The Sleeper in the Sands (39 page)

That afternoon, returning to the Palace, the sun seemed brighter, the light more vivid, the colours richer and more imbued with life than Tyi had ever seen them -- yet their beauty served only to deepen her disquiet. The cool of twilight brought her no relief, nor the profounder stillness of night - and so at length, discovering that she could not sleep, Tyi rose from her bed. She called for a cloak, then walked through the gardens towards the side of the lake. The way was not difficult to follow, for it was lit by the moon, and she could remember, as she drew nearer to her father’s favourite spot, every twist, every turn, from the days of her childhood. Yet as she approached it, she saw that someone was already there, standing beneath the trees; and she could just distinguish his domed skull against the stars, his withered body, his narrowed arms, the ruined beauty of King Amen-hetep, her son. ‘Not here,’ Tyi thought, ‘not now, not with him.’ Instead she turned back to the Palace, and called for a horse, then rode up the path which led towards the hills. By the ravine which marked the entrance to the valley of the dead, she found no guards, which surprised her but seemed also, such was her mood, a relief. Passing between the cliffs, she dismounted from her horse and led it as far as her parents’ tomb. Having tethered it, she then knelt down in prayer, to ask her father for his comfort and aid.

Yet she had known, even before arriving at his tomb, what her father would have said - and therefore, as well, what it was she had to do. When at last she rose again, she felt resolved. Head bowed, she stood a moment more before the hidden entrance to the tomb, then returned to her horse to unfasten its reins. Suddenly, though, even as she was loosening the knots, she heard the murmuring of a far-off voice and looking up, caught a glimpse of faint, distant lights. Immediately she felt a chill of horror, for she knew, at such an hour and in such a place, that they could mean only one thing. Nevertheless, concerned to make certain, she hurried quietly back up the hill and when she reached a ridge of boulders peered out from behind them. Ahead of her, far up the valley, she could make out flickering torches and a body of men, some ten or twelve, gathered by a tomb -- and then she heard, very faint, the chink of picks against stone.

The noise was at once lost beneath the pounding of Tyi’s heart. She could not be certain what horrified her more: the threat of danger to herself, or revulsion at the sacrilege. She glanced down at the packed dirt beneath her feet, below which she knew her parents both lay. ‘Let them be kept safe,’ she whispered. ‘O All-mighty and All-seeing One, let them never be disturbed.’ Then, her heart racing ever faster, she crept slowly back down the hill and, untethering her horse, climbed into her saddle. She sat frozen a moment, gathering her courage, for she suspected that the robbers must have murdered the guards, and she knew that they would surely have posted sentries of their own. Then all at once, she spurred her horse on and galloped down the track as fast as she could, not concerned now to be quiet but only to escape the confines of the valley. By the narrow ravine which led out from the hills, she heard a muffled cry and saw two figures running out from the shadows towards her. One reached out and seized hold of her cloak, but Tyi loosened the fastening, and it slipped from her shoulders. She galloped on, out through the ravine and on down the road, towards the lights of the Palace twinkling on the Nile. Half-way towards them, however, Tyi saw a company of horsemen, and she cried out with relief when she recognised the shaven heads of priests. As she hailed them they all grew pale, reining in their horses, and preparing to kneel and bow down upon the road. Tyi, though, raised her hand and ordered them not to delay but to continue towards the valley, so as to surprise the robbers. At the news of what she had seen, the priests grew even paler and their eyes seemed to bulge with indignation and alarm. ‘Desecration in the valley?’ their leader exclaimed. ‘That is a horror and an evil barely to be believed. Your brother, O great Queen, our new High Priest, will be shocked indeed when he learns of this.’

Watching the priest continue towards the valley with his men, Tyi did not doubt what he had said, for it was the responsibility of the High Priest to keep the valley secure, and she suspected that when the news was brought to Inen, it would confirm him in his dread of a looming time of sacrilege. Yet she did not search him out to confirm this supposition, nor even meet with him or glimpse him by chance, and she wondered if he -- as she had begun to do -- was avoiding those places where the other might be found. Only on the day of her dead husband’s interment, when the body was transported from the temple to his tomb, did Tyi at last set eyes upon her brother again - yet never once did he choose to meet her stare. He walked instead at the very head of the procession, far apart from the new Pharaoh and the royal mourners, who followed in the rear of the mighty train of treasures, riding by the side of the coffin on its bier. By the time Tyi arrived at last before the tomb, the treasures had already been borne into the darkness of the rock and only the giant coffin of gold remained outside. As Inen led chants and prayers to Osiris, it was raised from the bier and placed beside the doorway, where it was then levered upright by two masked priests - one dressed as Isis, the other as Seth. Both, as they did so, raised a sudden chant of mourning, and Inen at last turned to face the royal party.

