House of Illusions (34 page)

All at once my way was blocked by a soldier who came to a halt squarely in front of me and looked me up and down with a bold stare. Before I could draw back, he was fingering my hair and fumbling with my sheath in an obvious attempt to judge the size and fitness of my body. He gave me an impersonal, swift smile. “Beer and a bowl of soup,” he pronounced. “What do you say?” Shame and a hot loathing coursed through me, directed not at him but at myself. For the second time that day my price had been assessed at no more than the value of the barest necessities to sustain life. If I am now worth so little, the words came whispering into my head, why not accept? What can it matter? You need sustenance, and this young man has accurately estimated the cost of the thing you would give in exchange for it. I drew myself up, although I wanted to crawl away and hide.

“No,” I replied. “I am not for sale. I am sorry.” He shrugged and did not argue, his lust a momentary impulse, not yet fuelled by a few hours of drinking and the jokes of his companions, and stepping around me he sauntered off. My mood of exaltation had gone and I did not linger. One last long red tongue from the setting sun slid towards me as I walked, until it came up against a bend in the street and soon faded. A jostling, whistling pack of soldiers crossed in front of me and disappeared into an open door. I looked up. The scorpion painted on the wall above seemed to want to scuttle down after them. I had found Kamen’s beer house.

With some trepidation I slipped inside. It was a small, unpretentious establishment crammed with tables and benches, well lit and seemingly clean. It was still halfempty, but even as I stood on the inner step, more soldiers pushed by me to be greeted with shouts. A few quiet whores sat together in a corner. They noticed me at once and eyed me suspiciously, afraid, I suppose, that I had come to steal business from them, but after a short while they lost interest in me and went back to their appraisal of the room.

I had begun to attract the attention of the soldiers as well. Their eyes flicked over me and away and I scanned them cautiously, looking for a spark of recognition or speculation. It was possible that Kamen had already given a message to his friend to pass to me, but one by one the faces turned away.

I could not stay there. I did not know if any of them belonged to Paiis’s guard but surely sooner or later someone would remember my description and rise to ask questions. This street was not a good place for me to be. The smell of soup was wafting into my nostrils from somewhere in the rear of the room and my mouth began to water but I turned and left, walking quickly away from the lamplight and into the lengthening shadows. Tomorrow I could easily steal food, and one night without it would do me no harm. I was thirsty, but the Waters of Avaris lay not far away and I could drink my fill of it if I did not care about the refuse flung into it. Better to take water from one of the temples where the priests kept huge urns filled for the use of pilgrims and worshippers. I found myself back on Ptah’s forecourt with a sense of relief.

Spending a moment in prayer to the Creator of the World, I drank deeply of his water and then began to wander the city, moving gradually towards the quays and docks where I intended to shelter for the night. At first I found myself often dodging into the darkness of recessed doorways while some richly hung litter passed by, its escort before and behind to clear a path and protect its rear, a servant calling a warning before it swung into view. Often the curtains would be raised and I would catch a glimpse of thin, gleaming linens bordered in gold or silver, a jewelled and hennaed hand fluttering, the stirring of oiled and coroneted braids. I did not want to take the chance of being recognized, even after seventeen years, by any of my former harem cellmates, though it was unlikely that any of them would know me without long consideration. Sometimes I thought I saw a face I had known, painted and closed, aloof in its beauty and its privilege, but my heart told me that what I perceived was the familiarity of my past, not one small fragment of it. As I grew closer to the docks and warehouses of Pi-Ramses, the torches and processions became less frequent and I walked more freely, but my hand crept to the hilt of the knife I had stolen and remained there, for the streets and alleys were dark and the people I encountered more furtive.

At the water’s edge, with the black silhouettes of barges and great rafts before me and the towering and jumbled heights of the warehouses behind, I found a sheltered corner under a pier and there I lay down, pulling my sheath close around me. At the end of the tunnel formed by the churned ground beneath me and the underside of the pier over my head, I could see the peaceful glint of moonlight on the hypnotic rippling of the Lake. My thoughts turned to Aswat, to the moon casting black shadows down the sides of the sand dunes where I shed my clothes and danced each night, danced in defiance of the gods and my fate.

