Authors: Pauline Gedge
“Hurry up!” he commanded, and I left the table. He closed the door behind me and turned along the passage that now held the gathering shadows of the approaching night.
“I have no sandals on my feet,” I protested, wanting reassurance, wanting to hear his voice, for deep in my heart I knew where we were going, and why.
“It does not matter,” he rumbled back over his shoulder. We came to the foot of the stairs and crossed straight to one of the two doors opposite their foot. He opened it, indicated that I should enter, then shut it again. He had not followed me.
The first thing that struck me was the smell, a foul, primitive miasma of vomit and faeces speaking of flight and terror and death. Choking, I paused for a moment, forcing myself to slowly accept it. Having worked with my mother I was no stranger to the distasteful stench of a sickroom, but this was different. Here the terror was a palpable thing, weaving heavily with the odours of the body and the thin smoke from the half-dozen lamps to fill me with panic. That too I struggled against, pushing it consciously away and looking about.
The room was the same size as mine but it seemed crowded. A pile of soiled linen lay heaped on the floor. Beside it was a large bowl of filthy water in which a cloth floated. Two slaves moved quickly and silently around the couch that stood in the middle of the space, easing fresh sheets under the half-obscured form lying there. Hui sat on a low stool with his back to me, and I was shocked to see that he was naked but for a simple loincloth. His undressed hair tendrilled white and dishevelled down his back and his skin was streaked with sweat. The table beside him was a litter of pots and phials.
In the far corner a priest stood, the sombre yellow light sliding over his shaved skull as he swayed. In his outstretched hand he held a censer-pipe. The spotless crispness of the wide lector sash across his smooth chest and the gossamer linen of his kilt contrasted brutally with the chaos surrounding him. He was chanting, his ritual drone at last piercing the numbness that had fallen on me.
“I know charms that the All Mighty wrought to chase away the spell of a god … to punish the Accuser, the Master of those … who allow decay to seep into this mine flesh …” His eyes were closed. The incense curled lazily into the foetid air but its fragrance was lost.
The words buffeted me like physical blows. I had done this. The dreadful scene before me was entirely of my own conjuring. I was the Accuser, the one who had allowed decay to seep into Kenna’s vulnerable flesh. “… Head, shoulders, body, limbs …” the priest was continuing to enumerate the stricken members as he tried to bind the gods to the healing of Hui’s servant. I was out of my depth, a child who had waded into the shallows and flirted with the bottomless darkness, only to be grasped and pulled down to where volition no longer existed.
No, I thought with such stridency that I was sure the word had gone shrieking and echoing against the walls. I was not pulled down! I jumped, I dived, I left the shallows gleefully of my own will!
“… I belong to Ra,” the priest’s doom-laden voice sang on. “Thus spake he: ‘It is I who shall guard the sick man from his enemies …’” I summoned up every ro of courage I had and went unsteadily to Hui’s side.
He barely glanced at me. He was stirring something in a cup, his pale face tense, and as I came up to him he reached for a reed straw. “Lift his shoulders and cradle his head,” he ordered brusquely. “These idiots are clumsy and are causing him distress.” I hurried to do as I was told, going around the couch and easing myself gingerly beside the damp pillow. Kenna was clammy to touch. Carefully I raised his flaccid head, bearing the weight of his upper body against my breast and holding him still while Hui inserted the straw in his mouth. I could smell his breath, rank and hot. He groaned and tried to pull away but I prevented him, horrified at how little effort it took. The dose was too high, I thought fleetingly. Next time I must make it less. Next time …
“What is wrong with him?” I whispered to Hui. He was stroking Kenna’s forehead with the gently loving gestures of a concerned father while he steadied the cup close to the foam-flecked lips.
“I do not know,” he replied absently, all his attention fixed on Kenna. “I thought at first that he had eaten something rotten but the symptoms do not fit. It is like a poison. Come, faithful one,” he urged. “Try to drink. You must get well, for no one can care for me the way you do.”
Kenna groaned. His chest heaved and fluttered. I felt him swallow once, twice, then with a cry he stiffened and vomited over Hui’s hands. Immediately the slaves were there with clean water, working quietly and efficiently. Hui sat back and Kenna slumped against me, his cheek turned into my neck. “What are you giving him?” I asked. The man’s diseased breath was like the panting of a wild animal, burning my skin, heating my blood. I wanted to throw him away from me.
