The Horus Road

by Pauline Gedge

  Shame made him excessively solicitous of her when they came out into the gentle dusk and paced to her cushions and carpet. He helped her down, drew a short cloak around her shoulders, took the dishes from Uni as they appeared and served her himself. He whisked the few late, lazy flies from her neck and several times reminded Ahmose-onkh, who had leaned across her to empty a platter, not to be so clumsy. She submitted to his care complacently, saying only, “You should go away more often, Ahmose, if missing me makes you so loving when you return!” It was his opportunity to break his news to her, but still his tongue would not form the words.

  Ahmose-onkh left them to perch by the pool where the fish were rising to snap at the mosquitoes between the fragrant lotus blooms that floated, blue and white, on the rippling water, and still Ahmose could not speak. Taking his hand suddenly she placed it on her abdomen and held it there and with a flood of distaste, pity, love and dread he felt his child kick vigorously against his palm. “It will not be long now,” she said, kissing his ear. “A son this time, do you think, Ahmose? Or better still, a daughter!” He could not answer. Aching with grief he gathered her into his arms.

  Later he summoned Ipi and dictated Abana’s elevation for the archives and letters to his commanders in the north warning them of his imminent return. The scrolls were to go out with Khabekhnet the next morning. He also sent to Hor-Aha, Turi and Ankhmahor, telling them to be prepared to march in two days. Then he made his way to Aahmesnefertari’s apartments. There were spring flowers in vases all about her bedchamber, pink tamarisk, blue cornflowers, red poppies, the delicate white spears of daisies, spreading a profusion of colour and aroma throughout the room. Lamps burning perfumed oil filled the air with a heavy sensuality. She welcomed him effusively from her couch, arms raised to him, and in spite of his consternation his body responded to her exuberant invitation. “I do not want to hurt you or endanger the baby,” he said awkwardly even as he was drawn to the promise of her body, glimpsed tantalizingly through the transparency of her gossamer-sheer linen, and the blatant invitation in her eyes.

  “Next month perhaps not,” she answered huskily. “But tonight let us put anger aside, my dear brother. We love and need each other, and what could be more important than that?” Het-Uart is more important, he thought as he sank onto the couch beside her. Killing Apepa is more important. Amun help me, how can I make you understand that although you fill my heart and dominate my mind there is a necessity that must temporarily take precedence, consuming me even over my preoccupation with you? He squeezed his eyelids shut and buried his face between her swollen breasts, taut with her pregnancy, as though by hiding in the sweetness of her skin he might become invisible to the world.

  “Nothing,” he lied, not knowing whether she had heard him or not and presently not caring. “Nothing at all, my dearest.”

  The storm struck him the next afternoon. Khabekhnet had left for the north, the Division of Amun, the Division of Ra and the Medjay were collecting their weapons, counting their arrows, and oiling their leather, and Ahmose had ordered Akhtoy to see to his packing. His travelling cot, tent, collapsible chair, carpets, and his moveable Amun shrine were already on board the ship tethered to his water-steps. He had been woken by the Hymn of Praise, held the usual audience in the reception hall together with Aahmesnefertari, and gone with her to inspect the progress Sebeknakht was making on the old palace. She had not left her quarters until the time of audience and was obviously too preoccupied to notice the flurry of activity in the house or hear the bustle on the river beyond the gate, and Ahmose was cravenly glad. They had shared the noon meal, after which she had gone to her rooms to rest.

  Ahmose himself went to the office. There were many details to be attended to and he had just finished giving one of the under-scribes the instruction to be alert for any letter coming up from Aahotep and Tetisheri at Djeb when the door opened and his wife swept in unannounced. She was very pale but her eyes in their rims of black kohl impaled him at once on his own cowardice. “Get out!” she snapped at the under-scribe. After one horrified glance at her the man did not wait for Ahmose’s dismissal. Snatching up his palette, he scurried past her and out the door. Aahmes-nefertari kicked it closed behind him with one savage movement. “You lied to me,” she said evenly, but there was such an intensity of rage beneath the artificial calm of her words that Ahmose had to repress the urge to step backwards.

  “No, I did not lie,” he began reasonably. “Before Abana brought his news from Het-Uart, I eagerly intended to be with you until the baby was born. But he changed everything.”

