The Horus Road (25 page)

“I cannot quite grasp the fact that, but for one miserable piece of ground, Egypt is back in the hands of Egyptians,” Turi remarked. “After so much misery it seems unreal.”

“It will be real enough when the King stands in the palace at Het-Uart before the Horus Throne and gives the order to take it south,” Paheri replied. “What of the navy, Majesty?” Ahmose gave him an apologetic smile.

“Many ships have sustained damage during the boarding at the hands of Pezedkhu’s men,” he answered. “Those ships that need repair, together with their crew, must go back to Nekheb. Kay and you or Baba Abana can go with them. Both of you know shipbuilding. So one of you will be going home while the other stays here. I need the tributary patrolled, even during the lowest ebb of the river. No citizen of the city must be allowed to leave or enter. Cull out those men you do not need and send them to their villages for the spring sowing. I leave those decisions up to the pair of you.” Both men nodded sagely. Ahmose stood to signal that the meeting was over and all rose after him. “I must go back to Weset myself with the Medjay,” Ahmose finished, “but I will stay here until the middle of Tybi to receive your final reports and I will of course leave heralds with each of you so that we may speak to one another on papyrus.”

The truth is that I am strangely reluctant to go home, he said to himself as he watched them wander away in little groups, discussing the situation as they went with an avidity and relief that was apparent in their easy gait. I do not want to arrive there in time for my daughter’s funeral when I have already been drained of all pity and regret by the death of my soldiers. I do not want to meet Aahmes-nefertari’s new scribe. I do not want to hear of the fine work Prince Sebeknakht and my wife have been accomplishing together. Life with the army has been robust and simple and I dread a return to the complexities of my household. Or is it just that I dread coming face to face with Aahmes-nefertari for fear that the welter of jealousy and possessiveness I have been able to keep in check will erupt once more?

I have the gloomy feeling that I will be returning to a very different Weset to the one I left six months ago.

Ramose had been standing quietly at his elbow and now interrupted his reverie. “And what of me, Ahmose?” he asked gently. “If you give me a choice I will stay here, you know that.” With an effort Ahmose turned to him.

“Yes,” he answered. “But I want you to go back to Khemmenu where you belong. Take over the estate and the governorship that is yours. If the siege is not broken by the beginning of Thoth I will be back here, in this same spot, and you with me. Until then, get about some other business and forget the tarnished treasure Het-Uart holds!” He had spoken with a growing irritation, all at once seeing Ramose’s constancy as a weak, rather pitiful thing. Ramose looked at him sharply.

“I will obey you, of course,” he said simply. “I seem to have annoyed you. I apologize.” Ahmose’s shoulders slumped.

“No, it is not you,” he admitted. “To tell you the truth, Ramose, I am loath to go back to my southern responsibilities myself. I have become someone different these last few months. If I could look forward to some peaceful fishing, a few afternoons at target practice, a jug or two of wine at dinner and then nights without anxiety I might not feel this … this shrinking.” Ramose did not reply. He touched his friend briefly on the shoulder, bowed, and was gone.

Ahmose stood for a long while, feet apart, arms folded, eyes on the walls of the city that soared up into the dusky scarlet of an evening sky. The air was soft. Little zephyrs blew around him, stirring the hem of his kilt against his thighs and brushing across his cheek. Between his isolated and guarded tent and those red-tinged defences, his army sprawled, its members weaving patterns of orderliness in the usual apparent chaos. Licks of new flame began to prick the increasing dimness as the cooking fires were kindled.

Hent-ta-Hent is gone, Ahmose thought. Pezedkhu is gone. The Feather of Ma’at quivers and once again the colours and configurations within this living picture that is my life and Egypt’s destiny shift into alien shapes to which I must conform. And there sits Het-Uart, enveloped in the sullen silence of a vanquished beast that is mortally wounded but refuses to die. He remained lost in contemplation until the light from the tent behind him became stronger than the fading strength of Ra.

