by Allen Drury
“‘Go with the gods, good Amonemhet! Go with our love! Perform your noble mission bravely and successfully, and Her Majesty and I will give great rewards to you and your family!
“‘This do we swear upon the name of him who loved you, faithful servant, and whom you loved, Neb-Kheperu-Ra Tutankhamon, he who has gone to live forever young and happy in the afterworld, forever and ever, for millions and millions of years!
“‘So speaks the Co-Regent Aye, in Thebes, to the Headman Amonemhet, in his village of Hanis.’”
My son stops reading and an awful silence falls upon us in our little hut (somewhat larger now, though—we have been able to add two more rooms as the family has grown. I have prospered as Headman of the village.) For a long time no one says anything; we just stare at one another and at the two gleaming rings, like birds hypnotized by the cobra. It is my son who finally speaks.
“Father!” he says, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “May I go with you?”
“No!” his mother wails. “You are the oldest, we need you to help us if—if—”
“Silence!” I thunder again, I am afraid not a very convincing thunder, for they all start shouting at once, even the baby beginning to scream in the midst of the chaos. “Silence!”
Eventually they obey me and I try to speak as calmly as possible, though I too am seized with fear, excitement and also—yes, because the honor and the danger and the challenge are all beginning to work a powerful magic upon me, I must admit it—with a sort of terrible eagerness.
“I will go,” I announce flatly. My wife and the girls sob, the boys look solemn-eyed with fright. “Young Amonemhet”—I pause as they watch me fearfully, all save he, the scamp, who I can tell regards it now as a great lark—“will go with me because—because,” I go on firmly over my wife’s anguished cry, “I am an ignorant, unlettered man, and he is young and clever and learning to be a scribe, and he can help me if I have to read anything. He can also help me with the border guards and, yes, even with His Majesty, King Suppiluliumas, if need be. His brother is almost fifteen and already a fine, sturdy lad. He will be a good guardian to you all if—if—”
I pause as my second son stands up, happy, proud and confident. I almost choke with the sudden emotion that sweeps me as I realize how much I love them all, and love my village, and how it may be that I will never see any of them again, for this is great danger into which we go.
“So let there be no more squalling about it. Wife! Children! Get food and water ready for us at once! We leave immediately on the mission of Her Majesty, in the memory of him who loved us and whom we loved, Neb-Kheperu-Ra Tutankhamon, Lord of the Two Lands, may he live forever young and happy in the afterworld, for millions and millions of years!”
And so presently we are on our way under cover of Nut the night, whose grasp still lies firm upon the land. It will be several hours yet before Ra’s first faint fingers begin to mark the eastern sky.
We are muffled in heavy wraps against the winter cold. Our horses, loaded with water and food hidden under piles of straw, are muzzled so they will not whinny. In careful silence we skirt the village, keeping to the edge of the Red Land as we will do every night of our journey at other villages. During the days we will travel the public road like any other peasants bound on normal business, so ordinary in appearance that I think not even the great General Horemheb will find us among Kemet’s millions. And when we get to the border of the Hittites—well, I will think about that later when we have to meet it. I am frightened enough as it is, right now.
But bound against my body I carry the rolls of papyrus, wrapped in old rags so they look like nothing; and on a leather thong around my neck the bag of gold and the ring, resting warm and snug against my chest; and in my mind’s eye a small golden figure, head held high and eyes filled with love and kindness for me and my village, defying his evil cousin and the evil priest—bright and brave and young and good, as he will always live in our hearts, even as he lives forever in the afterworld.
And I know that I will give whatever is asked of me, even life itself, to help her whom he has left to keep the kingdom, if she can.
***
Ankhesenamon
(life, health, prosperity!)
My grandfather has chosen our messenger well, one for whom my husband always felt deep trust and fond regard. He is a simple man of absolute integrity, loyalty, honor, a peasant who can disappear among other peasants so that no one will notice his passage as he goes swiftly on my mission. I pray to the Aten and the other gods—not to Amon, for Amon, like Horemheb, would stop him if he knew—that he may come safely to Suppiluliumas, and that Suppiluliumas will swiftly respond.
