House of Dreams (34 page)

“Word has come from the palace,” she replied absently. “You are to appear before the Keeper of the Door tomorrow morning and I am packing your belongings but I cannot find the long woollen cloak the Master had made for you last Mekhir.”

A faintness came over me and I went unsteadily to one of the chairs and lowered myself, trembling, into it. The reality of my situation had not been brought home to me until this moment, but watching my servant gather up an armful of pleated tunics and cross to a chest I was seized with terror. Tomorrow, she had said. And it was already late in the day. Soon the sun would set. Surely there should have been more warning! Didn’t the Keeper know that I must have time to take my leave of this dear room, that I needed many hours to kneel at my window in the darkness and say farewell to the silhouette of the trees against the night sky, and the beam of lamplight that often lay across the courtyard from Harshira’s office, and the sound of the wind as it left the windcatcher and came to flutter my sheets as I lay torpid in the heat of Shemu? Grimly I fought my panic.

“I have not seen the cloak since I snagged it on a branch and you took it away to mend,” I said with desperate calm. “Do not pack the yellow sheath yet, Disenk. I want to wear it to the feast tonight.” She shot me a sympathetic look and went on with her task.

“I am sorry, Thu,” she said, “but the Master has given orders that you are not to attend after all.”

“What?” I was dumbfounded, and the breath caught in my throat. “Why not?”

“You are to eat simply and go to bed early so that you may appear fresh and beautiful before the Keeper. The Master is sorry.”

The Master is sorry! He would be down there in his banqueting room with its flowers and scented cones and rich wines, its graceful walls enclosing a crowd of laughing, feasting people, and he would be laughing and feasting too, without a thought for me who was to be torn from my home on the morrow. I knew better than to argue. I sat silently while Disenk moved to and fro, and gradually the chaos thinned and disappeared and the chests were shut. The light in the room was changing, growing sullenly red. It seemed ominous to me, and I embraced its message mutely. The end of a day. The end of my youth. The end of Hui and me.

He did not come to me at all through that long, miserable night. I heard the guests arrive, litter after litter disgorging excited revellers, but I did not get up to watch them. Paiis’s voice, deep and distinctive, floated clearly to me, and I thought I recognized the Chancellor Mersura’s light, fussy tones, but the others were anonymous visitors bent on pleasure. I tried to stay awake, thinking that when everyone had gone Hui might sit with me for a while, commiserate with me a little, give me more advice, even share some of the memories we had made together, but I dozed and then slept, and dawn came inexorably without him. Disenk entered, raised the window matting, placed fruit and water by the couch. “It is a fine morning,” she said cheerfully. “The river is rising. Isis has cried.” I did not respond. The Nile could go on rising and engulf us all, I did not care.

She dressed me in shining white linen, put a white ribbon in my hair and white sandals on my feet. She painted my face with great care and slipped silver bracelets onto my arms and a silver chain around my neck. One long silver earring, a lotus flower hanging from its slender stem, swung from my lobe. My lips, feet and palms were hennaed.

As I was sitting waiting for the stain to dry, the servants came and began to carry out my chests. One of them swept up the little cedar box my father had given me and I stopped him with a cry. “Not that! Put it here beside me on the table. I will carry it. Disenk, open it and lay my statue of Wepwawet inside!” I saw the man glance to Disenk for confirmation and was suddenly incensed. “Do as I tell you!” I shouted. “I am the mistress here, not Disenk!” He murmured an apology, bowing and raising his hands, palm up, in the gesture of submission. I was shaking with illogical rage. As he brought the box towards me Harshira’s wide form loomed in the doorway.

“What is all this uproar?” he demanded. “Do not be difficult, Thu. The Master waits below. Are you ready?” I snatched up my precious box and stood.

“I am not being difficult, Harshira,” I snapped, “and I would like to remind you that as I am now a royal concubine and you are not Pharaoh’s Steward you have no authority over me any more.” He did not seem perturbed by this outburst, indeed, he ignored it. Clicking his fingers at the servants to hurry he rocked back on his heels and planted huge fists on his hips. The last of the chests was manoeuvred into the passage, Disenk tripping after it, and Harshira raised his dark eyebrows at me. Summoning all my dignity I snatched up the box and glided past him, walking loftily behind the sum of all my months in this house, down the stairs and out through the entrance into the sparkling sunshine. My litter was there with Hui beside it under a protective canopy. The servants were disappearing with the chests in the direction of the river and I supposed that a barge would transport them quickly to the palace. At a word from Harshira, Disenk climbed into the litter and settled herself among the cushions. I stepped to Hui. He looked ravaged. His white face had a greyish tinge and his eyes were puffy.

