by Anton Gill
‘He was our father!’
‘Yes, and you hope that the Northern Capital will confirm you in the position of his successor. Which it will not do if the truth about him comes out.’
‘You will do nothing without my approval. Even if you did, no-one would believe you if I chose to deny it.’
‘What about his victims?’
Senofer looked at his brother.
‘One of them still lives,’ continued Meten.
‘There is nothing to connect our father with the deaths of the other two. They killed themselves.’
Meten turned back to the window. ‘In any case, Ipur deserved to die.’
‘I am not like him. The Council of Priests will accept that, even if the truth about him comes to light.’
‘Then let us tell Huy the truth,’ insisted Meten.
‘The sooner Huy leaves here, the better. We do not need his help. We will purge this city of the evil that is in it and present it, cleansed, to Horemheb. That was the agreement.’
Meten inclined his head ironically. ‘And power falls to us. I hope you are firm in your resolve.’
‘You cannot doubt me.’
‘If Huy knew what we suspect, he might become our ally. We do not blame his son for what he did.’
‘No. The matter is too uncertain.’
‘You fear too much. If Huy is allowed to go on looking for information by himself, the gods know what he will find. Do you not fear for yourself? If Kamose found out what you are doing behind his back, behind Atirma’s back...’
‘Huy will not discover that,’ snapped Senofer.
‘If it were to emerge it would harm our cause.’
‘It never will.’
‘It might, as long as they live.’
‘Atirma has no power to harm us. What voice has he?’
They were interrupted by the barking of the dogs. Senofer turned irritably in the direction of the noise.
*
Leaving Psaro at the guest house, Huy made his way through the grounds to the governor’s mansion. At this hour, Kamose would be in his work room, with his secretary, finishing the day’s business. Huy wanted to talk to him. In his mind was less his conversation with Senofer than what Userhet had said. Shadows were fleeting across his heart: he could not capture their substance; but they were forming a pattern. He also wanted to know about the ship he had seen at a distance, moored to the army jetties. He was all but certain that it was not a Black Land ship. He wondered if Kamose knew about it.
He had reached the terrace of the mansion and turned right along it to walk towards the archway that led into the inner courtyard. The sun was out of sight behind him and the sky had become a great slab of dull red. He paused for a moment to look out across the scrubby garden, with its low-growing, stubborn shrubs, to the lugubrious spreading flatland of the marshes where the River lost itself in the Great Green. The white sea-birds dipped and squalled in concentrated spirals by the harbour, and as he watched a ship – too far away from here to identify, but he was sure it was Wild Bull, laboriously hoisted her yellow sail to greet the freshening wind. Slowly, almost too slowly to believe, she got under way. Even at this distance he could occasionally hear the disjointed shouts of the mariners, their voices echoing, disembodied, like those of ghosts on the early evening air.
He lifted his gaze to the sky. The huge arch of it spread like a cloak over the Black Land, far greater than he had ever seen it at home, and promising strange horizons where it sank to meet the earth. Why in this vast expanse did he feel so hemmed in? Here, in a town at the edge of the world he knew, sending ships out into this void of water, he might have hoped to feel a reborn sense of wonder, of adventure, of opportunities never taken that even now, perhaps, need not be written off as missed. Why did he feel weary, uninspired? Why did he feel like turning his back on it?
But a part of him resisted this lassitude. A part of him was angry.
He heard light footsteps behind him and thought he recognised the girl he had glimpsed with Kamose earlier, approaching him. She had an easy smile and open, frank eyes which were not those either of a servant or a concubine. The way she walked, too, was relaxed and confident – even provocative. There was no deference to the visitor from the Southern Capital here.
