“Then I may swim?” I asked eagerly. He nodded.
“Under my direction, every morning, in the pool. Then you pull the bow, to keep those pretty breasts high. A few other things. I will see you in the garden tomorrow morning before you break your fast. Sleep well.” He spun on his heel and left, slamming the door behind him.
… keep you firm …
… those pretty breasts high …
I turned to Disenk.
“I want to see the Master,” I demanded. “At once, Disenk. Go and tell him.” She clasped her pretty hands together, an expression of agony on her face.
“Oh pardon me, Thu,” she said in a high, hurried voice, “but that is impossible. He has guests this evening. They will be arriving at any moment. Be patient, and I will convey your request to Harshira in the morning.”
“I have been patient,” I snapped, “and all I get is evasions. I must talk to Hui.” She flinched, distressed, at my use of his name.
“If I go to him now he will be angry,” she persisted, her carefully feathered eyebrows drawing together. “He will not be disposed to listen to you calmly. Please wait until tomorrow.” Her anxiety seemed exaggerated but I supposed that she was right. I capitulated.
“Oh very well,” I said grudgingly. “I will wait for one more night. But tell Harshira my desire tomorrow, Disenk, for I am becoming uneasy in this house.”
Obviously relieved she began to prattle on about nothing while she prepared me for bed, and she drew the sheet up over me and extinguished the lamps with care. Bidding me a good night she went away and I was left to the shadows and the sweet redolence of the smoking wicks, and a mind whose storm of thoughts would not abate.
Disenk had not lied. A short while later I heard voices and laughter in the courtyard below, and after that the music of lute and drums and the tinkle of finger cymbals coming from somewhere within the house. The sounds were sweet but faint, a faraway enticement to a dimension of life here of which I knew nothing. I wondered if there would be dancers. The dancers in Wepwawet’s temple were dignified and graceful, clothed in the ankle-length linens and thin sandals of ritual and respect, systra in their hands as they moved through the prescribed gestures that praised and importuned the god. I had heard in the village that secular dancers often performed naked, glittering with gold dust, rings on their bare toes, that they could jump the height of a man and bend themselves backward until their heads touched their heels. The music faded in and out as the night wind gusted and the reed mat covering my window slapped against the casement. I wanted to get up and creep into the passage, follow the dull throb of the drums, find the company whose shouts and clapping now wove with the quick, high plucking of the lute. But Disenk slept in the passage and would inveigle me back to bed with her excessive, irresistible politeness. I heard feet running on the paving. An owl cried suddenly, loudly, in the garden. I drowsed.
It was still fully dark when I drifted out of unconsciousness, disturbed by the drunken rowdiness of the guests leaving. “Hey, that’s not your litter, that’s mine!” a strong male voice shouted, and a woman let out a shriek of laughter.
“Let me share it with you then,” she called, her words lazily slurred. “The cushions look soft and yielding and my husband has already left with ours. Harshira, what shall I do?” I came fully awake. The Chief Steward’s familiar tone was confident and clear.
“If you will retire to the reception room, Highness, I will order out one of the Master’s litters to take you home at once.”
Highness? I swung myself off the couch and sped to the window. Lifting back the mat I peered cautiously below. A group of people stood loosely together, lit garishly by flaming torches in the hands of several slaves. A gilded litter sat on the ground, four Nubians before and behind it, waiting for orders. A man in a knee-length red kilt, his gleaming chest afire with jewels, his face heavily painted, leaned nonchalantly against it, grinning. Around them more guests spilled from the main entrance into the torches’ light, and more litters were arriving into which they tumbled happily and volubly. Harshira, his broad back to me, was facing a woman whose elaborately pleated sheath was rumpled and wine-splashed. One shoulder strap had torn loose, exposing a sweat-streaked brown breast. The perfume cone atop her long, many-plaited wig had sagged over one ear and the oil from it had somehow been smeared across her cheek, taking a quantity of kohl with it. “Thank you, Harshira,” she was saying, one hennaed palm vaguely patting his shoulder, “but I want to go home with the General.” The man in the red kilt guffawed. Peeling himself away from his litter he took her flailing fingers, kissed them, kissed her again, this time on her loose mouth, then jerked his head at Harshira and propelled her firmly back into the house.
