An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) (25 page)

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Authors: Paul Doherty

BOOK: An Evil Spirit Out of the West (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries)
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Chapter 10
‘Of course our Prince was magnificent.’ Ay bit into a succulent piece of spiced meat. He smiled wonderingly to himself, relishing both the memory and the food. We were sitting out at the Nose of the Gazelle, a craggy promontory overlooking the Nile, Ay, myself, Snefru and the scribe Ineti. A splendid day! Down by the waterside fowlers were busy. They’d spread their nets over a collapsible frame and placed it in clear water between clumps of reeds. The frame was fixed by stakes driven into the mud, then the hunters lurked behind a bush, ropes in their hands, ready to close the net trap on its hinges. The lure was baited with juicy crumbs and seeds. The birds came clustering in, fighting and squabbling over the bait. A fowler appeared, startling the birds; he shouted an order and the net snapped closed, trapping the birds inside. For a while all was confusion. The nets bulged as the birds, packed together, fought vainly to escape. Once they were exhausted the fowlers opened the net, quickly removing the young whilst they slaughtered the rest, necks were wrung, heads chopped off, blood drawn and feathers plucked, then the birds were tossed into pots of salted water.
‘Our Prince,’ I observed, ‘was meant to be trapped but he escaped the net of the fowlers.’
The smell of blood and salt wafted towards us. We sat in a semi-circle around the napkins opened to reveal spiced goose, fresh bread and sliced fruit. Our clay goblets brimmed with the best wine, poured by Ay himself, who had arranged the outing after our return from Karnak. Snefru seemed intent on the fowler, whispering under his breath the different types of bird caught: wild goose, lapwings, sparrows, green-ribbed ducks, grey doves with black collars, quail, hoopoes, red-back shrikes and pigeons.
‘They should be careful.’ Ay pointed to the reedfilled pools along the riverside. ‘Eels, pike and lampreys thrive there and, where they do, the crocodiles gather.’
Snefru refused to meet my eye as he began again to list the different fish which could be caught as if, by simple repetition, he could allay the tension and fear. Despite the meat and wine, that glorious, sunfilled afternoon, Ineti sat cradling his cup, gaze unwavering: if they could, his ugly juglike ears would have flapped because Ay was on the verge of treason. I bit into the fruit and bread and wondered where Ay was leading. Akhenaten had stayed behind with Nefertiti. In fact, he had been constantly with her since our return. No banquets, no feasts, just an ominous silence. Nefertiti had been as angry as a raging cat. She’d clawed my face, twisted my cheek: her beauty made her anger all the more terrifying.
‘My Beloved was baited,’ she snapped. ‘Taken like some tame goose to be paraded before the people. What was he meant to do? Stumble and fall? Either physically or in his words?’
‘Excellency,’ I protested, ‘your Beloved, my master, excelled himself.’
‘He shouldn’t have sung the hymn to the Aten,’ she retorted.
Ay disagreed. When Akhenaten joined them, I was dismissed so they could continue their quarrel in private.
Ay drained his wine and pointed to the hosts of birds flying above the marshes.
‘They remind me of those crows, the ones which flew over the Temple of Amun. A clever trick, that! The shaven heads undoubtedly caught them, starved them, then had them released as soon as we entered the central court. The crows would be noisy, raucous and eager to fly under the sun. Birdseed was scattered round that statue, strewn on the ground, to draw them down. Yet our Prince proved to be master of the occasion.’
Snefru’s scarred face was now all alarmed.
‘And what a speech our young Prince made,’ Ay continued. ‘Such wit, such tact. The shaven heads of Amun must be seething with rage. Ah well.’ He sighed and refilled our goblets. ‘The Magnificent One’s grand design faltered and was replaced with ours.’ He breathed in. ‘It’s good to be here. I love the smell of the river, the sweet and the sour, the ripeness and the dross, the rotting vegetation. Life and death, eh? I hope Shishnak rots in his temple.’
