Seer of Egypt

by Pauline Gedge

  And what of Imhotep? his mind persisted. He read, he understood, he became a holy and revered man and then a god. Did he read what I have read, and did he see words that have since disappeared? Next time I visit Thothmes and Ishat at Iunu, I must go to the House of Life, to the archives, and acquaint myself with the details of the Mighty Seer’s life.

  Wearily, Huy scrambled to his feet, picked up the cushion, and re-entered the house. He had no idea how long he had been sitting on the roof, communing with the Book. He needed to sleep now that his mind had been scoured. I’m right, he told himself as he lowered himself onto his couch with a groan of pure pleasure at its cool softness. My akh, my ka, and my ba all tell me so. The last scroll waits for me to finish it as it waited for Imhotep. On that conviction he fell asleep.

  12

  He spent the following day with his parents, noting with a pang of concern how his father, Hapu, tried to hide the pain in his limbs when getting up from his mat on the floor after the simple evening meal. Huy knew better than to nag him. The peasant whom Huy had procured for him was a cheerful, energetic man with an appetite as large as his girth. “Your father will not stay out of the perfume fields, Master,” he told Huy in private. “I have no authority to command him. All I can do is make sure that your uncle Ker assigns the heavier tasks to me. Hapu often works in the compound, simmering the flowers and handling the filtering, but he says that the powerful odours of the blooms give him a headache and he sneaks back to tend the plants. He’s happiest weeding out the wild flax and the dock leaves.” The wide shoulders lifted in a gesture of impotence. “He comes home with his back bent and your mother scolds him, but even she can do nothing with him.”

  It is as though Father is punishing himself for something, Huy mused as Hapzefa set lentil soup and barley bread before him, and Hapu, opposite, lifted his beer mug and smiled at Huy over its rim. Is he just being obstinate or is he, like me, no stranger to the guilt that often underpins every other emotion? Hapu’s muscles stood out like ropes on his arms, his legs, his torso, unsoftened by the layer of fat that had smoothed the contours of his younger body.

  Huy’s mother, Itu, had thickened around the waist. Streaks of grey threaded through her black hair and her face was becoming lined, but Huy thought that aging suited her. She had always been beautiful, but now she carried with her an aura of dignified fulfillment Huy liked very much. She still used the lily perfume whose gentle aroma could return him to the days of his childhood, and her embraces were as strong and warm as ever. Hapzefa, Ishat’s mother, never seemed to change. Her tongue was perhaps sharper, her movements less direct, but she still treated Huy with the mixture of affection and censure that had enfolded him since his birth. Ishat had showered her with gifts, provided her with a better house, a couple of cows of her own, and had offered to send a new servant for Hapu’s household so that Hapzefa could retire, but like Hapu himself she knew no other life but that of caring for the household and did not want to change.

  Huy both loved and disliked the unvarying atmosphere of his childhood home, fraught with both happy and fearful memories as it was. His younger self haunted the garden, waiting for Ishat to emerge from the orchard to play or argue with him. Stepping into the room that had been his and then Heby’s, he again saw Ishat come slipping through his window, one bare brown leg pushing at the reed slats of the hanging while he lay on the cot with a wounded skull, virtually a prisoner as he waited for the Rekhet to come and exorcise the demon most people, including his father, believed had taken possession of his body. Hapu had refused to be anywhere near him. Only his mother and Ishat loved him enough to ease his terror, Itu from a stout conviction that no demon existed in him and Ishat because she was more interested in the ghoulish sight of the gash on his head, and because she was lonely without him. Huy had no desire to relive those days.

  He was using some of the King’s gold to have a small tomb prepared for his parents in the low cliffs to the west, between the Delta and the country of Tjehanu. The simple events of their lives would be painted on its walls, but Huy had no intention of including anything to do with his own death, his waking after five days in the House of the Dead here at Hut-herib, or his exorcism. His successes and Heby’s also would be recorded and added to until the time Hapu and Itu became Osiris-ones, but no hint of anything uncommon would be depicted.

