The Twice Born (10 page)

“My crops are growing fast,” Ker said as he served Huy with slices of cold beef and a salad of crisp fresh lettuce, celery, and onion sprinkled with pungent slivers of garlic, “and so are the weeds. That little friend of yours, Ishat, pulls them out, but then she makes garlands of them. The wild flax and poppies and the daisies are too pretty to waste, she says. She sent something for you.” He opened the drawstring of the pouch at his waist and handed Huy a small stone.

Huy rolled it to and fro on his palm, thrilled at how it flashed and glittered in the strong midday light. “Is it gold?” he asked, awed.

Ker chuckled. “No. The flecks in it are called pyrite, but they are as pretty as gold, aren’t they? Ishat picked it up on the shore of the tributary. She thought you might like it.”

Huy set it carefully on the deck. “I do,” he said fervently. “This is the second gift Ishat has given to me. As soon as I’m able I shall write and thank her. Even though she can’t read, she will be thrilled to receive a letter.”

“And that moment will come sooner than any of us expected.” Ker poured beer into two cups and held one out to Huy. “The Overseer and your teacher are very impressed at your rapid progress. I was not wrong to send you here, Huy. Is there anything you lack? Anything you need?”

Huy put his nose into his cup. The beer, thick and dark, smelled of musk, but its bitter taste was oddly agreeable. “Yes, there is, Uncle Ker. I would like a statue of Khenti-kheti to put on the table beside my cot. All the other boys have their totems with them.”

Ker glanced at him shrewdly. “I expect they do. But why do you desire the god’s presence?”

Huy licked the froth off his upper lip. “Because Khenti-kheti protects Hut-herib and I am from Hut-herib, therefore the god will protect me. I am his son.”

“You are indeed,” Ker agreed. “Very well, Huy. If you will accord the god the proper reverence due to him and say the prayers each evening, I will bring him to you next time I pass through Iunu. If the priest at the shrine writes out the prayers for you, will you be able to read them?”

Huy shook his head. “Not yet. But my teacher will help me.”

“Good. You seem to be acquiring a new and somewhat surprising interest in the state of your soul. Do you like the other boys here?”

“Most of them.” Huy settled down to tell his uncle all about Harnakht, Kay, and Thothmes, the objectionable Sennefer, and the lofty inapproachability of the jewelled and perfumed young men who fascinated him.

Ker laughed at the way he described them. “Before you know it, you too will be tall and beautiful. I am very proud of you, Huy. You are a credit to all of us at home.”

The beer had made Huy sleepy. He yawned, thinking of his cot in the coolness of his cell. Ker indicated the cabin. “Crawl onto the cushions in there and rest,” he offered. “I must do business with the High Priest this afternoon. I have incense gum for him and a quantity of kyphi perfume for the dancers. My men will remain on board.” He leaned over and kissed Huy’s hot forehead. “Don’t worry, the Overseer knows where you are.”

Huy had not seen the Overseer since that first miserable day when Ker had deposited him in this place that had seemed so vast and terrifying.
But I suppose
, he thought as he burrowed into the cabin’s cushions and drowsily watched the slatted pattern of light around him,
that he must know everything about everyone here or he wouldn’t be an Overseer
. The cabin felt like some animal’s den, cozy and safe. Voices and the rhythmic shush of sandals on paving came to him pleasantly muted. The odour of the barge’s wood was like the music of some old, familiar lullaby, and as he fell asleep Huy fancied that he could also smell a panful of perch frying over a fire on a sweet spring evening by the river.

Ker’s vessel pulled away from the temple watersteps just as Huy’s swimming class wandered into sight. Huy was disappointed. He would have liked the other boys to have boarded the barge, however briefly. But Ker was on his way to Weset and had many river miles to cover. He had said an affectionate goodbye to his nephew, and Huy was sad as he watched the helmsman clamber onto his high seat and grasp the tiller. For a moment he wished he might be making the journey to that holy city where the King sat on his golden throne and all the men around him must surely look like the nobles’ sons here at the school. But then Thothmes called him and the others were leaping into the water with screams of delight, and Huy began to shed his kilt and loincloth. It had not occurred to him to want to go home.

