‘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.
For once the little gate was locked, but she quickly pulled back the stone bolt and slipped outside, drawing the gate closed but not relocking it: she would need to be as little delayed as possible if she were to get back unnoticed, and the first servants rose early, at the ninth hour of night. She knew by the temperature that it was now about the sixth hour. Borne on a tiny breeze, there was even a faint hint of morning in the air already, so she would have to hurry.
She knew the meeting place; the pool in the little park on the south side of the palace compound. She knew it because she frequently went there. The pool in their own garden had been filled in by her father five years before when her baby brother had drowned there; but she loved to sit by cool water, inured to the stinging flies which gave people from the north so much trouble. And now she was going there again, for a great adventure; perhaps the greatest in her life. The anticipation overcame her fear, and there was fear: the thing which had most made her hesitate was the thought of the deaths of her two friends. But Iritnefert had been found by the river, outside the compound; and Neferukhebit in her own home. Besides, she would not be alone – only on the journey there and back. During the hour they would be together, she would be protected. The thought gave wings to her feet. She did not want to waste a moment of the time they would have.
She arrived at the park. It was cool and dark, but familiar, and she felt no fear as she entered it, though she briefly touched the tjet amulet at her neck for luck. She was aware of her body, realising that it was taut as a lute string with anticipation. Every pore was alive. She could feel the root of every hair of her head.
She advanced through the shadows less cautiously, her only fear now that there would be no one to meet her. The thought cast darkness over her heart.
But there, standing at the edge of the pool, half-hidden in the deeper shade cast by a clump of leaning palm trees, he was waiting. Reassuring, smiling at her, and coming to greet her. Strange that he should seem so familiar to her now; as if they had always been close.
‘You came.’
She looked up at him, wanting to reach up and stroke his face. His eyes held her. She had no will.
‘I never doubted that you would.’
‘I am on fire,’ she said, and was immediately ashamed of her candour.
He moved away from her. Only a fraction, but she was aware of it.
‘This is a solemn moment. We must consecrate it to each other and to the gods.’
‘Yes.’ She was too awed to notice anything but passion in the voice. She knew from pictures in the Book of Instruction clandestinely glimpsed in her father’s library what to expect, approximately; and she had seen animals; but exactly what happened she could not imagine.
‘We do not want the gods to regard our deed as evil.’
‘They wouldn’t do that. It is good to create life.’
‘But in an evil world innocence must be protected. Come. The water will purify us.’