“You did not come to me last night,” I said with a lump in my throat, the words very different from the ones I had intended to say. Traces of my earlier anger gave them a bitter sharpness.

“I did not think it would be wise,” he replied simply, almost humbly, and at his refusal to lull me with false excuses my defences dissolved. He nodded at the litter. “I have made up a selection of herbs for you, and included phials, mortar and pestle. If you need anything more, send for it. Take heart, little Thu. This is not farewell.”

“Oh yes it is, dearest Hui,” I whispered. “Nothing will ever be the same again.” Reaching up, I stroked the ivory braid that lay over his shoulder, then I went to the litter and reclined beside Disenk. “Close the curtains!” I said sharply to Harshira and he obeyed. As his face loomed briefly near mine he smiled and said quietly, “May the gods prosper you, little one.” Then Disenk and I were alone in the suffused glow of a filtered sun. Hui spoke and our conveyance jerked into the air. We were on our way.

I felt no urge to peer back at the house. I did not want to know whether Hui stood looking after me until I vanished. I did not want to watch the pretty façade of the house become slowly obscured by the verdant growth of the garden. Nor did I want to see the Lake and its traffic.

Disenk and I sat without speaking as we rocked under the shadow of the entrance pylon and turned onto the road. Glancing at her I saw a calm profile. Disenk accepted the twistings of fate, and I thought as I studied her strikingly aristocratic nose and the finely grained skin of her painted cheek that the suspicion of a smudge on my kohled temple would cause her more distress than any abrupt change in her fortunes. I admired her aplomb at that moment, and some of my despondency lifted. “Have you been inside the harem before, Disenk?” I asked her. She nodded.

“I have had occasion to visit the House of Women with the Lady Kawit when she called on her friend the Lady Hunro,” she told me. “It is a marvellous place.” Hui had also mentioned the Lady Hunro, Banemus’s sister, but I had someone else on my mind.

“The Keeper of the Door,” I inquired. “What is he like?” She made a little grimace.

“He is the most important person there,” she told me. “If Pharaoh does not select a woman to sleep with, it is up to the Keeper to choose one for him. Therefore the women all vie with each other to bring themselves to his attention and placate him. He rules the harem with a firm hand. Even the Great Royal Wives must defer to him. Except the Lady of the Two Lands herself, of course. She is queen over all.” I digested this information thoughtfully as we swayed along. The sounds of the road came to me dimly. I was hardly aware of them until they suddenly ceased and we swung right. A challenge rang out and was answered by one of our guards. “We are beside the royal watersteps,” Disenk said. Turning to me she began a swift inspection of my person and then looked away, evidently satisfied. I feel like something being offered up in the market-place, I thought grimly, and I am supposed to be excited and grateful for the supreme compliment. Any other girl would be. I have too much pride, that is the trouble. But I vow that one day Pharaoh will be the one to be grateful.

We were challenged once more and then I felt the litter veer to the left. “Lift the curtain,” I said to Disenk. At once she did so, looping it back and tying it, and I found myself looking at a small forest of sycamore and acacia trees. The water of a large pond glittered between the trunks. We were on a paved path lined at regular intervals with Shardana soldiers liveried in the imperial blue and white. The litter halted and was lowered. I eased myself out with as much grace as I could muster and Disenk followed.

I was facing a heavily guarded pylon set into a continuous wall, high and solid. I turned. A long way behind me the path met the edge of the vast landing before the water-steps, and through the trees I could see the way that led straight into the palace. Disenk and I were standing on the left-hand branch.

One of our guards had a scroll in his hand. He approached his compatriots under the pylon and presented it. I watched it pass from hand to burly hand and disappear. Soon a word must have come back, for our guard bowed to me ceremoniously, jerked a thumb at our litter-bearers, and set off the way he had come, the others falling in behind him. The men in front of the pylon beckoned. Disenk and I went forward into the harem.

