by Mike Ashley
Men-amun croaked back, sheer fright having gone with his voice.
“Are you daft or what?” the man bellowed. “Hear me, muttonhead! Run!” He ducked down, vanishing as quickly as he’d come.
Men-amun shut his useless, gaping mouth.
He had to retreat, take a run and jump the awful gap. He stubbed his toes and rocked the displaced flag. He scrambled upright, sprinting for the duty priests’ living quarters.
He had no authority whatsoever to try approaching Hapu-seneb, Highest of all High Priests – those of Amun-Ra – nor did he have much hope of finding where this exalted personage might be since, outside of religion, the same was also Vizier to Their co-Majesties and as such, not always within the sacred precincts. Yet something dreadful had gone wrong. Men-amun pelted on, praying disjointedly he might at least reach someone to whom he could rid himself of the problem.
He emerged, panting, into the inner court surrounded by the cells and eating house of the junior priesthood. And surely Amun-Ra had heard him, for seated on a stone bench, glancing through a papyrus roll, was the Third Prophet: the Lord Menkheper-re-sobek.
Men-amun jolted to a halt, making hasty obeisance.
Lord Sobek (he had contracted his name long ago in deference to his royal half-nephew, also Menkheper-re, who was now called King as Tuthmosis III) looked up surprised, halfway to reproof at such lack of dignity. Then he saw sweat, and scented fear, and changed his mind. He frowned, listening to Men-amun’s plunging story, snapped his fingers for his steward and sent him instantly to Lord Hapu-seneb bearing a signet ring and a terse message of urgency. He stood up, unfolding his tall, thin figure in one fluent movement.
“Come,” he said. “You and I shall see for ourselves.”
Men-amun would have done almost anything else rather than go back to the passageway’s gloom and that suddenly yawning hole – but he had no choice. When they got there, Lord Sobek peered down into it and grunted. Then he whisked his robes together at the knees and, to Men-amun’s great unease, lowered himself over the lip into the dark. At waist height, he paused.
“Since you have knowledge of this, willy-nilly, I would teach you what it is,” he said, and, “There is a ladder here. Below, will be rushlights on the walls.”
Men-amun was aghast.
“One of the disciplines of priesthood – as you should know – is an ability to walk with fear and come out the further side. You will not progress, else. Follow me,” he was bidden.
And undoubtedly, one great difficulty in life is that when a High Priest who is also a Prince of the Blood sets you a task, you may not easily refuse.
Men-amun swallowed convulsively, then – as Sobek steadily descended – offered his own feet, reluctantly, to be guided down the spelky timber treads.
The corridor underground was barely a body’s width and led in a different direction to the one above. There were tiny prickets carrying light but it was hard to make much out, though Lord Sobek seemed confident enough.
They walked very straight for more than a hundred paces (Men-amun counted as he kept close to the pale blur that was his superior). Twice they were let through solid doors after Sobek had given a sharp double knock. Those guarding them were armed, going by the creak of leather and tiny metallic chimings of their gear. Nobody said anything. Nor were there other sounds – only an ever-increasing stifling stillness laced with the occasional scrape and slitherings of their progress.
The passage turned an elbow.
Abruptly they came out into a vaulted chamber. Here at least it was possible to see partly by daylight, due to two meagre ventilation shafts high up in the roof. Two other passages branched away on the far side ahead of them. To their right, where the chamber bellied out, a strong-room or cell had been built in, made entirely of smooth, worked stone. The wooden locking bar on its door was split and the keeper it ran into smashed away, but the whole had been jury-rigged fast, by dint of someone wedging a bench obliquely into the stone jambs. Liquid dribbled from the threshold, bringing with it a sour stink.
There were five of them now – the two from the passage having walked behind, heavy spears in hand. A third guard squatting opposite the cell entrance, sword drawn and never moving his eyes from it, was the man with the injured face.
“I have sent to the Lord Hapu-seneb,” Sobek informed him.
The man muttered thanks and half pushed himself to his feet.
