Valley of the Kings

by Cecelia Holland

  He smiled. He knew that he had saved himself.

  14

  Meryat groaned with every step. The soldiers had beaten her over the back and on the legs before they threw her out of the palace. She could not go back there. If Ankhesenamun saw her, she would know immediately what had happened. Meryat limped down the road toward the ferry stage, sighing and moaning.

  There, on the bench where people sat to await the ferry, she sank down and gave herself over to tears. The night was dark; she was alone on the ferry stage. She wept until her eyes were dry. Her throat was raw from crying, and her misery was like a stone in her belly.

  She cursed those who had done this to her, Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun, but she knew her words were only wind against such great ones.

  All the night long she sat there on the bench, weeping when the reservoir of her tears was filled, and cursing when she had wept her eyes dry. Then the sun rose. People gathered on the ferry stage. They looked curiously at the wild-looking woman huddled on the bench, and no one would come near her, or even sit on the same bench with her.

  She had no money for the ferry. Anyway, she had no place to go. She sat there the day long, no longer weeping, while hunger carved a hole under her ribs. She watched the common herd of people passing by her, coming and going. They looked on her with oblique glances, with shocked faces. She spat at them. They knew nothing of life—all they knew were the tasks of daily life. They knew nothing at all.

  In the afternoon she saw Sennahet in the crowd.

  She twisted her face away, ashamed. She prayed that he would go on by her without recognizing her. But he saw her and came and sat down beside her, murmuring in surprise.

  “Meryat! I hardly knew you. What is this?”

  She gritted her teeth together. If he knew what had befallen her he would despise her. “Go away,” she said.

  The hunger in her belly called to him in a rumbling voice. Humiliated, she closed her eyes.

  He took hold of her hand. “Meryat, what has happened? Here—I have bread—I have some beer…”

  He drew her away to a shady place along the ferry stage, and from his wallet took a runt end of a loaf and a little jar half full of sour beer. She bit her lips, longing to eat, but afraid that he would mock her. He put the food in her lap.

  “Eat.”

  Then she ate, and the food was delicious, far sweeter than the honey and milk of the palace. She began to weep again as she ate, and he put one arm around her and held her still. He fed her sips of beer.

  “Why have you left the palace?”

  “I can never go back—never!”

  “I have a place to stay,” he said. “You may stay with me and my friend.”

  She lifted her head. Her cheeks were rutted with the endless tears.

  The sun had gone down. Beneath the world, Osiris was sailing back from west to east through the demon-ridden night. Above the world the great red star Sothis burned in the sky like a spark of flame.

  Half-drunk, Hapure sat in the doorway of his house at the edge of the desert. Behind him Sennahet was sitting with the girl Meryat in the front room of the house. Hapure shut his ears to their talk. He groped beside him for the jug of wine.

  Down the street two women were shouting insults at each other. The street was strewn with garbage; the rest of the villagers had come back to their homes and to their work in the necropolis of Thebes. Pharaoh had remembered them, too, and sent them bread and dried fish roe, beer and dates, linen and water and oil, and a new overseer who carried a whip.

  Hapure took no comfort in this renewal of the village. He drank several deep swallows of the date wine without taking any comfort there, either.

  “The Queen will not dare to doubt you,” Sennahet said, his voice rising. “You misguess your power over her.”

  Hapure did not hear Meryat’s answer. He turned his head slightly to see her. She sat huddled in the middle of the floor, under the lamp, her hands to her face. Sennahet crouched before her. He looked evil, his arms and legs crooked, his knees and elbows sharp as fishhooks. He never took his eyes from this girl. In spite of all that he and Hapure had seen at the looted tomb, Sennahet was ever more intent on stealing Pharaoh’s gold. Now he claimed that the robbery of the tomb had brought the treasure within their reach. He was trying to talk Meryat into returning to the palace and finding out where the gold was stored.

