Sphinx's Queen (5 page)

The hippo’s square jaws gaped, his terrifying tusks dripping with water and foam. His breath enveloped us in a wave of heat and the smell of rotting greens as his bellow of blind rage dinned in our ears. Nava shrieked and dug her fingers deep into my skin. While Amenophis and I had been whispering shaky reassurances to the little girl, we’d kept our gazes on the herd of hippopotamuses lolling on the eastern bank. We’d neglected to turn our eyes west, even for a glance. If we’d done that, perhaps we might have spied two wickedly flicking ears just above the waterline, a pair of tiny, spiteful eyes watching us, even a telltale trail of bubbles on the river’s surface.

We hadn’t, and now it was too late. The solitary beast attacked.

I grabbed Nava even tighter than she’d seized me and scrambled backward in the boat, dragging her as far from the raging creature as possible. The boat pitched and tossed crazily under my feet. I heard Amenophis calling my name. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of him raising the big steering oar and swinging it at the hippo. The wooden blade bounced off the monster’s shoulder as if it were a fly. I watched, my blood as cold as the deepest night, as the hippo turned and snapped his jaws shut on the oar so forcefully that he nearly yanked Amenophis into the river before he crushed the wood to splinters.

Then, as suddenly as he’d attacked us, the hippo sank back beneath the river. I dropped to my knees, hugging Nava, looking up into Amenophis’s ashen face. My heart was thumping so loudly I thought that it would overwhelm my labored, panting breath.

Just as I drew a long breath of fresh air into my lungs, the beast burst from the water a second time, only a hand’s breadth from the stern, and plowed headfirst into the side of our boat. Our vessel heeled steeply as we all struggled to keep from sliding overboard. Panic began to choke me as I clawed for something, anything, to save me from the water. Slivers of reed slid under my fingernails as I fought to hang on to the boat with one hand and to Nava with the other. Sky and water teetered before my eyes for one heart-stopping instant, and then—

Then a fresh bellow from the beast, a second blow to the boat, and our watercraft turned over, spilling us into the river along with everything aboard. As the water closed over my head, Nava’s small hand slipped from my fingers. I kicked my feet frantically and broke the surface, hair plastered across my eyes. My ears were filled with the sound of brutal crunching as the hippo demolished our capsized boat. He tore the bundled reeds into flying, floating debris mouthful by mouthful in a mad, mindless riot of destruction.

“Nava! Nava, Amenophis, where are you?” I called, desperately scanning the water. The river’s current was carrying me along, away from the rampaging animal. I used my hands the way I’d used the oar, steering myself toward the shore. My head throbbed with prayers:
O great Hapy, lord of the sacred river, save them! Lady Isis, loving and gentle, powerful and wise, bring them safely out of the monster’s jaws!

My legs began to ache and tire. I thought that I was near the bank, but no matter how energetically I kicked and paddled with my hands, the land didn’t seem to get any closer. My neck grew stiff from the effort of keeping my head above the surface, and I choked when a wavelet slapped me across the face, filling my nose and mouth with water.

Blinking my eyes rapidly to clear them, I cast heartsick looks everywhere, seeking one glimpse of Nava, of Amenophis, of any sign that the sacred river had spared them. All I saw were three great boats with sails set to catch the wind that would carry them upstream. Some nobleman was traveling south to Thebes or beyond with his family or followers. Laughter and loud music drifted to my ears from the brightly painted ships. I shouted for help, but no one aboard those magnificent vessels heard my voice over the beat of the drums and the jangling of the sistrums. If my cries reached them at all, they must have sounded as faint as birdcalls on the wind.

Every kick I made to stay afloat became more and more difficult. Weariness was a rope lashed around my ankles, relentlessly dragging me down, and despair at seeing no sign of Nava or Amenophis turned my heart heavy as a stone. Something bumped into my shoulder. I turned my head and saw a big bundle of reeds, part of the wreckage of our boat. I threw my arms over it and let it carry me along, but I was too numb with gloom to rejoice over this unexpected, life-saving gift of the river.

