House of Illusions Read online

  Praise for Pauline Gedge

  “Gedge excels at setting the scene and subtly evoking a sense of the period as she tells a timeless story of greed, love, and revenge.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Gedge makes the past so accessible. You can imagine walking between the pillars into a magnificent hall and watching it come alive with the smell of the fresh paint on the frescoes.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Gedge vividly renders the exotic, sensuous world of ancient Memphis, the domestic rituals of bathing and dressing, the social ambience of superstition and spells.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Gedge has such a terrific feel for ancient Egypt that the reader merrily suspends disbelief and hangs on for the ride.”

  —Calgary Herald

  “Her richly colourful descriptions … hit the reader with photographic clarity.”

  —The Ottawa Sun

  “Gedge has brought Egypt alive, not just the dry and sandy Egypt we know from archaeology, but the day-today workings of what was one of the greatest and most beautiful kingdoms in the history of the world.”

  —Quill & Quire

  “Each volume is a carefully devised segment, with its own distinct flavour and texture. When put together, then the skill and workmanship of the whole undertaking stand out clearly. The trilogy is one of Pauline Gedge’s most appealing works.”

  —Edmonton Journal

  “Gedge … has the magical ability to earn a reader’s suspension of disbelief.”

  —Toronto Star

  “Pauline Gedge’s strengths—imagination, ingenuity in plotting, and convincing characterization—are here in abundance.”

  —Books in Canada

  “Gedge draws another vivid picture of Ancient Egypt and skillfully weaves her dramatic tale of intrigue, treachery, and manipulation. Her historical novels have the ability to bring a period fully before us; it is possible to feel the heat and experience the pageantry she so ably describes.”

  —The Shuswap Sun

  “Pauline Gedge’s knowledge of Egyptian history is both extensive and intimate, and has enabled her to produce an entire society of the time of Ramses II with admirable vitality. She has a sharp eye for the salient detail, and an evocative way with landscape and interiors. She can produce a mood and suggest an atmosphere … A very good story well told, and it engrosses the reader from the first page to the last.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  PENGUIN CANADA

  HOUSE OF ILLUSIONS

  PAULINE GEDGE is the award-winning and bestselling author of eleven previous novels, eight of which are inspired by Egyptian history. Her first, Child of the Morning, won the Alberta Search-for-a-New Novelist Competition. In France, her second novel, The Eagle and the Raven, received the Jean Boujassy award from the Société des Gens des Lettres, and The Twelfth Transforming, the second of her Egyptian novels, won the Writers Guild of Alberta Best Novel of the Year Award. Her books have sold more than 250,000 copies in Canada alone; worldwide, they have sold more than six million copies and have been translated into eighteen languages. Pauline Gedge lives in Alberta.

  ALSO BY PAULINE GEDGE

  Child of the Morning

  The Eagle and the Raven

  Stargate

  The Twelfth Transforming

  Scroll of Saqqara

  The Covenant

  House of Dreams

  The Hippopotamus Marsh:

  Lords of the Two Lands, Volume One

  The Oasis: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Two

  The Horus Road: Lords of the Two Lands, Volume Three

  The Twice Born

  HOUSE OF

  ILLUSIONS

  PAULINE

  GEDGE

  PENGUIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in a Viking Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

  a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1996

  Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

  a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2002

  Published in this edition, 2007

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

  Copyright © Pauline Gedge, 1996

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  * * *

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Gedge, Pauline, 1945–

  House of illusions / Pauline Gedge.

  Sequel to: House of dreams.

  Originally publ.: Toronto : Viking, 1996.

  ISBN 978-0-14-316743-3

  1. Title.

  PS8563.E33H69 2007 C813’.54 C2007-903367-9

  * * *

  ISBN-13: 978-0-14-316743-3

  ISBN-10: 0-14-316743-X

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see

  www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 477 or 474

  HOUSE OF

  ILLUSIONS

  Part One

  KAMEN

  1

  IT WAS THE BEGINNING of the month of Thoth when I first saw her. I had been detailed by my commander, the General Paiis, to escort a Royal Herald south into Nubia on a routine assignment and we were on our way back when we put into the village of Aswat for the night. The river had not yet begun to rise. It was flowing slowly, and although we were making better time on our return than we had on the journey out, we had covered hundreds of miles and were very eager to reach the familiar comforts of the Delta.

