“To the river,” I replied, and at the catch in my voice he grasped my fingers and together we found ourselves on the bank of the Nile, its muddy depths flowing just below. The gaunt trees behind us threw long shadows across the water as Ra lipped the horizon and we sat in their shelter and began to talk. The guard took up his station some way away and we forgot his presence. We shared our childhood and spoke of the years we had been apart. Pa-ari told me how he had fallen in love with Isis. I described Disenk and Hui and Harshira and General Paiis, but of Prince Ramses and Pharaoh himself I did not speak. Pa-ari wanted to know what the Delta was like, and the mighty city of Pi-Ramses, and I gave him my impressions as best I could.
The dusk turned into evening and the guard became politely restless until I turned to him and said, “I will be spending the night with my family but I will be back on board the barge for the dawn sailing. Please tell the Master, and ask him to send another soldier to stand by me.” He bowed and left and Pa-ari chuckled.
“You give orders very confidently, my Libu princess,” he teased, and I laughed with him. Our eyes turned to the gathering darkness on the farther bank and the gradually fading colours of the sky. The deep peace of the south was beginning to fall on this changeless backwater and I felt a corresponding loosening in my body. I leaned back against a tree. “Only here is there such a sense of the meaning of eternity,” I half-whispered. “It is a clean, sane feeling, Pa-ari, and I miss it very much.” He did not answer, but his fingers tightened on mine and I knew that he had understood.
By the time we walked back to the square, a new guard trailing behind us, full dark had fallen and the dull yellow glow of lamplight flickered from the doorway of the house. Hui and his entourage had gone. The welcoming smell of lentil and onion soup and the fragrance of freshly baked bread greeted me as I crossed the threshold. The meal had been set out on spotless linen on the floor of the reception room and I sank onto the mat before my dish as I had always done. Father said the evening prayers before the shrine, his naked, bent back, the sound of his deep voice and the rather rank odour of the lamp oil all serving to pull me back to a time long gone. The experience was bewildering. It was as though I had dreamed a childhood here while growing up in Hui’s house, dreamed that I was a peasant girl in a small southern village with a soldiering father and a midwife for a mother and a brother who was studying to be a scribe.
As we were dipping our bread into the soup a man came in, grunted an absent greeting, and settled himself beside me, reaching for the food. My father did not introduce us. I presumed that this was the Maxyes slave, for he was heavily bearded and his thick black hair matched the matting on his chest. He ate quickly, and when he was finished he rose, murmured a good-night, drew a jug of beer from the flagon beside the soup, and went out into the night. No one remarked upon his behaviour.
After the meal was over I helped my mother remove and wash the empty bowls, then we all sat in the reception room and talked. The conversation was light. There was love in the smiles, in the old family jokes, but a restraint was on us that could not be broken. Before the oil in the single crude lamp was exhausted we stood by unspoken, common consent and I said goodbye to my parents, holding them to me tightly in a paroxysm of affection and guilt. I promised to send them regular scrolls from the harem and my father bade me be honest and trustworthy in all my dealings. Then they were gone and Pa-ari and I made our way to the room I had happily shared with him for so many years.
My mother had placed clean linen on my pallet, but its coarse texture irritated my skin as I curled up beneath it. The pallet itself seemed hard. I could feel the unyielding mud floor digging into my hipbones. My parents’ voices came to me faintly, a reassuring susurration, and then became intermittent and died away. I could not see my brother in the pressing blackness, but as always I was able to feel his presence and I put out my hand to clasp his own. We lay there in a companionable silence for a while until he said, “I suppose I shall have to travel to Pi-Ramses if I want to see you again, Thu. What a nuisance! And will I be required to obtain permission from every petty harem official before I am allowed to at last prostrate myself before your august Highness?” I laughed and corrected him, and all at once the strangeness was gone and the night was close and warm and secret as it used to be when we emptied our hearts to each other. Words flowed easily, perhaps because we could not see one another and whispers are ageless. The hours passed unremarked while the invisible bond that held us together grew tight and firm again. Yet I did not speak of the reason for Kenna’s death though the need to do so became almost irresistible. I did not want to be lessened in my brother’s eyes and I knew that he would not understand.