She was tall, with long legs, and broad, strong buttocks. All the shapes of her were moulded by a light plain dress gathered high, and made of a linen so fine that it might have been byssus. Her skin was the colour of warm sandstone in the sunlight, and the silver-tasselled shawl which covered her broad shoulders revealed strong arms, golden armlets, and the firm curve of her breasts. She wore a narrow gold-and turquoise bead necklace and around her dark braided hair a decorated band in white and ochre. The strands of her hair ended in gold beads, with which she played ceaselessly with her left hand. The hand was long and well-shaped: an artist’s hand; and the equally slender wrists bore simple bracelets of heavy gold, in which inlaid turquoise fishes swam. Her black eyes took up the smile on her lips, but just as it was provocative, so there was a challenge in them. She came to a halt not two paces from him and stood there, smiling her smile, watching him, saying nothing. Huy returned her look, finding himself attracted and uncertain. Kamose had not mentioned a wife. He remembered the masculine atmosphere of the house. Was this, after all, a young concubine?
She sidled closer to him, knowingly. Standing by the low wall that bordered the terrace, he had no room to retreat.
‘I have seen you,’ she said, at last, in a low, attractive voice. But she was immediately familiar, and even with these simple words she seemed to take charge of whatever they would have to say to one another.
‘And I you, I believe,’ replied Huy, lamely. ‘I am Huy.’
‘I know. And I am Hemet.’
He waited, expecting her to tell him more than her name, which he remembered, on Kamose’s lips, on the day of his arrival. He also remembered the look the governor had exchanged with his man Cheruiri. But she fell silent, though her gaze never left him. Unseen, the sun was setting, but they could feel it. The energy was going out of the air. Feeling himself pinioned by her eyes, which were changing colour to indigo as the colour left the sky, he forced his gaze away, back to the River. He was shocked to see how far Wild Bull had already sailed – she was almost out of sight, her hull half hidden among the papyrus water-meadows.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Do you not know?’ He was surprised. There was also a little-girlishness about her voice, something plaintive in the forming of the question, that intrigued him. She was dressed in adult clothes; she did not wear her hair in the Lock of Youth. And yet there was much of the child about her. Was it an act that she was playing? Was she teasing him?
‘I am looking for my son,’ he said.
‘Heby.’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew him. You should have asked me about him.’ She walked two or three paces, almost flouncing, to come round to his other side. As she did so she turned west, and her face was bathed in the dying light.
‘Tell me now.’
‘There is something you must find out first.’
‘What is it?’
‘Who I am.’
‘I hoped you would tell me.’
‘You are the problem-solver.’ Her smile became more mocking. Huy could not imagine why she was flirting with him. How old was she? Eighteen or nineteen? A woman, and no child. Why did he find himself joining in her game, despite himself?
‘You must help me. Do you live here?’
‘No.’
‘Did you once?’
‘Yes.’
Then Huy knew. There had been something about the face which he had recognised, but the nose and forehead were, though the same, transformed into objects of female beauty, from the masculine strength – or even coarseness – that the same features lent to her father’s face.
‘You are Kamose’s daughter,’ he said decisively.
She seemed disappointed tha
t he had guessed so soon. She did not speak, but inclined her head, and transferred her gaze from him to the River.
‘Will you keep your side of the bargain?’
‘What was that?’ Her tone had changed abruptly. Now her voice was bored, even sullen. She looked at the River as if she would like to drain it, to turn the Delta into desert.
‘Tell me about my son. Was he a friend of yours?’
She thought – or seemed to think – for a long time before she replied. Then she looked at him again. Her eyes had changed colour again with the light: now they were grey, opaque.
‘Heby was a good man. Believe that, whatever else you hear.’
‘Was?’ Her words stabbed Huy’s heart more painfully than he had thought possible.
She looked at him with something like concern. ‘But you must know that he is dead.’
‘So it seems. His mother does not think so.’
She was about to say something dismissive, charged with the impatience of youth, but decided against it. She ran a fingernail lightly along the wall of the house.
‘My father has not introduced us.’
‘Perhaps there has not been a chance. If you do not live here.’ He wanted to ask her more about herself, wondering if he might have found an ally in her; but he did not want to frighten the quarry. This was a girl, he sensed, who would only respond to careful stalking. She would tell him things when she was ready. He wished he could read more of her character in her eyes: were they careful, or were they cold?
