by Paul Doherty
‘It’s yours,’ I declared softly, ‘if you just let me stand here. Tell me, is someone following me?’
The jeweller played with the scales, head going from side to side. ‘No, no, there’s no one. Ah, I am wrong. There is someone. He has just gone behind the stall. He’s dark-skinned, a desert man, dressed in a leather war-kilt, a belt across his chest. Ah, he’s turned and is going elsewhere.’
I left the silver, walked away and gazed round. I could not see ‘Leather Kilt’ amongst the crowd, only Nubians with their skins of smoked bronze, long-robed Desert Wanderers, Libyans with their feathered head-dresses, and fair-skinned Shardanah mercenaries. I crossed a needle-thin canal into the poorer quarter of the city which ran along the old quayside, down the narrow, crooked paths reeking of filth between houses of unbaked brick covered with a layer of mud and a roof of palm leaves. Between these, a few ragged acacia and sycamore trees shaded muddy pools for cattle to drink from. The inhabitants spent most of their time out on stools or rush mats, protected with sharp prickles to guard against scorpions and other vermin. They sat, engaged in tasks or eating a dish of onion and flat cakes baked over the ashes of their fires, little pots of oil beside them to soften the hard bread which broke their teeth and chapped their gums. They were garbed in filthy rags, their faces ash-stained. Children, almost naked, played in the mud, running and screaming, the din made all the more hideous by the yip and snarl of narrow-faced, yellow-skinned mongrels. The poverty was disgusting. In people’s faces I saw hollow eyes red and swollen, sunken cheeks and toothless mouths; smoke curled everywhere. I coughed and retched, wary of the rubbish strewn about. The beggars were legion, but my strength, not to mention the dagger I carried, kept them back.
I stopped at a corner and gave a scribe a deben of copper. He had set up a stall under a tree to write out temple-petitions for the illiterate. Taking the copper, he directed me to the waterfront where I found the Street of Jars, a thin strip of a lane full of beer-houses and winebooths. I glanced round. No dark-skinned man in a leather kilt followed me. I went into the cleanest-looking beer-house. The reception room was freshly limed, with mats, stools and piles of stained cushions for its customers. The place was half-empty except for a few tradesmen drinking jugs of beer and taking sips of palm brandy, and perfumed liqueurs cooked slowly in a pot. A grey fog of smoke curled from the kitchen and cheap oil lamps. I sat in a corner and ordered some beer. As I did so, ‘Leather Kilt’ sat down opposite me. He was burned black by the sun, shaven-headed, an earring in one lobe, copper-studded armlets and wrist-guards along his arms, a belt of similar colour and texture across his chest, military sandals on his feet. He leaned over, took my jug, drained it and pushed it at the pot boy, indicating we needed two more. I stared at that face, eyes crinkled by the sun, the leathery skin, the ugly scar which marked the left cheek, dead eyes in a dead face, a grim mouth.
‘Sobeck!’
‘Sobeck!’ His lips hardly moved. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. My name is Kheore – that means being. For that’s what I am – I simply am.’ He smiled at the riddle.
The boy returned with the beer jugs. Sobeck indicated that I was not to talk. We drank the beer and left, going down to the riverside. The quays were busy with their shabby markets through which soldiers, marines and sailors paraded, trying to catch the eye of the pleasure girls. Tumblers, tinkers, traders and scorpion men, the sellers of amulets and scarabs, bawled for trade. Storytellers announced what they had seen in their wondrous travels. Sobeck pushed his way through these and led me down an alleyway. At the bottom lay a derelict warehouse, its brick walls collapsed due to flooding. Inside, beneath the sodden palm-leafed roof mingled a pile of mud and bricks.
‘Everything collapses around here.’
Sobeck sat down on a part of the outside wall, indicating I sit on a nearby plinth.
‘Only the gods know what this was once. A temple? A warehouse? A brothel? A beer-shop? Anyway, it’s a good place to talk. There is only one lane leading to it, so I can see if anyone comes.’
I stretched out my hand. Sobeck hawked, spat, then grasped it.
‘I owe you my life.’ He stretched as if to catch the breeze coming in from the river. ‘I escaped,’ Sobeck declared. ‘I wandered for days. A Sand Dweller attacked me. He must have been a scout and not a very good one. The fortune of the gods, eh Mahu? He loosed an arrow but it hit the clay tablet round my neck. I pretended to be dead. He came in to see what plunder he could take.’
