Egypt Page 27

  I stood in the shadows, listening intently for any sound from the house. I watched the full moon as she moved slowly across the dark ocean of the night, and the great stars wheeled around her. Eventually, in the darkest hour of the night, when she was about to sink below the horizon, the doors opened once more, and the cloaked figure slipped out, accompanied by his two guards. I ran silent as the moon through the dark ways of the city, found the place I had decided upon in my head, where several lanes merged into a small open space, and waited. I was ready.

  As the group of figures appeared, I sent an axe hurtling through the shadows with all my strength; it thudded exactly into the centre of the first guard’s forehead with a crack, and he slumped to the ground. The cloaked figures of Nakht and the other guard stopped in their tracks, trying to identify their attacker; the second guard moved quickly on his feet, fully-concentrated, coming towards me, his curved blade slicing at the shadows before him. I tormented him with a scatter of small stones cast against the wall beside him. He turned, and I plunged my scimitar deep into his belly, jerking the curved blade sideways until his guts spilled out, warm and slippery, into his clutching hands. His face tipped up to the stars; it was Nakht’s manservant, Minmose. Perhaps he recognized me, for he muttered something; but the blood in his mouth choked him, and he died. I lowered his body to the ground.

  The hooded figure had already disappeared silently into the narrow streets. But he didn’t know his assailant was me; nor did he know I knew exactly where he was going. And above all, I knew how to get there faster. I ran like a jackal, with the supreme power of the opium surging through me; and I was waiting for him in the shadows opposite the door of his mansion when he arrived, breathless and silent. The moment had come. Just as he reached his door, and safety, I stepped into the street and revealed myself. He stared at me.

  ‘Show yourself,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ he replied. ‘Do you not know who I am?’

  ‘I want to look upon the face of Obsidian.’

  ‘Obsidian has no face,’ he replied.

  ‘We have that in common, then. I, too, am a shadow returned from the Otherworld to feed upon revenge. So show yourself. Or is the great Obsidian afraid?’

  He slowly slipped off the hood. In the moonlight, the face was familiar, and yet now it seemed possessed by a stranger. I knew him and I did not know him. His eyes were black stones.

  ‘Names are powers. You should use them carefully, with respect,’ he replied. ‘They bring the forces of eternity to life in this world.’

  ‘You lied to me. You left me to die.’

  Obsidian’s face betrayed no emotion.

  ‘Have you not discovered there is so much more to yourself than you ever believed? And is it not so much darker than you could ever have imagined?’ he said.

  I took another step closer to him. I could see a faint sweat on his skin. His right hand held on to a hidden weapon. He stood poised, like a different man entirely.

  ‘I have lost my family,’ I said.

  ‘All earthly things end. But the way forward calls you now to something far greater…’

  ‘Don’t talk that rubbish to me. I know you too well,’ I said.

  ‘You do not know me at all.’

  ‘I want my life back,’ I hissed.

  Obsidian almost smiled.

  ‘Your old life is gone. It’s finished. But there is a place for you, in the future of a new world, without dynasties–if you join me now.’

  I tightened my grip on my scimitar.

  ‘What future? Ankhesenamun cannot prevail now. Horemheb will occupy Thebes. Nothing you have done will prevent that calamity. You have simply made it possible,’ I said.

  ‘The royal dynasty is finished. General Horemheb is a soldier without imagination. He believes he will bring “order” to the land. It is a shallow ambition. He would stifle the priesthood, and impose his own dynasty. Egypt is the greatest of all empires. But it has for too long been ruled by kings and dynasties, beset by vanity and jealousy. That shall be no more. There will be no more kings. And that is not all. There will be no more worship of the Gods, for they too have failed. Only Osiris, Lord of the Dead, eternally incorruptible, will rise again at the midpoint of the night, reborn in me. When Ra ascends tomorrow, time itself will begin again, a new age and a new world,’ said Obsidian. ‘It is I who will prevail.’