“The General is going home alone, Highness,” he said wryly, his words becoming muffled as he pulled her in under the portico. “You wait here like a good girl and Harshira will attend to you.” He added something I could not catch, then he entered my line of vision again, alone. He got onto his litter and his hand, as dazzlingly bejewelled as his wide chest, grasped the curtain. He leaned out. “Good-night, Harshira,” he said. “Bundle her into one of Hui’s litters and send a guard with her.” Harshira bowed. The curtain twitched closed. On a sharp order the Nubians lifted it and set off across the paving, and soon it disappeared into the darkness.
I let the mat fall and slid down until I was crouched under the window. I was shocked and titillated. Everyone got drunk from time to time, I knew that. Drunkenness was a pleasant pastime for those with idle hours to while away. Often my father came home staggering and my mother, in her long afternoons drinking wine with her friends, would occasionally rise with a sparkle in her eye.
But this was different. The nature of the woman’s inebriation had shocked me. To get drunk in the village was still to observe the basic proprieties but the princess, for such I judged her to be, given her title, had exuded an air of complete abandonment, uncaring of her appearance, heedlessly flaunting her drunken lust for the man in red. It was as though no one else in the world mattered but herself, nothing had any importance but her own sulky desires. Such selfishness, I thought in envy. Such arrogance! How must it feel to be so rich, so above censure or the moral restraints of ordinary people that one can say and do exactly as one pleases?
Suddenly I longed to be like her, not in her rather disgusting loss of control but in her state. I wanted to dine here as a guest, applaud the dancers, exchange sophisticated witticisms with the noble sitting beside me, flirt with the man in red, pick over my food fastidiously while a slave bent to hear my next command. I wanted to be carried home to my great estate in an elaborately draped litter, give parties myself, perhaps on huge, flowered barges on the Nile. I wanted many lovers. I wanted to be resented and admired. Never never again did I want to be the one feeling the sharp thorn of envy.
7
IN THE MORNING I told Disenk that I did not want to see the Master after all, that a good night’s sleep had allayed my anxieties. It was true that I was not being harmed, in fact I was being cared for scrupulously. Besides, my sight of the drunken princess had given me pause. Hui had connections in very high places. If I behaved myself, if I concentrated on trying to be obedient, one day I might be invited to serve at the festivities of the house. I might even be permitted to meet the Master’s aristocratic friends. That was a faint hope, I knew. I was beginning to learn of the gulf that existed between fellahin and noble. Until I had real cause for complaint I would put my vague worries to the back of my mind. I would, however, be vigilant. I would keep my eyes and ears open. Innocent though I was, I knew that such attention was not usually lavished on a minor servant, but I would enjoy it. I would play the game until the Master changed the rules.
My days settled into a rigid pattern. At dawn Nebnefer would come for me and together we would walk through the sleepy house to the pool, its surface always placid and unruffled in the fleeting hush of the hour. I would swim up and down, up and down, while Ra’s pink r
ays rapidly became a bright heat and Nebnefer shouted instructions and admonitions as he strode beside me.
I grew to long for the moment when he left me outside the bath house and Disenk would comfort me with perfumed water, and the masseur’s sure hands would soothe me with scented oils, kneading away the soreness of my muscles. The food awaiting me in my own room would taste like the nectar of the gods. Having eaten, my face would be painted and Disenk would dress me, telling me all the while of fashion and manners, of the methods of setting jewels and dressing wigs, how to get in and out of a litter gracefully, how to address priests and the nobility with the proper deference. I would listen silently, trying not to ask myself how all the prattle could possibly apply to me unless I was lucky enough to catch the eye of some young nobleman.
