City of Lies

by Anton Gill

  Huy returned the look. Had it quite occurred to him yet how beautiful this woman was? He looked in vain for traces of Tascherit’s features in her face.

  ‘But a man tried to murder her… and Imuthes. That is beyond question.’

  She looked at him keenly. ‘Poor Ankhsi,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It is difficult to speak to you of this,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘You are very close to my sister-in-law. Perhaps I have said enough already.’ She motioned to the servant, who came forward with wine again. Huy noticed that she watched him keenly. He also noticed that the servant mimed pouring more wine into Huy’s cup than he in fact did.

  ‘You had better speak freely than not at all.’ Huy was disturbed. He thought about Ankhsi’s plan to take the Golden Chair for her son.

  ‘For some time we have been worried about her,’ said Takhana. ‘She is two years younger than me and since she married into our family I have tried to be an older sister to her.’

  ‘Has she taken you into her confidence?’

  Takhana sighed. ‘No. She is closed up in herself, Huy. Now she will not take my brother to her bed. We think she sees phantoms, dreams phantoms.’

  Huy was silent for a moment.

  ‘The attack was real enough,’ he persisted stubbornly.

  ‘Yes, and that is what is of most concern.’ She made a gesture of impatience. ‘If the guards had only not killed the man, we might have learnt the truth.’

  ‘The truth?’ Huy felt strangely relaxed, almost as if he were floating. The conversation seemed to come from somewhere outside him. Inwardly, he shook himself to return to himself.

  ‘The attack was real and yet it was not fatal. Far from it. The child was barely hurt and she herself only suffered a flesh wound. Your own woman is Ankhsi’s doctor. She must have told you that.’

  ‘Yes.’ Huy wondered who it was that was really seeing phantoms. ‘But the attack was interrupted. It was clumsily done.’

  ‘It was made to look like that. The man should have escaped. He had done what he had been paid to do.’

  Huy felt cold. ‘Why has your brother said nothing of this to me?’

  ‘He wishes to protect his wife.’

  It was true that Tascherit had always been sceptical about Ankhsi’s fears, though he had mounted a guard.

  Huy leant forward. He should be feeling tenser, but the comfortable warm feeling was creeping back into all his body.

  ‘What are you telling me?’

  ‘It is hard for me – ’

  ‘What are you telling me?’

  She slipped her legs from the bench on which she sat and leant forward to him. Their faces were very close. He smelt the delicious odour of her body under the scent of desert date.

  ‘She had to convince you – I suppose she wanted to convince everybody – that there were real attempts on her life.’

  ‘But why?’

  Takhana hesitated again, biting her lips, then running her tongue lightly over them.

  ‘For some time now she has been growing at odds with her khou. She does not listen to reason. We worry that she will lose knowledge of her Name. Did she send for you? Did Ay send you?’

  ‘No,’ said Huy, hoping that the truth was the right answer. In any case he was not sure that it had persuaded her.

  ‘Her heart is misleading her and she felt she was alone. That is what I believe. She wanted you here more than anything. It hurt Tascherit to think she could turn to another man with more certainty of protection and help than to him, but she had shut herself off from us.’ She leant closer. ‘Now that I have met you I find it easier to understand how a person would trust you. You power is strong in you. A person can sense it.’

  Huy listened in silence now. He even regretted that his cup had not been refilled properly, but the servant had disappeared. Takhana’s face filled the whole world of his vision. Slowly she raised her left hand and drew her index finger gently down the scar below his eye.

  ‘We are your friends,’ she said. ‘We want you to help us find out the truth.’

  She leant forward a finger’s breadth more and he felt her cheek against his as she kissed the scar.

  Later, Huy went to the House of Healing. The streets were busy now as the day cooled. Down by the harbour a group of sailors from the Land of Two Rivers had set up a stall of crudely-carved erotic figures in cedar-wood: men and women in groups, women with dogs, men buggering women dwarfs. They were selling the things in exchange for sacks of meal or little rough nuggets of gold, and had attracted a crowd large enough to block the traffic coming out of one of the streets that led to the town centre.

