by Anton Gill
So absorbed was he in the prayer that he was not at first aware of the scuffling behind him. It was such a small noise and so far away. Perhaps a stone had loosened and fallen. Perhaps it was just the noise of the water. He did not turn round. His face was close to his wife’s. He could see the contours of her face through the linen. He bent, he could not resist it, to kiss her mouth.
As he did so the bronze axe raised behind his bent head struck down hard into the middle of the back of his skull.
*
‘It worries me,’ said Hemet. She was naked and the chill of the evening breeze made her shudder. She pulled her white woollen shawl around her shoulders. Reclining on the bed where she sat next to him, her knees drawn up to her chin, Senofer made a half-hearted attempt to dislodge it again.
‘It is unlikely,’ he replied, trying to reassure her. He turned over what she had been telling him in his heart. Atirma had set a man to follow Huy. From him he had learnt that there was a possibility that Heby had been seen in the town, and Atirma had passed this news on to his wife. Senofer thought about Atirma. He had long considered him unreliable, and now here was proof – admittedly unsurprising – that he was also loose-tongued.
‘If Heby has returned the City of the Sea, he will find a way to contact us. Do not forget that we are close friends.’
‘Allies perhaps. I do not know about friends.’
‘It amounts to the same thing.’
‘You and Atirma are also allies. Yet what you do with me is not the action of a friend.’
Senofer smiled. It had occurred to him that Atirma might have suspected his wife’s infidelity, but he doubted if he knew the identity of her lover. Perhaps Atirma had come to terms with his suspicion: after all, Hemet was a flirt. She liked to reassure herself of the power of her looks. It amused him that she thought that he himself was in her thrall.
‘Perhaps I should confront him with our love,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should make a clean breast of it, and ask him to divorce you.’ He pretended to pause for thought. ‘But of course I do not know how your father would react. Kamose is a violent man; at the very least he might cut you out of his testament.’
Glad to be offered the breach through which to escape, Hemet cuddled up to her lover placatingly. ‘And I would fear for your safety too,’ she said, nuzzling him and reaching for his lips with her own. A divorce was the very last thing she wanted. Senofer was many things that Atirma was not – he was attractive, intelligent, and ambitious. But he was not as rich as Atirma and what his father had left he would have to share with his brother. Hemet had no intention of paying for her fun. Only Atirma’s death would end their marriage unless she could be certain, and she was not, that she would be entitled to at least half his wealth. If he went to the Fields of Aarru before her, she wanted to be sure of inheriting it all.
Senofer knew something of what she was thinking. He stroked the soft hair which caressed his cheek as she nestled against him. Atirma and his father-in-law were close. There was little doubt that Atirma was involved in the slave-trading fraud too – even if only as an accessory. Senofer congratulated himself on keeping his own hands clean – even though his father had been involved, and Duaf too, there was no way any investigation could implicate Meten and himself in the conspiracy. They had taken care to ally themselves too strongly to Heby and his moralising stepfather for that. He remembered the first meetings they had had with Heby – how the young soldier, fire in his eyes, had spoken of cleaning up the cesspool. It had been a gift to the brothers – that, and the greed of the ruling men of the city. Now, if Atirma could be dragged down with them, his estates would be forfeit to the king. Acting for the king would be General Horemheb. And if General Horemheb wished to reward the exposer of the crimes against the state, he might be persuaded that a suitable gift would be those very estates.
Senofer would thus be able to inherit Atirma’s lands and with them his wife. She, too, would inherit her father’s property.
Hemet’s head had grown heavy on his shoulder: she had fallen asleep. He listened to her regular, untroubled breathing, and stroked her shoulder abstractedly. She smelt sour after sex, and already she was beginning to bore him, but he needed to be sure of everything he wanted before he let her go. How long would it take? He calculated pleasurably: it could not be more than a few weeks.
*
Huy did not like taking Psaro into his confidence; but he was alone here and he needed an ally. He also needed someone to try his ideas out on, and Psaro, by finding the buckle, had turned himself into a kind of associate.
