The Shepherd Kings (18 page)

It came to her only slowly that not all the guards were
bearded, and not all of those were fresh-faced boys. Fresh faces, yes, but soft
and sweetly rounded, and under the leather tunics the faint but unmistakable
curve of breasts. These were women, one or two riding on horses, the rest in
chariots drawn by horses, with swords and spears and bows, and an air of fine
and high insouciance.

They were not such women as Iry had ever seen before. Some
were dark, but some were fairer of skin under the darkening of wind and
weather. One had hair the color of her horse’s coat, like old bronze. Another’s
eyes were familiar: paler than eyes should be, almost gold. She had a nose like
the arc of the young moon, and a way of turning the head that reminded Iry all
too vividly of the Lord Khayan.

His sister, Iry would wager, or his very close kin. She had
not her brother’s warmth. She was as hard and keen and cold as a swordblade,
sweeping past Iry in the shadow of the gate and springing from the back of her
tall dun horse. Even before her feet touched the ground, she was calling out
orders in the conquerors’ tongue, in a tone that expected all nearby to leap up
in obedience.

Iry chose to be invisible. Lords and servants were one
thing; they need trouble her only as far as she chose to let them. Women who
strode about like men—that was another thing altogether.

They would want the women’s house. And the Lady Nefertem had
not surrendered that to any woman whom the old lord brought with him. He had
learned to leave the rest of his women behind when he came here. This new lord
had had no such teaching.

Iry considered each of several things that she might do.
After a while, as the invasion sorted itself out and the parts of it began to
disperse, she set off toward the women’s house.

She was just ahead of the Retenu, but she made no move to
walk more quickly. She found the women’s house in its morning order. Maids were
cleaning the central hall, sweeping and scrubbing. Others were out in the
courtyard with the vats of water from the river, washing linens and running up
the stair to the roof, there to spread them to dry.

The Lady Nefertem was awake and completing her morning
toilet. She did not acknowledge Iry’s arrival: she was greatly preoccupied with
choosing between two grades of malachite for her eyes. “The darker, I think,”
she said to her maid, “though the lighter may be more appropriate in this
season. Or perhaps . . . the lapis? For variety?”

Iry made herself comfortable in a corner. She had always
taken a peculiar pleasure in watching her mother make herself beautiful. The
raw beginning, the face all cleansed of paint and upheld to the light of day,
was as exquisite and yet as unfinished as a sculptor’s sketch in clay. Then
layer by layer the maids painted and adorned it. First the cheeks and brow,
smoothed to the whiteness of alabaster; then the blush of the high cheekbones,
and the lips drawn full and red, and the eyes made long and brilliant with kohl
and, after a last discussion, the darker malachite. Then when all that was
done, the selection of the wig. That too was a matter of great moment, a high
affair of state. The plaits, the curls, the straight glossy wig like a
helmet—even the Nubian wig with its cap of tight curls, which was not in
fashion, but the Lady Nefertem might be inclined to make it so.

She shook her head at length and laid that aside, and chose
the wig of many plaits, with its fillet of blue beads and gold bound with
golden flowers. It was a more formal wig than she used to prefer in the
mornings; but Iry knew better than to think that her mother was altogether
oblivious to the doings in the house without. Her gown was one of her best,
too, of fine white linen cut so close to her body that it had to be sewn on,
and when she would be free of it, her maids would cut the stitches.

It concealed nothing of her beauty; not her lovely round
breasts with their rosy nipples, nor the gentle curve of her belly, nor the
black triangle of her sex. Concealment was no part of it. She was better than
naked; she was beauty heightened, and made more wonderful for the thin sheen of
gauze between it and the world.

Iry sighed a little. Beauty was not her gift or her art. She
had no patience for it. But her mother was a great master. She had a gods-given
talent, too, for the exact moment; so that she was ready, dressed, wigged,
painted, and set in her regal chair in the room of the waterfowl, when the
foreign women entered the women’s house.

They came in like an invading army, which was no more or
less than what they were. She of the yellow eyes led them, and the rest of
those in tunics, who had ridden on horses and in chariots; then the chattering
flock of those in veils. And last of all, as if the others had been the
vanguard, a circle of veiled women, and one in their midst who walked slowly,
as a queen will, or a woman of years and august presence.

