He lingered on his estate for another day, out of an uncharacteristic pride determined to show his power by keeping Amunhotep waiting but also in a deep reluctance to discover what the King desired of him. He even considered sending excuses south—I have fallen ill, my mother is sick, my barge has been holed—but finally he recognized his cowardice. In the cool of the following dawn, he stepped unwillingly onto the boat’s ramp, Thothhotep behind him, and gave the order to cast off.
Leaning on the deck rail and watching the riverbank slide by, it seemed to him that the water was at a level considerably lower than it had been a scant three days before, giving off a rank odour of slimed reeds and mud that underpinned the tributary’s usual scent of lush green growth even in the weeks before the Inundation. It’s my own inner disturbance that I smell, he thought. Behind him, Tetiankh was attaching the awning to the wall of the cabin, stepping around Thothhotep, who was already ensconced on cushions, sipping water from the cup Iny had handed her and contentedly watching the sky, where a falcon swooped above them. This time Huy’s rowers were at work, fighting the slow current. The sound of his captain calling the beat was soothing. The journey to Mennofer would be a few hours longer than usual.
They put in at sunset, and the tired rowers left the barge to sit or lie on the grass of the bank while Khnit and her assistants lit a fire and prepared an evening meal of fried fish and cabbage stew. Huy and Thothhotep waited together in silence for the food to be brought. Huy’s abstracted mood seemed to have infected his scribe. He knew that she loved being on the river as much as Ishat had. Her enjoyment was less exuberant than Ishat’s had been, gentler but no less deep; her observations of the scenery floating past were made calmly, but her language was rich. So far she had said little, in spite of the clouds of dust hanging over the groups of reapers plying their sickles while the golden crops collapsed before them, and the steady stream of other craft heading to nearby Iunu or the cities far to the south.
After they had eaten in a wordless companionship, she summoned Iny and disappeared, the body servant laden with natron, cloths, and oils. Later, returning clean-faced, her short hair slicked back with oil, she bade Huy a solemn good night and lay down at the foot of the cabin. Iny covered her and, bowing to Huy, retreated to the sailors’ fires beginning to twinkle in the deepening dusk. Huy himself was too restless to sleep. Taking Anhur, he wandered along the tributary’s path. They were very close to the fork of the Delta where the river branched into several arms. Iunu itself sat almost upon that spot. Huy, pacing beside the comforting bulk of his soldier, remembered his despairing walk along this same rutted road on his way north from Iunu to an unknown fate in his hometown. The memory did not soothe him.
In the late afternoon of the following day, having passed Iunu in the morning, they went by the northern mouth of the drainage canal that ran behind Mennofer, and the northern suburbs of the city began. The watersteps of the nobles broke the line of palms and other trees overhanging the river path at regular intervals. The houses lying beyond them were seldom glimpsed. Huy knew that behind the meticulously tended lawns and gardens, with their sheltering mud-brick walls, lay a maze of narrow streets and tiny row houses, markets, beer houses, and simple shrines. Behind this teeming hive lay the Ankh-tawy district, stretching in a wide arc to the southern canal—a place of respectable artisans who cultivated a few cramped arouras to augment their rations of bread, beer, onions, and garlic received from the overseers who directed their work in the place of the dead across the canal and out onto the desert.
East of the Ankh-tawy lay the heart of Mennofer, first the temples of past kings, then the District of Ptah, with its mighty temple and sculpture-lined avenues leading north to the famous White Walls, the ancient Citadel, and the temple of Neith, goddess sister to Osiris; and south to another small canal, the South District, and the temple of Hathor of the Sycamore. Then the south suburbs began, mirroring those of the north. A short way farther east, running all the way from the Citadel south to where the avenue from the temple of Ptah became the canal, a high wall protected the Fine District of Pharaoh, with its palace, harem, and gardens. South of this wall, hard up against it, the buildings of the arsenal and the homes of the sailors and soldiers stationed in the holy city, crowded against the great Peru-nefer dockyards and piers and the Amun shrine.
