City of Dreams

THREE

The girl was not more than fourteen. She lay on her back on a wooden trestle table which stood under a palm leaf awning in the shady corner of a broad courtyard in the Place of Healing. They had placed linen wadding soaked in water around her to keep her body cool, but despite the attentions of the attendants there was no stopping the persistent flies, and although it was still early enough in the season of shemu for the sun’s heat to be mild, her face was already puffy.

Huy could see no mark on the body to indicate how she had died. She was naked, except for golden anklets and bracelets set with emeralds. A rich girl, then; but he could see that already from the delicacy of her skin, and the fine soft hands which lay crossed over her small breasts.

‘What is this?’ he asked Merymose cautiously. The two of them stood side by side by the corpse. From time to time a little breeze, trapped in the courtyard, eddied and gusted in their direction, bringing with it the first hint of the sweet smell of decay.

‘It is something I need your help with. Or at least your advice.’

Huy glanced at his companion, but there was nothing in his expression except serious concern. There was not even tension or anxiety. It was as if what had happened did not surprise him.

‘But you know my background. It’s unlikely that asking my help will be approved by your masters.’

Merymose returned his look. ‘For the moment I am in sole charge of this death. In any case, I am not making an official request.’

Huy hesitated. ‘It is difficult for me. You cannot forget who I am and what I was. With a political prisoner escaped, all of us who were at the City of the Horizon must come under increased scrutiny.’

‘Your house will certainly be watched.’

‘And I will be followed. I might lead your men to the fugitive.’

‘That is true. But, if you were prepared to be of service to us…’

‘What makes you think I can be of help?’

‘Everything Taheb has told me about you. Don’t blame her. She wants to help you; and of course people will employ you to help them solve their problems; but that will not make you popular with the Medjays or with Horemheb.’

‘Thank you for the advice. I will be careful.’

Merymose relaxed slightly. ‘It is a pity that you are not a Medjay yourself. Our organisation is only efficient at keeping the streets quiet, and then not always. As for what you do – investigation – that is something new. It interests me, but I am one of very few, and I need instruction.’

‘It would be a case of one blind man leading another.’

‘At least they would be moving along the road. And they might learn to find their way together.’

‘They might fall over a cliff together, too.’ Huy was put at his most suspicious by the policeman’s flattery.

‘Are you not curious about this girl? At least look at her. I cannot keep the body later than this evening. It must be handed over to the embalmers then, or it will be too late.’ Huy paused before asking, ‘Who was she?’

‘Her name was Iritnefert. Her father is Ipuky.’

Huy looked sharply at the Medjay. ‘Ipuky – you mean the Controller of the Silver Mines?’

Merymose nodded.

‘What happened?’ Huy was alarmed. Ipuky was one of the most important men in Tutankhamun’s court.

‘We don’t know. A group of workmen crossing over to the Valley just before dawn found her by the shore.’

‘Where were they crossing? Not from the harbour?’

‘No, further downriver.’

‘Nearer the palace?’

‘Yes.’

Huy thought for a moment. Ipuky had a house in the palace compound.

‘As soon as they reported it, Ipuky was informed and I was sent for.’

‘The horses?’

‘Yes.’

Huy looked at the girl again. She had a delicate, innocent face; the cheeks still round with the plumpness of childhood. Someone had closed her eyes, placing white stones on the lids to keep them down. There was nothing in the cast of her features to suggest that she had been alarmed or frightened at the moment of her death.

‘Did anybody take note of how she looked when she was found? Of how she was lying on the ground, for example?’

‘The first people to arrive were servants from Ipuky’s household, and they took the body there. If I hadn’t requested a delay the embalmers would have already covered her in natron.’ Merymose looked grim.

‘You were brave to make that request. What did they think of it?’

‘They were astonished; but Ipuky is an intelligent man, and he wants whoever did this caught. I am sure his wife thought I was in league with Set.’ Merymose’s face betrayed a flicker of amusement. ‘But the murderer must be brought in, or I will have to pay the price.’

‘It is a pity you didn’t see the girl at the place she died. That might have told us much.’

‘I know. I talked to the workmen. The foreman said that the girl was lying on her back, her hands folded, as she is now.’

‘Was she dressed?’

