City of the Dead

opening the door a fraction wider. Closing it behind him, the child staring at him inquisitively, she led the way through an inner courtyard hung about with farm implements to a long low room facing north on the other side of the house. From a gallery half in shadow came the noise of snoring from one end and the rustle of straw as a body resting on it shifted its position in sleep.
    ‘My parents are there.’
    ‘I know.’
    The child burbled. Fearful that he might speak, or cry out, the girl took him to a small bed set against the wall, where he settled down, though from it he continued to gaze at Huy with the bright, frank eyes of his father. Then she returned to sit opposite her visitor, her own eyes tired, and their expression dull.
    ‘I am Nehesy’s friend,’ said Huy again.
    She shifted her position. ‘He spoke of you.’
    ‘I s he in trouble?’
    ‘What have you come for?’
    ‘To find out what has happened to him.’
    An expression of great bitterness crossed her face, which Huy did not understand, if you do not know, you are either a very good friend, or no friend at all.’
    ‘We were working together. I went to the stables and they told me he had been arrested. So I came here to find out more.’
    She continued to look at him bleakly, as if gathering the energy to speak. When she finally did, it was in a low, toneless voice, wrung dry of feeling.
    ‘Four days ago they came to our house at dawn. Three Medjays. They took my husband away. Then at noon one of the officers returned and told me that Nehesy was being relieved of his duties. I would have to get out of the house by evening. I didn’t know where to go. When something like that happens with things as they are at the moment, none of your friends wants to know you. So I came home here. They knew where I’d gone at the stables so I supposed that sooner or later Nehesy would be released, and would join me - I knew he couldn’t have done any harm — or that I’d be given news. I waited a day and then I went to the city, but no one could tell me anything.’
    All the time she spoke in a voice of quiet bewilderment, as if she could not believe that such a thing could have happened to her secure little family.
    ‘And then,’ she continued after a pause in which she had taken several deep breaths, ‘yesterday they brought him home.’ She stopped speaking again, and looked with dead eyes at a point in the room behind Huy.
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘In the stable.Below the loft.’
    ‘How is he? Is he sleeping?’
    Her eyes met his again. ‘Yes. He is sleeping.’
    Suddenly a cold fear gripped Huy’s heart. ‘What did they do to him?’
    ‘They told me he fell from a gallery in the prison. He was being escorted to an interview with one of the investigators and he slipped and fell.’
    ‘Did they tell you what he was accused of?’
    Aahetep hung her head. ‘I was afraid to ask. They never look into your eyes. They look at your forehead and talk to you as if your existence was something which they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge. They told me that as a servant of the state, he was entitled to a funeral at the expense of the palace. I told them I preferred to keep him.’
    ‘What will you do?’
    She looked at him with tired pride. ‘We cannot all lie in stone vaults for eternity. This evening my father will dig a pit in the fields, above the floodline. We will line it with stone and my mother and I will weave a wicker roof for it, which we will seal with pitch and cover with sand. Under it Nehesy will lie, curled as he was in his mother, with food and utensils for the great journey. We have no need of embalmers, for the sand will dry him. Geb will take him in his arms and from above Nut will watch over him. Little Itet and I will always be near him, and this house will harbour his Ka. It is better than a tomb, and less lonely.’
    Huy looked at her. ‘Can I see him?’
    Without another word she rose, and after a glance at the child, now sleeping, led the way out of the room and across the yard. As she pushed open the stable door, the smell met them and Huy felt his throat tighten. An image came to him before he could repress it of the grey worms seething in eye sockets, but as he approached his friend’s body he saw that Nehesy had been spared that.
    He lay on his side in an oval wicker basket, his hands cupped under his head and his knees drawn up to his chest. They had sprinkled natron over him, and the big earthenware