Between the Fine District of Pharaoh and the river lay the centre of Mennofer, busy and wealthy with commerce, and the wide watersteps where dozens of craft of every description jostled against each other. Two canals ran through it. The southern canal ran straight to the temple of Ptah, but the northern waterway, heavily guarded all along its length, led directly to the palace itself; and it was close to this canal that Huy’s captain found a narrow berth and the helmsman expertly jockeyed the barge into it. Even before the ramp was run out, a phalanx of soldiers, their short kilts sporting the blue and white of royalty, had gathered above the watersteps. Their captain stepped forward and bowed. “This way is restricted,” he called to Huy, who was facing him on the deck. “If you have business with the ministers of the Horus Throne, state it now. Otherwise you must move south to the public watersteps.”
“I am the Seer Huy son of Hapu,” Huy called back. “The One has summoned me.”
He was surprised when the man nodded rather than sending away for confirmation. “His Majesty is temporarily in residence, Great Seer. My orders are to have you, and you alone, escorted to the palace when you arrive. Food and drink can be provided for your entourage if you so wish.”
“I go nowhere without my scribe and the captain of my guard,” Huy protested, indicating a painted and perfumed Thothhotep hovering at his elbow.
Even before he had finished speaking, the other was shaking his head. “The command is absolute,” he said tersely. “You are to present yourself alone. You will be poled along the canal and met at the concourse.”
Huy hesitated, one thought in his mind. What if the sense of foreboding that had dogged him ever since Thothhotep read him the scroll was a warning that Amunhotep wished to harm him? Perhaps even have him quietly killed? But that’s ridiculous, he told himself. You’ve done nothing to incur the King’s displeasure, and besides, you are too well known throughout the country to suddenly vanish. Nevertheless, visions of his bloated body being pulled from the river, or bloodied with stab wounds and found out on the desert, half eaten by jackals, or even headless and unidentified in some city ditch, flashed across his inner eye.
“Master, you need to decide, and really there is no decision to be made,” Thothhotep murmured, handing him the scroll. “This is a direct summons.”
For answer, Huy stepped onto the ramp. “Make sure that my people are given whatever sustenance they require,” he said brusquely to the soldier, very aware of Anhur glowering in disapproval at his back. Reaching the end of the ramp, he took the few steps to one of the waiting skiffs and got into it. At once the waiting sailor bowed to him and, lifting his pole, shoved off. The skiff began to drift towards the towering wall, with its shadowed mouth into which the canal seemed to disappear. Huy sat tensely on the cushion provided. He had never felt more vulnerable.
Soon the little boat reached the wall and slid under it, coming to a bumpy halt before a long stone concourse that ran away to a series of pillars fronting the imposing palace which had been the northern centre of power in Egypt for many hentis. Blue and white flags rippled from tall poles set in the hands of massive stone figures seated to either side of the building’s entrance. Double doors of beaten copper had been folded back, the golden brown metal blindingly reflecting the westering sun, whose strength was still white-hot. Guards stood ranged along the length of the palace, impassively watching the few well-dressed people who were hurrying across the concourse. Most were accompanied by servants holding linen sunshades over their heads. Huy got out of the skiff and, feeling the hot stone burn beneath his sandals, began to walk forward. It seemed to take him a long time to reach the blessed shadow cast by the buildin
g, but at last he stepped from heat to coolness and came to a halt.
At once one of the guards approached him, a man in a short blue and white kilt, his broad chest hidden under a leather jerkin, a sheathed sword hanging from his sturdy belt. A plain white linen helmet edged in blue framed a brown face out of which two dark eyes scanned Huy shrewdly. Huy, staring back with the vague certainty that he had met this soldier before, noted the golden Supreme Commander’s arm bands gripping the well-muscled upper arms, and scoured his mind for a name.
The man smiled slightly and bowed. “Great Seer, you are expected, although His Majesty did not know how long it would be before you were free to answer his summons. Perhaps you do not remember me. I was little more than a lad when I accompanied His Majesty to your town, before he marched into Rethennu. At that time I was Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s ground forces. Now I have the honour of controlling the navy as well.”
