House of Illusions (52 page)

I listened less to his words than the tone of his voice, soothing and reassuring. It was the instrument he used to calm hysterical concubines, reprimand fractious ones, or proclaim pharonic decrees, yet I did not believe that his intent was to manipulate me. We knew each other too well. He spoke with sincerity and concern, and thus I was comforted. “I want you to witness that the plea came from Hunro herself,” I told him heavily. “The soldier who accompanied me into her cell will bear me out. I want you to prepare a document setting out her words and the Prince’s knowledge and my agreement. Then I want you to come with me into the storehouses with one of the palace physicians and observe while I do the work, noting the ingredients I use.” I clenched my fists and met his eye. “No one must say that I acted without permission, hers or the Prince’s, or that out of revenge I gave her a vicious poison that caused her to die painfully. It is bad enough that all will know, and remember my past, and say it is as they expected!” He nodded.

“I understand.” Suddenly and startlingly he squatted, and taking my face between his palms he brushed my lips softly with his thumbs. “In two days the Prince will release you,” he said quietly. “It will all be over. All of it, Thu. Then it will be your task to live again, to find friends to coax you into laughter and good black soil to nurture you and perhaps a man who will pour over you the healing oils of love so that you may look into your mirror once again and see a woman cherished and revived. But you must want these things. You must vow to make the past thin and shred and blow away like an outworn sheath. Will you do this?” I pressed my own hands against his, overcome by the surrender of his customary detachment.

“Oh Amunnakht!” I choked. “In spite of everything you have supported me.” He smiled with amusement and rose, his face falling into its usual lines of polite objectivity.

“I have been Pharaoh’s faithful servant,” he said, “and you have proved impossible to ignore.” Going to the doorway he shouted a sharp word into the darkness and presently a servant appeared. “Fetch my scribe,” Amunnakht ordered, and coming back into the room he retired behind the desk. “Now,” he breathed. “You will dictate a scroll in whatever words you wish and I will sign it and send it to the Prince with a request that he sign it also. Then we will go to the storehouses.”

When the scribe appeared, I did as the Keeper had suggested, and when I had finished he put his name and titles beneath my words. “Take it to Prince Ramses at once,” he told the man, “and when he has set his seal on it, place it in the archives together with the other correspondence relating to the royal concubine the Lady Thu. As you go, find Royal Physician Pra-emheb and ask him to meet me at the harem storehouses.” Filling a cup with wine, he held it out to me. “Come,” he invited mildly. “We have a little time to wait. Let us drink to the future, and give thanks for the bounty of the gods. I have a plate of pastries here somewhere, probably stale but tasty enough. Would you like one?”

We toasted and drank and nibbled on sweetmeats, so that by the time Amunnakht set his empty cup on the desk with a click and bowed me to the door, I had regained my equilibrium.

We walked to the storehouses through a peaceful night and found both the scribe and the physician waiting for us outside the cavernous entrance. A servant with a lamp stood by. “It has been done as you commanded, Keeper,” the scribe said in answer to Amunnakht’s query. “I found His Highness in the gardens with his wife. The scroll has been sealed and now reposes in the archives.” I sighed inwardly with relief, wondering what Ramses had thought of my desire to have my part in Hunro’s suicide officially recorded. Doubtless he remembered another scroll, the one promising me a queen’s crown before it so opportunely vanished.

“Did the Prince comment on my words?” I could not help asking the scribe.

“No, Lady,” he replied. “His Highness merely remarked upon reading it that all was as it should be.” An ambiguous and wholly typical response, I thought wryly, turning to the physician as Amunnakht introduced us. Pra-emheb inclined his head to me, his eyes alive with curiosity.

“Do you minister to the King directly?” I wanted to know as we all moved inside the building. “How is His Majesty’s health?” Pra-emheb pursed his lips.

“I am in attendance on him during the day,” he replied. “There is nothing to be done but to ease his decline. I do not think he will live much longer. He eats only a little fruit and that with difficulty and will only drink milk.”

“Does he still rise? Sit beside his couch? Is he in pain?” And does he crave Hui’s expert touch? I wanted to add. Is he wandering in the past when my body was warm beside his and the fires of lust ran through his veins instead of the frigid and mysterious fluid of death? The physician shrugged.

