House of Dreams

by Pauline Gedge

“What are you doing, Master?” I wanted to know. He sat back, placed his pen carefully on the palette, and turned his gaze to me. There were tiny tracks around the blood-filled eyes and a deeply grooved line running from one side of his nose to a corner of his mouth, giving a cynical cast to an otherwise intriguing face.

  “You are never to ask me that question,” he said coolly, “in fact, Thu, you are to ask permission to speak if you have a question. I examined your belongings while you slept. Put on the sheath. The tattered thing you wore when you returned to the barge with your father has been tossed overboard. When we tie up for the night you can bathe properly in the river. Until then you must go dirty. Go on deck and amuse yourself, but do not gossip and chatter with any of my servants. I have ordered an awning erected against the cabin wall where you may take the shade.” I glanced about quickly. My precious box, my link with my family and my childhood, was nowhere in sight but my basket was still propped where I had left it.

  “Master!” I blurted. “May I ask a question?” He nodded. “My box …”

  “Your box,” he said with quiet scorn, “is in the basket. I thought it would be safer there. Now clothe yourself and go.” I drew my best and now only sheath out of the basket then hesitated, embarrassed at the idea of being naked before him in daylight. He turned on me impatiently. “If I had wanted to rape you, you stupid girl, I could have done it a dozen times over by now, though what makes you think you are so enticing is beyond me. I made it quite clear last night, when you pranced about without your clothes, that I have no interest whatsoever in your skinny little body. Go!” Mutinously I dropped the sheet and pulled the sheath on over my head.

  “I did not prance,” I retorted, and sweeping the curtain aside, went out into the blinding sunshine.

  The side of the barge was four steps away and I paused, blinking and taking in what I saw. We were moving ponderously but at a good pace in the middle of the river. Sand-banks dotted with ragged palms slid by, and beyond them a collection of mud houses huddled on the edge of dry, cracked fields. A brown ox, knee-deep in the murky shallows, had its head down and was drinking. A naked peasant boy with a stick in his grasp, as dun-coloured as his beast, stared at us as we glided past him. In the distance the desert hills shimmered golden in the heat haze. The sky was white-hot. As I turned rather shyly forward to where the oarsmen moved to and fro and the captain sang the rhythm, the village dropped away to be replaced by empty land cut by a path that meandered beside the Nile. I was disappointed. I might have been looking at Aswat and its environs from my father’s fishing boat.

  The deck was hot under my bare feet. The oarsmen ignored my progress but the captain on his stool, under his canopy, favoured me with a brisk nod. I walked to where the graceful prow curved up and inward, over my head, and leaned out. Crystal wavelets folded back from the barge’s assault, and above my head the flag bearing the imperial colours, blue and white, cracked in the prevailing north wind of summer. The breeze, hot though it was, felt good on my skin after the close confines of the cabin. Ahead, the river made a slow curve and vanished out of my sight so I retreated to the wall of the cabin where, as Hui had said, a white linen awning had been erected for me. Cushions had been strewn on the deck under it. I lowered myself into the shade with a sigh of satisfaction. Now was not the time to think of Aswat, to allow homesickness to invade me. Better to consider how desperately I had wanted to leave, how the gods had answered my prayers. I examined the vague guilt that stole over me as I relaxed, and realized that it was due to unaccustomed idleness. My mother would not have approved of me lolling here on plump satin like a pampered noblewoman while the oarsmen heaved and grunted under my eyes. Soon I will go aft and look at the helmsman on his perch in the stern, I told myself, but indolence had me in its gentle grip and I surrendered to it happily.

  Perhaps I dozed, for it seemed that the sun had moved swiftly towards the west when my master called me sharply from beyond the curtain. I hurried to obey his summons, noticing as I did so that the placid, dreamlike shoals and banks of the river were changing. We were slipping by a house the like of which I had never seen before. It had its own watersteps as though the inhabitant was a god, and the tree-dotted land around it was a startling green. That meant many servants to haul water from the shrinking Nile. I glimpsed pillars, white as washed bones, and a portion of stone wall. Casting a glance further forward I saw another estate in the distance. Suddenly I was a foreigner in my own country, an uncouth peasant girl with dirt under her fingernails and not the slightest conception of how life might be lived by the people in those ethereal mansions. This time, as I came into Hui’s presence, I bowed.

