The King's Man (54 page)

Leaving the litter-bearers under the shade of the many trees dotting the area between the outer wall and the sprawling buildings, they sought admittance through a side door, where Huy sent one of the palace heralds to ask if the King would see him. The man returned quickly. “His Majesty is very eager to receive you, mer kat. His Majesty is in his bedchamber. Shall I call a house servant to escort you?”

“Thank you, but I know the way. Is the Empress with him?”

“Not yet. She is hearing the petitions at present.”

I hope she’ll go from there to the administrative offices
, Huy prayed as he and Paneb moved into the labyrinth of intersecting passages.
That’s what we used to do
. As he walked through the palace, the noise and laughter of the groups of courtiers already congregating at every intersection died away at his approach. Heads were bowed and arms outstretched in reverence. A few of them made sure that their fingers brushed him.
As if by merely touching me they might be healed or given a glimpse of their future
, Huy thought as he passed them. Thothmes’ comments regarding Huy’s titular godhead came to mind and were quickly dismissed. The wide, statue-lined corridor leading to Amunhotep’s imposing double doors was directly ahead, and the King’s personal bodyguard stood with Chief Steward Nubti, watching Huy and Paneb approach. Nubti rose with his usual misshapen grace. Reverencing Huy with a smile, he opened the door behind him, and Huy and Paneb waited, listening to his deep voice announce them. He waved them in.

At once they knelt and performed a full prostration. Huy, with his nose to the floor, could smell a faint trace of Tiye’s perfume, her odd blend of cardamom and myrrh.
Has she spent the night here
, he wondered,
or was she here a short time ago? If so, she may not return and my luck will continue to hold
. Amunhotep’s happy voice bade them stand and approach and they did so, bowing again as they came up to him. He was relaxing in the wide chair beside his couch, swathed to his ankles in crumpled linen, a white cap on his head and his face unpainted. He was beaming at Huy, and for a moment Huy was returned to his office at Hut-herib, where his precious royal charge sat behind his desk with the plans for constructing a ship under his hands, his brown face lifted to Huy’s with a question. Free of cosmetics he was simply an older version of that impatient child, all innocence and anticipation, and Huy’s heart filled with love for him as Amunhotep left his seat and threw his arms around Huy.

“Uncle, this is a great and welcome surprise!” he said as he released Huy and returned to his chair. “I was grumbling at Wesersatet for making me leave my couch so early, but now I’m overjoyed! Your presence has cured the pain in my head! Why didn’t you send me word that you had come home? Sit. Sit!”

“I needed to rest before approaching you,” Huy replied, “and if Your Majesty doesn’t mind, I’d rather stand for now.” He repressed an urge to reach down and stroke the King’s soft cheek. “It’s good to see you also, Amunhotep.”

Some of the cheerfulness went out of the younger man’s brown eyes. “You want to be serious. True to your word, you bring me the vision of my little Prince’s future now that matters in Mennofer have been concluded. I’m anxious to hear it, particularly since for once the gods did not predict an early death for him, but you come to me unadorned and wearing blue. Not all the events in the Seeing are good, are they? I think that the Empress must hear it too.” He beckoned Nubti. Huy noted that Amunhotep had not asked for the results of his visit to Ptah’s temple. Hastily he put out a hand.

“Please, Majesty, not yet,” he said. “What I have to say is for you alone at present.”

Amunhotep sobered. “I have no secrets from Tiye. You are my right hand, Uncle, and she is my left. I insist on her presence. Nubti, bring me wine.”

The chief steward came forward quickly. “But Your Majesty, you have eaten no food yet this morning. Wine on an empty stomach will simply give you another headache, and you had planned to hunt later today.”

Amunhotep flicked his fingers, a gesture of irritable dismissal. “You do not exist in order to mother me! Do as I order you. Stop trying to catch my uncle’s eye, and don’t frown. It makes you look like a cat about to vomit.” Nubti bowed and went out.

The time when Huy might have corrected the King’s rudeness was long gone. He waited in silence, Paneb behind him. The King began to drum his fingers on the gilded arm of his chair. A line of sweat had broken out across his forehead, darkening the band of his cap and sending a whiff of sour rosemary oil into the air. “If the Seeing had been full of promise, you would have told us all of it before you left Weset,” he ventured after a while. “You assured us that my second son will not die in his youth, therefore Anubis showed you some other form of anguish, something terrible.”