To our left there were more trees, a lush expanse of clearly well tended grass studded with bushes, and a large oval pool on whose surface lilies and lotuses rocked. There were of course no blooms on the lotuses but the lilies had opened pale, pink-tinged petals folding one into the other on their beds of dark green, flat leaves. Butterflies of an iridescent emerald hue flickered over them, and I could hear the croaking of young frogs newly resurrected from the mud of the Lake.

On the edge of the garden ahead was a mud brick wall with an outside staircase leading to a roof. It was a cool, sun-dappled prospect but I had no time to fully appreciate it. Clutching my cedar box I watched a man come stalking towards us, his blue kilt swirling against his ankles, his arms encircled with gold, his black wig falling in intricate waves over his shoulders. His heavily kohled dark eyes regarded me impassively. His age was impossible to determine. He was not young, but carried himself so easily and with such authority that he could have been any age. In his hand was the scroll our guard had relinquished. He bowed shortly, and the one square jasper set into the gold circlet that cut across his forehead shot a baleful red gleam at me as it caught the sun. “Greetings, Thu,” he said coolly. “I am Amunnakht, the Keeper of the Door. The Horus of Gold has seen fit to bestow his favour upon you. You are indeed fortunate. Follow me.” He did not wait for an acknowledgement but turned on his expensively shod heel and walked away. Disenk and I trotted after him, I hugging my box and Disenk cradling the medicines Hui had collected for me. I felt distressingly insignificant.

We were on a narrow path that ran between two very high walls, and at the farther end I could just discern another wall where the path appeared to terminate. Our footsteps echoed briefly, the sound mingling with other noises at first faint and then growing more distinct, the shouts and shrieks of children at play and the continuous splash of moving water. About halfway along the path a gate suddenly opened on our right and I glimpsed a dark passage, also walled on both sides, and the shadowy form of a guard at the farther end, standing stolidly before a huge, closed door. Amunnakht looked neither to right nor left but led us steadily on until he came to a halt before another gate on our left. He pushed it open and we followed him obediently.

I am not sure what I expected to see. I suppose I had imagined the harem to be much like Hui’s house but larger, an elegant arrangement of sunny rooms and wide passages full of soft-footed servants and perfumed, quiet women. The sight that met my eyes was a shock. A very short passage led at once into a wide, grassy courtyard dotted with a few trees. In the centre was a stone basin into which a fountain spewed arcs of glistening water. Naked children paddled under the flow and scrambled in and out of the low-lipped reservoir, and all around, arranged under the trees or under gauze canopies, women sat or lay in pairs or small groups, watching the children and talking among themselves. Around the courtyard ran the cells, and above them, reached by a staircase in the corner to my left, was a second storey of roofed cells opening onto a narrow landing where one could stand and look down on the scene below. The courtyard was of course open to the sky.

Amunnakht moved on, along the right-hand side of the grassy area, and we passed several small doors, some open, some closed. Our progress caused little interest. A few of the women turned to look at us but soon turned back to whatever they were doing. The children, immersed in the sheer pleasure of cool water on bare skin, ignored us completely. At last the Keeper swung round and indicated a murky doorway.

“This is your room, Thu,” he said indifferently. “The Seer has requested that you be placed with the Lady Hunro, and I have complied. Your servant will be quartered with the others of her station in the block at the far end of the path along which we have just come. If you need her, there are runners who ply between the cells and the rest of the buildings. She may of course choose to sleep on your floor.” He snapped his fingers and a young girl came hurrying. She bowed and waited expectantly. “Take this body servant to her quarters,” he commanded.

I stepped past him. The cell was small, almost cramped. There was no window. Two couches rested along opposite walls, flanked by two tables. One side of the room was obviously occupied, for chests took up the wall space the couch did not and there was a small, closed shrine and other personal belongings arranged in the available space. The furniture was simple and functional, the abundance of cushions and linens clean as far as I could see, but I was horrified. Disenk had disappeared. “Your servant will return once she has seen her room,” Amunnakht was saying. “If you have any concerns or complaints you may approach Neferabu, the Steward in charge of this section of the House. There are two bath houses at the farther end of the courtyard.” He made as if to withdraw but I seized his arm.