Seer of Egypt

by Pauline Gedge

  Huy recounted his shameful audience at the palace while Methen briskly scoured his bowl with a piece of bread, sat back, and sipped at his beer. He offered no advice and Huy did not ask for any. Huy went on to speak of the hyena, and again Methen remained silent, one of the reasons why Huy valued him so highly. Huy finished by telling Methen about Anuket’s surprising change, and here Methen smiled.

  “Has it occurred to you that Atum has at last decided to save her out of his regard for you? That he has more sympathy for the agonies of your youth than you imagine? Your love for her died when you saw her at Ishat’s marriage feast. Can a god regret something he has caused, even though he will not alter the consequences of his decision? Does he wonder, as you used to do, what would have happened to Anuket, to you, if you had been allowed to retain your sexual potency and she had chosen to run away with you? She has been unhappy with Amunnefer, but she has obviously decided not to punish him, and herself, anymore. I think your fears of Atum’s retribution may be unfounded.”

  “Perhaps so,” Huy said. “All I can do is wait as my own future unfolds. Methen, I keep remembering what the Rekhet said to me once when I visited her at her house in Iunu. I was deeply troubled because of my enforced virginity. I still believed that I could shed it and retain my gift, or, better still, shed it and thus rid myself of the gift. She had calmed me and was braiding my hair. ‘Some great work waits for you in a future I cannot see,’ she said. ‘Something vital to Egypt. Your courage must not fail, for if it does, then Egypt will go down into chaos.’ What if the ‘great work’ was openly condemning the King and Prince Thothmes for their deceit, and in losing my courage to do so I have condemned Egypt to the chaos of which she spoke?”

  “Is that what you believe? What you fear?”

  “Yes. No! I don’t know. I cling to the prospect of the second chance Anubis granted me.”

  “Then stop worrying about it. The moment of weakness has receded into the past. It can’t be retrieved and corrected. You think too much of yourself, dear Huy, if you suppose that you are above human error.”

  Huy managed a laugh. “Your ability to comfort me hasn’t changed since you picked me up outside the House of the Dead. Actually, Methen, I came to you today for information.”

  Methen’s eyebrows rose. He grinned. “And here I was thinking so much of myself that I supposed you had been missing me!”

  “Of course I missed you.” Huy pulled Methen’s cup towards him, swallowed a mouthful of the beer, and pushed it back. “You come to my house less often than you used to.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I assume that as long as you don’t need me, you need not see me.”

  “That’s just stupid!” They smiled at one another. “Anyway, I want you to tell me about Imhotep.”

  Methen blinked. “All right. But why?”

  Huy sighed and crossed his arms, leaning them on the surface of the table. He was suddenly aware that the shaft of light flooding into the room through the open door had acquired the colour of copper. The sun was approaching the western horizon, where Nut’s mouth was waiting to swallow it.

  “The Book has woken in me, Methen. I turn my attention to the flow of the words when I am alone in the night, before I sleep. I’m becoming convinced that it is incomplete.” He had been afraid of a burst of laughter from the priest, an assumption that he was joking. He had kept his eyes on the empty soup bowl as he spoke so that he might not see his friend’s face, but after some moments of silence he glanced up. Methen’s own eyes had narrowed. His expression had sharpened.

  “That is the last thing I expected to hear you say,” Methen finally responded. “What makes you think so?”

  Huy unfolded his arms and laid his hands palms up on the table. “At the end of the recitation, Thoth says that he has written the Book as Atum has instructed him. He sounds almost … almost petulant. Apologetic. And the end of the Book is very abrupt. It’s not even a summing-up. Atum, through Thoth, says that the end curves back to the beginning, but it doesn’t seem to. The break is somehow … jagged.” His fingers curled loosely in on themselves.

  Methen shook his head. “How many years has the Book been a part of you, Huy? Twenty-five, twenty-six years? And this suspicion only strikes you now?”

  “I’ve allowed the pleasures and concerns of my life to drive the Book deep into my akh. The King and the hyena have shocked me into the realization of a task undone. I am able to be more objective now, to not only listen to the words but look at them with the eyes of my mind as they glide by. The rest of the fifth and last stage is either unwritten or lies somewhere other than the temples of Ra at Iunu and Thoth at Khmun.”

