House of Dreams

by Pauline Gedge

  In the world outside, the crops were sown, grew to maturity, and were harvested. Shemu began. Egypt died, as she did every year at this season. The ground cracked and turned to dust. Everything living crawled into whatever shade could be found and lay drained and helpless under the sun’s fierce onslaught.

  At least, that is how it always was at Aswat. Here in the Delta, on Hui’s estate, the heat was certainly intense and the air dry. But the watered gardens remained lush and green, the foliage of the trees fragrant and dense. The months slid by. Pakhons became Payni and then it was the beginning of Epophi and my Naming Day. I was fourteen years old.

  The morning began with an early rising and a walk to the pool through air that had already lost its fleeting freshness as Ra opened his mouth and breathed fire over the earth. Nebnefer was unusually bad-tempered, standing waist deep in the water with his fists bunched against his hips as he yelled at me to pull harder, go faster, so that by the time I scrambled over the lip and began my stretches I was wondering why I had been born at all. I was, I confess, feeling sorry for myself. At home my day would have begun with extra sleep, and some simple gift would have been placed by my dish as I ate the morning meal. I would have been escorted to the temple with my whole family so that they and I could give thanks for my life and health. I would have laid some precious possession, a favourite toy perhaps or a vial of oils I had mixed carefully myself, at the feet of Wepwawet’s High Priest, and in the evening the friends of the family would have gathered to drink wine and eat the special sweetmeats my mother prepared for me once a year. Not that I had enjoyed many friends. On the few occasions when a couple of the village girls had darkened our door for my naming day I had resented the way they gobbled up the treats and depleted my father’s meagre stock of expensive wine.

  But here, I thought mutinously as a slave held a sunshade over me and I walked back to the house, there is no celebration. No one cares that today I am fourteen years old, the age of betrothal in the village, the age of new womanhood. Sullenly I submitted to the routine of massage, dressing and cosmetic application that usually pleased me, and in my pretty sandals I slap-slapped my way briskly to Kaha’s office for my first lesson, pausing to savagely rip at the seam of my sheath. Disenk had surpassed herself. The threads held but the fabric, so fine, so transparent and soft, tore with a tiny ripping sound. I did not consider how only a year ago such material would have filled me with awe and I would have handled it with gentle reverence. Now I ran down the stairs, strode along the passage, and knocked on Kaha’s door with nothing in my mind but the rather spiteful thought that Disenk would have a long hour of mending in the evening. Or I would be issued with a new sheath. Perhaps a yellow one this time. I hoped so.

  Kaha opened for me, but instead of ushering me within he came out and took my hand. He was smiling. “Come,” he said, tugging me further along the passage. “School is over for you, my little Libu princess. Today you graduate from Kaha’s lessons.” We had come quickly to a pair of imposing double doors where the passage terminated. They gave off the expensive, subtle aroma of Lebanon cedar. Kaha rapped twice, then bent and kissed my cheek. “I congratulate you—I think,” he grinned. “You are now in the hands of a much more severe taskmaster than I, whereas I can cheerfully hand you over and spend the rest of my day wandering in the markets of the city. May the gods smile on you, Thu.” He turned on his heel and walked back along the passage. I was too dumbfounded to call after him, and, in any case, one of the doors was sliding open. I swung round. Ani was bowing me inside. Rather unsteadily I passed him and the door was closed behind me. I looked back. Ani had gone.

  “Do not stand there with one foot across the other like a dazed heron,” an annoyed voice commanded. “Haven’t you learned anything in the past year? Come here.”

  Chastened, my heart thumping against my ribs and my palms suddenly wet, I did as I was told. Hui rose from behind the desk. He wore a voluminous white tunic whose many crisp pleats unfolded across his upper arms. His white kilt was also pleated to his knees. Otherwise, his pale flesh was unadorned by jewellery, although his red eyes, those frightening demon eyes, were circled in black kohl. The effect was startlingly magnetic. His stark white hair had been pulled up and back from his face and braided so that it fell in one thick plait between his shoulder blades. Deliberately he placed both palms on the desk.

