Seer of Egypt (45 page)

“She merely sleeps,” Anubis said. “Atum has decreed that now she may wake. He accepts your sad little spasm of humility. Have you learned your lesson, Seer?”

Huy opened his mouth to agree and felt Ishat’s fingers withdraw. Startled, he looked up. Her one good eye was open.

“Huy, what are you doing here?” she said, her voice thin but clear. “Gods, my hand hurts! So does breathing. And my eye!” She gingerly touched the swelling. “Did I take a fall?”

Thothmes ran to the couch and bent to kiss her. “You remember nothing, Ishat? Coming home through the Street of the Beer Houses? The foreigners who attacked you?”

She frowned and tried to sit up, then winced. “Ouch! I’m bruised, aren’t I, my dearest? I remember coming home late and bidding Intef and the bearers a good night. I was tired, but I went to the nursery to make sure the children were all right, then I came here to my own quarters so as not to wake you.”

Thothmes and Huy exchanged glances.
Atum has done all this,
Huy knew with certainty.
Were the foreigners inhuman, a host of Khatyu sent to chastise me by injuring Ishat? The attackers were not caught. They melted away into the night. They will never be caught, Ishat will recover completely and in perfect ignorance of the events that overtook her, and I have been horrendously warned to never again betray the creator.
Thothmes was gripping Ishat’s hand and stroking her face, talking to her quietly.

Huy got to his feet. “I’ll dictate later,” he said to Thothhotep. “The vision was for me alone, and I must never forget it.” He touched Thothmes on the shoulder. “I have an errand to run in the House of Life,” he told him, “but I’ll return for the evening meal. I promised to spend time with young Huy on my barge. Ishat, you are indomitable. You will heal quickly.”

She smiled up at him faintly. “I’m appalled at what Thothmes has told me. Thank you, darling Huy, for the Seeing.”

“I did nothing,” he replied. “Make a sacrifice to Atum when you are well enough.”

“I shall. Send me the children as you go. I want to see them.”

Huy started for the door, Thothhotep behind him.
I did nothing,
he repeated soundlessly as he gained the passage.
I have no pain of my own because the canal that flows between god and petitioner is dry this time. No divine force streamed through me. My discipline is complete.

The heat outside struck him forcibly and he began to sweat. He could see Anhur with the children clustered around him in the shade of a tree. “Your mother will be well!” he called to them as they saw him and scrambled up. “Go and see her! Anhur, get me the litter and bearers from the barge. And beer! Thothhotep, you had better come with me and take note of whatever I find at the temple.”
I’m not even tired,
his thoughts ran on as he and his scribe waited above the watersteps.
I feel light and slightly dislocated from everything around me. The burden of my guilt has gone.

He and Thothhotep drank thirstily before they got into the litter and the bearers set off along the river path. They rode in a familiar and companionable silence. The curtains remained open and gusts of hot air fluttered Thothhotep’s linen against Huy’s naked leg. “I don’t tell you often enough how fond I am of you,” he said to her abruptly. “You are efficient and intelligent and an essential member of the estate. Are you happy, Thothhotep? Do I allow you to go home to Nekheb often enough? Do you miss your sisters?”

She glanced across at him in surprise, plucked eyebrows lifting, dark eyes warm in their encircling kohl. She was wearing a pair of earrings he did not recognize, the centre of each a disc of moonstone held by petals of green faience. He supposed that Anhur had given them to her. She never wore rings; she had said that they interfered with the practice of her work. But often her thin upper arms were gripped by plain spiral bracelets engraved with her name.
She has remained too scrawny,
Huy thought with loving humour as she opened her mouth to reply.
When she came to us, Ishat was horrified at her physical state and we both tried to fatten her, but to little avail. She insists on keeping her hair short, an unflattering look for a very slender woman, but on her it is attractive. I must remember to give her more faience pins for it on her next Naming Day in Khoiak.

“I write to them every month, Master,” she said. “They’re married now. I always send something for the public scribe who reads the letters as well. I’m very happy in your employ. My parents are in good health and do not need me. I lack for nothing, and if I may be permitted to say so, I admire you and I am proud to serve you.” Her gaze strayed to Anhur, who had one hand on the roof of the litter and was pacing beside it.

