House of Dreams (36 page)

I knew another thing, also, at that moment. I did not care about their plans, not really. I loved Hui and wanted to please him, but I was willing to play their game for less idealistic reasons than the ones that obsessed the Master and his associates. A peasant with invisible mud between her toes and the taste of gritty black bread and lentils still in her mouth, I wanted to continue to enjoy jewellery and expensive linens, fine food and the best wines. I wanted luxury and power, respect and recognition, because in those things lay security and the realization of my childhood dreams. I would be a princess. I would be queen.

“Yes, it is what I wish,” I agreed slowly, meeting her eye, “but it is what you wish also, isn’t it, Hunro?” Her smile widened as we gazed at one another.

“Indeed it is, Thu,” she purred. “Indeed it is.”

14

I DID NOT FEEL READY
to brave Pharaoh’s bed until the middle of the following month, Paophi. Each morning I awoke thinking, I will do it today, I will send for the Keeper and tell him, but always something happened to divert me. My unacknowledged reluctance to do my duty was the true excuse, but there were many more. Within two weeks of my arrival in the harem it was known among the women that I was a physician. There were others, of course, men of high medical standing, but in coming to me the women knew that their ailments, and above all their most private requests, would not be relayed to the Keeper or worse, to the palace authorities. I would open my box of supplies and sit in a chair in a secluded corner of the courtyard, listening to the real or imagined needs of my compatriots, examining them and prescribing as best I could. Many of them were simply plagued with the vague distempers of boredom but it was not my business to recommend a more active life and in any case I knew that my words would fall on deaf ears.

I myself had embarked on a routine as similar to the one I had practised at Hui’s as I could make it. Most of the women slept for as long as possible and would emerge from their cells, half-naked and yawning, to stumble into the shade and pick at their first meal of the day when the sun was already overhead. The temptation to follow their example was strong, but thanks to the rigid discipline I had endured under Hui’s wise direction I was able to resist it.

In the morning Disenk roused me early and I would exercise, going through the rigorous movements Nebnefer had taught me, while the sun lifted higher, turning the pink and shadowed courtyard into a cup of golden light. Often I was joined by Hunro who would dance on the grass with a joyful abandon, her face an ecstatic mask as she lifted it to the glittering sky. Then, both of us panting and pouring sweat, we would run down the narrow path between the forbidding wall of the palace and the blocks of harem buildings until we came to the entrance of the compound. Of course we did not attempt to pass the guards. We veered right into the little-used harem garden that enclosed the whole huge complex on three sides, and plunged into the pool. Hunro was content to immerse herself and then get out, lying on the grass until she was dry, but I grimly swam the lengths I had been used to doing for a shouting, critical Nebnefer, up and down, up and down, until my arms and thighs trembled with exhaustion. I would collapse beside the woman who was fast becoming a friend, and until hunger overtook us we would talk aimlessly, with much giggling. We did not bother to take our servants with us. At these times we had no needs and besides, while we exercised, Disenk and Hunro’s woman were in the kitchen preparing our food. When we were ready we would stroll back to our quarters and eat and drink like famished desert lions, self-righteously watching the first few sleepy denizens of the other cells stumble out and stand blinking in the strong sunlight. My appetite appeased, Disenk would escort me to the bath house where I was washed. This was followed by a body shave and massage from one of the resident masseurs.

Those morning hours became precious to me. They were a time of quiet and privacy before the courtyard filled with young children and gossip, before the few women I saw professionally each day began to drift in my direction.

At first the dozens of other concubines, a lovely, soft mass of big eyes and high voices and yielding flesh, were anonymous to me. Most of them remained that way, for I saw no reason to cultivate their acquaintance. After all, I would not be among them for long. But some stood out from the others. There was Hatia the drunkard who made her appearance in the late afternoon with swollen face and shaking hands and would sink gracelessly beneath her canopy to stare out upon the noisy crowd around the fountain. No one paid her any attention. She would sit thus, wine cup in hand and motionless servant behind, until sunset, at which time she would rise as silently as she had come, and disappear into her cell.

