And then it occurred to me to wonder how this officer had died. There seemed to be no bloodstains on the linens around the body. I unwound the bandages from his head. At the back they were hard and cracked with a mass of dried blood, and it was difficult to peel them away without also pulling off hair and skin. The man’s dead face was dark blue and black, like a massive bruise. The muscles of his lips had shrunk and peeled back, revealing his poor teeth. His eyes were no longer white, but faded black orbs in the sockets, seeing nothing. Despite this, I could still tell he was young, perhaps eighteen years old-and definitely not an officer of any kind. This was a conscripted foot soldier, and there would be no reason to return his body to Egypt for an expensive burial. Usually he would have been buried where he fell. The platoon were not only smuggling opium; they were also using the bodies of low-level soldiers as the container. I looked at the ruin of his face, and tried to imagine him alive: a kid without prospects, who would have chosen soldiering, despite its reputation for misery and hopelessness, as the best, perhaps the only, way forward in his life. I managed to lift his head enough to peer at the skull at the back. I could see at once it had been smashed in with a single blow. This was not a battle wound, but a summary execution. And now I knew the secret within the secret. The platoon were murdering their own, to provide transportation for the opium.
Suddenly the stench of death, and my terrible desire for the opium, were too much to endure. I buckled over, gagging, trying to hold my bowels together, desperate to make no noise. But the guards must have heard something. They appeared together at the entrance, holding up their lamp, listening intently.
‘You’re imagining things,’ I heard one of them whisper.
‘No. I heard something,’ said the other.
‘Maybe they’re not all dead. Maybe they’re coming back to life…’
He made a noise like a spirit and suddenly gripped his friend around the neck. His companion laughed, shook him off, and stepped further inside the darkness.
‘We’d better take a look.’
‘Not a chance! This place scares the life out of me. There’s nothing going on here. Come away…’ said the other.
The suspicious one, holding the lamp, peered one last time into the dark, then shook his head, muttering: ‘The sooner we get this consignment back to Memphis, the happier I’ll be. I’ve had enough. I want out. I want to go home.’
‘Once you’ve joined up, the only way out is in a coffin, isn’t that what they say?’ his friend replied.
‘Obsidian has us all in his grasp,’ said the one holding the lamp. ‘Whoever he is…’
‘They say he’s not a man at all, but Seth returned to the world. They say he kills all who oppose or disobey him by cutting them to pieces while they are still alive. He has a blade, a black scimitar, which is so fine, so sharp, that it can slice open the air itself. They say it can even cut through time, and that is how he enters our world again, wherever and whenever he wills… He hears everything, he knows your thoughts, and he could even be here, now, right behind us…’
‘Stop it! All I know is this: he demands loyalty, and those who fail him disappear, never to be heard of again,’ said the other.
The men were briefly silent.
‘Come. We’re scaring ourselves. Let’s do our job, and we’ll have nothing to worry about,’ said the suspicious one.
I froze in the shadows, hearing the name of Obsidian again, as if he had been conjured right before me. I knew he was not a god returned to this world. He was a man, and the murderer of Khety, and I would return to Thebes and destroy him, if it cost me my life.
I replaced three of the bricks and rewrapped the corpse, then slipped out of the magazine, made my way back along the dark passages of the citadel and, with the mad energy in my legs, clambered up the broken stones of the wall. An almost full moon had risen; the night was full of stars, and from my vantage point I could see across the dark burial ground to the camp bonfires and torches beyond, and further away in the distance the dark shapes of ships moored at the harbour, awaiting their secret cargoes. In my shaking hands I held one precious brick of opium. I knew I could never complete my mission if I tried to survive without it. I told myself I had no choice.
36
The following morning, the soldiers returned to the citadel, loaded up the coffins on the train of carts, and accompanied them back to a military vessel newly docked in the harbour. I watched as they carried each coffin up the gangplank and inside, with a performance of military honours. No port or military overseer examined the coffins or questioned the officers. I knew their destination: Memphis. I had to arrive first.
I took a space on the first passenger ship I could find; it was already crowded with traders, merchants and their goods, and as soon as I stepped aboard, and the Official of the River had checked our authorizations, we set off into the Great River, the big sail over our head, among its taut web of ropes, gathering the afternoon breeze into itself, and carrying us south, against the strong current.
As I sat listening to my fellow passengers on the deck, all were alive with rumour and speculation: Ay was dead, Ankhesenamun was isolated and hopeless, the End of Days was nigh, said some; others, that Ay was still alive. No one spoke Horemheb’s name aloud, although he was surely on everyone’s minds.
I found a space apart; I wanted to be alone, to think, and to take more of the opium without being seen. I constantly felt the small bundle inside my bag to make sure it was still there. But an elderly pot-bellied merchant, whose business was in the trade of wood for shipbuilding, spotted me, introduced himself, and immediately started talking.
‘The latest reports from Thebes are bad, very bad,’ he said, with the strange pleasure men take in the discussion of impending disaster.
I said all I had heard was rumour. I had been away from the Two Lands for several months.
‘Well, you might have done better to stay away. They say King Ay has died, but the palace is not revealing the truth for fear of what the uncertainty of the succession may provoke in the people. But in my opinion, by not saying anything they surely provoke even greater uncertainty!’
‘But whether or not that is true, Queen Ankhesenamun still holds power,’ I offered.
‘How can she hold power, man? She’s just a girl! I mean, yes-I wish it could be so, for her sake. And it’s unfortunate the dynasty has come to a sad ending. It began with the great glory of Amenhotep the Magnificent-who I recall vividly, for I was a boy when he ruled-and all the great monuments of his reign. The processional colonnade, the great pylon at Karnak, and of course the royal palace of Malkata, which they say is a great miracle of a place, all were his works. But since then? We’ve had the disastrous days of his son, whose name I shall never be persuaded to utter, with all that nonsense about a new religion, and the madness of the priests turned out of their temples. Everything was thrown up in the air, and nothing came down right.’
He leaned closer towards me, his index finger raised like a teacher.
‘And then it got even worse with his son-Tutankhamun. You can’t tell me that wasn’t a sign from the Gods. I mean, I’m sorry he died young, and the tragedy was very great, of course; but I don’t think he’d ever have made a strong king. He was weak as water. Can you imagine him smiting the enemy? Destroying them in battle? Having the guts to execute the opposition?’
‘Perhaps it’s time we had a king who didn’t do that. Perhaps it’s time we had a king who had other values on his mind,’ I said, playing nervously with my dagger to calm the growing anxiety inside me.