An Evil Spirit Out of the West

Chapter 5

The Veiled One finished his prayer kneeling in the garden pavilion, face towards the rising sun. In one hand he held a water flower, in the other, swathed in a piece of linen, a pot of burning incense. His mother knelt beside him, her hands outstretched. I was not too sure to whom we were praying or why, yet I followed suit. The garden was empty, the air slightly cold, the mist tendrils still curling like white wraiths through the trees. The haze shrouding the sun had yet to part. Soon it would be New Year. Sirius the dog star would rise high in the eastern sky, the Ibis birds would flock back to the Black Lands and the Inundation would begin. Once again, the Nile would sweep from its mysterious source in the South to refresh the earth. Yet that day was my New Year’s Day, a moment when my life changed.

The Veiled One finished his hymn, bowed and placed the incense bowl on the ground, the flower beside it. He leaned back, chatting softly to his mother. On the small table before us were three goblets of wine and soft bread smeared lightly with eating salt. A strange meal to begin the day but, there again, I was confused. In truth, I was only half awake. I had almost been kicked out of my bed by Imri when the dormitory was still dark and cold. I thought it was connected to the previous day’s occurrence, that Hotep had changed his mind and I was to be arrested as Sobeck’s accomplice. The Kushite, however, gestured at the jug of water, bowl and napkin he had brought.

‘Come, Baboon,’ he commanded, grinning over his shoulder at the other Kushites thronging in the doorway. ‘Our master and the Great Queen want words with you.’

I had washed and dressed, carefully following the Veiled One’s guard back through the dark garden and into the Silent Pavilion.

‘Do you know who you are praying to?’ Tiye broke into my reverie. ‘Mahu, look at me.’

I went to bow again but she snapped her fingers. ‘Look at me, man.’

‘I gaze upon your face, Divine One.’

‘I am sure you do,’ she smiled wryly. ‘But this is not the place for court niceties or polite pleasantries. God’s Father Hotep has recommended that you join the Medjay and you are not happy with that.’ She looked more closely at me. ‘Your eyes are heavy. You drank deeply last night?’

‘To the very dregs, Excellency.’

The Veiled One laughed quietly.

‘No wonder. Out in the Western Desert,’ Tiye continued, ‘your skin will be burned black by the sun, you’ll be blinded by the heat, eat sand and dust and live for the next stoup of water. You are not a happy man, Mahu.’

‘Your Excellency is most perceptive.’

Tiye joined in her son’s laughter. ‘Well, you are not to go! I have made my will known. The Divine One supports me. You are to join my son’s household.’ She smiled at my surprise. ‘My son has told me all about you, Mahu, Baboon of the South. You were born alone and grew alone, yet you have demonstrated your loyalty. My son owes his life to you whilst your assistance of Sobeck is praiseworthy.’

‘Did you dream that night?’ the Veiled One demanded. He was sitting between myself and his mother. Now he leaned forward, his cold, clawlike fingers squeezing the muscles on my face.

‘I did not dream.’

‘Good.’ He kissed me gently on the cheek. ‘You must never lie to me, Mahu.’

‘Your father was a soldier,’ Lady Tiye continued, ‘a brave one. You shall be my son’s soldier: his life and his health will be your sole concern.’

‘Is his life under threat?’

‘Good, good!’ the Veiled One murmured. ‘That’s the way to begin, Mahu. Ask questions but keep the answers to yourself.’ He glanced sideways at me and winked.

‘Is my son’s life threatened?’ Tiye repeated the question. Her lower lip jutted out and she played with the simple veil which covered her rich black hair. Tiye’s face was unpainted except for kohl rings around her eyes and a light layer of carmine on her lips. She’d piled her jewellery on a small garden table just near the door. ‘Everyone who shelters in the shadow of the Divine One is threatened. Now, to my former question, to whom did we pray?’

‘To Amun-Ra?’

She shook her head. ‘To the Sun?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘To the Aten, the Sun Disc? Yes and no. More precisely, to the power which raises that sun and sets it, which sends forth the cooling breeze, allows the bud to flower, and the chick in the egg to stir.’

I remained impassive. Theology, the word of the gods, was of little concern to me. I was more intrigued by Queen Tiye’s face in the vain hope that I might meet the Beautiful One again, rather than the strange events now occurring.

