House of Dreams

by Pauline Gedge

  It was Harshira who stood outside the door, resplendent in gold-shot linen, a golden sash draped across his broad chest. I read no reaction to my transformation in his eyes but he bowed to me stiffly before leading the way along the passage. Dusk was filling the house and the stairs were dim but we descended into the sweet smell of scented lamp oil and soft yellow light. The servants were moving to and fro with tapers, driving back the impending darkness. They stopped and reverenced Harshira briefly as we passed them, and he nodded frostily, sailing on into a part of the building that had been forbidden to me until now.

  We had turned right at the foot of the stairs. The passage here had widened into a stately hallway, blue-tiled, its ceiling sprinkled with painted stars. My glance fell from the Chief Steward’s rolling buttocks to my own feet pacing the spotless floor. Light glinted on the tiny gems sewn into my new sandals, one between each toe, and my skin gleamed with oil. The hem of the gossamer blue sheath brushed my ankles like the merest breath of air, shimmering with my movement, and as I came to a halt behind Harshira a gush of saffron perfume from my body rose out of its folds to my nostrils.

  Harshira knocked on the imposing cedar doors that confronted us and a slave opened them at once. Within there was a tide of male conversation, a gruff burst of laughter, a sudden gush of scented heat and full light. The tiny turquoise pendants of my armband tinkled as I consciously unclenched my hands and let them fall loosely to my sides. “The Lady Thu,” Harshira intoned, and stood back for me to pass. I met his eyes. They said nothing. With a throat all at once gone dry I stepped into the room.

  Hui was already rising, coming towards me, and for a moment he was all that I saw. He was smiling warmly, the moon god himself, all glimmering white and silver with his white braid threaded in silver hanging over one shoulder, the silver baboons, Thoth’s sacred animals, clustered on the pectoral across his white chest, the thick silver bracelets gripping his muscular arms, the silver-shot folds of his floor-length linen. He was strange and beautiful and my Master, and pride swept me as he took my fingers and raised them to his hennaed mouth. “Thu, you are the loveliest woman in Pi-Ramses,” he whispered, drawing me into the company, and it was then that I realized how silent the room had become. Six pairs of eyes were fixed on me, male eyes, appraising and curious. I lifted my chin and gazed back as haughtily as I could. Hui surreptitiously pressed my hand. “The Lady Thu,” he announced quietly. “My assistant and friend. Thu, these men are also my friends, with the exception of General Paiis, my brother, of whom you have perhaps already heard.”

  He was uncurling from behind his small dining table, a tall, ridiculously handsome man with black eyes and a full, sardonic mouth. He was wearing a long yellow dress kilt instead of a red one but I recognized him immediately. It was all I could do, not to start forward and blurt out, “It’s you! Did you ever succumb to the drunken princess’s lust?” He bowed to me, grinning slowly.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you at last,” he drawled. “Hui has told me a great deal about the excessively beautiful and impossibly clever young woman he has kept sequestered in his house. He has guarded you so jealously that I despaired of ever setting eyes on you. But …” He held up a playfully mocking finger, “the wait has been worthwhile. Let me introduce you to yet another General, my comrade in arms, General Banemus. He commands Pharaoh’s Bowmen in Cush.”

  Banemus was tall also, with the tight physique of the serving soldier. His movements, as he rose and bowed, were abrupt and assured, but his eyes, under a mop of curly brown hair anchored with a purple ribbon, were kind. A raised red scar cut across the corner of his mouth and he fingered it absently from time to time. It looked fresh. “There is not much commanding to do in Cush at the moment,” he retorted, smiling. “The south is quiet and my men do nothing but patrol endlessly, gamble recklessly, and quarrel sporadically. It is to the east that Pharaoh looks with wary gaze.”

  “He would do better to gaze within his own land,” another man broke in sharply, coming forward. He bowed to me shortly, officiously, his glance sweeping me noncommittally from head to toe. He reminded me of a pigeon. “Forgive me, Thu,” he said. “I am Mersura, Chancellor to the Mighty Bull and one of his advisers. When we here present get together we cannot resist the heated discussions that arise from the preoccupations of our several professions. I am happy to meet you.” He strutted back to his cushions and I felt Hui’s arm go around my shoulders.