There were Nubhirma’at and Nebt-Iunu, a pair of nubile Egyptian girls from Abydos who had been raised on neighbouring estates and had been friends since their birth. Ramses, on a visit to Osiris’s temple at Abydos, had been captivated by their singing and had contracted with both their fathers for their inclusion in the harem. They regularly went to Pharaoh’s bed together and were summoned to him frequently, but it was hard for me to see them as my rivals. They were sweetly stupid, obligingly good-natured, and had eyes only for each other. One was never seen alone. They shared the same couch in the same cell and sometimes even ate with fingers intertwined. They consulted me together, coming into my cell with shy determination and asking for a contraceptive. “We know it is forbidden,” Nebt-Iunu whispered breathily, hanging onto her lover’s arm, “but although it is the greatest honour to bear a child to the Great God we really do not want to. Can you help us, Thu?” I did not want to help them. I did not want to be discredited, or worse, incur the anger of the God I myself had yet to encounter, but I was conquered by their pleading looks and transparent distress. I did as they asked, grinding up the acacia spikes with dates and honey and saturating the linen fibres with the mixture, thinking of my mother and the furtive consultations I had witnessed in her herb room. Perhaps we are not so dissimilar, I mused as I worked. Perhaps it is true that blood will out.

More often than not I had the cell to myself during the daylight hours. Hunro seemed to have much business to attend to, but she would slip onto her couch as Disenk was putting flame to the wick of my lamps and then we would lie watching the shadows gyrate on our walls and talking lazily. She spoke of Ramses and how to please him, her language unselfconsciously explicit as she described in graphic detail the mysteries of the royal bed, and I listened and stored away the information, bringing it out later to ponder and dissect while Hunro slept peacefully.

It came to me then that I could not expect any kind of fulfilment from my role as concubine. Not for me the anticipation that brought a smile and a thudding heartbeat when a lover was close by. Not for me the moment of sheer joy when a beloved face appeared. There would be no tenderness, no urgent yet gentle merging of body and ka. Such things would be forever beyond my reach, forever beyond my experience, and I was not yet sixteen years old. I was paying a high price for dreams that were not yet within my grasp, gambling with enormous stakes for a future that might never be mine. My sole purpose was to please Pharaoh. He had no obligation to please me. At least, not yet, my mind whispered back. Not yet … I tossed and turned restlessly. If I wanted love, if I wanted real passion and romance, I would have to come to the attention of the Prince, but even if I did, what then? I belonged to his father.

One early morning, when Hunro and I were speeding along the narrow path on our way to the pool with the air still cool on our naked bodies and the walls on either side of us still cutting out the new light, we almost collided with a small procession that was emerging from the Queen’s domain. I was ahead, but at the sight of the cavalcade Hunro grabbed my shoulder and brought me to a sudden halt. We stood panting and exposed as first a Herald in blueand-white livery and then a Steward came towards us. The angle of a white canopy inched around the corner and then a dull flash of jewels, a wide, braided and coronetted wig, an expanse of flowing, gold-shot linen. The Herald stopped opposite us. “On your faces before the Lady of the Two Lands, concubines!” he snapped. Obediently we went down, kneeling in the cramped space with our foreheads against the gritty stone of the path, and the man moved away. I felt the tiny breeze of the Steward’s passing and then the shuffle of the canopy bearers. Greatly daring, I lifted my head.

The miniature woman beneath the filmy gauze was as tiny and willowy as an artist’s dream. The feet stepping delicately by were shod in sandals that could have fitted a child of ten and the transparent linen swirled around ankles I might have encircled with one hand. Yet as my rapid glance sped upward I realized with a shock that I was seeing an aging body. The Great Queen’s belly sagged slightly and the vague outline of her small breasts beneath the pleats showed that they were not firm. Her high neck, draped in many gems, was ropy and in the second when I scrutinized her meticulously painted face I was aware of the clefts that ran beside her nostrils, the fan of lines about her eyes that the kohl could not disguise in the pitilessly revealing light of morning. Her bearing was haughty, her expression closed.

