The Twice Born (62 page)

“Are you insane?” She thrust her face close to his. “You may not want this, but I deserve it! Besides, if you refuse it, won’t you be offending him far more deeply than anything you could do in the future? And how long can you continue to flog yourself among the sick of the town, the way you’ve been doing, before you wear out either your gift or your body? Headaches every day, hollows under your eyes, you get so tired you cannot sleep. Please, Huy. Please! Let us do this!”

“Those are a woman’s arguments,” he grumbled, “but I dare say they are valid. Let me read our governor’s scroll and then make no decision until the morning.”

He could almost hear her swallowing any further words. She nodded and gestured sharply. “Go on, then.”

Snapping the seal, he again read aloud. Ishat stood where she was.

To the Seer Huy son of Hapu, greetings. The King has acquainted me with his desires for you, therefore it pleases me greatly to let you know that I have placed his request in the hands of your mayor, Mery-neith, with instructions that he should find a suitable house for you and personally oversee the acquisition of furnishings, grain, oil, and servants. The King wishes to provide gold, perfumes, cosmetics, and all other necessities from his own Treasury and storehouses. May you have joy of your good fortune, and bless the God who is so generous. If you find any fault with Mery-neith’s choice for you, I have empowered him to select other estates for you to inspect. Written by my own hand on behalf of the King, this thirteenth day of Tybi, year three.

“Other estates for you to inspect!” Ishat crowed. “Oh, Huy! We have not treated this Mery-neith, have we?”

“No.” Huy let the scroll roll up with a sense of defeat. It would indeed be insane to throw this gem back in the King’s face, yet a shadow seemed to lie over it. “But I have been to the homes of several of his assistants. Mery-neith has a large and very healthy family.” He set the governor’s letter beside the King’s and stared down at the two smooth beige cylinders. “I suppose that the mayor has had word by now and we must just wait for a message.”

“So you will do it? You will accept the King’s offer?”

“I have little choice. All I can do is hope that Amunhotep’s reign progresses without the necessity for difficult decisions and that he will put our continued welfare into the hands of his treasurer and a steward and gradually forget about me.” He raised his eyes to hers. “Besides, you are right, Ishat. I owe you this. Without you I could not do the work of the gods.”

“No, you couldn’t.” She heaved a great breath that lifted her shoulders exuberantly. “Now, while we are waiting for word from the mayor, you can help me shake out these wet linens and drape them about so we have something to wear in the morning.”

No communication came from the mayor for the next two weeks. Ishat continued to take down the names of the needy in the temple’s crowded forecourt each morning. She and Huy continued to visit their homes. Huy had taken the letters to Methen, hoping that the High Priest would counsel him against accepting the King’s gift, but Methen merely nodded and smiled his approval. “You are one of this country’s treasures, Huy, though you do not know it yet,” he had said. “Perhaps our King, young though he is, is beginning to realize that you must be cared for and protected.”

“Like some useful domestic animal,” Huy retorted.

Methen’s eyebrows rose. “You have less right to such pride than anyone else in Egypt. Do you think that the King is honouring your good looks? Of course not! Without your gift, what would you be? An assistant scribe to an assistant scribe in some merchant’s home.” They had been sitting knee to knee in Methen’s quarters. Now the priest leaned forward, placing both hands on Huy’s shoulders. “You may not spend much time remembering the moment when you woke from the dead in the House of the Dead and gave the sem priests the fright of their lives,” he went on, “but I do. Such a miracle has never been seen before. Did Atum breathe life back into your body as a kindness to you? No. He did it for Egypt. You have been using his power to heal, but I firmly believe that your destiny is to guide the gods who will sit on the Horus Throne with your ability to predict the future—or rather, the ability Atum has given you to predict the future. You will tell kings what to do, and they will do it.” He gave Huy a gentle shake before sitting back. “This is the first step, and you must take it.”

Suddenly Huy wanted to fling himself into Methen’s arms like the child he had been on that terrible day. “I have been born out of time!” he said thickly. “I should have been wrapped in cerements and buried years ago! What is this that inhabits me, Methen? The Rekhet told me that I am not possessed. Then what lashes me along this path? What part of myself disappeared when I died, to be replaced by … by what?”

