Seer of Egypt (43 page)

“Before how long?”

“I don’t know. Prince Amunhotep will be in exile for twelve years, therefore Prince Thothmes will not sit on the throne into his old age. The King himself does not look well. His veins visibly pulse and his colour is florid. We may soon have to endure a period of mourning. Ah, here it is.” He unrolled the papyrus on the desk, holding it open with both hands. Ishat’s bold script leapt to his eye and for a moment he was engulfed in a wave of hunger for the past. Thothhotep had come up beside him and was leaning forward over his arm. “This is the vision I had when the Noble Heqareshu came for a Seeing,” he explained. “It was just before I hired you. I gave him only a part of what I Saw. The rest I dictated to Ishat and stored away. I did not understand it, but I do now.” Grimly, he read of the wounded hawk that had hovered over the baby Thothmes, and how he had put out an arm so that it might perch on him. It had struggled to balance itself on his wrist, but when he had turned his face towards it, it had sunk its beak into his lip and disappeared.
I bled in that vision,
Huy remembered.
Atum was trying to tell me something about my own future, to warn me. I have done great harm to Prince Amunhotep, the rightful Hawk-in-the-Nest. That’s why the Horus of my Seeing attacked my mouth.

Huy let the scroll roll up and replaced it in its niche.
If I had interpreted the vision correctly, if I had been on guard for such a moment, would the future of Egypt have been different? Does Anubis show me what is to come or only what might be? Am I a prophet or a sage? Will Anuket carve a new fate for herself?
Shocked, Huy realized that he did not want a slim and healthy Anuket. He wanted her drunk and abused and lying filthy and naked in an alley. He wanted her punished for all the pain she had caused him.
Even now,
he thought with sick comprehension.
Even now, when so many years have gone by, I have not really forgiven her, although I no longer love her.

“Pick up your palette, Thothhotep,” he said harshly. “I must dictate a congratulatory letter at once to Governor Amunnefer, and one to the Princess also, thanking her and asking her to keep me acquainted with events in Mennofer. Then I must visit Methen.”

He found Khenti-kheti’s priest in his two-roomed cell just off the god’s small forecourt. Methen was eating his evening meal. He rose and embraced Huy. “How wonderful to see you!” he exclaimed. “Have you eaten? Come and sit beside me and give me your news. I hear that you were summoned to the palace last month. I meant to pay you a visit, but both of us have had little time to spare for leisure.”

His food steamed on the small table. Huy pulled the only other chair close to it and sat watching fondly as Methen spooned up the vegetable stew. They had been friends ever since Methen had found Huy naked and half insane outside Hut-herib’s House of the Dead and carried him home to his stunned parents. Methen had brought him poppy for his pain and an unwavering affection that Huy returned. The priest had petitioned for the exorcism that freed Huy from the doubt that he was possessed, and together with High Priest Ramose and Henenu the Rekhet he had become a valued mentor. Now Henenu was dead and Ramose had retired from the temple at Iunu to his estates near Pe in the Sap-meh sepat of the northern Delta. Huy had not seen him or received a letter from him for a long time. Huy had been twelve when Methen had rescued him, and Methen in his late twenties. He had seemed very old to Huy. Now he was in his mid-fifties. Lines fanned out across his temples and faint grooves marked the edges of his mouth, but even in repose his expression remained warmly benevolent.

Huy recounted his shameful audience at the palace while Methen briskly scoured his bowl with a piece of bread, sat back, and sipped at his beer. He offered no advice and Huy did not ask for any. Huy went on to speak of the hyena, and again Methen remained silent, one of the reasons why Huy valued him so highly. Huy finished by telling Methen about Anuket’s surprising change, and here Methen smiled.

“Has it occurred to you that Atum has at last decided to save her out of his regard for you? That he has more sympathy for the agonies of your youth than you imagine? Your love for her died when you saw her at Ishat’s marriage feast. Can a god regret something he has caused, even though he will not alter the consequences of his decision? Does he wonder, as you used to do, what would have happened to Anuket, to you, if you had been allowed to retain your sexual potency and she had chosen to run away with you? She has been unhappy with Amunnefer, but she has obviously decided not to punish him, and herself, anymore. I think your fears of Atum’s retribution may be unfounded.”

