Read Online The King's Man by Pauline Gedge - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Pauline Gedge
Ads: Link
under steward I can delegate to, more servants, a food taster … I need your authority to sort it all out before I collapse. And what about a permanent physician for us all? I don’t trust any judgment but your own.”
“Have you read these references?”
“No. And that’s another thing. Petitioners line up outside the doors, wanting to see you. Scrolls pile up from the gods know who and I’ve no permission to open them. We’ve been here no more than a few days and already it seems like hentis.”
“I’m the one who must apologize, Amunmose.” Weariness and a claustrophobic panic had seized Huy. “Early tomorrow afternoon I must visit a friend of the King’s, but afterwards we’ll try to establish some order out of all this confusion. Go to bed.”
In Huy’s own bedchamber, Tetiankh had turned down his sheets and was trimming the lamps. Huy flung himself into a chair. “Find me a lily perfume and anoint my couch and the walls with it,” he said as the body servant knelt to remove his sandals. “Do it every day until the jasmine has stopped flowering. We need a physician of our own, old friend. You already know your way about the palace. Recommend someone. And give me my poppy! My head is full of troubling images tonight.”
He was undressed, washed, drugged, and on his couch by the time Tetiankh found a quantity of lily perfume and began to distribute it carefully about the room. Gratefully Huy inhaled the aroma that reminded him of his mother Itu and the little house where he had spent his childhood. Deliberately he called the sunlit garden to mind, and Ishat slipping through the acacia hedge to play with him, and his father Hapu plunging his tousled head into the deep clay basin outside the rear door at the end of a day spent working in his uncle’s perfume fields. Yet the heavy blanket of opium stupor he relied upon to wrap itself around his mind seemed unusually thin this night. Itu’s perfume filled his nostrils, but it was Anuket’s innocent young face that blossomed suddenly, filling his inner vision, waking the ancient passion for her that had destroyed his peace for so many years. Long before her death he had been cured of it, but here it was again in all its distressing impotence. Even as he sank beneath the soporific influence of his drug and unconsciousness waited to claim him, he somehow knew that an old love was not the cause of the mental picture being presented to him. Nor was it a grasping for the familiar in the bewildering ocean of new circumstances. It was something else, something simpler and yet more threatening, but his tired consciousness refused to examine it. That night he neither stirred nor dreamed.
3
IN THE MORNING, HUY ATTENDED the daily audience, once again standing behind Amunhotep’s throne with Mutemwia, doing his best to take careful note of each administrator and the matter of business he brought. This time he was able to recognize and name many of them. Ptahmose, Vizier and Fanbearer on the King’s Left Hand, he had already met and liked. Amunmosi, Fanbearer on the King’s Right Hand, little more than a boy, seemed something of a dandy, with his expertly made-up face and faultlessly pleated linen, the golden threads woven into the many braids of his gleaming wig, the gems adorning his chest, hands, and feet. Amunhotep greeted him affably, sharing with him some private joke that indicated a close and easy relationship between them. Huy made a mental note to acquaint himself with the Fanbearer. As Amunmosi turned back into the crowd, he flashed Huy a spontaneous smile of such sweetness that Huy found himself grinning in answer. Treasurer Nakht-sobek gave a short report on the amount of gold recently arrived from the mines in Kush. The King listened to him in a stony silence and Nakht-sobek’s obeisance when he had finished was mildly defiant. There was little more.
Amunhotep dismissed them all with obvious impatience, got up, and took Huy’s arm.
“Have you read these references?”
“No. And that’s another thing. Petitioners line up outside the doors, wanting to see you. Scrolls pile up from the gods know who and I’ve no permission to open them. We’ve been here no more than a few days and already it seems like hentis.”
“I’m the one who must apologize, Amunmose.” Weariness and a claustrophobic panic had seized Huy. “Early tomorrow afternoon I must visit a friend of the King’s, but afterwards we’ll try to establish some order out of all this confusion. Go to bed.”
In Huy’s own bedchamber, Tetiankh had turned down his sheets and was trimming the lamps. Huy flung himself into a chair. “Find me a lily perfume and anoint my couch and the walls with it,” he said as the body servant knelt to remove his sandals. “Do it every day until the jasmine has stopped flowering. We need a physician of our own, old friend. You already know your way about the palace. Recommend someone. And give me my poppy! My head is full of troubling images tonight.”
He was undressed, washed, drugged, and on his couch by the time Tetiankh found a quantity of lily perfume and began to distribute it carefully about the room. Gratefully Huy inhaled the aroma that reminded him of his mother Itu and the little house where he had spent his childhood. Deliberately he called the sunlit garden to mind, and Ishat slipping through the acacia hedge to play with him, and his father Hapu plunging his tousled head into the deep clay basin outside the rear door at the end of a day spent working in his uncle’s perfume fields. Yet the heavy blanket of opium stupor he relied upon to wrap itself around his mind seemed unusually thin this night. Itu’s perfume filled his nostrils, but it was Anuket’s innocent young face that blossomed suddenly, filling his inner vision, waking the ancient passion for her that had destroyed his peace for so many years. Long before her death he had been cured of it, but here it was again in all its distressing impotence. Even as he sank beneath the soporific influence of his drug and unconsciousness waited to claim him, he somehow knew that an old love was not the cause of the mental picture being presented to him. Nor was it a grasping for the familiar in the bewildering ocean of new circumstances. It was something else, something simpler and yet more threatening, but his tired consciousness refused to examine it. That night he neither stirred nor dreamed.
3
IN THE MORNING, HUY ATTENDED the daily audience, once again standing behind Amunhotep’s throne with Mutemwia, doing his best to take careful note of each administrator and the matter of business he brought. This time he was able to recognize and name many of them. Ptahmose, Vizier and Fanbearer on the King’s Left Hand, he had already met and liked. Amunmosi, Fanbearer on the King’s Right Hand, little more than a boy, seemed something of a dandy, with his expertly made-up face and faultlessly pleated linen, the golden threads woven into the many braids of his gleaming wig, the gems adorning his chest, hands, and feet. Amunhotep greeted him affably, sharing with him some private joke that indicated a close and easy relationship between them. Huy made a mental note to acquaint himself with the Fanbearer. As Amunmosi turned back into the crowd, he flashed Huy a spontaneous smile of such sweetness that Huy found himself grinning in answer. Treasurer Nakht-sobek gave a short report on the amount of gold recently arrived from the mines in Kush. The King listened to him in a stony silence and Nakht-sobek’s obeisance when he had finished was mildly defiant. There was little more.
Amunhotep dismissed them all with obvious impatience, got up, and took Huy’s arm.
Similar Books