‘She was naked.’

Huy stepped closer to the body. He had no medical knowledge, and no idea of what to do, what to look for; but the calmness of the body intrigued him. It raised many questions.

He touched it softly. The sun had warmed the skin, giving it the illusion of life.

‘Are there any marks on her back?’

‘None that I noticed.’

Huy looked at the girl’s hands again: they were without a blemish. Her heels were grazed. The rest of her skin, over all the visible part of her body, was clear and unbroken. He would need a doctor to tell him if she had been violated, but there was no indication of it, not even a bruise on an arm where a strong hand might have held her. He reached gently behind her head and felt her hair and the back of her neck, detecting no damage. He registered the stiffness in her body as he lowered her head again.

‘Well?’ asked Merymose.

‘I can tell nothing,’ Huy said. ‘There has been no violence, and there is no way of telling the manner of her death.’

Merymose sighed. ‘That is what the doctors say.’

‘Have you spoken to Ipuky?’

‘They have shut themselves in their house. I will speak to their chief steward before night.’

‘What will happen to Iritnefert?’

‘Since she can tell us no more, I will give the order for the embalmers to take her.’ He paused irresolutely. ‘The way this has been done, you might think a god was to blame. Has she been struck down by heaven, do you think?’

‘No.’

‘If she were not the daughter of such an important family…’

‘Yes, how much easier it would be. I am sorry I could not help. Perhaps Taheb overestimated my talent.’

‘I will speak to you again of this.’

‘You know where I am. How much time will they give you?’

‘Seventy days. The time that it takes to embalm her and send her to the Fields of Aarru.’

Huy wondered, as he walked away, what Merymose would do if in that short time no killer had been found. Someone would be made to die for the crime; but for all his reservations, Merymose did not strike him as the kind of man who would fall on just anyone in order to present a solution. At least, not until the three months had passed and the knife was poised over his own neck.

His route took him past the City of Dreams. Remembering the wig which now he did not need, he pushed open the door and entered the antechamber which served as a reception area and office. There was no other way out of the building than through here, though the girls may have had a secret exit of their own, and this antechamber was guarded more fiercely by Nubenehem than ever a desert demon guarded its cave.

The large Nubian was discussing something – evidently money – with a client who bent over the desk towards her, his back to Huy. A middle-aged man, well-dressed, but furtive.

‘It’s too much!’ he hissed at the madam.

‘For what you want to do, it’s a bargain. Take it or leave it.’

He half turned, indecisive, and Huy caught sight of a grey profile, vaguely familiar, but the man turned back to Nubenehem before he could place it.

‘All right. But they’d better be good.’

‘You’ll have a ringside seat.’

The man giggled – a horrible noise – before setting off for the curtain at the back of the room.

‘Just a minute.’

‘What now?’

‘Pay first.’

Cursing under his breath, and still keeping his face averted from Huy, the man threw a handful of small silver bars in front of the fat woman, who scooped them up almost before they had settled on the surface of the table.

‘They’ll show you where to go inside.’

The man vanished. Only now did Huy approach.

‘Who was that?’

‘You know better than to ask questions like that. He’s too important a client for me to tell you.’

‘That’s a lot of money he paid.’

‘What he likes is specialised. We don’t usually do it.’ The Nubian looked up from the couch where she half lay by a low table on which a number of limestone flakes were scattered. They were covered with calculations.

‘The accounts,’ she explained, deliberately changing the subject. ‘The farmers coming in from outside the city always want to pay in so much emmer, so many hides, so much barley. I tell them to pay in metal, it is easier for me to negotiate, but they always reply that it’s too hard for them to get. I’d refuse them admission altogether if I could afford to lose the business.’

‘I doubt if you’d go under.’

‘Maybe not. But this is still a chore I could do without. If you’ve come for a session with Kafy, you’re out of luck – she’s booked for the whole night by one of the priests from the Temple of Khepri. If you’ve come to collect your wig – ‘

‘I won’t need it now.’

‘Run off, has he?’

Huy looked at her.

‘An order is an order,’ continued Nubenehem, unruffled. ‘And an order fulfilled has to be paid for – if you want more favours in the future.’ She rose heavily, fat cascading over her hips, and crossed the room to a large cupboard set in the wall. Drawing a number of bolts, she opened its door and withdrew from the interior an elderly, moth-eaten wig which she flourished in front of Huy.

