City of Dreams (13 page)

‘I hope you realise that it is only on account of the entreaty of Taheb that I see you, Huy,’ were his words of greeting. ‘You are persistent. That is not necessarily a quality.’

‘I want to find out who killed Iritnefert.’

Ipuky did not blink. ‘I have my own men to do that. I have told Merymose what I know. Why inflict further pain on my family and myself by telling you again?’

‘Because of what you might have remembered since.’

‘That is the talk of one casting around in the dark,’ said Ipuky with a smile like the light covering of frost which, on hard nights in the middle of
peret
, fringes the rushes on the banks of the river. He extended scant courtesy, even to Taheb, and despite his wealth his servants only brought in the minimum guest-offering of bread and beer.

‘You might have developed suspicions. Perhaps your men have uncovered something. I could help.’

‘We both know you are thinking about someone in particular, don’t we, Huy?’ There was mockery in the man’s voice. ‘I am thinking about no one.’

‘You are thinking about Surere,’ retorted Ipuky. ‘These killings started when he broke free; and he did not escape punishment for working under the Great Criminal, as we did.’

Huy would not share this burden of guilt. ‘Well?’ he insisted, as Ipuky fell silent.

The tall man fixed him with his cold eyes. ‘I do not see him as a killer. But when he is found it will be interesting to see what he has to say.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

Ipuky took his drink and sipped it. ‘No.’ There was a long silence. Ipuky looked at neither of them. He was waiting for them to leave.

‘Perhaps your wife has something to add; or your other children.’

Ipuky’s eyes seemed sightless. ‘My children are young. All are under seven years old. My Chief Wife saw nothing, knows nothing. Iritnefert was not her daughter. If you want to find out about her character, you must ask her mother, and she is in the Delta.’

Huy glanced at the wall painting. ‘She was in the City of the Horizon with you?’

‘Of course,’ a hint of impatience in the voice now. ‘And when the city fell and she decided that my fate was no longer one she chose to share, she returned to Buto. Do not draw any conclusions from the painting. I had it done to remind me of a mistake from which I have learnt much, and of an ending which I have no cause to regret.’

‘What was Iritnefert’s mother like?’ asked Huy.

Ipuky turned his gaze slowly to Taheb. ‘A fire that could burn in water, would you not say?’

Taheb lowered her eyes.

‘And only Paheri could control it,’ Huy spoke into the silence.

Ipuky was caught too off guard to conceal his reaction. He glared at Taheb.

‘Did you tell him?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Huy. ‘I was in the City of the Horizon. Taheb was not. What happened to your sons?’

‘Clearly you know.’

‘I know that Paheri stayed with your first wife, and that your second son was lost when the northern empire collapsed.’

Ipuky looked grim. ‘That is true, and that is all there is to say. They are both dead now.’ 

‘Are you sure? They were loyal servants of the old king, but they were also your children.’

Ipuky looked at him with hatred. ‘They are dead to me. I do not even acknowledge them as my own.’

‘What is in his heart?’ Huy asked as they left. They had seen little of the house apart from a gloomy garden and a long corridor which led from the entrance hall to the room in which they had been received. All the doors off it had been closed, and the only light came from the open archways at its beginning and end.

‘Nothing. Stones,’ Taheb answered. Her voice was weary. ‘It is a miracle a man like that has any children at all.’ Taheb smiled thinly. ‘You are wrong. Look at how he described his wife.’

‘What?’

‘She didn’t leave him because his star had fallen; she knew well enough that he was the kind of man who’d recover. But the collapse of the City of the Horizon gave her the chance to escape. He would never have let her go if he hadn’t been distracted by his own interests. His second marriage is a marriage of conformity. Its children are the children of duty.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Ipuky’s new Chief Wife is the daughter of a colleague of his. She is fifteen years his junior, and little more than a housekeeper and unpaid bedslave. She is a human letter of partnership between two businessmen. Iritnefert’s mother, if you can believe it, could make Ipuky burn.’

