He glanced down at himself and halted. His feet were bare. So was the rest of him. Shirt, kilt, loincloth, all had disappeared. He turned, but no linen floated on the surface of the lake. As he turned back, he caught a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. The braid of his youth lock with its driftwood frog had swung forward. Huy lifted it from his collarbone in astonishment. A perfect little golden frog with lapis lazuli eyes peered back at him. Thoroughly alarmed, he remained very still, the frog and the end of his lock clutched in one hand, and it was then that he realized the silence surrounding him. No birds sang. The leaves of the trees dotting the wide lawns to either side of the forecourt were motionless. No lap of waves, no shout of oarsmen, no sound of animal or human came to him from the river behind him. There was only a hush so deep that he could hear his own breaths. Nothing moved, and yet the profound immobility held a quality of expectancy that seemed to be directed at him. Even the air he was drawing into his lungs was waiting.
Huy did not know what to do. If he tried to reach his cell as quickly as possible by slipping through the inner court stark naked and sopping wet and was caught, the punishment for such flagrant blasphemy would be dire. If he took the more acceptable route beside the outer wall of the temple and then in through one of the doors to the school at the rear, he was bound to be seen by a priest or one of the older boys, who might report him. Could he run in under the trees, make his way to the river, and lurk by the road in the hope that someone might have spread laundry on the bushes or dropped a cloak by accident? Yet he saw that beyond the fingers of shade cast by the pillars, the outer court was as empty as everything around him. He let go his youth lock, said a quick prayer for forgiveness to Ra, whose sacred house he was about to violate, and took one step towards the temple.
At once he was engulfed in sound. Birds twittered, leaves rustled, the water of the lake slapped gently against its stone apron. Illogical though he knew it was, Huy believed that he had made the correct decision, and as he walked in under the towering pylon and entered the outer court he felt himself become completely dry.
He expected to look ahead across the concourse with its cloisters on either side to the roofed inner court fronted by its row of pillars and, beyond that, the closed doors of Ra’s inmost shrine. What he saw stopped him dead as though a giant hand had suddenly been thrust against his belly. The power in his knees gave way so that he almost fell, but his flailing arms helped him to keep his balance, and then he stood in awe, his nakedness forgotten.
He was on the edge of a vast garden whose lush, flower-sprinkled grass ran away from him to be lost in a warm blue horizon. Pools dotted its expanse, their placid surfaces thick with white and pink water lilies. Close by on his right, a wide river flowed slowly, its water sparkling in the brilliant light, its banks marked by palm trees at whose feet the papyrus marshes were crowded with feathered egrets and herons picking their way gracefully among the gently quivering fronds. To his left, when he dared to turn his head, he saw a small whitewashed house set in a thicket of sycamores, and far, far beyond it he was sure he glimpsed a line of serried hills shimmering beige against the cloudless sky. All these things rushed at his senses in a chaos of colours and shapes, but the confusion was temporary, for he found himself inhaling a delicious scent he recognized but could not place. It seemed compounded of his uncle’s orchard blossoms and the honey his mother took from the hives in the perfume fields and the merest hint of garlic, and as he strove to bring its source to mind he noticed the Tree. He could have sworn it had not been there before, but now it towered ahead of him, its great branches spread, its leaves making a vast canopy of moving shade. Its aroma poured into him until he felt as though his blood itself had become charged with it, and as he stared at the Tree he remembered both its name and where he had seen it before. It was the Ished Tree.
Beneath it, spine resting against the gnarled trunk, a man sat cross-legged, a scroll unrolled across his knees. He was enveloped loosely in white linen. A pair of papyrus sandals and a scribe’s palette lay in the grass beside him, together with a silver cup in which a rich purple liquid quivered. Not far away, to Huy’s terror, a hyena squatted on its bony haunches, blinking lazily in the radiant sunlight, its snub nose pointed towards the man, the tufts of fur on each small ear and curving over its powerful shoulders gleaming. Its attitude seemed neither predatory nor expectant; it simply watched the man with an air of utter contentment. If it knew of Huy’s presence, it gave no sign.
Huy was afraid to move. For a long time he stood immobile, his gaze flicking from man to beast to the house, but always returning to the lush profusion of the Tree, until at last the man spoke. “Come forward, Huy son of Hapu,” he said without raising his eyes from the scroll.
