Chapter Seven #2
Qar trilled from the corner of the room, and Arsinoe nodded. “Qar believes we will be slighting the gods if we do not continue to the temple.”
That made me pause. Qar was a gift of the god Thoth, a vessel like the Buchis bull. His words held weight, much to my chagrin.
“Truly?” I felt my resolve wavering.
“Truly,” Arsinoe confirmed. “It will only delay us a few days. Perhaps less time than that.”
We were very close to Hermonthis.
The scribe looked up at me and I nodded. She discarded the papyrus she was working on and began again.
“Two days,” I said. “We must ensure the Buchis enthronement is conducted on the morrow.”
Arsinoe’s lips twitched ever so slightly.
I should have known. I should have seen it.
But I have always been blinded by love. That was one thing your histories got right.
—
“We welcome Queen of the Two Lands, Cleopatra Thea Philopator VII, to the god Montu’s place of sanctuary.” High Priestess Neferu stood at the head of the procession. The eight servants of the gods lined the hallway of the temple, their brown cowls hiding their faces so all I could see was shadows.
I strode past them and Neferu fell into step just behind me. “Is the bull ready for selection?” I was impatient for the ceremony to commence. With each passing day Caesar grew ever nearer.
“We captured nine wild bulls eight days ago, Pharaoh. We await your guidance on which beast will become the vessel of our lord Montu.” Neferu’s tone was sharp, charged with obvious irritation.
I looked back at her with an eyebrow raised. Her face was hidden behind the shadows of her cowl. Unlike the other priests, Neferu wore a full-length white robe to denote her status. It pooled around the tiles at her feet, the quality of linen as fine as anything I wore.
“I see our donation reached your coffers,” I said. Arsinoe chuckled somewhere behind me.
Neferu dipped her head. “We are grateful for your continued patronage, Pharaoh.”
“Indeed,” I replied coolly.
We reached the temple courtyard where the heat of the sun left a mirage wavering like a lake upon the ground.
In the centre of the landscaped gardens was an empty pen, its metal bars gilded. An ornate granite trough filled with crystal-clear water stood in the corner. Opposite it lay an assortment of plush cushions.
“What happened to the last bull?” I asked as we passed the enclosure.
“It simply died, Pharaoh,” Neferu replied. There was a catch to her voice that told me there was more to know.
“There is nothing simple in death, High Priestess.”
“You bless me with your wisdom.” Her words didn’t sound mocking, but from what I could see of her lips, they were quirked with a half-smile.
I cleared my throat. “I find my mouth quite dry in this heat.”
“Refreshments are just this way, Pharaoh. If you’d like to follow me.”
I nodded, giving her permission to take the lead, but indicating with a flick of my wrist for the royal guard to hang back. Arsinoe grumbled behind me as the guards closed ranks to prevent her from following.
Even Charmion stayed her feet, letting me go on alone with Neferu.
The high priestess led me towards a small room off the courtyard. Servants cleared the space as we entered. As soon as the door was shut behind me, I turned to Neferu.
She lowered her hood and the face that emerged was lined with every year that she had lived. The creases were soft embellishments on severely cut features. As I looked into her kohl-lined eyes, so much like mine, I felt a tug of grief.
I crossed the space between us and embraced her in a crushing hug.
“It has been too long, my niece,” Neferu said against my shoulder.
My eyes burned as I inhaled the familiar incense that reminded me so much of my mother. “It is good to see you, Aunt.”
She pushed me to arm’s length. “How fares your journey?”
I tried not to scowl. “Caesar descends on Alexandria; I must make haste and return as soon as possible.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When a Roman crosses the ocean, trouble comes on the tide.”
“Pothinus and Theos will welcome him.”
“Pah.” Neferu scrunched her lips to spit. “A fool and a child.”
“Not a fool; my father trusted him enough to name him regent.”
“Your father was a fool too, my dear.”
Neferu had never forgiven my father for taking my mother away from the Montu temple. When he had selected her among the priestesses, she had stopped dedicating her life to Montu and instead become a servant of a different god—a pharaoh.
“Tell me of the bull,” I said. I did not enjoy tainting my father’s legacy. My mother had died giving birth to young Ptolemy, so my memories of her were blunted, but my father’s still cut sharp.
Neferu looked troubled. “I suspect murder.”
My blood ran cold. “How?”
“A new acolyte joined the temple two days before our lord’s death. The day the bull died, the student disappeared.”
I raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Every acolyte’s first duty is to maintain the water trough of the Buchis. I suspect she poisoned the water,” my aunt explained.
“Why would anyone wish to poison Montu’s manifestation? Why risk the wrath of the gods?”
“Money,” Neferu said calmly. “Taxes are high, crop yield is low.” She didn’t say it with any hint of blame, but still I felt ashamed.
“What do you know of this acolyte?”
She shook her head. “We searched her rooms after she left—discreetly, of course—and there was very little to find.”
I made a sound of frustration and Neferu gave me a look that would have silenced a schoolyard of children.
“I said very little, I didn’t say nothing.” She pulled something out of her pocket. “I found this behind her pallet. Part of her blood money, I am sure.”
My aunt handed me a coin. It was a simple drachma. Nothing entirely out of the ordinary, but as I looked at it more closely, my hands began to prickle.
The two-sided coins minted during my reign were embossed with my profile on one side, and Theos’s on the other.
