The Twice Born (50 page)

“Of course you are. But what are you doing here? You usually spend the months of the Inundation at the school.”

So she had cared enough to stay abreast of his movements, probably through his letters to his parents. He felt ridiculously pleased. Then he sobered. A longing to tell her everything came over him. Almost shyly, for the voice of his old friend issuing from the mouth of this lovely woman still baffled him, he reached for her hand. “Come and sit with me on the other side of the hedge where no one can get to us from the house, the way we used to do,” he said, drawing her away from the pond.

Wordlessly she allowed herself to be drawn through the gap in the hedge and they settled themselves in the deep shadow of one of the trees. Ishat drew up her knees. The folds of her sheath fell away to reveal two long, shapely legs, which she did not bother to cover again. Huy smiled to himself even as he noted their grace. Something of the child who loved to run free and filthy alongside the canals still remained in her.

“I’m finished with school,” he began. “I’ve come back to Hut-herib to work for Methen …” And although it hurt him, shamed him, to speak to her of Nakht’s betrayal and of Anuket’s long betrothal, unbeknownst to him, to a nobleman’s son, and to unburden himself of the Book and its mysterious significance, he felt a great comfort as the words left him because it was Ishat listening—Ishat, his oldest friend and playmate—and his trust in her had not changed.

She laughed at him only once, when he haltingly recounted his disastrous effort to lose his virginity to the young whore. “So you could do nothing even though you wanted to?” she said incredulously. “And this with a woman schooled in arousing a man? Why not?” He told her why not, in short, sharp sentences. She was silent for many moments, looking away from him into the darkness under the trees. When she looked back at him, her expression was unreadable. “That’s the saddest, strangest thing I have ever heard. Are you sure of this, Huy? That Atum himself wills your virginity?”

“It seems so,” he replied harshly, “and most of the time I hate him for it, and hate the gift and hate not being able to get drunk like everyone else and hate being bowed to and stared at all the time in the temple.”

“So much hate!” she said, and the mocking tone was back. “And I hate too. I hate that stupid girl who made you so miserable and refused to run away with you.”

“What of your life, Ishat?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.

She shrugged. “Nothing has changed since I saw you last,” she said harshly. “I work in your father’s house under the command of my mother. I clean or cook or look after your brother. My own father has forbidden me the fields and waterways, without much success, now that I am fully grown. He is trying to find a suitable husband for me.”

“Is he succeeding?” Huy experienced a moment of sheer jealousy.

“No. I look at the mongrels who come sniffing around me with their big hands and dirty nails and the lust in their eyes and I am disgusted. My father is permanently angry with me.”

“So you are still a virgin?” Huy had not wanted to ask the question. He knew that it implied an interest in a part of Ishat’s nature he preferred not to consider; but he could not help himself.

A full minute went by before she answered, and when she did so her tone was carefully neutral. “You and your family are peasants, but you are one step above me and mine. Only slaves are below us in status, Huy, as you know very well. We are your servants. Our lives, our way of thinking about everything from the gods to gathering food, are cruder and more urgent than yours. Like the animals, we are mainly concerned with ensuring our survival and grabbing at whatever fleeting pleasure we can.” Slewing about, she folded her legs and faced him directly, and even in the uncertain light he could see the tension in her face and limbs. “If I had not grown up with you I would not even have learned the words I am able to use which do not belong to my class, even though my accent is rough and always will be. From you I have learned dissatisfaction. From you I have received pain.” She began to draw one palm across the other. The tiny sound was unnerving. “No, I am not a virgin, Huy. I was crossing a field last Pakhons, taking a shortcut to the river road. The barley was standing high. The workers had begun to pull up the weeds, the clover and wild flax and dock leaves that pollute the crop, but it was early afternoon and everyone was taking the hour of sleep.” Pausing, she stopped her stroking motion and hid her hands under her thighs. “I saw a young man coming towards me. I thought it was you. He walked like you, very straight and easy. I started to run towards him, but as I came closer I realized that of course it wasn’t you. Still, his features resembled yours. Coarser, and his eyes were smaller. We exchanged greetings. I was about to move on, feeling rather sad, when he caught my arm and pulled me down under the shelter of the fronds of barley. He kissed me. He pushed up my sheath. I closed my eyes and pretended it was you.” She laughed shortly, a sound without mirth. “Why did I give in to him, like an animal in one of my father’s pens? Because I missed you, Huy, and despaired of ever having you. Because I have always loved you. But it was rather horrible, just a series of boring fumbles, a moment of pain, and he got up and went on his way without a word to me. Such encounters are common among my class.” Her tone was biting. “Who cares if the blood of peasants is not pure, if one peasant impregnates another? Not like your noble friends, who are so careful to keep their bloodline untainted. When I got to the river road I went into the water and washed the blood off my legs and vowed that never again would I allow myself to be humiliated like that, in spite of my lowly status. Did I behave any better than your little whore, Huy? Not much.”

