The King's Man

by Pauline Gedge

  A puff of wind found him, lifting his tangled mane of hair and pressing the kilt briefly against his thighs. He had wandered to the wall dividing his garden from that of the King and was about to turn back when he heard a low laugh followed by a string of quiet words, and paused. He recognized the voice. It was answered at length by another—deeper, more masculine. Huy could not make out what was being said, but he stood still and began to smile. The vision you gave me spoke true, Anubis, he said silently to the jackal god who had become his guide and often his taskmaster. Amunhotep and Tiye are talking together quietly, intimately, under the cover of a hot summer night, and I am happy. Everything is going to be all right.

  PART TWO

  10

  CHIEF STEWARD USERHET bowed profoundly as Huy, with Paneb behind him, walked into the Queen’s apartments and settled into one of Her Majesty’s gilded chairs. Paneb lowered himself to the floor at Huy’s knee and began to prepare his palette, the small sound of the burnisher against his papyrus faint but discernible in the quiet air. The room was empty but for Userhet, who glided past them to take up his station just out of earshot against one of the walls. Slowly Huy inhaled the faint, spicy aroma of the perfume Tiye still wore, a distinctive blend of cardamom and myrrh that enveloped her and remained hanging, an invisible cloud, wherever she had been. The room was empty and still but for an occasional gust of the hot night wind out of the north, coursing through the low, unshuttered window. It was the middle of Mesore.

  Throughout the country, the last of the harvest was being hurriedly reaped, grain scythed, fruit pulled from tree or vine, honeycomb lifted, oozing golden and sweet, from the hive. Here in Weset the heat was unrelenting. Dust pervaded every corner of the city. The fields straggling along the river’s eastern bank were already fissured by deep cracks. The palm-lined canals were dry. At first Huy had been appalled and depressed by such aridity, but in the twelve years since he had sailed south with the court he had learned to endure it. Nevertheless, the return of the New Year was celebrated here with a greater fervour than the dwellers of the Delta could understand. The river was due to begin its life-giving rise in about two weeks, and the prayers of the populace had become clamorous with entreaties to Isis for a fresh outpouring of her tears and to Hapi for an Inundation teeming with fish.

  Twelve years, Huy mused. How rapidly the time has slipped away! Weset has burgeoned into one of the largest and most vibrant cities in the world, the centre of an empire I have forged for my King. At its heart the golden outer skins of its stone buildings are visible for miles around. Its citizens enjoy the influx of a constant supply of goods from every nation eager to befriend a King who could crush them with a wave of his hand if he chose to end their precarious autonomy. My countrymen flood Kush and Wawat as far as the Fourth Cataract. Gold cascades into the Royal Treasury every day. Amunhotep desires, and out of all this wealth the things he desires at once acquire substance. What he desires most is the beautifying of his domain, and I have spent the better part of these last years in fulfilling his wish. Apart from the projects begun before he was crowned, my hand has been on the raising of every monument, every statue, so that wherever I go I see a memory of those times. A few are not particularly pleasant. Working with Amunhotep-Huy on the restoration and adornment of Ptah’s temple at Mennofer was difficult. I became Vizier in his place, but he was given the control of Ptah’s temple as Overseer of Works in the temple of Nebma’atra-United-With-Ptah, and Overseer of Priests. I can understand why the King wished himself to be seen united with the creator-god, but I have never understood why he elevated my bad-tempered nephew to a position of such power in Mennofer. Was it Mutemwia’s decision, a ploy to keep Amunhotep-Huy firmly fixed in one place? He drove his craftsmen with whip and harsh tongue, and at that time I had not been given the authority to replace him.

  In any event, after six years of labour the temple stood ready for Prince Thothmes’ obligatory term as a Priest of Ptah, and how he complained at the prospect of leaving the south! Huy smiled at the recollection of the boy’s mutinous face, so like his father’s at that age. The ceremonies in Mennofer had taken all day, and it was an exhausted court that had straggled to the barges sitting low in the depleted river and gratefully headed for home. Huy was still tired. His body servant Kenofer had scarcely finished washing the grime of travel from him when the Queen’s summons had arrived. Clad in a clean kilt and little else, he had left his servants to unpack his belongings and made his way with his scribe, a few soldiers, and Captain Perti to Tiye’s spacious apartments on the second floor of the palace. Custom had taught him patience. The Queen would appear when she was ready. In the meantime he, like Chief Steward Userhet and Paneb, waited without anxiety.

