The Twice Born (30 page)

Huy giggled. “So I do have a demon after all. Send for the Rekhet at once!” No one seemed to hear him.

The face shook its head. “Not yet. If I tried to force medicine down his throat, he would choke. Later, if the gods will a satisfactory climax to the illness, I prescribe belladonna for any pain, with camphor seeds to reduce the fever, and coriander of course.”

“All of which are useless at the moment.” The Ramose-demon’s voice was testy. “I should have watched him more carefully. He returned from the House of the Dead too short a time ago. Perhaps we have given him more burdens than he could bear.” The face receded into the darkness, but the voice continued. “The servants can work in shifts. The fever must be brought down.”

“Master, I want to take care of him. I can bathe him, and with Pabast’s help I can make him as comfortable as possible. He knows my touch.” The voice was Thothmes’.

Huy felt relieved. Thothmes could talk to the demons. He would overcome them. “Sort the hieroglyphs, my friend. Tear them from the demons’ skin and lay them sensibly before me.”

“He muttered when he heard my name,” Thothmes went on. “Master, please!”

“Very well. But you will do everything the physician tells you to do, and you will have to make up the school work you lose in your own time. I must send to your father. Nakht may not want you so close to illness.”

The lip of a well was rushing towards Huy. It had fingers. It grasped his throat and head and pulled him into it. The pain was terrible. With a cry, Huy fell towards more darkness.

He knew Thothmes’ hands in that lightless place. A damp coolness spread from them wherever they touched him. Someone was singing. “I belong to Ra. Thus spoke he: It is I who shall guard the sick man from his enemies. His guide shall be Thoth who lets writing speak, who creates the Books, who passes on useful knowledge to Those who Know, the Physicians his followers, that they may deliver from disease the sick man of whom a god wishes that the physician may keep him alive …”

“Get well, Huy,” he heard Thothmes whisper before the well claimed him again. “Don’t you dare die, or all these sleepless nights will have been wasted.”

At last he felt the fever begin to die. Its coils loosened, and between bouts of unconsciousness he was able to open his eyes drowsily to see his friend wringing out wet cloths or praying before his totem, or half sitting, half lying on his cot asleep. Now he knew one of the demon faces as that of the physician, who lifted his head and held a cup to his lips. The medicine was bitter. It raked his tender throat, but he swallowed it, and the day came when he croaked a word of gratitude before falling into a healthy sleep.

And dreamed. He was sitting cross-legged on warm grass facing an Ished Tree weighed down with thick red-and-white blossoms and alive with the drone of many bees. A languorous scent filled the air. Standing directly overhead, the force of the sun should have been unbearable, but Huy, a river of contentment coursing through him, was entirely comfortable. Facing him, Imhotep had an open scroll across the scribe’s palette on his knees. Other white scrolls lay scattered about. He seemed not to notice Huy’s presence, and for a long time Huy drifted in a trance of sheer pleasure, inhaling the gusts of aroma from the Tree and listening to the soporific hum of the bees as they darted in and out of the profusion of blooms, before his attention returned to Imhotep. The great man’s head was down, one ringed hand motionless on the delicate characters Huy knew so well. Idly Huy looked for the other hand and a thrill of apprehension went through him when he saw what it was doing. The hyena lay curled beside Imhotep, its golden eyes half closed as the man’s long fingers caressed it, moving slowly from the dome of its rough head and down its curved spine in a lazy, deliberate gesture.

“Do you think,” said a deep voice directly behind Huy, “that this is consciousness?” Huy swung round. Anubis’s long black snout brushed his ear, and beside him Ma’at’s iridescent feathers quivered in the sweet breeze. “Or is it something more, young mortal? Is there anything more than consciousness? How can Atum become the Hill unless the Hill possesses the consciousness of Atum? And if the Hill possesses the consciousness of Atum, then Atum has willed the First Duat. Hear me and understand.” The god’s voice was oddly timbreless and cold, as though it came through the chilling water of a Delta winter morning. His black arm appeared on the periphery of Huy’s vision, stretched out towards the Tree, a golden ankh in his grasp, and at once the sun went out. The darkness was immediate and absolute, a night so complete, so final, Huy knew that there had never been, nor would there ever be, anything else. “Behold the Nun,” the voice went on remorselessly. “Where is consciousness now, Son of Hapu? For here there is no now, no then, no yes and no, no positive and negative, no presence or absence. There is not even nothing, there is the nothingness of nothingness of nothing. Where is Atum? How can he enter this? What is his will? Hear me and understand.”

