The City of Refuge: Book 1 of The Memphis Cycle (35 page)

“I shall tell you,” said Nebamun.

LVIII Questions Answered

“My father was vizier during the last years of the reign of my grandsire, Amenhotep III, and throughout the reigns of Akhenaten, my uncle, and Smenkhara, my cousin. He was a great statesman, a courageous and wise man, and a loving father such as few children are ever privileged to have. I grew to manhood knowing myself to be my father's pride and one of my uncle's favored children.

“When Akhenaten died and Smenkhara succeeded him, my father continued as vizier. Smenkhara was close to my age, only four years younger than me, and he was old and understanding enough to recognize my father's worth and loyalty. But Smenkhara died after three years, and Tutankhaten came to the throne. With him came his close confidant, Huy, who had long been an enemy of my father.

“My uncle's last years had been filled with sorrow and isolation. He turned his gaze from the world around him, which had brought him only grief and bereavement, and fixed his eyes on his god. My father had done his best to keep the empire strong, but without Pharaoh's fiat, he was powerless. The confusion continued into Smenkhara's reign, though my father did much to bring Egypt back to stability. When Tutankhaten came to the throne, Huy persuaded him to strip my father of his official rank and forbid him holding public office.

“My father was a powerful and wealthy man still, and he could have appealed to the nobles for support, but I think he loved Tutankhaten. He also could have brought pressure to bear by appealing to Shupilluliumash. But my father judged it best to wait for the bad times to pass.

“Huy was now vizier. He spared no effort to humiliate my father, but he didn't touch me, aside from making certain I heard of every indignity visited upon my father. He recognized in me a weapon that might somehow be turned against my father.

“It maddened me to see my father's plight, and I hadn't learned to bridle my tongue yet. Many people heard my opinion of Pharaoh's lack of backbone and Huy's villainy. One of them was a young man named Huni, the son of my father's old major-domo, who had been raised in my father's household as though he were his son. My father sent Huni to me when he fell from power, thinking, I believe, to spare him suffering. I took Huni into the armies as my aide.

“Since we had been boys together, I felt no need to guard my tongue before Huni. That was a mistake: Huni had made some contacts with my father's enemies. I think he had been a spy in my father's household for some time. He listened to me and then repeated what I had to say to those who had paid him to do so.

“Those people decided to rid themselves of my father, who was showing Huy to such disadvantage, even in defeat, that they judged it necessary to end his life. They decided to force him into swift and drastic action that would result either in his death or his permanent disgrace, and I was seized upon as the best means to such an end.

“The plot was carefully laid. My father had been sent to Akhet-Aten to supervise the dismantling of the city. He told me he was doing this under royal commission, and was receiving all the respect due one of his birth and rank. Horemheb had ordered that he be guarded at all times in order to protect him from his enemies.

“I received word, anonymously, that my father was being held under house arrest, heavily guarded like a felon, and that he was kept shackled. As Huy had foreseen, the news sent me into a rage. I demanded speech with Pharaoh and was turned away, not gently. I swallowed my pride and tried to speak with Huy, thinking I could sway him by recalling to him the times my father had helped him to come to power. I was given nothing but smooth, meaningless words.

“I decided to travel to Akhet-Aten and learn from my father exactly how matters lay. I turned my command over to my second, took what supplies I felt necessary in order to travel lightly: my two favorite horses, the gold-mounted chariot my cousin Tutankhaten had given me, and two changes of clothing. I and boarded a ship traveling north from Thebes. Huni accompanied me.

“We arrived at Sumneh, and Huni went ashore as I supervised the unloading of my horses and my chariot. Huni came back to me as I was thanking the ship captain. He seemed disturbed. He told me that no member of my father's family was allowed to speak with him, but that he was permitted to receive messengers. He offered to carry a message to my father for me, and so I asked him to do so and ask my father for the truth of his treatment.

