They re-entered the temple. After knocking twice on an imposing set of double doors just within the long line of cells Huy had been dragged past earlier, the man left him without another word. Huy, who was recovering a little of his usual aplomb, just had time to bitterly regret his habitual and secretive disobedience, curse Pabast, and wish that his uncle had never heard of the temple school at Iunu when the doors were opened and the High Priest appeared.
Carefully he inspected Huy, then nodded. “Good. Now we will return to the Tree.”
Oh gods, Huy thought dully as he shuffled after the Master’s straight spine. He is going to put a rope around my neck and hang me from one of those twisted branches and I will die unjustified and Mother and Father will be disgraced forever. But this time he was sufficiently recovered to take a small interest in a portion of the temple that was new to him. Some of the priests lounging outside their cells smiled at him. Music drifted into the wide passage from somewhere in the inner court, the click of finger cymbals punctuating the sweet rise and fall of women’s voices and the trilling of lyres. The sounds served to blunt a little of Huy’s glum fatalism. He could smell food. Something delicious was being prepared for the priests’ evening meal and it seemed somehow inexcusable to Huy that the odour should make him hungry when he was about to die.
The now-familiar door loomed, the huge key still in its lock. Turning it, the High Priest indicated with a jerk of his head that Huy should enter, then he followed and closed the door carefully behind them. The sun had already sunk below the level of the temple walls, and the enclosure holding the Tree was growing dim. The clustered leaves were motionless, forming a thick umbrella under which the coming darkness was quickly gathering. Huy, naked and resigned, felt once again the peculiar otherness of the place. He glanced about surreptitiously for the rope that would be knotted around his throat.
“Take off your sandals and make three prostrations,” the High Priest said. “Then repeat these words of apology and veneration after me.” Huy did as he was told, kneeling and putting his nose to the earth. The third time the High Priest’s foot descended onto his back, holding him down while the Priest chanted the short litany and Huy followed. “Now get up and bow,” the man said crisply. “Do you know what you are looking at?”
“No, Master,” Huy gulped. “Are you going to kill me now?”
“Kill you? No. You are nothing but an ignorant child who is paying the price for wandering where he should not. You will be handed to Overseer Harmose and whipped, and you will go to bed without food in order that you might always remember this day.”
As if I could forget it, Huy thought, heartened by the knowledge that he was not in fact living his final moments. “Master, why is this tree holy?” he dared to ask.
The High Priest gave him a wintry smile. “This is the Tree of Life, the Ished Tree,” he answered. “Some call it the Family Tree, but that is not correct. It holds within it the full knowledge of the mysteries of good and evil. Atum himself planted it here when he created the All out of the Nun, and every High Priest of Ra has tended it since the beginning. Other temples have been given shoots of it in case it should die, but it is old beyond the reckoning of the wisest and it continues to flourish. So, my young criminal, you have seen something no one but High Priests and temple guards has ever seen.” Taking Huy’s chin, he tilted up his face and scrutinized it keenly. “For some odd reason I believe that this truth is safe with you,” he said slowly. “I don’t know why. You have an air about you. Tell me, can you smell the Tree?”
Huy nodded. The sweet yet pungent aroma had been strengthening with the darkness. “Yes, I can. It smells like honey and garlic and my father’s orchard blossoms and something else, something not so nice.” He hesitated, afraid that he had inadvertently committed yet another act of sacrilege, but the Priest’s expression did not change. “Maybe like my father’s leg when the cat scratched it and it oozed and wouldn’t heal and Mother had to put willow sap on it.”
The Priest removed his hand. “I smell nothing. The Tree only gives off its odours to me when its crop hangs heavy on the branches. Then I collect every fruit and make a fire within this enclosure and burn them all. To eat is forbidden. Who are you?” he murmured. “Did the god mean you to stumble into this place? All the same,” he added firmly, “you must take your punishment. I will summon Harmose and we will hear the story of your misdemeanours before he brandishes the willow switch.”
