City of the Dead

THREE

The king accepted in his heart that unless they were helped, the gods would remain impartial. As the present custodian of the perpetual incarnation of Ra-on-Earth, he did not hesitate. And to his joy, but hardly to his surprise, one action by him triggered others by those gods whose alliance he had solicited for so long.

He meant Ahmose’s death as a warning, however oblique, to the general. He had the man abducted and drowned downriver, reluctant to accord him anything other than a merciful, noble death. Then he had the body brought back to the city and laid on the shore near Horemheb’s jetty. It was a custom which he followed, rather than initiated, and he was sure that the general would read the shorthand correctly. His worry stemmed from not knowing how many other Ahmoses there were in his camp.

Anxiety turned to triumph later, though he still had several months to wait, during which neither side – Tutankhamun had begun to think of the series of moves and counter-moves as a cold war – did more than wait, watchfully maintaining their positions on the board. Then the gods suddenly struck two blows in his favour.

The year had turned round and the Black Land had entered the season of sbemu again. After the enervating activity of the harvest, which in this good year had filled the granaries and taken even the workers from the valley, where the great tombs of the departed lay on the west bank of the River across from the Southern Capital, to help gather the generous crop of emmer, barley and flax, the country lay in grateful exhaustion. The king’s heart could not rest, though, because it dwelt with an unwelcome tirelessness on the fact of his wife’s empty birth-cave, and on the imminent gift from Nut and Geb of a child to Horemheb and Nezemmut. It took two seasons and one passage of the moon for a child to grow in the birth-cave, and the time was almost up.

But Nezemmut’s child was born early and dead. To the king’s secret satisfaction, it had been a boy. That would be vinegar on the general’s lips. The little corpse, with its huge head, curled like a baby crocodile in the egg, was swiftly dried and embalmed, and set aside in a cedar box for the time to come when it would join its unlucky parents in their tomb. They would know the same pain the king had.

The next month Ankhsi’s bleeding stopped. She showed Tutankhamun the linen towel. It was as clean as when her maid had bound it to her loins. The king hardly dared breathe.

The news quickly spread from a household which had been divided between hope and despair for years now. Happy body servants told their wives, husbands and lovers – there was no interdict of secrecy from the king. Sorrow at the queen’s dead womb gave way to speculation about the royal child’s sex. The betting odds down in the harbour quarter settled cautiously in favour of a son, and the former scribe Huy put a golden piece down in the hope of a male child. The sunlight at long last seemed to move across the palace compound and settle on the king’s house instead of Horemheb’s. The general and his household made their congratulations, and the king formally commiserated with their misfortune. Both publicly accepted the will of the gods, and secretly made contingency plans.

At first Tutankhamun was fearful that he had tempted the gods’ anger by premature celebration, but a second month passed and the linen wad was as free of dark blood as ever. The queen’s guard was doubled, and Horemheb’s special Medjays were banished from the precincts of the palace. The general wore a fixed expression, and was seen less in public. Ay, on the other hand, became a more frequent visitor to the king.

By the third month, the pharaoh decided he had been away from the hunt long enough.

‘You must be careful.’ Ankhsenpaamun had never liked hunting. It was dangerous and bloody. The king was half a stranger for a hour after his return. Sometimes he was away for weeks.

‘Don’t worry.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Three days at the most.’

‘And where will you go?’

‘Where the quarry lies.’

‘What will you hunt?’

‘It depends what we see. I want to fetch something special for you.’

‘Do not hunt lions,’ said the queen. She was fearful of the new, light chariot. It was faster, she knew, than many of the animals the king loved to chase, but she also knew that it overturned easily. If the king fell near a furious wounded animal like a lion, or, worse, a wild bull, he would die. Alone, she knew she would not be able to stand up to their enemies. Like her sisters, she would be condemned to a luxurious prison and an empty life. Or, worse, there was the threat of marriage to Ay.

‘Do not go unattended,’ she added. ‘Take many bowmen with you.’

