House of Illusions (39 page)

I must have dozed in spite of my feverish imaginings, for I came to myself with a jolt as the litter was set down. The curtain was lifted and a face peered in at me, limned in torchlight. “Get out,” the soldier barked, and I scrambled onto the ground. Another soldier appeared, words were exchanged, and my bearers and escort went away. I looked about me.

I was standing on the vast stone concourse before the main entrance to the palace. The watersteps and the canal were behind me. To right and left, large trees raised their shrouded branches over lawns that ran away under them into darkness, but the pillars of the entrance were fixed with many torches that cast a garish light over the richly apparelled litters sitting on the paving like beached skiffs. Their bearers waited patiently for their masters to return from whatever royal feast or ministerial conference was taking place within. I could hear the gentle suck of the water where the orange glare rippled beside tethered craft and the subdued voices of the sailors attending them.

Nothing had changed. I could have been standing here eighteen years ago, resplendent in yellow linen and gold, my hair netted in silver thread, my hennaed palm uplifted imperiously to summon my litter while behind me Disenk hovered, my embroidered cloak over one arm and a box of cosmetics tucked under the other to touch up the kohl around my eyes or the blue shadow on my lids should I be indelicate enough to sweat during the evening. A longing that was like the most refined homesickness went through me in the moment before the soldier took my wrist, and I fancied that my other self, that ghostly vision of youth and power and beauty, turned and smiled at me with a scornful superiority. I allowed the soldier to lead me away.

I knew where we would go. A broad stone path led towards those rearing, lighted pillars under which a crowd of royal soldiers and servants were clustered, but before it reached them, it divided. The right-hand fork went to the gate that gave onto the palace gardens and the columns of the banqueting hall and further still, to Pharaoh’s office.

My captor took me along the left-hand way. The path cut through more verdant lawns, and I caught a glimpse of the pool where Hunro and I had swum every morning after I had gone through the series of exercises Nebnefer had taught me and Hunro had danced beside me. Hot and dishevelled, laughing and invigorated, we would race each other out the harem gate, across the grass, and plunge headlong into that clean, cool water. At that same gate the soldier let go my wrist, knocked twice, and left me, but before I could collect my wits and dismiss the insidious visions with all their unwanted resurrections, before I could dash for the trees, the gate opened and I was drawn inside.

The man even now closing the gate behind me was dressed in the ankle-length, flowing sheath of a Steward. Beside him a boy stood eyeing me with frank curiosity, holding a torch, and the light glittered on the Steward’s golden armbands as he faced me and beckoned. He did not introduce himself. And why should he? I asked myself as I trudged after him and his slave. I am less than no one, a peasant to be delivered to the kitchens or the laundry and given a kilt and a sleeping pallet before being consigned to oblivion.

I could see little as we went, but I knew what we were passing. On the left would be more trees, grass studded with bushes, a lily- and lotus-dotted pool, and then at right angles to the narrow path my feet were already recognizing, a mud brick wall with an outside staircase leading to the roof of the queens’ quarters. Two high walls began, hemming me in, and I felt the first intimations of suffocation in my chest, for the wall on the left ran a very long way until it ended beyond the whole length of the harem buildings and the one on the right hid the palace itself. Struggling for air, knowing it was memories clutching at my lungs and nothing else, I paced steadily after the bobbing torch.

The harem had been constructed in four enormous squares with narrow alleys running between each one. Each square had an open courtyard in the centre with lawn and a fountain, and around the courtyard were the two tiers of cells for the women. At the far end was the block reserved for the royal children. We had already passed the first block, a heavily guarded and quiet enclave for the queens. The second and third were full of concubines. The Steward paused at the entrance to the second and swept through. I hesitated, not knowing whether to follow him or not, for surely he had been ordered to deliver me straight to the servants’ cells beyond the Royal Nurseries. But looking back, he saw me halt and waved me forward with a jerk of his thumb.

