by Anton Gill
Her father and Meten stood by the large table that dominated the room, piled high with papers in neat order. As she approached, trying not to appear timid, Meten raised his head and looked at her. His glance was one of cool appraisal which she found more frightening than any look of lust or hatred. She went out of her way to avoid Duaf’s assistant – there was too much of his father in his face – but he had never appeared to notice or resent this, and for his part he had never made any noticeable effort to be friendly. But the look he gave her now was like that a peasant might give an ass he was on the point of buying – a look that an owner might give a new possession.
Her worst fear was removed when Meten withdrew – not to the corridor outside, but to an inner work room which was little more than a cupboard with just room for a desk and a shelf to contain the papyrus scrolls. This was where he drew up Duaf’s accounts. He closed a thick leather curtain behind him as he squeezed into the small room. Nofretka glanced at her father’s hard face, then at the floor in front of her.
‘There has been news of your mother,’ she heard him say without preamble. There followed a pause, but she did not know whether he was expecting her to make some comment or not. She remained silent, still looking at the floor.
‘Do you wish to hear it?’ the harsh voice continued. It was as if the anger he felt against Meritre was being diverted to her. Did her face serve as a reproach to him? She knew she looked very like her mother.
‘Yes, father,’ she said.
‘Look at me. Or is it that you cannot bear to?’
She was surprised at the bitterness in his voice. She raised her eyes and saw that in his eyes there was not just the usual stony, impenetrable glare which served to shut out anybody and everybody, but an obscure appeal. For what? Surely not for sympathy.
He was holding a piece of paper, which was rolling up in his hand. One corner bore a seal. She could see writing on the paper, but it was too hidden to decipher anything.
‘She has written to me. She has gone far away with her lover. You will never see her again. She has abandoned you. You have no mother any more. I am your only family now.’
It was as if he had hit her. She could not continue to look at his face and in any case the eyes had become hard and veiled again. It was as if he were trying to infect her with his hatred. If he had known, she thought, how her heart sang for her mother, who was now flying free as any bird. And yet – never to see Meritre again. Well, the gods were kind sometimes – perhaps it need not be so.
‘Where is she?’ Nofretka heard herself asking.
‘That is not something you need to know,’ snapped her father. ‘She was unfaithful to me; she is dead to you. She will never return.’
Her ordeal was not to last much longer. Duaf fell silent, and moments later she could hear him scrabbling among his papers. When she looked up the letter was no longer in his hand and his face had resumed its normal sour, inward-looking appearance. She wished she had noticed what he had done with the letter. She would dearly have liked to read it, and it would certainly contain some clue about Meritre’s whereabouts – Duaf must know where she was, or he would not have refused to tell her.
He caught her eye and looked at her as if she had just entered the room. ‘You may go,’ he said, and, without a pause, called for Meten to rejoin him.
She was heading for the door before the leather curtain had started to move. Duaf had spoken with his characteristic quietness – his voice never more than a hiss – but was it possible that Meten had overheard? Surely Duaf would not have wanted him to?
Meten watched her go, admiring the swing of her buttocks under the clinging folds of linen. She had her mother’s body, he thought, only, of course, that much younger. It was all he could do to conceal his impatience as Duaf took him painstakingly through the rest of the day’s paperwork.
But at last it was over, and he hastened home to his brother. He barely waited until the wine was poured and the servants dismissed to ask his question:
‘Do you think Duaf knows that I was Meritre’s lover?’
Senofer considered. ‘No. I am not sure why he put on that performance for his daughter in your hearing; but it does not sound as if his intention was to flush you out. I thought he suspected Heby.’
‘That is true. He did. Meritre smiled on his affair with her daughter. If the old man had known what was going on there, he might have been even angrier.’
‘Then you have nothing to fear.’
‘Meritre has written no letter,’ said Meten, broodingly. ‘I would have known about it. I fear that she has gone to a farther country than any of the living could reach.’
‘Did you want to go away with her?’
Meten spread his hands. ‘For what? What future would there have been for us? We would have had no means to live.’
‘I would have sent you supplies,’ said Senofer. ‘We are joint heirs of our father.’
Meten said nothing, but thought privately that there was greater likelihood of the River turning to sand.
‘Did you love her?’ asked Senofer.
‘No. I don’t believe I did. She needed love, though, and it was flattering that she thought I could give it to her. She was a passionate woman. All that longing, cooped up for an eternity.’ Meten smiled at the recollection.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Ten days ago. She came to the work room after Duaf had retired to sleep in the afternoon and we coupled among his papers. It amused her to do that. She was not worried. She was happy.’
‘Did you think she had gone away?’
‘That is what the old man told me. I could hardly raise the alarm.’
‘But you think she is dead?’
Meten looked at his brother. ‘Where would she have gone? What for?’
They were silent for a breath’s space.
‘I think he has killed her,’ said Meten.
‘Killed her – or had her killed?’
‘He would do it himself – he couldn’t trust a servant.’
‘But he has no strength and she is a woman in the full day of her life. What would he do with her sahu?’
‘Perhaps then he did enlist aid,’ said Meten. ‘Powerful men can cover their tracks. Look at our father.’