He fell asleep just before dawn, and when I heard his steady breathing I rose, bent down to kiss him, and quietly let myself out of the house. The air was still stale with the night’s heat and a promise of the scorching morning to come. A delicate, pale light was gradually flooding the deserted village square and the motionless ragged shrubbery that bordered the river. My guard detached himself from the thin shadow of the house wall and fell in behind me as I walked away quickly, my sandals dangling from my hand. I did not look back. They would wake soon, and yawn, and sleepily look out upon another day filled with their simple routines of work and rest, prayer and gossip, village affairs and neighbours’ concerns. But by the time my mother had collected up her washing and gone to the river to stand knee-deep in the water and slap the linen against the stones, I would be resting under the awning of the barge, watching Egypt slide by while Disenk prepared the fruit for my first meal. I would have escaped.
She was sitting on the ramp waiting for me, and as I rounded the last bend in the path and came in sight of the watersteps she rose and hurried forward, her matchless little face lighting with pleasure. But at the sight of my soiled and rumpled sheath, my disordered hair and dusty limbs she stopped short, her tiny fingers fluttering in distress.
“Disenk!” I called out, suddenly wanting to embrace her with the relief of seeing the barge still at its mooring. “Am I late?” The helmsman was already mounting to his great steering oar in the stern and there was a flurry of purposeful activity around the ramp and the ropes that held us to the mooring poles.
“Your feet!” Disenk wailed. “Look at them! And the soil is so dry, it will ruin your skin and you are covered in it! Oh, Thu!”
“But you are a magician, Disenk,” I retorted gaily as I ran up the ramp. “You will perform your spells and everything will be all right!” I left her hurrying aft and calling for water and I slipped into the cabin. As I did so I heard the captain give a short command, his voice echoing against the temple pylon ahead, and the barge lurched. We were underway.
The scent of jasmine, Hui’s perfume, hung thick and sweet in the cabin as I let the curtain fall and stepped up to the travelling cot. Neferhotep was already busy. He nodded to me and then turned back to his preparations for Hui’s morning ablutions. I lowered myself onto the sheets. Hui was not yet fully awake. He eyed me drowsily as I planted a swift kiss on his mouth, then he smiled slowly. “Well?” he said.
“I love you, Hui,” I replied. “I am ready to go home.”
13
MY ARRIVAL back at Hui’s estate was the true homecoming. This time the sight of Harshira’s regal figure before the entrance pylon filled me with joy and I ran down the ramp and hugged him. He detached himself with aplomb and smiled at me gravely.
“Welcome back, Thu,” he said. “I trust that the gods have blessed your journey with peace and success.”
“Thank you, Harshira,” I answered happily. “I am so pleased to see you again!” I did not wait for Hui. Hurrying in under the pylon I almost skipped along the path to the house, mentally greeting each twisted tree branch, each manicured shrub, like an old friend. I turned aside on the way to say a swift prayer to Thoth, kissing the feet of the god in the garden shrine before hurrying on to the courtyard and the men who guarded the pillared doors of the house, and so ins
ide and up to my own dear, familiar room.
It smelled faintly of saffron, and the intermittent puffs of hot air coming down the windcatcher carried the subtle odour of the fruit orchards, a fragrance I had ceased to notice while living here. Diving onto my couch I lay face down, my head buried in the cool freshness of clean linen, the softness of my cushions. I heard Disenk come in and behind her the servants carrying my travelling chest. After a long sigh of pure satisfaction I sat up. “Disenk,” I said, “Do you think it is permitted for me to take a swim?” She had already opened the chest and was lifting out my sheaths and ribbons.
“Indeed, Thu, you are now permitted to go where you wish within the house and grounds,” she said, “but please summon the canopy bearers. It will not be easy to repair the damage to your skin and hair done by the harshness of the south.” I grinned at her as I slid from the couch and went to the door.
“You are a tactful servant,” I remarked. “What you really mean is the damage I have done by my careless behaviour! But Disenk, it was good to walk barefooted by the river in Aswat, and sit in the dirt under the sycamores with my brother!” Her little nose turned up and she did not reply.
