Imhotep Read online

  “I don’t have anyone ... I have sent Siamun to Kom Ombo…I don’t know… “ Djefi stammered.

  Kanakht turned to walk away.

  “Take him to Khmunu, to Waja-Hur. There are plenty of men there who are not afraid to kill a stranger, or a god. His embalmers will be happy to have this Brian as a new specimen,” he said over his shoulder. Then he stopped. “Yes, take him to Khmunu. You and I and Waja-Hur should all talk together. You’ll have time to think about our conversation, to divine what Sobek will do at Kom Ombo. Yes, Djefi. Come to Khmunu.”

  Brian emerged from the night shadows.

  Tim and Meryt were awake waiting for him. The rest of To-She slept and snored, bellies filled with the food from the day’s feast and the many jars of beer that accompanied it.

  “She’s asleep, drunk. Just like she must have been at that other party,” Brian said as he squatted beside them in Hetephernebti’s encampment.

  “Did you talk to her?” Tim asked.

  He nodded.

  “Just for a little, before Yunet took her away. She said she’s not going anywhere with me. I didn’t tell her about you. I don’t trust her. I’m positive she tells everything to Yunet, and Pahket said that Yunet and Djefi are close. So,” he shrugged.

  Tim and Brian looked at each other, each hoping that the other would have an idea.

  “Did he say anything about going to Khmunu?” Meryt asked.

  Tim shook his head.

  “What did she say?” Brian asked.

  “She asked if you said anything about a place called Khmunu.”

  “Hetephernebti said Djefi was going to Khmunu and then on to Kom Ombo,” Meryt continued. “She said he was taking several boats. He usually takes only one. I think he is planning to take Diane and Brian.”

  “Did anyone say anything about you going someplace with Djefi?” Tim asked Brian.

  Brian shook his head.

  “You understand her,” he said, nodding at Meryt.

  “It’s a been a few weeks, so, yeah, I’m understanding more and more. But it’s hard.”

  Brian shook his head.

  “That old man, I carried him on my back for three days and he talked the whole time, well, except for when he passed out or fell asleep. I have no idea what he was talking about. Pahket taught me some, but she talks real slow for me.”

  “You know, Brian, People think you’re a god or something. First you saved Neswy and then that little girl from the crocodile.”

  Brian shrugged. “I was lucky. I mean, it wasn’t a real long throw and the thing wasn’t moving that fast. I just had this rock in my hand, and, well . . .” He looked away. “Nolan Ryan would have killed it. I just stunned it.”

  Tim reached out and patted Brian’s shoulder. “You’re a hero to these people. Really. Look, I don’t know what to do about Diane. Do you think she really wants to stay here? I mean, you and I could head back to that tomb ourselves, if you think that’s what she wants.”

  Brian shook his head. “No. She’s pissed off at me, but she can’t want to stay here. She’d miss her friends, her credit cards, her family. I don’t think she realizes what’s going on, or else she’s given up hope because she doesn’t think I can help her. I don’t know.”

  “We’re planning to leave here tomorrow. Meryt said Hetephernebti is going to a town called Waset, where King Djoser is now. Then everyone is going to Kom Ombo. Djefi is building a temple there. So he’ll be there for sure. He’s been taking Yunet and Diane with him everywhere he goes, so they’ll be there. Meryt said that he’s taking several boats, so you’ll probably be going too.”

  They were both quiet again, thinking of what it meant.

  “Either you and I leave now, without Diane,” Tim said, “and you don’t want to do that, and neither do I, or else we follow Diane and try to persuade her to come with us. She’s bound to come to her senses soon.”

  Brian rolled his neck, cracking the vertebrae. He hunched his shoulders, stretching and twisting.

  “You OK?”

  “Yeah,” Brian sighed. “I just hate this. I got us into this, all of us because you followed me and Diane. Now I can’t get us out. I can’t kidnap Diane and carry her off. Shit. So, yeah, I’ll stay close to her. Maybe Pahket can teach me more of their language so I can talk to Yunet and or something. But I’ll stay close to Diane.”

