Nefertiti

41

The last of the light faded to black. The Queen sat outside watching, her arms around her dozing girls, her gold costume dulled and streaked with dust and sand. Senet sat near, frozen despite the heat of the evening. Meretaten was awake, sitting a little apart, staring not at the sunset but at the ground. Her mother glanced across at her, but seemed to decide to leave her alone for now. Akhenaten remained in the tomb chamber, huddled on a pallet in a dark corner.

Khety and I found lamps, and a small supply of twisted wicks.

‘They add salt to the oil,’ he said, whispering for no reason. Perhaps because we were in the presence of Akhenaten; perhaps because we did not want to hear our own voices in the dead acoustic of the chamber.

‘Why’s that?’

‘To stop the wick smoking and spoiling the ceiling work. Look.’

He stepped up a ladder that was leaning against an uncarved column and revealed, in the light of his lamp, a great patterned pathway of gold stars-the celestial kingdom of the goddess Nut-against the serene indigo of the night. He looked for a moment like a dusty young god among his constellations, swinging a sun gently in his hand, his face touched with a smile of wonder at all he had made. I saw that Akhenaten, too, had turned and was staring up at the old vision of creation on the ceiling.

After a moment of silence, I said to Khety, ‘Come down now.’

The glow descended to our mortal level and Khety became himself again.

‘We’ve only got enough wicks to last a few hours,’ I said. ‘There’s water and some bread, but I can’t find anything else.’

Khety inclined his head towards Akhenaten’s dark figure, which had turned again from the light to face the dark wall. ‘What are we going to do about…?’

I shrugged. I had no idea. It was too big a problem for me to solve.

‘Bring me some water,’ called Akhenaten from the shadows.

I took him a cup, and had to help him to sit up to drink from it, like an invalid. Something had snapped inside him. He was light and frail. He drank with little tentative sips.

‘We must return to the city immediately,’ he said suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to him. His eyes, in the dark, looked haunted, as if he already knew this would not be possible, and that this knowledge of his powerlessness made it more urgent still. He struggled up, propping himself on his beautiful ceremonial staff. ‘I insist we return immediately.’

Suddenly Nefertiti was beside him, talking quietly, persuading him to lie back down, making him comfortable. I moved away. There was something both intimate and dreadful about the way she calmed him, and the look of something like loathing hovered faintly in his eyes.

The girls were all lying on pallets now. Meretaten was staring at the scene of her mother and father carved on the wall beside her. She had a strange look on her face. ‘That’s me,’ she said, pointing at the largest of the smaller figures gathered at the feet of the King and his Queen in the Window of Appearances to receive the blessing of the Ankh of Life. Then she looked across at the very different scene of her mother trying to calm and restrain her father. Suddenly she looked older and wiser, as if she understood too much too soon of the casual, lazy brutality of this battered world. I hoped my girls would never look like that.

‘We’re not going home, are we?’ she said quietly.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do. Everything’s going to change now.’ She spoke with all the fierce candour of an angry child. Then she turned haughtily away from me.

She is right, I thought as I looked at her, a child with the weight of the world upon her hunched shoulders.

I stood up. In the light of the lamps placed around the chamber the scene looked like a picture from a story. But this was no picture-book story. Where could we really go from here? The best we could do was try to hold out. But I no longer rated our chances. I went outside to try to think, and to keep watch. Khety was perched in a dark niche of the cliff, on guard. Nefertiti joined me, and we looked down over the plain spreading west and south to the city. In the clear night air we could see hundreds of tiny night-lights-sentries and soldiers congregating at the roadblocks. We also saw chains of lights approaching, gathering and spilling around them, heading for the passes out of the city’s territory and into the surrounding desert.

‘I don’t know whether it would be better to move on from here by night or by day,’ I said.

She did not reply. Had she heard me? I glanced at her. Silence extended like a great distance between us, although we were no more than a few cubits apart. I looked up at the great imperishable stars.

Then she spoke:

‘The land is in darkness as if in death.

They sleep in their chambers, heads covered.

One eye cannot see the other.

Were they robbed of all their earthly goods

— even those that lie beneath their heads-

They could not awake.

All the serpents bite.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s very encouraging.’

She smiled and looked away.

‘Which poem is that?’

‘It is the Poem of the Aten,’ she replied. ‘It is written on the walls of the chamber. Did you not notice it?’