“Perhaps so,” Huy said. “All I can do is wait as my own future unfolds. Methen, I keep remembering what the Rekhet said to me once when I visited her at her house in Iunu. I was deeply troubled because of my enforced virginity. I still believed that I could shed it and retain my gift, or, better still, shed it and thus rid myself of the gift. She had calmed me and was braiding my hair. ‘Some great work waits for you in a future I cannot see,’ she said. ‘Something vital to Egypt. Your courage must not fail, for if it does, then Egypt will go down into chaos.’ What if the ‘great work’ was openly condemning the King and Prince Thothmes for their deceit, and in losing my courage to do so I have condemned Egypt to the chaos of which she spoke?”

“Is that what you believe? What you fear?”

“Yes. No! I don’t know. I cling to the prospect of the second chance Anubis granted me.”

“Then stop worrying about it. The moment of weakness has receded into the past. It can’t be retrieved and corrected. You think too much of yourself, dear Huy, if you suppose that you are above human error.”

Huy managed a laugh. “Your ability to comfort me hasn’t changed since you picked me up outside the House of the Dead. Actually, Methen, I came to you today for information.”

Methen’s eyebrows rose. He grinned. “And here I was thinking so much of myself that I supposed you had been missing me!”

“Of course I missed you.” Huy pulled Methen’s cup towards him, swallowed a mouthful of the beer, and pushed it back. “You come to my house less often than you used to.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I assume that as long as you don’t need me, you need not see me.”

“That’s just stupid!” They smiled at one another. “Anyway, I want you to tell me about Imhotep.”

Methen blinked. “All right. But why?”

Huy sighed and crossed his arms, leaning them on the surface of the table. He was suddenly aware that the shaft of light flooding into the room through the open door had acquired the colour of copper. The sun was approaching the western horizon, where Nut’s mouth was waiting to swallow it.

“The Book has woken in me, Methen. I turn my attention to the flow of the words when I am alone in the night, before I sleep. I’m becoming convinced that it is incomplete.” He had been afraid of a burst of laughter from the priest, an assumption that he was joking. He had kept his eyes on the empty soup bowl as he spoke so that he might not see his friend’s face, but after some moments of silence he glanced up. Methen’s own eyes had narrowed. His expression had sharpened.

“That is the last thing I expected to hear you say,” Methen finally responded. “What makes you think so?”

Huy unfolded his arms and laid his hands palms up on the table. “At the end of the recitation, Thoth says that he has written the Book as Atum has instructed him. He sounds almost … almost petulant. Apologetic. And the end of the Book is very abrupt. It’s not even a summing-up. Atum, through Thoth, says that the end curves back to the beginning, but it doesn’t seem to. The break is somehow … jagged.” His fingers curled loosely in on themselves.

Methen shook his head. “How many years has the Book been a part of you, Huy? Twenty-five, twenty-six years? And this suspicion only strikes you now?”

“I’ve allowed the pleasures and concerns of my life to drive the Book deep into my akh. The King and the hyena have shocked me into the realization of a task undone. I am able to be more objective now, to not only listen to the words but look at them with the eyes of my mind as they glide by. The rest of the fifth and last stage is either unwritten or lies somewhere other than the temples of Ra at Iunu and Thoth at Khmun.”

The doorway darkened. Methen’s servant came in, a lighted taper in his hand. Quickly he touched it to the wicks of the two clay lamps, one on the table and one in the second room beside Methen’s narrow cot, blew it out, and bowed to both men. “Greetings, Great Seer.” He smiled. “I trust you are well? And your household?”

By the time he and Huy had exchanged courtesies, the faint odour of warm, unscented oil filled the air. The man collected his master’s dishes and quietly left. Methen was staring thoughtfully at Huy, his lips pursed.

“That’s why you want to know about Imhotep,” he said. “He was reading the Book when you stood before him in the Beautiful West. You think that he read it during his early years, just as you did, but that he read it in its entirety, or realized that a part of it was missing and found that part.”

“Yes. What can you tell me, Methen?”

“His statues and monuments fill Egypt. According to their inscriptions, he was the Chief Architect to the Osiris-King Djoser in the dawn of history, and he designed the first of the mighty tombs that crowd the City of the Dead on the plateau outside Mennofer. The King valued him so highly that Imhotep was allowed to have his name carved on one of the King’s likenesses—a unique honour.”