  Somewhere in the distance a dog howled, and another answered. It would soon be dawn.

  I took another step forward. With the next I would be close enough to slay him. But he was prepared, too. He watched me carefully. The city was silent all around us. I looked up at the eternal ocean of the night, glittering with stars. A harrowing sorrow entered my heart.

  ‘I have one last question,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you do,’ he said.

  ‘Why did Obsidian kill Khety?’

  ‘You already know the answer to your own question,’ he said, simply. ‘Because you told me about him. Your own words condemned him. And now here we are.’

  He might as well have cut my heart out with his knife. I had told Nakht about Khety for the first time on the boat, on our way to the palace. I had trusted him.

  He took one more step towards me.

  ‘You have looked into the dark mirror of the truth, so you now understand.’

  He touched his heart. And when he smiled, I attacked.

  Our swords sliced through the moonlight. His was made of obsidian; a long, black, deadly, shiny blade, honed to the finest edge. This was what had cut off the head of my friend. This was the blade that had sliced him apart, while he was still alive.

  We fought intently, closely, our faces almost intimate, our breaths close in the cold air, our swords desperate to find each other’s hearts.

  The obsidian blade whispered through the silence and I twisted out of its dark path, parrying each brilliant thrust and slice with my own curved blade, battling to maintain momentum. Suddenly his sword sliced into the muscle of my right forearm. My blade clattered across the stones, and blood slipped from the perfect cut.

  He leapt back, light as a cat on his feet, and disappeared around a dark corner of the street. I tore a piece out of my robe to bind the wound, and stood still, listening to the silence. Then I picked up my sword in my left hand and moved slowly around the corner. The shadowy doorways seemed empty. Up ahead was a derelict space between two buildings, where a large house was being reconstructed. I knew he must be in there. I knew he was leading me away from his mansion.

  As I entered the darkness, sand and grit crunched lightly under my sandals. I peered into the gloom. Here and there slants of moonlight entered through the timbers of the roof. I inched forward, my sword ready, trying to see into the gloom. And then I heard something, the faintest whisper–the obsidian blade slicing through the air. Just in time, I threw myself down, and as it flashed over me, catching the moonlight, I twisted around on the ground, drew my old dagger from its place across my chest, and threw it, left-handed, with all my strength. There was a moment of silence; and then Obsidian’s face loomed out of the shadows. The dagger was planted in his chest. He looked curiously at the bloom of black blood that stained his linen robe, made luminous by the moonlight. And then, to my astonishment, he offered me the obsidian blade.

  ‘Take it. Kill me. For Khety. For the dead boys. Taste your revenge. Do it now…’ he said quietly, with a strange remorse.

  I hesitated. Was he now himself again? But then the wrong smile crept over Obsidian’s face. He began to draw the dagger out of his chest. Blood followed. He hissed in some kind of dark rapture. Then he pointed the dripping blade at me.

  ‘I knew it … you are too weak even to take the revenge you have sought for so long,’ he said. ‘But I am perfect.’

  And in the moment it took him to smile, I grasped the obsidian knife with both hands, and with one absolutely silent motion, the blade cut through the dark air, and through his flesh and bones as if they were insubstantial as a spirit’s
. His torso remained standing, his arms moving as if in apology or confusion; his blood pulsed out of his neck in gushes that quickly lost their strength, until his body slipped over and fell to the ground. It jerked a few last times, and then lay still.

  His head had rolled away; I scrambled to find it, then ran into the street with it still warm, still full of secrets, in my hands. I held it up, dripping, by the hair, in the last of the moonlight. His eyes were open wide, staring, as if he had seen something that truly surprised him.

  ‘What do you see now? Do you see the truth and the light? Or just the darkness?’ I cried.

  But his features were changing again. Slowly, and in death, I could once more recognize not Obsidian, but Nakht, the man I had called friend nearly all my life.

