by Anton Gill
The man got off at the first jetty, and Aset clambered after him, almost forgetting to hand over the small copper piece demanded by the boatman, a wall-eyed man whose breath was so vile that she gagged as he thrust his face into hers to ask for his pay. His stumpy teeth were covered with a white slime.
It was getting towards the sixth hour of day, and there were fewer people about now, as the time approached for the main meal and the afternoon rest. It was harder to remain inconspicuous, and Aset compensated for this by keeping further back. She seemed to have aroused no suspicion, for the man kept pressing forward, looking neither right nor left. Concentrating on him, she was unaware of her surroundings, beyond acknowledging to herself that she was in an unfamiliar part of the city.
Suddenly the buildings ceased to hedge around them, and she found herself on a narrow sandy plain, the town behind her, the River on her right, and the cliffs which bordered the eastern desert away to her left. About five hundred paces to the south one of the long walls of the palace ran, magnificently painted with hunting scenes. A strong young pharaoh alone in a light chariot drawn by two slim horses stormed after antelope and lions; in another scene, he stood over a writhing leopard, an arrow in its eye. In another, he brought down ducks and geese with a fowling-stick; and in yet another, from a high-prowed papyrus canoe, he speared wallowing river-horses and crocodiles. The colours were bright, and so fresh as to appear garish in the sunlight.
In the exact centre of the wall a high dark entrance gate was built, its lintel and supports of heavy grey stone blocks. The tall man was making towards this. There was nothing else for it but to follow, and Aset did so quickly, needing to reach the gate in time to see which direction he would take once he’d passed it.
The palace was not one building, but a second city, encircled by walls. From where she stood by the gate she saw the man enter a low, rust-coloured edifice whose entrance was flanked by heavy columns with lotus-capitals, near which lay giant statues of Amun’s animal, the ram. Here, the streets were more populous again. People hurried about their business in great preoccupation, for the time before the king’s arrival could now be measured in days. No one paid attention to Aset, especially as she was quick to ape the same manner of harassed activity affected by everyone else. She dived into the building after her quarry, looking for some plaque or sign to indicate what the function of the place might be. Doors opened off the central corridor into unadorned rooms in which she could glimpse men bent over plans. Several of them wore the regalia of senior priest-administrators.
The tall man finally paused at a door which he opened without knocking on, and immediately closed behind him. Frustrated for a moment, Aset noticed a stairway built into the wall by the door which she guessed must lead to a gallery leading on to the room he’d entered. She ran up it and found that she had been right. Two painters were working on inscriptions and scenes which were to form a frieze round the gallery, but beyond a glance they paid her no attention. She looked over the parapet to the room below and saw that the man stood facing another across a broad table spread with papyri. The second man was heavy, and powerfully built, with huge, bunched shoulders. Even without the chain of office of the High Priest of Osiris he would have been unmistakable.
It had been a bad day’s fishing for Anpu. The sun beat down on his back and the sweat ran into his eyes as he guided his little papyrus boat through the shallows along the eastern bank of the River north of the Southern Capital. The water level had risen to such an extent that the reeds which grew here only showed their tips above it, and it was easy to steer among them; but it was impossible to see fish because of the amount of red silt in the water, and the leather net came up time and again with nothing but weed clinging to it.
He screwed up his eyes and looked at the position of the sun, reckoning it to be about the tenth hour of day. The heat had lost its ferocity, but by this time in the late afternoon it had set its dead hand heavily on everything. The banks shimmered through the haze, and the oxen and the egrets seemed to doze even as they paddled at the edge of the water. Anpu decided to make for home. He would make an extra-early start tomorrow and try to make up his losses then.
He made his way to the stern of his boat, picked up the paddle and drove it lazily into the water. The light prow swung round instantly and he angled it into the stream of the current, pushing down hard to overcome the inertia. Looking up after the fifth stroke to make sure he was still holding the boat’s bow directly upstream, he saw the body, resting against the capsized trunk of a palm. Quickly he made his way over to it, throwing a rope over the tree to secure the boat.
The current was strong, but as the River was so wide, its thrust near the bank was sluggish, so that although the boat was light, it was a relatively simple matter to bring it parallel with the palm trunk and lodge it there. Getting the body aboard would be more complicated, and Anpu wanted to make sure that it would be worth it, though even if the man were already dead, no doubt there would be relatives willing to pay a good price for the retrieval of the corpse for burial. As he came close, however, Anpu heard a faint groan.
Bracing himself, and spreading his feet so that his weight balanced the boat, he leant forward and took the man under the arms, half lifting and half hauling him aboard. He fell on his face among the dozen or so grey mullet in the well of the little craft. Anpu managed to turn him on to his back and make him more or less comfortable before clambering past him to take up his position at the stern, where he had to dig in much harder with the paddle than before to get the boat going upriver again.