  Usually his visits were pleasant, the conversations warm and light, when everyone was careful not to allude to the past. But occasionally the past hung about the house and garden like smoke, making Huy desperate to escape back to his own home.

  True to his word, Huy visited his arouras west of the town, in the Andjet sepat, and stood with Seshemnefer to watch the peasants wield their sickles, the emmer, barley, and flax falling before them in a steady rhythm. The huge reed baskets were filling with broad beans, figs, dates, onions, lentils, and other vegetables used in large quantities. Seshemnefer, whose assistant was in charge of the arouras the Rekhet had willed to Huy, told Huy that the yield of olives had been surprisingly heavy at Ta-she and the grapes had ripened with no sign of rust. “Surely the gods smile upon you again, Master, as they do every year,” Seshemnefer remarked, “and therefore on me also as the Overseer of your fields. I have personally harvested a goodly quantity of henna leaves. They are already steeping in the sarson oil and will make a rich orange dye for my noble customers. Is Anab caring well for the estate garden?”

  Huy smiled. “He shares your magic touch, and the soil responds to his attention. Seshemnefer, if you can leave the harvesting here to your assistant, I want you to go south to Weset this year and supervise the slitting of the poppy pods with Amunnefer’s Overseer. I want to know the quality of the drug from your own mouth. Also make sure that the correct amount is delivered to the King’s Overseer of Physicians. He’ll be hanging about, waiting to transport the poppy back north to Mennofer. The last thing I want to do at this time is antagonize His Majesty.”

  The man nodded. “Very well. I would like to take my wife with me if you can spare her, Master. Khnit would love Weset.”

  Huy considered. It was true that Khnit had been working steadily for a long time. Even though she now had two servants under her, it was no easy matter to feed everyone resident on the estate. “Amunmose will grumble, but he can be my cook for a while. Thank you, Seshemnefer. You make my fields very profitable.”

  Every season of Shemu, the reports from his overseers were the same: bountiful, healthy crops of all kinds, free of disease. Even the quality of the poppy yield was approaching the potency of the dark brown Keftian juice. The same could be said of the unfailing riches the incense caravans brought home to Egypt almost every year. It is indeed true that the gods have favoured me, Huy reflected as he walked to where his litter and the bearers waited under the palms at the edge of the field.

  In the last week of Epophi two letters arrived, one from the palace and one from Amunnefer. Seshemnefer had returned with satisfactory reports after discharging his duties at Weset and so Huy, staring down at Amunnefer’s scroll sealed with Amun’s two feathers, could not imagine what message lay inside. He had summoned Thothhotep when Merenra handed him the letters. Now he passed them both to her across his desk. His office, though not cool, was at least dim, due to the shrubbery crowding the low window. “Read me Amunnefer’s first,” he said, dreading to discover what new demand the King might be making of him.

  Obediently, she broke the seal and scanned the contents, then she smiled, glancing at Huy, before her eyes dropped to the script and she began to speak. “‘To my friend and partner the Great Seer Huy, greetings. You will of course already know that our venture together will once more bring us much profit, but I am not writing to you today, the fifteenth day of Epophi, in my own hand, to discuss the poppy. On the twenty-second day of last month, Payni, in the evening, I arrived at my house expecting to find it empty of my wife Anuket, who for many years has preferred the company of others to my own. I was surprised to find her waiting for me in the
reception hall, painted and dressed as though for a feast. When I asked her if I had forgotten the visit of some dignitary who must be feted, she replied that the only dignitary present was I. Since you Saw for her all those years ago, she has struggled against the lure of wine with little success, but on that day of Payni she declared that she had woken to find herself entirely freed from the need for it, and that she would not be leaving the bounds of the estate unless there were social obligations to fulfill. For several days I waited to see her resolve weaken, but a month has passed and, true to her word, she drinks only juices and water. Her health is improving. If she leaves the house, it is with me or her steward and guards. Both of us have begun to wonder if perhaps through her efforts she has at last been able to avert the fate you Saw waiting for her, and which she eventually related to me. We are cautiously beginning to believe that the change in her is enduring. We rejoice, and I am sure that you, as one of her oldest friends, will be glad also.’” Thothhotep allowed the scroll to roll up. “He signs it ‘Governor of the Uas sepat, Amunnefer. Life, Health, and Prosperity to you and all who live beneath your sunshade.’ Shall I open the other letter?”

