Seer of Egypt

by Pauline Gedge

  She had gone very pale, but there was a glint of rebellion in her eyes. “I drink much wine, it is true, and it makes me happy. But Huy, I shall never descend to the whorish depths you have described! Never! Your vision is … is… ” It was obvious that she did not want to accuse either him or, worse, the god of lying.

  Huy resisted the need to touch his paining head. “You wanted me to See for you,” he said roughly. “I have done so. What you make of what I have Seen is up to you, but beware, Anuket! The god does not lie. I pray that what I saw is not fixed, that you can alter your future if you want to …” He closed his mouth abruptly. Nasha, he thought. Nasha and her mother. Stay away from the Street of the Basket Sellers, I told Nasha after the Seeing had come upon me without my volition, and she obeyed me, but it was her mother who died in the Street of the Basket Sellers, and I still do not know why. If Anuket decides to become the perfect wife, will Amunnefer lie drunk and besmirched in the arms of some whore? His mind shied away from the question as though he had been stung. I have pondered this before to no avail. All I can do is tell what I See.

  Another silence fell between them. Huy sat very still, vainly willing the beating of his heart to stop reverberating behind his eyes. Anuket was staring at him expressionlessly. He was gathering himself up to stand and take his leave, desperate for the dose of poppy Tetiankh would bring him, when she spoke. “Sometimes I dream that I am copulating with a pig. According to the Purified, it is an omen of foreboding. What do you think, Huy?”

  “I am not an interpreter of dreams,” he answered her stiffly, “but if I were one of the Purified and if I had been told the vision of your future, I would warn you to go to the nearest temple, fast and pray, and then go home and amend your life.”

  “How cold you are,” she protested softly. “How formal and faraway, as though you are a stranger and not a man I have known since we were both little more than children! How have I angered you?”

  By treating my love for you as a plaything, he answered her dumbly. By making a game out of teasing a defenceless boy and then pushing him away.

  “I’m not angry with you anymore, Anuket,” he said aloud. “All my school years were coloured by my love for you, and when you refused to run away with me, I was almost destroyed. Until now I have kept an image of you entirely separate from all else in my mind, but I thank the gods you came to Thothmes’ wedding. Seeing you again has cured me of that youthful malady.” He did not know whether or not he had intended to offend her, but at his words her eyes narrowed briefly and her full mouth turned down.

  “It’s true that I toyed with you. I tried out my new power as a woman on you, as though I was a baby cutting its teeth on a sliver of reed. That was wicked of me, especially seeing that I loved you as though you were blood kin to me.” She cleared her throat, a sound that could have signalled embarrassment or genuine shame, Huy thought. He doubted if it meant either. “I often look at Amunnefer and wonder what my life would have been like if I had crept out of the garden with you on the night my father refused your request. I think I really was half in love with you then, but I was already becoming very adept at the game of manipulation.”

  Huy had had enough. Rising, he bowed to her. “Stop playing it, Anuket, or it will lead you to the degradation I saw,” he managed hoarsely. “Amunnefer deserves better. So does the memory of your illustrious mother. Find some respect for yourself.”

  She waved one languid hand as if to dismiss him and his words, but Huy could see the rage beneath the whitening of her face. “Say what you like, but my name is a curse that must be fulfilled. No one can fight the destiny of his name.”

  He had been turning to the door, but now he paused and looked back at her. “Then change it,” he forced out through a blur of pain. “Go to Amun’s temple at Ipet-isut and beg one of his priest-astrologers to make a new chart for you based on the name you have chosen. It is sometimes permitted. You know this! Bring back the chaste and fragile maker of garlands who so captured my heart!”

  She began to cry, the tears welling up and overflowing down her painted cheeks. “And will you love me again then, Huy?” she choked. “Will you?”

  He shook his head. She had spared no thought for her husband at all, and her tears were for herself alone. Walking to the door, he bowed once more to her superior station and went out into the passage. It was not far to his own room. Thankfully, Tetiankh was there, folding kilts that had obviously just been starched. The servant took one look at Huy and then went to the window, lowered the slatted hanging, and came to him, gently removing his jewellery and his clothing.

  “I packed plenty of poppy, Master. I’ll prepare a draft at once and bring cool water for your forehead.” Huy let Tetiankh’s arm lower him onto the couch.

