The Twice Born

by Pauline Gedge

  The servants collected cups, dishes, and the table and disappeared, and for a while there was a lull. Then the High Priest swept into the compound, two acolytes beside him. He was dressed in full regalia, the leopard skin flung over his shoulder, and all present sprang to their feet. Raising his arms, the man began the hymn of praise to Ra that would change to a prayer for the god’s protection as he traversed the twelve houses of the night, and Huy joined in, the words as familiar to him now as the sound of his own name, their beauty striking him anew as they did at the start of each school year. When it was over, the High Priest paused, his gaze travelling the assembly, coming to rest at last on Huy. He smiled, the aristocratic face breaking into lines of gentleness, and Huy smiled back. Nodding, he turned away, the junior priests pacing after him, and Huy let out his breath, a vision of the Ished Tree coming clear and sharp behind his eyes. His transgression had been a long time ago, but it seemed that neither the High Priest nor he himself was destined to forget it. At least I am forgiven, he thought as he entered his cell, where Pabast was lighting the lamp. The gods have visited no retribution on me. Truly I am blessed.

  He was about to undress himself when Thothmes walked in. The two friends embraced happily, but Thothmes, instead of wriggling up onto the still-unmade cot he usually occupied, perched beside Huy and crossed both arms and ankles. “I can’t stay,” he said ruefully. “I’m in the next compound with my new charge. I was late returning to school because my family was visiting relatives in Mennofer and when we got back Father couldn’t find the litter-bearers.” He shook his head. “The steward ran them to earth in one of the beer shops. I could have come on foot, but you know how protective Father is.” He turned his large, shining eyes on Huy. “How good it is to see you again! You are well? The girls have been pestering me to invite you home as soon as possible. What have you brought to tie your lock with?” It was the first year the boys were allowed to use something of their own choice to anchor their youth locks.

  Huy grinned at Thothmes’ uncharacteristically animated face. “My father carved me a little wooden frog out of a piece of driftwood left on the bank of the river after the flood last year,” he said, sliding off the cot and reaching behind the image of Khenti-kheti on the table. “Look! It has green faience eyes and a loop so that I can thread it onto the leather thong I made. What about yours?”

  Thothmes fingered the oily smoothness of the tiny creature. “It’s beautiful.” He nodded, handing it back. “I have silk ribbons of various colours so that I can wash them when they get dirty. Everyone complained. Mother wanted to have strips of cloth of gold woven for me, and Father commissioned silver ankhs and said I should at least hang them on the ribbons or everyone would think we were poor, but I asked him to put them on a bracelet for me instead.” He sighed. “It has been a busy summer and I am glad to be back here. You also?”

  “Oh yes! But we won’t have much time to talk, for the first month at least,” Huy said regretfully. “What’s your charge like? Mine won’t be arriving for a couple of days.”

  “He’s silent and frightened and wouldn’t let go of my hand until I put him to bed and told him I had to go and visit my friend.” Thothmes laughed. “He comes from Abtu and has the most enormous likeness of Osiris set up on the floor beside his cot already. It was too big for the table. But I approve of such piety. Do you realize that our Great God is in the fifty-first year of his reign? How holy he must be! What did they give you for the evening meal?”

  They chatted for a while longer, Huy basking in the aura of sanity and security Thothmes always seemed to carry with him, until Thothmes stood and hugged him once again. “I really must go. I don’t want the child to wake up and have no one to comfort him.” He went to the doorway but turned back briefly. “Speaking of comfort, I don’t suppose by some miracle Sennefer has not returned this time?”

  Huy snorted. “Unfortunately, he was gorging himself on gazelle meat tonight and sneering at me between mouthfuls. One day he will choke on his greed. Oh well. We’ve endured him for eight years, Thothmes, we can put up with him for a few more. Sleep well.”

  “You also.”

