City of the Sea

by Anton Gill

  But it was what came later in the letter that concerned him. Aahmes had never been a good writer – she had even entrusted the penning of this to one of the scribes attached to Menuhotep’s business – there was no mistaking the neat, official hand; her style was stiff, formal, as if even after all these years of separation – they had been apart now longer than they had ever been together – she had not come to terms with it. And yet she had remarried and had three more children by Menuhotep. It took Aahmes a while to get to her point, and yet long before it was reached Huy knew it was coming – he could sense the anxiety in the lines as clearly as if could hear it in her voice: for she would have spoken of any worry in precisely these formal, pursed-lipped terms.

  ...a recent posting to reinforce an infantry unit beyond the east coast of the Great Green...

  Where the fighting would be toughest, Huy guessed. But then came the worst part.

  He has not arrived at his unit, and cannot be found. The troop he was travelling with was forced to fight a skirmish, with casualties, after being ambushed in a village not far inland from the port of disembarkation. His absence was noticed then. It is certain that he embarked here for we saw him onto the ship.

  Missing in action, then, thought Huy. Not dead. They would have recovered the body after so small a fight. The Khabiri, who had laid the ambush, had all been killed, except a handful who had fled into the desert. The Black Landers had razed the village and killed all its inhabitants and livestock, and burnt the crops. They had sustained no dead, only casualties.

  Menuhotep cannot countenance the shame of desertion.

  But that did not seem likely. And might anyone have made such an accusation? Extracting the sense behind Aahmes words, though, Huy could see that Heby had disappeared at a point between embarking on the troopship at the City of the Sea, and the time of the skirmish. But why had nobody noticed his absence? Had he no friends among his fellow-soldiers on the ship?

  Huy tried to suppress the questions, but they rose up in his heart and joined with the anxiety that had already found a place there. Could Heby have deserted? It seemed unlikely; if only because he was such a keen soldier: he had volunteered to leave training camp early, Aahmes had written in another part of the letter, to go on active service.

  Perhaps he had got lost on the march into the Northern Empire? Huy knew about those long, straggling columns, the dust, the braying pack animals, the confusion and the noise. Huy put down the letter and looked across the garden, resting his eyes on it. How peaceful it was here – it was impossible to imagine a war going on in that remote region of the north. Would its outcome ever affect them here? It seemed unlikely. The flowers bore him a faint scent of honey on the breeze. He closed his eyes, and let the wind caress his eyelids.

  He had never seen the Great Green. They said that it made a sound like no other – a roaring that came from eternity and filled all space. There was land on its other side, they said, but you could not see it from our shore. Out in it were the great islands - Alasa and Kheftyu. It was full of fish, some monstrous, and dangerous to sailors.

  He picked up the letter again.

  ...understand that your duties could never bring you here, but as we must consider Heby dead, you may wish to speak to us about his entombment. There will be a statue to provide a home for his ka. But, Huy, You-Who-Were-Once-Mine, I do not think him dead.

  That was all she wrote. After that sentence came the salutation, which was as formal as the rest of the letter. Huy wondered if Menuhotep had read it. It was unlikely. In the important event of Heby’s death, Huy would have to be consulted, the more so as now he held a senior position at court. But the one tender short sentence with which she ended the letter reminded Huy of the Aahmes he had first known, the girl he had married. He could still smell her hair as he kissed the top of her head that day on the tall masted sailing boat moored on the west bank above the Southern Capital.

  It was no good. His curiosity was aroused. And if the mother had reason – though she gave none – for thinking her son was still alive, should not the father at least try to find out the truth of what had happened? The problem was how to do so.

  Psaro appeared from the house. ‘I am ready to serve dinner.’

  ‘Is Senseneb awake?’

  ‘Yes – but she prefers to eat inside. She is waiting for you.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Psaro hesitated. ‘Did the letter bring good news?’

