by Gill, Anton
Nehesy was huge. His bulk was increased by the swellings from the beating he had been given. Thinking of women, Kenamun felt again the disgust and excitement which tightened every muscle in his body.
‘Not the wire,’ said Kenamun.
He showed them what to do himself. Putting a foot in Nehesy’s right armpit, he pulled slowly at the man’s wrist until the arm was out of joint at the shoulder, if you can yell, you can talk,’ he spat at Nehesy; but the big man had Passed out.
The assistants threw water over him.
‘Now do the same to his right leg,’ said Kenamun. The sergeant left the room abruptly. Kenamun’s expression did not change. He watched them twist Nehesy’s leg until it hung limp.
‘Will you tell us who knows?’
Nehesy did not reply, but his eye still glittered. Kenamun watched as he opened his mouth to speak, but knew that Nothing would come out — not because the huntsman could not talk; but because he was still not broken.
Kenamun sighed, and took a small gadget from the table he stood at: two flat pieces of wood joined by thin wire, and a stick. He wrapped the wire under Nehesy’s left knee and twisted it tight with the stick until blood and muscle burst out and the wire grated on bone. Nehesy screamed with a violence and at a volume which made even the hard skulls of the young torturers crawl.
‘Save yourself,’ Kenamun said softly, after the scream had subsided into a sobbing whimper. ‘Bravery never mattered, never changed anything. Why give yourself all this grief?’
Nehesy spoke at last, bringing his torturer into focus. ‘May Set shit in your mouth.’
Kenamun blinked once. Perhaps the man really knew nothing. But no, that could not be. He was an experienced huntsman, he had been with the king on the last expedition. He was bound to have had suspicions. Inwardly, the police chief cursed. They had been too confident, too arrogant.
‘He can’t take any more now,’ he said. ‘Give him an hour.’ He looked at Nehesy. ‘Show some sense then, or we’ll start on your teeth. Then your other eye. Then your prick. Think about it.’
‘Shall we clean him up?’ asked one of the thugs as he turned to go. Was he imagining more faintheartedness?
‘No,’ said Kenamun.
EIGHT
‘Why?’ Ineny drank fastidiously from his cup of pomegranate wine. ‘Because I don’t think he will have the courage to do anything in the end. That is why.’
Huy, sitting across from him, looked out to where the River had turned a deeper shade of red. The flood was coming. Soon it would be upon them. The chroniclers and measurers of the inundation predicted a strong rise in the water level this year. There would be a good crop later. Peasants talked of the departed pharaoh’s last gift to his people. But in the city the talk was of his successor. Too much time had passed without a nomination, though that morning the official inquiry into Tutankhamun’s death had at last come up with its unsurprising finding: death by misadventure.
‘People are becoming impatient,’ continued Ineny. if Ay does not move soon he will lose initiative and perhaps the chance to move at all.’
‘It is better to prepare your ground before you move, to be certain that your footing will be sure.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Ineny sarcastically. Huy returned his smile. They had met by chance in the street that afternoon, and Ineny had invited him to share a bottle. It had been an excuse for two off-duty employees to swap opinions about their master. Ineny had thrown off all reserve, and now, relaxed, chatting, he was a different person. At first it had been Huy who had held up his guard, since a chance meeting this type very often turned out to be arranged; but if it had been Ineny’s intention to pump him, then either he was very bad at it or he had been sidetracked by his own preoccupations, because nothing had been demanded of Huy other than polite interjections and the occasional bland statement, to show that he was paying attention.
Ineny was principally affected by the consideration that he had thrown in his lot with the wrong man. Huy sought to reassure him and retain his trust without appearing to be too anxious to do so. Ineny was in on too many of Huy’s secrets to be treated off-handedly.
‘I always wondered if he’d have the courage to stand up to Horemheb,’ he was saying mournfully. ‘Now I’m proved right. But it’s too late for me to change sides. I’m a marked man.’
‘Do you really want to?’
‘I want to get on. That means following the right leader.’
‘I wouldn’t give up Ay yet.’
Ineny looked at him, and drank some more wine.
‘I’ve been with him since he returned to the Southern Capital. He was always so hungry for power — he managed his life so well. But now that the Golden Chair is within his grasp, he hesitates.’
‘Gathering strength before he jumps.’
‘Do you think so?’ Ineny raised his eyebrows hopefully just as Huy was beginning to think that he had thrown in one platitude too many. But for Huy there was nothing disappointing in Ay’s caution. It was to his caution that Huy owed his survival. However, he was not going to spell that out for Ineny. He would be interested to see which way the little man would jump. Ineny was a small piece on the senet board; but he was in an important position.
Huy could not afford to relax. He knew the real reason for Ay’s hesitation — Ineny had not been present for all of his own interview with the old Master of Horse - and he also knew that Ay’s patience would run out as soon as he sensed the moment to strike was passing. Huy would have to give Ay all the information he had within the next two days. To do that and guarantee the safety of the queen would require quick thinking.
‘Has Ay asked after me since our last meeting?’