Huy was speechless. The jealousy had fled, to be replaced by a great pity. Gently tugging her hand out from under her cold flesh, he held it to his face then kissed it and let it fall. “I’m sorry, Ishat.”

“What for?” She got to her feet. “Is it your fault that you cannot love me? That you have never desired my body? So do the gods make fun of us for their own amusement.” Her voice broke.

Huy rose. “You are my friend like no other,” he began, but she gestured sharply, one swift wave of her fingers.

“Don’t try to make it better,” she snapped. “I play no silly feminine games. I am without the wiles of my sex. I love you. That is all.” She inhaled deeply, and all at once her body loosened. “So you go to Methen in the morning, to begin your new work?”

“I go to make my house habitable first,” he replied, glad that the conversation had moved to safer ground. “It’s dirty. It needs whitewash. Methen has given me some furniture from the temple storehouse, but it is very meagre. I’ll manage.”

She nodded. “I shall see you before you leave,” was all she said before turning on her naked heel and walking swiftly away through the trees.

Huy watched her until the night swallowed her up, then he pushed through the hedge and made his way across the garden and into the quiet house. Someone had left a lamp burning beside the cot in the room that was now Heby’s. Quickly Huy shed his kilt and loincloth and slid under the sheet that had been turned down for him. Leaning across to the table, he blew out the lamp. Gradually the darkness gave way to a sombre half-light; he had forgotten to lower the window hanging.

For a while he lay on his back, thinking. A grown-up Ishat had been a shock for which he should have been prepared, but in his arrogance he had not considered that the passing years had acted on her as they had on him. He imagined her striding across the barley field with its feathery beige expanse of crop, the low clumps of purple clover by her feet, the deep blue of the wild flax flowers nodding in the summer wind. He imagined the young man who resembled him, lowering her to the earth, pushing her sheath up to her neck to reveal that long, lithe body, pushing himself inside her. He was there, lying on top of her, looking into those dark, indifferent eyes with her black hair netted in the stalks of grain around her head.
Well, at least she did not enjoy it
, he thought restlessly.
She called it a boring fumble
. He felt angry and anxious.
One day she will enjoy it
, he told himself dismally.
One day a suitor acceptable to her will appear and she’ll begin to forget how close we were, she and I, and she will open her arms and her body and become one with someone else. Do I care?
He rolled onto his side and put both hands under his cheek. The sheets, the pillow, were rough and irritated his skin.
Yes, I do care, but why? Anuket is all my desire. Ishat is the friend of my childhood and nothing more
. Yet he found himself envious of the man who would see those sharp features loosen in sexual ecstasy, and he knew that, although he had no lover’s claim on Ishat yet, he wanted to keep her for himself so that no one else could have her. The need was ridiculous, entirely and illogically selfish. Huy did his best to fight it, but it lingered on into his sleep, fuming his dreams with an invisible cloud of fretfulness.

When he woke at dawn, the members of the household were already up. For a while he lay listening to Heby’s chatter, his mother’s calm comments, the clatter of dishes. He could smell fresh bread with the tang of sesame seeds, Hapzefa’s specialty, and with the aroma came a healthy hunger. Wrapping on the loincloth and kilt he had worn the previous day, he padded into Hapu’s reception room. Heby ran to him. He was wearing a kilt with a small wine stain near the hem that Huy recognized as one of his own from years ago. Sturdy leather and rope sandals were on Heby’s feet and he was clutching a small linen bag. Huy picked him up, hugged him, and set him down.

“I’m ready for school,” Heby told him. “I walk all the way, with my friend from farther along the road and his mother.” He shook the bag. “My lessons,” he said proudly. “One day I shall be allowed to write on papyrus instead of these bits of clay. Will you be here when I come home at noon, Huy?”

