by Anton Gill
‘You will not go to the Fields. The-Thing-That-Eats-Shadows will devour your shadow and spit it out into the boiling pits of Seth.’
‘No,’ he replied quietly. ‘You will redeem me. I have done what I have done because of you. You will not allow me to be judged for what you caused.’
‘You lie in filth.’
‘Do not anger me.’
‘What do you think I have to fear now?’
She felt, rather than heard him sigh. He was looking within himself. He did not want to give her pain. She was not like the other women he had known; but they had been as casual and as venal as he. There had never been any feeling before. It could be that only death would unite them. It could be that the gods had willed it like this.
None comes from there
to tell us how it is
to soothe our hearts;
we learn only
when we go where they have.
‘I have a wound,’ he said at last.
‘Yes.’
‘I cannot get it clean. It is not deep. Feel.’ He took her wrist so quickly that she gasped, and guided her shrinking fingers to his side. ‘You are a healer. We must burn it. I have a spearhead. But I cannot control the metal and myself.’
He turned from her. He picked up an oar he had taken from the boat. With his sword, he cut a piece from the end of its shaft. The effort made him giddy. Sweat dripped from his brow. His body was greasy, his kilt wet. He sat down again and made himself breathe gently. When his head felt that it belonged to him again, he wiped his eyes and using his knife began to carve a short haft for the spearhead.
When he had finished, he gathered some shreds of matting from the boat, and began to kindle fire. Soon he was able to throw cakes of dried dung onto it. The fire was at the mouth of the cave and the wind blew its heat and smoke back into it, making the cave a choking oven. Senseneb crawled to the mouth of the cave near him; she could not deny her body breath. When the fire was bright, Henka picked up the spearhead and fitted it to its haft. It was no longer than a dagger’s handle, but it would do. He placed the spearhead in the fire, and waited.
Senseneb could smell the hot metal.
After a time he sought he hand. ‘Take it,’ he said, guiding the handle into her grasp. She felt the rough, water-washed wood, and felt the heat of the bronze near it. He led her hand close to his body. She heard him grunt with pain as he struggled not to back away from the glowing weapon.
‘I must hold the wound open,’ he said. ‘You are just above it. All you have to do is push down.’
With her free hand she felt his body to locate it. She tightened her grip on the makeshift dagger. She had cauterised many wounds. All she had to do was twist the blade in her hand and drive the point into him.
But instead she pressed the flat sides of the spearhead hard against the open mouth of the wound. It hissed and sputtered, but she held it there for as long as she could, until Henka yanked his body away.
He had not made a sound.
Kenna was furious. ‘Why have you not spoken to Tascherit?’
‘I have not found the right moment.’ Huy replied distractedly. He had just returned from Samut’s house to be told that the merchant had not returned the previous evening. He had then gone to Ankhesenamun, but she had heard nothing.
‘Then you must take the wrong one! I need an answer to take back to Ay and I will not delay my departure by more than this day.’ He scowled at his surroundings malevolently. ‘This place is not suitable to me. It is too hot, and the flies disgust.’ He turned to Huy again. ‘It astonishes me that you ever came.’
‘I have told you that Ankhesenamun will return.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as she has settled her affairs here.’ Huy felt as uneasy as the stilted exchange of words.
‘But if Tascherit does not know? What if he refuses to let her go?’
Huy said, ‘He cannot refuse a direct order from the king any more than you or I. Had you forgotten that?’
‘I would still rather be assured of his consent before I go. Ay will want to know. What if he refuses to keep the boy? Ay will not want the child in his household.’
‘He is the king’s great-grandson.’
‘But he is the son of no one.’
‘That has not prevented a person from sitting in the Golden Chair before.’
‘Be careful, Huy.’ Kenna glared at him. Ay’s own ancestry was hardly royal.
‘What else worries you?’ asked Huy.
Kenna did not reply immediately. ‘We do not want unrest in the south.’
