House of Dreams (14 page)

“Again,” she nodded, removing my tray, “and every morning.” She held out a fresh sheet and I slid off the couch to be wrapped in it. “Once I am satisfied with the condition of your body, Thu, the routine will not be as harsh.” The papyrus slippers appeared and she knelt to put them on me. “Do not be angry with me,” she begged half-seriously. “I only fulfil the wishes of the Master through the words of Harshira.” I sighed, and followed her into the passage.

The same bland faces ministered to me in the bath house, and the same young man stroked and pounded at my body. I was shaved again but not plucked, to my profound relief. The process did not take as long as it had the day before and I felt guilty for taking some enjoyment from it. Afterwards I returned to my room to find that a small but very beautiful table had been set up under the window. It exuded the faint, steady scent of cedar wood and its polished surface was cunningly inlaid with gold in the likeness of Hathor, goddess of youth and beauty. Her serene face looked up at me and the sun sparked along her gracefully curving cow’s horns as I ran my fingertips over her, marvelling at the workmanship. Disenk indicated that I should sit. Her own hand went to a catch on the rim of the table and half of the top lifted on cunningly concealed hinges to reveal a cavity full of pots, brushes and spoons. Deftly Disenk arranged a selection on the half that remained closed, and placed a copper mirror in my lap. “What are you going to do?” I wanted to know.

“You are very young, and do not require much painting,” she replied, “but no one should go about without kohl to protect and beautify the eyes, and the mouth also should be guarded. Each night I will anoint your face with oil and honey, but for the day, simple cleanliness is enough.” Her hands were busy opening tiny jars and selecting brushes. She peered into two pots, frowning, holding them against my cheeks, weighing the effect.

“Show me,” I ordered. She did so. They both contained powdered khol, one a dark grey and the other green.

“Your eyes are blue,” she said, “therefore the green is not for you.” While she spoke she had been dropping water into a tiny crucible and adding the grey powder, mixing it carefully with a bone stick carved to resemble a river reed. Her actions were graceful but deft and I wondered for the first time who had trained her, and where, and what her origins might be. “Close please,” she commanded. I did so, my eyelids quivering at the unaccustomed touch as the brush passed over them. I felt the slickness on my temples and for just a moment caught a whiff of her breath, an odour of cumin that was far from unpleasant. “You may open,” she said. “For your mouth I have red ochre, also brushed. Part your lips a little, Thu.” There was a pause, and this time the brush tickled. “Now look at yourself.”

I did so, bringing up the copper mirror in some trepidation, then gasped at what I saw. An exotic creature gazed back at me, the dark paint now emphasizing the startling clarity of my blue eyes so that they dominated my face over cheekbones that had suddenly become delicately patrician. My brown skin had a healthy sheen to it. The red mouth was parted in surprise, the lips full and lush. “It’s magic,” I whispered, and the image mimicked my words. The eyes narrowed seductively then widened. I could not put the mirror down. Disenk chuckled, obviously complimented.

“Not magic, Thu,” she said. “Any proficient cosmetician can make beautiful that which is truly ugly, but painting you requires no skill. You are an easy assignment.”

Something in her artless words chilled me. Slowly I lowered the mirror. I wanted to ask her what all this pampering was for. After all, Hui had brought me to Pi-Ramses only to be his servant. Or was there another reason? Had he lied when he told my father that he would guard my virginity more closely than Father himself had done? Was I being prepared for his bed? Suddenly I felt suffocated. Disenk was combing my hair in long, sure strokes but her touch no longer seemed pleasurable.

“I am flattered that the Master has seen fit to take such a personal interest in me,” I managed clumsily. “Surely not all his servants are accorded this attention.” Her movements did not falter. The comb continued to glide through my heavy tresses.

“All the house servants must be physically acceptable and presentable,” she pointed out. “Forgive me, Thu, but when I first saw you yesterday I might have mistaken you for a kitchen slave. Many important people come here. The servants must reflect the taste and elegance of the establishment.”