‘Will you take the oath?’ Tiye continued. ‘By that power, by earth and sky, by fire and water, to be my son’s man in peace and war? Will you?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency.’

‘Good.’ She lifted the wine cup and thrust it into my hands. Picking up a piece of salted bread, she broke it into three and handed a piece to me and to her son. The rest she popped into her own mouth, chewing it quietly, her gaze never leaving me. The Veiled One and I followed suit. The bread was soft but the salt was hard and bitter and I had difficulty swallowing it. I then sipped the wine, full and strong, rich as blood.

‘You have eaten the salt and drunk the wine,’ Tiye declared. ‘You have taken the oath. Life and death, Mahu. Every time you eat bread and drink wine it will commemorate this occasion.’

Outside I heard a servant call. A horn wailed as a sign that the day had officially begun. Tiye rose and left and so it was that my life was woven into the life of the Veiled One. I was his bodyguard, his manservant, sometimes his friend and, when his moods shifted, even his opponent, someone to argue with, as well as to lecture, warn and instruct. I soon slipped into the regular routine of his household. I’d rise in the morning and join the Veiled One at his prayers, followed by meetings with different officials and flunkies of the court. I was given my own chambers in the far side of the Silent Pavilion, with washed-green walls and a small storeroom beside it.

The daily routine of the household was soothing. Sometimes I thought about Sobeck and, now and again, wondered if the beautiful woman would return. Great Queen Tiye and Prince Tuthmosis were frequent visitors and sometimes, at least once a week, God’s Father Hotep came. The latter had accepted me. He’d smile and nod, sometimes he’d draw me into superficial conversation about affairs in Thebes or visitors from abroad. He’d inform me how Horemheb and Rameses were now Captains in the Sacred Band, how Pentju and Meryre promised their worth in the House of Life whilst Huy and Maya were proving to be excellent scribes. Tuthmosis ignored me as if I did not exist. On one occasion when he met his brother alone in the small audience hall he asked that I stand outside. The Veiled One shrugged and told me to wait in the garden. For the rest, I was always close to him. He would eat before noon, rest during the heat of the day and then spend his time in a range of different studies, hobbies and pursuits.

Occasionally, mysterious visitors would arrive. They’d be garbed in striped robes, coarse garments and heavy sandals; they looked like Sand Dwellers with their long hair and beards though they lacked their shifty gaze and furtive ways. They were warriors with sharp-nosed, haughty faces who swaggered rather than walked and only reluctantly handed over their weapons to Imri’s keeping. Why they came or what they discussed was kept secret. The Veiled One was very cunning. He always met such visitors at the far end of his audience hall or out in the garden pavilion where eavesdroppers would find it difficult to lurk. These men would come and squat before the Veiled One, talking softly, gesturing with their hands, always treating him with the greatest respect. Great Queen Tiye would often join such meetings and sometimes, at night, she and her son went out to meet these strange ones beyond the gates. I’d go with them, Tiye and the Veiled One shrouded in cloaks and hoods. The strangers would be waiting, hoods pulled over their own heads. They were always armed, one or two carrying pitch torches. They’d leave, slipping quietly through the darkness, both my master and his mother returning shortly after dawn. No one from the Silent Pavilion was ever allowed to accompany them. I’d established a good relationship with Imri and often practised with him on the drill ground. Over a beer jug I asked about these mysterious visitors. The Kushite pressed a calloused finger against my lips.

‘You may ask, Mahu, but never expect an answer. I know very little of them except that they are Apiru, a tribe of the Shemshu.’

‘Apiru?’

‘Hush!’ Again the finger against my lips. He nudged me gently, got to his feet and strolled away.

The Apiru were no strangers to me. They were not desert people but nomadic tribes who’d wandered across Sinai following the Horus roads past the silver mines. They’d been allowed to enter Egypt and suckle at her fertile breasts. Some joined the army, others became craftsmen; they were Egyptian in everything but name. Others kept to themselves, living away from the cities, only visiting them to barter and haggle in the marketplace. I wondered what they would have in common with my master and with Egypt’s Great Queen, yet Imri was correct. The danger of such a question lurked not so much in asking it, but in searching for the answers.