‘Of course,’ the king reassured her. Privately, he had it in mind to hunt lion. His ancestor Nebmare Amenophis had bagged one hundred as a young man. It was his ambition to pass that record.

He went to inspect his animals. His lean hunting dogs bounded to the gates of their pen to see him, jostling each other to put their great sand-running paws against the wooden crossbar, thrusting eager heads forward, red tongues flickering in open mouths, brown eyes keen, long tails wagging. He stroked their soft ears and cradled their pointed snouts.

The cats, trained to retrieve fish and small game-birds, were more sedate, but they left off washing, and their ears became alert as they paced the limits of their pens, occasionally scrapping with one another. Nearby, his two cheetahs, captured young and trained for the chase by Nubian huntsmen, stretched and eyed him half watchfully, half expectantly. He paused to reprimand their beast-slave for not yet refreshing their water that day, then made his way to the far end of the vast cedar enclosure, to where his riding and chariot horses were corralled.

These costly animals, the third generation to be bred in the south, were the king’s pride and joy. He adored their strength and their loyalty, and they were guarded with almost as great care as himself. He gave them slivers of honey cake, and real apples expensively imported from the lands to the north.

‘What game is there?’ he asked his chief huntsman.

‘Nearby, ibex, gazelle.Plenty of ibex, not half a day’s ride.’

‘I am interested in lions, Nehesy.’

The man considered. ‘Not near. It is too dry now. Perhaps south of the First Cataract, or out by the Dakhla Oasis.’

The king shook his head, disappointed. Both places were too far away. He thought of the half-promise he had given Ankhsi not to be absent longer. He wanted to bring her back trophies worthy of a king, knowing that the spirits of the animals would enter him, their vanquisher, and build his strength; but he was anxious too that she should not be alone too long. Since the Ahmose episode the king had not known whom to trust, and he had given orders to his personal guard that only blood relatives should be allowed to see her; but he knew he could not deny access to Horemheb or Ay.

‘Are you sure there are none nearer?’

‘If you took the horses by river you could be at the First Cataract in two days.’

‘It is still too long.’

‘How long does the king intend to hunt?’

‘I cannot spare more than three days.’

‘It is a pity we have no lions corralled.’

‘That is not hunting,’ said the king contemptuously. Very seldom now did any of the nobles hunt in the old way, spearing animals already trapped in a corral from the top of the palisade. The horse and the light electrum chariot had brought speed and mobility and danger to the sport.

‘Will you hunt on the River?’ suggested Nehesy, seeing the tightness on the king’s face, which however quickly recovered its customary, dangerously bland expression. ‘I could call the wildfowlers. Or perhaps we could go after river-horse or crocodile?’

‘No. I want to use the chariot. We will go after ibex. Where are the good herds?’

‘They are in the Eastern Desert.’

‘Good. We will save time by not having to cross the River.’

‘When shall we go?’

‘As soon as the heat of the day is past. I will take my usual team and the new chariot.’

‘And what dogs?’

‘Give me Pepi, Ypu and Ruttet. Sherybin will be my charioteer.’

The king spent the rest of the morning pleasurably choosing hunting spears, and discussing with Nehesy and Sherybin the best bows to take. The new chariot was drawn out into the yard and propped up on its shaft, gleaming red-gold in the sun while they tested the leather footstraps and handholds for firmness. They discussed the pros and cons of the machine’s heavier floor, which created greater stability at the expense of speed.

‘But we will not need so much speed for ibex,’ said Sherybin.

‘I know,’ replied the king, sullenly.

‘There is a bull in the herd with the finest horns I have ever seen,’ Nehesy put in quickly. ‘I can see them now on the prow of your falcon-ship.’

‘Good,’ the king responded, brightening.

‘Who else will you take with you?’ asked Nehesy.

‘You will come, and the three best trackers, and with you, two more chariots. Put my men in them.’

‘Is that enough protection?’

‘It should be. I am not going after dangerous beasts.’

‘No,’ Nehesy hesitated. ‘I meant…’ He trailed off, not knowing how to finish.

