City of Dreams

ONE

The end of the knout hit the base of his spine with a force that burst a star of pain through his body, to his fingertips, feet, and skull. The prisoners’ heads were shaved but they were allowed no covering as they worked in the granite quarry in the heat of the day. The priests had decreed that the god Ra must also participate in their punishment.

Another blow flung him on to the harsh ground, where the broken rocks stabbed at knees and elbows. Still, he scrambled forward to escape a third lash. He heard the hiss of the scourge through the air, but this time the guard only succeeded in catching him across the back of the legs, where the muscles, hardened by eighteen months’ labour, were equal to withstanding its force. But he had no strength left to evade a fourth attack, and lay prone, feeling the sun’s harsh heat, tasting salt from the blood on his lips as it mingled with the scented dust of the quarry. A spiked rock close to his eyes loomed large as a mountain.

Summoning the last of his strength he braced himself for another blow. To get more courage he whispered in his heart his name: Surere. From the corner of his eye, he saw the end of the whip flick past. Beyond it, the dirty feet of other prisoners, who were standing out of range, watching.

The guard relented.

‘Get up,’ Surere heard far above him.

Cautiously, he pushed himself on to hands and knees, fearing that the guard would change his mind; but he looked up and saw the man’s muscular back as he walked off, looking for another shirker.

He rose, firing silent curses. The one thing that had preserved his sanity in this southern hell, the Number Seven Red Granite Quarry near the River’s First Cataract, was the maintenance of his dignity. He had been a district governor under the old king, Akhenaten, and a district governor he would remain, though it was already long since he had been stripped of rank and title, and shipped down from the City of the Horizon in a convict barge with many of his fellow-officials during the purges that followed Akhenaten’s death and the collapse of his new capital.

How long had it been? Two years? Three? Surere had struggled to keep a note of time, but only the annual inundation of the river marked it in the changeless succession of sunny days, at a place where not even the great festivals were noticed. In the time that had passed, most of his former colleagues, senior scribes and civil servants like himself, had perished through the unaccustomed hard labour.

Surere put his survival down to the strict continuation of his inner life. He would never be impolite, nor allow the brutalising effects of the labour camp to enter his soul; though the effort this cost was great. He had known men of culture here who had become so obsessed with self-comfort that they masturbated ceaselessly, their hands straying to limp penises even at work, whenever the guards’ attention was not on them, their skin grey, drawn across their faces like papyrus, their eyes milky at the death of intelligence. He had known officials who at the court of the City of the Horizon would never have been seen even by their concubines, let alone their wives, without make-up or unperfumed, now careless even of washing, their ragged loincloths daubed with the crust of faeces, the disgusting stubble of beards on their chins, their breaths foul from neglected teeth and the sour-bread-and-onion doled out to them here.

He fell to work again at the relatively easy task which good behaviour and an ability to survive had earned him: scraping away the chippings that accumulated as the masons worked at cutting an obelisk out of a sloping bank of granite. The palm-rope shackles around his feet still chafed at the worn skin, though by now his feet had grown sufficiently hard not to be unduly worried by them. Diseased feet spelt death for a prisoner. Unable to walk, he was unable to earn his keep, and as no doctors worked in the camp, the end would come either through the blows of the guards, or be sought by the prisoner himself, who might drag himself to the water’s edge at night and give himself up to the River.

He gathered dusty shards into his tattered apron, looking down at his calloused hands as if they belonged to a stranger. He remembered touching his dear lover with them. Amenenopet, that sweet boy. He only dwelt on the tender thought for a moment. The purity of youth. How beautiful life would be if one could be spared the disillusion of experience.

Shaking his head, Surere clambered out of the trench to dump the shards on to the waste-sledge which would later be rolled down the slope to the dump. He knew that here in the labour camp one of the many ways to madness led through remembering a happier past.

He turned his heart in another direction. For weeks now he had been cultivating one of the masons. They were semi-skilled men who roughly hewed out the obelisks from the rock before they were loaded on to barges bound downriver for the Northern and Southern Capitals, where master masons would trim them to their final shape, and metalworkers and carvers would adorn them with the hieroglyphs appropriate to the subject of their commemoration.

This man, Khaemhet, would soon be taking a new obelisk to the Southern Capital, and Surere felt confident that at last he would be selected to be one of the very few privileged prisoners to accompany it, though until now no former official of Akhenaten’s court among the camp’s inmates had been accorded such a favour. The late pharaoh, whose visionary reign had ended so disastrously for the empire of the Black Land, had even been deprived of his name. Now, under the pharaoh Tutankhamun, his predecessor could only be referred to by the words Great Criminal. Surere shuddered. To take a man’s name away, even if he were a god like the pharaoh, was to destroy his soul. The thought of non-existence after death was too horrible to contemplate.

