by Anton Gill
‘The black ones are the true accounts, the red are the false ones to be shown to the state,’ she said. She saw Huy looking at the hiding place and, as she was still young enough to recover fast, she smiled.
‘My father loved secrets,’ she said.
*
Cheruiri stood in the shadows by a pillar in the private audience chamber of the governor’s mansion. Kamose had asked him to remain, in case a written report of the exchange was needed for his private files later. The rumour was that Ay was dying, but Kamose so far only had Horemheb’s assurance that this was so. Kamose knew that he still had to cover himself; and he trusted Cheruiri.
‘I am not surprised the brothers hadn’t got them,’ said Horemheb. ‘But arrest them anyway.’
‘If the contents of those books come out, I will be ruined,’ said Kamose.
‘You knew the risk you took.’
‘I took it to support your cause.’
‘You took it to feather your nest. And because you hoped I’d promote you if you helped me.’
‘There is no wrong in that.’
‘If I have to sacrifice you, Kamose, I will. And there is nothing you can do about it.’
Kamose stiffened. ‘Userhet and Atirma are with me in this.’
‘Do you threaten me? I do not think so. They will come behind me to save themselves. I choose who is left out, and who enters the cage!’
‘We protected your name. Duaf and Ipur never knew that the slave-running was in your interest. I constantly kept a check on them. They never suspected that we were engaged in anything but a simple fraud. Then we discovered that they planned to betray us.’
‘Yes! To me!’ Horemheb laughed. ‘But do not worry, little Kamose. We only need two scapegoats. Senofer and Meten will do. The whole slave-running matter can be placed at their door and they will be punished. The judgement will redound to my credit, and it will not hurt me, whether Ay dies or not. You will remain here. Userhet will accompany me to the Southern Capital. Atirma can go back to his plump little wife and his fat little estates. The money will go into the imperial treasury. All of it.’
‘All?’
‘Surely you do not expect to escape with your skin and be paid for it too?’
Kamose was silent.
‘Arrest them,’ said Horemheb.
‘Without the books there is no proof.’
‘There will be. Huy would not have told me about them if he did not have a plan.’
‘He is not infallible.’
‘Arrest them. I have nothing to lose. If Huy fails to produce evidence, we will cut our losses and let them go. You can arrange for them to be killed later, when I am gone.’
‘As long as the location of the books is uncertain – ’
‘That is for you and the others to worry about, not me.’ Horemheb grinned. ‘But do not worry. You will find me just, but merciful.’
‘As the gods will,’ said Kamose drily. Horemheb dismissed him with a wave, not even looking at him. Kamose as he left the room looked for Cheruiri behind the column. But Cheruiri was gone.
*
The best policy now, thought Kamose, was to act without thinking. He had his chief scribe draw up arrest papers for the brothers and sent a detachment of Medjays to Ipur’s house forthwith. Horemheb ordered that they be detained until the evening, then had them brought to the mansion. There the charges were read to them, and immediate restitution of the goods received from Alasa for the slaves was demanded from them.
Meten was silent. Senofer said. ‘We are innocent, and therefore we have no goods. And you have no proof against us.’
Horemheb smiled. ‘You arrogant spawn of Seth, may Bes blow down your throat,’ he said. ‘Of course I have proof, and not simply of defrauding the state. I have a witness who brings me proof.’
It was a dramatic moment that Huy detested. He had not known, when he had brought the books to the General, that this entire piece of theatre had already been engineered. What Horemheb would have done if Huy had failed to produce them, he did not know; but the General had not become great by eschewing risk. Now Huy was forced to enter the arena of the courtroom which had been set up in the governor’s audience chamber, with Nofretka by his side, as Horemheb’s own scribe produced the account books, but the true and false, and placed them with a flourish on the broad table in front of the General. The air was heavy in the room, and the lamps which lit it burned sullenly. But there was no mistaking the triumph on the General’s face when he saw the grey veil which fell on the faces of the brothers.
‘You are the shit of Ammit. She will swallow your hearts in the Halls of Truth.’ yelled the General. ‘I have everything here.’ Horemheb made a show of collecting himself. ‘I see revealed before me a plot as complicated as it is demonic: this was no ordinary fraud: you are clearly too clever for that! What you sought was nothing more than to destroy the fabric of this city by constructing an entirely imaginary fraud based on slave-running, and producing falsified accounts’ – here he tapped the scrolls bound with black reed – ‘to implicate the leading men here.’ He indicated Kamose, Userhet and even Atirma who were seated on the low dais behind him, their faces in shadow. ‘My most trusted aides, who have supported the north of the Black Land loyally for the pharaoh, great Ay, while I was defending the Land itself against invasion from a loathsome foe! You wormed your way behind their backs and looked to bring them down before me, so that you could take their places. Not only that, but you conspired to kill two of this city’s most honoured citizens, one of them your own father, the other the father of this innocent girl, when they discovered your dark purpose and threatened to expose it! And you did not stop there. You also stand accused – though here I freely admit that the justice of the Land cannot touch you, for there is in truth no proof – of killing Duaf’s wife Meritre, and of killing my most trusted agent, Heby son of Huy, whom I had deputised secretly to keep watch here on my affairs during my absence.’
Huy listened to the pompous political criminal recital as if in a dream. He had sought justice in a roundabout way, and he had received it in a roundabout way. What Horemheb had said about Heby confused him, for he knew that to be a untruth indeed, among the litter of lies and half-truths which Horemheb had spread to spare his officers and destroy the brothers.
But why spare his officers? Huy looked unseeingly into the flickering room and caught the eye of Cheruiri, standing by a Captain of Medjays behind and to the left of Senofer and Meten.