  “Go back upstairs,” he said coldly, “and change your sheath. If you tear the seams any more you will sew them up yourself. Is that understood?” I nodded dumbly. “Good. I do not want to see you come in here unkempt every morning. Go.” I hurried to do as I was told. Every morning, he had said. Every morning! My life was to change again. I flew up the stairs and burst into my room, eyes shining.

  “A fresh sheath, at once!” I shouted at Disenk. “And I promise I will walk like a lady from now on! I am to work with the Master!” She smiled, completely unsurprised, and going to the chest, extracted a garment. I could hardly stand still while she removed the mutilated one. I was ridiculously happy.

  Outside his doors again I smoothed the fresh sheath over my hips and pulled the ends of my red hair ribbon to lie on either side of my neck. My hands were clean and I could see no dry skin on my calves and feet. I took a deep breath, knocked, and went in. This time he smiled.

  “Much better,” he said. “Sit down, Thu. I know that this is your naming day. Therefore I have something for you.” Leaving the desk he approached the shelves that lined his walls and I had an opportunity to survey the room. I did not know what I had expected, some outward show of wealth or authority perhaps, the furniture inlaid with gold, chests of gems, but I was a little disappointed. Hui’s surroundings were spartan, and differed little from Ani’s or Harshira’s office. Indeed the window was smaller and higher. Hui’s desk was large and imposing and quite bare apart from a rather beautiful white alabaster lamp carved in the likeness of Nut the sky goddess. The stone had been abraded so thinly that the pattern of stars painted on the inside could be clearly seen even though the lamp was unlit. A much smaller desk had been pushed against the right-hand wall beside another door. Half the shelves on the walls were empty. The rest held chests, but by their plainness I decided that they could not possibly hold any household treasures.

  Hui turned, and set before me a scribe’s palette. It was new, its polish gleaming softly, its surfaces unscratched and unstained. There was the groove for brushes and a sink for an inkpot. It was black. Inlaid upon its writing surface, picked out in delicate lines of silver, Thoth stood. His long, curving ibis beak stretched over the palette he held in one hand. In the other he grasped a pen. The work was so fine that I actually gasped as I rose to examine it. My fingers found no rough spot, caught on no flaw where a brush might trip.

  “It is ebony, from Cush,” Hui told me, as I caressed it. “Pharaoh’s own craftsman fashioned it to my design. It is yours.” While I stared at him, agape, he turned to a shelf again and then placed beside the palette a stack of virgin papyrus and a long, thin box, also of ebony. On its lid, traced in silver, were the glyphs for prosperity, health and millions of years. “Your brushes and paper,” Hui went on. “Do close your mouth, Thu. I do not need to see the back of your throat at this hour of the day. The box also contains a scraper of ebony, capped in gold of course. Silver is too soft for rubbing papyrus. Are you pleased?”

  I could not speak. With a cry I flung myself around the desk and into his arms, hugging him fiercely. For a moment he held me, my cheek against his chest. I could feel the steady drumbeat of his heart. Then he put me gently away. “These are not toys,” he warned as I retraced my steps and lowered myself into the chair with trembling knees. “You are now officially my scribe. Your work will be very specific.” He seated himself and folded his arms. “Ani is my Chief Scribe. He handles all my letters, the inventories of the household, the details of my estates. But I need someone to be directly responsible to me in the work I do. I am not only a Seer and visionary,” he explained. “It is true that I
spend much time in the temples, gazing into the oil on behalf of Pharaoh. I also interpret the movements of the Apis Bull and walk beside Amun when he is carried from shrine to shrine about the city in his Holy Barque, while he passes judgements and listens to petitions. I do not need you for that.” He stirred on his chair. “You are perhaps not aware that I am also a physician. I treat whomever it pleases me to treat. This includes my family and those of my own household, of course. I have a great interest in both the healing and the destructive properties of herbs and certain chemicals. I keep records of the disease, treatment and progress of everyone I minister to, in those chests.” He nodded at the shelves. “Naturally the information within them is utterly private. No one may read them but you and me. Likewise the conclusions I reach in my experiments with the substances for which I trade in many strange places must remain secret. You will attend me whenever necessary. You will take my dictation. When invited, you may question me with regard to my work, for I intend that you should not only write down what I do but understand it also. Why are you frowning?”