‘You will not get it from Tascherit.’
But Huy was troubled. Already he had concealed enough from this representative of the king to suffer the cruellest death if ever he was discovered. The fact that he still hoped to sway Ankhsi away from her plan would count as nothing in the reprisals that would follow an unsuccessful rising. Huy had watched men executed by impaling. But he had not forgotten the orders Ay had given to kill him, and there was a corner of his heart which reminded him that if the rebellion succeeded, his reward would be great. If he had not been convinced that it would fail, only the gods knew what decision he might have made. He found himself in a position where he could only watch as the gods resolved the places of the pieces on the senet board; but his instinct told him with increasing strength that the evil which grew here had nothing to do with the distant General Horemheb. He was groping blindly in a tunnel, like the golden eyeless beast that travels under the sand, but as yet he was moving with none of its ease.
More than anything he wanted Kenna to leave. The man cluttered his thoughts.
‘Ay should be satisfied to hear that his granddaughter is returning to him,’ he repeated. ‘That should be enough. What could Tascherit do in any case?’
‘He could rebel,’ Kenna replied bluntly. Huy hoped his expression had not changed. ‘Our spies have been quiet here. They have reported little or nothing. That in itself makes the king uneasy. But I will be making my own report.’
Huy wondered how many people in Meroe Kenna had spoken to. He wondered too if the scribe would survive the journey back to the Southern Capital. Is that what Ankhsi had needed time for – organising a man to kill him? Killing Kenna would achieve nothing more than to make Ay’s suspicions more acute. But were the former queen and Samut subtle enough strategists to see that?
‘Ankhsi has given her word,’ said Huy.
‘But will she keep it?’
‘She cannot run, can she? The king will always know where to find her.’
Kenna smiled. ‘That is true. But what of you?’
‘I will return only when I know the fate of Senseneb.’ Huy closed his eyes. He was struggling in a net. Two names kept returning to him: Nesptah’s, and Tascherit’s. And Ankhsi’s feelings for her sister-in-law had revealed much. But how did the pieces fit?
Kenna was preparing to reply, but as he opened his mouth to speak he was interrupted by Psaro, who came through the gate to the street at a run. He approached them with no ceremony, his tunic stained and dusty, his long limbs sleek with sweat.
‘You must come!’ he said to Huy.
‘What has happened?’
‘You must come!’
Huy and Kenna exchanged glances and then hurried after the tall man as he loped back towards the street. They turned left and walked swiftly north, up the long road that sloped gently uphill towards Samut’s house.
The room in which Huy had last spoken with Samut had been turned into a mortuary until the embalmers came. Psaro explained that he had deliberately delayed their arrival until Huy had seen what there was to be seen. The healers had already left. There was nothing for them to do. Tascherit’s Medjays had been and gone.
‘There will be a great search. All the town will be questioned. News has already been sent to the Viceroy,’ said Psaro.
The two bodies had been stretched out, as far as was possible, on two long trestle tables. Each had been covered with a li
nen sheet soaked in water. Two men sat in opposite corners of the room waving huge fans made from the tail feathers of the great desert bird, and large earthen jars full of water stood in the other two corners. But still the buzz of swarming flies was deafening, and the sweet smell of death was heavy in the air. Kenna, retching, remained outside.
‘I loved my master. All who worked for him did,’ said Psaro. Huy looked at his face and noticed the grief in it.
‘What has happened?’
‘They were found together by fishermen working downstream in the reeds. They cannot have been there long. They are not swollen or torn – at least, not by the crocodiles.’
Huy felt as if the cold north wind had blown through the room.
‘What has happened?’ he asked again.
Psaro drew back the sheet which covered the smaller body. It was that of the silent servant who had served Huy the wine at Nesptah’s house when he visited Takhana. The body was naked, but clean and unharmed except for a narrow gash high in the neck below the jaw.
‘The wound goes deep,’ said Psaro. ‘Right into the centre of the head. They used a long knife.’
