Huy nodded. Outside the window the waning moon filled the street with grey light. Some small animal, probably a dog, clicked by, its paws tapping out a regular rhythm on the hard ground. Nothing else stirred.
‘What will you do in Napata?’
Senseneb smiled. ‘I may be a doctor there. I am not leaving all my father’s drugs and instruments and papers for his successor.’ Her voice became hard, and her eyes turned inwards.
‘Why? Who is he?’
‘Merinakhte.’
Huy paused before speaking again, trying to read her face. She let him do it, pretending to study the little statue of Bes which stood guard on a shelf. ‘Will you help me?’
She turned her eyes to his. ‘How?’
‘I must get the queen away from here.’
She reached out her hands to him and he took them.
‘Yes, I will help you. I will live and die for you.’
‘And I for you.’
A ferry had crossed between them. They talked more; he told her about Nehesy, about Ay. He told her almost all that he had discovered, but at the back of his heart he knew that from now on they would have to be careful. He could not allow himself to imagine what would happen if Kenamun found out that she knew him. Huy told her about his life, and the City of the Horizon, and how above all he wanted to be a scribe again, and about Heby, and how he still missed him, even though he had no idea what his son must look like now.
When later they made love, it was no longer as strangers.
Nezemmut had gone to her cold bed long ago, though not without an assurance from her husband that he would visit her later, for the getting of an heir formed an important part of his busy schedule. In another part of the palace, in a large dark room overlooking the river on one side and the city to the north on the other, General Horemheb sat crouched at a black wood table on whose surface a number of scrolls were scattered.
Many were old, plundered long since from the archive at the City of the Horizon, because Horemheb was tracing his lineage. Before long, he thought, a time would come when his own historian would have to rewrite the annals of the Black Land in such a way as to make him the direct heir and successor of Nebmare Amenophis. Thus the difficult years of Akhenaten and his immediate successors would be erased for posterity, and even his own wife would cease to exist in the records. By then, if the gods were good, she would have served her purpose. For the moment, however, it was too soon to strike for the final goal. Patience had always been Horemheb’s great ally; and he would not abandon his faith in it now, though age and time were not patient, and were beginning to nudge him.
For weeks he had not left the palace, brooding over the past, imagining the future, and leaving his men to control the present.
The reports he received were good, and he had no reason to think that their work was patchy. His belief in his own destiny had grown so hard that he could not imagine anything with the power to break it.
Kenamun stood near the table, half in the light cast by the lamps and half out of it. He bit his lip in impatience as he waited for his master to come down from the sky. They had got nothing out of Nehesy before they had killed him, and yet Horemheb’s reaction to this news – Kenamun’s chief dread -had been mild. Knowing the general’s aversion to unnecessary torture, he had played down that part of the interrogation. In fear of betrayal, he had had the Medjay sergeant who had been present transferred to the Northern Capital – a move to which the sergeant himself had no objection. The vizir there was a quiet man who obeyed orders from the south. The place was no centre of power but merely the northern arm of the administration. It was a peaceful town, mainly concerned with trade and troop movements to and from the Delta.
‘So, what would you advise?’ Horemheb said finally.
‘Ankhsenpaamun could pose a threat to the nation. If a core of resistance built up round her and there were civil war, some of our forces would have to be diverted from the Delta, and the risk of a Hittite invasion would be increased.’ Kenamun chose his words carefully. Behind them was the simple message: kill the queen. But Kenamun knew that, as he progressed up the ladder of power, such brutal plain speaking had become increasingly abhorrent to the general. Indeed, his own old title was no longer pleasing to him, and he preferred these days to be known by the last of the many that he had prevailed upon Tutankhamun to bestow on him: Presider over the Two Lands, Great Lord of the People.
‘But if the threat is removed before the burial of the pharaoh, will that not look displeasing? The priesthood is restless – they are conservative and adapt slowly; but I haven’t the time to march at their pace.’
‘The king’s burial is still many weeks hence. The embalmers will need another forty days to prepare him, and that is the one part of the process that cannot be hurried. Nor would it be seemly to do so.’
‘Then we have an insoluble problem. For that time gives the queen an opportunity to organise.’
‘Alone she is powerless.’
‘But is she alone?’
‘We believe her to be,’ lied Kenamun, not wanting his own failure to infiltrate Ankhsenpaamun’s household adequately to reach Horemheb’s ears. The queen’s intelligence service was better than he dared admit to the general, perhaps because it was so small and tightly-knit. Half the information he fed Horemheb on was invented.
‘So there is no danger?’ persisted the general.
‘There is always danger in not making sure of a thing as soon as you can,’ replied Kenamun cautiously. ‘Especially if the stability of the Black Land is at stake. You rescued it after the fall of the Great Criminal. I do not want to see that work go for nothing.’
‘But we have sealed all the cracks in our security.’
‘Yes.’
‘Whatever suspicions Horaha had have died with him.’
‘Yes,’ said Kenamun, more doubtfully. ‘I still think I should interview the daughter.’
‘She is not a danger,’ said Horemheb loftily. ‘What could she do? In any case we may safely leave her to Merinakhte. He is pleased with his reward for removing Horaha?’
‘He seems to be.’
‘Well, whether he is or not, he is our man now. He has bloodied his hands for us, and owes us house and career. Whether he can take the girl too – if he wants to – is his own affair. It does not affect us either way.’
Kenamun spread his hands. ‘As you please. But what of Queen Ankhsenpaamun?’
Horemheb frowned. ‘I will give her thought. But I do not see the urgency you seem to.’
‘Be advised – ’
Horemheb looked at him. ‘I will seek advice when I need it,’ he said, and turned back to his papers dismissively. Kenamun withdrew, but as soon as he was alone, Horemheb found that he could concentrate no longer. The hieroglyphs danced on the page, making no sense, and for no reason a chill shook him.
He kept seeing the queen’s face in his heart. Kenamun’s words stayed with him, and he was troubled.
NINE
He had decided to visit her at the busiest time of day, when traders and servants were making their way to and from the pharaoh’s palace, crowding the compound, chatting and bickering in its courtyards. Dressed in a shabby kilt, his beard unshaved, dirt from the riverbank rubbed on to his face, Huy’s stocky figure disappeared in the mob of people. The difficulty was getting close to her, but the queen was expecting him, and once she had recognised him she had one of her body servants guide him through back corridors to a small room near the top of the building. There the man shaved Huy, applied make-up, and dressed his hair hastily, and gave him a clean tunic and kilt before leading him through the kitchens and then down through further corridors to another room, windowless and crammed with squat red columns, where he left him. No one who had seen the scruffy lighterman enter the palace would have associated him with the shaved and perfumed courtier who now stood waiting for Ankhsenpaamun.