Still, though, he avoided his sister’s eye but gazed instead, very coldly, at King Amen-hetep. ‘O Osiris!’ he cried out in a ringing voice. ‘Your descendant comes, your kinsman, who is flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood! Hail to you, Lord of Brightness, Great Teacher of Mankind, Ruler of the Stars! You who were slain, and placed within a wooden chest, and dismembered by your brother into fourteen parts, guard great Pharaoh, who comes here now in death, that he too may never rot but live with you for ever, O Master of both the Living and the Dead!’ Then for a moment Inen paused, yet Tyi saw that he continued to gaze coldly at her son, King Amen-hetep, before turning at last to face the coffin again, the staff of his office raised in his hand. Gently he brought it down upon the image of the dead Pharaoh, which had been crafted with wonderful skill upon the coffin. Inen touched it lightly upon the left breast. ‘Guide Pharaoh’s heart through the season of night.’ He raised the staff once more, then again brought it down, this time upon the lips of the image’s head. ‘Open Pharaoh’s mouth. Give him his breath. Preserve in him for ever the life eternal.’

Inen stood a moment more with his head bowed low, then he raised both his arms and renewed a sombre chant. The other priests joined him as the coffin was lifted and borne into the tomb. Still the priests chanted, as the bearers re-emerged from the darkness at last, and all was made ready for the final sealing of the tomb. The stone blocks were lowered; the bricks carefully mortared; a great mound of rubble piled against the doorway, until at last it was as though there had never been a tomb there at all.

Inen turned back to King Amen-hetep and bowed very low. ‘O mighty descendant of the star-dwelling gods, your father is now at one with Osiris. The ritual of thanksgiving must therefore be proclaimed. Will you, as is the custom, lead our sacred rites?’

But King Amen-hetep shook his head. ‘You know,’ he answered shortly, ‘that I have no belief in your gods. If I came here at all, it was merely to make certain that my father was indeed safely sealed.’

Inen’s lips tightened almost imperceptibly, but otherwise he betrayed not a flicker of emotion. ‘I trust then, O King, that you are now content.’

‘Indeed,’ King Amen-hetep nodded. Yet not everything, I fear, even now may be secure. There have been reports, O my uncle, dark rumours, of the actions of thieves abroad in the night.’ He paused a moment, narrowing his eyes. ‘Guard well against them. I would not have my father, in his sleep of death, disturbed.’

Again, Inen bowed low. ‘Nothing shall disturb him,’ he answered, ‘in his sleep of eternal life.’

A smile flickered faintly on King Amen-hetep’s swollen lips. ‘I am glad to hear it,’ he nodded. He glanced once more towards the hidden tomb, then turned and walked back to his waiting chariot. His courtiers and attendants followed in his train, and of all the royal party only Tyi remained where she had been. Inen was still standing as though rooted to the spot, gazing at the rubble concealing the doorway; but then at last he raised his head, and this time he did meet his sister’s eyes. Tyi could not interpret what she saw within his stare, whether it was an appeal, or a warning, or something even more - the hint of a secret as yet un-revealed. She almost brought herself to cross to him, but then Inen turned again to speak to the priests, and Tyi knew that the moment had not yet arrived. ‘Within another seventy days,’ she thought to herself as she crossed back to her chariot. ‘Then let us speak and, if needs be, part for ever.’

Yet when the seventieth day after the burial arrived, there was not a sign of Inen, nor even a message; and when Tyi, in perplexity, went to the temple, she could find no trace of her brother even there. The seventy-first day passed, and then the seventy-second, until at length ten days had gone by without contact, before a message marked as secret finally arrived for her.

However, it proved to be not from her brother, but from her son, ordering her to meet him upon the road to the hills, and when she rode there she found him with a body of his guards. King Amen-hetep kissed her warmly, then turned to the captain. ‘Tell the Queen,’ he ordered, ‘the mystery you have found.’

The captain bowed his head. You must know, O mighty Queen,’ he said, pointing to the valley, ‘that I have been appointed to guard the royal tombs.’