“No, no, be easy. You have taken enough. He is in there?” Sobek queried.
“He is, Lord Prince.”
“What happened?”
The wounded man shook his head, speechless, sliding back down the wall. One of the others set out to explain.
“Beg pardon, sir . . . he got Si-ankh’s best mate, see? Me and him –” he pointed at his fellow – “was coming on duty. We’d fetched the supper stuff and water as usual. We’d come from yon side, and got bolted in from behind, like they do. There hadn’t been a peep from His Nibs all day, Si-ankh was just saying as Merweh took in his bowl and beaker. There was a pause, like – then all hell broke loose! Si-ankh dashed straight in after – well, you see what he got – but Merweh was blinded and spouting blood. Rolling about and screaming. None of us could get near quick enough to drag him free. You can’t hardly believe the mania! We grabbed Si-ankh and His Nibs come hissing and howling after us busting everything he touched, so it was a matter of cobbling the door to before he got out and went rampaging! What happened inside after that don’t bear thinking on!”
Sobek nodded and would have answered, but a guard reinforcement appeared from the opposite side escorting Vizier Hapu-seneb and an official of the Queen Regent’s household called Senenmut.
There was a brief bustle of activity with people bringing flaring resin torches, brooms and water pots. Si-ankh was taken away for treatment.
Men-amun had to admire Lord Hapu-seneb. He and Sobek stood together, Hapu-seneb with a torch held high. Soldiers made a tight semicircle round them, weapons poised. At Hapu-seneb’s command somebody hoisted away the bench and shoved the door smartly inwards.
“Now you rascal!” the Vizier announced into the interior. “You know us. This sort of thing cannot go on!”
Together, the High Priests marched in.
Against the flickering light, Men-amun caught one horrifying glimpse of a creature barely human, crouching toad-like on the lost guard’s corpse.
The priests’ advance set it off in an unearthly wailing, like a soul in Darkness, but its manic energy was spent.
They bound him, hand and foot, bundling him into a bag made from sewn sheepskins. They pulled his mouth open and made him drink – milk it looked like – but it must have had drug in it to complete quiescence. Four soldiers carried him bodily from the cell and dumped him unceremoniously in a corner.
Merweh’s remains came out in pieces – his throat ripped and dripping, the lolling head a red obliteration. There were chunks of gouged flesh, and a wrenched arm separate. Whatever might be retrieved was collected on a sheet of sailcloth.
There was a great deal of brooming and swilling away.
A military joiner arrived to start fitting new locking bars and keepers.
Sheepskins are abomination – ritually unclean – and this prisoner’s were particularly rank, yet out of sheer curiosity Men-amun forced himself to go near. He squatted to study the madman covertly.
He had a great mass of unkempt, matted hair and gaunt features – quite a prominent nose and sticking-out upper front teeth. His skin was greyish, from lack of light, perhaps. His eyes flickered, evasive, unnervingly blank. He lay there, keening to himself in some wordless, tuneless monotone. After a bit, wriggling and shifting, he began working his arms up from inside the bag. When he got his hands out, tightly lashed, Men-amun could see his weapons: ten hugely overgrown, horny, thickened nails – honed obsessively, no doubt, in his stark surroundings, to pointed, lethal talons. Blood was drying into them. Worse: an eyeball glistened – white and globular – still impa
led on a nail half broken.
Men-amun thrust down revulsion.
Almost by accident he turned a key in the situation, for he joined in the keening sound, making it deftly into a repetitive, childlike tune – then a rhyme – then he built on that by tapping each dreadful finger in turn, going round and round. The creature giggled and flexed them, following his game. In time Men-amun pulled a small trimming knife from his belt and cunningly pared off every talon, short and square. Only when there were no more left did the man grow fretful. So to preserve peace and because he could think of nothing better, Men-amun embarked on telling him a story.
“Remarkable!” was Lord Hapu-seneb’s dry comment when he came to oversee the prisoner’s return. But by then the man was hardly awake, what with poppy juice and the low hypnotic drone of Men-amun’s voice.
