Authors: Pauline Gedge
A ripple of anticipation went through the watchers as the curtains of the cabin twitched and were drawn aside. A we’eb priest appeared, tied back the drape, and bowed to the figure who emerged. I held my breath.
The ripple subsided quickly and the silence of shock took its place, for the thing that came out of the dimness of the cabin and paused on the deck was a wrapped corpse, walking like a man. It, he, was swathed from head to toe in white wrappings. Even his face was hidden far back in the shadow of a voluminous hood, and the cloak that enveloped him covered his hands as well. The hood came up, turned from side to side, and I was sure that the unseen presence within was measuring us all.
The man stepped up onto the ramp that had been run out between the boat and the stone facing of the canal. I glimpsed a foot bound in white bandages and suddenly felt faint. The Seer was diseased. He had some terrible disfiguring illness that made him too monstrous for ordinary eyes. I would abandon my mad scheme. This was too much. Besides, the sheer daylight reality of the boat, the trappings, the sweating soldiers, had shattered my stupid daydreams. I noticed then that Wepwawet’s High Priest with his acolytes had come out from beneath the pylon, wreathed in thin streams of incense, and was waiting to receive the God’s strange guest. I turned away.
“Where are you going?” Pa-ari whispered.
“Home,” I answered curtly. “I don’t feel well.”
“Do you still want me to find out how long the Seer is staying?” he pressed. “I go to school with the acolytes. They’ll tell me.”
I hesitated, pondered, then nodded. “Yes,” I said resignedly. It was no good. Even if the man had three heads and a tail I wanted an end to the aimless not-knowing. I would stiffen my resolve. Pa-ari’s mouth came close to my ear.
“Remember, Thu,” he muttered. “You have no gift.”
I swung to meet his gaze, which told me nothing, but I had the distinct impression that he suspected the thing I was determined to offer. Leaving him I slipped through the throng and began to run towards the village. The day had become oppressive, and I could hardly suck in the turgid air.
Pa-ari and my mother returned to the house much later, and I was severely scolded for not preparing the evening meal, seeing I had been home alone. But even Mother was caught up in the disturbance caused by the notable’s visit, and did not punish me. I took our cow down to the water and then milked her. We ate bread and cold soup in the last red light of the day, and then Father surprised me by asking for fresh water. I brought it to him, then sat on the floor and watched while he meticulously washed himself. Mother was twisting wicks for the lamps and Pa-ari was cross-legged in the doorway, brooding over the darkening square beyond. Then Father called for his sandals and a jug of our best palm wine. I scrambled to obey and Mother looked up suspiciously from her work.
“Where are you going?” she enquired.
He ran both hands through his wet, blond hair and smiled in her direction. “I am off to seduce one of the mayor’s nubile daughters,” he joked. “My dearest sister, your jealousy is delightful. Really, I am going to indulge in soldier’s gossip with the Shardana. I have had no contact with men of my own kind for a long time. Do not wait up for me.”
“Hmm,” was her comment, but I could see that she was pleased. He took the sandals from me gently, slipped them on, and hefted the jug of wine. “Pa-ari!” he called to the huddled form of his son outlined between the lintels. “Would you like to come with me?”
The invitation was a surprising honour, for Pa-ari would not be reckoned a man to share in other men’s affairs until he turned sixteen. He jumped up at once. “Thank you, Father!” he crowed. “I would like that very much!” And then they were gone. Pa-ari’s excited voice faded and the night fell.
My mother was asleep long before the two of them came home, but I was not. I sat on my pallet with my back against the wall in the room Pa-ari and I shared, fighting drowsiness, until I heard their unsteady footsteps turn into the house. Father’s heavier tread stumbled straight into my parents’ bedroom. Pa-ari came fumbling for his mattress in the darkness.
“It’s all right,” I hissed at him. “I’m awake. I want to hear everything, Pa-ari. Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Very much.” His voice was laboured and I could tell that he was slightly drunk. He sank onto his pallet with a gusty sigh and the air was full of wine fumes for a moment. “The Shardana are formidable men, Thu. I would not want to face them in battle. I was in awe of them, but Father sat with them before their tents and laughed and drank and spoke of things so foreign that I was reduced to silence. He is a great man in his own way, our father. Some of the stories he told tonight, of his exploits in the time of troubles! I could hardly believe them!”