3

 
OVER THE NEXT TWO MONTHS
, the fixed routine of life at the school gradually became a matter of second nature to Huy. He no longer had to run to Harnakht for direction or reassurance if he could not remember where he had to be or what was coming next. The rhythm of his days—eating, washing, studying, exercising—even the walls of the precinct itself, provided a womb of predictability inside which he could safely flourish.

Long before Thothmes had finally learned to negotiate the many rooms and passages himself, Huy knew them, and the other boy’s temporary dependence on Huy accelerated the bond already growing between them. Huy was not tempted to exert control over his cellmate as he had always tried to do over Ishat. He might have Thothmes at his mercy where a corridor branched, but Thothmes was his better in the knowledge of the many things the pupils in their class took for granted. Huy absorbed information quickly, holding his tongue when the conversation turned to the family lives of those who were his social superiors. He was making swift progress under his teacher’s critical eye and could comfort himself with the knowledge that, although this boy might be the son of a governor or that one belong to one of the King’s Overseers, he himself had a sharper mind and a greater love for the hieroglyphs he was beginning to manipulate.

Sometimes the classes were cancelled in order that a god’s feast might be celebrated, and the boys with families in Iunu went home. Huy was granted permission to spend these days with Thothmes in his father’s house by the river. At first the size and grandeur of Thothmes’ home made him tongue-tied and shy. Thothmes was the darling of three older sisters who teased and petted him, much to his irritation, and seemed pleased to have another child to cosset, but Huy remained in awe of Thothmes’ father, a man with a temperament very like his son’s, engaged in the world around him but somehow aloof. The house with its verdant garden, airy rooms, and host of servants, its watersteps overhung with willows where both skiff and barge rocked invitingly, seemed opulent to the boy from a farm in the Delta. Thothmes had laughed at Huy when he first expressed his admiration. “Father is only a governor,” he had said. “We are comfortably rich, but you should see the estate of the Vizier.” They had been lying stretched out one above the other on the watersteps after practising their swimming strokes, the shapes of their damp bodies forming like shadows around them on the warm stone.

“Is Sennefer’s home like this?”

“Yes, and he doesn’t deserve what he has. His mother spoils him. She gives him everything he wants. His father argues with her about it all the time, but it makes no difference. That’s why he lives at the school. His father insisted, to get him away from her. So I hear my father telling my mother when they think I’m not listening.” Huy looked up at his friend. Thothmes was lying on his stomach and peering over the edge of the step. Water from his dishevelled youth lock dripped onto Huy’s cheek. “He isn’t learning anything much, and I do hope that our Blessed God and King will not make him governor when his father dies. He is too cruel and stupid to govern the rats in the grain silos, let alone even a small sepat like Nart-Pehu.”

Huy thought that Sennefer’s parents sounded very like his own. Did his mother not spoil him, and had his father not insisted that he be sent away to school, thanks to Uncle Ker’s generosity, for that reason? It occurred to Huy that he might be a little like Sennefer himself—but surely not cruel or stupid. “Don’t you think that the Good God might already be sailing in the celestial barque by the time Sennefer is old enough to hold his father’s office?” he inquired.

Thothmes snorted. “Certainly not! And even if that is true, he will still guide our country through the Hawk-in-the-Nest Amunhotep, his son. Perhaps the King would send Sennefer to the Tjel, or one of the garrisons along the Horus Road,” he added hopefully. “My father says that Sennefer ought to be learning soldiering because he will never make a good administrator.” He rolled onto his back and out of Huy’s sight. “I overheard him say that to my mother, but I keep it to myself, as a good scribe would.”