I was somewhat reassured but not altogether convinced. Not every servant had a sumptuous room to herself, of that I was sure, for did not Disenk herself sleep in the passageway and was she not, by her own admission, my body servant as well as my teacher? I resolved to question Harshira though the prospect was horrifying. Disenk was binding a blue ribbon round my forehead and arranging its ends to fall one over each shoulder. She reached for a jar, broke the wax seal on it, and using another bone stick she anointed me with the contents, pressing gently under my ears, in the hollow of my neck, against my inner elbows. She stroked it through my hair, and gradually the light but pervasive tang of oil of saffron filled the atmosphere. “There!” she said with evident satisfaction. “Now for your sheath and sandals and you will be ready.”

I stood woodenly as she pulled the garment expertly over my head, avoiding contact with my face, and settled it tight to my body. The linen was white and fine, softer than anything I had ever felt let alone worn, even softer than the kilt Father had brought home so triumphantly for Pa-ari. It draped itself around my slight curves as though it had been made for no one else. A slit up one side would allow me to walk and I looked down admiringly but warily at my provocative length as Disenk put the sandals on my feet. “Remember, Thu,” she warned me, straightening and regarding her handiwork critically, “you must not lope. The sheath will allow small, polite steps, very graceful, very becoming, and you will soon become used to its restriction. A lady does not gallop.” She went to the door and called sharply. A boy entered promptly and bowed. “He will take you to Harshira,” she said, and I turned about and left her, feeling as though I was being torn from my mother’s arms.

The little slave moved confidently ahead of me along the passage while I teetered after him. My natural stride was long and within a very short time I was in danger of falling on my face as the sheath caught me with every move. At the head of the stairs leading down to the centre of the house I paused. I had had enough. “Wait!” I called to my silent guide, and bending, I examined the stitches in the side of the sheath where the slit ended. They were tight. My mother would have approved of the skill they exhibited. Nevertheless I worked at them until they loosened then I picked several of them undone. The slit was now above my knee but I did not care. The boy was looking at me aghast, as though I had stopped to actually take off the stupid garment. “What are you staring at?” I snapped at him, half in annoyance and half incredulous at my own temerity, and he raised his hands to me, palms skyward, in the ancient gesture of submission and apology and turned away.

I squared my shoulders in defence and anticipation as we came to the foot of the stairs, but the table where the Chief Steward had sat only the day before was empty. The boy marched past it, turned left away from the main reception hall so that we faced the large, open doorway that gave out onto the rear garden and estate wall, then left again along an inside corridor. The distance was not great. A closed door barred our way. He knocked, was bidden to enter, did so, announced me loudly and succinctly, then slipped past me and vanished. I walked into the room.

It was full of light and I realized immediately that it lay directly under my quarters, for I could see the front courtyard with the waist-high wall, the gate and the trees clustering beyond. A gardener was just disappearing into the far shade, tools over his shoulder, and a kilted young man strode casually past the window. I could hear his sandals tapping on the paving. This is a good place for the office of the Chief Steward, I thought, even as I came to a halt and bowed. He can see everyone who comes and goes. Nothing will escape him during the daylight hours. I wonder where he sleeps?

The man himself was sitting, as before, behind a table, but this one was massive and laden with papyrus scrolls of every size. A silver dish piled with wrinkled purple pomegranates sat half-buried to his right hand, a wine jug to his left. Cupboards and chests lined half of each wall from floor to ceiling. The other half was taken up with doors. One, I surmised, led to the main hall and the other surely let into the quarters of the Master and his other important staff members. There my observations ended, for the man himself waved me forward. There was an empty chair beside me but he did not invite me to sit. I resisted the urge to clasp my hands nervously together. His kohled eyes travelled me from head to toe without expression. Both his hands, heavily ringed and surprisingly slim for a man of his girth, remained flat on the desk before him.

“Are you well?” he asked harshly after the moment of silence. I nodded. “Good,” he went on in the same noncommittal tone. “Today you will dictate a letter to your family, telling them so. When you have finished you will spend the rest of the afternoon in the company of one of the under-scribes, who will begin to teach you how to write and will assess your reading ability. After your evening meal, which you will take with Disenk in your own room, you will exercise with the Master’s physical instructor. Then you will take a history lesson. That is all. Do you have any questions?”