‘No. But don’t think for a moment that he has forgotten you.’ Ineny smiled. ‘I admire you, Huy. All this time we have been talking I find that I’ve opened my soul to you - such as it is. And you manage to be a pleasant companion, cordial, even warm - and yet at the end of it I know not one grain more about you than I did to begin with.’
‘You would make a poor spy, Ineny.’
‘My wits have not disappointed me so far.’
‘Stay with Ay. It would be foolish to make more enemies than you need to at a time like this.’
‘I do not ask your advice.’
‘Then why have you told me all this?’
‘What is it you know, Huy?’
‘Very little.’ Huy managed to remain close-faced. But Ineny’s restlessness worried him. To take the man into his confidence demanded too great a risk for him to take now. If it turned out later that he regretted his caution, he would accept what the gods arranged. In the meantime Huy would need all the help he could get from the one person he had decided he could trust without any reserve: Nehesy. Senseneb too, perhaps; but she knew enough about medicine to procure and administer poison, and she would not be the first woman to use sex to turn a potential enemy’s judgement. Huy had not forgotten Merinakhte, the young doctor who had climbed as high as he could and whose eye would now be on his next goal — Horaha’s position. Had he enlisted Senseneb’s help to get it?
He shook himself like a dog to cleanse his heart. It was surely not good, not healthy, to see the dark side of everything Ra sent.
For Ay, it was a difficult interview. He had rehearsed it in his heart many times before facing it in reality, and now had to acknowledge that reality has the disadvantage of having no script.
The step he was attempting to take was one which he had considered at length, and he had discussed it with his Chief Wife. Tey had acquiesced, but with reserve, and Ay was left with the feeling that although she had always supported him in his ambitions, she drew the line at agreeing to give up her primacy as a stepping stone. Still, the speed with which Ankhsenpaamun had put her plan to marry the Hittite prince into action had alarmed him. If Ineny had not got wind of it through the royal body servant he slept with, Prince Zannanzash might be in the Southern Capital even now, sending messages about his safe arrival
back to his ever more powerful father. An accidental death here would have been out of the question, and it would not have been long before not only he, but Horemheb, would have felt the earth open beneath them.
For a while he had hesitated, hardly daring to believe that Horemheb’s spies had not got wind of the queen’s plot too -and then when he was sure, he had hesitated again; but finally he had given the order to have Zannanzash killed, because Horemheb’s downfall would not necessarily have ensured his own survival; and with Zannanzash enthroned, Ay’s own hope of the Golden Chair would vanish forever.
But the incident had shown him how essential it was for him to strengthen his links with the royal family. It was his own lowly birth which had failed to secure him the succession when Akhenaten had died. He would not make the mistake of overlooking that again. He did not have the time! Age hung like a clinging ape around his shoulders, weighing him down, and no amount of make-up, exercise or a frugal diet could keep the lines from the neck, the forehead and the elbows, or could prevent the skin from sagging at the jowls and losing its elasticity on the hands, or stop the biceps from turning into loose, flabby folds. Ay had his hair dyed, and under his robe he wore a tight linen bandage to hold in his shocking balloon of a stomach, which would not decrease even though he only ate one small meal of rice and figs a day, and drank nothing but water.
* * *
Ankhsenpaamun received Ay formally, with a retinue of body servants. That disquieted him. He had little doubt that she knew why he had come, and was irritated at her insistence on addressing him as ‘grandfather’. After the formal greetings were out of the way, he managed to persuade her to dismiss most of the people, though she kept two women near, one of whom kept darting impertinent glances at him from a plain face whose bright black eyes reminded him of a rodent’s. Ay, wishing that he had at least one supporter with him, toyed with the beaker of Kharga wine he had been offered and been obliged to accept, wondering if he could get away without drinking it. He looked into the queen’s unfriendly eyes and wondered if she had guessed the truth about what had happened to Zannanzash. He decided that even if she suspected a killing, it was more likely that she would blame Horemheb than him.
‘I do not see why you wish to take a new wife,’ said Ankhsenpaamun, once he had made his proposal.
‘The answer to that is simple,’ replied Ay. ‘Your safety. By marrying me, you would be sure of my protection.’
‘And after your death, grandfather? We are separated by fifty years.’
Despite the coldness of his desire, for Ay had hardly considered this marriage as one which would involve the two of them sharing the love bond, her words caught at his heart. How merciless youth is, how arrogant is its energy, he thought. And yet looking at his granddaughter he remembered Nefertiti, and her mother, who had died so very young, an age ago, when he had himself been young, or at least clinging to the shreds of youth, at thirty-five, i will not die so soon.’
‘And what about my child?’ it will be safe.’
‘And the succession?’
Now she had touched a nerve. Ay had no son. It was true that he had seen his other daughter marry his rival, so that Perhaps one way or another his blood would flow in future generations on the Golden Chair; but Nezemmut’s child had died as it entered this world. That was a bad omen, and although the girl was young, and broad-hipped, the old man still clung to a hope of siring his own successors. His Chief Wife, Tey, was too old for more children; but could he manage to bring his granddaughter to bed? His principal intention in marrying her was to strengthen his own bond with the Golden Chair, but...
