myself as inert beside her as the heat of this darkness itself, and that shame I could not risk again. So, through the night, I had to hear His loud laugh, and the grunts that came from His throat.

Next night, Usermare stayed away, and I was with Honey-Ball, and ready. So soon as we lay down, I was in her, so soon as she moved, I could not stop, and before her body was in a gallop, I had ridden through. This time it was I who heard the whimper, the cry, the small moan of rage and the fall reverberating through her.

Still, there was a difference most agreeable for me. Until this night, I had no more than to come forth and I was left in fear, I wanted only to flee her arms. Tonight, however, I was ready to do it again, and did, and it was better. At last I could feel master of my feelings. The knowledge that her mouth was a slave to Usermare gave me sufficient disdain of her (and of myself) to remain within my bounds and, most nicely, able to rock back and forth as if lolling on a boat, even to take her hips through the pounding waves, indeed, take her on a voyage of both our bodies through the river of the night until the small stirrings of every caged animal in her garden became like the sounds on the riverbanks, and even the mice in fascination ceased running through the cracks in the walls. I tried this art of kissing at which she was adept, and although she was but a few days removed from the taste of Usermare's parts (which gave me a great revulsion insofar as He was a man) still He was also a god and nothing may issue from a god that is not fit for a feast, indeed, it used to be said that our flesh is formed from Amon's leavings, and perfume is the sweet smell of His corruption. So I was able then to keep turning in my heart between admiration and disdain, bringing myself back each time I was ready to go forth, and we galloped at the end in equal bounds, throwing each other about, and afterward felt true repose in the circle of our arms around each other.

From that night on, I could speak of a sweeter warmth. For I thought she was beautiful. Even the great weight of her lips spoke of the power of large beasts, and her waist had the vigor of a tree. I adored her back. It was strong, and Honey-Ball's thighs when I took them one in each of my arms were as full of satisfaction as the waists of two young girls I might hold at once. I always felt as if I were in the embrace of more than one woman.

Each time, then, I knew her better and thereby underwent more misery on those evenings when Usermare came to visit. One night, when He chose Honey-Ball in company with several little queens, the sounds of their pleasure so disturbed me that I came near to bursting in. Such an end would have been peaceful compared to the cruel state of listening. For I was crawling with ants in the hot baked desert of my heart.

On the next evening, He was there again, but I could recognize the little queens' voices and He had not chosen her. Uncertain whether to be pleased, or to despise her lack of charms to capture Him a second time, I overcame all caution, climbed her wall, entered her bed, and knew jealousy when she spoke. She told me she had been witness to all He did last night, yet entered none of it. When He asked why she stood before Him in such chastity, she replied that she had been communing with demons in preparation for a holy ceremony, and wished to avoid the risk of attaching these unseen ogres--who might be near--to His divine flesh. When He asked the purpose of her ceremony, she replied that it was for the Life, Health and Strength of the Two Lands. At which He grunted and said, "You could have chosen a better day" but asked no more.

That was the story she told. I did not believe it. The night before, in my suffering, I had heard her laugh many times. Besides, Usermare had small patience toward anyone who could not please Him. When I was ready to tell her so, she put her fingers to my lips (and, I promise you, we were speaking in tones next to silence itself) and whispered, "I said that if I did not touch His flesh on this night, I would be twice full of Him as a result." Honey-Ball giggled in the darkness. Although she had made the double circle of Isis about us many a time so that not one fleeting thought could depart into anyone else's thought, still she did it again for laughing at Him. "What did He say?" I asked.

"Oh," said she, "He told me He would pay double attention when next He looked at me," and with a bawdy grin, she spoke in the language of the streets, her mouth in my ear. "He said that since He was Lord of the Two Lands and twice King of Egypt, He would have me next by my cunt and my asshole."

"And what did you say?" I whispered.

" 'Great Two-House, it will take all of us to kiss You clean.' He started laughing so hard He never stopped. It almost ruined His pleasure. That is the only way to speak to Him."

