“Please, Ramses,” I choked. “Please. You do not know what it is like to be surrounded by women and children every day, to be unable to escape that noisy chaos, to have lost any purpose in life, to dress and paint for no one but yourself! I am afraid of the harem. It will pull me into its suffocating embrace and I will disappear. Forgive me if I have offended you, and show your mercy, I beg! Do not condemn me to such a fate! Let me go, Ramses! Let me go!” His face was now a mask of disapproval, and even before I had finished speaking he was looking past me and snapping his fingers. I whirled about. A burly guard was approaching purposefully. “Oh, Ramses, no!” I cried out in despair. “For the love you once bore me, have pity!” But he had already seated himself again and was signalling curtly to the Vizier.
“Continue, To,” he said brusquely. The men in the room loosened and turned their attention back to the business I had so abruptly interrupted. To cleared his throat. The scribes picked up their reed pens. No one was looking at me as the guard firmly grasped my arm and I was marched between the columns and out into the sunshine. Once on the path I shook myself free.
“I know my way back to my quarters without an escort,” I said haughtily. “Unless of course you were ordered to take me to my door and lock me in.” He hesitated then bowed and turned on his heel and I recrossed the paving, found Disenk’s cloak where I had left it, and arranging it over my arm I began to walk back the way I had come.
I was in a state of shock. The scene in Pharaoh’s office was still a confusion of jumbled words and feelings in my mind but I knew that before long the whole nasty exchange would arrange itself into a memory that would burn and haunt me for ever. I found myself on grass and realized that I had been lurching along the path like a drunkard. I was light-headed and weak. Carefully I kept my eyes on my sandalled feet, the leather glaringly white against the beige flagstones, the pretty gems sparkling as I moved.
A shadow formed ahead of me, and glancing up I saw that I was now level with Amunnakht’s office and the Keeper himself stood outside it in conversation with a scribe. They broke off and bowed as I approached, and Amunnakht shot me a puzzled glance. I went right up to him.
“I would like to visit my mentor, the Seer,” I said, amazed that my voice could be so even and natural. “Have I your permission, Keeper?” The request had been unpremeditated, an instinctive need to run to the one place where I could re-establish my wholeness. Amunnakht looked along the path the way I had come, then back to me. “Yes, I have been in the palace without your leave,” I said impatiently, “and Pharaoh has reprimanded me severely. I promise I will not do it again, and I hope that my rash action will not bring a similar tongue-lashing to you, Amunnakht, for not keeping a closer watch on your charges. I expect you will want to consult with him about my request but I doubt if he will object. He will see visiting Hui as a lesser evil.” I managed a wry smile. The Keeper looked mystified.
“You have my permission subject to that of the King, Lady Thu,” he answered. “I will approach him with the matter as soon as he has finished the ministerial business of the day.” I did not wait for more but nodded and immediately went on my way. The interview with Ramses was beginning to coalesce into a progression of knife-sharp images and I did not want to feel their cuts until I was able to cry in the privacy of my own cell.
I spent the afternoon on my couch with my baby cradled fiercely in my arms, sobbing out my humiliation, but towards sunset Amunnakht sent word that the King would allow me to visit Hui if I was escorted by a harem guard. To make sure I do not run away, I thought grimly as I laid Pentauru in the basket that was rapidly becoming too small for him, and ordered Disenk to repair my face paint.
While she valiantly attempted to disguise my swollen eyes and reddened nose I stared at my unprepossessing reflection in the copper mirror and picked at the cold goose and raw celery on the table beside me. The fate to which the King had so spitefully condemned me was utterly unacceptable and something must be done, but what? Hui would know. Hui cared about me, even if Pharaoh did not. He would suggest something clever. Surely there was no problem without a solution.
So I tried to cheer and strengthen myself as Disenk’s cool hands moved over my skin, but my brave thoughts were no more than the shreds of a cold comfort and I had to struggle to stop my tears from flowing once more as I bent to kiss my sleeping son and went out alone into the warm red evening.
