House of Dreams (11 page)

Turning, I walked along the bank away from the town and the barges. Here there were donkey paths winding through the parched undergrowth and I took one that brought me out to a secluded marsh. The reeds stood like the brittle spears of some absent army, but once through them the sand was firm under my feet. The sun had gone and the dusk was deepening. The water was no longer pellucid but reflected the darkening sky. Pulling my sheath over my head I waded into its calm embrace. I had no natron with which to wash myself but I did my best, scooping up sand and rubbing myself with it vigorously, running my fingers over my wet scalp. When I had finished I could no longer see the farther bank. The silence around me was absolute. Standing waist deep in the almost imperceptible tug of the current I closed my eyes. “Oh Wepwawet,” I prayed, “strong God of War, my totem. Help me to do battle with myself and with the unknown Egypt into which I sail. Give me a victory, and so bring me to my heart’s desire.” I had not even opened my eyes when a jackal began to howl, startlingly close on the other side of the river, and I shuddered. Wepwawet had heard me.

By the time I returned to the barges, full night had fallen and I was hungry. Skirting my Master’s craft where a lamp burned high in the cabin, I trudged grimly towards the crackling fires of the servants. At first I was not noticed as I stepped into the circle of light, then Kenna rose from his stool and came over to me. “I understand that you are to be attached to the Master’s household as personal servant and apprentice,” he said coldly, without preamble. “Do not think that the title of apprentice gives you licence to take on any airs. You will not last long, so remain humble. You will have less far to fall when you are sent back to your native dirt.” He looked me up and down with deliberate insolence. “The Master sometimes has these momentary foibles but he soon tires of playing the generous lord, so beware.” He pointed across the sand. “There is lentil soup, bread, onions and beer over there. You will sleep with the others on the deck of the barge. I will have a pallet and a blanket placed ready for you.” He marched back to his stool and was soon deep in conversation with a man I recognized as the captain of Hui’s barge.

If I had been older, I would have known first that Kenna was marking his territory like a desert dog who lifts his leg against a rock and second that he was desperately in love with his Master and jealous of anyone who might usurp his place in Hui’s affections. But I was an innocent country girl, hurt by this man’s cruel words. As I ladled soup into a clay bowl and picked up my sliced onions, slapping them onto the heavy barley bread, I fiercely reminded myself of Hui’s Seeing in the divining bowl, of the hand of fate in my life, of the worth I placed on myself regardless of how others saw me. I would get even with him, I vowed. I would spike his wine with enough poppy to make him seem drunk when he went about his duties. I would sprinkle certain salts on his food so that his bowels would turn to water. As he talked he was watching me, his dark eyes alert to my every movement.

Balancing my food I went to join the group of servants sitting by one of the fires. Willingly they made room for me. Their curiosity was friendly. Some were cooks, some scullions to clean the barges and the Master’s quarters. The oarsmen were there, and the guards who were not on duty. Their tents were pitched some way away but they were enjoying the conviviality. The guard who had admitted my father and me to the cabin recognized me and had drunk with my father, so that I was greeted kindly. When the night lengthened and the fires began to die, I went with them onto their barge and slept easily beside them on the pallet the disdainful Kenna had provided. I did not visit the ibis burial ground. I did not fancy wandering about this alarmingly big place alone and besides, I promised myself, one day I will come here in state with a hundred servants of my own and Pa-ari with me, and together we will investigate all the marvels of Thoth’s sacred home.

I passed the second and third days on the river in the company of the other servants. Hui did not summon me and I did not know whether to be pleased or anxious because of it. My companions did not discuss his deformity. I could think of no other word for his physical grotesqueness. Had he or his mother been cursed before he was born? Or were his afflictions the outward manifestation of the gift of Seeing that had been granted to him by the gods? It was impossible to say.

Kenna remained on the other barge, so it was often a merry gathering under the huge awning of our barge while we slipped steadily north. The villages and small towns, the dead fields and wilting palm trees, the churned desert beyond the cultivated land and the mighty cliffs that protected Egypt, glided past us with a dreamlike dignity and I watched and drowsed, talked and listened, slept and ate, in a rising contentment tinged only slightly with homesickness. Most of the villages we passed resembled Aswat, so that sometimes it seemed to me that the barge was held in a spell of motionlessness while Aswat itself passed and repassed endlessly, a mirage just beyond my reach. But at other times, when I sat in the cool sand at the end of a fiery day and chatted with my fellows while we drank our beer and ate our simple food, Aswat faded into unreality. I was finding an equilibrium.

