by Paul Doherty
‘Were you really?’ Akhenaten snapped his fingers.
I hurried across with another parasol and he walked round the slaves, touching their skin.
‘What do you think, Mahu?’
‘If they had to sing for their living,’ I replied, ‘they’d soon starve.’
Akhenaten grimaced. He continued his inspection. I noticed at the back of the group were two Medjay, scouts who accompanied the procession to make sure light fingers went nowhere near the treasure wagon. Whilst Akhenaten hummed a song under his breath and perused the carts full of treasure, I recalled what Api had told me. Was I to be made Chief of Police of Thebes? How had my aunt known? Why hadn’t Akhenaten discussed the matter with me?
‘I know what we’ll do.’ Akhenaten stood on top of the cart, his fine robes spilling out about him. ‘Mahu, I want these Hittites to wear women’s wigs and dress in female attire. I am going to call them my Orchestra of the Sun. I will educate them myself.’
‘Why women’s attire?’
‘Their days as warriors are finished.’ Akhenaten clambered out of the cart. ‘They will be a symbol of the everlasting peace which my reign will bring, when swords are hammered into ploughshares and the chariots of war become carriages of pleasure.’
I could see the Princess’s arrival had interrupted Akhenaten’s thinking so I kept silent. I was always nervous about talking to my master in public lest the name Akhenaten might slip from my lips. The Prince had made me swear a great oath, my hand over the Sun Disc, that his sacred name would remain hidden until his Father gave him a sign to publish it, as Akhenaten said, to the ends of the earth and beyond.
The retinue was becoming restless. Akhenaten had not been discourteous. It was customary for such a period of waiting to be observed before a prince met his new wife. The poor Hittites looked totally bemused, shuffling their feet and muttering to each other in their clicking tongue. Akhenaten went and stood by Nefertiti. At last the sweating palanquin-holders were ordered to release their precious burden. They did so gently, the curtains were pulled back and Tadukhiya emerged. She was small and dark, no more than fourteen summers old, her black hair bound up under a rather exotic head-dress. She was garbed in gaudy but costly robes. She tripped gracefully toward Akhenaten, who grasped her hands and kissed her on each cheek, staring down at her affectionately. The contrast between the two women was startling. The Mitanni was perfectly formed but rather small, with slanted eyes in a dark-skinned face, a pouting mouth, pointed ears, and her plump cheeks glistening with oil. Nefertiti visibly relaxed; this new wife would be no rival.
‘She looks like a monkey,’ she whispered to me. ‘That’s what we will call her.’
And so her name became Khiya. No cruelty was intended. Khiya was a term of endearment, no more insulting than Akhenaten’s greeting in which he described Nefertiti as ‘Ta-Shepses, the Favourite’. He welcomed her to the palace, staring down at her, grasping her hands whilst she gazed shyly back, raising a hand to her mouth to hide a smile, a gesture she repeated when taken across to meet Nefertiti. At the time I thought Khiya was stupid. I was wrong: she learned quickly and wanted to survive. I noticed how she did not need further introduction to my master’s retinue: Ay she knew by name and reputation, the same for other members of the household, myself included. Horemheb and Rameses were praised as great warriors and I realised, as she was taken through the group, that someone had explained to her in great detail her new husband’s household as well as the power and status of his notables. Khiya was given her own quarters in new chambers Ay had ordered to be built and soon came to be accepted more as Nefertiti’s principal lady-in-waiting than a wife in her own right. Indeed, Khiya trailed Nefertiti like a pet monkey, giggling and chattering a stream of innocent questions. Nefertiti was more than content.
‘She is pretty and rather empty-headed,’ Nefertiti confided in me when we walked in the orchard to take the breeze wafting in from the river. Nefertiti often insisted on this, walking slowly, holding her stomach whilst discussing the doings of the day. Pregnancy had given her a fullness, a contentment which enhanced her beauty, a gracefulness both alluring and majestic. I had not forgotten that day in the orchard, the strange drink and even stranger dreams which followed. Nefertiti made no reference to this but treated me as a brother, asking my advice or questioning me about my first meeting with her husband. Khiya never joined us on such walks.
