House of Illusions (12 page)

Then how was it that both she and the Master knew how to tie identical knots? There was only one explanation. The woman was sane after all. And at that thought I felt as though something that had been twisted inside me ever since I encountered her began to untie and loosen. She was sane. She was telling the truth, and a desperate, bitter truth it was. She had said that she was once a physician, but where? She had not told me that. But the Seer was also a physician. Could it be that once, a long time ago, she had been his colleague here in Pi-Ramses, had visited his house to conduct consultations, had watched him tie the clever knots binding shut the door I had seen in his office? If that was so, if it was so, it was possible that she too had known my mother. Somehow I must return to Aswat, talk to her, tell her my story even as I had listened to hers, and ask her about my mother. How I would find an excuse to leave the General for the time it would take to go there and return I did not know. But I vowed I would find a way, even if it meant resigning my post.

I was unable to sleep again. I sat on my couch, knees drawn up, my body composed but my mind a confusion of conjecture and speculation, until just before dawn I heard a flurry of activity in the courtyard below. Getting up, I went to the window, stepped through, and walked to the edge of the roof. Just beyond the grain-storage bins torches flared, and in their wavering light servants ran to and fro, loading the horses that stood by the gate while the dogs that accompanied the caravans to kill desert vermin and warn of danger loped about barking with excitement. I saw Kaha with his scribe’s palette and a rather dishevelled Pa-Bast conferring over a pile of sacks, and then my father appeared, cloaked and booted, and I drew back. I did not want him to see me, bid me take care while he was away, give me his wide smile. There was something between us now, and until I had explored and understood it I could not freely meet his gaze.

The unruly cavalcade finally moved out, through the gate into the service court and then left through the servants’ entrance, and the cacophony of thudding hoofs and babble died away, leaving churned earth over which Pa-Bast and Kaha picked their way, entering the house beneath me. The sky in the east was paling.

Setau came in, greeted me, laid the early meal on my table, and without a word began to sort through the jumble of linen and jewellery I had thrown on the floor the previous night. I forced myself to swallow the fresh, warm bread, the brown goat cheese and sweet, wrinkled apples, all the while wondering what I could say to my General today. I had to get to Aswat and back before my father returned from Thebes. He would be gone for three weeks at the most. Aswat was closer than Thebes and I surely needed no more than one day with the woman there, but I did not think that the General would release me at once, if he was willing to allow me leave at all. What could I do if he refused me out of hand? To disobey him would be seen as desertion and the penalty was, of course, death. What argument would compel him? I still had no clear idea of what I would say. I was determined, but I was also afraid.

However, I need not have worried, for I had been at my post outside the General’s door for less than an hour when his Steward approached me. “Officer Kamen,” he said, “you are summoned. The General is in his office.” Surprised, I followed him into the house, continuing on when he vanished, until the familiar cedar door loomed ahead. I knocked and was bidden to enter.

Paiis was at his desk. A tray with the half-eaten remains of his first meal sat on the floor and he himself was only half-dressed. He had flung a short kilt around his waist and his feet were bare. The room smelled strongly of the lotus oil that gleamed slickly on his broad chest and had not yet been washed from his unkempt hair. He glanced at me from under swollen lids.

“Ah. Kamen,” he said brusquely. “Revise your list of guard duties so that you can be replaced for a while. You are to meet with one of my mercenaries at my watersteps in four days’ time and escort him to Aswat where he will arrest the madwoman. You will then be responsible for their safety and well-being until he delivers her to the prison here. Your juniors can see to the provisioning of whatever craft you choose from my boats, and make sure that you select something with a cabin that is walled not just curtained. You will not put in overnight at any village or moor close to any habitation, nor will you speak of this assignment to anyone. You will report to me personally as soon as you return. That is all.”

I stared at him, shocked. His words were so completely unexpected that for a moment I could not collect my thoughts. Then I blurted, “But why, General?”

“Why?” His black eyebrows shot up. “Because you are ordered to do so.”