‘Perhaps you are right. I do not live here anymore. Soon after my mother’s death I left home to marry. I am married to the landowner Atirma. He is one of the richest men in the city, though he is young.’
‘Do you live in the city?’
‘Yes. But there is a house on the land too.’
Was she boasting? And if so, why?
‘He is a powerful man,’ added Hemet, holding Huy with her eyes. Huy looked at her. There seemed to be nothing more in her face and the line of her body than the suggestion of sexual challenge and mockery that had been there before, but had a new element crept in – did he imagine it or was it real? He might have sworn that in some way she was warning him – or threatening him.
Chapter Five
Duaf adjusted the bracelets on his wrists. He was sweating in this unaccustomed humidity and the heavy gold jewellery slipped uncomfortably down onto the big bone joints that attached his arms to his hands. He was an ungainly man, tall and stooping, with a face that always looked as if he had just swallowed a draught of sour fig liquor. Duaf was aware of his physical shortcomings, but for many years he had consoled himself with the company of a faithful and much younger wife. He had been forty when he had approached Meritre’s father – the long-dead slave-merchant, Pasinisu, with his offer of marriage. At the time, Meritre had been sixteen – the same age as his daughter Nofretka was now.
But Meritre was gone: she had broken the dream he had had about her. Part of him could understand and forgive her. She had been married to him because of what he was worth, not because of any real qualities. He had closed his heart to the look of fear and disgust on her face when he had first taken her to bed and she had seen him stripped of his fine – and cunningly cut – clothes, and his jewellery and wig. Without them, he gained ten years in appearance, and his gnarled and bulbous joints twisted appallingly, the more so, like a betrayal, after the shedding of the camouflage of his robes.
But he was a strong man, and he had bent her to his will – either that, or she had become used to him, for the expression – each of her expressions had been branded onto his heart as they changed – on her face had given way to acceptance, however grim, and finally to boredom, though of course latterly there had been a new light in her eye. Her body had still been his, he later realised, but only in the physical possession of it. The heart within was finally free, and had settled elsewhere. And now she was gone. Yet there had been a time when they had been close. When Nofretka was born. How Meritre had loved him then – or so he had thought.
He regarded his daughter with the same jealousy as he had his wife. He had no plan to marry Nofretka himself – he had been broken in his most secret depths by his wife’s infidelity, and he had no wish ever to repeat the experience of conjugal love. There were clean whores available, who would give him satisfaction when Min rose in him, and that would be all he would seek for the rest of his life here. In the Fields of Aarru he would seek out Meritre and drag her back to judgement, send her howling to the boiling pits of hell. For form’s sake he had had to dedicate a statue to her, but he would let her ka starve and hunger in secret – let her ka be forced to drink urine for want of water, eat sand for want of bread. She should not have mocked him with his own deformity.
Nofretka had inherited her mother’s fine body – thank the gods – and all her fine features except the nose, which was Duaf’s, though smaller and more delicately shaped in her serene oval face, framed in gently waving hair so dark a brown as to be a warm black. Sometimes her presence disturbed him, especially if she came upon him unawares, because she reminded him so much of her mother. But he knew that any residual pangs would pass in time – and they were pangs of anger and pain, not the ache of loss. Meritre was gone – if he wished her back, it was only so that he could impose tortures upon her to fit the enormity of her betrayal. In his great age he had come to see that women were the enemy, not the helpmeet, of man. Their conditions were so subtle that you did not see that they were made of the strongest bronze. They could lead you to the cliff and throw you over before you had noticed, and then walk off with the man they had betrayed you with, without even a backward glance. They used you up and disposed of you when they were done.
