The Twice Born

by Pauline Gedge

  Huy began to sob dryly in spasmodic gasps, an almost insupportable weight against his chest. Somehow he knew that he must control himself, that if he did not stand straight and speak sanely these men would rush at him and cut his throat. Clenching his fists, he stood away from the embalming couch and willed his limbs to quieten, the panic to dissipate. “I swear to you by Osiris, by Isis the Protectress of the Dead, by mighty Horus their holy son who spreads his wings over blessed Egypt, that I am indeed Huy son of Hapu of this town,” he said loudly. “I was attacked with such force in the precinct of the temple of Ra at Iunu that I was rendered as unconscious as though I were dead. My ka was loosened from my body, but five days of rest has restored its hold. Give me a kilt to cover my nakedness and let me go home, I beg you.” The speech had cost him dearly. Spots swam before his eyes. Clamping his teeth together, he made himself meet their eyes one after the other, reading doubt, indecision, and, overwhelmingly, disbelief in their faces. Move at once, something told him. He was unable to restrain the weakness in his legs. Tottering to the corpse on the couch nearest to him, he pulled off it the square of linen covering its genitals and held it over his own, then he made his way to the open doorway. No one stopped him. No one moved. A smaller room opened out before him. He was blind to whatever it contained. Staggering through it, he reached a walled courtyard and a closed door. He was almost done. Reeling to the door, he fumbled at it, praying that it opened outward and he would not have to exert a strength he did not have to haul it inward. A moment later it swung out, and Huy found himself falling onto his hands and knees in sandy grass.

  It was night. Not far ahead, a clump of trees smudged darkly against a sky rich with stars. Huy crawled until he felt leaves brush his back, then he collapsed, his body curled in upon itself, and began to howl, an inhuman noise heavy with anguish, betrayal, and confusion, and found he could not stop. How long he lay there keening like a wounded wolf he did not know. The passage of time had ceased to have any meaning for him. He was aware of nothing but the clamour of his own disintegration. But the night was still deep when the leaves parted above him and warm hands lifted him up and turned him over. Candlelight wavered across his face. There was a hissed intake of breath, a muttered, “No. This is impossible,” and Huy peered up through swollen lids into the features of Khenti-kheti’s High Priest. A name swam to mind.

  “Methen,” he whispered. “Help me for the love of Ra. Help me.” He felt the ground fall away beneath him and then no more.

  Consciousness returned to him more kindly this time, at first an overwhelming sensation of safety as though he were cradled in a cocoon and then the sweet sounds of normalcy coming to him from far away. Voices outside, birds foraging and twittering in trees, and, closer in, the gurgle of water being poured. For a blessed moment he floated on an ocean of unreflective wellbeing, but then pain surged into his head and thirst forced him to open his eyes.

  He was lying on his side facing into a small whitewashed room. Opposite him a doorway gave out onto a passage. Beside its lintel a large chest sat on the undressed floor and the wall above it was busy with images of frogs, palm trees, lines of hieroglyphs, and often a name. Huy. That is my name, he thought with difficulty. I am Huy. Did I paint those things? Bars of filtered sunlight lay just within his vision, coming from what must be a shuttered window to his right, a gently gusting breeze blowing the hanging into the room and releasing it again so that the reed slats clicked quietly against the frame. Close in, almost unfocused, there was a table on which stood the little statue of a god. For a while Huy lay staring at it through the pounding behind his eyes before deciding that it was Khenti-kheti keeping watch over him. Where had he seen that statue before? He swallowed slowly, with effort. “I need water,” he whispered.

  Somewhere beyond the couch he heard a stirring, soft footfalls, and a woman was bending over him, her features drawn, the skin around her dark eyes inflamed as though she had been weeping. A cool palm was placed against his forehead and his nostrils were invaded by the scent of lilies. His mind struggled to bring together the perfume and the woman’s face and he almost succeeded, but the attempt was too tiring. “I am Huy,” he whispered again, “and I am very thirsty. Could I please have water?” The woman’s expression of anxiety did not change, but there was a flare of something—fear? disappointment?—in the sudden twitch of her eyebrows. She disappeared, and then her arm was under his shoulders, pulling him towards her, and the rim of a cup was pressed against his mouth. He drank swiftly, greedily, his gaze on the face that he felt he ought to know. “Who are you?” he said.