  The events of this year have left me with a miasma of sheer weariness when I remember them, Huy’s thoughts ran on idly. Amunhotep’s demand for more temples, more sacred statues of himself and the other gods, has grown almost frenetic. He seeks to leave more monuments than any other pharoah before him, and in doing so he wishes to eclipse the lies and near apostasy of his father. He wasn’t happy when every oracle he consulted told him that his very first, precious son must be named Thothmes. He wanted the baby called Ahmose after the country’s great emancipator. Yet the Prince is a sturdy, intelligent nine-year-old boy with the promise of greatness in his eyes. Tiye refused to believe me when I touched his warm, sweet-smelling skin and predicted his death.

  Huy unconsciously sighed aloud and Userhet glanced his way. Huy shook his head, correctly interpreting the steward’s unspoken question. Both the King and the Queen have deliberately put my warning out of their minds, Huy told himself. Amunhotep bends over the architect’s drawing board and I bend with him. Kha, Hori, Suti, Men the Master of Works and Overseer of Sculptors—all of us with one aim: to beautify the country and glorify His Majesty. I have built a temple to the crocodile god Sobek Lord of Bakhu, complete with a statue of the deity lovingly embracing Amunhotep. The temple of Thoth at Iunu has been refurbished and a great statue of a baboon placed before it, to help the sun to rise. The little shrine Kha and I designed to honour the creator-god Khnum on the island of Tent-to-Amu at the First Cataract is begun. Likewise a House for Horus Nekheni Lord of Nekhen opposite the temple to Nekhbet, farther south of Weset, where Thothhotep used to live. All that toil, and myriad smaller tasks as well.

  Huy, not without a mild inner misgiving, had received orders that His Majesty would like to see himself increasingly depicted with the female members of his family. Bes, the dwarf god of all pleasures of the flesh, and Taurt, hippopotamus goddess of childbirth particularly venerated by women, had begun to adorn the palace walls, furniture, and cosmetic items, reflecting the King’s increasing preoccupation with his dozens of acquisitions inhabiting the House of Women. The goddess Hathor, mother, wife, and daughter of Ra himself, held sway. As the Eye of Ra, she also protected the god. Her name meant “House of Horus,” and as such she provided a womb in which the King, as the embodiment of Horus himself, could feel secure. Yet Amunhotep was fully aware of Hathor’s other aspect, the vengeful and savage Sekhmet, who had unleashed a bloodbath upon the country at the behest of Ra, angered by the lack of respect humankind had shown him. If Hathor-Sekhmet had not been deceived into drinking beer dyed red and subsequently become drunk, she would have destroyed everyone. Amunhotep had often pointed out to Huy that he drew his strength and many of his powers from the goddess’s aggressive vitality. Huy had not commented. He disliked the subtle aura of femininity that now seemed to diffuse from every room and hall of the palace. Nor did he appreciate the many hours he had spent designing the statues of the King that now stood in virtually every temple. Over a thousand of them proclaimed him as the beloved son of Ra, or Hathor, or Sebek, or the sky goddess Nut, or Amun himself, emphasizing not only his divinity but also his equality with them.

  Huy had mastered the language of diplomacy long ago. His nephew Ramose was now a senior scribe in the Treasury. An aging May still presided over the Offi
ce of Foreign Correspondence, and he, together with Huy and the Queen, maintained a firm yet tactful hold on the country’s vassals and trading partners. The Khatti and the kingdom of Mitanni required more careful handling. Both principalities exerted a strong influence on the petty tribal regions around them, and neither Huy nor the Queen desired the wastage of a war. The King showed very little interest in any foreign negotiations unless they concerned the cementing of an alliance with a marriage. Babylon, Assur, Zahi, Arzawa, circled Egypt in obedience, and the provinces of Katna and Nukhashshi, properly belonging to Mitanni, wisely preferred a cautious liaison with Egypt.

