“Perhaps,” was all Huy said, but privately he knew such a conclusion was wrong and that the truth would come to him one day. He did not know why, but he dreaded that day.
Nakht had hired thirty professional mourners to wail and cast dirt on their heads as they followed his wife’s mummified body from the verge of the river to the tomb’s entrance, but she had been well liked among her own noble circle and at least four times that number of women, her friends and the wives of her husband’s aides and administrators, wore blue, the colour of grief, and added their formal keening to the mourners’ cacophony.
Huy walked with the members of the family. Behind them snaked the mourners, relatives, friends, and at the rear the host of servants who would erect tents, carry water, and prepare food for the three days of ritual feasting that would follow the interment. Waiting by the open entrance of the tomb was a cluster of priests and women who would represent the gods who had been present at the burial of Osiris. Huy, already thirsty and hot from a high sun beating down unmercifully on unprotected heads, thought how ghoulish they looked, particularly the men wearing the masks of the four sons of Horus—hawk, ape, jackal, and man. The sem priest, wrapped in a cow’s skin, was already lying on a couch pretending to be asleep, pretending to be the lifeless corpse about to be reanimated. The cortège came to a halt. The coffin was propped upright beside the tomb entrance and opened to reveal the tightly bandaged form within. The Kher-heb, the chief funeral priest, began to sprinkle water around the foot of the coffin. The ceremony had begun.
It was Huy’s first funeral, and for a while he forgot his physical discomfort as well as his own sorrow as he watched the intricate rite being performed. Only once, as Thothmes approached the remains of his mother in his role of the Sa-mer-ef, the Son who Loves, and gently touched her mouth and eyes with the Ur-hekau, the prescribed metal chisel, to reopen both, did Huy have to fight against his tears. After Thothmes, a sem priest repeated the gestures with his little finger and then with a bagful of pieces of red carnelian to restore colour to the woman’s lips and eyelids.
The sacrifices of the cow, two gazelles, and the ducks did not particularly bother Huy. They were offerings to the deceased, food to be buried with her as well as bread, wine, and oil. The blood quickly sank, steaming, into the surrounding sand and the ritual went on.
At last, as the sun was setting behind them, Nefer-Mut was carried down into the cool dampness of her final home and the family followed her, laying on her the wreaths Anuket had prepared and saying their farewells. Huy did not join them. This tribute was for them alone, so he stood with the other tired members of the funeral, watching the white tents unfold across the desert and the smoke from the cooking fires spiral straight up into the motionless air. He was hungry. Soon he would sit on cushions with Thothmes and drink wine, eat roast goose and figs and warm bread dripping in butter, while the pall that had hung over all of them for seventy days was suddenly lifted and they could laugh again. The detritus from the feast would be buried close to the tomb, as was the custom, and then they would make their way to the rising river and the barges and the city beyond.
12
THE SCHOOL HAD EMPTIED at the beginning of Mesore, a month before the Inundation. Huy had used the legitimate excuse of Nefer-Mut’s funeral not to go home to Hut-herib. He was used to the indulgence of silence and peace behind the ordinary comings and goings of temple life, and he looked forward to long days spent with Thothmes and his family; and indeed, after the interment, the invitations resumed. Yet Huy, boating in the cooler evenings with Thothmes, sharing meals with the four of them in the lamplit elegance of the dining hall, joking with Nasha when he met her as she went to and fro on her household errands, detected a new and wounding distance between them and himself. Outwardly they were as easy and affectionate with him as ever. Huy could not put his finger on one moment, one gesture, one expression, and say there! There it is! But he felt a tiny crack, with himself standing on one side and they on the other. Searching the wholly groundless guilt he felt because he had been unable to save his friend’s mother’s life, he wondered if the sense of detachment came from his own imagination; but he felt it as soon as he entered the house, and sometimes, in the split second before he was greeted, he fancied that he saw a coldness on the face coming towards him.
