The King's Man

by Pauline Gedge

  The hieroglyphs were in a hand he did not recognize. Tiny and neat, they flowed pleasantly under Huy’s gaze, unfolding in a version of dialect less ancient than that of the Book, Huy surmised, and easier to read. “An account of the ceremonies and secret rites composing the sacred progression of the heb sed festival whereby the land is rejuvenated and the King’s transmutation affirmed,” the opening sentence proclaimed. “It is Thoth who gives the words. It is Wepwawet who ensures the correct performance of every ritual. Thus may His Majesty’s mouth be opened to eternity.”

  Wepwawet, Huy repeated to himself. A lesser wolf god with a shrine in the town of Aswat. If I remember my lessons correctly, he bears two titles: Lord of War and Opener of the Ways. He stands in the celestial barque with other gods as they convey the King through the Duat and do battle with Apep the serpent and the demons of the dark. We think of him as opening a way in the night, but what if he does a great deal more? He is one of the earliest of our deities, the origin of his powers lost in the past. What if he presides over the heb sed because without him the King’s transformation into a god could not take place? Rejuvenation of King and land, yes, but what if Wepwawet in his guise as Opener of the Ways is the only one commanded to form a path along which Atum’s transforming magic may travel? Putting aside conjectures that were futile at present, Huy returned his attention to the scroll.

  There were seven solemn rites making up the days of the festival, and as the details of each one unfolded, Huy sank more deeply into the anonymous scribe’s descriptions. Every stage of the King’s progress towards rebirth had been set out with a clarity and precision that enabled Huy not only to understand and visualize each phase but also to link it directly to passages from the Book of Thoth. One such segment that had always puzzled Huy, coming as it did at the end of what he used to believe was the last portion of the Book, said, “… he has gone around the entire two skies, he has circumnambulated the two banks …” Now it was set firmly into the third stage, when the King lies curled in a small chamber especially erected to be both a tomb and a womb from which he will be reborn. The tiles decorating the space are blue-green. The King is wrapped in a cow’s skin representing the womb of the sky goddess Nut, who swallows Ra every evening and expels him each morning. An Opener of the Mouth, a funerary priest, enfolds the King and watches as he crawls into the place where he symbolically dies and from which he will emerge transmuted. Inside the tomb two paired glyphs are depicted representing both halves of the sky, east and west, and both banks that make up Egypt herself on either side of the river. The same passage from the Book goes on to speak of the resurrected King’s triumphant flight once his assimilation with Horus is complete, Huy realized. The King is reborn. He has died, and now he emerges from the womb of Nut as Horus himself. The waiting funerary priest performs the Opening of the Mouth ceremony with the Pesesh-kef knife, giving new senses to the young Horus. The King then suckles, eats, and teethes as spells are said to render those activities authentic, but he is still both living and dead until the assembled officials privileged to attend his emergence from the tomb—the priests, sem priests, magicians, and archivists from Ptah’s House of Life—shout, “Awake! Awake! Awake!”

  There was more, much more. Some of the rites had to do with a rejuvenation of Egypt herself as the King was reborn, but to Huy, utterly engrossed in the ancient text, the ones carried out in strict privacy were plainly intended to metamorphose a mortal King into an immortal god. Wepwawet, Opener of the Ways, presided over it all from the first solemn procession to the raising of a djed column and the unveiling of new statues of the King scattered throughout Egypt, announcing a renewal of both the ruler and the land.

  As the scroll rolled up, Huy finally came to himself. Paneb still sat cross-legged on the floor beside the desk, but his chin rested on his breast. He was asleep. The alabaster lamps were burning brightly. Someone had refilled their oil without Huy’s being aware of it. He leaned back, all at once conscious of an ache at the base of his spine, stiff shoulders, and a difficulty in focusing as he scanned the room. The apartment lay resting in a deep silence Huy was loath to disturb, but reaching down, he touched Paneb. Immediately the scribe was awake. “Go to bed,” Huy told him. “Tomorrow I’ll dictate my thoughts on this matter. Kenofer will be snoring outside the door. Send him in to me as you go.”

