City of Dreams (6 page)

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.