Nefertiti rr-1

by Nick Drake

  Of course I had not. This was deliberate. Nevertheless, I had flouted protocol and annoyed him. Again.

  ‘I assumed Khety or Tjenry would report to you.’

  ‘Who’s the dead girl?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  I said nothing more, hoping he would go. But he just stared out at the people as if they were a herd of animals and he the hunter depressed by his lack of appetite.

  ‘What do you make of all this?’ he said, jutting his head at them.

  ‘They’re all trying to get by. We all have to swim in the same water.’

  He gave me a brief, cynical look. ‘Most of them don’t know they’re born. They think the worst that can happen is a slave stealing a handful of jewellery. While the rest of us are spending our lives keeping the deserts off their streets.’

  ‘That’s the job. Always more desert.’

  ‘I want to know whose side you are on, Rahotep. I want to know what you think.’

  ‘I’m not on anyone’s side.’

  ‘Then let me tell you something. That is the most dangerous position in this city. Sooner or later you will have to make a choice. At the moment, it seems to me you don’t even know what the sides are.’

  ‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’

  He laughed darkly. ‘You’d better find out fast how things work, and who pulls what strings. Even your own. Good luck untangling them. And by the way, I’ve gathered a few friends together for a hunt on the river. Tomorrow afternoon. Do you hunt, Rahotep?’

  I had to confess I did.

  ‘Then I insist you join us. It will give me a chance to assess your progress.’

  He patted me patronizingly on the back, and moved off with his predator’s lope through the crowd.

  I turned to look at Khety, who all this time had stood behind me ignored by everyone, and was surprised to see a flash of anger in his eyes.

  ‘Take no notice, Khety. He’s an old-fashioned bully. Don’t let him get to you. Above all, don’t be afraid of him.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of him? Just a bit?’

  ‘I’m trespassing on his territory. He’s a big old lion and he doesn’t like that.’ I changed the subject. ‘Won’t Akhenaten appear tonight?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve heard he rarely appears at events after dark. And the invitations were issued in Ramose’s name. But even so I’d have thought he needs to show himself to confirm there’s not a problem.’

  ‘Yet if he appears without the Queen that will only confirm the suspicions.’

  I suddenly realized why the hall was so animated and noisy. It was as if the rules of the day-the worship for and respect of the new religion-were relaxing. And I felt like this too. Another girl was passing, and I intercepted her and took more drinks. I suddenly very much needed another drink. I drank it gratefully.

  Khety gave me a look.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Just then the orchestra concluded its excruciating labours and the dancers melted away. Trumpet blasts stopped the barrage of conversation, officials moved into formation, and all heads turned towards the raised platform at the centre of the hall. A herald announced him, and Ramose walked up onto the platform. The hall immediately fell silent. He stared about him for several moments before speaking.

  ‘We stand together, tonight, in the new City of the Two Lands. A new city for a new world. Here we celebrate the Works and the Wonders of Aten. And over the coming days we shall welcome the arrival of kings, chieftains, heads of state, loyal vassals, officials and leaders. They are travelling here from across the Empire to pay rightful homage to the Great Estate of Akhenaten, through whom all things exist and in whom all recognize Truth. To those honoured guests who are already among us, I offer you welcome. To those of you granted the good fortune to reside here, in service of the Great Estate, I say: join me in that welcome. And to the world, which hears these words, I say, for Akhenaten and the royal family: worship the Aten, here in Akhetaten, the City of Light.’

  There was a strange and uncomfortable silence at the end of the speech, as if more needed to be said, or indeed as if something else needed to happen, such as the appearance of Akhenaten and the family in the Window of Appearances. But there was nothing. I noticed people exchanging uneasy little glances with each other, communicating in the most careful way their responses to this dogma and to the discomforting tone, the odd flatness, of Ramose’s delivery. Everyone knew someone was missing. Ramose descended from the platform to receive the offered congratulations of his officials. Slowly the level of noise restored itself, but this time with a different tone, one that spoke of speculation.