  He was lying on the cot draped in a sheet, and I could see that the linen under him was soaked with his sweat. I could hardly breathe for the thickness of the air and the stench of his odour under which was a faint hint of jasmine. Fleetingly I was reminded of the lyings-in I had attended with my mother. Many of the cramped mud rooms had smelled like this.

  “Master, why do you not come outside?” I blurted without thought. “Ra is sinking towards the mouth of Nut, and soon the breeze will freshen.”

  “Thu, you have no manners,” he muttered. “I told you not to question me. Nor may you give me advice unless, the gods forbid, I decide to ask you for it. I cannot go outside while Ra still rides across the sky. The merest touch of his rays upon my flesh causes me untold agony, as though he had bent down and put his mouth against my skin.” He saw the shame of my presumption on my face and smiled. “If I had been born a fellahin like you, my father would have slaughtered me or Ra himself would have taken my life. Sometimes, particularly when I am forced to travel in primitive conditions like this, I wish it had been so. The moon is more to my taste than mighty Ra, and I bear alliegance to Thoth, the god to whom he belongs. We will tie up tonight on the outskirts of his city, Khmun, and perhaps you would like to see the sacred burial place of all the ibis birds brought there to lie under his protection. However.” He pointed to the table. “Sit on the floor beside me and read me those scrolls. They are unimportant accounts from my Treasurer and letters from my friend in Nubia and I know their contents. Attempt the words you do not recognize.” I picked up the bundle and surveyed him.

  “Master, may I say something?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Let me bathe you. There is water in the bowl, and cloths, and I have much experience seeing to the comfort of women in labour. I could make you feel better.” His smile broadened and he laughed aloud.

  “That is the first time I have been compared to a broody female,” he choked. “Sit, Thu, and do as you are told.”

  So I sat and spelled out the scrolls, sometimes with ease but more often with a humiliating difficulty. Pa-ari’s lessons had not taken me as far as I, in my vanity, had believed. Hui corrected me brusquely but not unkindly, and as we worked the light in the room mellowed slowly to a friendly pink and the barge ceased to rock. At length I heard the ramp run out and we were interrupted.

  “Permission to enter, Master. It is I, Kenna.”

  “Come.”

  The man who presented himself and bowed wore a simple white kilt with a border embroidered in yellow. A yellow ribbon cut across his forehead and trailed down his naked back. He was shod in straw sandals, wore a silver armband, and smelled gloriously of saffron oil. I presumed that the servants’ boat had also been moored, and surely this creature with the loftily aristocratic nose and haughty gaze was none other than Hui’s High Steward.

  “Speak,” Hui ordered.

  “The sun is even now almost below the horizon and the cooking fires have been lit. Will you be dressed and come to the river so that I may bathe you? An acolyte from the temple of Nun awaits your pleasure on the bank. The High Priest wishes you to dine with him tonight, if you so desire.”

  So Kenna was nothing more than my Master’s body servant. Then in what clouds of luxury would the High Steward appear? I felt myself shrink into insignificance. Hui jerked his head at
me. It was a dismissal.

  “Find a secluded spot and bathe yourself,” he told me, “then go to the servants’ barge and they will feed you. Kenna, see that she has what she needs after you’re done with me. You can wander about Khmun for as long as you want, Thu, and after that you will be travelling on the servants’ barge. Kenna will resume his customary place here in my cabin.” The body servant shot me a look of sheer malice. I rose, placed the scrolls back on the table, bowed to Hui, and pushed past the supercilious Kenna. So I was to be relegated to the servants’ quarters. Well what did you expect? I asked myself furiously as I swung down the ramp. Instant recognition, my Libu Lady Thu? Respect and deference and indulgence? Wake up! If you want those things you will have to work for them. Very well, my thoughts ran on as I breathed deeply of the evening air and looked about me. I will work and I will have them.

