The Twice Born (56 page)

He was also forced to forgo his visits to his family. He sent Ishat to explain to them why he had so little time to call his own. His mother sometimes came to the outer court, waiting patiently until the increasingly large crowd vying for his attention had thinned, and Heby found many occasions to hurry from his morning’s lessons and chatter away to Huy before Hapzefa loomed to escort him home. So the season of Shemu passed quickly into Akhet, the season of the Inundation, and four months later into Peret, when the river deposited its silt and sank, its task accomplished, and the sowing and growing began again.

Neither Huy nor Ishat marked the passing of time. For them each day was like another, full of begging voices, broken bodies, and fatigue, although Ishat found the energy to be delighted with the growing variety of gifts from those the gods had blessed through Huy: coarse blankets, cowhides for the floors, clay bowls and cooking pots, a copper looking glass, a selection of dried herbs, jugs of beer and occasionally wine, plenty of natron, and once, to Ishat’s great excitement, a bolt of linen of the tenth grade and a handful of gold dust from the assistant governor of the Maten sepat, who had travelled north from Mennofer, the capital of the Maten, with his diseased wife on his barge. A fussy and meticulous man, like so many nobles involved in administration, he had spent many minutes describing his wife’s symptoms—a languid inability to rise for more than an hour or so, a vagueness of mind, a steady loss of weight. Huy had listened impatiently, and when at last he was allowed to take the woman’s cold hands in his own, he saw her intestines bursting with writhing worms. Anubis prescribed minute doses of the dog button, a rare and very expensive plant with blossoms that smelled of cumin and coriander, and intensely poisonous grey velvet seeds. The assistant governor was shocked when Huy told him to obtain the seeds, which had to be imported, crush them one at a time, and feed them to his wife mixed in honey. “But, Master,” the man protested, “every physician knows that the seeds of the dog button cause death from convulsions and a stopping of the breath! I cannot take that risk!”

“I said one seed at a time,” Huy had pointed out wearily, wondering if it was the cost of the remedy that had sent the assistant governor into a paroxysm of objection. “One seed every three days for fifteen days, in honey. Crush and administer it yourself, in the presence of your household steward in case you make a mistake. More than one seed will kill your wife. Less will have no effect.”

The man departed mollified but unconvinced. A month later the gold dust and linen had arrived, delivered by a herald, together with a short, ecstatic scroll of thanks. Huy shrugged. He knew almost nothing about the medicines the god told him to prescribe. He had never heard of the dog button before Anubis’s harsh tones had spoken the words into his ear.

Sometimes the god’s instructions seemed nonsensical. “Put the water of the river into a pot and make it boil until you have counted to five hundred. Let it cool. Mix it with the grey rot of bread of ten days and have your son drink the equivalence of one phial of it every day until it is gone.” Huy understood rotten bread of ten days, or two, or seven. Everyone did. Such bread, placed on a suppurating wound or even eaten by someone with an infection, often healed. But why boil the water of the river? Huy did not know—he simply conveyed the decision of the god to anxious parents, husbands, wives, whoever waited hopefully for salvation. He took no pride in the healings; they were not of his doing. His pleasure rested in seeing the sick restored to health. Since finally relinquishing his will to Atum, he had recognized himself as nothing more than a vessel, a lamp waiting to be filled with oil and lit before it could be used. He did not forget the knowledge that had come to him. Atum had not given him back his life out of mercy. Atum had chosen to resurrect him for a purpose, and at last Huy was able to accept the responsibility of that purpose without resentment.

He began to see petitioners from other parts of the country, due, he thought, to the restoration of the assistant governor’s wife. He had asked the man to keep the results of the prescription to himself and trusted that a government official would do so, but his wife was a different matter. Ishat was the only woman Huy knew who could hold her counsel. Women loved to gossip, to share, to exaggerate their experiences and verbally tear apart their enemies. Even Nasha had not been immune from the desire to spread some delicious, shocking story. But Ishat regarded the conversation of other women with intolerance. Huy trusted her to keep any secret he shared with her, and so far she had not let him down.

The governor of the Sepa sepat himself came with a head that would not stop aching. His payment, to Huy’s great pleasure, was a bow and a set of well-made arrows, two decorated daggers, and a young donkey that Ishat immediately fell in love with and called Soft-Nose. “How are we going to feed it?” Huy had asked her irritably while she exclaimed over it and hugged its grey neck. She had smiled at him as though he were an imbecile.

