Seer of Egypt (48 page)

The weight of her words, the outward expression of his own thoughts, settled around Huy’s heart. “I am afraid so,” he agreed. “Her trust is a great compliment, but it is also a great threat. There’s no need to send her any reply to this letter.” He touched it briefly. “All we can do is wait for matters at court to unfold. You do realize that if the King or Prince Thothmes discovers her correspondence to me and they are indeed plotting murder, she might very well be interrogated. I can imagine the questions now. ‘Highness, His Majesty and your husband Prince Thothmes are concerned for you. Are you ill, that you must write to the Seer so frequently?’ Or worse: ‘Highness, the King suspects the Seer of distrusting the holy dream sent to your husband by the god buried in the desert. I am instructed to read his letters to you so that the King may confound any blasphemy against the god or your husband they may contain.’ Either one of them, King or Prince, could ruin me.” He laughed without humour. “That prospect filled me with terror when I stood before Amunhotep. It made me weak. Now I face the same outcome because the Princess Mutemwia has decided to make me her accomplice. I wonder if Atum and Anubis are smiling.” Bending, he smoothed down Thothhotep’s cap of shining hair in a rush of protectiveness. “We understand one another now, don’t we, Thothhotep?” he said quietly.

Taking his hand, she kissed it respectfully and stood. “We do,” she answered. “I am grateful to be in your employ, Great Seer, but I am more thankful to be in your confidence.”

“Good! Then come on the river with me this evening. Its level is still low, but the water birds will be finding many juicy morsels in the mud. I like to watch them when I can. Anhur will of course accompany us.”

“Master, it is not necessary—”

Huy cut her off. “My reliance on Anhur may increase as the weeks pass,” he said brusquely. “As the captain of my bodyguard, I should perhaps tell him a little of what we have discussed today. He goes wherever I go, Thothhotep. It has nothing to do with you!” His grin took the sting out of his words.

She grimaced. “I have fallen into the habit of apologetic self-effacement and you are right, Master, it does not suit me, and I am sorry for it.” She picked up the Princess’s scroll. “I think I should keep this and any future correspondence from Mutemwia away from the office. The bottom of my tiring chest will do admirably.”

Huy did not protest. “You and Anhur should sign a marriage contract,” he said as she was walking to the door. “I would be generous if you did, and besides, that way I would have no fear of losing either of you!”

“Anhur has told me that he will never leave you,” she answered without turning around. “As for me, it would be very hard to train another scribe to take my place, and besides, the work here is always interesting!”

That’s the Thothhotep I encountered in Hut-herib’s ramshackle marketplace,
he thought, the enforced grin fading from his face.
I believe I am right to trust her now, and perhaps Anhur also, although his solution to every problem is always a practical one. This is one danger I must not share with either Thothmes or Ishat. Thothmes is incapable of dissembling. His duties take him to the palace too often, and the King is not a fool. And although Ishat would understand everything and keep her counsel from her husband, it would be unfair of me to ask her to do so. This is something Thothhotep and I will face together. We have made a promising beginning today. I feel less alone.
He continued to stand leaning against his desk and frowning into the hot dimness of the room.

After the last meal of the day, Huy ordered out his boat and he, Anhur, and Thothhotep spent the long hours of sunset drifting slowly north on the current. The helmsman had little to do but keep the vessel away from the exposed shoals and sandbanks that would soon disappear under the flood water. Crested egrets and white ibis, their feathers tinged pink by the last slanting rays of soft light, stalked through the mud on slender legs half hidden by thick mats of reeds that stirred stiffly as the boat’s sluggish wake reached them. Often Huy noticed field flowers or a carefully woven wreath that had been cast into the river as an offering to Hapi and had floated towards the Great Green only to be snared by the straggling growth invading the edge of the water. Fleetingly he was reminded of all the times when he had stood with Thothmes, Anuket, and the rest of Nakht’s family, one of the bouquets Anuket had so carefully crafted in his arms, the aroma of the blooms filling his nostrils as he waited to toss them into Hapi’s domain.
I must not confide in Heby anymore either,
his thoughts ran on, still occupied with the time spent in his office with his scribe.
Those I love must be able to truthfully deny any knowledge of the letters if necessary. How much should I tell Anhur? Will I need to be guarded more closely? Should I begin to have Merenra or Tetiankh taste my food and drink? Would Amunhotep dare to murder a Seer? I wish you were still alive, Henenu, with your clicking cowrie shells and your wand and your brisk, cogent advice. I wear the amulets you made for me on my fingers and the sa you crafted for my protection around my neck, but will these things blunt the blade of a dagger or render a poison as harmless as milk? Did Mutemwia consider the danger to me and mine when she chose to make me her collaborator?
Deliberately he turned his face to the dying sun, now spreading a pool of blood between the trunks of the trees on the western shore as Nut began to swallow it.