‘Why didn’t Iritnefert live with her?’

‘That was Ipuky’s way of punishing her. And torturing himself, I think. Iritnefert looked like her mother, had the same temperament. She was also the price her mother had to pay for her freedom.’ Taheb paused. ‘He was lying about the painting on the wall. That is a torture, too,’ she added. ‘Then why does he have it there?’

‘Ask the gods. They made us this way.’

‘Do you think he loved his sons?’ 

‘He only loved Iritnefert’s mother. That was all the love he had to give. To others, he would give something called love; but it was only a reward for loyalty.’

They were being carried along a man-made gorge — a yellow road of sandstone flags between two red cliffs of plastered wall which sloped inward at the top, towards the building they were encircling. On them, giant painted images of the gods walked in a stately procession. The stiff representations were new. Harsh and impersonal, they had no life in them. Huy looked at them. These were not gods with whom you could speak.

At the house of the Chief Scribe, Reni’s major domo was waiting at the gate to meet them. He guided them through a broad passageway flanked with heavy half-columns surmounted with lotus blooms, and protected by the couched forms of rams, Amun’s beast, in sculptures larger than life. They entered a large garden, which was protected from the heat by the umbrella of a huge and ancient vine, the shadow of whose leaves dappled the paved floor. From an intricate system of pipes, water flowed everywhere, in fountains and little artificial streams, irrigating a profusion of plants, set in the earth or clustered in countless pots, whose unaccustomed variety and colour dazzled the eye. The gabbling of the water mitigated the noise of the crickets. The cool of the garden greeted you as you went in with a breath as welcome as that of the north wind at the top of a house during the season of
akhet
.

As they approached, Reni rose from his seat at a table near the large rectangular pool which was the centrepiece of what — as Huy now saw it to be — was an unconventionally asymmetrical garden. The scribe was dressed in the white garb of mourning, and his lined face looked worn. His own hair was combed out over his shoulders, and for make-up he had used only the faintest trace of
kohl
. He was pale, but his careworn expression could not disguise the malice in his eyes.

There was cunning in the face, too. Huy could not guess by what means Reni had saved himself and his family from the debacle that followed Akhenaten’s fall; but he knew many good men whose ruin had been the price the scribe had paid to be sitting here now, and the thought tempered his sympathy. He looked around for Reni’s wife — the mother of Neferukhebit — wondering if she was the source of the girl’s character.

If Reni remembered Huy from the past he made no reference to it, nor did his face betray the slightest sign of recognition. He motioned to the chairs around the low table, standing and positioning Taheb’s himself, as servants approached with wine jars and food: honey cakes, figs and heron’s eggs. Huy allowed a beaker to be filled so as not to transgress the etiquette of hospitality, but he did not propose to drink any wine. Ipuky might have saved himself, but at no one else’s expense. What was on Reni’s table was blood-food, and Huy would not touch it.

He tried not to let his feelings show in his eyes; but he sensed that the scribe knew them anyway. Neither of them, however, gave any sign, and indeed Reni seemed too preoccupied by his grief to give other matters much thought. But he was too intelligent not to have a conscience. Whether he was intelligent enough not to pay heed to it was another matter.

‘I hope you don’t think it strange of me to sit here,’ said Reni. ‘It was here that my middle daughter, Nephthys, found Nefi. I feel close to her here, as if perhaps her
Khou
were hovering near me.’ He smiled sadly, taking Taheb’s hand and squeezing it.

‘What do you think happened?’ asked Huy.

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Surely my question was clear?’

Reni’s brow darkened. ‘My daughter was killed, here, in my own garden. No one can find out how, or why. That is what happened.’

‘And that is all you can tell me?’

‘Do you think I have time to play games? If there were more, I’d have told the Medjays.’

‘Do you remember me from the City of the Horizon?’ Huy asked.

‘Yes, I do. You are working for Kenamun now?’ replied Reni, mildly.

‘In this matter.’ 

