City of Lies

by Anton Gill

  Senseneb patted his belly. ‘Too much,’ she said. ‘You look like the priest Ka-aper. Fat.’

  Huy was not happy at her familiarity, but that was a problem for another day. For the moment her skin glowed in the soft light of the oil lamp by the bed. They sat close to each other, watching the steady flame.

  ‘This is better than the boat,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As much as you did in the street when I was angry?’

  ‘I knew that you had noticed.’

  He stroked her arms and her breasts, rubbing her nose with his. They kissed with their lips too, and their tongues, gently biting each other’s’ mouths. She slipped her cool hand round his penis as his fingers sought her life cave. From the rooms around them came the muffled noises of other travellers preparing for sleep.

  ‘The walls are thin,’ said Senseneb.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We will keep them awake.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But later, as they lay in the darkness and silence and the sweat cooled on their bodies, she raised herself on her elbow and asked him,

  ‘When would you have told me?’

  Two days later the water had risen again. They successfully negotiated the dangerous third cataract below Kerma because of this kindly blessing of Hapy, who lifted the boat clear of the rocks and shoals. As one of the sailors said, the god must have been sleeping, but now he was busy pushing the rich soil downriver with the flood which he raised by pushing with his generous breasts as he swam. At Kerma the relieved townspeople were holding a festival for the god.

  Three more travellers had joined the boat at Soleb; only one did here. A short, powerfully-built man who walked like a mariner, with an amulet-bag round his neck and a leather satchel slung over one massive shoulder.

  Chapter Four

  Two dawns later they had rounded the sharp eastward-bent elbow of the River and after one evening more they saw the city of Napata rise on the north bank ahead of them, its high mud walls turned magenta by the setting sun. The two fortified garrisons lay close in, nestling against the protecting walls, and as they drew closer, the passengers on board could see the black auxiliary troops performing their evening drill on the huge flattened square just beyond the harbour.

  The harbour itself was bounded by two extended jetties, each higher than was usual in the Black Land, and each terminating in high watchtowers. Even at night, when darkness reigned, these watchtowers were manned, and along each shore as far as the little sister city of Nuri just upstream, beacons were being lit. They were meagre things, for even dried dung fuel was scarce in this hard red land, but their glow was enough to keep the lightlessness at bay along each shore, and a sullen ochre gleam flickered on the water long after the brightness of the sun had left it.

  ‘Do you know this city?’ one of his fellow-passengers, an eager-looking businessman from Kerma with a high colour on his face, asked Huy.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor I. It seems well protected. Good for our trade. Do you trade?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Building up, eh? I’d favour hardwoods. Heavy but not bulky, and a little goes a long way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They could smell the city now, as the supper fried on hundreds of castor-oil and linseed-oil skillets. And the smell of dried fish, and ordure. The usual smells, but here somehow diminished in the dry air. The sail was furled and the crew took to the oars to complete the last manoeuvre into the harbour.

  They disembarked with the other passengers and walked the short distance along the jetty to the dockside. The space beyond it was similar to that in the Southern Capital, except that it was smaller, and far more soldiers were in evidence. The officers were Black Landers, but most of the soldiers were local men, slim and dark-skinned with lean faces and wide lips. Huy noticed one small knot of men standing apart by a quay where light ferry-boats were tied up. They wore the insignia of charioteers- the elite troops of the imperial army. Hapu, who had stayed on board at their other overnight stops to guard the baggage and furniture stowed in the belly of the boat, engaged one of the sailors to do so here as he intended to visit a brother who was in the Viceroy’s service. Huy and Senseneb followed the other travellers through a narrow gate in the city wall and walked along a street that wound uphill to the central square.

  The principal inn of the city occupied almost one whole side of this square, and outside it a few local traders had set up stalls selling dates, cakes, sandals, linen satchels and other goods which might appeal to travellers, but they found no customers.

