Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows

by Nick Drake

  ‘Because it will prove a dead end.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘She is a poor lunatic who has not left her quarters for many years. What can she possibly have to do with all of this…?’

  He turned away. His hands quivered slightly as he raised the wine cup and drank a deep draught.

  ‘Take me to see her. Now.’

  He put down his cup too quickly, and some of the wine splashed on his hand. He looked incensed by this, and instead of wiping it away, he licked it off.

  ‘You have no grounds for such an interview.’

  ‘Should I trouble Ay or the Queen with this request?’

  He wavered.

  ‘When there is so much else of really vital importance going on, it really is too ridiculous, but I suppose if you insist…’

  ‘Let us go, then.’

  ‘It is late. The Princess will have retired. Tomorrow.’

  ‘No. Now. Who knows what hours lunatics keep?’

  We set off down the corridors. I hoped to keep a bird’s view of our progress, like a plan inscribed on the papyrus of my memory, because I wanted to be able to locate her quarters exactly, and find them again if I needed to. But it was not a simple matter, for corridors dwindled to passageways, and became more crooked and narrow. Beautiful wall paintings of papyrus marshes, and images of rivers full of perfect fish beneath our feet, gave way to mundane plainly painted plaster walls and dried-mud floors. The finely wrought oil lamps that lined the main passageways became more ordinary, such as one might find in any reasonably comfortable home.

  Finally we came to a simple doorway. No insignia decorated the lintel. No guards stood before it. It could have been the doorway to a storeroom. The bolts were tied together, and sealed. Khay was perspiring; tiny beads of sweat gathered on his noble forehead. I nodded. He knocked, not very confidently. We listened, but there was no sign of movement.

  ‘She must have retired for the night.’

  He relaxed visibly, and turned to leave.

  ‘Knock harder,’ I suggested.

  He hesitated, so I did it myself, with my fist.

  More silence. Perhaps this was a useless chase, after all.

  And then I heard footsteps, very quiet, moving across the floor. The faintest glow of light appeared under the door. Someone was definitely there. A tiny star of light appeared in the door, at eye level. Whoever it was observed us through a peephole.

  And then the door rattled with a mad fury.

  Khay jumped back.

  I broke the seal myself, quickly untied the knots of the cord that bound the bolts, and threw open the doors.

  37

  The chamber was dreary, lit by the oil lamp she carried, and niches in the wall where cheap candles burned with an oily, smoky light, casting a dismal light on everything. Mutnodjmet, sister of Nefertiti, wife of Horemheb, was very thin; her sunless skin clung to her elegant bones, which were painfully obvious through the folds of her plain robe. Her skull was shaved. She wore no wig. Her shoulders were rounded. Her face, which carried the same high cheekbones as her sister’s but had none of its poise, was somehow inert, and her eyes would have been sorrowful were they not also apathetic. She was a hollow thing. She gave off a desperate, sad, unanswerable neediness. But I also knew I could not trust her in any way, for despite her lassitude, need was coiled inside her, like a cobra, poised.

  A dwarf stood on either side of her. They wore good-quality, matching clothes and jewellery, and matching daggers, indicating they were of prestigious rank. This was not unusual, for many men of such stature and appearance had made their way into responsible positions within the royal courts of the past. Unusually, however, they were identical. They did not look happy to be disturbed.

  Mutnodjmet continued to stare at me uncomprehendingly, her head lowered, her mouth slack. She seemed unable to make sense of who I might be, or what we might be doing there.

  ‘Why have you brought me nothing?’ she mewed, in a tone that was much deeper than disappointment.

  ‘What should I bring you?’ I asked.

  She considered me with her dull eyes, suddenly yelled a remarkable set of abuses at me, then shuffled off into another chamber. The dwarfs continued to gaze at us, with unfriendly expressions on their faces. I assumed they knew how to use their daggers. Perhaps their small stature would give them an advantage; after all, I thought ruefully, plenty of damage can be inflicted below the waistline.

  ‘What are your names?’

  They exchanged a brief look, as if to say: ‘Who is this idiot?’

  Khay intervened.

  ‘We are here only briefly to visit the Princess.’

  ‘She receives no visitors,’ said one of the dwarfs in an unexpectedly resonant voice.

  ‘None?’ I asked.

  ‘Why do you want to see her?’ said the other one, in an identical voice.

  It was like talking to two faces with one mind. There was something comical about it all.

  I smiled.

  They were not amused, and their little hands went to their daggers’ handles. Khay began to prevaricate, but he was interrupted.

  ‘Oh just let them in,’ she shrieked, from the other chamber. ‘I want company. Anything, to make a change from you two.’

  We moved down the hallway, off which I noticed several more or less empty rooms for storage, and a cooking area equipped with shelves and storage pots and jars, and came to a larger salon. We sat on stools, while she reclined on a bed. The room was basic, and somehow underfurnished, as if she had inherited a few second-rate leftovers from the family mansion. She watched us with her jaded eyes, circled with excessive and inaccurately applied lines of kohl. She looked Khay over like a fish that had gone off.

  ‘I bring you Rahotep, Seeker of Mysteries. He insisted on meeting you.’