  Aswat is not a place I would choose to visit. It is little more than a huddle of small mud houses crouched between the desert and the Nile, although there is a rather fine temple to the local totem, Wepwawet, on its ou
tskirts, and the river road wanders pleasingly through shady palms as it enters and then leaves the village. The Herald whom I was guarding had not planned to beach our craft there, indeed he seemed very reluctant to do so. But a frayed rigging rope on which we had been keeping an anxious eye finally parted and that same afternoon one of the crew sprained his shoulder, so with bad grace my superior ordered that the oars be shipped and a cooking fire built on the bank not far from Aswat’s place of worship.

  It was sunset. As I alighted I could see the temple’s pylon through the trees and a glimpse of the canal up which visitors to the God might float. The water was red with the glow of Ra’s setting. The air was warm and full of dust motes, and but for the rustle and twitter of nesting birds the silence was unbroken. Unless the peasants here had conceived a violent hatred for Pharaoh’s messengers, I would have no work to do this night. But mindful of my duties I left the beach where some of the sailors were already gathering what wood they could find and the rest were wrestling with fresh rope for the rigging, and I checked the river road and the sparse trees for any danger to my Herald. Of course there was none. If there had been any possibility of real harm on this journey, my General would have assigned a seasoned soldier to guard the King’s man.

  I was sixteen years old, two years out of school and into my military training, and had seen no action at all apart from the rough and tumble of the training ground. I had wanted a posting to one of Pharaoh’s eastern forts where the foreign tribes pressed against our borders with longing eyes fixed on the lush fecundity of the Delta. There I might have been called upon to unsheathe my sword, but I suspect that my father used his influence to keep me safely in the city of Pi-Ramses for I found myself a member of General Paiis’s household guard, a position of monotonous ease. My military education continued, but most of my time was spent patrolling the General’s walls or standing outside the doors of his house, watching a steady stream of women come and go, nobles and beautiful commoners, drunk and happily dishevelled or elegant and deceptively cool, for Paiis was handsome and popular and his bed was always full.

  I say my father, and so I think of him, but I have always known that I was an adopted child. My real father was killed in one of Pharaoh’s early wars and my mother died giving birth to me. My foster parents had no sons and were glad to take me in. My father is a merchant, very rich, and he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but something in me yearned for the soldiering life. To please my father I went with him on one of his caravans to the country of the Sabaeans where he trades for rare medicinal herbs, but I was bored and increasingly embarrassed as he tried to interest me in the sights we passed and the subsequent negotiations with the tribesmen when we arrived. We exchanged heated words, and when we returned to Pi-Ramses, he gave in to my begging and enrolled me in the officers’ school attached to the palace. So it was that I came to be walking towards the little temple of Wepwawet, God of War, on a still, warm evening in the month of Thoth, God of Wisdom, the village of Aswat behind me, the Nile rippling quietly on my right and the tiny barren fields of the peasants lying brown and furrowed on my left.

  In truth I was curious to see inside the temple. The only link I had with my true parents was a small wooden statue of Wepwawet. It had stood on the table beside my bed for as long as I could remember. I had cuddled its smooth curves during the brief unhappinesses of childhood, paced furiously before it when my lamentably fiery temper was aroused, and fallen asleep night after night while watching the glow from my lamp illumine the God’s long wolf nose and pointed ears. I never felt fear with him beside me. I grew up with the fanciful belief that my first mother had appointed him to guard me and no danger, human or demonic, could reach me as long as Wepwawet stood gazing with his steady eyes into the dim recesses of my room. The craftsmanship was simple but sensitive, the hand that had formed the spear and sword the statue carried, that had carefully carved the hieroglyphs for “Opener of the Ways” across the God’s chest, had been devout as well as able, I felt sure. Who had made it? My adoptive mother did not know, and told me not to distress myself with fruitless fantasies. My father said that when I had been delivered to the house as a baby the statue had been wrapped together with me in the linen swathings. I doubted if either of my mysterious dead parents had actually put knife to wood themselves. High-ranking officers do not do the work of artisans and somehow I could not imagine a woman fashioning a God of War. Nor could I believe that the statue came from the poverty of Aswat. Montu was the Mightiest God of War, but Wepwawet was also venerated throughout Egypt, and in the end I had to sensibly presume that my dead father, a military man, had purchased the statue for his household shrine. Sometimes when I touched the God, I thought of those other hands, the hands that had made it, the hands of my father, the hands of my mother, and I imagined that I felt a flow of connectedness with them through the oiled patina of the wood. On this peaceful evening I had been given the unexpected opportunity to enter the house of the God and pray to him in his own domain. I skirted the end of the canal, walked across the tiny forecourt, and passed under the pylon.