The following hour, before Huy was able to crawl painfully onto his couch, was the most humiliating of his life. Standing before the High Priest and the Overseer in the former’s reception room, he was forced to confess the idiocy of the whole day and by inference admit to having entered the proscribed areas of kitchens, gardens, and animal pens on many occasions. Then, still naked, he was marched to his own compound and given six stripes with the willow switch in full view of his classmates, who gathered to watch with varying degrees of amusement or sympathy. When he heard his sentence, Huy had been relieved. Six stripes—how bad could that be? But the willow was sharp and whippy. Each blow stung unbearably, and by the time the six welts were swelling on his back, he was in tears. The Overseer had proclaimed blasphemy as the reason for Huy’s punishment, and when he had tucked the switch under his arm and gone away and the small crowd had dispersed, Thothmes came close.
“Put your arm across my shoulders and lean on me,” he said as Huy limped awkwardly towards the blessed privacy of their cell. “What on earth did you do that was so terrible, Huy? Try to get into the Holiest of Holiest?”
But Huy, shaking his head, could only answer, “I saw something I wasn’t supposed to.” Thothmes could get no more out of him. Although he had not been ordered to remain silent regarding the presence of the Ished Tree in the temple, he did so out of a sense that there had been a message for him under its spreading panoply, a communication that remained unintelligible long after his wounds had healed and the other pupils had ceased to tease him. The High Priest’s words had meant little, indeed he was not sure that he understood any of them apart from the fact that Atum had planted the Tree and it was sacred. But the Tree had touched him deep in his ka, and to speak of it would have made him feel as though he were committing another act of blasphemy.
He had expected to be shunned by his fellows. After all, he had been disgraced in their presence and censured by the High Priest himself. But he found to his surprise that his adventures had imbued him with a certain prestige. He had ventured where most of them dared not go. Like an explorer, he had placed himself in danger, not mortal perhaps but glamorous all the same, and he had charted the forbidden areas of the temple and returned with tales to relate to envious and less-enterprising boys. But of that final peril he did not speak, hugging it to himself in the night, reliving each moment from the time he had seen the triangular shadow by the wall. The details, rather than fading in his memory, grew brighter. He was not aware that his very reticence prompted a flurry of speculation and rumour, and even Sennefer, after one vicious dig in Huy’s ribs and a whispered, “I don’t care how popular you’ve made yourself, you’re still just a peasant,” retired to both glower and reluctantly be in awe of him with the others.
But the removal of Huy’s youth lock was still a shameful brand that caused him great distress. His hair grew back slowly, first as a clump of short black bristle and then as a single curl that bobbed like a ridiculous animal’s tail. He tried not to shrink with embarrassment when Pabast made his regular visit to the cell to shave him and Thothmes. The servant made no comment regarding his condition, but his silent attitude of disdain spoke volumes. In his idle moments Huy took to tugging vainly at his lock in the hope that he might lengthen it more quickly.
He continued to progress well in his studies, and by the time the school closed just before the month of the Inundation he had mastered the majority of the symbols making up his language and could read and memorize the simple and improving maxims his teacher set. His written work was still untid
y and unformed, but no more so than that of his classmates. He had not forgotten his promise to the priest at Hut-herib, but he knew he was not yet skilled enough to compose a letter of which he could be proud. One day, perhaps in the next year, he would.
At the end of Mesore, the last month of a burning hot summer, both teachers and pupils went home. The harvest had begun the month before, but Huy was the only boy whose father might have needed help in the fields and Huy was still too young to be of any use. Classes would reconvene at the end of Tybi, and Huy, although he was eager to see his parents and Ishat again, felt rather glum. The seven months he had been in the temple school had passed swiftly. He had come to love the work, to accept and even appreciate the routines binding him to compound and schoolroom, and would miss the companionship of the other pupils, particularly Thothmes. “I shall miss you too,” Thothmes said as they packed their belongings. “Being at home will be wonderful at first. My sisters will fuss over me and Father has promised me a gift for completing the year and I’m looking forward to more sweetmeats and less vegetables. But I think that after a while I shall be bored.” He hopped up onto the edge of his couch and began to swing his legs. “Perhaps you can come and stay with me for a day or two once the river has started to shrink.”