Huy closed his eyes against the sun’s glare. Thothmes’ words had prompted a new and rather unnerving train of reflection, and for the first time Huy wondered what his own future might be. His mother had sometimes said things like, “When you take over your father’s work in Ker’s fields …” and, “You must not be rude to the field workers, Huy. You might be the Overseer of their sons one day,” but he had not paid her much attention, seeing that he would always be free to play in the garden with Ishat and the frogs and have Hapzefa to look after them all. It had already become clear to him that his father was really not an important man at all. It did not matter that he helped to supply Pharaoh’s perfumer with the blooms, fruits, and seeds needed to produce the exotic blends that were famous throughout the world; he was a man with dirt under his fingernails. What was it that had been written about the gardener? Huy’s teacher had read aloud the long admonitions to a boy beginning his studies. The anonymous author had intended them to be a warning and an encouragement to those struggling to master the skills of a scribe. Thothmes would remember; his powers of recall were remarkable. But Huy did not want to bring up the subject of his father’s occupation. Some of the lines he could remember himself. “The gardener fetching with the carrying pole, his shoulders are the shoulders of old age …” something something something “… he has laboured in the sun and afterwards his body aches. He is too old for any other occupation.” There were blanks to be filled in later, when the class began to write and memorize the exercise, but the sense of this particular stanza was clear. Huy sighed. He would prefer to spend the rest of his life either at school or running about his home, but if he had to grow up—and here the first intimation of his own mortality fled across his mind and was gone—then it had better not be as a man who laboured in the sun and had an aching body.

“Why are you sighing?” Thothmes demanded.

Huy sat up. “I am getting hot. Shall we go in the water again?”

Thothmes considered, then shook his head. “No, let’s go in. I’m hungry. Besides, Meri-Hathor has promised to take us into the marshes this afternoon to look for egret eggs, and we will be eating supper with her on the bank afterwards. She says she will build us a fire, but I don’t think she knows how. Maybe we can take a servant with us.”

Meri-Hathor was Thothmes’ eldest sister. At fourteen she was already contracted to marry the son of one of the many King’s Overseers in the city. It was an advantageous match for her, but to Huy she did not seem very impressed. A graceful girl with her brother’s huge eyes and pointed chin, she seemed to spend all her time fussing with cosmetics and having long discussions with her mother about furniture and such things. A trip into the marshes with her was an unusual treat. Huy was sure that Thothmes had asked for it and had of course not been refused.

Apart from feast days spent at Thothmes’ home, Huy found himself regularly at leisure in the hours between each afternoon’s exercise and the evening meal. Sometimes he would join the other boys gathered by the pond to toss a ball or wrestle or simply lie in the grass and talk. They were cheerfully offhand with him, aware of his lower social status but not particularly caring about his origins, for Huy’s arrogance had suffered a death blow, as his father had hoped it would, and he approached his classmates with a humility born of new experiences. He was accepted for his quick mind, his healthy little body, and his eagerness to make the wearing of the youth lock legitimate by earning his own place among them. The one exception was Sennefer, who held himself apart from his peers. He ignored the other blue ribbons, ingratiating himself with those a year ahead of him, the ones who wore red ribbons on their youth locks. Few of them had responded to his overtures in the three years he had been attending the school, but as is often the case he had drawn three or four other coarse boys around him. They delighted in making the lives of the younger boys a misery, and Huy and Thothmes always slid out of sight when they entered the compound.

It was on one of these occasions that Huy discovered the Tree. After a rare display of inattention, Thothmes had been given extra work to do that kept him in their cell, so Huy, at a loose end, began to wander. He had already explored the limits of the precinct. From a respectful distance he had watched the priests submerge themselves in Ra’s sacred lake, knowing that its placid waters were forbidden to him. He had roamed the area behind the temple where the kitchens and storehouses were, although he was afraid that Pabast might catch him. He had even found his way into the animal enclosures, happy to lean over the fence and talk to the pigs, stroke the rough hides of the cattle, and watch the imprisoned doves and pigeons flutter and twitter in their cages. Someone was always there, either feeding and watering the livestock or opening the gates to lead an animal away to be slaughtered, but the men ignored Huy. Obviously he was not their business. The only section of the temple that he had not ventured into, apart from the inner court and the Holiest of Holiest itself, was made up of the priests’ cells, robing rooms, and the places where the sacred vessels and implements were stored. These were most definitely out of bounds, even to the oldest boys, and for all his curiosity Huy had made sure to stay well away from them.

