by Anton Gill
To Huy, this seemed odd behaviour in someone who only a day earlier had seemed to be anticipating her husband’s death before anyone else had begun to give up hope, but he accepted it gratefully, as she unbent sufficiently to allow him to visit the house at any time, though not to ask Amotju questions, or stay long.
For a time, they feared that he had suffered a loss of memory so total that it had not only deprived him of his past, but robbed him of the power of speech. Mutnefert, unable to see him at all, was frantic — a reaction which Huy found almost as surprising at Taheb’s, for he had thought Mutnefert a woman well in control of her feelings. He relayed news to her as often as he could, to Aset’s disgust; but there was little fresh he could say with each succeeding visit, and nothing good.
Then, minute signs began to appear that Amotju would emerge from the state of deep shock they had found him in. First of all, recognition came back into his eyes — of where he was, then of whom he was with. Not long after that, his lips began to move as he strained towards forming words. This took a lot longer, but the desire to talk was strong within him, and he struggled until he succeeded. Thereafter, his progress was quick, though his manner remained reserved, and he kept his eyes down when talking to people, unwilling to meet their gaze.
To Taheb’s evident annoyance, the person he most urgently wanted to see was Huy. Summoned to the house, he first had to run the gauntlet of his friend’s wife, who issued a list of precautions and conditions worthy of a provincial administrator before allowing him into a small inner courtyard. Even then, she left him with as much reluctance as suspicion.
He found himself in a space barely larger than an arbour. The walls here were painted with vigorous, highly coloured designs of ducks flying above lotus groves, of sportsmen hunting water birds with throwing-sticks in the marshes, and of oxen ploughing by the River, The court was dominated by an ancient fig tree which cast its shade over everything, plunging the area into semi-gloom. Amotju sat on a long, low couch spread with gazelle hide, supported by a large bolster. He beckoned Huy over with a listless smile.
‘My friend…’
Huy grasped his wrist in greeting, appalled to see how thin it had become. The skin on the backs of his hands was badly broken and scabbed.
‘How are you?’
‘I cannot believe I am here.’
‘You have had a terrible experience.’
‘Yes, it was terrible. It brought me to the brink of death.’
‘What happened?’
Amotju’s face contracted in pain. ‘I cannot talk about that! Not now! Not yet!’
Huy was surprised and concerned at the violence of his emotion. ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to distress you.’
‘It’s all right. Naturally you would want to know.’ Amotju relaxed slightly.
Huy said, more gently, ‘Can you at least tell me the sequence of events…where you were?’
Amotju looked at him beseechingly. ‘If I told you, I am not sure that you would believe me. I do not know if I can face the memory myself yet.’
‘Please trust me. Perhaps if you share it —’
His friend’s eyes took on a haunted look, as if he expected something to spring at him from the shadows in the corners of the courtyard. He pulled Huy to him, so close that their foreheads touched, and spoke in a voice that was barely audible: ‘I have not been to the brink of death, but beyond it.’ His eyes met Huy’s, imploring him to believe. ‘Do not ask me to say any more now. But that is the extent of what has happened.’
Amotju sank back, exhausted, and closed his eyes. Huy watched him for a moment, sitting on the edge of the couch, and then thinking him asleep, started to rise softly. In a moment Amotju was awake, clutching his arm.
‘You must do nothing more in pursuit of Rekhmire!’
‘What?’
‘Nothing! Do you hear me?’
‘We will talk. But I must find out who has done this to you.’
‘I have received a warning from the gods.’
‘Which gods?’
Amotju seemed to be on the point of answering, his heart struggling to give his tongue speech.
‘Huy!’ Taheb’s curt voice, calling him from the entrance to the courtyard. Amotju sank back, his battered hands losing their grip on Huy’s arm, where the fingers had left red marks. Huy rose gently, biting back his irritation at Taheb’s untimely interruption, and turned to meet her.
‘He has had enough,’ she said more softly, leading him away and through into the larger quadrangle where they had first met. ‘He gets upset very quickly, very easily. What did he tell you?’ They passed a house-servant carrying a jug of water, going to tend his master.
‘Nothing.’
Taheb looked at him in a way which might have been sceptical, but she indicated a chair, and asked him if he would like bread and wine. This was very different treatment from before, but Huy did not allow his face to betray any of his thoughts. They sat in silence while the food and drink were brought.
‘How did he seem to you?’ asked Taheb after they had drunk.
‘Frightened.’
‘Yes. He has been given some terrible shock.’
‘Deliberately?’
‘What do you think?’
‘What has he told you?’
She sighed. ‘He says he remembers nothing of what happened — only the fear stays in his memory. But he has asked me to take no action, to let him recover and to forget the whole thing.’
‘And will you?’
‘I cannot.’ She looked at him directly. ‘I will not disguise from you the fact that Amotju and I have had…our difficulties. No doubt you know already. It is the kind of thing friends discuss,’ she added, with a trace of her customary bitterness and envy. ‘But this has made me realise that I cannot abandon him; I seek an answer and I seek revenge. This was a cowardly act.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘The doctors found from his faeces that he had been drugged — or poisoned.’