  She lowered him carefully back onto the pillow and stood smiling at him sadly. “My name is Itu and the house you are in belongs to my husband, Hapu,” she replied, speaking carefully.

  “But I am Huy, the son of Hapu!” Huy exclaimed. “You are my mother?” And even as the question left his lips, his mind slammed them together, the perfume and the woman, and he whimpered with relief. “Mother! Of course! Then this is my room?” Again he saw something in her glance, an apprehension, before she brought forward a stool and sank onto it beside him.

  “It is your room, but you don’t stay in it very often,” she told him. “You are at school in Iunu for most of the year. What can you remember, Huy? Do you even know how old you are?”

  Huy considered. “I am not sure. I think I might be twelve. That’s the number that comes to me. Am I right?”

  She nodded, obviously waiting for more, but Huy fell silent. Presently he said, “I remember waking up in the House of the Dead. I remember being somewhere wonderful before that. Someone told me that I was attacked with a throwing stick and fell into a lake because the sem priests said there was water in my lungs. They were afraid of me. They wanted to kill me too.” Tears of weakness came stinging into his eyes, surprising him.

  Itu wiped at them with the hem of her sheath. “They believe that you are not my son, that my Huy’s body has been possessed by a demon,” she told him steadily. “The whole town is talking about how you lay dead for five days. You must strive to remember all you can. You must convince everyone that you are still Huy, that your ka has not flown.”

  The Judgment Hall, Huy thought with a secret panic. A tree, a strange man saying … what? I am losing something. Something very important is slipping away from me and I am powerless to prevent its going.

  “I am in great pain,” he managed. “My head. I think the person who attacked me is called Sennefer and the place was a temple. Why a temple? Why did he attack me? Am I correct, Mother?”

  “Yes!” she said emphatically. “But I do not want to answer your questions. It will be better for you to answer them yourself. We must pray that your memory returns as your wound heals.” She reached to the table, steadied his head, and Huy felt a thick, cold liquid slide down his throat. Its bitterness made him retch. “The priest Methen prepared this poppy for your pain,” she went on. “It will make you sleep. I must speak to your father now, and your uncle Ker’s steward is waiting to take any news of you to his master.”

  A delicious numbness was creeping over Huy, seeping into his limbs, soothing the throbbing in his skull, feeding drowsiness into his senses. “Ker and Heruben,” he murmured. “Ker and Heruben. The priest brought me here, didn’t he? I want to see him.”

  Her voice came to him from the doorway. “You see? You are remembering already. Your father will send to the priest.”

  Before Huy’s eyes closed, he forced himself to look up at the ceiling. Familiar cracks spidered across the whitewash, each meandering fissure a thread of reassurance. My room, he thought. I am home.

  The following days were marked by regular doses of the nauseating poppy, as much water as Huy wanted, and long hours of sleep followed by equally long hours when he lay dazed and pleasantly drugged, staring at the slow movement the strips of sunlight made across his floor. His mother attended him constantly. He could often hear the cries and cheerful babbles of a child somewhere in the house, the scolding voice of
another woman named Hapzefa, their servant, his mother told him, and the sure male tread of Hapu, his father, but no one save his mother came near him. His uncle requested regular news of his progress, but neither he nor Huy’s aunt visited. Finally Huy, sitting up on his couch with a mound of pillows supporting him, asked his mother why.

  “They are all afraid of you,” she told him bluntly. “It has done no good for me to be angry with your father. He is not a lover of the gods, but he is superstitious, as is so often the case with those who mistrust the divine. When you are able to walk in the garden, he will see you and be calmed. Hapzefa loved you very much and does not wish to have her fear that your ka has gone confirmed.” She would not meet his eyes. “I have prepared a soup of barley and onions for you, with pepper and aloe juice to strengthen your heart. There is a little date wine also, but if you are not ready for it you need not finish it.”