I had never thought to do such a thing, never dreamed that I would find it necessary. But I did not dream of my husband’s death either: and it came. Now if I would save the Two Lands from my grasping cousin I must do what I am doing. My aunt, my grandfather and I see no other way.
At first, of course, I saw nothing. When the soldier burst upon me with his dreadful news, I fainted as if I too had died. When I returned to the world I found my body tortured with pain, my child already on the way; I had no time or ability to think of anything else. Then that ended, I fell into a deep, unknowing sleep. When I awoke I remembered: dread, terror, grief for my gentle husband flooded my heart. Sitamon, trying her best to be kind, for she is very kind, told me of the death of the Crown Prince—who was not the Crown Prince at all, thanks to the vengeful gods. Again grief consumed my being, but not for long: again I had no time.
Now I carry in my heart a crying for Tutankhamon, our lost prince and our lost chances, which I shall never lose though I live to be the age of Aye; but there has been little or no time to give to that. I realized that I was sole ruler of the Two Lands, that I had to strengthen myself for many things: grief had to be sternly conquered and swiftly put aside. Now though I weep ritually each day for Pharaoh, I do not really cry inside: I suspect it will be a long while before I do. Someday I know I will, but not now. Now a cold resolve resides in my ka and my ba, in the very soul and essence of my being. I think only of my plan, and of what I shall do when it has been accomplished. First I shall take vengeance upon Horemheb. And then I shall restore to Kemet all that has been taken from her in these past sad years, using the power which will be fully mine when the answer comes from Suppiluliumas.
That I should appeal to him was Sitamon’s idea to begin with, but I was quick to embrace it when I looked about the ruins of our House and saw what was left after the horror. The gods have always denied me sons: even to the end, I could bring forth only girls, all dead—all three dead, even the last, when the Good God and I wanted so desperately to have a son. Had I been so delivered, and had the child lived, I should have ruled the kingdom as Regent until he was old enough to take the throne, and no one, not even Horemheb, would have dared challenge me. But it was not to be. And so I am forced to do a desperate thing, strange and unknown to our history, but the only thing left for me to do.
My cousin has not yet approached me formally for my hand but it will come: it will come. Sitamon tells me so and logic tells me so. I am the surest road to the Double Crown for Horemheb. We think he will not dare try it until Pharaoh has gone beneath the ground, but surely he will try it then. And by then, I hope, I shall have answer for him.
Meanwhile I remain in Sitamon’s palace and refuse to give him audience. Why should I? As surely as though he used the spear himself he killed the Living Horus, as he killed the Living Horus before him; and not I, nor anyone in Kemet, I believe, accepts his feeble tale of how he surprised Hatsuret at it and killed him to revenge the King. As Sitamon says, that is transparent nonsense. Why should I give audience to such an evil one?
I am ruler of the Two Lands and I am but a girl of twenty-two. Yet am I daughter of Nefertiti and Akhenaten, and strong must he be who bends to his will the child of that union. I may yet have to flee, he may yet kill me: but while I live, I, Ankhesenamon, Queen and Lord of the Two L
ands, will do all I can to keep my kingdom safe from such a one.…
When we were young—When we were young! Were Tut and I ever young?—my husband and I dreamed always of the day when we might bring to Kemet the rule of love and universal happiness that my father and mother tried to create. They did many wrong things, particularly my father: this we can all see now. But at least their hearts were good, and they wanted only good for the Two Lands and our people. In the Aten, the Sole God, my father thought he had found the key; and this did my husband and I also believe, and now it is I who am left to believe it alone—I and to some degree my grandfather and Sitamon. All else has gone back to jealous Amon.
Yet even so there was no need to do what Horemheb has done. Tutankhamon and I were not going to overturn the kingdom again. We planned nothing violent, we, too, wanted only love. We did not even wish to turn again upon Amon, though Amon, we knew, was always ready to turn upon us. We simply wanted all the gods to live, like all our people, in love and harmony. We wanted to favor the Aten, as we intended to do in the mortuary temple which would be his symbol. Yet even there, particularly there, we would have given all other gods, including Amon, a rightful and worthy place.
