Tutankhamun: The Book of Shadows

of the Otherworld. Someone had left a lamp lit in a wall sconce for me. It burned without movement or sound, undisturbed by currents of air or time. I picked it up and walked forward; tunnels disappeared unfathomably in every direction, and off each one of them deep, low-ceilinged chambers were stacked high with clay pots of all shapes and sizes. There must have been millions and millions of them, containing the embalmed remains of ibises, falcons and baboons…Thoth, surrounded by the remains of his own kind, scented the cemetery air, his ears alert, to catch the smallest revealing sounds-a sandal treading on dust, the whisper of linen across living skin-such things as would be inaudible to me but might betray the presence of Sobek and my son to his acute attention.

Then we both heard it: a child’s cry, lost and stricken, calling pitifully from deep within the catacombs. My son’s voice…but where was it coming from? Thoth tugged suddenly on his leash, and we scrambled along the passage to our left, our shadows tracing us along the walls in the sphere of light cast by the lamp. The passage sloped downwards. More passageways led off in different directions into branching infinities of darkness. Where was he? How would I save him?

Then we heard another high, echoing cry, this time from another direction. Thoth turned and tugged on the leash, urging me to follow. I let him lead me down a side passage. At the end, it divided into two. We listened, vigilant, every nerve sharpened, every muscle tense. Another cry came, this time to the right. We hastened along the passage, past still more low chambers crammed with pots, most of them smashed now, with small bones and bits of skull sticking out at odd angles, as if they had been here for a very long time.

Every time the cry came echoing up to us, it led us deeper and deeper into the catacombs. It occurred to me then how impossible it would be, even if I could save my son, to find our way out again. And the thought followed: this was a game. He was trapping me. I stopped. When the next cry came I shouted out: ‘I will go no further. Come to me. Show yourself.’

My voice echoed down the passages, resounding and repeating throughout the labyrinth, before fading to nothing. Thoth and I waited in the vast obscurity, in our small circle of weak, propitiatory light. At first, there was nothing. But then the faintest glow glimmered in the darkness. Impossible to gauge how close or how far away it was, this tiny point of light. But we watched it bud and flower, as it lit up the sides of the passageway, I saw within it: a shadow, walking.

48

He wore the black mask of Anubis, the jackal, Guardian of the Necropolis. His painted teeth were white in the dark. I saw a ceremonial gold collar around his neck.

‘You have brought your baboon,’ he said, in his low, grey voice.

‘He insisted on meeting you.’

‘He is Thoth, Recorder of the Dead. Perhaps he deserves a place at this gathering,’ he replied.

‘Take off that mask, Sobek, and look me in the eye,’ I said.

The great catacombs, with their labyrinth of darkness and silence, seemed like the vast, echoey ear of the Gods. Were they listening to every word? Slowly he removed the mask. We faced each other. I stared with hatred into his stone-grey eyes.

‘You have my son, and I want him back. Where is he?’ I said.

‘He is here, hidden. I will return him to you. But first, you must give me something.’

‘I have it but I will not give it to you until my son is safe, with me.’

‘Show it to me.’

I held up the leather bag so he could see it in the lamplight. He gazed at it hungrily.

‘We have an impasse. I will not tell you where the boy is, until I have the bag. And you will ensure I do not gain possession of the bag unless you have the child. So let us be intelligent, and think about this in another way,’ he said.

‘And what is that?’

‘The price of your child’s life is nothing more than a little conversation with me. I have long thought of you as an honoured colleague. We are very like each other, after all.’

‘We have nothing to discuss. I am nothing like you. All I want is my son. Alive. Now. If you have hurt him, if you have hurt any particle of him-’

‘Then to get him you must be patient, or I will tell you nothing,’ he replied coldly. ‘I have waited for this moment. Think, Seeker of Mysteries. You, too, have questions. Perhaps I have answers.’

I hesitated. Like all murderers of his kind, he was lonely. He desired to be understood.

‘What do you want to talk about?’

‘Let us talk about death. For this is what fascinates us both. Death is the greatest of gifts, for it alone offers transcendence and perfection from this hopeless and banal place of blood and dust,’ he said.

‘Death is not a gift. It is a loss,’ I replied.

‘No, Rahotep. You feel most alive when closest to death. I know you do, despite the sweet little world of your family. All those dear children, and your loving wife…But mortals are mere bags of blood and bone and vile tissue. The heart, the famous heart of which our poets and lovers speak, is nothing but meat. All shall rot.’

‘It is called the human condition. We make the best of it. What you do is also very banal. You kill helpless, drugged boys and girls, and small animals. You skin them, you break their bones, and you pluck out their eyes. So what? That is nothing special. In fact, it is pathetic. You are no more than a schoolboy torturing insects and cats. I have seen much worse. I don’t care why you killed them in the way you did. It doesn’t matter. It was some kind of freak show of death done for your own benefit. You speak of transcendence, and yet here you are, deep in the catacombs, a lonely, frustrated little man, despised, a failure; and desperate for what is contained in this little leather bag.’

He was breathing faster now. I needed to goad him.

‘Did you know that one of the boys did not die? He is alive. He described you. He can identify you,’ I continued.

He shook his head.

‘A witness with no eyes? No, Rahotep, it is you who are desperate. It is you who are the failure. The King is dead, your career is finished, your son is in my power.’

I struggled not to slam him up against the wall of the catacomb and smash his face with the lamp. But I must not, for how then would I find Amenmose? And I still needed answers.

‘As for those absurd objects you left for the King; your strange little gifts. Did you really think they would frighten him?’

He scowled.

‘I know they caused him terror. They showed him, and that girl, everything they feared; all I had to do was to hold up a mirror to their terror of death. Fear is the greatest power. Fear of the dark, of decay, destruction and doom…and above all, fear of death; the fear that drives all men. The fear that underlies everything that we have made, and everything we do. Fear is a glorious power, and I used it well!’ Sobek’s voice was tighter now.

I moved closer to him.

‘You are a pathetic, sad, twisted old man. You were sacked by Ay, and in revenge you found a way to make yourself feel important again.’

‘Ay was a fool. He did not see what he had before him. He dismissed me. He betrayed my care! But now he regrets it. Everything that has come to pass, all the chaos and the fear, has been caused to happen by me! Even you, the famous Rahotep, Seeker of Mysteries, could not stop me. Do you still not see? I called to you. I laid a path for you, from the beginning, to this moment. And you have followed like a dog, fascinated by the stink of corruption and death.’

I had known this, and denied it to myself. He saw it.

‘Yes. Now you understand. Now fear touches you. The fear of failure.’

I kept moving to ward off that fear.

‘But why did you hate Tutankhamun? Why did you begin to attack him?’

‘He was the seed of a declining and deteriorating dynasty. He was not fit. He was not virile. His mind was weak and his body imperfect. His fertility was blighted, and offered only a progeny of twisted, useless things. He