  “Keep everyone away but Ishat if she wants to see me,” he murmured. “Find Merenra and tell him to prepare for our return to Hut-herib tomorrow. I want to go home, Tetiankh.”

  The man made soothing noises and left. Now Huy was free to put both palms against his temples and close his eyes. Every muscle in his body had tensed against the knife point jabbing inside his skull, but woven into the pain, like some harsh, discordant harmony for which his heart was providing the rhythm, the images Atum had fed to him of a naked, befouled Anuket paraded through his mind. Unable to banish them, he groaned. “The ponderous inevitability of consequence,” the High Priest’s voice cut in suddenly. “The ponderous … inevitability … of… consequence. The … ponderous … inevitability …” Huy, his arms, Amunnefer’s arms, going around Anuket once more, inhaling that odd, terrible odour of her inner hopelessness, knew the futility of his words to her. She may change her life, busy herself on their estate, give up her adulteries, but her doom will fall anyway, he told himself, hugging his knees under the sheet, trying to cradle the pain. The goddess Anuket herself was not able to remain the pure water creature of the past. Did she become the licentious whore some now worship from choice or by decree? Whose decree? Atum’s? Does she exist at all, or is High Priest Ramose right and every god, every goddess, is only an expression of the eternal energies of the mighty Neb-er-djer, Lord to the Limit, the Great He-She? Oh Tetiankh, hurry or I must scream out this agony!

  As if in answer, the servant came in. Huy struggled up and, taking the cup, drained the contents eagerly. “Find my oil of lemon grass,” he asked. “This mixture is very strong and bitter, Tetiankh, and I need the oil on my tongue.” He opened his mouth for the drop then lay down thankfully. The opium was already doing its blessed work, warming his blood, numbing his limbs, flowing around the loud visions and voices in his mind and encapsulating them, making them fade. “I can sleep now,” he whispered, and fell into the drug’s embrace.

  He woke to full darkness. A lamp was burning on the table beside his couch, and as he struggled to sit up, its light wavered. Ishat rose from the chair by the window and came quietly to sit on the couch by Huy’s knees. Rubbing his cheeks, he accepted the goblet of water she was holding out and drank quickly. “Tetiankh knew you would need me,” she said, taking the cup when he had finished and setting it back beside the jug. “He asked me to watch over you while he ate with the other servants. Who did this to you, Huy?”

  “You make it sound as if I was attacked in some way,” he responded. His lips still felt numb and his limbs only loosely coordinated. Tetiankh’s dose of the poppy had been unusually powerful. “Amunnefer asked me to See for Anuket. Actually, he begged me.”

  “And of course you couldn’t refuse.” Her tone was waspish, and Huy was able to smile to himself. Even though she was now married to Thothmes, her long jealousy of Anuket could still prick her. “Well, because of it you’ve missed your last chance to feast with me and Thothmes and the rest of the family. Tetiankh told me that you’ll be leaving in the morning. We had lotus seeds in purple juniper oil, and sedge roots and cumin, and roast goose and leeks and celery. Fig cakes. Beer flavoured with mint. Nasha made sure that there was plenty left for you. Are you hungry?”


  “A little. If Tetiankh is outside in the passage, send him to the kitchen.” Put your hand on my forehead the way you used to do, he beseeched her silently. Massage my head. She was watching him doubtfully. She looked truly beautiful in her scarlet sheath. Gold dusted her eyelids and cheeks. Her mouth was hennaed, her hair caught up in the gold mesh that could be attached to the circlet she had ordered from the jeweller in Hut-herib and that he, or more properly the King, had paid for. She could have passed for any aristocrat. Reaching out and taking her hand, he turned it over. The orange henna felt slightly rough to his questing fingers. Absurdly, he wanted to cry.

  “When you’ve eaten, will you join Thothmes and me on the raft?” she wanted to know as she rose. “We’re just going to sit on it and be rocked by the river in the torchlight and drink wine and talk. Nasha may come too. Please, Huy?”

  “Perhaps. I feel dirty and slightly nauseous. How is Nakht?”

  “He ate in his own quarters.” She opened the door and spoke a few words to Tetiankh, then regained the couch and bent towards him. “I’m glad he asked you to See for him. Perhaps the god will be pleased to heal him?”

