by Nick Drake
I walked around him with my lamp. I knew there was more.
‘Thank you for the gift of the box of eyes. I suppose they came from the victims I found.’
He nodded, satisfied.
‘They were gathered for you. A tribute. And a sign.’
‘Eyes are everything, are they not? Without them, the world disappears to us. We are in darkness. But as in an eclipse, the darkness is itself a revelation. “The Sun at rest in Osiris, Osiris at rest in the Sun!”’
He nodded.
‘Yes, Rahotep; at last you begin to see, to see the truth…’
‘In your workshop I found some glass phials. What did they contain?’ I asked.
‘You have not solved that either?’ And he suddenly barked with contempt. Thoth growled and stirred at my side.
‘I tasted salt…’ I said.
‘You did not think far enough. I collected the last tears of the dead, from their eyes as they saw their approaching deaths. The secret books tell us that tears are an elixir that contains the very distillation of what the dying witness in their last moment, as they pass from life to death.’
‘But when you drank the tears–nothing. Just salt and water, after all. So much for the mysteries of the secret books.’
He sighed.
‘There were compensating pleasures in the act.’
‘I suppose you drugged your victims to make it easier to commit your barbarities? I suppose they did not struggle. I suppose you were able to show them the agonies of their poor flesh in great detail,’ I said.
‘As always you fail to see the deeper meaning. I left them as signs of warning for the King. But I wanted something else, something more profound.’
‘You wanted to watch.’
He nodded.
‘Death is the most glorious moment in life. To behold that moment of passing, as the mortal creature yields up its spirit, from the greatest of darkness into the light of the Otherworld, is to behold the finest elation this life can offer.’
‘But your experiments failed, didn’t they? All the broken bones, and the gold masks, and the dead faces turned out to be just ridiculous props. There was no transcendence. The drug gave illusions, not visions. The dead simply died, and all you saw in their eyes was pain and sorrow. And that is why you need this.’
I dangled the leather bag before his fascinated eyes. He reached out for it, but Thoth suddenly leapt at him, and I held it away.
‘Before I give it to you, and you return my son to me, tell me one thing. How did you obtain the opium poppy?’
I was gratified by the flash of surprise in his stony eyes.
‘It is easily obtainable,’ he replied, carefully.
‘Of course it is, medicinally, in small quantities, for a physician such as yourself. But there is more to it than that; there is a secret trade. I think you know a great deal about that.’
‘I know nothing about it,’ he muttered.
‘Nonsense. The demand for the luxury of its pleasures is so strong now that no number of desperate girls and boys, used as traffickers, could satisfy it. But that remains a useful way to distract the city Medjay from the bigger plan. Let me tell you about that plan. The opium poppy is grown in the Hittite lands, and then its juice is smuggled into Thebes by ship, through the port. The drug is stored and sold through the clubs. All the officials, at every stage–from the border guards, through the port officials, to the bureaucrats who approve the clubs–are bribed. Everyone needs to survive, especially in these tough times. But what fascinates me is this: how do the cargoes manage to pass from the land of our enemies, the Hittites, in a time of war, through the border security of the army? There is only one answer. And that is: the army itself is complicit in the trade.’
‘What an extraordinary fantasy! Why would the army connive in such a thing?’ he scoffed.
‘The treasure from such a secret trade enables Horemheb to achieve economic independence from the royal treasury. This is the modern world. The days of primitive looting and plundering and pillaging are long gone. And an independently financed, well-equipped and highly trained army is a very dangerous monster.’
For a long moment he was silenced.
‘Even if this outlandish fantasy were true, it has nothing to do with me.’
‘Of course it does. You know all of this. You are the physician. Your knowledge of hallucinogens makes you very valuable. Horemheb employed you not just to administer to his mad wife, but as overseer of the business here in Thebes. You oversee the arrival of the cargoes at the port, and you make sure it is transferred reliably to the clubs. But I don’t think Horemheb knew the full extent of your nasty private activities. Did he?’
