by Anton Gill
‘So he trained as a warrior-bowman, not as a driver?’
‘Yes.’
‘He has not taken after me.’
‘Do not be angry, Huy. You are a stranger to him. Menuhotep brought him up well.’
‘Menuhotep. The great charioteer.’
‘You have no right to be bitter.’
‘I am not bitter. I am disappointed.’
An uncomfortable silence fell between them.
‘But now he is gone,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I wish you had seen him. He is your son. Taller, but your build, with your face. It has not always been easy to live with his face, because of the memory it has kept alive in me.’
‘If he is not dead,’ say Huy, interrupting her, ‘where do you think he might be? What does your heart tell you?’
‘I do not know. It is just a feeling.’
‘A wish?’
‘More than that. But perhaps more than a feeling, too. There was no reason at all for him to desert. He was impatient to get to the war. He cannot have been killed on the journey.’
‘But what about his comrades? How did they not see anything?’
‘I do not know. He had few friends.’
Either that, or very good ones, thought Huy. Ones who would not betray him, if he had a secret purpose. But he did not know the person his son had become. Would he like him? From all that Aahmes had said, it seemed unlikely. Heby had become Menuhotep’s son, the son of a former warrior, eager to relive his father’s glory. Huy wondered what Aahmes had told him about her first marriage, and about his real father. Had she told him anything? Perhaps it was unlikely. He had been such a little boy at the time. What would have been the need to do so? Might Heby remember anything of him? Surely he must – all our hearts carry some memories of the earliest part of our lives. But he would only find out if he could speak to Heby – he recognised with a heavy heart that they had never – at Aahmes’ request – exchanged letters. He believed Aahmes when she said that she felt he was alive. He had no such instinctive feeling himself, but he respected it. It was hard that she could give him no more positive indication than this. He would have to speak to the garrison commander as soon as possible. Perhaps there would be time that very day.
‘You are certain that you saw him onto the ship,’ he said.
‘Yes. We all went to see him go. Menuhotep and our three children.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘They are at school – except the youngest. She is too small to tell you anything. She has only lived through three cycles of the Seasons.’
Huy was ashamed that he did not know the names of these children – and something prevented him from asking them now. He wondered if he even wanted to see them: would they look like Heby had when he was little? There would be much of Menuhotep in them, of course; but also much of Aahmes. His bone, her flesh. That was how it was with children.
‘None of them would be able to tell you anything more than we can. Look! We all saw him onto the ship. He waved. They can tell you no more than I can.’
She fell silent. Huy watched her tired face: in it for a moment he could see the face she would have as an old woman.
‘Heby meant much to Menuhotep,’ she said. ‘Perhaps more than his own children did.’ She looked sadly into the distance, as if she were closing Huy out of her thoughts. ‘He does not get on well with small children; but he could speak to Heby. What plans they had! Heby would come home a hero and take over the cedar-wood trade, which by then Menuhotep would have built up for him. He would become governor of the district, and perhaps one day Viceroy in the Northern Capital. Men dream, women work, as the saying is.’
Huy listened quietly. He wondered what poses he would have struck, what ambitions he would have imagined, if Heby had grown up with him. How much he would have liked to see the boy a scribe! What he could have taught him then! What positions might a proud father’s influence not have procured for the boy! Inwardly he laughed. Childless now, he would at least be spared the disappointments of dashed hopes. He looked at Aahmes, wondering if she would realise what pain her tactlessness had caused him. Of course she would not. Inside, people do not change, and she had never been sensitive to it in the past. He shook himself. Well, no regrets had been awakened by seeing her again. A tireder, older version of the woman he’d once loved looked at by a tireder, older version of the man who’d loved her. What did it matter?
He drank some more wine, and felt better, but there was the nervousness in him, too, that wine would get the better of him, as it had in the past. Booze merely deferred pain, did nothing to cure it. How many years had he wasted, in the past, preferring to put things off, never liking to confront them. Was not his life with Senseneb a repetition of his life with Aahmes?
There was movement in the entrance from the ruined garden. The small servant seemed to have appeared from nowhere in the company of a tall, slightly stooped, troubled-looking man who wore too much gold for someone in his position. Huy’s first thought was, why has he not sold it? But then he understood that a man needs some symbol of his pride to cling to, that is worth more than food. Had he not always clung to his scribe’s palette, through all the years he had been forbidden to use it?
He stood to greet the merchant.
‘Menuhotep.’
‘Chief Scribe Huy.’
The uneasiness between them was unnecessary. In the dim room, they sized one another up. Huy found that he had no opinion of the man at all: here was a businessman fallen on hard times and clutching the shreds of his former status. Whether the man was a fighter he did not know. Perhaps all his energy had burnt up in the hopeless struggle against the will of the gods. But no; there was defiance in his eyes still. This was a man who still believed that life was good, held promise. But Huy had not been able to give the man a title. His title was gone. All he had was this ruined house. His gold jewellery. His drained wife. His little children. The son who had once been Huy’s.
It was for the host to speak, thank the gods. Menuhotep said. ‘You are a chief scribe now.’
‘A deputy only, in the Cultural Archive.’