For the rest, the Veiled One immersed himself in his activities. He loved painting and sculpture, and two of Tiye’s master craftsmen, the painter Bek and the sculptor Uti, were frequent visitors to the house. The Veiled One had taken over and converted a high-ceilinged storeroom, transforming this into what he called his ‘House of Paintings’. I often joined him there. Sometimes Bek painted on screens, other times the walls, but only after the Veiled One had given his approval. Most of the paintings were similar to those found in temples, palaces or tombs, executed in vivid colours, light blues, dark greens, rich yellows: garden scenes, a hunter boating along the Nile, a hawk plunging on its quarry or an athlete about to throw a stick. The gods did not appear in them, however, nor did the Pharaoh or, indeed, the imperial court. Other paintings were more dramatic and vivid, different from any I had ever seen. Bek and Uti were related; in fact, they looked like twins, small men with round smiling faces, totally immersed in their art, ever ready to please. They were a little shamefaced about these new paintings, but listened patiently as the Veiled One enthused over their realism.

‘We must live in the truth,’ my master announced proudly, displaying the images of himself painted on the wall.

Bek and Uti had followed his instructions scrupulously and, rather than disguise his physical imperfections and deformities, they exaggerated them. The Veiled One was portrayed in a striped blue and gold head-dress, and a gloriously coloured kilt, with a sash round his waist, his face and jaw were portrayed as much longer than in real life, the sensuous lips more full, the eyes sharper and more elongated, his chest and belly more protuberant, his hips wider. ‘The truth?’ The Veiled One repeated, and gestured with his fingers. ‘If life is truth and paintings reflect life, then they should be truthful. Well, Mahu, what do you think?’

‘Has your father seen them?’

The question was a mistake. The Veiled One spun on his heel and strode out of the House of Paintings. Bek and Uti stood, heads down, as if they were war-prisoners.

‘Never,’ Bek whispered, ‘ever mention his father again.’ He raised his gentle face, eyes screwed up. ‘You are most fortunate, Mahu. I have heard of others being struck with a sharp-edged cane for saying less.’

‘Does his father know of these paintings?’ I refused to be abashed. I had not intended to give offence and I was angry at being treated so unfairly.

‘No one knows of them except us and Great Queen Tiye.’ Bek laughed sharply. ‘If we exhibited these in the temples and palaces we would be the laughing stock of Thebes.’

The Veiled One soon forgave me. He was always busy and, as Bek and Uti had once confided, passed from one thing to another like a butterfly in the garden. He would invite the two artists down, question them, work them like slaves, then reward them with banquets and a stack of gifts, only to forget them for a month. He’d become interested in shrubs, tending the herb plots or using plants to make stoppers for wine jars, chaff glued together or a parcel of young sycamore leaves. He would fashion candles and elaborate oil lamps. He would spend an entire afternoon making floral garlands out of the fibre of palm leaves, lotus petals and willow leaves. He’d experiment with the destruction of a snake’s nest by leaving dried fish, lumps of natron or even an onion at its entrance. Occasionally he would call the housekeepers together and lecture them on the use of fleabane mixed with charcoal to drive away flies or the way to mix frankincense and myrrh, mingled with boiled honey, to give the kitchens and storerooms a pleasing fragrance. He was fascinated by animals, particularly the cats, which roamed through the storerooms ever vigilant against vermin. I once found him outside the kitchens dissecting a mouse’s corpse, taking out the small organs and laying them on the paving. He glanced up as I approached.

‘No, I didn’t kill it, Mahu. I just wondered, is the life-force in a mouse the same as in a lion? Does the lion receive more? And, if that is the case, do we share the same life-force and express it in a different way?’

He never waited for an answer but returned to the task in hand. He was a generous master in many ways. One day he brought me a beautiful tame bird, a golden oriole. I was much taken with it.

‘What will you call it?’ the Veiled One enquired.

Again I replied before thinking. ‘Why, Weni! He was our overseer at the House of Instruction.’

The Veiled One’s face showed I had made a mistake. I flew the Oriole twice in the small meadow beyond the pavilion walls, but afterwards it disappeared and I never saw it again. My master did not replace it, and I never uttered the name Weni in his presence again.