  The room emptied, the shadows deep and still against the steady flame of the lamp. The next feast day is the Opening of the Tomb of Osiris, followed at once by the Feast of the Hoeing of the Earth and then the Preparation of the Sacrificial Altar in the Tomb of Osiris, Huy thought as he removed his kilt and loincloth and crawled between the sheets. Three days, one after the other, that I can spend at Thothmes’ house. I wonder if Anuket is as anxious to see me as I am to see her? Oh gods, I hope so! As he blew out the lamp, he heard Ishat say, “You could marry me, Huy … You wouldn’t make me cook and clean and have babies, would you?” Closing his eyes and lying back in the darkness, he pushed her face away, not without an ache of guilt followed almost at once by a flash of anger. Much as he loved her, she ought not to have presumed on their close friendship. He did not realize, as he fell asleep, that his anger was not directed at her presumption but at the sudden flowering of her physical maturity. Ishat must remain forever a child.

  Huy’s own charge turned out to be a stocky boy named Samentuser, whose fear was expressed in outbursts of belligerent refusals to co-operate with anything outside the classroom. When Pabast first arrived to shave off his unruly mop of black hair, he had tossed his head about, gripping the edges of the stool, his jaw thrust out stubbornly. After several attempts to apply the knife in an uncharacteristic silence, the servant looked appealingly at Huy, who was standing watching the performance with amusement and some sympathy. What, no veiled insults, Pabast? Huy had thought. No sour references to a shock of peasant hair? The Overseer had told him nothing of the child’s background, merely handing him over with what Huy later recognized as a rather sly smile. Samentuser in turn had said nothing at all that first evening, eating, bathing, and going to bed without answering any of Huy’s attempts to draw him out. He had left his cot, gone naked to the doorway of the cell, and thrown his early meal onto the grass before lying down again and facing the wall. In the bathhouse he had at least attempted to scrub himself, but he had now rendered Pabast helpless. Huy savoured the moment before squatting before the mutinous little face.

  “If you do not allow Pabast to shave you, the other pupils will call you a peasant and your father a dweller of the swamps,” he said crisply. “Is that what you want, Samentuser? Perhaps you are indeed a peasant. So am I. But here you can learn to be something better, if you will behave.” He rose. “Otherwise I will hold you down while Pabast does his duty.”

  Samentuser went white, then colour flooded back into his face, dark red under skin that seemed too pale for a boy. “How dare you address me in that manner!” he barked shrilly. “How is it that you do not know who I am? My father is a smer and my mother a descendant of the mighty Aahmes pen-Nekheb! I do what I like, and what I like is to leave my hair alone!” He sprang up and clenched his fists, a small, blazing ball of fury. “I hate it here and I hate you, peasant, and if this servant lays a finger on me I shall have him whipped!”

  “Oh, I do not think you are a nobleman,” Huy said slowly. “Noble blood is kind to those of lower birth. A true nobleman has no need to bully his inferiors, as you will learn when you begin to study the maxims of Ptahhotep. Now sit down and behave yourself!”

  “This is my third school!” Samentuser shouted. “I have heard the maxims! I hate the maxims! I want to go home to Nefrusi!”

  Huy considered him carefully, wishing that the Overseer had given some indication of this child’s status. If Samentuser was not lying, it was entirely probable that a series of tutors had left the family’s estates out of sheer exasperation. Remembering the Overseer’s knowing smile, Huy decided that, given his own less-violent but just as resentful beginning, the task of taming this kindred ka had been given to him on purpose. Taking Samentuser firmly by the shoulders, he pressed him back onto the stool and held him there. “Do you love your father and your mother?” he aske
d.

  Samentuser looked up at him as though he had gone mad. “Of course. My father is wise and my mother is beautiful.”

  “Do you believe that they love you?”

  The boy frowned. An expression of uncertainty flitted across his face.

  “Do you want them to love you even more? Why did your tutors leave you? Why do you think that your father keeps sending you away to one school after another?”

  “Because he does not want me at home,” the boy said sullenly.

  Huy shook his head. “No. It is because he loves you too much to see you grow up ugly and cruel and selfish. He longs to see you make him proud of you. Will you try, Samentuser?”