Horemheb drew himself up and pronounced his judgement into the expectant silence. ‘Take them out now and kill them. Take them to the harbour, let the townspeople gather to witness the punishment, and gut Senofer and Meten like fish,’ said the General. ‘Then burn them. With the great peace I have brought to the Black Land, it is my intention to bring great justice. Mercy in such cases would be misplaced – indeed, the gods would frown on it.’
Huy’s eyes did not leave Cheruiri’s.
*
It was a strange conversation to be having, thought Huy. He was not even sure why Hemet had sought him out. He noticed that despite everything, she was still flirting with him.
‘But I will stay here now, with Atirma. I have suffered much. But now my husband is rewarded. As Nofretka has decided to go to the Southern Capital, he will buy Duaf’s concerns from her. And my father will control Ipur’s legacy for the state. So that there is no reason for me to leave.’
‘Was there ever?’
‘When are you leaving?’ she asked, as if she had not heard his question.
‘Tomorrow. There is much to be done in the Southern Capital. I have neglected my work too long.’
‘They say that Ay is dying.’
‘Yes.’ In truth the rumours were multiplying, and Horemheb’s ships were rigged and ready to sail. The General would depart in two days. He had watched the execution of Senofer and Meten unblinkingly. Before they were taken down to the harbour, immediately after the trial, Horemheb had given orders for their tongue
s to be cut out. Huy had been obliged to watch them die too. He told himself that it was probably quicker than it looked: that shock would have protected the heart from pain. He had looked at the faces of Kamose and Userhet and Atirma, too. Three masks. Userhet was to sail south with the General. There was talk of his taking over the Viceroy’s job in Napata, far to the south – if Ay did not survive.
After the trial Cheruiri, with hesitation, had spoken to him. So he had learned the truth about Horemheb’s involvement in the slave-running. Huy hardly knew how to react. He was tired. By the gods! – he was so tired! Justice had been served and not served; and he had served it and not served it. Nothing was tidy, and all the guilty were not punished. But at least some were. There was nothing he could do about the loose ends. How annoyed Ay would have been! Alas! By the sound of things Ay would be beyond worrying now about what he left behind. Perhaps his heart had already entered the Boat of Night.
Kamose had refused permission to Cheruiri to return to the Southern Capital. For some reason that had made Huy sadder and more lonely than anything else. He had even tried to intercede with Kamose himself, but Kamose regarded him with deep suspicion and would barely talk to him. Cheruiri took it more philosophically: time did not stop, and could still bring change. But he would not come to the quayside to say goodbye to Huy. He hoped Huy would understand.
‘You can be proud of your son,’ said Hemet. ‘He will always be revered in this city. No-one ever believed he was a deserter, and now we know he was working for Horemheb. It is clear now. He always admired the General.’
Huy had said nothing about Heby’s guilt. He had let Senofer and Meten carry the blame for Ipur’s death along with everything else. But what could he have said? How could he have changed things by blaming his son? Wouldn’t it have been inconvenient for anyone to believe him? And what of Duaf? Could Huy ever be sure that Heby had not killed him? No-one alive now could tell him. It was something that, for him, would never be solved.
He wondered if he would tell Senseneb the whole truth. Senseneb. Soon he would see her again. It almost seemed to him that she no longer existed except in his thoughts. But all too soon the familiar realities, the familiar responsibilities would be nestling close to him once more, all too close.
Psaro supervised the loading of their gear onto the Goddess of Truth that evening. Neferabu was deeply preoccupied. He sat over a cup of good Kharga wine with Huy in the broad cabin aft, with its smell of resin and cedar wood and of the River.
‘I have had more news from the Capital,’ he said. ‘We will be fortunate if we arrive before the pharaoh leaves us.’
‘I hope not. I would like to say goodbye to him.’
‘Shu will blow steadily for us. By his grace we will not be too late.’
‘Yes.’
There had been other goodbyes. Huy thought of Aahmes. He had not wanted to see her again, but he had had to; and for both of them, as he had feared, the farewell had been a formality. He knew he would never see her again. He would never see his son’s grave.
*
That night was a long one, but the morning was brisk and clear, and in truth the north wind was fresh and vigorous. Huy stood on the deck and looked up, his face in the sun, as the sailors hoisted the sail.
There can be no change without the death of what has gone before.
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Author’s Note
The background to the following story is broadly authentic, though the majority of its characters are fictional. We know a comparatively large amount about life in Ancient Egypt because its people - at least its ruling and administrative classes - were sophisticated, literate, and had a sense of history; even so, experts estimate that in the two centuries since the science of Egyptology began, scarcely more than twenty-five per cent of what might be known has been revealed. There is still much disagreement and debate about certain dates and events among scholars, and in the process of discovery, many of the delicate relics of the civilisation of the pharaohs have been destroyed or dispersed.
This is a novel, and I have allowed myself occasional freedoms in interpreting what life in Ancient Egypt must have been like. Bearing in mind that no-one can know completely how the people of that time spoke or behaved, and accepting that human nature has not changed much in the past 3,500 years or so, I nevertheless apologise to Egyptologists and purists for those freedoms. Among the many to whose work I am indebted are not only the founders of modern Egyptology, like James Breasted, E. Wallis Budge, and W. M. Flinders Petrie, but also modern scholars, including Cyril Aldred, W. V. Davies, Christine El Mahdy, T.G.H. James, Manfred Lurker, Lise Manniche, P.R.S. Moorey, R.B. Parkinson, Gay Robins, John Romer, M.V. Seton-Williams, A.J. Spencer, Miriam Stead, Eugen Strouhal, Richard H. Wilkinson and Hilary Wilson. I must also thank Dr H. Peter Speed for answering my enquiries.