  Hapure leaned his head against the frame of the door and rubbed his hands together. A fly buzzed around him. He waved his fingers at it, irritated. Egypt would rise and fall and rise again, but the flies were eternal. He ground the heel of his palm into his eyes. The rage and pain had sickened his heart since the moment he saw that Pharaoh robbed Pharaoh; he felt clogged with the undisgestible knowledge; his passions and his thoughts would not flow fresh thoughts and passions in their streams.

  “She must take you in,” Sennahet said. “Offer the flimsiest excuses of where you have been, and she will accept it, for fear of what you might say. She will not dare do otherwise.”

  “I can’t go back,” Meryat said. Her voice broke. She was near tears again. “If he sees me—if he summons the Queen again to his couch—”

  “Let her alone,” Hapure said, over his shoulder.

  “You must go back,” Sennahet said. “Just long enough to make us all rich.”

  “I don’t want to be rich!”

  “For revenge, then.”

  Meryat began to cry. Hapure almost twitched himself to his feet to defend her from Sennahet, but he stayed where he was. The evening was pleasantly cool; the stars were so bright they seemed almost within reach. He drank more of the sweet wine.

  Sennahet said, “Only for a few days, Meryat.”

  The Queen Ankhesenamun dreamed of lions. Waking suddenly in the night, she heard an owl hoot in the garden. These portents of what she meant to do chilled her to the bone. Rising from her bed, she drew shawl over her bare shoulders and went to the open window.

  There were servants nearby, but she did not call to them. With her own hands she put the carved screen across the window.

  But she could not sleep—would not, until the deed was done. She walked around the room in the darkness, the shawl caught fast in the meshing of her crossed arms. Her nerves fluttered like a bride’s. She reminded herself of the lions she had killed, the horses she had mastered. Now she would avenge her father. She shut her mind to any thought of turning aside for that holy task.

  It was her father whom she intended to avenge, yet her prayer was to her mother. Pressing her open hands to her breasts she spoke aloud: “Shining Woman, accept my thanks, that such a worthy deed should come to me.”

  She paced around her room, which she had furnished as simply as she imagined the barracks of soldiers to be. The bare floor chilled her toes. In the dark the low chest and bed were solid featureless shapes like stones. She strode from one wall to the opposite wall of the room. She knew that her father would hate what she was doing. He had wanted her love everyone.

  A rush of anger at him made her tighten her fists. He could believe that, preach that impossible ideal: he who had set himself off from the world in the isolation of his own city, where no one dared speak a word against him. But she lived in the world, in the midst of enemies.

  Pacing around the darkened room, she paused before the marble chest, where a tray waited, with two cups. With one forefinger she traced the rim of the right-hand cup. When the time came, she would offer that a cup to Tutankhamun. She quickened with excitement. She teased herself with the thought that she might not be able to do it, in the end, that some softness, some false pity, might betray her. She imagined what she would say, when the King lay dead at her feet. She imagined herself tall and cool, untouched. She longed for that moment, when it would be done, and the waiting over.

  She sighed. Akhenaten had been a fool. If one loved everybody then how cou
ld one come to love a single person with the intensity and nobility that raised one above the common muck? To profess to love world was insult to those whom she did love. She loved her father, Akhenaten, and therefore she hated Tutankhamun. Tomorrow she would destroy him whom she hated. She began to smile. For the first time, she felt herself to be Akhenaten’s equal, and she warmed with a fresh affection for him.

  In his house in Thebes, the General Horemheb also walked sleepless through the deep of the night.

  Horemheb’s private chambers were as highly decorated as the altars of the gods. His chairs were of inlaid wood and his window screens of alabaster; his cups and mirrors were of gold. The floor was warmed and softened with many layers of carpet. The lamps that burned in the niches of the walls were made of the finest oils.

  There the general walked alone. He had no taste for wine or food and no interest in sleep. Ever he returned to the window facing west, the window from which he could see the gilded palace of Pharaoh on the far bank of the Nile.

