House of Illusions (40 page)

“Paiis is confined to his estate. Kamen was found chained in his house. He has suffered no harm, but I do not think he would have been allowed to live through this night if the Prince had not moved swiftly to contain the General.”

“I don’t understand.”

“All those named on your list so long ago are under house arrest, Thu, pending the report that will be brought back from Aswat concerning a body buried under the floor of your hut. If it is there, you will be vindicated. You are to be allowed the freedom of the harem and your hurts will be attended. The Prince will see you as soon as his men return from Aswat.”

“I want to see my son!”

“Kamen has been delivered to Men’s house. The Prince does not wish you to leave the harem at present.”

“But Hunro is here, Amunnakht. If she knows I am also here she will try to do me harm.”

“You have not listened,” he reproved me. “Hunro was on your list. She may not leave her cell and a harem guard is at her door continually.” A bewildering gladness spread in me. I wanted to close the space between us and throw my arms around the Keeper, but of course I did no such thing.

“So I was not arrested for punishment, I was captured for my safety!” I cried out. “And they will find the body because Kamen and I put it there ourselves! I am hungry now, Amunnakht!”

“Good.” He rose in one fluid motion. “Eat then, and sleep. Tomorrow when you wake you will find a body servant outside your door, waiting for your orders, and if you lack anything, send me a message.” I laughed at him for sheer joy.

“It will not be Disenk, will it?”

“No,” he responded gravely. “Your previous servant is now in the employ of the Lady Kawit, the Seer’s sister. And concerning the Seer, there is one thing …” A hand squeezed my heart, very gently.

“Yes?”

“The Prince’s soldiers went to Hui’s estate but he was not there. The house and grounds were searched but he has gone. His Steward does not know where.” So Hui not only heeded my warning, I thought bitterly, but acted on it as soon as I left him. I was a fool to go there. I should have remembered how wily, how clever he is. Am I to be cheated of the one portion of my revenge that would taste the sweetest? Where has he gone?

“He has holdings in other parts of the Delta,” I said slowly, “and he is well known in all the temples of Egypt.”

“Every hiding place is being explored,” Amunnakht assured me. “The harem is well guarded, Thu. He cannot possibly reach you here.” No, but I want to reach him, my thoughts ran on. I want the royal hands to go around his white throat at last, at last, I want to see his damnable selfassurance crumble. I want to see him suffer.

“How is the King?” I asked diffidently. “Will I be allowed to see him?” Amunnakht shot me a shrewd glance.

“He is very ill,” he said. “He does not often leave his couch. I fear he is dying. But the Prince went to him this evening and told him all that had passed.”

“He knows I am here then. He may send for me!”

“He may, but I do not think so, Thu. After all, you did try to kill him once.”

“He was happy with me,” I said softly. “In spite of all the pain we caused each other, he may remember that at the last.”

“Perhaps. Dream well, concubine.”

He was gone in a swirl of blue linen and I was alone. Drawing a deep, satisfying breath I turned to the table and raised the beer to my lips. Kamen was safe. I was safe. And the King would remember his little scorpion. The gods had been kind after all. They would allow me to kneel before their kinsman and beg forgiveness for the harm I had done him. Drinking quickly, I reached for the soup.

12

BEFORE CRAWLING
between the pristine smoothness of the sheets on the small but luxurious couch, I pulled Hui’s grubby sheath over my head and tossed it out the door. Then blowing out the lamp, I lay down. The familiar silence of a harem night enveloped me, its quality of smug insularity heightened by the reassuring murmur of the fountain, and I sank under its spell with a sigh of sheer abandon. Briefly I thought of the docks where I had slept previously, of my anxious wait in the beer house, of the unexpected kindness of the captain, of Amunnakht and his words, but most of all it was the King’s face that hovered before my inner vision and his voice that lulled me. He lay a mere stone’s throw beyond the wall of my compound. Was he awake and thinking of me? Or had I been in the end so inconsequential to him that he could barely remember my name?

