“So beautiful,” Thothhotep breathed beside him.
Anhur stirred. “Beautiful, yes, but we should get the rowers seated and start back upriver soon. The helmsman can’t navigate in the dark at this time of the year,” he remarked.
Huy gave the command. The oars were run out and ponderously the barge began to swing towards the south. By the time the sailors brought it bumping gently against Huy’s watersteps, dusk had fallen. The ramp was run out. Huy was the first to disembark. Climbing the steps, he had passed through his open gate, greeting Kar as he went, and had started along the short path to the house when a furtive movement low down in the bushes to his right brought him to a halt. No, no, he thought frantically, his heart suddenly pounding. It can’t be! The other two had come up behind him.
“What is it, Huy?” Anhur growled. “What’s wrong?”
Wordlessly, Huy pointed. A hyena had emerged from the gathering shadows. Seeing the group, it paused in the ugly half-crouch Huy had begun to loathe, and it seemed to be staring directly at him. “I told you to get rid of it!” Huy croaked. “It’s come back, Anhur! I thought that your men sold it in the market!”
“They did,” Anhur replied easily. “I expect it escaped and remembered the good feeding here, especially now, with mice trying to get into the granaries. I’ll fetch a guard or two and we’ll kill it this time.”
“No.” Huy found that he was trembling. “Trap it and have it taken well out into the desert this time. Its death here on the estate would be a very bad omen for me.” He could have sworn that at the sound of his voice the creature’s ears had pricked higher, as though it were listening.
Anhur took a step, and at his movement the beast started for the gate at a shambling pace. Kar had already closed it, but the hyena became fluid, flowing under it and disappearing even as one of the guards stationed just beyond the gate aimed a kick at its indistinct shape.
Anhur glanced at Huy quizzically. “You really hate them, don’t you? I can have the garden scoured for them every evening if you like.” His tone was offhand.
Huy shook his head. “It’s a warning and a reminder to me,” he said. His voice was still unsteady. “I think I’ll be seeing it often in the future.” He felt both pairs of eyes on him as he resumed his pace and, reaching the house, he bade them an abrupt good night and left them.
14
In the following month of Paophi, on the ninth, Huy celebrated his thirty-ninth Naming Day. The river had continued to rise, and with it the annual irritation of flies and mosquitoes, their presence adding a further annoyance to the increasing heat. As usual during the Inundation, Huy dealt with an increase of fevers that required him and Thothhotep to spend much time venturing into Hut-herib itself. The river road would remain accessible only for perhaps another month, and Huy, hot, tired, and in constant pain, eagerly awaited its flooding. But it was the pleading of distraught parents begging him to return their drowned children to life that most distressed him. Every year it was the same. Youngsters who had played safely and happily in the shallows were caught unawares by water that had become deeper. Few of them could swim. Huy, entering the small, dark homes of the town’s ordinary citizens to be faced with pallid corpses and weeping women whose eyes filled with hope when they saw him, was forced to explain that he was unable to raise the dead. Often he could feel the unspoken accusation: “The gods gave your life back to you, Son of Hapu. Why are you so favoured when my little one’s breath has fled?” To that he had no answer. In spite of the truth the whole town knew by now, there were always those who believed that the fate of their children must be different.
Iupia gave birth to a lusty boy on the first day of the month of Athyr, the last day of the festival of Hapi. The river was reaching for its highest point, the flood was ample, and the fierce heat had begun to abate. “He is to be called Ramose,” Heby had written in a letter that took longer than usual to arrive at Huy’s estate as it had to be carried along the edge of the vast, placid lake which Egypt had become.
Iupia is very well and so is the baby. Amunhotep-Huy ignores him, but this does not worry us. Your older nephew has thrown himself completely into his training with Irem, the officer in charge of him, and if he becomes rude or disobedient, all I have to do to compel his obedience is threaten to withdraw him from the barracks and make him study with his tutor in the afternoons as well as the mornings. There are rumours abroad that our Governor might appoint me Mayor of Mennofer, a position that must of course be approved by the King. I don’t know why or how my name appeared as a replacement for Nebamun, who has been sent south to Weset as Overseer of the Desert. The position would mean that I would have to relinquish my post as Chief Scribe for Ptah, but our circumstances would improve. I pray to Ptah and try not to daydream too much!
