“No, I will not,” I managed with difficulty. “It will never be a matter of cold discussion for me. I am distraught, Harshira.” Now he laughed, but I was not so incapacitated that I could not see the way he was looking at me, with humourless speculation.
“You are drunk,” he said, “and that is good. It is just what you needed. Now go with your faithful little escort, Thu, but remember that there are many who care as you do, many who strain to restore the purity of Ma’at, and the members of this household are among the most zealous.” He patted me on the back. “Go.” I wanted to fling myself into his arms, to feel the reassurance of a father’s embrace, but of course I did no such thing. All the same, I thought to myself hazily as I made my way carefully out the door and Disenk rose to pad after me, there has been a subtle change in my relationship with the Chief Steward. He addressed me as an equal.
When I woke the following morning the edge of my distress had been blunted but by no means erased. I saw that I had reacted to Kaha’s lesson with the outraged offence of a spoiled child; nevertheless an adult sadness and anger remained. My peasant innocence had gone as surely as the days of my country’s ancient innocence, and would not return. I could not calmly ponder a solution to Kaha’s question. I was still too emotionally engaged for such an exercise, and all I could picture was a great hand sweeping away all of them, priests, foreigners and Pharaoh himself, so that Egypt could begin afresh. I told Kaha so when we met in his tiny cubicle that afternoon.
“You do not look well,” he observed crisply as I sank onto my habitual stool beside him. “You need to fast, cleanse your body.”
“I need a better night’s rest and a more optimistic lesson from you,” I replied tartly. “I am sorry, Kaha, but I have come to no conclusion with regard to the assignment you set me.”
“Well let us hope that you have remembered the numbers,” he drawled. “Say them.” Wearily I did so. They were still there in my mind, clear and black and uncompromising. I thought he was going to rub his hands together when I had finished. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Very good, Thu. Your powers of recall are prodigious. Now can you not hazard even a guess as to what might be done?”
I sighed inwardly and made a feeble attempt. “Pharaoh could send to Babylon or Keftiu for gold with which to pay soldiers to overthrow the priests,” I offered. “Or use them to confiscate the temples’ wealth. He could have the priests murdered. He could enter into a deceit whereby the God appears to speak to the High Priest, expressing his divine displeasure and commanding that his son, Pharaoh, be re-established as the ultimate power in Egypt.” Kaha snorted derisively.
“You are indeed not your usual nimble-witted self,” he retorted. “Such things have already been considered and broached to the Mighty Bull with cautious tact. He reacted with horror and puzzlement. He will not risk offending Amun, not in the slightest degree. What if it is the God’s wish that his servants rule instead of his son? What if the end did not justify the means and Egypt’s final fate was worse than it is now? Besides, Thu, Ramses is afraid and tired. He is forty-five years old. He has fought three great battles to keep the eastern tribesmen and the sea peoples from pouring into Egypt and claiming its fertility as their own. Each time he has returned to Pi-Ramses as to a place of safety and peace, a nest where he can curl up after having done his duty and where he chooses to ignore the increasing corruption around him. If he fouls that nest by attempting to change the situation, and if he should fail, he will have no safe place left in which to retire if circumstances force him to go to war again. At least if he closes his eyes he can cling to the pretence that he still rules Egypt and of course the priests give him all the respect and reverence due to his position, even though their words are empty.”
“If I were Pharaoh I would risk everything for a chance to restore Ma’at!” I broke in hotly, and Kaha laughed.
“But you are not forty-five years old and scared and tired,” he pointed out.
There was a brief silence between us.
“What of the Hawk-in-the-Nest?” I wanted to know. “Has Pharaoh appointed his successor yet? Surely a strong son would do his best to persuade his father that his inheritance must be secure.” Before he answered, Kaha seemed to consider. He began to toy absently with a papyrus scraper on his desk, his gaze travelling the untidy, scroll-crammed recesses of his walls. Finally he looked at me.