A picture of my brother’s face rose before my inner vision. We had always been close. He had taught me to read and write, coming home from his own lessons in the temple to share them with me in the stolen hour of the afternoon sleep. In the first flush of my ascension over Pharaoh, when I had seen Egypt coming to my feet and the future had seemed to glitter with promise, I had begged him to come to Pi-Ramses and be my scribe but he had refused, preferring marriage and work in the temple at Aswat. I had been selfishly hurt, wanting to gather him to myself as I wanted to greedily gather everything my heart and my fingers touched. But his loving detachment had been my balm and my support in the nightmarish weeks after my return in disgrace to the village and he was still my rock.

My last parting from him had been painful. He had agreed at once to lie for me, to put it about that I was lying ill in his house, although we both knew that his punishment would be severe if all did not fall out as I had hoped. Now here I was, lying sore and shivering under a pier with my life once more in ruins, and where was he? Our subterfuge had surely been discovered. Had he been arrested? Or would the mayor of Aswat, according him the affection and respect the whole village felt for him, allow him to walk free until I was either returned to my exile or vindicated before Pharaoh? Pa-ari. I murmured his name as I shifted on the hard ground. He had given me a selfless love I had not deserved and I was still repaying him with trouble.

Of my parents I dared not think. My mother scarcely spoke to me any more, but my father had borne my dishonour with the same inner dignity he had always shown, bringing me such material comforts as he could. Still, there was a wounding awkwardness between us that restricted our speech to everyday things and did not allow us to probe the wounds the years and my wickedness had opened.

The knife had worked its way against my hip and I drew it out and lay with it in my hand. What were the others doing, Kamen and his pretty Takhuru, and Kaha, who had been a welcome substitute for my brother during my months in Hui’s house? And Paiis? Hui himself? I needed sleep but my mind raced on, one image replacing another, all of them carrying their burden of anguish. In the end I clutched at the vision of Kamen as it went fleeting by, Kamen before I knew that he was mine, his eyes huge in the dimness as I pressed my manuscript into his unwilling hands, Kamen kneeling on my cot, a dark shape above me as I struggled up from unconsciousness, Kamen’s face, pale and contorted as blood spurted from the assassin’s neck, the feel of Kamen’s hand in mine, Kamen my son, my son, drawn to me against all odds, a sign of the gods’ forgiveness. I was calm then. My eyes closed. Drawing my knees to my chest, I slept and did not wake until the clatter of busy feet above and the creak of taut rope disturbed me.

No one paid me the slightest attention as I crawled from my hiding place, tucking the knife out of sight and stretching to ease the stiffness out of my limbs. The early sun felt good on my face, warm and clean, and I let it bathe me for a moment before setting off towards the markets once again. I did not intend to stand behind the melon stall. I would steal what I could from other stallkeepers and then perhaps spend some time in one of the temples. Their forecourts were always crowded with worshippers and gossipers and I could sit at the base of one of the columns and pass the time listening to the talk. If soldiers appeared, I would slip into the inner court where there would be a dusky silence. I hoped that the priests would not turn me out before the hunters had withdrawn. I had not anticipated that boredom would be my enemy along with anxiety, but I could see that it was going to be hard to fill the three days before I must go to the Golden Scorpion. Perhaps I might visit Hui. The thought brought a bubble of laughter to my lips and my pace quickened.

There were many small market squares in the city, and after several wrong turns and an altercation with a man whose patient donkey, loaded with tiers of large clay jugs, was blocking the cramped alley down which I had strayed, I found myself emerging into a sunny space alive with cheerful activity. Tables were being set up, awnings unfolded, children unloading panniers of everything from freshly garnered lettuce whose delicate green leaves still quivered with drops of moisture to crudely painted images of various gods set out to catch the awestruck eye of devotees from the country nomes. Servants were already moving among the half-erected stalls, empty baskets under their arms as they scanned the produce that would end up on the dining tables of their masters, and a small group of men and women had begun to gather in the shade at the far side of the square to await the prospect of employment.

