The King's Man (55 page)

“Yes, Majesty.”

“I will have no more legitimate sons besides Prince Thothmes, who is already destined to die, and my princely namesake, who will deliberately destroy everything precious in this country and leave us at the mercy of famine and disease?”

“Yes, Majesty. Since the day when Anubis showed me these things, when I took the baby’s hand in my own, I have been overwhelmed by what I saw and heard.”

“He will render Amun powerless?” The King looked increasingly puzzled, as though confused by Huy’s words and yet impelled to contradict their clarity.

Huy was about to reply when Tiye loudly slapped one hennaed palm on the surface of the table and sprang to her feet. “It’s a lie! All a lie!” she said through gritted teeth. “You gave this … this peasant more power to rule than anyone else in the realm, ignoring the years of faithful service my older brother Ay devoted to you, and my parents to your father before that! Anen, my younger brother, still wears the simple robes of a priest although he should be here at court where his talents would not be wasted. As for myself …” She faced her husband, placing both hands on the table and inclining stiff-armed towards him. “As for myself, my competence to govern Egypt is only required when the Son of Hapu is away on some errand of his own. This so-called vision is nothing but a ploy to make sure that every fully royal son dies. Then you will be forced to name one of the male bastards born to any one of your harem women as the Horus-in-the-Nest and grant him legitimization by marrying him to one of our daughters. And you may be sure that the boy will be chosen by Huy himself!”

Huy knelt, holding his arms out palms up in the universal gesture of submission. “Not only will he render Amun powerless, he will send masons throughout Egypt to obliterate the names of every god but the Aten,” he said clearly and deliberately to Amunhotep, forcing the King to hold his gaze. “In removing the name of Amun, he not only commits the gravest blasphemy against Egypt’s saviour, he annihilates you also. You are the Incarnation of Amun. Your name contains the name of the god, but if it is excised, your ka will be lost.”

“This is not to be believed.” Amunhotep shook his head and slumped back in his chair. “What have I done to deserve such a fate? What evil has Egypt done, that Ma’at should desert her? No, Uncle. Your vision must be false, and if not false, then you have misinterpreted what you saw.”

“What a kind assumption you make, my husband!” Tiye broke in sarcastically. She folded her arms and, brushing past Huy, began to pace. He was no longer able to read her expression. “How generous you are! ‘Misinterpreted’? What proof have we that our trusty mer kat was granted any vision at all? Only his word and the word of his scribe, who will of course swear on behalf of his master.”

Amunhotep ignored her. “I have known you all my life, Huy,” he said quietly, “and indeed when I was still a baby in my mother’s arms with no claim to the Horus Throne you saw me bathed in royal gold. Through the years you have served and protected me, and worked tirelessly to give me an empire. You’ve grieved with me at the deaths of my children, deaths predicted by your visions. It was very hard for you to tell me that my beloved Prince Thothmes would not outlive me. Now you confess a future for me and my country more terrible than I could ever have imagined.” His voice faltered. Lifting his cup from the table, he drank deeply, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his shift. “Without the history of many accurate Seeings behind you, I might agree with the Empress,” he continued. “As it is, we must discover how this future might be averted. Get up! And you, Tiye, such outbursts do no good. You hate Huy for matters beyond his control.”

On the contrary, you hate me for everything within my control
, Huy thought as he regained the stool and watched her return to perch rigidly on the edge of her chair.

“There are many feast days for Osiris this month,” Amunhotep went on. “We will beg him for his wisdom, and you and I, Tiye, will process to Ipet-isut at every sunrise, and while the Holiest of Holiest is open so that the High Priest may minister to Amun, we will prostrate ourselves and ask what it is that we have done wrong.”

“But we’ve done nothing wrong!” Tiye protested hotly. “If the Son of Hapu speaks the truth, which I still doubt, the seeds of disaster are in our son, not in ourselves!” She reached across the little table and gripped his forearm with both hands. “We must watch over him at all times, choose his tutors with the utmost care, make sure he learns to sincerely venerate the gods, teach him the correct position the Visible Disc holds! Then he will have no inclination to drift into heresy.”