"Will you do that?" I asked.

"I will do my best to avoid it," she said, with the same bawdy mirth on her mouth, and I was tempted to strike her.

Now, no matter how else we held each other, she had never let me near her feet. They were tiny for so big a woman, that much I could see, tiny like the feet of her mother, the most elegant woman among the rich and noble ladies of Sais. Honey-Ball told me that was the mark of a noble family, feet more delicate than others, and when I asked why, she looked at me with scorn. "If our hair is able to feel the whisper of the wind, we can have thoughts as delicate as birds." "Yes," I replied, "but by the balance of Maat, our feet should be sturdy like the earth." She laughed. "Spoken like a peasant!" she said, and laughed again and opened the circle of her thumb and forefinger so that I could enter her thoughts. I now saw myself jiggling like a doll at the tip of Usermare's sword. That made me angry enough to strike her, but I did not. She would never let me enter her thoughts again. "Sweet Kazama," she said, "the deepest thoughts are held by the earth. Through our toes--if they are fine enough--enter the cries from the Land of the Dead."

Simple enough. A good reason for delicate feet. So I would never have touched them, but now she mocked me again with her laughter. I seized her foot.

By the way she fought back, it was clear that I had committed some terrible act. But I was too busy wrestling to understand in our silent fury (for in all of this we did not make enough commotion to wake one servant) that the foot I had grasped was the one with the missing toe. Then, since I held it with both hands, and she was kicking at my wrist and head with the other leg, it was all I could do to explore the poor missing place where the little toe had been, now as shiny to the tips of my fingers as the amputated nub on the wrist of a thief, yet as soon as I truly held it, I knew this rape was the only true seduction I would ever have of her, and feeling by now strong as a tree myself, I merely offered my skull to each of her kicks, while deliberately kissing this shiny little place. But my head was ringing so much from these blows of her leg that I saw her family pass before me in a noble boat, a golden panoply on the broad waters of the Delta, and then her fight was gone, and Honey-Ball burst into tears. Her sobbing became the loudest sound of the night in all these Gardens, and it was as soothing to the heavy silence as the washing past of waters, for where was the house with a little queen who had not wept? Usermare would never be concerned with such a sound. Honey-Ball's body became soft again, and I lay holding my captive foot and imbibed all the sorrow that came up from it, even the odor of the little caverns between her toes was sad, and so I knew with what misery she lived, and rose up at last and kissed her on the mouth to taste the same sorrow, ah, there was a feeling of tenderness in my chest such as I had never known before.

From that hour I began to see her as a sister. We had a saying in my village: "You can sleep in a woman's bed for a hundred years, but you will never know her heart until you care for her as a sister." I never liked that belief, I find no pleasure in sentiments that take care of matters forever, but now I thought I understood why Honey-Ball had grown so fat. One had only to touch the stump of her little toe, as I alone had done, to feel the loss within her--the nub of that toe was like a rock in a silent sea, and I could feel her thoughts beat upon it. So I came to learn how her feelings toward Usermare might have only a little love to mix with a hatred larger than mine. Holding her as she wept, her heart spoke to me, and we were of the same family--you could not find another man and woman in all of the Gardens of the Secluded as consumed as ourselves with the heat of revenge. For when Usermare took out His short knife, grasped her foot and promptly took away the toe with one stroke of His blade, He then handed that bloody little half-worm back. They say she screamed and fled, all true as she told me, but she also embalmed the toe in natron for seventy days and kept it in a small gold case that had the shape of a sarcophagus. That is the act of a woman who puts immense value on herself, but you must understand that to her family she was not a little queen, but a Queen. Her mother used to say, "After Nefertiri, comes Ma-Khrut." It was never true, of course, yet to the eyes of her family, it was. So the insult to her foot disturbed the heavens. It is no small matter to descend the royal steps from First Favorite of the little queens to a woman whose name He speaks twice a year. Like a mummy I think she had to cover herself with three coffins.