Now it is not to be: Aye does not think it wise to proceed with the project at this time and I agree with him. Perhaps later, he says, and I think later I will hold him to it. But right now all energies and effort must be devoted to digging Tutankhamon’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. He had not ordered work begun on it himself, because he wished to construct a single huge family tomb in which all of us, my father and mother, the Great Wife, Beketaten, Smenkhkara, Merytaten, Meketaten, our other sisters, ourselves and all, might be gathered together to lie in one place. Thus Tutankhamon did not order his own individual tomb, and so now his friend Maya (who supervises the necropolis as his father Pani did before him), the sculptor Tuthmose and our good cousin Nakht-Min are supervising the crew that is working frantically night and day to dig his sepulcher. It will be hurried and cramped and small, but in it he will be buried with full honors and with all the riches of funerary furniture, jewels and equipment that befit a Good God. Because that is what he was, my earnest young uncle and husband, whom I came to love and whom my bad cousin has taken from me: he was a Good God, and he would have been a great one had he lived. But it was not to be.…
Meanwhile, loyal Amonemhet hurries on his way to Suppiluliumas, and in Sitamon’s palace in Malkata I await his word. May the Aten grant him safe passage and a quick return.
The days pass slowly for me, but they pass. I am determined to do this thing and when I have, though I have husband, it will be I, Ankhesenamon, who truly rules the Two Lands. Then will there come finally to Kemet the love and peace and goodness that my father, my mother and my husband all failed to bring about.
Tradition—superstition—jealous gods—the ambitions of others—all defeated them.
I am determined they will not defeat Ankhesenamon, last direct descendant of the Eighteenth Dynasty, last member of the House of Thebes.
***
Suppiluliumas
I do not know what I have here. They appear to be two brave, if frightened, peasants; yet in the papyrus which I hold in my hand as they stand trembling before me I find that Her Majesty the Queen of Kemet (if so strange and unheard-of a document can indeed come from her, which I doubt—and yet who could forge such a thing, and for what reason?) refers to the older, obviously the father, as “the Lord Hanis.” What does this mean? Is he in disguise as a peasant? Is he really one of her nobility, sent on mission to me? What does it mean? And why to me, who am at this very moment ravaging the borders of her collapsing empire and raiding deep into her territory? We are at war with one another, does she not know that? Can it be she has sent him and his son to sue for peace? And what of her husband Biphuria, whom they, I believe, call Tutankhamon? Does he know of this? Is it done with his knowledge, or is she appealing to me behind his back? Would she dare such treason? What use can I make of this to gain my own advantage? It is all very puzzling to me.
I peer down from my throne upon “the Lord Hanis,” who stops trembling and straightens proudly beneath my glance; still obviously frightened, but brave, as I said: brave.
“You are the Lord Hanis?” I inquire in a mild tone of voice, for I do not wish to harm my chances of getting to the bottom of this by disturbing him even more.
“I am?” he responds blankly; and then, as his son nudges him sharply in the ribs, repeats hastily, “I am! Yes, Your Majesty, I am! Bringing to you the greetings of Her Majesty Ankhesenamon, Queen and Lord of the Two Lands, as you see, may it please Your Majesty.”
“Oh, it pleases me,” I agree, exchanging a wry glance with my son Mursil, who stands at my right hand, vainly trying to conceal his baffled amusement at this strange scene. “Welcome to the land of the Hittites, O Lord Hanis.”
“It is my pleasure,” he says loftily, “to be here. Particularly,” he adds, “on the business of Her Majesty. Poor girl!”
“‘Poor girl’?” I echo sharply. “Why ‘poor girl’?”
“You have not heard then,” he says, suddenly cautious; and then, shrewdly (I still think he is a peasant, but no matter: I will play the game until I find out its meaning), “Perhaps it is in Her Majesty’s letter.”
