Seer of Egypt

by Pauline Gedge

  Instead, she flung herself against him, pressing him to her with a ferocity that alarmed him, her wet cheek jammed into his neck, her mouth trembling on the skin of his shoulder. “I cannot leave you and I cannot stay,” she half whispered, her muffled words broken by sobs. “I have to do this or I will never know true contentment. I will be good to him, and loyal—but oh, Huy! What memories will come to torment me in the night! How do I purge myself from you?”

  He held her with his eyes closed, feeling her long body hot under the thin sheath, her lips invisibly imprinting her distress onto his own body, her hair soft against his forearms.

  “By becoming the wife of the future Governor of Iunu’s sepat,” he said, forcing his voice to remain even. “By giving birth to beautiful children, and loving them, and teaching them everything you have learned about how to live, Ishat. And one day, sooner than you might think, you will see me alight from my barge and walk towards you where you stand beside Thothmes, and you will recognize an old friend. The man you love and cannot have will be gone. Ishat, my dearest, this parting will be bitter for me also. Don’t doubt that I too will suffer.”

  “Good.” She lifted her head. Kohl had run down her cheeks and streaked across her temples. “I want you to suffer. I want you to miss me terribly. I want your new scribe to be careless and inept and rude. The gods are very cruel, Huy, as you well know.” She pulled herself away from him. “Have you forgiven me?”

  “Yes, but not Thothmes. Not fully yet.” He snatched up the scroll and held it out to her. “I’m glad to see my Ishat restored. Now read, and then find Iput and have yourself washed and painted again. Thothmes will go away upset if he sees you in such an unseemly mess.”

  She was still hiccuping, but she unrolled the letter with steadier hands. Huy was glad to see that she had almost completely recovered from her loss of control.

  She raised her eyebrows. “It’s from Heqareshu, Overseer of Royal Nurses. I presume he is in charge of Prince Amunhotep’s welfare. He wants you to See for him, and he will arrive during the third week of Thoth. That’s next month.” Letting the scroll roll up, she used it to tap her chin. “The Inundation will be upon us, but of course Mennofer is not far away. We may get all the palace gossip, and information about our Hawk-in-the-Nest.”

  “So you will still be here?”

  She looked startled. “For another four months, I think. Thothmes wants a marriage sometime during Peret. The season of spring will be auspicious for us, he says.”

  “He says.” Huy shrugged. “That will give me plenty of time to find another scribe. Go and get yourself clean, Ishat, then come back for dictation. I must reply to this Heqareshu.”

  The King is allowing this man, who must be on very intimate terms with the whole royal family, to consult me, Huy mused when Ishat had gone. Will he bring me something Pharaoh wants me to know? Why does the thought of our little Prince, surely nothing more than a baby as yet, make me uneasy?

  Tetiankh had entered and was bowing just inside the door. “Assistant Governor Thothmes has left the bathhouse, and I have heated fresh water for you, Master. Will you bathe now?” His eyes rested briefly on Huy’s shoulder before he politely glanced away. Huy patted himself and his fingers came away black with kohl. He followed his servant out of the room.

  Thothmes seemed reluctant to leave. When it became obvious that he was about to settle himself in the shade of the garden instead of on the deck of his barge, Huy gave the order allowing the townspeople to come in. While he and Ishat dealt with them, he was aware of his friend watching from beyond the pool, and when Anhur had ushered the last of them back through the gate and Amunmose emerged from the house with a jug of beer and two cups balanced ceremoniously on a tray, Thothmes left the grass and joined them. As usual after emptying himself before the needs of Hut-herib’s citizens, Huy was exhausted, wanting nothing more than an hour or two on his couch; but today, as Thothmes approached and Amunmose bent to offer him a drink, he admitted grimly to himself that he did not want to leave Thothmes and Ishat alone together. Please, Thothmes, just go away. You will have the rest of your life to spend with my Ishat. Can’t you see that I begrudge you these fleeting moments before you take her away from me forever?