“Ramses has not yet designated an heir,” he said. “The royal sons fall over each other in the harem. Ramses has many women, and several wives, all of them fertile. He is obsessed with the question of the succession but he cannot make a decision. Which of his many fully legitimate sons will make a good Horus of Gold? The priests have their own choices, of course, and pester him with their merits. Ramses knows that if he does nothing there will almost inevitably be bloodshed upon his death as his sons, with their supporters, battle for supremacy. Yet he does not dare to declare for any one of them in case he loses what tenuous power he has. He has tried to weed them out.”
“What do you mean?” I asked apprehensively. Kaha shrugged.
“Six of his legitimate princes died suddenly, very close together. The Master believes that Ramses had them murdered. It was a desperate attempt to thin the ranks of potential heirs to the Horus Throne. Ramses cried and beat his breast and they were buried with full pomp, but I do not think he was suffering overmuch.” I felt little. The major blow to my gullibility had been struck the day before.
“It was the action of a weak man,” I said slowly, “if it is true. Is there no prince left who can shoulder the responsibility of restoring Ma’at?”
“There is Prince Ramses,” Kaha replied. He had relinquished the scraper and was drumming his fingers almost soundlessly on the surface of the desk. “He is twenty-six, strong and handsome, but he is an enigma, a man who spends much of his time alone in the desert. No one is close to him, not even his father. His political sentiments are unknown.” I was all at once aware of Kaha’s intensifying attention fixed on me. His fingers whispered on, tap tap across the wood, and he was still relaxed, but he was waiting eagerly for my response. I stirred on my stool.
“It seems to me,” I said bitterly, “that there are no scruples left anywhere in this country but in the remotest villages. Therefore why not commit the final blasphemy? Ascertain the Prince’s position. If by some chance his heart bleeds for Egypt, then remove Pharaoh entirely and place his son on the Horus Throne. Of course, those who did so would then become the real power. If the Prince is as gutless as his father, find another legitimate princeling, a baby or child, one who has no conviction, and elevate him to Godhead.”
“Your intelligence is truly fearsome for your age, precocious one,” Kaha said softly. “But you know that you speak high treason. Anyone entertaining such nefarious schemes would be endangering their immortal ka as well as their body. Who in Egypt would take such a terrible risk? Is there no other way?”
“Seeing that this is merely an academic discussion,” I responded bleakly, “I must say that of course there must be other ways, but I cannot think of any. May we pursue another subject today, please Kaha? I am surfeited with the agonies of the King.” Immediately his hands were stilled. He straightened.
“Very well,” he said, and smiled sunnily. “Today you can practise taking the dictation for a very lengthy and horribly wordy letter from the Overseer of Royal Monuments to the Chief Mason at the quarries of Assuan. I, naturally, will play the part of the Overseer. You are his long-suffering scribe.”
The lesson ended on a cheerful, almost hilarious note, but when it was over and Kaha dismissed me I felt exhausted and curiously soiled. I would have been glad to submerge myself in the timeless indifference of the Nile. As it was, I did not return to my room. I wandered out into the garden and sat hunched beneath a thick bush, my chin on my knees, eyes on the play of brilliant light and grey shade just beyond my feet. I was still there two hours later when a flustered servant found me and I was led, unprotesting, to where D
isenk waited in the hot dazzle of the courtyard, wringing her little hands and almost weeping in consternation. I did not care. Turning a deaf ear to her words of reproach I followed her into the house.
8
SO THE WEEKS WENT BY, and although outwardly my routine did not change there was a subtle difference in the attitudes and conversation of the people who dealt directly with me. It was not that they were more familiar in their kindnesses or harsh in the disciplines to which I was subjected. I was not able to isolate just what the shift was, but I felt as though the household had taken me into its confidence, that I was at last a part of its organization. Perhaps it was simply that my own coloration had changed. I was no longer homesick.
