The Crocodile Tomb

by Michelle Paver

  At that moment, Hylas spotted Pirra on the other side of the avenue. She hadn’t seen him – she was looking the other way.

  He couldn’t risk shouting. Wildly, he waved at her from behind his plinth. But at that moment, the ground gave a sickening lurch. Lights flashed behind his eyes, and the burning finger stabbed his temples.

  The din of flutes and clappers became a dull boom, and his senses turned infinitely sharp. He heard a bead of sweat trickling down the water-carrier’s spine, and the crunch of beetle jaws gnawing lotuses in a garland. Then the air flooded with dreadful brightness – and on the gilded litter, Sobek turned His greenstone head and glared at him.

  Hylas cried out. A shadow fell across his face. He glanced up. He saw the giant falcon twist its basalt neck to peer down at him. He fled, blundering into the water-carrier, who turned – and instead of a human face, Hylas met the fierce yellow glare of a baboon.

  Blindly, he crashed through the throng.

  He found himself at the mouth of a passageway between tall houses. There, crouching by a pile of rubble, was the naked child from the pretty girl’s litter, crooning over a fistful of fallen feathers.

  Hylas smelt her garlicky breath and heard the tiny pinch of a snake’s scales slithering out of the rubble. In a flash, he knew what was going to happen. Whipping out his knife, he threw it. The child jerked up her head. She shouted and squirmed as he snatched her to safety. In the litter nosing its way past the mouth of the passage, the pretty girl turned and saw them. Her dark eyes widened as she took in her sister wriggling in Hylas’ arms – and the cobra lying skewered and thrashing on the ground.

  Pirra had seen him too, and was pushing towards him.

  Setting down the child, Hylas finished off the snake. As he straightened up, he saw Telamon.

  The grandson of Koronos had a litter of his own, some distance behind the girl’s. Hylas couldn’t see his face but he knew him at once. In one frozen heartbeat, he took in his one-time friend’s red linen tunic and dark warrior braids with the little clay discs at the ends. The jasper sealstone on his wrist, and the tiny amethyst falcon that had been Pirra’s.

  Telamon sat scanning the crowd, one forearm resting on his knee, his head turned away from Hylas. At any moment, he would see Pirra.

  Frantically, Hylas waved at her to get down. ‘Down!’ he mouthed. ‘Get down!’

  She didn’t understand. What?

  Telamon’s gaze was raking towards her.

  Suddenly the crowd surged forwards and hid Pirra behind a forest of waving hands. They were crying out in excitement, reaching towards Echo, who’d alighted on the basalt head of the falcon god. A falcon, perched on an image of Heru! This was the best possible omen for the Flood.

  Thank you, Echo, Hylas told her silently. To his relief, he saw that Pirra had realized the threat, and vanished.

  But now it was Hylas who was exposed, as the crowd thinned and Telamon’s gaze came sweeping towards him. Wildly, Hylas cast about for somewhere to hide.

  ‘Here! Under here!’ whispered a voice nearby. It was the pretty girl, beckoning from her litter.

  Pirra appeared beside Hylas and grabbed his hand.

  Just before Telamon saw them, the pretty girl twitched aside the hanging at the base of her litter – and Hylas and Pirra ducked underneath.

  ‘This has to be a trap,’ muttered Hylas as they shuffled blindly along under the litter.

  Above him a girl’s voice hissed at them in Egyptian.

  ‘She says be quiet,’ whispered Pirra, ‘Telamon’s close behind. – You’re very pale, are you all right?’

  He nodded, but it was all he could do to keep from lurching into the unseen slaves who were carrying the litter. Pirra was small enough to stand upright beneath it, but he was forced into an awkward stoop, and still reeling from his visions.

  Abruptly, the litter turned and the din of the crowd fell away. Hylas parted the hangings, and came face to face with a wall. Same on the other side.

  Ducking out from under, he and Pirra found themselves in a shadowy passage between tall houses. Ten paces ahead, people stood with their backs to them, watching the procession. Behind, four sturdy black slaves blocked their escape.

  In a heartbeat, their knives were taken, their arms pinioned behind their backs. But instead of a triumphant Telamon appearing at the mouth of the passage, the Egyptian girl leant out from her litter and said something to Pirra that Hylas didn’t understand.

