The Twice Born

by Pauline Gedge

  “Greetings, son of Hapu, you most reluctant tool of mighty Atum!” The voice of Anubis came to Huy so clearly that he started. “This child is not yet ready for the Judgment Hall. Ask her father the question I shall give you. Then tell him exactly what to do. Atum’s eye has turned to you at last, proud Huy. But you knew that already.” The god’s voice was warm with humour.

  Huy listened as Anubis spoke, his lungs bursting, his eyes on the foul ukhedu leaving the feverish body, and just when he felt he must scream and flail in a panic to escape that dreadful place, he found himself crouching beside the cot, his whole body trembling, Ishat beside him.

  “Sit back onto the floor,” she said. “You saw something, didn’t you, Huy? Can you speak?”

  He nodded, looking up into the two drawn faces leaning over him. Hathor-khebit had begun to breathe in gasps. “Iri,” Huy said, “what is your profession?”

  Iri frowned. “I am a gardener,” he said brusquely. “I tend the gardens of several of Hut-herib’s nobles. Surely this is no time to be asking me frivolous questions!”

  “You take your daughter with you as you work?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Three days ago your daughter ate the seeds of the bead vine. You must know how poisonous they are. That is why her food sits whole in her stomach and her mouth is full of ulcers and her heart cannot pulse regularly. She vomits but cannot expel the ukhedu. It pours out of her as diarrhea, but the seeds remain.”

  The woman screamed and began to tear at her sheath. Iri cried out, “My own carelessness has done this! I am my daughter’s murderer!”

  Huy felt Ishat’s hands press against his shoulders as she levered herself to her feet. “Be quiet!” she snapped at the woman. “Hathor-khebit is not dead yet, so why do you tear your clothes?” At her peremptory tone the girl’s mother stopped screaming and began to whimper.

  Huy wanted to stand but found he could not. He stayed huddled on the floor. “This is what you must do,” he said to Iri. “Dig a small pit in here and make a fire. Go out and chop one small branch from an oleander bush. One small branch only. Cut it up and burn it so that your daughter breathes in the smoke.”

  Iri frowned. “Every gardener knows that all parts of the oleander—wood, leaves, and flowers, even its honey and smoke—are deadly. What are you saying?”

  “The smoke will steady the pulse of her heart. One small branch, no more. And you”—he glanced up at the woman’s tearstained face—“while Iri is making the fire, you will feed your daughter four ro of castor oil followed by one small cup of the juice of the aloe plant. She will not vomit this up. Wait one hour. You have a sand clock?” The woman nodded. “Good. After one hour you will give her a mixture of one ro of ground kesso root so that she will sleep and two ro of ginger to cleanse her stomach. Continue to wash her and keep her clean. That’s all.”

  Huy saw a cautious hope dawn in the swollen eyes. “Master, I have neither kesso nor ginger.”

  “Go at once to whatever physician you first called to Hathor-khebit. Promise him anything, but get the ingredients. Your daughter will live.” Huy was steadier now. He felt strength beginning to return to his legs, and he stood. “Now please, I must go to my work!”

  Iri made no mention of payment and it did not occur to Huy to ask for any. Desperate to escape, he pushed past the man and his wife and hurried along the passage to the reception room and the relatively fresh air beyond. He had forgotten about the crowd. A hush of expectancy greeted him as he emerged, Ishat behind him. Saying nothing, head down, he made for the street, and not until he and Ishat had reached the corner did a hubbub break out in a flood of loud voices and a pounding on Iri’s door.

  “Peasants!” Ishat said furiously. “Shall I come with you as far as the temple, Huy? Do you need to lean on me?”

  “No. I have recovered.” Huy stopped and faced her. “This is just the beginning, you realize that, Ishat,” he said dully. “The girl will recover if her parents do what they were told. The word will spread, and soon we will be besieged in our home. I wish I could afford a stout cedar door.”

  Leaning forward, she kissed his cheek. Her eyes were shining. “Let’s just get through today,” she answered. “The gods are speaking through you once more, Huy! It is your destiny! Before long a new door will be the least gift you can command!”