8

AAHMES-NEFERTARI WOKE EARLY
, coming to full consciousness with a thrill of anticipation. The scroll still lay on the table beside her couch where she had placed it after reading it for the hundredth time the night before. Today he is coming home, she thought, swinging her feet onto the cold tiled floor. It will not be this morning, but at some hour I will be dictating to Khunes perhaps, or giving the audience to Tetaky that I arranged, or walking beside the water with Ahmose-onkh, and a herald will approach to say that his ship is rounding the bend in the Nile. I will call out the household. We will gather above the watersteps, all of us full of excitement, and there he will be, standing in the prow with the Followers behind. Our eyes will meet. He will be smiling. Oh gods, how wonderful. Ahmose is coming home. I will not be able to settle to anything until I hold him in my arms again.

Calling softly to Senehat, she took up a cloak, went to the window, and rolled up the reed hanging. Cool air flowed over her at once and the drowsy music of the dawn chorus came muted to her ears from the still-shadowed trees of the garden. It was too early even for the gardeners and the dewy expanse of lawn running away below her was empty. Shivering a little, she turned back into the room as her body servant entered and bowed sleepily, her black hair tangled and her shift crumpled. “It is a beautiful morning, Senehat,” Aahmes-nefertari smiled. “Go and see if the water is heating in the bath house. Tell Neb-Amun that I want to be shaved as well as massaged after my bath and he is to put lotus essence in the oil. Bring me food while I wait, and send Uni to me as soon as he has dressed.”

The girl bowed and departed and Aahmes-nefertari began to pace, trying to keep her mind centred on the tasks of the coming day but unable to see past the familiar delineations of her husband’s face. In the months since he had left for the north, after laying such responsibilities on her shoulders that sometimes she despaired of her ability to carry them all, she had often solaced herself with memories. At first her imagination had supplied her with consistently clear pictures, but as the weeks fled by she had found to her distress that her husband’s presence became more nebulous, his body, his laugh, his gestures more difficult to conjure. His letters had revived him temporarily, but more and more she had found herself remembering the remembering, two steps removed from experience itself.

Hent-ta-Hent’s death had sealed that severing. He had not been there, had not seen the child tossing in a torrent of sweat, had not heard her cries rising above Amunmose’s chanting in a room full of the smoke of incense and the intimation of disaster. He had not held those tiny fingers as the warmth of life slowly receded from them, and when Aahmes-nefertari had turned in anguish and loss from the drenched and rumpled cot with its pathetic burden, there had been no strong arms to enfold her pain. No matter what his own feelings might have been when he read her account of his daughter’s dying, they could not match her own. She had seen the tiny chest rise and collapse for the last time. He had not. He would be present at the funeral. Hent-ta-Hent’s mourning period would not end for another week. But that was not the same.

They had been separated many times before. The years of Kamose’s war had been a series of agonizing farewells interspersed with brief periods of reunion tinged with the fear of an uncertain future. But through those years they had each changed little, growing slowly. Kamose’s murder and the subsequent purges had shocked them both towards an accelerated maturity that had ripened while they were apart. Ahmose had placed in her left hand a mountain of obligations and in her right the power to discharge them. Together they had created an explosion of fatigue, anxiety, grim willfulness and a burgeoning authority, from which a capable Queen had been born. Aahmes-nefertari was fully aware of what she had become. She doubted if her husband was.

Yet on this morning, this momentous morning, his face was there in all its clarity before her mind’s eye as it had not been for many months and with it came a welling-up of love that quickened her heartbeat and reddened her cheeks. She had been lonely and bereaved, one-half of a marvellous whole that would once more be united, and she breathed prayers of gratitude to Amun and Hathor as she measured out the confines of her bedchamber.

It was not Senehat, however, who knocked on her door, but Ahmose-onkh. He came trotting in completely naked, a slab of fresh bread in one hand and a candied date in the other, and made straight for the window, standing on tiptoe to peer over the sill. “Ra has begun to climb in the sky and the gardeners are out there now but they are standing about talking,” he said. “They should be setting up the canopies. What if Father comes before we are ready?” Aahmesnefertari dismissed both the contemplation of her husband and the doubts that lay behind it.

