The King's Man (48 page)

“Captain Perti received a verbal message from Ptah’s Chief Archivist earlier, and passed it on to me,” he told Huy. “Penbui will greet you in his quarters at any time today.”

“Good.” Huy slid off the couch. “You’ll have to deal with the correspondence for Weset later, Paneb. I’ll need you to come with me to the temple.” He dismissed Paneb, joined Kenofer, who had been waiting just beyond the door, and went to the bathhouse. He did not hurry. A sense of formality moved with him, a calm certainty that before Nut swallowed the dazzling heat of Ra that evening all would be made clear, providing Atum willed it.

Later, he had himself dressed simply in a plain white kilt and shirt, still feeling himself surrounded by an aura of gravity, wondering what changes the knowledge he was about to acquire might bring about in him but not really caring. It was enough that he had accomplished what no man save the great Imhotep had done before him. At twelve years old, standing before Imhotep with the Judgment Hall behind him and Paradise ahead, he had not realized the extent of the privilege being offered. He had chosen to read the Book, and in so doing had determined his fate as a Seer and much later as mer kat, ruler of Egypt with no authority but Pharaoh’s to gainsay him.
But will he?
Huy dared to ask himself as he began the short walk to the temple with Paneb behind and Perti and his soldiers ahead.
The end of the Book sets down the cryptic means whereby a King truly, actually, becomes a god. It’s the climax of Egypt’s journey, the reason why Atum chose to enter the Duat of metamorphosis and so began the process of creation according to his desire. Magic
, Huy thought as Perti opened the garden gate and bowed him through.
Deep, strong, fierce heka pouring from Atum and carried on the breath of Ra to culminate in a man who is transformed into a god by the ritual of the heb sed. But only one man, only a King? Those who have been correctly beautified may live forever in the Beautiful West, but not as divinities. Is there no avenue to godhead for the rest of us? Imhotep has been worshipped as a god for hentis, but at first he was simply one of the beautified, like my parents, like Ishat, like dearest Heby my brother. Did Imhotep set out to become a god by deliberately, perhaps even secretly, performing the heb sed for himself? But would that not have been a blasphemy against Atum? Imhotep spoke to me kindly and patiently as he sat beneath the Ished Tree with the Book across his knees and a tame hyena with golden eyes beside him. Is it that we Egyptians over many hentis have chosen to see him as a god when he is not? Or does Atum intend godhead by ritual for all of us?

Huy knew, as he and the others turned to walk beside Ptah’s canal, that he was not really engaged in the puzzle. He and the archivist would solve some of the mystery, but not all.
And there is still the hyena
, he reminded himself as they passed into the afternoon shadow of the entrance pylon.
That is another matter entirely
.

He left Perti and his men in the outer court, and after asking a passing priest the way to the archivist’s cell, he and Paneb made their way along the side of the House of Life to where a large mud-brick house with a modest garden shared the library’s rear wall. Penbui himself rose from a stool in the shade by the doorway and bowed profoundly. The face he lifted to Huy was alive with curiosity.

“Yes,” Huy said. “The scroll is indeed the final piece of the Book of Thoth. I’m hoping that you will be able to help me make it intelligible. This is my scribe Paneb, who will record our conversation.”

“You will share it with me, Great Seer? I’m honoured. Please enter my home. Refreshments will be provided in due course.” He ushered them into a room that instantly reminded Huy of the cozy cell occupied by Penbui’s brother Khanun at Khmun, although this was larger. Khanun had decorated his walls with bright scenes of everyday life along the river that, though crude, were full of vitality. Penbui’s depictions were more expert but expressed a similarly exuberant joy of living that lifted Huy’s spirits at once. “Khanun and I shared a love of language and a reverence for knowledge,” Penbui said, noting Huy’s glance as he took a chair. “Such interests were unusual in two peasant children raised on a farm. I counted myself most blessed to have finally been appointed caretaker to the precious scrolls in this House of Life after many difficult years. Khanun rejoiced in his success also. But we sometimes missed the simple freedoms of our upbringing.” He waved at his colourful walls.

“My roots are modest also,” Huy told him as Paneb settled at his feet and began to prepare his implements. “Thoth’s priests at Khmun seemed alarmingly refined to the young boy I was. I took refuge with your brother. We had much in common. Please sit, Penbui. The recitation will be long. Paneb, this is not a dictation.”

