The voice came out of nowhere and yet surrounded him. Measured and clear, Huy knew instantly that he was not listening to Anubis’s low growl. “Am I the Bennu bird alighting on the Benben?” it said. “Some think so. Am I Khepri with the egg of a new creation? Some think so. Am I the divine ichneumon, killer of Apep the Great Snake? Some think so. And you, Huy son of Hapu, who do you think I am?”
Huy wanted to cower down, curl in on himself from the sheer terror of awe, but he found his own voice. “You are Atum, the Neb-er-djer, Lord to the Limit, the Universal God. You are the Great He-She. You created Yourself.”
“Well done.” The voice held a hint of laughter. “I have put my true names into your heart. Are you pleased with the gifts I have given you, mortal one? No, I believe that you are not. Nevertheless, in spite of your reluctance, you are already serving me and my purpose for Egypt. Tell my son Amunhotep the things I shall show you, and give him this warning: He must not depart from the balance of Ma’at I have established. Already he is tempted to do so.” Or what? Huy thought with foreboding. What dreadful thing will happen?
He was gathering up his courage to ask the god, but with a speed that shocked him he found himself standing alone on a high cliff. Hot wind ruffled his hair. Below him the King’s army snaked along the Horus Road towards the east. Dust hung in the air above the marching men. The scene changed, but Huy remained on the cliff. Now there was the melee of battle far below him. Words filled his mind. The princes of Rethennu. This is Shemesh-Edom. Eighteen prisoners and sixteen horses for His Majesty. Now the host was crossing two mighty rivers, engaging the Tikhsi, capturing seven of their princes. The city of Niy opens its gates to Amunhotep. Now he is rescuing his troops garrisoned at Ikathi from revolt. Now he is turning for home, for Egypt, with the seven princes of Tikhsi hanging head down from the prow of Kha-em-Ma’at.
The great kaleidoscope ended as abruptly as a candle flame blown out, and Huy came to himself with a cry. He was sitting on the floor of a barge’s cabin, his whole body slick with sweat, his head throbbing so violently that he winced with every pang. He was hanging on to Amunhotep’s hand with both his own, grinding the fingers. As soon as he realized where he was, what had happened, he let go of the King. Amunhotep’s fingers were crushed white, but he did not rub at them. He laid both hands in his lap. Nothing was said. Huy continued to pant, his head now resting on his knees. After a while he felt something nudge him and, looking up, he saw Men holding out a cup.
“It is warm water with the ground beans of the carob tree,” the man said. “Very fortifying. Drink, Master.” Huy obeyed, thirstily draining the cup, hardly aware of the new taste of its contents.
“Men, set a stool for the Seer,” the King ordered. Gratefully Huy crawled up onto it and handed the empty cup to the steward. He had not missed the respectful address Men had given him. Master. Well, I suppose I am, Huy thought, his mind clearing. Strength was returning to his body more rapidly than usual. He presumed it must be the good effect of the carob beans and wondered if Ishat knew where to get some.
Amunhotep raised his black eyebrows. “Will you speak now, Master?”
Huy nodded. Keeping the visions of the god to himself, he related all that he had seen of Amunhotep’s campaign against the rebellion in Rethennu and beyond. Amunhotep listened intently.
“Seven princes of Tikhsi?” he pressed. He had begun to smile. “Hanging alive from my prow? The gods be praised! I shall sacrifice them in the presence of Amun and display their bodies on the walls of Weset. Perhaps I shall keep one to dangle at Napata in Kush, beside the Fourth Cataract—the southerners too are prone to rebellion.” He leaned down, eyes alight. “And what of booty, Huy? After this campaign I intend to move my court back to the palace at Mennofer, where I was raised. Shall I bring much wealth to my old home?”
Huy was in so much pain that his sight had become blurred. “Indeed so, Majesty. I was shown more than five hundred petty princes of Rethennu, two hundred and forty of their women, two hundred and ten horses, three hundred chariots, four hundred thousand deben-weight of copper, and gold vases and other gold vessels to the deben-weight of six thousand eight hundred and forty-four.”
“Such precision,” Kenamun exclaimed dubiously. “Are you telling us that the gods showed you not only the progress of the King’s triumphs but also the details of his spoils?”