He did not attend the Jubilee days or visit his father’s court, nor did he observe the religious festivals. In none of the rooms did I see one statue or carving of a god. In a nearby market, I bought a small wooden statue of Anubis, a tawdry imitation of the great statue in the god’s temple at Thebes, the one I had seen as a boy, the jaw of which moved so as to issue an oracle. I meant it as a gift for one of the servants who had been particularly kind to me. When the Veiled One saw it, he snatched it from my hand and ordered me to buy another. He later crouched on the ground like a little boy and pretended the two gods were talking to each other or fighting like quarrelsome curs. He was particularly fascinated by the moving jaw and used them as puppets.

‘I am Anubis,’ he would squeak, pushing one forward. ‘No, I am Anubis,’ the other one would reply. The Veiled One loved to use the two carvings to mock the great Lord of the Mortuary. Priests he hated, dismissing them as ‘shaven heads’ or ‘soft pates’. At times he was mischievous and invited priests from a certain temple to a small feast in the cool of the evening, either in the audience hall or the garden pavilion. I was always beside him. The ritual was ever the same. The Veiled One would sit and ask them innocent questions. ‘Where do the gods live? If they are spiritual, why do they have masks? If Seth killed his brother Osiris, how can he be a god? If the gods really live in the temples and are all-powerful, all-seeing and everywhere, how can they be locked up in a tabernacle? Why do they need food? And if the choicest meats are laid out for them, why don’t they come and eat it or take it away to give to the poor?’

Of course the questions would change depending on the circumstances but the object was the same, a sneering ridicule. Invariably the priests left hot-eyed and sullen-faced. Afterwards the Veiled One would mimic them: despite his own disabilities, he had an eye for another’s voice or look. He’d imitate their stoop, the sanctimonious way they walked or raised their eyes heavenwards. Sometimes, when he had drunk deeply, he’d deliver his famous lecture on how Isis had to hunt for her husband’s penis.

‘To sew it back on again?’ he’d yell. ‘When he’s supposed to be a god? He doesn’t need needle and thread! Can you imagine it, Mahu?’ He’d stick out his own groin. ‘Walking around with your penis sewn on?’ He’d collapse in laughter or sing an obscene hymn he’d composed to Isis.

Soldiers he admired, and he talked to me volubly, excitedly, about history and the might of Egypt. He studied maps depicting the land routes into Kush, Punt and across Sinai. He knew the trade routes along the Great Green to Canaan. Once he joined me and Imri on the drill ground but he was too clumsy and slow, an easy opponent to overcome. Afterwards he took me aside, face laced with sweat, eyes agitated.

‘I’m not very good, am I, Mahu?’

‘In a chariot,’ I replied tactfully, ‘you’d excel the best.’

‘You speak with true voice,’ he smiled, slapped me roughly across the face but never returned there.

Every quarter an imperial physician would visit him. The Veiled One remained silent and passive as the man prodded him, staring into his mouth and ears or feeling his hands and feet. He and the physician never exchanged words. I was always present, armed with sword, dagger, a bow and a quiver of arrows.

‘I feel like a horse at the stud farm,’ the Veiled One described such examinations, yet he never resisted.

My master often visited the kitchens. He would just stand there, watching the cooks from under heavy-lidded eyes. Either I or Imri always tasted his food and wine. Never once did he tell us what he feared. Imri told me a few details about the Veiled One’s early life. How he was not meant to live as a child. How the priests had recommended that he be placed in a reed basket and left to float in a crocodile pool. Tiye had been furious. The best physicians had been summoned but there was little they could do so the ugly child was banned from his father’s presence. Only those with deformed faces, war veterans or criminals who had lost noses were allowed to serve him.

‘You,’ Imri tapped me drunkenly on the chest, ‘are the first and only exception, though you are so ugly, you might as well be one of us!’

