Seer of Egypt (40 page)

Huy stared at her stupidly. “Put it back? What are you talking about, Khnit?”

“I traded for it in the market while you were away. I had no intention of letting it rouse you from your couch!”

“Traded … What do you want a hyena for, woman?”

She looked at him as though he had lost his mind. “Why, to fatten up and then eat, of course! Hyenas themselves will eat almost anything. There’s always offal to be disposed of. Their meat is strong but tasty.”
You really don’t know this?
her tone implied. “We don’t often see them in the Delta. There was another one in the market. They like to live with their own kind. But the trader wouldn’t give me a good deal for the two of them.”

Huy’s panic was back, sourceless this time. He struggled to beat it down. “You meant well. I’m sorry, Khnit. I won’t eat hyena meat, and I don’t want them anywhere near this estate.”

“But, Master, perhaps for the servants—”

“No. Anhur’s men can take it back to the market and sell it for you if you like. Now go back to bed.” She sniffed, bowed, and stalked off. Huy turned to Anhur. “Do you know anything about hyenas?”

It was Amunmose who answered. He had come up behind the little group, a sheet clutched around his waist. “I do, Master. We see them often on the outskirts of Khmun, and my mother has a delicious recipe for their meat. They are mysterious creatures. They can change their sex from male to female and back again whenever they want to. They live in packs, and talk to each other with many different sounds. In the wild they hunt at night, and together they can even bring down a leopard, or so it’s said. Pharaoh has a leopard in his zoo, a gift from some southern tribal chief.”

“How do you know this?” Huy was becoming more and more repelled. Amunmose grinned. Huy realized that he could make out his under steward’s pert features, and the darkness around him was less dense. Ra was about to be born out of the vagina of Nut.

“I love gossip,” Amunmose said promptly. “I listen to everyone who comes here and encourage people to tell me their news and stories. They say that hyenas have a queen, not a king, and that they belong to Set and that lions hate them.”

Lions hate them.
Those words, spoken so lightly by his servant, sank slowly into Huy’s consciousness and beyond, as though they carried with them a subtle poison that began to infect not only his ka but his blood and the marrow of his bones.
When the rays of the sun strike the earth, they become lions,
he thought.
Ra, Aten, Amun. Light, light, light. And hyenas are in Set’s domain, a place of darkness and chaos.
He looked up. A greyness was filling the garden, bringing with it the brief cool breeze that preceded the dawn. Suddenly cold, Huy shivered.

“Anhur, detail a couple of men and catch the thing,” he ordered. “Don’t let it escape them. They can take it to the market at once. And take heed, all of you: I never want to see a hyena in my garden again. Tetiankh, heat water for me in the bathhouse. And you, my gossiping steward, go and tell Khnit that I want something hot this morning. Soup, perhaps.”

They scattered, but Anhur looked back. “It’s only a filthy animal, Huy. Don’t let it upset you.”

I am no longer upset,
Huy thought as he re-entered the drowsy half-light of the house.
What I feel is deeper and colder and more threatening than mere alarm. I see the beast with the yellow eyes as I stood before Imhotep in the Beautiful West while my body lay lifeless in the House of the Dead. I see it watching me calmly, tamely, an aura of tranquility surrounding it, and yet I sensed something in its gaze, didn’t I? I was twelve years old. I had no name for it then, but I can name it now. Pity. The beast was staring at me with pity in those golden eyes. Lion, hyena. The sun and the darkness. Atum, what does all this mean for me? What is it that I really fear? Was the compassion in its eyes for my future state, as though the animal itself had the power of Seeing and was looking at what I was to become?

Entering his room, he removed the kilt, dropped it on the floor, and sat naked on the edge of his couch. His flaccid penis, resting loosely against his thigh, mocked him.
Useless appendage,
he thought savagely.
I should cut you off and offer you to Atum of my own free will. “See!” I shall say. “Here is what’s left of my manhood. You took its essence without my consent when I was a boy. I throw the rest down before you, now that I am a man.”

