The Twice Born (60 page)

In the morning he watched Ishat join Thothmes in the litter with a jealousy he fought successfully to control. Ishat had given him the list of petitioners she had made while Huy was with the King, and grimly he set out to alleviate as much of the suffering it represented as he could. He ate the noon meal with Methen, recounting the details of his audience with Amunhotep. In the afternoon, too agitated to rest, he continued to traverse the town, going from street to street, house to house, meeting each fever, each wound, each undiagnosable illness, with as much detached kindness as he could muster. His headache grew worse, it always grew worse as the day progressed, until in the end he turned for home and the blessed poppy Men had given him and his lumpy, welcoming couch.

The pain had receded by the time he heard Ishat’s voice out on the street. She burst into the house. “Huy, are you here?” she called, coming to the doorway of his sleeping room where he was groggily trying to put on his sandals. “It’s almost sunset. Thothmes is keeping the litter outside until we’re ready to go.” Coming closer, she peered into his face. “Your head was bad today?”

He nodded. “Yes, but the poppy has taken care of the worst of it. Have you had fun?”

She knelt and began deftly to tie his sandals. “I have, but I felt guilty leaving you to cope on your own. Thothmes wants me to spend tomorrow with him again, but I won’t. You need me.”

“I don’t want you to help me if you don’t want to.” Huy tried and failed to keep the petulance out of his voice.

Ishat put her cheek against his calf, then rose. “It’s amusing, playing the part of a noblewoman, but I’m more comfortable being with you,” she said simply. “Do you need help putting on your kilt?”

“No. I’m shaky but recovering. Another night on Thothmes’ barge is what I need. Can the three of us squash into the litter?”

For the following five days Thothmes stayed moored outside Hut-herib. True to her word, Ishat worked beside Huy for two of those days, both of them dining each night on the barge. She lost her shyness very quickly, joining in the conversations that took place long into the sweet, hot nights, and Huy took a much-needed consolation from the closeness growing among the three of them. But during the remaining days of Thothmes’ stay she could not resist his urging to spend the daylight hours with him.

On the afternoon before Thothmes was due to weigh anchor and row back south to Iunu, she returned to the house early. She had asked Huy to be there, and he was sitting tensely on a chair in the reception room when she came in. For once she did not greet him. Pouring herself some water, she drank long and thirstily before setting down her clay cup with an exaggerated deliberation that told Huy she had something serious on her mind. Suspecting what it was, he clenched his fists in his lap and waited. Pulling forward a stool, she sank onto it in front of him.

“Thothmes has tried to give me many pretty gifts over the last week,” she began, her eyes roaming the room, avoiding Huy’s. “There is a market here in Hut-herib where the rich toss the baubles they no longer want. I had not seen it before we found it. I was tempted, but I refused to accept anything.”

Huy did not ask why. Instead he said, “Go on.”

“He has given me permission to tell you that he has fallen in love with me. He wants to ask you if he can take me back to Iunu with him.” Huy had known the words that she would speak, had heard them as ghostly echoes in his mind, but every syllable she uttered felt like the clamour of harsh music falling directly on his heart, making it falter.

“I see,” he managed. “As what, Ishat? His servant? His concubine?”

“No.” She began to cry, the tears falling soundlessly down her face. She did not try to wipe them away. “He will give me a little house of my own, and servants of my own. He will provide for all my needs if I will allow him to introduce me to his family so that they can get to know me. He says that his father is a fair and broad-minded man who will eventually accept me as … as his daughter-in-law.”

A bubble of bleak laughter welled up in Huy and threatened to choke him. The muscles of his chest contracted so painfully that he was forced to stand. He could control his resentment no longer. It was not directed at her; like a noxious cloud it enveloped the memory of Nakht’s face on that terrible evening when he had begged for Anuket, begged for an acceptance that had been denied him but that was now being held out to Ishat, begged for a future, any future, under Nakht’s protection. He could not argue that Thothmes was profligate in his tastes, that he slept indiscriminately with many women, that he was flighty and unreliable. He had known Thothmes almost all his life. Thothmes was a happy, intelligent, warm man who did his best to live according to the laws of Ma’at.
Do not punish Ishat for this
, he told himself while his jaw clenched tight against the hateful things roiling in his mind.
Why should she not grab at a chance to better herself?

