City of Dreams (10 page)

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.’

She watched as if dreaming as he untied his kilt, all he was wearing, and let it fall to the warm ground beneath them. She looked between his legs, but all was shadow there until he turned towards her and she saw the snake’s head loom. Her first sensation was of unfocused disappointment. It was not as large or as upright as the one in the
Book
of
Instruction
.

‘Now you.’

Dutifully, even hastily, she pulled the strap down over her left arm and stepped out of her dress. She regretted that it was too dark for him to see how beautiful she had tried to make herself, even using malachite as well as the usual galena. She let the dress fall and took a shy step towards him. He put out a hand and caressed her hair, her head, with tenderness and, she thought, curious detachment. But she knew nothing of these things.

Then he was closer. There was the warm, acrid male smell of his body, and his left arm was round her, stronger than she thought, holding her against him. Her face was against his chest. Clumsily, for he was holding her too tightly for her to manoeuvre, she kissed him there, but he twisted away, bruising her lips and leaving her confused and rejected. What had she done wrong?

‘Teach me,’ she said, raising her head to look at him.

He did not look into her eyes. He was steadying her with his left arm, fumbling with something in his right hand. She was held so tightly now that she could not struggle. Then at last his lips descended on hers and she closed her eyes.

The pain which followed immediately was so sudden and so extreme that it went beyond feeling. She opened her eyes but he kept his arm tightly round her, his lips pressed on hers, so she could not move. But the will do to so did not last. What seemed an age was only seconds, fractions of seconds, before her open eyes no longer responded to the light they received. The side of his face became a range of grey hills towards which she was riding, on some animal whose hoofs did not touch the ground. Then the hills merged into the dark sky behind them, and all was grey, but it was not the hoped-for grey which is the beginning of dawn. It was a grey that went deeper, and deeper, into night.

SIX

They took the brain from her head with long hooks, delicately drawing the tissue out through her nostrils, and discarding it in a small brazier of red-hot charcoal. The brain was of no importance. Then they used water mixed with vinegar in a syringe to rinse the cavity clear, sitting her up so that the residue could run out through her nose. Afterwards, they carefully cleaned her face before the flies could settle.

The vital organs, the stomach, the intestines, the lungs and the liver, were withdrawn carefully and whole. The embalmers laid her flat on a long wooden table, and one of them, the master, took a sharp flint knife to make a long incision low down in her side. Probing with his narrow hands he located the organs he sought, and, using another slender knife, dislodged and withdrew them, handing them to his assistant, who placed them in bronze trays and took them to another table where he covered them with natron salt, to dry and preserve them ready for the four jars which would stand in a chest at the head of the coffin. Their eternal resting place.

Once he had cleared the body, the master embalmer rinsed it through, first with palm wine, and then with a solution of coriander. He would now dry it in natron, before packing the cavities he had made with linen treated with myrrh and cassia; the nostrils and eyes plugged with linen soaked in resin, and the hair dressed with as much care as for attendance at a royal wedding.

The master embalmer had seven bodies laid out in various stages of the seventy-day preparation for eternity, and the open-ended hall where he worked was crowded. He had employed two extra assistants to keep the flies at bay, and he found he had to force himself not to hurry his craft, not to cut corners. His clients were rich and demanding, and all the more likely to notice a botched job. His hall was built on a north-to-south axis, so that the wind blew through it constantly, keeping the air fresh; but the odours of the spices and scented oils he used were the only ones a visitor might smell. All moisture was drawn out of the dead before they could rot.

It had taken a full day for Merymose to obtain permission for Huy to visit the embalmer. By the time he’d got it, the two dead girls the scribe wanted to see had been joined by this third. Her body had been found the morning before by the side of the pool in the little park on the south side of the royal compound. Now, Huy was visiting the embalmer alone, barely repressing his fury at the delay, but for which a girl’s life might have been saved. Inwardly, too, he cursed the arrogance of the latest victim’s father. Above all he turned his anger towards Kenamun, who, on grounds of security, had forbidden Huy to visit the scene of the third murder when it came to light, where he might have had a chance at last of studying the circumstances of death.

Merymose had already seen the body, but now he had been deputed by an increasingly impatient Kenamun to visit the victim’s parents. The father was a general, a commander of cavalry, and the mother a daughter of the army’s chief supplier of salt. The father had not applied for a Medjay to guard his house, giving as his reason that he had efficient men of his own to do the job.

‘She was called Mertseger,’ the embalmer told Huy as he stood looking down at her. ‘She looks terrible now, but I’m going to put packing in the cheeks to fill them up again after I’ve dried her out. The loss of moisture makes the face cave in, look like a skull. But I’ll give her back her beauty.’