Huy’s brow cleared. “Wesersatet! Of course! The last time I saw you, you were clad in a cloth-of-gold kilt and decked in jaspers!”
“And you were anxious and a little afraid of us painted and perfumed courtiers. Believe me, your presence aboard Kha-em-Ma’at had us agog with curiosity about you under our nonchalance!”
“Kha-em-Ma’at,” Huy repeated. “‘Living in Truth.’ The name of the royal barge. I had forgotten that, but not how I saw a great victory for the King in Rethennu. It was a long time ago, Commander.”
Wesersatet gestured to one of the guards. “Tell a servant to fetch Maani-nekhtef at once. Tell him that the Great Seer is waiting.” The man passed beyond the entrance just far enough to speak to someone hovering inside. Wesersatet turned back to Huy. “Please take the stool. The Chief Herald will be here presently and will take you to the Throne Room. I believe that His Majesty has risen from the sleep and is consulting his ministers there. Shall I summon Men? Are you hungry or thirsty?”
Men, Huy thought swiftly. The chief steward. He gave me my first taste of the carob drink, and a dose of poppy so strong that I could hardly walk out of the King’s presence in the cabin without stumbling. A wave of desire for the drug washed over him. Grimly, he pushed it away.
He had been perching on the stool for no more than a few moments when a man emerged from the gloom of the palace doorway, bowed, and addressed him briskly. “I am Chief Herald Maani-nekhtef. I will announce you to His Majesty. Have you titles to be called, Great Seer?”
Huy rose, his heart thudding. “No. And please, Maani-nekhtef, announce me as Huy, son of Hapu of Hut-herib.”
“Very well. Follow me.”
The reception hall was vast. Huy heard the echo of his tread strike the lofty walls and mingle with the measured voices of the servants and soldiers whose presence was lost in that great expanse of marching pillars and smooth, tiled floor. Huy imagined it crowded with hundreds of lavishly clad, jewelled guests gathered to fete a foreign ambassador, perhaps, their conversations all but extinguishing the music of drum, lute, and finger cymbals, the perfume from the wax cones on their wigged heads or massaged into their gleaming bodies mingling with the fragrance of the thousands of blooms scattered about.
Coming to himself, he realized that he and his guide had crossed the hall and were now pacing along a series of wide corridors flanked by more guards standing between ebony totems that represented the gods and symbols of every sepat in Egypt. Their serene faces gazed unseeingly at him as he passed. He tried to spot the one for his sepat, the Am-khent, but the Chief Herald strode ahead and Huy hurried to catch up to him, suddenly bewildered by the sheer size of this holy place. Large doors opened off the passages at regular intervals, giving Huy a glimpse across dainty inlaid chairs and intricately carved little tables towards a view of gardens full of shrubs and riotous with healthy blooms, although it was the season of Shemu, when his uncle Ker’s perfume fields would be showing no more than a dense collection of drooping stems and parched leaves, the crop of flowers plucked and crushed for steeping long since. One passage ran between what were plainly the offices of various ministers, their walls pocked with niches for scrolls, their desks large and simple, each with a small flax mat beside it for a scribe, their lamps purely functional in design. Huy saw no indication of a woman’s touch, and decided that the harem quarters lay somewhere else in the complex. Perhaps foreign dignitaries were lodged in this wing of the palace, close to the ministers with whom they probably had to deal.
Suddenly they came to the end of a passage, the attending soldier opened the door, and Huy found himself blinking in strong sunlight and surrounded by lawn and a forest through which a path ran. Other buildings, their whitewashed walls bright with paintings, loomed to right and left. Each had its contingent of guards clustered about the doors. The herald had begun to slow, and directly ahead Huy saw a relatively modest structure. The soldier there was already opening the door.
“Within are the Throne Room and several private retiring rooms for His Majesty and the royal family,” Maani-nekhtef told Huy. “His Majesty gives formal audiences here, although today he has been hearing the preliminary reports on projected yields of grain. I believe that it has been a fruitful year, and of course we must now pray for a good flood.” Politely, he held up a hand. Huy gave him the scroll he had been clutching, then stood on the threshold. He could still see Maani-nekhtef’s back as the herald took a few steps into the room, bowed, waited for some signal Huy could not see, then intoned, “Huy, son of Hapu of Hut-herib, requests admittance into the presence of the One. What is Your Majesty’s pleasure regarding this desire?”
