House of Dreams (28 page)

“Gautut?” I was shocked. “But the District of Gautut is on the left bank of the Nile, in the Delta, it is a part of Egypt!”

“Four years ago the Delta was occupied from Carbana to On by the Meshwesh,” Hui pointed out. “Ramses and his army finally managed to repulse them. Their chief, Mesher, was captured. His father, Keper, pleaded for mercy for his son but Pharaoh would not listen. Mesher was executed. Did the peasants of Aswat know nothing of this, Thu? What age do they think they live in?”

“They are more concerned with how to pay their taxes and find their food!” I flashed back at him, stung. “What are events in the Delta to them? Merely the faint echoes of an Egypt that they cannot afford to care about!”

There was an awkward silence, during which Hui stared at me speculatively. Then he began to smile. “There is still a little peasant lurking behind that accomplished exterior,” he said softly. “And her loyalties are primitive and unreflective. But it is all right, Thu. I like that tough little daughter of the earth. She knows how to survive.” He stirred, uncrossed his legs, and began to unbraid his hair. “What do you think of Paibekamun, our aristocratic High Steward?” I watched the ropes of creamy hair fall free in a rippling wave.

“He is shrewd and cold,” I suggested hesitantly, “and though he may smile and nod and converse, his true nature is well concealed.” Hui tossed the silver threads that had been woven into his plait onto the desk behind him and slid to his feet.

“You are right,” he declared flatly. “Paibekamun is an exemplary Steward, efficient and silent, and his King thinks very highly of him. So do I, but for very different reasons.” He stifled a yawn. “You acquitted yourself well, Thu. I am pleased.” I scrambled up.

“Then I may keep the blue sheath?”

“Little mercenary!” He tapped me lightly on the cheek. “I think you may, and the jewellery as well.”

“Really?” I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Thank you, Master!” A look of sadness came over his face and he sighed.

“I have become very fond of you, my ruthless assistant,” he said quietly. “Go to your couch now, and sleep the day away. Dawn is here.”

I was halfway to the door when some devil stirred in me, a wicked yet pathetic impulse. I turned.

“Marry me, Hui,” I blurted recklessly. “Take me for your wife. I already share your work. Let me share your bed also.” He did not seem taken aback. His mouth quivered, whether from mirth or some other strong emotion, I did not know.

“Little girl,” he said at last, “you have spent the years of your growing in this house, and I am the only man you have really known since you were obedient to your father and frolicked with your brother. You stand on the brink of a dazzling maturity. You have tasted true power once. You will do so again. There is a larger issue in Egypt than either your happiness or mine, and that is my true work. You do not share it yet. I am not the one to take your virginity, and though you imagine that I have taken your heart, it is not so. I do not wish to marry. Leave me now.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to argue, even to beg, for I suddenly sensed a severing, but he gestured violently and I left him, pacing the empty, dawn-drowsy passages until I came to my own domain. Disenk rose from her pallet by the door and quickly undressed and washed me. I watched the water in the bowl become rust coloured as the henna dribbled from my palms. My head had begun to ache. So did my heart. Oh, Hui, I thought as I lay down and Disenk drew the covers over me. If you have not taken my heart, then where is the man who can possibly loom larger in my life than you?

The following morning I reported for work with some trepidation, not knowing how I might be received after my outburst of two nights ago, but my Master greeted me with a warm smile. “Do not become too comfortable, Thu,” he said cheerfully. “Your naming day is less than three weeks away and I have decided to give you your gift early. Today you may come with me to the palace.”

“Oh, Master!” I exclaimed. “Thank you! You have business there?”

“No,” he grinned. “You do. An important man is complaining of abdominal pain and fever, and I have decided that you shall make the diagnosis while I stand by with my palette and take notes. You are perfectly capable of this,” he assured me, seeing my expression. “Have I not trained you myself?”

“But how should I behave in the palace?” I asked in momentary panic, and he rolled his eyes.

