The Twice Born (54 page)

A peace came slowly to Huy as the season of Akhet drew to an end, a serenity born of the regularity and uncomplicated predictability of his days. The month of Athyr, when the river was still rising, slid into Khoiak and the height of the flood. His life, and Ishat’s, was bare of all but the necessities of work, food, and rest. Their health remained good. Huy ceased to notice the din that rose from the beer house at every sunset. He was teaching Ishat to read and write in their little reception room by the light of the chipped alabaster lamp. He would sketch the hieroglyphs in chalk on the tabletop and she would copy them onto the pieces of smashed clay pots available on every garbage heap. Huy began with the names of the gods, as his teacher had done. Ishat learned quickly and with an awe that touched Huy’s heart. She would suck in her breath and stare at the figures he had drawn in front of her, underlining them with one reverent finger. “This says
Amun?
” she would ask, or, “This says
Ptah?
” as though she could not quite believe the evidence of her eyes. Often Huy would return from his morning at the temple to find that she had scrawled her lessons in an increasingly sure hand all over their whitewashed walls. Before long it was time to move on to the symbols that represented not only a thing but also a concept. Ishat, for all her self-assurance, was a humble student—
more humble
, Huy thought as he faced yet again her charcoal scribbles as he walked through their doorway,
than I ever was. At this speed she will make a passable scribe in a year or two
.

One early afternoon he returned to find her waiting for him, smiling triumphantly beside a list she had written on the wall. “These are the foods you will be eating tonight,” she announced, slapping a hand beside the hieroglyphs. “What do you think?” He went closer and inspected what she had done. Her control over the pieces of charcoal had grown. The figures were smaller and neater and did not run into each other or meander down the whitewash.

“Grilled goose meat,” he read aloud. “Cabbage with coriander. Pea soup with mustard. Salted olives. Dried plums. Beer. Oh, Ishat!” He turned and hugged her. “This is wonderful! Only one mistake.”

She pushed him away. “A mistake?” Her hands went to her hips. “Where?”

“Here. You mean to say ‘olives,’
baq-t
. You’ve written the plural correctly and half the hieroglyph, the bird and the triangle, but you put this in”—he pointed—“instead of the semicircle and you forgot the tree. According to this we will be eating salted brightness,
baq
.”

She sighed. “There are so many
baq
s,” she grumbled. “
Baq
, to dazzle,
baq
, a prosperous man,
baq
, to be protected, and every
baq
written a little differently.”

“I’m very proud of you,” Huy said, and meant it. “You never make the same mistake twice. Are we really having grilled goose?”

She made a face. “Alas, no. I went to the kitchen so I could write the list. No dried plums or beer either. Sycamore figs. But it does look good, doesn’t it, Huy?”

“It does. I am amazed.”

She yawned. “I will rest this afternoon. All this thinking makes me sleepy. I’m glad I pleased you, Huy.”

The familiar pang of grief washed through him as he saw her delight, and then it was gone. “You always please me, Ishat. Now I must rest also. Tonight we will begin the names of fish.”

She laughed. “Now that is something we must do sometime,” she said as they parted. “The owner of the beer house has a boat. He will lend it to me. We will go fishing together.” The last words came to him muffled as he lowered himself onto his couch and pulled the blanket over him. They were four months away from the pitiless heat of the summer season of Shemu.

At last Huy received a scroll from Thothmes. Huy had not written to his friend, partly because of the preoccupations of settling into his new life but also out of a reluctance to conjure in himself the memory of the faces he had loved and trusted. The pain of leaving Iunu had begun slowly to fade. It sprang up again as Methen held out the roll of papyrus with Thothmes’ personal symbol, an image of the ibis-headed god Thoth himself, pressed into the red wax. “A letter for you from Iunu,” Methen said. “A messenger delivered it early this morning.”

“It’s from my friend Thothmes,” Huy replied, taking it gingerly. For just a moment he fancied that he caught a whiff of Anuket’s perfume, the faint cloud of mingled flower and herb aromas that always clung to her. “I’ll read it later.” He kept his attention fixed fiercely on his work that morning, dreading the moment when Methen would stretch, sigh, and say the closing prayer to Khenti-kheti before sending for food; but of course the hours passed. Huy had little appetite. He bundled his bread and some goat’s cheese into his linen bag for Ishat, bade Methen rest well, then went to sit in the grass with his back against the spreading sycamore. The court was deserted. Huy broke the seal and unrolled the scroll.