The cavity of her abdomen had dropped alarmingly with the removal of its contents. The dark incision running obliquely from just above her vagina seemed a grosser violation of her corpse than anything inflicted on her in life.

‘Did you notice anything, any wound?’ 

‘No. And she had never known a man. The skin is unbroken,’ he gestured professionally towards the vagina. ‘I don’t need a doctor to tell me that. Do you want to see?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll stitch it up when she has dried out. We seal all the openings to the body. It is an extra insurance against the maggots. Once the flies have laid their eggs on a body, there’s nothing we can do, so we get that seen to as quickly as possible.’

Huy turned to the two adjoining tables. On the one farthest away lay Iritnefert, her arms at her sides, held there stiffly, as if she wanted to deny the downward pull of the earth. Her head was back and her chin raised, resin plugging the eye sockets. An assistant was carefully applying gold leaf to it. The lack of eyes robbed the face of all the character it had had, of personality, of the vestige of life. Huy hoped that when he died it would be in the desert or on the river, so that the vultures or the crocodiles would take him. He did not like the idea of being closed in a black tomb, though he knew that it would be only his
Sahu
lying there.

Nevertheless he looked more closely at Iritnefert.

Nothing to tell now of the girl she had been. The nose, dried out, was pitifully thin and pinched. The cheeks, also awaiting padding, had vanished into the cavities of the skull. She looked like a leathery caricature of the old woman she might have become.

‘She’ll look as alive as you or me, once we’ve packed her and made up her face,’ the embalmer reassured him again. ‘Normally we don’t like people to see them at this stage. It’s better that way. It’s better for them to see their loved ones as they remember them.’

Huy looked at the man. They were about the same age, but the embalmer seemed older. His hands were soft and wrax-like from frequent washing. He was of medium height, and had regular, even features of the kind which are instantly forgettable. His dark face was framed by raven-black hair so perfectly cut that it barely changed its set as he moved. His expression was one of amused and slightly sinister detachment, which reminded Huy strangely of the young king’s. You could imagine Tutankhamun sparing a man on the point of execution, or ordering the death of thousands, without the slightest twitch of an eye muscle.

‘I want to see the second one — Neferukhebit,’ said Huy briskly. He had had enough of carrying on at a snail’s pace. If toes had to be trodden on, too bad. Merymose might get it in the neck from Kenamun, but if this madman was to be nailed quickly, the odd official would have to sacrifice his dignity.

The embalmer sniffed primly. ‘That is impossible. As you can see.’

High walls of planking surrounded the body on the second table, forming a trough at the bottom of which the body lay. Into this natron salt had been poured, covering the corpse completely.

‘How long does this take?’ Huy insisted impatiently.

‘It depends on the weather, on the time of year, on the size of the body. In this case, not more than thirty days — forty at the most.’

‘And how long has it been so far?’

The embalmer consulted the writing on a limestone flake attached to the edge of the trough. He tutted, sucked his teeth.

‘How much difference would it make if you cleared this away for a few minutes — that’s all?’ persisted Huy. it is important that I see her.’

‘I’ve told you; it’s impossible. Nobody has ever suggested anything of the sort ever before. It is unheard of.’ The embalmer was shocked.

Huy forced himself to stay patient. ‘I imagine it is impossible for just anyone to come in here to see your work, as I have?’

‘Quite impossible.’

‘And you know that I am only here because I have royal authority?’

‘Yes.’

‘That authority is given me to help me find the killer of these girls.’

The embalmer looked uncomfortable, and wiped the back of his neck with a cloth. His assistants looked across with studiously blank faces as Huy began to raise his voice. The embalmer himself eyed him more nervously. This stocky little man, whose educated voice belied his riverman appearance, looked capable of doing damage. The embalmer glanced to check how close he was to a narrow shelf on which a series of knives were arranged in orderly rows.

‘It is not just me you will be obstructing when you object to my seeing her body.’

‘But to interrupt the process — ‘

‘For a few minutes?’

‘It has never been done before. I don’t know what the effect will be. I’d need the parents’ permission.’

Huy had had enough. ‘You have it,’ he lied firmly.

‘In writing?’

Huy growled, taking a step forward. ‘You doubt my word? I’m an officer of the court.’

Still doubtful, the embalmer beckoned his assistants away from their other tasks. He was probably thinking that in these times it was not worth taking the risk of offending anyone, just in case they were agents of Horemheb and you ended up in an emerald mine on the Eastern Coast. Together, the three of them removed the boards which formed the trough and the natron ran off in a tide of white powder on to the floor. Huy noticed the desiccated corpse of a shrew which must have fallen in when the stuff was first poured over Neferukhebit.