Ineti coughed; his face was ashen, eyes full of fear at what he was hearing.
‘One day,’ Ay murmured, ‘the Aten, the Unseen, Ever-seeing God will come into his own and be worshipped everywhere. The clever tricks of Amun, the charades in his temple, will be over. I’d love to go into the Holy of Holies.’ Ay chattered as if he was talking to himself. ‘They pick up this ridiculous statue on its so-called sacred barque and Pharaoh asks it a question. If the barque moves forwards the answer is Yes. If No, it goes back. I mean,’ he laughed, ‘it’s carried by the shaven heads! They will give Pharaoh the answer he wants. But, of course, he is growing stupid, isn’t he?’
Snefru moaned. I felt a chill of fear. Ay was now staring at Ineti.
‘You can’t believe those juglike ears can you, Master Scribe? Are you taking careful note of what I have said?’ Ay leaned forward. ‘Are you going to run back to your masters in Thebes and tell them about the treason you have heard? Well, you won’t be running anywhere. Ineti, the wine you have drunk is poisoned. You can’t taste it. It contains a special potion distilled by my daughter: snake venom mingled with a few deadly powders.’
Snefru jumped to his feet, throwing his cup away.
‘Oh, not yours,’ Ay snapped, his eyes never leaving Ineti, ‘just the scribe’s.’
Ineti tried to move but he couldn’t. His sallow face had turned grey, eyes large in his face, a strange colour about his lips. White froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth.
‘The symptoms are quite swift. Death does not take long. You can’t move, can you, Ineti?’
The scribe sat as if carved out of stone; only the throbbing in a vein in his neck showed that the death struggle had begun. It was eerie, frightening, blotting out any other image: the cry of the birds, the faint shouts of the fowlers, the breeze picking up along the river, the buzz of bees, the incessant whirl of the myriad insects. I put my goblet down. Ay stretched across and touched Ineti’s face. The scribe was now fighting for breath like a man whose lungs have filled with water. The sounds from his mouth grew more hideous; he was straining and gagging as if he was going to be sick, eyes rolling back in his head. At last, he collapsed to one side, face hitting the sharp rocky ground so hard that flecks of blood appeared, then he lay still.
‘Why?’ Snefru murmured.
Ay grabbed dirt from the ground, and threw it over Ineti’s corpse, then picked up his goblet and toasted the river.
‘Get back.’ He recited a spell from
The Book of the Dead
. ‘Retreat! Get back, you dangerous one! Do not come against me! Do not live by my magic! Get back, you crocodile from the East! The destination of you is in my belly. May you live in fiery darkness forever. Well, Snefru,’ he rubbed his hands together and pointed further along to a clump of bushes. ‘Drag the corpse over there. No one will see it.’
Snefru, however, was already on his feet looking round.
‘Horemheb and Rameses will send spies.’
‘I doubt it,’ Ay murmured. ‘It’s the Prince they watch and my daughter. Even if they do find out, we’ll all take an oath, won’t we? Ineti must have eaten something which disagreed with him.’ He laughed merrily. ‘Go on, Snefru, drag the corpse into the bushes. Cut deep into his chest, pluck out his heart and throw it away for the birds and jackals to feast on. Cursed in life, Ineti will be cursed in death. His
Ka
can wander the cold arid halls of the Underworld. Let him never know peace. Go on, man!’
Ay dug into the food basket, pulled out a long knife and thrust it into Snefru’s hand.
‘Cut out his heart. As you do so, recite a curse! Go on now!’
Snefru grasped the knife and pulled Ineti’s corpse away as if it was a bucket of filthy rubbish. He dragged it across the ground, keeping low so the fowlers from the riverside could not see him. The scribe’s sandalled feet scraped the ground, arms and legs jerking like those of a broken doll.
‘Well, Snefru’s got his work cut out!’ Ay laughed at the pun.
