by Anton Gill
‘You must eat before you go.’
‘All right. Thank you. The alcohol – ’
Huy smiled. It was a long time since he had been affected by alcohol, but that was more a matter for regret than pride.
‘Come on,’ he said.
A short time later, the land agent was more like himself. Huy had not watched until dawn for a long time, and he felt light-headed as he led his guest into the street. It was grey in the early light, and there were few people about. A man drove his overburdened donkey past the house, but he was dressed in the royal livery, and Huy recognised him. The animal’s load creaked as it plodded by them.
‘Are you sure you won’t wait and travel down with us?’ Disregarding his earlier caution, Huy felt sorry for the man, who looked so forlorn.
‘No. I will feel safer in Meroe. It is my place and there I not only have friends, but know who my enemies are.’
‘Then we will see you in Meroe,’ said Huy.
‘Indeed,’ replied Reniqer, looking unenthusiastically down the now empty street. It was chilly, and a thin dawn mist clung to the surfaces of things.
‘It is clear,’ said Huy. ‘Go in Truth.’
Reniqer raised his hands and turned to walk away. Huy did not stay to watch him go.
‘Will he be all right?’ asked Senseneb, as Huy re-entered the house.
‘I think so. Once he is on board he will be safe. And he can find a rickshaw or a litter to take him down to the harbour at the Compound Gate.’
‘What did you talk about? You were up all night.’
‘We drank. We talked of Meroe.’ Huy was not sure whether she would see that he was lying, but her expression did not change. He also wondered whether Ankhsi would tell her everything before he had had a chance to, but he decided to face that difficulty when he encountered it: there would be an opportunity to tell her the truth during the voyage south. He felt the sun begin to warm his back as he sat at breakfast, and blinked his eyes slowly and wearily, thinking of Reniqer, who must have been equally tired, and the journey that he faced.
In a far corner of the Southern Quarter of the Palace Compound, where the grooms and outdoor servants lived, Henka stood in his room. The room contained a low plain bed, fitted with interlacing bands of stiffened linen, old and stained, but still strong enough to support his weight. There was also a small acacia-wood table and near it a folding stool with a leather seat which was of good quality – though it was old and battered. The walls were roughly plastered and showed vestiges of an ancient ochre wash – but they, like the dusty floor covered with old, dry rushes, and the furniture, indicated nothing so much as dismal neglect. The room looked as if its last occupant had left it many floods ago, and that was the truth, except that Henka had lived here since Ay had become pharaoh, and that was time enough for Khons to rise in the dark sky and fatten from a sliver to full roundness fourteen times.
But Henka saw none of the shabby loneliness of his stall. The one thing he had brought to it was a wooden chest – cheap and plain, cobbled together out of tamarisk offcuts for him by a jobbing carpenter – which held what passed for his goods on this side of the Night. The chest was small enough for one man to carry. It contained two spare kilts, a satchel, a leather belt, a pair of rush sandals, the bronze knife he had always carried with him on the barges, the khepesh sword which he used for his present work, and the barbed head of a spear for hunting river-horse. There was also a woollen cloak, roughly woven but thick and warm, and an amulet – a small headrest-pillow made of the tooth of the great forest beast of the far south. It was yellow with age and it had belonged to Henka’s mother – a person only remembered as a soft, warm presence and a comforting smell. It was not in Henka’s nature to think back, but Ay would have been surprised to discover that this man clung, in the secret back-alleys of his mind, to one memory – a unique memory of kindness.