“You will behave like a physician, briskly, kindly and competently. Put on your pretty blue linen and tell Disenk to henna your soles and palms. Wear the jewellery but not the wig. I will meet you in the courtyard presently and we will share a litter. Do not be long!”

I nodded vigorously and almost ran from the room. I was delighted and scared. My life had been a placid river for so long, with but one whirlpool, the death of Kenna. Now, in a breathlessly short time, it had become a torrent of stormy water, exhilarating and unpredictable in its surges. I was determined to weather each one.

11

BY THE TIME
I hurried through the main doors and out into the courtyard Hui was already waiting in the litter, bound in his linen like a sitting corpse. I climbed in beside him and at once he gave the order to move, leaning across me to pull the curtains closed as he did so. “Oh please, Master!” I protested as our conveyance rose onto the shoulders of the bearers. “Could we not leave them open? I have seen nothing outside your estate for more than two years!” He hesitated then grunted an assent and I lay back on the cushions, my eyes on the shrubbery of the garden gliding by. We were escorted by four household guards and I could hear their steady tread before and behind. The shadow of the entrance pylon slid over us and was gone.

We turned right, and there, just beyond Hui’s water-steps, was the Lake of the Residence, its level low because of the season, sparkling dully in the bright sunlight. A small craft with one lone rower was passing, and behind it the bulk of a laden barge loomed majestically. On the farther bank three skiffs lay beached, their white lateen sails collapsed and flapping idly in the intermittent, hot breeze. Above them was a jumble of roofs and then the brazen blueness of the summer sky. My vision was suddenly obscured by a group of four or five servants hurrying in the opposite direction along the road which we were sharing. Their bare feet kicked up little clouds of dust. They were talking animatedly and hardly glanced into the litter as they went by. A contingent of soldiers swung out and marched past us. They were heavily bearded, with coarse kilts aproned in leather and horned bronze helmets. They ignored us. “Shardana mercenaries,” Hui said tersely.

The sounds of the great city were more evident now, shouts and the creak of cart wheels, braying of donkeys, and other unidentifiable noises all blending into a hum of activity and industry that formed a faint, wind-shivered background to the gentle slap of water against the water-steps of the noble dwellings we moved slowly past. The road curved inward past these places, and huge walls reared up to our right, their tops hung with bristling palms and drooping tree branches whose shade dappled us. The watersteps were all guarded by men who watched the traffic carefully in spite of the fact that no one was allowed to use this road except those who lived or worked in the palace or the homes of the privileged that fronted the Lake.

My gaze remained on the water, and just as I had seen them so many months ago, Pharaoh’s barges came into view, rocking at anchor at the foot of his dazzlingly white marble watersteps. Their gold and silver chasings flashed. The imperial blue-and-white flags rippled high on their prows. Guards stood solemnly motionless before them. Although I was no longer the spellbound country girl who had once gazed on these marvels open-mouthed, they still filled me with wonder.

We turned right again. The watersteps were now behind us, and a vast marble landing had opened out, ringed with soldiers. Our litter was gently lowered and we got out. “We must walk from here,” Hui said. He reached back into the litter for his palette and box of medicines and I looked about.

Although the landing was surrounded on both sides by neatly trimmed trees and lush grass, it was so wide that we were standing in harsh heat where the shade could not touch us. Ahead, a granite pylon reared. Before its two sides, high standards lifted blue-and-white flags into the heavens and through its gateless centre I could see a paved path crowded with more trees. I am going to enter the palace, I thought, choked with elation. Somewhere beyond that pylon is the most powerful God in the whole world and I will be breathing the air he breathes, treading the floors his feet have rested upon. Each face I see has looked upon his face. Each ear has heard his voice. “Come,” Hui ordered, and I gathered my wits and fell in beside him, walking under the pylon where the gate guards gave us a sharp glance and then bowed.