Huy took one hesitant step. “Where am I?” he whispered.
“In Egypt, of course,” came the reply. The scroll rustled gently as the man unrolled it a little further. The hyena yawned, giving Huy a momentary look at its sharp ivory teeth before it slid forward to lie prone, nose against its paws.
Huy took another step. “Am I … am I dead?”
Now the man glanced up, smiling, eyebrows raised. He had a thin face, the cheekbones prominent, the brown eyes full of humour. Something about him struck Huy as vaguely familiar. “Perhaps,” the man said mildly. “But perhaps you are only dreaming. Look behind you.”
Slowly, tensely, Huy did as he was told. There was no square dampened by his footprints, no lake beyond, only an immense, dim hall, its ceiling lost in shadow. In the centre of the lapis-tiled floor towered a massive golden scale, its two salvers empty. Beside it a woman stood, her cupped palms lifted as though she were waiting to receive something, the heavy golden bracelets on her delicate wrists giving off a dull sheen in the uncertain light around her. Two tall feathers attached to the rear of the plain gold circlet on her brow shook softly in a draft Huy could not feel.
Huy caught his breath. He had never before seen such beauty and serenity on a human face. But she is not human, he thought with a stab of fear. I am staring at the goddess Ma’at herself, the symbols of cosmic and earthly order on her head. She is waiting to place a heart on the scales, to make a judgment. Reflexively he clutched at his chest. The scales are empty. Have I already been weighed?
In the shadows behind her, there was a stirring. The goddess smiled and turned away from Huy, holding out both gossamer-hung arms to the creature that emerged, the man with the muscular black body wrapped in a short kilt of woven gold thread, the jackal with the tall black ears and long nose. Golden kohl encircled the bright black animal eyes. One human hand held a golden ankh, the other grasped a staff of office topped by a miniature jackal’s head. Not human! Not human! Huy thought wildly. Anubis, god of the rites of death! Sennefer’s throwing stick killed me. I have already been embalmed and entombed, but I have no memory of traversing the Judgment Hall, my hand in that of Anubis, or of seeing my heart placed on the scales against the feathers of Ma’at. Anubis was staring directly into Huy’s face, his lips raised over cruel fangs in what might have been a feral grin or a warm smile. His arm had gone around the goddess’s shoulder and the ankh he was holding covered her chest.
“Why are you afraid?” came the quiet voice of the man behind Huy. “Anubis harms no one. He wishes the scales to balance for every man and woman. It is better to fear the goddess, who sees into the heart and knows when the harmony of Ma’at is threatened. Come here.”
Gratefully, Huy turned away from that sombre place and at once the perfume of the Ished Tree, the musical cacophony of the birds, the joyous blue of the sky, surrounded him again. Walking towards the Tree, he felt the light folds of a linen tunic settle against his skin. He was no longer naked. “Sit beside me,” the man went on. Huy obeyed, sinking into the sweet-smelling grass, his fingers going deliberately to the rough bark of the Tree. His companion laughed. “Touching the Ished is no longer forbidden to you,” he said. “Indeed, you may taste its fruit if you wish.”
Huy looked
about. There was no sign of any fruit littering the ground. “But where is it?” he asked, scanning the face, now so close to his own, that tantalized him with the knowledge that he had seen it somewhere before. “And who are you, Master?”
The man tapped the scroll. “It is here, of course. This is the Book of Thoth, and my name is Imhotep.”
Huy lost his breath. Scrambling to his knees, he put his forehead against the man’s foot. Here, warm and alive, was the god who had designed the mighty tomb of the Osiris-one Nebjerikhet Nebti hentis ago, who had won renown as a healer, and who had been the greatest Seer Egypt had ever birthed. His shrines were common throughout the country, where his statues, large and small, crude and fine, smiled arrogantly and enigmatically back at every petitioner.
“Then I am dead, and this is the Paradise of Osiris!” Huy exclaimed.
Imhotep waved him up. “Perhaps. Perhaps,” he repeated, “young Huy, the gods with their inscrutable purpose have decreed an early death for you. All I know is that I am to put to you this question: Will you taste the fruit of the holy Ished Tree?” He raised his hands and the scroll rolled up, falling into the folds of his linen.
