The Twice Born (8 page)

By the time the meal was over and the boys had returned their plates and bowls to the serving table, the enclosed area was flooded with the red light of sunset. A priest appeared, his white robe stained crimson with the dying sun, and clapped his hands. Instantly a reverential silence fell. The boys stood with arms upraised. The man began to sing and the boys joined in, a unison of sweet treble voices raised in praise of the god now sinking into the mouth of Nut, goddess of the sky. The music changed, became a prayer for Ra’s safety as slowly he moved through the twelve houses of the night towards his birth, and its beauty made Huy want to cry.

Afterwards, when he and Harnakht were back in their cell, the older boy remarked on the absence of any representation of Khenti-kheti on Huy’s table. A small statue of Osiris stood beside his own cot. “Does your family not honour the god of your town?” Harnakht wanted to know. “Do you not need his protection? His image to address each evening before you sleep?” Pabast had passed through each cell to light the lamps while the boys were eating. Now Huy looked sheepishly into his new friend’s worried face. Harnakht, sitting on his cot, was leaning forward into the glow of the lamp. The rest of him was shadowed.

“My father prays in the evening,” Huy responded defensively, “but we have no statue of Khenti-kheti in our house.”

“No shrine? Are your parents then so poor?”

“No!” Huy was nettled. “I don’t know why,” he added lamely. “But we go to the shrine in the town on our Naming Days.”

Harnakht grimaced. “Things must be different in the Delta. I have no experience of …” He hesitated. “Of countrymen who work the land.”

But my father respects the god
, Huy thought, wounded in a way he did not yet understand.
How angry he was at my selfish choice of a gift! What else is expected?
The song to Ra still rang in his ears, and gloomily he met Osiris’s knowing smile.
Obviously quite a lot
, he answered himself.

He played sennet with Harnakht while outside the darkness grew. Harnakht won all games but two. Huy undressed and climbed onto his cot, but Harnakht stood and prayed before Osiris, ending with a full prostration before stripping off his own clothes and blowing out the lamp. Darkness swept into the room. Presently Huy, lying on his side, began to see the stars framed in the rectangle of the doorway, and all at once a wave of homesickness crashed down on him. The novel sights and activities of the day had served to keep it dammed up, but now, in the silence and stillness of this alien place so far from home, its strength was irresistible. Reaching for the Nefer amulet he had removed when he prepared for bed, he cradled it in both hands, pressing it tightly against his face while he cried. Although he tried, he could not muffle the noise he was making, and he heard Harnakht turn over.

“I sobbed myself to sleep for a whole week,” Harnakht said soothingly. “All you can do is let it have its way. In the end it will pass. Would you like to share my cot with me tonight, Huy?” But out of sheer pride, Huy declined.

Eventually his tears dried. His pillow was soaked and he reversed it, replacing the amulet on his table at the same time. Harnakht was breathing deeply, sunk in his dreams. Huy’s eyes burned. He thought of Khenti-kheti’s priest, his kind face, his encouragement and admonitions, but those things did not comfort him much.
I’m not really very brave
, he thought.
I would do anything, give away every one of my toys, to be at home with Mother and Hapzefa and even Ishat. I would not even mind having to sleep in the same room as that monkey again
. As though he had deliberately summoned it, a vivid picture of the creature sprang into his mind. He could feel the distasteful coldness of the ivory, and see the black eyes alight with a malevolent eagerness to bring its tiny paws together and destroy his world. He was not able to fall asleep for a long time.

The morning brought Pabast with milk, barley bread, and dried figs. Both boys ate in a drowsy silence and joined the listless parade to the bathhouse, and Huy was grateful for the two washings he had endured on the previous day, for he was able to go through the routine of wetting, scrubbing, drying, and oiling with increasing ease. By the time he had regained his cell, he was wide awake. Fresh linen had been set out for him and he dressed himself without fumbling, but once again the accursed ribbon defeated him and Harnakht was forced to come to his rescue. The pair of them straightened up their cots, Huy shivering a little in spite of his glowing skin, for Ra had only just emerged from the vagina of Nut and had not yet gained his strength. Even here, forty miles closer to the fabled heat and desert of blessed Weset, Tybi was still a cool month.
Father will be sowing from dawn until dusk
, Huy thought as he and Harnakht left the cell for the morning’s lessons.
He will have hired Ishat and some of the gardener’s boys to keep the geese away from the strewn seeds, but he will be cursing the gulls that can’t be so easily deterred. Oh, Father! Are you thinking about me today? And Mother, are you and Hapzefa stirring the grapes as they dry and checking the progress of the jars of barley beer? Do you miss me, my noisy frogs?

