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of earshot, vainly signalling at Ishat, who had rolled onto her stomach and was deliberately gazing into the shrubbery. “I am not supposed to ‘outstay my welcome’ as my mother says,” she muttered. “But seeing that no one has told me to go away, I will stay here.”
    In truth Huy wanted all of them to go away so that he could examine the scarab again at his leisure. “She will want to put me to bed for the afternoon sleep and then clear the mess,” he responded hopefully. “But if you like, you can come back later and play with me, Ishat.”
    She shot him a dark look. “I will if you don’t forget your promise never to be mean to me again.”
    The party was breaking up. Ker and Heruben said their effusive goodbyes. Huy suffered himself to be kissed repeatedly before they made their way to where their litter-bearers drowsed just beyond Hapu’s main gate. Ishat rose reluctantly, waved dismissively at her mother, and disappeared in the direction of her hut.
    “You look tired, Huy,” Itu said. “You will sleep well this afternoon. Have you enjoyed your celebration?” She scooped him up and hugged him, but he protested, getting down to retrieve his gifts, balancing the monkey on top of the sennet in one hand and the scarab on the box in the other as he walked carefully towards the house.
    Hapzefa undressed him, grunted approvingly at the pristine state of his new shirt, stood the monkey on the table by his cot, slid the sennet game under it, and produced a square of soft folded linen. “It was left over from the shirt, Master Huy. It will make a good bed for your scarab. Perhaps you should place it upside down in the box so that its legs do not break off.” But Huy wanted to see the bright curve of its back whenever he lifted the lid, and once she had freshened the water in his cup and had closed his door behind her, he patted down the linen and reverently set the beetle on it. He fell asleep with the box clutched tightly against his chest.
    He did not forget his promise to Ishat, and in the following days they spent much time together. As usual they had many fights, but Huy, mindful of the golden treasure that she had bestowed on him, was learning to control his urge to respond to her baiting with a slap or a pinch, and he missed her when she did not come prancing into the garden to while away the dead hours between the afternoon rest and the evening meal. She usually had good suggestions about what to play, although when he wanted her to be a Vizier and he the King, she seldom agreed. “Viziers are men,” she would say. “Anyway, being one is boring. I want to be Queen Meryet-Hatshepset. You can be Pharaoh Men-kheper-Ra Thothmes.” Eventually they took turns conceding to one another.
    In a burst of affection he gave her his dog. He would have liked to make her a present of the ivory monkey, but his father indignantly refused to countenance the idea. “Your uncle gave gold for that toy,” he told Huy. “It was very expensive. What would he say if he came to visit and saw Ishat playing with it? Why don’t you like it, you foolish boy?” Huy could not say why. All he knew was that it frightened him more as time went by. At first he had simply turned away from its idiotic grin when he wanted to sleep, but the atmosphere of blind malevolence around it seemed to spread farther into his room each day, until he could no longer banish an awareness of its presence by showing it his back. He put it under his cot, not even liking the cool feel of it when he picked it up, but that was somehow worse than not being able to see it. What if it began to clap its paws together all by itself, there beneath him? He knew that he was being silly, that it was really only a lump of inanimate matter (although he was unable to use those words), yet he remembered being told that the kas of the gods lived in their likenesses, making the stone come alive, and his dread grew. What if one of Thoth’s holy baboons was bad-tempered