Involuntarily Huy thought of Senseneb, who had been wondering about the head. Why was such an unimportant seat of power also a seat of life? The grey organ it contained did nothing but lubricate the nose. Why should it be vital? Thinking of Senseneb also made him think of the search for her. Two murders would concentrate official hearts on other matters; and she had been gone long enough now for people to think her dead too. Would the whole matter be quietly forgotten, as it also involved a servant of the king? As for Hapu, there was no one to mourn him, though Huy had arranged for him to be prepared by the embalmers for proper entry to the Fields of Aarru. And he would not give up the search for her.
‘He never spoke,’ said Huy.
‘He was without the gift; but it was not always so,’ replied Psaro. ‘He was always in Nesptah’s service. Once Nesptah discovered that he had revealed the location of a silver mine to the south. He had spoken of it in a drinking house; but it was enough. Nesptah had Apuki take his tongue out; but he kept him under his eye. It was not hard for my master to make a spy of him.’
Huy called the picture into his heart of the soft-limbed steward he had seen with Takhana. Ankhsi had married into a dark household.
Brushing aside raging flies, Psaro began to draw back the second covering. Huy drew a corner of his shawl across his mouth as he looked, screwing up his eyes.
He had already braced himself, because he had seen the outline of the twisted body under the sheet. But he could not have prepared himself for what he saw now. It was Samut. It was what was left of him. But it was only by his size and his jewels that he could be recognised.
It must have taken them a long time to get whatever information they wanted from him – if they had succeeded at all. Huy would not have thought anyone capable of withstanding such pain as the merchant must have felt; but then he remembered the passion with which Samut had spoken of his planned vengeance. He would have submitted to anything rather than betray those who might still be able to carry out his hopes. Huy looked down, thinking, any dead body looks pathetic, robbed of the dignity and vitality of living tissue. A human being looks like a slaughtered pig. But Samut’s aped life: its back was still arched and one arm reached out to fend off a long-past and unstoppable threat. the mouth was open and bent downwards in a pain which outlived its end, and the eyeless sockets above it seemed to contain within them the ghost of an untold torment. Huy’s glance sped down past the ruined loins to the legs, broken and sprawling at impossible angles to the torso.
Huy looked at Psaro. Psaro looked down at the poor body, crying.
‘Cover it,’ said Huy.
Psaro did so.
‘Do you know who could have done this?’
‘No.’
‘Samut was a careful man. He fell into a trap. They must have got him away somewhere to do this. This kind of torture takes time, makes a noise. How could he have allowed it to happen?’
‘He was too confident. He took risks. He never had a guard.’
Huy walked to the window and looked out. The scene was a replica of that which Samut had looked out on during his conversation with Huy. Huy tried to fill his body with clean air but the atmosphere inside the room clogged his nostrils.
‘Do you know what they were trying to find out?’
‘My master had many secrets.’
‘But no one was driven to do this to discover them out before.’
‘He will have told them nothing.’
Huy looked at him. ‘Did he share his secrets with anyone?’
‘No.’
Huy’s heart swam. ‘Can the embalmers come?’ asked Psaro.
‘Yes, get them to come now. I am going to look through the house.’
Huy had always assumed that Samut must have a family, but what Psaro’s words had suggested was confirmed by his look through the building. There was no one else to consult about the embalmers, no one to mourn, no one to ask questions or be questioned apart from his personal staff. Samut lived alone. Huy remembered the doctor Samut had casually referred to. The one who had delivered Imuthes and whom he had killed to preserve the secrecy of his plan. Yet the same man commanded such love from his servants that Psaro could cry over him, unless the tears were prompted more by pity than love.
One thing was clear. He would have to talk to Kenna.
He made his way out of the house quickly, but Kenna was not in the main courtyard, where Huy had expected to find him.
‘He has gone,’ said the gatekeeper.
‘When?’
‘Nesptah brought an offering for the dead. He stayed only to speak to the chief steward, and he left with Kenna.’