“My father will put it out in his field and it will keep the wild animals from the crop,” she had said. “It is a good gift, Huy. When we move we will need a donkey, and a cart and harness.”

Huy had grunted. “So we will be moving soon?”

“Of course! The brick maker is piling up bricks for us. All we need is a piece of land.”
And that
, Huy thought,
is an impossibility. Only the King or the governor can apportion land
. But he did not say so. He did not want to spoil Ishat’s obvious pleasure.

The chief steward of the Prince of the Atef-Pehu sepat came from Qes, hundreds of miles to the south and halfway to Weset, where the King sat on the throne, and stood patiently in line with the dozens of other supplicants, a guard to either side of him, a servant holding a parasol over his shaved head to keep him in the shade. When Huy saw him begin to gasp for breath, he left the stool where he had been sitting in the outer court, told Ishat to continue to take down names, and led the chief steward into Methen’s cool quarters. His respiratory condition could not be cured, but it could be controlled with minute doses of the powdered leaves and roots of an imported plant called nightshade. To Huy’s surprise, the man nodded. “Few physicians know of this prescription. But my master’s physician is a foreigner from beyond the Great Green. He has much strange knowledge and is skilled in the treatment of all maladies. I had hoped that the gods would see fit to cure me completely, but it is not to be.” He had shot Huy a keen glance. “You have something else to tell me, young man.”

Huy had grimaced miserably. He had begun to like this humble, self-possessed servant. “I am sorry, but as well as Seeing your ailment, Anubis showed me your future. You are a soldier, are you not?”

“I used to be, before my Prince took me for his steward. I captained the guard of his house. I proved myself trustworthy.”

Huy touched his arm. “You will prove your devotion to your Lord with your life. You will die in battle, protecting him.”

The man’s dark eyebrows shot up. “In battle? But in the event that the One goes to war, I will be left to oversee my Prince’s family and household while he is away!”

“I tell you only what I have been shown.” Huy rose and went to the door. “It has been a privilege to meet you, noble one. I pray that my vision is proved false. Rest here until your chest eases.” But he knew, as he walked to where Ishat was surrounded by the usual clamorous crowd of the needy, that his visions had never been proved false. Suddenly he felt very sad.

18

 
SHEMU PROCEEDED ON
its stifling way. All around Hut-herib the crops were harvested, the grain threshed and stored, the perfume flowers gathered for soaking and distillation. Huy was scarcely aware of the activity in the fields as he and Ishat struggled to cope with the crowds that waited for them every dawn in the forecourt of the temple, and which did not disperse until Huy pushed through them at sunset to go home. He did not know how to control them, could not turn away any of the needy without a pang of guilt. It seemed to him that he drew strength from the dreams of the Paradise of Osiris that intensified in power and beauty the more exhausted he became. Ishat too was tired, giving the petitioners the sharp edge of her tongue when they surged around Huy instead of queuing quietly, and using the last of her energy each day to prepare their evening meal and wash their linens.

The season of Akhet began with the month of Thoth, when Sirius the Dog Star appeared in the night sky, signalling the beginning of the Inundation. Now at last the multitude began to thin. Thoth heralded the New Year, and celebrations honouring the god after whom the month was named, the appearance of Sirius, and the first slight rise in the level of the river went on for the full thirty days. Huy and Ishat stayed in their house, sleeping, eating, talking together as they had not been able to do for a long time. Huy answered the letters from Iunu that had piled up. He and Ishat visited their families. Both began to recover their strength.

“We cannot continue to deal with dozens of beggars every day,” Ishat remarked one hot evening as they sat on stools outside their door, watching the people of the street stream past them on their way to cast flowers into the water. “Besides, the High Priest has been receiving complaints from worshippers who can barely push their way into the court for all the crush of people around you. It’s time to find another place, Huy. Somewhere on the edge of the town. And we need a door steward, someone to regulate the flow of petitioners, admit them in order of need. How can I cook and clean as well as scribble lists all day and try to keep the citizens from mobbing you to death?”

Huy was leaning forward, relaxed, his elbows on his bare knees and his hands hanging between them, his eyes on the noisy and colourful scene flowing past. Now he sat back with a sigh. “You’re right. But to obtain land I must become a petitioner myself, at the governor’s door, and I don’t think that the gold we got from the noble with the headaches would be enough to pay for it. Besides, a house would have to be built. Where will the extra bread and onions come from to pay the labourers? And a doorkeeper? Be sensible, Ishat.”

