The Twice Born (44 page)

Nakht smiled. “Of course,” he agreed. “You are a very intelligent young man. You will make a fine scribe.”

Huy made a deliberate effort not to clench his fists. “The High Priest has offered me employment as his personal scribe. It is a prestigious position and would bring a good remuneration with it if I decided to accept.”

Nakht’s smile widened. “My congratulations, Huy,” he said heartily. “You deserve this, and I am happy that your relationship with my family will continue. We would all miss you if you were forced to take up work somewhere else, Thothmes in particular. He loves you very much.”

“And I him.” Desperately Huy took a step forward. “Lord, you know, of course you know, that I also love Anuket. I have loved her for years. I have always treated her with the respect due to both her station and her virginity. I have been faithful to her without any words of love passing between us. Now I beg you to draw up a marriage contract for us. I believe that she loves me too. I will be a caring husband. I do not want to work for Ramose. I want to work for you. Either way, I will be able to supply all her needs. I have waited a long time for this,” he went on more frantically as he saw the smile slowly leave Nakht’s face. “Do not dismiss me out of hand!” He was breathing heavily and closed his mouth, suddenly overcome with the desire to collapse onto the chair, but he remained on his feet.

A heavy silence fell between them. The flame in the lamp guttered once, making shadows dance briefly across Nakht’s face. At last Nakht sighed. “I had hoped that this day would never come,” he said sadly. “I have grown to love you like a son, Huy. You are an honest and upright young man. I have seen your attachment to Anuket and I have prayed that it might end, like any first infatuation. But it has not.” He rubbed his forehead wearily. “I know my daughter well,” he went on. “She is wilful and thoroughly selfish, and in spite of my constant discipline she is becoming a shrew as well. She needs a very firm hand.”

“I will care for her so lovingly that her nature will change,” Huy pressed.

Nakht pursed his lips. “She does not love you. She sees your adoration as her due, but she does not return it.”

“That does not matter! How many marriages are founded on love? Very few. As long as there is respect—”

“I am sorry, Huy. Firstly, her blood is noble and she must marry within her class. Secondly, a scribe, no matter how well paid, would not be able to support her properly. In any case, I have no need of another scribe and my administrators within the sepat use older men who are already versed in the language of politics, having served their apprenticeships elsewhere. Thirdly, I have not forgotten, although you seem to, that your history as the Twice Born and the presence of a Seer’s gift within you makes marriage impossible for you. The anger of the gods would fall on you and yours at such a betrayal. The answer is no.”

“But Lord, there is precedent in history for a noble to wed a commoner!” Huy cried out. “As for supporting her, you could help me! Offer me a position under you, train me in the administration of some branch of the sepat! Some Seers keep their gift. The Rekhet told me so! Oh, please …”

Nakht left the desk and went to Huy, putting an arm around his shoulders. “No, Huy,” he said gently. “Anuket has been betrothed to the son of the governor of the Uas district since she was born. She will go to live at Weset. She will do as she is told because she is ambitious, unlike Nasha, who refuses all men who seek to marry her. I am sorry.”

A pain as sharp as the thrust of a knife suddenly struck Huy under his breastbone. He wanted to double up over it, wrap his arms around it, but with the last vestige of his dignity he drew himself up and away from Nakht’s touch. “I am more than sorry,” he whispered, “but I thank you for hearing me, Lord, and for welcoming me into your family for so many years. I do not think that I shall come here again.”

“I hope you will change your mind.” Nakht stepped away. “You will leave a breach among us unless you do.”

Huy could not suppress a groan. He wanted to speak again. Frantically he searched for the right words to scream and rain down on Nakht, words that would give him Anuket; but if they existed they remained locked in his mind. He bowed to the Governor, straightened with difficulty, and let himself out into the passage. Once there, he leaned against the wall and slammed a hand across the pain that was threatening to engulf him. Bent over, he turned from the front entrance and walked unsteadily out the rear door, past the sleepy guard, and into the warm darkness of the garden.

