by Anton Gill
He had considered having Mutnefert killed, just to be rid of her; for to exile her might have placed her outside his physical reach, but not outside the bounds of his imagination. He could not bear the thought of her with another man, though frequently, despite himself, he would torture himself with the contemplation of it. And yet, to kill her…He still could not bring himself to have it done. He had wondered about having her watched; but he knew that if she discovered such a thing she would be done with him. At the same time he did not think he could bear to have confirmed what he most feared.
He turned once more to the papers before him, picking up first one and then another, and placing them in loose order, at least to distract his mind; but desire had taken hold of it, and he knew that he would not be able to work until he had satisfied it. Cursing inwardly, he pushed his seat away and pulled himself to his feet, picking up his wig and jamming it roughly down on to his broad skull as he limped to the door to call one of his body-servants. The bad foot was more swollen than ever in the heat, and it ached sullenly as it dragged after him.
The slave came running. He had a hard young body which shone in the sun, and Rekhmire laid an appreciative hand on his muscular shoulder. Perhaps this boy would do…But no! He needed a woman, now, to slake his lust. Then he could work. Tonight, in his own house, in the room painted with the act of creation, he would make Mutnefert earn her keep, earn her place as his mistress. Somehow he would find a way to break her proud spirit, and then the thought of her would cease to torment him. As his heart dwelt on what he would do, he caressed himself gently, his breath ragged.
‘Master, shall I — ?’ asked the young slave.
‘No. Get me a woman. One of the foremen’s whores will do, as long as she’s young. But get her quickly!’
There was a roaring noise, like much water driven through a narrow channel, only muffled and distant. He wanted silence, but the noise would not diminish, and there seemed to be a slapping, a beating, too, as of paddles, except that the two sounds were one.
He longed for the silence that there had been before, but the racket would not let him return to it. To shut it out, he contracted his eye muscles. A hundred paces ahead of him winches twisted and solid doors closed. Ochre suns burst in front of his eyes, and amidst them a man dangled on the end of a pike. Many leagues below his eyes, his lips began to move. A rank taste, but coolness. The words: eyes, lips, seemed like new discoveries too. Then there was breathing. But breathing hurt. It was too much effort. If only the noise would let him drift back.
It was no good. He had regained consciousness, and the pain had to be faced. If only it would be granted to him to get over it before there was fresh danger. He made a cautious movement — new discoveries: arms, legs, a pelvis — though all too far away to contemplate. Remote; not his, not really. But as he moved, a hundred thousand freezing needles drove outwards through his forehead, through the top of his skull, and a lolling sac of bile lurched in his stomach. The top of his skull; he wanted to tear it off, to let air in, then there would be relief.
He knew that he had half raised himself on to one arm, but now he was stuck. He wanted to lie back, but couldn’t face the pain of more movement. His whole body would burst; everything would run out. His head hammered and great yelps of pain whanged round it with each beat of the distant mill race. It was as if embalmers had already broken through the ethmoid bone and driven their thin hooks up his nostrils into the cranial cavity to remove the brain. He tried his nose, to breathe there, but it was caked solid. For a moment panic banished pain, but then he discovered his mouth again, and breathed there, not gulping, taking it slowly.
After a moment or two of this his heart began very falteringly to grow steady. His body reassembled around it and he stood once more at his own centre. I will stay here, he thought, until something happens. If nothing happens, I will stay here for ever. This will do. This is at any rate better than it was. Meanwhile his heart and memory trawled for scraps of the howling dreams that had occupied — how long? It seemed several lifetimes since he had climbed up to Ramose’s tomb.
After another minute had passed he realised that although his arms and back retained the impression of stone and rock, he was lying on something softer, and something soft was covering him. He did not yet know which direction was which, or whether he was upside down, but at least he was no longer floating in a void where the teeth of the creatures of the pit tore at him.
There was something else. Something that was not of him, but outside him.
A touch.
It resolved itself as a cool hand on his arm. Lying there gently, with just enough pressure to reassure, to say: I am here.