  “And keep an eye out for us,” Tim said. “We’ll be leaving before you, so when I get to these towns I’ll find a place where we can get together. If worse comes to worse, Brian, I’ll meet King Djoser. Meryt thinks he’ll help us, then it won’t matter what Djefi or Yunet want. So, a couple weeks, everything will be worked out.”

  Pahket was proud of Brian.

  Wherever they walked in To-She, people stopped and stared at them. Many of the women in the village would stop what they were doing to approach Brian to thank him for saving little Kiya. They knew the price of bringing an infant into the world and how hard it was to see a child through its early years.

  Two days after Brian had saved the little girl, her father had brought Brian a kilt, its hem decorated with small green crocodiles.

  “For you, Netjer Brian,” he said, offering the neatly folded kilt with both hands. His wife stood quietly behind him, holding Kiya’s hand.

  Brian took the kilt and, unfolding it, held it to his waist.

  The family stood nervously, waiting his reaction.

  “It’s perfect,” he said, in English. They recognized his tone, but not the words. Without thinking, Brian loosened the strip that held the plain kilt he was wearing, and let it fall to the ground. Then he wrapped the new kilt around his waist.

  “Good,” he said in Egyptian, looking down at the kilt as he tied its strap around his waist. “Very good. Thank you.”

  He reached out a hand to the father. The man looked at him, as Bakr had weeks ago at Saqqara. Brian took the man’s hand and taught him how to shake hands. “What’s your name?” he asked in Egyptian.

  “Karem,” the man answered.

  Brian smiled widely. “Finally, a name I can recognize. KA-REEM,” he said in English, pronouncing the name loudly and distinctly as if he were a radio announcer at a basketball game. He laughed and said the name again.

  The family laughed hesitantly, unsure why this god was laughing.

  Brian clapped the father gently on the back and thanked him again. Then he knelt by Kiya.

  “You’re a pretty little thing,” he said in English. “But you got to learn to watch out for stuff. Here’s what I do. You have to pay attention to things, right? But you can’t focus on one thing too much. It’s like this.”

  He brought his hands up to the side of his face and curled the fingers to form a tunnel to look through. Kiya copied his motion. He nodded his head to show she was doing the right thing. While she looked through the small window of her hands, Brian slowly reached around out of her field of vision. Clapping his outstretched fingers against his thumb to imitate a crocodile’s mouth, he tickled her side.

  She dropped her hands and laughed.

  “See, you can’t get tunnel vision.”

  He put his hands up and stared at her, nodding permission. She reached over and he pretended to be surprised.

  When she put her hands up to take her turn he shook his head and gently pushed her hands down. “No, don’t limit your view. You got to see everything.”

  Then in Egyptian he said, “Be watchful.” He looked over his shoulder to Pahket, who check if he had said the words correctly.

  She nodded her approval, her eyes brimming with happy tears.

  Later that day, as they walked alone in the green fields beyond the orchard, Pahket told him that they would be going with Djefi to visit a priest at a town called Khmunu.

  “Diane is going?” he asked.

  Pahket nodded.

  “Same boat?” he asked.

  “I don’t know Netjer Brian, but at night we will leave the boat, so you can be with her then.”

 
There was something in her voice that caught his attention. He knew that even when he understood the individual words she said that he sometimes missed all of her meaning. He looked at her now and thought he caught a hint of sadness or resignation in her eyes.

  Meryt lay curled on the deck of Hetephernebti’s boat, gripping her stomach, her face tight with pain.

  She had stayed away from Tim the previous day, telling him that she did not feel well. She hadn’t seemed concerned and when he saw her wearing a kilt he had assumed that she was menstruating.

  He knew that the way women were treated during their monthly cycle varied among ancient societies. He had no idea how the ancient Egyptian’s dealt with it. So he spent the day with his note pad, sketching the river scenery and constructing future conversations with Diane, trying to find the right tone of persuasion or sternness. He realized that he didn’t know her well enough to guess at her responses, but he wanted to be prepared.

