Jamie Buxton - Sun Thief

‘You tell me if you know so much,’ I just about dare to say.

He shakes his head, then stands, those awful, thick arms heavy by his side.

‘We’ll get to the bottom of it, boy. I’m going for a little stroll, but we’ll talk again when I come back.’ And he walks out of the courtyard.

I’m so scared that I want to be sick.

I try to settle down at the wheel to make more plates and beakers, but it’s like he’s put a spell on me. My hand can’t shape the mud, can’t make it rise and hollow into a beaker or thin into a plate.

This has never happened to me before, but my hands find something else to do. They pick up a lump of mud and start to shape it. A big, round head, piggy little eyes, nose like a broken rudder and an oddly full mouth. The Quiet Gentleman is the colour of mud anyway and no one seeing my model of him could mistake it for anyone else. Or mistake what I think of him.

I leave it on his bench, then retreat into my corner to think.

No one likes a cringer, the Quiet Gentleman says. Well, I’ll show him what a cringer can do. From the way the tomb robbers were talking, it’s clear he’s brought something valuable with him, so when I go off to sweep his room, I check for soft earth where he might have dug a hole in the floor.

Nothing.

I run my hands over the walls, looking for missing bricks. All present and correct. A sudden burst of certainty sends me up a ladder to check the roof, but there’s nothing up there either. Now I have to hurry, because how long can he be out strolling for?

Come on, come on . . .

My father comes out of the kitchen and scratches himself in the morning sunshine. He looks at me warily. I will him to notice that the courtyard has been cleaned from the night before and I’ve been out to get milk and bread.

He notices all right. He clears his throat, spits and says: ‘Have you cleaned the shrine? It must be filthy. Take a broom down there and make sure you do a good job.’

It’s like a sudden handclap of understanding. That’s the place I should be searching.

Once, a long time ago, there must have been a temple or palace where our inn is now. If you dig in the courtyard you can find huge blocks of smooth stone just a little way down. All gone now but for a sort of hut with the goddess in it and that’s our shrine.

I’ve never liked visiting the shrine. Now the gods are hiding, the statue down there is not much more than a stone corpse.

The light comes through the holes in the roof so she’s always half lit, a worn lump of rock with an animal head and a woman’s body. I think she was meant to be Sekmet, goddess of war and plague, but my father thought there were more commercial possibilities if she was one of the fertility goddesses, so he borrowed a chisel and hacked away until she looked a bit more like a hippo and said she was Tawaret, the goddess of making babies.

It worked, I guess, because Imi arrived, but I still think the goddess looks more like Sekmet, and a pretty angry Sekmet at that.

I stand in front of her. She doesn’t look at me, just keeps on staring at the entrance with her badly painted eyes, like she’s wondering where the crowds have gone. I put a coin between her stone feet and say: ‘I’m going to look behind you. I hope it’s not rude. Please don’t give me the plague if you’re Sekmet, or a baby if you’re Tawaret. I don’t know why the king killed you off, but it doesn’t matter really, does it? You’re still here and you’re not going anywhere. Thanks.’

With a last glance up to see if she’s angry, I squeeze into the space behind her. It’s darker round here. No sand. A flagstone rocks slightly under my feet. I manage to lever it up and peer into the dark hole. I should have brought a taper from the kitchen fire . . .

The darkness moves. I know I’m not imagining it. There’s just enough light to see something dark in there, as dark as water, gleaming like water, pouring itself like water, but with more purpose. And rustling with a dry sort of hiss.

Snake!

I jump back and the flagstone falls, but instead of a dull whump there’s a wet crunch, then . . . nothing. I wait, motionless. Still nothing.

Swallowing my fear, I reach down and touch the dead snake’s head, half severed by the edge of the falling flagstone, which I lift again and push back.

The first thing I find is a leather roll, wrapped tightly. The second is a small bag that is very, very heavy.

BOM-BOM-BOM-BOM-BOM. That’s my heart.

My hands are trembling as I pick up the objects, then I squeeze out from behind the goddess into the half-light at the front of the shrine. And there is the Quiet Gentleman.

‘So, boy,’ he says, ‘you found a way round my guard. Don’t drop what you’re carrying.’ His voice is calm and level.

I was about to, I admit, just to show that I don’t really care if I keep them or not. I can hardly breathe.

‘Talk, boy.’

‘Can’t.’

‘You just did.’

‘Found these. Cleaning. They yours?’ My voice is shaking and high. I hold out the leather roll and the heavy little bag. He takes the roll, which clinks like there’s metal in it.

‘You hang on to that,’ he says, nodding at the bag.

‘Why?’

‘Just while we have a little chat. Now’s the time to tell me everything you know.’

His voice is as flat as a knife. In that little shrine, with the sun slanting down through the holes in the roof, making everything striped, the truth comes pouring out of my mouth like grain from a slashed sack and it doesn’t stop until there’s no more truth to tell. The City of the Dead, the hiding, the rats, the men and all they said . . .

I finish and wait for the punishment I’m sure is coming, but the Quiet Gentleman just asks questions.

‘So you think I’m a tomb robber, do you, mud boy?’

‘I don’t want to think anything,’ I say.

‘Why’s that?’

‘If you’re a . . . you know what, you’ll kill me.’

‘So you know other tomb robbers?’

‘No!’ I almost shout.

‘Then don’t you worry about dying quite yet,’ the Quiet Gentleman says pleasantly. ‘I need you alive to answer a few more questions. These people you overheard: you never saw their faces?’

‘Sort of. I think one of them was here the night you turned up. He left as soon as you arrived, but I recognised his voice.’ I describe him, but can’t see any change in the Quiet Gentleman’s expression.

‘Will you know the voices if you hear them again?’

I nod. ‘And one was called Jatty.’

A pause. ‘Did the other have a voice like a smear of cold vomit?’

I nod enthusiastically, but suddenly he’s towering over me like a mountain. ‘And why did you look for my things? To steal? To sell them to these men if they found me? Are you lying? Did they catch you? Did you do a deal with them to save your life?’

‘NO! I just . . .’ I gabble. ‘I was scared to tell you in case you killed me. And then I was angry because you called me a cringer. I just – just wanted to look at what you had.’

He inhales like he’s about to say something, then breathes out through his nose. When he finally speaks, I know it’s not what he was going to say at first.

‘Well, in that case, you’d better look before you die,’ the Quiet Gentleman says. His eyes are like little dark slits, pushed up by his cheeks.