But when I turned the coin over—the side wet with my sweat—I found my face had been replaced with an eagle, a symbol of royalty. At first, I thought it an old coin left in circulation from my father’s reign. But there was no mistaking the young Theos, his eyes wise and unblinking.
An error at the minting press, that is all, I reasoned with myself, though I knew I had last sent Pothinus to the press. He had been instructed to change the valuation of the bronze coin.
What if he had done something else entirely? Something treasonous?
Neferu seemed unaware of the coin’s defect. It wasn’t unusual for the king of the realm to feature as the sole ruler on currency, but I had changed this within the first season of my rule. I also imagined it was rare that Neferu handled money.
I closed my fist over the drachma and slipped it beneath my dress, where the binding of my undergarments tightened around my chest. Against my beating heart.
“Thank you for telling me this.”
Neferu’s eyes narrowed. She could sense something had shifted in me, but I was not able to vocalise what. Especially when I wasn’t sure why this defective coin had left me so unsettled.
“We should return to the others,” I said.
“Yes.” Then she reached for my hand and squeezed it so hard the pressure bordered on pain. “I sense something coming. Like a storm on the horizon, it draws ever near.”
I shivered as my skin turned to the texture of gooseflesh. But despite my sense of foreboding, I straightened my shoulders and met my aunt’s eyes steadily. “A storm will bring rain, and rain grows crops. I do not fear it.”
Neferu looked at me with an expression that said, You should, before sweeping up her cowl to hide her features once more.
She waited for me to leave the room first, and as we crossed the threshold we were once again strangers to each other, not aunt and niece, but high priestess and Pharaoh.
Arsinoe glared at me as I rejoined the procession. Neferu was her aunt too and I trusted Arsinoe, but our aunt’s news on the acolyte was for my ears only.
I followed the path that I had last ventured down with my father, three years prior, when we’d selected the last Buchis bull. It led me to the pens on the outskirts of the temple.
Nine bulls snorted and paced within, separated from each other by stone bricks, some of which had suffered under their large horns. Every bull had a white hide with black patterning across its face.
“They are smaller this year,” I noted. One looked barely out of calfhood.
“Without the Nile floods, many of our fields have fallen barren,” Neferu said quietly.
Choosing to ignore her comment, I scrutinised each of the bulls in turn and waited for a feeling of clarity to come over me.
The bulls snorted and shifted in their pens as I walked past. I could feel their aggression in the bulk of muscle that corded above their shoulders.
Some of them feinted a charge at me, others scuffed their hooves, but none of them seemed anything other than a bull.
“You will know when Montu calls to you,” my father had explained three years before. He had chosen the beast that day, pointing a bejewelled finger at the new vessel as I watched.
“But how, Father?” I pressed.
“It is a feeling, like how your patron tethers you to the gods—as you will know, when your power eventually manifests.”
I felt humiliation then, and I felt it now. For Isis had not called to me, and neither did Montu.
My throat began to narrow with panic, and I found myself swallowing over and over again. I looked back and found Neferu watching me expectantly. Arsinoe stood in her shadow, her bored expression only increasing my trepidation. I was not the paragon of authority she could learn from.
Charmion stood apart from the procession of priests. When I caught her eye, she tipped her eyes to the sky with a subtle expression that only I could read: Hurry up, I’m hungry. It was exactly what I needed to prompt a decision. Time was dwindling.
I drew level with the final beast.
He was not the largest of the bulls, nor the plumpest. His horns were a murky cream rather than the polished white of some of the others. But when he looked at me through the grating of his cage, his eyes were as brown and as fathomless as the Nile’s depths.
I convinced myself it was a sign from Montu.
“This one,” I announced. “He will be the god’s vessel.”
The response from the priests was immediate. They stepped forward in formation, each standing in front of one of the other bulls. Neferu moved to stand by me, her hands raised to praise the new manifestation of Montu.
“Come forth, Buchis, our lord almighty. May you live for years untold. May you bask in the sun everlasting. My prayers are yours until you claim my soul to stand by your side in the afterlife.”
The eight priests responded to Neferu’s prayer as one: “I am thy servant, great lord.”
Then, the priests pulled out spears from beneath their robes. The first time I had witnessed the ceremony, I had been surprised to find the holy servants armed. But blood and power have always come as one.
“We honour your presence with this sacrifice,” Neferu said.
I closed my eyes as the priests lunged forward, their spears pointing towards the bulls’ hearts.
Squeals erupted around me as the creatures’ flesh was pierced. Some died quickly, but others were not so lucky, their screams turning to gurgles where the priest’s aim must have missed the heart and punctured their lungs.
The whole process was agonisingly slow. When the courtyard finally grew quiet, I opened my eyes.
The Buchis I had chosen was the only beast left alive. His eyes rolled in his skull, his nostrils flaring and snorting as he smelled the blood of his brethren.
I averted my gaze from the slumped forms of the other animals. It was then that I noticed Arsinoe watching me.
“Sister, are you well?” she asked. Though her tone was concerned, her lips curled upwards mockingly.
“Yes,” I said. “I fear I am just hungry, and it has set my heart a-thunder.”
I rested my hand against my chest, feigning light-headedness. Servants rushed to attend me, but I ignored them: I had been reminded of the threat pressed against the bone of my sternum.
The coin with my profile removed.
And so it began, the erasure of my history.