  “You are very stupid,” Samentuser muttered, but he remained still as Pabast tentatively approached him, and when his new youth lock lay submissively against his shoulder and the rest of his hair covered his feet in a coarse black cloud, he ran a hand over his oiled scalp, grunted, and left the cell without another word.

  His bedside table was cluttered with ostentatious representations of the deities of Weset: Amun, his wife Mut, and their son Khonsu. Huy did not know who the god of Nefrusi was, and did not care to ask. Nefrusi lay within the designation of the Un sepat, together with the towns of Khmun, Hor, and Dashut, halfway between Iunu and Weset. “He is simply showing off his father’s connection with the Horus Throne,” Thothmes said scornfully. Samentuser had wasted no time in informing everyone that he was the son of the princely governor of the Un region, who spent much time at the palace in Weset and held many conversations with the King himself. “If the father is anything like the son, I imagine that our Good God merely tolerates him out of the kindness of his august heart.”

  As the days went by, Huy strove to find something in the boy to like, listening to his complaints about the quality of the food, the grade of the bed linen, the ban on personal servants. Samentuser tired him and he began to regard the hours in the schoolroom as a welcome respite from his onerous charge rather than an opportunity to further his own education. He was distressed but not surprised when he saw a bond begin to grow between Samentuser and his old enemy Sennefer. Their characters were distressingly similar in spite of the difference in their ages. Samentuser had found a sympathetic ear and Sennefer an admiring accomplice. It was a great relief when the month ended and Thothmes moved back into their cell.

  Mekhir began. The river had regained its banks, the weather was pleasant, and in the fields the farmers stood to watch their young crops tremble, green and sturdy, in the warm breezes of Peret. The students settled down contentedly to another year of learning. Huy began to memorize the Wisdom of Amenemopet as dictated for the edification of his son the scribe Hor-em-maakheru. The stanzas were long and full of good advice to the young, a fact that Huy’s teacher dwelt on with relish. But Huy was also taking dictation straight onto papyrus from one of the older pupils, who had chosen for the exercise the military memoirs of Aahmes pen-Nekheb, friend of Osiris Thothmes the First in his old age, doughty campaigner, and Samentuser’s ancestor if the disagreeable child was to be believed. The man’s powerful character, arrogant, courageous, worshipful, and humorous, drenched every word Huy conscientiously transcribed in his neat hand, and Huy found himself pondering a lusty bloodline already grown thick with self-regard and polluted by pettiness. No more than three kings separated the first Thothmesid and the death of his fellow soldier from Samentuser—two if one did not count the upstart queen Hatshepsut, daughter of Thothmes the First—yet pen-Nekheb’s line threatened to dissipate into whatever feeble offspring Samentuser might produce.

  Huy was idly discussing that incongruity with Thothmes one warm afternoon after the sleep. They were walking across the temple’s sun-dazzled forecourt on their way to the practice ground, Thothmes already gauntleted in preparation for his lesson in chariot driving and Huy with his bow held loosely in one hand. It was not a feast day, and the entrance to Ra’s House was deserted but for a few priests gathered in the shade of the pillars guarding the outer court. Several boys were playing on the grass under the trees, their shouts echoing against the high wall that surrounded the whole precinct but for the canal and lake in the forefront. Huy recognized Samentuser’s back, and beyond him Sennefer stood brandishing a throwing stick. Sennefer saw them and started towards the stone apron of the lake they were about to circle. “We should not have taken the long way around today,” Thothmes muttered. “Sennefer has been bragging about his new weapon ever since his father sent it to him. Now what?”

  Huy sighed. They had no choice but to continue straight past Sennefer; to turn back would be cowardly. They did not change their leisurely pace, but Huy felt his muscles contract in anticipation, and sure enough, in a moment Sennefer began to shout.

  “See my throwing stick, Huy?” he jeered, waving it above his head. “I’ve become quite proficient in its use. I brought down twelve ducks this summer. Now I’m teaching Samentuser how to use it. Would you like a lesson?”