  He wondered if the Queen would indeed kill her husband. She was not tough, not cold, like a true murderer. To herself perhaps it was not murder, just as to the lion the slaying of an antelope was only right and proper.

  Thus far all Horemheb’s plans had unwound without flaw, a golden thread of fate. He dared not consider what might happen to him if by some misjudgment he should break the thread. He was always careful, doing as little as necessary, nudging people a little, that was all. He stood at the window staring across the river toward the palace, longing for the sun to rise.

  In the late afternoon the Royal Wife, Ankhesenamun, received her lord, Tutankhamun, in her bedchamber. She wore the sacred headdress of the Princess of the Sun, with the vulture goddess poised above her eyes.

  Tutankhamun was brought in his chair. The bearers set down the chair and, without rising from his place, the King looked on his wife. She returned his looks with a calm face. She did not kneel to him.

  The King arose from his chair. With a motion of his hand he sent away his attendants. All dressed in gold, his arms plated with bracelets and magic amulets, he stood stiffly before his wife.

  “You are free before me,” he said, “as no one else ever has been. Yet I do not find this unpleasant.”

  The Queen said, “I have summoned you here to give you news that will bring great joy to Egypt. It is my right to meet you now as your equal.”

  Immediately the King understood that she was with child. His delight was uncontainable. He clapped his hands.

  “I shall build a temple. I shall dedicate five days of festival.”

  Two servants came into the room on their hands and knees, and the King bade them go for wine.

  “We shall celebrate this news,” he said.

  The Queen nodded. “I anticipated that you would wish it. There is wine waiting. I will serve you with my own hands.”

  So saying, she went to a cabinet and opened it, and took out two cups of wine that she had prepared. She gave one cup to the King. Tutankhamun touched his scarab ring to his cup and to Ankhesenamun’s.

  “Blessed be the sacred life that has taken root in your womb.”

  “Blessed be it,” she murmured.

  “And for you, my Queen, another palace, the most beautiful in Egypt.”

  Tutankhamun drank from his cup. Immediately he felt a sickly fire racing through his veins. He cried out in amazement. He still held the cup; Ankhesenamun, with her cup, stood before him, her face immobile, and her expression distant. Tutankhamun sank to the floor. He coughed and moved a little and died there.

  The Queen remained still a long while, the King dead on the floor at her feet. She put the cup down.

  “As I told you,” she said, “this is a great joy to Egypt, that you are dead. And you were right, in your promise to me. Henceforth I shall rule from the greatest palace in Egypt.”

  She called to her servants; she sent to Horemheb and to the Vizier that the thing was done.

  Although Sennahet argued and pleaded with her to go back to the palace, Meryat refused. Then the news came that Tutankhamun was dead, and she went back.

  She went back at night. In spite of the late hour everyone in the palace was still awake. Idle servants roamed through the hall and gathered in knots in the courtyard. The great rooms and open terraces of the palace were meant for daylight and the night made them gloomy and the wind swept cold across the porches and the whole place seemed haunted.

  Meryat went quietly toward the Queen’s apartments. She passed by swarms of people, but no one seemed to recognize her. No one was crying or tearing up his garment or mourning in any other way; they stood close together and murmured.

  The Queen’s chambers were empty.

  Meryat went through the robing room, painted with gold leaf, into the chamber where Ankhesenamun slept. No lamp burned there, but torches burned in the garden, and their hot fingers of light reached in through the tall windows. Without thinking, Meryat moved screens across the windows.

  Heralded by voices, Ankhesenamun returned with her women. Meryat stood near the screened window. The Queen did not see her at first. Striding into the room, Ankhesenamun gave sharp orders about her to the servants. Two lamps were lit and the night retreated into the corners of the room. The Queen shed her light cloak. A servant caught it. Ankhesenamun turned and saw Meryat.

  Their looks clashed. Meryat’s muscles wound tight. With a little jerk of her head, Ankhesenamun sent away the other women. Hushed, the servants left by the door into the robing room. Their curious eyes sought out Meryat as they left. Meryat knew that they would listen from beyond the door.