  15

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Huy set Paneb the task of copying the heb sed scroll and ordered Amunmose to have his belongings packed. He sent a herald north with a warning to Thothmes to expect his arrival in three days’ time, and one to the King explaining his actions. All that day, while his scribe laboured over the ancient text and a harried Amunmose shouted imprecations at the servants creating chaos out of what had been a very fragile order, Huy sat in a corner of the shady garden and attempted to lay out in his mind everything he had learned. The Book of Thoth made sense to him at last, and coupled with the grave procedures of the heb sed festival, the will of Atum-Ra was finally revealed, not as a pious hope carried down through the ages and taken for granted by every citizen of Egypt, but as an unequivocal truth. Every pharaoh undergoing the death and resurrection of the heb sed becomes a god. That’s why Ma’at was given to us in the first place, Huy realized. That’s why adherence to the harmony of both cosmic and earthly laws she represents is so vital. Even the King himself must obey them as diligently as every one of his citizens. He must be worthy of godhead, and we, his subjects, must give him the same deference Ma’at demands of him. But does every King merit true godhead? Do the rites of the festival confer transmutation no matter what the character and deeds of royalty may be? What of the appalling vision granted me regarding the baby Prince?

  Huy groaned softly and Perti, standing guard not far away, glanced towards him. Huy uncrossed his legs, leaned back against the tree sheltering him, and waved at Perti. If that child grows up to sit on the Horus Throne and repudiates all gods but the Aten, Ma’at will desert us and Egypt will be defenceless, he thought as Perti turned away. I’ve felt the threat ebb and flow over the years. So has Mutemwia. Placing my nephew Ramose among the priests of the Aten’s shrine to spy for her signified her concern. But Prince Thothmes is fated to die, and nothing will prevent Prince Amunhotep from becoming the Hawk-in-the-Nest. Nothing, that is, but his death.

  The words were so fraught with horror that Huy pushed them away, deliberately calling his friend’s face to mind instead. I’ll be with him and Nasha for the Feast of the Great Manifestation of Osiris on the twenty-second of this month, he told himself firmly. There will be good wine and feasting, and the closeness Thothmes and I have always enjoyed, and his son Governor Huy, my namesake, will greet me fondly and be full of local affairs to discuss. Before the reassuring images he had conjured could fade, he got up and called for a litter. The streets and alleys of Mennofer would be brimming with life and he needed a complete distraction.

  He was not sorry to leave the echoing corridors of the old palace. The scroll was returned to Ptah’s archivist together with a gift of gold dust for the temple and beer, honey, and almonds for Penbui himself. Perti had officially handed the guarding of the Fine District of Pharaoh back to its permanent soldiers. The rooms Huy and his men had occupied had been emptied and scoured. To Huy, the preparations for departure, grown so familiar to him and his servants through much travel over the years, seemed fraught this time with an entirely uncommon atmosphere of change, as though, Huy thought, we have all been living under a spell, taking the heka into our bodies where it has begun to remake us so that everything we know feels strange.

  At dawn, he stood at the handrail of his barge with Amunmose and Perti as the oarsmen carefully guided the craft into the slowly sinking level of the river. There was no reason why he should feel tired, but all he wanted to do was quickly reach the city he knew and loved and then sink onto the couch in Thothmes’ familiar guest room. There was an uncharacteristic ache along his spine, and the knuckles of his left hand throbbed for no reason.

&
nbsp; A journey that should have taken a full two days was accomplished in a little over one due to the vigilance of Huy’s captain and the efforts of an exhausted crew to keep the craft just within the pull of the central current and free of the shoals hidden close to the western bank. Iunu sat on the river’s eastern bank. In the dark small hours of the morning the barge was finally tethered to the sunken mooring poles of Thothmes’ watersteps and the ramp was run out. Huy had left his remaining two vessels at Mennofer with the bulk of his staff, and only he, Paneb, Perti, and Kenofer walked towards the two soldiers guarding the entrance to Thothmes’ estate. Recognizing him, they both saluted.