  Huy was shaking himself inside, making himself run to get the blood in the rivers of his body to clear itself of its sluggishness. He had stopped to splash water on his face and arms at the first public tank he had come across, driving his wrists into the cold water to cool himself, and rubbing himself vigorously with an old linen towel which the tank attendant lent him, to get rid of the scent which clung to him.

  When he reached the House of Healing Senseneb was still busy, attending a tall old man whose muscles had seized up, turning his hands into claws and his knees inward. ‘How will I work now?’ he kept saying, half to himself, half to Senseneb, who was rubbing a mixture of ash and behen oil into his withered wrists.

  When she had finished and washed and changed, they took a rickshaw back to their house, where Psaro bathed Huy, then dressed him in a fresh kilt and new sandals. Huy had said nothing yet of his interview with Takhana. It had been a long and busy day and his heart was working too hard, trying to unravel the twisted ball of yarn the gods had presented him with. Or, it was like being in the great sunken maze of the old pharaoh Nebmare Amenophis, in the corner of the great palace he had built in the Southern Capital. It had been filled in now, but how it had delighted the old king to throw his political enemies into it, and those who intrigued against him, only ever allowing freedom to those who earned it for themselves by finding their way out.

  They went to take food at one of the eating houses around the main square. They ordered goose and a yellow pomegranate wine. Huy drank a little but it was bitter on his tongue. And yet there was nothing wrong with the wine. Should he ask Senseneb about the wine Takhana had given him? He decided against it. As they ate, he told her, at least, what Ankhsi’s sister-in-law had said.

  ‘Do you think Ankhsi may be mad?’ he asked her bluntly, when he had finished.

  ‘No. But I know there is something wrong. She will not say much to me, though I see her every day. She looks at me expectantly, but says nothing.’

  ‘Do you think she mistrusts me?’

  ‘It is impossible to say. Perhaps she regrets taking you into her confidence so fast. Perhaps she did not speak with Samut about it before he left.’

  ‘She wishes that I was more enthusiastic. But Takhana is concerned about her. And she has known Ankhsi for all the time since we last saw her.’

  Senseneb looked at him. ‘Do you trust Takhana?’

  Huy was silent.

  ‘Talk to Samut. He is a good man. Hapu met one of his servants at the market. He will be here again tomorrow.’

  It was still early when they finished and they walked back. Khons’ chariot hung golden and low in the sky, showing its full circle, and many of the townspeople were still about, enjoying the evening light and the dry, warm air. News had come from the north that the Flood, though not the lowest they had had for many years, was not going to be the disaster many had feared. Some of the merchants were already talking in sombre tones of how a glut of barley in Shemu, the third season, would depress prices, and were discussing means of converting their stock now into something that would hold its value more solidly. For most people, though, this was a time of relief, and worry had been eased from the faces of many. The town felt in harmony with itself, and perhaps for many it was. But Huy looked at his fellow strollers as if each of them was an actor, the face each wore concea
ling the true intention of his heart.

  Neither he nor Senseneb noticed the figure that watched them from the shadows as they reached their house, though Khons’ shining was bright enough to make pinpoints of light out of the tears in its eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘So she has told you.’ Samut’s face was half in shade as he sat at right angles to the low but long window which ran along almost the entire length of the riverside wall of his office, its casement all of expensive Tura limestone.

  ‘Yes.’ Huy had not been in the office before, but its opulence told him in absolute terms what Samut, for all his apparent modesty, was worth. The appointments of the place vied with those of Ay’s work-room in the Southern Capital. If Samut could command so much, what must Nesptah be master of?

