House of Dreams (26 page)

10

I SPENT MOST
of the seventy days of mourning for Kenna in my room with Disenk. There was nothing to do and not much to say. Disenk spoke occasionally of a Kenna I had never known, a man who loved dogs and who had captured and tried to tame one of the desert creatures, shy and harmless but traditionally impossible to domesticate; a man whose mother had abandoned him in the streets of Pi-Ramses when he was three years old and who had steadfastly revered Bes, god of motherhood and the family, in the hope that one day he might be reunited with the woman who had cared so little for him.

I did not want to hear these things but I bit my lip and listened in a storm of confusion, guilt, relief and fear. In the long silences, when the heat of the season blended with the unaccustomed hush throughout the house so that it seemed to me as if time itself had died with Kenna and we were all suspended in an eternal limbo, I sat cross-legged on a cushion under the window, staring at the floor, and tried to recapture something of the person I had been. I did not want to examine the emotions that raged in my heart. Hour after hour I pushed them away, but just when I was able to achieve a precarious calm some image would blossom unbidden in my mind and my throat would go dry, my stomach churn. Kenna’s shadowed face by the river when the Master swam in the moonlight. Kenna pacing across the courtyard in Hui’s wake, obedient and respectful, his head down over the linen he carried. The feel of Kenna’s mouth under my own, firmness melting briefly into passion.

Much worse were the searingly fresh memories of Kenna’s clammy shoulders slumped against my chest, the feel of his hot, quick breath on my skin. These could not be fought and I sank helplessly under them. They passed, but at night new horrors attacked me as I tried vainly to sleep. I saw the sempriest in the House of the Dead bend over Kenna’s corpse and force the iron hook into his nostril to draw out his brain. I saw his flank slashed with the Nubian stone and the priest rip apart his skin to lift his cold, grey intestines onto the embalming bench. In the end I sent for Harshira, for I dared not approach Hui, and asked that he beg an infusion of poppy from the Master so that I could rest. The medicine came in due course and without comment and I drank it down, wondering dully whether it would be my last act before facing the gods of the Judgement Hall. But Hui did not exact revenge on me and after many hours of drugged unconsciousness I woke sluggishly, swollen-faced and thickheaded, to another day of inactivity and mental torture.

It was as though the house was sealed. No litters disgorged guests, no laughter broke the shimmering emptiness of the courtyard whose paving pattern became as well known to me as the delineations of my own face. Once I thought I heard a female voice below my window but was too lethargic to get off the couch where I was lying. Disenk told me later that the Lady Kawit had visited her brother to express her condolences.

I was not permitted to attend the funeral on the seventy-first day of mourning. I knelt at my window and watched the members of the household drift quietly across the courtyard and in under the trees on their way to the waiting barges. Kenna would be placed in a simple wooden coffin and would lie in the small rock-cut tomb Hui had provided on his behalf. So Disenk told me. There his friends and fellow servants would gather for the rituals of passing. They would eat the funeral feast outside the tomb and bury the remains of the food, and the little cave would be sealed. Disenk, solemn and cool, had wanted to attend but had obviously been instructed to stay with me. I at last persuaded her to come with me into the garden and we sat in the unearthly stillness, not speaking, while the hollow house drowsed, bathed in white sunlight, and even the birds were silent.

Towards evening we went back inside and Disenk prepared a simple meal for me herself. I had little appetite but I ate, just to please her. Later as she was sewing by the light of a lamp and I was moodily picking through the scrolls of time-honoured stories, songs and poems I liked to read for my own satisfaction, I heard the house begin to revive. The courtyard filled with the sound of chatter and hurrying footsteps. Downstairs a door slammed. Disenk looked up. “It is over,” she said quietly, and bent to her work again. I heard Hui’s voice outside, faint but familiar, and Harshira’s deep bass as he answered.

Suddenly it was as though a crushing weight had been jerked from my chest. I took a long, slow breath. It was over. I had not seen my Master for more than two months but it did not matter, he intended to forgive me, life would go on. Where the weight had been there was now the soft, healthy heaviness of a natural exhaustion. I yawned. “Undress me, Disenk,” I said. “I think I will go to bed now.” She obeyed immediately. I fought my sleepiness until she had finished the usual ritual of massaging my face with oils and honey. Then I fell at once into the blessed dark pit of unconsciousness. There were no dreams.

In the morning, before I had even left my couch, someone knocked on the door. Disenk opened it. A short, powerfully built man stood there. He smiled at Disenk and bowed briefly across the room to me.

“I am Neferhotep, the Master’s new body servant,” he said. “I bring this for Thu and Disenk. I also bring a message. Thu is expected to attend the Master for work as soon as she has completed her personal tasks.” Thrusting a small bowl at Disenk he smiled again and withdrew. Disenk carried it carefully to me as I swung my legs from under the sheets.

“What is it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in bewilderment. I looked. Two shiny green leaves were floating in clear water. I stared at them, and gradually a tide of happiness swept over me. He must have put them in the water as soon as he came back from Kenna’s funeral, I thought delightedly. One for her, one for me. A gesture of reassurance, a promise of forgiveness, permission to laugh again. Reaching into the bowl I fished out one leaf, shook the moisture from it, and handed it to Disenk. She backed away suspiciously and I took the bowl from her and set it on the table.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “Put it in your mouth and chew it slowly. It is a kat leaf. Trust me!” I took the other leaf and laid it on my tongue. Hesitantly she imitated me, frowning at the bitter taste. For a moment we stood facing each other and chewing thoughtfully, but it was not long before we were giggling together over nothing.