Huy was in no mood to be tactful. He peered up at the supercilious face through eyes narrowed in agony. “Not the gods, but Atum himself. How dare you question the word of the Neb-er-djer? When my visions are proved to be true, you will do homage to Atum on your knees.” He returned his gaze to Amunhotep. “Majesty, I have a personal message for you. Atum says, ‘Tell my son Amunhotep the things I shall show you, and give him this warning: He must not depart from the balance of Ma’at I have established. Already he is tempted to do so.’ That is all.” Huy gripped his knees against the pounding of his head.
There was a moment of silence so deep that the murmured conversations of the men outside could be clearly heard. After a while Amunhotep cleared his throat. “I will ponder this warning if all the particulars of my campaign turn out to be true,” he said heavily. “If they do, then indeed we have a mighty prophet in our midst. Huy son of Hapu, what may your King bestow on you for your work this day?”
Huy raised a hand. “It is enough to have served you, Majesty, but I would be grateful for a supply of poppy powder. It is expensive, and every time I exercise my gift I suffer from headaches. The more vivid the vision, the greater the pain. Forgive me.”
“What for?” The King’s tone was gentle. “Men, prepare a dose of the poppy at once and give Huy a jar of whatever you have left. Send a runner back to Mennofer for more. Huy, I shall make sure that you are adequately supplied. Sit still until you feel better.” He was clearly elated with what Huy had seen, beginning a discussion with the assembled men of the tactics he proposed to employ at his first engagement against the princes of Shemesh-Edom, and Huy was grateful to be temporarily forgotten. Soon the steward handed him a tiny alabaster pot of milky liquid. Huy downed it quickly, fighting its bitter taste. Almost at once his headache eased and his limbs filled with a delicious lassitude.
“This is a very powerful mixture,” he said to Men as he gave him the empty pot.
Men nodded. “The poppy fruit from which this drug is extracted is imported from Keftiu. It is superior in strength and efficacy to the plants grown here in Egypt. The King will make sure that you have a constant supply.”
Huy rose unsteadily. At once all conversation ceased.
“You wish to be dismissed,” Amunhotep commented. He waved behind him. “My friends want to know whether or not they will survive my battles. They want you to See for them.”
“Majesty, I am very tired,” Huy excused himself, the prospect of inducing more visions too distasteful to contemplate. “By tomorrow I shall have recovered enough to attend these nobles.”
“By tomorrow I shall be driving my chariot along the Horus Road,” Amunhotep replied. “Go, then, most miraculous young peasant. I may need your services again in the future, so take care to remain healthy. Have you a guard? Good servants?”
“No, Majesty. I live modestly with one servant, my friend Ishat. I have no need of a guard.”
“We shall see.” Amunhotep gestured, a swift flick of his ringed fingers. “Make your obeisance.”
Huy did so, concentrating on keeping his legs steady. The poppy coursing through his veins was making him dizzy. Carefully he backed to the cabin door, bowed again, and plunged into the open air with an audible sigh of relief. Wesersatet escorted him onto the bank. He would have liked to do more than call out a final greeting to Anhur, but Thothmes was waiting for him beside the litter and, in truth, the cushions glimpsed beyond the damask curtains were too seductive. Huy climbed in and sank back on them gratefully. He felt Thothmes settle beside him. The litter was lifted.
“Well?” Thothmes pressed. “Was your vision acceptable to His
Majesty? I’m presuming that you had one. Isn’t Kenamun a nasty, patronizing piece of Egyptian nobility? But did you like Miny?”
“Which one was he?” Huy muttered. “I only had dealings with Men and Kenamun.”
“Miny was the older man with the scar across his chest. He’s the King’s military instructor. He gave Amunhotep the massive bow that no one but the King is able to draw. The King is very proud of that fact.”
“I didn’t notice him. I did my job, that’s all. I was offered water but no beer or food, and now that both the pain in my head and my anxiety are abating, I’m hungry. I want to go home to Ishat and have something to eat, and then I want to sleep.”
“All right,” Thothmes agreed good-humouredly. “I can tell that you’re grumpy. I’ll send the litter for you both at sunset and we’ll dine on my deck, away from the stench of Hut-herib. Did the King promise you any wonderful gifts?”
Huy reached for his hand and clasped it tightly. “Forgive me, Thothmes, it has been a most demanding morning. I thank the gods I don’t have to endure the presence of royalty regularly!”