I had lived here, in this block. I had shared a cell with Hunro. I did not need the torch to show me where the fountain stood or where the grass gave way to the path that ran past each small doorway. I looked up. The same stars stood above the black edge of the roofs. The same wind stirred the grass under my feet and filled my nostrils with the same faint odours of perfume and spices. If I had come there in daylight, I might have been able to hold onto reality. But slipping through the warm darkness, my mind receiving the vague shapes of my surroundings and accepting them as immediately and unremarkably familiar, my nostrils, the soles of my bare feet, the rest of my skin, feeding my senses with impressions that obliterated time in an instant, I became for one horrifying moment insane. The Steward stopped in a pool of yellow light pouring from the open door of one of the cells. “The Keeper of the Door awaits you,” he said, and turned on his heel. I stepped into the lamp’s glow.

He had hardly changed at all. I had always thought him ageless, for he carried himself with an easy grace and authority, and only the deeper grooves around his alert black eyes and sober mouth told me that seventeen years had passed. He rose from his seat as I went dazedly towards him, the blue kilt I remembered so well falling softly about his ankles, the black wig with its many rigid waves cascading over his shoulders. Thick gold armbands went from his elbows to his wrists and rings winked on his long fingers as he slid from the chair. He smiled. “Greetings, Thu,” he said.

“Greetings, Amunnakht,” I whispered, and bowed to him, according him the profound respect I had always felt for his intelligence and wisdom. The most powerful man in the harem, he was responsible for the peace and good ordering of the hundreds of women in his charge and he was answerable to Pharaoh alone. If he wished, he could foster a concubine to the height of royal favour or condemn her to remain forever obscure. He had liked me, and out of love for his royal Master had promoted my cause with the King, believing that I would do him good. But I had done him harm. I had betrayed Amunnakht’s trust also, yet it had been he who, on Pharaoh’s command, brought the lifegiving water to me as I lay dying in prison, and had held my head and soothed and comforted me. I had not deserved such forgiveness. “I did not thank you for your unmerited kindness to me when last we met,” I said to him haltingly, “nor for taking upon yourself the task of making sure my totem Wepwawet went with my son to his new home. Because of you I have found him. I disappointed you deeply and I am sorry. It has been on my mind all these years that I did not thank you.”

“Come forward, Thu,” he invited. “Sit. I have requested a simple meal for you. It is very late, but you may want to eat before you sleep. I had not much warning that you were found.” I did as I was told, still in the grip of that lingering dislocation, so that his words and my own seemed to come from other mouths, in another time. “Whether you disappointed me or not is unimportant,” he went on, regaining his own seat and crossing his legs. “I regarded you as my greatest failure and I sorrowed over both your fate and my lack of judgement at the time. I do my duty to my Lord and see to his needs to the best of my ability, and it was his disappointment that caused me the most grief.” He arranged the filmy blue folds of his kilt across his knees. “He commanded your death and I assisted in the distribution of your belongings. Then he commanded that you should live and I was pleased to enter your cell and minister to you.”

“You could have sent a Steward.”

“I said I was pleased to enter your cell,” he pointed out. “In spite of your great crime and your flagrant ingratitude to the One, I still had much affection for you. Why I do not know.”

“Because I was not like the others,” I responded. “Because I refused to behave like one of His Majesty’s female sheep. Because I would not be cast aside for the mistake of bearing him a child.”

“I see that you have not changed much,” he said. “You are still arrogant and sharp-tongued.”

“Not so, Amunnakht,” I disagreed softly. “I have learned patience and many other bitter lessons during my exile. I have learned to love revenge.”

There was a silence during which he studied me without agitation, his body quietly relaxed, his whole attitude one of unselfconscious confidence, and I stared back at him while gradually that hideous sense of displacement began to fade. The years between my sixteen-year-old self and the present re-formed in their proper order, and I was able to put the lamplit cell, the scent of the unseen lawn outside, the constant susurration of the fountain water, the man who sat thoughtfully opposite me, into the perspective of a returning lucidity. Somewhere in this vast complex of buildings Hunro slept, but not the Hunro I had known. In the queens’ apartments Ast lay. Was she still elegantly beautiful? And Ast-Amasereth, that cunning and mysterious foreigner who shared the secrets of the state with Pharaoh, her husband, was she still alive? Time had not stood still here as it had not spared me during those endless years in Aswat. I had not been trapped in a loop of hours and the past was gone for ever.