“Perhaps.” Huy was wrapping his statue of Khenti-kheti in linen before placing it on top of his sennet game at the bottom of one of his leather bags. “But it will depend on my uncle, whether he has business in Iunu at the right time.” He straightened and met Thothmes’ serene gaze “My father can’t afford to hire a barge to bring me back here.”
Thothmes made a face. “I keep forgetting that you’re poor,” he said matter-of-factly. “But Huy, you are doing so well at your studies that one day you will be hired to scribe for a very rich and fussy man who will want only the best. Then you will have your very own barge.”
“That’s years away.” Huy had begun to sort through the pile of kilts. “Look at this, Thothmes. Half these kilts aren’t mine.”
“Take them anyway. The linen is a better grade than the ones you came with. Can I see your scarab once more before you put it away?” Reverently Huy handed over the box and together they peered down at the beetle’s gleaming carapace. “I expect Father could order one of the servants out onto the desert to get me one,” Thothmes went on, “but it wouldn’t be the same. This is your lucky charm.” He drew back.
Huy closed the box and it disappeared into one of the bags. “That’s everything. Just imagine, Thothmes—next year we wear yellow ribbons!” They grinned at one another. “I must go and say goodbye to Harnakht. He’s probably with Kay. Are you coming?”
Thothmes slid to his feet. “When we grow up, you must try and marry my sister Anuket,” he said as they walked out into the bright morning. “That way you can live here at Iunu and we can see each other all the time.”
“Oh, I’m never going to get married!” Huy protested. “Imagine having to share a house with a girl! Much better to share one with you.”
Ker had arrived the night before, and after a quick visit with the Overseer of the School he had slept aboard his barge. Now he waited for Huy at the foot of the ramp and Huy, seeing the craft rocking gently, felt a surge of excitement in spite of having to leave Thothmes. He would sleep in the cabin without the fear that had dogged him on his way to an unknown future. He began to run, dragging his bags across the crowded concourse, and Ker held out his arms. “This time I can take you home!” he exclaimed as Huy dropped his burden and flung himself at his uncle. “I do believe you’ve grown again! Your mother is very anxious to see you. She sends her love. So does your aunt.” He picked up the bags as Huy ran up the ramp, and signalled to the helmsman.
“I’m still not tall enough to see over the rail,” Huy said as the ramp was hauled in and the sailors manned the oars. “Lift me up, Uncle. I want to see the temple get smaller behind us.” Ker set him on the rail, holding him tightly, and the barge began to nose its way towards the canal and the river beyond. “Isn’t it a mighty pylon!” Huy said happily. “I’m not frightened of it anymore!”
“I should think not,” Ker murmured dryly, “seeing that you know not only the pylon but the lake and the outer court and a lot more besides. You haven’t been an altogether model pupil, have you. The Overseer told me about your escapades and the whipping you were given, but he failed to mention the removal of your youth lock. Your hair’s the same length it was when I deposited you here. Why did they cut it off? It must have been for something more serious than a few forays into the kitchens and pens.”
They had almost reached the river. The sailors had temporarily shipped the oars so that the helmsman could control the drift that would carry the barge into the north-flowing current. They haven’t told him, Huy thought. Why not? Did the High Priest order the Overseer and the teachers to be quiet about my dreadful offence? Perhaps people who don’t know about the Tree aren’t supposed to know unless they find it by accident as I did or they work in the temple itself. He tensed. I don’t want to talk about it, even to Uncle Ker, and I don’t want to tell a lie either.
“I did do something worthy of my punishment, Uncle,” he said carefully, “but it was in ignorance. If the Overseer hasn’t spoken of it to you, then I would like to keep it to myself. I mean you no insult.” His uncle’s hold on him did not change. Huy waited in trepidation for stern words, his eyes on the last sparkle of the canal as the chaotic river frontage of the city began, and was surprised when Ker chuckled.
