The King's Man (16 page)

Ra had entered the mouth of Nut and the light of the stars was strengthening when Huy sought admittance to the Queen’s apartments. In spite of the fact that he had not eaten during the day, he had done no more than pick at the broiled goose, broad beans, and garlicked cabbage Paroi had set before him. He had woken with an intense craving for yet more poppy and an ache in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with a hunger for food. Resignedly he fought the urge to call for Tetiankh. He had been bathed and dressed in fresh linen, but when his body servant began to braid his hair, Huy had pulled away. “Leave it loose,” he said. “My scalp hurts.” Tetiankh had reminded him that he would be meeting the Queen. Huy snapped back some brusque response that he instantly regretted, and Tetiankh had bowed.

“At least let me gather it into a ribbon,” he said. “Master, do you need to consult a physician? You eat less than you should, and your belly is not happy.”

“A physician would only tell me what we both know already,” Huy replied. “I take too much opium. Have Amunmose mix me garlic and juniper, and brew me an infusion of thyme for the pain.” He had allowed Tetiankh to tie his hair with a white ribbon, and later he downed the remedy his chief steward had prepared. The ache became a tenderness, but still he could not eat. He was glad to leave his quarters.

The Queen’s steward Ameni admitted him to her rooms. She had been wearing jasmine perfume the last time he had entered, but to his relief the mingled scents of lotus, narcissus, and henna flowers wafted towards him as he went forward and bowed. As before, she was casually dressed in a voluminous linen sheath and a filmy coat with soft wide sleeves from which her tiny hands extended like the centres of white lilies. She was unpainted and unshod, her feet planted together on a low stool. The bud-shaped honey alabaster lamps on their tall stands filled the warm space with a golden glow that barely reached the depiction of flowers, birds, and fruits covering the walls in glorious profusion.
There is no woman sharing my quarters anymore
, Huy thought as he straightened,
and I do not realize how much I miss the aura of a feminine presence until I come here. I am sexless. I forget that I am a eunuch by the will of Atum, but in Mutemwia’s presence I become a man again for a while. It is not a comfortable awareness
.

She beckoned him. “Come and sit down, Huy. You look unwell. Take a little date wine. It’s fortifying.”

Obediently Huy took the empty chair beside her and at once Ameni was at his elbow, pouring the dark liquid into a silver goblet. Although he had no desire to do so, Huy drank, and felt the dull ache in his belly subside.

Mutemwia smiled. “That heavy brow of yours has begun to clear, but you are gaunt, dear friend. Do you not eat enough?”

“You have no need to spy on me, Majesty,” Huy said. “In all the years we have known one another, I have given you no cause to distrust me.”

“I know.” Her hands left the arms of her chair and were folded in her lap. “I have no active spy in your entourage, Huy, but servants talk, and I have always had an ear for the conversations of those closest to their employers. One would think that family members are closest, but it’s not so.” She nodded once. “Good servants do not gossip, but of course neither are they dumb. For example, your chief steward Amunmose enters the kitchens with mortar and pestle where many cooks work at all hours. He requests a clove of garlic and a juniper berry to grind up, and a handful of thyme leaves in order to brew an infusion. He says no more. One cook comments to another that the Great Seer must be suffering from an upset stomach. He too says no more. Much food is being returned to the kitchens from your quarters each day and distributed among the servants. Again, a brief word to me in passing is all that is needed for me to draw certain conclusions. Your appetite is lacking, your stomach is giving you trouble: you are of course addicted to opium.” She leaned towards him and, taking his hands in hers, shook them kindly. “I have learned to make correct deductions over many years when the knowledge of what is passing behind palace doors is vitally important for me and for my son. I trust you utterly, my Huy. Do you understand now?”

Her fingers were warmly alive. He wanted to lift them to his face and set her palms against his cheeks. He met her eye. “Yes. And therefore I suppose that I need not tell you that I Scryed for Yuya’s daughter.”

She burst out laughing. “That’s certainly one reason why I asked you to come to my quarters. Are you willing to tell me whether or not you Saw something that I or the King should know?” She released him and sat back.

He glanced around at Ameni and two other servants, alert and motionless in the shadows. “If you had not called for me, I would have petitioned Ameni for an audience with you before long. But what I have to tell you is most definitely for you alone to hear. Please dismiss your men.”

At once she gestured, a flick of the wrist, and Ameni ushered them out, closing the door behind himself. Her attention returned to Huy. She became very still as she waited for him to speak, her body relaxed, her attitude one of complete patience.