It had not lasted long – Henka came from the north, and his mother had been killed by a gang of Khabiri when he was small. It was in the old pharaoh’s time – the time of the Great Criminal, as the people called him now. It was a just name, and it was just to take away the king’s True Name: he had left the country to ruin. No wonder there had been plague! No wonder they had lost the north! If he had chosen to unearth the memory he would have seen a frightened three-year-old squeezed hidden behind the bread oven, unable to see what the men who had entered the village that morning and gone through each house systematically – snakes among petrified rodents – were doing to his mother but able to hear – oh yes, able to hear. And later to see what they had done, and to feel the horror without understanding it. The survivors V those who had already been in the fields and stayed hidden – had found him clinging in the warmth of the blood as it cooled. An old woman had held him and said the Words Against The Demon Of The Dark. He remembered them. He believed, just as the people of his village believed, who, even after the old king had decreed that that there was no god but the sunlight, had still continued to place a loaf and a water-jar by the old fig tree at the end of the street to appease the goddess who lived in it.
His father was a boatman. That was all his mother had told him. News of the raid must have reached the man somewhere but he never came to claim his son. He never returned to the village. Perhaps there had never really been a father. His rescuers had waited for two full cycles of the seasons and then sent Henka to work on the boats. He was five, old enough to work, agile and already strong. It was better than being sent to the gold-fields, they told him, where children were needed for the smallness of their hands. They were gathered early to Osiris there. Perhaps it was a blessing. But life is also sweet because it is what we know.
He had survived. He had also, in his turn, put men into the Boat of Night. He had been a river pirate once, until his qualities as a navigator had been discovered by an agent of the shipmaster, Ramose, father of Amotju. That was the first time he had been saved. Then Ay had saved him – and it was true that he had not deserved death then.
Since then, he had deserved death many times – but he no longer saw it in that light. He was as much the instrument in Ay’s hands as the khepesh was the instrument in his. The guiding heart was the guilty one. He had found a comfortable way to live, and he did not know that the man who feels comfortable is the man most at risk.
He turned the headrest over in his blunt hand. He knew what it symbolized and he knew that it protected him as surely as if his mother’s sekhen had stretched its wings over him. Its meaning was written in the Book Of Coming Forth By Day, and once there had been a tiny papyrus scroll with the chapter’s words on it. He had learnt them.
You are lifted up. Doves awake you from sleep. They lift up your head to the horizon, you are raised up and you triumph by reason of what has been done for you. Ptah has overthrown your enemies. You are Horus the son of Hathor, Nesert, Nesertet, who gives back the head after the slaughter. Your head shall not be carried away from you after the slaughter. Your head shall never, never, be carried away from you.
There was a leather pouch for the amulet. he placed it inside and closed the drawstrings. Then he hung it round his neck securely. He had left clay food in his mother’s grave so that her ka would be fed forever, even when he was far away. There would be no one to do the same for him.
He went out to wash at the well in the courtyard. Then he returned, opened the chest, and, taking out the satchel, began to pack.
The Matet boat unfurls its sails quickly in the Black Land, and by the time the rickshaw had dropped him at the harbour, it was bright day. Reniqer made his way across to the quays hastily, pushing through the crowd of people, all in an equal hurry, and all just as impatient of each other as he was of them. He had already recognised the blue and yellow painted prow of his ship, and was eager to get aboard, where at last he would feel safe. He could see the broad, terra-cotta backs of two sailors as they bent over to make fast the sheets to the clews. Most of the other passengers appeared to be already aboard, to judge by t
he luggage and goods lashed in a pile in the well of the boat, but Reniqer had timed his arrival so that he would not have long to wait until sailing – the less time he spent here now, he thought, the better. Despite the long night without sleep, his senses were sharp and he felt more alert than he would have expected. Though already dusty and warm, the air still retained the keenness of dawn, and that infected him.
His wound ached, but the attack itself seemed curiously like a dream. No words had been exchanged – perhaps after all it had been a robber. Perhaps he had imagined that the man on the downstream boat had been following him. But he had been right to take precautions. He knew in his heart, even if his khat denied it, that the attack had been no robbery, and that he had indeed been followed. One did not need reasons to know these things.