‘Kenamun and I know each other well, despite our differences in the past. Nowadays, we visit each other’s houses,’ Reni continued, in the same mild tone.

Huy registered the threat, and Reni saw that he had, before turning to Taheb, stroking her hand as he spoke. ‘Nephthys found Nefi’s body early, when she returned from the house of her husband-to-be. My sons were not yet back. The gates were still open, but there were servants about.’

‘Were there any in the garden?’ asked Taheb, wishing she could draw her hand away. There was something reptilian about the old man’s grip.

‘It is unlikely. For most of them the day’s duties were over.’

‘So it was unguarded.’

Reni shrugged slightly. ‘Taheb, my dear, I have a gatekeeper, and this house is within the palace compound. Besides, there had been one killing. No one had any reason to suspect a second.’

‘But you knew that Surere had escaped. That he was in the capital,’ said Huy.

Reni looked at Huy in contempt. ‘The Medjay captain asked me that too, and I give you the same answer: how would an escaped convict find his way into the compound? All the gates are guarded. Even you and people like you have to have special permission to enter.’ He turned away with a dismissive, impatient gesture.

‘Do you have your own men working on this?’ asked Taheb.

Reni looked across at her. ‘Ipuky wanted me to join forces with him, but I decided to leave matters in the hands of the authorities. I would not know what orders to give my men. But my sons…I cannot answer for them.’

‘How did they react?’ asked Huy, remembering what he already knew about this.

‘The older boy is angry — but then, Ankhu is a man of action. He never learnt his letters properly, to my shame, and now he talks of the army. He hunts with the young king, so no doubt some sort of career is assured him.’ Reni had not changed, thought Huy, remembering the oily modesty with which, even in the old days, he had scored social points off colleagues who he knew could not compete. ‘Nebamun is more like me,’ continued the scribe complacently. ‘He controls his grief, turns it into a subject for contemplation. But I would not say he was beyond revenge.’

‘And your daughters?’

Reni folded his hands. ‘They are women.’ Then he caught Taheb’s eye and lowered his own with a slight cough.

He was saved further embarrassment by the rustling approach through the fecundity of his garden of his wife, accompanied by two of the children. They came towards the seated group cautiously but without hesitation — almost as if their entrance had been prearranged.

‘May I present to you those members of my family who are at present — ah — available,’ said Reni. ‘Ankhu is at court, and my oldest girl will still be busy in the archive at the far end of the house.’ Huy wondered whether that eldest daughter, who worked as Reni’s secretary, had helped him destroy the documents he drew up during Akhenaten’s reign, which would have given such priceless ammunition to his enemies, before turning his attention to the newcomers.

Reni’s Chief Wife surprised Huy. She had a neutral, neglected look. Her mourning white was not as dazzling as her husband’s, and the downward turn of her mouth appeared to be the result of permanent, not recent, grief. But her face was intelligent; out of her eyes gazed a heart which acknowledged a wasted lifetime. She should have left him years ago.

Nebamun was probably seventeen, already a man, though his face was still bright and open. Nephthys was dark, and her large features had an open attractiveness due to the personality which animated them. Physically, her looks were like her mother’s; her mother’s face before hope had been dashed out of her life. It was odd that there should be nothing of Reni in the features of either child.

They greeted Taheb with pleasure before turning to Huy with more guarded expressions. He wondered if they had been primed to talk to him, and how far they had been told they could go. He longed for the chance to talk to each of them in private, but saw little hope of it.

Huy found himself unable to know where to begin. Merymose had asked the questions of fact, at a time when they were all too stunned by the event to react other than practically. The questions of theory and of hypothesis seemed wrong now, and looking from face to face, he wondered how much good the answers would do him. To encourage himself as much as anything, he ventured a handful of general questions about Neferukhebit’s activities on the days leading up to her death — questions which resulted in conventional answers, the activities of any rich young girl marking time between the end of her education and the arrival of her husband — for these girls were on the fringes of the royal household, and work — such as Taheb did — was taboo to their class.