  Huy shook his head. “He doesn’t want it. He misses his wife. He has nothing left to look forward to but grandchildren, and that’s no great lure for him. The AA disease is merciless, Ishat. Let him go.”

  “Still, I hope there will be time to get to know him better,” Ishat sighed. “I could easily learn to love him.”

  They both became quiet, but it was a close, companionable thing. Huy’s mind sharpened as he pulled himself free of the last effects of the opium, and by the time Tetiankh entered with a loaded tray, his appetite had fully returned. Ishat left the couch and went to the chair, and while Huy ate, they talked easily of innocuous matters. Huy knew that Ishat was more than curious about the Seeing he had done for Anuket, and he waited for her inquisitiveness to get the better of her. At last she said, “I suppose Thothhotep took the dictation for the Seeing, Huy? Did she perform well? Do you need me to check her work?”

  Huy began to smile and then to laugh, engulfed in a wave of love for her. “Her deportment was exemplary, Ishat, and as for the scrolls, I’ll check them myself before giving Anuket her copy. You know perfectly well I can say nothing about what I Saw.”

  Ishat made a face that took Huy back to their time together in Hut-herib. “If I was still your scribe, I’d know. We’d discuss the Seeing.”

  “But you are no longer my scribe. Now I think I’ll go to the bathhouse with Tetiankh and then meet you and Thothmes on the river. I’m almost fully recovered.”

  Getting up, she came and planted a swift kiss on his cheek before admitting the servant, tossed back a smile, and disappeared. Huy wrapped a sheet around himself and took the stairs to the bathhouse, now dimly lit by one lamp. The water was barely warm. Huy refused Tetiankh’s offer to heat it, standing on the bathing block while Tetiankh scrubbed him down and thinking of all the occasions when he and Thothmes had come here together, covered in river mud or sweat or simply getting ready to begin their day, when every moment had been full of the pleasure of holiday, and Nakht had been strong and vigorous, and Anuket had been in the herb room every morning, weaving her wreaths and bouquets amid the mingled aromas of flowers and drying herbs, and the future stretched ahead in all its promise. Nostalgia began to wind about him, but before it could tighten its hold on his heart, he bade Tetiankh dress him and tie back his long hair.

  Walking through the house, he met no one. The garden too was empty and peaceful, but beyond the watersteps there was a glow of welcoming yellow light and Nasha’s loud laughter. Huy ran to join his friends. There was no sign of either Amunnefer or Anuket, and he was glad. Settling on a pile of cushions, he accepted a cup of palm wine, returned Nasha’s impudent kiss, and gave himself up to the warm night.

  There was no serious conversation. Old jokes were aired and rather lamely explained to Ishat, who had no history with the family. Nasha regaled them with all the latest local gossip. Huy joined in but often fell silent, content to watch the play of wind-tugged light and shadow pass across these faces that were so very dear to him. Thothmes kept Ishat’s fingers woven with his. Nasha half lay with her head inches from Huy’s thigh, gesticulating widely with her cup. The river was a dark, slowly heaving presence, moving the huge raft sluggishly and soporifically beneath them. On the watersteps, the two guards carried on their own intermittent exchange, a pair of dark shapes against the tangle of black foliage hiding the house. I will never forget this, Huy thought. Only the Paradise of Osiris can surpass the peace and sweetness of these hours, and I will not think of the Beautiful West now, not with Nakht’s slow dying, not with the Book of Thoth lying deep beneath everything I do or think or say. Now I will exist, just exist and nothing more, caught willingly in this moment where time has ceased to flow, where we do not grow old or ill, where change and decay are impossible. In the end the talk faltered and then ceased altogether, and they fell deeply asleep on the cushions, limbs entwined, Thothmes enfolding Ishat, Nasha’s cheek against Huy’s calf. His dreams were gentle.

  They woke as one, roused by the brief chill that heralded the imminent birth of Ra, and scattered quickly to their different quarters. Huy made his way through a house already full of the bustle of servants sweeping, dusting, and setting out the tables for the first meal of the day. They reverenced him and he greeted them absently, intent on finding Tetiankh and seeing that his chests were packed. On his way upstairs he met Amunnefer coming down. It was too late to retreat. His heart sank as he bowed and Amunnefer came to a halt.

