City of the Dead

water jars which stood about him like sentinels kept the temperature in the stable cool. The light was dim, but there was enough for Huy to see what had been done to Nehesy before he died. He stole a glance at Aahetep, looking down at the corpse with moist eyes which still would not acknowledge the truth of what they saw, and wondered if she really believed what they had told her.
    ‘It must have been a very bad fall,’ he said.
    She looked at him with eyes blazing. ‘If you were his friend, may Horus help you avenge him,’ she said; and he knew that there was nothing at all he could tell her, even if he had wanted to.

    Huy spent that evening at his house with Senseneb. The dinner he had planned had been arranged much earlier, but their anticipation of it had dwindled. They sat near one another after they had eaten, but they spoke little, so preoccupied with their own thoughts that they were not curious about each other’s. Huy, glad that after so long there was a woman here again, and one who warmed the little rooms by her presence, still weighed on the scales of his heart the element of risk he would take in confiding in her completely. It seemed to him that he would have to commit himself. There was no progress without risk; his one sure ally had been removed from the field; and Senseneb had done nothing - apparently - to betray him, or they would not have taken Nehesy and tortured him to death.
    There was something more: within him he felt the love bond with a woman more strongly than he had since the first years of his long-dead marriage. He still tried to suppress it. There was no time for love now, or so he told himself. But another part of his heart longed for Horaha’s daughter, and it would not be quiet.
    Senseneb was aware of the distance the present silence had put between them, but she was trying to summon up the courage to share the thoughts which were preoccupying her. She had drunk enough of the Kharga wine he had served to feel confident, but not enough to feel reckless. She did not know what his reaction would be to the truth about her own Past. But she reflected that she knew little of his, and was therefore not inhibited in her feelings for him. He did not Seem to be a narrow-hearted man, and in any case she would have to gamble to stand any chance of winning.
    Both knew that if they parted, or moved on to lovemaking, before they had spoken to each other, an important moment would have been missed forever; but it was difficult to arrive at it. It seemed, they both thought, foolish for two adults who no longer had the excuse of youthful inexperience still to be so much at the mercy of the mischief of Hathor. But they continued to fence, each refusing to begin, discontentedly throwing scraps of small talk into the silence.
    The lamp began to flicker and die on the table. Huy dressed the wick, refilling the bowl with linseed oil. The dying light was a reminder of passing time, and the activity it demanded triggered the conversation which had been waiting with increasing impatience to begin.
    ‘More wine?’ asked Huy.
    ‘Yes.’
    He fetched a fresh jar and broached it, and they drank in continued silence for a moment longer; but both were tired of it now.
    ‘I want to tell you about my past,’ said Senseneb. ‘I do not need to hear yours in return, though I would like to.’
    ‘I will tell you everything. There is nothing particularly evil, daring or adventurous in it, though. It has been part battle, part assault course, like everyone else’s.’
    Senseneb smiled. ‘I like your house.’
    ‘You honour it.’
    She sighed, already thinking that it would be good to live with him; but unsure if there would ever be a time when they could.
    ‘If we are to know each other properly, you must also know my past,’ she insisted. ‘My parents are now both dead; but there is nothing I have to say to harm their reputations here or in the Fields of Aarru.’ As she spoke she looked into the shadows of the room, as if seeking Horaha’s Ba there, perched on a shelf or clinging bat-like to the wall near the ceiling, listening to his orphan daughter. She knew that he had liked Huy.
    ‘I am twenty-eight,’ she said, looking at the lamp. ‘My husband sent me back to my parents because I was barren. But that was not the real reason. I had slept with another man; I had slept with several others.’
    She looked at Huy’s face; but if it was wearing any expression at all that she could read, it was