by Anton Gill
It was still early, and although he could hear movement in the kitchen at the top of the house, muffled and cautious as the baker sought to disturb no one, the rest of the building was wrapped in the profound silence that settles on life when night is at its deepest. Reaching his door, his foot scuffed something small and hard, placed on the floor outside it. He knelt and peered down at it through the semi-gloom, and picking it up found it to be a stone scarab, of the sort on which commemorative inscriptions were incised. He carried it along the short corridor to where an oil-lamp glowed in a recess in the wall. There he turned it over. On its base one hieroglyph was cut: the sign for death.
Suddenly, all the warmth rushed out of him, and the friendly darkness filled with threat. Still clutching the scarab, and taking the oil-lamp with him, he retraced his steps silently and hastily. At the door of his room he hesitated; but then, overcoming his fear, he pushed it open firmly, and entered.
Even by the feeble glimmer the lamp cast on it from a distance, he could see that someone, or something, was lying in the bed. He placed the scarab on a table by the door and moved forward. He was unarmed, but the rigid stillness of whatever it was in the bed told him that it posed no direct threat. At first, the light only allowed him to make out that it was covered by a linen sheet, and that the sheet was marred by an enormous dark stain at its centre. There was a faint smell which made the hair on the back of his neck rise: the odour of long-dead fish and sulphur lingered in the room.
He saw that although the proportions of the thing in the bed were human, the head was not. It was too long. What should have been the nose was pulled forward into a snout, the forehead had been flattened backwards, and the hair and chin had disappeared. There seemed to be no mouth, until he realised that the head was all mouth — huge extended jaws containing…But they contained nothing. And the eyes were sightless holes. Huy saw that this was a crocodile mask, the skin of a dead animal stretched over a light wooden frame. He leant forward cautiously to touch it, then sprang back as it appeared to move; but it was only a trick of the gloom.
He had stumbled and instinctively reached out to steady himself, touching the sheet. It was cold and wet, sticky and wet, and what was under it was cold and soft. Even without the thin light he could have told that it was blood, for the smell of it was strong on his fingers. Hardly believing in the waking nightmare he had walked into, he gingerly took the dry corners of the sheet and pulled it back, having to tug it gently when it stuck. He half knew what to expect, but when he saw it, glistening in the yellow glow of the lamp, his gorge rose and he had to breathe long and slowly to conquer his nausea. A male human corpse which had been flayed. Whoever had done the job was a master, for not a trace of skin remained, even on the penis.
Huy’s eyes travelled up the trunk to the grotesque mask, though he already knew who this was. One of the legs ended just below the knee.
‘You mustn’t tell him,’ said Taheb. ‘He is making good progress now, and news like this will cause a relapse.’
‘He will want to know the reason I am leaving.’
‘Will he? You may be surprised.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Huy.
‘I’ll let him tell you.’ She looked at him in silence for a moment, then said, ‘I’d like to know what progress you have made. If any.’
‘I wanted to talk to Intef.’
‘What good would that have done?’
‘Everything is aimed at Amotju.’
‘Nonsense. His father’s tomb was only one of many that have been robbed recently. And as for river pirates, they are everywhere.’
‘But the robbery of the tomb, the piracy, and the abduction, all coming together…’
‘Amotju thinks that he was carried off by gods or demons under Rekhmire’s control,’ said Taheb drily.
‘And do you believe that?’
‘I must believe my husband’s opinion.’
‘When I was up at the tomb I was attacked by Set,’ said Huy after a moment’s hesitation, ‘or someone dressed to look like him. Who sent me there? What people are these robbers to go in for amateur theatricals?’
Taheb drew in her breath sharply. ‘What you are saying may be blasphemous. We are very well aware of the heresy you took part in; but the old gods are back in their rightful place.’
Huy knew that Taheb was too intelligent to believe any such thing, but dared not say so. ‘I do not think I would merit a personal attack from Set.’
‘If you think that there is a connection between these three events, and that Rekhmire is behind them, then I look to you to provide proof that we can take to Horemheb. And I expect you to make better progress than you are. You are an intelligent man.’
‘I will try,’ said Huy, wondering again whether this enigmatic woman wasn’t in some way challenging that intelligence; and asking himself what personal political interests lay behind desiring Rekhmire’s fall. ‘But the manner of Ani’s death and the placing of his corpse present such a direct threat to me that I cannot ignore it. I must retreat.’
Taheb pursed her lips. ‘Intef’s family took revenge. Anyone might have seen you meeting Ani before the trial, and afterwards again. Ani was the principal witness against Intef. Perhaps their revenge just takes the form of killing him in so cruel a way as to scare you off permanently. How did Aset take it?’
‘She didn’t see the body. I had three of the house-servants clear the room and take away the corpse. But she knows what happened.’ It occurred to Huy that his friend’s wife was asking too many questions, and he was disinclined to answer more than he had to.
‘Trustworthy house-servants?’
‘What can they say? Ani had no family, but his friends will be told. As for Intef’s family, he too had none that I have been able to trace. He was half Mitannite. Perhaps all his family live far to the north.’