Thothmes, however, was as loving as ever. The bond that held him and Huy together was too old and too strong to be broken, and Huy was reluctant to have his suspicion confirmed by airing it to his friend. After all, Nakht still clapped him on the back and gave him fatherly advice on everything from his school work to understanding the military tactics he and Thothmes were now studying. Nasha still teased him. Anuket still smiled at him and wriggled aside on her reed mat in the herb room so that he could sit beside her and watch her latest creation take shape under her graceful little fingers. Yet the aura of almost imperceptible sexual taunting had gone. It had caused Huy physical discomfort and the same sort of mental confusion he was now experiencing with regard to the family’s attitude towards him. All the same, he missed it. Sometimes it had seemed to him like a subtle game that he did not know how to play. He was in no doubt that he loved her still, loved to see the mute harmony of her movements, hear the high timbre of her voice, lose himself in the play of sunlight on her gleaming black hair. He did his best to cloak his emotion more carefully than he had before. Anuket seemed not to notice.
During his solitary wanderings through the deserted school precinct his mind turned often to the fourth part of the Book. Thoth’s words had of course sunk into his memory at once and could be retrieved at any time, but Huy found himself more often pondering those snatches of the accompanying commentary he could remember. The two scrolls had contained a straightforward account of Ra-Atum’s birthing of the world, but the anonymous commentator had dared to extrapolate, or perhaps simply cogitate, on what was written. Huy returned to the scrolls, sitting under the Tree, Thoth’s words unread but the commentary spread open across his knees.
Atum is the all-encompassing author of entirety, weaving everything into the fabric of reality …
The womb of rebirth is wisdom. The conception is silence …
Atum is first, the Cosmos is second, and man is third. Atum is One, the Cosmos is One, and so is man, for like the Cosmos he is a whole made up of different diverse parts. Atum made man to govern with him, and if man accepts this function fully, he becomes a vehicle of order in the Cosmos.
To Huy this idea seemed blasphemous. To govern with Atum—did this imply equality with him? Was this the will of Atum, that man should be as he is, a god? And how could man, turbulent, self-seeking man, scarcely able to order his own soul, become a vehicle of order in the cosmos? Perhaps Atum meant only a part of man. Huy knew the components of a human being: a physical body, a shadow, a ka, a soul, a heart, a khu-spirit, a power, and a name. Which component was untainted enough to govern the cosmos with Atum?
But perhaps the writer did not mean man as a whole, Huy’s thoughts ran on as he paced the hot, quiet passages and rooms smelling of dry papyrus and ink. Perhaps he meant a few chosen ones like Imhotep, gifted and all-wise. The priests keep telling me that I am the Chosen One, that Atum wishes me to unravel his will. Is his will the ordering of the cosmos by me? At this he had laughed aloud, the sound echoing back from the far wall of the passage running behind the temple sanctuary where he had been wandering. “Now that really is blasphemy,” he said aloud, and turned his interior attention to the difficult chariot manoeuvre he had been practising with his grumpy and uncooperative horse. But the idea came back to haunt and unsettle him in the nights that followed, and at last he approached the High Priest with a request to read the final part of the Book.
“Are you sure you are ready? Are all the previous eight scrolls secure in your memory and your understanding?” Ramose asked him, his glance keen. Huy knew what the man was seeing. The morning was already breathless with heat, the sunlight white and relentless, and the marks of a hot, rest
less night were on Huy’s face.
“Yes, they are,” Huy told him, with more confidence than he felt. “Today is the ninth day of Paophi. Today I am fifteen years old. It seems appropriate.”
Ramose smiled. “Your birthday!” he exclaimed. “With Harmose away there have not been any reports or reminders concerning his charges. Nothing has come for you from Hut-herib, either, to remind me, but it will, won’t it?”
Huy nodded. “There will be a scroll from my father and a gift from Methen. Nakht has invited me to a feast, just the family and myself.”
“You have become estranged from your own blood ties, Huy? How many years has it been since you went back to Hut-herib? Do you at least write to your parents?”
“I am a dutiful son in that regard,” Huy replied uncomfortably. “My life here has put an abyss between us. I no longer know what I would say to them if we sat down together.”
“I suppose it was inevitable.” Ramose passed a hand over his brown skull. “But Huy, do not invest all your love and loyalty in Nakht and his children. In one year you will be leaving the school. Your skills are such that you could obtain a good position as a scribe with any noble household. Nakht will not hire a friend of his son’s to be a servant.”
