Nefertiti

22

Someone’s shadow was standing over me. I jumped up, shaking my head to sort my senses into some order. Lamps had been lit along the walls. I had slept like a village idiot. For a moment I could not remember where I was.

‘It is time.’ Khety looked amused.

Some dates and figs lay in a bowl and I wolfed down a handful hungrily. Sweetness in the late afternoon gives me at least the appearance of energy.

We were prepared as well as possible in our dress. Parennefer drove me slowly and nervously to the royal palace in his own chariot, while Khety followed behind. Parennefer was one of those drivers who seemed to look no further than the horses’ noses. Certainly he did not look up ahead to see what was happening on the crowded way.

He gave me one of his solicitous, tilted looks. ‘Have they told you much about Tiy?’ he said.

‘I hear she’s not in the finest form of beauty these days.’

‘I could not say. But she is here only to attend the Festival. Although the King has constructed for her a palace and a temple, she has not until now wished to visit the new city. I’ve heard she thinks it has all gone too far, this move to the new city, the Great Changes and so on. But she feels compelled to support it, now that everything has happened. Everyone knows, I think, that her words are still powerful with Akhenaten.’

‘Well, that’s how it tends to be between mothers and sons,’ I said, thinking of my own mother and her clever ways.

‘Of course, but not only that!’ he cried, as if I had not learned my lesson well. ‘Firstly she is herself of royal status as the beloved wife of Amenhotep, Akhenaten’s father, the Magnificent, Builder of the Monuments. But also, and not least, because her own family is the most trusted in the service of the royal family. Indeed, her father, Yuya, who began his career as Officer in the Royal Charioteers, rose to become Amenhotep’s most trusted adviser. And her brother, Ay, today holds his father’s offices, and is an extremely close adviser to Akhenaten.’

‘I have heard of this Ay. What do you know about him?’

‘He is known only to a closed circle; apparently he prefers to remain publicly anonymous. His family has grown around the royal family like ivy, until through marriage they have eventually become almost indistinguishable from it. It is a powerful alliance.’

These genealogies were mind-numbingly complicated. Who knew how, in future days, such chains of birthright and power-bargaining would be untangled? How such and such a girl would come to be sold to another foreign power for the price of a little peace or the cost of a small war? Whose names would survive, whose stories would turn to dust and blow away? But I had to get this clear in my mind or I knew I would make some stupid error in front of the woman I was soon to interview.

‘So, Tiy is Queen Mother. Her father was an up-and-coming young man from a well-placed family who became very powerful. Her brother, Ay, is in the inner circle.’

‘Yes,’ said Parennefer. ‘His father, who was a good as well as a powerful man, ensured his son’s position at the heart of things from a young age. I think in fact he was the youngest ever Master of the Horse.’

‘And what is the nature of this man’s relationship with Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife?’ I asked.

‘I do not know.’ And with that he clammed up, his face no more revealing than a sealed tomb.

I thought it through as we continued to drive through the now chaotic streets in the evening light. Here was a man at the heart of the royal family. Everything had been done by his own family to ensure the succession and improvement of that alliance. And it seemed to have succeeded astonishingly well. Yet I did not know anything of this man or his power.

‘Is he here in the city?’ I asked Parennefer.

He looked as if he was surprised I should still be thinking about Ay. ‘Not at this precise moment, I believe. I understand he travels constantly between Thebes, Memphis and here. He has his own ship of state. But few know of his movements. Certainly not me.’

We arrived at the royal palace. Parennefer hurried us through the gateway, waving his hands loftily at the guards, who made themselves invisible. He led us down more long corridors, deeper into the complex. We were turning a corner when suddenly he held me back in the shadows.

‘Be careful what you say in your meeting with the Royal Mother,’ he said. ‘She feasts on fear. She has the tongue of a crocodile. She can turn your life to dust. She will be meeting you with the princesses. Apparently she insists on being present during their interview.’

‘That’s the last thing I want,’ I said, cursing my stupidity in not foreseeing this.