Tutankhamun looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’

He spread his hands. ‘With a child on the way, your safety is important.’

The pharaoh considered. ‘Three chariots then. And my strongest men in them. We will not be away long.’

He left them, but he could not shake off irritation. The security arrangements cast a shadow over his enjoyment. Hunting was the one time he tried to forget he was a king, entrapped in the net of intrigue and duty which seemed to press closer on him with every day that passed. Irrational as he knew it was, he longed for once to go out into the desert alone, to shake off other people, and to pit himself against the forces of the wild.

He took the midday food with the queen alone, eating frugally and simply: some ful with salted curds and plain bread. Then they went to the bedchamber to sleep. She stroked him as they lay naked in the brown twilight behind the closed shutters of the room, and he responded to her, slipping an arm around her and pulling her to him, squeezing her narrow buttocks with his hand. Then he lay back and allowed her to mount him, as she liked to, and she rode him with sleepy gentleness for half an hour before he surged into her and she bent and clung to his neck, moaning. In the peace which followed, he forgot his other anxieties and yearnings – or at least, the fulfilment of lovemaking forced them to retreat to the far corners of his heart.

The body servants came for him at the tenth hour of day, as the sun was inclining steeply towards the cliffs of the valley on the opposite bank of the river, and they changed colour from ochre to red to black. Ankhsi rose with him and bathed him herself. He could feel her unhappiness like a wall between them, and it diminished his own anticipation of the hunt. After all, a part of his heart whispered to him, they were only going after ibex. But having made his decision he would not change his mind; and he was proud of his reputation as a keen and accomplished hunter. Still he could not shake off the power of her reproach, and he disliked the way she clung to him when they parted.

‘Have the gods spoken to you?’ He asked her softly, one eye on the body servants who stood near.

‘No.’

‘No warning?’

‘If there had been, I would tell you. You would not go.’

‘To whom have you prayed?’

‘To Hathor and Onuris.’To the Suckler of the King and the Huntsman. The same gods as the king had chosen. It was a good omen. Tutankhamun smiled, kissed his wife again, on the nose, eyes, ears and lips, and touched the lower gates of her body lightly with his hand.

‘May they keep you,’ he said.

‘May they keep you indeed,’ she returned, looking at him sadly.

As soon as he was away from her he felt relieved, the burden of her reproach lifted by her absence. The warm wind on his face as he rode into the desert rushed through his being and cleansed his heart. Under Sherybin’s control, the excited horses skimmed across the firm sand, and the king was free to scan the twilight landscape as it swept by like the sea.

They pitched camp at dusk, gathering round the fire to eat as the first watch was set. The tents were frail and vulnerable in the vastness of the desert, their linen sides flapping in a rough wind that eddied round, changing direction abruptly, whipping sand into their faces, and making shadows leap. In the silence that followed it, Tutankhamun listened hopefully for lions, but nothing came out of the darkness except the lonely bark of a distant jackal. Nehesy and Sherybin were men of his age, Sherybin younger, and he rejoiced in their company. If only the quarry were more exciting! He insisted that they retire before he did, and remained by the fire as it died, as alone as he ever would be, he thought, with only a guard and a body servant for company. He opened his heart to the great emptiness around him and let it take possession of him.

The following day the trackers, who had left before dawn to lope silently into the gloom to the east, returned to report a small herd of ibex – fifteen to twenty – in a cluster of low hills – no more than large rocks – half an hour’s ride ahead. The four chariots of the hunting group were harnessed to their teams and set off – the king and Sherybin in the lead, with Nehesy and his charioteer off to the right, and the two others riding to the left and rear. They were well spread out, to confuse the focus of their prey. Tutankhamun weighed a medium spear in his hand and suppressed the thought of lions.