‘She can certainly talk,’ Nefertiti confided. ‘She chatters like a monkey, Mahu. Does she ever confide in you?’
I shook my head. I never said what I really knew or felt, at least not until I was certain. I would have loved to have questioned Nefertiti about Api’s strange remark about being appointed Chief of Police at Thebes. The honour intrigued me yet I was wary; such an office could mean my removal from the Royal Household and, above all, from her presence.
‘Do you think Khiya stupid, Mahu?’
‘No one is stupid.’
Nefertiti clapped her hands and laughed. ‘There speaks the bodyguard.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘The Chief of Police.’
‘Chief of police?’ I queried.
‘We’ll, that’s what you are, isn’t it, Mahu? Searching out those who wish to hurt my beloved? Protecting us?’
‘You have Horemheb and Rameses, not to mention your Uncle Nakhtimin.’
‘Put not your trust, Mahu, in the power of Pharaoh nor your confidence in the war-chariots of Egypt.’ She shivered and rubbed her arms. ‘Years ago in Akhmin I visited one of those soothsayers. She said my death would be at the hands of a great friend.’
‘My aunt was a soothsayer. I don’t believe in such things.’
‘You don’t believe in anything, do you, Mahu?’ She came closer. ‘What is Amun to you, or the power of the Aten? Well?’
‘I find it difficult to believe,’ I replied, ‘as my master does, that the gods wander the heavens like the massed priests of Amun. Go down to Thebes, Excellency, watch the seething mass of people. Do you really think the gods are interested in them?’
‘But the Aten?’ she insisted. ‘The One? The Invisible and Undivided?’
‘I wish him well, Excellency. And, when he introduces himself to me, I’ll return the courtesy.’
Nefertiti tweaked my cheek, grasped my arm and walked on down the pebbled path between the trellised fence of the vine groves. ‘We were talking about Khiya, an empty-head, a mere child. But,’ Nefertiti paused. ‘Sometimes, you watch me, Mahu. Why?’
‘You know the reason,’ I replied softly.
Again the laugh, this time self-conscious.
‘Khiya is different. She watches me like a monkey, as if learning my movements, wanting to imitate them.’
‘She’s in awe of you,’ I replied. ‘She wishes to please.’
‘A willing student in the arts of love,’ Nefertiti replied mischievously, ‘very astute, very active and eager. I have watched her closely. I had to tell her that squatting on all fours is not the only pose for a Princess of Egypt. She is also very noisy. Squeals like a cat. Akhenaten is much taken with her.’
In fact Akhenaten treated Khiya with great affection as if she was some newly bought toy. She often joined us at meals and, when he decided to walk in the cool of the evening, she would always be invited along. Nefertiti, of course, watched her like a bird of prey would its next meal.
‘She’ll never breed,’ she confided hotly. ‘No child of hers will wear the Double Crown of Egypt.’
Of course, as the weeks passed, Khiya became accustomed to the routine of the court. Ay was now often absent or closeted in his own chamber, poring over maps as well as reports from his myriad spies in Thebes. But he did not distance himself from me; we met every day for at least an hour. Ay had delineated my duties most carefully.
‘You, Mahu,’ he would sit squatting on a cushion, hands extended, ‘you are to watch and guard the Palace of the Aten. I will take care of affairs beyond its walls.’
And then he would deal with business: describing
the affairs of Egypt, the deployment of his regiments, the rumours and gossip from the temples, the quality of the harvest, the bartering in the marketplace. He pursued one aim – to keep everything in order to sustain harmony.
‘Let the days merge into each other,’ he remarked. ‘Let people not realise’ – he gave that crooked smile – ‘at least not now, that there is a new power in Egypt.’
I was tempted to raise the question of the post of Chief of Police in Thebes, but I decided against it. Ay himself was responsible for this. The city had two Police Chiefs, one for the East and one for the West of Thebes; they reported directly to Rahimere, the Mayor. Any change in this would have disturbed the harmony, the peace Ay so zealously pursued.
