Pillar of Fire

by Judith Tarr

  Twenty-Nine

  The king’s body was carried out of the city on a golden bier borne by embalmer-priests and by priests of the Aten, in wailing and in lamentation, as befit a king who went to the house of the dead, or as they called it in Egypt, the house of purification. The whole city seemed to follow him and to grieve. They were doing again what Egyptians were so adept at: dividing the man from the office, putting aside the king whom they had hated for the king who was lord in the Two Lands, whose body had been as the kingdom’s body, and whose strength was the strength of Egypt.

  They would mourn him so for seventy days. Then the king who yet lived would be the chief priest of his burial, and would take away from the tomb the whole power and strength of the kingship. So had kings’ heirs done since Egypt was young, thousands and thousands of years, down to the morning of the world.

  But the dead king’s queen knew that the king was not dead. So did the queen’s servant, and certain of the embalmers, and three Apiru in the laborers’ village.

  Even that few might be too many. Nofret had forgotten sleep, had forgotten the meaning of ease. She would not rest till the king was far away from here, the slave’s body embalmed and wrapped and laid in the tomb, and all threat of discovery past.

  Ankhesenpaaten seemed much calmer than Nofret. She rent her cheeks and beat her thighs as a grief-stricken queen should, and maybe the grief was real. She was losing her father-husband, no matter whether he was alive or dead. She might never see him again.

  The door to the house of purification was closed to any who was not an embalmer-priest. Even a queen had to stop there, to say her farewells until the body should emerge in its garments of eternity. For Ankhesenpaaten this was the true farewell, the last she would have. She allowed herself to break, there at the shadowed door, under a sky that was passing rare in Egypt: heavy with cloud and almost cold. There was rain in the wind.

  She fell weeping on her father’s breast. He lay motionless under her, no sign of life, no flicker of eyelid, no perceptible drawing of breath. Again Nofret wondered if he had died after all. She had not seen him move, not once, or caught him in a breath.

  Others of the servants moved past her to coax their lady away from the bier. Nofret let them do it. She was wrapped in a dark mantle against the unaccustomed chill. It was easy to wrap it tighter, to cover her head and face, to vanish amid the crush of people.

  She saw Ankhesenpaaten lifted from the bier and carried sobbing away. The one who came to aid her, Nofret had time to notice, was the Lord Ay. She was glad of that. He would look after his grandchild and see that no one troubled her till she had cried herself out.

  Nofret was not moved to weep. She was angry that her lady should be forced into this lie, that—yes, that two whom she called friends were going away and would maybe die for a worthless lunatic of a king.

  The house of the embalmers swallowed the king’s bier. Once it was gone, the crowd scattered, high ones seeking their servants or their allies, commoners trudging back to their houses or their work. No one lingered in the chilly wind. No one stayed to mourn the king with honest grief.

  Nofret made her way quietly, shadow-fashion, around the house of purification. Not all the chill she felt was from the wind. This simple block of brick and stone was full of death, radiating cold and darkness as the sun radiated light.

  Out of that darkness came two shrouded figures, and between them a third. They half-carried him, but he was walking, however feebly, stumbling and dragging feet that had not touched ground in a month and more. Stubborn fool. They had wrapped him in the robes of the desert, covered him to the eyes. Those, scoured of paint, were narrow, heavy-lidded, lifting to Nofret’s face and fixing there with a peculiar intensity.

  She stared back boldly, not caring what he saw: hatred, impatience, contempt. He was not the king any longer. The king was dead. This was a dead man walking, a shadow, a thing of air and emptiness.

  The long eyes warmed, startling her. He was smiling.

  She turned her back on him and led the way through the rough and tumbled country that backed against the workmen’s village. This was their protection, this difficult land, where no one went unless he must.

  The donkey was waiting up toward the pass, such as that was, a steep and narrow cleft in the cliffs that ringed the city. It bore a light burden, all the baggage that the Apiru would allow, and room enough for the king to sit on its back.

  No, Nofret thought. Not the king any longer. Not Aten’s Glory either, royal Akhenaten. This was a nameless man, Aharon’s halfwit bother, sick and seeking healing in the northern desert.

