by Nick Drake
And I waited until slowly, untrustingly, he gave me the slightest nod.
Outside, Nakht confronted me.
‘What was that about?’
‘Now I can tell you the name of the man who did all of these things. But prepare yourself. Because you know him,’ I replied.
‘I?’ said Nakht, with astonishment and some degree of anger.
‘His name is Sobek.’
My old friend stood still as a statue. His mouth hung open foolishly.
‘Sobek?’ he repeated, incredulously. ‘Sobek…?’
‘He was Ay’s physician. Ay sacked him and replaced him. He gave him another, lesser job. Caring for the mad Mutnodjmet. But he cared for her in his own way. He made her an opium addict, and in the end she did anything he asked of her. And now she too is dead.’
He sat down slowly on the nearest elegant bench, as if exhausted by too much information.
‘So have you apprehended him?’ he asked.
‘No. I have no idea where he is, or where he will strike next. And I need your help.’
But Nakht continued to look horrified.
‘What is it?’ I snapped.
‘Well, he is a friend. It is a great shock.’
‘Certainly. And you introduced him to me here. That does not make you guilty or complicit in any way. But it does mean you can help me catch him.’
He looked away.
‘My friend, why do I get the feeling there is something you are not telling me, once more? Is this another of your secrets?’
He said nothing.
‘I need you to answer all my questions clearly and fully. If you refuse, I will have to take the necessary measures. This is too important, and time is too short, for games.’
He was astonished by my tone. We stared at each other. He saw I meant what I said.
‘We are both members of a society.’
‘What sort of society?’
With the utmost reluctance he continued: ‘We are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. I mean the research, investigation and study of secret knowledge. In our times, such esoteric knowledge has been driven underground. It has become unacceptable. Perhaps it was always something that could only be appreciated by an initiated elite who valued knowledge above all else. We preserve and continue the ancient traditions, the ancient wisdom.’
‘How?’
‘We are initiates, we preserve the secret rites, the secret books…’ he stuttered.
‘Now we are getting somewhere. And what are these books about?’
‘Everything. Medicine. Stars. Numbers. But they all have one thing in common.’
He hesitated.
‘And what is that?’ I asked.
‘Osiris. He is our God.’
Osiris. The King who, in the ancient story, once ruled the Two Lands, but was betrayed and murdered, and then resurrected from the Otherworld by his wife, Isis, whose love and loyalty made this possible. Osiris, whom we depict as a man with black or green skin, to indicate his fertility and his gift of resurrection and eternal life, dressed in the white bandages of death, holding the crook and flail, and the white crown. Osiris, who we also call ‘the perpetually good being’. Osiris, who offers the hope of eternal life, provided his followers make the right preparations for death. Osiris, who it is said waits for all of us after death in the Hall of Judgement, the supreme judge, ready to hear our confession.
I sat back and considered Nakht for a moment. I felt as if this man, who I counted as a close friend, had suddenly become almost a stranger to me. He stared at me as if he was feeling the same.
‘I am sorry for the way I spoke to you. Our friendship is very important to me, and I would not see it imperilled. But I had no choice. I had to make you tell me this. You are my only possible link to this man.’
He nodded slowly, and gradually a touch of warmth returned to the feeling between us.
‘You said I could help you. What did you mean?’ he asked eventually.
‘I will explain. Tell me something first. Does this secret society have a symbol?’
Once more he hesitated.
‘Our symbol is a black circle. It is the symbol of what we call the night sun.’
At last I had found the answer to that enigma. I quoted back his own words to him: ‘The Sun at rest in Osiris, Osiris at rest in the Sun.’
He looked askance.
‘My friend. I must ask you this. When I described the carving with the sun disc destroyed, and when I asked you about the eclipse, and we went to the astronomical archives, you must have recognized the connection. Is that not the truth?’
He nodded, miserably.
I let him dangle on the sharp hook of his own guilt for a little while.