No, he won’t, Huy thought mutinously, but he is Governor of the sepat. He might very well give me an administrative position under him. After all, have I not become his unofficially adopted child through the passage of time alone? He loves me. I know he does. Anyway, he would not see me separated from Thothmes.
“I understand this, Master,” Huy said. “But I do not think about it. I have a year to make plans for my future.”
“Very well. I shall have the scrolls sent to you, and I shall go and pray.” His lips twisted wryly. “You show no signs of madness, my dear Huy, but who knows what the final reading might bring to you? Your gift has remained dormant, has it not?”
“Yes, and I thank the gods for it!” Huy exploded.
Ramose’s eyes narrowed. “Am I seeing a return of that arrogant, wilful child deposited on me so long ago? Take care, Huy. The gods will not be mocked.”
Huy flushed. “Forgive me, High Priest, Greatest of Seers,” he said, giving Ramose his formal titles. “I do not mean to mock. The gift has been a heavy burden, and at present I am glad that I have not felt its weight for some time.” He bowed. After a moment Ramose returned the gesture and strode away, and Huy began to walk towards the courtyard that held the Ished Tree.
Why am I suddenly so angry? he wondered. The High Priest’s reprimand was gentle and I deserved it. No, I am angry and afraid because of what he said about Nakht, who of course will not hire me as a scribe, who perhaps will not give me work at all, and I dare not trespass on my friendship with Thothmes to ask him his opinion of my future. Return to Hut-herib? He shuddered. Oh, Atum, do anything with me but that!
He was approaching the guard on the door to the courtyard when all at once his true purpose coalesced in his mind. Ever since Nefer-Mut’s death I have been at war with myself, he thought, horrified. But no—this dilemma has much older roots. It goes all the way back to my conversation with the Rekhet about my virginity, my passion for Anuket that never seems to fade. I hope the gift in me is dead. I intend to secure good work in some rich man’s house if Nakht will not give me some small share in governing the sepat, and then I will ask Nakht for a marriage contract between myself and Anuket. If he will not grant it I will persuade her to leave his house with me. I will give her my virginity, and so will destroy the thing I carry with me everywhere.
Anger and mutiny rose in him like vomit so that for some moments he could not take a breath. He came to himself to find the guard peering at him anxiously. “Master, are you ill?” the man asked. Huy shook his head and indicated the door; he did not trust himself to speak. The guard turned. The door swung open, and as Huy moved stiffly inside he heard his own laughter inside his head. Govern the cosmos? I am a worm, Atum. A coward. An arrogant, selfish child. I will fight to forget the glorious power of Paradise. I will put my nose to a lotus bloom and call its aroma intoxicating. I will make my fate my own.
The Ished Tree was bereft of blooms at this time of the year, yet it still exuded the combined odour of wholesome sweetness and rot with which Huy had become familiar. He went and stood under it, gazing up into its dense foliage, a sudden wrench of loss twisting his heart. He did not reverence it, but Ramose did, coming in behind Huy, bowing to the Tree, and placing a casket on the small area of grass where Huy customarily sat. “Perhaps the will of Atum will be revealed to you today, Huy,” Ramose said, and left. The door closed quietly behind him. Sick in spirit, tumultuous with guilt, grief, and a sense of impending liberation, Huy sank cross-legged onto the ground, murmuring the scribes’ prayer before realizing that the well-worn words were out of his mouth.
Carelessly flipping open the chest, he extracted the two scrolls, his innate reverence for the ancient papyrus making his hands gentle although he felt far from respectful. One scroll was a darker beige than the other, and very thin. Huy unrolled it quickly. So this is the fifth and last portion, he thought in the moment before his gaze fell to the familiar beauty of the hieroglyphs. After this I am free of the Tree. No matter what I read I can tell the priests that it is incomprehensible, that years will pass before enlightenment comes to me, and gradually all of them will forget me. Anger and a strange despair still simmered in his heart. He half expected the Tree to sense his emotion, its leaves to whisper admonitions and accusations, but there was only the common rustle of a dry wind in its branches. Huy blew out his lips and looked down.