  They had had to carry him for most of the way, and a hard way it was, difficult even for men who were not burdened with deadweight. They set him gently on the donkey’s back—more gently than Nofret would have managed. Aharon untied the leadrope from the stump of tamarisk that had kept the donkey from wandering. The man on the donkey slumped forward, near enough to unconscious that Johanan, muttering under his breath, drew a rope from the donkey’s pack and lashed him in place.

  Nofret, watching them, knew for a searing instant that she would go with them. She would not go back, she would not be a slave. She would go free into the desert. Her lady did not need her. Lord Ay would take care of his granddaughter. She could go—

  No. Ankhesenpaaten had refused to flee with her father; had said simply and inarguably that if she disappeared it would look too suspicious. She belonged to Egypt. So, in spite of everything, did Nofret.

  Johanan finished with the donkey’s bindings. Aharon was waiting, watching Nofret. Nofret dipped her head to him. “May your god protect you,” she said.

  “And may he guard and guide you,” said Aharon. Stiff words, but warm for all that, like the embrace Nofret did not dare ask for.

  Johanan was less restrained than either of them. He moved before Nofret knew it, seized her and held her so tightly that she could not breathe. She was too shocked to struggle.

  He let her go as abruptly as he had caught her up, set her down breathless and staggering. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes more than a little wild. “I’ll come back,” he said. “I promise.”

  “Just don’t come back dead,” she said roughly.

  “I promise that, too. Alive and breathing. And a free man.”

  She could not look at him any longer. If she did, she would burst into tears. “Go,” she said. “Quickly. You don’t know who might come up here. Thieves—soldiers—”

  “And you have to go back,” he said, appalled. “Father, I had better—”

  “You will not,” said Nofret. “I’ll get back safe. That’s my promise.”

  “Promise me you’ll be in Egypt when I come back. Alive and breathing.”

  Nofret could promise no such thing. She pushed him toward his father. “Go. Go! It’s getting late.”

  He was going to protest, drag it out, delay them all. She stopped it by turning away, walking back the way she had come.

  It was a steep, tumbled, stony way, and took all her skill and attention to keep from falling on her face. She could not look back. She could not catch a last glimpse of him—of them, scrambling and stumbling up the slope, toward the high desert and a long deadly road, and at the end of it, if the gods were kind, freedom.

  oOo

  There was no freedom for those who stayed behind in Akhetaten. Nofret nearly turned more than once and ran after the ones who escaped. She would rather die on that road than live on the one she had chosen.

  But choose it she did. She had a soldier’s loyalty to his commander, bred in as inescapably as the arch of her nose, and worse maybe than that, a woman’s irresistible compulsion to protect what was hers. Ankhesenpaaten was both of those.

  Far down the road from the cliff, where it passed the laborer’s village, a figure stood waiting. Nofret knew Leah even before she saw the face under the veil. It was the same face as always, no sadder or more bereft, though she had given her son and her grandson to a man whom she owed no
thing.

  “One does what one must,” she said, reading the thought in Nofret’s eyes as she had always done.

  “I should get back to my lady,” said Nofret, uncomfortable. She did not want to go to Aharon’s house, that now was only Leah’s. It would be too empty. Too full of remembrance.

  Leah nodded to all of it, spoken and unspoken. “I’m coming with you.”

  Nofret stopped short. “You can’t—”

  “Why not? The palace is full of idlers and do-nothings. What’s one more? Particularly if she’s kin to the queen.”

  “But—” Nofret bit her tongue. It was true, what Leah said. And yet, Leah in the palace . . .

  Leah laughed wryly but without bitterness. “I may surprise you. Come, we’re dallying. Your lady needs you.”