We went down to the bath house arm in arm. I stood on the bathing stone with my eyes closed while I was washed and the fragrant warm water was trickled over me. Never had the feel of liquid on my skin been so insidiously sensuous, nor had the morning air been so full of delicious odours as I left the small room and went to lie on the bench for my massage. It will be all right, I thought deliberately, luxuriously, as the young man’s hands began their daily chore. Time is moving me forward again. I laughed aloud on a tide of well-being and the capable fingers were temporarily stilled.

“My touch is not sure today?” came the query. I laughed again, knowing it was the kat but more than the kat. It was the breath in my nostrils, the strong, healthy beating of my heart, the tiny spot of burning on my heel where the sun had moved the shade away. Kenna was dead but I was alive.

“Your touch is wonderful, as always,” I answered, and thought, it is over. I am free.

Hui greeted me as though nothing at all had happened. After his habitual keen glance over me to make sure my eyes were correctly kohled and my sheath spotless we proceeded with the day’s duties. I had presumed that he would look strained, that there would be a certain aura of sadness about him at least for a while, but he showed no evidence of grief. I knew now in what esteem he had held his body servant but I supposed that the seventy days had leached out his sorrow. I had a moment of profound shock when halfway through the morning I heard someone enter the office behind me and Hui said absently, “Yes, it is permitted to clean now,” but of course it was Neferhotep armed with rags and broom who busied himself around us. He did not call for beer.

The house returned quickly to its regular routine and so did I. Letters to my family were dictated, prescriptions noted and made up, the work went on in the herb room. Such rigidity served to make one day flow seamlessly into another with very little to distinguish them and soon Kenna’s presence became nothing but an uncomfortable, fleeting memory.

Under the simple sheaths I wore every day my body slowly changed. My breasts grew more prominent, my hips gently rounded. I continued to exercise every morning with Nebnefer, to stand in the bath house and lie on the massage bench, to sit before Disenk’s cosmetic table while she painted my face and dressed my hair.

I cannot remember the moment when I realized that Hui’s establishment had truly become my home. I did not consider how the very restrictions placed on my life had forced an unnatural reliance upon its complete security, its unwavering predictability. I saw the same familiar faces from week to week, performed the same tasks, and except in my sleep I ceased to feel uneasy at the changelessness of it all. I was a prisoner unaware of her true state, a favoured child refused the challenges of unfolding maturity, so that although I became expert in the variety and application of all Hui’s medicinal herbs and poisons, though my memory became faultless and my body perfect, my will remained dormant. I was not required to make a single decision regarding myself and I was content that it should be so.

Three months fled by. Then it was Payni, the middle of the season of Shemu again, three weeks before my naming day, and everything changed.

I had risen as usual and the morning had been entirely uneventful. There had perhaps been less to do during my afternoon hours in the office after the noon sleep and in spite of the absence of any real work Hui seemed tense and preoccupied, but I retired to my room pleased with my day. It lacked two hours to sunset. Walking through my door I came to an abrupt halt. Blue linen, the palest, most delicate colour I had ever seen, shimmered and cascaded over my couch, and the smooth contours of my bedcovering could be seen through it. On the table beside the couch a wig rested on a stand. Beside it was a tumble of jewels. Disenk turned from her cosmetics and smiled. Coming to me quickly she closed the door and ushered me forward.

“What is all this?” I wanted to know. She was already unfastening my sheath as she replied.

“Word has come from Harshira that you are to attend a small feast tonight with the Master and a few guests. They will be arriving at dusk. We must be busy.”

“But who is arriving? Why am I invited too? What is going on, Disenk? Do you know?”

“Yes I know, but I have been instructed to give you no information,” she said primly, and for a moment I was awash in the same anxiety and fear that used to plague me when I first arrived. I allowed her to seat me and remove my sandals. I was now completely naked but for the ribbon in my hair which she proceeded to gently slide away.

“Well, what is expected of me then?” I persisted. “Am I to go as a servant, or as the Master’s apprentice? How am I to behave?” I was suddenly panic-stricken. Strangers entering the womb where I had learned to curl up safely. New eyes appraising me, judging me … Disenk was massaging my feet.

“You will behave as I have taught you, Thu,” she said calmly. “You no longer belong to the fellahin. Perhaps you do not realize it, but you walk and talk and eat and converse now quite naturally like a lady. You have become accomplished.”

“It is another test,” I blurted. “After all this time, Hui is still testing me!”

“You are right,” she admitted, “but I think that you will not be displeased when you know why. Now allow me to wash your hands and remove the old paint from your face. We must begin afresh.”

“I have been a member of this household long enough that I can be trusted with its secrets!” I objected hotly, but I submitted to her soothing, efficient touch and gradually composed myself. It did no good to kick against the goad and besides, I was eyeing that river of almost translucent blue linen rippling over my couch with mounting interest. “Am I to wear that?” I asked Disenk, nodding in its direction.

“Of course. And the Master has said that if all goes well tonight you may keep it.”

“If I behave myself and do not embarrass him, you mean,” I muttered but my innate optimism was stirring, the long-buried need for adventure and challenge, and I decided quite deliberately to enjoy myself to the full. It was entirely possible that the invitation to dine would not be repeated. I had sensed Hui’s deeply buried callous streak a long time ago.

Once washed, I sat before the little cosmetic table while Disenk worked her magic. Grey eye paint on my lids and thick black kohl drawn to my temples brought my glittering blue eyes into instant, alluring prominence. My eyebrows were also emphasized with the kohl. Carefully Disenk pried the lid from a tiny jar, and taking a fine brush she loaded it with the contents. “Tip your head back,” she commanded and I did so, catching a sparkle out of the corner of my eye. Studiously she shook the fine grains over my lids and brushed them over my face. “It is gold dust,” she told me, anticipating my question, and I was dumb with wonder. Gold dust! For me!