I swam many lengths of the pool, sat in the grass and watched the insects busy around me, submitted later to Disenk’s oils and potions, and at sunset, painted and dressed, went down to eat a leisurely meal with Hui in the same exquisite room where I had been introduced to his friends. He told me, as we ate and drank to the music of his lute player and Harshira unobtrusively directed the servants who came and went with the heaped dishes and the wine, that the scroll my father had signed had already gone to the palace and a return message from the Keeper of the Door could be expected within a few days. I swallowed the broiled fish I had just placed in my mouth and stared at him, vaguely affronted.
“The Keeper of the Door? The official who administers the harem? Why will Pharaoh not send a scroll himself?”
“Because you are not yet very important to the Mighty Bull,” Hui answered brutally. “You are a girl who caught his eye and you attracted and intrigued him with your knowledge of medicine, but you are far from burning in his thoughts.” Seeing my outraged expression he waved impatiently. “I said, not yet,” he went on. “Gods, Thu, what a high opinion of yourself you have! But that is good. Pharaoh will not be won by docility and meekness. Most of his dozens of concubines have those dubious qualities in abundance, and that is why they were nothing more than a passing fancy for our King. You may not be important to him now but you will be. It is up to you.” I no longer had much appetite, and refused the honeyed dates held out to me. I picked up my wine.
“Tell me about him, Hui,” I begged. My Master dabbled his fingers in the waterbowl and pushed his table away, leaning back on his cushions.
“Ra-messu-pa-Neter,” he said slowly. “Ramses the God. Never make the mistake of underestimating him, Thu. For all his faults, he is not a stupid man. If Setnakht had lived to complete his desires for Egypt he would have placed a check on the priests once his arrangement with them had effected a suitable balance of Ma’at in the land,” he went on, “but he died, and by the time his son was able to turn his attention from the threats of invasion that preoccupied him for the first eleven years of his reign it was too late. Egypt’s economy was in the hands of the temples, and Ramses did not know what to do about it.” I had been listening carefully to Hui’s words but now I was watching his face. He seemed all at once very tired, the lids of his red eyes puffy, the lines of his pale face accentuated. “Egypt’s stability hangs by a thread,” he finished. “The yield of our gold mines in Nubia is lessening. Our administrators are people of foreign extraction who care more for their positions than they do for the good of the country. Amun reigns supreme in Thebes, unchallenged, for Pharaoh seldom goes there. This is what we face. This is what we want you to fight.”
I felt very small and impotent at that moment. What could I, one young woman, do to halt such massive decay, to influence such a man? “What of Prince Ramses?” I asked diffidently and not altogether with a selfless interest. “Surely he can do something!” My voice must have betrayed me, for Hui fixed me with a calculating stare.
“So,” he said softly. “You are becoming enamoured of our handsome princeling, are you Thu? Then beware! Ramses is a loner. He spends much time by himself, out on the desert, hunting or driving his chariot or communing with the gods—who knows? He keeps his thoughts hidden. Although he is twenty-eight years old he has but one wife and only a few concubines. As for his politics—no one has heard him make a statement for or against his father’s methods of administration. Do not think to seduce him! From the moment your father signed that scroll you have belonged to Pharaoh and him alone, and if you give your body to another you condemn yourself to death.”
This particular stricture had not occurred to me. I had not really considered fully the implications of the flattering offer from the palace. I had had some hazy idea that a concubine must be more free than a legal wife but of course it was not so. This was no village arrangement of convenience, this was a contract with the Living God, and any child produced must be known to be the offspring of the King beyond any doubt. I would be tied to that flabby flesh until death claimed one of us. Suddenly the prospect was horrifying. I left my table and crawled the short distance to Hui, laying my head in his lap, and my fingers went to his thighs, so firm, so sturdy. “I do not think that I can do this after all, Hui,” I whispered against his warm, white skin. “I want to stay here with you.” He pulled me away from him gently, then shook me.
“It is too late for that,” he said. “And you can do it, Thu, I know you can. Make him dependent on you for his health. Make him dependent on you sexually as well. Be aggressive and forthright. Do not simper and approach him with downcast eyes as the others do, who imagine that is what he wants. It is what he wants, but not what he needs.”