The day was well advanced, and the sun, in his seqtet boat, had begun the descent to the western horizon. Still the heat beat down, and reflected back from the smooth granite slope, setting up a fierce glow in Surere’s face. For a moment he allowed his heart to wander again through the streets of the City of the Horizon, the capital Akhenaten had built as the centre for his new religion, for which all the old gods had been swept away. The pharaoh had taught his people to worship the life that came from Aten – the power that dances in the sunlight. Unbidden, lines from the king’s great song came to Surere, and the dust and heat of the labour camp receded. It was as if a cool hand had been placed on his brow, soothing his loneliness and his desperation.

Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,

O living Aten, beginning of life!

When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven,

Thou fillest every land with thy beauty;

For thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high over the earth;

Thy rays, they encompass the lands, even all thou hast made.

Thou art Ra, and thou hast carried them all away captive;

Thou bindest them by thy love.

Though thou art afar, thy rays are on earth;

Though thou art on high, thy footprints are the day.

He stooped to gather more chips of stone, flying from the bronze chisel of the mason. Passing close to the man, Surere could smell his sweat, and thought how it would have offended him once. Now, he was sure, he smelt far worse himself. Sensing his eyes, the mason turned round to glare. Surere straightened up, easing his back, and carried another apron-load to the sledge.

His attention was attracted to the River far below, where a massive barge was manoeuvring itself into position. It must have come down to the quay while he was working, for he had not noticed it before. From its vast beam and length, and its battered appearance, he knew it to be an obelisk barge, and his pulse quickened. Was it possible that this time he might be on it when it sailed, instead of just watching it go?

Controlling his excitement, knowing that hope followed by disappointment was a destroyer here, he worked on for the rest of that afternoon with a diligence which surprised the mason, who put it down to the beating Surere had taken from the guard. The mason speeded up his own work; this was the last obelisk he would have to cut here, he thanked the gods. As soon as it was released from its rocky bed, his indenture would be finished, and he would make the long journey north to work in the limestone quarries of Tura, where no prisoner labour was employed. The mason disliked working with convicts. Their presence, and the smell of their despair, depressed him, made him feel like one of them.

Later, in the compound, on the narrow strip of hard land between the quarry and the River, Surere squatted a little apart from his fellow inmates, stooped over the usual evening meal of shemshemet, the glutinous cabbage stew which was their staple diet. There was not much social contact between the prisoners: the authorities had seen to it that few former officials of Akhenaten’s court were placed together in the same gangs, and the two Surere shared a tent with at night, along with a dozen ordinary petty criminals serving short sentences for picking pockets or minor fraud, were quiet men, turned inwards, unable to forget what they had been, or face what they were now. Therefore no one minded or noticed that Surere sat apart with his chipped earthenware bowl, spooning the stew into his mouth with his fingers.

Night fell, and here and there a torch – papyrus bundles dipped in bitumen – was lit. Each cast a little pool of light, and stark shadows within it, before giving up to the gigantic darkness. Here, not even cicadas broke the silence, and the only noise, now comforting, now mocking, was the restless murmur of the River.

Against the torchlight, Surere could see the silhouettes of the strong cedar derricks, with their palm-ropes and cradles. Near them, still on the log rollers which had transported it from its birthplace in the quarry to the quay, lay a large mottled obelisk, now just a dark shape, the flickering light making its outline shadowy and threatening. Scooping up the last of his food, he scanned the shoreline for the brawny figure of Khaemhet. There were few people about, picking their way along the shore on some late business or standing in small groups from which the sound of muted conversation came faintly to him. The friendly stonemason was not among them, and Surere reminded himself sternly that he must not let hope get the better of him. Nevertheless, he continued to look until the torches burned low, and there was no one left on the quay except the night guards.

He walked down to the River to wash his eating bowl, and then himself. This was allowed and even approved of by the camp authorities. Security in the compound was relaxed. The quarry and the camp lay on the east bank, and there was nowhere to escape to. Away from the River lay desert. On the opposite bank, if one succeeded in the almost impossible task of swimming the distance, more desert, and the Kharga oasis ten days’ march across it. To the south and north, equal difficulties lay. The only way out was by getting on to a barge bound for one of the capital cities, and making an escape from there.