‘Keep close to Khiya,’ he also advised. ‘She’s new to the palace.’
‘But one day, surely,’ I mused, ‘our master will have his own harem, his House of Love? We can’t watch them all.’
‘One day, some day,’ Ay retorted caustically. ‘That does not matter. For the moment you have your orders.’
I didn’t need to watch Khiya. She watched me. I never really understood the attraction. She had learned about her nickname and accepted it with her usual good-natured charm. Perhaps it was mine, Baboon of the South, or the fact that she had seen Akhenaten and Nefertiti confide in me and thought that whatever was good for the Great Royal Wife was good for her. At table she would always single me out for comment or just sit and stare, those black eyes studying me curiously. As Nefertiti became more confined to her own quarters, surrounded by physicians under Pentju and the ever-chattering midwives, Khiya would search me out. We’d walk hand-in-hand like brother and sister through the palace grounds. Sometimes, when we were well away from public view, she’d sit at my feet like a scholar in the House of Instruction and gaze up at me. In some ways she was like Nefertiti, asking me question after question about her new husband, his early days. On occasion we could hear him training his orchestra, and Khiya would laugh.
‘So strange,’ she mused, ‘how he is interested in so many minor matters. He showed me his House of Paintings. The Prince explained how all art must speak the truth. But what is the truth, Mahu? Why is he attracted to the Aten? In my country we have many gods – they live in the trees and rocks.’
I’d answer like a teacher or an absentminded father would his daughter. On one occasion she looked away, then glanced back. I saw it, just for a moment, a knowing look, eyes a thousand years old in a mere child’s face. Oh, we all underestimated Khiya – and that includes myself. Yes, there was the usual feeling of unease but nothing alarming, just a glance, the pitch of her voice but we constantly misread the signs. If we met a jackal skulking through the narrow streets of the Necropolis, an ibis wading through the Nile or an ape grinning behind some palm fronds, we reckoned it must be the visitation of a god, a sign of things to come. We ignored Khiya at our cost and the price we paid was terrible. Ay confessed she was his real mistake and, if that cobra of a man could be deceived, why not me?
More pressing matters claimed our attention. Nefertiti eventually gave birth. Pentju withdrew and the midwives gathered with the silver and ebony birthing-chair, pots of the shepen plant and the corpses of skinned mice, should things go awry. The shaven heads of Amun-Ra sent five priestesses to represent the Goddess Isis and the rest. Akhenaten sent them packing but superstition still had its day. Charms were fashioned out of fishbone, prayers were offered to ward off ‘Him’, the Thief of the Underworld, who prowled the cot beds of infants ready to suck their life out. Akhenaten prayed to his strange god, demanding his blessings. In the end, the gods, or Chance, arranged things smoothly. Nefertiti gave birth to twin daughters, lusty girls who made the right cry and were born on an auspicious day. Two more human souls, destined to be caught up in the giddy whirl of Akhenaten’s dreams.
My master was pleased and proud. There was feasting and rejoicing in the brilliant, colonnaded halls where the babes were praised and fussed. Presents were showered on them, jewels and trinkets, robes and foodstuffs. Akhenaten preened himself, comparing his prowess to other Pharaohs, though I knew his soul too well, or thought I did. I caught his disappointment that he had no son. Suddenly, my days of festival were harshly interrupted. I kept thinking about Api’s strange remarks and wondered why Sobeck had not replied. In the end he did. A peddler came to the kitchens and Snefru brought me the message: a friend wished to meet me and buy me a present of the most exquisite jewellery.
‘I am a crocodile immersed in dread.
I am a crocodile who takes by robbery.’
(Spell 88: The Book of the Dead)
Chapter 13
Dressed in one of Snefru’s garish cloaks and carrying my sealed jar in a leather pannier slung across my shoulder, I went across the Nile to the Necropolis: a journey which always reminded me that, as in the palace, life and death sat cheek by jowl. At the quayside a beggarman, squirming through the crowds, seized my wrist, going down on his knees to show his peaceful intent.
