by Paul Doherty
He picked up a piece of duck, dipped it into the herb sauce and, leaning across, gently fed me. ‘I like you, Mahu, Baboon of the South. You are a child of the Kap. Now tell me about yourself.’
I had no choice. I chattered like a bird on a branch about Aunt Isithia, my father, my years in the Kap, Horemheb, Rameses and the rest. The Veiled One turned his head slightly as if he had difficulty hearing. He stopped eating and listened intently, now and again interrupting with a sharp question. When I had finished he leaned back against the cushions, head against the wall, cradling his wine cup.
‘I hate beer.’ He looked at me from under heavy lidded eyes. ‘How old do you say I am?’
‘About my age.’
‘Which is?’
‘About fourteen summers.’
‘Have you had a woman, Mahu?’
‘Yes,’ I confessed.
He leaned forward, his face rather vexed. ‘But not last night?’ His voice became rather petulant. ‘Not today, not last night. You have been purified.’ He stared intently through the linen curtain behind as if seeking assurances from someone beyond it. Then he relaxed and laughed noisily.
‘I cannot take a woman.’ He glanced down at the table. ‘They say I am unable to.’ He gestured towards his groin. ‘A curse from the gods. What is your favourite god, Mahu?’
I was tempted to reply the Aten, the Sun Disc.
‘Well?’ The Veiled One’s head came up, a curious look on his face.
‘I have no god.’ The words came out. Tell the truth, I thought.
‘No god?’ He reached over and caressed my cheek. ‘Are you sure, Mahu? Not Seth or Montu, Isis or Ptah? Why not? If you repeated those words in the House of Instruction …’
‘I’d be beaten,’ I replied, the wine now making its presence felt. My face felt flushed, my tongue thicker and heavier than I would want.
‘No god.’ The Veiled One blinked. He turned to his side and brought out a small beautiful coffer of sycamore wood with bands of copper, its corners inlaid with silver and gold. He moved the platters and cups, placed this gently on the table and pulled back the lid. ‘Here are the gods, Mahu.’ He lifted out small statues of all the great deities of Egypt, except their heads had been removed: Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Seth the Destroyer, Montu of War. ‘Baubles!’ The Veiled One weighed two in his hand. ‘Plaster and stone and nothing else. They laugh at me, you know?’
His face had changed, no longer beautiful with his jutting mouth and those half-closed, glinting eyes. ‘The shaven pates, the soft heads, the priests – they told my father to keep me away, to place me here so here I have sat, Mahu.’ He threw the statues back in the box.
I was tempted to ask him about what I had seen in the glade earlier that morning but decided to hold my peace. Abruptly his mood changed.
‘Come on, finish your meal.’
I did so even as he filled my wine cup. I was becoming alarmed at this strange person with his changeable moods. Sometimes he would talk to me directly, at other times he would break off and turn to his side as if there was someone I couldn’t see sitting next to him. He would eat quickly but tidily, wiping his lips with his fingers, cleaning them on a napkin. The questions came thick and fast.
Had I entered the House of War? What was it like to lie with a girl? Which of the boys were my friends? Did I ever visit my aunt? His mood turned ugly whenever he mentioned the priests. I fought against the drowsiness, a sense of oppression. At the end of the meal the Veiled One rested back against the wall.
‘Shall I share a secret with you, Mahu? My brother Tuthmosis, he is kind.’ He wagged a finger at me. ‘I am glad you respect him. You must go soon.’ He played with the ring on his finger. ‘Mother will be here shortly. I shall speak to her about you but ask her not to tell Father. The Magnificent One,’ his voice turned rich with sarcasm, ‘does not like my name to be mentioned. If he’d had his way, I would have been drowned in the Nile. Mother argued differently. She says I am touched by the gods. We have our secrets.’
‘But you do not believe in gods?’
‘True,’ the Veiled One murmured. ‘For the time being true.’ He cocked his head slightly. ‘Do you believe in magic, Mahu?’
‘I know some tricks,’ I replied.
The Veiled One giggled, fingers covering his mouth. ‘Well, you’d best go.’ His hand fell away. He stretched across and ran a finger around my lips. ‘I have met you and wish you peace Mahu, Baboon of the South. One day we shall meet again.’
