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  The sailors made their last preparations for departure. The blades of the two great steering oars, painted with blue and white lotus flowers, and more udjat eyes, were carried from the roof of the cabin, where they were stored when not in use, to the stern, where they were placed into the leather loops, and lashed to the vertical stanchions that would hold them during the voyage north. The central mast towered up out of the cabin; its sails would remain furled for the journey north, as the river’s current would do all the work. The sailors checked the complex network of rigging, making sure it was tied neat and close. And then, with a cry of command from the captain, all those not travelling hurried ashore, the rowers on the deck below took up their chant, and we slowly sailed out of the dock, past the hundreds of other ships. We towered over the fishermens’ skiffs returning from the night fishing. They parted to make way like schools of little fish. Then the river caught us in its firm, powerful grasp and drew us swiftly north, away from the city, as if it shared our sense of urgency. Although I almost never pray, I found myself whispering a prayer, like a dead man remembering the necessary spells for survival in the darkness of the Otherworld.

  I had said my farewells to the children on the previous night. I had wanted to slip away from the house as early as possible, to avoid a dramatic or tearful farewell. Tanefert had maintained her angry distance all through the evening and the night. We lay apart, awake and unable to speak. I turned to look at her face in the shadows, but she kept her eyes firmly closed. I whispered her name, but she simply turned away, and curled into herself.

  This morning, at the last moment, after I had said goodbye to Thoth, running my hands over his brown mane and talking to him quietly, and imagining he truly understood my orders to guard my family, I had passed his lead to my wife, and we had stood in silence, knowing we had reached the point of no return. Even then, she refused to allow me to take her in my arms. I kissed her quickly on the head, telling her that she was the love of my life. She glanced at me as if this were a bitter truth. I was desperate for some sign of affection from her; but she was locked in her own grief, and could not give it. For a moment I almost fell to my knees and told her I would not leave, I would not abandon her, and our home. But I steeled myself, and as I turned to the door, I swore I felt my heart tear in two.

  I walked away down the dusty street, in the chill dark before dawn. When I turned back, I wanted her to be standing in the gateway to the yard, holding the oil lamp in her outstretched palm, watching me disappear into the gloom. I wanted the children to slip into place next to her, one by one, each holding their own oil lamps like tiny stars in the darkness. I wanted them to put their arms round each other, shivering, and wave and wave. But the door remained closed in shadows. I looked back for the last time, and waved even though there was no one there to receive my gesture, then turned the last corner. And then, despite everything, I admit I felt a strange measure of relief, to be finally on my quest, and to have committed myself single-mindedly to its pursuit, no matter what the cost.

  Nakht invited Simut and me to pay our respects to Ambassador Hattusa in the cabin. He wore his greying hair long, and he was clean-shaven, like all Hittites. His face was haughty, and his blue eyes keen as a jackal’s. He carried himself with immense dignity.

  ‘My lord,’ I offered, bowing low.

  ‘Simut is Commander of the Palace Guard. Rahotep is my personal guard. He is trusted by the royal family. The Queen herself commanded his presence on this mission,’ said Nakht, by way of introduction.

  Hattusa examined me minutely, as if for flaws, then nodded, apparently adequately satisfied.

  ‘I gather the royal envoy has confided in you the true nature of our quest,’ he said quietly, in flawless Egyptian.

  ‘He has,’ replied Simut.

  ‘And he has made it clear that secrecy is imperative?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Simut.

  Hattusa glanced at me expectantly.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ I replied.

  ‘Let me be clear. The safety of the royal envoy is your absolute and only priority. Without him, this mission will fail. He alone can speak for the Queen of Egypt. I expect you to give your life for his, if necessary. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, my lord,’ I said.

  He nodded, dismissing us, and gestured to Nakht.

  ‘Come, honourable friend, let us retire. We have much to discuss,’ he said. Nakht bowed, and we took our cue and left the cool shade of the cabin, followed by Hattusa’s two bodyguards, who assumed sentry duty on either side of the entrance.

  Simut and I stood at the prow of the ship, looking ahead at the wide, shining expanse of the Great River, and out across the green and yellow glory of the cultivation.

  ‘These ambassadors are all the same. They have the eyes of Anubis. And they make me feel like a servant. Like a shabti in a tomb. “Here I am. I will do it!”’ I said, in the formula of the little funeral figures buried with their dead masters.

  Simut laughed.

  ‘You get used to it. It’s all part of the way of things. They are creatures of their class, and they have certain expectations,’ he said. ‘But it’s true, they often seem rather bloodless.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course not, he is a Hittite. I would no more trust a scorpion.’

  He glanced at the Hittite bodyguards with a confident measure of contempt. They ignored him. Simut’s own guards were preoccupied with their preparations a little way further down the deck, in the shade of their open shelter.

  ‘I suppose this proposal could look like a golden trap to the Hittite King,’ I said. ‘I suppose Hattusa must have needed assurances that, once here in Thebes, the Hittite Prince won’t simply be sidelined, or assassinated.’

  ‘Well, he’d be right to be concerned about that. But they must have come to terms, for here we are, at the beginning of our great journey. I must admit, never did I think I would find myself on a boat bound for the capital of our enemies.’

