His aunt was yawning and his mother had sunk onto her elbow. Hapzefa hovered just out of earshot, vainly signalling at Ishat, who had rolled onto her stomach and was deliberately gazing into the shrubbery. “I am not supposed to ‘outstay my welcome’ as my mother says,” she muttered. “But seeing that no one has told me to go away, I will stay here.”
In truth Huy wanted all of them to go away so that he could examine the scarab again at his leisure. “She will want to put me to bed for the afternoon sleep and then clear the mess,” he responded hopefully. “But if you like, you can come back later and play with me, Ishat.”
She shot him a dark look. “I will if you don’t forget your promise never to be mean to me again.”
The party was breaking up. Ker and Heruben said their effusive goodbyes. Huy suffered himself to be kissed repeatedly before they made their way to where their litter-bearers drowsed just beyond Hapu’s main gate. Ishat rose reluctantly, waved dismissively at her mother, and disappeared in the direction of her hut.
“You look tired, Huy,” Itu said. “You will sleep well this afternoon. Have you enjoyed your celebration?” She scooped him up and hugged him, but he protested, getting down to retrieve his gifts, balancing the monkey on top of the sennet in one hand and the scarab on the box in the other as he walked carefully towards the house.
Hapzefa undressed him, grunted approvingly at the pristine state of his new shirt, stood the monkey on the table by his cot, slid the sennet game under it, and produced a square of soft folded linen. “It was left over from the shirt, Master Huy. It will make a good bed for your scarab. Perhaps you should place it upside down in the box so that its legs do not break off.” But Huy wanted to see the bright curve of its back whenever he lifted the lid, and once she had freshened the water in his cup and had closed his door behind her, he patted down the linen and reverently set the beetle on it. He fell asleep with the box clutched tightly against his chest.
He did not forget his promise to Ishat, and in the following days they spent much time together. As usual they had many fights, but Huy, mindful of the golden treasure that she had bestowed on him, was learning to control his urge to respond to her baiting with a slap or a pinch, and he missed her when she did not come prancing into the garden to while away the dead hours between the afternoon rest and the evening meal. She usually had good suggestions about what to play, although when he wanted her to be a Vizier and he the King, she seldom agreed. “Viziers are men,” she would say. “Anyway, being one is boring. I want to be Queen Meryet-Hatshepset. You can be Pharaoh Men-kheper-Ra Thothmes.” Eventually they took turns conceding to one another.
In a burst of affection he gave her his dog. He would have liked to make her a present of the ivory monkey, but his father indignantly refused to countenance the idea. “Your uncle gave gold for that toy,” he told Huy. “It was very expensive. What would he say if he came to visit and saw Ishat playing with it? Why don’t you like it, you foolish boy?” Huy could not say why. All he knew was that it frightened him more as time went by. At first he had simply turned away from its idiotic grin when he wanted to sleep, but the atmosphere of blind malevolence around it seemed to spread farther into his room each day, until he could no longer banish an awareness of its presence by showing it his back. He put it under his cot, not even liking the cool feel of it when he picked it up, but that was somehow worse than not being able to see it. What if it began to clap its paws together all by itself, there beneath him? He knew that he was being silly, that it was really only a lump of inanimate matter (although he was unable to use those words), yet he remembered being told that the kas of the gods lived in their likenesses, making the stone come alive, and his dread grew. What if one of Thoth’s holy baboons was bad-tempered and restless and did not like children? What if its ka had left its home and found this ivory toy in some craftsman’s workshop, and had sunk into it so that it could torment whatever little boy came to own it?
“Carry it around with you as if you love it,” Ishat advised him matter-of-factly when he told her of his fear. “Then, when no one is looking, find a big rock to drop on it. If you are lucky, its limbs will shatter instead of snapping off so it can’t be fixed and you can tell a lie and say it was an accident.” But Huy, although he had no scruples about lying occasionally, could not bear the thought of having it against his skin for any length of time. In the end he dropped it at the bottom of his clothes chest under his kilts and shirts. Of course, Hapzefa found it there, but she said nothing. Perhaps, Huy reasoned, she did not like it either.
