Nefertiti rr-1

by Nick Drake

  I stood still, returning his gaze. If this was a game of senet, he was standing like Osiris on the last square; except Mahu represented my passage into the next world in the worst possible way. Would they capture me and bring me down, or would I be executed on the spot? But I still had options. I was standing on a roof near the edge of the shanty. I could take my life into my hands with a leap into the unknown. Certainly I had little enough knowledge to defend myself against Mahu. In his power again, I doubted I could survive.

  Before I even finished the thought, I ran towards the edge of the roof and jumped.

  35

  I walked slowly up my street towards my house, my case in my hand, my journal in my case, my heart singing like a bird in my chest. I was returning home at last. I was older now. How many years had passed? I could not tell, and it no longer mattered. Time was a long, slow river. The early evening sun inscribed shadows on the clear air. People turned to look at me and waved as if I had been gone a long time.

  I stepped through the gate and opened the door into the courtyard. The children’s toys lay scattered about on the tiles. I entered and called out. Tanefert? Sekhmet? Girls? No answer came. I passed through the sitting room. In the kitchen, fruit rotted in the bowl, and the dishes served only the dust of many days. The children’s room, where I had last held them and kissed them goodbye, was empty, the beds unmade. One of Sekhmet’s stories-she had written hundreds-lay scattered across the floor. I bent to pick it up and saw with horror on the papyrus the imprint of a dirty leather boot. My hands started to shake.

  I ran through the rooms, shouting their names, throwing aside chairs, opening doors, ransacking storage chests to see if they were hiding inside. But I knew now they were gone and I had lost them for ever. In that moment I heard a howling, like a grieving animal, from very far away, lost in a dark, dead wood.

  I woke to that strange howl. It was my own bitter, unanswered cries. There were disgraceful wet tears on my face. I struggled to become myself again, out of the misery and confusion of the dream. I wanted to sleep so deeply I could know and feel nothing, but someone was telling me I must not. I must wake up. Suddenly I felt frightened of what would happen if I did sleep.

  No light entered into whatever place this was. So much for the god of the sun; he had deserted me. I could see nothing. My body was far away. It occurred to me I must bring it back. I recalled I had muscles for use. I concentrated on the word ‘hands’ and something stirred, but coldly, remotely, heavily. I switched to ‘fingers’, and this time I could feel them moving more clearly. But what was this, rough and harsh? A crude shackle around my wrists, which were wet. I brought my hands slowly together and discovered they were linked to a rope. I struggled to bring everything towards my mouth, for taste was the only sense I could believe in. I licked something familiar and strangely comforting. A memory came in a flash: a knife blade held to my lips. Then it vanished again, and a feeling of implacable sorrow replaced it. I struggled against it. No! Keep thinking! The shackles had worn away the skin and flesh. I must have struggled, in my dream, to free myself from my bondage.

  I let my fingers move across my face: eyes, nose, mouth. Chin. Neck. Shoulders. Keep going. Chest. Nipples. Arms, two-abrasions, places that hurt, suddenly, when I touched them. Bruises? Wounds? More. Find yourself. Belly, thighs-and another sudden flash: I saw boots kicking again and again into my groin, and the torn sensations of agony, rage and vomiting. Now my mouth recalled its own taste: stale, parched, disgusting. Suddenly I wanted to drink and drink. Water!

  My fettered hands scurried, desperate as rats, across the invisible floor of this place. A jar. I raised it to my lips, the contents sloshing over me, stinging where the flesh was cut, and then I sent it flying into the dark. Cold piss. My wrists throbbed where the short ropes yanked against them. My gorge rose, but spewed nothing more than a dribble of some intense bile whose bitterness flooded my throat.

  Then I remembered. Mahu. The rooftop. Before I jumped. This was his work. He was to blame. Then my fetters were tearing again at my flesh. I was raging, raging like a demented animal, kicking against my confinement.

