City of Dreams (9 page)

‘Then how did you know the right dose?’

She laughed. ‘Do you never stop asking questions? I want to feel you against me.’

Briefly her hands left him, darting behind her neck to undo a clasp. When she brought them away again, the dress fell like a curtain, revealing a strong body, broad shouldered but with slender hips and delicate breasts.

‘Do you like what you see?’

Around him, the air swam gently, and he swam in it, with her, as his kilt, his sandals, his headdress, seemed to fall away. A couch had appeared on the balcony — had it always been there? — and they were lying on it together, though he could not remember moving to it.

She leant against him, their nipples touching, caressing his thighs with hers. Perhaps by magic, her hands were flowing with lotus oil, and with it her firm fingers anointed him.

Supporting her with his right arm, his left hand strayed from her breasts to her thigh, and from there slowly completed the journey to the mouth of the Cave of Sweet Mysteries, lingering long enough to find the little temple of Min and arouse him as she began to gasp for breath, her tongue making passionate sallies into his ear. He turned his face so that their lips could join, making another temple where their tongues embraced, stroking each other, running over teeth. Opening his eyes, he noticed a bloom of perspiration on her bronze shoulder, and slid his mouth over her skin to lick it off. Then he let his head fall to her breasts, taking each as far into his mouth as he could and teasing the nipples with his tongue. He lowered his head further, until he was drinking in the sweetness of her loins with his nose and his lips, kissing and teasing, sucking the tiny proud god who reared at the entrance to the Cave as she sighed and groaned softly far above him. Then she drew him up to her, and lowered her own head to take him in her mouth, her tongue darting out in tender forays at the base of his penis, stroking his belly with her hair as her teeth gently nibbled his manhood. Later she rose too, and their lips and tongues met again, full of sweet tastes.

Their hands were busy with each other, lubricated by the lotus oil, their perspiration and the wine of Min which had entered the mouth of the Cave. She held him firmly, pumping his penis up and down slowly and rhythmically, twisting it slightly as she did so. He bit his lip to curb the god, then buried his mouth in the curve where her neck met her shoulder, smelling her smell, wanting to drown in her.

They floated to the floor. Huy clasped her buttocks, his palms pressing hard against their softness, his fingertips urgently exploring that other cave they protected. With one hand Taheb did the same, while the other guided him into her. They cleaved to each other, lips hard against lips, bodies crushed together, her heels against the small of his back, clinging there as they bucked and dived, soared and plummeted together. For two hours they made love, never leaving each other, even for the brief periods when they lay still, nibbling ears and lips gently; always delaying the splendour until the last possible moment, and always achieving it together, gasping and roaring, moaning and crying, seven times. At last they stopped, lying together, smelling the rich smell, feeling their sweat grow chill on them. Servants came, and wrapped them in soft new sheets together, and carried them to the bed which they had set up in the white room. Then they slept, hour upon hour, folded tightly together.

When he woke, it was to the sensation of her breath cool on his chest. When she woke, her eyes were like fires in the depths of the deepest wells. It was a long time before they spoke. Words had found their place.

They were of secondary importance.

FIVE

Kenamun was a tall man — too tall, with that fragile thinness which accompanies extreme height. His hands were large, with swollen knuckles and the long, nervous, hammer-ended fingers that betray a weak centre of life. They hung at the end of slender wrists and looked as if they had been tacked on to the wrong person. His head was long and bony, and so shaped that you could see all the contours of the skull beneath the skin. Here, too, the features were large, and clumsily applied: a nose like a ridge of clay, lips that recalled a Nubian’s, though set in a bitter line; a protruding blue chin and ears so prominent that they covered half the sides of his head. Only his eyes were small, and they were set so deeply in their orbits that you could not tell what colour they were. They glittered like the backs of scarabs caught in torchlight at the rear of a tomb.

To mitigate his appearance, he had grown a beard — though it was so fine, to conform with custom, that it might have been painted on with a kohl-brush, an impression reinforced by the methodical severity with which the rest of the face had been shaved. He wore a red-and-gold headdress, and a white tunic trimmed with the same colours. He stood at an unusually high desk in the room into which Merymose ushered Huy, and there was no sign of any other furniture, beyond an open chest containing scrolls. Huy concluded that the man worked standing up.

He looked at Huy — as far as Huy could tell: it was more an impression of being looked at, and there was no reading the expression in the eyes — but spoke to Merymose without preamble.

‘So this is the man you say is indispensable to us.’ 

‘He would be of help,’ said Merymose. ‘We want this solved soon.’

‘Indeed. But what methods has he that we do not have at our disposal already?’

‘An instinct for asking the right questions.’

‘Of whom? You know the families we are dealing with.’

‘Frequently, just of himself.’

Kenamun had not removed his gaze from Huy, who began to feel like a specimen, or, worse, a snake stared down by a mongoose.