  I had had enough for one evening. I needed to return to the office, to think, to sleep. I looked up at Nefertiti’s statues again. Where are you? Why have you gone just now? Have you been taken, and if so by whom? Or have you vanished-and if so, why? Who are you?

  Outside the hall, along the Royal Road, a number of citizens remained, still keen for a sighting of someone important. No-one took much notice of Khety and me, luckily, so we drove slowly away.

  Now, as I lie here, I am considering the various strands of the evening. At my head stands the strange little icon of Akhenaten. I remember Parennefer’s words: the city is a beautiful enchantment. But it does not seem so simple now. For all the language of light and enlightenment the same dark shades of human ambition, avarice and cruelty seem to reside here too, awaiting opportunities. It seems to me, suddenly, that Akhenaten is standing under the sun for fear of those night shadows creeping closer to him with every passing day. I too am now subject to the encroachment of these shadows. Mahu was right. I cannot yet disentangle truth from speculation, fact from fiction, honesty from lies.

  I go to the window and look out at the bleak little courtyard. At least the heat has lifted a little. The desert makes this city tolerable by night; breezes cooled by the face of the moon move through doors and passages across our sleeping faces and into our restless dreams. Tomorrow I must pursue the identity of the dead girl. It strikes me I am investigating versions of possibility. I am pursuing copies in the hope of tracing their lost original. But at least I have my next move. The scarab and this journal I will place beneath my pillow on my headrest for safe-keeping. May the gods bless my children and my wife, and bring me to the new light of the dawn. Suddenly my love for them is singing in my breastbone like a stitch of pain.

  14

  I woke to an urgent knocking on the door. It was Khety. Something was wrong. It was still dark. We drove fast through the deserted ways, in silence.

  I opened the door to the chamber of purification. It was very dark and very cold. I entered the room carefully, anxious to disturb nothing. I raised my lamp. The girl’s shadowy body remained in the same position. The chilly air was tainted with decay. All the candles in their sconces had burned down. I walked slowly around the room, trying to observe everything, as is my method, breaking up the surfaces and spaces into squares, noting everything and moving on to the next. It was as I remembered it: the chests were closed, the implements in their places, the canopic jars on their shelves. The Sons of Horus stared down at me. I walked along the wall of empty, decorated coffins, holding up the lamp. Suddenly I leaped back: one was wide open. It contained a body, propped up like a bad scary joke.

  Tjenry was upright in the coffin, his eyes open, a slight smile stuck on his bloodless handsome face. I waved the lamp over him and caught a strange glitter in his wide-open eyes. I looked carefully into them. Glass. I lowered the lamp. Something else was set on the floor at his feet. One canopic jar.

  Khety and I lifted him out, with infinite care and sorrow, and set him gently down on a table. We could not look at each other. A few hours ago this thing of muscle and bone had been a young man of charm and prospects. In the glow of the newly lit lamps I examined every inch of the body. Apart from a loincloth he was naked, washed, clean. There were brutal red and blue gouges in the yellow and grey flesh of his
wrists and ankles, and around his waist and chest. Over his forehead was a deep band of purple bruising. He had been bound down tightly. He had struggled greatly for life. There were also marks and little tears on his nostrils. I dreaded what I would find. I opened his mouth, stiff now like a trap, and pulled sticky red wadding from the cavity. What was left of the tongue was a chewed piece of meat, unrecognizable as the instrument of speech. I kept going, although my deepest wish was to walk from this room and keep walking, rather than go forward to the discovery I knew lay ahead. He had clearly been alive when all this was done to him. Everything pointed to an experience of slow, excruciating and terrifying agony. I looked up and saw the grim instruments of mummification hanging in the shadows on their hooks. I steeled myself and looked inside the canopic jar. His brain, mangled, torn and already tinged blue with decay, the organ usually thrown away, lay within, topped by his eyes on their bloody, torn strings.