Huy blinked at it, perplexed. “The Book of Thoth is the fruit of the Tree? But the High Priest of Ra told me that he gathers up the fruit and burns it every year, therefore it cannot be a book. Anyway, does the Book of Thoth not merely contain two spells, one for reanimating the dead and one for bestowing the power to understand the language of the animals and birds? And does it not lie in the tomb of some anonymous sorcerer, far beneath the earth? Many necromancers have sought it.”
Imhotep shook his head. “No, there is no such book. It is a story, a fable. In the Egypt of the living, the fruit of the Ished Tree symbolizes the knowledge of all truths, both cosmic and earthly. This knowledge was dictated to Thoth by the great god Atum before the creation of the world, and Thoth wrote it down. In the Egypt of the dead it retains this form.” He plucked the scroll from his lap and, holding it reverently on both palms, offered it to Huy. The gesture was so like the goddess Ma’at’s cupped palms in the semi-darkness of the Judgment Hall that Huy momentarily cringed.
“I don’t understand,” he faltered.
Imhotep regarded him steadily. “Yes you do. It is quite simple. Atum gives you this choice, to make entirely freely. He deigns to share with you his divine wisdom. You may refuse the Book if you wish, without any hurt. There will be no retribution if you do so.”
Huy stared at the papyrus cylinder lying so innocently on Imhotep’s lined palms. “But why?” he cried. “Why me? What purpose can such knowledge serve, seeing that I am already dead, judged, and in Paradise?”
“I do not know.”
“You have read it, Master. Can you not advise me to unroll it or leave it alone?”
“No.” Imhotep sighed. “You stumbled across the Ished Tree in the temple of Ra when you were a little boy. Few but Ra’s priests have seen it through all the hentis since Atum caused it to be planted. Maybe at that moment you became sacred yourself. Or the god deliberately caused you to find his tree. Only he knows why this choice has come to you. Will you read?”
Huy took the scroll and closed his eyes. The paper was warm and comforting in his hand, returning him to the classroom at the rear of Ra’s temple, and his teacher’s voice, and the smell of the ink as he, Huy, dipped his brush into it and drew the holy symbols Thoth had bequeathed to Egypt onto the sheet of blank papyrus. Thothmes, he thought sadly. My safe little cell. Uncle Ker and the river. Mother, Father … I shall not see you again, not until you also pass through the Hall, and only the gods know how far ahead that time will be. Shall I be lonely here? I wonder. And if the scroll does indeed contain the full knowledge of every truth in the cosmos and on the earth, will the reading of it make me a god like Imhotep? The thought was alien, outrageous, and he smiled. Opening his eyes, he nodded.
“I will read,” he said.
“Very well. But first you must sleep. You have had a long journey and you are tired. Lie down here. Rest against me.” All at once Huy felt his eyelids grow heavy and his head begin to buzz with weariness. The scroll fell from his grasp. His cheek found the hollow of Imhotep’s shoulder, and before his eyes closed again he peered lazily up into the man’s kindly face. It seemed to Huy that Imhotep’s ears had grown tufts of coarse hair and the skin brushing his forehead had become rough.
“Dream, little one, dream,” the deep voice purred, and Huy surrendered himself to darkness.
5
HUY RETURNED to consciousness sluggishly, struggling to pull himself free of whatever mire seemed to be holding his feet and to half swim, half scramble out of the pit or well or tomb in which he sensed he was trapped. He could not breathe. As he fought to draw air into his lungs, as his limbs flailed, his mind was disgorging a chaos of half-formed images: two gods and a goddess in a shadowy place, a hyena fused to the trunk of a tree, an expanse of garden with red grass, monstrous green blooms, pools of black water colliding with yellow clouds in a sky high above that was terrifying in its invisibility although he knew it filled the space above him. He wanted to scream at the madness of it, for even as he saw these things they melted into each other and began to stream past his interior vision, a swift flow of intertwining, oily colours turning to grey as they disappeared.