“Is this sensible?” She flung out both brown arms. “Using up our khu faster than the gods can replenish it? How much longer will it be before we collapse ourselves?” She lowered her voice. “I am beginning to hate them all, with their anxious eyes and demanding tones, as though you owe them something instead of bestowing great favour on them.”

Huy was beginning to feel the same way but did not want to admit it. More and more the people who thronged him had begun to acquire a single face, their voices a single, jangling whine. He knew that the law of Ma’at required respect among all Egypt’s citizens, with the greatest reverence and esteem reserved for the One who sat on the Horus Throne. He knew also that his perception of his fellow humans was becoming distorted.
I see only the sick and troubled
, he thought as he watched Ishat’s dark brows draw together in a frown.
I share a laugh with no one. I have no time to use the bow and arrows I was given, or float on the river with Ishat and fish, or sit in the beer house and listen to the babble of healthy patrons. But how can I dare to incur the wrath of Atum by turning anyone away? Must I indeed exhaust my khu and my body to the point of illness myself, in the service of the god?

“I agree that we must bring some sort of order into what our lives have become, but how, Ishat?”

“There are three hundred bricks on our pile already. The brick maker sent his son last week to tell me. Soon there will be enough for a new house.” She tapped him on the knee. “Go and see our governor. Surely he has heard of your fame as a healer by now. He should be honoured to have such a servant of the gods in his town. He should give you land.”

Huy did not reply. As many as he had healed, there were many for whom he had predicted death, and although no one had refused to hear the nature of his or her end, such knowledge inevitably ate away at the precarious peace of the supplicant. More than once Huy had been confronted with a man or woman who had agreed to be told their future but who had eventually returned to Huy with fear, to have the vision verified. All venerated a healer; few accorded a fortune teller the same unqualified appreciation. Huy did not think that the governor would be eager to grant him a boon that might lift him from the relative anonymity of the street and set him closer to those of a higher class. Besides, the sting of Nakht’s rejection was still too painful; Huy could not face another such rebuff.

In the end he did nothing. The river swelled and overran its banks; Hut-herib became a series of islands. Huy’s eighteenth birthday on the ninth day of Paophi passed without much fuss. Ishat gave him a red ribbon to weave into his braid. Methen presented him with a sheaf of fresh papyrus and a pot of powdered ink. His parents feasted him, and Heby, in his brother’s honour, had painted a lurid picture of Huy kneeling before Atum on Hapu’s outside wall. Letters of congratulation came from Thothmes, Nasha, Ramose, and the Rekhet. Otherwise Huy and Ishat resumed the hectic pace of their life.

Every month had its celebrations. At least five days and usually more were holidays in honour of some god or other, when no work was done, and at those times Huy and Ishat snatched a little rest and sanity out of the chaos their lives had become; but Huy, increasingly desperate and depressed, began to dream of throwing his scanty belongings into his two satchels and stealing away with Ishat in the middle of some moonless night. He began to beg Atum for his release.

The blessed season of Peret with its four months of cool breezes, its green, springing crops and bursting fecundity, came and went. There were fewer fevers and invisible maladies for Huy to deal with. Accidents multiplied instead, as farmers laboured on their land with their tools, but a slashed leg or a broken arm could be dealt with by any physician. Children had always spent their time playing in the water of the canals running through the town and in the stagnant irrigation channels dividing the fields, and Peret brought drownings and worm infestations. Huy saw many children, some of them already dead, and for these the distraught parents expected Huy to perform a miracle and bring life back into the cold grey limbs. When he protested that he could not, demonstrated that such an event was far beyond his power, he saw the unspoken accusation in the swollen eyes of the bereaved. “You came back from the dead. You are the Twice Born. You are familiar with the gods, who granted you a second chance and gave you potent gifts. They must therefore love you, and will give you any boon you ask. Why do you not ask on behalf of my child?”

Seeing these drowned children with their pale, glazed eyes and weed-entangled hair filled Huy with the familiar panic of the child he had been. Often he needed all the strength of his will to prevent himself from fleeing every dim death room, with its odour of scummed water, and running to where there was light and warmth and the comforting noise of people going happily about their daily business. He began to drink wine in the lengthening dusks, seeking an oblivion he knew would be denied him but hoping nonetheless that he might prompt the pity of the gods.