He sighed and Harnakht put an arm around his shoulders. “Just listen diligently to your teacher, sit without fidgeting, and before you know it, it will be time to roll up your mat and eat. In a day or two you won’t need me beside you at all, my handsome little scribe-to-be. May Thoth look upon his new disciple with indulgence!”

They turned into the schoolroom. The noise was deafening. Every pupil seemed to be making the most of the freedom to chatter or wrestle before the serious work of the day began. Harnakht pointed. “You see Thothmes over there? Go and get a mat and sit beside him. That is where your teacher will expect you to be. I will see you later.” He strode away, threading between the loud activity towards Kay, who was waving at him.

Huy picked up a mat from the pile by the dining room entrance and approached Thothmes. There were other boys around him, some with yellow ribbons tied to their youth locks, some with blue, as well as a couple with rather bedraggled-looking white ones trailing down their necks. After one incurious glance they ignored Huy, who unrolled his mat and sank gingerly onto it beside his future roommate.

Thothmes nodded at him gravely. “You have been crying. I cry too, but not because I want to go home. That boy”—he indicated a burly, loud-voiced child with a blue ribbon tied at the end of a wiry black braid—“is the son of the governor of the Nart-Pehu sepat. It is a very small district, not at all important. The day before yesterday was my first day here, and when I told him that I was named after our glorious King he said something rude and pushed me onto the edge of the pond.” He lifted an arm so that Huy could see a mottled bruise on his chest. “He is now my enemy, because he does not respect the mightiest pharaoh that ever lived.” He sighed. “Be careful of him, Huy. He is a bully. I will have my revenge on him, but I haven’t yet thought how.” The solemn dark eyes explored Huy’s face. “I go home quite often. You can come with me if you like. My father would be pleased.”

Huy, somewhat taken aback by this measured spate of unsolicited information, was about to ask why Thothmes’ father would be pleased when the level of noise instantly fell. A group of white-clad men had entered. The boys rose as one, turned to them, and bowed. A prayer to Thoth followed. Huy was soon to know it by heart, for it was said every morning, but now he simply lowered his head and listened. Afterwards he sank to his mat in silence like everyone else.

His teacher had settled onto a low stool and was surveying his charges. His gaze lighted on Huy. He smiled. “Huy, son of Hapu of Hut-herib. Welcome to this school. You are about to embark upon a journey that will lift you out of the mire of ignorance and place you upon the agreeable heights of erudition. Do you know what erudition is?”

Huy felt his cheeks growing hot. “No, Master.”

“Erudition is knowledge coupled with wisdom. Are you able to write your name? Let me see. Sennefer, bring me a basket and a bag of charcoal.” The solid child Thothmes had singled out scrambled eagerly to his feet, ran across the room, and dragged back one of the baskets full of pottery shards Huy had seen the day before. The teacher selected one and passed it to Huy with a piece of charcoal. “Write,” he ordered. “And sit down, Sennefer! Why are you hovering at my elbow?” With a scowl the boy regained his mat.

Huy took the charcoal carefully and, with a deep breath, inscribed his name, holding it up for the man to see. “Good,” came the approval. “But you will do better. We must all strive to form the blessed characters Thoth has bequeathed to us as perfectly as possible. Thus we honour him. Thothmes, how many epithets does the god possess?”

“Twenty-two, Master.”

“And what is an epithet?”

“It is a way in which a god or person or object may be described,” Thothmes answered with cool aplomb.

The teacher pointed at Huy. “Remember that, Huy son of Hapu. I will ask you to repeat it tomorrow. By the time you move up into another class, you will all know the twenty-two epithets we apply to our patron Thoth. Now we must work. Come and get your bits of pottery. White ribbons, you will continue to copy the symbols drawn for you on the easel. Take as many shards as you need. Yellow ribbons, you will continue to transcribe and read the first stanza of the sayings of Amenemopet. I will attend to you in turn in a moment. Blue ribbons, you will write from memory as much of the first, second, and third instructions of King Kheti to his son Merikara as you can.”