Surere squatted by the dark water. From somewhere out of sight but not far away a girl squealed, her voice quickly muffled. The voice sounded too clear, too innocent to belong to one of the gruff Syrian whores who were kept in a palm-thatched shack, its walls decorated with imaginative pictures of girls strapping their legs around jackasses and baboons, for the benefit of the civilian workers in the camp. Surere thought of Amenenopet again, briefly. What could have happened to him? Sadly, he acknowledged that in his memory the boy’s features were becoming blurred. Once, he would never have believed that possible; the thought would have been unbearable. Now, all it elicited was a dry smile. Sentimentality was another road to death.

He stood up, easing his back again, the pain from the beating resolving itself into a dull ache. The moon had risen and its light on the black water made it seem thick, like oil. He started up the slope that led back to the compound and his tent. Halfway up it, he heard the unseen girl cry out again.

The sound made him pause, trying to decide if it had masked another, barely perceived, but which might have been a footfall. He quickened his pace and reached the edge of the compound without seeing anyone or hearing anything more, but before he left the cover of the tall rushes that grew along its River side, a man stepped softly on to the path in front of him.

‘Khaemhet.’

The mason looked at him shyly.

‘Were you following me?’

‘I saw you down by the River. I was going to talk to you tonight but I wanted to be sure to see you alone.’

‘There was a girl down there somewhere.’

‘One of Kheruef’s girls,’ said Khaemhet, mentioning the name of the brothel-keeper. ‘A new arrival. She came up with a couple of others on the barge this afternoon. Kheruef said he was going to try them out.’ Khaemhet took a step closer, then hesitated. ‘I didn’t want to risk them disturbing us.’

Surere looked at him coolly, smelling the seshen with which he had perfumed himself. Khaemhet could not hold his gaze, but looked down at his square, mason’s hands, folding and unfolding his fingers.

‘Have you news for me?’ asked Surere, hardly daring to put the question for fear of a negative answer.

‘Yes,’ replied Khaemhet.

‘And what is it?’

Now the mason’s broad young face broke into a smile. Perfect teeth, thought Surere, glad that his own, through hard brushing with the beaten ends of twigs, had survived his imprisonment.

‘You can come with me on the barge as part of the hauling crew. The overseer gave permission this afternoon.’

Surere felt such a surge of the god’s power through him that he thought he would leave the ground. He made himself breathe slowly and evenly, but he could see that his excitement had communicated itself to Khaemhet, who came closer still – cautiously, even respectfully; but closer, his eyes full of longing. It would be impossible to deny him now.

‘Thank you.’

‘You have yourself to thank as much as me,’ said Khaemhet. ‘The overseer thinks you are a model prisoner. It may be that one day you may be pardoned by Nebkheprure Tutankhamun, important as you were in the court of the Great Criminal.’

Surere thought the possibility remote. The boy-king, though wilful, was controlled by two men far more powerful than he was: Horemheb, commander of the army, and of the land in all but name; and the old politician Ay, who had kept his grip on power despite having been Akhenaten’s father-in-law.

‘When do we leave?’ he asked the mason.

‘We load the obelisk before dawn. At dusk we leave.’

‘And our destination?’ Surere’s throat felt dry. He could sense a shadow of impatience in Khaemhet at all these questions. The excitement tingled in the air between them. Surere cast his eyes briefly and discreetly down to Khaemhet’s kilt to see its cloth, half in shadow, raised by a strong erection.

‘The Southern Capital.’ Khaemhet took one more step. ‘Come. There is a quiet place in the reeds. I have brought good wine.’

‘I have forgotten what it tastes like.’

‘I have spice-bread and apples too.’

‘Real apples? From the north?’

Khaemhet smiled. ‘I know what you were used to once.’

Apples were an unheard-of luxury. Khaemhet himself had probably never tasted them, and Surere could not help feeling touched by this mark of respect; but he needed one more question answered before he showed his gratitude.

‘When will we be there?’

‘In four days. The barge is slow. Now, come.’ Surere’s wrist was seized by a strong, burning hand, and his vanity regretted his broken fingernails and rough skin.

‘I am surprised that you can like me…as I am,’ he murmured.

‘You are lovely to me as you are,’ said Khaemhet, his eyes soft with desire. ‘As you were, painted and scented, with gold on your fingers and toes, you would be too beautiful, and I would be too much in awe of you.’

Surere felt a strong arm round his waist, pulling him into the secrecy of the reeds, and then rough lips and a passionate tongue bruising his own.

Later, as they lay side by side watching a light breeze, herald of the dawn, ruffle the surface of the River, Khaemhet said, ‘There is one thing I must ask you to promise me.’

‘Yes?’