  Huy gazed at her but did not see her. He was not aware that he was gripping both thighs. The twenty-second day of Payni, his mind repeated. The twenty-second … That was the day when I stood before the King and his sons and betrayed Ma’at, and suddenly, on that very day, for no reason at all, Anuket is able to take a final step away from the terrible fate I Saw for her. Atum has done this. The discipline Anubis promised is upon me. My vision for Anuket will be proved false, as false as my craven words of appeasement to the King and Prince Thothmes—but will it fall on someone else? Someone I love?

  One of his hands was lifted. He looked down to see Thothhotep kneeling beside his chair, her features disfigured with concern. “Huy, what is it? You’ve gone pale. I remember transcribing the Seeing you gave for the Governor’s wife. That was more than fifteen years ago. But this is good news, is it not? Huy!”

  She had begun to shake his fingers. Laying his other hand over hers, he stilled the movement. “I have not told you what transpired when the King summoned me,” he said, the need to unburden himself overcoming any reticence he might feel. “You keep your counsel and mine, Thothhotep. You’ve proved as much. Bring a stool, and then I will try to explain to you why this letter fills me with horror.”

  She went to the corner, dragged out the stool, and sat down facing him. She did not pick up her palette from the desk where she had placed it. Quickly, Huy spoke of Prince Thothmes’ fictitious dream, the response he himself should have made, and the response he did make. He spoke of the two hyenas, the one beside Imhotep and the one that stared him down in his garden. He described as best he could the flooding of his consciousness with the Book and Anubis’s warnings.

  Her eyes did not leave his face until he fell silent. Then she folded her arms and her head went down. After a long time she said, “There will be two consequences, yes? One will be a punishment for failing both Atum, who gave you your gift, and Ma’at, whose feather represents cosmic and earthly justice, truth and integrity held in balance by the King in his person and by every Egyptian who strives to live in her. The other will overtake you if you do not decipher the meaning the hyena has for you. I must confess that I cannot wrap my thoughts around the connection between the lion, the darkness, and you. Have I understood you so far, Master?”

  He nodded. In using his title once more, she was placing herself back in the position of the trusted inferior in case the confidence he had just shared with her might have embarrassed him. He was grateful for her sensitivity.

  “You are not a god,” she went on, “and surely Atum cannot expect you to be the perfection that he is. You experienced a moment of weakness. What of it? We all fall short of what is required of us sometimes.”

  But my weakness before the King has the power to resonate throughout Egypt, dear Thothhotep, he answered her silently. That is why I shall be chastised. On impulse, because he had wished Ishat to be sitting there instead of Thothhotep and regretted the desire, he ran his hand down the cap of her glossy hair and rested it against the bare nape of her neck.

  He was rewarded with a brilliant smile. “Atum created us and placed us in this glorious land,” she said. “Does that not indicate a love for us? For your childhood friend, the Lady Anuket? Perhaps Atum has chosen to avert her dire fate.”

  She sits at my feet day after day, recording my visions for those who seek healing or reassurance, he thought, removing his hand. But still she does not understand.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Read me the other letter and then I’ll reply to Governor Amunnefer.”

  At once, she left the stool, picked the scroll up from the desk, and cracked the seal bearing the royal stamp of the sedge and the bee. “It’s not from His Majesty,” she said. “Princess Mutemwia writes to you. She dictates the usual greetings, then she says, ‘The sight of you holding my little son was most pleasing to me, and I continued on to the apartments of my dear friend with a light heart. It was to be the last time she and I shared wine together. She is travelling, and is not sure when she will be returning to Mennofer. When next you have cause to visit this city, I shall be privileged to receive you. Dictated this eighteenth day of the month Payni, year twenty-three of the King.’”

