House of Illusions (23 page)

“Tell the General that his father sent for him from the Fayum late last night,” I said. “It was a family matter of the greatest need and he set out at once. Did the General not receive his message?”

“No. When will he return?”

“I don’t know. But as soon as I have news I will pass it on to the General.” The man swung on his heel and padded away and I turned to find Pa-Bast standing behind me.

“This has become a serious matter,” he said to me in a low voice. “I wonder what we should do. I will send Setau to Akhebset’s house to make enquiries there, and also to Nesiamun’s Steward to ask if Kamen has been with the Lady Takhuru, but if we cannot run him to ground, then Men will have to be notified. I pray that Kamen is safe. I am reluctant to alert the city police and so make his disappearance public.” I nodded. It has something to do with that scroll, I thought to myself, but I did not say so aloud.

“Send Setau out,” I said. “There is nothing else we can do at the moment. If he comes back without news, we will talk again.”

I had little to do that morning. I took a few scrolls to read into the garden and settled myself within view of the entrance, and when I saw Setau leave, I went back into the house. Kamen’s door was open. The passage behind me was empty. Quickly I stepped to his chest, and opening it I saw the scroll lying on a pile of fresh linen, where Setau had undoubtedly put it when he tidied the room. Taking it, I closed the lid of the chest and made my way back outside.

Of course I had intended to tell Kamen what Pa-Bast and I had decided, and ask for the scroll to be returned, but Kamen was the gods knew where, and Men and the women would be coming home soon. If I had been a scribe who always observed the letter of the law, I would have taken the thing to the office and restored it to Men’s private box, and indeed my conscience smote me once, but very mildly, as I unrolled it. I was worried about Kamen. I wanted to help him if I could, and the contents of the scroll might point me towards some useful direction.

At first the words that I read made no impact on me, or rather, the impact was so violent that I was stunned into a mental insensibility. Then I let the scroll roll up and placed it carefully with the others beside my knee. Clasping my hands together in my lap, I gazed into the brightness of the garden from the shade of the tree under which I sat. For a while I thought nothing, was not able to think, but gradually my mind began to recover from the blow it had sustained.

Now I understood why the child who had sat under his father’s desk had evoked such a mysterious affection in me, his glance, his gestures, even his laugh, stirring a memory I had not recognized as such. Yet now it was all clear, pitilessly so, and I marvelled at the slow but inexorable weaving of the divine fingers that decreed a reckoning for every deed. Or so it seemed to me in that moment of revelation. For Kamen’s mother was none other than the girl I had tutored in the house of Hui my master, the girl on whose fresh, unblemished mind I had inscribed the formula for Pharaoh’s downfall according to the instructions of the Seer. I had grown to love her with the proprietary affection of a brother, and when she left to become a royal concubine, I had missed her. Then the plot had failed and she had been exiled, and I had torn myself from the womb of that household in answer to an imperative for self-preservation. That sense of danger was back, a throb of fear, because I knew without a doubt where Kamen had gone. I would have done the same. He had gone south to find his mother, and she would tell him everything, and we were threatened again, all of us, Hui, Paiis, Banemus, Hunro, Paibekamun, even Disenk who had been Thu’s body servant, grooming her for the eyes of the King.

I was only a scribe. I had not instigated the plot but neither had I reported it to the authorities, and I had obeyed Hui’s command to instil in the young and impressionable Thu a sense of the past glories of Egypt and a sorrow and indignation at the depths to which our country had fallen under Ramses the Third’s inept rule. We had succeeded well. The peasant girl entrusted to our care, innocent, raw and full of dreams, went to Pharaoh’s bed like a scorpion, beautiful, unpredictable and deadly. Like a scorpion she had stung him but he had recovered. And Thu? She had vanished into the south and Hui had thought her sting had been drawn. But he was wrong. The child she had borne had not concerned the Seer at all, yet he could prove to be the undoing of us, even after so many years, unless we moved quickly to prevent it.