On the afternoon of the fourth day we came to the plain of Giza and I fell silent, leaning over the side of the barge and staring at the mighty pyramids that dotted the desert. I had heard of them. Father had spoken about them once or twice, but nothing he said had prepared me for their grandeur, their awesome nobility. My companions, who had seen them many times before, ignored them, but I fell to dreaming of the gods whose tombs they were, and wondering what Egypt had been like in that long-ago age. All the rest of that day they delighted and troubled me, and they were still faintly visible when we tied up at the city of On.

Khmun was a camp compared to the grandeur of the home of Ra. We were approaching the Delta and the river was busy with commerce. The quays of On were full of industry. Nobles’ estates stood side by side along the river as far as the eye could see, and behind them the great temple of Ra poured a steady stream of incense and chanting into the darkening blue of the evening sky.

The Master had commanded that we tack to the west bank of the river to spend the night. The city sprawled along the east bank and the west was given over to the dead. I think he did it because he had a grudge against Ra, who would burn him if given a chance, but whatever the reason, we were subdued as we made our fires and shared our meal, thinking of the tombs behind us in the empty and starlit waste of the desert. I did not want to see the city. I did not want to leave the safety of the barge at all. Like a frightened animal curled in its burrow I clung to what I knew and tried to prepare myself for yet another climactic change. My restlessness in Aswat, my bold dreams of escape, seemed the paltry, flimsy fabrications of a child who plays with dolls and is suddenly confronted with a real baby to tend. I longed to reach out for Pa-ari’s reassuring hand.

That night, after the fires had died and the desultory conversations of my bedmates had faded, I could not sleep. I lay on my back gazing up at the red Horus gleaming balefully in its net of white constellations. Tomorrow we would enter the Delta and in two days I would see my Master’s house. I did not want to consider the future. Nor did I want to dwell on the past. The present was enough. After a while I closed my eyes but it was no good. I pulled on my sheath and left the barge.

A guard challenged me, then let me pass with a warning. I had been told that the fringes of the Delta could be dangerous, that the eastern tribes Pharaoh had defeated three times in battle continued to filter into Egypt past the border forts of Djahi in Northern Palestine and Silsileh and pasture their flocks and herds on land belonging to Egyptians. The Libu of the western desert, who had allied themselves with the eastern people in their attempt to conquer the Delta by force, continued to raid the villages on the edge of the Delta’s rich vineyards and orchards. There were murders and thefts and woundings, and the army could not patrol everywhere at once. The Medjay did what they could, but they were trained to police the villages and deal with internal problems. Desert predators were too much for them. All this shocked and troubled me. I had believed that Osiris Setnakht Glorified, our Pharaoh’s father, had secured Egypt internally and our present Horus of Gold had driven the foreigners from our frontiers for ever. The increased vigilance of the soldiers as we proceeded northward had been taken for granted by my companions who ignored the added security.

Still, this was not yet the Delta. I was close to the heart of the city of On, far from the fringes of cultivation to east or west. I did not intend to go far, only to wear out my body a little so that I could sleep. I kept close to the river, treading easily through black shadows and the ashen light of the moon.

I had come to an open stretch of sandbank and was about to turn back when I saw him. He was standing waist deep in the silvered water, arms raised, his head thrown back and that lustrous white hair cascading past his shoulders like iridescent foam. Here, bathed in the pale aura of his god, lost in adoration or tranced in Seeing, he was uniquely beautiful and I drew in my breath and paused. Quietly I began to retreat but a twig must have snapped under my tread for he swung about and called to me.

“Are you spying, praying, or seeking adventure, my little peasant? How are you faring, flung in with my menials? Perhaps you are sneaking south to find Aswat again as a poorly trained horse will seek its stable.”

I did not yet know him well enough to decide whether or not he was being spiteful. I could not discern his face in the gloom though his body was bathed in ghostly moonlight.

“I came upon you accidentally, Master,” I said loudly. “I did not mean to spy.”

“No?” His hands went to his hips, hidden under the slow swirl of the dark water. “But Kenna tells me that you are full of questions to your new-found friends. Could it be that my trust in you is misplaced?” This was so grossly unfair that I had no ready answer. I remained silent, and it came to me once more that he was conducting some sort of test. I resented it. “But Kenna is a man of violent prejudices where I am concerned,” he went on smoothly. “He does not like you at all.”