We came to a door, he knocked, and we were admitted. I heard the familiar sound of girls shouting and arguing, punctuated by the apparently pointless instructions of a woman’s voice. Nurses and servants ran about looking tense and tired.

‘It must be bedtime for the princesses,’ said Parennefer. He looked more worried now than before. ‘Marvellous. I must be going. I will leave you in the capable hands of the governess. Ah, here she comes now.’ Then he looked at me again and said quietly, ‘We are early. I thought it best to arrive early.’

I understood him. He hoped to give us a little time alone with the princesses before Tiy arrived. I gripped his hand, communicating my thanks.

A middle-aged woman moved anxiously towards us, alarmed to see us there so soon. She was unprepared. She had just opened her mouth to greet us when she was interrupted by a sharp scream; a small ball of blue and red leather flew through an open door with all the furious inaccuracy of a child in a tantrum, and shattered a plant pot. Soil went flying across the floor. The door slammed shut.

The woman blushed. ‘Come, clear this up, quickly.’

Servants hurried across to sweep away the mess.

‘The princesses have such a wonderful appetite for life that the idea of bedtime is distressing to them,’ she continued, addressing me. ‘They grow tired, and then cannot account for themselves in the way I am sure they would truly wish.’

I interpreted her meaning. I tried to help her out. ‘My girls are the same. Although the promise of a story can quiet them for a little.’

She nodded. ‘But then one must be careful, for the Royal Grandmother believes literature is an unnecessary stimulation and may keep them awake all night.’

‘Could I meet them now, before they sleep?’

‘I was strictly instructed only to begin the interview when the Queen Mother arrived.’

‘Well, I am here now. And they seem ready for bed. Could I perhaps meet them immediately?’

She was shaking her head fearfully when a girl appeared at the doorway. Meretaten. I remembered her from the ceremony.

‘Bring him in now,’ she ordered imperiously, and turned back into the room with a confidence that somehow was unattractive.

We entered the nursery. It was a long, high room with windows and doors to the terrace now covered with bright curtains. In the centre was a long, low wooden table. Alcoves contained beds. Toys of remarkable invention and beauty of construction overflowed from trunks. Papyrus collections of stories were packed onto shelves. Little statuettes and votive figurines were lined up along a shelf. The walls around each bed were hung with drawings, stories and poems on beautifully illustrated papyri. Servants were apprehensively attempting to restore some kind of order to the room’s colourful and lively chaos.

At the table sat three girls on low stools; Meretaten stood at the head. As we entered they all looked at me expectantly. Their mother was in all of them. Their faces were fine and haughty, their hair black and glossy, their skin pure, their postures elegant and perfect. They sat as if posing, straight-backed and self-conscious, not with the indolent pleasure of my girls. Their governess introduced me to them: Meretaten, then Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten and Nefernefruaten.

‘I don’t know if I can remember those names straight away,’ I said.

Meretaten stared down her nose at me. ‘Then you must be a fool.’

There was a little silence while the other girls waited to see how I would react. I asked her how old she was.

‘Fourteen.’ She gazed at me.

‘And you other girls?’

‘Twelve.’

‘Ten.’

‘Seven-and I’m not the youngest. Nefernefrure and Setepenra are already asleep.’

I sat down with them, at their level, on a low stool. The silence continued. The girls looked uncertain. I realized there were a number of women in attendance, waiting and watching. I whispered to the governess to ask if I could be left alone with the princesses.

‘It is forbidden for men to remain alone in the nursery,’ she replied.

‘Then could you perhaps dismiss the attendants, and stay yourself as the chaperone?’

She considered it, but it was Meretaten who nodded her agreement and clapped her hands. The attendants filed out of the room and closed the door behind them. As soon as they were gone, Meretaten relaxed slightly. Meketaten got up from the table and went to sit, cross-legged, on her bed, her sleek sidelock falling over her ear as she repeatedly combed it through.

‘Do you mind if I talk to you all a little?’ I said.

‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ said Meretaten. She looked at me curiously now.

‘Are you a seeker of mysteries?’ asked Ankhesenpaaten.

‘I am a detective in the Thebes Medjay, and your father has ordered me here. Perhaps you are aware of the reason why?’

‘Because the Queen has disappeared,’ said Meretaten. Those were her words, spoken with a strange kind of bitterness. No mention of the fact that it was her own mother who had vanished. She must have seen the look of surprise on my face, for she covered her tracks quickly. ‘That’s what people are whispering.’

‘And what do you think?’ I asked.

‘I think you’re here to find her. Which means she’s been kidnapped, or stolen. Or she’s dead.’

I was shocked by her casual tone.

‘I must be honest with you and admit I don’t yet know what has happened to her, but I believe she is alive, and I am determined to find her and bring her back to you. She must miss you as much as you miss her.’

I heard behind me a little snuffle. Nefernefrure had appeared, silent tears trickling down her face.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said Meretaten.

The governess took the child in her arms and comforted her. The tears subsided, and the tiny girl glared suspiciously at me.

‘I know how difficult it is to talk,’ I said, ‘but I wanted to meet you all because I need your help. I need you to tell me anything you remember about your mother in the days before she disappeared. Or anything about your mother you think I should know. Can you do that?’

The girls all looked at Meretaten, as if they were silently discussing an agreement. Then Meretaten took up and set spinning on the table a faience top. It whirled on its single point of balance, the bright colours blurring together so that the image of a smiling face appeared where, in stillness, there had been nothing more than lines. It was a rare and surprising object.

‘That’s a beautiful spinning top. Who gave it to you?’

‘Our mother,’ said Meketaten, pointedly.

We all watched the top in silence. The princesses were mesmerized. Gradually it lost its poise, wobbled, subsided, and then fell over. Meretaten seemed to read its behaviour as a tool of prophecy, or at least decision-making, for she considered it for a little while before eventually nodding. They drew a little closer to me.

‘She was behaving strangely. Her face was dark, sad. Full of shadows and worries.’ The lamplight flickered in Meretaten’s eyes as she spoke.

‘Do you know why?’

Meketaten, lying on her divan, called out, ‘She and father had a fight.’

‘No they didn’t,’ said her older sister.

‘Yes they did. I heard them. Then she came in to say goodnight, and you were all asleep. She was crying but she was trying not to show it. I said, “Why are you crying?” And she said, “No reason, my darling, no reason.” And she said it was our secret, and not to tell. Then she kissed me and hugged me like I was a doll or something, and then she told me to go to sleep and not to worry because she’d make everything all right.’

‘And when did this happen?’ I asked.

‘I don’t remember the day. But not long ago.’

‘And did she talk to any of you other princesses in the same way?’

They looked at each other and shook their heads. Meretaten was angry and silent now. ‘I thought you said it was a secret. You’ve said it out loud now.’ She glared at her sister, who glanced back at her, but wilted under Meretaten’s angry look.

She turned back to me. ‘They have fights. Everyone does. It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Have they had lots of fights?’ I asked.

Meretaten refused to reply.

Ankhesenpaaten, along the table, was playing with a mechanical toy of a wooden man and a big dog worked by strings and pulleys. As she turned the peg the wooden man raised his arms to defend himself as the dog leaped at him to attack. Over and over, the dog biting the man. The white fangs and the wide red eyes and the raised hair along his back. The little girl laughed and pointed at me. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s you!’

I was disconcerted. Then I thought of something.

‘I should also pass on a message to you all,’ I said. ‘It’s from Senet. She wanted me to tell you she misses you all.’

Meretaten’s face hardened. ‘Tell her-’

Then the door opened behind me. The girls stood up and hurried to their beds. The governess trembled.

‘Who permitted this man to enter the nursery and address the princesses without my presence?’

Her voice was like nails scraping on a board. There was a horrible silence. We all stood like statues, looking at the floor. I felt like I was back at school. I had to speak.

