A bank of mist was drifting across the water, wafted and shifted by the breeze.
‘Now keep that little cur silent.’ The old man preened himself. ‘My poem is important, it’s your death lament.’ He intoned: ‘In the end, all things break down. All flesh drains. All blood dries …’
‘Ahoy there!’
I gazed into the night. A skiff, a torch lashed to the pole on the front, was aiming straight towards us.
‘Ahoy there! May the God Hapi be with us! May his name-!’
‘What do you want?’ the old man screeched.
‘I am lost.’ The light concealed the speaker.
‘Where do you want to be?’ the assassin behind me bellowed.
‘In the Fields of the Blessed,’ the cheery voice rang out. The skiff turned abruptly to the left, coming up behind us. The assassin behind me dared not turn, nor could the puntsman. The old man was staring by me, trying to make out the newcomer. A sound like that of swift fluttering wings carried across the water, the music of an arrow. The man behind me holding the knife crashed into me, hands scrabbling at my back even as he coughed up life’s hot blood. Another whirr, a shriek followed by a splash as the puntsman collapsed into the water. The punt rocked dangerously but its broad flatness held it secure. The old man reacted too slowly. I lashed out with my fist as he rose. He staggered to the side, tried to regain his balance but tumbled into the water. The puppy jumped down between my feet. I pushed it away as I lurched to the side. The assassin behind me had now fallen over backwards. The arrow had taken him in the back of the neck and its barbed point jutted out under his chin. The old man was desperately trying to clamber aboard.
‘Please!’
I struck his vein-streaked, bald head. The punt was rocking from side to side. I clawed his face, pushing him under the water.
‘Finish your poem!’ I screamed. ‘Let the river beasts hear it!’ My nails dug into his face, one finger jabbed an eye. He lashed out at my hands. The water swirled, then he was gone. I sat back catching my breath. The corpse of the assassin who had pricked my throat followed his master into the water. The puppy was mewling softly. I snatched it up and looked for my rescuer. The skiff came alongside. The young man sitting so calmly within it smiled at me: a powerful Syrian bow across his lap, a quiver of arrows beside him. And that’s where I met him! Djarka, at the dead of night with the cold freezing my skin and my heart and belly lurching with fear. He just smiled at me, his smooth, olive-skinned face unmarked even by a bead of sweat, those dark thick-lashed eyes staring curiously. He played with his black oiled hair, ringlets tumbling down each side of his face. At the time he looked more like a young woman than a man. I watched his hands. I could see no dagger.
‘Mahu.’ He spread his arms. ‘Mahu, come!’ His voice was tinged with an accent. ‘I am Djarka of the Sheshnu.’
‘So?’
‘I am one of the Silent Ones who serve Great Queen Tiye. I am to be your servant.’
‘I don’t need one.’
‘Oh yes, you certainly do,’ he sighed. ‘Come, we can talk on the way. The Great Queen wishes to speak to you. Let’s be gone before the river guards pass.’
I gripped the soaked puppy and jumped into the skiff. Djarka grabbed the paddle and we moved swiftly away, leaving the barge rocking in the river, its fiery cresset torch fading to a distant blur of light.
‘You were following me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Sobeck’s men never caught you?’
Djarka shrugged the robe off his shoulders and passed it back to me: it was quartered in four colours, red, blue, black and bright yellow.
‘People always look for the same,’ Djarka declared over his shoulder. ‘I try never to be the same. Sometimes I wear a hood. Sometimes I remove my sandals. I watched you leave the Sign of the Ankh. You went down to the quayside and acted very stupidly. They were waiting for you.’
‘But how did they know? Sobeck must have betrayed me.’
‘No.’ Djarka turned back and concentrated on his paddling. We were now approaching the Karnak side of the river and I could glimpse the lights along the quayside. ‘Sobeck would have killed you and buried your body out in the Red Lands.’
‘Then who?’
‘Someone wants you dead but, there again, someone wants me dead. We kill each other in our thoughts.’
By now my stomach had quietened, my heart beat not so fast. ‘You are a priest, a philosopher?’
Djarka laughed merrily like a boy and my heart warmed to him. ‘No, I am a hunter,’ he replied. ‘No, that’s wrong. I am an actor who mimes. Wrong again,’ he mused. ‘I am merely the Great Queen’s servant. I met you years ago, Mahu, out in the desert but I was a boy. You wouldn’t remember. Ah well, we are here.’
Djarka nosed the craft along the quayside steps which served one of the smaller courts of the Malkata Palace. He picked up a rope, lashed it to the metal ring driven into the wall and helped me out onto the slippery steps.
‘Can’t you get rid of that?’ He pointed at the puppy. He plucked it from my hands as he led me up the steps. We hurried across the courtyard, then Djarka stopped at a storeroom, pulled open a door and threw in the bow and arrows, followed by the little puppy, slamming the door shut on its whining and yelping.
‘It will be safe and warm there and will soon go to sleep. What are you going to call it?’
‘Karnak.’
Djarka gave a twisted smile. ‘The shaven heads of Amun will love that.’ He led me into the palace proper: guards in their blue and gold head-dresses, ceremonial shields displaying the ram’s head of Amun, stopped us. Djarka produced a clay tablet pass which silenced all questions and we were ushered on.
Queen Tiye was waiting for us in a downstairs chamber overlooking a small enclosed garden. The air was sweet with fragrance and through the open window I could see braziers glowing, their light shimmering on the ornamental lakes and pools. The room itself was bright, its walls painted blue and yellow with an oakwood border along the top and bottom. Queen Tiye was sitting on a small divan, the cushions plumped about her, poring over rolls of papyrus. She was dressed in a simple white tunic with an embroidered shawl studded with precious stones about her shoulders. As we came in, she glanced up. Her eyes were tired; the furrows on either side of her mouth were deeper, more marked than before.
‘You are safe, Mahu?’
I went to kneel but she waved at the cushions before the divan.
‘Sit down! Sit down! You too, Djarka.’
‘You had me followed, Excellency?’
‘Of course I did.’ Queen Tiye’s head went to one side. ‘Do you think you can go to Thebes, Mahu, and not be noticed? I know all about Sobeck and the jeweller. He’s dead, you know. I tried to suborn him and, poor fellow, he paid the price. You are wondering why I didn’t have Sobeck arrested?’ She shrugged. ‘Why should I? For stealing a royal concubine? He can have the lot! Moreover, what threat does he pose?’
I remained silent.
‘He wasn’t safe.’ Djarka spoke up. ‘He was attacked on the river by the Jackal Heads.’
‘Jackal Heads?’ I recalled the amulet slung round the old man’s neck.
‘A family of assassins,’ Djarka cheerily replied. ‘In fact, a clan who hire themselves out for murder.’
‘Your Aunt Isithia knew them,’ Tiye added. She smiled at my surprise. ‘Oh yes, she knew such assassins for a long time.’
I recalled the day going into the Temple of Anubis to view my father’s corpse: that strange beggarman at the quayside as well as the day my master was attacked.