The boat – Khepri Soars In The Sun – was a large one-fifty cubits, Reniqer supposed, but broad and shallow-draughted. Loose folds of its furled yellow sail flapped as if in anticipation of the journey home. The wind was fresh, causing the water to slap eagerly against the solid cedar planking of the hull. These were good signs.
He gave his name to the sailor who stood by the gangplank and, handing his pack to another, went aboard. Now he was safe. He looked up at the mast and at the egrets wheeling round it in the hard blue sky. He could have laughed with relief. He was as good as home.
The captain was standing by the cabin aft, and it was reassuring to Reniqer to see him. It was good to find Teta working this route – Reniqer had travelled with him many times – but the riverman was young to have command of such a large ship.
Teta had seen him too, and was approaching, smiling proudly.
‘Things happen when I am away,’ said Reniqer. ‘How long has she been yours?’
‘This is my first voyage on her.’
Reniqer bowed humorously. ‘Then I am honoured.’
‘At least you will be safe. You may be sure that I am the last person to run her onto a shoal. Nesptah would take her away from me again immediately if I did.’
‘Then you will not. But I did not know you worked for Nesptah.’
‘I didn’t, until this command came along.’
‘I remember seeing her being built, but I did not think she had been so near completion.’
‘Nesptah was only waiting for the mast to be shipped down. They had sent one mast, but it was not long enough. As soon as the right one arrived, he had it stepped and put the Khepri into service immediately. He said he had wasted enough money on the investment already.’
‘That sounds like him.’
‘She is a good ship. She handles well and travels fast. We will even be able to travel some nights.’
‘Good. It will be good to be home.’
Reniqer made his way towards the cabin and the purser showed him to the men’s sleeping platform. Four pallets had been prepared.
‘Are there so few of us?” asked Reniqer.
‘There are no women on this voyage. We are using their platform for the other five passengers. So everyone has more room.’
‘That is good.’
‘It is never good to be without women.’
‘Is it ever good to be with them?’
‘Heaven and hell come in the same wrapper.’
The two men smiled at each other politely over the old joke, and the purser made his way back to the deck. Reniqer noticed with gratitude that the pallet furthest from the entrance and against the wooden aft wall of the cabin was the one that had been reserved for him. His pack had been stowed in the locker next to it. Teta had not told him how many nights would be spent on shore, but he assumed at least four – at Soleb, Kerma, Napata and Atbara. For the rest he hoped that his roommates would be quiet sleepers. He applied oil to his face and neck against the sun, then drew the linen screens around his pallet and followed the purser on deck.
Three men were idling by the cabin, watching the activities of the crew. They exchanged greetings with Reniqer, who recognised one of them as a turquoise dealer he had seen before in Soleb. The others he did not know, but one had the ink-stained fingers that scribes were always careful never quite to clean, as a mark of their status and profession. The other could have been a soldier, from his bearing. Four other passengers stood in two groups of two further down the deck. All were young men, and they were obviously travelling together, as they kept calling to one another excitedly. They wore a good deal of make-up and too much jewellery. They had the wiry arms and legs, and the pronounced buttocks of acrobats. Probably a troupe of actors or dancers going down to Napata, thought Reniqer. One of them kept getting in the way of the crew.
Reniqer had timed his arrival on board well. The shouts of the crew had become more urgent, and their movements quicker. Two had leapt down to the jetty and as he watched they cast off the mooring ropes, watched by the the usual knot of people that were hanging around. They jumped aboard again as the Khepri swung clear of the quay, guided out into the stream by two solid, grubby little tugs rowed by men with arms like treetrunks. In the centre of the River, as the current started to bear them downstream and the bulk of the Khepri loomed over the tugs, the men in them cast off as Teta shouted an order to the crew to throw out the drift anchor to hold her steady as the yard was raised. Straining and chanting, the crew hauled it aloft and the great yellow sail uncurled itself in the wind with a lazy grace. For a moment the Khepri hung still in the water, and then, as a sailor drew in the wooden anchor, the north wind began to urge her forward against the current. The hull creaked gently, and her motion created a counter-breeze, though a very faint one, in the faces of the people on board, and those on shore called out their last farewells.
