I came to myself in a darkness that seeped into my nose and pressed relentlessly against my skin. Thirst cried out from every pore. My head throbbed. I ached with cold, for the cell did not retain the heat of the day but gave out a stinking dankness without the sun. Rising with difficulty I went unsteadily to the door. I could sense but not see the presence of the two guards to either side, and I strained to perceive what was beyond, but there was no moon and I had to imagine the rough ground, and the stables and perhaps even a row of palm trees beside the Waters of Avaris that flowed deeply to join the Nile and from there to the limitless expanse of the Great Green. I had never seen the Great Green, and now I never would. Not with the eyes of my body. But perhaps with the magic eyes of my coffin I would be able to look upon that miracle.
Coffin? Criminals did not receive coffins. They were not embalmed. Their bodies were buried in the sand, and only by diligently searching would the gods be able to find them. And then what? How would I fare in the Judgement Hall, providing the gods were able to put a name to my withering body? My heart would betray me. There would be no scarab placed upon it to prevent it from telling the truth about the evils I had done, and when weighed on the scales against the Feather of Ma’at it would sink with a damning speed. You are twice condemned, Thu, I told myself. Once by mortal judges and once by the verdict of the gods. No happiness at the feet of Osiris for you. Only more darkness, more despair, an eternal cry for light in the lightlessness of the Underworld.
My hands and feet were beginning to swell. With fumbling fingers I lifted Wepwawet and lay on the cot, at first whispering prayers of contrition and remorse and pleas for clemency but then simply saying them in my mind, for my tongue was becoming fat and unwieldy and the effort of drawing breath hurt me. The air rasped over my parched throat.
I slept, oblivion coming upon me with horrifying swiftness, but to my dismay I woke again to daylight and a raging thirst that had me crawling to the door and begging incoherently for water. But my jailors were deaf to my increasing frenzy. It was as though I were already dead. At last one of them spoke without looking at me, without even turning his head. “You may ask for a sword if you wish to end your misery,” he said brusquely. “That is allowed.”
I clung with one hand to the lip of the window as panic finally overtook me and gave me a moment of renewed strength. Screaming and crying and beating at the door with one fist, I gave myself over to madness, and to that fear of the unknown that lurks waiting for everyone doomed to grow old and for whom a last breath is a terrifying certainty.
I do not remember much of the third and fourth days. I cannot describe my desolation, the bouts of delirium, the violent protests of a young and healthy body in the process of extermination. I know that once a face loomed over me and I came to myself sufficiently to recognize one of the guards, but I did not hear him retreat and close the door again. I was sporadically aware of the quality of light in the cell, grey at dawn, dim at noon and briefly red at sunset. The air seemed full of noise until I realized that the sound came from me, it was my breath panting like a suffering dog, and in my lucid periods I tried to concentrate on it as proof that I still lived, that I was still Thu, that time still held me in its grip.
I began to imagine that Kenna was bending over me. He was a pale oval floating in the darkness, his features shifting. “She is far gone,” he whispered. “I do not know if this will be enough.”
Oh, Kenna, I thought. It is enough. Is it not enough? Have I atoned for what I did to you, to Hentmira? Is she here also? I felt his hand beneath my head. A ghostly cup bumped gently against my mouth. My cracked lips opened. The waters of paradise gushed past them. My stomach heaved and I retched.
When next I opened my eyes Kenna was still there, and this time he had more substance. His features did not swim but cast long shadows over his face. The light of Ra haloed him. Once more he raised me and I drank, but before I could ask him if I had perhaps already traversed the Judgement Hall unconsciousness claimed me again. As I plunged into the void I heard Osiris say, “The stench in here is unbearable. Have her washed at once.”
A third time I surfaced, and now there was a lamp on the table and I was drinking, drinking the sweetest water I had ever tasted. It was running down my chin and trickling between my breasts and soaking the filthy mattress on which I lay and I wished I might drown in it. Amunnakht withdrew, carefully lowering my head and placing the cup beside the lamp. I stared up at him dumbly. He dissolved into the shadows and another face took his place. Round cheeks, a full chin, a high brow under a soft linen helmet, bright brown eyes that surveyed me shrewdly. I swallowed several times before I could find enough saliva to form a word. “Majesty,” I croaked. He nodded.