Hugging the reed bundle, I was able to rest until my legs recovered enough for me to resume kicking. Every hope I’d clung to since the hippo’s attack was gone, swallowed up by the river, whose banks and surface showed no sign that Nava and Amenophis were still in the land of the living. My face was wet with river water, wetter with tears, but sheer stubbornness made me go on, fighting to guide my tiny float to shore.

At last I felt the blessed sensation of muddy ground underfoot. I staggered out of the river, through shallow places where papyrus plants towered over my head. Waterfowl heard me coming and took flight, squawking angrily. I let the bundle of reeds bob away back into the current, and I sprawled on the bank, my cheek pressed to the warm, welcoming earth. I took one deep breath before my chest tore open with loud, inconsolable sobs for everything that had been wrenched away from me.

“Nava, little Nava … Amenophis, my friend, my dear, brave … Oh, gods, why?” I howled, and beat my hands against the ground. “Why, why,
why?”

I don’t know how long I lay there, crying out my sorrow. In the end, grief stole the last scrap of my strength and I fell into a deep sleep. There were no dreams. When I awoke, Ra’s great sun-ship was well on its way to entering the gates of the underworld, past the western horizon. Beyond that gate lay darkness and the giant serpent, Apep, whose one purpose was to devour Ra and his ship, leaving us to perish in an endless night. It was no wonder that so many of Pharaoh’s royal ancestors had ordered their tombs carved into the rocks of the sacred river’s western shore. This was the land of the dead.

I pushed myself up and sat back on my knees, gazing at the sun. My throat felt raw, and my palms were red, badly scraped and stinging. I tucked them under my arms and hugged myself, taking deep, steadying breaths.

Dendera …
The name slipped into my mind unbidden.
I can’t stay here. If I don’t move, I’ll die. If hunger and thirst don’t kill me, I’ll shrivel to dust in the sun or be found by some hungry beast that prowls the night. I must get up. I must go on. I have to reach Dendera
.

“Dendera,” I whispered. “Yes. Nava and Amenophis risked—lost—their lives to save me from Thutmose’s plotting.” Fresh tears trickled from my eyes. I wiped them away and stood up. I knew with all my soul that if I didn’t go on, stand before Pharaoh, let him know the injustice that his crown prince had committed in his name, there would be more than my life at stake. Could someone like Thutmose be trusted to rule if he worshipped his own desires and scorned the goddess Ma’at’s holy truth? The gods would avenge it; all of the Black Land would suffer.

Pharaoh Amenhotep has many sons
. A wicked, insinuating doubt disturbed my thoughts.
Many, but only two are Tiye’s children. He adored her enough to raise her to the position of Great
Royal Wife, even though she wasn’t nobly born. She still holds power over him. How will he react when he hears one of his favorite sons has been accused of so much wrongdoing and learns that the other died trying the save the accuser? More important than that, how will
she
react? Who will suffer then?

I clenched my hands, even though it made the pain worse.
“No!”
I shouted, stamping my foot. Wings whirred up out of the papyrus thicket, but I didn’t see the birds I’d startled with my outburst. “No, no, no!” I shook my head violently, my eyes squeezed shut, as if that would banish the evil whisper that I knew came from my own weakness. “I won’t turn back. I won’t run away.”

Why not?
it came again, cajoling.
Pharaoh has many sons, but you have only one life. Why gamble it when you could live it? You have a scribe’s skills, and cleverness, and you can dance as well as many of the girls who earn their bread by entertaining at banquets. Forget Dendera. Seek your fortune somewhere else, far from Dendera, from Thebes, from the royal court, from—

“Not from the gods,” I said quietly. “Not from Father, Mother, Bit-Bit, all that I love. Even if I’m punished for Amenophis’s death, I’ll see them again. No matter how enraged and vengeful Aunt Tiye will be, even she’s not cruel enough to deny me that.” I opened my eyes. “And even if she is so pitiless, I’m still going to Dendera.” I knew that I was alone on the riverbank, talking to the air, but it gave me courage.

The sacred river showed itself in lingering flashes of brilliance through the green thickets of fringe-topped papyrus plants. There were more boats sailing along its deep blue surface now, though none of them steered a course close to my side of the wide water. Would one of them come to help me if I could hail them loudly enough, or would they just sail on, indifferent?