‘So it was deliberate.’
‘You never thought otherwise for a moment.’
He looked at her and found his gaze coolly and firmly returned.
‘Do you suspect me?’ she asked. ‘Do you think I would be driven to anything so vulgar or so desperate to frighten him off seeing that Mitannite woman?’
So she did know about Mutnefert. Well, it was not surprising. Amotju was not a naturally duplicitous man, and he had never been able to wear two faces effectively. Huy drank some wine. Dakhla this time. Amotju evidently stocked nothing but the best.
‘What do you want me to do?’
She smiled; Huy could hardly believe it. ‘I should have believed Amotju when he told me you were clever.’
Huy thought, you look at me and you see a stocky little clerk without much money, who has lost his wife and who was foolish enough to have come unstuck when Akhenaten’s ship went down. But maybe you’re learning.
‘I want you to help me find out who is behind this.’
‘He asked me to drop everything.’
‘And will you?’
Huy wondered if she knew about the original threat, the ichneumon symbolically robbed of its life and the strength of its right arm after death. It seemed unlikely that Amotju would have told her about it. He also wondered how politically ambitious she was, through her husband. He noticed that she had not mentioned Rekhmire. It was difficult, not knowing how far she was in Amotju’s confidence, and not knowing how sure she was of keeping him. Aset had said he would leave her for Mutnefert.
‘I think I would like to find out the truth. I do not like mysteries.’
‘Some things are hidden from us for ever by the gods.’
‘There is very little that determination cannot uncover.’ After this short, formal exchange that signalled their agreement, they smiled at each other cautiously. Taheb raised her cup and drank.
Glory-of-Ra had been floated off the sandbank and completed her journey to the port of the S
outhern Capital with what was left of her cargo. There she was unloaded and overhauled, the planking damaged in the battle replaced, and the bloodstains scoured from her decks. Ani had been able to supervise most of this. Gradually getting used to his new cedarwood leg, with its linen cushion and leather straps, he now rested on his single crutch to ease the soreness he still felt in his stump, and let his eyes run over the lines of his ship with satisfaction. Mobile again, and assured of his old command back, he had spent the preceding days recruiting a fresh crew. Soon he might be sailing up to the Northern Capital. Glory-of-Ra was possibly to be consort to Splendour-of-Amun as escorts to Nebkheprure Tutankhamun as he sailed south to take up his new residence.
Ani felt a glow of satisfaction. After the uncertainties and vicissitudes of the last decade and a half, the world would be right again. There was only one loose end to be tidied up before he could settle with a clear mind to his work once more, and that was the matter of justice — or vengeance. Ani did not particularly care which motivated him more: the men who had robbed him of his ship, slaughtered his crew, and seen him mutilated by the crocodiles, had to be found.
The rule of law had declined rapidly on the upper reaches of the River during the last two reigns, and pirates, unknown in Ani’s youth, during the rule of Amenophis III, had emerged in their hundreds from the ranks of disaffected or cashiered sailors, deserters from the navy, and freelance captains who looked for a quick and high profit from crime. Ani knew that there would be no question of bringing all the individuals involved to justice, though through passing the word among his network of contacts up and down the River he had the satisfaction of knowing that five of them had had their throats cut. Solidarity amongst the honest sailors on the River had less to do with sentiment than insurance; and their justice was swifter and a good deal more conclusive than that meted out by the courts.
Ani’s thoughts, however, were focused on the Medjay officer who had sat watching as his men were slaughtered. He must have been very cocksure to show himself like that; though in truth the battle had been all but over when he had appeared. The problem was that you did not trace a Medjay, still less an officer, through unofficial channels; and even if you were able to do that, there would be little or no chance of administering the rough justice Ani had seen dealt out to his other enemies. That morning, however, he had received news which gave him some cause to celebrate. Three of the peasant farmers who had rescued him had also seen the Medjays, and as Ani had added judicious bribes of his own to the reward paid by Amotju, these men had agreed to testify with him in any trial.
All that had remained was to track down the Medjay, and that had turned out to be easier than Ani had expected. That morning he had had confirmation that the man’s name was Intef; he had recently been appointed to a post at Esna.
‘The arrogance of the man is unbelievable,’ he told Huy when he passed on the information. ‘But of course someone like him regards peasant farmers as barely above the animals in the fields, and he thought that we were all killed.’
‘I don’t know if we can get him.’
‘Of course we can get him. Horemheb is determined to put a stop to the crime that’s developed in the country. Especially down here, where it’s so bad people can’t even cross the port area in the capital at night.’
‘He won’t like it if one of his own men is involved. Whoever brings the charge may win, but he won’t be popular.’
‘I’ll take that risk,’ said Ani, evenly. ‘If I don’t have a legitimate complaint, who has?’
‘But what case do you have?’
‘They were so close to us. They could have saved us!’
‘That proves nothing.’
‘It proves they weren’t doing their duty!’
‘They might have felt it imprudent to intervene. You know the way they think.’