  ‘Nor I,’ I answered.

  We gazed up the river, looking north.

  ‘What do you know of the Hittites and their land?’ I asked.

  ‘They say they have a thousand Gods. They say their chief God is the God of Storms. They say they have many laws, and that none are put to death, even for murder…’ said Simut.

  ‘They probably also say they mate with donkeys, and eat their own children,’ I replied, joking.

  ‘Hittites are capable of anything,’ he replied, without irony, and spat into the deep green waters passing below us.

  The Hittite guards kept themselves apart, preparing and eating their food separately, and sleeping outside the cabin where the ambassador was accommodated. Nakht, Simut and I also took our meals apart from the twelve Egyptian guards–by their choice, rather than ours. They were fit, highly disciplined, well-equipped with high-quality scimitars, spears, and bows and arrows, and silent, as if words alone could betray them. They carried a particular atmosphere of intensity and concentration, and Simut commanded them with an absolute authority. He advised me not to try to engage them in conversation, for that was counter to their training; and indeed they even avoided eye contact.

  With nothing else to occupy me, apart from regular tours of the ship, and keeping an eye on the shoreline to make sure there were no assassins hidden with bows and arrows in the fields or the trees by the water’s edge, I spent the first days of the journey watching the Great River. Its brooding waters suited my dark mood, and I observed how its surface turned in an endless reflective embrace of light and darkness, curling into and out of itself, gathering reflections of the unchanging sky like strange, distant memories. Sometimes the waters flowed in a lucid suspension, then hesitated and argued in knots and curlicues, until they resolved and continued calmly onwards. I fancied the river was trying to describe itself, and the world it reflected, ceaselessly. And the little dramas of human life–dots and dashes of colour and movement, of poor labouring women in
linen clothing, and children playing in the mud, and birds scattered across the sky, and crocodiles waiting in the papyrus marshes–were its passing daydream. But as I watched all of this, I thought mostly of the dead. I saw their cold, disappointed faces turning up towards me in the water–the faces of the dead Nubian boys, and of my friend Khety. I saw my father, too, and only he had the expression of implacable absence held by the peaceful dead. But I could not see anywhere in the changing waters the face of the man I would kill. And that tormented me.

  Five days after our departure, we sailed past the unseen ancient pyramids and monuments of the high plateau, towards Memphis, the army city. The river was suddenly busy again, and the shoreline crowded with little mud-brick houses; and then, in the distance, among the hundreds of ships with their sails open to the north wind, we caught our first glimpse of the vast port of the great capital–Horemheb’s city, and therefore highly dangerous for us. Majestic war vessels with the Eye of Horus painted boldly on their prows, and with their sails still open to the north wind which had carried them home, slowly negotiated their paths into the immense docks. From our deck, Simut and I watched as hundreds of shackled captives were marched off each boat and forced to their knees in positions of abject submission and trunks of war booty were unloaded on to the quayside. Thousands of soldiers disembarked and were ordered in their battalions towards the distant buildings; meanwhile thousands more stood waiting to board those ships which had been repaired, cleaned and re-stocked, and were bound for further periods of service in the wars.

  ‘They belong to the Ptah division,’ said Simut, nodding at a great assembly of soldiers standing in precise, disciplined lines.

  I gazed at the vast spectacle of the modern machinery of war. It left me feeling cold and powerless.

  ‘If Horemheb can muster such forces, what hope is there for the future, even if we are able to return the Hittite Prince to Thebes?’ I said, remembering what Nakht had told me about the general’s divisions.

  Simut shrugged.

  ‘You’re right. But his success cannot be based upon force alone. That might enable him to grasp power, but it will not necessarily help him to maintain civil authority. And he would still have to do a deal with the priests, for they own everything…’

  ‘Do you think Horemheb’s here, in Memphis?’ I said.

  Simut shook his head.

  ‘The campaign season will soon be ending. He will be in the northern lands, commanding his troops.’ He hesitated. ‘But he’ll still know everything that’s happening here, and in Thebes. He overhauled the military messenger system–now he can receive up to date news from the city in only a few days.’

  ‘If he has eyes and ears everywhere, then that’s bad for us. If he knows about this mission, then he’ll simply stop us. He’ll kill us all,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. But luckily he’s not the only one with the benefit of intelligence,’ he replied.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He glanced at me, and lowered his voice.

  ‘Come on, Rahotep. How do you think Royal Envoy Nakht gets his information about events in the north, and in the war? The army has its intelligence, and the palace has its own, too. The days when an invasion or an attack took place and no one heard about it for months are long gone. This war’s all about speed and information, and you can be sure Nakht has a very efficient system. The problem is, each system is always trying to infiltrate the other. And there’s always the danger of spies.’

  ‘But surely not in our camp?’ I said.

  ‘I hope not. My guards have been vetted. Every crew member on this ship has been vetted. I know everything about them: I know what they eat, who they love, who they sleep with, and what they’re afraid of. There’s no question of their loyalty.’