Besides, she had brought great dishonor upon her family. In Sais, she told me, the good families gossiped so much about her toe, that one of her sisters, engaged to a young noble, received word most suddenly that he would now marry into another family. Honey-Ball sighed as she told me this and said, "They might as well have buried me in a sheepskin."

With our growing familiarity, she had become more modest and did not always seek to display her powers, indeed, there were nights when she was my sister, and spoke of small pains and miserable little sorrows. So I began to hear from her lips the old saying one heard often in Thebes about people in the Delta: "Those who inhabit the swamps, know not." The meaning had always been so obvious that I never questioned its truth--to live in the swamps was to be wet, pestered with insects, and weak with heat. Everything grew too easily. The balance of Maat was missing. One lived in stupor and knew not.

"It is true," said Honey-Ball. "It is true except for those about whom it is not true." And she went on to tell me how her family, of twenty generations in the city of Sais, had had the pride to overcome the apathy of their swamp country. "Our desire," she said, "is to stand in balance to our neighbors who know not." Then I would be obliged to listen as she repeated, "Sesusi does not value me because I am from Sais." The pit of this drear mood grew so deep that she decided to avenge herself against Usermare's indifference, and for the next few nights she gave much to her rites, but, I must say, she received little. Each night, she performed a ritual to Turn-the-Head-of-Usermare, and cried forth the names of gods with much weight, her voice quivering with exaltation. Yet next day, nothing had happened and the sum of all she had exhausted in herself, was most visible on her face.

I began to ask myself how any magician could turn His neck. Usermare was able to call on a thousand gods and goddesses. He had a myriad above, and now, after His marriage to Rama-Nefru, a Hittite myriad of gods below.

Yet, each night, as I lay beside her, much as if her magic could turn my neck far better than our Pharaoh's, I was not bored with her unhappy moods, and loved her. We could each drink in the other's sorrow and shame. I would lie beside her, my face between her breasts, and they came to tell me of the solemnity and deep resolve of her heart until I did not think she was silly for suffering over how she had injured her family. I was coming to understand that this family was raised higher in her heart than Usermare. In her two great breasts lived all that she would cherish, her father, her mother, her sisters, and myself. Feeling myself in her flesh, I thought that if she were slow to stir, and I might never again enjoy the liveliness and wickedness and love of the dance that women with small breasts might bring to bed, that could not weigh against our sweet deep silence, its warning in one's flesh that the love I would find in these heavy breasts would not be small nor soon pass. Listening to the secret intentions of her heart as its beat came to me out of the depth of her flesh, I knew she had decided against all caution to trust me--which could only mean that she must work her spells from out of my heart as well as her own, bind us so closely that an error in any magic I learned could cause a great rent in hers. So I also knew that if I did not stand up straight away in the dark and leave her room, never to be alone with her again, I would lose the power to command what was left of my will. Yet so strong was the power of her heart that I felt no panic to move, and indeed, was a slave already, and close to her.

•

Finally, on one night, she initiated me into these matters that are so full of treachery and peril. For I knew the intent of our magic--it was our magic now--could be no less than to take away the strength of Usermare.

Of course, if I were to be the great servant of her magic, I must be ready to die. That she told me often, and always added, "But no longer like a peasant." No, now I must learn to die in the full regalia of embalming. Like the art of learning to kiss, death belonged to nobles. I used to laugh at her. Did I need this strengthening of the will?--I, who had looked at a thousand axes--but she knew better. She understood, as I would soon, that to die peacefully can be the most perilous way of all, since one must then be ready for the journey through Khert Neter.

Over and over, she wished to assure me that no servant of her body and heart, certainly not I, would lose Ma-Khrut's protection. Neither in this world nor in the next. I told her that in my boyhood, in my village, we knew it was only nobles and the very wealthy who could travel in the Land of the Dead with any hope of reaching the Blessed Fields. For a poor peasant, the serpents encountered were so large, the fires so hot, and the cataracts so precipitous that it was simple prudence not to try, indeed never to think of it. Easier to rest in a sandy grave. Of course, as I also began to remember, many of our village dead did not accept such a rest, and came back as ghosts. They would pass through the village at night and talk to us in our dreams until the burial practice in my region became so harsh as to cut off the head of a dead person and sever the feet. That way a ghost could not follow us. Sometimes, we would even bury the head between the knees and put a man's feet by his ears to confuse him altogether. She gave a silvery laugh when I told her this. The light of the moon was in the tenderness of her thoughts, whatever they were.

