City of the Dead

thought in Huy’s heart was to kill him; he saw himself seize the man by one wrist and the waistband of his kilt, and hurl him into the river.
    But there had been too many deaths. Huy paused. Before Merinakhte could recover he had placed his thumbs behind the doctor’s ears and pressed until the man passed out. Ay’s justice would be harsher than drowning; but Huy was too much of a coward to take another life. He heard shouts, and, looking up, saw three scared young longshoremen approaching. On the ground, a pool of urine spread from Merinakhte’s loins.

    Ay took the Golden Chair in the last days of the season of akhet, so that the people would be free to farm as soon as possible after the end of the flood. It coincided with news from the north of great victories by Horemheb over the Hittites, giving the Blacklanders a second reason to rejoice, for the conscripted soldiers would soon be coming home. Horemheb had sent word that there was nothing now that could not be dealt with by regulars.
    The High Priest of Amun made much of the good news, coming as it did on the back of the magnificent funerals of Tutankhamun and his queen, for which Ay had revived many more of the old rituals suppressed during the days of the Great Criminal. The priests acclaimed Ay as the bringer of peace and stability to the Black Land at last, and all the portents were that he would live happily and long. The popularity that ten days’ celebration at his expense had brought him was undeniable, and the drinking house talk was of a new marriage, an heir, and a new dynasty, founded on peace as fully as the last had been on war.

    ‘I never thought I would see this house again,’ said Senseneb, looking round the cramped living room into which the sun shone, making the spiralling dust sparkle.
    ‘I never thought we would see the Southern Capital again,’ replied Huy, looking at his old home with the eyes of a stranger. Had it only been eighty days since he had left it? And yet even the journey back from Meroe, where they had left the queen in the care of the governor, seemed like a dream.
    ‘Do you regret leaving here?’
    Huy could not answer the question. It was too soon to tell. But he could not disappoint the hope in her voice. In a very short time, Senseneb had taken to life in the country; and he still believed in the love bond between them.
    ‘No,’ he replied at last. ‘But it is good to return, and to see that Ay kept his word.’
    ‘Yes. My father’s Ka will be at peace.’
    ‘Will you go to the doctors’ compound?’
    She shook her head. ‘I will see Hapu, but I will not revisit my past. I would be like a ghost returning to a place which everyone it knew has left.’
    They fell silent. Huy thought of Merinakhte. Ay had ordered him to be impaled, and Huy had seen the execution. He had bribed the impalers to give the young doctor flame liquor before they killed him. It was an act of mercy he owed his enemy, for he knew that he should have given Merinakhte to the River at the end of their fight. But Merinakhte had refused to drink, twisting his head and lips away from the proffered bottle so violently that in the end the executioners had given up. It had been a bad death.
    Huy looked around the room again, to clear his heart, recognising his old possessions — the statues of Horus and Bes, the battered furniture, the papyrus scrolls in their niche. They seemed to belong to someone else now. Perhaps, in a way, they did.
    ‘What will you do with this house?’ asked Senseneb.
    Huy had asked himself that question. The answer depended upon many things. He had the chance of a new life in the south, but something made him reluctant to let go of the old. Was it just natural caution? He would return to Napata now. That was certain. Perhaps there an answer would come to him. It did not matter how long it took, there was no hurry. Ay had even told him he could practise as a scribe again. But now that it was possible at last, discontent stirred in a corner of his heart. He looked inwards at a picture of himself: a provincial scribe, living out his life by the river under the southern sun. It was a restful, calm, uneventful picture.
    ‘Ipuky, the Master of the Silver Mines, gave me this house. I will talk to him about what to do.’
    ‘Why do you need someone else’s advice?’
    Huy took her hands, but he knew what the house meant to him. Still, he would not deny himself this chance of happiness. Happiness. Another word with no