The Twice Born (46 page)

Ramose sighed. The hands he placed on Huy’s head felt gentle and without need. “May the all-seeing eye of Ra guide your journey,” he said gruffly, “and may the soles of your feet be firm.” The hands were withdrawn. “Go now, Huy. You may fill one of your leather bags with food from the temple kitchens. Take nothing else.”

Huy bit back a sharp reply at the implied criticism; Ramose would continue to be upset for a long time. Coming to his feet, Huy hesitated. Surely there was something more to be said, to be explained? Could twelve years of the bond that had linked a growing child to this cultured priest be dismissed in so few moments? Henenu and Ramose stood watching him quietly. Huy bowed again and left them.

In a mood of jubilation laced with disbelief, he packed quickly, stuffing his clothing and a carefully wrapped Khenti-kheti in the larger of his two worn satchels. He would have liked to take his bedding with him. He had become used to sleeping on fine, soft linen and he doubted whether Methen would be able to provide him with such sheets, but he stripped the couch and left the linen in a heap on the mattress for the servants. Taking his smaller satchel, he made his way to the kitchens, filling it with hunks of cooked beef and a whole grilled goose, two loaves of bread, a handful of green onions and spears of celery, some sticky dates and fresh figs, and a few brown, small plums. He threw in a handful of dried chickpeas and a bulb of garlic and was delighted to find a boxful of bak pods, of which he extracted only four, to crunch as he walked. Ishat had loved the pungent, eye-watering taste of them also, he suddenly remembered.
I shall be seeing her soon
, he thought with a rush of anticipation as he hunted for salt and coriander leaves.
Her and her mother and my family. My family … my father. I wish it were possible to look forward to a happy reunion with them all, to imagine them running to greet me as I approach the house with my arms open wide to embrace them. But Father will clasp me out of duty and I will have to fight the need to shrink from his touch
. The knowledge made his chest constrict.

He approached one of the cooks. “I am going on a journey. The High Priest has given me permission to take food, but I have no pot to cook it in or a knife and spoon with which to eat. Are there any discarded pans out on the refuse pile beyond the wall?”’

“How should I know?” the man retorted. “Go and look for yourself. Feel free to take whatever you might find.”

So Huy, carrying his bulging knapsack, went through the gate and out to the rear of the temple precinct, where piles of rotting waste and holed utensils lay waiting for the wild cats and carrion birds to descend in the cool of the evening. The smell of decay was overpowering in spite of the sun’s cleansing heat that would burn up everything pernicious. Gingerly Huy set down his satchel and, wishing he had brought with him the gloves that lay in his chest in the cell, began to poke through the refuse, all at once aware that off to his right lay the cattle pens and beyond them the slaughtering yard where so long ago, hentis ago it seemed to him, he had crawled to escape Pabast. As though the image of the man had served to conjure his presence, Huy was startled by the voice behind him.

“So, Master Huy, you have a taste for offal on this sweltering day?” Huy turned. The servant was actually smiling at him. “I heard that you were leaving us and returning to your peasant roots,” Pabast went on. “You are insane. I have not minded serving you. I have watched you grow from a selfish little sprig into a polite young man with a great future ahead of him. And now you want to go home. I might as well have left you hairy and unkempt for the last twelve years and saved myself a load of work. Come with me.” He marched away and Huy followed warily. Pabast could still intimidate the little boy in him.

Back inside the kitchen compound, Pabast swept up an empty pot, a knife and honing stone, and a fired clay spoon and thrust them at Huy. “Put these in your sack,” he ordered. “Wait here.” Huy did as he was told. Pabast disappeared in the direction of the servants’ cells and soon came back with something wrapped in coarse linen. “One of my old razors,” he said curtly. “It will need constant sharpening. You will have to find tweezers and a cosmetic knife for yourself. I can’t spare any of mine. Although”—and here he cast a disapproving glance at Huy’s long braids—“doubtless the knife will be wasted on you. Have you salt?” Bemused, Huy shook his head. Pabast went to a bowl set on one of the long tables and, unhooking a tiny box from somewhere in the pleats of his kilt, filled it and handed it to Huy. “You always were slightly mad,” the man finished gruffly, “but you treated me with respect. I don’t believe all that nonsense about the Chosen One and the Twice Born. The priests can be as crazy as a woman under a full moon. Go with the gods, Huy. Don’t camp too close to the flood line. Don’t drink the flood water. Stick to beer.” He swept up a small sealed flagon and pressed it roughly into Huy’s already full arms. “And don’t think I’ll miss you. I’ve served hundreds of boys over the years.” He grinned, something Huy had never seen him do before. His usually dour expression lifted into mirth. “But I’ll tell your successor all the stories about the boy who once slept on the couch in the cell with the noble Thothmes.” Then he was gone, striding into the shade cast by the row of servants’ rooms. He had not given Huy a chance to thank him.