  “But why not Kaha, or one of the other under-scribes?” I objected hesitantly. “Why me? Is it because I already have a knowledge of healing?” He laughed harshly.

  “The knowledge you have acquired from your mother would not even fill a tiny kohl pot,” he retorted. “I wanted an innocent, fresh, untrained mind. Intelligence without the weight of prejudice or the often crippling strictures of a common education. You suit my purposes admirably, Thu. You are highly intelligent. You are ambitious, or you would not have forced yourself upon me that night on my barge at Aswat. The only education you have had so far is the crudest of beginnings with your brother and an intense training with Kaha within the guidelines I myself set.”

  “So you did not see my face in the oil before we met,” I said slowly. “You simply seized an opportunity to perform yet another experiment.” He unfolded his arms and leaned across the desk so suddenly that I was alarmed. His red eyes narrowed.

  “Not true,” he contradicted me vehemently. “I am no charlatan. More than that I will not say. But if you work with me I can promise you a future more glorious than you have ever dreamed.” He smiled, and the mood in the room changed. “This is your last chance to say farewell to my hospitality and go home. You can take the palette with you, of course. I daresay the skills you have learned might be useful as you sit in the centre of the village and hire yourself out to write letters.” The scorn beneath the words was obvious.

  “You speak of privacy, of secrets,” I said. “Are you not afraid to trust one so young and untried as me?”

  “I trust no one,” he replied flatly. “Do not flatter yourself on that point, Thu. Believe me, I am not relying on any sense of honesty or loyalty you may have.” He sat back, then got to his feet. “I place my trust more in your own secret dreams. You know what I am speaking of, don’t you? Besides, if your tongue loosens I will cut it out and send it to your father.” He waved me up and I followed him to the door by the small desk. I had no doubt that he meant what he said, and for a moment I was afraid. What strange journey was I embarking upon? With Hui’s hand on the tiller, where might my craft end up?

  Excitedly I stood beside my Master looking down at the intricately knotted cord that held the door closed. I inhaled the muskiness of his perfume, and thought only of the tantalizing yet repulsive whiteness of his hands and how I would like to touch them. My fate was sealed.

  “These are knots of my own invention,” he remarked as he methodically worked at the cord. “They ensure that no one enters this room without my knowledge. I change them when the fancy takes me. At night I place a seal over them, and a guard stands here. You must learn the knots, Thu. Or invent your own for me to unravel!” He laughed briefly and the cord loosened and fell away. He pushed the door open.

  The smell struck me at once, the sweet, dry pungency of desiccated herbs, and I inhaled deeply and delightedly, my mind suddenly alive with an image of my mother bent over the task of sorting through the piles of dusty plants on the table before her. But almost immediately I detected another odour, much fainter, and the room at Aswat fled. This was a bitter scent, musky and alien and somehow disturbing. I could not identify it, for it wove with the healthier essence of the healing herbs. The room was windowless. The only light was a shaft that penetrated from the office, flowing past Hui and me as we stood there and throwing our shadows across the spotless tiled floor and up against the table opposite. As far as I could see, the table too was spotless, an expanse of what looked like thin marble that stretched away on either side. The walls were lined with shelves on which were phials, jars and pots of every size. Under the table I saw two great stone flagons. “Herbs must be kept in complete darkness, as I’m sure you know,” Hui said. “But when I work I bring in several lamps.” He smiled at me. “The surroundings can be much more congenial than they appear. Any dictation I give you regarding what goes on in here must stay in this room. You look troubled, Thu. What is the matter?” I shook off the moment of trepidation and returned his smile. “Nothing, Master. Are all the containers labelled?” His grin widened until he looked almost boyish, and I realized that he was happy. I hoped that it was I who had made him so.

  “No they are not,” he answered. “If by some incredible chance a thief managed to pass you and me at work in the outer office during the day or the guard and the knots at night, he would have no idea what to steal.” He pulled the door closed and his fingers moved busily and gracefully, re-tying the knots. “He would not dare to unstopper the vials in order to hunt for what he wanted. If he got this far he would know that he might die.”