Prince Sobek led him back along the underground passage. Workmen came behind to replace the flagstone and remove the wooden steps.
“It wouldn’t do to risk this kind of thing again,” the Prince explained.
It gratified Men-amun that Lord Sobek saw personally to his repurification, presented him with fine new linen, and – since the refectory evening meal was now long over – insisted Men-amun took supper in his private rooms.
“The First Prophet was impressed with your forethought in trimming our friend’s nails,” the Prince told him affably, after his steward had served them and retired. “No one else has managed any such thing in years!”
Men-amun looked modestly pleased.
They had roast of goose with salad stuffs, and strong wine imported from islands in the Great Green. The Prince himself broke fresh bread between them.
“Eat, please,” he said, “You must be hungry – I am!”
Men-amun ventured some questions.
“Has that man been there long?”
“Not there . . . No.”
“How old is he, sir?”
“Approaching thirty perhaps – why?”
“I found that difficult to gauge. Is he always dangerous?”
The Prince sighed.
“His condition is intermittent. He might be quiet for months on end. But the rages strike without warning. That is the problem.”
“I see.”
Sobek set down his food.
“I must have your undertaking – on your honour as a priest and in writing – that you will never discuss this matter with anyone. Am I plain?”
“Of course, Highness,” Men-amun hastened to agree. “Indeed, you have my word.”
They spoke of other things but, in the end, Men-amun failed to resist the ultimate, obvious question:
“May I ask – who is that person?”
The Prince’s expression turned glacial.
“That,” he stated flatly down his fleshy Tuthmosid nose, “can be no concern of yours!”
After a day or two the matter assumed unreality – like some ill dream brought on by too much cheese and garlic late at night. Almost.
Yet, in a day or two also, Men-amun was sent for by Lord Sobek.
“You made an impression,” he said, acknowledging Men-amun’s bow and watching him sit cross-legged before him, “in regard to the person you may remember. He likes your storytelling.”
Men-amun’s stomach lurched. He said he found it hard to credit the prisoner had taken any of it in.
“Can Your Highness be sure?”
“Quite sure. Yes. We have consulted. We find it reasonable to try what another tale might achieve. Should you consent, naturally.”
(“We” – who were “we” – precisely? Men-amun wondered.)
There was an uncertain silence during which he was uncomfortably conscious of minute scrutiny. Then Men-amun prevaricated.
“I hardly know what might hold his interest . . .”
“Oh, come! One doubts if he expects some classic text!”
“. . . and if I were missed from duties, sir?”
“If you slip away after refectory supper – might it not seem you had studies given? I shall accompany you to the place – and remain. Any small improvement would help – and be rewarding to yourself, longer term, I might add.”
Men-amun argued it in his head. Patronage he was going to need if he were not to be stuck in the lower priesthood all his life. For though his family did middling-well – father retired with honour from the army, and a brother prospering in merchandise – they had no claims to lineage or social influence. But nowadays people could rise to great power. Lord Senenmut was living proof of that.
He bowed his head, consenting.
“I shall try, Prince, as you see fit,” he agreed.
They took a different route at such times, skirting kitchens, bread ovens, storage places and down into deep cellars. Again there were guarded doors and another narrow subterranean corridor until they reached the stone chamber from an opposite side. Men-amun often wondered where the third passage led.
The soldiers on duty varied.
In the cell was nothing except a built-in mudbrick sleeping shelf on which, usually, would be the putrid sheepskin bag. A thin litter of straw and rushes scattered the floor, in an effort to sop up filth.
The soldiers would remove Men-amun’s knife before he went in, and he would have a bundle of rushes to sit on.
“Daren’t make it a stool, sir,” one of them apologized. “He could grab it and clobber you!”
Often enough the prisoner would be crouched in a corner, naked, covering his head with one arm.
