followed by a white sacrificial bull, the God approached. Finally the King and Queen stood up: Tutankhamun, the Living Image of Amun, and next to him Ankhesenamun.
‘She looks frightened.’
I looked down at Sekhmet, then back at the Queen. My daughter was right. Under the paraphernalia of power, the crown and the robes, the Queen looked nervous.
From the corner of my eye I saw, from out of the dense crowd standing under their sunshades against the intense light of the sun, several figures raised up by other figures as if on the joined hands of acrobats, and then a series of swift movements, arms casting something-small, dark balls that arced high in the air, over the heads of the crowd, on an inexorable trajectory towards the standing figures of the King and Queen. Time seemed to stretch and slow, as it does in the last moments before an accident.
A series of bright splashes of red exploded suddenly across the immaculate dust, and over the King and Queen’s robes. The King staggered backwards and slumped into the throne. The silence of profound shock suspended everything for a long moment. And then the world exploded into a thousand fragments of noise, action and screaming.
I feared Tutankhamun was dead; but he slowly raised his hands in horror or disgust, reluctant to touch the red stuff that ran down his royal robes into a puddle in the dust. Blood? Yes, but not the King’s, for there was too much of it too quickly. The God’s shrine now wavered, as the carrying priests, uncertain how to respond, waited for instructions, which did not come. Ankhesenamun was looking about in confusion; then as if waking from a slow dream, the orders of the priests and the army suddenly broke ranks.
I became aware of the girls screaming and crying, of Thuyu huddling into me, of Tanefert holding the other girls to herself, and of Nakht’s quick glance communicating his shock and astonishment at this sacrilegious act. On the roof terrace, men and women were turning to each other, their hands raised to their mouths, or appealing to the heavens for comfort in this moment of disaster. A tumult rose beneath us as the crowd began to panic, turning in confusion, pushing against the ranks of Medjay guards, trying to spill out on to the Avenue of Sphinxes, where they stampeded away from the scene of the crime. The Medjay guards responded by piling into the crowd, hitting anyone they could reach with their batons, dragging innocent bystanders by the hair, tackling men and women to the ground-where some were trampled by others-and herding as many people as they could capture together.
I looked back down to the place the balls had been thrown from, and noticed a young woman’s face, tense with trepidation; I was sure she had been one of the people who had thrown the balls; I watched as she looked around, assessing whether she had been seen, before turning purposefully away in the middle of a group of young men who seemed to gather about her as if in protection. Something occurred to her, and she looked up and saw me watching her. She held my gaze for a moment and then hid herself under a sunshade, hoping to disappear into the pandemonium of the streets. But I saw a group of Medjay guards rounding up everyone they could catch, like fishermen, and she was trapped, along with many others.
The King and the Queen were already being carted with indecent haste back into the safety of the temple walls, followed by the hidden God in his gold shrine and the crowds of dignitaries who ducked and scurried, alert to their own anxieties. Then they all vanished through the temple gates, leaving behind an unprecedented pandemonium at the heart of the city. A few bladders of blood-weapons suddenly as powerful as the most sophisticated bow and the finest, truest arrow-had changed everything.
I looked at the solid ground far below me, crowded with people, swirling in eddies of panic, and then for an instant what seemed solid changed to an abyss of dark shadows, and within it I saw the serpent of chaos and destruction, that lies coiled in secret beneath our feet, open its golden eyes.
4
I left the family with instructions to wait in Nakht’s house until it was safe for them to return home under the care of his household guards. Then I took Thoth with me, and stepped carefully out of the doorway into the street. Medjay officers swept up the last of the crowds, taking prisoner and binding any they suspected of wrongdoing. Shouts and cries came distantly through the thick, smoky air. The Avenue seemed like a vast papyrus scroll on which the true history of what had just happened was now recorded on the trampled sand, scribbled with the scuffed signs of footprints as people had fled, abandoning thousands of sandals. Litter drifted pointlessly. Gusts of hot air went around in angry circles, and then died out in a flutter of dust. Little groups gathered around the dead and injured, weeping and crying out to the Gods. The detritus of all the festival flowers, smeared and crushed, made an inadequate propitiatory offering to the god of this havoc.
I examined the patches of spattered blood, now sticky and congealed in the sun to black puddles. Thoth sniffed delicately at the blood, his eyes flickering up at me. Flies fought furiously over these new riches. I carefully picked up one of the bladders, and turned it in my hand. There was nothing sophisticated about it, or about this act. But it was radical in its originality, and the crude effectiveness of its abomination; for the perpetrators had humiliated the King as well as if they had just hung him upside down and smeared him in dog shit.
I walked beneath the carved stone image of our standard, the Wolf, Opener of the Ways, and entered the Medjay headquarters. I was instantly assailed by chaos. Men of all ranks hurried about, yelling orders and counter- orders, and generally demonstrating their status and appearance of purpose. Through the crowd, I saw Nebamun, Head of the Thebes Medjay. He stared at me, obviously annoyed to find me here, and gestured bluntly in the direction of his office. I sighed, and nodded.
He kicked the door shut in its shoddy frame, and Thoth and I sat patiently on our side of his not very neat low table, covered with papyrus rolls, half-finished snacks and dirty oil lamps. His big face, always shadowed with bristles, looked darker than ever. He glanced disdainfully at Thoth, who gazed back at him undaunted, as he pushed the various documents about with his stubby fists-he had the wrong hands for a bureaucrat. He was a man of the street, not a papyrus man.
He and I had avoided speaking directly to each other, but I had tried to show I bore him no resentment at his promotion over me. His was not the job I desired, despite my father’s disappointment, and Tanefert’s wish. She would prefer me to inhabit the safety of an office; but she knows I hate being trapped in a stuffy room mired in the tedium and nonsense of internal politics. He was welcome to it all. But now he had power over me, and we both knew it. In spite of myself, something rankled in my guts.
‘How’s the family?’ he asked, without much interest.
‘They are well. Yours?’
He gestured vaguely like a bored priest waving away a troublesome fly.
‘What a mess,’ he said, shaking his head. I decided to keep quiet about what I had seen.
‘Who do you think is behind it?’ I asked innocently.
‘I don’t know, but when we find them, and we will, I am personally going to rip their skin from their bodies in long, slow strips. And then I will stake them out in the desert under the midday sun as lunch for the bull ants and the scorpions. And I will watch.’
I knew he did not have enough resources available to investigate any of this properly. In these last years, the Medjay budget has been cut again and again, in favour of the army, and too many ex-Medjay were now unemployed or else working-for better remuneration than they had ever received within the force-in private security operations for rich clients and their families, at their homes or their treasure-filled tombs. It created an uncomfortable circumstance in which to run the city force. So he would do what he usually did when faced with a real problem: he would arrest some likely suspects, invent a case against them, and execute them for show. Such is the process of justice in our time.
He lolled backwards, and I saw how his belly had expanded since he had been appointed to his new role. Fat, with its implication of wealth and ease, seemed to be part of his new self.
‘It’s been a while since you had one of your big projects, eh? I expect you’re sniffing around for a place in the investigation…’
The way he eyed me made me want to walk out.
‘Not me. I’m enjoying the quiet life,’ I replied. He looked offended.
‘So why the hell are you here? Sightseeing?’
‘I examined a dead body this morning. A boy, a young man, under interesting circumstances-’