Ay gnawed at the idea, then put it back. First things first. Let him marry this girl and sit on the throne. A strategy to secure it for his direct descendants could be developed later; and anyway Horemheb would be a danger while he was alive. Fleetingly, he thought of Huy. How much depended now on that little spy’s evidence.
‘The succession lies in your birth-cave,’ he said. He had barely hesitated a second before replying.
The queen pursed her lips. ‘That would be a condition of our marriage.’
‘I loved the king like a son.’
‘That I have never doubted,’ she replied, with equal formality, though her voice was taut.
‘Then you will accept me?’
‘I need time to consider it.’
‘There isn’t time. Tutankhamun’s successor must be named.’
‘Why can there not be a regency again until my child is old enough to rule?’
There is not time, thought Ay. He wanted to seize her by the shoulders, shake her, chase all that youthful insouciance out of her. How dare she be so unruffled by the passing of time? He felt the touch of Osiris on his shoulder every hour now. Well, one day this cocky little girl would do so too.
‘It would be unwise. The country needs to feel unified behind a pharaoh again. One strong enough to face the threat from the north.’
‘I see. And you are that man?’
‘It would be best, if our family is to keep the crown.’
‘And what about my aunt?’
‘Nezemmut is — ’
‘What? An understudy? A second string to your bow?’
‘The king your husband willed that she should marry Horemheb, not I.’
Ankhsenpaamun turned away. She felt disgusted and trapped. Mistaking her movement for modesty, coyness, girlish indecision, Ay stretched out what he hoped was a fatherly hand. She felt it on her bare shoulder, dry, warm and leathery, like a snake sliding there. She shrank from it. Understanding immediately, humiliated and furious, but as much for the damage done to his scheme as for himself, Ay withdrew.
‘Consider my offer,’ he said stiffly, after a pause, lowering his voice so the two women attendants (who stood stiff as statues three or four paces away, but whose eyes, he knew, had missed nothing) could not hear. ‘Accept it is your best hope of safety, and the best security for the Black Land.’
The queen trembled, though whether with rage or fear Ay could not tell. ‘I cannot,’ she said finally, and her voice, though firm, was toneless.
‘You do not have a choice,’ retorted Ay, harshly. ‘I will give you five days to reconsider. If you refuse me you risk much.’ Feeling that with this threat he had gone too far, he brought their conversation to an abrupt end, with only as much ceremony as was necessary to prevent the observers’ tongues wagging, and left her. Pointedly, he did not bother to reach the door before turning his back.
Ankhsenpaamun managed to hold back her tears long enough to dismiss the women, then she let go and threw herself on to a chair, giving way to the anger, grief, frustration and loneliness which she could bear no longer.
‘Nehesy isn’t here any more,’ said the stable boy with the carbuncle to Huy. They stood in the dusty yard. Over it all there hung an air of neglect, disuse. Huy looked across to the animal shed, and wondered how the beasts there were faring.
‘Where has he gone?’
The man scratched his neck. Huy noticed that two among the cluster of boils had started to fester. The man needed medical treatment quickly, or he would risk gangrene. ‘They took him away.’
‘Who did?’
‘I thought you were a palace official. The Medjays did.’
‘Arrested him?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
Scratching again, and squinting into the sun, the man said, ‘Four days ago.’
‘Did you find out what for?’
‘Do they need a reason nowadays?’
Huy glanced towards the huntsman’s house.
‘No good looking there,’ said the stable boy. ‘The family’s gone too.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. There’s a new chief huntsman.’
‘Who?’
The man grinned. ‘Me. Don’t look so alarmed. No one’s got time for hunting just now so I’m a sort of caretaker. This thing on my neck’s going to put me into the Boat of the Night before I’m much older,
anyway.’
‘You could have it treated.’
‘I haven’t time to leave the animals. Somebody’s got to keep them clean and fed and exercised.’
‘But what’ll happen afterwards?’
The man shrugged. ‘Everyone’s got to die sooner or later. I expect they’ll appoint somebody, once they’ve settled whose going to rule us. There’ll always be hunting, whoever’s in charge.’
‘What’s happened to Nehesy’s wife? Where’s she gone?’
‘Her parents have a farm just north of the city.’
‘I don’t even know her name.’
‘Aahetep, if it’s any use to you. But she’s got no more idea why they took Nehesy than I have.’
Huy hurried back through the city. The sun at midday was so harsh by this time in the season that all activity ceased until the breeze picked up again towards evening. Business was compressed into the hours of the early matet boat and the late seqtet boat. It was now late in the morning so the streets were clearing, and although the rickshaw puller he had hired grumbled unceasingly under his breath at the mercilessness of expecting him to drive in this heat, they covered the distance between the palace and the northern streets of the town in fewer than thirty minutes.
The city ended abruptly. The sheer walls of the houses, elevated on their low hill of centuries of detritus and the rubble of earlier buildings, which protected them from the worst of the annual river floods, gave way immediately to fields which were parched and cracked now, but which would very soon be flooded with the rich black silt which was the life-giving gift of Hapy. The River had risen already, the red sand which gave it its colour at this time of year swirling on its surface as it passed northward on its long journey to the Great Green.