Casting the Gods Adrift

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  ‘Not a hundred breaths ago,’ said the goldsmith, wincing at my loudness. He was understandably puzzled. I had never before objected to Ankhesenpa-aten helping herself. He cursed me as I threw open the door and made a draught that fluttered some of his golden flakes to the ground.

  I ran after the princess, but did not catch up before she reached the queen’s palace, where I could not follow. I stopped in front of the guards, havering, uncertain what to do, picturing Ankhesenpa-aten, my exquisite ‘Ankh’, poking her little paintbrush into the caked eye holes, brushing them open. I thought of the asps glimpsing light and rearing up their little bulbous heads, licking the air, tasting the perfume of Ankh. Then I set off to run around the seemingly endless palace wall to where I knew Ankh’s room looked out over an orchard of frankincense and moringa trees.

  ‘Princess! Princess Ankhesenpa-aten!’ I called in a whisper that quickly broke into a cry of desperation. ‘Princess, please.’

  At last, her sweet, oval face appeared, framed by the arch of the window. ‘The cat, Princess! Did you take the cat?’

  It was not seemly to suggest any such thing, I knew that. To suggest that a princess had filched something from a craftsman! By all the laws of courtesy, I should have pretended the cat never existed, or that I had given it to the princess myself, or that it was still in my workshop. The face at the window looked shocked.

  ‘It was pretty.’ She pursed her lips, preparing to be outraged if I dared to question her right to take it.

  ‘It wasn’t finished. It was only half made!’ I protested. ‘Let me have it back, and I’ll make it perfect for you!’

  ‘Was it not for me?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes! Of course! Naturally! But you deserve only what is perfect! It has to be perfect for you … Please!’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now. I have given it to my mother as a present.’ And she pouted a little, for I had spoiled her presents as well as questioning her actions.

  ‘Your mother! You gave it to the great queen?’

  Ankhesenpa-aten turned away from the window. Her handmaid was waiting to make her ready for the public gaze. When I called again, she reappeared, impatient and angry with me, a cone of perfumed wax fastened to the crown of her glossy black wig.

  ‘Princess, where is my brother? Have you seen him? I must find my brother!’ I called up to her. Ibrim could find the cat, I told myself, and retrieve it since, as a musician, he was free to come and go within the palace.

  ‘Your brother? How should I know?’ She shrugged peevishly. ‘On board the barge, I expect. We are going down to the reed marshes. The Syrian ambassador wishes to hunt. There will be musicians, I suppose. No potters, though.’ She turned her back on me, haughty and serene in the face of my agitation.

  I retraced my steps home, sunk in despair. I found Father singing as he washed, blithe and excitable as a child on the morning of a festival. I told him what had happened, and he was delighted. ‘Aha! The queen bee carries the poison back to the hive and poisons all her drones! Excellent! Excellent!’

  I crammed my anger away like a sail into a basket. Anger would not achieve anything. Instead, I took myself over to the Temple of Aten and asked the priests to perform a ritual prayer for me. ‘O Aten, let her not die! Reach down your sunny hand and protect the divine family!’

  But I could not sit idly by and wait. If there was to be a boat trip to the reed marshes, the palace would be largely empty of people. I might just be able to get inside the royal quarters and find the cat. I went down to the quayside to watch the royal family embark – to make certain of them being out of the way.

  The great cedarwood barge threw the shadow of its long, bowed shape across the waterfront, the river bubbling and hissing past the hull, the oarsmaster shouting orders to the crew. Under a canopy near the prow, I caught sight of Ibrim seated on a woollen cushion, with his hand lyre. I threw up my arms to catch his attention – forgetting his blindness. There was absolutely no chance of reaching him.

  A crowd had gathered, as crowds always did, to see the king and queen. By the time I had pushed my way through to the front, Akhenaten, Nefertiti and the six princesses had come gliding down to the wharf and were climbing aboard, while the crowd called out blessings and praises, and bowed down reverentially.

  I forgot to bow. My eyes were fixed on Queen Nefertiti, glorious in her blue crown banded with gold, her white linen wrapper, her golden sandals. In the crook of her arm, its eyes still plugged with clay, sat the little Nile-blue faience cat. She had brought her daughter’s present with her from the palace!

