A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore

by Mohamed Mansi Qandil

  “I come,” he said, “to announce our victory, my lord.”

  This was not evident from his appearance, and if such a victory had indeed been achieved, then it had been very costly. Tut dared not say a word, or ask for details. He simply stared fixedly at Horemheb.

  “We destroyed their settlements,” Horemheb continued. “We evicted them from Canaan and drove them back beyond the river. The Hittite king has pledged not to attempt to antagonize us further, and he sent his son as hostage, to ensure that he keeps his promise.” Horemheb gestured and said, “Come forward, Tayfour.”

  A slender youth advanced, bare-chested and tousle-headed. He stood trembling before them. Tut looked him over uneasily. His hair was dark blond, his eyes disquietingly pale. He was trying to disguise his primitive ill nature with a mask of servility, and he kept his mouth closed to conceal his fangs. His nails were long and filthy, his bare feet broad, ill-suited to his wiry frame, as if he had walked a journey of many miles. Ankhesen studied him as well, equally ill at ease: those strange eyes, blue as if they contained a miniature sea; his disheveled locks straggling upon his wide shoulders. His legs were strong, like those of a wrestler—he could have lifted her up onto his shoulders if he had wished, and carried her off. There was a protracted silence, while Tut tried to find his voice.

  “I congratulate you, brave warrior,” he told Horemheb at last, “but what are we to do with this hostage? Are we to kill him or imprison him?”

  “My lord,” Horemheb said, “he is our hostage. Should any harm come to him, it would mean a renewal of war. We must play host to him, and guard his life.”

  “Very well,” Tut replied casually. “Let him be housed in one of the lodgings adjacent to the palace, then. We have no wish to provoke the barbarians’ wrath.”

  The servants led the youth away. Ankhesen followed him with her eyes until he disappeared from view. Then Horemheb began to tell them of his deeds and offer up the spoils. It was plain enough that he really had been victorious. From the enemy’s temples he had seized statues of Set, the god of darkness, whom they worshipped. He had got hold of their flags, fashioned from dyed animal hide, and made off with their leaders’ iron coats of mail. He had appropriated gold from their treasuries. Not only that, but he had ordered the rape of all the women, so that they would bear children of Egyptian blood, who would declare no more wars upon the land in which their fathers dwelt.

  With Horemheb back, there was virtually no need for the Pharaoh who sat upon the throne. The ranks of those seeking favors, the beggars, and the sycophants, dwindled. The country seemed enervated, as if it were trying to recover its breath. To begin with, Horemheb dissolved the army and paid off the soldiers. They were required to surrender their lances and swords, and to return once more to their starving villages. Axes were raised and brought down upon the earth, tilling it and clearing it of dead matter. The waterwheels turned, lifting water from the river’s edge and depositing it into the irrigation canals, which had become clogged with weeds. The fields drew breath once more, the dust shivered as it received the new plantings. But the war that had grown distant still raged within the palace, whose chief inhabitant seemed to be laboring under a curse. Tut had been seized by a sudden weakness, and one night he found himself unable to rise. Ankhesen’s moans and her efforts to rouse him were of no avail—he was simply too feeble to accommodate her. Horemheb’s footfalls resounded through the palace corridors at all times, without cause. Tut made no further attempt to return to her bed, while his longing to cross to the opposite shore increased.

  The tomb continued to grow, the way a viper creeps along below the earth. Ankhesen sat alone all day long, and for many hours of the night as well, amid the slave girls’ silly chatter and the toadying of Thebes’s upper-class women. Her friends from the city in which she had grown up no longer came; abashed, they kept to their own homes. Ankhesen felt desperately lonely.

  On hearing her slave girl, Amnet, remark, “What a gorgeous creature he is!” she rose and went to the girl’s side. It was then that she saw him pacing about the palace garden, like a captive animal. He was lean, but muscular. His skin shone with perspiration, for he had not yet adjusted to Thebes’s hot weather. With a gasp, he lifted his hand as if groping for a breath of fresh air. Quivering, she gazed at him, feeling herself at one with him—just like him, she had been snatched away from her family, her people, leaving behind her mother and sisters, as well as her father’s grave, whose whereabouts she did not even know. She had become a prisoner within this stifling palace. She wished she could go down to him and touch him, offer him some sort of kindness, let him know he was not alone in this strange land. Standing beside her, Amnet gave off her own distinct fragrance. She was a pretty girl, from one of the noble houses of Thebes, and her scent was that of Ankhesen’s grandmother Tiye. All the women of Thebes had insisted upon wearing it after the queen’s passing.

  “He is not a ‘creature,’” said Ankhesen.

  “He is wild and dangerous. My mother always warned me about men with pale eyes—everyone fears them.”

  “Perhaps it is he who fears everyone else,” Ankhesen replied. “If Horemheb should become angry with him, he might kill him in an instant.”

  Ankhesen felt her heart fill with pity for the young man, a despairing hostage in a strange country whose language he did not know, threatened with death at any moment. In Amnet’s voice she could sense her hunger; the girl could not suppress a tremor of desire. Unwittingly, she had drawn attention to the youth, and now Ankhesen saw an escape from the tedium of the vacant days her husband spent on the other side of the river.