Huy’s thoughts flowed quickly as he considered how much of the two visions he ought to relate. The first had been one of triumph, the temple full of incense smoke and joyful music that soared in praise to Amun and spoke of the eternal power of Ma’at. But the second … Mentally, Huy shook himself. This was Mutemwia, the woman with whom he had shared the dangerous years of her husband’s reign, who had spent many nights with him in the office on his estate, talking easily and intimately as the night deepened and the house fell silent. But here, in this noisy conglomeration of hundreds of living quarters, the clusters of building after huge building, a small city within the larger maelstrom of Mennofer where she ruled as Regent to her son and could wield absolute power if she so chose, had she changed? Become altogether a goddess? What was he to her now? A friend and adviser, or a gaming piece to be used? On the wave of a familiar doubt the yearning for poppy suddenly returned, smothering his mind, seeping into his limbs, and he fought it with a desperate spasm of his will.

When he spoke, the words were forced out through stiff lips, but he recounted everything. It took a long time, and only when the lamps stopped crackling did Huy realize that the Queen had left her seat, replenished the oil in them herself, and regained her chair. Picking up his goblet, Huy drained the last of the date wine. Her gaze followed his movements. Huy could tell that she was thinking deeply. Her fingers had begun to tap out an absent rhythm on her linen-clad thighs, and she was frowning.

“This is the last message from the gods that I expected,” she began at last. “I had been waiting until Yey’s funeral was over to request your advice regarding Iaret.”

“Iaret? One of Amunhotep’s sisters, the eldest one who became Osiris Thothmes’ wife?” Huy vaguely remembered a letter from little Amunhotep years ago when his father King Thothmes had taken him on a punitive expedition into Wawat. Iaret had accompanied them. Amunhotep had told Huy how the Queen, his sister, had complained ceaselessly about the heat and discomfort of their surroundings, and about how much he disliked her.

“Yes. I had expected Neferatiri as Thothmes’ Great Queen to attempt a union with our returning Prince in order to supplant my son as King. But the Prince simply wants to go away from court and live as a provincial noble. I believe he is sincere in this. Neferatiri will remain in the harem indefinitely.” Mutemwia slid to her feet. “Iaret’s petition caught me by surprise. She is a fully royal sister. She has a right to occupy the Queen’s throne beside my son.” She spread her arms, a gesture of frustration. “So do Amunhotep’s other sisters, although Iaret’s claim is the strongest. But you tell me that Atum has chosen Tiye. Only two generations separate her from her Mitanni grandfather, a commoner, and moreover a prisoner brought into Egypt by Osiris Thothmes the Third.” She squatted in front of Huy, placing her hands on his knees, anxiously scanning his face. “She’s still a child, Huy, soon to be eleven years old. Amunhotep doesn’t like her very much, although a King’s personal preferences when it comes to marriage are not important—an eligible girl’s lineage and character matter far more. Remember how precarious my son’s claim to the Horus Throne is! His first wife should be of royal blood, his own and his father’s. She should be his sister. Since ancient times it’s been the royal women who carry the power of divine succession in their blood! Tiye’s blood is neither royal nor even Egyptian! Gods, Huy, what are you doing to me?” Rising abruptly, she swung away from him. Huy expected her to begin to pace, but she stood immobile, chewing her lip and still frowning. “Who else knows about the visions? Your scribe? Tiye herself?”

“Paneb definitely. I was not stupid enough to tell Tiye what I Saw, but eventually I must. The first vision anyway.”

“The first vision.” Mutemwia exhaled and her body lost its rigidity. Bending over the table, she poured herself wine. Again she did not do what Huy expected. Instead of gulping it, she took two sips and set it down. “The second vision is dire, Huy. Anubis gave you no instruction regarding the first, but he was adamant that what he showed you in the second must not come to pass.”

“Yes.”

“Tiye is linked to some grotesquely malformed man? A King?”

“Egypt’s King. Yes.”

“So Tiye will outlive my son and still be young enough to marry his successor? Then where are my royal grandsons? If Tiye signs no marriage contract with the Horus Throne, if she is denied the Queen’s crown and I command her to wed with some eligible nobleman, both visions will dissolve into nothing.”