  Huy fingered his head. Hair was beginning to grow on his scalp in a swath of soft black fuzz, but it had refused to take root on the unsightly dent that marked the place where the throwing stick had brutally severed him from his past. “Mother, why has no physician been called to me?” he wanted to know. “Is it because Father is too poor to afford one? Uncle Ker would pay.”

  Her hands suddenly shook as they placed a tray across his sheeted thighs. “Your uncle said that if your wound became infected and you died, it would prove your innocence,” she said huskily, “but if you lived then it was the demon in your body that had triumphed.” Her features distorted in a grimace of rage and disgust. “Your father argued with him many times, often violently, but Ker is adamant. I have tried to reach him through Heruben, but it is useless. The priest is not charging us for the poppy.”

  Huy lay quietly under the swift kiss she planted on his cheek. “So my father is able to reason with his fear. I need his loyalty. I long to see him, Mother, and my little brother.” He knew the boy’s name but could not always bring it to mind.

  “Soon you may leave the couch and sit in a chair,” Itu said. “Eat the soup. Drink the wine. Are you in pain today?”

  “Not much. But I need more poppy than at first.”

  “Its effect is wearing off. You are becoming inured to it. When Methen comes today, I will tell him.”

  The priest had been a regular visitor, sitting quietly with Huy and answering his questions honestly. “Your mother chooses to believe that you lay in a coma for five days after you were struck down,” he told Huy. “Let us not disabuse her of the notion. But Huy, the sem priests are correct. They deal with dead bodies every day. They could not be deceived. You died. You were dead. I saw your corpse unloaded from your uncle’s barge and carried to the House of the Dead. I held your father while he cried. I went into the House and watched the sem priests wash the blood from your body. I saw the stale water pour out of your white lips. I had become very fond of you, you see. I purified myself afterwards, of course, but I had to make sure that you would be treated with due respect in the House no matter what your embalming was going to cost. Your uncle had planned to put you into his own tomb. He has an agreement with your father so that all your family may lie safe and thus enter the Paradise of Osiris unscathed.” Methen had leaned close. “For your own safety, Huy, do not ever deceive yourself. The gods revived you after five days. Where was your ka during that time? You say you cannot remember. That may change. In the meantime do not ever, ever pretend as your mother does. It is the only way she can bear to be near you. You must be exorcised soon. Perhaps then the townspeople will stop talking of murder and go back to gossiping about each other.”

  “Murder?” Huy was startled and horrified. “They want to murder me?”

  Methen grinned mirthlessly. “They want the demon sent back to the dark realm and Huy’s body properly embalmed and entombed. An exorcism will achieve the same result, I hope.”

  “What happened to me?” Huy cried out. “Where did the gods take me? Why did they bring me back?”

  Methen had gripped his agitated hands. “Their purpose will become clear. Tell me, do you remember any of your lessons? Are you able to hold a brush and write the hieroglyphs?”

  Huy held on to his friend tightly. “No, not yet. I try to think of them, but then they become muddled in my head. Nor am I physically strong enough. Why?”

  “Because demons cannot write the sacred language Thoth gave to us. Its holiness defeats them. Write, and you will go a long way to proving that you are still Huy son of Hapu.”

  “What if I am not?” Huy responded bitterly. “What if I only think I still have my own ka?”

  Methen sat back. “Madness lies that way,” he retorted. “Say your prayers and have patience, Huy. I did not hesitate to pick you up and bring you home to the screams of your mother and the horror of your father. I am a priest. I would have known through my hands if I had become sullied when I cradled you in the darkness outside the House of the Dead.” He rose. “I must attend to my duties. Khenti-kheti awaits. I will come again soon and bring more poppy, although by your increasingly healthy colour I do not think you will need it for much longer.”

  I would like to keep drinking it for the rest of my life, Huy thought as Methen’s straight back vanished into the gloom of the passage. To always have that welcome fog between me and every other Egyptian would be very fine. But a continuous fog between me and my disordered mind would be even better.