He was rounding the house, moving under the trees towards the entrance and his litter, when the shadows stirred and Anuket came noiselessly into the faint starlight. Huy halted and watched her drift closer, her long white sheath flowing grey, her eyes as black as her hair, as black as the night surrounding her. Reaching him, she stood still, looking solemnly up into his face. “I wanted to hear what you had to say to my father. I went and stood outside his office window. Every word came clearly through the blind.” Huy waited. She passed her tongue slowly over hennaed lips the colour of ebony in the uncertain light. “I love you also, Huy,” she went on in a half whisper, stepping right up to him so that her wine-laden breath fanned him. “I have loved you almost as long as you have loved me. But what can I do?” She sighed heavily, putting a hand against his chest. “I must be an obedient daughter. I must honour the pledge my father made on my behalf when I was little.” Huy felt her fingers curl around the sa. They were cold.

“You can choose to say no,” he responded in a forceful whisper. “You can promise yourself to me here, now, and next week I will come and take you away with me. I will easily find work somewhere far from Iunu. It will be an adventure, Anuket.”

She began to rub the sa lightly back and forth across the damp folds of his tunic. “But even though I am of age,” she whispered, “I must have my father’s permission to wed. Would you have me live with you as your wife without a contract or the blessing of the gods? Do you want me for your whore, Huy?”

Savagely, he grasped the caressing hand and tore it from the amulet and, pulling her into him, wound his other hand roughly in her hair. Her head jerked back, but she did not cry out. A faint smile curved those black lips. Huy’s mouth descended on hers and he kissed her with all the pent-up violence of the evening, his teeth grinding against hers, his body rigid. He felt the length of her, the small, hard breasts, the tiny swell of her belly, the firmness of her thighs. She did not pull away, but neither did she react. He wanted to twist her hair, throw her onto the grass, force a sound from her, any sound, but she remained impassive, the fingers he was crushing did not warm. In the end he dropped his arms. Anuket patted her lips. “You handle me crudely,” she said.

All at once the heat of lust and desperation drained from Huy, and he turned and left her without another word. At Nakht’s gate he woke the bearers. “Take the litter back to the temple,” he ordered them tersely. “I want to walk.” They obeyed with obvious relief and Huy turned away, taking the path beside the river until he found a rutted street leading into the heart of the city.

The night was far advanced. Respectable citizens had long since gone home, many of them to sleep on their roofs and enjoy a few fleeting hours of coolness. Iunu was left to the soldiers, the whores, the restless scavengers who prowled the narrow alleys looking for anything worth picking up. On the whole they were harmless and the city police left them alone, patrolling slowly and cheerfully from one busy beer house to another. Huy trudged the dim streets, blind to the pockets of lively noise and lamplight spilling out from the beer houses that soon faded behind him to be replaced by the silence of buildings huddled darkly against a darker sky. Sometimes he stumbled over dried donkey droppings or stones held fast in the brick-hard earth. Sometimes he came to himself in the middle of a patch of tired grass before an empty shrine.

But his gaze was focused inward where Nakht’s eyes registered pity, where he heard himself begging without dignity, where Anuket’s body did not relax against his and her mouth was stiff and cold. So cold!
She does not love me
. His feet measured out the damning words. He felt old and used up, his own body giving back to him the pain of his heart with the sudden failure of a calf muscle, the spasm of his gut.

At last, with dawn a mere two hours away, he found himself not far from the Rekhet’s house. He had walked this street before. The shabby buildings were familiar, as was the girl sitting yawning on a stool, her back against a wall, the stub of a candle flickering beside her. It was the young whore who had reminded him of Anuket before she had bared her full breast and leered at him. Then he had been disgusted. Now he approached her.
This is not coincidence
, he told himself dully.
There is no such thing as coincidence. This is fate, my fate, which I take into my own hands this very night
.

She did not even bother to rise as he came up to her. Her hands remained loose in her yellow lap. But a spark of recognition lit her heavily kohled eyes as she glanced at him. “I know you,” she said, her voice high and light like a child’s, like Anuket’s, although her accent was coarse. “I’ve seen you before, you with that beautiful long hair and those tempting eyes. What do you want? I’m tired.”

“You. I want you,” Huy said harshly. “I’ve nothing to pay you with.” She shrugged, coming to her feet. She was taller than she had seemed, taller than Anuket, but the fine bones of her face, the delicacy of her features, were breathtakingly similar. She looked him up and down, but before she could speak again Huy took the earring from his lobe. “I’ll give you this,” he said.