  She said, “Did you kill him?”

  Ankhesenamun stood straight and lithe before her. “I did. Now what do you want?”

  Meryat shivered. Her gaze fell to the Queen’s hands.

  “I know why you were driven away,” Ankhesenamun said. “You tried to warn him. Then why did you come back?” The tall woman paced around the room. The heels of her sandals clicked on the painted floor. Her level stare returned to Meryat. It seemed to Meryat that the Queen’s eyes glowed in the darkness like a cat’s.

  “Do you mean to make trouble for me, Meryat? Don’t be a fool.”

  “I wanted—” Meryat began, and stopped.

  “Before, you might have done some harm,” Ankhesenamun said. Her voice was too loud. Surely she too realized that the servants listened to all that was said. She crossed the room with long, swinging strides. “But you have no power anymore, Meryat. You are nothing!”

  “I shall go,” Meryat said.

  She started toward the door into the robing room, to chase away the servants. Ankhesenamun got in her path.

  “No. Tell me why you have returned.”

  Confronted, Meryat said nothing.

  “To accuse me,” Ankhesenamun said. “It was to accuse me. Do you think, Meryat, that I can do the deed, but shrink from the word?”

  She struck Meryat so hard that the sense left her; the next she knew she was sitting dazed on the floor, with Ankhesenamun shouting at her.

  “You misjudge me—they all misjudge me! The Vizier thinks I will be mild and womanly, and make my husband King, and then sit at his knee. But I will place no man above me, and especially not one of my servants, who has bowed to me all my life!”

  Meryat stood up on her quivering legs. Ankhesenamun moved restlessly in a circle around her. Her forehead was puckered, and her shoulders hunched. She stopped before the veiled and canopied bed and placed her hand on the carved head of the bed, which was shaped like the head of a cobra.

  She said, “I shall sleep with whom I choose henceforth.”

  “Remember,” Meryat said, “that because of me you did not sleep with Tutankhamun.”

  Ankhesenamun gave her a fiery look. “Who would believe you? Who would ever listen?”

  “You l
isten,” Meryat said.

  The Queen hesitated, and in the moment of hesitation Meryat knew that she had said truth, she knew that she was right. She stepped toward the door.

  “I will prepare your nightclothes, my lady.”

  “You will leave me!”

  Meryat said, “I will be in the robing room, my lady.” She did not bow before the Queen; she only went out of the room.

  That night Meryat slept in her old bed in the room behind the Queen’s. She woke smiling, congratulating herself that she had the Queen in her grasp. Then when she went forth into the Queen’s apartments her pleasure died.

  The Queen was gone, and all her servants. The bed was gone. In the cupboards and the closets of the robing room only a few old clothes were hanging.

  Meryat wandered around the deserted rooms, unable to decide what to do. Stupidly she went from room to room, as if the Queen might suddenly reappear. In the bedchamber there were marks on the floor, where the bed’s feet had rested on the packed earth. At last Meryat went down into the quarter of the common servants, and there sat down among the porters and the sweepers.

  On the western bank of the Nile, opposite the living city of Thebes and south of the palace of the King, was the City of the Dead. There worked the embalmers and the makers of tombs and coffins, and there many noblemen and princes were buried in great tombs, and there were the splendid temples of the dead Kings, who had become Osiris.

  In the City of the Dead was a house called Per Nefer—the House of Vitality. On the second day of Tutankhamun’s death, the tent of Pharaoh was spread out above the Per Nefer, and Pharaoh was carried within.

  The priests of Osiris who would justify Tutankhamun as Osiris were chosen by lot. In three rituals as old and sacred as the name of their god, the priests cleansed themselves and invoked the power by which they transformed the dead flesh of the man Pharaoh into the perfect and incorruptible body of Osiris. With their voices the priests said prayers. With their hands they prepared the body of the King.