How could she think about poems now?

‘It sounds like a warning,’ I said.

‘It is a wise one.’

We looked up at the stars again.

‘Do you think perhaps there are many other worlds besides ours under the sky?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I can imagine a few better ones, especially tonight,’ I said.

‘I imagine one where the Red Land is turned into a great garden. The trees are golden, and there are many rivers, and beautiful cities built on hills.’

‘You always see heavens. I see the opposite.’

‘Why?’

‘Perhaps because I live in a land where malignity rules, where fear and shame dwell. I see botched and corrupted lives, failed hopes, broken dreams, murders and mutilations. Injustices committed with authority. I see people with no souls doing the worst possible things to people with no power. For what? For nothing more than riches and power. There is no honour and no dignity in such things. But we’re a rich, big, strong, tough, proud land now, so it doesn’t matter at all.’

I looked away to the southern horizon, surprised by the ardour of my reply.

‘I had a dream before I came here,’ I continued. I realized I suddenly needed to tell her about it.

‘You are quite a dreamer for such a sceptical man,’ she said softly.

‘I was in a cold place. Everything was white. There were dark strange woods. The trees looked black, as if they had burned. Everything was very still. I was lost. I was looking for someone. Then something impossibly light began to fall from a white sky. Snow. That’s all I remember, but the desolation has stayed with me. Like a loss that can’t ever be put right.’

She nodded, understanding. ‘I have heard of snow.’

‘I heard a story about a man who carried a box of it back to the King as a treasure. When it was opened, the snow had vanished.’

She looked interested in this. ‘If I were given such a box I would not open it.’

‘Surely you’d want to know what was inside?’

‘You should never open a box of dreams.’

I thought about this for a moment. ‘But then you never know if the box is empty or full.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You never know. But it is still your choice.’

Eventually my thoughts came back to the present.

‘We could get to the river and find a boat,’ I suggested.

She shook her head. ‘And then go where? We must return to the city. All the night creatures are collaborating on their plots and betrayals. I imagine the serpents are sharpening their teeth and filling their mouths with poison. The world makes its claim upon us, and we must not say no.’

She was right, of course. More than anything else, the storm had damaged the family’s prestige and opened it up to attack. If they were going to survive they needed to show themselves and reassert their authority. But at what risk?

‘But let me ask you this: how are you going to do that? They’ll say the storm was a divine judgement against you both.’

She laughed. ‘The one thing you never think of is the thing that brings all the great dreams, plans and visions crashing down on your head.’

Her eyes glittered with something other than curiosity and amusement. Everything she had done seemed, now, to have been futile. Everything she had achieved had been destroyed by the storm, as if it had been clearing the playing board, making many new and unforeseen developments possible.

‘Perhaps you could commission a poet to rewrite the story of today to make the storm seem like part of your grand plan after all. The Poem of the Triumph over the Storm. The Queen returns in glory from the Otherworld, the god of chaos tries to vanquish her, but all his might could not blow down the city of the Aten, nor frighten its Queen.’

‘I’m frightened now.’

She looked at me for a moment. I wanted more than anything to hold her as she sat with her arms wrapped tight around her legs, trying to keep warm-or trying to stop herself shaking. My heart was suddenly inappropriately tripping and fluttering like a schoolboy’s. She was so close. I could sense the warmth of her skin across the cool night air; I could see the potency of her eyes in the dark. She was distant and sad. I reached out and gently let my hand touch hers. I feared the mountains would rumble and the stars fall from the sky. But none of that happened. She did not move. I believe, now, her breath stilled for a moment. We sat like that for a long moment. Then, with something I hope was reluctance, she slipped her hand out from under mine.

It was then that I heard a very faint trickle of grit and tiny stones nearby on the slope below us. It could have been a desert rabbit, but it was not. I looked up to see Khety gesturing at something. I stood up slowly and backed towards the tomb entrance, trying to make no sound, trying to shield the Queen from whatever was coming up out of the darkness. Another faint trickle, then a clearly audible step being taken closer up the slope, a foot seeking purchase. But the stranger remained in the realm of the shadows. At least we had now reached the entrance to the chamber, which offered us some temporary sanctuary; we lacked the means, other than our daggers, to defend ourselves. I pushed the Queen back into the shadows of the chamber and waited.

