The Twice Born (43 page)

“I did not expect to study today,” Huy said lamely. “I will fetch it at once.”

The teacher was already settling himself on a chair beside the basket that contained all his scrolls. “Do so. And be quick—time passes.”

For the first month Huy fell onto his couch each night exhausted, his head bursting, his body aching, and each morning he was forced to deliberately gather up the shreds of his will and weave a new, grim determination to exceed his instructors’ expectations. It was not that he found learning and memorizing difficult; indeed, much of what he was being taught intrigued him. The maze of trade routes connecting Egypt to her subjugated states and to the rest of the civilized world, the mechanics of construction in stone that differed so drastically from that of mud bricks, the use of Shock Troops, boat building—it was as though at last he was drinking knowledge at a pace just within the limits of his capability, but that pace strained his mind and his muscles.

As he began the second month in a furnace heat that drained all volition from man and beast, the pace seemed to quicken, but Huy had found his stride. He gave no thought to the impending Inundation. His sleep was immediate, deep, and dreamless. But as the facts, figures, equations, and concepts grew more complex, he became convinced that he was being forced to learn far beyond the usual requirements for passage from the school into the world. He remembered Ramose’s comment about an adviser to the god sitting on the Horus Throne, but he had neither the time nor the energy to roll it about in his consciousness. His tutors loomed like giants, filling every hour with their presence. His body no longer ached and he felt in command of his mind, but he finished his days too drained to say his prayers.

At the end of the second month he received permission to spend one precious evening at Nakht’s house. At once he sent a servant to inquire of Nakht whether he might join the family for a meal. The man returned several hours later and bowed. “The noble Nakht will be very pleased to see Master Huy on the first day of Paophi,” was the reply, and suddenly Huy woke to an awareness of the world outside his walls. Thoth had come and gone. Isis had begun to cry and the country had celebrated the rise of the river with the usual fervour. A humidity tinged the air, and with it came clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes. The Feast of the Great Manifestation of Osiris, held on the twenty-second day of Thoth, had come and gone. It was the thirtieth day of Thoth. Tomorrow would be the first day of Paophi, his last month of studies, and his sixteenth birthday would arrive on the ninth. Huy took a deep breath as he stood in his cell at dawn. The time had come to speak to Nakht.

Yet he moved towards his tiring chest with a curious reluctance. He knew he must choose his best kilt, one of the ones Nasha had given him. He had grown out of the shirt Hapzefa had made for him years ago, but he had a white tunic of good grade that one of the priests had not needed. He must wash and oil and braid his long hair, ring his eyes with kohl, try to squeeze his feet into the pair of sandals he wore seldom so that they did not become scuffed. They were as plain as the ones he wore every day, but at least they looked new. He must belt the tunic with Nakht’s gift of last year, put Anuket’s earring into his lobe—
or would it be better
, he wondered anxiously,
to leave behind everything I have received from them so that I do not look as though I have been needy for years, even though that’s true? Shall I go simply, in a plain kilt and no tunic, with the sa on my breast and the amulets on my fingers as my only adornment? Apart from the frog holding back my hair, of course
.

Lifting the lid of the chest, he sighed and stood staring down into it.
I have dreamed of this moment for so long
, his thoughts ran on.
It has been a fantasy on which I have fed. Now the moment of reality faces me and I am irresolute and afraid. Have I built a palace without a foundation, hope piled on hope and underneath no sunken pillars in the shifting sand of my desire?
Shaking his head, he bent and began pulling out kilts and shirts, laying them on his couch. Beneath them were the little boxes that held his treasures—the earring, his sennet game, Thothmes’ casket of last year. He pulled them out too. Right at the bottom, where he had not delved for years, he saw the cedar box his uncle Ker had given him. In an aura of disconnection he took it up and opened it, and there, in one of the compartments, was a tiny bundle of clean linen. Backing to the couch, he sat and unwrapped it with shaking fingers. The scarab Ishat had given him was a desiccated husk, lying so lightly on his palm that he could scarcely feel it. Its colour was still bright, the sheen of gold gleaming as though it had been polished. Two of its legs had fallen off into the piece of linen. As though it was yesterday, Huy saw Ishat’s grubby, sturdy little fingers balancing something on a lettuce leaf and presenting it to him solemnly. “I wish you happiness on your Naming Day,” she had said. The sun had been strong in the garden, her voice full of pride. “I found it floating on the flood,” she had explained. “My father told me that scarabs are very rare here in the Delta. They like to live in the desert. He said it would bring me good fortune, but I said Huy needs it more than I do, seeing that he has to go away to school.”