  “So Prince Amunhotep has gone.” Huy left his chair and came around the desk. “The Princess obviously did not even want her scribe to know why she was really writing to me. I wonder if the King will bother to discover where he went. Probably not. He knows that Amunhotep would never plot with foreigners to take the Horus Throne by force. So before too long we will find ourselves ruled by another unscrupulous liar.” He began to search through the niches of scrolls set into the walls of the room.

  “Before how long?”

  “I don’t know. Prince Amunhotep will be in exile for twelve years, therefore Prince Thothmes will not sit on the throne into his old age. The King himself does not look well. His veins visibly pulse and his colour is florid. We may soon have to endure a period of mourning. Ah, here it is.” He unrolled the papyrus on the desk, holding it open with both hands. Ishat’s bold script leapt to his eye and for a moment he was engulfed in a wave of hunger for the past. Thothhotep had come up beside him and was leaning forward over his arm. “This is the vision I had when the Noble Heqareshu came for a Seeing,” he explained. “It was just before I hired you. I gave him only a part of what I Saw. The rest I dictated to Ishat and stored away. I did not understand it, but I do now.” Grimly, he read of the wounded hawk that had hovered over the baby Thothmes, and how he had put out an arm so that it might perch on him. It had struggled to balance itself on his wrist, but when he had turned his face towards it, it had sunk its beak into his lip and disappeared. I bled in that vision, Huy remembered. Atum was trying to tell me something about my own future, to warn me. I have done great harm to Prince Amunhotep, the rightful Hawk-in-the-Nest. That’s why the Horus of my Seeing attacked my mouth.

  Huy let the scroll roll up and replaced it in its niche. If I had interpreted the vision correctly, if I had been on guard for such a moment, would the future of Egypt have been different? Does Anubis show me what is to come or only what might be? Am I a prophet or a sage? Will Anuket carve a new fate for herself? Shocked, Huy realized that he did not want a slim and healthy Anuket. He wanted her drunk and abused and lying filthy and naked in an alley. He wanted her punished for all the pain she had caused him. Even now, he thought with sick comprehension. Even now, when so many years have gone by, I have not really forgiven her, although I no longer love her.

  “Pick up your palette, Thothhotep,” he said harshly. “I must dictate a congratulatory letter at once to Governor Amunnefer, and one to the Princess also, thanking her and asking her to keep me acquainted with events in Mennofer. Then I must visit Methen.”

  He found Khenti-kheti’s priest in his two-roomed cell just off the god’s small forecourt. Methen
was eating his evening meal. He rose and embraced Huy. “How wonderful to see you!” he exclaimed. “Have you eaten? Come and sit beside me and give me your news. I hear that you were summoned to the palace last month. I meant to pay you a visit, but both of us have had little time to spare for leisure.”

  His food steamed on the small table. Huy pulled the only other chair close to it and sat watching fondly as Methen spooned up the vegetable stew. They had been friends ever since Methen had found Huy naked and half insane outside Hut-herib’s House of the Dead and carried him home to his stunned parents. Methen had brought him poppy for his pain and an unwavering affection that Huy returned. The priest had petitioned for the exorcism that freed Huy from the doubt that he was possessed, and together with High Priest Ramose and Henenu the Rekhet he had become a valued mentor. Now Henenu was dead and Ramose had retired from the temple at Iunu to his estates near Pe in the Sap-meh sepat of the northern Delta. Huy had not seen him or received a letter from him for a long time. Huy had been twelve when Methen had rescued him, and Methen in his late twenties. He had seemed very old to Huy. Now he was in his mid-fifties. Lines fanned out across his temples and faint grooves marked the edges of his mouth, but even in repose his expression remained warmly benevolent.