Even if a boat answered my call, could I blindly trust my fate to whomever took me aboard? If all men’s hearts were good, upright, and honest, Lord Osiris wouldn’t need to keep ever-hungry Ammut at his side when he judged the dead.
Better to walk than take that chance
, I decided, and took the first steps of my renewed journey.

I headed inland first, seeking a clearer way, one where I wouldn’t have to push aside the plants that grew so thickly at the water’s edge. I was overjoyed when I happened upon an irrigation canal. Its banks would be well maintained, providing me with an easier path. It might also lead me to the farmers who used it to raise their crops. In any case, I’d never go thirsty as long as I could dip my hands into its sweet water.

Water alone wouldn’t sustain me. The western bank of the sacred river was where the sun sank into the dark land of many dangers. It was the place where generations of our pharaohs, their families, their highest-ranking and most honored nobles were entombed, an empire of the dead. The living dwelled here, too, but this side of the river wasn’t as thickly settled as the other. How far along the canal would I have to travel before I met another human being? If I was going to reach Dendera on my own, I had to find other people or I’d starve.

And what will you do once you find them?
Oh, that horrible voice of doubt, haunting me!
How will you persuade them
to give you anything to eat? You’re no one to them, a stranger, a grubby beggar from who knows where!

Mery—my second mother—always gave bread to any beggar at our door
, I thought, fighting back against my own misgivings.

She could
afford
to be charitable! She wasn’t a farmer’s wife with a brood of children to feed. It’s easy to give away a loaf of bread when you’ve got five on the table, ten more coming out of the oven, and thirty jars of grain in the storeroom!

I shook my head again, as if that would force out my troubling thoughts, and walked faster, following the line of the canal. As I strode along, I muttered prayers: “O Isis, have mercy. Let me meet another human being soon. I don’t dare stray too far from the river. If I lose my way and there’s no one to help me find it again … Goddess, please, don’t let that happen. Guide me. Help me. Hear me!”

But if the goddess heard my words, she gave no sign. Daylight was fading, and the track of the canal wasn’t bringing me any closer to finding a peasant’s home or even a boy sent out to herd goats for his family. Hunger dug deep into my belly. How grateful I would have been for a mouthful of bread, even if it was as hard as baked clay! I paused, torn between following the canal a little longer or giving up on my search. The land was silent except for the chirr of insects and the distant cries of birds.
Not even a dog’s bark
, I thought. I took a deep breath through my nostrils.
Not even the smell of a cookfire
. That decided me. Reluctant but resigned, I turned my back on Ra’s sinking sun-ship and headed toward the river.

I don’t know if I walked faster because of the coming night or if I’d simply taken a shorter route than following the irrigation ditch, but it felt as if I’d taken less time to return to the sacred river than to leave it. As I neared the water’s edge, I heard the sound of raised voices. Moving cautiously, I crept closer until I saw two men loudly arguing as they waded through the shallows, hauling a boat between them. It was a larger version of the one the rogue hippo had destroyed, except this one was laden with baskets brimming with the feathered bodies of dead ducks and other game birds. One of the men looked much older than the other, perhaps his father. I hoped he wasn’t. No son should fling so many curses and complaints at his father’s head.

“Why I have to listen to you, you worthless frog skin! It’s more my hard work than yours that’s filled this boat! Stupid old bag of bones, you’re already blind in one eye and the other’s halfway gone. I’m the one who killed all these birds, and you think you can claim
half?”

“You couldn’t kill ’em if you couldn’t find ’em,” the older man replied just as hotly. “You’re a poor excuse for a hunter. You’d waste your days sticking this boat into every patch of reeds on the river and praying to Lady Neith for luck. And that’s the only way you
would
find your quarry. The gods might’ve stolen the light from my left eye, but my right’s still sharp enough to read the game signs and know where the birds are.”

“Pfff! Sharp as
mud
, you mean. You nearly steered us onto a bank full of crocodiles!”

“No such thing! Tell a few more whoppers like that, boy, and you won’t have to worry about Ammut gobbling up your heart. Your mother’ll do the job first. Trust me, I know my sister’s temper when it comes to liars.”

“Ah, Ma’s not that bad,” the younger man replied with a snort.

“Oh, no? How d’you think I
really
lost sight in this eye?”