Ishat was sitting on a stool outside their door, waiting for him. She rose eagerly as the litter was lowered, but Huy did not fail to notice that her first glance went to Thothmes, who was holding back the curtain. They smiled at one another, Thothmes barked an order, and the litter moved off. Ishat took Huy’s arm and drew him into the house. “Did the Seeing go well?” she wanted to know. “What does the King look like? Was he kind? Does he have lovely jewels? How big is his barge?”
Looking into her sparkling eyes, Huy could not disappoint her. Although he longed to attack the bread, figs, and fresh salad she had set out on the table, he answered her questions patiently. “He gave me no gold,” he said, anticipating her final query, “but he has promised a constant supply of poppy for my head. You know how Seeing makes me ill. Now please, Ishat, let me eat!” Going to the table, he sat and bit into the bread. Ishat moved behind him. He felt her begin to undo his braid, and soon both her fingers and a comb were sliding through his hair. The effect was blessedly soothing.
“It was difficult to disperse the crowd from the temple,” she said after a while. “The people did not want to go. They grumbled. They would have waited for you to come back if Methen hadn’t appeared and shouted at them. Some of them came here, to the house, after I returned. I did not feel safe, Huy. We must find a house that can be properly guarded.”
On impulse Huy reached for one of her hands, drew it forward, and kissed the callused palm. “I know. The last thing I desire is to put you in danger, but Ishat, we’re very poor. What can I do?”
She exhaled so gustily that her breath warmed his scalp. “Let’s see what happens when the King comes home victorious as you have predicted that he will. Perhaps his gratitude will extend beyond a ready supply of poppy.”
“Perhaps.” Huy bit into the last honeyed fig. “In the meantime I must go on healing the needy. Gods, Ishat, I’m eighteen years old and I’m living the life of the middle-aged! I have a longing to play.”
“At what?”
“I don’t know. Just play. Don’t braid my hair again. My head will stop aching sooner if it’s loose. Will you take the afternoon sleep?”
She laid the comb on the table. “Yes. And this evening we will dine with your friend and pretend that our life is as comfortable as his.”
Huy left the table. “I think he’s attracted to you, Ishat. How does it feel, to be desired by a nobleman?”
She gave him a sardonic look. “Is the lust of a nobleman somehow different from the lust of a farmer?”
“I said desire, not lust. Surely desire is less crude.”
“Ah! So that is the difference? Farmers lust but noblemen desire?” Then she laughed and, going up to him, hugged him warmly. “I like him very much, your old friend Thothmes. He treats me as an equal. No doubt he was raised to be kind to everyone. Sleep well, my dearest brother.”
She vanished into her room, leaving Huy to make his way thankfully to his own sagging couch. He had intended to examine the events of the morning, and thinking of Anhur made him smile, but the poppy had done its work well and he fell into a healing sleep with the King’s face fixed on his mind’s eye.
19
THOTHMES’ LITTER CAME for them at dusk. Huy wore the same kilt he had discarded before the afternoon sleep, but after she woke Ishat laid out her two spare sheaths and the sandals Huy had got for her, fingered them uncertainly, stared at them, then uncharacteristically burst into tears. Huy had been braiding his hair. Hearing her sobs, he hurried into her room. He could not remember ever seeing her weep, and he stood helplessly just inside the doorway. “Ishat, whatever is wrong? Are you ill?”
She turned towards him, not trying to hide her ravaged face, and gestured at her cot. “I have never been anyone’s guest before!” she wailed. “Always I have done the serving. Now I go to sit on a nobleman’s barge and have his underlings attend to my needs, and they will be polite and dutiful—but I know what they will be thinking!”
Huy was genuinely puzzled. “Ishat, what are you talking about? You will be with a friend, someone you know. I’m glad that for once you’ll be treated as a guest.”
“But I will look like a servant, Huy! I have no pretty linen to wear, only my coarse old working sheaths! I have no jewellery, nothing for my hair. I do not even have my lobes pierced! They will know I am an imposter!”
Huy’s heart went out to her. Such a consideration had entirely escaped him. Going up to her, he tried to take her in his arms, but she pulled away from him, her body rigid. “Don’t try to comfort me!” she flared. “My place is standing behind you with the other retainers tonight as you eat and drink, seeing to your needs, filling your cup. Thothmes has only invited me to act as your equal out of kindness.”
