More pressing matters claimed our attention. Nefertiti eventually gave birth. Pentju withdrew and the midwives gathered with the silver and ebony birthing-chair, pots of the shepen plant and the corpses of skinned mice, should things go awry. The shaven heads of Amun-Ra sent five priestesses to represent the Goddess Isis and the rest. Akhenaten sent them packing but superstition still had its day. Charms were fashioned out of fishbone, prayers were offered to ward off ‘Him’, the Thief of the Underworld, who prowled the cot beds of infants ready to suck their life out. Akhenaten prayed to his strange god, demanding his blessings. In the end, the gods, or Chance, arranged things smoothly. Nefertiti gave birth to twin daughters, lusty girls who made the right cry and were born on an auspicious day. Two more human souls, destined to be caught up in the giddy whirl of Akhenaten’s dreams.
My master was pleased and proud. There was feasting and rejoicing in the brilliant, colonnaded halls where the babes were praised and fussed. Presents were showered on them, jewels and trinkets, robes and foodstuffs. Akhenaten preened himself, comparing his prowess to other Pharaohs, though I knew his soul too well, or thought I did. I caught his disappointment that he had no son. Suddenly, my days of festival were harshly interrupted. I kept thinking about Api’s strange remarks and wondered why Sobeck had not replied. In the end he did. A peddler came to the kitchens and Snefru brought me the message: a friend wished to meet me and buy me a present of the most exquisite jewellery.
‘I am a crocodile immersed in dread.
I am a crocodile who takes by robbery.’
(Spell 88: The Book of the Dead)
Chapter 13
Dressed in one of Snefru’s garish cloaks and carrying my sealed jar in a leather pannier slung across my shoulder, I went across the Nile to the Necropolis: a journey which always reminded me that, as in the palace, life and death sat cheek by jowl. At the quayside a beggarman, squirming through the crowds, seized my wrist, going down on his knees to show his peaceful intent.
‘The jeweller,’ he whispered through sore gums, ‘his stall is closed. However, your host will welcome you at the Sign of the Ankh in the Street of the Caskets near the Basketmakers’ Quarter in the City of the Dead. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’ I tried to shake off his grip.
‘Go in peace, pilgrim,’ he smiled. He leaned forward in a gust of stale sweat and cheap oil. ‘And be careful you are not followed.’
A boatman took me across the Nile. The sun was dipping and the fishing boats were out, the men on board shouting at each other, eager to find the best stretch to catch lampreys, skit, grey mullet and the pale-backed dark-bellied batisoida which always swam upside down. Henbirds, alarmed by the noise, rustled the branches of trees and brought the papyrus groves to life with their squawking and nesting. A screech owl hunted over the mudflats. Higher up, against the blood-red sky, vultures and buzzards patrolled; when one plunged, it was the sign for others to join the feasting.
The river was so busy it was impossible to see if anyone was following me. Matters worsened when the river guards, in their war-barge, manoeuvred along the edge of the reeds and shouted at us to move away. The alarm had been raised by some fishermen still waving their pitch torches as a sign of danger. Apparently a group of harpooners in their skiffs had cornered a young hippopotamus in the shallows only to find another, a cow, ready to give birth. This, in turn, had attracted the attention of crocodiles. The bull, summoned to his mate’s distress call, also returned to enter the fray.
The harpooners had withdrawn but the hippopotami were now so agitated they were likely to attack anything which caught their attention. I used the confusion to stare across at the dappled river bright in the dying rays of the sun and the dancing torches of the fishermen. I was looking for a boat, a punt or a barge with one passenger, someone who seemed out of place, but I could detect nothing.
Having landed safely at the Quayside of the Dead with its brooding, ill-carved statue of the green-skinned Osiris, I made my way across the Place of Scavengers and into the warren of streets in the lower part of the City of the Dead. It was a sombre place, suitable only for those who wished to shelter from the law and needed the darkness to cloak their activities. Sailors and marines staggered about, beer jugs in hand. Ladies from a House of Delight drifted through them trying to entice them in a cloud of cheap perfume, clattering jewellery and sloe-eyed glances, their rouged mouths in a permanent pout. Elsewhere, beggars, scorpion men, confidence tricksters, Rhinoceri, outlaws from the Red Lands, the grotesque and the crippled rubbed shoulders with grey-robed Desert Wanderers.
The lanes and streets were arrow-thin funnels lit by the occasional blaze from an oil lamp or the dancing fire of a cresset torch. The air was bittersweet with the stench of corruption from the cheap embalmers’ shops where the corpses of the poor were over-dried in baths of natron, hung on hooks to dry, pickled, stuffed with dirty rags, then doused in cheap perfumed oil before being handed back to their relatives. Casketmakers, shabti-sellers and coffin-polishers touted for business. Women of every nation, skimpily dressed or clothed mysteriously in hoods and robes, offered their bodies for sale. Tale-tellers and minstrels offered their wares, while professional travellers shouted how they had stories for sale about a land of frozen whiteness, yellow-skinned men who lived in palaces or roaming hordes of barbarians who killed and plundered and drank from the skulls of their enemies. A sideshow in front of a shop, covered with a patched tapestry of faded animal skins, offered a chance to view a Syrian ‘strong as a ram, pleasure three women at once’. Another show invited the curious to view a woman with three breasts, a dwarf with two heads or a bird which could talk like a man. Soothsayers and fortune-tellers vied with dancing troupes to catch my attention. A gang of pimps shrieked at a group of white-garbed priests, dancing madly in the name of their foreign god, to leave them and their customers alone. Stalls and shops spilled out rubbish. Bakers and meat-sellers offered platters of freshly cooked lamb, beef, goose and fish, grilled above spluttering charcoal and spiced hot to the tongue to satisfy any taste as well as to hide any putrefaction. Such a mêlée made it impossible to see if I was being followed. I felt uneasy because I was left alone, as if protected by some invisible presence, yet I could see nothing, except for a shaggy-headed dwarf, dressed in a striped robe, who always seemed to be either beside me or in front.
I reached the Sign of the Ankh, a pleasure-house and beer-shop which catered for the casket-, coffin-and basketmakers. On that particular evening it was deserted inside, although its small courtyard was full of bully-boys in their leather kilts, baldrics and thick marching sandals, lounging round a cracked fountain. They looked up as I entered but no one rose to challenge me. The entrance to the shop was also guarded. Inside, the low-ceilinged room, reeking of sawdust and burned oil, was brightly lit. A row of barrels and baskets were stacked at one end. Sobeck sat on a pile of cushions under a shuttered window. Others of his gang stood or squatted, deliberately shrouded by the shifting shadows. Sobeck smiled as I entered, put down the puppy he was playing with and rose to greet me. His eyes, however, were still on the door.
‘You did well, my friend,’ he said, then called: ‘Was he followed?’
The dwarf replied in a guttural tongue I could not understand.
‘Apparently you were,’ Sobeck clasped my hand, ‘but we lost him.’ He sat down and gestured at the cushions piled at the base of a wooden column. I took the dagger from my sash and squatted down. A jar of beer was thrust into my hand. Sobeck cleared the platters from the small table which separated us. The puppy, unsteady on its legs, stumbled over, licked my knee, sniffed at the basket and curled up beside me. Sobeck raised his goblet in a toast. I replied but didn’t sip.