‘Your son has acted for you.
The Great Ones tremble
when they see your sword.’
(Spell 174: The Book of the Dead)
Chapter 2
My encounter with the Veiled One was brief but startling. I wondered if something might happen but no reference was made to my secret visit nor did I receive any message from the Silent Pavilion. My encounter also coincided with ‘the children of the Kap’ (though we were young men now) being more included in the life of the Malkata Palace, as Crown Prince Tuthmosis matured. What the Veiled One had told me quickened my interest in his parents whom I’d glimpsed from afar; now I listened avidly to the gossip. Old Weni, who was growing more and more dependent on the beer jar, was an excellent source of stories, if he kept sober. Not content with the henket or barley beer, he had moved on to the sernet, rich dark beer which would soon bring you into the presence of Hathor, Lady of Drunkenness.
I would often join him in the shade of an olive grove near a rather dank pool where the leaves were thick and lush. He’d lounge back against a tree, a basket of garlic sausage or grilled chicken covered with celery sauce on his lap.
‘Oh yes,’ he’d slurp, tapping his fleshy nose and winking at me. ‘The Magnificent One is truly blessed by Amun. He had a harem.’ Weni stumbled over the words Per Khe Nret ‘The House of Women’. ‘Princesses from every nation under the sun.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Mitanni, Hittites, Babylonians, Nubians, Libyans, the fairest of the field to satisfy his every whim.’ He’d slump closer, eyes glazed, breath thick with the smell of beer. ‘But the real power, I’ll tell you the real power. It’s his wife, the Great Queen, Mistress of the House, the Divine One Tiye.’
‘Where’s she from?’ I asked.
‘She’s not a foreign princess.’ Weni squinted up at the sky. ‘Pharaohs have always married foreign princesses but the Magnificent One was captivated by her since the days of his youth. Tiye the Beautiful.’ He shook his head. ‘And she was exquisite, Mahu. Oh,’ he caught himself, ‘she still is, small but perfectly formed, with strange red hair and those almond-shaped eyes. If she was a cat they’d glow in the dark.’
I lifted my hand for silence. Strange, isn’t it, how the relationship between teacher and pupil can change? Weni was becoming more and more dependent on me. The rest would tease or taunt him but I would talk to him and use the gifts I had received from Aunt Isithia to buy him a jug of beer. I’d do errands for him, fetching this or fetching that. I was growing as cunning as a mongoose and intended to use him to learn more about the Malkata. Horemheb had once said a strange thing to me. I’d made some funny remark about an official at the court. Horemheb was tying up his sandal and chose to do it close to me.
‘Watch what you say, Baboon of the South,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Around here, even the trees hear.’
I had taken the warning to heart but that olive grove, as always, seemed deserted. If anyone approached, the undergrowth and leaves would betray him.
‘Lady Tiye?’ I prompted.
‘Lady Tiye.’ Weni shook his head drunkenly. ‘Generous with favours, Great King’s wife, Beloved of Nekhbet. She’s from Akhmin, hundreds of miles to the North, in the Ninth Nome of Egypt where they worship Min the God of Male Fertility. Lady Tiye was a priestess there. They say,’ his face came closer, ‘she knows more about the art of love than a legion of courtesans.’
‘And the harem?’ I insisted.
Weni waved his hand as if wafting away a fly. ‘More for show than an
ything else, though rumour has it that, as he gets older, the Magnificent One’s tastes have developed. He likes to watch some of his women dance whilst the others fondle him.’
‘And the Divine One’s children?’
Weni was too sly to reveal a hidden scandal.
‘Oh, there’s Prince Tuthmosis,’ he glanced out of the corner of his eye, ‘and some daughters.’ He glared blearily at me and turned the conversation to how soon I would enter the House of War.
‘My days will end and yours will begin,’ he’d add mournfully. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you go, you clever goose.’ A reference, of course, to the disappearance of his beloved pet. However, I could play Weni at his own game and I wouldn’t be drawn.