  ‘Unsettling news,’ said Huy, smiling. Psaro came from the south, where Huy had first met him. He had a direct manner and an insatiable curiosity, both of which appealed to the little scribe.

  ‘Of the war?’

  ‘Of my son.’

  Psaro looked serious. ‘I am sorry.’

  Huy spread his hands. ‘There is little I can do about it.’ Psaro looked shocked. Seeing this, Huy felt bound to explain. ‘It is a long time since I saw him.’ Within himself, Huy was ill at ease, because he was not, after his first reaction, as distressed as he felt he ought to be. He tried to imagine the Great Green, and Heby on a ship, crossing it. Heby as a soldier, with a short thick kilt, a leather belt, and a bronze sword. Heby the colour of dark brick, burnt in the sun, strong from training – had they beaten him often? – ready for action. It seemed inconceivable to Huy that he should have been one-half responsible for the creation of such a man. And yet had not he himself always hankered, if only in his heart, for a life of action? The gods had given him good muscles, and now, in age, he had lost some of the weight he had put on formerly. Despite his inkstained fingers there were few meeting him for the first time who took him for a scribe.

  ‘Can you not go?’ asked Senseneb, a shade crisply.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Nakht might give you leave.’

  ‘There is too much work. And it would be Ay’s decision.’ He hesitated. ‘Would you come?’

  She lowered her eyes. ‘I have my work here. And I would be in the way.’

  ‘I do not think to look for him,’ said Huy, not sure if he meant that.

  ‘Despite what Aahmes writes?’

  ‘I would have to talk to her. I know no-one there.’

  ‘Menuhotep would help.’

  ‘Heby was not his son.’

  ‘Heby lived with him far longer than he lived with you. And for all his years of growing to manhood. He was a baby, scarcely beyond being a shapeling, when you knew him.’

  This remark cut Huy deeply, though he was certain it had not been made with that intention.

  ‘There would be little more for me to do,’ he said, ‘than attend to the funeral arrangements.’

  ‘There is no reason for you not to go.’

  ‘The journey is long.’

  ‘It is downriver.’ Senseneb looked at him. ‘It is not as far as Meroe is to the south, and we went there once.’

  ‘That was to be forever.’

  Senseneb ignored him. ‘The falcon-ships can make the journey from here to the City of the Sea in five days.’

  ‘At their fastest.’

  ‘Even if it were ten, you would not need to be gone long.’ She gave him a wan smile. ‘The city would get on without you.’

  ‘I am not sure if Nakht would.’

  They were silent. Huy put food into his mouth and ate, but he was not hungry. The meat tasted flat, but that was not the fault of the cook, or of the duck.

  ‘Are you not curious about your son?’

  ‘Yes – but there is nothing I could do.’

  ‘There is a mystery.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You believe Aahmes is right to doubt.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if she is wrong, then you should at least try to find out what happened?’

  ‘Yes – but that would mean many things. I could not cross the Great Green to the war. Why would I go? Who would send me? And how could I find out there? Whom would I ask questions of? I would not know where to start.’

  ‘You could begin in the City of the S
ea – perhaps you need go no further. If then there was need, you would find ways. No-one can set out on a journey knowing what its end will be. What then would be the point of the journey?’

  ‘You want me to go.’

  Senseneb sighed. They were sitting at either end of the low table on which dinner was spread. Psaro had left them, but the house attendants stood just within the narrow sphere of the lamplight. The sky was indigo: soon it would be night.

  ‘We need to part,’ she said.

  The words hit him like a spear but he knew she was right. This was not the first occasion on which they had had this conversation, and done nothing. Was it that they both had too much work to do to have time to attend to their own lives – which should have been the most important matter? Or were they using work as an excuse for putting action off? When had their last love-making been? Three years ago? Four? When had they last even touched each other?

  ‘Perhaps by doing so we can find a way back,’ she continued. ‘There will be no change at all otherwise.’

  ‘Do you want to say the Words of Undoing now?’ he asked, after a long silence.

