mouthfuls of the delicate flesh.
‘I brought you here because I know you have found the Queen,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would have left you to the tender care of Mahu, who hates you.’
I said nothing. Anyway, my mouth was full.
‘In fact, I will express that thought another way. She is a clever woman, and would not have led you to her unless she wished to be found. True?’
Again, I did not reply. I needed to see where we were going. I remembered the look of animal fear upon that beautiful face when Ay’s name was mentioned.
‘Therefore she has a plan, which to some extent depends on your participation. And of course this plan must be to reveal herself again during the Festival. Why else would she sequester herself?’
It was not a question requiring an answer.
‘I have not found her,’ I said. ‘I do not know where she is.’
He stopped eating. Those snow-filled eyes stared at me. ‘I know you have found her. I know she is not dead. I know she will return. So the only question is, what happens next? She cannot know, so this is the area of interest to me.’
At a nod from Ay, the servant cleared the dishes and set new ones.
‘And what have I got to do with all this?’
‘You are her go-between. That being the case, I wish you to take her a message from me.’
‘I’m not a messenger boy.’
‘Sit down.’
‘I’ll stand.’
‘The message is this: ask her to come to me, and I will restore order. There is no need for this melodrama. There are sensible solutions, correct choices to be made, for all of us. She does not have to fight us all to return stability to the Two Lands.’
I waited for more, but he said nothing.
‘Is that it?’
‘That is what I wish her to know.’
‘It’s not much of an offer.’
Suddenly he was angry. ‘Do not presume to comment on what does not concern you. You are lucky to be alive.’
I watched him, the flash of intensity, the brief revelation of his power.
‘Tell me one thing. What is the Society of Ashes?’
Ay gave me the long stare.
‘And do golden feathers mean anything to you? And a water that wets not, and yet burns?’
His face gave even less away, but this time he got up and walked away without bidding me farewell.
So I sat down and finished my lunch. After everything I had gone through, a good meal was the least I deserved.
38
I was returned to shore, my belly full, wine in my head, my finger still throbbing. I turned back to look at the great ship. Ay seemed like a mirage: vividly there, but gone when looked at from the wrong angle. Was he a figure of infinite power, or some magician’s trick of smoke and mirrors?
It was mid-afternoon now, and the sun, remorseless above the simmering cooking pot of the city’s landscape, did nothing to clarify my state of mind. Nor did the crowds, overheated and overwhelmed, that now packed the harbour and the city’s ways. Something was blurring the atmosphere of the place. After the hours on the ship, on the flowing water, and the lost time in jail, I felt heavy and weary, as if dry land was pulling me down. I felt like I wanted to wash and then sleep in the dark.
But I had to see Nefertiti. Not because I wanted to carry Ay’s message-although I wanted to see its effect upon her-but because I needed to see if Khety had managed to reach the Queen’s fort; and also because I had things to say. Things to tell her. Shards of story. I knew she could put them together better than I, if she chose.
I made my way to the necropolis. No sign of the cat. I approached the chapel for the second time, checking to make sure I was not observed, and entered its little precinct of stone and shadow. In the flat afternoon glare it seemed less mysterious, less convincing. In the sanctuary, the offering bowls had been kicked away. The hieroglyphs had been defaced. My name was scored out. So now someone knew about this place.
I examined the narrow gap through which on that night I had entered the Otherworld. But it was now sealed up. There was no way in. How, then, could I reach her? And why had this place been vandalized? It was obviously deliberate. Was she preventing me from reaching her again? I was furious. What did she want of me?
I went first to the pig sty, and rooted about like a fool for the trap door while the pigs sniffed at me. But the door refused to open. Suddenly I had the sense of being watched. I glanced up and down the alleyway-empty. It was oddly quiet, though. Someone could have trailed me, and stepped back into the shadow of a doorway. No other choice, then: I almost ran to the Great River, taking a zigzag route through the streets and ways, moving through crowds then slipping into a side passage, then doubling back. I kept glancing over my shoulder; I felt in my bones I was right, yet no-one seemed intent upon pursuing me. I scanned the crowds, but they all seemed occupied with other plans. Perhaps the unreality of the city was finally influencing my mind. Still, I could think of several people who would benefit from trailing me now and I could afford to take no risks, not with so much at stake.
I pretended to be moving in a northerly direction towards the Aten temples, and joined the throng on the Royal Road. Then I took a side turning to the east and, using the advantages of the grid pattern of construction, turned right and right again, doubling back upon myself, checking at each corner that no-one seemed to be following, then slipping through the crowds again on the Royal Road and heading west, through the warren of streets to the docks.
I chartered the worst kept and least noticeable skiff, kicking the old boatman out of his afternoon sleep. He rubbed his eyes, and began to row. I looked back across the crowded dock. Many people were observing the water. Many other boats were setting out. None seemed to be following me.
We crossed in silence. The man glanced at me curiously once, then pretended to concentrate on the river. The traffic was busy, and we passed in and out of the bigger ships, the slow ferries, the flotillas of pleasure-boats, and a small herd of water-buffalo struggling across, their heads held up above the waterline.
He left me on the far side. Suddenly the simple quietness of the world returned to me: a few birds, some children playing at the water’s edge, the occasional calls of women working in the fields. No other boats were approaching or landing here. The sun, slowly descending towards the western cliffs, guided me towards the general area where the fort lay.
I set off between the fields of emmer and barley. How immaculate they were, tended to perfection over all time as if the fields themselves were worshipped gods. At one point a group of men riding donkeys appeared ahead of me, but we nodded and continued without attending much to one another. The track between the fields reached a wider path, and I followed it north, along the axis of the river’s course, through a tiny settlement where the people still lived in the same low, dark mud shacks with their animals as they had done since time began. Everyone, including the babies and the old men reclining on their low benches, stopped to watch me pass. I felt as if I had stepped down from the sky. These were the working poor who had possibly, probably, never even crossed the Great River to the city. To them it was a kind of fable.
Then I was back again among the fields and date palms, and the sounds of early evening. Where was this place? Eventually, sweating and frustrated, I found myself standing at the boundary between the Black Land and the Red. Behind me the verdant yellows, viridians and spring greens of the cultivated world; one step in front of me began the stony dereliction that surrounds us. A flat, forsaken plain extended to a continuous wavering line of crumbly red cliffs. The Red Land continued beyond them, eternal, unseen, sacred, to the end of the world.
And there, up to my right, stood the building, its squat walls giving no sign of the life within. Of course there were no doors and no windows, but I had assumed I would be able to call, or find some means of access. I stood in