“Well what of the soldiers?” I broke in sharply. I was jealous of the unfeigned admiration in Pa-ari’s voice. I wanted him to love and admire no one but me. “Where are their tents? How many of them guard the Seer at night? Is he on his barge or elsewhere? How long is he staying?”
There was a silence. For a while I was afraid that Pa-ari had fallen asleep, but then I heard his mattress rustle as he found a new position. “I called you obdurate once.” The words came quietly from his unseen mouth but their tone conveyed his expression, sad, disappointed. “I think you are ruthless also, Thu, and not always very likeable. You do have a gift, don’t you? Something shameful, dark. Do not lie to me. I know.”
I said nothing. I waited calmly. Everything in me had gone cold, a kind of dead peacefulness, while our relationship hung in the balance. Would he help me or would he turn aside, just a little but enough to sunder the closeness we had always shared, and define our affection in other, less forgiving terms. I heard the anger and sorrow in his voice as he at last gave me the information I needed.
“There are two tents, set up on this side of the temple wall. Two soldiers stand guard over the Seer, who sleeps in his cabin on the barge. The rest stand down. He will be here for two nights and will cast off for Pi-Ramses at dawn on the third day. If you take to the river and swim up the canal you should be able to accomplish your desire. The guards are really for show.”
I did not thank him. I sensed that he would be insulted if I tried. But the coldness in my ka had gone and I felt obscurely dirty. After a long time I said tentatively, “I love you, Pa-ari.” He did not reply. He was either asleep or had chosen to ignore me.
All the next day I thought about what I would do. The village remained largely deserted, the people hurrying to the temple in their spare moments to try and catch yet another glimpse of the sinister figure who had glided under the pylon and into their imaginations, but my father slept late and then went out onto the desert for reasons of his own and Pa-ari disappeared with his friends. Mother and I retreated to the relative coolness of her herb room and busied ourselves in grinding and bagging the dozens of leaves that hung drying from the ceiling. There was little conversation and I was free to make plans, each more fantastic and impossible than the last, until I was ordered sharply to soak the lentils for the evening meal and stop daydreaming. With an inward sigh, part hopelessness and part recklessness, I did as I was told. I had discarded all flights of fancy and decided on a direct course of action. I would go simply, nakedly, to my fate. After all, what was the worst that could happen? Arrest, and an ignominious march back to my father’s door.
Father came home at sunset, blood caking his chest and dried in rivulets down his arms. A dead jackal was slung across his shoulder, and more blood dripped from its mouth and nose down my father’s sinewy back. He tossed it outside the door, together with his bow and two soiled arrows. “I’m hungry!” he shouted into my mother’s horrified face. He was laughing. “Don’t begrudge a man an afternoon’s sport, woman! Thu, bring beer to the river immediately. I am going to wash off this carrion’s remains and then I will drink and eat and then you and I,” he planted a kiss on my mother’s silently protesting mouth, “will make love!”
He set off for the river at a lope and later, watching him splash and plunge about in the water, I understood that the time he had spent with the soldiers had freed him to briefly be the man he had laid aside, willingly but perhaps regretfully, when he chose my mother as his wife. He was fine, my father, straight and honest and strong, yet in my arrogance I pitied him that day for the choices he had made.
We all ate together, sitting cross-legged on our mats with the food on a cloth before us while the sun dropped behind the desert. My mother lit a lamp. Father said the evening prayers to Wepwawet, our totem, and to Anhur and Amun and mighty Osiris, his voice reverential but still full of happiness. Then he and my mother walked out under the stars and Pa-ari and I went to our room. He busied himself with arranging his pallet, his back towards me. “It is the Seer’s last night,” he remarked non-committally at last, his face still averted. “Have you come to your senses, Thu?”
“If you mean am I going to meet my destiny tonight, yes I am,” I replied loftily. The words hung between us, fraught with a dignity I had scarcely intended, and I finished lamely, “Please don’t be angry with me, Pa-ari.”
He had lain down and was motionless, a dark column on the pallet. “I’m not,” he said, “but I hope they catch you and whip you and drag you home in disgrace. You know that none of us has actually seen under all those grim white wrappings, don’t you? What if he’s not human? Aren’t you afraid? Good-night, Thu.”