A shadow rose up from the slope. It was somewhat out of breath. I recognized immediately the outline of the bulky, powerful body, the brutal shape of the head. I recognized too the dark panting bulk that followed him, faithful and dumb.

‘This is a strange place to spend the night.’ Mahu’s voice was tense. He was trying to disguise his breathlessness.

‘We were just looking at the stars,’ I replied.

‘You could use their help. Where are they? Are they safe?’

‘Why are you asking me?’

Then Nefertiti slipped past me, holding a lamp. Mahu looked relieved, and immediately got down uncomfortably on his knees, like a monster before a child.

‘I offer prayers of thanks to the Aten for the safe return of the Queen,’ he said.

‘Give me your report.’

‘May I also report to our Lord?’

‘He is resting.’

Mahu looked unhappy ‘But-’

‘He is well,’ she insisted.

There was steeliness in her conduct. Mahu was caught out. There was a moment of silent tension between them during which she yielded nothing; and then he nodded. But he had not yet given in.

‘That man must leave. I will take charge now.’ He pointed at me, his eyes full of loathing. The encounter with Ay still smarted. Good.

‘Why? He has protected and saved me, he has brought the royal family to sanctuary, he has performed well. What have you accomplished? What have you to say to us that he should not hear?’

It was hard not to smile. I did not try too hard.

Mahu’s head moved about nervously on his bulky shoulders. He was like a baboon trapped in a cage, seeking an escape. He was still dangerous to me. He would savage me in a moment. But Nefertiti remained implacable and absolute.

‘Speak,’ she commanded.

‘The city is in chaos,’ he said. ‘The Great River is jammed with traffic. All who can are leaving. The tent accommodations were blown away. Scaffolding has collapsed, killing citizens and blocking ways. Many food stores have been ruined by the sand. Wells that were uncovered have been spoiled. The supply of sweet water is unreliable. There have been many deaths in the panic.’ He hesitated. The harder part of the report was obviously yet to come.

‘And what else?’

‘There is disorder.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Authority has collapsed. My troops are few, and unable to control the situation. The temple stores have been ransacked, all the supplies of grain, wine, fruit-all dispersed among the mob. They have even butchered sacrificial animals in the temple precincts for food. The people have become barbarians overnight. There has been fighting on the streets between different nationalities for possession of food and shelter. The ambassador of Mittani and his family and followers were assassinated in the confusion. We suspect Hittite forces. We could not protect them. We accommodated as many of the important families and leaders as we could within the Great Palace, and we have set up temporary shelters in the Small Aten Temple.’

‘Why have you failed to maintain control over the city in our name?’

His face darkened. ‘Horemheb elected to take command, over my own authority and that of the Medjay. He has deployed his soldiers around the city and commanded the support of reserves. They arrive in the next day or two. He has won military control of the area, until such time as…’ He paused again, having reached the moment of the unspeakable.

‘Speak.’

‘Until you return to meet with him.’

Her face remained impassive, but this was bad news.

‘Has he sent you here? As his errand boy?’

Mahu glared at her, pride triumphing over respect. ‘I am not now, nor have I ever been, other than a loyal servant. I am no errand boy. I came to warn you of his intention.’

She allowed a slight relaxation of her features. ‘Your loyalty is greater than gold to us.’

It was strange to see the power of a few words of praise upon such a man. Mahu’s fierceness melted away.

She spoke quickly now, alive to the imperatives of the new situation. ‘I shall return. But to command, not to negotiate with Horemheb’s army.’

This statement did not quite have the expected or desired effect on Mahu. There was something he was not revealing. An argument? Bad news? An assassin’s knife, even? The Queen glanced quickly at me, having observed this too. I decided to move closer.

Mahu growled at me. ‘Stay away from me.’

Nefertiti nodded imperceptibly, and I stepped back again.

‘You must speak truthfully,’ she said. ‘Hide nothing. Otherwise I return to the city flawed in my knowledge and understanding.’

I glanced up to where I’d last seen Khety, but I could not spot him up there in the darkness. Surely he was listening though.

Mahu made up his mind and spoke with a hesitation I had not thought he was capable of. ‘There is…another thing.’ He paused, dramatically.

‘Do not expect me to interpret silence. Speak.’