‘The buckle could have been anybody’s,’ he said. ‘There are plenty of soldiers in the town, and it is unlikely that, even if Heby were here, he would still be in uniform. That is the least likely thing of all.’
‘And yet Lady Aahmes is sure she saw him. And you are more than half convinced,’ said Psaro, crossing his long arms on his knees and leaning forward.
Huy acknowledged silently that he spoke the truth. But why was he convinced? Because his heart wanted to be. That was the only reason he could come up with in the absence of proof, and in the hard sunlight it looked a very weak reason indeed.
‘Why should he be here?’ he asked, putting the question more to himself than to Psaro.
‘Perhaps he just wanted to show himself to his mother,’ suggested the Kushite. ‘To show her that he was still alive.’
‘If he wanted to do that, he could have chosen a less risky way. He could have written, enclosing some token that would prove to her that the letter was from him.’
‘Perhaps he wanted to see her with his own eyes.’
‘No – he hadn’t been away any time at all. If he returned to the city, he returned with some purpose.’
The two men were silent, the difference in their rank forgotten as they thought together.
‘Perhaps we are looking too closely at one point,’ said Huy at last. ‘What were Heby’s circumstances? Was there a woman here he loved? How did Menuhotep’s ruin affect him? Why should Menuhotep have fallen so low?’
‘If he could not extend his credit –’ Psaro left the sentence unfinished.
‘But surely that is nonsense,’ snapped Huy. ‘Everyone knows there will always be a market for cedar wood, and that once the war is over and the trade routes are open again, anyone in that trade down on his luck now would soon be able to recover and repay all his debts with interest. To help such a man would be a certain investment, given that the war would assuredly soon end.’
‘But no-one has,’ said Psaro.
‘Menuhotep is a proud man,’ brooded Huy. ‘Perhaps he is too proud to ask.’
‘No man is that proud,’ replied Psaro. ‘Not when his wife and children risk starvation and the street.’
For no reason that he could think of, an image of the murdered Ipur came into Huy’s heart. It was so vivid that it startled him, for he had never seen the priest and did not know what he looked like; then he realised that he had given the dead man features which bore a shadowy similarity to Duaf’s.
It was as if Horus had sent him a sign. Huy found the guest house which Kamose had assigned to him in the governor’s compound increasingly oppressive. He spent his days away from it, increasingly on the verandah of a little drinking house halfway up a shady street overgrown with unruly purple flowers which led from the harbour square to the western quarter. There they sat now, and from his seat Huy, suddenly aware of movement some way down the street, looked up to see the plump figure of Cheruiri making its way hastily towards them. It was still early, not past the third hour of the Matet boat, and the sight of the governor’s aide in such a hurry at such a time made his blood race. Something had happened.
‘I guessed you would be here,’ said Cheruiri, panting as he drew up. ‘I have just come from Kamose. There is grim news.’
Huy thought that there had been a setback in the war. Everything had been running too smoothly. Was a battalion of Khabiri even now on its way towards the city?
/>
‘Duaf is dead.’
The strange thing was that it was almost as if Huy had been expecting to hear this. He looked into himself silently for a breath’s space: had his power to divine things revived? He doubted it. But then he thought again of the image of the dead Ipur with Duaf’s face.
‘How?’ was all he could think of to ask.
‘The one thing that is sure is that it was not an accident. He was found in a back storeroom of his house. The door was bolted so that the servants had to break in. At first they thought he had taken his own life, but there was no reason...’ Cheruiri’s voice trailed off. Huy noticed a troubled look on his face that seemed to have to do with more than just Duaf’s death, but he kept silent. ‘The back of his head had been split open. I have not seen the body.’
‘Who has?’
‘His body-servants. His daughter, Nofretka. She was in the house of course. She was there when they broke down the door.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘When they summoned the Medjays, the captain sent word to the mansion. I went down to offer help. She prefers to stay there until preparations can be made for Duaf to be taken to the Tent of Purification. She is a strong girl. She will need to be. She is alone in the world now.’