You and Anhur should sign a marriage contract,
he thought to himself.
Why don’t you? I must ask Anhur when I think of it next.
For answer he patted her knee and fell to watching the brown, brittle stalks of parched river growth glide by.

Huy did not want the High Priest of Ra’s House to know that he was within the holy precinct. He had no idea who had succeeded Ramose, his old guide and mentor, but he strongly suspected a complicity between this High Priest and the King’s plans for his son Prince Thothmes. Leaving his bearers on the watered grass under the trees to either side of the god’s domain, he, Thothhotep, and Anhur crossed the stone apron between the small lake where craft coming up Ra’s entrance canal could moor and the pylon that signalled the outer court of the temple itself. Before reaching the pylon, Huy veered to the right. The House of Life lay within the shelter of the temple’s surrounding wall, between the row of storerooms giving onto the outer court and the sheltering main wall itself. Huy had sometimes been sent there by one of his teachers to fetch a scroll needed for class study. He was familiar with the cool, musty rooms whose walls were closely and neatly pocked with niches, themselves crowded with rolls of papyrus. The sleepy guard on the door recognized him and waved him on, and just inside the doorway the archivist rose from his stool and came bustling forward.

“I am addressing the Great Seer, am I not?” he said, bowing. “I am Tehuti, Overseer of this House of Life. How may I serve you?”

Huy returned his bow. “I’m seeking the life and works of the mighty Imhotep. Having been a pupil here, I know that he was a High Priest of Ra.”

Tehuti looked at him curiously. “Very little has survived from those far-off days. Papyrus will last a very long time if it is cared for properly, but stone makes a better surface on which to inscribe the events of the past.” He tapped his chin. “We do have copies of most of the inscriptions on Imhotep’s monuments, and I believe we also have a few, a very few, accounts of his deeds.” He bent and swept up one of the small baskets on the floor near him. “If your scribe will accompany me,” and here he looked doubtfully at Anhur, “I will collect what there is.” He set off with Thothhotep at his heels.

“You can join the bearers outside if you like,” Huy said to Anhur. “I may be here some time. I doubt if the archivist has any designs on ending my life.”

Anhur did not respond to Huy’s gentle teasing. “Huy, do you remember the old keeper of the House of Life at Thoth’s temple in Khmun?” he asked. “You spent a lot of time with him. I liked him.”

“Khanun. That was his name. I promised to send him a letter as soon as I had solved the riddle of the Book of Thoth. I wonder if he’s still alive?”
Half of the Book is here somewhere, in one of these rooms,
his thoughts ran on silently.
I can feel it, holding its secrets to itself and yet reaching out to me. How familiar this place smells! I might be a student again, waiting to hurry back to the schoolroom carefully clutching some boring work of wisdom or advice with which to torment the class.
He smiled ruefully to himself and settled down to wait.

But the archivist knew his charge well. Presently he came striding back. Thothhotep was carrying the basket, now containing perhaps ten scrolls. “There are tables over here,” Tehuti gestured. “Unless I can be of more assistance, I shall leave you to your reading. May Thoth guide your heart and your thoughts.” Then he was gone.

Thothhotep carried the basket to one of the tables. Huy took the chair behind it. Anhur sank onto the floor, yawned, and put his back against the wall.

“Shall I read for you, Master?” Thothhotep asked.

Huy considered, wondering how much of the papyrus contained information couched in an Egyptian dialect so ancient that she would not be able to decipher it. “No,” he decided. “I’ll read, and dictate the facts I want to take home. Prepare your palette.”

In the end, the information Huy found was disappointingly scant. Apart from designing the main temple to Hathor at Iunet in the south, Imhotep had been Vizier and Overseer of Works to the Osiris-King Djoser. In that capacity he had drawn up the plans for the Divine One’s tomb, a pyramid of steps, and had supervised its construction. He was a devotee of Thoth and had been buried in the City of the Dead on the plateau across the river from Iunu with many beautified ibis birds and baboons, the creatures sacred to the god of wisdom and writing. He was an accomplished physician and was purported to have written a book of medicine, since lost. Apparently he had also written a book of spells, a few scrolls of which had survived as copies. Huy unrolled them eagerly. “These works are to be chanted aloud,” he read. “The very quality of the sounds and the intonation of the sacred words contains within itself the force of the things said.” There followed several incantations to be used for a variety of purposes. Huy laid those scrolls aside. Imhotep’s sparse biography went on to say that he had written a wisdom text and that he had great skill in reading the ancient scrolls housed in the temple of Thoth at Khmun, where it was the habit of the scribes employed there to throw a little water on the ground in memory of their patron before they began to take dictation.

