Sphinx's Princess (4 page)

Father gave me a helpless look. “Hmm. What can I say to
that
, little kitten? One answer will bring Pharaoh’s wrath down on my head, the other will provoke a mighty goddess.”

“Isis is right,” I said firmly. “Pharaoh is Ra’s son, but Isis stole Ra’s power because she was more clever than the old sun-god.”

The little man clapped his hands. “Well said, my pretty child! Only
don’t
say anything like that if you ever find yourself in Pharaoh’s court. You won’t be popular.”

“And how popular will you be when our king learns that you’re parading around as the god Bes, eh?” Father asked, winking.

Our guest let loose a great sigh, so loud and so exaggerated that it sent Bit-Bit into fresh peals of laughter. “Alas, then it seems I have no choice. But will sweet Nefertiti still be my friend when I’m no longer a god, but only poor old Henenu the scribe?”

I made Father set me down and went swiftly to put my arms around our guest’s heavy neck. “I will
always
be your friend, even if you’re not Bes,” I announced. “You saved my
sister.” I sealed my promise with a big kiss on his rough cheek.

Father laughed. “And how did he do that?”

“He made magic and took away the scorpion’s poison and there isn’t even a mark on Bit-Bit’s foot where she was stung,” I said, hugging Henenu harder. “I
told
you.”

“Er … perhaps it’s time I told you, my little lady.” Henenu gently freed himself from my arms. “Your sister was never in any danger, may the gods be praised. The scorpion you saw never touched her. Even if it had, it was only one of the brown ones. Their bite hurts, but it can’t kill us.”

“But she was crying,” I protested.

“Perhaps she’d just fallen down? And when I came upon the two of you, you were holding her tightly and screaming in her ears. She wasn’t bitten, she was terrified.” The dwarf bowed his head. “I deceived you, child, but only to calm your fears. I’ll understand if you want nothing more to do with me.”

I hesitated for only a moment. In the time it takes to draw two breaths, my arms were once more around Henenu’s neck and I’d planted a second kiss on his brow. “I’m still your friend,” I declared. “But you have to promise not to tell any more lies or Ma’at will be angry with you.”

“Ah, so you already know about the beautiful goddess of truth, do you?” The dwarf was pleased. “Very well. In that case, I swear by the sacred Feather of Ma’at that from now on, I will always tell you the truth, Nefertiti. But you must swear that you won’t hate me for it.”

“Why would I?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Because the truth holds the greatest magic, the greatest beauty, and sometimes the greatest danger,” Henenu said solemnly.

I laughed and hugged him. “You’re funny,” I said, believing with all my heart that his words were another one of his jokes and that there was nothing in the truth that could ever harm me.

“What are you doing, Henenu?”

If I’d been given a spoonful of honey for every time I asked that question during the first year after we met, I would have drowned in golden sweetness. During that time, the scribe became a frequent, welcome visitor to our home. This wasn’t anything extraordinary: He and Father had known each other since boyhood. Both of them had grown up and left Akhmin to serve in Pharaoh’s court, following the trail of good fortune my aunt Tiye had left behind her when she became Amenhotep’s adored Great Royal Wife. Father and Henenu were inseparable friends then, but those days ended for Father soon after I was born. Mourning my mother, he requested permission to serve Pharaoh elsewhere and was sent back to Akhmin. Henenu stayed on, one of Pharaoh’s best, most valued scribes.

In spite of how comfortably Henenu lived in
Amenhotep’s shadow, he still made it a point to come home as often as possible, to visit his family and share the bounty he earned in the great king’s service. It was only chance that kept us from crossing paths until the Day of the Scorpion, as he called it: Pharaoh sent him to Nubia as part of a diplomatic mission and the assignment kept him far from Akhmin for years.

“What does it
look
like I’m doing, Nefertiti?”

No matter how many times I asked my eternal question, Henenu’s answer remained the same. He made me work for knowledge. Even though he was forever the size of a child, he was a grown-up. More important, he was one of those rare grown-ups who knew how to talk to children without treating us like living dolls or clever puppies.

“It looks like you’re doing the same thing you did on the Day of the Scorpion,” I said, standing behind him and peering over his shoulder. “You’re making pictures, only you’re not doing it in the dirt.”

This was true. I’d found my friend sitting cross-legged in the shade of one of our sycamore trees, a sharpened reed in one hand, a piece of beeswax-covered wood in his lap. The wax was covered with line after line of pictures. Even though we had known each other for a year, this was the first time I’d discovered him busy with this particular activity.

“And why do you
think
I’m doing this, little kitten?” It hadn’t taken him long to call me by the pet name Father had given me. It made me happy to hear him use it.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, settling myself on the
ground beside him and studying the lines in the wax. “Magic?”

“Maybe.” The keen point of the reed flew across the board and a new row of pictures appeared. “There,” he said. “That’s you.”

“That?” I pointed at the figure of a seated woman at the right-hand end of the line of images. “That doesn’t look like me. She’s too old and she’s got long hair.”

Henenu chuckled. “What I meant to say was, that’s your
name
. This is how you write ‘Nefertiti.’ ”

I looked more closely at the figures. “You’re teasing me again,” I said. “You’re trying to trick me the same way you did on that day, pretending you were using magic to save Bit-Bit. But you were only pretending.”

Henenu sighed dramatically and let his large head slump forward onto his chest. “So this is the thanks I get for helping you: nothing but cruel doubt and accusations of falsehood. If I were to die tomorrow, when I came before Osiris for judgment, the gods would hear your words and condemn me for being a liar. They’d feed my heart to the Devourer and that would be the end of me, body and soul.”