I leaned forward at last, a question on my lips, but the doorway was shadowed by a servant who entered, bowed to the Keeper, and set a laden tray on the table beside me. Steam rose from the onion soup, the hot brown bread dripping with butter, the two pieces of broiled goose from which a tantalizing aroma of garlic wafted, and beads of moisture trembled on the leaves of young lettuce, sliced radishes and mint. The woman unfolded a napkin, and with a murmured and formal request for permission, spread it across my filthy lap. She held out a finger bowl in which a single pink blossom floated. When I had rinsed my fingers she poured a brown liquid into a clay cup, set it by my hand, and retired behind my chair, ready to serve me. But Amunnakht signalled her and she bowed again and left us as noiselessly as she had come. I picked up the cup and felt my throat grow tight with unshed tears. “It is beer,” I said huskily. “You did not forget my liking for the drink of my upbringing.”

“I am an excellent Keeper,” he said imperturbably. “I forget nothing that might bring happiness to Pharaoh’s concubines. Eat and drink now. The food has been tasted.” At the stark reminder of the dangers lurking in this place where every luxury was taken for granted and yet the screen of ease and indulgence hid the darkest passions, my mood changed. I sat with the cup cradled in both hands and looked across at Amunnakht.

“Why am I here in this cell and not lying on some miserable pallet under a kitchen bench?” I asked. “Did the Prince command you to receive me like this only to make my ultimate destination more bitter?” He hardly stirred. One carefully manicured fingernail was drawn along his eyebrow.

“I saw the list of names you gave the King at the time of your previous arrest,” he said. “His Majesty enquired of me whether I had any deeper knowledge of them than he, or whether I had heard whispers of a seditious nature about them. He was distressed. He had condemned you to death but doubt fluttered in his august mind. I was forced to tell him that I knew nothing untoward about those listed, but I did not believe that you had dictated their names maliciously, without foundation for your accusation. In his mercy the One stayed your execution so that he could investigate your claims of a treasonous conspiracy. He said that once dead and yet proved right you could not be resurrected to this life and he would have committed a grave sin against Ma’at.”

“He said that?”

“He did. So you went into exile. You should have been whipped first for attempting to murder the Good God, but he would not have it. His rage against you and his hurt were great, but I think he also felt guilt because he had loved you more than any other and had cast you away. He appointed the Prince to investigate the Seer and the others, but no evidence of their culpability came to light.”

“Of course not!” I retorted hotly. “They lied, their servants lied, everyone lied but me!”

“Such self-righteousness from a regicide!” he commented wryly. “The matter was closed, but Pharaoh was not fully convinced that it should have been. As a precaution he demoted the Butler Paibekamun to the rank of Steward in the palace and made him taster to Great Royal Wife Ast.” I laughed aloud at that delicious irony. Paibekamun had disliked me from the first, thinking me common and ignorant, and I was glad to hear that his arrogance had suffered such a blow.

“Am I here because I violated the terms of my exile, Amunnakht?” I asked. “Am I to serve in the harem instead of in Wepwawet’s temple for the rest of my life?” His features slowly broke into a wide, unaffected grin and for a fleeting moment I saw a Keeper I did not know existed, a man of humour and delight.

“No, you evil woman,” he chuckled. “For tonight a most extraordinary thing happened. Three men begged an audience of the Prince as he was preparing to preside in the banqueting hall. Luckily for you, he granted it. Then he heard such a tale of attempted assassinations and ancient plots as has never before been told in this place of many secret crimes and violent acts.” I slammed the cup back on the table so hard that the beer slopped over my hands.

“Kamen! Kamen pleaded our case to the Prince! Where is he now, Amunnakht?” The Keeper sobered.

“No, Thu, it was not your son who held the ear of the Heir captive. It was his adoptive father, Men, his betrothed’s father, Nesiamun, and the Scribe Kaha.” I clenched my teeth in a sudden paroxysm of misgiving.

“Why was he not there? Something terrible has happened to him, I knew it! Paiis …” Amunnakht held up an admonitory hand.