  What I saw drove all irritation from my mind. The barge rested lightly just within the tip of a wide bay fringed with acacia and sycamore trees. A little way off, the beach was cheerful with the twinkle of fires and chatter of the servants beside their own craft. I supposed that the oarsemen had joined them, for the oars of Hui’s barge had been shipped and now hung high above the waterline. Beyond both boats, strung out along the bay, bathed in the afterglow of a red sunset, lay the largest town I had ever seen. Watersteps led to hidden gardens whose trees leaned over mud walls. Light craft of all descriptions rocked at their moorings. Here and there a road appeared, diving into a palm grove and reappearing only to run past a collection of huts and disappear once more. Behind the houses, the huts and the trees I could just make out the beige pylons and lofty pillars of several temples. Somewhere here, I knew, enshrined in a Holiest of Holiest, was the sacred mound which had arisen first from the primeval floodwaters of Nun, the original Chaos, the place where Thoth, god of wisdom and writing and every scribe’s patron, had begat himself and risen upon a lotus flower. I thought of my favourite scribe, my own dear Pa-ari, at that moment, and wished fervently that he could see the home of his god.

  Turning, I walked along the bank away from the town and the barges. Here there were donkey paths winding through the parched undergrowth and I took one that brought me out to a secluded marsh. The reeds stood like the brittle spears of some absent army, but once through them the sand was firm under my feet. The sun had gone and the dusk was deepening. The water was no longer pellucid but reflected the darkening sky. Pulling my sheath over my head I waded into its calm embrace. I had no natron with which to wash myself but I did my best, scooping up sand and rubbing myself with it vigorously, running my fingers over my wet scalp. When I had finished I could no longer see the farther bank. The silence around me was absolute. Standing waist deep in the almost imperceptible tug of the current I closed my eyes. “Oh Wepwawet,” I prayed, “strong God of War, my totem. Help me to do battle with myself and with the unknown Egypt into which I sail. Give me a victory, and so bring me to my heart’s desire.” I had not even opened my eyes when a jackal began to howl, startlingly close on the other side of the river, and I shuddered. Wepwawet had heard me.

  By the time I returned to the barges, full night had fallen and I was hungry. Skirting my Master’s craft where a lamp burned high in the cabin, I trudged grimly towards the crackling fires of the servants. At first I was not noticed as I stepped into the circle of light, then Kenna rose from his stool and came over to me. “I understand that you are to be attached to the Master’s household as personal servant and apprentice,” he said coldly, without preamble. “Do not think that the title of apprentice gives you licence to take on any airs. You will not last long, so remain humble. You will have less far to fall when you are sent back to your native dirt.” He looked me up and down with deliberate insolence. “The Master sometimes has these momentary foibles but he soon tires of playing the generous lord, so beware.” He pointed across the sand. “There is lentil soup, bread, onions and beer over there. You will sleep with the others on the deck of the barge. I will have a pallet and a blanket placed ready for you.” He marched back to his stool and was soon deep in conversation with a man I recognized as the captain of Hui’s barge.

  If I had been older, I would have known first that Kenna was marking his territory like a desert dog who lifts his leg against a rock and second that he was desperately in love with his Master and jealous of anyone who might usurp his place in Hui’s affections. But I was an innocent country girl, hurt by this man’s cruel words. As I ladled soup into a clay bowl and picked up my sliced onions, slapping them onto the heavy barley bread, I fiercely reminded myself of Hui’s Seeing in the divining bowl, of the hand of fate in my life, of the worth I placed on myself regardless of how others saw me. I would get even with him, I vowed. I would spike his wine with enough poppy to make him seem drunk when he went about his duties. I would sprinkle certain salts on his food so that his bowels would turn to water. As he talked he was watching me, his dark eyes alert to my every movement.

  Balancing my food I went to join the group of servants sitting by one of the fires. Willingly they made room for me. Their curiosity was friendly. Some were cooks, some scullions to clean the barges and the Master’s quarters. The oarsmen were there, and the guards who were not on duty. Their tents were pitched some way away but they were enjoying the conviviality. The guard who had admitted my father and me to the cabin recognized me and had drunk with my father, so that I was greeted kindly. When the night lengthened and the fires began to die, I went with them onto their barge and slept easily beside them on the pallet the disdainful Kenna had provided. I did not visit the ibis burial ground. I did not fancy wandering about this alarmingly big place alone and besides, I promised myself, one day I will come here in state with a hundred servants of my own and Pa-ari with me, and together we will investigate all the marvels of Thoth’s sacred home.