  There were commands, shouts. A door slammed open and a jar of cold water was thrown over me. The shock of the light, the freezing shock of the water and the fear of reprisal made me crawl back into a corner of the cell, its filth and stone walls partly revealed. There were strange markings gouged into these walls, the desperate signs of the condemned who had passed through here on their way to death and oblivion. Now I was one of them.

  Two Medjay guards aggressively hustled me into a standing position. Fetters ached and weighed, cutting into my ankles as well as my wrists. My nakedness was exposed to the light. The guards ignored me, and no-one gave me clothing. I found I wished to speak, but what came from my mouth was the croak of a crow. They laughed, but one of them gave me a jug. I held it, trembling, and a little cool water entered my mouth. Tears filled my eyes at the same time. Then the guard roughly pulled the jug from my grasp.

  I cannot tell how long we stood there like that. I was so tired, but they forced me to stay standing, prodding me with their batons as I wavered on the spot like a drunk who has lost his memory and his way.

  Then a thick shadow appeared, moving slowly, purposefully, one step at a time, in no hurry at all, towards the door, as if descending into a tomb. It stooped to enter the cell. Mahu. He looked at me casually. The guards stiffened to attention. Suddenly I broke out towards him, punching, lashing out, desperate to beat his smug face with my bare fists, my feet, anything. But I was stopped by the ropes as short as a mad dog’s, and I fell jerking and thrashing at his feet. At that moment I hated him and his thick panting hound. I would have torn his squat throat apart with my bare teeth, smashed open his ribs and feasted on his entrails and his fat heart.

  He smiled. I said nothing, trying to control my ragged breath and the storm of hatred inside me. He shrugged, waited, patient as a torturer, then leaned down near me. I could smell his stale scent.

  ‘No-one knows you’re here,’ he said.

  I returned his gaze.

  ‘I warned you, Rahotep. You only have yourself to blame. If you are suffering now, that is good. If your suffering has taught you hatred for me, that too is good. It is a fever that will infect, corrupt and rot your soul.’

  ‘I will kill you.’

  He let out a short laugh, a bark of contempt, rolled his head on his solid neck, and nodded. The guards held my arms, and he grasped the hair of the back of my head with his meaty hands, forcing me to look up. His breath was hot and foul on my face. His teeth needed cleaning. His nose, I noticed, carried tiny broken red lines under the greasy skin. His spittle, as he spoke, flecked my face.

  ‘Hatred is like acid. I can see it now, penetrating and corroding your mind.’ Then he methodically and casually worked two fingers into my eye sockets, and pushed until brief stars of agony exploded in the red sky of my head. I thought he would crush my head in his hands. I struggled in my bonds, spat at him, flailed uselessly. ‘Before you lose your mind, I want answers. Where is the Queen?’

  I refused to answer. He pressed harder. My head lit up with incandescent arcs of pain.

  ‘Where is the Queen?’

  I still refused to answer. Would he crush my eyes in my head? Suddenly the pressure vanished. I blinked but could make out nothing but a strange vision of whirling shapes and colours. I shook my head to try to clear my sight. His kick caught me in the face. The force of the blow travelled fast through my head. Acrid bile seeped into my mouth. Sickly sweet blood dripped from my split lips. I could feel the outline of my teeth blooming and swelling on my bruised mouth.

  Through the roaring in my head I heard him ask again, without changing the expression of his voice: ‘Where is the Queen?’

  ‘As it is said in the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘As it is said in the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day.’

  ‘I dislike riddles.’<
br />
  ‘Her sign is Life.’ And this time I smiled.

  He punched it off my face. ‘I will break every bone of your fingers if I have to. And then how will you write in that little journal? You won’t be able to hold your own cock to piss.’

  I waited a little while, then with all the strength I had I said, ‘Do you go down into the Otherworld.’

  His anger showed in his face. Good. Then, with a sigh, as to a recalcitrant child, he casually picked up my left hand and with a swift motion jerked back the little finger. The tiny crack echoed around the cell. I cried out.