Few glanced at me as I threaded my way through them all. The mouthwatering smell of broiling fish enveloped me as I sauntered past a man bent over the brazier on which it sizzled but I could not snatch hot food. Nor was there any point in running away with one of the ducks piled limply on another stall, for even if I had used the knife to gut one, I could not build a fire on which to cook it. I settled for a handful of dried figs, a loaf of bread and a few discarded leaves of lettuce, for though the owners of the fig and bread stalls had been engaged in their morning gossip and had not noticed my nimble fingers, the man on the lettuce stall stood behind his wares with a stony expression of vigilance on his face and all I could do was gather up the leavings scattered about behind him.

Retreating from there quickly with my meal, I walked a short way until I came to a Hathor shrine. At that hour the goddess’s small domain was deserted and I was able to sit on the ground with my back against her niche and eat in peace. By the time I had finished, however, a few women had come to do homage and I was forced to escape from their disapproving looks. My stomach was now pleasantly full, but after my night under the pier I was filthy, my hair full of dust, my feet and legs grey, my sheath stained, so I began to move towards the Waters of Ra on the west side of the city where I hoped to be able to bathe in relative privacy. I knew that military barracks were strung out along part of the Lake of the Residence and the Waters of Avaris on the east side and also beside the Waters of Ra, but to their south were the conclaves of the poor, spilling north from the ruins of the ancient town of Avaris, and there I would be entirely ignored.

I went slowly, my way impeded by the necessity of evading the small patrols of soldiers bent on business that probably had nothing to do with me but who I feared nonetheless, so that I did not come upon the western edge of the city until the sun stood overhead. Here, on the muddy verge of the water, I paused. Far to my right through the few stunted, drooping trees I could see the protecting wall of the military establishment. To my left and behind me was a maze of mud brick shanties set without order in a hot, grassless waste of noise and confusion. I had strode through it boldly, for the inhabitants were for the most part harmless, unlike the night denizens of the docks. They were peasants who had left their villages for the imagined delights of the city or the poor of the city itself, law-abiding and self-sufficient. The patch of packed earth on which I stood was deserted, baking in the sun, but I knew that in the evening the women would bring their laundry here, beating it on the stones just beneath the surface of the water while their naked children shouted and splashed around them.

For the present I was alone. Untying my belt I pulled the sheath over my head with relief. I buried the knife temporarily in the wet sand where the water lapped, and with my sheath in my hand I waded quickly past the rocks, feeling with a gasp of mingled shock and delight the blessed coolness creep up my thighs and over my stomach to caress my breasts. I could not help gulping it down as my head went under.

For a while I simply hung there, letting the water insinuate itself into every crevice of my body, loosening the soil even as it woke and restored me, then I did my best to scrub myself and my sheath. I had no natron, no brush, only my hands. When I had taken my fill of the water, I clambered out, dressed myself in the clinging, sopping linen, and sat in the thin shade of a sickly acacia bush, forcing my fingers through the tangle of my hair. When it lay in a semblance of tidiness below my shoulders, I got up and followed the water in the direction of the barracks. Fed and cleansed, I wanted to sleep.

The rear of the military enclosure was already casting a shadow as the sun slipped from its zenith, and I kept close to the wall, hearing on the other side the occasional neighing of chariot horses, shouted commands, the startling bray of a horn as the army pursued whatever occupations filled its time when the country was at peace. Coming to the vast gates and the paved way leading inside, I crossed it without a tremor and went on. Paiis’s soldiers were not quartered here but in the barracks on the other side of the city. If things had not changed, it was Prince Ramses’ Division of Horus and the Division of Set performing the manoeuvres drifting to my ears, twenty thousand men to be fed and watered and kept occupied lest their unrest spill over into wanton violence. I wondered how many of them were rotated to the eastern and southern borders and whether the Prince had any more interesting plans for them once his father died.