“I purged him with durra and black alder at first,” Hui told me. He was holding Kenna’s hand now, his thumb moving comfortingly back and forth over the servant’s prominent knuckles. “But when I realized that it was something more serious than stale food I tried to stop the violence in his bowels with garlic and saffron in goat’s milk. I can do little more.” Now he looked directly at me. “What is your opinion?” I met his gaze and held it with an effort I knew did not show on my face.
“But it must be an Ukhedu that has entered him through bad food or drink, Master,” I said huskily. “What else could it be?” He searched my eyes for several long moments.
“What indeed?” he agreed drily. I fought not to look away, remembering with a surge of horror that he was not only a physician but a Seer, and then Kenna began to moan and writhe. I clasped him tightly as his head rolled back and forth. Hui snapped his fingers and a slave bent with bowl and linen. Carefully Hui wiped his servant’s greying features.
I felt Kenna’s attempt to speak before a word came out. The muscles of his chest tensed, went limp, tensed again, and I too became taut with the need to clap a hand across his mouth. How clear was his mind in this extremity? Had he been able to deduce the cause of his illness? He turned towards Hui and his fingers came up, scrabbling against the other’s naked skin. “Bitter,” he whispered harshly. “Bitter.” A tremor shook him and he sagged in my arms. Immediately Hui took him from me and laid him down.
“He is unconscious now,” he said tersely. “It is a good thing. He will not vomit again and he feels no pain.” He stood wearily. “Take the stool and watch him,” he ordered. “I want to question the other servants and look closely at the things he ate and drank from today. Did you see him, Thu?” I nodded as I walked around the couch and sank onto the stool he had just left.
“He came to clean the herb room as I was making the prescription for the Queen,” I said. “It was as it always is.” I kept my attention fixed on Kenna’s oblivious form, and heard the Master stride across the room. The door closed.
“… I am one of those of whom a God wishes that he may keep me alive …” the priest was intoning. I felt very cold. Behind me the slaves were removing the soiled linen and the bowls of dirty water. Light all at once leaped, sank and steadied as one of them moved about, trimming the lamps. I began to shiver. Kenna was breathing in shallow little gasps, each outgoing breath a whimper. My heart was as frozen as my body. I folded my arms across my knees, hung my head, and waited.
A long time later Hui returned, coming silently to draw up a chair on the other side of the couch and lean against the rumpled sheets, one arm across Kenna’s body. The hours dragged by. Sometimes Hui would mouth words I could not catch, prayers perhaps or some strong spell, and once he sighed and touched Kenna’s cheek. There was no response. He took up a sharp pin, pricking the forearm, the neck, drawing down the linen to expose Kenna’s lithe, flat stomach and drawing blood there, but Kenna remained insensible.
Hui resumed his former position and an ominous silence fell, broken only by the sick man’s tormented breathing. I had ceased to shiver but it was as though my limbs had been formed out of alabaster and it would have required a great effort to move them. I closed my eyes.
Kenna died as the first light of dawn began to battle the thinning glow of the lamps. There was no warning. His rasping breath simply stopped, and the sense of relief in the room was immediate and overwhelming. Hui got up, peering into the calm face. He laid a hand on Kenna’s motionless chest and stood there, concentrating, then his shoulders slumped. With a wave of his hand he silenced the priest. “It is over,” he said. “Harshira!” With a sense of shock I swung round. The Chief Steward had been standing just inside the door. “Send for the sem-priests to take him to the House of the Dead. Then proclaim to the household that we will be observing the full seventy days of mourning for him. He has no family but us to grieve for him. Thu, come with me.” I stumbled as I obeyed. I was stiff from sitting so long. Following Hui through the adjoining door and having it closed behind me I found myself in a very large room of airy proportions.