“Heby is well known among the priests and administrators of the temples in Mennofer,” Huy had mused to Thothhotep as she walked to one of the niches in the wall of the office and laid the scroll with all the others from Huy’s brother. “But outside that august community, he is anonymous. Few are even aware that he’s my kin, and the thought of our parents having any influence with the Governor of Mennofer’s sepat is just ridiculous. Nor is Heby ambitious enough to petition for the post of Mayor himself. He’s never asked me to speak on his behalf for any preferment.”
“Perhaps Iupia’s father as Assistant Treasurer to the King is so pleased with his new grandson that he wants more recognition for his daughter’s husband,” Thothhotep ventured, coming back to the desk and picking up her palette. “Will you dictate a reply to Heby at once, Huy?” She was smiling at him. In the last few months Huy had seen the pride and confidence that had impressed him at their first encounter begin to return, and he had rejoiced at their increasing closeness, but now he was frowning into the distance, oblivious to her expression.
“I don’t think that this is Merira’s work,” he replied slowly. “He has never pushed Heby to seek advancement. Nor has he ever seemed ashamed of Iupia’s choice for a husband.”
“The King, then?”
Huy laughed grimly. “I doubt it. Amunhotep has no interest in my family and he has already rewarded me with gold for my public confirmation of Prince Thothmes’ so-called dream. No, dear scribe, I see the Princess Mutemwia’s hand in this. She is deliberately befriending me and has now begun to groom my brother for a future that so far only she can imagine. How many scrolls have we received from her in the last three months?”
“Four. According to her, the King and Prince Thothmes have begun to make regular offerings to the god Ra-Harmachis now that his body is free of all sand, and a wall has been erected around him to prevent further subsidence. The stela is finished and has been set up. Work on the temple continues. Her little son thrives. The Prince in Mitanni is well.”
“But His Majesty is not. Didn’t the Princess mention that Amunhotep has been suffering from shortness of breath and occasional weakness in his limbs?” They stared at one another for a moment. “A change is coming.” Huy spoke into the cool peace of the room. “I can feel it sometimes as an inner flutter.” He blew out his lips. “Meanwhile, I shall dictate to Heby and tell him that I’ll be with him for his Naming Day on the twenty-first of Mekhir, almost three months from now. By then all the crops will be in the ground and beginning to sprout. It should be a pleasant jaunt. I must take a gift for baby Ramose.” Mutemwia has not asked me for a Seeing on her own behalf, Huy thought as the words to his brother rolled off his tongue. For one so young, she brings a formidable intellect to bear on the invisible current of desires, ambitions, and machinations flowing through the King’s court, and arrives at her own conclusions regarding them. She is confident enough in her deductions to use them as a basis for her own plans, and it is clear that those plans include me. Am I to be a playing piece or a partner?
Absently, he signed the curled papyrus Thothhotep was holding up to him and left her to arrange for its delivery while he began to wander around his garden. The flood was still hi
gh but had begun imperceptibly to recede. The canal feeding life to his glistening soil was full, and soon the dike holding the water it contained would be rebuilt. Anab and his assistant were busy seeding the flowers and vegetables that would make a small paradise of his holdings, their bent brown backs happily exposed to a kind sun. Word had come from Amunnefer regarding his plans for the poppy fields once the river had regained its banks. A new incense caravan had left Egypt the week previously. Seshemnefer’s report on the house and land Huy had inherited from the Rekhet was more than satisfactory. All is well, Huy told himself as he rounded the rear of his two conical silos and started back towards the house. Even Anuket is holding her own. Then why am I so restless?