  “Go quietly up to your master’s house and find out if he’s awake,” Huy said. “If he sleeps, don’t allow him to be disturbed—I’ll remain on my barge until dawn.” Kenofer had been carrying a stool and Huy sank onto it with a secret relief. He himself had been unable to rest as the craft moved steadily north, and now his eyes burned and his back gave him a pang with every movement. He was not sorry at the wait. Slowly he absorbed the well-remembered aura of Thothmes’ arouras: the faint, delicate aroma of the flowers Ishat had commanded the gardeners to plant because they bloomed at night, the slightly rank odour rising from the lily-choked ponds and narrow canals channelling water to the vegetable gardens at the rear, and under it all an indefinable scent of grass, palm trunks, and sun-warmed mud brick. The flood was slightly more than two months away from its crest and by then the watersteps and much of the ground around Huy’s perch would be drowned, but for now he inhaled his own spate of poignant memories carried to him on the intermittent caress of the soft air.

  He would have been happy to sit there dozing for the rest of the night, but before long he saw the pale glow of a lamp draw nearer and a man he did not recognize came to a halt in front of him and bowed. The servant who had been carrying the lamp ahead of him stepped aside.

  “Forgive me for speaking first, Great Seer,” the man said, “but I have not had the pleasure of serving you before. I am Hay, chief steward in the household of the noble Thothmes.”

  “Paser is retired? Dead?” Huy glanced into the face above him. So many administrators look too young to cope with the responsibilities they have assumed, he thought gloomily, but the truth is that I’m just too old to remember the weight of accountability I myself used to bear.

  “He died and was beautified several months ago,” Hay explained. “My master has been awake for some time and is eager to greet you. Please follow me.”

  Long before you were born, I could walk this path blindfolded, Huy thought with unaccustomed rancour. Why would you imagine otherwise? And why am I suddenly filled with this petty resentment so foreign to my nature? Rising, he obeyed Chief Steward Hay’s request.

  He sensed rather than saw Nakht’s house far off to the left. Thothmes’ father had been the Governor of the Heq-at sepat, and at his death Thothmes had inherited the title. Now Thothmes’ first-born son Huy lived in his grandfather’s house and ruled the district from Iunu, its capital. Nakht, Thothmes’ second son, had risen in the army to become commander of the Division of Ra, and Thothmes’ daughter Sahura, married to the Governor of the wealthy Ament sepat west of the Delta, had forged a lucrative business in her own right by obtaining royal permission to share in the profits from the vast natron deposits of the sepat in exchange for providing the workers with housing, food, and medical care. She also oversaw the cultivation of hundreds of grapevines that produced the famous Good Wine of the Western River. Ishat, Huy often thought, would be proud of the accomplishments that have vindicated her own determination to become literate and her insistence that Sahura be more than an able household manager.

  At the imposing entrance to Thothmes’ home, the doorguard left his bench to reverence Huy. He had hardly opened the doors when Thothmes himself came hurrying forward, arms outstretched. “Huy! What a wonderful surprise! Nasha said you’d be unable to resist the opportunity to visit Iunu again once your task at Mennofer was over!” Huy’s own arms were flung wide and the two men embraced. Thothmes had always been shorter and more slender than Huy, but now, holding his dearest friend tightly, Huy was horrified to feel the jutting bones of Thothmes’ spine under his hands and the outline of ribs against his chest. He was forcibly reminded of the last time he had greeted Nakht, whose gaunt body was already ravaged by the wasting disease that had killed him. Thothmes was barefooted. He was wearing a loose white sleeping robe. His face, cleansed of all cosmetics, seemed all jutting cheekbones and deep furrows. As they broke apart, Huy noticed a slight stoop to Thothmes’ narrow shoulders that brought him a pang of dismay followed at once by a wave of love.

  “How long has it been?” he said huskily. “I haven’t seen you since the court moved south to Weset.”

  Thothmes made a face that instantly returned Huy to their school days together, and linking arms they moved into the reception hall. “I’ve often thought of making the journey,” Thothmes said, “but somehow I never did find enough energy to see my house turned upside down and then face those endless miles into desert country.”

  “I know, and the King would never have released me for anything other than the most pressing emergency. I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” Thothmes shot him a quizzical look. “Nasha told me why His Majesty finally allowed you to leave Weset. Was it worthwhile, Huy? Is the search over at last?”