The month of Pakhons heralded the return of the season of Shemu, when the days became gradually hotter and the fields turned from a tired green to bright gold, waiting for the scythes of the reapers. Pakhons passed. Payni began, and on the eighth day of that month Huy’s fortunes changed with a swiftness that stunned both him and Ishat. Just after dawn they were eating oat porridge with honey. Ishat had opened their front door to allow the brief coolness of the morning wind to flow in, but its touch revived neither of them. Dispirited and tired, they finished their meal in silence. Ishat had risen to collect their empty bowls when a shadow fell across the floor and someone pounded on the outer wall. “They cannot even wait until you go to the temple,” Ishat snapped. “Huy, this has got to stop!” She turned towards the doorway and froze, and Huy, seeing her sudden stillness, got up. A blessedly familiar form was advancing into the room.

“It took me a long time to find you,” Thothmes said. “Gods, Huy, I’d forgotten what an ugly pit Hut-herib is! Am I safe on this street? I did station a guard outside.”

For a long moment Huy stared at his friend. Then reality flooded in and he ran forward. “Thothmes! How wonderful! Yours is the last face I expected to see today!” He threw his arms around the well-remembered body. “What are you doing here? Do you have business with the governor?” They broke apart and stood grinning at one another. Huy felt his heart lighten and all tension in him loosen.

“Not exactly.” Thothmes looked him up and down with a critical eye. “What have you been doing to yourself? If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’d become a permanent drunk.”

“He works too hard, noble one.” The voice was Ishat’s. As Thothmes swung to her she bowed. “You perhaps do not remember me,” she went on. “I and my mother were servants in the home of Huy’s parents. Now I am Huy’s servant. But I remember you very well. Are your beautiful sisters with you, Master? Should I go to the market and prepare something special?” There was a hint of acid in her tone and Huy sighed inwardly.

“I do remember you,” Thothmes said slowly, “but the last time I saw you, you were a gangly little girl.
Ishat
. That’s your name, is it not? You have grown up most pleasingly, Ishat.”

She bowed again. “Thank you. Your family …?”

“At home in Iunu.” He turned to Huy. “Nasha sends all her love. She’s lonely now that Anuket has married and gone away. She and Father and I entertain a lot because the house seems so quiet and empty, and somehow when all the music and chatter have died away the three of us talk of Mother and of you.”

“Thothmes, you look so healthy and contented!” Huy cleared his throat, feeling choked with emotion. “You finished school, of course. You’re working for Nakht?”

Thothmes grimaced. “All day every day, even when everyone else is celebrating some god’s feast or other. Honestly, Huy, I drown in lists and figures, and the only fun I ever have is when Father sits in judgment over some dispute or other. I sit beside him and try to appear wise. I’m going to make a very lax governor when Father dies.”

Huy took his arm, drawing him farther into the room and indicating a chair. “Sit down, my dear one. Ishat, go next door and beg a jug of beer for us.”

Thothmes shook his head. “There’s no time for sharing the news this morning, Huy. I’d almost forgotten why I’m here. The King wants to see you.”

Huy gaped at him. “What?”

Thothmes chuckled. “I had to wade through the huge crowd waiting for you in the outer court of the temple an hour ago. I needed to get directions to your house from the High Priest. It wasn’t even light, my miraculously gifted friend, and here were all these beggars longing for your touch! It made me feel quite important.”

“Be serious.” Huy reached to the table behind him for support. He was trembling. “How does Pharaoh even know I exist?”

“Are you naive or just dense? You’re famous throughout the country, the young healer and fortune teller with the long hair who lives humbly with his faithful servant. It’s said that you can resurrect the dead and cause the gods to appear before you in clouds of incense. Anyway, the One needs your services.”

“What for? Is he ill? Do I travel south to see him? Oh, Thothmes, you are terrifying me!”

Thothmes let out an exaggerated sigh. “Anyone would think you live on the moon. Don’t you know that the tribes in Rethennu have rebelled against us? They’re slaughtering Egyptian merchants and officials who’ve been quite legitimately working in Rethennu, which is after all a vassal state and has been for hentis. Every new Horus has to mount a punitive expedition into Rethennu early on in his reign, and the foreigners never seem to learn prudence. The King wants a prediction from you regarding the outcome of his impending clash with these ungrateful tribesmen.”

“He is here in Hut-herib?”

Thothmes’ nose wrinkled with distaste. “Well, not actually in the town. The royal barge
Kha-em-Ma’at
is moored just north of here. The army is encamped to the east, where the Horus Road begins. Pharaoh will join the troops after you have Seen for him.”

“But Thothmes, what if I don’t See anything? It happens sometimes. Or See him defeated?”

“He will want the truth from you. Has he not named his barge
Living in Truth?
”

“And you”—Huy was desperately trying to organize this tumble of information in his mind—“why are you with him?”