Nick Drake - Egypt

I stared at the ground, shaking my head sorrowfully, and drying my eyes. The father considered me.

‘My condolences. Your brother gave his life for the greater good of Egypt. Now, if you will just return to the front office with my sons, they will take down your details, and we will gladly assist with the necessary arrangements.’

I stood before Horemheb, in his office within the Memphis military compound. At first his handsome, cold face betrayed nothing as he stared out of the window. ‘These men will be arrested immediately! I will interrogate them myself, and then they will be executed. They have disgraced the army and the Two Lands of Egypt.’

But this would not serve my purpose.

‘Consider again, lord. Only two people know about this: you and I. These men have no idea we know about their activities. But they are not the important ones. They are the workers, not the head. We must track the shipment of opium to Thebes, to see where it goes-to see who receives it. To see who is behind the operation that is selling the opium on the streets. Those are the key men. The killers.’

He stared suspiciously at me. I had to persuade him.

‘There is still more to this. There is a commander who runs it all. He has a code-name. Obsidian . I believe he’s one of your men. He is extremely dangerous. He created and instigated everything, inside the Egyptian army itself, inside the Seth division, for his own profit. Such a man is extremely dangerous to you. Imagine how much power he commands. Imagine the disastrous effect of his work. Imagine what could happen if he has power in Thebes, especially at this highly sensitive moment for the Two Lands…’ I said.

I let the implications of that do their own work; for if Obsidian were not caught, Horemheb’s ability to command the city would be severely compromised. Worse still, if the corruption came to light, his claim to the royal succession would be profoundly damaged, no matter how many divisions he ordered to take over Thebes, no matter how brutally efficient the martial law he might impose. Horemheb’s face was taut with suppressed rage at this unexpected flaw in his grand plan.

‘ Find this Obsidian . But I want him alive. Keep me informed at all times, and when the moment comes, I will personally command the troops that attack these traitors, and I will destroy them and their filthy trade. All corruption will be wiped out in the new Egypt; none will be tolerated. And I will personally silence this Obsidian. Be sure you deliver him to me. You know the price of failure,’ he said quietly.

I nodded and turned away. He had given me what I wanted: permission to track down Obsidian. But he was my prize, and I would never give up the satisfaction of my revenge for Khety’s death, not to Horemheb or anyone else.

As I passed through the doorway, he called out: ‘And remember this, Rahotep. I don’t trust you. I won’t hesitate to destroy you if you put one foot out of place. You have three days to accomplish everything. Ay is dead. A storm is coming to Egypt now, a storm that will cleanse and purify the corruption and the chaos into which we have descended as a result of the selfish decadence of the so-called royal family and those fat, self-satisfied priests. Their time is over. My time is now.’

When the pylons and great walls of the temples of Thebes finally appeared before me, rising above the river waters and the surrounding cultivation, after so long away my heart brimmed over with the emotion of homecoming. Ra shone brightly upon the city that held my wife and my family.

But I confess, too, that the beautiful light seemed a cruel illusion. Little did the citizens of this great city know of the dark storm that would soon change everything: Horemheb and his divisions were on their way, to occupy the streets, palaces and offices of the city, and bring the arrests, executions and wholesale destruction that would surely follow, as he grasped power, took the Crowns, destroyed the carved names and faces of the statues of the old dynasty, and asserted his new dynasty. But more than even that, I was the only one of the original party to return alive: Nakht had died at Inanna’s compound; Simut was in chains, condemned; Zannanza had been brutally assassinated. And now Ankhesenamun was doomed.

And as for me, I was an opium addict, and until I was no longer in the grip of such craving, I would not allow my family to know me. Still worse, how could I find the courage to tell my wife of my actions? Before I could walk through the gate and back into my home and my old life, I would somehow have to atone for the dark truth of what I had done. And so, as I set foot once more on the stones of the city of my birth, I felt I was more a shadow than a living man: a thin black silhouette, separated from my old self and my old life.

News of Horemheb’s impending occupation, and of Ay’s death, must already have circulated, for there was a strange, new tension in the air of the city. Many smaller ships were being loaded with trunks containing personal possessions, as the rich tried to save their families and worldly goods by shipping them out of the city and down to their country houses. Crowds of merchants clamoured to buy cargoes of grain as if they were the last ever. Fear had already begun to grip the city. We had lived like gods on borrowed time, and now that dream was over.

In the small hours, three nights earlier in Memphis, I had watched the opium packages being transported from the backyard of the embalmers’ and loaded on to another, smaller commercial ship. I had watched the Official of the Dock sign the papyrus of authorization for the cargo, and give it back to a man dressed in military clothing. I had not recognized him. He and several other accomplices had then boarded the boat to accompany it to Thebes.

It had arrived at noon. I stood in the shadows and kept watch. Nothing happened until the sun set. Then, in the dark of the night, more men appeared, and carried ten wooden crates down the gangplank to a waiting cart. I followed it into the city. The moon was full, and its bone-light lit the streets. The single cart was accompanied by armed guards, running before and after in silence. They did not travel far. They turned past the Southern Temple, and then followed its eastern wall before turning into the spreading labyrinth of the eastern suburbs and their narrow side streets. I knew these streets and passageways well, for I had lived and worked there as a Medjay officer all my life. Some were thoroughfares with shops and markets, others were dedicated to different trades where the workshops opened directly on to the street; others still were low passages only wide enough for one man. So I ran through these, following the map of the place in my head, glimpsing the progress of the cart down dark alleys and side ways.

Finally, it stopped at the high wall of a merchant’s warehouse. The great wooden doors were immediately opened, and it drove in. I waited, breathless, listening to the sounds of the night city, which I seemed to hear intently, in enormous detail-the barking of the dogs across the districts, the cry of night birds, and the uncanny silence of the streets. I approached warily. Nothing distinguished the house from any other, except that its walls were high, it was separate from the buildings around it, and there was only one entrance. Disappointed, I found a discreet doorway in the shadows, and settled down to wait. The cart did not reappear, but all through the night, men in groups appeared in silence, knocked quietly, and were admitted-perhaps twenty altogether. None, however, left.

As I waited in the darkness, Ankhesenamun’s face began to haunt me; I remembered the warmth of her greeting, all that time ago, before we began our journey north. I remembered the fear in her eyes, and her noble call upon my loyalty to her. She was alone, in that lonely palace. Perhaps she had intelligence about Horemheb’s imminent arrival in the city; perhaps she was preparing to escape. But perhaps she was trapped there, unaware. Without Nakht to support her, or Simut to protect her, maybe I was the only man in the world who could help save her from the coming storm.