  “Yes.” They had crossed the hall and had come to the foot of the stairs and the passage beside it leading farther into the house. “I need to tell you everything, Thothmes, but I must sleep and eat first.”

  Thothmes nodded. His brown eyes, still full of the eagerness for life Huy remembered so well, swiftly scrutinized Huy’s face. “Hay’s been busy preparing for your arrival since your message was delivered. I’m longing to hear the news, Huy, but later. I don’t sleep much anymore, but tonight, or rather this morning, I know I’ll be able to. Incidentally, I can tell you with great glee that you’re showing your age at last, mighty mer kat! I think the gods have finally grown bored with you!”

  Smiling, he snapped his fingers at the steward and disappeared into the dimness of the passage. The group scattered to their accommodations. Perti and Paneb shared a room beside Huy’s, and a pallet outside Huy’s door had been left for Kenofer. As the house settled into the deep hush of the hours before dawn, Huy lay on the familiar couch, drowsily relishing the sense of complete security the city of Iunu and Thothmes’ presence had always meant to him. He did his best to stay conscious in order to enjoy the feeling for a little longer, but a profound sleep overtook him and he did not wake until half the morning had gone.

  There had always been a sanity to Thothmes’ house, compounded, Huy believed, of Ishat’s clear-headed honesty, Thothmes’ steady kindness, and the blessing of Ra upon a family dedicated to the laws of Ma’at. He felt it most strongly when visiting his friend after a long absence. Today, standing on the slab in the bathhouse while Kenofer scrubbed him with natron, it slowly uncluttered his mind, separating the maelstrom of his emotions from the enormity of the knowledge he had recently gained, so that by the time he lay on one of the benches in the shade outside to be shaved, plucked, and oiled, he was able to order his thoughts calmly.

  The noon meal was served in the reception hall, and to Huy’s delight Thothmes’ sons, Governor Huy and General Nakht, were present. “I couldn’t pass up the chance to see you again,” the Governor told him. “There aren’t many official duties to perform at this time of the year. Of course I’ll be busy once the flood’s subsided, but until then I can amuse my children and please my wife.”

  “There’s nothing much for a general to do either,” his brother remarked, dipping bread into the bowl of garlic-flavoured olive oil on the gilded table by his folded knees. “You’re responsible for the distribution of the divisions, mer kat. My soldiers need something to do. Perhaps a little war?” He grinned at Huy before biting into the bread, and in the lift of his mouth his resemblance to his mother Ishat
made Huy’s heart turn over.

  Nasha pointed her spoon at Huy. In her other hand the red liquid in her cup trembled. Over the years her liking for wine had not diminished, and Huy had often marvelled at her body’s ability to withstand its long-term effects. Unlike poor Anuket, she was not consumed by the need to seek oblivion in it. Her wit remained as acerbic as ever, and although she was older than Thothmes, she did not look it. Huy had greeted her warmly as he lowered himself to the floor beside her and prepared to eat, noting that her stay with her brother had done her good. Her eyes were clearer and her skin less sallow. Now she was frowning.

  “What have you been doing to yourself in Mennofer?” she said sharply. “I’ve never seen swelling under your eyes before. Did you offend Ptah?”

  “I don’t think so.” Huy’s tone was mild. Nasha’s concern for him invariably sounded like anger. “I’ve been reading a great deal, Nasha, that’s all.”

  “Well, you look terrible. Shall we be staying here for long?”

  Huy considered. I should go home. My search has been concluded. Unfortunately, I have no reason to stay in the north.

  “You may stay as long as you like,” he replied reluctantly, “but I must return to court once I’ve talked to you, Thothmes. Their Majesties are waiting for information from me regarding a Seeing I performed before I left. I mustn’t keep them in suspense for any longer than is necessary.” He wanted to tell Nasha that she would be safer here in Iunu, that once he had unburdened himself to the King and particularly to Tiye his fall from favour could very well be immediate, that the only solution to the problem of the baby Prince he had arrived at so far would mean disaster for him and danger for everyone close to him—but such words could only be spoken in private. Meeting Thothmes’ eyes, he read a question there.