We drove away from the now silent village. Eventually I broke the silence.
‘At least we have an answer, Khety. Something we know we know.’
‘The dead girl’s connection with the Harem Palace.’
‘Exactly. Take me there right now. I’ll need to interview everyone.’
‘We have our authorities, but we’ll have to inform the Office of the Harem first.’
I sighed. Was nothing simple?
‘There’s no time to waste. Come on, let’s go.’
Khety squirmed like a child caught lying.
‘What?’
‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten? The invitation?’
And then it struck me. From Mahu. To a hunt. This afternoon. I cursed my stupidity in accepting.
‘Here I am, with the first decent lead we’ve had in days, and you think I am going to waste time on a hunt? With Mahu, of all people?’
Khety shrugged.
‘Stop shrugging! We’re going directly to the Harem Palace.’
Khety looked uncomfortable, but did as I ordered and drove back into the city.
We were just entering the outer precincts when suddenly from a side street, out of nowhere, Mahu appeared driving his own chariot. His ugly dog, as obvious a symbol of a man’s soul as ever I saw, stood with its paws up on the sill beside him.
I turned to Khety, furious. ‘Did you tell him where we were going?’
‘No! I don’t tell him anything.’
‘Well, you work for him, and here he is, just as we’re on the trail of something at last. It seems like a strange sort of coincidence, doesn’t it?’
Khety was about to bite back when Mahu yelled over at me, ‘Just in time for the hunt. I’m sure you hadn’t forgotten.’ He jerked his reins viciously, and charged ahead.
17
The hunting party gathered at the main jetty of the river-a long, narrow construction of newly laid timber boards on supporting piles of stone and wood built out perhaps fifty cubits from the land, and perhaps five hundred cubits in length. A few cargo barges carrying stone blocks were being unloaded, and a squat, crowded ferry was setting sail across the river with its cargo of men, children, animals and coffins, between the east and west banks. But otherwise at this hour of the afternoon there were just pleasure-boats-one particularly elegant, with a double-storey cabin, which I had not seen before-with their masts down and resting on their stands. Among these drifted a number of skiffs with small linen sails dyed vivid blues and reds. The chimes and peals of cultivated conversation and laughter tinkled and lilted on the travelling waters.
The sounds coming from the hunting group were different. The voices were assertive, masculine, testing themselves against a kind of underlying silence, a palpable tension. A typical group of young men from elite families, together with a handful of Medjay officers. All swagger and machismo, all standing on their hind legs, the mood hyped up and belligerent.
Khety tried to insist again that he had had nothing to do with Mahu’s intervention. I could not credit it. ‘I had begun to trust you,’ I said, and walked off towards the group of men. My feet felt as heavy as river mud. I was trapped by protocol, just when I needed to follow the new lead.
Mahu introduced me. ‘Glad you could join us,’ he added, with heavy sarcasm. Here was a man who made everything he said sound like a threat.
‘Thank you for the invitation,’ I said with as little enthusiasm as possible.
He ignored me. ‘I hear you’ve been scratching around in the workers’ village. You’ve a missing woman and a dead officer on your hands. Time is ticking.’
I wasn’t going to give him anything. ‘It’s surprising how things apparently unrelated to each other are in fact deeply connected.’
‘Is it? Perhaps you can deeply connect your aim with a flying duck, if nothing else.’
A condescending ripple of amusement rang out from the other men. I looked around their gathered faces. They all wore imitations, more or less successful, of Mahu’s lion grin. All dressed up in pristine hunting outfits, they looked like they were going to a fancy dress party. Their muscles had the appearance of vanity, not work. Hunting for them was a pastime, an amusement. Necessity, that simple and true god, had never visited them. The angle of the sun exaggerated the shadows of their haughty faces. Here were heads of offices, scions of Great Families, all members of the power elite.
Although I have made clear my hostile opinions about the Great Changes, even I must admit that one of the consequences is the way they have opened up new possibilities of advancement to a wider social spectrum. People such as myself. I am from a so-called ‘ordinary’ family. Yet how inadequate that word seems to the truth it contains: people caring for each other, improvising ways to get by, to enjoy their pleasures, to live well. These elite families, son after father, father after grandfather, have held on to the offices of earthly power and the locked stores of riches of our land for as long as time has trickled through the water clock. They have held on to it as if it could protect them from everything. And in truth it does-from poverty, from most kinds of fear, from want, from the diminished or destroyed horizons of a life’s possibilities; from powerlessness, from humiliation, from hunger. Yet not from the suffering and vulnerability to misfortune that affect us all as a necessary part of being human.
Mahu interrupted my thoughts, as if reading them. ‘Well, time flies. Let us take to the boats. Good hunting.’
We walked over to a group of papyrus-reed boats. Servants stood ready to attend us on the hunt, their own skiffs already prepared. I had grown up sailing these lovely craft-so simple and so elegant. We partnered up. Khety appeared at my side looking anxious, but just as he was about to step onto the boat beside me, one of the men from the group stopped him with a rudeness that amazed us both. But I had no wish, in any case, to waste the next hour with Khety whining in my ear. The stranger introduced himself as Hor. He had with him his cat on a leather lead. It leaped at once to the front of the boat, and sat down, washing its front right paw, glancing at me expectantly, critically.
Hor, who seemed uninterested in conversation, produced a superb bow from a linen carrying cloth. He tested the tension of the bowstring with the thumb-ring. The fine threads-probably around sixty for a weapon of this quality-were neatly joined at each end to loops of tightly twisted sinew-a marvellous way to avoid fraying. I found, in a wooden box, a carved throwing stick I could use myself, as of course I possessed none to bring with me. There was also a weighted net and a spear in the box, in case we caught anything bigger. All pretty basic, and nowhere near as powerful as the costly sophistication of the bow.
As Mahu gave the signal and we moved in silence out onto the wide river, as smooth and rippling as a banner in a light breeze, towards a reed marsh further north along the river from the city, I was already desperate for the hunt to be over. The cat remained poised and keen on the prow, mesmerized by the far songs and hidden calls of the marsh. Soon the city disappeared behind the wide, tree-lined curve of the river. The eastern cliffs, where the tombs were being built, rose up on our right-hand side to form a high natural barrier to the river’s course, but to the west the river widened and flattened into water marshes and thick, dark papyrus forests. Birds pitched their warnings as they drifted, circling in the high light.
The skiffs silently, one by one, entered the tall stands of the motionless green and silver reed marsh, and disappeared. As I punted along, I tried to keep track of the others; it was hard to keep one’s gaze steady among the flickering verticals of the reeds. The hunting cat was up on all fours, pacing about its little territory in the bow, its head rising up to scent the air. Hor stood up, preparing his bow and glancing alertly through the reeds, as if looking for something. I looked back and saw, briefly, Khety some considerable distance behind me. He was trying to track my progress. I slowed my pace. He raised a hand, trying to signal, but then he disappeared again behind the dense forest of the reeds. Hor said gruffly, ‘Don’t lose the pace. We don’t want to miss the fun.’ I looked down to make sure the nets and throwing stick were near to hand.