‘But justice caught up with him. As it will with Duaf,’ said Senofer. ‘He will meet his deserved fate when his crimes are revealed to General Horemheb.’
‘Yes,’ replied Meten. ‘The case against him and the others is complete. I have all the documents falsifying the accounts dealing with the sale of the slaves. We have only to present them to the General and this city’s chief men will fall.’
‘And the city will be ours,’ concluded Senofer, smiling. ‘Virtue triumphs.’
Meten laughed aloud. ‘Thank the gods for Heby and his moral zeal. If it hadn’t been for that little idealist we might never have hit on this scheme.’ Then his brow was troubled. ‘Still there is a question: where is Heby now?’
‘We have spoken of this,’ said Senofer impatiently. ‘If Heby lives, he is as good as dead. Certainly he has no power to harm us.’
‘But what about his father? Huy has spoken to Duaf.’
‘About Ipur? Duaf will have told him nothing. And our mother is gone – it is well that we sent her away when we did.’
‘And what did she tell him?’
‘Nothing. She swore it to me. And even if she was lying, what could Huy do with such information? He has no proof.’
‘But it would give him an idea of why our father was killed.’
‘Yes, but he will never get beyond the fact that it was a random death. Who is left to take vengeance on our father for anything?’
Into the silence, Meten spoke reluctantly: ‘Heby.’
Senofer looked scornful. ‘How?’
‘He was Nofretka’s lover. She might have told him the truth.’
‘What concerns us now,’ said Senofer, ‘is the present. Our father belongs to the past; and Heby c
annot threaten the present. As for Nofretka, you will keep watch on her. Soon her father will be seeking a husband for her. He may select either of us.’
Meten looked at him knowingly. ‘Come, older brother,’ he said. ‘I thought you were fishing in quite another pool.’
Senofer smiled. ‘We should wish each other good hunting,’ he said. ‘If we are successful, the entire wealth of the city will be united between us.’
‘As you said,’ replied Meten. ‘The triumph of virtue.’
‘There remains Huy,’ said Senofer, his expression clouding again. ‘Perhaps we should remove him.’
‘No,’ said Meten. ‘He is the pharaoh’s man. If we attract Ay’s attention too closely, all our plans could fall into the fire. Let us first grasp our prize, and then let Seth swallow Huy and all the others. Huy is not worth bothering about. He is too small to be worth bothering about. Let him return to the Southern Capital and mourn his wretched son. But as for Duaf –’ His eyes darkened.
‘Leave him,’ said Senofer. ‘To the justice of Horemheb.’
‘I am prepared to take that risk in the case of the others. But if he killed Meritre in truth...’
‘That is a riddle we may never solve.’
*
Aahmes had decided to say nothing to Menuhotep of the phantom visit of her son. Seeing him return from the Northern Capital so tired and dispirited she had not wanted to charge him with yet another anxiety. But then the burden of keeping the news to herself proved too great, and she knew how much Menuhotep loved his stepson. In any case she could not resist the temptation to look outside her front door at least once every evening, an action which was bound to attract his attention. So she changed her heart and told him. Almost to her relief he did not appear to take the news very seriously.
‘If he has indeed come back, then he had better keep out of sight,’ said the merchant of cedar-wood. ‘Because he is a deserter, whatever his reasons for returning in secret are; however noble they may be.’
‘I am sure he will be able to justify what he has done.’
Menuhotep squeezed her arm. ‘I believe in him too. But even so I hope what you saw was no more than a trick of the light. I would rather think of Heby restored to his regiment, and gaining glory in the field as a charioteer.’
She found his fantasy more stretched than her own: if Heby were not in the city, then the alternative was that he was almost certainly dead – drowned, killed by Khabiri, or, if alive, then far from home and unable to return. She had considered the possibility that it was her son’s ghost she had seen. She had not heard from Huy again, and she had not been able to divine what her former husband had really thought of the episode. Had he believed that she had seen their son? Knowing Huy, she thought it unlikely.
But Menuhotep had other matters on his heart, to distract him. He had exchanged the gold for a shipment of grain, which would be coming downriver within the next few days, and which would see them through a few more months. Perhaps if the war had ended by then, he might yet recover. But he had no credit left, and his debts loomed on all sides. Coldly he reflected on the men of this town who had seemed so welcoming and friendly at first. Atirma, that young prig, who had lavished credit on the newcomer; Kamose, all smiles, eager to extend every facility to make Menuhotep’s nascent business flourish. And of course Ipur and Duaf, the two pillars supporting the city. Well, Ipur was gone, but his sons would inherit the bills of credit Menuhotep owed their father, and soon enough they too would be pressing for a return of their loans.
It seemed to Menuhotep that there was a conspiracy to break him at all costs before the war ended, so that his ruin would be complete. As a debtor, he could not leave the town, so he was trapped. Even if he succeeded in selling the house, it would not fetch enough to cover what he owed, and where would they live then? In a hovel on the shore, with the families of the casual dockworkers who eked a living loading and unloading? Well, he would do that if necessary, but in the meantime he would cling to what dignity remained his.
And yet none of this need have happened. It was plain enough that his refusal to join the slave-trading ring was what had brought him down.