  “This is your table, between Paiis and myself,” he said gently, guiding me to it. He snapped his fingers and a young slave appeared, placing wine and a bouquet of flowers in my hands. “Before you sit, some final introductions.” The last three men were hovering behind him and I turned to them expectantly. “This is Paibekamun, High Steward to the Living Horus; Panauk, Royal Scribe of the Harem; and Pentu, Scribe of the Double House of Life.” They made their silent greeting and I returned it, murmuring my delight at their acquaintance. They murmured back politely, and while I settled myself behind my table, laid the flowers beside me on the floor, took a sip of wine, they watched me intently. The High Steward in particular had a dark, brooding air about him that was more than the awesome dignity of his exalted position at court. His regard was steady and completely cool. At first I endured it meekly, cowed by the impressive company into which I had been so summarily thrust, but before long I became annoyed.

  “Do I have a blemish on my nose, Lords of Egypt?” I enquired brightly, and the tension in the room broke up. Paiis grunted his laughter. Hui chortled. Paibekamun the High Steward bowed again to me, this time with a little more respect.

  “Your pardon, Thu,” he said with an icy smile. “I do not often succumb to such rudeness. Let us say that your beauty is somewhat startling. The palace is full of the loveliest women in the country but you are very unusual.”

  “Oh yes!” I replied as he retired to his table. “Do let us say that, Lord Paibekamun! And let me say in my turn that I am honoured to be allowed to dine in such illustrious company.” I lifted my cup and drank to them and they toasted me back. Hui signalled, and at the end of the room his musicians began to play. Servants carrying steaming, laden trays poured through a door and began to serve us. Paiis leaned close to me.

  “It wasn’t just flattery you know, Thu,” he assured me. “You really are exquisite. How do you come by your blue eyes?”

  While my plate was heaped with delicacies and my cup refilled, I told him of my father’s roots in Libu, then I asked him about his family. He spoke readily enough about Kawit, his and Hui’s sister, and of his parents and forebears who had peopled the Delta for many hentis, but soon he brought the conversation around to me again, inviting me to talk about myself which I did with some hesitancy, aware of Hui eating quietly so close to me. I expected a rebuke from him but there was none.

  The conversation sometimes flowed around me but more often was focused in my direction and I began to sense that I was being gently but expertly drained of information about myself. I was the polite centre of attention. I was the curiosity, the butterfly set free from its prison, and the experience was sweet. The food was wonderful, the wine heady, and the music wove with the warm virile voices, the darting men’s eyes, the sheen of sweat on their arms and in the hollows of their throats that formed as the night deepened. I found myself joking and laughing with them, my temporary shyness gone.

  Only Hui was quiet. He ate and drank desultorily, gave his orders absently, then sat back on his cushions and watched his guests. He did not speak to me once and I was anxious lest I had somehow offended him, but that anxiety was thrust away by my enjoyment. I had arrived. Arrived where, was a question I did not then ask myself. I was the Lady Thu, at ease among Egypt’s greatest. It was a feast I would never forget.

  Towards dawn the musicians retired and one by one the men rose amid a welter of soiled dishes and empty wine jugs, picking their way unsteadily through the wilted flowers and broken pastries to the door leading into the great reception hall and the porticoed en
trance beyond. Hui took my hand and led me out with them. A scentless, warm wind met us, lifting the braids from my tired shoulders and pressing my crumpled linen against my thighs. The litters were waiting. Harshira stood in the shadows, ready to assist anyone too drunk to help himself. They took their farewells of me with wine-induced fondness, their voices loud in the blessedly cool air, and got into their litters and disappeared across the courtyard. But General Paiis lifted my fingers to his lips and then kissed me lightly on both cheeks. “Sleep well, little princess,” he murmured in my ear. “You are a rare and exotic bloom and it has been a delight to get to know you.” He swung away, springing into his litter and giving his bearers a curt command. He waved as the gloom swallowed him up and I thought deliriously— princess. He called me little princess and I am standing here in the same spot where he rejected that other princess, and I am the happiest woman alive.