Greetings to Huy, Scribe to the High Priest of Khenti-kheti and my dilatory friend. Why have you not written to me? Are you unwell? Have you a house? Do you enjoy your work? Most of all, dear Huy, do you miss me as much as I miss you? School begins again next month. How shall I be able to walk into our cell knowing that you and your possessions are gone? I expect I shall be sharing with some nasty little first-year pupil who will alternately weep with homesickness and rant against his fate and I shall have to assume the role of big brother when all I want is my own dear brother by adoption in the cot across from me. At least it will be my last year, blessedly shortened because of the death and beautification of my King. Harmose the Overseer says that all those who should have finished their schooling by the beginning of last Akhet will carry an extra load of study so that they need not waste more time. I groan. Father is preparing to train me in the business of administering this sepat, so I suppose I may say that I have almost achieved adulthood. I still can’t hit a duck with any accuracy. Nasha asks me to send you her love. She misses you almost as much as I. Come back to Iunu, Huy. I will importune my father to obtain a good post for you in the city. He does not say so, but I know that he regrets having to refuse you Anuket and feels the lack of you when we sit down to eat together. Speaking of the little witch, her formal betrothal ceremony took place last week, followed by a huge feast. I do not particularly like her future husband. He seems rather stupid, or perhaps he is simply shy. Anyway, he is no match for Anuket, who slinks and purrs around him like a cat who has caught a mouse and is about to play with it before devouring it. Father cannot seem to control her anymore. I think he just wants to sign the marriage contract and have her go away. Does he wish she were going away with you? Perhaps. But, dear Huy, remember how she had begun to treat you. Unlike her new prey, you have had a lucky escape. Write to me at once, and may my prayers to the Osiris-one, Thothmes the Third Justified, keep you safe. Your friend, Thothmes.

Huy let the scroll roll up, laid it in his lap, and closed his eyes. I want her to go away too, he thought, the image of Anuket prompted by Thothmes’ words clear and bright behind his lids.
I fell in love with her before she began to change, before her true character began to show through, and no matter how I struggle I am still trapped by the quiet, industrious girl whose nimble fingers wove the fragrant blooms in whose profusion we sat side by side and silently for hours. Will I never be free of her?
He saw her step into the embrace of the faceless man, her betrothed, saw her arms slide about his naked waist, her mouth lift to meet his. Deliberately, stiffly, as though his mind were a joint that ached, he turned it to Thothmes’ wide, unstinting smile and the grace of that short, slim body.
I love you and miss you also, but I cannot go back to Iunu. I will go home and write to you and thank you for your generosity and beg you to come and see me here, but the city of my past has become a city of dreams from which I struggle to awake. I long to hear your voice, Thothmes. I long to look into eyes other than Ishat’s that know me well and with whom there is no pretence
.

“You’re late today,” Ishat remarked as Huy entered their house and handed her the bag. “Is it bread and cheese again? Huy? Why are you so pale?”

“There is a letter from my friend at Iunu,” he told her, setting his scribe’s palette on the table. “He is well and wants to hear from me.” Her eyes narrowed. She began to rummage in the bag, dragging out the food. “It’s all right, Ishat,” he said carefully. “Thothmes’ sister has just become officially betrothed and will be married shortly. I was never her choice, or her father’s.”

“Because you are a commoner.” She shook the brown cheese at him. Her tone was bitter. “Because your blood is not pure enough to mingle with hers. Not that it could. Not if what you told me—”

“Peace!” he said sharply. “Do not rub my nose in my own misery. What you were about to say is true.”

“I’m sorry.” She came and knelt beside him, wrapping her arms around his knees. “I am hurt for you, and angry at them, all of them. I hate to see you suffer.” She could both love him and hate him for not loving her back. Her impulse was to both defend him and castigate him, and as he felt her warm cheek against his thigh before she scrambled to her feet, he reflected how convoluted and mysterious were a woman’s emotions.

“Sit and eat,” he said. “I will write to Thothmes and then we will sleep.” He went to the dusty floor, setting his palette across his lap and whispering the scribe’s routine prayer to Thoth as he uncapped his ink. “It’s all right,” he repeated. “I am content to be here in Hut-herib with you. It is an old pain, Ishat.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” she said caustically, and bit into the cheese.