Reniqer looked around again at his travelling companions. His first dread had been that the unwelcome fellow-traveller on the journey down would have rejoined him for the journey back, but there had been no sign of him so far, and, more importantly, Reniqer had had no feeling of his presence.
Nevertheless, he could still only see seven other passengers. He shrugged. Suddenly he was tired. Everyone would gather for the midday meal in any case, and he would see the ninth man then.
Senseneb looked around the empty rooms once more. Already they had ceased to be part of her life, though it was only that day that the final arrangements had been made, and Hapu had gone off with the train of baggage donkeys, following a morning of turmoil and temper, to take their last belongings down to be loaded on board ship not an hour before.
Time had gone too swiftly. It was two days since Reniqer had left them but it could have been two minutes, and she had not had the moment to herself that she needed to adjust to the reality of departure. Though a looking-forward had come into her heart to balance the loneliness of leaving, and she had stilled the anxiety that her instinct had originally prompted, she could not believe that they were in truth setting forth on this new life. But she had had letters from Ankhsi which reassured her that Meroe was not after all the unwelcoming hell-hole that she had conjured up in her worst imaginings. Men there traded in gold and black wood, the yellow teeth of the grey forest beast and even the spotted running cats that could be trained for hunting – all of which could be found further south still, and which were brought by men the colour of basalt down the River from wherever it rose in the unknown cloudland beyond the Black Land. Meroe was a rich town. Which was why Ay still clung to it. Where there were riches, there had to be control.
The first letter had described the town; the second, more importantly for Senseneb, confirmed to her that as far as her career was concerned she had been right in suspecting that Meroe would provide a better start than the Southern Capital. Ankhsi’s own physician had died soon after she had delivered Imuthes from the birth cave; Ankhsi herself had got used to a female doctor, and wanted another. There was, too, a new House of Healing in Meroe, and the town did not have enough people trained in the ways of herbs and proper cutting.
Her other consolation for going was Huy. He had thrown off the dusty look he had picked u
p in the State Barley Archive. There was a vitality about him that she remembered, though she had not seen it for a long time. She was not a fool, and she knew Huy well enough to connect something of the vitality not with their departure, but with Reniqer’s visit, though she had no idea why and, aware that the feeling was not strong enough to form real pictures in her heart, decided not to complicate the moment of going with questions. Perhaps she did not want to know. There was her own life to settle too; she wanted Huy, but she had no wish to stay where she was not wanted.
How cold the rooms looked, needing the stamp of another human being to bring them back to life. She tried to imagine them stuffed with the gilded and curled furniture that Tehuty’s chief wife bought, expensive stuff covered with turquoise and black wood embellishments in defiance of the damage inflicted on it by the couple’s four surviving children. They had been lucky. That four out of eight should live was more than most couples might expect. Senseneb looked down for a moment at her own flat, reproachful belly. But she thought then with a wry smile that it would be long before she would ever need to use the behen oil mothers and old women needed to anoint themselves with if they wanted to remove the corrugations of the flesh left by the passage of children through the birth cave.
Tehuty had been strutting ever since he’d heard of his new appointment, but he had said nothing to Huy. Huy had said that he was sure Tehuty was avoiding him, and he was not surprised. Huy only hoped that no-one had told his ex-brother-in-law that it was he who had sponsored his advancement. And Tehuty was not a man to take all that kindly in any case to taking a job vacated voluntarily by Huy, even though taking it meant advancement. The poison was too deeply settled in Tehuty’s blood ever to clear completely.
Somewhere in the Palace Compound, from away towards the new temple of Amun, came the tinselly sound of sistra and tambourines as the priests performed the morning ablutions of the god, behind the high walls that concealed their rites from the sight of the uninitiated. Senseneb said a quiet goodbye to the room she was in, and left it without looking back.