  There were soldiers here, too, and inside the inn people were talking of a recent attack mounted on Nuri by a small army of tribesmen from Kush. They had been defeated, and they had fled back into the desert to the south, but no one was sure that they had been routed. The sense of being in a frontier town where opportunity and danger walked hand in hand both excited and unsettled Huy’s heart. But he knew that within the cities and on the River the danger was slight. Among the conical mud buildings of the old town of Napata, Black Land temples had been built, and the professional classes of UatUat wore Black Land clothes and spoke the language of the Southern Capital. Gradually, trade was overtaking war as the means of communication between the colonisers and the locals – it was more profitable to both sides, though the pharaoh’s falcon ships, like the soldiers, were more numerous here than to the north, protecting the merchants and their vessels in this rich but volatile outpost of the kingdom.

  But although there was a veneer of accustomed culture spread over the town, and much that was recognisable, the essence of the place was distinct. The familiar smells and sounds were not completely so, for there were new spices and flowers, and the ordinary voices that shouted to each other in the distance or were overheard in conversation nearby used an unknown language. Even the silence and the dust that hung in the air had a different quality.

  The darkness, too, seemed deeper, though the impression might have been strengthened by the fact that fewer lamps burned here than in the Southern Capital. The hall of the inn and its open central courtyard where a goat was roasting on the embers of a huge range were yellow with light, but there was little more beyond it and this was a night when Khons rode his black chariot in the sky above. With the coming of the dark, the soldiers and stallholders had drifted away and there was silence in the town beyond the inn, though it was a silence punctuated at times by the calls of sentries and the cries of rivermen. The River pushed ever higher, and began to turn red as the season progressed. It made its own quiet, constant, reassuring noise, but Huy could tell from overhearing the conversations of farmers that despite the encouraging omens, there was no guarantee yet of a good Flood.

  The inn was the social centre for the town, though Huy could imagine that a more select group probably gathered each evening at the Viceroy’s palace. As if reading his heart, a stout man with an immaculately oiled and curled beard, dressed in an expensive earth-red linen kilt edged with gold, caught his eye and approached him.

  ‘I am Samut,’ he said, nodding gravely to Senseneb.

  ‘Join us,’ she replied, politely.

  He drew up a stool and sat at their table, lowering himself onto it with a slight effort, though close to Huy could see that his body was firm and his skin taut over the flesh.

  ‘Do you travel far?’ he asked, after they had called for and drunk wine together.

  ‘To Meroe.’

  Samut’s face cleared. ‘That is my destination too. If I am not wrong, it is your boat I am joining tomorrow.’

  ‘We depart then.’

  ‘I hope I may enjoy your company.’

  ‘We look forward to yours,’ replied Huy equably. They sat in silence then while Samut stared at the meat on the range pensively.

  ‘You will forgive me – but you look as if you should be guests of the Viceroy, not staying at the inn.’

  �
�No,’ said Huy. He looked down at his tunic, and knew that its cut and quality declared him to be in the pharaoh’s service. He explained briefly to Samut what their plans were and where they were going. ‘But you, too, should surely be a guest of the Viceroy,’ he finished, politely. Samut’s clothes certainly looked expensive for the inn, but Huy did not push his curiosity. If he worked for the Viceroy he might have been sent to see what travellers had arrived and to find out their business, but he could either have done that bluntly and officially, or taken a more indirect and undercover line. In any case, Samut did not bear himself like a functionary. Huy knew that the Viceroy had all but independent power in these southern reaches of the kingdom, and that he ruled a court that was in all essentials a miniature version of that governed by Ay. Still, he remained Ay’s underling and would be expected to gather information for the king. Huy had not forgotten Pinhasy, and he had been careful in conversation with his handful of fellow-travellers from Soleb on upriver. These, however, all seemed to have disembarked and concluded their journey here in Napata. The thickset mariner who had joined them at Kerma remained aloof, and he had not spoken to him at all.

  ‘The Viceroy knows me, of course,’ said Samut. ‘I am a merchant of sorts, though I mainly deal in gold. But I have been coming here for the past ten nights to find out news of my partner who should be returning from business of his own in the Southern Capital. I have not asked you your name; but I suspect from what you have told me that you are the scribe Huy.’ He looked at Huy then with a watchful expression in his eyes.