  Then there were the deaths. Five years ago the King’s uncle, walking his fields, had died suddenly at the age of forty, an event that had surprised Amunhotep, who had virtually forgotten his relative. Huy and the Queen had quietly removed their spies from the Prince’s household and generously endowed his funerary temple. In the end he had been an honest man who had endured a melancholy fate, and Huy pitied him. Heby also was gone, his beautified body lying deep within the tomb he and Huy had prepared together for the members of their family. Huy had stood outside it with Ramose and a weeping Iupia while Amunhotep-Huy, as Heby’s elder son, performed the Opening of the Mouth. He and his father had agreed on very little, but all the same he was pale and his voice trembled as he spoke the time-honoured words. Huy had no doubt that his brother’s heart would balance on Ma’at’s scales. Heby had been respectful of the gods, kind to his wife and sons, and resolute but fair with his underlings. His titles and responsibilities had passed to Menkheper, who became Mayor of Mennofer. Amunhotep-Huy was now Royal Steward at Mennofer, Overseer of Priests, and Overseer of Works in the temple of Nebma’atra-United-With-Ptah, in charge of the reconstruction and embellishing of Ptah’s home. The pompous designations fooled no one, least of all Amunhotep-Huy himself. The King did not want him at court. Mennofer was his place of exile, and he bitterly resented the task he had been set.

  The wound of Heby’s passing was still fresh in Huy, but not as agonizing as the death of Ishat, and at that memory Huy grunted and closed his eyes. He heard Userhet stir again, a tiny whisper of linen in that silent place, but Huy ignored him. Ishat at sixty-two, her dear, familiar features lined and crumpled with age, her hands stiff and painful, her body, that lithe and graceful body, thickened and slowed by the multiplying years. Thothmes had sent a panicked message to Huy begging him to come to Iunu, sure that his best friend could somehow defeat the god who waited invisibly to take Ishat’s hand and lead her into the Judgment Hall, but Huy had no power to heal this, the woman who had always meant the most to him, and in spite of his secret hope, Thothmes knew it. She lay cradled against her husband’s breast, her children to either side of the couch, her hand resting between Huy’s as he knelt beside her. There was no point in trying to See for her; her only future now lay with Osiris in the Beautiful West. Huy had been fully aware of the presence of Anubis at his back, the god motionless and patient, his measured breath barely perceptible. Ishat had been without the energy to speak, yet she smiled, her sluggish glance moving from Huy’s face to the being standing behind him.

  “You see him, don’t you?” Huy had said, his voice heavy with tears, and she had nodded, struggling to form words. Huy hushed her, squeezing her fingers. “I love you, my Ishat,” he managed. “The years we spent together were the happiest I’ve ever known. You need not fear the scales, and I pray that I too may be found blameless by Ma’at so that I may embrace you once more under the branches of the sacred Sycamore Tree.”

  He felt his own well-being as an insult then, the scant physical evidence of his years an affront to those with whom the passing of time had dealt with its usual harshness. The awareness that Atum had decreed his survival until his service to the god was over brought him no comfort. The children, adults though they were, clung to each other with tears. Thothmes laid his cheek against the crown of his wife’s tousled head, and as Ishat’s eyes turned upward towards him she sighed, went limp, and died. Now let me see her as she was. Huy had spoken fiercely and silently to the jackal god as Anubis stepped to the couch and bent over it. Give me a glimpse of her youth and strength, her clear eyes full of mirth or hot argument or thoughtfulness, her black hair gleaming suddenly as we passed from the shadow of our house into the full glare of a summer afternoon! But Anubis did not even glance his way, and Huy found himself with face pressed into the rumpled sheets and the palm of Ishat’s lifeless hand still warm against his mouth.

  He did not wish to remember what followed: the constant ache of bereavement, he and Thothmes locked together in a flood of grief and loss whenever they met, the terrible seventy days of mourning while Ishat’s body lay gutted in the House of the Dead. Her funeral simply underscored Huy’s deep sense of abandonment. All he wanted to do was escape to his tiny estate outside Hut-herib where he and Ishat would always be young and full of an innocent hope.