‘So who avenged him?’
Huy bowed his head. He was getting tired of questions.
‘Perhaps they will have achieved their ends,’ said Taheb. ‘I can’t see you being able to do much from a hiding place. Where will you go?’
‘I haven’t decided that yet.’
Taheb challenged the lie with her eyes but said nothing. Huy wondered if he had gone too far.
‘Although I would like you to continue to work for us, in the circumstances you will understand that I can only pay you on results,’ she said finally. ‘And now you had better talk to my husband. He is waiting for you in the inner courtyard. Be careful how you tell him about Ani.’
Amotju sat on a low chair, his feet on a stool, and was in the act of pouring wine when Huy entered the little atrium. As he looked up, Huy could see that, physically at least, he was his old self. But his eyes retained a hooded, haunted look.
‘How are you?’ Huy clasped his friend’s hands and noticed that the skin on their backs was still scarred.
‘Well,’ replied Amotju, though his voice was strained, even slurred. Huy wondered that Taheb allowed him such free access to wine. As carefully as he could, he gave Amotju the news of Ani’s death, skirting around any details that the sick man did not need to know. Amotju took it sombrely.
‘He was my best captain.’
‘He was certainly loyal.’
‘The ships were his whole world. The men were his family. I will see to it that he has a good burial. He will be rewarded in the Fields of Aarru. The embalmers will make him as whole as they can.’ A sudden thought struck him. ‘They did not take away his heart?’
‘No; they had that much mercy.’ Huy shuddered at the thought. To take away a person’s heart was to deny them life in the hereafter; it was like killing the soul. The dead thus dispossessed were doomed to wander the earth, seeking the opportunity to take the heart of a living man, to make themselves whole again. Not all his years at the enlightened court of the City of the Horizon had quite dispelled the doubt from his mind that still caused him to fear such things, more than the old gods.
When Huy explained t
hat the implied threat to himself made it necessary for him to withdraw for a time, Amotju barely listened. He seemed to remain uninterested even when Huy drew the parallels that suggested themselves between this more brutal warning and the one issued to Amotju himself in the form of the caged ichneumon. Only someone with great skill and power — and, yes, quite possibly the help of demons — would have been able to achieve this.
Amotju heard him out, drinking steadily, then raised a weary hand: ‘I understand all that you have said; but it seems that you have not understood me. I no longer wish you to continue with this investigation. You may not be satisfied, but I am. I am satisfied still to have my life and my fortune. You may choose to ignore threats in order to seek out the truth. I am contented now to yield the palm to Rekhmire, if he will leave me in peace.’
‘And will you see Mutnefert again — or do you intend to leave her to Rekhmire too?’
Amotju suddenly looked at him with far more of the glint of his old self in his eyes. ‘What?’
‘Your mistress. Will you give her up to your rival?’
‘Who told you this?’
‘It might have helped me to know.’
‘It had nothing to do with your work.’
‘I have seen love undo kings,’ said Huy, thinking now, too, of the intense love the old king, Akhenaten, had borne his great queen, Nefertiti. Seven daughters and no son, and still he slept with no one but her.
‘Whatever else, I will have nothing more to do with you. There has been nothing but trouble since you arrived, and Rekhmire goes from strength to strength.’
There was enough fight in his friend’s voice now to give Huy hope that the battle wasn’t over after all. ‘So, you are not scared enough to give up your mistress?’
Amotju stood up. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Get out now!’
SEVEN
The River was rising faster now, steadily. Every day you could see a difference, and the water was taking on the green colour that heralded the arrival of Hapy with his gifts. Soon, perhaps even before the new king arrived, although people hoped not, because the colour was inauspicious, the water would turn red, taking the tint of the rich earth that came as Hapy’s gift from the south, from the upper reaches of the River, which some claimed to have seen, and from the Atbara.
The interview with Amotju determined Huy not to return to the City of the Horizon — which had been his plan. Instead, he would stay. His friend’s refusal to continue to investigate what was behind his recent misfortunes made Huy all the more determined to do so, and he had told Amotju that this was his intention before leaving the house. But as he walked through the dusty streets his temper cooled, and he began to consider more soberly what was best to be done.
He would, he argued, have been safer back in the City of the Horizon than if he remained at the Southern Capital; but he would then have been too far for even a hint of unfolding events to reach him. What was more, the threat brought directly into Aset’s house made him less rather than more determined to distance himself from her, because he couldn’t know what harm might come to her in his absence; and although he doubted the effectiveness of his role as her protector, he knew he could not leave her. He knew, too, though he had striven hard to deny it to himself, that he loved her.
But staying meant taking her into his confidence. For the time being, Aset would be his eyes and ears. The situation could not last long, though: it would be impossible to keep his presence a secret indefinitely, and his resources were all but spent. Some form of income would have to be sought soon.