Then out of the silence and the darkness came a hissing sound, and a dull thud. Nefertiti and I stared out into the unknown. Mahu made no move. His expression changed to puzzlement, as if he could not quite remember the beginning of his thought. Then a dribble of blood appeared at the side of his mouth. He reached up and touched it slowly, surprised at the redness on his fingertip. Then he shook his head, and slowly fell forward like a beast with too great a burden, onto his face.

We crouched down and ran over to his body. An arrow had split his spine. It was lodged deep between his shoulder blades. I looked at it carefully; it bore a familiar hieroglyph: the cobra. My mind raced back to the memory of the charred arrow on the burning boat. The warning sign sent to me before I’d even arrived. And here it was again. Identical.

I turned him on his side as carefully as possible. He was still breathing, in shallow gasps, as if he were now in the wrong element, as if air were water. Some recognition of the irony that mine should be the last face he would look upon in this life dawned on him.

‘Damn you.’ He forced out each word through his bloody teeth from a gurgling throat. ‘You were right.’

The Queen looked at me. I shook my head. Mahu coughed and spat, and a sudden shower of red drops speckled my clothes. This made him laugh, and more blood welled out of him, thicker, darker now. He noticed.

‘Dying,’ he said, almost with a shrug, as if mortality were nothing. The dog licked his face. I pushed it away.

‘Right about what?’ I said.

I sensed someone standing above us. It was Akhenaten, looking like an old man awakened from a deep sleep. He was holding a lamp, and in his white robes he stood out like an easy target for another arrow. I dragged him down out of the range of danger. He shouted with outrage. I held my hand over his mouth. The three of us huddled together around Mahu, whose eyes took in the sorry sight of his puzzled and shambolic Lord. Did I see disappointment pass across his eyes before death’s hands slowed then stilled them and turned their topaz glitter to something more like misted bronze?

I grabbed Akhenaten by the arm and we all scurried, crouching like dogs, back to the mouth of the tomb chamber. He stumbled, trying to look back at Mahu’s corpse, the dog sitting faithful and confused by its side, and I had to drag the King of the Two Lands behind me in the dust. Khety appeared as if from nowhere to help me.

We hid inside the chamber, our breath making brief clouds in the now chilly desert air. The lamps had burned down low, lending a flickering, feeble light to the painted figures and the forest of white columns. The girls had woken up and were huddling around their mother, who warned them in a whisper that they must be completely silent. We waited, listening intently. I knew these might be the last moments of our lives. We had trapped ourselves; there was no way out. Anyone could enter the chamber and slaughter us all like beasts in this dying light. As if to presage this, I heard Mahu’s dog whine sharply, then fall silent.

‘Please do not hide on my account.’

The words, spoken very quietly, seemed to come from nowhere. Then a long shadow slanted across the moon-silvered stones of the entrance, and moved along the wall into the chamber. The shadow was followed by a man’s figure, slim and elegant. He had with him a lamp, which illuminated a bony face made gaunter by the flickering shadows.

Ay was accompanied by guards who stood back at the entrance. Their bows glinted in the moonlight. I noticed that their arrows were tipped with what looked like silver. I looked across at Nefertiti. She looked as if she had finally come face to face with her worst fear.

Ay nodded to the bowmen, who checked us for weapons, taking my dagger. I knew two of them. One had been on the hunting party; the other was the young architect from the boat, the one who was designing the temple latrines. So I had been watched from the start. He looked me in the eye, as if to say: we meet again. Then Ay ordered them to go outside, and he slowly approached us. The Queen and I split up, moving in different directions among the forest of white columns.

‘How strange and yet how right that you came to my own tomb for sanctuary,’ Ay said. ‘I’m sorry to see you all accommodated in such inadequate surroundings. But perhaps there is a sense in which this incongruous setting amuses you, and so compensates for the discomfort.’ He was toying with us. He smiled like a necropolis cat. ‘We are all mortals. Except for those of us who have become gods. In their own opinions, at least. See, here it is, written in stone.’ He read off a column of hieroglyphs: ‘“An adoration of the Aten who lives for ever and ever, the Living and the Great Aten, Lord of all that Aten encircles, Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth. Lord of the House of the Aten in Akhetaten, of the King of the South and the North, living on Truth, Lord of the Two Lands, the Son of the Sun, Lord of Diadems, Akhenaten, great in his duration, and of the Great Wife Nefer-Neferuaten-Nefertiti, who has life, health and youth for ever and ever.” And so on and so on. Oh, here’s my part: “the Bearer of the Fan on the Right Hand of the King, Overseer of all the Horses of his Majesty, he who gives satisfaction in the whole land, the favourite of the good god, God’s Father, Doer of Right, Ay who says: ‘Your rising is beautiful on the horizon of heaven, O living Aten, who gives life; when you rise on the eastern horizon you fill every land with beauty.’” ’ He paused for a moment, relishing the irony of it all. ‘Well, hardly, as it turns out…’

