Nefertiti (25 page)

Khety shaded his eyes. 'Horemheb.'

I gazed at this figure who
had suddenly assumed a great im
portance in my mind. As I watched, there was a moment of ceremony between the reception committee, the brisk, no-nonsense man, and the retainers who followed him at a respectful distance down the gang-plank. Then he moved off through the crowds, his armed escort beating back with sticks and batons any careless person who did not instantly bow his head and make way.

Khety, who could pass unnoticed in a crowd more freely than I could, departed to speak to his brother and find a means of access to the archives. After he left, I stayed wa
tching on the roof as the caval
cade of materials and people continued to flow into the unfinished, soon to be overwhelmed city. And above us all the birds, circling; and beyond that the infinite opposition of the desert. I thought of my girls, and Tanefert. What were they all doing now? Were my girls asking about their father? Was their mother making up some story with her rich invention? Or were they just running around, or reading, or executing new acrobatic movements over and over and over until something was knocked flying?

As I sat there pondering the imponderables of my life, a frail figure emerged onto one of the nearby roofs. She shaded her eyes and looked around, and when she noticed me she made a polite, deferential bow. I nodded back. It would do no harm, I thought, to discover more about this quarter of the city, not least because secrets and information are not the preserve of palaces alone, but are found equally in the most dismal of shanties. So I stepped over the parapet, making my way cautiously over the crumbling roofs - in places the dry reeds, bundled and plaited together, which served as roofing material had already broken or given way - and joined her on the opposite parapet. Her skin was darker than mine, her features nomadic, her dress clean but poor, adorned with a few trinkets of traditional style. She might have been no more than twenty years old, but hard labour had aged her well beyond that: as always the hands, with their callused skin as tough as hide, gnarled knuckles and broken nails, told the story. Still, there was life and humanity in her smile. We greeted each other.

'I am from Mut,' she said, by way of introduction. I knew of it - a desert settlement to the south-west, near the Dakhla Oasis.

'I've never been there, but I enjoy the wine,' I said.

She nodded without comment.

'Why did you come to the city?' I asked her.

'Ah. The city.' She shaded her eyes and shook her head slowly. 'My husband overheard a wonderful story someone was telling in the market, of the new capital, about the need for workers. He came home and told me, "We can escape, make something of ourselves." I was afraid to leave everything I knew and cared for to set out on such a dangerous journey. We'd heard other tales of gangs of convicts and even the soldiers of the Amun Priests robbing travellers by night. But he wanted to go, and there was nothing for us where we were. So we surrendered all we possessed to a guide, who guaranteed safe passage. He told us about a green city of towers, gardens and ample work for all. Even I was beguiled by his words. We left, with our two young children. Parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters - we left them all behind knowing we were unlikely ever to see them again. We were five families who set out together that evening.'

She paused for a moment, her eyes swimming with the memory of departure.

'We travelled for days beyond telling. Then one evening we were surprised and surrounded by a band of Medjay guards. We were forced to march, and eventually they rounded up other straggling groups of desperate people from all over the Red Land. We were nothing but cattle.
Cattle.'

She held out her ruined hands in a gesture of helplessness.

'Finally we arrived at the Great River. But all the sweet waters that flowed before my eyes could not have satisfied my thirst to return home again, and know my own hearth. We were shipped down the river to the city and set to work. We were not slaves, but we were not free men either. Men and women had to wait together every morning for the Overseer and his assistants to make their selections: who would work and eat, and who would not work and starve. Always the fittest and strongest worked, and while these lucky ones tried to bring supplies back in secret for the others, gradually those not chosen died away in the filthy hovels where they were left to fend for themselves. I worked as a labourer. My children are now mixing the mud for the sun-dried bricks that, one by one, are building the city. My husband is now the foreman of a work gang. But it has soured his soul. He drinks. We fight. And now...'

She gestured to her foot. I saw that it was bandaged.

'It is broken?'

She slowly unwound the stained linen and showed me the damage: it had been crushed by a stone building-block. The flesh was mottled blue and crimson and rotten yolk-yellow, the shape distorted, the toes curled into themselves. It looked to me as if the bones were smashed, the flesh rotting. She would have to lose the foot.

'I am as useless now as a dancer with one leg.'

It was tempting to read a parable of suffering and wisdom in her dignified face. But what I saw there was simply hopelessness.

'I wish we had not come,' she continued. 'But what choice did we have? All we had left to sell was ourselves. And this is a world in which if you have nothing to sell, you die.'