“Is this the same self-willed, inconsiderate boy who gave his god an inferior gift and would pout if he was denied the smallest thing? I am amazed at the change in you, Huy. You have just admitted your guilt with an honest excuse, refused to speak of the matter because you think it would not be appropriate to do so, and apologized to me for any offence your attitude might cause. Truly, the schooling here is beyond reproach!”
Huy had not viewed his little speech in quite that light. He was all at once very pleased with himself. Wriggling free of Ker’s grip, he slipped to the deck and ran to the opposite railing. “I want to see the monuments of the Osiris-ones before we sail past them,” he called. “Will you lift me up again, Uncle?”
Ker joined him and together they watched the lordly pyramids on the plain of Saqqara drift by, the majestic sight reducing both of them to silence. Behind them the helmsman shouted a command, feet pattered across the deck, and Huy heard the unfurled lateen sail suddenly billow as it took the wind. Oars were shipped with a clatter and the barge’s progress quickened. Huy sighed with delight. He was not in a hurry to get home. He hoped they would tie up by the riverbank and eat by firelight as they had done before, but he was too polite to ask if it was possible. He had begun to learn that he was not in fact at the centre of the world, nor was he a special favourite of the gods. His concerns were of no more importance to them than those of the next child. Nor were they of much interest to the adults who controlled his destiny, apart from his mother, of course. She had always cared more about what he wanted than about her own needs. His uncle loved him, but if business was calling him back to Hut-herib there would be no leisurely frying of fish under the stars. It did not occur to Huy that he was accepting the idea without his usual rancour. He was wondering if Ishat was looking forward to seeing him again.
They did indeed spend the night anchored almost opposite the place where the barge had stopped all those months ago. The fish tasted as delicious as before, the stars were just as beautiful, and this time Ker allowed Huy to curl up and sleep in a blanket beside the water. He himself chose the cabin. “I’m getting too old to enjoy the hard ground under me,” he joked to Huy, “and I’m not worried that you’ll run away. The sailor over there is for your protection.”
Huy clapped his hands. He had never spent the night out of doors before. “Thank you, Uncle! Were you really afraid that I might run away?”
“I presumed that your last weeks at home were miserable,” Ker answered matter-of-factly, “a
nd if I had been you I would have been considering many ways to avoid my fate.” He smiled. “You are not such a mystery, Huy. Your father kept a sharp eye on you in case you tried to enlist Ishat in some mad scheme of escape.”
Huy was astonished and rather nettled. Adults were not as dull-witted as he had supposed. “I did try to think of something,” he admitted, “but there was really nowhere to go.” He glanced at the fire, now little more than glowing embers. “Uncle Ker, I almost hated you for sending me to school, and I made a big fuss about it. But it was a wise and generous thing for you to do.” Embarrassed, he dug a toe into the still-warm earth. “I have learned a lot and I am grateful.” Ker was gracious enough not to laugh, but Huy caught the twitch of his mouth.
“You’ve only just begun the journey,” Ker said, “and I am already being amply repaid, I assure you, my brave little delinquent!” He held out a blanket. “Here. Find yourself a hollow, and if anything alarms you in the night, come back aboard. Sleep well.”
Huy chose a spot in the open, near the fire and well within calling distance of the sailor stretched out and already breathing heavily not far away. He was more worried about snakes and spiders than about any human threat. The darkness was not absolute. The moon stood almost at the full, its cool light making blurred shadows of the trees and obscuring the stars closest to it, and the sky all around it was thick with white stars. Water slapped lazily against the barge’s dim bulk. Some small creature slid through the reeds clustered at the river’s edge, making them whisper briefly before a dreaming silence descended once again.
For a long time Huy lay on his back, hands behind his head, entirely content. The night air smelled of mud and wet greenness and the tang of smouldering ashes. He thought of Thothmes, and wondered how he was enjoying his first night at home with his adoring family. He thought of his empty cell, the mattress rolled up on his cot, waiting for him to return. Finally, as it always did, his mind turned to the sacred Ished Tree, and he fell asleep with the sound of its foliage murmuring in his ears.
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