‘Highness, I am to blame.’

By the shuffling noise they made I knew her feet were weak and old; her breath came short with anger. For all the finest perfumes of the land, she stank. It was the sickly-sweet stench of decaying flesh. Then she reached out and grabbed my face. I was shocked by the contact, and jumped. She gripped me with bony, resilient strength, and I had to make myself stand still while she drew her fingers, with their long, nasty nails, down across my face.

‘So you are the fool who believes he will find her. Look at me.’

I did so. Time had withered her beauty into a wizened mask of rage. But for the crazy opulence of her dress-veils and robes draped around her bones-and the dyed lengths of her own hair, she would seem a madwoman, a wild nomad from the desert. Her mouth was like an old leather purse, her eyes milky, the colour of the moon. They drifted in their sockets as she spoke. Her laugh was accompanied by a gust of stagnant marsh gas. She grinned as if she could see my reaction, revealing an array of false gold teeth among rotting black stumps.

She shuffled around the girls like an ancient animal or a seer in her fantastic rags. The princesses instinctively backed away from her. Meketaten held her nose and made a face behind the back of the Queen Mother. Suddenly, with shocking accuracy, she slapped the child hard across the face. The girl forced down the tears that sprang to her eyes.

‘Now that I have made the effort to come here, what do you wish to ask these girls? Hurry. It is late.’

I racked my brains.

‘You waste my time. Speak.’

‘Highness, I have no further questions. We have already talked.’

She scowled at me. Then she turned to the girls. ‘Sleep! Now. Any child who speaks will be punished.’

Nefernefrure began to sob again, great waves of unhappiness welling up inside her. The old monster shuffled over to the little girl and shouted into her distraught face. ‘Stop blubbing! Tears are futile. They have no effect upon me whatsoever.’ None of the other girls had the courage to defend their little sister.

She turned back to me. ‘And you and your idiot slave, follow me. Governess, the room is a disaster. See that it is ordered.’ And she shuffled out.

Khety blew out his cheeks, as if to say: I told you so. And he was right. Time was taking a slow and terrible revenge upon her, bone by bone. She was like a living corpse, except somewhere in that mind, probably over-complicated with the fears and terrible imaginings of a lifetime in power, was a keen intelligence and a refusal to submit to mortality without a struggle. But that did not account for her cruelty and viciousness. It was as if all human emotion had long since rotted down into a bile which ran black and vicious in her heart. Perhaps it was all that kept her in the land of the living.

We followed at a respectful distance. As she passed, everyone stepped back, lowering their heads respectfully, and then looked up frankly at Khety and me, with little more curiosity than if we were dinner for the crocodiles in the Sacred Pool. She seemed to know her way without help, and no-one offered to guide her. When she came to steps she showed no sign of hesitation but with quick, practised touches of her slippers quickly found her way onwards.

Eventually we came to a private chamber. Guards were set on either side of the door. As she passed, she flourished her hand and the doors were closed silently behind us. The room was devoid of personal touches: nothing more than a meeting room furnished with a throne on a raised dais which she ascended. She did not sit down in it but remained standing above us.

‘I will grant you a few moments of my time, which is short in every sense. But only because the King, my son, requests it. I have no wish, whatsoever, to discuss affairs of state with some ambitious and unimaginative little Medjay meddler. Speak.’

Here was a woman who had seen and engaged in the operations of power for decades. A woman who had presided over the most powerful reign of the dynasty and still influenced the present King. She waited, her blurred eyes open. It was a strange and disconcerting sensation to address them directly.

‘Highness, kindly describe your relationship with the Queen Nefertiti.’

‘She’s the wife of my son and the mother of six of my grandchildren. My female grandchildren.’

‘You have others?’

‘Of course. There is a harem; there are other wives.’

‘And other grandchildren?’

‘Yes.’

Stones speak more candidly than this. But the stoniness perhaps defended information that was delicate. Other children. Other claims to power.