  “Huy,” the man said heavily, “I looked for you last night, but your body servant told me that you were ill and had retired early. So it is true that the Seeings you perform make you sick?”

  Huy nodded, inwardly blessing Tetiankh.

  “I’m sorry,” Amunnefer continued. “Anuket is much distressed by what you told her. She did not fall asleep until an hour ago. She will not talk to me about it. Are you permitted to give me some hint regarding what you Saw?”

  “No,” Huy answered to the homely, worried face. “All I can suggest to you is that you keep her close to you at all times, particularly at night.”

  “There is danger for her while Ra is in the womb of Nut?” Amunnefer’s expression cleared. “She knows what kind?”

  “It is not quite that simple,” Huy replied. “I wish I could say more.”

  Amunnefer regarded him closely, his eyes moving from Huy’s own to Huy’s mouth and back to his eyes. Huy could almost hear the man’s rapid thoughts. Finally, Amunnefer lifted his shoulders and held out his hands, hennaed palms up. “She is an Egyptian wife, and a noblewoman at that,” he said slowly. “No law allows me to forcibly keep her in her quarters, or on the estate for that matter.”

  “But you can amuse her, play board games, take her on the river, perhaps even share the problems of your governorship with her.”

  Amunnefer’s mouth twisted. “I try. If you would confide the Seeing to me, I might understand.” He paused. Huy said nothing, and after a moment Amunnefer swung away. “I do not hold this against you, Great Seer,” he called back as he reached the foot of the stairs. “You acceded to my request reluctantly and I apologize for compelling you. Expect regular letters from me regarding your investment.”

  Grimly, Huy took the few remaining steps to his room. Merenra, Tetiankh, and Thothhotep turned as he entered.

  “The chests are ready to be taken on board and Thothhotep has checked that nothing will be left behind,” Merenra said. “Shall I alert your captain, Master?”

  “Yes. Put Anhur in charge of the servants’ barge. I’ll eat with the family, pay my respects to Nakht, and then we can go. Thothhotep, have you delivered the scroll to the Lady Anuket?”

  “I have, and the original will not leave my pouch until I file it in your office.”

  “Good. Tetiankh, I’ll bathe now.”

  On their way to the bathhouse, Huy thanked him for
his protection from Amunnefer. “You need not thank me, Master,” Tetiankh replied crisply. “I was merely doing my duty.”

  And so was I this morning, Huy thought. Then why do I feel as though I have betrayed a friend?

  The meal was a sober affair. Nasha, obviously suffering from an overindulgence of wine the evening before, yawned often and answered Huy’s attempts at conversation in monosyllables. Ishat picked at her food, her eyes on Huy, but when he looked at her directly, her gaze slid away from his.

  Even Thothmes’ customary cheerfulness had deserted him. “I wish you would stay in Iunu permanently,” he begged Huy yet again. “Soon I’ll be Governor. I’ll make sure you get a good piece of land right on the river where you can build.” He leaned across and touched Huy’s shoulder. “A Governor must choose his friends very carefully or he risks being accused of partiality in his dealings with the citizens of his sepat. Our affection for each other exists far above such corruption—except in deeding land to you, of course!” He grinned but only succeeded in looking ghoulish. “You are my only friend in a sea of acquaintances, Huy. I need you.”

  Huy pushed away the plate of delicacies before him. “I need you also, Thothmes, but you know why I must remain in Hut-herib. I will come when your beautiful house is finished.”

  “I do know, but I’ll keep trying to seduce you here,” Thothmes sighed.

  They sat on while a pall of silence fell over the dusky room.

  Nakht was lying propped up on pillows when Huy was admitted by the body servant, and for one anxious moment Huy believed that he was approaching a corpse. The Governor’s skeletal arms lay limply on the sheet. His yellowed, sunken features were turned slightly towards the door. His thin mouth hung open. But when Huy bent over him, lifting the cold collection of bones that made up his hand, he stirred and opened his eyes. “Huy,” he whispered. “My physician has gone to mix me more poppy. I can eat only pap, but I drink milk and fruit juices. Thothmes and Nasha will begin to take turns sitting with me through the nights. Shall I tell them I have three more months of life? I’m so glad Thothmes has Ishat. I wish Nasha had someone to love her. I wish Anuket—”