Authors: LYNN VOEDISCH
THE GOD'S WIFE (12 page)
“Can you believe he’s doing this?” Rebecca whispered.
“Oh, he’s got them bobbing like marionettes,” Raven whispered back. “Thanks so much for bringing him into the fold.”
“I didn’t!” Rebecca whirled to face Raven. “He just attached himself to me.” Raven knew this was the same man who had watched Rebecca lose consciousness at the last fundraiser. Didn’t she remember?
“He always manages to get into the spotlight, doesn’t he?” Raven answered.
“Always making trouble for me. That’s more like it.”
“Try to see if you can make him go away.”
Some of the crowd turned and mumbled disapproval of the women’s conversation. Rebecca clammed up, but her mind chattered on.
No, no. This isn’t my fault.
Raven disappeared the moment Sharif ’s speech ended.
The energy in the room switched, and Sharif was the new star of the evening. Rebecca ran over to Randy to make apologies, but he spoke first.
“Great guy you brought along. Great. We ought to make him an artistic advisor.”
Rebecca stomach lurched in free-fall.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Better research his background first,” she said, looking at the floor, hiding her emotions. “He has a way of just appearing out of nowhere, and I don’t know where he comes from, really ...” She decided the time had come to make her break. “Anyway, my plate is full, Randy, I think I’m going home to rest up for tomorrow.”
“Sure, sure,” he waved her off, and his gaze wandered back to Sharif. She slipped on her shawl and gathered her things at the table when a voice came from the back of the room.
“So soon?” The sound made her want to scream. Was it with delight or consternation?
“Why, Sharif ? Can’t you leave me alone? You just appear unwanted. Can’t you just magically disappear?”
“Do you not see this is all for you?” He stepped into view and fastened her in place with his hypnotic eyes. She knew he tried to weaken her, drink her in with that gaze. He touched her forehead with a gentle caress. He leaned in, almost kissed her, then seemed to think better of it and pulled back. “I’ve been in love since the first minute —”
“Don’t say it,” she snapped, “Just don’t say a word. Stay out of my business. Stay out of my world.” She swirled around, terrified for a second, and rushed for the door, her heels clacking in reproof the entire way.
#
Jonas listened as Rebecca poured out her troubles at the coffeehouse adjacent the medical association building. Both of them had only a short lunch break, so she attempted to get through the previous night’s events as fast as possible. Jonas listened, picking at the cardboard band around his coffee cup.
“So that’s it?’ he said, when Rebecca came up for air.
“Isn’t that enough? I’ve got some goon swooning over me and trying to take over the production — the one with my starring role.”
Jonas frowned at the wooden tabletop, then took another swig of coffee and stared out the window at passers-by. Rebecca tapped her near-empty cup on the table, waiting for a response.
“I’m really sorry I couldn’t be there for you,” he said, his face contorted in a knot of concern. “They’ve been working us so hard lately.” He waited a beat. “You say Lenore
stole
your invitation?”
She nodded.
“Something’s not right. I don’t mean just the theft. The way he just showed up like that in a tux. As if he had the whole thing coordinated.”
“He did.”
Jonas peeled his cardboard wrapper some more and set his mouth in a tight line.
“Now this nut says he’s in love with you …”
“And is trying to take over the whole production.”
“Well, you don’t know that for sure.”
“He told me that.” Rebecca ran her hands through her hair in exasperation. She couldn’t tell him how Sharif said it, nuzzling her ear as they danced. Her guilt chewed at her stomach. “What good can he possibly do? We don’t need him. He’s only going to get in the way. And the deal with Lenore. It’s creepy. She does his bidding for no apparent reason. He’s like Svengali.” She waited a beat and tapped her foot on the floor in sheer irritation. “I don’t want that jerk around me anymore.”
He turned and touched her shoulders, which were so tense she almost hiked them to her ears.
“Have you felt faint at all lately?”
“No. That’s not the issue …”
“Listen to me: I’m worried about your health, and I’m worried about your safety with that loon running around.”
She shrugged in assent and felt her back muscles begin to unwind. He massaged her shoulders with care.
“How do I find this guy?” he asked, jaw set, ready for battle. Oh, no, here comes the control freak, she thought. Please don’t let him find Sharif and beat him up.