Soon enough the rocks came into view, looming grey against the yellow of the desert. Years ago a small gold mine had been worked here, but now all that remained of it was a cave-like opening among the rocks, and the broken remains of water jars. They were not far off the main route from the Southern Capital to the port on the Eastern Sea from where the swift coasters departed for Punt, but the desolation of the desert covered them like a pall. The chariots fanned out and, the horses slowed to a trot, rode round the rocks at a distance. From the jagged grey shapes, softer ones began to detach themselves as the large, brown-grey animals raised their heads with the great swept-back horns to regard this intrusion with curiosity and caution.

The king exchanged his spear for a bow and arrow. Nodding to Sherybin, he steadied himself in the footstrap on the floor of the chariot and drew on his archer’s glove.

The hunt lasted all morning, but it was not a success. Three animals lay drawn up on the sand, but they were elderly, only having fallen prey to the archers because they had lost their nimbleness. There was no honour in their deaths, and the king had called off the pursuit in disgust. This was not the way to celebrate the arrival of his child. He returned moodily to camp. His humour was not improved by news from Sherybin that his chariot had a damaged axle, and that a new one would have to be brought from the capital; but he gave his charioteer permission to absent himself from the hunt for the second day in order to fetch the spare part. On that day he hunted with Nehesy, but the only living thing they saw were golden desert rats which popped up from their holes to gawp at them.

On the last day the king was awakened early by an excited Sherybin.

‘The trackers have brought news,’ said the charioteer, scarcely able to contain his enthusiasm.

‘Of what?’ The king squinted past him at the sky outside the tent. Could the trackers be back already?

‘Wild cattle,’ Sherybin told him in a triumphant whisper.

Tutankhamun’s heart leapt. If the news were true, then the omen had been good after all. Wild cattle! That would be a prize worthy of the great Tuthmosis himself. Only the pharaohs were allowed to hunt them, and if he could bring down a bull…!

His ambitions raced ahead of him.

‘Waken the others. We must set off immediately.’

Sherybin quietened him. For a moment they were two excited men, equals, eagerly discussing the merits of an important hunt. ‘No. Not the others. You know how nervous wild cattle are. If we go in a big group we might panic them and then they’d be gone before we could get one decent shot at them.’

‘But if we go alone we’ll have fewer chances of getting anything.’

‘More than a group would ever have. I know your shooting. You are the best in the Black Land.’

Tutankhamun had trained himself to bite the metal of flattery to see if it was good. But coming from so experienced a hunter and charioteer as Sherybin, this was to be taken as a compliment without question.

‘We will leave word with one of the guards to say what direction we have taken,’ continued Sherybin, allaying the king’s other unspoken fear without being asked. ‘Come, if we delay we will miss our chance. They must be crossing the desert from oasis to oasis and they will not be caught in the open once the sun is high.’

Convinced, the king rose, washing and dressing at speed, strapping on his leather armguard himself, and brushing aside the attentions of his body servant. He stepped out of the tent into the keen blue night and the cool silence of the desert. No one stirred, though not far from the encampment he was surprised to see his chariot ready harnessed, one of the trackers standing by the horses. Sherybin spoke swiftly and urgently to a guard as he came forward into the glow from the fire, and then helped the king on to the footplate of the chariot, where the right weapons were ranged ready. The long-limbed tracker ran ahead, soon barely visible in the gloom, taking a southerly direction. They followed at an unhurried trot, making as little noise as possible. The king took a last look at the sleeping camp, but the thought of wild cattle dispelled any lingering doubts in his heart. He turned his face to the wind and imagined brown-and-white hides, proud jet-black eyes, and long, crooked horns.

The tracker was out of sight now. Clicking to the horses, Sherybin encouraged them to a canter. Tutankhamun grasped the leather handstrap more firmly, and cast his eye over the Weapons. A heavy throwing spear, a sturdier bow than he had used on the first day, and a bronze short-sword in a leather scabbard. The horses moved faster now across the featureless desert, but somehow the tracker must have kept ahead, for the king did not see him. Then, coldly, the thought came to him that Sherybin could not see him either, and if that were so, how did he know what direction to take? He looked covertly at his charioteer, who did not return the glance, even if he were aware of it, but kept his eyes ahead.