Ishat
, Huy thought, willing his hands to stop trembling.
I was a spoilt, selfish, nasty little boy, but you loved me all the same. You were always smarter than I. You helped me to get rid of that horrible monkey. Now I know why I feared it: it belonged to the future, to the baboons of Thoth’s temple, to the heka and the Book, and something in me sensed that future and recoiled. What does your voice sound like now, Ishat? Is it still strident with righteous indignation or jealousy, soft with some new discovery from the flower fields to share with a Huy who is no longer there to see it?
A wave of longing to see her struck him.
It is just the insecurity of what is to come at Nakht’s house
, Huy thought.
A need for the safety of my childhood
. His hands had stopped shaking. Carefully he rewrapped the scarab and laid it back in its compartment.

In the end he decided to dress as the young nobleman he knew he was not. On his chair he set out a gold-bordered kilt and the tunic, the turquoise-studded leather belt, Anuket’s earring, and on his table he set a pot of kohl and jasmine-scented oil for his hair. It was time for his first class. On his way he hurried to find Pabast and asked the man to come to his cell that evening and shave his body. Pabast rolled his eyes and nodded. In spite of his apprehension Huy smiled to himself as he sped along the corridors. The servant no longer intimidated him, but he continued to terrorize the poor little newcomers to the school. Pabast would never change.

In the evening, after a silent but efficient Pabast had shaved and plucked him, he went to the bathhouse, washed and oiled himself thoroughly, and ordered a litter. While he was waiting for it, he dressed carefully. Then setting his mirror on his table, he knelt and painstakingly applied black kohl to his eyelids. Thothmes had left a small amount of henna in a pot beside his couch. Huy longed to paint the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands with it, longed suddenly and bitterly for the right to do so, but he was not an aristocrat and probably never would be. Rubbing the jasmine-scented oil across his chest and belly, he wriggled his feet into the stiff leather sandals. They pinched him, but seeing that he would be carried to and from Nakht’s house, he decided to keep them on. The litter-bearers had arrived. With a last glance at his face in the mirror, Huy went out to greet them.

The tributary of the river was rising steadily, its turgid, swollen surface belying the speed of the north-flowing current beneath. Eventually it would cover the path running beside it, but for now it had drowned only half of Nakht’s watersteps. Fleetingly Huy remembered the last flood, when Anuket had behaved with such coarse abandon and he and Thothmes had sat on the watersteps above the river and talked under the light of the moon. It seemed as though they had done so yesterday, but a full year had passed. Once again the moon was at the half and waxing, and the Sothis star hung bright and shimmering in the black night sky. The bearers answered the gate guard’s challenge at Nakht’s entrance and trundled along the path to the main doors. Huy got out, knowing that the men would sleep in the grass until he was ready to return to the school. His heart was thudding erratically and he took a moment to compose himself as best he could, but it was still palpitating as he walked into the lamplit quiet of the reception hall.

Thothmes rose from the chair where he had been waiting and the two young men embraced. “Gods, I’ve missed you!” Thothmes said, linking arms with Huy as they made their way to the dining hall. “I heard that your lessons are proceeding even though the rest of us must twiddle our thumbs and wait for school to begin again. How daunting, to be the only one under the tutors’ eyes all the time! Are you working hard?”

“Very hard,” Huy laughed. “But it’s good, Thothmes. I’m enjoying it. The High Priest wanted me to be ready to leave the school on my sixteenth Naming Day, and so I am.”

“That’s in eight days.” Thothmes relinquished Huy’s arm. “What are you going to do then?”

A gush of warm air laden with the familiar aromas of good food and expensive scents greeted him as he entered the dining hall behind his friend. “I want to talk to your father about that,” he said. Thothmes paused but did not turn around, then continued on to settle himself on a cushion before his flower-laden table.