“You can’t. I mean, I don’t know. I only have his cell phone number.”
“That’s good enough.” She produced the business card with Sharif ’s number, and Jonas scribbled the digits down in his reporter’s notebook. “If I find this guy, he’ll be sorry he met me.” His eyes glittered with rage for a second. He stood up and grabbed her in an embrace.
“I’ll do the best I can to take care of you,” he said. People in the coffee shop stopped their activities and gawked at their public display of affection. He looked into her eyes, his blue irises wide and frank. “I don’t want some guy running around saying he’s in love with my girlfriend.”
He kissed her and then charged through the door before she could answer.
She watched his retreating form on the sidewalk: a tall, athletic man who could easily take the thinner, more elegant Sharif down in a fight. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Thinking, she fingered some graffiti an errant customer had scrawled on the table. The truth blared out, refusing to hide. She could be the only person who really had a chance to get rid of Sharif. She rose, feeling little resistance left in her system, walked to toss away her cup and headed back to the studio.
#
The air inside the building was filled with the usual smell of sweat and the humidity level had hit intolerable levels, but that wasn’t the only thing wrong with the atmosphere. Rebecca could feel deceit clinging to her skin the minute she walked through those battered wooden doors.
Dancers sat stretching in Studio A, waiting for rehearsal to start. Rebecca slinked by, headed for the changing room, when Raven stopped her in her tracks. Rebecca looked up and saw her friend’s olive eyes staring dull and unresponsive.
“What’s wrong?”
Raven allowed her bag of gear to slip from her shoulder to the floor.
“Thanks ever so much,” she said, her voice flat and lifeless.
“What?” Rebecca suffered stabs of electricity in her gut.
“He’s our new artistic advisor,” she spat out. “And Lenore took away my job as understudy.”
Rebecca jiggled her head as if trying to dislodge the sound. It couldn’t be happening. Somehow, overnight, Sharif had won. He’d worked his magic on Randy and the rest of the production crew. The show had been altered forever.
“That bastard. It’s not possible,” she said, but Raven already heaved her bag up and slipped away.
Neferet’s ears were still ringing with the sound of her mother’s carping. The woman yelled and screamed about how Neferet shouldn’t “take liberties,” even though she had no right to lecture the God’s Wife so. Neferet seeing Kamose upset Meryt the most. Neferet shook her head, trying to dislodge the memories of their recent altercation, then stormed to the temple. Her recent talk with Father had turned Meryt into a harridan, but Neferet would turn a deaf ear to orders from Mother. She’d see Kamose as often as she’d like. Then she sighed inside because she really hadn’t had an opportunity to be with Kamose at all, thanks to palace politics.
She set her mind to the task at hand. It was time to get ready for the Heb-Sed festival, a time-honored ritual to prove that the Pharaoh had the requisite fitness to stay in command. Every thirty years, they repeated the ceremony. Because the Pharaoh took office at the age of sixteen, no one suspected he had turned senile, yet the festival was required to take place regardless of outward appearances. In the Heb Sed court, the king must run around markers that symbolized the various outer regions of Kemet. In earlier days, the serious tasks, such as archery and spear throwing, marked the course. Now mere ceremony took over. Heb Sed no longer stood as a time test of strength or endurance. However, for a man of forty-six, getting old by the standards of his time, it remained an important showing of the ruler’s continued vitality.
Escorting the dignitaries who showed up from all the main cities of Kemet became Neferet’s project at Heb Sed. She also attended to the ambassadors of neighboring lands. Many of them would have to travel for several weeks. They would be housed in unused priests’ quarters at Karnak, and Neferet ordered her many servants to spruce up the often dingy lodgings, making them resplendent enough to boost the Pharaoh’s reputation as a generous host.
Each visiting representative would bring with him images from local temples to bear witness to the Pharaoh’s virility. These icons, too, would be housed in the temple. To do this duty, Neferet gave the keys of the storeroom to Deena, who would need to pick up a fair amount of Kemet’s language and show an unswerving loyalty to Neferet. The God’s Wife had faith in her assistant.
Over the next few weeks, in the land surrounding the palace, work crews guided by Kamose strained and lifted, building a new, temporary temple to Amun, plus a plaza with a wide arching colonnade with ornate pillars.