It was then she rose from our bed, and picked up a sarcophagus no longer than my finger, yet Ma-Khrut's face and figure were painted upon the lid. Within was a mummy the size of a small caterpillar, so carefully wrapped in fine linen that it needed no resin, indeed, its touch was as agreeable as the petal of a rose. I was holding the carefully embalmed mummy of her little toe. Yet before I could so much as decide whether it was of great value, or disagreeable to behold, she began to speak of the travels of her little toe through the gates and fiery courses of the Land of the Dead, and when I babbled that I did not know how any part of the body, much less a toe, could travel by itself, she gave her silvery laugh once more. "By way of a ceremony known only in my home," she said. "Sometimes those who are from Sais do not know so little," and she laughed again. "My family had the Ka of this toe betrothed to the Ka of a fat and wealthy merchant from Sais. Yes, they even provided him with the appropriate rolls of papyrus." I knew her well enough to understand she was serious, and at last she told me the tale. On receipt of a letter from her mother, Honey-Ball learned that this merchant died on the night she lost her toe. So even as her toe was lying in its little bath of natron, so was the merchant lying in his large bath, and both of them to. be steeped for seventy days. Messages were exchanged to make certain they were wrapped on the same afternoon, and installed in their separate sarcophagi, the large and the small, even on the same evening, the toe in Thebes, the fat merchant in Sais ten days' travel away on the river, yet such is the natural indifference of the Ka to distance that her toe was ready to take the voyage to Khert Neter with him.

Then Honey-Ball spoke of how her mother had assisted the fat man's family during the preparations. "It is terrible when a family makes its wealth so quickly that no knowledge adheres to the gold. The widow couldn't name which rolls of papyrus to buy. Nor did she understand that she was obliged to buy the Chapter-of-the-Negative-Confession."

"The-Chapter-of-the-Negative-Confession," I repeated wisely, but Honey-Ball knew I was as ignorant as the fat man's family.

"Yes," she said, "the widow complained about the cost. She was stingy! Finally my mother had to pay for it herself. She was not about to let the Ka of my little toe go wandering through Khert Neter unless this fat man had bought a Negative Confession. The night before the funeral, my mother was obliged to hire two priests, and it took them until dawn to inscribe the Confession properly on thrice-blessed papyrus. But now at least the merchant could show all the gods, demons, and beasts that he was a good man. This papyrus testified that he had never committed a sin. He had not killed any man or woman, nor stolen anything from any temple. He had made no violation of the property of Amon. He had never uttered lies or curses, and no woman could declare he had committed adultery with her, any more than a man could say he had made love to other men. He had not lived with a heart full of rage, and he never eavesdropped on neighbors. Neither had he stolen desirable land, nor slandered anyone, and he did not make love to himself. He had never refused to listen to the truth, and could swear that no water supposed to flow onto the property of others had been dammed up by him. He never blasphemed. He had not even raised his voice. He had committed not a single one of the forty-two sins, not one. Most certainly he had never worked any witchcraft against the King."

Now Honey-Ball laughed with as much pleasure in her voice as I ever heard. "Aiiigh, Kazama, what a foul man we helped! There was no sin he did not commit. His reputation was so putrid that everybody in Sais called him Fekh-Futi, though not to his face.

"Yet, do you understand," Honey-Ball said to me, "that the powers of this Negative Confession are so great the Ka of my toe is safe?" She nodded. "In my dreams, that is what I am always told. Fekh-Futi thrives in the Land of the Dead, and my little toe beside him."