Then another voice spoke out from the shadows, shaky and strange: ‘ “For you are splendid, great, radiant, uplifted above every land…You are the Sun, distant but on the Earth, and when you set on the western horizon the Earth is in darkness, and in the likeness of Death…”’ Akhenaten’s voice grew in strength as he declaimed the lines, his thin arms raised up, mirroring his own carved image on the stone wall beside him, towards a sun that was not there. But then he stopped suddenly, as if he no longer wished to say the words that followed.

Ay looked at this spectre of failed power without expression. ‘Yes, the likeness of Death,’ he said. ‘I commissioned this tomb at some considerable expense, but I have never had the time to visit it and inspect the progress of the work. They are quite expensive now, these Houses of Death, yet there is no time while we are alive to attend to the things that matter. We rush, we make mistakes, we hurry to correct them, we do not think enough about the past and the future.’

He paused. I had no idea where he was going with this. Nefertiti remained oddly silent.

‘Would you like to hear a story about the past or the future?’

‘Let us consider the future.’ Nefertiti spoke at last from the darkness at the far end of the chamber.

Ay moved towards her, but she moved away again. I could not tell shadow from substance.

‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘I will tell you what I see. I see a time of calamity. I see this world crumbling, collapsing. I see Priests attacking the Aten temples, I see the Treasury empty, I see hatred in the eyes of the people, I see our enemies conquering our great cities and destroying our gods. I see our great green and gold world drying up, the Great River denying its bounty, the land parched and the crops wilted, and the locusts consuming all in their path. I see our granaries full of dust. I see the wind of time sweeping in from the Red Land, bringing fire and destruction, razing our cities, turning all that we have made to ash. I see children instructing their parents in acts of barbarity and horror, and I see barbarians celebrating in our temples. I see the statues of the gods replaced by chattering monkeys. I see the river flowing backwards and Ra turning cold. I see dead children in unnamed graves.’

‘You should not eat dinner so late,’ Nefertiti responded, carefully. ‘It disturbs the imagination.’

He fastidiously ignored her. ‘I see things as they are, and as they will be. Unless we act decisively now. We must return to things as they were. We must return to the ways of the traditions. We must fold up this city and lock its god, this Aten, in a box, and bury it deep in the desert as if it had never been. Then we must be practical. We need troops and grain. We must negotiate agreements and compensations with the new army, and with the Amun Priesthood. We must restore to the Theban Priesthood some portion of control over their wealth and resources, and allow them back into their temples. At the same time we must show the world we, as a family and a country, are stronger than ever, and that the gods support us. And to do this we must have a figure of power who can say to the people and the gods: “I am yesterday and tomorrow; I see all time; my name is one who passes on the paths of the gods. I am Lord of Eternity.”

‘There is no such person.’

‘I think there is,’ he said, quickly. ‘I think it is time to reveal her.’

He let that hang in the air. An offer. A possibility. But who was Ay, for all his authority, to make such a proposal? Was he a king-maker, a god-creator, a director of what shall and shall not be?

Then Akhenaten spoke with a madman’s futile conviction. ‘This is treason, and I will have you arrested and executed like a common thief.’

Ay laughed in his face-the first time I had heard him make such a human sound. ‘And who will hear this command, and who will obey it? No-one. You are a bankrupt, broken man. Failure and dissolution hang over you. Your power is departed. You will be lucky to be allowed to continue to live.’ His voice was calm and ruthlessly severe.

Akhenaten moved quickly to the entrance, but was barred by two guards. ‘Let me pass!’ he ordered. ‘I am Akhenaten!’ They remained still and silent. His powerlessness was terrible to behold. He beat his fists against them like a child in a tantrum. His blows were light and they simply ignored him.