‘What does it mean?’ I said, eventually.
‘In the simplest form, it means that in the darkest hour of the night, the soul of Ra is reunited with the body and soul of Osiris. This allows Osiris, and indeed all the dead of the Two Lands, to be reborn. It is the holiest, most profound moment in all creation. But it has never been witnessed by any mortal. It is the greatest of all the Mysteries.’
He was silent for a moment, unwilling to meet my eye.
‘I asked you about this before. And you did not tell me this most crucial detail. I might have identified Sobek much more quickly. I might have saved lives.’
He was frustrated again.
‘We are a secret society! The relevant word is “secret”! And at the time I did not see any truly compelling reason to betray the sacred oaths I took.’
‘And, as it turned out, you were wrong,’ I replied.
To his credit, he nodded and looked appalled.
‘The consequences of our slightest deeds seem never to be in our power. I try to control my life, but I see now, life controls me. And at moments like this, I feel I have the blood of innocent people on my conscience.’
‘No, you don’t. But if you are feeling in need of moral redemption, then help me now. Please.’
He nodded.
‘I suppose, logically, Sobek is working for either Ay or Horemheb, most likely the latter, for he benefits greatly from the King’s death.’
‘And if that is so, then catching him before he can wreak any more chaos is imperative. Horemheb’s ship of state is moored by the Malkata Palace. He has proposed to Ankhesenamun. She is considering his offer.’
‘May the Gods preserve us from that destiny. Tell me your plan,’ he said quietly.
‘I believe Sobek is obsessed with visions. I also believe he is fascinated by hallucinogenic mysteries and substances. He seems to be also fascinated by what happens in the moment between life and death. I think that is why he drugs his victims and watches closely as they die. He is searching for something in that moment. This might bear comparison with the interests of your secret society–the moment of darkness and renewal?’
Nakht nodded.
‘Now, Pentu, the King’s physician, mentioned to me that there is said to be another, very rare, fungus reputed to give the power of immortal vision; he said all that was known of it is that it grows only in the far boreal regions of the world. Do you know anything about this?’
Nakht nodded.
‘Certainly. It is mentioned in the secret books. I can give you a much more detailed account. It is said to be a red-capped fungus, which only thrives in remote forests of silver trees with golden leaves. Its existence is highly speculative. No one has ever held such a thing in his hand. Anyway, it is said to be a means by which its priests die to the world, experience a vision of the Gods themselves, and then return to life. They also say that, used incorrectly, it is a powerful poison, and results in madness. I always considered it a kind of esoteric fable of spiritual enlightenment rather than something that existed in the real world.’
‘What matters now is that it might exist, and that if one had such a fungus, it would be an object of obsessive fascination to such a man as Sobek. A vision is sometimes far more powerful than reali
ty itself…’ I said.
Nakht shook his head doubtfully.
‘Your plan depends upon something that does not exist.’
‘Sobek has used the power of the imagination against us himself. And so there’s a kind of poetic justice in using it against him, isn’t there?’
‘What a strange world this is,’ he replied, ‘Medjay detectives describing their work in terms of poetry and justice.’
I ignored his quip.
‘In any case, the person who will pretend to have obtained the mysterious, magical fungus is you,’ I replied quickly.
He looked aghast.
‘Me?’
‘Who else? I cannot very well present myself at your secret society, can I?’
He shrugged, realizing he was trapped.
‘We’ll need to concoct a good story about how you obtained it,’ I continued. ‘Where do you get your seeds from, the rare ones in the gardens?’
‘They are sent to me by merchants from all over the kingdom. Let me think. Ah! There’s one in the town of Carchemish on the Mittani border. He supplies me with very rare and interesting seeds and bulbs which come from the north.’
‘Excellent. A connection like that will bear investigation. You could say he obtained the hallucinogen from a dealer with contacts along a new trade route,’ I suggested.
