House of Illusions by Pauline Gedge Read Free Book Online Page A

briskly down the stairs. My father stood at the bottom, talking to Kaha, and as I came up to them he eyed me critically. “Very handsome,” he commented cheerfully. “Off to dally with Takhuru are you? Well keep your hands off her, Kamen. Your marriage is still a year away.” I did not rise to the familiar bait. Bidding them both a good night I crossed the reception hall and out into the orange flush of the setting sun, thinking as I did so that I must remember to talk to Pa-Bast about the box.
    Turning left outside the main gate, I swung along the path that ran beside the water, inhaling the cooler evening air. The watersteps I passed were thronged with the inhabitants of neighbouring estates and their servants as they prepared to take to the river in search of a night of revelry, and many of them called greetings to me as I passed. Then for a while I walked with dense trees on my left until I came to the sentries guarding the Lake of the Residence. Here I was challenged, but the words were a formality. I knew these men well. They allowed me to pass and I moved on.
    The Waters of Avaris spread out into the great Lake that lapped with a suitably dignified slow rhythm against the sanctified precincts of the Great God Ramses the Third himself, and the estates between me and the towering wall protecting him from the common gaze were also walled. The tops of lush trees leaned discreetly over these massive mud-brick constructions, dappling me in a gradually deepening shadow as I paced beneath them. Where they were broken by tall gates that let out onto marble watersteps and sleek craft whose brightly coloured flags trembled in the evening breeze, the soldiers clustered. I saluted them happily and they shouted back at me.
    Along this hallowed edge of the Lake lived the men holding the health of Egypt in their hands. Their power infused the kingdom with wealth and vitality. Under their direction the balance of Ma’at, the delicate web that wove the laws of gods and men together under Pharaoh, was maintained. Here lived To, Vizier of both the South and the North, behind his gates of solid electrum. The High Priest of Amun, Usermaarenakht, with his illustrious family, had his titles incised into the stone of the pylon under which his guests had to pass and his guards were decked in gold-tooled leather. The mayor of the holy city of Thebes and Pharaoh’s Chief Taxing Master, Amunmose, favoured a life-sized statue of the God Amun-Ra, once totem of Thebes alone but now the King of all the gods, standing with folded arms and gently smiling face on the paving between watersteps and gate. I did him homage as I stepped past his mighty knees. The home of Bakenkhons, Overseer of all Royal Cattle, was relatively modest. Here a party was about to embark, the women in filmy linen encrusted with jewels that flashed red in the dying light of the sun, the men wigged and ribboned, their oiled bodies gleaming. I waited respectfully while they were handed onto the cabined raft rocking at the foot of the watersteps. Bakenkhons himself answered my obeisance with a warm smile and the raft was poled away in a swirl of dark water. I went on.
    The shadows were lengthening, stretching over me now and fingering the verges of the Lake, and as I came to the precinct of the great Seer, I paused. The wall enclosing his house and grounds was no different from the walls I had already passed. It was broken halfway along by a small and very simple gateless pylon so that passersby were able to glance into the garden itself. Within the left-hand base of the pylon an alcove sheltered a taciturn old man who had been the Seer’s porter for as long as I could remember and who had never once returned my greeting as I came and went. My father, who regularly had business with the Seer, told me that the ancient one only addressed those who turned in under the pylon and then only to send to the house for permission for the visitor to proceed. Not that he could have