  Anger reddened his face, but it was not directed at her. He turned and headed for the temple. She ran after him and thrust his palette into his hands. “You dropped it by the child’s cot. Bring me something better than bread and cheese to eat at noon.”

  Methen was pacing in his quarters when Huy at last crossed the busy courtyard and approached him. “You’re very late, Huy, and you look ill,” the High Priest commented as he took his place behind his desk, where several scrolls lay waiting to be examined. “What happened?”

  Huy sank cross-legged to the floor beside his friend and set his palette across his knees, noticing with a mild detachment that his fingers still shook. “Something very distressing,” he replied, and proceeded to relate the events of the morning.

  Methen listened quietly. “I suppose it was too much to expect that you could remain safely anonymous anywhere in Egypt,” he said when Huy had finished. “I think you have arrived at the place Atum always intended you to be, Huy, and your work for him has begun.”

  Huy wanted to cry. “I think I knew that eventually he would revive his power in me, but I had hoped I would be allowed a few more years of peace. Ishat and I are only just settled, Methen! I have only just become accustomed to the rhythm of my life here! And healing?” He glanced up into Methen’s sombre face. “I could not heal Thothmes’ mother, but I have been able to see the future for a handful of people. Ramose believed that the gift would expand to include healing.” He closed his eyes. “I have no control over my own will anymore. It’s a terrible feeling, to be at the mercy of a god whose devices are so mysterious. Perhaps if I had not failed to decipher the Book, I would know the culmination of his will. As it is …” He looked down at the floor. “As it is, I must now be tense all the time, never knowing when he will strike through me.”

  “We must wait and see,” Methen commented. “The child may still die, and if so, you will be left in peace …”

  “But if she was supposed to die I would have seen it,” Huy finished for him, smiling wryly. “Therefore she will live and my life will not be my own anymore. Ah well. While we’re waiting, we had better see to the morning’s dictation.”

  He expected a flood of petitioners at his door, but to his surprise one week went by, and then another, and the crowds on the street outside ignored his modest entrance. He was just beginning to relax into a sense of security when, on the first day of the third week of his freedom, he walked into his home to see Ishat pouring beer for Iri, who was sitting at the table with Hathor-khebit on his knee. Huy hardly recognized the girl. Her skin was rosy with health, her eyes sparkled, and as she scrambled down and ran to Huy her glossy hair rippled around her bony little shoulders. Falling onto her stomach, she grabbed his ankles and fervently kissed his dusty sandals. “I don’t remember being sick,” she said, “but Father tells me that you held my hand and made me better. He told me to reverence you when you came home.”

  Embarrassed, Huy reached down and pulled her to her feet. “Now you have a grubby mouth, Hathor-khebit. I did not make you better. It was Anubis himself who chose to heal you.”

  “Then we must go to his shrine and make an offering,” Iri cut in. He had risen and was standing staring at Huy with a mixture of awe and shyness. “I did as you commanded, Master. And my daughter lives. I have brought vegetables for you and your servant from the gardens of my employers. I shall continue to do so, every week.”

  “Almonds, Huy,” Ishat said loudly. “Almonds! And radishes, lotus roots, lots of lovely cabbage, green onions, garlic, lettuce, broad beans. Iri says he will bring whatever is in season. Fruit, too.” She was grinning. “I can begin to cook at home. I can use t
he communal firepits at the end of the street. No more hauling lukewarm soup from the temple kitchen!”

  Hathor-khebit was gazing up at Huy adoringly. “I like your long hair,” she said.

  After she and her father had bowed themselves out, Huy and Ishat looked at one another. Huy could smell the green freshness coming off the vegetables piled against the wall. The scent reminded him of his mother’s plots around the pool in her garden. “With luck you can cure a woodworker next,” Ishat said, “and after that a jeweller. Gods, Huy! We might even be able to move into a bigger house. If this is just the beginning, you might have to stop working for Methen.”