  The doorway darkened. Methen’s servant came in, a lighted taper in his hand. Quickly he touched it to the wicks of the two clay lamps, one on the table and one in the second room beside Methen’s narrow cot, blew it out, and bowed to both men. “Greetings, Great Seer.” He smiled. “I trust you are well? And your household?”

  By the time he and Huy had exchanged courtesies, the faint odour of warm, unscented oil filled the air. The man collected his master’s dishes and quietly left. Methen was staring thoughtfully at Huy, his lips pursed.

  “That’s why you want to know about Imhotep,” he said. “He was reading the Book when you stood before him in the Beautiful West. You think that he read it during his early years, just as you did, but that he read it in its entirety, or realized that a part of it was missing and found that part.”

  “Yes. What can you tell me, Methen?”

  “His statues and monuments fill Egypt. According to their inscriptions, he was the Chief Architect to the Osiris-King Djoser in the dawn of history, and he designed the first of the mighty tombs that crowd the City of the Dead on the plateau outside Mennofer. The King valued him so highly that Imhotep was allowed to have his name carved on one of the King’s likenesses—a unique honour.”

  “I know that he is worshipped as a healer as well as a Seer.”

  “He wrote a book of wisdom that has since been lost.” Methen passed a hand over his shaven skull, disturbing the play of light and shadow Huy had been watching shift across his friend’s face as he spoke. “That’s really all. Of course, you’re aware that he served as High Priest at the temple of Ra at Iunu.”

  Huy jerked forward. “No, I didn’t know! He read the Book, Methen! Would there be more about him in the House of Life at Iunu?”

  Methen shrugged. “Perhaps, but I doubt it. If the archives had held more information, you may be sure that your teachers would have insisted that you learn it. Iunu is very proud to be the city where the great Imhotep served the god.”

  “Somehow he was able to absorb the Book in its entirety,” Huy insisted. “How else was he able to become so famous as a healer and a Seer that he’s regarded as a god himself? Next time I visit Thothmes and Ishat, I’ll visit the House of Life as well.”

  “Huy, are you sure about this? Sure that you’re not just using it as an excuse to avoid the hard work the study of the Book demands?”

  Only you can speak to me like that, Huy thought with a rush of respect. You have earned the right, and I listen to you. Already I have become so renowned that no one dares to question me.

  “No, I’m not sure,” he confessed. “I have a strong intuition, though. As for the Book, I disembowel it like a worker in the House of the Dead and I put it together again, and still it will not form the coherent wholeness of a meaning. However, I persist.” He got up and Methen rose with him. The sun had set, and the shreds of light creeping through the doorway were a delicate pink fading rapidly to grey. The two men embraced. “I love you, Methen,” Huy said. “Come soon and eat with me and sit in my garden.”

  “If I do, it will have to be before the month of Thoth when there are so many gods’ days to observe! Next month I make my annual visit to my parents. I’ll try to come to you at the end of Mesore.”

  They said their goodbyes. Methen retreated into his cell and, in the gathering dimness, Huy crossed
the little outer court of Khenti-kheti’s shrine, empty of worshippers at that hour. His litter-bearers were clustered just beyond the wall of the shrine, playing knucklebones in the dust. Anhur was pacing. He greeted Huy with ill-concealed relief, snapped at the bearers as they scrambled up, and Huy was carried home.

  For the next few days, Huy found it difficult to settle calmly to his tasks. He did his duty by those who came to him for aid almost without reflection, presuming that Anubis would guide his visions and remedies as the god had always done. Sleep came to him late and hard. As he lay on his couch and the Book unwound through his consciousness, he became increasingly convinced that its final portion was missing. The knowledge made him anxious to be gone, to begin a search for it in the House of Life at Iunu, to seek out every likeness of Imhotep and read the archaic inscriptions on them in the hope of stumbling across some clue that would lead him on to the solution he sought. He was already taking the poppy three times a day and admitted to himself that he had developed an addiction to it, but he bade Tetiankh strengthen his evening’s dose, hoping that under its influence he might enjoy a full night’s rest. The drug stupefied him so that he lay prone and naked in the hot darkness of his room, his muscles lax and unresponsive, while the stanzas of the Book continued to whisper behind his closed eyes. He needed a concerted effort of the will to stop it so that his mind was free to wander and then to sleep, but the stronger poppy seemed to sap his inner coherence. In the end he told his body servant to return him to his regular nightly dose.

