The Twice Born

by Pauline Gedge

Anuket sighed ostentatiously and let go her hair. It fell to her back in a perfumed shower. Huy held out the flowers. She shook her head. “I can’t be bothered summoning my body servant. You tie them into my hair for me, Huy, would you?”

  “No, he certainly would not!” The voice was Nakht’s. “Drinking much wine is a pleasant thing, Anuket, but if wine is going to make you behave immodestly then you will be denied it altogether. Forgive my daughter’s bad manners, Huy.”

  Huy, grappling with the disquieting concept of a drunk and unruly Anuket who appeared to be in the grip, not of the ancient water goddess, but of her more recent persona, was saved from replying by the steward’s return.

  Nasha came unsteadily to her feet. “I shall present them,” she said thickly. “First, from father, a really lovely leather belt studded with polished turquoise. And look, Huy! There’s a loop for a dagger and another one for a small bag.”

  The belt was braided at each end for tying. Huy took it and at once his thumbs went to the smoothness of the perfectly matched stones. “This is a magnificent gift, Lord. Thank you!”

  “The turquoise is green, signifying health and vitality, dear Huy,” Nakht replied. “I am very fond of you and wish you many years of both.”

  Nasha kept her balance by placing a hand on top of Huy’s head as she lowered a pile of linen across his knees. “Four kilts from me,” she announced. “Linen of the twelfth grade, edged in gold or silver thread. Yes, they cost me a great deal, so don’t rip them. I love you, my almost-brother.”

  Huy grinned up at her. “I love you also, Nasha, in spite of all the bruises you’ve given me. Thank you.”

  “I went to the Street of Leather Workers myself,” Anuket broke in loudly and, Huy thought, a little sulkily. “I insisted on watching the craftsman make my gift to you so that the stitches were tiny and tight. Nasha, give him the gloves.” Nasha held them out. They were of soft, very supple calf leather complete with wrist guards with a running horse pulling a chariot stamped into the skin. “They are to protect your hands when you drive the chariots,” Anuket explained needlessly. “I know you don’t have a pair and you won’t ask the priests to give you one.”

  His discomfiture forgotten, Huy leaned over and kissed her damp cheek. “Thank you, my friend,” he said, genuinely moved. “Look! They fit me flawlessly.” He had drawn them on and was showing her, but unaccountably she moved away.

  “Of course they do,” she said tartly to no one in particular.

  Huy saw Thothmes shrug and roll his eyes. “Last one, Nasha,” he said. “Give it to him before you fall down.” Thothmes’ gift was a casket full of smaller boxes. One contained grains of frankincense, the rarest and most fragrant of sacred smoke. Another was jammed with almonds. Another held pot after pot of scribe’s ink. There were also two alabaster phials of kohl, the black powder mixed with gold dust.

  Huy laughed in delight and, rising, went and embraced Thothmes. “These are magnificent gifts for a fifteenth Naming Day. I am so grateful to you all and I love you all very much.”

  Nasha, back on the floor, waved her cup. “A toast to Huy, now embarking on his sixteenth year. Life, health, and prosperity!” Nakht and Thothmes drank with her. Anuket had fallen asleep, an unkempt muddle of tousled hair and wine-stained sheath on the cushions.

  Nakht yawned and stood. “I am ready to retire. Nasha, have Anuket carried to her quarters and put to bed. I will deal with her in the morning.” Huy bowed to him. As he left, Nasha hauled herself to her feet and called for the servants.

  Thothmes took Huy’s elbow. “Are you tired, Huy? No? Then let’s walk in the garden.”

  The air seemed cool and fresh after the scent of wax, perfumes, and sweat. The sound of the Inundation could be heard, a constant gurgle of flowing water and a lapping slap as it met the watersteps beyond Nakht’s high walls. For a while the two friends strolled in silence. The night was fine. Stars and a half moon filled the paths with grey light.

  Thothmes pointed upward. “Look! The Sothis star. How strange that it appears every year at the beginning of the Inundation and I always look for it, but I have no idea when it goes away again.” He breathed deeply. “I wish school was in,” he went on. “Another three months to wait! Meanwhile I have begun to accompany Father to all his administrative meetings now that I am also fifteen. I take notes, like one of his scribes. Occasionally he actually asks for my opinion on some dispute between farmers or on new policy for the sepat that has come from the One in Weset. I am learning how to be a governor.”