More letters began to arrive from Iunu over the following weeks, from the Rekhet, full of advice and demanding a return, and from Ramose, implying gently that Huy was in the grip of a temporary madness and confident that, once sane again, he would return to the temple. Huy answered them. He thanked the Rekhet for her advice and filled his letter with descriptions of his surroundings and details of his daily life, knowing that she approved of his decision to return to Hut-herib. His scroll to Ra’s High Priest was more cautious. He spoke of his contentment in serving Methen as a scribe, his gratitude to both Ramose and the school for providing him with the excellent education that allowed him to ply his trade, and a promise to visit if he ever found the time to travel to Iunu. The implication behind his carefully chosen words was polite but clear: I am happy, I am grateful, but I have chosen the course my life will take and I do not intend to return to a state of dependency. They wrote again; so did Thothmes. The scrolls from Iunu and the necessity to answer them became matters of routine, threaded into the fabric of Huy’s everyday life. The memories began to lose their sting, and often he found himself entirely involved in his present. He began to taste fulfillment.

17

 
AS THE FLOOD SLOWLY SANK
, revealing the wet, newly enriched soil beneath, Huy began to dream. Like the receding water, the anguish of the previous year seemed to flow away during the hours of darkness, leaving his sleeping mind fallow. Once again he stood in the Judgment Hall, gazing towards the bright sunlight bursting through the great doors, Anubis and Ma’at unseen presences behind him. Then perhaps he would find himself kneeling before Imhotep, the leaves of the Ished Tree murmuring above, the aroma of its flowers filling him with intoxication. Imhotep was always reading, reading, engrossed in what Huy knew was the Book of Thoth, and did not acknowledge him.

Once, he found himself on the banks of a wide river whose slow, meandering curve between stands of palm trees and little sandy bays reminded him of a stretch of the river he had walked beside before he reached the tributary on his long journey to Hut-herib. But the water was blue, not brown, as blue as the sparkling sky, the spears of the palm fronds freshly green, the sand so golden that it glowed. A procession was passing on the opposite bank, the men in glistening white kilts, the women dressed in linens of red and yellow, their arms heavy with bright gems, the oiled tresses of their wigs glinting with gold. The group moved slowly, majestically. Huy could see them smiling and talking to one another. He shouted across the expanse of glittering wavelets, cupping his hands around his mouth, but it appeared that they could not hear him. Soon they turned onto a path leading up into the beige hills. Huy watched them grow smaller and smaller until their graceful forms eventually vanished.

He was warm and peaceful, standing amid a scattering of fragrant wildflowers—tall hollyhocks, vivid blue cornflowers, tiny orange chrysanthemums, and the dazzling white drug poppies. He could see no lotuses, but their scent surrounded him, saturating the air itself. The sun was gentle on his head, the grass soft on his bare feet. Pulling his braid forward over his shoulder, he saw, without surprise, that his humble little frog now gleamed with gold. His chest and fingers were naked. The amulets and the sa sign were gone.

Waking from these dreams became increasingly difficult. He remembered how, after he had returned from the dead, after his senses had brimmed over with the delights of the blessed realm of Osiris, the sights of the mortal world were drab and colourless, the smells weak and faintly corrupt, the food ashy. Gradually his flesh had adapted to his return and his experience in Paradise faded beneath the weight of worldly concerns, but now the place where the Osiris-ones dwelt came back to him with as much force as ever, and the grief of loss began to fill him each morning as he opened unwilling eyes to see his tiny, dark chamber and the uneven rise and fall of the whitewashed ceiling above him.

He had not wanted to speak of this to Ishat, but as always in her presence he found he could not remain silent. He told her how distressingly real his night visions were becoming. “And the Book,” he finished. “Imhotep is reading the Book, and as he unrolls it the words roll through my mind. I had thought I was forgetting it, but no, it’s come back. Every symbol. Every obscure saying.”

Her eyes narrowed. They were sitting across the table from each other. Evening light was streaming through the doorway, falling on her, bronzing her shoulder and one arm, making her black hair shine, and tingeing her sheath pink. “Do you know its meaning now? Have you solved its mystery?”

He shook his head. “No. Sometimes I feel that its riddle is unravelling, but then I wake up. I keep the words, though.”