  Now when he saw Meryt in pain, he ran to her and knelt by her side.

  With her eyes shut tight she didn’t realize that he was there.

  He laid he hand against her forehead. It was burning hot.

  She opened her eyes at his touch.

  “Netjer Tim, you must stay away.”

  He smiled at her. “Do you think I will get what you have?” he asked gently, brushing her forehead softly.

  She nodded.

  A shadow appeared over them.

  “She has the wasting disease,” Hetephernebti said. “And yes, Netjer Tim, you will catch it. Come with me.” She turned and walked toward the canopy that covered the deck at the stern of the boat.

  “I’ll be right back, Meryt,” Tim said, touching her frail arm.

  “We will arrive at Khmunu tonight. We will put her ashore there. Waja-Hur will watch over her ending days.”

  Tim was stunned, hoping that he misunderstood her.

  “I am very sorry, Netjer Tim. Meryt is so young and it seems so unfair. You have grown close, haven’t you?”

  “No, wait,” he said. “What do you mean, her ending days?”

  “She has the wasting illness,” she said, her voice resigned and sad.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She cannot eat or drink, it gives her pain,” Hetephernebti said with a sigh. “When she empties herself there is blood. We cannot help her. The disease passes quickly from one person to another. I have seen entire families brought down with it. It is so very sad. The children and the elderly always die. Meryt is not a child anymore, but she has little strength.”

  “We can’t just let her die.”

  Hetephernebti smiled sadly. “We can not help her, Netjer Tim. There is nothing to do. At Khmunu I will put her in Waja-Hur’s care. She will be made comfortable and when her ka passes to Khert-Neter, he will prepare her body for the journey also.”

  Tim heard her, but his mind was elsewhere. He imagined Addy dying alone in her car while strangers stood by watching. If he turned his head just a few degrees he would see Meryt lying alone in her pain, drifting toward death, but alive, still alive and in need.

  Even if he couldn’t save her, he could stay with her, hold her and comfort her. He realized with a hot rush that his feelings for her had grown much stronger than he had admitted to himself.

  He looked up and saw that Hetephernebti was watching him, her eyes searching his face, trying to look into what he was thinking and feeling. Somehow he didn’t feel it was an intrusion, but rather that she was trying to find out what he really wanted and how she could help him.

  “I can not leave her, Hetephernebti.”

  “You will catch the illness. You are strong. It is possible you will recover. And it is possible that you will not.”

  He nodded slowly, his thoughts within. He didn’t believe in fate. He didn’t believe that the tractor-trailer had overturned so that Addy would take a different exit and find herself in a dangerous neighborhood. He didn’t believe that she had died so he would find himself here alone and he didn’t believe that the one person he had grown to care about had become deathly ill so that he would die here, five thousand years before his time.

  He believed that the chaotic path that he had followed had led to this situation and he would deal with it, and then continue to follow that path wherever in the unknown future it would lead. He believed in himself and that he would never leave someone in need.

  He looked at Hetephernebti’s kind face, saw the warmth and concern there, but shook his head slightly. “I can not leave her.”

  King Djoser in the Garden of Ma'at

  “So, dear sister, I have heard exciting news from your distant province. I hear that gods are walking the Two Lands in Men-Nefer.”

  King Djoser and Hetephernebti were walking hand in hand through a small garden near the Temple of Ma’at in Khmunu. Although they were alone, his personal guards patrolled the perimeter of the grounds.

  “Yes, brother. It seems living gods are walking all throughout Kemet.”

  Although Djoser’s face showed no anger, Hetephernebti felt his grip tighten on her hand. She knew the royal blood they shared did not protect her from her brother. His power over the people of Kemet was absolute; they lived, married and died by his leave. If she had ever shown the slightest desire for the throne, he would kill her without a glimmer of remorse.

