House of Illusions (21 page)

“Kamen I am very fond of you,” he said, “but let me remind you that you have no authority over me either. I am answerable directly to your father and no one else. My position in this house depends on it.”

I stood up. Coldly I went to one of the chests under the shelves, and kicking apart the wax seal on the string wound about the two knobs holding it closed, I opened it and began to toss its contents onto the floor. He watched me silently. The chest contained more scrolls but also small boxes and things wrapped in linen. Roughly I opened and unwrapped. There were gold trinkets, bars of silver, an uncut piece of lapis lazuli that must have been worth our whole house, loose gems, Sabaean coins, but not the thing I sought. Kicking through the debris, I approached a second chest. The lid crashed against the wall. I bent.

“All right, all right!” Kaha shouted. “Gods, Kamen, are you insane? I will give you what you want. Call Pa-Bast as a witness that I do so only under powerful duress.” But there was no need to summon the Steward. He loomed in the doorway, staring aghast at the chaos I had made. I gave him no chance to speak.

“You see all this?” I said shakily. “I did it. Kaha tried to stop me. He will now give me what I seek because if he does not I will wreck this room. I mean it, Pa-Bast.” I saw his glance quickly assess my state, Kaha’s anger, the extent of the damage I had already done.

“Are you drunk, Kamen?” he enquired. I shook my head. “Then you had better give him whatever it is that has prompted this display,” he said to Kaha. “If that does not calm you,” he went on, turning to me, “I will have you confined to your room until your father returns from the Fayum.”

“No you won’t,” I replied. “I am in my right mind. Everything will be fine. Kaha?” He nodded coolly, and going to another chest, he opened it and withdrew yet another box. This one was of ebony chased in gold. Lifting the lid, he held it out to me.

“I will hold it while you examine the contents,” he said. “Do not disturb anything other than the thing you want.”

I saw it at once. It resembled the scroll Takhuru had shown me. The papyrus was of excellent quality, tightly made and then expertly polished. This seal had come away intact on one side of the sheaf rather than breaking in two and the imprint on it was identical. I unrolled it slowly, the two men, the mess on the floor, the other contents of the box Kaha was still holding out, receding into nothingness. A mantle of composure seemed to suddenly envelop me and I read the hieroglyphs without a tremor.

“To the Noble Men, greetings. Having become acquainted with your desire to adopt a son, and having investigated your suitability both as a minor noble of Egypt and a man of good repute, it is our pleasure to place in your care this child, conceived of our holy seed and born to the Royal Concubine Thu. You will nurture and educate him as your own. In return we deed to you one of our estates in the Fayum, the legal survey of which we enclose a copy. We adjure you never to reveal the lineage of this child, on pain of our strongest displeasure. We wish you joy of him. Dictated to the Keeper of the Door, Amunnakht, this sixth day of the month of Mesore, in the fourteenth year of our reign.” It was signed in a different hand, hurried and so heavy that it had scored the papyrus. The King’s titles took up four lines.

So it was true. I was a king’s son. This scroll confirmed it. And the concubine’s name, my mother’s name, was Thu. Could it be true after all, a miracle sent by the gods, that Thu of Aswat is also my Thu? Not so fast, I tried to tell myself soberly. Thu is a very common name. Thousands of women in Egypt answer to it. Yet I felt almost incoherent with excitement. I let the papyrus roll up. Kaha gestured with the box but I shook my head. “I will keep it for a while,” I said. “Get a servant in here to put everything away.” His eyes and Pa-Bast’s were on the scroll in my hand and I searched Pa-Bast’s face for any sign of recognition or remembrance but there was none. Without another word I pushed past him and strode across the hall towards the stairs.

I had almost reached my room when something happened to my thoughts. It was as though a waiting hand had descended, and with a few deft movements rearranged them into a new and startling pattern. The shock was almost physical, so that I stumbled and cried out, then I broke into a run.

Once across my own threshold I flung the scroll onto my couch and falling to my knees I wrenched open my chest and withdrew the pouch containing the copy of the manuscript the Aswat woman had entrusted to me. Sitting on the floor, I shook it out and began to feverishly riffle through the sheets of papyrus. It was somewhere towards the end of her account. I found it and read rapidly. “Every afternoon when the heat started to abate, I took him onto the grass of the courtyard and laid him on a sheet, watching him kick and flail his sturdy limbs under the shade of my canopy and crow at the flowers I picked to dangle before his eyes and place in his fist.” She was speaking of her son, the son she and Pharaoh had had together, the son who had been taken away from her when she was exiled to Aswat in disgrace. Not enough, not quite enough, I thought incoherently. My dream, yes, the words bring it back to me with horrible clarity, but can it be more than coincidence? But it fitted the pattern that had formed inside me and was now throbbing insistently.