  Pirra spat back defiantly.

  ‘Sh!’ The girl pointed at the procession, where Telamon’s litter was nosing into view. In heavily accented Akean she said: ‘I’ve told Kerasher I’m sick, but we haven’t much time!’

  They were shrouded in linen and smuggled on to a cart, then a boat – then laid none too gently on cold stone.

  Wriggling out of his shroud, Hylas found himself in what appeared to be a stable, although it was far grander than any he’d ever seen. It had walls of polished limestone, painted with chariots and hunting dogs. There was a marble water trough in a corner, and sheets of wet linen hanging from the roofbeams and stirring gently in a breeze from a high window, presumably to cool the horses he could hear snorting and stamping in adjacent stalls.

  Pirra lay beside him, dusty, dishevelled and furious. Like him, her arms were pinioned behind her.

  Without a word, they shuffled round till they were back to back. Hylas tried to untie her, then she tried to untie him. Couldn’t be done. The bindings were tight at elbows and wrists, and their fingers were numb.

  Struggling to his feet, Hylas peered out of the window.

  ‘Where are we?’ said Pirra.

  He couldn’t see the River, as the window gave on to the cliffs. They were in shadow, the Sun dipping behind them. ‘The West Bank,’ he said.

  To the north, in the distance, he saw fields, a large village, and many people. Nearer, what looked like the workshops where last night they’d met Nebetku. And nearer still, a trail snaked west, towards a gap in the cliffs that might be a gorge. He wondered if it led out into the desert: a possible means of escape.

  Behind him, Pirra was on her feet, looking over the partition into the next-door stall. ‘What are chariot horses doing out here?’

  ‘They belong to my husband,’ said the Egyptian girl, appearing in the doorway. ‘The hunting is better on the West Bank. Fewer people, more prey.’

  A slave held the door of their stall open while she stepped inside, nudging aside a strand of straw with one narrow sandalled foot. Behind her, two more slaves stood at a respectful distance, their arms crossed on their chests.

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded Pirra.

  As if Pirra hadn’t spoken, the girl nodded to the first slave. He cut their bindings, yanked off Hylas’ head-covering, then withdrew with a bow. His mistress stared in fascination at Hylas’ fair hair.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, rubbing the feeling back into his wrists.

  ‘They bound you too tight,’ she replied. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve had worse.’

  ‘I can see.’ Her eyes flickered over the scars on his arms and chest, and a flush stole up her cheeks.

  Pirra snarled at her in Egyptian.

  The girl looked her scornfully up and down, then turned back to Hylas. ‘I am Meritamen, wife of the Hati-aa of the First Province of the Two Lands.’

  Hylas heard Pirra’s angry hiss and shot her a warning glance. Of course Pirra was angry – this girl’s husband had helped the Crows catch Userref – but it would be disastrous to let on that they knew who he was, that might lead her to Nebetku, and the dagger.

  ‘Why did you bring us here?’ barked Pirra in Akean.

  Again the girl looked askance at her, as if she was a slave who’d spoken out of turn. Again she spoke only to Hylas. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Flea,’ he replied.

  Her full lips twisted in amusement. ‘Is that your real name?’

  ‘No. Why did you help us get away, then tie u
s up and bring us here?’

  ‘Why should I not help you? You saved my little sister.’

  The child emerged from behind her skirts and stared up at him with her mouth open. She too seemed fascinated by his hair.

  ‘My sister is very spoilt and very disobedient,’ Meritamen said fondly. ‘She begged to come and see the barbarian who saved her from the cobra. How did you know it was there?’

  Again, Hylas shrugged. ‘I just did.’

  ‘But how? My sister says you threw your knife the moment before the snake appeared.’

  He didn’t reply.

  She moved closer.

  She wore an ankle-length dress of white linen so fine it was almost sheer, netted with tiny turquoise beads that shimmered at her every move. A sash of silvered calfskin cinched her narrow waist, and on her upper arms, gold rings pressed into her smooth brown flesh. Across her neck and shoulders lay a broad collar banded with red chalcedony and rows of living green leaves: mint, willow, and the evergreen plant Egyptians call isd.

  Pirra said something, but Hylas didn’t take it in. He felt breathless and hot. He tried to swallow, but his throat had closed.

