Huy hushed him with a wave of his hand. “Everything can wait until I’ve rested. Get to your own couch, Amunmose. For once I’ll be eating the evening meal here at home, so tell Rakhaka, will you?”
Removing his sandals, he set off across the long expanse of the hall, glad to feel the slight chill of the white and blue tiles against the naked soles of his feet. It took him some time to reach the hot breeze of the open passage beyond and the guarded stairs leading up at right angles to the chambers above. Most of the administrative business inherent in his position as mer kat was conducted in the many offices adjacent to the palace, but sometimes matters of a delicate nature were dealt with here, in his home, where his reception area was deliberately designed to create a diffidence in the officials who appeared before him at the foot of his dais. Amunhotep had insisted that the imperial colours be apparent in the house. “You are the extension of my arm and the chosen companion of the gods,” he had said flatly. “My brother, my uncle, my beloved Seer, the only man I trust completely. If anyone is privileged to live amid the blue and the white besides myself, it’s you, mer kat.” So Huy’s staff were kilted in blue and white, the flags flying from his skiffs and barges also sported the colours of a royal house, and Huy himself wore striped blue and white linen ribbons plaited into his long braids. The palace servants, the common folk he encountered coming and going, would kneel and prostrate themselves when he passed, and long ago Huy had given up trying to prevent their extreme homage. “The people know who rules Egypt,” Amunhotep had casually stated in dismissal of Huy’s protest. “They’re expressing their gratitude for the lives of peace and plenty you’ve given them, that’s all. You’re concerned that you’re appropriating my prerogative, Huy, but I’m not troubled in the least. This matter is of no importance.” Thankfully, Huy’s personal staff did no more than bow to him occasionally as they pursued their duties.
His under steward, Paroi, passing the foot of the stairs, nodded as he disappeared into the lower labyrinth of the great house. Huy nodded back, mounted the stairs, and at last stepped over a snoring Kenofer and turned into his own door.
The body servant had lowered the reed slats covering the one window Huy had insisted upon when the house was being designed. It was uncommon for a bedchamber to have more than a small clerestory transom just under the angle of the wall and ceiling—often there was no window at all—but Huy had not liked either trying to fall asleep or waking up in complete darkness. He still remembered tumbling into the utter blackness that had swallowed him when at the age of twelve he had been brutally attacked, and he preferred the discomfort of increased heat and the white sunlight filtering through the blind in the afternoons to a resurgence of that memory. Kenofer had placed fresh linen on the huge gilded couch and a silver dish of wrinkled figs beside the water jug on the bedside table. A clean loincloth and kilt lay on the lid of Huy’s tiring chest, waiting for Kenofer to dress Huy for the evening’s activities. A pair of earrings and several bracelets had been set beside the copper mirror on Huy’s cosmetic stand. Everything was as it should be, as it always was at this time of the day, yet Huy paused.
Some time ago, he had begun to wear the spicy perfume extracted from the small greenish-yellow flowers of the plum trees that grew freely in the sandy soil of the south. He had reached an age when almost every other scent either reminded him of those he had loved and lost to the Judgment Hall or else impelled a vivid memory, sometimes pleasant, sometimes distressing. Such moments could not be avoided, but surely it was not necessary to carry the constant recollection of Ishat or his mother or even Anuket on his own body. He disliked the brown fruit produced by the particularly unlovely, spiny, thorn-covered tree, but the odd scent of its flowers suited him. The perfume was kept in a blue faience bottle in his cosmetic box, and although it was firmly stoppered, the aroma always imbued the air of the room, mingling with a trace of the frankincense he often burned before his shrine.
Now, standing just inside the entrance, he became alert, his nostrils flared. Another odour, so faint as to be almost undetectable, was hanging in the close stillness, and he had the immediate feeling that he was not alone. His first brief thought was of Anubis, his mind swirling with images of fur and black skin, but the god carried the scent of myrrh with him as well as the odour of his body, and the air Huy was drawing into his lungs was unrelievedly rank. An animal had found its way upstairs, perhaps a pampered palace feline that had followed him home or, worse, a rat from one of the grain silos at the bottom of his garden. Paroi was engaged in a constant battle to poison them.