I Thoth, the Tongue of Atum, now give the mighty gift of these few words.
I Thoth, the Reckoner of Time for gods and men, now speak of the death of Time.
I Thoth, that came into being at the beginning, now speak of the end.
I Thoth, guide of heaven, earth, and the First Duat, am now the Bridge of Atum.
Bridge between what and what? Huy wondered. Not between Atum and anything, because Thoth says that he is a bridge of Atum, not for him. Atum is not crossing this bridge to go anywhere. He read on.
This is the will of Atum. You will go around the entire Two Skies. You will circumambulate the Two Banks.
You will become one with the perishable stars. You will become a ba.
You will journey to the Land of the West. You will inhabit the Fields of Yaru in peace until Turnface carries you away.
Free course is given to you by Horus. You flash as the lone star in the midst of the sky. You have grown wings as a great-breasted falcon, as a hawk seen in the evening traversing the sky. You will cross the firmament by the waterway of Ra-Harakhti. Nut will put her hand on you.
Thoth had added a final declaration.
I Thoth, Lord of all Judging, have written this Book as Atum has instructed me. Let the reader of these words now put on his sa, for the ending of the Book curves back to the beginning, and he who has lifted his eyes from my work cannot see the power of the double heka in which he sits. Let the wisdom of enlightenment fall on him, or let the darkness of confusion cloud his khu forever.
Huy let the thin scroll roll up, and with a stab of fear he glanced about him. I have no sa, he thought anxiously. I don’t even know what a sa is. Is it an amulet or a spell or simply a state of mind? I feel no double heka here, at least nothing like the heka that oppresses me in Thoth’s temple at Khmun. Only the embracing magic of the Tree and the prickle of power from the papyrus under my hand. I have no idea what Atum’s words mean, but I understand the final warning. I must fight for enlightenment or my spirit will suffer a long confusion. What does the commentary say? The second scroll was as thin as the first. He unrolled it quickly, desperate to shed some light on what seemed nonsense to him. It is as though I am opening the first part of the Book for the first time, his thoughts ran on. I am struggling in an ocean of perplexity coupled with the anger and resentment that will not go away.
But he found no comfort in
the unknown sage’s caution.
If you shut your soul up in your body and demean yourself, saying, I cannot know, I am afraid, I cannot ascend to heaven; then what have you to do with Atum? Wake up your sleeping soul. Why give yourself to death when you could be immortal? You are drunk with ignorance of Atum. It has overpowered you, and now you are vomiting it up. Empty yourself of darkness and you will be filled with light.
He describes my inner turmoil exactly, Huy thought bitterly. Every step of this journey into the Book has been a struggle to apprehend, to understand, to try to create a whole out of pieces of obscurity. My soul is in revolt and I am tired. He read on.
Immerse yourself in Atum and recognize the purpose of your birth. Ascend to him who sent this Book. Those that bathe themselves in Atum find true knowledge and become complete.
There was no more.
Huy flung the papyrus down. The sage had failed him at the last. He had not ventured to explain Thoth’s cryptic sentences. Perhaps he had not understood them either. Or perhaps, Huy thought, he understood them only too well and saw in his conclusions a great danger for the next reader, or even for Egypt herself. Did confusion cloud his khu until he was driven mad, or did he walk away from the Book with the will of Atum clear in his mind? Closing his eyes, Huy leaned back against the warm bole of the Tree, slowly repeating Thoth’s words to himself. Already they were etched into his consciousness. Aware that the god had said that the end curved back to the beginning, he began to recite the Book in its entirety aloud, linking each phrase into a seamless whole. It took a long time, but when he fell silent and the soft noises of the Tree flowed in to fill the vacancy his voice had left, he was no nearer to learning the will of Atum than he had been years ago. No inspiration burst upon him. No glimmer of comprehension fluttered on the periphery of his mind. Laying the scrolls back in the casket, he picked it and himself up, went to the door, and knocked to be released. His head had begun to ache with a dull, enervating pounding, and all he wanted to do was sleep.
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