Seer of Egypt (12 page)

The Queen was handing the baby back to the Royal Nurse. “The priests have chosen his name,” she was saying. “He is to be called Thothmes. Pharaoh is pleased. It is an honourable name, full of the powers of godhead.” Huy heard the words, but his attention was fixed on the baby. A circlet had appeared on his head. Attached to it, the royal uraeus, the vulture Lady of Dread and the cobra Lady of Flame, reared up together, but there was something wrong. The mighty protectors of kings were not facing forward, united in their warning and defence of a pharaoh. As Huy watched, the cobra’s frill closed up and the vulture’s head sank slowly to lie against the snake’s skin. It was as though the two potent symbols had turned to each other for support.

A thrill of terror shot through Huy as the sight dissolved, taking with it the baby, the Queen, the crowd of whispering women, until nothing remained but the face of the Royal Nurse. Rapidly it aged. The cheeks hollowed. The blue-painted eyelids puffed and sagged. Deep lines appeared beside the widening nostrils. Distress was clouding the tired eyes. “But Majesty, it is not right, it is not just!” Heqareshu was saying. “I have raised both princes. They are both estimable, both honourable! I beg you, for the love in which you hold me as your own Foster Father and the father of your dearest friend—reconsider this decision!”

Huy’s hand trembled slightly. He looked down. The fingers enclosed in his own moved. The rings bit into his palm. Opening his hand, he rose with difficulty. His knees felt weak and a pounding in his head made him wince as he groped for the stool set ready and slumped onto it.

“Well?” Heqareshu snapped, rubbing at his rings.

Ishat picked up her pen.

“Queen Tiaa will give birth to a healthy boy,” Huy managed. “He will be named Thothmes. He will survive. You yourself will also survive into old age, Royal Nurse, but an event in the far future will bring you much grief. The god did not show me what it will be.” In the moment of silence that followed, Huy could hear the faint pressure of Ishat’s brush against the papyrus.

Heqareshu leaned forward. “That is all?” he asked sharply. “I have come all this way for that?”

Huy smiled, a mere twitch of his mouth. “Considering that the King moved his capital from Weset back to Mennofer over a year ago, you will be back at the palace in about two days. His Majesty will be very pleased at the news you will bring him. Would you like a little wine before you go, Royal Nurse? It will take my scribe a moment to make a copy of my words for you to take away with you.”

“No.” Heqareshu stood and shook out his linen impatiently. “If you will allow my servants back into the room, I will have them escort me to my barge.” His tone was sarcastic. “Your steward can bring me the finished scroll.”

Huy had had enough. “Is it my peasant origins that disturb you so much, Heqareshu, or my calling? For I had no choice in either one. If the gods had decreed otherwise, you yourself might even now be padding barefooted through the dust of the river path somewhere, sweating into your coarse and much-mended linen. I would remind you of the words of Amenemopet: ‘Man is clay and straw. Atum is the potter. He tears down and he builds up every day, creating small things by the thousands through his love.’ You and I, my Lord, are merely clay and straw, and in the balance of Ma’at we are small indeed.”

Heqareshu had gone gradually pale as he spoke. Huy had expected an angry rebuff that would put him in his place, but he stared at him for a moment, head on one side, then nodded. “Egypt fears you, Seer, and fear often manifests itself as anger. With your permission, I will thank you for your hospitality and leave your house.” He bowed to Huy, walked to the door, opened it, and was gone. Through ears ringing with pain, Huy heard his retinue scatter along the hallway and down the stairs.

“I have completed the copy, Huy,” Ishat said. “The Seeing was very short.” She made as if to set her palette down, but Huy forestalled her.

“Take another roll of papyrus and write what I will tell you,” he ordered. “I withheld something from the Royal Nurse that I want recorded and filed with my private scrolls. It disturbs me greatly, Ishat.” Quickly, he spoke of the wounded hawk and the twisted uraeus. When he had finished, he made his way unsteadily to the door. “Have Heqareshu’s scroll delivered at once to the barge, and stay at the watersteps until he has gone. I want to talk to you about what I saw, but later. I have seldom suffered such an extreme physical consequence to the Seeing.” He was ridiculously grateful to see Tetiankh waiting for him outside his room a short way along the passage. “Poppy,” he grunted, and lurched towards his couch.

