Khaemhet, standing by the bargemaster at the stern, was looking anxiously from obelisk to quay, shouting orders to men who grabbed stay-ropes and, with long poles, attempted to arrest the great stone’s pendulum-like motion. Satisfied that the mason’s attention was entirely taken up, and determined not to let this god-given opportunity slip, Surere hurried forward, slipping adroitly between the knots of men, losing himself in the busy crowd of sailors. Finally he stopped and looked over the shoreward side of the barge: it was still swaying away from the jetty wall before crashing into it again, but the amount of swing was smaller, and the movement less violent. If he misjudged his leap and fell, there was still a likelihood that he would be crushed to death; but the chances of that had lessened considerably.
Choosing his moment, he hoisted himself on to the low wooden railing that ran the length of the barge, holding on for balance with both feet and his left hand, and stealing a final cautious look round to see if anyone had noticed him. No one had, but the bustle aboard was abating, and there was less frenzy in the straining figures at ropes ashore. It was now or never. Letting go of the rail with his hand, he pushed with his feet and launched himself forward into space, aiming at a coil of rope near a hardwood bollard.
He landed heavily, grazing knees and wrists on the rope. Rolling over, he quickly found his feet, and walked determinedly, a man on an errand, past and behind the crowd of onlookers which had gathered to gawp and shout advice. No one spared him a second glance: the barge seemed to be under control and the drama had gone out of the moment. Some of the workers ashore had dropped their ropes and crossed to man the derricks.
Brushing the dust from his stained and battered kilt, Surere thanked god that his time in the quarries had made him so fit. Safe in the crowd, he slackened his pace to still the pumping of his heart, and turned to take a final look at the barge. He could see Khaemhet walking forward, though it was too far away to see the expression on his face, and he could not tell whether the mason was already looking for him. It would be as well not to take chances.
There was an open area to cross before he could reach the safety of the tightly-packed yellow and ochre buildings which marked the riverward edge of the town. Noticing a man leading a small procession of three pale grey donkeys, heads and backs bowed under a heavy burden of barley in coarse brown sacks, their shadows long in the late afternoon sun, Surere made himself wait for them to reach him. Once they had, he used them as cover to detach himself from the press of people at the harbour, and headed quickly for the mouth of the nearest street. He did not look back again.
Had Khaemhet missed him by now? A brief sense of regret at his broken promise was quickly eclipsed by the thought of what would happen to him if he were recaptured, and he moved faster.
Soon he was in the cool gulley of the street. Half running between the windowless walls, he turned a corner and even the sounds of the harbour were shut off. He paused to take his bearings before pressing on, still maintaining the purposeful pace of a man with an appointment to keep. He needed shelter and clean clothes and he needed to get to a part of town where no one would question the arrival of a stranger; where people had their own secrets to keep.
Beyond that his plans were looser than he liked to admit, even to himself. But he was free, and he trusted to Aten, the god of the sunlight and the protector of the innocent, whose power he had never doubted despite all his tribulations since the fall of Akhenaten, to place him in the shelter of his hand now.
TWO
Huy was shown to his place by a dark-skinned girl dressed in nothing but a broad gilded collar studded with oval turquoises and a similar thin girdle resting on her hips. Her breasts were small and firm, the nipples only a shade darker than her skin; because this was a party, she had threaded beads of carnelian into the hair of her pubis.
He drank from the beaker of wine she gave him and glanced around at his fellow guests. Some wore scented garlands round their necks, and most of the women had perfume cones on top of their black wigs. There were fifty people in the pillared hall, in groups of five at small tables dotted around a central area where a quartet of women musicians sat with a singer.
Huy was late, and he gave apologies to the three people at his table – a sad-eyed woman he did not know, her husband, a grain broker whom he knew by sight, and a Medjay captain, Merymose. They were reserved, though no more so than any strangers would be at first acquaintance, and cordial enough for Huy to think that either they did not know his background, or did not care.
‘Where is our hostess?’ he asked, looking round the room again. The invitation from Taheb had come out of the blue, and at first he had considered not accepting it. He had not seen Amotju’s widow since his friend’s death, and although the events surrounding it had forced the two of them into an uneasy alliance, she had always given the impression that her feelings for him were anything but warm. For this reason, if for no other, he had decided to attend the dinner party, curiosity having got the better of him. If Taheb had decided to invite him, there must be a reason. He was more intrigued than flattered to notice that he had been shown to a table at which chairs were set, rather than the stools given to the less-honoured guests.
‘She will be joining us,’ said the broker, indicating the empty chair between Huy and the Medjay. ‘She has gone to talk to her steward about the acrobats. They have arrived too early, and have another booking later.’
‘I don’t see why they can’t perform now,’ said his wife, who looked bored.
‘They would get in the way of the food servers,’ answered her husband matter of factly.
‘Oh.’ She picked up the mandrake fruit by her place and sniffed its sickly-sweet odour, darting a glance at Merymose, who answered it with a friendly look, declining its invitation.
‘Don’t you think it’s a little early for that?’ asked the broker, indicating the fruit. Muttering something under her breath, but without venom, the woman put the narcotic down and sighed. The awkwardness of the moment was saved by the arrival of two girls bearing golden plates with honey bread, cucumber, nabk berries, falafel and – luxuriously – roast beef. A third carried a pitcher with pomegranate wine, and refilled each beaker. The broker’s wife drained hers immediately and held it up for more. The broker pretended not to notice.
In an attempt to deflect attention from this, Merymose asked if anyone had seen the great rough-cut obelisk which had arrived from the First Cataract a week earlier and which had lain on the third jetty ever since, one of the quayside derricks having collapsed during offloading.
‘I think they have rolled it on to logs,’ said the broker.
‘Isn’t the quay too narrow for that?’ asked Huy, politely.
‘The one thing to be thankful for is that the stone didn’t fracture,’ said the broker. ‘That obelisk is to be set up and carved as a memorial to Horemheb’s victories in the north during the reign of Nebmare Amenophis.’
‘Then it would have been most unfortunate if it had broken,’ said Huy, neutrally, avoiding the Med jay’s eye. The pharaoh Amenophis III had died over twenty years ago, yet now the carved records on all public buildings were being altered to show that he was the immediate predecessor of Tutankhamun.
It would be as if Akhenaten had never existed. And yet during Amenophis’s long reign there had been very little military activity. During Akhenaten’s reign, when the northern empire had been lost, the commander-in-chief was Horemheb. The fifty-year-old general had now also been elected chief of police, and it seemed that he had the eleven-year-old pharaoh securely tucked into a fold of his blue-and-gold kilt.