Ishat shrugged. “We are now in the month of Pakhons. The first month of Shemu. It’s getting hotter. Perhaps your dreams have something to do with the time of year.”

Huy sat back with a sigh. “I don’t think so. I’m afraid that they are warning me of a change in my life.”

A look of alarm crossed her face. “Oh, Huy, don’t say that! At last we are settled here! Your work goes well. I now have needle and thread, and we replaced the leaky lamps with two new clay ones. Things are getting better for us!” She stood abruptly and the shaft of light flowing onto the floor was cut off. “You’re not going back to Iunu, are you? You’re going to leave me behind!”

He had not realized the depth of her insecurity. “No, I’m not going back to Iunu. And Ishat, I’d never leave you behind,” he protested wearily. “This is not about us—it’s about me. A change in me. Something’s coming.”

She did not reply. Arms folded, she stared at him while the silence lengthened and the brief glow of evening disappeared behind the row of buildings on the other side of the dusty street.

He mentioned none of this to Methen or to the Rekhet in his letters to her. He was not sure why he had unburdened himself to Ishat and not to them. His hopeful, unformed thought was that perhaps the dreams would cease and in making too much of them, in telling his more mature friends about them, he might sound arrogant or, worse, pitiful. After the constant glare of attention he had endured in Iunu and Khmun, he was enjoying his anonymity.

But two months after he had spoken to Ishat, when even in the Delta the heat had become almost unbearable and all around the town the farmers had begun to harvest their crops, Huy was accosted in the street. He was on his way to his morning’s work in the temple, walking purposely in the shade the buildings cast, when a man stepped in front of him, barring his way. With a murmured apology Huy made as if to step around him, but the man flung out an arm. Huy stood still.

“You are the one who came back to life in the House of the Dead,” the man said. “Everyone thought you’d been possessed by a demon, but a Rekhet came and pronounced you free of everything evil. I saw you once, out by the flower fields.” Huy smiled politely, nodded in what he hoped was a dismissive gesture, and turned to cross the street. The man grasped his arm. Huy began to feel afraid. There was not much crime in Hut-herib, mostly thievery and the midnight fights that broke out after the beer houses closed, so the police patrolled casually during the day. A swift glance up and down the dusty alley told Huy that no official help was in sight.

“Please let me pass,” he said firmly, trying to pull his arm out of the man’s grip. “The events of my childhood are nothing to do with you.” The man opened his fingers and Huy prepared to run, but to his horror and embarrassment his waylayer fell to his knees, holding up his hands in the time-honoured gesture of begging and submission. The movement of the crowds thronging the street began to slow. Some stepped around Huy and his unwanted pesterer with grunts of impatience, but most came to a halt, staring curiously at Huy.

Huy grabbed the upflung arms and hauled the man to his feet. “If you continue to bother me, I shall knock you down!” he hissed. “I do not know you, I do not want to know you. Now let me pass at once.” Even as the words left his mouth he regretted them, wondering whether perhaps this man was under the protection of the gods, but meeting his eyes Huy saw no glint of madness—only panic and distress.

The man did not move. “I need your help, noble one,” he said urgently. “My name is Iri. My daughter has become very ill and the physician can do nothing for her. He says she will die. I have sent for a priest to chant the fever demon out of her, but I do not think his incantation will do any good.”

Huy wanted to shake him. His own panic was rising, born of a sense of fatality far outweighing the few moments of this annoying encounter. Something he wanted no part of again was closing in on him. He felt his ability to choose ebbing away. Sweat suddenly sprang out along his spine and trickled to dampen the waist of his kilt. “I am not a noble,” he ground out. “I’m not a physician either. Let me go on my way.”

“But you have seen the gods,” Iri protested breathlessly. “You have been in their presence. Surely they will listen to you, the one they sent back from the dead, if you entreat them on behalf of my daughter. You are favoured above all other men!”

A swell of muttering arose from the throng of people around them. “It is he!” Huy heard someone call out. “The Twice Born!” someone else said. “He has returned to Hut-herib!”

“Go and heal the girl!” an indignant woman insisted, thrusting herself forward and glaring at Huy. “It is your duty!”

“It is not my duty!” Huy shouted back. “I am not a healer, I am a scribe. My childhood is behind me. I was wounded, nothing more, and you should not listen to silly rumours!”

