The Twice Born (47 page)

After a moment the door opened. Methen stared at him, then his face broke into a wide smile. “Huy! Already! I did not recognize you for a moment. It has been a very long time since we actually saw each other. Come in.” His arms went around Huy. “You look as though you have walked all the way from Iunu!” Huy followed him inside and the door was closed.

Methen’s quarters were as neat and clean as the priest’s body always was. A raffia mat took up most of the floor. A wooden desk with a chair behind it and a rough chest on either side took up one wall to the left. Two plain wooden chairs flanked a small table directly ahead. Two simple oil lamps provided the only illumination, their naked flames still bending from the movement of the door. On the right a dim opening led, Huy surmised, to the priest’s sleeping room. All at once the idea of laying his head on a pillow and stretching out on a cot was delicious. Fatigue overwhelmed him.

“What do you need first?” Methen continued. “A bath or something to eat?”

“I did walk from Iunu. I would like a large jug of water please, Methen, and then whatever food you have. I could sleep for a week, but I had better wash myself after I’ve eaten. May we talk tomorrow? It’s so good to be here with you, but I’m tired.”

Methen regarded him fondly. “My servant has gone home for the night. Sit down and rest, Huy. I’ll go to the kitchen and see what I can find. I have an assistant priest now, you know. Or rather, several who perform the three-month rotations common in other temples. It makes me feel quite important.”

He grinned and Huy smiled back.
I love you
, Huy thought as Methen swiftly left.
You saved my life. You carried me from the House of the Dead to my parents’ house. You kept faith with me when my own father turned away. It is all coming back to me, and I don’t want it! Must I relive it all since I have been away for so many years?

Although the chair was hard, Huy felt himself slip into a doze. He came to himself as Methen shut the door and took the few steps across the room. “Water, cold duck, cold lentil soup, cold bread,” he said apologetically. “Eat and drink while I bring your belongings inside. The guard also goes home at night. Not that I fear thieves within the sacred precinct.”

Huy drained the water and set about the food, tearing at the bread and dipping it into the spicy soup. He had finished the meal by the time Methen had set his chest and satchels against the wall. “I have lit a fire under the cauldron in the bathhouse,” Methen added. “You’ll find it outside the main wall and to your right. Again, there is no one to shave and oil you, but that too can wait. A man comes to see to us priests every day. We may not have a single hair on our bodies when we go about our duties.”

Huy slid from the chair and hugged him tightly. “Gods, I’m glad to be here!” he murmured. “To be with someone I completely trust. Someone who will ask nothing extraordinary from me. You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

As Huy made his way back across the grass to the gate, he glanced up. The moon was low and full, eclipsing the stars close to it. The air smelled faintly of donkey dung and smoke. The bathhouse was warm with steam and the light, pleasant fragrance of ben oil. Lifting the lid of a small bowl, Huy found natron. Unbinding his dusty, disordered hair, he set about the task of ridding himself of his long trek.

Much later he returned naked to the safety of Methen’s rooms, sandals and dirty linen bundled under his arm. Methen took them from him and indicated his sleeping room. “Take my couch tonight. I’m quite happy to stretch out here on the floor with a cushion and a blanket. It’ll be more comfortable than an all-night vigil in the shrine on the eve of a major feast day!”

Huy was too tired to demur. Nodding his thanks, he stumbled through the doorway. Methen’s linen was coarse but clean, his one pillow stuffed with goose down. Huy did not even remember pulling up the sheet.

He woke to voices and for a moment believed himself to be back in his cell at Iunu, but as he struggled to sit up, the man who placed hot bread, a hunk of cheese, and a cup of milk on the floor beside him was unfamiliar. The man smiled. “The High Priest has gone to perform the morning rites for Khenti-kheti,” he explained to a groggy Huy. “He has laid out his own linen for you and has asked me to recover yours and wash and starch it. I presume it is in one of the bags out there.” He pointed to the outer room. “The water in the bathhouse will still be warm if you hurry, and the body servant to the servants of the god will wait a little while to shave and pluck you if that is your desire.”

Huy blinked at him. “Thank you,” he managed. “My linens are in the larger of the two bags. I cannot pay you.”