Athyr ended and Khoiak began, then Tybi. As usual, Thothhotep was careful to observe every god’s day during the month of Tybi, and Huy, out of the worrisome sense of something impending, took to accompanying her to Hut-herib’s shrines and temples so that his mind might be temporarily occupied. Petitioners were beginning to congregate outside his walls as the river path, muddy and slippery, became visible once more. Obedient to his gift, he dealt with them dutifully, the ensuing headaches either mild or debilitating, depending on the length and clarity of his visions. He gladly entertained Methen. He visited his parents, and on the nineteenth of Mekhir he ushered them aboard his barge for the journey south to Mennofer to mark Heby’s twenty-eighth Naming Day, on the twenty-first. His new nephew, Ramose, was thriving, and both Heby and Iupia were in fine health. Two months later, Heby was declared the Mayor of Mennofer and his letters to Huy became long missives dictated to his new scribe, Nanai, regarding the challenges and intricacies of the position. Huy sent congratulations.
The season of Shemu began with the month of Pakhons. The sun became gradually less kind as the crops attained their full height and began to turn from a lush green to the first tinges of beige. Thothhotep went home to Nekheb to visit her family, her absence adding to the ongoing feeling of vague uneasiness that had dogged Huy now through the four months of Peret and into Shemu. Mutemwia’s letters seemed to mirror his own mood. They were polite, short, and contained no new information. It seemed that Egypt was continuing to enjoy the state of peaceful changelessness every citizen valued.
Huy moved routinely through the days, and at night, after taking his poppy, he allowed the Book of Thoth to unroll through his mind while he lay on the roof under a blaze of summer stars. The harvest began. The air became full of dust motes as the labourers threshed and winnowed the grain. In the orchards, the fruit hung heavy on the laden boughs, ready to drop into waiting baskets. The grapes were trodden, the rich purple or golden liquid pouring into the jars full of promise. The perfume distilleries exuded such a heavy aroma that passersby could not bear it and drew their linen over their noses. Thothhotep returned from the south exhausted but happy, retiring to her quarters at once so that Iny could cut her hair and begin to repair the damage done to her hands and feet by the harsh, dry southern climate. “I ran about barefoot and unpainted the whole time I was there,” she told an amused Huy. “It would have been pointless to take Iny with me. My cousin, the one who wanted me to marry him, has finally married one of my sisters after all this time. They seem well suited to one another. My parents liked the gifts I took for them. I did enjoy myself, Huy, but I’m glad to be home again. Is there anything needing my attention? If not, I would like to see Anhur.”
I used to find these months appealing, even though they are hot, Huy thought as he watched her stride away. There’s a sense of the eternal about them in spite of the activities of the harvest. The days are long, the twilight lingers, time seems to be removed from our awareness. But this year the timelessness is simply bringing my internal agitation to the fore. It is as though I itch without any source for the inflammation. I will welcome the Inundation in spite of the new round of fevers and dead children it will bring. Anything is preferable to this feeling of imminence.
The letter from Princess Mutemwia arrived on the same morning as the annual supply of poppy and a report for Huy from Amunnefer. It was the fifteenth day of Thoth. The New Year had begun. Merenra delivered both scrolls to Huy as he had finished his morning meal and was making his way to the office. The fog shredded apart in his mind. Asking the steward to find Thothhotep, Huy entered his office and dropped into the chair behind the desk, sitting tensely with his hands flat on the table’s surface, both scrolls before him. “Something from Mutemwia,” he said to her as she came in. “Read it to me, Thothhotep.”
Stepping briskly forward, she quickly cracked the scroll open. “Her Highness’s skill has improved somewhat,” she remarked as she scanned the contents. “Oh, Huy!” She mastered herself immediately, her features falling into the properly noncommittal expression.
Huy found his shoulders hunching in anticipation. “Read!” he snapped.
She no longer reacted to his sharper tones. She nodded. “‘To the Great Seer Huy, greetings. Know that my father-in-law is very ill and is not expected to live. He refuses to send for you. If I am unable to write to you again regarding this matter, then Mayor Heby your brother will doubtless keep you informed. As always, I desire no answer. Written by my own hand this third day of Thoth in the year twenty-five of the King.’” Thothhotep looked up. “She no longer signs her name, but of course I recognize her hand.”
“I thought that he looked unwell when I last answered his summons,” Huy commented. “Naturally he will not send for me. Even on his deathbed he does not dare to have his subterfuge exposed. Well, let him die!”
“Will you have the news carried to Prince Amunhotep in Mitanni?”