What could I do for this woman? Our green and gold world, our life of houses and linens and fine wines, is built on the invisible, inescapable labour of the multitudes. Not a new thought, of course. There had been many occasions in my life when I had been exposed to these unpleasant realities. My work had shown me day after day the effects of this poverty: in the crimes committed out of the despair of drink, in particular; the delirious exuberance, the indifference to cares, the sorrowful songs of misfortune soon giving way to irredeemable acts of rage and violence.

We sat for a little while, listening to the birds' free music. It seemed like a beautiful joke at her expense, a sweetness she could never possess; but she closed her eyes and drank it in like wine. I pressed upon her the only thing I could offer: a draught of water from the jar. She drank a few sips, grateful more for the offer than the thing itself. And then we made our farewells, and she hobbled away across the rooftops in the burning afternoon.

Not long after that Khety returned with the news that we could attempt to enter the archive that evening. He was full of problems and concerns: how would we pass through security, how would we find the necessary information among so much papyrus, what would happen to his brother and his family if we were caught? But in such situations I find myself becoming less, rather than more, concerned.

'Don't waste my time with your worries,' I said. 'Concentrate on solutions, not problems.'

He didn't like that.

'Listen, Khety, there are two things in our line of work. One is knowledge, under the heading of which I include planning. The other is improvisation, under the heading of which I include errors, mistakes, cock-ups and the general chaos to which all things inevitably, especially in our business, tend - and that goes for planning too. So let's make a plan, and then, when it goes wrong, we'll improvise our way out of trouble.'

31

It was in the personae of a court scribe and his assistant that we left the safe house. I had my story prepared. We were researching an official history of the reign of Akhenaten to be presented to him by the Office of Culture on the occasion of his jubilee. It was to be a surprise, and must be kept secret. We carried with us documents of permission from the Akhetaten Medjay office which Khety had forged, having stamped them with some kind of blurred approval-seal in his office. I also had with me the original papers of authorization, but they would not help us now that we were in hiding.

'Did you see Mahu?' I asked Khety.

'He was out. I timed my visit
carefully. He's been asking for
me.'

'I imagine he has. What does he think you are doing now, since we were arrested after Meryra's murder?'

'He's been too busy to care. The murder has badly damaged his prestige, and he's on the rampage to fi
t someone to the crime. I guess
he's furious that you've disappeared again. I'm sure that's why he wants to see me.'

I gave myself a moment to relish the satisfaction Khety's words brought me. With the Festival coming, and the escalating security tensions after Meryra's murder, Mahu was almost certainly too pre-occupied with his immediate problems to make good on his threat against my family.

It was a strange experience to walk once more through the streets of the city. The absolute single-minded purpose that characterized the attitude of the citizens during my first days here had changed now; among the new crowds there was a sense of uncertainty, touching on anxiety, as if everyone was apprehensive about the coming events and the arrival of so many strangers. But that was all to our advantage, as it enabled us to move far less conspicuously up and down the roads. Nevertheless, we covered our heads in the vague imitation of some kind of religious modesty. No-one paid us any attention.

We walked away from the slums and up the Royal Road heading north, where Thutmosis the sculptor had driven me in his chariot. We continued towards the central city among the evening crowds, past the Small Aten Temple, which was besieged with worshippers clamouring to enter through the first pylon. I caught a quick glimpse of the open sun court packed with people, their hands raised to the many statues of the King and Queen, and to the rays of the late sun. We followed to the right along the long northern wall of the temple, struggling against the current of the crowds, until we passed the House of Life and came to the complex of the Records Office. Now we were in more danger. We were more likely to be recognized here, not least because Mahu's office in the Medjay barracks was only a few blocks away to the east.

Khety confidently made his way down a narrower avenue between high walls, past offices where all kinds of bureaucratic activity seemed to be taking place. We turned through a formal portal decorated with the insignia of the Aten sun disc, and found ourselves in a small courtyard. Here we encountered our first set of security guards. Khety wafted the permission briefly before their eyes, and I tried to look haughty. They glanced at us suspiciously, but nodded. We were about to move on through the courtyard when a commanding voice called us to halt. Khety looked at me. Another guard approached us.

'This office is not open for public attendance.' He scanned our permission. 'Who authorized this?'