“I know that he is worshipped as a healer as well as a Seer.”

“He wrote a book of wisdom that has since been lost.” Methen passed a hand over his shaven skull, disturbing the play of light and shadow Huy had been watching shift across his friend’s face as he spoke. “That’s really all. Of course, you’re aware that he served as High Priest at the temple of Ra at Iunu.”

Huy jerked forward. “No, I didn’t know! He read the Book, Methen! Would there be more about him in the House of Life at Iunu?”

Methen shrugged. “Perhaps, but I doubt it. If the archives had held more information, you may be sure that your teachers would have insisted that you learn it. Iunu is very proud to be the city where the great Imhotep served the god.”

“Somehow he was able to absorb the Book in its entirety,” Huy insisted. “How else was he able to become so famous as a healer and a Seer that he’s regarded as a god himself? Next time I visit Thothmes and Ishat, I’ll visit the House of Life as well.”

“Huy, are you sure about this? Sure that you’re not just using it as an excuse to avoid the hard work the study of the Book demands?”

Only you can speak to me like that,
Huy thought with a rush of respect.
You have earned the right, and I listen to you. Already I have become so renowned that no one dares to question me.

“No, I’m not sure,” he confessed. “I have a strong intuition, though. As for the Book, I disembowel it like a worker in the House of the Dead and I put it together again, and still it will not form the coherent wholeness of a meaning. However, I persist.” He got up and Methen rose with him. The sun had set, and the shreds of light creeping through the doorway were a delicate pink fading rapidly to grey. The two men embraced. “I love you, Methen,” Huy said. “Come soon and eat with me and sit in my garden.”

“If I do, it will have to be before the month of Thoth when there are so many gods’ days to observe! Next month I make my annual visit to my parents. I’ll try to come to you at the end of Mesore.”

They said their goodbyes. Methen retreated into his cell and, in the gathering dimness, Huy crossed the little outer court of Khenti-kheti’s shrine, empty of worshippers at that hour. His litter-bearers were clustered just beyond the wall of the shrine, playing knucklebones in the dust. Anhur was pacing. He greeted Huy with ill-concealed relief, snapped at the bearers as they scrambled up, and Huy was carried home.

For the next few days, Huy found it difficult to settle calmly to his tasks. He did his duty by those who came to him for aid almost without reflection, presuming that Anubis would guide his visions and remedies as the god had always done. Sleep came to him late and hard. As he lay on his couch and the Book unwound through his consciousness, he became increasingly convinced that its final portion was missing. The knowledge made him anxious to be gone, to begin a search for it in the House of Life at Iunu, to seek out every likeness of Imhotep and read the archaic inscriptions on them in the hope of stumbling across some clue that would lead him on to the solution he sought. He was already taking the poppy three times a day and admitted to himself that he had developed an addiction to it, but he bade Tetiankh strengthen his evening’s dose, hoping that under its influence he might enjoy a full night’s rest. The drug stupefied him so that he lay prone and naked in the hot darkness of his room, his muscles lax and unresponsive, while the stanzas of the Book continued to whisper behind his closed eyes. He needed a concerted effort of the will to stop it so that his mind was free to wander and then to sleep, but the stronger poppy seemed to sap his inner coherence. In the end he told his body servant to return him to his regular nightly dose.

When there had been a lull in the number of petitioners clustering outside his gate, and no letters waited for his attention, he decided to go south. The harvest was almost over, and Egypt had begun to sink into the stagnant timelessness of high summer. Humans and animals panted in the shade. Cracks began to appear in fields already denuded of their crops, and the peasants unlucky enough to be still reaping sweated and cursed the god who seemed to be expelled each dawn from the sky goddess Nut with malicious speed, and who poured an uncharacteristic venom upon their skin until the moment when he reluctantly slid into her mouth. Dust hung everywhere, often eddying in the scorching air to coat the drooping palms and sycamores and sift behind teeth and eyelids. The irrigation canals were empty. The river itself was at its lowest level, its northward current barely perceptible. Much of the Delta remained green, the soil fed by the trickles of many tributaries. Iunu was situated at its southern tip, where it began to fan out. Although the land to either side of the river still held to a semblance of fertility, it took Huy’s exhausted crew an extra day to reach the city.