‘You were right not to,’ Aahmes said. ‘You did not believe in it, and you said so. Now they are afraid you will expose them when the General returns.’
‘I was arrogant. I thought I would not need to be involved in such trade. I played into their hands.’
‘They could not have touched you if it had not been for the war. It brought them gain, and loss to us.’
‘Something which I should have foreseen.’
You are a soldier, not a businessman, thought Aahmes. It was an unequal battle you were engaged in. You had a stick, but they had spears. She was sorry for the big man who sat slumped on a stool in the middle of his Great Room, with its peeling frescoes and cracked walls. She remembered the parties they had given at the beginning. Where were all those friends now?
‘I should have joined them. They would have protected me.’
‘We must hold on. There will be peace soon. You will see.’ She crossed the room and kneaded his bowed shoulders with her firm, square fingers, feeling the muscles relax reluctantly under them. ‘General Horemheb will return and call everyone to account.’
‘They have foreseen that. He will pass through this city and there will be no appeal to him.’
‘Do not see this battle as lost before it is even fought,’ she replied. ‘Everyone is talking about the peace. They even say that within one more cycle of Khons’ chariot there will be troops returning. Then we will see.’
‘You speak as if I had not heard the rumours,’ he said. ‘They are just as rife in the Northern Capital.’ But his voice had a faint edge of hope.
*
The passage under the house was low, wide and old. It led down to the harbour. In one or two places the roof sagged, but Duaf knew that it would hold at least for the rest of his life. It was a good tunnel: only the last fifty cubits nearest the River ever filled with water, and even during a Flood it was not impassable.
He waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dim light, holding the taper he carried well in front of him. As he waited, he listened. There was no sound except the dripping of water in the distance, which echoed in the surrounding silence. The walls glistened. It was cold down here – it was always cold.
He looked back to the narrow stone steps which led from the trapdoor in the floor of the storeroom. He remembered his father showing it to him for the first time, when he was a young man of fifteen, and enjoining him to secrecy then. Here they had hidden the treasures of the family when the first wars in the north threatened the empire of the Black Land as the reign of the Great Criminal drew to a close. How he had got her body down here he did not know – Seth or some demon had breathed into his flaccid muscles the strength of a river horse.
He felt his way along the dank walls to the place. It was not far to where the passage broadened further – two alcoves had been cut into the earth and lined with stone. Each alcove could be sealed with a sliding stone door, and each was the size of a grave. Once the sliding door was closed, so cunning was its construction that no-one could tell that the alcove behind it existed at all.
Duaf had hung powerful amulets round his neck to protect him from his wife’s ka; but in truth he knew that it would not harm him. It would be wandering, looking for a proper home, anxious for its welfare in eternity. This would be the last time he would look on the corpse. He would not tell Nofretka of the existence of the passage. If it were ever discovered by chance, it would be long after his death. Meritre would sleep undisturbed, if unmourned, here. Nevertheless he had relented and brought white bread and wine to place by her, in memory of the love that they had once had. Perhaps, thought Duaf, it still existed, at least on his part. Would he have killed her if it did not?
He remembered choking the life out of her when she had told him the truth. She had not disclosed the one thing he wanted – the name of her l
over. If she had not laughed at him he might have spared her, but it was when he realised that she did not even pity him that he had decided she must die. Perhaps he resented her strength. He dismissed the thoughts. There was too much guesswork in them. The deed was done and he must live with it. In one way he was comforted to think of her lying here, safe within his house and unable to do him any more harm.
He drew back the stone door on one side. The initial effort of moving it made his head pound, but then it slid as effortlessly as if it had been floating on water. He had no fear of what he would see. He had wrapped Meritre tightly himself, covering all her body and her face in white linen and tying it securely. He would not be able to preserve the body but there were no insects down here to plant their eggs in her, and no rats to gnaw her. Above all he would not see her rot away, and he had no intention, after this visit, of coming here again. He was an old man. He was aware of the suddenness with which his body sent him new reminders of that fact. The loose skin on his hands, the pouches under his eyes, the pain in his knees and teeth, the dullness of his hearing, and the inability of his eyes to pull the close figures of his paperwork into focus any more all carried their messages of mortality. But he had been strong when he had loved Meritre and he had been strong when he had killed her. Now he would say goodbye and he would forget her.
He lifted the taper. The body had not moved. He had placed it in the position he remembered her always adopting when she slept. He had wanted her to be comfortable.
He placed the bread and wine by her. He touched her forehead and her hidden mouth with the Amulet-of-the-Feathers around his neck. My place of hiding is opened, my place of hiding is revealed, he said. The Khus have fallen into the darkness, but the Eye of Horus has made me mighty and the god Apuat has nursed me like a babe. I have hidden myself within you, O stars that never diminish! My brow is like Ra’s, my face is open; my heart is upon its throne. I have power over the speech of my mouth; I have knowledge; in truth I am Ra himself. I am not held to be a nobody, and I am protected from all violence. Your father lives for me, O son of Nut. I am your son, O Great One, and I have seen the hidden things which are yours. I am crowned king of the gods. I shall not die a second time in the underworld.