“He likes to be propped up on his couch from time to time, but such efforts exhaust him,” he said. “I do not think he feels much pain. We drug his milk with poppy. The members of his family are with him but the priests give him more comfort now.” Poor Ramses, I thought sadly, and fell silent, following the pool of lamplight falling from the hand of the servant and Amunnakht’s regal, blue-clad spine.

When we reached the room where I had so recently chosen medicines to take away with me, we came to a halt. The scribe settled his palette on a bench and laid out a fresh piece of papyrus. “I want you to make a draught,” I told Pra-emheb. “I will tell you what to do. It is so that I may not be accused of deception, of secretly substituting one ingredient for another. I will ask you also to witness the account the scribe will write, together with the Keeper. Do you agree?” He frowned.

“I have no idea why I am here,” he protested. “What draught? You could have requested a physic from me without all this fuss, Amunnakht.”

“The Lady Thu is an accomplished physician,” the Keeper explained imperturbably. “She has been retained by the Prince at the urging of one of the condemned to prepare the poison that will allow the condemned to take her own life. Understandably she wants the distasteful task fully and properly recorded.”

“Oh.” Pra-emheb stared at me blankly. “Then you have my sympathy, Lady Thu. What do you require?” The scribe was ready, his pen poised above the papyrus. I strove to keep my voice and expression firmly neutral.

“Nothing very complicated,” I replied. “I have decided to use the bulb of the dove’s dung, ground and mixed with a good quantity of poppy. What do you think?” I could see the alternatives being assessed behind his eyes as he nodded slowly.

“It is a good choice for a painless death,” he said. “No convulsions, no vomiting or diarrhea, simply a rapid stopping of the breath. The bulb is of course the most lethal part of the plant, and ground up it will probably provide one ro of powder. How much does the condemned weigh?”

“Not much,” I said swiftly. “She has become … emaciated since her incarceration. But I will use two bulbs to make sure. I do not want her to suffer.” I was hating this cold, impersonal conversation, this objective discussion that could have been about the best treatment for worms in the bowels but instead concerned a prescription for annihilation. I would have preferred the decision to have been an interior one, a quick and shameful conclusion in the secrecy of my mind and then the barest of instructions spoken hurriedly. But Pra-emheb seemed to relish the airing of his knowledge, or perhaps the spurious importance it brought.

“Two bulbs will do,” he said. “And then it will not matter whether they are fresh or dried. Of course if fresh, the method of preparation will have to be …” I cut him off sharply.

“I know how to prepare every poison and physic available in Egypt and many outside it,” I snapped. “I do not need a lesson. You are not here to teach me but to follow my instructions.” He took a step away from me and looked to Amunnakht, offence in every line of him, but the Keeper, after giving me a dark glance, smiled placatingly.

“It is a distressing matter,” he purred. “We are all upset. Forgive her, Pra-emheb, and let us conclude the business as soon as we may.” I bit back the retort curdling on my tongue.

“Hunro is not business,” I whispered but the physician had already turned to the shelves and was murmuring, “Dove’s dung, dove’s dung.” All at once his hand froze in the air. “I know who you are!” he said loudly. “I remember the scandal. I was a young apprentice in the palace at the time, treating the servants, but the story spread everywhere. You …” Again I forestalled him.

“Do not say it, Pra-emheb,” I half-begged, half-threatened. “I do not care to hear it any more. I was awarded my punishment and now it is over. Over!” Suddenly I felt a wave of sick dizziness, and turning I sank onto one of the chests cluttering the floor. “Please, just do this thing and go away.” Amunnakht’s hand descended on my shoulder, warm and steadying. Pra-emheb’s hand began to move.

I watched as, stony-faced, he lifted down a box, extracted two bulbs of the plant, and opening the small sack hanging from his belt, took out a knife. Expertly he stripped the withered, crackling remains of the stem and cut off the dried roots. He took mortar and pestle, and slicing the bulbs, he dropped them into the pestle and began to grind them. They released a bitter, earthy odour and I knew that no matter what they were diluted with they would taste the way they smelled, harsh and dangerous. Sweat began to bead on his forehead, for the work, as I well remembered, was arduous. Amunnakht spoke to the servant. “Set down the lamp and fetch natron and a bowl of hot water,” he ordered. The man went away, his footsteps echoing in that dim, vaulted place, and I got up and began to scan the shelves, seeking a pot in which to pour the finished liquid. I found a stone jar with a wide mouth just as the sound of Pra-emheb’s grinding ceased.