“No.” Huy got up. “The Princess will do that. And in another ten years her husband will also be dead, if my Seeing for the Prince spoke true. Take a dictation to Heby. I’ll tell him that I’ve heard a rumour regarding the King’s health, and ask him to send me reports on the progress of whatever’s wrong with him.” Why do I feel so vindictive towards Amunhotep? he asked himself as Thothhotep sank to the mat beside the desk and opened the drawer of her palette. Is it because I still take his gold, or because he and his younger son were the cause of my failure before Atum? I wonder if Thothmes will continue to supply my household once he takes the throne. But of course he will see it as buying my ongoing silence, and I must accept it as an implicit guarantee to him that I will keep my mouth closed.
Thothhotep was busily smoothing her piece of papyrus, a brush between her teeth. “How old is Prince Thothmes now?” Huy asked her.
Taking the brush, she began to mix her ink. “I’m not sure. About eighteen, I think.”
Huy sat on the edge of the desk and folded his arms. “And he will imagine a long reign, but ten years is all that the gods intend to give him,” he remarked with an inner pang of pure spite that he knew he should be directing at himself. “Poor Thothmes! Begin, Thothhotep. ‘To the illustrious Mayor of Mennofer, greetings …’”
But another year was to pass before Pharaoh finally expired. The letters Huy continued to receive from both Heby and the Princess during this time often guardedly referred to Amunhotep’s remarkable hold on life, as if, Huy mused grimly, he is afraid to let go and face the ordinary fate that I believe awaits him. No Holy Barque to receive him—only the dim draftiness of the Judgment Hall and the accusing eyes of a maimed and weakened Ma’at. Huy shied away from the responsibility of his own part in the King’s probable fate. That sense of imminence, of something rolling inexorably towards him, deepened as the year progressed, its advance smothering everything but the continuous unrest deep within him and the sonorous words of the Book of Thoth.
The harvest ended. The New Year had begun, but the Inundation was late. Egypt seethed with distress. Men spoke darkly of the inevitability of famine. But at last Isis began to cry and the usual gods’ feasts were celebrated with a relieved near-hysteria. Huy stood apart from the countrywide rejoicing. His Naming Day in the following month, Paophi, came and went with a visit and gifts from his parents, and it took
all of Huy’s control to feign a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. Athyr, and his new nephew Ramose’s Naming Day, seemed to plod by like some huge, ponderous beast slowed by its own sheer size. Khoiak, Tybi, Mekhir—the months were all the same to Huy, who waited, a fly caught in a web that hung outside the sane and regular passage of days, and he knew that struggling to free himself would be useless. His crops grew and matured, and the harvest began.
Phamenoth and Pharmuthi crept by. Once again during Pakhons, Thothhotep made her annual journey south to visit her family, and Huy took to spending his nights supine on the roof of his house, staring up at the stars, hands clasped behind his head, as he waited. Waited for what? He did not know. The stars wheeled above him. Three more times the moon waxed and waned, and then once more it was the month of Thoth. The Sopdet star rose. Thothhotep, brown and healthy, came home. The Inundation began, and at last Huy’s long vigil, his wait for something indefinable, ended. The invisible web imprisoning him fluttered. Huy almost physically felt it loosen its hold, and he took the first deep breath of freedom he had been able to draw for a whole year.
Amunhotep died on the twenty-ninth day of Thoth. Isis had dutifully cried and the river had begun to swell. Heby wrote to tell Huy that Amunhotep had at first taken to his couch with complaints of a headache as well as the pains in his limbs, but had subsequently and suddenly lost the use of his right arm and leg and could not speak. Mutemwia’s letter was more formal. “The King died last night and is being Beautified for his seat with the other blessed Osirisones in the Sacred Barque,” she had dictated, for the letter’s script was exquisitely neat and the spelling faultless. “The court and the country will mourn him until the middle of Khoiak, when his body will be laid in his tomb. I and my son Amunhotep intend to visit you at the end of Paophi, as I require a Seeing. Long Life and Prosperity to you, Seer. Dictated to Scribe of the Harem Nefer-ka-Ra by Her Highness Princess Mutemwia, the thirtieth day of Thoth, year twenty-five of the King.”
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