  Huy was watching his feet, gliding disembodied under him along the ashen path. “You’ll make a wonderful governor when Nakht dies. You have all the attributes, Thothmes. You’re honest, intelligent, you can be reasonable when you want to be, and above all you love your country. Egypt is everything to you.”

  “And my dear King, the Mighty Bull,” Thothmes said fervently. “Strange to think that he was already our ruling god before I was born. Yes, I think I will be glad to train for the governorship under my father. Do you know yet what you will do, Huy? Will you make your living as a Seer?”

  “No!” Huy responded sharply. Then he relented. “I don’t know what I shall do, Thothmes, but I do know what I won’t do. I won’t See for anyone anymore. I want a wholly boring, ordinary life!”

  They had reached the gate to the watersteps and, greeting the guard, they slipped through, settling side by side on the top step and watching the dark water swirl below them. Finally Huy broached the subject that had been troubling him. “Thothmes, is something wrong with Anuket?” he asked diffidently. “I thought I knew all of you well. I’ve seen Anuket full of wine before. Usually she just becomes even more quiet than usual and sits even straighter and then she falls asleep. Tonight she was like … like …”

  “Like a jealous lover?” Thothmes filled in. “Really, Huy, you can be so dense! It was the reremet that did it. For years, yes, years, you’ve been in love with her, or in lust or whatever. Everyone in the household knows it. You’ve mooned around her like a besotted suitor for so long that she could never imagine your interest going to someone else.” He laughed. “She became complacent, my self-involved little sister. You must admit there have been times when she played with you, tested her power to drive you to distraction, with no real appreciation for what you might be feeling.”

  “I did wonder sometimes if I was being teased,” Huy said. His words were even, but his heart had begun to ache. “Anuket is innocent and modest. She has the reticence of her blood.”

  “Maybe. But she is also developing the nasty wiles and manipulations of her sex,” Thothmes pointed out. “Who better to try them out on but the youth whose adoration is so steady, although he tries to hide it? She is genuinely fond of you, Huy. I mean, look at you! Tall, handsome, accomplished, and kind into the bargain. Not to mention someone with a truly exotic past. And oh so faithful! Tonight her smugness was shaken. She was forced to see you differently, all in the space of one unexpected moment.”

  “Are you saying that she was jealous?”

  Thothmes gave him a level glance, and for the first time Huy saw him as he really was, not the skinny, big-eyed little boy of their childhood together, but a slim, poised young noble whose impulsiveness had become confidence and whose naive eagerness had matured into an informed perception. “Perhaps,” he replied. Thothmes opened his arms in a wide gesture of uncertainty. “Perhaps tonight she realized the depth of her affection for you. Perhaps it was nothing but possessiveness. Anyway, Father will discipline her severely tomorrow for her behaviour.”

  They fell silent. All at once a vision of Ishat’s face bloomed in Huy’s mind, her features as clear as though she had suddenly appeared before him. Ishat! he thought in surprise. How long has it been since I even remembered that you exist? Yet here you are, and your arrival brings with it the same sense of relief and comfortable familiarity I used to feel whenever you emerged from the orchard with mud on your feet and tangles in your hair. You are a common girl, a s
ervant, but I know that in a similar situation you would have scorned to stoop to Anuket’s devious behaviour. Indeed, imagining Ishat leaning over him with subtle deliberation so that her breast rested against him while she pretended to reach for food gave Huy a surge of distaste. Ishat would have complained loudly that he was lying, that he had not gone to see his mentor, that he had been dallying with some cheap whore and she wished the bitch dead. Then she would have jumped up and strode out of the room in a jealous temper. Ishat would have behaved more … more cleanly.

  He rose abruptly. “It’s late. I must collect my gifts and go, Thothmes. How generous you are, all of you! I have no way to fully show my gratitude.”

  Thothmes scrambled up beside him and for a moment their eyes met, each face deeply shadowed. “You must forgive her,” Thothmes said. “She is standing on the verge of full womanhood. Sometimes she is not very likeable.”

  Huy did not reply. Neither is Ishat at times, his thoughts ran on. I suppose that she too is fast becoming a woman, yet I cannot imagine her ever being anything other than forthright with her emotions. Her picture began to fade and at once Anuket was there in his mind’s eye, her expression sullen and loose with wine. A pang of sadness shook Huy. He and Thothmes walked back to the house side by side.

