‘You will be aware that I have-’
‘Stop.’
He raised his right hand. I waited.
‘If the Queen had ventured to ask my opinion, I would have forbidden her to send for you.’
He looked me up and down.
‘I do not like the city Medjay interfering in the administration and the business of the palace.’
‘She called for me in a private, personal capacity,’ I replied.
‘I am perfectly aware of the nature and history of your involvement with the royal family,’ he said quietly. ‘And if this does not remain an entirely private, personal affair, you may be sure I will show you and your family no mercy.’
I nodded, but said nothing.
‘In any case, I have decided that carving is irrelevant. It must simply be destroyed and forgotten.’
His hand, mottled and bony, quivered as it gripped the head of his walking stick. I looked around the pure order of his chamber. The room seemed to lack life, and its natural state of disorder, entirely.
‘And yet it seems to have alarmed the King and Queen.’
‘They are children. Children fear the insubstantial. The ghost in the tomb. The bad spirit beneath the couch. It is superstition. There is no place for superstition in the Two Lands.’
‘Perhaps it is not superstition but imagination.’
‘There is no difference.’
Not to you, you slice of emptiness, I thought.
He continued: ‘Nevertheless, this represents a failure of order. The officers of the palace should have detected it. That it came to enter the precincts of the palace at all is gross negligence. This will not be tolerated.’
‘No doubt there will be an investigation, and the flaws will be remedied.’
He ignored the contempt that inflected my tone.
‘Order is the priority of power. After the arrogant catastrophes of the past, the glorious reign of Tutankhamun represents the triumph of the divine universal order of
‘You called him a child just now.’
He gazed at me, and for a moment I thought he would throw me out. He didn’t, so I continued.
‘Forgive me for labouring a point, but when the crowd start to splatter the King with the blood of slaughtered pigs, in public, at the height of the Opet Festival-’
‘An isolated incident. These elements of dissent are unimportant and they will be crushed out of existence.’
He noticed the table was out of alignment, frowned, and returned it to its perfect position.
‘And then the carving. Discovered on the very same day? Someone within the palace hierarchy is conspiring against the King. And bearing in mind the rumours of the failure of the Hittite wars, and the long absence of General Horemheb-’
I had hit the spot. His walking stick slammed down on the low table between us. A glass figurine tipped over and shattered. He barked: ‘Your job is to apply the law. Not to question the ethics or the practice of its application.’
He tried to calm himself.
‘You have no authority to speak of any of these issues. What are you doing here, wasting my time? I know what the Queen has asked of you. Why should I care if she wishes to indulge her little fantasies of fear and protection? And as for you-you imagine yourself as the hero in a romance of truth and justice. And yet who are you? Others have been promoted before you. You languish in a middle-ranking position, alienated from your colleagues, lacking accomplishments. You think of yourself as complex and subtle, with your interest in poetry, and yet you are uncertainly engaged in a profession that exalts the violent business of the execution of the law. That is the sum of you.’
Silence. I stood up. He remained seated.
‘As you say, I’m a figure from a romance: absurd, old-fashioned and out of date. The Queen prevailed upon me. I can’t help myself. I have a weakness for ladies in distress. Someone shouts the word “justice,” and I appear like a dog.’
‘
The mocking way this old and rotting man spoke the word at me made me think of everything that was not just.
I moved towards the door.
‘I’ll assume I now have your approval to continue with the investigation of this mystery, regardless of where it takes me.’
‘The Queen is sufficient authority. I support her wishes in all things.’ And he meant: ‘You will have no authority from me.’
I smiled, opened the door, and left him and his aching bones in his perfect chamber. At least I had now asserted my role in the situation. And I knew one other important thing: he had no idea of Ankhesenamun’s plan.
10
I returned to my own shabby office at the wrong end of the last passageway, where the light gives up in disappointment, and the cleaners never bother. No signs of power here. Ay was right, of course. I was going nowhere, slowly, like a fallen leaf in a stagnant pool. Indeed, the glamour of last night’s encounter was now giving way to the harsh light of day, and I realized I hardly knew where to begin. On days like this I felt, as the saying goes, worse than the dung of vultures. Thoth rambled ahead of me, knowing the way, as he knows everything that matters.
Khety was waiting for me. He has a way of brimming with information which I find tolerable only on good days.
‘Sit.’
He faltered for a moment, disconcerted.
‘Speak.’
‘Last night-’
‘Stop.’
He paused, his mouth open, looking from me to Thoth, as if the animal might explain to him the reasons for my temper. We sat like a trio of fools.
‘Do you believe in justice, Khety?’
He looked a bit dazed by the question.
‘What do you mean,
‘It is a matter of faith over experience, is it?’
‘I
I nodded at this good answer, and changed the subject.
‘You have some information.’
He nodded.
‘Something you have seen with your own eyes,’ I continued.
He nodded again.
‘Another body has been found.’
‘That’s disappointing,’ I said, quietly. ‘When was it discovered?’
‘Early this morning. I tried to find you at home, but you had already left. This one is different.’
She would have been beautiful. Last night she would still have been a young woman, eighteen or nineteen, just arriving at the perfect possession of her beauty. Except that where her face and hair should have been there
