The Horus Road

by Pauline Gedge

  “Renewed trade and the increase in taxes that will result from a healthy and peaceful land will make us rich, and Amun too,” she retorted, “but Neferperet will keep us so. I am grateful for your approval, Ahmose. It means a great deal to me.” She sighed. “But already the number of scribes and assistants and minor officials is growing under the needs of the ministers and overseers. Our lives will no longer be tranquil.”

  “Compared to the chattering and scurrying going on around us here a battlefield is a haven of serenity,” he said with rueful humour. They had come to the edge of the main path that ran from the watersteps gate to the rear of the estate. The house was behind them, and before them the grass was already beaten down into thin ribbons that snaked in all directions. Men were moving along them singly and in small groups, some with scrolls tucked under their arms, others talking earnestly together.

  “When the offices are completed, they will not need to use the garden so much,” Aahmes-nefertari remarked. “They will move to and fro between their several doors, all in the shadow of the rear wall beside the servants’ quarters. At the moment they work where they can.” Sensing a discomfort that was perilously close to bewilderment in him, she took his arm and turned him gently to face her. “Listen to me, Ahmose,” she said urgently. “A very short time ago we were princelings living in a southern backwater. Father governed a quiet nome under Apepa’s eye. We, his children, fished and swam and played in what seemed to be an endless round of little tasks and pleasures that made up a secure and predictable existence. We had accepted our fate under a perverted Ma’at. All that has changed. Nothing will ever be the same again. Apepa thrust the sword of humiliation into our peaceful nest and Father was forced to counter the insult. From that moment on the die was cast. We cannot go back. Do you know, really know, what has happened in the last year?” She shook his arm and his eyes suddenly lost their vague expression and met hers with sharp concentration. “Egypt has an Egyptian King again. Egypt has begun to sing its ancient song of holiness and fertility. She will be rich. She will be stable and powerful once more. We have emerged from a cocoon and what you see around you is an inevitable flowering as the forces of Ma’at are gathered in. This estate has become the heart of Egypt’s administration. You no longer serve the dictates of war, you serve Ma’at and Egypt under Amun. You are a god, my dear brother. You cannot belong to yourself alone any more.” She stopped speaking and let him go. He continued to study her face, his own a mixture of understanding and anguish, while the sunshade bearers stood patiently holding the protecting linen over their heads and their guards waited to encircle them when they chose to move on.

  At last he nodded slowly. “I know all this,” he said, weighing each word. “I have imagined how it would be many times in the long nights when Kamose and I were fighting our way down the Nile and the will of the god was all that kept us going through the terror and misery of those months. But the reality is hard for me to grasp. I see it all but I am almost unable to comprehend it. I wish that I had been here while it was growing.” He cast a longing glance towards the closed watersteps gate. “My days will be full from now on, will they not? I would like to take Ahmoseonkh and a skiff and go hunting in the marshes.” She shook her head.

  “Ahmose-onkh has gone to the temple with one of the we-eb priests,” she told him. “He is learning the proper prayers and observances that the god requires of a Prince. Sebek-nakht is expecting you, Majesty. He wishes to show you what he has done.” She saw his jaw clench as he turned to look across the garden to where the old palace sat ribbed with scaffolding and shrouded in a murk of dust. The shouts and clatter of the workmen echoed as they swarmed over its rough walls.

  “I should be overjoyed,” he muttered to himself. “All this is the culmination of everything we have striven for. It is the climax of our struggle, the justification for our honoured dead. Then why do I feel as though I have bitten into a ripe apple only to find it brown with canker inside?” He signalled and immediately the guards sprang to life. He and Aahmes-nefertari stepped onto the springing grass of the lawn. “I loved the old palace when it bore an atmosphere of genteel decay,” he said to her as they approached the slight hump that was all that remained of the dividing wall. “It was a sombre place, full of the brooding presence of the past, but it offered privacy and silence.”

  “Its silence cried out to Father and Kamose for justice,” Aahmes-nefertari responded curtly. “Think of it restored, Majesty, full of lamplight, glittering with golden walls and silver doors.”