  ‘But what about the others? There must be other palace people back in Thebes who know about our mission. The presence of the Hittite ambassador at the palace alone will have stirred all sorts of speculations.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Simut said. ‘But his presence has been very low-key, and the official reason for his visit was given as war negotiations. We have to assume Nakht has thought of all of this, and taken the necessary precautions.’

  Later that day, we passed close to Heliopolis, the city of the Sun, where the most ancient temples of the Two Lands stood. It was known as a city of mystery and wonder, but nothing I had heard could have prepared me for the dazzling vision that came into view: in the distance, beyond the cultivation, in the harsh desert to the east, the blazing electrum-tips of innumerable black granite obelisks shone incandescently brighter than Ra, the Sun itself. I was witnessing the dazzling light into which no man could look without blinding himself. Hattusa and Nakht stood with us at the ship’s gunwale, in awe, shading their eyes. Nakht lectured us about the city, its infinite wealth, and its five vast and ancient temples of the Sun, to which the kings of our own dynasty–including Akhenaten himself–had added their own monumental constructions, in honour of the great Lord of the Sun. I think of our Temple of Karnak as the greatest in the world; but Nakht assured us the temples of Heliopolis were twice as large.

  ‘One temple has a floor so perfect, the stones so polished by time, that the night sky is clearly reflected in it, as if it were water. I assume you both know the origins of Egypt’s great theology?’ he asked airily. We both shook our heads like admonished schoolboys. He tutted.

  ‘Atum, Creator of the Universe, was self-created, self-begotten, but alone in his universe. He therefore created the Nine Gods, the Ennead, who embodied the sources and the great forces that make up this world and the Otherworld. He ordered that each and every king must rule through the just and rightful ordering of those forces. One of the temples contains a pillar called the Benben, which offers back to the sky the Stone of Creation. It is the dark seed of all existence. It is nothing less than a star that fell to earth. And it is also within the sacred precinct that the grey bird–which, as I am sure you know, is depicted in our Book of the Dead as the heron, because it is the manifestation of both Ra and Osiris–returns, and is reborn from his ashes as a swallow, singing on the stone at dawn, according to the calendar of Sirius, renewing the year and the world, and ushering in a new era with its song.’

  ‘When is the bird next due to grace you with its presence?’ asked Hattusa, and I could not tell whether his tone was serious or ironic.

  ‘Alas, that is secret knowledge,’ replied Nakht. ‘Of course, we might say its return soon would be greatly desired. The priests of Heliopolis can calculate and predict the rising and setting of the great stars. They maintain the sacred calendar of the universe. One could say they control time itself. But that is all secret knowledge…’

  ‘But surely the great and learned Nakht is an adept of this knowledge?’ asked Hattusa, this time with more warmth in his voice.

  ‘Alas, no. It is an old dream of mine to study here. But the demands of the world have not permitted me the opportunity. Many come seeking the knowledge and wisdom of the heavenly bodies, and what we call the geometry of sacred time.’ Nakht paused, and gazed at the distant, dazzling towers. ‘It is said that Thoth himself left here a secret book containing spells to charm the sky, the earth, the Otherworld, the mountains and the waters. It is said there are spells to enable man to understand the speech of the birds. And it is said the most secret of all the spells brings forth a vision of the living and the dead, with the great God appearing with the Nine Gods, and the new moon in his hand.’

  ‘And where is this marvellous book to be found, and who may read its secrets?’ asked Hattusa.

  Nakht smiled, and quoted:

  ‘In the middle of the water is a box of iron. In the box of iron is a box of copper, and within that a box of juniper wood; within that a box of ivory and ebony, and within that a box of silver. Within that is a box of gold, and within that is the book. But the box is full of scorpions, and wound around the box forever is a great serpent. And even if a man opens all the boxes, and destroys the scorpio
ns, and kills the serpent, and reads the book and learns its wisdom–even so, Thoth also laid a curse on his own book, and promised death to the reader.’

  Only the sound of the keel slicing through the water followed these extraordinary words. Nakht had spoken with a strange melancholy. Hattusa broke the silence.

  ‘That is most interesting. But I believe this is not the time to think of secret books and curses. Surely there are enough serpents and scorpions already around us in these strange and changing days. Let us conclude our great business first, and then we may speak of these other, more wonderful mysteries.’

  I paced the deck. Hour after hour I had nothing to do but go over and over everything, feeling like a trapped dog, and as I did so, I realized I agreed with Hattusa’s words. The demons of this world were my enemy–the ones in the next could wait. Nakht’s curiosity about the next world was foolish, and I felt a strange anger towards him gripping me. Of course he was my master, and I his servant, now. But I kept myself apart from him as much as my duties allowed, and he must have noticed, for he made no effort to resolve the new silence between us.

  And as I watched, the landscape itself was changing, too: the Great River had begun to divide up into its five branches, from which the many smaller branches subdivided into the fertile fields and vast marshes of the delta. The ancient dividing line between the Black Land of the valley and the Red of the desert, which draws the great division of life and death, had vanished; the distinction between land and water had become blurred. Beyond this outpost lay the sea, that mysterious frontier where the Two Lands of Egypt end, and all that is not Egypt begins. I was looking forward to crossing it.

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