The Twice Born

by Pauline Gedge

  He entered the High Priest’s spacious cell to return the scrolls. Ramose got up from behind his desk, picking up a small leather bag as he did so and holding it out to Huy. “You look exhausted,” he commented kindly. “We will not talk of what you have discovered just yet. Go and rest. The Rekhet has sent this to you, for your birthday.” Huy took the bag and thanked him, glad that he would not be forced to endure a long conversation with the man. Bowing, he left and made his way to his cell, grateful for the atmosphere of unburdened silence imbuing the empty halls.

  His courtyard was, of course, deserted, the grass long and lush, for the gardeners still watered it. Huy sank onto its fragrant greenness, just out of reach of the fine spray emitted by the fountain, and pulled open the bag’s drawstring. Inside was a sheet of papyrus and something wrapped in linen. He withdrew them and read the note. It had been penned in running hieratic script by a firm, unique hand.

  Master Huy, I have made you a sa for your Naming Day. Seeing that you are a decidedly ignorant young man, you will not know that the sa is an amulet of supreme protection although you will be familiar with its use in the hieroglyphic alphabet. It represents a reed mat, rolled up and folded in two and tied at the lower end to make a shape similar to that of an ankh. Hentis ago the folded mat was carried by marsh dwellers to place around their necks and buoy them should they fall into deep water. Cattle herders used it to protect themselves against sharp horns. You are in deep water, I sense, and the sharp horns of anger and disillusionment are pricking you. Place the amulet around your own neck and visit me within three days. I have come to my city house from my estate in order to speak with you.

  Huy unfolded the linen. The charm itself had been wrought in electrum, the purplish sheen of the gold glinting in the high sunlight. The chain was silver. It had no counterpoise. Huy put it on at once. It lay lightly between his nipples, and at once Huy felt its soothing influence. Spreading his right hand, he gazed at the Rekhet’s other work, the ring amulets. The lapis eyes of the tiny frog glowed deeply blue, and the golden feathers of the human-headed hawk charm folded in exquisite detail along its bird spine. She knows me well. She is my friend, but she is also implacable in her desire to serve the gods and see me achieve whatever destiny they have appointed for me. A wave of depression hit him. Gathering up the papyrus, linen, and bag, he plunged into the coolness of his cell and lowered himself onto his cot. Every muscle began to loosen and his headache began to ease. With his left hand curled around the sa, he fell into a deep sleep.

  On the following evening he ordered out a litter and had himself carried to the Rekhet’s house. Although the day had been unbearably hot, he had taken out a chariot and the horse that never wanted to behave and had spent several hours on the manoeuvres of battle he was required to learn before classes reconvened in Tybi. He had washed both chariot and horse, fed and watered the animal, bathed himself thoroughly, then found he could not rest during the afternoon when a great somnolence always fell over both city and temple. Instead he sat in the shade of one of the sycamores surrounding the sacred lake and let the words of the Book roll slowly through his mind. The language was beautiful, the concepts he had already grasped both sophisticated and sublime. But there was no coherence in them for him, no great conclusion. They were like the mathematical equations the architect set his pupils. Worked out correctly, the answers were satisfyingly simple and could be practically applied. Might there in fact be a practical application to the Book of Thoth? Huy wondered for the first time. Something not at all abstract? Something encompassing the material as well as the divine? He played with the idea for some time, but having no clue as to how to put the whole together, he gave up. Who was the “you” Thoth was addressing? “You will become … You will go around … You flash … You have grown wings …” The terrible Turnface was the ferryman who carried those justified from the area of Paradise called the Fields of Yaru to their eternal home. Could “you” mean everyone justified? Then how did the last scroll connect with the first—the nature and metamorphosis of Atum?

  After eating bread and a salad of the earliest greens, he set out for the Rekhet’s house. The city was beginning to come to life again after the torpor of the day. As Ra began to lip the western horizon and the stale summer air held the faintest promise of coolness, the stall keepers set out their wares, the soldiers began to saunter towards the beer houses, and loose groups of strollers wandered the streets, chattering and laughing. Whores, looking fresher than the noblewomen passing in their litters, emerged from the shade and strutted towards the seedier areas of Iunu. After the quiet emptiness of the school Huy drank in the optimistic bustle. He was not due at Nakht’s house for dinner until well after full dark had fallen. He had plenty of time both to enjoy his passage through the city and to share wine with Henenu. In spite of his state of mind, he had missed her.

