what we witnessed tonight is testimony to that tension-something which we must take advantage of. Families are so strange and unaccountable, one sometimes wonders why people actually have them…’ he added. I saw he was only half-joking.
‘All families are complicated. But royal families are surely the most complex of all-for they squabble over power and gold and revenge, not just over who has the last bowl of soup…’ I suggested.
‘No matter how poor a man may be, if he has family he is rich,’ Nakht quoted the old proverb back at me. ‘As you know.’
Then he lay down on his couch, and prepared himself to sleep, as if nothing were the matter, as if he were not carrying such a great weight of responsibility upon his narrow shoulders.
‘How can you just sleep like that, when you know tomorrow you hold the destiny of our land in your hands?’ I said, in amazement.
‘No great task was ever undertaken without a good night’s sleep. Wars are lost through weariness and won after a good night of rest. I have prepared as thoroughly as possible. Nothing has been left to chance. I know what I have to do. Lying here awake all night worrying, and waking up tomorrow, before dawn, with red eyes and nothing in my brain will hardly help our cause. So if you don’t mind, please would you provide me with the silence necessary to allow me to get some rest? Good night.’
And he closed his eyes firmly. Simut and I tiptoed around him, and went outside to check his guards were in position for the night watch. We could trust no one here but ourselves, and as the Crown Prince’s behaviour had confirmed, we were unwelcome guests for many of the Hittites. We knew at any moment we might be attacked. Outside the entrance to the building, Hittite guards had also been posted. They stared at us, and our own Egyptian guards, with antipathy.
I glanced up at the night sky, full of stars, and a new moon’s crescent, which had slipped into the corner of the vast heavens.
‘Well, here we are,’ I said to Simut.
He nodded. ‘And I’m already looking forward to going home. This place gives me the creeps.’
‘Me, too. For some reason I keep thinking of snakes.’
He laughed.
‘It’s a palace. All palaces are full of ambitious men, women and children who’d eat each other alive for advancement. They’re all supposed to be the elite, but they clamber over each other, and behave with a viciousness and cruelty that would shock a dumb animal. That Crown Prince is a nasty piece of work. He’s no friend of ours.’
‘He’d love to see our Egyptian heads impaled on the city walls,’ I replied. And I thought about the strange Levantine I had seen, and his twisted face.
Simut decided to stay up with his guards for some of the night watch, so I returned to our chamber. Nakht was already breathing lightly, like a child. I gazed at his elegant head resting on its sleeping stand, and at the fine, delicate features of his face. I couldn’t tell if he was truly asleep or not. This journey had made me realize I did not know this man, my old friend, as well as I thought. We had been close for so many years. But even now, I never could be quite sure what was happening behind those hazel, hawk-like eyes, now closed in sleep. His face was a mask of calmness.
I sniffed the flask of water, to check it for poisons. It seemed fine and clear, so I drank a draught. It didn’t kill me at once, anyway. And I soon fell asleep, into a deep dream of high places, and drifting mists, and my family calling to me from very far away…
21
We were made to wait, and we were not alone. In the stifling antechamber a crowd of petitioners, bureaucrats, army officers, rich merchants, magnates and vassal rulers had come to pay their respects and to report on their territories. Every time a new person and his retinue appeared, everyone looked up to see whether they should rise, out of respect, or remain seated, out of pride. When we had entered, we had been assessed and then deliberately slighted. No one had stood up. The ambassador was embarrassed, but Nakht refused to allow the slight to offend him, nor the greater one of the long wait-even when the morning sun approached its zenith, and the air crackled with the day’s heat and the whir of crickets, and we had been waiting on the King for many hours, and had seen almost all others pass before us into his presence.
‘This is nothing,’ he said. ‘Sometimes envoys and ambassadors are made to wait for days, even weeks, for a royal audience. And as for messengers, most of them are lucky if they only have to wait a year for a reply to carry home.’
And he returned to his private contemplations. But suddenly, when I had begun to think we would indeed have to wait a year ourselves, the doors of the antechamber creaked open, and we were summoned.
The palace guards escorted us in a grim silence through several colonnaded courts, each larger and more impressive than the preceding one, and then up a wide flight of stairs to a higher floor, which opened into a vast terrace containing a spacious courtyard surrounded by a large, elegant colonnade. We were shown to bowls of clean water, and then our hands and feet were scrupulously washed by royal attendants. The pungent scent of branches of burning herbs haunted the air. Finally, we were led to magnificent doors, carved with the royal symbol of the lion and covered in gold leaf. There was absolute silence. Hattusa nodded to a royal herald, who knocked three times with his ceremonial mace on the door, and we were admitted.
We found ourselves in a beautiful shaded hall. Open arches along three sides gently admitted light and a warm breeze. Countless pillars, of great elegance, held up the high ceiling. At the far end of this hall, a group of men stood in the shade. The ambassador formally led us towards them; some I knew from last night, including the Crown Prince, who once again affected barely to acknowledge Nakht, and his uncle, the Chief Steward, who was politely respectful. Others were introduced: Hazannu, Mayor of the City; Zida, Chief Minister, and several other political advisers who formed the royal cabinet; but there was still no sign of the King. Simut’s guards carried our trunk of gold treasure, and laid it down before the royal throne.
We stood awaiting His Majesty in a line, in uncomfortable silence; until at last the royal herald grandly announced his imminent appearance, and suddenly, through a double doorway that must have led further into the private royal apartments, he appeared, as if in a great hurry, giving an impression of imperative, impatient energy. Everyone quickly got down on their knees, and bowed low.
When we were eventually permitted to rise, I found myself glancing cautiously at a man of no great height, but solidly built, scrupulously and unostentatiously dressed, with an air of barely subdued temper mixed with melancholy, and bluegrey eyes of penetrating, alarming astuteness. He sat down and gazed balefully and contemptuously at the company, drumming his ringed fingers on the arms of his throne. Suddenly, he barked something in his own language. One of the servants, quivering with fear, came forward and bowed before him. The King shouted a command, and then the servant bowed once more, turned, walked quickly to the far end of the chamber, and, without hesitating, threw himself off the edge into the void below.
‘I command every living creature in this world, and I command death. Remember that,’ said the Hittite King, in badly accented Egyptian, directly to Nakht.
Then he nodded brusquely to Hattusa, who began to deliver a speech in Hittite. I understood nothing, but I could see the King was affecting not to listen-or at least not to give away any response at all. Hattusa then invited Nakht to come forward. I confess that, for the first time, I am sure I saw my friend’s hands shaking with nerves. But when he spoke, his voice was calm and clear. And he spoke in Akkadian, the old, formal, otherwise unused language of all international diplomacy, as if it were his native tongue. Hattusa translated sentence by sentence into the Hittite tongue, and the King listened carefully, all the time refusing to respect or honour Nakht by looking at him. The other ministers and officials also listened, their eyes to the floor, each one carefully not giving away any response. Finally, Nakht bowed, and opened the trunk to reveal the gifts of gold. The Hittite King affected not even to glance at the contents. Instead, he sat forward impatiently, and spoke rapidly in Hittite. Hattusa in turn translated for Nakht, directly into Egyptian.
‘He commands us to speak in Egyptian and Hittite. He says it is better. Let brother speak to brother in his own true tongue.’
