‘I don’t know what will become of us if the Queen too is dead,’ she continued. ‘If someone would murder the Queen herself, then what will they do to us? What good would we be to anyone? Who would want us? We would be nothing more than pale reflections of the dead. We will be spirits trapped in life.’
‘I do not think the Queen is dead,’ I said. ‘I believe she lives.’
‘May the gods prove you right.’ She sounded relieved to hear my words. She turned my hand over in hers so that the palm faced upwards. ‘I think I see something here.’
I felt myself seizing up inside. I cannot abide the nonsense of fortune-telling and horoscopes, all that silly business of spells and potions and mumbo-jumbo. Seeing patterns and meanings where none exist. It goes against my training and my instincts.
She must have sensed this at once, for she smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry, I am not going to tell your fortune like a market-place prophetess. All I want is to say what I feel. That you are a good man. That you want to get home.’
I felt like a piece of faience that has suddenly been caught by sunlight. Ridiculous. The white statue of Nefertiti, still meditating on the black pool at her feet, ignored us. ‘May she protect you on your journey,’ she said, quietly, as if she knew already that I would have to travel into much darker places before I could finally, if ever, reach that longed-for place that seemed to recede with every step and every day.
‘I won’t forget you,’ I said.
She smiled ruefully, then opened the doorway back into the main Harem building. I stepped through it. The ghost of her scent stayed with me for a moment, then disappeared.
19
Khety was waiting for me on the other side. I asked him to take me to the house of Nakht, the noble. We arrived there without being seen. The street, in the south suburb, was shadowy and silent, the dark villas and estates secure and hidden behind their high walls. The air was thick with heat. Nothing stirred. I knocked quietly on the door. Quickly, it was unlocked, and Nakht’s kind face, not the porter’s, appeared. He looked tremendously relieved.
‘It’s the middle of the night and you open your own door,’ I said.
He gestured for us to enter, and we passed through into the sanctuary of his house without speaking.
We sat in his garden, around a single lamp. The scents of strange flowers hung richly in the warm night air.
‘Can anyone observe us?’ I asked.
‘No. I built this place for privacy.’
The walls were high, and the frogs around the pool talked louder than we did. He poured some wine.
‘I’m honoured to offer you some sanctuary.’
‘It will just be for one night.’
He inclined his head. ‘So you survived Mahu’s hunt. Apparently you were the intended duck.’
‘Is my demise the talk of the town?’
‘It is indeed. It has contributed to the feeling that no-one is in control any more. First Nefertiti. Then the young Medjay officer. Now you. Everyone is convinced she has been murdered. And the city is obviously still unprepared for this ill-conceived Festival. The entourages are arriving to find unfinished accommodations, inadequate supplies and a King without a Queen. It all seems to be escalating into chaos.’
‘Someone is in control of this, but it is not Akhenaten,’ I said.
‘Nor is it Mahu, if that is what you are thinking. Whatever else he is, he’s famous for his loyalty, and he’s not so stupid as to have you killed at his own party.’
‘So who, then?’
Nakht shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But you must be getting warm to earn this kind of attention.’
‘I feel I’m getting nowhere at all, and time is dripping away fast. Before long the basin will be empty and dry.’
‘We know the dead girl’s identity, and we know some of what happened that night,’ said Khety, encouragingly.
‘Who would want Nefertiti dead?’ I asked Nakht. ‘Who would want to destabilize everything? Ramose?’
‘I cannot see that. Ramose stands at the heart of the new order. He admires the Queen, and it seems to me he prefers dealing with her than with the King because she has a more pragmatic understanding of the affairs of the Great Estate than he does. He’s obsessed with his grand design, and his new religion.’
I gazed into the fast-dwindling shallows of my wine. ‘What about within the old Priesthood? The Amun faction? What kind of power could they have here?’
‘The whole point of the city was to create a capital apart from them and their power-bases in Thebes and Memphis,’ Nakht said, refilling my goblet.
‘But surely they still have their powers? Akhenaten can ban them, but he can’t destroy whole families, whole generations. They won’t give it all up without a struggle.’
Nakht nodded and looked off into the dark foliage of his garden. ‘I was one of them myself. Yet now I’m here. There were many of us who chose the pragmatic way of conversion to the Aten. But it was more than pragmatism. The Amun Priesthood was not of course just a Priesthood, although they venerated the god, kept the rituals and managed the festivals. As you know, they controlled vast commercial interests too. They owned a great deal of the land and its riches. Their commercial and political interests clashed repeatedly with those of the royal household. It was inevitable that at some point one or the other would have to make a bold move for absolute supremacy. Now, I have my private doubts about the Great House and their melodramas, but’-he smiled quietly-‘in the end I thought how much more interesting it would be to see what would happen when Akhenaten committed us to his enlightenment. Perhaps, after all, it will be to the greater benefit of many people. It has opened many doors previously shut in the faces of talented but non-elite men. It has brought the business of worship out of the carefully preserved secrecy of the temples and into the light of day for all to see. And there is something about it, in its finest forms, which tells people not to be afraid to live. Let’s not forget, the Amun families are generally repulsive. They take their supremacy for granted. It was a special pleasure to see the shock and amazement on their arrogant faces as Akhenaten and Nefertiti stripped away their powers and riches. Welcome to the human race!’
He looked unembarrassed by this confession.
‘But of course in converting to the Aten you also managed to preserve your own fortune,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘I can’t see the purpose of destroying my life and the work of my ancestors just to prove a point, especially since it was a point I disagreed with. It was a way of converting their efforts into something new, something more generous. I wanted to explore the new possibilities. Do you think I was wrong?’
‘No, I think you did the necessary thing.’
‘Not the
‘I am wary of the words “right” and “wrong”. We use them far too easily to judge things which we have no competence to judge. And I could not say that the things I have seen here in Akhetaten are
He nodded. ‘Certainly. The way is difficult. Things get messy and complicated as soon as they descend from the realm of the ideal into the chaos of the human. There are many people here who harbour serious doubts about what has happened lately. They see idealism changing into fanaticism. There are the same old self-serving struggles for personal power. But to return to the Amun question, it is quite likely they are here too, under the guise of conversion, perhaps waiting for their instructions, waiting for the opportunity to bring down the new regime.’
I drank some more wine. And then a name popped into my head.
‘And Horemheb?’
Nakht sat up. ‘Now that’s a name to reckon with.’
‘We met some young guards who seemed to be completely infatuated with him.’
‘I’m not surprised. He seems to have come from nowhere, built himself a brilliant career, married the Queen’s