  He looked closely into my eyes, as if to enjoy at close range the spectacle of my suffering. I saw the black dots of his pupils, and my own distorted face reflected in his eyes. ‘No-one is going to save you this time, Rahotep. It is too late. Akhenaten himself does not know you are here. You have disappeared into thin air. You are nobody. Nothing.’

  The pain was still singing in my hand, and I feared I would vomit again.

  ‘You have very little time left to find the Queen,’ I croaked. ‘And if you cannot, then the Festival is going to be a catastrophe for Akhenaten, and for you and for this city. I am your only lead. You cannot afford to kill me.’

  ‘I don’t need to kill you. Others will take care of that. But I find I do need to hurt you very badly. And we can go on for some time.’

  ‘No matter what you do to me, know this: I will not tell you what I know. I would rather die.’

  ‘It is not you who will die. Do you understand me?’

  I looked into his eyes. I understood his threat. Hathor, Lady of the West, forgive me now. I did the only thing possible.

  ‘As it is said in the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day.’

  His eyes turned colder, as if all light had suddenly abandoned them. He reached for my hand again. I prepared myself, silently uttering a prayer. My whole body was shivering now. He waited, relishing my suffering, timing his move.

  ‘Tell me where she is.’

  I looked into his eyes with all the defiance left in me. ‘No.’

  He grasped another finger to snap the next little bone.

  36

  A quiet but entirely authoritative voice possessed the sudden silence of the cell: ‘What is happening here?’

  He had entered unnoticed. Perhaps both Mahu and I had been too engaged with the enactment of our mutual antagonism, the blood and sweat of what was happening; but it was as if he carried no shadow, made no noise, as if he had suddenly appeared from thin air. Ay. His very name was weightless. Thin air, indeed, seemed to describe his presence. But what force has thin air that it can cause a thug like Mahu to leap to his feet, alarmed, already stammering his excuses?

  ‘Release this man from his bonds,’ Ay whispered almost, to ensure we all listened carefully.

  Mahu nodded, full of hatred and uncertainty, and the guards did as they were ordered. I cradled my damaged hand and bloody wrists.

  ‘This man is naked,’ Ay added, as if mildly puzzled. He looked enquiringly at Mahu, who gestured vaguely, at a loss to answer. Ay’s face modulated into an expression that in others would have constituted a smile. His lips pulled back to reveal evenly spaced fine white teeth, the teeth of a man whose diet is so refined nothing ever rots or damages them. But his grey eyes smiled not at all. ‘Perhaps you should offer him your own clothes,’ he said softly.

  Mahu looked so surprised I almost laughed. And his hands did indeed stray towards his own linens as if he would actually obey this absurd command. Then Ay, with a dismissive nod, made it clear that my clothing should be brought for me-which it was, instantly. I dressed as quickly as I could, despite the sickening pain of my broken finger, and immediately felt stronger, more equal. The three of us stood in silence. I wondered what could possibly happen now. Ay let Mahu suffer; he stood there wishing he were made of stone.

  ‘Did this man not expressly state to you that he was under my protection?’ Ay enquired of Mahu.

  If it was possible, I was momentarily the more startled. Mahu glanced at me.

  ‘Yet what do I find? The chief of police personally enacting his own little inquisition. I am very surprised.’

  ‘I detained him in the course of my duties, and with the authority of Akhenaten himself,’ Mahu countered.

  ‘I see. So the King knows you have this man here for interrogation?’

  Mahu could say nothing.

  ‘I do not think he would approve of your treatment of a fellow officer whom the King himself decided, from the depth of his wisdom, to appoint.’

  Then he turned to me and I looked for the first time properly into his frozen grey eyes-full, it suddenly struck me, of snow.

  ‘Come with me.’

  I would save my vengeance on Mahu for later, and relish it then. It took all my willpower not to punch him hard in the face with my good hand as I walked past him. He knew it, too. Instead I just stared at him, then carried on, as well as I was able, and followed the footsteps of Ay up the stone stairs, towards the weak light of day staining these miserable walls.