"Thrives?" I said to her. I was much confused. The night before, seeking to impress me with how much wisdom she had acquired from these travels of her toe, she said that no priest could instruct me as well in what to say to the fiery beasts and the keepers of the gates. She not only knew the names of the serpents, but was familiar with the apes and crocodiles on the banks of the Duad, and her Ka had spoken to lions with teeth of flame, as well as to lynxes with claws like swords. She could use the words of power to take you past lakes of burning oil and had learned the herbs to eat when travelling through the quicksand in the darkness beyond each gate.

"You're equal to the Royal Library of Usermare," I said.

"I would do all of this for you," she told me. I could hear how much love was in her voice. She would, indeed, take true care of me in the Land of the Dead. She wished me to have no fear of that place. That way, I would have less terror in her ceremonies.

I was now altogether confused. With it all, Fekh-Futi had been given one little piece of papyrus full of lies, blessed by who knew which drunken priests fondling one another through the night, yet he was safe? He was forgiven?

"Oh," she said, "the thrice-blessed Negative Confession was not written for Fekh-Futi alone. It is also for the Ka of my little toe."

"Can you say that you have committed none of those forty-two sins?"

"The virtue of the papyrus is not to be found in its truth but in the power of the family that purchases it," she admitted.

Her words sat heavily on me. Ma-Khrut might claim to be able to do much for me, but the more likely truth was that we were both in peril.

I told her this. I hardly had to. She knew my thoughts.

"We could be killed together." She said this calmly, even as we lay side by side in her bed. "Usermare could come through that door while I am listening to your heart."

"Why do you tell me this?"

"I want," she said, "that you commit some prayers to memory for use in the Land of the Dead."

"Can I do it?"

"It can be done."

"You have done it," I agreed.

Ma-Khrut might know how to memorize all the prayers she would need, but her memory was mightier than my muscles. I did not even feel the desire to try such feats. She might be as wise as the Royal Library, but she was also so stupid as not to know there was going to be no bath of natron for me. If He found me here, Usermare would cut my body into forty-two pieces, and strew the parts.

•

As soon as I left her side and was back in my own house, I began to drink from a jar of kolobi and soon swallowed most of it. The sad truth was that I did not even know if I wished to end in the Land of the Dead with her. Did I desire to be the eternal companion of a woman who had tasted the leavings of another man?

It was then I knew how much I was married to Honey-Ball, and how much I was oppressed by her. Even in my own room, I did not dare to have any thoughts. Saying this to myself, the near-empty jar of kolobi in my hands, feeling as drunk as the Good and Great God Usermare, I made the circle forty-two times about my head and fell away from vertigo. The trials and ambushes of the Land of the Dead had become as twisted in my mind as the entrails on the battlefield of Kadesh.

When I awoke next morning in the stupors of kolobi, I turned over on my bed and said to myself, "The evil spirits of the night are abroad." For behind the protection of my forty-two circles, I still hated Honey-Ball and was most happy with the few thoughts she could not reach. My mood was as sour as the taste of blood in the mouth.

Still, that was not all of what I said to myself. Aware of all the thoughts that she could certainly hear, I took pains to tell her of the love I held. Nor did I lie altogether. The recollection of what she had done with Usermare was like a fire in my groin, but not all of the heat was evil.

All this while, the cries of children playing outside my house were in my ears. How many there were! Retching over the ghost of the kolobi, I could hear (as I had never before) the sound of their games through the morning, larger even than the cries of the birds. These children's shouts flew in all directions. Now I heard them as they bathed in the pools and chased the geese, or climbed high in the trees to talk to the birds. Over my head came a gabble of nurses scolding, mothers scolding, long whimpers and every kind of laughter, all these children, every one, sons and daughters of Usermare. Watching, there were tears in my eyes as strange and sweet as a fall of rain in a desert. I was moved by the observation that Honey-Ball was one of the few little queens who had not borne any of Usermare's children. Could it be that she was one who did not love His loins, and might, in truth, prefer mine? I felt so close at this instant that I could hate her no longer. She had been ready, after all, to die with me.