  Nofret thought of protesting further. It would do no good. Leah did as Leah chose, and if that was to become a queen’s servant, then a queen’s servant she would be. She would be no odder than the women from Mitanni who lingered wan and useless now that Lady Kiya was dead.

  oOo

  Leah came into the palace and made a place for herself among the queen’s suite, so serenely and with such perfect assurance that no one presumed to ask who she was or where she had come from. Either she had been a royal servant in her youth or she was prescient beyond what Nofret would have believed possible: she took over the management of the queen’s wardrobe as if she had been born to it, and without discommoding anyone. It might be coincidence, it might not, that her predecessor had left not long before to marry a man of some little substance in Thebes.

  She did nothing to embarrass anyone. She uttered no prophecies that Nofret heard. She was so perfectly a part of the queen’s following that the queen seemed not even to know she was there.

  Ankhesenpaaten had gone strange. It was not the apathy that Nofret had dreaded. It was something both more alarming and more reassuring. She had thrown herself into the duties that had burdened her for so long, so much so that she was in the temple at dawn performing the rites as she had always done, and late at night she was still with the scribes and the chamberlains, overseeing the affairs of the kingdom. She grew gaunt and pale, and even the arts of her maids were not enough to conceal the deep shadows under her eyes.

  She had no more help than she had ever had from either Smenkhkare or Meritaten. Nor would she ask for any.

  Lord Ay was bold enough to venture it. Nofret managed to be there when he did it, chiefly by virtue of having had wind of his errand and managed to escape duties that might have detained her. She could not say why she went, except that she was curious, and she did not object to looking at Smenkhkare.

  He had been exercising in his chariot and was being bathed and fussed over by his wife and a flutter of maids and courtiers. It was not unduly difficult for Nofret to vanish among the latter, most of whom had nothing better to do than hang about and gossip and slide glances at the king. He, knowing he was beautiful, made certain to pose at his best advantage, standing water-sleeked and glistening clean while Meritaten stroked sweet ointment into his skin. She paused often for kisses, blind to anyone who watched, and deaf to the chatter of her court and servants.

  Lord Ay came into this vision of royal ease as a grey wolf among a pack of house-dogs. His dignity was impeccable, his smile that of a man looking on the pleasures of children.

  Meritaten did not even acknowledge his coming. Smenkhkare rolled his eyes and put on an expression of excruciating politeness underlaid with boredom. His manners had worsened, Nofret reflected, since his mother died.

  Lord Ay said nothing of that, nor betrayed any distress at the coolness of the welcome. He had received it before, Nofret suspected. Smenkhkare acted so toward everyone who might hint to him of dull duty and duller obligation.

  Lord Ay took his time in coming to the point. He greeted the king and his queen civilly, received a nod from the one and not even a glance from the other. He stood near but not among the courtiers who hung about, waiting with unruffled patience for the king to be done with his bath and his anointing.

  Smenkhkare might have thought to outlast him, but the king was at heart an impatient man, and Lord Ay had learned long and in a hard school the art of waiting on royal whim. When Smenkhkare had had enough of his ladies’ ministrations, Lord Ay was still there, still smiling slightly, in perfect and maddening calm.

  “Well?” Smenkhkare said to him, a hint of sharpness in the languid tone. “Do you have a message for me?”

  “In a manner of speaking, majesty,” said the Lord Ay.

  Smenkhkare waited, but Lord Ay did not go on. “Deliver it, then,” he said, “and have done.”

  “As my lord wishes,” said the Lord Ay. He paused, although a lesser man might have given way to the storm lowering on the royal brow. When he spoke, it was still at leisure, and mildly, with no suggestion of either anger or scorn. “My lord is no doubt aware that his brother the king is dead, and that he himself is king. Has my lord considered the precise meaning of this state of affairs?”

  “Of course I have,” said Smenkhkare. “Are you going to lecture me on duty and kingship and all the rest of it? If so, spare your breath. I’ll not hear it.”

  “Perhaps,” said Lord Ay. “Perhaps I may observe that your brother’s wife is suffering greatly in order to spare you the ennui of royal duty.”

  “Ah,” said Smenkhkare, “so you pity her. Poor little thing. It’s all she has. She does seem to enjoy it. I’d hate to deprive her of that poor pleasure.”

  “She is doing the work of a man and a king,” said Lord Ay. “Work that the king cannot be troubled to do.”