“So beautiful,” Thothhotep breathed beside him.

Anhur stirred. “Beautiful, yes, but we should get the rowers seated and start back upriver soon. The helmsman can’t navigate in the dark at this time of the year,” he remarked.

Huy gave the command. The oars were run out and ponderously the barge began to swing towards the south. By the time the sailors brought it bumping gently against Huy’s watersteps, dusk had fallen. The ramp was run out. Huy was the first to disembark. Climbing the steps, he had passed through his open gate, greeting Kar as he went, and had started along the short path to the house when a furtive movement low down in the bushes to his right brought him to a halt.
No, no,
he thought frantically, his heart suddenly pounding.
It can’t be!
The other two had come up behind him.

“What is it, Huy?” Anhur growled. “What’s wrong?”

Wordlessly, Huy pointed. A hyena had emerged from the gathering shadows. Seeing the group, it paused in the ugly half-crouch Huy had begun to loathe, and it seemed to be staring directly at him. “I told you to get rid of it!” Huy croaked. “It’s come back, Anhur! I thought that your men sold it in the market!”

“They did,” Anhur replied easily. “I expect it escaped and remembered the good feeding here, especially now, with mice trying to get into the granaries. I’ll fetch a guard or two and we’ll kill it this time.”

“No.” Huy found that he was trembling. “Trap it and have it taken well out into the desert this time. Its death here on the estate would be a very bad omen for me.” He could have sworn that at the sound of his voice the creature’s ears had pricked higher, as though it were listening.

Anhur took a step, and at his movement the beast started for the gate at a shambling pace. Kar had already closed it, but the hyena became fluid, flowing under it and disappearing even as one of the guards stationed just beyond the gate aimed a kick at its indistinct shape.

Anhur glanced at Huy quizzically. “You really hate them, don’t you? I can have the garden scoured for them every evening if you like.” His tone was offhand.

Huy shook his head. “It’s a warning and a reminder to me,” he said. His voice was still unsteady. “I think I’ll be seeing it often in the future.” He felt both pairs of eyes on him as he resumed his pace and, reaching the house, he bade them an abrupt good night and left them.

14

I
n the following month of Paophi, on the ninth, Huy celebrated his thirty-ninth Naming Day. The river had continued to rise, and with it the annual irritation of flies and mosquitoes, their presence adding a further annoyance to the increasing heat. As usual during the Inundation, Huy dealt with an increase of fevers that required him and Thothhotep to spend much time venturing into Hut-herib itself. The river road would remain accessible only for perhaps another month, and Huy, hot, tired, and in constant pain, eagerly awaited its flooding. But it was the pleading of distraught parents begging him to return their drowned children to life that most distressed him. Every year it was the same. Youngsters who had played safely and happily in the shallows were caught unawares by water that had become deeper. Few of them could swim. Huy, entering the small, dark homes of the town’s ordinary citizens to be faced with pallid corpses and weeping women whose eyes filled with hope when they saw him, was forced to explain that he was unable to raise the dead. Often he could feel the unspoken accusation: “The gods gave your life back to you, Son of Hapu. Why are you so favoured when my little one’s breath has fled?” To that he had no answer. In spite of the truth the whole town knew by now, there were always those who believed that the fate of their children must be different.