  There was no point in being angry with her, Huy reflected. Her ambition, her greed, was for him, not for herself. Nor would it do any good to tell her how much he feared and dreaded the demands of the god. Now is the time to pay the price of resurrection, a part of his mind whispered to him. All good things must be earned, and the gift of the reanimation of your body requires the highest fee, namely, everything you have to give. Watching Ishat’s features glow with happiness, Huy sighed inwardly and at last surrendered to the god who had stalked him ever since Sennefer’s throwing stick sent him plunging into water that had turned out to be deeper and darker than he could ever have imagined. I am yours, mighty Atum, his heart said. Do with me whatever you want. My rebellion is over.

  Early the following morning, as Huy was dressing, he heard voices, Ishat’s and another woman’s, at the door, and when he had tied on his sandals he went through to his reception room. He knew what was coming. He felt utterly calm. Ishat stepped back and the woman bowed low to him. “I know about Iri’s daughter,” she said hurriedly, nervously. “Master, my husband makes mud bricks down by the water. We are very poor and can offer you nothing unless you need bricks, and if you refuse to help him we will understand, but yesterday he came home paralyzed in one arm and this morning he cannot lift his leg.” She remained bent over, but she lifted her face to meet Huy’s. “Please come and beseech the gods to have pity on him, on us. If he cannot work, we will starve.”

  Behind her Huy saw a man cross over from the other side of the street, slow, and then come purposefully towards him. He turned to Ishat. “Go and fetch my palette.” She nodded and went into his sleeping room, quickly returning with the palette cradled across her arms. “Good,” Huy went on. “Now sit on the floor and balance it across your knees. Uncap the ink. Use my scraper to smooth a piece of papyrus. Choose a brush, it doesn’t matter which one, and write what I tell you.”

  Ishat looked up, shocked. “But Huy, I am not good enough at my letters yet! Not neat or fast!”

  “You can do this. Now”—he turned to the woman—“tell my servant where you live.” He then signalled to the man waiting hesitantly on the street. “What is it that you need?”

  Ten people came to the door that day. Huy left his palette with Ishat, instructing her to write down their names, addresses, and complaints, while he hurried to Methen. “It’s just a trickle,” he told the High Priest, “but I’m afraid it will swell to a flood. I want to continue my work with you, Methen, and go out among the sick in the evenings. I must beg another palette from you.”

  “I can go back to using the temple scribe,” Methen told him.

  Huy shook his head. “If I remain in the house I will be pestered day and night. I need to be here with you in the mornings.” He passed a hand over his eyes. “This is frightening, Methen.”

  “But it has a rightness about it. You are vulnerable in your house, Huy. Perhaps you should ask that the petitioners come here, to the temple. You can then be seen to be working under the auspices of Khenti-kheti.”

  Huy grunted an assent. “I suppose you’re right. Not all will be healed. Some will be told when and how they are to die.” He lifted his shoulders as though they were burdened. “Some will be angry. This is happening too fast, Methen. I am afraid.”

  Methen embraced him. “Let us see where Atum leads you. After all, Huy, what choice do you have? You cannot run away from this. You would simply take it with you.”

  “I know.” Huy returned Methen’s embrace then stepped back. “At least here I am just a citizen. At Iunu I would be hoisted onto a pedestal and worshipped.” He smiled at Methen. “The people of Hut-herib will keep my doings safely within the confines of the town.”

  Methen’s eyebrows rose. “For a while. Shall we go and look for another palette?”

  It was not long before the trickle did indeed turn into a steady flood. Huy returned to his house each afternoon to find several sheets of papyrus covered in Ishat’s careful scrawl waiting for him. Sometimes the petitioners were still lined up when he pushed his way through his door and handed Ishat her noon meal. After she had eaten, they would go over the list together. Then both would sleep before Huy ventured out into the town to visit the needy who had thronged his door. In the evening he and Ishat ate whatever she had prepared, and in the twilight Huy set off again on his errand of healing. He had told Ishat to refuse admittance to anyone who came begging after the noon meal, but it was then that the grateful ones turned up, two or three days after Huy had been in their homes, to bring payments that ranged from the promise of enough bricks to build a new house, from the man who had been paralyzed, to one haunch of beef a week, delivered by a butcher who had accidentally sliced into his upper thigh with a cleaver and almost bled to death before Huy’s hands stopped the flow.

