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becoming drowsy. He wondered whether his uncle had left the city yet, whether he was safely on board his barge and floating cheerfully home to Hutherib. He began to cry again, but silently, his hands over his mouth, before his pain dissolved into unconsciousness.
    He woke to a moment of frightening disorientation. A babble of voices interspersed with young male laughter and raucous shouts was drifting into the room, giving him an instant of terror that subsided into fragile acceptance. With a flood of longing he imagined the quiet of his own house, the sunlit playground of the garden, and Ishat’s skinny brown limbs as she came running towards him. He was alone. Harnakht’s cot was empty, but as Huy swung himself onto the floor a shadow fell across him. It was a man bearing a basin of steaming water, a bundle wrapped up in sackcloth tucked under his arm, and a stool.
    “You slept for a long time,” the man said, setting down the stool and placing the basin on Huy’s table. He unrolled his bundle on the cot. It contained several compartments, each holding a knife. “I am Pabast, one of the servants to the pupils of the cells. But you are not my master, so do not try to give me commands. I have come to shave your head before you go to the bathhouse.”
    Huy touched his black curls. “My hair must come off? But why?” Pabast indicated the stool. Reluctantly Huy sank onto it, still heavy-eyed from weeping and fuddled with sleep.
    “Because every child here, regardless of his parentage, must wear the youth lock. It seems that you are not the son of a noble or you would be shorn already.” There was the slightest hint of disdain in the man’s tone, and Huy, with a child’s acute sensibility, did not miss it. He was suffused with shame. You have all your hair , he wanted to say. You are not noble either. You are only a servant, like Hapzefa . The strength of his emotion, though it burned him, dispelled some of the heaviness of homesickness.
    The man made no further comment, and though his words had been insulting, his touch was gentle. Huy sat still while his hair fell softly onto the floor around him. His scalp was oiled, and then he felt the stroke of a knife being drawn swiftly and expertly over his skin. Occasionally he heard a tinkle as the blade was swirled clean in the basin. He held his breath, waiting for the sharp sting of a cut, but Pabast dropped the knife in the water and ran his hand over Huy’s skull with a grunt of satisfaction. The ordeal was over.
    Pabast set a vial of oil on the table. “Your head will itch for a while and be tender in the sun. Oil it often. I will return every week and shave you again. Be sure to oil your lock as well, every time you bathe. The hair is not long enough yet to braid and I do not have a white ribbon for you. I will bring one later.”
    I don’t like you , Huy wanted to shout at him. And I’m not going to wear a ribbon like a girl . He got off the stool and turned his back while Pabast collected up his tools and basin and went away.
    He was sitting on his cot with his palms pressed between his bare knees when Harnakht returned. The older boy surveyed him critically. “I forgot to tell you about that,” he apologized. “It suits you, Huy. It shows off the bones of your face. One day you will have every girl you know praying to Hathor for one glance from those big eyes of yours. Come on, I’ll show you around the bathhouse.”
    The lawn outside was crowded with boys of every age, some kilted, some naked. They huddled in groups or sat in pairs or sprawled negligently in the grass. Huy decided not to be selfconscious about his own state of undress, although he could hear his mother’s caustic comment on such indecency. Even in the hottest weather he had been made to wear his loincloth. He had never seen either of his parents naked. He could not picture what his mother or Hapzefa might look like, and as for Ishat, she always wore a thick kilt and her chest was as flat