Huy left the kitchens and went back to his cell. It had already shut him out, although his chest with the larger leather satchel on top of it still rested on the floor beside the denuded couch. Huy put the things Pabast had given him on top of the food in the smaller bag, then he sat on his mattress, his nerve temporarily failing him. There was no one else to bid goodbye. The school was of course empty of the students he might have embraced, and the priests, both friendly and sometimes embarrassingly reverential, were a white-clad flock without individuality. It was time to go. So quickly it had become time to go! Yet Huy sat on, longing for Thothmes’ presence, longing for one more day in the safety of the classroom, longing to be a child again.
But without Sennefer
, he thought, rousing himself at last.
Huy you fool, would you really want to live that time over again? Even now you cannot think of it without a shudder, and after the shudder come the words of the Book, rolling through my mind like the Inundation itself, weighty and beautiful and still incomprehensible
.

Sliding off the cot, he tied on his old sandals, slung the satchels around his neck, one to either side, and hefted the chest, balancing it on one shoulder. It did not feel too heavy, but he wondered how much ground he would be able to cover before its angles dug into his flesh.
I should have asked Pabast for rope, and fashioned a sling so that I could carry it between my shoulder blades
, he told himself dismally.
Ah well. I can wait no longer. From now on the sun will begin to set, and the evenings will be cool, and I am young and strong. It should take me no more than five days to walk to Hut-herib. Uncle Ker’s barge made the journey from there to here with one stop overnight, pushing against the current
. He stepped out of his cell and began to cross the courtyard. He did not look back.

He reached the outskirts of Iunu just after the sun had set. He had followed the wide path that ran beside the river, refusing to be herded towards the centre of the city when the path veered and then divided. Before long the chest did indeed begin to cut into his neck just below his ear, but he walked on, moving it from one shoulder to the other, doing his best to avoid laden donkeys, laden litters, and thick groups of people all going in the opposite direction from his own. River water swirled around the boles of half-drowned palms and sucked at the sedge growing close to the path. It would not be long before the way itself would be submerged.

When he could no longer see his feet and the weight of the chest had become too much, he left the path, striking inland a little way and setting down his burdens beside a clump of sycamores interspersed by prickly acacia bushes. He could still hear the rumble of the city. Collecting dried brushwood, he built a fire, filled the pot Pabast had given him with river water, and set it over the flames. He had never cooked for himself before, let alone over an open fire. He sat exhausted, watching the water as it began to seethe and then bubble. He added half the chickpeas, a few coriander leaves, a couple of fronds of onion, some salt and garlic, and while he waited for the peas to soften he crunched a celery stick and ate a couple of plums. The dates and figs would keep. The chickpeas took a long time to cook. He tested them occasionally on the end of the knife, his appetite growing as the aroma of the garlic and coriander began to tinge the evening air, but at last his simple stew was ready. He spooned it up greedily together with slabs of tender cold beef and goose meat, and when he was finished he went to the water’s edge, washed the pot and the utensils carefully, and set them to dry.

It was now fully dark. Activity along the path seemed to have ceased and Huy, yawning and replete, scraped a small hollow for himself out of the sandy, grass-pitted ground and lay down, his head on his larger satchel. He had no cloak, nothing with which to cover himself, and before long, in spite of the balmy night air, he felt cold. Drawing up his knees, he thought of snakes and stinging insects.
How delicate I have become
, he thought ruefully.
No amount of shooting practice or wrestling or swimming could stop my hip bone and my shoulder from aching
. Nevertheless, a peace began to descend on him. Images of the school flitted through his mind and dropped away. Anuket’s face did not appear, only her name, and it was Nakht’s features, full of pity and determination, that hovered before Huy’s inner eye and woke him fully from a pleasant drowse, causing him to groan quietly. Deliberately he turned to Thothmes, talking to him, laughing with him, until at last full sleep came.