The man shrugged. “It is a service for Methen,” he said simply, and went away.

By the time Huy had eaten, bathed, shaved, and dressed himself in Methen’s copious linens, the priest was back, hurrying into his house in a cloud of kyphi perfume. He laughed when he saw Huy emerge from the sleeping room. “All you need is a leopard skin draped across your shoulder and a sacred staff in your hand to play the part of a High Priest yourself,” he said, eyeing the folds of the sheath flowing against Huy’s ankles. “Never mind. Soon your kilts will be returned to you.” Going to the table, he sat, reaching for his morning meal. “The dawn song has been sung to Khenti-kheti,” he went on. “The rites of feeding, cleansing, and dressing the god have been accomplished. Now tell me everything while I eat.”

Huy took the chair opposite his friend and began to recount his shameful interview with Nakht, the encounter with Ramose and the Rekhet, and his long walk from Iunu. He did not speak of his desperate attempt to rid himself of both his gift and the wound of his humiliation at Nakht’s hands by engaging the whore; the memory of it was too raw for words. Methen listened attentively as he ate his bread and cheese. Then he sighed. “Perhaps you have been hasty. Your pride was wounded, Huy, your dreams shattered. Your letters were full of Anuket and her family and I was often troubled as I read them. But with your excellent school record and the blameless assessments of your tutors, you could have obtained a good post with any of a hundred needy nobles, merchants, and other businessmen in Iunu. There is no future for you here. You must know that.”

Huy shrugged. “I know. I don’t care. I just want anonymity, Methen. Small responsibilities, simple tasks.” He grimaced. “I fancied myself a noble. The arrogance that drove my parents to send me away in the first place has obviously not died. I am chastened.”

Methen shot him a keen look. “So you seek the other extreme out of a wounding anger? And how will you feel once your hurt and anger have died?”

“I don’t know.” Huy spread out his hands. “If you are worried that one day soon I’ll run away to some more lucrative post, we can have a contract drawn up between us. But I am so very tired, Methen. Tired in my soul from the forced learning of the past weeks, from loving Anuket in spite of a growing conviction in me that she will make no one a good wife, from the continual pressure to decipher the Book …”

“Ah. The Book.” Methen drained his cup of milk and dabbed his mouth on the square of linen beside his plate. “We do not need to speak of its mysteries unless you want to, Huy. As for Anuket, you are not the first man to love an unworthy woman, and you will not be the last. Why do you think thus of her?”

Carefully Huy told of her increasingly common behaviour, his sense of being manipulated by her, their final encounter in Nakht’s night-hung garden, and as he heard himself give audible voice to his misgivings it came to him that she was indeed unworthy of him. He had not dared to think of her in that way before, but with the attempt to describe her to Methen came a clarity of mind. He still loved her, he knew that, but the emotion could be placed behind other preoccupations in a way impossible before. A shift had taken place in his ka. Peace had suddenly become attainable.

“I would like to discuss my duties now, Methen,” he finished.

“Certainly. We will work together through the morning hours tallying gifts given to Khenti-kheti, preparing requisitions for his upkeep and that of his priests—all two of us—and keeping a record of the petitions made to him by the citizens of the town. The tasks are small and easily dealt with. So far I have simply hired a scribe from the marketplace.” He smiled. “It will be good to rely on one intelligence, let alone one style of writing, for this work. The afternoons will be yours. I’m afraid you must launder your own linen and prepare your own food, but you may use the temple’s kitchen and its modest stores if you wish. The temple will supply ink, brushes, and papyrus for you.” He rose. “I have been fortunate to find you a house close by. It belongs to the temple. I could have moved into it, but I prefer to be closer to the sanctuary and my sacerdotal duties. This house was occupied by a woman who recently died. It is bare and there is no garden with it, but that’s true of most homes in Hut-herib. There will be no remuneration with this position,” he told Huy. “But your needs will be supplied by the temple. You have enough linens and oils for the time being?”

Huy thought of his satchels and his chest, full of the gifts from Nakht and his family. “I have enough. I will not be prodigal in my wants, Methen, I promise you.”

“Good. Then bring your belongings and I will show you the house.”