  ‘Well, it does not surprise me. Indeed, I supposed she might.’ Samut, if he had not actually advised Ankhsi to reveal their plan to Huy, certainly did not seem distressed that she had done so. At least, his voice betrayed nothing, but Huy was sorry that he could not see the merchant's face. The lips, picked out in a shaft of orange sunlight, were lightly pursed, and the merchant ran a stubby finger along the lower, Black hair grew briskly on the lowest joint of the finger, Huy noticed. Samut was not a priest, and therefore was not obliged to shave his body – indeed, he appeared to pride himself on his oiled and pampered beard – but this small example of neglect in his toilet focused Huy’s attention for an instant, on the lookout as he always was for any character trait which might lead him through the maze.

  ‘I am glad that she has told you. After all, I knew as soon as I saw you on the boat travelling down here that you were one of us. Your reputation has travelled well beyond the Southern Capital. Taheb’s captains carried word of you up and downstream.’

  Huy remembered Taheb, whose husband had been his friend and whose tragedy had provided the set of chances which led him to his first problem-to-be-solved. The wife had inherited the husband’s fleet of river boats, and after his death she and Huy had for a time been close. He had never thought of being the subject of other people’s talk. Now it had led him into what waters?

  ‘You were a loyal man under Akhenaten, the last true pharaoh,’ continued Samut warmly. ‘Had he lived, you would have risen high. Instead, your career was destroyed. As were the lives and careers of many. By an unjust rebellion engineered by Horemheb – ’ He broke off and stood, moving to the window, resting his hands on the cool white sill and lowering his head to look out at the panorama below. It might have been a painted scene. The Flood was all but full and the Time of Waiting was upon the land. Only a solitary falcon-ship was moving on the River in the course of one of its tireless patrols. Huy noticed that the man was shaking with anger.

  ‘My father was one of them. His lands were taken from us and his mines too. We had rich mines in the Eastern Desert.’ He paused, looking at the falcon-ship. ‘Their security is good. So it is always when men hold power to which they have no right. But now the time is coming when the true heir of the Great Pharaoh will come into his own. Under Amenophis – whom we named after his magnificent grandfather who was so cruelly brought low – the Aten will return and lead us on to the age of splendour that is our due. And you will be there at our side,’ he turned to Huy again, and now, for an instant as he passed through another shaft of sunlight, Huy could see his face – the intent mouth and the glittering eyes. The cold hand of Seth closed on the scribe’s heart.

  ‘I was here when the queen arrived – I mean Princess Ankhesenamun – or Ankhesenaten, as she will be renamed when the time comes, just as her son will become Akhenaten the second,’ continued Samut, his voice rising and falling in a lilt as he strove to master his excitement. ‘I had escaped here after the wreck of my family and I had been struggling – by the great god, so hard, to replace my father’s stolen fortune.’ He turned again to fix Huy with his look. ‘As soon as I saw her I knew it was a miracle. I already had friends, but not enough to stop Nesptah from taking the first advantage. He saw that she was without protection and alone and he moved in quickly to secure her confidence. It was he that made sure she married that fop of a brother-in-law of his, and he who managed to so ingratiate himself with Ay that Tascherit became the highest-paid Military Governor of a town in all the Black Land. Blood money is what it was!’ He stopped for a moment, resting his hands on the table, breathing hard. Huy stole a glance at the two attendants who stood immobile as statues on either side of the closed cedar-wood door – that a man could afford to use cedar-wood for a door! Their faces were masks. They looked at nothing.

  ‘Well,’ continued the merchant, calming himself and dabbing at his forehead with a linen cloth pulled from a fold in his kilt – Huy noticed where the man’s makeup had run. ‘I may have been too weak to prevent the marriage, but I knew how to be patient. It grates on me now, still to have to rein myself in, but patience is an egg – you know the saying!’ He even laughed now, though it was a bitter sound. ‘My first chance came when I knew that she was pregnant. Her doctor was already working for me but that was fortunately known to no-one else and she was the best woman healer in Meroe, so that despite Nesptah I managed to introduce her into the Governor’s household. Governor!’ Samut almost shouted the word as he spat it out, so great was his contempt. ‘The man is governor of nothing but his own prick, and even that – ’ But the merchant caught Huy’s eye and stopped himself. ‘The man is a piece of filth, a nothing; but he is a good actor,’ was all he would say.