Just when he knew he must die of fear and suffocation, his chest expanded, his heart gave a single powerful lurch and settled into the rhythm of life, and he was breathing normally. At the same moment it all came back to him: the Ished Tree, the intoxicating beauty of its surroundings, Ma’at and Anubis in the Judgment Hall, Imhotep and the hyena and the scroll. He felt himself smile. Imhotep had told him to sleep and he had slept. He had died. Sennefer had killed him, and now he was free to enjoy and explore the Paradise of Osiris, read the scroll, and learn the secrets of the gods. Why, then, he thought with a dawning dismay, is the Ished Tree now giving off its underlying stench of decay and corruption, and why is my body so heavy? He opened his eyes.
A figure was bending over him limned in flickering yellow light, its arm raised. It seemed frozen, and as Huy turned his head it uttered a sound, part choking gasp, part grunt. “Imhotep?” Huy whispered. “Is that you?” The figure shrieked and stumbled back. Something fell from its hand to the floor with a clatter. There was a flurry of movement and several more figures appeared, moving uncertainly on the periphery of Huy’s vision. Slowly, painfully, he sat up. He was on a low, narrow bed of some kind, in a room full of other beds, all of them occupied by people who were lying utterly still. A table laden with strange knives and tools sat in the centre. Many lamps burned, filling the fetid air with a light that seemed thick and heavy to Huy, who had expected to see the bright, limpid air of the beautiful garden. The figures now backing away from him resolved themselves into a group of men clad in kilts grimed with what looked like old blood. They were staring at him with blank horror. One of them was shaking and pointing at him. “I was about to cut it … cut it … I was about to cut it …” he was saying over and over, his voice shrill with hysteria. Huy himself had begun to tremble.
“Where am I?” he managed. “Where is Imhotep?” He glanced behind him, hoping to see the garden and the Tree, but a stained wall met his bewildered gaze. Turning around had hurt him. His head and neck throbbed unbearably. His shoulders sent arrows of stiff pain down his spine. Carefully he turned back. The men had fallen silent. They were staring at him without moving, and no one on the other curious beds was moving either. All the occupants were totally motionless.
Suddenly full awareness flooded Huy, and leaning forward he vomited onto the obsidian knife lying on the ground beneath his feet. He was in a House of the Dead. The men watching him with such dread were sem priests, and one of them had been about to slit open his abdomen and begin his embalming. “But I died!” he blurted, dry-mouthed. “I died, and I saw the Judgment Hall. Imhotep … Imhotep talked with me and it was more than beautiful, it was glorious. How is it that
I am here?” He cleared his throat, inhaling the odour of death clinging to his skin, to the hard bed on which he sat, rising from the floor, carried to him on the heat of the lamps. He could hardly speak for the chattering of his teeth. “Did the gods pour my ka back into my body? Tell me. Tell me!”
There was a long silence during which Huy found his feet and stood, his arms, his knees, even his head, jerking uncontrollably. The sem priests continued to regard him in an atmosphere deepening into the most profound suspicion. Finally one of them answered him, although the man did not step forward and seemed prepared to shrink behind his fellows if Huy threatened to make a move.
“This is the House of the Dead at Hut-herib,” he quavered. “Your body was removed here from Iunu five days ago by your father and your uncle. You … you were slain by a blow to the head. Your lungs were full of water. Lifting you onto the embalming couch, it gushed from you like … like a flood.” He had begun to pant. “There was no breath. For five days, no breath. We are very busy. We could not begin your beautification at once. What are you? Answer me in the name of Ausar Unnefer, Great God of the Dead! For surely Amam-Apep the Devourer has stolen the ka of Huy son of Hapu!” The question was half shouted, and at its tone the men drew together as if for protection.
“Oh gods.” Huy fought the faintness prickling in his body and threatening to engulf him. They thought he was a demon. They thought that Huy’s ka had gone and something evil had replaced it. Desperately he searched his memories and found little but shreds. A woman’s face. His mother’s? A young girl—no name. A scribe’s palette across knees—his knees?—and a voice dictating to the hand—his hand?—drawing the characters on the papyrus. A tree, yes, it was the Ished Tree, but enclosed in a roofless space in a temple and he was very small and staring at it with a frightened interest. No scroll. Where was the scroll? Where was Imhotep?
The Twice Born Page 14