The scribe set his palette on the floor beside him. The archivist settled back in his chair, crossed his legs, and rested his folded hands against his white-clad lap. At once a long silence fell. A not unpleasant blend of birdsong wafted through the open door of the house together with a thin shaft of sunlight, but it became muted at once by a weight of stillness that had begun to infuse the dim interior of the reception room. To Huy, with Penbui’s gaze fixed steadily on him, it had the quality of the moment just before dawn when a motionless expectancy invaded the world, when everything, even the river itself, seemed to hold its breath.
I have never before recited the Book of Thoth in its entirety, and I do so now, not before kings, nobles, or priests, but before a man as humbly born as myself. Yet it feels right. The flimsy accretions of privilege I have gathered over the years fall away like dead leaves and I am nothing but an instrument of Atum’s will
. His voice, when he spoke into that quiet air, was strong and steady. “Up until yesterday it was believed that the Book consisted of five parts, the scrolls divided between the temples at Iunu and Khmun. Now we know that there is a sixth, here in Mennofer. Each part begins with a declaration by Thoth, who took the dictation of the contents from Atum. Thoth lists his own many titles, warns the reader of the dangers to those who dare to study the sacred concepts within, and then proceeds to set down the mysteries. There’s no need to go through his introduction to every scroll. I’ll recount only Atum’s direct words.”

He paused. A sudden greed for the poppy washed over him, drying his throat and spasming in his fingers, and for one desperate moment all he could see was the vial hanging in a linen pouch from his scribe’s belt. But he fought the dismal familiarity of the desire, and gradually it ebbed under the force of his will. Closing his eyes, he began at the beginning of the very first scroll.

“‘The Universe is nothing but consciousness, and in all its appearances reveals nothing but an evolution of consciousness, from its origin to its end, which is a return to its cause.

“‘How to describe the Indescribable? How to show the Unshowable?

“‘How to express the Unutterable?

“‘How to seize the Ungraspable Instant? …’”

The sonorous phrases rolled off Huy’s tongue, filling the room with their mystery and poetry, and as Huy passed slowly from scroll to scroll he felt time itself draw away from him and collapse into insignificance. He was perched on the edge of his cot in the cell he shared with Thothmes at Ra’s temple school at Iunu. It was evening. The fresh smell of rinsing vinegar rose from the clean sheets under him. Pabast had been late bringing the lamp. He had arrived at the same time as Thothmes, who was bleeding from a scratch on his calf. “I got between Menkh and the ball,” he explained while the servant was setting the lamp on the table between the two couches. “I’ll put some honey on it after we’ve been to the bathhouse. Huy, are you all right?”

Huy, sitting in Chief Archivist Penbui’s house reciting the Book of Thoth, could feel again the sore throat that had been a precursor to the fever through which Thothmes had nursed him, could look with an overwhelming love at the features of his friend’s youthful face as it had once been. As the remembered scene was played out, its details became sharper and more immediate, until Huy no longer knew that he himself was an old man. Thothmes’ worried face as it came close was everything, the yellow lamplight was everything, the incomprehensible words of the very first scroll he had read under the Ished Tree in the centre of the temple were everything as he recited them to Thothmes, there in the sweet safety and predictability of a student’s life.

He was plunged into other scenes so vivid and immediate that the self whose words went on effortlessly filling Penbui’s room was forgotten. “Undo your braid,” Henenu the Rekhet said, and he was sitting in her little house, milk and dried figs on the plain table beside him, the cowrie shells hanging from her waist and festooning her ankles clicking as she ordered her servant to bring oil and a comb. The oil, when it came, gave off a sweet, heavy aroma that made him sleepy in body but alert in mind. He had just finished thanking her for the amulet she had made him, and while she loosened his long hair and began to comb it, he was reciting the few incomprehensible sentences of the Book’s fifth part. The odour of the reremet, the mandrake root she had crushed and added to the oil, filled his nostrils as it imbued the comb gliding over his scalp. She was speaking of his youthful rebellion against the gift of Scrying that had accompanied his agreement to read the Book, a gift that had brought with it an unwelcome sexual impotence that he, now fifteen years old, resented with an angry bitterness. He had begun to hate the god who had imposed such an unexpected consequence on him. “It will be better for you if you realize that for you there are no large choices in life,” she told him as her hands moved hypnotically through his hair. “Your journey was chosen for you by the gods and by you when you agreed to read the Book. The sooner you accept that Atum rules your fate, the sooner you will achieve the peace that eludes you.”