  Thothmes put a warning hand on Huy’s arm. “‘A storm wind moving like a flame in straw—that is the hothead in his hour,’” he quoted from the Wisdom of Amenemopet. “Ignore him, Huy. Don’t even look at him. He loves this.”

  Samentuser had turned and was watching them expressionlessly. Huy gritted his teeth and walked on.

  “Oh, of course. I forgot.” Sennefer’s voice rang clear and full of a false apology. “You’re not allowed to hold a throwing stick, are you? Being the son of a peasant, I mean. Too bad. You might have used one to kill a few of the rats infesting your father’s hovel.” Huy stopped dead. The bow fell from his hand.

  Thothmes began to tug at him frantically. “Come on, Huy! Come on! He’s not worth the trouble! He’s nothing!” But Huy struck his friend’s fingers away. His heart had begun to pound and a redness was gathering before his eyes. Through it he saw little Samentuser grinning at him and, farther back, Sennefer’s mouth opening to spew forth another insult, another sly attack on his lineage.

  “Not this time,” he said through rigid lips, coldly aware somewhere deep inside himself that he was almost incoherent with rage, that he was going to beat Sennefer to death with his bare fists and was fully capable of doing so, that he must use this last flash of terrible self-knowledge to regain control. But with a grunt he pushed it deliberately away and the full frenzy of his wrath rushed in. Crouching, his whole body tense, his features twisting into a snarl, he prepared to fling himself at Sennefer.

  He heard Thothmes shriek, “No, Huy!” through the fog in his ears, saw Sennefer’s expression change from a sneer to a frightened surprise, saw Sennefer’s hand gripping the stick come up and back in a mindless reaction of fear, and the weapon came speeding towards him, turning over and over, its polished surface glinting in the bright sunlight. “Oh gods,” Thothmes said.

  For Huy, time seemed to slow. He was able to examine the stunned disbelief in his friend’s two words. He clearly felt the string of his bow under the sole of his reed sandal as he took one step back. Inch by inch he toppled sideways as Thothmes thrust against his shoulder. Fascinated, he watched the throwing stick flow towards him. He could hear it now, a rhythmic whistle as it sliced through the air, and then it struck. Suddenly he was crawling blindly over the rough stone of the forecourt. He knew he was crawling, but he could not feel his hands or his knees. Someone was screaming his name through the loud singing in his head. Then he experienced a sensation of space beneath him, and falling, and the cool water of the lake closed over his spine. He tried to breathe and could not, but somehow it did not matter, because the space was beneath him again, vast and dark. He knew it was dark, dark and comforting, even though he was unable to open his eyes, and he was falling into it like a pebble dropped down a well. It has no bottom, he thought calmly. So I may as well give myself up to death, and as though he had said the words out loud he felt death float quietly up from below to claim him.

  But a moment later he found himself kneeling on the verge of the lake, water dripping from
his body onto the stone, his lungs fighting for air. Gasping and coughing, he staggered to his feet and looked about, expecting to see Thothmes rushing towards him, but the forecourt was deserted and the temple’s pillars empty of priests. There was no sign of his tormentor either. Sennefer and Samentuser had vanished. Lawn, trees, temple, and forecourt lay quietly dreaming in the soft, bright warmth of a spring afternoon. Gingerly Huy fingered his head. He could find no break in his scalp and his touch caused him no pain, although he knew that the throwing stick had struck him with enough force to kill him. In the right hands it was a lethal weapon, and Sennefer had flung it with all the strength of a sudden panic. Puzzled, Huy began to walk towards the temple, anxious to get to his cell and talk to Thothmes. He distinctly remembered the stunning blow of the stick, his immediate blindness, the feel of water closing over his back, but perhaps his instantaneous anticipation of those things as the piece of curved wood came hurtling towards him had caused him to react as though it had found its mark when in fact Sennefer’s aim had been faulty and the stick had missed him altogether. Then where is Thothmes? Sennefer and the child would have run away, but Thothmes would have hurried over to make sure that I was all right. And I am certainly all right.