  I walked to the Great River. The vast waters were black under the late-night sky. I sat down, and studied the head: this simple skull, with its once-mutable, lively face, had contained secrets, and languages and ideas, and the knowledge of the stars and the Gods; it contained brilliance and mercilessness, crimes and cruelties, and somewhere, somehow, even love. But those things were all gone now. With the last of my strength, I threw the head as far out as I could. It landed with a faint splash, and vanished.

  I stayed there watching the great mysteries of the perpetual waters running by me in the last of the darkness of the night. I was shivering uncontrollably again. The opium sang in my blood, demanding to be satiated. But I would never take it again. I had to face myself before I could return home. I felt unclean. So I stood in the Great River, and began to pour its waters over myself, over and over, scrubbing at the agony in my flesh, and heard myself begin to scream.

  42

  Horemheb’s divisions occupied the city the following day. Before dawn his ships sailed into the harbour in silence. As Ra rose upon a new day, his regiments moved through the silent streets quietly and efficiently. There was no resistance. There was no disorder. Shops remained closed, and people stayed at home, afraid, waiting to see what would happen, hoping the storm would break and pass into a new peace. The Medjay submitted obediently. My old foe Nebamun remained at the head of the force, and was ready and waiting for the general himself, offering his congratulations. Horemheb’s officers marched into the bureaucracies and the temples, and new men, who swore their loyalty to the army, were given positions of authority. Those who were associated with the old regime were marched out, under arrest, in daylight, to await their trials in the jails of the city. But no one disappeared in the dark of night. There was no violence. There were no summary executions. Elite men hid in their mansions, and waited to see what would happen. Horemheb’s reign began, as he had said it would, with the restoration of order. And the next day the shops opened, and people returned to work.

  I visited the general, and gave him the location of the merchant’s warehouse. That night, after the fall of the new curfew, he commanded his most elite squad. They took their positions along every street and every alleyway in the moonlight, armed with axes, staves, swords or spears. Up on the rooftops, archers waited, poised and silent. But instead of breaking down the great wooden doors with a battering ram, Horemheb commanded the archers to fire arrows dowsed in flaming bitumen into the compound of the warehouse. These hissed up into the night sky, brief shooting stars, and arced down into the unseen interior. After a moment, there were shouts from within as fires sparked; then another round of arrows shot up into the sky, and down into the warehouse. As the fires took hold, smoke began to rise up, and a glow could be seen inside the building; the shouts of men trying to rally their forces came clear over the high walls. A third shower of arrows lit up the sky, and now fierce red flames took possession of the warehouse, shooting up above the walls.

  Horemheb nodded, and his foot soldiers gathered before the doors. A figure suddenly appeared at the top of the high wall, his tunic and hair on fire, dancing in agony, and dropped to the ground; instantly the back of his skull was dashed by Horemheb’s men. There were more shouts within, and then the great wooden doors began to open; thick smoke billowed out, and a gust of heat and flame, and men, blinded and staggering, many on fire, ran screaming towards Horemheb’s men, and were swiftly dispatched with blows to the skull. Quickly there was a long line of dead bodies laid out neatly in the street, and the fire burned on, lighting up the night sky; but Horemheb had imposed a curfew, and no one dared to come out to see what was happening.

  By dawn, the fire had gutted the warehouse, and burned itself out. Horemheb strode among the ruins, and I followed him, taking in the carnage and chaos around me. Many more bodies, burned into twisted, inhuman shapes, lay scattered about. We looked at the ashy remains of cages and cells, where kidnap victims must have been held; we found the storage rooms where the opium would have been kept; and finally we stood in the treasury, where the vast golden profits of Nakht’s opium trade, tarnished by the heat of the fire, spilled across the floor. There was enough gold there to buy a new army. Horemheb kicked at it, contemptuously.

  ‘And they thought they could destroy me with this?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Where is “Obsidian”?’ he asked, suddenly, turning on me. ‘I have a feeling he is not here, and that you know where he is. Do not lie to me.’

  ‘He is dead. I killed him.’