Huy woke with a scream. Fumbling to touch his protective amulets, pouring sweat, he sat up. It was night. Through the open doorway of the cell he could see a blaze of stars and the reassuring, regular lines of the surrounding roofs bulking densely against a velvet sky.

At once Thothmes was beside him. “Huy. Huy! Do you recognize me? Your fever has gone, but you’re very weak still. Lie back. I need to wash you again.” He laughed with relief. “You stink!” He slid another pillow behind Huy and went to the door. Huy heard him send one servant for hot water and more linen and a second to the High Priest’s quarters.

“How long have I been ill?” he asked when Thothmes returned. “You’ve been nursing me, haven’t you? I remember your voice and the feel of your hands.” He blinked away the tears of weakness. “I think I would have died without the hope of those moments. Thank you, my dearest friend.”

Thothmes grinned. He looked pale to Huy, his small face even thinner. He had lost weight. “You’ve been out of your mind for four days and unconscious for another two, between moments when you woke enough for the physician to pour his noxious brews down your throat.” His arms went around Huy. “The High Priest is a wise man. He knew that your chances of recovery were better if you were tended by someone you trusted. Ah! Here’s the water.” He gestured at the servant. “Wait while I wash him and then you can help me change his sheets. How do you feel, Huy?”

Huy relaxed and closed his eyes while the warm cloth moved over his body. The pungent odour of camphor oil filled his nostrils. “My throat is fine, but my head still gives me a twinge or two.”

“You woke with such a scream, I thought the fever had come back.”

“No. I was dreaming. I saw the Nun, and it is terrible. Terrible!”

“It was the last of the fever dreams,” Thothmes said, briskly wringing out his cloth. “We were talking about the Nun on the night you became ill. The Nun
was
, Huy, not is. The time of the Nun is long past. Are you thirsty? Would you like some water?”

Huy considered. “Actually, I want grape wine. If the physician will allow it.”

Thothmes took a towel from the servant’s waiting arm and applied it vigorously to Huy’s limbs. “There! That must make you feel better! The physician is not here, though I imagine he’ll darken our door before long. He might agree that grape wine is strengthening. I have half a jar that Father sent me. If you can come and sit on my cot, you can drink it while we change your linen.”

Huy felt himself lifted in his friend’s wiry arms and set on his feet. Unsteadily he took the few steps across the room and sank onto Thothmes’ bed. Quickly Thothmes and the servant stripped the sodden, fetid sheets from his cot while he gulped down the wine. The taste of the grapes filled his mouth with sweetness and he felt life begin to trickle through his body. All the same, he was glad to be helped back to his cot and have Thothmes tuck the sheet around him. It smelled pleasantly of the dash of vinegar put in the rinsing water to dissolve the last of the cleansing natron. He felt all at once drowsy.

“I can’t stay awake to see the physician and Ramose. Tell them I will be well. All will be well.” He turned his cheek into the pillow and fell into a deep and healing sleep.

He was not allowed back into the classroom for another week, during which he was forced to go on swallowing the physician’s remedies. The High Priest visited him every morning. His food was brought to him and he ate it outside, sitting on the grass of the courtyard, relishing the strokes of the breeze on his flesh and the forceful reality of the sunlight drenching the pleasant space. Ramose took him into the temple, where he prostrated himself before the closed doors of Ra’s sanctuary and gave thanks aloud for his recovery, but privately he thanked the god for deliverance from the ghosts and shadows that had accompanied his illness. He had not forgotten the terror of the well with fingers reaching out for him. He knew that he was alive not only through the will of Atum but also because of the selfless care of his friend. Every evening Thothmes regaled him with the gossip of the classroom. “Many of the other boys want to come and see you,” he had told Huy, “but the High Priest has forbidden it. You are to recover completely in peace. No one is to upset you.”

“As though I’m a girl,” Huy scoffed, but he was secretly glad of the days of quiet and the nights of rejuvenating rest. The physician stopped calling, and just as Huy began to be bored with his aimless existence the High Priest sent for him.