I had no taste for the calm beauty of the sinking sun as it tinted the Lake of the Residence on its journey westward. I sat tensely in the cabin of my skiff, jaw clenched and hands pressed between my knees, blind to the pink glitter of my craft’s wake and the gentle slap of the wind-worried sail. Hui’s watersteps came into view like the vision of something for which I had yearned over many weary years.
Leaving my helmsman and his rowers to tether the boat and wait for me under the trees beside the water, I walked under the pylon, past the porter’s cubicle where I exchanged a few immediately forgotten words with the old man, and along the path to the house. As I went, the sun finally disappeared below the horizon, falling into the mouth of Nut, and twilight crept about me.
I stepped through the garden gate and onto the paving of the courtyard, and as I did so Hui came striding round the corner of the house. We saw each other at the same time and halted. The gloom of the coming night began to gather between us, and all at once it seemed to me that we had become participants in a mysterious ritual or performers in a play whose origins were anonymous and threatening. I had imagined flinging myself into his sheltering arms, crying out my pain against his soothing chest, but as I looked at him he seemed so strangely separate from everything around me, everything familiar in my daily life that I took for granted, that I could only stare at him with a kind of helpless ache in my heart. “Hui,” I said, “I am in trouble. I am afraid.”
He did not speak. Inclining his head he came silently across the courtyard, a sliver of paleness in the soft dusk, only a loincloth breaking the clean lines of his body. He had obviously been about to go swimming. Planting a kiss on my forehead he brushed by me and I followed him back into a garden already pregnant with shadows.
He led me away from the path and through the shrubbery. We skirted the lotus pond, plunging deeper into the tangled growth beneath the trees, until we came to the foot of the wall that divided his estate from his neighbour’s. There he turned and nodded. “Tell me,” he said. It was as though his words had breached a dam in me. Fists clenched, eyes on the dark mud bricks of the structure behind him, I told him how I had been forbidden to return to my quarters, how my request for an audience had been denied, how in stubborn desperation I had gone to Pharaoh’s office and begged to return to his bed, begged to return to my land in the Fayum. “He has no right to cast me off like this!” I cried out in the end. “I have done my best to be everything to him, to please him in every way, and how am I rewarded, Hui? He has thrown me away like so much rubbish, tossed me from him as though I was a soiled kilt he no longer wishes to wear! He humiliated me before his ministers. He spoke to me coldly, as though he did not know who I am! I hate him!”
Suddenly I closed my mouth, for with those words came the shock of a great relief. It was true. I hated him. Under the innumerable stings of wounded pride, disillusionment, rejection and crushed hopes was a sea of loathing for the man on whom I had bestowed my virginity, my affection and my loyalty, and who had rewarded me for these gifts with a fickle indifference.
“I hate him,” I repeated in a whisper. “I wish he was dead. I could kill him for what he has done to me.”
There was a long silence. Hui had not stirred throughout my tirade. He was watching me carefully, his arms loose at his sides. Around us the night was deepening. Colour had bled from the trees leaving them as dim ghosts trembling and murmuring above our heads. Darkness was seeping from the ground to envelop us in secrecy and Hui’s white body was becoming grey and insubstantial. I could hear his breath, a calm, measured sound, but his intense gaze beli
ed the serenity of its rhythm.
At last he spoke, and it was as though I had been waiting for his words to expose and confirm the black thing already fully formed in my heart. “Could you?” he said quietly. “Could you indeed? Then why don’t you? He has treated you despicably. He has condemned you to a life of insupportable boredom and utter predictability. He has shamed and belittled you. None of it is your fault. You have done your best for him and it has availed you nothing.” He stepped closer to me and the shadows slid over his pale face and settled in the hollows of his unearthly red eyes. “He treats Egypt with the same uncaring callousness,” his voice went on hypnotically. “He would not be missed. You have tried to help this country and you have failed through no fault of your own. Killing Pharaoh would be an act of kindness.”