“I see that you are now in your own mind,” he said, “and can understand me well enough. You are an evil and cunning woman, Thu, and you deserve the death that was to be meted out to you. Yet in my divine mercy I have decided to spare your life. I signed the warrant for your execution but I was troubled. I did not sleep well. Memories came to afflict me, and the contents of your petition whispered in my thoughts. I ordered it burned, but I will not forget the list of names. It is possible that you dictated to me the truth. If that is so, and I let you die, I will have committed an offence. Not as great an offence as yours, to be sure, for in your wickedness you sought to destroy your God, but a small tear in the fabric of Ma’at all the same. Time will reveal all. I have decided to send you back to Aswat and there you will stay. I have spoken.”
I struggled to form words, to thank him. I tried to touch him but my hand trembled when I had managed to lift it and besides, it was too late. He had gone as quickly as he had appeared. The Keeper replaced him in my vision, helping me to drink again, wiping my face, drawing a blanket higher over my shoulders, and I found myself crying helplessly like a child. “He is a good God,” Amunnakht said, and I moved my head once in assent, listening. I could no longer hear the laboured panting of my breath. I was going to live.
A week later I was taken from the cell that would have been my tomb, and chained to the mast of a barge bound for the granite quarries of Assuan. No one but the soldiers detailed to secure me to the craft bade me farewell, and when I had woken on the morning of my departure I had been alone. Amunnakht had himself tended me until the night before. I had pressed the statue of my totem into his hands and begged him to see that it was given to little Pentauru. I could no longer cherish and protect my son. Wepwawet must become his mother, guiding and guarding him as the god had done for me. Perhaps the passing of the statue from my hands to his would forge a link between us. Perhaps Wepwawet would draw him to Aswat one day to see the temple of the deity whose likeness had mysteriously companioned him from the cradle. I could only hope. The Keeper agreed to do as I had asked, but when I pleaded further with him to send me word now and then of how the boy was faring he refused. “It is forbidden,” he said firmly. He did not return to see the shackles go around my ankles and wrists. I was sorry, for I had not taken the opportunity to thank him for his care.
I was taken in a closed cart to the docks of Pi-Ramses, fed a meal of sesame paste and bread, and assisted to my place on the enormous craft. The captain, a burly Syrian, watched while my guards secured my chains. He received a scroll from one of them for the mayor of my village then went away without a word. The soldiers also departed, and I was left to watch the mighty city slowly vanish into the pearly glow of early morning.
I was not sorry to leave it behind. I had never known it well. I had come as a captive and I was leaving as one, and my life had been spent within the cocoons of Hui’s house and then the harem. Even the thought of my baby did not conjure regret. That would come later. For the present I sat, ate and slept on a thin pallet under a wide canopy, and for the rest of the time I was content to savour the breezes that caressed me, to hear with an almost overwhelming delight the slap of the Nile against the sides of the barge, to let my eyes explore the glory of a slowly passing vista I had never thou
ght to see again.
I had nothing but the rough shift I wore. A few short months before, I would have been horrified at the prospect of venturing out without my litter, the soothing creams for sunburned skin, a parasol if I should decide to walk, sandals to protect my soft feet, some fruit if I should feel hungry, and of course the guards to keep away curious onlookers.
But now, as I crouched at the foot of the tall mast with the canopy flapping over my head, my hair whipping in my unpainted eyes and my cheeks already reddening with the sun, I experienced a surge of freedom such as I had never known. The chains chafed my delicate ankles where once there had been golden links. I eagerly and with conscious enjoyment ate the plain fare and drank the strong peasant beer placed on the deck for me twice a day, and washed with reverence in the tiny bowl brought to me each dawn. At night I lay watching the stars sparkle in the immensity of the sky while the sailors sang and laughed and the mast above me seemed to reach up and up and spear the brilliant points of light themselves. I had returned from the dead. I had stood on the edge of the chasm of nothingness and had been reclaimed. I could savour life as no other.