“There is plenty of time,” she chided her son. “A herald will arrive first and there will be ceremonies at the watersteps before we feast together. Calm down, Ahmose-onkh, or you will be in tears or trouble before noon. Eat that date, and do not touch anything with your sticky fingers until you have been washed.” The child crammed the date into his mouth, chewing furiously, and as he did so both Raa and Uni appeared in the doorway. “Raa, I have told you many times not to allow him to run about naked,” Aahmes-nefertari said in exasperation as the nurse took Ahmose-onkh by the wrist after many apologetic bows. “He is too old for that. Dress him formally today and try to keep him clean.”

“I am sorry, Majesty,” Raa said. “He has an uncanny ability to disappear the moment I turn my back.”

“I know.” Aahmes-nefertari bent and kissed the top of his shaven head, sliding her fingers through the long rope of hair straggling loose over his right shoulder. “Give him into the care of his guard. He can shoot his little arrows at the trees in the garden. Or see if one of the under-stewards will toss a ball for him. I don’t think he will want to sleep this afternoon.”

“He is almost ready for a tutor,” Raa grumbled. “He needs to put his energy into learning instead of racing about impeding the house servants and bothering the brickmakers.”

“I do learn, Raa!” Ahmose-onkh protested as he was led into the passage. “The brickmakers have been showing me how to mix the mud and the straw and scoop it into the moulds.”

“You are a Prince. You should not be mixing so readily with commoners.” Raa’s voice was growing fainter. “I will have a word with your guard who it seems to me enjoys gossiping with the labourers too much …” Aahmes-nefertari sighed and gave her attention to Uni who had been waiting with an impassive patience.

“She is correct, Majesty,” he said. “The Prince loves to pat the wet mud and watch the straw being chopped but it is not a suitable pastime for a Hawk-in-the-Nest.” Aahmesnefertari grimaced.

“I know, Uni, but I have been too busy to do more than kiss him good night,” she admitted. “I must give the matter some thought. He is an intelligent child. Is it too soon for a tutor?”

“I can ask Yuf to assess his readiness,” Uni replied. “Queen Aahotep will not mind. Yuf is to go to Djeb soon to inspect the tomb of her ancestor Queen Sebekemsaf and until then his duties will be light.”

“Well, I cannot concern myself with Ahmose-onkh today,” Aahmes-nefertari told him. “Speak to Yuf, if you like. It is a good idea. Raa loves her charge but he is continually wriggling out of her grasp and she is becoming exhausted. Come in, Senehat.” The girl slipped past the bulk of the steward and began to set the morning meal upon the table. The aroma of freshly baked bread sprinkled with sesame seeds filled the room and all at once Aahmesnefertari was ravenous. “Send to Emkhu out at the barracks,” she went on addressing Uni. “I will speak with him later this morning regarding a parade in the King’s honour. Tell Prince Sebek-nakht that no work is to be done on the old palace today and he must hold himself in readiness to greet Ahmose. Summon the Overseer of Grain. I want to talk to him after I have given audience to Tetaky. Send to Amunmose. He is invited to the feast tonight. Neferperet also. I hope that Ahmose approves my appointment of him as Chief Treasurer.”

“Majesty, you have worked wonders in the months the King has been away,” Uni said, and Aahmes-nefertari knew that the man had sensed the hesitation behind her words. “If His Majesty does not like what you have done, he will change it, but I do not think he will be displeased. Weset is flourishing under your care.”