In many ways, it was a strangely halcyon existence, albeit tinged by danger. Nothing definite or precise but there were sometimes mysterious occurrences, with their own silent menace, which kept me nervous and wary. One incident took place during the second month of the Inundation in the thirty-fourth year of his father’s reign, just after the Festival of Opet. Imri’s men always escorted the stewards down to the city markets as the servants’ disfigured faces might cause provocation and hostility. Amongst the provisions brought back was a basket of juicy figs, fresh and smeared with honey — the Veiled One’s favourite delicacy, to be kept near him in his garden pavilion. I took the basket across. The smell from the figs was delicious: moving the lid, I was about to take one out when the figs moved like water rippling. I drew my dagger and knocked some of the fruit aside — a thin venomous rock adder, followed by another, coiled out. I killed both, took the basket and flung it away in a far part of the garden. I considered it an accident and told no one.

A few weeks later I was called down to the wine cellars, a long low cavernous room supervised by a wine steward, a former criminal who had lost both his nose and a slab of flesh on his right cheek. He was in the far corner already in his death throes, eyes glazed, legs and arms jerking, a white froth smearing his lips. Near him lay an unstopped jar of wine from Absh, a favourite of the Veiled One, always stored in a special jar protected by a wadge of basketwork. I picked up the stopper; the docket around it described the wine, the vineyard and the year the grapes had been plucked. The cellarer had decided to help himself and been most unfortunate: both the stopper and the jar smelt so foul I whispered one of my aunt’s spells to repel venom.

The rest of the servants thought the man had suffered some form of seizure or falling sickness. I had the body removed and again informed no one. In the first month of the Peret, the thirty-fifth year of the Magnificent One’s reign, the danger became more real. The Veiled One often went down to the banks of the Nile, to watch the boats and barges and the frenetic activity of the riverside markets. He always sat in what I called his tabernacle on a cart pulled by oxen, a veil across his face. I always walked behind, and on either side strolled the Kushites armed with spear and shield. Discipline was lax; the guards often chatting amongst themselves, now and again pushing away the curious. One of those shabby individuals, a road wanderer, a travelling tinker or trader came close to the cart, gathering his tattered rags about him. He had a dark, pinched face, and his long hair and beard were streaked with grey. In one hand he held a staff, in another a sistrum which he clattered. Now and again he broke into song. He reeked of sweat and other odours but seemed harmless enough walking beside me, eyes on the tail of the cart. I looked at him carefully; I remembered the day Aunt Isithia took me into the temple and the fortune-teller cursed her. Was it the same person?

‘Have we met before?’ I asked.

‘No, great lord,’ the beggar whined. ‘I have only come to sing the praises’ — pointing to the cart — ‘of God’s own son.’ He broke into a chant, repeating almost word for word one of the hymns the Veiled One sang to the Sun Disc, the Aten:

The man’s voice grew stronger. He began to dance and cavort, singing his praises to the Aten. ‘All glory to his son,’ he warbled. ‘All glory to him, Beloved of the Father.’

At the Veiled One’s command the cart stopped. The Kushite driver came along the side and pulled back the curtains. The Veiled One sat there, his face now exposed. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the road-wanderer with his fan, indicating he should come closer.

As the fellow clambered into the cart and went to kneel at the Veiled One’s feet to make obeisance, I noticed the bulge in the tunic on the man’s right side; it moved even as the fellow twisted his shoulders slightly sideways. He was drawing a dagger. I drew mine and leaped into the cart. The Veiled One sat transfixed, eyes staring, mouth slightly open. The assassin made to leap forward but I knocked him in the back, sending him sprawling onto the bottom of the cart. He turned, dagger coming towards me. I thrust mine once, twice, deep into his exposed throat. The cart was now surrounded by the Kushites, so the scuffle was hardly noticed by those passing on either side. I stared into the dying man’s eyes, watching the light of life fade, a strange gargling sound echoing from the back of his throat. I looked at that face darkened by the sun, the lips opening and closing.

‘No, we have not met before,’ I whispered. The man’s body jerked, his head fell to one side. I was content to drag the corpse off and leave it on the highway.

‘No,’ the Veiled One intervened. He spoke sharply to the Kushites. A rug kept in the cart was brought. The corpse was wrapped in this and we returned to the palace grounds. Once there, just before we entered the courtyard, the Veiled One ordered the cart to be stopped. He kicked the body with his foot off the tail of the cart and, grasping his cane, climbed down to examine it more carefully. The foul, dirty robes were removed. The Veiled One, unperturbed, studied the man’s corpse carefully, noticing the criss-crossed scars on the muscular torso and thighs, the welt marks now faded on his back.