They could not all fit into that one small chamber. The bold
ones in the lead scattered to rooms beyond, and most of those in veils, too.
But the rider with the falcon-eyes, and the circle of veiled women, did not
retreat. Nor did she of the veil and the high head, who must have looked to
claim such a chair as the Lady Nefertem sat in, but found herself with nowhere
to sit but on the floor.

She stood therefore, and from the glitter of eyes within the
veils, she did it with no good grace. She spoke in the language of the Retenu,
high words and haughty. “Who are you? How dare you sit in this house as if it
were your own?”

Iry could have told her that the Lady Nefertem spoke only
Egyptian, and probably should have. But no one else saw fit to do it, either.
The Lady Nefertem sat in silence, ignoring the words that meant nothing to her
ears, as she had always done and as she would always do.

The silence went on for a great while. The foreign women
glanced at one another, and rustled a little, but their lady’s stillness
forbade them to speak. The same held for the Egyptians; they knew better than
to utter a sound.

When it was considerably more than evident that the Lady
Nefertem was not going to break the silence, the foreign lady snapped, “Someone
speak to this creature in words that she can understand.”

Iry thought about it for some little time. No one had
stepped forward to speak, and no one seemed inclined to. She did not like the
way the Retenu was glaring at her mother. Retenu did not control their tempers
well. And when they grew angry, they were given to killing whatever got in
their way.

In such a case, it was not greatly wise for Iry to speak;
but her mother, after all, was her mother. She said in Egyptian, without rising
or leaving her corner, “Mother, the woman asks you what you are doing here.”

The Lady Nefertem raised one perfect brow. “I live here,”
she said.

Iry bit her lip. It would not be wise to laugh. No, not in
the slightest. In Retenu she said, “This is her house, madam.”

The foreign lady spun about in a whirl of veils. How she
bore them, Iry could not imagine. They must suffocate her. And that, no doubt,
was the root of her ill humor, even more than the insolence of those whom she
reckoned but slaves. “
Her
house! How
dare she?”

“Perhaps,” said Iry mildly, “because it is.” She looked the
woman up and down, bold to insanity and knowing it, but she did not care. “May
I ask who you are?”

“You may not!” That was the woman who had ridden the dun
horse, outraged and with hand clapped to swordhilt, as if she had been a man.

But the other woman—who Iry thought was older, though it was
difficult to tell—spoke with surprising coolness. “I am your mistress here. And
who is this?”

“Our mistress here,” Iry answered. “Are you his mother or
his wife?”

The eyes within the veils widened slightly, startled; taken
off guard. “I am neither. I am his elder sister. I keep his house for him.”

“He has no wife?”

“Who are you to ask such questions?” the rider demanded. “I
shall have you flogged.”

But the other had paused, as if something in Iry’s voice,
her manner, even her impudence, struck her as greatly interesting. “He has no
wife,” she said.

“Well then,” said Iry. “He’ll not get this one.”

“Can she not speak for herself?”

“She doesn’t choose to,” Iry said.

“This is outrageous,” said the rider. “Maryam, let us
dispose of them both!”

“I think not,” said the one called Maryam.

As if she had made a momentous decision, she let fall her
veils. Her face was not beautiful, but neither was it ugly. It was, for these
people, rather ordinary: strong-featured, solid-chinned, with an arched nose
and thick black brows. She had not inherited the golden eyes that marked her
brother and her sister. Hers were dark and direct, fixed on Iry with a hard,
clear stare.

“Tell me your name,” she said to Iry.

Iry did not see any profit in defying her. “My name is Iry,”
she said.

“How refreshingly brief,” said Maryam. “And who is this
one?” She tilted her head at the Lady Nefertem.

“This is Nefertem,” Iry said, “the lady of the house.” She
did not see that this foreigner needed to know what the Lady Nefertem was to
her. There was little resemblance, everyone agreed. Iry took after her father,
who though handsome enough had not boasted of great beauty.

