Nefertiti (11 page)
We paused to absorb his words.
'Barbarians at the garden gate indeed.'
I recognized the cold sarcastic voice at once. Mahu joined us.
Nakht acknowledged him with the barest nod. 'Where's your dog, Mahu? At home, waiting up for you?'
'He doesn't like parties. He's happier in his own company.'
They were like mutually adversarial species: the elegant leopard of the noble intelligentsia and the lion of the lower ranks sharing the same habitat only by virtue of an agreement that could be terminated at any moment.
Parennefer, anxious to avoid confrontation, took the opportunity to announce his departure, effectively abandoning me to the charms of a man he must have known was not favourably disposed towards me. I would remember that.
'I expect we will meet again,' he said. 'It's a small world.'
'But I wouldn't want to have to paint it,' I said.
That was something my ex-partner Pentu used to say. I don't know why it came into my mind at that moment. Nakht laughed, but Parennefer just looked puzzled, shrugged, and then sailed off into the sea of conversation.
'It is encouraging to know we have a smart man on our side in these strange times,' Nakht said, turning to me. 'I hope we will meet again. Call on me for anything you need. Your assistant knows where to find me.' And then he too left us.
I was sorry to see him go. I felt I could trust him. And he could be a good friend on the inside.
Mahu stared balefully after Nakht's figure, then turned to me. You have a little fan.'
I shrugged. 'He seems a good man.'
'He is a noble. It is easy for them to be good. There is no effort in it. They inherit it, along with the power and the fortune.'
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
'You didn't come to see me with your news,' he said.
Of course I had not. This was deliberate. Nevertheless, I had flouted protocol and annoyed him. Again.
'I assumed Khety or Tjenry would report to you.'
'Who's the dead girl?'
'I don't know yet.'
I said nothing more, hoping he would go. But he just stared out at the people as if they were a herd of animals and he the hunter depressed by his lack of appetite.
'What do you make of all this?' he said, jutting his head at them.
'They're all trying to get by. We all have to swim in the same water.'
He gave me a brief, cynical look. 'Most of them don't know they're born. They think the worst that can happen is a slave stealing a handful of jewellery. While the rest of us are spending our lives keeping the deserts off their streets.'
'That's the job. Always more desert.'
'I want to know whose side you are on, Rahotep. I want to know what you think.'
'I'm not on anyone's side.'
'Then let me tell you something. That is the most dangerous position in this city. Sooner or later you will have to make a choice. At the moment, it seems to me you don't even know what the sides are.'
'That's what I'm here to find out.'
He laughed darkly. 'You'd better find out fast how things work, and who pulls what strings. Even your own. Good luck untangling them. And by the way, I've gathered a few friends together for a hunt on the river. Tomorrow afternoon. Do you hunt, Rahotep?'
I had to confess I did.
'Then I insist you join us. It will give me a chance to assess your progress.'
He patted me patronizingly on the back, and moved off with his predator's lope through the crowd.
I turned to look at Khety, who all this time had stood behind me ignored by everyone, and was surprised to see a flash of anger in his eyes.
'Take no notice, Khety. He's an old-fashioned bully. Don't let him get to you. Above all, don't be afraid of him.' 'Aren't you afraid of him? Just a bit?'
'I'm trespassing on his territory. He's a big old lion and he doesn't like that.' I changed the subject. 'Won't Akhenaten appear tonight?'
'I don't think so. I've heard he rarely appears at events after dark. And the invitations were issued in Ramose's name. But even so I'd have thought he needs to show himself to confirm there's not a problem.'
Yet if he appears without the Queen that will only confirm the suspicions.'
I suddenly realized why the hall was so animated and noisy. It was as if the rules of the day - the worship for and respect of the new religion - were relaxing. And I felt like this too. Another girl was pa
ss
ing, and I intercepted her and took more drinks. I suddenly very much needed another drink. I drank it gratefully.
Khety gave me a look.
'What?'
'Nothing.'
Just then the orchestra concluded its excruciating labours and the dancers melted away. Trumpet blasts stopped the barrage of conversation, officials moved into formation, and all heads turned towards the raised platform at the centre of the hall. A herald announced him, and Ramose walked up onto the platform. The hall immediately fell silent. He stared about him for several moments before speaking.
'We stand together, tonight, in the new City of the Two Lands. A new city for a new world. Here we celebrate the Works and the Wonders of Aten. And over the coming days we shall welcome the arrival of kings, chieftains, heads of state, loyal vassals, officials and leaders. They are travelling here from across the Empire to pay rightful homage to the Great Estate of Akhenaten, through whom all things exist and in whom all recognize Truth. To those honoured guests who are already among us, I offer you welcome. To those of you granted the good fortune to reside here, in service of the Great Estate, I say: join me in that welcome. And to the world, which hears these words, I say, for Akhenaten and the royal family: worship the Aten, here in Akhetaten, the City of Light.'
