The Twice Born (11 page)

Once oriented, he set off, keeping well away from the wall and under the slim cover of the palm trunks. He was tired from both physical exertion and the shock he had received, but the fear of retribution drove him on. He must get to the bathhouse before his fellow pupils took their evening wash, before the end of the sleep if possible, but one glance up at the sky told him that the sleep was probably already over. The wall ran on without a break, but soon the trees grew more sparse, giving way to patches of sand and clumps of spiny grey tamarisk bushes. Huy did his best to stay within their shadow, but he was now fully visible. Clenching his fists, he ploughed doggedly through the churned sand. He did not mind being seen by a servant. His forays into the forbidden areas of the school had taught him that servants were generally too busy to mind anyone’s affairs but their own. It was the priests he feared, with their spotless white robes and gleaming skulls and voices heavy with authority. Fervently he wished that he had never ventured into the animal enclosure, never, in fact, disobeyed the rules of the school at all.
I shouldn’t have gone where I am forbidden
, he told himself as he stumbled on,
and I am being punished. Please, great Ra, mighty Khenti-kheti, take pity on me and show me how to get back to my cell!

At that thought he stopped dead and stared at the seamless wall, heart thudding.
I should have come to the gardens by now
, he reasoned.
Surely I should be somewhere near the rear of the enclosure. The wall should be curving. There should be doors or gates. I should be able to hear the gardeners and perhaps even smell cooking from the kitchens. Where am I? Oh gods, I’m lost! But how can I be lost if I’m just following the wall?
He felt panic clutch at his stomach and with it the urgent need to squat and vacate it through his bowels. Fighting the spasm, he tried to think calmly, closing his eyes and retracing his steps from the moment he had heard Pabast’s hectoring voice.

At once he realized his mistake. He had always come to and gone from the huge pens the same way, noticing but not really absorbing the route along which the condemned animals were led to the slaughtering yard. In his fright and confusion, he had believed himself to be heading towards the northern side of the temple where, if he had turned east, he would have easily come to the training ground and from there, with luck, could have slipped back into his compound. But the slaughtering yard and the tannery were on the southern side, and he had not only swung in the wrong direction but had also been much closer to the river and the facade of the temple than he had imagined. He tried to think coolly.
All I have to do is keep going. I have not yet reached the rear, but I must get there if I watch the wall. It will take me longer, but I can still cut through the gardens and then the kitchens and avoid being caught
.

The dung with which he was encrusted had begun to dry and flake. He brushed at it absently and started off again, looking ahead in the expectation of a row of shade trees that would signal the wide acres of the temple gardens, but instead he saw a peculiar shadow triangulating out from the bricks of the wall. As he drew closer it became a small door, and the door was slightly ajar. Huy slowed, hesitated, held a very short debate with himself on the relative merits of stumbling on wearily or taking a chance on an unknown shortcut, and quickly made up his mind.
After all
, he thought miserably,
how many more disasters can this day bring me?
He approached the door and cautiously peered around it.

The first thing he saw was another door directly opposite, set into the inner wall that encompassed the whole temple complex, and he sighed with relief. Wherever that door led him, he would be back inside Ra’s domain and could surely get his bearings. But the second thing he saw was the Tree, and the sight of it drove every other thought from his head. Rising from the low circle of mud wall that retained the water on which it throve, the Tree’s many grey branches turned and twisted to fill the space around it with a delicious leafy shade. To left and right Huy saw that the corridor which ran between the walls had been blocked off, making a roofless area with the Tree in the centre. There was nothing else, only this great, gnarled trunk with its winding arms and pale green, latticed foliage that covered the ground in a moving pattern of coolness. Huy stared at it in wonder. He had never before seen anything like it. Not sycamore, not palm, not willow or olive or carob, it exuded such an atmosphere of otherness that Huy was almost afraid to step through the door. For what seemed to him a long time he merely stood with one hand on the lintel and watched the play of breeze and sun on those delicate, almost translucent leaves. But he knew that beyond the other door lay the end of his grim adventure. In twenty steps or so he could be free. Taking a deep breath, feeling that in some strange way he was committing an act of blasphemy, he started across the smoothly pounded earth.

