House of Illusions (36 page)

Coming to the door of my old room, I pushed it open. The window was uncovered, and the dull light of the stars was diffusing through it so that I could see the surface of my table under it where I used to eat with Disenk hovering behind me to make sure that I observed the proper manners. She would sit at it in the red flush of sunset, her head bent over my sheaths, sewing up the seams I had rebelliously torn, for my stride was long and I did not like to take the mincing little steps she required. Eventually Hui had reprimanded me and I had capitulated mutinously to the dictates of gentility.

The couch was still there also but it had been stripped to its bare wooden frame. The mattress, the smooth linen sheets, the deep pillows, had gone. No covering was on the floor, no chests, no evidence of occupation. For a moment I imagined fondly that Hui had ordered the room to remain unused out of sentiment, but then I laughed softly aloud. Thu you are still a conceited idiot, I told myself. There are no tender emotions for you lingering here. Two of your would-be murderers are downstairs, feeding off dainty victuals and congratulating themselves on yet another scheme, and you are here only for revenge. Grow up!

Yet I stood there for a long time in the almost complete darkness, probing the atmosphere for some trace, however faint, of the girl I had been. But no scent of the myrrh with which Disenk had anointed me came to my nostrils, no briefly glimpsed flick of gossamer linen disturbed the shadows, no cry of delight or pain or remorse echoed to my inner ear. The only familiarity lay in the dimensions of a room that had otherwise become dumb and anonymous. It did not even seek to reject me, but presently I sighed and left it, regaining the passage and turning away from the stairs to where another set of steps led down to the bath house. They too were full of a close blackness, but the bath house itself, open along one side to the small courtyard at the rear of the house with its single palm tree lifting stiff branches, was relatively light.

Here I sucked in a long, slow breath, for the damp aromas were a combination of perfumed oils and scented essences holding only sensuous memories. How long had it been since any hands other than my own had touched my body to perform the wholly gratifying rituals of cleansing and massage? Every day I had stood here on the bathing slab while servants had scrubbed me with natron and poured sweet warm water over me, and then with rosy skin and tousled wet hair I had gone out into the courtyard where the young masseur waited. Disenk would carefully pluck out my body hair and the masseur, his hands ruthlessly expert, would stroke and pummel the fragrant oil into every pore. Life had been good then, full of promise for a beautiful and ambitious girl.

I circled the room, the soles of my feet welcoming the wet coolness of the stone floor, and lifted the lids from the many pots and jars on their stone ledges. Shedding my sheath, I dipped a jug into one of the great urns full of water, took a handful of natron, and stepping up onto the slab I abraded and rinsed myself, working the salts into my hair as well. When I had finished, I plunged my head directly into the urn, then reached for the oil. My skin drank it greedily, and so did my hair. I sat on the slab and braided my tresses.

There was a chest just by the foot of the stairs and I opened it and drew out the contents. There were a couple of male tunics and crumpled male kilts but there was also a long, light summer cloak and a narrow sheath, so sheer that only my eyes told me that my fingers caressed it. Harshira thought of every comfort for his master’s guests, including the possibility of a bath after a night of strenuous feasting. Tossing my coarse servant’s attire into a corner, I drew on the sheath with reverent hands. It slid down my freshly oiled body and settled against my curves as though it had been made for me alone. With its silken texture pressed against me I wished I had a mirror, for I felt for the first time in years the stirring of the Thu I had been. I rummaged again in the chest for sandals but could find none, and then decided it was just as well. Sandals would be too noisy, and besides, my feet had become unaccustomed to wearing them and if I was forced to run they would slow me down.

I was ready. Retrieving the knife from the place where I had laid it, I went back up the stairs, along the passage, and brazenly down into the entrance hall. The outbursts of laughter and talk were louder now, the music more strident. Hui’s wine was flowing freely in the veins of his friends. At the foot of the stairs I turned sharply left and joined the passage that ran straight through to the rear gardens. I passed the office door, the smaller door that probably still led into the cell of Hui’s body servant, and came to the imposing double doors of Hui’s own bedchamber. Without pausing but without haste I pushed them open and went in.

I had been here in his sanctuary only once before on a day I did not wish to remember, but I could not help glancing right first, towards the connecting door that led into the body-servant’s room. Kenna had died in there, Kenna the sulky with his venomous tongue, jealous of Hui’s attention to me, hating me and protective of the master he adored. I had murdered him in my panic lest he should drive a wedge between Hui and myself and I should be sent away. I had not intended to kill him, only make him very sick, but I had been an amateur in those days and the mandrake had been too strong. I need not have resorted to such a desperate measure after all, for I did not realize that I was far more valuable to Hui than his body servant. Kenna’s death sat on my conscience with a weight that my attempted murder of Pharaoh did not. It had been a cruel and senseless act.

The connecting door was shut, but I had no doubt that the current body servant was behind it, waiting for Hui to see his guests off and come to bed. I would have to be very quiet. I looked to the centre of the room. The massive couch still stood on its dais. Its sheet had been turned down. A lamp burned steadily, filling the space around it with an inviting glow. The walls were still alive with the paintings I remembered, lush depictions of the joy of living: vines, flowers, fish, birds, papyrus thickets, all in shimmering colours of scarlet, blue, yellow, white and black. A few gilded chairs sat about, flanked by narrow mosaicked tables set with other lamps, unlit. Someone had tossed a woollen cloak over one of the chairs. Its soft white folds pooled on the ground.

