House of Illusions (30 page)

“I do not know what is going on here,” he said, “but I will leave it to the palace to sort out. You must come with me, Kamen, at least until this obvious error has been revealed. My orders are quite clear.”

“No!” Takhuru shouted. “If you take him away he will be killed! He will never reach the palace! Where are you going with him?” The officer regarded her with a glint of amusement.

“Really, my Lady,” he expostulated. “He is being taken into custody, not to the executioner. The General has the Prince’s permission to put a few questions to him. As for you,” he concluded pointedly, “if you are a guest here, then why is the city being combed for you as we speak? Go home to your father.” He issued a brisk command and Kamen was flanked by an armed escort. At another command he was ushered to the entrance.

“Father, go to Nesiamun immediately and make for the palace,” Kamen called. “Do not wait for the morning. Kaha, the manuscript!” Then he was gone. We stood immobile with shock. Takhuru began to cry.

“Gods, what a fool I am,” Men ground out. “Pa-Bast, I am putting Takhuru directly into your care. No one must take her from you, not even her father’s retainers. Kaha, get your cloak. We will take the skiff to Nesiamun’s house.”

I ran upstairs, but before going to my own room for my cloak, I entered Kamen’s quarters. Setau was there. “I need the leather bag Kamen brought back from Aswat,” I said to him hurriedly. “Get it for me, Setau. It is all right. He asked me to deliver it to the Prince and I intend to do so tonight instead of tomorrow. I will be responsible for it.”

“Kamen has said nothing of its disposal to me, Kaha,” he said, but he turned reluctantly to one of Kamen’s chests and drew out the satchel.

“He would have taken it with him tomorrow if he had not been arrested,” I told Setau, taking the bag from him. “Please trust me. And help Pa-Bast to keep an eye on Takhuru.”

Swiftly I made my way to my own room, and snatching up a cloak, I wrapped it around Thu’s manuscript. Then I went downstairs.

9

MEN WAS ALREADY WAITING
outside, muffled in his cloak. “I have spoken to Shesira,” he said as he started down the path. “If anyone comes to take Takhuru away, she is to be hidden inside the granary and the soldiers must be allowed to search without hindrance. What a damnable business this is!” I caught up with him and grasped his arm.

“Master, I do not think we should take the skiff,” I said. “Paiis will have rightly presumed what our next move will be. His men will be watching your gate and Nesiamun’s also, and he may even have soldiers lingering about the palace entrances. We should slip out through the rear wall and proceed behind the estates. Put a couple of well-swaddled servants in the skiff and tell them to row to Nesiamun’s watersteps, but slowly. Of course, they should not speak.”

“Good. Wait here,” he breathed, and was gone. Before long he returned with Setau and a house servant, both wearing full-length cloaks. “Keep your faces in shadow until you are well away from the watersteps,” he told them. “When you reach Nesiamun’s steps, tie up but stay in the boat for a while and pretend to debate your next action. Kaha and I need time. We do not know for sure, but we believe that General Paiis’s men are watching both establishments.” He clapped them warmly on the shoulder and turned away and I followed him into the darkness.

Once at the rear of the gardens we used the lip of the well that was set hard against the perimeter wall to hoist ourselves up and over into the littered alley behind. It ran in a rough curve, in one direction back towards the narrow bottleneck of the Lake’s entrance and in the other to the huge compound where the army lived and drilled. Many noble estates backed onto it to left and right but it was not used for traffic. It was choked with the offal and rubbish tossed over the walls by lazy kitchen servants, and inhabited by feral cats. We turned left, for Nesiamun lived close to the neck of the Lake and not far from the factories in his charge.

We met no one. Slinking along in the shadow of the succeeding estate walls, stumbling over unnameable refuse, our progress was slow. We perceived it to be less rapid than it really was, for each wall seemed to stretch away blackly forever, elongated in the tepid moonlight, and the pocked ground beneath our sandals was vague. But at last Men came to a halt, his hand on the mud brick. “I think this is it,” he whispered. “I lost count somewhere. Surely that is the branch of the big acacia tree Nesiamun will not let his gardener fell. Kaha, climb on my shoulders. You will have to find Nesiamun. I am too old to go scrambling over walls.”