He was almost halfway across when the door he was facing suddenly swung open. A large male hand appeared, but the rest of the body did not immediately follow. Huy heard a brief conversation going on. Frantically he looked about for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere, only himself and the Tree and the thickly dappled shade. Spinning about, he headed for the door through which he had come, but he was too late. The door behind him clicked shut and then his youth lock was grabbed so violently that he was jerked to a halt. Cringing, he waited for blows to rain down upon him, but the hand gripping his lock had begun to tremble and then it released him. He turned, and found himself staring up at a temple guard. The colour was draining from the man’s face. Huy had never seen such a thing before, and he watched in fascination as the skin became grey.

“What are you doing here?” the man hissed. “You shouldn’t be here! And so filthy! Never! Never!” His gaze slid to the half-open door and he began to push Huy towards it. “Get out! Gods, I’ll be flogged for this!” Huy shrugged his youth lock back against his shoulder and sauntered towards the door, his terror fading; this man was more frightened than he was. “Hurry! Hurry!” the soldier was whispering, no longer touching Huy but hard on his heels, and Huy, his confidence returning, decided to take his time. Whatever he had done, he would obviously be in less trouble than the frantic man gesticulating at his rear, and his day had been horrendous enough without yet another Pabast forcing an undignified retreat upon him. But his arrogance was his undoing. He had not quite reached freedom when the other door creaked open. The soldier groaned. Huy glanced behind him, and froze.

A priest stood there, transparent white linen falling from one bronzed shoulder to his gilded sandals. A golden arm band emblazoned with Ra’s symbol hugged one of his wrists and the same hieroglyph hung on his chest. He held a white staff topped by Ra’s hawk head, and even as Huy made a dash for the door he heard it clatter to the ground as the man lunged for him. He was too late to squeeze through the gap. A strong hand descended on the nape of his neck and he was dragged unceremoniously backward.

“Close that door and take up your station outside it,” a voice ordered coldly. “You know that if you must leave your post even for a moment, it has to be locked. I will deal with you later.” Huy heard the soldier swallow noisily as he passed him and disappeared. The door to Huy’s salvation clicked shut.

Boy and Priest regarded one another, Huy in trepidation, the Priest expressionlessly. His grip did not loosen. At last he said, “Do you know who I am, you disgusting little scrap of humanity?”

“Yes, Master,” Huy croaked. “You are the High Priest of Ra.”

“And do you have any idea what you have done?” Huy tried to shake his head. “You have desecrated one of the most holy places in the world. Not only is your presence a grave offence, but you dare to enter here stinking of the cattle pens. If you were any older, your punishment would be death. Who are you?”

Huy felt a sudden urge to void his bladder. Desperately he forced his besmirched knees to remain firm. He had begun to cry. “I am Huy, son of Hapu of Hut-herib,” he sobbed. “I am a pupil at the temple school. I meant no harm, Master. I was lost.”

“What were you doing so far from your quarters?” the man demanded. “Well, it does not matter. I will want an explanation later, but every moment you stand here unpurified you invite the wrath of every god. By the time you crawl onto your cot tonight, you will wish you had never been born.”

Now Huy’s knees did give way. He would have collapsed at the High Priest’s feet but for the man’s inexorable grip on his neck. Grasping one of Huy’s arms, the man pulled him roughly through the door, turned the massive key to lock it, and began to tow him past a series of cells from whose depths the murmur of voices rose. As they passed, a few curious heads poked out, but Huy was too distraught to note that he was in the middle of the quarters where the many priests attending to the temple’s duties lived. He continued to sob from both fear and pain. His arm felt as though at any moment it would be parted from his shoulder, and he could not find his feet, the High Priest was moving so fast.