  “Amunmose, go and get another cup,” he said wearily, his head beginning to pound as Thothmes lowered himself onto the stone of the little portico into whose shade Huy and Ishat had retreated. Amunmose set the tray on the ground and went back into the house. Ishat poured the beer, holding it out to Huy first with a deliberate solicitude that suddenly angered him. He drank thirstily. Amunmose returned with the cup, passed it to Thothmes, and filled it. Thothmes sat swirling the brown liquid slowly around, his eyes on its gentle motion. A constraint had fallen on all three of them that was not broken until Thothmes cleared his throat.

  “I suppose I ought to get onto my barge and go home,” he said, “but I wish I could stay here with both of you until the closeness that used to exist between us came back.”

  Neither Huy nor Ishat replied, and after a moment Thothmes drank, called for Ibi, and went into the house.

  He and Huy embraced at the watersteps where Seneb, his captain, waited to draw in the ramp. They held each other tightly, both struggling to break the dam that held their affection for each other in check. Huy was the first to pull away. “I shall want to see a copy of the marriage contract before I bring Ishat to you, and of course one must go to her parents, whether they can read it or not,” he said huskily. “Please keep writing to me, Thothmes, for the sake of our schooldays together.”

  Thothmes nodded, his eyes large with unshed tears. Turning to Ishat, he lifted her hands and kissed them lightly. “You honour me, Ishat,” he told her quietly. “Be well.” Running along the ramp, he disappeared into his cabin.

  Seneb bowed to the pair on the steps, shouted an order, and quickly the ramp was hauled in. Sailors appeared with poles and began to push the barge away from the bank and into the centre of the sullen river. Ishat put a hand on Huy’s arm. She was about to speak, but Huy shook her off.

  “Not now,” he said tersely. “I need poppy and an hour on my couch. Tell Merenra to begin preparations for the Royal Nurse’s visit.” None of this will have any meaning once she is gone, he thought as he felt the blessed coolness of the reception hall enfold him. Not the estate, not my work. She has become the heart of everything in my life. How shall I fill the chasm her going will leave? Already I feel it opening all around me.

  He lay on his couch once Tetiankh had given him the drug and had withdrawn, turning onto his side and staring into the dimness of the room. This is not anger, he realized all at once with a shock the poppy did not dull. This is fear. I am afraid of loneliness, afraid of missing her, afraid of decisions that must be made without her clear voice arguing us both into consensus. Fear? This is panic. Ishat is my link to the world of normality and practicality I began to leave the moment Sennefer’s throwing stick sent me plunging into Ra’s temple lake, a world I crave desperately but can only partially inhabit. I cannot get drunk, although I may drink. I cannot make love, although I may feel both love and desire. I must carefully discipline my mind to appreciate the beauty of Egypt, thrusting away any comparison my ka wants to make with the incomparable glories of Paradise. I am Atum’s pawn, at the mercy of whatever visions he chooses to send me, without the security of knowing his will, for even though the words of the Book of Thoth are sharply embedded in my consciousness, I still have not been able to solve their final riddle.

  As if he had deliberately summoned them, the first phrases of the Book rose into his mind. “I Thoth, greatest of heka-power, giver of the sacred gift of language to man out of my own Hu, set down these mysteries at the command of Atum so that he who is possessed of the gift of wisdom may read and understand what is the will of the Holy One. Let him who desires this knowledge take care that his eyes be diligent and his reverence complete. For he without sia will read to his harm, and he without diligence will enter the Second
Duat.”

  The opium was spreading its warmth through his blood, loosening the tension in his limbs, gently lifting memories out of the dimness on the periphery of his consciousness where they hid, and imbuing them with all the colour and immediacy of moments long gone. Once again he was stepping down from the wicker floor of the chariot after his lesson on the school’s training ground and running his hand over Lazy White Star’s moist flank as he prepared to unhitch the horse. He could smell his own sweat mingling with the not unpleasant odour of the animal. The sun was hot on his head. Dust clung to his calves. But he was oblivious to the physical world around him for the torment in his mind. What was the Second Duat? He had cursed the sluggishness and ignorance of his own sia, his perception, as he freed the horse from the vehicle, led it into its stall, and washed and brushed it while it drank, his movements automatic. He had then gone outside, and was struggling to wrench the chariot free of the sand when the solution had come to him, flooding his mind. The Second Duat was what every Egyptian thought of as the first and only one, a place through which the dead must pass in order to reach the Paradise of Osiris, a nightmare populated by djinns and demons. The First Duat was the place where Atum willed a metamorphosis for himself.

