Egypt (39 page)

Horemheb's sword blade was suddenly sharp and cold against my throat.

‘I gave very clear orders he was to be taken,' he said.

‘He killed my closest friend. He betrayed me. He left me for dead. And he had my family, living in his house,' I said. ‘He was my prize, and he was about to kill me. I don't regret what I did.'

‘Who was he? Name him…' he insisted.

For some reason, perhaps the last traces of loyalty to the memory of a former friend, I hesitated for a moment. But I wanted the world to know the truth.

‘His real name was Nakht.'

Horemheb laughed briefly, like a jackal, at the cruel irony.

‘How perfect. The Queen's royal envoy turns out to be the spider at the heart of the dark web of secrets. I suppose he would have exposed and disgraced me, and then proposed himself as leader, as the restorer of order after the time of chaos.'

‘He wanted to start a new age. Without kings, without Gods … the errors of the past all purged away. He thought he could make the world perfect in his own image. He thought he was incorruptible. But he wasn't. He discovered he liked killing…' We stood in silence for a moment. ‘All his secrets died with him. No one else knows the truth about Obsidian, and the opium-smuggling within the Seth division,' I said.

‘Except you,' he replied.

‘Yes.'

I supposed he would now have me arrested, and sent bound like a captive to his darkest prison, never to return. But instead he reached into a leather purse, and produced a fine gold ring.

‘Here. Recompense,' he said.

I held it in my palm. ‘I don't want it,' I replied, and flicked it carelessly into the great mound of gold before us.

Horemheb looked genuinely surprised.

‘Then what do you want?'

‘I want you to release Simut. I want you to allow the Queen to live out her life in privacy. And then I want to go home.'

For a moment, he considered.

‘Even now, when you should be grasping your rewards, you remain loyal to that disastrous dynasty…'

‘I am loyal to
her
.'

He stared at me.

‘Your loyalty is commendable. But I'm afraid you must mourn her. She is dead. She died by her own hand. Poison. Supplied, I am reliably informed, by your old friend Nakht.'

I turned away.

‘This was the inevitable ending. Let us not be sentimental. All this was business. And now it will finally be possible to rebuild Egypt. I will, of course, destroy the names of her dynasty, and I will usurp their monuments. The stones of their temples will be demolished to build new temples, in my name, and in the name of my dynasty. I am King now, but I was born an ordinary man. I remember that. I will proclaim a new edict of excellent measures. I will appoint new judges, new officials and new regional tribunes to oversee the improvement of the laws. Wrongdoing will not be tolerated. Theft will be severely punished. Corruption within the instruments of justice will be severely punished. Crimes against justice will be severely punished.'

‘And what of those who oppose you?' I said. ‘What of men like Simut, good men, honourable men? Will you torture and execute them? Will those of the old order disappear in the night, into dark prisons, never to be seen again? Will you target and assassinate your enemies?'

‘There will be public trials, and those who opposed me will answer for their wrongdoing before a judge, if necessary with their lives. Those who repent could be freed, on condition of absolute loyalty,' he said.

He came closer.

‘I have had many years to think what to do with my kingship. I have no interest in personal acquisition. Gold has never delighted me. I am only interested in Egypt. There is much to do. I have need of reliable men. Men who are not in love with gold. Your allegiance to the Queen has impressed me. I know very well that the Thebes Medjay has been governed poorly. This city needs a new hand to restore faith in the laws, and security on the streets.'

‘Nebamun has welcomed you with open arms,' I said.

‘Nebamun is no fool. He is an old hand, and he knows his time is over. He will accept a decent settlement of the gold he has always coveted, and the status he has always aspired to. He will retire to his country villa, and drink himself stupid,' he said. ‘So there will be a vacancy. I would need someone reliable to appoint to his office…'

He was offering me the great prize. I stared at the piles of gold at my feet. So much had been lost for the sake of its terrible glory.

‘I am not reliable,' I replied.

‘And perhaps that is why I respect you. These are the days of reckoning, Rahotep. It is time to make choices, and swift changes. Think about it carefully,' he said.

I stood before the great wooden door of Nakht's mansion, and hesitated. And then I knocked three times. I heard footsteps. The door slowly opened. Tanefert stared at me. I could not speak. Slowly, she raised her hand, and carefully touched my cheek, not yet daring to believe I was alive. Then she beat her fists against me, in fury and grief; but, suddenly, she crumpled. I caught her in my arms, just in time.

We crossed the Great River in sunlight for Khety's funeral rites; Khety's wife, Kiya, and her daughter, and his younger brother Intef, and my own family. We were all dressed in white linens. Kiya's belly was swollen now; the baby was growing. The girls sat together, Khety's daughter folded into the generous company of my girls, her face alert to the strange seriousness of the ritual. Tanefert tried to comfort Kiya; but to her the river traffic all around us was simply unreal.

I found myself gazing into the dazzle of the light on the waters, mesmerized and apart. Since my return home, and from the dead, three weeks ago, I had kept myself apart. The grim agony of separating myself from the addiction was finally over; but I felt empty and detached. The darkness was still inside me. I had told Tanefert everything on my first night home. And her silence had taken possession of the house as surely as Horemheb's soldiers had taken possession of the city. We slept like strangers, and her eyes avoided me during the day. As I sat on the boat, my son insisted on sitting with me, his hand in mine, as if he were afraid he would lose me again. He gazed up at my face, perhaps searching for the father he remembered and could no longer recognize.