We churned past the entrance to the Fayum in the dark, and though I knew it was there I did not sit up to see the channel wind away towards the home I had never inhabited, the fields whose bounty I would never see. I had not been allowed to make any dictations, but Amunnakht had promised to see that the Overseer and his men were paid before the estate passed into other hands. I felt a deep sadness when I remembered how Ramses had surprised me with the deed and how we had journeyed there to see it. My fields had not betrayed me. They had faithfully and obediently yielded their fruits. It was I who had let them down and I grieved quietly while the Fayum dropped away behind me and the dry air of the south began to stir in my nostrils.
Eight days later at noon the barge dropped its two anchors in the middle of the river opposite Aswat. The craft was too large to negotiate the shallows but the captain lowered a small raft and poled me, still in chains, to the bank. The heat was unremitting at that hour. The stiff palms I remembered with a jolt, the configurations of the growth that overhung the muddy water, the haze of white dust hanging in the burning air, all incandescent in the increasing fire of Shemu, reached out to draw me back into their timeless embrace.
As I stumbled up onto the sand beside the small bay where my mother and the other women washed their clothes, the village itself came into view. It was smaller than I remembered, its houses merely mud boxes, its square that I had thought so vast nothing but an uneven patch of earth. Dirty and impoverished, I saw it for the first time as I saw myself, sturdy, strong, indomitable, surviving the vagaries of rulers and the depredations of war with its roots sunk deep into the soil and its nourishment the hallowed traditions of antiquity. I had expected to find an end, but Aswat greeted me with mute promise.
My mother, father and brother were standing on the edge of the square, together with the mayor. The Keeper had sent a message to them and doubtless, in the way of the village, the word of the barge’s approach had spread long before it had appeared. They did not speak and I did not look at them as the captain struck off my chains. The flesh of my ankles and wrists had been rubbed raw. My face was red and peeling from the now unaccustomed exposure to the sun I had endured. When the man had finished, he thrust the scroll my guard had given him at the little group, picked up the chains, and waded back into the river. It was done.
No one spoke. A lizard skittered across the square and flicked into the thin shade of a bush. I saw movement within several of the doorways and I knew that though my father had probably requested the other villagers to let me disembark in peace, they were watching me from the shelter of their houses. I looked at him. His face was etched with deep lines that the sun had hammered home and his hair was greying, but his eyes were as clear and warm as ever. “Welcome back, Thu,” he said. As if his words had broken a dam, my mother stepped forward.
“You have forever disgraced this family,” she said in a low voice. “You are a wicked girl, and I can hardly hold up my head with my neighbours because of you. Even if I wanted to take you back as my assistant, the other women will not let you near them for fear you might do them harm. How could you? Did I not raise you well?” She would have gone on, but my father silenced her abruptly.
“This is not the time for recriminations,” he said. “We must hear the Good God’s instructions regarding Thu’s future, then we will take her in out of the heat.” I glanced at Pa-ari. He had neither moved nor spoken. The mayor was pursing his lips officiously. Then he blushed and passed the scroll to Pa-ari. I noticed that my brother’s hand was shaking as he began to read it aloud.