“What makes you think this is more than a brief infatuation on Thothmes’ part?” he said hoarsely. “Do you imagine that his love will last?”

“We have immediately become friends. It’s as though we’ve known each other all our lives.” She started to sob and, picking up the hem of her sheath, scrubbed at her cheeks.

“Then why are you weeping!” He folded his arms against the dreadful ache in his chest. “I trust I am a reasonable master. I release you. Go with him.” His tone was hard.

Now her swollen gaze flew to him, eyes and nostrils flared, and the old, familiar Ishat flashed out at him. “I only require your permission out of politeness, Huy! Have you forgotten that it was my decision alone to leave my service in your parents’ home and tend you? Why so cruel?”

“I’m sorry.” The apology cost him a great deal, but it seemed to ease the fluttering of his heart. “Will you go with him?”

To his surprise she shook her head vigorously. Then, reaching out, she grasped a handful of his kilt so that he was forced to step towards her and she buried her face in the linen. Her forehead burned against his genitals.

“No, Huy, I can’t go. I’ve told him so. I don’t love him. I love you, curse you. Curse you! I have loved you since we were children together. I know you do not care for me …”

Genuinely distressed, he pulled her clutching fingers away from his kilt and squatted. “I do care for you, my Ishat. I love you dearly.”

“But not that way. Not as a lover desires the beloved. Even so, I can’t leave you. Not yet. Not until all my hope is gone.”

Releasing her fingers, he smoothed down her tousled hair and cupped her chin. “I cannot be selfish in this,” he said with more force than he felt. “Thothmes offers you an honourable opportunity to eventually become the wife of the governor of Iunu! My Ishat, a governor’s wife! Remember how I saw you in my vision.”

“I remember.” She jerked her head back and sank onto the floor. “If he really loves me he will wait. He will write to me. I can read letters now. He will come and see me, take me on short trips to meet his family. And even then I may choose to stay with you. You are not my master in the usual sense, Huy. I am free to choose my own destiny.”

Huy sat back down heavily. “None of us are that free. The gods decide the course of our lives before we are born. Or twice born.” The bitterness flowed out of him. “What I Saw for you will come to pass whether you think to choose another way or not. But for now I am selfishly glad that you will stay with me. I’d be very lonely without you.”

“Selfish indeed,” she agreed more calmly. “And I am weak and foolish. Well. We had better prepare for our last night with Thothmes. I shall give him my decision.” But she continued to sit on the floor, head bowed. He watched her in a mood of helplessness and self-hate.

That evening, after food and wine and light conversation, Huy excused himself and left the boat, walking a short way along the riverbank. When he regained the deck, the pair of them were sitting in silence. Ishat was staring down into her goblet. Thothmes’ expression was gloomy as Huy approached. “Ishat is very loyal to you,” Thothmes said heavily as Huy lowered himself onto a cushion. “Is her answer an honest one?”

“Ishat is one of the most honest people I know,” Huy replied uncomfortably. “Her word is true. She is distressed at hurting you, and I am sorry to see you disappointed, Thothmes. You are both my friends. I don’t want either of you to suffer.”
As I am suffering
, he went on silently.
Love is painful when it pours out of the soul towards the beloved and is not returned. It just goes on bleeding until the soul becomes sick with grief. Better for you not to know, Thothmes, that Ishat’s wound is open to me, and mine to Anuket still cannot be closed
.

“Then I must accept it for now,” Thothmes said. “Perhaps in time she will change her mind.”

“Please don’t speak of me as though I were not here,” Ishat broke in. “Thothmes, I am deeply touched by your affection for me. Huy, I am yours for as long as you need me.” She drained her cup and stood. “It has been wonderful to live like an aristocrat for these few days, but it’s time to regain my station. Thank you again, noble one. I look forward to reading your scrolls.” Both men got to their feet. Thothmes’ expression was strained as he embraced her. “May the soles of your feet be firm,” she said as she kissed his cheek, giving him the time-honoured blessing of the traveller. “Huy, I will wait for you on the bank.”