  She looked down her nose at him, and giggled.

  ‘What a cold dish he is. I wouldn’t feed him to a cat…but you.’

  She looked me directly in the eye.

  I ignored her blatant cue. She cackled suddenly, her head thrown back like a melodramatic actor.

  I continued to hold her gaze.

  ‘Oh. I see; the strong and silent type. Perfect.’

  She tried to gaze back like a courtesan, but she faltered, giggled, and suddenly collapsed into hysterics.

  Someone had supplied her recently enough. She was still in the happy phase. Soon that would fade, and she would be in the clutches of her grim need again. I felt excitement rising in my chest, like a wonderful panic, for here was the missing connection. But would she be capable of doing the things I thought she had done? Could she have placed the stone carving, the box containing the mask of animal remains, and the doll? She resided within the royal quarters, but her freedom of movement seemed no greater than that of an animal within a cage. Her rooms were sealed from the outside. Someone was controlling her; but who? Not her husband, at least not directly, because he was far away. It had to be someone who had regular access to the palace, and in particular to these chambers. Also, it had to be someone who could supply her. The answer was so tantalizing. Was whoever had killed the young people, also managing the Princess? One question at a time, and I might be able to prove the connection, slowly, carefully, precisely.

  ‘Who supplies you?’ I said.

  ‘With what?’ she said, her eyes glittering.

  ‘With the opium poppy.’

  Khay was on his feet instantly.

  ‘This is an appalling breach of protocol, and a disgusting accusation.’

  ‘Sit down and shut up!’

  He was deeply affronted.

  ‘You have your own addictions,’ I added, purely for my own vindictive pleasure. ‘Addiction to wine is no different to what she’s doing. You can’t live without it, and neither can she. What’s the difference?’

  He huffed but found he had no reply to that.

  ‘That’s true,’ she said, quietly. ‘It’s all there is. I tried to refuse it. But i
n the end, life without it is disappointing. It’s just so boring. So–nothing.’

  ‘And yet here you are, living for it. And you look like you’re dead already.’

  She nodded, sadly.

  ‘But when you have it inside you, everything feels like bliss.’

  She seemed as far from a state of bliss as a woman in the jaws of a crocodile.

  ‘Who brings it to you?’ I asked.

  She smiled enigmatically and approached me.

  ‘You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you? I can see right through you. You’re as desperate as I am. You need your answers, just like I need my drug. You know how it feels…’

  She slid her cold hand down inside my robe. It did nothing for me, so I withdrew it, and returned it to its owner.

  She rubbed her wrist, tenderly.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you anything now,’ she said, like a petulant child.

  ‘I’ll go, then,’ I said, and stood up.

  ‘No, don’t,’ she called out. ‘Don’t be cruel. Don’t abandon a poor girl.’

  She mewed like a cat again.

  I turned back.

  ‘I’ll stay with you for a little while. But only if you talk to me.’

  She twisted her hips from side to side, like a seductive child. It was pathetic in a middle-aged woman. Then she patted the bench, and so I sat again.

  ‘Ask me anything.’

  ‘Just tell me who supplies the drug.’

  ‘No one.’

  She cackled again, suddenly.

  ‘This is tiresome,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a little, private joke between him and I. He tells me he is no one. But he does not know I laugh because I see he has an empty face.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Somehow his soul is missing. He is a hollow man.’

  ‘And how old is he? And how tall?’

  ‘He is middle-aged. He is your height.’

  I looked at her. I sensed a new thread of connection running in my brain.

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘He has no name. I call him “the Physician.”’

  The Physician.

  ‘Tell me about his voice.’

  ‘It is not loud, but it is not too quiet. Not young, but not old. Not gentle, but not violent, either. It is a calm voice. There is a strange kindness in it, sometimes. A kind of gentleness.’

  ‘What about his hair?’

  ‘Grey. All grey,’ she sang.

  ‘And his eyes?’

  ‘Oh, his eyes. They are grey, too, or sometimes blue, or sometimes both. They are the only beautiful thing about him,’ she said.

  ‘What is beautiful about them?’

  ‘They see things others cannot see.’

  I pondered that.

  ‘Tell me about the messages.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ she said. ‘He would be angry with me. He will not visit me again if I betray the messages.’

  I glanced at Khay, who was listening with amazement.

  ‘And when does he come?’

  ‘I never know. I have to wait. It is terrible, when I haven’t seen him for days and days.’

  ‘You fall ill?’

  She nodded, pathetically, her chin drooping.

  ‘And then he arrives, and leaves me his gifts, and all is well again.’

  ‘When he leaves you these messages, they instruct you to do things for him. Am I right?’ I asked.

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  ‘To take things, and leave them in certain places?’

  She paused, nodded again, and leaned towards me, whispering noisily.

  ‘He allows me to walk the corridors and on occasion the gardens when no one is present. Usually it is night. I am locked up here for days and days. I go crazy with boredom. I get desperate to see the light, to see life. But he is very strict, and I have to return quickly, or he will not give me what I need; and he always reminds me I have to be very careful never to be seen, because then everyone would be so furious and there would be no more gifts…’

  She looked at me, her eyes wide and innocent now.