  I could barely believe it. Someone had bound him down, and while he was alive had removed his brain through his nostrils, as if he were already dead and ready for burial, using the iron hooks hanging innocently on the wall. It had been done meticulously, expertly. It had been done during the time we were at the reception, eating and drinking and talking. It had been done in this room.

  I struggled to keep control of my feelings. I had seen bad things in my time. I’d smelled the sweet stench of human bone burning, and the steam from just-dead viscera rising from a gutted belly. But I had never seen anything like this inhuman enactment with its barbaric precision.

  There was nothing now I could do for him. No prayers from the Book of the Dead would guard against the horror of this. I remembered that I had ordered him to remain behind. And now he was dead. I closed his delicate, cold eyelids over his strange, bright glass eyes. Khety and I left the room, with its appalling chill, and stood outside. The dawn was breaking. Birds were singing.

  15

  I commanded Khety to return to the Medjay headquarters to report the murder, while I waited. I needed time alone, before the shouting and the noise. I needed to think, even though my mind was emptier and more haunted than the Red Land. The images of what had been done to this promising young man stopped every thought in its tracks.

  I watched the street wake up. An old man shuffled out of his dark doorway carrying a jug of water, which he poured tenderly around the roots of a sapling that had taken root in the earth. He seemed to have all the time in the world to accomplish his task. Then he picked up some of the broken rubbish from around the tree and threw it further into the street, and shuffled back into the darkness of his accommodation. Then the sun came up, and more people appeared, leaving their homes and going about their daily business.

  Rage swept through me then-at myself for having let this young man die, at the waste of life, at the disgusting futility of this city, at the refined cruelty that had committed this crime. I knew, of course, that this act was aimed at me. It was as purposeful as the arrow on the boat. Whoever committed the crime wanted me to know they knew everything I was doing. They wanted me to know I was being watched closely. Also, they wanted me to know they could inflict worse things upon me if they so chose. There was something mocking in it, taunting. They were slowly and meticulously destroying the ground of authority under my feet. Soon I would be marooned on a tiny island of complete uncertainty. I had come to the city to investigate a missing person. Now I was investigating murders as well.

  Mahu arrived, of course. He barely acknowledged me as he entered the chamber. When he came out, he inflicted the best of his fury on me. It was shaming, of course, in front of the other men, but I felt strangely immune. The facts of Tjenry’s death made his noise and anger irrelevant and futile. Then he was gone again, with dire warnings and threats. He would inform Akhenaten. I hardly cared. I wanted to track down and trap this man, or woman. I had my own private revenge to drive me now. I needed to know what kind of human being could do such a thing to another. Was this person a monster, or did he or she have a heart and soul, blood and emotions, like the rest of us?

  When everyone had gone, Khety and I sat together for a little while, not speaking.

  ‘This is the worst thing I’ve seen in my life,’ said Khety eventually.

  ‘We’ve had two barbaric murders in the space of a few days. There’s no reason to suppose they will stop here. There’s every reason to suppose they are directly connected to our investigation. We’re being followed.’

  He nodded. ‘And they’re leaving no clues.’

  ‘That’s not exactly right. The manner of the deaths is telling a story. We have to work out what it is. And the next step is to trace the dead girl. I have an idea. We should ask in the artisans’ village.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because if she was a person of importance, her disappearance would have been noticed, maybe reported, by now. Someone in the city might have connected her to the murder victim. And we need to stop off on the way. I need to see the maid, Senet.’

  The house was quiet when we arrived. The guards admitted us and we waited for Senet to appear. She bowed low to me.

  ‘Can we go somewhere private?’

  She showed us into an antechamber. As before, she was immaculately dressed, her hair covered, her hands in the little yellow gloves.

  ‘I want to show you something. Please don’t say anything. Just nod if you recognize it. Yes?’