Again the troubled look appeared in his eyes.
‘If the doors of the storeroom were locked, there must be another way out,’ said Huy. ‘We must find it. Come on.’
Duaf’s body had been taken away by the time they arrived at his house, but a Medjay officer and three young, scared-looking guards remained outside the house, fending off the small crowd of onlookers which had gathered. Huy noticed that not all the faces in the crowd were friendly, or even sympathetic, but he was surprised to hear one or two of the people spit out curses against Duaf and his ka. It was unusual for anyone to excite such dislike.
‘He was never known for his charity,’ explained Cheruiri. ‘Shall we go in?’ Nevertheless he hesitated at the door, clearly unwilling to go a step further. At that point Nofretka herself appeared.
Huy had not imagined that she would be so beautiful. For her part, she seemed to be looking at him with a kind of shocked curiosity. She approached him immediately.
‘You are Huy,’ she said, confirming her belief more than asking a question.
‘Yes.’
‘We are fortunate that you are here.’
‘I bow to your grief.’ Huy had not forgotten that the girl had recently lost her mother as well.
‘We must bow to the gods who control our destiny. My hope is that Osiris has gathered my father to join my mother in the Fields.’
‘It is my hope too.’
She hesitated. Huy could see that she was still in that state of disbelief which immediately follows tragedy and which is the prelude to relieving sorrow.
He took her hand and noticed the intensity with which she looked at his own. Then her eyes turned to his face with the same deep interest that he had noticed before. He found it unnerving.
He followed her into the house. Hesitating again, she stopped in the first courtyard, where Duaf’s servants had assembled, unsure what to do.
‘I cannot go back to where they found him,’ she said. ‘You must forgive me.’ Huy noticed that she exchanged a look with Cheruiri. ‘Parenefer will escort you.’ She gestured to one of the body servants, a large, placid-looking man who did not seem to be the type to be affected by ghosts.
‘Come too,’ Huy said to Psaro and Cheruiri. Cheruiri spread his hands. ‘I must return to the governor. He will be expecting some kind of report’
‘Won’t he get that from the Captain of Medjays? In any case, if we find anything now, you will have more to tell him.’
‘Kamose instructed me to summon you to the mansion as soon as possible. If I go ahead now, I will at least be able to tell him what you are doing.’
Huy hesitated. ‘Who will stay with Nofretka?’ He looked at her uncertainly. In her grief she looked very young.
‘I have my people to attend me,’ she said. ‘And I must go to the Tent of Purification and speak with the Controller of Mysteries. Everything must be done for the safe passage of my father in the Boat of Night.’
Huy inclined his head. Nodding to Psaro, he followed Parenefer into the further interior of the house. As he left the courtyard, he saw Cheruiri advance towards the girl with his arms outstretched. He also noticed that she stiffened at his approach, making the man hesitate. But there was no time or opportunity to do more than note this quite possibly insignificant exchange. Parenefer was proceeding ahead of him at a steady but purposeful pace.
They passed through two more courtyards, one larger than the first, the next smaller, and came at last to the service rooms of the house, whose size was belied by its exterior. Huy knew that he was in a small palace which could only have been built with great wealth. Parenefer finally stopped at a small acacia-wood door which had turned dark brown with age, and pulled back a stout wooden bolt from the stone recess into which it slid. He pushed the door open to reveal a small storeroom on whose shelves wine jars were neatly stacked above larger water jars and wooden bins of wheat and barley. A plain table stood to one side of the room, which was devoid of any other furnishing.
Huy glanced around the room, and then at the plaster ceiling and the stone floor. No baked-earth floors in such a house, he thought, as he touched one or two of the perfectly cut limestone slabs with the toe of his sandal. Then he looked again at the table. Though there was plenty of space for it in the centre of the room, it was shoved up against some shelves, obstructing access to them. Such an arrangement seemed to run counter to the very precise order of the storage arrangements, especially as Huy imagined that the table’s function was to have required food and drink measured out on it, and logically therefore should stand where people could get round it from every side. He walked over to it and tested its weight. It was not heavy, despite its size. One man could move it easily.