  The litter-bearers were clearly indignant at having to walk through such a poor area of the city. Setting Huy down outside Henenu’s cowrie-encrusted wall, they squatted together in its lengthening shadow and Huy approached the servant beyond, at the door. This time he was greeted with a smile and escorted at once to the pleasant little garden behind the house.

  The Rekhet was sitting on a low stool in the middle of her tiny vegetable patch, bare of growth at that time of the year. As Huy came towards her, she rose with a smile. “I don’t know why I am compelled to contemplate this naked soil,” she said as she reached up to kiss his cheek. “In fact I don’t know why I plant anything here at all. An old habit learned from my father. He used to pace across his arouras, sifting the earth, long before the sowing was due to begin.” Her eyes scanned his face, and presently she nodded. “I was right,” she went on. “Come into the house and tell me about it.”

  She walked away, the shells on her leather belt and around her ankles clicking against each other as she moved, and Huy followed her. He had not been inside her dwelling before and was not surprised to find it very sparsely furnished, the few chairs plain, the walls whitewashed and unadorned. For the first time in ages Huy remembered his paints, and how as a child he would stand outside his father’s walls happily making pictures on them for hours. Henenu indicated a chair. The table beside it held a clay cup of milk and a dish of dried figs.

  “Undo your braid,” she ordered. Huy obeyed, pulling off the small frog clasp and unwinding his thick plait. Henenu clapped her hands. The same woman who had served them soup on Huy’s last visit appeared and bowed. “Bring oil and a comb,” the Rekhet told her. “Now Huy, I am going to oil and comb your hair and you will talk to me. The milk and figs are for you, if you are hungry.” Huy was thirsty. He drank the milk but declined the figs. At once the servant reappeared, set a phial of fragrant oil on the table, and went away. Henenu moved behind Huy, out of his sight.

  “I must thank you for this sa,” Huy said, his hand going to the amulet on his breast. “How did you know that I needed it?”

  “I had a feeling,” she answered briskly. “The design is simple. It did not take long to make. How did you know that you needed it?”

  “Thoth told the reader of the Book to put on his sa. I did not know what a sa was.” He found himself reciting the few pungent sentences of the fifth part and the pieces of the commentary he could remember. As he did so he felt her hands on his head, her touch firm but gentle, loosening his hair. The comb began to glide through it. At once a sense of peace stole over Huy.

  “It falls below your shoulders,” Henenu remarked. “It must be very hot. You do not wear it long merely to hide the scar, do you? What is your reason?”

  “I’m not sure,” Huy confessed. “It is partly because I don’t want to look like a priest, with a fully shaven skull, or a Seer for that matter.”

  “Might it also be a symbol of your virginity?” she murmured. Huy stiffened. Her grip on his hair momentarily tightened. The comb slid pleasingly over his scalp. “Let us not bandy words, my wicked young charge,” she continued. “You know perfectly well that many
of your fellow students have already enjoyed their first sexual encounters. You are now fifteen—almost a man in the eyes of the law. Your state of innocence has begun to haunt you. You want an end to it. Suddenly you have become rebellious, wanting what other men have, wanting a chance to choose a wife, but most of all wanting to rid yourself of the gift the gods gave you.”

  Huy felt coolness as she poured a few drops of oil on the top of his head and began to draw it through his tresses with her fingers. At once his nostrils were assailed by a sweet, heavy aroma that went to his head immediately, making him sleepy yet alert and filling his limbs with an agreeable weight. “Henenu, you are drugging me. What is that odour?”

  “Reremet,” she replied promptly. “I crush the fruit and add it to the oil when I want someone to relax. Often people come to me in a state of agitation so great that I cannot work for them. A few whiffs of the reremet calms them.”