  Hui drew me back into the house, towards the familiar peace of his office. Once the door was closed behind us he invited me to sit but he perched on the desk, one long thigh crossed over the other, his legs the colour of milk under the still spotless, silvered kilt. I looked up into the red, kohl-rimmed eyes and as I did so he leaned down and lifted the heavy wig from my head, pulling out Disenk’s pins and then pushing his fingers tenderly through my hair. “You are flushed,” he remarked. “Are you tired now, Thu? Did the evening exhaust you? What is your opinion of my friends?” His touch was both soothing and arousing. Troubled, I bit my lip and looked away and instantly his hands returned to his lap.

  “Your brother is charming,” I replied. “I am not surprised that the princess wanted to sleep with him. I heard an exchange between him and a royal lady from my window one night a long time ago.” Hui blinked in surprise and then laughed hoarsely.

  “Paiis has a way with women. And do you want to sleep with him?”

  “No!” I said aloud, laughing back, but thought giddily to myself, it is not the General who makes my breath come faster, it is you, Hui. I want to sleep with you. I want you to hold me in your arms, kiss me with those hennaed lips, I want your red, red eyes aflame with desire as they travel my naked body, your white hands sliding over my skin. You are my Master, my teacher, the arbiter of my days. I wish that you were my lover also. I shuddered.

  “Good!” Hui retorted. “I think he would like to play with you for a while because you are a novelty, neither pampered noblewoman nor ignorant slave, but you will have the good sense to avoid any sweet traps he may set, won’t you? And what of the others?” I considered carefully. The effects of the wine I had drunk were wearing off, leaving my head heavy and my limbs cold.

  “General Banemus is an honest man, I think. If he ever gave his word he would keep it. How did he get that scar?”

  “Fighting the Meshwesh at Gautut, by the Great Green, four years ago,” Hui answered indifferently. “He acquitted himself so well that Pharaoh gave him command of the bowmen in the south. Pharaoh is not a man of sound judgement. He should have kept Banemus in the north.”

  “Gautut?” I was shocked. “But the District of Gautut is on the left bank of the Nile, in the Delta, it is a part of Egypt!”

  “Four years ago the Delta was occupied from Carbana to On by the Meshwesh,” Hui pointed out. “Ramses and his army finally managed to repulse them. Their chief, Mesher, was captured. His father, Keper, pleaded for mercy for his son but Pharaoh would not listen. Mesher was executed. Did the peasants of Aswat know nothing of this, Thu? What age do they think they live in?”

  “They are more concerned with how to pay their taxes and find their food!” I flashed back at him, stung. “What are events in the Delta to them? Merely the faint echoes of an Egypt that they cannot afford to care about!”

  There was an awkward silence, during which Hui stared at me speculatively. Then he began to smile. “There is still a little peasant lurking behind that accomplished exterior,” he said softly. “And her loyalties are primitive and unreflective. But it is all right, Thu. I like that tough little daughter of the earth. She knows how to survive.” He stirred, uncrossed his legs, and began to unbraid his hair. “What do you think of Paibekamun, our aristocratic High Steward?” I watched the ropes of creamy hair fall free in a rippling wave.

  “He is shrewd and cold,” I suggested hesitantly, “and though he may smile and nod and converse, his true nature is well concealed.” Hui tossed the silver threads that had been woven into his plait onto the desk behind him and slid to his feet.

  “You are right,” he declared flatly. “Paibekamun is an exemplary Steward, efficient and silent, and his King thinks very highly of him. So do I, but for very different reasons.” He stifled a yawn. “You acquitted yourself well, Thu. I am pleased.” I scrambled up.

  “Then I may keep the blue sheath?”

  “Little mercenary!” He tapped me lightly on the cheek. “I think you may, and the jewellery as well.”

  “Really?” I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Thank you, Master!” A look of sadness came over his face and he sighed.

  “I have become very fond of you, my ruthless assistant,” he said quietly. “Go to your couch now, and sleep the day away. Dawn is here.”

  I was halfway to the door when some devil stirred in me, a wicked yet pathetic impulse. I turned.

  “Marry me, Hui,” I blurted recklessly. “Take me for your wife. I already share your work. Let me share your bed also.” He did not seem taken aback. His mouth quivered, whether from mirth or some other strong emotion, I did not know.

