City of Dreams (20 page)

Once on the west bank, they made fast to the side of one of the large workmen’s barges, and clambered over it on to the land. Above them and to the south, two or three small lights winked from the tents where some of the artisans at work on the tombs were spending the night. Huy and Surere made directly inland before turning north. By now Huy knew where they were going, and was not surprised. Nefertiti’s burial chamber lay only a few hundred paces ahead.

‘I have been coming here ever since I returned to the Southern Capital,’ said Surere. ‘Her tomb has been neglected. I have done what I can to clear the rubbish from it, but there is too much work for one man.’

‘When did the king appear to you first?’

‘It was during the third visit I made. I think that he had been coming here alone for a long time, perhaps since the moment of his own death. He loved her beyond measure.’

The cartouche containing Nefertiti’s name had been carefully cleaned, and the sand and brushweed partially cleared away from the entrance; but even in the faint light Huy could see that the paintwork was weathered and dull, and the place had a sad and neglected air. The entrance doors had been broken, no doubt by tomb robbers, who had grown bold in the period of anarchy which had existed here in the last years of Akhenaten’s reign.

When they had approached to within ten paces, Surere motioned to a large boulder which lay by the side of the all but obliterated pathway that led to the tomb. Near it was a low mound, roughly oval in shape. It was the kind of grave in which you might bury a pariah-dog.

‘I wanted to show you this,’ said Surere proudly.

Huy looked at the grave. Even in this light he could see that it was new.

‘God brought me back here to do one good deed, at least,’ continued Surere tranquilly. ‘He thought he was a good servant of the Aten, but he was not. He hated the queen. She could only bring forth daughters. He thought she was a monster, sent by demons to undermine the Aten. A very primitive man. I don’t know how I can ever have been close to him.’

‘Paheri?’

‘Yes. They never caught him. He had come back here, too. But he was hounded by demons himself. I would never have recognised him, I just took him for another harbour beggar, until he called me by name.’

‘What? I thought you were enemies.’

‘We were.’

‘Why didn’t he expose you?’

Surere smiled again. ‘He was past hatred, and he acknowledged the punishment of God. I was wrong to fear him.’

‘What happened?’

‘After the king’s fall, he escaped to the desert. He took refuge with desert dwellers, but he had already caught the disease by then. They threw him out as soon as they discovered that he was a leper, and he made his way here to beg. In the shadow of his father’s house.’ Surere paused. ‘He wanted one final favour from me. The disease had already eaten his hands and his face, and his feet were so rotten he could barely walk on them. He wanted me to send him to the Fields of Aarru. I brought him up here and killed him, and buried him so that he could sleep under the protection of the queen he had misjudged. I knew she would forgive him. Forgiveness is better than monuments.’ He broke off again, listening. ‘Now I must prepare myself, for the king is coming.’

Struggling to contain his full heart, Huy crouched by the boulder while the loyal servant approached the last resting place of his adored queen alone. Surere had brought an offering of white bread. He placed it reverently on a copper dish which lay on a small stone table in front of the entrance. He lit the oil lamp next to it, then knelt, head bowed, and waited. As he watched from his hiding place, Huy felt the hair on his neck rise.

The king appeared. He came from nowhere that Huy could see, suddenly standing in front of Surere, part-hidden in the shadow of the tomb. He was dressed in a long robe, and his face was not clearly visible, but there was no mistaking the huge belly, or the broad hips and thighs. Huy’s throat was dry, and he prayed that Surere would not call him forward to meet the ghost.

The little scribe could not remember the sound of the king’s voice, having only heard it three or four times. When he spoke now, the tone was reedy and high; yet there was something familiar about it. Surere, who had been in the king’s presence frequently during his life, accepted it unquestioningly. Huy felt his own soul separate from his body and float above it. But part of his heart held back, and told him: if it is the king, he will know you are here, and you will have no power over what he does. If it is not the king…

‘Surere!’ said Akhenaten.