‘A soldier,’ he murmured, getting to his feet and prodding the man’s belly with his cane. ‘He does not look so dangerous now.’

The wound in the man’s neck, a dark-red, jagged gash, still glistened with blood.

‘Wrap him in sheepskin,’ he ordered the Kushites. ‘Give him the shroud of an accursed one. If there is a Hell, let him wander there for all eternity with my curse on him!’

The Veiled One grasped my arm and, leaning on his cane, hurried through the gates. I later discovered that the cart and tabernacle were also burned and the oxen which pulled it slaughtered, though the Veiled One never discussed the incident.

Once inside the house he retreated to his own chamber and stayed there until the following day. Just before dawn the Great Queen Tiye swept into the Silent Pavilion and was immediately closeted with her son. Later in the morning I was summoned to meet her in the audience hall. She asked me to describe what had happened, praised me for my vigilance and took from a napkin a beautiful amulet of blue faience depicting the sun rising between the twin horns of Hathor. The hall was deserted. All the servants had been dismissed, the window shutters closed. Tiye sat on the small daïs slouched on the cushions, though now and again she rose as gracefully as any temple dancer, to walk up and down. Sometimes she’d stop beside me, other times stand on the daïs. I kept kneeling on the cushion, my head down. She walked the length of the hall and came back, her slippered footsteps light and soft. Once again she sat down on the cushions on the other side of the table and gestured that I do likewise.

The Great Queen was calm though her eyes were bright and watchful, the skin of her face paler than usual. I did not know whether it was due to anxiety or the lack of any adornment. She was dressed very simply in a gauffered linen shawl across her shoulders, part of which served as a hood over her black hair gathered tightly at the back. She wore no jewellery, earrings or necklaces, only a simple copper bracelet on her left wrist. She kept playing with this as she studied me intently. I heard a sound and was about to turn.

‘Yes, Mahu, someone is there.’

I recalled the escort, those strange visitors to the house, and knew one of them must be standing, deep in the shadows, an arrow notched to his bow.

‘Mahu? Do you have anything to say?’

Those large dark eyes never wavered. I repressed a shiver and held her gaze. The Great Queen may have thanked and rewarded me but she did not trust me.

‘Describe the incident again.’

I did so. Tiye listened intently, asking questions.

‘It was planned.’ She slid the bracelet on and off her wrist. ‘Of course he will be dismissed as some madman with addled wits and disordered heart. However, I know and you know, Mahu, that it was planned. The dagger?’

‘Burned with the rest,’ I replied.

‘But did you see it?’

‘A long blade with an ebony handle.’

‘Given to him,’ Tiye declared. ‘He carried no silver or gold? No precious objects?’

‘A former soldier, I suspect,’ I replied, ‘to judge from the scars on his body and the welts on his back. I thought I had met him before.’ I described Aunt Isithia taking me to see my father’s corpse. Tiye dismissed this.

‘A former soldier,’ she mused, ‘who was hired by someone who promises largesse and great bounty. My son was known to travel along the riverside. The guards are there but, as you say, lax. As for you, Mahu,’ Tiye leaned forward and grasped my arm, her sharp nails digging deep, ‘the assassin was taught a hymn.’ She pressed her nails deeper. ‘A hymn to the Aten which he knew would catch my son’s attention. Anyone who sang, who knew the words of that hymn would rouse his curiosity. The cart is stopped and the assassin is given his chance.’

‘Except that I killed the assassin, Excellency.’

‘Yes, yes, you did.’ She dug her nails in one last time then withdrew her hand. For a while she sat plucking on her lower lip, eyes half-closed as if about to fall asleep. She asked me if there was anything else. I said no and, fast as a pouncing cat, she leaned forward and slapped me viciously across the face.

‘Aren’t you forgetting, Mahu, you most worthless of Baboons, the attack on the camp by the Kushites?’

‘But that was war!’

‘Was it?’ she demanded. ‘When I ask you a question, answer it fully. What were those words the Kushite muttered as he died?’