  ‘Who would be angry?’

  ‘They would.’

  ‘Your family? Your husband?’

  She nodded, miserably.

  ‘They treat me like an animal,’ she hissed.

  ‘Does no one else ever release you, and allow you some liberty?’

  She hesitated for a moment, and glanced at me before she shook her head. So someone was taking pity on her. I thought I knew who that might be.

  I watched her as she shifted nervously, her fingers endlessly unpicking an invisible tangle of thread.

  ‘So what is happening out in the wide world?’ she asked, as if she had suddenly remembered it was still there.

  ‘Nothing has changed,’ said Khay. ‘Everything remains the same.’

  She looked at me.

  ‘I know he lies,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘I can’t tell you anything,’ I said.

  ‘I have a world in here.’ She tapped the side of her head lightly, as if it were a toy. ‘I have lived in it for a very long time now. My world is beautiful, and the children are happy, and people dance in the streets. Life is a party. No one grows old, and tears are unknown. There are flowers everywhere, and colours, and wonderful things. And love grows like fruit upon the vine.’

  ‘I suppose your husband is not in it, then.’

  She looked up instantly, her eyes suddenly focused.

  ‘You have news of my husband? When did you see him?’

  ‘A few weeks ago, in Memphis.’

  ‘Memphis? What is he doing there? He has not seen me for so long. He has been away at the wars for years. That is what the Physician told me…’

  She looked betrayed.

  ‘How does the Physician know about your husband?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He gives me news. He told me my husband was a great man, and I should be proud of him. He said he would soon return, and everything would be different.’

  I glanced at Khay at these ominous words.

  ‘But I fear my husband has never loved me as I loved him, and he never will. You see: he has no heart. And perhaps he even wishes me dead, now that I have served one purpose, and failed in the other. Human beings do not matter to him.’

  ‘What purpose have you failed?’ I asked.

  She looked at me very directly.

  ‘I am barren. I have given him no heir. It is the curse of our line. And to punish me, look what he has done.’

  She raised her hands to her pitiful skull. ‘He has made me mad. He has locked the demons in my head. One day I will dash my brains out on the walls, and it will all be over.’

  I held Mutnodjmet’s hands in my own. The sleeve of her gown lifted a little, and revealed healed scars on her wrists. She wanted me to see them.

  ‘I am going to leave you now. If the Physician returns, perhaps you should not mention my visit. I would not want him to withdraw his gifts.’

  She nodded, sincerely, and utterly unreliably.

  ‘Please, please, please come and visit me again,’ she said. ‘I might remember more things to tell you, if you came again.’

  ‘I promise I will try.’

  She seemed satisfied with that.

  She insisted on accompanying me to the door. The dwarfs reappeared, attending her like malevolent pets. She kept repeating ‘goodbye, goodbye’ over and over as I closed the door. I knew she was waiting on the other side, listening to the cords being tied on her living coffin.

  We walked away in silence. Khay seemed quite sobered now.

  ‘I feel I owe you an apology,’ he said, at length.

  ‘Accepted,’ I replied.

  We bowed to each other.

  ‘You must know the name of this Physician,’ I said.

  His face fell with disappointment.

  ‘I wish I did. I knew, of course, that she was here, and why. I was given the responsibility of t
he practical aspects of her care. But the order came from Ay, perhaps in collaboration with Horemheb. This “Physician” would simply have been granted a pass to the royal quarters, and it would all have been done in secret. It all happened so long ago, and she was such an embarrassment, I suppose we all just forgot about her, and carried on with matters that seemed much more important. She was the dirty family secret, and we were all glad to get rid of her.’

  ‘But are you sure Ay is in charge of her circumstances?’

  ‘Yes, or at least he was at the start.’

  I thought about that.

  ‘Is she right about Horemheb?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Horemheb married her for power. He seduced her very effectively, but all he wanted was an entrée into the royal family. He knew no one would want her for herself, and so she was a kind of bargain.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She was damaged goods, so to speak. She was always a bit strange. Even from her childhood she was troubled, hysterical. So she came cheap. The family were keen to see her put to some use, and the alliance to a rising military star seemed valuable at the time. He was obviously going somewhere. Why not keep the army within the family? And obviously he got a remarkable preferment out of it. The other side of the bargain was that as a member of the family, by the grace of the deal, he would agree to behave; to give her at least the public semblance of a married life, and to harness the army to the strategic business and international interests of the family. After all, under the terms of the deal, that would be in Horemheb’s own interests, too.’

  ‘And is that why Mutnodjmet still remains incarcerated within Malkata Palace? Why don’t they send her to her husband?’

  ‘They must have come to some mutually beneficial arrangement. She lost her mind. She became a liability to both parties. To Horemheb she became a horrible embarrassment; she is the price he paid for his ambition. She loves him, but she revolts him. He wants to be rid of her. To Ay she was also a problem, for she is part of the dynasty, but she could not sustain a public role. Therefore it was in the interests of both parties that she disappeared from life, to become a kind of non-person without actually dying. But she is kept alive, for now. And as you see, she is quite mad, poor thing.’

  ‘And Horemheb?’