  Huy, lying drugged on his couch, no longer saw the far wall of his room. The expanse of the training ground shimmering in the heat had given way to the cool, roofless confines of the place where the sacred Ished Tree had been planted by Atum at the beginning of time. Huy was sitting with his back against its trunk, a scroll across his thighs. Above him, the leaves of the Tree rustled and whispered. His nostrils filled with its curious scent, honey and garlic, orchard blossoms and the merest whiff of something corrupt, something rotting. The beauty of the ancient hieroglyphs contained within the Book of Thoth filled his vision as he began to read. At that moment I understood that I equated Atum’s metamorphosis with my own, Huy remembered as his younger self sat on in that magical room, cocooned by the vast labyrinth of the temple of Ra. I was declared dead of Sennefer’s throwing stick and of drowning at Iunu.

  The walls around him dissolved, the floor lengthened and became hot beneath his sandalled feet, and he was standing in Ra’s temple forecourt, Thothmes beside him, his bow in his hand. They were on their way to the training ground, Huy for archery practice and Thothmes gauntleted for the chariot. Beyond them, in the trees, Sennefer was brandishing his new throwing stick, his sycophantic follower Samentuser watching admiringly. Sennefer, seeing them come, started towards them, a string of insults already streaming from his mouth. Bully that he was, he hated both Huy and Thothmes, but in Huy’s peasant roots he had found the perfect target for his jibes. On this day, as Huy and Thothmes came to a halt, the hurtful invective was all about throwing sticks, and how only the nobles were allowed to own them, which was a pity, for Huy’s father might have used one to kill the rats in his hovel. Huy, unaware that his body lay flaccid on his couch, once again stood stiff with a mounting rage as Sennefer’s voice echoed across the wide stone flagging of the temple’s forecourt and the verge of the lake fronting the apron sparkled in the strong afternoon sunlight. Thothmes put a warning hand on his arm, but Huy shook it off. “Not this time,” he said through clenched teeth, his heart pounding, a redness before his eyes. Somewhere deep behind the vivid re-creation of this memory Huy knew that the opium he had taken was compelling him to relive this most terrible day, but the knowledge was a faint whisper come and gone. He lunged towards Sennefer, saw the boy’s expression change from a sneer to one of frightened surprise, saw Sennefer’s arm come up and back, and then the throwing stick was speeding through the air, turning over and over, glinting as it came. It struck, and Huy the man in his dimly lit room, Huy the twelve-year-old pupil at Iunu’s temple school, cried out together. In the grip of memory, Huy began to crawl sightless over the hot stone, insensible to the pain in his hands and knees. Then there was space beneath him and he was falling into the lake, the water cool against his skin.

  Such a terrible death, Huy groaned silently through the smothering mantle of the drug. But I did not know that I had died until much later, for while my lifeless corpse was being floated north to Hut-herib, to the House of the Dead, I was in the Beautiful West, the Paradise of Osiris, speaking with the Great Seer and Physician Imhotep himself, and agreeing, in my innocence, to read the fabled Book of Thoth. Five days later, as a sem priest was about to cut open my abdomen with the obsidian knife and begin my Beautification, my ka was returned to me and I sat up, not knowing where I was, ill and confused. Methen found me naked and sobbing under a palm tree and took me to my parents’ house.

  The memory did not fade; it was snuffed out as though its bright candle flare had been doused in a shower of water, and Huy found himself staring across at the wall of his room. That rebirth was my First Duat, he realized dully. Of course. I metamorphosed into the Twice Born, the one favoured by the gods, the one who had died and been restored to life. Will Ishat’s going plunge me into my Second Duat, a place of demons, of dark pools and rivers, where terror lurks? Has Atum decreed that my comfort should be removed from me, taking sanity and normality with her, because I have been drawing ever closer to the world of the senses and forgetting, dismissing, the god’s will for me? The idea was insupportable. Huy could imagine the god’s voice speaking words of correction: “You belong to me alone … You are my instrument … My will for you must be your only resting place …” He had heard Atum’s voice once, giving a message to Pharaoh Amunhotep through Huy’s own lips. Huy lay tense and miserable. The poppy had not sent its soothing magic to blanket his mind and body today. He wanted to call to Tetiankh for more, but his throat, his tongue, would not obey him.