  The outer court was already full of evening shadows, its paving blocks dim beneath my feet, the unadorned pillars on either side shrouded in the coming darkness but for their crowns which still glowed in the last light of the sun. As I approached the double doors leading to the inner court, I stooped down, unlatched my sandals, removed them, and was raising a hand to pass through when a voice stopped me.

  “The doors are locked.”

  Startled, I turned. A woman had emerged from the shelter of one of the pillars and was in the act of lowering a bucket onto its pediment. She tossed a rag after it, put a hand to the small of her back, stretched, then came towards me, her step brisk. “The officiating priest locks the doors to the inner court at sunset,” she went on. “It’s the custom here. Few villagers come to worship during the night. They work too hard during the day.” She spoke off-handedly, as though she had made the same explanation many times and was only partially aware of me, yet I found myself looking at her carefully. Her accent held nothing of the harsh, slurred speech of Egypt’s peasants. It was clipped, precise and well modulated. But her bare feet were rough and splayed, her hands coarse, the nails broken and grimed. She was dressed in the formless garb of the female fellahin, a thick shift falling to the knees and secured with a length of hemp, and hemp also held back her wiry black hair. Her deeply brown face was dominated by a pair of clear, intelligent eyes whose colour, I realized with a shock, was a translucent light blue. Meeting them, I was immediately tempted to drop my gaze and the urge annoyed me. I was a junior officer of the King’s city. I did not give way before peasants.

  “I see,” I replied more abruptly than I had intended, switching my attention to the inoffensive temple doors with what I hoped was a casual authority. “Then find me a priest to unlock the doors. I am guarding a Royal Herald. We are passing through your village on our way home to the Delta and I wish to perform my devotions to my totem while I have the opportunity.” She did not bow and back away as I had expected; indeed, she moved closer to me, and those peculiar eyes narrowed.

  “Really?” she said sharply. “What is the Herald’s name?”

  “His name is May,” I offered, and saw the sudden interest die from her face. “Will you fetch a priest?”

  She scanned me, taking in the regulation-issue sandals in my hand, the leather belt from which hung my short sword, the linen helmet on my head and the armband denoting my rank that hugged my upper arm and of which I was so proud. I could have sworn that in that moment she had correctly assessed my position, my age and the limits of my power to command her. “I do not think so,” she said smoothly. “He is enjoying his evening meal in his cell and I do not wish to disturb him. Have you brought a gift for Wepwawet?” I shook my head. “Then it would be better to come back at dawn, before you set sail, and say your prayers when the priest begins his duties.” She turned as if to leave but swung back. “I am a servant to the s
ervants of the God,” she explained. “Therefore I cannot open the doors for you. But I can bring you refreshments, beer and cakes or perhaps a meal. It is also my duty to see to the needs of those who journey in the service of Pharaoh. Where are you moored?” I thanked her, told her where our craft rested, and then watched her pick up the bucket and walk away through the gloom. She carried herself as regally as my older sister who had been trained in correct deportment by our nurse, a woman lured into our employ from the harem of the King himself, and I was left staring after her straight spine with a vague feeling of inferiority. Annoyed, I put on my sandals and made my way back to the boat.

  I found my Herald sitting on his camp stool moodily staring into the flames of the fire the sailors had kindled. They themselves squatted in the sand a little way off, talking quietly. Our craft was now a bulk of darkness against a fading sky, and the water rippling gently against its hull had lost all colour. He glanced up as I approached.

  “I suppose there’s no chance of a decent meal in this forsaken hole,” he greeted me wearily. “I could send one of the sailors to the mayor and demand something but the prospect of being surrounded by gawking villagers is too much tonight. Our supplies are running low. We will have to make do with flatbread and dried figs.” I crouched beside him and turned my face to the fire. He would eat and retire to sleep in the cabin of the boat, but I and the one soldier under me would rotate watches while he snored. I too was tired of indifferent food, hours spent in boredom and discomfort on the river, too many nights of broken sleep, but I was still young enough to be excited by my duties and proud of the responsibility that had me yawning and leaning on my spear in the small hours when nothing stirred but wind in the sparse trees along the Nile and overhead the constellations blazed.

  “We will be home in a few days,” I answered. “At least the journey has been uneventful. In the temple I met a woman who is bringing us beer and food.”