‘My lord.’ Surere kept his head bowed, his own voice a whisper.

‘I hold out a scroll and a knife. On the scroll is a confession. You will sign it with your Horus-name, with your
nebti
-name, with your Golden-Horus-name, with your
nesu
bat-name, and with your Son-of-Ra-name. Then you will take the knife and fall on it, entering the Boat of the Night to join me in the Fields of Aarru.’

‘But what must I confess?’ Surere looked up, trembling, his fear of death greater than his fear of Akhenaten. ‘Why must I do this?’

‘It is not for you to question my word. My word is the word of God. The scroll tells of the children you have sent to me to protect them from evil, and of the Medjay, Merymose, who would have thwarted me.’

Surere bowed his head again, raising his hands to receive the paper and the knife. The king stepped forward to give them to him. As he did so, his face came into the starlight and Huy could see that it was covered by a clay mask in a crude likeness of Akhenaten. Now his heart was sure; but he stayed where he was.

The king placed a scribe’s palette, with ink cake, brushes and water bowl, on the table next to the bread and the lamp. As if asleep, Surere unrolled the small scroll and signed his name. Then he took up the knife. Huy moved into the open. 

‘Have you decided to stop killing?’ he asked the king loudly.

The masked head swung round. Surere, with a moan of terror, scuttled into the darkness, still clutching the knife. ‘Surere!’ Huy shouted after him. ‘This is not the king!’

The figure was pulling off its robe, and with it the padding which made up the false stomach and distended hips and thighs. A long dagger had appeared in its hand. Then a hand went up and removed the mask.

The dark eyes held a gloating triumph. The mouth was turned down. The face looked far older than it was.

‘No, I have not stopped killing. My work will never stop. But every day you have been getting closer to me, and it was time to pause, to shake you off. Surere has milked Reni enough now, and his usefulness is at an end. It is a pity he brought you here. I had hoped for a tidier conclusion. Think: the four girls, and Merymose. The riddle of their deaths solved by the confession of a madman. Your time would have come later. I already had your trust.’

Under the cold light of the stars, the sand was grey as pearls. Huy shifted his weight, watching the knife.

‘Did you really think you could persuade him to kill himself?’

‘He believed I was the old king. I followed him here once, after my father organised the hiding place for him in the old town house, and paid the first instalment of his blackmail. Surere disappointed me. I thought he was sincere; I thought he shared my ideas about innocence; but he was corrupt, like all the others. After my sisters’ deaths, my wretched brother started to pick up the scent.’

‘Why did you kill them?’

‘To save them.’ Nebamun ripped off the remains of his costume, and stood naked and taut in the sand, the knife solid in his hand. ‘I loved Iritnefert, but she wouldn’t have me. She wanted more. She wanted other men. I wasn’t good enough. I knew she preferred Ankhu, with his drinking and his hunting. So I made a tryst with her — a last appeal. I knew what I would do. It had to be by water, for purification, and then an embrace. I used an embalmer’s probe to kill them.’

Huy looked from the youth’s face to the hand holding the knife, judging his moment. From the darkness beyond them, he could hear Surere sobbing.

‘Then my sister Nefi. Did you know my father took her to the Glory of Set for Kenamun? Oh, she enjoyed it. Kenamun tied her up and tattooed a scorpion on her back. Her idea. The family goddess. My father helped him. Then she and another girl — a little bitch from the Twin Rivers…Well, you can use your imagination. The Twin Rivers girl disappeared. But not Nefi. She told me all about it. She thought I’d like to do it with her too. So I played along. It was too late to save her, but not to stop the pollution of her spirit. After that, I wondered about women…I knew Mertseger. She was a friend, she’d known my sisters from childhood. I’d seen her looking at me. I decided to find out if she was like the others; if she would be ready to fall. She was! But I saved her.’

‘And your sister Nephthys?’

‘Do you think marriage isn’t also a violation?’