  Smenkhkare stepped closer to his uncle—for Ay was that, who had been brother to Queen Tiye. He was somewhat the smaller and much the lesser in intellect, but Nofret doubted that he was even aware of the latter. The former vexed him: she saw how he frowned, transparently considered stepping back again, realized that if he did he would seem to be in retreat. It was a fine dilemma for such a man.

  It made him angry. Anger made him speak unwisely. “You are telling me that I am neither man nor king.”

  “I am telling you nothing, majesty,” said the Lord Ay. “I am simply pointing out that your kinswoman is overwhelmed. She’s hardly more than a child. Is it fitting that she do all that a king must, while the king takes his ease?”

  Smenkhkare tried to laugh. It sounded like a snarl. “Did you deliver this same sermon to my dear departed brother? He left it all to the women, too. At least I am man enough to ride and hunt and dance among my princes, instead of living in a temple, groveling at the feet of my pet god.”

  “Certainly,” said the Lord Ay, “a woman’s feet are softer, and her presence more immediately gratifying.”

  Smenkhkare sprang. He took everyone by surprise, except the Lord Ay, who simply was not where he had been before. He stood out of the king’s reach, sighing and shaking his head. “Ah, my lord, such energy, such temper! The Two Lands could make excellent use of both, were they applied to suitable ends.”

  “I am king,” Smenkhkare said with the stiffness of great anger. “I do as I please. You will go, and quickly, before I remember all that a king may do to those who provoke him.”

  Lord Ay bowed as a high lord bows to his king, no more and no less. There was no fear in him that Nofret could detect. “My lord,” he said, and went as he was bidden.

  Nofret caught him far down the corridor that led from the king’s bath. She had no clear memory of willing to do that; she had simply done it.

  Once she was level with him, she did not know what to say. He regarded her as calmly as he had the king, with a brow lifted in polite inquiry. She searched his eyes for signs of temper, but found none. “How can you be so calm?” she demanded of him.

  Most great princes would have dealt her a blow for her presumption. Lord Ay answered her as if she were entitled to speak to him at all. “I’ve served three kings. One learns serenity early, or one leaves the royal service.”

&
nbsp; “I haven’t learned it yet,” Nofret muttered, “and I’m still here.”

  “Ah,” he said, amused, “but you serve a queen, and a most unusual one at that.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Nofret. “It’s clear that queens don’t do all the work she does unless they’re distinctly odd. She’s killing herself, my lord. She won’t listen to anyone who tells her so.”

  “That is the privilege of queens,” Lord Ay said, “and of kings: not to listen to anyone unless they please.”

  He sounded more wry than bitter. Nofret eyed him narrowly. “It’s not just pity for her that moves you, is it? I’d have thought that lords and princes would prefer a king who doesn’t pay attention to ruling—who doesn’t interfere with them—to one who has his eye on everything at once.”

  “Certainly,” said Lord Ay. Probably it amused him to be direct for once instead of princely complicated. “A king who does nothing is an invitation to the princes to do as they please. But we’ve had one king who not only discarded the cares of kings, he discarded the gods as well. Now we have a king who cares nothing for either gods or kingship.”

  He was not looking at her any longer but at the air above her head, frowning as he spoke thoughts that maybe had festered in him for long and long. “You may not understand this, foreign-born as you are; or if you do, you may not realize what it means. The king is more than a man who wears the Two Crowns and carries crook and flail and does as he pleases in the Great House. The king is the Two Lands. At each waking he brings the sun into the sky. What he does in the day, and again in the night, embodies the strength of the kingdom.

  “We had a king who denied the gods but who exerted himself unceasingly to serve the one he set in their place. He was hated for what he did, but he was indisputably king. He lived as a king should live, and for long years he performed his duties as a king ought.

  “This king that we have now neither serves the gods—not even his brother’s one god—nor chooses to serve the kingdom. His beauty and his bodily strength may be enough, he thinks, to sustain us all. But beauty fades, and strength is too easily weakened. We have a weak king, and worse than that, a king who refuses to be strong.”