Tyi frowned in puzzlement. ‘Is it not the duty of the priests to guard the tombs?’

‘A duty’ answered King Amen-hetep, ‘which lately they have been neglecting, for in the past few weeks there have been ever more tombs broken into. I therefore decided’ -- he gestured to the captain - ‘to appoint some men of my own to the valley’

‘And did you inform the priests of this decision?’

King Arnen-hetep smiled grimly. ‘I did not.’

‘I see.’ Tyi nodded slowly. ‘Then tell me,’ she asked the captain, ‘what it was that you found?’

‘Some ten days ago,’ answered the captain, ‘I was patrolling with my men when we heard - by the tomb of your husband, O great Queen -- the sound of footsteps scrabbling over stone. We at once descended to inspect the entranceway and discovered, as we had feared, that it had been broken open. Inside we found five men despoiling the coffin, and so we seized them and then sealed up the tomb as best we could. The robbers we treated as the law proscribes, by removing their noses and cropping their ears, then impaling their bodies upon stakes beside the tomb. All this was done, as I said, ten days before.’

‘Then where is the mystery?’

The captain glanced nervously at King Amen-hetep, then back at Tyi. ‘Four of the robbers, as you might have expected, have long since expired. But the fifth, O mighty Queen . . .’ -- the captain swallowed -- ‘is still alive.’

‘No.’ Tyi breathed in deeply. She could feel a grip like ice growing tight about her heart. ‘How is that possible?’

‘I had thought, O my mother,’ said King Amen-hetep softly, ‘that you might be the one to answer that for me.’ From beneath his cloak he drew out a bottle, half-filled with black liquid. ‘I discovered that Kiya has been drinking this. She had been given it by Inen. She said that he had been giving you the very same drink, to preserve your beauty in the face of the passing years.’

Tyi gazed at the bottle guiltily, yet still spoke with defiance. ‘It is not a sin,’ she said at length, ‘to wish to retain one’s beauty and one’s youth.’

King Amen-hetep laughed bitterly, concealing the bottle beneath his cloak once again. ‘We should journey at once to my father’s tomb,’ he said with sudden brusqueness. ‘It would be interesting to discover what other spells the High Priest of Amen might possess.’

‘Why, you surely do not think . . .’

But King Amen-hetep raised his hand. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, turning to the captain, ‘did you not say, in your report upon the wretch, how the point of the stake has extended through the skull?’

The captain bowed. ‘I did, O mighty King.’

King Amen-hetep turned back to his mother. ‘Very well, then. Let us go, and see what we shall see.’

Yet in truth, even as they rode along the lonely track and long before the thief upon his stake could be seen, his screams of agony could easily be heard, and as she listened to them, Tyi knew they were her brother’s. Drawing nearer to the tomb, she saw five contorted bodies blackened by blood and the pitiless sun, four of them lifeless but one still twisting as he shrieked out violent curses, disfiguring even more his already ruined face. As Tyi approached him, however, with her son by her side, the wretch fell silent; then all at once, unexpectedly, he started to laugh.

‘Why?’ Tyi cried up at him with sudden fury. ‘O Inen, tell me why?’

But still he laughed, and would not reply, and to all his sister’s and nephew’s questioning he would only splutter in mingled mockery and pain. ‘Bring him down,’ King Amen-hetep ordered, turning to the captain. ‘I cannot endure the sight of such suffering. And you’ -- he nodded towards the other guards - ‘open the tomb again. You said that you had found them’ -- he gestured to the bodies on the stakes -- ‘attempting to despoil the coffin of Pharaoh, my father. I want to know what it was that they were hunting.’

The guards bowed, and at once set about following their orders. While the majority laboured to reopen the tomb, Tyi watched as her brother on his stake was gently lowered. She saw that the captain had not exaggerated, for the point had indeed emerged through Inen’s skull, and as the guards sought to pull his body from the stake, she could endure to watch no more but had to turn away. When she glanced back at last, she saw her brother twisting and spitting blood upon the sands, freed of the stake but with his hideous injuries still oozing and wide, and he continued to laugh even as he screamed. Only when King Amen-hetep bent down beside him, and forced the bottle with its potion into his mouth, did he fall silent at last; and even when the potion had been drunk and the bottle tossed aside, he remained in silence, raising not a moan. King Amen-hetep sought to press him, but he seemed barely to hear; and Tyi saw that his eyes were very wide, and fixed on her.