“Not so. I know him as well as I know you. If Thothmes thought of you as a servant, he would not have treated you with familiarity or included you in his invitation to dine. As for his servants, what do they matter? You have never cared what people’s opinion of you might be.”
“But this is different!” She tugged at her tousled hair then held out her hands. “No oil to spare for my hair! No time to soften my hands even if I had any lotions! I cannot even pretend to be a noblewoman playing at humility!”
At last Huy understood. Ishat did not care what the servants thought of her, but she cared very much for Thothmes’ opinion. Her customary nerve had failed her. Huy thought for a moment then decided to be frank. “Thothmes has seen you exactly as you are,” he said severely. “He remarked to me on your beauty—just as you are, Ishat! Do you think you can increase his respect for you by trying to look like something you are not? We can spare some lamp oil for your hair. I have a little perfume left in my chest to add to it. Your sheaths are clean and we can wash your sandals. Hold up your head and be as gracious and proud as you know how before Thothmes’ servants.”
“It’s all right for you,” she said sulkily, already calmer. “You spent years being cared for by them, every time you stayed with Thothmes’ father and the rest of his family. Can’t you see that I’m afraid of looking like a fool?”
Now Huy laughed. “My dearest Ishat! One sharp word from you will put them in their place. Besides, what am I? Nothing but a peasant who learned the habits of the aristocracy through an accident of fate. Make up your mind to enjoy yourself. Savour the wine. Eat your fill. You deserve some pampering.”
For answer, she pulled one of the sheaths reluctantly towards her and shook it. “At least it fits me. Huy, will you do my hair?”
So while she sat quietly on a stool, Huy took a little oil in his palm, added a few precious drops of his jasmine perfume, and worked the mixture thoroughly into her thick black tresses until they lay tamed and gleaming below her shoulders. Then, slowly and carefully, for he had not done such a thing before, he added water to his kohl powder and outlined her eyes. The effect was startling. When she rose and turned to face him, c
lad only in her simple sheath, her arms and neck unadorned, her eyes huge and lustrous with kohl, she had a pure regality about her that gave Huy a pang of the unfamiliar. “You look like an ancient queen,” he said, and meant it.
She smiled. “Thank you, Huy. Now I shall sit outside so that all the commoners on the street can pay me homage.”
She had never ridden in a litter before, and exclaimed over the comfort of the cushions, the luxury of curtains to draw, the rhythmic movement of the bearers, with a wholly childlike enthusiasm that made Huy feel decidedly avuncular. Thothmes had moored his barge a short way to the south of the town in a sandy cove surrounded by palms. One of Nakht’s household guards stood at the foot of the ramp. Huy recognized him and greeted him cheerfully. He bowed first to Huy and then to a flustered Ishat, whose eyes were on the curve of gaily painted planking and the flag flying the colours of Nakht’s sepat above the gilded prow. Huy felt as though he was coming home.
Memories assailed him as he ushered Ishat up the ramp towards the men waiting on the deck. Anuket dancing for the drunken throng during a Hapi festival, wreaths of flowers to fling into the river held loosely in her graceful little hands. Nasha lolling under a canopy in the shade cast by the cabin, fanning herself and smiling lazily, a teasing word for her brother on her hennaed lips as he laid aside his throwing stick and reached for the beer. Nakht himself with his wife beside him, holding out a hand of greeting as Huy ran up the ramp towards them clutching his leather bag for an overnight river journey to see the newborn hippopotami in the marshes. How much I have lost, he thought with a wash of grief. How cruel the past is, bringing to mind the memories that hurt and cannot be changed, the fruitless stumble into the agony of what-ifs, the awareness of time as a murderer, killing all hope, locking every door behind me as time carries me where I do not want to go.
Thothmes bowed to Ishat and took her hand. “You look very beautiful this evening,” he said to her gravely. “This is my steward, Ptahhotep, my captain, Seneb, and my servant, Ibi. Ibi will be seeing to your needs tonight.” Ptahhotep and Seneb inclined their heads, but Ibi bowed low. Thank you, Thothmes. You divined Ishat’s insecurity before I did. Huy greeted all three men as the old acquaintances they were.
The Twice Born Page 51