Carefully, Huy surveyed the room. His couch stood on four legs and there appeared to be nothing under it. Neither was there movement under the cosmetic stand or the gold and ivory table in the centre of the floor, and the chair drawn up to it was empty. The ornate golden shrine holding a likeness of Khenti-kheti, crocodile god of Huy’s natal town, was closed, and with a growing sense of unease Huy’s attention became drawn to its double doors incised with Khenti-kheti’s long snout and bulbous eyes. Inside the shrine, Huy knew, the god himself sat benignly, scaly tail curved around his stubby feet, waiting for the doors to open in order to receive Huy’s daily obeisance. Or did he? Huy glanced quickly into the thin shadows around the shrine. Nothing stirred, yet that distasteful odour was intensifying, edging out both perfume and incense. As Huy hesitated, the horrific conviction grew in him that Khenti-kheti no longer occupied the shrine, that something corrupt and tainted now squatted in his place, and that on no account must he open those little doors. But the idea was ridiculous, preposterous, belonging more to the realm of nightmares than to a hot, sleepy Weset afternoon.
Angry with himself, Huy resolved not to wake Kenofer. He took one determined step towards the shrine, and as he did so he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He knew that his couch had been empty a moment before, but now an animal sat on his sheets staring at him imperturbably, its yellow eyes slitted, its pink tongue hanging motionless from its wide black snout. The fur covering its hide was stiffly bristled, ugly, and doubtless sharp to the touch, Huy thought in the second of shock before he recognized it. But you touched it, didn’t you, Imhotep? he said to himself. You stroked its spine as it sat beside you, tame and contented, while those yellow eyes regarded me with solemn self-containment. This is no ordinary hyena. This creature has come to me from the Beautiful West. Why?
He took another step. The hyena did not move. “What are you doing here?” Huy whispered. “Did Imhotep send you? Is there a message from Anubis?” At the sound of his voice it blinked, and rising on its thin haunches, it stretched. Then, to Huy’s dismay, it jumped to the floor, shambled towards him, and began to rub its body against his leg. The feel of it, rough and coarse, filled him with such revulsion that he cried out and stumbled away, and almost at once Kenofer’s tall form filled the doorway, already winding a crumpled kilt around his waist.
“Master, what’s wrong?” he asked, coming swiftly to Huy. “You’re trembling! A dream? No. I see your couch is undisturbed. Are you ill?”
Huy scanned the room, hysteria not far away. There was no sign of the hyena, but he fancied he could smell its breath, a stench of warm, rotting offal. But that’s wrong? his thoughts ran on. The celestial hyena had no odour, gave off no evidence of animality. The earthly hyenas become imbued with the stink of what they eat. Going to the couch, he bent. His sheets still bore the imprint of its forepaws and its narrow buttocks.
“Come here, Kenofer,” he ordered tersely. “Look down. What do you see?”
Kenofer’s hands went automatically to smooth the already uncreased white linen. “Nothing, Master. At least, nothing but the sheet. What am I supposed to see? Did the washerman leave a stain?”
“No. What do you smell?”
Kenofer’s dark eyebrows rose. He inhaled noisily. “Stale incense and your perfume,” he told Huy. “I can have the room washed down with vinegar if those odours are beginning to bother you.”
Huy could still
see the indentations. They seemed to mock him, and the skin of his bare calf was crawling with the feel of that abrasive pelt. “Have my couch stripped and the bedding washed again. I need to be thoroughly bathed at once, please, Kenofer. While you’re attending to me, your assistant can be making up the couch in one of the guest rooms and I’ll take what’s left of the afternoon sleep there. I’ll want poppy. Meet me in the bathhouse.”