“Perhaps it is,” I agree, “but it is not in this one you have given me. This one says only that you are the Lord Hanis and his body servant”—at this “Lord Hanis” gives his son a superior glance and his son grins cheerfully and not, I am afraid, too respectfully, at his lordship—“and that I am to welcome you as though you were Her Majesty herself and receive from you her message. Why does this not come from His Majesty Biphuria? Do you carry another letter for me?”
“Perhaps,” said “Lord Hanis,” and I say—suddenly stern, for I do not want him to think he is too clever—“Do not joke with me, Lord, or I shall have thy flesh served me on a platter, which you know we do here in the land of the Hittites.”
(Of course any civilized man knows we do no such thing, but it has helped us militarily a good deal to spread such rumors. I can see “Lord Hanis” and his body servant have heard them, for both he and his son turn suddenly pale and very quiet.)
“Come now,” I say more reasonably. “I have no intention of eating you, good Lord Hanis, or your son either. But if Her Majesty has sent me another letter, give it me at once. I still do not understand why it comes from her and not from His Majesty Biphuria.”
“His Majesty is dead,” “Lord Hanis” says, and suddenly his eyes fill with tears and he is quite genuinely overcome. I could wish I had a few subjects who loved me as he obviously loved Biphuria. “He has been foully murdered, and that is why I come to you from Her Majesty, I believe.”
“You ‘believe,’” I say sharply. “Has Her Majesty not told you?”
“Her Majesty,” he says grandly, recovering a bit through his tears, “does not tell me everything.”
Now I know he is a peasant, but the knowledge, I must say, gives me a sudden respect for Her Majesty’s cleverness. Apparently there is some desperate urgency about this message of hers, and who better to entrust it to than two peasants who can pass unseen through the millions that fill the world?
“Well, come, come,” I say. “Give me her other letter, now. I would read it and try to untangle this mystery for myself.”
He hesitates, although I am sure he has orders to hand it to me.
“Give it to His Majesty, Father!” his son says sharply; and with a strange reluctance, almost as though he were afraid of its contents, although of course he really has no idea what they are, he draws from beneath his rags a second papyrus. This one is tied with a ribbon of gold, and upon it in wax a royal seal, which I take to be Her Majesty’s, for beneath it there is also stamped in small, as though from a signet ring, the cartouche of Biphuria.
“How do I know this really comes from Her Majesty?” I ask, and again from beneath his rags my strange “Lord Hanis” take
s a leather thong on which hangs a small leather bag and a ring.
“See?” he says, holding the ring next the cartouche of Biphuria. “Are they not the same?”
Mursil and I inspect them carefully. I nod.
“Hide His Majesty’s ring again, my lord,” I advise. “We do have robbers here … Well then, let me see what it says.”
And while my lord, his son and Mursil all watch me closely I untie the ribbon of gold, break the wax seals, open Her Majesty’s letter, start to read—and, with a startled gasp that makes them jump, almost drop it in amazement.
Never have I heard of such a thing! Never have I dreamed it possible! It is impossible! I do not believe it! Yet here it is, I give you my word as King of the Hittites, sixty years old and aware that the world is full of wonders, but by all the gods I know of anywhere, not full of this kind of wonder. It is absolutely unbelievable. Yet here it is:
“Her Majesty Ankhesenamon, Queen and Lord of the Two Lands, to His Majesty Suppiluliumas of the Hittites, greetings. May all go well with you, may all be well in your house and in your country. May we live in peace hereafter.
“I say to you this, O King of the Hittites:
“My husband Tutankhamon, whom you know as Biphuria, has been slain in a terrible way by those he trusted. All the land of Kemet grieves for him. I, his widow, grieve for him. Yet I must act, O mighty King, for you know who I am and the blood I bear. I carry the blood of the Living Horus, eternal and sacred in the eyes of Ra—”
(Sometimes their pretensions in the land of Kemet amuse the rest of us; but there it is. What does this strange girl want of me? I learn soon enough, and this is when I gasp.)
