The King's Man (21 page)

“There is nothing wrong with my body, Uncle,” Amunhotep-Huy blurted as though he had been waiting for an opportunity to unburden himself. “But I am troubled in my mind.”

Startled, Huy looked across at him. In all the years Huy had known him, he had never once confided anything of importance. The litter’s curtains had remained tied back. The evening was still and hot. Red dust from the sandy street rose in thin clouds from the feet of the accompanying soldiers, and Huy could hear Paneb’s deep, measured tones and Perti’s lighter answers as they strode behind the bearers. Amunhotep-Huy leaned closer. Huy could smell his sweat mingled with the faint scent of sam flowers. He had time to wonder at his nephew’s choice of wild wormwood blooms for perfume before Amunhotep-Huy passed a tentative hand over his shaven skull. His brown shoulders were hunched.

“Yours are not the ears I would choose, but there’s no one else I can ask about this,” he went on huskily. “At least you have a reputation for keeping your counsel. I am the Scribe of Recruits. I am known for my forceful speech and strong decisions. By my own diligence and with help from my military tutor, Officer Irem, I won a position as a scribe in the palace, and then as an under steward. You didn’t know that, did you?” For a moment the usual caustic quality sharpened his speech, but Huy had merely begun to shake his head when Amunhotep-Huy plunged on. “Then Her Majesty the Regent became aware of the time I spent enjoying the company of the soldiers and was pleased to promote me yet again, to my present position as Scribe of Recruits. I am responsible for administering the army and navy and regulating the defence of the Delta. I enjoy my work. I do it well.”

He bit his lip and fell briefly silent, obviously struggling for words of anxiety that must surely, Huy thought, be foreign to him. Huy was entirely bemused by this uncharacteristic outburst.
I could point out that every member of our family received a preferment when I was summoned to court
, he thought.
Your father became Mayor of Mennofer and Overseer of the Cattle of Amun, not to mention the added prestige of being appointed Overseer of the Two Granaries of Amun in the Sepats of Ta-Mehu. Your half-brother Ramose was made steward in the Mansion of the Aten at Iunu although he was only eleven at the time, a wise and crafty way for Mutemwia to ensure the loyalty of a future spy among the devotees of that god. Certainly Her Majesty fixed upon your talent, my cantankerous young relative, but her true incentive was to lure me into her service
. Huy said none of these things. He waited for Amunhotep-Huy to compose himself. At last the handsome features so like those of his father were turned down to the fingers clasped tightly across the burly thighs.

“But now Her Majesty summons me and tells me that I am to accompany you—not that you are to accompany me—with Vizier Ptahmose as he holds his annual consultations,” Amunhotep-Huy continued, his voice uneven. “Everyone at court knows that you have her ear and that your influence over the King is absolute. I decided that perhaps you had petitioned His Majesty for the position of Vizier instead of Ptahmose. I thought nothing of it.”

No, of course you didn’t
, Huy wanted to snap at him, his temper rising. “You do not know me at all if you think—” Huy began, but Amunhotep-Huy cut him short. Hot fingers closed over Huy’s wrist.

“That wasn’t it at all!” he said urgently. “I am to take you into every fort, every garrison, I am to make every officer in the Delta aware of you, I am even to travel with you east along the Horus Road, and I am not to say one single word regarding the deployments I have effected or the reasons why I have chosen to distribute the troops in the manner you will see! The gods know that I do not yet hate you, Uncle, in spite of our differences, but if my position as Scribe of Recruits is taken away from me and given to you, the Queen’s willing lapdog, I shall beg Set for vengeance!” His voice had risen and he had begun to shake.

Huy hushed him savagely, aware that the men surrounding them were now quiet. He pulled himself loose from his nephew’s clutch. “I have always known of your antipathy towards me,” he said, fighting the surge of anger that threatened to spill over into words that could never be withdrawn. “I have never understood it, unless its roots lie somewhere in your discontented childhood. You do me a terrible disservice if you truly believe that I would deliberately seek to undermine you. I have no desire whatsoever to take your title away. Think, Amunhotep-Huy! You have already been promoted three times. Have you no confidence in your ability? In the Regent’s wisdom? Your assumption is nothing but a fantasy.”

“I do not trust you!”

“You should. I came to you, seeking your advice regarding my need for a suitable captain. You agreed that no matter what hostility lay between us, a loyalty to the family came first. You remember?”