  She made sure she was alone. She took to dismissing Amnet before the hour at which he made his daily appearance in the garden. She stood behind the curtains, so the she could watch him intently. She did not know whether he had sensed her presence or not; while in the garden he was never still—it was as if he were keeping up a regimen of military exercises, battling imaginary adversaries and hurling spears at nonexistent targets. He kept up his savage routines, so as not to grow soft, to give way to a life of ease. For long hours she watched him, unable to take her eyes off him, her body tensed as if she had reached the summit of a mountain that had no other side.

  She had been observing him for more days than she could count, when one day he startled her by approaching her window. She was expecting him to turn around and walk away again, but he didn’t. He stopped below her window and lifted his head to confront her. She felt her breath coming faster—it was no use trying to hide behind the curtains—he knew she was there—no doubt he had caught sight of her some time ago. She opened the curtains and stood facing him, feeling her chest expand and contract. She could smell his sweat, distinctly a scent of the wild, and all the while he stood regarding her with his strange eyes, an arresting, indeterminate blue color. She did not speak—but then he addressed her in broken Egyptian.

  “You are the queen, yes? I still remember your face.”

  With a start of surprise she said, “You’re speaking Egyptian!”

  “Yes. I learned it from the slave girls and attendants.”

  As astonished as before, she said, naïvely, “The slave girls? When did this happen?”

  “All the time. They sneak into my room every night.”

  She gasped, staring at his body, his pale skin. He had taken some color from the sun, but it had not dispelled his whiteness. He looked powerful, overflowing with the potent juices of his youth. Those whoring slave girls—they had learned the way to his bed and not one of them had told her. Had they conspired together, or had each sought her own pleasure in her own particular way?

  “Why are you always watching me?” he said now. “Why don’t you come talk to me? I, too, am royalty—a prince, and my father is a king . . .”

  Three guards began making their way toward him, coming from the other end of the garden. She saw them walking in his direction, their weapons unsheathed. “They’ll kill you,” she said, frightened. />
  He turned and looked behind him. Seeing them, he showed no fear, nor did he move from his place in front of her window. “They wouldn’t dare,” he said. “I am a hostage.” The soldiers, looking no less menacing, were getting closer.

  “They will kill you,” she said in alarm, “because you dared to speak to me.” The guards moved in, circled him, and pointed their spears at his neck. It appeared to Ankhesen as though their pointed tips had actually pierced his skin. “Stop!” she shrieked. “Get away from him!”

  The guards lowered their spears and bowed their heads. She was trembling, and still he gazed at her, looking her in the eye, indifferent to the guards and their spears. “Go!” she shouted at him, but still he stood there, defiantly. This pleased her, but she glared at him and he began to move off, without turning his back to her. She stood watching him, following every step with her eyes, afraid that the guards would go after him and do him some harm. She turned to them—their heads were still bowed—and she said with undisguised fury, “Do not provoke him again. Now go!”

  For the rest of the day she was unable to regain her composure—she felt as though she was burning up inside. The Pharaoh, meanwhile, stayed away all day and all night. When Amnet came, Ankhesen turned on her wrathfully. “That hostage,” she cried, “the prince. Do you know where his room is?”

  Amnet gave her a frightened look and colored deeply. Taking a step backward, she said, “My lady, I . . .”

  But Ankhesen was apoplectic. “Wretched girl!” she shrieked. “Don’t try to tell me that you don’t go to him!”

  The girl could not understand why Ankhesen was so angry with her.

  On the other side of the river, work on the tomb proceeded, and Horemheb could only admire its workmanship and the way in which it continued to expand beneath the earth. He had gone in person to see it, going down with the Pharaoh as he descended the passageway leading underground. They entered the anteroom, the largest of all, in which everything belonging to the Pharaoh would be placed, all the things that would be useful to him in the afterlife. Then they passed through the doorway leading to the burial chamber, which was a little smaller. Here was where the coffin would go, along with the rest of the king’s treasures. Horemheb followed him into each section, including the small annex in which the king’s weapons would be placed.

  His face expressionless, he said, “This shall be a tomb surpassing all those of the great Pharaohs.”

  They both knew he did not merit such a tomb, but Horemheb ordered that the national treasuries be opened, and that the gold needed for the construction of his coffin, his death mask, and the royal chariot be taken out: as if he were offering compensation for his betrayal of the fallen god and the late Pharaoh.

  Ankhesen, meanwhile, still stood in her room, oppressed by a sense of bitter cold and silence. She sat down upon the empty bed, but she could neither sit still nor sleep. She got up again and hurried down the stairs. She stepped out into the wet grass. The guards would see her, certainly, but they would not dare approach her. She entered a stone building hidden in a stand of trees and dashed along the corridor, out of breath, heedless of the slaves who prostrated themselves upon the ground when they saw her. Her body was in revolt, and nothing could have stopped it.

