by Anton Gill
Huy was not alone. Opposite him sat Cheruiri. It had been harder work to extract information from the man than Huy had supposed. Always friendly, deferential and polite, Cheruiri had the gift of being able to answer a question without answering it. Huy had taken an hour to establish that Cheruiri had regarded Heby as a friend, though whether a close one or not Huy could not determine, and that Heby was highly thought of in the City of the Sea. Cheruiri would not comment on the likelihood of Heby’s death, and seemed unwilling or unable to help establish the fact one way or another. What Huy found most interesting was that Cheruiri should be evasive about the matter at all; he might have dismissed it as a natural courtier’s second nature; but Cheruiri could be direct enough when he pleased.
There was clearly something within him that weighed on Cheruiri’s heart. On several occasions during that afternoon he seemed to be on the verge of speaking of it to Huy, but each time he drew back. His plump body glistened in the heat, though he had a long kilt and a fine shawl to keep him cool, and he kept shifting his feet in his plaited papyrus sandals, as if they chafed him.
‘I want to talk to you of Duaf,’ said Huy, moving to what he hoped was more neutral ground.
‘Yes?’
‘I am to see him. Now that I have spoken to Ipur’s wife, I am in a better position to ask him questions.’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘Very little, in truth. But enough to make me think of reasons for his death that lie beyond a random attack.’
Cheruiri looked interested but Huy did not elaborate. It was his turn to be miserly with his confidence. He knew that Cheruiri would not so offend etiquette as to ask him directly what his new knowledge was. He watched the courtier’s face narrowly to see if there was anything in his expression that showed he already knew about Ipur, but if he did, Cheruiri hid it well. If it had been common knowledge, it would hardly have been likely that Ipur could have continued in his post.
‘You should talk to Meten about Duaf.’
‘I prefer to talk to you. This is a small place. You must have an impression of all its chief citizens.’
‘You should ask Meten,’ repeated Cheruiri. ‘He works for Duaf.’
‘He might therefore give me a partial answer.’
‘And might not I?’
‘You might. But that is a risk I will take. I spoke to Senofer and I did not like him. I suspect that during that conversation we were overheard, and that Meten was listening to our talk with his brother’s knowledge. Do you hunt, Cheruiri?’
‘No.’
‘You must never start the game before you are ready to pounce,’ said Huy.
Cheruiri looked surprised. ‘What do you suspect the brothers of? Surely not of killing their father?’
Huy spread his hands. ‘I suspect them of nothing. But they regard me with no friendly feelings. I conclude that they have something to hide, which they are fearful that I shall uncover, by accident or design.’
‘What plans do you think they have?’
‘I do not know.’ Huy paused. ‘It was surprising that Senofer did not wish to help me find his father’s killers.’
‘But if he is convinced that it was Khabiri pirates who did it, why should he?’
‘You argue well,’ said Huy. ‘Perhaps I am over-suspicious. I see men where there are only shadows.’
Cheruiri sat back, but Huy knew that he was not persuaded by his own argument or by Huy’s apparent acceptance of it. ‘Duaf is a hard man. He will tell you what truths suit him,’ he said.
‘Was he close to Ipur?’ asked Huy.
‘Neither man had friends. But they supported each other. They were of value to each other. Between them they ran the town.’
‘And Kamose?’
Cheruiri looked down. ‘Kamose is my master. He is the governor of the city. He represents the king and is above petty matters of business.’
Huy smiled. He would have liked to see Ay’s response to any matter of business being described as petty. He also recognised another elusive answer; but by now he was getting better at interpreting them, and decoding Cheruiri’s messages.
‘Would Duaf ever have betrayed Ipur?’
‘Not unless there was a clear profit in it, which would never be a likely thing.’
‘I want to ask him about his family. Has his wife left him?’
Cheruiri looked at him. ‘No-one knows. She was quiet, pretty. Much younger than him. Where would she have gone?’
‘To her family?’
‘No. She came from the south.’