He woke cramped and shivering at dawn, returned the now-dry pot, spoon, and knife to the satchel, hefted the chest to one stiff shoulder, and set off at once, moving north, always with the water on his left. He felt grubby. His braids had loosened and he could feel grains of sand against his skin, under his crumpled kilt. Yet his spirits lifted with the red shimmer of a birthing Ra on his right, and the motion of his legs soon warmed him. He had decided to eat only once a day, at sunset. His stomach was already protesting, demanding the milk, fresh bread, and fruit that would have been laid on his couch at this hour, but he disregarded it.
Methen
, he thought.
Methen and the little mud-brick house and a new, humble life
. He began to whistle.

He did not reach the outskirts of Hut-herib until the evening of the fifth day, and by then he had eaten all his food. The beer had been drunk long before, irresistible during the intense heat of the days. He had accidentally burned his foot when an ember rolled from one of his fires, and because the flood water now covered the road he had waded ankle-deep in it to soothe the wound and to cool himself, but a full day out of the town its level had risen dangerously and he had been forced onto higher ground. It was with unutterable relief that he saw the jumble of squat buildings, still low on the horizon, that signalled the southern outskirts of Hut-herib. They were surrounded by the grey, placid lake of the Inundation. Rows of half-submerged palm trees delineated drowned fields. The spreading tops of the sycamores were heavy with flocks of raucous birds watching the surface of the water for small fish and insects. Huy, tired and filthy, drew the damp air into his lungs and wondered what was missing. Some time later he realized that deep inside him he had been expecting the heady, thick aroma of the arouras of perfume flowers his uncle grew, but of course it was the wrong time of the year. There was only the smell of muddy water and now, faintly, a whiff of smoke from cooking fires.

At last, having been forced to approach the town in a wide half-circle to the east, he came to a raised road leading onto the top of one of the deep dikes cut throughout Hut-herib and temporarily isolating areas of the town from one another. He remembered that he had not been following the river itself but one of its eastern tributaries that ambled north and spilled into the Great Green. He remembered that Hut-herib itself sat between two of the Delta branches. As Nut opened her mouth and slowly swallowed a bleeding Ra, he crossed the tributary, found himself facing the town’s welter of warehouses and boat-crowded docks, and knew vaguely where he was. It did not take him long to reach the centre of the town. He had forgotten how bare and ugly it was. The fertile fields to the east of it might be beautiful, but Hut-herib itself was bereft of trees, the gardens of its wealthy that lined the tributary hidden behind mud walls over which tired branches drooped above the path.

Khenti-kheti’s shrine took up one side of a large square of beaten earth where farmers and merchants kept the market busy and noisy. Huy crossed it just as the last of the stalls were being dismantled and unsold goods were being loaded into carts or the basket panniers of patient donkeys. No one gave him a second glance. Wearily he passed through the gate in the god’s wall and immediately recognized the small patch of grass dominated by the one sycamore tree, and the short, stone-flagged path leading to the single modest court. There was no sign of a guard. Huy set down his burdens. How tiny it all was, after Ra’s mighty, pillared expanse at Iunu! No worshippers or gossipers jostled him. The court was empty, the inner room closed off.

Methen’s quarters adjoined the court. His small door was closed. Huy approached it, the memory of his four-year-old self walking with him. He had known, that day, that he was to be sent away to school and he had blurted out his fear to the kindly priest who had taken his hand and led him into the inner room. There he had waited for the sanctuary door to be opened while the priest had charged a censer and Huy had smelled frankincense for the first time. It had become a commonplace aroma at Iunu, so familiar that he had grown almost unaware of it, but this evening as dusk settled over him and he knocked on Methen’s door he remembered how it had filled his nostrils with its exotic scent, not sweet or bitter, rich and yet gentle.