  Huy had heard of the mandrake with its roots in the shape of a man with a penis. His friends at the school had made jokes about its aphrodisiac properties. “I am not agitated,” he said indignantly.

  “Yes you are. You are a little maelstrom, Huy. Close your eyes and your mouth and let me speak.” Huy did as he was told, giving himself over to the wonderful lassitude of his body and mind yet fully aware of the sharpness of his mental faculties. The comb continued its slow, rhythmic course from his crown down to his shoulder blades. “It will be better for you if you realize that for you there are no large choices in life,” Henenu went on. “You may decide what to eat, what to wear, whom to befriend, but your journey was chosen for you by the gods and by you when you agreed to read the Book. Protesting your youth and ignorance will not do!” she said firmly as Huy opened his mouth. “I have heard that argument. Discard it. It avails you nothing. It is wasted words. Understand that you may try to take a wife, sleep with a whore, bury yourself in whatever anonymity you can find, but your sex will not respond. It will refuse your bidding. The sooner you accept that Atum rules your fate, the sooner you will achieve the peace that eludes you.”

  “But even the High Priest had no answer to the question of my virginity and the loss of the gift,” Huy said dully. “Neither do you, Rekhet. Some Seers produce children and keep their gift. Some do not.”

  “And you wish to be one who does not,” Henenu retorted. “You are close to hating the god who commanded this for you. You have decided to beg Nakht for a contract with Anuket. He will not grant it, partly because he desires a nobleman for his daughter, but mainly because he has a healthier fear of the god’s anger than you. He wants a favourable weighing, particularly since the beautification of his wife. But go ahead and try, foolish one. Be rebuffed. Find another girl to wed. It will not matter.”

  “I think the gift is dead in me anyway,” Huy said sullenly.

  “You lie. Nakht told me what you Saw as his wife died. The gift is in abeyance, that is all. Atum is patient. He waits for you to commit yourself totally to the Book, and until you do, your khu will surely be full of the confusion of which you spoke. Ah, Huy!” The comb hit the table with a click and she began to expertly rebraid his hair. “Some great work waits for you in a future that I cannot see. Something vital to Egypt. Your courage must not fail, for if it does then Egypt will go down into chaos!” Huy swung round, astonished. The netted lines of her face were distorted with emotion, her eyes narrowed. “I do not lie. I do not attempt to control you. I am telling you what I most strongly sense when I am near you. I choke on the power of it. It has nothing to do with the hosts of Khatyu who attack and trouble those who come to me for exorcism. They throng you. They do not want your destiny fulfilled. But they cannot touch you. This is something else, something higher and more dire.” She placed both oil-slicked hands on his cheeks. “You have Shai. You have a mighty destiny. What is a moment of orgasm compared to that?”

  Huy pulled himself free. “I have no idea, seeing that I have never experienced orgasm,” he said thickly. “And if you are right, Rekhet, I never will. But I swear I intend to try!” He stood. “I love you. You are my friend, one of my counsellors, you have been so kind to me—but you are ruthless also. I have done all that I have been commanded to do, but I am tired of it all, the Book is nothing but a jumble in my head, the heka is too much to bear, I stand at the threshold of my life, and I want my freedom!”

  “You stood at that threshold when Sennefer’s throwing stick found its mark,” she broke in quietly. “You are the Twice Born, Huy, whether you like it or not. Freedom belonged to the first life, the life that was snuffed out. Servitude to Atum and to him alone is the responsibility of the second. He may choose to lift the burden from you. If he does, it will be his choice, not yours. You have no choices to make.” Suddenly she embraced him, her wiry grey hair brushing his neck, her sturdy arms around his waist. “But fight him if you will,” she sighed. “To contend with him will be no more than if you were a mouse in the beak of a hawk. Go now. I knew your distress but not its depth. I shall make spells for you. Do not remove the sa.”

  The heaviness in his legs and arms was subsiding. Without saying more, he gave her a deep reverence and left.