‘Aahmes…’ He wondered if he had the strength to open his eyes. Very slowly, he relaxed them. The exploding suns were gone. Through the coral membrane of the lids, he could see real light.
Someone was calling him. Gently, cautiously. Calling his name. But he still could not open his eyes. He had to decide where he was, whom he might be with. Very gently, the hand moved on his arm, stroking it, reassuring. Another touched his brow, and from the movement of the body he could now clearly feel close to him there came the delicious scent of seshen.
He blinked. The light in the room was dim, yet it shrieked into his pupils, scalding the retina. The freezing needles returned, stabbing frenziedly. He reached out and held the hand that had been on his arm, holding it hard, for dear life, to keep control, and it held his in no less firm a grip.
When the room had ceased to rock, and the yelling in his skull had subsided to a dull but manageable throb; when the bed seemed unlikely to lurch and pitch him on to the floor, he opened his eyes again, firmly this time.
He looked into another pair of eyes, concerned, raven-black.
‘Osiris has sent you back to us,’ said Aset. Huy could not remember the last time that a voice had held such tenderness for him.
Much later in the day, when Amotju had joined them, he told them of the circumstances which had led him to the tomb. In turn, he learnt that he had been unconscious for three days. They had found the body of the murdered guard first, lying where it had fallen in the courtyard. It was not until they had examined the pillaged tomb that one of the household servants found Huy.
‘We were worried that you had disappeared,’ Amotju explained later, when Huy was able to sit up and take food. The three of them sat on the garden terrace of Aset’s house that evening. Huy felt luxuriously wrapped in its safety, and enjoyed the deep pleasure that only comes with the sense of having survived great illness or great pain. ‘But we had no idea who might have known about you, or wanted to get to you so quickly.’
Huy told him about the papyrus note.
‘Someone recognised me, or had seen me leave your boat. So, either some enemy of yours suspected me of being a newly-hired agent and wanted to waste no time in getting rid of me, or some friend of yours knew about the grave robbers’ plan and wanted to warn you through me.’
‘The first seems unlikely; and in the second case, why not warn me directly? There is another thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Why did you go alone? Why did you not tell me?’
‘You do not want to be associated with me publicly, remember? I am a disgraced officer of Akhenaten.’
Amotju was silent.
‘And the tomb? Your father’s tomb. How much damage was done?’
‘Little damage. They took everything that was expensive. Everything that was of wood and everything that was of metal. Some shabti figures. They tried to prise the bronze from the doors, too. I am having the doors covered by a stone shutter. But damage — no. These people do not desecrate; they simply take. Did you see their faces?’
‘No.’
‘How did they know you were there?’
‘They must have had lookouts whom I did not see.’ Huy was not prepared to describe his encounter with the demon. He could not accept that such a creature could even exist outside the imaginations of the pries
ts; that it would abet tomb plunderers seemed even less likely. So he kept silent.
This was something he had to resolve in his own heart before he spoke of it to others.
‘Do you hurt still?’
‘I hurt.’
Aset had sent for a doctor as soon as Huy had been brought back to her house. The doctor had located three broken ribs, a torn muscle in the shoulder, and said that there had been much loss of blood. ‘Three hours longer, in the sun, and he would have died, dried up like an apricot.’
‘The world must know I am here now,’ said Huy. ‘Perhaps it is time for me to move.’
‘It doesn’t matter now if the world knows you are here, or that I know you. It is too late.’ Huy could sense irritation in Amotju’s voice. ‘You should not have gone alone. You should have come back here and relayed a message to me through Aset. Now, you may have startled the big game away by frightening the hares.’
‘If they knew who I was. There may be no connection between the people who gave me the message and the people who robbed the tomb. I was just someone in the way, a stray worker, a tomb-servant, another guard. They left me for dead; it is their misfortune that I survived.’ Huy smiled. ‘Have you yet been able to arrange a meeting with Rekhmire?’
