City of the Dead

SIX

As soon as she awoke she knew something was wrong. At first she lay still, trying to guess by the quality of the light what time it was. From the cold and the stillness, she knew that morning was still far away. Then she wondered what it was that had awakened her so suddenly, so absolutely. All that was left in her heart was the memory of a noise, or of the ceasing of a noise.

She was not frightened. She lay and looked at the window, framing white moonlight. Some spilled into the room, and she waited until her eyes grew into it enough for her to see her way without a lamp. When she was satisfied, she threw off the sheet and stood up, naked in the cool darkness, enjoying the sensation for a moment before she directed her attention to the silence around her; the noise of the sheet and the creaking of the leather bedstraps had been an intrusion, and now it had returned, more intense than before.

Suddenly she realised what had awakened her: the coughing had stopped. She pulled on her long robe and left the room, walking briskly along the verandah, open on one side to the sky, to her father’s room.

The house servant whose bed was placed outside it was already awake, and unable to decide what to do. Pushing him aside, Senseneb grabbed the handle of the door and opened it.

Horaha lay on his back, his neck reposing on a bone headrest, the oil lamp beside him still burning. His arms were splayed, his hands open, palms upwards. His head had fallen back and his lips and eyes were open. His body was still. The only movement was from the minute bubbles that frothed and broke at the corners of his mouth.

‘Get Hapu,’ she told the servant at her elbow, but even as he ran to fetch the chief steward she knew that her father was dead. She had probably known it the moment she had entered the room and seen him. A large yellow moth which had been fluttering around the lamp now left its rotating course and settled near Horaha’s eye. For a second Senseneb found herself hoping to see the cheek flinch, but the moth might as well have landed on a statue.

She was astounded at how calm she felt. She crossed the room to the body and checked pulse and breath as he had taught her, automatically, seeking refuge from her feelings, keeping them at bay through the actions she took. Soon enough the thoughts would pour in. She was an orphan and a divorcee, with no children and no other relatives. Though she knew enough to practise medicine, it would be hard here in the Southern Capital. She would have to go away, but where?

She pushed the door of her heart closed. For the moment it would be enough to find out what had happened.

There was a sound of running feet, bare feet on the wooden floor of the verandah. She turned to see Hapu, closely followed by the frightened house servant.

‘What has happened?’ the steward asked, scared himself.

‘Horaha is dead. We must make his Khat comfortable,’ she said. Her voice was firm. The commands that came from it calmed the men. They came into the room, glad to escape from the tumbling rush of their own feelings in activity.

‘Do what is necessary,’ she continued. ‘We must send for the embalmer at dawn. But I want to speak to him before he touches the body.’

‘Yes, Lady.’

She noticed the title they had instantly accorded her. Up until now, she had been Returned Daughter of the House. If was three years since her husband had divorced her on grounds of barrenness, and sent her back to her father. Her husband, a kind man, had even paid her the agreed divorce fund which had been settled at their marriage, and had not told her parents that he had other grounds for divorce: her adultery. Her mouth felt acid at the recollection. Seven wasted years. Why should she think of them now? Perhaps because she was alone again.

When they had done, removing the headrest and replacing it with a large pad of linen, then resting the arms on more linen pads, they went to fetch the linen sheet soaked in water in which they would cover the corpse to keep the insects away. Alone with her father, she leant close to his face and dabbed away the foam at his lips. It smelt rank.

She drew back, stood up, thinking. It was two days since that thickset investigator from Ay’s household had been here. He had tried hard to play the little official, but his eyes were too intelligent and his mouth too humorous to deceive her. They had fenced with each other, but there had been something in the air between them which had made them sense each other as friends. Who was he really? She had little doubt that she would see him again, but how soon? It seemed that she needed him urgently, and she did not know where to find him.

In the stillness, she sent a thought to him, concentrating hard. If it reached him, he would come.

Two days. Who had betrayed her father? Perhaps Merinakhte. But her refusal to sleep with him was too small a reason for such vengeance. There was no doubt in her mind that Horaha had been poisoned.

When had the coughing started? Early the previous day. Horaha had put it down to a chill caught at the bank of the River during the Oblation to Hapy. The dry season was nearing its end and Horaha had been chosen as one of the officials to offer this year’s sacrifice for the flood. He had drunk the holy river water, but so had all the others chosen.

Horaha had taken no food or drink outside his own house since then that she had not taken too. Indeed, since the noon meal yesterday he had eaten nothing, taking only the herb tea he had prescribed himself. It seemed insane, she thought, that he had to die in the middle of the best community of doctors in the entire Black Land.