Nasha flew at Huy, kissing his cheeks effusively and pulling him forward. Anuket glided up to him. He met her eyes with the inward capitulation that had marked their every meeting since he had fallen in love with her. He did not wait for the customary brush of her lips against his chin. Taking her hand, he turned it over and kissed the hennaed palm. “Greetings, little one,” he said softly. “It’s good to see you again.” She smiled and let her hand rest in his for a moment before withdrawing it and retreating to her table without speaking.

Huy approached Nakht, who had been standing watching. He bowed. “Forgive me for inviting myself to your house, Lord. There is a matter I would like to discuss with you after the meal.”

Nakht regarded him gravely. “You are always welcome here, Huy. You have become quite a fixture. It’s hard to remember a time before Thothmes brought you home.” He indicated Huy’s table. “We will talk later.”

A fixture. Huy felt jubilant. Nakht snapped his fingers and servants appeared carrying the first course. Huy hurried to his table, lifting the wet, quivering blooms from its surface and laying them gently beside him.

“You don’t wear kohl very often, Huy,” Nasha called over to him. “It makes you look very handsome and mysterious. What’s the occasion?”

Huy looked down at the salad being set before him. “I will reach my majority in a few days,” he answered. “I thought it was about time I began to put childhood behind me.”

Nasha snorted. “Pompousness! Please don’t grow up. Father would never let me wrestle a man to the ground. It would be unseemly.” Her rich laugh rang out.

Anuket took a sip of her wine and straightened her back. “Your behaviour is always verging on the unseemly, Nasha,” she said primly. “That’s why your suitors come with eagerness and go with even greater alacrity.”

“You self-righteous little prig!” Nasha shot back. “You used to be such a kind and mild girl. Never mind
my
suitors—I pity the man who’s going to marry you!”

“Peace!” Nakht said sharply.

Thothmes leaned close to Huy. “They do this to each other every day,” he murmured. “They drive Father insane. Anuket taunts Nasha and Nasha insults her. There is no woman in the house to help Anuket grow up, that’s the problem. I wish Father would take another wife.”

Huy glanced at him, startled. “I suppose he might. I just thought that your mother’s memory would always be too fresh in his mind.”

“Huy, you are a romantic,” Thothmes said. “There is an ending to grief.”

Both girls seemed to have recovered their good humour under their father’s warning, and the meal progressed with no more unpleasantness. To an increasingly nervous Huy it seemed to drag on forever. Course followed course, the wine cups were emptied and refilled several times, except, Huy noted with humour, for Anuket’s. After her third cup the steward avoided her, carrying the jug to the others. Her delicate mouth turned down, but she made no comment, picking gracefully through the remnants of her food and ignoring the conversation swirling around her. At last Nakht pushed his table away and rose. “Huy, come with me. Children, amuse yourselves this evening.”

Huy felt his throat dry up. As always, the wine had not taken the edge off his anxiety. Unfolding himself, he stood and followed the Governor into the passage beyond.

Nakht’s office faced the rear garden. A large window, its reed blind now hiding the view, lay behind the desk, on which stood a single alabaster lamp glowing against the dimness. The walls were covered with niches, almost all of them full of scrolls. The room was a place of neatness and efficiency. Nakht was a good governor. He closed the door behind Huy and went to perch on the edge of the desk, waving to the chair beside him, but Huy was too apprehensive to sit. He shook his head.

“Now, my young friend, what can I do for you?” Nakht asked. “Should I send for my scribe?”

Huy was taken aback. It had not occurred to him that either he or Nakht might want his business recorded. “I don’t think so, Governor,” he managed. “Perhaps when you have heard my request you may deem it necessary.”

Nakht’s eyebrows rose. “Is it so serious, then? Proceed.” He appeared to be surprised, but in Huy’s sensitive state he thought he saw a bleak knowledge already dawning in Nakht’s dark eyes. The moment had come. Gathering up his courage and all his will, Huy began.

“Lord, you surely know that under the High Priest’s ruling my education has been continuing and in little more than a week it will be complete,” he said, amazed that his voice was clear and steady. Nakht nodded. “I shall pass from the school with the highest marks and with very good recommendations from my instructors.”