  “Little girl,” he said at last, “you have spent the years of your growing in this house, and I am the only man you have really known since you were obedient to your father and frolicked with your brother. You stand on the brink of a dazzling maturity. You have tasted true power once. You will do so again. There is a larger issue in Egypt than either your happiness or mine, and that is my true work. You do not share it yet. I am not the one to take your virginity, and though you imagine that I have taken your heart, it is not so. I do not wish to marry. Leave me now.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, to argue, even to beg, for I suddenly sensed a severing, but he gestured violently and I left him, pacing the empty, dawn-drowsy passages until I came to my own domain. Disenk rose from her pallet by the door and quickly undressed and washed me. I watched the water in the bowl become rust coloured as the henna dribbled from my palms. My head had begun to ache. So did my heart. Oh, Hui, I thought as I lay down and Disenk drew the covers over me. If you have not taken my heart, then where is the man who can possibly loom larger in my life than you?

  The following morning I reported for work with some trepidation, not knowing how I might be received after my outburst of two nights ago, but my Master greeted me with a warm smile. “Do not become too comfortable, Thu,” he said cheerfully. “Your naming day is less than three weeks away and I have decided to give you your gift early. Today you may come with me to the palace.”

  “Oh, Master!” I exclaimed. “Thank you! You have business there?”

  “No,” he grinned. “You do. An important man is complaining of abdominal pain and fever, and I have decided that you shall make the diagnosis while I stand by with my palette and take notes. You are perfectly capable of this,” he assured me, seeing my expression. “Have I not trained you myself?”

  “But how should I behave in the palace?” I asked in momentary panic, and he rolled his eyes.

  “You will behave like a physician, briskly, kindly and competently. Put on your pretty blue linen and tell Disenk to henna your soles and palms. Wear the jewellery but not the wig. I will meet you in the courtyard presently and we will share a litter. Do not be long!”

  I nodded vigorously and almost ran from the room. I was delighted and scared. My life had been a placid river for so long, with but one whirlpool, the death of Kenna. Now, in a breathlessly short time, it had become a torrent of stormy water, exhilarating and unpredictable in its surges. I was determined to weather each one.

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  BY THE TIME I hurried through the main doors and out into the courtyard Hui was already waiting in the litter, bound in his linen like a sitting corpse. I climbed in beside him and at once he gave the order to move, leaning across me to pull the curtains closed as he did so. “Oh please, Master!” I protested as our conveyance rose onto the shoulders of the bearers. “Could we not leave them open? I have seen nothing outside your estate for more than two years!” He hesitated then grunted an assent and I lay back on the cushions, my eyes on the shrubbery of the garden gliding by. We were escorted by four household guards and I could hear their steady tread before and behind. The shadow of the entrance pylon slid over us and was gone.

  We turned right, and there, just beyond Hui’s water-steps, was the Lake of the Residence, its level low because of the season, sparkling dully in the bright sunlight. A small craft with one lone rower was passing, and behind it the bulk of a laden barge loomed majestically. On the farther bank three skiffs lay beached, their white lateen sails collapsed and flapping idly in the intermittent, hot breeze. Above them was a jumble of roofs and then the brazen blueness of the summer sky. My vision was suddenly obscured by a group of four or five servants hurrying in the opposite direction along the road which we were sharing. Their bare feet kicked up little clouds of dust. They were talking animatedly and hardly glanced into the litter as they went by. A contingent of soldiers swung out and marched past us. They were heavily bearded, with coarse kilts aproned in leather and horned bronze helmets. They ignored us. “Shardana mercenaries,” Hui said tersely.

  The sounds of the great city were more evident now, shouts and the creak of cart wheels, braying of donkeys, and other unidentifiable noises all blending into a hum of activity and industry that formed a faint, wind-shivered background to the gentle slap of water against the water-steps of the noble dwellings we moved slowly past. The road curved inward past these places, and huge walls reared up to our right, their tops hung with bristling palms and drooping tree branches whose shade dappled us. The watersteps were all guarded by men who watched the traffic carefully in spite of the fact that no one was allowed to use this road except those who lived or worked in the palace or the homes of the privileged that fronted the Lake.