  Not long after this conversation, the doses of poppy were withdrawn, and Huy spent several sleepless nights in a mood of irritability and restlessness, leaving his couch to pace up and down between the window and the wall until he was tired enough to sleep. The exercise did not take long. The muscles of his legs seemed slow to gain strength, as though he had been an invalid for many months. He had begun to fear the dark, and without comment Itu had left him a lamp to keep the shadows at bay.

  It was on one such night, when the depression in his skull had begun to itch unbearably and his body seemed full of crawling insects, that the girl appeared. Huy had just returned to his couch and was pulling a sheet up over himself when there was a furtive disturbance at the window, the reed hanging was pushed forward, and one naked brown foot slid into view. Huy forgot his discomfort, watching in fascination as one leg, then the other, then the whole small figure materialized, shrugging down the sheath that had become disarranged before pausing to stare across the room at him with narrowed eyes.

  Huy sat very still, frantically trying to put a name to the foxlike little face he recognized but could not place. She was obviously of low peasant stock. Her skin had been burned to the colour of wood bark by the sun. The linen garment she was pushing past her knees was thick and coarse, its hem ragged with wear, its surface marred by old stains although limp with many washings. Wiry black hair stood out from her head in an unwieldy mass and hid the tops of her shoulders, but unkempt as it was it could not detract from the sharp delicacy of her features. Her dark eyes were large and clear. Unlike most peasants, she had a nose as straight and thin as any aristocrat’s daughter, swooping down towards a wide, well-delineated mouth and a chin as pointed as the angle of her elbows. Her arms were thin and Huy’s impression of her body under the ugly folds of the garment was that it was thin also, but lithe as she unbent and stood waiting expectantly for a word of recognition from him. The moment lengthened. The girl’s black eyebrows drew together in a frown. She folded her arms, strong fingers splayed against her forearms, and took a step forward on bare, roughened feet. The impression she gave Huy was one of coherent determination, a self-assuredness that promised impatience and a pride at variance with her impoverished appearance. Huy was intrigued. He knew her. Something inside him recognized her with a rush of gladness, but the curious combination of good breeding and commonness she projected confused him.

  “You can’t even remember my name, can you, Huy?” Her tones sent waves of both relief and shame through him. She was there in the back of his mind, hidden under the catastrophic events of the past weeks. This was one face,
one voice, he should have been able to identify before all others, but he could not force her name out of the murk of his consciousness. He shook his head. “Mother said that you’d lost a lot of your memory,” she went on tartly, “but I can’t believe you’re not just teasing me. Perhaps if I slap that silly expression off your face you’ll come to your senses. Oh, Huy! I’m your very best friend! Better even than that aristocrat Thothmes you’re always talking about.”

  Quickly she came towards him, and as she did so the pieces of information in his head flew together and he let out a sigh. “Ishat,” he said. “You are Ishat.”

  She clicked her tongue and came forward. “Of course I’m Ishat!” she snapped. “Who else would be sneaking into your room in the middle of the night? If Mother knew I was here I’d get the beating of my life. She has strictly forbidden me to try to see you in case you leap on me with the murderous teeth of Sobek and tear me to pieces.” Arriving at the edge of the couch, she peered at him closely, examining his face. “You look ghastly,” she said matter-of-factly, “but I don’t see any demon behind your eyes. Is it really true what they say? Is that wine in the jug?” She sniffed at it. “Can I have some?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes,” Huy replied, smiling in spite of himself. “It’s palm wine. A poor substitute for the poppy and not sweet enough. Do you know me well, Ishat?”

  In the act of pouring the wine into his empty cup, she gave him a sideways glance full of astonishment. “Only since we were born! My mother, Hapzefa, serves in this house and I do also.” She filled the cup and turned to him, holding it in both hands. “Do you remember nothing but my name, Huy? Not how close we are? How we always played together and you were often really mean to me? How I gave you a beautiful golden scarab beetle when you went away to school?” She took a breath and opened her mouth to continue, but Huy waved at her urgently.