  Among the crowd, I saw my father’s face, gloating, utterly delighted with himself. The royal barge pulled out from the quay, and around it a flotilla of little papyrus boats and coracles bobbed like lambs around a ewe. The faithful were always eager for a glimpse of the pharaoh, the living god.

  An empty skiff bumped against the quayside at my feet. That was it! That was what I had to do – go after the royal barge! Father had to come, too.

  Somehow, I plucked him out of the crowd and got him into the boat before he could refuse. He did not understand what he was doing there, and clung to the sides chanting the prayer against crocodiles and bleating dismally about my rowing.

  Soon, most of the flotilla of little boats peeled off one by one, and turned back to el-Amarna, but I kept on plying the single oar at the stern, riding the current, riding the glossy wake which marked out the path taken by the royal barge.

  Downstream, the reedbeds make a dark cage of stems against which everything is in silhouette, and colours merge into a single shadowy green haze. Widgeon and teal break cover and dart into the sky. There is a continuous singing throb of frogs, and the occasional bubbling up of gas from rotting vegetation below water. Bulrushes form, for mile upon mile, a guard of honour to the little boats which nose and butt among them. Mosquitoes drone, and fish nibbling at the reed stems set the brown velvet rush-tips swaying. There are water snakes, too.

  Amidst this lovely turquoise world, Queen Nefertiti, the great queen, the beautiful one, cradled on her knees a faience cat that was aswarm inside with asps. A single bite from any one, and she would be dead within hours.

  My papyrus skiff chafed and bumped against the moored barge. Some of the king’s guests, mayors and Syrians, were disembarking into skiffs and starting to hunt for birds deep among the reedbeds. One man would stand in the prow with a handful of throwing sticks, knocking down birds scared out of hiding by slaves wading thigh-deep and slapping the water.

  But the pharaoh did not disembark. The royal family did not hunt, never went hunting.

  ‘What kind of man does not hunt?’ sneered my father, and not for the first time. ‘Look, son, can you see? He’s half woman, that one, with his fat rump and his big—’

  ‘Be quiet, Father!’ I hissed. ‘If he doesn’t look like you and me, it’s because he’s half god.’

  Harkhuf rose unwisely to his feet and came at me down the boat. I shouted for him to sit down. The skiff rocked wildly. He struck his head sharply against the beetling wooden hull of the royal barge, and sat down abruptly, stunned into silence. He looked up just as a handful of pomegranate seeds landed on his shoulder, apparently out of the sky.

  The commotion had drawn attention to us. The pharaoh was leaning over the side, now, holding half a pomegranate; he hailed us genially. ‘Harkhuf? Is it you? What brings you here?’

  Father did not answer. Someone had to. Someone had to say something. I stood up. ‘O King, we are ashamed to admit it!’ I stammered. Father shot me a look of such hatred that I thought he might throw me to the crocodiles before the day was over. ‘I told my father how Ibrim plays now for the great queen, the beautiful one. He wanted to hear for himself. Hear Ibrim playing in the pharaoh’s presence, I mean. It was pride, O Lord King. Pride made us forget our manners and interrupt the peace of your afternoon!’

  ‘Harkhuf, my old friend!’ laughed the King. ‘You had only to say! Come aboard, and we shall have mu
sic. Your son is indeed a credit to his father – both your sons!’

  I thought my father might refuse, or blurt out something rash and insulting and fling himself into the river. I leaned forward, until my face was right in front of his. ‘Get aboard, or I shall tell the pharaoh what you did last night.’

  Bewildered and undermined, Harkhuf allowed himself to be helped aboard, once again over the bulwarks of the cedarwood barge. His eyes, blood-shot from the brightness of the journey downstream, flickered to and fro along the deck. He looked hunted, penned in, guilty, but the pharaoh mistook it for simple embarrassment.

  At the sound of our voices, Ibrim sat bolt upright on the cushions in the prow of the boat, trying to make sense of what was happening, what we were doing there. Pharaoh Akhenaten sat down on his own silken cushion, put his arm around Nefernefruaten-Nefertiti. The six little princesses – among them my beautiful Ankh – sat behind, in descending order of size, the cones of perfumed wax melting into their hair and down their bare necks, shoulders, throats. That sweet scent mixed with my fear for their lives made my head spin. I spread my hands on the hot deck to steady myself as Akhenaten called for Ibrim to begin playing.

