The Sleeper in the Sands (34 page)

‘What is it?’ Tyi demanded.

Still Pharaoh laughed.

‘What is it?’ she screamed, in a wild fury now. ‘You cannot keep what you know from me any longer!’

At once Pharaoh’s laughter died upon his lips. ‘I can,’ he whispered. ‘I can, and I do. For indeed, it fills me with such horror that I can scarcely bear to think of it, still less put it into words.’ Then he brushed her away again, and would say nothing more; and Tyi flushed, and felt a panic start to surge up within her. She listened to Pharaoh’s footsteps as they echoed into silence, then touched the bracelet with its image on her wrist, recalling that it had been her intention and solemn vow to hurl the thing away. She inspected it closely, frowning, then turned to see where her three lions lay. Tyi crossed to them and stroked their thick, black manes, as was her habit whenever she found herself angry or distressed. Then, sitting down beside them, she inspected the portrait closely once again. She knew already that she would not dispose of it. For what other piece of evidence, what other clue did she possess, in her quest to discover the nature of her blood? There was only the memory of King Amen-hetep laughing, laughing wildly as at a hidden joke, at the image of herself as a ravening lion; and yet however hard she tried, Tyi could not see the joke.

But at this point, Haroun saw the approach of morning and broke off from his tale. ‘O Commander of the Faithful,’ he said, ‘if you would care to return here tomorrow evening, then I shall describe to you the anxieties and th e discoveries of Queen Tyi.’

And so the Caliph did as Haroun suggested; and the following evening he returned to the mosque. And Haroun said:

In the weeks that followed, and then the months and then the years, Tyi came to treasure the bracelet which her father had first brought her as though it were a charm, a pledge that the temple’s secrets would indeed one day be hers. That her husband already knew them was something that she never ceased to resent, nor to fret over; for it seemed to her that, since their visit to the temple, she had lost her power to rule him, and she was constantly afraid that it might slip utterly away. Certainly King Amen-hetep was often in the temple of Amen, and his silence as to what he did there was as total as before. But all the same, Tyi had noticed a subtle change in his manner which was always most pronounced when he came back from the temple, for his laziness then seemed banished and his appetites renewed, and it was sometimes all that she could do to keep pace with his demands. At other times, he would journey for days into the desert, and would not return until vast numbers of animals had been slain, so that their carcasses could be dragged back in triumph through the dust, and the evidence of the slaughter piled before the Palace. Tyi would survey the fly-blown corpses with disgust, then reach for her lions as they fretted at her feet, and seek to calm both her restless animals and herself, hugging them tightly and stroking their manes. Sometimes, in an effort to purge the stench from her nostrils, she would order her barge to sail across the lake, and watch the bright-plumed birds as they rose against the sky, and breathe in the scent of lilies on the breeze. Such pleasures grew ever more precious to her, the more threatened they came to seem; for with each day that King Amen-hetep spent abroad upon the hunt, away from her presence and her influence, so the higher the walls of the Harim seemed to rise, and the darker their shadow seemed to fall across Tyi’s thoughts.

It was when King Amen-hetep announced his intention to journey to war, to ride with his troops against the far-off Asian tribes, that she could be certain that her influence was under mortal threat at last. Only a son now, she thought, would renew it once again, and so her yearning for one grew ever more desperate and urgent. But King Amen-hetep, excited by the prospect of war, scarcely visited her bed before his departure from Thebes -- and Tyi knew, even as she watched him riding away, that she was not with his child. It would be a long wait, she feared, before he came to her again, and indeed the weeks began to drag and then to lengthen into months. Sometimes a letter would be brought in which Pharaoh would describe in high excitement an annihilation of his foes, how he was a ‘raging fire’, a ‘fierce-eyed lion’; but there was little hint, amidst the boasts, that he was missing Tyi at all.

It was with trepidation, then, and a certain grim resolve, that she heard the news at last of Pharaoh’s imminent return. It was brought to her by Ay, already Egypt’s most celebrated general, who had been sent ahead to Thebes in command of the advance guard, to escort the treasures plundered in the wars. And yet in truth, so Ay revealed, there had barely been any wars, for there had barely been any enemies strong enough to fight -- and so King Amen-hetep had contented himself with the pillaging of towns, and the occasional massacre, whenever he found himself growing too bored. Indeed, so Ay reported, he had appeared uninterested in anything much at all save for the capture of prisoners, of which there were now many hundreds loaded down with chains, and being brought in the train of the army back to Thebes.