‘And you killed him? You broke the back of his head?’
For the first time Sobeck showed surprise.
‘Maya told me. He works in the House of Secrets.’
‘That plump piece of shit!’
‘He didn’t betray you,’ I declared.
‘Then who did?’
I spread my feet and gazed on the ground: I was intent on my revenge. ‘You will not believe this.’ I glanced up.
‘My Aunt Isithia.’
A knife suddenly appeared in Sobeck’s hand, its blade only a few inches from my face.
‘It’s a long story,’ I lied. ‘I won’t give you the details.
My Aunt Isithia was, is, a courtesan, well-known to the priests of Amun and the courts of the Divine One. She trains the Royal Ornaments in certain pleasures and practices.’
The knife was lowered. I sat listening to the whirr of insects and the faint sounds from the quayside.
‘I know all about the Divine One’s pleasures,’ Sobeck murmured, ‘but I never told anyone outside the Kap.’
‘Aunt Isithia’s suspicions were roused,’ I continued. ‘Do you remember Imri?’
‘The Captain of the Kushite guard,’ Sobeck retorted. ‘He guarded the Grotesque, or as you termed him, the Veiled One.’
‘Aunt Isithia heard some chatter about your dalliance with a Royal Ornament, the challenge to steal the Statue of Ishtar and so on.’ I paused. ‘She informed the authorities who instructed Imri, already their spy on the Veiled One, to keep this particular grove under close guard. He saw you both and reported back.’
‘I’ll kill him!’
‘He’s already dead,’ I replied. ‘Drowned in a crocodile pool.’
Sobeck put the knife away. ‘Your work, Mahu? You never did anything for anyone.’
‘Except plead for your life, Sobeck, and risk coming here.’
‘So Imri is dead.’ Sobeck tapped his sandalled foot. ‘I thought he killed Weni for insulting the Grotesque!’
‘Weni,’ I retorted, ‘died for mocking a Prince of the Blood. The Divine Ones will only tolerate this if it’s done at their command.’
Sobeck moved and saw me flinch, my nose wrinkle at his sour odour.
‘Yes, you’d notice it, Mahu, coming from your perfumed quarters. Do you know what I do now? How I make a few deben of copper? I am a dog-killer. I slaughter mongrels both here and in the Necropolis. I skin and mummify them so they can be sold to pilgrims as offerings.’ He half-smiled. ‘It’s an exciting profession, Mahu. You meet some interesting people.’ His smile faded. ‘It stops me from starving.’
‘Why did you follow me?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been following you since you left the palace. If you’d come straight to the Street of Jars I would have suspected that you’d allowed yourself to be deliberately followed, but the route you took,’ he shrugged, ‘the stalls you stopped at … There’s a price on my head, Mahu. A very good one. I am not some common criminal but someone who squeezed between the thighs of a royal concubine. The House of Secrets has as many spies as flies on a dog turd.’
‘So why did you send the message?’
‘Ah, the love poem?’ Sobeck whistled softly under his breath. ‘I wanted to find out if I could trust you. I need money, Mahu, silver and gold, precious stones. You always were a hoarder.’
‘And if I say no?’
‘Then, Mahu, you are no longer my friend. You can go, but you’ll never see me again.’
‘And why do I need your fri
endship?’
Sobeck crouched down and poked me hard in the chest. ‘In this land of tribulation, Mahu, never make an enemy when you can make a friend. The imperial court is not unique, it’s the same here. You fight, you struggle, you kill or die, either of starvation, a club to the back of the head or a knife under the ribs.’
‘I have already helped you.’
He got to his feet. ‘Ah yes, Aunt Isithia. I’ll reflect on what you said, Mahu. You want her dead?’
‘She’s nothing to me, Sobeck. She’s a witch: a woman with no heart or soul.’ I recalled Dedi, Ay’s secret whisperings. I rose to my feet. ‘She owes me a life. It’s time the debt was paid.’
I walked to the crumbled doorway.
‘Do you remember that jeweller I stopped at? Do you think he can be trusted?’
‘If he can’t be,’ Sobeck quipped, ‘he’ll die.’
‘I will leave you something there,’ I held up my hand, fingers splayed, ‘five nights from now.’
Sobeck walked across and clasped my hand. ‘You could inform the Divine One or Hotep? Even your own master?’