He turned to Ay, incandescent with rage now. ‘The King will not be denied! You have stolen my kingdom. You have betrayed my trust. I curse you, and I and the god will be revenged upon you.’

‘No. You have betrayed the trust of the Two Lands. You have betrayed me. You have mocked and destroyed the great inheritance of this world. Your curses have no power. How can you feed the people? You cannot. How can you restore maat? You cannot. How can you show yourself again under the sign of the Aten? You cannot. The people hate you, the army despises you, and the Priests are plotting your assassination. I gave you this world and all its riches and power, and what did you do with it? You made this fool’s plaything of mud and straw. Can greatness be conjured from such materials? No. It crumbles, it decays, it falls apart. Soon there will be nothing left of this city and its mad King but shadows, bones and dust. Your father’s spirit dies a second death of shame. You will give up the crowns. Fall to your knees.’

Akhenaten stared at Ay. ‘To you? Never.’ He had lost, but he remained defiant.

Nefertiti emerged from the shadows. My heart twisted inside me when I saw her face.

‘You are God’s Father, but you cannot be the King,’ she said.

Something changed in Ay’s expression. I had seen it before, on the face of a committed gambler about to double the stakes.

‘You do not know who I am,’ he said.

His words changed the currents running in the dark air. Nefertiti stood still, caught out.

‘You are Ay, are you not?’

He moved among the columns, appearing and disappearing in the light and shadows, the conjuror of himself.

‘You cannot remember?’

She said nothing, waiting.

‘Memory is such a strange thing. Who are we without it? No-one.’

Still she waited.

He smiled. ‘I am glad you do not remember. I intended it to be so. I wanted you to be pure of all associations of the heart.’

‘That cannot be. The heart is everything.’

He shook his head gravely. ‘No, it is not. I hoped that you would have learned the greatest truth. There is only power. Not love, not care. Only power. And I gave it to you.’

‘You gave me nothing.’ At last she sounded angry.

He smiled again, as if this were another little triumph, and then dealt his blow softly and quietly: ‘I gave you life.’

He watched her face as she struggled to accommodate the implications of these few words. He was a murderer, his knife twisting expertly in the heart, observing the suffering of his victim. Then she spoke, her voice oddly calm, as if the worst had happened and nothing more could hurt her.

‘You are my father?’

‘Yes. Do you know me now?’

‘I see what you are. I see you have a desert where your heart should be. What happened to your heart? What happened to your love?’

‘These are soft words, daughter. Love, mercy, compassion. Strike them from your heart. Action is everything.’

She came closer to him, curious despite her obvious pain. ‘If you are my father, who is my mother?’

He dismissed her with a wave.

‘Do not turn away from me. Tell me who my mother is.’

‘She was no-one. She is nameless. She died giving birth to you.’

This new fact did its quiet and terrible damage. She buckled under the pain of the loss, the loss of something she had never had except in dreams, her hands against her breast as if holding the broken pieces of her heart in her tight fists.

‘How could you do this to me?’

‘Do not try me with feeble words and arguments of care. You are not a child, to speak of childish things.’

‘I was never a child. You took that from me too.’

She turned into the shadows and disappeared. Ay strolled casually among the pillars, waiting calmly for her to return. As he passed close to me I swiftly drew the knife from his belt and held it at his throat, touching the soft, chilly skin, almost cutting it open, my arm pinning his arms behind his back. It was like holding almost nothing, he was so still. The guards came running in, but I said quietly, ‘Stay back, or I will cut his head off.’ Khety disarmed them efficiently.

Nefertiti returned to the lit part of the chamber. I pressed the knife blade harder against the gently pulsing vein in Ay’s neck and was glad to feel, at last, a tremor of uncertainty. ‘I can kill him now, or we can hold him and return to the city. Arrest him; put him on trial for treason and murder.’

She looked at me sorrowfully, then shook her head. ‘Let him go.’

I could not believe she meant these words. ‘Who do you think had Tjenry tortured, mutilated and killed? Who do you think had Meryra burning in agony? He may not have committed the acts, he had his Chief of Physicians to do that; but he planned and incited them. And after everything he has done to you? This man has brought nothing but suffering and destruction, and you wish me to let him go? Why?’

‘Because we must.’