At first, Aset, who had been so anxious for him to stay, was worried that by doing so he would put himself in greater danger. He reassured her, and, using the last of the savings he had brought from the City of the Horizon, together with the payment made to him by Amotju, he rented a small, two-roomed house in the crowded poor area of the city close to the harbour. Here, the drifting population of sailors and foreigners from far to the north and the south would provide him with sufficient cover to pass unnoticed. If both Horemheb and Rekhmire thought that he had gone, he could continue his investigation of the priest’s affairs without risking his life. He needed to earn the fee Taheb was still offering him, and Ani’s murder had robbed him of a friend, redoubling his own desire for justice — and vengeance. The original threats to Amotju, the figure of Set which had attacked him, the recurrent smell of rotting fish and sulphur, the callous theatricality of Ani’s death, so clearly related to Intef’s execution, were all interlinked — whatever Taheb thought, or wished him to think.
He settled down quickly in his new surroundings, finding comfort in the crowds, and the uncaring bustle. The landlord had barely looked at him, hadn’t checked the false name he’d given, and had only flickered into life and taken real care when it came to the down payment of the rent. In the racial melting-pot of the docks, Huy decided further to blur his identity, after a short battle with disgust, by allowing his beard to grow.
Rekhmire looked across the room at her. She was sitting in her usual chair, by the window, her smooth skin vividly lit by the last rays of the sun, as the noise of the street below gradually died away. Evening was giving way to night. She sat quietly, apparently unaware of his presence; but he knew that the act was about to begin, the little play which he had written for them both, and which he enjoyed every time as freshly as if it were the first. It was a scenario in which he could forget that he had a hump on his back and a club foot; deformities which had driven him relentlessly to prove himself in life, to dominate and control other people, and still to seek the approval of parents, now long dead, who had never praised him, but only demanded more.
Mutnefert, he thought, understood him. She even seemed to enjoy the cruelty, to succumb to him just as he wished. Why, then, was he frightened of her? Why did he rein himself in? Was it just that he was afraid of losing her? Looking at her tonight, he almost faced the question he had so long sought to avoid: why was this the only way he could find to approach her — or any woman before her? This little game of domination and subjection they played. He knew that he had never had a conversation with her, and that apart from sex he barely knew her. He had never attempted to probe her thoughts — he had always told himself, if he had given the matter any thought at all, that this was because they did not interest him. Now, despite himself, he found a suspicion creeping into his heart that the real reason was that he was afraid of what he might find out — about her, and about himself.
Another suspicion that had crept in, undermining his usual pugnacious self-confidence, was that he was losing her. Each time they met, she seemed more and more drawn into herself, and there were times when she would not look at him, when it seemed that he might as well not have been there. On these occasions it was necessary to hurt her more; but still there was no reaching her. Rekhmire could not bear to confront the feeling this created in his heart. It was an unfamiliar feeling to him, and one which he could not afford to acknowledge. If he had been forced to give it a name — though he never would — that name would have been desolation. Was, then, the name for the fear of losing her, love? He barely dared acknowledge the half-formation of such questions in his heart. His heart had been used since childhood to seeing attack as the best form of defence, and political power and material advantage as the best bastions against mockery and condescension.
She turned to him now, and he tensed in expectancy, though still she did not appear to see him. She was like a figure in a dream. She stood, and with a languorous slowness, started to undress, her firm brown limbs and broad shoulders emerging from the folds of pristine white linen in a way that was both tantalising and innocent. His eyes embraced the soft curve of her buttocks; his throat became dry; the tips of his teeth tingled. Then their eyes met, as she seemed to notice him for the first time. He read what he wanted to in hers: surprise, and hurt innocence vying with the anticipation of guilty pleasure. She was a good actress. He rose in his turn and grasped the stick by his side.
Afterwards he never lay down beside her. Usually he would leave immediately, for tenderness had no role to play in his impoverished lovemaking. But today he lingered. He knew, of course, that it was all a game, the only real thing being the pain he inflicted on her when he forgot to rein himself in. Now, though, there were these new feelings, and the sense of her remoteness disturbed him. He felt her eyes on him again, but they were different. The eyes of the off-duty actress, uninterested, wanting him to leave, so that she could bathe, change, wash his smell and his memory away until the next time. These things had never disturbed him before, never entered his heart. The question in her eyes was clear to read: ‘Why are you still here?’ He felt a need to answer it.
‘You are my official mistress. Recognised.’ He began, fumbling pompously over the words.
‘Yes.’
‘It would threaten the dignity of my position if you were to betray my trust.’
Silence. Astonishment?
‘In such a case I would have to take steps to maintain my standing. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ But toneless.
‘Do you see other men?’
‘In this way?’
‘In this way.’ He kept his voice firm.
‘No.’
He looked at her eyes and saw nothing reflected there. He felt a pain in his heart which he continued to fight but knew would win.
‘There is no one but you,’ she said.
‘I am determined to keep you. No one else will have you.’
She lowered her eyes demurely and he felt first foolish, then irritated that this woman, who was not even wholly a native of the Black Land, seemed to have such power over him. No! He had survived too long by never allowing his feelings to rule him to give in to them now. He could control them as he always had, and always would.