The real leader of the Kap was Crown Prince Tuthmosis, a hard-bodied, lean young man with an imperious face and manner and a grating voice. About two months after my meeting with the Veiled One, the Prince gathered us together and announced that we would stay in residence here but enter the House of War under the direct supervision of Hotep the Wise, his father’s close friend and councillor who rejoiced in the title of God’s Father, Scribe of Recruits, ‘Overseer of all Works’. Hotep was a legend: a commoner from Athribitis in the Delta, he’d been promoted high in the Royal Circle. He was the overseer of the building works of the Magnificent One, from the Great Green to beyond the Third Cataract: temples, statues, shrines, palaces and obelisks all to the glory of Amun-Ra and his son, Amenhotep the Magnificent.
A week later Hotep arrived, tall and thin-faced, with patrician features. He must have passed his sixtieth summer. He dressed like a priest, head all shaven and devoid of any ornaments. He was joined by Colonel Perra of the Maryannou (the Braves of the King), seconded from the Regiment of Seth, a burly young man with a thickset body and the harsh face of a professional wrestler. He would be our tutor in the arts of war. Weni was ignored, pushed aside to sit on his bench and drink beer. Hotep gathered us in the courtyard and, with little ceremony, stood on a bench. He carried a small fan in his right hand which he kept tapping against his thigh. For a while he just stood studying each of our faces.
‘I am,’ he began in a carrying voice, ‘a truly excellent scribe. The first to calculate everything in To-mery. I have been inducted into the gods’ books. I have studied the words of Thoth. I have penetrated the gods’ secrets and learned all their mysteries. I have been consulted on their every aspect. I have directed the King’s likeness in every hard stone, supervising the work of his statues. I never imitated what had gone before. There has never been anyone like me since the founding of the Two Lands.’
Hotep the Wise paused, a smile on his lips. ‘I have taken a vow to Ma’at. My words are true. And why do I tell you this? You are children of the Kap. Soon you will enter the service of the Divine One. You will work in the House of Rejoicing and the will of the Divine One will be your pleasure. In doing his will, if you imitate me, you will find great favour. Do you understand?’
We were kneeling before him on the hard ground and made obeisance, noses pressed into the dust.
‘Good!’ Hotep climbed down from the bench. Colonel Perra told us to stand, and we hurriedly obeyed. Hotep moved down the line, pausing to speak now and again. He stopped before me and tapped me lightly on the cheek with his fan.
‘You are Mahu, son of Seostris.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
The day was hot, the sun had risen high and we had been exercising before God’s Father had arrived. I was coated in dust and aware of the trickle of sweat down my face.
‘A good soldier, your father.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
‘And you are nephew of Isithia, the lady of the fly whisk which she can wield so expertly.’
I caught his look of cynical amusement and wondered if he had been one of my aunt’s clients as well as the reason for me being included in the Kap. He moved closer to me, away from Colonel Perra. ‘Mahu the Baboon,’ he whispered. ‘A young man who knows his way around the palace, who can creep through the trees like a shadow.’
I stiffened and recalled Horemheb’s words. Hotep tapped me again on the face. ‘Do you have anything to say, Mahu?’
‘He who spits in the sky,’ I quoted the proverb, ‘will find spittle on his head.’
Hotep grinned. ‘So you have nothing to say?’
‘Except that I am honoured by your presence, Your Excellency, and that you have deigned to take notice of me.’
The smile disappeared. ‘Oh Mahu, Mahu, don’t worry, I have taken close notice of you.’
He moved on to Sobeck standing beside me. This time his voice was louder. Sobeck had grown into a handsome young man with a boyish smile and a lazy charm; a superb athlete, his hard, golden-skinned body often attracted the attention of the girls, as well as Maya’s who pined for him like some lovelorn maid.
‘Sobeck.’ Hotep, I am sure, intended me to hear. ‘Do you know the story about Babylon, Sobeck?’
‘Which story?’ my comrade replied.
‘About the Royal Harem. When the King dies he is buried in a deep pit. Those who have served him follow him there taking poison, being wafted to the Far Horizon by the music of blind harpists who will also accompany him into the West.’
Hotep glanced quickly at me. I stared ahead. Colonel Perra had gone back further up the line to talk to Horemheb.
‘You’ve heard the proverb, Sobeck,’ Hotep continued. ‘If you wish to keep the friendship of any household you enter, as either a visitor, a brother or a friend, whatever you do, never approach the women.’ He tapped Sobeck on the chest. ‘Remember what I said.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
Once we were dismissed I took Sobeck aside.