On this particular afternoon, he was with the animals and happily engaged in reaching through the birds’ cage to collect a fine pigeon’s feather when he heard a familiar voice. “They need another couple of pigeons in the kitchen,” it said. “Go and wring their necks and be quick about it. As if I haven’t enough to do without running all the way to this stinking place.” It was Pabast. Huy’s view of him was blocked by the animal keeper approaching the servant, but he knew those hectoring tones only too well. His heart had begun to pound. Fortunately, he had been crouching to grope for the feather or Pabast would have seen him at once. As it was, his usual way of escape was blocked. The keeper would be coming towards the birds at any moment. He had seen, and not bothered with, Huy before, but now that Pabast was there, would he give Huy away? Only one route remained. Huy had not taken it before. It led to the killing ground. He did not want to take it now, but he had no choice. On hands and knees, he crawled towards it as fast as he could.

The beaten path was thick with animal dung and Huy could not avoid it. Soon he was mired in foul-smelling excrement, but he dared not stand, not until he knew he was out of sight. Panting with fear, he struggled on, wrists aching, knees sore, until all at once the ground opened out before him and the odour of old blood caught in his nostrils. The place was not unlike the training ground but smaller, its floor of churned sand stained brown, the area bounded by a high mud-brick wall hung with a combination of axes, clubs, and knives that made Huy shudder. A huddle of rickety pens at the farther end crowded to either side of a door. No one was there. Breathing a prayer of thanks to Ra, Huy stumbled towards it. It was not locked. Leaning on the door with all his weight, Huy managed to inch it open, and tumbling through he quickly heaved it closed again.

He found himself in a dark room full of frames on which cattle hides in various stages of curing were hung or stretched. Barrels full of bones and urns full of liquids he could not identify lined the walls. A large wooden table holding scrapers and other strange tools sat in the centre. Huy, trembling and nauseous, thought he had never been in a more foul place. A door opposite him stood ajar and through it he could see grass and blue sky. With a shriek of pure relief he fell through it.

A grove of palms faced him and he ran between the smooth, spreading boles of the trees until he knew he could not be seen, then he collapsed onto the sparse grass and began to scrub frantically at his filthy legs. His kilt had dragged in the muck. He pulled it off and rubbed it between his hands, wondering how far away the river was. His panic was subsiding, his heart receding from his throat to settle once more in his chest, when he realized suddenly that he was outside the frowning double wall surrounding the temple, the school, and everything else in his world, but on the opposite side of the one he knew. If he turned to his left he must eventually come to the canal and the lake and the apron of stone before the outer court, but he quickly discarded the idea; he did not fancy crossing that vast expanse covered in animal excrement when it would be busy with people. Going right would mean a very long walk, but it was his only hope of slipping unnoticed into the corridor between the walls and from there to his cell.
A slim hope
, he told himself dismally as he came to his feet,
but I have to try. Damn Pabast and his pigeons!

He set off, keeping to the cover of the palms, but he need not have been concerned with secrecy.
I must go all the way around the back
, he decided,
behind the animal pens and the kitchen gardens and the servants’ quarters. It will take me forever
. He groaned, his nostrils full of the foul odour rising from his kilt and his skin, his ears alert for any sound of approach. But the palm grove lay quiet in the late afternoon heat. The only sounds were the secretive rustling of the dry leaves above him and the warble of the pigeons circling the roof of the Holiest of Holiest.