  Not everyone in pain was healed. Sometimes Huy was forced to sit or kneel beside a disordered cot and wait anxiously for the onset of a power that did not come. Sometimes the gods were silent and instead Huy was catapulted into visions of future agony and chaos that distressed him almost as much as they did the unfortunate creatures who had to hear the prophecies. He always gave those people the choice of knowing what was to come or remaining ignorant. All chose knowledge, and their eyes, pleading, terrified, disillusioned, followed him into his dreams, peering at him through the leaves of the Ished Tree, reflected in the lazy golden glance of the hyena nestled beside Imhotep.

  Soon Huy instructed Ishat to make it known that she would receive the names of those needing help in the outer court of the temple. Both of them were becoming exhausted and their home had ceased to be a place of quiet refuge. Huy also told her to keep one day a week free of all obligations. In spite of his assurance to Methen that he would continue to work at the temple, he was eventually forced by the sheer volume of his petitioners to ask that another scribe be appointed in his place. He missed those peaceful mornings of civilized industry and he saw Methen much less often. On his one precious day of freedom from the stench of infection, without the weight of suffering that seemed, from his point of view, to be imbuing the whole town, he could rest, play sennet with Ishat, wander with her by the river, even help her put the house to rights, and recover something of his equilibrium.

  He was also forced to forgo his visits to his family. He sent Ishat to explain to them why he had so little time to call his own. His mother sometimes came to the outer court, waiting patiently until the increasingly large crowd vying for his attention had thinned, and Heby found many occasions to hurry from his morning’s lessons and chatter away to Huy before Hapzefa loomed to escort him home. So the season of Shemu passed quickly into Akhet, the season of the Inundation, and four months later into Peret, when the river deposited its silt and sank, its task accomplished, and the sowing and growing began again.

  Neither Huy nor Ishat marked the passing of time. For them each day was like another, full of begging voices, broken bodies, and fatigue, although Ishat found the energy to be delighted with the growing variety of gifts from those the gods had blessed through Huy: coarse blankets, cowhides for the floors, clay bowls and cooking pots, a copper looking glass, a selection of dried herbs, jugs of beer and occasionally wine, plenty of natron, and once, to Ishat’s great excitement, a bolt of linen of the tenth grade and a handful of gold dust from the assistant governor of the Maten sepat, who had travelled north fro
m Mennofer, the capital of the Maten, with his diseased wife on his barge. A fussy and meticulous man, like so many nobles involved in administration, he had spent many minutes describing his wife’s symptoms—a languid inability to rise for more than an hour or so, a vagueness of mind, a steady loss of weight. Huy had listened impatiently, and when at last he was allowed to take the woman’s cold hands in his own, he saw her intestines bursting with writhing worms. Anubis prescribed minute doses of the dog button, a rare and very expensive plant with blossoms that smelled of cumin and coriander, and intensely poisonous grey velvet seeds. The assistant governor was shocked when Huy told him to obtain the seeds, which had to be imported, crush them one at a time, and feed them to his wife mixed in honey. “But, Master,” the man protested, “every physician knows that the seeds of the dog button cause death from convulsions and a stopping of the breath! I cannot take that risk!”

  “I said one seed at a time,” Huy had pointed out wearily, wondering if it was the cost of the remedy that had sent the assistant governor into a paroxysm of objection. “One seed every three days for fifteen days, in honey. Crush and administer it yourself, in the presence of your household steward in case you make a mistake. More than one seed will kill your wife. Less will have no effect.”

  The man departed mollified but unconvinced. A month later the gold dust and linen had arrived, delivered by a herald, together with a short, ecstatic scroll of thanks. Huy shrugged. He knew almost nothing about the medicines the god told him to prescribe. He had never heard of the dog button before Anubis’s harsh tones had spoken the words into his ear.