‘Where did they go?’
The gatekeeper spread his hands.
Huy made for the street. Takhana might have swayed him briefly, but one thing was clear now: Ankhsi was not mad.
Chapter Eleven
Kenna’s man was loading his pack onto the falcon-ship. The rowers were relaxing at their oars, joking with one another. The long haul back to the Southern Capital would be eased by the northward current of the River, and the time of the journey halved. Huy sensed in them the relief of getting away from the south, back to the rich green strip which protected the Capital from the desert.
Kenna himself had little to do, but was making much of it. He had climbed aboard and disembarked again twice, inspecting his narrow cabin and sorting his papers. His scribe’s palette hung by a cord from one soft shoulder, and his fingers were suitably stained with black and red ink. He even had a reed brush stuck behind one ear.
He looked at Huy in no friendly manner. ‘There was no need to come down to the quay to see me go,’ he said.
‘You were my guest.’
‘I acknowledge the courtesy.’
A silence fell between them, but it was not just the awkward silence that falls between people at parting. Kenna was holding something back. That, and his evident haste to leave, bothered Huy. He had been impatient since the previous night, and Huy had arrived back at his house to find him already engaged in packing. Huy was sure that if the ship had been ready, he would have gone then.
Huy had skirted the question of what Kenna had talked about with Nesptah. The rules of correct behaviour forbade him to ask anything directly about it, but Kenna had closed up even at an oblique approach. All Ay’s scribe had done was to heap praises on the businessman’s head – and they were conventional praises of the type a man in such a position might write about himself or any other high official for their tombs: Nesptah was the stuff of the empire, the silt of the River; a man who opened up new lands and made them secure by his commerce. A loyal and productive servant of the Great Lord. Why were there not more such? Huy was reminded of the kind of thing he had had to copy in scribe-school:
I was composed, good-hearted, merciful;
I soothed those who wept.
-
I was a man who adorned the mansion of his king
and was remembered for his great successes.
Kenna was hiding something, and he was not doing it well. He was not the only one to feel impatience, Huy thought, as they watched the final preparations. He great sail of the light, fast craft had been neatly furled and wrapped, since they would be sailing against the wind and would not need it with the current to carry them. The lookout had already taken his place on the roof of the tall cabin aft, and the Kushite archers who would form Kenna’s escort as far as Napata had taken their places at the prow.
‘Be sure to bring Ankhesenamun back to the Capital before the Season of Coming-Forth,’ said Kenna as he boarded for the last time. ‘Be sure to bring her back yourself. I have been lenient with you over Tascherit. Now my reputation hangs in the balance with yours. Do not disappoint me, Huy.’
He turned and climbed the gangplank, leaving Huy to ponder his last look. There had been a peculiar light in them. Huy knew the look, which Kenna, he also knew, had not attempted to disguise. It told him that Kenna had power over him. But what?
The ship had cast off and was in midstream, its helmsman leaning hard on the steering oar to position its head downstream, while the rowers prepared to keep it in the fastest run of the current, before Huy turned to go. Let Seth swallow them all, he thought. He would take a boat and go upstream. If he could not find Senseneb he would just keep going. As he considered the plan his heart knew that it was vain – that he was bound to the Black Land as tightly as his Eight Elements were bound together to make him a man. What would he achieve by leaving? How could that help Senseneb? But he also knew that he could not leave without knowing that she was at peace.
A hand touched his elbow and as he turned he was aware of the smell of scented oil. Nesptah stood there, looking disappointed. His white kilt and shawl, edged with gold thread, dazzled in the early morning sunlight. His makeup was fresh and perfect, and his gold collar, formed of hundreds of thin leaves and studded with lozenges of lapis lazuli, hung lightly on his shoulders. Two attendants, scarcely less gorgeously attired, stood respectfully behind him. One carried a stretched-papyrus parasol to protect his master from the sun. Was this a man who could control monsters?