She knelt by her father, holding his hand, knowing that nearby two of the Eight Elements, his Khou and his Ka, would be standing in the gloom. His Ba would be preparing itself for the long lonely journey through the Twelve Halls. Struggling with her thoughts, she remained with Horaha until dawn, sending message after message to Huy. Perhaps it would work, though with the generations the Blacklanders were losing this gift of communication.

Then, shortly before dawn, she saw in her heart’s eye a stocky figure leave a house in a shabby street in the harbour quarter, and she knew that he had heard her.

Huy’s first thought was that the killing had been committed with such crude disregard for secrecy that it was meant to be taken as a warning.

‘You will have to heed it,’ he told Senseneb.

‘How?’

‘Keep your head down. Do nothing.’

‘How can I do nothing?’ she asked angrily. ‘Anyway, they will be watching the house. They will have seen you come.’

‘That is not unnatural. You did not summon me by any means they could track. As far as they are concerned, I was bound to come back here. If they are watching me – or you – at all.’

‘They must want to know what has happened.’

‘They will hear about it soon enough in any case.’

Senseneb was silent. Then she said, ‘What is this all about?’

‘A struggle for power,’ replied Huy. ‘Do not look so stern-Why do you not give in to your grief?’

‘I am not ready yet,’ she answered. ‘I am not yet brave enough to face it.’

The embalmer came with his assistants and his long cart.

Soon the shell that had contained the Eight Elements of Horaha was taken away to be prepared for the spirit that would inhabit ¡t eternally. They watched it go from the gate and turned back into the garden. Suddenly, her shoulders started to shake.

He held her as her body was racked with sobs. Nervous servants peered from windows and doorways, but Hapu brought water to wash her and wine to drink, and together he and Huy nursed her through the first wave of misery. Later, sitting up on the couch by the pool, the pet ro geese solicitously attending her, she looked at the former scribe with tired eyes and smiled.

‘I will not apologise for my tears, but I am ashamed of some of the reasons for shedding them. I am alone now, and soon I will have nowhere to live.’

‘What will happen to this place?’

‘It belongs to the House of Healing. It is the residence of the chief doctor, and as soon as a new one is appointed, he will move in.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘My father owns a place far to the south, in Napata. It is a long way from the Southern Capital.’

‘How long will they let you stay here?’

She sighed. ‘At least until my father is in his tomb. The funeral rites must be controlled from here and they would not risk the anger of his Ka.'

‘His killers risk that already.’

‘I have never known the dead avenge themselves yet. Have you?’

‘No.’

She sighed, stretched her long limbs, and looked at Huy With the ghost of a smile again. ‘I am glad you caught my thought.’

It was vivid. I was sleeping when it came and it woke me.’ I did not think it would work.’

There are few left who can use the air between us.’

I could not do it again.’

‘I hope you will not have to.’

Huy poured wine and they drank together. The sun was heading towards its zenith, warming the tamarisk’s grey awl-shaped leaves; but in its shade it was still cool, and the garden had trapped a breeze which touched their faces.

‘Will you tell me now what Horaha believed happened?’ Huy asked quietly, hoping he was not pushing too fast or too soon.

‘Yes.’ She sighed again, sipping the wine and drawing her legs up, encircling her knees with her arms, it is certain that the king died because of a blow to the head; but if he had been thrown from the chariot there would have been bruises on other parts of his body. My father thought that the only other explanation was that he might have been thrown clear and struck his head on a rock.’

‘No,’ said Huy. ‘There are no rocks. And the king could not have been thrown clear, because he would have had one foot in the floorstrap of the chariot.’

Senseneb said, ‘Then he was killed deliberately.’

‘Yes.’

‘That is what my father had begun to think.’

‘I see.’

‘Who did it?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Was it Horemheb?’

Huy sighed. ‘Or Ay.’

‘But Ay has hired you to find out the truth, hasn’t he?’

Huy smiled. ‘You think as an antelope runs.’

‘What will you do with what you know?’

Huy was silent.

‘But you must tell Ay,’ continued Senseneb. ‘He must be impatient for news from you.’

‘I am expecting his messenger to come today.’ Huy drank a cup of wine, and squinted up through the leaves at the sun.

‘He would reward you well.’

‘That is true. But then I would be in his debt.’

Senseneb looked at him. He was not the kind of man whom she would have thought attractive, but the eyes carried the face. 5he wanted to tell him about herself, to explain why she had been unfaithful to her husband, to tell him how certain she was that she could bear children. But why did she want to?

‘Do you think your father was killed because of what he believed?’

‘Yes,’ she replied quietly.

‘Who was with him at the Oblation to Hapy?’

She looked at him. ‘His colleague Merinakhte, and Senefer, the High Priest of Amun. Horemheb and Ay, and the priests of Mut and Khons; and Horemheb’s chief of police, Kenamun.’