I repeated them. Again the plucking of the lip. I stared round the hall. Now it did not seem so colourful or bright but a place where death lurked, where secret, silent assassination was plotted. Another sharp stinging slap made me jerk. I stared across at the Queen; her eyes were bright with fury.

‘Is there anything else, Baboon? You must tell me the truth. For all I know …’ She let her words hang in the air. I knew what she was going to say. Was I to be trusted? Was I involved in the attack on her son?

I replied honestly, describing the incident of the figs and wine: this time she did not slap me but just sat, tears filling her eyes.

‘Whom do you suspect, Excellency?’ I burst out.

She lifted her head. ‘I could ask the same question of you, Baboon. You, with your clever eyes and ugly face. My son chose well. Whom do you suspect? His father, the priests?’

I nodded. She leaned across and caressed my cheek. ‘You’ve eaten the salt and drunk the wine,’ she whispered. ‘If I suspected you, Mahu, you’d die a choking death beneath the sands of the Red Lands. So listen carefully to what I am going to say. My son was born on an inauspicious day.’ She drew back, staring at the table as if talking to herself. ‘A difficult birth. I had sat in the child chair for an eternity. Pains, like flames of fire, coursed through my body. He was born just as the sun rose, and wrapped in swaddling clothes. I was weak, covered in sweat, the blood all about me. Even as the maids insisted that I retire to bed, I knew something was wrong. They kept him away from me, cared for by a wetnurse. Eventually I demanded the truth. The Divine One came down, my loving husband.’ The words had a bitter twist to them. ‘I went with him to the Royal Nursery. The physicians and priests were there, the air filled with their scent and babbling prayers. They showed me the child, my son with his strange, long head and misshapen skull. He was fully formed and strong, for he had been in my womb at least three weeks longer than he should have been. The physicians whispered, arguing amongst themselves. They did not tell me directly but I knew what they were saying. My son was cursed and should either be allowed to die or be exposed. I took off my shawl, wrapping it around that little body and plucked him up from the cot. I left that chamber and returned to my own quarters.’

She paused, staring down the hall, eyes narrowed, lips tight. ‘My husband came.’ Her voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. ‘He looked at the child and said that he was no son of his. I screamed at him — the most hideous threats, what I would do if the child was harmed. The Divine One truly loved me.’ Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘He agreed that nothing would happen, on one condition: he never saw him again. My husband, Mahu, is Amenhotep the Magnificent. He will not tolerate any imperfection or impurity, except in himself. Now I wonder, has he changed his mind? After all, the Crown Prince Tuthmosis will be his heir.’

I recalled that blood-stained napkin but remained silent.

‘And what will happen to his younger brother,’ she asked, ‘when I am gone? Kept here,’ she stared around, ‘well away from the public gaze and prying eyes, will he demand to be treated as Pharaoh’s blood brother? Go into the temples, Mahu, walk the streets of Thebes? You know the song as well as I do. “Pharaoh is Egypt, Egypt is Pharaoh, the beloved son of Ra.” How can the gods love Egypt if the Divine One has a disabled son, distasteful to the public eye? A cripple, malformed?’

‘He is none of those things, Your Excellency.’

‘No he isn’t, Mahu. In my eyes he is the Beautiful One.’ She blinked away her tears. ‘But it’s his heart not his body the temple priests fear. He has no time either for them or their gods. Oh, I know about his dinner parties here and the way he mocks the shaven heads, the soft pates.’ She turned her face sideways, studying me out of the corner of her eye. ‘He has good reason to hate them. As a child he was moved from the nursery to the House of Life in the Temple of Isis. He was there two years before I discovered the cruelty and abuse to which he was subjected. They knew about his father’s disapproval and they mocked him. I took him out but, even at court, I could not protect him all the time. This place was Hotep’s idea.’ She gestured around. ‘I suppose he’s happiest here. He asks for very little.’

‘And Tuthmosis?’

‘His brother feels guilty. I am not too sure if it’s love or guilt.’

‘Could there be a reconciliation?’ I asked. Here was a Great Queen of Egypt confiding in a commoner, chatting about her son like some washerwoman down at the Nile.

‘Never,’ she replied. ‘My husband believes his second son is accursed. When he heard about this place he issued a decree. No one was to serve my son but grotesques.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Except you and, as for that,’ she sniffed, ‘well, never mind!’