I placed my precious bundle at the foot of the wall and removed my sandals. Men bent over, and balancing myself with one hand on the bricks, I hoisted myself up. I could just reach the branch that overhung the top of the wall. Heaving on it, I peered gingerly down into the garden. There was no movement as far as I could see. The tightly winding paths showed as dull grey ribbons weaving indistinctly through the motionless tangled shadows of shrubs and trees. I would have to be quick. Fighting the protest of muscles long unused, I managed to ease my knee onto the lip of the wall. My chin grazed the rough brickwork. With a kick I rolled and fell tumbling into the sparse grass on the other side.

I wanted to lie for a moment and catch my breath but I did not dare. Getting to my feet, I crouched and ran to the nearest cover, then I began to creep towards the house. It was not long before I saw the first soldier. He was stationed beside the path, leaning against a tree and looking towards the dark bulk of buildings. It was not difficult to work my way around behind him, but I was in terror lest I stumble on another one. I stayed away from the entrance. I was certain that several men would be sitting under the pillars and more would be dispersed between the water and Nesiamun’s gate. No one would be able to leave unobserved by the main way.

At last I was touching the wall of the house itself, on the opposite side to the entrance. How was I to get in? A trained man could get onto the roof and perhaps wriggle through a windcatcher but the limit of my exercise had been a vigorous swim once a day and I was not equal to such a task. There were stairs from the roof into Takhuru’s quarters, I remembered, but to use them I had to get to them. Closing my eyes, I succumbed to a momentary fit of despair. If I paced the house walls and found no way in, I would return to my Master, acknowledge defeat, and we would attempt to be admitted to the palace without Nesiamun’s authority.

But as I slid around the corner, a pattern of weak light met me. It was coming from a waist-high window. Its reed mat had been lowered and the light seeped sullenly between the slats. I waited, eyes straining into the darkness beyond the reach of that light, but I could discern no human shape. Taking a chance, I crawled to the edge of the window and set my eye to one of the slits. I was looking into Nesiamun’s office, a large room the limits of which were lost in gloom. Facing me and close enough to reach in and touch was his desk.

Nesiamun himself sat behind it. A scroll was open before him and his hands rested on its edges but he was not reading. He was gazing straight ahead. Carefully I scanned what I could of his surroundings. He appeared to be alone. I heard the distant murmur of voices from far beyond the invisible inner door. I tapped on the edge of the window. “My Lord,” I called softly. He stirred. I pushed the mat aside. “My Lord it is I, Kaha. Can you hear me?” To his credit he did not start. Quickly he left his chair and came around the desk.

“Kaha?” he said. “What are you doing skulking in the garden? Go around to the entrance.”

“I cannot,” I explained quickly. “Your house is being watched by the General’s men so that no one may leave. Kamen has been arrested for kidnapping your daughter. The General persuaded Prince Ramses to issue the order. We must go at once to the palace, for Paiis will murder Kamen and then seek his mother at his leisure if the Prince does not stop it. We cannot wait until the morning.” He grasped the situation at once. His gaze sharpened.

“Where is Men?”

“He is waiting for us beyond your wall. His house is also under observation. He begs you to come now.” For answer he bent down. I saw that he was tying on his sandals, and in another moment he had stepped out his window and was standing beside me.

Without speaking again, I led him back the way I had come, motioning him into silence as we circumvented the soldier by the path. We reached the big acacia without incident, but here he looked up at the looming height of his wall. “I cannot climb that,” he said brusquely. “Wait.” The shadows swallowed him and I squatted uneasily, suddenly desperate to be away from this place, but soon he returned, dragging a ladder. I rushed to help him set it in place and held it while he climbed, then I followed him, hauling the ladder up and letting it down on the other side so we could descend. Men rose from the pool of darkness where he had been sitting and the two men greeted each other soberly. I picked up my cloak and the bag.

“We had better hurry,” Men said. “Sooner or later they will discover that we have slipped their net.” The words sent an ominous shiver down my spine. We turned and began to retrace our steps.