Iupia gave birth to a lusty boy on the first day of the month of Athyr, the last day of the festival of Hapi. The river was reaching for its highest point, the flood was ample, and the fierce heat had begun to abate. “He is to be called Ramose,” Heby had written in a letter that took longer than usual to arrive at Huy’s estate as it had to be carried along the edge of the vast, placid lake which Egypt had become.

“Heby is well known among the priests and administrators of the temples in Mennofer,” Huy had mused to Thothhotep as she walked to one of the niches in the wall of the office and laid the scroll with all the others from Huy’s brother. “But outside that august community, he is anonymous. Few are even aware that he’s my kin, and the thought of our parents having any influence with the Governor of Mennofer’s sepat is just ridiculous. Nor is Heby ambitious enough to petition for the post of Mayor himself. He’s never asked me to speak on his behalf for any preferment.”

“Perhaps Iupia’s father as Assistant Treasurer to the King is so pleased with his new grandson that he wants more recognition for his daughter’s husband,” Thothhotep ventured, coming back to the desk and picking up her palette. “Will you dictate a reply to Heby at once, Huy?” She was smiling at him. In the last few months Huy had seen the pride and confidence that had impressed him at their first encounter begin to return, and he had rejoiced at their increasing closeness, but now he was frowning into the distance, oblivious to her expression.

“I don’t think that this is Merira’s work,” he replied slowly. “He has never pushed Heby to seek advancement. Nor has he ever seemed ashamed of Iupia’s choice for a husband.”

“The King, then?”

Huy laughed grimly. “I doubt it. Amunhotep has no interest in my family and he has already rewarded me with gold for my public confirmation of Prince Thothmes’ so-called dream. No, dear scribe, I see the Princess Mutemwia’s hand in this. She is deliberately befriending me and has now begun to groom my brother for a future that so far only she can imagine. How many scrolls have we received from her in the last three months?”

“Four. According to her, the King and Prince Thothmes have begun to make regular offerings to the god Ra-Harmachis now that his body is free of all sand, and a wall has been erected around him to prevent further subsidence. The stela is finished and has been set up. Work on the temple continues. Her little son thrives. The Prince in Mitanni is well.”

“But His Majesty is not. Didn’t the Princess mention that Amunhotep has been suffering from shortness of breath and occasional weakness in his limbs?” They stared at one another for a moment. “A change is coming.” Huy spoke into the cool peace of the room. “I can feel it sometimes as an inner flutter.” He blew out his lips. “Meanwhile, I shall dictate to Heby and tell him that I’ll be with him for his Naming Day on the twenty-first of Mekhir, almost three months from now. By then all the crops will be in the ground and beginning to sprout. It should be a pleasant jaunt. I must take a gift for baby Ramose.”
Mutemwia has not asked me for a Seeing on her own behalf,
Huy thought as the words to his brother rolled off his tongue.
For one so young, she brings a formidable intellect to bear on the invisible current of desires, ambitions, and machinations flowing through the King’s court, and arrives at her own conclusions regarding them. She is confident enough in her deductions to use them as a basis for her own plans, and it is clear that those plans include me. Am I to be a playing piece or a partner?

Absently, he signed the curled papyrus Thothhotep was holding up to him and left her to arrange for its delivery while he began to wander around his garden. The flood was still high but had begun imperceptibly to recede. The canal feeding life to his glistening soil was full, and soon the dike holding the water it contained would be rebuilt. Anab and his assistant were busy seeding the flowers and vegetables that would make a small paradise of his holdings, their bent brown backs happily exposed to a kind sun. Word had come from Amunnefer regarding his plans for the poppy fields once the river had regained its banks. A new incense caravan had left Egypt the week previously. Seshemnefer’s report on the house and land Huy had inherited from the Rekhet was more than satisfactory.
All is well,
Huy told himself as he rounded the rear of his two conical silos and started back towards the house.
Even Anuket is holding her own. Then why am I so restless?