So, if I had awakened with every oppression, now I could breathe again. My heart stirred at her generosity. It was as if I understood, and for the first time, how no one could provide for my future travels so well as this woman. It brought me to understand the true power of a family. As Ra had His godly boat for travel through the dark river of the Duad, so were a wife and children our own golden vessel on such a trip. Honey-Ball and I had been wed by the secret ceremony of marriage--knowing each other's buttocks, we shared the property of our flesh. Now, I would have children with her. Yes, I told myself, we must escape from these Gardens. I would flee with her to the Eastern Desert. From there, we might travel to New Tyre. How could we fail to prosper in such a curious city with her great knowledge?

It was then I remembered the story Heqat told of the ugly woman who kept her husband free of every disease, and I laughed aloud. Honey-Ball's face could be beautiful, and her body was as great as the wealth of Usermare, yet I knew she must be the ugly woman of whom Heqat had spoken. I would never suffer any ill while living with her, nor would our children. She would protect them all. So I loved her for these riches and could not sleep for the clarity of the sentiments I felt. I could smell the keen air of every morning we would know in the mountains on the long road from Megiddo to Tyre, and even the perils appealed to me as pleasures. I could show Ma-Khrut the resources of my knowledge once we were in the forests. More than ever before, I felt bold as a god.

On the next night, therefore, in the sweet silence that followed love, full of honor, and most content that we had embraced for once without any ceremony of magic, but had come forth in all the quiet yearning of a brother and sister, I held her face between my hands, much aware of the great sky above where the gods might be listening, and whispered of how we would yet be wed and live with many children. But as I spoke, I knew the perils of the journey, for I perceived how much we would need her magic to reach any other land.

She answered, "It is better here."

I had a clear view through her eyes of all she would give up: the jars and boxes that held her amulets, her powders and her animal skins. She saw them as equal to a city, even as the fortress of her powers, but so soon as I was ready to tell her that she would have all of that again in another place, she asked, "How dear will children be to you?"

"We must have many."

"Then you do not want to run away with me," she said. Her eye had no tears and her voice no sorrow as she told the story, yet when she finished, she began to weep. The child of Usermare had been in her belly, she said. And she had lost that child, her first child, on the night Usermare cut off her toe.

"I do not believe that," I said.

"It is true. I lost the child, and I lost what was in me to make other children." Her voice was as firm as the roots of the largest tree in the Gardens of the Secluded. "That," she said, "is the true reason I grew fat."

In the pain of listening to her, my thoughts ran past like riderless horses.

She got up from the bed and lit a pot of incense. With every smoke I took into my throat, I had the certainty that my life was shorter by each one of these scents, and the hour of my most unlucky hour was coming in, even as my breath was going out. On the inside of her belly would my last seed expire.

Unable to bear the misery of our silence, I began to make love to her again, but felt thick with stupor, and I came forth into the muddy banks of the Duad and lay beside her, wondering whether the power of the circle drawn forty-two times around my head might keep her from knowing how foul were the pits of my mood.

She did not speak, but upon us, sour as the odor of old blood, was the weight of her purposes. No love would ever be so near as the triumph of her craft. Lying silently by her side, I spent the night waiting for that hour before the dawn when I must leave. I did not wish to stay, but the depth of her thoughts (which I could not enter) lay upon me like the carcass of a beast, and indeed we passed the night like two much-wounded animals.

Yet, in this last interval before I left, she allowed me to come close once more to her thoughts. As a traveler on a barge can listen to the murmurings of the Nile and know the spirit of the water, so did I perceive that she was searching through her wisdom for a ritual that could strike Usermare with force.

Now was I surprised in the morning when I returned to her house and the eunuchs were busy cleaning her altar. This gave me so much uneasiness that I visited her again despite any attention this might cause and by the nature of her preparations, I saw that she was preparing an Address to Isis.