Tasked with organizing the cooks and arranging recipes for the various Heb Sed feasts, Meryt presented a sullen face to nearly everyone since she had her run-in with Neferet. Meryt ran about business in a huff, checking the fatness of pigs and the milk of goats with her head held high. Neferet knew Meryt considered herself above this job, which could have been handled with ease by the head palace chef. However, Pharaoh had insisted on an assignment for all — including his Great Royal Wife. The entire kingdom must pull together for this event, which made Zayem’s continued absence a continued, glaring insult.
From Kamose, whom she dared not meet near the palace, Neferet discovered that Meryt had not sent out scouts to search for her son. This stood out odd behavior, even for Meryt, for she always had been overbearing in her desire to protect Zayem. Neferet had only to think of her childhood, when young Zayem met his mother almost on the hour for checks of his whereabouts. Meryt never bothered to monitor her daughter in that manner. An often-forgetful nurse netted that job. So, Neferet and her friends could get lost in the marshes near the Nile, watching out for crocodiles and picking rare blooms, while her half-brother remained tethered to the palace by the maternal leash.
“Maybe Zayem is on some mission for his mother,” Neferet said to Kamose out in the flax fields behind the poorer dwellings. They chose meeting places with care, for Meryt’s cronies sneaked about everywhere.
“I’m pretty sure of it,” Kamose said, holding up one hand like a visor, shielding the blistering sun. They conferred only a few yards from the beginnings of the vast desert. “When he failed to kill us, he was sent into hiding until Meryt could bring him home to safety.” He kicked at the ground with his a sandal, eyebrows drawn together. “Does father know?”
Neferet nodded, not willing to speak too much of her need to inform on Zayem to the all-powerful Pharaoh. She wished she could have handled Zayem on her own, but there were limits to her authority.
“I also have the palace priests and guards on high alert, not to mention the Medjay,” she added, alluding to the Pharaoh’s police force. “We know how he got into the Amun shrine, desecrating it. No man is more reviled than Zayem at Karnak right now.”
She looked up at Kamose and felt the urge to kiss his troubled brow. It would be such a small thing, a gesture of concern. Indeed, she looked back toward the main road and scanned for onlookers to measure their safety. Just then, a strange man on a donkey lumbered into view. A spy? Kamose remained within reach, yet a million cubits away in availability. He, too, seemed at a loss for what to do about their nearness. She could smell his skin on the verge of burning and not from the sun.
“We’ll be safer after the Heb-Sed, when the commotion calms down,” Kamose said, his eyes penetrating hers. “Right now, there are too many informers everywhere.”
“What makes you think anything will change after Heb-Sed? The dignitaries will leave, and we will still be a target for spies. We can’t let down our defenses until Zayem is found.”
Kamose blew out a puff of air and looked down at the ground, his black hair shining in the rays of the sun.
“Then we could be apart for a long time.” Rue filled his voice.
“Don’t worry. Meryt has to call him back to court eventually. She’ll probably broker some truce with father, and Zayem will be pardoned.”
Kamose smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes.
“I should hate to see that happen, but to be free to see you again, well, any opportunity will do.”
Neferet touched his chin and peered into his face, tracing a slight battle scar near his pierced ear. “But will Zayem give up when he is absolved? Will we ever be safe?”
Kamose looked into the far distance. He seemed to be studying a young boy who played in the street.
“We must build up a better ring of spies than he has,” he answered. Then he stepped forward to talk to the street urchin in this unfamiliar stretch of town.
#
The Heb-Sed announcement dinner filled the palace dining hall with smells of an international feast and the sweet, inviting lure of the festivities to come within a month’s time. Biting, sour lemons from the East sprayed their zest into the air, and waiters poured sweet, stewed grains from Nubia. Fragrant trays of luscious olive oil from the lands across the northerly sea floated by in the arms of servers. Neferet elected not to wear the incense-infused wax cones that were all the rage at court. Men and women would affix the beehive-shaped formations to the top of their wigs, then as the heat increased in the room, the wax would melt and sweet smells of lotus and jasmine would work their way into the fibers of the headpiece. However, the wax was too much weight for her slender neck. The wig weighed enough, like a second head. Besides, if she had the cone dripping perfume on her, she’d never smell the marvelous culinary aromas.