As I watched his sensuous lips close over the strong teeth, all passion left me and I went very still inside. An act of kindness, I thought deliberately. Oh no, my Master. An act of thwarted ambition on my part and an act of treason on yours. But whatever the motives, we are cast from the same mould, you and I, attracted to each other like lust to young flesh, like thirst to heady wine, like rage to revenge …
“You always knew it would come to this, didn’t you, Hui?” I said slowly. “Even if I had been able to complete the impossible task of swaying the King’s policies, a task you knew was probably beyond any human capability, you still saw his murder as ultimately necessary. That is why you have never really tried to influence Ramses through your gift of Seeing, isn’t it? You might have been able to sway him to less damaging political decisions but you did not bother, for you wanted him dead. All these years you have waited for the right time.” He did not reply. He went on staring at me expressionlessly, breathing easily, but I thought I sensed the glimmer of a smile on that well-formed mouth. “And your friends,” I continued, feeling my way cautiously through a maze that was suddenly becoming clear in my mind. “That arrogant snob Paibekamun, your brother Paiis, General Banemus, Panauk, Pentu, Mersura, they want him dead too, don’t they? Will the army take over Egypt then, Hui, with the Prince settling comfortably on the Horus Throne? How long have you all been meeting and plotting, dreaming your treasonous dreams? Is the Prince a part of it all?”
I should have felt used, betrayed. After all, they had seen in me a chance to bring their aim a little closer to fruition and I had meant less to them than the cups from which they had carelessly drunk their wine. But I did not. I shared their desire to rid Egypt of its ruler. I had my own reasons now. I was one of them. I belonged. Was that something Hui, in his devious wisdom, had known would happen?
“You are an astute young woman,” Hui said, and the smile I had glimpsed broke out. It contained no warmth. “What you say is true, and I have told you many times the reasons for our actions. But the Prince is not yet involved. We believe that once his father is removed he will be amenable to our suggestions for re-establishing Ma’at in Egypt, for there will no longer be a barrier of loyalty between himself and his own good sense. But we will approach the Prince when the time comes. Are you with us?” His hands came out, grey moths in the dimness, and I felt them cup my cheeks. “You have killed before,” he whispered, his breath mingling with a hint of his perfume, jasmine, “and for a much less laudable reason. I know you, Thu. Sooner or later, with or without my help, you would have come to the same decision, for you are too proud and too unscrupulous to spend the rest of your life imprisoned in the harem.” His fingers moved against my skin. “Wouldn’t you rather take the chance of becoming queen to a vigorous young king when he comes to the throne and chooses his women than wither away as the cast-off of a fat old man?” I pulled away from his caress.
“Why should I do it?” I asked sharply. “Why risk myself? Let Paibekamun rid you of your bane!”
“Paibekamun would be immediately suspect, along with all those who are in constant attendance on the King,” Hui retorted. “But you are merely one among hundreds of women and moreover, you are no longer admitted to the royal presence. No hint of guilt would brush you.”
“If I am no longer admitted into Ramses’ presence,” I snapped back, “then how am I to get close enough to … to kill him?” The words tumbled from my tongue, their taste darkly exotic and yet familiar. “It is no use trying to poison his food or drink. He has his Butlers taste everything.” My heart had begun to beat more rapidly and one thought after another flashed across my mind.
I turned from Hui and began to pace, vaguely aware of the new coolness of the grass beneath my sandals, the faint pricking of the first stars above my head. “I suppose I could contrive to feed his lion something that would inflame the beast, but it might attack someone blameless. An accident by water or out on the desert is too difficult to plan. Help me, Hui!” But I did not look at him and he made no move as I went to and fro before him.
For a while I pondered feverishly, a fire like the intoxication of wine creeping slowly through my veins and making me giddy. Then all at once an idea so diabolical, so delicious struck me that I grunted and came to a halt. Of course, of course. I ran to Hui. “You must give me arsenic,” I blurted. “I cannot feed it to him directly, but I will put it into the precious oil with which I used to massage him. I will make sure that the new favourite, Hentmira, slathers it all over him with her loving hands. No one will suspect the oil, and if they do, it will be Hentmira who takes the blame.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” he said. His voice was husky, vibrant with the same excitement I felt. “But what if she then accuses you?” I grasped both his arms and shook him.