So the weeks passed. The third week of Huy’s birth month, Paophi, was taken up with the universal celebration of the Amunfeast of Hapi, god of the river, whose banks had overflowed into a satisfying flood that promised another year of good harvests. The heat began to moderate as the river, together with the population of mosquitoes and flies, continued to rise. Paophi became Athyr, and still the water slowly lifted, lapping over the sunken fields and giving back to those who watched it the distorted reflections of the trees that stood isolated amid its calm expanse.
On the first of Khoiak the feast of Hathor, goddess of love and beauty, was observed by the whole country. It signalled a month of many religious observances, a flurry of activity within and without the temples that included three solemn and important rites of Osiris, but Hapu’s favourite, indeed the only one he cared to participate in actively, was the Feast of the Hoeing of the Earth, for it meant that the water was at last receding, the flower fields would be calf-deep in life-giving silt, and in a very short time he and the other peasants could begin the sowing.
Huy had pushed the knowledge of his impending departure to the back of his mind, content to catch frogs and play with Ishat, or sit with his father, the sennet board between them, and play the game that he had found easy to learn but difficult to master. Hapu made no concessions to his age. On many occasions Huy, reduced to tears of sheer rage, would see his spools ruthlessly tumbled onto the water square one by one and, losing, would sweep them onto the floor. Hapu remained indifferent, ordering his son to pick them up and replace them on the board, but on the day when Huy beat him for the first time he roared with laughter, pulled him from his cushion, swung him over his head, and hugged him fiercely. From then on Huy looked forward to their contests and behaved with a great deal more equanimity when he lost.
But the end of Khoiak saw Hapu out in the fields, breaking the dikes that had held in the precious water so that it could now flow away and leave the soil exposed, and miserably Huy remembered that Tybi was almost upon him and, with it, the time to leave his home for the first time. “How horrible!” Ishat had said when he told her how few days he had left. “I don’t ever want to go farther than the markets, and I certainly don’t want to learn to read or write. Why should I? I am perfectly content.” But seeing his expression, she relented. “Poor Huy!” she exclaimed. “I will pray every day that you finish school quickly and get sent home so that I won’t be lonely.” Huy did not think that learning to read and write was something you managed to do quickly. Suddenly jealous of her continued freedom, he refused to tell her how much he would miss her.
He saw little of his father in the days leading up to his departure. Hapu rose early, ate sparingly, and was gone to the fields before Hapzefa opened the shutters on Huy’s window. The mornings were chilly. Often Huy would run into his parents’ room, climbing onto their bed and snuggling up to Itu as she drowsed, herself unwilling to get up. Sometimes Huy went back to sleep curled into the crook of her arm and he did not know that she lay crying quietly, inhaling his warm child smell, aware that no matter how often she was privileged to hold him in the future it would never be the same. His childhood was almost over.
His father gave him a large leather bag for his clothes and sandals and a smaller one for whatever personal items he did not need but wanted to take. Huy received them in silence. Hapzefa and his mother took charge of the larger one, filling it with loincloths and new kilts and shirt
s, a comb and a plain copper mirror, natron and linen cloths for washing himself, his drinking cup, a knife and a dish. Itu fretted continuously. Would there be someone to help him dress, wash his clothes, tie his sandals if he knotted the thongs—and what if he became ill? Would anyone notice or care? Surely the local school could give him an adequate education! Wisely Hapzefa did not respond to Itu’s panicked questions that had no answers, and Hapu, tired and filthy when he returned late from the fields, could only keep reassuring her that many boys had begun their careers at Iunu and had come to no harm, that Huy was healthy and resilient, and that Ker had promised not only to deliver Huy to the temple and see that he was safe but also to visit Iunu as often as possible during Huy’s first six months at the school. Itu was not mollified, but having voiced every worry several times she found their stings less painful and lapsed into a precarious quiet.