“I don’t know how to behave with a man,” I faltered. “I don’t know what to do.” He put one hand on the back of my head and drew me roughly towards him. His eyes had gone hard.
“Use your intuition, your instinct,” he said harshly. “I wish that I could teach you myself, but it is forbidden. You must go to him as a virgin.”
Perhaps if I had not made an involuntary movement, swaying under the pressure of his hand, he would have retained his self-control. But as I stirred, his mouth opened and came down on mine with a force that instantly shocked and excited me and I responded, winding my arms about his neck, my fingers in his beautiful white hair. He tasted of wine and cinnamon. His probing tongue was warm, sending waves of excitement through me, and I pushed myself against him so that our bodies met. He grunted, his touch sliding down my spine, and then there came a discreet cough. We drew apart, panting. Harshira was standing close by, his expression inscrutable.
“General Paiis is here, Master,” he said. Hui passed a trembling hand across his mouth.
“Show him in.” He grabbed the wine and tossed back a long draught. He did not look at me.
Paiis came quickly towards us, smiling as he called a greeting and snapping his fingers at the servants who came running with refreshments. He sank onto the cushions I had so recently vacated, and glanced over both of us critically.
“Well, little princess, you look truly delectable tonight,” he offered. “I am almost disposed to pity our King, for once he succumbs to such loveliness he will be your prisoner forever.”
“You are very kind, General,” I managed, preternaturally aware of Hui’s knee so close to mine, the still rapid rise and fall of his chest, the General’s astute assessment of the situation.
“He’s not kind at all,” Hui said drily. “He is speaking the truth. Have confidence, my Thu. Now run along to your couch like a good girl, and leave me to talk with my brother.”
I obeyed at once, scrambling to my feet in relief and bowing to them both. I felt embarrassingly clumsy, all arms and legs, as I walked away.
“So, Hui,” I heard th
e General say as I went through the doorway. “Did her father agree? But of course he did. She will cause a sensation in the harem. What a waste!” The door was closed behind me and Hui’s answer was lost. Flushed, dishevelled and agitated, I made my way to the sanctuary of my own room, Paiis’s words echoing in my mind. What a waste! A waste … But I fixed my inner attention on the vision of Prince Ramses, tall and glorious, and by the time Disenk had undressed me I was calm again.
I went back to work with Hui during the days of peace I had left, falling easily into our routine of dictation, consultation and the preparation of salves and potions for his few patients. Of the wild kiss we had impulsively shared the night we returned home we did not speak. Hui behaved as if it had never happened, and therefore so did I. Yet it haunted me. I did my best to replace Hui’s hot mouth, the feel of his hard flesh, the flare of lust in his fiery eyes, with an image of Prince Ramses, and I was distressed to find that I could not do so.
On more than one occasion, lying tossing on my couch as the nights wore away, I considered forcing the issue with Hui. I could drape myself in drifting linen, dowse myself with perfumed oil, slip into his bedchamber, and seduce him. The contract with Pharaoh could somehow be circumvented. Hui and I were nothing if not inventive. But a fear of his rejection kept me from making the attempt. I was beginning to realize the depth of his desire, not for me, but for a return to a prosperous Egypt with a restored Ma’at at its centre. He had decided to use me to foster his plan and I knew that he would not be diverted.
As we busied ourselves together in his office he continued to instruct me in Pharaoh’s character, his likes and dislikes, his prejudices and tolerances. He employed his old method of making me repeat back to him what he had said, and before long I felt that I knew the Horus of Gold better than his own wives. Hui also listed the King’s ailments and the treatments that had been prescribed so that I should make no mistakes if called upon to examine him. Of life in the harem itself he said little although I pressed him. “It is better that you should form your own opinions, make your own way,” he told me. “Living in the harem is not much different from living anywhere else. It can be as pleasurable or as horrific as you choose to make it.” He had been grinding cassia seeds as he spoke, and their mild, refreshing aroma filled the room. Now he paused, and without looking at me said, “Remember to eat only the communal food you see the other women eating, or meals that Disenk herself has prepared. The more Pharaoh cleaves to you, the more jealousy you will stir up around you. Touch no wine or beer at all. It is too easily contaminated. I will keep you supplied with jars from my own vineyards.”
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