  Two years ago, Amunhotep had decreed the construction of a temple at Hut-herib as a mark of gratitude to Huy. It was to replace the smaller edifice Huy had visited many times. He and Methen, Khenti-kheti’s priest, had formed a strong bond over the years since Methen had found Huy naked and half deranged outside the House of the Dead and had carried him home to his parents. Methen too was now dead, and by royal command Huy had become Overseer of the Priests of Horus-Khenti-kheti, a title Huy stubbornly refused to acknowledge although he added the supervision of the new temple’s architects and stonemasons to his already crushing list of duties. Huy made sure that Men, who had worked under Kha and his sons, was promoted to Overseer of the Works of the King, and as such Huy thankfully left the project at Hut-herib in his care. Men’s reports on his progress were terse and satisfactory. Amunhotep had decided that the new temple should be dedicated to both Horus and Hut-herib’s crocodile totem. Huy had not objected; indeed, he had not cared. The assurance of the King’s continued love and trust for him was the true gift.

  Construction had at last begun on Amunhotep’s new palace on the west bank, away from the dense and clamorous sprawl the city of Weset had become. The King’s funerary temple had also begun to rise under Huy’s control. It was to be a vast edifice of gold-plated sandstone walls depicting the King celebrating his jubilee festivals in the company of the gods and his family. It was to have silver floors, and an avenue of stone jackals would lead from the river to its entrance. Amunhotep did not say so, but Huy suspected that the King had chosen the jackals not only because this was to be his funerary temple but also in deference to Anubis the psychopomp, who carried the words of Atum to Huy, his Seer. Huy had Seen for the King many times since arriving in Weset, and the King had prospered. His habit was to consult Huy and his mother when any decision was to be made, but Mutemwia, in her mid-forties, preferred to devote her time to running her many lucrative business concerns now that her son had the benefit of two wise advisers, Huy and his Chief Wife Tiye.

  At the thought of Tiye, Huy felt himself tense. He had made sure to ingest a larger than usual amount of opium in preparation for this meeting, with the now inevitable consequence of a nagging pain in his stomach, but the thirst for even more of the drug came rushing at him from the image his mind presented. Six years ago, during a time of upheavals in the administration and a burst of frenetic building projects that rendered Huy both harried and extremely exhausted, the King had sent for him. It had been evening. Huy had attended the daily morning audience as usual, gone from there to the Office of Foreign Correspondence with Tiye, returned to his own office to dictate a mountain of letters answering questions from Hori, Suti, and Men, among others, ate hurriedly with Nasha, who now organized his household together with his two stewards, worked on the plans for the temples of Sobek, Khnum, and Horus at Nekhen, and consulted on the quarrying of quartzite for the colossal statues of baboons to grace Thoth’s temple at Iunu. He had been too tired to eat the last meal of the day, and had been drinking a cup of wine while listening to a regular update regarding the state of his o
pium crop when the summons had come. The King’s chief steward, Nubti, a little more bent, a little more wizened, but as keen-eyed as ever, had brought it himself. Gliding forward with both Captain Perti and a glowering Paroi in the rear, he reached Huy’s chair and bowed, handing down a thin scroll to Huy’s Chief Scribe Paneb. Huy nodded reluctantly for him to speak.

  “Great Seer, I bring a command from His Majesty that you should accompany me to his apartments at once. The scroll bears the same invitation. His Majesty requires that everything to do with this matter be officially and correctly recorded.”

  Huy’s eyebrows rose. “As you can see, I am tired and ready to retire to my couch,” he replied. “Can this discussion not wait until tomorrow?”

  Nubti bowed again, this time with an air of apology. “Great Son of Hapu, I see the marks of weariness on your face,” he said gently, “but His Majesty expects you at once. Be pleased to follow me. I have a litter waiting.”

  Huy’s heart sank. He knew that he was not alert enough to either match wits with Amunhotep’s obstinate nature or weigh some vital administrative consideration. “Nubti, may I not send my humble regrets to the King?” he tried. “I am truly of no use to him tonight.”

  Nubti’s expression did not change. He merely stood quietly, looking at the floor. After a moment Huy hauled himself out of his chair, called for his sandals and a cloak, and, beckoning to Perti and Paneb, followed the steward out of the room.

  The night was calm. A slight breeze stirred in the expanse of opium fields surrounding Huy’s house, bringing the faint odour of river growth to his nostrils. The sky, as always here in the south, was startlingly clear and brilliant with stars. The constant rumble of the mighty city came muted to Huy as he and Paneb slid into the first royal litter. Perti pulled the curtains closed, and at the same time Nubti’s voice gave the order to proceed. The litters swayed forward.