There were few such ships in the fleet. I had seen others before, in Thebes, and had once even toured
The ship, with an attendant flotilla of lesser craft to guide it, slowly and perfectly negotiated its arrival at the dockside with hardly a bump. I was desperate to see what this man looked like, who carried such mystery and precipitated such fear. The boat deck was now crowded, not only with Priests and sailors, but also with dignitaries and officials who had ascended the gangplank as soon as the ship had docked. Among them I struggled to make out a figure to whom they all bowed. I could see nothing. It would be a long time until the jam of river boats was cleared.
I began to move our boat to the shore, trying not to attract the attention of the soldiers on the river, who, in any case, were also fascinated by the spectacle of such an arrival. The bank was no more than twenty cubits away, and I hoped it would seem we were just drifting away from the main body of onlookers. We managed to secure the barque to the trunk of a palm, and stepped into the warm, shallow waters.
‘I hate getting my feet wet,’ said Khety.
‘Then you should have taken an office job.’
We made our way up a service path that ran beside a little watercourse. Here, among the foliage of the trees, all was suddenly quiet and still.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
‘We’re just below the main gardens of the Great Palace.’
‘Terrific. Guards everywhere. How do we get onto the road without being seen?’
‘Like this.’ And with a quick hop Khety leaped up and shimmied over a wall. I thought, not for the first time: the security in this place is shocking. I made the same movement, although I confess with less elegance.
I wish I hadn’t, for as I dusted myself down I looked up to see two armed guards facing us. The alleyway in both directions was empty but for a child playing with a ball. Khety looked at me, I looked at him, and then, as if we had been operating in this way for many years, we launched ourselves simultaneously at the two men. The force of my first blow sent my opponent staggering back off-balance and off-guard against the wall opposite, where I swiftly followed up with a couple of hard punches to the gut and the face. He parried the second, and I felt a blow to the side of my head: he had clouted me with his wooden baton. But no pain came, and before I knew what I was doing I had picked up the baton from the dust where it had fallen and was beating the man’s head and body. He curled into a tight ball, shivering and scrabbling to shield himself from the blows, and I heard the crack and snap of his finger bones as I beat down hard. Suddenly blood spattered brightly against the wall and the dust, and his little cries and moans ceased. I realized that Khety was holding back my arm, saying, ‘Enough, enough, let’s go.’
We abandoned the two inert bodies to the flies and the sun and ran to the top of the alleyway. I knew even then it was at least unwise to have left them there, but what could we do? The child with his ball had vanished.
The alley gave on to one of the thoroughfares leading to the Royal Road. Winding our linens around our heads again, we passed into the busy passage. Everyone seemed to be moving in the same direction, keen to witness the spectacle of the arrival of Ay. We emerged onto the Royal Road at a place between the Window of Appearances and the Great Aten Temple. The road itself was empty, in that odd way when everything is pushed aside to make a clearing for ceremony. Crowds had gathered along its sides, though, and many more observers crowded onto balconies or huddled at windows and on roofs. There must have been thousands of people, but they were so quiet, so hushed, it was possible to hear the birds chattering.
Up to our right, the air suddenly seemed to charge itself, and a team of chariots appeared, the hooves of the horses clattering on the stones in time with each other. Trumpets blared like the announcement of battle, with the crowds on either side of the road like puzzled opponents. Khety and I pushed our way through for a closer view and saw, as the cavalcade slowed down, in the central chariot a tall, haughty man dressed in a white tunic and modest amounts of gold and jewellery.
His face was bony. Condescension seemed to seep from every pore. His manner suggested his utter contempt for the world in which he was being forced to make an appearance. The cavalcade came to a stop. Dust whirled in the hot air. Ay turned slowly to stare balefully at the Window of Appearances, which at this moment was significantly empty. With barely disguised reluctance, while stage-managing an expression of sombre respect across his tight face, he lazily raised his arms to the empty space and waited. We too continued to stand, observing the man at the centre of this.
Then Akhenaten himself appeared suddenly in the Window, accompanied by his girls, Meretaten taking the place her mother should have occupied. The crowd instantly noticed the absence of the Queen. A man next to me whispered to his wife, ‘See? She is still not there. The child stands in her place.’ The wife made a gesture for him to be silent, as if this too were a treasonable thought.
The two men looked at each other for a few moments, and it seemed as if an understanding of great complexity was taking place between them. Akhenaten made no gesture of recognition of the raised and respectful arms for at least a minute. ‘Not a hair’s breadth between them,’ Horemheb had said. But it did not immediately seem so. Ay maintained his posture, his head now bowed, without wavering. The two men stood in their attitudes, and I thought how odd was the balance of power between the Great Akhenaten and the fastidious courtier, older in years. Then Akhenaten took a magnificent gold and lapis lazuli collar from a cushion and lowered it ostentatiously around the thin, waiting neck of Ay. This was a signal for a fanfare, and Ramose himself stepped forward to recite the liturgy.
It was during this recitation that I noticed there were spots of blood on my sandals. Then Khety surreptitiously nudged me and nodded. Coming through the silent gathering, at some distance yet, a set of guards. And with them, riding on the shoulders of another man, presumably his father, the small boy with the ball. The boy was looking through the crowd. As I turned my head he saw me, and pointed.
At this moment the liturgy finished, and the cavalcade moved on towards the Great Aten Temple with a noise of trumpets and hooves and obedient cries of celebration from the crowd who had raised their arms, as one, to the sun disc. Through this forest of conforming arms, which had the added advantage of screening us, we pushed our way out. I glanced back and the boy’s mouth was open, shouting, but drowned out by the general noise. We moved faster, trying not to make ourselves too obvious, but it was clear from people’s surprised faces that we were behaving strangely. No-one stopped us, though, and we reached a passageway and hurried down it.
‘Where shall we go?’
‘The safe house?’
I turned and looked again, just as the boy and the guards reached the top of the passage. He pointed, and his yell came loudly down the narrow walls. We ran. Khety knew his way through the back streets, but we were disadvantaged by the regularity of the city’s layout: where were the crooked labyrinths of Thebes when I needed them? People turned to watch us run, and we had to double back when we saw soldiers moving up the road towards us. I have never before been on the wrong end of a chase. Always it is the Medjay in pursuit; now I was the pursued, running for my life.
We ran between the half-built shadows of the shanty town, and it seemed we had escaped our pursuers. The alleyway of the safe house was deserted. With a quick glance either way, we slipped behind the tatty curtain into the room, and bolted shut the heavy wooden door. We lay there, trying to suppress the jagged gasping in our aching chests; we were making too much noise in the listening silence.
‘What do we do now?’
For the first time since I had met him, Khety looked honestly frightened.
‘I don’t know!’
We just looked at each other, praying to the old gods that some inspiration or luck would come to us. But there was nothing. We were on our own.
‘We could go to my family.’ Khety looked at me, frightened but brave. I was grateful to him for the honourable intention with which he made the offer. He meant his family would hide us. But the risk to them was far too great. Discovery would mean torture and execution for the men, mutilation and slavery for the women. I would not expose them to such a catastrophic fate, even though so much was already at stake.
Perhaps I saw a blur of a shadow of a movement, perhaps I imagine this only now, but suddenly a bronze axe-head shattered the middle panel of the door. It stuck there, and I could hear the curses of the man trying to free his weapon and the barked commands of his superior officer. We ran up the ladder just as another blow from