Once clad I would go to my lessons with Kaha, sometimes in the garden but more often in his tiny office, which was actually an ante-room to the Chief Scribe’s domain. In the morning I would read, with increasing fluency and understanding, the scrolls he chose. They usually contained old stories that ended in some moral maxim or other—the kind of tales that all mothers told their children—or were linked to my history lessons of the afternoons. But once in a while they were household accounts, orders for linen or wine, commissions for amulets and other pieces of jewellery.
After the noon meal, eaten in my room, we would change places. I would sit at his desk and labour to write what he dictated. My hand improved slowly. I began to develop a style of my own under his patient tutelage, and I came to trust and admire him. He teased me a great deal, disparaged many of my painstaking efforts, praised me rarely so that I learned to prize and labour hard for those few off-hand words, and consistently called me “little Libu princess.” I suppose that he became a kind of substitute for my dear Pa-ari for he was young and energetic and full of fun. Perhaps that was why I never felt physically attracted to him in spite of his eligibility. He was like an older brother, yet to be feared also, for I sensed that his opinion of me carried a lot of weight with his master, Ani, and hence with Hui also.
When my wrist cramped and I had managed more often than not to smear ink over my cheek or down my sheath, we would share beer and shat cakes. Then he would commence my history lessons. He was an entertaining teacher. He recited the king lists each day like poetry, inviting me to choose one pharaoh whose name intrigued me. When I had done so, he would begin the tale of the Osiris One’s life, his character, his achievements, his wars and his loves. Once a week he would test my knowledge both verbally and on papyrus. If I did well he would place in my hand a clay scarab, each one a different colour. I kept them in the box I had brought with me from Aswat, and the collection grew.
In the long, warm evenings, after I had eaten formally in my room, waited on by Disenk and expected to behave as though I was at a great banquet, she and I would walk about the gardens or recline by the lotus pond until sunset. Then I would be returned to my room where she would play the lute and sing to me, or teach me little dance steps.
For many weeks I would be tired by the time she snuffed the lamps and bade me a good night. But gradually, as I mastered my lessons and became accustomed to the unvarying routine, I grew restless, and often left the couch where she had dutifully laid the sheet over me. I would raise the window mat and kneel looking out over the dusky courtyard to the shivering trees beyond. The sounds of the city would come to me but faintly, all clamour mixed and muted to a faraway rumble. Sometimes a craft would pass unseen, but I would hear the shout of the captain, the splash of oars. Once a barge drifted by, so brightly lit that its lamps made a wavering glow through the trees. Then there was loud laughter and the babble of many voices, shrieks of mock terror and the frenetic pulse of many drums. I thought of the drunken princess and the red-kilted General as the cheerful cacophony faded and the river was silent again. Were they on board? Had the princess managed to inveigle the General into bed with her or had her lust been nothing more than the vacuous promptings of the wine? I would never know. I was an insect trapped in resin, a piece of flotsam washed into a secret corner of the Lake of the Residence while the current ran on strongly to the Great Green, without me.
Several times I hid and watched the Master’s dinner guests arrive and leave, the gaily caparisoned litters and black slaves come and go. Once I thought I caught a glimpse of the General slipping alone across the darkened courtyard but I must have been mistaken. I dreamed of him twice, a romantic figure in red lurking on the periphery of my vision, but I did not allow myself to think of these people much during my waking hours. Although I hated to admit it, they were as far out of my reach as Pharaoh himself, and I did not want to increase the growing agitation my enforced isolation was causing. I no longer knew what fantasies to conjure.
I saw the Master several times, very late at night, gliding like a wraith in the moonlight on his way to the pool with Kenna at his heels. I had no urge to disturb him. Perhaps I was learning a little patience. I half expected him to pause and glance up at me for I had the strong impression that he knew perfectly well I was watching him, but he never did and I was both relieved and disappointed.