Men-amun would squat, doing his best to ignore the stench, and begin the counting game on his fingers. The man would watch for a while, unmoving, until he took up the thread of rhyme – then, collecting and dragging the bag, he’d creep close and put himself half inside it. Once he tired of the rhyme, he’d demand, clearly: “Story!”
He liked things about animals. Men-amun invented firstly, some endless stuff about a cat journeying to find where the Nile was born. Once absorbed, his listener had an obsessional habit of stroking his right earlobe. Often he would seem asleep – or Men-amun’s tale would peter out from weariness – but if he stopped too soon or tried, however cautiously, getting to his feet, a bony hand would clamp round his forearm with a speed and force that was frightening.
“More,” he would say, “Again! Tell some more!”
Sobek would have to come and intervene with a bowl of whatever-it-was the prisoner drank so greedily, and unlatch the gripping fingers.
“More stories another time,” he’d say, “But only if you are good.”
It wasn’t long before Men-amun came to loathe and fear these occasions.
The return to Temple life afterwards was lengthy – there was always the process of purifying in the sacred pool, not something you could skimp with a High Priest right beside you. The relief, the reward, lay in being rid – in being dry and clean – in taking wine and refreshment in the Prince’s quarters.
“I suspect,” Sobek told him once, “You think we keep the poor creature badly.”
“He is very thin,” Men-amun was judicious.
“His diet must be restricted. And often enough he spoils what food he’s given.”
“Might he not have a loincloth at least?”
“Do you think we haven’t tried? He shreds things – or ruins them. Except for the time he twisted his linen thin and strangled someone with it! You yourself are witness to what can happen.”
Men-amun said no more. But a question plagued him: if this man was so difficult to keep – why did they persist?
It grew worse. The prisoner would greet Men-amun’s arrival with a screech which, given the circumstance, might supposedly be construed as gladness. Like some gigantic vile spider he would scuttle up to sit next to him in his horrid bag – all in a kind of caricature of friendship.
The nails were growing again but this time there was nothing Men-amun could do – no ruse or game which pleased; nor did the guards dare risk leaving Men-amun his knife.
Once, taking advan
tage of Lord Sobek’s temporary absence outside the cell, Men-amun asked the prisoner his name. He had been following the epic adventures of Wepwawet the jackal, stroking his ear. The interruption made him stare, fretting the lobe.
Men-amun repeated his own name and said again: “Who are you?”
“Story!” pleaded the man.
“In a moment. I am M-e-n-a-m-u-n, yes?”
Impatiently the man nodded, poking him sharply in the ribs.
“Tell me: who are you?”
“No name.”
Such a thing was inconceivable.
“You cannot – not – have a name!” Men-amun protested, aghast.
A name was the person’s unique, essential label. The ka and the ba of the soul attached to it and all of that carried you forever through Existence. You must be so equipped when it came time for you to go back into the Other; when you had to answer before Thoth, god of Wisdom and Ma’at, goddess of Truth, Justice, Balance, for your deeds. To be unknown, unrecognizable then was to be lost in impenetrable Nothing; to have the lights of your spirit extinguished.
“Wepwawet,” the man was repeating anxiously.
“He’s in the story. Who are you?”
“No name.”
Men-amun tried again. The man looked at him disdainfully – as at an idiot.
“No name,” and he shouted, “NO-NAME! No-name IS name! STORY, STORY, STORY!”
He started beating Men-amun with his fists.
Sobek reappeared, alerted by the rise in sound.
Men-amun had no choice but to resume hastily: “. . . so Wepwawet sang to the stars and to his own jackal god, and to Nut of the night sky before setting off once more across the desert . . .”
Men-amun dreaded these times: the darkness, the dirt, the stink – above all, the ever-present prickling awareness of danger.
Sometimes he had the sensation of being watched – but by whom, how, or for what purpose he couldn’t fathom. On leaving once, he could have sworn to a brief drift of perfume in the slack air – sandalwood? – a bizarre note in such surroundings. And having to keep the endless tales going time after time, scoured his mind and imagination dry. It dragged him down, costing him sleep and appetite.