The Twice Born (14 page)

Huy had thanked them profusely, handling the objects curiously and holding the papyrus to his nose. It did not smell at all like a plant, indeed it had hardly any odour at all. The beaten weave of it fascinated him and he asked Ker how it was made. “I will take you to the papermaker in town,” Ker said. “You can see it all being done. The papyrus is truly a useful and magical plant. It is sacred to Hathor, and was not Horus himself born in the papyrus marsh at Chemmis, here in the Delta? A papyrus thicket marks the frontier between life and death. Always treat it with respect, plant and paper both.”

“There is no point in taking it with you to Iunu this spring,” Hapu had said firmly when they returned home. “It will be several years before you leave the pottery shards behind. Give it to your mother to store away safely. You don’t want it stolen, do you?”

So, reluctantly, after several evenings spent handling and dreaming over his new acquisitions, he took the palette and papyrus roll to Itu. She was in the room she shared with her husband, changing the linen on his couch, when Huy peered round the door. “Come in, Huy,” she said. “Have you finished gloating over your presents?”

“I did not gloat. I was trying to imagine what it will be like to set them across my knees like the scribes and actually begin to take the dictation of my employer.”

Itu dropped the armful of sheets on the floor and sank onto her own couch. “How humid it is today!” she complained. “Before long the mosquitoes will begin to fly out of the canals. Put your things in my chest, Huy. They won’t be disturbed.”

She watched him cross to the wall and lift the lid of the chest. Then he paused. “You still have it,” he said. “I can see one paw sticking out under your sheaths.”

“You really hate it, don’t you, my darling? It is rather sinister, I admit. Perhaps you will appreciate its value when you are older.”

Huy had drawn away from the chest, the palette still in his hands. “I don’t think so, Mother,” he said steadily, though he could feel his hands grow cold. “Would you please put my things away? I don’t want the monkey to know I’m here.”

Itu slid off the couch. “You and your funny fancies!” she said kindly. “You’re still just a little boy, aren’t you, Huy, in spite of your grown-up language and the new gravity you came home with. Very well. Give it to me.” Huy did not relax until the lid of the chest banged closed. “Hapzefa has been slicing watermelon,” Itu went on. “Let’s go and have some.”

Huy made sure that he was not the last one out of the room.

On the first day of the month of Thoth, New Year’s Day, the whole country celebrated the rising of the Sothis star, which always heralded the beginning of the Inundation, with a sacrifice to Amun. Every month held its feast days, but those of this month, the first of winter, were observed with a fervency born of relief. Isis had begun to cry. Once again there would be silt for the crops and plenty of water to fill the canals. The ceremony of the Opening of the Dikes took place, the King performing the first ritual and every farmer with dams across his canals following suit. The Chief Royal Scribe noted, as always, the exact day, month, and year of the King when “the water returned.” People everywhere held parties, throwing gifts, flowers, and often themselves into the river. It was a time for fishing and fowling, and on Ker’s arouras the grapes hung heavy and lusciously red, waiting to be harvested. On the nineteenth day of the month Thoth himself was honoured, and on the twenty-second the Feast of the Great Manifestation of Osiris was held. Hapu and the gardeners were too busy filling their baskets with grapes to do more than say a few perfunctory prayers during a morning’s holiday from work, but Huy, mouth and fingers temporarily stained purple with grape juice, stood in the privacy of his room and thought for the first time about the god who had given the civilizing gift of the written word to Egypt. Although the statue of Hut-herib’s totem graced his bedside table, it was to mighty Thoth that he prayed, thanking the god for his wisdom and begging that his remaining years at school would result in skills that would make his father proud of him. “And please keep me away from any more mischief,” he finished before rushing out to join Ishat by the grapevines. He still had four more months in which to enjoy himself before his uncle’s barge bore him away again.