The need to talk to Ishat rose up in him all at once. She would discuss the hyena and its meaning. She would understand his fear and confusion. So would Thothmes. Huy saw them frequently, often stopping in at Iunu on his way home from visiting Heby at Mennofer. Their rambling house was full of the noise and laughter of their three children, who called him Uncle Huy and hugged him with delight when he appeared. Thothmes was strict with them. They were not allowed to ask if Huy had brought them presents or sweetmeats. They must bow to him both as an adult and as Egypt’s Great Seer at least once when they were with him. Thothmes had named his eldest offspring Huy, and the astrologers had happily approved his choice. The boy was nine, attending the temple school at Iunu as both Huy and Thothmes had done. Intelligent as his mother and as agile and small as his father, he considered himself too old now to fling himself on Huy, and was proud simply to sit with him and talk.

Nakht, named after his grandfather, was eight. He also attended the temple school, a quiet child who enjoyed his own company. Sahura, a girl, much to Ishat’s joy, was six. Thothmes had hired a tutor for her so that she could learn at home. It was a highly unorthodox thing to do. Girls were taught to run households and care for their families. Noble daughters could write their names and a few simple sentences, and often became astute businesswomen. But Ishat, remembering her own early ignorance, was ambitious for Sahura. The tutor was instructed to follow the curriculum set down for the boys at school in the temple. In spite of the necessary strictures imposed on Thothmes’ household due to the public nature of his position, his estate was a happy place, full of laughter. Huy, having been subjected to his nephew’s scowls and tantrums in Heby’s house at Mennofer, would arrive at Thothmes’ gate with relief.

There was seldom a chance to speak to Ishat at length, however. Her household bustled with servants, feasts for dignitaries both important and minor, and the raising of her brood. Sometimes Huy and Thothmes were able to sit peacefully together in the evenings outside, and talk while dusk settled around them and the lights from the newly lit lamps inside the house ribboned thin and insubstantial, to be lost in the shrubbery crowding the walls. Huy’s need for Ishat had moderated in the years since her marriage. He had become content to see her happy with her husband and fulfilled by her children.

Besides, Thothhotep had proved to be an able scribe. Already she and he had formed memories, but she had not lived the years of childhood together, of poverty, of the early experiences he and Ishat had shared that bind one to another. He was fond of Thothhotep, and she of him. There was much about him and his gift that she understood, but she could never have Ishat’s intuition and insight when it came to his soul. Ishat had been in love with him all her life, a fact that used to fill him with guilt because he could not reciprocate. That guilt had died when she chose to wed his best friend. But now, waiting for Tetiankh to summon him to the bathhouse, his stomach empty, his mind full of confusion and a nagging certainty that he was missing something vitally important to do with the two hyenas—the one inhabiting the Beautiful West and the one even now being snared in his garden—he missed her desperately. He could write to her, he supposed, and she would reply, but without the language of eyes and body, the freedom to interpret every nuance of voice, the exchange would be unsatisfactory. Hearing Tetiankh’s tread in the passage, he rose, sighed, and went out.

After he had been bathed and dressed and had eaten, he sat behind the desk in his office and dictated to Thothhotep everything he could remember about the Seeings he had received for both Prince Amunhotep and the Princess’s baby. “Seal the scrolls,” he told her when she set down her brush and was massaging her fingers. “Then put them in a box by themselves and seal it shut also. You understand these visions, don’t you, Thothhotep?”

“I think so, Master.” She reached up and set her palette on the desk, then stood, laying the papyrus coils beside it. “It’s a terrible matter, the prospect of a forced exile for the Prince who should be our Hawk-in-the-Nest. The One has never officially declared an heir. Now we know why.” She tucked her short hair behind her ear, a gesture indicating either thoughtfulness or annoyance, Huy knew. “As for the little Prince and the gold, all it seems to mean so far is that he will be very rich and attract those things which bring security and ease with them. I will pray to Horus for Prince Amunhotep’s safe return to Egypt, as your vision promises.”

Huy laughed and she glanced at him, startled. “If you feel the need to pray for that event, you can’t have much faith in my visions!” he said. “Well, dear scribe, I suppose we must attend to the townsfolk who are waiting for their own visions and healings. Tetiankh will have prepared my drug for me. I would like one more day to recover, but they have been camping outside the gate since we left for the palace. Seal the scrolls first and put them in a niche until you can find a box. Ask Anab for one. At least there are no letters to be dealt with.”