  I don’t know what he played – whether happy or sad, a love lament or a dance. My eyes and mind were on the Nile-blue pottery cat standing on the deck beside the queen’s cushion. If I hurled myself towards it, I knew the bodyguard (although he stood at a discreet distance and looked half asleep) would snuff out my life as easily as snuffing out a candle.

  The huntsmen had moved off deep into the rushes. The reedbeds were noisy again with their own droning music. But Ibrim’s playing rose above it. He was happy. His music spoke happiness. And his happiness conveyed itself to the face of the great queen who, beautiful and serene as the Sphinx, watched him with cat-like concentration.

  I looked sidelong at Father, and saw that he too had seen the faience cat. His eyes were fixed on it. His face was scarlet with the oppressive heat, and little beads of sweat were bursting through his wrinkled skin. Perhaps he was beginning to realise the enormity of what he had done.

  ‘That was sweetly played, as ever,’ said the queen, as my brother laid down his lyre. ‘Come here, Ibrim.’

  He rose and crossed the deck, unerringly, to the source of her voice, kneeling down and bowing his face to the deck. She reached to one side. ‘A token of our pleasure,’ she said. And put the faience cat into his outstretched hands.

  I felt the hairs rise on my head. I felt my father beside me stiffen like a scorpion, back arched. I saw my brother return to his hassock and cradle the cat tenderly in his lap, exploring its features with his delicate, musician’s fingers: the paws, the haunches, the coiled tail, the pointed nose, the face. His fingers stopped at the unexpected roughness of the mud-clogged eyes, and, with two twists of the little finger, he pushed the two clay plugs inside, into the hollow body of the Nile-blue cat.

  I leaped along that deck like a flying fish, snatched the figurine out of his hand and flung it over the side. As the Nile-blue cat sank beneath the bile-brown Nile, little black shapes wriggled away into the water, but only I saw them go.

  There was a stunned silence. Ibrim felt about him, open-mouthed, appalled that someone had robbed him of his precious gift. Father slumped sideways against the cabin wall, as if asleep. I turned round to face the astonished gaze of the entire royal family.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I gulped. ‘I’m so sorry! But it was one of mine. I made it long ago. When I was an unbeliever in the one god! It was a likeness of Bast, you see! It was an idol to the goddess Bast. Not just a cat. An idol – an insult to Aten. I couldn’t watch my brother kiss a pagan idol!’

  Ibrim looked up to me, with his blind eyes, uncomprehending. Ankhesenpa-aten scowled at me, narrowing her painted eyes. But Nefernefruaten-Nefertiti inclined her head graciously and asked my father if he would care for a drink of water. The pharaoh reached out a hand and creamed some melted wax from his wife’s shoulder to smear on his forehead. The mosquitoes were starting to bite.

  I think such fear had gone through my father that all his hatred melted in the heat of it. He had almost killed his own son. Almost but not quite. Like that scented wax trickling in soothing drops down the royal skin, the relief cooled Harkhuf’s incandescent brain and left only a kind of emptiness – a vacuum.

  On the way home, we did not talk of anything that had happened, and Ibrim never was given a proper explanation. But when we got to the house, I straightaway presented Father with the stela I had carved for him. I believe my fear of him had also melted in the heat of the day.

  He held it between his two hands as though I had just introduced him to his grandchild for the first time. Here was his promise of immortality. He looked from the stela to me, from me to the stela. ‘I do not deserve this,’ he said, fingering the figures of the gods, the hieroglyphs that spelt out his name, and he wept with pleasure.

  His humility did not last for long. Soon he was considering the practicalities. How could it be got to Abydos? Who would set it up for him when he was dead? Who could be trusted with such a beautiful, such an exquisite work of art? That is how he described my handiwork! I thought my heart would crack. Not so much with pride, for I no longer craved his praise, but with a kind of aching tenderness.

  ‘I shall take it there for you, Father,’ I said.

