House of Illusions (49 page)

The wine was dry and heady, sliding easily down my throat. “It was not so simple, Highness,” I said. “He did not regard me altogether as a fool and I neither love nor hate him as much as you suppose. He no longer fills my world. He occupies a corner where the wall is unfinished and the door unhung. My youthful self also inhabits that space, and it was of my youthful self, the wrong done to her and the wrong she did, that I wrote.”

“And yet the loves and hates of youth burn with such ferocity that we can still be singed with their fire in our later years,” he pointed out carefully. “We are seldom strong enough to exorcise them ourselves. Others must do it for us. You are not being wholly honest, Thu.”

“Neither are you, Highness,” I retorted, acutely uncomfortable at his perception. “You have still managed to give me no reason for the omission of Hui’s name in the proceedings. You cannot believe he carries no guilt!”

Ramses took another judicious sip of his wine, watching me carefully over the rim of his cup. He licked his lips with deliberation, frowning as though the gesture required conscious attention. Several times it appeared that he would speak, but he checked the urge. Then he seemed to shake himself. His gaze went to the crimson liquid in his cup and he began to swirl it around and around.

“My father thought that it would be better for you to learn of this later,” he said quietly, “but I cannot see what difference it will make whether you hear it now or not.” His scrutiny suddenly left the cup and became fixed intently on me. “The charges against the Seer were indeed read, Thu, and a condemnatory judgement was pronounced. It was done in private, before my father himself.”

With a kind of numb fascination I saw his mouth form the words and it was a few moments before they made sense to me. When they did, I went cold with shock.

“Charges? What charges?” I tried to demand, but my voice came out a thin croak. “For Set’s sake, Ramses, what judgement? And why in private?”

“Because my father wanted Hui set apart for reasons of his own,” Ramses said. “The charges were the same as those for the others. I am not permitted to tell you the judgement imposed but if you knew it, you would approve I think.”

“Then what was it?” My head came up, and as it did so I saw something in his face, something almost furtive, that made me say the words that had burst into my mind without any warning. “Hui was present at this secret proceeding, wasn’t he!” The Prince’s gaze met mine calmly.

“Yes,” he said brusquely.

“Was he condemned to death, then?” I asked sarcastically. “Was he flogged first? Did the executioner take his head before the public hearing began? Or did Pharaoh thank him very much for being such a fine physician, such a mighty Seer, and let him walk out of the palace a free man? I want to know! I have a right to know!” Ramses held up a reproving finger.

“Be careful,” he cautioned. “You are close to committing blasphemy. What makes you think you have a right to know anything more than that you are pardoned for your own heinous crime? Pharaoh in his wisdom has found the perfect sentence for Hui. You will know it in due time. Be patient.”

“I want to see the King,” I pressed, distraught. “I want him to tell me these things himself!” The Prince shook his head.

“He will not see you again,” he said. “He is very low and he knows that such a meeting would only bring him anguish. He has done everything for you that was in his power, forgiving you so that his heart may receive a favourable weighing and also because with the sentiment of old age he remembers how he loved you. Have faith in his prudence. He is a good man.”

“I know.” I breathed deeply in a whirl of confusion and distress. “I am sorry, Highness. This wound goes very deep.”

“It will heal eventually,” Ramses said wryly. “Now, no more questions. Here. Finish your wine.”

When I obediently lifted the cup that had been forgotten in my grasp, he took my other hand and gently placed it also around the curve of the goblet, guiding the rim to my mouth. As I surrendered to his ministration a tranquillity seemed to spread through me from the warmth of his palms. When I drew away, he let me go, taking the cup and setting it on the table with a decisive click. Then he turned back to me. “There is something else,” he said, and a faint smile lit his features. “My father regrets that he did not accede to your plea for a marriage contract between the two of you all those years ago. He feels that if he had done so he might have spared you from attempting to commit murder, and your son would have received the upbringing and deference due to a legitimized prince. You should know, Thu, that I disagreed with an old man’s misplaced guilt. He no longer sees the past as it was, all the ruthlessness and desperation with which those days were imbued. You would not have made a trustworthy queen. I am telling you this for the sake of our old bargain, so that you will no longer think of me as entirely devoid of sympathy.”

I heard him out with a growing sense of futility and sadness. Once I would have traded my ka for that honour. I had begged Pharaoh to marry me and legitimize our son but he had refused. I had forced a similar arrangement from the Prince and that too had come to nothing, along with my feverish and lustful desire to possess his body. Perhaps if the King had married me, I would have abandoned Hui and his schemes, but eventually there would have been greater heights to scale, more power to be scrambled for on my own behalf, with Egypt becoming nothing but my playground. I did not deserve to be a queen; indeed, in those days it would have been impossible for me to understand the responsibility that accompanied the title. Now I did not want either a crown or the Prince’s embrace.

“I think you will make a wonderful Mighty Bull,” I said quietly. “Thank you for telling me this. You are right, of course. I have never been worthy of a title, let alone the position of queen. Do not let Pharaoh fret over one of the wisest decisions he ever made.” He came to me, and raising my chin he kissed me gently.

“Thus do the gods see their mysterious desires fulfilled,” he commented. “I wish you well, Thu. Your past sins will be buried with the man around whom they gathered.”

“Not so,” I objected bleakly. “For they gathered around Hui, and where is he? Have I your permission to leave the harem now, Highness?”