I threw the knife away in disgust. Ay slipped free of my grasp, and with his red leather glove slapped me hard across the face. ‘That is for having the temerity to touch me.’ Then he slapped me again. ‘And that is for having the temerity to make baseless and unprovable accusations.’

I stared at him, unmoved.

‘My daughter is an intelligent woman,’ he continued. ‘She understands.’

And then he smiled. I loathed that smile.

‘You have everything in the world,’ I said. ‘Yet some fury is raging inside you, eating away until you are a hollow man. Whatever it is, it will never be satisfied.’

Ay ignored my contempt. He bent down and scooped up a handful of dust, which he studied casually. ‘I never liked this place, and I doubt now I shall be buried here. Why do we need all those pretty pictures of the good afterlife? See how we depict our desperate hope for more life; rich fields and many servants to work them; great honour and position; the acquisition of wealth and property-the best the world can give, or that we can take. Yet it is all nothing but paint. We both know what happens when we die. Nothing. We are bones and dust. There is no eternal life, no Otherworld, no Field of Reeds. The sweet birds of eternity sing only in our heads. They are all stories we tell to protect ourselves from the truth. Now, if I had everything I would be able to change this dust back into life. I would buy more days and years as if they were grain, and I would live for ever. But it cannot be done. We cannot survive time. Only the gods are immortal. And they do not exist.’

He let the desert grit fall from his open hand onto the floor and turned again to Nefertiti. ‘There are more practical matters requiring our immediate attention. I offer you this: return to Thebes and I will negotiate a new agreement with the different parties. You will agree to return to the old ways. You will make a public worship of Amun in the Karnak Temples before a gathering of the Priests. This will be an absolute necessity. In return, your daughters will be allowed to live. Your husband will be allowed his life, and his crown, but he will have no authority. He may remain in this ridiculous city for all I care, worshipping the noon sun and the dust like the lunatic he has become. No-one will know. He will be granted sufficient attendants to care for him.’

‘And you?’

‘I am God’s Father. Doer of Right. I will remain.’

‘You are the society,’ I said. ‘The Society of Ashes. What an appropriate name. The men of ash.’

He smiled that calculating smile. ‘It is another show. A ceremony, if you like. But it works well. Men love the power of secrets. It is interesting what they will do, and give, to know the great secret of power. Seven gold feathers from the bird of rebirth. I believe you still have one in your possession. Please pass it to its rightful owner now.’

‘You left it there for me to find.’

He nodded, as if politely accepting a compliment.

I reached into my case, found the feather, and gave it to Nefertiti. She looked at it as if now she could see the future. As if now she knew the end of the story. And it was not what she desired.

‘Good,’ said Ay. ‘I will prepare for tomorrow. The people love you, daughter. Your strategy in outwitting your enemies was admirable. You have returned from the Otherworld. We will of course make use of this. You must become co-regent. You are a star among us lesser mortals.’

‘And if I refuse this proposal?’

He laughed quietly. ‘You are my child. I know you too well. Let us not waste time. I will make the necessary preparations, and await you at the palace for a public ceremony of return tomorrow. The guards will remain here to escort you back, when you come to the right decision. If you do not, they will follow my other orders. You may well guess what they are. Tomorrow is another day.’

‘You would kill your own grandchildren?’

‘Remember: there is no love, only power. As your maid knows. Don’t you, Senet? You should ask her about it. And about scarabs. I like to leave my mark, you know.’

He turned and left. No-one dared to speak. Senet shivered.

‘He has such power,’ she whispered, with loathing and misery.

‘Let me tell your story,’ I said, as gently as possible.

She nodded.

‘You killed Seshat.’

She looked up, but did not contradict me.

‘You brought her to her death. You brought down the blows upon her face. You left the scarab hidden on her body.’

She continued to stare at me.

‘You wore gloves to hide the damage to your hands. You let me think something was missing from the Queen’s jewellery. You let me believe the scarab belonged to the Queen. But the scarab was given to you by Ay. He told you to place it on the body. He said it was his mark, his sign. He was right. He is from the dung of the earth. The lowest of the low. Yet he pushes kings and queens like suns into the light of the new day.’

Senet glanced at the Queen, who gazed at her almost compassionately.

‘You fulfilled his instructions. You ferried the disguised girl up the river and then, in the dark, when she was not expecting it, you hit her. She would have been badly wounded by the first blow, but it must have taken much more strength of mind, as well as body, to beat her face off.’