Every month I dutifully dictated a letter to my family, knowing that Hui’s eyes would weigh my every word. I was tempted to say outrageous things about him but I repressed the childish desire. At first the task brought my family and my old home and the villagers vividly to mind and I would experience a surge of homesickness followed by a tumult of conflicting emotions, but as time went by my family began to lose substance, appearing as increasingly formal and stilted figures to my mind’s eye. I received word from them intermittently, or rather, the scrolls would come in Pa-ari’s neat, economical hand as they could afford it. My father and mother sent affectionate greetings but obviously did not dictate any news, for the letters’ idiom was all my brother’s. He wrote of the good harvest, the number of babies born in the village, who had become betrothed to whom, how his studies were progressing. He told me of the life of the temple, in which he was now intimately involved as a scribe, and of one of the dancers, the daughter of a neighbour, who was fast losing the clumsy coltishness of girlhood and acquiring interesting curves. I read this with a sudden lump of jealousy in my throat, for selfishly and illogically I did not want to share my brother’s affections with anyone. He did not go out on the desert much any more to watch the sunset, he said. It was not the same without me. He missed me very much. Did I miss him? Or was my new life so full and satisfying that I had no time to think of him? Beneath the friendly words I sensed his concern for me, and wondered if the Master sensed it also, for I was certain that the missives did not come to me fresh. They were naturally unsealed. Peasants did not bother with wax or cylinders or rings for imprinting. I was suddenly afraid, reading Pa-ari’s black script. I did not want to have his features become indistinct as time took us away from each other. I did not want him to be frozen in memories, doing and saying the same things over and over in my consciousness because we had no new experiences to share. Yet I knew that I would probably not see him again for many years, if ever. His scrolls, too, went into my box and I reread them often, fighting to keep them all—my clever, impatient mother, my taciturn, handsome father, our lively, inquisitive, earthy neighbours—vital and alive.
So my days followed their appointed pattern. The season of Shemu gave way to Akhet, the time of flooding, heralded by New Year’s Day, the first day of the month of Thoth. Everyone celebrated, servants and masters alike. Hui’s house and garden filled with the clamour of drunken festivity and the river was choked with the god’s worshippers. The noise of the city penetrated my room, but I was not allowed to join the crowds. I was not even allowed into the garden. Furious and disappointed, I sat at my window with Disenk while the other servants, those with whom I had shared food and comfort on the journey from Aswat and who had received me kindly, congregated happily under the trees and ate and drank to the glory of Thoth. I supposed that they had forgotten me by now. The officials of the hou
sehold, Harshira, Ani, Kaha and the others, stayed apart from the slaves and kitchen labourers, feasting in Hui’s reception hall. Of Hui himself I saw nothing. As a Seer he would have spent the feast day in the temple of Thoth, being consulted by the god’s priests with regard to the coming year, and I had no doubt that he had fasted and remained in seclusion to prepare for the occasion, but the day drew to a close without a hint of his presence anywhere.
The month of Thoth passed, and Paophi and Athyr. The flood was high that year. Isis had cried copiously and the crops would be thick and bountiful. The season of Akhet ended with the month of Khoiak, and Peret, the time of receding waters and sowing, began. I was for the first time divorced from the slow, time-honoured rituals that bound the fellahin to the land. In Aswat my father and his neighbours would be out walking the fields every day to judge the quality of the silt spread by the now shrinking river, their feet sinking into the fertile mud, their talk all of what grain should be planted in which plot. Here in Hui’s house my own rituals had become just as unvaried, and the only sense I had of the changing months came from the lessening heat and a rise in humidity that brought clouds of mosquitoes into the garden.
Six months after my arrival in the Delta my lessons with Kaha took a new turn. My reading was becoming fluent and my writing improved every day, but it was in the study of history that the change began. One day, sitting in the grass beside the pool in an afternoon loud with the croaking of frogs and hazy with warm, diffused sunshine, Kaha handed me a scroll to recite. He had not begun, as he usually did, with the king lists, but ordered me to read the contents of the scroll aloud. I did so. It was not difficult. “One hundred and seven thousand slaves,” I intoned. “Three-quarters of a million arouras, half a million head of small and large cattle, five hundred and thirteen groves and temple gardens, eighty-eight fleet vessels, fifty-three workshops and shipyards …” I paused and glanced enquiringly at Kaha. “What is this?” He nodded once, brusquely.
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