“Yes.”

“Her Majesty understands that allegiance. She will not force a choice on me between my duty to my family and my duty to Egypt, because she acknowledges my honesty. Where’s your courage and the faith you have in your own talents, nephew? Do you want me to See for you after all?”

“That is not necessary,” the other said stiffly. “I apologize for my loss of self-control.”

The bearers were slowing. Amunhotep-Huy was struggling to recover his composure as quickly as possible, and dismally Huy realized that in confessing his inmost fear to him and thus his vulnerability, his nephew would now hate him all the more.

His reunion with his two oldest friends and their remaining children was joyful, and Huy filed away the painful exchange with Amunhotep-Huy to the back of his consciousness as he embraced each one and allowed himself to be led into Thothmes’ reception hall. To his great pleasure another familiar figure rose from among the scattering of little gilded dining tables, goblet in hand, a cluster of blue faience cornflowers pinned behind one ear. “Nasha!” he called, and hurrying towards one another, they hugged fiercely. Thothmes’ older sister smelled of wine and Susinum, a blend of lilies, myrrh, and cinnamon in balanos oil, which Huy seldom encountered.

“You never write to me,” Nasha complained as they drew apart. “Here I am, bored and lonely, rattling around in the house next door, reduced to playing with my jewellery and dyeing my hair, while you share the exalted confidences of our young King and think yourself too good for us ordinary folk!” She raised herself on her toes and kissed his cheek. “You must eat beside the Vizier and then talk of serious things with him and Thothmes in the office, but afterwards we have planned to drink the rest of the night away on Thothmes’ raft. You remember the last time we did that, Huy? It was after the celebration of Thothmes’ marriage to Ishat. Father was dying. Those few days were a strange mixture of sadness and pleasure.”

A lump formed in Huy’s throat as he looked down into her painted face. The eyes were as sparkling and alive as ever, speaking to him of Nasha’s indomitable and optimistic nature, but her age had become increasingly evident in the sagging of her cheeks and the lines around her hennaed mouth.

“You should have married, dear one,” he said. “The gods know, you had suitors enough!”

She wrinkled her nose. “They all had something wrong with them. Besides, I have father’s house and estate. Why should I share the riches? We can talk later.”

Thothmes’ steward had approached and was waiting politely to show Huy to his table, and as Huy followed him one of Thothmes’ servant girls reached up and laid a wreath of quivering blooms around his neck.

The feast was a happy one, full of banter and good conversation. Even Amunhotep-Huy, sitting on Ishat’s left, became flushed with Thothmes’ wine and hummed to the music of the harp and drum as the sweet nehet figs in date syrup were offered and the warm night air made the lamp flames tremble in their alabaster cups.

Afterwards, Thothmes, Huy, Ptahmose, and Amunhotep-Huy, together with their scribes, gathered in the office, and Thothmes in his capacity as Governor gave the Vizier an overview of the business of the sepat: the quantity and estimated value of the various harvests still in progress, the legal disputes adjudicated, the advancement of building projects, any problems concerning the administration of both secular and religious institutions, and the overall mood of the populace in general. There were few areas of concern. Iunu was an ancient and wealthy city, its priests and nobles content, its commoners well fed, and the peasant farmers and retired soldiers coaxed abundant fruits and vegetables out of the fertile soil. Huy, watching his friend’s sensitive and intelligent face, found himself giving thanks to Atum for the warmth and intimacy that had been his since his childhood days at school here in the temple of Ra, when he and Thothmes had been drawn together, the peasant and the noble’s son, and Thothmes’ family had made him one of their own.

When Ptahmose and his attendants had returned to the barge, Huy dismissed Paneb, and arm in arm with Thothmes he walked to the watersteps, where torches blazed, illuminating a raft piled with cushions and rocking gently. Amunhotep-Huy had refused Thothmes’ invitation to join them. “You and the rest of my uncle’s friends will doubtless while away the hours in reminiscences, Governor Thothmes,” he had pointed out. “I thank you for your hospitality, but I think I’ll retire to my cot.”

“He is not a happy man, is he, Huy?” Thothmes had remarked as they watched the darkness gradually swallow up Amunhotep-Huy’s rigid spine. “How’s the rest of your family, by the way? Heby and Iupia? What’s your other nephew, Ramose, doing?”