  ‘I am Huy.’ Huy also introduced Senseneb.

  ‘I am honoured to meet you again,’ said Samut.

  ‘Again?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘I knew your father well when you were just a little girl and your mother was still alive. Hathor has watched over you in the growing.’

  Senseneb smiled at the compliment, but said. ‘You must forgive me. I do not remember you.’

  Samut spread his hands. ‘You were very small. I left the Southern Capital long before you were grown to come and work here in the south. I have been here for twenty floods.’

  ‘Did you stay in touch with my father?’

  ‘You know how it can be. We exchanged letters, but we were both busy men. But for his sake I would do all that his daughter commanded. It grieved me to hear of his death.’ He turned to Huy again. ‘My partner had business with you. Reniqer.’

  Huy exchanged a look with Senseneb. ‘Reniqer left for the south before we did. We were to meet him in Meroe. It is he who has organised matters for us as I told you.’

  Samut looked worried. ‘He was to meet me here and we were to travel on together. I have delayed my own departure to wait for him.’

  ‘And he has sent you no news?’

  ‘None. The boat he was travelling on left him at Soleb. But he has been seen at Soleb and I have sent one of my men back downriver to find out what he can there. In the meantime I can delay no longer.’ He paused, then looked at Senseneb and smiled. ‘But it is fortunate that we have met. I will make sure that all is done for you at Meroe as well as if Reniqer had been there himself.’ He paused again. ‘It is unlike him. But all may yet be well.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They all sat in silence. Accidents happened on the River. Huy wondered if Reniqer’s partner knew of the secret element of his mission. He touched the udjat-eye he wore at his breast to protect him.

  ‘You do not look like a superstitious man,’ said Samut.

  Huy was surprised by the remark. ‘What do you mean?’

  The merchant looked round. ‘Don’t worry. The priests of the Southern Capital do not have such great influence here. There are those of us who still hold to the god of the sun’s light – the Aten.’

  The god of the old pharaoh, Akhenaten. Akhenaten had swept away all the other gods and rid the Black Land of ghosts and demons – but with his death they had all come back. Huy had been part of the New Thinking. He knew that followers of the Aten still had a foothold in the south, but he had not expected them to be open about it as Samut was.

  Again it appeared as if the merchant read his heart. ‘I know your history, Huy the Scribe,’ he said, with the faintest suggestion of a smile. But it was not a warm smile. It was a smile of power. What else did Samut know? And why was he speaking like this now? Huy had the impression that he was being sounded-out, but he did not know for what purpose. And now another thought occurred to him: Ay had spies in the south; but just as certainly there were those in the pay of Horemheb here too. Both men had served Akhenaten, but both were engaged in the uprooting of all signs of his teaching, for the reinstated priesthood of the old gods, the chief of which was Amun, was rich and powerful. If an Aten-cult was suffered to exist here, it must be because it was not considered a threat. But even so...

  Huy stopped his heart from running on these lines. ‘I believe that all gods are worthy of respect,’ he said. ‘We would be foolish not to accept at least the possibility of their power. It can do us no harm to do so, and we may risk much if we do not.’

  ‘Do you fear the Undead?”

  ‘I fear the ones-without-a-heart, yes.’ Out in the darkness beyond Napata, Huy felt that rebel tribesmen were probably more to be feared than wandering ghosts, but he would not be drawn into an argument designed perhaps to make him reveal more than he wanted to.

  ‘It is late,’ said Senseneb.

  ‘Of course. But I must ask one question more before I let you go, if you will forgive me. How was Reniqer when you saw him?’ asked Samut, smiling at her but addressing his question to Huy. Huy felt Senseneb’s irritation but she hid it well, drinking wine to conceal the flash in her eyes.

  ‘He was well.’

  ‘Was he concerned?’

  Huy spread his hands. ‘He had a businessman’s preoccupations, I suppose. I am a civil servant.’

  ‘No longer.’