‘You have recanted your allegiance to the Great Criminal?’ Huy sighed. ‘I was not offered that possibility. I was merely forbidden to practise my profession.’

‘And you were a scribe. After all those years of training, that must have been like having your hand cut off.’ Kenamun considered. ‘But you were not sent into exile, or to work in the mines?’

‘No.’

‘And you are a friend of the family of Amotju?’

‘Yes,’ said Huy, recalling Taheb. Could that have only been yesterday — and at about this time?

The official dropped his gaze abruptly and turned his attention to some papers on his desk. ‘You are a good officer, Merymose,’ he said at last, ‘and although I disagree with you about the capability of our Medjays, I respect your judgment. You may consult this man, but he is to have no direct or unsupervised contact with the families of the girls, and he is to work only under your orders, not independently. You will make a report to me daily at the first hour of night. Finally, he is your responsibility. If this becomes widely known, I will say that you acted on your own initiative, and you will take the consequences.’

He did not look up, or say anything more. Huy and Merymose glanced at each other, and withdrew.

‘What is he like?’ asked Huy as soon as they were clear of the building and out in the broad street that ran close to the walls of the palace complex. After Kenamun’s office, the light of day seemed even brighter, the sun warmer. 

‘He is an official. He is on his dignity. He doesn’t know how to go about the work he has been put in charge of, and yet the successful solution of this case will be a great coup for him, politically. On the other hand, the risk is high, because failure will set him back. He has few friends, and already the pressure Ipuky and Reni are putting on him through their friends is filtering down to me. But he made no objection to engaging you. That is a degree of how desperate he is to get this thing settled.’

They walked down to the river, as a motley crowd milled about the jetties where the ferry boats left for the West Bank. Over there, generations of pharaohs slept in the tombs, cut deep into the red cliffs of the valley. The thought of the neglected tomb of Nefertiti passed briefly through Huy’s mind.

‘What do the families say?’

‘They are too broken in spirit to know. There is suspicion of the work of demons; but it is rare for demons to attack the rich, and above all to leave no trace of violence on the bodies. That there is a clear similarity has escaped no one, and there is fear that other daughters of similar families are at risk. We have been pestered for men to protect several houses, and as these people have such influence, we cannot refuse.’

‘The girls must have had friends. Have you spoken to them?’ Huy decided to keep what he had learnt about Iritnefert to himself for the moment. There was no point in telling Merymose what could not be proved. There was little likelihood that he would believe it, and, anyway Huy himself was not about to trust the Medjay completely.

‘Yes, some. Of course the two girls knew each other, too — all part of the same set. It seems that Ipuky’s daughter was rebellious; but they either don’t know what she got up to, or won’t say. The other girl — ‘ Merymose hesitated.

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing. Just an ordinary girl.’

Huy nodded, but the hesitation had not escaped him.

‘Her brothers are angry,’ continued Merymose more confidently.

‘At least, one is angry; the other is inclined to be more…’ he searched for the word, ‘philosophical about it — like his father.’

‘Philosophical?’ Huy imagined the rage he would feel if his son were killed.

‘They accept what has happened; but they do not see anger as the fuel for vengeance. I know that Ipuky is putting his own men on to this.’

‘That will muddy the water.’

‘What do you want them to do? Med jays are not trained to investigate such things as these,’ repeated Merymose.

‘And if it is a demon?’

‘The household priests are looking to Osiris for guidance. So far he has given none. The household priests take that to mean that the gods are not responsible for these deaths.’

Huy wondered how deep Merymose’s belief in the gods ran. Also, being human, Huy regretted that he was now committed to working with the policeman. If he had been able to, how gladly he would have hired himself out to either of the wealthy men whose daughters had died. He doubted if the authorities represented by Merymose and Kenamun would pay him as much as Reni or Ipuky would have; and he doubted if he would receive any reward at all if he were unsuccessful.

He looked up to see Merymose grinning at him. ‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said. ‘Neither of them would have engaged you. Now that we have an escaped political prisoner on the loose, everybody is fighting shy of having anything to do with people like you. Of course it doesn’t affect the really big fish, but even important officials who recanted formally are looking over their shoulders at the moment. That these killings have happened at the same time doesn’t help.’

‘Then thank you for getting me any work at all.’ Huy countered affability with affability; but he could not help wondering what strings Merymose had had to pull — or how — to get Kenamun to accept him. He wondered if he should not give his
Ka
a name, and call it Taheb.

‘What did you tell them at the paperworks?’

‘They didn’t ask questions. I’d given them time to look for someone to replace me permanently. And they told me that I can have a job back there any time I want.’ Huy grinned. Nothing would drag him back to that grind.

