Jennifer Colgan: The Concubine’s Tale

“Tell me more. Ammonptah had some nefarious plan in store for Nayari, didn’t he?”

“According to the scroll, yes. But it took her a while to find out exactly what.” Cait took another sip of her drink and continued her story.

The journey to Coptos was tedious. Only the warrior seemed unfazed by the heat and the dry dust that rose along the road as they plodded along. His posture never wavered, and he slowed his stride only long enough to water the oxen and ask Nayari if she needed to relieve herself. She declined the offer and pulled her shawl farther over her face to distance herself from his disconcerting stare and to hide from the prying eyes of the people they passed along the way.

She imagined what the other travelers must think of her, being led along in an old cart with the stiff-backed warrior trudging ahead of her. She felt like an outcast, and she began to hate Ammonptah for visiting this torture upon her.

She thought back to the last time she’d been with him and wondered if she’d done something to make him dislike her.

Then it occurred to her that Ammonptah probably thought she was barren! She’d been in his household for several years now and, at age twenty, she had yet to bear a child for him. Obviously he was sending her to the temple to ask for a blessing of fertility. That had to be it. That thought eased her apprehension somewhat. A blessing from the gods would certainly help. Then she could return home, fully prepared to serve Ammonptah’s household properly.

Her spirits buoyed now, she straightened her spine and clapped her hands to get the warrior’s attention. “What’s your name, servant of Ammonptah? I must know what else to call you if you are to be my servant as well.”

He stopped mid-step, and the thick muscles of his back bunched before he turned to her. “I am Ammonptah’s servant. Not yours.”

“I demand to know your name.”

He turned away from her and began walking again. The oxen snorted, and their tails flicked in unison to dislodge the flies that had settled on their angular backsides.

“I am a servant of Ammonptah.” He said nothing more until sunset.

“He didn’t like her, I gather.” Thanks to Cait’s colorful description, Grant had a clear picture of the scene in his mind. The strong warrior reduced to babysitting a spoiled princess for his master. It sounded like a dishonorable job reserved for someone who’d screwed up royally and needed some humiliation to keep him humble.

“On the contrary.” Cait grinned and popped a bite of her smoked salmon entrée into her mouth. Grant watched her lips again, tantalized. Did she taste sweet or spicy? How many buttons between her cleavage and her skirt? “According to the scroll, the warrior was smitten with Nayari the moment he saw her. She was considered very beautiful in an exotic way. Her skin was light, and her eyes were the color of dark honey. Her hair was probably black, long and straight and shiny. He, of course, was forbidden to think of her as anything other than cargo to be transported at the whim of Ammonptah.”

“Did he know why she was being brought to the temple? Did he wonder if he might get to see her dance for the fertility god?”

“He didn’t know yet. It wasn’t his place to question. However, he was clever and strong-willed and not exactly sure that he supported Ammonptah’s ambitious bid for the throne.”

“He was a man of integrity.” Grant sipped his wine and tipped his glass to touch Cait’s. “To integrity.”

“Of course, it wasn’t a time in history when integrity was well received. Political alignment was everything. Wealth and power were the only avenues to a comfortable life and, as a soldier, he had to be on the winning side to reap the rewards of his station. He had to bide his time.”

“But he had the hots for his boss’s woman.”

“One of his boss’s many women. A young, beautiful woman who was about to need his help desperately.”

“Don’t leave me hanging. I need to know more.” At his prompt, Cait’s eyes seemed to lose focus, as if she were seeing into the past as she described it to him. Grant kept his gaze on her and let the rhythm of her words transport him once again to another world.

A river of stars dusted the sky when Nayari and her stoic escort finally reached the temple at Coptos. The heat of the day had faded, and Nayari shivered in her thin shawl. The warrior reached up to help her down from the cart. When she laid her hand in his, the heat of his skin felt like fire. His black eyes smoldered when his gaze met hers, and once again she felt a jolt of unexplained anticipation.

Acutely aware of her movements now, she slid her legs down and pointed her sandaled feet at the ground. As she lowered herself from the cart, her billowy skirt rose up her legs, revealing the thin leather ties that crisscrossed up her calves.

His rough fingers slid upward along the curve of her hip to steady her.

“Thank you, servant,” she said, mimicking the tone she’d often heard Baakah use with lower members of the household.

He dropped his hand and turned without a reply. Nayari thought of ordering him to remove her belongings from the cart just to see how he might react, but she didn’t have a chance. At that moment two priests emerged from the temple, and behind them came two women. All were bare-chested and wore thick belts of beaten gold and linen skirts. Their bare feet made no sound on the cool sandstone pathway that led into the temple, and they said nothing to their guests.

The four people bowed to the warrior and then to Nayari, and the women began removing the baskets from the back of the cart.

One of them touched Nayari’s shoulder and beckoned her to follow. Uncertain, she glanced at the warrior, and he nodded.

Would he leave her here? Would Ammonptah be waiting inside? Nayari pushed the disturbing questions out of her mind and followed the women into the dimly lit interior of the temple.

Just inside the entrance of the temple, the women stopped and ushered Nayari toward a narrow passageway to the right. Over their shoulders she saw into the cavernous main room of the temple, and she craned her neck for a better view of the forbidden space.

“You can’t enter there,” one of the women whispered. She placed a firm hand again on Nayari’s shoulder and guided her into the corridor where oil lamps lit the deeply inscribed walls. “Only priests and acolytes may attend Min. You will stay back here in the special chambers.”

As she followed the women deeper inside the temple, Nayari gazed at the inscriptions that covered the walls. Though she couldn’t read everything, the pictographs were fairly explicit, and they set her imagination alight.

Here a man knelt in supplication at an altar while a woman anointed his head with oil. There a woman and a man embraced while above them the Chief of Heaven, Min himself, blessed their marriage union.

Nayari leaned closer to the next pictograph. This was a portrait of the god, a tall man with a beautiful face and a strong physique. Protruding from his waist at the juncture of his closed legs was the longest, straightest erection Nayari had ever seen.

He held his arrow-like member in one hand and pointed it at a group of worshippers who offered him sheaves of wheat in return for his blessing.

The paintings and carvings held Nayari’s attention and made her think of Ammonptah. Her master was the only man she’d ever seen in such a state of arousal, and his penis was certainly no match for that of the god.

Warmth rose to her cheeks when she found herself wondering if Ammonptah’s member was normal or unusually small for a man of his age and stature. She thought of the warrior, with his bulging muscles and glistening dark skin, and wondered if his cock might look more like Min’s, long and straight and powerful.