This Maryam did not seem inclined to ask if Iry was the
lady’s kin. She studied the Lady Nefertem, who ignored her with queenly
disdain, sitting still and expressionless as she could do for hour upon hour.
Where her mind was, or what she did there, Iry could not imagine. It must have
been pleasant enough: her mouth bore the hint of a smile.

“She goes far away,” Maryam said as if to echo Iry’s
thought. “Or does she merely lack the wit to understand what passes in the
world?”

That too had been a thought of Iry’s, but bitter with shame.
That shame fed anger, and anger escaped in a spit of words. “She is not the
fool here. Now get you gone. The old lord’s women had a place allotted them.
Ask Teti the steward; he’ll show you the way to it.”

“But,” said Maryam levelly, “this is the women’s house.”

“This is the Lady Nefertem’s house,” Iry said. “You will
have a house of your own. You’ll find it’s adequate. Some might even call it
luxurious.”

“And if we choose to take this one?”

“You may try,” Iry said.

“Enough!” cried the rider, so sharp that even the Lady
Nefertem swam out of her reverie to stare. “Maryam, if you will not silence
this slave, I will.”

“No,” Maryam said. “No. I’ll speak with our brother. And,”
she said with a glance at Iry, “if he bids us cast out these monsters of
insolence, then we will do it.”

The rider snorted. “Khayan! When has he ever gainsaid a
woman?”

“Egyptian women,” said Maryam.

Her sister only laughed.

But Maryam, it was clear, had made up her mind. She summoned
all those who had come in with her, and sent them out again. She went with
them; but first she paused, looking long at Iry’s face, as if to remember it.

Iry neither flinched nor looked away. She had never been so
wild before, or so careless of her own safety. Was this what it was to be a
woman? How strange. She had seen such things in boys who became men, but when a
girl became a woman, she most often shrank and dwindled into herself.

Whatever the cause of it, she would live for yet a while.
The Retenu were gone, the women’s house clean of them, though how long that
would last, or what would come of it, Iry could not foresee.

The new lord’s sisters and the rest of his women—maids,
servants, and concubines—took up residence in the lesser house, apart from the
women’s house though connected to it by a garden. If they voiced their
complaint to him, Iry did not know of it. Maybe, when they saw the house, they
had seen the wisdom of silence.

The women’s house was inescapably Egyptian. This one had
been made new by the old lord’s chief wife, built and ornamented in the Retenu
fashion: heavy draperies, heaps of carpets, furnishings that would not have
been amiss in a tent in the desert. To a Retenu it would be both beautiful and
luxurious, though Iry found it suffocating.

And so they settled, each in her place, with no more
disruption than one might expect of a house full of Retenu. Iry undertook to be
as invisible as she had ever been: belated prudence after the beginning she had
made, but, she hoped, not too late.

For a while it seemed she had succeeded. No one troubled
her. She performed such duties as she had, and evaded that of pouring the
lord’s wine in the evenings, trading that office for a daily stint in the
laundry. It seemed a fair exchange, and a safe one.

She saw him often enough, from a prudent distance. He had
informed a scrupulously expressionless Teti that since he intended to make this
the chief of his houses, he wished to know every corner of it, and every corner
of the estate, too, all up and down the river. Every morning, when it was as
cool as it could be in this season, he rode out in his chariot to visit this
village or that. Every afternoon, in the cool of the hall, he sat to hear
petitions and judge disputes.

These were matters that Teti had always seen to, under Iry’s
father as well as the Retenu who supplanted him. This young lord had ambitions
of ruling in every aspect of his domain: great foolishness in Iry’s estimation,
though he seemed to think it a great good deed. Certainly he seemed pleased
with himself when she saw him.

Teti was not so pleased. In front of his lord he maintained
a mask of decorum, but when he went home to his wife, he was . . .
difficult. That was the word she used.

“Difficult,” she said to the Lady Nefertem at their morning
audience, shaking her head and glaring at the daughters who would have
elaborated on the word. “He’s always been the one to say what comes and goes in
these lands. Now he has to stand aside while that interloper does it. Really,
lady, if this goes on, I’m afraid he’ll turn rebel.”