She looked directly at me now. ‘It takes a long time to kill someone,’ she said. ‘The first blow was simple. But she would not die. She kept making noises, even though she had no mouth left. I beat her until she was finally silent. It took a long time.’

The chamber was silent. I continued with the story.

‘She dressed in the clothes you brought from the Queen’s wardrobe. She was wearing a headscarf, as required by the instructions. But you did not know, until I told you, who you had killed. You only knew it was a woman. As far as Ay was concerned it did not matter who died and who lived. But it mattered to you. You murdered and mutilated an innocent woman. Her family loved her dearly.’

‘So did I,’ she said, proudly. ‘I loved her with all my heart.’

They had been lovers. The simple words of truth.

‘Please show me your hair,’ I asked.

She nodded, slowly revealing a cropped head of auburn hair. Khety looked at me, understanding now.

Senet spoke again, this time to the Queen. ‘He knew everything. He could read my thoughts and dreams. He told me he would expose us, Seshat and me, not only to you, my Lady, but to the world. I could bear this. But then he told me he would have her killed if I did not do as he commanded. If I did not tell him everything. He told me what I had to do. He told me to take the sealed instructions and the clothes to the Harem as if they were from the Queen. A woman would be brought. And he told me what I must do. He told me we must not speak. He told me where to take her, and how to do what I was to do. What choice did I have? What would you have done?’

These last questions were directed at me, but all I could offer her was a look of understanding. She suddenly howled with grief, clutching and beating at her own head. ‘Hathor, Lady of the Sky, Lady of Destiny, she who is powerful, forgive me. I have killed the woman I loved! I acted out of love and fear. Now there is nothing but death.’

Nefertiti touched her on the shoulder, gently. ‘If you had come to me with the truth I could have protected you.’

The maid looked up at her slowly. ‘He is greater than all of us. He is Death. Do you know he kissed me? On the lips. From that moment I was doomed.’ She picked up the dagger I had thrown away, walked out of the tomb chamber and disappeared into the darkness. I knew no-one could save her, and I knew we would never find her. I hoped the goddess Nut would spread herself over the girl and find some place for her among the imperishable stars.

Khety and I walked outside for some fresher air. It was the darkest part of the night, and the moon had sailed low and deep on the horizon. We sat down like two glum monuments.

‘I thought I knew Senet well,’ he said. ‘When did you work it out?’

‘I knew there were strange and missing elements to her story. But her grief betrayed her.’

He nodded. ‘That man is a monster.’

‘I don’t believe in monsters, Khety. That makes it too easy for the rest of us. Ay is one of us, in the end.’

‘That makes it worse,’ he said.

I had to agree.

Nefertiti came out from the chamber. Khety moved away respectfully, leaving us alone. I had things to say now.

‘That was quite a story you told me, when we first met, about your father and your family. You fooled me well.’

She looked at me calmly. ‘When you are born without parents, you spend all your time imagining them. You imagine them as perfect people. To make up for all the things that didn’t happen you dream up all the stories, and the stories seem real. Until one day…’

‘The truth.’

‘Yes. I imagined my father as a good man, a wonderful, kind man. One day I believed he would come to rescue me. I believed he would take me up on his white horse and we’d ride away together, for ever. Safe.’

‘I could have destroyed him for you.’

She paused, thinking. ‘No. You could have killed him, but then he would still be inside me, inside my head, for ever. That is worse, perhaps. Perhaps all I can do is forgive him. For what he has done to me. For what he has done to others. If I can do that, then he has no power over me any more.’

I was again amazed and appalled. ‘Forgive him? He’s used your life, his own child’s, as a means to an end, as a way to power, and he’s threatened to kill you and your children. There is no love in him.’

‘That does not mean I should not forgive him. Love begets love. Hate begets hate. Revenge begets revenge. The choice is mine.’

‘So you will accept his demands? Will you keep the feather?’

‘I must. There is no choice. This is the destruction of all we have worked for; it is the end of the dream of a better way. But I warned you: the world makes its demands upon us, upon me, and I cannot say no. I have enough power to save those I love, and to influence the course of the future. I have a responsibility to the future.’

Then a thought came to me very clearly. ‘I will not see you again.’

She took my hand in hers. ‘I will not forget you.’

We sat there for a long time, together.