Like wraiths we slipped past Men’s estate and went on. Occasionally the strains of music drifted to us over the walls we walked beside. Sometimes we were assailed by the laughter and din of a feast that soon faded to be replaced by the rustle of overhanging branches and the furtive scratching of the cats that lived in that forgotten strip of the city. But at last we had passed the final estate before the huge royal and military compound began and we turned in towards the centre of the city.

By unspoken consent we took a circuitous route that led us beside the temple of Ra and into the anonymity of the night crowds. Lamplight flared out at us as we moved past the open doors of beer houses or flickered from the stalls of merchants eager to attract those citizens who loitered happily, enjoying the balmy night. But at the road that ran right, to the temple of Ptah, Nesiamun stopped.

“This is no good,” he said. “We cannot hope to enter the palace complex by any back way. Every entrance, small and large, is heavily guarded and even if we could by some miracle bypass the royal mercenaries, we would be challenged again and again before we reached the Prince. Nor do we know where exactly he is. The palace is too much of a maze to go wandering about in without direction, and time is fleeing by. I think we should attempt the main entrance and I will bully the guards into taking us straight to where we want to go. If Paiis’s soldiers are also hanging about there, they will have to explain to Pharaoh’s men just why I should not be given admittance. I brought this.” He extracted a scroll from the loose folds of his tunic. “It is the Prince’s agreement to my request for an audience. It will secure us a successful hearing at the gates at any rate.”

“Very well,” Men agreed. “I am frightened for my son, Nesiamun. Every moment that passes is a moment in which I see his death. If Paiis triumphs, I will never forgive myself for dismissing Kamen’s distress in so cowardly a way.”

Nesiamun smiled coldly. “And Takhuru will never forgive me,” he added. “Come then. We must head for the water.”

It took us another hour to thread our way through the confusion of city streets and alleys until we found ourselves suddenly on a great green lawn dotted with palms. At its edge the Lake of the Residence lay, rippling darkly. To our left reared the mighty wall that completely surrounded the whole palace complex, but it was broken some way ahead by the tree-lined canal upon which the royal barges were tethered and up which the diplomatic commerce of the world flowed towards our God. The canal ended in a flight of broad, three-sided watersteps of marble that led up onto a wide paved court and beyond that the vast pylon that signalled the entrance to the holy domain itself.

In a tense silence we walked towards the court. A gorgeously arrayed litter, glittering in the light of the torches held by slaves, sat on the paving. It was empty, its silk curtains looped back, and its bearers stood in a knot, talking desultorily. They barely glanced at us as we approached and then passed them. Several barges were being tethered at the watersteps. Ramps clattered against the stone and across them flowed a crowd of laughing people. They dispersed around us, enveloping me briefly in a cloud of perfume and a dazzle of jewels, before trickling in under the pylon. Many of them called to Nesiamun, asking him why he was not dressed for the feast and where his wife was. The phalanx of guards protecting the entrance glanced over them keenly and then drew back.

Men grasped my arm and moved closer to Nesiamun who had fallen into step with one of the revellers and was engaging him in earnest conversation. The loud company hemmed us in. Then the shadow of the pylon passed over us and we were within the palace grounds. “If there is feasting tonight, the Prince will not be in his quarters,” Men said hurriedly. “Nor will he like being disturbed.”

“It is still early,” Nesiamun replied. “Too early for him to go to the banqueting hall. We will try to see him before he leaves his rooms.”

We had come to a place where the paved way split into three, each path running through trees and bordered by grass. Ahead, at the end of the central way, a row of columns reared, like four vast tongues of red flame in the light of the torches clustered at their bases. “The public reception hall,” Nesiamun said tersely. We approached them, still a part of the cheerful throng, but we did not sweep under them. Nesiamun led us left in front of them, across the springing turf, but did not join with the left-hand path. “That leads to the harem,” he said. “We must go between the harem and palace walls.” He had brought us to a small gate beside the pillars where two guards in the blue and white imperial livery stood and warily watched us approach. One held out a leather-clad arm and we halted.