Huy put the sennet game and his paints into the bottom of his bag. He wondered if he would be allowed to paint on the temple walls. He had already mastered the writing of his name and had daubed it not only on his door but on every outside wall of the house. Into his cedar box went the scarab and his Nefer amulet. The other compartments remained empty and he wondered what precious trophies might fill them in the years to come. He left the hated monkey on the table by his cot. “It will be there to welcome me when I come home,” he told Itu mendaciously. “It might be stolen if I take it with me.” Hapzefa coughed discreetly and turned back to the packing.
His mother smiled. “How very thoughtful of you, Huy.” The smile broadened. “I will make sure that it comes to no harm.” Huy, catching her eye, wondered for the first time whether she had ever believed any of his lies.
Then, suddenly, too suddenly, Hapzefa was washing him for the last time, his mother had come into his room to kiss him good night for the last time, and he laid his head on his pillow for what he believed, with a cold shiver, to be his final sleep on his cot. “Ker will come for you in the morning,” Itu told him, “and he will take you right to the temple and talk to the priest in charge of your class. You are expected, Huy. Shall I leave a lamp with you?”
He nodded, numb with a dread he had not felt since the evening his father had broken the news to him that he really would be going away. He tried to remember the kind priest’s words but could not as he watched Itu’s dark hair fall over her brown shoulder, and inhaled the lilies of her perfume. Save me, Mother! he wanted to scream. Tell me it was all a joke!
Itu went to his empty clothes chest, knelt, and, lifting the lid, brought up the monkey. “I think I had better start looking after this right away, don’t you, Huy?” she said gravely. “I will move it to my own chest, where it will be undisturbed. Until the morning, little one.” She left quietly and Huy was alone.
It was a great relief to know that the monkey was not lying in the chest, eyes open in the darkness, peering about for him. For a long time Huy lay gazing up at the sweet familiarity of the cracks across the ceiling, trying to stay awake, to make every remaining moment count, but before long his eyelids grew heavy and he slept.
2
HUY HAD IMAGINED that the journey to Iunu would take many weeks. It had seemed to him that the walk to Khenti-kheti’s shrine from his home had gone on forever, and having been no farther afield than that, he could not envisage a greater distance. But Ker had told him that Iunu was a mere forty miles upstream, reachable in one day if necessary, although he would not tire his rowers by forcing them to fight the northward current when speed was not essential. “We will make a leisurely trip, Huy,” Ker had said as his barge pulled away from the dock at Hut-herib and the steersman fought to avoid the other craft jockeying for position in the crowded tributary. “Very soon we will strike the river itself. Later, towards evening, we will pull into some little bay and build a fire, fry some fish, and you can sleep in my cabin. That will be fun, won’t it?”
Huy, clinging tightly to the guardrail while the steersman shouted curses at his compatriots on all sides, could only nod. The noise was alarming. So was the rocking of the deck under his feet. His mind filled with the last sight of his parents, standing forlornly at the gate, his father holding a sack of seeds ready to go out to the fields, his mother swathed in her woollen cloak, for the pre-dawn air was cold. Their goodbyes had been quietly perfunctory. Ker had brought a litter so that Huy might ride to the water, but Huy, crawling up into it, was oblivious to his uncle’s kindly gesture. Craning his neck for a last look at all that was dearly familiar as the bearers began to move off, he spotted Ishat hovering by the orchard wall, arms folded, grinding one bare foot on top of the other. He did not wave. Neither did she. Waving was a cheerful gesture and, besides, it meant a parting, and he stubbornly refused to consider what was to come. Ishat continued to stand there awkwardly until he was out of sight.
Ker’s barge smelled of dressed wood mingled with the rather sour odour of the water lapping against its sides. At any other time Huy would have excitedly filled his nostrils with the novelty of it as his uncle took his hand and led him up the ramp and onto the cool planking of the deck, but today he was insensible to anything new. He followed Ker to the cabin, where his uncle’s belongings were already stowed neatly in one corner. Ker set Huy’s two leather bags beside his own. “When you are tired, you can come and sleep in here,” he told the boy. “It will be cool and quiet for you. But now, let’s stand by the rail and watch the town slide away behind us. Then we will eat. Yes?”