  “And what will Treasurer Neferperet say to that expense?” Ahmose shot back. Aahmes-nefertari shrugged good-humouredly but was unable to reply, for Khabekhnet had begun to shout the King’s approach and a flurry of excited cries broke out as the workmen shed their tools and loads of bricks and knelt wherever they could.

  A group of wigged and white-kilted men turned from the table over which they had been bending and bowed as the pair came to them gingerly over the cracked and heaved paving stones of the vast outer courtyard. Ahmose bade them rise and went forward with a smile.

  “Sebek-nakht!” he exclaimed. “It is good to see you again, much sooner than either of us expected. Forgive me for troubling your conscience by preventing you from re-entering Het-Uart to complete the task Apepa set you.” The Prince held out his beringed hands palms up, the universal gesture of submission or the acceptance of an unavoidable fate.

  “I fulfilled my obligation to my Lord as well as circumstances permitted,” he answered, “and I understand that Your Majesty’s war could not wait upon the dismantling of mortuary temples.” His glance went to Aahmes-nefertari and he smiled. “I am happier building up than tearing down and I thank Your Majesty for the opportunity to do so here in Weset.” He indicated the handful of men waiting respectfully behind him. “These are the assistant architects Her Majesty was kind enough to allow me to engage.” He introduced them quickly, then smoothed out the curling sheets of papyrus on the table that were rustling softly in the breeze. “I have drawn up tentative plans for the renovation of the palace,” he went on, “but the work done so far has been largely cosmetic. The Queen wished me to wait for less easily corrected changes on the edifice itself until Your Majesty returned to give your approval.”

  “Indeed!” Ahmose said, moving closer to him and looking down at the thin black lines spreading out in a seemingly unintelligible jumble across the papyrus. Aahmes-nefertari could hear no rancour in his voice. “You had better show me what you have done and tell me the rest, Sebek-nakht, for I can make no sense of these scrawls. If the Queen trusts you, then so will I.” He tapped the table, casting a sidelong glance at his wife. “Aahmes-nefertari, you have been out here every day. Have you learned what these patterns mean?” She studied his face, trying to decide whether he was trying to trap her or not, and then berated herself for a coward. If I start to lie now in order to placate him, I will never stop, she thought.

  “I have learned some of it,” she replied evenly. “I walked the precincts many times with the Prince before we sat in Father’s old office and Sebek-nakht explained to me what he would like to do.” His indirect scrutiny of her became a full regard and he gave her a half-smile.

  “Very well,” he said. “Let us walk through the halls of my ancestors, Prince, and I will hear you. How Kamose would have loved to be walking with us!”

  He may indeed be here, Aahmes-nefertari thought, as the three of them picked their way through the obstacles of shattered bricks, workmen’s tools, discarded pieces of scaffolding and the hunched forms of the peasants themselves, who had laid aside their burdens to prostrate themselves on the dusty stone. I have felt his presence very strongly as Sebek-nakht and I moved through the palace, and once I was sure that I saw him sitting up there on the roof above the women’s quarters where he used to go to be alone.

  Sebek-nakht had paused before the row of soaring pillars that marked the main entrance.

  “There are ten of them, as you know,” he was sa
ying. “The palace is of course composed of mud brick, but these are sandstone.” He touched one of them. “They are majestic and beautiful even though the painted scenes with which they were no doubt covered have largely been destroyed. Three of them are canting slightly on their foundations, Majesty. They must be taken down and then reset and for that you need skilled masons. May I send to Mennofer for artisans I have worked with before? I will guarantee their competence.” Ahmose’s gaze travelled up the mighty columns to the deep blue of the sky above.

  “Do that,” he said. “I trust your judgement, Prince.”

  They moved inside, crossing from warm sunlight to the sombre dimness of the great audience hall, past the ancient guardroom on the left and the larger room on the right where petitioners, ministers and those who had been summoned waited to be presented to the King. Ahmose halted, drawing in a slow breath. Aahmes-nefertari and Sebek-nakht watched him tensely.

