Free The Twice Born by Pauline Gedge

teaching him such basic skills, although he missed Hapzefa’s gentle touch. There was also a dish of dates and raisins and a glass of milk. Huy hesitated. He was hungry again, but perhaps Harnakht had fetched the snack for himself. But it had been placed on his table, so in the end he emptied cup and dish.
    He was just putting on his sandals when Harnakht returned. “I washed myself and dressed myself,” he blurted eagerly, forgetting what his uncle had said about the other boys of course being able to do these things, but Harnakht simply nodded. He had a white ribbon in his hand. Huy’s elation vanished. “I won’t,” he said.
    “Yes, you will.” Harnakht held it out. “Every first-year boy wears a white one. In the second year you get a yellow one, in the third blue, in the fourth red, and so on. It’s how the teachers and servants are able to recognize the level of study you’re at. After the fourth year you get arm bands instead. See mine?” He thrust out his arm. “This is my eighth year. I’m twelve. When you get to your twelfth year you get a gold one. You have to give it back for the next sixteen-year-olds, of course, but the High Priest himself gives you a scroll to say that you are qualified to begin work as a scribe if you want to.” He shrugged. “I will become mayor of Abtu after my father, I expect, but before that I will work under him as an assistant scribe. Now tie this around your youth lock, close to your scalp until the hair grows longer.”
    Huy was mollified. If the other boys in their first year had to look like girls, then he supposed no one would think him stupid. Snatching the ribbon, he fought to make it tight, but somehow his fingers got in the way and in the end Harnakht tied it for him. “You must practise doing it yourself,” was all he said.
    For the next two hours Harnakht walked Huy through the world behind Ra’s temple. He showed him the four other compounds, one of which had separate small houses and flower beds, and trellises covered in vines that provided shade by the large pool. This was where the oldest boys, already men, spent their final year. “Many pupils leave at my age,” Harnakht told Huy. “By then they have learned to read and write and are ready to continue a different education at home, depending on their parents’ wealth and blood. But those that stay on here will have become proficient in music, chariot driving, and all military arts and strategy by the time they go. Few parents can afford to keep their sons here so long. Only the sons of nobles inhabit these houses, with their own servants to care for them.”
    The next month stretched ahead for Huy like a summer that never became an Inundation and then winter. He tried to imagine how long twelve years was, and gave up with a shudder. He hoped that Uncle Ker was not rich enough to keep him in school for such an eternity.
    The school itself consisted of one enormous room, mostly bare but for one wall where a row of baskets held an assortment of pottery shards, and a long table laden with heaps of papyrus sheets, scribe’s palettes, pots of ink, and brushes. An easel holding a whitewashed board stood at one end. “The scrolls are too valuable to be kept here,” Harnakht said. “The teacher brings them every day from the House of Life.” Huy did not know what he was talking about. The room intimidated him with its slightly musty smell of new papyrus and pottery dust, although it was full of late afternoon sunlight that poured into it from large, high windows. Looking up, he saw a row of pigeons sitting on one of the sills, preening and watching the two boys.
    “Light is, of course, needed in here,” Harnakht said, misinterpreting Huy’s glance, “and in the mornings it is not direct, seeing that the room has a northwestern orientation. After class we go straight to the dining room, through there.” He strode to a wide, doorless aperture and Huy trailed after him, mentally tracing the route