By the time they were within sight of the city, Huy was able to sit up, groggily, and take stock of his surroundings. At the same time, he had to fend off a number of questions from Anpu, who clearly regarded him with a mixed sense of ownership and suspicion. But in return he was able to find out approximately where the fisherman had found him, and so calculate how far downstream the current had taken him after he had been thrown into the water. Never had Huy been more grateful for his powerful, stocky, unscribe-like body as he strove to swim to safety under the cover of darkness. He had wondered whether or not the intention of his captors had been that he should die; it seemed unlikely after having gone to the trouble of drugging him and subjecting him to a piece of theatre which had been sufficient to scare Amotju, and was certainly intended to have the same effect on him. But perhaps, being less important than Amotju, he had not been the subject of such precise orders as had been given for his friend’s treatment.
They hadn’t robbed him, in any event. His leather purse was still attached to the girdle of his kilt, and it still contained the couple of debens of copper he had had with him at Mutnefert’s. These he gave to Anpu; the first as a reward, the second to buy his silence and to persuade him to let him off the boat before he reached the main quay. Feeling that he hadn’t done so badly from his day’s fishing after all, Anpu left his charge several hundred paces north of the city, pushed off, and made his way back to his village, already framing in his mind the tale of the rescue which he would tell to his fellow villagers.
Huy was certain that his captors had remained convinced that he was unconscious until the time that they dumped him — if they hadn’t been, he was sure they would have killed him.
As it was, as far as they were concerned, their pantomime of the halls of hell had been successful. If it had not been for the real pain of his amulet piercing his chest, they might have succeeded as well as they had with Amotju, for Huy, despite his education in the court of Akhenaten, would not have doubted or questioned the evidence of his senses when the beginning of life after death, as it had been described in The Book of the Dead since the time of the ancient kings, was presented to him.
Walking cleared his head, and by breathing deeply and evenly he was able to rid himself of the nausea which plagued him. Gradually, his step became firmer, and he was able to begin to organise his thoughts. He began by taking stock of himself. There seemed to be very little physical damage
, though his body ached and here and there large bruises were beginning to appear. Though he could not see what his face looked like, there was evidently nothing in his appearance to draw attention to him, as no one in the suburbs and then in the city centre gave him a second glance as he walked home. The decision to go back to his little house had been made easily: since he had been flushed out, there was little point in hiding now; and perhaps whoever had planned his entertainment would be less suspicious if he simply pretended that its designed effect had been successful. The plans he was now formulating would require secrecy of a different kind.
Arriving in the street in which his house stood, he paused for a moment to draw breath, for he suddenly felt tiredness descend on him. Looking up, he saw a light in the window of his upstairs room — it was so faint that he wondered if he had imagined it, but as he waited and the short dusk deepened into full darkness, the glow became more pronounced. Huy debated whether to go on, to find somewhere else, perhaps even to make his way to Amotju’s house; but he found that his exhaustion would not let him. Whoever this was, they would have to be faced at some point. He made no attempt even to be stealthy as he opened his door, surprised to find it locked.
Downstairs, all was as he had left it. He shut the door behind him and went to the alcove containing a bundle of papyrus books behind which his broad-bladed bronze knife was casually hidden. It was still there, in an oiled leather sheath. He drew it doubtfully, aware that he was untrained in how to use it professionally, and crossed the room to the stone steps that climbed the opposite wall to the room above. He could see the light clearly through the square hole in the ceiling to which the stairs led. For an instant he stood still, listening hard, but no sound came from the room above. Then, slowly, he began to climb upwards. When he was nearly at the top, his head almost level with the opening, he paused again, and now he could hear a faint, regular, gentle sound — breathing. Gingerly, he raised his head so that he could see into the upper room. On the bed lay Aset, fully dressed. She had thrown a rug over herself and had fallen asleep.
She awoke with a start and looked at him in alarm; then he realised that he had not put the knife down. As she became fully conscious, she put her arms up to him and silently drew him to her. He closed his eyes and wished he could drown in her warmth.
Finally they drew apart. She looked at him properly now.
‘What has happened to you?’ she said in dismay.
‘I don’t know.’ He wondered how he would begin to tell her. He glanced at Aset’s face. To his relief it expressed more concern at his appearance than curiosity. If he had been less weary, he might have wondered why.
‘How do I look?’ he said, trying to joke.
She smiled. ‘Terrible. I must clean your wounds.’ There was nothing he wanted to do more than sleep, but after she had made him comfortable, she disappeared downstairs, to return with an earthenware bowl of water. With linen swabs, she bathed his face and hands, and he noticed for the first time that his knuckles were chafed and badly cut. There were minute pieces of grit in the wounds, and as he washed his hands, he noticed that under his fingernails there were quantities of fine red sand.
She held up a bronze mirror for him to see his face, which looked haggard and battered, but was still recognisably his own.
