The Twice Born (18 page)

Her voice came to him from the doorway. “You see? You are remembering already. Your father will send to the priest.”

Before Huy’s eyes closed, he forced himself to look up at the ceiling. Familiar cracks spidered across the whitewash, each meandering fissure a thread of reassurance.
My room
, he thought.
I am home
.

The following days were marked by regular doses of the nauseating poppy, as much water as Huy wanted, and long hours of sleep followed by equally long hours when he lay dazed and pleasantly drugged, staring at the slow movement the strips of sunlight made across his floor. His mother attended him constantly. He could often hear the cries and cheerful babbles of a child somewhere in the house, the scolding voice of another woman named Hapzefa, their servant, his mother told him, and the sure male tread of Hapu, his father, but no one save his mother came near him. His uncle requested regular news of his progress, but neither he nor Huy’s aunt visited. Finally Huy, sitting up on his couch with a mound of pillows supporting him, asked his mother why.

“They are all afraid of you,” she told him bluntly. “It has done no good for me to be angry with your father. He is not a lover of the gods, but he is superstitious, as is so often the case with those who mistrust the divine. When you are able to walk in the garden, he will see you and be calmed. Hapzefa loved you very much and does not wish to have her fear that your ka has gone confirmed.” She would not meet his eyes. “I have prepared a soup of barley and onions for you, with pepper and aloe juice to strengthen your heart. There is a little date wine also, but if you are not ready for it you need not finish it.”

Huy fingered his head. Hair was beginning to grow on his scalp in a swath of soft black fuzz, but it had refused to take root on the unsightly dent that marked the place where the throwing stick had brutally severed him from his past. “Mother, why has no physician been called to me?” he wanted to know. “Is it because Father is too poor to afford one? Uncle Ker would pay.”

Her hands suddenly shook as they placed a tray across his sheeted thighs. “Your uncle said that if your wound became infected and you died, it would prove your innocence,” she said huskily, “but if you lived then it was the demon in your body that had triumphed.” Her features distorted in a grimace of rage and disgust. “Your father argued with him many times, often violently, but Ker is adamant. I have tried to reach him through Heruben, but it is useless. The priest is not charging us for the poppy.”

Huy lay quietly under the swift kiss she planted on his cheek. “So my father is able to reason with his fear. I need his loyalty. I long to see him, Mother, and my little brother.” He knew the boy’s name but could not always bring it to mind.

“Soon you may leave the couch and sit in a chair,” Itu said. “Eat the soup. Drink the wine. Are you in pain today?”

“Not much. But I need more poppy than at first.”

“Its effect is wearing off. You are becoming inured to it. When Methen comes today, I will tell him.”

The priest had been a regular visitor, sitting quietly with Huy and answering his questions honestly. “Your mother chooses to believe that you lay in a coma for five days after you were struck down,” he told Huy. “Let us not disabuse her of the notion. But Huy, the sem priests are correct. They deal with dead bodies every day. They could not be deceived. You died. You were dead. I saw your corpse unloaded from your uncle’s barge and carried to the House of the Dead. I held your father while he cried. I went into the House and watched the sem priests wash the blood from your body. I saw the stale water pour out of your white lips. I had become very fond of you, you see. I purified myself afterwards, of course, but I had to make sure that you would be treated with due respect in the House no matter what your embalming was going to cost. Your uncle had planned to put you into his own tomb. He has an agreement with your father so that all your family may lie safe and thus enter the Paradise of Osiris unscathed.” Methen had leaned close. “For your own safety, Huy, do not ever deceive yourself. The gods revived you after five days. Where was your ka during that time? You say you cannot remember. That may change. In the meantime do not ever, ever pretend as your mother does. It is the only way she can bear to be near you. You must be exorcised soon. Perhaps then the townspeople will stop talking of murder and go back to gossiping about each other.”

“Murder?” Huy was startled and horrified. “They want to murder me?”

Methen grinned mirthlessly. “They want the demon sent back to the dark realm and Huy’s body properly embalmed and entombed. An exorcism will achieve the same result, I hope.”

“What happened to me?” Huy cried out. “Where did the gods take me? Why did they bring me back?”

Methen had gripped his agitated hands. “Their purpose will become clear. Tell me, do you remember any of your lessons? Are you able to hold a brush and write the hieroglyphs?”