‘Could she have taken a boat?’
‘There would have been harbour gossip. The Medjays here conducted a search. Duaf made a great noise about it. The most expensive statue of Meritre is being carved for her tomb, for the residence of her ka.’
‘Another one.’
‘Yes. There will be one for your son.’
‘If he is dead.’
Cheruiri was silent. He was silent for a long time. Huy poured water and drank it, though his belly felt bloated with the stuff and he wanted to piss. He watched Cheruiri instead. The young man’s eyes were fixed on the beaker in front of him. From nowhere a dragonfly appeared, hovering in silent precision one cubit above the exact centre of the table. For what purpose? Its face, if the creature could be said to have such a thing, seemed almost melancholy to Huy. Did some small god inhabit it? In truth it was a living jewel in the sunlight. It disappeared as suddenly as it had come, too quickly for the eye to register the movement of its departure. Perhaps its meaning had been to bless this silent moment between them.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ said Cheruiri at last, in a low voice. Huy, for some reason, felt excitement rise in his breast. He had known that Cheruiri could not leave the table without unburdening himself of the spiritual load he had brought to it. But perhaps it would be some quite unimportant thing.
‘What is it?’
Now that he had started, Cheruiri had to finish the job. But still he hesitated, for one more small vessel of time, like the moment before jumping from a high place into water, as it were, when the weight of the body irrevocably shifts from the safety of the earth to the unsupporting air, which, however, permits movement, change.
‘Take me with you when you go.’
Cheruiri’s voice had fallen so low that Huy had to strain to hear him. Was this another sign of age?
‘Can you not go yourself?’
Cheruiri looked at him then and Huy felt remorse for the harshness of his question, for the face of the courtier had become like a child’s: open and beseeching. Still the man in him strove to answer:
‘Kamose would not let me go without good reason. It is true that I am not bound to him but I want to go to the Southern Capital and you could help me gain a foothold there.’
Huy was silent himself for a breath’s space. ‘There is no reason why you should not accompany me back to the Southern Capital when I go. But why do you want to leave here, and why should I do this for you?’
‘I cannot spend my life here,’ said Cheruiri in a rush. ‘I know that great changes are coming in the Black Land, and I want to be part of them. I cannot be part of them here.’
‘But this is as much a part of the Black Land as any. What makes you think that you will prosper any better in the Southern Capital?’
‘I must leave here,’ repeated Cheruiri. ‘Do you not feel yourself that this is a prison?’ He gestured towards the sea. ‘Soon, Horemheb will come from there. He will return home victorious. I want to be part of his progress south.’
‘We still have a pharaoh. His name is Ay,’ Huy reminded the younger man gently.
‘I did not mean that. Can you not find me a place in the State Cultural Archive? I would do anything. Copying, storing, preparing the scrolls – just to come to a new beginning. I have made a false start here.’
‘We will talk of this again,’ said Huy, standing heavily. The pressure on his bladder was great, and he was not going to make even a h
alf-promise to this man, who was fast moving from pleading to hectoring, who might at any moment start to cry, whose agitation was in all truth and silence sincere, but whom Huy had not yet come to trust.
Seeing him stand, Cheruiri was obliged to do the same.
‘You forget I am not come to the end of my business here,’ said Huy. It is true that I have now only a short time left to complete it, for the king’s patience is not without end; but I will not go until I must.’ He was careful not to add that he agreed with Cheruiri: the atmosphere of the place affected him almost more than he could bear.
Cheruiri inclined his head, muttered a confused mixture of thanks and farewell, and left, running, almost, from the shelter of the awning across the blazing garden to the shielding shadows of the governor’s mansion, avoiding the sun’s rays as if they had been rain.