He asked Parenefer about it.
The man scratched his smooth chin. The slowness of his movements and his manner were beginning to irritate Huy.
‘Normally it is in the centre of the room,’ he confirmed at last.
‘Who moved it?’
‘That I do not know. Perhaps the Medjays.’
‘Where was the body found?’
Parenefer appeared not to understand.
‘Where in this room?’ pursued Huy with diminishing patience. “Can you show me?’
After some further deliberation, Parenefer pointed mutely to a spot near the centre of the room. Huy knelt down. He could see races of dried blood, but also a discoloration of the stone which indicated that Duaf had lain more or less where the table normally stood. There were also some scuff marks, as if something had been dragged across the floor. But neither the table nor the body would have been heavy enough to score the stone in that way.
‘The table must have been pushed to the side already,’ said Huy, standing up again and noticing an unwelcome pain in his knee joints. ‘Did you not see that?’
‘I was not the first to arrive.’
‘Scribe Huy!’ Psaro was kneeling where the body had lain now. His posture was almost that of a desert tracker as he scanned the floor with, Huy suspected, eyes that were not only younger, but keener than his own.
He was looking at a flagstone set slightly to the side of the centre of the room. Two of the table’s legs would have rested on it if the table had been in its proper position. As Huy watched, Psaro reached out and pushed at the stone with his long fingers. It rocked slightly under the pressure.
Huy expected that it would take at least the three of them to move it, but Psaro waved him back and probed the stone in several places, delicately. Finally he found the point he was looking for, and pushed gently. Soundlessly, the stone swung downwards on a hidden pivot, one end of it descending as the other ascended, revealing an opening a generous cubit square, and shiny black steps leading down.
‘Th
at is how he escaped,’ said Psaro.
‘Who knew of this?’ Huy asked Parenefer, who was staring at the trap door with open mouth.
‘No-one. I have been here twenty years and I never suspected it existed.’
‘Get some torches.’
‘I will get swords too. There may be demons.’
‘There may be crocodiles.’
But there was nothing in the tunnel. Cautiously they made their way along its entire dank length, but encountered nothing but smooth dark walls and a smell of the underworld. It emerged, as Huy had half suspected it would, in a small stone boathouse, which Parenefer recognised as belonging to Duaf, about seventy paces upriver from the main harbour square. The boathouse was empty. They closed the similar trapdoor they had found there carefully and made their way back to the house through the city. None of them had any desire to venture through the tunnel again. Once back at Duaf’s house, they closed the trapdoor in the storeroom and replaced the table in its original position. No-one had seen them return: Cheruiri and Nofretka had gone, and the servants were dispersed about the house. Only the young Medjays at the front of the house looked at them curiously, but they were more concerned with the onlookers, most of whom had now dispersed. It was just as well that this was so, thought Huy.
‘Tell no-one of this but Nofretka,’ he said to Parenefer. ‘Tell her I will speak to her soon.’
Beneath their feet, hidden in the secret alcove which Duaf’s killer had reverentially closed and Huy had not discovered, Meritre slept on, in the darkness and loneliness which, it was intended, would be hers for all eternity.
Huy had decided that he would not trust Parenefer alone with conveying the necessary news to Nofretka, and, much to his body-servant’s satisfaction, told Psaro to remain behind with a message for her. He then made his way to the governor’s mansion. Halfway up the hill he paused, wiping the sweat from his brow, and looked around for a rickshaw. After the elation of discovering the passage, he felt a profound lassitude. Finding out how Duaf’s killer had escaped did not bring him any closer to identifying him. And he was certain what Kamose’s first question would be. It would probably, in truth, be his only question. It was one that had also occurred to Huy, and his heart was already wrestling with it, in the tireless way the heart has, even when the rest of the spirit is longing to lie down and be quiet.