A full goblet had been placed on the table by the couch. I could see its blood-red contents glinting. Gliding across the cool, blue-tiled floor to the dais, I stepped up and thrust my nose close to the liquid. I inhaled carefully but could detect no hint of a soporific mixed with the wine so I picked it up and drank. The taste was pure Hui, dry, expensive, utterly slaking, and before I realized it I had drained the cup. Shrugging, I set it down then looked about for a suitable hiding place. There was none. A few ebony chests lined the walls, but though they were large, I did not think I could fit into any of them.

The cloak caught my eye. Voluminous and thick, it gave me an idea, and I went and stared at it thoughtfully then grabbed it up and carried it to the chest farthest away from the lamplight. I draped it this way and that over the edge until I was satisfied that I could crouch in the angle between it and the side of the chest. Then I crawled beneath it. On hands and knees, my face pressed to the tiny slit I had left in order to see into the room, I felt it resting gently on my shoulder, and all at once my nostrils were invaded by the delicate scent of jasmine, Hui’s perfume. I closed my eyes as a wave of longing for him swept over me, and taking the soft fabric between my fingers I drew it to my lips.

It was no good. Only the first thirteen years of my life had been spent without the knowledge of him, and the time before that was nothing more than an ephemeral mirage to me, without clear form or substance. He was the grounding, sometimes conscious, sometimes unwitting, of everything I had been and was now and would be until I died, no matter how hard I tried to exorcise him from my ka. I put my back against the wall, drew up my knees, and set the knife beside me. Then I waited.

11

I CROUCHED
there for a long time, sometimes sitting, sometimes kneeling, gritting my teeth against the cramps that soon began to shoot through my protesting limbs but afraid to leave my hiding place and stretch them for fear I would be discovered. Once the doors opened without warning and my heart leapt into my mouth, but it was only a servant come to trim and replenish the lamp and he left again without so much as a glance into the rest of the room. I tried to doze, but my position and my state of mind made any relaxation impossible, so I continued to huddle with the knife cradled between thighs and stomach, wondering in the end what madness had impelled me here.

But he came at last, stripping the wilted kilt from his waist and tossing it onto a chair as he approached the couch. Sighing, he passed both palms over his face then pulled the white ribbon from his braid and shook his hair loose. He called sharply and the other door opened to admit the body servant. Silently the man reached up and unfastened the moonstone pectoral from his master’s neck and slid the silver bracelets from the outstretched arms. Hui stepped out of his sandals. “I’m tired,” he said. “Leave all this until the morning.”

“Do you require poppy, Master?” Hui shook his head.

“No. And I don’t want any more wine either. Take the cup away. Drink it yourself, if you like.” The man went to the table and lifted the vessel, then paused. From my narrow vantage point I could see his face quite clearly. He was about to speak but then thought better of it, for it was obviously his responsibility to see that the goblet was left full. He looked puzzled, held it high against his chest, turned, and bowed.

“Thank you, Master. If there is nothing more, I shall go.” Hui gestured, and a moment later he was alone.

He moved out of my sight, but from the sounds he made I presumed that he had gone to the window. In the span of quiet I hardly dared to breathe. Presently I heard him sigh again and murmur something. The rattle of his fingernails against the frame was distinctly recognizable, and immediately afterwards he was back in the line of my vision, standing by the couch. He was still startlingly, exotically beautiful with the unrelieved whiteness of his skin, the ashen ivory of the hair that rippled down his spine and tendrilled against his collar bone.

He bent to blow out the lamp, curving his long fingers around it, and his features were fully illuminated in that instant. The lines to either side of the soft, sharply delineated mouth I had dreamed of kissing and that had only twice been laid against mine were perhaps deeper. That was all. Time had been kind to him, the man who was himself the Master of the future, and I was so suddenly and painfully flooded with the helpless, remembered desire for him that I must have made some sound, however small, for in the act of extinguishing the lamp he stopped, still bent, and stared straight ahead. For one delirious moment his hooded eyes seemed to gaze directly into mine, glittering red and suddenly alert, but then he exhaled and the flame died. In the blinding darkness I heard him get onto the couch. I closed my eyes so that they might adjust more quickly, and when I opened them again I could make out the square of lighter greyness on the floor from the uncovered window and a portion of the dais.

Hui’s breathing slowed and became regular, but the conviction that he was not sinking into sleep, that he was lying there with his eyes open, waiting for me, gradually took hold. With a sickening wash of terror I remembered the first time I had confronted him. He had come to Aswat to consult with the priests of Wepwawet on behalf of Pharaoh. The village had been in a frenzy of speculation about the famous and mysterious Seer whom few had seen, how he always went about swathed in linen from head to toe like a freshly wound corpse in order to conceal some dreadful deformity. I had already decided to seek him out and ask him to see into my future, for my desperate fear of remaining in Aswat for the rest of my life, birthing babies like my mother and growing coarse and old before my time, was greater than my dread of the monster the women’s whispers had magnified. I had left my parent’s house at Aswat in the middle of the night and swum to his barge, clambering onto its deck and creeping into the dark, stifling confines of the cabin. But then I had stood staring at the vague mound under the sheet, paralyzed with the same terror sweeping over me now, for he had known, even in his sleep, that someone was there.

Swallowing, I fought the panic. Be sensible, I told myself. How can he possibly know that you are here? The man who trimmed the lamp did not know. Neither did the body servant, and nothing has changed since he left the room. All the same, the certainty that he was aware of me grew until I felt myself shrinking against the wall, urgent for invisibility. The knife grew slippery in my grasp. I wanted to cry.

Then, just when I knew I must fling the cloak aside and scream and scream, he spoke. “Someone is there,” he said, his voice perfectly calm. “Who is it?” In the pause that followed I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut in a paroxysm of dismay. All at once he began to laugh. “I rather think that it is Thu,” he went on conversationally. “You had better show yourself so that you may deliver whatever acrimonious speech you have prepared and I can get some sleep. ”