Something else fitted too. I had been too burdened and anxious on the journey back to Pi-Ramses from Aswat to do more than feel the horror and pity of her story without any reflection, but now I found another passage that I had skimmed too quickly. “Many coats of oil had been added to give the wood the soft patina I saw and felt. Wepwawet’s ears were pricked up, his beautiful long nose quested, but his eyes gazed into mine with calm omnipotence. He wore a short kilt, its pleats faultlessly represented. In one fist he clutched a spear, and in the other a sword. Across his chest, the hieroglyphs for ‘Opener of the Ways’ had been delicately chiselled and I knew that Father must have taken the time to learn from Pa-ari how to carve the words.”

I turned and regarded the peaceful, intelligent face of the god who had stood beside me for as long as I could remember, and Wepwawet gazed back at me smugly. “Opener of the Ways,” I whispered. “Can it be? Is it possible?” I crammed the squares of papyrus back into the bag, got up, and lifting the little statue I pushed it in also. Then I ran back down the stairs and out into the garden. She had given the totem her father had carved to Amunnakht, the Keeper of the Door, and begged him to see that it went with her son wherever he might go. Had he gone to the home of Men the merchant? I was about to find out.

I ran the short distance to Takhuru’s house, the satchel bumping against my hip, my sandals sending up small spurts of sand. The sun was standing almost overhead now. The path was busy and I wove in and out of the groups of purposeful servants, brisk soldiers and loitering residents of the estates I passed. Many greeted me but I did not pause.

Panting, I veered in at Nesiamun’s gate, managed a breathless word flung over my shoulder to the startled warden, and just had time to slip behind a spreading shrub as Nesiamun himself came towards me, deep in conversation with two other men. Behind them an empty litter was being carried, its tassels swinging scarlet and its gold-shot curtains glinting in the noon light. “We are delayed by a shortage of powdered quartz,” Nesiamun was saying, “but that problem should be solved tomorrow unless of course the quarry men decide to strike. There are altogether too many incompetent overseers who have bought their positions without knowing the first thing about the manufacture of faience. I have great difficulty in firing them. Their relatives are influential and some are my friends. Still, the important thing is production …” His voice faded as he and his companions rounded a bend.

It was not difficult, in Nesiamun’s garden, to remain out of sight. I stayed away from the winding path, thinking as I went how my last few visits to my betrothed had been conducted like the furtive forays of a secret lover. I felt all at once disgusted with the way my life had become one clandestine event after another, as though I had been acquiring a new layer of inner grime with each occurrence. I wanted to walk clean and free.

Approaching the house, I heard Takhuru’s mother, Adjetau, laughing and the accompanying murmur of female voices above a clink of dishes. She was entertaining her friends in the entrance hall and I could not go in that way unless I wanted to be invited to sit and be offered wine and honey cakes under the inquisitive eyes of the nobles’ wives. Nor was I dressed for polite concourse. I plunged deeper into the shrubbery, wondering what to do.

As I neared the pool towards the rear of the estate, I caught a glimpse of billowing white linen through the tracery of leaves. I crept closer. Takhuru herself had just left the water and was wrapping a voluminous sheet about her naked body. She stood straight, arms outstretched, hands grasping the corners of the sheet, and for a moment I saw her small breasts lifted in the action, her long black hair tendrilling against her elbows, the glistening water trickling over her belly to be channelled in the grooves to either side of her pubis and run down her inner thighs. She was a glorious sight and for a moment I forget all else. Then the sheet enveloped her and she lowered herself onto the mat by the verge of the pool and reached for a comb. I stepped warily out of the shadows. “Kamen!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” I went to her quickly and squatted, glancing about for a sign of her body servant. “She has gone to fetch my sunshade,” she explained, seeing my movement. “I decided to stay outside for a while to avoid mother’s little group of gossipers. Are you bringing me another mystery?” I nodded.