My forehead once more touched the ground. The footsteps receded and I had begun to pick myself up, one knee still resting on the stone, when I heard someone else coming quickly. Hunro was already on her feet. From the entrance to the Queen’s quarters a man was striding towards us, arms swinging, head raised. My heart gave a leap. It was he, so handsome, so strong, so glorious with his square chin and flashing black eyes, the hennaed mouth I longed to kiss and the flexing thighs that begged to be caressed under the short kilt. Intent on catching up to his mother he merely glanced at us and I was grateful, for I was unpainted, drenched in sweat from the exertions of my exercises, and my sticky hair was plastered to my skull. Then all at once he checked himself and turned. Hunro and I extended our arms and bowed very low.

“Greetings, Hunro,” the well-remembered voice said. “I trust you are well. And how is Banemus? We have received no message from him yet. Have you?”

“No, Highness,” Hunro replied with her usual aplomb. “But you know my brother. He will be more concerned with the welfare of his contingent as they march to their fort in Cush than with dictating a scroll to the palace.” The Prince smiled. His even teeth were dazzlingly white.

“And so he should be,” he retorted. His attention turned to me. At first it was politely non-committal, then his gaze became keen. “It is the female physician, is it not?” he said. “The Seer’s assistant? You are now one of my father’s acquisitions?” I nodded dumbly and the smile returned. “He has made a good choice, I see.” Without further comment he went on his way. I watched him hungrily until he was out of sight then I grimaced and fell into step with Hunro.

“Gods!” I groaned. “It is just my luck to be caught by him in this lamentable state! What will he be thinking of me?” Hunro shot me a sharp look.

“He will not be thinking of you at all,” she said quietly. “Why should he? And for your own sake you must not let your mind dwell on him or you will come to grief.”

I did not answer. When we came to the garden I attacked the water of the pool as though it was an enemy, slicing through it with ruthless power until the blood was pounding irregularly in my ears. It was time to make Pharaoh my slave.

That very afternoon I requested, through Neferabu, an interview with the Keeper. I had expected that he would come to my cell but I was sharply reminded of my true station when Neferabu returned to tell me that although the Keeper was otherwise engaged he would be pleased to give me a few moments towards dusk in his office. Now that my decision was made I was impatient to put it into action. Irritably I accepted the message, sent for a harem scribe, and whiled away the intervening time in dictating a letter to my family and one to Hui. I said nothing of any great import in either of them, certain that all correspondence passed under the Keeper’s eye before finding its way out into the world. I had hoped that Hui might have visited me or at least been called to treat someone in the palace and come to see how I was faring, but neither he nor word from him had arrived.

Just after sunset a runner came to escort me to Amunnakht. I went with ill grace, wrestling with my pride as we walked far to the rear of the compound, through a guarded gate, and out onto a wide yard of beaten earth. Against the far wall was a long series of many cells and beside them the kitchens. They were surely the harem servants’ rooms. But we turned sharply right, brushed a short way along the inside wall, and then turned right again through a throng of soldiers who watched us carefully.

I found myself within a vast garden, on a path that soon veered left to run in front of a row of large cells whose doors were open. Inside I glimpsed men sitting behind desks, scribes taking dictation, scrolls piled everywhere, and presumed that these were the offices of administration for the palace. On my other side, indistinct through the trees, I could make out the solid wall of a huge building. After frantically trying to place my position I decided that I was actually inside the palace grounds and was looking at the seat of power itself. I was not particularly impressed. The little runner paused outside one of the offices, knocked on the open door, announced me to whoever was within, bowed, and hurried away. I did not wait to be invited, but walked forward.