Nefertiti

stale, with a slight film of dust. The bed and its sheet-untouched. The statuette of Akhenaten-unmoved. I passed the lamp back and forth over the floor, trying to see whether there were prints of any kind. I could see nothing. I set it down on the desk, took out this journal, and wrote down all I recalled of the last two days.

The one thing I returned to was the look that passed, like a brief complication, no more than a shadow, across the face of Mahu when I mentioned the name of Ay. Who was this man? Could I gamble on the unknown power of that name, at least for a few days? Perhaps. But it felt like risking my life, and those of my family, on a wild guess.

I sat looking out into the courtyard lit by the full moon. Companion of my night work through my life. How many nights had I spent under his light, seeing things in the dark? The night life of our world, when the god travels on his barque through the perils of the Otherworld, and I in my way travel through mine (on foot of course). When I could have been sleeping close and quiet with Tanefert, I had spent too many nights stumbling among the dark detritus of mortal crimes and unredeemable tragedies. Regret comes to us always when it is far too late to change that which we have done.

As I unrolled the scroll to start another sheet, and at the moment when I had run out of all thoughts and possibilities, I found written, but not in my hand, these signs:

A shiver ran through me. I scanned the room again, as if someone might now be standing in the shadows, waiting with a knife. But there was no-one. This writing must have been done-could have been done-at any moment in the last few days. And I could not but believe that someone had written this here knowing I would find it about now, this very evening, perhaps; they needed to tell me something they could not, or did not, wish to communicate in any other way. But who, and how, and why?

I read the hieroglyphs. This was my interpretation:

Do you go to the necropolis. Do you go down into the Otherworld

As it is said in the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day

Do you find there stability

When you reach what you seek it is a woman

When you reach what you seek it is a woman

Her sign is Life

Enigmatic instructions! It seemed like nonsense. I read them again. I had seen the site of the necropolis near the artisans’ village. There were also of course the noble and royal rock tombs under construction in the cliffs to the north. But how could anyone go down into the Otherworld, following the instructions and prayers of the Book of the Dead, unless they were themselves dead? And then came two signs of hope: the hieroglyph for stability, the pillar of power raised upright before the Gods to restore order to the world. The hieroglyph was also worn as an amulet to accompany the dead. And then those final hieroglyphs: Her sign is Life. The symbol of life was the Ankh, which I had seen everywhere in the city being passed down to creation by the Aten.

Her sign. Was ‘She’ the source of this strange message? If so, was this proof she was still alive, and instructing me to find her? Possibly. But why in this mad way? And then came another idea: was Mahu playing with me, luring me by means of this puzzle to my doom? I had no choice. I could not ignore this message. I had to act while I still had the advantages of darkness and surprise.

There were guards posted at my door, but were they guarding the unfinished terrace beyond the window? I looked out for a minute, and no-one passed by. I listened at the door, and I heard the two guards speaking quietly to each other as they paced up and down. I went back to the window, and the moonlight showed me the way I needed to go: across the terrace and over the wall.

I write these words not knowing whether I shall ever write more. Will there be more to tell? Or will this journal be found and returned to you, Tanefert, my beloved? What else can I write on this scroll, perhaps the last, but a message to you and the girls. I love you. Is that enough? I do not know. I leave the empty scrolls that follow in the deepest hope that they will soon be covered with more writing. Not, please Ra, left blank after my death.

25

There are wise men and seers who claim to have visited the Otherworld in visions. They starve themselves, or sing in the language of the birds, and all we mortals can do is believe, or disbelieve and say, ‘These men are mad. Lock them away, in prisons of stone and silence, so that their visions and their impossible tales cannot frighten us.’ I am now one of those men. And now I must seek the words to explain the mystery.

I could hear the guards outside the door, playing a game of senet, casting their astragals and moving their pieces accordingly through the long, snaking journey of chance, the propitious and the unlucky squares. I was lucky, for the game preoccupied them. Boredom is the fugitive’s greatest gift from the god of chance. Carrying only my leather satchel, I hopped over the lintel of the window and landed silently outside. I crouched there for a moment in a sliver of shadow, for the moon was still full, and the silver light, creating vacant silhouettes of trees and buildings, made everything seem like a vast and perfect simulacrum of the absent world by night.

It was as well I waited, for just then a guard ambled past me, a body’s length away. He was looking up at the stars. I saw how his hair needed cutting, how his sandals were in poor condition, how his callused feet were dusted silver in this light. He stopped, looked up for a moment, took a slow breath, thinking about something-his destiny, or his debts perhaps-then carried on. I could have taken him, and with a swift jerk of the head despatched him in silence, but it was not necessary. I thought too of the family, somewhere, who would grieve his loss. To me he was a passing figure, to them a unique, irreplaceable life. Why add to the woe of the world? And besides, his body or his absence would have alerted the others. Better to slip away unnoticed. Better not to leave traces of change. People notice change more quickly than anything.

So he passed and I moved forward, making less than no noise. There were gods in my feet that night; my body seemed suddenly to be possessed by a different energy, a kind of lightness. I scaled the wall, its height perhaps ten cubits, as if it were nothing, as if the laws of the world were already slipping and changing, becoming fluid with possibility.

I dropped softly on the far side and found myself in the garden of a house. I crouched down behind a small shrine. I looked carefully around the side, and saw that there was a dinner in progress. Lamps lit up the white napkins on small tables set beside a pool that rippled with luxurious light. Another world, suddenly: the tinkle and murmur of people eating and talking casually. A little drama of talk and food, in a small halo of light under the vast panorama of stars obscured for them by the glow of a few lamps.

I skirted the garden’s borders, keeping to the shadows, hoping no dogs kept guard. I sensed that the wall continued all the way around the property. I had little choice but to try to reach the front of the house. As I moved I kept my eyes on the dinner party. A woman stood up, making some comment whose astuteness and wit precipitated a round of laughter. She moved out of the light and into the house. I used this moment to move quickly along the far border of the garden. A long dark passage to the side of the house lay ahead of me, except where an open doorway’s patch of light fell across my path. I hesitated, listened. I could hear the woman moving about in the interior, humming, as if assembling the next course of the meal, and issuing instructions to the servants. I heard footsteps passing away from me, up a tiled corridor. The woman’s humming continued. It was close. I held still. Suddenly she appeared in the light. She looked up and saw me. Quickly I put my hand over her mouth and at the same time a metal dish slipped from her hand. Despite my attempts to catch it, it hit the ground and clanged noisily.

We froze. A man called, ‘Is everything all right?’ Her eyes were wild with fear, and her body struggled. But as her gaze took me in, she went still. She realized she knew me before I made the connection. It was the woman from the boat. The intelligent, handsome woman. I slowly took my hand away from her mouth, begging for her silence with a simple gesture. She nodded. She called back to the man, ‘Yes, I just dropped something.’

Suddenly I realized how close, how tight, I was still holding her. She didn’t resist, but looked wryly up at