  ‘Through the doctor I first found out that Ankhsi was pregnant, and through her, too, it was easy to discover that Tascherit could not be the father – not that that would have been likely anyway, but few had access to his secret. From there, it was easy to understand who the real father of the child must be. Ankhsi was a good girl, a decent girl, she would not in any case have had any opportunity to sleep with other men than the Little King she had been married to.’

  ‘What happened to the doctor?’ asked Huy.

  Samut shrugged. ‘I soon as I knew the truth the plan I have began to form in my heart. Foolishly I told her – I was sleeping with her at the time – so I poisoned her. Nothing should threaten the absolute security I needed until I was strong enough to strike.’

  ‘And Ankhsi?’

  The merchant shrugged again. ‘She soon found out the truth about Tascherit. You have seen her – the girl is a prisoner. It was hard to get to see her privately, but I am a passable actor and no one here knows my background. I have become fat and bearded and look like a harmless provincial merchant on the make. Why should anyone suspect what simply looked like social climbing? You have seen the princess. She is a prisoner. Of course she has ambitions for her son and wants to avenge her husband. In a sense, she sees me simply as her weapon – the means to achieving those ends. We were not often able to meet privately, but when we did, we planned. I have many men working for me here, and I have greater wealth than anyone knows. Soon, I will show you.’

  ‘But have you the means – ’ began Huy, cautiously.

  Samut laughed. ‘Hah! Ever the questioner!’ He clapped the scribe on the shoulder. ‘Forgive me, but that is just why you are so valuable to us! You are a man who would never lower himself into opaque water, and you are quite right!’ He leant forward. ‘There is not a soldier either in the garrisons here or those of Napata who is not under my command. I have the Viceroy in the folds of my robe and I have every Black Land and UatUat officer, every Kushite platoon-leader, ready to move when I give the word.’

  Huy was silent while he digested this. ‘How have you done this?’

  Samut sat back. ‘You are in the south. The cult of the Gem-aten is strong here. This was fertile soil for my seed. And my seed is gold.’

  ‘And the Viceroy, how can you trust him?’

  Samut spread his hands. ‘The Viceroy is a gambler who likes to bet on certainties. He has no loyalty to Ay.’

  ‘But Ay appointed him,’ Huy said, thinking that Ay would never put a man o
f whom he had the slightest suspicion in a key position so far from the Capital.

  Samut smiled. ‘That was a year ago, and the Capital is distant. We have opened the Viceroy’s eyes to other possibilities. Look!’ he spread his hands again, wide this time. ‘The empire is crumbling – a man must put his loyalties with those who control the future.’

  Huy marvelled at the man’s confidence, and remembered a madman he had seen once who made a bet that he could dance across the River across the backs of the crocodiles at midday.

  ‘But what of Tascherit – does he know?’

  ‘He is too foolish to know. His sister and Nesptah, they are different game. But we have men in their houses. You saw my very best man when you visited the delightful Takhana.’

  Huy started. ‘You know about that?’

  ‘You are not the only one to be cautious. It was like a gift of the Aten when we heard you were coming here, but who does not look at a valuable gift with care, to make sure that it will not turn into a cage, or bite?’

  ‘Who was it?’

  Samut smiled. You are the problem solver, Huy. It will not be beyond your heart to identify him. You should thank him too. Takhana knows how to lace her wine with a preparation of mandrake fruit that carries no taste of its own. If you had drunk all that she had intended, you would not be here now. As it is, she is astonished at your fortitude.’ He laughed again. ‘She blames Apuki for not getting the dose right.’

  ‘Apuki?’

  ‘Oh, you saw him too. A greasy, sallow little man.’ Samut grew more serious. ‘Now, he is dangerous.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He is known as her steward. But he does... whatever she requires of him. There are those cruel enough to suggest that she even likes him to take her now and then, through her hole of Seth. But I am sure that it is nothing but a vicious rumour.’ Samut smiled again. ‘What did she tell you?’