He gazed at me with his empty eyes.
‘Very good, Seeker of Mysteries. My works of art were personal tributes to Horemheb. They were a contribution to his campaign for power; my offering of chaos and fear. But how does this knowledge profit you? Rather, it now condemns you. I cannot let you go. You are trapped in this underworld of darkness. You will never find your way back to the light. So now I will tell you the truth. And I will watch you suffer. The vision of your misery will more than compensate me for the loss of the other vision. I am no fool. Who is to say whether what you carry is real, or fake?’
And then he uttered a cry, imitating my lost boy, exactly. The obsidian knife of fear slipped between my ribs and pierced my heart. Was Amenmose, my son, dead? I sensed I was too late. He had won.
‘What have you done with my son?’ My voice was cracked.
I took a step towards him. He took a step backwards, raising the light of the lamp to dazzle me and disguise his face.
‘Do you know what Osiris cried to the Great God when he arrived in the Otherworld? “Oh what is this desolate place? It is without water, it is without air, its depth is unfathomable, its darkness is black as night. Must I wander hopelessly here where one cannot live in peace of heart or satisfy the longings of love?” Yes, my friend. I have made your son a little sacrifice to Osiris, the God of the Dead. I have hidden him far, far away, in the depths of these catacombs. He is still alive, but you will never find him, not even with all the time in the world. You will both starve here, lost in your very own Otherworld. Now, Rahotep, your face has been truly opened in the House of Darkness.’
I lunged at him, Thoth rose on his hind legs, snarling and baring his teeth, but Sobek suddenly threw his flaming oil lamp at me, and disappeared into the darkness.
49
I released Thoth’s muzzle, and he bounded into the darkness. Red light flared from the burning oil that had splashed from Sobek’s lamp, and spread across the wall behind me. I heard barking, and then, gratifyingly, screaming. But I needed Sobek alive, to give evidence, and above all to return my son to me. I shouted an urgent order to the baboon as I ran along the dark gallery towards the figure huddled on the ground. I held my lamp up. Thoth had bitten deeply into Sobek’s throat; there was a great gash down one side of his mauled face, tearing his eye from the socket, and the ragged flesh of his cheek hung loosely from the face, exposing bone and vessels. Black blood was pulsing from the neck wound. I knelt down and dragged his ruined face close to mine.
‘Where is my son?’
Blood gurgled in his mouth as he tried to laugh.
I pressed my thumbs down on his eyes.
‘What do you see now?’ I whispered into his ear. ‘Nothing. There is nothing. You are nothing. There is no Otherworld. This darkness you see is your eternity.’
I pressed harder and harder, forcing his eyes back into their sockets, and his legs kicked in the dust like a swimmer drowning on dry land, and he squealed like a rodent, and I felt blood under my fingers, I kept pushing until his vicious heart pumped the last of his black blood from his body, and he was dead.
I kicked his useless corpse, over and over, stamping on the remains of his face until I lost all strength. Then I collapsed on the ground, sobbing in defeat. For his death had achieved nothing. I had done wrong. The o
il lamp was dimming fast. I no longer cared.
And then–I heard something. Far, far off: the sound of a child, waking from a nightmare to find himself alone in the darkness, weeping and screaming…
‘I’m coming!’
Amenmose’s screams came back louder.
Thoth bounded ahead of me, into the greater depths of the darkness, but sure of himself as he moved left and right, making the choices for me. And all the time we cried out to each other, father and son, screaming for life.
Thoth found him at the end of one of the deepest galleries. His small head stood out above the rim of a pot large enough for a fully grown baboon. His face was sticky with tears and dirt, and his cries were inconsolable. I scrabbled around for a stone with which to smash open the pot without hurting him. And I kissed the howling boy, and tried to calm him a little, calling ‘Amenmose, my son’ over and over. The first blow did not crack the pot. He howled louder still. Then, with another surer blow, the pot split open. I dragged the shards apart, the dirt cascaded out, and at last I held my son’s shaking, cold, filthy body in my arms.