As Huy listened to their interchange, an agitation grew in him that he dared not show.
Your father and grandfather openly preferred to worship the sun in all his aspects, and Ra’s priests encouraged the enmity that ensued between them and the servants of Amun. Amun is superior, the essence of godhead. The Aten is merely one of Ra’s energies, his rays of light, the Visible Disc striking the earth and becoming lions. Unfortunately, it’s a far more exciting concept for a boy to imagine than Amun the Great Cackler with his double plumes. Lions are the representations of the rays of both Amun and Ra. The Aten is the rays themselves. Aten worship has been a court religion for hentis. It’s always been too sophisticated, too complex, to appeal to the ordinary citizen. This second royal son will make it his obsession
. “Majesty, Anubis did not so much as hint at a way out—none at all!” Huy addressed Tiye directly. “Everything I saw in that gleaming new city seemed distorted, every face in the crowd marked with a despair that only I could see. The Prince is already cursed. His affliction will spread.”

Amunhotep shook himself free of his wife’s grasp and, picking up his cup, stared into the dregs. The cup trembled in his grasp.

Tiye went very still. “Then what does Anubis want His Majesty to do with our poor little cursed Prince?” she whispered venomously, eyes half shut. “Surely he does not expect Amunhotep to violate a law of Ma’at and thus become a feast for Ammut beneath Ma’at’s scales in the Judgment Hall when his heart inevitably weighs more heavily than her feather? Oh, but I forgot.” She made a parody of recollection. “The King does not undergo the test of the Judgment Hall. He ascends to ride in the sacred barque with his royal ancestors. He is thus exempt from any punishment for his abuses—but Egypt is not. Egypt suffers in his place. So I ask you again, mer kat, Great Seer, what does Anubis expect my husband to do with his son? That is, if your vision spoke true at all.”

“Enough!” Amunhotep’s voice was unsteady. “Leave us alone now, Uncle. Go home and stay there until you’re summoned. Paneb, give me my copy of the Seeing. Send Nubti and Tiawi in at once. You’re both dismissed.”

Huy rose carefully.
It was too much to expect that the King would simply take my word for this Seeing
, he thought in a brief burst of panic that had every one of his muscles suddenly tensed for flight.
When he reads the full account, it will seem so preposterous to him, so blasphemous, that any hope I had of belief on his part will be gone. As for Tiye, she will demand my punishment and use every argument she can muster against me
. “Paneb, give me both scrolls,” he said quietly. Paneb left the floor with ease, reaching into his pouch and handing them over. Huy stood looking down at them, two neat curls of papyrus, while the rich possessions he had worked to amass over his lifetime grew flimsy, shredded, and blew away, leaving him as naked and vulnerable as a child.

“Majesty, I have not told you everything,” he said huskily, holding the scrolls out to him with shaking hands. “Many years ago, before you married Amunhotep, I Scryed for you, Tiye. Anubis showed me the King’s coronation day with you beside him, resplendent in the formal garb of a Queen, but that was only the first part of the vision. I kept the second part to myself because I wanted the marriage to take place, and the will of Atum was not clear. However, I did dictate all of it.” He swallowed. “The whole vision of the baby Prince Amunhotep’s future that I received is on this other scroll. Anubis showed me more than I have dared to say. I am too afraid to put it into words. You will understand when you read it, and I beg you, both of you, to remember as you do so that I have served Egypt and the Horus Throne with complete loyalty.”

Tiye’s arm went out, but Amunhotep snatched the scrolls first and held them securely in his lap. “Does anyone else know the full extent of what these contain?” he demanded sharply.

Huy hesitated before deciding that the time for deceit, even kindly deceit to spare another’s pain, was long past. “I discussed the contents of the older vision with your royal Mother in her capacity as Regent,” he acknowledged, and did not go on to say that Mutemwia had also thought it best to keep silent regarding any description in its entirety. Tiye had gone white. Both hennaed lips were clamped tightly closed. The King merely looked pensive.

“Dismissed, both of you,” he repeated. Huy and Paneb bowed themselves to the door. Tiye’s hostile eyes stayed on Huy, but Amunhotep’s gaze had returned to the scrolls he continued to hold firmly against his linen-draped thighs.

