When had the coughing started? Early the previous day. Horaha had put it down to a chill caught at the bank of the River during the Oblation to Hapy. The dry season was nearing its end and Horaha had been chosen as one of the officials to offer this year’s sacrifice for the flood. He had drunk the holy river water, but so had all the others chosen.
Horaha had taken no food or drink outside his own house since then that she had not taken too. Indeed, since the noon meal yesterday he had eaten nothing, taking only the herb tea he had prescribed himself. It seemed insane, she thought, that he had to die in the middle of the best community of doctors in the entire Black Land.
She knelt by her father, holding his hand, knowing that nearby two of the Eight Elements, his Khou and his Ka, would be standing in the gloom. His Ba would be preparing itself for the long lonely journey through the Twelve Halls. Struggling with her thoughts, she remained with Horaha until dawn, sending message after message to Huy. Perhaps it would work, though with the generations the Blacklanders were losing this gift of communication.
Then, shortly before dawn, she saw in her heart’s eye a stocky figure leave a house in a shabby street in the harbour quarter, and she knew that he had heard her.
Huy’s first thought was that the killing had been committed with such crude disregard for secrecy that it was meant to be taken as a warning.
‘You will have to heed it,’ he told Senseneb.
‘How?’
‘Keep your head down. Do nothing.’
‘How can I do nothing?’ she asked angrily. ‘Anyway, they will be watching the house. They will have seen you come.’
‘That is not unnatural. You did not summon me by any means they could track. As far as they are concerned, I was bound to come back here. If they are watching me – or you – at all.’
‘They must want to know what has happened.’
‘They will hear about it soon enough in any case.’
Senseneb was silent. Then she said, ‘What is this all about?’
‘A struggle for power,’ replied Huy. ‘Do not look so stern-Why do you not give in to your grief?’
‘I am not ready yet,’ she answered. ‘I am not yet brave enough to face it.’
The embalmer came with his assistants and his long cart.
Soon the shell that had contained the Eight Elements of Horaha was taken away to be prepared for the spirit that would inhabit ¡t eternally. They watched it go from the gate and turned back into the garden. Suddenly, her shoulders started to shake.
He held her as her body was racked with sobs. Nervous servants peered from windows and doorways, but Hapu brought water to wash her and wine to drink, and together he and Huy nursed her through the first wave of misery. Later, sitting up on the couch by the pool, the pet ro geese solicitously attending her, she looked at the former scribe with tired eyes and smiled.
‘I will not apologise for my tears, but I am ashamed of some of the reasons for shedding them. I am alone now, and soon I will have nowhere to live.’
‘What will happen to this place?’
‘It belongs to the House of Healing. It is the residence of the chief doctor, and as soon as a new one is appointed, he will move in.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘My father owns a place far to the south, in Napata. It is a long way from the Southern Capital.’
‘How long will they let you stay here?’
She sighed. ‘At least until my father is in his tomb. The funeral rites must be controlled from here and they would not risk the anger of his Ka.'
‘His killers risk that already.’
‘I have never known the dead avenge themselves yet. Have you?’
‘No.’
She sighed, stretched her long limbs, and looked at Huy With the ghost of a smile again. ‘I am glad you caught my thought.’
It was vivid. I was sleeping when it came and it woke me.’ I did not think it would work.’
There are few left who can use the air between us.’
I could not do it again.’
‘I hope you will not have to.’
Huy poured wine and they drank together. The sun was heading towards its zenith, warming the tamarisk’s grey awl-shaped leaves; but in its shade it was still cool, and the garden had trapped a breeze which touched their faces.
‘Will you tell me now what Horaha believed happened?’ Huy asked quietly, hoping he was not pushing too fast or too soon.
‘Yes.’ She sighed again, sipping the wine and drawing her legs up, encircling her knees with her arms, it is certain that the king died because of a blow to the head; but if he had been thrown from the chariot there would have been bruises on other parts of his body. My father thought that the only other explanation was that he might have been thrown clear and struck his head on a rock.’
‘No,’ said Huy. ‘There are no rocks. And the king could not have been thrown clear, because he would have had one foot in the floorstrap of the chariot.’
Senseneb said, ‘Then he was killed deliberately.’
‘Yes.’
‘That is what my father had begun to think.’
‘I see.’
‘Who did it?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Was it Horemheb?’
Huy sighed. ‘Or Ay.’
‘But Ay has hired you to find out the truth, hasn’t he?’
Huy smiled. ‘You think as an antelope runs.’
‘What will you do with what you know?’
Huy was silent.
‘But you must tell Ay,’ continued Senseneb. ‘He must be impatient for news from you.’
‘I am expecting his messenger to come today.’ Huy drank a cup of wine, and squinted up through the leaves at the sun.
‘He would reward you well.’
‘That is true. But then I would be in his debt.’
Senseneb looked at him. He was not the kind of man whom she would have thought attractive, but the eyes carried the face. 5he wanted to tell him about herself, to explain why she had been unfaithful to her husband, to tell him how certain she was that she could bear children. But why did she want to?
‘Do you think your father was killed because of what he believed?’
‘Yes,’ she replied quietly.
‘Who was with him at the Oblation to Hapy?’
She looked at him. ‘His colleague Merinakhte, and Senefer, the High Priest of Amun. Horemheb and Ay, and the priests of Mut and Khons; and Horemheb’s chief of police, Kenamun.’
After he had left her and made his way home again to await Ay’s messenger, Huy thought about his own powerlessness to stop a chain of events which would lead to more deaths within the next days, or weeks at the latest. He was sure that, short of a miracle, a bloodbath would follow the burial of the king, and he knew that unless he acted very quickly, the net gathering round the queen would have so tightened that he would not be able to release her from it. He wondered what secret guard had been placed on her already; then he considered that perhaps it was too soon. The general might feel confident enough not to place a guard on her. For after all, what could she do to him?
Any last doubt about who was responsible for the king’s death had vanished with Senseneb’s news that Kenamun had been near her father close to the time of his death, despite the fact that Horemheb liked to show off his control of the powerful police at any and every public occasion – especially the corps now known in the city as the Black Medjays, created by Horemheb in the national interest, as e Put it, but answerable only to him. The warning function Horaha’s demise was clearer than ever.
The Problem which faced Huy was how much to tell Ay. He had looked at what he had learned, and he knew that in Ay’s hands, it could be enough to bring Horemheb down. He acknowledged to himself that he was now in water so deep that his feet no longer touched the bottom. He was unsure what beasts might be swimming below the muddy surface, ready to seize his legs and drag him under. Ay had his own ambitions, and Huy was wary of underestimating so adept a survivor.