“Only Hunro will be able to connect me with the oil, and she will deny my involvement. She is one of us, isn’t she?” He nodded. “It is perfect, Hui. Nothing can go wrong!”
“A word of caution,” Hui said. “I know exactly what the arsenic will do if it is placed in food or drink but if it is applied to the skin I am not sure how quickly it will react. I have performed no experiments to determine such a thing. I think it will depend on how large an area is covered, whether the body is sweating or not, how high a concentration of poison is in the oil, but I am not sure. It will certainly destroy Hentmira as well as Ramses if the dose is high enough to achieve your aim.”
“Then give me so much that the outcome will be certain,” I retorted. “Why should I care about Hentmira? Let her succumb to the dangers of the harem if she is stupid enough to believe that Pharaoh’s favour renders her invulnerable.” The image of myself, heavily pregnant and dishevelled, tear-stained and distressed, flashed across my inner vision. Hentmira had bowed to me in the narrow passage and had murmured a respectful greeting but the door of Pharaoh’s bedchamber had closed behind her while I had been left, distraught and shamed, to creep back to my cell in the darkness. Recklessness seized me, a delirious surge of madness, and it seemed to affect Hui too for he pulled me against him, lifted my chin, and lowered his mouth onto mine.
I closed my eyes, and as I did so all the old yearnings that had plagued me during my stay in his house came back to me. My hands found his hair, that thick, silver mane, and I slid my fingers into its silkiness. He tasted of jasmine. I did not know which sense to plunge into first, so powerful were the messages from all of them, but it did not matter, I could let them all engulf me, for this man was Hui my friend, Hui my mentor, Hui the phantom lover of my girlish imagination, and in his arms I would find the fulfilment I had always sought. I whispered his name as my knees refused to hold me up any longer and his arms encircled me, lowering me to the ground.
There was no tenderness in our lovemaking. Both of us were on fire with the frenzy of the plot that linked us, and as it consumed us we devoured each other. But there was no crude fumbling, no dislocating awkwardness as we fought to possess the essence of the mood and one another. That night remains one of my saddest memories, for it was not the unexpressed love between us that drove us together as it should have been. The harmony of our bodies, the complete satiation of our lust, came from a source
of corruption and thus did not heal as it might have done. Yet I tasted him, felt and touched him, kissed and fondled the foreign, moon-tainted flesh I had craved, I think, since I first saw it, and received at last from him the capitulation of his will.
Afterwards we lay panting in the grass, his head slumped across my breasts, until our breath slowed and I began to doze. Then he stirred and rose, sighing. “Wait here,” he ordered, and sweeping up his rumpled loincloth he walked away in the direction of the house. Propping myself on one elbow I watched him go, a column of moving paleness soon lost in the gloom. By the time he returned and placed a phial of white powder in my hand I had tidied myself and was becoming anxious. “Use it well,” he murmured, and bent to kiss me. “I love you, Thu.”
“I love you also, Master,” I whispered back, but he was already leaving me, flitting between the palm trunks until the night swallowed him up. When I could no longer see him I glanced into the sky. There was no moon.
The Children’s Quarters were quiet and I was able to cross the courtyard to my cell unremarked. Disenk was asleep on her mat before the cell door and I stepped over her carefully, not wanting to wake her. She had left one lamp burning on the table by my couch. After a swift glance into Pentauru’s basket where he lay naked and spread-eagled in unconsciousness I got my box of medicines, and carrying it into the pool of light I opened it and extracted the pretty honey alabaster jar which contained the blend of oils I used for my massages. I removed the stopper and looked about quickly. All was still. I did not hesitate, did not give myself time to think, unless it was a fleeting moment of reassurance as my eye passed over the cushion containing the Prince’s scroll. Gingerly I eased the wax from the phial Hui had given me, and careful not to spill any of the contents on my skin I tapped the powder into the jar. As I watched it form a small pyramid on the surface of the oil I found that I was sweating.
House of Dreams Page 45
