Today, I’m delighted to welcome NL Holmes and her new book, A Taste of Honey to the blog, with an excerpt
Excerpt from A Taste of Honey by NL Holmes
They leashed the puppies with a nub of rope the steward brought them and led the dogs, tumbling and frolicking, down the road toward the River from which they had come. The steward accompanied them to the bank, where a low, utilitarian-looking vessel of modest size had drawn up and lay rocking in the green water.
“Thank Lord Amen-nakhte for this,” said Neferet gratefully. “It saves us a long wait in the sun.”
“I’m sure he’s happy to do it for his old friend, my lady. My lord.” The steward bowed repeatedly as the little party clattered up the gangplank, puppies in their arms.
After the usual ritual of casting off anchors and pushing into the flow, the crew struck up their paddling rhythm, and the boat surged downstream toward the city. It was early afternoon, and there was little traffic on the River. Instead of standing at the gunwales, watching the scene unspool past them on the banks, the travelers crouched on the deck and played with the puppies. Just like human toddlers, the young dogs were uncoordinated, hyperactive, and prone to chewing on everything. They were an endless cause for merry laughter. As for Brute, he observed them with paternal tolerance.
All at once, a thud, a screech—and the boat gave a sideways lurch that threw everyone to the deck, reeling. Neferet, caught completely off-balance, fell flat on her face. Bener-ib screamed as she toppled over a coil of rope, and one of the puppies slid on its back across the deck, stopped only by the wickerwork of the gunwales. Mut-tuy scuttled after it and hugged the wildly squirming creature to her chest.
“What was that?” cried Neferet as she struggled to her hands and knees.
“I think we’ve struck something.” From his seat on the planking, Grandfather had fallen sideways, feet in the air, one sandal flying. He picked himself up gingerly and groped for his shoe.
“Mut the mother of us all!” Mut-tuy shouted. “That boat hit us!” She pointed, round-eyed, to starboard, where an elegant yacht crowded against the side of their own craft. They could hear the squeal of wet wood as the two hulls ground against one another.
Amen-nakhte’s captain ran to the gunwales, screaming and gesticulating at the other boat. It drew away a bit but maintained a parallel course. No one came to the side to shout excuses or see if there had been injuries aboard their victim. Neferet added her own imprecations to those of the captain, while the others secured the puppies.
“What were they thinking?” she exploded as Grandfather joined her at the rail. “They have all the room in the world. Why are they coming so close to us? We’re going to collide again.”
“I think that’s what they intend,” he murmured. “Look. They’re leaning into us.”
He hastily pulled Neferet away from the gunwales as the tall mass of the yacht bore down once more upon the slow little farm transport. The big boat’s long, carved prow slid over its victim with a shudder of boards and the sound of splintering. The smaller boat rose in the water and sank back with a splash. Screams of rowers caught between the hulls sent chills up Neferet’s neck.
“The turds are trying to sink us!”
“Are they pirates?” Bener-ib clutched at Neferet’s arm.
“So close to the city? I can hardly imagine it.” But what else could they be? Her stomach was in her throat. They were all going to have to jump ship and swim for shore. And what about the puppies?
Their boat was struggling to pull away from its aggressive fellow traveler. The steersman hung desperately upon one of the tall oars with all his weight while the captain stalked up and down in a frenzy, yelling orders, but the larger vessel crowded after it.
“Stay on the other side, girls, and be prepared to evacuate,” Grandfather said uneasily. “I think you’re right, Neferet. They’re trying to take us down.”
Bener-ib whimpered at Neferet’s side, her fingers digging into her partner’s arm, but she never released her grip on the cream-colored puppy pressed to her side with the other elbow. Another teeth-gritting screech resounded as the vessels collided once more. The cargo boat listed wildly, throwing everyone against the gunwales. One of the stone anchors skidded over the deck with bone-crushing momentum and crashed through the wickerwork barrier on the other side. The empty mast almost slapped the River before rising again abruptly. Water sloshed across the planking. The passengers slid and staggered. One of the sailors ran to cut the rope that held the anchor, which was weighing the boat down at a tilt.
“Don’t let go of the puppies!” Neferet shouted, grabbing at Brute’s collar. If we go under, they’ll drown, she thought in anguish. We’ll all probably drown.
The yacht drew forward, raking the side of the boat again as it passed. More ominous splintering resounded—and strangely, a distant yapping and baying. A couple of men had gathered at the rail of the yacht and stared down at the terrified passengers below them. Their expressions were grim.