“It’s time for you to resume your studies,” he told Huy. “You’re ready, I think. But if you feel your illness returning, if you become overtired, send word to me at once. I fear I overtaxed your strength, and I apologize.” Ramose did not object to Huy’s request to read the Book only twice a week. “I did not sufficiently take your other duties into account. Come to me in three days.”

Huy felt as though he had been accorded a stay of execution at the last moment. He threw himself wholeheartedly into catching up with his many lessons, refusing to acknowledge the mysterious phrases always lurking in the back of his mind and earning praise from both his archery instructor and Mesta, who was already allowing him to take Lazy White Star’s reins and guide the chariot carefully around the perimeter of the training ground by himself. The sense of power, of being utterly in control of himself, the vehicle, and the animal, was a wonderful antidote to the chaos inside, and Huy made the most of the hour he spent balancing on the springy wicker floor of the chariot while the horse trotted steadily ahead and Mesta called the occasional order.

At the end of his session on the third afternoon, as Huy had stepped out of the chariot and was preparing to unhitch the horse, Mesta clapped him on the back and said, “Well done again, Huy! You are becoming a good driver. Perhaps instead of a career with words you’ll want to become a man of action!” The words were warm, an accolade and an amused encouragement, but something entirely sober shifted in Huy’s mind. “You are becoming … you’ll want to become …” From words to action.
No, that’s not it
, he thought feverishly as he led Lazy White Star into his stall.
That’s the second thing
. “You are becoming … You become in this your name … You culminate in this your name of ‘Hill’ …”
Culminate. Culminate. But to culminate means to have begun a process—not a task, not a chore, a process—and brought it to fruition. Atum wills a culmination. He enters the First Duat. Oh gods, it’s there, but I can’t bring it forward!

The horse raised his head from the water bowl and looked reproachfully at Huy, his muzzle dripping. Fetching warm water, Huy washed and brushed him, the words of the Book and Mesta’s remark juggling together infuriatingly, then went outside to drag the chariot into its place. It was lightly built, easily moved, but it needed a tug to free the wheels from the sand. Lifting the shafts, Huy pulled it towards him and stepped back, and as he did so the storm of words abruptly swirled, separated, halted their mental dance, and the answer he was seeking came clear and pure to his tongue. “Metamorphosis!” he blurted, dropping the shafts and standing numbly between them. “Of course! ‘Hail him who enters the First Duat! You culminate in this your name of “Hill”! You become in this your name!’ The First Duat is the place of metamorphosis! Atum wills a metamorphosis for himself, enters the process, and becomes Hill … I need beer!”

Mesta was hurrying towards him. “Huy, is anything wrong? Have you pulled a muscle? Are you ill again?”

Huy bent and picked up the shafts again. He was smiling. “No, Master, thank you. I have almost finished my obligation.” Once the vehicle was chained in its stall and Huy had checked it for a loose axle, a weakness in the wicker, or the first signs of rot in the spokes, he bade Mesta a brusque farewell and set off for his courtyard at a run. His feeling of self-congratulation was almost as great as his thirst.

This time he prostrated himself before the Tree, sank onto the cushion, and opened the small box without a qualm. Ramose, on his way out of the room, paused and glanced back. “Huy, you have forgotten your palette,” he said with a hint of reproof. “I shall send a servant for it.”

“There’s no need, Master. At least, I don’t think there is. I seem to be able to memorize the script as I read it even though I don’t try. Let me see if I can do so again.”

The High Priest stared at him speculatively. “If I were a different man, I might be disposed to fear you, Huy son of Hapu,” he murmured. “As it is, I simply wonder what strange fate the gods have in store for you.” The lock clicked behind him and Huy was alone.

Eagerly he extracted the scroll he had been reading before and unrolled it, skimming through the text he already knew with an easy comprehension. Atum existed alone, unique, certainly incomprehensible, outside any notion of space or time but inherent in the Nun through his own choice. He also chose to become, to metamorphose. Here Huy’s eyes left the papyrus and strayed unseeingly to the opposite wall.
I also experienced a First Duat
, he thought in surprise.
I died and was reborn. I metamorphosed, as the gods intended. To what end is hidden from me, but if I had refused Imhotep’s invitation to read the Book, would I have remained dead to this Egypt, my body beautified and entombed? Am I to understand something of Atum’s metamorphosis because of my own? Surely there is no comparison possible between the will of a god and the powerlessness of a human resolve to do anything more than resign itself to its destiny!
His gaze returned to the hieroglyphs.