Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows

37

The chamber was dreary, lit by the oil lamp she carried, and niches in the wall where cheap candles burned with an oily, smoky light, casting a dismal light on everything. Mutnodjmet, sister of Nefertiti, wife of Horemheb, was very thin; her sunless skin clung to her elegant bones, which were painfully obvious through the folds of her plain robe. Her skull was shaved. She wore no wig. Her shoulders were rounded. Her face, which carried the same high cheekbones as her sister’s but had none of its poise, was somehow inert, and her eyes would have been sorrowful were they not also apathetic. She was a hollow thing. She gave off a desperate, sad, unanswerable neediness. But I also knew I could not trust her in any way, for despite her lassitude, need was coiled inside her, like a cobra, poised.

A dwarf stood on either side of her. They wore good-quality, matching clothes and jewellery, and matching daggers, indicating they were of prestigious rank. This was not unusual, for many men of such stature and appearance had made their way into responsible positions within the royal courts of the past. Unusually, however, they were identical. They did not look happy to be disturbed.

Mutnodjmet continued to stare at me uncomprehendingly, her head lowered, her mouth slack. She seemed unable to make sense of who I might be, or what we might be doing there.

‘Why have you brought me nothing?’ she mewed, in a tone that was much deeper than disappointment.

‘What should I bring you?’ I asked.

She considered me with her dull eyes, suddenly yelled a remarkable set of abuses at me, then shuffled off into another chamber. The dwarfs continued to gaze at us, with unfriendly expressions on their faces. I assumed they knew how to use their daggers. Perhaps their small stature would give them an advantage; after all, I thought ruefully, plenty of damage can be inflicted below the waistline.

‘What are your names?’

They exchanged a brief look, as if to say: ‘Who is this idiot?’

Khay intervened.

‘We are here only briefly to visit the Princess.’

‘She receives no visitors,’ said one of the dwarfs in an unexpectedly resonant voice.

‘None?’ I asked.

‘Why do you want to see her?’ said the other one, in an identical voice.

It was like talking to two faces with one mind. There was something comical about it all.

I smiled.

They were not amused, and their little hands went to their daggers’ handles. Khay began to prevaricate, but he was interrupted.

‘Oh just let them in,’ she shrieked, from the other chamber. ‘I want company. Anything, to make a change from you two.’

We moved down the hallway, off which I noticed several more or less empty rooms for storage, and a cooking area equipped with shelves and storage pots and jars, and came to a larger salon. We sat on stools, while she reclined on a bed. The room was basic, and somehow underfurnished, as if she had inherited a few second-rate leftovers from the family mansion. She watched us with her jaded eyes, circled with excessive and inaccurately applied lines of kohl. She looked Khay over like a fish that had gone off.

‘I bring you Rahotep, Seeker of Mysteries. He insisted on meeting you.’

She looked down her nose at him, and giggled.

‘What a cold dish he is. I wouldn’t feed him to a cat…but you.’

She looked me directly in the eye.

I ignored her blatant cue. She cackled suddenly, her head thrown back like a melodramatic actor.

I continued to hold her gaze.

‘Oh. I see; the strong and silent type. Perfect.’

She tried to gaze back like a courtesan, but she faltered, giggled, and suddenly collapsed into hysterics.

Someone had supplied her recently enough. She was still in the happy phase. Soon that would fade, and she would be in the clutches of her grim need again. I felt excitement rising in my chest, like a wonderful panic, for here was the missing connection. But would she be capable of doing the things I thought she had done? Could she have placed the stone carving, the box containing the mask of animal remains, and the doll? She resided within the royal quarters, but her freedom of movement seemed no greater than that of an animal within a cage. Her rooms were sealed from the outside. Someone was controlling her; but who? Not her husband, at least not directly, because he was far away. It had to be someone who had regular access to the palace, and in particular to these chambers. Also, it had to be someone who could supply her. The answer was so tantalizing. Was whoever had killed the young people, also managing the Princess? One question at a time, and I might be able to prove the connection, slowly, carefully, precisely.

‘Who supplies you?’ I said.

‘With what?’ she said, her eyes glittering.

‘With the opium poppy.’

Khay was on his feet instantly.

‘This is an appalling breach of protocol, and a disgusting accusation.’

‘Sit down and shut up!’

He was deeply affronted.

‘You have your own addictions,’ I added, purely for my own vindictive pleasure. ‘Addiction to wine is no different to what she’s doing. You can’t live without it, and neither can she. What’s the difference?’

He huffed but found he had no reply to that.

‘That’s true,’ she said, quietly. ‘It’s all there is. I tried to refuse it. But in the end, life without it is disappointing. It’s just so boring. So-nothing.’

‘And yet here you are, living for it. And you look like you’re dead already.’

She nodded, sadly.

‘But when you have it inside you, everything feels like bliss.’

She seemed as far from a state of bliss as a woman in the jaws of a crocodile.

‘Who brings it to you?’ I asked.

She smiled enigmatically and approached me.

‘You’d like to know that, wouldn’t you? I can see right through you. You’re as desperate as I am. You need your answers, just like I need my drug. You know how it feels…’

She slid her cold hand down inside my robe. It did nothing for me, so I withdrew it, and returned it to its owner.

She rubbed her wrist, tenderly.

‘I’m not going to tell you anything now,’ she said, like a petulant child.

‘I’ll go, then,’ I said, and stood up.

‘No, don’t,’ she called out. ‘Don’t be cruel. Don’t abandon a poor girl.’

She mewed like a cat again.

I turned back.

‘I’ll stay with you for a little while. But only if you talk to me.’

She twisted her hips from side to side, like a seductive child. It was pathetic in a middle-aged woman. Then she patted the bench, and so I sat again.

‘Ask me anything.’

‘Just tell me who supplies the drug.’

‘No one.’

She cackled again, suddenly.

‘This is tiresome,’ I said.

‘It’s a little, private joke between him and I. He tells me he is no one. But he does not know I laugh because I see he has an empty face.’