I was about to start speaking, to try to improvise a way past this danger, when a high, clear voice cried out, 'I did.' The thin young man who had spoken had the serious, pale face of those who avoid the sun. He stood at the threshold to one of the offices. 'They have a meeting arranged with me. I've been assigned to offer them assistance. It is a great honour. Don't you know this is one of the finest writers of our time?' He nodded respectfully in
my direction. I bowed almost im
perceptibly to acknowledge the compliment, in a way I copied from a public reading I had once attended, on Tanefert's insistence, given by a writer much admired for his supposed wit and brilliance. I had spent the endless time marvelling at his pomposity, his bad but costly dress, and his affected speech. The young man gestured respectfully for me to lead the way, and as we passed beyond the jurisdiction of the guards he whispered to me, with a quaver of fear in his voice, 'Fortunately none of them can read.' And with that we passed through the immediate danger and into the building.

Khety's younger brother was as unlike him as was possible, as if he had only been able to define himself in opposition to his sibling's character.

You might as well know I'd rather be reading about this kind of thing in a cheap story than actually
smuggling
you in through security. Have you no idea of the danger you place us all in? At a time like this?' He addressed this last comment to his brother.

Khety raised his eyes at me. 'Sorry, sir. He's led a sheltered life.'

A group of Medjay officers passed us in the corridor, and we all fell silent. I felt sure I recognized one of them from the hunting party. His eyes met my glance curiously. I looked away, and kept walking. I dared not look back. Their footfalls paused for a moment - would he call after me? - but then continued until they died away behind us. We walked on.

Khety's brother introduced himself as Intef - 'it is a name I share with the Great Herald of the City, although unlike me he is also known as "Great in Love", "Lord of the Entire Oasis Region" and "Count of Thinis", which, as I'm sure you will know, is Abydos' - as he pushed open a door with a flourish. We followed him into a large chamber lined with high wooden shelves and furnished with many desks at which men studied scrolls and papyrus documents in the last of the light from the clerestory windows. Few looked up from their scrutinizing; some were now packing away their materials, notes and documents to leave. I saw that many corridors and passage-ways led off from this central reading room. Fortunately there were no guards here.

'This is the main library,' Intef s
aid. 'Here we keep all the docu
ments and publications relating to the current works of the city. We have separate sections for Foreign Affairs and Correspondence, Domestic Internal Information, Criminal Acts and Judgements, Cultural Documentation including poetry and fables, Sacred Texts heretical and orthodox, Historical Records public and not, and so on. Sometimes it's quite difficult to know under which heading some kinds of information fall.'

'So what do you do then?' I asked.

'We send it to be classified. And if that fails it is passed on again to a room in the library which privately we call Miscellaneous, Mysterious and Missing. Sometimes we know we ought to have a certain document, certain kinds of evidence in writing, but for what-ever reason it is not in the library. So we may also make a record of its absence, so to speak, and again we send this to the Missing Room. In some cases we may make notes towards the definition of what is missing in terms of secret information - what we know we don't know, in a way.' He smiled.

'I think I follow you. Those must be quite extensive records. Do you include missing persons in this Missing Room?'

He looked at me suspiciously, then at his brother. 'What exactly are you looking for?'

'Not what, who. I do not think the information we are seeking lies in this room.'

Intef glanced at the men preparing to leave the main room. He nodded quickly and anxiously, and we followed him out. He hurried down one of the passageways, and we entered into a great labyrinth of papyrus. The corridors were lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves on which were piled a dusty infinity of documents and writings: unbound papyrus sheets, bound collections, some cased in leather, others in scrolls, wooden boxes containing millions of clay tablets in many scripts.

'What language is this?' I asked, picking up one covered in a series of complex slanted marks.

'It is Babylonian, the language of international diplomacy,' Intef said, taking it off me quickly with a click of his tongue and fastidiously replacing it.

'No wonder everything's so con
fused. How many people can read
it?'

'Those that need to,' he replied piously.

Then, with a quick glance up and down the corridor, he pulled us aside into a small, barely lit antechamber lined with shelves. Like a bad actor playing a conspirator he addressed me too loudly: 'It is indeed a great honour to help you in your project. What can I do for you?' As he did this he gestured with his thumb at the walls and winked over and over.

I played along. 'We are researching the glorious acts of our Lord
...
'

He made a kind of
more
gesture.

'And we ask you to honour us with access to the archives on the subject of his early life.'

At the same time, Khety handed him a tiny scroll of papyrus on which he had written the names of those we really wished to research. Intef secreted the scroll in his robe.