There was nothing else. All was much as Methen had related. Huy returned the scrolls to the basket for the archivist to put away, but he was not disappointed. Imhotep had studied the ancient works stored at Khmun. He had also been a High Priest of Ra. That he had read and pondered the Book of Thoth was almost a certainty. Could he have penned the commentary that had been included with each portion of the Book, the explanations of Atum’s mystifying thoughts and actions that Huy had found helpful when he himself was attempting to understand them? Could the great man have resisted such a challenge? Huy did not think so. Nor did he believe that Imhotep would have dismissed the suspicion that the Book’s final stage was either incomplete or missing.
He sought it,
Huy told himself with excitement as he bade Anhur find the archivist.
He sought, but did he find? And finding, did he recognize something so strange, perhaps even dangerous, that he chose to leave it where it was? What, then, should I do? Wait for Atum to lead me to it, or pursue it on my own? I have no idea where to begin, therefore I’ll go home, continue to heal and scry, and hope that enlightenment may find me.

The archivist had arrived and was bowing, his eyes going briefly to the basket to assure himself, Huy thought with a smile, that none of the scrolls had been damaged. “Is there nothing else pertaining to Osiris Imhotep stored here?” Huy wanted to know.

The man shook his head. “Nothing, Master. It’s rumoured that Imhotep was also a High Priest of Ptah at some time in his illustrious life, but as far as I can ascertain, no written record of such an appointment exists.”

Huy was tempted to ask if he might see the Book of Thoth and the commentary. He had a confused idea that simply by looking at the commentary’s script, Imhotep would give him direction. But his good sense prevailed and, thanking the archivist, he and his companions left the temple precincts, Huy afraid that he would be recognized and delayed.

“Are we going home, then?” Anhur inquired as they approached the litter.

“No,” Huy replied. “I want to eat with Thothmes and then spend the evening with little Huy, and in the morning we’ll take the barge south to Mennofer. I need to talk to Heby.”

He dictated what he had learned to Thothhotep before re-entering Thothmes’ house, shared a cheerful meal with Thothmes and Ishat in her bedchamber, where she was sitting up and nursing her maimed hand while her husband did his best to feed her, and took young Huy into the cabin of his barge, listening carefully and with affection to the boy’s unselfconscious conversation before sending him off to his couch.

He was still on his cot the following morning when his vessel turned obediently against the small, sullen tug of the current and the sail was unfurled to catch the strong north wind. No oars were necessary, and by the time the moon had reached its zenith the next night, they were tying up at Mennofer’s communal watersteps.

13

H
uy ate his morning meal before ordering out the litter. By the time Heby’s gate guard waved him through the high brick wall separating the house from the noisy maelstrom outside, a thin film of dust had insinuated itself onto his skin and settled on the litter’s cushions, even though the curtains had been closed. Thothhotep fluffed at her hair and shook out the folds of her sheath before following him across the patchy grass and drooping trees to the welcome shade of the three little pillars fronting the house’s entrance. A servant rose from his stool in the shade and welcomed Huy with a smile. “My Master is at work in the temple and will return at noon,” he told Huy, “but my Mistress and your nephew are within. Let me tell them you are here.”

It was not long before Iupia came hurrying from the dimness to greet him. Huy bowed to her as the daughter of a noble, then she embraced him warmly. “Heby will be so pleased to see you,” she exclaimed as she ushered them inside and sent a servant scurrying for beer and honey cakes. “So will Amunhotep-Huy. He didn’t go to school today. He has a cough. My father’s physician has prescribed licorice and ground cumin seeds in honey for him, so I expect him to be better in a few days. How very hot it is! We all sleep on the roof. Heby has taken to watching for the rising of the Sopdet star, but of course it’s a little too soon. All of us long for the Inundation.” She was shepherding them through the cramped entrance hall and into the reception room, where the only light came from two clerestory windows.