  The floor that had once been an ocean of ragged stone wavelets casting pools of tiny irregular shadow had been torn up and replaced. It ran away from the eye, level and even, punctuated by the rows of pillars that marched across its burnished surface. The disintegrating walls in whose holes birds had nested now rose planed and whole to a ceiling that spread high above without rift or sag. The throne dais had been completely refashioned. “This was no work for an architect, Majesty,” Sebek-nakht observed. “It required only skilled bricklayers and a knowledgeable foreman from Weset. What you see is naturally the bare bones of a final glory that you must try to imagine.”

  “I can imagine it,” Ahmose said in awe. “Tiles of dark blue lapis covering the floor, the flecks of gold embedded in them catching the torchlight and sparkling like sunshine on water so that the whole room seems alive. Walls sheathed in electrum with images of the gods beaten into them. And a ceiling studded with silver stars.” He pointed to the dais, his finger trembling with excitement. “I can see the Horus Throne in the centre, Aahmes-nefertari, and the box containing the sacred Double Crown and the Crook and Flail resting beside it. Where are the shadows that always lurked in the crumbling corners?”

  “The ghosts have gone, Ahmose,” Aahmes-nefertari said quietly. “They are content, for at last their long sadness is at an end. The palace comes to life again to house a King.” She thought she saw tears in his eyes, but if so, they did not spill over. For a long time he stood rooted, looking this way and that, sniffing the air that must seem strange to him, she knew, now that it brought the odour of brick dust and sweat to his nostrils instead of the damp decay that had always hung about the maze of silent rooms. Finally he lifted his shoulders as if to repudiate some unwanted weight.

  “Lead on then,” he said to the Prince. “I am very pleased.”

  He was escorted along lesser hallways full of the rubble of reformation, along passages whose roofs had been torn out to expose the ceilings of the stories above, through doorways leading to freshly opened pits and past pits that were being filled in. As he went, Sebek-nakht unfolded his conception of a palace that would emerge from the chrysalis of the old one, its rooms larger and more airy, its passages wider, its stairs more broad. “We cannot go up to the sleeping quarters,” he told Ahmose. “Many of the floors up there are not safe and there are dangerous holes where several of the windcatchers have collapsed inward. I have shown you which walls I wish to dismantle entirely so as to enlarge many of the apartments. This will limit the number of people able to inhabit the palace; therefore I request your permission to build two new wings, one reaching out to the north and one joining to your present house to the south. I will design them so that they can easily be adapted to accommodate a larger royal family. I have also designed new servants’ quarters of course, and small cells for your governors to inhabit while they are stationed in Weset. I would be honoured to submit those plans to you.”

  They had come to the foot of the narrow, winding stairs leading to the roof where Seqenenra had been attacked and where Kamose would sit, his back against the remains of the windcatcher, his eyes on the panorama of river and distant cliffs beyond. Ahmose paused.

  “These stairs are important to me,” he said. “You are a talented architect, Prince, and I congratulate you on the work you have done here so far. I have no criticism, indeed your vision has surpassed my own for this sacred place. But I want these steps left exactly as they are. Are they safe?”

  “Yes, Majesty,” Sebek-nakht assured him, puzzled. “They have been examined and are sound but I had marked them for demolition and reconstruction. They should be wider and contain only one angle if many women and their burdened servants are to use them.”

  “Build the women another way to get onto the roof from their quarters,” Ahmose said. “I want no one using this stair without permission. Set a door at its foot and another on the roof so that no one comes down it by mistake.”

  “I can do that,” Sebek-nakht agreed. “But surely the stones and other debris that litter it should be cleared away and the steps themselves repaired?”

  “No.” Ahmose shook his head. “Leave it just as it is, one small part of the ancient structure to remind future kings that without vigilance tragedy may once again fall upon Egypt. I have spoken.”

  Later, when they had taken their leave of a visibly relieved Sebek-nakht and were almost at the pool in the garden where they would eat the noon meal, Aahmesnefertari took his arm. “I know why you really want the little stairs left alone,” she said. “But is it wise, Ahmose? An unused staircase with doors at the top and the bottom sealing it off, a place where evil went up and pain came down, where Kamose often climbed with his heart full of many strong and secret emotions, surely it is perilous to trap the vestiges of such invisible power. Will it not linger, seep into the rest of the palace, bring melancholy dreams to haunt us and alien memories of a sadness that is not theirs to those who come after us?”