Huy followed him out into the full glare of the morning sun. They crossed the square of grass, threading through the groups of gossiping townsfolk who had come to pay their respects to the god and stayed to share their news with each other, and passed through the gate, turning sharply left into a narrow earthen street where the small buildings crowded lopsidedly together. “These are all homes with one or two shops fronting them,” Methen explained. “Nothing very grand. A potter making wine jars, a woman selling brooms. Unfortunately, there is a beer house beside your dwelling. You share a wall with it. The nights may be noisy, but the few whores who loiter about outside take their customers farther along the street. It is a far cry from your quiet little cell or Nakht’s estate at Iunu.”

Huy thought of the Rekhet’s home on just such a street.
What is good enough for her is surely good enough for me
, he said to himself,
and if I want to escape the noise and dirt I can go out into the field
s. Stepping around a crowd of naked children playing knucklebones, he followed Methen through a low doorway halfway along what was almost an alley.

There were three tiny rooms smelling of mice and the peculiar mustiness that often clung to the skin of the elderly. The walls and floor were undressed. The room fronting the street was the largest but by no means copious. The right-hand wall was almost completely taken up with two doorless apertures leading to the remaining two rooms, identical in miniature size and divided by a wall. Methen pointed to the far wall. “The beer house is beyond that. There’s not much room, but it would be advisable to place your cot in the centre of the floor. And take the room farthest from the street to sleep in. Mud bricks are thick and keep most noise out, but not all.”

Privately, Huy was appalled.
What in the name of Atum have I done?
he wondered dismally.
This is much worse than Henenu’s house. No rear door, no garden, and if I want to escape the dimness and sit in sunshine I must take a chair into the street
. Dust and grit lay thickly under his sandals as he took the few paces from room to room. Methen was watching him anxiously. Huy managed a smile.
It is what I deserve
, he wanted to say. Instead, he summoned a joke. “Cleaning it should take me all of two moments,” he said. “I shall buy a broom from my neighbour and ply it with vigour. There will be no problem, Methen.”

The priest looked relieved. “Later you may want to look for something better, but you know this town, Huy—apart from the few nobles’ estates fronting the tributary, Hut-herib is ugly.” He turned back towards the square of light seeping in from the street. “Let’s return to the temple and take a look in the storehouse. We may find a cot and a table and a chair or two there. Then you should visit your family.”

“My family?” With a thrill of mortification Huy realized that not one thought of his parents had entered his head. He wondered what they would say when he told them he had come back to Hut-herib to work. His mother would simply be happy to have him close by, but his father would probably make some dry comment about peasants finally knowing their place, or young men with pompous ideas being humbled. Huy dreaded the encounter. “Of course you’re right,” he said to Methen’s back as he picked his way behind him down the street towards the blessed cleanliness of the temple courtyard. “What can I say to them, Methen? And especially to my uncle Ker, who relinquished the responsibility he had taken on for my education when you carried me from the environs of the House of the Dead? He favours my brother Heby now. It will be a difficult meeting.”

They were crossing the soft grass of the court. Methen glanced at him. “Difficult but necessary,” he said crisply. “These people are your blood, Huy. Nakht could not take their place, nor did he ultimately want to. Remember that. It was not my place to tell them that you might be coming home. You are not expected. Do you want to send them a message first?”

“No,” Huy said slowly, coming to a halt. “I want to see their reactions. I want to know if I am still loved by any save my mother.”

Methen cocked an eye at him. “You chose to stay in Iunu on many occasions when you could have come home,” he reminded Huy. “If your parents are cool towards you, you cannot blame them. How prideful you still are! Go and see them. Accept their greeting, whether warm or aloof. Has it not occurred to you that your long absence might have hurt them?”

No
, Huy thought dismally,
it has not. My father removed his trust from me. Ker removed his affection. They were all happy to have me stay away, except when Nakht and Nasha and Thothmes visited me there and brought them gifts. Then they were happy enough with me
. Rancour curdled in his mouth like soured milk.
I will see them and take the medicine my father is bound to tip into my unwilling ears. I will show them the scrolls of excellence from my teachers, but not as though I were begging for their approval—I care nothing for that. Afterwards I will see them only when I am obliged to do so, on my brother’s Naming Day for instance. I can’t even remember when that is
.