  But she had never married, so there was no ambitious spouse to look upon Djoser as an obstacle to power. Her religious devotion to Re was known throughout the Two Lands. She suspected that she was the one person in Kemet who would speak honestly to her brother. She knew he valued that truthfulness, even if it meant that she sometimes reminded him of her disapproval of his self-proclaimed divine status.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Well, first of all, I’m not sure that they,” she emphasized the word, a small atonement to her brother, “are gods. Djefi has been hiding two of them, or trying to. But Djefi is so inept . . .”

  “But dangerous,” Djoser interrupted. “There are stories. Djefi’s tiny voice and unbecoming size make him seem a fool. I fear that beneath all that hulk and pomposity there is very little. He is just an empty shell, but all the more dangerous because he is constantly striving to prove that he is more than he knows he is.”

  Hetephernebti nodded in agreement. Her brother had an uncanny ability to see into a person’s very ka and to understand what they would do before they did. She wondered what he saw in her and realized that whatever it was, it allowed her to stay alive and to be his confidant.

  “He sent the one called Brian into the desert with that soulless animal Siamun. Something happened out there and one of the hunters was injured. Siamun left the crippled hunter and Brian without food or water to die in the desert, three days out of To-She. Brian staggered into To-She just before the start of the festival, carrying the crippled man, alive, on his back. Then the next day he saved a child from a crocodile. The people at To-She are ready to worship him instead of Sobek.”

  “Then Brian had better watch his back,” Djoser said.

  “There is a woman. Her name is Diane. Djefi actually brought her to Iunu, but he kept her secluded. I don’t know anymore about her except that she is constantly watched over by a woman Djefi trusts.”

  “And your personal god?”

  Hetephernebti stopped walking and turned to face her brother-king. “My personal god is Re, dear brother. I love and respect all the gods. All of them,” she said, looking into his eyes. “But I am, first, last and always, a servant of Re.”

  Djoser leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  “Re is fortunate to have such a servant. Tell me about Tim.”

  She was not surprised that he knew Tim’s name.

  “He says he is not a god.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Hetephernebti considered this longer than he expected. It was a question she had been unable to answer for herself. His unexpected devotion to Meryt, he was secluded with her even now, exposing hi
mself to the wasting disease without any sign of fear or regret, made her think it was possible he was divine. He was rumored to have saved Paneb’s daughter of a scorpion sting and Meryt had reported how he had disappeared from Djefi’s camp in Iunu, knifing without sound into the canal’s water and swimming underwater like Sobek.

  “He has powers that are unusual. Sometimes when I watch him, I think he is looking at things beyond what I can see. Yet he seems to be flesh and blood. I think he would shed his body as any of us would. I have seen pain in his eyes and I have seen love, the kind of love I see in the face of Re when I chant his thousand names.”

  As ever, Djoser cut to the heart of the matter. “Should I fear these ‘gods,’ dear sister?”

  It was another question she had considered during the trip up river. It certainly was strange that the three had appeared now, just before the flooding of the Iteru, and just as hints of a plot against Djoser were appearing. Gods or not, were these three strangers a threat to Djoser and to The Two Lands?

  “I believe Tim comes in peace. I think Brian is a force that Djefi should fear. I do not understand Diane. Not yet. I think, dear brother, that there are others, closer at hand, that deserve your attention more.”

  Now he stopped.

  He was aware of the travels of everyone up and down the great river. His spies had already reported much of what Hetephernebti told him about Brian and Tim and Diane. He knew what Hetephernebti was about to tell him, but he wanted confirmation of his suspicions. The discontent in the Two Lands was something he allowed to ferment, watching to see who would be drawn to it and who would defend him. It was easier to deal with one’s enemies when one knew who they were.

  He was relieved that Hetephernebti wanted to talk about it. Her willingness was proof again that his trust in her was justified, that she was not part of the plot.

  “Ah, you speak of Kanakht,” he said.

  She nodded, relieved that he had raised the vizier’s name first. “Yes, and others. He spent time alone with Djefi at To-She and he plans to meet with Waja-Hur in a few days.”