When Kar, the gate guard, had ushered the last petitioner out of the gate, the household settled down for the afternoon sleep. Later, when Huy woke and went downstairs, Merenra told him that the hyena had been traded for a sack of chickpeas. “The soldiers were clever,” he added. “Seshemnefer did not grow them for you last year, Master. He turned over that portion of your arouras and planted broad beans, with a small corner devoted to henna.”

“Henna?”

Merenra permitted himself a brief smile. “I have not brought details such as this to your attention. There is never a need to do so. Seshemnefer has your permission to keep a certain portion of the profits from the arouras for himself and his wife. Khnit persuaded him to plant henna. The flowers are very sweetly scented, but as you must know from the work your uncle does, the dried leaves mixed with sarson oil make dye for the hair and the skin. The seeds give their own oil. Seshemnefer sells both oils in the lull between the harvest and the sowings of the New Year. Do you wish to alter your arrangement with Seshemnefer?”

“No,” Huy replied thoughtfully, “but Khnit seems to be an astute businesswoman as well as a fine cook. Watch her, Merenra. Perhaps in the future we should employ a new cook and make use of Khnit in some other way.”

He ate a quiet evening meal with Thothhotep and Anhur, walked a little by the murky and sullen depths of a river still sinking, sat on his roof to watch the huge orange moon rise and shrink to a silver ball, and went to his couch feeling tired but oddly serene. The hyena was gone. He had discharged the duties his gift demanded for yet another day. His household was orderly. Those he loved were healthy. He promised himself a visit to his parents on the following day. His head was not paining him. He fell quickly asleep.

Once more he opened his eyes onto darkness, immediately tensing for the wail of the hyena. It did not come. Words were pouring into his mind instead, not through his ears but rising from that place within himself that had lain dormant for many years. The Book of Thoth was demanding his attention. When Imhotep had asked him if he would read it, he had not considered the consequences, one of which was that on reading the words of those precious and holy scrolls they would become embedded in his ka and in his consciousness. Like a rock entrenched in the bed of a river, they lay quiet while the water of Huy’s everyday life flowed over them, but they rose to the surface of his awareness in complete totality whenever he chose to turn his attention to them. He had not done so for a long time. The ultimate meaning of the forty-two rolls of papyrus continued to elude him, so that in the end he had ceased to worry at them and had left them in the place where they had been so strongly implanted.

Now they thundered through his head, the phrases majestic, ponderous, each syllable as clear and sweet as the sound of a single note played upon a flute by a master musician. Huy left the couch and stood still for a moment, fully awake and alert, aware that he was able to make his own thoughts over the undercurrent of the chanting voice. For the first time, he wondered whose voice it was. His own? Was it the voice of Atum himself? But he had heard Atum speak. The pitch of this voice was slightly higher than that of the mighty god, though just as melodious, and fraught with authority. It certainly did not belong to Anubis, whose jackal tones were throaty and harsh. Nor did it belong to the goddess Ma’at; Huy had heard her speak also. Was he hearing the voice of Thoth, who had written down the words at Atum’s command?

The answer was not really important. He was powerless to stop the flood pouring through him like the water of the rising river streaming over the cataracts.
Why now?
he asked, but he knew. He knew. He had failed the creator. He had betrayed his gift. It did not matter that he himself had often hated and resented it since it had been thrust upon him. It was a grave responsibility, which he had done his best to carry regardless of his feelings. But he had failed the test of the King’s displeasure. He had put the fear of losing all he had before the will of Atum and his own uniqueness and, worse, he had already begun to reason away the guilt that had descended on him.

He was suddenly sure that the hyena had slunk back into his garden, that the vile beast was sitting on the worn patch of earth close to the rear of the house, staring up at the roof with its hateful black eyes. Leaving his room, glancing to the left where Tetiankh was snoring on his pallet, he turned towards the window to the roof and was soon walking to the lip and peering down. The long recitation moved with him, the cadences singing in his blood, behind his eyes, shivering under his skin. The moon was still high, the sharpness of its outline beginning to soften as it started its slow wane, and the garden was flooded with its strange unlight. Huy’s eyes searched every corner and saw nothing. The water in the irrigation ditches lay smoothly silver.