Huy held on to his friend tightly. “No, not yet. I try to think of them, but then they become muddled in my head. Nor am I physically strong enough. Why?”

“Because demons cannot write the sacred language Thoth gave to us. Its holiness defeats them. Write, and you will go a long way to proving that you are still Huy son of Hapu.”

“What if I am not?” Huy responded bitterly. “What if I only think I still have my own ka?”

Methen sat back. “Madness lies that way,” he retorted. “Say your prayers and have patience, Huy. I did not hesitate to pick you up and bring you home to the screams of your mother and the horror of your father. I am a priest. I would have known through my hands if I had become sullied when I cradled you in the darkness outside the House of the Dead.” He rose. “I must attend to my duties. Khenti-kheti awaits. I will come again soon and bring more poppy, although by your increasingly healthy colour I do not think you will need it for much longer.”

I would like to keep drinking it for the rest of my life
, Huy thought as Methen’s straight back vanished into the gloom of the passage.
To always have that welcome fog between me and every other Egyptian would be very fine. But a continuous fog between me and my disordered mind would be even better
.

Not long after this conversation, the doses of poppy were withdrawn, and Huy spent several sleepless nights in a mood of irritability and restlessness, leaving his couch to pace up and down between the window and the wall until he was tired enough to sleep. The exercise did not take long. The muscles of his legs seemed slow to gain strength, as though he had been an invalid for many months. He had begun to fear the dark, and without comment Itu had left him a lamp to keep the shadows at bay.

It was on one such night, when the depression in his skull had begun to itch unbearably and his body seemed full of crawling insects, that the girl appeared. Huy had just returned to his couch and was pulling a sheet up over himself when there was a furtive disturbance at the window, the reed hanging was pushed forward, and one naked brown foot slid into view. Huy forgot his discomfort, watching in fascination as one leg, then the other, then the whole small figure materialized, shrugging down the sheath that had become disarranged before pausing to stare across the room at him with narrowed eyes.

Huy sat very still, frantically trying to put a name to the foxlike little face he recognized but could not place. She was obviously of low peasant stock. Her skin had been burned to the colour of wood bark by the sun. The linen garment she was pushing past her knees was thick and coarse, its hem ragged with wear, its surface marred by old stains although limp with many washings. Wiry black hair stood out from her head in an unwieldy mass and hid the tops of her shoulders, but unkempt as it was it could not detract from the sharp delicacy of her features. Her dark eyes were large and clear. Unlike most peasants, she had a nose as straight and thin as any aristocrat’s daughter, swooping down towards a wide, well-delineated mouth and a chin as pointed as the angle of her elbows. Her arms were thin and Huy’s impression of her body under the ugly folds of the garment was that it was thin also, but lithe as she unbent and stood waiting expectantly for a word of recognition from him. The moment lengthened. The girl’s black eyebrows drew together in a frown. She folded her arms, strong fingers splayed against her forearms, and took a step forward on bare, roughened feet. The impression she gave Huy was one of coherent determination, a self-assuredness that promised impatience and a pride at variance with her impoverished appearance. Huy was intrigued. He knew her. Something inside him recognized her with a rush of gladness, but the curious combination of good breeding and commonness she projected confused him.

“You can’t even remember my name, can you, Huy?” Her tones sent waves of both relief and shame through him. She was there in the back of his mind, hidden under the catastrophic events of the past weeks. This was one face, one voice, he should have been able to identify before all others, but he could not force her name out of the murk of his consciousness. He shook his head. “Mother said that you’d lost a lot of your memory,” she went on tartly, “but I can’t believe you’re not just teasing me. Perhaps if I slap that silly expression off your face you’ll come to your senses. Oh, Huy! I’m your very best friend! Better even than that aristocrat Thothmes you’re always talking about.”

Quickly she came towards him, and as she did so the pieces of information in his head flew together and he let out a sigh. “Ishat,” he said. “You are Ishat.”