  “Perhaps.” He lowered himself onto the cushions set ready under the white canopy and at once Akhtoy appeared at the head of a procession of servants bearing trays. “But our destiny was forged on those steps, Aahmes-nefertari, and they are precious to me, both for that reason and as the only portion of the old palace left that will have directly borne the imprint of Father’s and Kamose’s feet. They will not allow us to be cursed by my decision.” She could see that he had made up his mind and would not be swayed. Ahmose-onkh came running from the direction of the watersteps, his guard hurrying behind him.

  “Majesty Father, I have been reciting my prayers all morning and I am so hungry!” he was shouting even as he came up to them. “May I eat with you? May I be excused my afternoon sleep today? I want to go to the marshes and see the baby hippopotamus that has just been born.”

  “Yes and no,” Ahmose responded equably as the boy flung himself down between him and Aahmes-nefertari. “We will go together to see the hippopotamuses but not yet. The parents of that baby will be dangerous. Once your aunt, the Princess Tani, was chased for the same reason. She had a love of the hippopotamuses and spent much time watching them.” Akhtoy had signalled and the servants were bending one after another to offer the food and beer. Aahmes-nefertari glanced at her husband sharply. Ahmoseonkh was reaching up to take the platter being offered to him.

  “I have heard the servants speak of my Aunt Tani but not my family,” he said. “Why not? Is she dead? We do not go to her tomb to make offerings during the Beautiful Feast of the Valley. I only have one radish on my dish,” he complained to the hovering attendant. “Give me more.”

  So while they ate, Ahmose told his stepson about the girl who had been full of lighthearted mischief, who had loved to watch the hippopotamuses parting the still water in the marshes as they rose ponderously from the depths, their huge, leathery backs glistening wet, their jutting teeth festooned with green weeds, who had danced and darted through house and grounds and brought laughter to master and servant alike. He spoke of the passion that had flared between her and his friend Ramose, how its flame had settled to a steady glow
that still burned in Ramose, and how after Seqenenra’s defeat at Qes, Apepa had come to Weset to tear the family apart, condemning each of them to a different exile but taking Tani away as a hostage against any reprisal Kamose might attempt. Ahmose-onkh listened carefully, pushing his favourite vegetable to the edge of his plate to be eaten last. “But my Uncle Kamose the Osiris one did not do as the usurper commanded,” he interrupted Ahmose, crunching a stick of celery and waving the remains under his father’s nose. “He went to war. What happened to my aunt? Did Apepa kill her there in Het-Uart?” Ahmose shook his head.

  “No,” he replied gravely. “He may be a usurper, Ahmoseonkh, but he is not a cruel man. She lives there still.”

  “Oh.” The boy began to pop the heap of radishes into his mouth one by one with lusty enjoyment. “Then you will rescue her when you overcome that city, and she will go and live with Ramose?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I hope so.” He was losing interest now that his curiosity had been satisfied and, handing his empty plate up to a servant, he rolled onto his stomach and began to run his hands through the grass where there were insects to feed to the frogs in the pool.

  I suppose that he has just received his first history lesson, Aahmes-nefertari thought, watching him with a mixture of affection and sadness. Tani’s fate does seem like history now, an ancient story that belongs to another time. Ahmose did not tell him all of it, how Kamose had sent Ramose into the city to pass calculated information to Apepa and his generals, how Apepa granted Ramose a meeting with Tani in exchange for that information, and how Ramose thus discovered that Tani had married Apepa and was known to the Setiu as Queen Tautha. I feel very little pain when I think of my sister now, Aahmes-nefertari mused. What is so badly broken cannot be truly mended. When Ahmose takes Het-Uart, what will he do with her? And will our wounds then be opened afresh? “It is time for your sleep, Ahmose-onkh,” she said. “Raa is waiting.” He sighed ostentatiously but rose at once.