There was a strange and uncomfortable silence at the end of the speech, as if more needed to be said, or indeed as if something else needed to happen, such as the appearance of Akhenaten and the family in the Window of Appearances. But there was nothing. I noticed people exchanging uneasy litt
le glances with each other, com
municating in the most careful way their responses to this dogma and to the discomforting tone, the odd flatness, of Ramose's delivery. Everyone knew someone was missing. Ramose descended from the platform to receive the offered congratulations of his officials. Slowly the level of noise restored itself, but this time with a different tone, one that spoke of speculation.
I had had enough for one evening. I needed to return to the office, to think, to sleep. I looked up at Nefertiti's statues again.
Where are you? Why have you gone just now? Have you been taken, and
if
so by whom? Or have you vanished — and
if
so, why? Who are you?
Outside the hall, along the Royal Road, a number of citizens remained, still keen for a sighting of someone important. No-one took much notice of Khety and me, luckily, so we drove slowly away.
Now, as I lie here, I am considering the various strands of the evening. At my head stands the strange little icon of Akhenaten. I remember Parennefer's words: the city is a beautiful enchantment. But it does not seem so simple now. For all the language of light and enlightenment the same dark shades of human ambition, avarice and cruelty seem to reside here too, awaiting opportunities. It seems to me, suddenly, that Akhenaten is standing under the sun for fear of those night shadows creeping closer to him with every passing day. I too am now subject to the encroachment of these shadows. Mahu was right. I cannot yet disentangle truth from speculation, fact from fiction, honesty from lies.
I go to the window and look out at the bleak little courtyard. At least the heat has lifted a little. The desert makes this city tolerable by night; breezes cooled by the face of the moon move through doors and passages across our sleeping faces and into our restless dreams. Tomorrow I must pursue the identity of the dead girl. It strikes me I am investigating versions of possibility. I am pursuing copies in the hope of tracing their lost original. But at least I have my next move. The scarab and this journal I will place beneath my pillow on my headrest for safe-keeping. May the gods bless my children and my wife, and bring me to the new light of the dawn. Suddenly my love for them is singing in my breastbone like a stitch of pain.
I woke to an urgent knocking on the door. It was Khety. Something was wrong. It was still dark. We drove fast through the deserted ways, in silence.
I opened the door to the chamber of purification. It was very dark and very cold. I entered the room carefully, anxious to disturb nothing. I raised my lamp. The girl's shadowy body remained in the same position. The chilly air was tainted with decay. All the candles in their sconces had burned down. I walked slowly around the room, trying to observe everything, as is my method, breaking up the surfaces and spaces into squares, noting everything and moving on to the next. It was as I remembered it: the chests were closed, the implements in their places, the canopic jars on their shelves. The Sons of Horus stared down at me. I walked along the wall of
empty, decorated coffins, hold
ing up the lamp. Suddenly I leaped back: one was wide open. It contained a body, propped up like a bad scary joke.
Tjenry was upright in the coffin, his eyes open, a slight smile stuck
on his bloodless handsome face. I waved the lamp over him and caught a strange glitter in his wide-open eyes. I looked carefully into them. Glass. I lowered the lamp. Something else was set on the floor at his feet. One canopic jar.
Khety and I lifted him out, with infinite care and sorrow, and set him gently down on a table. We could not look at each other. A few hours ago this thing of muscle and bone had been a young man of charm and prospects. In the glow of the newly lit lamps I examined every inch of the body. Apart from a loincloth he was naked, washed, clean. There were brutal red and blue gouges in the yellow and grey flesh of his wrists and ankles, and around his waist and chest. Over his forehead was a deep band of purple bruising. He had been bound down tightly. He had struggled greatly for life. There were also marks and little tears on his nostrils. I dreaded what I would find. I opened his mouth, stiff now like a trap, and pulled sticky red wadding from the cavity. What was left of the tongue was a chewed piece of meat, unrecognizable as the instrument of speech. I kept going, although my deepest wish was to walk from this room and keep walking, rather than go forward to the discovery I knew lay ahead. He had clearly been alive when all this was done to him. Everything pointed to an experience of slow, excruciating and terrifying agony. I looked up and saw the grim instruments of mummification hanging in the shadows on their hooks. I steeled myself and looked inside the canopic jar. His brain, mangled, torn and already tinged blue with decay, the organ usually thrown away, lay within, topped by his eyes on their bloody, torn strings.
I could barely believe it. Someone had bound him down, and while he was alive had removed his brain through his nostrils, as if he were already dead and ready for burial, using the iron hooks hanging innocently on the wall. It had been done meticulously, expertly. It had been done during the time we were at
the reception, eating and drink
ing and talking. It had been done in this room.
I struggled to keep control of my feelings. I had seen bad things in my time. I'd smelled the sweet stench of human bone burning, and the steam from just-dead viscera rising from a gutted belly. But I had never seen anything like this inhuman enactment with its barbaric precision.
There was nothing now I could do for him. No prayers from the Book of the Dead would guard agains
t the horror of this. I remem
bered that I had ordered him to remain behind. And now he was dead. I closed his delicate, cold eyelids over his strange, bright glass eyes. Khety and I left the room, with its appalling chill, and stood outside. The dawn was breaking. Birds were singing.
