Huy pulled himself free. “I have no idea, seeing that I have never experienced orgasm,” he said thickly. “And if you are right, Rekhet, I never will. But I swear I intend to try!” He stood. “I love you. You are my friend, one of my counsellors, you have been so kind to me—but you are ruthless also. I have done all that I have been commanded to do, but I am tired of it all, the Book is nothing but a jumble in my head, the heka is too much to bear, I stand at the threshold of my life, and I want my freedom!”
“You stood at that threshold when Sennefer’s throwing stick found its mark,” she broke in quietly. “You are the Twice Born, Huy, whether you like it or not. Freedom belonged to the first life, the life that was snuffed out. Servitude to Atum and to him alone is the responsibility of the second. He may choose to lift the burden from you. If he does, it will be his choice, not yours. You have no choices to make.” Suddenly she embraced him, her wiry grey hair brushing his neck, her sturdy arms around his waist. “But fight him if you will,” she sighed. “To contend with him will be no more than if you were a mouse in the beak of a hawk. Go now. I knew your distress but not its depth. I shall make spells for you. Do not remove the sa.”
The heaviness in his legs and arms was subsiding. Without saying more, he gave her a deep reverence and left.
The litter-bearers were asleep, sprawled against the wall that fronted the street so that passersby were stepping over their outstretched legs. Huy roused them peremptorily, told them to carry him to Nakht’s house, and climbed into the litter, pulling the curtains closed. The evening held no more delight for him. The tiny space gradually filled with the rather sickly smell of the mandrake in his hair, but its power had dissipated. The men carrying him could not arrive at the Governor’s house quickly enough for Huy.
He dismissed them outside Nakht’s entrance, greeted Nakht’s porter, and strode eagerly towards the house. Full night had fallen, warm and redolent with the mixed aromas of the muddy river water that had begun to lip the street to his rear, the scent of soil that reminded him forcibly of his father, and the welcoming smells of roasting fowl wafting from the kitchens behind the house. Nakht’s steward was waiting for him just inside the entrance pillars. With a bow he opened the doors, and with unutterable relief Huy stepped into the lamplight of Nakht’s reception hall.
Before he reached the dining hall the steward had alerted the family. One by one they came to kiss him. Nakht took his hand gravely. Nasha tried to lift him off his feet, failed, and punched him on the shoulder. Thothmes embraced him tightly. “Fifteen, dear friend, and we are still together,” he said happily. “I miss seeing you during the week. Are you getting lonely, ruling the school all by yourself?”
Anuket came last. Taking Huy’s hand, she drew him down and kissed him close to his ear. Then she stepped back, frowning. “Huy, you smell of reremet,” she said loudly. “I know it, and its power to seduce. Sometimes I use the stems and leaves in my work. Have you been with a girl tonight?”
Huy was astonished. Anuket was smiling as though she were making a joke, but the fingers still coiled around his had spasmed and her eyes were hard.
“Anuket, you are rude!” her father snapped. “What Huy does beyond these walls is his own affair.” But the man looked mildly pleased.
“I have been with my mentor, the Rekhet,” Huy said. “I was tense. She combed my hair with mandrake infused in oil, to calm me.” Was that a fleeting disappointment on Nakht’s face? Huy could not be sure. The expression had come and gone too fast.
Anuket lifted her pretty shoulders and released his hand. “Let’s go into the dining hall. The servants are ready to serve the food,” was all she said.
Huy had put on the earring Anuket had given him for his last Naming Day and the gesture obviously pleased her. She sat close to him, smiling and talkative for once, even teasing him gently and leaning past him to lift a dish of lentils or honeyed dates. Huy did not know how to respond. Nasha’s affectionate jibes always eased and reassured him. Thothmes made fun of him and he of Thothmes in an entirely masculine, impersonal way. But this new Anuket, this young woman breathing wine fumes into his face as her primly clad breast brushed his arm and her huge eyes swam out of focus, so near were they to his, shocked and embarrassed him. Blushing and stuttering, he did not know what to say. He wondered whether she had been drinking much before he arrived. Nakht seemed unusually quiet. He watched his daughter carefully and once or twice seemed about to speak to her, but each time Nasha had interjected with her stream of constant, entertaining gossip and Nakht had sat back. Even though she was at the centre of all his most private fantasies, Huy wanted to shrink from her uncharacteristic behaviour. He was devoutly glad when the meal was over.