A neatly made couch strewn with cushions stood on a dais in the middle. The blue-tiled floor gleamed, spotless. On the walls from floor to ceiling, beautifully executed paintings in vivid scarlet, blue, yellow, white and black showed scenes of vines, flowers, fish, marsh birds, sand dunes, papyrus thickets, all flowing one into the other like a pleasant dream. Hui raised the mat over the window and a shaft of pale morning sunlight splashed across the couch, the gilded chair, the small, ornate tables with their cunningly contrived gilded legs that resembled clusters of reeds. On one of the tables I noticed a tall vase and beside it a vial of oil, both flanked by incense burners. So Hui practised his gift in the privacy of his own room I thought, but vaguely, for the opulence of the surroundings rendered me briefly uncomfortable.
Various chests for clothes and cosmetics hugged the walls, but my attention was drawn to a collection of sordid plates and cups laid out on one of the tables. Hui crooked a finger at me and I went slowly to stand over them. He was haggard in the unforgiving daylight, his red eyes swollen and darkly circled, but his glance was keen.
“I have just lost a faithful friend and a devoted body servant,” he said without preamble. “These are the things he used today. The food he did not eat went back to the kitchen and was fed to the servants’ cats. They are very much alive. He drank goat’s milk this morning in the presence of one of my cooks, with whom he spoke for some time. The cook also drank from the same milking. The cook also is very much alive. The water the servants use to quench their thirst is kept in vast flagons here and there about the house. No other servant is even slightly ill. That leaves the beer.” He picked up a cup and with a thrill of foreboding I recognized it. Traces of foam had dried inside it. I did not want to touch it but Hui thrust it at me. “The servants draw their beer from sealed jars delivered straight from my brewing hut,” he went on in a level voice. “The Under-Steward is responsible for its distribution. Seven servants drank from the same jar yesterday, and one of those cups drawn was for Kenna, at work in the herb room with you. Look into the cup, Thu.” Unwillingly I did so. There were dark, viscous dregs in the bottom, a foul-smelling sediment from which I involuntarily drew back. “Do you recognize the odour?” Hui pressed. I shook my head, passing him the cup and placing my hands behind my back. “It is love apple,” Hui said. “Kenna was poisoned by someone very naïve and stupid, someone who probably did not know that the love apple works twice as quickly when mixed with alcohol, someone who thought that by the time he became ill all the evidence of his poisoning would have been cleared away. ‘Bitter,’ he said. I am not surprised. Bitter indeed. Bitter for him, bitter for me.” He took my chin in a rough grasp and pulled my head up so that I was forced to meet his fiery eyes. “Kenna had an enemy,” he said, still in that flat, level tone, but his eyes were burning, red flames of anger and loss. “He was not an easy man to love, but neither was he petty, and his heart was mine. He grumbled but he meant no harm. Who did not understand this?”
I said nothing. I could not speak. His fingers dug into me remorselessly and I knew that he had found me out. It was over. My work with him, my pleasant sojourn in this house, perhaps even my life itself was over, but no matter what, I would not admit my guilt. I had not intended Kenna to die. I was not a murderer. Trembling, I waited for the judgement. Then Hui released me so suddenly that I staggered back. “Go to your room,” he said coldly, quietly. “While we mourn for Kenna there will be no music or feasts here and the only work we do together will be the things that are unavoidable. You look very tired. Sleep now, and may the gods send you a good dream.” His mouth twisted and he turned away.
I stood there for a moment, foolishly. You know! I wanted to shout at him. You know what I did! Will you take your revenge in secret instead of denouncing me to the whole of Egypt? I am nothing but a commoner. Who would really miss me if you slit my throat and cast me in the river? Am I to die quietly, unexpectedly, at some moment when you have finished pondering my punishment? He must have sensed my thoughts for he spoke quickly, without turning. “I will find a new body servant and you will continue to learn the lessons for which you have been brought here,” he said. “Now leave my room.” I somehow found the strength to do as I was told.
Back in my quarters I ignored a sleepy and confused Disenk, crawling up onto my couch and reaching for the precious carving of Wepwawet that my father had done for me. I cradled it to my chest, rocking to and fro and crying, weeping for Kenna in a torment of remorse. My tears fell for myself also, for my shock, for the contempt I had seen in Hui’s eyes.
I hated what I had done and longed to undo it, and bled a little for the man whose life I had snuffed out simply because I was jealous. I would have brought him back if it had been at all possible, and I did not dare to even think about the judgement the gods would assuredly mete out to me. Clutching the warm smoothness of the God of War I sat shivering and staring into the dimness.