Nefertiti

have betrayed me. You have mocked and destroyed the great inheritance of this world. Your curses have no power. How can you feed the people? You cannot. How can you restore maat? You cannot. How can you show yourself again under the sign of the Aten? You cannot. The people hate you, the army despises you, and the Priests are plotting your assassination. I gave you this world and all its riches and power, and what did you do with it? You made this fool’s plaything of mud and straw. Can greatness be conjured from such materials? No. It crumbles, it decays, it falls apart. Soon there will be nothing left of this city and its mad King but shadows, bones and dust. Your father’s spirit dies a second death of shame. You will give up the crowns. Fall to your knees.’

Akhenaten stared at Ay. ‘To you? Never.’ He had lost, but he remained defiant.

Nefertiti emerged from the shadows. My heart twisted inside me when I saw her face.

‘You are God’s Father, but you cannot be the King,’ she said.

Something changed in Ay’s expression. I had seen it before, on the face of a committed gambler about to double the stakes.

‘You do not know who I am,’ he said.

His words changed the currents running in the dark air. Nefertiti stood still, caught out.

‘You are Ay, are you not?’

He moved among the columns, appearing and disappearing in the light and shadows, the conjuror of himself.

‘You cannot remember?’

She said nothing, waiting.

‘Memory is such a strange thing. Who are we without it? No-one.’

Still she waited.

He smiled. ‘I am glad you do not remember. I intended it to be so. I wanted you to be pure of all associations of the heart.’

‘That cannot be. The heart is everything.’

He shook his head gravely. ‘No, it is not. I hoped that you would have learned the greatest truth. There is only power. Not love, not care. Only power. And I gave it to you.’

‘You gave me nothing.’ At last she sounded angry.

He smiled again, as if this were another little triumph, and then dealt his blow softly and quietly: ‘I gave you life.’

He watched her face as she struggled to accommodate the implications of these few words. He was a murderer, his knife twisting expertly in the heart, observing the suffering of his victim. Then she spoke, her voice oddly calm, as if the worst had happened and nothing more could hurt her.

‘You are my father?’

‘Yes. Do you know me now?’

‘I see what you are. I see you have a desert where your heart should be. What happened to your heart? What happened to your love?’

‘These are soft words, daughter. Love, mercy, compassion. Strike them from your heart. Action is everything.’

She came closer to him, curious despite her obvious pain. ‘If you are my father, who is my mother?’

He dismissed her with a wave.

‘Do not turn away from me. Tell me who my mother is.’

‘She was no-one. She is nameless. She died giving birth to you.’

This new fact did its quiet and terrible damage. She buckled under the pain of the loss, the loss of something she had never had except in dreams, her hands against her breast as if holding the broken pieces of her heart in her tight fists.

‘How could you do this to me?’

‘Do not try me with feeble words and arguments of care. You are not a child, to speak of childish things.’

‘I was never a child. You took that from me too.’

She turned into the shadows and disappeared. Ay strolled casually among the pillars, waiting calmly for her to return. As he passed close to me I swiftly drew the knife from his belt and held it at his throat, touching the soft, chilly skin, almost cutting it open, my arm pinning his arms behind his back. It was like holding almost nothing, he was so still. The guards came running in, but I said quietly, ‘Stay back, or I will cut his head off.’ Khety disarmed them efficiently.

Nefertiti returned to the lit part of the chamber. I pressed the knife blade harder against the gently pulsing vein in Ay’s neck and was glad to feel, at last, a tremor of uncertainty. ‘I can kill him now, or we can hold him and return to the city. Arrest him; put him on trial for treason and murder.’

She looked at me sorrowfully, then shook her head. ‘Let him go.’

I could not believe she meant these words. ‘Who do you think had Tjenry tortured, mutilated and killed? Who do you think had Meryra burning in agony? He may not have committed the acts, he had his Chief of Physicians to do that; but he planned and incited them. And after everything he has done to you? This man has brought nothing but suffering and destruction, and you wish me to let him go? Why?’

‘Because we must.’

I threw the knife away in disgust. Ay slipped free of my grasp, and with his red leather glove slapped me hard across the face. ‘That is for having the temerity to touch me.’ Then he slapped me again. ‘And that is for having the temerity to make baseless and unprovable accusations.’

I stared at him, unmoved.

‘My daughter is an intelligent woman,’ he continued. ‘She understands.’

And then he smiled. I loathed that smile.

‘You have everything in the world,’ I said. ‘Yet some fury is raging inside you, eating away until you are a hollow man. Whatever it is, it will never be satisfied.’

Ay ignored my contempt. He bent down and scooped up a handful of dust, which he studied casually. ‘I never liked this place, and I doubt now I shall be buried here. Why do we need all those pretty pictures of the good afterlife? See how we depict our desperate hope for more life; rich fields and many servants to work them; great honour and position; the acquisition of wealth and property-the best the world can give, or that we can take. Yet it is all nothing but paint. We both know what happens when we die. Nothing. We are bones and dust. There is no eternal life, no Otherworld, no Field of Reeds. The sweet birds of eternity sing only in our heads. They are all stories we tell to protect ourselves from the truth. Now, if I had everything I would be able to change this dust back into life. I would buy more days and years as if they were grain, and I would live for ever. But it cannot be done. We cannot survive time. Only the gods are immortal. And they do not exist.’

He let the desert grit fall from his open hand onto the floor and turned again to Nefertiti. ‘There are more practical matters requiring our immediate attention. I offer you this: return to Thebes and I will negotiate a new agreement with the different parties. You will agree to return to the old ways. You will make a public worship of Amun in the Karnak Temples before a gathering of the Priests. This will be an absolute necessity. In return, your daughters will be allowed to live. Your husband will be allowed his life, and his crown, but he will have no authority. He may remain in this ridiculous city for all I care, worshipping the noon sun and the dust like the lunatic he has become. No-one will know. He will be granted sufficient attendants to care for him.’

‘And you?’

‘I am God’s Father. Doer of Right. I will remain.’

‘You are the society,’ I said. ‘The Society of Ashes. What an appropriate name. The men of ash.’

He smiled that calculating smile. ‘It is another show. A ceremony, if you like. But it works well. Men love the power of secrets. It is interesting what they will do, and give, to know the great secret of power. Seven gold feathers from the bird of rebirth. I believe you still have one in your possession. Please pass it to its rightful owner now.’

‘You left it there for me to find.’

He nodded, as if politely accepting a compliment.

I reached into my case, found the feather, and gave it to Nefertiti. She looked at it as if now she could see the future. As if now she knew the end of the story. And it was not what she desired.