He slept the day away, waking only to gulp a cup of water before falling back into a sodden unconsciousness, and the sun was setting before he woke fully, wrapped himself in a sheet, and went in search of Ishat. He found her in the garden with a flagon of shedehwine and a bowl full of fruit, vegetables, and bread beside her.

“The peaches and figs are simply luscious,” she said as he lowered himself beside her, “and the currants are very sweet. You should eat something, Huy. Wine?” She handed him a brimming cup, and he tossed a handful of currants into his mouth before drinking and reaching for the sticks of crisp green celery. “Seshemnefer tells me that there is a small rise in the level of the river,” she went on. “He asks that we put the soldiers to work digging the canal we promised him so that he can care for the garden without hauling water. We could make it pretty by planting palms along its length beside the house.” She paused, looked bewildered, then laughed without humour. “What am I saying? I won’t be here to see the palms grow.”

Huy did not respond. He felt calm and emptied, as though the poppy had scoured both body and mind.

Ishat spat out a melon seed. “Huy, is it your duty to give the King the rest of the Seeing? You described terrible omens over the little Prince.”

“I know. But I have a strong intuition that they are for me as well as for Thothmes, that I am obliged to ponder their meaning with regard to that baby before I decide what to do. What do they mean to you?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. Horus hovers above the Prince. He is in pain, unable to fly properly, unable to soar. But Thothmes is not the Hawk-in-the-Nest. His older brother Amunhotep is the heir to the Horus Throne. Is Amunhotep to die, then? Is Thothmes to become the Hawk-in-the-Nest? And if so, why is Horus wounded? The holy uraeus appears on Thothmes’ brow, but it too is wounded, disfigured, perhaps even impotent. Will Thothmes take the Double Crown by force from his brother, and try to rule without Ma’at?”

Without Ma’at.
Her words struck an answering chord in Huy.
The visions have something to do with Ma’at, with cosmic and earthly rightness,
he thought to himself.
They speak of more than just a brother usurping the throne or a Prince dying. They shout to me of an Egypt wounded to the heart.

“I have got no further in my guesses than you,” he put in, “but I believe I must keep this knowledge secret until Atum wills its exposure. It makes me nervous, Ishat. In fact, even before Heqareshu arrived, his coming made me anxious. All I can do is wait.”

4

I
t was a good flood that year, a full twenty-five cubits, the water completely covering Huy’s watersteps and lapping at his gate. Although it was the season for fevers, fewer townspeople bothered to negotiate the sodden path that ran past Huy’s estate, and neither he nor Ishat ventured into Hut-herib. It was Amunmose, as under steward, who went to and fro, fulfilling the necessary errands for the household. Huy put Anhur’s soldiers to work, first building a small dam at the flood’s edge and then digging a canal beside the house and into the garden. Seshemnefer, in his capacity as gardener, had the privilege of breaking the dam when the work was finished, and everyone on the property turned out to watch the deep ditch fill swiftly and the water run out to pool on and then sink into the thirsty soil. The soldiers rebuilt the dam, this time to keep the water in, and Seshemnefer began the task of planting date palms along the verges of the canal, to both provide fruit and prevent subsidence.

Letters began to arrive, one from Thothmes, one from Hut-herib’s Mayor, Mery-neith, and one from Pharaoh’s Treasurer. Ishat broke the wax seal bearing the imprint of the sedge and the bee first, unrolling the slim scroll while Huy waited. Both of them had been sprawled deep under the shade of the sycamores that clustered close to the estate’s outer wall, trying without much success to escape the heat and idly watching Seshemnefer’s naked, bent back as he dug small irrigation hollows around his precious young palms.

Ishat scanned the papyrus quickly. “The King has agreed to allow you to buy into his incense monopoly,” she said as Huy hauled himself into a sitting position and reached for the water. “According to the Treasurer, you may either pay the gold directly into the Royal Treasury or have the amount deducted from our allowance.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a huge amount, Huy. What do you want to do?”

Huy considered. “The incense trade with Karoy is very secure,” he said after a while. “Either way, we won’t suffer a loss. Send a letter to the Treasurer and tell him to deduct the gold from our allowance. Also whatever tax is assessed from our profits before he sends them to us each year. What does our Mayor have to say?”