“What now?” he said, setting the pestle aside and wiping his face on his kilt. I handed him the jar.

“Find poppy,” I told him. “Fill this half-full with the powder. Add the dove’s dung and then I will top it up with milk.”

“Half-full of poppy?” he exclaimed. “But that in itself will be enough to make her heartbeat falter!”

“Exactly,” I said wearily. “I want her to succumb to the soporific effects of the poppy and drift to sleep before the dove’s dung acts.” I could not blame him for what seemed like stupidity. His reaction had been a physician’s shock, unthinking and immediate. I wished that mine could be the same. “Have you recorded all this?” I asked the scribe. He nodded and went on writing.

Pra-emheb found the poppy and tapped the white powder into the jar. The ground-up bulbs followed. As he passed it back to me, the servant reappeared bearing a steaming bowl and a dish of natron, and the physician plunged his hands into it and began to wash himself vigorously. He was trying to cleanse more than his flesh, I knew. I wanted to do the same. “Thank you, Pra-emheb,” I said to his bent back. He did not reply. Holding the jar, I walked out of the storehouse.

I did not realize that Amunnakht was behind me until he spoke. “Do not think badly of him, Thu,” he said. “It is a hard thing for a physician to do.”

“You do not need to tell me that!” I shouted, rounding on him. “Am I not a physician also? Or have you forgotten? Do you imagine that this causes me no more pain than a thorn prick to the finger? Must I pay for the evils of my youth forever?” He did not answer. Instead he leaned forward and took the jar from my fingers.

“How much milk must be added?” he asked. At first I did not hear him for the rage making my pulse race, but then I understood and the hurt went out of me.

“You do not need to do this, Keeper,” I said huskily. “I made the promise, not you.”

“You have done enough,” he replied. “I am the Keeper of the Door. All women within the palace precincts are my responsibility. I will fulfil this duty on your behalf. How much?” The night was fine, dark and sweet with the scent of wet grass, with showers of stars, with gentle eddies of air that fluttered my sheath and lifted my hair. I inhaled deeply.

“Half a cup,” I said. “Then shake it well and add more milk, leaving room only for the stopper. You will take it to her, Amunnakht?”

“Yes. And I will stay with her while she drinks it.”

“It must be shaken again just before it is poured out, and she must drink it all at once or its bitterness will prevent her from draining the rest,” I told him. “But after you have added the first half-cup, let it stand overnight so that every grain may be softened. Do not let it out of your sight, Amunnakht. If a servant mistook it for milk, I would never forgive myself.”

“Nor I,” he smiled. “I will send you word when it is done. Good night Thu.” He did not wait for more. He walked away, enveloped in the invisible cloak of confidence and dignity that was so uniquely his, and I made my way back to my cell with a lighter heart.

Once there I stripped off my sheath and sent Isis for wine, and while she was gone I went to the deserted bath house and scrubbed myself feverishly, grinding the rough crystals of natron into my skin and then upending jug after jug of pure water over my head. Returning to my room, tingling and yet shivering, I crawled onto my couch. The wine was there on the table, a cup already filled for me, and Isis was hovering. Thanking her, I told her I would not need her until the morning. She bowed and left, and before her heel had vanished around the door jamb I had emptied the cup and was pouring myself another.

I lay drinking, half-propped up on my cushions, allowing the wine to heat my stomach and loosen my mind from the grip of the all-too vivid images afflicting me. It was a harmless indulgence, a minor and temporary refusal to face the stresses of the moment, and I let the spell of the alcohol take me where it would.

It did not carry me into the past where loss and despair might have claimed me. It floated me into the future, Kamen and Takhuru and I on a quiet estate where the gardens were lush and shady and the flowers splashed colour beside the paved paths and pink and white lotuses heaved gently with the ripples on the fish pond. There would be a white craft tethered to our modest watersteps, with a bright yellow sail tied to the mast. Sometimes we would board it and be rowed to Aswat to visit Pa-ari and Kamen’s grandparents, but more often we would simply drift on it in the scarlet sunsets, watching the white cranes spread their wide wings and the crested ibises stand contentedly among the tall reeds bordering the riverbank.