The lamp was guttering now. We had to try to find our way out before we lost the light. I shouted a command to Thoth. He barked as if he understood me, and bounded ahead. I held the boy under my arm, and ran after him, unable to protect the flame at the same time.
But too soon, it flickered and died.
Utter darkness. The boy whimpered, and began to cry again. I shushed him, tried to comfort him.
‘Thoth!’
The baboon bounded to my side, and by feel and habit I fastened the leash on to his collar. He moved on into the blackness, and all I could do was follow, trying to protect the boy from harm as we bumped into walls, and tripped on the uneven floor. Hope, that most delicate of emotions, flickered in me as weak as the lamplight had been. I kissed my son’s eyes in despair. He was quiet now, as if my presence in the dark comforted him, and any fate would now be acceptable.
And then, I saw a brief flash in the obscurity. Perhaps I had imagined it, a figment of my desperate brain. But Thoth barked again, and then the light duplicated itself, and I heard calls coming to me, as if from the lost world of life and sunlight. I shouted back. The lights turned and gathered, coming towards me, like sacred deliverance from the shadows. As they approached I looked down at my son’s little face. His eyes opened wide as he watched the lights in the darkness, like something from a fable bringing him to the happy ending of a scary story.
In the shaking light of the first lamp I recognized a familiar face, at once fearful and relieved. Khety.
50
When I had carried Amenmose up the lane and into the house, Tanefert had fallen to her knees, her mouth open in a silent howl of agony and relief. She held him in the vigil of her arms, and would not let go. When eventually, speaking to her gently, I had been able to prise him from her and lay him on his couch, she then turned to me and beat me with her fists, slapping my face with her hands as if she would tear me apart; and in truth I was glad to let her.
Then she washed the boy in cool water, with a cloth, with infinite tenderness, talking to him quietly. He was tired and fractious. Then she watched over him sleeping, as if she would never leave him again. Her own face was still wet with her tears. She avoided my gaze. I could not speak. I tried brushing my hand gently against her cheek, and she ignored it. I was about to withdraw it, but suddenly she grasped it, kissed it, and held on to it. I encircled her with my arms, and held her as tightly as she had held our son.
‘Never forgive me, as I will never forgive myself,’ I said, eventually.
She looked at me with her now-calm, dark eyes.
‘You promised me you would never allow your work to hurt our family,’ she said simply.
She was right. I put my head in my hands. She stroked my head, as if I were a child.
‘How did he take him?’
‘I had to find food for us all to eat. The children were sick of the same old dinners. They were bored, and frustrated. And I couldn’t stay inside the house all the time. It wasn’t possible. So I decided to go out to the market. I left the servant girl in charge of them. The guard was on the door. She says they were all playing in the yard, and she was doing the washing. And suddenly all she could hear was screaming. She ran out–and Amenmose had disappeared. The gate was open. The guard was lying on the ground, blood pouring from his head. Sekhmet had tried to stop him taking Amenmose. He punched her. That monster punched my daughter. It was my fault.’
She curled into herself, sobbing. Futile tears startled my eyes. Now it was my turn to comfort her in my arms.
‘That monster is dead. I killed him.’
Tanefert raised her tearful face, taken aback, and she saw it was the truth.
‘Please don’t ask me any more today. I will talk about it when I can. But he is dead. He cannot harm us any more,’ I promised.
‘He has harmed us too much already,’ she replied, with an honesty that broke my heart.
The girls’ heads appeared around the curtain. Tanefert looked up, and tried to smile.
‘Is he all right?’ said Thuyu, chewing her side-lock.
‘He’s asleep, so be quiet,’ I said.
Nedjmet stared at him.
But Sekhmet, when she saw him, broke down. I saw the black bruising around her eye, and the scratch marks on her arms, and the long grazes on her legs. She gulped and swallowed, and the plump tears came extravagantly.