Ani grimaced in irritation.
‘I know you don’t like it; but we have to think strategically, within the law,’ said Huy.
‘If I’d thought you were going to turn out to be such a cold fish, I wouldn’t have come to you with this. I thought Amotju was your friend.’
‘Stirring up the Medjays against him won’t help.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘That we need concrete proof.’
‘You’ve got four witnesses!’
‘Proof that he was in on the attack.’
Ani was about to reply; then he relaxed, as if something had occurred to him. He grinned. ‘You’ll get your proof,’ he said.
Three days later, Intef was arrested. A chest of gold ingots bearing Amotju’s stamp had been found under the floor of his stable.
‘I don’t believe that anyone could be that stupid,’ said Aset, when Huy told her.
‘It might just have been that he felt absolutely sure of himself,’ Huy said. ‘Arrogance, but not stupidity.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘There will be a trial.’
‘When?’
‘Immediately. Horemheb is very displeased. He wants it all cleared up and forgotten as soon as possible. At the same time, he’s going to make an example of this man.’
‘If he’s guilty.’
‘Three men saw him, and Ani. Now there’s the gold.’
‘Have you talked to Ani about this?’
‘Of course.’
‘What does he say?’
‘That the gods answered his prayers.’
‘And do you believe him?’
Huy looked at her. He had already checked the dockets itemising the gold offloaded from Glory-of-Ra at the port, against the boxes of rough ingots and nuggets now in Amotju’s strongrooms, and there was no discrepancy.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Any more than I believe that Intef was behind it, though he was almost certainly part of it.’
The trial was held at Esna and did not take long. The young officer protested his innocence but there was no denying the damning evidence, and the matter had to be hurried through. The dry season was coming to an end, and people were preoccupied with the coming floods, as Hapy, the breasted god, spread the rich water of the River wide over the thirsty land. Then the king would come to the Southern Capital. On a dawn when the fresh north wind was blowing, Intef was taken down to the water’s edge, where a stake, two paces long and a hand’s-breadth across, had been jammed firmly between rocks, the roughly sharpened end pointing to the sky. They stripped him, raised him up, inserted the point of the stake in his anus, and impaled him. There was not a great crowd. People were too busy preparing for the floods. Because he was a Medjay, the jailers had seen to it that he had had too much fig liquor to drink on his last night on earth. Thus it was that he was barely conscious until the pain hit him; and then he was not conscious any more, ever.
SIX
As he had told Taheb, Huy did not like mysteries. They were untidy, in the same way that Intef’s death was untidy. It was supposed to solve problems, tie up a number of loose ends, and it had achieved neither aim, except for the purpose of official records. But whom had Intef been working with? Would they be likely to avenge him? Executing him might have a discouraging effect on other Med jays wanting to take a short cut to fortune, but Huy was simply frustrated that the man had been killed before he had had a chance to talk to him. Offering him clemency in exchange for information was a new idea, and one which would probably not have appealed to Horemheb; still, it was a pity that there had not been an opportunity for the attempt.
But his interest in Intef would draw attention to him which he would soon find unwelcome.
Aset had managed to get him an introduction through her brother’s contacts to the clerk who had responsibility for checking the offloading of the remaining part of Glory-of-Ra’s cargo, the man whose paperwork Huy had already had a chance of inspecting.
The clerk was not too pleased to see Huy again. He was the model of clerical self-regard, and might have stepped straight out of those pages of The Miscellanies that deal with scrib
es, thought Huy. Tall and immaculate, except for his finger-ends, which bore carefully neglected inkstains to underline the status of his profession, the man had all the marks of the ambitious junior who wants to appear more important than he really is. In contrast to the battered palette which Huy no longer carried, this clerk’s was brand-new. It was made of sycamore wood inlaid with ebony, with a long indentation scooped down the middle to hold the (in this case) perfectly straight rush brushes. Above this notch six circular holes were carved into the wood, each holding a cake of pressed ink powder, four black and two red. At his belt, the clerk carried two neat leather pouches, with further supplies of ink powder. The man looked so refined that Huy wondered if he used only water or sometimes spittle to moisten the ink, and whether he lowered himself to chew the ends of his own rushes, to split the fibres and create the brush.
‘Greetings, Pemou,’ said Huy, as he entered the man’s room near the quay.
‘Is anything amiss?’ Pemou wanted to know immediately. He knew all about Huy and was wary, but at the same time didn’t want to alienate the boss’s friend.
‘No.’
‘The documents you saw were in order, I hope?’
‘Perfectly.’
Pemou was still worried. He nibbled the end of one of his pens, and, reaching across his low desk, adjusted one or two of the items on it: a small tortoiseshell containing water, and a roll of leather which he used as a writing surface. Seeing these familiar objects, Huy felt a pang of envy and of nostalgia. He wondered if he would ever be allowed to use them again. He noticed that Pemou even wore a clay talisman of Thoth, the god of writing, around his neck. This man was a copybook scribe.
‘If nothing’s amiss, what can I do for you?’