‘That is just about plausible; to the east of the great inland sea beyond the northern borders of the Hatti kingdom there is a fabled and impassable mountain range where snow reigns permanently, and no traveller can survive. But it is also said that there is a secret route through those mountains, leading to another realm beyond, of endless forests and desolate plains, frozen in ice, white as the purest limestone, where primitive peoples, pale and straw-haired and blue-eyed, wearing the furs of beasts and the feathers of golden birds, live in palaces of ice.’
‘It sounds horrible,’ I said.
I had put Nakht in a dangerous situation. But he knew I had no other choice. If, as I believed, our man was obsessed with dreams and visions, and since I knew he was a member of the secret society, then this was the best lure.
‘So all you need to do now is send a discreet message in your no-doubt secret language, proposing to your secret-holding fellows that you will bring the hallucinogen to a meeting tomorrow night, so that they can inspect and experiment with this mysterious marvel of visions. Perhaps you could even offer the temptation of a live experiment.’
‘On whom, may I ask?’ he said nervously.
‘I am sure Khety will be willing to represent the victim, given what is at stake.’
‘Well, a message is not necessary. Tomorrow night we celebrate the last night of the Mysteries of Osiris. I suppose you do not know that the last month of the inundation is the time of his festival? As the flood waters recede, so we celebrate the rites of resurrection. Following the days and nights of lamentation, we celebrate the triumph of the God. Tomorrow night, in fact.’
44
I was desperate to return to my home, to check that all was well, and that the guard I had ordered Khety to organize was in place. I could afford to take no chances with my family. But as I turned a corner in the riddle of the lanes of the oldest part of the city, I saw a shape whirring through the air, and felt a blow, spreading with something like painful warmth across the side of my head, and then all was darkness.
I came to my senses on the filthy floor of the lane. Thoth was nuzzling my face with his wet muzzle. The shadows of four men stood over me. They were wearing the kilt of the army. One of them tried to kick Thoth, but he turned on him, his teeth bared.
‘Call your animal off,’ said one of them.
I quelled the bile in my throat, and slowly got to my feet.
‘Thoth!’
He came instantly, obediently, to stand beside me, at attention, gazing at the soldiers. I allowed them to shackle me, and then, with them forming a guard of dishonour, I was hurried away, down to the docks. They hustled me on to a boat, and, with Thoth anxious at my side, we set off across the Great River. We landed on the opposite bank, further north. I was pushed on to a waiting chariot, Thoth bounding up to sit at my feet, and we were driven off at speed along the stone ways that led directly towards the desert hills and mortuary temples; and then we turned north-east, towards the hidden valley. Then I was summarily taken from the chariot, and marched up the baking slopes of the rocky grey and orange hills. Our breath sounded loud in the tinder-dry silence. I wondered suddenly whether I was being escorted to some desert grave, but this seemed an absurd way to go about disposing of me. They could simply have caved in my skull and thrown me to the crocodiles, if my death was their intention. No, I was being taken to meet someone.
When we reached the top of the hill, with the great green plain surrounding the city of Thebes stretching far away to the east, hazy in the late afternoon heat, behind me, I was not surprised to see in the shimmering haze a figure waiting for me under a sunshade, with a horse standing nearby. I knew his profile. Horemheb seemed as unaffected as a lizard by the heat. He looked at me, sweating and out of breath, with contempt. He made me stand in the sun, while he remained in his circle of deep shade. I waited for him to address me.
‘I am puzzled. Why does the Queen trust you?’ he said, suddenly.
‘If you wanted to have a conversation, why did you bring me up here?’ I asked.
‘Answer the question.’
‘I am the Queen’s personal guard. You would have to ask her why she trusts me.’
He came closer.
‘Understand me well. If I do not receive satisfactory answers to my questions, I will not hesitate to cut your baboon’s head off. I see you are fond of the creature. I was not happy to have you listening to my conversation with the Queen, and that inclines me further towards the necessity of violence,’ he said.