And what of Hui? Where could he have gone? Perhaps he had left Egypt altogether, but somehow I did not think so. He would not betray his guilt so blatantly. He would hide and wait to see what happened, and if my affairs went badly he would return with some innocuous story of where he had been. At the moment I did not care. My couch was soft, my belly full of the best food I had eaten in seventeen years, and my son within the guarded walls of his father’s house. I slid contentedly into unconsciousness.

The sounds of female voices passing my door woke me, and for a while I was not sure where I was. I heard a child scream with momentary rage followed by the scolding voice of an adult. My room was still dark, but when I swung my feet to the floor and moved drowsily to the door, tugging it open, a blast of dazzling sunshine half-blinded me. The morning was far advanced. Before me the wide lawns were dotted with groups of women who sat knee to knee, talking, or sprawled under white canopies that flapped lazily in the refreshing breeze. Servants flitted between them. Brown children splashed in the fountain or chased the dogs that barked frenetically. As though renewing an ancient habit, my eyes were drawn to one particular spot on the far side of the huge square but it was empty.

Something stirred by my feet and a young woman uncurled, smiled at me, and bowed. “Greetings, Thu,” she said. “I am Isis, your servant. You slept well?” I licked my lips and suppressed a yawn.

“Thank you, Isis,” I replied. “I have not enjoyed such a good sleep in years. Now, as you can see, I am naked and sadly in need of a bath. Have you the authority to bring me anything I want?” Her eyebrows rose.

“But of course,” she said. “Anything at all. You are the Prince’s honoured guest.” I forbore to mention that if indeed I was a guest of royalty I would not have been sequestered in the harem, but I did not want to spoil this child’s sense of her own importance.

“Good!” I exclaimed. “Then go and fetch me a robe, and tell the bath-house attendants to prepare hot water. Find a masseur and a cosmetician. Bring food to me after I have bathed. Are there clothes for me?” She blinked.

“I will have a variety of sheaths, sandals and ornaments laid out on the couch for your selection,” she said, and bowing she prepared to leave.

“One more thing,” I added. “I see that the concubine Hatia is not in her accustomed place. Where is she?” The girl frowned.

“Hatia?” Then her brow cleared. “Oh, Hatia! She died five years ago. I was not employed here then, but it is said that from the time she entered these precincts to the time she was found stiff on her couch she remained silent. None of the women heard her speak one word.”

Neither did I, I thought sadly. Her servant, a man equally mute, came to me once to ask me if I would attend her in my capacity as a physician, but Hatia turned her face to the wall when I entered her cell and I was left with an overwhelming impression of great misery and quiet suffering. Hatia the drunkard. I had suspected her of spying on me for the Great Queen Ast-Amasereth in exchange for unlimited amounts of vintage wine. I had even wondered if it had been Hatia who had placed the poisoned fig on my dish when but for Disenk’s vigilance I would have eaten it and died. But in all probability the glazed malevolence of her scrutiny encompassed all of us, the healthy, beautiful women who came and went before her. I should have tried harder to treat her, to draw her out, but I had been too selfish and utterly involved with my own affairs.

At my dismissal the girl strode away and I retreated to my couch. I could not help Hatia now, could not undo the many thoughtless acts I had committed during my stay among these privileged and yet restricted women, and even now, when a few short steps would take me to the cell I had shared with Hunro, I gave thanks that I was not really one of them. I had not changed much. I simply knew myself a little better than I had all those years ago.

But a chilling thought struck me. Was I in fact not one of them? I still belonged to the King. I was still a royal concubine. I had lain with no man since my forbidden coupling with Hui, that insane hour in his garden. Ramses had the right to order me returned to the harem for as long as he lived, and his son could then retire me if he wished to that dreadful place in the Fayum where the old and used-up concubines lived out their final days. A sense of desperation brought me to my feet and exploded the bubble of selfsatisfaction in which I had been congratulating myself. The King must send for me, and when I had apologized for what I had tried to do to him, when I had wept and knelt by his couch, I must ask to be released from his service. The strange twists of fate that had made up my life must not dribble away into the stultifying boredom and despair of an unwanted slave!