‘How much further?’ asked the king. A thin line of pale blue outlined the low hills near the coast away to the east and he knew that very soon there would be light enough to see for miles. He gauged the speed with which he could draw the sword. With the dawn came a gathering wind from the north.

‘Soon,’ came the reply. The voice was still warm and enthusiastic, even carrying with it some of the tension of the hunt. But the king’s belly told him what a fool he had been.

‘Where is the tracker?’

‘Ahead.’

‘No tracker could run that fast.’

Sherybin drew the chariot up. ‘Listen.’

At first, after the noise of the horses’ hooves and the clattering of the chariot, the silence seemed impenetrable. But then, out of it, distant at first, came the noise of other hooves. The king peered ahead into the gloaming from where the sounds came, and as he watched dark shapes began to detach themselves from it, crossing the path ahead. The king’s breath came faster. He felt himself becoming transfixed and forced himself to turn, to see what Sherybin was doing. He was just in time. His charioteer’s hand was on the haft of the sword.

Without thinking, the king brought his own right fist smashing down. The three heavy gold rings crushed the bones of the thin brown hand beneath them, and the charioteer drew away with a hiss of pain. Tutankhamun brought the sword out of the scabbard in one sharp movement and held it at Sherybin’s throat.

‘What have you done?’ he said.

The man smiled wanly, but there was fear in his eyes.

‘You should not have driven so fast,’ continued the pharaoh.

‘I might never have suspected anything.’ He was surprised at his own calm, as from the corner of his eye he saw the shapes approach, still too far away to identify individually, but in the gathering light were certainly not cattle. Horsemen. Could they see what had happened on the chariot? They were approaching without haste.

He tried to calculate how far from the camp they had come. Sound travelled a long way in the desert, especially in the thin air of morning. Whatever happened now, would happen fast.

He seized the reins from his charioteer’s numb left hand, and raised the sword, at the same time pushing his foot firmly into the footstrap for balance.

‘May Set swallow you, Sherybin,’ he said, pronouncing the curse precisely, without emotion. Fear and – possibly – shame had turned the charioteer into a statue. Thoughts flew through the king’s heart. He wanted to say more, to find out why. Above all he was appalled at the betrayal and at the speed with which it had taken place. He had little doubt of its originator. But there was no time. The horsemen were approaching, and they were doing so faster. He brought the sword down hard. The blade cut the base of Sherybin’s muscular young neck and cleaved through the collar bone down to the sternum. The charioteer was still gaping and gagging, his hands jerking up to the wound, when the king, leaving the sword where it had jammed, thrust him off the chariot with his elbow.

The horses were uneasy. Trying to keep his own voice steady to calm them, Tutankhamun turned them. The riders were not a hundred paces away now, and he could hear them calling to each other. They had seen Sherybin fall. The chariot’s turn, accomplished in a second during the hunt, now took an age, but at last it was done. The king took a firm grip of the reins and held them taut so that the horses’ heads reared. With his free hand he took up the spear. Then, gathering air in his lungs, he lashed the horses forward and sped back towards the camp, roaring his battle cry as he did so. Behind him, he could hear the sound of hooves as his pursuers whipped their mounts forward. How many of them were there? Ten? Twenty?

He flew, but as he continued to cry out he knew that the north wind was blowing the sound of his ever-weakening voice back to the men behind him. Nehesy would never hear him at the camp. But by now they would be up, and perhaps even saddled and riding after him. It had been clever of Sherybin to give directions to a guard, but perhaps over-confident. The thought gave the king new heart.

Then one of his horses stumbled, and though it recovered almost immediately, the chariot had slewed round and the king knew that he had lost fatal seconds by the time he was back on course. His heart became hollow as from the corner of his eye he could see a rider gaining on his flank. He yelled encouragement at the horses and once more the light chariot flew forwards. Tutankhamun gulped air, part of him caught in a wild thrill that had little to do with the horror of his situation. He could not believe that he would die, that anyone would dare to perpetrate, plan or even imagine bringing about the death of a pharaoh. Such an act was to kill god. But through the mists of his flying thoughts came a clear one of his immediate predecessor Smenkhkare, who had died suddenly at the age of twenty, in the midst of life. How?