Coming suddenly to himself in the archivist’s house, he could still hear the tuneless clacking of the shells she constantly wore to protect herself against the demons she confronted every day in her work.
She was old even then
, he thought as he struggled to return to the present.
She was my touchstone. She loved me, and I, in my selfish, often careless way, loved and trusted both her great spiritual knowledge and her down-to-earth good sense. I miss her. Gods, there are so many people I miss, so many dear ones I’ve seen carried into their tombs! Only Thothmes and Nasha are left to remind me of my youth, and in spite of my power as mer kat and my ability to foresee the future, I am helpless to prevent their dissolution. Take me back to the hovel I shared with Ishat!
he begged whatever force was separating his memories from the flow of Atum’s words streaming out of him.
Put us face to face, not with the imprecision of common recall but as sharply clear as Thothmes and Henenu were!
His sudden need to be with Ishat was a stab of homesickness so violent that it closed his throat, and seeking the next verse of the Book he realized that the narration was over.

He opened his eyes. Small sounds began to take the place of the profound silence that had seemed to seal the room. Intermittent birdsong, the drowsy rustle of leaves stirring in hot puffs of breeze, the brief cough of the servant waiting in the shade outside, began to return Huy and the others to a welcome normality. Paneb stood, stretched, and then resumed his position on the floor beside Huy. Penbui left his chair with some difficulty, walked to the table, poured two cups of water, and offered one to Huy. Both his hands were shaking. Huy drank eagerly.

Penbui went to the door. “We need food,” he said hoarsely to the servant who had scrambled up. “See what you can find. There should be roasted gazelle left over from last night’s meal, as well as bread, cheese, and plenty of raisins. Don’t forget a large jug of barley beer.” Resuming his seat, he folded his arms, hunching his shoulders as if in defence, but Huy recognized the gesture as one of supreme awe. “Today I am the most privileged citizen in Egypt,” he half whispered. “Today I have heard the words of the great creator-god himself.”

Huy did not answer. Drinking more water, he set an elbow on one knee and, resting his forehead on his open palm, closed his eyes again. He was very tired. No one spoke.
Before I give the archivist the words of Imhotep’s summary, I want to hear his assessment of the Book. He said that he’d read the last scroll, or parts of it. Did he unroll it far enough to find the great man’s conclusion? And shall I tell him about the hyena that haunts me?

He woke startled from a doze some time later to find Paneb’s hand on his arm. “The food is here, Master,” he was saying quietly. “The temple kitchens have provided onion and garlic soup. I know that it’s probably not as hot as the air outside, but please try to eat it. You need to renew your strength.”

Huy looked at his scribe with bleary astonishment. The only conversations he and Paneb had held in all the years of Paneb’s service had concerned matters of palace business or Huy’s investments in the poppy fields and trading caravans. Paneb, sober, punctilious, and excellent at his profession, had never before stepped beyond the bounds of his responsibility.

“Paneb, you made a joke!” Huy exclaimed.

Paneb moved to the table and, picking up a tray from which an appetizing aroma was wafting, brought it to Huy, setting it carefully across his linen-clad thighs and then shaking out a square of napkin. “Kenofer is not here. Therefore it is my privilege to perform his duties.” He draped the napkin carefully between the tray’s edge and Huy’s crumpled shirt and stood back, obviously waiting to serve.

Huy waved him away. “You are not to take over the obligations of my body servant, although you have my gratitude, Paneb. I’m perfectly capable of feeding myself, and I shall indeed eat this wonderful soup. You must eat as much as possible yourself—your task today is about to begin.” Lifting the beer mug to his mouth, he glanced across the room at Penbui.

“We could have gone to the priests’ dining hall, mer kat,” the archivist explained. “After all, the sun is setting and Ptah’s servants break their fast early so as to see to the needs of the god at nightfall. But I assumed that you would not welcome the attentions of my fellows. Not today.”