  She nodded. I opened my hand and showed her the scarab. Horror, rather than sorrow, descended on her face. Her hands trembled with shock.

  ‘It is not quite what you think.’ Her big eyes lifted, suddenly hopeful.

  ‘Why did you not tell me the truth?’

  ‘About what?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘That this scarab was missing from the Queen’s jewellery?’

  She tried to think quickly. ‘Forgive me, but I did not know who you were. I mean, who you truly were.’

  ‘You mean you did not know whether I could be trusted? As a Medjay?’

  She nodded, grateful that I had said what she could not.

  ‘I need to know if you have anything to say about this scarab.’

  She looked at it. ‘Please tell me, how did you come by it?’

  ‘Someone else was wearing it. Another woman.’

  She looked astonished. ‘How could that possibly be?’ she said, turning it over in her hands.

  ‘I don’t know. But I will tell you this. The woman who was wearing this once looked very like the Queen.’

  She struggled to take in what I was saying. ‘Once?’

  ‘She is dead. I cannot identify her. Do you have anything you wish to tell me now?’

  She suddenly looked away. ‘This place is full of darkness.’ She spoke the words with a new passion.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘People are animals, don’t you think? The Queen says most people have good hearts. But I see their faces when they smile, when they say clever things, when they laugh at others’ misfortune. I think the tongue is the monster in us all.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because words have more power to wound and kill than knives.’

  I left the thought to rest between us.

  ‘Tell me more about this scarab.’

  She held the thing in her delicate palm, tilting it this way and that. ‘I see the possibility of new life. Proclaimed in eternal gold. The scarab beetle, least of all life forms, constantly renewing itself. Resurrection from the basest things of this world. I see the sun, from whom comes all creation, pushed back into new life in the claws of the beetle. I see the mystery of Ra’s power contained in the dot at its centre. Like a child in the womb. I see a woman, the complete equal of the sun god in all things. I see this worn as a sign of hope. I feel it lying on warm skin, over a good heart.’

  Suddenly she buckled, as if from a bolt of dreadful grief, and sobbed, her body racked with overwhelming emotion. Khety and I looked at each other, surprised. Then her ag
ony passed, and she calmed herself. The little lapping sounds of the river meeting the terrace stones filled in the gap of silence between us. She waited for me to respond, her head bowed.

  ‘You have spoken well,’ I said. ‘Nothing will be forgotten.’

  I turned to leave but her hand reached out before I passed through the doorway.

  ‘What about the children? I am sure they are miserable without their mother.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘They’ve been taken to their grandmother.’

  Her look of anxiety told me all I needed to know about what she thought of that arrangement.

  ‘I will need to talk to them all. Do you want me to carry a message when I see them?’

  ‘Please tell them I am here waiting at home for them.’

  16

  The artisans’ village lay to the east of the central city. We drove as far as we could along the track. Ra, in all his glory-far too much glory for me-beat down mercilessly from his zenith. There was no relief anywhere. All shadows had retreated into their objects. Khety raised the parasol to protect our heads, and we drove on sharing the minimal relief of the shaky little circle of shade.

  Various other tracks crossed our paths, radiating out into the eastern desert, some leading to the desert altars, others to the rock tombs and the security stations. Fatigued young men stood like shadow sticks at crossing points, and I could see, from time to time, tiny figures standing sentry at the border points of the city’s shimmering territory-as much, it seemed, to keep the people in as to prevent incursions from the superstitious spirits and barbarians of the Red Land.

  I pointed them out to Khety.

  ‘The worst job of all,’ he said. ‘They’re out there through the day with nothing more than a thin reed hut for shade. They’re also guarding the tombs being cut into the higher levels of the hills.’ He pointed up at the distant cliffs, white and red and grey, and I shaded my eyes in an attempt to see. They seemed uninhabited to me. ‘They’re working some way into the rock now. It’s actually hotter the deeper you go.’