At the embalmer's shop on the west bank, we met Khety's coffin, and the cortège of priests and mourners who would accompany it. The coffin was placed on its covered bier, decorated with bouquets, and pulled by the embalmer's men to the cemetery. I insisted on joining them in their labour. I wanted to feel the true burden of Khety's death as I dragged my friend's coffin to his tomb. The professional mourners went ahead of us in their blue robes, tearing their hair and beating their breasts. I hated their high wails and cries, so rehearsed and inauthentic. The chest containing the canopic jars was dragged on a bier by more of the embalmer's men. The priest, wearing a panther skin thrown over his shoulder, went before the coffin, sprinkling milk on the ground, and wafting incense in the bright air of the morning. Behind came the funeral servants, carrying the trays, foods and flowers, jars of wine and jugs of beer, and the other necessities of the funeral feast. And behind that, others carried the few objects from Khety's life that would be left in the tomb with him.

We came to the cemetery, and the tomb. The lector priest was waiting for us, chanting prayers and spells from the papyrus roll he held out before him. Khety's mummy was propped upright, and the priest set about preparing the instruments he would need for the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. The lector priest began to recite the Instructions, and the priest approached the tomb statue of Khety. I tried and failed to find his face in the generalized features the embalmers had given him. He was one with the innumerable dead, now. Following the prescribed gestures, the spells and libations, the priest took his instruments from their alabaster tablet, one by one, and touched the face of the statue with the forked
pesesh
knife, the chisel, the adze and the rod ending in the snake's head–restoring the senses to the dead man so that he might live again in the Otherworld, and eat, and speak his name. He made offerings of incense and natron, of food and wine, and the traditional cuts of meat–the foreleg and the heart. All this was intended to reunite the parts of the body and the spirit; and I could only hope the magic would work powerfully, restoring the butchered parts of Khety's body to his new, whole self, in the beautiful light of the Otherworld.

It was hot. The children, who had been awed and fascinated, began to look around, slightly confused and bored. Tanefert gave them each a drink of water. Intef looked dazed. Kiya stared straight ahead, holding her daughter's hand. The child must have been puzzled by the elaborate rituals, and by the disappearance of her father into this anonymous wooden shape.

Finally, the rites were concluded; Khety's coffin was carried down the small steps into the tomb chamber. The canopic chest was settled in its niche. I descended into the small space of the tomb; there, around the mummy, I placed his
senet
game board, over which we had spent many hours of play, and his staff of office, and his knife, which, according to ritual, I broke so that it could not be used against him in the afterlife. And then I laid in front of Khety the papyrus scroll of the Book of the Dead which I had commissioned especially for him, with his name written throughout, and whispered my earnest prayer for his afterlife, that he should pass the trials of death, and arrive at the Field of Reeds, and that it should bring him all the pleasures and the peace he dreamed of, but never quite achieved in this life; and that, if he could, he might one day forgive me my failure of friendship.

Kiya and Intef kissed his headrest, and then passed it to me to place gently beside the coffin. But when her daughter gave me his favourite old sandals, Kiya suddenly began to weep in terrible and uncontrollable jolts. Her daughter embraced her, and Tanefert went to her support. Then all the girls began to cry together. Quickly, the funeral feast was prepared; back up the stairs, in the light of day, they stood at the chapel door together, eating and weeping, weeping and eating. I could do neither.

The priests and embalmers whispered their condolences and excuses, and made their way back to the river, with all the tools and paraphernalia of the rites. The professional mourners had already gone to another engagement, another burial. Death was everywhere, of course.

There was nothing more to do. There was nothing else to be achieved. Tanefert came to my side. We didn't speak. Very carefully I took her hand in mine, and this time she allowed me to do so. We remained like that for a few, vital moments. Then, with a brief squeeze, she withdrew hers, gathered the children together, and led them away.

Kiya remained behind, unwilling to leave. We stood together in the heat. She looked at me.

‘I loved him,' I said.

She nodded.

‘He knew that.'

She touched her belly. Her words, and the sorrow on her face, and the sadness of the unborn child inside her who would never know its father, suddenly passed into me, into my dead, black heart. And then bitter tears poured out of me, despite myself; my cries of grief were wordless and helpless as a child. I wept for what I had risked, and what I had lost, and for who I had become. She held me, as I buckled, as best she could.

As we walked back to the Great River, arm in arm, we were silent. But just before we came to the boat, she turned to me.

‘When the child is born, if it's a boy, I will name him after his father.'

‘It is a fine name to carry through life,' I said.

‘He will live for his father. He will be a good man, too. You will take care of him. You will stand in for his father,' she said simply.

Year 1 of the Reign of King Horemheb, Horus is in Jubilation

Thebes, Egypt

Our skiff lolled on the edges of the Great River, among the reed beds, a little way south of the city, in the dappled shade. It was a quiet afternoon. Amenmose and I lay back with our fishing rods in our hands. Thoth crouched in the prow, gazing suspiciously down his long nose at us, and glancing swiftly aside at the sudden ripples made by the fish as they snapped at insects. He hated the open water. Ducks argued and birds sang invisibly within the dense stands of papyrus; across the water we could hear the calls of other fishermen, and further off the farmers and their children at work in the fields. I offered my son some bread, which he took and chewed thoughtfully.

‘Father?' he said, in the way he usually commenced a long enquiry into philosophical matters.

‘Son…'

‘What happens when we die?'

‘Well, it's a long story. First our hearts must be judged in the presence of Osiris himself, and the forty-two judges.'

‘Why?'

‘To see whether we have lived a good life,' I answered.