A short distance in, the path I had glimpsed divided, running to left and right as well as straight ahead. Hui gestured to the left. “That goes to the harem,” he explained, “and to the right to the banqueting hall, the King’s office, and the rear gardens. We go to neither.” As he was speaking a man had materialized from the trees by the path and was approaching us. He bowed.

“Greetings, Noble Hui,” he said. “I am the Herald Menna. You are expected.” Hui gave him a curt nod and we set off, our four household guards behind us.

The pillars of the public reception area were easily visible long before we came up to them, four tall columns crowned in folded lotus buds and painted a spotless white. Soldiers stood at the foot of each one, eyes staring straight ahead, ignoring the people who came and went between them. Menna strode on. Beyond the pillars the coolness enveloped me like the embracing depths of the Nile itself and my footsteps echoed on the tiled floor, which was a dark blue shot through with sprinkles of darkly glittering gold. “What is it?” I whispered to Hui. His hooded face turned to me briefly and his red eyes gleamed at me in amusement. He was obviously not at all awed by his surroundings.

“The tiles are made of lapis lazuli,” he said. “The flashes of gold are in fact pyrite. Only Pharaoh and those of royal blood are allowed to wear or use the lapis, for the hair of the gods is composed of it. It is a very sacred rock.” The hair of the gods! I trod gingerly, marvelling like the child I had temporarily become, but I soon forgot my wonder, for we had threaded our way through the crowds in the reception hall and had entered the throne room.

Here the atmosphere of power and worship was almost palpable, and though many people came and went through the cavernous space they trod softly and spoke in subdued voices. Once again the floor was of lapis and the walls were too. I felt as though I was under a celestial ocean shot through with golden gleams. Mighty alabaster lamps stood on golden bases as tall as I. Incense perfumed the air from hanging censers. Servants in gold-fringed kilts and jewelled sandals, their hair imprisoned in ribbons of gold thread, stood at intervals around the walls, their kohled eyes watching the company. Every so often one of the throng would snap his fingers and a servant would detach himself from his place and glide forward swiftly to be sent on some errand or other.

At the far end, miles away as it seemed to me, was a raised dais that ran the width of the room. On it stood two thrones under a damask canopy. They were both of gold, with lion’s feet and backs depicting the Aten with its life-giving rays ending in hands radiating out to embrace and invigorate the beings who would sit there. One of them was of course the Horus Throne. I had no eyes, then, for the crowd. We drew ever nearer to the thrones. The Herald went up three steps and bowed to them before slipping through a small door behind them, on the dais to their left, and Hui and I followed suit. I was dazed with the opulence and dignity of my surroundings, dwarfed and intimidated to feel myself suddenly no more than an insignificant insect crawling on the floor of a temple.

The place behind the throne room was small and full of shelves and chests. I thought perhaps it was a robing and retiring room. We were soon through it and crossing a larger space, still imposing but more human in its dimensions and furnishings. Elegant low tables and chairs were scattered about and several animal skins lay on the floor. At the far end the wall disappeared in a burst of exuberant shrubbery and I could hear the piping and rustling of birds outside. Of course a guard was there, his spear canting, his broad back to us, and just beyond him I caught one startling and tantalizing glimpse of a tiny, impossibly beautiful woman in transparent yellow robes bending to pick a flower that nestled amongst the greenery before I found myself in a modest glazed hallway with tall cedar doors to right and left. A perfumed humidity oozed towards me from my right but the Herald opened the left-hand door, intoned Hui’s name, bowed to him, and retired. Hui strode forward and I followed.

This room seemed almost as vast as the throne room, a place of sombre shadows shot through by measured beams of brilliant sunlight from the clerestory windows cut high against the ceiling. I barely noticed the closed and guarded door on the left at the far end, the three or four blue-andwhite clad servants standing like wooden statues on the periphery of my vision, the sumptuously elegant chairs with their glinting electrum legs and high silver backs, the gold embossed surfaces of the few low tables across which the dim light slid. For in the middle of it all was an enormous couch that dominated its surroundings, and rising from the stool beside it and coming swiftly towards us was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.