  The Egyptian girl’s glossy black hair was a mass of tiny braids down her back, gathered in two bunches on either side of her face. Her features were as regular as a statue’s: large slanted dark eyes outlined in black, the lids an iridescent green. Lips hennaed a rich, troubling red. And yet, behind the paint, it was a girl who gazed up at him: dauntingly pretty, but not entirely sure of herself.

  ‘Why do you fear Lord Tel-amon?’ she said softly.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind if I tell him that you’re here.’

  He didn’t reply.

  Meritamen leant closer. He caught the spicy scent of her skin. Her breath heated his face as she stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear: ‘I know about the dagger.’

  Not a muscle moved in Hylas’ face.

  ‘I know about the dagger,’ repeated the Egyptian girl. She stood gazing up at him. Far too close. Why did she have to stand so close? Pirra hated her. She was acutely aware of her own dusty, dishevelled appearance.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Hylas said at last.

  ‘Yes you do,’ said Meritamen. ‘An outsider with yellow hair: that’s what Lord Tel-amon said. And a Keftian girl with a scar.’

  Pirra glared at her.

  ‘He said you are the enemies of his kin,’ Meritamen went on, her eyes never leaving Hylas’. ‘He said you are after his dagger.’

  ‘Then why are you helping us escape?’ broke in Pirra.

  ‘Because you saved my sister,’ the girl told Hylas. ‘Because Lord Tel-amon hates you – and because I hate him.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ said Pirra. ‘This is just a trick to make us talk.’

  ‘I will get you safely out of Pa-Sobek,’ the girl told Hylas, as if Pirra hadn’t spoken. ‘Kerasher must not hear of this, it will be as if it never happened. If you are caught, you will be on your own. So. You will leave now and never come back.’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ said Hylas and Pirra together.

  Meritamen drew herself up. ‘I must have the dagger,’ she said coldly. ‘I must give it to Lord Tel-amon by the dawn of the First Drop – that is the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’ said Hylas.

  The Egyptian girl swallowed. ‘I must save my family from the wrath of the Perao.’

  Pirra studied her face. Then she laughed. ‘You don’t know where it is!’

  ‘But I know that Nebetku has it,’ the girl shot back, ‘and he will give it to me soon!’

  A horrified silence. She knows about Nebetku, thought Pirra. She didn’t dare meet Hylas’ eyes.

  Meritamen saw their stricken expressions, and nodded. ‘Oh yes, I’ve known Nebetku all my life. He was kind to me when I was little. But I haven’t told Lord Tel-amon about him. I’m not so wicked that I’d let them torture a dying man. Lord Tel-amon doesn’t even know that the thief who stole his dagger had a brother.’

  This was too much for Pirra. ‘Userref was no thief!’ she shouted. ‘He never did anything but good – and yet you stood by like a coward and let the Crows hound him to death!’

  ‘I am not a coward!’ retorted the girl.

  ‘Pirra, please!’ Hylas turned to Meritamen. ‘We won’t tell you where the dagger is, if that’s what you’re after.’

  Meritamen brushed that aside. ‘You saved my sister, so I will save you from the barbarians – but I do not need you to tell me where is this dagger! I have already sent word to Nebetku. Soon he will give me the dagger!’

  ‘He’ll never do that,’ snarled Pirra.

  ‘Yes he will,’ said Meritamen with infuriating calm. ‘He has no choice.’

  They were on the River again, their arms bound, although less tightly, being rowed across by a boatman who sat with his back to them, silent and faceless in a hooded robe.

  It was dark, and ahead of them, the East Bank was alive with torchlight. The clamour of flutes and the smell of roasting meat drifted over the water. The heb would go on all night.

  Pirra shifted uncomfortably and flexed her shoulders. She saw Hylas glance at the water, as if weighing the odds of swimming for it. She shot him a warning look and shook her head. Don’t be mad, you’d drown!

  ‘I wouldn’t try it,’ the boatman said in Egyptian. ‘Lots of crocodiles on that sandbank over there.’

  Suddenly, Pirra noticed that instead of taking the long route across, which avoided the tricky currents and the rocks, the boatman was in fact turning back towards the West Bank. He steered the boat past a bend, and the lights of the heb blinked out.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Hylas.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Pirra cried in Egyptian.