‘In this land of pain,’ I grinned, ‘this place of tribulation, you need every friend you can get, Sobeck. Anyway, you have been punished enough. No child of the Kap should end his life gibbering and screaming on a stake.’ I held up my hand. ‘Five nights from now.’
‘Let him go!’ Sobeck hissed out into the fading light.
I paused. A dark shape appeared in the doorway, a small thickset man, tufts of black hair framing a monkey-face. In one hand he carried a knife, in the other a club.
‘I see you have friends already, Sobeck.’
‘Ah, this is the Devourer,’ Sobeck laughed, ‘a demon from the Underworld, a man who can help us both. By the way, Mahu, I leave it to you whether you tell Maya about me. So go in peace, friend!’
Monkey-face stood aside and I went out into the night.
The Palace of Aten lay eerily silent during Akhenaten’s visit to the Temple of Amun-Ra. A soul-wrenching tension affected us all as we waited for news. On the fifth day, as promised, just before the ninth hour, I went back to the jeweller’s with a sealed casket. I’d kept my own treasures, gold, silver and jewels collected over the years. Akhenaten was a generous master. Monkey-face was waiting to take it. He grasped the casket, lips snickered into a grin and disappeared into the crowd. I dallied in the beer-house then visited a palace of delight where two Syrian girls in their thick perfumed wigs, bangles and anklets jangling, gorgets of silver round their throats, entertained and pleasured me. I returned along the river, past the picket guards set by Horemheb, to find Snefru waiting for me at the gate.
‘You are needed, Master.’
He almost pushed me into the hall of audience. Inside, three figures gathered round a glowing brazier; their muffled cloaks, shadows dancing against the painted wall, made them look like spectres, ghosts out of the West.
‘Come, Mahu.’ Queen Tiye pushed back her hood. Her face was drawn, her eyes red-rimmed with weeping.
‘Where have you been?’ Ay snapped.
‘We have waited for you,’ Nefertiti whispered.
‘At my pleasures.’ I bowed and made to kneel.
Tiye grasped my wrist. ‘This is no time for obeisances or courtly courtesies,’ she said sadly. ‘Tuthmosis my son is dying.’
‘What!’
‘Your lord has taken sanctuary in the Temple of Amun-Ra.’
‘How do you know?’ I gasped.
Tiye looked over her shoulder into the darkness. ‘Come!’
A shape emerged from the entrance leading down to the kitchen. One of the oil lamps flared, revealing the round, painted face of Maya. He was swathed in a shawl, which concealed neither his exotic perfume nor the jingle of his jewellery. He reminded me of the Syrian girls I had just left.
‘Well met, Mahu.’ He minced into the circle of light.
Tiye patted him affectionately on the shoulder. I realised only then how this powerful group were intent on winning over all the children of the Kap. They had planned, they had intrigued, they had plotted from the start to isolate, educate and train young men to serve the Grotesque, the Veiled One, Akhenaten.
‘Was it always meant to be like this?’ I asked the question without thinking. ‘Were we always supposed to be servants for him?’
‘Yes,’ Tiye replied. ‘But the Divine One, at the last moment, refused to let my son join you. This house was the nearest he got. Everything else including’ – Tiye gestured at Ay and Nefertiti – ‘was to be hidden in the shadows.’
I pointed at Maya. ‘What have you learned?’
‘I have two spies in the Temple of Amun,’ Maya drawled, eyes smiling. ‘A lector priest and an acolyte responsible for their laundry.’
Ay laughed sourly. Maya ignored him.
‘Early this evening they informed me that Tuthmosis was found seriously ill in his chamber.’
‘Where was … ?’
‘Your master?’ Maya’s eyes rounded. ‘He stayed near the Holy of Holies. Apparently Tuthmosis had returned to his chamber beyond the central courtyard where he became seriously ill. The alarm was raised by a servant. A priest tried to tell Akhenaten, as he now calls himself, what was wrong but he refused to leave the Holy of Holies. Akhenaten fears for his life – he believes there’s a plot to kill him and he refuses to leave the sanctuary.’
I thought of Akhenaten, long-faced, cowering in those dark aisles, his enemies surrounding him like a band of dogs.
‘Excellency,’ I gestured at Ay, ‘why not send your brother Nakhtimin to inform the Divine One?’