A peace stole over Huy as he lowered himself onto the raft between Ishat and Nasha. Much as he loved Thothmes’ children, he was glad that none of them had joined the group. True to Amunhotep-Huy’s prediction, there were memories to share, but much of the talk centred around Huy’s daily life in the palace.

“Who would have thought that the awkward boy with the inarticulate passion for our sister Anuket was destined to advise the King himself,” Nasha commented at one point. “You must be incurring a flood of jealousy among His Majesty’s other counsellors.” Huy answered her lightly, examining himself as he spoke for any remaining vestige of the obsession for Thothmes’ manipulative younger sister that had almost destroyed him. He found nothing but a faint echo from the past, and gave himself up to the familiar pleasures of the present company.

Ptahmose’s advance through the sepats of the Delta followed much the same pattern as his visit to Iunu. In the centre of each district, whether city or town, he, Huy, and Amunhotep-Huy were feasted, the business of local government was discussed, and the following morning the barges would set off to negotiate whatever tributary of the river they must follow. During the idle hours Ptahmose gave Huy his personal assessment of the loyalty and efficiency of the various governors, his thoughts on the resolution of their difficulties, and a brief sketch of their family histories. Huy listened, noted, and formed his own opinions. He was aware of the Delta as never before—a vast, lush garden where fat livestock grazed, where the air, heavy with the humidity of the many rivulets and canals in spite of the time of year, carried the odours of a riotous fecundity to his delighted nostrils. Both Amun’s overseers and those of the King pastured their herds here, but Huy began to notice many small flocks of sheep and groups of fat swine occupying the grassy fields. Their guardians, wearing rough skirts and thick cloaks, stared at them impassively as the barges slipped by.

“Tribesmen from Rethennu,” Ptahmose told him. “I don’t suppose you would have encountered them at Hut-herib when your father worked in the perfume fields. They like to keep their animals grazing fairly close to the Horus Road. The governors of our northeastern sepats are endlessly settling quarrels that arise between our farmers and the slaves over the use of the land.” Any non-citizen or seasonal labourer from beyond Egypt’s borders was called a slave. It was a light, rather scornful word, and Ptahmose’s tone was condescending.

“I know it’s been the custom for hentis to let them in,” Huy said. “How many drive their herds into the Delta along the Horus Road?”

Ptahmose shrugged. “You must ask your nephew. My only concern is whether or not my governors are handling the situation.”

Huy was about to remind the Vizier that during a dark time in Egypt’s history those same tribesmen had managed to take control of the country without a drop of blood being shed and had ruled for more than two hundred years, but he closed his mouth again.
Better to see for myself, to talk to the garrison commanders. The Queen will expect the information I glean to be in my report
. Reluctantly he turned from the pleasant scenery slipping slowly by to May’s scribe, waiting patiently by his elbow. Huy’s lessons in Akkadian, the language of diplomacy, were progressing well. The meaning of the stark, thin symbols was much easier to learn than the tangle of hieroglyphs he had struggled with in school.

Once the Delta sepats were behind them, the barges were left in the care of Ptahmose’s captain and the litters were readied. The way led northeast along the Horus Road that began in the Khent-abt district and ran through the marshy Sea of Reeds, well-nigh impassable during the Inundation, towards the coast. It then curved east to disappear into Rethennu and the foreign terrain beyond. The garrisons set every few miles along it began at once. Huy expected to see a military presence between them, but there was none. The Road was choked with the flow of animals and their keepers leaving Egypt to return home before the Inundation drowned the rich fields they had enjoyed, and the Vizier’s entourage moved slowly in spite of the guards who walked ahead, calling a warning. Huy did not mind. There was time for a leisurely look at a swiftly changing topography, and the bearded herdsmen in their garish colours fascinated him. At each garrison, after the obeisances and a hospitable meal, he listened to the report given to Amunhotep-Huy. Paneb quietly noted it down. Huy had questions of his own regarding the policing of the Road. How were the foreigners controlled? Were daily records kept of their numbers coming and going? How often were the soldiers manning the garrisons rotated? The answers to the last question began to bother him. Many of the men were mercenaries, returning regularly to their native territories. These were places that paid tribute to Egypt or, more rarely, were governed directly by one of Pharaoh’s resident ministers.