4

 
THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED
were largely uneventful for Huy, but not for his mother, who gave birth to another boy four months after Huy’s eleventh birthday. Surprised and perhaps a little embarrassed, Hapu went into the market and hired a scribe, dictating the news to Huy, who received it at school with mixed feelings. He had known that his mother was pregnant and had watched the tumult of rejoicing and congratulations with a somewhat jaundiced eye. All his life he had been the family favourite, the only son of adoring parents and the darling of a childless aunt and uncle who had spoiled him outrageously. Now he would have to share the attention. He had returned to school before the actual birth and for that he was grateful. Fleetingly he wondered, in a flash of jealousy, whether his new brother would usurp his place in the affections of the family, seeing that for seven months of each year he was not at home to remind everyone of how much they loved him.

But his resentment soon faded. The focus of his life had gradually been shifting from Hut-herib to the school at Iunu. Immersed in his studies, involved more and more with Thothmes’ family, he knew that he was forging a future of his own. The baby had been named Heby. According to Hapu’s letter he had been born on one of Mekhir’s lucky days, was healthy, and had his mother’s eyes. Huy wrote back, “As Mekhir falls within the season of growing I pray, dear Father, that Heby may spring up as strong and straight as Ker’s many flowers. Give Mother all my love.” He used one of the precious rolls of papyrus Ker had given to him after his first year at school. His command of language was almost complete. He could read any document with relative ease, but he still wrote laboriously, forming the hieroglyphs with slow care. He had begun to study hieratic, the scribe’s fast-flowing substitute for the more formal and beautiful glyphs, but it would be another two years before the dusty shards of broken pottery over which he had sweated were a nuisance of the past.

His youth lock had eventually returned to its former length and then continued to grow. Now it hung well below his collarbone. White ribbons had given way to yellow, blue, red, and now a simple copper arm band, and Huy looked forward to his twelfth year when he would be allowed to wear the coveted gold arm band and tie his braid with anything he chose. He would also be given the care of a new boy as Harnakht had been responsible for him. Each Tybi he watched them come, bewildered, sometimes frightened, always homesick, and remembering his own first few weeks at the school he did his best to be kind to them.

Although he knew his classmates well and liked them all, but for Sennefer who continued to treat him with an often wounding contempt, it was Thothmes who had become Huy’s best friend. With the greater freedom accorded his age and a good record of behaviour he was able to spend every feast day with Thothmes’ family. The large estate bordering the river, with its gilded furniture and host of servants, had long since ceased to awe him and he basked in the attentions of Thothmes’ two remaining sisters, Nasha and Anuket. Meri-Hathor, the eldest, had married and now lived with her husband farther upriver.

Nasha reminded Huy of Ishat. Vital and energetic, she was always ready to explore the city’s markets or go fishing or pole a skiff through the marshes so that Thothmes could practise, rather ineffectually, with his father’s throwing stick. Huy, as the son of a commoner, was not allowed to handle the nobleman’s weapon, but he was happy to sit in the skiff beside Nasha while she hurled good-natured insults at her brother, who had launched the stick at some safe and quite indifferent duck. “I really don’t want to kill anything,” Thothmes confessed on more than one occasion, “but Father insists that I try,” and Nasha would snort and call him a girl. Open, frank, and impulsive, she was what Ishat might be, given an education and an arsenal of social graces. Huy still loved the playmate of his childhood. Going home always meant hours idled away in her company, but they were hours taken out of the stream of thought and discipline his life had become, a minor tributary up which he ventured, happily and temporarily, and where he could fully rest.