‘There!’

‘It’s terrible. It’d walk away by itself if you put it on the floor.’

‘You wanted something quickly. This isn’t a perukier’s, you know.’

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, treating a good customer like this.’

‘Not such a good customer recently,’ retorted Nubenehem, letting herself flop back down on her couch. ‘What’s happened to you? Min desert you?’

Their conversation was interrupted by the familiar sound of a girl’s badly-acted laughter from behind the bead curtain which led to the interior of the brothel, punctuated by the growling of a man who is under the illusion that he is cock of the dunghill. The girl remained unseen, but the man emerged a moment later, his eyes, as they caught Huy’s, switching from initial guilt to fraternal collusion as he saw that Huy was someone he did not know. In the dark days of the Southern Capital under Akhenaten, Nubenehem had told him once, a father who had sold his daughter into prostitution sometime later visited the City of Dreams to watch a session: his daughter, whom he had never touched himself, was one of the participants. It seemed that the father had gone straight from the brothel to the River and drowned himself. But there was nothing furtive or guilty about this customer, who radiated well-being and contentment.

‘Nice little ass, that Hathfertiti; but a bit of a tight squeeze.’ He gave Huy a connoisseur’s wink.

‘It’s a pity you’ve gone off fucking,’ continued Nubenehem when the customer had left. ‘There was a girl here not long ago, looking for fun, wanting to earn a bit on the side. God knows why. One of the aristos slumming. She was your type, maybe a bit on the young side. But you could smell the mandrake fruit on her across the room. I’ll tell you what; I’ll give you the wig for a silver deben. I’ll even throw in some henna for you to tart it up.’

Huy dug into the leather pouch at his side, concealed under a fold of his kilt, and withdrew its contents: a couple of silver deben were all it contained.

Leaving the whorehouse with the wig tucked under an arm, he reflected that it was worth at least what he had paid to have Surere off his back. At the same time he found it interesting that prison had made the former district governor more passionate about the cause championed by Akhenaten. The pharaoh had thrown out beliefs held for two thousand years, rejecting them as superstitions, and replaced them all by a single god, whose spirit could not be contained in images, whose love extended to all people, and who lived in the power of the sunlight. In the twelve bright years of the young pharaoh’s reign – he had died insane aged twenty-nine, his dream and his country in ruins – a new light had seemed to dance in the souls of men too.

But prison had protected Surere from the truth. Huy himself, who had had to adapt to the new world constructed after Akhenaten’s fall by Horemheb, had learnt above all that ideals do not change people. He acknowledged now that the majority of people, the great brown mass of the fieldworkers, had not even been noticed by the visionary pharaoh he had followed with such devotion, let alone been affected by his thinking. In a matter of weeks, not months, the old, disgraced order had reasserted itself. The priests of the old deities had emerged from the desert or from hiding in neglected provincial cities in Shemau and Tomehu, and established themselves again, without difficulty, the people grateful to have the old gods returned to them, who demanded no more than unquestioning duty, propitiation and sacrifice; gods who did not require a man to think for himself; gods who forgave sin if the price was right, and who guaranteed a good time in the Hereafter.

Surere had been unusually inflexible for an intelligent man. Always insisting on the purity of life, on the importance of family existence, he had gone far beyond the mild precepts laid down by his mentor. Before madness overcame him, Akhenaten had at least understood that there would always be a gulf between an ideal and its realisation. The Aten itself was amoral; but in life one should always forgive a man who had sinned. In his province, Huy remembered, Surere had tried to impose what he had interpreted as the supporting columns of a decent society: sexual responsibility and even monogamy were held to be the roots of a stable family; sexual relations between members of that family were restricted to cousins. Concubines were discouraged. In Surere’s province, there had been many transgressions, despite the loss of privilege which was the only punishment he had dared impose, though there were rumours that in some cases he would have preferred to apply the death penalty. There were rumours that in some cases he had.