  I passed the second and third days on the river in the company of the other servants. Hui did not summon me and I did not know whether to be pleased or anxious because of it. My companions did not discuss his deformity. I could think of no other word for his physical grotesqueness. Had he or his mother been cursed before he was born? Or were his afflictions the outward manifestation of the gift of Seeing that had been granted to him by the gods? It was impossible to say.

  Kenna remained on the other barge, so it was often a merry gathering under the huge awning of our barge while we slipped steadily north. The villages and small towns, the dead fields and wilting palm trees, the churned desert beyond the cultivated land and the mighty cliffs that protected Egypt, glided past us with a dreamlike dignity and I watched and drowsed, talked and listened, slept and ate, in a rising contentment tinged only slightly with homesickness. Most of the villages we passed resembled Aswat, so that sometimes it seemed to me that the barge was held in a spell of motionlessness while Aswat itself passed and repassed endlessly, a mirage just beyond my reach. But at other times, when I sat in the cool sand at the end of a fiery day and chatted with my fellows while we drank our beer and ate our simple food, Aswat faded into unreality. I was finding an equilibrium.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day we came to the plain of Giza and I fell silent, leaning over the side of the barge and staring at the mighty pyramids that dotted the desert. I had heard of them. Father had spoken about them once or twice, but nothing he said had prepared me for their grandeur, their awesome nobility. My companions, who had seen them many times before, ignored them, but I fell to dreaming of the gods whose tombs they were, and wondering what Egypt had been like in that long-ago age. All the rest of that day they delighted and troubled me, and they were still faintly visible when we tied up at the city of On.

  Khmun was a camp compared to the grandeur of the home of Ra. We were approaching the Delta and the river was busy with commerce. The quays of On were full of industry. Nobles’ estates stood side by side along the river as far as the eye could see, and behind them the great temple of Ra poured a steady stream of incense and chanting into the darkening b
lue of the evening sky.

  The Master had commanded that we tack to the west bank of the river to spend the night. The city sprawled along the east bank and the west was given over to the dead. I think he did it because he had a grudge against Ra, who would burn him if given a chance, but whatever the reason, we were subdued as we made our fires and shared our meal, thinking of the tombs behind us in the empty and starlit waste of the desert. I did not want to see the city. I did not want to leave the safety of the barge at all. Like a frightened animal curled in its burrow I clung to what I knew and tried to prepare myself for yet another climactic change. My restlessness in Aswat, my bold dreams of escape, seemed the paltry, flimsy fabrications of a child who plays with dolls and is suddenly confronted with a real baby to tend. I longed to reach out for Pa-ari’s reassuring hand.

  That night, after the fires had died and the desultory conversations of my bedmates had faded, I could not sleep. I lay on my back gazing up at the red Horus gleaming balefully in its net of white constellations. Tomorrow we would enter the Delta and in two days I would see my Master’s house. I did not want to consider the future. Nor did I want to dwell on the past. The present was enough. After a while I closed my eyes but it was no good. I pulled on my sheath and left the barge.

  A guard challenged me, then let me pass with a warning. I had been told that the fringes of the Delta could be dangerous, that the eastern tribes Pharaoh had defeated three times in battle continued to filter into Egypt past the border forts of Djahi in Northern Palestine and Silsileh and pasture their flocks and herds on land belonging to Egyptians. The Libu of the western desert, who had allied themselves with the eastern people in their attempt to conquer the Delta by force, continued to raid the villages on the edge of the Delta’s rich vineyards and orchards. There were murders and thefts and woundings, and the army could not patrol everywhere at once. The Medjay did what they could, but they were trained to police the villages and deal with internal problems. Desert predators were too much for them. All this shocked and troubled me. I had believed that Osiris Setnakht Glorified, our Pharaoh’s father, had secured Egypt internally and our present Horus of Gold had driven the foreigners from our frontiers for ever. The increased vigilance of the soldiers as we proceeded northward had been taken for granted by my companions who ignored the added security.