Anck-Su-Namun is thirteen when her father, after coming home from the market in Thebes one late evening, tells her she is to move away, to do something that will help them all. She say nothing, for she will not be heard, so it is better to save her words.
A mistress. A royal concubine. She is to let a man older than her own father have her in his bed in two years' time, the very day she starts her fifteenth year. And during the two years, she is to learn all about the Pharaoh from the older concubines, she is to learn how to walk and talk – or not to talk – how to smile, how to obey. How to, Anck-Su-Namun think silently, be a breathing doll. Her family will be provided for, will have an easier life. It is her duty.
So, Anck-Su-Namun learns. Without any heart and avoidant of joy, but she learns, nonetheless.
#
They day during which she starts her fifteenth year is like all the days before during the two years Anck-Su-Namun has been in the concubine wing in the palace. But when night approaches, there is difference. She is bathed first in peppermint water, then in rose water. They put small, so very small, beads of gold and lapis lazuli in her hair, paint her eyelids with black and gold and her lips only in gold. Her dress is of the sheerest, whitest linen Anck-Su-Namun has ever seen. She looks like someone else. In way she is someone else.
Pharaoh Seti isn't a man that hits or leave visible marks on the women he orders to him. He is, at least Anck-Su-Namun thinks so based on what she has heard of other men, surprisingly gentle even though he does not care if she enjoys the tie time with him. Then again, she is too good a pretender for him to think anything else; she has to be. The other concubines have told her so again and again over the years. She must smile, must look at easy, must never show that she is not happy to be in the Pharaoh's presence.
When she is sent back to her room, in the early hours of the next morning, all she wants to do is run away. Run far, far away from the jewelled cage she has been put in, and never return. But if she does, her family will suffer, and while Anck-Su-Namun does care for her father, she does love her mother and her younger siblings, and nothing can ever happen to them based on what she does. So, she takes another bath, applies the makeup like she has been taught, dresses in white linen and gold bracelets and necklaces, spends the day out by the pool with the other women, smiles and laughs and pretends until the evening falls and she is called upon once more.
#
She is seventeen when she hears the whispers about Seti wanting her as his wife. Disbelieving, Anck-Su-Namun waves it away. Palace slander has never interested her, and the jealous tongues of the other concubines do not face her anymore. She has learned to let the words wash over her like water that dries in the sun.
Pharaoh Seti calls for her for days, and she sees the jealous gleams from the other women's eyes, but there is nothing she can do about it, and nothing they can do, and so they all coexist in a mess of tired, broken feelings.
#
The year she turns twenty is the years she starts hearing the soft humming from the temple of Isis during her daily walks. Anck-Su-Namun remembers praying to the goddess as a child. She misses it, misses the gentle touch upon the crown of her head, the feeling of warmth in her heart. But the concubines of Seti are not allowed to worship anyone but him, the god on earth in human form.
The day during which the humming almost tears her mind and heart apart, Anck-Su-Namun disobeys the orders of worship, takes off from her routine walk rout and slides inti the temple covered by shadows. The humming fades to a happier tone. She walks in a daze, scarcely noticing the other people who are offering prayers and thanks, past rooms and pillars, into the Inner Room. Faintly, she knows that she should not be here, that this room, with the fire that never stops burning, is only for the priestesses of Isis. But she cannot stop. Not until the fire, high enough to reach her belly, is so close that she can reach out a hand and let it burn her skin. Anck-Su-Namun bows low, feels the hard stone floor touch her forehead. She says no words aloud, but in her mind she prays, prays of everything she has never told a living soul, offers her heart and soul and very being to the goddess of magic and dead.
A hand on her shoulder takes her back to here and now, and Anck-Su-Namun lifts her head and sees the High Priestess, bows low once more and waits for harsh words for having defiled their sanctum. The High Priestess says nothing. She merely takes Anck-Su-Namun by one hand and leads her deeper into the temple, past the Inner Room and into a small chamber. There, amongst torches and priestesses, Anck-Su-Namun is initiated. The High Priestess tells of dreams she has had of this moment, of the thread she can see woven in Anck-Su-Namun's life, a thread of love and hardship. But also a thread of a new life. Anck-Su-Namun offers her thanks with a real smile and a bow so low she touches the stone floor.
#
Anck-Su-Namun is twenty-on when Pharaoh Seti tells he she will be his wife upon her twenty-fifth year. She say nothing, merely smiles and bows before him. On the inside, her heart is screaming.
That night, clouded in darkness and shadow, she visit the temple of Isis like she has done in secret so many times during the last year. But this night is different. There is a ceremony between the priestesses of Isis and the priests of Osiris. Anck-Su-Namun follows the pull of magic that tells her how to stand, what to say, what to do. The two fires blaze brightly in the Inner Room of Isis's temple. One for the goddess. One for the god. Two made one, for the fires merges as the ritual comes to its closes. Anck-Su-Namun feels awe at the sight.
She means to leave with the others, she truly does, but something holds her back, so she falls behind and waits for the grip on her heart to lessen. That is when she sees him. The High Priest of Osiris, without the mask and adorned robe that he wore during the ceremony. He is bald, with the most golden skin and bluest eyes she has ever seen, dressed in a common black priest robe, nothing that shows his station. Humble, she realizes. He bows deeply to her, and the smiles that follows melts her heart and Anck-Su-Namun knows that this is the love the High Priestesses spoke of. And the hardship. For no other man but Pharaoh Seti is ever to touch her. Not even High Priest Imhotep.
#
They meet in dark, in secret, in the shadows during the four years that follow. Each meeting is well planned and never long lasting, but they leave Anck-Su-Namun feeling alive.
And then comes that one night upon which they slip, fall, fall and fall, and the hardships begin.