Even the king, who, unlike his district governor, had practised these precepts himself, had not expected his subjects to do so too, though he hoped they would strive towards the ideal. His own queen, whom Surere had revered so deeply, when she requested that she be buried not in the new City of the Horizon, but near her old home, in the Valley of the Dead across the river from the Southern Capital, had been granted her wish, though it had hurt Akhenaten deeply.

Nefertiti had died young. Five floods at least had fertilised the Black Land since her departure in the Boat of the Night. Since her husband had gone to join her, her tomb had been neglected, and sand was already drifting across its entrance, covering it inexorably in a red blanket. It had been thought among the citizens of the Southern Capital that the new pharaoh, Tutankhamun, whose own Chief Wife was a daughter of Nefertiti, might have renovated the Death Halls of her mother. His neglect of such a sacred duty had scandalised some, even members of the old priesthood, but behind Tutankhamun’s inaction the policies of Horemheb were discerned, and no public protest was raised. The king, after all, owned the land, the people, every animal and everything that grew. There was no questioning his word or deed. Even the thought of doing so would not enter the hearts of most.

Huy wondered how Surere would react to the world he found himself in now. He had not visited the Southern Capital, Huy felt sure, for at least eight years, and possibly longer, following the removal of the court to the new City of the Horizon downriver. In that time, its geography had changed little, the only difference being that more and more houses had squeezed themselves on to the mound of detritus that had built up over generations to form the hill on which the city squatted, above the highest level of flood the river could attain.

The man had survived in his pursuit of a political career by mingling adaptability with discretion. But his adaptability did not apply to his tenets, merely to his instinct for self-preservation. An amoral man applying a fixed morality to others might not have hoped for the success Surere had had; but now, with so much ranged against him, in a world so different from the one he had lorded it in, Huy wondered how he would get on. He found himself hoping that the man would succeed in his plan to take a knot of followers remaining faithful to the Aten – if they existed – out to the deserts which, he had heard, extended to the east of the Great Green, and form an outpost of the new religion there.

Huy had lived a more realistic life. He remembered the release he had felt when he had first heard the teachings of Akhenaten, which had cut away the rotten trappings of the old beliefs, festooned as they were with the cynical speculation of the priests. Now, though, having to live again in a world where ideals were something to be discussed by intellectuals and certain priests, but never applied, as they would have got in the way of Horemheb’s programme of reform, Huy found his feelings dulled. Unable to accept again the superstitions he had discarded, nevertheless with time and misfortune he found himself turning back to the three deities who had guided his early life, and helped him through his harsh apprenticeship as a scribe: the reasonable Thoth, ibis-headed, god of the scribes; Horus, son of Osiris; and the protector of the hearth, Bes – the little god of his childhood.

As he reached his door he found his thoughts turning once more to the urgent problem of putting food in his belly, and a part of his mind registered with pleasure that these thoughts were at last supplanting the ones in which he alternately pined for Aset and visited unholy vengeance upon her. As for his former wife, Aahmes, she had become a shadowy figure who sent him a letter from the Delta every new year, at the midsummer opet festival, with news of his favourite son, Heby. He tried to imagine how the boy would look now that he was nine. In her last letter, Aahmes had spoken of a new marriage. Huy tried to imagine her going through the simple ceremony with someone else, and could not. What seemed most real was that Heby would have a new father – someone who was there, instead of a remote figure several days’ sail upriver.

He was grateful to Taheb for having sought work for him through Merymose, and wondered if he had been unduly mistrustful of her. Perhaps she had begun to realise that she had been the victim of an unhappy marriage, rather than simply the cause of one. After her husband’s death she had borne herself with a mournful dignity which had done her standing no harm, and taken the funeral food to the tomb herself with a regularity and devotion which would have shamed women lamenting better-loved partners. Now he had met her again, he found a different woman – and the one who was now emerging was the one with whom, ironically, Amotju could have been happy.

Huy entered his house, and its drabness both depressed and reproached him. He scratched together some lentils and nebes bread, and found a small jar of black beer and a clay straw to suck it with, thinking of the contrast between last night’s dinner and this. After he had eaten he lit a small oil lamp to dispel the gathering gloom, and by its light fought off the silence by indulging in some desultory tidying, which consisted of gathering together assorted scrolls of papyrus and articles of clothing scattered about, and dumping them into two chests – one for each. He dropped the wig into the papyrus-chest, wondering what he would do with it, and whose head it had adorned before Nubenehem had come by it. Thinking of that, he made a mental note to burn it in the morning.