Presently they were joined by a younger priest and at last the High Priest’s brisk pace slowed. A door was opened. Huy found himself hauled across grass then paving before being flung to the stone at the verge of a body of water he recognized, in spite of himself, as Ra’s sacred lake. “Strip him,” the High Priest ordered curtly. “Burn his kilt and his sandals. Cut off his youth lock and burn that also. It too is polluted. I want him scrubbed and shaved from his head to the soles of his feet. Then bring him to me.” Picking Huy up, he tossed him into the water. By the time Huy came up for air, spluttering and gasping, the High Priest was striding away and the younger man was lowering himself into the lake.

“I can’t imagine what evil you have done,” he said, reaching for the knife Huy saw resting beside a pot of natron on the lip of the water, “but it must have been serious. Our High Priest is a very holy man and is considered merciful and just. Stand still while I detach your lock.” Exhausted beyond protest, Huy saw his precious braid with its white ribbon tossed onto the bank. His kilt followed. Silently the priest used the same knife to none too gently shave Huy’s scalp. Then he set about the small body with the natron and a cloth. Huy had no recollection of when either knife or salt, or the second priest for that matter, had been collected. He stood woodenly under the man’s handling, hiccuping occasionally, as yet too numb with shock to grieve for the loss of his youth lock and what that would mean.

Before long he was taken into a kiosk not far from the water, dumped onto a slab, oiled, and shaved again, this time over every part of his body. He submitted dumbly although the process hurt him. “Now I wash off the oil,” the priest said at last, and once again Huy was thrown into the lake. Shivering more from reaction than from cold, he was commanded to stand on the stone rim until the now-westering sun had dried him. The man slipped plain papyrus sandals onto his feet. “You are purified,” he said. “I must return you to the High Priest.” The sandals were too big for Huy and he stumbled as he made to follow. The priest turned. “Do not fall or I must complete your purification all over again,” he said sharply, “and I must go to perform my evening devotions. I have no more time to spend on you.”

They re-entered the temple. After knocking twice on an imposing set of double doors just within the long line of cells Huy had been dragged past earlier, the man left him without another word. Huy, who was recovering a little of his usual aplomb, just had time to bitterly regret his habitual and secretive disobedience, curse Pabast, and wish that his uncle had never heard of the temple school at Iunu when the doors were opened and the High Priest appeared.

Carefully he inspected Huy, then nodded. “Good. Now we will return to the Tree.”

Oh gods
, Huy thought dully as he shuffled after the Master’s straight spine.
He is going to put a rope around my neck and hang me from one of those twisted branches and I will die unjustified and Mother and Father will be disgraced forever
. But this time he was sufficiently recovered to take a small interest in a portion of the temple that was new to him. Some of the priests lounging outside their cells smiled at him. Music drifted into the wide passage from somewhere in the inner court, the click of finger cymbals punctuating the sweet rise and fall of women’s voices and the trilling of lyres. The sounds served to blunt a little of Huy’s glum fatalism. He could smell food. Something delicious was being prepared for the priests’ evening meal and it seemed somehow inexcusable to Huy that the odour should make him hungry when he was about to die.

The now-familiar door loomed, the huge key still in its lock. Turning it, the High Priest indicated with a jerk of his head that Huy should enter, then he followed and closed the door carefully behind them. The sun had already sunk below the level of the temple walls, and the enclosure holding the Tree was growing dim. The clustered leaves were motionless, forming a thick umbrella under which the coming darkness was quickly gathering. Huy, naked and resigned, felt once again the peculiar otherness of the place. He glanced about surreptitiously for the rope that would be knotted around his throat.

“Take off your sandals and make three prostrations,” the High Priest said. “Then repeat these words of apology and veneration after me.” Huy did as he was told, kneeling and putting his nose to the earth. The third time the High Priest’s foot descended onto his back, holding him down while the Priest chanted the short litany and Huy followed. “Now get up and bow,” the man said crisply. “Do you know what you are looking at?”

“No, Master,” Huy gulped. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“Kill you? No. You are nothing but an ignorant child who is paying the price for wandering where he should not. You will be handed to Overseer Harmose and whipped, and you will go to bed without food in order that you might always remember this day.”