But he would not visit his wife’s great sin on his daughter. He was not blind. He had seen what came into her eyes when she saw Heby. Now Heby was gone, too. Another danger removed, and he thanked the gods for it – may Seth swallow Heby and Meritre both! He would keep Nofretka safe, unless and until he could trade her off in marriage for some material advantage. That was all she was good for. She was a woman. They were all vicious daughters of night. It had only taken very young ones to lead Ipur astray – Ipur had even tried to coil himself around Nofretka. He had drawn off when Duaf had warned him; and Duaf had done nothing more. Ipur had not killed Nofretka, after all. Then Duaf might have been obliged to take revenge; but otherwise it seemed a pity to destroy such a good business relationship, especially for the sake of a woman.
His heart boiled as he fought to suppress the thought of Meritre. How slender she had been. How delicate, with her large eyes and her generous lips, her fine straight hair which he had always preferred her to wear in place of a wig. Her arms so slender that they were like a child’s, the fine, down-like hair on her cheeks. How she had curled in his arms - now he realised what a lie it had been. How she had, for a short time when he had believed that she loved him, kissed him, it seemed with the full force of her being, and made love to him with a natural dexterity and inventiveness that he knew he would never experience again. All a lie. He wished that he knew she was not dead, so that she would be his to kill again. She had made him think he was in heaven, but she had thrown him down to hell.
He knew how glad his daughter was at Ipur’s death. She had started to sing softly to herself, under her breath, and he learned from her body-servant that as soon as she heard the news she had slept, that night, like a child again, deeply and, from the stillness of her body, dreamlessly. Her body was still like a child’s, like her mother’s – so slim as to be almost thin, but with a delicacy that reminded him of things he dared not think of – pleasures and hopes torn from him. He never thought of why Meritre had behaved as she did – he never thought that she might at last have seen a chance of comfort somewhere else, an oasis in the desert of her life. He could only feed his rancour as a good farmer feeds the wheat, watching it go from green to gold and ripen, ready for the sickle’s blade.
There were ways
in which he envied Ipur. The man had gone beyond the bounds which held Duaf. He had torn open those young bodies and revenged himself on the pack of their sex. But if he had done the same to Nofretka... Duaf shook himself like a dog. An old dog in the sun which cannot bear his fleas. The thoughts itched and bit into him like fleas on an old dog.
He was distracted from them by his daughter. From the window in the room where he sat he watched her cross the courtyard below, under the shadows of the green climbing plants whose names he had never bothered to learn but which his wife had tended with such care. Why had he not had them dug out? Had them burnt down? Because their absence would have given the courtyard an ugliness akin to his own when divested of his clothes. He looked at her. She was walking slowly without purpose, her head bent over a flower she held in her hand, a white flower with a yellow centre. As he watched he became aware of someone else watching her, from the shade of the colonnade which surrounded the courtyard. It was Meten, his scribe. Meten. Watching Nofretka. The face was in shadow and he couldn’t see the expression, but he felt a surge of something approaching panic well up in him, as if he were looking on helplessly as a great wave engulfed a fishing-boat, an event he had in fact witnessed as a child. He could still hear, dream-like, the cries of the drowning sailors.
Why should he care about the child? He hadn’t before. Looked at coldly, Meten might make a good match for her. With Ipur dead, Meten might become a big man in this city. The combined fortunes of the two houses would make his grandchildren owners of the town. Of course there was Senofer to be considered; he would have a half share, at least; but even so... The unwelcome thoughts returned, biting savagely. Did Meten know what Ipur had done to Nofretka? It had all been hushed up. It would have been bad for business, broken the sacred circle, if Ipur had been exposed. But someone had killed him, someone who knew, to judge by the way he’d died. Had Meten done it? Family feelings, Duaf knew, had little place in that household.
And yet it was Meten, not Heby, he was sure of it now, who had abused his trust and stolen his wife. Duaf clenched his fists so that his long fingernails cut into his soft palms. He soothed his heart, calmed it. He was not hot-blooded. He would bide his time. He would know, when the right moment came, how to take the greatest profit possible from his revenge. Let Meten climb higher: it would only make his fall the greater.