I did indeed. I had a dozen questions, but under his dark, impassive gaze I felt myself quail. Pull yourself together, Thu, I told myself sternly. Pretend you are a princess and this man is nothing, an inferior whose fate you can decide with a toss of your beautiful, beautiful head. I moistened my lips, wondering fleetingly as I did so if I was transferring red ochre from my mouth to my tongue and would end up looking twice as stupid as I felt.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, with a poise that surprised me, “I have several. If, of course, it is permitted.” My tone was more sarcastic than I had intended and one of his carefully plucked eyebrows rose a fraction. He lifted one finger from the desk as an indication that I might continue. I took a deep breath. “Why must I take a history lesson?”

“Because you are an ignorant little girl.”

“I swim in the river every day. Why must I exercise?” Disenk’s comment regarding cleanliness had rankled. He did not move.

“Because if you do not exercise you will eventually become unattractively flabby.” Unconsciously I stepped nearer to the desk. “Your pardon, Harshira,” I said firmly, “but what does it matter whether I am unattractive or not? I am here to assist the Master in his labours, am I not? Yet I am primped and pampered like a … a concubine!” The word came hard to my tongue and I knew, furiously, ashamedly, that I was blushing. The exacting morals of my peasant upbringing ran strong and deep in me in spite of my reckless nature and I could see my mother’s disapproving face as she reproved me for wanting to talk about some village woman who had been behaving in an unseemly manner. “Concubine,” to my Aswat neighbours, was synonymous with laziness and moral depravity. A man might take a destitute village woman into the bosom of his family, sleep with her, have children by her, but always for the right reasons. Sexual adventure alone was not one of them. His legitimate wife might be barren or in poor health so that she could not perform her household duties. The woman in question would have no other recourse due to her straitened circumstances. When the villagers spoke of Pharaoh’s harem it was always in terms of our Ruler’s necessity to safeguard the Horus Throne with many potential heirs, ridiculous though the justification might be.

Harshira smiled. His huge cheeks rose. His dark eyes narrowed and for a moment lost their imperturbability. “Did the Master make you any such promise?” he asked me pointedly.

Promise? Promise! Did this man think that the prospect of concubinage was something to be yearned for, anticipated? “Certainly not!” I burst out.

“Then why are you anxious? Or are you, in your vanity, perhaps disappointed? I assure you that your virginity is quite safe in this house. Just do as you are told, like an obedient little peasant. Give thanks for your good fortune, learn while you can, and leave the larger issues to those who know better. Is there anything else? No?” He reached behind him and struck one note on a small copper gong. At once the door on the right opened and a servant came in and stood expectantly. “If he is unoccupied, ask Ani to grace me with his presence,” the Steward ordered. The man bowed and left. Crushed, I put my hands behind my back and gazed out the window with attempted nonchalance, seeing out of the corner of my eye that Harshira had placed his elbows on the desk, fingers steepled under his broad chin, and was watching me carefully. Suddenly he laughed, the sound a booming roar that made me jump. “We shall see,” he chuckled. “Yes indeed.” He poured wine from the jug, picked up the cup, inhaled slowly, then sipped with evident enjoyment. Putting down the cup he unrolled one of the scrolls littering the table and began to read, ignoring me.

I remained still, struggling with my anger. His treatment of me was at such variance with the way I had been catered to by Disenk’s small army of servants that I was completely disarmed. It was as though he had set out to deliberately prevent me from fancying myself the lady Disenk was trying to create. And perhaps that is so, I thought darkly, my attention going to the one long golden earring trembling against his bull neck as his head bent lower over the scroll. One holds out the sweetmeats, the other wields the whip. To what end? In what strange school have I found myself? But before I could consider the matter further the door behind me opened. Harshira immediately let the scroll rustle closed and stood. I turned.

The man coming forward, smiling, can only be described as anonymous. It was a word I used for him much later. At the time I merely felt that I must look him over several times before I could form an image of him in my mind that could be retained. He was of average height, neither strikingly tall nor short. His build was unremarkable, his features completely regular, even the lines around his mouth could have been drawn by an indifferent artist carving one face in a crowd of similarly middle-aged men. His wig was a simple black shoulder-length creation. He wore a plain white tunic and a thigh-high white kilt. I would have passed him by in the street without a glance or worse, not known that anyone had shared the path with me. His eyes, like Harshira’s, said nothing of what was inside, but unlike the Chief Steward’s, they gave no hint of intelligence beneath. He was a man to be forgotten, ignored, a man whose presence would never prompt feelings of inferiority or arrogance. In a room alone with him, one would be entirely oneself. He and Harshira exchanged bows.