‘My husband is befuddled! As yet no one else knows.’ Tiye’s eyes filled with tears. ‘If they did, they might decide to strike …’
‘At the roots,’ Ay finished the sentence.
‘If the Divine One is informed,’ Maya jibed, ‘he might decide to cut both root and branch.’
‘What do you advise?’ I asked.
Maya gazed blankly back. The rest stood in silence. I recalled my conversation with Sobeck about Aunt Isithia. We were snakes coiling in the darkness. Everything we did was cloaked in secrecy. My journey to Thebes, those long sombre alleyways with the burst of sunlight at the end. I had run through them so quickly.
‘Surely,’ I began.
‘Surely,’ Ay mimicked my words.
‘Strike now,’ I urged. ‘This is the moment, that heartbeat in the battle, when all hangs in the balance.’
‘How?’ Nefertiti asked.
I threw all caution aside. ‘Let me go to the Temple of Amun. Horemheb and Rameses can be my guards. The shaven heads don’t know them. They’ll see what they expect to see, officers from the Sacred Band. Huy is a royal scribe, Meryre a chapel priest,’ I pointed to Nefertiti, ‘whilst Pentju is her physician, a scholar in the imperial House of Life. That’s it.’ I clapped my hands. ‘We will all be emissaries from the Great Queen. Horemheb and the rest were all sent to spy on us; let’s turn their weapon against them.’
Nefertiti clapped her hands, her beautiful face bright with life.
‘I’ll seal the document,’ Tiye intervened. ‘Despatched under my own seal.’ Her eyes glowed with excitement. ‘No, on second thoughts, I will go with you.’
‘Impossible!’ Ay objected. ‘They would suspect something’s wrong. Why should the Great Queen accompany her envoys at the dead of night?’
‘True,’ Tiye conceded. ‘I hold my own cartouche. I’ll sign passes, issue a demand, saying I wish emissaries to see my son.’
‘Both your sons,’ I urged.
‘Agreed.’ Tiye nodded absentmindedly.
‘And if they refuse?’ Ay asked. ‘If the shaven heads object?’
‘Sooner or later,’ I replied, ‘the news of Tuthmosis’ sickness and my master’s sanctuary will become known.’
I paused and walked away. Something was wrong. Crown Prince Tuthmosis was seriously ill in the Temple of Amun yet Tiye and the rest were not concerned about him. It was
Akhenaten.
‘Tuthmosis,’ I declared. ‘He’s dead already!’
‘I know what you are thinking.’ Tiye’s voice carried across the room. She came up close. ‘I love my two sons, Mahu, but Tuthmosis is doomed. I know that, we all know that. I recognised the symptoms, his hideous secret for the last seven years. He coughs blood. No physician can save him. Indeed, this is what could have happened now: an attack, the bursting of blood within. However, I must, I can if God is good, rescue my surviving son. He has a destiny.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Please,’ she whispered; the imperious Queen of Egypt was pleading with me. She stretched out and grasped my hand. ‘Please, Baboon of the South, you have the cunning.’
‘What about the rest?’ Ay demanded. ‘Horemheb and Rameses? They might refuse.’
‘Let’s invite them to a meeting,’ I retorted, still holding Tiye’s hand, ‘and see if they’ll agree.’
My proposal was accepted. Ay was a little truculent, his jealousy of me apparent, but Nefertiti had forgotten her fears and took him aside, whispering, stroking his arm. By the time Snefru returned with Horemheb and Rameses, Huy and Pentju, Ay was in full agreement. Maya, of course, had disappeared, murmuring that it was best if his comrades did not see him.
Any protests at being disturbed at such a late hour died on their lips as Horemheb and the rest came into the hall of audience and greeted Queen Tiye. They silently made obeisance and waited until Snefru had arranged cushions on the floor and withdrew. We all squatted down, staring at each other over the glowing light of the alabaster jars. Queen Tiye was flanked by Nefertiti and Ay, whilst I sat with the rest facing them.
‘This is no idle summons,’ Tiye began. ‘Mahu will explain.’
My blood was still running hot. Despite the night I was not tired but eager to press on. I told my comrades in short, pithy sentences what had occurred and what was planned. When I finished there was silence.
‘It means we force our way,’ Ay began, ‘into the Temple of Amun accompanied by only two soldiers.’
‘And the Great Queen’s warrant,’ I replied.
‘And if we refuse?’ Huy asked.
‘Then we can all go to bed,’ I replied.