“Nooooo!” I threw my arms around his neck. The Devourer of Souls was the goddess Ammut, a ghastly monster who was one-third hippo, one-third lion, and one-third crocodile. Any soul that failed to pass its trial of virtue was her lawful prey. There was no escape, no appeal, only oblivion. “I didn’t say you
lied
,” I protested. “I said
you pretended
.”

“Some people might argue that those are the same thing,” Henenu said, cheerful once more. He gently freed
himself from my hold. “I did pretend to heal your sister, who needed no healing, but I assure you, whenever I write, I write only what I know to be true. The words I made in the dust on that day were a prayer to Hathor, asking her to calm and comfort you. Like this.” He scraped the reed pen over the waxed tablet.

I studied the results closely. “Where is Hathor’s name?” I asked. He pointed to a picture of a hawk inside a square. I frowned, skeptical. “That doesn’t look like her. Sometimes she looks like a cow, and sometimes like a woman with cow’s ears and horns, but never like a hawk.”

“It doesn’t need to look like her. There are plenty of painters and sculptors to make images of the goddess. But this symbol
means
her name.”

“The way this means me?” I asked, fascinated. I pointed to the centerpiece of my own inscribed name, a row of four strange images between what looked like a pair of feathers. “But
how
does it do that?”

Henenu seemed to take real pleasure in answering my questions. “Ah, my lady is wiser than many of my students. They never take the time to wonder about the reasons behind their lessons; they only drudge away like oxen plowing a field, eager to have the task over and done. They memorize everything and learn … nothing. It’s said that long ago, the god Thoth himself taught men the mysteries of writing. These are his sacred symbols. We are merely the servants that carry them from place to place and age to age. Now this”—he indicated the same symbol that had drawn my attention, a rounded object with a long, straight line rising
from it—“this is a picture of the human heart and the windpipe.”

“The what?” I knew about the heart, which was the house of the soul, but the other word was unknown to me.

“The path from your lungs to your mouth that carries the breath of life and lets you speak, cry, sing, laugh, and ask such interesting questions.” He winked at me. “That’s what the picture
is
, but what it
represents
is
nefer
, the part of your name that means beauty and goodness.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I admitted. “Mery taught me that my heart should always stay beautiful or Ammut will eat it, and it’s good to breathe.”

My words made Henenu laugh out loud. “I never thought of it that way! Very good, my lady: It’s not every day that someone gives a lesson to a teacher. What would you make of the rest of these symbols, I wonder?”

I pushed myself closer to the little scribe and fixed my eyes on all of the writing on the waxed tablet. “Well, that one looks like ripples on the river, so it must mean water, and that one’s a flower, so maybe it means beautiful, too, and that looks like Bit-Bit when she sucks her thumb, so I’ll bet it means baby, and that one—it’s just a bent line, I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. Oh! And there are two feathers in my name! Is it Ma’at’s sacred Feather of Truth, the one that goes into the other side of the scales when the gods weigh our hearts?” I turned to Henenu, eager to see approval in his eyes.

I was not disappointed. His smile spread all the way across his broad face. “It’s much more complicated than
that, my dear, but you’re not too far off the target. You have good eyes and a good mind. You’re also not afraid to try to answer even though it means you might be wrong, and smart enough to confess when you don’t know something. I’d love to see how well you’d do with some real instruction in the scribal arts. I wish you could be one of my students.”

“Why can’t I?” I asked.

“Scribes are men, that’s why.”

“But why is
that?
” I persisted.

“Because women have no use for such learning.” He looked very sure of himself, very satisfied with that answer, as if he were repeating the word of the gods themselves. “You’re going to grow up, get married, have children, and run a household. Why would you need to know how to write letters or keep records or make other important documents? Why would you want to take the time to learn something as difficult as writing when you could use your days better learning to do women’s work?”

“What about magic?” I asked.

My question startled him. “What?”

“Well, isn’t
that
women’s work? Isis used it to win the sun-god’s power by learning his secret name.
She’s
a woman.” It all made perfect sense to me, even if it left Henenu looking more and more like a goggle-eyed frog.

“Isis—Isis is a goddess,” he stammered. “You can’t compare her to ordinary women. You mustn’t! She might become angry with you.”

“No, she likes me,” I replied confidently, thinking of my dream-lions. Even though it was the Great Sphinx who’d saved me from them, I still recalled Father’s prayer to Isis
and the sweet face of her image in our garden. Isis was brave but kindhearted, a loving wife and a devoted mother. She would understand and forgive sooner than punish. All I felt for her and from her was love.

Then I remembered something: “Once when Bit-Bit was a baby, she got very sick and Father had a healer priest come to the house, but Mery went to the
sau
, the woman who makes amulets to ward off demons. She took me along and I watched the
sau
make the amulet on a piece of baked clay. I thought she was only drawing pictures, but now I think she was writing, just like you. She’s no goddess, so writing
is
women’s work, too!” My triumphant voice dared him to contradict me.

He didn’t. Instead, he laughed. “Ah well, who am I to stand against someone so fiercely determined to learn? I can almost see the divine Thoth smiling down upon you, giving his blessing.”

I knit my brows. Thoth, god of wisdom, was a man with the head of an ibis, a bird with a long, thin, down-curving beak. “How can an ibis smile?”

Henenu chuckled and slapped his knees. “He’s a god. He manages. Now let’s see if
you
can manage to learn.” He handed me the waxed tablet, showed me how to hold the sharpened reed, and our lessons began.

He must have been expecting me to lose interest quickly, either because I’d grow bored or discouraged trying to master all of the different symbols, their meanings, and their uses. But if he thought that writing was just another game to me, one that I’d soon tire of and abandon, I showed him otherwise. It was hard work, yet even if I sometimes
wept with frustration, the satisfaction of conquering each new challenge lifted my spirit so high that I wouldn’t have traded that feeling of exaltation for all the easy victories in the world.