“Yes.”

“Then I shall drink before I allow you to speak, mer kat, and Tiye must definitely hear what Atum showed you.”

“But Amunhotep—”

“No buts, Uncle. The boy was spawned from her body. Already she adores him and spends every afternoon in his nursery. He is completely healthy and suckles well. Amulets of protection surround him—”

Huy cut in, leaning towards him. “Majesty, he needs no protection against any Khatyu. No god wishes to unleash a force of demons against him—not yet.”

“Not yet? What does that mean? Senu!” he shouted. “Are you outside my door?”

At once the Chief Palace Herald appeared and sketched a bow. “Majesty?”

“Find the Empress, somewhere in the administrative quarter. She’s to come here at once. Escort her.”

Senu kept his expression bland, but Huy saw astonishment flit swiftly across his features.
Amunhotep doesn’t often issue orders to Tiye
, Huy reflected,
and I wager she will be annoyed at both the summons and the interruption
. Senu bobbed a reverence and went away, closing the door behind him, but it was reopened by a young man Huy did not know, a silver tray bearing a large flagon, a golden cup, and a dish of sweetmeats held ceremoniously before him.

“I don’t need a tedious repetition of the vintage, Tiawi,” Amunhotep said irritably, “and you can take the almond cakes away. I’m not hungry. Just pour and leave.”

Unperturbed, the man did as he was bidden, his movements fraught with solemnity, then turned to bow to Huy. “I am Royal Cup Bearer of Wine Si-Renenut, mer kat, recently appointed to the service of His Majesty. His Majesty and the members of my family call me Tiawi. May I fetch a cup for you also?”

“It would do the Seer no good unless it was laced with lotus flowers, Tiawi,” the King interposed.

Tiawi bowed again. “Unfortunately, the shipment of grape wine that arrived yesterday has not yet been opened,” he explained. “Therefore I have not tasted it nor set aside the required amount for the inclusion of the lotus. However, there are plenty of juices stored beside the kitchens.”

Huy would have liked a cup of pomegranate juice. His mother and the family’s one servant, Hapzefa, used to make it after every harvest and the taste would have brought back to him the security and peace of his earliest years at Hut-herib. But Amunhotep waved Tiawi away. “Thank you, Tiawi,” he snapped. “You may go.”

Tiawi managed to include Huy in his bow. Then, tray in hand, he backed away, bowed once more, and went out.

“I have four wine and beer bearers now,” Amunhotep said. “Tiye complains that I’m getting fatter because of the amount I drink, but as long as I’m able to hunt and satisfy my women, why should I care? Egypt is in more capable hands than mine anyway. You and she took over the government years ago.” He raised the cup and took a mouthful of wine.

“Your mother and I raised you to govern, not Tiye,” Huy reminded him sharply. “As for me, I would like nothing better than to pass the reins of Egypt’s control back to you and spend my time with Thothmes and Nasha, or overseeing the progress of the tomb you have graciously allowed me to place between those of your mighty forebears the Osiris-ones Thothmes the First and the Second of that name, or choosing the final decorations for my totem’s new temple. Why are you suddenly so peevish, Majesty?”

Amunhotep smiled faintly over the rim of his cup. Huy could see that he was doing his best to regain his good humour. “I don’t know, Uncle,” he admitted ruefully. “I want to be bathed and dressed and then visit my stables. I ought to be more than eager to learn the details of the Seeing now that I’ve waited for months, but if something appalling waits to overtake the Prince years from now, why do I need to concern myself with it today?”

Huy was saved from answering. The doors were flung back and Tiye swept into the room followed by her body servant Heria, carrying her spare sandals, whisk, and cosmetic box, Chief Palace Herald Senu, Tiye’s steward, the King’s steward Nubti, and a couple of palace guards. The room was suddenly full of bowed heads.

“Senu, you should have told me that the Seer was here,” Tiye said as she passed Huy without acknowledging his obeisance and settled herself into the vacant chair next to her husband. “Nubti, bring me a footrest and another cup—I might as well refresh myself. Chief Treasurer Sobekhmose and I have been talking together ever since I left the audience chamber and my throat is dry.” Coolly her eyes met Huy’s. She was wearing a sheath of pale green that emphasized the red lights in her loose hair. Her jewellery, from the circlet on her brow to the anklets on her half-hidden feet, was made of gold unrelieved by any embellishment. Even the rings on each of her fingers were bereft of any stone, the patterns on them etched into the metal. Huy thought that she looked magnificent and powerful, the impression of self-assurance evident in her heavily lidded eyes and the cruel downward turn of her hennaed mouth. Still in her mid-twenties, she exuded the authority of complete competence.

