She took a long breath, and sighed.
‘The Days of Purification are complete. It is time to bury the King. But I have a problem.’
‘Horemheb?’
She nodded.
‘It is absolutely necessary that I decide what course to pursue. I have sustained him carefully, and I think he almost believes I will accept his proposal. Ay also believes I will see the wisdom of his proposition.’
‘So it will be a dangerous moment when you reveal your decision,’ I said.
‘Yes. And once the King is buried, I must act. So I have decided for now I need them both, if I am to claim the crowns and continue my dynasty. Where Ay is concerned, he has offered to support me as Queen, provided he continues to control the offices and the strategy of the Two Lands. I would have to accept his accession as King-’
She saw my startled expression, but continued: ‘But in return I maintain my position and my independence, and I develop my own contacts, relationships and support among the offices of the government. I will confer useful legitimacy upon his authority. Ay is old, and he has no children; it will only be a matter of a few years of his kingship, before he settles all his authority and influence on me, and then he can conveniently die. This is agreed between us. It is the best I can do.’
‘And Horemheb?’
‘That is more difficult. Despite my revulsion for him, I have had to consider every choice, every option. He has powerful forces on his side; he commands in total more than thirty thousand soldiers. His generation are all new men, and the new army has been a path towards power and success for those who would otherwise have had none. Imagine what they could do! However, his accession to power would bring him into direct conflict with Ay and the offices, and I believe this would make the Two Lands as unstable as if we were at war with ourselves. Both of them know this, and both recognize it gives neither a clear advantage. Civil war would benefit no one at this time. And it is also the case that most of Horemheb’s divisions are still far away, engaged in the Hittite wars; even if a truce were negotiated there, it would take months for them to return, and that would be seen as a major defeat for the general. But he remains very dangerous.
‘Thanks to you, I have the intelligence I need now about the trade in the opium poppy, and I could use this to damage his reputation for moral purity. But it will be very difficult to prove, and above all I believe almost impossible to identify him, comprehensively, as the master of this trade. I have also decided such a controversy would be too damaging at the very time when everything must be done to create a new unity. So, I still need to contain him, like a lion in an enclosure, and in a way that ensures the army remains more or less willingly a collaborator within the scope of our authority. And to do this, in the real world of men and ambition, I must tempt him with something he wants. So I shall offer the prospect of marriage, but on the condition he waits until Ay is dead. And perhaps, with fortune on my side, a better possibility will reveal itself before then, because in truth I could never share my bed with that man. He has the heart of a rat.’
We sat in silence for a moment.
‘You said you had a request,’ I reminded her.
‘I said it was an “appeal,” and an invitation, in fact,’ she replied.
‘What is it?’
She paused, nervously.
‘Will you accompany me to the King’s burial? It is to take place tomorrow night.’
52
And so it was I joined the funeral party of Tutankhamun, once Living Image of Amun, and Lord of the Two Lands, accompanying him, as he himself had asked me to do in his final hours, to his eternity. The body lay within his chamber in the palace, wrapped in its white linen shroud, within the innermost of the coffins. He looked neat and tidy, like a large, well-made doll tied up with gold thread and decorated with amulets.
Ankhesenamun formally placed a collar of fresh flowers, blue and white and green, around his neck. A gold vulture and below it a scarab pectoral had been placed around his neck, and a gold falcon on his breast. His arms were crossed, and a pair of gold hands held the crook and flail of kingship. I remembered I had been the last person to hold the King’s real hand, as his life slipped away. Surmounting the shroud was an object of impossible glory and wonder: a death mask created with the most profound metalworkers’ skill from pure gold into the proud face of the God Osiris. But the craftsman had also accurately re-created the eyes of Tutankhamun, sly and watchful and brilliant, under the dark lapis lazuli curves of his eyebrows. Fashioned from quartz and obsidian, they stared into eternity with confidence. The vulture and the cobra flared protectively above his face. I felt it was a face such as he would have wished to possess to meet the Gods.
We processed through the palace. I was permitted to walk behind Ankhesenamun, next to Simut, who nodded, pleased to see me. Ay walked beside the Queen. He was sucking on another clove and cinnamon lozenge whose scent occasionally wafted in my direction. He had toothache again. It was hard to feel pity. When we emerged through the western gateway of the palace, the open air of midnight was cool, and the stars were shimmering lucidly in the depths of the eternal ocean of the night. The mummy in its open coffin was placed upon a gilded catafalque protected by friezes of carved cobras, and decorated with garlands; the other coffins, one inside the other, followed behind on another bier dragged by oxen, for their weight was enormous. Twelve high officials, including Khay and Pentu, were dressed in white, and wore white mourning bands upon their brows. At a signal they called out in one voice, and then heaved on the ropes to drag the first, light catafalque on its runners along the stones of the Processional Way.
We proceeded along the main Way, going west and then north. In the distance, the long low structures of the Temple of Hatshepsut were etched against the moon-silvered cliffs. It was a laborious, slow journey. Everywhere along the strategic points of the route, Simut had placed troops of guards, equipped with powerful bows. The land was silent, under the moon’s inspection. The shadows of the night fell in strange divisions. We eventually reached the Valley of the Kings’ embrace, and then proceeded west, turning left and then left again into the most secret eastern necropolis valley, and passing slowly between the vast, eroded ramparts of rock towards the entrance to the tomb.
When we finally arrived, I saw hoards and stacks of objects had already been unloaded and set under white linen sheets, as if a great household were moving palaces; these must be the funeral treasures that would furnish the tomb after the rites had been completed and the coffins had been set and sealed within the sarcophagus.
Lamps lit the sixteen carved stone steps that led down into the tomb, and while everyone prepared for the rites to take place, I descended. I was shocked by what the light of the lamps revealed: the entrance to the tomb was not yet finished, indeed the passageway seemed barely to have been tidied in time for this ceremony. Left on the steps were jars of bandages and natron, and the workers’ water skins, hastily placed to one side. I passed through the rock-cut doorway into the Hall of Waiting.
Here again, the work was unfinished. On the sloping floor and the still-rough stone of the walls were the masons’ red marks and guidelines. Flakes and chips of limestone had not been swept up from the floor. Gold glittered here and there on the walls where the movers of the royal furniture had scraped their burdens in their haste. The air smelled of burning things-candle wax, oils, incense, rushes-even the rough-hewn stone of the walls and the low roofs seemed to be permeated with the acrid history of the many chisels that had worked through the bedrock, chip by chip, blow by blow.
I turned right and entered the burial chamber itself. The walls were decorated, but only in a simple, unostentatious way. There had evidently not been enough time for anything grander and more sophisticated. The many massive sections of the golden shrine, comprising four huge boxes, one inside the other, were set against the walls, waiting to be assembled within the confined dimensions of the dark space, once the coffins had been manoeuvred into place within the sarcophagus. Each section of glorious gilded wood was marked on the ungilded inner side with instructions-which end matched which, and so on. Already occupying almost all the space in the chamber was an immense yellow stone sarcophagus. Each corner was intricately carved with the detailed, overlapping protective wings of the deities.
I turned right again and looked into the treasury. It was already furnished with many objects; the great