Finally tiredness overcame him and he went out into the yard to fill the water jars for his bath. Then he climbed the steps to his bedroom, stripping off his kilt, and lay down stiffly.

He expected to fall asleep quickly, but his heart would not let him. For no reason that he could think of, the image of Nubenehem’s customer, the furtive man in the brothel, came back to him. Why was he familiar? And why was such a well-dressed man using a brothel like the City of Dreams? Huy nagged at the problem until, unable to solve it, he became drowsy. Perhaps after all it was nothing more than that the man reminded him of someone from the old days, and it was not unknown for people from the palace compound to slum in the harbour quarter now and then.

The following morning he awoke refreshed, and the day no longer stretched before him like a void. Not that there was any more purpose in his life than there had been yesterday; but the events of the previous twenty-four hours had shown him that Ra could and would produce the unexpected at the most surprising moment, and he could not suppress the hope that his chance meeting with Merymose might lead somewhere. Huy had been more help to the Medjay than he realised; but it was on his own account that he decided to take up Taheb’s invitation and visit her.

He was curious about how she would react – had she just given it out of social politeness, or had she meant it? Also he was interested to find out more about the dead girl and her father, Ipuky. There was no question of his approaching the father directly as a man such as Huy would not be allowed into the palace compound; but Taheb was a rich businesswoman, and if she did not have any personal knowledge of the family, she would have contacts who would.

As he left the house Huy glanced around the square, and along the streets that led from it; but there was no movement at any of the few windows which looked on to the street, and the handful of people about were all familiar to him. He realised that it had been a while now since he had put himself on the lookout for Med jays shadowing him. The ones appointed to do the job had never been very good at it, but he had heard a rumour that Horemheb was training a secret corps of police, answering to him alone but set up in the pharaoh’s name and in the interests of national security. It could be that the men and women of this corps were already on the streets and that, army trained, they would be better at surveillance. He thought briefly about Surere again, and wondered with something akin to panic whether he would reappear; then, angered with himself at this disloyalty to a former colleague and certainly a fellow-sufferer under the new regime, he dismissed the matter and concentrated instead on what he would say to Taheb.

He made his way through the twisting streets of the harbour district, crossing the little squares where the market traders were spreading linen sheets on the ground before decking them with neat conical piles of vegetables and spices whose reds, yellows and greens shone out brightly against the white. Against walls, jars of oil, cheap wine, and black and red beer were stacked, and here and there a low table displayed jewellery. Near one of these, a guardian-baboon squatted, on a leash long enough to enable it to run after any would-be shoplifter and seize his thigh in its jaws. The ape gave Huy a baleful stare as he passed, then blinked and yawned, displaying a set of formidable yellow incisors. Nearby, a fisherman was gutting his catch, while his wife, weighing machine in hand, sorted the individual mullet by size. The smell of freshly-fried falafels hung on the air, reminding Huy that he had not yet breakfasted.

Gradually the streets became broader, the squares larger and less crowded with traders. He walked south-eastwards from the River, uphill towards the wealthy residential district where Taheb lived. Tamarisk and acacia trees stood by walls whose whitewash was truly white, not dun coloured, and which hid formal gardens, not cramped courtyards hung with washing. Huy passed fewer people as he penetrated the quarter, and most of them were servants. The occasional curtained litter or rickshaw sheltered its rich occupant from the sun as he or she ventured out on some errand. Nobody paid any attention to Huy. He guessed that, if anything, he must look like an under-steward employed in a moderately well-off family.

That was certainly the impression he gave to Taheb’s gatekeeper, a squat man with one wall-eye, who appraised him pessimistically with the other when he asked for the mistress of the house. He was saved by another servant who recognised him from the banquet. Amid apologies, he was ushered in, and led to a familiar inner courtyard to wait.