Honey-Ball had spoken of how solemn was this invocation of the Great Goddess and now I was moved by the seriousness of her choice. The decision was as bold as my own plan to escape, and a breath of love returned. My daring might have inspired hers. So I passed over all food offered to me this day, touching neither melon nor beans nor goose, and went early to the house of Honey-Ball. It was common to take my dinner with one or another little queen, even a good omen. The appearance of the Governor might induce a visit by Usermare Himself. On this evening, however, neither I nor Honey-Ball took more than a dish of cooked wheat on a plate made of papyrus. Then, in full view of her eunuchs, and of any little queens strolling by the house, I left, even lingering in the lane outside her walls while I spoke to other little queens and waited for the darkness. There would be no moon, and a visit by the Pharaoh was unlikely. As soon as the eunuchs of Honey-Ball were dismissed, I came back over the wall.

Honey-Ball was wearing white sandals and a gown of transparent linen. Her perfume spoke of white roses and her breath was sweeter than her perfume. I wondered if it was the presence of Isis rising from the wheat we had eaten. Honey-Ball had a breath that could come forth like a blossom, or reek of foul curses, and on many a night, I knew the stench of the Duad. On this evening, however, her breath was calm, and the red amulet of Isis she wore about her waist gave her composure.

Soon, she entered upon the invocation. Honey-Ball would call upon Isis in the voice of Usermare's father, the Pharaoh Seti the First. Ma-Khrut might be esteemed by many powers and spirits, but only a Pharaoh would be admitted to those elevations where Isis dwelled and, indeed, Honey-Ball had found a spell in the Royal Library of Usermare that would call forth the full powers of the Goddess if spoken by a King. So she must summon the Ka of a dead Pharaoh. Enveloped in His presence, she could speak to Isis.

She stepped outside the circle, therefore, to remove her gown, opened a chest, and took out a white skirt appropriate to a Pharaoh as well as golden sandals, and a golden chest plate large enough to cover her breasts. Then, to my astonishment, she opened another chest and withdrew a Double Crown of fine stiff linen made, I realized, by her own hands, and it was more than a cubit in height. She placed this upon her head, with a chin beard to her mouth, and by the time she stepped back into the circle and installed the red amulet on the altar, her face had transformed itself as well. The shape of her full mouth had altered into the stern lips of Seti--at least as I knew him by many a temple drawing.

While I lay on my back, head against the altar and her foot upon my chest (so that I looked up at a body and face as fierce and as massive as the great Pharaoh who had been the Father of Usermare) Honey-Ball began to recite a poem:

"Four elements

In their scattered parts,

Will bring their hearts

To these events.

May the Ka of Seti come to birth,

May the Ka of Seti know our earth.

Air, water, earth, fire,

Seed, root, tree, fruit,

Breathe, drown, bury, birth,

Air, water, fire, earth,

O Seti, come to me."

She said it, and lying beneath her, I repeated each word, our voices in unison, and the lines were said many times. As she spoke, she took pinches of incense from a bowl on the altar, and laid them on the pots so that the room was heavy with smoke, and the heat of her heart rose higher, and the weight of her foot was greater. Her voice moved through air so thick her breath shifted the smoke like clouds.

"O, You," she said, "Who were the greatest of Pharaohs and sits at the feet of Osiris with Khufu and Thutmose, You Who are the Father of the Great Usermare, know, then, the sound of this voice that calls to You, for I am Ma-Khrut of Sais, who was born in Your Reign.

"Great Seti, Greatest of all Pharaohs, let Yourself be known by Your Power, by Your Rage, and by the Glories of Your Reign. For Your Son, Usermare, has torn down Your Temple in Thebes. He has turned all the great words to the wall that are spoken of His Father Seti. In these Temples, praise for His Father is silent. The stones have been choked. If You hear me, may Your Ka descend upon me like a tent." She was silent. Then she said, "O, Seti, come to me."