‘I am going to try to cook something,’ she announced. ‘I have no idea how to, I have not been taught; but I have watched the cooks at home and I think I can manage. Do you think you can light the fire? Before I came I bought a duck and some fruit and shemshemet…’
Huy, despite himself, grinned, and realised that he was as hungry as he was tired. He made a fire in the oven, and produced wine and water from storage jars as she busied herself with splitting and flattening the duck, putting a copper pot on to boil white beans, and chopping onions and cucumber. Neither of them was good at preparing a meal, but there was respite and amusement in this unexpected, improvised domesticity which they both found comforting. As they worked, Aset told him about Rekhmire’s spy.
‘Did you hear what they said?’
‘No. The two painters on the gallery began to take too close an interest in me; I had to pretend I’d taken a wrong turning, and go. But isn’t it enough that Rekhmire sent someone to watch the house?’
Huy smiled. ‘Yes.’ He didn’t add that he wasn’t surprised. He knew more now than he would have imagined possible even a week earlier, but still he had not formed a picture he was confident of showing to anyone else.
After the tension of her adventure, Aset was brimming over with remembered excitement.
‘What made you come back here?’ asked Huy.
‘I didn’t know where to look for you. I thought that this would be the first place you would come back to. I was going to wait one whole day and night, then leave you a message.’
‘That would have been risky.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about safety. I was worried about you.’ As they ate, Huy told her, as far as he could, what had happened to him.
‘And the same thing happened to my brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know who did it?’
‘They wanted to frighten him; they wanted to frighten me.’
‘To scare you off?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then they must be working for Rekhmire.’
‘It’s possible.’
She stared at him. ‘Who else could it be? Amotju has no enemies here.’
‘It certainly seems unlikely that anyone else would gain from this…’
She was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘But are you sure it was what you say? That it wasn’t a real experience? Perhaps the gods have their reasons…’
Huy held up his hands. ‘These are real wounds — I must have been dragged across rough or stony ground, and the same must have happened to Amotju. And the red dust that was under my nails doesn’t come from the Fields of Aarru, though I know where I have seen it in this world.’
‘Where?’
‘In the tombs in the Valley, on the west bank.’
‘Then it must be Rekhmire. He thought that you were getting too close to uncovering him.’
‘We have discovered nothing to connect him with the grave robberies.’
‘He is a clever man.’
Huy had never lost sight of the grave robberies. Since the rifling of Ramose’s tomb, there had been no more activity that he had heard of; but the time that had elapsed between his encounter with Set and now was short. It might be that Rekhmire, aware of their interference, had decided to deal with Huy and Amotju before continuing with his activities. But in that case, why had he not simply had them killed? ‘He is trying to destroy my brother.’
Huy looked at her. It was possible, of course; but if that were so, there were more effective ways at Rekhmire’s disposal than robbing Amotju’s father’s tomb and raiding one gold bullion barge. His thoughts turned back to the Valley. Many tombs were constantly under excavation there, as the great nobles and the rich men of the city would start building their homes for the afterlife as soon as they could afford to start them in this one. There was a whole community of tomb workers, master craftsmen, masons and ordinary quarrymen, established in the Valley. There were also private tomb guards.
‘Do you know where Rekhmire’s tomb is being built?’ Aset thought for a moment. ‘There are two. He started one many years ago; now that his power has increased, he has begun work on a new, larger site nearer the centre of the Valley. But there are several guards posted there.’
‘What about the old tomb?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what plans Rekhmire has for it. Perhaps it is simply abandoned.’
‘But if it were guarded?’
‘To get past well-paid guards is impossible. If you could not buy their complicity, you would have to have as much influence with them as their employer.’
Suddenly, Huy’s mind could manage no more. The wave of exhaustion which he had been holding back would be
restrained no longer, and crashed over him in a flood. His eyelids drooped, and he thought that he didn’t care about any of them — about Horemheb’s empire-building through the young pharaoh, the imminence of whose arrival had set the city buzzing; about the shabby morality of Rekhmire and Mutnefert, Taheb’s waspishness or Amotju’s gullibility. They all wanted to bring each other down just to advance themselves. This was how the world was, and how it had always been; the ideals of the City of the Horizon had been a dream. They hadn’t even been supported. People had gone along with them simply because their proponent happened to be pharaoh. If Akhenaten hadn’t had absolute power, his theories would never have been written down, still less followed; as it was, they had blown away at his death like chaff in the wind. But he, Huy, was still alive in the world, and had to live in it and through it, somehow.
He felt Aset’s cool hand on his forehead, and was grateful. There was a debt of friendship to her brother to discharge, and before he slept his orderly heart was already admitting to itself that it could not simply leave things as they stood. But once this was over, he would apply to become a scribe again; he would accept that life had changed, and avoid confrontation with it.
Until then, he needed to rest, for there was much to do.