“Each of us is composed of seven parts,” Methen answered. “You know this. But for you there is an eighth part. You are more than complete, Huy. Nothing in you is missing. A great and useful gift has been added. Useful to Atum. Something Atum desires you to have in order for him to steer the fortunes of our country.”

The mayor himself came to Huy’s door one early evening just as Huy and Ishat were finishing their last meal of the day. He was a hearty, rotund man who held his position through his ability to be at ease with peasant and noble alike. Now he stood on Huy’s threshold, two waiting litters behind him, and bowed. He looked distressed.

“I knew of you, of course,” he told Huy, “but I had no idea that you were living here!” He waved behind him at the clamour of the street. “You must forgive me, Master. My days are overfull of administrative matters. Do not turn me into a toad!”

Huy laughed, liking the man at once. “You need not call me Master. As for my surroundings, what’s wrong with them? I have been happy here.”

Mery-neith’s brow cleared. “Ah. Well. But you will be happier in surroundings more appropriate to your calling. I must tell you how glad I am that you choose to stay in Hut-herib, not the prettiest town in Egypt, I’ll be the first to admit, and not run off to Iunu or even Mennofer. It will be my pleasant duty to channel the King’s maintenance to you at regular intervals, and naturally, if you or your servant”—here he sketched a bow to Ishat—“lack for anything, you must send to me at once. Now if you are ready, I wish to show you the estate I have chosen for you. It is small but quiet. It belonged to one of our few noblemen, who has been promoted to Overseer of the Governor’s Cattle in the Ka-set sepat and who has thus moved his family closer to his work. He has been recompensed for his house.” With a glance at Ishat’s excited face Huy followed the mayor out into the warm evening air. “To tell you the truth, I hope you will like the place when you see it,” Mery-neith continued as he indicated one of the litters. “There are not many suitable estates in or around Hut-herib. The governor made it clear that you were to be situated on the edge of the town, so that only the most desperate citizens will be able to bother you. If you will ride with me, Master? And your servant in the other litter, if you wish her to come with us?”

“A pack of ravening hyenas couldn’t prevent Ishat from coming.” Huy pointed at the second litter. Ishat nodded and ran to it. “She is more my friend than my servant, Mayor.”

“Ah. Well.” Mery-neith lowered himself beside Huy, who smiled to himself. The mayor was too well mannered to inquire into the nature of Huy’s relationship with Ishat, but Huy could feel the questions hovering on the man’s tongue. He let them hover.

Huy left the curtain open on his side of the litter so that he could see where they were going. At the end of the street they turned right, skirted the temple compound, then took another, wider street that Huy knew ran east a short way before meeting the road that ran beside the far eastern tributary. He wondered if they would then head north or south. He liked to think of the south, where Iunu lay at the point of the river’s mighty divide into the many smaller rivers making up the Delta. To his delight the litter did indeed swing south. The road was crowded with laden donkeys and farmers carrying sacks of seed on their backs, for it was the month of Mekhir, the time of swift sowing and even swifter growing. Mery-neith’s steward strode ahead of the litter, calling a warning. The people divided to stream past on either side. Mery-neith often interrupted his flow of bright conversation to call out a greeting or a question to one or another. “Do you know everyone in Hut-herib?” Huy asked him.

Mery-neith flung out his arms in an expansive gesture. “I try to visit every home and farm once a year. I know your uncle Ker, and I did once announce myself at your father Hapu’s door. He shared beer with me, but seemed uneasy. Your mother Itu is very beautiful. To my eternal shame, Master, I have inadvertently omitted your street for the last two years.”

The crowd was thinning. Huy could smell running water and greenness and the faint scent of flowers. The bearers abruptly veered right, took several steps, and set the litter down. Mery-neith, for all his bulk, got out nimbly. Huy followed.

He was standing in the middle of a garden. To his left was the wide opening through which they had come, cut into a wall that continued out of sight on either side, high and solid. To his right, the equally naked wall of a house joined transverse walls. In between was the short path up which they had come, dividing unkempt flower beds, patches of sparse grass, a scummed pond full of lily pads, and several sycamore and acacia trees for shade.