They had reached the end of the ferry jetties and ahead of them lay the tightly-knit bulk of the town, its few colours — beige, dun, ochre, brown and white — flattened by the sunlight. The shadows provided some relief, and here and there a man or a donkey dozed in one. A thin dog sidled up to them, stopping just out of range of a kick, and looked at them with what it hoped was an appealing expression. It only succeeded in looking craven.

‘We’ve nothing for you,’ Merymose told the dog, adding to Huy: ‘If you’re poor
and
ugly, you can forget about love, eh?’

‘What do you want to do?’ asked Huy.

‘I want to tell you everything I know about all this so far, and in detail. What do you want to do?’

‘I want to look at the bodies.’

Merymose hesitated again. ‘We’ll have to get permission from the families. They will both be with the embalmers.’

‘Then let’s do that. Fast.’

‘But what can you possibly tell from the bodies, especially now?’

‘They must have died somehow. It may be that looking at the bodies will tell me. I might see something that has been missed.’

‘They may have been poisoned.’

‘Poison takes time, and it hurts, it turns the lips black. Iritnefert looked peaceful, and her body was relaxed. From what you say, Reni’s daughter did not look different. What was her name? You never mentioned it.’

‘Neferukhebit. They called her Nefi.’

Huy’s stomach leapt, but he hid his surprise from Merymose. The policeman was keeping things from him. Why? Was it just that he was obeying orders from above?

‘What did she look like?’

Merymose told him. Huy hoped that the embalmers knew their job, and had preserved the bodies well. He told himself that he had little to fear; but he was sweating as they made their way into the city.

Meet by the water, he had told her. Lying waiting for the family to go to sleep, she had begun to lose courage. Perhaps, she had thought, she would not go after all. She would stay, safely in bed, cocooned in the fresh linen sheets scented with
seshen
, and then perhaps later she would explain, if the opportunity arose. It might not even be necessary.

But then her pride and her curiosity had got the better of her again, and she remembered why she had agreed to the meeting in the first place. The thought of what might happen scared her, but it thrilled her too. Of course, nothing at all might happen. They might just talk. But that would be a kind of failure, having summoned up the courage to go this far, to take this step; and though he had warned her that it might hurt a little, she trusted him: he was so gentle, so mature. He would not do her any real harm.

Once she was certain that the house was asleep she had climbed lightly out of bed, dipping her face into the bowl of washing water on the table near the door and dabbing it dry with a hand towel. She was careful not to disturb the make-up she had applied secretly before retiring, and checked it quickly in a polished bronze mirror that lay next to the bowl, the deep yellow glow from the oil lamp she had left burning providing her with just enough light to see that none had smudged. Having satisfied herself, she slipped into a tight calf-length dress which had a strap over the left shoulder but which fell away to the right of her body, leaving one young breast exposed. Then she snuffed out the light, and waited for a moment, getting her owl-vision. High in the sky, Khons’s chariot reflected only a sliver of light from its sides.

Stepping into the passage she trod on something soft, silky and alive, but was in time to withdraw her naked foot before it wailed. Instead, a sleepy purring trill told her that the dozing house cat — it was the long-haired one, named after Bubastis, and almost a pet — had mistaken her clumsiness for a caress; she had barely disturbed its sleep. The corridor was in the embrace of a deep silence which spread right across the dark garden court below and beyond the open verandah which ran along all four inward-looking walls of the house on the first floor, on to which the bedrooms opened. The only sound was her father’s heavy breathing, occasionally broken by a snore. She stole past his door with even greater care, unsure whether he was sleeping alone tonight. It had been long since he had asked her mother to share his bed, and for some time now his favourite had been a young Khabiri concubine, a month younger than she was herself. And that, if anything, was what had fired her to embark on this adventure.

Aware of the loose board near the top of the stairs, she clung to the wall and then slipped down to the garden in shadow, barely a shadow herself, and making as little noise, though inside her head it seemed as if her heart would waken the dead with its pumping. The one hurdle still to be jumped was the gatekeeper; but she had chosen her night carefully. Old Mahu was on duty, and he never left his shelter by the main gate, once he was sure that everyone was asleep. It was likely that he, too, slept.

She made her way to the small side gate that opened on to the alley and which in the daytime was kept permanently open so that tradesmen could make their way to the kitchens through the vegetable garden. There was a steady flow of people during the day and in theory the last to use the gate after the second hour of night should be the one responsible for bolting it. In practice this rarely happened, and anyway since childhood, even before she was old enough to wear her hair in the Lock of Youth twisted over her right shoulder, she had known the location of the hidden bolt, and how to slide it.

She was not wearing her hair tied into the Lock now. It was loose and tumbled in a dark brown cascade over her narrow shoulders. It changed her face; she seemed a stranger, a complete adult. She tried to imagine how she would look when she was old enough to wear a wig, like her mother and the great ladies of the court who surrounded Queen Ankhsenpaamun, though the queen was not much older than she was herself.