She spoke in the clear and perfect tongue of a Pharaoh, her left hand pointing out before her North to the altar, North to the lands of Sais on the Delta, and I felt the Ka of the dead Monarch descend upon her like a tent of the lightest linen. I saw how the green circle on the floor burned with the red of the amulet on the altar. The cries of birds came across the silence of the sky from the time of Seti, and I sat up so that the hand of the Father of Usermare could grasp my hair and indeed my hair was seized, and I felt the great force of the Father of Usermare in the hand that was on my hair, and it lay like the weight of a bronze statue upon me.

Then I heard the voice of the Ka of Seti. He spoke to Isis: "Oh, Great Goddess," said this voice, "You are the Mother of our grain, and the Lady of our bread. You are the Goddess of all that is Green. You are stronger than all the Temples of Amon." Now a mist arose from the altar, and a smell of the sweetness of the fields was in the air. "The Moon," said the voice of the Ka of Seti, "is Your Temple. All mountains come down to You. The swamps flow at Your command."

High above the hand that gripped my head, I could hear Ma-Khrut speak in the voice of the Ka of Seti:

"Great Goddess, hear the shame of Seti the First. For His Son shifts the stones of His Temple. The blocks of marble are turned. The glories that have been written of Seti are turned to the wall. What has been to the front is now to the back."

"It is true," I said aloud.

"Old odors stir from these stones. They speak from the earth that has buried them. Let these stones fall upon Ramses. Let His Heart be crushed by the stones of Seti."

Waves went out from the Ka of Seti and passed through me, and great contortions of the flesh.

"Your mouth commands Ra. The Moon is Your Temple. All mountains come down to You.

On the altar, the amulet was glowing with a molten light white as the fires of metal. Now, I could not breathe. The altar trembled and tottered and crashed like the stones of the Temple of Seti. The cry of a captured bird shrieked in my ears, and I was shaken by a great fury. I felt the Ka of Seti pass from her to me, even as the altar had toppled, and though I had been told by every one of her instructions that I must remain motionless at the end (and thereby assist the departure of Isis) and then must thank the Ka of Seti, I made a sound instead like a beast, and the Ka of Seti that was in me became as fierce as a wild boar. There, beside the shattered altar, I mounted Honey-Ball and made love as never before, and she was as sweet beneath me as a young girl of the fields, and even as I came forth in a great voice (so that in the morning, more than one little queen would say the serpent of all evil must have traversed the Gardens last night), still, I knew that the hands of the thousand and one Gods who surrounded Usermare were no longer joined. For in the sound of my own great roar was the voice of Seti thundering in wrath at the overturning of the stones in His Temple, and I made love in a fury to Ma-Khrut, and turned her about so as to know each mouth, the Mouth of her Flower, the Mouth of her Fish, the Mouth of the Seat, and gave both of my two mouths to her so that she knew me well. Beyond the walls of the Secluded, in the great plazas and gardens of the High Palace and the Little Palace, out to the city of Thebes itself, and down to the river, I could feel the wrath of Seti enter the mutilated stones of the new temples, and Usermare was disturbed in His calm, like the water of the sea before a storm.

Yet when all was done, Honey-Ball said, "I do not know what happened. The Ka of Seti the First was not supposed to pass from me to you."

•

By the next evening, however, there was no one in the Gardens who had not heard what had come upon the Pharaoh. Visiting the Palace of Nefertiri in the middle of the day, He had been eating with His Queen when a butler spilled on Him a bowl of steaming soup. The servant fled to the kitchen pursued by the King's Guard who, hearing the Pharaoh's roars of pain, proceeded to beat the poor steward so brutally that he died before the sun went down. Among the Secluded, there was no end of talking on this matter, and Honey-Ball laughed with the sweetest gaiety I had heard in her voice for many weeks. "The powers of Isis work directly," she said.

"As I walked through the Gardens, I became another man and coveted the little queens for myself."

"I decided to seek the courage of madness and put myself in the bed of one of the little queens."

"Her tongue was sweeter than any finger, and yet like a small sword when it pressed into my mouth."

The second part of the excerpt of "Ancient Evenings" will appear next month.