Mery-neith, seeing Huy’s expression, lifted a finger. “Do not judge yet. See, by the gate, there is a shelter for the gate guard and, beyond it, over the river road, your watersteps. The door to the house itself is small, as you can see, and this garden somewhat neglected since the last owner left. But it keeps the house back from the road. Less noise within.” Ishat had clambered out of her litter and joined them, and together they followed Mery-neith to the wooden door set into the wall of the house. He pushed it open. “It bolts from the inside,” he told them, but they were not listening. Both had halted in amazement.

A large reception room had opened out before them, its black-and-white-tiled floor gleaming, the three small pillars in its centre wreathed with painted grapevines in whose leaves a host of birds in scarlets, yellows, and various shades of blue hid or thrust out their open beaks in soundless song. The whitewashed walls held a frieze, running just under three clerestory windows, that obviously represented the river, for fish of all kinds swam in the undulating blue swaths. “I had the walls freshly whitewashed up to the frieze,” the mayor said, “so that you could paint any scenes you liked for this room. The furniture throughout has come from the palace storehouse in Mennofer, by the King’s command. If it is unsuitable it will be replaced.”

Ishat was on her knees, her hands caressing the floor. “Not earth,” she whispered. “Tiles. Tiles, Huy! I have never been in a house with a proper floor before!”

Huy was moving from one piece of furniture to another. “But these chairs are cedar inlaid with ivory! And these four little tables—surely they are of ebony, with surfaces of gold and blue faience squares! You are sure they are for us, Mery-neith?”

“Quite sure. Trust me, they are nothing compared with what rests in the palace itself. This room would make a good office for you, Master, don’t you think? Or you might prefer one of the others along the passage.” He was indicating an open cedar door to the right of the main entrance. Huy walked over to it and looked in. The far wall was obviously the main wall of the whole house and part of the major wall running from the road, enclosing one side of the courtyard. Therefore it had no window, but, turning to his left, Huy saw that half that wall was nothing but window filled with the sunlit greenery of a strip of shrubbery beyond. The walls were full of empty niches intended for scrolls. This floor was also tiled in black and white. One large desk with a chair behind it, backing onto the wide window, dominated the space. This was a place of serious industry.

Huy withdrew. “You’re right,” he said.

Mery-neith nodded. “Good. Come. And you, young woman, do not fear that you will be sweeping that floor you appear to worship. Your servants are even now being hired by my assistant.”

A tiled passage led from the reception room past one door on the right and two on the left and straight out into blinding sunlight that was shafting as far as the reception room. Mery-neith opened each door. “One of these rooms is usually reserved for your chief steward and another for your scribe. The third is for a body servant. As you can see, they are simply furnished with a couch, table, stool, and tiring chest—and niches for whatever gods your servants will pray to, of course. Each of these rooms has an aperture cut in the ceiling so that you may call down for whatever you need from the bedchambers above. We will go upstairs before you see the kitchen, granary, and garden.”

“Every room has a wind catcher, and the reception room has two of them,” Ishat whispered to Huy. “I am so excited I can hardly stand up, my legs are trembling so! Wait until my mother sees all this!”

Wordlessly, Huy followed the mayor up the narrow stair that began at the end of the passage nearest the opening to the garden. Above, there was another passage running straight to the front of the house. It hugged a bare wall on the left against which the stairs had been built. On the right were another three doors. Each bedchamber contained a huge gilded couch, a cedar and brass-figured tiring chest, one small and one large table set with the most delicate alabaster lamps Huy had ever seen, two chairs, and opposite the door a very low window with a sill over which one could step onto a narrow deck that ran past each room and ended in a large area that was the roof of the reception hall. The floor of the room farthest from the stair was over half filled by a great golden lion’s pelt, the snarling head and curved claws intact. Huy stared at it, marvelling.

“The King killed this lion himself, with his very own bow,” Mery-neith told Huy. “I was instructed to tell you this. The King wants you to enjoy every blessing he can bestow.” He glanced curiously at Huy. “I apologize to you yet again, Master. I was not aware of your true importance.”