City of the Dead

oleander clambered, scattering it untidily with pale pink flowers.
    The door was opened to him by a house servant who ushered him into a large garden and asked him to wait. The house, raised on a platform against possible flood from the River, which ran close by, was tall and white, and partly hidden behind the cypress tress which had been planted along the edge of the rectangular pool. Two gardeners were busy, one watering a large kitchen garden, the other, half hidden, thinning out an enormous bank of blue and yellow flowers which rose against e inner side of the street wall. The lattice windows of the main reception room were set high in the house, and above them rose the two vents to catch the north wind. It was a bigger place than most of the others in the compound. Huy noticed that the interior doorposts were set with lapis lazuli.
    A pair of ro geese waddled over curiously from the direction of the pool to look at him. As they did so, their owner appeared in the doorway of the house.
    Horaha came slowly across the garden to meet him, leaning heavily on a blackwood stick. He wore no headdress, and his bald head was bronzed by the sun. He was dressed in a calf-length pleated kilt and a short upper robe with half-sleeves, from which wiry arms projected, ending in hands that seemed too big for them, with long, agile fingers. A high wooden sole had been attached to the sandal he wore on the foot of his bad leg, which protruded, withered and thin, from below the hem of the kilt. Huy, having noticed it, quickly withdrew his gaze and did not look in its direction again. He had always been careful in matters of everyday courtesy.
    The elderly doctor was not alone. Walking with him was a girl with the same intelligent face, but more delicate, subtle features. She had a clear, high forehead, framed by a mass of black hair dressed in a complex braid. Her large chestnut eyes were set under slender dark-brown eyebrows, and her fine nose above a generous mouth, curved in a smile which was partly defensive. Her chin was firm without being obstinate. She was tall - taller than Huy — and she had broad shoulders and full breasts, though her legs were long and slim, and her hips almost boyish.
    Wooden folding chairs had been brought out from the shade of the house and set under a tamarisk tree, where house servants brought Dakhla wine, honey and figs. Horaha’s manner was hospitable and charming; but he could not disguise an inner lack of ease.
    ‘How private do you wish this interview to be?’ he asked Huy-‘I have not introduced you to my daughter. She is Senseneb, and since my wife’s death she has been my right hand — more. I have no secrets from her, and if anything she knows more about my affairs than I do myself.’
    He was talking too much, too fulsomely; out of nervousness, Huy supposed. He smiled at the girl, but she did not relax her own expression. She would remain defensive until she knew whether or not he intended harm to her father.
    ‘Are you a doctor too?’ he asked her politely.
    ‘My father has taught me,’ she replied, non-committally.
    ‘There is no reason for you not to stay, if you wish,’ said Huy, and was pleased to see her expression unstiffen.
    As their conversation progressed, Huy was happy to find that there was very little of the restraint that had surrounded his talk with Merinakhte. Or rather, the restraint was of a different kind. The unease he had been aware of in Horaha did not diminish, and though Senseneb said little she would occasionally dart her father a warning glance. To try to relax them more, Huy played the part of the bland bureaucrat, making routine enquiries for the record, given that the death in question concerned the most important person in the country. He affected a lack of interest in the question of the pharaoh’s successor, taking the line that whoever ruled, people like him would always be needed. This act went some way towards having its desired effect, though despite himself Huy was sorry to see that Senseneb was beginning to look at him with mild contempt. A large and indolent cat, one of two that were prowling around the table, leapt on to his lap and settled there, purring.
    He wondered how old Senseneb might be. Not a girl any more, she might have been at the end of her third decade. Had she been married? Was she still? Did she have children? Her face told him nothing, and Huy fought his curiosity. It was not relevant.
    They had come to the cause of the