  Three weeks later, Royal Nurse Heqareshu stepped from his barge and answered Huy and Ishat’s profound obeisance with a brief nod. Huy had imagined him as plump and fatherly, with a ready smile and warm eyes, but the man regarding him with calm intelligence owed nothing at all to his fantasy. Fully painted and bejewelled, clad in a linen gown that shimmered with gold thread in the breeze, he exuded power and confidence. The members of his retinue were already giving their orders to Anhur and Merenra, and out of the corner of his eye Huy saw a flustered Amunmose backing surreptitiously in the direction of the kitchens, only to be summoned back by an impatient wave from Merenra.

  “This is not going to be fun,” Ishat whispered to Huy under cover of their bows. “He’ll drive us all into the Duat before he leaves.”

  Huy hid the jolt her comment had given him. Heqareshu was striding towards them. He stopped before Huy.

  “So,” he said smoothly, “you are the Seer Huy. I am the Noble Heqareshu. I believe that you have met my son Kenamun, Foster Brother of the Lord of the Two Lands.” His expression conveyed Huy’s good fortune. “My steward and the commander of my bodyguards will decide where I am to sleep, and whether or not your staff may remain in the house while I am here. I do not have time to waste. I must return to Mennofer as soon as possible to continue my care of the Prince Amunhotep. Therefore, you will See for me as soon as I have broken my fast tomorrow morning.”

  Huy bowed again. “You are welcome in my home, Royal Nurse Heqareshu,” he responded carefully. “However, as you can see, it is small. Perhaps you would prefer to rest for the night aboard your barge.”

  “My steward will make that determination. For now you may escort me within and offer me water and wine. The sun is hot.”

  Huy, feeling Ishat’s indignant struggle to keep her mouth closed, fought against his own desire to laugh. He was distinctly nervous. “I trust that both His Majesty and the Prince are in good health?” he inquired politely as he and the small crowd began to move.

  Heqareshu nodded. “They are both well. His Majesty has just announced that Her Majesty Tiaa, his half-sister and Second Wife, is pregnant. I shall, of course, be appointed as Royal Nurse to the new baby.”

  Of course, Huy thought as they entered the reception hall, where cushions and low tables were waiting. Amunhot
ep wants a prediction for this birth. He needs to know whether or not it will be a male. If so, it will be either an insurance against the death of the heir or a latent threat to him if he proves weak. But why the privacy, the need to acquire the Seeing through this man?

  He and Ishat waited while Heqareshu chose a table, lifted his linen with one graceful gesture, and sank onto the cushion behind it. At once a servant began to wave an ostrich fan over him. Huy could feel the minute but pleasant backrush of air. Heqareshu’s steward took the flagons of water and wine a stone-faced Merenra was holding and began to serve his master.

  Heqareshu looked about him. “You have good taste, Seer Huy,” he said, sipping his water. “Your house is indeed small, but well appointed. How long have you lived at Hut-herib?”

  A polite conversation began, from which Ishat was excluded. It was not a conscious slight on Heqareshu’s part, Huy decided. The man simply did not see Ishat at all. To formally acknowledge the presence of another’s scribe would never have occurred to him.

  After some moments, the commander of his bodyguard came up to him, bowed, and spoke quickly into his ear. Heqareshu inclined his head. “Your guest room will be suitable for me,” he said. “I shall not need to deprive you of your own couch, Seer Huy. However, my body servant must be near me. Therefore, he will occupy your scribe’s quarters.”

  Ishat had taken a sharp breath, her cheeks flaming. Huy reached across and gripped her shoulder hard. “The arrangement will be acceptable,” he said firmly. “But Ishat must not sleep in the servants’ cells. She must be ready to take my dictation at any hour. Merenra! Have a pallet set up in my room for Ishat!” He felt the muscles loosen under his fingers and withdrew his hand.