“To the honourable mayor of Aswat and the High Priest of the God Wepwawet, greetings. The following dispositions shall be made of the criminal Thu. She shall regard herself as an exile from the whole of Egypt but for the village of Aswat. Such men of the village who are willing shall build for her a hut against the wall of the temple of Wepwawet and she shall live there, earning her living by performing such tasks as the priests of Wepwawet shall assign to her. She shall not own any land, jewellery, a boat, or any goods other than those the priests deem necessary for the sustaining of her life. She shall not be allowed to possess any herbs or medicines, nor may she treat any illnesses or diseases within the area of her exile. She shall go barefoot at all times. Once a year the High Priest of Wepwawet shall dictate to me a scroll describing her state. It is to be remembered that she is still a possession of the Horus Throne, and as such may not be betrothed or engage in any sexual relationship with any man other than Pharaoh himself. She may swim in the Nile whenever she wishes, and she may cultivate a garden for her own use and for the ease of her ka.” Pa-ari let the scroll roll up and handed it back to the mayor. “It is signed by Pharaoh himself,” he said. Then he stepped forward and enfolded me in his arms. “I love you, Thu,” he said. “There is lentil stew and Mother’s beer waiting for you. It could all be worse. The gods have been kind.” Yes, they had been kind. They had chosen to forget me after all. And as I held Pa-ari’s hand and walked with him across the village square I suddenly realized that in one month I could celebrate my birth. I would be seventeen years old.
My father and Pa-ari built a two-roomed house for me in the shadow of Wepwawet’s wall and I took up residence there, going every day into the temple to sweep or clean, to carry away baskets of priestly linen which I would wash in the river, and sometimes to take such mundane dictation as an inventory of the god’s utensils or lists of supplies to be sent for from Thebes. I dug and planted a garden. Dutifully I visited my mother, although she remained ashamed to acknowledge me and I was always careful not to appear at her door when she was entertaining her friends. My father often came to sit at my door and talk, or drink the foul beer I made. He had fashioned a cot, a table and a chair for me and I had woven for myself two sheaths to wear, a covering for the cot and two cushions. I had begged dishes from the priests. Other than those simple things I was destitute.
Isis had produced a girl, a daughter for Pa-ari. I did not see as much of him as I would have liked even though we both worked in the temple, for his world was bounded by his new family and I was on its periphery, but sometimes he would appear at sunset and we would talk of the old days, of our childhood. Only once I told him of my life in the harem and of the terrible thing I had done, and I did not mention how Hui and the others had used me. It was not shame that held me back. Sometimes I grew afraid that Hui would send an assassin to kill me because of all I knew, and I did not want Pa-ari to be a victim also.
When I had been in Aswat for six months I began to think of my son. My life in the village was so divorced from everything I had known in the Delta that for a long time the harem and the palace and all that had passed there seemed like a particularly vivid dream, but gradually Pentauru regained his reality and my heart ached for him. I spent much time wondering how he was. Were the members of the merchant’s family treating him
well? Was it possible that one so young could retain any memories of his true mother, perhaps flashes of her face? Would a certain perfume bring back to him an unease, a feeling of discontent that seemed to have no root in his present? Would the sparkle of light on a gem, the flutter of fine white linen, bring a sadness brimming into his heart? Had Ramses forgotten him altogether, or did his thoughts sometimes stray to his beautiful, fractious concubine and the child he had fathered on her?
I no longer felt beautiful. My hands became rough and calloused. My feet, forbidden any protection from the elements, grew splayed and hard. No kohl surrounded my eyes, only a fan of tiny lines as I squinted day after day against the sun, and my hair lost its sheen and softness and grew brittle. Yet for many months I was content to revel in the sheer miracle of my continued existence. Though I worked like the lowest harem servant, though the villagers at best ignored me and at worst threw dung at me for marking their village as the place from which a murderess had sprung, I was happy.
I took to wandering in the desert during the night hours while the village and the temple slept. I would rest for a while after sunset, and then I would creep out behind my hut to where the cultivation ended and the sand began. There I would tear off my sheath and run naked under the moon until I had exhausted myself, shouting and laughing, drunk with my isolation and the exhilaration of the endless horizon that stretched, stark and starlit, for as far as I could see.
Stripped of everything, I remembered the moment when waiting for word that Pharaoh was dead I had almost succumbed to the peculiar urge to walk away, out of the harem, out of the city, until I came to the desert where I could begin my life again, innocent and free. That urge had been satisfied. Dancing with the cold, shifting sand under my bare toes I was indeed innocent. I was free.
House of Dreams Page 51