It was still the hour of the afternoon rest, and the house was silent. He made his way to the common washroom, and there sluiced himself down, scooping water from the tank with a copper bowl and pouring it over himself, soaping himself vigorously with an ash-and-clay tablet. The water was pleasantly cool, and brought him back to himself. He cleaned his teeth with natron, then rubbed himself down with a coarse linen sheet, and, wrapping it around him, made his way through the silent corridors to his own room. There he lay down and slept dreamlessly for two hours, until he was wakened by the wind stirring the evening air. He lay quietly for the space of time in which a man might count one hundred, then arose and dusted himself with fine ash talc before dressing. He left his room cautiously, for people were stirring now and he did not want to meet anyone. He had an errand to run.
*
He left the house without meeting anyone but an old beggar-woman who sat on the steps of the mansion from dawn to dusk alternately holding up a cracked wooden bowl for alms and scratching the lice which swarmed under her disintegrating grey tunic. He glanced at the sky and estimated that, from the position of the sun in the west, he would be at the meeting-place at exactly the right time.
Cheruiri skirted the walls as he walked, aware of whom he was passing in the streets but not meeting their eyes. His pace was swift but did not betray hurry or impatience. It was important that nothing in his demeanour should arouse curiosity or comment. As he walked he wondered what Huy’s reaction would be if he knew the purpose and burden of his errand. He smiled to himself at the thought, but it was not a relaxed smile. Cheruiri was serious. Perhaps he should have told Huy, taken the scribe into his confidence? Huy was clearly a decent man, and one who could be trusted. But he was also, for all Cheruiri knew, Ay’s man; and in this case Cheruiri knew better than to act on his own initiative. There had never been any real question of telling Huy. The moment for the scribe to learn the truth would come in its own good time.
He liked this part of the day, when the shadows lengthened and the temperature cooled enough to make a man feel alert. He needed to be alert, too, for he was under no illusions about the danger of what he was doing. It had been interesting to meet Heby’s father. Though on the face of it the two men seemed to have little in common, they shared a solidity of character. Heby was more forthright, less subtle than Huy; but there was no doubt that the older man had staying power. Cheruiri hoped that he would not catch up with the truth until they were ready for him to do so.
He reached the southern outskirts just as the sun touched the rim of the western horizon. She had picked a clever spot for their rendezvous – a small market square with a close concentration of people too preoccupied with buying and selling to be concerned with anyone else. Cheruiri had taken care to dress plainly. Now he scanned the small crowd, looking for her. She, too, would be wearing simple clothes.
She was standing by a well in the south-eastern corner of the little square. More than anything, he recognised her by the movement of her body – there was a hesitation in her gestures that he found endearing and which was unmistakable. Passing her, he touched her elbow briefly, but walked on without stopping for a few paces further, when he did so to pretend to inspect the bolts of bright cloth on a Syrian trader’s stall. He cast an eye back towards her and saw her walk towards one of the streets that led off the square back in the direction of the harbour. Leaving a discreet distance between them, he followed her.
Away from the crowd, she moved faster and more confidently. Unfamiliar with this part of the city himself, he had to make haste to keep her in view. After heading north a short distance, she turned up a narrow alley to her right. By the time he reached its mouth, she had vanished, but he noticed a dark doorway a few paces down and went through it without hesitation.
It opened, as he expected it would, into a small courtyard across whose walls a straggling vine grew, and around which a narrow gallery ran. He climbed the mud-brick staircase to this gallery, and made his way round it to a door which stood ajar. He slipped through it and closed it behind him. She was standing in a bare room through whose window a dim light struggled.
‘Lady Nofretka,’ he said, inclining his head.
‘Cheruiri. What news have you?’
‘He is safe,’ replied Cheruiri, watching her with tenderness as some of the tension left her.
‘Where is he?’
‘In the city. He will see you soon.’
‘Soon?’
‘It is not yet time. He asks you to be patient.’
‘What does he plan?’
‘He has not taken me that far into his confidence.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘But you are the only one he trusts. You are the only one who knows where he is.’
‘No. I do not know that. He meets me. He is like a shadow. No-one will find him.’
She sighed. ‘What word has he for me?’