‘And me?’ Tyi dared to ask her brother at last. ‘Did he never mention or seem interested in me?’

Ay smiled at her, then shrugged and took her by the hands. ‘You must get him a son.’

She cried out in frustration. ‘As if you need to tell me that!’

‘Why,’ Ay frowned, ‘there is not a problem, I trust?’

‘How can I know?’ Tyi swallowed very deeply, but suddenly she could no longer keep back her tears. Ay reached out for her and she buried her face against her brother’s barrel-chest, sobbing uncontrollably, until at last her anger and her passion had been spent and she sat again dully, the tears drying on her cheeks.

Ay scratched his head. ‘You should pay a call upon my wife, the Lady Tiya.’

Tyi frowned. ‘Why?’

‘She is wise in many arts.’

‘Arts? What do you mean?’

‘The sacred arts. For you know that the Lady Tiya is the High Priestess of Isis.’

‘What of it?’

‘Isis is a goddess of powerful magic’

Tyi stared at him in disbelief. ‘Magic?’ she repeated. Then she frowned and shook her head. ‘Not you as well, O my brother! What will our father say?’

Ay shrugged. ‘Why does he need to know?’

‘No.’ Tyi shook her head. ‘No, I cannot.’

Ay shrugged again. ‘Very well - as you please. But should you change your mind ... I know that my Lady will be eager to help you. Decide soon, though, O my sister. Pharaoh should be here by tomorrow night.’

He kissed Tyi briefly and then strode away, leaving her alone. All that day and evening, Ay’s words gnawed at her thoughts. She had been determined at first not to betray her father’s trust, to stay faithful to the worship of the One and Only God; but then, as she walked by the side of her lake, she realised again how beautiful and precious it was, and felt that to lose her throne would be a form of death. She glanced down at her reflection. It shocked her to see how much her beauty had faded, for her face had grown thin, and her legs and arms too. ‘I am almost a dry, old woman,’ she thought.

Upon a sudden impulse, she called for a cloak and swathed herself beneath its folds; then she walked to the Harim and stood behind its screen, watching the women in the garden below her. There were many, she saw, who wore wigs in the Nubian style, fashioned in imitation of herself, the Great Queen; and one of them, she realised with a sudden shock, was her long-deposed rival, the former Great Queen, who had once pulled her hair and mocked it for its ugliness. Tyi smiled; but the sweetness of her triumph seemed strangely bitter all the same. The taste of it resolved her: she hurried back into the night.

Even so, as she approached her brother’s house, it was with a sense of trepidation. Ay had not lied to her: strange things were indeed spoken of the Lady Tiya’s powers, for it was claimed that, like Isis, the goddess whom she served, she was ‘Great of Magic’, and could read the meaning of the stars. Tyi paused uncertainly by the entrance to the house, but the Lady Tiya, it seemed, had been expecting her arrival, for she appeared suddenly in the doorway without announcement. She took her guest by the hand with a silent smile and led her out into the cool of the garden, walled and secluded from any prying eye. Even so, Tyi still looked about her, nervous and unsure. ‘My father,’ she whispered, ‘he must never find out.’

Tiya smiled and shook her head, and then gazed up at the stars. ‘Does he not say how his god formed the heavens and the stars?’

Tyi bowed her head. ‘He does.’

‘Then where is the fault if we read the patterns there enshrined?’

Despite herself, Tyi raised her gaze towards the sky. ‘You can understand what they say?’

Tiya nodded very gently. ‘It is said, in our deepest mysteries, how the Lady Isis had the knowledge of every secret contained within the stars, for it was she who had gained the wisdom of the secret name of Amen and all the magic which it bore.’

‘And what can you read, then, in the heavens tonight?’

Tiya smiled, then whispered urgently in her companion’s ear. ‘Tomorrow! When Pharaoh returns -- it must be tomorrow!’

Tyi breathed in with relief. ‘And that is all I have to do? Sleep with him tomorrow?’

You will certainly then be granted a child, for I have read the patterns of the stars of your birth and there can be no mistaking them. Yet there is still one problem. They promise you a girl.’

‘No.’ Tyi felt her spirits plunging back into despair. ‘No, no, I must have a son!’

Tiya raised her hand. ‘All is not lost.’

‘What must I do?’

When I read the pattern of your stars, I read my own one as well. I am promised a son if I sleep with my husband tomorrow. Twin destinies, then - but different ends. They must be mingled, intermixed - somehow exchanged . . .’

