Seer of Egypt (2 page)

They began to gather before dawn. Huy would wake to the murmur of their voices rising to his bedchamber upstairs. He would hurry through the fresh bread, milk, and fruit his body servant Tetiankh set beside him on the gilded couch, take a cursory wash in the bathhouse downstairs, and carry a stool outside to be faced with the eager horde of petitioners. Usually Ishat would be waiting for him in her capacity as his scribe, her palette held loosely in her arms, her sleep-swollen eyes travelling the motley crowd with disapproval. Each case was documented by her—name, malady, and whatever cure Huy’s vision demanded—and the scrolls were filed in Huy’s office. By late afternoon the crowd would have thinned, those still waiting would be told to return the next day, and Huy and Ishat would escape into the house, themselves hot, tired, and thirsty, Ishat to stand in the bathhouse while her own body servant, Iput, scrubbed and then oiled her, and Huy to take a draft of poppy and lie on his couch until the drug took effect against the inevitable stabbing in his head and he felt able to go down to the reception hall for the evening meal.

This went on for several months, until both Ishat and Merenra, their chief steward, protested.

“I do pity them, Huy,” Ishat said one evening as they sat picking over a meal of ox stew and cold lentil salad they were too exhausted to finish. “But they will never stop coming. There will always be disease and accidents, let alone the people who just want you to tell them about their future.” She took a gulp of her palm wine, then set the goblet back on her table with a click. “We talked about getting a skiff and perhaps a barge with a cabin. The litter Merenra bought for us sits idle beside the house, and the bearers sleep all day and gamble all night out of boredom. Shouldn’t we be the ones at leisure?” Lifting the long black hair away from her ears, she flicked at her lobes. “You were going to order jewellery for me—and what about you? You are still wearing the same earring day after day, and you make poor Tetiankh launder and starch your one spare kilt that is falling apart. You’ll soon find yourself reduced to Seeing in nothing but your loincloth unless you take a little time to at least meet your need for new linen. Besides, the townsfolk trample on Seshemnefer’s flowers and vegetables. They urinate against the outer wall and defecate behind the grain silo. We can’t keep doing this!”

Behind her, Merenra stepped into the soft light of the alabaster lamps. “May I speak, Master?”

Huy nodded uncomfortably. He did not think he would ever become used to the care of servants who not only kept the house clean and cooked the food, as Hapzefa, Ishat’s mother, still did for his parents and his brother, Heby, but who were responsible as well for making his life as easy and free as possible.

“Your scribe speaks good sense,” the steward went on. “Khnit cannot continue to provide water and juices to the multitudes, let alone the bread and honey they demand. The King sends you gold every month, but even his coffers in Mennofer could not feed the whole of Hut-herib indefinitely. Your gate guard, Kar, has been jostled and threatened. It is time to seek a solution to this problem.”

Huy did not want to agree with them. Did he not have a duty to the god who had given him this onerous gift, to use it to the limit of his strength? Both Ishat and Merenra were watching him expectantly.

“The first thing we need is a contingent of soldiers stationed in front of the gate,” Ishat pressed him. “The second is some sort of restriction on the days you will be available and the numbers of people you will allow to come. Huy, I have not seen my mother since we moved in here!” she burst out. “And you need to visit your family. What good are you to anyone if you are dead from all this confusion?”

Huy knew rebellion when he saw it, and indeed he was secretly relieved that this decision had been taken from him. “Very well,” he said. “Let us reorganize our life. Merenra, is there any more wine?”

He remembered Anhur, the soldier who had guarded and befriended him on his visits to the temple of Thoth at Khmun, where he had read the portions of the Book of Thoth stored there. Anhur now served in the King’s army; he had become one of the elite Shock Troops.
But perhaps Pharaoh would release him into my service,
Huy reflected as the golden palm wine cascaded into his cup and Merenra stood back.
Amunhotep values my gifts. Already I have Seen for his Vizier and namesake, Amunhotep, and his chief scribe, Seti-en. We would all be safe if Anhur came here with a small detachment. I will petition High Priest Ramose for the release of Amunmose also. He came with me to Khmun carrying scrolls for Thoth’s High Priest. He was cheerful and begged me to remember him if I ever needed a good cook. At the time I could not imagine the turn my fortunes have taken, not in my wildest dreams of success and vindication, yet here we are, Ishat and I, living like the aristocrats we are not.
He smiled and raised the silver cup to his mouth, knowing that the flavour of palms would bring to mind a picture of the river in spring and the faint aroma of damp foliage along its banks. He had given up hoping for inebriation a very long time before.

