Seer of Egypt (16 page)

Later, she was shown the guest room, where the shrine stood open, ready for the totems of visitors. “I presume that you worship Thoth and Nekhbet,” Ishat said.

Thothhotep nodded. “I do, but I have no effigies to stand guard over me,” she replied. She did not add that she could not afford them, and again Huy was pleased.

“Show me your palette,” Ishat demanded, and the girl opened the bag Amunmose had placed on the couch and passed the palette to her. Ishat examined it respectfully. “You have managed to care for it well,” she commented.

Thothhotep flushed. “My cousin gave it to me when he thought I would agree to be betrothed to him,” she told them. “I tried to return it before I left Nekheb, but he was kind enough to let me keep it.”

“Otherwise you would have starved or ended up selling your body,” Ishat said tartly, passing it back to her. “Doubtless he knew that. Put it on Huy’s desk in the office beside mine. I’ll show you where, and then you can go to the bathhouse and be bathed and oiled. Iput?” Her body servant, who had been hovering with interest by the door, came forward. “Will you mind caring for this girl until I or the Master can find a replacement for you? Thothhotep, have you any more linens in that bag of yours?”

Huy was outside talking to Seshemnefer when Ishat pulled him away. “She and Iput are in the bathhouse, getting rid of that indefinable smell of poverty we ourselves used to carry about with us when we couldn’t afford enough natron to wash ourselves every day,” she told him. “She owns nothing apart from her palette and the sheath she’s wearing but a huge old man’s shirt and an equally big kilt. She needs literally everything, Huy, even new brushes and a better quality of ink. Couldn’t you have found a less drastic drain on Pharaoh’s Treasury? Iput is a good girl and can sew well, but I wouldn’t trust her to barter for sheath linen. Merenra and I will have to go to the flax merchants and then the weavers. What a bother! And she must have kohl for her eyes and at least one pair of earrings and two pairs of sandals and a belt and a lot of time-consuming care on Iput’s part for her hands. After all, the servants here must represent you properly, particularly a scribe.” She threw out her arms. “And I don’t even know yet whether or not she can spell!”

“Do your best with her,” Huy said. “I think that she will prove to be a ready pupil and will adapt to our ways. Take whatever gold you think you may need and go into the town with Merenra tomorrow. Perhaps you could lend her some of your sheaths in the meantime.”

“No! No, Huy. For one thing, she’s skinnier than a dry reed and nothing I have will fit her. For another …” She pulled him to a halt and stepped to face him, lifting defiant eyes to meet his own. “For another, I am doing my best not to resent her being here. I know how necessary she will be to you, but I don’t want anyone to be necessary to you but me! It is not logical, but I do not apologize. Let Iput alter her ugly shirt and kilt. I am giving her my life with you. I will not have my sheaths rubbing against her miserably dry flesh!”

So Ishat was indeed fully aware of what she was being called upon to do. Huy kissed her. Together they began to walk towards the house.

“You’re right and I’m sorry,” he said. “I should not have made that suggestion. Forgive my insensitivity.” They had almost reached the house when all at once Huy remembered the ivory monkey toy his uncle Ker had given him on his fourth Naming Day. He had hated it from first sight, hated its mindless grin, its grasping paws that would clap together if one pulled the cord in its back, and he had grown to fear it also, for reasons he did not understand. It had seemed to him to have a malevolent sentience, to hate him in return and wish him harm. One night some years later, he had taken it into his mother’s garden and, setting it on one of the rocks surrounding the pond, he had picked up a stone and pounded it into little pieces, not realizing that he was weeping as he did so, crying with the grief of his father’s betrayal and his uncle’s desertion after the priest Methen had carried him home from the House of the Dead and everyone but his mother and Ishat had disowned him out of fear. Ishat had come up behind him in the darkness as he was trying to scrape the remains of the monkey together. “I will dispose of the pieces, Huy. Don’t worry about it. Go and wash your face and then sleep,” she had said. “Your hand is bleeding.” He had held her tightly then, his loyal friend, full of the pain of nostalgia for a time of simplicity that would never come again.

“The times only
seem
easier now,” he said thickly aloud as the memory bloomed, bringing with it the old familiar ache of loss. “Underneath all this luxury there is still a well of uncertainty. I love you so much, Ishat.”
Please don’t leave me,
the words ran on silently. She took his arm, briefly laying her head against it as they entered the passage, and did not answer.