The body servant nodded and vanished quickly into the passage. Huy followed him almost at a run, turning right and hurrying along the wide hallway to the head of the stairs leading down to the privacy of Huy’s sumptuous bathhouse. Ahead was the guarded entry onto the roof. Soldiers everywhere, Huy thought as he fled down the steps, but no human being could have prevented what just happened to me. Gods, I feel dirty, besmirched inside and out! If I could vomit up the filth I can almost taste as well as smell, I would, and then drink nothing but water and vinegar until I was cleansed. Reaching the damp floor of the bathhouse, he tore off his clothes, jewels, and sandals and flung them away, tripping over himself in his haste to get onto one of the bathing slabs. There were several in the large, enclosed space. A generous seat ran around walls alive with depictions of naked men and women raising their arms to cascades of water, sailing in reed skiffs on a river choked with silvery fish, drinking from brimming cups offered to them by Hapi, god of the Nile, himself. Bowls of natron, flagons of scented oil, piles of linen towels, ivory combs, even ribbons and hair ornaments for needy guests, rested neatly about. Beyond the doorway opposite the stairs leading up into the house, a secluded area contained a firepit for heating the washing water, and benches high enough for Huy’s masseuses to knead the maltreated bodies of overindulgent guests. The luxuries and comforts of Huy’s estate rivalled those of the King’s palace itself, but today Huy stood alone with his eyes closed and his teeth clenched, as nude and defenceless as the most destitute of Amunhotep’s subjects.
Tensely, he waited for Kenofer and the purifying water. Purifying, yes, his thoughts ran on under the chaos of his fear. I have been sullied and I don’t know why. I sensed no taint in the hyena Imhotep was caressing. Everything in that blessed place was free of pollution. Yet today its touch contaminated me, as though it had come to give me some terrible ukhedu and if I look down at my leg I will see a suppurating wound. Why? Those steady yellow eyes were full of intelligence. Did they hold a message I was unable to decipher? In spite of the humid warmth of the bathhouse, he began to shiver.
Kenofer entered briskly, clean linen over his arm, and fetching hot water and a generous amount of natron, he proceeded to douse Huy, scrubbing him expertly from the waist-length ropes of his hair to the soles of his feet and then rinsing off the salts several times. Huy watched the grimy water splash from the stone slab onto the slanted tiles and disappear through the drainage hole in the floor. Wrapping him in linen, Kenofer picked up a jar of oil and led him outside to one of the empty stone massage tables. Huy did not resist.
Lying under the man’s firm control, eyes closed, he felt the panic leave him. Atum is merely using the hyena to drive home my obligation to deal with the Empress’s unborn son, he told himself calmly. There is a perversion I must correct so that Ma’at may remain whole, so that my spinelessness will not make her bleed as it did when I stood before the King’s grandfather and my courage failed me. But surely the mere sight of the beast would have been enough. Why was it allowed to wipe the filth of a mortal being against me? Why not a moment of encouragement from the Blessed Realm? Do the hyenas in the Beautiful West need food, and if so, what do they eat? An answer so outrageous formed in his mind that he grunted aloud, and Kenofer’s hands were stilled. They eat the fruit of the Ished Tree.
No! his mind clamoured. Surely not possible, even in Paradise! No living person, not even Ra’s successive High Priests who guard and tend the Tree, is allowed to consume the crop that falls to the ground. It’s gathered and burned every year. But those humans and sacred animals who have passed through the Judgment Hall, those who are justified, what new rules and laws apply to them? A hyena in the kingdom of the undying might very well be an unblemished object of veneration, whereas here they are fattened for food by the poor and regarded as necessary scavengers by the rest of us. But if venerated, why? If free to eat the fruit of the Ished Tree, why? No instant response came to him. Kenofer had resumed his task, and Huy did his best to give himself up to the man’s healing touch.
That evening, he slept in his own room on freshly washed sheets. By now he was used to the one acute disadvantage of his long years of addiction to the opium, an almost constant nagging discomfort in his belly that often prevented him from eating, but after the massage his appetite had returned and he was able to consume a large evening meal. Milk and date wine or date juice ordinarily served to give him some relief, and Steward Amunmose made sure that those liquids went with him as he hurried from morning audiences to administrative offices to building sites, but for once he closed his eyes with appetite sated and stomach at peace. Nor did he dream.