  ‘Let us decide when you return.’

  ‘Ay has not given his permission yet. I have not asked him yet.’

  ‘It is the Time of Drought. Ay is taken up with other matters than the Cultural Archive.’

  Huy considered. It was true that there was nothing on his work table that his staff could not do without him. He looked at Senseneb, but she had started to eat again, and was not looking at him. He could see how tired she was, but he wondered if she did not feel the same relief as he did at the prospect of being apart.

  *

  ‘Of course you may go,’ said Ay, looking up from the papers on his table. Huy stood erect in the gloom of the king’s work room, unable to believe that it had been so easy. He looked across at Kenna, but Kenna’s shoulders were bent as he wrote. Huy noticed in these days that Kenna, even when he stood, could not straighten those shoulders any more. The king’s arms and face were thinner, too – thinner and weaker. Time was passing.

  ‘You must attend to your son,’ continued the pharaoh. ‘We all have our dead to bury.’

  ‘I will have returned in time for the entombment of the Lady Ankhesenamun.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ay. ‘She was your friend. We are all losers by her death.’

  ‘May she dance in the Fields.’

  ‘I am certain that she does.’

  There was a silence then, and Huy stood, uncertain, while Ay’s head bobbed about amongst the papyrus scrolls. Then the king rose, and came round the table to him.

  ‘This is a difficult time, Huy,’ he said, taking the scribe’s arm and steering him towards the broad, low archway that led to a high balcony overlooking the River. The morning sun struck their backs as they walked into the daylight, and Ay pulled his shawl over his head. He leant on the brick balustrade and looked down over the city. Huy saw that there was much activity around the harbour square – a broad-beamed barge, carrying a vast, rough-hewn statue of the god Amun, had come up from the south during the night, and swarms of dockhands were busying themselves with ropes, boards and scaffolding for the unloading.

  ‘It will sit in the Stone Heart of the New Temple,’ said Ay, following Huy’s gaze. ‘It will bear my face.’

  Huy wondered when it had been commissioned. At the onset of Ankhsi’s illness, he guessed. Ay was not a man to let fate overtake him.

  ‘May the gods smile on the king,’ he said.

  ‘That is my hope too,’ replied Ay, drily. He looked at Huy carefully. ‘You and I have seen much,’ he said.

  ‘In truth, we have.’

  ‘And I think you will not have found me a bad master.’

  ‘No,’ said Huy, now careful himself.

  ‘It is well that you plan to travel to the City of the Sea,’ said Ay. Tied up not far from the barge at the quays of the harbour was the falcon-ship Wild Bull, which had brought Aahmes’ message. ‘When do you plan to leave?’

  ‘As soon as Nakht can arrange –’

  ‘I will deal with Nakht.’ Ay looked at him. ‘I would like you to go as soon as possible. In two days Wild Bull sails again. You will be on her.’

  ‘But I travel for myself.’

  ‘You are my official. You may use a falcon-ship. It will not be the first time.’ Ay paused for a breath’s space. ‘Besides, there is business I wish you to do for me in the north.’

  Huy breathed out quietly. He had been expecting this. Ay never gave favours. He only traded them. But he was the king, the owner of all the Black Land and everything that lived in it, from the oldest village donkey to – Huy stumbled at the thought of it – General Horemheb himself. That, at least, was how the laws were written.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  Ay frowned. ‘The death of my Second Wife may –’ he chose his words carefully, ‘– give encouragement in certain quarters. Of course I have my agents, but they are known in a way that you are not. And of course nothing could be more natural than that you should be in the City of the Sea – to attend to your son’s Funeral. What was his name?’

  ‘Heby.’

  ‘Heby. We will award him the Three Golden Flies. Let his statue be so decorated and inscribed. Kenna will give you papers for the District Governor.’

  ‘Is he your man?’

  Ay smiled. ‘Who can be sure of anything?’

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Kamose.’