They retreated to the reception hall, where more wine had been set out. Nakht took a chair as did Thothmes, but Nasha and Anuket dragged Huy down onto a pile of cushions. Nasha was happily drunk, tickling Huy and laughing at his protestations. Anuket laid her leg against his. Nakht clapped and the steward glided forward out of the shadows. “Bring Huy’s gifts,” Nakht ordered.
A silence fell. The high double doors stood open and the night breeze funnelled through them, bending the candle flames, fluttering the ankle-length linens of the two who sat, and stirring Anuket’s oil-slick hair. With one languid gesture she lifted it from her neck and, tilting her head back, piled it on her crown. The little yellow faience flowers wound into it tinkled against each other. Two of them fell into Huy’s lap. “Oh, I am so hot and sweaty!” she declared. “If the river had not begun to flow so swiftly I would take off all my clothes and plunge into the water!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Nasha retorted. “You hate swimming. And boating too, for that matter. What is wrong with you tonight, Anuket? You can barely sit still.”
Anuket sighed ostentatiously and let go her hair. It fell to her back in a perfumed shower. Huy held out the flowers. She shook her head. “I can’t be bothered summoning my body servant. You tie them into my hair for me, Huy, would you?”
“No, he certainly would not!” The voice was Nakht’s. “Drinking much wine is a pleasant thing, Anuket, but if wine is going to make you behave immodestly then you will be denied it altogether. Forgive my daughter’s bad manners, Huy.”
Huy, grappling with the disquieting concept of a drunk and unruly Anuket who appeared to be in the grip, not of the ancient water goddess, but of her more recent persona, was saved from replying by the steward’s return.
Nasha came unsteadily to her feet. “I shall present them,” she said thickly. “First, from father, a really lovely leather belt studded with polished turquoise. And look, Huy! There’s a loop for a dagger and another one for a small bag.”
The belt was braided at each end for tying. Huy took it and at once his thumbs went to the smoothness of the perfectly matched stones. “This is a magnificent gift, Lord. Thank you!”
“The turquoise is green, signifying health and vitality, dear Huy,” Nakht replied. “I am very fond of you and wish you many years of both.”
Nasha kept her balance by placing a hand on top of Huy’s head as she lowered a pile of linen across his knees. “Four kilts from me,” she announced. “Linen of the twelfth grade, edged in gold or silver thread. Yes, they cost me a great deal, so don’t rip them. I love you, my almost-brother.”
Huy grinned up at her. “I love you also, Nasha, in spite of all the bruises you’ve given me. Thank you.”
“I went to the Street of Leather Workers myself,” Anuket broke in loudly and, Huy thought, a little sulkily. “I insisted on watching the craftsman make my gift to you so that the stitches were tiny and tight. Nasha, give him the gloves.” Nasha held them out. They were of soft, very supple calf leather complete with wrist guards with a running horse pulling a chariot stamped into the skin. “They are to protect your hands when you drive the chariots,” Anuket explained needlessly. “I know you don’t have a pair and you won’t ask the priests to give you one.”
His discomfiture forgotten, Huy leaned over and kissed her damp cheek. “Thank you, my friend,” he said, genuinely moved. “Look! They fit me flawlessly.” He had drawn them on and was showing her, but unaccountably she moved away.
“Of course they do,” she said tartly to no one in particular.
Huy saw Thothmes shrug and roll his eyes. “Last one, Nasha,” he said. “Give it to him before you fall down.” Thothmes’ gift was a casket full of smaller boxes. One contained grains of frankincense, the rarest and most fragrant of sacred smoke. Another was jammed with almonds. Another held pot after pot of scribe’s ink. There were also two alabaster phials of kohl, the black powder mixed with gold dust.
Huy laughed in delight and, rising, went and embraced Thothmes. “These are magnificent gifts for a fifteenth Naming Day. I am so grateful to you all and I love you all very much.”
Nasha, back on the floor, waved her cup. “A toast to Huy, now embarking on his sixteenth year. Life, health, and prosperity!” Nakht and Thothmes drank with her. Anuket had fallen asleep, an unkempt muddle of tousled hair and wine-stained sheath on the cushions.
Nakht yawned and stood. “I am ready to retire. Nasha, have Anuket carried to her quarters and put to bed. I will deal with her in the morning.” Huy bowed to him. As he left, Nasha hauled herself to her feet and called for the servants.
Thothmes took Huy’s elbow. “Are you tired, Huy? No? Then let’s walk in the garden.”