  On the following morning both the expected message of congratulations from his family and the gift from Methen were delivered to Huy’s cell. Huy’s father had little to say besides wishing his son long life and happiness, but Huy was shocked at the news that his brother, Heby, was about to be enrolled in the temple school at Hut-herib. “Your brother will celebrate his fourth Naming Day in Mekhir,” Hapu had dictated, “and your uncle Ker has agreed to furnish him with the things he will need in order to attend the temple school in our town. We pray that he will do as well at his studies as you.”

  Slowly Huy let the scroll roll up and sat clutching it, staring out into the brilliance of the day. Four years old! My brother is four years old, he mused, stunned, and I see him in my mind still crawling about the garden naked, babbling nonsense at Hapzefa as she trails behind him. And what of my parents? How have they aged? I do not want to see them. Only Ishat. He flung the scroll onto the cot behind him. It hurts me that Ker will lavish all the attention on Heby that he took away from me, that my father’s true affection now goes to his second son, that I have become a ghost to my family. He tried to tell himself, quite truthfully, that it was his own fault, that he had refused, year after year, to go home. But his sense of abandonment remained.

  Methen had sent him a stack of papyrus sheets, carefully wrapped in linen and placed in a wooden box for protection. “My gift to you is a practical one,” the priest had written. “A student can never find enough papyrus. Use it to write to me.” Huy put his nose to it, closing his eyes and inhaling the familiar dry, reedy odour, his heart suddenly full of a longing to see his friend. But not even for a glimpse of Methen or Ishat would he return to Hut-herib. Sliding to the floor, he reached for his palette, set it across his knees, and began to compose a letter to the priest, and gradually the pain in his heart subsided.

  13

  SEVEN MONTHS AFTER Huy’s fifteenth birthday, on the seventeenth day of Pakhons at the beginning of the season of Shemu, Pharaoh Thothmes the Third died. The weather was pleasant. Egypt’s little palm-bordered fields were thick with lush green crops. Gardens overflowed with an abundance of flowers and swiftly ripening vegetables. It was the time of fecundity when the country was at its most beguiling, before the harvest and the deadening heat that would accompany it. There was shock as well as genuine sorrow throughout the kingdom, for Thothmes had passed his eightieth year and had sat on the Horus Throne for fifty-four years. Many had come to believe that he was indeed immortal, a god upon earth as well as a great warrior who had spent his youth in conquering an empire for his citizens before he settled down to rule an Egypt basking in the wealth that poured in from his new vassal states.

  The school at Iunu was closed during the seventy days of mourning for the Osiris-one. Again Huy found himself wandering the rooms and corridors alone, pursued by the dismal and seemingly endless dirges sung for the dead King by the priests in the inner court of the temple. The news of Pharaoh’s death had come to the two young men at dawn. Both had been awake and talking sleepily, but at the sound of the herald’s voice ringing out through the courtyard they had scrambled to stand outside their cell along with the others tumbling dishevelled onto the grass. An incredulous silence followed the man’s pronouncement. Huy, glancing at Thothmes, saw that his friend had gone pale. “It cannot be!” Thothmes whispered. “He was not even ill. We would have known that!”

  “He was very old,” Huy said awkwardly. “Many people were born and lived and died while he reigned, and never knew another king. He has gone to sit in the Holy Barque, Thothmes, together with the other gods. You must not grieve for him.”

  Tears had begun to run down Thothmes’ brown cheeks. “I must go home at once. I must put on the blue of mourning and set soil on my head and pray to him, for surely such a mighty and beneficent god does not need to be justified in the Judgment Hall.”

  Huy thought of that place, of the drafts that blew through it, the glitter of sporadic light on the golden scales. Once more he felt the hot breath of Anubis against his neck. “Is this reality, young Huy, or is it illusion?” the god was asking. Shaking off the vision, Huy put an arm around Thothmes. “The governors of the sepats will be summoned to the funeral,” he said. “You will be going south to Weset, Thothmes, and you will be able to watch your hero ferried across the river to the place of the dead. I wonder in what secret cliff his tomb has been prepared.”

  Thothmes blew his nose on the kilt he had snatched up to cover his nakedness. “It will be the end of Epophi by the time the funeral procession forms,” he said thickly. “The harvest will be half over and only one month of school will be left before the Inundation is expected. I wonder if the High Priest will simply cancel all classes until next Tybi. He might as well. The coronation of the Hawk-in-the-Nest will be celebrated immediately following his father’s interment.” He gave Huy a watery smile. “All I know about him is his name. Isn’t that awful of me, Huy? My devotion has belonged solely to the god whose name I bear. I must pack up my things.”