Thothmes watched her walk along the ramp into the dimness beyond the reach of the barge’s lamps. He turned to Huy. “Regardless of what she says, I shall speak of her to Father at every opportunity. My feelings will not change, so remember that when you have other servants to take care of you and she is free to reconsider my proposal. Then I shall make a formal approach to her parents, who will doubtless fall over themselves with joy at seeing their daughter elevated to the nobility.”

Huy looked at him curiously. “Do you see yourself as bestowing on her some great favour, then? Are you condescending to her, Thothmes?”

“Gods, no! You should know me better than that! Have I ever condescended to you?”

“No, but I had to ask. Well. I shall miss you very much. Write to me too.”

“I always do.”

Huy had one foot on the ramp before he found the courage to ask the question that had been souring in him all week. He glanced back. “Thothmes, how is Anuket? Is she well?”

Thothmes looked grim. “She is well and happy, but her husband is not. I wish you could forget her, Huy. Be safe. It has been wonderful to see you again.” He vanished abruptly into the cabin and Huy went on down the ramp.
I wish it too
, he thought as he got onto the litter beside Ishat and the bearers lifted them.
Sometimes it happens, but then a certain slant of sunlight, a certain scent, even someone’s casual word, will bring her back to me on a tide of memories. I see her in your face and your gestures, my dear Thothmes
. He felt Ishat’s hand on his arm.

“Huy, are you all right?” she said quietly. “You groaned.”

“I ate too much and I’m tired, that’s all,” he replied dully. “Besides, tomorrow we begin work together again. The prospect would make anyone groan.”

She did not laugh at the small joke, and they rode the rest of the way home without speaking.

For the following two months Huy threw himself into his work, dealing with the usual mishaps of the harvest season, but several times he found himself in homes he had been called to before, to touch some other member of a family where there had been a previous healing. The present maladies were uncannily similar to those of the past. A farmer whose injured leg had become swollen and black with ukhedu had followed Huy’s vision of treatment and been cured, but Huy had been begged to return on behalf of the man’s son. The boy had accidentally sliced through the top of his foot with a scythe. Both the blade and the foot had been dirty. Ukhedu had set in. But though Huy took the young man’s hands and prayed for an enlightenment, no vision came to him and he was forced to suggest the same washes and ointments that the god had shown him on behalf of the father. The family were disappointed but accepting, as though they were not entitled to more than one vision from the Seer. Twice more Huy faced the same dilemma, and once a fever victim, a child whose mother had been cured of a fever through Huy’s vision, died shortly after Huy had been forced to admit to the anxious parents that the gods had not spoken to him. The memory of his warning to Nasha came back to Huy, together with the circumstances of her mother’s death, so similar to the words of the caution. For a brief while he began to wonder if he was interfering with a law of fate that his visions were perverting. Perhaps the recipients of his touch were really meant to die or to suffer through their ailments to recovery on their own. But that would mean Anubis was deliberately deceiving him or, worse, the visions were the product of his own perverted mind. Neither explanation was satisfactory, indeed both filled him with fear.

However, as he and Ishat continued to move through the town, healings multiplying behind them, Huy put his worry aside. Such coincidences were few; they were irrelevant when measured against his successes. So he lulled himself until the worry became no more than an occassional faint pulse at the back of his mind, and it was completely driven out by the victorious return of the King two days before the beginning of the month of Thoth.

Huy and Ishat were about to leave the house an hour after dawn. Already the air had heated uncomfortably, and though their door stood open, there had been no sunrise wind to cool them. Ishat’s thick sheath clung to the sweat under her breasts. She tugged at it irritably and was about to pick up her palette when there was a commotion out in the street. Huy was still sitting at the table, his own armpits damp and his mood low. Yesterday had been more exhausting and painful than usual, the night close and uncomfortable, and his head still twinged in spite of the poppy he had drunk before retiring. Ishat had stepped out into the bright sunlight. Huy rose and followed her.

Their neighbours were hurrying past, including the owner of the beer house next door. Ishat hailed him. “Rahotep, what’s happening? Where is everyone going?”