  The litter-bearers were asleep, sprawled against the wall that fronted the street so that passersby were stepping over their outstretched legs. Huy roused them peremptorily, told them to carry him to Nakht’s house, and climbed into the litter, pulling the curtains closed. The evening held no more delight for him. The tiny space gradually filled with the rather sickly smell of the mandrake in his hair, but its power had dissipated. The men carrying him could not arrive at the Governor’s house quickly enough for Huy.

  He dismissed them outside Nakht’s entrance, greeted Nakht’s porter, and strode eagerly towards the house. Full night had fallen, warm and redolent with the mixed aromas of the muddy river water that had begun to lip the street to his rear, the scent of soil that reminded him forcibly of his father, and the welcoming smells of roasting fowl wafting from the kitchens behind the house. Nakht’s steward was waiting for him just inside the entrance pillars. With a bow he opened the doors, and with unutterable relief Huy stepped into the lamplight of Nakht’s reception hall.

  Before he reached the dining hall the steward had alerted the family. One by one they came to kiss him. Nakht took his hand gravely. Nasha tried to lift him off his feet, failed, and punched him on the shoulder. Thothmes embraced him tightly. “Fifteen, dear friend, and we are still together,” he said happily. “I miss seeing you during the week. Are you getting lonely, ruling the school all by yourself?”

  Anuket came last. Taking Huy’s hand, she drew him down and kissed him close to his ear. Then she stepped back, frowning. “Huy, you smell of reremet,” she said loudly. “I know it, and its power to seduce. Sometimes I use the stems and leaves in my work. Have you been with a girl tonight?”

  Huy was astonished. Anuket was smiling as though she were making a joke, but the fingers still coiled around his had spasmed and her eyes were hard.

  “Anuket, you are rude!” her father snapped. “What Huy does beyond these walls is his own affair.” But the man looked mildly pleased.

  “I have been with my mentor, the Rekhet,” Huy said. “I was tense. She combed my hair with mandrake infused in oil, to calm me.” Was that a fleeting disappointment on Nakht’s face? Huy could not be sure. The expression had come and gone too fast.

  Anuket lifted her pretty shoulders and released his hand. “Let’s go into the dining hall. The servants are ready to serve the food,” was all she said.

  Huy had put on the earring Anuket had given him for his last Naming Day and the gesture obviously pleased her. She sat close to him, smiling and talkative for once, even teasing him gently and leaning past him to lift a dish of lentils or honeyed dates. Huy did not know how to respond. Nasha’s affectionate jibes always eased and reassured him. Thothmes made fun of him and he of Thothmes in an entirely masculine, impersonal way. But this new Anuket, this young woman breathing wine fumes into his face as h
er primly clad breast brushed his arm and her huge eyes swam out of focus, so near were they to his, shocked and embarrassed him. Blushing and stuttering, he did not know what to say. He wondered whether she had been drinking much before he arrived. Nakht seemed unusually quiet. He watched his daughter carefully and once or twice seemed about to speak to her, but each time Nasha had interjected with her stream of constant, entertaining gossip and Nakht had sat back. Even though she was at the centre of all his most private fantasies, Huy wanted to shrink from her uncharacteristic behaviour. He was devoutly glad when the meal was over.

  They retreated to the reception hall, where more wine had been set out. Nakht took a chair as did Thothmes, but Nasha and Anuket dragged Huy down onto a pile of cushions. Nasha was happily drunk, tickling Huy and laughing at his protestations. Anuket laid her leg against his. Nakht clapped and the steward glided forward out of the shadows. “Bring Huy’s gifts,” Nakht ordered.

  A silence fell. The high double doors stood open and the night breeze funnelled through them, bending the candle flames, fluttering the ankle-length linens of the two who sat, and stirring Anuket’s oil-slick hair. With one languid gesture she lifted it from her neck and, tilting her head back, piled it on her crown. The little yellow faience flowers wound into it tinkled against each other. Two of them fell into Huy’s lap. “Oh, I am so hot and sweaty!” she declared. “If the river had not begun to flow so swiftly I would take off all my clothes and plunge into the water!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Nasha retorted. “You hate swimming. And boating too, for that matter. What is wrong with you tonight, Anuket? You can barely sit still.”