  And I suppose I ought to go home to Hut-herib, Huy thought dismally. It is seven months until Tybi rolls around again. By then I shall have passed my sixteenth birthday. Will I be forced to stay on in school until I am seventeen? What shall I do here for seven months? Thothmes had turned into the cell, and gloomily Huy followed him.

  On the morning following the King’s burial, the High Priest sent for Huy. It was the third week of Epophi. Everywhere the golden crops were being felled, the cabbages, garlic, onions, juicy cucumbers, and fat yellow melons pulled from thousands of gardens, the grapevines stripped of their weight of dusty purple fruit, and feasters gorged on fresh figs and dates, tiny currants and mulberries, and the sweet fuzziness of golden peaches. Pomegranates were in demand, and cooks held carob pods imported from Rethennu to their noses and inhaled appreciatively before tossing them into their dishes.

  The summer had begun to heat towards the furnace of late Shemu and early Akhet, and Huy found himself sweating as he made his way towards Ramose’s quarters, but the High Priest rose from beside his cot and came to greet Huy with his usual cool affability, his long white sheath unstained, his hennaed palm dry as it touched Huy’s shoulder. “Tomorrow our new King will be crowned,” he said. “Temples everywhere will be in festivity, including this one. Would you like beer, Huy? Or water?”

  Huy shook his head. “I need to immerse myself in the river, Master, but its level is very low. The bathhouse will have to suffice. What do you know of our new ruler?”

  Ramose indicated a stool and Huy sat. “Prince Amunhotep will be the second of that name to inherit the Horus Throne. He is twenty-two years old, a man in the full vigour of his maturity. His skill at horsemanship earned him the char
ge of his father’s stables, and at seventeen Thothmes put the chief base and dockyards of the navy at Perunefer under him. He rows well, and hunts, and his prowess at archery is unrivalled.” Ramose smiled at Huy’s hesitant expression. “He has been aiding his father in government and learning statecraft for the last two years, while Thothmes was ailing,” he added. “We must hope that he commands as great an intellect as his father’s. Time will tell. His mother was Queen Meryet-Hatshepset, a rather stupid woman, but Thothmes chose his tutors well. The Prince’s lifelong friend Kenamun is a wise and moderate young man and will undoubtedly be a positive influence on our new Pharaoh.”

  “You know much, Master!” Huy exclaimed, and Ramose laughed.

  “It is the business of every High Priest to glean as much information as possible regarding those set in authority over us,” he said frankly. “The course of Egypt’s history is often swayed by the servants of her gods—especially by the High Priest of Amun at Weset. He is able to exert a subtle power over the decisions of the Horus Throne. However,” he finished briskly, “it is your future we must discuss.” Retreating to his couch, he took the chair beside it and crossed his legs. “I do not want you to waste another year here. I have arranged for your education to continue so that when you turn sixteen, in three months’ time, you will be ready to take up the position of scribe here in the temple. Too many weeks have already been wasted with mourning our beloved King.”

  Huy felt himself go cold. “I am to sit in the classroom alone with my teachers?” he managed. “And the architect, he will come here especially for me?”

  “Certainly. You will also continue your lessons in military tactics, the use of weapons, and the use of the chariot.”

  “And afterwards you want me to remain here, as a scribe.”

  “I see that the idea does not appeal to you,” Ramose said dryly. “Let me speak bluntly. You have been educated at the temple’s expense. For that alone you owe me consideration, but I would not be so niggardly as to claim payment for it at this late date. No, Huy, I have plans for you. You possess the Book of Thoth, in your mind. You do not yet understand it, but one day you will.” He leaned forward, placing his jewelled fingers together, and to an increasingly alarmed Huy there was something mildly threatening in the gesture. “You are the Twice Born,” Ramose continued. “You have the gift of Seeing, and of diagnosing and healing too, I think. Atum has been kind in allowing these things to slumber in you for a while. As a student you are of little use to him. But soon you will be free of the restrictions of the classroom. Then the gifts will waken. When they do, you will need my guidance, mine and the Rekhet’s. I want you for my personal scribe. You must learn of the Egypt of today if you are to influence the Egypt of tomorrow. I receive correspondence from the High Priests of every temple, from governors and administrators, army commanders and both Viziers. You will learn, and meanwhile your reputation as a Seer will slowly grow.”