Nefertiti

drifted in their sockets as she spoke. Her laugh was accompanied by a gust of stagnant marsh gas. She grinned as if she could see my reaction, revealing an array of false gold teeth among rotting black stumps.

She shuffled around the girls like an ancient animal or a seer in her fantastic rags. The princesses instinctively backed away from her. Meketaten held her nose and made a face behind the back of the Queen Mother. Suddenly, with shocking accuracy, she slapped the child hard across the face. The girl forced down the tears that sprang to her eyes.

‘Now that I have made the effort to come here, what do you wish to ask these girls? Hurry. It is late.’

I racked my brains.

‘You waste my time. Speak.’

‘Highness, I have no further questions. We have already talked.’

She scowled at me. Then she turned to the girls. ‘Sleep! Now. Any child who speaks will be punished.’

Nefernefrure began to sob again, great waves of unhappiness welling up inside her. The old monster shuffled over to the little girl and shouted into her distraught face. ‘Stop blubbing! Tears are futile. They have no effect upon me whatsoever.’ None of the other girls had the courage to defend their little sister.

She turned back to me. ‘And you and your idiot slave, follow me. Governess, the room is a disaster. See that it is ordered.’ And she shuffled out.

Khety blew out his cheeks, as if to say: I told you so. And he was right. Time was taking a slow and terrible revenge upon her, bone by bone. She was like a living corpse, except somewhere in that mind, probably over- complicated with the fears and terrible imaginings of a lifetime in power, was a keen intelligence and a refusal to submit to mortality without a struggle. But that did not account for her cruelty and viciousness. It was as if all human emotion had long since rotted down into a bile which ran black and vicious in her heart. Perhaps it was all that kept her in the land of the living.

We followed at a respectful distance. As she passed, everyone stepped back, lowering their heads respectfully, and then looked up frankly at Khety and me, with little more curiosity than if we were dinner for the crocodiles in the Sacred Pool. She seemed to know her way without help, and no-one offered to guide her. When she came to steps she showed no sign of hesitation but with quick, practised touches of her slippers quickly found her way onwards.

Eventually we came to a private chamber. Guards were set on either side of the door. As she passed, she flourished her hand and the doors were closed silently behind us. The room was devoid of personal touches: nothing more than a meeting room furnished with a throne on a raised dais which she ascended. She did not sit down in it but remained standing above us.

‘I will grant you a few moments of my time, which is short in every sense. But only because the King, my son, requests it. I have no wish, whatsoever, to discuss affairs of state with some ambitious and unimaginative little Medjay meddler. Speak.’

Here was a woman who had seen and engaged in the operations of power for decades. A woman who had presided over the most powerful reign of the dynasty and still influenced the present King. She waited, her blurred eyes open. It was a strange and disconcerting sensation to address them directly.

‘Highness, kindly describe your relationship with the Queen Nefertiti.’

‘She’s the wife of my son and the mother of six of my grandchildren. My female grandchildren.’

‘You have others?’

‘Of course. There is a harem; there are other wives.’

‘And other grandchildren?’

‘Yes.’

Stones speak more candidly than this. But the stoniness perhaps defended information that was delicate. Other children. Other claims to power.

As I hesitated, uncertain how to proceed, her blind eyes glittered with a kind of bitter amusement. But I would not let myself be distracted. I tried a different approach.

‘Your Majesty has ruled at the heart of the kingdom for many years, by the grace of Ra.’

‘Your point?’

‘Your Highness knows better than any the…challenges which Queens must transcend. Men are born with advantages; women must create their own. It is, as in your own example, if I may say so, a noble achievement.’

‘Don’t you dare to praise me. Who do you think you are?’ Once more she was breathless with anger. ‘I was born into a family of great power. My gender was always to my advantage. I made it so. It gave me a useful cover for my intelligence. And it has enabled me to do all the things I have achieved. Most men fear powerful women. But there are a few who enjoy them. My husband was one. Without me, this city and its god would not exist.’

Khety and I exchanged glances. Even though she was blind I still felt she could see everything.

‘And the Queen?’ I asked.

‘What about her?’

She stared at me, hard. There would be no yielding here.

‘Would this city not exist without her?’

‘It seems to be surviving so far.’

Silence.

‘You are lost already,’ she continued, decisively. ‘You know nothing. You have nothing to ask me because you have discovered nothing and understood nothing.’

It was somewhat true, and all the more infuriating for being so.

I said, ‘I find a young woman, to all purposes identical to the Queen, murdered, her face removed. I find no evidence that the Queen’s disappearance was either violent or against her will. I do, however, find reasons why she might have decided to disappear of her own accord.’

She grinned, baring her gold teeth, in reply. And then she was caught out by a racking cough. She spat out a little phlegm, careless of where it landed. Khety and I just stared at it.

‘Can you hold dreams in your hand?’ she continued. ‘Can you say why people need gods, and why power’s legs must needs be crooked on the straight road? Can you say why men cannot be honest? Can you say why time is more powerful than love? Can you say why hate is more powerful than time? There are many questions your method cannot accommodate.’

I could not say why any of these things should be so. I played my last card: ‘She is not dead.’

Her face did not change. ‘I’m delighted to hear your optimism in the face of so much evidence to the contrary.’

‘Why do you think she disappeared?’

‘Why do you think she has disappeared?’

‘I think she had to make a choice. Between fight and flight. She chose flight. Perhaps it was the only way for her to survive.’

Her face puckered with rage. ‘If that is the case, then she is a despicable little coward,’ she spat. ‘Did she think it would be so easy, to just disappear when things got difficult? Pack up her tender feelings, abandon her children and her husband and disappear, crying her futile tears? Damn her for her selfishness, for her vanity, for her weakness.’

Her anger echoed around the cold room. Then, suddenly, she staggered a little. Her hand flew up to her face while the other searched about for the arm of the throne, but in her panic she missed, her legs lost all power, and she slipped down to the stone platform. She made no sound. Her veils had fallen from her shoulders and lay about her like white and gold linen snakes. For a moment she was quite still. I moved to her aid, and as I did so her breath began to rattle and shake as she struggled, tangled as she was in the folds of her robes. As she moved the clothing came away from her chest. Its brown skin hung in shrivelled folds from the bones. She seemed more a shadow doll, all sticks and string, than a living thing. Then I saw, with horror, black and blue cankers, open sores, blossoming where her breast should have been.

Without thinking, I touched her shoulder. And she screamed. The noise seemed to pierce the stone of the walls. I heard feet running towards us outside in the corridors. Then she grasped my head and pulled it down towards her rotting face. Her grip was supernatural, and she whispered urgently, wetly, into my ear: ‘Time himself is feasting on me. He is dining with care. He is powerful. But my hatred will survive me. Remember that, when you