‘He was warning you,’ I accused.
‘No, he was threatening,’ Sobeck laughed, ‘and I think he was doing the same to you.’
‘You should be careful,’ I advised, grabbing him by the shoulder. Sobeck glanced at my hand but I didn’t take it away. ‘There’s a spy amongst us.’
‘How do you know that, Mahu?’ Sobeck fluttered his eyelids. ‘What have they found out about you?’ He tapped me playfully on the cheek and walked away.
I now regarded my companions with unease. Sobeck made no attempt to hide his love affairs but Hotep had been hinting at something more than mere dalliance with a kitchen girl. I was different. I thought no one knew about my meeting with the Veiled One. Then I recalled squatting in that glade. How did the Veiled One know I was there? Were he and his escort so keen-eyed? Or had he been warned that he was under observation? The morning I was taken to the Silent Pavilion everything had been prepared, as if he’d been waiting for me.
Hotep’s arrival brought other changes, a quickening of pace like that of a drumbeat. The children of Kap had always taken part in the festivals. The Departure of Osiris, the Festival of Intoxication, Opet, the Feast of the Valley and the Festival of Beautiful Meeting. We had always associated these great days with food: loaves of bread, round, triangular or conical, enriched with eggs, butter and milk, and sweetened with coriander and cinnamon. After the bread came succulent water melons, sliced pomegranates and luscious bunches of grapes, with fresh gazelle or sweet hare meat, accompanied by the finest wines, either the Irep Neffer, the very good wine, or the Irep Maa, the genuine wine. We’d eat and drink till our bellies bloated, sampling these wines laced with honey, spices, myrrh and pistachio resin. Gorging ourselves on this plunder from the royal kitchens, we’d sit out in the courtyard, the night lit by aromatic jars or pottery bowls full of oil, their floating linen wicks glowing brightly against the dark. The only time we’d pause was to repeat the lines taught us by Weni:
‘Ankh, Was and Neb;
All life, power and protection for the Divine
One.
Ka Nakht Kha Em Ma at,
Amenhotep the Fierce-Eyed Lion,
The Strong Bull appearing in truth,
Lord of the Two Lands,
Scourge and Smiter of vile Asiat
ics.’
Afterwards we would chant to the Goddess of Intoxication:
‘Oh sing to Hathor the Golden,
The Lady of the Turquoise.
Send sweet pleasures for the Lord of the Two Lands,
Protect he who lives in truth.
Make him healthy in the East of the sky,
Prosperous on the far horizon,
Let him live for a million jubilees.’
We would all sing this, swaying on our feet but, of course, the Divine One was a distant figure, glimpsed on his royal barge, The Dazzling Power of Aten. He’d be adorned in his Coat of Jubilees and Robes of Rejoicing, brilliantly coloured as if a thousand butterflies and gorgeous flowers had clustered together. A distant figure, he and the Great Lady Tiye would sit on their thrones under ornate canopies, adorned with heavy jewelled pectorals, gold armlets and bracelets. They were always surrounded by fan-bearers, protected from the sun and the wind by gloriously thick pink-dyed ostrich plumes drenched in perfume. We’d glimpse his crown, blue, white and red as well as that of the Great Wife Lady Tiye’s, a solar disc between the Horns of Hathor, with tall feathers, a spitting uraeus – a dazzling image of swiftly passing colour and glory.
We regarded this magnificence as we would the beauty of the stars, always there but very distant. Hotep changed all that. He wanted to impress upon us that not only were we part of such glory, we had been born to serve it. He took us on well-conducted tours of the great Malkata Palace, be it the Magnificent One’s funeral temple or the splendid harbour he had built for Lady Tiye’s barge at Biket-Abu. We were taken through the well cultivated wall gardens and into the palace proper, a residence of vivid colour with painted tiled floors which depicted the People of the Nine Bows, the enemies of Egypt, captives under the imperial sandal. The walls and pillars of the palace were festooned with green spirals, golden bull heads, leaping red-and-white calves, and luscious paintings of the rich papyrus groves of the Nile with its flowing water and brilliantly plumed birds.