You think that can be done?’

‘It may be -- by the most secret magic of the goddess which I serve.’ So saying, Tiya reached for a box by her feet and, picking it up, laid it carefully on her lap. What you are about to see,’ she whispered, ‘is a glimpse of a wonder which very few have seen, for it is the true form of She Who Dwelt Beyond the Stars, the Lady of the Place of the Beginning of Time. Do not betray my trust then, O Queen, for I take a great risk in revealing this mystery to you.’

‘I swear by the God of my father,’ Tyi answered, ‘that I shall never breathe a word.’

Tiya removed the lid, to reveal two tiny figurines.

‘What are they?’ Tyi exclaimed, picking one up and studying it closely, for she had never before seen an image so unsettling. It was of a woman, garbed in the crown and regalia of the Lady Isis, but with long, thin legs and a swollen belly, a narrow face and a swollen skull. Tyi shivered with revulsion, then glanced up at Tiya. Why do you portray your goddess in this way?’

‘Because this is how she looked when she first came from the stars, she and Osiris and their brother Seth. It is a memory which has been guarded in the temples since the First Time, when the gods taught the arts of living to mankind.’

‘And what of these portraits? Do they too possess the power of sorcery?’

‘So we must trust,’ Tiya smiled. ‘For it is written, in the most secret and ancient of our texts, how man was first formed by mixing blood and clay, and brought to life by the power of Isis, when she spoke the magic of the Secret Name of Amen. Therefore’ -- she reached by her side for a golden knife -- ‘we must trust that such magic is not wholly dead. Give me your wrist, O mighty Queen.’

Tyi did as she was commanded, and, with a nick of the blade, a thin cut was drawn. Tiya positioned it so that the blood fell upon one of the figurines, then cut her own wrist and spilt her blood across the second. The strangely domed skulls were spattered with red spots, and then the clay began to drink it, sucking on it deep. Tiya reached down and held the figurines up to the moon. ‘Blood of blood,’ she whispered, ‘dust of dust,’ and then she threw the figurines hard against the ground. They shattered at once into tiny fragments and Tiya mingled the debris with the tip of her toe, round and round, until it was no longer possible to tell the two of them apart. When all was done, she scooped up the dust, and tossed it away so that it was caught upon the breeze. ‘O Lady Isis,’ she whispered, ‘hear your servant’s prayers.’ Then she turned back to Tyi; she smiled and took her hands, squeezing them tightly. ‘Now you know what you must do.’ She smiled again. ‘Tomorrow night, O Queen. It must be tomorrow night!’

Tyi prepared for it the next day with her deepest skill and care. She bathed a long while, then ordered her limbs to be anointed and perfumed. Watching as it was done, she thought again how strangely thin her legs and arms had become, but she did her best to put them from her mind. When her body had been prepared to her satisfaction, she ordered her most beautiful gown and most precious jewels to be brought to her and, having been adorned in them, commanded her favourite maid to style her hair. As the girl set to work, Tyi sat with a mirror inspecting her face. Again, as with her limbs, she felt appalled to gaze upon it, to see how narrow and high-boned her features had become. ‘Like the statues,’ Tyi thought suddenly, ‘the figurines of Isis’; and at once she felt the shadow of a strange thought fall across her mind. ‘No,’ she told herself, ‘no, it is not possible’; yet still the memory of the figurines remained before her eyes. Then suddenly she heard her maid breathe in deeply and, turning round, caught an expression of wonder and disgust upon her face. ‘What is it?’ Tyi demanded. ‘Tell me. Do not fear.’

The girl shuddered. ‘O my mistress,’ she whispered, ‘I am sorry, very sorry . . .’ ‘Tell me -- please.’

‘Your skull,’ the girl whispered. ‘Your skull -- your skull . . .’

Tyi raised her mirror and bent her head forward, then at once dropped the mirror so that it shattered on the floor. At the same moment she rose to her feet, abandoning her toilet, and screaming for a litter to the temple of Amen. Arriving there, she found the gates of the inner courtyard closed, but as she had done before, Tyi ordered them flung open and passed at once into the darkness beyond. Door after door she similarly commanded to be opened, so that she penetrated ever deeper into the temple, until at last she came to the place where she had reached once before, there to find that the doors of metal could not be forced. Tyi began to strike upon them, crying out loudly for her brother, until at last they glided open and Inen emerged.