House of Dreams (6 page)

“It was predicted, you know,” my mother’s friend was saying. “The oracle at Thebes warned the Osiris One and his evil foreign Viceroy before it happened, but I suppose there was such disorder in the country that no one took any notice. You don’t care about famine when you are about to be slaughtered in your bed.”

My mother gave a non-committal grunt and leaned back against the wall, wiping her neck and the depths of her considerable cleavage. I saw her eyes close. She disliked sensational conversation, preferring to dissect the small failings and harmless secrets of her neighbours.

“I hear that an oracle is coming to Aswat,” the other woman went on, “a very famous Seer consulted by Pharaoh himself. He wants to commune with our own oracle, the Lord Wepwawet’s I mean of course, here in our temple.”

“What about?” my mother murmured with a sigh. Her eyes remained closed.

“Well it seems that Great Horus is building a fleet of ships to go trading to Punt and the Red Sea and even the Indian Ocean and with Wepwawet being a God of War the King needs to know whether or not it will be safe to send them out.” She turned to my mother and spoke conspiratorially. “After all, Ramses has had to go to war three times in the last twelve years. He can’t want his ships set upon when they’re coming back, loaded with the treasure he so badly needs!”

My mother opened her eyes. “And how do you know what our Divine Incarnation needs?” she said sharply. “That is not our business. Finish your beer, impertinent one, and tell me how your sons are doing in school.”

Her friend was not abashed. She was my mother’s favourite companion because she could not be daunted. She had straightened and taken breath to resume the onslaught when I interrupted her.

“This Seer,” I said. “When is he coming? How long will he stay? Will he give readings for the villagers as well as consulting with Wepwawet’s oracle?” I was strangely excited, my lethargy gone.

She smiled at me, her teeth a sudden white flash in the bronze of her face. “I don’t know,” she admitted, “but my husband says he will come within the week. The priests have been cleaning and praying as though Pharaoh himself was going to appear. Ask Pa-ari. He’ll be able to tell you more.”

“Don’t get any foolish ideas, Thu,” my mother said easily. “Even if the man agrees to read for people here in the village, his fee will be high and you, my little bleating lamb, will not be considered.” To soften her words she refilled my beer cup and gestured for me to drink. “You could hardly offer him your services as an apprentice midwife!”

I grimaced at her, shrugged in silent agreement, then drank, but my thoughts were suddenly busy. What could I offer such a man to induce him to gaze into my future and tell me once and for all whether I would ever leave this place? The women were laughing kindly at me, then they turned back to each other. My mother’s friend said coyly, “I hear that a certain man came to see you late one night to obtain a handful of colocase. Oh I know you won’t talk, my dear, but the implications are quite delicious.”

I was not interested in the desire of the man in question to cure his sterility. I was no longer listening to the increasingly drowsy conversation. Rolling onto my back I put my hands behind my head and gazed up into the harsh blueness of the sky. I would have to confirm this snippet of information with Pa-ari, make sure it was not a tale that had grown larger and more distorted in the telling. And if it was true, what payment could I offer a mighty Seer? What would he accept? I had nothing of any value—three sheaths, a simple bone comb to hold back my hair, a necklet of yellow-painted clay beads, a pretty cedarwood box my father had brought home for me from Thebes one year and in which I kept a few precious things, feathers and oddly shaped stones that had caught my fancy, dried flowers and the shrivelled but still beautiful skin of a snake I had found beside a rock in the desert. I was sure that none of these would do. Idly I wondered what I could steal, but the thought was fleeting, not serious. Even the mayor of the village, rich by our standards, having a slave and ten arouras of land and three haughty daughters who flaunted their coloured linens and pretty hair ribbons, was poor beside the nobles and aristocrats who could pile gold and silver at the feet of such a man. I sighed. What could I do?

The shade was shrinking. Ra had moved in the heavens, and his hot fingers had begun to caress my feet, his touch both welcome and burning. I sat up and pulled in my knees. As I did so, an audacious idea came to me, an idea so scandalous that it took my breath away. I must have gasped, for my mother shot a glance at me. I stood, and not meeting her eye I said, “I will walk along the river path and meet Pa-ari.” She did not protest, and I set off briskly across the blinding dust of the square.

Once under the thin shadow of the trees my pace slowed. I met no one on that suffocating, timeless afternoon, and if I had I would not have noticed them. What could I offer? Myself of course. My virginity. It was worthless to me anyway. I was not saving it for some worthwhile village simpleton, for some undeserving husband, as the other girls were. I had heard their whispers, seen their sidelong looks when one of the boys swung past, light gleaming on his brown skin over the muscles farm work kept taut. I saw further than they. I saw those fine boys twenty, thirty years hence in the person of their fathers, their clean muscles all knotted, their backs bent, their hands gnarled and thickened and their faces grooved by the remorseless sun and grinding labour. Only my father, out of all the village men, seemed to care for his body, drawing his bow and swimming purposefully in the river so that his spine stayed straight and his muscles long. Yet even he had begun to show the rigours of his life. No. That was not for me. I would trade my body for a glimpse into my future, and count the loss well spent. Men liked young girls, I knew. I had heard them talk, heard their lustful laughter when the beer jugs emptied on village feast days. I was not unattractive, with my budding breasts, my long legs and small hips, and surely the startling fact of my blue eyes would titillate a man who was probably used to such exotic sights in Thebes and the Delta but who would not expect to see one here. My mother would die of shame if she knew. My father would beat me. I would be a disgrace in the village. My heart began to pound.

I had reached the temple precincts. Wepwawet’s sacred home stood graceful and white in the dazzling sunlight, and I found a patch of shadow just off the path and sat on the ground, studying the building with the mixture of delight and awe that it had always inspired in me. I would have liked to perch on the edge of the stone canal and dangle my feet in the water but the sun was too hot, and besides, the water was at its low summer ebb. No sound came from the walls, or from the sad growth around me. I waited.

