House of Illusions Read Online Free PDF Page B

gossamer wings trembling and glittering, and a frog leaped among them with a splash and a quick ripple.
    I had almost drowned once in that pond. I was three years old, insatiably curious, never still. Briefly escaping from my nurse who, I admit, was sorely tried, I trotted to the water, my hands eager for fish, flowers and beetles, and tumbled head first through the reeds. I remembered the shock, then the delicious coolness, then the onset of panic as I tried to draw breath from the dark greenness all around me and found I could not. My older sister pulled me out and tossed me onto the lip where I vomited water and then screamed, more in rage than in terror, and the following day my father directed his Steward to find someone to teach me to swim. I smiled as I entered the gloom of the porch and veered right, into the reception area, that memory coming fresh and vivid for a moment. Pausing, I let out a great breath of satisfaction, feeling the discomforts and tensions of the past few weeks flow from me.
    To my left the big room was open, broken by four pillars between whose bulk the sunlight streamed. Beyond them the garden continued with its well close by the inside wall separating the house from the servants’ quarters. The fruit orchard was so dense that the main wall running around the whole of my home could not be seen. Far to my right a small door led out to the courtyard where the granaries stood, and across the expanse of white-tiled floor the opposite wall held three doors, all closed. I looked longingly at the one nearest the pillars, for behind it was the bath house, but I crossed in the direction of the third door, my sandals leaving little siftings of grit as I went. I had almost reached it when the middle door opened and my father’s Steward came towards me.
    “Kamen!” he exclaimed, smiling broadly. “I thought I heard someone come in. Welcome home!”
    “Thank you, Pa-Bast,” I replied. “The house is so quiet. Where is everyone?”
    “Your mother and sisters are still in the Fayum. Had you forgotten? But your father is at work as usual. Do you return to the General at once or shall I have fresh linen placed on your couch?”
    I had indeed forgotten that the females of the family had decamped to our little house on the borders of the Fayum lake to escape the worst heat of Shemu, and would not come back to Pi-Ramses until the end of next month, Paophi, when everyone hoped the river would be rising. I felt momentarily dislocated. “I have two days’ leave,” I answered him, shrugging off my sword belt and handing him my kit together with the sandals I had also slipped off. “Please do have my couch made up, and find Setau. Tell him everything in my kit is filthy, my sword needs cleaning, and the thong on my left sandal is coming unstitched. Have hot water taken to the bath house.” He continued to stand there smiling, his eyes on the box under my arm, and all at once I became painfully aware of it weighing against my side. “Take this to my room,” I said hurriedly. “I picked it up on my journey and have no idea what to do with it.” He took it awkwardly, his other hand loaded with my belongings.
    “It is heavy,” he commented, “and what strange knots have been used to tie it closed!” I knew that the remark was not an inquisitive one. Pa-Bast was a good Steward and minded his own business. “A message has come from the Lady Takhuru,” he went on in a different vein. “She asks you to visit her as soon as you have returned. Akhebset came here yesterday. He wants you to know that tonight the junior officers will be celebrating in the beer house of the Golden Scorpion on the Street of Basket Sellers and if you are home by then he begs that you join them.”
    I grinned ruefully at Pa-Bast. “A dilemma.”
    “Yes indeed. But you could pay your respects to the Lady Takhuru after the evening meal and go on to the Golden Scorpion later.”
    “I could. What is our cook offering