It was Anuket, Thothmes’ youngest sister, to whom Huy felt most drawn. Older than he by one year, she had the delicate features of her noble bloodline. At twelve she had entered what for most girls was an awkward stage of gangling limbs and clumsy movement, and Anuket was no exception. But her eyes seemed to hold a constant, quiet wonder at the world around her as she performed her household chores or wove the garlands needed to present to the gods on their feast days. Huy often found her in the garden or the herb room, legs crossed and head down over some new, flowery creation, and his first urge, swiftly quelled, was always to gather up the long tress of her black hair hanging over one thin shoulder and press it to his face. He did not know what she thought of him. She was not shy, but reserved. Nasha would grab and kiss him, tease and jostle him as she did Thothmes, but Anuket simply smiled and kissed his cheek whenever he visited the house. She talked to him readily enough, laughed at his jokes, even made some of her own, but her self-containment seemed impregnable. “Actually, she thinks you’re quite wonderful,” Thothmes had assured him once when Huy had voiced his doubts. “She just doesn’t see any need to make a show of it. She doesn’t maul me either, and I’m her brother! Don’t worry, Huy. She’ll make you a fine wife!” But Huy, increasingly conscious of the gulf between himself and these aristocrats, although he was comfortable with them, did not believe that Anuket would be permitted to wed a lowly scribe.

The King was in his fiftieth year on the Horus Throne, and Thothmes, his namesake, faithfully entered the inner court of Ra’s temple, feet bare and an offering in his hands, to pray for the continued good health of his hero when the King’s Anniversary of Appearing took place. Huy sometimes accompanied him, waiting in the outer court while the solemn little figure disappeared into the pillared gloom bearing his gift for the god. Huy never made fun of his friend’s loyalty, unlike Sennefer, who jeered at Thothmes’ obsession at every opportunity. “He still hates us,” Huy said one evening when he and Thothmes, walking together across the concourse of the temple in the warm red glow of Ra’s setting, had been pelted with mud by a grinning Sennefer, who had been standing waist-deep in the lake by the temple watersteps. “We have done nothing to antagonize him, and apart from those few weeks after I got caught roaming about the temple where I shouldn’t and became a sort of hero, he’s continued to persecute us.”

“Sometimes I feel sorry for him,” Thothmes put in tartly, trying to pick a wet clod from the hem of his kilt, “but only sometimes. He’s jealous of me because my lineage is older than his, and he envies you your intelligence and good looks. He’s too lazy to work hard and too much in love with his food to give any of it up. We must just ignore him. He hates that.” He sighed. “I suppose we’d better stop by the bathhouse and wash off this mess.”

By the time Huy went home at the end of Mesore, his brother was six months old, a placid, happy baby just learning to roll from his stomach onto his back. Itu often left him in the shade of the garden with Huy while she attended to her domestic duties. At first Huy, rather afraid of this plump scrap of humanity, protested, but he grew fond of Heby as the days went by, watching his chubby arms push against the grass until he flopped over. Then he would chuckle with delight and reach for Huy’s nose as Huy bent over him. Later Huy was confident enough to put him in a sling and carry him about on his back. He particularly enjoyed the feel of that warm, tiny body against his spine when he stood painting or practising his characters on the whitewashed outer wall of the house.

Ishat had been hired to help Hapzefa with the cooking and cleaning while Itu attended to the baby’s needs. At ten years old she was entirely capable of both, but to Huy she lamented the loss of her freedom. “Why couldn’t everything have stayed the same?” she complained one evening as they sat together in the privacy of the orchard, safely away from any summons from the house. “Why did your mother have to go and get herself pregnant after so long? How did she do it?”

Huy knew that she was not asking about the process of sex; the joining of man to woman was no secret to the practical peasants of Hut-herib. He lifted one bronzed shoulder. “It had been so long since I was born,” he replied diffidently. “I expect she saw no need to use the acacia spikes anymore. It’s not so bad, Ishat. Heby is a sweet baby.”

She began to brush the dust off the soles of her bare feet with brisk little slaps. “Well, it’s all right for you,” she snapped, not looking at him. “All you have to do is talk baby talk to him while he lies on the grass and gazes at you adoringly. I can’t wade in the canals or climb the trees or chase the cats anymore. I’m too busy scouring pots and sweeping floors.” The bitterness in her voice alarmed Huy.