‘How could you let that happen to him?’ she cried in her broken voice, hardly able to breathe.
I felt shame come upon me, like a mantle of mud. I kissed her gently on the forehead, wiped her tears, said to all of them, ‘I am so sorry,’ and then I walked away.
I sat on the low bench in the courtyard. From outside the walls of the house the sounds of the street came to me distantly, from another world. I thought about everything that had happened since the night Khety knocked upon the wall by the window. My own heart was knocking now, in my ribs. I had done my family a terrible wrong by leaving. It had not seemed so at the time. And perhaps I had had no choice. But Tanefert is right: there is always a choice. I had chosen the mystery, and I had paid the price. And I did not know how I could heal this.
It was Sekhmet who came out to find me. She was sniffing, and patting away at her face with her robe. But she sat down next to me, curled her legs elegantly beneath her, and leaned into my side. I put my arm around her.
‘I’m sorry, that was a horrible thing to say,’ she said quietly.
‘It was the truth. I trust you to tell me the truth.’
She nodded wisely, as if her head were just a little bit too heavy with thinking these days.
‘Why did that man take Amenmose away?’
‘Because he wanted very badly to hurt me. And he wanted to show me he could take one of the most important things in the world away from me.’
‘Why would anyone do such a thing?’
‘I don’t think I know. Perhaps I will never know.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He’s dead.’
She nodded, and thought about that, but she didn’t say anything more, and so we sat together, listening to the noisy chaos of life in the street, watching as the sun rose higher, dispelling the shadows, and listening to the sounds of the girls starting to prepare the meal in the kitchen, arguing and laughing again together.
51
Once I knew my family was safe, I visited the palace one more time, and made my final report. I felt sick to the heart at the thought of re-entering that domain of shadows. But Ankhesenamun desperately needed to know what I had discovered about Horemheb–about how he was financing the new army, and about his commissioning of Sobek. These things would be crucial weapons in her negotiations. She could use that information against the general, intimating that she knew everything, and could reveal her knowledge, and so expose him and replace him. She would have the power to negotiate a truce between herself, Ay and Horemheb
. She, Khay and Simut had gazed at me in astonishment as I explained everything. And once they had questioned me to their own satisfaction, I had excused myself. I had said I needed time alone with my family, to recover from everything that had happened. I bowed, stepped backwards, and then, without permission, turned away. I sincerely hoped I would never again be required to set foot in those hushed chambers.
Over the next days, a steady, sweltering heat settled on the land. The sun blazed remorselessly down, driving even the shadows into hiding; and the city stirred with prognostications and mirages and rumours. Horemheb’s ships, carrying several of his Memphis divisions, had arrived, to a clamour of alarm, and they remained anchored near the harbour on the east bank; at any moment a raid or an occupation was feared, but day after day nothing happened. The constant heat and the inconstancy of the future made daily life difficult and insubstantial, and yet still people carried on with their ordinary business of work, and eating, and sleeping. But by night the curfew was imposed more strictly than ever, and as I sat upon my roof with Thoth, unable to sleep, looking up at the stars, drinking too much wine, listening to the guard dogs and the stray dogs barking furiously at each other, and thinking about everything and nothing, I felt like the last man alive under the moon.
Sometimes I stared across the chaotic shambles of rooftops in the direction of the Malkata Palace, far away across the city. I imagined all the tensions and power struggles that must still be taking place there, while Tutankhamun’s body underwent the final Days of Purification, in preparation for his burial. I thought of Horemheb on his ship of state still floating in the harbour, Khay drinking wine in his office, and Ay alone in his perfect chambers, clutching his fist to the endless pain in his jaw. And I thought of Ankhesenamun pacing her lamplit apartments, thinking of ways to win the board game of politics, and ensure the future of her unborn children. And I saw myself, mulling and drinking in the dark, and talking more to Thoth than to anyone else, perhaps because he had been with me through everything. He alone understood. And he could never speak.