The mason was embarrassed. ‘It is that you must not try to escape. If you do, they will kill me.’

Surere was silent.

‘Promise me,’ said Khaemhet, rolling on to one elbow to look at his face.

‘Of course,’ said Surere.

She had gone. He told himself that he had known this would happen; that he had seen the signs; that in any case it had been a dream; but none of that helped. Instead of bowing to the will of whichever minor god it was who dealt with such things as love – perhaps the dwarf-lion, Bes; or Min, with his rearing penis and his whip – Huy felt like a man who has a itch he is unable to scratch; or like one whose scalp burns so much that to tear it off would be a relief. For weeks he had been as restless as a corralled lion. She had gone and she no longer cared. Long before she had told him that she no longer wanted him, her decision had been made. Perhaps weeks, perhaps months earlier, he had ceased to exist for her as a lover. That was the worst. To have gone on dancing so long after the music had stopped.

Now he was chasing a ghost. He thought of writing more letters, he thought of going to her house again. But he knew it would be futile. His only course of action was inaction. He had to accept the most unpalatable truth of all: that the object of your love no longer needs you; you are no longer wanted; your part in the play of that person’s life has ended. It was, Huy thought, a searing thing to make your exit gracefully, but there was no alternative. Appeals would be received at best with affectionate embarrassment.

It was the season of drought, shemu, and from dawn to dusk all the Black Land endured the dreary, unchanging mildness of the sun. By the end of the year, in midsummer, the heat would be pitiless; but then the River would flood, and restore its green banks. Now was a time of long siestas and – to Huy’s frustration – monotonous inactivity.

He had just turned thirty. A year earlier, he had been living alone in a little house in a side street in the collapsing City of the Horizon, contemplating not only the wreck of his marriage but also the ruin of his career. He had been a scribe in the court of Akhenaten, and since that king’s fall, no longer allowed to practise his profession but not important enough to punish, he had scraped along as an investigator, a solver of other people’s problems. Now he looked around the similar little house in which he presently lived, still alone, in a run-down quarter near the port of the Southern Capital. The one big case he had come close to solving had ended in disaster; and now the single good thing to have come out of it was gone.

He said her name. Aset. He brought her image into his heart and tried to condemn her, but he could not. There had never been any hope of their being together for good; he had known that from the start. The sister of his friend Amotju, and now, after Amotju’s death, heiress to half a fortune – the other half, after a protracted legal battle, having been retained by Amotju’s widow, Taheb – Aset had never been within his reach, and was as far from it now as the moon.

He tried to push the memory of their last meeting away, but it kept returning to his heart – a painful and unnecessary event, caused only by his having been unable to accept her letter. He wished now, in a spirit of self-torture, that he had not destroyed the papyrus on which her firm hand had spelt out their situation with such merciless exactness. The trouble with the end of an affair, whether it has lasted one year or twenty, Huy reflected for the hundredth time, retracing the barren ground of his life like a dog which has lost the scent, is that the partner who leaves has already left in the heart.

Humiliated and miserable, he had subjected Aset to a series of wretched deaths in his imagination, before regretting each; just as he had envisaged a sudden change in his fortunes, making her accessible to him – but in his thoughts coming at a time when he no longer wanted her, however bitter her penitence might be at having thrust him aside. At his core, though, was a seed which would grow and grow, finally blossoming as the rank flower of acceptance, the harbinger of cure.

By the time Aset had married Neferweben, the former nomarch at Hu and now a gold dealer in the Northern Capital, six months after her brother’s death and three since her letter of dismissal to Huy, the scribe was beginning to be able to thank his guardian Ka for small blessings: that she was no longer living in the same city, and that Neferweben may have been rich, but was also fat and fifty, and missing an ear from a skirmish against desert raiders in his youth. Aset, just turned nineteen, had explained to Huy that she needed to consolidate her fortune and business. For his part Huy, who might have entertained hopes of joining Aset in the shipping business and helping her to expand, in competition with Taheb, her former sister-in-law, now told himself that marriage to such a venal woman would have been doomed from the start in any case. All these new, righteous, male thoughts helped for short periods. In time, however, they had become a poor substitute for an empty bed and no work.

The empty bed could be remedied with ease; living as he did near the port, the whorehouses were close by, and they were maintained to a fairly high standard of cleanliness by the city authorities. But a body paid to be there is no substitute for a heart that wants to be.