As I hesitated, uncertain how to proceed, her blind eyes glittered with a kind of bitter amusement. But I would not let myself be distracted. I tried a different approach.

‘Your Majesty has ruled at the heart of the kingdom for many years, by the grace of Ra.’

‘Your point?’

‘Your Highness knows better than any the…challenges which Queens must transcend. Men are born with advantages; women must create their own. It is, as in your own example, if I may say so, a noble achievement.’

‘Don’t you dare to praise me. Who do you think you are?’ Once more she was breathless with anger. ‘I was born into a family of great power. My gender was always to my advantage. I made it so. It gave me a useful cover for my intelligence. And it has enabled me to do all the things I have achieved. Most men fear powerful women. But there are a few who enjoy them. My husband was one. Without me, this city and its god would not exist.’

Khety and I exchanged glances. Even though she was blind I still felt she could see everything.

‘And the Queen?’ I asked.

‘What about her?’

She stared at me, hard. There would be no yielding here.

‘Would this city not exist without her?’

‘It seems to be surviving so far.’

Silence.

‘You are lost already,’ she continued, decisively. ‘You know nothing. You have nothing to ask me because you have discovered nothing and understood nothing.’

It was somewhat true, and all the more infuriating for being so.

I said, ‘I find a young woman, to all purposes identical to the Queen, murdered, her face removed. I find no evidence that the Queen’s disappearance was either violent or against her will. I do, however, find reasons why she might have decided to disappear of her own accord.’

She grinned, baring her gold teeth, in reply. And then she was caught out by a racking cough. She spat out a little phlegm, careless of where it landed. Khety and I just stared at it.

‘Can you hold dreams in your hand?’ she continued. ‘Can you say why people need gods, and why power’s legs must needs be crooked on the straight road? Can you say why men cannot be honest? Can you say why time is more powerful than love? Can you say why hate is more powerful than time? There are many questions your method cannot accommodate.’

I could not say why any of these things should be so. I played my last card: ‘She is not dead.’

Her face did not change. ‘I’m delighted to hear your optimism in the face of so much evidence to the contrary.’

‘Why do you think she disappeared?’

‘Why do you think she has disappeared?’

‘I think she had to make a choice. Between fight and flight. She chose flight. Perhaps it was the only way for her to survive.’

Her face puckered with rage. ‘If that is the case, then she is a despicable little coward,’ she spat. ‘Did she think it would be so easy, to just disappear when things got difficult? Pack up her tender feelings, abandon her children and her husband and disappear, crying her futile tears? Damn her for her selfishness, for her vanity, for her weakness.’

Her anger echoed around the cold room. Then, suddenly, she staggered a little. Her hand flew up to her face while the other searched about for the arm of the throne, but in her panic she missed, her legs lost all power, and she slipped down to the stone platform. She made no sound. Her veils had fallen from her shoulders and lay about her like white and gold linen snakes. For a moment she was quite still. I moved to her aid, and as I did so her breath began to rattle and shake as she struggled, tangled as she was in the folds of her robes. As she moved the clothing came away from her chest. Its brown skin hung in shrivelled folds from the bones. She seemed more a shadow doll, all sticks and string, than a living thing. Then I saw, with horror, black and blue cankers, open sores, blossoming where her breast should have been.

Without thinking, I touched her shoulder. And she screamed. The noise seemed to pierce the stone of the walls. I heard feet running towards us outside in the corridors. Then she grasped my head and pulled it down towards her rotting face. Her grip was supernatural, and she whispered urgently, wetly, into my ear: ‘Time himself is feasting on me. He is dining with care. He is powerful. But my hatred will survive me. Remember that, when you see beauty, for this is the end of beauty and power. That is my final answer to all your questions.’ Her sightless, moony eyes were fixed with strange concentration in that doll’s skull. Then she let me go, and all strength departed from her body.

I reached out to cover the horrible sight again, but she cried out a second time, and I realized that every touch caused her agony. It could not be long now. And there would be little work left for the embalmer to finish.