Ishat laid the royal scroll aside and took up another. “Apparently there is khato land available to the west of Hut-herib, across the tributary, in the Andjet sepat,” she said presently. “He will apply to the King for ownership on your behalf if you wish, and suggests offering His Majesty four deben’s worth of silver for it because it is very fertile.” She frowned down on the black lettering. “It is too much to pay, Huy, considering that once you have it, you must hire an overseer and labourers for it, and buy seed. And what if the crop fails or becomes diseased? Add that cost to the price of buying into the incense caravans and we will be poor again!”

“But Ishat, you won’t be here after the season of Peret,” he reminded her gently. “You will be living with Thothmes at Iunu. These problems will be mine alone.”

She flushed and bit her lip, glancing at him and then away. “I forgot for a moment. How could I forget? It seemed that as soon as Thothmes went home, he became like a dream in my mind. It has something to do with the aura of this place, Huy, something you exude and that fills the air around you.”

Huy’s hand jerked in shock, and tepid liquid from the cup he held dribbled onto his naked thigh. “You have never spoken like this before,” he said, privately wondering at this new avenue of perception opening in her. She had always been able to divine his moods, but, woman-like, her interest in his influence on what surrounded him, whether people or objects, had ceased at the limit of her own participation.

She grimaced. “You see into the future without effort,” she replied, still looking away, as though her own words were an embarrassment to her. “You are not bound by the passage of time like the rest of us, Huy, whether you realize it or not. Every time you touch a petitioner who asks for a reading, you enter eternity. Living with you, working beside you, is to inhabit a place where the hours slide by unremarked, and sometimes I must think hard to try to remember what day it is, even what month.”

“Ishat! I make you afraid? You have become afraid of me?” He was appalled.

“No!” Swiftly, she gripped his knee. “When we were almost destitute and living in that tiny house, and you had to haul water for us from the river every day and we fell onto our cots each night exhausted from tramping all over Hut-herib as you answered every plea for help, and I was trying to prepare food for us, and desperate to find some way of easing the terrible pain in your head—then, in spite of your gift, we were just two peasants struggling to survive. There was no time for an awareness of anything but the needs of the next moment.” Her nails were digging into him, the tendons of her wrist standing out under the brown skin. She was bending forward, the scrolls in her lap forgotten. “But it’s different now. There is poppy for your pain, oil for our bodies, good food set out by others on our pretty tables, fine linen for our couches, and
time
, Huy, so much time, in spite of the people you still treat. Time for me to wake in the night and know myself held in a place of such stillness, such otherness, that I can imagine neither birth nor death. Time to taste the air around us in idleness and find it … foreign.” She swallowed. “I see myself snared in it so that I will not age, the power of my love for you will not diminish but go on tormenting me, and in the end any reality outside your presence will not exist. That is what I fear.”

“Oh, my dearest sister.” Huy pulled her hand from his knee and held it loosely. The tension in her fingers did not relax. “These are nothing but foolish fantasies! Our whole life changed when the King moved to lift us out of the mud, and since then we have been faced with so many new faces, new challenges that have taken away the soil on which we used to plant our feet and put a very different ground under us. In spite of the luxuries we enjoy, there is still a strangeness to it all. We are still adjusting.”

She shook her head vigorously. “It’s more than that. I have the oddest feeling that you will not show your age, that the god will keep your body suspended in the aura of which I spoke until he has no further use for you.” She withdrew her hand. “I’ve told you before that I want to be loved, to enjoy a husband and children, to have a life where change is possible. To be chained to you by my unanswered desire is to be chained to your changelessness forever.”

Huy studied her face. Her words were insane, surely a wild justification for leaving him, a goad she had fabricated to use on herself so that she would be forced to tear herself away from him.
I am tired of this guilt, my Ishat, and tired of my own selfishness in this matter.

For a long time neither of them spoke. Seshemnefer’s labours had taken him farther away. Huy could no longer see him. One of the soldiers appeared, walking briskly along the path leading from the servants’ quarters to the rear entrance of the house. He bowed to Huy as he passed.
A change of shift,
Huy thought. A sudden gust of burning air brought the fleeting aroma of roasting goose to his nostrils from the unseen kitchen. He gestured, and heard Amunmose scramble to his feet somewhere behind him. The young man approached, yawning, his sandals dangling from one hand.