  He stared at me. Unspoken in his face was the knowledge that I did not believe in his gods, that I had gone over to the king’s religion, that I was an Aten man. He did not hate me for it. He just did not entirely know me any more. ‘Do you promise?’ he asked, like a child seeking reassurance.

  ‘I swear it, Father,’ I said. ‘It will stand there for ever, and your soul will travel there and be met by Osiris, Father of the Dead. By Aten, I swear it.’ As I said it, I wondered what Aten would think, who was even then prising his way into our house with his flail of sunlight and crook of evening sunbeams.

  9

  Everlasting Life

  All that was a lifetime ago. Several lifetimes, in fact. Akhenaten, divine prophet of the one true god, is long since dead, and sleeps in the Red Country, along with his eldest daughter Meritaten, and Harkhuf his animal collector.

  Even Nefernefruaten-Nefertiti is dead now – the lovely Nefertiti, sphinx-like in her sadness, too, for she had loved her husband with a passion.

  The lovely Ankhesenpa-aten married her half-brother Tutankh-aten who, at seven, became pharaoh over all Egypt, and wearer of the cobra crown.

  I did not marry, myself, and I am glad of that now. These are dangerous times, and I should not like to see children of mine playing among the ruins of el-Amarna.

  Only in one respect is Pharaoh Tutankh-aten like his father. He, too, changed his given name. To Tutankhamun. No longer is Aten sole god over Egypt. Tutankhamun has re-established all the old gods, restored all the old festivals. Now, when people talk about Akhenaten, they sneer and spit and curse his memory. They all call him ‘the Great Criminal, the destroyer of gods’. I hear his tomb is smashed and looted, though the priests of Aten may have carried his body away in time and hidden it. I pray they did.

  Tutankhamun has moved his court back to Thebes, to live in the palace of his ancestors, and el-Amarna is looked on as nothing more than a quarry, a source of bricks for new palaces, new temples to the old gods.

  Some of us stayed on here. El-Amarna was our home, after all. But the priests of Amun are out to remove all trace of the Great Criminal and his consort queen. His altars have been smashed, his likeness disfigured in all the wall paintings. They smash his name and the name of Nefertiti wherever they can find them. They think that if they can keep the names from being spoken, they can ensure that the king and the queen will have no afterlife.

  What do I believe? Sometimes, I think it doesn’t matter much what you believe, so long as you never start to doubt it. I am a craftsman. I believe in beauty, and I know beauty when I see it. It was in Akhenaten and his life. It was in his temples open to the sky a
nd his palace with its rooms full of the laughter of the princesses. Above all, it was in Nefertiti (A Beautiful Woman is Come).

  They are out there now, those devout vandals, smashing his name, smashing hers. May the vandals themselves be swallowed up by everlasting darkness, as the desert swallows up their graves.

  I can hear them getting closer, working their way through the city. That’s why I’ve locked the door. Until they break it down – if they still have the energy – I shall go on working here, locked in my workshop. I am making, by the light of an oil lamp, cartouche after cartouche of the royal names. And do you see this head, I’ve made? This is a likeness of Queen Nefertiti as it is burned into my memory. So beautiful. So superhuman in her beauty.

  Perhaps, they will break in here and smash my work as they have smashed so many works of mine over yonder in the palace. But while I have breath in me and light to see by, I shall go on speaking the names – their names – in stone, so that they may have everlasting life. A man must do what he can. While a name is remembered in this world, the spirit lives on in the Land of the West.

  Am I a fool? One day the world will be a thousand years older, two thousand, three! Who then will remember Akhenaten or the divine Nefertiti? One thing I do know for certain! No one will remember me, Tutmose the potter, or speak my name aloud three thousand years from now.

  When the ruins of el-Amarna were excavated, a beautiful carved head of Queen Nefertiti, as well as several cartouches of the names Nefernefruaten-Nefertiti and Akhenaten were found in a locked workshop. They had escaped both theft and destruction by the troops of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

  Glossary

  Beetling Overhanging.

  Boon A royal favour or blessing.

  Cataract A series of river rapids and small waterfalls.

  Coracle A small roundish boat made of waterproofed animal hides stretched over a wicker frame.

  Country of the West Spirit world of the dead.