Who, by all that’s holy, are these people who want to kill us?
Welcome to the blog. Can you tell me about your new novel.
Although much of it was done a long time ago, when I began teaching a course that involved a cultural and historical look at Ugarit, tackling a series of books set in an obscure city state in the Late Bronze Age did require some academic snooping. Times and places about which we know relatively little are a mixed blessing: one always wishes one had more clues to hang fiction upon, but in those gaps where we know nothing, plausible imagination is OK for the novelist. Still, I didn’t want to contradict anything we knew for sure to be true, so there was a lot to learn. I bought a lot of books.
To me, a person with a soft spot for words, one of the most interesting things I began to find out about was the literary tradition of Ugarit. Fortunately for us—and unfortunately for the inhabitants of the city in about 1190 BCE, when the city fell never to rise again—Ugarit was put to the torch, baking and preserving the clay tablets upon which information was recorded. A whole private library of texts was among the tablets discovered, opening to modern scholars a wonderful new world of mythological epic.
The author of some of the most complete of these was a certain scribe named Ili-milku, born in the near-by kingdom of Shiyannu. He eventually held the post of chief scribe of Ugarit but evidently still had time to write. It’s likely that, rather than composing the Cycle from scratch, he compiled and wrote down a definitive edition of a slew of tales that had been recited orally for a long time, much like Homer. He is the third point-of-view character in The Moon That Fell from Heaven. More about him in a moment.
Since their discovery in the 1930s, we have been exposed to Ugaritic narratives about Kirta, a Job-like figure of patience in suffering. About Aqhat, the long-prayed-for son of a childless couple. About Ba’al, the storm god, and various lesser divine figures like the Gracious Gods or Horon. Biblical scholars immediately noticed not only themes similar to those of the Hebrew Bible, but also literary forms that occur in the Bible. This shouldn’t surprise us, as the entire world of the eastern Mediterranean, which we may generalize as Canaanite, shared a closely related culture and languages. The Ugaritic high god Ilu, for example, is the same as El and means simply “god.” Ba’al is “the lord,” the rider of the clouds. But the gods of Ugarit were not omnipotent, by any means. They were closely associated with the phenomena of nature, and like nature, they did a lot of dying and resurrecting. Other parallels—with the Greek world—are striking too. Anat the Maiden is a virgin warrior goddess like Athena, for example. The Bronze Age was a world of global interconnection!
When the fictional Ili-milku is held hostage, he finds himself forced to critique endless poems his captor has written. This activity is possible because scholars have worked out that all the mythological stories that have come down to us from Ugarit are actually in verse. Their idea of poetry—like that of the Biblical authors—didn’t require rhyme or even meter. It was free verse, you might say. But it used very definite patterns of language, repetitions, build-ups, parallels. In short, it was constructed pretty much the same way modern Near Eastern poetry is, an interesting continuity of more than 3000 years.
How were these poetic narratives used? Some seem as if they might have been liturgical drama, with choral parts. Others were perhaps sung or chanted in temples or even around the campfire. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know until someone finds some stage directions. But even so, they shed a lot of light on how the people of Ugarit viewed their world, what they valued, how their society was structured. I’m glad to have studied them, because they bring a whole population closer and make them more human. I hope I’ve accomplished a little of that myself by turning a bit of their human drama into fiction.
Here’s the blurb
EIn Tutankhamen’s Egypt, the vizier’s head cook dies suspiciously, and it looks like murder to Neferet and Bener-ib. Only, who would want to kill a cook, a man admired by all?
Perhaps he has professional rivals or a jealous wife. But she is the longtime cook of Neferet’s family, a dear retainer above reproach. Was her husband the good man he seemed to be, or did he have the shady past our two sleuths begin to suspect?
They’d better find out soon before the waters of foreign conspiracy rise around Neferet and her diplomat father. If they can’t find the killer, it could mean war with Egypt’s enemy, Kheta — and someone else could die. Maybe one of our nosy sleuths…
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Meet the author
N.L. Holmes is the pen name of a professional archaeologist who received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. She has excavated in Greece and in Israel and taught ancient history and humanities at the university level for many years. She has always had a passion for books, and in childhood, she and her cousin used to write stories for fun.
These days she lives in France with her husband, two cats, geese, and chickens, where she gardens, weaves, dances, and plays the violin
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