There was a spoken response in tones Huy recognized. They returned him uncomfortably to the momentous day when he had Seen for the King, when Thothmes’ attraction to Ishat had intensified, when, unknown to him, his life was about to be forever changed. He could not make out the King’s words, but the herald took the few steps back to him and indicated that he should enter. “Perform your obeisances and then wait,” he said. “The King will attend to you as soon as he may. It has been a pleasure to serve you, Son of Hapu.” He bowed, turned on his heel, and walked away with the unhurried grace and speed acquired by every herald.
Very well, Huy thought, crossing the door’s lintel and moving into relative dimness. I hope I can remember how to reverence Amunhotep.
The room was large, but its proportions were manageable, somehow scaled on a more human level than the awesome magnificence of the reception hall. Nevertheless, it was splendid enough, with its deep blue lapis-tiled floor in which flecks of pyrite glittered, its pale blue ceiling where Nut, the sky goddess who swallowed the sun every evening and gave birth to him every dawn, arched her body in protection over the dais at the farther end. A crowd of people had fallen silent as Huy appeared. He felt their inquisitive stares as he bent, knelt, and then prostrated himself full length, but all his attention was fixed on the occupant of the Horus Throne set in the centre of the dais. There was a pause, then the voice he knew bade him rise. He did so, bowing from the waist with arms outstretched, as Chief Steward Men had told him to do all those years ago, and standing with eyes downcast.
He had thought that the dais was empty of all but the King, but when the same voice gave him permission to look up, he saw the throne surrounded. He knew Kenamun immediately. The King’s closest friend, son of his wet nurse, was taking up almost the same position Huy remembered from the cabin on Kha-em-Ma’at, behind Amunhotep and with one hand resting on the rear edge of the throne. Sitting at the King’s left hand on a stool, a young man with Amunhotep’s unmistakable features was watching Huy warily, his hand joined to that of a very pretty and equally young woman in a wig of many oiled black ringlets falling to her narrow waist. A coronet of gold and green faience flowers circled her brow. Green moonstone and gold scarab earrings swung lightly against her long neck, and above the high swell of her white-clad breasts a many-stranded pectoral bearing more moonstone scarabs rested on her pale, flawless skin. To the King’s right, a man was standing awkwardly. Older than the
young man on Amunhotep’s left, he was nevertheless much younger, Huy surmised quickly, than Huy himself. He too bore a marked resemblance to the King. On the floor before the dais, a series of men were ranged—ministers, favoured servants and courtiers, perhaps one or two High Priests, as well as the usual spread of palace guards. Huy’s eyes slid over them and up to the King himself.
Meeting his look, Amunhotep smiled broadly. “Welcome, Great Seer. It has been many years since you and I faced one another.” He made it sound as though they might be equals, and a murmur went up from the listening throng. “You were a clumsy stripling with the power of Atum in your fingers then,” the King went on. “Today you have become a handsome man, and they tell me that the authority of the god still pours through you.” He beckoned Huy closer. “In spite of the peasant stock from which you came, you have intelligence also, and so has your brother. We know that Heby is highly respected by the High Priest of Ptah. We were sorry to hear of the death of his wife Sapet, but our Assistant Treasurer Merira is proud that Heby has chosen his daughter Iupia to succeed the ill-fated Sapet.” His heavily kohled glance went to a man at the edge of the crowd, and Merira stepped forward and bowed, smiling at Huy.
“Indeed, Majesty, it is Iupia’s good fortune, and mine,” he said.
Amunhotep’s level gaze returned to Huy. “You also have lost someone you love, although she has not died,” he remarked. “Ishat has proved a worthy wife to my Governor Thothmes, and a valued ornament at court when he comes to make his annual report on the state of my Heq-at sepat. Do you still miss her, Huy?”
Seer of Egypt Page 27