At that, the crowd pushed forward and began to turn ugly. Fists were brandished. A small stone was flung, striking Huy on the ear. Angrily he put a hand to his bleeding lobe and prepared to lunge at his attacker, but a firm arm went around his neck and Ishat whispered, “I heard the uproar along the street. We must go with this man, Huy. Otherwise more than your ear is going to bleed. You will see the girl and she will die and then you won’t be bothered like this again.”

Still filled with the need to plant his fist in someone’s face, Huy gritted his teeth. “Oh, very well,” he managed. “Iri, take me to your home, and hurry up, before these mongrels tear me to pieces in the name of healing!”

Ishat’s fingers slid into his. Iri began to push his way through the crowd and Huy followed. So did the crowd. “I am sorry, noble one,” Iri said over his shoulder. “I did not mean to subject you to the curiosity of the people.” Huy did not answer.

Fortunately, Iri lived only one street away from Huy’s own house and they were soon turning in through a gateless aperture in a waist-high mud-brick wall that joined his property to others on either side. The crowd followed, filling the small space between the street and Iri’s door, where a number of clay pots held the green fronds of herbs and mixed flowers. Huy did not notice them, but Ishat did, and told him of them later. Iri opened his door and ushered them in, closing it firmly behind him. Huy and Ishat found themselves in a modest but well-appointed reception room, dark and cool. Iri did not pause. He hurried towards the narrow hallway at the rear of the room and, halfway along it, veered through a doorway on his left. Huy could see sunlight and a tiny patch of courtyard garden at the end of the passage before he too, Ishat at his heels, entered the room.

It reeked of stale incense, vomit, and excrement. Several bowls rested on the earthen floor, and Huy realized that the stench came from them. A cot stood against the far wall, with a lit lamp on the table beside it. Steam rose from the cloth a kneeling woman was wringing out. She stood and turned as the three came in, her face pale and haggard, eyes darting at once to Huy. “Oh, thank the gods, you have found him!” she exclaimed. Three clumsy strides brought her to Huy. With hot, wet fingers she traced his jaw, the slope of his nose, the curve of his eyebrows. “You exist,” she said in a low voice. “Twice Born. This is my daughter.” She began to cry. “Her name is Hathor-khebit. If you ask the gods, they will heal her.”

Jerking his head away from her questing fingers, Huy approached the cot with a sense of mutiny and helplessness.
I will perform this stupid play. Ishat is right, as always. The child will die and I will be left alone
. Awkwardly he knelt, and Hathor-khebit’s little head rolled towards him on the stained pillow. Her hair was a tumble of wet tangles. Her skin was sallow, her cheeks swollen, and when she opened her mouth and tried to speak her breath made Huy want to retch. Yet her eyes mutely begged him as he took her hot hand, and in that moment Huy wished that it was true, that he did indeed have the power of the gods within him to heal.

“Hathor-khebit,” he said slowly, and as her name left him he felt the vertigo begin. His fingers tightened convulsively around hers. Her face grew larger, nearer, was flung at him so that he instinctively drew back, then he seemed to be looking inside her where there was redness, and a forest of weeping ulcers in her mouth, and, farther in, the terrible, erratic struggle of her heart. Deeper still he saw food, pieces of white leek and brown beans and tiny scarlet, crushed seeds, and beyond her stomach the rapid flow of yellow diarrhea. If anything happened at all, he had expected it to be a vision of her death. He was unprepared for this hot, suffocating prison of her body, and he found himself gasping for air and finding none.

“Greetings, son of Hapu, you most reluctant tool of mighty Atum!” The voice of Anubis came to Huy so clearly that he started. “This child is not yet ready for the Judgment Hall. Ask her father the question I shall give you. Then tell him exactly what to do. Atum’s eye has turned to you at last, proud Huy. But you knew that already.” The god’s voice was warm with humour.

Huy listened as Anubis spoke, his lungs bursting, his eyes on the foul ukhedu leaving the feverish body, and just when he felt he must scream and flail in a panic to escape that dreadful place, he found himself crouching beside the cot, his whole body trembling, Ishat beside him.

“Sit back onto the floor,” she said. “You saw something, didn’t you, Huy? Can you speak?”

He nodded, looking up into the two drawn faces leaning over him. Hathor-khebit had begun to breathe in gasps. “Iri,” Huy said, “what is your profession?”