I considered my few options.
‘I am a detective in the city Medjay. I was called by the Queen to investigate a mystery.’
‘What was the nature of this mystery?’
I hesitated. He nodded to one of his men, who drew out a knife.
‘Suspicious objects were found within the royal quarters,’ I offered.
‘It will save time if you answer as fully as possible.’
‘These objects were threats to the life of the King.’
‘Now we are getting somewhere. And what was the result of your investigation?’
‘No culprit has been decisively identified.’
He gazed at me doubtfully.
‘You can’t be much good, then.’
He beckoned me to follow him to look the other way, down into the hidden valley that lay beyond and far below us, deep into the hills to the west. On the scarred dust-grey of the valley floor I saw tiny figures moving about: workmen.
‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘That is the King’s tomb being readied,’ he said. ‘Or rather, it is Ay’s tomb being adapted to receive the King.’
It seemed wiser to say nothing.
‘You may be wondering what it is I want from you.’
‘I assumed there must be something,’ I replied. ‘Although what a mere Medjay detective could offer you is unclear.’
‘You have influence with the Queen. I wish you to do two things. One is, to encourage the Queen to a favourable reply to my offer of marriage. The other is, to report to me on Ay’s conversations with her. Is that clear? And of course, there will be great advantages for you in the future. You are an ambitious man, and that should be respected, and your ambitions satisfied.’
‘Presumably, if I do not do as you ask, you will execute my baboon.’
‘No, Rahotep. If you do not do as I wish, and if you are not successful in persuading the Queen of the advantages of marriage to me, I will execute your family. I know more about you than you can imagine. Your three girls. Your young son. Your beautiful wife, and your ageing father. Just think what I could do to them, if I chose. An
d of course, I would have you live to endure and witness every moment of their suffering. And then I would condemn you to the gold mines of Nubia, where you could lament their deaths at your leisure.’
I tried to keep breathing, and not to give myself away. I was tempted to reveal everything then about the identity of Sobek, and his connection to Horemheb’s wife. I was tempted to ask him about the balls of blood that had been thrown at the King and Queen during the festival. But at this moment, when he seemed to control everything, I held on to my information. It was all I had. I would save it.
I was about to accept his proposal, when somehow, impossibly–for evening was still some hours away–the brilliance of the daylight noticeably faded. It was as if the air and the light were slowing down in time. Everyone noticed it. For a moment Horemheb and his guards looked confused. Thoth began to run in circles, muttering anxiously, his ears laid flat against his skull. Now unnatural cries and animal howls rose from every corner of the valley, and from the more distant settlements. We all stood staring up towards the sun, shading our eyes to try to understand what was happening. A great catastrophe seemed to be taking place in the realm of the sky. Suddenly vast shadows massed and moved across the slopes, hollows and hidden depressions of the mountainside, and, it seemed, from out of the red rock itself, as if the underworld’s ghosts and spirits were rising up to conquer the light of the living.
Distantly, I heard a high-pitched music calling urgently through the air; it must be the ceremonial trumpets blasting their emergency from the temple walls. The great pylon gates would be closing firmly now against the people. Inside, priests in white robes would be scurrying to offer sacrifices to sustain Ra from the unprecedented threat of darkness that was suddenly sweeping over everything.
It felt like the end of the world. I thought of the children, and Tanefert. I hoped they would be at home together, where at least they could shelter behind the solid wooden door. I hoped they would not be afraid. The vast shadows drew even more strength and gathered together into a strange twilight; and then everything suddenly went very quiet. Even the northerly wind, which always sprang up in the late afternoon, faded and then completely died. It was as if the world was abandoned; down below in the far fields, I could only see a few mules standing uncertainly, untended, and the last few workers running for their lives across their carefully tilled rows. I heard the tiny screams of an abandoned child, but I could not see him, and anyway he too was swiftly lost in the encroaching gloom.