‘But you have done well, after your fall.’
‘All that fall can only strive to rise again,’ said Huy, looking for a compliment and at the same time acutely aware of the awkwardness of the one he had just tried to pay.
‘Unless the fall is to death.’
‘If that were so, there would a greater resurrection still: to the Fields of Aarru.’
Menuhotep was silent. He motioned to the small servant, who, understanding his meaning without words, came forward and took away the wine flask. They all waited while he fetched another, and a another cup. Huy saw Menuhotep’s glance fall on the tired honey cakes, saw his heart register what poor fare they were. He lowered his eyes hastily before risking meeting Menuhotep’s. The master of the house walked away, swiftly after his servant.
‘He is proud,’ said Aahmes into the silence.
Huy knew how bitterly aware she was of the dry cakes, of Menuhotep’s mocking gold bracelets, of her own, too – for they were evidence that greater hospitality was due to a guest. He tucked his feet under him to draw less attention to his expensive leather sandals.
There was another long silence – Huy wanted to speak to his former wife, but he found that no words would come. Perhaps it was not necessary. They both knew that Menuhotep would soon return, having given his servant instructions to offer, as snacks, the best of what the house held – even what had been kept back for the children would not be spared.
Menuhotep duly returned, and the three of them talked politely of this and that until the small servant and the silent woman came into the room with dishes laden with cold duck and onions, dates and wheat bread, honeycombs and persea fruit.
They sat about the food in the gloom. Outside, in the little inner courtyard, the sun danced among the flowers. It was the hour of sleep, but here in the cool room there seemed to be
no need of that. Huy was not hungry, but knew that he would have to eat some of the food.
‘You are here on the king’s business, I expect?’ said Menuhotep.
‘Mostly I am here to find my son,’ replied Huy.
‘Of course,’ said Menuhotep, awkwardly. Huy regretted placing so much stress on saying ‘my son’. It was not fair. Heby was as much Menuhotep’s son as Huy’s. He had spent more years with the merchant.
‘I am sorry we share this loss,’ said Huy, looking from one to the other of them. ‘Of course I was ordered here on other business by the king and I naturally want to help.’
‘We are grateful to you,’ said Menuhotep. Huy could sense that the man was speaking through his pride. That he wished he was still in a position to hire a dozen men to search for Heby, to travel to the land to the east of the Great Green, to sail over it to Alasa and Kheftyu to look for him. But there was nobody to help except this first husband of his wife’s, who had fallen low and who was now lifted by the gods into a senior position at court. Menuhotep imagined how generous he would have been if only he had still been rich – how little any of this would have mattered between them. As things stood, he had spread out all the food in his household before the scribe, who was picking at it in an apologetic way – and he was aware of how little there still was and how poor was the quality of it.
He stretched his arms, showing the gold; feeling, however, like a puppet.
‘I would like to know whom Heby saw here. Who his companions were,’ said Huy.
‘He had few in the army – of course we did not know them – they were all at the training camp beyond the town,’ said Menuhotep.
‘I told him he had few,’ added Aahmes. Sitting together on the bench opposite Huy, they looked like a married couple indeed. It was he who felt like a stranger. Which in truth he was. He saw how they reached for each other. I am not your enemy, he wanted to say, but he had no words.
‘There were some in the town,’ said Menuhotep. Turning to his wife he added, ‘Did you not tell him of them?’
She looked at him and said nothing.
‘Sons of colleagues,’ said Menuhotep. ‘Former colleagues. One colleague in particular.’ He checked himself, looked awkward, as if he had caught himself out.
‘Can you tell me their names?’
‘Of course.’ But there was still some hesitation, and a glance was exchanged between them.
‘I would like to talk to them. Perhaps they know something.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Have you spoken to them?’
‘Yes, but now these two that I am thinking of have a sadness of their own.’
Huy looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They are the sons of Ipur,’ said Aahmes. ‘Senofer and Meten.’
‘Where can I find them?’ asked Huy, after a breath’s space.
‘At their father’s house. They live there still,’ said Aahmes. ‘They have not gone to fight.’
‘Do they work here in the city?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know Ipur?’ Huy was pursuing the ghost of an idea.
Aahmes looked at her husband. ‘We did not move in the close circles of this city.’
‘But did you know him?’
She met his eye: ‘We knew what he looked like, we knew what he did. But we did not know him as a man.’
‘Why was he killed?’
‘You had better ask Senofer and Meten.’
‘Might Heby have known?’
‘He died after Heby had left.’
‘What work do they do – Senofer and Meten?’
‘Senofer is a priest-administrator in the temple of Amun. He looks after the ships owned by the temple. Meten is a scribe and works for the merchant Duaf.’
‘I must talk to them.’
‘They will be able to tell you nothing,’ said Menuhotep. ‘Do you not think that I spoke to them? They will be able to tell you no more than we have.’
‘Were they there, too, when Heby left for the war?’
‘Senofer, yes. Meten was not in the city.’