The courtyard was where he had last seen his friend Amotju. Then, it had been an austere place, with only plain wooden furniture, painted dull red, to relieve the stark whiteness of the walls. Now, Taheb had set it with large earthenware tubs, from which a profusion of tall dark-green plants grew. Two of them bore long fruits like courgettes, though pink in colour and set with needles like a cactus. Two-thirds of the way up the wall a frieze had been painted, depicting the work of the shipping company which Amotju had inherited from his father. There, unmistakably, were the pylons of the port of Perunefer, near the Northern Capital. Further along, there was an Eastern Seaship, beating down under its huge sail along the desert coast on its way south to Punt to collect a cargo of exotica: blackwood so dense it sank in water; the fierce spotted cats which could be tamed to become the pets, or hunting land falcons of the rich; myrrh; the long teeth of the great forest beast. On another wall, the heavier ships which crossed the Great Green on less arduous journeys to Byblos and Kheftyu.

‘Do you approve?’ a voice behind him said, and he turned to see Taheb, dressed in a pleated robe of light wool, slit for coolness on one side to the top of her brown thigh, and edged in dark blue threaded with gold.

‘Yes. You have made many changes.’

‘It is important, if you are to continue to live in the same house.’

‘Had you considered moving?’

She shrugged. ‘I am comfortable here, and there is the office. I bear no ill-will, so there are no ghosts to rise against me.’

Huy spread his hands. ‘You invited me, so I came. But I should have sent word.’

She smiled. ‘You have chosen a good time. The wind freshened, and the two diorite barges in harbour due to go south sailed early. So – you may command me.’ She opened her long arms and let them fall gently to her sides again with another smile, gesturing to a couch and taking a seat herself nearby. As she walked to it, Huy wished that he could see more than the slit in the dress revealed. How could this woman have become so attractive? She had been withered before; now she was in bloom.

‘Do you know why Merymose was called away from here so urgently?’ he asked, as a body servant brought honey cakes and wine.

Taheb’s face became sad. ‘Yes. Poor Iritnefert.’

‘I want to ask you about her.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Has Merymose brought you in on his investigation?’

‘No – but thank you for the contact.’

She shrugged. ‘Your work is interesting, and I think you are good at it. Merymose is an intelligent man. You might learn from each other.’

Huy wanted to ask more about the policeman, but decided that now was not the time. He did not know Taheb well enough to trust her yet.

‘Did you know the girl?’ He said.

‘We knew the family. Occasionally we would be contracted by Ipuky to bring a cargo of silver ingots north from the mines on the Eastern Sea, and then upriver from the Delta. There is an overland trade-route now, so we do less business with them.’

‘What sort of man is he?’

Taheb’s smile did not slip, but she was immediately guarded. ‘How much further is this going?’

‘No further than me. I cannot speak to Ipuky myself, though no doubt Merymose will.’ He hesitated, and then continued. ‘I am interested. That is all. Merymose asked me to look at the body.’

‘Poor girl. Was she mutilated?’

Huy looked at her curiously. ‘No. She was unblemished. Do you ask that for any reason?’

‘I associate murder with violence. I imagined she’d been knifed, violated. You have an inquisitive and suspicious mind.’

‘It is getting worse.’

‘So, why are you asking me these questions, and why should I answer them?’

‘I am asking them to satisfy myself, and because doing nothing bores me. It may be that my help will be called for. If not, I will do nothing with the information you give me. It will be as if this conversation had never taken place.’

‘You are diplomatic.’ She embraced him with her eyes, pleased, and as she poured them both more wine, rewarded him with a view of her leg. Fine golden hairs, which but for the sunlight on them would have been invisible, shone against the soft brown skin of her thigh. What had happened to the old Taheb?

‘Ipuky is a civil servant. I am too young to remember but I think he began his career as a supervisor in the turquoise mines of the Northern Desert, towards the end of the reign of Nebmare Amenophis. I know that he was one of the ones who resented the rise of the military. He kept petitioning Amenophis to restrict the granting of golden battle honours – not that the battles were anything more than skirmishes then.’

‘Do you know what happened to him during the reign of the Great Criminal?’ Huy was grimly amused at how easily he could deny his former master’s name.

‘You don’t have to obey Horemheb’s decrees here, and we are not overheard,’ said Taheb. She seemed irritated that he had not taken her into his confidence by using Akhenaten’s real name. ‘The answer to your question is that I don’t know. But he was certainly in office – probably still in the mines department – and managed to hang on afterwards. Did you never see him at the City of the Horizon? There were plenty of career administrators and businessmen along with the idealists, you know. And they were just as necessary to Akhenaten – possibly more so.’