He dictated a respectful request to Wesersatet, the King’s Commander-in-Chief, and to his old guide and overseer High Priest Ramose at Iunu, his eyes on Ishat, sitting cross-legged at his feet, her pink tongue caught between her teeth as she laboured to produce the neatest hieroglyphs she could. Then he took each scroll from her and wrote his own name,
Huy son of Hapu, Seer
. “Give them to Merenra. He can go into Hut-herib and find a herald,” he told Ishat as she stoppered her ink and scrambled up. “I think that until we receive replies, we will close and chain the gates, and you and I will take the litter into town, to the finest jeweller Merenra can recommend. It’s time we used some of Amunhotep’s gold on ourselves. Merenra can find us a barge and a few sailors as well.”

Dropping her palette on Huy’s desk, she flung her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “Thank you, my dearest brother, thank you!” she breathed. “Oh, Huy, I love this house and my big bedchamber and the glorious food I don’t have to cook myself and seeing our laundry come in from the tubs outside while my hands get softer every day! Am I becoming shallow, do you think?”

Enveloped in the combination of myrrh, cassia, and henna flowers Ishat had taken to wearing, reaching up to smooth the strands of her hair away from his face, Huy was filled with a familiar sadness.
I wish with all my heart that I could love you as you deserve, my Ishat,
he thought. Aloud he said, “Yes, you are becoming the most shallow, spoiled, demanding princess Egypt has ever seen. Soon you will refuse to rise from your couch until the noon meal and make Merenra serve you only wine of year one of the King, four times good.”

She laughed and withdrew, her eyes shining. “I want my mother and father to come and see me here when the jeweller has finished making my hair ornaments and bracelets and anklets and rings and necklaces and … Huy, shall you invite Thothmes to stay soon? After all, he’s been your close friend since you and he were at school together. He’ll rejoice at your good fortune.” She had wept with shame and embarrassment when Thothmes, whose aristocratic father was a Governor, had arrived with the King but chose not to accompany Amunhotep on his way to war. Instead, he stayed moored close to Hut-herib and invited both Ishat and Huy to dine aboard his barge. Then she had possessed no jewellery or face paint, and one spare coarse sheath. She had never been a guest before, never been waited on by servants—who were in reality her equals—and she had been afraid of what they might think. But the evening had run smoothly thanks to the tact of Thothmes’ steward Ptahhotep and Thothmes himself, who had fallen in love with Ishat before the week was out.

Huy understood her question perfectly. “As soon as you are ready, I will write to him myself,” he promised. “Now, let us discuss the other matter, Ishat. How many people should be admitted, on how many days?”

It was some weeks before a reply to Huy’s request came from Wesersatet, and during that time the flood of Hut-herib’s needy was forcibly slowed to a trickle of no more than ten petitioners on four days of the week. True to his word, Huy took Ishat to the jeweller, and, leaving her inside the small workshop that smelled of hot metal and faience dust, he lowered himself to the pavement outside, his back against the warm mud-brick wall, and contentedly watched the bustle of the street. In spite of the happiness his new estate brought him, he sometimes missed the noisy life of the district where he and Ishat had lived in three dark, tiny rooms next to a beer house. Times had been hard, but he had felt a sense of accomplishment in his close connection with the suffering denizens of the town, a connection that had become more formalized and somehow less personal now that he was no longer on an equal social footing with them.

Ishat’s voice drifted to him through the open door, her tone authoritative, her laugh spontaneous. She was quickly finding the self-assurance and poise that grew with the acquisition of wealth, Huy observed, yet he knew her peasant heart, sturdy and immovable in its ability to see through any posturing, critical of anything that smacked of a certain arrogant dishonesty. She would order whatever pretty baubles she wanted, but not to excess. She would order jewellery for him also, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, all bearing the stamp of her innate good taste, simple yet beautifully harmonious.