After he had left her and made his way home again to await Ay’s messenger, Huy thought about his own powerlessness to stop a chain of events which would lead to more deaths within the next days, or weeks at the latest. He was sure that, short of a miracle, a bloodbath would follow the burial of the king, and he knew that unless he acted very quickly, the net gathering round the queen would have so tightened that he would not be able to release her from it. He wondered what secret guard had been placed on her already; then he considered that perhaps it was too soon. The general might feel confident enough not to place a guard on her. For after all, what could she do to him?

Any last doubt about who was responsible for the king’s death had vanished with Senseneb’s news that Kenamun had been near her father close to the time of his death, despite the fact that Horemheb liked to show off his control of the powerful police at any and every public occasion – especially the corps now known in the city as the Black Medjays, created by Horemheb in the national interest, as e Put it, but answerable only to him. The warning function Horaha’s demise was clearer than ever.

The Problem which faced Huy was how much to tell Ay. He had looked at what he had learned, and he knew that in Ay’s hands, it could be enough to bring Horemheb down. He acknowledged to himself that he was now in water so deep that his feet no longer touched the bottom. He was unsure what beasts might be swimming below the muddy surface, ready to seize his legs and drag him under. Ay had his own ambitions, and Huy was wary of underestimating so adept a survivor.

There was no way of avoiding a report to the Master of Horse. As the time for his interview with the old man approached, he went over the ground he had covered. What could he say, and what could he leave out? It seemed to him that he had three aims to serve: what was best for Queen Ankhsenpaamun; what was best for his own survival; and finally, what was best for the country.

The Black Land was in a deep crisis. Critically weakened by Akhenaten’s neglect of its northern empire, now lost, the country was threatened by warring Syrian tribes and by the Hittites, now pressing forward from the north, from the lands beyond the Great Green. The army was concentrated in the Delta, since to the south the peoples of Napata and Meroe had remained loyal, taking no advantage of the collapse of power at the centre.

There was no concerted move against the empire yet, as the foreigners were content to bicker over and enjoy the territory they had so recently won, but sooner or later the Black Land would have to strike back, or be lost forever. If they lost control of the River…

An unpleasant conclusion had lodged in Huy’s heart and grew there. Ay did not have the power or the personality to save the country. Horemheb did. Huy knew that the ultimate battle between the two men would not concern him, and he did not want to be involved in tipping the balance of power. But be was faced with the choice of backing one of two tyrants, and if the country were to be saved and survive, and he accepted that its survival overrode any other consideration, a choice had to be made. He wished the gods had not cast him in this role.

But there might be a way of using what he knew to buy the queen’s safety. After that, let Horemheb and Ay slog it out. He braced himself for the rough water ahead.

Ineny arrived to fetch him early. He was agitated, detached, and at first even less disposed to conversation than Huy.

‘What is it?’

‘Ay’s losing patience,’ replied Ineny, shortly.

‘With me?’

‘With the whole situation. Horemheb has practically taken over the entire investigation of the king’s death, on the grounds that Ay has more important things to do.’

‘What are they?’

‘The funeral arrangements, of course. But who is going to preside at them?’

Huy wondered who was looking after the protection of the northern frontier; but he guessed that Horemheb would have most of the generals under his wing. Ineny had arrived in a large, covered litter almost too broad for the streets. The carriers had to step over three or four beggars who crouched in their usual spots by the side of buildings, and from outside the two men could hear curses as the litter lurched over.

‘What do you think the end of this will be?’ Huy asked Ineny.

‘There are so many rumours inside the palace compound that you could weave a fishing net with them.’

‘What about the official inquiry? Have they issued a statement yet?’

No. But the news has broken of Horaha’s death.’

How has that been reported?’

Natural causes.’

Huy was silent. No one could disprove that. Whatever poison had been used had left none of the telltale marks – blue lips, a rictus after death – and even if Senseneb could prove that her father had been killed, Huy doubted that she would be wise to try- The time for avenging her father would come, and it would be in a way that did not put her fruitlessly in danger he would see to that.

His thoughts turned to Kenamun. A picture of the long, bony face with its thin beard appeared in his heart’s eye. Kenamun the sadist, whose murder of the little Babylonian prostitute some years ago he had been powerless to prove. Kenamun whose career under Horemheb’s protection had never faltered, and never would while the general needed to dip his hands in blood.

‘I know nothing of it,’ said Huy. ‘But the reason for the king’s death must be given soon.’

‘You know what it will be,’ said Ineny.

The litter tilted again, and from the greater sunlight that shone through the linen curtains, Huy knew that they were out of the harbour quarter and had started to cross the open space which separated the city from the palace compound.