“But it won’t be forever, Ishat. Besides, it means more of everything for your family. Food, linens, fripperies for you and Hapzefa—”

She rounded on him savagely. “Do you think I care anything for ribbons and ornaments? Why should I want to be better than I am? Will ribbons make my skin pale like a fine lady? Will a piece of faience around my neck soften these calluses on my hands?” She waved them in his face. “You! Every time you come home your skin is softer, your manner is more lordly, your speech has lost more of its Delta accents. It wasn’t so bad when we could run off and play together the way we always did—then the differences between us melted away. But now I am becoming a house servant like my mother and we can’t have fun anymore and you’ll soon stop seeing me as your friend! All because of that stupid baby!”

“But Ishat, you don’t want to be a fine lady,” he faltered. “You just said so. You want the freedom to run wild in the fields and canals.”

“Oh, you are as dense as a tamarisk thicket!” she cried out. “Must I explain? I want to be whatever you would like me to be. I don’t want to lose you, Huy!”

He took one of her flailing hands in both of his, feeling the rough palms, the coarsened tips of the long fingers. “I am little better than you,” he tried to reassure her. “Even though he has many arouras to care for, my father is still a gardener.”

She snatched her hand away. “But you will be something more,” she half whispered. Tears had begun to trickle down her cheeks. “Already you have those noble friends you told me about, Thothmes and his sisters, and as a scribe you will know many more. You will leave me behind.”

Guilt momentarily closed his mouth. He sat watching the full, trembling lips, the halo of untamed hair frothing past the hunched shoulders, the dark, moist eyes full of emotion. She had grazed her knee; it had scabbed over, and there was a thorn scratch on her thigh. All at once Huy ceased to see her as the little girl who had always been his playmate. She seemed to grow right under his gaze. Her arms and legs lengthened. Her face thinned. The buds of tiny breasts swelled almost imperceptibly on her naked chest, and he found himself looking at a strange young creature with Ishat’s features.

“How could I leave you behind?” he said softly. “All my memories of home have you in them, Ishat. How can that be changed?”

Furiously she swiped at her eyes with the edge of her limp kilt. “My mother is going to put me in a sheath,” she spat. “I have become a woman. And my father is already talking about finding me a husband within the next few years. A husband, Huy! Me! I don’t want any stupid husband, and I certainly don’t want any stupid babies! Oh, why can’t everything stay the same?”

To that Huy had no answer. The thought of Ishat married to some labourer was as shocking as the revelation of her maturing that he had been too blind to see before. He was surprised at the twinge of possessive jealousy he felt. She was his. He himself, once he had recovered from the first anguish of being torn from his home and deposited at school, anticipated the gradual changes each new year had brought. But Ishat must not change, Ishat must always be here, Ishat must admire him unconditionally forever, no matter what he became or where he ended up.

She was watching him out of the corner of her eye. “You could marry me, Huy,” she murmured. “Not yet, because neither of us is old enough. But if you told your father that you wanted to marry me later on, then my father would stop casting his net among the sons of his friends. You wouldn’t make me cook and clean and have babies, would you?”

Huy was aghast. A vision of gentle Anuket, her white lap full of flowers, bloomed in his mind. “Ishat, I am years away from even finishing school, let alone thinking about supporting a wife!” he protested. He could not keep the panic out of his voice, and after one cold glance she scrambled to her feet and began to walk away.

“I did say not yet,” she flung back over her shoulder. Huy watched her disappear into the dusk with a sense of relief that almost, but not quite, eclipsed the ache of his loss.

His Naming Day, his twelfth, was celebrated as usual with a visit to Khenti-kheti’s shrine, and this time Huy offered his precious paints as a thanksgiving to the god. It was not that he believed his uncle would replace them, but the time was coming when he hoped to be able to buy them for himself. Each year since the episode with the skittles he had made an honest choice from among his possessions, and he looked forward to his visit with the priest who had given him such good advice. He now wrote to the man once a year and always received a letter back, full of kindness and humour. It was an odd relationship, but one Huy had come to value.