She emerged like a piece of sculpture from the white tide — the first woman, born of rock. Fussily, the embalmer dusted the remains of the salt from her body. The last of it to come away was damp, and a faint odour of sweet mustiness clung to it. Huy was surprised that it was not more unpleasant.

‘Quickly,’ said the embalmer.

Huy looked at her, reaching over to brush a last detail of natron away from her face.

Already the features were changing as moisture was drawn out of the flesh, but remembering how Iritnefert had looked when he had first seen her, he could understand how the two girls could be confused. They might have been twins. And, he reflected, the same innocence, the same near-perfect regularity of feature, was shared by Mertseger, who lay two paces away in the patience of death, awaiting her preparation for the Fields of Aarru.

‘I need to look at her back,’ he said after several minutes of carefully examining the girl’s body.

‘That
is
impossible.’

Huy dismissed the embalmer with a look and abruptly motioned to the two assistants. ‘Come on. She can’t be heavy.’

The assistants looked from Huy to their chief, who nodded assent. It was a more difficult job than they had imagined, because of the stiffness of the limbs, but by holding the head and the ankles they managed it. Huy looked carefully at the girl’s back, and found what he was seeking. If only Nubenehem remembered it, then at least he could establish for certain which girl had been at the City of Dreams. If whoever had killed her had also seen her there, and could be identified…Well, it would be progress, of a sort.

He nodded his thanks and the men laid her back on the table. The embalmer helped them replace the planks, and then fussed about whether to sweep up and re-use the original natron, or replace it with fresh salt. While he was deliberating, another thought suddenly struck Huy, and he leant over the edge of the trough, feeling the girl’s stomach and breasts.

‘What are you doing?’ the embalmer asked, outraged.

Huy felt under the small breasts and raised them. Under the left, just visible, was a minute puncture. Quickly, he moved across to Iritnefert’s body. The skin under the breasts had puckered and darkened, and it was impossible to see anything. He made his way back past Neferukhebit to where Mertseger lay. Under her left breast, whose pale skin was only just beginning to give up its bloom to death, was a tiny, dark-red blob, no bigger than a sand flea.

Armed with his new knowledge, Huy hastened back to the centre of the capital, but Merymose was not to be found. As it was possible that the Medjay had left word at his house, Huy went home. There was no message from the police captain, and he was on the point of leaving again for the City of Dreams when a rickshaw, its linen sunscreens pulled down around the passenger seat, rushed into the square and stopped by him, blocking his path.

Surere was already looking sleeker, Huy thought, as he tried to banish the servile feelings which still rose to the surface when he found himself in the company of his former superior. Surere, presumably, had sent for him because he needed his help; why was it, then, that he gave the impression of bestowing a favour?

‘It was a risk, sending a letter to my house,’ said Huy.

Surere spread his hands. ‘It would have been a greater one to have visited you in person. And the boy who served as my messenger is illiterate — a rare gift in a servant.’

Huy pursed his lips. He had never liked the nakedness with which Surere used people. Even less did he like the way in which people continued to be taken in by him. He remembered asking a fellow scribe about this, years ago, as they stood in one of the sun-filled courtyards of the Great Archive at Akhetaten.

‘I can’t stand his lordliness; but I admire his moral stance; and the first is always the servant of the second,’ the other scribe had explained serenely, fuelling Huy’s dislike. Still, Huy had answered Surere’s summons, had even given in to the messenger’s insistence that they travel in the closed rickshaw, so that he would not be able to tell where they were going. They had gone on for a long distance, before arriving at a door in a long, anonymous wall; the letter bearer, a gloomily serious young man with eyebrows which met across his brow, maintaining a severe silence throughout the journey. And now this room.

‘You haven’t said what you want.’

‘That would have been foolish, in such a letter.’ The bantering tone remained in Surere’s voice but he added edge to it for the last word or two. Huy felt himself warned. By this man who had no power over him and whom he could sink with one word to Merymose. But treachery was not in Huy’s blood. He looked around the miserable room in which they were standing: a low, dark, cramped place with a grudging little window through which thin light crept apologetically. It fell on a rough table and two stools. On the table were a jug of water and two wooden beakers, together with a small bowl of salt and a cob of dark bread. The walls were unpainted, mud-brown, and bare of any decoration or shelf. No table stood by the plain low bed in the corner, the only other piece of furniture in the room.