“Well, I do not like him either!” I shouted back. “He should not judge me upon the evidence of one meeting!” He began to wade towards me. “It does not matter,” he commented. “Kenna is only a servant. His opinions do not interest me. Isn’t that so, Kenna?” I whirled about. Kenna was standing behind me, the Master’s clothes in his arms. His face was a mask as he met my eye.

“That is so,” he agreed tonelessly.

“Good.” Hui had left the water and was approaching us naked, and I thought with a jolt, why not? For Kenna and I are as nothing, little better than slaves, faceless and without importance. I should have lowered my gaze but I could not. I was mesmerized by the pallid, somehow tainted symmetry of the tight-muscled white belly, the high-rounded buttocks, and the thing that hung between Hui’s thick thighs. Embarrassed, intrigued, heated, angry, I could not, in my fourteenth year, recognize the dawning of my sexuality and it is only now, looking back with sadness, that I see the budding of a confused passion that was to colour the rest of my life. I was aware of the sudden tension in Kenna before he stepped around me and began to towel the moisture running like milk down Hui’s body. His movements were practised, gentle and impersonal, yet I clenched my teeth as I watched him. Hui watched me. He continued to do so as his servant draped him in linen, leaving only his head bare. When Kenna had finished, Hui dismissed him abruptly. He bowed and vanished promptly into the darkness.

“Are you happy, Thu?” the Master enquired. “Are you regretting your decision to cast your lot with me?” He was looking at me, now, with solicitude. I shook my head. “Good,” he said thoughtfully. “Now, my obdurate little colt, we will sit here on the dead grass, under the dead trees, and I will tell you a bedtime story.” To my amazement he arranged himself on the earth, drew up his knees under the thick cloak, and signalled that I should join him. I did so. “I will tell you a story of the creation of all things,” he began. “And then you will be able to sleep, will you not? Here. Rest your head against me. In the beginning, Thu, in fact before there was a beginning, the Nun was the all. Chaos and turbulence. And with the Nun there was Huh, the unendingness, and Kuk, the darkness, and Amun, the air …” His voice had a hypnotic quality, deliberately calming and reassuring, but the power of the story kept me listening, at least for a while. He spoke of how Atum, child of the chaos that was Nun, created himself by an effort of the will, and how he brought light to disperse Kuk, the darkness. So sometimes the Atum was Ra-Atum, the phoenix ever new. He told me how Atum, being alone, copulated with his shadow and so begat the gods. Increasingly his tone wove in and out of the fantasies sleep was conjuring in my mind. I was dimly aware that I had slumped against him and his arm had gone around me. Then his voice became a monotonous song. I felt myself lifted, carried, placed on my pallet, the blanket pulled to my chin, and then the blessed oblivion of unconsciousness.

5

THE THOUGHT OF THOSE DAYS
on the river still brings a lump to my throat, for I was still half a child and hopeful, and trusting in both gods and men. Just beyond On the Nile divided and became the three mighty tributaries and several smaller ones that emptied into the Great Green. Our barges took the north-eastern finger of the river, the Waters of Ra, and as I sat cross-legged on the deck I saw a slow miracle take place. Gradually the aridity and barrenness of summer gave way to the sweetness of spring. The air grew heavy with the scent of growing things. Papyrus thickets crowded the verdant shores, their dark green stems and delicate fronds weaving and whispering in the cool breeze. Everywhere there was fertility. Birds flocked and wheeled, piped and fluttered. White cranes and ibis stood motionless in the shallows, seemingly as bemused at the riotous lushness of the life around them as I was. And there was water everywhere; glinting half-glimpsed through dense trees, lying blue and still in full irrigation canals, rippling with the wash of tiny brown bodies bobbing up and down in the ponds. It was not surprising, I thought as I inhaled the distinctively sweet odour of what I came to know as the fruit orchards, stripped bare at this season, that the foreign tribesmen coveted such a paradise. The cattle that lifted their incurious heads and watched us glide by were somnolent and fat with health. The Waters of Ra became the Waters of Avaris. We passed the temple of the cat goddess Bast in the red glow of a perfect evening, and lit our fires amid a soft but constant susurration of insect song.