Amotju frowned. ‘It is never easy; but yes, he will see you. He is looking for a clerk of the works for the southwestern quarter of the palace; but do not worry,’ he continued, catching Huy’s expression, ‘he will not engage you. He will sense your independent spirit and he will not like it. Don’t worry, my friend; I know what your fate would be if you were caught acting as a scribe again after the work had been forbidden you. I would not expose you to such a risk.’
Huy relaxed. ‘There is another question, which becomes urgent. I can no longer stay here. If I proceed deeper in this, there may be risks to Aset.’
‘There are no risks I cannot face,’ said Aset.
‘I have considered this request of yours,’ said Amotju. ‘And for the moment I prefer that you stay here. In any case there is no question of your moving now. You have had a battering, my friend. I want you to recover quickly, to finish the job I brought you here to do. Aset will see to it that you are better cared for than any manservant would, and alone you would neglect yourself. You have been foolhardy, but perhaps your presence at the tomb scared them, prevented them for doing even more harm; and for that I — we — are grateful.’ He rose, draining his cup of wine. ‘Take care of him, Aset. Huy, can you walk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then come with me to the gate.’
As soon as they were away from the garden terrace, Amotju dropped his mask. His expression was troubled. ‘First the death threat. Now, the robbery at my father’s tomb. Can they be linked? Is Rekhmire behind them both?’
‘I will find out.’
‘Do. Recover quickly. I feel an ill star rising over me.’
‘We create our own ill stars.’
‘No. The gods do.’
Amotju pulled his cloak around him and mounted the litter which awaited him at the gate. The four body-servants who attended him picked it up by its four handles, and bore him off into the dusk. Huy stood for a moment at the gate, aware that the door-slave was eyeing him curiously, but unwilling to re-enter the house. He drank in the rich air and watched the darkness engulf the last moments of day. Under the bandages, he could feel the soreness of his body, but he had no intention of resting. He had been caught, humiliated. It was a lesson from which he had been lucky to escape with his life. Now, he was going to find out who had tried to take it. It wasn’t just Amotju’s political interests he was serving anymore; it had become his own fight, too.
He walked back towards the house. The night was warm and kind, and the scent of the flowers hung heavy in the air. From a bush, a bird murmured sleepily.
There was no one on the terrace now but Aset. She had moved to sit on a long couch which had been placed at the edge of the pool. With a stick, she idly teased the slow-moving fish, dark as the water.
She looked up at him as he approached and there was a new light in her eye.
‘Sit here, next to me.’
He did so, aware more keenly than ever of the warmth of her body. She was wearing a long, loose shift, gathered with a carelessly tied girdle at the waist.
‘Do you really want to leave here?’
‘It would be better if I was in the city.’
‘You can’t wait to get away from me.’ Almost a little girl’s voice — and yet, of course, calculated. She leant forward, swirling the water gently with her stick. As she did so, the material of her dress stretched across every contour of her body. He placed a hand on the couch next to her, his throat dry, but she continued to tease the fish, looking down at the water in complete concentration. After a moment she leant back and smiled at him, looking at him directly, challengingly, with those night-black eyes.
‘When I was twelve and you were twenty-three…’ she said, still smiling; but it was a very certain kind of smile now. Idly, she relaxed her legs, her right hand toying with one end of the girdle. She brought her naked left foot up and just touched his knee with her toes.
‘I don’t want you to go away,’ she said. ‘I’ve been watching over you for three days and every day I have wanted you more. Do you think you — ? When you came back to us this morning, the first word you said was Aahmes.’
It had been three years since Aahmes, and longer than that since he had been close to a woman. Already they were beyond words and beyond caution. He was holding her foot, caressing it with his thumb, and then her calf, her knee, her thigh, pushing the shift up, as she loosened the girdle and let it fall away. She lay back on the couch and he leant against her, feeling the sweet joy of her flesh against his as her hands worked at unfolding the tucks of his kilt. His ribs ached but their complaints came too late to stop the desire. Her arms were round his neck, caressing the back of his head, as he brought his lips down to cover first her right breast, then her left, softly sucking the nipple she thrust into his mouth, teasing it with his tongue, nibbling it with his teeth. She brought his head up to hers and held it for a moment, looking into his face with the eyes of a passionate stranger; then their lips were together, their tongues stroking and wrestling each other, as she pushed and rubbed her body against his.