‘The jeweller,’ he whispered through sore gums, ‘his stall is closed. However, your host will welcome you at the Sign of the Ankh in the Street of the Caskets near the Basketmakers’ Quarter in the City of the Dead. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’ I tried to shake off his grip.
‘Go in peace, pilgrim,’ he smiled. He leaned forward in a gust of stale sweat and cheap oil. ‘And be careful you are not followed.’
A boatman took me across the Nile. The sun was dipping and the fishing boats were out, the men on board shouting at each other, eager to find the best stretch to catch lampreys, skit, grey mullet and the pale-backed dark-bellied batisoida which always swam upside down. Henbirds, alarmed by the noise, rustled the branches of trees and brought the papyrus groves to life with their squawking and nesting. A screech owl hunted over the mudflats. Higher up, against the blood-red sky, vultures and buzzards patrolled; when one plunged, it was the sign for others to join the feasting.
The river was so busy it was impossible to see if anyone was following me. Matters worsened when the river guards, in their war-barge, manoeuvred along the edge of the reeds and shouted at us to move away. The alarm had been raised by some fishermen still waving their pitch torches as a sign of danger. Apparently a group of harpooners in their skiffs had cornered a young hippopotamus in the shallows only to find another, a cow, ready to give birth. This, in turn, had attracted the attention of crocodiles. The bull, summoned to his mate’s distress call, also returned to enter the fray.
The harpooners had withdrawn but the hippopotami were now so agitated they were likely to attack anything which caught their attention. I used the confusion to stare across at the dappled river bright in the dying rays of the sun and the dancing torches of the fishermen. I was looking for a boat, a punt or a barge with one passenger, someone who seemed out of place, but I could detect nothing.
Having landed safely at the Quayside of the Dead with its brooding, ill-carved statue of the green-skinned Osiris, I made my way across the Place of Scavengers and into the warren of streets in the lower part of the City of the Dead. It was a sombre place, suitable only for those who wished to shelter from the law and needed the darkness to cloak their activities. Sailors and marines staggered about, beer jugs in hand. Ladies from a House of Delight drifted through them trying to entice them in a cloud of cheap perfume, clattering jewellery and sloe-eyed glances, their rouged mouths in a permanent pout. Elsewhere, beggars, scorpion men, confidence tricksters, Rhinoceri, outlaws from the Red Lands, the grotesque and the crippled rubbed shoulders with grey-robed Desert Wanderers.
The lanes and streets were arrow-thin funnels lit by the occasional blaze from an oil lamp or the dancing fire of a cresset torch. The air was bittersweet with the stench of corruption from the cheap embalmers’ shops where the corpses of the poor were over-dried in baths of natron, hung on hooks to dry, pickled, stuffed with dirty rags, then doused in cheap perfumed oil before being handed back to their relatives. Casketmaker
s, shabti-sellers and coffin-polishers touted for business. Women of every nation, skimpily dressed or clothed mysteriously in hoods and robes, offered their bodies for sale. Tale-tellers and minstrels offered their wares, while professional travellers shouted how they had stories for sale about a land of frozen whiteness, yellow-skinned men who lived in palaces or roaming hordes of barbarians who killed and plundered and drank from the skulls of their enemies. A sideshow in front of a shop, covered with a patched tapestry of faded animal skins, offered a chance to view a Syrian ‘strong as a ram, pleasure three women at once’. Another show invited the curious to view a woman with three breasts, a dwarf with two heads or a bird which could talk like a man. Soothsayers and fortune-tellers vied with dancing troupes to catch my attention. A gang of pimps shrieked at a group of white-garbed priests, dancing madly in the name of their foreign god, to leave them and their customers alone. Stalls and shops spilled out rubbish. Bakers and meat-sellers offered platters of freshly cooked lamb, beef, goose and fish, grilled above spluttering charcoal and spiced hot to the tongue to satisfy any taste as well as to hide any putrefaction. Such a mêlée made it impossible to see if I was being followed. I felt uneasy because I was left alone, as if protected by some invisible presence, yet I could see nothing, except for a shaggy-headed dwarf, dressed in a striped robe, who always seemed to be either beside me or in front.