As soon as Huy stepped out into the passage, he knew the hyena was there. Its odour assailed his nostrils, a foul miasma far stronger than the tang that had invaded his bedchamber and more pungent than that of any wild animal. Resisting the urge to cover his mouth and nose, drained and on edge, he spoke quickly to Nubti and Tiawi, then started along the statue-lined way to the palace entrance, Paneb behind him. He could not think. He hardly saw the deferential comings and goings around him or heard any greeting. His ears were full of the soft, sinister footfalls only he could hear, and the slow panting of hot breath over a wet black tongue. Grimly, he prayed that in the sunlight flooding the vast stone concourse before the pillars of the reception hall the apparition would dissolve away or at least become invisible.

At first it seemed as though his prayer had been answered. The bearers saw him and came hurrying with the litters. He and Paneb got in, were lifted, and began the ride home, but one glance beyond the open curtains showed Huy the beast padding in the shadow abreast of his litter. When the bearers changed direction and the shadow moved, the hyena moved also, staying within its reach. Huy drew the curtains, closing himself in, and his head sank onto his raised knees.
I am being haunted by a demon
, he thought dully.
Anubis has unleashed a member of his Khatyu against me—but for what reason? I have solved the riddle of the Book of Thoth. In spite of knowing that Tiye will do her best to ruin me or even have me killed, I have finally released the details of both Seeings. Atum is allowing me to age at last, I feel it; therefore he has no more use for me. Unless I’m required to go further, sacrifice myself, fill my heart so full of the heavy stones of evil that the scales will not balance and Ma’at will condemn me to annihilation
. Huy groaned aloud.
Murder a child and save Egypt, but destroy myself. Let him live and destroy Egypt, but in disobeying Anubis’s direct command to undo the damage my arrogance has already caused, condemn myself anyway. There is no choice at all—I am damned whatever I do. I used to hate you, Atum, for treating me as though, with the gift of Seeing you bestowed on me and the permission to read the Book of Thoth you granted me, you purchased my soul to do with as you pleased. As I grew, I came to understand and accept the uniqueness with which you compensated me. But now I will return to hating you. You and your mouthpiece Anubis are more cruel than any of us mortals
. Huy knew that the clarity and venom of the words passing through his mind were largely a reaction against the tension of the morning, interspersed as they were with images of Tiye’s furious face and the King’s puzzlement. But the naked facts of Huy’s dilemma were undeniable. The presence of the hyena dogging his steps was also undeniable. Nauseated and oddly cold, Huy hugged his knees and gave himself up to despair.

Amunmose and Kenofer were waiting for him as he entered his house. Paneb left him to file away the record of the meeting with the King and Tiye, and his steward and body servant approached him, but suddenly Huy could not move. A paralysis of mind and body had seized him so that the faces of his servants and the details of his surroundings were all at once unfamiliar. Only the hyena had substance. It squatted beside him, so close to his naked calf that he could feel the heat of its body. A need to look down at it grew in him, a conviction that reality would quickly warp out of all recognition unless he did so. With a flicker of rebellion and fear, he compelled his head to turn, his gaze to drop. The creature was peering up at him, and as their eyes met, the room and the people in it regained perspective.

Both men were watching him cautiously. “Rakhaka is keeping the noon meal hot for you, Master,” Amunmose said. “Will you eat?”

“No.” With an effort of the will Huy thrust the instant of distortion away. “Kenofer, bring me poppy, and you, Amunmose, find Perti. I want to see both of you immediately.”
Amunhotep would never harm me
, Huy thought as he walked through the hall towards the stairs,
but Tiye would not hesitate to have me assassinated if she believed that my death would somehow change her son’s destiny. In spite of her bluster, she knows that my visions do not lie
. Reaching his bedchamber, he shook off his sandals and exchanged the blue shirt and kilt for a white shift. Lifting the lid of one of his cedar tiring chests, he felt past the neatly folded clothes to the boxes beneath. Most of them held jewellery and treasured mementoes from the past. Huy drew out one of them, slightly longer and less ornate than the others, and untying the cord that kept it closed, he took out a dagger. He had not held it for many years. Thothmes had given it to him on a Naming Day long gone, partly as a joke but mainly so that he might carry a weapon at his waist during one of his official journeys away from Egypt. The blade was of plain iron, but the haft was of gold inlaid with buttons of red carnelian, crafted so that a hand might grasp it smoothly. Huy hefted it briefly, aware that the hyena was watching him from a corner of the room, then replaced it in its box and carried it to the chair beside his couch.