Shaking off an almost insupportable sense of fatalism, I took up my palette, and laying it across my knees I wrote to Hui. There was no point in waiting to hear what Setau might say. I already knew that Kamen was nowhere to be found in Pi-Ramses. “Most Eminent and Noble Seer Hui, greetings from your erstwhile Under Scribe Kaha,” I penned. “I am most honoured to be included in your invitation to dine tomorrow evening with your brother the General Paiis, the Royal Butler Paibekamun, the Lady Hunro, and such of your servants as were in your employ seventeen years ago, to celebrate the anniversary of your gift of Seeing. I wish you long life and prosperity.” I signed it knowing that it was weak, but I could not think of anything else. I hoped that Hui would be able to grasp my meaning. I had given him short notice, but if he did understand me, he would command the others to cancel any other plans they might have.

Walking to the servants’ quarters, I gave the papyrus to one of the men and ordered him to deliver it at once, then I made my way back to the noon silence of the house and replaced Pharaoh’s scroll in Men’s box. It was my duty to warn them all. I would do so tomorrow, and they would decide what, if anything, to do. Nothing more would be required of me, or so I hoped. Yet I was filled with dread and could not eat the meal that was set before me.

As I had predicted, Setau returned with no news of Kamen. His friends had not seen him. Nesiamun’s Steward, questioned privately, had not seen him either. “We will give him one more day before telling the city police,” Pa-Bast said. “After all, we are not his jailors. He may have gone hunting on the spur of the moment and neglected to tell us.” But his voice lacked conviction and I did not reply. He was hunting sure enough, and if he found his prey, the lives of everyone in both Hui’s and Men’s households could be changed forever.

Hui did not acknowledge my message. Nevertheless on the following evening I told Pa-Bast that I was going to visit friends and I walked to the Seer’s house through the red drenching of a perfect sunset. It was the third day of the month of Khoiak. The annual Feast of Hathor was over. Soon the river would begin to shrink and the fellahin would tread the fertile mud its flood left behind to spread the seed of their crops. Here the Lake would remain much the same. The orchards would drop their carpet of flower petals and sprout fruit, but the life of the city would go on, largely divorced from the burst of activity in the countryside.

Born and raised in Pi-Ramses I cared little for the eternal changelessness of the rest of Egypt, a very different sameness from the constant excitement of such a huge concentration of people. Whether I chose to take part in it or not, I needed to know that it was there and I was in the heart of it. My years at the temple school in Karnak at Thebes had been spent in dedicated study. I had had no time or inclination to explore a town that had once been the centre of Egypt’s power but now existed only for the worship of Amun and for the funerals that took place regularly on the west bank, the city of the dead. But my thoughts turned to the south as I neared Hui’s pylon and my heart quickened with memories. Was Kamen on the river, floating towards the arid hostility of the desert and the village of Aswat?

The old porter came hobbling out of his lair and graced me with a dark look. “Kaha,” he said sourly, “I haven’t seen you in a long time. You are expected.”

“Thank you!” I retorted as I strode past him. “And a cheerful greeting to you too, Minmose. Have you ever lived up to your name?” He chuckled throatily as he shuffled back into his lodge, for his name meant Son of Min, and Min was a type of Amun, when once a year the god became the lettuce-eater of Thebes and reigned over all excesses of the flesh.

In spite of the seriousness of my visit I must confess that my step became lighter as I paced the Seer’s elegant garden. I had been happy here. Much of my youth lay in the pink droplets of water splashing from the fountain and spoke to me from the early shadows under the trees. There I had sat with the young Thu’s eyes on me in fierce concentration as I recited a list of the battles of the Osiris Pharaoh Thothmes the Third and expected her to give it back to me from memory. She had pouted because I would not let her drink the beer at hand until she got it right. And there I had paused on my way to the market to watch her go through her morning paces with Nebnefer, the Master’s physical trainer, her supple body sheened in sweat as she worked under Nebnefer’s shouted goads. Naïve and eager she had been in those days. When she left my care to begin her instruction under the Master himself, I had sorely missed our lessons together, and though we saw each other daily, it was not the same.

I wondered what had happened to the small store of clay scarabs she had been accumulating. I had given her one for every discipline she mastered and she had been disproportionately pleased each time I placed one on her tiny palm. Little Libu Princess I had called her, teasing her for her haughtiness, and she had grinned at me, eyes alight. For years I had not thought of her, but now, as I came to the expanse of courtyard and began to cross it, the images of her took form and colour. She had been left-handed, a child of Set, with the peasant’s superstitious shame at such a brand until I explained to her that Set had not always been a god of malevolence and that the city of Pi-Ramses itself was dedicated to him. “Take heart, Thu,” I had said to her in response to the expression of uncharacteristic hesitation on her face. “If Set loves you, you will be invincible.”