Half the hours of darkness seemed to pass before I heard my parents return, but it cannot have been that long. Pa-ari was soon asleep. I listened to the comfort of his regular, slow breathing and beyond that the watchful silence of a summer night, hot and still. Yes I was afraid. But I was learning that fear can make your spirit sick. It can turn you into a shuffling thing inside and it can feed on itself like a disease until you cannot move, you no longer have any pride. And without pride, I thought darkly, what am I? A jackal howled, the strident, agonized sound very faint and far away, and I wondered if it was the mate of the beast father had killed. I heard his step and my mother’s low, coquettish giggle. I wondered if they had lain down together on the warm, dusty earth of the fields or in deep shadow by the Nile. When the house had settled I rose and crept outside.
The air embraced me, fingering my naked limbs and lifting the hair from my neck. The moon rode high and full and I paused to pay it homage, raising my arms to the son of Nut, goddess of the sky, and to the stars, her lesser children, before entering the shadow of the path leading to the temple. Here a little of my exaltation at being out and free and alone left me, for the black palm fronds above my head stirred with a secret fretfulness and I remembered that the spirits of the neglected dead could be thronging the dense moon-shadows, watching me jealously. The path itself had lost its cheerful daytime face and now wore another, dreamlike, pale and magical, a road to somewhere I could not foresee. But that is why I am here, I told myself stoutly, keeping my eyes on my feet while the palms whispered a warning and their laced shadows crept up my body as I walked. I must foresee. I must know.
I sensed rather than saw the greyish blur of the two huge tents that had been pitched up against the temple wall and I came to a halt, poised for flight, my heart suddenly pounding. But there was no sound, no movement. Ahead and to my right the lovely prow of the Seer’s boat curved indistinctly. It, too, was still. The river was very low and the canal half-empty. Sweat broke out along my spine as I crouched and ran across the path to the shelter of the river growth. Peering through the branches I saw that Pa-ari had been right. A soldier stood at the curtained door of the cabin, looking in my direction, and I had no doubt that his fellow was stationed on the other side. Very well. I would swim and climb. As I turned towards the river a great tide of excitement rushed up inside me and I wanted to sing for the joy of it. I was smiling and gasping with delight as I slid into the black, moon-rippled water.
I was a very good swimmer and could move without greatly disturbing the surface. Revelling in the silken coolness, the polite resistance of the Nile, buoyed by that strange exaltation, I reached the canal and turned cautiously up it, feeling the stern of the boat grow larger until it towered above me. My fingers found wood and then I rested a moment, my wet cheek against the sweet-smelling cedar. I no longer cared about anything but the thrill of my adventure. Something in me was being fulfilled at last and it grew and blossomed and I knew, hanging there with my mouth caressed by the river, my eyes on the broken sky-road the moon was making all around me, that I would never be the same. “Praise to you O Hapi, source of Egypt’s fructifying power,” I murmured to the dark expanse of water, then my fingers found a grip and I pulled myself from the God’s arms.
The ship’s construction was such that the planks were overlaid one upon another. It was child’s play for me to climb the side. I had some difficulty at the top where the lip curved inward but once I had anchored myself on this I had only to roll quickly onto the deck to find myself in blessed shadow.
For a long time I lay curled against a pile of rope, my brown body blending with its shape as I scanned the length of the craft. It looked eternal in the deceptive moonlight, as though the cabin was receding even as I assessed the distance. Everything was black or grey or sombre-hued. I saw the two guards, one gazing into the bushes and the other, at the rear of the cabin, watching the temple and the path that continued on to the next village. What must they have felt, standing lookout in such a boringly peaceful place? Foolish? Angry? Or were they so dedicated to their work that it made no difference to them where they performed their duties?
My skin was beginning to dry. Cautiously, lying flat on the deck, I set off to crawl towards the cabin. Only the glitter of the moon in my eyes could give me away, for the rest of me was the colour of the polished wood over which I moved and if one of the men happened to glance my way I would simply lie frozen until his attention passed. My knees and elbows began to ache but I ignored the small pain. I made no sound. I scarcely breathed. And all the while that pulse of intoxication throbbed with my blood. I felt omnipotent, a hunting animal sure of its prey. The soft brush of drapery against my outstretched fingers brought me to myself. I half rose, lifted the heavy hanging, and stepped inside.