  ‘That is spoken in truth.’

  ‘And you are coming to live among us to farm?’

  ‘I have not fixed my plans.’

  Samut broke the atmosphere. He laughed good-naturedly and addressed his next remark to Senseneb. ‘Try to persuade your husband to trade. There is more profit and less care. There are many chances and there is plenty of room. Not everyone can be a Nesptah but at least everyone can aspire to be.’

  ‘Who is Nesptah?’ she asked.

  Samut looked at her. ‘Can it be that his fame has not yet spread to the Southern Capital? He would be grieved to hear it. Even the Viceroy listens to Nesptah.’ He smiled again. ‘He is a merchant, but a great one, and the brother-in-law of the Military Governor at Meroe. He is married to Tascherit’s sister, Takhana. You will meet him.’

  There was a crash of raucous laughter from a bunch of young men at a table near the archway that opened onto the courtyard. Huy looked in the direction of the noise and through the shimmering air beyond the heat from the fire where the goat was cooking, he saw the blunt-headed man who had boarded at Kerma. Their eyes met for only a moment but in that instant Huy felt a coldness as if Seth had breathed on him. The eyes were the colour of grey granite and imparted as much expression as dead stone. Then Huy saw that they had fixed their gaze on Senseneb and that she was returning the look. Her eyes, too, were devoid of expression, unless it were dulled fascination, as if she were unconscious that she was staring at the man. Her mouth was curved, slightly open. Samut was aware of it too and turned round in his seat to look in the direction of the archway. When Huy turned his eyes to it again, the man was gone.

  ‘Who was he?’ asked Samut.

  Huy shrugged. ‘He was on the boat.’

  Senseneb shivered. ‘He had eyes like a crocodile. He looked at me like a crocodile looks at its prey.’

  ‘I must go,’ said Samut. ‘It is indeed late but I must make my farewells at the Viceroy’s palace. There will be no time tomorrow. We leave at the very rising of the Matet boat I think?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Huy. Samut mus
t surely know that, as a regular traveller on this stretch of the River.

  ‘One day I shall have my own fleet of boats. Like Nesptah.’

  ‘May Nun smile on the getting of them.’

  Samut smiled and took Senseneb’s hands in his, bowing over them. Then he left them, walking briskly away through the archway. Huy noticed that he, too, had something of a boatman’s stride.

  ‘Well?’ asked Senseneb after a moment and draining the rest of her wine.

  ‘Nothing. I wonder about Reniqer.’

  As he spoke, Samut returned, walking faster now, and in the company of a dishevelled man who smelt of the River. His expression was set. Huy stood up to meet him.

  ‘This is Niui. The man I sent to Soleb. He has just returned.’

  Huy could tell from the man’s face that he had news and that it was not good.

  ‘Tell him what you told me. Tell us all you have learned fully,’ ordered Samut.

  Niui hesitated. He knew bad luck attended the bringer of bad news. ‘Reniqer is dead,’ he began. Inwardly, Huy sighed, glancing sharply at Samut, who, however, was listening impassively. It was a kind of relief to hear what he had suspected.

  ‘He arrived at Soleb and went ashore, but they told me there that he seemed troubled,’ continued Niui. In the morning they waited for him on the Khepri as long as they could but at last had to sail without him. He was not at his inn and they thought he must have had business that had come up in the town.’ He looked round at his audience. ‘I decided to continue upriver in search of him as there was no sign of him any more in Soleb. There was no-one even to say if he had taken another boat, but – ’ Niui broke off, looking at his master, who was looking at the ground, breathing impatiently.

  ‘I asked after Reniqer at every village on the way down to Kerma. Then at last at the Medjay post at Kerma there was news. A fisherman had found the remains of a body in the water three days earlier. The crocodiles had not left much of it but what was left the embalmers at the wabet house had preserved, for the clothes it was still wearing were rich and they expected the relatives to claim the remains sooner or later.’ He grimaced, showing a set of bad, worn teeth. ‘It was from the clothes that I recognised Reniqer. His limbs were gone and most of his head.’