After a long time I saw Pa-ari appear under the pylon leading to the outer court, skirt the end of the canal, and walk towards me. He was dressed, as usual, in a white kilt and nothing else. His feet were bare. The bag he carried was no longer full of pieces of pottery for he now used a scribe’s palette, pots of red and black ink and brushes of various sizes that belonged to the temple and had to stay there. He was tall and beautiful, my brother, his body a uniform brown, the colour of the earth, of the desert at twilight. He strode proudly, uprightly, his head raised, the sheen of light and heat on his thick black hair, and I thought with a shock, he is one of them, my Pa-ari, one of the village boys the girls giggle over. He is one of them, but oh, I pray that he will not shrink and wither, that he will remain erect and full of sap no matter what. I came to my feet and stepped out onto the path, unaccountably shy for a moment. He saw me and his rather solemn face broke into a smile.

“You must be very bored, Thu, to have nothing better to do than crouch under a tree,” he said as I swung into step beside him. “Has something happened at home?”

I shook my head and hugged his arm. “No, but I heard today that a great Seer is coming to Aswat. Is it true?”

“Why yes, it’s true,” he said, surprised. “The First Prophet himself only knew yesterday, when a message arrived from Thebes. News travels fast in small places.” His tone was ironic. He looked at me and then away to where the limp palms towered over our heads, dividing the path from the wasteland of the empty fields beyond. “Let me guess,” he went on. “My Lady Thu is anxious to meet this man. She wishes, as always, to have her future spelled out for her like a child on his first day at school.”

I scuffed at the dust, watching it puff over my naked toes, both flattered and annoyed that I was so transparent to him. “It is something like that,” I admitted. “What are the priests saying?”

“They are saying that this man will arrive three days hence, that he will stay aboard his barge except when he is consulting with the First Prophet, that he will be guarded by royal troops, and that he will not receive any villager but the mayor who will convey Aswat’s respectful greeting to the Lord of the Two Lands.” His eyes returned to the path ahead. “Therefore, Thu, I suggest you forget about him. While he is here I have no classes or duties in the temple. We can go eeling and have lots of lessons.” All at once he came to a halt and pulled open his bag. “I have something for you,” he explained. “Here.” He drew out two sheets of papyrus, smooth and crisp, and thrust them into my hands. They were followed by a tiny sealed clay pot. “Powder for ink, and a brush my teacher threw away. It’s well used but you can squeeze some more life out of it. I was given the papyrus and the ink as a reward for good work,” he finished proudly. “I want you to have them.”

“Oh, Pa-ari!” I managed, overwhelmed, clutching the precious squares to my chest. “Oh, thank you! Can I try some letters now?”

He held the bag open and reluctantly I slid the treasures back inside. “No you can’t,” he said firmly. “I’m tired and hungry and very thirsty. Tomorrow morning, if Mother doesn’t need you. We can sneak away to our spot under the sycamore.”

I thought no more about the visiting oracle for the rest of the day.

3

THREE DAYS LATER
I was standing with Pa-ari in the crowd of excited villagers when the Seer’s barge turned into the canal and laboured the short distance from the river to the watersteps. I had seen royal craft before, usually fast boats flying the imperial colours of blue and white and carrying Heralds with messages for the Viceroy of Nubia far to the south. They would pass Aswat swiftly, cutting the water and disappearing to leave nothing but their wash rippling against the bank. The great barges weighted down with mountainous granite from the quarries at Assuan also went by but rarely, for little building was being done. It was said that at one time the river was busy night and day, thronged with commerce, thick with the pleasure ships of the nobles, choked with Heralds plying to and fro on business for the hundreds of administrators and officials who ran Egypt. Watching this barge bump against the watersteps I was seized with nostalgia for a time I had never known, and fear for the slow eclipse of my country of which until that moment I had been only dimly aware. The village dreamed on, self-contained, but when talk of outside events did begin, the words were all of what had been in a glorious past, of present threats and future disasters. I will ask Pa-ari to read the history scrolls, I decided, jammed against him in the crush of excited bodies. I want to know this Egypt from a different vantage point than the village square.

The craft was painted a spotless white. Its mast was polished cedar, as were its oars, and from the top of the mast the imperial flag was shaken sporadically by the intermittent, dry breeze. The planking curved sweetly from prow to stern, and fore and aft curled inward in the shape of fanned lotus flowers, each painted blue, the petals picked out with gold that glittered intoxicatingly in the sunlight. The cabin amidships had heavy, tightly drawn curtains of some material into which gold thread had been woven, for they also sparkled in the bright day. Sumptuous red tassels hung from the cabin’s frame, waiting to tie back the drapery. High in the stern, the helmsman clung to the vast steering oar and ignored the exclamations and cries of the people.

The soldiers ignored us too. Six of them stood on each side of the cabin, tall, blackbearded foreigners with watchful eyes that peered out from under their horned helmets to disdainfully contemplate the sky above our heads. They wore long white kilts that concealed all but the shape of their massive thighs, and beneath collars of studded leather their chests were bare. They were equipped with swords and great round shields. Our father once looked like that, I thought with a rush of pride. He defended Pharaoh. He fought for Egypt. But then I wondered just what these men here today were supposed to be defending the illustrious oracle from. Us harmless villagers? Attacks from the banks of the Nile on his journey to Aswat and back to Pi-Ramses? I saw one of the soldiers shift his weight from one splayed, sandalled foot to the other. The gesture made him suddenly human, and I decided that the escort was simply for pride and show. Was the oracle arrogant, then, as well as famous? It was important for me to know.