“Yes,” I floundered. “I am ordered, I will obey, but may I ask why she must be arrested?”

“Not really,” he responded curtly. “If every serving soldier questioned his orders, Egypt would be in chaos in a week. Do you want to refuse me?” I knew that to do so would result in an unfavourable testimony to my senior officer at the military school and a check to my career and besides, it was as though fate had conspired to put me in the very place I desperately needed to be. Yet this made no sense at all. Why send a Delta soldier and an expensive mercenary all the way to Aswat when a message to the governor of the nome in which the woman lived would surely be sufficient? Were there no prisons closer to Aswat? And for Amun’s sake, why arrest her at all? I was treading on perilous ground by not saluting and turning on my heel but I persisted.

“No, General,” I said. “I am well aware that to refuse an assignment means a negative assessment to my immediate superior. But to send two men from Pi-Ramses on such a routine mission seems to me inefficient.”

“Does it indeed, my insubordinate young officer?” he said, a quick, cold smile coming and going on his face. “Perhaps I should be pleased that you are so concerned to prevent the wasting of the country’s time and resources. I like you, Kamen, but you are sometimes lacking in the proper attitude a soldier must adopt towards those who carry more responsibility than he. This is not a meeting to plan any strategy, nor is your opinion required. Do as you are told.”

I should have left the matter there. After all, I was completely sane and the woman to be arrested was not, according to all convictions but my own. To press the General was an act of madness but I could not help myself. The whole matter grew more nonsensical the longer I considered it. “Your pardon, General Paiis,” I pressed. “But I wish to make two observations.”

“Then hurry up!” he snapped. “I have not even been bathed this morning.” Then why the speed of this summons? I wondered but did not say so aloud. Instead I went on.

“Firstly, the woman at Aswat is harmless. She is a nuisance, nothing more. Has she committed some recent crime? Secondly, why send me?”

“That is not an observation, it is a question, you young idiot,” he said wearily. “And in answer to it, an answer I am not really required to give as you know, it is customary to have the criminal to be arrested identified in person. You have not only seen but talked with her. Any other soldier I might choose to send might make a mistake.”

“Then a member of her family could identify her. Or one of the villagers.”

“Would you point a finger at a member of your family in such a situation?” he asked. “And as for the villagers, I want this done as quickly and quietly as possible. The villagers have suffered enough at her hands. So have the King’s Heralds and anyone else of note who wishes to conduct their own business or the business of Egypt in peace, without the certain prospect of harassment at the hands of this importunate woman. Their complaints have at last been heard. She is to be incarcerated for a time. She will be treated kindly but firmly, and when she is released, she is to be warned that on pain of an even wider exile she is not to bother the travellers on the river any more.”

“I see,” I said, but I was wondering again why the local authorities at Aswat were not dealing with the complaints, and why a man as powerful and influential as Paiis was concerning himself with this mundane affair. Suddenly his words penetrated and my head jerked up. “An even wider exile, my General? So she was exiled to Aswat? That part of her story, at least, is true? Did you open the box, and did you find her words as she swore?”

He got up and came round the desk, bringing with him a gush of lotus perfume and a tang of male sweat. Folding his arms he leaned towards me. “I did not open the box,” he said distinctly, as though speaking to a small child. “I disposed of it as you should have done. I threw it away. I used the word exile inadvisedly. She is a native of Aswat, and her own madness has exiled her there. That is all I meant. You are in danger of losing not only your commission in this house but also any credibility you have been building as a mature soldier with a fine future by what I can only describe as a youthful obsession with this woman’s pathetic fate.” He grasped my shoulders and his expression softened. “I will forget that you had the effrontery to question your orders in this matter if you agree to carry them out diligently and then put all thought of Aswat out of your mind. Agreed?” Now a genuinely warm smile lit his handsome features and I responded, stepping out of his grip and bowing.

“You are generous, my General,” I said. “Do I know the mercenary you have selected for the task?”

“No. I have not yet chosen the man. But in four days I expect you to be ready to begin the journey. Now you are definitely dismissed.”