  “He did not change what you led me to believe,” she cut in glacially. “What was it you said to me only a few days ago? ‘I will be at your side on the first day of Tybi when we celebrate the Feast of the Coronation of Horus.’ Perhaps you were speaking to Apepa. Or perhaps you were just breaking wind.” He put out a hand, desperate to do something to avert the avalanche of pain he knew he deserved, desperate to silence her.

  “Aahmes-nefertari, you are right and I am sorry,” he offered. “But try to understand why …”

  “Why what? Why you played me for a fool? Why everyone in the house but me knew that you are leaving again tomorrow and no one dared to speak the words to me? Why you lacked the courage, let alone the compassion, to tell me that you were leaving? It is not the reasons for your going that have cut me to my soul,” she shouted, “it is the lie. The lie!” She came forward clumsily, one arm across her belly and the other reaching for the gilded back of a chair. “Ahmose-onkh burst into my bedchamber wanting to know if he could go with you,” she went on furiously. “That was when I knew. You made love to me last night and even on my couch you spewed lies!” She paused for breath and he stepped to her, but she flinched away. “I know what it is,” she said hoarsely. “My babies are weak. My babies die. You do not want to be here to see what feeble creature my womb expels and you do not care that I am also afraid, that I am terrified, that I need you with me. You want another wife.”

  Horrified, he stared at her, aware that she had probed his deepest agony but had not been able to discern the greater truth, that he loved her completely and would only take another woman in the direst dynastic necessity. Nothing I can say will stem the tide of her hurt, he thought. I have brought this on myself. “I am indeed a coward,” he ventured. “I did indeed shrink from having to tell you that I must go north at once. Let me try to explain.”

  “Explain is such a passionless word,” she said bitterly. “So cold in its connotation, so damningly reasonable. No, Ahmose. Do not insult me with your explanations. They are phrases of the mind that cannot touch the scorpion stinging my heart.”

  He would have poured it all out to her then, the Seer’s prediction, his own terrible feeling of fatalism, his intense desire to run from her because he could not protect her from what was to come, his intuition that he must stand before the walls of Het-Uart as soon as possible or all would be lost. But the clamour of his thoughts confused him and he could say nothing. Letting go the chair, she turned back to the door. “I do not want to see you before you go,” she said. “I do not care if Het-Uart falls or not and neither should you until this baby is born. To Set with you, Ahmose Tao. Do not expect any letter from me while you are gone. I shall be too busy to dictate.”

  Heartsick, he watched her leave, her head high, her whole body trembling. Once the door had closed he called her name, his throat suddenly released from its paralysis, but she did not come back. “Aahmes-nefertari, you are a Queen now,” he said aloud into the stunningly quiet room. “You have crafted a new administration, you have ruled in my absence, surely you understand the sometimes sharp distinctions between you and me as we were, you and me as we would like to be, and you and me now, divinities who carry the weight of a country on our shoulders.” But his words melted into the shaft of sunlight gleaming on the surface of the table and were absorbed by the dust motes floating in the air. It is not the divinity you wounded and misled, Ahmose, you fool, he
said to himself. It is the woman. And no amount of prayers and prostrations will restore you to her favour.

  He had hoped that the venting of her wrath would be enough, that she would be standing on the watersteps to give him her blessing when he and his entourage embarked just after dawn the next day, but though he waited as long as he could, using various pretexts to delay the moment when he must turn and walk up the ramp of his ship, she did not appear. Ahmose-onkh hugged him fiercely. “I have been practising with my bow and my sword,” he said as Ahmose swung him high and kissed him before setting him back on his feet. “Are you sure you do not need me, Majesty Father?” Ahmose swallowed past the lump in his throat.

  “I need you very much,” he answered gravely. “But this time your mother needs you more. Spend some time with her when you are not at your lessons, Ahmose-onkh.” He glanced at Pa-she, who nodded his understanding. “Amuse her with board games. Talk to her. She will be lonely until your new brother or sister is born.”

  “She has become very grumpy,” the child muttered. “But I will obey you, Divine One. As the Hawk-in-the-Nest I will take your place and comfort her.”