'Please follow me,' he said, almost comically bellowing now. 'I am sure we have many treasures pertaining to our Lord's Great Works.'

We walked faster now through the passageways. Intef whispered more urgently and silently this time: 'I cannot afford to get into any kind of trouble. I'm only doing this because my brother insisted. I should have known
...
'

'I asked Khety to ask you. Why don't you read the list of names?'

He did so, and I watched as his complexion achieved an even weaker shade of pallor. He held the papyrus like a poisoned thing.

'Do you have the slightest idea of the danger in which you are placing me, yourselves, our . . . lives?' he hissed.

'Yes,' I said.

He was speechless. He made the old gesture of blessing over himself and led us on to another chamber, long, dark and narrow, deeper inside the building. He checked carefully for guards, then crept up a staircase into a vast, dusty and low chamber, like a tomb, barely lit, which, he explained in another low whisper, contained the classified stacks of the collection.

'Guards patrol at all hours of the day and night,' he warned.

The many stacks of shelves, each marked at its entrance with a different hieroglyph, disappeared into shadows. So many words and signs, information and stories were gathered here. A torch brushing casually against a shelf, a forgotten taper falling over on a pile of papyrus, a mistaken spark ascending, caught by a draught and delivered like a firefly onto the yellow corner of an ancient tome, and this hidden library of secrets would be ablaze in moments. It was tempting.

First we searched for Mahu's file. The information was stored with bureaucratic precision. There were already thousands of documents on citizens whose names began with M. I flicked through some of them: Maanakhtef, the Officer of Agriculture under Akhenaten's grandfather; Maaty, Treasury official; Madja, 'Mistress of the House'. I glanced down her paper and read 'informer of the artisan community . . . sex worker'. There were countless other individuals whose names and secrets passed in a blur. Then, there it was: a single slip of papyrus contained within a neat leather binding. How like his office and his manner in its minimalism. But the content was disappointing. The papyrus held only the most elementary information: date and place of birth (Memphis), family antecedents (ordinary), long lists of accolades, successful entrapments of fugitives, statistics of success rates, bringing armed robbers to trial, numbers executed . . . and then the words:
PAPERS X CLASSIFIED.
He must have written it himself. In a way I had expected nothing more. What sort of a police chief would leave his best-kept secrets written down in his own archive?

Meryra was next. I flipped through, casting a quick eye over Merer, gardener; Merery, Priest, senior, of Hathor at the Dendera Temple in the Sixth Nome, also Keeper of the Cattle; then Meryra. Parents: father Nebpehitre, First Priest of Min of Koptos; mother Hunay, Chief Nurse of the Lord of the Two Lands. Interesting to find the same few families continuously maintaining their proximity to, and influence on, the royal family. Koptos was a rich place, for its gold mines, its quarries and its prime location on the trade route to the eastern seas -a tremendous source of income for the father. Min, I knew, was a god associated with Amun and the Theban cults, as well as Protector of the Eastern Desert. His main role had been to assist in the ceremonies of coronation and festival; he was the god of potency who ensured the power of the King. So the family had moved its allegiance as required, and very successfully, negotiating coinciding positions within both the Amun hierarchy and the Great House. But it seemed Meryra had been given the opportunity - or was it perhaps a threat? - to pledge total allegiance to Akhenaten and the Aten cult.

I ran my eye down his biography, which contained nothing exceptional. Educated in the usual schools and admitted to various hereditary and additional offices; th
en he seemed to have allied him
self unequivocally to Akhenaten soon after the death of Amenhotep. He had been one of the first to arrive in the new city. He had become chief adviser to Akhenaten on domestic policy. In this way he would have been able to protect and advance the family assets within the land, I supposed. Well, no more. He was dead now. But what was there here to help explain why he had been targeted? Obviously the assassination of the newly appointed High Priest of the Aten was an astonishingly powerfu
l and well-aimed blow at the fac
ade of Akhenaten's power. And the timing was immaculate. Who were the benefactors? I assumed his possessions would largely devolve to the Treasury. Similarly, Ramose had motive: at a stroke he would have wiped out his chief opposition. But the way Meryra was murdered did not fit that idea: Ramose would have been subtler and quieter, and he would have made certain the death did not reflect back so obviously on himself. Also, Nefertiti had said he never acted out of revenge. No, what had happened had been designed to continue and extend the destabilizing of the regime in the most effective, most public way possible.