I looked towards the river. The fowlers were now moving away. Like Ay, they were happy at a good day’s hunting.
‘He was the assassin, Mahu.’
Ay filled my cup, grinned at my uncertainty and exchanged his cup for mine. His grin widened as I changed them back.
‘Trust me, Mahu! Trust our master! Ineti was an assassin, a spy. We all know that. Like a viper hidden under a rock he was waiting for his moment. You don’t mourn him, do you?’
‘I don’t give him a second thought.’
‘Good! I used to take Ineti down to the markets in Thebes to buy provisions. He wasn’t a very good spy. He’d always wander off down the same street and enter a beer-shop where he’d give the owner a small scroll of papyrus. I persuaded the owner to give it to me. Well, the last scroll at least. I cut the rogue’s dirty throat just in case.’
‘And the papyrus?’
‘Oh, it told Ineti’s master, whoever he is, what I did, where I went, no more than a hint that if I was to die, perhaps it could be some sudden city accident or a fight at a winebooth. Now, that’s not the place for me to die, is it, Mahu? But I didn’t just kill Ineti for that.’
He picked up a piece of well-cooked goose and bit into it carefully. ‘You saw what happened at Karnak. We are at war, Mahu! In war you strike as much terror into the hearts of your opponent as you can. Oh, our enemies will realise we killed Ineti but they won’t be able to prove it. They’ll never find his corpse. Snefru will come back after dark and toss it into a crocodile pool. We are sending a message, Mahu. We are as ruthless as they are.’
‘Who are they?’
‘To be perfectly honest, boy, I don’t know.’
‘I am not your boy.’
‘No you are not, Mahu, you’re my scholar. Anyway, this is the way things are done. They attack us, we attack back.’
‘They will seek revenge for Ineti’s death.’
‘Let them and they’ll pay a price, but before they do, they’ll think carefully.’
‘Who do you think they are?’
‘Everybody, Mahu! The Crown Prince, the Divine One, Shishnak, High Priest of Amun, Rahimere the Mayor of Thebes. Either one, two or all of them. You have been involved in a battle. The enemy deploy, hidden by a screen of dust or a rise in the ground. You have to wait, spy out their true strength, let them show their standards. The same applies here.’ He paused.
Snefru’s grunts as he hacked at Ineti’s body carried clearly back to us.
‘Wash your hands!’ Ay shouted. He paused, ears straining. I caught the words of the curse Snefru was chanting as he cut out Ineti’s heart.
‘Can we trust Snefru?’
‘Oh yes. Especially now.’ Ay wiped the sweat from his forehead with the tips of his fingers. ‘I once told Snefru how Ineti worked for the courts. He was a Scribe of Wounds, supervising the mutilations carried out against convicted criminals. Snefru may be surprised by the speed of Ineti’s death, but I suspect he’s enjoying his work.’
When Snefru came out of the bushes he was dressed only in a white kilt; his stomach, chest, hands and arms were covered in blood.
‘Is it done?’
‘The birds already feast on his heart.’ Snefru’s face broke into a smile.
Ay glanced down at the river. ‘And the fowlers have gone. Snefru, go down there and wash.’
We watched him go. Snefru cleaned himself quickly, stripping naked, staying on the edge of the river, fearful of what the smell of blood might arouse. Ay repacked the baskets except for Ineti’s cup which he flung down the rocks and, with Snefru trailing behind us, we returned to the Palace of the Aten. Akhenaten and Nefertiti were in the garden sitting beneath the outstretched branches of a sycamore tree fashioning a floral collarette of flowers. They both looked up as we approached; Akhenaten’s face brooding, his dark eyes watchful, Nefertiti as serene as any well-fed cat.
‘It is done,’ Ay declared.
‘Good!’ Nefertiti murmured. ‘Now, my Beloved, never put blue and green so close.’ She glanced up and smiled. ‘Mahu, we have to pack. Queen Tiye has sent us a message. An imperial barge will be here for us in two days.’

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