She clicked her tongue and came forward. “Of course I’m Ishat!” she snapped. “Who else would be sneaking into your room in the middle of the night? If Mother knew I was here I’d get the beating of my life. She has strictly forbidden me to try to see you in case you leap on me with the murderous teeth of Sobek and tear me to pieces.” Arriving at the edge of the couch, she peered at him closely, examining his face. “You look ghastly,” she said matter-of-factly, “but I don’t see any demon behind your eyes. Is it really true what they say? Is that wine in the jug?” She sniffed at it. “Can I have some?”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” Huy replied, smiling in spite of himself. “It’s palm wine. A poor substitute for the poppy and not sweet enough. Do you know me well, Ishat?”

In the act of pouring the wine into his empty cup, she gave him a sideways glance full of astonishment. “Only since we were born! My mother, Hapzefa, serves in this house and I do also.” She filled the cup and turned to him, holding it in both hands. “Do you remember nothing but my name, Huy? Not how close we are? How we always played together and you were often really mean to me? How I gave you a beautiful golden scarab beetle when you went away to school?” She took a breath and opened her mouth to continue, but Huy waved at her urgently.

“Wait!” he commanded. “Wait. Don’t move. Something is unfolding.” He dared not breathe as the knowledge slowly bloomed within the mysterious recesses of his mind. “The scarab! I remember! All the other boys envied me for the luck of having it.” He pursed his lips. “But it did not bring me luck, did it? It brought me to this.”

Ishat sucked appreciatively at the wine then set the cup back on the table. “Where is it now?” she demanded. “Did some other pupil steal it after you died?”

“I don’t know. It was in the box my uncle gave me, together with my sennet game and my Nefer amulet and my scribe’s palette. Oh, Ishat! I can see those things! Look under my couch. See if the box is there.” She knelt and, scrabbling about, withdrew the cedar box. Huy snatched it from her and hugged it to his chest, but he did not want to open it, not until she had gone.

“I can’t see that you’ve changed much, except for the silly halo of fuzzy hair all over your head,” she said a trifle sulkily. “Show me the wound.” Still clutching the box, he twisted sideways. Ishat climbed up beside him and he felt her deft fingers move over what had become to him a ravine, her noisy breath in his ear. Presently she sat back. “It’s really ugly,” she pronounced. “Deep and red and all furrowed. I heard it was a throwing stick.”

Shame at the disfigurement washed over him. “So I was told,” he responded dryly. “But I can’t see the person who did it, or any of the other boys for that matter.”

Ishat grinned. “So we are equal again. You will be staying home now, won’t you, Huy? No more school. No more aristocratic friends. Only me. You’ll have to marry me now. I’m the only one left who isn’t afraid of you.” At his expression of distress she lifted his hand and laid it to her cheek. “I’m sorry. That was cruel. I do not believe that you are inhabited by something evil. Not you! But I had to see for myself, and Mother has kept me away from your house ever since the priest brought you back.” She smiled. “Well, at least it has meant a rest from sweeping floors and washing linens and trying to cook.” She let him go and stood. “I had better go before we wake your parents. May I visit you again in the middle of the night?”

He nodded but said nothing, and after a moment she quickly drained the wine, ran noiselessly across the floor, and vanished. The reed mat slapped once against the wall and then hung motionless.

Silence filled the house once more. Huy fancied that he could still feel Ishat’s touch on his scalp and resisted the urge to scratch his wound.
So I have one friend whose faith in me has not wavered
, he thought.
I know and yet do not know her. Behind her face, her familiar gestures, there is a tapestry of colours and events and conversations, but they are so muddled and garbled that I cannot sort them out
.

All the same, his heart was lighter as reverently he set the cedar box across his thighs and raised the lid with its silver image of Heh, god of eternity, kneeling on a stool. Huy’s nostrils filled with its pleasant scent. The scarab, wrapped in a piece of spotless linen, sat in one of the compartments. Huy drew it out, laying back the cloth and gazing down at the glittering thing. “I found it floating on the flood,” Ishat said loudly. Huy looked up, startled, but the lamp’s glow showed him an empty room. “My father told me that scarabs are very rare here in the Delta. They like to live in the desert,” the voice went on, Huy now knew, in his own head. “He said it would bring me good fortune, but I said Huy needs it more than I do, seeing that he has to go away to school.” The proximity of the memory in which the words were encapsulated made Huy feel nauseated.
My Naming Day
, he thought. Garden. Family? Which Naming Day? A flash of something came to him. He was running down the passage outside his door towards the bright sunlight of the garden, but he doubted that such a moment had anything to do with the scarab.