But she had not been invincible. She had soared to the sun like mighty Horus himself and then fallen back to earth in pain and disgrace. I sighed as I passed between the painted pillars fronting the entrance to the house and greeted the servant hovering within. “You may proceed into the dining hall,” he told me, and I crossed the huge tiled expanse, the slap of my sandals echoing against the walls, and went through the familiar double doors on the right.

Lamplight met me, blending with the fading last rays of the sun that were falling briefly from the clerestory windows high above. A gush of scented air blew into my face from the flowers scattered over the small tables set before cushions and from the oil in the lamps. It held the faintest undercurrent of jasmine, the perfume the Master preferred, and such a chaos of memories struck me that I paused on the threshold, overwhelmed. Then Harshira the Steward came gliding towards me like a laden barge under full sail, his kohl-rimmed eyes beaming, and clasped my hands in his own vast fists. “Kaha,” he rumbled, “I am more than pleased to see you. How have you been faring in the house of Men? I see Pa-Bast from time to time and we exchange our news, but it is good to greet you face to face.” I met the warmth of his words with equal enthusiasm, for I had always liked and respected him, but my attention was fixed on the others.

They were all there. Paiis was wearing a short scarlet gold-bordered kilt that showed off the turn of his handsome legs, his chest covered in gold chains and a droplet of gold hanging from one ear. His black hair had been oiled back and he had hennaed his mouth. The Royal Butler Paibekamun had aged somewhat in the years since I had seen him. He was stooped and the skin of his cheeks had drawn ever tighter but his expression was as closed and disdainful as ever. I did not like him, and I remembered that Thu had not liked him either. He was a cold man, full of calculation. Paiis was lounging back on one elbow, wine cup in hand, but Paibekamun sat cross-legged and as straight as the curve of his old spine would allow. He did not smile at me.

Hunro did. Kohled, hennaed, glittering with jewels, her braided hair threaded with silver and the folds of her long sheath heavy with beads of carnelian, she would have been a fantasy of beauty if it had not been for the tracks of discontent etched from her nose to the corners of her mouth, which gave her a slightly sullen look, even as her lips rose. I remembered her as quick and lithe, trained as a dancer, possessed of a restless body and an agile, masculine turn of mind, but she seemed to have thickened in some indefinable way. She and Thu had shared a cell in the harem. Of an ancient family, with a brother, Banemus, who was also a General, she had chosen to enter the harem rather than marry the man of her father’s choice. She had spent her life there, and looking at her discontented face now, I wondered whether she regretted her choice.

Then there was Hui, and at the sight of him everything in me loosened. He rose and stood looking at me, a column of whiteness broken only by the silver border of his kilt and the silver clasping his upper arm. He still wore the wide silver snake that had always twined about his finger. He had not changed much. I supposed that he must be close to his fiftieth year, but his inability to tolerate much sunlight had preserved his features well. No colour had ever tinged that pale skin or crept through the long, luxuriant hair that now lay loose about his naked shoulders, but it did not matter, for all his life lay in the glittering red eyes that always seemed to catch whatever light was in the room. Because of his peculiar malady he went about swathed like a corpse. Only in the presence of his friends and trusted servants would he unveil himself, and yet he was possessed of an exotic and compelling beauty whose power I had forgotten until this moment. I walked forward and bowed to him. “Kaha,” he said. “It has been a long time. Why must it take a common threat to bring old friends together again? Come. Sit. You are no longer my pert young Under Scribe, are you?” He snapped his fingers. Harshira immediately went out to supervise the presenting of the food and a servant approached me with a flagon of wine and a cup, which I took and held while he filled it, but first I made my obeisance to the illustrious company. Then I sank onto the cushions the Master had indicated. He regained his seat. “Well,” he went on. “We will not discuss the business at hand until we have eaten and shared other more innocuous news. We are called here together on short notice but that does not mean our conversation must be brusque. Drink your wine, Kaha!”