  “So you have poisons in there?” I responded to his gesture and resumed my seat. I was not particularly impressed. My mother had often pointed out to me the plants that could kill. The beautiful oleander bush, for example, with its luscious pink flowers, was particularly virulent. The smoke from its burning wood would make you very sick. Honey extracted from the flowers would kill. So would its leaves, its sap, even water that had been used to keep it alive. The azalea dealt death as well. Also the dove’s dung, and the castor gourd, unless its juice was heated. Hui nodded.

  “Some of them kill upon contact with the skin. Some of them kill if you are stupid enough to lean over the container and take a breath.” All at once he seemed to become bored with the subject. He pushed the beautiful palette and box towards me. “I shall expect you to appear tomorrow morning, properly and neatly clad, your hands clean, your face kohled, and your sheath in one decorous piece,” he said. “Go away and play with your gift now, Thu. You may do as you please for the rest of the day.” I clutched the palette to my breast in both arms and rose.

  “I would like to go to the shrine of Wepwawet, if there is one in Pi-Ramses,” I said, “and give thanks on my naming day.”

  “Out of the question,” he responded indifferently. “Besides, Wepwawet has no shrine here. Why do you think I travelled all the way to Aswat a year ago?”

  “Then I would like to take Disenk and an escort and go about the city.”

  “No.” The feel of the cool ebony under my hands gave me courage. He had cared enough about me to remember my naming day.

  “Then let me wander by the Lake and look at the boats. You tell me to do as I please, but there is nothing to do in this house if I am not to study. Why do you keep me so secluded? Are you afraid that I will run away?” He rolled his fiery, macabre eyes, then fixed me with their red stare.

  “Why don’t you sleep?” he said caustically. “Young girls need much sleep, do they not? Talk to Kaha if he is still here, which I doubt. Go and bother Harshira. Take another massage. Thoth has a shrine in the garden. Make some prostrations to him. Have you no imagination, Thu? The house is full of things to do. And no, I am not afraid that you will run away. You are free to do so if you wish, but if you do, you will not be received back.” I walked stiffly to the door.

  “I am not allowed in the reception hall, the servants�
� quarters or the public area of the gardens,” I reminded him. “There may very well be things to do, but I am not allowed to do them. It is most unfair.” I did not wait for a response. Bowing, I went out. I knew better than to slam the door but I wanted to. I also knew better than to brood on the petty restrictions of my life, for brooding would change nothing.

  I went back to my room. Disenk was not there. Throwing myself onto my couch I examined the precious, the magical gift I had been given, my delight in it quickly dissipating my frustration. It occurred to me, as I turned it to and fro so that the thin lines of silver caught the sunlight, that it was an entirely practical thing to give a graduating scribe. It took no account of gender. True, all the scribes I knew or had heard about were male, but that was not the point. Hui had not considered my sex when he had had the palette made. He was concerned only with my proficiency.

  The pride I felt at that thought was mixed with a quixotic disappointment. Would I have preferred a piece of jewellery, a hair ornament perhaps, or a bracelet? Something that acknowledged his awareness of my femininity? What would it be like to kiss those pale lips, plunge my hands through that milky hair? I was not ignorant of sex. No village girl, raised in close proximity to animals, could be. But I was fourteen years old. If I had remained in Aswat the young men would have begun to call on my father, sitting on the mat in our reception room and nervously answering his questions while casting sidelong glances at me, glances, I was sure, that would smoulder with desire. There would have been decorous meetings under my mother’s stern eye, walks by the river, perhaps even fumbles and caresses under the palm trees during some stolen night assignation. I would have ultimately scorned them all, I knew. My body was maturing, its needs still confused and contradictory as yet. My heart was waiting to be captured for the first time but my life was severely regulated and restricted. The impulses of girlhood, the fey changes of mood and mind, the feverish, formless dreams that invaded sleep, I felt them all but they were stifled by the ritual of my existence. They did not die, of course. Thwarted, they turned inward, gained strength, became an erotic undercurrent to everything I did.