The letters I dictated to my family became more stilted as time went on, although I tried to keep them warm and interesting. I prattled on about the details of my life while Ani industriously set down my words, but I said nothing important, for what could I tell them? That the King they idolized was a weak, impotent man? That he was probably a murderer also? That the holy men we were never allowed to speak of lightly were rapacious animals absorbed in their own selfish needs? I wanted to sit down with Pa-ari and share this wound. Pa-ari, however, was far away and judging by his own letters to me, was courting the dancer he had told me about before. We were separated by more than distance. Increas-ingly our lives were taking very different paths.
It was Kaha with whom I shared the emotions that the day-to-day realities of my new existence brought. I suppose that Disenk should have become a friend, but our relationship was not clearly enough defined. She was my body servant, therefore she was my subordinate. But she was also my teacher and my jailer, under direct orders from Harshira, and I came to resent the pretence that I could command her in any but the most trivial way. The situation must have been trying for her also, and knowing her fastidiousness and her rather snobbish nature, it must have been difficult for her to bow to an ignorant peasant from the desert. I expect that she in her turn resented her position at times but she hid her feelings well, as any good servant should.
I vastly preferred Kaha’s male frankness to what I arrogantly saw as Disenk’s shallowness. I knew how to talk to Kaha and even Harshira. I did not know how to converse politely with Disenk. Of course, I tended to take women too lightly, and one day Disenk surprised me. I had asked her where she had come from. She misunderstood my question.
“I was Chief Cosmetician in the household of Usermaarenakht, the High Priest of Amun,” she told me, much to my surprise. She was mending one of my sheaths at the time, restitching the seam I had automatically ripped so that I could walk more freely. I did this now as a matter of course when I was dressed, and Disenk just as methodically sewed up the seam again. It had become a silent battle of wills. “I was also chief body servant to his wife,” she added. Then she fell silent. I had been sprawling on cushions on the floor, watching her. Now I sat up.
“Well?” I prompted her. “Go on, Disenk. What is the First Prophet’s household like? What kind of a man is he? How did you come to be working for the Master?”
She had run out of thread. Severing it with one decisive slash of her tiny, sharp knife she reached for another strand. She was sitting at the low table under the window so that the afternoon light could fall on her work and the sun caught her burnished cap of hair as she leaned forward.
“The First Prophet’s wife was a childhood friend of the Master’s sister the Lady Kawit,” she explained, drawing the thread between her tiny hands. “For a time they and other friends of the schoolroom would feast together every month. I would be there to repair their face-paint when necessary. The Lady Kawit praised my work and eventually persuaded me to leave the High Priest’s employ and go to her house.” She threaded her needle and picked up my sheath. “It was a happy arrangement. But when the Master knew you were coming he asked his sister to relinquish my services. I am now at his disposal.” She did not look at me and I got the impression that she felt she had said too much.
“Are you saying that Hui borrowed you from his sister solely to care for me?” I was bewildered. “And what of this sister? Where does she live?”
“The Lady Kawit and her husband have an estate just out of the city,” Disenk said calmly. I waited but she had pursed her perfectly painted lips and was plying the needle industriously.
“But are you just as happy here?” I wanted to know. “Were you angry at having to serve me? Will you go back to the Lady Kawit soon?” She smiled at the mild trap I had laid for her.
“I am at the Master’s disposal now, Thu,” she repeated dutifully and I saw that I would get no more out of her in that regard.
“Were you happy in the High Priest’s household?” I pressed. Her nostrils flared delicately. She placed the sheath on the table and smoothed it out, surveying her stitches critically, and I thought that once again she would refuse to reply. She shot me a glance and resumed her work. I noticed that she was sewing over a portion that was already mended. Either Disenk was becoming upset or she was determined that the linen itself would tear before her stitches gave way under my tugging.
“It is not correct for a servant to gossip about her employer,” she said primly.
“But don’t servants gossip amongst each other?” I shot back. “And aren’t I being prepared for a position as a different kind of servant? Besides, I am not asking you for gossip but for your feelings.” She sighed.
“You are a hippopotamus, Thu. You are a battle chariot, rolling over me. No, I was not happy in that place. It offended me.”