He brought his senses back to his own race with death. A dark figure was riding close to his horses now, stooping to grasp their head harness. He pulled his horses back to slow them of his own accord, throwing the rider off balance, and, drawing ‘ his right arm back, thrust the spear forward blindly. He felt its point catch weight and dig in, and then the end of the shaft he held was pulled out of his hand as the figure impaled on its end soundlessly dropped from his mount, which veered away ¡ into the open desert.

Tutankhamun looked ahead, but the rush of wind in his face forced him to keep his eyes screwed tight, and he could see little. There was no sign of the camp or of Nehesy riding to help him. A grain of sand caught in his left eye and made him j

close it, involuntarily slowing again. His heart told him it was over. He could sense them on either side of the chariot now, and his own horses giving him up as they lost the will to run. He had no weapon left which he could use at close quarters.

The death of their fellow had been to their gain, because killing him had cost Tutankhamun the final seconds of advantage he had. They had both his horses by the head now, leaning back on their mounts to slow the chariot, digging in with leg muscles like rope to the brown flanks.

One more yell produced a last flagging effort from his horses, but they were beyond obedience now, frightened and confused. He felt that reality was receding from him. As if in a dream he watched his team dragged to a halt, lowering their heads as they were released, submissive, done. From behind him at last a voice issued one harsh and laconic order:

‘Quickly.’

Tutankhamun’s heart acknowledged that he had heard the voice of death, but still the events around him seemed to have nothing to do with him. He stood in the chariot like the captain of a sinking riverboat, watching as the horses were hastily unhitched. The tilting of the shaft downwards as they were withdrawn and the men holding it lowered it to the sand made him stagger. Then, in the precise second before he was seized and dragged from his place, reality flooded him, and in a moment of anguish he saw Anhksi again, whom he would never see again, whose warm breath he would never again feel on his chest as she slept. He thought of the child he would never know, and the kingdom he would never rule. How had he been so cruelly out-manoeuvred? He had been so careful!

A last thought crossed his heart: if he could not live as a king, he would at least die like one. He plucked an arrow from the quiver just as they laid hands on him, and flung him at the rider whose voice, it appeared to him, had issued the order; a thin, angular man with a scant beard. Its flight was true, and for a glorious, hopeful moment it looked as if it might strike him in the eye. But it fell short. Tutankhamun had time to see it dash against his right cheek, drawing blood, before they pulled him down.

Now he no longer seemed to be part of his body. He watched from somewhere in the air above as they forced it to its knees, pinioning its arms. Two men did this, destroying their hearts and souls for all eternity as they committed the crime. He could not see their faces; indeed did not want to. Two other men were overturning the chariot with feverish haste. Two more were slinging the body of the man he had killed over his horse, which they had recaptured. He could see how the wind, which had borne his voice away from his friends, was blowing sand over the mess of their tracks. By the time Nehesy arrived, there would be no sign of what had happened. Except for Sherybin. What would they do with him?

But as he watched, more horsemen, working in the same hasty silence, dragged the charioteer’s body up. His wound was split over one wheel of the machine, as if he had fallen on it in the accident. The sword was cleaned carefully and stowed in its place on the chariot. Still the wind continued its work as accomplice, erasing the traces as they appeared.

Then the voice spoke again. There was tightness in it, but he could not tell, nor did he care, whether the tone stemmed from anger at the wound or increased urgency.

‘Quickly.’

It occurred to him at last that they had not stopped his mouth. He was still bent forward, held, and he could not fill his lungs. But he opened his mouth and started to bellow his war cry. Suddenly it was a desperate cry for life. Ankhsi appeared before him so vividly that he could smell her, taste her soft body, bury his head in her breast. The yearning was unbearable.

Then the blow fell, and, before the darkness came, all he could feel were the sand in his nostrils and a trickle of blood on his face.