‘Why do you live in that area?’ asked Ineny, whom the conversation appeared to soothe, it stinks of fish, and all the people who aren’t sailors are cut-throats.’

‘You get used to it,’ said Huy.

‘That doesn’t answer my question. You’ve got quite a reputation.’

‘And I’ll keep it by staying quiet. If I don’t, I’ll lose my living and my head.’

‘You can’t help getting known about,’ said Ineny. ‘Once you pass a certain stage, you can’t help getting noticed. Even in a big place like this.’

Huy looked across at him. ‘Are you telling me something, Ineny?’

‘I just want to be on the winning side when all this is over.’

‘That may be a long time yet.’

The massive wall of yellow stone towered above them as they climbed out of the litter by a side-gate of Ay’s house. The gate was a cavernous rectangular portal set so deep in the wall that the carvings of its lintel were lost in shadow. But as they .approached, a small door set in the greater swung open soundlessly.

The court they stood in was brown and bare. The sandy floor had been swept, but not a plant grew to relieve the severity of the high walls which surrounded them. The only decoration was a massive statue of Ay. As always, he was shown young, an expression of impenetrable blandness on his face, to which the sculptor had given some of the features of Tutankhamun, in a further attempt to bolster Ay’s claim to the throne. They crossed the gash of sunshine that slanted down in a precise rectangle defined by the building, and entered a doorway on the other side of the yard, at the entrance to which stood two Nubian guards in the white kilts and dark blue headdresses of Ay’s livery.

Ay received them in the same room as before, but his manner was agitated and he did not sit at the low table by the balcony.

‘You have been slower than I anticipated,’ he said to Huy. it is not always possible to produce quick results, especially when they are of such importance.’ indeed. But you lag behind the official inquiry. No doubt you and Kenamun have been treading on each other’s toes?’

‘On the contrary, I have not seen him.’

Ay seemed to be weighing something in his heart. ‘No, of course you would not. His inquiry did have a start on yours.’

‘I have seen no evidence of his inquiry.’

‘What have you found out for me?’

Huy had decided what to say, but framing the words took a moment.

Come on,’ said Ay, impatiently, ‘I needn’t tell you what rewards will be yours if you prove yourself useful to me.’

‘What is your plan?’ asked Huy.

Ay looked at him angrily. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Before I tell you what I know, I must see how you will use it.’

‘What business is it of yours how I use it? I am interested in finding out the truth. The king was like a son to me.’

‘And you mistrust Horemheb’s inquiry?’

‘We have been over this before. I told you, if you accepted the job, you had to accept my terms with it.’

‘What I have found out may be too important for that.’

Ay narrowed his eyes. ‘Then it wasn’t an accident?’

‘No.’

Ay looked away. ‘Can you prove it?’

‘Yes. But I must have time. There are still pieces missing.’

‘If you can’t find them we can manufacture them. What have you got so far?’

‘I will not tell you.’

Ay looked at him. ‘Be careful, Huy. You are playing a very dangerous game. What are you after? Do you intend to sell to the highest bidder? If that is so, let me tell you that you will not even leave here to make your sale.’

‘I cannot tell you my plan; but you will not kill me either. You need what I can give you because it will bring Horemheb under your power.’

‘You are very confident. Does it not strike you that you cannot leave this house without my permission? Why don’t I give orders now to have the information tortured out of you?’

‘Because I have no doubt that Horemheb knows where I am, and he will be intrigued. He is waiting for you to make your play. Keep me here, torture me, and you will alarm him into action before you are ready to defend yourself.’

Ay turned to look out over the river. It was beginning to fill with the red sand that heralded the flood.

‘I can weave you a net strong enough to catch the general, continued Huy. ‘But if you want it to be strong enough, you must wait.’

‘Of course you realise that you are speaking treason one regent to another? Why don’t I just turn you over to Kenamun now?’

‘I have thought of what I would say to you, Ay. I would not have said as much as I have if I did not know that I am not in your power.

The old man’s lip quivered and he turned away again. After a moment he had mastered himself, and now the glittering eyes turned in on themselves again, coldly weighing, as the heart within reached its decision.

‘Very well,’ he said at last, it seems that I must trust you -or give you what passes for trust. You are a very clever man; cleverer than I thought. But you are in a light boat, not on firm land; and there are rapids ahead.’

‘Then I must keep a tight grip on my paddle.’

Ay almost smiled. ‘Be sure that you do,’ he said.

Huy was not allowed to leave until night had fallen. Ineny wanted to escort him home, but it was an easy matter to persuade him not to. As for remaining alone in the palace compound, he still had his badge of office, and he intended to put it to use.

He waited until the shadows were at their deepest before setting out, hugging the walls, for the royal palace.