*
Huy made his way through the streets slowly. He was not in any hurry to return to Kamose’s mansion, and he needed time to himself to think. He had not been in the town for any time at all, and already his heart felt cluttered, and he felt crowded by it. There were more people about now. Their dress was meaner than the clothes worn in the Southern Capital, and their faces harder and more lined. There were many foreigners among the Black Landers, men with heavy beards and hair on their bodies, in thick coarsely woven tunics and loose trousers. A monkey on a chain nattered at him from the top of a whitewashed wall, and he stood aside to let a small caravan of three oatmeal-coloured donkeys plod wearily by, their backs laden with bundles of some tired looking vegetable bound in sacking.
He found himself insensibly making his way towards the harbour, following every street that led downhill, and then taking his cue for directions from the smell of fish and the tangy, weedlike odour of the sea. The harbour square was busy with people, and a variety of craft crowded the jetties – mainly small coastal traders trans-shipping their cargoes to broader, flat-bottomed riverboats. There were a few soldiers about, presumably on furlough from the garrison, but not as many as Huy had expected to see. He reminded himself that the war was coming to an end. Soon they would be carving the victory columns. All the Northern Empire – or most of it at least – that had been lost by the Great Criminal, would be restored. The columns would show Ay triumphing over his enemies, but Huy and every other Black Lander knew that the true victory was Horemheb’s, and Ay would have to acknowledge it. How much longer did Ay have? He was still as politically astute as ever, and if he did not control the entire army, he had at least ensured that Horemheb have charge only of the Northern Ra Division. The Southern Amun Division – the home army – stood loyal to him, as he had told Huy himself; and he, as king, was also supreme commander.
Ay controlled the priesthood and the temples, too, with all their vast network of property, farms and shipping, and he controlled the means of feeding the land. By dint of great gifts lavished upon the kings of Mitanni and Rettenu, he had retained their allegiance and might hope for their armed support in any crisis – their mercenaries already fought in his army. He need fear no revolution – in any case, Horemheb would never be able to conjure up support for any plan to bring down the god on earth; but Ay had little time left. No man since the ancient kings had lived to the ideal age of one hundred and ten years; and very few, even among the elect, had seen as many years as Ay now had. The enemy the pharaoh could not conquer was Time. And Horemheb, who had seen two kings come and go already since the fall of the Great Criminal, had proved beyond doubt that he had patience. It could be that he was content to wait and sit under the tree, certain that the fruit would, in the end, fall into his lap. Ay might control the priesthood, and might, in the eyes of the people, own both them and the land itself; but it had been known that the High Priests of Amun could, in times of doubtful succession, throw the god’s weight behind the candidate of their choice. If the god spoke at the Opet festival, it would be through the voices of the priests.
Ay would have to act fast to get an heir now, and Huy had begun to think that Horemheb’s succession was a foregone conclusion. What age his rule would usher in he could guess all too well; there had been great freedom during the reigns of the Great Criminal and of his father. But the past decade had seen more and more doors close: the old gods and the old ways were brought back. The Black Land sought the glory which had almost slipped from its grasp. Its gold would keep it at the centre of the world only if the land was ruled firmly. It had lasted more than one and a half thousand years and would last as long again; but the lesson to be learned from the Great Criminal was that it would not survive change. So things had been, so must things always be. But Huy had seen daylight once, and knew he could not live in darkness thereafter. He did not know yet what he would do – w
hether he would even live to see the days that were coming; but he understood the feelings of the desert herdsman when he senses the approaching duststorm.
But what had all this to do with a lost son and a dead priest? Had they anything to do with each other? The only link was that the dead man’s sons seemed to be among Huy’s son’s few friends. It hurt him to think of Heby as a loner; but what was he, himself? How many friends did he have? His best friend was probably Senseneb, the wife whom he was on the verge of leaving.
Reluctantly, he started to make his way up the short, steep road to Kamose’s mansion. For a moment he had loitered by a drinking-house; but it was the hot time of the day and he had already consumed too much at Aahmes’ house. It was acid, this sea-wine, and had made his head heavy. He blinked against the sun. Already his visit to his former wife seemed like a dream. But his heart felt something like relief at having seen her again – relief that the question of regret was resolved. There was no desire to go back: the present was better than the past. And even with Senseneb, Huy had never felt other than lonely: now loneliness had become a friend, a cool mantle to be drawn around one against the sun; the shade of oasis palm trees; sitting by water in a garden. So much energy was spent fighting fate; but a man engaged in that activity was like a lion in a net: the more you struggled, the tighter it held you. But acceptance was the hardest thing of all, for how many of us can accept what we are, what has become of us?
Huy shook his head to clear it; as if in mockery of his thought, it felt muddier than before. He drew his shawl over it, for the sun was burning the top of his scalp, and its light dancing on the waves hurt his eyes.
*
‘Of course you must question them,’ said Kamose.
‘You didn’t tell me they were friends of Heby.’
‘I didn’t think it significant. They have problems enough, with the death of their father.’
‘I can imagine.’
Kamose looked sharply at Huy. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing really. I do not know them. Were they a close family?’
‘I believe so,’ replied the governor, stiffly. His strange blue eyes were uneasy, and he prowled in his stuffy work room as restlessly as one of the fast desert hunting cats in its cage at the menagerie in the Southern Capital.