  When there had been a lull in the number of petitioners clustering outside his gate, and no letters waited for his attention, he decided to go south. The harvest was almost over, and Egypt had begun to sink into the stagnant timelessness of high summer. Humans and animals panted in the shade. Cracks began to appear in fields already denuded of their crops, and the peasants unlucky enough to be still reaping sweated and cursed the god who seemed to be expelled each dawn from the sky goddess Nut with malicious speed, and who poured an uncharacteristic venom upon their skin until the moment when he reluctantly slid into her mouth. Dust hung everywhere, often eddying in the scorching air to coat the drooping palms and sycamores and sift behind teeth and eyelids. The irrigation canals were empty. The river itself was at its lowest level, its northward current barely perceptible. Much of the Delta remained green, the soil fed by the trickles of many tributaries. Iunu was situated at its southern tip, where it began to fan out. Although the land to either side of the river still held to a semblance of fertility, it took Huy’s exhausted crew an extra day to reach the city.

  Thothmes’ estate lay just to the north of Iunu’s wide watersteps. All were relieved when the captain gave the order to tack west and the Governor’s own set of steps came into view. Anhur hailed the guards on the bank, two sailors hurried to secure the mooring rope, and the ramp was run out. Huy sent Tetiankh on ahead to warn the house that he had arrived. Apart from his body servant, only Anhur and Thothhotep, with her servant Iny, had accompanied him. All were hot and thirsty.

  Huy had barely stepped across the threshold of the reception hall when Thothmes came hurrying towards him, a distress bordering on panic filling his face. He was unpainted and unshod. The odour of incense clung to his clothes as he grasped Huy’s shoulders. Instinctively, Huy jerked back. “I sent a runner for you yesterday,” Thothmes said. “You must have passed him on the way. What are you doing here? Did the gods impel you to come? Never mind. The physician says she is dying, but if you See for her, Atum will make her well again.”

  Huy wrenched himself free of his friend’s frenetic grip. For one dizzying moment he was young again, walking thankfully towards the cell they shared at the temple school after he had spent time in Thoth’s temple at Khmun, and Thothmes was racing towards him with the terrible news of Nefer-Mut’s accident. “You must save her! You must!” Thothmes had begged, but his mother had died. Huy had stood with her in the Judgment Hall and watched her enter the Paradise of Osiris. “There is no Duat for you,” Anubis had told her. “The Son of Hapu has saved you from that ordeal.” Huy had never been able to understand how or why.

  “Make sense, Thothmes!” he barked now, out of his own mounting dread. “Sahura. Is it Sahura? What has happened?”

  Thothmes gave him a blank look. Then the frenzy went out of his eyes. “Not Sahura—it’s Ishat,” he rasped. “She was coming home late from the Naming Day feast of one of her friends. She was slightly drunk and the bearers and two guards were tired. They were taking a shortcut through the Street of the Beer Houses. It was a stupid thing to do!” His voice had begun to rise and he struggled visibly to control it. “Intef should have known better!”

  His fingers had curled around one of Huy’s long braids and he was pulling Huy deeper into the house, like a child with a special surprise to show, but his features were distorted by fear.