Huy could hardly breathe for the lump in his throat. Ker shouted a command to the rowers and the boat began to move. He talked gently to Huy, pointing out the various sorts of craft around them, what cargo they might be carrying, where they had come from, the meaning of the flags most of them were flying. “You see that one there?” He pointed to a sleek, gilded skiff with pennants of blue and white fixed fore and aft. “Blue and white are the imperial colours. Whoever is on that boat is here on the business of our King. Probably a herald. The craft is too small for goods.” He smiled down at Huy. “When I deliver perfumes to Weset I am allowed to display the blue and white.” He chatted on, trying to put Huy at ease, but Huy was not comforted. Full of that childish desperation which is always mingled with helplessness, he felt the dawn breeze lift his hair and the first rays of the rising sun strike his skin, and he began to cry.
Nevertheless a sort of security quickly grew up around him as hour by hour the rowers beat their way upstream. For the time being he was safe with a man who loved him, and isolated on a river whose banks still showed him the familiar lush vegetation he might find on his father’s acres. Between the palm trees to either side he could see sowers strewing seed onto the rich black soil as his father was doubtless doing, sacks slung around their necks, brown arms moving to and fro, followed by the inevitable flock of greedy gulls and pigeons wheeling in a graceful white rhythm behind them. Cows stood in the shallows, water dripping from their muzzles as they lifted their heads, curious as always to see what was going by. Yellow-crested ibises stalked through the papyrus swamps, and now and then in an iridescent blue flash a kingfisher dove between the feathery fronds of the sedge. In the heat of the afternoon Huy slept on the cushions of the cabin, lulled by the motion of the vessel he had at first found distressing, and Ker lay propped against the cabin wall under a canopy, drowsily sipping beer.
Although the river had retreated to the level it held for most of the year, the current was still running strongly, and before the sun lipped the western horizon Ker directed the helmsman to a tiny cove ringed with the tangled trunks and bright yellow button flowers of acacia trees. He sent Huy to gather wood for a fire while the helmsman set out his fishing line and the rowers waded into the water to wash off their sweat. Briefly Huy forgot the fate awaiting him at Iunu. Proudly he piled twigs and a few dry branches near the hollow in the sand Ker had made, and as his uncle laid and lit the fire he went and stood ankle-deep in the shallows, watching the rowers laugh and splash away their fatigue.
They all dined
on perch fried in olive oil, sitting in the sand as the light turned red and gradually faded and the shadows under the jumbled acacia grew dense. Huy, full and content, pressed close to his uncle as night deepened, his eyes on the leap and crackle of the fire, his ears full of the rough accents of the sailors as they made jokes about things he did not understand and spoke to him teasingly but kindly. At last, worn out and yawning, he was carried back on board the boat, laid in the cabin, and bade to sleep well. Ker assured him that he himself would be just outside the door if he needed anything, but before his uncle had finished speaking Huy was asleep.
In the morning there was bread, goat’s cheese, and grapes that were beginning to wrinkle into sweet raisins, and once Huy had finished eating Ker told him to take some natron down to the water and give himself a good scrubbing. Huy was horrified. He had never washed himself, and as he stood naked and shivering on the deck, a bag of natron in one hand and a square of coarse linen in the other, the bleakness of his situation came rushing back. “I can’t!” he wailed. “Hapzefa always does it! I want Hapzefa! I’m cold and I want to go home!”
Ker scooped him up and hugged him. “I know, little one, I know,” he said soothingly. “One day you will thank me for putting you through this nasty ordeal, but now you must be clean and put on fresh linen so that you need not be ashamed when I present you to the Overseer of the temple school. You have been very brave so far,” he continued, moving towards the ramp. “Try to hold on to that courage. I and your aunt love you very much. We would never do anything to hurt you. This distress is temporary.” He had reached the edge of the water. Setting the boy down, he began to instruct him. “The other pupils will all be able to wash themselves,” he encouraged Huy. “First you must wet yourself all over, even your hair. Then take a little natron out of the bag, and cupping it in your hand, you must rub it all over you, your face, even on top of your head. Look, I will show you.” He pulled off his kilt, unwound his loincloth, and ran into the water. “See!” he called. “Wet all over!”
The Twice Born Page 4