  ‘What do you wish me to do?’

  Ay spread his hands in a small gesture. ‘Nothing. Just have a look at what is going on. Talk to people. All the reports are that the war is coming to an end. The Kheta are retreating north again above Ugarit, and the Khabiri have been driven into the Desert beyond the Eastern Sea. The time will soon come when Horemheb will no longer feel his talents stretched by the Northern Empire.’

  Huy looked inwards. ‘He has the army.’

  Ay smiled. ‘Not all of it. The trick will be to recall him without it – to judge the moment in the north when he is no longer needed, but the army is.’

  ‘But will he come alone?’

  Ay face darkened. ‘He must obey my command! I am the king! But even if he tried to defy me, the army is tired of fighting. Would it turn on the pharaoh? I think not. And the Southern Army is loyal.’

  ‘Have you ordered it to march north?’

  Ay smiled again. ‘You do not change, Huy. Always you ask too many questions.’

  ‘Lord, you are great. You have nothing to fear.’

  ‘I know. But I also like to be sure of it.’

  Chapter Two

  The voyage in truth was fast. Wild Bull sped down the current, in the middle of the River, itself low, fast and narrow at this time of year, settled between its high banks, along which the very last of the harvesting was in progress. Dawn of the third day saw them passing the ruins of the City of the Horizon. Huy looked at it as the ship cruised by, finding it hard to imagine that this was where he had once lived. This had been the new capital, the centre of the greatest empire on earth, the fount of a new cult, destined to outshine even the great tomb of Khufu as a wonder to the eyes of foreign ambassadors and kings: diplomacy through construction: who could resist the power of such builders? But now not only was the city a deserted ruin, but the tide of the sand, impelled by the wind, had moved over and buried much of it, so that its profile was already blurred, like the decaying corpse of a dead lion in the desert. And yet here all his hopes and ambitions had been founded; here he had been married and had a family, a house, a position which he had held in happy confidence of a secure, successful and serene life. Watching the greyish yellow mounds pass by in the cold early morning light, it was difficult to believe that such a time had ever existed, let alone been part of his life. But our past is unreal – like a dream. The house we have lived in for twenty years, thirty, ceases to be one of bricks and wood as soon as we have packed our belongings and left it – it becomes part of the dre
am. We are condemned to live in the present, an existence founded on nothing and going nowhere, except by the will of the gods, who are as remote as the stars.

  Huy shook himself to rid his heart of such thoughts – they did not help the business of getting through the time before the voyage to the West. And life was a struggle – better to accept that and get on with it than mope. Moping, after all, was a form of idleness. He went to find Psaro, who, to the body-servant’s great delight, was accompanying him. Huy had not brought any more attendants with him; this was no official tour.

  Northward sped the ship, cleaving the River like a knife, slipping between the little craft that crowded the water near every village, passing the heavy transport barges and the deep-keeled Kheftyu ships. From the high cabin aft, Huy saw the shimmering outline of the ancient step-tomb of Zoser, brooding on its low hill near the Northern Capital, where Wild Bull put in to deliver letters to the Viceroy. They had timed their arrival badly: it was the hottest part of the day and not a soul was stirring. Only the scarab beetles, the children of Ra, were flying on clattering wings.

  Huy spent the night here in the house of a friend, Paeri-Renenutet, a shipbuilder who lived with his three wives and eighteen children in a sprawling, run-down villa on the edge of the town. He had done so to escape from his two fellow-passengers, a dull civil-servant and an inflexible young chariot-brigade officer, complete with Feathers of Rank in his wig, who refused to discuss any aspect of the war – Huy suspected he was afraid to reveal his ignorance of its progress. However, he found the experience of staying in the overloaded household exhausting, and his friend aged beyond belief. The Northern Capital, smaller and younger than the Southern, held few charms for him, and he was glad to be on his way again the following day. Psaro was more reluctant to leave – he was beginning to be overawed at the thought of the sea.