  There was little left to say, no other family members to bid farewell. To the accompaniment of Amunmose’s chanting and the clicking of the finger cymbals held by the temple dancers, Ahmose finally stepped onto the ramp, Ankhmahor and the Followers behind him. The servants cast off, the captain shouted to the helmsman, and the rowers bent to their task, backing the craft out to where the north-running current would catch it. At the rear came the other vessels bearing Ahmose’s staff and the senior officers, Hor-Aha, Turi, Idu, Kagemni, Khnumhotep and Khaemhet. The Medjay and the divisions were already on the march along the edge of the desert under the command of junior men.

  Abana will have reached Nekheb and begun his own journey north, Ahmose reflected, but he will continue to be two or three days behind my flotilla. I will put in at Khemmenu and pick up Ramose, but I will still arrive outside Het-Uart before my Admiral. It does not matter. In spite of my feeling for haste I must not presume to find the situation changed when I get there. The thought of seeing Ramose again brightened his spirits, but as he looked back at Ahmose-onkh, a small, rather forlorn figure holding his tutor’s hand amid a crowd of tall adults, his guilt returned. He scanned the house anxiously, hoping for a glimpse of his wife at the last moment, but the shadows cast over paths and garden by the early sun remained untenanted. She had meant what she had said.

  Through the huge gateless aperture leading to the fore-court of the old palace he saw Sebek-nakht and his architects raise their hands and bow as he slid past. The peasants were already at work, swarming over and around the venerable building. Ahmose could hear the buzz of their cheerful conversations carried to him on the clear morning air. House and palace were receding, swallowed up by the larger picture of palm trees rearing above the thick green vegetation of early spring and between them the roof of the temple. Weset itself was mostly hidden from the river, but present in a continuous susurration of low noise, and the river path was busy. “The renovation of the palace will soon be complete,” Ankhmahor remarked. He had come up beside Ahmose and was leaning on the rail, watching the last of the city slide away. “I expect that Your Majesty will want to move into it as soon as you return from the north.”

  “I suppose so,” Ahmose replied unwillingly. As the river curved and his home was lost to sight, his mood suddenly lightened and he did not want to think about Weset anymore.

  12

  IT WAS THE MIDDLE of Tybi before Ahmose saw the walls of Het-Uart again. The wind had been fitful, not yet coming steadily out of the north to impede the ships’ progress as it would in summer, but beginning to be turbulent so that in spite of the northward current some time had been wasted in tacking back and forth. Ahmose had stopped in Khemmenu for longer than he had planned, sleeping for two nights in Ramose’s house while he gave audience to the mayor and various other dignitaries and consulted with his friend regarding the city’s ongoing reformation. Ramose seemed happy to inhabit once more the pleasant estate that had once belonged to his traitorous father, but Ahmose found himself haunted by a past that waited to ensnare him around every familiar corner of the big house. He had visited his mother’s cousin Teti and his wife Nefer-Sakharu many times as a child when Seqenenra had brought Aahotep to Khemmenu to observe Thoth’s feast days in his temple there. Teti had been a man who smiled a great deal and had liked to sit in the garden and throw sweetmeats for his and Seqenenra’s brood to catch, but Ahmose had been a little afraid of him and his richly decorated wife, although they were always kind to him. Now, of course, he knew why. Teti had proven himself to be a devious and deceitful man hiding behind an affable exterior and he had died for it.

  On the third day Ramose had given his assistant governor his last-minute instructions and had joined Ahmose on board his ship. Messages had come from the divisions, who were now little more than a day behind. Paheri and Ahmose Abana were also on their way. Ahmose did not anticipate another halt. Now all I need is for those gates to swing open and my cup of satisfaction will be full, he thought wryly to himself. Perhaps if I petition Shu, he will blow them apart for me. The mental vision of the god of the air with puffed cheeks and bulging eyes attempting to destroy Het-Uart’s defences with the force of his wind made him chuckle. “You are happy, Ahmose.” Ramose smiled at him from over the rim of his beer mug. “It is good to be on the river again, is it not?”

  “Yes, it is,” Ahmose agreed, pushing the image of his wife away, as it threatened to come between himself and the glitter of sunlight as the oars made little eddies on the water. He pointed. “Look, Ramose. Over there. A crocodile, just slipping through the papyrus swamp. An auspicious omen, do you think?” The word ‘omen’ coming out of his own mouth silenced him, and while the sailors ran to the side of the boat to see the beast, exclaiming excitedly, he turned and went into his cabin.