“Under my whip, you mean!” Aahmes-nefertari laughed. “Keep a close watch on the preparations for the festivities, Uni. I want nothing to go wrong. We are celebrating more than the King’s return. We acclaim his triumph over the Setiu also.” She paused and met his steady gaze. “It has all been like a dream, has it not?” she said quietly. “I look back to the day that insulting letter came to my father, the one in which Apepa complained that the hippopotamuses in our marshes were disturbing his sleep with their coughing. Father was just a southern Prince then, a nothing in the eyes of Egypt’s conquerors in spite of his royal lineage. That was not so long ago. Sometimes I expect to wake up and find myself in my old quarters with Tani still asleep in the cot beside me and Father’s voice wafting through the window-hanging from the garden outside.” She shrugged. “I am overwhelmed by the unreality of what this family has achieved and I cannot believe that I am now the Queen of Egypt.”

“There is still Het-Uart,” the steward said smoothly. Aahmes-nefertari snorted, and waving him away she moved to the table.

“Trust you to grasp my ankles and pull me back towards the ground!” she responded without malice. “Get about your business, Uni. Senehat, you may serve me now.”

After she had eaten, she went to the bath house to be scrubbed and then shaved, plucked and kneaded with perfumed oil. Lying on the wooden bench while the man’s sure hands dug into her muscles and the heady scent of the lotus filled her nostrils, she thought of Uni, his perceptiveness, his trustworthiness in spite of his Setiu ancestry, and how she had come to rely on his judgement and quiet support. Akhtoy would be returning with Ahmose and would want to resume his place as Chief Steward. She did not relish the idea. Uni ran the household as she liked it to be run, efficiently and tactfully. He was firm but fair with the servants. He shielded her from unnecessary details. He was an observer. Standing behind her chair while she interviewed those she was considering for various posts, he would make his own assessments of their suitability and they seldom disagreed with her own. She did not always ask his opinion, but when she did, he gave it without dissembling.

I do not want Akhtoy to change all that, she thought, as wrapped in a sheet she made her way back to her quarters and sat down before her cosmetics table. I do not want the two of them glaring at each other over my head as I try to make decisions that will affect the whole of Egypt. But you will no longer be doing that, the other voice, the one she was desperately attempting to restrain, reminded her bleakly. Ahmose will. He delegated his power to you while he was away, but the moment he steps from his ship it reverts to him. You will have to learn co-operation, Queen Aahmes-nefertari! You will have to bite your tongue if his judgement seems less sound than yours.

But why should it? she asked herself as her cosmetician lifted the surface of the table to reveal the compartments full of face paints beneath. We have always been partners, Ahmose and I, keeping no secrets from one another, sharing the making of difficult decisions. What do I really fear? Not the loss of my authority, for Ahmose has always respected my reasoning and listened to my arguments. Perhaps it is merely the suspicion that in the exercise of his own power, male power, not blunted by my presence, he has become arrogant. His letters have been brisk. Almost cold. Because he has been preoccupied and hard-pressed or because he is beginning to resent me?

Or because … She held her breath against the sharp pain that knifed through her chest. Because I have not given him a healthy male child as I did for Si-Amun? Why should I believe that he is any different from other Kings in needing to guarantee a peaceful succession? As a Prince he did not care about such things and we were utterly united. But as a King, with nothing but a stepson and no daughter now to carry the royal blood, does he see danger and put the blame on me? But I am young yet, and so is he. There will be time for more children, male and female. Oh gods, Aahmes-nefertari, stop thinking. Stop thinking!

“What colour are you wearing today, Majesty?” the cosmetician enquired. He had finished brushing her face with the yellow ochre and was fingering the kohl pots.

“Scarlet,” she said impulsively. Yes, scarlet, she told herself, brilliant in the sun, and gold and lapis so that he is dazzled and sees nothing but me.

“Then I will oil your lids and sprinkle them with gold dust and use the black kohl,” he decided. “Close your eyes.”

When he had finished his work, he handed her the copper mirror and she stared at her burnished reflection carefully. Am I still beautiful? she asked the face that looked back at her so pensively. The full, red-hennaed lips parted in misgiving and the kohl-rimmed dark eyes under the shimmering lids were solemn. Will he still want me? Laying the mirror back in its case, she thanked the man with a nod and dismissed him.