“Huni returned to me late that afternoon with a description of my father's humiliation that would have brought tears of rage to the eyes of a granite statue. He spoke of my father's desperation, and he painted such a picture that I was mad with horror. Shackles, guards, and he housed in a filthy cell in the barracks. Huni told me he had been placed under arrest, and had only just succeeded in making his escape. He also told me he had learned I was to be arrested, and he suggested I leave at once.

“I should have known better, of course. But I trusted Huni and I wasn't thinking. I cast about frantically for a way to save my father, and suddenly I remembered my uncle's younger brother, Prince Thutmose, who was High Priest of Ptah at Memphis. I had seen little of him after my fourteenth year, when Pharaoh had issued his edict proscribing all gods but the Aten. Prince Thutmose had suffered much during that time, but he had emerged from the end of that reign with his integrity untouched, and with the respect of all.

“I thought that such a great and wise prince would surely stretch out his hand to help my father. I intercepted a royal messenger who was traveling posthaste to Memphis, and gave a letter into his hand. In that letter I poured out my heart to Prince Thutmose and pleaded for his help. I said I was traveling to Memphis, myself, with all speed. I wrote out one more message, which I hid under the floor board of my chariot, and then harnessed my horses and drove north with a heart filled with hope.

“Hope makes any journey one of beauty, and I was caught by the sun glittering on the river, by the coolness of the wind as it blew south from Memphis. But gradually I began to notice things that made me uneasy. Sounds, movements behind me. I was a good soldier, and I was certain I was being followed by the second day after I had left Sumneh. I thought they were my father's enemies, trying to keep him from rescue.

“I tried to outrun them, but they were swift and frighteningly well-trained. I realized my only hope lay in reaching the desert passes and cutting straight north through the Arabian desert. I thought I might be able to make my way to one of the old caravan routes and reach Memphis that way. But it was no use. A detachment of the army had made a forced march and now guarded the passes. I circled south in a frantic attempt to reach and cross the Nile, but I was brought to bay the next afternoon.

“A troop of men, all with drawn bows, surrounded me, and General Horemheb was at their head. He said, “Surrender, you fool, and give up this treason!”

“I decided I would go down fighting rather than submit tamely and allow my fate to dishonor my father. I drew out and nocked an arrow, aimed it at Horemheb, and shouted back, “If it is treason to protect my father from disaster, then I am a traitor! You were never my enemy and I don't want to hurt you, but if you have joined the rest of those villains, you won't be with them for long. Stand aside or die!”

“Horemheb is a man whose words are few and harsh. He motioned to two archers who were ready to skewer me with their arrows, turned to me and said, “It's you who have brought your father to disaster! Listen to me: Nakht is dead because of you! Surrender and come back with me at once before matters get any worse!”

“My heart lurched, but I stiffened my knees. “Liar!” I shouted. “I don't believe you!”

“Horemheb tossed me something that seemed to glow in the sunlight. I caught and looked at it and felt the world spinning around me. It was the Udjat amulet that you are wearing now. I'd given it to my father when I was a child. He had been about to take a long journey across the ocean, and I had wanted to give him something to keep him safe. I had run away to the market place and traded a little gold fish amulet, which had been set with valuable lapis, for the udjat charm. He had hung it on a gold chain.

“It was a thing of little real value, but my father had never removed it. I knew that he was dead indeed and I had failed. My hands lost their strength to hold my bow; it slipped to the ground, and I made no attempt to resist as Horemheb's soldiers surrounded and secured me.

“I was taken back to Akhet-Aten and brought to my father's house. He hadn't been sent to the embalmers yet. I'd had dark thoughts of murder, but one look at his peaceful face was enough to calm those misgivings. Whatever the villainy of those around him, he had kept himself unsullied to the end. After that I...went where they told me and answered whatever questions they asked me. Nothing mattered any more and I didn't care what happened to me, though I couldn't understand their persistent talk of treason.

“Horemheb and Ramesses taxed me with plotting to bring the Hittites into Egypt. I denied it. I told them I'd been heading north to speak with Prince Thutmose. They didn't believe me. They kept insisting I had been planning treason, for my father himself had told them. But I continued to deny it, and finally came to myself enough to produce the copy of the letter I had written to Prince Thutmose and hidden in my chariot.