  We were soon in a wide brick-lined shaft, perhaps a hundred cubits deep, like an enormous well that had not yet struck water, and never would. Stairs wound up the sides, and at every level chambers like those in a catacomb disappeared quickly in different directions into inky shadows. The entrances to these were barred but I saw, as we passed, the still-living mortal remains of men in the darkness, little piles of skin and bone, some with their white eyes open, in tiny cages not fit for dogs. In another space I saw men buried up to their noses in large sand-filled clay vases, like the ibises and baboons we dedicate in sacred catacombs. Madness and despair showed in their eyes. These men had been abandoned here and could no longer speak to defend or betray themselves. There was almost no sound.

  Ay acknowledged the existence of none of this horror; he just walked up the stairs methodically, step by step, as if it cost him no effort. I followed, my mind bewildered by events and these sights, until finally, out of breath, I stepped out of that pit of suffering and misery and into the ordinary light of day. Suddenly there was the world again: heat and brightness, and guards sitting bored in the shadows of a reed hut. They all rose instantly to respectful attention when they saw Ay.

  Ay got into a carrying chair, already prepared with uniformed carriers, and motioned for me to sit beside him. Shading my eyes against the blaze of daylight, I suddenly recognized where we were: in the Red Land behind the city, south of the desert altars. It must be late morning, for the shadows had gone and all was hazy with heat and overwhelming light. I felt very weak and tired. Ay handed me a little water jar, and I drank slowly as the carriage moved away along one of the Medjay paths. Servants ran beside us holding shades against the light. I think he had a profound aversion to the sun. We sat in silence. I found myself unable to think, only to feel the strange adjacency of these two worlds, the one buried deep, the other open to Ra and the light of day, and me passing between them, fortunately in the right direction.

  ‘How long have I been imprisoned?’ I asked Ay.

  ‘Today is the eve of the Festival,’ he replied calmly.

  Two days. Because of Mahu, I now had only one day left. How could I solve the mystery in so little time? And how could I now save my family? My hatred for him intensified, like a pure flame.

  ‘And what news of my assistant, Khety?’

  ‘I know nothing of this man,’ said Ay dismissively.

  That was the one piece of good news. Perhaps he had escaped.

  The carrying chair took us to the border of the city, and soon we were passing through the ways of the central city, where the people were going about their daily acts and affairs so absurdly unconscious of the atrocities being committed on their fellow humans nearby. For a city in so much sun, I saw dark shadows everywhere. Parennefer had described the place as an enchantment, but now it seemed a mockery, an appalling delusion. Ay looked out at the spectacle, occasionally glancing up at building work in progress, at t
he many teams of artisans and workmen moving about anxiously and hurriedly on the high walls, trying to make the place look as finished as possible in time for the Festival. He seemed sceptical. He noticed me glancing at him.

  ‘Do you believe they will finish in time for the ceremonies?’ I asked.

  He replied in his quiet voice: ‘This is a fools’ paradise, made of mud and straw, and soon it will crumble and collapse back into the base matter from which it is constructed.’

  We passed the Small Aten Temple and the Great Palace, and continued along the Royal Road until we arrived at the harbour. I had not stopped, at any point, to consider my position. Here I was in the company of this man of enormous power, having been saved from the loving attention of Mahu and his gang; but of what nature was this new company? What did Ay want from me? He had freed me from one trap, but was I entering another? No guards accompanied us; I could simply have stepped out of the carrying chair and walked away up the street. But then what? I felt that he would be able to locate me anywhere.

  He gestured to me to board a reed boat. I saw anchored out on the water his magnificent ship. So, this was our destination: his floating palace, a movable estate of power. I boarded the reed boat, as he knew I would.

  37

  The ship seemed to hang in the water by its own immutable laws, a self-contained creation of stateliness. The streamers had been removed, the Priests and the orchestra had gone, and now, as I stood on the main deck, it gave above all a sense of power, clarity and grace. Ay moved swiftly into the shade of the portico, gesturing for me to follow. ‘The physician will examine your injuries,’ he said. ‘Then we will dine.’