  Akhtoy had his tent pitched in exactly the same spot beside the great tributary as it had been the year before, and while his belongings were being carried inside and his cook was setting up a field kitchen, Ahmose got into his chariot with Ankhmahor at the reins and had himself driven as close to Het-Uart as he could get. Then he dismounted and stood staring up at the familiar walls. He had sent Khabekhnet to his generals, summoning them to dine with him that evening. Word of his return had spread quickly among the soldiers who had remained to continue the siege. He could hear their anticipation in the level of noise rising from the vast array of tents spreading out on the plain to his right. But no sound seemed to be coming from Het-Uart.

  For some time he and Ankhmahor gazed at the city. Then Ahmose said, “Commander, do you sense that anything has changed since you stood here last?” Ankhmahor hesitated.

  “It is a strange question, Majesty,” he replied. “I see nothing different, but you are right. It is as though Het-Uart were about to collapse, as though the foundations of its walls were invisibly and quietly crumbling. There is a tension in the air. I thought that it was my imagination.”

  “I have felt it ever since Abana confessed that Apepa had almost been allowed to escape,” Ahmose said. “He has given up the fight, Ankhmahor. He wants to run to the bosom of his brothers in Rethennu and he is frantically trying to find a way to do it without having to personally surrender either himself or his city. Something is about to happen.”

  “Het-Uart appears dead,” Ankhmahor commented. “No smoke is rising from cooking fires or funerals. I hear nothing either.” He turned to Ahmose. “Is it possible that the citizens are all dead?”

  “No,” Ahmose said shortly. “The population is undoubtedly decimated by plague and starvation, but we have yet to see vultures circling above those damnable walls.”

  A light rain began to fall towards evening, pocking the earth and making the surface of the tributary dance and darken, but by the time the generals drove up, it had ceased and the sky had cleared to reveal a sprinkling of faint stars in the blue-
washed sky. Ahmose, wrapped warmly in a woollen cloak, sat at the end of the long table that had been set up outside his tent, with Ramose at his side and Ankhmahor and the Followers behind. Six lamps burned in a row down its centre. Camp stools lined it and the wine jugs stood ready. Akhtoy and his bevy of servants waited to serve simple spring fare: fresh lettuce, cucumber, green onions, radishes, crushed garlic cloves, soft cheese, roasted gazelle meat brought in earlier by hunting soldiers, and bread. No fruit would be available for some months, but dried dates and figs drenched in honey would be offered.

  As his men left their chariots and came within reach of the lamplight, Ahmose greeted them, received their obeisances, and invited them to sit. Each face reminded him more vividly of the battle last year and with the memories came a profound contentment. They talked softly amongst themselves as the servants came forward to pour the wine, waiting for the latecomers and passing the time in soldier’s gossip, the single gold hoops or jasper coins or turquoise droplets hanging from their earlobes catching the lamps’ benign yellow glow, their black, kohl-circled eyes glinting. Some wore cloaks as Ahmose did but some were bare-chested, oil gleaming on their brown skin, the muscles of their broad shoulders tightening and loosening as they moved.

  The sheer force of their combined masculinity struck Ahmose like a plunge into cold water. It was bracing and reviving. The men who now served him in Weset, his ministers and officials, were intelligent. Their discussions engaged and challenged him. But their virility was of a different kind, overlaid with the complexities of a life measured out in the sophisticated intricacies of a rapidly developing court. I prefer this, Ahmose thought, as Hor-Aha, the last to appear, bowed and slid onto a stool and Khabekhnet called for silence. For these strategists there are no unspoken objectives, no obsession with details that in the end have little importance. One day soon I suppose I shall have to commit my energies completely to the business of peaceful government, but in the meantime such a commonplace pursuit pales beside my task here, the salvation of Egypt. Signalling to Akhtoy to begin to serve the food, he smilingly surveyed the faces turned to him. “I am happy to be with you all again,” he said. “While you eat, you can give me your reports on the state of your divisions one by one. I trust that your soldiers have all enjoyed a proper rotation, that their health is satisfactory, and that they are eager to resume their duties.”