I saluted and went to the door. As I turned to close it behind me he was still watching me, arms across his chest, but his expression was no longer benign. Those compelling black eyes had gone blank.

I finished my watch for the day, then spent the evening rearranging the rota for guard duty and giving my instructions for victualling the boat I had chosen. Paiis had several skiffs, rafts and other craft, but I wondered why he had not commanded me to take one from the army’s small harbour adjoining the barracks on the Lake of the Residence. I also wondered why I was not to tie up overnight where I could be observed. The whole exercise smacked of something excessively clandestine and I did not like it. Why try to keep the straightforward arrest of one miserable peasant woman a secret? Particularly as she was to be interned for a short time and then released. Why not instruct the mayor of Aswat to place her under house arrest instead? The more I thought about it the more ridiculous the whole affair began to seem, and my delight at being actually thrust into her presence was gradually overshadowed by an uneasy puzzlement.

Paiis had not destroyed the box, of course. It was obvious to me that he had not only opened it but found something important inside, something vital enough to prompt her secret arrest solely on his own authority. That was also a presumption on my part, but not once had he intimated that his order to me came from someone else through him. As long as the woman remained a nuisance, pestering men who regarded her as insane and brushed her off, Paiis was able to ignore her. But I had changed all that. I had accepted the box. I had put it into his hands in spite of her warning, and precipitated his decision to act. If these things were so, then I was the cause of her imminent arrest. I would obey the General, of course. To refuse would be unthinkable. But I would do so cautiously. I began to wish that I had thrown my principles to the winds and cut away those convoluted knots and read the sheafs of papyrus I no longer doubted had been inside.

By the time I arrived home, full night had fallen. Although a lamp was burning in the entrance hall, the house had a neglected air and the silence that met me as I crossed the tiles was somehow hollow. I had not missed my sisters’ light footsteps or the sound of my mother’s voice as she saw to the daily ordering of our lives, but now I longed to hear her calling, “Kamen, is that you? You’re late!” and to see Tamit come running, her kitten at her heels. I felt all at once lonely and rootless, wanting the security of family and the cosy predictability of my childhood.

Passing my father’s office, I paused. He too was gone. There was no chance of encountering him if I pushed open the door, approached the boxes in which he kept his accounts, began to remove the scrolls … A soft footfall behind me brought me to myself. I swung round. It was Kaha, his scribe’s palette under one arm, the leather pouch in which he kept his papyrus dangling from his wrist and a lamp in his hand. “Good evening, Kamen,” he said smiling. “Is there something you require in the office?” I smiled back wryly.

“No thank you, Kaha,” I replied. “I was just standing here thinking how empty the house feels with everyone away, and now I myself have to leave it. I am ordered to go south in four days’ time.”

“That is unfortunate. You have only just returned,” he said politely. “Do not forget to send a letter to the Lady Takhuru, acquainting her with your enforced absence.” His eyes were twinkling and I laughed.

“I am sometimes a forgetful lover,” I agreed. “Remind me again. Sleep well, Kaha.” He inclined his head and walked past me, disappearing into the office and closing the door behind him.

Summoning Setau I stripped, bathed and ate, telling him that he could visit his family in their Delta village if he wished while I was away, and when he had bid me a good night I poured a few grains of myrrh into the small incense cup I kept beside the statue of Wepwawet, lit the charcoal beneath, and prostrating myself I prayed fervently that this journey would result in an answer to the riddle of my birth and that the god would protect me in my search. When I had finished, I stood and regarded him. His long, aristocratic nose pointed past me, the tiny eyes were fixed on something I could not see, but I seemed to hear him murmur, “I am the Opener of the Way,” and I was content.

I received no further instructions from the General and I served my remaining three days without incident. Kaha had told Pa-Bast I was leaving, and the Steward assured me that the household would be intact when I came back. The words were a formality. Pa-Bast had ruled the family as kindly and ruthlessly as he ruled the servants for as long as I could remember.