Dinner that evening was a quiet affair. Thothhotep’s appetite seemed to have deserted her. She looked tired and vulnerable, hunched over her table in one of Iput’s worn sheaths, and after the meal she begged to be allowed to retire to her room. Ishat, wine cup in hand, watched her go. “Iput tells me that she has been shaved and plucked, and oiled all over twice, but looking at her, there’s no way to tell,” she commented. “Let her sleep long and soundly, and then perhaps tomorrow she’ll be ready to begin her training. I do know how she feels, Huy. I had to hide my panic when I met Thothmes officially for the first time. I broke down and cried in front of you, though, didn’t I?”

Huy looked across at her affectionately. “Yes, you did, but you conquered your fear and went on to conquer him. Ishat, I would like to give you something special as a marriage gift. What would you like? A piece of jewellery? A goodly supply of your perfume? I cannot think of anything Thothmes will not be able to supply.”

“I suppose I ought to ask for gold,” she replied. “The gods know that my father is far too poor to offer Thothmes a dowry. Let me think.” Her nose disappeared into the cup and she drank, afterwards running her tongue over her upper lip to savour the last droplets of wine clinging to her mouth, her eyes dark as she stared past him into the pleasant dimness of the room. Then she set the cup slowly back onto her table. Her hands remained clasped to its stem. “There is one thing, but you may not want to part with it.”

“Just name it,” Huy protested. “Everything I own apart from my protecting amulets is yours, Ishat.”

“The scarab, then.” She lifted her face to meet his gaze. “The scarab I found and gave to you all those years ago. It has always comforted me to know that you cherished it. I thought of it as something that bound us together. I still regard it in that way. No matter how contented I may become as Thothmes’ wife, no matter how much we both may change in the future, the scarab is a symbol of the link that joins us and may never be broken. You still have it?”

“Of course! You presented it to me on a lettuce leaf while the remains of my fourth Naming Day feast lay scattered on the plates and the grass and on your tiny kilt, Ishat.”
On that same day Ker and Aunt Heruben gave me the compartmented cedar box with an image of Heh, god of eternity, etched in silver into the lid,
he remembered.
Above the kneeling god with his arms outstretched and holding the notched palm ribs was my own silver name, Huy, also sunk into the fragrant wood. Hapzefa found me a piece of fresh linen and I laid the scarab on it in one of the compartments. The other boys at school envied me such a precious and unusual gift.

“Merenra,” he called, and the steward slid out of the shadows. “Go up to my room and bring me my little cedar box. It is somewhere at the bottom of one of my tiring chests.” He turned back to Ishat. “You may have it gladly, dearest sister. It has delighted me, reassured me, and comforted me also through the years. You want nothing more?”

“No.” She had relaxed. Her fingers left the stem of the wine cup and at once Amunmose appeared beside her, proffering the jug. She shook her head. “No more wine for me, Amunmose.” He retired.

Huy and Ishat waited in silence for Merenra to return. A kind of formality had fallen between them, Huy realized—why he did not know. It seemed to carry with it an aura of solemnity, as though a ritual was about to be performed.
And so it is
.
In giving the scarab back to Ishat, I am closing the door on a smooth continuity of closeness and love that began almost before I could stagger naked about my mother’s tiny garden and Ishat, one year younger than I, would try to crawl after me.

Merenra returned, placing the box on Huy’s table, and for a moment Huy ran his fingers over the lovely figure of the god and over the notches on the palm ribs that represented millions of years.
The future,
he said to himself.
No longer a mystery to me whenever I wish to explore it. Did Ker experience a flash of presentiment when he ordered Heh incised here?

“The Anniversary of my Naming Day takes place this week,” he said, lifting the lid and carefully extracting the scarab. “I was born on a very lucky day, the ninth of Paophi. It seems fitting that this should go to you now, Ishat. Be gentle with it.” He passed it to her on its bed of linen and she took it cautiously.

“Even in the lamplight its carapace still gleams golden!” she marvelled. “Two of its legs have come off and are loose on the linen, Huy. Thank you, thank you. No matter what other gifts I may receive on the day of my marriage feast, this will always be the most prized.” She struggled to her feet, holding the beetle reverently before her. “I have an empty alabaster ointment pot Iput can scour out. The scarab will be quite safe in it.” She smiled at Huy and then yawned. “Good night, my Seer. I suppose we must invite your family and my parents to a feast for your Naming Day. I had completely forgotten about it. I wonder when Thothhotep was born.”