  Horemheb’s sword blade was suddenly sharp and cold against my throat.

  ‘I gave very clear orders he was to be taken,’ he said.

  ‘He killed my closest friend. He betrayed me. He left me for dead. And he had my family, living in his house,’ I said. ‘He was my prize, and he was about to kill me. I don’t regret what I did.’

  ‘Who was he? Name him…’ he insisted.

  For some reason, perhaps the last traces of loyalty to the memory of a former friend, I hesitated for a moment. But I wanted the world to know the truth.

  ‘His real name was Nakht.’

  Horemheb laughed briefly, like a jackal, at the cruel irony.

  ‘How perfect. The Queen’s royal envoy turns out to be the spider at the heart of the dark web of secrets. I suppose he would have exposed and disgraced me, and then proposed himself as leader, as the restorer of order after the time of chaos.’

  ‘He wanted to start a new age. Without kings, without Gods … the errors of the past all purged away. He thought he could make the world perfect in his own image. He thought he was incorruptible. But he wasn’t. He discovered he liked killing…’ We stood in silence for a moment. ‘All his secrets died with him. No one else knows the truth about Obsidian, and the opium-smuggling within the Seth division,’ I said.

  ‘Except you,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes.’

  I supposed he would now have me arrested, and sent bound like a captive to his darkest prison, never to return. But instead he reached into a leather purse, and produced a fine gold ring.

  ‘Here. Recompense,’ he said.

  I held it in my palm. ‘I don’t want it,’ I replied, and flicked it carelessly into the great mound of gold before us.

  Horemheb looked genuinely surprised.

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘I want you to release Simut. I want you to allow the Queen to live out her life in privacy. And then I want to go home.’

  For a moment, he considered.

  ‘Even now, when you should be grasping your rewards, you remain loyal to that disastrous dynasty…’

  ‘I am loyal to her.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘Your loyalty is commendable. But I’m afraid you must mourn her. She is dead. She died by her own hand. Poison. Supplied, I am reliably informed, by your old friend Nakht.’

  I turned away.

  ‘This was the inevitable ending. Let us not be sentimental. All this was business. And now it will finally be possible to rebuild Egypt. I will, of course, destroy the names of her dynasty, and I will usurp their monuments. The stones of their temples will be demolished to build new temples, in my name, and in the name of my dynast
y. I am King now, but I was born an ordinary man. I remember that. I will proclaim a new edict of excellent measures. I will appoint new judges, new officials and new regional tribunes to oversee the improvement of the laws. Wrongdoing will not be tolerated. Theft will be severely punished. Corruption within the instruments of justice will be severely punished. Crimes against justice will be severely punished.’

  ‘And what of those who oppose you?’ I said. ‘What of men like Simut, good men, honourable men? Will you torture and execute them? Will those of the old order disappear in the night, into dark prisons, never to be seen again? Will you target and assassinate your enemies?’

  ‘There will be public trials, and those who opposed me will answer for their wrongdoing before a judge, if necessary with their lives. Those who repent could be freed, on condition of absolute loyalty,’ he said.

  He came closer.

  ‘I have had many years to think what to do with my kingship. I have no interest in personal acquisition. Gold has never delighted me. I am only interested in Egypt. There is much to do. I have need of reliable men. Men who are not in love with gold. Your allegiance to the Queen has impressed me. I know very well that the Thebes Medjay has been governed poorly. This city needs a new hand to restore faith in the laws, and security on the streets.’

  ‘Nebamun has welcomed you with open arms,’ I said.

  ‘Nebamun is no fool. He is an old hand, and he knows his time is over. He will accept a decent settlement of the gold he has always coveted, and the status he has always aspired to. He will retire to his country villa, and drink himself stupid,’ he said. ‘So there will be a vacancy. I would need someone reliable to appoint to his office…’

  He was offering me the great prize. I stared at the piles of gold at my feet. So much had been lost for the sake of its terrible glory.