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“I was,” she agreed. “When I became a woman, I entered the temple of Hathor as a priestess.” Her eyes glowed and her voice took on a breathy youth. “When I danced, I became the goddess on earth.” Her odor sweetened, as if capturing the memory of that goddess.
I tried to imagine this wizened, leathery body that lay rigid in yellowed, crumbling linen as a beautiful dancer, and I could not. She was spinning a tale to please me, like any sideshow fakir.
Tauseret was unaware of my doubt. “But when I danced at the feast of Min during the time of inundation, I caught the eye of a man whom one should not be noticed by,” she said. Her voice cracked. “Sethnakhte.”
I don’t know why, but I shivered.
“He was of mixed foreign and Kemet blood and had trav-eled,” she told me. “He knew languages, and the court valued him in talks with foreign kings. He had studied in the temple of Set at Tanis. He knew the ways of khemi—magic, you would call it, or maybe science. The pharaoh, impressed by his knowledge, made him priest of Set in Avaris, servant of the despised god of deserts, storms, and war.
“The servants of Sethnakhte followed me all feast day. They gave me flowers. They laid sweet fruits before me. They entreated me to come to him, until I finally agreed, if only to put an end to his attentions.
“I met him in a palm arbor. He stood too close to me, and his breath stank of the pellets of natron that he chewed to cleanse himself, the same natron used to preserve the bodies of the dead. I saw the lust on his face as he asked me to be his mate. I feared the anger of a powerful man, but he was much too old. I should marry a beautiful youth, not a man twice my age. I tried to refuse.
“He trapped me against a tree and threatened me with the unwelcome length of his body as well as his words. With the same lips he pressed against my neck he said he could prove that my father wrote false records for his own gain. His accusations were not true, but Sethnakhte had the ear of the pharaoh. What chance did a lesser man have? For love of my father I submitted.
“As soon as I moved my possessions to his house, he demanded that I forsake my service to her of music, dance, and happiness, as that did not become the wife of Set’s priest. What husband is shamed to have a dancer of Hathor under his roof?” Her voice strengthened with her wrath.
“I threatened to take him in front of the judges. Again he promised to ruin my father. I had no choice. I took off my menat and laid my sistrum down. More fool he, for the menat stands for joy and fertility. He would have neither of me. I shuddered in repulsion at his touch, and my body rejected his seed. In turn he treated me with disdain for my barrenness. He called me less than a woman, yet he forced me repeatedly to his bed.”
I found Tauseret’s honesty brutal.
“I lived in misery,” Tauseret told me. “I relished my freedom in the hours he worked on the documents he brought home to translate.”
She fell silent, perhaps to gather strength. I let her be and listened to the gentle, chirping night as I watched over her. Far away a train whistle blew. Her head jerked and her eyes widened.
“It’s just a train,” I said. “A steam carriage.”
She nodded solemnly. Her lower lip trembled. “Yes, my scholar spoke of trains, but I didn’t know they screamed. I thought I’d heard the Eater of Souls.”
As if in response to the lonely train whistle, a child cried inconsolably.
“Ah,” said Tauseret, “the little seer frets.”
“You do talk to Minnie!” I exclaimed with relief. “You’re just a real girl after all.”
Tauseret’s lips twitched into a smile. “I do not speak to her with my mouth. She can see my ka—my double that speaks for me. You saw it too.”
“Lady T.,” Minnie had called the mummy, and said she was pretty. I stared at the creature that lay before me and tried to see what Minnie did, what I had seen in my dreams. I found that impossible. “Maybe Minnie does have a gift,” I muttered.
“Indeed,” answered Tauseret, “but she is too young to understand much of what she sees.”
“I wonder why she’s crying,” I said, unsure if I should go and help, but reluctant to leave this newfound mystery. “Perhaps she’s had a nightmare.”
“It’s death,” said Tauseret. “She sees death.”
21
DEATH?” I ASKED, AND LOOKED over my shoulder before I could help it.
“She may have seen an animal die on a farm down the road,” Tauseret answered. “Or a man meet his end a thousand miles away. The death could be this night or next year. Her visions keep her awake. She whispers what she sees to me, but I have had no arms to comfort her.”
Even now Tauseret’s arms were immobile, crossed down her front, tied at the wrists at hip level, individually bound with ancient cloth. “How did you end this way?” I asked to change the subject. My heart would break if I dwelled too long on a tiny child who could foresee death. There were others to comfort Minnie; Tauseret was here alone.
“Since you cannot remember, I will tell you,” she said, and her little yellow teeth looked ready to bite. I felt aggrieved. How would I remember?
“On one of my cherished visits home, my father brought a student from the school of court to the evening meal,” Tauseret told me. “I was married. I sho
uld have looked at the food and not at him, but he had the body of an acrobat and the eyes of a poet, and I could not look away. I wanted to know the limits of that body. I wanted poetry from those lips.” She turned her head to me, as far as her bindings would allow. “That man was you, Ankhtifi.”