But she would not buy him rings. Stretching out his fingers, Huy examined the amulet rings the Rekhet had made for him: the Soul Protector with its hawk body and man’s head, and the Frog of Resurrection, its deep blue lapis eyes gleaming dully in the strong sunlight. He had never removed them from his hand. Thinking of the old woman and her powerful magic gave him a twinge of guilt. He had not written to her since leaving the town, yet he loved her for her wisdom. She and Ramose, High Priest of Ra, were related. Both were Huy’s mentors, but the Rekhet brought to him a tolerance and understanding that had been largely lacking in Ramose’s advice to Huy, who saw that the Priest was torn between his ambition for Huy and his obvious affection for his unique pupil. Huy had not written to him either. The thought gave him a moment of physical agitation. At once his litter-bearers, sprawled in the shade a polite distance from him, sat up and glanced at him expectantly, but he waved them down again, drawing up his knees and resting his chin on them.

Obligations,
he thought dismally.
To the Rekhet and Ramose, to my parents, to Thothmes and his family—all of them waiting to receive an invitation from me to stay in my house, exclaim over my good fortune, when all I really want is an occasional visit from Methen. He would lay aside the formality of his position as priest to Hut-herib’s totem, Khenti-kheti, and talk to me with the ease of a friendship begun when he found me naked outside the House of the Dead and carried me home. His presence ought to remind me of that miserable time, but when I am with him I remember only his warmth and kindness. I do not want the past brought to life on my estate by the people who determined it. Except for Thothmes, of course, but even he would bring a threat with him. What if he is still in love with Ishat? What if he still wants her for his wife, and her decision to remain with me becomes weakened in his presence?

As if his thought had summoned her, Ishat came out of the doorway and stood smiling down at him. “He will send the pieces as he finishes them,” she said. “All will be in our boxes two months from now. You look pensive, Huy. What were you thinking?”

Huy swung to his feet, disliking the question. “I was feeling the lack of regular exercise and wondering when Anhur might arrive,” he lied.

Ishat snorted. “No, you weren’t.” She straightened the sa amulet hanging from its gold chain on his naked chest, then laid a hot palm against his skin. “You were remembering with nostalgia the hovel we used to inhabit, because this street reminds you of it.” She waved at the bearers, who rose reluctantly and picked up the litter. “Let’s go home, Huy. May we stop on the way and buy some hot date pastries? I’m hungry.”

He tugged at her hair, his good humour restored, as they scrambled onto the cushions of the litter. “Of course.” He called the order to the bearers, then pulled the curtains closed. “Now, tell me what adornments His Majesty’s gold is paying for,” he teased her. “How many circlets will be cluttering up your cosmetics table?”

She grinned across at him. “Only three. One to keep for when the aristocrats come to consult you, one for everyday wear, and one to fill our less illustrious guests with awe when we give the parties I’m sure you will allow me to plan.”

Huy turned to her anxiously. “But Ishat, we have work to do. I don’t intend—”

She put a finger to his mouth. She often touched him with what appeared to be unselfconsciousness. Huy could always sense the need behind her gestures and had learned to harden himself against the compassion welling up in him. They had grown up together, both of them peasant children, the long days of childhood forming a bond between them that even Huy’s years away at the temple school in Iunu had not severed. Huy loved her deeply as his lifelong friend, but Ishat desired him with all the fervour of her passionate nature. It was not in her character to dissemble the matter, to hide her feelings behind a wall of feminine guile or attempt to win him by subtle manipulation. She had openly and frankly declared herself. The knowledge of her pain was often hard for Huy to bear.

“I’m not serious,” she said. “Or at least, not really. I look forward to entertaining our families. I want to show off our good fortune, Huy. You have been vindicated in the face of your uncle Ker and your father, and Thothmes will be delighted to see you living without worry about the future. Invite his father as well—Nakht must have his nose rubbed in the glory of your success after refusing to help you gain a position as a scribe. A scribe! You are far above such a humble station now.”

“Scribes need not be humble,” Huy responded swiftly. “Their skills are vital to the efficient administration of every aspect of Egypt’s life.” Privately, he was thinking that his future depended on a continuation of the King’s generosity, and that the King’s open hand would swiftly close if his gift deserted him. He sometimes wished it would. Then perhaps he would be free to get happily drunk on hot summer nights like everyone else, and free to throw off the burden of enforced virginity the god Atum had laid upon him and experience the final intimacy he had only been able to imagine. If he was able to make love to Ishat, would that love become something rounded, more complete, turning his desire from Thothmes’ sister Anuket to the young woman sitting so cheerfully beside him now, the folds of her scarlet sheath resting lightly on his thigh, her perfume filling the stuffy, enclosed space of the litter? He knew that such thoughts only led to anger and sadness, and he was glad when the litter was lowered and the aroma of hot pastries edged out the scent of Ishat’s fragrance.