  At last she came to the place where he slept. He was naked beneath the moonlight, deeply asleep. She wrapped herself around him. He had become accustomed to these nocturnal advances, the pressure of women’s bodies, trembling with desire, none of his visitors bothering to identify themselves. This time, though, he recognized the face in the moonlight and understood the enormity of the predicament in which he found himself. But she pulled him closer, growling like some famished creature. His bed was permeated with a multitude of aromas, those of other women—including even Amnet’s scent. This goaded her further, and she moaned, finding his body so different from what she had known: youthful, strong, and muscular, as it moved above hers, knowing and confident. He knew where to find the key to her pleasure—the most subtle and sensitive places. A cry of ecstasy escaped her as she was engulfed by a wave of intense feeling such as she had never known. Again and again, unceasingly, her body rose up responsively, not even allowing her a moment to stop and catch her breath.

  A little later, Ankhesen sat beside the window, gasping for breath, the moonlight reflected in her face, which shone with perspiration. The boy, bewildered, exclaimed, “I never imagined you coming to me on your own two feet!”

  She contemplated his body, gleaming in the light of the moon. No other body had given her this pleasure, rapture such as she had never before experienced—not with the wolves’ whelp, not with any of the dozens of slaves and guards. No one had given her, as he had, the sensation that her limbs were dissolving.

  “If you had given me a sign,” he said, “I would have slipped past the guards and soldiers to kneel at your feet.”

  She took his head in her hands, gazed into his pale eyes, and pressed his face to her breasts, into which, trembling, she felt him sink his teeth. She cried out in pain. “I don’t want you to kneel at my feet,” she said. “I want you to be king—my king.”

  It was a crazy idea, and yet, from the first night on, she could not stop thinking about it. She felt more certain each time she crossed the patch of damp grass, ravenous for him; each time she lay bathed in sweat on his narrow wooden bed; each time she returned, drunk and sated with pleasure. She could no longer detect any scent but her own in his bed. She would envision the details of how it might be accomplished, each time Tut lay beside her, with his slight frame and dark complexion, starting up from time to time as if relentlessly beset by nightmares. But it was an idea so outlandish as to render Tayfour impotent with fear. He got up out of bed and covered the beautiful, naked body that was his glory.

  “I am a foreigner here,” he said. “No one would accept me.”

  “When I choose you, they will accept you. It was I who gave the throne to my husband, and I can still give it to you. I am the daughter of Isis. He who sits upon my lap shall be Pharaoh.”

  She spoke with a keen resolve, a firmness of mind so different from the ungovernable appetites of her body. Truly she was a goddess, with her wide eyes and delicate lashes—no one could check her desires or break her will. Everyone knew of their relationship—her nightly forays were observed, her moans overheard. But his being the instrument of her pleasure was one thing; for him to attempt to ascend the throne would be quite another.

  “What about the present Pharaoh?” he said. “The one who still lives—your husband?”

  “This is what we must arrange between us. He is no good for this life. Every night he goes across the river—to the land of the dead. And it is there he must stay.”

  That night with him she gave herself over to violent passion, and did not leave off even after he had grown shaky. She had found the bodily release she had sought for so long—she had come to this point in the same crazed and outlandish way in which her father had conceived his decision to destroy the old gods and follow a new one.

  In her bid to achieve her ends before revealing to all the true state of affairs, time was her adversary; she must exploit her power as queen and make all arrangements out of everyone’s sight, well concealed from the Pharaoh and Horemheb—especially Horemheb. She would need enough gold to persuade the guards who watched Tayfour’s every move to look the other way, and to expedite the task of the river guards in crossing to the other shore, and of the ferrymen in finding anchorage that would not be discovered by the night watchmen. No one knew the truth of her scheme—or its intended outcome. Each participant was apprised only of that small part in the proceedings for which he would be paid.

  She waited for a night when the moon would be full, when the ancient wolf spirits would awaken and they would call to one another, howling all through the night, in a communication between two worlds: that of the living, and that of the dead. Seeing Tut preparing to cross to the western shore of the river, she shrank for a moment in
fear of the deed she was contemplating. She clung to his neck. He felt the quivering tension in her body as she pressed herself to him.

  “Don’t leave me this night!” she cried desperately. “Lie here beside me and do with my body what you will—or do nothing. Only stay with me!”

  But he too was gripped by a sense of urgency, every cell of his being straining toward the moment in which his senses, his former instincts, would reawaken. He saw the moon through the window, looking down upon him, pale and round, encircled by a nimbus composed of the spirits of his ancestors—they were calling on him to join them. He left her and hurried down to where the boat awaited him. The river was dark and cold.

  The affair was proceeding like a destiny foretold. Had she been trying to prevent him from going, or to hasten him on his way? Then she heard footsteps approaching her room—had Tut suddenly changed his mind, and come back? But it was Horemheb who entered the room, not waiting for permission, before she could cover herself—who but he would dare to do such a thing? He stood before her, his face dark with anger, and she felt a cold apprehensiveness clutch at her heart. She shrank from his grimace, and said, “My lord Pharaoh is not here.”

  “Indeed,” he said, his voice booming. “I am aware of that. It is you I’ve come to speak to, to learn what is going on between you and the hostage.”

  She turned sharply toward him, shaking off her fear. “You wouldn’t dare touch him,” she said.