  “A group of foreigners came out of one of the beer houses. They seemed very drunk, but when they attacked the litter, their actions were full of purpose. It was dark. My captain, Intef, could not understand their language. They barred the way. The bearers tried to go around them. Ishat started to shout at them. They set upon my men. The bearers were unarmed. One of the guards was badly injured. Ishat fell out of the litter and began to run, but some of them pursued her. The rest were beating the bearers to the ground. Ishat was caught. They tore off her sheath, Huy. They broke three of her fingers taking off her rings, and beat her about the face when she tried to stop them taking her earrings. She was screaming and struggling. They had her down. They were going to … to… But there were soldiers from Iunu’s garrison drinking in one of the other houses, and they heard her and rushed into the street and saved her. The foreigners ran away into the darkness. Not one of them was caught, Huy, not one! These things do not happen in Egypt, where Ma’at is revered! The soldiers wrapped her in a cloak and put her in the litter and brought her home. The bearers are injured, but they’ll recover. Ishat … Ishat had bruises all over her body and an eye swollen shut and some of her hair pulled out. She was in great pain. The physician set her fingers and gave Iput a salve for her bruises and put her to sleep with a large dose of poppy, but then she didn’t wake up! She can’t wake up, Huy! The physician said that there must be some invisible injury inside her head. He can do nothing— but you can. Atum can, can’t he?”

  Huy had listened to Thothmes’ almost hysterical recital with a mounting horror mingled with alarm, scarcely aware of their progress through the reception hall, along a wide passage, and through the tall double doors leading to the women’s quarters, where Ishat had made a retreat for herself away from the demands of her position as a Governor’s wife. This is the future I Saw for Anuket, Huy thought, the words erupting in his mind and flooding him with panic. Anuket has triumphed over her fate. She is free of it, but instead Atum has visited it upon her sister-in-law Ishat, her kin, as though, once shaped, it must be fulfilled at any cost. His limbs trembled and he was forced to steady himself against the wall. I Saw for Ishat years ago in the hovel we shared, his feverish thoughts ran on, and in the vision she was painted and bejewelled, but Anubis gave me no more than that. Has Anuket’s deliverance meant a doom for my dear friend? A doom that Atum transferred to her so that my vision for Anuket did not mark the god as a liar? Real terror sliced through him as he stumbled after Thothmes.

  The children and the servants filled her small reception room. When they saw Huy, they surged towards him. Thothmes let go of his hair. Sahura and Nakht flung themselves sobbing at Huy. The boy Huy, his namesake, had started towards him but then hung back, biting his lip, his eyes huge with the tears he was trying to suppress. Huy untangled himself and beckoned him.

  “I want you to take Nakht and Sahura into the garden,” he said. “Anhur will go with you. He has many fine stories to tell. Put them on mats under the trees and give them a little wine,” he ordered the servants. “If they can fall asleep, so much the better.” At once Anhur scooped up the two younger children an
d went out. Huy squatted and, placing his hands on the older boy’s cheeks, kissed him on his hot forehead, almost moved to tears himself by the child’s likeness to Ishat. “You must be brave,” he said, “but not so brave that you dam up your fears until you cannot cry. Whatever happens, tonight you and I will share the cabin of my barge. We haven’t seen each other for a long time, have we? I want to hear all your news.” The relief on his namesake’s face was reward enough for Huy’s effort to pause and deal with the boy’s defencelessness when all he really wanted to do was hurry to Ishat’s couch.

  “I’ve had no strength to give them,” Thothmes said when they were alone. “I cannot lose Ishat, Huy!”

  “Come with me and prepare your palette,” Huy said to Thothhotep, who was standing just behind him.

  Thothmes turned and led them through another doorway and partway along a passage with several doors opening off it. Huy had been here many times. He followed Thothmes into Ishat’s bedchamber.

  The shaft of sunlight falling from the clerestory window high up in the wall was murky with the smoke of frankincense. Its scent gave Huy the impression that he was entering a holy place. Frankincense was extremely expensive and usually reserved for temple use. The priest wielding the long shaft of the censer had been chanting softly. Now he fell silent, bowed to Huy, and left the room. The physician rose from his stool by the couch. He also bowed.

  “I have set the fingers with linen stiffened in resin, Master,” he said in answer to Huy’s raised eyebrows. “I have applied a mixture of honey, castor oil, and myrrh to her cuts and bruises. I applied these remedies when the Lady Ishat was first brought home. She was shaken but alert. I gave her a small dose of poppy for her pain, and shortly thereafter she fell asleep. Three days have passed, and she will not wake.”