“On the twenty-eighth day of Khoiak.”

Ishat shot him a keen look and then laughed. “The Feast of the Procession of the Obelisk. Truly a neutral day, neither lucky nor unlucky. Well, I shall see if I may discover something about her that you don’t know.” Her shadow snaked through the doorway as she approached the torch set in the wall of the passage beyond, and then she was gone.

Huy shivered. The hour was late, but he did not think that weariness was sapping his khu-spirit. He felt the loss of the scarab as a minute hole in the wall of his defence against the Khatyu, the demons waiting to thwart the will of Atum and destroy him, Huy; and he wondered if the opening was large enough to allow the Sheseru, the arrows of the evil host, to get through and pierce him.
I wonder if I should find a spell of protection and write it on papyrus and soak it in beer to drink in the morning,
his thoughts ran on anxiously. Then he laughed at himself and, rising, signalled to Merenra that he could now extinguish the lamps.
I wear on my body the most powerful symbols of protection, made for me by the most powerful Rekhet in Egypt,
he told himself as he mounted the stairs.
I never take them off. May the scarab bring you safety, my Ishat, and good memories of the years that have slipped beyond the ability of even the most powerful of Seers to restore.

The following two months, Athyr and Khoiak, passed peacefully while the flood water stood at its highest. A trickle of townspeople came to Huy for diagnosis and treatment, and on those occasions Ishat herself took down the instructions of the god as they issued from Huy’s mouth, but she made sure that Thothhotep recorded them also, and meticulously scanned and criticized the girl’s work. Thothhotep herself seemed to be settling well into the routines of the house. Her increasing confidence was evident in a straighter carriage and a more ready smile, but she remained quiet and self-contained, a foil for Ishat’s volubility. She met Huy’s parents and Heby, his brother, with correct deference when they came for Huy’s Naming Day feast together with Ishat’s parents and Methen, priest to Khenti-kheti, the town’s totem, and Huy’s good friend. She and Ishat spent every afternoon in Huy’s office, Ishat dictating difficult passages from pieces of old correspondence and making the girl write hieroglyphs over and over on shards of discardable pottery until her neatness approached the standards Ishat had set for herself years before, when Huy in his turn had been teaching her.

Thothhotep was obedient and patient. Her progress was swift, but Huy had not yet wanted to ask her for her opinions of the letters that arrived from the King’s Treasurer regarding Huy’s request, or the confirmation of his share in the cultivation and sale of the poppy drug that came from Amunnefer, Anuket’s enthusiastic husband. Occasionally Huy, passing his office door after the daytime sleep, heard Ishat’s sharp voice berating the girl, but he did not interfere. Inspecting her work, he could see the improvements she was making. She had asked his permission to write to her father, to let him know what shape her new life was taking, and of course he had agreed, privately unrolling the unsealed scroll and reading it before giving it to Merenra to send south to Nekheb. Its contents were touching. “To my esteemed father, greetings,” it began in Thothhotep’s pretty and increasingly neat hand. “I bring you the good news that I have been hired by the Great Seer Huy son of Hapu as his apprenticed scribe. His own scribe will soon leave his employ, at which time, if blessed Nekhbet wills it, I shall take her place. I am treated with much kindness. The Seer is a man of honour, with a mild and forgiving disposition. You need no longer worry for my welfare. Embrace my sisters and mother, and greet cousin Ahmose on my behalf. Your obedient daughter Thothhotep. Signed by my own hand this thirtieth day of Athyr in year seven of the King.”

Huy let it roll up and passed it to Merenra with a smile.
Mild and forgiving, am I?
he thought, amused.
It is a good thing, little Thothhotep, that you cannot yet see into the depths of my ka as Ishat does.
He had given Thothhotep a pair of gold earrings on her Naming Day, plainly fashioned in the likeness of her totem, the goddess Nekhbet, and Ishat, with perhaps more glee than was appropriate, had heated a sliver of metal and pierced the girl’s lobes. Thothhotep now wore them every day with obvious pride. The sheaths Ishat had grudgingly commissioned arrived during Athyr, together with two pairs of leather sandals and a simple white leather belt. Huy, passing the open door of the guest room one early morning soon after the clothing arrived, had glanced in to see Thothhotep holding the soft linen of the new sheaths bunched against her mouth, her eyes closed, a look of sheer joy on her face.