She rose to her feet and walked down the hall. Whoever was lurking there stepped out of the shadows. I heard a soft footfall but I dared not turn round. She came back arms wrapped across her chest.

‘And the future?’ She sat down on the cushions. ‘And the future?’ she repeated as if talking to herself. ‘What will happen to my son when the Divine One goes into the Far West and I follow him? Will his brother protect him?’ She shivered and rubbed her arms. ‘And what happens,’ she continued in a whisper, ‘if Tuthmosis begets no heir but also goes into the Far West? Will the priests, the generals accept what they call a grotesque Pharaoh? Well, my Baboon, what do you think?’

‘Excellency, I think nothing.’ I was determined not to mention that I had seen the red-flecked napkin Tuthmosis had coughed into.

‘Go on, clever Baboon,’ she urged. ‘You are thinking something.’

‘May the Crown Prince Tuthmosis,’ I declared, reciting the conventional phrase, ‘live for a million years. May he enjoy jubilee after jubilee. May he see his children’s children and may his power and glory be felt by the people of the Nine Bows.’

‘So be it. So be it,’ Tiye responded.

‘But, if you have thought about the future,’ I chose my words carefully, ‘so has your husband, the Divine One.’

Tiye’s mouth opened and closed.

‘And?’

‘Is there somewhere a papyrus document, sealed with the Divine One’s cartouche, which gives instructions on what is to happen?’

Tiye closed her eyes. I had expected a blow, even an objection but we were past that. Tiye was chatting to me because, in truth, I was nothing: in the eyes of the Divine One, a mere fleck of dust, a few heartbeats away from total silence. But now I was voicing her own fear, like a priest in a chapel listening to the confessions of some devout pilgrims.

‘Is there, Your Excellency?’ I repeated.

‘What do you think, Mother?’

This time I heard the footstep and turned. The Veiled One, dressed in a long white robe gathered at the waist, stood a few yards away, an arrow notched to the powerful Syrian bow. He was standing slightly sideways, a calculating look on that long face. He was watching his mother, waiting for a signal.

‘Should we kill the Baboon, Mother?’

‘If you kill the Baboon, master,’ I replied, staring at Queen Tiye, ‘then you have lost a true friend and a lifelong ally.’

I heard the bow being pulled back but I couldn’t move. I sat frozen. Queen Tiye was no longer staring at her son but at me. I heard a sharp intake of breath, the twang of the cord and the arrow whistled past over our heads to smack into the wall. Tiye’s face creased into a smile.

‘Baboon can be trusted. Come, my son.’

I heard the bow and quiver clatter to the ground. The Veiled One joined us on the daïs, plumping up the cushions, sitting down breathing quickly, eyes gleeful and bright.

‘Did you really think, Mahu, I’d put an arrow into your back? Do you know what you are, Mahu? You are my baboon. When the Medjay go through the marketplace at Thebes their trained baboons go with them to catch felons and thieves. I am surrounded by felons and thieves, at least beyond these walls. You must have many questions but you never ask them.’ He leaned forward. ‘Where do my mother and I go at the dead of night? Who are those strange visitors? One day you’ll know. In the meantime you are to catch the thieves and felons who want to take my life and send my soul into the darkness. He who ordains all things has ordained this.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘I listened to what my mother has told you, it is the truth. I do not intend to die, Mahu, but to live for my true Father Aten, the Beautiful One, who rides on the Far Horizon.’ His hand curled out. ‘In whose eyes, a million years are as yesterday, a brief watch in the night. Oh by the way, your friend Sobeck …’ He glanced sideways at his mother. ‘I am sure he was betrayed. My mother used her influence to ensure that Sobeck does not die in the Red Lands.’ He stretched across and tugged my hair playfully. ‘You have won great favour, Mahu. Never forget that.’ He leaned back and rubbed his hands together. ‘In the meantime, let’s have a party. We’ll invite your friends from the Kap — it would be good to see them all again, wouldn’t it, Mahu?’

His mouth smiled but his eyes were cold, devoid of any feeling. Bowing my head, I realised that for better, for worse, in this deadly game of plot and counter-plot, I could not escape.