“The letter set the seal on their bafflement. They finally put me under guard, more for my own protection than anything else, while they tried to decide what to do with me.

“I hadn't yet learned that no matter how powerful the evil ones may be, the good are never left helpless. A messenger from the High Priest of Ptah arrived just at this moment bringing a reply to my letter and the news His Highness was traveling south to Akhet-Aten with all speed to speak with me and my father. His arrival two days later shed some light in the darkness.

“Prince Thutmose knew at once that Huy was behind my father's death, though the exact means baffled him. Now I watched as he set about to make matters right. He decided the wisest course would be to turn away from the mechanics of my father's death and instead concentrate on protecting what was left of his family.

“Prince Thutmose, Horemheb and Ramesses decided it would be unwise to wait the customary seventy days to bury my father, and so Nakht's son, Neb-Aten, officiated at his father's funeral after only two weeks. He died of grief after another week and was laid to rest in his own tomb by his old comrades Ramesses and Horemheb. It was a quiet ending for a turbulent young man who was mourned by only a handful of honest friends and was soon forgotten.

“Nakht's widow, the royal princess Merit'taui, remarried a year later and passed from the public eye, though she did bear one more child, a daughter, and lived in wealth and contentment until she died.

“Not long after Neb-Aten's death, a man named Nebamun quietly entered the household of the High Priest of Ptah at Memphis. He had a gift for administration; he spent his first year with His Holiness learning the skills required to oversee the vast properties of the cult of Ptah. This man seemed quiet and somehow sad, but, against his own expectations, he lost his heart, happily, to Prince Thutmose's daughter, the Lady Mayet. And, more wonderful even than this, he learned that his was not the only heart lost: the middle of Nebamun's second year at Memphis saw his betrothal to this truly lovely lady. He married her at the end of the year.

“Nebamun lived well but quietly. He held no public offices, aside from those incidental to the priesthood of Ptah, and he never went to court. Those trifles could not touch the happiness that he had found, all unexpectedly, in his life. Huy died after a reign of two years. He was succeeded by Ay, whose reign was also brief. In time, after Ay's death, which occurred almost twelve years after Prince Nakht's suicide, Nebamun was named Second Prophet of Ptah by his father-in-law, with the approval of Pharaoh.”

Lord Nebamun lowered his eyes from the now dark sky and smiled at Khonsu. “You guessed it all, my dear Khonsu,” he said. “I am Neb-Aten. Or perhaps 'was' is the proper word. He is a person from another time and place, far separated from me, though for a time it was necessary to become him once more. The only command that was laid upon me at the time I went into the temple of Ptah, and that for my own protection, was that I was forbidden to speak of my past to all but Horemheb, Ramesses and Prince Thutmose. And, of course, my lady, when I married her at last. And, I had resolved, you, when everything had been settled.”

“I still don't understand how you were deceived,” Khonsu said.

“It was simple,” Nebamun sighed. “I was too trusting. Prince Thutmose might have realized Huni's part in all of this, if I had spoken of him, or if Horemheb or Ramesses had known, but my father and I had never mentioned him. We had thought to protect him. In fact, I...forgot all about his part in Neb-Aten's last days until an old family servant, Neterkhet, came to me two years ago, after my mother's death.

“He had learned from my mother that I was still alive, and he came to me in the bitterness of his heart, to reproach me for my part in my father's death. What he had to say was...very enlightening.”

Nebamun's eyes narrowed slightly. “I learned that instead of bearing the message I'd given him, Huni told my father I had sent word to Shupilluliumash and was planning to ride to the northern borders of the realm, and there meet with his messengers and plot with them to overthrow Pharaoh. He told my father I was expecting to hear that Shupilluliumash was on the march.

“My father knew this would never happen. Hatti had enough immediate concerns, with the fall of Naharin and its expansion into Syria and the Levant, but he saw at once that this treason would lead to my ruin and death, and he determined to stop me.