Occasionally, mysterious visitors would arrive. They’d be garbed in striped robes, coarse garments and heavy sandals; they looked like Sand Dwellers with their long hair and beards though they lacked their shifty gaze and furtive ways. They were warriors with sharp-nosed, haughty faces who swaggered rather than walked and only reluctantly handed over their weapons to Imri’s keeping. Why they came or what they discussed was kept secret. The Veiled One was very cunning. He always met such visitors at the far end of his audience hall or out in the garden pavilion where eavesdroppers would find it difficult to lurk. These men would come and squat before the Veiled One, talking softly, gesturing with their hands, always treating him with the greatest respect. Great Queen Tiye would often join such meetings and sometimes, at night, she and her son went out to meet these strange ones beyond the gates. I’d go with them, Tiye and the Veiled One shrouded in cloaks and hoods. The strangers would be waiting, hoods pulled over their own heads. They were always armed, one or two carrying pitch torches. They’d leave, slipping quietly through the darkness, both my master and his mother returning shortly after dawn. No one from the Silent Pavilion was ever allowed to accompany them. I’d established a good relationship with Imri and often practised with him on the drill ground. Over a beer jug I asked about these mysterious visitors. The Kushite pressed a calloused finger against my lips.
‘You may ask, Mahu, but never expect an answer. I know very little of them except that they are Apiru, a tribe of the Shemshu.’
‘Apiru?’
‘Hush!’ Again the finger against my lips. He nudged me gently, got to his feet and strolled away.
The Apiru were no strangers to me. They were not desert people but nomadic tribes who’d wandered across Sinai following the Horus roads past the silver mines. They’d been allowed to enter Egypt and suckle at her fertile breasts. Some joined the army, others became craftsmen; they were Egyptian in everything but name. Others kept to themselves, living away from the cities, only visiting them to barter and haggle in the marketplace. I wondered what they would have in common with my master and with Egypt’s Great Queen, yet Imri was correct. The danger of such a question lurked not so much in asking it, but in searching for the answers.
For the rest, the Veiled One immersed himself in his activities. He loved painting and sculpture, and two of Tiye’s master craftsmen, the painter Bek and the sculptor Uti, were frequent visitors to the house. The Veiled One had taken over and converted a high-ceilinged storeroom, transforming this into what he called his ‘House of Paintings’. I often joined him there. Sometimes Bek painted on screens, other times the walls, but only after the Veiled One had given his approval. Most of the paintings were similar to those found in temples, palaces or tombs, executed in vivid colours, light blues, dark greens, rich yellows: garden scenes, a hunter boating along the Nile, a hawk plunging on its quarry or an athlete about to throw a stick. The gods did not appear in them, however, nor did the Pharaoh or, indeed, the imperial court. Other paintings were more dramatic and vivid, different from any I had ever seen. Bek and Uti were related; in fact, they looked like twins, small men with round smiling faces, totally immersed in their art, ever ready to please. They were a little shamefaced about these new paintings, but listened patiently as the Veiled One enthused over their realism.
‘We must live in the truth,’ my master announced proudly, displaying the images of himself painted on the wall.
Bek and Uti had followed his instructions scrupulously and, rather than disguise his physical imperfections and deformities, they exaggerated them. The Veiled One was portrayed in a striped blue and gold head-dress, and a gloriously coloured kilt, with a sash round his waist, his face and jaw were portrayed as much longer than in real life, the sensuous lips more full, the eyes sharper and more elongated, his chest and belly more protuberant, his hips wider. ‘The truth?’ The Veiled One repeated, and gestured with his fingers. ‘If life is truth and paintings reflect life, then they should be truthful. Well, Mahu, what do you think?’
‘Has your father seen them?’
The question was a mistake. The Veiled One spun on his heel and strode out of the House of Paintings. Bek and Uti stood, heads down, as if they were war-prisoners.
‘Never,’ Bek whispered, ‘ever mention his father again.’ He raised his gentle face, eyes screwed up. ‘You are most fortunate, Mahu. I have heard of others being struck with a sharp-edged cane for saying less.’
‘Does his father know of these paintings?’ I refused to be abashed. I had not intended to give offence and I was angry at being treated so unfairly.
‘No one knows of them except us and Great Queen Tiye.’ Bek laughed sharply. ‘If we exhibited these in the temples and palaces we would be the laughing stock of Thebes.’
The Veiled One soon forgave me. He was always busy and, as Bek and Uti had once confided, passed from one thing to another like a butterfly in the garden. He would invite the two artists down, question them, work them like slaves, then reward them with banquets and a stack of gifts, only to forget them for a month. He’d become interested in shrubs, tending the herb plots or using plants to make stoppers for wine jars, chaff glued together or a parcel of young sycamore leaves. He would fashion candles and elaborate oil lamps. He would spend an entire afternoon making floral garlands out of the fibre of palm leaves, lotus petals and willow leaves. He’d experiment with the destruction of a snake’s nest by leaving dried fish, lumps of natron or even an onion at its entrance. Occasionally he would call the housekeepers together and lecture them on the use of fleabane mixed with charcoal to drive away flies or the way to mix frankincense and myrrh, mingled with boiled honey, to give the kitchens and storerooms a pleasing fragrance. He was fascinated by animals, particularly the cats, which roamed through the storerooms ever vigilant against vermin. I once found him outside the kitchens dissecting a mouse’s corpse, taking out the small organs and laying them on the paving. He glanced up as I approached.
‘No, I didn’t kill it, Mahu. I just wondered, is the life-force in a mouse the same as in a lion? Does the lion receive more? And, if that is the case, do we share the same life-force and express it in a different way?’
He never waited for an answer but returned to the task in hand. He was a generous master in many ways. One day he brought me a beautiful tame bird, a golden oriole. I was much taken with it.
‘What will you call it?’ the Veiled One enquired.
Again I replied before thinking. ‘Why, Weni! He was our overseer at the House of Instruction.’
The Veiled One’s face showed I had made a mistake. I flew the Oriole twice in the small meadow beyond the pavilion walls, but afterwards it disappeared and I never saw it again. My master did not replace it, and I never uttered the name Weni in his presence again.
He did not attend the Jubilee days or visit his father’s court, nor did he observe the religious festivals. In none of the rooms did I see one statue or carving of a god. In a nearby market, I bought a small wooden statue of Anubis, a tawdry imitation of the great statue in the god’s temple at Thebes, the one I had seen as a boy, the jaw of which moved so as to issue an oracle. I meant it as a gift for one of the servants who had been particularly kind to me. When the Veiled One saw it, he snatched it from my hand and ordered me to buy another. He later crouched on the ground like a little boy and pretended the two gods were talking to each other or fighting like quarrelsome curs. He was particularly fascinated by the moving jaw and used them as puppets.