‘That he loves you;’ Cheruiri paused, the burden of his news heavy on his tongue. ‘That he has taken vengeance on your wrongdoer. Ipur died by his order.’
She looked at him in disbelief. Cheruiri lowered his eyes. It had been he who, at Heby’s insistence, had hired the Alasa sailors who had carried out the murder. He had been present when Heby instructed them, minutely, about the manner he wished for Ipur’s death. It was not the killing itself which had shocked him as much as the calculated brutality; but Heby had argued that the punishment had to reflect the crimes Ipur himself had committed. Ipur deserved impalement; but such a sentence would never be carried out on a man whose position put him effectively above the law. Soon a new age would dawn, Heby had said, an age of granite, when such men would not escape the grindstone of formal justice so easily, but he could not wait until then to destroy the man who had raped the woman he loved when she was still a little girl. Cheruiri had listened and obeyed; he had paid the men off after the deed was done, and had seen them back onto their ship. He admired Heby too much to disagree with him openly, but he was troubled. He had supported Heby because the young man looked as if he carried with him the spirit to open the windows of this suffocating town and let the cleansing wind blow through it. Perhaps one day he might even govern it. He would reward Cheruiri, who would then be able, at last, to leave, to go south.
But even as his plans began to unfold, Heby began to change. Or perhaps it was not change, but revelation of what had always been there. Heby had always admired Horemheb. Now he appeared to idolise the General. Cheruiri told himself that there was nothing to worry about, but however much he tried to deny it, he did not like what he saw, and he had begun to doubt the fulfilment of his own dreams. Cheruiri had started to make plans of his own.
What had remained consistent was Heby’s love for Nofretka. And yet there was trouble in that direction, too. It was clear that one of Ipur’s sons would pay court to Duaf’s daughter, and that Duaf would smile upon a union which would unite two of the biggest fortunes in the city. Had Heby considered that? And yet the brothers had been his associates in the early days, when the three of them had sat up late secretly, planning reform and calling themselves ‘vigilantes’. All this Cheruiri knew, from Heby.
But the brothers did not know Heby was in the city. As far as they were concerned, Heby was either dead or a deserter. Cheruiri knew that Senofer and Meten were interested in power not for reform, but for the wealth it would bring them. He was sure that Heby had come to understand this.
These were not good times.
‘I would not have wished to be avenged in such a way.’ Nofretka’s voice brought him back from his anxious pondering. He saw from her face that she, too, had been waylaid by troubled thoughts.
‘You must tell no-one of this.’
She looked at him disdainfully. ‘I will not betray Heby’s trust.’ Then her expression became more uncertain. ‘But what is he doing? When will I see him?’
Cheruiri wished he could answer, as much for his own sake as hers. But Heby took the older man less and less into his confidence. And there was something else Cheruiri did not like to admit to himself: that he was being used; that he was becoming less of an accomplice and more of a tool. But he kept his counsel now. Sowing doubt in Nofretka’s heart would be pointless, even if he succeeded in doing so.
‘Heby knows what to do,’ he said. ‘We must trust him.’
‘He is too ambitious,’ said Nofretka, simply.
Cheruiri tried to close his heart to the doubt that he saw in her eyes.
*
Duaf spread his hands. ‘There is little I can tell you about Ipur,’ he said. ‘We did business together; more often than that we were rivals. Never in an unfriendly or underhand way, you understand,’ he added. ‘And we always had the city’s interest at heart.’
‘Naturally,’ said Huy, who had noticed that the man seemed incapable of meeting his eye. Duaf had the angular, nervous gestures of many similar men he had met who were too tall and too thin. His skin was pale, and dry. Little crumbs of it flaked away on his cheeks, leaving angry red blotches beneath. ‘But you must have formed some impression of him as a man.’
Duaf remained defensive. ‘I am not prepared to discuss his character with you,’ he said. ‘Ipur was a good public servant and a good man of business. That is all I am prepared to say. You have talked to the widow, I understand?’