It was snatched from his hand with alacrity. She jerked her head. “Come inside.”

He followed her into her tiny, cramped room. The couch was disordered, the walls patchy grey for want of whitewash. One plank of wood laid across two piles of mud bricks formed a table holding a dusty clutter of cosmetics in plain clay pots and one candle. The earthen floor was uncovered. Huy noticed none of these things. Reckless and feverish, he watched her light the candle from the stub she had carried inside with her and drop the earring Anuket had given him amongst the mess on the makeshift table. As she came back to him, he took her shoulders.

“Your name is Anuket. You are a seventeen-year-old virgin,” he said. He heard the words issuing from his mouth with a fleeting disbelief.

She nodded. “And you are my deflowerer.” Her demeanour changed at once. Her eyes widened. The hand she placed against his chest trembled. The transformation was startling. A callous lust seized Huy. Pulling her against him, he rammed his mouth against hers. For a moment she struggled, making little mewing noises of protest, then hesitantly her lips opened. Huy’s tongue found hers. His hands touched the straps of her sheath and he pushed them over her shoulders, down her arms, until the sheath lay in a heap at her feet and she was naked. Breaking his kiss, she covered her sex with both hands, fear in her eyes. She was panting.

For one icy, sane moment Huy recognized her skill as an actress and knew himself for a fool, then he pushed her backwards onto the couch and, tearing off his tunic, kilt, and loincloth, tumbled after her. Her breast was close to his mouth, the nipple hard. She tried to wriggle away from him, but he pressed her to the grubby sheet with both hands, closing his teeth and then his lips around the nipple, groaning as he did so. Taking both breasts in his hands, he rolled on top of her, but he knew, in the midst of this terrible, fiery loss of control, that his penis was not answering his urgent demand. He kissed her again, squeezed those full, heavy breasts so unlike Anuket’s little nubs, but it was no good.

She turned him onto his back and, giving up any pretence to innocence, slid down the length of him and took his penis in her mouth. Huy lay tensely pleading, begging, his wild thoughts seeking no particular god or demon, but it was no good. Gradually the terrible craving began to ebb, leaving him with a greater sense of emptiness than he had ever known. He closed his eyes, feeling the whore get off the couch, hearing the rustle as she pulled her sheath back up over her body. For some moments he lay there nude, spread-eagled. He could smell his shame, the rank odour of his sweat and hers mingling in that fetid little space. “It’s not my fault you didn’t come,” she said. “I’m keeping the earring. Now go away. I want to sleep.” Huy crept awkwardly from the couch and fumbled into his clothes while she stood there watching him impassively. Before he was even out the door, she had extinguished the candle.

Huy set off for the temple at a shambling run. Half mad with humiliation and grief, he began to shout, “I hate you! I hate you!” to Atum, to Thoth, to all of them, the gods who cared nothing for him, who manipulated and used him; to Imhotep, who had oh so slyly asked him the question that had ruined his life; to Ramose and every priest, who served the perfidious gods; to Nakht, who had pretended to love him; to Anuket, who had practised her diabolical new feminine skills on him and torn him to pieces. His howls echoed down the silent, drowsy streets and he did not care. If he had met one of the Medjay, the city police, he might have been arrested. But even they had gone home.

Soon he was forced to slow. His legs shook violently and he had a raging thirst. As he stood with his hands on his knees and his head hanging down, in the middle of some anonymous alley, he realized that the buildings crowding him were limned very faintly in a tremulous grey light and he could see his feet. Dawn was not far off. Forcing himself forward, he hurried on. He judged himself to be still some distance from the temple, but he knew in which direction it lay.

He came upon a large stone basin full of water, set before a shrine to Hapi, god of the river. Careful not to drink, for there was a green scum on the water, he plunged his head and his hands into it and, refreshed, quickened his pace. Before long the river itself came into view. The light was strengthening rapidly. Dazed and hollowed out, Huy knew that he would not have time to clean himself up, much less eat, before he was due at his first lesson. He cared about nothing else anymore but this, finishing his education. With a last spurt of energy he ran again, speeding beside the temple’s canal and across the huge expanse of concourse and into the passages behind the temple. Just before he reached the schoolroom, he stood still so that his breath could slow, then he walked in.