‘And most of them were forgiven.’

‘That should not make you bitter. Of course they were. They were given the chance to recant, they did so, and they went on with their work. They are the ribs and backbone of the Black Land, and the army is its muscle. Without them the heart cannot function, however much it rules them.’

‘Can it rule what it cannot control?’

‘Yes, as long as it thinks it controls. Akhenaten tried to break that pattern and look what happened.’

‘Tell me more about Ipuky’s family.’

Taheb considered. ‘There were three children. Iritnefert was the only daughter, and she was the youngest. She was unmarried, and there was no one in prospect as far as I know. Her mother divorced Ipuky and went to live in the north of the country with one older son. Paheri. He was already grown, and became a priest of the Aten.’

Huy drew in his breath.

‘What is it?’ asked Taheb. ‘Did you know him?’

‘Yes. He was Surere’s right-hand man. But I did not know that he was Ipuky’s son.’

They were silent for a moment, both thinking of the escaped quarryman-prisoner.

‘I wonder what happened to Paheri, after Akhenaten’s fall,’ said Taheb.

‘He disappeared, like so many,’ said Huy. ‘There would not have been many to mourn him.’

‘Except his mother. He always thought that she had been wronged by Ipuky.’

‘She must have been the only woman Paheri ever liked. His nickname was Sword of Surere. They may even have been lovers, though they parted company towards the end.’

‘What happened?’

‘There was a bitter row. Paheri accused Surere of taking too soft a line; but I also heard that he’d found Surere in bed with a stable boy. Surere certainly began to enjoy the fruits of power towards the end, but Paheri was a deeply jealous man.’ Huy made a dismissive gesture. ‘That is all history, and Paheri must certainly be dead. Where in the north did Ipuky’s wife go? I don’t think she ever came to the City of the Horizon.’

‘She came from Buto originally. I think that is where she lives still. She never remarried.’

‘But Ipuky did.’

‘Of course. In his position, he had to. I do not know the name of his new Chief Wife, but I think that apart from her, he only maintains concubines. Most people think Ipuky is married to his work. He has the reputation of being a cold man, and appears to enjoy neither his power nor his wealth, though I find that difficult to believe since he works so hard to keep them.’

‘Are there children by his second marriage?’

‘I do not know them, nor how many there are.’

‘How old might they be?’

‘Certainly no older than eight. Still children.’

Huy paused, thinking. ‘And do you know anything of Ipuky’s other son – Paheri’s brother?’

This time Taheb was evasive. She tried not to show it, but she was not quick enough for Huy. ‘I don’t know. There was something wrong with him. I think the family managed to find him some kind of posting in a province in the north-west, towards the Land of the Twin Rivers. But no one has heard anything of him since the collapse of the northern empire.’

Huy knew better than to press her, and changed the subject. He already had enough to think about. ‘How are your own children?’

She looked at him archly. ‘Growing up. I am twenty-five. An old woman.’

‘Tell me that again in fifteen years. You will cause many sighs yet.’

‘You should have been a courtier.’

‘I did try.’

A scribe came into the courtyard timidly, his pen-box swinging from his left shoulder and a sheaf of documents in his hands, stained with red and black ink.

‘I am sorry,’ he said to Taheb, nodding carefully to Huy and bringing his arm across his chest in greeting. ‘These are the shipping lists you asked for. You said they were to be brought as soon as they were drawn up.’

Huy stood up.

‘There is no need for you to go,’ said Taheb.

‘Yes.’

She shrugged, standing too, taking the papers and nodding dismissal at the scribe. She came a little closer to Huy. ‘If only I could find you a job here.’

‘Long ago I wanted to be a boatman. Now I know I shall never have the skill. I cannot work as a scribe, and I am beginning to enjoy being free. How could I be useful to you?’

Taheb embraced him with her eyes again, but said nothing. Huy could not interpret the nature of that look. ‘I must ask you one more question. You knew Iritnefert a little?’

‘Yes, a little.’

‘What was she like?’

There was a pause before she answered. ‘A fire in the wind,’ Taheb said.