“Would you defy the Great He-She?” Huy rose and faced her. She was sweating lightly, the heat of her body releasing gusts of perfume that clung to him, making him giddy with the flare of an emotion so old and yet so familiar to him that in her anxiety and his urgency he did not pause to name it. “Mutemwia, my gift, my curse, this door Atum opens for me—I ignore what it shows me at my peril, and I beg you not to put yourself in danger from the hosts of Khatyu Anubis, which may unleash on both of us if you flout the King’s immediate destiny. The god uses me. Believe me, it’s often more of a punishment than something others envy. Consider Egypt’s destiny also. Who knows what disasters may come upon the country without Tiye at the King’s side?”

Her eyes narrowed. “We believe in fate. We believe that from the time we are born our lives are ruled by whatever decisions the gods have made regarding our every move. I think about this often.” She grasped his arm. “But what if the resolutions the gods have made for us can be altered by our own choices? What if Atum can only show you what might be, because what might be depends on the large and small choices of your petitioners each day? Do your predictions always come true?”

Huy stared down at those deceptively delicate features without really seeing them. “They always come true,” he answered finally, “but not always in the way I was shown them. I too have pondered this question. Whether illness or death or a contented life, the end is as I have Seen it, but the path leading to that end sometimes differs from the vision.”
Yet the first Seeing Atum forced upon me was for Nasha
, he remembered with a jolt.
I had no control over the visions then. I Saw Nasha knocked down and killed in the Street of the Basket Sellers at Iunu. I warned her to stay away from that place and she did, and it was her mother who died under the wheels of a donkey cart. Is a certain destiny set, then, and must be fulfilled at any cost? What am I really Seeing when I take a supplicant’s hand into my own?

“So no matter what I decide, Tiye will become Queen of Egypt.” Mutemwia sat down. “Is that what you are saying, Huy? And what of the second vision? Is there any use in trying to obey the god’s injunction if what you saw is inevitable?”

I was punished once
, Huy thought.
The fate Atum had decreed for Anuket became Ishat’s for one terrible day before I humbled myself and bitterly repented my cowardice
. “Our daily choices only lead to the fate already chosen for us,” he said at last. “Atum reveals that fate to those brave enough or foolish enough to come to me. But he has also made the future of Egypt my responsibility. That is why you chose to send your son to my estate. That is why he grew to love me, and you and he summoned me to court, where I may guide and advise you both.” The turn in the conversation had woken a kind of desperation in him. He felt tense and suddenly ill. “You make many decisions on his behalf, Majesty, and they are good and necessary if he is to become Pharaoh. But the decisions arising from my visions you must leave to me. You must trust that Atum desires only prosperity and peace for his favourite country.” His knees had begun to tremble and he eased himself into a chair.

She was staring at him speculatively, her lips pursed, her expression cool. “My last question has not been answered,” she said stiffly. “Moreover, one does not say ‘must’ to a Queen. Even if Atum owns this ship and tells you in which direction it should sail, yet my son and I remain at the helm and may steer towards its destination as we see fit.” Huy had not seen her angry before. She had not raised her voice or made any gesture, nor had her cheeks flushed, but he sensed an icy rage beneath her calm exterior.

“I apologize for being so blunt,” he said. “You have showered me and the members of my family with favours and preferments because you know that we, all of us, are utterly loyal to you and to Egypt. You brought me to the palace to be close to the King, to continue to guide and advise him just as you yourself do, out of love for him. Are you angry with me, Mutemwia, or with the god?”

Her narrow shoulders slumped. Pushing back her hair with both hands, she sighed. “I don’t know. Everything you say is true. Everything. Perhaps I resent having the decision of a suitable wife for Amunhotep taken away from me. It is one of the few occasions when I may be a mother as well as a Regent. My mind fills with acrimony when I imagine him coupled with a commoner chosen by a commoner.” She pointed ruefully at Huy. “You. Nor do I like humbling myself before the gods. If you see a fragile, dainty aristocrat in me, my friend, you are deceived. I admit that Amunhotep needs you, but I need you also, to remind me that even a Queen must face the judgment of Ma’at’s feather. I have grown arrogant since my son mounted the Horus Throne.” She grimaced. “Very well. Why did I bother to bring you here if I refuse to listen to you? Or to Atum? But promise me, Huy, promise me that you also will obey the god and do your utmost to make the second part of the vision a lie. We will say nothing of it to the King. It has nothing to do with him. As for Tiye, why should she imagine her husband dead before she’s even been betrothed? You may approach Yuya when his father has been entombed, and then the King, who will protest the god’s imperative very loudly, and then Tiye. She will have to be moved into the harem with her mother, and her education must change. Iaret will be furious.”