Work was another matter. Certain people with influence knew the major part Huy had played in solving the mystery which had ended so tragically; but none of them were friends now. He was tolerated by the authorities, though still kept under occasional surveillance by General Horemheb’s police, the Medjays. His ambition – to be allowed to work as a scribe once more – was as far off as ever. Discreetly, he advertised for the work fate had given him. Former colleagues would mention his name as a problem solver at the foot of information papyri, and he made sure that in court and palace circles those whose matrimonial and business interests and difficulties might put them in need of him should not forget his services and his whereabouts. After that, it was a question of sitting, waiting, and growing thinner, together with his dwindling supplies.

Amid shouts of warning and panic from the sailors on the foredeck, the huge barge, sunk to the waterline by the weight of the massive red obelisk in its cradle, wrenched free of the helmsmen’s control and, pushed by a vigorous undercurrent of the River, hurled itself against a jetty wall of the Southern Capital. Several men were thrown on to the deck by the impact, and in the brief pandemonium which followed, it seemed as if the boat had split, and might sink, there and then, at the end of its journey. But the groaning timbers held, though a plank in the half-decking astern snapped with a noise like a lightning crack, and one of the derricks on shore swayed dangerously, threatening to fall.

Surere, released from his bonds by Khaemhet, along with the other prisoner-quarrymen brought to augment the crew, cast a quick glance fore and aft. The barge wallowed to such a degree that it was hard to maintain his footing, and river water washed over the deck, making it slippery. Overhead, the obelisk swung in its cradle, as the helmsmen fought to bring the barge under control and sailors threw ropes to those ashore who, catching them, hauled on them in teams in an attempt to wrestle the boat alongside. Taut copper backs glistened in the sun as the huge barge bucked and reared like a living thing.

Khaemhet, standing by the bargemaster at the stern, was looking anxiously from obelisk to quay, shouting orders to men who grabbed stay-ropes and, with long poles, attempted to arrest the great stone’s pendulum-like motion. Satisfied that the mason’s attention was entirely taken up, and determined not to let this god-given opportunity slip, Surere hurried forward, slipping adroitly between the knots of men, losing himself in the busy crowd of sailors. Finally he stopped and looked over the shoreward side of the barge: it was still swaying away from the jetty wall before crashing into it again, but the amount of swing was smaller, and the movement less violent. If he misjudged his leap and fell, there was still a likelihood that he would be crushed to death; but the chances of that had lessened considerably.

Choosing his moment, he hoisted himself on to the low wooden railing that ran the length of the barge, holding on for balance with both feet and his left hand, and stealing a final cautious look round to see if anyone had noticed him. No one had, but the bustle aboard was abating, and there was less frenzy in the straining figures at ropes ashore. It was now or never. Letting go of the rail with his hand, he pushed with his feet and launched himself forward into space, aiming at a coil of rope near a hardwood bollard.

He landed heavily, grazing knees and wrists on the rope. Rolling over, he quickly found his feet, and walked determinedly, a man on an errand, past and behind the crowd of onlookers which had gathered to gawp and shout advice. No one spared him a second glance: the barge seemed to be under control and the drama had gone out of the moment. Some of the workers ashore had dropped their ropes and crossed to man the derricks.

Brushing the dust from his stained and battered kilt, Surere thanked god that his time in the quarries had made him so fit. Safe in the crowd, he slackened his pace to still the pumping of his heart, and turned to take a final look at the barge. He could see Khaemhet walking forward, though it was too far away to see the expression on his face, and he could not tell whether the mason was already looking for him. It would be as well not to take chances.

There was an open area to cross before he could reach the safety of the tightly-packed yellow and ochre buildings which marked the riverward edge of the town. Noticing a man leading a small procession of three pale grey donkeys, heads and backs bowed under a heavy burden of barley in coarse brown sacks, their shadows long in the late afternoon sun, Surere made himself wait for them to reach him. Once they had, he used them as cover to detach himself from the press of people at the harbour, and headed quickly for the mouth of the nearest street. He did not look back again.

Had Khaemhet missed him by now? A brief sense of regret at his broken promise was quickly eclipsed by the thought of what would happen to him if he were recaptured, and he moved faster.

Soon he was in the cool gulley of the street. Half running between the windowless walls, he turned a corner and even the sounds of the harbour were shut off. He paused to take his bearings before pressing on, still maintaining the purposeful pace of a man with an appointment to keep. He needed shelter and clean clothes and he needed to get to a part of town where no one would question the arrival of a stranger; where people had their own secrets to keep.

Beyond that his plans were looser than he liked to admit, even to himself. But he was free, and he trusted to Aten, the god of the sunlight and the protector of the innocent, whose power he had never doubted despite all his tribulations since the fall of Akhenaten, to place him in the shelter of his hand now.