Huy breathed quietly.

‘Then Merymose found out about the blackmail,’ continued Nebamun. ‘He followed Surere and discovered the house. I followed him. I wasn’t sure what he would do but I thought he’d contact you before he went to Kenamun. And you wouldn’t have been content with Surere. I knew it would only be a matter of time before you started to pick up other threads.’

‘So you wanted to help me in order to watch me?’

‘Of course. I am not a fool.’

‘And Merymose?’

‘That was easy. I trapped him in the stall and buried him in grain. I couldn’t have killed him otherwise — he was too strong for me, and I couldn’t rely on taking him completely by surprise.’

‘And me?’

Nebamun laughed. ‘You are a scribe; Merymose was a soldier. My brother trained me to use a knife. I do not think you will match me. Especially with one arm in a sling.’ 

‘What did you do to the Twin Rivers girl?’

‘Nothing. She disappeared. Perhaps Kenamun got too rough for her and she ran away.’

‘And your father?’ asked Huy, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice.

‘He only watched — everything,’ replied Nebamun contemptuously. ‘He enjoyed watching. He was always going to one brothel or another. Especially to places where his money would get him whatever he wanted. But he has his punishment now.’

Huy had guessed that the talking was planned to lull him. Now, without warning, Nebamun lunged. Huy stepped back fast, but not quickly enough to prevent the knife from slicing through the linen of his sling and opening a shallow wound the length of his injured forearm.

He brought his own knife out and across in a slashing movement which was uncontrolled and foolish, and ought to have missed completely, but caught the side of Nebamun’s throat and opened the great reservoir of life there. Blood pumped out in a jet as Nebamun continued his attacking run for ten more paces, only then staggering forward and lying still, blood murmuring in his throat as he died.

Using his mouth and his good hand, Huy managed to retie the sling. His head rang with pain. He stumbled over to the offering table where the lamp still burned by the bread, and sat down on a corner of it, resting his arms on his knees.

Across the valley, he could see the lights of the workers’ tents. Nebamun’s blood was black on the grey sand. Above, the eternal, distant stars shone, the far gods, who measured changes in eons.

Huy listened to the silence, and became aware that it contained more than Nebamun’s death alone. He wanted to call Surere’s name, but his voice would not rise above a whisper, so he set off in the direction the sobbing had come from.

He was crouched under the cartouche of Nefertiti, his knees drawn up to his head, ready to return to Geb, a child of earth going back to his father in the position of the unborn. The bronze knife lay by him, hilt and blade dark with blood. Near it lay a dozen small scrolls of papyrus. One was the confession, which Huy took and burned at the lamp. The others were the originals of Reni’s accounts, proof of his embezzlement.

Surere was not yet dead. Huy came up to him and made him as comfortable as he could, putting his good arm round his shoulders. He looked up, his eyes wide as a little child’s. ‘There is no answer, is there?’ he said. ‘This is the only end of our confusion.’ He nestled his head on his knees again and died quietly.

Huy made his way down to the River. Wearily, he untied the ferry-boat and rowed back to the jetty on the east bank. Dawn was close but still he had the river to himself. He remembered that it was a holiday. Today the new king, Tutankhamun, would formally be shorn of his Lock of Youth. Soon, he would take power into his own hands and the uneasy regency of Ay and Horemheb would be at an end. He tied up the boat and made his way home. Later, he would go to Ipuky and make his last report. Ipuky could do with it as he wished. It worried him that the death of Isis was still a mystery, but the gods do not give tidy endings. He thought of her body, eaten by quicklime in the burial pit for the unclaimed dead, and said a prayer for her poor, abused
Ka
.

There was never going to be enough evidence to bring down Kenamun, her most likely killer; but it was possible that Ipuky would have enough information to close down the Glory of Set. Reni, he knew, would be broken by what had happened. It would be for Ipuky to decide what to do with the accounts. Huy wondered how Ipuky would take the news of his own son’s death.