We worked so well together, you and I, in the days when we argued ourselves and the various ministers into policies from which grew the empire Egypt now controls
, he said to her mutely.
I wish that we had remained friends
.

Nubti was approaching with a small footrest, which he set on the floor in front of her, and another cup. Half filling it with wine, he bowed and retreated.

Tiye swung her feet onto the footrest, took a mouthful of wine, and set the cup down loudly on the table between herself and Amunhotep. “Well?” she said sharply to Huy. “The gods know I’ve waited quite long enough for this revelation. What did Anubis show to you in the matter of the Prince’s future?”

She glanced at Paneb as though uninterested in him, but a brief twist of what Huy could only interpret as jealousy marred her face.
The lowly scribe Paneb already knows what you do not
, Huy thought.

Amunhotep raised his voice. “Leave us, all of you. Wait in the passage. Nubti, Seer Huy will come for you when we have finished.” Obediently they all bowed themselves out. The double doors closed behind them and Amunhotep’s attention returned to Huy. He reached across the small table to grasp Tiye’s hand. “You look pale, Uncle,” he said kindly to Huy. “Perhaps you should sit after all.”

A sudden weakness was beginning to make Huy’s knees tremble. Dragging a stool from Amunhotep’s cosmetics table, he placed it before them and sank onto it gratefully.

“Now, Uncle, tell us everything. You wear blue in order to warn us, don’t you?” Huy saw him tighten his hold on Tiye, whose gaze was already fixed coldly on Huy’s face.

At Huy’s signal Paneb went to the floor and prepared to record the proceedings. He had not been ordered to leave with the other servants.
I want an accurate account of everything said today, and so does Amunhotep
, Huy decided.
He’s not as obtuse as he would like his courtiers to think
. Clearing his throat, trying not to clench his fists, Huy began.

He spoke of the strange city in which he had found himself, the malformed body of the King who stood with several women and girls above the crowd, the awarding of the Gold of Favours, the distressing answers to Huy’s questions given by Anubis in the guise of the anonymous man beside him. He spoke of temples left empty, priests turned out to wander begging from village to village, the gods’ storehouses cleared of gold and grain that went into the silos of the Aten and its worshippers at Akhet-Aten while the rest of Egypt starved. Paneb’s brush remained poised over the papyrus on his palette as Huy repeated the details of the vision already copied and filed away. As Huy went on, Amunhotep sat frozen, oblivious to the wine cup resting on his thigh or Tiye’s fingers curled tightly around his own. Tiye’s eyes stayed fixed on Huy. He was able to read nothing in them. At his first words a dull red had flushed her cheeks, fading almost at once to a patchy sallowness, and her features had gone blank, but he could see the gradual tensing of the rest of her body.

Today I am atoning for the loss of courage I displayed before the Osiris-one Amunhotep the Second
, he thought as his bleak words filled the room.
I am discharging my debt to you, Ma’at, and to you, mighty Atum. If the hyena is haunting me because of that perfidy, dismiss it, I beg you, and let me live out the remainder of my days in peace!

When there was nothing left to say, no detail overlooked, he closed his mouth. A deep silence descended. Neither the King nor Tiye moved, and Huy, free at last from an oppressive burden, felt a tide of giddy elation spread out from his dry throat and surge along his limbs, leaving them limp with relief. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Paneb dip his brush into the ink and hold it ready, but still the pair were motionless. A low murmur of conversation from the group of servants waiting outside the door came drifting faintly through the wood. The odour of Tiye’s perfume mingled with the King’s sweat. The blend seemed to intensify, hanging both acrid and unpleasantly magnetic in the still air. Finally Huy left the stool, and at his movement Amunhotep let go his grip on his wife’s fingers, unsteadily set the cup he had been holding on the table, and bent forward. When he spoke, his voice was reedy.

“Let me be sure I understand,” he said. “You are telling me that my son will grow up to be physically deformed, inherit the Horus Throne, blaspheme against every one of Egypt’s deities but the Visible Disc, and desert Amun’s home for a new city? This is the future Anubis showed you?”