“Perhaps.” Taking the statue of Wepwawet out of the bag, I put it in her damp hand. “I want you to toss this among your cushions and jars,” I said, indicating the jumble beside her. “Then I want you to send for the Aswat woman. When she comes, dismiss your body servant. It doesn’t matter what you ask the woman to do. She can comb your hair or oil your limbs. It is important that she eventually notice my totem. I will be hidden and watching.”

“Why?”

“I will tell you later, but now I want you to see her reaction to it without knowing why.”

“Oh very well.” she wrinkled up her nose. “Isis is coming with the sunshade. Can you give me no clue, Kamen?” For answer I kissed her and rose, and I had just regained the shelter of the shrubbery when her servant appeared and began to unfold the dome of white linen over her. Takhuru felt about in her belongings and produced a piece of cinnamon which she put in her mouth and began to suck. “Isis, go and bring the new servant to me, the one with the blue eyes,” I heard her order. “I think she is working in the kitchens today. I want her here at once. You can go back to the house.” Isis bowed and went away.

Takhuru settled back on one elbow. I saw her lips open to briefly reveal the piece of dark cinnamon caught between her teeth. She gazed levelly at the bright scene before her, then she raised herself and adjusted the thin gold anklet above her foot, pulling the sheet up around her thighs as she did so. She leaned back again. Her movements were slow and lazy, fraught with a sensuous purpose, and I realized suddenly that she was taunting me in a way that owed nothing to her youth and inexperience.

“You are like the Goddess Hathor herself today,” I called to her quietly. She smiled.

“I know,” she said serenely.

We waited. The time seemed long, but at last the woman came striding into the open area around the pool. She was wearing the dress of the house, a calf-length sheath bordered in yellow and pulled in at the waist by a yellow belt. Yellow sandals were on her feet. Her hair was pinned on top of her head and tied with a yellow ribbon. Approaching Takhuru she bowed gracefully and then stood still. “You sent for me, Lady Takhuru,” she said. Takhuru sat up.

“You massaged me with such skill yesterday,” she announced, “and I am stiff with swimming today. Please do it again. You will find the scented oil there.” She pointed.

The woman bowed again and went to where the pot of oil rested. Wepwawet lay beside it, half-buried under a cushion. I saw the woman’s brown hand reach out, then pause. My breath hitched in my throat. Her hovering fingers began to shake, then with a strangely animal grunt she grabbed the statue with both hands and turned towards Takhuru. I could see her face plainly. Her eyes were wide, the blue of them rimmed entirely in white. She had gone very pale. Lifting my totem, she pressed him clumsily to her forehead and stood there swaying as though she was drunk. Her throat worked. Takhuru was watching her as keenly as I. When she did manage to speak, her voice was ragged.

“Lady Takhuru, Lady Takhuru,” she said. “Where did you get this?” She was now running uncertain hands over it as I had often done, feeling the smooth, gleaming lines of the god’s kilted body.

“A friend gave it to me,” Takhuru answered off-handedly. “It is well made, is it not? Wepwawet is the totem of your village, isn’t he? Why Thu, what is the matter?”

“I know this statue,” Thu said huskily. “My father carved it for me as a gift for my Naming Day long ago when I was still an apprentice in the house of the Seer.”

“Are you sure it is the same one?” Takhuru asked. “There are hundreds of likenesses of the god. He is after all the Opener of the Ways.” She touched Thu’s arm. “You may sit, Thu, before you collapse.” The woman sank onto the grass.

“I would know it blindfolded,” she said more calmly though her voice still trembled. “One touch would tell me that it is my father’s handiwork. Did I not see it beside my couch every day? Did I not pray before it? My Lady, I beg you to tell me which friend gave it to you.” She was leaning towards Takhuru, her face strained, her whole body tense. “The last time I saw it was when I passed it into the keeping of Amunnakht, ruler of the King’s harem, on the day I left Pi-Ramses to begin my exile. I beseeched him to see that whatever fate befell my little son, Wepwawet should go with him.” I saw the bewilderment on Takhuru’s face begin to give way to a dawning understanding. The woman pounded the earth with a clenched fist. “Do you see?” she cried out. “If I can talk to your friend, I might be able to find my son! Perhaps he still lives!” Takhuru stared at her, then her gaze swivelled to where I knelt. “Gods,” she whispered. “Oh gods. Kamen, it’s you.”