The air seemed cool and fresh after the scent of wax, perfumes, and sweat. The sound of the Inundation could be heard, a constant gurgle of flowing water and a lapping slap as it met the watersteps beyond Nakht’s high walls. For a while the two friends strolled in silence. The night was fine. Stars and a half moon filled the paths with grey light.
Thothmes pointed upward. “Look! The Sothis star. How strange that it appears every year at the beginning of the Inundation and I always look for it, but I have no idea when it goes away again.” He breathed deeply. “I wish school was in,” he went on. “Another three months to wait! Meanwhile I have begun to accompany Father to all his administrative meetings now that I am also fifteen. I take notes, like one of his scribes. Occasionally he actually asks for my opinion on some dispute between farmers or on new policy for the sepat that has come from the One in Weset. I am learning how to be a governor.”
Huy was watching his feet, gliding disembodied under him along the ashen path. “You’ll make a wonderful governor when Nakht dies. You have all the attributes, Thothmes. You’re honest, intelligent, you can be reasonable when you want to be, and above all you love your country. Egypt is everything to you.”
“And my dear King, the Mighty Bull,” Thothmes said fervently. “Strange to think that he was already our ruling god before I was born. Yes, I think I will be glad to train for the governorship under my father. Do you know yet what you will do, Huy? Will you make your living as a Seer?”
“No!” Huy responded sharply. Then he relented. “I don’t know what I shall do, Thothmes, but I do know what I won’t do. I won’t See for anyone anymore. I want a wholly boring, ordinary life!”
They had reached the gate to the watersteps and, greeting the guard, they slipped through, settling side by side on the top step and watching the dark water swirl below them. Finally Huy broached the subject that had been troubling him. “Thothmes, is something wrong with Anuket?” he asked diffidently. “I thought I knew all of you well. I’ve seen Anuket full of wine before. Usually she just becomes even more quiet than usual and sits even straighter and then she falls asleep. Tonight she was like … like …”
“Like a jealous lover?” Thothmes filled in. “Really, Huy, you can be so dense! It was the reremet that did it. For years, yes, years, you’ve been in love with her, or in lust or whatever. Everyone in the household knows it. You’ve mooned around her like a besotted suitor for so long that she could never imagine your interest going to someone else.” He laughed. “She became complacent, my self-involved little sister. You must admit there have been times when she played with you, tested her power to drive you to distraction, with no real appreciation for what you might be feeling.”
“I did wonder sometimes if I was being teased,” Huy said. His words were even, but his heart had begun to ache. “Anuket is innocent and modest. She has the reticence of her blood.”
“Maybe. But she is also developing the nasty wiles and manipulations of her sex,” Thothmes pointed out. “Who better to try them out on but the youth whose adoration is so steady, although he tries to hide it? She is genuinely fond of you, Huy. I mean, look at you! Tall, handsome, accomplished, and kind into the bargain. Not to mention someone with a truly exotic past. And oh so faithful! Tonight her smugness was shaken. She was forced to see you differently, all in the space of one unexpected moment.”
“Are you saying that she was jealous?”
Thothmes gave him a level glance, and for the first time Huy saw him as he really was, not the skinny, big-eyed little boy of their childhood together, but a slim, poised young noble whose impulsiveness had become confidence and whose naive eagerness had matured into an informed perception. “Perhaps,” he replied. Thothmes opened his arms in a wide gesture of uncertainty. “Perhaps tonight she realized the depth of her affection for you. Perhaps it was nothing but possessiveness. Anyway, Father will discipline her severely tomorrow for her behaviour.”
They fell silent. All at once a vision of Ishat’s face bloomed in Huy’s mind, her features as clear as though she had suddenly appeared before him.
Ishat!
he thought in surprise.
How long has it been since I even remembered that you exist? Yet here you are, and your arrival brings with it the same sense of relief and comfortable familiarity I used to feel whenever you emerged from the orchard with mud on your feet and tangles in your hair. You are a common girl, a servant, but I know that in a similar situation you would have scorned to stoop to Anuket’s devious behaviour
. Indeed, imagining Ishat leaning over him with subtle deliberation so that her breast rested against him while she pretended to reach for food gave Huy a surge of distaste. Ishat would have complained loudly that he was lying, that he had not gone to see his mentor, that he had been dallying with some cheap whore and she wished the bitch dead. Then she would have jumped up and strode out of the room in a jealous temper. Ishat would have behaved more … more cleanly.