  ‘You’ll see,’ muttered the boatman. His voice was oddly familiar.

  ‘The Lady Meritamen said we are not to be harmed,’ said Pirra.

  ‘I don’t work for the Lady Meritamen.’ The boatman threw back his hood, and Pirra saw his strange, gaunt young face and his wispy grey hair. ‘Herihor,’ she said in astonishment.

  ‘You’re to come with me,’ he said. ‘Nebetku needs your help.’

  This time, Nebetku wasn’t in the shabti workshop, but in a long low house packed with scrolls of papyrus. Pirra saw newly washed sheets of it hanging to dry, and reed pens and pallets blotched with red and black ink.

  Pellets of sweet resin were burning in a small clay brazier; the smell was oddly familiar. Near it stood a little plaster god with the head of an ibis. Pirra recognized it as Tjehuti, Lord of Time and God of Knowledge – and of scribes. They were in Nebetku’s own workshop.

  He lay on a mat with his neck on a headrest. Rensi the dwarf sat beside him. Pirra was shocked. If Nebetku had been ill before, he was now clearly dying. His sunken eyes darted, seeking peace and finding none. ‘This is your doing,’ he told her in Egyptian. ‘You killed him – and now this!’

  ‘Speak Akean,’ growled Hylas.

  ‘Get him out,’ Nebetku told Rensi. He broke into a frenzy of coughing. The dwarf handed him a blood-spattered rag which he pressed to his mouth.

  ‘If he’s telling me to go,’ said Hylas, ‘I won’t. I’m sick of being pushed around. If he wants our help, he talks to us both.’

  Nebetku laboured for breath. ‘The Lady Meritamen,’ he said in Akean, ‘is clever. Her spies couldn’t discover where I hid the dagger – so they found a way to make me give it up. The night before we put Userref in his tomb, I kept watch over his body in Herihor’s workshop. One of her spies put a potion in my beer, and while I slept …’ His face worked. ‘Her spy entered the workshop and stole the peret em heru – the Spells for Coming Forth by Day – from my brother’s coffin. In its place the spy left a blank scroll. I found out today, when she sent me word.’

  ‘What does this mean?’ asked Hylas.

  ‘I forget you know nothing,’ panted Nebetku. ‘When an Egypti
an dies, his spirit makes the perilous journey through the Duat – the world of the Dead. In the Hall of Two Truths, his heart is weighed against the Feather of Maat, and he must answer the questions of the Forty-Two Judges. Only with the Spells for Coming Forth by Day can he pass the trials of the Duat and reach the blessed place under the Sun – the Place of Reeds – where the crops never fail and the cattle are always fat – and everyone is young and healthy …’

  Weakly, he gestured at the scrolls stacked from floor to roofbeam. ‘All these are peret em heru. I’ve spent my life writing the Spells, over and over, for merchants, priests, temple singers … And yet my own brother will stand before the Judges with blank papyrus!’ His burning gaze sought Pirra’s. ‘You ask what this means. It means his spirit will be eaten by the Devourer. It means he will be mutu – cursed – he will suffer the Second Death and cease to be. It means that when I reach the Place of Reeds, he will not be there! I will never see him again!’ He burst into painful, wrenching sobs.

  Rensi put a comforting hand on his shoulder. Herihor fluttered his bony fingers, then added more resin to the brazier, releasing more scented smoke.

  Pirra remembered it now: Userref used to burn it to cheer her up. She thought of his spirit trapped in the tomb, or lost in the Duat, or perhaps already standing before the Judges, in terror of the Devourer …

  Nebetku gave a ghastly, rattling laugh. ‘If only that spy had known that the dagger was inside the coffin! He could have stolen it while I slept, and left my poor brother in peace!’

  ‘So why do you need us?’ Hylas said impatiently. ‘Why can’t you just open the tomb and swap the scrolls?’

  Nebetku shot him a look. ‘Because the Hati-aa’s guards won’t let us! The Lady Meritamen has let it be known that there are tomb-robbers about, and has set a watch on the Houses of Eternity. Today at the heb, she sent me word: “Bring me the dagger and I will call off the guards, so that you may restore the Spells to your brother. If not …’ His lips trembled. ‘If not, he will suffer the Second Death.” ’