On the following day, when he, Hori, Suti, and Men stood on the western bank of the river, under the thin protection of their white linen sunshades, looking towards the King’s embryonic funerary temple, Huy saw the hyena again. Beside the men was a churned hole where a landing stage would be erected and a canal dug for Amun, who would cross the water in his Divine Barque from Ipet-isut in order to visit the temples of the Osiris-kings during the Beautiful Feast of the Valley in Payni. Amunhotep had requested an avenue of jackal statues in honour of Anubis to run on either side of the waterway to the concourse before the as yet unbuilt entrance to his great funerary temple. The whole area seethed with busy workmen.
“How many statues are finished?” Huy asked Men. “These foundations are ready. And what about the draft your father submitted to you regarding the layout of the temple, Hori? Is it final, or has the King been meddling with it again?”
“The sculptors at Swenet tell me that they have almost completed their charge, and I’ve sent a flotilla of barges south to collect the statues,” Men replied. “My son Bek will supervise the loading. I’m not happy with this canal, though, Huy. I don’t think it’s deep enough.”
“The major plan is finished, mer kat.” The higher voice was Suti’s. Huy could still not tell them apart until one of them spoke.
Hori was squinting at his brother, kohled eyes narrowed against the sun. “The King can play with the details all he wants. It’ll be some time before the interior begins to take shape. The One wants the design to make sure that all but the innermost sanctuary will be flooded during the Inundation. Father isn’t happy with the strain such an annual occurrence will put on the building’s foundations, let alone the numerous royal statues.”
Huy blew out his cheeks. “Kha must simply find a way to cope with Amunhotep’s wishes.” Huy peered ahead at the lively anthill. Between the chaos that was the birth of the King’s funerary temple and the hot beige cliffs shimmering beyond it, the temples of other dead pharaohs rose out of the churned sand as though the desert had spewed them up an eternity ago. A little to the left, the temple of the Osiris-one Thothmes the First sat a distance apart from that of his unfortunate son Thothmes the Second, husband to the upstart Queen Hatshepsut, whose far more glorious monument lay tightly against the Cliff of Gurn, far to Huy’s right. Almost directly ahead was Thothmes the Fourth’s sacred structure, looking as ancient as the others although it had barely been finished before that King met his end, a death Huy did not grieve in the least. He wondered whether anyone brought prayers and offerings to the priests caring for him or for his father Osiris Amunhotep the Second, with his small edifice to the north. However, Huy smiled as his gaze moved over the large temple that followed. Many times his dear friend Thothmes had made the long voyage from Iunu to present gifts and petitions to his hero and namesake Thothmes the Third, warrior and empire builder. After Ishat’s death Thothmes had turned over most of the chores of the sepat’s government to his elde
r son Huy and had become something of a recluse, although he and Huy corresponded regularly as they had always done. Looking at the Osiris-one’s funerary shrine gave Huy a swift pang of longing for his friend’s face, and he was about to turn away when he saw a familiar shape sitting beside one of the foundation pits for the jackal statues halfway between himself and the King’s future forecourt. It was motionless, its blunt head turned towards him. There was a threat in its very stillness.
Hori pointed. “Look at that!” he exclaimed. “A hyena, right where one of the avenue’s statues will be placed! This is an undesirable omen. Perhaps the gods do not approve of our designs for the King’s temple, Suti!”
So the others can see it also, Huy thought. Therefore it belongs to this world, a creature of the desert with perfectly ordinary black eyes. Yet the relief he ought to have felt was missing. He knew with a dull certainty that it was not here as a sign of the gods’ favour. Its presence is for me alone, his thoughts ran on. A warning, and a reminder of what must be done. But gods, I cannot, I absolutely will not, murder the Empress in order to destroy the child within her. Just the word murder, lucid and pedestrian, caused him to break out in a nervous sweat. Must I pray for a miscarriage, an event that would surely distress Amunhotep and drive Tiye into despair?
“Oh, look!” Hori repeated. “It’s washing its face as though it were a cat!”
Huy watched as the pink tongue caressed one of its forepaws and the limb passed up the coarse fur of its cheek and over its ear. Even this gesture is a message, Huy realized. I must cleanse my craven soul—but how? The hyena got up and shambled away towards the narrow shade of the temple’s foundation blocks, and Men turned to toss the scroll in his hand towards the basket his servant held.
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