“I want you to stay for another six days,” he said. “Then you will be free to go wherever you wish.” He held up a hand as I began to protest. I did not want to be sitting in my cell on the day when the last prisoner took his life. I wanted to be far from Pi-Ramses, on the river perhaps and sailing to a destination full of promise, with a wind stirring my hair and sunlight glancing off the water. “This is not a request,” he warned me. “It is a command. There is a final arrangement to be made before you go. Be patient and all will be made clear to you in due time. And when it is, I beg you to remember the mercy and forgiveness of the god whose days in Egypt are almost done. Go back to your cell now. I dismiss you.” At once I bowed and backed to the door. “I doubt that I will see you again before you leave the city,” he added. “But if there is ever anything the Lord of All Life may do for you in the future, you have only to send a message. There was a time when you stirred my blood also, Thu, as I know I heated yours. But our destinies were not meant to move along the same path, only to brush each other as they have done. May the soles of your feet be firm.” A lump had formed in my throat.

“Long life, health and prosperity to you, Horus,” I said. I glanced at him one last time. He had lowered himself into a chair and was sitting back with his legs crossed and his hands folded on his knee. In the encroaching dimness of sunset I could not make out his expression. I opened the door and left him.

15

I DID NOT SLEEP
that night. I ate a late, quiet meal, and by the time I had finished and Isis had tidied my cell, the courtyard had emptied. I had no desire to go to my couch. In spite of the wine I had drunk with the Prince and the shocks, both pleasant and wounding, I had suffered, my body was not tired. I felt empty and peaceful, drained of all feeling. Isis loosed and combed my hair, washed the paint from my face and the henna from my palms and feet, and helped me into a shift. She extinguished my lamp, and bidding me a good night, she went away. I waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded before leaving my room and walking out onto the cool grass.

It was soft and yielding to my now tender soles, and as always, I relished the sensation. The air, too, was silky with a caress the day could not bestow and I moved through it gratefully, aware of the press of the shift against my body, the slight flutter as the linen billowed behind me. Approaching the fountain, I settled beside it, my back against the basin. At once I felt the vibration of the pounding water thrumming soothingly through my spine. Now and then a thin spray misted me. I was aware of it beading in my hair and netting in the fine down of my arms but it did not trouble me.

The courtyard lay in a dreaming darkness, the moon above half-full, the stars around it faint but strengthening further away from its pale light. Most of the cell doors were closed. One or two still stood ajar, the lamps within giving off sullen orange glows that did no more than waver on the stone path before being dissipated in the lush blackness of the lawn.

I drew up my knees and gave myself fully to the strange mood possessing me. I was alert, responsive to every hint of breeze that grazed my skin, every private rustle in the grass, as though with the emptying of my emotions had come a heightening of the senses. My mind shared this peculiar, almost delirious state. No wisps of unfinished thoughts, no vague, drifting chaos of images filled it with noise. Scoured and clear, it was a vessel waiting to be sanely filled.

Hui engaged it first, and beneath the anger and shock that had exploded from me at the Prince’s revelation regarding the private hearing he had been accorded, I was now able to acknowledge the lack of surprise that had underpinned my reaction. There was a familiarity about the news, as if my ka had expected nothing less from a man who had always been mysterious and unpredictable.

Somehow Hui had managed to have himself admitted to Pharaoh. Not only that, but he had convinced the King to allow him a secret pleading. No judges, just the God Himself to hear and pronounce sentence. How had he done it? Had he seen his danger in the visionary oil and slipped into the palace before the warrant for his house arrest was issued, gambling everything on the belief that he would be able to negate the evidence and influence Pharaoh? After all, he had been the King’s personal physician for many years. Such a relationship fosters trust in the one and authority in the other. And yet the Prince had assured me that if I knew what sentence had been imposed I would approve.

No, not if. When. What did that mean? For I knew deep in my belly that Hui was alive somewhere. And why was I being kept here until the time allotted for the other sentences had run out? What possible arrangement was there to make that might have a bearing on my future? The King himself had made it secure with his generosity. And what had the Prince wanted with Men? Was it a matter regarding Kamen? The only answers to these questions were speculative, and in the end I laid them aside. All I knew was that Hui was alive. Was I glad or sorry? Both and neither. Where Hui was concerned I could have no single well-defined emotion. I ceased to ponder all these things and gave myself up to the beauty of the night. I was still sitting hunched by the fountain when the first greyness of dawn began to deaden the stars.

The following three days were uneventful and I spent them thinking of Pharaoh, for whispers regarding his failing condition were rife among the other women and the mood in the harem was a melancholy one. I wanted to do him honour, this man who had bound my life to his for so short a time and yet whose shadow had fallen across every moment of the last seventeen years, but he did not wish to see me again. My only homage could be a silent one, a reverence of the mind. Accordingly I kept a vision of him before me, his voice, his laugh, the feel of his hands on my body, the stony coldness of his rare angers, and each night I lit incense before my totem and prayed to the other gods to ease his passing and welcome him joyfully into the Heavenly Barque.

But many of the inmates spoke less of their dying master than of their fate, for the new King would take an inventory of the Women’s House and those concubines he did not wish to keep would be moved from the precincts. Some would be given their freedom. The younger ones would probably be required to stay. But the older women, the aging, the infirm, would find themselves conveyed to the Fayum. I had once visited the harem there with the King and seen a fate that one day might have been mine. It was a quiet place but its peace was the emptiness of impending death, its cells harbouring the dried-up husks of what once had been the flower of Egyptian womanhood, and I had been so horrified that later I had been unable to make the proper sacrifices to Sebek, who had a temple in the oasis. That terrible destiny would not now be mine and I pitied those around me for whom such banishment, no matter how benign, was certain.