“But I won’t know what the symbols mean,” Huy whispered to Thothmes. “What is the use of that?”

The teacher had heard him. “Because this is your first day, I will be lenient towards you, young man,” he said sternly. “But remember that it is not for you to judge the use of anything you are required to do. It is necessary that you become familiar with the shape of the symbols, how it feels to draw them, before you are told what they represent. You are being offered the tools of power. You must respect them above all things. Now stop wasting my time!”

The easel and blank whitewashed wood Huy had noted previously was now covered in a bewildering array of black-painted signs and figures, but he was heartened to recognize the three that made up his name. Following Thothmes, he got up, extracted a handful of broken pottery from the basket, and, returning to his mat, began to painstakingly copy what he was seeing. “I could do better with my paints. This charcoal is too thick and sooty,” he muttered to himself, and was appalled when the shadow of the teacher loomed over him.

“Are you going to be the mosquito whining round my head that continually needs beating away?” the man demanded. “Is your father so rich that he is able to provide you with the vast amount of paint you will use up during the course of your education? Paint is for them.” He pointed behind him to where the members of the highest class, palettes across their knees, were quietly applying brushes and ink to their sheets of papyrus. “One day perhaps you may attain their proficiency,” the man went on, “but until then you will concentrate on the task to hand, arrogant one.” He bent lower. “You are doing well. Do not ruin your progress with excessive self-regard.”

“Rich?” came a sneering voice behind Huy. “Everyone knows that his father wades in the mud of the Delta marshes. He’s a dweller of the swamps.”

Huy turned around. Sennefer was grinning insolently at him. Huy forgot where he was. The charcoal fell from his fingers and the shards rattled to the floor as he jumped up and tried to throw himself at Sennefer. But a firm hand pulled him back by his youth lock and shook him.

“My father is not ignorant! He is not ignorant!” Huy shouted with difficulty while the room span and his teeth rattled.

The teacher dropped him in a heap on his mat and beckoned Sennefer. “Bring me the willow switch.” The boy rose, still grinning, and sauntered to the front. “If you can recite to us all the first maxim of Ptahhotep,” the man continued, “I will not beat you. Begin.”

Sennefer’s grin became fixed. “But Master, we have not yet studied the maxims,” he protested. “Besides, I spoke only the truth. The son of Hapu’s father is a farmer.”

“That may be. I am not interested in what Huy’s father does, indeed I am not interested in what your father does either. Is your father able to do your lessons for you? No. Can he by magic reach into your heart and make you a perfect scribe? Certainly not. But you called a man a dweller of the swamps. You insulted someone you do not know. By what evidence do you use the offensive epithet”—here he paused and regarded them all significantly—“
epithet
, to describe a man you have never met? Begin the recitation.”

Sennefer glowered at him. “I do not know it.”

“Then take your punishment.” Six times the willow switch whistled and fell, leaving angry red stripes on Sennefer’s back even before he was told to go to his mat. “The maxim begins ‘Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge. Approach the unlettered as well as the wise,’” the teacher said. “I expect every blue ribbon to go to the House of Life after the sleep this afternoon, request the scroll from the Guardian, and you, Sennefer, will read it aloud as many times as is necessary for each one of you to have learned it by heart. Tomorrow we must waste time listening to you all recite it. You may blame Sennefer for this delay.” No one dared to groan or whisper, but the other members of Sennefer’s class cast dark looks at him before they went back to their writing.

“Why did he do it?” Huy wondered later to Thothmes as they rolled up their mats and prepared to join the stream of pupils drifting into the dining room when the lesson was over. “He must have known he’d be punished.” Privately he smarted, not so much at the boorish Sennefer’s words, but at the quote the teacher had flung at them.
I don’t care if Father is “unlettered,”
he thought angrily.
He’s the best father a boy could have
.

“I don’t think he minds being punished,” Thothmes replied. “You have been justified, Huy, but for me there is still the matter of the affront to our Great God. I wonder what Sennefer fears. We must do our best to stay out of his way. I think we both annoy him for some reason. Do I smell grilled goose?”