Her arms were busy around him, and he realised that she was gently manoeuvring him to her side.
‘Lie still,’ she whispered, her hands on his flanks now, and her mouth kissing, licking, exploring his neck and upper chest, then darting much lower. He felt her fingers form a tight ring around the base of his penis, before she drew it gently into the warm wet cave of her mouth, to meet the caresses of her tongue.
He would have liked to spend longer exploring her body; her hard thighs and tight buttocks; her soft, challenging breasts, the delicious moist cavity of her mouth; and later there would be time, but now, their need for each other was too urgent — as urgent as it was spontaneous. He drew her up to him again and rolled her on to her back on the couch. Her hand was below him now, reaching hastily to guide him as he lifted his body slightly away from her, listening to the contrast between his own ragged breathing and her sighs and gasps. In another moment they were one.
Huy was trying to fathom the priest. He could not have provided a stronger contrast to the ascetic, unworldly men who had guided the worship of the Aten in the City of the Horizon. This man had his feet planted firmly on the earth. He was heavily built, though not tall, and might have been anywhere between forty and fifty years old. One of his fleshy shoulders rode considerably higher than the other, and the face that hung between them on its short neck was coarse, loose-lipped and pock-marked, though the eyelashes, exaggerated by kohl, were long and curiously feminine. The overall impression was of a man in love with power and in love with himself in that order. A politician and a survivor who would not care who else sank, so long as he rose to the surface himself. Huy wondered whether he was vulnerable to anythi
ng at all.
They sat opposite each other in Rekhmire’s room at the palace. For his part, the priest kept his counsel. He knew that the man sitting opposite him had all the qualities the job he had in hand demanded — he was a good scribe, and had sound knowledge of engineering and architecture. Here, too, was an independent spirit which it might be better to have under his own wing, on his side, as it were, than in the potential employ of any of his enemies. Of course he couldn’t be sure that the man wasn’t that already, and sent as a spy.
‘It will take time before I make a final decision,’ he said finally. ‘Where can I reach you?’
‘I will contact your clerk. I am new in the city, and not yet settled.’
‘Then I advise you to find a house quickly. You must register with the Med jays.’
‘It is stricter here than it was when I went away.’
‘Yes…You have not said why it is that you have returned here from the Delta.’
‘My wife and I have divorced.’
‘I see.’ Rekhmire did not enquire further. He allowed the silence to descend again.
Huy wondered what he would do if he were actually offered the job, but decided that the likelihood of that was remote. He was well aware that the man opposite him didn’t like him; that he presented an obscure threat to his sense of security. It had been worth the risk to get close to him, to get his measure; but the task of collecting evidence against him, enough to bring him down, would be as great as laying siege to a city.
Two days after this interview, and five after Aset and Huy had made love in the dusk of her garden, the bullion barge Glory-of-Ra was wallowing in midstream halfway between Aswan and Esna, on the sixth day of her journey downriver after taking on a cargo of Nubian gold. This late in the dry season there was little activity on the farms which sporadically lined the banks of either side of the River, and this was in any case a lonely, underpopulated stretch. With a valuable load on board, the captain, Ani, one of Amotju’s senior commanders, had taken on a detachment of Nubian marines as private guards, and these were now deployed at the bow and stern, armed with bows and lances. The River was broad and sluggish here, and even with every man at his oar, there was no way the overburdened Glory-of-Ra could outrun or outmanoeuvre a lighter, faster craft. So far, the voyage had been mercifully uneventful; but still Ani anxiously scanned the horizon of the River ahead and behind. Even to carry off part of his cargo would make rich men of river pirates, and a man on horseback could have carried news of him ahead from Nubia much faster than he could travel.