“No. But I shall come back and visit you soon, Heby. I will take you down to the docks to see the boats. Would you like that?”

“Yes, please! Father only takes me out to the fields sometimes, but I do go into the perfume house with Uncle Ker. The docks will be more exciting. Goodbye, big brother!”

“You had better mean what you say,” Itu commented. She had come into the room as Heby went out after impatiently allowing her to kiss the top of his curly head. “Heby has a very good memory, and if you disappoint him you may find a beetle slipped under the waistband of your kilt one day! Did you sleep well in your old room?” She was pouring him milk and cutting off a piece of goat’s cheese from the brown slab on the table. “Help yourself to dates as well,” she told him as he went to the floor and reached for the bread.

“My sleep was fine and I will certainly take Heby out some afternoon,” Huy replied, bringing the bread appreciatively to his nose before taking a bite. “Oh, Mother! I could eat Hapzefa’s bread all day!”

“Thank you, Master Huy.” The woman herself had come in and was removing the littered plates. “Ishat tells me that she saw you last night and you spent much time sharing all the news.” She cocked an eye at Huy, who knew exactly what she was thinking.

“We shared nothing but the news, Hapzefa,” he assured her. “Is there hot water for me to wash in after I’ve eaten?”

“Your father left some before he went to his work. It might still be warm.” She went out, her hands full.

Itu sat down beside Huy and watched him as he ate. “What of your friend Thothmes?” she asked after a while. “Will you miss him, Huy? Will you travel to Iunu sometimes to see him?”
You are ambitious for me, dearest Mother
, Huy told her with silent affection.
You hope that I will tire of poverty under Methen and will hurry back to some more illustrious post in Ra’s city
.

“I’ll miss him a great deal,” he answered, “but I’ll be writing to him as often as Methen lets me have papyrus. Thothmes gave me a sheaf of it that will not last forever.”

“And what of his sisters? Will you miss them also?”

Huy was about to tease her until he saw her expectant expression. “I shall miss the whole family,” he said between mouthfuls. “They were good to me, and generous—and yes, Mother, I still feel more than affection for Nakht’s youngest daughter, Anuket. But you knew that, didn’t you, even though I did not speak of it to you directly.”

“I guessed as much from the way you described her to me,” Itu sighed. “I had hoped that your preoccupation with her might have died a natural death by now, my son. Should your father be seeking a suitable wife for you?”

Huy swallowed the last of his food and sat back. “No,” he replied firmly. “How could I support a wife in the position I am about to take up? And anyway, where is the woman of my station who would hold my interest and my respect?”

“Nowhere close by, that is true,” Itu admitted. “The children of Iunu’s Governor have spoiled you for any intercourse within your own class. It’s a pity. Perhaps Ker can help. He has a wide acquaintance among the merchants from the Delta to Weset.”

“I will take no favours from Ker, and you know very well why,” Huy said harshly. “I am simply not interested in marriage, Mother. Perhaps I never will be.” He got up abruptly. “I must wash now.”

Outside, between the house and the kitchen, was the pit where Hapzefa heated water for the household. A large cauldron hung over the ashes of the morning’s fire. Beside it, on the beaten earth, was a small dish of natron and a cloth. There seemed to be no oil left in the clay cruse propped carelessly against the wall; Hapu had used it all. Huy did not begrudge it to him as he stripped and began to ladle the tepid water over himself. A man who worked under the sun’s unforgiving heat all day needed the protection of whatever oil was to hand. Huy unbound his hair but did not wash it. After scrubbing his body, he rebraided his thick tresses, tied the plait with the frog, and re-entered the house, intending to pick up his leather satchel and be on his way.

But angry voices met him as he walked along the passage, and he emerged into the reception room to see his mother and Hapzefa facing a thin-lipped Ishat. Hapzefa was red from the neck of her heavy sheath to the roots of her grey hair, his mother looked distraught, but Ishat stood with her arms folded, a large linen bag at her bare feet and an obstinate expression that Huy recognized only too well on her features. “I don’t care what you say,” Ishat was declaring loudly, “I’m going. And if Father drags me back, I’ll just run away again. I’m fifteen, Mother. Soon I’ll be sixteen. Why bother to fight with me now?”