My gloomy thoughts were interrupted by Isis’s return. Over her arm she had a filmy cloak of semi-transparent linen which she shook out and draped around my shoulders. “You are expected in the bath house,” she said, and I forced away the fear, determined to revel in this chance to regain something of the youth I had lost.

They bathed me in scented water and combed lotus oil through my neglected tresses. They plucked the coarse hair from my body and massaged more oil into my parched skin. They abraded and dressed my poor abused feet, coaxed honey and castor oil into my hands and face, scraped and washed and oiled me again. I submitted with the deepest joy. These were the delights whose memory had nourished my days of drudgery in Wepwawet’s temple and my nights of near-hopelessness when I fought to believe that exile in Aswat was not the end. They signalled my rebirth into a life that was more than work and the sleep of exhaustion, and no matter what, I did not believe that Aswat would ever be a part of my destiny again.

I returned to my cell on bandaged and sandalled feet, my body tingling, my hair gleaming, to find the cosmetician waiting for me, her chest open, her brushes and vials laid out. She waited politely while I sat at the table and broke my fast. Isis served me with the easy competence of experience, and as before, the manners Disenk had drummed into me during my first months in Hui’s house came back to me. Every morsel was a blessing, every drop of milk a promise.

When I had finished, Isis removed the tray and the cosmetician put a finger under my chin, lifting my face to her assessing glance. “Do not flatter me,” I told her shortly. “Do not tell me what arresting blue eyes I have or how wellformed my mouth. I do not know if the ravages of sun and time can be erased but please try.” One corner of her own mouth lifted in a wry half-smile. She was an older woman, already greying, and I was not surprised when she said, “I remember you, Thu, though of course you do not remember me. When you were in residence here I was attached to the Lady Werel. You were fortunate to have the services of Disenk for your painting. She is an artist.” She is also a snobbish little rat who left me to drown like the rest of them, I thought. “Your complexion is distressingly brown,” the woman went on, “and I do not know what can be done to restore a bloom to your face. Perhaps much, with time. Are you taking up residence here again?” I sighed.

“Please all the gods I hope not,” I answered her honestly. “Nor do I know how much time there will be for your work to take effect. But do your best.” She nodded and turned to her potions, and I sat back, closing my eyes.

She worked quietly and methodically and when she had finished she handed me a copper mirror. I did not want to look at myself. For years I had avoided my reflection in the Nile, in the irrigation canals bordering Aswat’s fields; I had even refused to glimpse myself in the water of my one drinking cup. The villagers had turned their faces from me and I had done as they did. It was not only vanity. It was an unwillingness to see my besmirched soul condemning me from behind my own eyes.

Yet now I took the elegant instrument and with trembling fingers lifted it. She had painted my lids silver above the sweeping black lines of the kohl, and dusted my cheeks with gold. My lips glistened with red henna. Framing the whole I saw the dark, shining lines of my hair, subdued and luxuriant. I caught my breath and the Thu I used to be, the young and vibrant Thu, began to laugh softly somewhere deep inside me. “I will return each day for as long as you wish,” the woman said, beginning to pack her belongings. “Make sure they continue with the honey and castor oil, Isis, and they can add a little myrrh to hasten the fading of the dark colour. Rub oil into her hands and feet every night and do not let her use them much.” She bowed to me gravely and was gone.

She had forgotten her mirror. I still clutched it close to my face. What would Pharaoh see? I wondered. A battered thirty-four-year-old peasant or a lovely girl grown to a glorious maturity? Oh gods. I thrust the mirror at Isis and reached for my first cup of wine. “The man is here with your sheaths,” she said. “Do you wish to dress now? He has also brought a sunshade the Keeper himself sent for you, with a message that you must not venture out without its protection.” So Amunnakht also believed, though he had denied it, that Ramses would eventually send for me. I nodded.