“Did they forget to use their fingerbowls between courses?” I teased her. Her feathered brows drew together.
“Oh no,” she said. “They are very rich, very cultured. The High Priest’s father, Meribast, is Pharaoh’s Chief Taxing Master and he is also Overseer of All the Prophets of Khmun. The High Priest himself has many influential friends and the house was always full of important people.” Once more the knife glittered in the sun, the thread was sliced, and Disenk folded the sheath and began to tidy away her utensils. I smiled inwardly, thinking how this must have pleased her snobbish little heart, but she looked at me solemnly. “But not the right kind of people,” she went on. “First, Second and Third Prophets of Amun and Montu and Nekhbet and Horus, dancers and chantresses of the gods, overseers of their cattle and their treasuries. But no princes and nobles, no people of the correct blood. The High Priest and his wife behaved as though they were royal. The house was full of curious and beautiful things. They adorned themselves in silver and electrum. They spoke disparagingly of the royal family. One can inherit power,” she finished priggishly, “but power will not confer noble blood. One is born to the nobility or one is not. The High Priest was not. I only thank the gods that Pharaoh has not been persuaded to allow his nobles to marry beneath them.” So, I thought. It is as Kaha says.
“You must hate having to serve me,” I said drily, and she leapt to her feet, hands fluttering.
“No no, Thu!” she assured me earnestly. “Not at all. I am happy to obey the Master, therefore it is my pleasure to serve you.”
“And is the Master a noble?” I said sardonically. She blinked at me.
“But of course,” she replied.
She had given me a great deal to think about. I was young, but I was no fool. Had Hui deliberately collected all these malcontents under his roof, or was every nobleman’s household as full of dissatisfaction? I had no way of knowing and besides, it had little to do with me. I would eventually perform the duties for which I was being prepared, and leave matters of greater import to my superiors.
The information about Hui’s family intrigued me more. Someone months ago had mentioned the fact that he had relatives, but I had forgotten. He had always seemed to be one of a kind, aloof, alone and self-generating, but now there was a sister, the Lady Kawit. What was she like? Was she also a sliver of whiteness, the moon incarnate? Disenk had not said so, but then Disenk was usually a model of decorum.
&n
bsp; Occasionally I continued to see the Master pass almost beneath my window as I crouched there in darkness. He was always muffled in linen and trailed by Kenna as he went to swim privately in his pool. I only accosted him once, on the night that Disenk had told me a little of her story. On impulse I leaned out of the window and called him in a low voice, not expecting him to hear, but he came to a halt and looked up. There was no moon then and his face was an indistinguishable blur.
“What is it, Thu?” he called back softly. “Are you well? Are you happy?”
“Yes,” I answered, knowing that it was the truth. “But tell me, Master, do you have kin besides the Lady Kawit?” I had taken him aback. I saw him start and recover, then he chuckled.
“Prurient curiosity is not an attractive trait in a young girl,” he said drily. “Besides Kawit I have one brother and one other sister.” He signalled to Kenna and turned away but I leaned further and forestalled him.
“Master!” I was ashamed of myself and yet burning to know. “Are they … Are they …” He looked back at me briefly.
“No, Thu,” he said coolly. “They are not.” He continued across the courtyard, a regal, ghostly figure merging into the shadows.
“Impudent child!” Kenna hissed before he too hurried on and I decided, as I let the window mat fall and tiptoed across the room to my couch, that Kenna had probably been employed as an Overseer of Prisoners working the gold mines in the burning wastes of the Nubian desert before he had found his way into Hui’s service. I could easily see him flogging and torturing the hapless criminals and licking his lips with pleasure as they gasped for the water that he denied them.
That night I dreamed that I was the one with the whip and Kenna the grovelling slave. He was filthy, terror-stricken and emaciated. He was also stark naked. I awoke in a glorious flush of heat that had nothing to do with Ra’s appearance in the eastern sky, my nipples hard and my loins moist, and for the first time I arrived at the pool for my morning exercise before Nebnefer. I felt full of vitality.
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